So died Stephen Byrne. And the world talked for many days of the tragic
accident of his drowning, of the tragic failure of his friend to find
him, under the eyes of his wife, under the windows of his home. But the
people of The Chase, at least, were not surprised; they had always said,
they discovered, that he would overdo it at last ... pottering about on
the river at all hours of the night. They found the body, by a strange
chance, among the thick weeds and rushes round the Island, about the
place where Stephen had hunted for firewood on the last day. It had come
down with the tide, and had been blown into the weeds, as the driftwood
was blown. But the world did not know this, and they said it was the
weeds which had pulled him down at last to his death.
Three weeks later the Stephen Byrne Memorial Committee met for the first
time. It was a truly representative body. Lord Milroy was, of course, in
the chair, because he and Stephen were Old Boys of the same Foundation,
and because he was always in the chair. John Egerton was a member
because Margery insisted; and Dimple, Whittaker, and Stimpson
represented The Chase with him. Indeed, the whole affair had its origin
in The Chase. It was clear of course from the beginning that there would
be a memorial somewhere, whether it was at Stephen's school or his
birthplace; or it might even be a national memorial. But before any one
else had made a move the people of The Chase put their heads together
and decided that it should be a Chase memorial, run by The Chase, and
erected in or about The Chase. Further, in order to ensure that The
Chase memorial should be _the_ memorial, they astutely invited all
possible competitive bodies to send representatives to sit on _The_
Stephen Byrne Memorial Committee. All these bodies fell into the trap.
The Old Savonians sent two representatives, and the village of Monckton
Parva another; and a man came from the Home Office and another from the
Authors' Society, and others from various literary bodies.
They met at the Whittakers', and Lord Milroy presided. Lord Milroy was
one of those useful and assiduous noblemen who live in a constant state
of being in the chair. One felt that at the Last Day he would probably
be found in the chair, gravely deprecating the tone of the last speaker
and taking it that the sense of the Committee was rather in favour of
the course which commended itself to him. For although he was courteous
and statesmanlike and suave, he was passionately attached to his own
opinions, and generally saw to it that they prevailed.
On the matter of this memorial he speedily formed an opinion. There were
many alternative proposals--some of them attractive, but expensive or
impracticable, some of them merely fantastic. One man took the view that
the work and character of Stephen Byrne would be most suitably
commemorated by the endowment of a school of poetry in Northern
Australia, where the arts were notoriously neglected. The school, of
course, would bear the name of Stephen Byrne, and this would be a
perpetual link between Australia and the mother country. The Old
Savonians pointed out to the Committee that the gymnasium at Savonage,
where Stephen Byrne had spent perhaps the happiest years of his life,
must somehow be enlarged--if it was to keep pace with the expansion of
the school. And the spirit of the founder's motto, "Mens sana in corpore
sano," could hardly be so perfectly expressed as by the commemoration of
a fine mind in the building up of fine bodies. Besides, there was no
prospect otherwise of getting the gymnasium enlarged. The
representatives of Monckton Parva were more ambitious. They said that
the place where a man was born and the place where a man lived
afterwards were the two great geographical monuments of his life. Since
the Committee did not see their way to arrange for a memorial in each
of these places, why not somehow unite them? The house where Stephen was
born was now unhappily situated between a brewery and a tannery; and
unless sufficient funds were subscribed to provide for the total
destruction of the brewery and the tannery, the house as it stood could
scarcely be regarded as a suitable nucleus for the memorial. They
therefore suggested that the house should be demolished or rather
disintegrated, brick by brick, and re-erected in a suitable site in
Hammerton Chase as near as possible to Stephen's house. The house was
small and comparatively mobile; indeed, there was a legend in the
township that the house had been transplanted once, if not twice,
already. Alternatively both the house at Monckton and the house at The
Chase might be razed to the ground and re-erected as one building on a
neutral site in Kensington, or perhaps Lincolnshire, a county which
Stephen had mentioned very favourably in one of his poems.
Mr. Dimple, who had been got at by the church, strongly advocated the
claims of the Montobel Day Nursery; Stephen, he said, had had two
children himself, and if he had been able to give an opinion, would
almost certainly have elected to be commemorated by a gift to the little
ones of the neighbourhood.
