SOME NOTABLE PEOPLE
President Roosevelt--Lord Balfour--Mr. Asquith--Lord Haldane--George
Meredith--Rudyard Kipling--James Barrie--Henry Irving--Bernard
Shaw--R. L. S.--Grant Allen--James Payn--Henry Thompson--Royalty.
When I have chanced during my life to come in contact with notable
people, I have often made some short record at the time of what they
said and how they impressed me. It is difficult, however, to use these
notes for publication when you happen to have been a guest, and it can
only be done, I think, by using one’s judgment and never consciously
harming one’s host. If every one were altogether silent upon such
occasions the most pleasing side of great contemporaries would never be
chronicled, for the statesman in slippers is a very much more human and
lovable person than the politician on the platform.
Among the great men that I have known President Roosevelt occupied a
prominent place. He was not a big, nor, so far as one could see, a
powerful man, but he had tremendous dynamic force and an iron will
which may account for his reputation as an athlete. He had all the
simplicity of real greatness, speaking his mind with great frankness
and in the clearest possible English. He had in him a great deal of
the boy, a mischievous, adventurous, high-spirited boy, with a deep,
strong, thoughtful manhood in the background. We were present, my
wife and I, at the Guildhall when he made his memorable speech about
Egypt, in which he informed a gathering, which contained the Foreign
Secretary, Sir Edward Grey, and many of our Cabinet, that we should
either rule more strictly or clear out altogether. It was, of course, a
most unwarrantable intrusion into our affairs, but it was a calculated
indiscretion, and very welcome, I believe, to those who were dealing
with Egypt. As he made his way through the dense crowd afterwards he
passed me and said with a grin: “I say, I let them have it that time,
didn’t I?” There was the mischievous boy coming out.
He had a quick blunt wit which showed itself often in his metaphors. He
spoke to me, I remember, of some one who had a nine guinea-pig-power
brain. One of his entourage told me how the President had been awakened
once to address some prairie folk at a wayside station. “They have come
sixty miles to see you,” said his secretary. “They would have come a
hundred to see a cat with two heads,” said the ruffled President.
I met him once at a small luncheon party at the invitation of Lord Lee,
who had soldiered with him in Cuba. He was extremely talkative--in
fact, I can hardly remember anyone else saying anything. Thinking
it over afterwards I concluded that two ideas were running through
his mind, and every now and then coming to the surface. They were
formidable ideas, and may have been some temporary wave of feeling, but
they were certainly in his thoughts. The one was that there would be
another civil war in the States. The second, that if you had the farmer
class on your side they presented the best military material. From this
I gathered that it was not a geographical but an economic struggle that
was in his mind. _Absit omen_, but great men are often pessimists, and
the Duke of Wellington was deeply convinced that Britain could not long
survive his death.
When Roosevelt was shot I sent him a cable to express that sympathy
which every Englishman felt. I have his answer before me, written only
a day or so after the event:
MERCY HOSPITAL,
CHICAGO,
_October 19, 1912_.
DEAR MR. DOYLE,--
Many thanks for your kind message of sympathy. As you know, a bullet
wound is rather a serious thing, but all conditions seem to be
favourable, and I hope in a few days we will all be relieved from
anxiety.
Sincerely yours,
THEODORE ROOSEVELT.
It is typewritten, but signed by his own hand. I do not think that a
more brave and detached letter was ever written by a sufferer.
Roosevelt was a very loud hearty man, with a peculiar wild-beast toothy
grin, and an explosive habit of slapping his hand down for emphasis.
I jotted down a few of his _obiter dicta_ after our conversation. He
had no good word for Henry James. “He is not a whole man. All that
subtlety is really decadence.” He was very virile, not to say heroic in
his views. “A man should guard particularly against being led from his
duty, especially a dangerous duty, by his women. I guess a woman would
have had a bad time if she had tried to lead Leonidas from the pass.”
Of the German Emperor he said that he was jealous of the King’s dog at
the King’s funeral because he attracted the more notice. Altogether he
was one of the raciest talkers I have ever met.
Among the occasional great ones of earth whom I have met there is
hardly anyone who stands out more clearly than Arthur Balfour, with
his willowy figure, his gentle intellectual face, and, as I read it,
his soul of steel. I should think that of all men of our day he was
the last who would be turned from any path which he had deliberately
taken, but, on the other hand, he was capable of standing a most
unconscionable time at the place where paths divide, for his mind was
so subtle and active that he would always see the two sides of every
question and waver between them. He could never have been a pioneer.
The occasion of our first meeting was a most ridiculous one. Old
Lord Burnham, the first of his line, had invited me down to his
country house at Beaconsfield--a wonderful house which had been built
originally by Waller, the Royalist poet. Burke had lived close by,
and the dagger which, in a melodramatic moment, he threw upon the
floor of the house, in order to show the dangers of French Republican
propaganda, is still on exhibition. I can remember the party well,
though nearly all of them are now on the farther side. I see Lady
Dorothy Nevill with her mittened hands and her prim pussy-cat manner,
retailing gossip about Disraeli’s flirtations. Sir Henry James walks
under the trees with bended head, talking to the rising barrister who
is destined as Lord Reading to be Viceroy of India. Lady Cleveland,
mother of Lord Rosebery, is listening with her old face wreathed in
smiles to Lady Dorothy’s scandal. Young Harry Irving looks unutterably
bored as Lord Burnham explains golf to him, bending his head over to
get a glimpse of the ball round the curve of his goodly waistcoat. Mr.
Asquith stands smiling beside them. As one looks back they seem all to
have been shadows in a world of shadow.
Lord Burnham’s hobby was Turkish baths, and he had an excellent one
in the front of the house, the drying room being the first door on
the right as one entered, and being a simple sitting-room as far as
appearance went. With his usual kind hospitality Lord Burnham had urged
me to try his bath, and having done so I was placed, arrayed in a long
towel, and with another towel screwed round my head, in the drying
room. Presently the door opened, and entered Arthur Balfour, Prime
Minister of England. He knew nothing of the house or its ways, and I
can remember the amazement with which he gazed at me. Lord Burnham
following at his heels introduced me, and I raised the towel on my
head. There were no explanations, and I felt that he went away with the
impression that this was my usual costume.
