LIBRARY 
 
 University of 
 
 California 
 
 Irvine
 
 761 
 H23
 
 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS 
 
 (THIRD SERIES)
 
 BOOKS BY FRANK HARRIS 
 THE YELLOW TICKET 
 GREAT DAYS A Novel 
 THE BOMB A Novel 
 
 MONTES THE MATADOR 
 UNPATH'D WATERS 
 THE MAN SHAKESPEARE 
 THE WOMEN OF SHAKESPEARE 
 SHAKESPEARE AND HIS LOVE A Play
 
 CONTEMPORARY 
 PORTRAITS 
 
 (THIRD SERIES) 
 
 By 
 
 FRANK HARRIS 
 
 PUBLISHED BY THE AUTHOR 
 
 40 SEVENTH AVENUE 
 N EW YO R K C ITY
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 FACING PAGE 
 
 H. G. WELLS i 
 
 UPTON SINCLAIR 15 
 
 JOHN GALSWORTHY 31 
 
 CUNNINGHAME GRAHAM 45 
 
 GILBERT K. CHESTERTON 61 
 
 ARTHUR SYMONS 71 
 
 THE RIGHT HON. WINSTON CHURCHILL 87 
 
 ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE 103 
 
 THOMAS HUXLEY 115 
 
 Louis WILKINSON 131 
 
 W. L. GEORGE 143 
 
 HENRI GAUDIER-BRZESKA 149 
 
 LORD ST. ALDWYN 165 
 
 AUGUSTUS JOHN 181 
 
 COVENTRY PATMORE 191 
 
 WALT WHITMAN 211
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 INTRODUCTION v 
 
 H. G. WELLS i 
 
 UPTON SINCLAIR 15 
 
 JOHN GALSWORTHY 3 1 
 
 CUNNINGHAMS GRAHAM 45 
 
 GILBERT K. CHESTERTON 61 
 
 ARTHUR SYMONS 7 1 
 
 WINSTON CHURCHILL 87 
 
 RUSSEL WALLACE 103 
 
 THOMAS HUXLEY 115 
 
 Louis WILKINSON 131 
 
 W. L. GEORGE 143 
 
 GAUDIER-BRZESKA 149 
 
 LORD ST. ALDWYN 165 
 
 AUGUSTUS JOHN 181 
 
 COVENTRY PATMORE 191 
 
 WALT WHITMAN 211
 
 COPYRIGHT 1920 BY 
 PRANK HARRIS
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 WHAT a gorgeous undertaking it is to try to depict 
 the soul of a man. A god-like hardship to render 
 in words the utmost reach of thought and 
 spiritual endeavor and the abyss of feelings, instincts, 
 fears the ghostly echoes in us of forgotten dangers or 
 long disused powers. Of necessity the enterprise is a 
 failure. 
 
 You might as well try to paint a wave and at the 
 same time, its chemical constituents and its myriad 
 animalculae. 
 
 You think of your friend's chief characteristic, the 
 most prominent and peculiar trait of his nature and 
 before you have got it on the paper, you recognize that 
 he might correct you and declare that the opposite and 
 antagonistic quality had guided him again and again 
 and in fact finally determined his life's course. 
 
 Each one of us is made up of a myriad contradictories 
 and no man has been able as yet to paint his own spirit 
 in its entirety, let alone a stranger's, for we are all 
 strangers one to another and lonely from the cradle to 
 the grave, alone and forlorn. 
 
 Yet when we look at this impossible task in another 
 light, it comes within our compass. If the complexities 
 are infinite we have them all within us and so can piece 
 
 v
 
 vi INTRODUCTION 
 
 out the portrait for ourselves. Moreover, if we are 
 dealing with great men and their achievements our chief 
 object should be to set forth the qualities and accidents 
 that made their triumphs possible, for thus we render 
 them comprehensible to others, an encouragement and 
 perhaps an inspiration. 
 
 Great men are to us the ladder Jacob dreamed of 
 reaching from earth to Heaven; they show us the way 
 to climb, the heights to be reached, and are so to speak 
 the altar-stairs of our achievement; the love of them a 
 vital part of natural religion; their words our authentic 
 inspiration and Gospel. 
 
 To know them by their works is not enough ; we want 
 the personal touch of intimate knowledge; the little 
 vanky that acted as a spur; the trick of gesture or 
 curious choice of phrase that throws light on some quirk 
 of mind or idiosyncracy of thought. The works of genius 
 will be there for men in the future to use and judge; the 
 personalities should be preserved in the memories of 
 contemporaries. 
 
 In this spirit I have worked and here they are my sixty 
 eminent men pictured in their habit as they lived. In 
 deference to our modern courteous custom I have 
 extenuated a great many faults in my sitters, and assured- 
 ly have set down naught in malice. Indeed I have tried 
 to paint no one whom I have not loved at some time or 
 other and had the Age been less mealy-mouthed I should 
 have liked to block in the outlines with heavier shadows 
 and so reach a more vivid verisimilitude.
 
 INTRODUCTION vn 
 
 In my "Autobiography," however, I intend to be 
 franker than the world will allow me to be in these 
 "Portraits" ; but I have no trace of malice or envy in me 
 and accordingly shall always try my best to see my subject 
 as he sees himself. For this is what we all desire, that 
 men may see us as we see ourselves with a kindly eye 
 for shortcomings and a mother's pride in our excellencies 
 and indeed in our mere peculiarities. 
 
 The book as it stands is due to a remark Carlyle 
 made to me once when he told me he had spent twelve 
 or was it fourteen years ? on his half-hero Frederick. 
 
 "What a pity," I cried; "if you with your seeing eyes 
 and painting phrases had only given us life-sized portraits 
 of your famous contemporaries, how much richer we 
 should have been. Had you only painted Coleridge, 
 Lamb and Hazlitt, Thackeray and Dickens and Reade 
 and Ruskin, Byron and Browning, to say nothing of 
 Heine, Hugo and Balzac, as you painted Tennyson, what 
 a gallery we should have had." 
 
 "May be," he said, "but I wasn't in sympathy with 
 many you mention. Each man has to do his own work. 
 Perhaps you will do portraits of your contemporaries and 
 so fill the gap." 
 
 From that day on I kept it in mind as a part of my 
 work and it is for others now to say whether I have done 
 it well or ill. 
 
 Nine out of ten of these portraits have been painted 
 with loving-kindness ; if I find it hard to excuse the men
 
 viii INTRODUCTION 
 
 who in stress of war gave up their opinions and turned 
 their coats, or, if you will, yielded to popular clamor 
 obeying obscure centripetal influences, my prejudice, if 
 you will, or my sense of contempt is probably due to the 
 fact that I have suffered all my life through unpopularity. 
 
 FRANK HARRIS, 
 40 Seventh Ave., 
 N, Y.
 
 
 
 H. G. Wells
 
 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS 
 
 H. G. WELLS 
 
 WE all have our limitations, blind spots, short- 
 comings ; we can all trace arrests in our develop- 
 ment, knots which the sweet sap of life can 
 hardly penetrate or vivify to growth; imperfections, not 
 of the body or mind merely, but of the soul. 
 
 And these faults and flaws of ours prevent us from 
 being faithful mirrors; this man we show well and that 
 one badly, do what we will. 
 
 Often, too, the personage we ought to mirror best we 
 do worst; people near us, like us, sympathetic to us, we 
 cannot be just to, strain as we may. 
 
 And our blunders are incorrigible, inexcusable, inex- 
 plicable loathsome to us as running sores, till we see 
 that the greatest of men have to admit similar defeats. 
 Then we resign ourselves: 
 
 "Why must I 'twixt the leaves of coronal 
 Put any kiss of pardon on thy brow?" 
 
 We men all need forgiveness: "pardon's the word to 
 all," as gentle Shakespeare knew. 
 
 In my first volume of portraits I had to ask the readers' 
 forgiveness for my poor, thin sketch of glorious Robert 
 Browning.
 
 2 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS 
 
 Before I knew him I would have wagered fhat it there 
 was one Englishman I could picture to the life, if I ever 
 had the good fortune to meet him, it would be Robert 
 Browning. Surely there was no fold, no corner, no inner- 
 most shrine in that spirit unexplored by my love! And 
 yet, though I met him frequently, I could not get near 
 him, could not even get him to sit for me. 
 
 In much the same way in this book I shall fail with H. 
 G. Wells and the Devil alone can give the reason. 
 
 I find that when I say I discovered this genius or that, 
 some of them resent it. Shaw said it seemed to fliim like 
 patronage! Assuredly it was not so intended, indeed in 
 my case was nothing more than the sad superiority of 
 the senior. 
 
 Had I ever wished to make capital out of my personal 
 relations with this or that man of genius I should certainly 
 have published my reminiscences of Carlyle or Renan or 
 Burton immediately after their deaths when curiosity was 
 at its height and gossip about them universal. I could 
 thus have won a cheap notoriety a score of times, but such 
 vicarious limelight seemed to me degrading. 
 
 Wells, however, has since called rne his "literary god- 
 father" ; admitted that I was tfhe first editor to publish 
 anything of his, so I may claim priority here even though 
 it is only another word for chance. 
 
 When I took over the editorship of The Fortnightly 
 Review Mr. Morley was very kind to me; towards the 
 end of our talk .he pointed to two large boxes in the 
 corner of the long room and said: 
 
 "You'll find those boxes full of manuscripts: I ought
 
 H. G. WELLS 3 
 
 to have returned them long ago ; some date back for years ; 
 some are recent. You could get your secretary just to 
 send them all 'back and so bte rid of 'em the hatppy dis- 
 patch, eh?" And the bleak face lighted up witih a glint 
 of wintry sunshine. 
 
 With the conscientiousness of the beginner I went 
 through the boxes. Ninety nine out of every hundred man- 
 uscripts were worthless ; many out of date ; some aimed at 
 Morley's pedantic rationalism ; only two struck me ; one a 
 story, the other a paper on "The Rediscovery of the 
 Unique." The story and who wrote it I may talk of at 
 some future time; now I am only concerned with the 
 article. It set forth that the modern habit of generaliza- 
 tion was an aid to memory but not to truth ; the beads of 
 fact we string .together on one thread are all different. 
 No two leaves of a tree are alike; no two eyes in a head 
 are the same in shape or color; even the two sides of the 
 nose are never exactly matched, nor the two lobes of any 
 brain. Everything in nature and in life is unique, has to 
 be studied by itself ; for the soul and meaning of it is in 
 its uniqueness and it will not yield its secret save to loving 
 study of its singularity. 
 
 The paper was charmingly written, the style simple, 
 easy, rhythmic ; the architecture faultless. The signature 
 surprised me. I had expected some well-known name: 
 H. G. Wells ! 
 
 "Have you ever heard of Wells ?" I asked my assistant. 
 He shook his head. 
 
 "You will hear of him," I ventured. "And now I want
 
 4 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS . 
 
 you to write and ask him to come to see me any afternoon 
 here!" 
 
 A few days afterwards Wells called and Tasked him 
 to take a seat. I told him of his article and how greatly 
 I admired it, all the while studying him. A man of 
 middle height, well-made, with shaipely head, thick chest- 
 nut hair, regular features; chin and brow both good; 
 nothing arresting or peculiar in the face, save the eyes; 
 eyes that grew on one. They were of ordinary size, a 
 grayish blue in color, b'ut intent, shadowed, suggesting 
 depth like water in a half -covered spring; observant eyes, 
 too, that asked questions, but reflection, meditation the 
 note of them ; eyes almost pathetic in the patience of their 
 scrutiny. 
 
 His manner was timid ; 'he spoke very little and only in 
 response; his accent that of a Cockney. He professed 
 himself a student of science. 
 
 "I've written some things for science papers, for 
 Nature. I scarcely hoped to have this paiper accepted; 
 it has been so long since I sent it in. I'm glad you like 
 it. . . ." 
 
 He was so effaced, so colorless, so withdrawn, that he 
 wiped out the effect his paper 'had made on me. I lost 
 sight of him for some time, but knew his value. 
 
 When I took The Saturday Review I asked Wells to 
 review the best novels for me. In the few years that had 
 elapsed since our first meeting, his manner, I found, had 
 entirely changed; there was no trace of timidity now; a 
 quiet self-confidence had taken its place ; the provincialism 
 of accent had also disappeared. He was uncertain, 'he
 
 H. G. WELLS 5 
 
 said, whether he could write regularly for me ; "creative 
 work is beginning to take up most of my time ; still, I'd 
 like now and then to say what I think of some good 
 book. . . ." 
 
 The first piece of journalism that counted was his 
 memorable review of Conrad's first novel, "Almayer's 
 Folly." 
 
 It sold out the edition in a week and laid the foundation 
 of Conrad's fame "broad bases for eternity," if only he 
 had known how to make use of them. 
 
 Naturally I was delighted and gave Wells every op- 
 portunity of repeating his feat; but he had no other 
 opportunity for triumph so far as I can remember. 
 
 I did not see much of him while he was working on the 
 Review ; but I found that he was scrupulous in keeping his 
 word ; his articles were always forthcoming at the time 
 indicated and they were uniformly excellent. 
 
 One incident, however, impressed me peculiarly. Early 
 in 1895 I -brought out a volume of American stories: 
 "Elder Conklin." I had had them by me so long in print 
 that I had lost interest in t'hem. As soon as a story ap- 
 pears in book form or in a magazine it never seems to 
 belong to me any more ; I am able to regard it then with 
 some detachment almost as if another person had written 
 it. I was leaving the Saturday Review office one day 
 when I ran across Wells ; he stopped me with a word. 
 
 "I have b'een reading that book of yours and wanted to 
 talk to you about it," 'he began. "I had seen some of 
 the stories when they appeared in The Fortnightly and
 
 6 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS 
 
 liked them ; but in a book the effect of them is altogether 
 different." 
 
 "Really ?" I questioned. 
 
 "Half a dozen stories," he went on, "give you an im- 
 pression of the writer; enable you to form a judgment of 
 him ; whereas a single story or even two or three read at 
 long intervals have not the same power." 
 
 "Curious," I interjected, "it is not quantity with me, but 
 always some little intimate touch or piece of self-revealing 
 that lets me see the writer's soul, and once I get the cue 
 my impression is usually confirmed by his other 
 writings." 
 
 "It was the whole book," he went on, "that gave me a 
 view of your sub-conscious self. I call it sub-conscious 
 because it is so unlike the Frank Harris one knows." 
 
 "I don't follow you," I said dryly. 
 
 "Well," he began afresh, "when one meets you, you are 
 abbut the most dominant, imperious personality I've ever 
 seen; but in this book one finds a modest, patient and 
 peculiarly fair-minded person, who wishes first and last 
 to present every one impartially and find some soul of 
 goodness in every outcast even. I could not but ask my- 
 self : which is the real man?" 
 
 "Both," I replied laughing, and went my way. But 
 Wells's insight had greatly increased my respect for his 
 intelligence. It was the first time I had been so analyzed 
 to my face and it gave me an odd shock that among these 
 conventional, subdued, cautious folk I was regarded as a 
 wild American, or what Shaw has since called "a ruffian." 
 
 Still, I consoled myself quickly : I knew how little man-
 
 H. G. WELLS 7 
 
 ners count in the final estimate of a writer, less even than 
 his personal appearance; it's his work alone that matters 
 and by that alone he'll be judged. Who cares now that 
 Shakespeare's manners were said to be "too sweet" or 
 Beethoven's too insolent and domineering. Rebel or 
 courtier, ingratiating or cynically contemptuous, no one 
 will care which you were, ten years after your death. 
 
 On reflection the interesting thing to me was that Wells 
 too wanted to see other men as they really are; he, too, 
 was evidently trying as I was trying to get from the 
 writing to the writer. The consequence was that I became 
 interested in him, and read his first book carefully. 
 
 "The Time Machine" and other strange stories im- 
 pressed me hugely; I thought them excellent; the best 
 of their kind ever done ; but I could not believe that such 
 Jules Verne yarns would outlast the generation for which 
 they were written, though Wells was a head above Verne 
 both in content and handling: a born story-teller of the 
 best with an imagination fecundated by scientific specula- 
 tion. 
 
 A little later I read "Love and Mr. Lewisham" and 
 found that I had underrated him ; Wells might be a great 
 novelist, might do something that would outlive his genera- 
 tion or even 
 
 Filled with admiration I began a mental portrait of him 
 and kept asking about his life in order to correct or con- 
 firm my deductions. 
 
 I found from a dozen indications that he was very 
 touchy about his social position, anxious to be well up in 
 the latest society slang, to dress and behave correctly.
 
 8 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS 
 
 When I mentioned this to some one who knew Wells 
 intimately, he replied : 
 
 "Wells's father, you know, was a professional cricketer, 
 getting in the summer months perhaps $25 a week. He 
 has come from the bottom and learnt all the society 
 touches as a man and is therefore naturally nervous: a 
 little unsure of himself." 
 
 On the other hand I soon discovered that Wells had a 
 curious conviction of his own greatness both as a writer 
 and thinker; but especially as a thinker. His education 
 was very modern; he had never been brought into close 
 contact with the greatest minds in the past; he measured 
 himself only against his contemporaries and thus found a 
 thousand reasons to justify a high self -estimate. 
 
 Wells's first successes came to him when he was only 
 twenty-nine and they were flattering enough to turn the 
 steadiest head. His scientific stories had an extraordinary 
 vogue, were translated into a dozen languages ; by the time 
 he was thirty-two or three, Wells was known from Kyoto 
 to Paris. 
 
 And when he turned to writing novels of life and char- 
 acter his vogue helped him; the great wave of his popu- 
 larity lifted him over one difficulty after another. While 
 still a young man ! he was earning more than a Cabinet 
 Minister and was received almost everywhere ; listened to 
 also by older men, men of established position, with a 
 certain deference or at least with courteous attention. 
 Women too made much of him; he is quite good-looking 
 and intensely interested in the fair sex and as usual they 
 returned that compliment with uncommon zest.
 
 H. G. WELLS 9 
 
 Now all this is infinitely pleasant to a man, intoxicating 
 even ; but it is not the fate Fortune allots to those rare 
 spirits destined to steer humanity. 
 
 Cervantes lost the use of a hand in the battle of Le- 
 panto ; was taken by the Moors and worked for years as 
 a slave; then in his native land when he managed to get 
 a piti'ful post he lost it on a false accusation and was again 
 thrown into prison. Finally at sixty, poor, neglected, al- 
 most destitute with six women and several little children 
 dependent on him, "in (poor health and very anxious," as 
 he himself said, he sat down to write "Don Quixote." 
 
 The great popular writer of the time, Lope de Vega, 
 sneered at him and his works; declared that "Don 
 Quixote" was poor, second-rate trash; used all his 
 power and influence to crush the older man who wasn't 
 even a rival but a belauder of de Vega's "most in- 
 genious and interesting comedies." 
 
 Yet no one reads de Vega to-day and no one can 
 avoid reading the comedy and tragedy of "Don Qui- 
 xote," the greatest prose book in the world, I think, after 
 the Bible. 
 
 But "Don Quixote" didn't assure to Cervantes his 
 daily bread. Even after he had brought out the second 
 part at seventy odd years of age he was poor and often 
 in need. But his immortal courage never faltered. Just 
 before his death the Bishop of Toledo wrote to 'him 
 saying that he would like to help him if he wanted any- 
 thing. 
 
 "Nothing for myself," he replied, "my foot is already
 
 io CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS 
 
 in the stirrup, but if your lorcls'hip would help my poor 
 wife and 'her relatives, I'd go content!" 
 
 That's the sort of life men give to their teachers and 
 true guides. 
 
 Success is its own handicap and nowhere in life ex- 
 cept perhaps in politics is success so seductive as it is 
 to the writer. Editors flatter, publishers offer golden 
 baits, strangers enquire eagerly about the next book ; fair 
 women show impatience; what can a man do but write 
 when writing comes so easily ? 
 
 Alas! facile, fluent writing makes very hard reading. 
 And the man who produces a couple of books each year 
 should know that he is writing for the day and hour 
 and is nothing but a journalist. Great work is not done 
 at such speed. And Mr. Well's speed seems to be in- 
 creasing; in 1918 I read "The Soul of a Bishop," and 
 "God, the Invisible King," and "Mr. Britling Sees It 
 Through." The two first quite unreadable, altogether 
 unworthy of Mr. Wells's talent and position. "Mr. 
 Britling Sees It Through" was dreadfully tedious for 
 some hundreds of pages; but the last fifty or sixty 
 pages redeemed the book. 
 
 And now this year I have had much the same experi- 
 ence: "In the Fourth Year," b'y Mr. Wells, is a mere 
 pamphlet on the times and anything but a good pam- 
 phlet, while the long novel "Joan & Peter" deserves 
 little consideration. The first two hundred pages of 
 it are deadly dull and wholly uninspired; when the 
 children grow up, however, the narrative becomes in- 
 teresting in spite of being interrupted on almost every
 
 H. G. WELLS ii 
 
 page by some remark on the war or comment on this 
 or that phase of the struggle which is merely adven- 
 titious. The love-story with its touch of novelty in 
 the boldness of Joan would have made an excellent 
 short story. Mr. Wells has almost buried it in 500 
 pages. I do not believe that the next generation even 
 will take the trouble to disinter it. 
 
 But all this matters little or nothing. A writer is 
 judged by the best in him and not by his mistakes and 
 blunders. His faults and shortcomings do not even 
 enter into the account. The question is: has Mr. 
 Wells written anything that must live; one master- 
 piece is enough for any man's measure. Surely the 
 answer as yet must 'tie in the negative. I don't forget 
 "The War of the Worlds," or "The Time Machine," 
 or "The Island of Dr. Moreau," still less "The Country 
 of the Blind," or "The Research Magnificent." 
 
 But no one of these by any stretch of sympathy can 
 be called a masterpiece. 
 
 Mr. Wells, however, has still time; I only regret that 
 he has allowed these last four years with their insistent 
 urge and appeal to drag him into journalism and pam- 
 phleteering. 
 
 But will he ever give now what we have a right to 
 expect from him? I still hope or I shouldn't have 
 written about him at this length. He began so well. 
 In the famous nineties in London he was a prominent 
 Fabian with Sidney Webb and Bernard Shaw. True, 
 he left the Fabians rather rudely and drew down on 
 himself one of the few contemptuous harsh letters which
 
 12 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS 
 
 Bernard Shaw has written. Since then he has cari- 
 catured Sidney Webb and his wife mercilessly; but all 
 that is of small and transitory importance. 
 
 He may never write a great novel of revolt; yet may 
 still have a great love story in him. It should not be 
 difficult for him to beat "Tom Jones." He has a better 
 brain than Fielding and a far more flexible style; knows 
 women, too, if not men and criminals, better than the 
 great magistrate. W'hy should he not write a novel that 
 would stand to "Tom Jones" as "La Recherche de I'Ab- 
 solu" stands to "Manon Lescaut"? 
 
 I should be more than hopeful were it not for his 
 attitude on this world-war. For years he talked of im- 
 minent victory, vilified the Germans and exalted the 
 ' British, with the myopic fervor of an Arnold Bennett. 
 Now if one may judge by "Mr. Britling" he is slowly 
 coming back to sanity again; but his recent laudation 
 of "The League of Nations" is in the same overpitched 
 key, almost hysterical, as far from sober reason as Kip- 
 ling's crazy phillippics. 
 
 Again and again now in this way, now in that, Wells 
 reminds me of Upton Sinclair. They are both healthy, 
 and on the whole well-balanced, and yet endowed with 
 extraordinary ability; they should both do great work 
 and yet one gives us "The Jungle" as ! his best, and the 
 other "The New Machiavelli," or "Mr. Britling." 
 
 It was bruited about in London at the time that "The 
 New Machiavelli" derived its fervor from the fact that 
 much of it was autobiographical. I am not especially in- 
 terested in that view of the matter believing as I do that
 
 H. G. WELLS 13 
 
 all the best creative work must necessarily be drawn from 
 personal experience. The artist's task still remains to 
 make what is individual, universal and thus give the mor- 
 tal, immortality. 
 
 Wells has no doubt been run after by women and made 
 much of by pretty girls; he is not only virile but good- 
 looking and even in the early thirties was invested with 
 the halo of fame. Moths flutter to the light, b'ut when 
 they give their bodies to be burned they diminish, for a 
 moment at least, the illuminating power. In the case of 
 an artist no one cares whence the inspiration comes ; the 
 fact of its presence is all-sufficient justification. 
 
 Mr. Wells is a far better writer thai Mr. Sinclair, lives 
 too, nearer the centre, is more exposed to high criti- 
 cism, and yet he can write "The Soul of a Bishop" 
 and "In the Fourth Year," and he is now well past 
 fifty; still, while there's life there's 'hope. 
 
 Mr. Well's latest work, an attempt to write the natural 
 'history of the earth from the time it was thrown off 
 from the Sun to the present, is ambitious enough in all 
 conscience ; but the great artist as a rule has enough to 
 do to write the natural history of his own soul, leaving 
 speculation about origins and developments outside him- 
 self to the camp-followers of science. He is a pioneer 
 of the advance and is vitally interested in forming or 
 heralding the future in accord with his own development 
 leaving the dead past to bury its dead.
 
 Upton Sinclair
 
 UPTON SINCLAIR 
 
 A HANDSOME fellow of good middle 'height and 
 strongly made, 'Sinclair reminded me at our first 
 meeting of Wells; but his features were even 
 more regular and his forehead broader. The eyes, too, 
 were fuller of light and kinder than Well's eyes; not 
 such reflective mirroring pools, I mean, but quicker, 
 brighter, vertical wrinkles between the brows surely 
 of doubt and thought ; perhaps of disappointment grown 
 impatient or querulous. Nevertheless, a fine wellbal- 
 anced face, backed by direct cordial decisive manner 
 which contradicted the wrinkles. 
 
 Sinclair was still young about thirty-two and had 
 already The Jungle to his credit and half a dozen other 
 novels; he might well be one of the Sacred Band, seer 
 at once and creative artist another Cervantes. "The 
 Jungle" was very nearly a masterpiece; if the end had 
 been worked up crescendo to flaming revolt, it would 
 have 'been the finest of American novels fit to rank 
 with "Robinson Crusoe," "The Pilgrim's Progress," and 
 "The Cloister and the Hearth." None of these books 
 was written before the author was forty; what might 
 not Sinclair do in another ten years? Clearly he was a 
 man to know, worth careful study. 
 
 Unluckily for me he was then on his way to Holland, 
 stopping in London only for a short time; he could not 
 
 15
 
 16 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS 
 
 give me another meeting though he was kind enough 
 to say that he regretted tihe necessity. 
 
 I talked to him of his new book, "Love's Pilgrimage," 
 wlhich I thought a mistake, and in the unexpurgated 
 form, a blunder. There were fine pages in it, however; 
 here and there an original thought; a mind beginning 
 to feel its own power. 
 
 The book was so different from "The Jungle" that 
 in spite of its shortcomings it testified to uncommon 
 width of vision. I was eager to know how Sinclair 
 had grown ; what reading he 'had done, and what think- 
 ing to come to his power as a story-teller. For as 
 Dante knew, the man who can tell convincingly what 
 he has seen, must have a noble mind. Sinclair gave me 
 the outlines of his early life quite simply: I reproduce 
 his words: 
 
 "I was born in Baltimore in 1878. I went to the 
 public school and 'trtve College of the City of New York, 
 where I studied the things which interested me and 
 neglected those that did not interest me. 
 
 "In the last year I got leave of ab'sence for several 
 months, stayed at home and read omnivorously. The 
 three men who had most to do with the shaping of my 
 thought were Jesus, Hamlet and Shelley. But at this 
 time I also read and studied especially Carlyle, Brown- 
 ing, Milton and Goethe. Tennyson I read, but was al- 
 ways irritated by his conventionality. Arnold was, I 
 think, next to Shelley and Shakespeare, my favorite poet. 
 I loved his noble dignity rather mournful not at all 
 what I was or meant to be, but the best of tfhe old stuff.
 
 UPTON SINCLAIR 17 
 
 I think a lot of Thackeray, too. I read all the Germans 
 up to Freytag before I read any French, so the French 
 had less influence on me. But Zola taught me a lot. 
 I said of the "Jungle" that I had tried to put the content 
 of S'helley into the form of Zola. 
 
 "I do not 'still' read Latin and Greek, as you suppose. 
 I never read them. I studied Latin five years and 
 Greek three years. I looked up some words in the dic- 
 tionary ten thousand times and forgot them ten thousand 
 times. I said what I had to say on the futility of lan- 
 guage study as it is done in colleges in two articles which 
 you will find in the files of the Independent along about 
 1902 or 1903. When I came out of college I taugiht my- 
 self to read French in six weeks and I learned more 
 German in one month by myself than I had learned in 
 college in two years. 
 
 "I did graduate work at Columbia University for 
 four years. I began about forty courses and finished 
 half a dozen of them. I quit because Nicholas Murray 
 Butler fired all the men who had any life in them. 
 