No one thought much of any of these suggestions; and after a great deal
of bland and sugary argument the field of alternatives was thinned down
for practical purposes to two--Mr. Stimpson's plan and Mr. Meredith's
plan. Mr. Meredith was the Home Office man. He had vacillated for a
while between a Stephen Byrne monolith at Hammersmith Broadway and a
Stephen Byrne Scholarship at London University, the balance of the fund
to be devoted to the provision of a mural tablet in Hammerton church,
setting out the principal works of Stephen Byrne, a kind of monumental
bibliography. Finally, however, he decided in favour of the Hammersmith
Broadway scheme. At that time there was much excitement in the Press
over the conduct of foot passengers in the London streets, who were said
to show an extraordinary carelessness of life in the face of the rapid
increase of motor transport. For example, they took no notice of
"refuges"; they crossed the street at any old point. And Meredith's
theory--which was also apparently the official theory of the Home
Secretary, if not actually of the Home Secretary's private
secretary--was that people neglected the refuges because they were such
dull places. An unbeautiful lamp-post, he said, sprouting unnaturally
from a small island of pavement, held out no inducement to pedestrians.
It simply did not attract their attention, so they did not go there.
Now, if they were made _attractive_, if every refuge at the principal
crossings and danger-points were made into a thing of intrinsic beauty
or interest, the people would crowd to them, to look at the statue, or
read the inscription, or drink at the fountain, or whatever it was. And
he proposed that the first experiment should be made with a Stephen
Byrne memorial at Hammersmith Broadway, which was very dangerous and had
nothing striking in the centre of it. He said it was a curious thing
that, if you counted the people who used the Piccadilly Circus refuge or
the King Charles refuge in one day, you would find the number was "out
of all proportion" to the number of people who used an ordinary refuge
where there was no fountain and no flower-girls and no statue of King
Charles. Nobody could remember doing this, and very few of the Committee
were prepared to take his word for it. In fact, Stimpson said that what
Meredith said was not borne out by his own experience (and this was as
near as the Committee ever approached to open incredulity or
contradiction); he also said that you do not _want_ crowds gathering
round refuges and gaping at pieces of sculpture; but then Stimpson was
prejudiced, for Stimpson had his own plan.
And Lord Milroy came down heavily in favour of Stimpson's plan. He
distrusted the Bureaucracy on principle and he disliked Meredith in
particular. And he was not fond of John Egerton; John was another Civil
Servant, and therefore a Bureaucrat, and John was the only member other
than Meredith who was hotly opposed to Stimpson's plan. So that for a
man less free from prejudice than the chairman there would have been a
good deal of prejudice in favour of Stimpson's plan as against
Meredith's plan.
And there was much to be said for Stimpson's plan. It had a certain
imaginative boldness, and just that touch of sentiment which a memorial
demands; and it was simple. He said that the great thing geographically
in Stephen Byrne's life at Hammerton Chase was the river. He had loved
the river; not Hammerton nor even The Chase, but the river. And any
memorial that was made to him in Hammerton should be somehow expressive
of this. There was only one place where such a memorial could
conveniently be made; and that place was the Island, the wild untenanted
Island, the Island where he had died. At the eastern end of the Island,
in sight of his own home, should his monument be put--a simple figure in
some grey stone, sitting there in his favourite posture under the single
willow-tree, with his knees drawn up and the head thrown back, and
looking out with the poetic vision over that noble sweep of the wide
river, at the gracious trees and delicate lights, and the huddled
houses curving away.... Stimpson was almost moving as he developed the
idea, and most of the Committee were captivated at once. Lord Milroy
said that he knew a sculptor who was the very man for such a task. He
specialized in river-work; and Lord Milroy, when travelling in India,
had been specially struck by a figure he had seen--by a figure looking
over the Ganges, which was the work of this man. He also said that he
was attracted by the breadth and freshness of the scheme; and this was
true.
Only John Egerton hotly opposed it. The idea of a stone figure of
Stephen Byrne, sitting for ever under the willow-tree in sight of his
windows, and in sight of Margery's windows, revolted him. But he could
think of no convincing objections. The Island was often submerged at
high tide; the soil was sodden; the banks crumbled away. The land did
not belong to Hammerton; nobody knew to whom it did belong, perhaps to
the Port of London Authority, perhaps to the Crown. Anyhow, it would
take a long time to secure authority. And so on. His difficulties were
easily dealt with; his timid suggestion that Margery might not like it
was scornfully rejected; and after the chairman's summing-up, delivered
in a very statesmanlike manner, the Committee by a large majority
adopted the plan.
So, after many months, the statue was put up, and reverently unveiled.