I did not see him after that week-end--he kept his room, I remember,
until midday on the Sunday--until some years later when, after heavy
domestic loss, I was endeavouring to collect myself again in a little
inn near Dunbar. He heard of my presence, and in his kindness sent a
car over from Whittinghame, only a few miles away, with a request that
I should come over for a couple of days. There was present his brother,
Gerald Balfour, a man with a beautifully refined face and manner,
not unlike that of Andrew Lang. His wife is the famous Lady Betty
Balfour, the daughter of Lord Lytton. When one thinks of that group of
inter-allied families--the Balfours, Cecils, Sedgwicks, and Lyttons--it
seems a sort of nerve ganglion of British life. There was also Lady
Frances Balfour, who was a daughter of the Duke of Argyle, and not
unlike him, as I can remember him. Her husband was Arthur Balfour’s
brother, an architect and antiquary, while another brother was Colonel
of the London Scottish. Finally, there was Miss Alice Balfour, a very
sweet and gentle intellectual person, who was my actual hostess.
I found Arthur Balfour in great spirits because he had just won a golf
medal at North Berwick. He seemed as pleased as any schoolboy, and
his sister told me that no political success ever gave him the keen
pleasure which he had from his golf victory. He was an average player,
orthodox in style, and about 10 or 12 in handicap. He proved to be a
charming host, for he was a good listener, seeming to be really eager
to hear your opinion, laughed heartily at small provocation, and talked
always very frankly and modestly of himself. After my long solitude I
was more loquacious, I remember, than is my way, but he bore it with
good humour.
Every night--or at least on the Sunday night--the whole staff of the
large rambling establishment, maids and grooms, some twenty in all,
came in for prayers, which were read by the head of the house. It was
fine to hear groom and statesman praying humbly together that they be
forgiven the sins of the day, and merging all earthly distinctions in
the presence of that which is above us all.
He was very interesting when he spoke of the outrage which the Russian
fleet had committed when, on their way to Japan, they opened fire
at the British trawlers on the Dogger Bank. It was curious to hear
his gentle voice and to note his listless impersonal manner while he
spoke in this fashion: “I was very angry, really very angry about that
affair. If our fleet had been at home I should have been inclined
to have stopped them in the Straits. Of course, one would not do
that unless one had overpowering force, so as to avoid bloodshed and
save the Russian face. Their Ambassador called that morning and gave
complete assurances, or really I should have had to do something. He
got himself into trouble with his own Government, who felt that he had
given away their case.”
I asked him how Cabinet Councils were worked. He said that they voted
upon points and went by majorities, unless it was a vital thing, when
of course the dissenters must resign.
I observed in his character a very great horror of cowardice. Nothing
seemed to arouse such scorn in him. He grew quite red, I remember, as
he spoke of Lord George Sackville, and recalled that though he had
been broken and should have been shot at the Battle of Minden in 1759,
he was none the less Minister of War during the American campaign. He
was also, as I reminded him, a most debauched man; and the murder of
his mistress, Miss Reay, the actress, by her true lover, the clergyman
Hackman, was one of the _causes célèbres_ of that century.
I shall always carry away the memory of that visit--a bright gleam in
a dark passage of life. I see very clearly the old house, the huge
broken tree outside, inside which a State conspiracy was once hatched,
the fine library with its wealth of French memoirs, and above all the
remarkable man who stood for so much in the life of the country. I was
not at that time so convinced of the primary importance of psychic
things as I became later, and I regret it, as this would have been my
one opportunity to explore a knowledge which at that time was certainly
greater than my own. Years later, when the fight was heavy upon me, and
when I was almost alone in the polemical arena, I wrote to Mr. Balfour,
and charged him with sharing all my convictions and yet leaving me to
defend them single-handed. His answer was: “Surely my opinions upon
this subject are already sufficiently well known,” which is surely an
admission that I was right in my description of them, and yet was not
much of a prop to me in my time of need.
I cast my mind back to other statesmen whom I have known, and Mr.
Asquith’s kindly personality comes into my memory. I remember playing
a round of golf with him once--and a very bad player he was--but
his conversation as we went round was plus four. He was a naturally
sweet-natured man, but under that gentleness there lay judgment and
firmness, as was shown at the great crisis of history. He never said
too much, but what he did say he lived up to. In conducting us safely
through those first two years of war he did that for which he has never
had sufficient credit, and the more light we have had since, the more
clear it has been that Lord Kitchener and he were really doing all
that men could do, in munition work and all other ways. Because he
had the solid Yorkshire stolidity, more nervous and excitable people
thought that he did not take the war sufficiently seriously, while the
constant lies about the pro-German tendencies of his wife increased
the evil impression. We owe him a reparation which is second only to
that which is due to Lord Haldane.
And that is indeed a heavy one. If one man could be named who was
absolutely indispensable to victory it was Haldane. He it was who built
up the whole splendid weapon which flashed so swiftly from its sheath,
and which Germany was so amazed to find directed at its breast as it
rushed forward upon its furious course. He could not work miracles; he
could not introduce conscription when a candidate with such a programme
would have been chased from the hustings; he could not prepare the
public mind in some dramatic way which would have precipitated the very
crash which there was still some chance of avoiding. But all we had
he gave us--the eight divisions which saved France, the Territorials
who carried on the good work until the new armies were ready and the
Officers’ Training Corps, which strengthened us where we should have
been fatally weak. There has never been so foolish and ungrateful a
clamour as that which has been raised against Haldane. I remember that
when he took the chair for me in the first war lecture which I gave in
London there were cries of “Traitor!” from people, chiefly women, among
the audience. I had never seen Haldane before, and have never seen him
since, so I have no personal bias in the matter, but I am proud that it
was in my first volume of the “History of the War,” published in 1915,
that I first put forward the unpopular view which will now be more
fully accepted.