 "My first short story was published w'hen I was fif- 
 .teen." 
 
 Sinclair appears to have read almost completely for 
 pleasure and perhaps there is no better way. But when 
 he says "all the Germans up to Freytag" he clearly means 
 merely modern Germans and apparently is not a student. 
 But I wanted him to tell me how his thought grew and the 
 stages of it. How came he to see the vices of the in- 
 dividualist competitive system of our time and realize
 
 18 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS 
 
 its atrocious injustice with the flaming passion that 
 sears every page of "The Jungle"? 
 
 He replied frankly: 
 
 "What b'rought me to Socialism was more Christianity 
 than anything else. I saw that those who professed 
 Jesus did not practice him nor seem to understand him, 
 I wanted to. And the more I came to doubt his divinity, 
 the more important it seemed to me to understand and 
 apply tihe human side of his teaching. I wrote 'Arthur 
 Stirling' and 'Prince Hagen,' which are pretty much 
 Socialistic works, before I ever met a Socialist. I 
 thought I was the only person who knew those things; 
 I had the burden of it all in my soul at twenty; and then, 
 when I ran into Leonard Abbott and Wilshire I dis- 
 covered it was all known before." 
 
 Sinclair did not feel as I did the necessity of embody- 
 ing t?he two opposing principles of individualism and So- 
 cialism in life, and so I put the question to him: "Do 
 you believe Socialism will supersede individualism? I 
 want the state to take over mamy departments of labor; 
 to resume possession of the land and to nationalize rail- 
 roads, telephones and telegraphs, etc. I hope municipal- 
 ities will take charge of all local public services; but 
 you seem to want Socialism everywhere, seing no short- 
 comings in it." 
 
 Sinclair replied: "I have never doubted Socialism. 
 You see I use the word in a broad sense to mean the 
 change from private ownership and exploitation to so- 
 cial ownership and co-operation. As to ways and 
 methods, etc., I have an open mind, and change it con-
 
 UPTON SINCLAIR 19 
 
 tinually. I am a half- syndicalist, and I understand that 
 the final goal is anarchy, so I can get along with all 
 the sects. I think an open mind is my chief character- 
 istic ; at any rate my belief in it. I try to combine moral 
 passion witih good judgment, and I know it's hard to do 
 because I see so few who even try it. 
 
 "I try to be impersonal; that is rather easy for me, 
 because I am naturally absorbed in ideas. I prefer 
 getting alone and reading about world events to meet- 
 ing anybody. I naturally don't see people. I mean, I 
 don't notice their eyes of Tiair, etc. . . . Sometimes I 
 am rude without being able to help it, because I am 
 easily bored and have great difficulty in controlling 
 myself; I mean that my mind runs away before I know 
 it and I am chasing some thoughts inside myself. 
 
 "I find that I have started out to tell you about my- 
 self as I really am, and as I suppose that's what you 
 want, I'll go on. 
 
 "When I was young, eighteen or so, I thought I was 
 inspired; at any rate I had some sort of a demon inside 
 me and I worked day and night and ate myself up. I 
 set out at seventeen to try and learn the violin, and I 
 practiced ten hours a day, practically every day, for 
 two or three years. I mean that literally; eight to 
 twelve; two to six and eight to ten. Then I got mar- 
 ried and had to work at things that carried at least a hope 
 of money. 
 
 "I had supported myself by writing from the time I 
 was fifteen. But when I got to be twenty (and had 
 marriage in view) a desire to write serious things over-
 
 20 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS 
 
 whelmed me, so I could no longer write the pot-tfoilers, 
 dime novels, jokes, etc., by which I had paid my way 
 through college. 
 
 "From twenty to twenty-six I nearly starved. All 
 my novels of that time 'King Midas', 'Prince Hagen,' 
 'ArtJhur Stirling,' 'Manassas,' and 'A Captain of In- 
 dustry' 'brought me less than one thousand dollars al- 
 together. I lived alone on $4.50 a week in New York 
 and I lived in the country with my family for $30 a 
 month. I really did it had to. Hence my bitterness * 
 and my fury against poverty. They can't fool me with 
 phrases. 
 
 "When I wrote what really interested me I never 
 stopped day or night for weeks at a time. I mean that 
 I had the thing I was writing in my mind every moment 
 I think even while I was asleep. I developed a really 
 extraordinary memory for words; I never put pen to 
 paper till I had whole pages off by heart in my mind. 
 I would walk uip and down thinking it over and over 
 and it would stay in my mind whole scenes. 
 
 "In the Stockyards I came on a wedding and sat and 
 watched it all afternoon and evening, and the whole 
 opening scene of 'The Jungle' took shape in my mind, 
 and I wrote it there and then; I mean in my memory. 
 I never jotted a note, nor a word, but two months later 
 when I settled at home to write I wrote out that scene, 
 and I doubt if three sentences varied. I can still do 
 that. . . ." 
 
 At our first meeting we talked of a hundred things. 
 It was evident at once that Sinclair had the heart of the
 
 UPTON SINCLAIR 21 
 
 matter in him a passionate longing for justice and a 
 better life for the mass of the people. I told him how 
 greatly I admired "The Jungle" and how inevitable it 
 was that it should catdh on in England before it did in 
 the United States and become infinitely more popular 
 in London than in New York. The aristocratic class 
 in Great Britain is fairly well read and has no sympathy 
 whatever with the new-rich whether manufacturers, 
 provision merchants or shopkeepers. Consequently they 
 read of traders' crimes with delight and chuckled over 
 the exposure of the nefarious methods of the meat-kings. 
 Similarly a book exposing the stupidities of the feudal 
 system with its hereditary powers and privileges would 
 be pretty sure to take better in New York than in Lon- 
 don. 
 
 "Your book is a great book," I said to Sinclair, "and 
 there are more people in England able to appreciate high 
 work than there are in the United States." 
 
 He agreed with this dogma a little reluctantly, I 
 thought; b'ut he did agree which Showed extraordinary 
 fairness of vision. 
 
 We parted regretfully and it was not till long after- 
 wards I realized that I could not paint him because I 
 had seen no shortcoming in him, no whimsies of tem- 
 per, no limitation of insight, no lack of sympathy for 
 any high endeavor. 
 
 For years now we've been in correspondence and since 
 I've edited PEARSON'S, Sinclair has written article after 
 article for me and at length I'm able, I think, to trace 
 the orbit of his mind. For if this war has done nothing
 
 22 
 
 else it has tested friendship and tried men as by fire; 
 forcing them to reveal themselves to the very innermost 
 dham'ber of the heart. 
 
 Moreover, I have now read all Sinclair's writings and 
 I may as well confess it at once there's a Puritanism in 
 him that I can't stomach and that, I believe, injures all 
 his work. There is no passionate love-story in any of 
 his writings. Take his latest work, "King Coail," which 
 has just been published by Macmillan. In "King Coal" 
 there is a superb Irish girl who confesses her love for 
 the hero and offers herself to him only to be told by 
 him that he is in love with another girl and engaged to 
 her. There is no love-story in "Love's Pilgrimage," or 
 in "Manassas" or in "The Jungle." Yet I have an un- 
 reasoned conviction that the greatest stories of the world 
 are love-stories and no Tendenz-Schrift, no novel-with- 
 a-purpose, however high, is going to live with the tale 
 of Ruth or Juliet or Manon Lescaut. 
 
 In his essential make-up Sinclair is more like Arnold 
 Bennett than Wells. Arnold Bennett, too, has never 
 been able to write a love-story; but then he has not 
 Sinclair's insight into social conditions, nor Sinclair's 
 passion for justice. His shortcomings don't matter much 
 while Sinclair's fill one with regret. So few are called 
 to great work. Why will not Sinclair put his hand to 
 the plow and give us the masterpiece we expect from him. 
 
 It seems to me that he may do this at any time. He 
 appears to have all the powers necessary and he sees him- 
 self with the detachment of genius. The other day he 
 sent me a eulogy of Jack London that I thought over-
 
 UPTON SINCLAIR 23 
 
 pitched. I -praised Emerson to him and Poe and Whit- 
 man in comparison, and in reply he answered me thus: 
 
 "I find London more interesting as a personality than 
 any of the men you mention. Emerson is much nearer 
 my own temperament because he had a Puritan con- 
 science ; but he was very apt to run to abstractions and 
 to facile optimisms. . . . Poe had imagination without 
 conscience. . . . Jack London was antagonistic to me in 
 many ways but he had the eternal spirit of youth." 
 
 Excellent criticism this, though I don't agree witth 
 the classification; Emerson is among the world's think- 
 ers, the greatest American after Whitman, whereas 
 London in my opinion has done nothing that will live. 
 But it is "the Puritan conscience" or rather the Puritan 
 strain in Sinclair, thinning his blood, which I regard as 
 perhaps his most serious limitation. Here again is his 
 own statement on the subject: 
 
 "Some day I hope to write a novel"; I don't know what 
 the name of it will be, but in my own thoughts I call it 
 my "Sex Utopia." I am going to try to indicate a solu- 
 tion based upon science and adjusted to the economic 
 changes which I feel are 'pending." 
 
 I find in this last sentence the essence, the quiddity 
 of Upton Sinclair. He would seek to solve even this 
 problem with his head and not with (his heart. Yet 
 Vauvenargues found the supreme word when he said : 
 "All great thoughts come from the heart." Now how 
 would the heart solve this puzzle which arises chiefly 
 from the polygamist desire of man ? 
 
 It seems probable to me that the virginity and chas-
 
 24 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS 
 
 tity of women will come in time to be less and less ap- 
 preciated or desired. In this particular as in many others, 
 the French appear to be leading civilization. At the 
 bottom of their hearts they think chastity a matter of 
 small moment (la rigolade) and they esteem free unions 
 when they are serious just as respectfully as marriages. 
 The Anglo-Saxons will of course demand definite in- 
 structions and for them the solution has already been 
 indicated. 
 
 When George Meredith came before the problem he 
 did not ttiesitate to advocate "marriages for a term of 
 years, say ten, due provision being made for the chil- 
 dren." 
 
 But Sinclair would have "a solution based upon 
 science," even in a matter like this which is eminently 
 an affair of the heart and only to be settled by each 
 pair for themselves. But at his best he sees deeper. 
 Here is his thought: 
 
 "I was brought up a Christian, and I followed the 
 ascetic ideal until I was married at twenty-one. I have 
 since come to think that ideal perverted; but on the 
 other hand, I have seen so many deplorable results of 
 promiscuous experimenting among radicals flhat I am 
 very cautious in the ideas I set forth. 
 
 "I can not believe in the present institution of marriage- 
 plus-prostitution. I do believe in early marriage, with 
 divorce by mutual consent at any time. All of our think- 
 ing about sex must at the present stage of things b'e 
 conditioned by the fact of venereal disease, which is so 
 wide-spread, so subtle, and difficult to be sure about-
 
 UPTON SINCLAIR 25 
 
 On this account any sensible person would wish to keep 
 very close to monogamy. 
 
 "On this, as well as on higher grounds, I advocate 
 very early marriage with the prevention of conception 
 until a later period. This early marriage ought to be 
 sensibly regarded as a trial marriage, and there should 
 be no children until it was reasonably certain that the 
 couple was well mated. 
 
 "Ultimately I look forward to maternity pensions, 
 co-operative homes, such as I tried to found at Helicon 
 Hall, and community care of children, wlhich will relax 
 the present strict family regime. I mean it will set free 
 the parents from being slaves to their children. At pres- 
 ent no intellectual people can have children unless they 
 are very wealthy. I know many wretchedly miserable 
 people who stay together on the children's account, and 
 yet it doesn't really help the children who know their 
 parents quarrel and learn to disregard both of them." 
 
 This statement seems to me full of interest yet un- 
 reasonably rational if I may so speak. I think the prob- 
 lem altogether too complex to b'e solved at this time ; 
 to attempt to solve it by "co-operative ihomes," seems to 
 me amusing. Of course the community should be glad 
 to take care of all derelict children, but most mothers 
 would not willingly surrender their rights over their off- 
 spring. The main thing is now to make divorce as easy 
 as marriage, and to be tolerant and sympathetic to all 
 those who go their own way scorning convention and 
 custom. But now to come to the question of the day : 
 
 Why does Sinclair take sides with the Socialists who
 
 26 
 
 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS 
 
 are in favor of prosecuting this unholy world-war with all 
 vigor? He is, of course, a far abler man than Charles 
 Edward &ussell; far better informed too; yet he holds 
 similar opinions. He is convinced that we must democ- 
 ratize Germany in some way or other; he has persuaded 
 himself that the German cherishes dreams of world 
 domination. He does not even rise to the height of 
 the English socialists wiho declared the other day that 
 no one nation was responsible for the war, that all the 
 combatant peoples were equally to 'blame. He writes 
 me that "if we had failed to combat the submarine 
 threat, we should have made a blunder as tragic as if 
 we had failed to support Lincoln in 1860, but I want 
 to make clear that my militarism is only for the period 
 before a German revolution; after tfliat I am for a revo- 
 lution in America and for nothing else." 
 
 My disagreement with Sinclair on these matters is 
 fundamental; I want as many different forms of gov- 
 ernment as there are different peoples and different 
 flowers in a garden. The genius of the Russian and 
 perhaps of the German, is towards Socialism, as the 
 genius of the Englishman and the American is towards 
 individualism ; why should any people wish to constrain 
 another ? 
 
 During the war our differences came to a break. Sin- 
 clair stated in his paper that Lincoln had abrogated in- 
 dividual liberty as completely as Wilson and had sup- 
 pressed as many newpapers. I denied this and asked 
 Sinclair for proofs. He wrote saying he hadn't the
 
 UPTON SINCLAIR 27 
 
 needful books at hand and after the war admitted that 
 he had exaggerated. 
 
 Such a difference between us may seem small; but 
 it is important I think. I believe that the force of gravi- 
 tation operates on minds as on bodies; that the centre- 
 seeking force acts in proportion to the mass and there- 
 fore I anticipated a vastly greater patriotism and im- 
 patience of opposition in 1917-18 than in 1863-4, and 
 the herd-feeling showed itself almost to delirium. I 
 thought it, therefore, the first duty of every a'ble man 
 to defend the liberties of the individual. I was hurt 
 that Sinclair should have thrown himself madly on the 
 pide of the herd-instinct already far too powerful. 
 
 I have indicated such differences of opinion between 
 us because in the main I am in profound agreement with 
 Sinclair and recognize him as a lover of truth at all costs. 
 
 Take for instance his views on personal immortality ; 
 the subject Emerson would not discuss with Carlyle 
 though he recognized their fundamental agreement. Here 
 is what Sinclair thinks : 
 
 "My attitude is a peculiar one. I stopped thinking 
 about it when I was seventeen, which was when I gave 
 up calling myself a Christian. I have had only a mild 
 curiosity about it since, because the present life is so in- 
 tensely interesting to me. If the forces which gave me 
 this life should see fit to give any more I will be pleased, 
 but I do not hold them under any obligation to do so, and 
 the probabilities look to me as if they would not do so. 
 Of course we have to admit that there is a Divinity which 
 shapes our ends because we are products of instinct, and
 
 28 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS 
 
 our reason has been unfolded out of instinct, but I have 
 the idea that reason is or will become a higher power than 
 instinct. My religion is the religion of experimental 
 science, which I believe will ultimately remodel and re- 
 create all life." 
 
 Sinclair's view is nearly mine ; but I have no interest 
 in personal immortality at all. It seems to me a child's 
 dream. I only wish I had realized earlier all one could do 
 with this life and with oneself if only one had understood 
 man's god-like power in youth. Goethe came near the 
 truth : 
 
 "Die Zeit ist mein Vermaechtnis 
 Wie herrlich weit und breit. 
 
 Die Zeit ist mein Vermaechtnis 
 Mein Acker ist die Zeit" 
 
 But even Goethe did not tell us how glorious our in- 
 heritance was, how infinite our powers. We can shape 
 ourselves into Supermen if we will, or better even than 
 that ; we are not only sons of man ; but of God 
 as well, and able to put ourselves into perfect re- 
 lation with the Spirit that made the world and is still 
 growing to its divine fulfilment. And as God one will 
 be able not only to reveal hitherto undreamed of pos- 
 sibilities in the soul, but also exercise an influence which 
 shall alter and beautify the earth-vesture of the Spirit in 
 a way altogether incredible to us today. I believe that 
 as we get better, we ameliorate unconsciously the climate 
 and land in which we live. Blizzards and heat waves are 
 leaving New York as we grow more humane, more con-
 
 UPTON SINCLAIR 29 
 
 siderate of others. The sunsets here are not so lovely as 
 those of the Burgundian plateau because we are too heed- 
 less to love them as the French do; but our skies are 
 inimitably higher here and the air ineffably lightsome be- 
 cause with all our shortcomings, and they are maddening, 
 we have a loftier ideal and a more unselfish than any 
 Latin people. 
 
 It will be said that I have fallen into transcendentalism 
 and lost myself in imaginings but imaginative speculation 
 is to writing what sky is to a landscape and I will not 
 even beg my reader's pardon for the flight. 
 
 To return to Sinclair ; I am not only in close agreement 
 with him, but I have a very genuine admiration for his 
 extraordinary talent. It is seldom that men admire those 
 who resemble them closely. As Anatole France was fond 
 of saying, "I must know all that my contemporaries are 
 thinking so I never read them: they don't interest me." 
 
 I have over Sinclair the sad superiority of the senior : 
 I am more than twenty years older than he is and so 
 inferior to him as a younger-born of Time. He is not 
 yet forty and when I think of all I have learned since I 
 was forty I am ashamed of finding any fault in him ; for 
 in the next twenty years he may outgrow all his limita- 
 tions and make my judging appear impertinent. But at 
 the moment, sixty has perhaps some right to tell forty 
 how to steer between Scylla and-Charybdis between too 
 little self-restraint and too tight a rein particularly if sixty 
 is inclined as in this case, to advocate a more complete 
 self-abandonment. 
 
 In my opinion "The Jungle" is so superb and splendid
 
 30 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS 
 
 , ' ! 
 
 an achievement that it justifies us in hoping even greater 
 
 things from Upton Sinclair. His criticism, too, of others, 
 is excellent; penetrating at once and sympathetic: he 
 even sees himself with exceptional detachment and fair- 
 ness. To set bounds to his accomplishment would be 
 merely impudent; but I am sorry that he has written 
 "King Coal" which is merely another Socialist novel. 
 
 Again and again I return to it: I wish he would fall 
 desperately in love as one falls in love at forty when the 
 heat of summer is still painting itself in gorgeous colors 
 on every fruit and every leaf, making even the forest a 
 flower-bed of indescribable richness and beauty. 
 
 He tells me he is married again and happy. In Pasadena 
 he says the wildflowers are tinted like orchids and breathe 
 forth an almost intolerable wealth of perfume. That's 
 the place for this Emersonian. I want him intoxicated 
 with the heady fragrance of love.
 
 John Galsworthy
 
 JOHN GALSWORTHY: A NOTABLE 
 ENGLISHMAN 
 
 JOHN GALSWORTHY began his literary work 
 about thirty 'by writing a novel; in the next ten 
 years he had produced three or four; I looked 
 through one of them, but didn't think much of it; the 
 feeling in it was not profound and the style meager -tame. 
 In 1906, when he was forty, "The Man of Property" 
 appeared, and about the same time a play of his, "The 
 Silver Box," made a sort of hit. I read "The Man of 
 Property," but it did not change my opinion materially, 
 though it showed development. Galsworthy had taken 
 the next step and now used an economy of means that 
 betokened a mastery of his instrument. 
 
 There was a good deal of talk about him at this time 
 and I gathered that he was a Devon man, belonged to 
 the so-called upper middle-class and was fairly well-to- 
 do. Suddenly, in 1910 I think it was, his play, "Jus- 
 tice," struck the nerves and drew the town. The piece 
 was well constructed, that we had expected, and at the 
 same time the morality of our "justice" was put on trial 
 and our legal punishment shown to be tragic. With 
 "Justice" Galsworthy came into the first rank of con- 
 temporaries, was now someone to know and watch. 
 
 I was not much in London at the time and we didn't 
 meet. The other day I heard that he was to lecture in 
 
 3 1
 
 32 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS 
 
 the afternoon at the Aeolian Hall, New York, and I 
 went. The hall was more than half full an excellent 
 audience. 
 
 Galsworthy came to the platform in ordinary walk- 
 ing clothes, went over to the reading-desk, smoothed 
 out his MSS. and began half to recite, half to read his 
 lecture. He is about medium height, spare of habit and 
 vigorous, his head long, well-shaped; his features fairly 
 regular, a straight nose, high forehead; he is almost 
 completely bald and wears glasses. His voice is very 
 pleasant, clear and strong enough; he uses it without 
 much modulation ; gets his effects rather by pauses than 
 by emphasis; has every peculiarity of the writer and 
 not the speaker. 
 
 His essay dealt with the various elements of forma- 
 tive force in our civilization. It was interspersed clev- 
 erly with stories, not invented by the speaker, and I 
 caught myself saying again and again half in approval, 
 "how English he is and how pleasant!" 
 
 Then it struck me that if I could give Americans this 
 mental picture of Galsworthy as an Englishman of the 
 best class and an excellent specimen to boot, it might 
 be interesting; do some good; at any rate the portrait 
 would be worth doing. Accordingly, at the end of the 
 first 'hour, I began to note what he said, or was it that 
 about this time he began to say things that interested 
 me? 
 
 He spoke of Bolshevism at some length and very 
 sensibly, with infinitely more understanding, of course,
 
 JOHN GALSWORTHY 33 
 
 than Senators Overman, Wolcott and Company, though 
 without sympathy. 
 
 In the evolution of human society, fee said, a revolt, 
 and much more a revolution, was in itself a proof of 
 injustice, of wrong done probably to the lowest classes, 
 and of suffering brought upon the workmen and their 
 families unjustly. Clearly the lessons taught by Car- 
 lyle have at length sunk into the English consciousness 
 and tinged all thought. 
 
 Not a word did Galsworthy say about "outrages," of 
 which we have heard so much from our lawmakers who 
 are far too busy to restrain lynchings; but a caution 
 against accepting glib statements of the press that were 
 manifestly inaccurate. 
 
 The press, Mr. Galsworthy insisted, should be very 
 careful to tell the truth and the whole truth, or its in- 
 fluence might be evil rather than good. Did he mean to 
 hint that our American papers were more careless of 
 truth than even English papers? I think he did, and as 
 far as the "kept" press goes I believe he would have been 
 justified in speaking his mind plainly. 
 
 But now to return to Bolshevism. It never seemed to 
 occur to Mr. Galsworthy that the motive power of 
 revolution might not be so much an uprising against 
 injustice and a resistance of wrong as an attempt to 
 realize a great hope, a resolve to shatter the framework 
 of society to bits in order to remould it "nearer to the 
 heart's desire." But if he had kaown Lenin or Trotzky 
 or indeed any of the English labor leaders, such as 
 Clynes or Thomas or Lansbury, 'he would have known
 
 34 
 
 that there is a new ideal abroad in the world and the 
 hearts of men are thrilling with a glorious hope of end- 
 ing or at least of mending this dreadful competitive 
 society, all organized by and for individual greed where 
 the many sheep are the prey of the few wolves, and in- 
 justice is built up to insane lengths by the principle 
 of inheritance. 
 
 But your well-bred Englishman is always an upholder 
 of the established fact, always prone to find virtue in 
 whatever exists. He would make some man of property, 
 some educated Sancho Panza his hero and the American, 
 it now appears, would go even further and turn Don 
 Quixote's idealism into comic relief or even confine the 
 noble Don himself in some lunatic asylum or jail. 
 
 Galsworthy went on to speak of the League of Nations 
 as another influence for good in our civilization, and 
 here I confess his Anglicism surprised me. He declared 
 very contemptuously that the League of Nations in his 
 opinion was " a lost dbg" save in so far as it was founded 
 on Anglo-Aimerican unity. I simply gasped at this way 
 of ensuring a world peace. And his English concep- 
 tion of democracy was just a little one-sided. "A democ- 
 racy," he said, "like every other system of government, 
 is there to pick out the best men and give them the 
 greatest amount of power; in fact a democracy is there 
 simply to affirm the true spirit of aristocracy." 
 
 It was plain that in spite of clear-cut phrases and the 
 epigrammatic endings of not a few of his paragraphs 
 Mr. Galsworthy was steadily losing his hold of his au- 
 dience. The most English-loving Americans would
 
 JOHN GALSWORTHY 35 
 
 hardly agree with this definition of democracy, and per- 
 haps Mr. Galsworthy felt this, for his peroration was 
 evidently designed as a sop to American feeling. With 
 much earnestness, and Mr. Galsworthy is able to convey 
 a great sense of seriousness and sincerity in his quiet 
 way, he declared that the most perfect man, the greatest 
 civilizing influence in four centuries, was George 
 Washington! not Owen, or Fourrier, or Marx; not 
 Goethe, or Lincoln, or Carlyle, no, Washington. And 
 that was the end. 
 
 A day or two afterwards I had a talk with Gals- 
 worthy in his hotel. 
 
 Seen close to, his face becomes more interesting; the 
 serious blue eyes can laugh; the lips are large and well- 
 cut, promising a good deal of feeling, but the character- 
 istic expression of the face is seriousness and sincerity. 
 
 I began by praising his insistence that a democracy 
 as a method of government must be judged by its success 
 in producing the best men. 
 
 "Still, that is not all the truth, is it?" I queried. 
 "Surely the sense that the race is an open one and that 
 we all have had a chance in it makes defeat easier to 
 bear than when some person is put above us simply be- 
 cause he is the son of his father." 
 
 Mr. Galsworthy shrugged his shoulders; it seemed im- 
 material to him. 
 
 "Don't you feel," I went on, "that while there is a 
 little greater love of freedom perhaps in England than 
 in America, there is a certain sense of equality here that 
 is unknown and unappreciated in Great Britain?"
 
 
 36 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS 
 
 He looked at me as if he hardly understood. 
 
 "I merely mean," I went on, "that the ordinary man 
 in America is able if he gets an opportunity to speak to 
 a governor, or senator or the, President and shake hands 
 with him, on an equal footing, whereas in England he 
 would find that impossible with any person in authority. 
 In fact, even the distance from Mr. Lloyd George, let us 
 say, to Lord Lansdowne, is a very long one indeed." 
 
 "Well, perhaps," said Galsworthy, desirous of being 
 fair-minded but unpersuaded. 
 
 I broke new ground. "Your praise of George Wash- 
 ington absolutely took our breath away. A good many 
 Americans think Lincoln a far greater man, and I am 
 afraid I share that view. How on earth did you get 
 the idea of George Washington's greatness?" 
 
 "He did such great things," said Galsworthy, "and 
 he remained so eminently well-balanced so sane." 
 
 I could not help smiling: the English ideal of bal- 
 ance and sanity to be the measuring-stick of humanity. 
 
 "I'm just reading of Tom Paine," I said, "I cannot 
 help thinking him a far bigger man than Washington. 
 Perhaps it would do me good to write a eulogy of Wash- 
 ington and you a panegyric of Paine," and we laughed. 
 
 The talk wandered off to Ireland and Egypt and Mes- 
 opotamia. Galsworthy said that an American had told 
 him that the poor people had never b'een so well off in 
 Mesopotamia as since the English had come there: lie 
 thought that the fellaheen in Egypt had never been so 
 prosperous as under British rule; but he was too fair- 
 minded and truth-loving to delude himself with the
 
 37 
 
 same argument in regard to Ireland. He evidently 
 believed that the failure of British rule in Ireland was 
 an economic failure. He did not attempt to shut his 
 eyes to the fact that the population of Ireland under 
 British rule has shrunk from over eight millions to 
 under four in less than a century. Still an Irish Re- 
 public seemed to him extravagant, almost absurd. He 
 wanted to know why the Irish demands have increased. 
 Why the Irish wanted Home Rule thirty years ago 
 while today they want an Irish Republic? 
 
 I laughed. "I might say that it was a result of fur- 
 ther experience of British rule," I replied, "but I do not 
 think that. I think the difficulty is a little the Egyptian 
 difficulty. Forty or fifty years ago the priests of Ire- 
 land used to be educated on the continent, at St. Omer in 
 France. Now they are all educated at Maynooih and 
 are merely educated Irish peasants. Formerly they had 
 a cosmopolitan training which inclined them to toler- 
 ance of English ways of thought and feeling; now it is 
 different: they are pure Irish. 
 
 Again Mr. Galsworthy's serious eyes brooded: 
 
 "I wonder why you don't agree with my view of a 
 League of Nations?" he said. "It seems to me so plain 
 that the peace of the world can only be kept by an Anglo- 
 American alliance." 
 
