- 
 
SAMUEL HENRY JEYES 
 
T 
 
SAMUEL HENRY JEYES 
 
 A SKETCH OF 
 HIS PERSONALITY AND WORK 
 
 BY 
 
 SIDNEY LOW 
 
 WITH A SELECTION 
 FROM HIS FUGITIVE WRITINGS 
 
 ARRANGED AND EDITED BY 
 
 W. P. KER 
 
 LONDON 
 
 DUCKWORTH & CO. 
 
 3 HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN 
 
 1915 
 

 
 . 
 
 WILLIAM BRENDON AND SON, LTD., PRINTERS, PLYMOUTH, ENGLAND 
 
JS? 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PART I 
 A SKETCH OF HIS PERSONALITY AND WORK 
 
 PART II 
 
 RULERS OF ENGLAND, AND OTHER PAPERS 
 
 ILLUSTRATED BY HARRY FURNISS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. SIR HENRY CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN . 75 
 
 II. MR. H. H. ASQUITH ..... 84 
 
 III. THE MARQUESS OF RIPON .... 94 
 
 IV. THE EARL OF CREWE .... 103 
 V. MR. JOHN MORLEY ... . . . 113 
 
 VI. MR. A. BlRRELL ..... 122 
 
 VII. MR. LLOYD GEORGE ..... 131 
 
 VIII. MR. R. B. HALDANE ..... 140 
 
 IX. SIR EDWARD GREY ..... 149 
 
 X. LORD CARRINGTON ..... 159 
 
 XI. MR. JOHN BURNS ..... 169 
 
 XII. MR. L. HARCOURT ..... 180 
 
 XIII. MR. McKENNA . . . . . . 190 
 
 vii 
 
 329070 
 
viii SAMUEL HENRY JEYES 
 
 PAGE 
 
 OUR GENTLEMANLY FAILURES . . . 199 
 
 MR. CHESTERTON'S SENSE OF DUTY . . . 224 
 
 A GREAT COUNTRY GENTLEMAN .... 230 
 
 PESSIMI EXEMPLI ....... 237 
 
 LOVE-MAKING BY LETTER ..... 243 
 
 JOHN STUART MILL IN HIS LETTERS . . . 248 
 
 THE PASSING OF EDWARD VII .... 256 
 
 LORD RANDOLPH CHURCHILL .... 263 
 
 LONDON IN MID-SEPTEMBER ..... 272 
 
 INDEX ........ 279 
 
PART I 
 
 A SKETCH OF HIS PERSONALITY 
 AND WORK 
 
SAMUEL HENRY JEYES 
 
 THE interest of any human life, for all but the 
 very few who have been in intimate contact with 
 it, depends on external circumstances as much 
 as character. A commonplace person who has 
 played his part on a great stage may furnish 
 better material for the biographer than one of 
 far finer quality to whom chance brought no 
 adventures and fate few opportunities. The 
 subject of the present notice passed his days in 
 useful labour, for the most part of a kind which 
 does not bring its author before the eyes of the 
 world in any conspicuous fashion ; and he was 
 always reluctant to make a parade of his own 
 personality, or to obtrude it upon the public 
 notice. In the profitable art of self-advertisement, 
 wherein so many men of letters are adepts, he had 
 no sort of skill. He regarded it indeed with im- 
 patience and dislike, and maintained throughout 
 an active literary and journalistic career a reserve 
 so close and vigilant that he was far less known to 
 tens of thousands of his own readers than scores of 
 
4 SAMUEL HENRY JEYES 
 
 mediocre writers with not a fraction of his ability 
 or his influence. 
 
 Samuel Henry Jeyes was born on April 2ist, 
 1857, at Northampton. He was the son of John 
 Jeyes, and Sarah Frances, daughter of Henry 
 Weldon, of Stamford. He belonged by descent 
 to that moderately endowed class of landed 
 proprietors which for centuries has done so 
 much to shape the destinies of Britain. Of that 
 order Jeyes was in many ways a typical repre- 
 sentative ; and he graduated in what may be 
 called its representative schools. From a boyhood 
 spent chiefly at the home of his maternal uncle, 
 Mr. Samuel Sharp, of Dallington Hall, Northamp- 
 tonshire, who was not only a country gentleman, 
 but a distinguished antiquarian and numismatist, 
 young Jeyes passed to Wellingborough Grammar 
 School, to a private preparatory school at Rick- 
 mansworth, and thence to Uppingham, to Oxford, 
 and to the Inner Temple. He went to Uppingham 
 in 1869, at the time when that seminary was at 
 the height of its reputation under the dominating 
 personality of a great headmaster, Edward Thring, 
 and he was there till he entered Trinity College, 
 Oxford, in the autumn of 1875. 
 
 From some of those who were his contemporaries 
 at school, and his lifelong friends afterwards, I 
 have received reminiscences of his Uppingham 
 years. The Rev. H. B. Freeman, Vicar of Burton- 
 
MEMOIR 5 
 
 on-Trent, Mr. W. P. James, 1 Mr. Arthur Hassall, 
 now Tutor of Christ Church, Oxford, and the 
 author of many historical works, and Mr. Edward 
 Hamley, were among his comrades at Uppingham. 
 The picture they give me of the youthful Jeyes, 
 after the lapse of more than forty years, has all 
 the impress of vitality. Time, that eater of things, 
 still leaves our schoolboy memories untouched. 
 " Jeyes came to my house, the Rev. W. Camp- 
 bell's," says Mr. James, " with an entrance scholar- 
 ship in classics. He was a very odd little boy when 
 he made his first appearance at Uppingham. He 
 was very short, but broad and rather round for his 
 age and height." He grew taller afterwards, and 
 was of good average stature, about five feet nine 
 or ten, I should think ; but he was always " rather 
 round," and smooth, and sleek, totus teres atque 
 rotundus in more senses than one. " He surveyed 
 his new schoolboy world," adds Mr. James, " with 
 just that smile that you knew well in after life." 
 Alas ! yes ; I knew it well, that humorous, half- 
 cynical, always kindly smile, and have seen it worn 
 gallantly when its owner was racked by pain or 
 vexed with care. 
 
 At school, I gather, Jeyes was not exactly a 
 thirteen-year-old cynic, because he was too genial 
 
 1 High Bailiff of Cardiff, who, for many years past, has con- 
 tributed a weekly column of literary notes to the journal with 
 which both Jeyes and myself were once closely associated. 
 
6 SAMUEL HENRY JEYES 
 
 and too full of fun ; but his attitude towards the 
 prevalent enthusiasms and prejudices of callid 
 youth was one of detachment tempered by an 
 amused tolerance. He was an independent, healthy- 
 minded youngster, manly, but not at all afraid to 
 express open derision of the common public-school 
 cult of " manliness," and the public-schoolmaster's 
 conventional worship of athletic excellence and 
 muscular Christianity, then at its height. He was 
 not active and handy enough to excel in games ; 
 but he would not shirk them, and did his best to 
 play cricket and football, though with no special 
 success. He was better at fives, rackets, and lawn 
 tennis, at which he became a fair performer at 
 Oxford. But throughout his life he preferred the 
 sports of the field and the open air, the traditional 
 recreations of English country life, to athletics and 
 games. In his boyhood he shot and hunted, and 
 he was always a good horseman. For the newer 
 kinds of sport and exercise, which came into vogue 
 after his school-days, he had no indulgence. He 
 treated golf with open disrespect ; he never learnt 
 to ride the bicycle ; he was not interested in motor- 
 cars ; and he clung to the hansom when most other 
 people in London were taking taxi-cabs. 
 
 To return to his school-days. Then, as after- 
 wards, he was a hater of insincerity and cant, and 
 distrusted the vox fopuli, even though it was but 
 the voice of the Common Room and the Upper 
 
MEMOIR 7 
 
 Sixth Debating Society. Clever boys, in those 
 Victorian days, used to grow enthusiastic over 
 Tennyson, Ruskin, and Carlyle. Jeyes was more 
 likely to counter them with Rabelais, an author 
 he got to know early, and loved long. And as a 
 cultivated Conservative Anglicanism was just then 
 the " tone " at Uppingham, Jeyes thought fit to 
 develop a stern and unbending Radicalism, to 
 denounce the Church and the landed aristocracy, 
 and to express a considerable admiration for Charles 
 Bradlaugh, the bugbear of British respectability. 
 He was popular at school, in spite of his limited 
 interest in athletics, and his attacks upon orthodox 
 etiquette and sentiment. The boys liked him, 
 as many men and women liked him afterwards, for 
 his wit, his courage, his shrewd sense, and the 
 genuine kindness and good-feeling which lay be- 
 neath his irreverent satire. He had a turn for 
 ready repartee which was not restrained by any 
 undue respect for the constituted authorities. He 
 could even " stand up " to the great Thring, 
 a benevolent, but extremely despotic, ruler 
 of his little kingdom. On one occasion the 
 autocrat was lecturing his Upper Sixth on their 
 ignorance of what we now call Civics. " I don't 
 suppose," he said, " that there is one of you 
 who could give the names of the members of the 
 Cabinet." 
 
 " I think I could," said Jeyes. 
 
8 SAMUEL HENRY JEYES 
 
 " Oh, could you ? " answered the headmaster 
 tartly. " Then who is the Master of the Horse ? " 
 
 " Not in the Cabinet, sir," replied Jeyes very 
 quietly. 
 
 " The reply," says one who heard it given, 
 " seems obvious enough now ; but hardly any 
 other of us boys, though some were verging on 
 manhood, knew enough of politics to be able to say 
 what constituted cabinet rank ; and Thring, ac- 
 customed to facile victories, even when wrong, had 
 counted on this. I shall never forget the look on his 
 face as he said, ' Oh ! ' and swallowed his snub. 
 
 "Thring was a man of the most excellent dis- 
 position, in no way likely to resent what Jeyes said ; 
 but his personality was powerful, and in those days 
 few people at Uppingham, especially few boys, 
 cared to contend with him. The incident impressed 
 us all immensely. Jeyes was always fond of reading 
 about politics and current events, and I think a 
 good deal of the time spent by others at cricket 
 he passed in the school library with newspapers 
 and magazines. I know on occasions, when I, who 
 read no papers, wanted information on some 
 subject of the day, I got it readily from him." 
 
 No doubt it was this interest in affairs which 
 caused him to accept the editorship of the school 
 magazine in his last year. I have not been able to 
 identify many of his contributions to this periodical. 
 But there is a paper by him on " Sisters," which is 
 
MEMOIR 9 
 
 written with much more ease and finish of style 
 than is often found in schoolboy essays, and has 
 distinct touches of satire, humour, and insight : 
 
 " The best of us should be handsome, clever, and true, 
 indeed, to deserve a sister's pride and a sister's love ; in 
 these there is no faltering, nothing of criticism. If any- 
 thing these should keep a man straight. But do you imagine 
 that such thoughts as these trouble our young friend's head? 
 The idea of his own unworthiness, if it ever occurred or were 
 placed before him, he would dismiss as too good a joke ; the 
 admiration he accepts as his due, while of the love he is all 
 unconscious. For it is the way of our amiable sex to place 
 slight value upon what is given without grudge or stint. 
 Yet it does some good this fictitious feeling of one's own 
 superiority ; especially to those who cannot often enjoy it. 
 For the benefit of such as these were Comic Songs, Chess, 
 and Latin Verses invented. These are they who shuffle their 
 feet at Debates, who chaff bowlers, who crack walnuts in 
 school-time. And it is well that they so do ; or their existence 
 might be forgotten. It is true enough that a man's worth 
 is to be measured by the verdict of his own sex ; but it 
 is good for him that he should sometimes see himself in a 
 mirror which distorts to flatter. Caliban, perchance, had 
 a spaniel which loved him ; perchance he treated it kindly. 
 And Miranda could do no more for Ferdinand, and Ferdi- 
 nand not much more for Miranda. Nor will our young 
 friend's illusion last his lifetime ; some day he will seek, and 
 may not obtain, a favourable verdict from somebody else's 
 sister." 
 
 This is not bad for a moralist of eighteen. I 
 imagine the young gentleman had been reading his 
 Thackeray, always one of his favourite novelists. 
 
io SAMUEL HENRY JEYES 
 
 But there is something in it of his own, something 
 that those who knew him in after life will recognise 
 as characteristic, in its shrewd and kindly glances at 
 common human relationships and particularly at 
 the relationships of men and women. 
 
 In his studies Jeyes, like many other clever boys, 
 affected to be rather idle and " casual." As a fact, 
 though he showed little aptitude for mathematics or 
 modern languages, he worked steadily at his classics, 
 and became a very good scholar, with a sound grasp 
 of style and verbal niceties, and a pretty taste in 
 Greek iambics and Latin elegiacs. He not only 
 read the great masters of ancient literature but 
 enjoyed them ; and he kept up his acquaintance 
 with some of them long after he left school and 
 college. He would turn to the ancient texts for 
 rest and refreshment in the midst of his busy 
 London journalism ; when he went for a holiday 
 a Sophocles or a Virgil was almost as certain to be 
 slipped into his handbag as a box of cigars and a 
 French novel. 
 
 In the spring of 1875 Jeyes gained an open 
 scholarship in classics at Trinity College, Oxford, 
 and in October of that year he went into residence. 
 Of his university career I cannot speak from 
 personal knowledge. I entered Balliol a year after 
 he went to Trinity ; but though thin partitions do 
 the physical bounds of Trinity and Balliol divide, 
 there is not, or there was not at that era, much 
 
MEMOIR ii 
 
 intercourse between these two seats of learning. 
 I knew Jeyes but slightly while we were under- 
 graduates, and met him, I think, not more than 
 three or four times in the rooms of other men. 
 My own reminiscences being so unimportant, I 
 prefer to insert this sketch of his Oxford career 
 kindly furnished by Mr. Allan Gordon Cameron, 
 his intimate friend then and afterwards. 
 
 " Trinity College, Oxford," writes Mr. Cameron, 
 " when S. H. Jeyes came into residence as a scholar 
 at Michaelmas Term, 1875, was great in games, 1 
 but small in numbers, and the sharp lines of social 
 cleavage inevitable in a large college had no place 
 with us. We formed a happy family some sixty 
 undergrads in college rooms, Jeyes occupying the 
 comfortable top floor of No. 9. 
 
 " It was noblesse oblige for scholars of the College 
 to justify their scholarships in the class-lists, and 
 most of our scholars, including Jeyes, abstained 
 from rowing or games as an interruption of serious 
 work. But scholars who did not play games were 
 none the less welcome to the companionship of 
 commoners who did, and Jeyes was welcomed by us 
 all in a quite exceptional degree. His sturdy in- 
 dependence, his imperturbable good temper, his 
 sparkling humour, his buoyant disposition, and his 
 
 1 We had F. H. Lee, Capt. of the 'Varsity Rugby Football 
 team ; A. J. Webbe, the best bat in the 'Varsity Eleven, and F. 
 Capet Cure, who stroked the Head of the River Torpid in 1876. 
 
12 SAMUEL HENRY JEYES 
 
 genial humanity, were irresistibly attractive, and 
 made him everybody's friend. To meet c old 
 Jeyes,' as he was often affectionately called by 
 young men older than himself, meant that you were 
 sure to enjoy a laugh, even at your own expense. 
 His kindly chaff, which was never meant to hurt 
 and never did, was a tonic that brightened life. 
 Along with the high spirits which accompany 
 perfect health he was gifted with the infinite tact 
 which comes from goodness of heart, and with an 
 absence of egotism extraordinary in so young a 
 man. Hence, his conversation was always delightful, 
 because he talked to please his listener and not to 
 please himself. A common college friend once 
 said of him to the writer : ' Whenever I am in the 
 blues I go and have a talk with Jeyes ; it's as good 
 as a glass of champagne.' And it was. 
 
 " Notwithstanding the social temptations which 
 beset a popular man at college, ' old Jeyes ' took 
 his career seriously from the beginning, and never 
 deviated from the straight path which he had 
 mapped out for himself. He possessed the self- 
 control which makes for success, and time filched 
 from his work by importunate friends could be 
 repaid during long afternoons when the friends 
 were tied to the river. The Greek and Latin classics 
 he really loved, and their idiomatic translation was 
 a literary exercise which particularly stirred his 
 interest. Hence, his ' first ' in Mods came easily to 
 
MEMOIR 13 
 
 him, and the c first ' in Greats, which every one ex- 
 pected of him was missed, probably because the 
 subjects were less congenial. Thucydides was his 
 favourite among the Greeks, and Juvenal among 
 the Latins. The mordant irony of the Roman 
 especially appealed to him. Of modern English 
 writers he preferred George Eliot, and notably 
 Middlemarcb. A vivid memorial of his own course 
 of reading, his methods of study, his favourite 
 books, and the points of view which led him to 
 success, will be found embodied in a little book 
 bearing the title Entrance Classical Scholarships, 
 published at Oxford by James Thornton in 1881. 
 A mass of terse common sense, acute reflection, and 
 pungent humour is packed into the fifty pages of 
 this modest volume. 
 
 " Achievement in the Schools, for a man who has 
 many friends, is only one part of 'varsity life. 
 Character and influence make their weight felt in 
 hours of leisure rather than in hours of grind. 
 While Jeyes took his work seriously, he took his play 
 humorously, and herein revealed an intellectual pre- 
 cocity which, even among the best men of his year, 
 placed him on a platform entirely his own. His 
 characteristic mode of thought was a frank cynicism 
 not the tired cynicism of Ecclesiastes, nor the 
 bored cynicism of Schopenhauer, but the sober 
 cynicism of a well-balanced mind, free from pose 
 or affectation, tempered by an acute sense of humour 
 
I 4 SAMUEL HENRY JEYES 
 
 and expressed with a ready wit which was a constant 
 source of joy to intimate friends. Oxford in the late 
 seventies provided abundant material for the 
 satirist. Thoughtful undergraduates, stirred by the 
 growing struggle between old faiths and new, were 
 profoundly puzzled by the motley host of clamant 
 signboards on the devious path of truth. Oscar 
 Wilde was preaching a new religion of aesthetics ; 
 Symonds and Pater countered him with a humanistic 
 gospel of the Renaissance ; T. H. Green was leading 
 a destructive onslaught upon Herbert Spencer ; 
 and an anonymous book, entitled Supernatural 
 Religion, had convulsed the churches. Jeyes, at nine- 
 teen, was really remarkable in the fact that he could 
 come to grips with this bewildering babel of 
 tongues, grasp the weak points of each, and make 
 effective fun of them, one and all. Argument 
 from an able antagonist sharpened his wit, but he 
 would drop a discussion the moment it heated his 
 opponent, and nothing bitter at the expense of an 
 antagonist ever passed his lips. Therefore he had 
 the greater influence, and his influence was wholly 
 good. Few thoughtful young men could associate 
 long with Jeyes without acquiring a broader vision, 
 a more proportionate outlook, and an appreciative 
 sense of having ' come up against ' something 
 strong. 
 
 " The strength of Jeyes lay in his well-furnished 
 brain. An omnivorous reader, he had always at 
 
MEMOIR 15 
 
 command what Pascal shrewdly terms une pensee de 
 derriere la tete ; but he never paraded his own 
 opinions or beliefs, and was content sympathetically 
 to discuss those of his friends. Nevertheless, it was 
 not difficult to infer from his conversation that at 
 this period of his life he was powerfully influenced 
 by the writings of J. S. Mill, and, in particular, by 
 the Principles of Political Economy, the Liberty, the 
 Dissertations, and the Logic. Yet he was a student 
 always, a disciple never. No one knew better than 
 ' old Jeyes ' that the opinions of youth are in a state 
 of flux, and that lapse of time may change them 
 beyond recognition. In the domain of philosophy 
 and religion he gave the impression at all times of 
 being completely detached. He was justly im- 
 patient of sciolists. ' Read what the big men say 
 for themselves, not what the little men say about 
 them. . . . Most systems [of philosophy] are tolerably 
 clear until they have been explained.' x Modest 
 to the point of self-effacement, he had a clear per- 
 ception of his own limitations. To the writer he 
 once said, ' I always know when I'm beat.' 
 
 " In one salient characteristic Jeyes was assuredly 
 not ' beat ' throughout the whole of his under- 
 graduate life. The buoyant spirits, which gave the 
 bright sparkle to his wit, and which to the world at 
 large seemed his most attractive quality, were ever 
 at the high-water mark, and ready to overflow. 
 1 Entrance Classical Scholarships, p. 43. 
 
16 SAMUEL HENRY JEYES 
 
 Fun depends so much upon circumstance that its 
 flavour usually passes with the occasion by which it 
 was provoked ; but the following incident, slight as 
 it is, may serve to reflect Jeyes in his habitual mood. 
 Charles Gore, now Bishop of Oxford, had just been 
 elected to a Fellowship at Trinity, where his affec- 
 tionate disposition endeared him to us all. Gore 
 was then a philosophic enthusiast with an immense 
 admiration for T. H. Green, and he came out of 
 Balliol one morning, his face aglow with pleasure, a 
 pamphlet in his hand, which he swung to and fro in 
 accompaniment to his long strides. Jeyes and the 
 writer met him at the Trinity porter's lodge. ' I 
 say, you fellows,' beamed Gore, brimming over 
 with delight, ' Tommy Green's given me a sermon ! ' 
 * What ! ' jerked out Jeyes in his incisive way, ' can't 
 he sell them ? ' ' You brute ! ' returned the in- 
 dignant Gore, and passed on to his rooms. * I seem 
 rather to have upset Gore,' chuckled Jeyes. Here 
 is an example of his readiness in retort. Talk fell 
 upon feminine morality, and Jeyes had made a 
 cynical remark which affronted a choleric gentleman 
 present. ' My dear Jeyes,' called out the affronted 
 one with some heat, ' your mind is a sewer ! ' ' If 
 so,' returned Jeyes promptly, ' you're floating down 
 it!' 
 
 " f Oxford's a delightful place when all the under- 
 graduates are away,' said Jeyes on one occasion, when 
 he had remained at College to work during an Easter 
 
MEMOIR 17 
 
 vacation. But, in truth, a more sociable mortal did 
 not exist, and hence it came about that all the boon 
 companions of his own standing were commoners, 
 chiefly f wet bobs,' who forgot to worry about 
 schools in their joie de vivre^ I cannot recall a 
 single day when ' old Jeyes ' was out of health or 
 out of form. He was fond of billiards, but only as 
 a pastime ; his usual smoke was a pipe, with Caven- 
 dish tobacco for choice ; and he enjoyed a glass of 
 port, which was the fashionable Oxford tipple of 
 the time. I believe he did no literary work during 
 his undergraduate days, being fully occupied with 
 his preparation for the schools ; but the bias of his 
 mind was towards a literary career, and his appoint- 
 ment to a classical lectureship at University College 
 soon after he had taken his degree gave him welcome 
 opportunity for a start in letters. His first published 
 books were translations from Latin. 
 
 " Let it be said as a last word of Jeyes that, while 
 we admired him for his clever head, we loved him 
 for his warm heart. He was sympathetic in a re- 
 markable degree. Nothing mean or unkind was 
 possible to him ; nothing pleased him more than 
 the chance of doing a kind act. For instance, he 
 strolled down to the billiard-room one afternoon, 
 
 1 Among them may be specially named : T. C. Burrowes, 
 A. B. Cartwright, C. Stone Wigg, R. J. Rhys, and the present 
 writer. The three last named rowed in the Trin. Coll. Eight of 
 '78, and Burrowes in the University Eight of '79. 
 c 
 
1 8 SAMUEL HENRY JEYES 
 
 found the marker out of sorts, sent the man to a 
 doctor forthwith, and paid the doctor's fee. Not a 
 few young men might have done the same, had the 
 thought come to them. The distinction between 
 them and Jeyes is simply that the thought always did 
 come to him, and to act upon it was with him a 
 matter of course. A bright, kindly, human, 
 humorous soul that is the image before me as I 
 cast my thoughts back upon the memory of my old 
 friend in those brave days that are gone." 
 
 Jeyes took his second class in the Final School of Lit. 
 Humaniores in the summer of 1 879, having previously 
 gained a first in classical Moderations. His capacity 
 as a scholar was recognised by the authorities, 
 and he was offered a lectureship in classics at 
 University College. He held this post for a couple 
 of years, combining with his college work a good 
 deal of private coaching for pass and honour 
 " mods." He was an excellent and sympathetic 
 teacher, and if he had remained at Oxford, he 
 would probably have had a successful career as 
 a coach and college tutor. But the life was un- 
 congenial to him. The atmosphere of the Common- 
 room was not to his taste, there was never anything 
 of the don about him, and his genial ways and 
 unconventional habits of speech were not quite 
 easily trimmed to the strict academic measure. 
 He told me that once, when he was riding on the 
 Woodstock road, his horse was startled by a clerical- 
 
MEMOIR 19 
 
 looting gentleman on a bicycle. Jeyes, who hated 
 bicyclists, gave the performer a few of his choicest 
 flowers of speech. In the hurry of the moment 
 he failed to observe that the recipient of these 
 favours was a dignitary of the college to which he 
 was attached. Such episodes may have helped to 
 convince him that he was not marked out for the 
 life tutorial. At any rate, he decided to leave the 
 University, and to play such part as might be 
 allotted him on a larger stage. 
 
 Quitting Oxford, then, in 1883, Jeyes settled 
 down to try his fortunes in the world of London. 
 His ostensible profession was that of the law. He 
 had kept his terms while at the University, and was 
 called to the Bar. He now took a share of some 
 chambers in the Temple ; he read with a barrister, 
 attended the Courts with some assiduity, and went 
 on circuit. I have always regretted that he did not, 
 or could not, devote himself with undivided aims 
 to the only profession which is worth an able man's 
 attention in modern England. If he had made a 
 fair start at the Bar, I see no reason why he should 
 not have attained considerable success. With his 
 acute intelligence, his wide knowledge of the world, 
 his insight into character and motive, his genial 
 presence, his ready wit, and his persuasive manner, 
 he should have impressed judges, conciliated juries, 
 and played like lambent flame round reluctant 
 witnesses. 
 
20 SAMUEL HENRY JEYES 
 
 But he had no interest with solicitors, and no 
 useful mercantile connection. The briefs did not 
 come, and Jeyes was little disposed to wait for them 
 through that grim interval of unremunerated 
 persistency which lies across the path of so many 
 young barristers. He continued to do a little coach- 
 ing and teaching in these first years of London life, 
 and he published some books. They dealt with the 
 subjects with which he was then most familiar 
 classics and the teaching of the classics. The best 
 of these works, in some ways the best of all his 
 works, is his prose translation of the Satires of 
 Juvenal, with a long Introductory Essay. The 
 task was thoroughly congenial to him ; for he knew 
 Juvenal better than any other ancient writer. No 
 one could be more fitted to appreciate that prince 
 of satirists and journalistic rhetoricians than Jeyes, 
 who looked at the men and women about him with 
 something of Juvenal's keen and minute observation, 
 though with little of the sceva indignatio which 
 drove the Roman to exaggeration and extravagance. 
 He heartily enjoyed Juvenal, but he was not blind 
 to his defects ; and his essay is an uncommon piece 
 of sane, just, and sagacious criticism. Here in brief 
 compass is the sum of much reading and thinking : 
 
 " There is one special reason why we must not take Rome 
 at Juvenal's valuation. He seems to have no sense of pro- 
 portion between the evils which he describes ; so that his 
 
 He comes down with the same 
 
MEMOIR 21 
 
 heavy hand upon mere affectations or fooleries as upon 
 downright wickedness. Using Greek phrases is made out to 
 be as bad as practising Greek vices ; and it is not quite in 
 jest when he says that Nero's worst crime was his perpe- 
 tration of a poem. Sometimes he condemns things which 
 seem to us innocent enough, such as over-indulgence in 
 athletics, or a refinement in iced drinks. Curiously enough, 
 his bitter censure of a young nobleman's taste for driving 
 may be paralleled by the strictures which were passed on the 
 Prince Regent for ' driving his own curricle in the Park.' 
 But Juvenal was not a sportsman, nor was he quite a gentle- 
 man ; else he would have seen nothing derogatory in a 
 young nobleman looking after his horses for himself when 
 he had brought them to the stables. Again, when he de- 
 scribes the impudence of petted slaves and the importance 
 of confidential servants, he seems blind to the fact that the 
 severity of Roman slavery was greatly mitigated by the 
 prospects, which lay open to every clever or faithful slave, 
 of making a career for himself and winning his way to 
 freedom. If Juvenal wishes to condemn a master or mistress 
 for cruelty to dependants, he is ready enough to assert the 
 innate equality of all men, the rights of common flesh and 
 blood ; but he forgets his humanitarianism except when it 
 is employed to shame the privileged objects of his satire. 
 So with the Greek adventurers who supplanted Roman 
 retainers in the favour of their patrons, he dwells only 
 upon the vile arts which some of them used, and says little 
 of the sterling ability which must have been the chief 
 source of their success. Poetically and rhetorically, he is 
 justified in only drawing attention to that aspect of every 
 question which supports his case ; but it is just because he 
 is both a poet and rhetorician that we must discount his 
 views and sift his statements." 
 
22 SAMUEL HENRY JEYES 
 
 The young scholar who could write like this had 
 in him the makings of a great critic. But the 
 Juvenal passed unmarked by the literary world. 
 It was only a school text-book, and nobody except 
 tutors and teachers (mostly inarticulate human 
 beings outside their class-rooms) takes much notice 
 of school text-books. 
 
 From the publishers Jeyes drifted naturally to 
 the Press, the obvious resource of the young man of 
 literary tastes and culture anxious to earn money. 
 It was a resource even more obvious in the mid- 
 eighties than it is now. In those days the writing 
 journalist was at the zenith of his power and pros- 
 perity. The news-editor was still a subordinate 
 functionary ; the reporter had hardly yet emerged 
 from being the pedestrian chronicler of events 
 which had " transpired " ; the whole army of 
 managers, organizers, publicity-agents, specialists, 
 who are the brains and soul of the latter-day news- 
 paper, was hardly existent. The Press set most 
 store upon the man who could write, the com- 
 mentator upon affairs, the publicist, the essayist, 
 the critic. Its editors paid what their successors 
 would consider excessive and misdirected attention 
 to composition and style ; it had not outgrown its 
 superstitious regard for the literary and academic 
 tradition ; it believed, in that distant and artless 
 world, that a university degree, and some familiarity 
 with the classical tongues, contributed to journalistic 
 
MEMOIR 23 
 
 excellence ; it wasted its resources with reckless prodi- 
 gality upon leader-writers and reviewers. There 
 were many more periodicals than there are now 
 which depended mainly upon the written " article," 
 with its appeal to an educated, and somewhat 
 leisurely, public. Thus a young Oxford man, with 
 the proper credentials, able to write fluently and 
 smoothly, could soon find a footing. Jeyes began 
 in the usual way by planting occasional contri- 
 butions in various likely quarters. He got himself 
 printed from time to time in the Saturday Review, 
 in those days still famous and brilliant and muni- 
 ficent ; in the two literary evening journals that 
 had risen from the ashes of the first Pall Mall 
 Gazette; in the " society" papers, and others. "I 
 am sending about a foot of rubbish weekly to the 
 
 Review" he wrote to a friend in 1887, " besides 
 
 other things." In his third year in London he had 
 grown tolerably busy with work of this kind. He 
 had abandoned his coaching, and was paying, I 
 think, but little attention to his frigid and uncertain 
 mistress, the Law. 
 
 It was at this period that he and I came into 
 close association. In the autumn of 1888 I was 
 called upon to become editor of the St. James's 
 Gazette, in succession to Frederick Greenwood, 
 greatest of all the journalists who had essayed to 
 wed journalism with literature. Jeyes had been 
 one of his occasional contributors ; and when the 
 
24 SAMUEL HENRY JEYES 
 
 change occurred he came to see me, and expressed 
 his desire to write more regularly for the paper. 
 I acceded willingly enough, for I was attracted by 
 his brightness, his good-humour, and his evident 
 knowledge of men and things. I told him I was 
 in search of an assistant-editor, who could write 
 well and take control in my absence ; and I asked 
 him if he happened to know of any capable young 
 man, preferably from Oxford or Cambridge, who 
 would be fit for the post. " Wouldn't I do ? " 
 asked Jeyes, without a moment's hesitation. I 
 replied at once that I believed he would " do " 
 uncommonly well. But I told him that the St 
 James's, though it had a considerable reputation 
 at the time, and was really influential, was not in 
 a very flourishing condition financially, and that the 
 salary it could afford to offer was probably too 
 moderate to tempt a man of his position and attain- 
 ments. Besides, I had seen enough of journalism 
 by that time to know that it can give little more 
 to the vast majority of those who addict them- 
 selves to it than a limited, and often a precarious, 
 livelihood, gained by arduous, and usually obscure, 
 toil. I pointed out to Jeyes that he might do 
 better to stick to the Bar, however unpromising 
 the immediate outlook appeared. He asked for a 
 couple of days to consider the matter. At the 
 end of that period he came to me, and said that 
 he would gladly accept the post. He was not, I 
 
MEMOIR 25 
 
 think, really interested in the law ; he was tired of 
 the irregularity and uncertainty of his position ; and 
 he wanted fixed hours of work and a fixed income. 
 So he discarded his wig and gown (his wig-box 
 as a receptacle of whisky and cigars long adorned 
 his editorial office for a sign unto all men that he 
 had definitely " cut the Bar "), erased his name 
 from the door in the Temple, and turned seriously 
 to the business which occupied him for the remainder 
 of his days, and the larger proportion of his nights. 
 
 We worked together on the St. James's for over 
 three years, and during that space I saw him daily 
 and hourly. It is an association to which I look 
 back now with a certain wistful pleasure. On the 
 whole I think we both enjoyed those busy years 
 together in the little office in Dorset Street, though 
 they were years not unchequered by anxieties and 
 trials of one kind and another. But the worries 
 slipped lightly from our shoulders. We were both 
 young ; we were both intensely interested 
 in the great movements of the intellectual and 
 political world, on which, in our adolescent 
 self-confidence, we believed ourselves to exercise 
 no mean influence ; we appreciated our oppor- 
 tunities of coming into frequent contact with great 
 figures in politics and letters ; and we thoroughly 
 enjoyed the brisk bustle of the newspaper office and 
 the exhilarating task of bringing out four or five 
 editions daily. 
 
26 SAMUEL HENRY JEYES 
 
 The St. James's had a position of its own in those 
 days. Its circulation was what would now be 
 called contemptibly small ; but its influence was 
 out of all proportion to the number of copies sold. 
 It was distinctly the organ of the " governing classes," 
 and it was read by them with a reverential attention 
 which always surprised, and sometimes amused, me. 
 As its news service was never really good it depended 
 almost entirely upon the strength and quality of its 
 writing, and the character of its comments on men 
 and affairs. Its leading article, to which Greenwood 
 had devoted an excessive amount of attention, had 
 become one of the features of the London Press ; 
 and even in my own less robust hands, a single 
 " leader " in the St. James's Gazette could some- 
 times do more to affect the course of legislation or 
 the opinions of statesmen than a whole series of 
 special articles and exciting news " stories " in the 
 huge and powerful journals of a later day. Our 
 staff, too, at this period might be called remarkable. 
 J. M. Barrie, Rudyard Kipling, Andrew Lang, 
 Edmund Gosse, George Saintsbury, Gilbert Parker, 
 Anthony Hope Hawkins, H. D. Traill, David 
 Hannay, Mrs. Lynn Linton, Herbert Stephen, and 
 his brother Jim, then in the fullest blaze of his 
 short-lived brilliancy, with other notable men and 
 women of letters, were among our regular or oc- 
 casional contributors. The handling of this team, 
 and the selection of suitable topics on which they 
 
MEMOIR 27 
 
 could employ their talents, involved a good deal 
 of editorial and critical work, of a kind that falls 
 less frequently to the editor of a modern newspaper, 
 concerned, as he must be, with so many interests of 
 an entirely different nature. 
 
 In all this Jeyes was the most valuable and com- 
 petent of coadjutors. His own judgment always 
 leaned to sanity and moderation, whereas mine, 
 I am afraid, was too often inclined to erratic 
 experiment. Jeyes was the conservative force in 
 the office, and I was constantly indebted to the 
 shrewd restraint he exercised over my tendency 
 towards hasty, and sometimes sentimental, inno- 
 vation. The subject of the daily leader was a 
 matter for close discussion between us in the early 
 hours of the morning ; and I seldom rose from these 
 little confabulations without being impressed by 
 the clear and logical judgment and the independent 
 thought which my friend usually brought to 
 bear upon the events of the hour. He often 
 wrote leaders himself, and his work was always 
 sound and capably expressed ; and in the Occasional 
 Notes he found scope for his talent for epigram, 
 and for an occasional sparkle of his caustic 
 humour. 
 
 The editing of an evening paper is a restless, 
 irritating kind of business, which offers many 
 occasions for setting sensitive teeth on edge, and 
 gives frequent opportunity for friction. Jeyes had 
 
28 SAMUEL HENRY JEYES 
 
 a temper of his own, which would flame out on 
 provocation, and relieve itself by speech of quite 
 unusual directness and force. But he kept a careful 
 restraint upon it, particularly in his professional 
 work, and in all the years of our close, and at times 
 our trying, association, I cannot remember that we 
 had even the beginnings of a quarrel. This, I am 
 sure, was due to his forbearance much more than 
 mine ; for I was, I believe, a fidgety young man, 
 somewhat over-burdened by the sense of my re- 
 sponsibilities, and I know that I was not altogether 
 popular with some members of my staff. There 
 was, indeed, a certain amount of squabbling and 
 jealousy in the office ; but all the rival parties and 
 factions agreed in liking and trusting the assistant- 
 editor. 
 
 Our situation was, in some respects, difficult. 
 The paper, with the retirement of Greenwood, 
 had passed into the possession of a proprietor who 
 was not an easy person to work with. A North 
 German by birth, though a naturalised English- 
 man, he exhibited in full measure some of the less 
 attractive features of the Prussian character. With a 
 Bismarckian physique, and conspicuous practical 
 capacity, he had a preference, even in the inter- 
 course of social life, for the methods of blood and 
 iron ; and the mailed fist was, in his case, seldom 
 hidden under a glove of velvet. Fortune had 
 played him the ill turn of making him an enormously 
 
MEMOIR 29 
 
 wealthy man before he was middle-aged, and had 
 completely spoilt his temper in the process. With 
 a moderate income and a comfortable suburban 
 home, he might have been a happy, and even an 
 agreeable, individual ; with a mansion in a fashion- 
 able square, a costly collection of mostly ill-chosen 
 pictures, and an unfulfilled aspiration after social 
 distinction, he was exceedingly uncomfortable, and 
 his discomfort expressed itself in aggressive on- 
 slaughts upon his connections and dependents. 
 Personally, I liked him, for I appreciated his practical 
 ability, his genuine, though too often misdirected, 
 force of character, and a sort of cross-grained 
 humour and elemental kindliness which underlay 
 his arrogant manner. I believe he had a certain 
 regard for me too, though we were constantly 
 quarrelling. About once a fortnight he would 
 surge into the office, genial as an October gale, for 
 a tempestuous interview with his editor, which 
 frequently ended in resignation being proffered on 
 the one side, and declined, with suitable apologies, 
 on the other. After this interlude, he would drift 
 away for a few soothing words with the manager 
 upon the unnecessary expense of office stationery 
 and postage stamps. But before he left, he would 
 find his way to Jeyes's room, where his tormented 
 spirit would be assuaged by a selection of racy 
 anecdotes, and he would depart chuckling and 
 temporarily at peace. Nobody could " get on " for 
 
3 o SAMUEL HENRY JEYES 
 
 very long with this able and self-assertive gentle- 
 man, though I endured him longer than most. 
 After I left editors and managers rose and fell like 
 presidents in a Central American republic. But our 
 friend had an almost exaggerated regard for Jeyes's 
 capacity, and for his shrewd knowledge of the world, 
 so different, as he sometimes courteously explained 
 to me, from my own. When I retired from the 
 St. James's Jeyes was tempted with munificent 
 offers to become my successor. But he had other 
 views at the time, and he knew this able proprietor 
 much too well to be anxious for closer association 
 with him. 
 
 The persistent accord which prevailed between 
 Jeyes and myself was all the more creditable since 
 we did not always see eye to eye in politics and in 
 various other matters. We had both been Liberals 
 in our younger days, and we had left the party at 
 the great secession over Mr. Gladstone's Home Rule 
 Bill. Neither of us would have called ourselves 
 Tories, and we both fell back, like so many dissentient 
 Liberals, on the useful non-committal appellation 
 of Liberal-Unionist. For myself, however, I was, 
 and always have been, a persistent, though not per- 
 haps a consistent, " mugwump," with a tendency at 
 that time to what was then called Tory-De- 
 mocracy. I was young enough to cherish the 
 illusion, which appears from age to age only to be 
 shattered by the stern blast of events, that a party 
 
MEMOIR 31 
 
 of the people might be created which should 
 be democratic and progressive in its aims, but 
 constitutionalist and imperialist in its methods. 
 Jeyes, however, after his early plunge into 
 Radicalism, developed into what I should call an 
 old-fashioned Benthamite, with distinctly aristo- 
 cratic leanings. John Stuart Mill had been one of 
 his favourite authors at school and college, and he 
 never quite emancipated himself from the classic 
 tenets of orthodox Liberalism. He believed in 
 free contract, individualism, self-help, private enter- 
 prise, and the strict limitation of the power of the 
 State. 
 
 But a man's politics are much more a matter of 
 temperament than reason, and by temperament, as 
 he settled down from youth to middle-age, Jeyes 
 became strongly, and even dogmatically, conserva- 
 tive. He liked the people, but he did not believe 
 in them. He distrusted their hasty impulses, their 
 emotionalism, above all their ignorance. Nobody 
 saw more clearly than himself the weaknesses and 
 the defects of the English governing classes, the 
 aristocracy and the country gentlemen. 1 But all 
 the same, it was to those classes, enlightened by a 
 larger view of life, and broadened by a more liberal 
 culture, that he looked mainly for social and political 
 salvation. He was conservative, also, in his dislike 
 
 1 See the extract given below, p. 199, from Jeyes's Fortnightly 
 Review article on " Our Gentlemanly Failures." 
 
32 SAMUEL HENRY JEYES 
 
 for rapid innovation and violent change. He was 
 reluctant, without good cause, to abandon the 
 old ways, the recognized order, the rules which 
 had been tested by experience, the established 
 orthodoxy. 
 
 A good deal of this, I am free to confess, was due 
 to personal predilection, in some degree perhaps to 
 personal prejudice. He had an almost physical 
 shrinking from vulgarity, eccentricity, and blatant 
 defiance of usage and precedent. If he estimated 
 the products of our public school and university 
 system at their true value, he liked, all the same, to 
 associate with them. He preferred to have gentle- 
 men and ladies for his friends, and he had no patience 
 with people who did not know how to behave 
 properly, or to enjoy the amenities of a polite and 
 cultured world. 
 
 It was, however, a deep and earnest conviction, 
 much more than sentiment or inclination, which 
 caused him to hold aloft so steadfastly the banner 
 of regularity, order, and good taste. He waged 
 strenuous warfare against the fads and freaks 
 which were shooting through the intellectual and 
 artistic atmosphere in the last decade of the nine- 
 teenth century. For Yellow-Bookism, Walter- 
 Paterism, aestheticism, and all the other " isms " 
 and cults sprouting so bounteously from the soil at 
 that period, he had no indulgence. Nor could he 
 look with patience on the humanitarianism, often 
 
MEMOIR 33 
 
 expressing itself in extravagant forms, which was 
 also then coming into vogue. My democratic 
 tendencies sometimes hurt his feelings. I re- 
 member one morning he came down to the office 
 almost dancing with indignation over something 
 he had seen in the daily papers. " Look at this," 
 he said to me fiercely, pointing at a printed column ; 
 " did you ever see anything like it ? " What had 
 roused him was a proposal brought forward by a 
 member of the London School Board that pianos 
 should be provided in the elementary schools at the 
 expense of the ratepayers. To me, who am rather 
 of the opinion that no day-labourer's home where 
 there is a wife and children should be allowed by 
 law to remain without a piano, this proposition did 
 not seem reprehensible ; but Jeyes was furious. 
 " Pianos," he said angrily ; " why not diamonds and 
 Paris gowns ? " And he went on to describe to me, 
 with a fullness of knowledge I did not think he 
 possessed, the conditions which existed in the 
 homes of some of the children receiving instruction 
 under the London School Board. " What can be the 
 use," he asked, " of teaching the scales to children 
 who are perishing for want of good clothing and 
 proper food ? >: He spoke with so much warmth 
 and feeling that I was, for the time at least, con- 
 vinced, and at any rate I decided to let him have his 
 head. He sat down and wrote a leading article, 
 
 with the heading, " Is Mr. a Myth ? " in 
 
 D 
 
34 SAMUEL HENRY JEYES 
 
 which he proceeded to argue, with great humour 
 and satire, that the gentleman in question could 
 have no existence, and that the whole story must be 
 a canard^ since it was quite impossible for any 
 intelligent human being, in that year of grace, to 
 be so inconceivably ignorant of the conditions 
 which prevail among the poor as to bring forward 
 such an absurd and impracticable proposal. 
 