With George Meredith I had several interesting connections. I have the
greatest possible admiration for him at his best, while his worst is
such a handicap that I think it will drag four-fifths of his work to
oblivion. If his own generation finds him hard to understand, what will
our descendants make of him? He will be a cult among a few--a precious
few in every sense. And yet I fully recognize that his was the most
active original brain and the most clever pen of any man, novelist or
otherwise, of my time. Knowing this well, it is strange that I can
see so limited a future for him. His subtle and intricate mind seemed
unable to realize the position of the plain outsiders who represent the
world. He could not see how his stained-glass might be less effective
than the plain transparent substance as a medium for vision. The first
requisite is to be intelligible. The second is to be interesting.
The third is to be clever. Meredith enormously filled the third, but
he was unequal upon the other two. Hence he will never, in spite of
the glories of “Richard Feverel” be on an equality with Dickens or
Thackeray, who filled all three. He had simply no idea how his words
would strike a less complex mind. I remember that once in the presence
of Barrie, Quiller-Couch and myself, he read out a poem which he had
inscribed “To the British Working-Man” in the “Westminster Gazette.” I
don’t know what the British working-man made of it, but I am sure that
we three were greatly puzzled as to what it was about.
I had written some articles on his work, which had been one of my
youthful cults, and that led to his inviting me to see him at his villa
at Box Hill--the first of several such visits. There had been a good
deal in the papers about his health, so that I was surprised when, as
I opened the garden gate, a slight but robust gentleman in a grey suit
and a red tie swung out of the hall door and came singing loudly down
the path. I suppose he was getting on to seventy at the time but he
looked younger, and his artistic face was good to the eye. Greeting me
he pointed to a long steep hill behind the house and said: “I have just
been up to the top for a walk.” I looked at the sharp slope and said:
“You must be in good trim to do it.” He looked angry and said: “That
would be a proper compliment to pay to an octogenarian.” I was a little
nettled by his touchiness, so I answered: “I understood that I was
talking to an invalid.” It really seemed as if my visit would terminate
at the garden gate, but presently he relented, and we soon became quite
friendly.
He had in his youth been a judge of wine, and had still a reverence for
a good vintage, but unfortunately some nervous complaint from which
he suffered had caused the doctors to prohibit it absolutely. When
lunch came round he asked me with a very earnest air whether I could
undertake to drink a whole bottle of Burgundy. I answered that I saw
no insuperable difficulty. A dusty old bottle was tenderly carried
up, which I disposed of, Meredith taking a friendly interest in its
dispatch. “The fact is,” said he, “I love my wine, and my little cellar
was laid down with care and judgment, so that when some guest comes and
drinks a glass and wastes the rest of the bottle it goes to my heart.
It really did me good to see you enjoy that one.” I need not say that I
intimated that I was always prepared to oblige.
His conversation was extraordinarily vivid and dramatic, uttered in
a most vehement tone. It may have been artificial, and it may have
been acting, but it was very arresting and entertaining. The talk got
upon Napoleon’s Marshals, and you would have thought that he knew them
intimately, and he did Murat’s indignation at being told to charge
_au bout_, as if he ever charged any other way, in a fashion which
would have brought down the house. Every now and then he brought out
a Meredithian sentence which sounded comic when applied to domestic
matters. When the jelly swayed about as the maid put it on the table
he said: “The jelly, Mary, is as treacherous as the Trojan Horse.” He
laughed when I told him how my groom, enlisted as a waiter for some
special dinner, said, “Huddup, there,” to the jelly under similar
circumstances.
After lunch we walked up a steep path to the little chalet or
summerhouse where he used to write. He wished to read me a novel which
he had begun twenty years before, but which he had not had the heart
to go on with. I liked it greatly--and we roared with laughter at his
description of an old sea-dog who turned up the collar of his coat when
he went into action as if the bullets were rain. He said that my hearty
enjoyment encouraged him to go on with it, and it has since appeared as
the “Amazing Marriage,” but whether I really had anything to do with it
I do not know. I should be proud to think so.
The nervous complaint from which he suffered caused him to fall down
occasionally. As we walked up the narrow path to the chalet I heard him
fall behind me, but judged from the sound that it was a mere slither
and could not have hurt him. Therefore I walked on as if I had heard
nothing. He was a fiercely proud old man, and my instincts told me that
his humiliation in being helped up would be far greater than any relief
I could give him. It was certainly a nice point to decide.
George Meredith’s religious convictions were very difficult to decide.
He certainly had no glimmering so far as I could see of any psychic
element in life, and I should imagine that on the whole he shared the
opinions of his friend, John Morley, which were completely negative.
And yet I remember his assuring me that prayer was a very necessary
thing, and that one should never abandon prayer. “Who rises from prayer
a better man, his prayer is granted,” says the Aphorist in “Richard
Feverel.” How far these positions can be harmonized I do not know. I
suppose that one may say that God is unknown, and yet rear a mental
temple to the unknown God.
Rudyard Kipling I know far less than I should, considering how deeply I
admire his writings, and that we live in the same country; but we are
both absorbed in work, and both much away from home, which may explain
it. I can well remember how eagerly I bought his first book, “Plain
Tales,” in the old Southsea days, when buying a book was a rare strain
upon my exchequer. I read it with delight, and realized not only that
a new force had arisen in literature, but that a new method of story
writing had appeared which was very different from my own adherence
to the careful plot artfully developed. This was go-as-you-please
take-it-or-leave-it work, which glowed suddenly up into an incandescent
phrase or paragraph, which was the more effective for its sudden
advent. In form his stories were crude, and yet in effect--which, after
all, is everything--they were superb. It showed me that methods could
not be stereotyped, and that there was a more excellent way, even if it
were beyond my reach. I loved the “Barrack Room Ballads” also, and such
poems as “The Bolivar,” “East and West,” and above all the badly named
“L’Envoi” became part of my very self. I always read the last one aloud
to my little circle before we start on any fresh expedition, because it
contains the very essence of travel, romance, and high adventure.