 "What heresy," I cried. "I think that such a league 
 would sooner or later provoke a counter-league of Russia 
 and Germany and, perhaps, Japan and result in another 
 world-war. I don't believe that Russia, Japan and Ger- 
 many will ever accept British supremacy of the seas now
 
 38 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS 
 
 that they have found out how vital it is to success in war. 
 Do you think that Russia with 180,000,000 of people a 
 country three times the size of the United States and 
 with almost double the population will sit down for 
 say a century to come in a position of absolute inferior- 
 ity to England and America and accept their alien 
 domination? The whole idea to me is insane. 
 
 "Like a great many others I dreamed of another 
 League of Nations. I believed that Mr. Wilson would 
 call the representatives of Germany and Russia to the 
 peace table ; and that he would begin by saying that here 
 there was no conquered and no conqueror; that now the 
 Germans and Russians had got rid of their autocratic 
 governments the time had come to treat them as friends 
 and equals and settle everything equally and justly 
 generously even. Lincoln would have done this. Now 
 Austria is dismembered and starving: Germany maimed 
 and mutilated: Russia attacked north, south, east, and 
 west by her own Allies while the conquerors squabble and 
 fight over the spoils." 
 
 The light died out of Galworthy's eyes. "We must 
 agree to differ," he said drily. 
 
 The talk drifted to books and writers, and quite 
 honestly I praised his "Justice," confessing that I pre- 
 ferred it to "The Man of Property," which seemed to 
 surprise him. "There is infinitely more feeling in it," 
 I said, "a passionate appeal to a 'higher justice than is 
 to be found in English law." 
 
 "What a rebel you are!" he exclaimed. 
 
 "What are you now going to tell us about America?"
 
 JOHN GALSWORTHY 39 
 
 "I know so little," he replied; "I have been here 
 only three months and I was here before in 1912. It is 
 so hard to learn anything about it; it seems to be with- 
 out marked features. How can an artist picture it?" 
 
 "Yet O. Henry did," I said. 
 
 "Yes," he admitted at once. "Yes, very interesting 
 work his; very vital." 
 
 "And David Graham Phillips," I went on. "Have 
 you read him?" 
 
 "No," he replied; "No, I think I have read one book 
 of his; it didn't make much impression on me." 
 
 "Yet he is almost of Balzac's class," I ventured. 
 
 "Really," he cried in wonder; "really; you surprise 
 me! I must read him. What are his best books?" 
 
 "I'll send some to you." I replied. 
 
 "That would be kind of you," he said, "and then: 
 
 "What do you think of Masefield? I admire some of 
 his work so much." 
 
 "I think ihim over- rated," I replied, "just as I think 
 the war-poets altogether over-estimated." 
 
 "Did you like "Nan?" he insisted. 
 
 "Not particularly," I replied. 
 
 "Did you meet Masefield when he was in New York ?" 
 
 "No, I had no wish to meet him. You know if you 
 hadn't written "Justice" I probably shouldn't be here 
 today. I look on 'J ust i ce ' as a great play: I put it 
 with Hauptman's 'Die Weber.' I am grateful to you 
 for it. Go on in that vein. What are you doing now ?" 
 
 "Another novel," he said.
 
 40 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS 
 
 "Ah! I said, "I have always thought a new novel 
 meant a new love affair a new passion." 
 
 "O, no," he replied. "Surely one love can furnish 
 forth a good manny books." 
 
 And so we parted almost without meeting. To Gals- 
 worthy "democracy" is a mere word, and "the League 
 of Nations" nothing more than an Anglo-American al- 
 liance, and Russian Bolshevism, the symptomatic rash 
 of a social disease. 
 
 To some of us, on the other hand, the Peace Confer- 
 ence has been a heart-breaking disappointment; democ- 
 racy 'has in it the sacred kernel of the brotherhood of 
 man and the Bolshevik republic is the greatest and most 
 unselfisih attempt ever made to bring Justice into life. 
 
 Galsworthy's Anglicism must not be taken to be the 
 best even in England. He is handicapped by 'his social 
 advantages. The other day I read a speech of Robert 
 Smillie, the labor leader of the English miners, who has 
 reached a higher height than any of the so-called edu- 
 cated English. At a recent meeting he said : 
 
 "The German and Austrian people are not to be 
 blamed for the war. All children are our children, 
 whether they live in England, France or Germany. If 
 it was wrong for the Germans to come over here to kill 
 men, women and little babies with their hellish machines 
 of war, was it not also wrong that we should use the 
 power we have to starve the German women and chil- 
 dren?" 
 
 The heart of England is not in the educated classes. 
 
 But Galsworthy is still growing. His new book "Five
 
 JOHN GALSWORTHY 41 
 
 Tales" (Scribner's) forces me to amend the above judg- 
 ment which I do gladly. As I have said already I am 
 not an admirer of his stories. And at first this book 
 struck me like the rest. 
 
 The first story in it called "The First and the Last" 
 seemed to me a failure ; none of the personages in it ex- 
 cept the lawyer brother was realized at all, and he not 
 realized deeply. Seventy-five pages that you forget at 
 once. 
 
 The next story, "A Stoic" -a sort of tale of the city 
 and company promotion and the inherent thefts of the 
 strong man from the weak, is better done ; the atmosphere 
 and surroundings are perfectly caught ; the ability of the 
 old commercial buccaneer excellently rendered ; the man's 
 love of power and riches ; his love, too, of a good dinner 
 and a good drink all splendidly realized ; but the whole 
 thing sordid, grimy, not lifted to the sunlight by any 
 passion or any hope. Two hundred pages of stuff for the 
 intelligence; very little for the heart; nothing for the 
 soul. 
 
 Almost daunted I began the next story, "The Apple 
 Tree." and very soon I became enchanted ; lost in a real 
 love story a love story most beautifully told. The at- 
 mosphere and surroundings perfectly rendered; a great 
 landscape; the English country in spring magically re- 
 presented : 
 
 "Spring was a revelation to him this year. In a kind of 
 intoxication he would watch the pink-white buds of some 
 backward peach tree sprayed up in the sunlight against 
 the deep blue sky, or the trunks and limbs of the few
 
 42 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS 
 
 Scotch firs, tawny in violet light, or again, on the moor, 
 the gaile-bent larches in their young green, above the 
 rusty black under-boughs. Or he would lie on the banks, 
 gazing at the clusters of dog-violets, or up in the dead 
 bracken, fingering the pink, transparent buds of the dew- 
 berry, while the cuckoos called and yaffles laughed, or a 
 lark, from very high, dripped its beads of song. It was 
 certainly different from any spring he had ever known, 
 for spring was withia him, not without." 
 
 How fine that is ; the lark "dripped its beads of song !" 
 And the love story itself; the passion of it and the 
 abandonment, more perfectly rendered still. I do not 
 think there are many pages in English of finer quality 
 than this, I am going to quote. The only one I remem- 
 ber is in "Richard Feverel," and this is worthy to be 
 remembered beside that most magnificent love idyll : 
 
 "He caught hold of her hands, but she shrank back, 
 till her passionate little face and loose dark hair were 
 caught among the pink clusters of the apple blossom, 
 Ashurst raised one of her imprisoned hands and put his 
 lips to it. He felt how chivalrous he was, amd superior to 
 that clod Joe just brushing that small, rough hand with 
 his mouth ! Her shrinking ceased suddenly ; she seemed 
 to tremble towards him. A sweet warmth overtook 
 Ashurst from top to toe. This slim maiden, so simple 
 and fine and pretty, was pleased then, at the touch of his 
 lips ! And, yielding to a swift impulse, he put his arms 
 round her, pressed her to him, and kissed her forehead. 
 Then he was frightened she went so pale, closing her 
 eyes, so that the long dark lashes lay on her pale cheeks ;
 
 JOHN GALSWORTHY 43 
 
 her hands, too, lay inert at her sides. The touch of her 
 breast sent a quiver through him. "Megan!" he sighed 
 out, and let her go. In the utter silence a blackbird 
 shouted. Then the girl seized his hand, put it to her 
 cheek, her heart, her lips, kissed it passionately, and fled 
 away among the mossy trunks of the apple trees, till they 
 hid her from him." 
 
 The dreadful tragedy of preferring a commonplace 
 girl to a "lyric love" is brought out, it is true, but not 
 realized so successfully. Megan, the little Welsh girl, 
 who died of love with "beauty printed on her," is simply 
 unforgetable. 
 
 Just the last words of the story are shocking. It ought 
 to have ended with Ashurst's repeating his wife's "Some- 
 thing's wanting," by "Yes, something's wanting." But 
 the putting "his lips solemnly to his wife's forehead" 
 sihould be cut out in another edition. We are not in- 
 terested in the wife ! 
 
 There are other stories in the book. I do not remember 
 them. I have read this one half a dozen times already, 
 and it lives with me as part of the furniture of my mind 
 so long as this machine shall last. It is better than 
 "Justice." It is one of the short stories of the world. 
 
 Having written this, Galsworthy may do anything, may 
 yet write a masterpiece, will write one, I'd say, were he 
 not an Englishman. In the realm of the spirit that to- 
 day is a heavy handicap.
 
 CUNNINGHAME GRAHAM 
 
 3Bratmt bg 
 MOORKPARK
 
 CUNNINGHAME GRAHAM 
 
 CUNNINGHAME GRAHAM, when I first saw him, 
 was something more than a very handsome man : he 
 was picturesque and had an air with him. He might 
 have been the subject of a portrait by Zurbaran of some 
 Spanish noble who had followed Cortes. As soon as I 
 knew him I always called him to myself El Conquis- 
 tador. Graham was above middle height, of slight 
 nervous strong figure, very well dressed, the waist even 
 defined, with a touch of exoticism in loose necktie or soft 
 hat; in coloring the reddish brown of a chestnut; the 
 rufous hair very thick and upstanding; the brown 
 beard trimmed to a point and floating moustache ; the ova' 
 of the face a little long ; the nose Greek ; large blue eyCi 
 that could become inscrutable as agate or ingenuous, res- 
 ponsive ; eyes at once keen, observant and reflective ; both 
 light and depth in them. 
 
 He was never taken for a dandy or merely a handsome 
 gentleman ; you felt a certain reserve in him of pride or 
 perhaps of conscious intelligence ; he was "some one," as 
 the French say. 
 
 I noticed him first at a Socialist meeting. William 
 Morris was there and Bernard Shaw, I think, and Cham- 
 pion, the ex-artillery officer, and Hyndman, the Marxian 
 leader of the party in the mid-eighties. Graham had evi- 
 dently not studied the economic question; but was en- 
 
 45
 
 46 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS 
 
 listed on the side of the poor and the workman, partly by 
 a sense of justice, partly by an aristocratic disdain of 
 riches and the unscrupulous greed that acquires riches. 
 
 "Why should we honor the wolves ?" was his argument, 
 "who break into the sheepfold and kill, not to satisfy their 
 hunger, even; one could forgive them that; but out of 
 blood-lust. Your rich contractor or banker is a mere 
 blood-sucker; why tolerate him? Pay good watch dogs 
 to protect you and kill the wolves as noxious brutes." 
 
 There was disdain of his audience in every word, in his 
 attitude even ; he had an artist's contempt for their lack of 
 vision, an adventurer's scorn for their muddy, slow blood. 
 The next time I met him was riding in Hyde Park. It 
 used to be sa5d that nobody could ride in the Row who 
 wasn't properly dressed, and by "properly" in England 
 they mean conventionally dark coat, dark trousers 
 tightly strapped over patent boots. But Graham was in 
 breeches and brown boots, as indeed I was ; but then he 
 wore a sombrero besides and was mounted on a mustang 
 of many colors, with inordinately long mane and tail. 
 
 "Some circus rider," was one remark I heard made 
 about him. 
 
 We came together naturally, as outlaws do; for I 
 wanted to know why Graham rode a piebald, and he was 
 eager, as every horse-lover, to extol the qualities of his 
 mount. I found that, like Wilfred Scawen Blunt, the 
 poet, who believed in the pure Arab strain, Graham be- 
 lieved in the speed of South American mustangs. I told 
 him about Blunt and how he had imported some of the 
 best-bred animals from the north of Africa. He had ar-
 
 CUNNINGHAME GRAHAM 47 
 
 ranged a race with some ordinary English platers, and 
 his Arab fliers had been ignominiously beaten. 
 
 Graham wouldn't believe it, and the end of it was we 
 made up a race. We agreed to wait till one o'clock till 
 most of the equestrians had gone home to lunch and then 
 try our mounts up the Ladies' Mile. The horse I was 
 riding was nearly thoroughbred, but only about 15^2 
 hands high, so the match did not look unfair. But the 
 English horse had a rare turn of speed and could do half 
 a mile in about fifty seconds, something like racehorse 
 pace. We told the inspector of police of our intention, 
 and at once, Briton-like, he took a keen interest in the 
 match, and said he would tell his men to keep the course 
 clear. 
 
 When we came to Hyde Park Corner about one o'clock 
 we found quite a little crowd ; we started at a hand gallop 
 and went down the slope side by side, the crowd cheering 
 "Gryhim, Gryhim ! Well done, Gri-im !" in strong Cockney 
 accents. As we breasted the hill I slid forward, crouch- 
 ing on the pad, and gave my horse his head, and at once 
 we left Graham as if he had been standing still. When 
 I drew up at the railings, I was some 200 yards ahead. 
 
 "You were right," said Graham courteously : "I'd never 
 have believed it. I'm just as much astonished as you say 
 Blunt was ; but you don't ride a bit like a cowboy ; where 
 did you get that jockey seat ?" 
 
 "I'm rather ashamed of it," I replied. "I always rode 
 all the races for our Kansas bunch as a boy on the trail. 
 I was the lightest, and I soon found out that the further 
 forward I got on the withers, the easier it was for my
 
 48 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS 
 
 horse. But you ride like a Centaur, with easy swaying 
 balance, like the figures on a Greek frieze. I fall natur- 
 ally into the professional way of doing everything. I 
 suppose it is my intense combativeness ; anyway, I'm a 
 little ashamed of it sometimes." 
 
 "Why should you be ?" he replied courteously. "I ima- 
 gine it is the desire in you to excel ; and what better desire 
 could a man have?" 
 
 "It is the desire to excel," I answered, "carried to 
 such an extent that one is careless of grace or comfort. 
 I sometimes think I should have been better without the 
 American 'speeding-up'." 
 
 That race made us friends, for Graham came to lunch 
 with me, and we swapped stories for hours, he telling of 
 the Pampas of the Argentine and Uruguay, giving weird 
 word-pictures of that Spanish and Indian civilization, and 
 I of the trail three thousand miles long that ran from 
 Laramie and the Platte river down through Kansas and 
 Texas to the Rio Grande : 
 
 "The old trail, the wide trail, the trail that the 
 buffalo made." 
 
 We had many points of contact ; we were both outlaws 
 by nature ; both eager to live to the uttermost, preferring 
 life to any transcript of it. Moreover, though he knew 
 Spanish and the religious-romantic Spanish nature far 
 more intimately than I did, and revealed himself in his 
 love of it, yet I too had been attracted by Spain and had 
 learned something of its life and literature, just as he had 
 got to know a good deal about America.
 
 CUNNINGHAMS GRAHAM 49 
 
 His deep and intimate understanding of the Spanish 
 people had freed him from the narrow English self-appre- 
 ciation by discovering to him the hard materialism of the 
 Anglo-Saxon nature. Every now and then words fell 
 from him and can be found even in his stories that show 
 this detachment: 
 
 "Does any Englishman really respect a woman ia his 
 heart ?" he asked one day, and I could not but smile, for 
 the same question had come to me so often that I had had 
 to answer it. It is the exceptional man of any race who 
 really esteems the feminine mind and spirit. We reach 
 a certain point in growth where the way is closed to us 
 unless we begin to trust our intuitions and act on them 
 as women do. Then first we begin really to respect 
 women. And as Englishmen like consistency of character 
 and strength better than width of vision and distrust 
 change, without which growth is impossible, compara- 
 tively few Englishmen ever reach reverence for what dif- 
 fers from their essentially masculine ideal. Graham felt 
 all this much as I did. 
 
 Then, too, he was sceptical of the much-vaunted 
 modern "progress." He saw that the enormous growth 
 of wealth due in the main to man's conquest of nature 
 had increased and not lessened social inequality, and 
 especially the inequality of condition. "The poor today 
 are on the starvation line," he used to cry indignantly, 
 "while the rich are portentously richer than ever before." 
 His sense of justice was shocked and his vein of pessim- 
 ism deepened by this observation. He did not see that 
 all readjustments take time, centuries even, and, after all,
 
 50 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS 
 
 centuries are only moments in the soul's growth. I was 
 attracted by his clearness of vision, and above all by his 
 courageous acceptance of all he did see. Graham had no 
 wish to hoodwink himself, and that was a tie between us. 
 If he had ever been a student and had submitted to 
 the training of a German university we might have been 
 still more alike ; but Graham had always had a silver-gilt 
 spoon in his mouth; he had always had money and posi- 
 tion and had learned what he liked and left unlearned 
 what did not appeal to him, and that privileged position 
 has its inevitable drawbacks : 
 
 "Who never ate his bread with tears, 
 He knows you not, you heavenly powers." 
 
 The next time I saw Graham was at a meeting in 
 Trafalgar Square in defense of free speech. I forget 
 what the occasion was ; but he was there with John Burns 
 and I think Shaw, and was cheered to the echo. No 
 finer or more characteristic pair than he and Burns could 
 be imagined ; his slight figure and handsome face showed 
 the aristocrat at his best, and Burns with his square 
 powerful form and strong leonine head, was the very 
 model of a workingman. Shaw, a sort of Mephisto in 
 appearance, but certainly a man of genius, did not fit in 
 any category. But Graham's gallantry and Burns' resolve 
 and Shaw's talent were all nullified by the brute force of 
 the police. The end of the scrimmage was that Burns, 
 Graham and half a dozen others spent the night in a police 
 cell on some hypocritical charge of obstructing the traffic.
 
 CUNNINGHAME GRAHAM 51 
 
 And next morning all the middle-class papers spoke with 
 contempt and disgust of both men, the editors never 
 dreaming that the one was soon to be a Cabinet Minister, 
 while the other belonged to a still higher class. 
 
 The next meeting with Graham that made an impres- 
 sion on me was in the House of Commons. In the in- 
 terval Graham had become a member of the House, and 
 his reception enabled me to judge it from an altogether 
 new angle. 
 
 "Every man finds his true level in the House of Com- 
 mons," is a favorite shibboleth of the English. I had 
 always doubted it and often argued about it with Sir 
 Charles Dilke, who, by virtue of his French training, was 
 peculiarly fairminded. 
 
 "The House," I said, "is made up of fourth-form 
 schoolboys with a leaven of men of talent. They want to 
 be fair and are fair to ordinary men ; they might even be 
 fair to a man of genius provided he had great parlia- 
 mentary or oratorical power; but the highest form of 
 genius would have a sorry reception there and a hard 
 time of it." 
 
 Dilke would never admit it. 
 
 "How do you account for the way they took to Brad- 
 laugh ?" he asked. 
 
 "After treating him for years like a knave," I replied, 
 "they came to recognize at long last his high courage and 
 noble character, chiefly because he had strong English 
 prejudices, was an individualist and staunch believer in 
 the rights of property ; in other words, high character, 
 great fighting power and second-rate intelligence won
 
 52 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS 
 
 their hearts in the long run. But the long contest broke 
 Bradlaugh, and he died untimely in the hour of triumph." 
 
 "Then what do you say of Tim Healy?" Dilke per- 
 sisted; "he's clever enough, God knows, and 'has no 
 English prejudices. How do you account for his suc- 
 cess?" 
 
 "He's not very successful," I retorted; "even now, 
 after twenty odd years of striving; but take Lord Hugh 
 Cecil; he has everything the English like; great name 
 and place; he stands, too, for all the English household 
 gods ; believes in property, in the oligarchy, is unaffected- 
 ly religious and goes to church twice every Sunday ; and 
 yet because he has a streak of genius in him they won't 
 have him. They give his dull brother, Lord Robert Cecil, 
 place and power ; but they keep Lord Hugh at a distance. 
 The English simtply 'hate and fear genius. To them it is 
 an unforgivable sin, and that's why their houses will be 
 left unto them desolate." 
 
 Dilke wouldn't have it, yet Cunninghame Graham 
 came to the House and the House wouldn't listen to him ; 
 simply gave him, or rather gave themselves, no chance. 
 Of course, he made all sorts of blunders. Every one is 
 listened to in the House of Commons the first time he 
 speaks; a maiden speech takes precedence of all others, 
 and so able men, as a rule, make their maiden effort in 
 some great debate, where they are sure of a large 
 audience. Graham, conscious probably of great powers, 
 wasted this opportunity, and afterwards he would have 
 had to make himself known to the Speaker by constantly 
 speaking to empty benches, and even then would have
 
 CUNNINGHAME GRAHAM 53 
 
 had to get up half a dozen times on any important oc- 
 casion before he could "catch the Speaker's eye," as the 
 phrase goes. But whenever he prepared, he tried in vain 
 to catch the Speaker's eye, and when 'by assiduity he got 
 a chance, the waiting and the rebuffs had taken the 
 steam out of him. And yet he was an admirable speaker 
 at his best, just as he was and is a most excellent writer. 
 
 How good a writer he was I learned soon after I took 
 the editorship of The Saturday Review in 1894. He came 
 in and told me of a recent visit he had made to Spain and 
 Africa and how he had enjoyed the art of the Prado and 
 the wild, free life in Morocco. 
 
 "I've brought you a little sketch of an incident," he 
 said, handing me a manuscript, "if you care to use it." 
 
 "Surely," I replied at once ; "I'll be delighted ; I'm cer- 
 tain I shall have a treat." And so strongly had Graham's 
 personality affected me that I did feel certain he would 
 do noteworthy work. 
 
 After he left I found I could not read his handwriting, 
 a dreadful spidery scrawl, so I sent the sketch to the 
 printer and when I read it in print I was charmed. Gra- 
 ham, it was clear, was a born writer of the best; very 
 simple, without a trace of pose or mannerism or effort, 
 getting all his effects by some daring image or splash 
 of color a strange trait of character or weird peculiarity 
 of mind and above all by a spiritual sense of the in- 
 timate relation between persons and scenes, as if the 
 Gaucho's mind had some of the vagueness and empty 
 void of the Pampas and as if his soul was like that 
 Southern atmosphere, subject to sudden rare storms of
 
 54 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS 
 
 singular violence. Graham paints like one of the school 
 of Goya, a Zuloaga, for instance, who has been touched 
 by French influence. 
 
 I remember one occasion that proved his genius as a 
 writer triumphantly. One evening I heard that William 
 Morris had died. Next day Arthur Symons asked me 
 to let him write on Morris' poetry; a little later Shaw 
 blew in with the declaration that he wanted to write on 
 Morris as a Socialist. 
 
 "All right," I agreed; "but stretch yourself, for Gra- 
 ham will describe the funeral, and his stuff'll be hard 
 to beat." 
 
 Shaw grinned; he, too, knew that Graham was a 
 master. 
 
 When the articles came in both Shaw's and Symons' 
 were most excellent, but Graham's had abiding value, 
 was indeed literature and not journalism at all. He 
 merely described what had happened; the meeting of a 
 dozen famous men at the train, the dreary walk from 
 the station to the cottage, and then the following the 
 coffin to the grave and the wordless parting. He told 
 how the few flowers wilted and cringed in the bleak 
 wind and how eloquent men were content to exchange 
 glances and hand-clasps and part in silence. Every 
 sentence seemed to drag heavy with grief, and there was 
 a sense of unshed tears and the unspeakable tragedy of 
 death in the very quietude of the undistinguished ending. 
 
 A great writer, is Cunninghame Graham! Three or 
 four of his best stories will live with the best of Kipling. 
 
 One later impression: I met him at an evening party
 
 CUNNINGHAME GRAHAM 55 
 
 in 1912, I think, in the house of a Spaniard named 
 Triano, the Envoy or Ambassador from some Spanish 
 South American State. 
 
 I had not seen Graham for perhaps fifteen years; he 
 had altered indefinably. His 'hair was sprinkled with 
 gray; the slight figure was as well set up and alert as 
 ever; but the fine coloring had faded and the light of 
 the eyes was dimmed; he had grown old, the spring of 
 hope had left 'him. 
 
 The Spanish setting suited him, brought out his dignity 
 and fine courtesy; he spoke Spanish like a native who 
 was also a man of genius, and our host took delight in 
 praising him to me as the only Briton he had ever met 
 who might be mistaken for a Spaniard un hidalgo an 
 aristocrat; he hastened to add: He's a great writer, too; 
 isn't he?' 
 
 "Yes," I replied, a little hesitatingly, and then the 
 word came to me, the true word, I think, "Graham's an 
 amateur of genius." 
 
 "That's it!" cried Triano, delightedly. "I know just 
 what you mean. He does not take his work seriously, 
 doesn't use the file on every phrase, seeking perfection; 
 he's a little heedless and his success haphazardous, eh? 
 His true metier is that of a gentleman-courtier; he s'hould 
 have been English ambassador at the Court of Madrid." 
 
 When I talked to Graham that evening I found him 
 saddened. The sense of the transitoriness of life was 
 heavy on him: 
 
 "Where are they all?" he asked; "the old reviewers?
 
 56 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS 
 
 McColl, Runciman, Max, Shaw and the rest; do you 
 ever see them?" 
 
 "From time to time," I replied. "Shaw is married, 
 you know, and Max, too; Runciman is dead, Wells lives 
 in Essex; and McColl at the Tate Gallery; we are all 
 more settled and none of us getting younger. . . ." 
 
 "None of us," he said, sighing; "how fast life streams 
 past! Are you as eager as ever?" 
 
 "I think so," I answered. "I look forward as hopefully 
 as I did at sixteen; indeed, I believe I'm more eager, 
 more hopeful, certainly more firmly resolved than I was 
 as a young man." 
 
 ~""I wish I could say as much/ sighed Graham; "life's 
 worth while, of course ; but it hasn't the glamor and magic 
 it used to have, and the younger generation aren't very 
 interesting, are they ?" 
 
 "Some of them interest me hugely," I said; "there's 
 Middleton Murry, with the Rhythm he edits, and a young 
 sculptor, Gaudier-Brzeska, and Augustus John and Fer- 
 guson and Jimmy Pryde and Lovat Fraser all gifted, all 
 likely to do big things. . . ." 
 
 "I don't know any of them," he said ; "where are they 
 to be found ? How young you keep !" and then, "Where 
 are you living now ?" 
 
 Somehow or other this meeting and Graham's sadness 
 made me ask a friend of his a day or two later how Gra- 
 ham lived : whether he was hard up ? 
 
 "Hard up ?" exclaimed our friend ; "he has ten thousand 
 a year at least; but he's a Scot and thrifty; 'near,' we 
 call it."
 
 57 
 
 The incident showed me how little I knew of Graham ; 
 how reticent he was or proud with that curious secretive 
 pride which is so Scotch and so Spanish. 
 
 Graham's stories are almost unknown in these United 
 States, and yet I fancy they would be popular or at least 
 keenly appreciated by the few who know how to read; 
 for good readers are almost as scarce as good writers. 
 
 Here, for example, is a picture taken from La Pampa, 
 a story in a book entitled "Charity," that he gave me in 
 1912: 
 
 "Grave and bearded men reined in their horses, their 
 ponchos suddenly clinging to their sides, just as a boat's 
 sail clings around the mast when it has lost the wind." 
 
 Or take this portrait of Si Taher, an Arab mystic, 
 half fanatic, half madman : 
 
 "Brown and hard-looking, as if cut out of walnut 
 wood ; with a beard so thick it loked more like a setting 
 than a beard, though it was flecked with grey. . . His 
 thin and muscular body, which his haik veiled, but did not 
 hide, showed glimpses of his legs and arms, hairy as the 
 limbs of an orang-outang. His feet were shod with san- 
 dals of undressed camel's skin. His strong and knotted 
 hands looked like the roots of an old oak, left bare above 
 the ground, both in their size and make. He always 
 carried in his hand a staff of argan wood, which use and 
 perspiration had polished like a bone." 
 
 Or, in the same book, his picture of his "Aunt 
 Eleanor," almost unquotable, for every line of the ten 
 pages has a new touch that adds to the versimilitude of 
 the portrait. Take these paragraphs:
 
 58 
 
 "Tall, thin and willowy, and with a skin like parchment, 
 which gave her face, when worked upon by a slight rictus 
 in the nose she suffered from, a look as of a horse about 
 to kick; she had an air, when you first saw her, almost 
 disquieting, it was so different from anything or anybody 
 that you had ever met. She never seemed to age. . . . 
 Perhaps it was her glossy dark-brown hair, which, parted 
 in the middle and kept in place by a thin band of velvet, 
 never was tinged with grey, not even in extreme old age, 
 that made her very young. 
 
