stock, and he had the good fortune to be born of an English mother.
But the Scotch blood in him, the Scotch ineptitudes, the Scotch lack
of force prevail. He does everything by turns and nothing long. Like
Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, he failed as a leader. The statesman in
him does not possess him; it was a mere detail and a small one. As an
active politician he had to look around for a model upon whom to shape
himself. No Scotchman can make the smallest sort of mark, whether it be
in politics or anything else, without such a model. And in his middle and
later periods, at any rate, Lord Rosebery has modelled himself upon Mr.
Augustine Birrell, and as is usual with Scotchmen, he has practically
ousted Mr. Birrell from the position of wit-monger to the Liberal party.
In the House of Commons Mr. Birrell made a reputation, not because he
was a statesman or an orator, but because he had a habit of firing off a
kind of loose wit which passes in the House of Commons for epigram. When
he spoke, the House was sure to be in a roar within the half-hour, and
one or two of the phrases he made became texts for leader-writers and
made good “quote” in Liberal speeches. With true Scottish enterprise,
Lord Rosebery determined to be a second and a greater Birrell. He has
succeeded. In the House of Lords he enjoys a reputation for saying
things. He is also credited, as was Mr. Birrell, with a nice taste in
letters. And, like Mr. Birrell, he is not infrequently asked down to
Little Puddlington in order to help in the celebration of the centenaries
of Little Puddlington’s locally born geniuses. He dare no more make a
serious speech, either in the House of Lords or at Little Puddlington,
than he dare call Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman out of his name. Fireworks
are expected from him, and if they were not forthcoming, there would
be no Lord Rosebery. He passes for a great empire builder, and along
with the worthy Dr. Jameson he figures among the executors of the late
Mr. Rhodes’s will. He is the founder and President of the New Liberal
League, which will have nothing to do with Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman,
but his personal friendship with Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman continues,
and Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman is certainly not mentioned in Mr. Cecil
Rhodes’s will. In effect, Lord Rosebery amounts to little more than
nothing. The Liberal League, which was to make a great to-do in most
matters appertaining to Liberalism and government, fizzled like a bad
squib for three or four weeks, and then Lord Rosebery went to Nice. That
is exactly the man. When his time comes, when the country wants him,
when Liberalism wants him,—when, in fact, anybody wants him,—he says,
“Yes, yes, I am here,” and immediately starts either for Nice or Epsom.
Scotch modesty overcomes him. Scotch caution says, “You know you are a
fool; be careful to avoid ultimate risks.” Scotch cowardice says, “If
you go into battle you may get hurt. Nice is much nicer.” In newspaper
columns Lord Rosebery’s speeches read _admirably_, providing you do not
study them too closely, but any person who has been present in the House
of Lords what time his Lordship was on his legs must have gone away
with shattered illusions. Even as C.-B. stutters and blunders and grabs
for his words in the circumambient air, so Lord Rosebery cackles and
sentimentalises. In appearance he is of about the build and body of a
draper. His voice is that of an anæmic curate. There are always tears in
it at the wrong places, and on the whole it makes you laugh. And having
spoken, he trots out like a Scotch sparrow, and with hat a-tilt and arms
under his coat-tails poises himself perkily on the steps of the entrance
to St. Stephen’s Hall, and waits for his carriage to take him off to the
station, and so to Epsom or Nice. On the turf his reputation is exactly
the same in kind as his reputation in politics. He is as variable as the
shade and as changeable as the moons. Sometimes he does brilliant things,
but he cannot keep them up. In brief he is half Scotch and half soda.
It is to these redoubtable Scotch persons that England is looking for
good government, and hence it comes to pass that of late she has had to
govern herself. Out of Scotchmen you can get little that is business-like
and little that is dignified, at any rate where statesmanship is
concerned. Their ambitions are illimitable, but their powers of execution
not worth counting. They will fight from behind cover to more or less
bitter and ignominious ends, but, like the Boer farmers, to whom in many
large respects they bear the most striking resemblances, they never know
when they are beaten, and their warfare deteriorates into mere brigandism
and filibustering. When Britain was ruled by Englishmen she wore the
epithet Great by good right; since she has been ruled by Scotchmen she
has well nigh lost it.
