In every tragedy connected with old age, the hardening which is the
curse of age appears.
The picture which Mr Burden presented at this moment is the
more vivid in my memory from the suddenness with which it was
extinguished. I desire to describe him as accurately as I may for the
sake of that posterity which must learn, not only what his virtues
were, but also in what way, and through what weakness, he failed upon
the chief occasion of his life. It is a lesson of the highest moment.
Tall, erect, somewhat pompous, but withal very active in his
carriage, he carried all the remains of a strong manhood. Of his
face I can only say that it was typical of his class: square with a
large firm mouth kept closely shut, and carrying, from long habit,
an affectation of purpose and determination which was far from the
habitual tenor of his mind. His hair was quite white but abundant;
he parted it with care upon the left side, and brushed it up clear
from his forehead as befitted his sure sense of what was decent in
such things. His eyebrows were contracted into a slight mechanical
frown, acquired perhaps in the habit of attention, but certainly
expressing no anxiety nor even any particular keenness in bargaining.
His hands were remarkably steady, his gestures firm and sure. I have
heard it said, with a colonial exaggeration, that to see him open
his umbrella was to comprehend England from the Reform Bill to Home
Rule. The young gentleman who composed this facile epigram, a student
with a nasal accent and weak in every organ, was born and bred in
Port Elizabeth, to which distant centre of African loyalty he has
returned. Let me forget him and continue the description of my friend.
His eyes, of a pale grey, were alight with so singular an honesty
as to border upon ignorance of the world. He had perhaps never in
his life deceived a human being. His business, founded upon ample
capital, demanding no credit, existing as a wholesale resource for
the trade and independent of advertisement, never required it of him
to lie, to cheat, to gamble, or to destroy another’s wealth. Its
expansion had been automatic; if his success had raised in him any
evil, it was certainly nothing worse than a slight tincture of pride.
Of his patriotism I fear to speak lest I should destroy by too
violent a praise the impression I desire to produce. It was abundant,
it was like a perennial spring; it was the deepest thing in the man.
I am certain that had England been in danger he would cheerfully
have sacrificed his fortune. He had known nothing but his country;
his very religion was in some odd way muddled up with her vices, her
spirit, and the peculiar beauties of her landscapes, the less obvious
effects of her towns. Indeed, he would have died for her ... perhaps
in a sense he _did_ die for her ... his name, manner, and habit of
life seemed to me who knew him to be always England, England.
With all this there was a failing, which neither I nor even those who
were in more daily intimacy with him, could hope to eradicate. The
national life, to which he was so deeply attached, had stood still
with him for many years.
Let me not be misunderstood. He had followed with a certain eagerness
the development of England and of the Empire. He was an assiduous
reader of the _Daily Telegraph_, _The Gleam_, _The Orb_, _The
Globe_, _The Times_, and _The Meteor_; he received _The Spectator_,
_The Economist_, _The Doctrinaire_ upon every Saturday morning, and
occasionally looked at them; and when he went abroad, according to
his custom, during the month of August, he was careful to make such
arrangements as caused these standard weekly organs of opinion to
reach him not later than the following Tuesday.
The mere facts, therefore, he knew. He was gratified, and
occasionally enthusiastic, over the expansion of our dominion. He
had a grasp of the various stages by which the jealousy of foreign
nations had been stilled, and their competition annulled. He had
appreciated in latter years the decline of English commerce, the ruin
of our agriculture, and the upbuilding of a Greater Britain beyond
the seas.
All the manifest destiny of the Anglo-Saxon race he had seen as
clearly as the humblest clerk; he had received it with as religious
an emotion as had the poorest and most vulgar of our electorate.
Nevertheless all this had been for him but a pageant. He had never
comprehended the great change in our method of thought which this new
fact in the life of the world involved. He was like a man who hears
of this or that catastrophe—of this or that triumph, suffers in the
catastrophe or glories in the triumph, but suffers and glories as in
a thing apart: a thing read or seen upon the stage. He never really
got it into his mind that _he_ was an actor in the drama; that _he_,
as a citizen, was making the new world.