 In this there was, no doubt, a certain measure of 
 Philistinism ; but it was Philistinism of a manly, 
 wholesome kind, based upon a sound scholarship 
 and a generous view of life ; and it had its uses at 
 a time when there was a good deal of affectation 
 and morbidity in the intellectual atmosphere. The 
 fin-de-siecle decadence, made fashionable by one 
 man of genius and a number of clever or cleverish 
 imitators, was assailed by Jeyes with a sturdy 
 Johnsonian bludgeon. His most effective achieve- 
 ment in this kind was his onslaught upon Oscar 
 Wilde's famous Picture of Dorian Gray. The story, 
 in its original form, first appeared in Lippincotfs 
 Monthly Magazine, in June, 1890. I handed it 
 over to Jeyes, who put on his heaviest fighting 
 gloves, and punished the author and the book, with 
 science as well as strength, in a review printed in the 
 St. James's on June 24th, 1 890. This brilliant piece 
 of slashing criticism is characteristic enough to be 
 worth reproduction almost in full: 
 
 " Time was (it was in the '70'$) when we talked about 
 
MEMOIR 35 
 
 Mr. Oscar Wilde ; time came (it came in the J 8o's) when 
 he tried to write poetry and, more adventurous, we tried to 
 read it ; time is when we had forgotten him, or only 
 remember him as the late editor of The Woman? s World, 
 a part for which he was singularly unfitted, if we are to 
 judge him by the work which he has been allowed to publish 
 in Lippincotfs Magazine, and which Messrs. Ward, Lock, 
 and Co. have not been ashamed to circulate in Great Britain. 
 Not being curious in ordure, and not wishing to offend the 
 nostrils of decent persons, we do not propose to analyse 
 The Picture of Dorian Gray ; that would be to advertise the 
 developments of an esoteric prurience. 
 
 " The puzzle is that a young man of decent parts, who 
 enjoyed, when he was at Oxford, the opportunity of 
 associating with gentlemen, should put his name (such as it 
 is) to so stupid and vulgar a piece of work. Let nobody read 
 it in the hope of finding witty paradox or racy wickedness. 
 The writer airs his cheap research among the garbage of the 
 French Decadents like any drivelling pedant, and he bores 
 you unmercifully with his prosy rigmaroles about the beauty 
 of the Body and the corruption of the Soul. The grammar 
 is better than Ouida's ; the erudition equal ; but in every 
 other respect we prefer the talented lady who broke off with 
 * pious aposiopesis ' when she touched upon the ' horrors 
 which are described in the pages of Suetonius and Livy ' 
 not to mention the yet worse infamies believed by many 
 scholars to be accurately portrayed in the lost works of 
 Plutarch, Venus, and Nicodemus, especially Nicodemus. 
 
 " Let us take one peep at the young men in Mr. Oscar 
 Wilde's story. Puppy No. I is the painter of the picture of 
 Dorian Gray ; Puppy No. 2 is the critic (a courtesy lord, 
 skilled in all the knowledge of the Egyptians and aweary of 
 
36 SAMUEL HENRY JEYES 
 
 all the sins and pleasures of London) ; Puppy No. 3 is the 
 original, cultivated by Puppy No. I with a ' romantic 
 friendship.' The Puppies fall a-talking : Puppy No. I 
 about his Art, Puppy No. 2 about his sins and pleasures and 
 the pleasures of sin, and Puppy No. 3 about himself always 
 about himself, and generally about his face, which is * brain- 
 less and beautiful.' The Puppies appear to fill up the 
 intervals of talk by plucking daisies and playing with them, 
 and sometimes by drinking c something with strawberry in 
 it.' The youngest Puppy is told that he is charming ; but 
 he mustn't sit in the sun for fear of spoiling his complexion. 
 When he is rebuked for being a naughty, wilful boy, he 
 makes a pretty moue this man of twenty ! This is how he 
 is addressed by the Blase" Puppy at their first meeting : 
 
 " ' Yes, Mr. Gray, the gods have been good to you. But 
 what the gods give they quickly take away. . . . Time is 
 jealous of you, and wars against your lilies and roses. You 
 will become sallow, and hollow-cheeked, and dull-eyed. You 
 will suffer horribly.' 
 
 " Why, bless our souls ! haven't we read something of 
 this kind somewhere in the classics ? Yes, of course we have ! 
 But in what recondite author ? Ah yes no yes, it was 
 in Horace ! What an advantage it is to have received a 
 classical education ! And how it will astonish the Yankees ! 
 But we must not forget our Puppies, who have probably 
 occupied their time in lapping * something with strawberry 
 in it.' Puppy No. I (the Art Puppy) has been telling Puppy 
 No. 3 (the Doll Puppy) how much he admires him. What 
 is the answer ? ' I am less to you than your ivory Hermes 
 or your silver Faun. You will like them always. How long 
 will you like me ? Till I have my first wrinkle, I suppose. 
 I know now that when one loses one's good looks, whatever 
 they may be, one loses everything. . . . I am jealous of the por- 
 trait you have painted of me. Why should it keep what I must 
 
MEMOIR 37 
 
 lose ? . . . Oh, if it was only the other way ! If the picture 
 could only change, and I could be always what I am now ! ' 
 
 " No sooner said than done ! The picture does change ; the 
 original doesn't. Here's a situation for you ! Theophile 
 Gautier could have made it romantic, entrancing, beautiful. 
 Mr. Stevenson could have made it convincing, humorous, 
 pathetic. Mr. Anstey could have made it screamingly 
 funny. It has been reserved for Mr. Oscar Wilde to make it 
 dull and nasty. The promising youth plunges into every 
 kind of mean depravity, and ends in being ' cut ' by fast 
 women and vicious men. He finishes with murder ; the 
 New Voluptuousness always leads up to blood-shedding 
 that is part of the cant. And every wickedness or filthiness 
 committed by Dorian Gray is faithfully registered upon his 
 face in the picture ; but his living features are undisturbed 
 and unmarred by his inward vileness. This is the story 
 which Mr. Oscar Wilde has tried to tell ; a very lame story 
 it is, and very lamely it is told. 
 
 " Why has he told it ? There are two explanations ; and, 
 so far as we can see, not more than two. Not to give pleasure 
 to his readers ; the thing is too clumsy, too tedious, and 
 alas ! that we should say it too stupid. Perhaps it was to 
 shock his readers, in order that they might cry Fie ! upon 
 him and talk about him. 
 
 " Are we then to suppose that Mr. Oscar Wilde has 
 yielded to the craving for a notoriety which he once earned 
 by talking fiddle-faddle about other men's art, and sees his 
 only chance of recalling it by making himself obvious at the 
 cost of being obnoxious, and by attracting the notice which 
 the olfactory sense cannot refuse to the presence of certain 
 self-asserting organisms ? That is an uncharitable hypo- 
 thesis, and we would gladly abandon it. It may be suggested 
 
38 SAMUEL HENRY JEYES 
 
 (but is it more charitable ?) that he derives pleasure from 
 treating a subject merely because it is disgusting. The 
 phenomenon is not unknown in recent literature ; and it 
 takes two forms, in appearance widely separate in fact, two 
 branches from the same root, a root which draws its life from 
 malodorous putrefaction. One development is found in the 
 Puritan prurience which produced Tolstoy's Kreutzer 
 Sonata and Mr. Stead's famous outbursts. That is odious 
 enough and mischievous enough, and it is rightly execrated, 
 because it is tainted with an hypocrisy not the less culpable 
 because charitable persons may believe it to be unconscious. 
 But is it more odious or more mischievous than the * frank 
 Paganism ' (that is the word, is it not ?) which delights in 
 dirtiness and confesses its delight ? Still they are both chips 
 from the same block The Maiden Tribute of Modern 
 Babylon and The Picture of Dorian Gray and both of them 
 ought to be chucked into the fire. Not so much because 
 they are dangerous and corrupt (they are corrupt but not 
 dangerous), as because they are incurably silly, written by 
 simple poseurs (whether they call themselves Puritan or 
 Pagan), who know nothing about the life which they affect 
 to have explored, and because they are mere catchpenny 
 revelations of the non-existent, which, if they reveal any- 
 thing at all, are revelations only of the singularly unpleasant 
 minds from which they emerge." 
 
 I should not have written this criticism myself, 
 nor did I wholly agree with it ; but it was a point 
 of view that was quite advisable to bring forward 
 at the time, and it appealed to many people who 
 were heartily glad to see the assertive decadent 
 school so faithfully handled. Wilde felt the 
 criticism acutely ; for he knew very well that if his 
 
MEMOIR 39 
 
 assailant's blows were rough, they were planted 
 with skill, and that they had got home where he 
 was weakest. Two days afterwards he attempted 
 to mollify the St. James's with a rather mildly- 
 worded remonstrance, in which he protested against 
 the imputation that his story had been written to 
 advertise himself ; and the following day (June 27th, 
 1890) he attempted a more elaborate defence. In 
 this he said that the writer of the review " was 
 incapable of concealing his personal malice," and so 
 had destroyed the effect he wished to produce. He 
 then proceeded to vindicate his conception and 
 treatment of the theme he had selected : 
 
 " Romantic art deals with the exception and with the 
 individual. Good people, belonging as they do to the 
 normal, and so, commonplace, type, are artistically un- 
 interesting. Bad people are, from the point of view of art, 
 fascinating studies. They represent colour, variety, and 
 strangeness. Good people exasperate one's reason ; bad 
 people stir one's imagination. Your critic, if I must give 
 him so honourable a title, states that the people in my 
 story have no counterpart in life ; that they are, to use his 
 vigorous if somewhat vulgar phrase, ' mere catchpenny 
 revelations of the non-existent.' Quite so. If they existed 
 they would not be worth writing about. The function of 
 the artist is to invent, not to chronicle. There are no such 
 people. If there were I would not write about them. Life 
 by its realism is always spoiling the subject-matter of art. 
 
 " The poor public, hearing from an authority so high as 
 
40 SAMUEL HENRY JEYES 
 
 your own, that this is a wicked book that should be coerced 
 and suppressed by a Tory Government, will, no doubt, rush 
 to it and read it. But, alas ! they will find that it is a story 
 with a moral. And the moral is this : All excess, as well as 
 all renunciation, brings its own punishment. 
 
 " The painter, Basil Hallward, worshipping physical 
 beauty far too much, as most painters do, dies by the hand 
 of one in whose soul he has created a monstrous and absurd 
 vanity. Dorian Gray, having led a life of mere sensation 
 and pleasure, tries to kill conscience, and at that moment 
 kills himself. Lord Henry VVotton seeks to be merely the 
 spectator of life. He finds that those who reject the battle 
 are more deeply wounded than those who take part in it. 
 
 " Yes ; there is a terrible moral in Dorian Gray a 
 moral which the prurient will not be able to find in it, but 
 which will be revealed to all whose minds are healthy. Is 
 this an artistic error ? I fear it is. It is the only error in 
 the book." 
 
 I told Jeyes that as he had drawn this upon us he 
 had better reply to it, which he did with gusto. 
 Mr. Oscar Wilde (he said in an editorial note, which 
 we appended to the letter) 
 
 " may perhaps be excused for being angry at the remarks 
 which we allowed ourselves to make concerning his moral 
 tale of the Three Puppies and the Magic Picture ; but he 
 should not misrepresent us. He says we suggested that his 
 novel was a wicked book which should be coerced and sup- 
 pressed by a Tory Government. We did nothing of the 
 kind. The authors of books of much less questionable 
 character have been proceeded against by the Treasury or 
 the Vigilance Society ; but we expressly said that we hoped 
 Mr. Wilde's masterpiece would be left alone. 
 
MEMOIR 41 
 
 " Then Mr. Wilde (like any young lady who has published 
 her first novel at the request of numerous friends) falls back 
 on the theory of the critic's personal malice. This is un- 
 worthy of so experienced a literary gentleman. We can 
 assure Mr. Wilde that the writer of that article had, and 
 has, no personal malice or personal feeling towards him. We 
 can surely censure a work which we believe to be silly, and 
 know to be offensive, without the imputation of malice 
 especially when that book is written by one who is so clearly 
 capable of better things. 
 
 " As for the critical question, Mr. Wilde is beating the 
 air when he defends idealism and * romantic art ' in litera- 
 ture. In the words of Mrs. Harris to Mrs. Gamp, * Who's 
 a-deniging of it ? ' 
 
 " Heaven forbid that we should refuse to an author the 
 { supreme pleasure of realising the non-existent ' ; or that 
 we should judge the * aesthetic ' from the purely ' ethical ' 
 standpoint. 
 
 " No ; our criticism starts from lower ground. Mr. 
 Wilde says that his story is a moral tale, because the wicked 
 persons in it come to a bad end. We will not be so rude as 
 to quote a certain remark about morality which one Mr. 
 Charles Surface made to Mr. Joseph Surface. We simply 
 say that every critic has the right to point out that a work 
 of art or literature is dull and incompetent in its treatment 
 as The Picture of Dorian Gray is ; and that its dullness and 
 incompetence are not redeemed because it constantly hints, 
 not obscurely, at disgusting sins and abominable crimes as 
 The Picture of Dorian Gray does." 
 
 Wilde returned to the encounter with further 
 communications, to which Jeyes responded with 
 the same trenchant and logical directness. The 
 
42 SAMUEL HENRY JEYES 
 
 Daily Chronicle, Henley and Charles Whibley 
 in the Scots Observer, and other journals and 
 journalists, took up the controversy, 1 and Wilde 
 retired from the contest with his original aggressor. 
 Before that he had come down to the office to state 
 his case personally. He told me that he had no 
 feeling of animosity against the author of the 
 review, whose culture and honesty he respected, 
 and that he would like to talk with him. I brought 
 in Jeyes ; and Wilde argued at considerable length, 
 and employed all the resources of his persuasive 
 manner and abounding wit to bring over his for- 
 midable critic. Jeyes, however, refused to be 
 mollified. " What is the use," he said, " of writing 
 of, and hinting at, things you do not mean ? " "I 
 assure you," replied Oscar earnestly, " I mean 
 every word I have said, and everything at which I 
 have hinted, in Dorian Gray." " Then all I can 
 say," answered Jeyes grimly, " is that if you do 
 mean them, you are very likely to find yourself at 
 Bow Street one of these days." I thought of that 
 shrewd warning, and the light laugh with which 
 Wilde greeted it, often enough afterwards when the 
 saddest tragedy of modern English literature was 
 enacted, and " the beacon's light was quenched in 
 
 1 The various newspaper articles, including those in the St. 
 James's Gazette, with Wilde's letters and the editorial comments 
 on them, have been collected and reprinted in a little book en- 
 titled Art and Morality, published in 1907, and reissued in 1912. 
 
MEMOIR 43 
 
 smoke," the murky and mephitic vapours of the 
 Central Criminal Court. 
 
 Our close association at the St. James's ended in 
 May, 1891, when Jeyes was offered, and accepted, the 
 assistant-editorship of the Standard. He left the 
 little office in Dorset Street with regret ; but the 
 post at Shoe Lane was too important to be refused. 
 To the Standard his main energies were devoted till 
 (in a quite literal sense) the day of his death ; for 
 he was correcting proofs for the paper a few hours 
 before he passed away. The Standard, when Jeyes 
 joined its staff, was at the height of its influence and 
 prosperity. After a long and chequered career, 
 during which it had experienced many vicissitudes 
 of fortune, it had been steadily built up, under the 
 sagacious and capable management of Mr. W. H. 
 Mudford, into one of the finest properties of the 
 English newspaper world. It had a large circulation, 
 a very lucrative advertising connection, and an 
 almost unequalled reputation for weight, stability, 
 and soundness. It was the special organ of the well- 
 to-do middle-classes, and of the great solid, mercan- 
 tile, manufacturing, and trading interests. Its 
 news service, if it lacked the enterprise and sparkle 
 of some of its contemporaries, was deemed excep- 
 tionally trustworthy ; it paid great attention to 
 foreign affairs, and vied with the Times as the repre- 
 sentative of English opinion for the financiers and 
 publicists of the Continent ; and its leading articles 
 
44 SAMUEL HENRY JEYES 
 
 were considered with profound attention in 
 thousands of the most respectable households 
 throughout the kingdom. Lord Palmerston's " man 
 in a white hat on the knife-board of an omnibus " 
 took his politics largely from the Standard ; so did 
 the man in the Conservative clubs, and the man in 
 the first-class railway carriage. It was, in fact, a 
 great power in those days, and if its artillery was 
 sometimes a little slow on the march it was un- 
 doubtedly effective. When the Standard chose to 
 bring all its guns into action to attack some cause 
 or personality, which it did but seldom for it had 
 a sedate dislike for superfluous activity, it could 
 breach the strongest fortress. 
 
 To the service of this influential journal Jeyes 
 gave ungrudgingly of his best for twenty years. 
 The work was arduous and responsible, but I believe 
 he found it from the first congenial. The Standard 
 was strictly anonymous, and Jeyes liked anonymity. 
 He cared nothing for the show of power ; but he 
 enjoyed the consciousness of it. To remain unknown 
 to the general public, and the paragraphists of the 
 Press, did not trouble him in the least ; but it 
 pleased him to feel that he wielded an influence over 
 the men who were really " doing things," and over 
 the things they did. He found an artistic delight 
 in bringing to bear the solid impact of the great 
 engine he helped to control upon the plastic mass 
 of public opinion. He was interested in the varied 
 
MEMOIR 45 
 
 phases of journalistic activity which came before 
 him, whether he were interviewing a Cabinet 
 Minister on some delicate international question, 
 or mollifying an exasperated printer struggling with 
 belated copy, or making sense of cryptic telegrams 
 from St. Petersburg and Vienna, or toning down the 
 exuberancies of descriptive reporters and dramatic 
 critics. He enjoyed the details of newspaper 
 management, and read manuscripts, corrected 
 proofs, and conducted correspondence, with un- 
 wearied assiduity. Many sides of human nature 
 came before him, and he met them all with the 
 same surface cynicism, the same broad and kindly 
 comprehension, and the same blunt directness of 
 speech. He could always lighten work with a jest, 
 and sweeten it with an act of kindness. One evening 
 an indoor messenger, in some fit of despondency, was 
 discovered making an abortive attempt to cut his 
 throat with a blunt table-knife. There was much 
 excitement, instant notice of dismissal for the 
 culprit, and flurried proposals to send for the police. 
 Jeyes intervened and vetoed all such action. He said 
 that if the lad were sent away, or brought before the 
 magistrate, he would be ruined, and would be sure 
 to commit suicide in earnest, sooner or later. At the 
 office he would be among friends and comrades, who 
 could keep an eye upon him, and would make him 
 heartily ashamed of his foolishness. Even so was it 
 done ; the young man remained at his work, which 
 
40 SAMUEL HENRY JEYES 
 
 he did very well, and gave nobody, so far as I know, 
 any further cause for anxiety. A life which might 
 have gone to wreck was redeemed and rendered use- 
 ful by Jeyes's practical good sense and good-nature. 
 To the paper itself his attitude was rather like 
 that of the Duke of Wellington towards the ad- 
 ministration of the country. " The Queen's 
 Government must be carried on." He regarded 
 the Standard as a kind of national institution, so 
 valuable that it ought to be maintained and kept 
 at its best level of usefulness, even at a heavy sacrifice 
 of private interests and personal feelings. He 
 worked under four different editors, very different 
 in character and temperament, with the same 
 soldier-like loyalty, doing an immense amount of 
 hard work for each, and always with a strict and 
 disciplined fidelity. Withal he retained his in- 
 dependence, and never hesitated to express himself 
 very plainly when he thought the wrong thing was 
 being done. Anybody who took liberties with him 
 was apt to get a quick and awkward riposte. An 
 aristocratic and haughty young under-secretary of 
 state, from whom he was endeavouring to elicit 
 some information, said to him, " Do you suppose I 
 am here to answer the questions of newspaper 
 reporters ? ' 3 " I don't know what you are here for," 
 replied Jeyes, " but I know I am not here to stand 
 
 impudence from any jack-in- office." The 
 
 noble lord collapsed and apologized. One of his 
 
MEMOIR 47 
 
 editors had a fussy way of invariably altering the 
 opening sentence of his contributors' articles. 
 Jeyes cured him of the habit by sending in his copy 
 with the first half of the opening sentence left 
 blank. He had a great objection to being unfairly 
 treated, and angrily resented any attempt to " do " 
 him ; and in spite of his habitual placidity he was a 
 formidable opponent when fairly roused. I recall a 
 little adventure that occurred when we were once 
 together in the Casino at Dieppe, and a croupier at 
 the roulette-table refused to pay him some money 
 which he had won, or thought he had won. The 
 official curtly repudiated the claim, and evidently 
 considered the incident closed. It was not. Jeyes 
 slowly heaved himself up from his seat, leaned both 
 arms upon the table, dropped his somewhat hesi- 
 tating French, and in very loud and emphatic 
 English demanded his money. The startled croupier 
 paused just long enough to throw a glance at the 
 burly figure and resolute face confronting him, and 
 then without a word complied with the request. 
 " I should have kicked the table over in another 
 minute," said Jeyes, as he pocketed his francs and 
 turned away. 
 
 Though quick, and sometimes indiscreetly frank, 
 in speech, he was extremely cautious in action, and 
 at the Standard his influence was always used 
 against hasty experiments or ill-considered, half- 
 thought-out declarations of policy. As time wore 
 
48 SAMUEL HENRY JEYES 
 
 on his conservatism took a stronger tinge, and he 
 became rather a keen party man, though he could 
 always view the conduct and utterances of his own 
 leaders with philosophical detachment. He thought, 
 however, that in a country where the party system 
 prevails it is absurd for a person concerned in active 
 politics to affect complete independence. Better to 
 get something done, even if it is not the best thing 
 possible, than to skirmish ineffectually between the 
 armies and do nothing at all. " England," he said, 
 " was not made by the mugwumps." Apart from 
 this he was, as I have said, really a Conservative by 
 temperament, in his love for order and tradition, 
 his dislike of sciolism, and his distrust of democracy. 
 His political information was accurate and wide, 
 founded on an extensive acquaintance with the 
 memoirs and biographies of the nineteenth century ; 
 and no man read his blue-books and parliamentary 
 papers more carefully. Withal it was the personal 
 side of politics that interested him most. I fre- 
 quently disagreed with him in his judgment of 
 measures ; but I was always struck by the acuteness 
 of his comments upon men. The best things he 
 wrote for the Standard were, I think, the series of 
 Letters to Eminent Persons signed " Friar John," 
 extracts from which are given in this volume. 1 
 Some of his epigrams are characteristic, as when he 
 gently ascribes to one self-satisfied politician " a 
 
 1 See pp. 75 sqq. 
 
MEMOIR 49 
 
 certain deficiency in the art of self-measurement," 
 or tells another distinguished personage that he 
 possesses " a temper as genial as can be afforded by 
 a man who has to make his own way in life." There 
 is wit as well as a profound knowledge of the English 
 political temper in the remark that nothing is so 
 hard for a public man to live down as a reputation 
 for facetiousness. 
 
 Outside his office, whether in Dorset Street or in 
 Shoe Lane, Jeyes found time to do a good deal of 
 writing. Soon after coming to the St. James's he 
 set about a rather elaborate account of the public 
 life of the late Lord Salisbury, which he undertook, 
 I believe, chiefly as a good exercise for a young 
 journalist anxious to gain a mastery over con- 
 temporary political history. It was published (in 
 1894) in four volumes, and issued by one of those 
 firms which sell large illustrated books by subscrip- 
 tion, and do not specially court the notice of 
 the literary reviews. Consequently this biography 
 attracted less attention than it deserved ; for it is 
 quite an adequate piece of work, accurate and well- 
 written, with much useful information compiled 
 from the newspapers and the parliamentary debates 
 and other official sources. While at the Standard 
 Jeyes contributed a good memoir of Lord Rosebery 
 to the series of volumes called "The Prime 
 Ministers of England " (1906). To another series 
 (" Public Men of the Day ") he had contributed a, 
 
50 SAMUEL HENRY JEYES 
 
 short biography of Mr. Chamberlain in 1896; and 
 in 1903 he published a more elaborate Life of that 
 statesman, on which he expended a considerable 
 amount of labour. A biography of a man still 
 living is not an easy task to accomplish, and there 
 were special difficulties in this case. Nor was Jeyes 
 wholly in sympathy with his subject in all its 
 aspects. But the record of Mr. Chamberlain's 
 public career is set forth judicially and systemati- 
 cally, and the book holds its place as a capable and 
 well-balanced contribution, so far as its scope and 
 limitations permit, to the political history of the 
 later nineteenth century period. Intimate know- 
 ledge is shown of the working of the party system, 
 and there are many sagacious and penetrating 
 observations on events and their causes and results. 
 There was no flattery or hero worship in these dis- 
 criminating pages ; but Mr. Chamberlain was pleased 
 with them, and wrote to the author to say so. 
 
 " DEAR MR. JEYES, 
 
 " I am much obliged to you for a copy of your book. 
 I don't think that a man can criticise his own biography, 
 and I am not certain that he should read it ; but I may 
 express my interest in the account of contemporary politics 
 which your book necessarily contains, and my appreciation 
 of the fairness and friendliness with which your task has 
 
 been executed. .. 
 
 " Believe me, 
 
 " Yours very truly, 
 " J. CHAMBERLAIN," 
 
MEMOIR 51 
 
 Some of the proofs were submitted to the late 
 Mr. Justin McCarthy, who sent the author a note 
 upon a certain important and much-discussed 
 episode, which may be read with interest : 
 
 " Slip twenty-four about the Kilmainham Treaty is 
 all right. You can safely let it stand. Later on, where you 
 deal with the Lord Carnarvon negotiations, there is one 
 mistake. The meetings with Lord Carnarvon were in 
 London not Dublin. There were three interviews in 
 all. I saw Carnarvon for that purpose twice Parnell 
 only once. Lord Carnarvon sent for me in the first in- 
 stance through a Conservative member, a friend of his and 
 of mine, who is still in the House of Commons. I had a 
 long talk with Lord Carnarvon. His object was to get an 
 interview with Parnell, which I told him I would do my 
 best to arrange. He told me he was prepared to go as far 
 in the way of Home Rule as Parnell or I wished to go. 
 With some difficulty I induced Parnell to see him ; but the 
 interview took place, and Parnell told me it was most satis- 
 factory to him. Later on I had a second interview with 
 Lord Carnarvon at the house of another Tory friend. He 
 had come over from Dublin, and had been to Hatfield. 
 He told me he had failed, owing to one or two untoward 
 events, in prevailing upon his colleagues to go in for a 
 Home Rule scheme, but he assured me that if he had three 
 months' time to work it he could have succeeded. Of 
 course I had no way of judging whether he was too sanguine 
 
 or not. ,, T , . 
 
 ' Very truly yours, 
 
 " JUSTIN MCCARTHY." 
 
 In these years neither journalism nor literature 
 took up all his energies, in spite of the industry 
 
52 SAMUEL HENRY JEYES 
 
 with which he laboured at his office and his desk. 
 Soon after coming to the St. James's he installed 
 himself in a pleasant suite of bachelor chambers in 
 Jermyn Street, in which he resided till his marriage. 
 In friendship and society he found agreeable relief 
 from the pressure of professional duties. He was 
 a good deal the man about town, and affected to be 
 something of a viveur. He was at any rate a welcome 
 guest at some rather exclusive dinner tables and 
 country houses. Lord Curzon, Lord Midleton, 
 Lord Dudley, Lord and Lady Londonderry, Lord 
 and Lady Burghclere, Mr. George Wyndham, and 
 other people notable in the world of politics and 
 society appreciated his humour, his bonhomie, and 
 his sagacious comments on men and affairs. In the 
 early 'nineties he became acquainted with Lady 
 St. Helier, then Lady Jeune ; and as a rising 
 political journalist, and a possible future editor of a 
 great daily newspaper, he was naturally received 
 with favour in what was then the most interesting 
 and comprehensive salon in London. He was often 
 seen at the dinner-parties and luncheons at Harley 
 Street, where everybody who was anybody, or 
 might become anybody, was in due course to be 
 met. Some of them formed associations with 
 Jeyes, which endured to the end of his life. Like 
 Dr. Johnson, he "kept his friendships in repair," 
 not only by many courteous and graceful acts, 
 but by real and considerable expenditure of 
 
MEMOIR 53 
 
 time, thought, and money, when these were 
 required. 
 
 Many people resorted to him for advice, for they 
 knew that his counsel in all practical affairs was 
 likely to be sound, and that it was certain to be the 
 result of sincere thought and careful consideration. 
 His circle of intimacy included some charming and 
 distinguished feminine figures. All his life he 
 might have been called Pami des femmes, using the 
 words in the best sense ; for he had that genuine 
 and unaffected interest in the personality and 
 psychology of women which seldom fails to awaken 
 their own interest in response. Several ladies, eminent 
 in the literary or the social worlds or in both, con- 
 sulted Jeyes about their writings or their business 
 affairs or upon subjects more delicate still ; and in his 
 busiest moments he could always find time to help 
 them. He read their manuscripts, gave them 
 valuable hints upon composition and style, super- 
 vised their correspondence with publishers and 
 solicitors, and sometimes with troublesome kinsfolk, 
 and generally guided, protected, and petted them 
 with an elder-brotherly solicitude which was grate- 
 fully appreciated. One brilliant and successful 
 lady-novelist owed her first attempt in fiction to his 
 encouragement, and has never written a better book 
 than that which she produced under his mentorship. 
 To another clever woman he was the kindliest and 
 most intimate of friends for years, and never with- 
 
54 SAMUEL HENRY JEYES 
 
 held his sympathy and aid through vagaries and 
 adventures which were sometimes trying. His 
 attitude towards women was a little Thackerayan 
 and mid-Victorian in its humorous tolerance. 
 Much as he liked them he never, I think, could take 
 them with complete seriousness, or quite got over 
 the feeling that the charm of the dear creatures 
 consisted largely in their delightful inconsequence, 
 their entrancing unreasonableness. He found these 
 traits, to his exceeding enjoyment, even in his 
 learned and literary feminine friends. Among the 
 manuscripts which used to pass through his hands 
 at the St. James's were those of a " great lady " 
 whose vigorous style we rather admired. " She 
 doesn't write like a woman," I said. " She spells 
 like one," replied Jeyes. 
 
 A lady who gave him much of her confidence was 
 " John Oliver Hobbes," that delightful and gifted 
 Pearl Cragie, genius, saint, woman of the world, 
 and blue-stocking, who irradiated the literary and 
 social life of London for a few brilliant years. 
 Jeyes admired everything about her, except her 
 rather portentous erudition. There was once some 
 talk of her possible marriage to a very distinguished 
 person. " It will be hard work for him," said Jeyes ; 
 " he will have to get up all the Early Christian 
 Fathers before the wedding." 
 
 In these latest years of the nineteenth century, 
 and those which followed, Jeyes always gave me and 
 
MEMOIR 55 
 
 others the impression of being an exceedingly happy 
 man. He was interested in the various activities and 
 amusements of his well-filled days. Although he 
 kept late hours in Fleet Street, he was rather an 
 early riser ; and he was usually to be found sitting 
 down to his breakfast at about nine o'clock. Then 
 perhaps he would go for a stroll along Piccadilly and 
 into the Park ; and I daresay murmur a stanza of 
 Horace, or of our later Horace, to himself as he cast 
 his observant eyes round, and saw how 
 
 " Our world to-day, 
 Tried in the scale, would scarce outweigh 
 
 Your Roman cronies. 
 Walk in the Park you'll seldom fail 
 To find a Sybaris on the rail, 
 
 By Lydia's ponies ; 
 
 Or hap on Barrus, wigged and stayed, 
 Ogling some unsuspecting maid." 
 
 He would return to his rooms and read through a 
 dozen newspapers, London, provincial, and foreign, 
 and perhaps glance at a blue-book or parliamentary 
 report or some recent volume of memoirs till it was 
 time for lunch at the Garrick Club. This agreeable 
 circle, which has retained its character of intimacy 
 and friendliness amid the devastation that has fallen 
 upon the club life of London, Jeyes regarded with 
 the affectionate loyalty which the Garrick often 
 inspires among its members. He was at his best 
 when he was regaling the after-luncheon group, 
 gathered in the lounge, with joke, satire, and 
 
56 SAMUEL HENRY JEYES 
 
 piquant gossip. One of his friends, himself a 
 popular and distinguished member of the Garrick, 
 has furnished me with the following Note upon 
 Jeyes in his capacity of club-man : 
 
 " The saying that a man may be known by his 
 club is probably truer than most generalisations of 
 the kind. 
 
 " One would not consult a member of the 
 Athenaeum upon a matter of racing lore, and if one 
 wanted to find Sydney Scraper, and did not know 
 his club, I rather think we should look in at the 
 Oxford and Cambridge about dinner time, on the 
 chance of finding him still ' simpering over the 
 Quarterly Review in the blameless enjoyment of his 
 half pint of port.' 
 
 " The Garrick was certainly Jeyes's favourite 
 haunt. It has always been a popular resort among 
 literary men. The reason is not far to seek. It is 
 one of the few clubs which has successfully main- 
 tained the tradition of easy and friendly companion- 
 ship, based upon the assumption, so heretical to the 
 old-fashioned clubman, that a fellow-member may 
 be a human being of like feelings with oneself. 
 
 " A distinguished theologian has recently com- 
 plained that friendship is a sensitive plant which 
 has not time to mature in the stress and rush of 
 modern life. In clubs like the Garrick a rest cure 
 may be found for that distracted sentiment, perhaps 
 the only places left where middle age can hope to 
 
MEMOIR 57 
 
 keep its friendship in tolerable repair. Literature, 
 from its very nature, must be a solitary profession. 
 To its practitioner after a day's work the free and 
 easy talk and laughter of a congenial circle must 
 always be a grateful relaxation. Of the friendly 
 spirit essential to such a result Jeyes was the very 
 embodiment. No one ever entered into the genial 
 flow of club talk with more contagious good humour. 
 An admirable talker himself, he was something rarer 
 and finer, the cause of good talk in others. Good 
 talkers are scarce enough, but good talkers who will 
 listen are social pearls beyond price, and infinitely 
 rarer. 
 
 " No one could listen long to Jeyes's talk without 
 being impressed by his wide knowledge and in- 
 tellectual outlook ; but while, like Addison, he could 
 * draw for a thousand pounds,' unlike that eminent 
 author and politician he had no lack of small 
 change, and could hold his own admirably in the 
 lighter interchanges of the smoking-room, or rather 
 hall, which, after an internecine conflict perceptibly 
 longer than the Boer War, was annexed, despite 
 horrific protests, to the smoking area of the establish- 
 ment. 
 
 " As a conversationalist he did not lend himself 
 so much to quotation, but perhaps would best be 
 described by Dr. Johnson's definition of the most 
 agreeable form of that engaging art : 
 
 " ' The happiest conversation is that of which 
 
58 SAMUEL HENRY JEYES 
 
 nothing is distinctly remembered but a general 
 effect of pleasing impression.' 
 
 " His friends used sometimes to rally him upon 
 his entire lack of that most famous of all human 
 irritants, the Oxford manner. Indeed, it was not 
 always easy to bear in mind that the kindly 
 humorist, who threw himself so frankly into the 
 fun of the moment, was a distinguished and scholarly 
 Oxonian. One can even recall unscrupulous at- 
 tempts, always, I am bound to confess, unsuccessful, 
 to draw him into comparative controversy by 
 affecting to believe that his education had been 
 completed on the banks of the Cam. No one was 
 ever less of the Don. Even Oxford did not prevent 
 his enjoying the humour, when a brilliant member 
 complained, at a time when some ill-conditioned 
 people thought that our statesmen were drawn per- 
 haps too exclusively from a certain college in Broad 
 Street, that England was being ruined by ' these sons 
 of Balliol.' 
 
 " For several years he served on the Committee 
 of the Garrick, at whose consultations his admirable 
 good sense was always a strengthening force. 
 
 " At the Beefsteak Club he was always a welcome 
 diner, and though he only joined it comparatively 
 late in life, he caught at once its homely and inti- 
 mate note. No one ever had more of that most 
 priceless of all social gifts, what Robert Louis 
 Stevenson calls the gift of intimacy. Most social 
 
MEMOIR 59 
 
 qualities are reciprocal. Clubs liked Jeyes perhaps 
 in part because he liked clubs so much himself. 
 No member was ever more popular. In a way they 
 embodied the qualities which specially appealed 
 to him, the toleration, easy give and take, all the 
 amenities which make the camaraderie of club life. 
 There was no club of which he was a member that 
 did not feel perceptibly the poorer by his loss. 
 Always giving of his best, he was fortunate in the 
 possession of the qualities, not too common in 
 themselves, and thrice precious in combination, 
 which go to the making the most agreeable of all 
 types produced by the evolution of the city life, a 
 clubbable man." 
 
 After lunch Jeyes would sometimes play a game of 
 billiards ; then perhaps to Shoe Lane for the after- 
 noon, and back to his rooms to dress for a dinner- 
 party. The hours in Fleet Street were more in- 
 dulgent than they have become in these times when 
 the daily papers are " on the stone " before mid- 
 night. In the late 'nineties it was still possible for 
 an editor to dine with some comfort and begin his 
 night's task afterwards. His engagements never 
 interfered with Jeyes's work. He was very regular 
 and punctual in his attendance at the office, and 
 neither social distractions nor his occasional attacks 
 of gout, would keep him away from his desk. Some- 
 times when he could hardly hobble into a four- 
 wheeler he would get down to Shoe Lane somehow, 
 
60 SAMUEL HENRY JEYES 
 
 and write leaders, and instruct printers and re- 
 porters, with an inflamed foot resting on a chair. 
 And the chief sign he gave of suffering was to 
 answer rather testily if anybody asked him how he 
 felt. 
 
 He did not take many holidays. Country bred 
 and born, with his roots in the soil, he had become 
 a thorough-going Londoner, and he loved London, 
 as Thackeray loved it or Johnson, and was never, 
 I think, entirely comfortable when far from its 
 throbbing heart and multitudinous voices, When 
 he sought a change it was usually with his friends or 
 kinsfolk in some part of England. In the autumn of 
 1897 he was the guest of my wife and myself for a 
 week at Puys, near Dieppe. Henry M. Stanley 
 and Gilbert Parker, with their wives, and other 
 friends of ours, were staying in the hotel at Puys 
 at the time, and likewise as it happened the lady 
 whom Jeyes afterwards married. It was a pleasant 
 party, and Jeyes kept us all in good spirits with his 
 unfailing store of epigram, anecdote, and genial 
 satire. 
 
 He was married on December 30th, 1901, to Miss 
 Genevieve Sherman, daughter of Charles Edward 
 Sherman, of New York, U.S.A., and step-daughter 
 to Mr. Edwin Bale, R.I., a painter of charming 
 landscapes in water colours, and the art-director of 
 a great publishing firm. Marriage brought much 
 to Jeyes besides content and a deeper happiness, and 
 
MEMOIR 61 
 
 the closest and most sympathetic companionship. 
 He had hardly ever been out of England till he was 
 middle-aged ; but he became something of a 
 traveller in his later years. He took his holidays in 
 France, Italy, and Switzerland ; he accompanied 
 his wife on a longish visit to the United States and 
 Canada, in which he got as far as the Pacific 
 Coast; he spent a month in 1909 in the Canaries; 
 in 1910 he was in Portugal, went up the Douro 
 valley, and stayed for some weeks at Busaco ; and 
 he was projecting a somewhat protracted journey 
 into the East when his final illness fell upon him. 
 
 After his marriage he lived for a couple of years 
 in a flat in Victoria Street. Then he moved to his 
 father-in-law's house in Grove End Road, St. John's 
 Wood. In that pleasant suburb, with its wide, 
 clean roadways, and its groves rustling under the 
 breeze from the northern heights, Jeyes took great 
 delight. From the fumum et opes strepitumque 
 Romae he escaped gladly to Mr. Bale's green lawn 
 and gay flower-beds, and the ample studio, where 
 he smoked his pipes and wrote his articles. The 
 Garrick saw him less often ; busy in his office and 
 his home, he had fewer hours to spare for mis- 
 cellaneous society and amusement. 
 
 In the autumn of 1904, while Jeyes was on a 
 holiday with his wife in France, he received a 
 telegram calling him back to London to learn that 
 the Standard had been sold, and that a new pro- 
 
62 SAMUEL HENRY JEYES 
 
 prietor had entered into possession. The news fell 
 upon many people in Fleet Street and elsewhere like 
 a thunderbolt ; for though the sale to Mr. C. 
 Arthur Pearson had in fact occurred some months 
 earlier, the arrangement had been kept secret, 
 and the editor and the staff went on working, un- 
 conscious of the vast change that had been made in 
 their position and prospects. To Jeyes the shock 
 was severe. George Byron Curtis, who had suc- 
 ceeded Mr. Mudford in the editorship, was an 
 amiable, kindly, and conscientious journalist, and 
 his promotion had been well earned by many years 
 of assiduous service. But during his tenure of the 
 office the direction of the paper passed more and 
 more into the hands of Jeyes, and it was the general 
 expectation that he would in due course perhaps 
 before very long find himself elevated to the 
 editorship. The succession to the post seemed his 
 by right, and in harmony with office precedent. 
 The Standard editorial staff had been a close hier- 
 archy, and promotion came according to established 
 rules. Intervention from outside was deemed un- 
 likely. The paper, until the few years immediately 
 preceding the transfer, had sailed on its prosperous 
 course, serenely indifferent to the doings of its 
 contemporaries and the many currents quivering 
 through the journalistic world. Even so might 
 some great galleon have rolled heavily through the 
 Spanish Main, with its cargo of ingots, and its 
 
MEMOIR 63 
 
 company of contemptuous Dons, till the black 
 craft with the raking masts shot alongside out 
 of the blue ; and presently the crew were under 
 hatches, with the broad banner of St. Jago trampled 
 on the deck, and the Jolly Roger flapping in its 
 place. It was one of the tragedies of Fleet Street, 
 that street of many tragedies. 
 
 The captors of the Standard were indulgent, and 
 even generous, in their victory. It was only natural 
 that Mr. Pearson should prefer to send to the quarter- 
 deck a chief officer of his own choosing. Poor 
 Curtis, not illiberally compensated, had to go. 
 But the new proprietary recognised the value of 
 the assistant-editor, and ample offers were made to 
 him. After some hesitation he decided to remain. 
 His decision was due to his sense of loyalty to the 
 Standard far more than to any pecuniary considera- 
 tions. He had helped to direct the vessel in its 
 days of success, and it went against his feelings to 
 desert it when if was steering through somewhat 
 broken waters. 
 
 But he knew that with the appointment of a 
 capable and energetic new editor his own chance 
 of the succession had practically disappeared. He 
 had never the slightest doubt of that himself, and 
 the blow was deeply felt. His life, for years past, 
 had been bound up with the great daily. Amid all 
 his other occupations and amusements this was his 
 one abiding interest He had served faithfully 
 
64 SAMUEL HENRY JEYES 
 
 and well, and he looked forward confidently to his 
 reward, though he seldom gave expression to the 
 hope. When a tempting offer of a colonial editor- 
 ship, with a very large salary, was made to him he 
 refused it without hesitation. " I suppose I shall 
 be editor of the Standard some time or other, you 
 know," he said to me, in one of his rare moments of 
 self-revelation. And to be editor of the Standard 
 was what he wanted ; it was almost the only thing 
 he did want. With his combination of ambition 
 and reserve it was the position that would have 
 satisfied him better than any other. The honours 
 and the perpetual advertisement of public life 
 would have jarred upon him ; nor do I think he 
 would have really cared very much for literary 
 distinction. But to have the consciousness of power, 
 without parading his personality, to remain in the 
 background, and yet in a sense to feel that he was 
 ruling the rulers of mankind, to know that under 
 the veil of anonymity he was exerting a great 
 influence upon great events all this appealed to 
 him keenly. Moreover, he liked the business of 
 journalism, and would have welcomed the oppor- 
 tunity of independent direction. To see all this 
 prospect swept away at a stroke was bitter indeed. 
 He never, I think, quite recovered from the effects 
 of the reverse. 
 
 But he did not complain or lament, and he shrank 
 sensitively from the undignified pose of a disap- 
 
MEMOIR 65 
 
 pointed man. He went on with his work for the 
 Standard, quietly and steadily as before ; and only 
 a very few who knew him well could perceive that 
 there was some dimming of the old spontaneous joie 
 de vivre, some loss of buoyancy and zest. The 
 editor under the Pearson regime, Mr. H. A. Gwynne, 
 was as much indebted to Jeyes as his predecessors 
 had been for invaluable co-operation, competent 
 advice, and pertinacious labour. 
 