 "Her uniform, for so I styled it, it was so steadfast, 
 was, in the winter, a black silk, sprigged, as she would 
 have said herself, with little trees, and in the summer, 
 on fine days, a lilac poplin, which she called 'laylock', 
 surmounted by a Rampore Chudda immaculately white. ." 
 
 In the same quiet way he tells how the old lady loved 
 horses and rode to hounds, even in extreme old age, and 
 then finally of her death after she had made all arrange- 
 ments for her funeral and given all the necessary orders, 
 and this by way of epitaph : 
 
 "My aunt rests quietly under some elm trees in Old 
 Milverton churchyard. 
 
 "Many old Scottish ladies lie round about the grave 
 where my aunt sleeps under a granite slab, now stained a 
 little with the weather, imparting to the churchyard a 
 familiar air, as of the tea-parties that she once used to 
 give, when they all sat together, just as they now lie 
 closely in the ground, to keep each other warm. The 
 rooks caw overhead, and when the hounds pass on a bright 
 November morning I hope she hears them, for heaven
 
 CUNNINGHAME GRAHAM 59 
 
 would be to her but a dull dwelling-place if it contained 
 no horses and no hounds." 
 
 In all these stories the painter's eye and a superb 
 painter's talent. Graham has also done one or two 
 sketches of Paris life, notably "Un Monsieur," which de 
 Maupassant would gladly have signed; but in spite of 
 their mastery, his best work is found in pictures of 
 Spanish South America or of Scotland, the land of his 
 heart and home. 
 
 Graham's latest collection of tales, entitled "Brought 
 Forward," just published by Stokes & Company, of New 
 York, at one dollar and thirty-five cents, does not contain 
 any of his best work. 
 
 Graham himself appears to have felt this, for he writes 
 a "Preface" to this book, in which he takes leave of his 
 readers and bids them forever farewell. 
 
 "Hold it not up to me for egotism, O gentle reader, 
 for I would have you know that hardly any of the horses 
 that I rode had shoes on them, and thus the tracks are 
 faint. Vale." 
 
 Eight or nine small volumes hold the entire legacy ; in 
 half a dozen short stories you have the soul and quint- 
 essence of the gallant gentleman who in life was Cunning- 
 hame Graham. The tracks he left are faint, he tells you ; 
 the record of his sixty or seventy years could all go in 
 one little booklet ; but the final account is not to be made 
 up in this way. 
 
 He was born to wealth and place, dowered with per- 
 fect health and great personal charm; tempted as only 
 such a man is, he might have been forgiven if he had
 
 60 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS 
 
 chosen the primrose way and lazied through life relishing 
 all the flowers and tasting all the sweets. Instead of 
 that, he left his caste and spoke and wrote and worked 
 for the poor and the outcast and the dispossessed. He 
 braved the scorn and hatred of men when he might easily 
 have enjoyed their applause and honor. He faced blows 
 and indignities and imprisonment when he could have 
 reckoned on welcome as a distinguished guest in Courts 
 and Throne-rooms; by choice he took the martyr's way 
 and gave the best of his life to the meanest of his fellows. 
 
 And I hold Graham the higher because he made the 
 supreme sacrifice, not in rags and dirt, as the saints 
 selected, still less as one seeking insults and scars, but as 
 a courtly gentleman making light of his good deeds and 
 mocking overwrought pretensions, passing through life 
 with a gay smile and reckless gesture as if it were proper 
 for a man to live for others and to die for them, if need 
 be, and for Justice without the faintest hope of reward. 
 
 Ancl so I echo my friend's "Farewell," even though I 
 hope to see him again, for his gallant bearing and courage 
 and talent formed part of the pageantry and splendor of 
 life to all of us, and the ease of his accomplishment as an 
 artist more than atoned for the little carelessnesses in 
 craft of this amateur of genius who was at the same time 
 a most delightful friend and absolutely faithful to his 
 high calling.
 
 Gilbert K. Chesterton
 
 GILBERT K CHESTERTON 
 
 NATIONAL ideals are persistent and recurrent. 
 National poets stand out as landmarks ; Schiller 
 in Germany, Victor Hugo in France correspond 
 to Milton in England. 
 
 These national idols find difficulty in passing the 
 frontier; Schiller to us is hardly more than a rhetorician 
 in rhyme, and the poses and pretenses of Hugo, his innate 
 theatricality, in fact, robs him of our reverence, while 
 Milton's narrow religiosity, his shallowness of mind, and 
 his incurable hypocrisy as shown in his writings on 
 divorce, hide from us the poetic genius of the author of 
 Lycidas. 
 
 It is admitted today that Montaigne, Renan, Anatole 
 France are typical and characteristic French writers as 
 Dr. Johnson is perhaps the most typical Englishman of 
 letters. 
 
 Every nation sees the neighboring nation's idol as a 
 ridiculous figure. We all remember how Taine found 
 it impossible to discover any greatness in Dr. Johnson; 
 he recognized that the doctor was looked up to by Sir 
 Joshua Reynolds and by Burke, was the literary arbiter 
 of his time in London, yet he can see little or no talent in 
 him, to say nothing of genius. Rasselas is tedious, he 
 says, almost stupid. Johnson's criticisms of poetry almost 
 silly ; even his table talk as recorded by Boswell is devoid 
 of high lights. He was a mass of popular prejudices, 
 
 61
 
 62 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS 
 
 believed that the American colonists should be "whipped" 
 into submission, and that a woman should accept the 
 faithlessness of her husband meekly ; was as superstitious 
 as any old woman, drank tea to excess and made plat- 
 itudes worse than boring by pomposity. 
 
 We all feel that this is a French judgment and omits 
 essentials; we think of Johnson's manly letter to Lord 
 Chesterfield, of his noble endurance of poverty, of his 
 reverence, and above all of his sound masculine under- 
 standing and hatred of shams and snobberies, and his 
 occasional gleams of real insight ; "the devil, sir, was the 
 first Whig. ... I can furnish you with reasons, but 
 not with a mind to understand them" and so forth. 
 
 We have all a soft spot in our hearts for the great 
 doctor; we understand his whimsies and idiosyncrasies 
 and don't dislike them; a characteristic Englishman, we 
 say, with certain conspicuous gifts. 
 
 Gilbert Keith Chesterton was received in London just 
 as if he had been Dr. Johnson come to life once more. 
 Born in 1874, he had already made name and reputation 
 as a journalist by the beginning of the new century. His 
 book on Browning in 1904 and on Dickens in 1906 showed 
 ai certain range of interest, while his volume on Shaw in 
 1909 gave him position. But in my opinion his two self- 
 revealing books are The Man Who Was Thursday, 
 which dates from 1908, and the play, Magic, written in 
 
 Every journalist and writer in London from 1900 to 
 1910 knew the Chesterton brothers ; the younger, Cecil, 
 was a small replica of Gilbert Keith, and some four years
 
 GILBERT K CHESTERTON 63 
 
 younger. He was a short, stout man, with round head 
 and round red cheeks, a contradictious temperament and 
 an extraordinary belief in his own ability. He worked 
 for me on Vanity Fair for some months, and told me 
 many stories of his brother and their early life together. 
 They hardly ever met, it appeared, without disputing, and 
 as they always met at meal time, lunch and dinner were 
 the scenes of prolonged and passsionate controversy. 
 The were both intensely interested in the happenings of 
 the day and they argued about them unceasingly. 
 
 "What was the difference between you ?" I asked. 
 
 "Gilbert loved to play with words," was the reply, 
 "whereas I took words to mean something." 
 
 I cannot help thinking that in The Man Who Was 
 Thursday, Gilbert records some of these disputations : 
 
 "He came of a family of cranks, in which all the 
 oldest people had all the newest notions. . . His 
 father cultivated art and self-realization ; his mother 
 went in for simplicity and hygiene. Hence the child, 
 during his tenderer years, was wholly unacquainted 
 with any drink between the extremes of absinthe and 
 cocoa, of both of which he had a healthy dislike. The 
 more his mother preached a more than Puritan ab- 
 stinence, the more did his father expand into a more 
 than pagan latitude ; and by the time the former had 
 come to enforcing vegetarianism, the latter had pretty 
 well reached the point of defending cannibalism." 
 
 The first time I met Gilbert Chesterton he made an 
 extraordinary impression on me, as I imagine he must do
 
 64 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS 
 
 on most men. He is not only inordinately fat, but tall 
 and broad to boot ; a mountain of a man. He must have 
 described himself in The Man Who Was Thursday. 
 
 "His vastness did not lie only in the fact that he 
 was abnormally tall and quite incredibly fat. This 
 man was planned enormously in his original pro- 
 portions, like a statue carved deliberately as colossal. 
 His head, crowned with white hair, as seen from be- 
 hind, looked bigger than ai head ought to be. The 
 ears that stood out from it looked larger than human 
 ears. He was enlarged terribly as to scale ; and this 
 sense of size was so staggering, that when Syme 
 saw him all the other figures seemed quite suddenly 
 to dwindle and become dwarfish." 
 
 I soon found that wine and companionship had the 
 effect of endowing him With an astonishing verbal in- 
 spiration ; as the wine sank in the bottle his spirits rose 
 unnaturally and the energy of his language increased till 
 his talk became a torrent of nonsense. 
 
 I have never met any one in my life who was such an 
 improvisatore in words, who became intoxicated to the 
 same extent with his own verbal ingenuity. And just as 
 the mist of water overhanging the thunderous falls of 
 Niagara is now and then pierced by some shaft of sun- 
 shine, so the mist and spray and thunder of Chesterton's 
 verbal outpouring is now and again illumined by some 
 shaft of wit. For instance, The Man Who Was Thursday 
 won a companion, and here is the comment, merely verbal, 
 if you will, but excellent:
 
 GILBERT K CHESTERTON 65 
 
 "It may be conceded to the mathematicians that four is 
 twice two. But two is not twice one; two is two thou- 
 sand times one. That is why, in spite of a hundred dis- 
 advantages, the world wil^ always return to monajgamy." 
 (The italics are mine.) 
 
 And that is why, too, the martyrs and guides of 
 humanity are able to survive and do their high work in 
 spite of the general hatred, loathing and contempt ; there 
 is always some one person who understands and en- 
 courages and one is a 1 host in himself. 
 
 A side of Chesterton, so to speak, or rather some sur- 
 face characteristics of him, are splendidly rendered in this 
 book; the heart of him, however, is to be looked for in 
 the noble play, "Magic." I can praise this drama whole- 
 heartedly, because I had again and again coquetted with 
 the idea of writing a tragedy on this same theme. 
 
 I never took up the matter seriously because all the 
 symbols of the mystery are so hackneyed and idiotic ; but 
 Chesterton used the chairs that move and the table that 
 tilts and the lights that burn with different colors, and 
 somehow or other the incommunicable is suggested to us 
 and we thrill with the magic of the ineffable ; he manifestly 
 rejoices in the fact that there is no ultimate horizon ; 
 but visions from the verge that set the unconquerable 
 spirit of man flaming. He at least is a believer, a devout 
 believer, in the Christian faith and Christian dogma. It 
 astonished Carlyle that a man of Dr. Johnson's power of 
 mind and thought in the middle of the sceptical eighteenth 
 century should have been able to worship Sunday after 
 Sunday in the Church of St. Clement Danes. But what
 
 66 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS 
 
 would he have said of Chesterton, who, after the theory 
 of evolution has been accepted and Christianity has been 
 studied historically for half a century and is now univer- 
 sally regarded as nothing more than a moment, a flower, 
 if you will, in the growth of the spirit of man, can still 
 go on his knees daily in adoration and still believe like a 
 child in a life to come and a Paradise for the true believer ! 
 In France, or, indeed, anywhere in Continental Europe 
 sarve Russia, such a phenomenon would be derided; a 
 man of latters who proclaimed himself a sincere 
 Christian would be regarded as negligible, an instance of 
 arrested development. England, however, is still pro- 
 foundly religious and Chesterton's passionate affirmations 
 have won him hosts of friends. And when he preaches 
 beef and beer as well and asserts that a man's creed is 
 sacred and his house is his castle and Socialism a dream 
 of the unwashed, thousands more join in applauding the 
 "true blue" Englishman, though he happens to be cursed 
 with a rare talent for words and will write instead of 
 making a fortune in some legitimate way. As a matter 
 of course Chesterton became popular in England as soon 
 as he revealed himself; but general adulation and per- 
 sonal popularity do not seem to have injured him in any 
 way; the knots so to speak, in his timber cannot be in- 
 creased in size or number and so he bears success better 
 than most men. 
 
 But what hope is there for him? Or rather, what hope 
 is there for us of getting something better from him than 
 he has yet given. We must fetch around, so to speak,
 
 6; 
 
 and look at him from another point of view before 
 deciding. 
 
 His brother Cecil began better than Gilbert in some 
 respects; he was a convinced Socialist even after he left 
 the Fabian Society, started the "New Witness" and be- 
 gan to hatrry the millionaire profiteer. At any rate spiritual 
 development was a possibility in his case, a probability 
 even, till he immersed himself in the fighting and died 
 with the colors in France. 
 
 Gilbert at once took over the conduct of the weekly 
 newspaper; but he is not so good a journalist as his 
 brother, probably because he is a bigger man and a more 
 original mind. 
 
 There is no use disguising the fact ; there is ai blind spot 
 in me; as a student I could not admire Aristophanes; 
 I could see, of course, that he was magnificently equipped 
 with a talent not only for words but for rhythmic speech 
 superior to any of the Greek dramatists or poets except 
 Sophocles and an absolutely unique gift to boot of spiritual 
 humor and satiric denigration; his picture of Socrates 
 swinging about in the air (aerbaton) and talking pa- 
 radoxes is delicious und unforgetable, yet, in essentials, 
 Aristophanes was an ordinary Athenian citizen ; he had no 
 quarrel with the popular idols; the gods of the Agora 
 called out his reverence and the religion of his fathers 
 was good enough for him. He had none of the insight, 
 none of the aloofness, none of the Sacred Fire of the true 
 teacher. He knew nothing of the dreadful isolation and 
 heart-devouring doubts and misery of the pioneer and 
 pathfinder resolved to widen the horizon and carry the
 
 68 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS 
 
 light out into the all-surrounding Darkness. He was 
 never a spiritual guide or leader and his superb talent for 
 speech and controversy only exasperated me against him ; 
 such a splendid soldier I said to myself without a cause, 
 always fighting as a mercenary against the Light and the 
 Torchbearers. 
 
 In this category of voices without high though, singers 
 without a soul, I cannot help putting Gilbert Chesterton ; 
 nothing that he has written or is likely to write is cal- 
 culated to interest me profoundly ; his top-note is "Magic"' 
 which is hardly more than a disdainful doubt of the 
 prevailing incredulity. I could admire Coventry Patmore 
 and listen for hours entranced to his praise of the Fathers 
 of the Church ; even his mystical faith in the ultimate 
 union of the soul with God in an ecstasy of joy won my 
 sympathy and reverence for it came from the depths of 
 his spirit and was indeed the sap of his most 
 sacred song and psalm ; but I miss this impassioned 
 fervor in Chesterton and find him as I find Maurice Hew- 
 lett a talent divorced from life, a gift unused, wasted in 
 fact or worse than wasted. A sort of Dr. Johnson, not 
 a heroic bringer of the light, as Carlyle phrased it, not 
 even a heroic seeker after it ; but one contented with the 
 wax-candles of the past and resolved to maintain that 
 the tallow drippings are an added ornament to cope or 
 chasuble. 
 
 Of course, this is unjust and beside the point. We 
 must thank Chesterton for what he is and what he has 
 given, and not blame him for what he is not. I have 
 read verses of his on "Christmas" that have the touch
 
 GILBERT K CHESTERTON 69 
 
 of high poetry in them; humorous verses, too, that come 
 from the dancing heart of mirth ; even his journalism is 
 rayed with thought as in the instance I give above when 
 he says that two is not twice one, two is two thousand 
 times one; but there it is, the blind spot in me; the 
 earnestness of the fanatic who cannot accept the terrible 
 fact that "there's nothing serious in mortality," and will 
 condemn another by his own limitations. 
 
 Yet I see and know that Gilbert Chesterton is a true 
 man, an original thinker, also, a force therefore of 
 incalenlable effect.
 
 Arthur Symons
 
 ARTHUR SYMONS 
 
 True love in this differs from gold or clay 
 That to divide is not to take away. Shelley. 
 
 One day I was praising an article 'of Symon's when a 
 London literary man of the previous generation, lifting 
 his brows, said disdainfully: 
 
 "O yes ; Arty can write. A pity he has never anything 
 to say." 
 
 There was just enough truth in the ill-natured jibe to 
 barb the shaft and make it stick in memory : "What has 
 Symons ever said?" 
 
 No great story, no extraordinary book, no unforgetable 
 lyric to his credit. Clearly he was not one of the Im- 
 mortals. And yet what charming things he had written ; 
 what an astonishing mastery he had of prose and poetry ; 
 how many-sided he was! how well-read, how sincere, 
 how sympathetic! What prevented him from winning a 
 prize where even George Moore gets an "honorable 
 mention ?" 
 
 I pick up this new book of his, "Cities and Sea Coasts 
 and Islands," just published by Brentano, and find as a 
 frontispiece a late portrait of Symons by Augustus 
 John. John is one of the most gifted painters of the 
 age a man with the seeing eyes of Rembrandt. He does 
 not possess the Dutchman's generous rich palette, but he
 
 72 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS 
 
 is a better draughtsman. And he has painted Symons with 
 the relentless truth we all desire in a portrait ; the sparse 
 gray hair, the high, bony forehead, the sharp ridge of 
 Roman nose, the fleshless cheeks ; the triangular wedge of 
 thin face shock one like the stringy turkey neck and the 
 dreadful, claw-like fingers of the outstretched hand. A 
 
 ARTHUR SYMONS 
 
 terrible face ravaged like a battlefield; the eyes dark 
 pools, mysterious, enigmatic ; the lid hangs across the 
 left eyeball like a broken curtain. 
 
 I see the likeness and yet, staring at this picture, I 
 can hardly recall my friend of twenty-eight years ago. 
 Symons was then a young man of twenty-six or seven,
 
 ARTHUR SYMONS 73 
 
 some five feet nine or so in height, straight and slight, 
 with rosy cheeks, thick, light-brown hair and good, bold 
 features. When the uncovered, the 'breadth of forehead 
 struck one; but even then the chief impression was one 
 of health delicate health. 
 
 At our first meeting he professed himself an admirer 
 of the music halls, then just beginning to be popular in 
 London; declared with an air of finality tfhat dancing 
 was the highest of all the arts, that it alone could convey 
 passionate desire in every phase from coquetry to aban- 
 donment, and that was the deepest impulse of the human 
 heart. 
 
 "What are we?" he cried, "but seekers after love? 
 That is our quest from tihe cradle to the grave. Love is 
 our Divinity, Love our Holy Grail." 
 
 He was a Welsh Celt in outspokenness, enthusiastic 
 as became his youth. And at once we went at it ham- 
 mer and tongs. I would have it that poetry dramatic 
 poetry was the most complex, and therefore the high- 
 est, of all the arts, and cast scorn on ihis acrobatics and 
 pirouetting-women with overdeveloped leg muscles and 
 breathless thin smiles! 
 
 In the middle of the animated discussion I reminded 
 him that Plato had called music the divinest of the arts, 
 and forthwith, to my astonishment, Symons changed 
 front in a jiffy and took up this new position. 
 
 "True! true!" he exclaimed. "Plato was right; 
 music is the voice of sorrow, and sorrow is deeper than 
 joy. Music alone can render the sobs and cries and 
 wailing of the world's sadness. Sadness is deeper than
 
 74 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS 
 
 desire, sorrow more enduring than joy; death is the 
 rule, life tthe exception." 
 
 I could not help mocking his transcendentalism. 
 "Hurrah for the exception!" And yet his enthusiasm, 
 his ingenuousness, his love of sweeping generalizations 
 his brilliant youth, in fact, moved me very pleasantly, 
 attracting me. 
 
 Shortly afterwards I received a critical article from 
 him, and was astonisihed and delighted by his mastery 
 of prose. It was lucid limpid, even and insinuating 
 as water, taking coljor, too, from every feeling and 
 rhythm from its own motion. Praising it one day to a 
 friend, I discovered its shortcomings. "It is French 
 prose/* I cried, "not English; it has all the virtues, but 
 it is not sob'er enough: too agile, quick, following too 
 closely the changes, right-about-turns and springs of 
 thought itself. We English have a stif fer backbone and 
 want something more solid, virile, moderate." It is 
 only fair to add that since those days Symons' prose has 
 shed its Gallic flavor and inconsecutiveness, and is now 
 excellent in every respect. But at that time his prose 
 taught me that he must know French exceedingly well, 
 for every sentence could be turned into French almost 
 without change. The next time we met I remarked on 
 this to him, and he admitted the accomplishment as if it 
 were without importance, as in truth it was. And yet 
 this adaptability is characteristic. Strong, original 
 minds do not possess this chameleon faculty of taking 
 color from the surrounding air. 
 
 One day he came to lunch with me, and John Gray
 
 ARTHUR SYMONS 75 
 
 was there. They began talking poetry. Gray's slim book 
 had just come out in its green and silver cover, and he 
 had dedicated a poem to me. Symons declared that fee 
 looked upon me as a realist, a writer of stories. "Prose, 
 prose, is your medium," he wound up. "You hammer 
 out figures in bronze." He Betrayed his French procliv- 
 ities at every ipoint. He wanted to be epigrammatic, 
 whereas an Anglo-Saxon would hesitate to sum up a 
 personality in a phrase. A verse of Gray's came up 
 
 The subtle torso's hesitating line 
 
 Symons repeated it again and again, delighting in that 
 "subtle" in it and tlhe undulating rhythm, and in return 
 Gray quoted a poem of Symons, and at once it struck 
 me that here was Symons' true field : he would win as a 
 poet or not at all. For there was something light ab'out 
 him, academic about the pair of them, indeed. They 
 had never been out in the naked struggle of life, I said 
 to myself; cultivated creatures 'both flowers of a 
 garden, hedged off from the storms and tempests of the 
 world. 
 
 Was it his "Amoris Victima'' or a talk we had that 
 made me see Symons as one of the band of "very gentle, 
 perfect lovers" who find the same golden gate into life 
 and into heaven? As soon as you came to know him 
 he made no bones of avowing his Celt-like cult of love, 
 Venus Callipyge, the queen of his idolatry. His frank- 
 ness was most refreshing to one choking in English con- 
 ventions. 
 
 "Have you ever read 'Casanova' ?" he asked me one 
 day as we were crossing Grosvenor Square, in a curious,
 
 76 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS 
 
 challenging way, born, I guessed, of a remnant of shy- 
 ness with an older man. 
 
 "I should hope so," I replied. "A most interesting 
 book and a great man." 
 
 "I'm delighted to hear you say that," he went on. 
 
 "Most Englishmen look at him askance, and you're the 
 first I ever heard call him 'great.' ' : 
 
 "There is a volume of this 'Memoirs' always at my 
 bedside," I replied, "and his meeting with Frederick 
 the Great stamps him. They talked on an equal footing. 
 I think I've learned more history from Casanova than 
 from any one. His gamblings and swindlings, love af- 
 fairs and journeyings paint that eighteenth century as 
 no one else has painted it. He's not only a great lover, 
 but a great adventurer. I profess myself an ardent 
 admirer of Signor de Seingalt." 
 
 "And I too," he cried. "I intend one of these days 
 to find that last volume of his they're always talking of. 
 What a thing it would 'be to get out a really complete 
 edition of his 'Life'! We all want the last chapters." 
 
 "Go to it," I exclaimed. "I wish you all success, 
 though I much fear Casanova's end will be dreadfully 
 unlappy. Those who live for the sensuous thrill are apt 
 to have a bad time of it 'when the senses decay." 
 
 "I don't know about that," countered Symons. "Casa- 
 nova had always thoughts to console him, and I suspect 
 he was a good poet as well as a good Latinist. Perhaps 
 I'll find some of his verses. What fun!" 
 
 "All luck," I encouraged. "I always see him in 
 Venice, hastening in a gondola to that convent on the
 
 ARTHUR SYMONS 77 
 
 island where he met M., his bright, brown eyes straining 
 through the darkness to the b'eloved." 
 
 "His 'book ends," said Symons, "in 1774, and he lived 
 till 1798. How wonderful it would be if I could find 
 the concluding volumes! He told the truth about life 
 more nakedly even than Rousseau." 
 
 "All the world knows how Symons (has since discov- 
 ered the two missing chapters of the last volume, and, 
 better still, the letters of Henri ette, who loved Casanova 
 for over fifty years. Now we are counting on Herr 
 Brockhaus' promise to include all this new 'matter in a 
 complete edition, which I hope to read one of these days. 
 
 It was in 1901, I think, that Symons brought out his 
 first volume of poetry. It was a surprise to most of 
 his friends and to some few a disappointment though the 
 technical skill displayed is extraordinary. 
 
 There are light verses of Symons as perfect as the 
 best of Dobson, and some of his lyrics will always be 
 familiar to lovers of good poetry. But, curiously 
 enough, it is in his translations that he reigns almost 
 without a peer. There are some in this b'ook from Santa 
 Teresa and Campoamor which are as perfect as can be, 
 and, like home flowers seen in a foreign land, charm one 
 with the surprise of well-loved beauty. Here are two 
 giving the soul of Santa Teresa: 
 
 "O soul, w<hat, then, desirest thou? 
 Lord, I would see thee. who thus choose thee, 
 W.'hat fears can yet assail thee now? 
 All that I fear is but to lose thee.
 
 ;8 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS 
 
 Love's whole possession I entreat, 
 Lord, make my soul thine own abode, 
 And I will build a nest so sweet 
 It may not be too poor for God." 
 
 And here is a couplet from Campoamor that might 
 be used as a model by translators : 
 
 "Al mover tu abanico con grace jo, 
 Quitas el polvo al corazon mas viejo." 
 "You wave your fan with such a graceful art." 
 You brush the dust off from the oldest heart." 
 But I remember some translations in a book pub- 
 lished by John Lane which were even finer, I fancy a 
 translation of the passion of San Juan de la Cruz side 
 by side wifeh a rendering of Gautier's "Coquetterie Post- 
 hume," as good as the original. There was even a trans- 
 lation of Heine which forced me to admit that Heine 
 could be transferred into another tongue without loss, a 
 miracle I would never have believed had I not seen it 
 done by Symons and by Thomson. Here are two verses, 
 just to show Symon's astounding mastery: 
 
 "I lived alone wiflh my mother 
 
 At Koln, in the city afar 
 The city where many hundreds 
 
 Of chapels and churches are. 
 
 Heal thou my heart of its sorrow, 
 
 And ever its song shall be, 
 Early and late unceasing: 
 
 'Praise Mary, be to thee !"
 
 ARTHUR SYMONS 79 
 
 There are in this book, too, some lyrics of Symons' 
 transcripts of slight remote moods that please me inti- 
 mately; one so musical tihat its cadence affects me like a 
 phrase of Chopin: 
 
 "Night, and the down by the sea, 
 
 And the veil of rain on the down; 
 
 And she came through the mist and the rain to me 
 
 From the safe, warm lights of the town." 
 
 This book, too, contains songs of passion that give us 
 Symons' true measure. Here is his confession : 
 
 "There is a woman whom I love and hate: 
 
 There is no otlher woman in the world : 
 
 Not in her life shall I have any peace. 
 
 There is a woman whom I love and hate : 
 
 I have not praised her: she is beautiful: 
 
 Others have praised her: she has seen my heart: 
 
 She looked, and laughed, and looked, and went away. 
 
 I don't know why, b'ut this reminds me in places of 
 Swinburne's "Leper." 
 
 And here is great blank verse verse that Keats 
 might have signed: 
 
 "The sorrowful, who 'have loved, I pity not; 
 But those, not having loved, who do rejoice 
 To have escaped the cruelty of love, 
 I pity as I pity the unborn." 
 
 And here verse with the organ-tones of Milton : 
 "And something, in the old and little voice,
 
 8o CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS 
 
 Calls from so farther off than far away, 
 I tremble, hearing it, lest it draw me forth, 
 This flickering self, desiring to be gone 
 Into the boundless and abrupt abyss 
 Whereat begins infinity; and there 
 This flickering self wander eternally 
 Among the soulless, uncreated winds 
 Which storm against the barriers of the world." 
 
 It reminds me of Milton's verse : "In the vague womb 
 of uncreated Night," till the last line, which is Matthew 
 
 I turn willingly to pure Symons a love snatch: 
 Arnold:^ "And naked shingles of the world" all 
 reminiscent, I'm afraid ; but lovely nevertheless. 
 
 "O unforgotten! you will come to seem, 
 
 As pictures do, remembered, some old dream. 
 