It is a paradox, but a paradox ever present in our contemporary life;
we owe to it the extreme reluctance with which each new and necessary
idea is accepted by a people born, after all, to Empire. It is in our
blood.
Did space permit me, I could give many instances of this failing:
let me be content with two. Mr Burden had voted honourably and
straightforwardly for that small taxation of our food supplies,
which was necessary for the consolidation of the Empire. Of the
direct effect of that vote he never complained; but he would not or
could not connect with his opinion upon this matter, the necessary
depreciation which it involved in his investments. Again, he had read
and applauded Mr Chamberlain’s great speech just after the Australian
Commonwealth cancelled the “loans previous”; he also appreciated that
Australia must have new capital, and that, in the actual state of her
credit, this capital could only come from Great Britain; yet in the
meeting in the Cannon Street Hotel six months later, he had described
the reconstruction of the Waga-Murri mine as “un-English.”
Mr Burden’s dissociation from the underlying philosophy of his
time went deeper still. He would have maintained, in a kind of
abstract way, that the connection between finance and politics
was dangerous—it is difficult to say whether he saw that it was
necessary. At any rate he dreaded and avoided that necessity. He
would have admitted that a Cabinet drawn from the ranks of rich men
was a purer and better government than one formed upon the less
stable models of democratic nations, but in some vague way he must
have thought of their wealth as exclusively territorial, for he would
not only have expressed, but would have felt a very genuine horror at
hearing that a Cabinet minister had held, or had been given, such and
such shares in a company connected with our Imperial development.
When he was asked, as I once asked him, how a man could be rich
and yet not mixed up with the principal source of modern wealth in
England, he replied with a simple affirmation; he said that any
one in office should sell whatever shares he had possessed in such
concerns. He refused to follow the logical consequences of his creed.
It was precisely upon this point that a greater mind, a mind more
necessary to England, though not perhaps more English, found the
principal difficulty of contact. Mr Barnett knew that the M’Korio
Delta was a touchstone for the future of England. I do not pretend
that his only motive lay there. His motives were largely economic.
But, at anyrate, the fulfilment of his own legitimate ambition
demanded that he should persuade English opinion of what the M’Korio
Delta was.
As I have repeatedly pointed out, there was not at that time in the
city any name whose influence would have a more immediate effect
towards converting the investor in W. African securities than that
of Mr Burden; and yet every avenue of Mr Burden’s mind was closed
to such methods of approach as Mr Barnett comprehended. He could
not offer shares, and that sharp imaginative power which would have
turned the M’Korio Delta into the great province it must become in
the future, he knew that Mr Burden did not and could not possess.
The very circumstances by which Mr Burden came to be the sole arbiter
(as it were) of M’Korian trade made Mr Barnett’s advance the more
difficult.
Charles Abbott, who by a curious anachronism, remains to this day
the chief proprietor of the Abbott Line of steamers, had (and has)
about him something of the explosive radicalism which was often to be
discovered in the older sort of English officials and business men;
the men who helped, in their unconscious way, to build that which
we now direct towards such astounding destinies. Of the New Empire
he had a shallow, but a curiously robust disgust. He loved things
as he had seen them—as they were: for dreams, for anticipations, he
had as profound a contempt as for debt. He had never owed any man
a farthing; he had never done business with the future. In feature
he was red and a little over-eager; in gestures abrupt and strong;
but his violence was balanced by a deep and emphatic voice which
possessed a strange power of persuasion, especially over men less
hearty than himself.
Such a man had not founded his fleet of ships to deal with “niggers.”
He had developed it upon the South American trade. A Government
subsidy had persuaded him to touch once a month at the M’Korio. He
had travelled there once in person, and had carried away nothing but
an added contempt for the policy that could deal with such things.
Through this unsympathetic channel had Mr Burden been introduced to
the Delta.