I saw Kipling most nearly in his very early days when he lived at
Brattleboro, a little village in Vermont, in a chivalrous desire to
keep his newly married wife in touch with her own circle. In 1894, as I
have recorded, there was a good deal of tail-twisting going on in the
States, and Kipling pulled a few feathers out of the Eagle’s tail in
retaliation, which caused many screams of protest, for the American
was far more sensitive to such things than the case-hardened Briton.
I say “was,” for I think as a nation with an increased assurance of
their own worth and strength they are now more careless of criticism.
The result at the time was to add oil to flames, and I, as a passionate
believer in Anglo-American union, wrote to Kipling to remonstrate. He
received my protest very good-humouredly, and it led to my visit to his
country home. As a matter of fact, the concern shown in America, when
the poet lay at death’s door a few years later, showed that the rancour
was not very deep. Perhaps he was better known at that time in America
than in England, for I remember sitting beside a bushman in London, who
bowed his red face to my ear and said: “Beg your pardon, sir, but ’oo
is this ’ere Kilpin?”
I had two great days in Vermont, and have a grateful remembrance of
Mrs. Kipling’s hospitality. The poet read me “McAndrew’s Hymn,” which
he had just done, and surprised me by his dramatic power which enabled
him to sustain the Glasgow accent throughout, so that the angular
Scottish greaser simply walked the room. I had brought up my golf clubs
and gave him lessons in a field while the New England rustics watched
us from afar, wondering what on earth we were at, for golf was unknown
in America at that time. We parted good friends, and the visit was an
oasis in my rather dreary pilgrimage as a lecturer.
My glimpses of Kipling since then have been few and scattered, but
I had the pleasure several times of meeting his old father, a most
delightful and lovable person, who told a story quite as well as his
famous son. As the mother was also a very remarkable woman, it is no
wonder that he carried such a cargo.
James Barrie is one of my oldest literary friends, and I knew him
within a year or two of the time when we both came to London. He
had just written his “Window in Thrums,” and I, like all the world,
acclaimed it. When I was lecturing in Scotland in 1893 he invited
me to Kirriemuir, when I stayed some days with his family--splendid
types of the folk who have made Scotland great. His father was a fine
fellow, but his mother was wonderful with a head and a heart--rare
combinations--which made me class her with my own mother. Kirriemuir
could by no means understand Barrie’s success, and looked upon their
great son as an inexplicable phenomenon. They were acutely aware,
however, that tourists were arriving from all parts to see the place
on account of Barrie’s books. “I suppose you have read them,” I said
to the wife of the local hotel man. “Aye, I’ve read them, and steep,
steep, weary work it was,” said she. She had some theory that it was a
four-horse coach which her good man was running, and not the books at
all which accounted for the boom.
Great as are Barrie’s plays--and some of them I think are very great--I
wish he had never written a line for the theatre. The glamour of it
and the--to him--easy success have diverted from literature the man
with the purest style of his age. Plays are always ephemeral, however
good, and are limited to a few, but Barrie’s unborn books might have
been an eternal and a universal asset of British literature. He has
the chaste clarity which is the great style, which has been debased
by a generation of wretched critics who have always confused what is
clear with what is shallow, and what is turbid with what is profound.
If a man’s thought is precise, his rendering of it is precise, and
muddy thoughts make obscure paragraphs. If I had to make my choice
among modern stylists, I should pick Barrie for the lighter forms of
expression and our British Winston Churchill for the more classical.
Barrie’s great play--one of the finest in the language--is of course
“The Admirable Crichton.” I shall always hope that I had a hand in the
fashioning of it. I say this not in complaint but in satisfaction, for
we all drop seeds into each other, and seldom know whence they come. We
were walking together on the Heath at Kirriemuir when I said: “I had a
quaint thought in the night, Barrie. It was that a king was visiting
India and was wrecked on the way on some island far from the track of
ships. Only he and one rather handy sailor were saved. They settled
down to spend their lives together. Of course the result would be that
the sailor would become the king and the king the subject.” We chuckled
over the idea, and when Crichton appeared, I seemed to see the fine
plant which had grown from the tiny seed.
Barrie and I had one unfortunate venture together, in which I may say
that the misfortune was chiefly mine, since I had really nothing to
do with the matter, and yet shared all the trouble. However, I should
have shared the honour and profit in case of success, so that I have no
right to grumble. The facts were that Barrie had promised Mr. D’Oyley
Carte that he would provide the libretto of a light opera for the
Savoy. This was in the Gilbert days, when such a libretto was judged
by a very high standard. It was an extraordinary commission for him to
accept, and I have never yet been able to understand why he did so,
unless, like Alexander, he wanted fresh worlds to conquer. On this
occasion, however, he met with a disastrous repulse, and the opera,
“Jane Annie,” to which I alluded in an early chapter, was one of the
few failures in his brilliant career.
I was brought into the matter because Barrie’s health failed on account
of some family bereavement. I had an urgent telegram from him at
Aldburgh, and going there I found him very worried because he had bound
himself by this contract, and he felt in his present state unable to
go forward with it. There were to be two acts, and he had written the
first one, and had the rough scenario of the second, with the complete
sequence of events--if one may call it a sequence. Would I come in with
him and help him to complete it as part author? Of course I was very
happy to serve him in any way. My heart sank, however, when, after
giving the promise, I examined the work. The only literary gift which
Barrie has not got is the sense of poetic rhythm, and the instinct for
what is permissible in verse. Ideas and wit were in abundance. But
the plot itself was not strong though the dialogue and the situations
also were occasionally excellent. I did my best and wrote the lyrics
for the second act, and much of the dialogue, but it had to take
the predestined shape. The result was not good. However, the actual
comradeship of production was very amusing and interesting, and our
failure was mainly painful to us because it let down the producer and
the cast. We were well abused by the critics, but Barrie took it all in
the bravest spirit.
I find, in looking over my papers, a belated statement of account from
Barrie which is good reading.