 And I sihall think of you as something strange 
 
 And beautiful and full 'of helpless change, 
 
 Which I 'beheld and carried in my heart; 
 
 But you, I loved, will have b'ecome a part 
 
 Of the eternal mystery, and love 
 
 Like a dim pain; and I shall bend above 
 
 My little fire, and shiver, being cold, 
 
 When you are no more young, and I am old." 
 
 And here Symons in another mood: 
 
 "I have had enougih of wisdom, and enough of mirth, 
 For the way's one and the end's one, and it's soon to the 
 ends of the earth;
 
 8i 
 
 And it's then good night and to bed, and if heels or 
 
 heart ache, 
 Well, it's sound sleep and long sleep, and sleep too deep 
 
 to wake." 
 
 If this too, reminds one of a great poem of David- 
 son, still no one can deny that the writer of these lyrics 
 has every right to call himself a poet. 
 
 And just as Symons has reached excellence as a poet, 
 without, perhaps, winning place among the Immortals, 
 so he has shown himself an excellent critic within simi- 
 lar limits. He is not one of those critics wiho have re- 
 moulded the secular judgments passed on the greatest. 
 He is content to accept the verdicts of the centuries. 
 But he is not afraid, in another book, "Figures of Sev- 
 eral Centuries" (published by E. P. Dutton & Co.), to 
 justify his half-hearted praise of Meredith or his over- 
 pitched eulogy of Swinburne, and he 'handles his smaller 
 contemporaries, Hardy, and Pater, the Goncourts, and 
 Huysmans, with intimate sympathy and a fine under- 
 standing of their merits and their defects. In fact, as a 
 critic he can stand with Hazlitt, or perhaps with Sainte 
 Beuve, though he is not so methodical and satisfying 
 even as these minor masters. He is more whimsical, 
 more like Lamb, and like Lamb, too often gets to the very 
 heart of his subject through sheer passion of admiration. 
 
 And Symons is nearly as good a critic of painting 
 and painters, or, indeed, of music and musicians, as he 
 is of writers. When he calls Zurbaran "a passionate 
 mediocrity," I thrill witih pleasure, and he has written
 
 82 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS 
 
 more intimately and more convincingly of El Greco 
 than any one else. In fine, a man, take him all in all, of 
 very wide culture and broad sympathies, a rarely good 
 judge of the best in modern literature, a writer in b'oth 
 prose and verse of extraordinary accomplishment. 
 
 For fifteen years or so I watched Symons' growth, 
 almost every book showing a distinct advance. One 
 after the other his faults and mannerisms of style dis- 
 appeared and his speech became simpler, more flexible, 
 dowered witih an enchanting wealth of musical cadence 
 and happy epithet. 
 
 No such master of prose and poetry has been seen in 
 England since James Thomson, I said to myself; surely 
 one of these days he will write a dozen lyrics of sur- 
 passing loveliness. In every respect he is more gifted 
 than Dowson. He is a lover, too, as Dowson was, with 
 Conder's divine sense of beauty; so I waited, eager for 
 the fruiting. 
 
 One day I met an English friend in Nice. "Have 
 you heard of poor Symons lately?" he remarked casu- 
 ally. "Is he getting better, I wonder?" 
 
 "What do you mean ?" I asked, with a dreadful sinking 
 of the heart. "Has he been ill?" 
 
 "Then you haven't heard ? Oh, it's tragic ! He was 
 walking with his wife one day in Genoa, I think it was, 
 when he suddenly lost control of himself and began to 
 break the shop windows, muttering wildly the while, 
 'Lost! lost!' Lost, indeed, I'm afraid; down and out!" 
 
 "Great God!" I cried, "what a pity! what a dreadful 
 loss ! What was the cause ?"
 
 ARTHUR SYMONS 83 
 
 He shrugged his shoulders. "Who can tell ? The last 
 time I saw him, a year or so ago now, he had got very 
 thin. He was always delicate, you know. He looked 
 haggard, I thought, worn, played out, in fact." And 
 his eyes met mine. 
 
 I needed no further explanation. Symons had reached 
 the fatal term. About forty a man's powers cease ex- 
 panding. He needs only about half as much food as he 
 formerly consumed. If he does not draw in and form 
 new habits he'll soon grow unwieldy fat or suffer agonies 
 from indigestion, or both. If he has indulged in youth 
 in any way to the limit, nature now becomes inexorable, 
 presents her bill without more ado, demanding instant 
 payment. 
 
 The ordinary man gets over the bad place with a rough 
 jolt or two, but the artist is in dreadful danger, and the 
 lover is almost a doomed man. The Latins called Venus, 
 Diva Mater Cupidinum, and where desire is whipped to 
 frenzy by imagination no strength can withstand the 
 strain. Life to the artist-lover resembles the river above 
 the falls. When he notices that he is in the rapids it is 
 already too late ; he cannot stop, but is swept on faster and 
 faster to the inevitable catastrophe. It was a French poet, 
 Mery, who wrote: "Les femmes ont tue beaucoup d'ar- 
 tistes, mais les artistes n'ont jamais tue des femmes." 
 
 After going over Niagara, Symons struggled slowly 
 back again to life. The terrible experience is written in 
 his haggard mask, in the straggling gray hairs and the 
 withdrawn eyes : The heart knoweth its own bitterness.
 
 84 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS 
 
 As soon as I heard that Symons was again in com- 
 parative health I could not help wondering about his 
 work. Like the brave soul he is, he has taken the burden 
 of it up again ; but I am afraid that the fall was disastrous. 
 He has been in what I have called when writing of de 
 Maupassant, "the most dreadful torture-chamber in life." 
 And I greatly fear that no one who has ever passed 
 more than an hour there will be able to do his best work 
 afterwards. 
 
 The experience is soul-shattering. 
 
 As the artist's reward is the highest and most desir- 
 able in the world, it is, perhaps, only fair that his life's 
 pilgrimage should be the most dangerous. But few 
 understand how desperate is his adventure. Not only 
 must the artist feel more acutely than other men, but he 
 must abandon himself, with every fibre in him, to his 
 sensations and emotions, for he is expected to surpass 
 all previous masters in magical expression of his feel- 
 ings. And if he thereby endangers health or sanity, who 
 cares? The product is all men ask for. "Paint us the 
 heights and depths of passion as no one else has ever 
 done," is the inexorable mandate. 
 
 And his competitors are not merely the men of his own 
 day, but the greatest of all time in a dozen tongues. 
 
 And then the critic cavils and compares, awarding three 
 laurel leaves here and five there, and another fool 
 wonders malevolently why the artist doesn't pay his 
 debts, never weighing in the balance the incommensurable 
 debt that the world owes the artist and will never even 
 acknowledge, much less pay. For without the artist the
 
 ARTHUR SYMONS 85 
 
 vast majority of men would have no eyes for beauty and 
 scant sympathy for suffering. Their very souls are made 
 for them by the artists whom they despise and maltreat. 
 But in face of this suffering 1 and. this torture of 
 Symons, I want to admit my debt and tell its importance. 
 I have enjoyed golden hours of companionship with him 
 and when "farther off than far away," to use his own 
 phrase, with his books, his moods and lovesongs. There 
 are lines of his, I say, that might have been written by 
 Sophocles; there are some that first came from Milton; 
 others that remind me of "the greatest of all the 
 humorists," as Heine called himself, and there are some 
 of Symons' own worthy to be remembered even among 
 these. Here with the shadows gathering round me, I say 
 Ave atque vale I 
 
 *******
 
 The Right Hon. Winston Churchill
 
 WINSTON CHURCHILL 
 
 MR. WINSTON CHURCHILL'S life has been 
 a succession of adventures : probably no one 
 living, certainly no living statesman of forty 
 years of age, has seen more of war or of life in its tense, 
 dramatic moments. 
 
 As head of the Britis'h Admiralty he was the first 
 Cabinet Minister after the war started to be driven 
 from his position by a storm of criticism and contempt; 
 but while other fallen Ministers remained in the limbo 
 of forgotten worthies he alone returned to honor and 
 place as Minister of Munitions and then of War. This 
 singular good fortune deserves closer study. 
 
 I had read about him in the newspapers of the day 
 many times before meeting him. When merely a youth 
 he kept himself in the limelight, it was said; but then 
 the limelight in England turned naturally on the eldest 
 son of Lord Randolph Churchill, who had given proof 
 that the genius of the first and great Duke of Marlbor- 
 ough was only dormant. Winston passed from Harrow 
 directly into the army. At school he had cut no par- 
 ticular figure; was, indeed, a very mediocre scholar, 
 knowing even now no French, for instance, though he 
 had three hours a week teaching in it for seven years. 
 
 When hardly of age he showed an uncommon thirst 
 for adventure by going off to fight for the Spaniards 
 in Cuba ; a couple of years later he served on the North 
 
 87 

 
 88 
 
 West Frontier of India. Evidently he was as hungry 
 for adventure as 'he was careless of learning. A year 
 or so later, he went up the Nile with Kitchener, was 
 present at the battle of Khartum and won unique distinc- 
 tion by condemning his General publicly for desecrat- 
 ing the grave of the Mahdi. His book, "The River 
 War," which had a large sale, showed that he could judge 
 men and events with a certain impartiality as from a 
 height. We were still reading this book on the Nile 
 expedition when he stood for Parliament and the very 
 next year he was in South Africa as war correspondent 
 for The Morning Post evidently a bold, active, venture- 
 some spirit. 
 
 During the war with the Boers, only two correspon- 
 dents -came to honor in spite of the rigorous censorship, 
 which made everything b'ut eulogy impossible A. G. 
 Hales, the Australian, and Winston Churchill. I shall 
 never forget the stir made by one article in which' Win- 
 ston declared that one Boer was worth five or six Brit- 
 ish soldiers in the field. Like some of us who had al- 
 ready made similar statements in the London press, 
 Winston was at once condemned as an American or 
 worse (his mother was Miss Jenny Jerome, of New 
 York). Telling the truth practically ruined Hales; and 
 if Winston Churchill survived and won through, it was 
 because he was a member of the British governing class 
 by birth and manifestly difficult to suppress. 
 
 Winston was captured by the Boers, managed to 
 escape and returned from South Africa to contest Old- 
 ham again. This time he got into Parliament and soon
 
 WINSTON CHURCHILL 89 
 
 began to make a new reputation. He spoke frequently 
 and on many subjects without creating much impression; 
 but he managed to avoid boring the House by pointing 
 his political platitudes now and then with acid criticism 
 of his Conservative leaders. Mr. Ernest Beckett, af- 
 terwards Lord Grimthorpe, adopted the same tactics and 
 the pair soon came to be looked on with disfavor by 
 their chiefs. One evening Beckett told me the Conserva- 
 tive Whips had let it be known that none of the mal- 
 contents would ever be honored with official position. 
 Mr. Balfour, it appeared, insisted on servility and strict- 
 est party discipline. 
 
 Finding the way up blocked against him, Winston 
 took the decisive step : he left the Conservative Party in 
 1906 on the question of Free-Trade, stood for a division 
 of Manchester as a Liberal, and was returned. 
 
 In the same year Winston Churchill published a bulky 
 life of his father, Lord Randolph Churchill, in two vol- 
 umes, which was the occasion of our closer acquaint- 
 ance. 
 
 Ernest Beckett had been a most intimate friend of 
 Lord Randolph Churchill. Indeed, w'hen Lord Ran- 
 dolph died, it was found that he had made Ernest 
 Beckett one of his literary executors, the other being 
 Lord Curzon (not him of Kedleston). It was under- 
 stood that they were to arrange for the publication of a 
 biography of the deceased statesman. Naturally enough, 
 when they knew Winston wanted to write the life of his 
 father, they gave it to him to do and handed over to
 
 90 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS 
 
 him all Lord Randolph's official documents and private 
 papers. 
 
 Hearing of me through Beckett, Winston wanted to 
 know me and Beckett brought about a meeting, at lunch 
 in his flat off Piccadilly. At this time Winston 
 Churchill couldn't have been more than thirty-two, yet 
 his hair was already thinning and his figure showed signs 
 of a threatening landslip. To my astonishment he was 
 exceedingly fair (his mother being very dark), rufus- 
 fair, indeed, with whitest skin and the round blue eyes 
 and bulging reflective forehead of his father. He was 
 about five feet ten in height, but mudr stooped. He 
 spoke with a peculiar lisp, which he afterwards mitigated 
 by lessons in elocution and "prodigious practice. He had 
 an abrupt directness of manner and took the lead in all 
 talk as a matter of course. His name and life had evi- 
 dently given him inordinate self-confidence. He knew 
 me, it appeared, chiefly through the article I had written 
 in the Saturday Review on the occasion of his father's 
 death. He was kind enough to call it "the best article 
 which had appeared anywhere" ; and added that the 
 Duchess of Marlborough, Randolph's mother, always 
 showed it about as establishing her estimate of her fa- 
 vorite son's genius. 
 
 Our talk turned, I remember, on the Boer war: we 
 agreed on a good many points. Whatever he had learned 
 by himself was trustworthy; outside of that he had the 
 ordinary English prejudices. He believed that the Boers, 
 as Rhodes said, had been intriguing to get German as- 
 sistance because in Kruger's place he would have played
 
 WINSTON CHURCHILL gi 
 
 German against Englishman. When I declared that the 
 Boers only wanted to be 'let alone and disliked the Ger- 
 mans even more than the British and were too conceited 
 to seek help from anyone, he brus'hed it all aside: 
 
 "That would merely prove their stupidity. Of course, 
 they tried to get whatever help they could." 
 
 Kruger's trust in God, his 'belief that 'Standing simply 
 for the right, he would not be deserted in the hour of 
 need, seemed to him ridiculous, incredible. 
 
 "Kruger, too, was out for money; all he could get, if 
 half I hear is true." 
 
 No argument, no fact even on the other side, could 
 find acceptance or even consideration : his mind was not 
 flexible, his sympathies were narrow; his prejudices in- 
 vincible. 
 
 When we changed the subject he spoke of his "Life" 
 of his father. He wanted to know whether I'd look 
 through the proofs of his book and make suggestions. In 
 a weak moment I consented, fancying that his acknow- 
 ledgment would do me some good. In the course of the 
 next four months I discovered a thousand new reasons 
 for believing that no son can possibly write a life of his 
 father. Even if he is detached enough to see the truth, 
 he dare not write it, if it is unpleasant or derogatory. 
 Men live in conventions, and, according to the English 
 canon of .today, a son must see few, if any, serious short- 
 comings in his father or he will be regarded as unnatural, 
 worse than a traitor, indeed. And Winston had no ar- 
 tistic ideal driving him to faithful portraiture. 
 
 I was a little surprised to find that he saw all 'his
 
 92 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS 
 
 father's faults with microscopic enlargement. Randolph 
 Churchill had always had an irritable, imperious temper 
 backed by prodigious conceit. After his downfall these 
 faults were poisoned, so to speak, by an extravagant 
 bitterness. 
 
 "You didn't like him ?" I asked Winston. 
 
 "How could I?" was the reply. "I wa"s ready enough 
 to, as a boy, but '.he wouldn't let me. He treated me as 
 if I had been a fool ; barked at me whenever I questioned 
 him. I owe everything to my mother, to my father 
 nothing." 
 
 "Did you never talk politics with him?" 
 
 "I tried, but he only looked contempt at me and would 
 not answer.'* 
 
 "But didn't he see you had something in you?" I per- 
 sisted. 
 
 "Pie thought of no one but 'himself," was the re-ply; 
 "no one else seemed to him worth thinking about and as 
 his health grew worse, his selfobsession became maniacal. 
 Towards the end it was pitiful: he suffered dreadfully." 
 
 There was evidently no filial piety in this son to cloud 
 clearness of vision. 
 
 I soon found that Winston was prudent, too, and sel- 
 dom acted from impulse. Before every important decision 
 he tried to calculate all the forces and establish the re- 
 sultant. He had a curiously exact sense of his own posi- 
 tion. As soon as he became a Liberal he spared no pains 
 to get immediately re-elected : 
 
 "If I don't get in at once, the Liberals may drop me,"
 
 WINSTON CHURCHILL 93 
 
 was his fear. "They're under no obligation to find a seat 
 for me. It's at the beginning I may fail." 
 
 "Your name would always save you!" I interjected. 
 
 "It's not enough. I don't mean to give 'em the chance." 
 
 After his election the next question was canvassed 
 even more eagerly, more closely : 
 
 "Will Asquith give me office ?" 
 
 After his first speech in the House as a Liberal : 
 
 "Did I do well ? Asquith hasn't sent for me ? I think 
 he will. Don't you? What do the journalists say?'' 
 
 Plow well I remember the interminable talks. I saw 
 him nearly every day, and each morning he would meet 
 me with : 
 
 "Nothing, nothing, yet; still I have hopes. So-and-so 
 told me last night that Asquith always took his time" ; 
 and so on to: "Shall I get office?" 
 
 Or his thoughts would take another turn: 
 
 "Suppose he asks me what post I should like ; what 
 am I to say? Of course, I'd like to be Financial 
 Secretary of the Treasury; that's the highest place he 
 could offer me, I think ; but I couldn't well ask for that. 
 It wouldn't look well. I'd hate a minor post on the Board 
 of Trade or somewhere." 
 
 "But you could refuse it," I rejoined. 
 
 "No, no," he said quickly ; "it wouldn't look well ; might 
 put his back up against me and I can't afford to do that ; 
 can't afford it. I wish I could." 
 
 "Why can't you ?" I asked again in my ignorance, and 
 got the answer. 
 
 "If I once get office I've won. Don't you understand ?
 
 94 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS 
 
 I'm not rich; can't afford to figlhit two or three contested 
 elections; might drop out altogether; but once in office, 
 once a Minister and your Party is bound to find a seat for 
 you. You needn't bother any more. The lists are al- 
 ways open to you and if you can fight, ultimately you'll 
 find your place and your reward." 
 
 "Oh, I see," I replied; "of course then you'll take 
 whatever is offered you?" 
 
 "That's what makes me so anxious," he replied reflec- 
 tively. "I must take wlhat's offered; I can't bargain; 
 I daren't. 
 
 One morning I found him grave but triumphant ; a sort 
 of formal solemnity about his manner. 
 
 "Mr. Asquith sent for me," he said. "It's all settled. 
 I'm to 'have the Colonies. Under Secretary of State for 
 the Colonies." He mouthed the words. 
 
 "At last," he beamed; "no more doubt and fighting; 
 no more waiting and longing ; Ministerial rank ; that can 
 never be taken away. No place I sihall ever get will be 
 such a step for me as this none; not even the Premier- 
 ship: Asquith was very kind; he has really great qual- 
 ities." 
 
 Not a word about his own fitness ; nothing about duty 
 or the work to do. Clearly he was meant to be a British 
 Minister. 
 
 "The colonies should give you a chance," I said, "for 
 you lhave visited a good many of them and can get in 
 touch with the real feeling of those you are supposed to 
 represent." 
 
 "Get in touch with nothing," he cried ; "with my Chief
 
 WINSTON CHURCHILL 95 
 
 and with Asquith. Show him and the other Ministers 
 that I must be reckoned with ; the ring is there ; now for 
 the fight!" 
 
 An arriviste, a climber, but not a man of genius, for 
 the great man is always thinking of the work and how 
 it should be done, and not chiefly of the reward. 
 
 All this was natural enough but backed, as I have 
 shown in the little discussion about the Boers, by a fixed 
 belief that every one is driven by self-interest and by 
 self-interest alone and that any other motive of human 
 action is negligible. 
 
 And the chief interest to him at first was money, he 
 was always more than half American. I sold his "Life 
 of Lord Randolph Churchill" to Macmillans for just 
 double the amount he 'had hoped to get, $40,000. W'hen 
 I told him the offer had been made and I had accepted 
 it, conditionally, he triumphed. 
 
 "That'll make me independent; you've no idea what it 
 means to me; it guarantees success; I'm extremely 
 obliged to you." 
 
 And some time later, talking of my idea of selling 
 Vanity Fair, he was urgent in the same worldly-wise 
 spirit. 
 
 "Get enough to live on, without asking anybody for 
 anything : that's the first condition of success, or indeed, 
 of decent living; that's the prime necessity of life. Every 
 man of us should think of nothing but that till it's 
 achieved. Afterwards one can do what one likes please 
 keep that in front of you as the object of your life!"
 
 96 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS 
 
 His earnestness spoke of intense anxieties in the past 
 and was impressive. 
 
 Winston had no other god or goal but success, and the 
 only success he understood was the success of wealth and 
 power and honor success in the day and hour. His 
 ambition was so intense, 'his vision of what he wanted so 
 clear, the urge in him so powerful, that I would have 
 forgiven him had he married for wealth and position or 
 at least with an eye to those advantages. It is the more 
 to his honor that he married emphatically for love, a 
 daughter of Lady Blanche Hozier, a girl of extraordinary 
 beauty and charming manners ; but with no money and 
 no prospects. The Churc'hills have since had a son and 
 daughter, and whoever lias seen Winston playing with 
 his baby on the floor in his drawing-room will under- 
 stand that his home-life is a perfect oasis in the desert 
 of strife and labor. His pride in the radiant beauty of 
 his wife is good to see. She is tall, dark as he is fair, 
 and carries 'herself superbly. 
 
 In the year of his marriage, 1908, Winston was made 
 President of the Board of Trade, which office he held 
 till 1910; then he became Home Secretary, and after- 
 wards, to the astonishment of every one, First Lord of 
 the Admiralty. I say to the "astonishment of every one," 
 for the Home Secretary is a far higher and more influ- 
 ential position than First Lord, as it is certainly better 
 paid; but Winston Churchill didn't hesitate to take the 
 lower but more responsible post; for he felt that the war 
 was coming. The event shows that he had divined 
 rightly ; he had 'placed himself in the center of the stage,
 
 WINSTON CHURCHILL 97 
 
 not dreaming that the full limelight would reveal his 
 short-comings as sharply as his qualities. Unluckily for 
 him his blunders were appalling : a few thousand marines 
 sent to Antwerp to hold up 250,000 Germans, and the 
 fiasco of forcing the Dardanelles which, however, was a 
 military and tactical but not a strategical mistake. 
 Winston resigned his post and went to the trenches to 
 fight as a subaltern. 
 
 I 'have now shown, I think, pretty fairly the notable 
 balance which Winston Churchill keeps between senti- 
 ment and self-interest. Where feeling should be supreme, 
 as in marriage, he has shown himself superior to sordid 
 impulses ; he is not only abler than the ordinary man, 'he 
 is better, kinder perha/ps in equal measure. It now 
 remains for me to frame the portrait, so to speak, by 
 indicating his limitations, which may, however, in turn 
 become qualities or even virtues in his present position. 
 
 The desire to grow, apart from success or even away 
 from it, always appeared to Winston Churchill as fan- 
 tastic or disgracefully affected. 
 
 "What good is it to b'e wiser than your fellow men if 
 they don't or won't see it? What good did it do you to 
 foretell the outcome of the South African War when no 
 one would listen to you or give you credit for it?" 
 
 The artist's striving to reveal beauty or to throw a veil 
 of loveliness over what is ugly, or to lift the common 
 thing to significance, left him coldly indifferent. 
 
 "I wouldn't waste an hour on making a book of mine 
 better," he would say, "if the extra work would probably
 
 98 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS 
 
 pass unnoticed or unappreciated : what would be the good 
 of it?" 
 
 And the prophet-impulse, whether of Cassandra- 
 warning or of John the Baptist triumphing, appeared to 
 him to belong to a semi-barbarous or even mythical past. 
 He had scant and merely mouth reverence for writers 
 like Goethe, Schopenhauer and Meredith, who set the 
 course for humanity, and he preferred to be captain 
 rather than himself steer the ship. Ideal aims without 
 reward or visible results are beyond his admiration. 
 
 But while this short-sightedness prevents 'him from 
 being a great man, it will help him to success. It is 
 necessary to aim high in order to go far, but he who 
 shoots straight upwards may be injured by the falling of 
 his own arrow. - 
 
 Winston Churchill is likely, I'm afraid, to aim too low 
 rather than too high. His contemptuous jeer at the 
 German fleet, "We shall draw them like rats from their 
 hole," was neither wise nor in good taste, was, indeed, 
 a measure of ignorant conceit; but like Lord Curzon's 
 dreadful verses, the gibe must be taken to be popular 
 with the oligarchy and to be, therefore, a part of his bid 
 for leadership. But Churchill does not need to please 
 the aristocratic class; he belongs to it; his weakness is 
 that he does not appeal to the masses so successfully as 
 Lloyd George, for instance, and the working-class in 
 England would rather hear of an advance in the pay of 
 soldiers and sailors or an increase of pension and allow- 
 ances to the widows and orphans than any insult to 
 the foe.
 
 WINSTON CHURCHILL 99 
 
 Winston Churchill is not democratic enough to be 
 popular. He hates socialism without ever having studied 
 it, and if one proved to him that in a perfect state it 
 must have its place just as clearly defined as Individual- 
 ism, indeed that happiness results from an equipoise 
 between these two opposing forces, he might assent, but 
 it would be a reluctant, grudging admission. 
 
 I shall never have done if I go on counting up his 
 intellectual shortcomings. He knows no foreign language ; 
 cannot even speak French; has no idea what Germany 
 and her schools stand for in the modern world. He has 
 read scarcely at all, and, outside a smattering of history, 
 is astoundingly ignorant of the best that has been thought 
 and said in the world. However, he knows something 
 about the British Colonies and India from having seen 
 them and in so far can crow over most of his colleagues 
 in the Cabinet. 
 
 But he reveals himself even more clearly in his admira- 
 tions. He loves Gibbon and Macaulay and believes that 
 the stilted, antithetical, pompous English which they af- 
 fected is a model of good taste. He has no inkling of 
 the fact that simplicity is the hall-mark of greatness in 
 manners as in style. He loves lordly rooms as he loves 
 sounding and ornate words. The only iphrase he has 
 invented as yet, betrays his taste: he spoke once of a 
 falsehood as a "terminological inexactitude" and the 
 "mot" had an astonishing success. Finally, Winston 
 Churchill has all an Englishman's disdain for everything 
 that does not harmonize with his ideal; he 'has no sus-
 
 ioo CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS 
 
 picion that there are heights above him as mighty as the 
 depths beneath. 
 
 Within his limits, -however, he is an excellent servant 
 of the State. He is hard-working to a fault and brave 
 to indiscretion. He was the first Minister to make 
 ascents in airplanes, and as soon as hydroplanes were 
 invented he persisted in going up day after day, in spite 
 of reasonable remonstrance. Once his pilot was killed 
 in an ascent a few hours after he had taken Winston for 
 a flight; but the mishap had no effect on the steeled 
 nerves of the Minister. He went up again next day with 
 another airman as if nothing had happened. Again and 
 again 'he has been under the sea in submarines ; indeed, 
 if personal courage be a high virtue in a statesman, 
 Winston Churchill is rarely equipped. 
 
 But what a pity it is that he did not adopt submarines 
 more quickly and develop both them and airships more 
 boldly. Years ago he was challenged in the press to spend 
 millions on submarines and airplanes, but 'he didn't think 
 the suggestion worth considering. I got the late Admiral 
 Sir Percy Scott to advocate in 1912 a large expenditure 
 on the new weapons, and Scott was one of the few 
 British naval chiefs who had both knowledge and imagin- 
 tion; but the British government preferred to let the 
 French and Germans experiment with the new in- 
 struments. 
 
 n 
 
 As an administrator Winston Churchill has been 
 
 cautious to excess and followed his chief war-adviser, 
 Admiral Lord Fisher, very closely. The pair did not 
 blunder to success this time, as British leaders of no
 
 WINSTON CHURCHILL 101 
 
 higher mental calibre 'have often blundered before. This 
 war may possibly 'have taught Englishmen that the time 
 for "bungling through" is over and past. How bitterly 
 Winston Churchill, if he has sufficient imagination, must 
 have regretted the wasted years and unused millions that 
 might have made English submarines and airplanes and 
 hydroplanes the best in the world. There is a Nemesis 
 attending place and power and wealth unwisely used. 
 
 I have tried to give a realistic portrait, so to speak, of 
 Winston Churchill, and it appears from it that no great 
 or original stroke of genius need be expected from him 
 in any place. Since he first won office and the con- 
 sequent pension when out of office, that is, absolute free- 
 dom from material cares, he has grown stout and only 
 keeps 'himself within comparatively decent outlines by 
 strenuous polo. He reads only to prepare his speeches 
 and has no other artistic tastes. But, on the other hand, 
 he is easy of approach and his heart is in his work; he 
 listens to everyone, even though he cannot grasp all that 
 is said to him ; in fine, he is an excellent subaltern : cap- 
 able, industrious and supremely courageous, but not 
 pathfinder or great leader of men. ^ 
 
 England has always despised genius and stoned the 
 prophets ; in her estremity, she had only the capable 
 mediocrities, whom she still delights to honor. She had 
 dozens of Curzons, McKennas and Cecils, any number of 
 Beresfords and Haigs, but no Fulton, no Napoleon, no 
 Paul Jones, no one to play indicating figure and so give 
 value to her millions of recruits ; no one to imagine, much 
 less to accomplish, the impossible for her sake, and, for
 
 102 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS 
 
 love of her, tear victory from the empty sky and the 
 unsounded sea. Yet thanks to America, she is again 
 victorious and her first use of victory has been to deny 
 freedom to Ireland and to drown in blood the aspirations 
 of India and Egypt to self government and national life.
 
