FRIENDS WHO NEVER CAME TO ADDISON MANSIONS
I OUGHT to say something here of the interesting people I have known,
who never happened to come to Addison Mansions, for one reason or
another.
Distance prevented the great Dr. Boyd of St. Andrews—the famous
A.K.H.B., of whom I saw a good deal in the long summer I spent at St.
Andrews—from coming. Dr. Boyd possessed the most crushing powers of
repartee of any person I ever met. One day, when he was walking with me
along the street at St. Andrews, which leads down to the links, some one
presented an American publisher, a partner in a famous firm, to him.
“I am very glad to meet you, Dr. Boyd,” said the publisher. “I enjoyed
your _Scenes from Clerical Life_ so much.”
“I did not write that book, sir,” said the terrible Doctor. “I wrote
_The Recreations of a Country Parson_—and you ought to know it, because
your firm stole them both.”
I once unconsciously helped him in using this talent, which happened in
this wise. Dr. Boyd was a reformer as drastic as John Knox. The great
humanising movement in the Scottish Church, which made its services and
music so much more beautiful and its attitude so much less angular, was
largely his work, for he was not only one of the most eloquent of the
notable ministers who worked for it, but he had any amount of backbone.
An old ultra-Protestant lady, having perceived this, paid an evangelist
a thousand a year to go about Scotland preaching against him. One Sunday
he was at St. Andrews, on the public space where the inhabitants used to
practice archery, preaching against Dr. Boyd. His preaching was all
“limehousing,” an appeal to the coarsest prejudice, most banal abuse and
derision. It was so ludicrous that I took most of it down in longhand,
in the intervals when he paused for applause, as he did whenever he
imagined that he was scoring. It so happened that I was having
afternoon-tea with Dr. Boyd, and that he was preaching in his own church
that evening. I began to sympathise with him in being made the subject
of such a persecution.
“Were you there?” he asked. I nodded.
“Do you remember at all what he said?”
I produced my notes.
“Do you mind reading them out to me?” he asked, after a despairing
glance at the writing. I did. He took no notes; but he had an admirable
memory, and he evidently took it all in, for that evening, without
having lowered his dignity by being present at the evangelist’s attack
on him, he turned the tables on the offender from his own pulpit, with a
dissection of his remarks which can only be compared to throwing
vitriol, though it was all done with beautiful polish and observance of
form.
He was never more amusing than when he was sympathising about the
difficulties which he described Andrew Lang as experiencing when he came
to St. Andrews. He was such a master of innuendo.
Dr. Boyd wrote his books in handwriting so minute that he could get two
thousand words on to one foolscap page. The firm who always printed them
for his publishers had large magnifying glasses fitted to the case on
which his copy was fixed for setting it up. And Dr. Boyd was very proud
of it.
One of Dr. Boyd’s sons has inherited his power as a writer—my friend
Charles Boyd, who acted for some time as private secretary to Cecil
Rhodes in South Africa.
Sir Charles Dilke, M.P., took a flattering interest in my books, and was
very friendly in his intercourse with me. The most amusing reminiscences
I have in connection with him are _à propos_ of a dinner at which we
were both taken in, though I was too obscure for it to signify in my
case.
A dinner for a high-sounding object was given at Prince’s. Sixty
important public men and leading writers and journalists were invited,
and Sir Charles Dilke was asked to respond to the toast of the evening.
His rising to speak was the signal for three great acetylene flares to
be turned on, which reduced the scores of electric lights in the room to
looking like the gas jets in the Richmond railway-station. This was
taken as a compliment to Sir Charles, though it would have disconcerted
any less practised speaker.
When his speech and the other speeches were over, the chairman
electrified the assemblage by informing them that a new sort of
gramophone would reproduce for them Tennyson’s last words in the voice
in which he spoke them. It was a most impressive moment. For a few
minutes one did not realise the colossal impertinence of pretending that
there had been a phonograph in Tennyson’s bedroom on this solemn
occasion. But, of course, the record might have been produced by a man
who knew Tennyson’s voice well enough to imitate it, as certain reciters
imitate celebrated actors. We did not realise this at the time. The next
day the dinner was duly reported, with the names of the makers of these
wonderful lamps, and this wonderful phonetic record, and later on it
transpired that these two parties had paid for the dinner, which was
only got up to advertise them.