IN ACCOUNT WITH J. M. BARRIE.
_Why._ _Cause of delay._ _Remarks._
A £1 Lent at Station. Object moving too fast. Doyle _says_ he
lent it.
B £12 Jane Annie Moving or swaying Better late than
on Tour. of Kodak. never.
C £30 6_s._ 4_d._ Failure to pull cord. Doyle gets 2/5 of
Heaven knows. a penny beyond
his share.
Our associations were never so closely renewed, but through all my
changing life I have had a respect and affection for Barrie which were,
I hope, mutual. How I collaborated with him at cricket as well as at
work is told in my chapter on Sport.
Henry Irving is one of the other great men whom I have met at close
quarters, for his acting of Gregory Brewster brought us in contact.
When he was producing “Coriolanus” he came down to Hindhead and used
to drop in of an evening. He was fond of a glass of port--indeed, he
was one of the four great men who were stated (probably untruly) by the
Hon. G. Russell to drink a bottle each night--being the only trait which
these great men had in common. The others, I remember, were Tennyson,
Gladstone and Moses Montefiori, and the last I believe was really true.
Like all bad habits, it overtook the sinner at last, and he was cut off
at the age of 116.
Irving had a curious dry wit which was occasionally sardonic and
ill-natured. I can well believe that his rehearsals were often the
occasion for heart-burnings among the men and tears among the ladies.
The unexpectedness of his remarks took one aback. I remember when my
friend Hamilton sat up with me into the “wee sma’ hours” with the
famous man, he became rather didactic on the subject of the Deity or
the Universe or some other tremendous topic, which he treated very
solemnly, and at great length. Irving sat with his intense eyes riveted
upon the speaker’s face, which encouraged Hamilton to go on and on.
When at last he had finished, Irving remarked: “_What_ a low comedian
you would have made!” He wound up his visit by giving me his copy of
“Coriolanus” with all his notes and stage directions--a very precious
relic.
Many visions of old times rise before my eyes as I write, but my book
would lose all proportion should I dwell upon them. I see Henley, the
formidable cripple, a red-bearded, loud-voiced buccaneer of a man who
could only crawl, for his back appeared to be broken. He was a great
poet and critic who seemed to belong to the roaring days of Marlowe
of the mighty line and the pothouse fray. I see Haggard too, first
as the young spruce diplomatist, later as the worn and bearded man
with strange vague tendencies to mysticism. Shaw, too, I see with the
pleasant silky voice and the biting phrase. It was strange that all
the mild vegetables which formed his diet made him more pugnacious
and, I must add, more uncharitable than the carnivorous man, so that
I have known no literary man who was more ruthless to other people’s
feelings. And yet to meet him was always to like him. He could not
resist a bitter jest or the perverted pleasure of taking up an
unpopular attitude. As an example I remember Henry Irving telling me
that when Shaw was invited to his father’s funeral he wrote in reply:
“If I were at Westminster Henry Irving would turn in his grave, just as
Shakespeare would turn in his grave were Henry Irving at Stratford.” I
may not have it verbally exact, but that was near enough. It was the
kind of outrageous thing that he would say. And yet one can forgive him
all when one reads the glorious dialogue of some of his plays. He seems
subhuman in emotion and superhuman in intellect.
Shaw was always a thorn in Irving’s side, and was usually the one
jarring note among the chorus of praise which greeted each fresh
production. At a first night at the Lyceum--those wonderful first
nights which have never been equalled--the lanky Irishman with his
greenish face, his red beard, and his sardonic expression must have
been like the death’s-head at the banquet to Irving. Irving ascribed
this animosity to Shaw’s pique because his plays were not accepted, but
in this I am sure that he did an injustice. It was simply that contrary
twist in the man which makes him delight in opposing whatever anyone
else approved. There is nothing constructive in him, and he is bound to
be in perpetual opposition. No one for example was stronger for peace
and for non-militarism than he, and I remember that when I took the
chair at a meeting at Hindhead to back up the Tsar’s peace proposals at
The Hague, I thought to myself as I spied Shaw in a corner of the room:
“Well, this time at any rate he must be in sympathy.” But far from
being so he sprang to his feet and put forward a number of ingenious
reasons why these proposals for peace would be disastrous. Do what you
could he was always against you.
Perhaps it is no bad thing to have the other point of view continually
stated, and the British stand that sort of thing better than other
nations. Had Shaw said in America what he said in England about the war
whilst it was in progress he would have been in personal danger. There
were times, however, when his queer contrary impulses became perfectly
brutal in their working. One was at the time of the _Titanic_ disaster,
when he deliberately wrote a letter at a time when the wounds were raw,
overwhelming every one concerned with bitter criticism. I was moved
to write a remonstrance, and we had a sharp debate in public, which
did not in any way modify our kindly personal relations. I can recall
a smaller but even more unjustifiable example of his sour nature when
he was staying at Hindhead. A garden-party had been got up for some
charity, and it included the woodland scenes of “As You Like It,” which
were done by amateurs, and very well done too. Shaw with no provocation
wrote a whole column of abuse in the local paper, spattering all
the actors and their performance with ridicule, and covering them
with confusion, though indeed they had nothing to be ashamed of. One
mentions these things as characteristic of one side of the man, and
as a proof, I fear, that the adoption by the world of a vegetarian
diet will not bring unkind thoughts or actions to an end. But with it
all Shaw is a genial creature to meet, and I am prepared to believe
that there is a human kindly side to his nature though it has not been
presented to the public. It took a good man to write “Saint Joan.”
Wells, too, I have known long, and indeed I must have often entered the
draper’s shop in which he was employed at Southsea, for the proprietor
was a patient of mine. Wells is one of the great fruits which popular
education has given us, since he came, as he is proud to state, from
the heart of the people. His democratic frankness and complete absence
of class feeling are occasionally embarrassing. I remember his asking
me once if I had played cricket at Liphook. I said that I had. He
said: “Did you notice an old fellow who acts as professional and
ground-keeper?” I said that I had. “That was my father,” said Wells. I
was too much surprised to answer, and could only congratulate myself
that I had made no unpleasant comments before I knew the identity of
the old man.