IV
THE SCOT IN JOURNALISM
We have seen on the word of Dr. Robertson Nicoll that once upon a time it
was the ambition of every Scotch youth to become a professor. Once upon a
time, too, and one does not need to quote authority for it, every second
child in kilts was devoted by his parents to the ministry, and did, no
doubt, sooner or later attain to that admirable office. But latterly the
supply of Scotch professors has been a good deal bigger than the demand,
and it has dawned upon the slow Scottish intellect that £70 a year and a
manse is after all not exactly one of the prizes of life. Therefore your
stern, calculating Scotch peasant has during late years dedicated his
son to the practice and service of journalism. Now journalism, though
the Fourth estate, is the last of the professions. The journalist who is
making £500 a year,—at any rate, the Scotch journalist who is making £500
a year,—is the exception and not the rule. Still, £500 a year, or, for
that matter, £250 a year, is wealth to your average Scot, who, nine times
out of ten, comes hitherward from a district where persons who once had
a sovereign in their possession are looked upon with awe and reverence.
Furthermore, journalism suits the Scot because it is a profession into
which you can crawl without inquiry as to your qualifications, and
because it is a profession in which the most middling talents will take
you a long way. The reporting staffs and sub-editorial staffs of both the
London and provincial journals can, I think, boast a decidedly decent
leaven of Scotchmen. In Fleet Street, if you do not happen to possess a
little of the Doric, you are at some disadvantage in comprehending the
persons with whom you are compelled to talk. “Hoo arre ye the noo?”
is the conventional greeting in most newspaper offices. Also a large
proportion of the persons who come up the stairs on personal business
which usually turns out to be the personal business of the persons, and
resolves itself into a request for reviewing, or an offer to do another
man’s work at a cheap rate, are very Scotch indeed; and while they drop
the Doric word with fair success, they cannot for the life of them
get out of the Doric idiom and the Doric accent. Armed with a letter
of introduction from Professor McMoss—whom you do not know—and with a
sheaf of dog’s eared certificates picked up at Scotch universities, they
descend upon you with the air of men who know for a surety that you
are dying for their services, and when they go out, after wasting an
altogether unnecessary amount of your time and temper, it is with black
looks and a burning conviction that you refused to employ them because
you know them to be so clever that they might supplant you in your own
chair.
Ten years ago it was the man from Oxford or Cambridge that was considered
the essential thing in journalism. Nowadays the attitude of newspaper
proprietors in want of a smart man amounts to “No university man need
apply.” I do not think that we are very far from the day when the tune
will be changed to “No Scotchman need apply.” Numerically the Scotch
journalist is unquestionably strong. He possesses, too, certain solid
qualities which are undoubtedly desirable in a journalist. For example,
he is punctual, cautious, dogged, unoriginal, and a born galley-slave.
You can knock an awful lot of work out of him, and no matter how little
you pay him he may be depended upon to sustain the dignity of the office
in the matter of clothes, external habits of life, and a dog-like
devotion to the hand that feeds him and the foot that kicks him. In
short, he is a capital routine man, and if you have a journal which you
wish to maintain on the ancient lines of stodge and flat-footedness, the
Scotchman does you admirably. But it is impossible to get away from
the fact that the vogue of the stolid, arid, stereotyped, sleepy sort
of journalism which satisfied the last generation is rapidly going to
pieces. The contemporary world wants and will have what it chooses to
call the “live” journalist, and the Scotchman who is a live journalist
to the extent of evolving anything bright or subtle or suggestive or
original has yet to be found. At the present moment he is managing to
keep himself alive by imitation. As a plagiarist of ideas, necessity has
made him a master. He knows that the reign of dulness is coming to an
end, and that the auld wife journalism in whose benevolent presence he
has prosed and prosed for so many years, is even now in her dotage and
cannot last much longer. So that he has taken thought and determined to
aim higher. What man has done, a Scot can do. It is not given to him to
be witty and brilliant and unhackneyed on a little oatmeal, but, thank
Heaven! he can always play sedulous ape, and sedulous ape it shall be.
