Edward Poynter, made a very determined resistance. Lord
Chilston was First Commissioner of Works, and I, as you know,
occupied the post which you had filled with so much distinction
and permanent advantage to the nation.
“We, who were fighting for the retention of Hertford House,
owe a heavy debt of gratitude to King Edward, then Prince of
Wales, who, with unerring instinct in such matters, grasped
at once the historical and æsthetic advantages of keeping the
collections intact and _in situ_.
“We were also largely indebted to Sir Francis Mowatt, then
Secretary to the Treasury, who afforded us unfailing and
generous support.
“The purchase of the leasehold and freehold interest in the
house cost £74,620.
“The structural alterations about £28,000, and electric light,
heating and painting, £259 16s.
“In August, 1898, at your instance, I took the decorative
work, to a very great extent, out of the hands of the Office
of Works’ contractor. I remember that the paper used in the
large picture gallery, the selection of which had given us a
great deal of trouble, was copied from a piece of Italian silk
which we borrowed from Bertram, who lived in Dean Street, Soho.
Alfred Rothschild then, as always, took a deep interest in
Hertford House, and his advice was invaluable to us all.”
A Board of Trustees was then appointed, consisting of Lord Rosebery, as
chairman, who gave way to Sir John Scott, Sir Edward Malet, Sir John
Stirling Maxwell, Sir Arthur Ellis, Mr. Alfred de Rothschild and myself.
Mr.—now Sir—Claude Phillips, that distinguished connoisseur and critic,
was appointed keeper. The Office of Works constructed the new Galleries
according to our plan, and a Committee of the Trustees undertook the
arrangement of the collection. Sir John Scott, Mr. Alfred de Rothschild
and myself, with Sir Claude Phillips, worked day after day for many
months, evolving kosmos out of a chaos of packing-cases. It was a huge
task, but when the Galleries were finally thrown open, we were rewarded
by a chorus of approbation, and the praise of foreign critics was no
less loud than that of our own friends. Our leading idea was, as far as
possible, to avoid the museum aspect, and to show the pictures, clocks,
furniture, porcelain, etc., as the collection of a great connoisseur
set out as if he were still living in the house. The trustees were
fortunate in securing the generous co-operation of Sir Guy Laking in the
arrangement and cataloguing of the armour. It may readily be believed
that it was no small sorrow to us when, owing to the war, all our work
had to be undone in order to stow away our treasures in safety. I, for
one, can hardly expect to live to see the reawakening of the old glory. I
can only hope that when that time comes something of the former order may
be restored.
One morning—it was the 17th of January, 1912—I received an urgent message
by telephone, begging me to go to Hertford House at once. Sir John Scott
had died there suddenly. When I reached Manchester Square, I found him
lying in the Trustees’ room. He had been discussing business with Mr.
MacColl, who had succeeded Sir Claude Phillips as keeper, when all of
a sudden he began to have a difficulty in breathing. He said it was
nothing, but he grew worse. Doctors were sent for, but there was nothing
to be done. That large-hearted man died in the house where he had lived
so long, and surrounded by all the beautiful things which he loved and
which he had been the means of securing for the nation when he might
have had them for himself. The Government had made him a baronet. Lord
Rosebery, with a keen appreciation of what he had done, said to me in
righteous jest: “They have made him a baronet when they ought to have
made him a duke.”
A NOTE ON RUSSIAN STUDIES
A few days ago—I am writing on the 7th of August, 1916—I read in the
_Times_ a long speech by one of our preter-pluperfect rulers, announcing
the determination of the Government to encourage the study of Russian, on
account of its glorious literature. I think the adjective was “glorious,”
but, at any rate, it was some such word. Was there ever a better example
of the danger of giving reasons? Had this illustrious gentleman deigned
to glance at some such easily accessible book as Mr. Maurice Baring’s
delightful little “Outline of Russian Literature,” he would have been
saved from talking such nonsense.
We are told that upon one occasion Dr. Johnson declared that he could
quote by heart a whole chapter of the Natural History of Iceland from the
Danish of Horreboro, and immediately proceeded to show that it was no
vain boast.
Chapter LXXII, Concerning Snakes.
There are no snakes to be met with throughout the whole island.