 Alfred Russel Wallace
 
 RUSSEL WALLACE 
 
 THOUGH I knew he was one of the Immortals, 
 Wallace did not impress me at first as a great 
 man. His name, of course, was indissolubly con- 
 nected with .that of Darwin as one who had arrived in- 
 dependently at the idea of natural selection as the cause 
 of the origin of species, and the names of Darwin and 
 Wallace will shine as twin-stars in the firmament of 
 science like the names of Newton and Leibnitz. 
 
 More even than this might be said truthfully, for 
 both Wallace and Darwin showed not only fairness but 
 generosity to each other. In 1858 Wallace sent his famous 
 letter on Natural Selection to Darwin, who had written 
 a monograph on .the subject in 1842 which had been 
 shown only to Sir Joseph Hooker and Sir Charles Lyell. 
 As soon as Wallace learned this fact he gave all the 
 credit of priority to Darwin, and indeed was the first 
 to christen the new theory "Darwinism." And Darwin, 
 not to be outdone, chided Wallace for speaking "of the 
 theory as mine; it is just as much yours as mine." 
 
 Those who realize how jealous even- great men are 
 prone to be in anything that touches honor and reputa- 
 tion, will readily admit that this is perhaps the noblest 
 rivalry as yet recorded among men. 
 
 In spite of my prepossession, Wallace did not give me 
 at first the sensation of 'power and originality that Hux- 
 
 103
 
 104 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS 
 
 ley, for instance, did; he seemed a little slow, even in 
 drawing deductions; but patient to a fault, singularly 
 fair-minded and persevering as a natural force. He 
 grew upon you gradually. The more you explored his 
 mentality the wider you found it. 
 
 He was interested in every phase of thought ; the con- 
 nection between mathematics and metaphysics, the pro- 
 voking laws that govern chances and regulate coinci- 
 dences, the mysterious movements of the human spirit 
 by contradictories, by analogies, by merely verbal dis- 
 sonance and assonance, the gropings of consciousness 
 in the child, the senile decay of mind and memory, the 
 higher law of sex unions : he had studied all of them 
 and said something worthful about most of them. 
 
 And under the panoply of knowledge his mind moved 
 freely; he questioned this axiom and rejected that much- 
 vaunted conclusion without a shadow of hesitation. Bit 
 by bit he impressed me as some natural force impresses 
 despite its simplicity. 
 
 His limitations sound like eulogies; he was so per- 
 fectly sane, normal, well-balanced, that he could not even 
 understand the devastating passions of a Heine or a 
 Shakespeare could not see that such wild excess had 
 any excuse or justification; he regarded the mind as in- 
 ferior that could not hold all passions in leash without 
 effort. He was not a pilot for stormy seas, but the 
 solid land knew no safer, no more excellent guide. His 
 book on "Social Environment and Moral Progress" is 
 a classic in Sociology as valuable in its way, as his im- 
 mortal essay on Natural Selection.
 
 105 
 
 His goodness was as memorable as his fairness of 
 vision. He always lived most modestly; never desired 
 riches, never feared poverty, believed implicitly that 
 by devoting himself to his best work, he would always 
 make a decent living. 
 
 Though born and bred in England, no snobbism had 
 ever touched him, he felt that the peasant's life, being 
 richer in experience, was more interesting than the lord's. 
 Yet he was of the finest courtesy, kindness and gen- 
 erosity; he loved to relieve any want or alleviate any 
 misery; he said once: "The sole value of riches is the 
 joy of giving." 
 
 I knew him for more than quarter of a century and 
 can recall no fault in him no flaw even. His temper 
 was as patient and quiet and fair as his mind, and his 
 health was almost perfect even in extreme age. In writ- 
 ing thus of him, I feel as if I were ladling out treacle 
 to my readers; but I can't help it; I can't go outside 
 the Truth. Looking back, I'm inclined to think 'he was 
 the wisest and best man I've ever known. Fortunately 
 this word may be added, I've met dozens of bad men 
 who were incomparably more interesting. 
 
 I met Wallace for the first time some forty years ago, 
 just after Henry George's book, "Progress and Poverty," 
 had appeared. Everyone was discussing nationalization 
 of the land, and George's single-tax panacea for social 
 injustice. Englishmen were roughly divided into two 
 camps, those who believed in land nationalization and 
 those who disbelieved in it. Wallace believed in it, yet 
 saw quite plainly that it was only one step in the transfer-
 
 io6 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS 
 
 mation of the feudal state into an industrial state; but 
 the importance of it as a step forward he preached with 
 astonishing vigor. 
 
 I was struck at once b'y his curious but perfect under- 
 standing of the fact that wage-slavery is really more 
 degrading than chattel-slavery; that civilization, or the 
 humanisation of man in society, is absolutely impossible 
 so long as <men and women willing to work are under 
 the Whip of hunger and scourged by fear of want. He 
 was the first Englishman I met who understood this 
 cardinal fact. He wrote : "Our whole system of society 
 is rotten from top to bottom, and the Social Environment 
 as a whole, in relation to our possibilities and our claims, 
 is the wprst that the world has ever seen." 
 
 The next time I saw him was in the offices of the 
 Fortnightly Review. He and Frederic Chapman, head 
 of the publishing house, had been boys at school together 
 in the west of Engtland; I got them out to dinner, set 
 them reminiscencing, and so by schoolboy memories 
 made Wallace's more intimate acquaintance. 
 
 Chapman always asserted that Wallace had changed 
 less than any one; "he is the boy grown large"; but 
 that only shows how little boys and even men know of 
 each other, for the real Wallace was head and shoulders 
 out of poor Chapman's sight. 
 
 Later, Wallace used to come to see me whenever he 
 was in London. We often lunched together and spent 
 the evening playing innumerable games of chess ; he was 
 not a great player, but a good amateur careful, not 
 brilliant. Two or three times he stayed with me for a
 
 ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE 107 
 
 day or two. But as soon as his business in London was 
 finished he hurried "home" to his cottage in the coun- 
 try. Gradually I came to have the most sincere admira- 
 tion for him as a man of the rarest qualities. 
 
 His appearance was prepossessing: he was tall, I 
 should say over six feet in (height, and strong though 
 loosely made. A fine face framed in silver hair; the 
 features were regular, well-balanced; the eyes splendid 
 blue as the sky the light in them the kindly radiance 
 of genius. Wallace had all the candor of a child, and 
 he met every one with amiability and gentle courtesy. 
 He would discuss any subject with perfect frankness, 
 and would listen to diametrically opposed opinions with 
 a certain sympathy while defending his own views with 
 ability and persistence : his adversary might see some 
 new facet of truth a very simple and great nature. 
 
 It is by the heart we grow, and Wallace kept himself 
 so sincere, so kindly that he grew in wisdom to the 
 very end of his life instead of stopping as most men and 
 women stop growing mentally, almost 'before their bodily 
 growth is completed. .A quarter of a century ago he 
 was quite conscious, to use his own words, that "the 
 materialistic mind of his youth and early manhood was 
 being slowly moulded into a socialistic, spiritualistic and 
 theistic mind." He had crossed that desert of scepticism 
 which I speak of somethimes as stretching in front of the 
 Promised Land. He believed devoutly in God, in a con- 
 stantly acting spirit of almost unimaginable grandeur 
 and prescience, and towards the end of his life he re- 
 garded man as a special creation. His words admit of
 
 io8 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS 
 
 no doubt. The great apostle of evolutionary science 
 speaks of "the Divine influx, which at some definite 
 epoch in his evolution at once raised man above the rest 
 of the animals, creating as it were a new being with 
 a' continuous spiritual existence in a world or worlds 
 where eternal progress was possible for him." The 
 conversion of such a man as Wallace, seems to me, 
 ve'ry significant. 
 
 Many of his critics have written contemptuously of 
 his latest work, ''Man's Place in the Universe," and 
 "The World of Life," but I knew Wallace too well to 
 disdain the gropings or even the visionary hopes of one 
 of the finest spirits that ever wore earth. 
 
 I am not inclined to overrate Wallace, though I found 
 myself in agreement with him in this return, so to speak, 
 to faith; for I could never accept what he used to call 
 "the chief article of his creed." 
 
 I came late to an appointment one day and found 
 him waiting for me in my smoking-room. His face was 
 transfigured, smiling in a sort of ecstasy. I excused my- 
 self to him and said I was sorry to be late. 
 
 "It is no matter," he said, "I have been listening to 
 celestial harmonies." 
 
 "Really," I exclaimed, "What do you mean?" 
 
 "Don't you hear the violin?" he said. "I can hear 
 the music distinctly; one was on my knees playing just as 
 you came in." 
 
 I stared at him in amazement; but he was perfectly 
 sincere, yet I could see no trace of a violin.
 
 ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE 109 
 
 He held up his hand. "Listen," he said, "the melody 
 is still clear though faint." 
 
 I listened, but heard nothing; not a sound. 
 
 "You will hear the tunes," he went on, "one of these 
 days, for all who love them, hear them." 
 
 "What do you mean exactly?" I asked. "Can you 
 recall melodies with such vividness that you really hear 
 them again, as master-musicians recall music by reading 
 the score?" 
 
 "Oh, no, no," he replied quietly ; "I am not a musician ; 
 indeed until I became a spiritualist I didn't care much 
 about music. I was listening to the music of the spheres, 
 supernal melodies." And his face was like that of an 
 angel; his eyes shining with a sort of unearthly 'happi- 
 ness. The transparent sincerity of Wallace had so im- 
 pressed me that I was more than surprised; a certain 
 awe mingled with my wonder. 
 
 I want my readers to understand this man. Fifty 
 years before he had discarded all belief in Christianity; 
 long before most of us, he had applied the doctrine of 
 evolution to religion as boldly as to art or science and 
 had cleared his mind of all childish illusions. But now. 
 in ripest maturity, he came to regard this little Earth 
 of ours as the centre of the Universe and the anthropoid, 
 Man as the Crown of Creation, the masterpiece of Be- 
 ing, an emanation of God Himself with endless possi- 
 bilities of growth in worlds unrealized. 
 
 And this extravagant Gospel was not merely a belief. 
 He had the smiling, unruffled certitude of knowledge. 
 The superstition, as I called it to myself, was baffling.
 
 i io CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS 
 
 "Does he believe it?" I sometimes asked myself, as Ter- 
 tullian said, "because it is incredible?" (credo quia in- 
 credible). 
 
 Naturally, we had long discussions on these matters. 
 Wallace professed to know that there was a life after 
 death for every man; this life, indeed, he regarded as 
 a mere moment in the existence of the spirit, and won- 
 derful to relate he believed that personal identity would 
 be preserved beyond the grave. I could not follow him 
 in this any more than I could agree with his spiritualism, 
 though I admired the ineffable, haunting beauty of the 
 creed and its incalculable effect upon life and conduct. 
 Still I could not help -playing Thomas, and can only 
 affirm that whenever he called up spiritual phenomena 
 before me I was unable to witness the manifestations; 
 with the best will in the world I could never see the 
 violins or 'hear the celestial choiring. I gave myself to 
 the experiments again and again, but never could catch 
 the faintest glimpse of the undiscovered country that 
 may lie beyond the walls of sense. 
 
 Yet who shall say that Wallace was not right? No 
 more simple, sincere and noble soul has lived in these 
 times. My readers may remember how in a previous 
 volume of "Portraits" I have praised Meredith as al- 
 most Shakespeare's peer. I can only say here that Wal- 
 lace has left on me nearly as deep an imprint; he was 
 not so whimsical as Meredith, not by any means so gifted 
 in speech ; but more trustworthy in spite of his spiritual- 
 ism a fairer and broader, if less gifted mind. 
 
 One slightly humorous story may be chronicled here,
 
 ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE m 
 
 for humor is sometimes the natural obverse of intense 
 seriousness. 
 
 One evening I found Wallace in a friend's hou^e ai- 
 ter dinner. I knew most of the people present ; cultured 
 folk of the upper-middle class with a good deal of indi- 
 viduality if not much originality of view. Wallace had 
 been made the centre of the gathering; it was just after 
 the appearance of his book, "The World of Life," which 
 had fluttered the dove-cotes of science by its bold belief 
 in a life after death and indeed in life prolonged in other 
 worlds from everlasting to everlasting. The talk swirled 
 about him in drifts and eddies and he answered every 
 one with extraordinary knowledge and sympathetic cour- 
 tesy. 
 
 At length I brought up the famous prediction of Gomte, 
 the great French humanitarian, who asserted that there 
 were two problems that would never be solved by man ; 
 one was the origin of life; the other the chemical com- 
 position of the stars. Within ten years the chemical 
 comiposition of the stars had been discovered by Bun- 
 sen and his fellow student, Kirchoff, I think, and I re- 
 lated the student legend that has grown up in Heidel- 
 berg about the discovery. 
 
 The two had been working for a long time on the 
 colors shown by different chemical elements when seen 
 through a prism. They had established the fact that 
 nitrogen, I think it was, left a wavy dark line on a white 
 screen. One day the pair went out to luncti in a hurry, 
 for they had been working late and feared the meal
 
 ii2 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS 
 
 would be over. Bunsen put the prism on the wooden win- 
 dow-frame as he closed the door. 
 
 When they returned they saw a wavy dark line on the 
 big white screen. 
 
 "Who's been here?" cried Bunsen. 
 
 "You must -have drawn that line," said the other. 
 
 They both stared; suddenly one went over, took up 
 the prism, and the line disappeared. The two gazed at 
 each other while the revelation flooded the mind; the 
 nitrogen line had revealed itself in the rays of the sun! 
 The mystery of mysteries was solved. We can tell the 
 chemical composition of stars that may have vanished 
 from the heavens a thousand years before we were born. 
 
 "But will the origin of life be discovered as easily?" 
 I asked to change the subject. 
 
 Wallace replied, as I knew he would, that sooner or 
 later man would divine all the secrets of nature, for 'he 
 held all the keys in his own being. And he went on to 
 say how this problem of the origin of life had teased 
 Ihim once in the far East for six or eight months. He 
 had traced life back to its simplest forms and found it 
 hardly more than a power of motion; as undeveloped in 
 certain marine animals as in certain plants that also can 
 move from place to place. 
 
 "If the monies we now spend on armaments," he said, 
 "were spent on the endowment of science for one cen- 
 tury, that problem and a thousand others of more im- 
 portance would certainly be solved. 
 
 "Think," he went on," that we do not yet know 'how
 
 ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE 113 
 
 even sex is determined ; our ignorance is abysmal, crim- 
 inal. 
 
 "But one day we shall be able to create Krankensteins 
 at will and perhaps endow them with wisdom and good- 
 ness as supermen to teach our children." 
 
 "Wonderful, wonderful," piped up a little man from 
 the background; "but I think some of us would still 
 prefer the old-fashioned way of creation." 
 
 A shout of laughter broke the spell; after that we 
 talked of lighter things. It is only fair to say that Wal- 
 lace laughed as heartily as any of us. Wallace's under- 
 standing of the evils of our present day competitive 
 system and the dangers of the selfish gospel of "Every- 
 one for himself," was almost uncanny. In his last book 
 I find, if not a prediction of the world-war, a premoni- 
 tion of the catastrophe which the national and indi- 
 vidual selfishness of our time was fated to produce : 
 
 "There are, however, indications that the whole marc'h 
 of progress has been dangerously rapid, and it might 
 have been safer if the great increases of knowledge and 
 the vast accumulations of wealth had been spread over 
 two centuries instead of one. In that case our higher 
 nature might have been able to keep pace with the grow- 
 ing evils of superfluous wealth and increasing luxury, 
 and it might have been possible to put a check upon them 
 before they had attained the full power for evil they now 
 possess. 
 
 "Nevetheless, the omens for the future are good. The 
 great body of the more intelligent workers are determin- 
 ed to have JUSTICE."
 
 1 14 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS 
 
 If the English Order of Merit had any meaning Wal- 
 lace's name would have figured in the list when the 
 Order was first created instead of the names of second- 
 rate generals and admirals whose service to mankind 
 never rose above the quarterdeck or mess-room table. 
 
 But Alfred Russel Wallace was too great to be seen 
 or understood by any of the kings or ministers or cour- 
 tiers ; 'his work and 'his fame, his noble wisdom and simple 
 life belong to humanity are indeed as Thucydides said 
 of his great History, part of the possession of men for- 
 ever. He was too noble even to be mourned at death ; 
 the best of him lives on in those he influenced; his 
 memory is an encouragement his achievement an in- 
 spiration.
 
 Thomas Huxley
 
 THOMAS HUXLEY 
 
 NATIONS like individuals have ideals and com- 
 placently believe that they are admired by 
 others on account of them. Like individuals, 
 too, nations frequently misssee themselves. For instance, 
 Germans are always vaunting their "Redlichkeit und 
 Treue," though few foreigners would be found to admit 
 that the chief Teutonic virtues were honesty and loyalty 
 rather than industry and ambition. 
 
 In the same way the French plume themselves on being 
 chivalrously brave and generous to a fault, whereas they 
 are thrifty to meanness, high spirited rather than chival- 
 rous and possessed of a keen sense of truth and justice. 
 
 The English, on the other hand, are convinced that they 
 are a plain, sincere and outspoken folk who love truth 
 and hate a lie; in spite of the fact that they think more 
 of appearances than any other race and have a far 
 keener sense of physical beauty than of truth. 
 
 Our ideal as a rule is complementary, made up of what 
 we lack of perfection and no proof of an approximation 
 to it. 
 
 Now and than, however, a man appears who represents 
 in himself the ideal of the race, and it is interesting to 
 notice how he stands out from the crowd and is always 
 rather respected tha,n loved. The only Englishman I 
 ever knew who came near realizing the English ideal 
 was Thomas Huxley a very honest, outspoken plain 
 
 "5
 
 ii6 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS 
 
 man who was as devoted to truth as nine-tenths of his 
 countrymen are to social pretences. 
 
 I cannot say I knew Huxley intimately, though I met 
 him 6f ten enough ; he was a whole generation before me, 
 and I have again and again had occasion to notice that 
 one can only know intimately the men of one's own time 
 or by gift of frank sympathy or similarity of striving some 
 few among one's juniors. 
 
 Huxley's person was as strongly marked as his mind. 
 He gives his height somewhere as five feet eleven; I 
 should have guessed him about five feet nine or ten, spare 
 in figure with square shoulders, erect carriage, and 
 vigorous, abrupt movements. The photograph I repro- 
 duce gives his features, but does not convey the challenge 
 of the quick dark eyes or the pugnacity of the prominent 
 cocked nose, or the determination of the heavy jaw, bushy 
 eyebrows and clamped lips : a fighter's face, if ever 
 there was one, and the face of a Celt at that ; he reminded 
 me always of Slavin, the Irish pugilist, though Slavin 
 did not show so combative an air, 
 
 And the mind did not belie the outward. Huxley was 
 as pugnacious as any Irishman, as argumentative as any 
 Scot ; but one remarked almost immediately that he took 
 no unfair advantage in controversies, and even in the 
 heat of dispute never indulged in exaggerated statements 
 or misrepresented his opponent's case. 
 
 His uncompromising love of truth made him the great 
 naturalist. It was impossible not to realize the high and 
 noble allegiance of the man. He himself bears witness to 
 the general contempt of truth in England, and his loyalty
 
 THOMAS HUXLEY IT; 
 
 to it in his fragmentary ''Autobiography," where he 
 speaks of "that mellifluous eloquence which, in this 
 country, leads far more surely than worth, capacity or 
 honest work, to the highest places in Church and State . . . 
 I have been obliged to content myself through life with 
 saying what I mean in the plainest of plain language, 
 than which I suppose, there is no habit more ruinous to 
 a man's prospects of advancement." 
 
 In France and Germany such plain speaking rather 
 helps a man ; but in England, as in the United States, the 
 moment you dissent from the common opinion, you are 
 tabooed. Paine is still regarded here as anything but a 
 patriot. 
 
 I do not know exactly when my personal acquaintance 
 with Huxley began. Shortly after I became editor of the 
 Fortnightly Review I wrote to him telling him how much 
 I admired his work and hoping that we might meet, 
 adding that if he had anything to say on matters of 
 thought or morals I should be delighted to publish it. 
 
 In reply I got a pleasant letter from him inviting me 
 to call, and shortly afterwards I called. 
 
 His perfect sincerity, the entire absence of pose or 
 pretence in him, won me at once, and as both of us loved 
 thought and tongue- fencing we were soon at it hammer 
 and tongs, while strolling up and down his garden. Some- 
 thing he said about morality started me off. 
 
 "Curious," I said, "that just when we should be taught 
 morality at school, when our boyish minds are as plastic 
 as our bodies, we are trained in all sorts of immoralities !" 
 
 "Quite true," he exclaimed, "I had not much schooling,
 
 ii8 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS 
 
 but I agree with you that the school influences were the 
 lowest I have ever known. I have met all manner of men 
 in my time good and evil but I never met such an irre- 
 deemable set of scoundrels as at school. The boys were 
 bad enough with their bullying and cruelty, but the 
 masters and the atmosphere were as bad as bad could be." 
 
 "How do you account for it?" I asked, "that in spite 
 of this, most Englishmen are resolved to praise their 
 schools and school life." 
 
 He shrugged his shoulders. 
 
 "An extremely puzzling question," he remarked 
 thoughtfully. "I have no solution for it." 
 
 "Perhaps," I ventured, "the majority have such low 
 morals that they may profit by what would soil and bruise 
 some of us." 
 
 "Possibly," he remarked, evidently refusing to go into 
 the matter. 
 
 Another point of agreement between us arose from 
 something I said in one of our first talks about the 
 difficulty of making a decent living in England by 
 literature. 
 
 "Still harder to get a living by science," he said, "much 
 harder. There are so few places for men of science, and 
 almost no endowment for scientific research : I should 
 have thought the literary man what with papers and mag- 
 azines and books could get on much better." 
 
 "I was thinking of honorary rewards as well," I inter- 
 jected, "immediate recognition by one's peers. At twenty- 
 five or twenty-six you were elected a Fellow of the 
 Royal Society ; the following year you got a medal ;
 
 THOMAS HUXLEY 119 
 
 everyone regarded you as a man of great distinction ; 
 you could marry and do as you wished." 
 
 "In the honor way,' he replied, "I think you are right ; 
 all the bigwigs in science were very kind to me from the 
 beginning, and I believe the bigwigs in literature are not 
 kind to the young men ; perhaps because the training in 
 science is training in truth and in appreciation of all good 
 work; but in money rewards I think men of science are 
 probably worse off than men of letters. I had to serve 
 longer than Jacob for my wife; we were engaged eight 
 years ago before I could venture to marry. 
 
 "What used to annoy me at first was that first-rate 
 men like Owen, who had a European reputation second 
 only to that of Cuvier, only received $1,500 a year as 
 Hunterian professor, less than the salary of many a 
 bank manager. Forbes, too, and Hooker were first-rate 
 men ; had they turned their abilities to business they must 
 have made large fortunes; yet they could scarcely live. 
 Some day or other a business world will find it must pay 
 men of science infinitely better than it does to-day. 
 
 "But after all," he went on ; "the material rewards do 
 not matter much, so long as one gets a chance to do the 
 best in one, and I cannot say that I should have done 
 much better if I had had heaps of money." 
 
 "That is the motive power in us, is it not?" I cried. 
 "To do the best we can the best in us." 
 
 "Surely," he rejoined, "I used to call it my demon which 
 drove me to work and would give me no rest till I had 
 reached the highest in me." 
 
 Huxley would not promise to write for me, telling me
 
 120 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS 
 
 he was pledged to Knowles, the editor of the Nineteenth 
 Century, a friend of many years' standing. 
 
 "You see," he said, "we old fellows like sugar, and 
 Knowles gives me lots of it a proof of second child- 
 hood, I suppose," and he laughed half shamefacedly. 
 
 As soon as my first story came out in The Fortnightly 
 Review I sent it to him and asked him what he thought of 
 "A Modern Idyll." I quote from his reply: 
 
 "Hodeslea, Eastbourne, 
 
 "June 2, 1891. 
 "My dear Mr. Harris : 
 
 "I greatly delight in stories, and that which you have 
 been so kind as to send me is of the kind which I specially 
 appreciate, and very rarely have the chance of reading. 
 
 "Indeed, except Browning and Daudet, I do not know 
 among the authors with whom I am acquainted, where I 
 should find such a true and subtle psychological study. 
 Alike in conception and execution 'A Modern Idyll' 
 strikes me as a very thorough piece of work so far &s 
 it goes " 
 
 He went on to suggest that I should continue the story," 
 expand it into a long novel ; he thought it a "grand 
 subject." 
 
 I afterwards sent him "Montes," but he did not care 
 so much for it. I wanted to meet him again, so I called 
 and found him this time not frank and sincere merely, 
 but cordial. He would hardly believe that I had written 
 no stories before ; that both of the stories I had sent him 
 were my earliest attempts in fiction. He praised the 
 reticence in the telling, citing Goethe's great word:
 
 THOMAS HUXLEY 
 
 121 
 
 "In der Beschrankung zeigt sich erst cler Meister." 
 I wrote to him a day or two afterwards, telling him 
 how I had been attacked by the Rev. Newman Hall and 
 other clergymen and in the press for my outspokenness 
 in "A Modern Idyll.'" He answered me in this post- 
 script, which I give in facsimile: "The Public, as Mr. 
 Bumble said of the Laiv, "is a hass". Write to satisfy 
 yourself. The public may kick up its heels at first; but 
 will surely follow with true asinine docility in time." 
 
 /2^' 
 
 f tfr<j 
 
 Such frankness, such a modernity of outlook seemed 
 to me extraordinary in an Englishman, and delightful to
 
 122 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS 
 
 boot. I was very eager to find out about his youth ; had 
 he sowed wild oats? He was just as frank about this. 
 
 "I am ashamed of it," he said ; "but in my youth I com- 
 mitted all sorts of sins few worse men ; all the rest of 
 my life has been a padnful climbing up out of the mire 
 towards better things." 
 
 "What helped you most?" I asked. 
 
 "Carlyle, I think," he said; "more than any man; he 
 taught me that one can have a deep sense of religion 
 without any Christianity or theology. 
 
 "Then there was my work; but most of all love was 
 my teacher love for my wife showed me the beautiful 
 things in human nature, and then love for the children 
 taught me more from day to day." . . . 
 
 I began to think him one of the bravest and wisest of 
 men, especially when I found that he held the sanest view 
 of personal immortality. 
 
 "I see no reason for believing it," he said ; "on the other 
 hand I have no means of disproving it. I perhaps might 
 gay I desire it, but my work has forced me to make my 
 aspirations conform themselves to facts, and not try and 
 make facts fit my aspirations." He paused for a while, 
 and then went on, "the thing that always impresses me 
 most is the absolute justice of the system of things. The 
 gravitation of suffering to sin is as certain as the gravi- 
 tation of the earth to the sun.' 
 
 "Great goodness !" I cried ; "you cannot hold that faith ; 
 that is what the old Jews seem to have believed in the 
 ancient Hebrew creed ; but Job saw that the belief would 
 not hold water,
 
 THOMAS HUXLEY 123 
 
 "He declared he had been righteous and just all the 
 days of his life and yet was plagued beyond enduring." 
 
 "I care nothing about Job," replied Huxley, and his 
 lips tightened and his jaw stuck out. "It is plain to me 
 from my own life and the life of others, that the wicked 
 come to grief and the righteous to happiness and joy." 
 
 "Great Scott!" I ejaculated. "Your creed is simply 
 incredible. A drunken father strikes his wife and the 
 child is born a cripple, and in consequence suffers life- 
 long agony. Can you see justice in that? Justice in the 
 crucifixion of Jesus ; justice in the poisoning of Socrates ; 
 justice in your own small pay and being fenced away 
 from the kingdom of love for eight years. Justice!" 
 
 Again his lips tightened. 
 
 "Of course," I said; "there is a sort of rough justice 
 in the world an approximation to justice. We are all 
 conscious of that. Conscious that if we get drunk we 
 shall probably have a headache next morning ; but I have 
 sometimes drunk a good deal too much and been benefited 
 by it. It is the perpetual terrible injustice of life that is 
 /ipalling, that distracts all the sympathetic and sensitive 
 spirits, and leads to soulnumbing despair." He shook his 
 head and changed the subject. 
 