I have always had my doubts as to those elaborate forecasts of the
future in which Wells indulges. He has, it is true, made a couple
of good shots which have already materialized in the tanks and in
the machine which would deliver news in our own houses. But he has
never shown any perception of the true meaning of the psychic, and
for want of it his history of the world, elaborate and remarkable as
it was, seemed to me to be a body without a soul. However, this also
may be given him, and it will make his equipment complete. I remember
discussing the matter with him, when George Gissing, Hornung, he and I
foregathered in Rome early in this century, but apparently my words had
no effect.
Willie Hornung, my brother-in-law, is another of my vivid memories. He
was a Dr. Johnson without the learning but with a finer wit. No one
could say a neater thing, and his writings, good as they are, never
adequately represented the powers of the man, nor the quickness of his
brain. These things depend upon the time and the fashion, and go flat
in the telling, but I remember how, when I showed him the record of
some one who claimed to have done 100 yards under ten seconds, he said:
“It is a sprinter’s error.” Golf he could not abide, for he said it was
“unsportsmanlike to hit a sitting ball.” His criticism upon my Sherlock
Holmes was: “Though he might be more humble, there is no police like
Holmes.” I think I may claim that his famous character Raffles was a
kind of inversion of Sherlock Holmes, Bunny playing Watson. He admits
as much in his kindly dedication. I think there are few finer examples
of short-story writing in our language than these, though I confess I
think they are rather dangerous in their suggestion. I told him so
before he put pen to paper, and the result has, I fear, borne me out.
You must not make the criminal a hero.
Jerome, too, is an old friend. He is an adventurous soul, and at one
time started a four-in-hand. I remember sitting on the top of it,
and when one of the leaders turned right round and took a good look
at the driver I thought it was time to get down. Maxwell also is an
old friend. He is, of course, the son of Miss Braddon, who married a
publisher of that name. I respect him for doing a man’s work in the war
when, though he was fifty years of age, and had led a sedentary life,
he volunteered for a fighting battalion, a credit which he shares with
A. E. W. Mason. Maxwell’s work has always greatly appealed to me, and I
have long looked upon him as the greatest novelist that we possess.
I never met Robert Louis Stevenson in the flesh, though I owe so much
to him in the literary spirit. Never can I forget the delight with
which I read those early stories of his in the “Cornhill,” before I
knew the name of the author. I still think that “The Pavilion on the
Links” is one of the great short stories of the world, though there
were alterations in the final form which were all for the worse, and
showed prudery upon the part of the publishers. Stevenson’s last year
at Edinburgh University must have just about coincided with my first
one, and Barrie must also have been in that grey old nest of learning
about the year 1876. Strange to think that I probably brushed elbows
with both of them in the crowded portal.
From his far-away home in Samoa he seemed to keep a quick eye upon
literary matters in England, and I had most encouraging letters from
him in 1893 and 1894. “O frolic fellow-spookist” was his curious term
of personal salutation in one of these, which showed that he shared
my interest in psychic research but did not take it very seriously.
I cannot guess how at that time he had detected it, though I was
aware that he had himself in early days acted as secretary to a
psychic research or rather to a Spiritualist society in Edinburgh,
which studied the remarkable mediumship of Duguid. His letters to me
consisted of kind appreciation of my work. “I have a great talent for
compliment,” he said, “accompanied by a hateful, even a diabolic,
frankness.” He had been retailing some of my Sherlock Holmes yarns
to his native servants--I should not have thought that he needed to
draw upon anyone else--and he complained to me in a comical letter of
the difficulty of telling a story when you had to halt every moment
to explain what a railway was, what an engineer was, and so forth.
He got the story across in spite of all difficulties, and, said he,
“If you could have seen the bright feverish eyes of Simite you would
have tasted glory.” But he explained that the natives took everything
literally, and that there was no such thing as an imaginary story for
them. “I, who write this, have had the indiscretion to perpetuate a
trifling piece of fiction, ‘The Bottle Imp.’ Parties who come up to
visit my mansion, after having admired the ceiling by Vanderputty and
the tapestry by Gobbling, manifest towards the end a certain uneasiness
which proves them to be fellows of an infinite delicacy. They may be
seen to shrug a brown shoulder, to roll up a speaking eye, and at last
the secret bursts from them: ‘Where is the bottle?’” In another letter
he said that as I had written of my first book in the “Idler” he also
would do so. “I could not hold back where the white plume of Conan
Doyle waved in front of me.” So, at least, I may boast that it is to me
that the world owes the little personal sketch about “Treasure Island”
which appeared in that year. I cannot forget the shock that it was to
me when driving down the Strand in a hansom cab in 1896 I saw upon a
yellow evening poster “Death of Stevenson.” Something seemed to have
passed out of my world.
I was asked by his executors to finish the novel “St. Ives,” which he
had left three-quarters completed, but I did not feel equal to the
task. It was done, however, and, I understand, very well done, by
Quiller-Couch. It is a desperately difficult thing to carry on another
man’s story, and must be a more or less mechanical effort. I had one
experience of it when my neighbour at Hindhead, Grant Allen, was on
his death-bed. He was much worried because there were two numbers of
his serial, “Hilda Wade,” which was running in “The Strand” magazine,
still uncompleted. It was a pleasure for me to do them for him, and
so relieve his mind, but it was difficult collar work, and I expect
they were pretty bad. Some time afterwards a stranger, who evidently
confused Allen and me, wrote to say that his wife had given him a baby
girl, and that in honour of me he was calling her Hilda Wade. He was
really nearer the truth than appeared at first sight.