At the beginning of the nineteenth century literature in Russia was like
the snakes in Iceland. Nor can it be said that the new development which
took place early in that century was a _rinascimento_ such as sprang into
being in Italy, in France and in England. A new birth implies a previous
state of existence, and it cannot be said that the old chronicles which
the dryasdusts of Kiev—the old head-quarters of such monkish learning as
existed—still less a few embryonic attempts at versification and dramatic
writing, could be dignified by the inspiring title of literature. “The
Russian language”—to quote Mr. Baring—“was, as has been said, like an
instrument waiting for a great player to play on it, and to make use of
all its possibilities.” The fables of Kryloff—a playwright whose dramas
have long since been forgotten—were published in 1806, and these remain
a classic. Out of the two hundred fables which he left at his death in
1844, forty were translations, or, rather, “recreations,” as Mr. Baring
puts it, of La Fontaine; seven were suggested by Aesop; the remainder
were original. As in all fables, these contain an element of satire;
that here and there the satire should be tinged with even a spice of
political acidity did not hinder their popularity. I should like to say,
in passing, that the few pages which Mr. Baring devotes to his account of
Krylov contain passages of great beauty—passages which could only have
been written by a man gifted with the keenest appreciation of the poetry
which is part of himself.
[Illustration: IVAN TURGENIEV.
_From an etching by E. Hedouin._
[_To face p. 204._]
It was in 1816, that with Karamzin’s monumental work, “The Chronicles of
Russia,” the literature of that country burst into existence, like Pallas
Athene fully armed from the head of Zeus. “Not only were the undreamed-of
riches of the Russian language revealed to the Russians in the style, but
the subject matter came as a surprise.” Pushkin, the greatest Russian
poet that ever lived, or probably ever will live, was the next great
star that appeared upon the firmament, and he declared that Karamzin had
revealed Russia to the Russians, just as Columbus discovered America.
To Karamzin’s glorious prose and to Pushkin’s immortal verse belong the
first honours in the _belles-lettres_ of Russia.
Fifty years and more have passed since I read Gogol’s “Dead Souls” in the
original. The strivings and hard work of a somewhat strenuous life have
swept away the little that I knew of Russian authors and literature. I
am now obliged to walk upon the crutches of translations, though now and
then a faint memory is in some mysterious way awakened, and the interest,
at any rate, has not faded.
Such names as Turgeniev, whom I once met, Dostoieffski, and the two
Tolstoys, have still a magic charm for me. Besides, all the world can
prate of them. Of the host of lesser novelists, mostly translated by
ladies, in my judgment the less said the better. The work of obviously
coarse, uninstructed men, they often, both in their narration and in
their imagery, deal with subjects which are unwholesome and which common
consent rejects as unsuitable. Literature does not scramble about in
midden heaps.
And the great ones—what is their place in the history of the world’s
achievements? I very much doubt whether there be any among the most
patriotic enthusiasts who would claim even for his beloved Pushkin a seat
on Parnassus beside Homer, Virgil, Dante, Shakespeare, Milton, Goethe,
Voltaire. That Karamzin’s prose was of the very first order is proved
by Pushkin’s appreciation of him. Unfortunately it can only appeal to a
very small public. Twelve volumes of chronicles, essential to the Russian
student of his own country’s story, will hardly be faced by the average
foreigner.
Pushkin’s activities were phenomenal. That in the thirty-seven years of
his tragically short life he should have wrought what he did, and that
he should have been so uniformly good, invests him with a glamour which
is all his own. He was a meteor, and, like a meteor, he appeared as it
were for a moment in the sky, and then vanished into space. And yet
half a century ago, among the men who were the leaders of thought in
Petersburg, there was far less talk of Pushkin than there was of Dante,
Shakespeare, or Voltaire—not to speak of many other foreign authors.
It has taken many years to create the revival of the interest of Russians
in Russian work. It has come at last, and now the only danger is lest,
under much flattery and patting on the back from abroad, the true advance
of public taste should not be rather hindered than furthered. Pushkin,
be it remembered, was highly cultivated, a man of wide reading. He
recognized the fact that in order to write well a man must read well,
and study the best models. Some of his criticisms of Shakespeare and of
Byron, under whose influence he was until Shakespeare dethroned his idol,
are masterpieces.