 It was labour after a time done under increasing 
 stress ; for Jeyes's health was slowly breaking. In 
 his earlier years I gather that he had impressed his 
 contemporaries as a person of exceptional physical 
 vigour. Though he affected to scorn athletics at 
 school he was stronger than most of the athletes. 
 Two of his schoolmates, both tall and lusty youths, 
 once tried to force him into the stocks of a country 
 village near Uppingham, but their united powers 
 could not overcome the victim's resistance. At 
 Trinity his splendid health was the admiration of 
 his friends. He believed in it himself with that 
 kind of i//3pj? which the Greeks thought the high 
 gods will surely punish. While we were at the 
 St. James's I had to condole with him on the death 
 of a near kinsman anno aetat. 74. " A good age to 
 live to," I said. " Do you think so ? " answered 
 Jeyes ; " I expect to live much longer than that 
 myself." Mr. Freeman tells me that in their 
 college days Jeyes said to him : " If I marry and 
 
66 SAMUEL HENRY JEYES 
 
 have children, I do not suppose I shall leave them 
 much, except, I hope, my own iron constitu- 
 
 tion." 
 
 So do we make a jest of Fate ! There must have 
 been some alloy in the iron ; for in later years Jeyes 
 suffered not infrequently from gout and other 
 ailments, though he made, and kept, a sturdy 
 resolution that they should not impede his work. 
 I do not know when exactly the first symptoms 
 appeared of the painful malady which cut short his 
 life. To his physicians the case appeared grave from 
 the outset. Jeyes, however, presented an unruffled 
 front to the world, nor would he suffer himself to 
 relax his journalistic and literary activities. He 
 even undertook new tasks and obligations. Among 
 these was the volume entitled The Russells of Bir- 
 mingham, prepared and completed some years before 
 his death, though it was not published till the 
 autumn of 1911. 
 
 This book was founded upon a collection of papers, 
 dealing with the affairs of a Midland family in the 
 closing period of the eighteenth, and the early years 
 of the nineteenth, century. Jeyes handled the 
 materials entrusted to him with much skill, and wove 
 them into an extremely interesting and illuminative 
 narrative. William Russell of Birmingham was a 
 close friend of Dr. Priestley, and he shared in the 
 popular animosity aroused by the opinions of that 
 radical, humanitarian, and heterodox divine. He 
 
MEMOIR 67 
 
 was so " French " in his sympathies, and so ardent 
 an admirer of the Revolution, that he had his house 
 burnt by a patriotic Church-and-King mob in the 
 famous Birmingham Riots of 1791. England 
 .becoming impossible for him he migrated to the 
 United States with his family, was captured on the 
 voyage by a French man-of-war, and met with 
 various adventures in the Old World and the New. 
 " Against their will," says Jeyes, " almost without 
 their knowledge, these prosperous, cultivated, in- 
 conspicuous persons were thrust from the hum- 
 drum routine of a sheltered life, and caught in the 
 vortex of international strife. Their journals and 
 correspondence, casually composed and accidentally 
 preserved, show us how the vicissitudes of war and 
 peace affected a class of English people who have 
 been given little space in the printed records of a 
 momentous age." The book sheds useful sidelights 
 on some aspects of this crowded time. It also 
 exhibits Jeyes's literary craftsmanship at his best. 
 His instinct for character and motive finds ample 
 scope in his treatment of this little group of highly 
 respectable middle-class Britons ; and there is a 
 flow of quiet humour running through these pages 
 which suggests that the author, if he had found 
 leisure and opportunity, might have become a 
 successful practitioner of fiction in the school of 
 Jane Austen, always one of his favourite novelists. 
 The style, too, is reminiscent of that admirable 
 
68 SAMUEL HENRY JEYES 
 
 model in its lucidity, its precision, its lightness of 
 touch, and its absolute freedom from meretricious- 
 ness and straining after effect, which to Jeyes were 
 the least pardonable of literary misdemeanours. 
 
 Another commission he accepted was that of 
 writing a biography of the late Sir Howard Vincent, 
 an uncongenial and uncomfortable task, which 
 had to be left unfinished, though Jeyes laboured 
 strenuously too strenuously to the very last to 
 get it completed. 
 
 All through those two closing years his health 
 was failing fast, and a serious operation became 
 necessary. But he kept his flag flying with heroic 
 constancy. He fought the disease boldly and even 
 cheerfully, and few, save those who attended him 
 with unsparing devotion, were allowed to know 
 that he was seriously ill. Whether he ever admitted 
 it, even to himself, I do not know ; at any rate, 
 until the end he sternly declined to claim indulgence 
 on the ground of ill-health. He clung to his duties 
 at the Standard with grim tenacity, and impatiently 
 refused to hand over his work or his responsibilities 
 to others. After the early spring of 1911 he was 
 no longer able to get down to the office. But he 
 insisted that proofs and correspondence and re- 
 views of books should still be sent up to his house. 
 He read the letters and articles, and dictated 
 answers and notes with his wife's help ; and on the 
 afternoon before he died he was endeavouring to 
 
MEMOIR 69 
 
 give his attention to a budget of papers brought 
 up to him by a clerk from Shoe Lane. 
 
 In those closing months of pain and weakness he 
 could receive no visitors except two or three very 
 old and intimate friends. I saw him for the last 
 time a few days before his death. It was in that 
 thronged and feverish week of King George's 
 coronation, when all London was tossing restlessly 
 under its trappings. But the decorations and the 
 tumult left the quarter of groves and gardens 
 untouched. Peace and sunshine were on the green 
 lawn where Jeyes was lying in a little tent, such 
 sunshine and such peace as made the coming of 
 death more poignant in its pathos. For I knew 
 then that he was a dying man, and so, I think, did 
 those about him. But shattered and feeble as he 
 was there was still in him the old dauntless spirit, 
 a flash even of the old gaiety. With the sad con- 
 vention we use on such occasions one had to affect 
 ignorance of his real condition. We talked thinly 
 of trivialities and externals, of the time when the 
 patient would be able to get a " change ", of politics, 
 of the newspapers, of the coronation, and of its 
 hollow pomps and mocking pageantries as they 
 seemed to me at that moment. Helpless on his 
 couch, speaking slowly and with much effort, Jeyes 
 still gave no sign of yielding. He had the ghost 
 of a satiric jest for a person whose name was men- 
 tioned. And of himself and his malady he would 
 
70 SAMUEL HENRY JEYES 
 
 not say much ; but he was still hopeful. He believed 
 that he had taken a turn for the better and was now 
 steadily mending. I wondered if he really thought 
 so, or if this was only another example of the valiant 
 hypocrisy that will not accept the truth if the truth 
 means defeat. And I wondered too, as I passed out 
 through the trim garden, sparkling under the mid- 
 summer sky, if he and I should meet again in this 
 world. In truth I saw him no more. I called at 
 Grove End Road a day or two later; but he was 
 too ill to see anybody; and early in the morning 
 of June 26th, 1911, he passed away. 
 
 There were kindly notices of him by his colleagues 
 in the Times and Standard and the other leading 
 London journals, and sorrowing hearts in that 
 large circle of those who knew and loved him. To 
 the general body of newspaper readers the announce- 
 ment of his death, no doubt, meant little ; for they 
 had not appreciated his personality or estimated his 
 attainments at their true value. To some degree 
 that, I suppose, must be the lot of all men who work 
 for the Press under the veil of anonymity. But most 
 journalists of ability and ambition find frequent 
 occasion to break through the screen which hides 
 them from the public view. With Jeyes it was 
 otherwise. He made few attempts to draw aside 
 the curtain behind which he moved, and he would 
 have found the glare of the footlights extremely 
 
MEMOIR 71 
 
 disturbing to his eyes. There is hardly a " signed 
 article " amid all the myriad columns he contributed 
 to the Press, though these, if they could be collected, 
 would make many more volumes than the books of 
 which he was the avowed author. His biographical 
 and critical works, well-written and creditable as 
 they are, do not represent the main portion of his 
 activity, nor do they give the true measure of his 
 capacity. This was not solely because he was 
 absorbed in the daily task, nor was it that he lacked 
 the initiative to undertake some enterprise of larger 
 scope and more permanent value. But the precise 
 form never, I think, presented itself ; he was of 
 the company of those who do not find the instru- 
 ment to express themselves completely, and so 
 " die with all their music in them," or at least 
 with much of it mute save to a few attentive ears. 
 At any rate his chief energies were engaged, 
 as the reader of these pages will have seen, for 
 nearly a quarter of a century in comment on public 
 affairs, on literature, and on life, all thrown into the 
 fragmentary form which journalism exacts from 
 those who feed the devouring fires of its altars. 
 Most of this matter must be left to drift upon the 
 shoreless sea of the newspaper files, or to sink into 
 their unplumbed depths. But it has seemed worth 
 while to cast the line here and there into the " ocean 
 of dead dogs," and to bring to the surface a few 
 specimens from the writings which streamed from 
 
72 SAMUEL HENRY JEYES 
 
 that competent pen, before the busy fingers that 
 held it were caught too soon and stilled for ever. 
 It may be that the excerpts given in the following 
 pages are not in all cases the best examples of their 
 author's work. He was, in his characteristic modesty, 
 careless of his own reputation ; he attached small 
 value to his fugitive writings, and kept no record of 
 them ; and to recover them from the tumulus of 
 printed matter wherein they lie entombed has been 
 no easy task. These fragments of journey-work, 
 done to meet the passing needs of the hour, are 
 often no more than an index to the potentialities 
 which lay hidden in that capacious brain, in that 
 large and kindly heart. But they seem worth pre- 
 serving, as some memorial of a man who impressed 
 all who knew him by the force and keenness of his 
 intellect, by the sanity and sincerity of his temper, 
 by his wit and humour, his charity, his chivalry, his 
 inexhaustible good-nature, and his wise and genial 
 outlook upon the drama of life in which he played, 
 for too brief a term, his self-effacing and honourable 
 part. 
 
 S. L. 
 
PART II 
 
 RULERS OF ENGLAND 
 AND OTHER PAPERS 
 
 BY S. H. JEYES 
 
NOTE 
 
 The series of letters by Friar John addressed to 
 Rulers of England appeared in the Standard between 
 May 27 and August 19, 1907. The original Friar 
 John was a companion of Pantagruel. 
 
SIR HENRY CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN 
 
SIR HENRY CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN 
 
 SIR, 
 
 At the age of seventy you became a new man. 
 It is acknowledged that last session you disappointed 
 your enemies and surprised many of your friends by 
 not coming to grief as Leader of the House of Com- 
 mons. When Mr. Balfour resigned and you took 
 office at the end of 1905, it was remembered that 
 for six years you had conducted the Opposition 
 without either organising a single resolute attack 
 on the Unionist Government or once stimulating 
 the enterprise of the younger Liberals. Reputed 
 indolent in spirit, infirm of purpose, not over-ready 
 in speech, you were contemptuously ignored as 
 little better than a parliamentary automaton, a 
 sort of animated Newcastle programme. In the 
 inner circles of your party it was stated that in the 
 course of a few months you would withdraw to the 
 serener atmosphere of the House of Lords, and 
 leave the business of the popular assembly to be 
 managed by statesmen younger, more adroit, and 
 better fitted to control its turbulence. Within a 
 few weeks you had entirely reversed the general 
 estimate of your powers, and, though for a time 
 
 75 
 
76 RULERS OF ENGLAND 
 
 your attendance was rendered irregular by the 
 claims of a private sorrow, your occasional interven- 
 tions in debate were marked by a rude and un- 
 expected vigour. The applause which you earned 
 by these efforts has been your undoing, since you 
 appear to have developed a somewhat overbearing 
 temper. On certain occasions it is true that Mr. 
 Gladstone permitted himself to bully the Opposi- 
 tion, but as a rule he treated it with almost defer- 
 ential courtesy, and reserved his severities for im- 
 patient or refractory members of his own party. 
 You, on the contrary, are obsequious to the Radi- 
 cals and Socialists, strain the allegiance of Moderate 
 Liberals and exasperate the Conservatives. " Enough 
 of this foolery," you exclaimed when Mr. Balfour 
 plagued you with his dialectic. You were rewarded 
 with a storm of cheering from the new members. 
 But you had struck a false note, and already the 
 men who then admired your petulant outburst are 
 imbibing the traditions and learning the etiquette 
 of Westminster. In the present session your 
 influence has visibly declined. The Radicals are 
 beginning to see that you are an incompetent 
 Leader of the House. You frame ambitious pro- 
 grammes, but get little or nothing done. 
 
 Popular you have always been, and in your 
 Scottish constituency, which you have represented 
 since 1868, you are impregnable. You have made 
 no enemies through personal intrigue. No man 
 
SIR HENRY CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN 77 
 
 can hold his tongue so persistently, or sit more tightly 
 to the saddle. But amiability, honesty, and dogged- 
 ness are not qualities which by themselves adapt a 
 man to the most powerful position in the greatest 
 Empire in the world, or even help him to guide the 
 destinies of a party in the House of Commons. 
 For it would be idle to pretend that your intellect 
 is above the average level of the ordinary front- 
 bench man. Your eloquence falls short of that 
 modest standard. Even when you have written out 
 what you conceive to be a choice passage you do not 
 deliver it effectively. Can it be suggested that you 
 have shown yourself a skilful and earnest admini- 
 strator ? Behind you lies a long record of official 
 experience. But as an understrapper, first at the 
 War Office and afterwards at the Admiralty, you 
 betrayed no sign of unsettling energy. This absence 
 of inconvenient zeal marked you out for promotion, 
 and in 1884 you were made Chief Secretary. With 
 characteristic pluck and self-confidence you under- 
 took the task of governing Ireland, torn as it was 
 with sedition and almost on the point of rebellion. 
 It was not likely that the Parnellites would give an 
 easy time to Mr. George Trevelyan's successor, but 
 on your imperturbable good humour they made no 
 sensible impression. You were a " Scotch Sand- 
 bag," they declared, and you met their random and 
 frantic punchings with an insuperable passive 
 resistance. By the aid of coercion you maintained 
 
78 RULERS OF ENGLAND 
 
 a semblance of Law and Order. This, probably, 
 was the most distinguished epoch in your admini- 
 strative career. 
 
 In your own opinion, however, the summit was 
 reached on the glorious day when you announced 
 in the House of Commons that the Duke of Cam- 
 bridge had been induced to resign the post of 
 Commander-in-Chief. For this purpose you had 
 steadily worked ever since you became Minister of 
 War in 1892. The cousin of Queen Victoria was 
 not easily displaced, and we know that only by the 
 firm, though affectionate, representations of Her 
 Majesty was he persuaded to retire. At the time, 
 however, the sole credit for what was regarded as 
 the first step towards military reorganisation was 
 given to the Secretary of State, who declared that, 
 without further delay, the Government would 
 carry out the reforms recommended by the Hart- 
 ington Commission. June 21, 1895, was to be a 
 red-letter day for the British Army, the War 
 Office, and Mr. Campbell-Bannerman. Before 
 night the Ministry had been defeated. It was 
 shown in the House of Commons that the store of 
 ammunition had been dangerously depleted, and 
 on the Cordite Vote the salary of the jubilating 
 Minister for War was reduced by 100. It was 
 only by a majority of seven that Mr. Brodrick's 
 amendment had been carried, and the Government 
 were entitled, if they had wished, to reinstate the 
 
SIR HENRY CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN 79 
 
 Vote and invite the House to reconsider its decision. 
 You stood on your dignity, and insisted, if Lord 
 Rosebery should go on, that you would retire. 
 You had stated in the House of Commons that the 
 supply of cordite was sufficient. You had not 
 been believed. You would listen to no terms and 
 entertain no compromise. This, of course, was 
 tantamount to wrecking the whole Administration, 
 since your departure would involve a shifting of 
 offices, and a Cabinet with an effective majority of 
 about twenty could not venture upon reconstruction. 
 Already, however, you were known to be at cross 
 purposes with your titular Chief, and siding with 
 the Radical faction, the old Gladstonian guard, 
 against the Liberal Imperialists. There never had 
 been sympathy between you and Lord Rosebery. 
 Personally he scarcely troubled to conceal his 
 opinion of your understanding and narrow principles, 
 while, as a practical politician, you detected and 
 despised his moral vacillation and theatrical postur- 
 ing. Not a vindictive man, you did not pursue him 
 after he had thrown up the party leadership. 
 Placidly you left him alone until he showed sign 
 of again popping up and gathering around him 
 a band of Liberal Imperialists who intended to 
 relegate you to a secondary position. The South 
 African War gave you an opportunity. With per- 
 verse courage you stuck to your Little England 
 creed, and disgraced yourself by defaming the men 
 
8o RULERS OF ENGLAND 
 
 who were fighting the battles of their country. 
 The slanders of malignant foreigners did not bite 
 so cruelly as your declaration that our officers and 
 soldiers were practising " methods of barbarism." 
 You stained an honourable life with an indelible 
 stigma. The indignation caused by a series of 
 similar, though less offensive utterances had given 
 heart to the Liberal Imperialists, none of whom 
 was more self-assertive than your present Chan- 
 cellor of the Exchequer. It was decided to give 
 him a dinner in honour of his independence. You 
 called a party meeting, and though Mr. Asquith 
 and Sir Edward Grey claimed the right to speak 
 freely what they thought, you damped down the 
 whole project, and the subsequent banquet was a 
 tame and colourless ceremony. 
 
 Naturally, you were determined to serve neither 
 under nor with Lord Rosebery. With extraordi- 
 nary shrewdness you chose a killing lure and landed 
 your fish. When the last General Election was 
 well in sight he had, professedly as a private indi- 
 vidual, started on a political tour in the West of 
 England, and was being everywhere received 
 under decorous protest as the Liberal leader. All 
 his other principles he left nebulous, but against 
 Home Rule he made a definite declaration. Hence 
 your famous manifesto to the Nationalists, advis- 
 ing them to accept such a measure of Devolu- 
 tion as would be consistent with and lead 
 
SIR HENRY CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN 81 
 
 up to the larger policy of Home Rule. The im- 
 petuous nobleman did not give himself time to think. 
 Promptly he repudiated you and your programme. 
 Of course, you took him at his word. This was 
 sagacious. But it was still more subtle of you to 
 steal away his sworn supporters. Either they were 
 offered or they had solicited explanations which 
 satisfied their scruples. He received no similar 
 assurance. Mr. Asquith, Sir Edward Grey, Mr. 
 Haldane, and Sir Henry Fowler trooped over to 
 the banner under which Lord Rosebery would 
 never fight. He was left outside lamenting, while 
 you were the man in possession. It is known that 
 within the Cabinet the Liberal Imperialists have 
 made occasional displays of independence, as, for 
 instance, last year over the Trade Disputes Bill. 
 But for this act of mutiny you made them atone 
 by a public recantation. 
 
 In the enjoyment of power you have lost your 
 old tact in manipulating men. Just as in the 
 Education Bill you infuriated Churchmen and 
 Roman Catholics without bringing contentment to 
 political Nonconformists, so in the Irish Council 
 Bill you have irritated Unionists without gaining 
 the support of Home Rulers. You thought, no 
 doubt, that you had squared Dr. Clifford and Mr 
 Perks, as you believed yourself assured of Mr. 
 Redmond's allegiance. But when the pinch came 
 you were in both cases deserted by the friends for 
 
82 RULERS OF ENGLAND 
 
 whose sake you had aroused permanent and un- 
 relenting enmities. Similarly your handling of 
 the Imperial Conference has been singularly un- 
 fortunate. Our visitors from the Colonies were 
 gratified with your personal cordiality, but you 
 permitted colleagues and subordinates to hold lan- 
 guage which sent the Premiers away all disappointed, 
 and some of them affronted. In the same way, 
 your philanderings with schemes for gradual dis- 
 armament at The Hague Conference have revived 
 German suspicions of British policy, caused dis- 
 quietude in France, misgivings in Japan, and polite 
 ridicule in Italy. Briefly, you exasperated our 
 rivals and annoyed our allies. From sheer insular 
 incapacity to enter into the foreigners' point of 
 view, you, who pride yourself on your cosmopolitan 
 sympathies, have imperilled what you believed 
 yourself to be promoting the cause of peace and 
 retrenchment. As for Reform, the third article in 
 the traditional programme of the Liberal party, 
 you have set it back by identifying progress with a 
 double attack on the principles of Private Property 
 and the historic duties of the Upper House of 
 Parliament. The development of your plan of 
 campaign against those institutions is awaited by 
 their defenders with curiosity rather than concern. 
 A kindly, simple gentleman, essentially of the middle 
 class, possessed of a great fortune and moderate 
 capacities, you have, perhaps, been fed up by the 
 
SIR HENRY CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN 83 
 
 flatteries of interested sycophants. But you have 
 not in you the makings of a Catiline or a Cade. 
 Your humble and blameless function is to act as a 
 stopgap while the Liberal party is looking for its 
 principles. 
 
 At times you seem to rejoice, with all Mr. 
 Roosevelt's unsophisticated fervour, in " clanking 
 platitudes." " La Douma est morte, vive la Douma " 
 was one of them. " A way must be found " (for 
 suppressing the House of Lords), " and a way shall 
 be found " was another. It is astonishing that so 
 shrewd and practical a man, gifted also with a sense 
 of humour, should impose on himself with phrases 
 culled from a select dialogue between Mr. Obvious 
 and Mr. Bounceable. It might have been better 
 for your reputation if you had been chosen to 
 succeed Speaker Peel in the Chair of the House of 
 Commons. This was the limit of your parliamen- 
 tary aspirations, and you would have occupied that 
 exalted position with dignity and firmness. But 
 as Prime Minister of England you are a misfit and 
 a makeshift, and when you fall into political tan- 
 trums you are about as formidable as a blind man 
 who has lost his dog. 
 
 I am, Sir, 
 
 Your obedient servant, 
 
 FRIAR JOHN. 
 
 The Right Hon. 
 
 SIR HENRY CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN, G.C.B. 
 
MR. H. H. ASQUITH 
 
 SIR, 
 
 It is the general opinion in Parliament that 
 you are on your trial. If the Radicals can ruin 
 your career it will be idle to look for mercy. When 
 you were at Balliol under Jowett you and Alfred 
 Milner were marked out by the Master (an acknow- 
 ledged expert in rising talent), and by the yet 
 shrewder estimate of your undergraduate con- 
 temporaries, as destined for the highest places in 
 the service of the State. This flattering opinion was 
 in neither case earned simply by the ease with which 
 you both swept up honours and prizes at Oxford. 
 Other scholars, more accomplished than either, may 
 be recalled for whom nobody predicted public 
 eminence. Nor was the confidence in your fortunes 
 inspired by your performances at the Union. Per- 
 suasive, polished, and occasionally spirited, not even 
 in the more fervid days of youth did you stir the 
 hearts of an audience. Indeed, you never were 
 young until you had reached the confines of middle 
 age, when suddenly you blossomed into a blameless 
 frivolity. But as a Scholar and Fellow of Balliol 
 you had already displayed a strength of character 
 
 84 
 
MR. ASQU1TH 
 
RULERS OF ENGLAND 85 
 
 and an almost intuitive knowledge of the world, an 
 incorruptible rectitude, and a temper as genial as 
 can be afforded by a man who has to make his own 
 way in life. These inestimable qualities you com- 
 bined with a sturdy physique and the power of 
 doing hard work without intellectual fatigue. 
 
 Like most barristers who mean to succeed in their 
 profession, you married early, and your first wife 
 made you the father of a lad not unlikely to follow 
 in your steps. For some time you contributed 
 solid articles to a high-class weekly paper, but while 
 you kept one eye on politics you toiled steadily at 
 your law. It is not probable that you would ever 
 have made a famous name at the Bar. You " got 
 on," it is true, and got on rapidly. But your mind 
 had neither the acuteness nor the narrowness re- 
 quired by the brief-getting and verdict-winning 
 lawyer. The principal feat in your professional 
 career was your masterly cross-examination of the 
 Times manager before the Parnell Commission. 
 Had you been tempted to adhere to the law you 
 would, no doubt, have earned a very considerable 
 income, and by this time have received high 
 judicial appointments. But you would not have 
 won a place among the great advocates or judges 
 whose names have become household words. It 
 was, therefore, no vast sacrifice which you made in 
 1892 when you accepted Mr. Gladstone's offer and 
 became Home Secretary in his last Administration. 
 
86 RULERS OF ENGLAND 
 
 From your conduct in that difficult and somewhat 
 discredited Office you received unqualified com- 
 mendation. There was no Cass case, no Beck case, 
 no Edalji case, while you were responsible for the 
 London police and the prerogative of mercy. You 
 put a stop to the Sunday riots in Trafalgar Square 
 by the bold and simple expedient of permitting 
 the agitators to hold their meetings there if only 
 they would give due notice to the Commissioner of 
 Police. You even went so far as to " protect " the 
 demagogues by arranging that a sufficient force of 
 constables should be in attendance. No sooner was 
 the demand of the Social Democrats conceded by 
 authority than they ceased to value the civic 
 privilege. Neither amusement nor booty was to be 
 gained by blocking the streets of Central London 
 peaceably and in a lawful manner. The foaming 
 orators of republican clubs feared they might look 
 flat and foolish if they ranted under official tutelage, 
 nor did the sons of the proletariat who hoped to 
 raid the shops of West End jewellers relish the idea 
 of being inspected at close quarters by emissaries of 
 Scotland Yard. But there was other trouble for 
 the Home Office during your term of office. It was 
 a period of bad strikes, yet you were cool and im- 
 perturbable in maintaining order. For this fidelity 
 to duty a black mark was made against your name in 
 quarters which at that time did not matter. The 
 official Liberals then had no dealings with the 
 
MR. ASQUITH 87 
 
 Labour men, and your firmness as administrator 
 was reckoned the party asset. In the short-lived 
 Government of which Mr. Gladstone and Lord 
 Rosebery were successive chiefs, you were the one 
 man who had strengthened his hold on public 
 regard, unless we are to think that Sir William 
 Harcourt increased his fame by his " great Demo- 
 cratic Budget " an achievement which you have 
 been called upon to emulate thirteen years later. 
 In 1895, Lord Rosebery's authority had been badly 
 shaken, and Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman's star 
 had not yet risen. Sir William Harcourt was 
 already a failing force, and Mr. John Morley had 
 shown himself devoid of the qualities that go to 
 popular leadership. It was generally felt that you 
 were the man of the future, and though the mana- 
 gers of the Liberal party doubted whether they 
 could " go to the country on Asquith," you stood 
 far ahead of all other available candidates for the 
 first place in the House of Commons. Unfortu- 
 nately, you never cultivated the arts of popularity 
 in that captious assembly, and in 1899 the Radicals 
 contrived to thrust you aside in favour of the 
 genial gentleman who now presides over the 
 Councils of the Cabinet. 
 
 Throughout the South African War you had the 
 temerity to espouse the cause of Great Britain. As 
 is your habit you spoke out plainly, though you 
 knew that every word uttered on behalf of your 
 
88 RULERS OF ENGLAND 
 
 country would be taken as an attack upon Sir Henry 
 Campbell-Bannerman. In 1901 the quarrel came to 
 a head. You repudiated the language used by 
 eminent pro-Boers. You declined to be branded 
 with the heretics and schismatics because you held 
 patriotic views on Imperial questions, and you 
 maintained that your Liberalism was not less sincere 
 because, with regard to the struggle then in progress, 
 you differed from the official leader of the party. 
 This, of course, was taken as a declaration of in- 
 dependence, and the Liberal Imperialists announced 
 that they would celebrate the occasion by entertain- 
 ing the author at a public banquet. The crisis was 
 thought so alarming that a general meeting of the 
 party was convened at the Reform Club. There, 
 with Sir Edward Grey, you insisted on your right 
 to speak your mind without " ambiguous formulas," 
 but the official pressure was so scientifically applied 
 that fewer than forty of the Liberal Imperialist 
 Members ventured to show themselves at your 
 dinner. Perhaps you had some reason to complain 
 of Lord Rosebery, for though he talked valiantly 
 and volubly, he declined to come forward and 
 reclaim a party which had been led astray. 
 
 Nevertheless, when it became evident in 1905 
 that the Liberals would be placed in power at the 
 coming General Election, Sir Henry Campbell- 
 Bannerman decided in his mind that Lord Rosebery 
 should be shed, and you must be won back. After 
 
MR. ASQUITH 89 
 
 he had made his startling bid for the Nationalist 
 vote he privately offered you explanations which 
 rendered it possible for you to accept Office with- 
 out going back upon your recantation of Home 
 Rule. Rightly or wrongly, you are credited with 
 having led the Imperial return to the banner under 
 which Lord Rosebery would not serve. You so far 
 made good your pledges as to Ireland that the Bill 
 offered to Mr. Redmond was one which the Nation- 
 alists outside Parliament would not permit him to 
 accept. But what other proof of moral fortitude 
 have you given since you took office under Sir 
 Henry Campbell-Bannerman ? As Chancellor of 
 the Exchequer you have been inclined to look 
 indulgently upon plans for reducing the Naval and 
 Military Estimates. Over the Trade Disputes 
 Bill last year you played a sorry part, since you dis- 
 avowed in public the limitations on which you had 
 previously insisted, though it must be added that 
 other statesmen, in both parties, joined in the stam- 
 pede before the Labour vote. Confronted, soon 
 afterwards, with the demand for universal old age 
 pensions, you asserted that nothing lay closer to 
 your heart than the hope of making this provision 
 for the poor. If that was a true confession your 
 past life had been one long dissimulation. Never 
 had the most intimate of your friends suspected 
 this cherished flame. This year you have given 
 earnest of your faith by promising to start the 
 
90 i RULERS OF ENGLAND 
 
 scheme in your next Budget. What have you 
 gained by temporising with Socialism ? Not long 
 ago Mr. Keir Hardie made a bitter attack on you 
 and Mr. Haldane and Lord Rosebery. He bracketed 
 you together as defenders of that " crime against 
 humanity," the South African War. Two of that 
 company, he said, were members of the inner 
 tabernacle of the Liberal party ; while the other, 
 the " best of the three," was wandering in the 
 wilderness. At present, happily, Mr. Keir Hardie 
 is not the king-maker, but his words fairly represent 
 the opinion of many Radicals in the House of 
 Commons. While you were doing their work in 
 Opposition and making the best speeches on your 
 side against Tariff Reform they were ready enough 
 to profit by your labours. If you have aroused 
 bitter enmities, you have also made many good 
 friends, and they hope that the Radical coercionists 
 may threaten you with open hostility. That would 
 settle the question, for you are a stubborn man 
 and would not yield to menace. When the Land 
 Tenure Bill last year was in Committee they tried 
 to get up a revolt against Ministerial concessions to 
 the Opposition. You stamped it out with a heavy 
 foot. 
 
 The sincerity of your devotion to Free Trade 
 principles cannot be called into question. Yet it 
 has fallen to your lot to undermine the existing 
 fiscal system and unwillingly to promote both 
 
MR. ASQUITH 91 
 
 branches of Mr. Chamberlain's policy. Your 
 cautiously elaborated Budget this year showed 
 that we have pretty well reached the limit of direct 
 taxation, and that, if further calls are to be made 
 on the national resources, we must have recourse 
 to duties on imported commodities. Similarly, 
 the lecture on political economy which you de- 
 livered at the Imperial Conference was so unhappily 
 phrased that it brought about a reaction in favour 
 of the movement which you meant to destroy. In 
 denouncing Preference you intended no personal 
 discourtesy towards the Colonial Premiers. It was 
 academical arrogance, not egotism or conceit, which 
 induced you to treat our visitors as undergraduates 
 assembled for a lesson in a subject which they had 
 not studied. Without meaning it, you gave offence 
 to our visitors and helped to produce a general 
 impression that they were being disrespectfully 
 treated by the representatives of the nation. Here, 
 indeed, is revealed the failing which may spoil your 
 fortunes. You cannot disagree gracefully. Prob- 
 ably you are not more resolutely opposed than 
 several of your colleagues to the demands of the 
 Women's Suffrage agitators. Yet they have marked 
 you down for special animosity, and even at the 
 doors of your private house you have been singled 
 out for their shrewish assaults. They misunder- 
 stand you altogether if they think that you can be 
 bullied into submission. It is to coaxing that you 
 
THE MARQUESS OF RIPON 
 
 MY LORD, 
 
 You boasted the other day that you had 
 been a staunch Radical since you entered the House 
 of Commons in 1852 as member for Hull. There 
 is, in truth, no spot or blemish in your party record. 
 With the ups and downs of Liberalism you have 
 been alternately elevated and submerged, never 
 deserting the ship or seeking refuge in a cave. Quite 
 naturally, your political record has been one of un- 
 interrupted promotion. It is, perhaps, going too 
 far to suggest that you have always been a Radical, 
 since you served contentedly under Palmerston 
 and Russell, and held an important office in Glad- 
 stone's first Administration so vehemently assailed 
 by the Nonconformist Radicals. Yet we have your 
 word for it that you were always in sympathy with 
 the forward group, and it is certain that you have 
 at least progressed with the times and adapted your 
 faith to each successive programme. 
 
 On your own side there is no statesman who has 
 gone through so long and varied a training in the 
 duties of State, yet you have not earned a reputa- 
 tion for administrative skill. As a matter of fact 
 you do not deserve all the blame heaped upon you 
 
 94 
 
THE MARQUESS OF RIPON 
 
RULERS OF ENGLAND 95 
 
 by your critics, since the failures or indiscretions 
 with which your na'me is associated were brought 
 about by the policy of your chiefs and colleagues. 
 When left to yourself and allowed to act upon your 
 own judgment, you did something to modify their 
 errors. For you are a most excellent man of busi- 
 ness, and in the Cabinet yours has generally been 
 reckoned a good opinion. Your official experience 
 began in 1859, as Under Secretary, first for War 
 and then for India. In 1863 you were made 
 Minister of War, and in 1866 Secretary of State for 
 India. From that time forward you have been 
 reckoned an indispensable member of every Liberal 
 Administration. Mr. Gladstone, in 1868, made 
 you Lord President of the Council, and from the 
 light duties of that almost honorary post you were 
 spared to promote International Arbitration, by 
 acting as Chairman of the Alabama Commission, 
 which resulted in the ambiguous and troublesome 
 instrument known as the Treaty of Washington. 
 Your tact and kindliness earned golden opinions, 
 and it was agreed that you displayed an almost un- 
 expected aptitude for giving away the British case. 
 By these public services you endeared yourself to 
 Mr. Gladstone, who appointed you, in 1880, to be 
 Governor-General of India, where, as will be seen 
 below, you faithfully carried on the Imperial 
 traditions of the Liberal party. An intimate 
 friend of Mr. Morley, and an early advocate of 
 
96 RULERS OF ENGLAND 
 
 Home Rule for Ireland, you were enlisted, for a few 
 troubled months in 1886, as First Lord of the 
 Admiralty. When, in 1892, the Liberals were again 
 placed in office with a so-called mandate for the 
 new Irish policy you were appointed Secretary of 
 State for the Colonies, nor, on Mr. Gladstone's 
 retirement two years later, did your Radicalism 
 prevent you from serving under Lord Rosebery. 
 It was but a fitting reward of lifelong labours that 
 after the last General Election you should be given 
 the distinguished sinecure of Lord Privy Seal and 
 retain the titular leadership of the Upper House. 
 
 For the heavy work of piloting complicated Bills 
 through a hostile Chamber you were manifestly 
 disqualified by advanced age and health not too 
 robust, but it would be a mistake to treat you as an 
 extinct volcano. There was fire, as well as smoke, 
 in the speech last week with which you wound up 
 the reply of the Government to Lord London- 
 derry's indictment of their Irish administration. 
 Though you maintained the official view that the 
 reports of agrarian outrage in the south and west 
 were greatly exaggerated, you excited some surpise 
 by giving a fairly plain hint that a continuance of 
 serious disorder might be followed by resort to 
 vigorous measures of repression. The word coercion 
 was not whispered, lest your Radical friends should 
 suffer perturbation of spirit, but it was rendered 
 evident that the League which has repudiated the 
 
THE MARQUESS OF RIPON 97 
 
 last message of peace from English Liberalism must 
 not presume much longer on the forbearance of the 
 authorities. 
 
 It was your misfortune to make history in India, 
 being sent out to reverse Lord Lytton's policy and 
 undo the results of the Afghan War. Just by way 
 of beginning, you disagreed with General Gordon, 
 or it might be more proper to say that he disagreed 
 with you. He had accompanied you as private 
 secretary, and took the view which, of course, he 
 would not abandon that the ex-Amir Yakub Khan 
 had been unfairly treated by the Indian Govern- 
 ment. Lord Lytton had advised the recognition 
 of Abdur Rahman as Amir of Kabul, while Kandahar, 
 then in British possession, was to be placed under 
 another rule, whose authority we should support 
 by a military force stationed in convenient proximity. 
 But since the occupation of Kandahar, which ren- 
 dered India unassailable from Central Asia, had 
 figured as one of the main counts in the general 
 indictment of Conservative bloodguiltiness, the new 
 Ministry decided that Afghanistan must be re- 
 united and placed under a strong man. Him they 
 found in Abdur Rahman, and his good faith, which 
 at that time was wavering, you sought to confirm 
 by promises of British support. This general 
 undertaking you repeated in 1883, and put into the 
 practical form of a yearly subsidy of twelve lakhs, 
 to be spent on military defences. From the strategi- 
 H 
 
98 RULERS OF ENGLAND 
 
 cal point of view the plan has worked out better 
 than was expected, since Abdur Rahman, after 
 some hesitation, decided that on the whole his 
 interest lay on the side of Great Britain. But the 
 arrangement did not promote, what the Gladstone 
 Ministry specially desired, a good understanding 
 with Russia, who resented our predominant in- 
 fluence at Kabul not less than the occupation of 
 Kandahar. Incidentally, if enthusiastic Liberals 
 had cared to inquire, they would have discovered 
 that the cause of humanity and enlightenment in 
 the earth's dark places was not served by consoli- 
 dating the authority of the very capable but abso- 
 lutely unscrupulous Prince in whom we were asked 
 to place our trust. The very statesman who has 
 denounced the Sultan to High Heaven for his cruel 
 persecution of rebellious subjects deliberately estab- 
 lished upon our own borders a despot far more 
 ruthless than Abdul Hamid. The story of his 
 dealings with his enemies is not fit for ears polite, 
 yet our alliance with his government was trumpeted 
 forth as a triumph of humanitarian statecraft. 
 
 Within the borders of India your administration 
 was not unredeemed by sound and useful work. 
 Education was stimulated, and the railway system 
 was considerably developed. But it was hardly to 
 be expected that a Cabinet of Visionaries would be 
 content with merely advancing the moral and 
 material progress of the people. The natives must 
 
THE MARQUESS OF RIPON 99 
 
 be inducted into the privileges of local self-govern- 
 ment. The already existing system of municipal 
 and district councils, largely elective, was rendered 
 universal, and their powers were increased. The 
 experiment has fallen flat, being productive neither 
 of the benefits anticipated by the reformers, nor the 
 mischief predicted by old-fashioned officials. More 
 positive in its results, and entirely harmful, was 
 the repeal of the Vernacular Press Act and the 
 removal of efficient restraint upon seditious utter- 
 ances. But the indignation caused by these well- 
 meant schemes of popular enfranchisement was 
 almost forgotten in the excitement aroused through- 
 out India by the so-called Ilbert Bill though 
 neither you nor Sir Courtenay Ilbert had drafted 
 that unfortunate measure which rendered Euro- 
 pean British subjects liable to trial before a native 
 judge, not only in presidency towns (where they 
 were always subject to such jurisdiction), but also 
 in up-country stations. So bitter was the opposi- 
 tion that stories were circulated, and widely be- 
 lieved, that a plot had been formed for seizing your 
 person and deporting you from Indian territory. 
 There was, of course, no foundation for the legend, 
 but it illustrated the discontent which you had 
 stirred up in the English community. At first, 
 perhaps, it may have seemed sufficient compensa- 
 tion that you gained remarkable popularity amongst 
 the educated and discontented natives of India, 
 
ioo RULERS OF ENGLAND 
 
 and even at the present time your name is held in 
 honour amongst them. Nevertheless, it was with 
 a sense of general relief that Ministers discredited 
 by the retrocession of the Transvaal and the tragic 
 muddle in Sudan learned that you had resigned office. 
 Nothing, however, that you had done as Governor- 
 General was held to disqualify you for further 
 Imperial administration. Conservatives mindful 
 of the reproaches which they had heaped on Mr. 
 Gladstone for his pusillanimous treatment of the 
 Transvaal, and themselves tardily awakened to the 
 calls of Empire, shook their heads over your appoint- 
 ment in 1892 as Secretary of State for the Colonies. 
 It is, however, matter of common knowledge that 
 you acted with considerable persistence, and once 
 or twice with vigour, in pressing upon Mr. Kriiger 
 the demands of the Outlander party for justice 
 and reform. You gave way, it is true, over Swazi- 
 land, but incurred the enmity of the Doppers by 
 nullifying the whole value of that obsequious sur- 
 render. The Boers were rejoicing over having at 
 last secured their long-desired outlet to the sea 
 when, without a word, you suddenly annexed 
 Sambaanland and Umbigesaland. England, wrote 
 the disgusted Mr. Kriiger, had " no more claim on 
 them than on the moon," and they had been marked 
 down at Pretoria for leisurely deglutition. " It 
 goes without saying," the old President continued, 
 " that the Transvaal protested against the annexa- 
 
THE MARQUESS OF RIPON 101 
 
 tion, but England did not trouble herself about 
 that." This clever and quite legitimate transaction, 
 which you must either have initiated or sanctioned, 
 was made the text for many general declamations 
 against British perfidy, in which the Liberal party 
 and yourself were expressly included. 
 
 In this affair you displayed the stubbornness which 
 serves a man in good stead if he happens to have 
 made up his mind on the right side, but prevents 
 him, when he has fallen into error, from retracing 
 his steps. It is this quality which, perhaps, explains 
 your position as a Roman Catholic in an Anti- 
 Clerical Cabinet. Nothing could be more in- 
 decent than to drag a statesman's religious belief 
 into political controversy, though the admission 
 in 1874 f the Grand Master of the English Free- 
 masons, at one time known as a Christian Socialist 
 and Broad Churchman, into the Roman communion 
 was matter of universal comment. From that time 
 you had been known for your personal devotion 
 and noble benefactions to the Church of your 
 adoption. How comes it that you are allied with 
 Nonconformists and Secularists in destroying the 
 elementary schools in which the doctrines of your 
 faith are taught in the only manner sanctioned by 
 its Bishops and clergy ? The answer is that you did 
 not believe that Mr. Birrell's scheme would have 
 this effect. You were largely responsible, it is said, 
 for the " four-fifths " clause, believing that the 
 
RULERS OF ENGLAND 
 
 Roman Catholic schools would thus escape the doom 
 intended for the Church of England institutions. 
 So clearly mistaken was your calculation, so roundly 
 was it repudiated by the Duke of Norfolk and the 
 Catholic Education Committee, that two explana- 
 tions were put forward of your remaining with the 
 Government. The favourite theory was that you 
 stayed on in the hope of extorting further conces- 
 sions from the Government a view confirmed by 
 the success of Ministers in conciliating the Roman 
 Catholics from Ireland. The other suggestion is 
 simply that you were obstinate. Having made up 
 your mind that the Roman Church would not be 
 materially injured you refused to alter your opinion. 
 How will you act next year when the stronger 
 Bill threatened by the Government is laid before 
 Parliament ? That, we have been told, is to pre- 
 vent religious bodies from paying for special in- 
 struction in schools maintained by the State. At 
 present you are wedded, in a sort of spiritual 
 bigamy, both to the Radical party and the Roman 
 Church. If you wish to avoid making a painful 
 choice you had better imitate Sir Alexander 
 Swettenham and ask for leave to retire on the 
 ground of a sudden access of old age. 
 I am, my Lord, 
 
 Your obedient servant, 
 
 FRIAR JOHN. 
 The MARQUESS OF RIPON, K.G. 
 
THE EARL OF CREWE 
 
 MY LORD, 
 
 All men speak well of you or nearly all. 
 Yet you are not a Lord whom the Radicals love. 
 The announcement that Lord Rosebery's son-in- 
 law had been made Lord President led to angry 
 mutterings amongst the advanced people in your 
 party. On the first opportunity in the House of 
 Commons some of the Labour members lodged their 
 protest against the appointment. Though the 
 duties of your office are almost honorary, it was 
 hinted that they were beyond your powers and the 
 modest salary was more than you would ever earn. 
 It is easy to imagine the patrician contempt with 
 which you regard their low-bred vapourings. Neither 
 directly nor indirectly would you deign a reply, but 
 you are not one of those pachydermatous aspirants 
 who forgive or forget an attack on their personal 
 dignity. The fortunes of Parliament gave you an 
 easy triumph over your detractors. By the manner 
 in which you conducted the Education Bill last 
 year through the House of Lords, and all but rescued 
 it from impending doom, you won golden opinions. 
 The superior and somewhat condescending air was 
 
 103 
 
io 4 RULERS OF ENGLAND 
 
 thrown off, and the practical man of business was 
 revealed. Without the grace or readiness of an 
 expert debater, you supplied the deficiency by 
 your mastery over all the details of an intricate 
 scheme ; and your exposition, if sometimes halting, 
 was always lucid. Not once did your temper fail, 
 though at times* it must have been sorely tried in 
 Committee, when you had to face, day after day, a 
 hostile majority, and deal at the same moment 
 with half a dozen different inquiries some sensible, 
 some foolish, and others subtle. Yet you were 
 never taken off your guard. Even when a rather 
 shabby trick which your colleagues may have hoped 
 would escape notice under a cloud of technical 
 phraseology was suddenly exposed, you carried off 
 the misadventure with bland and politic indifference. 
 No matter how illusory might be the offer which 
 you were instructed to put forward as a concession, 
 you preserved the serene effrontery of the finished 
 statesman. During the negotiations which ensued 
 on the difference between the two Houses you had 
 little chance of proving your diplomatic skill. Had 
 the arrangement been left on the Liberal side to you 
 and Mr. Birrell you would, undoubtedly, have 
 induced the Archbishop of Canterbury and the 
 Marquess of Lansdowne to accept a compromise 
 which the Church of England would hereafter have 
 found cause to regret. But your finesse was thrown 
 away, since no sooner had you worked out a plaus- 
 
THE EARL OF CREWE 105 
 
 ible arrangement than it was repudiated by the 
 group of rabid Nonconformists who had got the 
 ear of the Cabinet. It was, therefore, your bad 
 fortune to be personally associated with the most 
 conspicuous failure of the first session of Sir Henry 
 Campbell-Bannerman's Administration. 
 