This is one of the two cleverest pieces of journalism I remember. The
other happened on the night that King Edward died. A great London
linen-draping firm had an elaborate intelligence system during the
well-beloved monarch’s last illness. They were well served. I happened
to see the head of the firm about twelve hours before the nation was
plunged into mourning.
“You may take it from me,” he said, “that his Majesty won’t live another
twenty-four hours.”
As he was in the habit of making impressive statements, I discounted
what he said. But he was right, and acting on his information, he bought
up all the available mourning in the market, and scored a huge business
victory. I met him long afterwards, and alluded to the information which
he had given me.
“I wasn’t the only one who took pains to know,” he said, “for that
night, at the hour the King died, I was driving from the hotel, where I
had been dining, to my office, with the correspondent of one of the
great French newspapers. As we passed the Palace, one of the top windows
was opened, and a person came to it with a lighted candle, and blew it
out. ‘Did you see that? Do you mind driving me to the West Strand
post-office?’ said my French friend. ‘Why, no,’ I said; ‘but what do you
want to go there for?’ ‘To send a cipher-wire to my paper that his
Majesty is dead.’ ‘Isn’t it a great risk?’ I asked. ‘If it was, I would
take it. But even a good rumour is worth something.’”
The Frenchman was right, and he won his victory.
The late Lord Dufferin was another man who was very kind to me about my
writings. I suppose that they appealed to him for the same reason that
they appealed to Dilke. Both of them were deeply interested in Greater
Britain, and in travel generally, and I have written books full of
enthusiasm for travel and the Colonies.
Lord Dufferin never forgot any one who had served him. When his new
title forced a new signature on him, he sent a new photograph with the
Dufferin and Ava signature to all his journalist friends, though some of
them had passed out of his sphere for years.
He always did the right thing. I remember the late Lord Derby beginning
a speech at a dinner at Winnipeg at which I was present, “As Lord
Dufferin, who seems to have left nothing unsaid, observed,” etc.
On that same vice-regal progress to the West, I was showing Lord Derby
some Kodaks I had taken on various occasions at which he had been
present—crowded functions in cities, full-dress rehearsals of Chippeway
Indians on the war-path, and the like. One print was from a negative
which I had of these Chippewas, with their necklaces of cartridges and
their feather head-dresses, taken on the top of the massed choirs of
Manitoba, singing “God save the Queen.” Lord Derby begged this
photograph from me, “That’s a photograph of the whole trip,” he said.
He remained surprisingly popular, considering the maladroitness of one
of his aide-de-camps—a delightful Guardsman who is now dead. I have
heard this A.D.C., whom Nature had gifted with the most graceful
manners, say appalling things.
At one provincial capital, the mayor gave a ball in Lord Derby’s honour.
I had just been presented to the mayor, and was standing quite close to
him, when Lord Derby came in. When the official presentation was over,
Lord Derby, who always wished to get on a friendly footing with his
hosts, asked his A.D.C. in a whisper, “What is the mayor, M——?” The
Governor-General wished to know if his host bred cattle, or ran a
timber-mill, or owned a hotel, or what, so that he might say the
appropriate thing. But the A.D.C.’s reply, which, like Lord Derby’s
“What is the mayor, M——?”, was perfectly audible to that functionary,
was “Toned-down Jew.” So much for the _entente cordiale_ at—we will call
it Medicine Hat.
At a ball given by Lord Derby, I watched that same A.D.C. taking an
important politician, whom he should have known perfectly well, to
introduce him to his own wife, a young and pretty woman who considered
herself one of the lions of Canadian society. The situation struck me as
a promising one, so I listened to hear what he would say.
“Mrs. Um,” he said; “may I introduce Mr. Um-um to you?” She looked up at
him with an amused smile, and he continued quite blissfully, “He’s a
stupid old buffer, but I’ll get you away from him as soon as I can.”
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