Mr Abbott, though ten years Mr Burden’s junior, had been, almost
from boyhood, his most intimate friend; it was an intimacy born of
perpetual daily association, meals in common, and a long life spent
with few other opportunities for expansion than that afforded by
each other’s society. When he had last returned to Europe from a
voyage to the Delta he had suggested to Mr Burden—with no great
enthusiasm—that there was some little dealing to be had with the
aborigines of that marsh, in goods of the sort that Mr Burden
handled. Iron rings of a sort known to the trade as “Large Nines,”
were in that district not only a rarity but an object of political
necessity. Long the symbol of authority upon the heads of the
chiefs, they had been manufactured with infinite pains from old
ship nails by the natives, or imported at considerable expense from
the neighbouring Sultanate of Botu. Our excellent English article,
cheaper, more reliable, and more accurately made, soon settled the
competition of these rivals. It was impossible, indeed, to accept as
currency the valuable slaves which had formerly found their way to
the Sultanate; but considerable quantities of ivory were obtainable
for many years in exchange for a gross of these goods; and Mr Burden
had the advantage not only of securing such a profit as was due to
his initiative and skill, but of knowing that indirectly through his
efforts, the slave trade had disappeared in a part of Africa where it
had seemed inseparable from the soil.
It was not to be expected that this state of things should last for
ever. Oligarchic as was the nature of M’Korian society, the number
of chiefs was limited; and a religious awe forbade the possession
by anyone of more than a certain number of these sacred symbols.
Moreover, a German firm, secretly subsidised by its government, had
so far interfered with the old monopoly as to offer the rings at a
price which made it difficult for the original trade to subsist in
English hands. But Mr Burden’s profits were soon supplemented from
other sources. Guns, of a simple sort, and a kind of sword, were
introduced, and (a very remarkable example of the ingenuity of a
client in Birmingham) fine chain armour replaced the leathern jackets
which the warriors of the protectorate had hitherto worn.
But, though Mr Burden had become the sole importer, though his
advice and that of Mr Abbott often controlled the decision of the
Government in the local affairs of the M’Korio, and though his name
was attached to all the few traditions of the settlement, yet the
trade was very small, and, such as it was, it was dwindling. In Mr
Burden’s considerable affairs, the total of this petty offshoot did
not amount to one-twentieth at the most; it rarely represented a
profit of £400—more commonly less than £300 in a year; and, to his
natural compliance in Charles Abbott’s judgment, therefore, was added
a business experience which made of the Delta something mean and
paltry in his conception.
This contempt of his for the M’Korio was broken down at last by the
intervention of Cosmo; but that intervention, necessary as it was in
its moment, would not alone have sufficed, though without it nothing
would finally have been done.
The ground had first to be prepared for the whole public and for
Mr Burden as a part of that public; and the instrument of this
preparation was the power which—a full year before he had met Mr
Burden’s son—Mr Barnett had begun to exercise over the Press.
There is a kind of rash political indignation which we all come
across, and to which some of us are attracted. There are men who hate
the successful or the rich, but whose hatred is not quite dishonest,
though it is wildly unjust. They see conspiracies upon every side,
they scowl at every new fortune, but they do so in good faith, for
they are haunted by a nightmare of Cosmopolitan Finance—pitiless,
destructive of all national ideals, obscene, and eating out the heart
of our European tradition. I need hardly say that this kind of hatred
was roused against Mr Barnett, and gained an especial strength from
the attitude which the great papers took towards what was known to be
his scheme; and yet at that moment Mr Barnett, had the world known
it, was comparatively poor. He had not certainly a free capital
of ten thousand pounds, beyond what was locked up in his various
properties and adventures.
The particular charge made against Mr Barnett was that he had “bought
the Press”—or at least the London Press.
Of general and vaguer charges there were many, but they are incapable
of proof, and I shall not concern myself with them. With his
relations towards the Press I am well acquainted; and though it is
not my business to defend Mr Barnett, yet I am so convinced that this
kind of indignation proceeds solely from an ignorance of our social
machinery, that it is incumbent upon me to show quite clearly how
false the accusation was.