 It was that talk which led me to study Huxley. There 
 were dreadful limitations in him. I began to see how 
 English he was shallow, I mean, not deep-souled. The 
 English are good workmen ; they have no great thinkers. 
 Their success in practical life comes from shaJlowness of 
 feeling; they will never be like the Jews, saviours of men, 
 or like the Greeks and steer humanitv to new ideals.
 
 i2 4 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS 
 
 But I felt sure I could trust Huxley's instincts of fair 
 play, and so I went at him again for an article. I wanted 
 him to write on the ethics of evolution, and felt that if 
 I provoked new thoughts in him: he would do it for me. 
 He began by saying again : 
 
 "I am so bounden to Knowles," adding, with his 
 habitual frankness: "I suppose I shall have to write for 
 you, too. 
 
 "The phrase 'the survival of the fittest' is ambigous, 
 as you say. 'Fittest' has a touch of 'best' about it a sort 
 of moral flavor, whereas in nature what is fittest depends 
 upon conditions. 
 
 "If our world were to grow cold the survival of the 
 fittest might bring about in the vegetable kingdom a 
 growth of humbler and humbler organisms till the 'fittest' 
 might mean nothing but a lichen ; but in the evolution of 
 man there is an ethical process which has grown out of 
 the cosmic process and limits the area of struggle and 
 competition. We are slowly growing better. 
 
 "At first the ape and tiger instincts are pretty dominant, 
 but as soon as families are grouped into clans a blood tie 
 is engendered that assures a certain loose unity, and the 
 spirit of the herd comes in to restrain individual assertion. 
 This sympathy with others of our kin is the germ of 
 ethics, and so we have the evolution of that altruistic 
 feeling which we call conscience." 
 
 "I know all that," I said, "but it won't do for me. 
 There are qualities in us which cannot be evolved into 
 higher and richer forms, for they tend to self-destruction. 
 Pity, self-sacrifice, the desire that comes to one sometimes-
 
 THOMAS HUXLEY 125 
 
 for noble self-immolation. It causes at man who cannot 
 swim to jump overboard to help a drowning person. You 
 cannot tell me that that tends to survival ; it leads to his 
 drowning, and so prevents him from transmitting his 
 qualities to his kind. Sympathy is a source of weakness 
 in the struggle of life, and should not go a bit beyond the 
 necessities of the case; but it is not even honored by us 
 till it goes far beyond necessity, far beyond even what we 
 regard as reasonable." 
 
 "Yes, that is true," Huxley admitted musingly. "It is 
 difficult to be sure about the matter." 
 
 "I remember reading once of an Oxford man," I went 
 on, "a Fellow of his college, who jumped in front of a 
 runaway horse in order to pull a poor old apple woman 
 out of danger. The old woman was saved, but the 
 scholar's thigh was broken and he died a week or two 
 later. I remember Francis Newman, brother of the 
 Cardinal, telling me that he thought the man had acted 
 wrongly disgracefully throwing his valuable life away 
 for a worthless one ; but I insisted that that was the es- 
 sence of all self-sacrifice. If it were reasonable we all 
 ought to do it, but our admiration went to the self- 
 sacrifice that was unreasonable." 
 
 "I see, I see," cried Huxley ; "it is, of course, very dif- 
 ficult to decide. You may be right. I will try to write 
 something for you." And we left it at that. 
 
 He was 66 thirty years older than I was and just 
 as willing to force his mind to occupy itself with the 
 furthest reaches of thought as he could have been as a 
 young man. But I was always conscious of limitation in
 
 126 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS 
 
 him. He had not anything like the depth of sympathy or 
 width of mind of a Carlyle, or a Meredith, to say nothing 
 of Goethe or Shakespeare. 
 
 We lunched together this same year and talked about 
 politics. We agreed in detesting Gladstone, but though 
 he spoke with some admiration of Parnell he suddenly 
 burst into a tirade against the Irish. Healy and Sexton 
 had promised fidelity to their leader, and now declared 
 that they only did it, believing that Parnell would resign 
 a sort of letter of commendation to a servant if he took 
 his discharge easily. 
 
 "What a pack of liars," cried Huxley. "That is at the 
 bottom of the whole Irish question. The Irish cannot tell 
 the truth." 
 
 He made me smile. At bottom he was so very 
 English. 
 
 "What are you grinning at?" he barked. 
 
 "At you," I replied, "and your sweeping condemnation. 
 I have seen no Englishman yet with the sensitiveness for 
 the truth I have known in several Irishmen. The source 
 of the Irish trouble is the fear on the part of the English 
 that the Irish will outdo them. The reason they got rid 
 of the Parliament in Ireland was because the debates on 
 College Green were so much more interesting than those 
 in Westminster. They would be again to-morrow if we 
 had an Irish Parliament. And the Irish would try all 
 sorts of experiments in economics ; they might even 
 nationalize the land ; probably would ; and the English are 
 frightened of that, too." 
 
 Seeing him frown I went on maliciously. "The land
 
 THOMAS HUXLEY 127 
 
 must be nationalized in Ireland because Ireland is like a 
 saucer. You cannot drain your land wtien your neighbors' 
 water is running into it; the first act of a great Irish 
 republic would be to nationalize the land. They might 
 teach you English all sorts of lessons and you are most 
 unwilling learners." 
 
 "That is true," he cried, laughing ; "you have got me 
 there." 
 
 A little later we had a talk about his contest with Glad- 
 stone over the Gadarene swine. 
 
 "The idea," I said, "of your arguing with Gladstone 
 about such nonsense ! You might just as well go into a 
 ring to wrestle with a naked savage whose body was 
 smeared with oil." 
 
 But he would not have it ; he had all an Englishman's 
 peculiar reverence for position, "Gladstone was twice 
 Prime Minister . . . enormous influence,' and so forth 
 and so on. 
 
 A little larter I got an essay from him on that curious 
 moral difficulty I have already spoken of, which the 
 doctrine of "the survival of the fittest" does not elucidate. 
 He met the point frankly; but he would not admit, as 
 Alfred Russel Wallace admitted, that our admiration for 
 self-sacrifice could never have come from the herd-feel- 
 ing, for it goes beyond reason and is condemned by the 
 herd-feeling. To the English state the life of a gifted 
 young professor was far more valuable than that of an 
 old apple-woman. Our admiration of heroism is as 
 intuitive as our love of beauty ; is, indeed, as Wallace saw, 
 the best proof that some divine impulse is working in
 
 128 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS 
 
 us and through us to a fulfilment beyond our imagining. 
 
 Huxley's mind had its limitations ; his sympathies were 
 somewhat narrow ; but the beauty and nobility of his 
 character grew upon one. He was generosity itself to all 
 youthful or worthy striving, and bit by bit, the enthusiasm 
 of the younger scientists helping, he came to a position of 
 unique authority. When he was made of the Privy 
 Council everyone was astonished and rejoiced, as one is 
 astonished in England when honor is paid to the honor- 
 able. 
 
 So, after all his controversies, and they were as many 
 as the years of his life, he came in the fullness of time 
 to leisure and dignity and the enjoyment of the winged 
 hours. 
 
 His married life had always been aJmost ideal ; he never 
 sent an article to the printer before his wife had read and 
 declared it good, and whenever she objected to any pas- 
 sage he knew at once that it needed revision. 
 
 All his life had been a moral growth, and his greatness 
 of character often brought him to extraordinary wisdom. 
 For instance, he was approached shortly before his death 
 by an anti-militaristic society, and he answered them in 
 the following words, which I think worth weighing and 
 assimilating today, though they were written offhand five 
 and twenty years ago. 
 
 "In my opinion it is a delusion to attribute the growth 
 of armaments to the 'exactions of militarism.' The 'exac- 
 tions of industrialism' generated by international com- 
 mercial competition, may, I believe, claim a much larger 
 share in promoting that growth. Add to this the French
 
 THOMAS HUXLEY 129 
 
 thirst for revenge, the most just determination of the 
 German and Italian peoples to assert their national unity ; 
 the Russian Paaslavonic fanaticism and desire for free 
 access to the western seas ; the Papacy steadily fishing in 
 troubled waters for the means of recovering its lost (I 
 hope for ever lost) temporal possessions and spiritual 
 supremacy; the 'sick man' (Turkey) kept alive only be- 
 cause each of his. doctors is afraid of the other becoming 
 his heir." 
 
 With Huxley died a great moral influence and no one 
 in the present generation occupies the throne he left 
 vacant. When a generation or more elapses before any- 
 one is found to fill your place, you may be said to have 
 achieved a certain measure of immortality. Huxley was 
 always contemptuous of fame, declaring frequently that 
 he would not give a button for posthumous reputation. 
 Nor has he left any work that will enshrine him in the 
 memory of men. But his life and example were inspiring 
 and he will live on in the spiritual influence he exercised 
 over many of the best men in his own time.
 
 Louis Wilkinson
 
 LOUIS WILKINSON 
 
 BY every right of blood and birth Louis Wilkinson 
 should have been among the most conventional of 
 Englishmen. He was born and brought up in the 
 straitest sect of the Pharisees and yet appears to have 
 sucked in revolt with his mother's milk. I have no ready- 
 made or even reasonable expfanation of his phenomenon ; 
 Wilkinson must be accepted as a "sport" just like a child 
 of ordinary parents who is endowed with six fingers. 
 
 He was born December 17, 1881, at Aldeburgh in Suf- 
 folk. His father was the Rev. Walter Wilkinson, Fel- 
 low of) Worcester College, Oxford, distinguished in 
 the chess world as an amateur. This Walter Wilkinson 
 travelled all over Scandinavia, and "discovered" Ibsen 
 before Mr. William Archer, but failed to interest anyone 
 in the slightest degree in Ibsen's work. 
 
 Louis Wilkinson was educated at Radley College, one 
 of the large English "public schools," after having gained 
 a classical scholarship there as a result of the classical 
 education received from his father. In 1899 ne won an ~ 
 other classical scholarship at Pembroke College, Oxford 
 an event which had a sequel of some significance. From 
 his first term at Oxford, Wilkinson displayed a most 
 violent antagonism to the ruling undergraduate caste 
 the "bloods," in 'Varsity parlance ; or, to use a term that 
 will convey a clearer description to present-day American 
 readers, the Junkers, who based their pretensions to as-
 
 1 32 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS 
 
 cendancy in college and university life on their prowess 
 in sport and in athletics. 
 
 Wilkinson, and his few friends who sympathized with 
 his rebellion, fought the pretensions of this governing 
 class in every possible way, by propaganda and by direct 
 action. The "Jum r Common Room", a dub to which 
 access was by right free to every member of Pembroke 
 College, had been for some time closed to all except the 
 Junkers and their friends and toadies. This arbitrary 
 denial by the few of the rights of the many was the object 
 of special attack by Wilkinson and his party. A man- 
 ifesto was drafted, couched in phrases which no doubt 
 revealed all the pompous gravity of adolescence, protest- 
 ing against the claims of a handful of men to arrogate to 
 themselves the privileges that belonged to the Common- 
 wealth. A surprisingly large number of signatures was 
 secured, but the manifesto failed, and the college authori- 
 ties showed unmistakably that their sympathies were with 
 the Junker caste. 
 
 Meanwhile, an insolent notice posted by the leader 
 of the athletic party, that "it was not only the duty, but 
 the business," of all the members of the college to run 
 along the towing-path while one of the university rowing 
 races was in progress, further helped in bringing matters 
 to a head. Wilkinson and his friends of course refused 
 to go near the towing-path. Shortly afterward, Wilkin- 
 son's rooms in college were raided in his absence by the 
 leaders of the athletic set, and the furniture mauled after 
 the fashion of such "raggings." 
 
 A special point was made of the mishandling of a
 
 LOUIS WILKINSON 133 
 
 framed photograph of Oscar Wilde, with whom Wilkin- 
 son had corresponded for two or three years before his 
 death. He had never met Wil-de, but entertained and 
 expressed high admiration for him as an artist and a re- 
 volutionary figure. This fact, and the further fact that 
 Wilkinson made no secret of his contempt for the forced 
 routine of college chapel services, encouraged his more 
 malignant enemies in the hopes that he and his friends 
 might be laid low by the time-honored reactionary trick 
 of accusations of immorality and blasphemy. 
 
 Their dangerous activities in opposition to the Junker 
 regime would thus be stopped forever. Painstaking ef- 
 forts of inquiry failed, however, to collect even the most 
 meagre evidence of immorality against either Wilkinson 
 or those associated with him ; consequently this charge 
 was soon abandoned, and the "Junior Common Room" 
 men determined to make things hot for the offenders by 
 a continuation of the policy of "ragging" their rooms 
 rather than by laying "information," which had so ob- 
 viously little or no relation to truth. 
 
 But the Wilkinson faction was not inclined to take this 
 kind of treatment in the proper spirit of humility. Being 
 in a hopeless minority, they realized that resistance of the 
 usual kind was foredoomed to failure, and they therefore, 
 perhaps somewhat in the spirit of melodrama, provided 
 themselves with revolvers, and advertised their determina- 
 tion to use them in the face of any assault either on their 
 persons or their property. The threat was put to the 
 test, and the raiders of the next set of rooms, confronted 
 by loaded firearms, thought better of their intention and
 
 134 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS 
 
 retired. No further attempt at violence was made : resort 
 was now had to other means and the cooperation of the 
 college authorities was secured by the undergraduate 
 oligarchy. 
 
 The master of Pembroke College was then, and I 
 believe still is, the Right Reverend John Mitchinson, 
 sometime Bishop of Barbadoes. This individual signed 
 his letters during his episcopacy "John Windward Isles," 
 thus courting a deserved ridicule, which annoyed him 
 extremely. He was a didactic disciplinarian of the worst 
 Prussian type, with all the tyrannical impulses which so 
 frequently obsess men of low birth who have risen to 
 authority. He was a religious bigot and a fanatical con- 
 servative. Obviously no head of a college could have 
 been better qualified by character and opinions to col- 
 laborate with the enemies of the Wilkinson party. How 
 the undergraduate Junkers "worked" him is not clear, 
 for secrecy shrouded their manoeuvres, but the task of 
 aligning him against such rebels could not have been 
 difficult. 
 
 The undisputed fact is that he summoned Wilkinson 
 and four of Wilkinson's most "dangerous" friends, and 
 summarily informed them that they were no longer 
 members of the college. The reason given was that they 
 had been proved guilty of "blasphemy", but not a single 
 specific charge was put forward, and therefore any de- 
 fense, even had it been allowed, was out of question. 
 The men were not confronted by their accusers. There 
 was not the remotest semblance of a trial. The Bishop 
 contented himself by saying that the contract between
 
 LOUIS WILKINSON 135 
 
 the college and the undergraduates was one terminable 
 at pleasure on either side, and that he chose to terminate 
 it The real reason, of course, was that Wilkinson and 
 his friends held and acted on opinions that ran counter 
 to the interests of the college oligarchy ; therefore it was 
 necessary to get rid of them. 
 
 The cup of Wilkinson's guilt ran over, when it was 
 known that he opposed the Boer War and was a con- 
 temptuous critic of British jingoism. In 1901 such an 
 attitude ensured a dangerous unpopularity. 
 
 Mr. Labouchere's journal, Truth, ran a series of ar- 
 ticles under the title of "A 'Varsity Star-Chamber," ex- 
 posing what he called "The Pembroke College Scandal." 
 
 In 1902 Wilkinson, helped enormously by the influence 
 and the exertions of his father, who realized at once the 
 grossness of the injusice that had been committed, 
 matriculated at St. John's College, Cambridge. He now 
 turned from classics to the study of history, winning an 
 Historical Exhibition in 1903, and graduating with 
 honors in 1905. In this year he published his first novel, 
 "The Puppet's Dallying," which, though naturally im- 
 mature, had a certain succes d'estwie, being favorably 
 noticed by the more important London journals. 
 
 In the summer of 1905 Wilkinson was invited by the 
 Philadelphia Society for Extension of University Teach- 
 ing to come to America for a six months' lecture tour. 
 During the period from September, 1905, to March, 
 1906, Wilkinson laid the foundation of his prestige as a 
 lecturer on literary and social subjects in this country, 
 and he has lectured over here in the winter months con-
 
 136 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS 
 
 tinuously to the present date, with the single exception 
 of the 1914 1915 season, which he spent in Spain and 
 Italy. In 1914 he received the degree of Doctor of Let- 
 ters from St. John's College, Annapolis, in recognition 
 of the value of his lectures there. In 1909 he had become 
 co-founder with Dr. Arnold Shaw of the University 
 Lecturers' Association of New York, an association that 
 was speedily joined by John Cowper Powys and other 
 distinguished speakers. The friendship between Powys 
 and Wilkinson is a curious example of the attraction of 
 opposites, for Wilkinson's antipathy to the essential 
 elements of Powys' outlook on life and literature is 
 deep-rooted. 
 
 From 1905 to 1914 Wilkinson, disgusted by the im- 
 perfections of his first novel, made no serious attempts 
 to write, but in the summer of 1914, at Siena, he began 
 his second novel, "The Buffoon." It was completed in 
 the following year, and published by Knopf in the spring 
 of 1916 and in England by Constable's. 
 
 During the summer and fall of 1916 Wilkinson wrote 
 his third novel, "A Chaste Man," which was published 
 in the fall of 1917. 
 
 The scene of the novel is laid in Chiswick, a suburb of 
 London; the character of the hero is anamalous yet 
 peculiarly English, for in England a Joseph is still pos- 
 sible if not praiseworthy, whereas in every other quarter 
 of the globe a Joseph would be ridiculous and disgraceful, 
 if not utterly inconceivable. The philandering hero who 
 wins the young girl's love and then has scruples about 
 embracing her, does not impress me in spite of his chas-
 
 LOUIS WILKINSON 137 
 
 tity, though he is excellently drawn; his cold snobbish 
 wtife, too, fails to reach my sympathy, but the Flynn 
 family the wise and outspoken but drunken Irish father, 
 the three unconventional vividly differentiated daughters 
 and the boarders is of most pathetic interest, and the 
 slip of the hero's sister gives the very imprint of life 
 itself, an impression only reached by consummate art. 
 
 It is exasperating, though natural enough, that England 
 should still lead these United States in all literary 
 achievements. I have just read half a dozen American 
 novels by well-known writers, but not one of them can be 
 compared either as works of art or as transcripts of life 
 with this book. I would rather have written "A Chaste 
 Man" than any novel of Dreiser save "Sister Carrie," 
 and Wilkinson's heroine Olga is an even finer creation 
 than Carrie. I have always faith in the future of a man 
 who can paint women to the life. Besides, Wilkinson's 
 style is excellent simple, sincere, but touched now and 
 again to beauty. Here is a sentence : "She stood before 
 him with her rich young head drooped and her child's 
 figure a little swaying" that rich" is pure magic. 
 
 Wilkinson's latest book is perhaps his best. "Brute 
 Gods" deserves to be read very carefully even by those 
 who think themselves masters of the story-telling art. 
 
 I do not by this mean that the book as a whole is well 
 told or well constructed. It is not. In the beginning we 
 have a family lightly sketched, the wife and mother has 
 run away with a lover and as soon as we get to know the 
 father and husband we understand why any woman 
 would run away from him.
 
 138 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS 
 
 What makes the book is the description of the love of a 
 boy of nineteen, Alec, for Gillian Collett, a woman six or 
 seven years older than himself, who is rather ashamed 
 of carrying on with a boy, and yet is seduced time and 
 again by the boy's passionate desire and whole-hearted 
 abandonment to his affection. The older woman tries 
 to feel cynical towards the youth, but she cannot; his 
 passionate admiration is too sweet to her ; in spite of her- 
 self she yields more and more to him. Here is a page 
 I must reproduce; for it seems to me of extraordinary 
 quality : 
 
 " 'You're wonderful'." He was close to her, he spoke 
 low. " 'I don't know I didn't know that any one could 
 be so' " 
 
 " 'Oh, I'm not ! You can't really I mean you don't 
 know me at all !' " 
 
 "Her arms dropped, she wavered before him. His look 
 of utmost conviction shamed her words. That religious 
 look of a devotee, it was absorbingly new to her, yet not 
 new, she had in some sort known it. It was terrible that 
 he should be so sure, that his youth should do this to him ; 
 it was terrible, and great. That strong eagerness of his 
 mouth, his eyes so darkly lit, his boyish candor, all his 
 unknowing boldness . . . she could have dropped at 
 his feet and humbled herself to him forever. No other 
 way but to hold fast by that tenderness and passion. He 
 could subdue her, this boy who seemed to be at her will. 
 
 " 'I want you !' " he whispered. " 'You can't tell how 
 much I must ' "
 
 LOUIS WILKINSON 139 
 
 " 'But what ?' " She held out her hands, and he caught 
 them, burning her through. 
 
 " 'It's not like anything I've ever it's because Oh, 
 I I love you ! May I say that, do you mind? do you?' " 
 
 "Her mouth shook, she waited for him to say it again. 
 
 "'May I kiss you?'" 
 
 "The girl of twenty-six was wholly taken by that 
 question which no one but a novice can ever ask. The 
 contrast of his diffidence and humility and restraint with 
 the overpowering and momentous compulsion that drove 
 from him, so sure in his mouth and eyes, confirmed her 
 his. She did not answer, she looked hard, then she kissed 
 him, and stayed." 
 
 No one living, it seems to me, except Louis Wilkinson, 
 could have written this page, and it is better than any- 
 thing he has done so far. It ranks to me with that short- 
 story of Galsworthy's, "The Apple Tree," which I have 
 praised in and out of season. It is as fine even as Gals- 
 worthy's and, if anything, better realized, and more in- 
 timate, though not so well expressed. One could almost 
 swear it was a personal experience of Wilkinson's. If 
 he had deliberately written the book round this incident 
 between the boy and the woman I think he would have 
 made the book a classic. As it is I am not straining eulogy 
 when I say he has written some pages that anyone might 
 be proud to sign. 
 
 It seems to me everything may be hoped from such be- 
 ginnings. Wilkinson has as much temperament as W. L. 
 George and knows not only France and French but classic
 
 140 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS 
 
 literature as well and America to boot. His roots strike 
 deep and are 'richly nourished. 
 
 He has kept his head perfectly throughout the war; 
 without making himself conspicuous by kicking against 
 the pricks he has yet never concealed his frank opinion 
 that English policy was at least as selfish and sordid as 
 that of Germany and that all the combatants deserve to 
 lose for embarking on a war that could benefit no one. 
 His opinion of the Peace and the League of Nations is 
 not flattering either to Lloyd George, Clemenceau or 
 President Wilson. I find in him high qualities both of 
 intellect and character. I have only known him person- 
 ally for the last three years here in New York; but to 
 me he is both likeable and interesting. In person very 
 tall, just over six feet I should think, and slight, but 
 giving one the impression of wiry strength. His manner 
 is that of the student, reflective and retiring rather than 
 brisk or ready, yet he talks excellently when you know 
 him and has neither false modesty nor undue shyness. 
 
 He writes me that he has accepted a position offered 
 to him in England and is not likely therefore to return 
 to these States for some years. I regard that as a piece 
 of good fortune for him; the scene of all his stories is 
 laid in England. The creative artist needs a special 
 terroir; it is not good for him to become too cosmopol- 
 itan; we only grow to be masters of ordinary life and 
 ordinary men and women by living much with them. 
 
 I expect considerable things from Wilkinson; in both 
 "A Chaste Man" and "Brute Gods" the story is not at 
 once as clear as I think it should be ; it dawns on you after
 
 LOUIS WILKINSON 141 
 
 a while and becomes plain enough ; but one is a little per- 
 plexed and irritated just at first and this is a fault to be 
 shunned, not repeated. I want his next story to begin 
 as simply and persuasively as "The Cloister and the 
 Hearth," or "Le Cure de Tours" and then I shall settle 
 myself down for an hour's pure enjoyment. Wilkinson 
 has the heart of the matter in him I am persuaded and so 
 I bid him gird up his loins and give us his very best.
 
 W. L. George
 
 W. L. GEORGE 
 
 THE first time I met W. L. George was some ten 
 years ago at an an artistic "At Home" in Chel- 
 sea. He made a pleasant impression ; a strong, 
 well set-up figure, some five feet nine or ten in height, 
 with dark handsome face ; ai courteous mannr with a sus- 
 picion of self-assurance that announced to me the coming 
 generation. Just as we of the Fifties met the Brown- 
 ings and Arnolds of the Twenties and Thirties, so now 
 the young men born in the Eighties came to dispute with 
 us" the pride of place. George met me on even footing, 
 He wais willing enough to listen, but I soon had occasion 
 to remark that he knew French thoroughly and spoke it 
 like a native. His book on "France in the Twentieth 
 Century" had not impressed me deeply. It was good 
 honest journeyman's work far ahead of average British 
 opinion in knowledge, but not subtle or imaginative or 
 complete ; the heights in French life unexplored ; he never 
 mentioned Descartes or Pascal, Vauvenargues or Ver- 
 laine; his outlook was that of a journalist rather than 
 that of a thinker or poet, and because of this feeling of 
 mine that he lived on the surface I was inclined to resent 
 a little his self-confidence. Suddenly I was asked by 
 some one to notice that Mrs. George was smoking a pipe 
 or it may have been a cigar. In any case attention was 
 drawn to the couple rather by force than by charm. 
 A year or so afterwards the town was startled by "A 
 143
 
 144 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS 
 
 Bed of Roses." The thesis, if I remember it rightly, was 
 that a woman might find a "gay" life more amusing and 
 more lucrative than a humdrum existence. But there 
 were moments in the novel of soul-analysis sufficient to 
 redeem a worse subject, and one had to admit that George 
 had studied or absorbed certain types of women with rare 
 insight. He was not as successful in his portraits of 
 men, but on the whole one felt that a new novelist had 
 made a successful first appearance. 
 
 I am not sure that his later books have bettered his 
 position greatly. "The Second Blooming" seems to me 
 the best of them, and indeed the story of the wife's 
 seduction, which is the theme of that book, is excellently 
 managed, while the subsequent love-passages and the 
 final breaking-off are all realistically realized and ren- 
 dered with French fairness. But there is nothing in the 
 book that takes the breath like the love-idyll in Richard 
 Feverel. There is no charm in it to be compared to 
 the charm of Galsworthy's little story entitled "The 
 Apple Tree." George gives us a picture of love and 
 passion, but nowhere ecstacy or the magic of lyric vision. 
 
 "Blind Alley" is another love story which this time 
 comes to nothing, and is therefore not so interesting as 
 "The Second Blooming." Nor is the feminine psychology 
 of thef book quite so deep; the scalpel is not used so 
 boldly; the nerves are not laid bare so dexterously. 
 
 Of all George's books "The Making of an English- 
 man" or "The Little Beloved," as it is entitled by Little, 
 Brown & Co. of Boston, the American publishers, is the 
 one that throws most light on the author's mentality and
 
 W. L. GEORGE H5 
 
 temperament. It is the story of a young Frenchman who 
 comes to London and goes into business to make a 
 fortune. But we are told little of his adventures in the 
 city and much about his landlady's two daughters, and 
 especially about the eldest daughter Maud, who is quite 
 willing to kiss and flirt with the young Frenchman, but 
 will not go any further unless he's minded to marry. 
 
 Maud is a really brilliant study of a sound-hearted, 
 self-interested girl of the lower middle class of Cockaigne 
 who is perfectly well able to take care of herself in any 
 circumstances. Maud evades the attack and the young 
 Frenchman is bitterly disappointed, but he turns at once 
 to a daughter of his employer, "Edith" who shows him 
 another side of English character. 
 
 Edith is a girl of the better class, romantic, affec- 
 tionate and very pretty, and the Frenchman falls in love 
 with her bit by bit, for like most Frenchman, and most 
 young men for that matter, he is "in love with love," 
 and on the quest of it perpetually. 
 
 These two studies of contrasted English types, Maud 
 and Edith, are as good as anything George has done or 
 indeed seems likely to do. 
 
 George's political views strike one as rather shallow. 
 He has interspersed them through the love story and 
 they come rather to irritate us like thin editorials, and 
 yet they are fair-minded enough in a certain way. 
 
 He tells us on one page that the cry of Home Rule 
 arouses "troublesome memories" in him, and that "the 
 English tricks in Egypt, South Africa and Ireland annoy 
 him.' He tries hard to be liberal without any deep
 
 146 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS 
 
 comprehension of the struggle going on underneath the 
 surface betrween the Haves and the Have-Nots, which 
 is, as Goethe saw a hundred years ago, the real, the vital 
 problem of the modern world. 
 
 George's views on politics are nothing like so inter- 
 esting as his views of women. He is by nature a lover. 
 He has studied love from the man's point of view with 
 passionate earnestness, and so every now and then has 
 caught glimpses of the woman's view of the matter, 
 glimpses and gleams which light up his pages. The story 
 of his bethrothal to Edith and her father's opinion of the 
 matter, and his final success complete "The Making of an 
 Englishman," and the whole book is, as I have said, ex- 
 tremely interesting. 
 
