A MAN whom I had known from my school-days, Frederick Thistlethwayte,
coming into a huge fortune when a subaltern in a marching regiment, had
impulsively married a certain Miss Laura Bell. In her early days, when
she made her first appearance in London and in Paris, Laura Bell’s
extraordinary beauty was as much admired by painters as by men of the
world. Amongst her reputed lovers were Dhuleep Singh, the famous Marquis
of Hertford, and Prince Louis Napoleon. She was the daughter of an Irish
constable, and began life on the stage at Dublin. Her Irish wit and
sparkling merriment, her cajolery, her good nature and her feminine
artifice, were attractions which, in the eyes of the male sex, fully
atoned for her youthful indiscretions.
My intimacy with both Mr. and Mrs. Thistlethwayte extended over many
years; and it is but justice to her memory to aver that, to the best of
my belief, no wife was ever more faithful to her husband. I speak of the
Thistlethwaytes here for two reasons—absolutely unconnected in
themselves, yet both interesting in their own way. The first is, that at
my friend’s house in Grosvenor Square I used frequently to meet Mr.
Gladstone, sometimes alone, sometimes at dinner. As may be supposed, the
dinner parties were of men, but mostly of men eminent in public life.
The last time I met Mr. Gladstone there the Duke of Devonshire and Sir W.
Harcourt were both present. I once dined with Mrs. Thistlethwayte in the
absence of her husband, when the only others were Munro of Novar—the
friend of Turner, and the envied possessor of a splendid gallery of his
pictures—and the Duke of Newcastle—then a Cabinet Minister. Such were
the notabilities whom the famous beauty gathered about her.
But it is of Mr. Gladstone that I would say a word. The fascination
which he exercised over most of those who came into contact with him is
incontestable; and everyone is entitled to his own opinion, even though
unable to account for it. This, at least, must be my plea, for to me,
Mr. Gladstone was more or less a Dr. Fell. Neither in his public nor in
his private capacity had I any liking for him. Nobody cares a button for
what a ‘man in the street’ like me says or thinks on subject matters upon
which they have made up their minds. I should not venture, even as one
of the crowd, to deprecate a popularity which I believe to be fast
passing away, were it not that better judges and wiser men think as I do,
and have represented opinions which I sincerely share. ‘He was born,’
says Huxley, ‘to be a leader of men, and he has debased himself to be a
follower of the masses. If working men were to-day to vote by a majority
that two and two made five, to-morrow Gladstone would believe it, and
find them reasons for it which they had never dreamt of.’ Could any
words be truer? Yes; he was not born to be a leader of men. He was born
to be, what he was—a misleader of men. Huxley says he could be made to
believe that two and two made five. He would try to make others believe
it; but would he himself believe it? His friends will plead, ‘he might
deceive himself by the excessive subtlety of his mind.’ This is the
charitable view to take. But some who knew him long and well put another
construction upon this facile self-deception. There were, and are,
honourable men of the highest standing who failed to ascribe
disinterested motives to the man who suddenly and secretly betrayed his
colleagues, his party, and his closest friends, and tried to break up the
Empire to satisfy an inordinate ambition, and an insatiable craving for
power. ‘He might have been mistaken, but he acted for the best’? Was
he acting conscientiously for the best in persuading the ‘masses’ to look
upon the ‘classes’—the war cries are of his coining—as their natural
enemies, and worthy only of their envy and hatred? Is this the part of a
statesman, of a patriot?
And for what else shall we admire Mr. Gladstone? Walter Bagehot,
alluding to his egotism, wrote of him in his lifetime, ‘He longs to pour
forth his own belief; he cannot rest till he has contradicted everyone
else.’ And what was that belief worth? ‘He has scarcely,’ says the same
writer, ‘given us a sentence that lives in the memory.’
Even his eloquent advocate, Mr. Morley, confesses surprise at his
indifference to the teaching of evolution; in other words, his ignorance
of, and disbelief in, a scientific theory of nature which has modified
the theological and moral creeds of the civilised world more profoundly
than did the Copernican system of the Universe.
The truth is, Mr. Gladstone was half a century behind the age in
everything that most deeply concerned the destiny of man. He was a
politician, and nothing but a politician; and had it not been for his
extraordinary gift of speech, we should never have heard of him save as a
writer of scholia, or as a college don, perhaps. Not for such is the
temple of Fame.
Fama di loro il mondo esser non lassa.