It was a noble piece of work. The figure was sitting in an easy posture
on the thwart of a boat, and this rested on a low, broad pedestal that
was just high enough to keep the figure out of the water at the highest
tides, yet so low that you did not notice it. You looked over and saw
simply the slight figure of a young man in grey, sitting near the water
under the tree, his hands clasped about his knees, his feet crossed
naturally, and his head thrown back a little, and his lips a little
parted, as if he were asking some question of the things he saw. It was
the exact posture of Stephen Byrne in that place, as many remembered it;
and the tone and colour of the figure were so quiet and right that it
was part of the scene, part of the river, and part of the Island, as it
was meant to be. And on the pedestal there was written, simply:
IN MEMORY
OF
STEPHEN BYRNE
A GREAT POET
HE LOVED THIS PLACE
The unveiling was a quaint, unusual ceremony. The time chosen was a
little after high tide on a fortunate afternoon in early January, when
the sun shone amazingly in a clear June sky, and the windless river
wore its most delicate blue. There gathered round the draped figure at
the end of the Island a splendid company of men and women. They came
there necessarily in numbers of small boats, and the greater part of
them remained all the time in these boats. They hung there in a dense
crowd, clinging to ropes made fast to the Island. Only the Committee and
the very great men stood on the Island by the tree. All those others,
great and small, sat absolutely silent in their boats for many minutes;
they had come long journeys, some of them, to see this thing, and some
of them were only Saturday holiday-makers, brought there by curiosity as
they rowed upstream; but they all sat silent. And as the hour for the
unveiling came near, the tugs and the barges and the small boats passing
by stopped their engines or laid aside their sweeps or their oars, and
stood still in reverence; and the river stood still, for it was slack
water. All this quietness of respect was very moving; and the men and
women rowed back afterwards in the warm sun, feeling that they had seen
a fine thing.
It was marred only by one strange note. John Egerton and Margery did not
go over for the unveiling; but they watched together from Margery's
garden. And in the stillness there were many there who heard and
remembered the high cackle of hysterical laughter which came over the
water when the figure was revealed. It was a thin and horrible laughter
that had no mirth in it, only a fierce and bitter derision. It went on
for a full half-minute and faded away to a faint sound, as if the man
laughing had gone suddenly into a house.
Muriel Tarrant heard it, for she was there with her mother, not in
black, as were many of The Chase, but darkly dressed. When she heard
that laughter she looked back quickly over her shoulder; and when she
turned her head to the statue again, her face was very white.
Very soon the figure became a landmark to those who used the river. It
became a mark among the watermen and bargees and the captains of tugs.
And people made pilgrimages in small boats on the warm winter days to
look at it and read the inscription.
Margery Byrne lived on in her house, and John Egerton lived on next to
her in his. But why they stayed in that place it is hard to say. For you
would think it was a cruel fate which set up at their own doors the
graven image of their old idol; you would have said it was a hard thing
to look out of the window at any hour of the day and see always some
pilgrim at the shrine, doing his silent homage to the idol--gazing up
from a boat or standing on the Island with his head bared--knowing
nothing, suspecting nothing. And sometimes, indeed--they confessed to
each other--they wanted to rush out to the river-side, and shout over
the water at these worshippers the secret history of that splendid
figure.
Yet it fascinated them. And it may be that, in spite of all, they were
proud of it; they were proud in secret of the pilgrims and the homage
and the Sunday crowds. It is certain at least that they never went to
their beds--and this also they confessed to each other--they never went
to their beds or threw up a window in the morning to bathe in the sun
without turning their eyes up the river to the end of the Island, to the
seated figure under the tree. On a dark night it was difficult to see,
but on a moonlit night they could see it very clearly. And they looked
at it always. The idol had something still of the old magic, though they
knew that the feet of it were clay. But on the wild sou'wester nights
they looked out very quickly and drew close the blinds. And on those
nights they were always sad.
But the statue stood there for three months only. In April there was a
great storm and a great tide. The wind and the rain came violently out
of the south-west and beat upon the statue; and the swollen tide rushed
up over the Island, and over the road, and over the little gardens of
The Chase; it surged up about the knees of the statue, and tugged and
fretted at the crumbling banks. At dusk the tide was not full, but
already the short waves were slapping the face of the statue, and there
was nothing to be seen under the willow-tree but the head and shoulders
of a man struggling in the furious race of the flood. In the morning it
was seen that the bank and the new stone facing of the bank had
collapsed; and at low tide the statue was found grovelling in the mud,
with its nose shattered. The willow is very near to the edge of the
Island now, and it is strange that it survived that tide. There is
nothing under it now but a small patch of rich green grass, very
noticeable from the windows of the Terrace. This grass is a favourite
haunt of the Island swans; and they stand there for hours, cleaning
themselves.
So for the first time the true story of Stephen Byrne is told; and those
at least who live in The Chase will know the real name of Stephen Byrne,
and the real name of Hammerton Chase. It is to be hoped that they will
be kinder now to John Egerton, and as kind as they can be to the memory
of Stephen Byrne. For there is something to be said for every man; and
Stephen Byrne was a strange mixture.
As for the rest, the pilgrims and the far worshippers, they may
understand the story or they may not; and it can be no great matter to
them. For they never knew Stephen Byrne in the flesh; and they have his
poetry as they had it before. And when the statue is put back securely
in its place, no doubt they will come to see it again. For, after all,
the inscription said that he was a great poet; it did not say that he
was a good man.