It seems to me that the State encouragement of Russian studies will be of
high value as promoting facility of intercourse—especially in the case of
the Services, naval, military and civil. A far higher, even world-wide
importance attaches to the establishment of schools of modern languages
all over Russia. It is of less moment that the literature of Russia, in
its present condition, should travel westward than that the literature
of the West should gradually influence the mind of the Slav. Just as
in music the wild barbaric outbursts of his gayer moods, the tender
sadness of his dirges, have been enshrined in the harmonies of his own
classic masters without losing one spark of their fire, one sob of their
pathos, so the untutored writer of to-day, chastened by study, will be
able to give us the freshness and zest of a life which is not ours,
shorn of all its crudities, not to give them a worse name. Let me not
be misunderstood. What I think is of consequence is that the startling
audacity, the rough ore of the Slav mind, should be passed through the
purifying furnace of the higher education it was in Pushkin’s case—all
honour to him—and then you will have something worthy of the praise which
is being rained upon the shameless translations by ladies, themselves
ill-equipped by classic culture, of the cubism of literary art.
VERBA COMPOSITA
In the first volume of my “Memories” there is a print of a drawing
by William Evans, of the inglenook in the picturesque dining-hall of
his house at Eton. Above the stone screen in which it was held was a
legend in Gothic letters: “Favus mellis verba composita.” The words
had disappeared for many years when I went to place my son with Miss
Evans—so long that she had even forgotten their existence when I asked
the reason why. To us old boys it seemed a pity, for the inscription
had derived a certain sanctity from the scholastic storm which raged
round it. The learned would not accept the legend. No one could say
whence the quotation or proverb came. Dr. Hawtrey, to whom the pure
well of Latin undefiled was almost a religion with which to tamper was
little short of sacrilege, declared that it was a barbarism, a piece of
dog, or, what was perhaps to him as bad, monkish Latin. He maintained
that it was untranslatable; but we, audacious monkeys, rushing in where
scholars feared to tread, declared that if the words were obscure, the
meaning was clear as crystal: “Sweet as the honeycomb is the talk of
friends in council.” Here I would fain break off for a moment to pay
a slight tribute to the memory of that most generous of men, William
Evans, drawing-master and, though one of the most masculine of mortals,
technically a “dame.” He was a big, burly man, of a jovial and rubicund
aspect, a combination which earned for him the nickname of Beeves. He was
a vigorous painter in water-colours, a member of the old water-colour
society, and one of the best of good fellows.
A sportsman, too, for he was the friend of the late Duke of Atholl,
spending most of his summer holiday at Blair, where he was always welcome
as an enthusiastic stalker. Indeed, “Scrope’s Deerstalking” was the only
book that I remember ever to have seen him read. I went to see him once
as he lay in bed, very feeble, at the beginning of his last long illness.
On the wall, at his right hand, was hanging his dearly-loved rifle, his
powder-flask, and the other paraphernalia of those pre-breechloader days.
In his youth he had been a great oarsman, and, indeed, the river was his
joy till quite late in life.
He took the greatest interest in all that concerned boating and swimming,
and it was owing to his influence, in conjunction with that of the noble
Bishop Selwyn, of whom Eton is still so proud, that the law was passed by
the authorities forbidding boys to enter a boat until they should have
“passed” in swimming. Of the good bishop a story is told of the time when
he was a private tutor at Eton which is worth preserving. He was sculling
in a wherry amid a crowd of boats, when he was run into by some unskilled
oarsman. Seeing that shipwreck was inevitable, he stood up, and, quoting
Ovid’s description of the discreet death of Lucretia, exclaimed:
“Tunc quoque, jam moriens, ne non procumbat honeste
Respicit, hoc etiam cura cadenti erat.”
Fasti II., 831.
And so, with a header as graceful as the quotation was apt, the
amphibious bishop that was to be, dived into the Thames amid the plaudits
of the multitude, who already recognized in him the heroism of which he
was to give proof in New Zealand and elsewhere.