These remarks, of course, apply only to the lower reaches of journalism,
to the sub-editorial, reportorial, contributorial, and contents bill
making departments. When it comes to a question of editors, matters
assume quite a different complexion. A Scotch editor is, as a rule, a
sight for gods and little fishes. Dr. Nicoll will tell you that the Scot
makes a good servant but a bad master. This is the truth. Mercifully,
you can count the Scotch editors of London on the fingers of one hand.
So far as I am aware, there are only two of them—Dr. Robertson Nicoll
and Dr. Nicol Dunn. Of one of them—him of the _Morning Post_—you hear
little, save that he is a good fellow of no great parts, and that he
holds at his office a daily reception for raw, unlicked Scotch youths who
are come newly over the border and crave the benefits of his advice and
assistance. Politically, his paper can scarcely be considered a power;
its views on most questions are of no great consequence, but it appears
to have an enormous circulation among the blue-blooded and the wealthy,
whose doings it chronicles with touching fidelity and regularity, and
without the smallest reference to the notoriously independent guinea
stamp of Dr. Nicol Dunn’s favourite poet. The other Dr. Nicoll is a horse
of another colour. He is all for Nonconformity and the appraisement of
healthy and improving literature. Each of his papers is a paper for
the bosom of the family and the ministers’ Monday, and warranted to
do all that can be done for the unco’ guid of North Britain, for all
Scottish writers of whatever degree of merit or demerit, for Dr. Nicoll’s
English admirers, and Dr. Nicoll himself. On every issue of these
remarkable publications Dr. Nicoll stamps the impress of his own engaging
personality. I have heard it said by an admirer of his that he is three
men—a Scotch divine, a judge of letters, and a journalist who never
forgets that his main business in life is to sell papers. These three
Dr. Nicolls are, I am assured, quite different persons, inasmuch as the
Doctor possesses the blessed gift of detachment and thinks nothing of
dictating an article on the genius of Dr. Parker, a kindly appreciation
of the latest gory detective story, and a set of Sunday afternoon verses
or so in a single morning. Of his lucubrations as a divine I shall say
nothing, because I have not studied them. As a judge of letters, however,
I take him to be the most catholic scribbler in Europe. Any author who
is doing well—that is to say, any author whose record of sales entitles
him to be considered a success—may always reckon on a large hospitality
in Dr. Nicoll’s journals, and will always find Dr. Nicoll and his merry
men beaming round the corner, hat in hand. It is a case of what would
you like, sir? all the time. Are you spending your holiday cruising
on the blue Mediterranean in the Duchess of Puttleham’s yacht? Very
good. Paragraph in the column signed “Man of Kent,” with a delicate
reference to your last great novel. Have you projects? Equally good. “Mr.
So-and-So is, I understand, hard at work on his next great novel.” Will
your new book, 30,000 copies of which have been sold before the day of
publication, make its appearance on April 1? Capital. Send us portraits
of yourself at all ages from three months to the present day, pictures
of the modest tenement in which you were born, and of your present town
house and little place in the country, and, bless your heart, we will
do the rest. Do people say that the great novel, of which you have
sold fifty million copies in England and America, is a pot-boiler and
a stunner? Dear, dear me! You have our heartiest sympathies, sir, and
if you would like to vindicate your character as an artist in a couple
of pages of the _British Weekly_, why, my dear sir, we are at your
service. I do not say that there is any terrific harm in this species
of enterprise; that it pleases the mass of mankind and therefore sells
papers goes without saying. On the other hand, it is quite subversive of
the best interests of letters, and therefore I am inclined to think—and I
set it down with great sorrow—that Dr. Nicoll, in spite of his devotional
connection is, if he have any force in letters at all, a distinctly
dubious and undesirable force.
As an example of what the _Bookman_ really can do when it has a mind, let
us quote the following review of a book by Mr. Le Gallienne:
“Mr. Le Gallienne is the Dick Whittington of song. His story reminds us
of that other Richard, who, one summer morning many hundreds of years
ago, sat listening to the bells of distant London. The one carried his
little all tied up in a handkerchief slung to the end of a stick; the
other came to London to seek his fortune with a sheaf of manuscript poems
in his pocket and any number of poems singing in his head. Now, Mr.