 Nevertheless, you made yourself a very consider- 
 able reputation, and, unless the Prime Minister is 
 tempted hereafter to recommend himself for the 
 honour of a peerage, will remain the acting Liberal 
 Leader in the House of Lords. One of the tasks 
 in which you excel is explaining away the incorrect 
 and unmannerly utterances of Sir Henry Campbell- 
 Bannerman. The general acknowledgment of your 
 unsuspected capacities must be the more gratifying, 
 as hitherto you had been reckoned amongst the 
 ornamental politicians whose loftiest ambitions 
 would be satisfied with a dignified Court office. 
 For about a year you served a light apprenticeship 
 under easygoing Lord Granville when he was mak- 
 ing his accustomed muddle at the Foreign Office. 
 In Mr. Gladstone's next Administration you spent 
 a few months as Lord-in- Waiting to the late Queen, 
 and again in 1892-5 you were promoted to the ex- 
 pensive and thankless post of Lord-Lieutenant of 
 Ireland. As Mr. John Morley was Chief Secretary, 
 and pledged to carry out the Home Rule policy 
 which he had been largely instrumental in forcing 
 on Mr. Gladstone in 1886, it was hardly to be 
 
io6 RULERS OF ENGLAND 
 
 expected that you would be given much initiative. 
 It was your special function, if possible, to keep 
 the Loyalists in hand and conciliate, as far as might 
 be, the excitable society of the Irish capital. That 
 you succeeded in this undertaking would be to 
 exaggerate the possibilities of social charm and 
 political tact. For a time the Viceregal Court was 
 almost boycotted, except by those who were 
 brought into official relations with the Lord- 
 Lieutenant. The ambiguous and unaccustomed 
 position in which you were placed may, perhaps, 
 have accentuated a certain natural hauteur which 
 in itself would not be unpleasant or unimpressive. 
 Malicious stories were circulated in Unionist circles 
 about the seriousness with which you assumed the 
 privileges of a delegated royalty. Probably those 
 tales were invented by the malicious wit of people 
 who would mock at an archangel if he came to 
 them in the guise of a Home Rule statesman. The 
 bitterness of party feud while you ruled at the Castle 
 has not been surpassed within the memory of living 
 man, and you were the victim of animosities which 
 personally you are incapable of arousing. Still, the 
 stories stuck to you and followed you to England, 
 for Irish resentments do not easily pass away. It 
 was even rumoured that after you came home you 
 did not find it easy to resume the status of a mere 
 subject. But nobody heeded these irresponsible 
 inventions, though the anecdotes are still circulated, 
 
THE EARL OF CREWE 107 
 
 and probably believed, in the inner circles of Dublin 
 Unionism. It is possible, that, if the Administra- 
 tion of which you were a subordinate though 
 imposing member had survived to the normal 
 length of days, you might have made a social success 
 of your Vice-royalty. The grand manner and 
 the fine appearance should have appealed to the 
 critical ladies of Ireland. The men of a sport- 
 ing race might have been won over by your 
 keenness in the hunting field, while your love of 
 literature and art must have commended you to 
 the scholars and critics of an academical and highly 
 cultured city. 
 
 If your position was uncomfortable in 1892-5 it 
 cannot be much happier in the present Government, 
 though you have been admitted to the Cabinet and 
 vindicated your title to be treated as a serious 
 politician. Your Radical colleagues are pressing 
 measures which it is known that you dislike. But 
 what can you do ? You might threaten to resign, 
 and in the last resort you could act upon the threat. 
 But you must be well aware that your defection 
 would not shake the Ministry. It might be difficult 
 to replace you in the House of Lords with an equally 
 adroit manager of recalcitrant peers. But you have 
 no authority in the country, and such influence as 
 you may possess in public affairs depends upon 
 your official position. In this respect you stand 
 on precisely the same footing as several other 
 
io8 RULERS OF ENGLAND 
 
 adherents of the Liberal Imperialist persuasion. 
 Your only chance of making your voice heard is by 
 acting in concert with the other Rosebery items, so 
 that the split, when it comes, may be long enough 
 and deep enough to wreck the whole Government. 
 Lord Crewe, Lord Tweedmouth, Lord Elgin, Sir 
 Henry Fowler even if they all should go together 
 would not sensibly weaken the Radical remnant. 
 If they are to impress the Prime Minister they 
 must induce the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the 
 Foreign Secretary and the Minister for War to 
 co-operate with them. It cannot be a pleasant 
 reflection for a man so proud and capable as you 
 are to know that he has been marked down for 
 destruction by the demagogues of the party, and 
 yet to feel that he has no effective means of retalia- 
 tion. You have to choose between a premature 
 retirement, which would condemn you to im- 
 potence, and waiting for the long-delayed oppor- 
 tunity for a general protest. It is not suggested 
 that you will be induced to stay on with the Govern- 
 ment merely for the pleasure and emoluments of 
 office, but, with the example before your eyes of 
 your friend and father-in-law condemned to plough- 
 ing a lonely and singularly irresponsive furrow, 
 you naturally shrink from imitating his act of 
 political suicide. 
 
 Like Lord Rosebery, you have other resources 
 than public life. You also have been an eager, 
 
THE EARL OF CREWE 109 
 
 though less successful, votary of the Turf. You are 
 a favourite in Society. With the library and art 
 collections bequeathed by your versatile, delight- 
 ful and distinguished father, you inherited no small 
 share of his literary taste and discrimination. You 
 have even written verses, and, on provocation, may 
 do so again. Perhaps you are seen to greatest ad- 
 vantage when you are taking the chair at a Literary 
 Fund dinner. In the polished style of oratory 
 which becomes such an occasion, and in the un- 
 affected sympathy with which you enter into the 
 struggles and sufferings of men whose ideals you can 
 appreciate, you would not be surpassed even by the 
 gifted statesman with whom you are allied by 
 marriage and united in the common pursuit of some 
 of the nobler objects open to the ambitions of 
 fortune's favourites. It is to be hoped that you 
 will not be tempted by your opportunities for 
 indulging a fastidious taste to turn your back in 
 disgust on the rough and tumble of party politics. 
 So long as such men as yourself find it possible to 
 remain on terms with the Liberal Party we can 
 still hope that some control will be exercised over 
 the wilder impulses and more vulgar spirits. It was 
 noticed that in the hottest moments of the Educa- 
 tion controversy you never permitted yourself to 
 indulge in even vague menace against a Chamber 
 which you could not bring round to your own way 
 of thinking. While the Prime Minister was dash- 
 
i io RULERS OF ENGLAND 
 
 ing off random letters for publication, while Mr. 
 Birrell was passionately declaiming against the 
 peers, and Mr. Lloyd George was beating the drum 
 up and down the country, you showed, by the cold 
 and businesslike discussion of sections and sub- 
 sections, that you took no account of the outside 
 agitation, but looked upon the House of Lords as a 
 permanent institution capable of solid legislative 
 functions. You are, perhaps, convinced that the 
 relations between the two Chambers stand in need 
 of readjustment, and, so far, your sympathy may 
 go with the general declarations of the Government. 
 But a few weeks ago you were called upon to dis- 
 charge an uncongenial function when you opposed 
 the motion of Lord Cawdor for appointing a select 
 Committee to consider the best method of broaden- 
 ing the basis of the Upper House. As a member of 
 Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman's Administration 
 you are forced to stand aloof from a reform which 
 as an independent statesman you would be anxious 
 to promote. 
 
 You are a pleasing illustration of the anomalous 
 truth that political capacity is quite as effectively 
 generated by the hereditary as by the elective 
 system. Your distinguished qualities of mind and 
 character are generally recognised. But it would 
 be idle flattery to suggest that by your unaided 
 natural gifts you would have worked your way up 
 to your present exalted position. Yet let us con- 
 
THE EARL OF CREWE in 
 
 trast you with all but five or six of the self-made 
 men in either House of Parliament. Is there one 
 amongst them who could have piloted the Educa- 
 tion Bill, almost to harbour, more skilfully, more 
 patiently, and more tenaciously ? You need not 
 shrink from comparison with Mr. Birrell, who is a 
 fine example of middle-class energy and talent. 
 In the Commons, with a strong and willing majority 
 behind him, he had a far easier task than was laid 
 upon you in the Lords. Yet he did not acquit 
 himself better in the popular assembly, and might, 
 perhaps, have broken down if, like you, he had been 
 confronted with long rows of hostile faces. To the 
 man, however strong and self-adapting, who has to 
 climb from the lower to the higher places in public 
 life, the arts of statesmanship are slow of acquire- 
 ment. The young peer, on the other hand, unless 
 he devotes himself entirely to a life of dissipation 
 and frivolity, gains an early training in the senate, 
 and picks up, almost unconsciously, that knowledge 
 of men and assemblies which is seldom attained by 
 any politician who enters the House of Commons 
 after he is forty years of age. Simply by giving 
 yourself the trouble of being born and by not 
 making wanton havoc of your chances in life you 
 have become as useful and effective a statesman as 
 though you had spent the better part of your 
 energies in " struggling for existence on provincial 
 platforms." You may recognise the phrase, since 
 
ii2 RULERS OF ENGLAND 
 
 it represents one of Lord Rosebery's indiscretions, 
 and enforces one of the truths which your Radical 
 associates insist upon ignoring. 
 I am, my Lord, 
 
 Your obedient servant, 
 
 FRIAR JOHN. 
 The Right Hon. the EARL OF CREWE. 
 

 LORD MORLEY 
 
MR. JOHN MORLEY 
 
 SIR, 
 
 It would be an unpardonable exaggeration 
 to say of the most gifted and accomplished member 
 of the Cabinet that his face was his fortune. Yet 
 the popular reading of your clean, cold, intellectual 
 features has stood you in good stead with a democ- 
 racy which respects character, though its chief re- 
 wards are bestowed on truculent subserviency. It 
 has also been your fortune to earn a nickname which 
 is a standing witness of inflexible probity. But you 
 are neither an ascetic nor a pragmatic. There are 
 veterans of Bohemia who remember you, in your 
 early days, as a gay and genial companion. Even 
 when your reputation had been established as a man 
 of letters and interpreter of Radical doctrine you 
 did not turn your back upon the pleasures of the 
 town. In the long years of intimate association with 
 Mr. Chamberlain it is safe to assume that the con- 
 versation did not turn exclusively on party tactics 
 and unauthorised programmes. You were often 
 seen together at the theatre, and the enjoyment 
 which you both derived, though you could be 
 severely critical if you pleased, leaned rather to 
 appreciation than analysis. You have warmed both 
 hands at the fire of life, and done romantic things 
 i 113 
 
ii 4 RULERS OF ENGLAND 
 
 without repenting of them afterwards. It is grati- 
 fying to know that sharp divergencies of opinion did 
 not diminish your regard for the statesman whose 
 " genius for friendship " you have recently extolled. 
 Over the Irish question, twenty years ago, there was, 
 no doubt, war to the knife, so far as such a phrase 
 may be used of a conflict free from personal ani- 
 mosity. There is, indeed, no bitterness in your 
 nature, though so far as the world knows you have 
 never undergone the mellowing experience of modi- 
 fying the views with which you entered upon your 
 public career. There is nothing which more effectu- 
 ally predisposes a man to the exercise of charity than 
 the sense that his own conduct may require the plea 
 of extenuating circumstances. 
 
 You can stand on your record and defy the critics 
 to find fault with anything except your opinions. 
 Other Liberal politicians may be charged, whether 
 fairly of unfairly, with having adopted Home Rule 
 in order to escape being drummed out of the party. 
 But you were the main author of Mr. Gladstone's 
 conversion, though it must be confessed that your 
 abstract arguments were strongly reinforced by the 
 result of the General Election in 1885, when Mr. 
 Parnell had a casting vote of about eighty to give to 
 one or the other of two evenly balanced parties. 
 Never, however, has it been suggested or thought 
 that you were influenced in your policy by the hope 
 of Office. Yet it was inevitable that you should 
 
MR. JOHN MORLEY 115 
 
 become Chief Secretary both in 1886 and 1893, and 
 assist in working the two Bills which you had largely 
 helped to draft. It was not an easy task for the 
 Radical politicians who had unrelentingly denounced 
 every form of coercion to maintain even an appear- 
 ance of order at periods when the Nationalists were 
 bent on keeping the Liberal Government up to the 
 mark, while the Orangemen saw no reason for 
 making things easy. Though you were exposed to 
 acute criticism, and deserved some of the censure 
 you received, it was agreed that, on the whole, allow- 
 ance being made for the special difficulties, you did 
 far better than had been expected. It was, of 
 course, impossible for a man of your nature and 
 antecedents either to understand Irishmen or be 
 understood by them. So far as you succeeded it 
 was because you did not try, and therefore avoided 
 the pitfalls of the Englishman who affects to put on 
 Irish sympathies. Logical yourself, you do not look 
 for logic in others. Yourself acting on principle, 
 you have a philosophic tolerance for persons guided 
 by impulse or intrigue. 
 
 It is generally supposed that you are a hard-and- 
 fast exponent of the old-fashioned Benthamite 
 Radicalism. This is so far true that you hold un- 
 flinchingly by the Individualism which rests upon 
 self-help and self-reliance, and in 1895, at the 
 General Election, you refused to support an Eight 
 Hours Bill. The sturdy miners of Newcastle appre- 
 
ii6 RULERS OF ENGLAND 
 
 ciated your independence. They called you Honest 
 John and sent you about your business. The set- 
 back was more than compensated by the compli- 
 ment. In spite of your resistance to the then new 
 Trade Unionism, you are by no means a blind ad- 
 herent of the Laisser-faire school. As your early 
 essays show, you have a kindness for the sentimental 
 side of the French Revolution philosophy. In this 
 respect, though, perhaps, in no other, you resemble 
 John Mill, whose economic orthodoxy was streaked 
 with Socialism. But with the Socialism expounded 
 by the Independent Labour party you have nothing 
 in common, since you detest every sort of compul- 
 sion, whether the tyrant be King, Parliament, or 
 People meaning majority of the People. It is 
 stated that in the last two years the pressure applied 
 by the Socialists has been more stoutly withstood 
 by the Indian Secretary than by certain other mem- 
 bers of the Cabinet who make a greater parade of 
 incorruptibility. You would be a better man than 
 some of those valiant colleagues to go tiger hunting 
 with once you had decided to make a start. But 
 there would always be a chance of your saying that 
 tigers were noble beasts which should not be hunted. 
 Steadily did you oppose the re-establishment of 
 British authority and the Khedive's arms in Upper 
 Egypt. You discerned aggression and predicted 
 disaster, so that men called you the False Prophet of 
 the Sudan. Generally, it may be said, you detest all 
 
MR. JOHN MORLEY 117 
 
 wars not waged in defence of liberty. You consist- 
 ently denounced the policy which, as you thought, 
 led to the South African struggle, but you never 
 joined in the abuse directed against British adminis- 
 trators and soldiers. On the whole you are in sym- 
 pathy with the views, though not with the language, 
 of the anti-Imperial party. The story is told of you 
 that after hearing a distinguished lady's declamation 
 during the late war you said that you felt inclined 
 to go into another room and sing " God save the 
 Queen." Possibly your ideal of political perfectness 
 would best be realised in a compact European state 
 without foreign possessions or over-sea responsibili- 
 ties an insular Belgium without its Congo appan- 
 age. Yet you are content to accept the British 
 Empire as an existing fact, and be a faithful trustee 
 of the great Continent placed in your keeping. 
 When you were appointed last year to be Secretary 
 of State for India the misgivings were general and 
 deep amongst people who cared for the progress and 
 stability of our rule in the East. The only hope was 
 that you were rather an old man, not specially in- 
 dustrious, and possessed of many other interests. 
 You might, therefore, be content to allow your per- 
 manent staff to do your business for you and give 
 you an easy time. No such thing. You buckled at 
 once to work, and in a short time had acquired an 
 astonishingly firm grip of the most important 
 problems of your Department. 
 
n8 RULERS OF ENGLAND 
 
 Very soon it became evident that you were not 
 going to play into the hand of the Congress party in 
 India or of their partially demented friends at home. 
 Thereupon you were marked down for ruin. On 
 the Budget day last year an ambuscade was laid by 
 these fanatic tribesmen, and a hostile resolution was 
 nearly carried which would have involved your re- 
 signation. From this unmerited humiliation you 
 were saved by Opposition votes an intervention 
 which did not endear you to the Radicals. For 
 months past they have been denouncing you as anti- 
 quated and renegade you who have never recanted 
 a doctrine or played false to a friend. Nevertheless, 
 you profited by the warning, and this year you have 
 been ready for the adversaries in your camp. The 
 statement of policy made last week contained a 
 definite scheme of reform which was bound to be 
 approved by all Liberals not of the extreme Left, 
 while you earned the applause of all moderate men 
 on both sides of the House by an eloquent and 
 argued vindication of the principles on which the 
 British authority is justified in the East. There was 
 no taint in it of a vainglorious patriotism, no excuse 
 for rule by the sword, nothing which the most acid 
 or sanctimonious could use as a handle against the 
 speaker. This was an adroit performance, and shows 
 that, when occasion demands, you can combine the 
 innocence of the philosophical dove with the wisdom 
 of the parliamentary opportunist. 
 
MR. JOHN MORLEY 119 
 
 During the brief spell of power enjoyed by the 
 Gladstone and Rosebery Administrations between 
 1892 and 1895 your influence was exerted against 
 the new Imperialism, but, with the collapse of Home 
 Rule, the authority of the Chief Secretary dimin- 
 ished. For the intrigues and manoeuvrings of poli- 
 ticians you possess neither relish nor aptitude. But 
 though you were never in accord with' Sir William 
 Harcourt's outlook on public affairs, you could more 
 easily have accepted him as Mr. Gladstone's suc- 
 cessor than the Foreign Secretary who had just 
 played so vigorous a part in reasserting the supre- 
 macy of Great Britain in the Valley of the Nile. 
 The occupation of Egypt was in your eyes a criminal 
 foolishness. Not merely was it a sin against native 
 rights, but it also kept up a constant feeling of irri- 
 tation in France. Although you have never de- 
 veloped strong views on foreign policy beyond 
 insisting on the duty of non-intervention in Euro- 
 pean affairs and ensuing peace both in Asia and 
 Africa, you have always kept in your heart a specially 
 warm place for the people who held up the banner 
 of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity against an 
 Absolutist combination, and whose literature has 
 inspired you with some of your finest thoughts. 
 You look coldly upon Liberal Imperialism because 
 you regard it as an illogical confusion of inconsistent 
 ideals. In the same spirit you have no tolerance for 
 loose phrasing and ragged sentences. As a platform 
 
izo RULERS OF ENGLAND 
 
 speaker you have inspired moments, and almost alone 
 of contemporary politicians you venture to address 
 the people in terms of political philosophy. Your 
 dignified and thoughtful perorations, not unworthy 
 of another literary statesman whom you have inter- 
 preted to the present generation, are, as a rule, not 
 more successful than were his in the House of 
 Commons. It was seldom that Edmund Burke 
 could hold the attention of Parliament, and most of 
 the Hon. Members who admire your unique quali- 
 ties prefer to wait to read your glowing periods in 
 the morning newspapers. 
 
 Adversaries wishing to disparage you as a politician 
 have extolled your attainments in the world of 
 letters and hinted not obscurely that in venturing 
 from the study into the public arena you are put- 
 ting your talents to a bad use. It is not clear, how- 
 ever, that your work as a critic and biographer has 
 been impaired by your labours in the House of 
 Commons. In mere point of style you are never 
 likely to surpass the brilliant studies which you 
 wrote as a comparatively young man of Voltaire, 
 Rousseau, and Diderot, or the ever admirable essay 
 on " Compromise " which is a fitting pendant to 
 Mill's on " Liberty." Nor can it be said of the 
 " Gladstone " that, from the artistic point of view, 
 it is equal to " Cobden," which in its way is a 
 masterpiece, since it presents a clear, convincing, and 
 attractive picture of a figure neither imposing nor 
 
MR. JOHN MORLEY 121 
 
 ingratiating. Yet we realise the restless energy and 
 contagious enthusiasm of the great propagandist, 
 and readers who have least sympathy with his ob- 
 jects are enabled to understand why he succeeded 
 in his prodigious task. In the " Gladstone " you 
 had a far more fascinating topic, but the massive 
 material was overpowering and the time at your dis- 
 posal too limited. It is the hope of all lovers of 
 good biography that some day you will enter on the 
 task of reducing that enormous compilation to one- 
 third of its present size, omitting what has become 
 irrelevant, compressing the narrative of complicated 
 episodes within their due bounds, and giving us a 
 real appreciation of the man as you knew him, telling 
 the whole truth as you have told it of Cobden. Even 
 as it stands, the book contains many passages which 
 are models of simple narrative such as no other living 
 man of letters could have written, and pages of the 
 scholarly eloquence with which you dignify the call- 
 ing of a journalist. When Greenwood and Morley 
 were using their pens in the service of their respec- 
 tive parties it was impossible for the most superfine 
 dilettante to look down upon the London Press, and 
 it may fairly be claimed that the upward movement 
 which they started has not spent the whole of its 
 force. I am, Sir, 
 
 Your obedient Servant, 
 
 FRIAR JOHN. 
 To the Right Hon. J. MORLEY, M.P. * 
 
MR. A. BIRRELL 
 
 SIR, 
 
 By this time, probably, you have discovered 
 that politics is not so easy a business as you fancied 
 when, eighteen years ago, you made your appear- 
 ance in the House of Commons. It is not clever- 
 ness that pays in the long run, so Sir Henry Camp- 
 bell-Bannerman has recently told us. He had reason 
 being Prime Minister. Your talents are nearly as 
 conspicuous as your failures. All your life, until 
 you became a Minister, you had been a prize-boy, 
 and the experience has not been good for your 
 character. It is not suggested that you are puffed 
 up : for a versatile and very ambitious man you are 
 singularly free from self-conceit. But you have 
 been misled by facile success. Yet you should have 
 been undeceived by the tenour of your professional 
 career. The very considerable knowledge which 
 you had acquired at Trinity Hall as to the principles 
 of law, and subsequently developed by study in 
 London, amply justified your appointment as Pro- 
 fessor at University College, but it did not bring 
 you profitable clients, or make you a good opinion. 
 Perhaps the most remarkable consequence of your 
 treatise on the Duties and Liabilities of Trustees 
 was to provide an adversary in Parliament with a 
 
 122 
 
MR. BIRRELL 
 
RULERS OF ENGLAND 123 
 
 text for condemning, as from your own mouth, an 
 essential feature in your Education Bill. Probably, 
 however, your thoughts were not greatly troubled 
 by seeing yourself outstripped in the race for prac- 
 tice by men whose attainments you might fairly 
 despise. In literature you found solace, occupation, 
 and reasonably handsome emolument. The note 
 struck in your charming essays was precisely suited 
 to the taste of an ever-widening circle of paying 
 readers. Half-educated and semi-intellectual, they 
 knew, or had picked up, enough to distinguish the 
 charlatan from the scholar. In the flood of unin- 
 structed twaddle and gushing appreciations which 
 pass nowadays for literary criticism they were de- 
 lighted to come upon a writer who did not tax their 
 brains, yet gave them intelligible and reproducible 
 reasons for praising the books which they ought to 
 admire. Moreover, though they could not analyse 
 your style, they felt its merits, which are equally 
 obvious and genuine. Your humour, too, bright and 
 blameless, is satisfying to a generation which discovers 
 subtlety in Mr. Barrie, sees philosophy in Dr. Ibsen, 
 and looks on Mr. Shaw as quite a mordant satirist. 
 
 As you had thrown personality into your writings 
 you entered public life with a ready-made character. 
 It was assumed that the Mr. Birrell of the belles 
 lettres would be the Mr. Birrell of the House of 
 Commons. Nor did the incidents of your earlier 
 career in Parliament, either as a debater at West- 
 
124 RULERS OF ENGLAND 
 
 minster or as a platform orator, serve to modify the 
 not unnatural forecast. Your speeches were vigor- 
 ous enough, but they betrayed no tinge of intoler- 
 ance. By their moderation and reasonableness they 
 did something to rehabilitate a discredited Radi- 
 calism. At the General Election in 1900 you took 
 your beating in North-east Manchester with good 
 sense and good temper. During the South African 
 crisis, while you were too prudent to associate your- 
 self prominently with the Liberal Imperialists, you 
 studiously abstained from the anti-patriotic agita- 
 tion. Steadily you gained favour with Liberals of 
 all shades, and the Unionists, though they recognised 
 an adroit and formidable adversary, read and 
 marked, if they could not altogether digest, your 
 lively comments on their policy. Your success last 
 year in North Bristol, one of the most striking 
 victories of your party, was, on personal grounds, 
 welcomed by Conservatives, since they believed that 
 as Minister of Education you would restrain the per- 
 secuting spirit of the political Nonconformists who 
 had avowed to make an end of Church of England 
 teaching in elementary schools. 
 
 They were justified in that hope, since you had, 
 with unaccustomed unction, breathed a prayer that 
 the same spirit which would govern your contem- 
 plated measure should guide the House of Commons 
 in its deliberations. Nor has the sincerity of that 
 over-sanguine manifesto been called into question 
 
MR. A. BIRRELL 125 
 
 by fair-minded opponents. It is universally agreed 
 that, if you had been permitted to direct the affairs 
 of your Department, you would have offered terms 
 which the Church of England and the other de- 
 nominations might have found tolerable, though 
 they could not affect to regard them as equitable. 
 Such a scheme you had framed and pressed upon an 
 almost unanimous Cabinet. With infinite pains and 
 considerable tact you had talked over a section of 
 the English Roman Catholics. Lord Ripon and an 
 eminent dignitary had been persuaded that the plan 
 would spare nearly all their schools, and that the 
 havoc which it was to work would fall almost en- 
 tirely upon the Church of England. They were 
 deceived, no doubt, but, partly through your skil- 
 fulness and partly through their anxiety to give 
 the Irish Nationalists an excuse for supporting a 
 Ministry inclined to Home Rule, they had allowed 
 themselves to be tickled into somnolence. 
 
 The plot was going on briskly when, at the last 
 moment, the alarm was given from the directly 
 opposite quarter. Mr. Lloyd George, acute in judg- 
 ment and truculent in Nonconformity, set his 
 friends in motion. They quickly saw that no net 
 could be woven with meshes wide enough to let the 
 Roman Catholics escape without also permitting a 
 large number of the Anglicans to get away. At this 
 point you made the blunder which wrecked your 
 Bill and inflicted the first blow on your rising repu- 
 
126 RULERS OF ENGLAND 
 
 tation. You gave way to the pious fury of the 
 political Dissenters, or perhaps it would be more 
 correct to say that you surrendered your judgment 
 to that of the Prime Minister. The proposals which 
 you eventually laid before the House of Commons 
 would not have been otherwise framed if you had 
 set yourself to stir up a strife of creeds the very 
 result which you had laboured to avert. In vain did 
 you exert all your suavity, all your dialectical in- 
 genuity, to disarm opposition. Humour, sophistry, 
 and menace were tried one after another, and when 
 finally a confused and unworkable Bill had been sent 
 to the House of Lords you paid a flying visit to your 
 constituents and dared the Peers to meddle with the 
 framework of a measure which, as you very well 
 knew, the Board of Education would not have ven- 
 tured to put into operation. 
 
 Still, almost to the end, you kept the Noncon- 
 formist flag flying. But all the time you were 
 desperately anxious to get a Bill passed some Bill, 
 almost any Bill. In the confidential discussions 
 which were held between representatives of the two 
 Houses you and Lord Crewe showed yourselves 
 ready, not, of course, to concede the full demand of 
 the English and Roman Churches, but to assent to 
 the minimum on which they were resolved to insist. 
 Once again peace was in sight, but once again you 
 failed to impose your will on the extreme men of 
 your party. The Bill had to be abandoned, and, 
 
MR. A. BIRRELL 127 
 
 somewhat unfairly, you were blamed for involving 
 the Government in a signal collapse. You sought to 
 cover your retreat by threats of administrative 
 oppression, but you are not fitted by nature or train- 
 ing to do that kind of dirty work. 
 
 Clearly the Board of Education was no longer a 
 place for you. Meantime, Mr. Bryce had rendered 
 himself impossible at Dublin. By what process of 
 reasoning the Prime Minister persuaded himself, 
 and you were induced to think, that having broken 
 down in Whitehall you might succeed at the Irish 
 Office has never been revealed. Perhaps the ex- 
 planation lies in the revelation of your weakness. 
 The man then required as Chief Secretary was one 
 who could be moulded by Mr. Redmond as you had 
 been manipulated by Dr. Clifford. If that was the 
 object it was brilliantly attained, since your Irish 
 Council Bill was much more than a measure of Devo- 
 lution. It was a substantial instalment of Home 
 Rule, and, Nationalist denials notwithstanding, quite 
 acceptable to the Irish Parliamentary party. More- 
 over, it would have been materially expanded if the 
 Dublin Convention had put down a series of definite 
 requisitions. You had managed both the reason- 
 able Nationalists and the hesitating Imperialists, just 
 as last year you managed the practicable Noncon- 
 formists and temporising Roman Catholics with 
 the same result. To your surprise and disgust you 
 learned that Mr. Redmond had no authority to 
 
128 RULERS OF ENGLAND 
 
 speak for the Separatist movement, and a second 
 time you were left in the lurch. In this case you did 
 not enjoy the sportsman-like satisfaction of giving 
 your backers a run for their money. You had under- 
 stood neither the problem to be solved nor the 
 persons you had to deal with. 
 
 The truth is that you are a man of letters, a man 
 of feeling, perhaps a man of thought, but you are 
 not a man of affairs. Statecraft does not consist of 
 making effective speeches, in devising elaborate 
 schemes on paper, and in meeting hostile comment. 
 Otherwise the government of the country would be 
 best conducted by a mixed Cabinet of chancery and 
 common-law barristers, with some inspired dema- 
 gogue for Prime Minister. What is required is a 
 sense of human nature, with an intuitive or acquired 
 power of trusting and mistrusting the right man on 
 the proper occasion. Of the real Ireland committed 
 to your keeping you know as little as of the religious 
 sentiment the prepossessions and prejudices, if you 
 will of the Churches and sects which you tried to 
 bring into line together. Every kind of fanaticism 
 is alien to your genial and rational temperament, 
 since you have spent all your days on the upper 
 crust, the upper middle-class crust, of a tolerant and 
 intellectual little continent bounded by Lincoln's 
 Inn, St. Stephen's, the Athenaeum Club, and West- 
 bourne Grove Chapel. Now and again you throw 
 back to your strain of provincial earnestness, as when 
 
MR. A. BIRRELL 129 
 
 you indulge in diatribes against the Bishops and 
 temporal Peers, but it is only a passing mood of 
 which you are half-ashamed. You have no more 
 sympathy with the religious frame of mind repre- 
 sented by Lord Halifax or Mr. Lloyd George than 
 with the patriotism of Mr. Redmond's masters at 
 the Dublin Convention. 
 
 It does not follow, because you have not yet lived 
 in the world, or faced the sterner forces of theo- 
 logical passion and national animosities, that you are 
 unteachable. By the irony of events you have been 
 placed in charge of Ireland when the agrarian 
 troubles of the 'eighties are being revived by a de- 
 termined and desperate organisation, and when the 
 inheritors of Invincible traditions have won a re- 
 newed influence over the spirit of the people. As 
 in consistency bound, you will try to govern with 
 the ordinary law, but, in case that should be in- 
 sufficient, would you have the courage to demand 
 special powers ? Already you have given up the 
 attempt to gloze over outrage and intimidation, and 
 frankly admit that the state of the country is causing 
 you " considerable anxiety." If you were left alone, 
 with the permanent Under-Secretary, to deal with 
 the trouble and disorder, you would soon put down 
 the mischief makers. For you have a will of your 
 own, and would exercise it if set at defiance. The 
 danger is that you may be talked over by the Prime 
 Minister and some of his more reckless colleagues. 
 
 K 
 
i 3 o RULERS OF ENGLAND 
 
 It is not in courage, but in judgment, that you have 
 hitherto proved yourself deficient. 
 
 It is disheartening to your friends to recall that 
 less than twelve months ago you were reckoned to 
 stand first for the succession to Sir Henry Campbell- 
 Bannerman. Mr. Asquith had estranged many 
 Radicals by the reputed moderation of his views, and 
 offended others by his uncompromising manner of 
 expressing them. It was almost arranged that he 
 should be set aside and you promoted to his place. 
 Now the only question is whether you will survive 
 another session. The position is not enviable. If 
 you palter with riot and sedition you will bring ruin 
 on the Government, and if you resort to coercion 
 the Radicals will join the Nationalists in hounding 
 you out of Office. You are so acutely conscious of the 
 dilemma that you may try to find a third course. 
 There is something to be said for indulgence to law- 
 breakers, and something for prompt measures of re- 
 pression. But the sure road to disaster is to combine 
 both methods : to look on apathetically while the 
 secret societies establish a reign of terror, and apply 
 force when they have become unmanageable. Your 
 career will be spoiled if you cannot shake off the 
 sickly air of irresolution. 
 
 I am, Sir, 
 
 Your obedient Servant, 
 FRIAR JOHN. 
 The Rt. Hon. AUGUSTINE BIRRELL, K.C., M.P. 
 
MR. LLOYD GEORGE 
 
THE PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF TRADE 
 (MR. LLOYD GEORGE) 
 
 SIR, 
 
 You are better praised than trusted, and more 
 denounced than disliked. The qualities that get you 
 most often into trouble represent the more sterling 
 side of your character. For the British Empire and 
 the Church of England you entertain a disinterested 
 aversion, and your angry outbursts proceed from 
 genuine passion. This your adversaries are begin- 
 ning to understand, and they make the sort of allow- 
 ance which tolerant Englishmen are always ready to 
 extend to every kind of fanaticism. Some of your 
 political friends are less indulgent, and put you down 
 as insincere because they know you to be an invete- 
 rate and successful intriguer. Nor can they be alto- 
 gether blamed for suspecting an old associate in 
 political conspiracy. Naturally, they think that the 
 suppleness displayed in their cause may hereafter 
 be turned against them. The elaborate legal 
 chicanery by which the Welsh Nonconformist 
 Radicals hoped to break down the Education Act 
 of 1902 was invented and worked by the man who, 
 since he became a Minister, has employed all his 
 skill in holding them in check. For many months 
 
132 RULERS OF ENGLAND 
 
 past your conduct has been keenly canvassed in the 
 Principality. There has even been a talk of expel- 
 ling you from the Welsh party, and threatening your 
 seat at Carnarvon. When you took office under Sir 
 Henry Campbell-Bannerman it had been imagined 
 that your first care would be to push the cause of 
 Disestablishment ; yet, while you speak of your zeal 
 as being still unabated, your energy seems to have 
 been principally occupied in finding excuses for the 
 delay of the Government in commencing its attack 
 on the Church of England. Some of the critics 
 seem to have been conciliated, but there is a formid- 
 able section of enthusiasts who mean to have your 
 blood. In order to put yourself straight with public 
 opinion among the Welsh Nonconformists you think 
 it. politic to indulge in almost frantic abuse of the 
 Establishment. Nor is the effort difficult, since you 
 are then speaking from your heart, and enjoy the 
 sensation of giving a free rein to your Celtic exu- 
 berance. 
 
 The same double tendency is exhibited in your 
 dealings with Imperial questions. In the House of 
 Commons the other day you spoke with unre- 
 strained fury about the South African war, neither 
 remembering nor caring that beside you, on the 
 Ministerial bench, were seated men who had on 
 many occasions declared and attested their approval 
 of that national effort. It did not matter to you 
 that men recalled the ignominious day when you 
 
MR. LLOYD GEORGE 133 
 
 came forward on a Birmingham platform as a cham- 
 pion of the Boer cause, and had to save your skin 
 by escaping in a policeman's uniform. The out- 
 break last week showed that you had not modified 
 the opinions which six or seven years ago made you 
 one of the most unpopular men in Great' Britain. 
 It also illustrates the kind of opposition which has 
 to be encountered within the Cabinet by statesmen 
 who cherish any recollection of the period when 
 they stood up with Lord Rosebery, and for the time 
 prevented the Liberal party from being submerged 
 in an anti-national movement. Now it is your sec- 
 tion which is in the ascendant, and we can imagine 
 what quarter would be given to a recalcitrant Im- 
 perialist. Yet your friends are dismayed and dis- 
 gusted to find that there are limits to your prejudice. 
 It had been confidently expected that you would 
 join with zest in trampling upon the Colonial 
 Premiers when you were put up to argue at the 
 Conference against their request for Preference. 
 You did, indeed, offer an argumentative defence of 
 our existing fiscal system. Not the most obdurate 
 Cobdenite could impeach the orthodoxy of your 
 views. But they were urged with a moderation and 
 courtesy that presented an almost startling contrast 
 to the doctrinaire lecturings of Mr. Asquith and the 
 snappish sciolism of Mr. Winston Churchill. Men 
 who disagreed profoundly with the conclusion will- 
 ingly admitted that you had behaved with states- 
 
134 RULERS OF ENGLAND 
 
 manlike consideration, and done something to reduce 
 the offence given by your colleagues. 
 
 As President of the Board of Trade, you are 
 making an excellent record, and what most people 
 in December, 1905, considered almost the worst of 
 Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman's appointments has 
 been more than justified. It was feared that the 
 politician who had signalised himself by unmeasured 
 attacks on Mr. Chamberlain would forthwith 
 attempt to turn things upside-down at Whitehall 
 and hunt, high and low, for any and every trace of 
 the accursed thing Protectionism. On the contrary, 
 you have shown yourself eager within the limits of 
 your economic theory to organise and develop 
 British commerce. The doctrine of Free Imports 
 is too holy to be tampered with, but it is not neces- 
 sarily linked with that of laisser-faire. By an 
 arrangement with the Foreign Office, steps are being 
 taken to stir up the estimable gentlemen who act as 
 British Consuls in foreign countries, and hitherto 
 have faithfully carried out the spirit of their in- 
 structions from Downing Street. In the art of doing 
 little or nothing that branch of the service was un- 
 surpassed. Henceforth an effort will be made to 
 employ Government machinery for helping men of 
 business in this country to obtain information as to 
 openings for their capital and enterprise abroad. 
 More than this, direct encouragement will be 
 offered to trade within the Empire, and a system of 
 
MR. LLOYD GEORGE 135 
 
 commercial agents in the Colonies is to be estab- 
 lished, which should partially meet the wishes ex- 
 pressed by the Premiers at the Imperial Conference. 
 The announcement was received by the Radical 
 Press with almost complete silence. " This sort of 
 thing," it was hinted, " was all very well so far as 
 it went, but it might easily go too far." The credit 
 of the idea may belong to other men, but you 
 adopted it and, more difficult, carried it through 
 the House of Commons. 
 
 It was with accents of pained surprise that the 
 zealots of your party hailed your plan last year for 
 equalising some of the conditions under which the 
 competition is carried on between British and 
 foreign shippers. Under previous legislation some 
 of the requirements imposed by the Board of Trade 
 for the comfort and safety of the crews were in 
 practice confined to British vessels. As the com- 
 pliance with these humane and proper regulations 
 involved very considerable expense, it is obvious that 
 your owners were pro tanto handicapped as against 
 foreign rivals. By making the application universal 
 for all craft resorting to British ports you did an act 
 of justice to your countrymen which has been 
 warmly appreciated. But, of course, you were far 
 too prudent to lay emphasis on this side of your 
 policy. It was the humanitarian aspect you insisted 
 upon, and the Radical critics had nothing to do but 
 sulkily acquiesce. You are pursuing a similar end, 
 
1 36 RULERS OF ENGLAND 
 
 and by almost identical means, in your legislation 
 this year in regard to patents. In future it will not 
 be easy for a foreign inventor or purchaser of a 
 foreign man's invention to obtain protection in this 
 country while he not only works the idea abroad, 
 but prevents it from being worked here at all. The 
 removal of this glaring hardship is a sign that you 
 at least realise that Free Trade and laisser-Jaire are 
 on their trial. If they are to be saved in this 
 country they must, at least, be pruned of their 
 excrescences. 
 
 Perhaps it is because you are still a young man 
 that you have shown yourself so much more teach- 
 able than most of your colleagues. Yet you started 
 as Minister with no advantage except your remark- 
 able cleverness. Your early years were spent in 
 acquiring the means of setting up in business as a 
 solicitor, and nothing in your speeches betrays an 
 acquaintance with matters lying outside the range 
 of your profession. Your career was, no doubt, 
 assisted by your political activity, and you are much 
 too acute a man to speak in Parliament without 
 having got up at least one side of the case. In the 
 debate on the House of Lords the other day you 
 crammed yourself with a long list of the historical 
 iniquities committed by that assembly of tyrants. 
 But the demonstration was not altogether success- 
 ful ; honourable members, if they do not know 
 much themselves, have a way of distinguishing 
 
MR. LLOYD GEORGE 137 
 
 genuine from affected learning. Like other public 
 persons who " get on," you have had unpleasant ex- 
 periences, but have been sensible enough to profit by 
 them. It was your fate to incur one of Mr. Glad- 
 stone's stateliest rebukes. A gang of solid Non- 
 conformists, amongst whom you were especially 
 active, had been opposing a Bill under which the 
 Church of England would be enabled to get rid of 
 scandalous and unworthy clerics. To this you and 
 your associates objected, because every reform thus 
 carried out would weaken the case for Disestablish- 
 ment. The old statesman spoke out his mind about 
 such tactics, and the victims of his indignation 
 winced under the lash. Even more humiliating was 
 your failure last year when you put yourself forward 
 to help Mr. Birrell with his Education Bill. You 
 felt, not unnaturally, that the part relating to Wales 
 should be placed under your special care. It is not, 
 perhaps, worth recalling how many drafts and re- 
 drafts were proposed and rejected in a few hours. 
 The incident is only mentioned here because it 
 proves how recent is the growth of your parlia- 
 mentary aptitude. Last session you were a bungler ; 
 now you are reputed to be a skilled performer. Even 
 when allowance has been made for your undeniable 
 quickness, the transformation seems a trifle too 
 sudden to be permanent. 
 
 As to your future, it is difficult to form an esti- 
 mate. Nothing you have said or done, or under- 
 
138 RULERS OF ENGLAND 
 
 taken to do, suggests that you have in you the 
 capacity for leadership. It is not, perhaps, your 
 fault that your public utterances reveal none of the 
 thought or knowledge which the English people 
 have generally expected to discover in a Prime 
 Minister. Yet other self-made men have found time 
 to read and think. So far, there has been no indica- 
 tion of your having interest outside your political 
 hack work, or being able either to cherish an ideal 
 or form an abstract conception. It would be a grave 
 declension, even from Sir Henry Campbell-Banner- 
 man, if the destinies of a great party were ever 
 committed to the guidance of such a man as you at 
 present are. The chance is that you may grow : the 
 fear is that you have no perception of a higher level 
 than your plane. Not that you are self-satisfied or 
 self-conceited. It is the universal opinion of all 
 persons brought into contact with you that you are 
 singularly unassuming in manner, eager to acquire 
 information, and sympathetic in assimilating what 
 you learn. These are invaluable qualities to an 
 ambitious politician, but they will not lift him from 
 second class to the first. By comparison with your 
 colleagues your successes have been so striking, and 
 your failures so inconspicuous, that there is a strong 
 temptation to overrate your gifts. But your argu- 
 ment is generally thin ; your humour, such as it is, 
 is apt to pass into a mild buffoonery ; and your in- 
 vective lacks finish. If ever you reach the highest 
 
MR. LLOYD GEORGE 139 
 
 place in the Liberal party it will be through the 
 demerits or misfortunes of your rivals rather than 
 your own ability. Already, it must be confessed, 
 they seem to be dropping out of the race. Mr. 
 Asquith, always a wobbler for all his solid air, just 
 now appears to be wobbling away from Imperialism 
 and towards Radicalism, though at any time he 
 might wobble backwards. Mr. Haldane has talked 
 everybody except himself out of breath. Mr. Birrell 
 is becoming a trifle absurd. You are younger than 
 any of these, you are more acute, and you have that 
 streak of Celtic passion which may almost pass itself 
 off for genius. But you also have the failings of 
 your countrymen. They know you best, and they 
 do not rate you so highly as do some of your English 
 friends. 
 