Evans’ was a very happy house, and the good old man spared nothing for
the comfort of his boys. The table which he kept was excellent, the
Sunday dinner quite a little feast, with a glass of sherry for each
boy at plum-pudding time—not altogether wise we should perhaps think
nowadays, but so kind and so hospitable. Rarely, too, would be fail to
invite one or two boys to stay for dessert. The traditions of the house
were nobly carried on by Miss Jennie Evans after her father’s death in
1877. And now she, too, has disappeared, the last of the dames, the last
of one of those dear old institutions which were part of the mystery of
Eton.
To remember is to wander, and when I begin to think of Eton—the Eton of
seventy years ago—it is easier to ramble on than prudently to stop. But
to-day I have only to deal with “Verba Composita.” It is of them that I
was thinking this morning as I sat in my Veluvana, and, indeed, there
could hardly be a more pregnant thought than that of the talk of friends
in council.
How perfect is the feeling with which, in the company of a familiar
friend of our own choice—we wander through the shaded paths and sweet
groves of our sanctuary. Nor is it necessary that the chosen comrade
should be himself a botanist or a gardener. Sympathy is all that is
asked of him, and that he will not deny. Indeed, there is something in
the worship of the great god Pan, and in the living, growing temples
which are raised in his honour, which makes for all that is best in the
intercourse between man and man.
A beautiful view, a discreet arrangement of flowers and graceful foliage,
will rouse congenial memories of books, of poetry, of pictures, and
sometimes even of melody. The sight of a plant recognized even by the
unskilled as an old friend of some distant clime, seen again after many
years, will excite a whole train of recollections fragrant with the
perfume of half-forgotten travels and adventures. So may two greybeards
sit happily in some remote nook, the home of fairies and dryads, where
the trees whisper old thoughts and call up sympathetic talk, broken and
yet stimulated afresh by “brilliant flashes of silence.”
[Illustration: FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE.
_From a photograph._
[_To face p. 212._]
All the better is this _solitude à deux_ if there should be the tinkling
music of a tiny stream, with the electric gleam of a kingfisher darting
across some idle sunlit pool. All these wield that magic power which,
for the nonce charming away the wrinkles of time, transports us across
the long years back to the days when the world and we were young and
life meant hope. Rare, indeed, and very precious are such dreamy talks
and silences. We can hardly rate their value too highly. The crazy
poet-philosopher Nietzsche was not far wrong when, in a letter to Erwin
Rohde, he wrote: “Eternally we need midwives in order to be delivered of
our thoughts. Most people go to a public-house, or to a colleague whose
mind is solely occupied with the interests of their calling, and there,
like so many small cats, they tumble about all their thoughts and tiny
schemes. But woe to us who lack the sunlight of a friend’s presence!”
It was a fine thought of his to elevate friendship to the rank of
a goddess. But, alas for the inconsistencies of genius! Few of
Nietzsche’s hot friendships had any lasting power. Rohde himself, Rée
and others faded out of his life. But no change was so violent as
that which occurred in the relations between the philosopher and the
tone-poet Wagner. The historic friendship—born of an admiration for
Schopenhauer shared by both, and of an adoration by Nietzsche of Wagner’s
music—ripened so quickly and was so beautiful, that it ought to have
lived with their lives; but this alliance between a budding youth and an
older, already famous man came to the saddest end.
Suddenly the fruit grew mouldy and fell from the tree, and the love,
which had seemed to be built upon a rock, the worship which was so
full of pious conviction, were changed into a hatred which was nothing
short of venomous, and which not even the death of Wagner could compel
to silence. They had first met at Leipsic, at the house of Professor
Brockhaus, and Wagner, touched by the boy’s enthusiasm, took to him at
once, petted him, and encouraged him to go and visit him, which he did a
few years later at Triebschen, Wagner’s retreat under the shadow of Mount
Pilatus.