The men who made it (a salutary fear of the law of libel forbade them
as a rule to put it into print), the men who made it, I say, had no
other ground than this: they saw that the M’Korio Delta was in the
air, they heard the name upon every side; they knew that Mr Barnett
would necessarily grow rich upon its development; they saw the Press
almost unanimous in its demand for that development, and they jumped
to the false conclusion which I have indicated, because their vision
had been warped by an uncontrolled and ill-balanced anger against the
modern inequalities of fortune.
Mr Barnett had not bought the Press; the Press is not to be bought.
That Mr Barnett had an influence with the Press, and a legitimate
influence, I will not deny; but when I have described that influence
I think my thesis will be proved.
Let us consider first what papers Mr Barnett owned. Here is the
list. He was the proprietor of _Little Ones_, _Boy’s Chatter_, _The
Woman_, _The English Country Side_. For some months, in the interval
between the bankruptcy of Sir Charles Binsted and the formation of
the Agricultural Union, he had also owned the _Farmer’s Friend_. It
is incredible that he should have made such purchases with any object
of hoodwinking public opinion. He could only have made them as an
investment. The very names of the papers are sufficient proof of this.
Beyond these he was proprietor of _The Review_. _The Review_ was a
losing property; he had been compelled to assume direction of it in
payment of a debt, and he was occupied at the date of which I speak
in building it up into something of its former importance. He was
also part owner (but only part owner), of the rival _Holborn Review_,
and the editor, who had been for some time his private secretary, has
assured me that Mr Barnett’s name was hardly mentioned in the office.
I am confident that he took no interest whatsoever in the _Holborn
Review_, save as a financial venture. My readers have but to turn to
a file to see that arguments upon both sides were admitted to its
pages, and that the M’Korio Delta, even at the height of its fame,
rarely afforded matter for more than one article in each issue.
Lest I should be accused of concealing anything that might militate
against my contention, I will mention the fact that Mr Barnett did
own the majority of the shares of the Twentieth Century Syndicate.
Now the Twentieth Century Syndicate, it is true, finances the Railton
Group; but Mr Barnett himself had nothing to do with that group. It
is interested in _The Mercury_, _The Britisher_, _The Hammer_, and
the two evening papers, _England_ and _The Empire_. No one who is
acquainted with the nature of modern finance can believe for a moment
that so indirect a relation would give Mr Barnett the least voice in
the management of these sheets.
Whether Mr Barnett held shares in the London and General Publishing
Company at any one time, it is not easy to determine. These shares
fluctuated considerably, and, if one may say so without disrespect
to so honoured a name as that of the Duke of Essex, the chairman
of the Company, they were something of a gambling stock. They were
perpetually changing hands, and the motive of their acquisition,
whether by Mr Barnett or by anyone else, cannot have been other than
that of a speculative game.
Over the great dailies he had absolutely no control whatsoever.
He advertised in them, of course; and a good deal of capital was
made by his opponents out of the fact that Mr Jefferson, the owner
and editor of so important a sheet as _The Gazette_, was connected
with Mr Barnett in the old business of the Haymarket Bank; but if
that is to be taken as an evidence of corruption, or even of undue
influence, who would be safe from such an accusation?[6] A man in his
position is naturally acquainted, often intimate, with the leading
men of his time. The editor of _The Doctrinaire_—a man wholly above
suspicion—was proud of his intimate friendship; and he naturally
had relations as a host upon more than one occasion with the two
proprietors of _The Nation_, and with the editors or owners of most
of the other great dailies. But Mr Barnett had no monopoly in such
acquaintances or friendships; most of our great financiers could have
boasted of the same.
It is time that I should turn from the ungrateful task of defending a
man against a calumny that ought never to have been made, to describe
the real services which Mr Barnett rendered to his adopted country,
and to the Empire; nowhere were these services more apparent than
in the interest he took in the careers of the more brilliant young
journalists. Let me cite the case of Mr Powler.
Mr Powler had been among the first to see the advantages of reversing
our fiscal policy. As long ago as 1898, just after taking his degree,
he had written a powerful defence of Protection which had earned him
his Fellowship. He was poor, and the whole weight of his genius might
have been lost for years to England had not Mr Barnett appointed
him to the editorship of _The Review_, just before the outbreak of
the war in South Africa. No one is ignorant of the effect of that
appointment.