 I am, Sir, 
 
 Your obedient Servant, 
 
 FRIAR JOHN. 
 The Rt. Hon. D. LLOYD GEORGE. 
 
MR. R. B. HALDANE 
 
 SIR, 
 
 You are beginning to be found out. It is 
 perhaps unfair that you should be suspected of 
 duplicity, for you have always been quite open in 
 playing a double part. Yet you are detested by the 
 Radicals, who mean to get rid of you, and distrusted 
 by the Moderate Liberals because they fear that 
 you will fail them when the pinch comes. You are 
 not a strong man, for it is notorious that you are 
 not master in your own Department, and allow your- 
 self to be overshadowed by a stronger personality. 
 Another strain of weakness was revealed by your 
 obsequious telegram to the American Secretary of 
 State about the Jamaica incident. Even a time- 
 server should be able to think a fortnight in front 
 of him. Without seeking to penetrate the secret 
 mysteries of the Cabinet, it may be assumed that 
 last year you fought your hardest to invest the 
 Trade Disputes Bill with some appearance of fair 
 dealing. The persuasive qualities which earned you a 
 well-merited reputation in the Chancery Division had 
 so far triumphed in the secret conclave that your 
 colleagues were induced to make an offer to the 
 Trade Unionists which it was known they would 
 reject. But in your platform speeches you had pledged 
 
 140 
 
LORD HALDANE 
 
RULERS OF ENGLAND 141 
 
 yourself " not to toe the line " of the Independent 
 Labour party, and something had to be done to save 
 your face. It was at once evident that your scruples 
 would be satisfied with a colourable concession. 
 When the Prime Minister announced in Parliament 
 his surrender to the demand for class legislation, in 
 favour of artisans against their employers, no pro- 
 test was heard from his Minister for War. More- 
 over, you complied with the unwritten Cabinet law 
 that a Member who has been overruled shall signify 
 in a public manner his acceptance of the decision 
 forced upon him by his colleagues. It was a sham- 
 bling yet ingenious speech in which you recanted be- 
 fore the House of Commons the opinions to which 
 you had unequivocally committed yourself. In a 
 sense it was candid, since nobody could have been 
 deceived into thinking that the renegade had 
 changed his mind, while if it had been intended to 
 conciliate the Labour men it might have been dis- 
 missed as a rather clumsy failure. 
 
 But that was not its purpose. The sacrifice had 
 been made, not with a view of making a lasting 
 peace, but in order to postpone hostilities. This has 
 been the keynote of your Ministerial career. You 
 have always been playing against time. When you 
 undertook the administration of the War Office and 
 the reorganisation of the Army, you professed your- 
 self appalled by the magnitude of the problem and 
 the intricacy of its details. An interval for study, a 
 
142 RULERS OF ENGLAND 
 
 term for clear thinking, we were told, was necessary. 
 The request was absolutely proper, and excited high 
 hopes amongst all genuine military reformers. Mr. 
 Brodrick had been bustled into his scheme for six 
 Army Corps, and Mr. Arnold-Forster, with natural 
 impetuosity, had plunged into an impracticable 
 scheme which his own party could not accept. Both 
 had failed because they had not allowed themselves 
 leisure for laying their plans and also because the 
 country or Parliament would not give them a chance 
 of working out their designs. But at last, it was 
 thought, a War Secretary had been discovered who 
 insisted on the right of full and unfettered delibera- 
 tion. How misplaced was this confidence ! Within 
 a few months you had yielded to the Radicals' im- 
 patience. They clamoured for an immediate re- 
 duction on the Army Estimates as an earnest of the 
 root and branch economies which they expect you 
 to carry out hereafter. The quiet, resolute man 
 as you believe yourself to be promptly climbed 
 down from his philosophical tree. You knocked off 
 20,000 men from the Regular Army, cut down the 
 Guards, and reduced an already insufficient Artil- 
 lery. 
 
 This was the outcome of the prodigious intellect 
 applied to politics ! Why, any War Office clerk 
 could have done as well. So many men cost so much 
 money. Then away with the men ! This is not the 
 place to argue about the military policy of the 
 
MR. HALDANE 143 
 
 British Empire or to criticise the voluble explana- 
 tion with which the House of Commons was for 
 several hours entertained and bemused. The ver- 
 dict of the practical soldiers was that you had 
 treated the country with a dressing of the moral 
 liniment which in the vernacular of the barracks is 
 described as eye-wash. But you got no thanks from 
 the Radicals, even for the saving on the Estimates, 
 since you accompanied the gift with sinful talk about 
 increasing the efficiency of that instrument of 
 oppression, the British Army. After having found 
 salvation with Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, you 
 were convicted from your own mouth of hankering 
 after the forbidden meats of Liberal Imperialism. 
 In the judgment of the Little England party you 
 presented a melancholy parallel to the Rev. Mr. 
 Greedy, that missionary of the Higher Light, who 
 reverted to the manners of an atavistic barbarism. 
 It is an undeserved imputation. Not a man in 
 the Army believes that you can perform your pro- 
 mises ; that you will have an Expeditionary Force 
 of 160,000 ready at short notice for foreign service ; 
 that you will keep up a special contingent as a 
 Reserve for the first six months of war ; or that the 
 Territorial Army, a body of untrained amateurs 
 estimated at 300,000, could be trusted with the 
 duties of home defence. As for its meeting the need 
 for military expansion in a National crisis, that is 
 merely one of your Parliamentary figments. Like 
 
144 RULERS OF ENGLAND 
 
 many clever men, you underrate the capacity of 
 average persons. What you are trying to do is to 
 persuade the peace fanatics that you are killing the 
 British Army by a scientific process of painless ex- 
 tinction, while you assure the soldiers that you are 
 only concerned to place it on a sound basis. Un- 
 fortunately, the two parties compare notes, and the 
 game is up. 
 
 There was a time already it seems remote 
 when you were credited with keeping Lord Rose- 
 bery's conscience. It is not surprising that you lost 
 control of that elusive force, which, like the ele- 
 ments revealed by modern physicists, operates in 
 places where it is neither seen nor felt. During the 
 late Parliament it was known that you were pulling 
 the strings of the League which accomplished the 
 end of its being in giving a dinner to Mr. Asquith, 
 and declaring " war to the knife and fork " against 
 the pro-Boers. They were to be converted, silenced 
 or suppressed. In the result, as we know, it is the 
 League that was decapitated and eaten up by the 
 Little Englanders. Some of its chief members, it 
 is true, are still but half digested, and occasionally 
 show signs of disagreeing violently with the system 
 into which they have been thrust. It is with a sense 
 of morbid curiosity that a callous public is watching 
 the agonising process of political assimilation. 
 
 Beyond a doubt, you and your associates are sin- 
 cere in your repugnance to the anti-Imperial policy 
 
MR. HALDANE 145 
 
 of the Liberal party as it has been moulded by the 
 Prime Minister. It would be far simpler and more 
 comfortable not to struggle against the overmaster- 
 ing current. Or it would be still simpler and, per- 
 haps, more comfortable to break, once for all, with 
 men whose aims you disapprove, and boldly take up 
 your abode in an independent Cave. Why, then, do 
 you retain a false and embarrassing position ? Your 
 Radical detractors say blankly that you are staying 
 on because you know that if you resign you would 
 be snuffed out. This is unfair and untrue. Prob- 
 ably you find a certain exhilaration in the daily task 
 of trimming and balancing and just maintaining an 
 unstable equilibrium. It is a form of intellectual 
 sport which appeals to your subtle nature. Perhaps 
 also you are still waiting for an opportunity. In 
 your judgment, the moment has not arrived for an 
 effective vindication of Moderate Liberalism. 
 
 But why is it that, with such views, you are tole- 
 rated as the colleague of a Radical Prime Minister ? 
 Because you are a hostage for the Moderate Liberals. 
 Of course he could defy them if he chose, and were 
 content to rely upon the extreme men. But he has 
 the country to think of as well as the House of 
 Commons. It is your inglorious function to act as 
 one of his most serviceable bonnets. He has to 
 give periodical assurances to his peace-at-any-price 
 friends about setting an example to the civilised 
 world and putting an end to " provocative " ex- 
 
 L 
 
146 RULERS OF ENGLAND 
 
 penditure on armaments. But in order to keep his 
 Moderate Liberals in tow the War Minister (a 
 gentleman of unimpeachable patriotism) is sent to 
 break bread with the Lord Mayor and City Cor- 
 poration, who are informed that Great Britain 
 would reconsider its defensive policy if its overtures 
 at The Hague should not be met in a spirit of 
 reciprocity. At the General Election the Prime 
 Minister got many votes from solid men of business 
 who were afraid that Mr. Chamberlain's fiscal re- 
 forms might upset the existing basis of trade. But 
 it would be shaken to its foundations by a war, or 
 alarm of war, at a time when our defences had been 
 let down to danger point. 
 
 " Haldane is a safe man, a sound man, a sensible 
 man," say the puffy princes of retail trade, who roll 
 up their fortunes from dealing in dumped foreign 
 trash. In their gratitude for the comfort you give 
 to their mercenary optimism they forget you are a 
 philosopher or forgive that finical enormity. In- 
 deed, they are rather pleased to hear of your going 
 up and down the country and talking of things that 
 do not matter the study of Thought, the future of 
 Science, the functions of a University, or the mean- 
 ing of Individuality. These effusions are charitably 
 ignored as the toys of your leisure, or as instruments 
 employed in the great art of advertisement. But it 
 would be doing you an injustice to hint that your 
 indefatigable exertions on all kinds of platforms are 
 
MR. HALDANE 147 
 
 actuated by self-seeking. You are genuinely ena- 
 moured of your own ideas and believe that their 
 author possesses an unrivalled gift of exposition. It 
 was not with any underhand design of preventing a 
 discussion on your first Army scheme that you spent 
 several hours in explaining it to Parliament. Simply, 
 you have so much to say that where ten minutes 
 would satisfy an ordinary man you require an hour. 
 The volubility is becoming a disease which may end 
 in ranking you among the bores of Westminster. At 
 present you are regarded with wondering admiration 
 by the Labour party. They dislike your views but 
 respect your erudition. The amount of your learn- 
 ing may, perhaps, be exaggerated in an assembly 
 which, with many new men of remarkable clever- 
 ness, contains few who can be credited with trained 
 and critical judgment. Dr. Macnamara, for in- 
 stance, may properly regard you as a prodigy of 
 attainment, but Mr. Herbert Paul would satisfy his 
 well-known passion for eulogy with a far more 
 modest estimate. Nevertheless, you are a sincere 
 and thoroughgoing student of the 'best philosophy 
 that Germany has turned out. If, when you paid 
 your visit to the Fatherland, you had accumulated 
 data for reorganising the metaphysical courses at the 
 Scottish Universities, you might, perhaps, have done 
 more solid work than by essaying to acclimatise in 
 this country the methods of the German General 
 Staff. But it must not be imagined that your philo- 
 
148 RULERS OF ENGLAND 
 
 sophical talents are quite thrown away at the War 
 Office. The moment may come when you will natu- 
 rally appeal to the mysticisms of ontology to get 
 yourself out of a tight place in the House of Com- 
 mons. As to Being and Not-Being, are they not 
 essentially identical ? Fundamentally, then, what 
 difference can be said to exist between an Army in 
 being and an Army not in being ? The demonstra- 
 tion which we anticipate will be so lucidly confusing 
 that only the practical soldiers will see through the 
 sophistication, and they will not be able to expose 
 it. It is always easy, said Lord Randolph Churchill, 
 to score off a military man in debate. 
 
 There is one anecdote in English history which 
 may be recalled to your attention. When the elder 
 Pitt was told by a colleague that the men and money 
 could not be got ready for an expedition on a certain 
 required date, he replied : " If the men and money 
 are not ready at ten o'clock on Thursday next, your 
 Grace's head shall roll at your Grace's feet." That 
 was the way, remarked Carlyle, to speak to an in- 
 capable Minister. Have you given us any reason to 
 believe that on an Imperial emergency the men and 
 money would be ready at ten o'clock on Thursday 
 
 morning ? 
 
 I am, Sir, 
 
 Your obedient Servant, 
 
 FRIAR JOHN. 
 The Rt. Hon. R. B. HALDANE. 
 
SIR EDWARD GREY 
 
SIR EDWARD GREY 
 
 SIR, 
 
 No compliment was intended when Sir 
 Charles Dilke the other day congratulated you on 
 having done what Mr. Gladstone declared to have 
 become impossible. You have conducted in the 
 House of Commons the business of the Foreign 
 Office. How has this political feat been accom- 
 plished ? Like most great performances, it is simple 
 when one knows how to do it. You have baffled the 
 amateur diplomatists of the popular Chamber by 
 sedulously staying out of range. When a question 
 on International policy has been addressed to the 
 Secretary of State, a concise typewritten reply has 
 been read out by a subordinate who has been in- 
 structed not in any circumstances to be drawn into 
 a supplementary discussion. The busybodies and 
 professional hecklers are not even bowled out ; they 
 simply do not get an innings. On very few occa- 
 sions, when a detailed statement appears necessary, 
 your speech blandly ignores the possibility of two 
 opinions being held as to British policy. With an 
 air of dignified sincerity you explain the conditions 
 and announce the decision. That, the audience is 
 given to understand, is the end of the matter. The 
 
 149 
 
ISO RULERS OF ENGLAND 
 
 idea of being led into controversy does not seem to 
 have suggested itself to the Minister's scheme of 
 duty. This attitude you have kept up without be- 
 traying a trace of the disdain which the son of a 
 great Whig family may be suspected of entertaining 
 towards democratic interlopers. Never is a handle 
 given for attack or an excuse for expressing irrita- 
 tion. You stand up before the Commons as a model 
 of political candour and official courtesy. 
 
 The exasperation is not less bitter because it has 
 to be suppressed. The object of Sir Charles Dilke 
 in paying you his left-hand tribute was to stir up 
 odium against the perfection of your bureaucratic 
 method, and to suggest that you were not in har- 
 mony with the popular element in the Liberal party. 
 With admirable adroitness you passed over the im- 
 putation as though you had not observed it, and set 
 yourself right with the Radicals by incidentally re- 
 marking on the happy concord which had been 
 maintained within the Cabinet in regard both to 
 domestic and foreign affairs. There is no need to 
 examine closely the historical accuracy of that 
 politic declaration. Why rake up old stories about 
 the Trade Disputes Bill or Irish Home Rule or Old 
 Age Pensions ? These are insular trifles which may 
 well have escaped the recollection of a Foreign 
 Secretary engrossed in the affairs of his department. 
 All parties in Parliament, except the Socialists and 
 a few extreme Radicals, are well content that the 
 
SIR EDWARD GREY 151 
 
 management of our external business should be 
 carried on by a statesman who holds himself almost 
 as aloof as Mr. Speaker himself from the disputes 
 which agitate mere average hand-to-mouth politi- 
 cians. You live upon a different plane, and, no 
 matter what freak in home legislation be favoured 
 by your colleagues, their most indignant adversaries 
 will not call for your resignation, or even ask how 
 you reconcile it with your conscience to co-operate 
 in measures opposed to your own opinions. If you 
 profit by the generous fiction, it is recognised that 
 you are not animated by a selfish motive, or have a 
 thought for anything beyond the honour of the 
 English name and interests of the British Empire. 
 Nobody would suggest that you love Office for its 
 own sake. Obviously, you would much rather be 
 tr outing or playing tennis. 
 
 It is, perhaps, the chief defect in your public 
 character that you appear to possess no personal 
 ambition. Indeed, if the truth be told, you have 
 no consuming hunger for hard work. Had you been 
 placed in any Department except one in which the 
 issues involved are so tremendous that lack of in- 
 dustry would almost amount to treason you would 
 probably have been known as quite a slack Minister. 
 But the easy-going methods of the Granville days 
 have passed away, and, accomplished as is the per- 
 manent staff at the Foreign Office, the Secretary of 
 State and his junior colleague have to keep them- 
 
152 RULERS OF ENGLAND 
 
 selves continuously braced to a high intellectual 
 tension which occasionally must be irksome to a 
 statesman who like yourself loves the open air, and 
 feels more relish in circumventing the wily trout in 
 a limpid Hampshire chalk stream than in tracking 
 out the dull mendacities of some diplomatic trick- 
 ster. For the wear-and-tear of platform agitation 
 or Parliamentary wrangling you have neither taste 
 nor talent. If the plain truth must be told, you are 
 not above-the-average clever. Yet from the outset 
 of your public career no doubt was entertained by 
 your friends as to the success awaiting you if only 
 you would give yourself the trouble of seizing it. 
 Even before you had gone into the House of 
 Commons you possessed the manner best appre- 
 ciated by that ever-changing, ever-constant assem- 
 bly. It consists in saying the expected thing on the 
 proper occasion and in suitable language. This art, 
 or gift, whichever it may be, is at once the despair 
 and contempt of the ambitious cranks and brilliant 
 failures who abound in Parliament. When you sit 
 down after making a plain statement of British 
 policy it seems as if anybody could have done as well. 
 You have not struck out a new idea or coined a 
 memorable phrase, nor is there, in your record, any 
 reason for supposing that you could have been 
 original if you tried. Yet you have achieved what 
 more showy politicians /fail to effect you have 
 carried the audience with you and disposed of your 
 
SIR EDWARD GREY 153 
 
 critics. They are silenced, exasperated, puzzled. 
 They could go on talking columns and prove you 
 wrong. But they know that nobody would listen to 
 them. 
 
 As an instance of Parliamentary adroitness, it may 
 be sufficient to point to your dealings with the 
 Russian Government. It was proposed last year to 
 send a British Fleet for a cruise in the Baltic, where 
 it would naturally pay a visit of ceremony to the 
 German, Scandinavian and Russian ports. Loud 
 was the outcry of sentimental Radicalism, which in- 
 sisted that the naval courtesy should be withheld 
 from a country where the Ministers of an autocratic 
 ruler were engaged in putting down a popular revo- 
 lution. We should be taking sides, it was argued, 
 with tyranny and against liberty. So vehemently 
 was the pressure applied that, since Great Britain 
 could not make an invidious distinction against one 
 of three friendly Powers, it was decided at the 
 Admiralty, or upon its behalf, that the whole pro- 
 ject must be abandoned. This, of course, was hailed 
 as a great triumph for the Vive la Douma agitators, 
 and in due course they planned a similar campaign 
 against the Foreign Office. It had become known 
 that the Secretary of State carrying on the negotia- 
 tions commenced by Lord Lansdowne was engaged 
 in settling the terms of a Convention with St. 
 Petersburg which would delimit the respective pos- 
 sessions and spheres of influence of the British and 
 
154 RULERS OF ENGLAND 
 
 Russian Empires in Asia. The only purpose was to 
 ease the strain of distant invigilation, and perhaps 
 lessen the burden of competitive preparation for a 
 possible war for the possession of India. A friendly 
 understanding between the two Governments 
 would, it was thought, save both peoples from the 
 risk of an exhausting struggle on the remote frontier 
 and should be equally welcome to patriots in either 
 country. But one of the more violent revolutionary 
 groups in Russia acting in close concert with a clique 
 of London Radicals, declared that the diplomatic 
 intercourse must at once be broken off, lest the 
 Czar's Government should be strengthened through 
 its success in making a beneficial treaty. The so- 
 called Friends of Russian Freedom became incessant 
 in their protests, and time after time questions were 
 asked in the House of Commons. On each occasion 
 they were met with a dry official formula, put into 
 the mouth of a discreet deputy, while the Secretary 
 of State quietly persevered in his task, with which 
 Parliament had no constitutional right of interfer- 
 ence. It is a sheer encroachment for the House of 
 Commons, or any of its members, to claim a voice 
 in Foreign Office dealings with other Governments, 
 and, if the usurpation were permitted, would make 
 it impossible for British diplomatists to maintain 
 confidential relations with the representatives of 
 another State. You were much too wise to display 
 resentment or dispute an untenable demand. Why 
 
SIR EDWARD GREY 155 
 
 waste words and temper when you could accomplish 
 your object by saying nothing and going on with 
 your work ? Not until last week, when it was known 
 that the business had practically been disposed of, 
 did you casually remark, on the Foreign Office vote, 
 that the forthcoming agreement had no bearing on 
 the internal affairs of Russia. 
 
 Though you are generally popular in the House 
 in whose debates you seldom take part, it must not 
 be supposed that you have escaped making enemies. 
 The cautious policy which you are pursuing is de- 
 tested by emotional politicians, who would drag us 
 into war with Turkey on behalf of Greek and Bul- 
 garian brigands in Macedonia much too busily en- 
 gaged in slitting each others' throats to trouble 
 about the Sultan's oppression or pick a quarrel 
 with the allied people of Belgium because King 
 Leopold winks at cruelty and extortion in the Congo 
 Free State. Equally are you banned by the Social- 
 ists, because, so long as you remain at the Foreign 
 Office, the Prime Minister is prevented from giving 
 effect to his visions of cosmopolitan fraternity. If 
 we may judge by results, you are the only Liberal 
 Imperialist within the Cabinet who has the power 
 of keeping that elderly-featherhead on the tracks. 
 Mr. Asquith, for all his airs of sturdy independence, 
 has been caught in the snare, and his embarrassed 
 struggles in the double part of rigid economist and 
 melting enthusiast, provide sinister amusement for 
 
156 RULERS OF ENGLAND 
 
 the students of political human nature. Mr. 
 Haldane, once a pillar of clear thinking and political 
 rectitude, has bemused himself in an unintelligible 
 scheme of army reorganisation, and no longer counts. 
 The others never did count. The Foreign Secretary 
 alone has held his ground, and with cold persistence 
 develops the Rosebery tradition in an anti-Rosebery 
 Administration. If only you could be thrown over, 
 imagine the whoop of emancipated malediction with 
 which some of your colleagues whom it might be 
 impolite to name would rush to their country plat- 
 forms and denounce the crimes and blunders of 
 British Imperialism. By this time, if any other 
 Liberal had been at the Foreign Office, we should 
 have named the day for marching out of Egypt and 
 shaken the very foundations of our rule in India. 
 
 Though you have spoken, as in duty bound, of the 
 concord reigning in the counsels of the Government, 
 you must have a good deal to put up with almost 
 as much, perhaps, as when, during the South African 
 War, a movement was started for drumming you and 
 Mr. Asquith out of the party. Then, as now, you 
 were unaggressive in asserting your patriotism : then, 
 as now, you were indifferent to clamour and imper- 
 vious to menace. You had shown the stuff you were 
 made of when in your present department you 
 served under Lord Rosebery. It would be unfair to 
 deprive your volatile Chief of the credit which he 
 earned in Mr. Gladstone's last and weakest Adminis- 
 
SIR EDWARD GREY 157 
 
 tration, by his prompt and courageous vindication 
 of British authority in Egypt. But it may reason- 
 ably be conjectured that his will was stiffened, not 
 only by the advice of Lord Cromer, but also by the 
 cool judgments of his Under-Secretary. A few 
 years later, when a still more formidable test was 
 applied to British statesmanship, you came forward, 
 and, on behalf of the Opposition, made it plain 
 that the Unionist Government might reckon upon 
 National support if in defence of British interests 
 it should have to face the prospect of war with a 
 Great Power. Distinguished services of this kind 
 are not easily forgotten in England, and, retiring as 
 your life has been, you then made for yourself a 
 position which the most reckless of the Radicals are 
 unwilling to assail. You are a valuable party asset, 
 and must not be sacrificed to a fit of splenetic philan- 
 thropy. It is characteristic of your judgment that 
 you show yourself unconcerned in matters not re- 
 lating to foreign policy, and even in your own de- 
 partment agree to immaterial concessions. Because 
 you felt assured that nothing would come of Sir 
 Henry Campbell-Bannerman's flighty scheme of 
 progressive disarmament you did not protest against 
 bringing ridicule on Great Britain by putting for- 
 ward in its name a resolution which most of the 
 Powers represented at The Hague treat as a harm- 
 less exhibition of English hypocrisy, while the rest 
 think it is a mean dodge for taking them at a dis- 
 
158 RULERS OF ENGLAND 
 
 advantage. If you were a cynic (which you are not), 
 you might laugh in your sleeve at the vapid demon- 
 stration of international amity the dull farce in 
 which you have to play Young Lover to Sir Henry 
 Campbell-Bannerman as Heavy Father. 
 I am, Sir, 
 
 Your obedient Servant, 
 
 FRIAR JOHN. 
 The Right Hon. Sir EDWARD GREY, Bart., M.P. 
 

 - 
 
 LORD CARRINGTON 
 
THE MINISTER OF AGRICULTURE 
 (LORD CARRINGTON) 
 
 MY LORD, 
 
 Though you are getting on in years, and at 
 sixty-four might be supposed to have reached the 
 age of discretion, you are not yet reckoned among 
 the serious politicians. The general estimate is ex- 
 plained less by your youthful appearance than by the 
 levity of your utterances. Nothing is so hard to live 
 down as a reputation for facetiousness. An ungrate- 
 ful world laughs at the little jokes and decides that 
 the maker does not count. You enliven debates in 
 the House of Lords with welcome merriment, air 
 London jests, not much the worse for wear, on 
 country platforms, and are quite inimitable at a 
 National Liberal Club banquet. Honest cits and 
 earnest organisers are entranced with your affability, 
 and speak of you amongst themselves by your 
 Christian name, affectionately abbreviated. Indeed 
 your spontaneous geniality and sincere kindliness 
 constitute your chief asset as a public person. It is 
 perhaps your special function to soften the asperities 
 of provincial Radicalism and to convince touchy 
 doctrinaires or disappointed social aspirants that 
 Peers may be good fellows. This, of course, is not 
 
160 RULERS OF ENGLAND 
 
 the view which you take of your mission. If we may 
 judge by some recent speeches you have acquired a 
 fancy for playing the big drum. The performances 
 have not been successful. 
 
 There was something comical too comical to 
 give offence when you lectured Lord Milner, the 
 other day, on Imperial patriotism, and solemnly an- 
 nounced that you had " done with him." The 
 wonder is that so sensible and shrewd a man of the 
 world as undoubtedly you are should not have 
 realised the absurdity of measuring swords with an 
 administrator whose name, for good or evil, will 
 endure in the records of the British Empire. It was 
 open to you or to any ephemeral politician to criti- 
 cise what you think have been his faults or blunders, 
 but to pretend that you have flattened out the Pro- 
 consul and left him prostrate argues a certain 
 deficiency in the art of self-measurement. It cannot 
 be suggested that you will take rank amongst Im- 
 perial Statesmen, though you have some acquaint- 
 ance with Britain over-seas. In your courtier days, 
 when you were one of the pleasantest young men of 
 your generation, you were selected to accompany 
 the King, then Prince of Wales, in his famous tour 
 through India. There, as everywhere else, you made 
 hosts of friends. But perhaps the best work of your 
 useful, if not oppressively righteous career, was done 
 when you were sent out in 1885 to be Governor of 
 New South Wales. At that time the prevailing tone 
 
LORD CARRINGTON 161 
 
 of Australian statesmen was one of mingled con- 
 tempt and dislike for Downing Street and all that 
 it signified. They were apt to visit their disgust for 
 the Colonial Office on the Governors. Some of 
 these unfortunate officials were second-rate poli- 
 ticians who, having failed at home, must be provided 
 for abroad, while others were starched pedants 
 quite incapable of sympathising with the unconven- 
 tional and occasionally overbearing gentlemen who 
 swayed the local Parliaments. Without apparent 
 effort you won all hearts in Sydney, and, though 
 part of the credit was due to the exceptionally 
 charming lady who shared your dictatorship, you 
 were long remembered as the best representative of 
 the Crown who had ever been sent to Australia. 
 The popularity that you gained and kept became a 
 standard to which your successors were expected to 
 conform. Nor can it be doubted that your five years 
 in Sydney did something to turn the swelling tide of 
 Colonial disaffection. 
 
 This great success in self-acclimatisation was the 
 more creditable as you had gone through just that 
 kind of training which is most likely to intensify the 
 traditional failings of the typical upper-class English- 
 man. Eton and Trinity, Cambridge, followed by 
 the Guards, do not in themselves make for the ready 
 understanding of a democratic community. Our 
 young cadets are unsurpassed in managing the 
 peoples of an inferior civilisation, because there they 
 M 
 
i6z RULERS OF ENGLAND 
 
 are not confronted with claims of equality. But 
 they are apt to stand on their dignity or relapse into 
 superciliousness when they find English methods and 
 British institutions criticised as antiquated survivals 
 in an effete old country. In your breezy style and 
 good-humoured cordiality the Australians of all 
 classes recognised an appreciative spirit, and they 
 repaid your generous hospitalities by saying you were 
 a Lord of the right sort. 
 
 The same qualities have won you the affection of 
 the worthy middle-class folks with whom you are 
 brought into association at such places as the 
 National Liberal Club. Happily you passed through 
 a public school and University without acquiring the 
 culture which makes shy men awkward and reserved 
 ones fastidious. It is, no doubt, a form of intellec- 
 tual snobbishness, and, as every kind of self-con- 
 sciousness is alien to your nature, you would probably 
 have shaken off any taint of academical exclusiveness. 
 You have been preserved from that temptation by a 
 rigorous and life-long abstinence from the pleasures 
 of the intellect. Therefore it does not trouble you 
 to meet on equal terms men of a different class. 
 You are too fine a gentleman to think of your rank, 
 while in point of thought and knowledge there 
 would be no excuse of condescension. Your career 
 is an illustration of the superfluity of the Higher 
 Education. The way to the Cabinet is open to any 
 plausible, good-humoured, clever man if he happens 
 
LORD CARRINGTON 163 
 
 to be a Liberal Peer. Since Mr. Gladstone's Home 
 Rule policy drove five-sixths of our hereditary legis- 
 lators over to the Conservatives, office and honours 
 have been cheaply won among the faithful remnant. 
 
 It would be unjust to hint that your adherence 
 to the Liberal faith was brought about by ambition. 
 You have always been a thoroughgoing party man, 
 and would no more dream of deserting your leader 
 than of disobeying the M.F.H. in the hunting field. 
 Indeed you follow politics in the spirit of a good 
 sportsman your own side, right or wrong and 
 never concern your head about the unpleasant things 
 that may be said by the men playing on the other 
 side. You would be just as loyal, though perhaps 
 you might be less energetic, if your services had not 
 been recognised in 1892 by appointment as Lord 
 Chamberlain, and last year as President of the Board 
 of Agriculture. When Mr. Gladstone was your 
 Chief you stood by him as afterwards by Lord 
 Rosebery and now by Sir Henry Campbell-Banner- 
 man. Dependable men like you are the salt of Party 
 Government, and, though the superfine philosopher 
 may scorn the illogical system, it has produced the 
 soundest Constitution in the world, and worked it 
 without a serious hitch for more than two hundred 
 years. The mugwumps did not make England. 
 
 It was because, on the whole, the Progressives in 
 London were identical with the Liberals that you 
 solicited the vote of West St. Pancras and became a 
 
164 RULERS OF ENGLAND 
 
 County Councillor. You lost no time in distin- 
 guishing yourself by vehemence of language and 
 equability of temper. At one time you were un- 
 justly depreciated as being a pale copy of Lord 
 Rosebery, and scandalised Moderates looked on you 
 as a sort of cheery Gracchus. Really you meant no 
 harm, and very soon found your level in an assembly 
 where Radical talent was more plentiful than in the 
 House of Lords. It was an interesting but un- 
 important episode of a facile career. But it stood 
 you in good stead, because it earned you warm 
 friendship in the Radical group which looks askant 
 on the noble placemen who absorb so many of the 
 good things that should be reserved for tribunes of 
 the plebs. Nobody grudged you your, promotion to 
 the Cabinet. Even the Labour members, who 
 sniffed at Lord Crewe, a far more capable man, 
 acquiesced in your selection as the head of the De- 
 partment which was to direct the campaign against 
 private property in land. 
 
 No such wild project has entered your mind. You 
 accept the professions of your official Chief at their 
 face value, and believe that you are committed to 
 nothing more serious than an extension of Allot- 
 ments and Small Holdings. It would be impossible 
 to overpraise the care and skill with which you have 
 developed the petite culture on your own estates. 
 With characteristic modesty you have spoken of 
 your " twopenny-halfpenny " efforts in this direc- 
 
LORD CARRINGTON 165 
 
 tion. As a matter of fact everybody who has fol- 
 lowed your experiments knows that the success is 
 largely due to the kindly interest shown by the 
 landlord and the expert supervision which he has 
 instituted. If all owners were equally competent, 
 generous and industrious, the peasant-farmer might 
 be kept on his legs against the fickle climate and 
 treacherous markets of the average English county. 
 It is quite possible also that the practical experience 
 acquired on your own properties will enable you to 
 achieve similar results though on a far grander scale 
 from the Crown lands placed under your adminis- 
 tration. If the Cabinet were seriously determined 
 to promote the agricultural innovation which they 
 are advocating, instead of getting up a cry against 
 the landlords because as a class they are Conserva- 
 tives, they would place ample funds and sufficient 
 machinery at your disposal and invite you to work 
 out a grand demonstration of their agrarian theory. 
 Instead of this you are taken away from depart- 
 mental duties in order to justify the random speeches 
 delivered by the Prime Minister. It was a happy 
 example of your frankness when you were put up to 
 explain a set of official papers which had been de- 
 liberately cooked in order to justify his allegation 
 that the landowning class, from selfish motives, had 
 set themselves against allotments and small hold- 
 ings. The document was mercilessly analysed by 
 Lord Lansdowne, and on you fell the unenviable 
 
166 RULERS OF ENGLAND 
 
 task of making some reply. Promptly you disarmed 
 criticism by admitting the charge. The memoran- 
 dum assailed as misleading was, you said, intended 
 only to give one side of the case ! Its purpose was 
 to substantiate Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman's 
 statement. You had done your best, you added, and 
 were not in the least ashamed of it. 
 
 The admission which happily exemplified your 
 attitude towards politics as a game tickled the 
 Olympian sense of humour indulged by the Peers. 
 So far from being keen partisans they are apt to look 
 down with genial disdain on " politicians struggling 
 for existence on provincial platforms." Having got 
 your audience into good humour, you edged away 
 from uncomfortable statistics and about the Prime 
 Minister's misrepresentations said as little as pos- 
 sible. You related a pleasing anecdote of a friend 
 named " Bob," whose pretty wife liked to play the 
 Lady Bountiful on his estate. Agricultural depres- 
 sion had set in and labourers were being discharged. 
 She was told by their wives that they would be con- 
 tent if they could each have a bit of land. But the 
 agent was a sour man and would not be " squared." 
 He could do nothing, he said, for a couple of years, 
 and that was too long to wait. So the pretty lady 
 went to her husband and asked him to get rid of 
 that impediment to her plans. But " Bob " was 
 funny in some things and said " No." The story 
 would, perhaps, have been more useful if it had been 
 
LORD CARRINGTON 167 
 
 continued. The curious inquirer might, perhaps, 
 have wished to learn why the wicked agent, who 
 should have been dismissed without notice, inter- 
 posed the two years' delay. It is just conceivable 
 that all the land suitable for small holdings had been 
 let to tenants who would not give up their farms 
 even to oblige Lady Bountiful. But nobody wanted 
 to spoil your little story, or in any other way take 
 you seriously. 
 
 Besides, you are recognised by your brother Peers, 
 in spite of intemperate platform flourishes, as a 
 sound man of business. Last year, for instance, when 
 Ministers had taken over Mr. Agar Robartes's Land 
 Tenure Bill, by your advice it was largely remodelled 
 by committee in the Commons, and the process com- 
 pleted under your supervision by the Lords. The 
 result was that a pretentious measure of confiscation 
 was turned into a comparatively harmless Act of 
 Parliament. Probably it will remain almost otiose 
 since the tenant who has reasonable skill and some 
 money at the bank is, as you know, master of the 
 situation and can obtain his own terms without re- 
 sort to the irritating and expensive remedy known as 
 official arbitration. It is hoped, therefore, that you 
 will display similar moderation when you have to 
 deal with the Allotments and Small Holdings Bill. 
 At present Mr. Harcourt, as becomes an hereditary 
 democrat, scorns the suggestion of compromise with 
 the Opposition. But you are well aware that some 
 
168 RULERS OF ENGLAND 
 
 of the more obnoxious clauses were only inserted for 
 the sake of blooding the Socialists, and that, unless 
 Ministers see an unexpectedly good opening for a 
 quarrel with the House of Lords, they will accept 
 the counsel which, as a practical agriculturist, you 
 are bound to offer. One thing is quite certain. You 
 will not urge on the Prime Minister towards the de- 
 struction of an assembly to which you owe your 
 political existence. You sat, it is true, for a few 
 years in the House of Commons, but the country 
 would hardly know your name except for the happy 
 accident which gives you an artificial prominence. 
 On neither side, however, of either House is there 
 any man who resents the disproportion between your 
 attainments and position. It is illogical, it may even 
 be immoral, but Englishmen have a liking for the 
 politician who in all circumstances can be trusted to 
 toe the Party line. 
 
 I am, my Lord, 
 
 Your obedient Servant, 
 
 FRIAR JOHN. 
 The Rt. Hon. the EARL CARRINGTON, K.G. 
 
MR. JOHN BURNS 
 
MR. JOHN BURNS 
 
 SIR, 
 
 As a self-made man, you are pardonably con- 
 scious of the debt owed by the nation to the author 
 of your eminence, though, perhaps, you exaggerate 
 the public sense of obligation. Never before, so one 
 might gather from your speech and bearing, has so 
 humane an understanding, so inflexible a will, so 
 unspotted an integrity, been placed at the service of 
 the State. It is not surprising that some of the wind 
 from the popularis aura has penetrated a really 
 sound and useful headpiece. Ever since you were 
 invited by the Prime Minister to join his Cabinet 
 you have been abominably flattered. Not by people 
 of your own class they stand by the privilege of old 
 friends and discuss your shortcomings with refresh- 
 ing candour. The adulation has been conducted by 
 the Tadpoles and Tapers of the Liberal party, who 
 thought that in you they had secured a rising asset, 
 as well as by more ingenuous politicians who are 
 captivated by your breezy self-reliance, and fancy, 
 when they draw you out, that they are communing 
 with the heart of the people. Naturally, it was 
 delightful, and just a little upsetting, for a stump 
 orator to be set up as the Oracle of Democracy. But 
 
 169 
 
170 RULERS OF ENGLAND 
 
 the business has been spoiled by over-advertisement. 
 The more profound was the deference paid to our 
 working-man Minister the more savage was the re- 
 sentment of his unplaced brethren. They do not, 
 or will not, see that where he has succeeded and they 
 have failed there has existed a good reason for the 
 preference. You possess qualities which they lack 
 and may despise. 
 
 Other Labour members have read quite as many 
 improving books, and with equal confidence can cite 
 their neat little tags from Ruskin and Carlyle and 
 Herbert Spencer. Culture is going cheap just now 
 at Socialist conferences, and eloquence is as plentiful 
 as strawberries in July. Even honesty is to be got 
 for quite a few pounds a week. These admirable 
 qualities will not by themselves raise a demagogue to 
 the Cabinet. You have beaten your rivals because 
 you know how to preserve the necessary air of rugged 
 independence while all the time you are compro- 
 mising with the need of the hour and the conveni- 
 ence of the Government. On the Trade Disputes 
 Bill, for instance, in the shape which was first pro- 
 posed to the House of Commons by the Attorney- 
 General, you had obviously given way to objections 
 urged by the so-called Moderate Liberals. You did 
 not resign on the ground that the Government were 
 in the first instance offering terms to the Trade 
 Unionist party which you knew it would not accept. 
 By retaining office, of course, you made yourself an 
 
MR. JOHN BURNS 171 
 
 accomplice in what was called a betrayal of the 
 Labour cause. But you sat tight and bided your 
 time, while the Moderate Liberals went forth to 
 their undoing. The novice in Cabinet intrigue saw 
 his way to euchre the experts, and enjoyed the satis- 
 faction of watching Mr. Haldane, who would ne'er 
 consent, yielding with gusto to the forced embrace 
 of Socialism, and Mr. Asquith, stout guardian of 
 personal liberty, eating his professions by the spoon- 
 ful. You are, no doubt, too good-humoured a man 
 to have exulted in the humiliation display. Besides, 
 one never knows when one's own turn may be 
 coming. 
 
 It is undeniable that the tact with which you 
 maintained your somewhat ambiguous position gave 
 deep umbrage to the Labour party, which you were 
 expected to keep in tow for the Government. In 
 that group there are enthusiasts who have sworn to 
 give you a fall. Meantime, in the language of the 
 people, you have been " getting back some of your 
 own." When the first rumours were circulated 
 about Socialist extravagance in certain scenes of 
 philanthropic adventure not a hundred miles from 
 Whitehall, you were duly shocked and scandalised. 
 As a good Democrat, you were convinced, no doubt, 
 that these tales had been fabricated by enemies of 
 the People. You commissioned your inspectors to 
 hold a searching examination, in order that your 
 late associates might be exonerated from obviously 
 
172 RULERS OF ENGLAND 
 
 malignant suspicion. It is easy to imagine your pain 
 and sorrow on discovering that these allegations 
 were true in substance and in fact, that esteemed 
 comrades were involved in the charge of vicarious 
 largesse, and that it was your official duty, as Presi- 
 dent of the Local Government Board, to show them 
 up. That trial you sustained with exemplary forti- 
 tude, but your exhibition of Roman virtue did not 
 endear you to the forward spirits of the fraternity. 
 Your detestation of other people's humbug has 
 got you into trouble in regard to the so-called Un- 
 employed. There is in the House of Commons a 
 clique of working-men censors who had promised 
 themselves this session the pleasure of calling you to 
 account on the Vote for your department. You 
 smiled at the threat, for you knew that the discus- 
 sion was going to be burked in the general scramble 
 of a closured Supply. Nevertheless, your critics are 
 waiting for you outside. The time will come before 
 long when you must fight for your life. Whether 
 on the whole you stand to win or lose by the viru- 
 lence of your enemies remains to be seen. If you 
 care for the praise of persons who resist your policy 
 and detest your aims, you may like to hear that your 
 full-mouthed denunciation of imposture, alike in the 
 seeking and the giving of public relief, rings true to 
 ears not favourably predisposed by a study of your 
 career. It is but fair to add that your condemna- 
 tion of the frauds practised on flabby politicians and 
 
MR. JOHN BURNS 173 
 
 raw philanthropists is not a front bench conversion. 
 Long before you were thought of as a future 
 Minister, when even in your own secret commun- 
 ings you had hardly measured yourself for a Court 
 suit, you scoffed at the sturdy beggars who go about 
 asking for employment and thanking God they do 
 not get it. Nor have you scrupled to lecture the 
 genuine working man on the besetting faults of his 
 class. If there were less betting and drinking and 
 idling in good times, there would be less talk about 
 distress, you have said, as soon as trade begins to be 
 slack. Nor have you confined yourself to preaching. 
 In the days, now distant, when you laboured with 
 your hands, you were distinguished for skill and in- 
 dustry, and could always be trusted to do a good 
 day's work in return for a good day's wages. Em- 
 ployers who disliked your oratorical performances, 
 and were dubious about your influence amongst their 
 men, had no fault to find with you as an artisan. 
 Even when you emerged from a retirement caused 
 by a misplaced enthusiasm for the right of public 
 meeting, you had no difficulty in getting a job and 
 keeping it. 
 
 It is often alleged, both by your friends and 
 enemies, that you are not at heart a Socialist, and 
 people talk as though you were a Conservative force 
 within the Cabinet. Where they find the evidence 
 of this alleged moderation does not appear. Thirty- 
 two years ago you stood as a Socialist for Netting- 
 
i 7 4 RULERS OF ENGLAND 
 
 ham, and since 1892 you have represented Battersea 
 on the strength of the Radical-Progressive-Socialist 
 vote. At this last General Election your address 
 covered the extreme propaganda, and included the 
 abolition of all hereditary authorities. You have 
 never spoken or written a word which suggests that 
 you have recanted any of the principles avowed 
 when you thundered crude philosophy on Clapham 
 Common or figured in the riots at Trafalgar Square. 
 So far as your opinions go you are the same man who 
 led the great strike at the London Docks, and com- 
 peted in the game of clap-trap with Salvation 
 Generals and Sensation Cardinals. It is possible, of 
 course, that you may disagree with some of the quack 
 remedies proposed by such men as Mr. Keir Hardie, 
 Mr. Ramsay Macdonald, or Mr. Snowden ; but 
 many years will pass before we come to the end of 
 the subversive and predatory schemes which you are 
 prepared to sanction. If we are to wait until your 
 scruples come into action, the State will have ad- 
 vanced a long way towards the Socialist ideal. It is 
 but doing you justice to confess that you are strenu- 
 ous in advocating a policy of philanthropic subversal. 
 The opposition and intriguing against you spring 
 from no imperfection in your creed, but simply from 
 jealousy of your personal success. Ingenious his- 
 torians delight in tracking out the tortuous man- 
 ceuvres of Whigs or Tories, and a scandalised pos- 
 terity is invited to hold up its hands in horror at the 
 
MR. JOHN BURNS 175 
 
 sordid motives which influence the great families 
 that ruled England until the Reform Act gave 
 supremacy to the virtuous middle class only to be 
 ousted in the next generation by the yet more 
 effulgent purity of the enfranchised artisans and 
 labourers. For a time, indeed, the successive leaps 
 in the dark of 1832, 1867 and 1885 were justified in 
 the result. Jobbery was checked, nepotism was dis- 
 guised, and bribery was rendered at once perilous 
 and inordinately expensive. Whatever other 
 charges may hereafter be brought against the 
 Gladstone-Disraeli period of public life in England, 
 it cannot be called an age of corruption or self- 
 seeking. The dual system was so rigidly worked that 
 no individual could push his own fortunes except 
 by doing service to his own party. Now we seem to 
 stand at the opening of a new era : the historic 
 Liberal party is breaking up and the loosely united 
 factions are little better than personal cliques. 
 There is now as much plotting and counterplotting 
 in Radical and Socialist circles as there was in the 
 House of Commons when Sir Robert Walpole dis- 
 pensed his bribes with good-natured cynicism. A 
 dead set has been made against you simply because, 
 amongst the forty or fifty working men representa- 
 tives, you have won the grand prize. 
 