I well remember that death-bed of Grant Allen’s. He was an agnostic
of a type which came very near atheism, though in his private life
an amiable and benevolent man. Believing what he did, the approach
of death must have offered rather a bleak prospect, and as he had
paroxysms of extreme pain the poor fellow seemed very miserable. I
had often argued the case with him, I from a Theistic and he from a
negative point of view, but I did not intrude my opinions or disturb
his mind at that solemn moment. Death-bed changes, though some clergy
may rejoice in them, are really vain things. His brain, however,
was as clear as ever, and his mind was occupied with all manner of
strange knowledge, which he imparted in the intervals of his pain, in
the curious high nasal voice which was characteristic. I can see him
now, his knees drawn up to ease internal pain, and his long thin nose
and reddish-grey goatee protruding over the sheet, while he croaked
out: “Byzantine art, my dear Doyle, was of three periods, the middle
one roughly coinciding with the actual fall of the Roman Empire. The
characteristics of the first period----” and so on, until he would
give a cry, clasp his hands across his stomach, and wait till the pain
passed before resuming his lecture. His dear little wife nursed him
devotedly, and mitigated the gloom of those moments which can be made
the very happiest in life if one understands what lies before one. One
thinks, as a contrast, of Dr. Hodgson’s impatient cry, “I can hardly
wait for death!”
Grant Allen’s strong opinions in print, and a certain pleasure he
took in defending outside positions, gave quite a false view of his
character, which was gentle and benignant. I remember his coming to
a fancy dress ball which we gave in the character of a Cardinal, and
in that guise all the quiet dignity of the man seemed to come out and
you realized how much our commonplace modern dress disguises the real
man. He used to tell with great amusement how a couple, who afterwards
became close friends, came first to call, and how as they waited on the
doorstep the wife said to the husband: “Remember, John, if he openly
blasphemes, I leave the room.” He had, I remember, very human relations
with the maids who took a keen interest in their employer’s scientific
experiments. On one occasion these were connected with spiders, and the
maid rushed into the drawing-room and cried: “Oh, sir, Araminta has got
a wasp.” Araminta was the name given to the big spider which he was
observing at the time.
Grant Allen had no actual call to write fiction, but his brain was
agile enough to make some sort of job of anything to which it turned.
On the other hand, as a popular scientist he stood alone, or shared
the honour with Samuel Laing. His only real success in fiction was the
excellent short story “John Creedy,” where he combined science with
fiction, with remarkable results.
At the time when I and so many others turned to letters there was
certainly a wonderful vacancy for the new-comer. The giants of old
had all departed. Thackeray, Dickens, Charles Reade and Trollope were
memories. There was no great figure remaining save Hardy. The rising
novelist was Mrs. Humphry Ward, who was just beginning her career
with “Robert Elsmere,” the first of that series of novels which will
illuminate the later Victorian era more clearly than any historian ever
can do. I think it was Hodgkin who said, when he read “Count Robert of
Paris”: “Here have I been studying Byzantium all my life, and I never
understood it until this blessed Scotch lawyer came along.” That is the
special prerogative of imagination. Trollope and Mrs. Ward have the
whole Victorian civilization dissected and preserved.
Then there were Meredith, unintelligible to most, and Walter Besant.
There was Wilkie Collins, too, with his fine stories of mystery, and
finally there was James Payn.
Payn was much greater than his books. The latter were usually rather
mechanical, but to get at the real man one has to read such articles
as his “Literary Reminiscences,” and especially his “Backwater of
Life.” He had all that humorous view which Nature seems to give as a
compensation to those whose strength is weak. Had Payn written only
essays he would have rivalled Charles Lamb. I knew him best in his
latter days, when he was crippled with illness, and his poor fingers
so twisted with rheumatic arthritis that they seemed hardly human. He
was intensely pessimistic as to his own fate. “Don’t make any mistake,
Doyle, death is a horrible thing--horrible! I suffer the agonies of the
damned!” But five minutes later he would have his audience roaring with
laughter, and his own high treble laugh would be the loudest of all.
His own ailments were frequently a source of mirth. I remember how he
described the breaking of a blood-vessel in Bournemouth and how they
carried him home on a litter. He was dimly conscious of the fir-woods
through which he passed. “I thought it was my funeral, and that they
had done me well in the matter of plumes.” When he told a story he was
so carried away by his sense of humour that he could hardly get the end
out, and he finished up in a kind of scream. An American had called
upon him at some late hour and had discoursed upon Assyrian tablets. “I
thought they were something to eat,” he screamed. He was an excellent
whist player, and the Baldwin Club used to send three members to his
house on certain days so that the old fellow should not go without his
game. This game was very scientific. He would tell with delight how he
asked some novice: “Do you play the penultimate?” To which the novice
answered: “No--but my brother plays the American organ.”
Many of my generation of authors had reason to love him, for he was
a human and kindly critic. His writing however, was really dreadful.
It was of him that the story was told that an author handed one of
his letters to a chemist for a test. The chemist retired for a time
and then returned with a bottle and demanded half a crown. Better
luck attended the man who received an illegible letter from a railway
director. He used it as a free pass upon the line. Payn used to joke
about his own writing, but it was a very real trouble when one could
not make out whether he had accepted or rejected one’s story. There
was one letter in which I could only read the words “infringement of
copyright.” He was very funny when he described the work of the robust
younger school. “I have received a story from ----” he said, “5,000
words, mostly damns.”
I knew Sir Henry Thompson, the famous surgeon, very well, and was
frequently honoured by an invitation to his famous octave dinners,
at which eight carefully chosen male guests were always the company.
They always seemed to me to be the most wonderful exhibitions of
unselfishness, for Thompson was not allowed any alcohol, or anything
save the most simple viands. Possibly, however, like Meredith and the
bottle of burgundy, he enjoyed some reflex pleasure from the enjoyment
of others. He had been a wonderful _viveur_ and judge of what was what,
and I fear that I disappointed him, for I was much more interested
in the conversation than the food, and it used to annoy me when some
argument was interrupted in order to tell us that it was not ordinary
ham but a Westphalian wild boar that we were eating and that it had
been boiled in wine for precisely the right time prescribed by the best
authorities. But it was part of his wonderful unselfish hospitality to
make his guests realize exactly what it was that was set before them. I
have never heard more interesting talk than at these male gatherings,
for it is notorious that though ladies greatly improve the appearance
of a feast they usually detract from the quality of the talk. Few men
are ever absolutely natural when there are women in the room.