Le Gallienne is a figure in ‘society,’ and lives in a beautiful house
crowded with costly _bric-à-brac_ and valuable books; but I like to think
sometimes of the sloping-roofed room, nestling under the gables of one
of the most picturesque buildings left in London—quaint old Staple’s
Inn—which was his first home in the great city.
“It was in just such a room that one might picture Chatterton—rough-hewn
oak beams above, uneven oak flooring below, and in front a ‘magic
casement’ ‘opening upon the foam’—not of ‘perilous seas’—but of perilous
streets, where the black tides of hurrying human creatures never ceases
[_sic_] to ebb and flow. Here were his bed, his books, and his papers.
Here, too, though shillings were probably scarcer than sovereigns are
now, were the flowers, which the extravagant tenant of the prophet’s
chamber was never too poor to deny himself—the flowers which were the
inspiration of many of his songs. And here, on a little stove in a
corner, he would himself boil the water with which to brew for his
visitor the tea or coffee that he would hand round with the ease and
grace of a duke dispensing hospitality in his castle.
“I have been betrayed into this personal reminiscence by reading how
‘Love, a poor poet in need of a room for his bed and his rhymes,’ and
‘Beauty, a little blue-eyed girl who loved him,’ transformed into a
seventh heaven a single seventh-story room which they had rented, for
surely ‘Love’ stands for Mr. Le Gallienne himself, and ‘Beauty’ for the
sweet-faced young wife with dove-like eyes and dove-like voice, whose
loss has been the great sorrow of the poet’s life. It was in a beautiful
idyll called _A Seventh-Story Heaven_ that I read of the transformation,
and this brings me to the fact with which I started or ought to have
started—that Mr. Le Gallienne has published a new book. In other words,
he has set open the door of another House of Welcome on the literary
highway. And surely ’twere as hard, on a glaring summer’s noon, for a
tired and thirsty traveller to pass by some ancient hostelry, through
the ivy-hung porch of which he sees, lying back in cool shadow, a
quaint stone-paven nook with a glimpse of green lawn and box-bordered
flower beds beyond, as it were for the literary wayfarer to turn aside
from a volume titled like Mr. Le Gallienne’s, _The Prose Fancies of a
Poet_! Could a more alluring sign be set aswing before the doors of
any literary House of Refreshment? Nor when we have entered are we
disappointed by the bill of fare which is put before us. ‘A Seventh-Story
Heaven,’ ‘Spring by Parcel Post,’ ‘A Poet in the City,’ ‘Brown Roses,’
‘Death and Two Friends,’ ‘A Seaport in the Moon’—here surely is a list
which might stir the imagination even of unimaginative folk.
“The score or so of ‘Fancies’ which form the volume are, as was
only to be expected, of very varying merit. To the opening idyll,
‘A Seventh-Story Heaven,’ reference has already been made. Mr. Le
Gallienne’s friend and neighbour, Mr. Grant Allen, a delightful
naturalist and essayist, whom society by her neglect has turned into a
thrower into her midst of Nihilistic bombs in the guise of novels, could
bear witness to the fact that nests are built in stranger places, but
surely never did love-birds find such strange quarters for their home
as this eyrie at the top of a building, the ground floor of which was a
sailor’s tavern. But dingy and unlovely as the spot may be, it is made
beautiful for us in Mr. Le Gallienne’s page as the scene of a love-story
so exquisitely told, and so tremulous with tender pathos, that we can
only compare it to the work of the gentle Elia.
“I cannot say as much for the second Fancy, whimsically entitled ‘Spring
by Parcel Post,’ for it is surely an error of taste which every admirer
of Mr. Le Gallienne’s genius must regret. ‘The big Dutch hyacinths,’
he writes, ‘are already shamelessly _enceinte_ with their buxom waxen
blooms, so fat and fragrant—(one is already delivered of a fine blossom.
Well, that is a fine baby, to be sure! says [_sic_] the other hyacinths
with babes no less bonny under their own green apron—all waiting for the
doctor Sun).’