 You are, no doubt, well able to take care of your- 
 self and give a good account of your rivals. For 
 you know how to get the ear of Parliament and have 
 
176 RULERS OF ENGLAND 
 
 impressed a distinct image of yourself on the public 
 mind. Really, you are a clever, resourceful, oppor- 
 tunist tactician, but wisely are content to be known 
 as Honest John Burns. The air of unpremeditated 
 candour is well kept up by the genuine impetuosity of 
 your language. Partly through intelligent reading 
 of good English literature, partly through a natural 
 turn for rhetoric, you have become a good orator of 
 the second class. It is, perhaps, hardly a defect that, 
 like most self-educated persons, you delight in swell- 
 ing phrases, and seldom use a simple word when 
 your vocabulary contains a long one. This is the 
 approved style of Hyde Park and the Trade Union 
 Congress. When you are engaged in controversy 
 your statements are as rotund as your figure of 
 speech. In your campaign on behalf of the London 
 Progressives you did not hesitate to reproduce the 
 bold flight of imagination by which the County 
 Council's Tramways are alleged to be paying a 
 dividend of sixteen per cent. Perhaps you are 
 astonished at your moderation in not claiming sixty. 
 It would be unfair to examine too precisely the 
 argument which you employed in behalf of your 
 associates in London administration. You owe much 
 to the London County Council, and the London 
 County Council owes much to you or that section 
 of it which for eighteen years was predominant at 
 Spring Gardens. Of the tramways, the steamboats, 
 the works department, and all other adventures in 
 
MR. JOHN BURNS 177 
 
 municipal trading you were a vigorous and hard- 
 hitting defender. On the whole, it is, perhaps, fortu- 
 nate that you were so closely connected with ex- 
 travagance in Local Government. The best game- 
 keeper, it is said, is a reformed poacher. You went 
 to Whitehall well versed in all the tricks and manners 
 which it has become your official function to circum- 
 vent and control. 
 
 It is only natural that an ambitious man, conscious 
 of genuine talent and crediting himself with greater 
 capacity than he possesses, should be anxious not to 
 associate himself with failure. Without being an 
 exceptionally discerning person or blessed with a 
 specially enlarged bump of caution, you are able to 
 see what is under your nose. A very slight study of 
 figures, with some kindly prompting from the 
 trained officials at the Local Government Board, 
 showed you that the promise given by the Prime 
 Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer in 
 regard to a universal system of old age pensions 
 could not be carried into effect. Either with or 
 without the privity of those tardily repentant states- 
 men you published the other day a set of tables 
 obviously framed with the purpose of enabling them 
 to climb gently down from their insolvent eminence. 
 Great was the indignation of the Independent 
 Labour party when it became known that you were 
 on the side of discrimination amongst State annuit- 
 ants. A resolution was forthwith passed which was 
 
 N 
 
1 78 RULERS OF ENGLAND 
 
 nothing but an oblique vote of censure of yourself. 
 Already you had fallen out of favour by your ex- 
 posure of the farm colony foolishness and by keep- 
 ing a sharp eye on the expenditure under the 
 Unemployed Workmen Act. You are, it is to be 
 feared, a lost soul, nor will your comrades shrink 
 from pronouncing the words of condemnation. 
 
 Your future is assured so long as Sir Henry 
 Campbell-Bannerman controls the Liberal party. 
 On most questions, if not all, you see eye to eye 
 with him. Of the two, possibly, he is the better 
 Socialist, and you the better Liberal. But neither 
 of you is troubled with an inconvenient rigidity. 
 Another bond of sympathy between you is your 
 common love of resounding platitudes and popular 
 applause. With his advantage in the way of wealth 
 and education you would have cut a far more con- 
 siderable figure than he is likely to achieve, while, 
 if he had been born in your station of life, he would 
 have made a passable Labour leader. Still on the 
 right side of fifty, you may have a distinguished 
 career in front of you, for you have by no means 
 used up your powers of self -instruction, and, for all 
 your platform truculence, you are not overbearing 
 in Parliament, and in private intercourse with mem- 
 bers of the House are unaffectedly genial. If some 
 of the Labour people look askance at you, they 
 cannot fairly accuse you of assuming airs of social 
 superiority. The inflation which you occasionally 
 
MR. JOHN BURNS 179 
 
 exhibit is purely intellectual, and it is quite untrue 
 to say that you are compelled to use a shoe-horn 
 when you put on your bowler hat. For you have 
 the saving gift of humour, which helps to carry off 
 your dreary commonplaces, urged with the air of an 
 original inventor, and redeems your bearing from 
 the worst errors of a Cleon trying to be Pericles. 
 I am, Sir, 
 
 Your obedient Servant, 
 
 FRIAR JOHN. 
 Rt. Hon. JOHN BURNS, M.P. 
 
FIRST COMMISSIONER OF WORKS 
 (MR. L. HARCOURT) 
 
 SIR, 
 
 You are one of Fortune's favourites and 
 deserve all she bestows. For you never miss a 
 chance or take an unfair advantage. After a few 
 months' experience of the House of Commons you 
 were lifted, smiling, over the heads of the party 
 veterans, and nobody except the disappointed 
 placemen found fault with your rapid advance- 
 ment. Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, not in 
 other respects a Heaven-sent Minister, is a shrewd 
 judge of character, and in the son of his old colleague 
 and rival discerned a rising man who would be useful 
 to him. Already you have more than fulfilled his 
 most sanguine expectations. Nobody could more 
 deftly have handled the Plural Voting Bill which 
 was entrusted to your charge last year in the House 
 of Commons. A more impudent scheme of electoral 
 gerrymandering had never been propounded in the 
 name of Reform, and, awkwardly introduced, it 
 would have revealed its unfairness even to Liberal 
 partisans. It was a bold experiment to consign its 
 fortunes to a parliamentary novice. But you 
 glozed over its worst features, and delivered a 
 
 1 80 
 
MR. HARCOURT 181 
 
 pleasing and humorous essay which put your audi- 
 ence into an amiable mood. The first impression 
 was decidedly not unfavourable, and even now there 
 are bull-headed Radicals who honestly cannot under- 
 stand why the Bill was hotly contested in the House 
 of Commons and finally rejected by the Lords. 
 Throughout the discussions, which at times became 
 stormy, you preserved an air of sweet reasonableness 
 that did infinite credit to your command of facial 
 expression. Yet all the time you never agreed to 
 any concession worthy of being considered by the 
 Opposition. Of course, you knew all along that the 
 measure would not be accepted. But you were not 
 working for legislation. What you aimed at was to 
 bring the Peers into public disgrace for throwing 
 out what you represented as a modest instalment of 
 a much-needed reform. Of course it was a hopeless 
 policy, since eventually the true character of the 
 Bill was sure to be exposed. But your business was 
 to act upon instructions, not to originate strategy, 
 and your part was performed to admiration. 
 
 The same genial suppleness has this session been 
 called into play on behalf of the Small Holdings and 
 Allotments Bill. Unfortunately, however, you were 
 not left quite at liberty to set the note. The Prime 
 Minister and some of his more obtrusive satellites 
 had indulged in such grandiloquence about their 
 plans for restoring the peasantry of England to the 
 soil, and for exterminating the squires, parsons and 
 
1 82 RULERS OF ENGLAND 
 
 other noxious vermin of the countryside, that, as a 
 faithful colleague, you were compelled to infuse an 
 acid flavour into your speeches. Nothing would 
 more keenly disappoint Sir Henry Campbell- 
 Bannerman than the opportunity of carrying a 
 measure which had been so modified as to preserve 
 the interests of landowners and meet the views of 
 practical agriculturists. To throw it over might 
 expose him to odium amongst people who are 
 anxious for a genuine extension of the small holdings 
 system, while to accept it would exasperate the fussy 
 gentlemen who are talking at large about an agrarian 
 revolution. Your efforts in Committee, therefore, 
 have been directed towards averting the peril of a com- 
 promise, and you were forced to meet fair offers with a 
 disobliging and overbearing attitude. The position is 
 essentially false, for nobody who has set eyes on you 
 or heard you speak in public can figure you in the 
 character of a firebrand. It is not suggested that 
 your new-found zeal in the cause of the agricultural 
 labourer has been feigned for party objects. Prob- 
 ably you have read up your brief in a sympathetic 
 spirit, and are sincerely convinced that the shortest 
 way to reform village life in England is to break up 
 the existing system, and place the landlord and 
 clergyman under the heel of ale-house politicians. 
 But though you are the happy possessor of a beauti- 
 ful country seat, and can divert yourself agreeably 
 with some of the sports beloved by people of your 
 
MR. HARCOURT 183 
 
 own class, you are, and will always remain a typical 
 man about town smart, quick-witted, urbane. 
 You are at home in Berkeley Square or Westminster. 
 Much as you love your home at Nuneham, you are a 
 stranger in the country. 
 
 There was, indeed, but one reason for selecting 
 you to pilot the Government attack on the landed 
 gentry through the House of Commons : of the 
 available Ministers, you alone possessed the requisite 
 tact and power of assimilating a plausible show of 
 information. Before the Third Reading you may 
 have picked up quite a respectable amount of in- 
 formation, for you are a " quick-study " besides 
 speaking your words with a quiet air of conviction. 
 Nevertheless, this Land Bill is not your job. There 
 is something rather absurd in the contrast presented 
 by your superfine appearance and delicate way of 
 living with the sentiments which you have to 
 enounce. You are no more fit to represent a Jack 
 Cade agitation than would Mr. Joseph Arch be to 
 receive your friends in Mayfair. It is true that a 
 rising politician who means to go far as you mean 
 cannot pick and choose his work. He must do what 
 he is asked or he will soon be dispensed with. But 
 when you have seen this measure through whatever 
 may be its fate you will have the right to protest 
 against more of the Government's dirty work being 
 put upon you. Like Mr. Birrell, you may imperil 
 your reputation if you are saddled with further 
 
1 84 RULERS OF ENGLAND 
 
 failures, and one day might find yourself ranked 
 along with the stale party hacks for whom you 
 cherish a secret but supreme disdain. 
 
 It must not be imagined, because you are genial in 
 bearing and scrupulously polite to all manner of 
 men, that you hold a modest opinion of your talents 
 and claims. You are a true son of your father, but in 
 social relations you began where he left off. To 
 those of us who knew Sir William Harcourt in his 
 latter days, when his old-fashioned courtesy charmed 
 even those who declined to be amused by his wit, or 
 interested in the display of his lightly handled know- 
 ledge, it was difficult to believe that in youth and 
 middle age, though he had a few attached friends, he 
 was one of the most cordially disliked men in public 
 life. As years advanced he mellowed and ripened. 
 In spite of his unconcealed anger and disappoint- 
 ment at being supplanted by a statesman whose in- 
 firmity of purpose he despised and whose showy gifts 
 he estimated at a very moderate figure, he allowed 
 the kindness of his heart to appear in his manner, and 
 in society which did not bore him (he would tolerate 
 no other) he was universally beloved. You have 
 modelled yourself on his latter manner, and, as re- 
 ward for your cleverness in this respect, are generally 
 acclaimed as one of the coming men of the Liberal 
 party. If Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman was 
 quick to recognise your merits you lost no time in 
 taking the measure of his foot. There is not one of 
 
MR. HARCOURT 185 
 
 his colleagues, young or old, to whose opinion he 
 pays more deference, and your recent promotion to 
 the Cabinet was but an official recognition of the 
 place you hold within the confidential circles of the 
 Government. If the driving power is supplied by 
 Mr. Winston Churchill, the lubricating fluid comes 
 from Berkeley Square, and it is an anomaly resented 
 by the holders of more distinguished posts that the 
 two politicians who especially have the ear of the 
 Prime Minister are the Under-Secretary for the 
 Colonies and the First Commissioner of Works. 
 
 Yet it is natural that he should turn away from the 
 starched pedants and pushing roturiers about him to 
 the young aristocrats whom he credits with the 
 possession of ideas. In Mr. Winston Churchill he 
 believes that he has discovered an inspired dema- 
 gogue who knows how to get up steam for a popular 
 movement. With more reason, he looks to you as a 
 skilled interpreter of public opinion. For this task 
 you gave yourself a special training when you acted 
 as secretary of the Home Counties Liberal Federa- 
 tion. You are, indeed, an artist in political organisa- 
 tion, and the result of your labours is seen in the 
 present Radical hold upon what is, perhaps, the most 
 Conservative region in the civilised world. The 
 rough-and-ready methods of the conventional party 
 agents, which are well enough in their way, you left 
 other men to work out. But you devoted yourself 
 with singular skill to the dissemination of opinion. 
 
1 86 RULERS OF ENGLAND 
 
 In short, while the political hacks consider they have 
 discharged their duty if they bring up their man to 
 the poll, you think a great deal more about making 
 him ready to come of his own accord. Indeed, if 
 this were ancient Athens, and you were Socrates, a 
 good indictment might be drawn against you for 
 corrupting the mind of the rising generation. 
 
 It is not easy to imagine that a man of fastidious 
 refinement, not unconscious of Plantagenet ancestry 
 and delighting in what is humorous, can stand in 
 close sympathy with the puffing and blundering and 
 grotesquely serious middle-class politicians whom it 
 is your business to keep in tow. But your character 
 would be misunderstood if you were reputed to be 
 insincere in Liberalism. Your principles you in- 
 herited from your father his latest set of principles 
 and, clever man as you are, you are never in the 
 least likely to start thinking on your own account. 
 With those principles you took over, as a legacy, some 
 of his prejudices. If you have consciously assigned 
 yourself a mission in public life, it is to prevent your 
 neighbour on the other side of the square from re- 
 asserting his old influence in the party. You main- 
 tain, and when the time comes are ready to prove, 
 that Sir William Harcourt was badly treated when 
 the succession to Mr. Gladstone's place was given to 
 Lord Rosebery. Nor will you have any difficulty in 
 making out a plausible case for your theory that the 
 disaster which fell upon the Liberal party in 1895 
 
MR. HARCOURT 187 
 
 was largely due to the inefficient leadership of a 
 graceful but wayward amateur. It is one of the 
 pleasures which you are holding in store for yourself 
 to vindicate your father's reputation, and, inci- 
 dentally, to tear away the few rags of credit still 
 hanging to his rival's woebegone figure. A vindictive 
 man you are not, but you have strong family affec- 
 tions, and you intend to put the Harcourts right in 
 public opinion. Meantime you devote your con- 
 siderable talents in domestic diplomacy to suppress- 
 ing any tendency within the party to a revival of 
 Imperialism. This is why you have co-operated so 
 heartily with the Prime Minister, and the success of 
 your joint efforts has been quite remarkable. It 
 began with the desertion of Lord Rosebery by his 
 most important associates when Sir Henry Campbell- 
 Bannerman was forming the Cabinet. How steadily 
 the work of sapping the Liberal League has been 
 carried on may be seen by the successive capitula- 
 tions of Mr. Asquith first to the Independent 
 Labour party over the Trade Disputes Bill, then to 
 the Nationalists over Home Rule, and finally on old 
 age pensions. There can be no doubt that the 
 Little England element within the Cabinet is 
 supreme ; the Imperialists have been bridled and 
 saddled for their masters. That they are being 
 ridden with a fairly light hand, and are permitted to 
 flatter themselves by pretending to be free agents, is 
 largely due to your dexterous management. 
 
1 88 RULERS OF ENGLAND 
 
 Admiration of the skill and persistence with which 
 the game is being played must not make us overlook 
 the perilous character of the sport. Here are you, by 
 nature and training, a Whig aristocrat, yet working 
 for the elimination of every moderate element within 
 the Liberal party. The fact that you and your closer 
 associates exercise some control over the extreme 
 men, and induce them to veil or postpone their ex- 
 travagant and subversive plans, only shows that you 
 understand the reality of the public danger. You 
 are overrating your powers if you hope always to 
 hold them in check. The subtlest of party managers 
 may suddenly find himself dispensed with. You will 
 see yourself one day outbidden by some vulgar but 
 equally astute demagogue, and driven to make your 
 choice between retiring from the competition or 
 taking part in a Dutch auction. Despite your 
 generous and unfeigned sympathy with the cause of 
 advancing democracy, it is impossible to conceive 
 you as sympathising with either social reconstruction 
 or political revolution. Yet you are doing the work 
 of Socialism and Republicanism as surely as though 
 you wore a red bonnet and marched the streets 
 behind a black banner. It may seem a little absurd 
 to connect the smiling, urbane and reasonable 
 gentleman, the owner of great possessions, and the 
 host of Sovereigns, with far-reaching designs for the 
 destruction of established institutions. But through- 
 out history it is the pliable and short-sighted aristo- 
 
MR. HARCOURT 189 
 
 crats, the men with keen vision for what is near their 
 feet, but blind to the middle distance, who have 
 brought the worst mischief on States. Your abilities 
 lie, as the Prime Minister knows, in the manipulation 
 of recalcitrant or hesitating colleagues, and nobody 
 imagines that if the pinch came you would dare to 
 withstand a turbulent mob leader. Not being an 
 especially unscrupulous politician or more than 
 normally ambitious, you may some day discover that 
 the Radical-Socialist group have approached a point 
 where you must part company with them. We may 
 be sure that the valediction would be delivered with 
 all possible grace, and you would pleasantly depre- 
 cate the explosion of the bomb which you are en- 
 gaged in manufacturing. 
 
 I am, Sir, 
 
 Your obedient Servant, 
 
 FRIAR JOHN. 
 Rt. Hon. LEWIS HARCOURT, M.P. 
 
MINISTER OF EDUCATION 
 (MR. McKENNA) 
 
 SIR, 
 
 Amongst the various suggestions put forward 
 to account for your appointment as Cabinet 
 Minister, the correct explanation was at first not 
 forthcoming. Now, however, there is a pretty 
 general agreement as to Sir Henry Campbell- 
 Bannerman's purpose. He favours every kind of 
 political innovation, and on this occasion was 
 resolved to break away from the invidious old 
 tradition that promotion should turn on merit. In 
 choosing you to succeed Mr. Birrell at the Board of 
 Education, he flattered himself that he had selected 
 the most unfit person in the House of Commons. 
 The Prime Minister is a sound judge of men, and 
 you lost no time in justifying his patronage. Your 
 indiscretions have been almost as glaring as your lack 
 of scruple. Hardly had you been installed in office 
 when you began to flourish about the great things 
 you meant to accomplish, and referred to the work 
 of your gifted and conscientious predecessor with a 
 singularly indecent air of condescension. A left- 
 hand compliment was paid to his conciliatory 
 methods and parliamentary eloquence, but the in- 
 
 190 
 
MR. McKENNA 191 
 
 f erence was conveyed that he had proved himself but 
 an inefficient weakling. Now at last the strong man 
 has come. Whitehall was to be put in order, and 
 the Church of England called to a stern reckoning ! 
 So inflated were you with a sense of new dignity that 
 you forthwith gave away the scheme which Ministers 
 intend to propose next year. In the future, if they 
 have their way with Parliament, it will be impossible 
 for any denomination to secure the teaching of its 
 doctrines in a public elementary school, even though 
 it is prepared to defray all the extra cost that may 
 be incurred. In the new Bill there are to be no 
 " facilities " for special religious instruction. We 
 are, therefore, to assume that the Cowper-Temple 
 rule will be made universal except for children whose 
 parents take refuge in the Conscience Clause and 
 object to any kind of devotional lesson. That is to 
 say, the rates and taxes paid by all citizens alike will 
 be spent upon a system repudiated by everybody but 
 Nonconformists and Secularists. 
 
 How little you must know of the English people if 
 you think they will submit to such tyranny ! How 
 little of Parliament if you hope to get such a Bill 
 passed into law ! Apparently it is an idee fixe in your 
 mind. Only the other day you returned to it in even 
 stronger language than before. Talking to your 
 Monmouthshire constituents, you told them that 
 the measure you were preparing would make the 
 Lords regret that they had not accepted Mr. 
 
192 RULERS OF ENGLAND 
 
 Birrell's Bill ! The Government had gone to them 
 with a peace offering, and they had refused it ! The 
 next time Ministers would go with a sword ! Let 
 us hope that your prophecy may be more accurate 
 than your history. But there is no need to correct 
 your misrepresentations. Perhaps they served your 
 purpose with the political Dissenters to whom you 
 were paying court. Nor is it worth while to com- 
 ment on the unctuous parody of Biblical language. 
 What possesses more interest is the gratuitous folly 
 of the avowal. Everybody in Parliament knew, of 
 course, that the Bill promised for next year is not 
 intended to be passed. Purposely it is being so 
 framed that the Peers must throw it out, and their 
 act in rejecting it is to be made a special count in the 
 general indictment. It is in this way that the House 
 of Lords will be tempted to " fill up its cup." The 
 strategy is crude, not to say infantile. But such 
 chance as it has of imposing on ignorant electors 
 depends on Ministers keeping up the pretence that 
 their proposals are moderate and reasonable. Who 
 could blame the Peers for resenting an open defiance? 
 The surest way of enlisting popular sympathy with 
 them is to show that the Government are trying to 
 pick a quarrel and drive them into a corner. 
 
 As you are obviously, rather too obviously, bent 
 upon making a career for yourself, there must have 
 been an intelligible reason for what looks very like a 
 vulgar stupidity. Perhaps the truth is that, like 
 
MR. McKENNA 193 
 
 some bad cricketers, you are playing, not for your 
 side, but for your personal score. What you are 
 chiefly thinking about is, how to ingratiate yourself 
 with the Radicals, and, in particular, with the party 
 managers. They believe that " Down with the 
 House of Lords " will be the best battle-cry for the 
 next general election, and you want to convince 
 them that you are a moving spirit in the Forward 
 group. From that point of view it is easy to under- 
 stand your recent outbursts. The educational 
 policy which you are supposed to represent is to be 
 sacrificed or rather utilised as a stone to tie round 
 the neck of the dog that you wish to drown. Perhaps 
 it is because there is no chance of passing your great 
 measure that you are trying to show the political 
 Nonconformists another kind of sport. They are 
 determined to taste the blood of Church schools, 
 and, as you cannot gratify them through legislation, 
 you are resorting like some Russian bureaucrat to 
 administrative decree. The Act of 1870 forbids the 
 employment of parliamentary grants in building 
 elementary schools, and, since you are unable to 
 upset that section of Mr. Forster's law, you mean to 
 circumvent it by a Vote in Supply, recorded by 
 a complaisant majority in the Commons. The 
 schools which you are to set up will draw upon the 
 unlimited resources of the unhappy ratepayers, and, 
 by lavish expenditure, draw the denominational 
 institutions into a ruinous competition. In the same 
 o 
 
i 9 4 RULERS OF ENGLAND 
 
 arbitrary spirit you have issued codes and regulations 
 which will destroy the religious teaching in the 
 training colleges and secondary schools built and 
 partly maintained by the Anglican and Roman 
 Churches. It is a shabby and oppressive trick, nor 
 was its character disguised by the dry, pragmatic 
 style in which you defended your conduct in Parlia- 
 ment. Possibly you do not understand the depth of 
 the resentment you have aroused or the strength of 
 the forces you are defying. 
 
 A few days ago, when the House of Commons was 
 dealing in Committee with Mr. Asquith's Finance 
 Bill, you blurted out a remark which at once startled 
 the Ministerialists, and revealed the limits of your 
 intelligence. Without any sort of justification, you 
 suddenly announced that in your opinion the whole 
 revenue of the United Kingdom should be raised 
 from Income-tax and Death duties. A patronising 
 apologist on your own side remarked that your 
 utterance showed the mischief of Ministers making 
 speeches without preparation. It is true enough 
 that your conduct of the discussion during the 
 absence of the Chancellor of the Exchequer 
 excited the derision of your party, and it has been 
 openly intimated that Mr. Asquith's work should 
 have been delegated to a subordinate but less in- 
 capable member of the Government. But it cannot 
 be pleaded in excuse that you spoke without know- 
 ledge of your subject, since you have served your 
 
MR. McKENNA j 95 
 
 fiscal apprenticeship as Financial Secretary to the 
 Treasury. It is impossible for a man to hold that 
 important office, a recognised training for statesmen 
 with a future, without realising the significance of 
 your proposal. But again, you had a personal object ; 
 you were playing to an extremist gallery. As before 
 you had sought to curry favour with the Radicals, so 
 now you were paying court to the Socialists. Should 
 they, at some future time, require the services of a 
 Finance Minister who would penalise all forms of 
 property, they would know where to find him ! 
 In justice, it must be confessed that the tactics 
 which you have recently been pursuing are probably 
 welcome to the Prime Minister. Step by step, since 
 he came into power, he has been engaged in proving 
 that he takes no account of the Moderate Liberals in 
 the Cabinet. Any action which brings them into 
 contempt passes without rebuke, and may, perhaps, 
 be rewarded with private commendation. For that 
 kind of work you are an almost ideal subordinate, 
 and, so long as he remains dispenser of the loaves and 
 fishes, you may depend upon getting your portion. 
 There is, of course, another theory of your con- 
 duct. It is more flattering to your character than 
 your judgment. The suggestion is that you are en- 
 dowed with an impetuous and overbearing spirit, 
 and occasionally let yourself go without premedita- 
 tion. Undoubtedly, your tone in Parliament gives 
 some warrant to the theory, and it is certain that 
 
196 RULERS OF ENGLAND 
 
 your rapid promotion has upset your moral balance. 
 Sitting on the same bench as distinguished men like 
 Mr. Morley, Mr. Haldane, Mr. Asquith and Mr. 
 Birrell, you fancy that you rank with them in point of 
 intellect, and are disposed to address lesser mortals in 
 the language which a university oarsman thinks ap- 
 propriate when he is coaching a college crew from 
 his horse on the towing path. You are preparing a 
 great fall for yourself if you forget that you are any- 
 thing more than a hack politician. It has been your 
 good fortune to win favour in the eyes of the Prime 
 Minister, who discerned your calibre with the un- 
 failing gift of a mediocrity in search of its like. Here- 
 after it may happen that the Leadership of the 
 Liberal party will revert to some man of intellect, 
 who will restore the policy of looking out for talent. 
 As for your overtures to the Socialists, they will come 
 to nothing, since in their own group they have 
 plenty of men with views as extravagant as those you 
 profess, and mental furniture far more imposing than 
 you can boast. 
 
 So far as the public know, the quality which raised 
 you to the front bench is the one you proved when 
 you rowed for Cambridge, and won prizes at Henley. 
 You are a first-rate fighting man, and that is a charac- 
 teristic which Englishmen are apt to respect. Lord 
 Carrington has held you up to popular admiration as 
 an example of his theory that this is a Cabinet of 
 sportsmen. But are you a good sportsman, and do 
 
MR. McKENNA 197 
 
 you always fight fair ? It was not altogether a 
 gracious episode when the leaders of the defeated 
 Liberal party, coming back to the House of Com- 
 mons after the General Election of 1900, delivered 
 an organised attack upon the Chamberlain family, 
 and attempted to show that they were unfitted, by 
 the nature of their private investments, for offices of 
 public trust. You joined with gusto in the hunt, and 
 the only excuse is that men of light and leading, such 
 as Mr. Haldane, decorously stimulated the vulgar 
 exhibition of political spite. When the scandalous 
 scene was brought to an end, the Liberals realised 
 that they owed no gratitude to the men who had 
 degraded the House of Commons by their virulent 
 personalities. This is not the sort of controversy 
 that beseems an historic Parliament. It would be 
 considered low and mean in a parish squabble. But 
 you seem to have thought it was good business, since 
 four years later you repeated your tactics. In 1904 
 you attempted to discredit Mr. Austen Chamberlain, 
 the Chancellor of the Exchequer, by insinuating that 
 the extra duty imposed on stripped tobacco had been 
 instigated by the Tariff Commission, and that one of 
 its members had been placed in a position to derive 
 profit from early and illegitimate information as to 
 the contents of the Budget. The charge scandalised 
 so robust a Free Trader as Lord Hugh Cecil, who 
 repudiated the accusation though he condemned 
 the impost which you professed to be criticising. 
 
198 RULERS OF ENGLAND 
 
 Pressed to define your accusation, you neither sub- 
 stantiated nor withdrew it protested that you had 
 made no insinuation. You did not suggest, you 
 kindly said, that the Chancellor of the Exchequer 
 had any complicity in the sudden and remarkable 
 increase of the imports of stripped tobacco at the 
 turn of the financial year. The question, you said, 
 was whether the Chancellor of the Exchequer had 
 been made a dupe ! 
 
 Until the other day this was the first occasion on 
 which you had succeeded in rendering yourself a 
 prominent personage in public life ; but you seem to 
 have learned nothing from the general reprobation 
 which followed an unworthy manoeuvre. Happily 
 you are still a young man, as politicians go, and, if 
 you mend your too evident faults of temper, there is 
 nothing to prevent you, with strict application to 
 business, from winning an assured place among the 
 second-rate placemen of the Liberal party, and 
 eventually, perhaps, obtaining promotion to the 
 House which at present you are engaged in de- 
 nouncing. 
 
 I am, Sir, 
 
 Your obedient Servant, 
 
 FRIAR JOHN. 
 
 Right Hon. REGINALD McKiNNA, M.P. 
 
OUR GENTLEMANLY FAILURES 
 
 Fortnightly Review, March, 1897 
 
 " To hear some people talk, they would almost suppose 
 that athletics were a kind of parasitic growth upon modern 
 educational institutions. He did not take that view, and 
 he never had taken that view. . . . While patience, sobriety, 
 courage, temper, discipline, subordination, were virtues 
 necessary for the highest excellence either at cricket or 
 football, there was a higher point of need. No doubt a 
 University existed largely to foster that disinterested love 
 of knowledge which was one of the highest of all gifts, and 
 to give that professional training which was an absolute 
 necessity in any modern civilized community. But he did 
 not think the duties of a modern University ended there. 
 A University gave a man all through his life the sense that 
 he belonged to a great community in which he spent his 
 youth, which, indeed, he had left, but to which he still 
 belonged. . . . That feeling might be fostered was fostered, 
 no doubt by a community of education, by attending the 
 same lectures, by passing the same examinations, but no 
 influence fostered it more surely and more effectually than 
 that feeling of common life which the modern athletic 
 sports, as they had been developed in modern places of 
 learning, gave to all those who took an interest in such 
 matters, whether as performers or as spectators." Mr. 
 Balfour, at Edinburgh. 
 
 " Aspiring young Englishmen should think a little less of 
 
 199 
 
200 OUR GENTLEMANLY FAILURES 
 
 athletics, and more of acquiring knowledge such as would 
 make them distinguished citizens." Mr. H. M. Stanley, in 
 Lambeth. 
 
 THE conflicting, if not contradictory, counsels given 
 by two men who have succeeded in life are placed at 
 the head of this article because they will, perhaps, 
 serve to draw attention to the view it puts forward. 
 It is not a novelty, only a discarded idea which now 
 seems due for revival a protest against the pleasant 
 cant involved in the phrase mens sana in corpore sano. 
 We need not inquire whether Mr. Balfour would 
 have published his Defence of Philosophic Doubt at the 
 age of thirty-one, and led the House of Commons in 
 his forty-fourth year, if he had made a playtime of 
 his youth, or whether Mr. Stanley does not owe part 
 of his African honours to a frame inured to privation 
 and endurance. But politics and exploring are fancy 
 trades, and offer no criterion for the humdrum call- 
 ings by which most of us have to thrive, starve, or 
 scrape up a bare subsistence. Still, the divergence 
 in the two texts is not without significance. Each 
 preacher spoke of life as he has found it. Mr. Balfour 
 had his career made smooth from the start : he 
 might turn out, according as he used or wasted his 
 chances, either a brilliant success or a graceful 
 failure, but he could not come absolutely to grief. 
 Mr. Stanley, on the other hand, had to push and 
 drag himself into notice, or eat his heart out in the 
 obscurity that is so galling to a man conscious of 
 
OUR GENTLEMANLY FAILURES 201 
 
 great gifts spoiling for want of opportunity. The 
 one had no obstacle to overcome save an ingratiating 
 diffidence : the other had to force his way, through 
 poverty and ignorance, either to acknowledged 
 triumph or solitary chagrin. The one perhaps could 
 afford to loiter on the road, trifle with the amenities 
 of a full life, and develop every side of a versatile 
 nature : the other had to be pressing forward all the 
 time. For young men situated as Mr. Balfour was 
 the precepts he delivered at Edinburgh may, perhaps, 
 be as sound as they certainly are attractive. Those 
 whose position more nearly resembles Mr. Stanley's 
 will find him a more trustworthy guide even if they 
 start with greater advantages in point of birth and 
 education. In any walk of life they may enter they 
 will meet thousands of rivals equally well equipped, 
 and, though the Art of Getting On does not contain 
 the Whole Duty of Man, it is a chapter which has to 
 be studied. 
 
 Forty, even thirty, years ago the young man who 
 had passed through his Public School with a tolerable 
 record was reasonably sure of a decent berth if he 
 went into commerce, or after taking a fair degree at the 
 University would probably find a modest opening in 
 one of the professions. There was a steady market for 
 his respectable attainments. The number of muscu- 
 lar young Christians turned out on the world every 
 year from the Public Schools was strictly limited a 
 few hundreds per annum. Now there are many 
 
202 OUR GENTLEMANLY FAILURES 
 
 thousands of them. The beginning of the glut is due 
 to Dr. Arnold, whose famous work at Rugby was 
 quickly imitated by a score of organizing head- 
 masters, who either transformed the languishing 
 Grammar Schools of country towns into great 
 establishments with several hundred pupils apiece, 
 or invested proprietary enterprises with a corporate 
 and quasi-public character. This process has been 
 carried on by another generation of teachers, and at 
 the present time it would be difficult to point to an 
 English county which does not possess half a dozen 
 institutions where the instruction and general train- 
 ing are substantially identical with those adminis- 
 tered at " Our Colleges of Eton and Winchester," as 
 mentioned in the Prayer Book. 
 
 Before Dr. Arnold's day, and for some time after- 
 wards, these privileges had been almost restricted to 
 the sons of parents who belonged by birth to the upper 
 or upper middle class, or had struggled up to that 
 rank. Now the middle class receives a Public School 
 education, and we have a generation of young gentle- 
 men out of all numerical proportion to the general 
 increase of our population. Grown and growing up, 
 we see them everywhere : bright-eyed, clean-limbed, 
 high-minded, ready for anything, and fit for nothing 
 unemployed or wearing out their best years in 
 third-rate situations. Walk along Cheapside, and 
 every third young fellow you meet in a silk hat you 
 may recognise as bred upon the Arnold tradition 
 
OUR GENTLEMANLY FAILURES 203 
 
 trained, as part of his nature, to tell the truth and 
 keep his nails clean. Excellent habits, both of them; 
 but not essentials of success in the City of London. 
 If you see one of them swinging along with his mus- 
 cular stride, his fresh unwrinkled face, and his spot- 
 less high collar, you know he is only cheerful because 
 he has been sent out on an errand, and forgets for the 
 moment that he is the drudge of some puffy Israelite, 
 has to call him sir, and perhaps answer his bell an 
 estimable and not unkindly person, perhaps, nor 
 without a certain weakness for the manly young clerk 
 who is so little use in the office, and despises him, he 
 feels, because he never took a cold bath in his life, and 
 does not know which way to sit in a boat or which 
 side to mount a horse. 
 
 The time was, it has been said, when a demand 
 existed for the Public School type. It had its value 
 in the City when it was less common. There were 
 some houses which liked to have a show partner or a 
 personable representative he inspired their more 
 fastidious clients with confidence. But that day has 
 gone by, or all but gone, and a salary now is nicely 
 adjusted to the service a man can render his firm 
 and the business he can introduce. The ordinary 
 merchant is no longer impressed with an athletic 
 record. He does not ask whether the candidate for a 
 stool in his office is the same redoubtable youngster, 
 with the left-hand twist from the off, who took five 
 wickets at Lord's last summer, kicked the odd goal 
 
204 OUR GENTLEMANLY FAILURES 
 
 for the Old Muggletonians in the final round for the 
 Cup, or electrified the University of Oxford by 
 stroking the Skimmery Torpid head of the River. 
 Now and again, it is true, real eminence in games 
 may come in usefully. There is a genuine camara- 
 derie amongst athletes. Old-fashioned investors may 
 still be found who like paying their commissions to a 
 broker whose name has been honoured in The Field ; 
 here and there, perhaps, a solicitor is so saturated 
 with the traditions of his boyhood that he will carry 
 a brief to the chambers of a distinguished cricketer in 
 Lincoln's Inn, just for the pleasure of making his 
 acquaintance and showing him off afterwards at a 
 dinner party of jolly old buffers like himself. But 
 the normal dispenser of legal patronage entertains a 
 prejudice in favour of counsel who have found time 
 to pick up a little law ; and the average Bull, Bear, or 
 Stag fights shy of the high-class firm who stand out 
 for the regulation -^ per cent. He goes to that 
 business-like Mr. Jacobs, who will accept T \-, and 
 deserts him in turn when he hears of a still more 
 enterprising Mr. Levy, just set up, who will take 
 'aV ^ ne p res tige of the Tom Brown type has 
 passed away, now that so much of the most important 
 business has come under the control of foreign or 
 half -foreign magnates, who neither admire nor under- 
 stand what is an essentially, one might add an 
 aggressively, British product. 
 
 It is easy to quote numerous instances of indi- 
 
OUR GENTLEMANLY FAILURES 205 
 
 viduals like Lords Justices Smith and Chitty, Sir 
 Richard Webster and Sir Robert Reid, who have 
 combined physical prowess in their young days with 
 striking success at the Bar. One may cite certain 
 strenuous families, such as the Selwyns, Wordsworths 
 and Lytteltons, in which this double stream of 
 energy descends as a sort of birthright. And there 
 are junior examples of the same fortunate type but 
 not many. The competition for eminence, the 
 struggle for a bare livelihood, has become too exact- 
 ing and exhausting, even in professions which, like 
 the Church and the Law, impose least strain on their 
 younger members. From a fairly wide acquaintance 
 among contemporaries men between thirty and 
 forty years of age who have respectively succeeded 
 or failed in making their mark, the writer is inclined 
 to regard the disappointed ones as almost, though 
 not quite, identical with those who gave the best of 
 their young time to athletics, and treated lessons and 
 lectures as " a kind of parasitic growth upon modern 
 educational institutions." Among the few happy 
 exceptions to that classification there is not one who, 
 on taking to work, did not give up play. A few there 
 have been who attempted to maintain the double 
 part ; but those who did not abandon the idea at 
 once either learned wisdom in time, or broke down in 
 their health. 
 
 But if a lad has " done his lessons," if an under- 
 graduate attends his lectures and " reads his books," 
 
206 OUR GENTLEMANLY FAILURES 
 
 how can he spend his spare time more healthily than 
 in some outdoor sport ? Well, the answer is simple 
 enough. He will leave his School or College knowing 
 just the same things as all his fellows a little more 
 than most of them or, as the case may be, a little less. 
 It does not make much difference. He will only be 
 but one more reproduction of a normal pattern a 
 pattern which has largely gone out of use. The regu- 
 lation curriculum perhaps as good as any inelastic 
 system includes a certain number of subjects 
 (classics, English and mathematics, with a smattering 
 of modern languages and science, mixed according 
 to taste and capacity) which, for all practical pur- 
 poses, are common property. There is not one of 
 these attainments which fetches a price in the open 
 market if it be only of average quality. There is not 
 one which does not command a purchaser, of some or 
 other kind, if it is in any way out of the common. 
 The young man who can do some particular thing 
 better than anybody else in his own circle of com- 
 petitors need never go begging for a patron. But 
 you cannot get a quotation for all-round average 
 merit. Lament it as we may, we must acknowledge 
 the fact that the future is for one-sided men, those 
 who have made the most of their special gift, or, if 
 they are endowed with several, have ruthlessly con- 
 centrated themselves upon one. Now it is just 
 this particularisation, this possibly lopsided develop- 
 ment which is checked if the learning years are 
 
OUR GENTLEMANLY FAILURES 207 
 
 spent, and the after life is moulded, on the old- 
 fashioned training the almost equal division 
 between mental and bodily education. Its demands 
 on the time and energy of those who undergo it are so 
 exacting that no chance is left for a man to differ- 
 entiate himself from his likes. He has no reason to 
 show why he should be chosen in preference to any- 
 body else who is similarly furnished inside and out- 
 side. It is the experience of most men who have 
 worked their way upwards without special interest 
 or exceptional opportunities that the long-awaited 
 chance of distinction has come through an almost 
 casual aptitude for some position, for some under- 
 taking, a little out of the ordinary run. And it 
 is painfully common to hear one of our meritorious 
 failures lamenting that he has lost " such a capital 
 opening " just because he did not know, or had for- 
 gotten, some " potty little thing " that nobody 
 could ever have thought would be of any use. 
 It is the stray fragment of botany, perhaps, or 
 chemistry, the sudden flash of a geographical or legal 
 reminiscence, which makes a man valuable in an 
 emergency ; which suggests a lucrative enterprise 
 or gives him the advantage in a technical contro- 
 versy over an opponent who knows everything else as 
 well as he does except the one little thing that 
 happens to matter. This is the sort of " luck " that 
 does not occur to the man who has learned just what 
 other men know, even if he has learned it a trifle 
 
208 OUR GENTLEMANLY FAILURES 
 
 better than most of them. In the strenuous hack- 
 neyed occupations of a Liberal Education there is 
 little opportunity for picking up the extra bits of 
 knowledge which may lead to fame or fortune. The 
 routine games and sports are at least as absorbing as 
 the routine tasks ; the ordinary young man has no 
 time to think, no time to observe. He is hurried 
 from work to play, from play back to work. The 
 system, it should be explained, has not grown up 
 accidentally. It is pursued of set purpose it keeps 
 the boys out of mischief. It acts as a sort of auto- 
 motor sanction of morality. Nor can its efficacy or 
 the importance of its results be called into question. 
 But we must count the cost. 
 
 " God never wastes his candle-ends," Mr. Spur- 
 geon said, or is reported to have said. Whatever he 
 meant by that audacious metaphor, it may be applied 
 to the present argument that modern fortunes are 
 made out of by-products, and made by those who 
 have the eye to discover them, by the men who 
 either were never cramped by routine or have 
 broken loose from the restraint. The virtues which 
 Mr. Balfour praises as the results of excellence in 
 physical pursuits (patience, sobriety, courage, tem- 
 per, discipline, subordination) make an imposing list 
 for the moral expert, though one might remark that 
 they are all very much of the same type. But if 
 cricket and football really have such results on the 
 character, then they have a good deal to answer for. 
 
OUR GENTLEMANLY FAILURES 209 
 
 They are all virtues which have their corresponding 
 faults faults that are obviously hostile to alertness 
 of mind and personal initiative. The qualities held 
 up for our admiration in the Perfect Athlete are such 
 as would rather console a good man in adversity than 
 help an ambitious one to make a start for success. 
 There is no need, however, to press that point. The 
 worst drawback is that athletics consume the whole 
 leisure of their votary, and prevent him from ever 
 " being by himself," making the acquaintance of his 
 own mind, and discovering that he is, perchance, 
 endowed with powers, or haunted by aspirations, 
 which are not exactly the same as those of all the 
 other good fellows with whom he is living in a daily 
 whirl of unreflecting activity. Every night he goes 
 to bed ready for the vacuous wholesome sleep that 
 will not be broken until it is time to begin another 
 round of task work and regulation play. It is cheer- 
 fully gone through because it is pleasant in itself, 
 because he is trained to all the virtues Mr. Balfour 
 enumerates, and because it is " just the same as the 
 other fellows are doing." There is no disturbing or 
 inspiring sense of a Something Wanting, no feeling 
 about for a Self that has got itself in the hum and 
 bustle of a corporate existence. The aim is rather to 
 conform to the recognised standard, to live up to the 
 highest mark of the established ethos, to win as many 
 prizes in the examinations and as many caps and 
 ribbons in the playing-fields as possible, to excel one's 
 
210 OUR GENTLEMANLY FAILURES 
 
 companions, if one can, but only on their own lines. 
 And so the days and the months go by pereunt et 
 imputantur ! Before leisure has been found for 
 thinking, for discovering one's own nature, the 
 learning years are lost, and it is time to go out in the 
 world and make a living only to discover that the 
 qualities which won so much respect in the little 
 society of School and College life have no value out- 
 side it, and that the work of self-preparation has to 
 be begun again unless a vigorous youth, accustomed 
 to praise and more or less facile success, is content to 
 drop into some subordinate post without any reason- 
 able prospects of promotion. The sensible ones soon 
 realise the situation, put away childish things, and 
 emancipate themselves by degrees from the self- 
 indulgent traditions of an antiquated system. The 
 others, the majority they are our Gentlemanly 
 Failures. They are too proud, too honourable to 
 become mere pensioners on their families, so they 
 accept the first berth that promises a bare living, and 
 endure it in the hope that something better will 
 turn up. 
 