Wonderful gatherings, indeed, have been held throughout the ages in
groves and gardens. Imagine the Baghavat, the Blessed One, surrounded by
his Bikshus, as poor as the first followers of St. Francis, preaching
the doctrines of truth and humility in those parables that are dear to
the Eastern, seated in one or other of his beloved gardens. Think of the
sages of ancient Athens gathered together in the groves of the Akademia
discussing the deep problems of existence. How much more instinct with
the poetry of life must such grave and reverend companies have been than
the boisterous though delightful tavern symposia in which Christopher
North, Tickler, the Ettrick Shepherd and their friends slung Doric
wit and wisdom over the toddy glasses! We can easily conceive how the
interchange of thought between the great trio, Wagner, Frau Cosima and
Nietzsche, in a lovely Swiss garden, surrounded by the majesty of the
Alps, must have been enshrined in such memories as those over which the
philosopher mourned so long as the lamp of life burned in him.
When the other day I was reading Dr. Mügge’s account of the trio at
Triebschen, Wagner, Frau Cosima and Nietzsche, and of their deep interest
in one another’s ideals, the old motto, “Sweet as the honeycomb is the
talk of friends in council,” of which I had not thought for many a
decade, came back to me, and I understood how Nietzsche, long years after
he had quarrelled with Wagner—indeed, shortly before his death—declared
that “he would resign all human intercourse, but at no price would he
give up the pleasant memories of those days spent in Triebschen.” The
honey of those Verba Composita was still sweet in the comb.
For the quarrel between the two men there may be explanations and
excuses; such changes are not without precedent. The first link between
them was, as I have said, devotion to Schopenhauer. “Nietzsche called
his connection with Wagner his practical course in Schopenhauer’s
philosophy.” When Nietzsche began to dream of a philosophy of his own,
the tie between him and the poet-composer was weakened; there was also
perhaps some feeling that he was being made use of, that he was being
patronized and made to play second fiddle to a man whom he was beginning
to look down upon as a mere play-actor—a mummer—a child of the theatre.
Mügge throws out a hint that in breaking with Wagner, Nietzsche was
possibly fleeing from himself, and he quotes a note from him to Frau
Cosima: “Ariadne, I love you! Dionysus.” Whatever may have been the
cause, or the many causes, of the rupture, its violence was, at any
rate on Nietzsche’s side, maniacal. His venom was not less poisonous
than that which Devadatta poured out upon the Buddha. Not content with
having hurled his Jupiter, as he called him, from his throne on high
Olympus, he must needs pursue him into the depths, trampling on him,
and covering with mud the man whom he had once beslavered with the most
fulsome adulation. Strange litanies for the high priest of the goddess of
Friendship to intone!
Far less intelligible is the change of front in regard to Wagner’s
music. That the man who, for the apotheosis of Wagner’s art, wrote “The
Birth of Tragedy in Music,” should so completely eat his words as to the
worth of the music because he had ceased to love the musician is almost
unthinkable.
In the first period he tells us that: “From a novice trying his strength,
Wagner became a thorough master of music and of the theatre.... No
one will any longer deny him the glory of having given us the supreme
model for lofty artistic execution. The renewer of the simple drama,
the discoverer of the position due to art in true German society, the
poetic interpreter of old views of life, the philosopher, the historian,
the æsthete and critic, the master of languages, the mythologist and
the myth poet, who for the first time included all these wonderful and
beautiful products of a primitive imagination in a single Ring, upon
which he engraved the runic characters of his thoughts—what an abundance
of knowledge Wagner must have had in order to have become all that!”
Again: “Over the coming of Wagner there hovers a necessity which both
justifies it and makes it glorious.” “Wagner, in his capacity as supreme
master of form, points out the way, like Aeschylus, to a future art.”
“In the life of this great man, the period over which as a golden
reflection there is stretched the splendour of a supreme perfection....
He produces _Tristan and Isolde_, this _opus metaphysicum_ of all art;
the _Meistersinger of Nürnberg_; the _Ring of the Nibelungs_; his work of
Bayreuth.”[17]
There is much more in the same strain, but when we come to the second
period it is another Nietzsche who speaks. He now attacks his former idol
with the most ferocious rancour, for which only insanity could account;
and yet that he was not then mad is proved by other utterances of his
in regard to that same art of music. For instance: “Mendelssohn was the
beautiful interlude of German music, quickly admired and then quickly
forgotten. Schumann was the last who founded a school. Though incessantly
glowing with happiness or throbbing with impersonal suffering, he was
a purely German event, and not, as Beethoven and Mozart had been, a
European phenomenon.”