Whatever may be thought now, Mr. Gladstone is not the man whom posterity
will ennoble with the title of either ‘great’ or ‘good.’
My second reason for mentioning Frederick Thistlethwayte was one which at
first sight may seem trivial, and yet, when we look into it, is of more
importance than the renown of an ex-Prime Minister. If these pages are
ever read, what follows will be as distasteful to some of my own friends
as the above remarks to Mr. Gladstone’s.
Pardon a word about the writer himself—it is needed to emphasise and
justify these _obiter dicta_. I was brought up as a sportsman: I cannot
remember the days when I began to shoot. I had a passion for all kinds
of sport, and have had opportunities of gratifying it such as fall to the
lot of few. After the shootings of Glenquoich and Invergarry were lost
to me through the death of Mr. Ellice, I became almost the sole guest of
Mr. Thistlethwayte for twelve years at his Highland shooting of
Kinlochmohr, not very far from Fort William. He rented the splendid deer
forest of Mamore, extensive grouse moors, and a salmon river within ten
minutes’ walk of the lodge. His marriage and his eccentricities of mind
and temper led him to shun all society. We often lived in bothies at
opposite ends of the forest, returning to the lodge on Saturday till
Monday morning. For a sportsman, no life could be more enjoyable. I was
my own stalker, taking a couple of gillies for the ponies, but finding
the deer for myself—always the most difficult part of the sport—and
stalking them for myself.
I may here observe that, not very long after I married, qualms of
conscience smote me as to the justifiability of killing, _and wounding_,
animals for amusement’s sake. The more I thought of it, the less it bore
thinking about. Finally I gave it up altogether. But I went on several
years after this with the deer-stalking; the true explanation of this
inconsistency would, I fear, be that I had had enough of the one, but
would never have enough of the other—one’s conscience adapts itself
without much difficulty to one’s inclinations.
Between my host and myself, there was a certain amount of rivalry; and as
the head forester was his stalker, the rivalry between our men aroused
rancorous jealousy. I think the gillies on either side would have spoilt
the others’ sport, could they have done so with impunity. For two
seasons, a very big stag used occasionally to find its way into our
forest from the Black Mount, where it was also known. Thistlethwayte had
had a chance, and missed it; then my turn came. I got a long snap-shot
end on at the galloping stag. It was an unsportsmanlike thing to do, but
considering the rivalry and other temptations I fired, and hit the beast
in the haunch. It was late in the day, and the wounded animal escaped.
Nine days later I spied the ‘big stag’ again. He was nearly in the
middle of a herd of about twenty, mostly hinds, on the look-out. They
were on a large open moss at the bottom of a corrie, whence they could
see a moving object on every side of them. A stalk where they were was
out of the question. I made up my mind to wait and watch.
Now comes the moral of my story. For hours I watched that stag. Though
three hundred yards or so away from me, I could through my glass see
almost the expression of his face. Not once did he rise or attempt to
feed, but lay restlessly beating his head upon the ground for hour after
hour. I knew well enough what that meant. I could not hear his groans.
His plaints could not reach my ears, but they reached my heart. The
refrain varied little: ‘How long shall I cry and Thou wilt not
hear?’—that was the monotonous burden of the moans, though sometimes I
fancied it changed to: ‘Lord how long shall the wicked, how long shall
the wicked triumph?’
The evening came, and then, as is their habit, the deer began to feed up
wind. The wounded stag seemed loth to stir. By degrees the last
watchful hind fed quietly out of sight. With throbbing pulse and with
the instincts of a fox—or prehistoric man, ’tis all the same—I crawled
and dragged myself through the peat bog and the pools of water. But
nearer than two hundred yards it was impossible to get; even to raise my
head or find a tussock whereon to rest the rifle would have started any
deer but this one. From the hollow I was in, the most I could see of him
was the outline of his back and his head and neck. I put up the 200
yards sight and killed him.
A vivid description of the body is not desirable. It was almost
fleshless, wasted away, except his wounded haunch. That was nearly twice
its normal size; about one half of it was maggots. The stench drove us
all away. This I had done, and I had done it for my pleasure!
After that year I went no more to Scotland. I blame no one for his
pursuit of sport. But I submit that he must follow it, if at all, with
Reason’s eyes shut. Happily, your true sportsman does not violate his
conscience. As a friend of mine said to me the other day, ‘Unless you
give a man of that kind something to kill, his own life is not worth
having.’ This, to be sure, is all he has to think about.