 What their idea of " something better " is may be 
 guessed from the fact that, when the Colonial Office 
 announced the other day that a hundred vacancies 
 were to be filled up in a South African police force, 
 twelve times as many applications were sent in by 
 young men of unexceptionable birth and first-class 
 education, who despaired, not without reason, of 
 
OUR GENTLEMANLY FAILURES 211 
 
 getting anything in England that would suit them as 
 well. The pay is trifling, the position is nothing, but 
 the work is mainly in the open air, and the qualities 
 required are just those developed by athletic sports 
 temper, patience, courage, sobriety, discipline, etc. 
 etc. What, however, must be the feelings of the 
 father of a successful candidate, when he reflects that 
 he has spent at least a couple of thousand pounds on 
 his son's education only to make a policeman of him? 
 More than once the War Office has declined to enrol 
 a regiment of Gentlemen Cadets. There are certain 
 obvious, though not perhaps insuperable, objections 
 to such a course. But there would be no difficulty in 
 enlisting the men. In three months it would be easy 
 to raise, not one or two, but twenty or thirty, such 
 regiments, which would make the basis of such an 
 Army Corps as the world has never seen, whether for 
 hard fighting or the patient endurance of hardships 
 men who would take to discipline as kindly as to 
 cricket, and to whom the honour of the regiment 
 would be as dear as was the credit of their school as 
 chivalrous a company as ever was sent to be food for 
 cannons. But what a waste of educated manhood ! 
 Even in the field the merely physical qualities de- 
 veloped by athletic games and sports are of little use. 
 The troopers who rode into the Transvaal with Dr. 
 Jameson and Sir John Willoughby were as pretty a 
 set of men as any officer could wish to command. 
 Nor is there any doubt that if they had been decently 
 
212 OUR GENTLEMANLY FAILURES 
 
 led they would have achieved their immediate object. 
 It is perhaps as well that they failed. But the fault 
 did not lie with the rank-and-file, or even with the 
 junior officers. The ignominious affair at Krugers- 
 dorp was no disgrace to English pluck or endurance, 
 but simply one more proof that modern warfare is a 
 game which should only be played by those who have 
 studied the rules, that you might as well try to give a 
 violin recital by the light of nature as to invade a 
 hostile territory without some rudimentary acquaint- 
 ance with the principles of strategy and tactics. 
 Hunting, no doubt, has helped to the making of 
 brilliant leaders of cavalry. But they are not sports- 
 men of the " cut-me-down captain " class. It is not 
 hard riding and bold jumping that train a man for 
 the greater game of war ; but that " eye for the 
 country " so rare in the hunting-field which en- 
 ables him to " guess what the enemy is doing on the 
 other side of a hill." 
 
 It is the same in every walk of life. In the Army, 
 officers who go through their drills and garrison 
 duties with just the indispensable amount of 
 efficiency, and then hurry off to their polo matches 
 and steeple-chases ; colonists who have walked a 
 Highland gillie off his legs, or ridden in the first 
 flight in the shires, but have no idea how to mend 
 their boots or shoe their horses ; barristers who take 
 up a patent case without even a smattering of 
 chemistry or mechanics ; actors with a pretty turn 
 
OUR GENTLEMANLY FAILURES 213 
 
 for sentimental elocution who cannot hold a foil or 
 send their voices to the dress-circle ; clergymen who 
 get a sore throat after three services on a Sunday, or 
 find themselves cornered by the local shoemaker on a 
 point of Christian evidence ; young men in the City 
 fit for nothing but adding up rows of figures and 
 running messages about the streets ; journalists who 
 want to write leading articles without understanding 
 the rules of the House of Commons^ these are but a 
 few examples of the Gentlemanly Failures whom we 
 meet at every turn. 
 
 The question would not be so serious if young 
 men were left to themselves. They might be trusted, 
 those who have sense, to find out their mistake in 
 time, and to keep under control the physical energy 
 which, in the sophisticated conditions of modern 
 civilisation, is almost as dangerous to success in life as 
 sheer mental indolence. But they are positively en- 
 couraged in their pleasures by leaders of public 
 opinion. At every academical function it has be- 
 come a platform common-place for the distinguished 
 person who makes the speech of the day to snub the 
 successful candidates and inform them that there is 
 something higher than mere proficiency in their 
 studies. So, no doubt, there is ; but it does not lie 
 in the pursuits of the rivals whom they have beaten 
 in the class-room. It is not the purpose of the writer 
 to depreciate outdoor sports or any other form of 
 amusement. It is well for everybody to take as much 
 
214 OUR GENTLEMANLY FAILURES 
 
 enjoyment as he can afford to pay for whether in 
 money or in time. But the taste is natural, almost 
 universal amongst Englishmen, and does not require 
 artificial cultivation. 1 What is the good of one class 
 of advisers warning us that our commercial 
 supremacy is slipping away from us, that we must 
 fight our hardest to retain the neutral markets of the 
 world, that we are being gradually supplanted by 
 more enterprising and self-adapting rivals, if another 
 sect of preachers go about expounding a more agree- 
 able gospel, and insist on the merit of getting all the 
 fun we can out of life ? The national need is all for 
 longer hours and closer application, while the popu- 
 
 1 Since this article was in type, a part of its argument has been 
 anticipated by Mr. Bryce. He was urging his hearers to observe 
 and reason on the facts of mercantile and industrial life. " The 
 thoughts of English boys and young men," he said, " were now 
 so largely absorbed by athletic sports. He did not wish to dis- 
 parage those sports, nor undervalue the physical training they 
 gave. They contributed largely not only to the health, but to 
 the high spirits and cheery dashing ways of young Englishmen. 
 But the inevitable consequence of the complete absorption of 
 the interests of young men in these amusements was that they 
 neither enlarged their minds by study after leaving school, nor 
 troubled themselves to reflect upon and comprehend anything 
 beyond their daily business routine. In business, as in everything 
 else, brains and pains will win in the long run, and our young men 
 who take life easily, and give all their spare hours and thoughts to 
 football, or cricket, or cycling much as we may sympathise with 
 these exercises will find themselves distanced in business by the 
 painstaking, hardworking, systematic, thrifty German, whose 
 thoughts are bent steadily upon the main purpose of his life." 
 
OUR GENTLEMANLY FAILURES 215 
 
 lar cry is for short hours, more holidays, and plenty 
 of recreation. In many parts of the country, in 
 occupations that permit the artisan to do his work in 
 his own time, very little is done between Friday night 
 and Tuesday morning. The middle class have not 
 yet risen to that apolaustic ideal they cannot afford 
 to take a solid slice from the week. That is reserved 
 for the " worker." But they are progressing in that 
 direction on their bicycles. 
 
 The worst of the tendency which is so unfortu- 
 nately fostered by many public men who wish to say 
 something pleasant is that it has come to be generally 
 accounted a merit. The man who drinks too much 
 wine or whisky, who consorts with fascinating frail- 
 ties, who backs horses or plays cards for stakes beyond 
 his means, is well aware all the time that he is making 
 a fool of himself, and is quite resolved to pull himself 
 up before he goes too far. Generally he is in time. 
 He gets a sharp warning before long ; if he does not 
 take it, so much the worse for him. But it is no great 
 matter, since, in that case, he belongs to the limited 
 class who are predestined for the crows. Very 
 different is the case of the athletic trifler. He 
 believes all the time that he is doing the best thing by 
 himself. His appetite, his ruddy complexion, and 
 his cheery spirits make him a pleasant companion for 
 himself as well as for his friends. " What a shame it 
 is," they say, " that such a bright, pleasant fellow 
 should not get a better chance." And they are in- 
 
216 OUR GENTLEMANLY FAILURES 
 
 dignant because that '* pasty-faced little Jones," who 
 cannot handle a racket or say two words to a lady at 
 dinner, has been promoted over his head. Mr. Jones, 
 no doubt, was a " sap " at School and a " smug " at 
 College, but now he is giving the go-by to the fine 
 young fellows who thought they did him quite an 
 honour if they tossed him a careless nod when they 
 passed him in the Quad. And, thirty years hence, it 
 will perhaps be this Mr. Jones, when they have de- 
 parted this life, who will head the subscription to 
 save their widows from destitution. For he still 
 keeps a tender place in his heart for the bright, popu- 
 lar lads who treated him almost as an equal in the old 
 days when he crept about the corridors half ashamed 
 of his own existence, and, in a deferential sort of way, 
 carried off all the prizes, as if they were matters of no 
 consequence. 
 
 Perhaps this jeremiad would not be called for, this 
 warning would be unjustified, if the mischief ended 
 where it arises, if the athletic vogue were dropped as 
 soon as life is begun in earnest. Cricket, football, 
 running, and rowing, are distractions which, in most 
 cases, work their own cure. The ordinary young man 
 with his way to make in the world very soon discovers 
 that he has neither time nor money for playing three- 
 day matches. Football, the cinder-path and the 
 river, except in a desultory way, involve an amount 
 of training and self-denial that are not compatible 
 with the ordinary duties and amusements of town 
 
OUR GENTLEMANLY FAILURES 217 
 
 life. Not many men carry them on after their 
 twenty-fifth year, and if they have devoted too much 
 of their previous career to such preoccupations the 
 harm is not yet irreparable. They have given them- 
 selves a bad start in life, but if they have the true 
 athletic mettle in them they may be able unless, as 
 sometimes happens, their general energy has been 
 impaired by premature strain rather than developed 
 by normal exercise to recover the lost ground. 
 And, in any case, the evil would not be widely 
 spread. To excel in such sports is not given to 
 many, and there is no temptation, once the stimulus 
 of school or college life is escaped, to go on with 
 pastimes in which one cuts an indifferent figure. It 
 is not unmixed bliss to field out the best part of a day 
 for the sake of spending a couple of anxious minutes 
 before the wicket, or to row one's heart into one's 
 mouth to a running accompaniment of critical ob- 
 jurations from the coach on the towing-path. It is 
 the introduction of easier pastimes which is wasting 
 so much time that ought to be spent, if not at the 
 desk, at least in taking stock of oneself, in associating 
 with other minds, and bringing out one's own latent 
 powers. Lawn-tennis, golf, cycling these are 
 amusements which anybody can learn with very 
 little trouble, and soon comes to enjoy, to look for as 
 a daily need. It is true that real excellence in these 
 pursuits may be as hard to attain as in any of the old- 
 established sports, but one may become a passable 
 
2i 8 OUR GENTLEMANLY FAILURES 
 
 performer, just as one may learn to sit a reasonable 
 horse, or to bring down a fairly confiding partridge, 
 without any great call on the virtues of patience, 
 sobriety, courage, etc. etc. " Failure is to form 
 habits," said Mr. Pater. They make a man into an 
 automaton, with no more volition or initiative than 
 the wheel or crank of a machine. His day gets 
 parcelled out into sacred sections, which must on no 
 account be broken into. The barrister (or his clerk) 
 who has acquired the craving for a spin on his 
 bicycle every afternoon at five o'clock is just as much 
 the slave of habit as the self-indulgent colleague 
 whom he despises for not being able to get on with- 
 out a brandy-and-soda or a glass of bitter at eleven 
 o'clock. One man is playing havoc with his stomach, 
 the other with his future. He may manage to 
 " finish up " his day's task before he starts for his 
 outing, but the value of work done under such pres- 
 sure is not very great. It may pass muster, but it 
 does not gain credit. It is just the stuff turned out 
 by a pot-boiling, bread-winning mechanic ; it lacks 
 the ideas and intelligence of an effective ambition. 
 There is but one kind of assets with which all men 
 are equally endowed every one has twenty-four 
 hours in his day. If he allots two, three, or four to 
 his racket, his clubs, or his wheel, he is deliberately 
 choosing to run with the weights against him, and 
 must not complain when he is beaten by rank out- 
 siders. Nor is the case much improved if he confines 
 
OUR GENTLEMANLY FAILURES 219 
 
 his pleasuring to his " week ends." It is just the 
 leisure time between Saturday afternoon and 
 Monday morning which should inspire the ideas 
 that may raise him above the common ruck. Once 
 again, it may be well to say that this is not meant as 
 a protest against holiday-making, whether athletic or 
 social, but only against the regular habit of tearing 
 about between work and play and filling up every 
 hour of the day and week with self-imposed engage- 
 ments. There is a great deal of talk about German 
 competition, but nobody who has employed German 
 clerks would say they were by nature more clever and 
 trustworthy than young Englishmen. The reason 
 why they so often get the better posts in houses of 
 business is that they have no other interest than the 
 one they live by. Their musical meetings, their beer 
 drinkings, their little debaucheries are detached 
 episodes, forgotten as soon as they are finished, not 
 part of their lives, whereas the open-air amusements 
 of their English colleagues are very often rather more 
 than dimidium animce. 
 
 There are many strong reasons none of them dis- 
 creditable why the worship of the body, or of 
 bodily prowess, should have grown to its pre- 
 sent dimensions. The English aristocracy whom 
 Matthew Arnold playfully called Barbarians have 
 always held the first place in the world for feats of 
 strength, skill, and courage ; and it was but natural, 
 when the middle class were at last admitted to a 
 
220 OUR GENTLEMANLY FAILURES 
 
 similar teaching, that they should also enter into 
 athletic emulation ; 1 that the Eton and Harrow 
 match should lead to a similar contest between 
 Rugby and Maryborough, and this in turn to an 
 annual fixture between the glorified grammar 
 schools of Slopington and Torpington, the cricket in 
 the last case being very often quite as good as in the 
 two others. Once the rivalry is started it is not easily 
 controlled. Nor has the head-master of the humbler 
 class of institution any object in keeping down the 
 sporting enthusiasm of his pupils and junior col- 
 leagues. It is good for the moral tone of the school, 
 no doubt, since it keeps the boys out of mischief and 
 leaves the masters free, and acts as a sort of auto- 
 motor discipline. The fact that a couple of Old 
 Slopingtonians are playing for Oxford is quite as 
 good an advertisement for their school as that three 
 or four members of the sixth form have won open 
 scholarships, and it is mentioned on Prize Day with 
 considerably more gusto. The Principal, excellent 
 man, is unable to believe that what is so useful to 
 himself can be anything but advantageous to his old 
 pupils. He allows himself to be patronised by those 
 dignified young dunces when they come down in 
 
 1 An extreme exemplar of the spirit was the veteran cricketer 
 who, on being presented with a son and heir, gave directions that 
 the boy's right arm should be kept strapped to his side. " It 
 would be such a pull for the youngster," he explained, " if he turned 
 out a left-handed bowler." 
 
OUR GENTLEMANLY FAILURES 221 
 
 their glory and make their esteemed suggestions as to 
 the improvement of the school cricket. They point 
 out, perhaps, that some promising young bat is having 
 his prospects seriously impaired by being compelled 
 to waste time in the laboratory or drawing school 
 when he ought to be at the nets in attendance on the 
 Professional. Even at the University the same kind 
 of thing goes on though not in the same degree. I 
 could name the College and the year when a formal 
 remonstrance was made by some of the leading 
 undergraduates to the Dean because his colleagues 
 had ventured to " plough " a candidate for matricu- 
 lation who was quite certain to play for the Uni- 
 versity in his first year. 
 
 Some of the more fortunate athletes who have 
 contrived to do just enough reading, and are blessed 
 with sufficient brains, to win colourable honours at 
 the University have, no doubt, a career marked out 
 for them. 1 They will be welcomed back as masters 
 in the old School to assist in the unconscious mischief 
 of manufacturing another generation of disappoint- 
 ments. But even for them the path is not so 
 pleasant as it was fifteen or twenty years ago. The 
 competition of qualified candidates for such 
 vacancies has already reduced the salaries and the 
 chances of promotion, and the Church no longer 
 
 1 A well-known University cricketer, who was playing a fine 
 innings at Lord's, received, while at the wicket, two telegrams 
 from enterprising headmasters offering him appointments. 
 
222 OUR GENTLEMANLY FAILURES 
 
 offers an opening. The increased seriousness which 
 has been introduced into that profession by the 
 steady development of the High Church movement 
 has relegated the duty of playing cricket and foot- 
 ball with the young parishioners to the works of 
 supererogation desirable but not essential quali- 
 fications for a cure of souls. 
 
 It is not to be hoped, nor need it be feared, that 
 the manly type of young Englishmen, sound in wind 
 and limb and clean in heart, will ever disappear. But 
 it existed amongst us long before the present mania 
 for athletics had set in, and will not become extinct 
 when that craze has passed away. The fashion has 
 spread in the United States, and seems to be gaining 
 some foothold in France. But it should be remem- 
 bered that the manufactures and internal trade of 
 those two Republics are protected by a wall of pro- 
 hibitory tariffs, and it is somewhat easier there for 
 the middle-class young man to earn a decent living 
 than in a country of unrestricted competition. But 
 our most formidable adversaries, the Germans, have 
 not yet been fascinated by an ideal which did very 
 well for ancient Greeks, whose wants were simple, 
 and who had no rivals to undersell them in their own 
 markets. It is true that the youths of the Fatherland 
 have to give up two or three years to serve in the 
 Army, where, no doubt, they acquire the virtues of 
 " patience, sobriety, courage, temper, discipline, 
 subordination." But, if all accounts are true, the 
 
OUR GENTLEMANLY FAILURES 223 
 
 period which they spend under the drill-sergeant is 
 not one of ease and pleasure-seeking, and they ex- 
 perience a pleasant relief when they are remitted to 
 civilian labour. The conscription may be a national 
 burden, though Lord Wolseley thinks it a political 
 advantage, but it falls equally on all, whereas the 
 young Englishman who gives up his best years or his 
 best thoughts to athletics is dressing the balance 
 against himself with the result that he is supplanted 
 by some very inferior person for whom he feels a 
 hearty and, perhaps, excusable contempt. He may 
 be consoled for a time by the smiles and admiration 
 of all the pretty girls he knows, but when it comes to 
 serious love-making he discovers that those engaging 
 innocents do not as a rule choose their husbands from 
 the ranks of Gentlemanly Failures. 
 
MR. CHESTERTON'S SENSE OF DUTY 
 
 Outlook, August iyth, 1907 
 SIR, 
 
 In a recent issue of the Illustrated London 
 News I see that Mr. G. K. Chesterton has been read- 
 ing a lecture to " the man who wrote the Note " in 
 your Review on Bishop Gore's views of University 
 Reform. " One might endure Oxford," he remarks, 
 " but not The Outlook." His sufferance is pathetic, 
 for, lower down, it appears that his soul is troubled 
 about even weightier matters than the fate of Oxford 
 or the merits of your Review. " Oh ! what a happy 
 place England would be to live in if only one did not 
 love it ! " Seemingly it is because of the great 
 affection he bears towards England and Oxford that 
 he takes up his pen and slings ink at them. Whom he 
 loves he chestertons. But if England is not good 
 enough for him, and Oxford falls below his mark, 
 The Outlook may perhaps put up with his superior 
 airs. He would, no doubt, improve all three in- 
 stitutions if he had the managing of them. But to 
 await the Utopia wherein Chestertons are kings and 
 kings are Chestertons might involve delay. Mean- 
 time, " the man who wrote the Note " may correct 
 a mistake into which his critic has blundered by mis- 
 
 224 
 
OXFORD AND CAMBRIDGE 225 
 
 understanding the prelate whom he has taken under 
 his protection. Really, Mr. Chesterton might 
 have been content with the range of his own 
 ignorance. 
 
 In the House of Lords the other day the Bishop of 
 Birmingham spoke of Oxford and Cambridge as being 
 too much of playgrounds for the rich. In a sense the 
 statement was correct. Dr. Gore is, as he always was, 
 both at Trinity and Pusey House, a spiritual en- 
 thusiast who devotes himself to gaining a moral in- 
 fluence over young men. Of his remarkable success, 
 and of his considerable limitations in that respect, 
 this is not the place to speak. Being, as it were, a 
 sort of cultivated missioner, he set up a high ideal, 
 and would not rest content with anything but the 
 most strenuous performance. But he did not say, or 
 mean to suggest, that the " upper classes regard the 
 University as a lark." Mr. Chesterton is proud of his 
 cockney phrase, since he uses it over and over again. 
 " The lads at Oxford and Cambridge are only larking 
 because England, in the depths of its solemn soul, 
 really wishes them to lark." 
 
 Mr. Chesterton should consult some more recent 
 authority on life at Oxford than The Adventures of 
 Mr. Verdant Green. He would then learn that by 
 no stretch of democratic language can the under- 
 graduates be described as rich. Nineteen out of 
 twenty will have to work for their livings when they 
 " go down," and nineteen out of twenty work with 
 Q 
 
226 MR. CHESTERTON 
 
 quite reasonable diligence when they are " up." 
 They might work a little harder, most of them, with- 
 out doing themselves harm. But they are, as a rule, 
 more serious than the average young fellows of their 
 own age the Army, the medical student, the bud- 
 ding solicitor ; the ordinary clerk or shop-attendant ; 
 or the typical artisan. Moreover, they work without 
 being paid and without being compelled, simply be- 
 cause such are the traditions and genius of the place. 
 If they are sometimes gay or frivolous or foolish or 
 occasionally vicious, they are like other specimens of 
 the race which Mr. Chesterton wishes to elevate. 
 But nobody who knows Oxford or Cambridge 
 certainly not Dr. Gore would suggest that they are 
 depraved by the atmosphere of the University. It 
 might be more rarefied, of course, and he has shown 
 what he believes to be the path towards the moral 
 altitudes. It is the belief of most University men 
 that better guides may be found, but none would 
 dispute either his good faith or knowledge. He 
 is not an intellectual contortionist, posing before 
 the ideal and pretending he won't be happy till he 
 gets it. 
 
 Both at Oxford and Cambridge there are many 
 young men who have nothing to support them 
 beyond their income from scholarships or exhibitions 
 supplemented, in case of need or merit, from a fund 
 privately raised and administered by their Colleges. 
 In this way they are enabled, on a modest scale, to 
 
OXFORD AND CAMBRIDGE 227 
 
 take part in the social life of the little communities 
 and enjoy the full benefits of Oxford and Cambridge. 
 They are, of course, much more fortunate than their 
 unattached or semi-attached contemporaries, who, it 
 is to be feared, get little benefit from an ancient 
 university which they could not more cheaply obtain 
 at one of the new foundations where the lectures and 
 demonstrations are at least equally efficient. Here 
 we come to the crux of the question, which persons 
 like Mr. Chesterton do not understand. They wish 
 the young men from the working-classes to share the 
 traditions and inhale the aroma of a certain form of 
 social existence, and yet to remain sons of the people. 
 The thing is impossible, for the simple reason that 
 corporate life whether it be that of a London club, 
 a trade-union, or a college involves a certain mini- 
 mum of expenditure. 
 
 You might fill the streets of Oxford and Cam- 
 bridge with crowds of emulous students, gathering, 
 as in mediaeval times, at the lectures of popular 
 professors at the University, but if you could not 
 find room for them in the Colleges they might 
 as well (or better) have gone to London, or Liver- 
 pool, or Birmingham. At the two old seats of 
 learning the College is the Alma Mater, not the 
 University. 
 
 This may be all wrong. In that case, away with 
 Oxford and Cambridge, or leave them alone and 
 found something after your own heart. But if you 
 
228 MR. CHESTERTON 
 
 attempt to nationalise them by flooding them with 
 mere attendants at lectures and classes, you will only 
 be building a new Oxford and a new Cambridge on 
 the ruins of the Colleges. For young men of 
 sufficient intellect and character, however humble be 
 their origin, there is a cordial welcome in the Col- 
 leges and a prosperous career. But the door is not, 
 and cannot be, opened for the sons of artisans or 
 small clerks who intend to follow their fathers' call- 
 ings. The training and the atmosphere unfit them 
 for the class from which they have sprung. This is 
 iniquitous, say the democratic reformers ; the best 
 sons of the people are tempted to desert their class. 
 Precisely. That is just what is being done. But the 
 more amiable and truthful way of stating the case is 
 to say that the Universities fulfil the function of a 
 social ladder, along which aspiring and meritorious 
 lads may rise to the highest place in the State. 
 
 Mr. Chesterton is shocked by the suggestion that 
 these excellent young fellows, with their way to make 
 in the world, may be assisted to " rub off some of 
 their angles " by intercourse on equal terms with 
 men of a different class and less strenuous character. 
 This, he says, means " losing their independence." 
 Mr. Chesterton is not the first democrat to con- 
 fuse independence with uncouthness, honesty with 
 boorishness. " Our angles," he writes, " are simply 
 our shapes." He is appalled by the fear of becoming 
 a " clumsy and indeterminate polygon." May he 
 
OXFORD AND CAMBRIDGE 229 
 
 stand on guard against the corroding action of 
 literary success, and escape the perils of an ener- 
 vating rotundity. 
 
 I am, Sir, 
 
 Yours, etc., 
 
 THE WRITER OF THE NOTE. 
 August \\tb. 
 
A GREAT COUNTRY GENTLEMAN 
 
 Outlook, November Qth, 1907 
 
 IMPORTANT as "Coke of Norfolk" was in his day 
 and county, there was, we think, no need to write his 
 biography in two large volumes. A memoir of about 
 a quarter the length of Mrs. Stirling's work would 
 better have met the wants and wishes of the most 
 intelligent readers. There are solid slabs of matter 
 here which possess no kind of interest or value except 
 for persons connected with the family or neighbour- 
 hood over which the " Whig prince " exercised a 
 genial despotism. But it seems useless to preach con- 
 densation or the art of literary omission until the 
 golden day arrives when the vendors of books will 
 charge, and the buyers will pay, prices in an inverse 
 ratio to their size. Naturally Mrs. Stirling, as a great- 
 granddaughter of her hero, is incapable of sifting 
 the relevant from the immaterial. Throughout she is 
 animated with whole-hearted admiration for the first 
 Earl of Leicester (of Holkham), and assumes the same 
 enthusiasm in her readers. Her redundance is the 
 more unfortunate because she is gifted with a quite 
 exceptional power of narration, and presents her 
 characters as living beings. For the judicious skim- 
 
 230 
 
COKE OF NORFOLK 231 
 
 mer there is in these handsomely illustrated volumes 
 a rich store of entertainment, a large amount of new 
 historical information, and a vivid picture of upper- 
 class life in England from the middle of the 
 eighteenth century well past the accession of Queen 
 Victoria. 
 
 In politics Coke of Norfolk was an uninteresting 
 Whig, chiefly rendered piquant by the violence of 
 his inherited prejudice and the rancour with which 
 he expressed his opinions. When first elected as 
 Knight of the Shire he told the freeholders that he 
 was a " Whig of the old school, a lover of the prin- 
 ciples of the Revolution of 1688," and by that line of 
 conduct, his course would be governed. It was as 
 much his duty, he held, to hate the Tories as to fear 
 God and help man. In strict accordance with these 
 traditions he entertained sympathy with the Ameri- 
 can colonists in their rebellion, felt a certain tender- 
 ness for Napoleon, loathed the younger Pitt, and 
 denounced the opponents of the Reform Bill as tyrants 
 and corrupters. His tolerance grew with age and 
 adulation. He presented two petitions for Reform to 
 the House of Commons, which he charged in direct 
 terms with corruption and " all its base and mis- 
 chievous appendages." This was rejected as insolent. 
 The second, we are told, was sufficiently vehement, 
 but " presented nothing so unequivocally insolent, 
 and was permitted to lie on the table." But he met 
 his match when Cobbett appeared at Norwich, 
 
232 A GREAT COUNTRY GENTLEMAN 
 
 scoffed at Reform as a remedy for hunger, and broke 
 up the assemblage of ardent politicians intent on 
 hearing their great neighbour from Holkham. 
 " Here," Cobbett yelled, " is immediate relief for 
 you ! Here is Reform indeed ! This will fill your 
 bellies ! This will prevent your beds from being 
 taken under you." In Parliament, as a rule, Coke 
 did not trouble to observe the ordinary decencies of 
 debate, but his most outrageous exploit with his 
 tongue was committed at a public dinner held at 
 Lynn to celebrate his election in 1830, when he was 
 a man seventy-four years of age. The toast had been 
 proposed of " The father of the new King the 
 memory of George III." Coke refused to drink it, 
 and pointing to a portrait of the late sovereign, de- 
 clared that he was the " worst man who ever sat on a 
 throne, that bloody king." Now we hold no brief 
 for the honour of George III, and only mention the 
 incident, which the biographer seems to think quite 
 creditable to her subject, as illustrating the truculent 
 side of Coke's character. 
 
 But he had the merits of his failings. Devoted as 
 he was to Fox, he spoke out against the coalition with 
 North. Because he disapproved of the Prince 
 Regent's action with regard to Mrs. Fitzherbert, he 
 declined to receive him at Holkham. On his Royal 
 Highness proposing to pay his annual visit, Coke 
 replied that Holkham was " open to strangers on 
 Tuesdays." The Duke of Portland, who had tried to 
 
COKE OF NORFOLK 233 
 
 disarm his opposition with the offer of a peerage, was 
 openly bearded in his own house. " My Lord Duke," 
 said the incorruptible squire, " I have come in person 
 to answer your letter, and to express my astonish- 
 ment and disgust at your Grace's believing me 
 capable of selling my principles for a peerage ; I beg 
 to acquaint you that I will never again set my foot 
 within your doors." This was but one of five occa- 
 sions on which he declined a similar honour. Why 
 in the end he succumbed is not quite clear. Perhaps 
 the dominating reason in his mind was that he would 
 enjoy a posthumous revenge on Pitt, who had 
 grossly affronted him by offering the Earldom of 
 Leicester a title to which he thought he had a pre- 
 scriptive right in another quarter. Vain, overbear- 
 ing, spoiled with prosperity, toadied almost from his 
 youth upward, declaiming about liberty and equality 
 yet never brooking opposition, and proud as Lucifer, 
 Coke of Norfolk was the type and embodiment of 
 the old Whig families who had so long ruled England 
 not less corruptly than the Tories whose mal- 
 practices they affected to condemn. 
 
 But this was only one aspect of the man's nature 
 perhaps the least important. He was beloved by all 
 about him, and admired even by those who did not 
 cherish designs on his open-handed generosity. He 
 lived en frince, and scrupulously fulfilled all the 
 duties of his position. As a landlord he was liberal, 
 and in agriculture he was a well-known pioneer of 
 
234 A GREAT COUNTRY GENTLEMAN 
 
 modern methods. His success as an administrator of 
 his great estates gives better proof than his speeches 
 of his very remarkable talents. If he played the 
 patron on a grand scale, he was also a genial com- 
 panion with his equals. He associated on intimate 
 terms not merely with the Royal Dukes who 
 honoured him by eating and drinking of his best, or 
 with the leading statesmen of his party, but also with 
 artists, scholars, and men of letters. Not the least 
 attractive passages in these volumes are the letters 
 from Samuel Parr, a pedant of high character and 
 some attainments who has to thank his ridiculous 
 egotism for the derision which has fallen on his 
 memory. But he was a good honest soul, if just a 
 trifle sycophantic, and magnanimously confessed 
 that Porson was a better Grecian. Though the two 
 men jangled, and though Porson, whether drunk or 
 sober, never veiled his contempt for the other's 
 understanding, Parr interested himself to get up an 
 annuity for Porson when he had to resign his Fellow- 
 ship at Trinity, Cambridge, because he could not 
 conscientiously take Orders. Mrs. Stirling tells the 
 story of Parr wishing to display his powers of argu- 
 ment before a large company, and asking Porson 
 what he thought about the introduction of moral 
 and physical evil into the world. A hush fell on the 
 company, and then, in a voice as solemn as Parr's, 
 Porson answered, " Why, Doctor, I think we should 
 have done very well without either." 
 
COKE OF NORFOLK 235 
 
 We must not yield to the temptation of extracting 
 good stories. The book is full of them, and they are 
 given with commendable brevity, but as a rule they 
 relate closely to the context. Perhaps the most 
 attractive feature of Mrs. Stirling's book lies in her 
 sketches of the half-forgotten notabilities of the time 
 the formidable " Queen Mary " (Lady Mary 
 Coke), the superlatively frail Lady Ellenborough, 
 Amelia Opie, Chantrey, Lord Erskine, the Duke of 
 Sussex (a staunch friend and frequent correspondent 
 of Coke) and Bishop Bathurst of Norwich. The 
 numerous and excellent illustrations bear witness to 
 the singularly handsome face and gallant bearing of 
 the " Whig prince " as well as to the charm and 
 beauty of the ladies of his family. He was a fine shot 
 and a good sportsman. His physical courage was 
 proved by the most crucial of tests ; he stood up 
 more than once against a savage mob. If he was 
 absurdly bigoted in his political opinions, he was 
 ahead of his time in not laying pressure on his 
 tenants or dependants to vote with him. His dicta- 
 torial manners made him the subject of many lam- 
 poons, but on the whole he was popular in his own 
 neighbourhood, and in every respect was a model 
 country gentleman, even if he did drink the health 
 of George Washington every night during the 
 American War. The picture drawn by Mrs. Stirling 
 suggests no flaw in Coke's character, and this inclines 
 us to suspect that the family papers have been edited 
 
236 A GREAT COUNTRY GENTLEMAN 
 
 with an over-tender discretion. The man presented 
 in these pages could have had little sympathy, 
 politics apart, with Fox, none with the Prince 
 Regent. We know pretty well how these eminent 
 persons spent their days and nights. It was not a 
 scheme of life that would fit in with the Holkham pro- 
 gramme as presented by Coke's great-granddaughter. 
 Though we thank her cordially for the two enter- 
 taining volumes she has given us, we hope that some 
 further effort may be made to trace the biography 
 written by Thomas Keppel, brother of Coke's 
 second wife. By some mysterious chain of events 
 the manuscript was lost. It might be worth re- 
 covery. 
 
PESSIMI EXEMPLI 
 
 Outlook, December 26th, 1908 
 
 IT would be unfair and misleading to lay the whole 
 blame of the Eight Hours Act for Coal Mines upon 
 the Government. True, it figured in Ministers' pro- 
 gramme, is one of the few substantial measures 
 which they have carried this year, and will no doubt 
 be made the subject of platform boasting. But 
 everybody knows they hated it and did their best to 
 kill it. The first idea was to overlay it, after the 
 fashion of mothers dealing with inconvenient off- 
 spring. When the Radicals insisted upon an autumn 
 sitting, Ministers at once filled up the dates with 
 their Licensing and Education Bills not intended to 
 pass, but nicely calculated to smother the Dear Coal 
 scheme. That trick having been defeated by the 
 Lords' curtailment of proceedings over one of the 
 stop-gaps, and Mr. Runciman's collapse over the 
 other, the Cabinet was compelled to redeem its 
 pledge to the Miners' Federation. The Bill should 
 be proceeded with. The Home Secretary was in- 
 structed to put his best foot forward, and mark time 
 with every demonstration of eager haste. Poor Mr. 
 Herbert Gladstone was in the position of a man who 
 
 237 
 
238 PESSIMI EXEMPLI 
 
 has been requested by a person he does not like to 
 propose him to his club. He cannot refuse without 
 giving offence, but at least he can hint to confidential 
 friends that his heart would not be broken if his 
 candidate were blackballed. Not very courageous 
 conduct, nor quite straightforward. But it is a 
 mixed world, my masters. 
 
 Mr. Gladstone performed his tortuous task with 
 unexpected judgment. The House of Commons 
 was given a free hand in Committee, for there was 
 just a chance that some amendment might be 
 carried (so easy-going were the Whips) which would 
 incense the Labour Party and give the Government 
 an excuse for saying that the Bill had been spoiled 
 beyond repair. But the studied neglect of Minis- 
 terial agents was made good by the Socialist watch- 
 dogs, so the Bill which was sent out to be scuttled 
 was piloted into its first port. All was not lost, how- 
 ever, when the Bill had been saved. The Commons 
 had failed, but there was still the House of Lords. 
 Once again, as in the case of the Trade Disputes Bill, 
 Ministers looked wistfully to the Peers. Now it is 
 our opinion that, on the whole, that appeal should 
 have been answered. Either the Eight Hours Bill 
 should have been rejected by the Upper House or 
 radically amended. There is, of course, no obligation 
 on the Peers to undertake scavenging for a Govern- 
 ment which would turn round on them afterwards 
 and denounce them for doing dirty work Again, 
 
EIGHT HOURS ACT 239 
 
 there was in the House of Lords quite a considerable 
 number of Peers who were unwilling to destroy a 
 measure recommended upon humanitarian pleas. 
 If not absolutely hypocritical these were uncon- 
 sciously deceptive arguments ; for the coal-miners 
 are not overworked, and if they were, could through 
 their powerful organisation limit their hours of 
 labour by voluntary arrangement with the employers. 
 Still, this misleading invocation of false sentiment 
 prevailed with many of the Peers, as in the past it has 
 in the House of Commons with Unionist politicians 
 who had no votes to gain by accepting proposals that 
 strike at the root of English industrial traditions, and 
 establish a formidable precedent in State Socialism. 
 Something, we confess, the Lords have done to 
 modify the direct mischief of this particular Act by 
 successfully claiming that both the winding-up times 
 shall be excluded from the statutory limitations 
 practically turning the Bill, it is said, into one for 
 eight and a half instead of eight hours. Their pro- 
 posal to postpone the date for the Act's coming into 
 full operation was, however, rejected in the Com- 
 mons and dropped by themselves vile damnum. 
 As we have before maintained, it is only right, if such 
 an experiment should be tried at all, that its effects 
 should be demonstrated while the Ministry which 
 carried it is still in existence, and therefore amenable 
 to public judgment, whether favourable or adverse. 
 For it is notorious that the Home Secretary's 
 
240 PESSIMI EXEMPLI 
 
 arguments in favour of procrastination were but 
 sophistical pretexts for evading popular disapproval. 
 Trie Government wished to get immediate payment 
 in votes from the Miners' Federation while they de- 
 ferred their own settlement with other wage-earners, 
 and with the small purchasers of coal. It is for the 
 present impossible to form any definite opinion as to 
 the amount of the destined rise in price. Perhaps it 
 will lie about midway between the minimising esti- 
 mate of Government apologists and the outside figure 
 suggested by the Coal Consumers' League. But 
 that some increase, and a serious one, will take place 
 is undeniable. Indeed, as ordinary householders 
 know, the process has already set in had set in as 
 soon as the Bill began to be seriously talked about. 
 Already the coal-owners have given notice, not for a 
 reduction of wages, but for cutting down extras and 
 privileges which represent money's worth to the 
 miners. But the full effect of the measure has been 
 partially masked, as the chemists say, by an excep- 
 tionally mild winter, which of course diminishes the 
 household consumption. 
 
 It is no argument against the probability of a per- 
 manent addition to prices that the miners, as a rule, 
 are paid by the amount won, not by the time spent. 
 For of one thing we may be quite sure : the Federa- 
 tion does not intend that the earnings of its members 
 shall be diminished. So insincere a profession would 
 only have been laughed at. Besides, it has been 
 
EIGHT HOURS ACT 241 
 
 frankly proclaimed that one purpose of the new Act 
 is to raise the price of coal by arrangement between 
 employers and employed. That would be a justi- 
 fiable policy if the profits of the one class and the 
 wages of the other were insufficient. In point of 
 fact there has been, so far, no indication that the 
 coal-owners are parties to such a scheme ; but that 
 many of them may eventually be compelled to con- 
 sider some arrangement of the sort is evident from 
 the fact that several great colliery companies are pay- 
 ing dividends scarcely adequate for an admittedly 
 speculative because highly variable business. Now it 
 is difficult to trace out all the various manners in 
 which a continued advance in coal prices will affect 
 the leading industries of the United Kingdom. 
 Apart from agriculture, there is no first-class in- 
 dustry which is not more or less dependent on cheap 
 power, and as Mr. Bonar Law has repeatedly ex- 
 plained, our supply of coal is the one natural ad- 
 vantage which we at present enjoy against most of 
 our commercial rivals. Throw away their handicaps, 
 and we shall soon be outpaced. Obviously the chief 
 suffering will fall upon the working-classes, who will 
 be hit twice over first in the fall of wages, and 
 secondly, in the dwindling of employment. It is 
 indeed a dubious boon from the Ministry which, as 
 Mr. Balfour remarked in the House of Commons, 
 affects to be specially solicitous for " the poorest of 
 the poor." 
 
 R 
 
242 PESSIMI EXEMPLI 
 
 But the worst feature of the new Act is not the 
 economic evil, immediate and deferred, which it 
 must bring about. Its true nature and purpose have 
 been obligingly explained by the Labour men. They 
 regard it, quite correctly, as an instalment of State 
 Socialism. With unconcealed contempt they put 
 aside the humanitarian plea now it has served its 
 turn that coal-mining is a specially exhausting 
 occupation which requires exceptional treatment. 
 The attempted distingue of Lord St. Aldwyn goes 
 by the board. Why the Labour Party demanded the 
 Bill and rejoice in the Act is their belief that the 
 principle of factory legislation has now been applied 
 to the case of grown men admittedly capable of look- 
 ing after their own interests and making their own 
 bargains. Neither in Durham and Northumberland, 
 in Scotland and Yorkshire, nor in South Wales, do 
 the miners need State protection. What they asked 
 for and have obtained what the majority amongst 
 them have asked for and obtained is the right to 
 impose their will by Statute upon a minority whom 
 they dare not coerce by ordinary trade-unionist 
 methods. Parliament has been called in to do what 
 the Federation shrinks from attempting, for fear of 
 making a schism in the organisation. But this is rank 
 and unredeemed Socialism. It is oppressive to 
 individuals and injurious to the nation. 
 
LOVE-MAKING BY LETTER 
 
 "The Carlyles." Outlook, April 3rd, 1909 
 
 IT is very unfortunate that by most of us the love 
 romance of Mr. and Mrs. Carlyle has been read back- 
 wards. First we heard about their wedded life, and 
 afterwards of their courtship. How many works of 
 imagination would stand the same test ? " They 
 married," says the judicious novelist, " and lived 
 happily ever after." Now this, in fact, is what the 
 Carlyles did notwithstanding the man's self-re- 
 proach, the woman's complaints, the misleading 
 biography, and the nonsensical controversies it ex- 
 cited. There is abundance of evidence that Froude, 
 quite unwittingly, misrepresented the married re- 
 lations of the Carlyles. Always reckless in the use of 
 material and caring for little else than to present a 
 vivid picture, he was, as a rule, guided by an intuitive 
 genius, so that the least historically minded writer of 
 his time became one of our best historians. But when 
 he went wrong his blunders were gross. And he went 
 almost as wrong over the Carlyles as over Caesar. Yet 
 because the sketch was done by a great artist it will 
 stand in men's memories or would have stood there 
 if it had not been superseded by this extraordinary 
 
 243 
 
244 THE CARLYLES 
 
 collection of authentic love-letters, arresting, com- 
 pelling, fascinating. 
 
 We have but one criticism to offer on this romance 
 for as a romance we insist upon treating it. For 
 real life it is too true. A novel though it is, Mr. 
 Alexander Carlyle has made it a novel with a purpose. 
 His object was to vindicate his uncle's memory. 
 Therefore he has felt himself obliged to handle his 
 documents as though they were evidence, and counsel 
 on the other side had demanded that the full text 
 should be read in open court. It may seem churlish 
 to protest, since by itself each letter is interesting. 
 But the text, it must be confessed, is somewhat for- 
 midable. Instead of galloping through the book in a 
 single evening of pure delight, we have either to go 
 slowly fifty or sixty pages at a time or else we 
 must skip liberally. Had Mr. Alexander Carlyle been 
 free to condense and omit what is irrelevant to the 
 main story he might not, perhaps, have proved his 
 case beyond demur, but he would have given us one 
 of the most charming books in our language. Truth 
 to tell, some of these elaborate literary dissertations 
 from the enamoured philosopher to his quick-witted, 
 elusive, responsive girl-pupil do at times hang fire. 
 They impede the flow of a self-developing tale. Yet 
 never was a solid man of letters less of a pedant than 
 Thomas Carlyle ; never was an accomplished and 
 almost learned girl less of a blue-stocking than Jane 
 Welsh. They are for ever matching their wits 
 
THE CARLYLES 245 
 
 against each other, this gifted pair. Nor was the 
 man altogether wrong, altogether misled by the 
 woman's beauty and charm, when he pledged his 
 critical reputation that she was animated by the 
 fire of real genius. For the leisurely reader their 
 interchange of confidences about books, their talk 
 about work, will provide a rich fund of enjoy- 
 ment. 
 