“I wonder if this offends the taste of my readers as much as it offends
mine. Mr. Le Gallienne may quote science and physiology against me, but
I must confess that in regard to children and flowers I like to keep my
very thoughts free from the smirch of sex, though I concede and contend
that the smirch is entirely of man’s, not of God’s making. But in the
passage I have quoted there is a certain coarseness of associations which
is painful in connection with the purest and most perfect thing on God’s
earth—a flower. It was to me as if hot hands were tampering with the
petals of a lily. The air seemed to become close as I read, and it was
not until I had had a dip—as into cool spring water—into the flower-poems
of Burns and Wordsworth that I could go on with my reading of _Prose
Fancies_.
“Let us turn the page and forget that one of the most delicately-minded
of living poets, whose work has hitherto been distinguished for exquisite
fancy and excellent taste, should so far have ‘lost himself’ as to have
written it.
“_Variations upon Whitebait_ is a caprice as skilful as Rossetti’s famous
sonnet, _A Match with the Moon_. It is a very curiosity in similes, and
though Mr. Le Gallienne will toss you a fresh and apt simile for every
fish upon your fork, though he introduce as many variations as a pianist
introduces into _Home, Sweet Home_, yet the essay is not all variation,
but has a pretty story running like the thread of a tune throughout.
“As for the ‘Letter to an Unsuccessful Literary Man,’ I would suggest
that it be lithographed in order that the successful author may use it as
a form with which to reply to the uninvited correspondent. If only Mr. Le
Gallienne could induce amateurs to read this letter instead of writing
letters of their own to that most baited of beings, the professional
author, what a boon he would confer upon his fellow craftsmen! The essay,
_On Loving One’s Enemies_, is scarcely written in the spirit which its
title and its protestations of charity might lead us to suppose. It
strikes me as somewhat self-conscious and defiant; but _Death and Two
Friends_ contains some really signal work. For the gem of the book,
however, we must turn to _A Seaport in the Moon_. This and the opening
chapter, _A Seventh-Story Heaven_, are in themselves worth the modest sum
which the publishers ask for the volume. _A Seaport in the Moon_ is an
exquisitely beautiful fancy. Mr. Le Gallienne was in the right mood when
he wrote it, and when he is in the mood he is a magician. His page glows
like a painter’s palette with rich colours, and the pictures come and go
before us like sunset pageant.”
Apart from the delicious Scotch snobbery which jumps at you from every
line of this admirable piece of criticism, and leaving altogether out
of the question the downright vulgarity and ineptitude of it, one would
like to know what the _Bookman_ would say if Mr. Le Gallienne published
a similar book to-morrow. At the time when this review was published,
Mr. Le Gallienne was in the zenith of his somewhat slender and rarefied
popularity. He had captured the heart of Kensington with dainty vacuity.
His locks were curled and perfumed; he figured prettily and replied
to the toast of letters at the dinners of literary clubs, and was the
delicate high priest of a little school of hot pressed poetry and vapid
prose. The _Bookman_, of course, was bound to salute him with a chaste
appreciation. Since then the world has gone on and left Mr. Le Gallienne
somewhat behind it, also Mr. Le Gallienne himself has settled in America
and cut off his hair. No more does he publish the booklet that takes
the town; no longer does he write of the “Woman’s Third” or sigh over
the deception of tender-hearted schoolgirls, who have provided one with
a sonnet. In short, his laurel hangs dustily on a nail at the “Bodley
Head,” and the raven locks that once bore it have probably by this time
gone to help in the making of a mess of honest builders’ mortar. So that
the _Bookman_ knows him no more.
From the issue of the _Bookman_ which contains the review above quoted I
take a couple of “news notes.”
“Mr. J. M. Barrie has finished a book on his mother, which will be
entitled _Margaret Ogilvy_. It is perhaps the most beautiful and
exquisite piece of work he has yet accomplished. It is not a biography in
the ordinary sense, but gives aspects and incidents of his mother’s life
in the style which Mr. Barrie’s readers know, keeping close throughout
to facts. The volume will be published in this country by Messrs. Hodder
and Stoughton, and in America by Messrs. Scribner.”
“Mr. S. R. Crockett’s new novel is to be entitled _Lochinvar_. Some
eminent critics who have had the privilege of reading the portion already
written are enthusiastic in their praise of the work. It is said to be
more in the manner of _The Lilac Sun-Bonnet_ than some of Mr. Crockett’s
more recently published novels.”
So much for the Scotch journalist.
V
THRUMS AND DRUMTOCHTY