There was one special dinner, I fancy it was the hundredth of the
series, which was particularly interesting as the Prince of Wales, now
George V, was one of the eight, and gave us a most interesting account
of the voyage round the world from which he had just returned. Of the
rest of the company I can only recall Sir Henry Stanley, the traveller,
and Sir Crichton Browne. Twenty years later I met the King when he
visited a trade exhibition, and I attended as one of the directors of
Tuck’s famous postcard firm. He at once said: “Why, I have not seen
you since that pleasant dinner when you sat next to me at Sir Henry
Thompson’s.” It seemed to me to be a remarkable example of the royal
gift of memory.
I have not often occupied a chair among the seats of the mighty. My
life has been too busy and too pre-occupied to allow me to stray far
from my beaten path. The mention of the Prince, however, reminds me
of the one occasion when I was privileged to entertain--or to attempt
to entertain--the present Queen. It was at a small dinner to which I
was invited by the courtesy of Lord Midleton whose charming wife, once
Madeleine Stanley, daughter of Lady Helier, I could remember since her
girlhood. Upon this occasion the Prince and Princess came in after
dinner, the latter sitting alone at one end of the room with a second
chair beside her own, which was occupied successively by the various
gentlemen who were to be introduced to her. I was led up in due course,
made my bow, and sat down at her request. I confess that I found it
heavy going at first, for I had heard somewhere that Royalty has to
make the first remark, and had it been the other way there was such a
gulf between us that I should not have known where to begin. However
she was very pleasant and gracious and began asking me some questions
about my works which brought me on to very easy ground. Indeed, I
became so interested in our talk that I was quite disappointed when
Mr. John Morley was led up, and I realized that it was time for me to
vacate the chair.
There was another amusing incident on that eventful evening. I had been
asked to take in Lady Curzon, whose husband, then Viceroy of India, had
been unable to attend. The first couple had passed in and there was
a moment’s hesitation as to who should go next, but Lady Curzon and
I were nearest the door, so possibly with some little encouragement
from the lady we filed through. I thought nothing of the incident
but some great authority upon these matters came to me afterwards in
great excitement. “Do you know,” he said, “that you have established a
precedent and solved one of the most difficult and debatable matters
of etiquette that has ever caused ill-feeling in British Society.”
“The Lord Chancellor and the College of Heralds should be much obliged
to you, for you have given them a definite lead. There has never been
so vexed a question as to whether a Vice-reine when she is away from
the country where she represents royalty shall take precedence over
a Duchess. There was a Duchess in the room, but you by your decided
action have settled the matter for ever.” So who shall say that I have
done nothing in my life?
Of the distinguished lights of the law whom I have met from time to
time I think that Sir Henry Hawkins--then become Lord Bampton--made
the most definite impression. I met him at a week-end gathering
at Cliveden, when Mr. Astor was our host. On the first night at
dinner, before the party had shaken down into mutual acquaintance,
the ex-judge, very old and as bald as an ostrich egg, was seated
opposite, and was wreathed with smiles as he made himself agreeable
to his neighbour. His appearance was so jovial that I remarked to the
lady upon my left: “It is curious to notice the appearance of our
_vis-à-vis_ and to contrast it with his reputation,” alluding to his
sinister record as an inexorable judge. She seemed rather puzzled by
my remark, so I added: “Of course you know who he is.” “Yes,” said
she, “his name is Conan Doyle and he writes novels.” I was hardly
middle-aged at the time and at my best physically, so that I was amused
at her mistake, which arose from some confusion in the list of guests.
I put my dinner card up against her wine-glass, so after that we got to
know each other.
Hawkins was a most extraordinary man, and so capricious that one
never knew whether one was dealing with Jekyll or with Hyde. It was
certainly Hyde when he took eleven hours summing up in the Penge case,
and did all a man could do to have all four of the prisoners condemned
to death. Sir Edward Clarke was so incensed at his behaviour on this
occasion that he gave notice when Hawkins retired from the bench that
if there were the usual complimentary ceremonies he would protest. So
they were dropped.
I might, on the other hand, illustrate the Jekyll side of him by a
story which he told me with his own lips. A prisoner had a pet mouse.
One day the brute of a warder deliberately trod upon it. The prisoner
caught up his dinner knife and dashed at the warder, who only just
escaped, the knife stabbing the door as it closed behind him. Hawkins
as judge wanted to get the man off, but the attempt at murder was
obvious and the law equally clear. What was he to do? In his charge to
the jury he said: “If a man tries to kill another in a way which is on
the face of it absurd, it becomes a foolish rather than a criminal act.
If, for example, a man in London discharged a pistol to hurt a man in
Edinburgh, we could only laugh at such an offence. So also when a man
stabs an iron-plated door while another man is at the other side of it
we cannot take it seriously.” The jury, who were probably only too glad
to follow such a lead, brought in a verdict of “Not guilty.”
Another distinguished man of the law who left a very clear impression
upon my mind was Sir Francis Jeune, afterwards Lord St. Helier. I
attended several of Lady Jeune’s famous luncheon parties, which were
quite one of the outstanding institutions of London, like Gladstone’s
breakfasts in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. I am indebted
to this lady for very many kind actions. Her husband always impressed
me with his gentle wisdom and with his cultivated taste. He told me
that if every copy of Horace were destroyed he thought that he could
reconstruct most of it from memory. He presided over the Divorce
Courts, and I remember upon one occasion I said to him: “You must have
a very low opinion of human nature, Sir Francis, since the worst side
of it is for ever presented towards you.” “On the contrary,” said he
very earnestly, “my experience in the Divorce Courts has greatly raised
my opinion of humanity. There is so much chivalrous self-sacrifice, and
so much disposition upon the part of every one to make the best of a
bad business that it is extremely edifying.” This view seemed to me to
be worth recording.