 But the human interest should be supreme. No- 
 thing is more quietly diverting than Carlyle's shy, 
 ungainly, but quite determined approach. This 
 love-making, like many another, began with the 
 lending of books. Step by step the crafty wooer 
 made his ground good, and when he is pulled up 
 sharp for having gone too far, his humble apologies 
 do not disguise his real intention though perhaps 
 not formulated in his own mind at the first oppor- 
 tunity to repeat the offence. The man of books 
 knew his way about a woman's heart. Sometimes, 
 no doubt, he suffers agonies for fear that after all he 
 may have lost his prize. One of his letters is dated 
 " Hell." 
 
 Indeed, he had some reason to despair. Socially 
 the girl was above him, and even her little fortune 
 was something of an obstacle. But the two natures, 
 except on their intellectual scale, were wide apart. 
 She was fitted to shine in the brightest of good com- 
 pany. She loved such success, and was not above 
 flirting with men of all sorts and conditions. Yet 
 
246 THE CARLYLES 
 
 long before she had confessed her love even when 
 she definitely wrote that never would she be wife to 
 her friend her heart had been lost beyond recovery. 
 This was sufficiently obvious to her mother, who at 
 first thoroughly disliked what she considered an un- 
 desirable entanglement, and did her best to break 
 through it for her brilliant daughter. 
 
 It was the mother's attitude which led Jane Welsh 
 to lecture her lover on his need to win an assured and 
 definite position, to make a good market for his 
 talents, and generally to render himself a presentable 
 parti. In spite of the worldly wisdom of the letter 
 in which she refuses to acknowledge a regular engage- 
 ment, it is all along clear that no consideration of 
 money or position would part her from her beloved 
 genius. She teases him often, bullies him sometimes, 
 but becomes a delicious little Fury when an outsider 
 hints disparagement. Once she has made up her 
 mind that she is really in love, nothing can exceed 
 the tenderness of her language, the generosity of her 
 self-revelation. Clearly she suffers tortures when she 
 has made her avowal that Carlyle was not her first 
 lover. She is desperately afraid that the old affair 
 with Edward Irving may come between her and her 
 happiness. Unbounded is her relief when Carlyle 
 treats the confession with good sense and good 
 humour. Again, she is genuinely angry when, later 
 on, he offers to release her in order that she may make 
 a better match. And what English she writes, this 
 
THE CARLYLES 247 
 
 loving woman nervous, limpid, never with a strain- 
 ing after literary effect ! 
 
 The lovers' quarrels and misunderstandings Car- 
 lyle did not enjoy being written to for his good are 
 perhaps more delightful than their smooth passages. 
 Quite clearly they both foresaw that their life to- 
 gether would have its moments of embitterment. 
 They were much too clever, both of them, to be in 
 constant agreement ; much too strong-willed not to 
 cross each other frequently. Yet, as we have said, 
 they married and lived happily ever after. The one 
 thing that really troubled them, before marriage and 
 after, was that they both had wretched health, and 
 we suspect that they greatly exaggerated their ail- 
 ments. That is the way of literary and artistic 
 people of most people with a sensitive organism and 
 a craving for sympathy. Quite an appreciable por- 
 tion of these letters is devoted to alternate lamenta- 
 tions over illnesses which ordinary persons who go 
 about their common business would not have worried 
 over. These, however, are the only passages which 
 remind us that we are reading about a pair of lovers 
 who are not altogether above our own plane. Wit, 
 pathos, romance, idealism, and sound commonsense 
 are abundantly present in this book of life. 
 
JOHN STUART MILL IN HIS LETTERS 
 
 Outlook^ May 7th, 1910 
 
 THERE is plenty of human interest, for readers who 
 know how to find it, in this collection of forty-year- 
 old letters written by the once influential leader, 
 though by no means orthodox supporter, of the 
 Philosophical Radicals. Students of his Political 
 Economy and Autobiography already know that his 
 Benthamism was varied with a streak of sentimental 
 Socialism, which marked him off, quite distinctly, 
 from thinkers like Ricardo. Also, he was something 
 of an opportunist or possibilist. While he looked 
 forward, perhaps, to an eventual nationalisation of 
 wealth, he did not believe in expropriation without 
 proper compensation to dispossessed persons. Nor 
 did he consider that the working-classes in his time 
 were morally or intellectually fit to become citizens 
 of a Collectivist community. He was not afraid to 
 tell them of their faults. One of the most honour- 
 able incidents of his public career was his refusal, as 
 candidate for Westminster, to repudiate or explain 
 away his previous statement that they were given to 
 lying. It has been acutely said of him and others of 
 his school that they desired to give power to the 
 
 248 
 
J. S. MILL 249 
 
 working-classes on condition that they were guided 
 in its use by the principles and culture of the upper 
 middle-class. In one of these letters Mill drops a 
 remark not elsewhere developed that no class 
 should be rendered supreme over the others. If that 
 dictum had been deliberately followed up it would 
 have landed him in a position very different from 
 that which he always upheld. We can but suppose 
 that the expression escaped him almost unawares. 
 Yet we know that his letters, even to intimate 
 friends, were carefully considered, copied, and some- 
 times recopied. 
 
 Severely intellectual and rigid in public morals, 
 Mill detested toadies of the people not less heartily 
 than sycophants of a despot. He believed that the 
 working-men would be demoralised by flattery if 
 they should obtain complete power. On the con- 
 trary, he wished them to be shamed by advice and 
 precept out of the class selfishness displayed by the 
 trade-unionists of his day. He was as strict in en- 
 forcing the obligations as in urging the rights of 
 citizenship. In 1870, when war had broken out 
 between France and Germany, he declared it was vain 
 to sing the praises of peace and descant on the horrors 
 of the battlefield. " Our turn will come," he ex- 
 claimed, and argued that we must prepare ourselves 
 for the struggle. There should be universal training 
 for lads, followed by six months in manhood and a 
 few days each year afterwards. A standing army he 
 
250 J. S. MILL 
 
 would maintain only for the protection of our foreign 
 possessions. His work at the India office, to which 
 frequent allusions are made, prevented him from 
 being a Little Englander, and at one great crisis he 
 stood out for a spirited foreign policy. 
 
 " If Gladstone had been a great man " (he wrote in 
 1870) " this war would never have broken out, for he 
 would nobly have taken on himself the responsibility 
 of declaring that the English navy should actively aid 
 whichever <5f the two Powers was attacked by the 
 other. This would have been a beginning of the 
 international j ustice we are calling for. I do not much 
 blame Gladstone for not daring to do it, for it re- 
 quires a morally braver man than any of our states- 
 men to run this kind of risk." 
 
 Here we have a presentation of Mill in his double 
 character, at once visionary and practical politician. 
 It is perhaps no disparagement of his acumen that he 
 treats France on this occasion as the aggressor and as 
 a potential enemy of England. The materials for 
 correcting that once prevalent mistake were not then 
 available. He is, we may note, quite explicit on our 
 duty to defend Belgium. The case of Holland had 
 not yet come within public ken. 
 
 Except to professional students of metaphysics 
 there are large portions of this book which will be 
 without much appeal. The developments in Mill's 
 mind of the Philosophy of Experience are a matter 
 rather of scholastic history than living concern. By 
 
J. S. MILL 251 
 
 almost universal consent his teachings, lucid as was 
 the language in which they were set forth, and con- 
 sistent as he was in applying his principles, have be- 
 come antiquated. Mr. Hugh Elliot candidly admits 
 that they are vitiated by the fact that he lived before 
 the Evolution era. On the other side they have been 
 smothered by the more acute, the more difficult, the 
 more profound ontology which, rooted in German 
 thought, has established itself amongst British meta- 
 physics. Almost as generally abandoned is the 
 ethical theorising which attempted, through the 
 ridiculously overworked doctrines of Utility and 
 Association, to deduce the moral code of Christianity 
 from the naked Hedonism of the Greeks. The few 
 adherents of that old-fashioned system support it 
 with a difference they branch off violently into the 
 self-regarding paradoxes of Nietzsche and the Italian 
 disciples now engaged in reducing their Master to 
 self-evident absurdities. 
 
 The personal side of Mill's life has unfortu- 
 nately, we think been emphasised in the injudicious 
 apology tendered by his wife's grand-daughter. We 
 are reminded, what we might as well have been 
 allowed to forget, that as a young man he entered 
 into Platonic philandering with a friend's wife. It 
 has not been suggested that the relations between 
 Mill and Mrs. Taylor were what are called guilty. 
 But they sufficed to compel a worthy and magnani- 
 mous husband to break up his home ; and, after his 
 
252 J. S. MILL 
 
 death, the marriage of the lady and her lover was 
 apparently not regarded as a complete rectification. 
 With an excess of chivalry Mill never quite forgave 
 his mother because, on the first day after the an- 
 nouncement of the intended wedding, she neglected 
 to call upon the bride-expectant. Upon one occasion 
 though that is doubtful he may have visited his 
 mother in her own house ; and then she was near the 
 point of death. Otherwise he only received her at 
 the India Office. His letters, though fairly frequent 
 and dutiful, were cold. His sisters, though they were 
 pathetically longsuffering, were not pardoned, and 
 Miss Taylor has but a sophistical extenuation to plea 
 for his harsh behaviour. 
 
 " Mill's letters to his own family are too many of 
 them painful, though strangely interesting, reading. 
 He cannot by the most wounding reproaches shake 
 their faith in him as a ' great and good man.' He 
 seems to endeavour to do this, but fails. They 
 recognise that he is cruel and insulting to them, and 
 they suffer acutely, but their affection is as invincible 
 as his resentment. It is wonderful to see a whole 
 family thus loving and enduring. Not one bitter 
 word is flung back to him. One sees that he reigns in 
 all their hearts. A marvel of cruelty ! Yet how deep 
 and rich must be the nature that can so reign in spite 
 of all ! As one reads one feels less anger with him 
 than deep love and admiration for these brave 
 women, who seem to consider in each scornful word 
 
J. S. MILL 253 
 
 only the wound from which it springs, and which 
 they perpetually seek to find and heal." 
 
 The truth is that, like many other great men, Mill 
 had to his character a petty, almost a mean, side. 
 His resentment may be explained by devotion to the 
 somewhat commonplace lady who inspired his pas- 
 sionate admiration, and became the subject of a 
 noble, if absurdly exaggerated, eulogy in the preface 
 of the work (the Essay on Liberty) which is most 
 likely to remain part of English literature. And 
 what was this love that made the trouble of an other- 
 wise serene life, this marriage in which he sought 
 (and found) all his happiness ? Let us quote the 
 declaration which he put into writing before he 
 entered into the estate of matrimony : 
 
 "March 6th, 1851. 
 
 " Being about, if I am so happy as to obtain her 
 consent, to enter into marriage with the only woman 
 I have ever known with whom I would have entered 
 into that state ; and the whole character of the 
 marriage relation as constituted by law being such as 
 both she and I conscientiously disapprove, for this, 
 amongst other reasons that it confers upon one of 
 the parties to the contract legal power and control 
 over the person, property and freedom of action of 
 the other party, independent of her own wishes and 
 will, I, having no means of legally divesting myself of 
 these odious powers (as I most assuredly would do if 
 
254 J- s - MILL 
 
 an engagement to that effect could be made legally 
 binding on me), feel it my duty to put on record a 
 formal protest against the existing law of marriage 
 in so far as conferring such powers, and a solemn 
 promise never in any case or under any circumstances 
 to use them. And in the event of marriage between 
 Mrs. Taylor and me, I declare it to be my wish and 
 intention, and the conditions of the engagement be- 
 tween us, that she retain in all respects whatever the 
 same absolute freedom of action and freedom of dis- 
 posal of herself and of all that does and may at any 
 time belong to her, as if no such marriage had ever 
 taken place ; and I absolutely disclaim and repudiate 
 all pretence to have acquired any rights whatever by 
 virtue of such marriage. 
 
 "J. S. MILL." 
 
 Was there ever such verbose nonsense ? It is 
 pleasant to turn away from Mill the family man to 
 Mill the friend. His letters to Carlyle, over-formal 
 though they are, are delightful in their frankness. 
 His admiration for a genius so different from his own, 
 his recognition in the other of poetical qualities 
 which he cannot claim, and of an intuition that he 
 vainly aspires after, show that, with a cold power of 
 self-measurement, he combined a warmth of genuine 
 emotion. Nothing could be more gracious and tact- 
 ful than his offer to compensate Carlyle, so far as 
 money could make good, the loss of the French 
 
J. S. MILL 255 
 
 Revolution manuscript in Mill's house. His farewell 
 letters to John Sterling, who had written to say that 
 his days were numbered, is infinitely pathetic : " I 
 have never so much wished for another life," he 
 replies, " as I do for the sake of meeting you." The 
 dry philosopher was the most tender-hearted of men, 
 and that must be remembered when we have to 
 criticise his behaviour towards some members of his 
 own family. The sympathy and loving-kindness, 
 instead of being crushed out of him by the arid in- 
 tellectual discipline so vividly described in the Auto- 
 biography, seem to have been but compressed during 
 adolescence to expand and bear fruit from early 
 manhood to the last days of a calm maturity. To 
 the historic villa where he passed them, amid the 
 rolling plains of Avignon, many an unbeliever has 
 made pilgrimage, as to the canonised saint of a 
 devout Agnosticism the only faith that he was ever 
 taught or ever accepted. 
 
THE PASSING OF EDWARD VII 
 
 Outlook, May 2ist, 1910 
 
 AT midnight on May 6 King Edward passed away ; 
 yesterday at noon his mortal remains were borne 
 from the capital of his Empire to the home and 
 resting-place of the English Sovereigns. The inter- 
 vening fortnight his subjects had spontaneously 
 given up to the respectful demonstration of their 
 loyalty, affection and sorrow. Officers of the Court 
 may organise the apparatus of a public mourning, 
 drape a town with the insignia of national lamen- 
 tation, conduct through crowded streets a great 
 pageant of woe which shall dwell in the memory of 
 all beholders, and hereafter make a tale for their 
 children and grandchildren. All this, and more than 
 this, they can do, and have done, excellently well. 
 But they cannot touch the heart of a people, draw 
 the sob from women's bosoms, and bring a lump into 
 men's throats. Indeed, the sense of personal grief is 
 apt to be deadened by the collective sympathy of 
 surrounding multitudes, by the amazement and 
 stupor of a slowly moving panorama, by the massed 
 emblems of regal splendour and historic tradition. 
 To the stranger looking yesterday upon King 
 
 256 
 
EDWARD VII 257 
 
 Edward's obsequies the occasion may have seemed 
 rather a celebration of Empire than a valediction to 
 its Ruler. But that is not how the ceremony struck 
 any citizen of the world-wide State. It was not 
 Edward Rex et Imperator, but Edward the English- 
 man, to whom we have paid our last tribute of out- 
 ward respect, and who will long be cherished in the 
 hearts of all who know how he lived and worked and 
 died for the duty he owed and the love he freely 
 rendered to the race of which he was servant and 
 master. 
 
 Had King Edward's life been less happy than it 
 was, he would yet have been requited for much 
 trouble and sorrow, repaid over and over again for 
 his labours in the nation's cause, by his unsurpassed 
 popularity. What he inspired was something much 
 deeper and stronger than the irresistible affection for 
 one who was a good King, a good sportsman, and 
 pre-eminently a good fellow. The nature of the 
 feeling has this week been proved by the multitudes 
 who kept vigil through the night that next morning 
 they might pass, for a few mournful moments, 
 through the hall where his body was resting. It was 
 proved again yesterday by the self-imposed discipline 
 of* the spectators the mourners, let us say, who 
 claimed respectfully to share with the Royal Family 
 in the sorrow of a personal bereavement. The quiet 
 dignity of the tribute paid to King Edward's 
 memory the discerning phrase is King George's 
 
258 EDWARD VII 
 
 was the best evidence how profoundly the heart of 
 the people was touched with pride for the monarch 
 they had possessed and sorrow for the friend they 
 had lost. 
 
 Other monarchs there have been, there are, who 
 have laboured unremittingly, conscientiously, suc- 
 cessfully, for their peoples, yet of none can it be said, 
 as of King Edward, that criticism has been swallowed 
 up in universal regard. Amongst ourselves there are 
 plenty of persons who in no circumstances could 
 bring themselves to praise a monarch, yet they are 
 eager in eulogy of the man. Others there are who 
 disliked and blamed certain policies which he was 
 believed to have originated and known to have ap- 
 proved. Witness his much-canvassed visit to the 
 Emperor of Russia. Without incurring unpopu- 
 larity even amongst politicians not inclined to respect 
 office and dignity, he carried out a purpose which he 
 held right and expedient. At once the voice of 
 censure was silenced. In a sense different from the 
 jargon of the text-books, the King, our King Edward 
 could do no wrong. So implicitly did the country 
 trust his judgment that cavillers could get no hearing. 
 Now the English people hitherto have been by no 
 means chary of comment on their Sovereigns. There 
 was no period before Queen Victoria's Jubilee when 
 public men and popular newspapers shrank from dis- 
 cussing the aims and motives of the monarch of their 
 day. The policy of the Court was as unceremoniou sly 
 
EDWARD VII 259 
 
 handled as that of a party leader. Nor has the im- 
 munity against attack been gained by the Sovereign's 
 enforced or voluntary self-effacement. Only the 
 ignorant imagine that everything done in the name 
 of Great Britain during the last two reigns was de- 
 vised by the Ministers responsible to Parliament. 
 On the contrary, the great influence gained by Queen 
 Victoria and handed on, with notable increment, by 
 King Edward, was earned by strength of will, force 
 of character, proved capacity and judgment. 
 
 Something of the feeling with which the late King 
 inspired his subjects, the confidence that he would, 
 in any crisis, find means to hold back a perverse 
 Ministry from irretrievable mischief, and preserve 
 the nation from calamity, was shared by the rulers 
 and statesmen of the nations represented yesterday 
 in the company of Royal mourners. In part no 
 doubt the courtesy of their attendance is a tribute 
 paid to the international position of Great Britain. 
 But if that were all, the compliment would not be 
 remarkable : it would be no more than our own 
 Court in turn would probably yield to any other 
 Great Power bereaved of its head. There was, of 
 course, another and fuller meaning to the assem- 
 blage this week in London of all these august and 
 famous persons. They have come together in order 
 to honour the name of a leader amongst kings. With 
 some perhaps he had been in conflict of aims ; his 
 relations with others may have been darkened by 
 
260 EDWARD VII 
 
 passing clouds. Nevertheless, his influence within 
 the mysterious inner circle of Sovereigns amounted 
 to something like authority an hegemony resting 
 not upon seniority and the claims of elder kinship, 
 but simply on that inexplicable personal force which 
 at home he displayed almost as soon as he had suc- 
 ceeded to his Mother's Throne. In the larger sphere 
 of European diplomacy his power naturally was less 
 rapid in maturing, nor was it consummated without 
 struggle and jealousy. But without exception, we 
 believe, the Imperial and Royal guests who have now 
 bidden him their last farewell recognised and re- 
 spected in him a master in kingcraft. Also as Lord 
 Rosebery declared in his fine speech on Wednesday, 
 the statesmen of Europe, who at the beginning of 
 King Edward's reign were animated with distrust, 
 if not dislike, of Great Britain, were by degrees con- 
 verted to a better understanding both of our Ruler 
 and our policy. They saw that, so far from stirring 
 up trouble and encouraging intrigue, he was 
 genuinely working for the peace of the world. The 
 honesty of his purpose in international affairs is now 
 almost as widely recognised as his eagerness to lessen 
 suffering and relieve distress amongst his own 
 subjects. 
 
 Gone are the days when men spoke lightly, 
 whether in disparagement or in wistful regret, of the 
 slender link of the Crown between the component 
 States of the British Empire. It was then believed, 
 
EDWARD VII 261 
 
 not without reason, that the destiny of our posses- 
 sions oversea was to break away from the Mother- 
 country and start a new life as independent com- 
 munities. So careful and thoughtful a statesman- 
 administrator as Lord Blachford held that the duty 
 of the Imperial Government was to prepare for the 
 severance and make it, when it should come, as gentle 
 as might be. How different from the skilled forecast 
 has been the actual development of the British 
 Empire ! Yet it was only towards the very end of 
 Queen Victoria's reign that the movement set in 
 towards consolidation and federation of the Empire. 
 The era of formative policy coincides almost exactly 
 with the nine years of King Edward's rule, and, 
 scrupulously though he abstained from interference 
 in current controversy, he was in his Empire the 
 strongest and most efficient of the Imperialists. We 
 are not claiming that he approved this or that 
 method of promoting British unity ; only that in 
 his own person and by his magnetic influence he 
 demonstrated beyond dispute the value of common 
 Imperial life, the need of one Central Authority, the 
 possibility of a British Federation of self-governing 
 States. It was therefore fitting that amongst the 
 most honoured and distinguished of the mourners 
 yesterday should be placed representatives of the 
 English-speaking peoples who inhabit and possess 
 autonomous British lands, of great Indian feudatories 
 who live under the shadow of the British authority, 
 
262 EDWARD VII 
 
 and of dependencies whose recent and inchoate civi- 
 lisation is being developed under British tutelage. 
 There are few races of the earth, few stages of 
 human culture, which are not comprised within the 
 Empire of which King Edward was the titular and 
 governing chief. His figure and his life stood with 
 equal success the tests of distant vision and near in- 
 spection. The Prince who was yesterday mourned 
 by four hundred millions of people was by universal 
 consent a great ruler, whether his work be measured 
 by the exacting standards of day-by-day criticism in 
 the most sophisticated of modern cities, or viewed in 
 the perspective of remote hero-worship. Not soon 
 will the memory fade or the glories depart from the 
 name of Edward the Englishman. 
 
LORD RANDOLPH CHURCHILL 
 
 Guardian, December I2th, 1906 
 
 THE dexterous phrases and flashes of sympathetic 
 insight which abound in Lord Rosebery's estimate 
 of Lord Randolph Churchill do not disguise the 
 amateurish nature of the performance. There is no 
 visible attempt to observe either an order of events 
 or a sequence of thought. It is disappointing that a 
 statesman who has stood so long behind the scenes of 
 public life and enjoyed an intimate acquaintance 
 with the fascinating politician whose character he 
 affects to portray should tell us nothing, except a 
 few anecdotes, with which we have not long been 
 familiar. It must be remembered, of course, that 
 Lord Rosebery has always practised, in regard to his 
 own inmost thoughts, an almost jealous reticence, and 
 may hold that a similar reserve is due to his friends 
 and the men and women with whom he was asso- 
 ciated. But in that case why write about Lord 
 Randolph, to whom publicity was as the very breath 
 of his nostrils ? Above all, why make at least two 
 statements which may be decorous, but are notori- 
 ously incorrect ? If we are to have the " personal 
 note " in biography and Lord Rosebery uses it 
 
 263 
 
264 LORD RANDOLPH CHURCHILL 
 
 freely it should not be misleading. The explana- 
 tion of the faults in this little book may, perhaps, be 
 found in its origin. Shortly after Lord Randolph's 
 death his mother asked Lord Rosebery to write some- 
 thing about him. " I excused myself," he says, " as 
 it was then too near his time." From this scruple he 
 was released by the appearance of Mr. Winston 
 Churchill's two volumes, and the present essay, in 
 fact if not in form, is largely a criticism, and, in most 
 respects, an endorsement of that elaborate but in- 
 complete narrative. 
 
 Lord Rosebery, we believe, is the first public 
 writer who has successfully analysed Lord Randolph's 
 distinctive humour. Consciously or unconsciously, 
 he founded both his style and way of thinking upon 
 The Decline and, Fall of the Roman Empire. His 
 main literary passion, we are told, was Gibbon. To 
 him, as an undergraduate, he " gave what leisure of 
 reading he had to give, and this literary devotion 
 lasted to the end." " Randolph's humour may be 
 fairly described as burlesque conception, set off by 
 an artificial pomp of style ; a sort of bombastic 
 irony, such as we occasionally taste with relish in an 
 after-dinner speech. Sometimes it is what one could 
 imagine that Gibbon might have uttered had he 
 gone on the stump." This is one of Lord Rosebery's 
 most admirable touches, but he adds that Lord 
 Randolph's exuberance sometimes over-reached itself 
 and seemed rather a cynical experiment on the 
 
LORD RANDOLPH CHURCHILL 265 
 
 political digestion of his audience. Take the passage 
 about the Whigs : 
 
 " I can see the viscous, slimy trail of that political reptile 
 which calls itself the Whig party gleaming and glistening 
 upon every line of it. I see that most malignant monster 
 endeavouring, as it did in 1832, to coil itself round the 
 constituencies of England and to suppress the free action 
 and to smother the natural voice of the English people." 
 
 We have no doubt that Lord Randolph himself 
 admired the simile and considered it forcible, though 
 he would have understood, had he chosen to think f or 
 a moment, that he had overshot the mark. The 
 same tendency showed itself even in his private 
 letters : 
 
 " The truth, perhaps, is that the constant exercise of 
 irony made sometimes a confusion as to whether he was 
 writing seriously or not. I well remember a letter in his 
 undergraduate days, couched in terms of some severity 
 which I believed to be ironical, but which I afterwards 
 found to be seriously meant." 
 
 It is quite a delusion to suppose that Lord Ran- 
 dolph wrote or spoke easily. Before he appeared in 
 public he shut himself up for two days and carefully 
 wrote out his speech. " When he had read the 
 manuscript twice over carefully he had learned it by 
 heart. Armed with copious notes, without which, 
 he told me, he could not approach a platform, he was 
 ready for his audience. Without great dramatic art 
 
266 LORD RANDOLPH CHURCHILL 
 
 of delivery he repeated the speech in a way that made 
 it seem absolutely fresh and spontaneous." It was 
 his habit to send the manuscript to the Press, and on 
 one occasion, when he was to make speeches on three 
 consecutive days, passed as many sleepless nights for 
 fear the editor would confuse the order of the 
 orations. This practice of careful preparation may, 
 perhaps, account for the fact that, effective as Lord 
 Randolph was in the House of Commons, his chief 
 successes were won on the platform, and also for his 
 collapse before his fatal illness had yet made any 
 great inroad on his mental powers. Though delivery 
 was a natural gift, composition was a painfully 
 acquired art. It throws a new light upon some of his 
 most daring epigrams to learn that they were labori- 
 ously prepared as, for instance, the scoff at Mr. 
 Gladstone's favourite exercise : " For the purposes 
 of recreation he has selected the felling of trees, and 
 we may usefully remark that his amusements, like his 
 politics, are constantly destructive. The forest 
 laments in order that Mr. Gladstone may perspire." 
 This is the kind of thing that ought to be improvised, 
 and we are not quite grateful to Lord Rosebery for 
 letting us into the stage secret. Another daring and 
 more literary flight was the reference to the elec- 
 tioneering misfortunes of the Liberal leaders : 
 
 " We remember . . . when Mr. Gladstone, flying with 
 impetuous haste from one corner of the country to the 
 
LORD RANDOLPH CHURCHILL 267 
 
 other, was hurled down by your southern division. Down 
 through electoral space he fell, nor was his fall arrested 
 till he had reached the distant borough of Greenwich. 
 Down, too, at that time fell Lord Hartingdon, his colleague, 
 whom an obscure group of villages in Wales received and 
 nourished." 
 
 It is true, as Lord Rosebery tells us, that Lord 
 Randolph was a born party leader brilliant, 
 courageous, resourceful and unembarrassed by 
 scruple. He had the " vital mainspring of zest " 
 whether he was engaged in politics, hunting, racing, 
 or chess. He had charm of manner (when he chose 
 to exert it) and rare gifts of conversation, while the 
 extravagant views and audacious paradoxes which he 
 would start at a moment's notice were but dinner- 
 table amusements. Lord Rosebery adds, and speaks 
 as one who knows, that he had a faithful and warm 
 heart, and that his friendships were " singularly 
 staunch." Yet he managed to quarrel, at one time 
 or another, not only with his party, but also with 
 most of its prominent individual members, and, as a 
 rule, on personal grounds. The truth is that 
 " lovable and winning " as he was, free from all 
 " base and unpardonable faults," he was from the 
 first a mauvais couckeur, and remained so to the end. 
 Lord Rosebery tries to explain the disagreements by 
 the suggestion, several times repeated, that Lord 
 Randolph was on the wrong side in politics. It 
 would be nearer the truth to say that he did not 
 
268 LORD RANDOLPH CHURCHILL 
 
 understand Conservatism any better than Lord 
 Rosebery understands Liberalism. But there is this 
 much foundation for the attempted apology, that on 
 several fundamental questions Lord Randolph was 
 out of sympathy with Conservatism. Though he 
 used a fine phrase about the Church of England as 
 " an institution which elevates the life of the nation 
 and consecrates the acts of the State," he was, Lord 
 Rosebery confesses, indifferent about the Establish- 
 ment as he was about property. He was not an 
 Imperialist, and he was an Economist bent upon re- 
 ducing taxation at the risk of starving the Army and 
 Navy. Again, on Home Rule, in spite of Mr. 
 Winston Churchill's argument, he was something 
 more than suspect, though, perhaps, Lord Rosebery 
 exaggerates the closeness of the understanding with 
 Mr. Parnell. All these points taken together make a 
 distinct Liberal showing, yet, disgusted as he was 
 with what he considered the bad treatment received 
 from the Conservative leaders, he never approached 
 near to Liberalism. Writing in 1891, he declared 
 that " no power could make him lift hand or voice 
 for the Tories, just as no power could make him join 
 the other side." 
 
 Lord Randolph appears to have pinned his faith to 
 Tory Democracy as a constructive creed around 
 which he could gather a following, and when Mr. 
 Balfour became Leader of the House of Commons he 
 laments that " Tory Democracy, the genuine article, 
 
LORD RANDOLPH CHURCHILL 269 
 
 is at an end." But it will not do, with Lord Rose- 
 bery, to dismiss that evanescent force as " originally 
 an escapade," or a device for " enabling Liberals by 
 conviction to remain Tories by profession." It was 
 a battering-ram against Mr. Gladstone, and when he 
 had been overthrown in 1886 there was no further 
 use for the machine. This Lord Randolph would 
 not or could not understand : " He was intoxicated 
 with a success and popularity which Disraeli, as a 
 young or middle-aged man, had never achieved. He 
 thought then that he could take his party with him." 
 But, as soon as he began to launch his audacious pro- 
 grammes the party kicked : " Though hon. mem- 
 bers," he complained, " do not in the least object to 
 my winning applause at great mass meetings in the 
 country, there seems to be considerable difference of 
 opinion when I attempt to carry these opinions to a 
 practical conclusion." Lord Randolph, like other 
 ambitious politicians, imagined that the great men of 
 a party are profoundly concerned that this or that 
 leader shall have a brilliant career, and, in order to 
 secure his success, will swallow any programme which 
 he likes to put before them. This may be true of 
 party organisers and party workers. They are apt to 
 be fascinated by a star performer, but, except at rare 
 moments of enthusiasm, the bulk of the electors 
 think vastly more about measures than about men. 
 It is a fact which distinguished statesmen, like popu- 
 lar actors, are in their natural vanity and self-con- 
 
270 LORD RANDOLPH CHURCHILL 
 
 sciousness apt to overlook. But there is nothing 
 which an aspirant for public favour should more 
 carefully scrutinise than the precise market value of 
 the magnetism which for the moment he may be 
 exercising on his party. No man in recent times 
 seemed more firmly rooted in democratic affection 
 than Lord Randolph Churchill. On the platform he 
 was by far the most attractive speaker of his day, Mr. 
 Gladstone not excepted. As Leader of the House of 
 Commons he exhibited astonishing aptitude and 
 address. The public admired his audacity, laughed 
 at his sallies, and believed in his political inspiration. 
 In such circumstances, having superseded Sir 
 Stafford Northcote and placed his own nominees in 
 the Cabinet, he was tempted to measure himself 
 against Lord Salisbury, a statesman who held in one 
 corner of his brain more wit, more wisdom, and more 
 courage than Lord Randolph would have attained if 
 he had spent a lifetime in serious preparation for 
 statecraft instead of dashing into politics for the sake 
 of making himself a name. He was so flattered by 
 friends and beguiled by toadies that he fancied him- 
 self indispensable. When he resigned as Chancellor 
 of the Exchequer he believed that the gap could never 
 be filled. " He forgot Goschen," and so long as he 
 lived never recovered from the cold, daunting sur- 
 prise that he was hardly missed in public life. Of the 
 few disclosures which Lord Rosebery permits himself 
 to make in this brief study, the most interesting is his 
 
LORD RANDOLPH CHURCHILL 271 
 
 statement, drawn from personal knowledge, that 
 Lord Randolph never intended or expected that his 
 resignation would be accepted. As on previous oc- 
 casions he thought that he would be invited to re- 
 consider his determination and permitted to impose 
 his own conditions. Probably he hoped that Lord 
 Salisbury would suggest a personal interview a 
 thing which Lord Salisbury never suggested to any- 
 body. 
 
 It would be idle to pretend that Lord Randolph at 
 any period of his career either was animated by a 
 higher purpose than a not ignoble ambition, or was 
 capable of taking a broad view of party exigencies. 
 Yet he did brilliant work in his time, and leaves a 
 fascinating memory behind him. But if we look at 
 what he accomplished, his main work was assisting in 
 the overthrow of Mr. Gladstone. Even that feat 
 has been exaggerated by contemporary enthusiasts. 
 It must not be forgotten that the spirited guerrilla 
 campaign of the Fourth Party in the 1880-1885 
 Parliament did not result in a victory at the ensuing 
 General Election. Mr. Gladstone came back with a 
 majority, and overthrew the stop-gap Conservative 
 Ministry. It was the Home Rule adventure that 
 ruined Mr. Gladstone, as it will ruin any other leader 
 or party which attempts it, not the intrinsic strength 
 of the revived and reorganised Conservative Party. 
 
LONDON IN MID-SEPTEMBER 
 BY A MAROONED CITIZEN 
 
 Guardian, September igth, 1906 
 
 HALF the main thoroughfares of the town are up 
 just as though it were the Season, Only by skipping 
 learnedly to and fro among trams and tubes and 
 tunnels, or diving trustfully into municipal subways, 
 can the traveller from north to south or west to east 
 avoid blocks and blinded alleys. It is the man who 
 has nothing particular to do and the partner of his 
 cares who most viciously resent this waste of their 
 time. The mere business man is happy enough to be 
 retarded on his way to the City where, as usual, 
 nothing is doing when he finds his motor-omnibus 
 deflected from the straight familiar route and 
 steered at sharp, astonishing angles through odd and 
 sordid by-paths and historic purlieus. Passing from 
 the confused hum of traffic, he will find himself 
 plunged into a comparative silence amid which the 
 notes of the barrel-organ or the street-hawker's cry 
 arouse distinct and not altogether unpleasing sensa- 
 tions. His nostrils, perhaps, will be tickled by 
 strange and pungent odours, especially from an un- 
 suspected fried-fish shop, where a family of per- 
 
 272 
 
LONDON IN MID-SEPTEMBER 273 
 
 spiring Hebrews are scraping up a livelihood from 
 the necessities of still poorer Gentiles, and week by 
 week saving up shillings for the viaticum which shall 
 bring over some kinsman in South Russia to this land 
 of plenty. If perchance our observer has eyes for 
 anything outside trade and business, he may glance 
 at the tired, hurried, harassed gentleman in dusty 
 broadcloth. He has been stopped on his errand into* 
 some slum, too tortuous even for an alternative 'bus 
 route, and is saying a few cheerful words to a knot of 
 youngsters their garments ragged but their faces 
 bright from the one wash in their day who are 
 gathered about the door of the National School. 
 Our City gentleman looks curiously at the priest, and 
 wonders what can have induced a fellow who has had 
 a college education to spend his time in that ghastly 
 district and among those awful people. " If he sticks 
 to it for a bit, he thinks somebody will give him a 
 fat country living ! " And so the subject is dis- 
 missed. But, now and again, among the involuntary 
 explorers of London's mean streets, there may be 
 some who retain a more permanent impression from 
 these cinematographic revelations of life in the 
 slums. The idea haunts them uncomfortably, and 
 they do not purchase an easy conscience till Sunday 
 morning, when they drop into the offertory a 
 shame-faced sovereign among the shillings and florins 
 of their una wakened friends and neighbours. 
 Yet it is not the poverty or misery of London 
 
 
274 LONDON 
 
 which is most obvious in the dead season. Rather is 
 one led to think of the vast amount of money saved, 
 begged, or borrowed for the autumn holiday-making. 
 That for weeks and months together the dirty-white 
 blinds should be drawn down, and invest with a new 
 dismalness the gaunt squares of Mayfair and Bel- 
 gravia and the prim terraces of South Kensington 
 and Bayswater is but part of the natural and ex- 
 pected order. The absentee tenants are rich folk, or, 
 under social pains and penalties, bound to seem so. 
 Nor does one easily believe the familiar legend that 
 behind some of those veiled frontages may be found 
 the householder and his family, making furtive exits 
 and entrances, to emerge next month with brave 
 tales of delightful foreign travel and charming visits 
 to country houses. The truth is that holiday-making 
 is like smoking. Begun in bravado, it is continued as 
 a pleasure, and finally becomes an ineradicable habit. 
 There are plenty of people who might be fairly com- 
 fortable all the year round if they did not insist on 
 impoverishing themselves in August and September. 
 But these are the people who think they have a 
 position to keep up. What is astonishing to the 
 moralist on the motor-'bus is that so many thousands 
 and tens of thousands of middle-class people, who 
 cannot labour under a similar delusion, should afford 
 themselves the same indulgence. Cast your eye 
 along one of the innumerable blocks of new flats 
 which are being run up in outer London, the rentals 
 
LONDON IN MID-SEPTEMBER 275 
 
 ranging from .75 to 120 a year, and you find quite 
 half the tenements forsaken. The same story is told 
 in every row of little stucco villas inhabited by " the 
 class which begins to wear a black coat." The rent 
 may be in arrear and the rate-collector clamorous, 
 but wife and family must be sent to the seaside until 
 it is time for the children to go back to school. 
 
 Though all the " smart set " and half the middle- 
 class have deserted the town, London is never so 
 bright and pleasant Piccadilly on a sunny morning 
 in May always excepted as in September. The 
 thinning-down of the traffic, both human and ve- 
 hicular, allows the shop-windows to be inspected at 
 leisure, and gives one glimpses of the contour of the 
 streets and their buildings. For the first time the 
 strayed tourist who has run up to do some shopping 
 realises that Bond Street is not simply a jamb of car- 
 riages and pedestrians, but a winding and undulating 
 ascent, full of colour and suggestive of historical 
 memories, gay or sad, and not invariably edifying. 
 London in September is the happy hunting-ground 
 of the natty " school-marm " (U.S.A.), with her 
 little reticule flapping from her demure " shirt- 
 waist," and all the notable events in English history, 
 with full details about every King and Queen, 
 tripping from her tongue. The German tourist is in 
 his glory gesticulating, talking loudly, and shoulder- 
 ing every meek-living pedestrian on to the kerb- 
 stone, but honestly appreciative, not meaning to be 
 
276 LONDON 
 
 rude, only devoted to his mission of putting the 
 Over-man doctrine into practice, taking off his hat 
 quite politely, and accepting in faultless English your 
 hypocritical apology for elbowing him on to the 
 right side of the road. Our French visitors, perhaps, 
 in their zeal for the entente cordiale, overdo their 
 ecstasies over all things English our women, our 
 policemen, and our street statues. But their sin- 
 cerity is so obvious, their gaiety so infectious, that 
 when we stroll among them and listen to their talk 
 we begin to feel that it is a mistake, after all, to go to 
 Paris or Brussels or Florence for our pleasuring, and 
 that this sombre, shapeless London of ours is the city 
 of amusement. Its attractions have already been dis- 
 covered by some of the natives. In Westminster 
 Abbey the other day a distinguished actor was de- 
 tected in personally conducting a family party round 
 the monuments, and playing havoc with the cen- 
 turies while he expounded some of the leading 
 events of our rough island story. But he was sound 
 enough about his Irving and having reached that 
 point, the real object of his pilgrimage, he hurried 
 off to a matinee. For some of the best theatres are 
 open, and doing excellent business. Every year they 
 depend less and less on the Londoner's patronage ; 
 more and more on the suburban dweller, the for- 
 eigner, and the country cousin. What is true of the 
 stage is true of all the other great London institu- 
 tions. In spite of metropolitan arrogance towards 
 
LONDON IN MID-SEPTEMBER 277 
 
 everything provincial, there is no such thing as 
 public life in the capital, no sense of corporate and 
 civic existence. The City of London is an historic 
 memory, the County of London an administrative 
 figment even the London County Council stands 
 only for rhetoric and rates. 
 
INDEX 
 
 Arnold, Dr., of Rugby, 202 
 Asquith, Mr., passim; 84-93 
 
 Bale, Mr. Edwin, 60, 61 
 Balfour, Mr., on Athletics, 199 
 Birrell, Mr. A., passim; 122-130 
 Bradlaugh, 7 
 
 Burns, Mr. John, 169-179 
 Burrowes, T. C., 17 
 
 Cambridge, Duke of, his resig- 
 nation, 78 
 
 Cameron, Allan Gordon, 1 1 sqq. 
 
 Campbell-Bannerman,Sir Henry, 
 passslm ; 75-83 
 
 Carlyle, Thomas, love-letters of, 
 edited by Alexander Carlyle 
 (1909), 243 sqq. 
 
 Carrington, Lord, 159-168 
 
 Cartwright, A. B., 17 
 
 Cawdor, Lord, no 
 
 Cecil, Lord Hugh, 197 
 
 Chamberlain, Austen, 197 
 
 Chamberlain, Joseph ; letter to 
 S. H. J., 50 
 
 Chesterton, G. K., 224 sqq. 
 
 Cobbett, William, 231 sq. 
 
 Churchill, Lord Randolph, 148, 
 
 263 sqq. 
 
 Mr. Winston, 133, 185 
 Coke of Norfolk, 230 sqq. 
 (Thomas William Coke, first 
 Earl of Leicester, of Hoik- 
 ham) 
 
 Crewe, Earl of, 103 sqq. 
 Curtis, G. B., 62 
 
 Dilke, Sir Charles, 149 sqq. 
 Edward VII, 256 sqq. 
 Freeman, H. B., 4, 65 
 
 George, Mr. D. Lloyd, passim ; 
 
 1 31 sqq. 
 
 Gladstone, Mr. Herbert, 237 
 Gladstone, W. E., 76; 100 
 
 (Transvaal) ; 163, 271 
 
 (Home Rule) ; 238 
 Gore, Charles, Bp. of Oxford, 
 
 1 6, 224^?. 
 
 Greenwood, Frederick, 23, 26 
 Grey, Sir Edward, passim ; 
 
 149 sqq. 
 
 279 
 
280 
 
 Gwynne, H. A., 65 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Morley, Mr. John, 87, 105, 
 
 Haldane, Mr. R. B., passim ; 
 
 140 sqq. 
 
 Hamley, Edward, 5 
 Harcourt, Sir William, 87, 119, 
 
 184, 1 86 
 
 Mr. Lewis, 180 sqq. 
 Hardie, Mr. Keir, 90, 174 
 Hassall, Arthur, 5 
 
 Ilbert Bill, 99 
 
 James, W. P., 5 
 Juvenal, translated by S. H. J., 
 20-22 
 
 Law, Mr. Bonar, 241 
 Lee, F. H., u 
 
 Leicester, Thomas William, 
 
 Earl of, see Coke 
 Lytton, Lord, 97 
 
 McCarthy, Mr. Justin, 5 1 
 
 McKenna, Mr., 190 sqq. 
 
 Mill, J. S., 15, 31, i.i 6 ; letters 
 
 of, edited by Hugh S. R. 
 
 Elliot (1910), 248 sqq. 
 Milner, Lord, 84, 160 
 
 Mudford, W. H., 43, 62 
 Northcote, Sir Stafford, 270 
 
 Rhys, R. J., 17 
 
 Ripon, Marquess of, 94 sqq. 
 
 Rosebery, Lord, passim; Life 
 
 of, by S. H. J., 49 ; his Lord 
 
 Randolph Churchill (1906), 
 
 263 sqq. 
 Rus sells of 'Birmingham -, The, by 
 
 S. H. J., 66 
 
 Salisbury, Lord, Life of, by 
 
 S. H. J., 49 
 
 Standard, the, 43, 44, 46, 62 
 Stanley, Henry M., 60, 200 
 Stirling, Mrs., author of Coke 
 of Norfolk, two volumes, 1908 
 (2nd edition 1912), 230 
 
 Thring, Edward, 4, 8 
 Vincent, Sir Howard, 68 
 
 Wigg, C. Stone, 17 
 Wilde, Oscar, 14, 34 sqq. 
 Wolseley, Lord, 223 
 
 ' 
 
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