[Illustration: THE EDITOR OF “THE DOCTRINAIRE” (AS HE APPEARED
READING HIS PAPER—“CAUSES OF OUR SUCCESS IN SOUTH AFRICA,” TO THE
ROYAL SOCIETY)]
Long after the war was over, but a full year before any mention
of the M’Korio Delta had been publicly made, the editor of _The
Doctrinaire_—a man wholly above suspicion—wrote to Mr Barnett, and
asked him if he could recommend some young fellow to sub-edit that
great weekly journal during his own enforced absence upon a shooting
party in Scotland. I know from Mr Powler himself what passed. Mr
Barnett came in person to the office of _The Review_, climbed to
the third story (no small sacrifice in a man of his temperament and
figure!) and begged Mr Powler to accept the post.
“It is better paid,” he said, “and a bigger place altogether than
anything that I could offer you.” Then he added with a smile: “You
know the advice that I always give to you young men.”
It was in vain that Mr Powler (so he himself assures me), pleaded to
remain in the service of a man whom he could not but regard as the
builder of a new world. He knew that Mr Barnett was making a great
sacrifice in permitting him to go, and it was only after a generous
dispute that the older man had his way.
Mr Powler took with him to _The Doctrinaire_ Mr Heinrich Rallé, and
between them they gave a life and a meaning to the paper which
recalled the great days of John Hardy and the successful, strenuous
battle in favour of the unification of Italy in the sixties. When
the editor of _The Doctrinaire_ returned from Scotland, he found the
beginnings of a fortune; and it seems to me not unnatural that he
should, under the circumstances, have permitted something of a new
policy to appear in his pages, or that he should have been drawn
towards Mr Barnett with a sentiment approaching to affection.
Talent of this kind is rare in modern journalism. The proprietors of
_The Nation_ privately approached and obtained the services of Mr
Henry Rallé. I will not enter into the somewhat heated difference
that arose between _The Doctrinaire_ and _The Nation_ relative to
this matter. I will content myself with saying that Mr Raleigh
infused a new life into the latter paper, erased from its outer
cover the phrase “an Hebdomadal Journal,” permitted the insertion of
illustrations, and in the general tone he imparted to its articles
made it what it had never been before; a vigorous ally of all that
makes for the larger life of England. It was on this occasion that Mr
Barnett’s friendship with Mr Jenkins, a proprietor of _The Nation_,
arose; and it is a singular example of his tact and care for detail,
that, during the four or five years which have since elapsed, in all
the multitude of dinners that either have eaten under Mr Barnett’s
roof, Mr Jenkins and the editor of _The Doctrinaire_ have never met.
I will not weary my readers with the story of the founding of
_Criticism_; of the resuscitation of the old _Orb_, or of that
vigorous off-shoot of Colonial enterprise, the London edition of
the _M’Korio Times_, It is enough to say that, in all this mass of
ephemeral literature, the last journal alone was directly founded by
Mr Barnett; and, as it dealt principally with the City, it had but
little effect upon the general current of opinion.
All this intellectual movement was instinct with the spirit of
England.
There are political forces that seem without form, very vague
and viewless as great currents of air may be, but they are as
irresistible.
Through England and the English some such force has long been
stirring. All these young men had felt it; all were bound as by a
kind of fate to express it. It coloured their writing upon every
topic. It troubled their view of the future; it compelled them to
continual appeals. For long that undefined and natural thing, that
impulse of patriotism, had wandered in vagaries, thinking that now
here, now there, it had found the substance which it should inspire,
the matter which it was destined to make live. So all great movements
begin.
At last, and not long after the advent into English journalism of
that younger life and keener enthusiasm which I have just described,
a true and permanent object absorbed its energies, and, if one may
use the phrase, the nation and her servants had found their mission.
The full meaning of the M’Korio Delta had appeared.
FOOTNOTES:
[6] As an example of the lengths to which folly can go, I may quote
the accusation made against Mr Barnett that he influenced three of
the great dailies upon a critical date by _threatening to cut off
their supply of paper_!!!