 Whether George will ever write a masterpiece or not, 
 would be very difficult indeed to determine. He has it 
 in him to write a great love story, but he must take, I 
 think, time for it and give his real knowledge of man's 
 and woman's passions generous opportunities. All one 
 can say at the moment is that he has the root of the 
 matter in him. He feels passionately, writes excellently 
 and is not afraid to say what he feels. One must simply 
 hope for the best and wait. 
 
 Scattered up and down his books are phrases which 
 stick in the memory. "There is no place like home," he 
 says, and then adds, "which is one comfort." He paints 
 a bishop pleading for national organization and discipline 
 by suggesting that the bishop means to do the organ- 
 ization while the rest of the world will come in for the
 
 W. L. GEORGE H7 
 
 discipline. And finally he sums up his own creed, the 
 last sentence of which is almost a proof of genius: 
 
 "Work sixteen hours a day. During the other eight 
 dream of your work. Check your references three times ; 
 then get somebody to check them again. Collect all the 
 facts you can; then realize there are some you don't 
 know. Acquire strong convictions ; then doubt them. In 
 other words, keep your mind fluid, so that always it may 
 be fit to flow into the most obscure crannies of human 
 singularity." 
 
 An excellent program: but you can only keep your 
 mind "fluid" by cultivating your sympathies. It is by 
 the heart we grow, and all our deepest thoughts come 
 from the heart. 
 
 George is about forty with an established reputation 
 and a lazy, carefree life assured with even four hours' 
 work a day. What will he do? His French education 
 and training gave him a splendid start and he used it to 
 the uttermost; but now? Has he laid broad bases for 
 eternity? Who shall say? 
 
 After forty with reputation made we are not apt to 
 learn much. Is George growing ? I don't know. His scat- 
 tered remarks on the war have been much more central, 
 less provincial I mean, than those of Wells and Bennett ; 
 his French training saved him from the worst extra- 
 vagances ; but something more is needed for enduring 
 fame. A great mental effort or a great passion, or a 
 supreme self-sacrifice many are the ways ; but daemonic 
 power is the first requirement of that I see no trace.
 
 Henri Gaudier-Brzeska
 
 GAUDIER-BRZESKA 
 
 WE are living in a rebirth of religion and of art, 
 comparable only to the Reformation and the 
 Renaissance of art in the sixteenth century. 
 But in the upheaval of three centuries ago, thought led 
 the way and art followed after, whereas now the spring 
 of art is passing into . high summer, while the new 
 thought is putting timidly forth the first bourgeonings. 
 It is difficult to fix exactly the beginnings of great move- 
 ments. Nine out of ten observers would give the credit 
 of this rebirth of art to France and trace the growth 
 through Delacroix, to the Barbizon school and so to 
 Cezanne, the epoch-making initiator who was followed 
 by Picasso, Gaudier-Brzeska, Epstein, Wyndham Lewis 
 and the rest. Just as the first renaissance was caused 
 by the fall of Constantinople and the consequent influx 
 of learned Greeks into Italy who brought with them 
 Greek letters and models of Greek sculpture, so this 
 modern renaissance was caused, or at least quickened 
 by fhe discovery of the paintings and pottery of China 
 and the prints and pictures of the Japanese, by Indian 
 and Persian miniatures too, and sculptures from all 
 parts of the world and of all times. The Goncourts in 
 France and Whistler in England were among the first 
 to assimilate some of these new influences. They were 
 the first to teach that every art had its own domain, its 
 own laws, its own home in the spirit, the first to reject 
 
 149
 
 ISO CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS 
 
 the influence of literature on painting, or of the pictorial 
 art on the literary art ; the first to question Shakespeare's 
 statement that art was there "to hold the mirror up to 
 nature." They despised the mere representation of the 
 actual and demanded an interpretation; some even at- 
 tempted as the old Chinese sage advised to leave reality 
 altogether, in order more freely to suggest "the rhythm 
 of things." 
 
 The mark of the new movement is boldness and sin- 
 cerity. Picasso is not afraid to recall the austerity and 
 menace of a Spanish hilltown by a series of cubes posed 
 one above the other as roof on roof, and his superb suc- 
 cess gave a name to the new departure and induced others 
 to try to evoke the soft curves of feminine beauty by 
 cubes and parallelograms of rectangular harshness. 
 But the successes grew more and more numerous; Gau- 
 guin's picture of Christ in Gethsemane was declared to 
 be a masterpiece by the masters, while the so-called 
 critics denounced it as a blasphemy or an absurdity. The 
 Garden was a rough incult olive wood with carious soil 
 sparsely covered with bunches of coarse grass; here on 
 a bank the Teacher sits who could not let ill alone; his 
 head bowed in utter dejection; the face livid with despair 
 and apprehension and against the graygreen skin a hemi- 
 sphere of scarlet hair and this flaming color, never seen 
 on human head before, suggests the supernatural, is in 
 itself an evocation of the ineffable that lifts this tragedy 
 above all others in recorded time. 
 
 Here is a woman's figure by Matisse; a few bold 
 curves, the utmost simplification of line and yet the soft
 
 GAUDIER-BRZESKA 151 
 
 warmth and weight of the flesh is on our fingers with 
 a magic of suggestion that no Venus, whether of Cnidos 
 or of Paris, ever before called forth. Matisse, we know, 
 was a masterdraughtsman or he could not thus seize on 
 the essential, omitting everything else. 
 
 Curiously enough this simplification of means and sin- 
 cerity of feeling alike led the artist to primitive schools 
 of design and modeling. We had all passed in the Brit- 
 ish Museum from the Parthenon sculptures to the As- 
 syrian and from the recognized schools to ignored or un- 
 noted efforts of so-called savages. There are sculptures 
 from Gambogia in the Trocadero in Paris as magnificent 
 in their own way as the greatest Chinese paintings. 
 
 These things were in my mind when one afternoon I 
 was introduced in a friend's room to a young man, Gau- 
 dier-Brzeska. I was struck at once by Gaudier's sharp 
 thin profile and his quick incisive way of speaking. He 
 was below rather than above medium height; slight but 
 strong; he had a little down curling carelessly about his 
 chin and this with his 'bold out-jutting nose and keen 
 round brown eyes gave him an old-world appearance. 
 He looked like a young Italian artist of the Renaissance 
 and I soon found he had all the true artist's enthusiasm. 
 I took a great fancy to him because of the outspoken 
 frankness of his criticism and asked him to call. He 
 promised to, but a couple of days later I melt him again. 
 I happened to be in the British Museum looking about 
 among the cases containing the idols and art-products 
 of the South Sea islanders; suddenly Gaudier-Brzeska 
 appeared and pointing to a figurine a span long said;
 
 152 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS 
 
 "Gaudy, isn't it? More wonderful than the sisters of 
 Pheidias." 
 
 "What are you doing here?" I cried. 
 
 "I often come here," he answered with that peculiar 
 mixture of shyness and of self-assertion which was a 
 note of him; "there are masterpieces here of all sorts; 
 look at that and that! The splendor of them!" His 
 English was always more expressive than correct. 
 
 I nodded ; "I wish I could handle them," he added. 
 
 "Come downstairs," he burst out, "where they keep 
 the early Assyrian things statues finer far than any of 
 Greece." 
 
 The haste, the passionate exaggeration, the staccato 
 utterance, were characteristic of his youth, I thought; 
 surely the frankest, sincerest, most assured nature I have 
 ever met. 
 
 I went with him and on the way, "W'hy do you run 
 down the Greeks?" I asked, "Rodin declares that they 
 were the master artists of the world." 
 
 Guadier pursed out his lips in contempt and shrugged 
 his shoulders: 
 
 "What do I care? Rodin is one man, I am another." 
 
 "I have always thought the Greeks very young," I 
 continued, "satisfied with the sensuous apipeal in the 
 tteatitiful naked form of man and woman." 
 
 "That's it," he cried; "or part of it; they never ex- 
 pressed anything but sex, but here you're got my As- 
 syrian who expresses spiritual qualities and characters 
 with an extraordinary simplicity of means."
 
 GAUDIER-BRZESKA 1 53 
 
 I have always thought his own bust of Ezra Pound 
 was the creative equivalent of Ms critical appreciation of 
 the great Primitives. At any rate, it is the best symbol 
 I can recall of Gaudier 's meaning. He was never tired 
 of directing attention to the soft outlines of the early 
 masters; no sharp line; no black shadow, just a shade; 
 every outline wavering in a sort of haze and the features 
 simplified, to the uttermost, only indicated indeed, yet 
 infinitely suggestive. 
 
 His method and message were both new and of a pas- 
 sionate, searching sincerity; again and again he tried to 
 define his position; "the modern sculptor is a man who 
 works with instinct as his inspiring force. His work is 
 emotional. What he feels, he feels intensely; and his 
 work is the abstraction of this intense feeling." 
 
 The creative artist is usually concrete, all in images 
 and pictures; but here was one seeking to give form to 
 abstractions. 
 
 I began to realize that young Brzeska 'had something 
 definite and new to express, though words and especially 
 English words were evidently not his medium. Talking 
 with me he usually lapsed into French ; but even there 'he 
 found it hard to render his abstract thought. 
 
 The first thing that impressed me in Gaudier was his 
 speed, an unearthly quickness of perception and reaction. 
 He was a sort of s'hy, wild, faun-like creature all in ex- 
 clamations and interjections, this moment in passionate 
 enthusiasm, oftener in passionate contempt. But always 
 astoundingly intelligent, always intensely alive and eager, 
 tireless, indeed, in his intellectual demands. He aston-
 
 THE HORSE 
 
 Progressive studies in the relation of masses 
 By Henri Gaudier-Brzeska
 
 GAURIER-BRZESKA 155 
 
 ished me once by his knowledge of German. "Where did 
 you learn it ?" I asked. 
 
 "In Munich," he replied; "I went there from Bris- 
 tol." At fourteen, it appeared, he had won a traveling 
 scholarship in his native France Which gave him two years 
 in a college in Bristol and in Bristol he won a scholar- 
 ship that took him to Munich. 
 
 "How did you live there?" I queried. 
 
 "By drawing Rembrandt 'heads of Jews," he grinned, 
 "another man used to paint them and then a third would 
 tone the papier with tea extract till our Rembrandt was 
 good enough to sign and sell in America," and he laughed 
 impishly. 
 
 After knowing him a month or so, I went with him 
 to 'his studio in Putney ; it was one bare room of a dozen 
 side by side. 
 
 "Whistler once worked here somewhere," I remarked. 
 
 "It's no worse for that," retorted Gaudier and we both 
 laughed at the cheeky retort. 
 
 The first five minutes spent in his studio convinced me 
 of Gaudier's genius. There were drawings on the walls 
 of torsos ; a picture of a wicker-basket full of apples, as 
 as good as any still-life of Cezanne or Picasso, and 
 done in the same flat colors without shading. In spite 
 of my poverty I bought it on the spot. Everywhere 
 there were curious modelings in clay, carvings in stone ; 
 notably a high-relief of two men side 'b'y side gazing 
 with greedy long eyes at a seated girl. Like most of 
 his sculptures, this was colored and had a sort of sen- 
 sual heat in it strangely impressive.
 
 156 
 
 The mark of the youth was always intelligence, incisive 
 self-assurance, and modernity of interest and view. He 
 knew a good deal of modern French poetry by heart ; but 
 I never heard him quote anyone earlier than Baudelaire 
 except Villon ; indeed, Villon and Verlaine, Bruand and 
 Jehan Rictus were his favorites. He knew a verse or 
 two of Goethe, half a dozen or so of Heine and he be- 
 lieved or pretended to believe that was all that could be 
 found in German. 
 
 His self-confidence provoked me once to try to "draw" 
 him, in order to define his limitations; but his sincerity 
 and intelligence carried him over the test triumphantly. 
 
 "Why on earth did you select sculpture," I asked, 
 "which is one of the simplest of the arts, instead of paint- 
 ing, for which you are at least as gifted, or poetry, which 
 is the highest of the arts because the most complex ?" 
 
 "Poetry," he barked. "Pooh! All the new work is 
 being done by the sculptors and painters. Where have 
 you an interpretation in poetry ? The poets are all work- 
 ing just as their forefathers worked five centuries ago; 
 but we are doing new stuff." 
 
 "What nonsense," I exclaimed. "A century before 
 Cezanne, William Blake did the best impressionist work 
 ever seen." 
 
 "Blake?" he asked, evidently not knowing even the 
 name. 
 
 "William Blake," I replied, "who did an impressionist 
 landscape of evening before any of the modern painters 
 were heard of. About 1775 at the age of sixteen he 
 wrote :
 
 GAUDIER-BRZESKA 15? 
 
 The night wind sleeps upon the lake, 
 Come Silence with thy glimmering eyes and wash 
 The dusk with silver. 
 
 And what do you think of his famous 'Tiger,' the 
 greatest of lyrics, I think ; at least the most epochmaking 
 and eventful ever written : 
 
 Tiger, Tiger, burning bright 
 In the forests of the night. 
 What immortal hand or eye 
 Framed thy dreadful symmetry? 
 
 No representation, here : no description ; nothing but the 
 imaginative symbol : you remember ?" 
 
 "No, no !" he cried, "I never heard it before ; but how 
 magnificent! Do go on, please," and I was forced willy- 
 nilly to recite the whole poem. 
 
 "Good God," he exclaimed when I had finished, "who 
 would have believed that an Englishman could have got 
 there in the eighteenth century? It's simply incredible. 
 Did he do anything more of that class ?" 
 
 "Sure," I replied, "and higher stuff still ; he was of the 
 prophet-seers worthy to stand with the greatest, with 
 Shakespeare and Jesus." 
 
 The name served to excite him. "Jesus," he burst out, 
 "was contre le nationalism e ; thart was all He did, His 
 only title to honor." 
 
 "Whew!" I whistled. "Your creative work is better 
 than your criticism, my young friend, or I wouldn't waste 
 my time with you. You are to be forgiven, though; 
 you only deny the Blakes and the Christs because you 
 don't know them."
 
 158 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS 
 
 "Lend me Blake?" he asked shyly. 
 
 "Of course, with pleasure,' I replied, "it is more yours 
 than mine as you want it more," and I handed him a 
 volume. 
 
 Henri Gaudier was perfectly simple and frank on all 
 
 DEER 
 
 (Pen Drawing) 
 By Henri Gaudier-Brzeska 
 
 occasions; met prince and peasant on the same even 
 footing; was careless of dress and appearance; would 
 fill his pockets with carvings and carry a heavy piece of 
 marble slung over his shoulder down Piccadilly in the 
 afternoon without being in the slightest self-conscious. 
 In other words, he had no vanity. 
 
 Leaving his studio after that first visit, I thought of
 
 GAUDIER-BRZESKA 1 59 
 
 him as a most characteristic product of our time; an 
 artist of our renaissance. He was very proud; though 
 always hard up, often too poor to buy marble except in 
 scraps, he never asked for loans or favors. 
 
 When I first knew him, he told me he had a clerkship 
 in the city which gave him and his sister a bare liveli- 
 hood; but as soon as he got to know a few people and 
 had sold half a dozen pieces of sculpture he threw up 
 the clerkship and tried to live on his earnings as an artist, 
 he eould live easily, he said, on a couple of pounds a week 
 and when I knew he was getting more than that I dis- 
 missed the matter from my mind as settled satisfactorily. 
 
 But one day shortly before I came to grief myself I 
 realized that he was in difficulties. He declared that a 
 bookseller to whom he had intrusted some of his sculp- 
 tures was cheating him : "He laughs aind laughs," he said, 
 "and sticks to all the money he gets from selling my 
 works, and I can hardly live. I must get back to France. 
 I left it because I didn't want to' waste time serving in the 
 army. If it were not .for that, I'd go back to-morrow. 
 It's easier for an artist to live in France . . . Paris," he 
 added with a sort of passionate longing. 
 
 I could not but admit that he was right. 
 
 Six months later the war broke out and after some 
 natural hesitations he returned to France, was promptly 
 arrested for having evaded service and was imprisoned. 
 He broke gaol at Calais within a few hours and managed 
 to return to London. But the call was in his blood and 
 his fate was upon him. He went to his Embassy, won 
 Paul Cambon's good word and returned to France to be
 
 160 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS 
 
 enrolled promptly. In due time he was sent to the front. 
 He bore all the hardships of life in the trenches with 
 smiling- good humor, took the rough with the smooth, 
 and in six months was made a corporal. Again and again 
 he declared that he would survive the war he was "ab- 
 solutely sure," but it was youth and the spring of blood 
 in him that spoke; he was shot through the forehead in 
 a charge at Neuville St. Vaast, June 5, 1915, after two 
 promotions for gallantry. 
 
 Mr. Ezra Pound, the poet, tells the truth about the 
 catastrophe when he says that the killing of Gaudier- 
 Brzeska was a greater loss to humanity than the de- 
 struction of the cathedral at Rheims. The great church 
 was known and had been assimilated by thousands ; what 
 Gaudier had in him to give, no one now can ever know ; 
 but speaking for myself, I must say that I expected 
 greater things from him than from any young man I have 
 ever met. 
 
 Let me give now a few extracts from his letters at the 
 front just to give an idea of the boyish good-humor and 
 manliness that distinguished this rare artist. 
 
 "The beastly regiment which was here before us re- 
 mained three months, and as they were all dirty northern 
 miners used to all kind of dampness, they never did an 
 effort to better the place up a bit. When we took the 
 trenches after the march it was a sight worthy of Dante ; 
 there was at the bottom a foot deep of liquid mud in 
 which we had to stand two days and two nights, rest 
 we had in small holes nearly as muddy, add to this a 
 position making a V point into the enemy who shells
 
 GAUDIER-BRZESKA 161 
 
 us from three sides, the close vicinity of 800 putrefying 
 German corpses, and you are at the front in the marshes 
 of the Aisne 
 
 "Our woods are magnificent. I am just now quartered 
 in trenches in the middle of them, they are covered with 
 lily of the valley, it grows and flowers on the trench it- 
 self. In the night we have many nightingales to keep us 
 company. They sing very finely and the loud noise of 
 the usual attacks and counterattacks does not disturb 
 them in the least. 
 
 "It is very warm and nice out of doors, one does not 
 mind sleeping out on the ground now." 
 
 And the combative stuff with the magnificent summing 
 up as noble as a judgement of Goethe. 
 
 "We give them nice gas to breathe when the wind is 
 for us. I have magnificent little bombs, they are as big 
 as an ostrich egg, they smell of ripe apples, but when 
 they burst your eyes weep until you can't see, you are 
 suffocated, and if the boche wants to save his skin he has 
 to scoot. Then a good little bullet puts an end to his 
 misery. This is not war, but a murderer hunt, we have 
 to bring these rascals out of their holes, we do it and 
 kill them remorselessly when they do not surrender. 
 
 "To-day is magnificent, a fresh wind, clear sun and 
 larks singing cheerfully. The shells do not disturb the 
 songsters. In the Champagne woods the nightingales 
 took no notice of the fight either. They solemnly pro- 
 claim man's foolery and sacrilege of nature. I respect 
 their disdain."
 
 162 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS 
 
 The best collection of Brzeska's works is owned by Mr. 
 John Ouinn, the famous New York lawyer. Mr. Pound 
 in his delightful book gives us part of the letter which 
 Mr. Quinn wrote on hearing of poor Gaudier's death : 
 
 "Now here is the distressing thing to me personally. 
 I got yours of April iSth on May loth. It was mostly 
 about Brzeska's work. I intended to write and send you 
 twenty pounds or thirty pounds, and say, 'Send this to 
 him and say it can go on account of whatever you select 
 for me.' But a phrase of yours stuck in my mind, that 
 when he came back from the trenches he would be hard 
 up. Poor brave fellow. There is only the memory now 
 of a brave gifted man. What I can do I will do." 
 
 I quote this because Mr. Quinn is one of the few col- 
 lectors who realize that if a man buys the work of artists 
 who need money to go on with, he in some measure 
 shares in the creation. He gives the man leisure for 
 work. 
 
 Taken all in all Gaudier was the largest and besfr en- 
 dowed artist I have known. As resolute and brave as a 
 born man of action, proud and self-reliant too and yet 
 artist to his finger-tips, as gifted for painting as for 
 sculpture and with an imperial intelligence. What might 
 he not have done ? a great man, superbly endowed ! 
 
 When people compare him with Rodin depreciatingly, 
 I get angry. Rodin has done his work and done it mag- 
 nificently ; but Gaudier had both hands full of new gifts 
 and was aflame to give of his best richer gifts, I verily 
 believe, than any sculptor since Angelo, and there is some 
 justification for my faith ; here and there a cut stone of
 
 GAUDIET BRZESKA 163 
 
 supreme excellence, as beautiful as a Shakespeare sonnet, 
 but, alas, Gaudier died at twenty-four, his splendid 
 promise half-fulfilled ! For me he stands at the head of 
 all the millions of brave men who have perished untimely 
 in this dreadful war; I can still see the eager face and 
 lamping eyes and hear the quick stabbing exclamations 
 ah, the pity of it, the pity of it ! the untimely shrouding 
 of that victorious intelligence!
 
 
 Lord St. Aldwyn
 
 EARL ST. ALDWYN 
 
 IT was in 1887, I believe, that I first made the ac- 
 quaintance of Sir Michael Hicks-Beach; at any rate 
 it was just after he had resigned his position as Chief 
 Secretary for Ireland. It was said that a serious affection 
 of his eyes had forced him to give up all work. But that 
 was regarded as a convenient pretext to cover failure 
 and defeat. 
 
 The whole position throws such light on British politics 
 and on the character of a great man who has been per- 
 sistently misunderstood and underrated that now Michael 
 Hicks-Beach is dead, I may be forgiven for sketching it 
 summarily. 
 
 It was his amendment to the Budget that had brought 
 about the defeat of Gladstone's government in 1885. Al- 
 ready in 1878 Hicks-Beach had been Secretary for the 
 Colonies ; later he had startled people by imperious man- 
 ners more than by any originality of view. For him to 
 accept the Chief Secretaryship and risk a growing fame 
 in Dublin "That grave of English reputations" was 
 looked upon as a weakness or at least an admission that 
 he could not get his own price from his party. His 
 enemies chuckled : "An eclipse, . . . the finish." 
 
 Some of us who rather liked what we had seen of the 
 man held our breath ; the risk was appalling ! Why had 
 be thrown himself into the abyss? For Ireland was at 
 
 165
 
 i66 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS 
 
 boiling point : Parnelf, one of the greatest of men had 
 drawn the sword and thrown the scabbard away: "No 
 rent" was being muttered and screamed and shouted 
 from Donegal to Cork : English landlordism snarled with 
 bared teeth behind its lawfences : a dozen able men, chief 
 among them Tim Healy, were attacking night after night 
 in the House of Commons with unrivalled sarcasm and 
 passionate contempt: England, obstinate, glowering, was 
 set against all rebels yet ominous mutterings were 
 heard that Ulster was being won by the "no-rent" bait, 
 the last English stronghold disaffected: anything might 
 happen. 
 
 Into the caldron plunged Hicks-Beach, a tall, dour, 
 imperious Englishman, a Conservative, a landlord of the 
 narrowest landlord class, a country gentleman Eton and 
 Oxford: nature, traditions, education all against him, 
 said the wise : would it end in another tragedy, the torch 
 hiss out in blood as it had gone out six years before ? We 
 waited, hardly daring to hope. 
 
 The turmoil in Ireland went on though dulled and 
 damped, we thought : the Irish leaders hesitating, watch- 
 ing. Then to our wonder, The Times began gravely to 
 warn the Chief Secretary ! He was hesitant, it appeared, 
 weak; (we grinned that was not his failing!) he was 
 adjured to act boldly against the lawbreakers, the rebels. 
 Our hearts beat high again with hope. The other English 
 papers began to copy The Times. ' The Times went on to 
 scold and then to curse, shriller and shriller, day after 
 day, while the cry joined in, the whole pack, now their 
 pockets were threatened, squealing, cursing, threatening:
 
 LORD ST. ALDWYN 167 
 
 the London Clubs all in a fury; then the word "Hicks- 
 Beach, the traitor !" 
 
 After six months, the issue at length ; clear, definite for 
 all men to see and take sides according to the God or 
 the Devil in them! Only great men bring about such 
 crises ! Lord Clanricarde, of evil fame, the worst of ab- 
 sentee landlords, wrote to The Times to say that he had 
 called upon the forces of the Crown to protect the officers 
 of the law who were collecting his rents, long overdue. 
 
 The Chief Secretary had replied in contempt of law : 
 "I refuse absolutely to use the forces of the Crown to 
 collect Lord Clanricarde's debts." Nothing more, no 
 explanation, even, just that, signed "Hicks-Beach." 
 
 The sensation was indescribable. London went crazy. 
 You might have thought a piece of the sky had fallen. For 
 the second time in its record of over a century The Times 
 devoted two leading articles in one morning to one sub- 
 ject. In the first it condemned Hicks-Beach root and 
 branch : he had gone outside his powers ; he was one of 
 the executive appointed to carry out the laws, not to make 
 laws and bring in anarchy : his intellect, always overrated 
 by himself, must be temporarily deranged. In the second 
 diatribe it was shown quietly that in refusing to collect 
 Clanricarde's debts, he was judging and sentencing Lord 
 Clanricarde without even hearing him; in the present 
 state of Ireland he was going further, making war on 
 all credit, on property itself property, the corner-stone 
 of civilization, property, the keystone of the arch that 
 bridges the abyss from barbarism to a state of order 
 trained rhetoric of the Devil's advocates.
 
 1 68 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS 
 
 The Times won and won easily. Even the London Liberal 
 papers would not take up cudgels for a Conservative who 
 had done what they did not dare even to preach. They had 
 condemned the Irish for refusing to pay rent : how could 
 they applaud this English Conservative squire who re- 
 fused to collect debts, as his duty bade him ? The Irish 
 waited and watched ! 
 
 Suddenly the news was published that Hicks-Beach's 
 eyes having given out through stress of work he had re- 
 signed and returned to London to be doctored. The 
 Times was not even jubilant or self-gratulatory. The 
 outcome was the only possible one: "England is a law- 
 abiding country." The Clubs, every one, said that Hicks- 
 Beach was ruined and would never be heard of again. 
 "He should go back to his country-place, Coin St. Aldwyn 
 and grow turnips." 
 
 It was at this moment I met him. The dinner was 
 given by the celebrated doctor, Robson Roose, and in his 
 invitation he told me that Lord Randolph Churchill was 
 to be there and other Cabinet Ministers. Would I please 
 come early, he wanted to introduce me to Sir Michael 
 Hicks-Beach ? I accepted eagerly. I wanted to meet and 
 measure the man who had acted so boldly, so foolishly, so 
 nobly. Had he been swayed by moral or by intellectual 
 motives ? 
 
 Robson Roose took me into a small room off the din- 
 ing-room. Sir Michael Hicks-Beach was standing at the 
 fireplace with his back to us. As we entered and Robson 
 Roose mentioned his name he turned slowly. He had a
 
 LORD ST. ALDWYN 169 
 
 heavy shade over his eyes and looked worn and thin, I 
 thought. 
 
 "I am so glad to meet you," I said and as Robson left 
 the room, I added, "I should say so 'proud'." 
 
 "Really!" he said in a tired voice ending in a sound, 
 half sniff, half snort, "not many persons would say 
 that!" 
 
 "You didn't act hoping for the applause of the many." 
 
 "Indeed, no!" he cried. "I knew better than that." 
 
 "The curious thing about the business is," I went on, 
 "that you acted as the moral conscience of the English 
 people and thus settled the Irish question. Your honesty 
 and courage will have great results do infinite good." 
 
 In silence he turned to me with his face all working and 
 held out his hand. In a moment he had regained control 
 of himself though the tears were on his cheeks. He 
 took out his handkerchief and wiped them away openly. 
 Then in a half- voice : 
 
 "Thank you! I shall always remember that. That 
 makes me proud. That was what I said to myself. One's 
 conscience the only compass-light in bad weather," he 
 added smiling. Sea-similes came naturally even to the 
 country squire's lips, for all Englishmen are of sailor- 
 stock. 
 
 "Of course you knew how they would treat you?' I 
 went on. 
 
 He nodded : "None of my business" curtly "I had 
 to show 'em that England, the England I love, did not 
 mean to go on doing wrong. I'm glad," he added, "that 
 you think it will have a good effect ultimately. So far,
 
 170 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS 
 
 it appears to have had no consequences except to throw 
 me out !" he added bitterly. 
 
 "Consequences are incalculable," I said. "The act 
 brought me to you, eager to help. It will bring dozens of 
 others, as Cromwell used to say 'a small band of good 
 men/ standing on this because they cannot help it an 
 inzrisible cloud of witnesses! You'll come back trium- 
 phant!" 
 
 "Come back," he repeated, resuming a conventional 
 tone, as our host accompanied by others entered the room, 
 "I must first go away to Coin and get cured. A tedious 
 job, I'm afraid." 
 
 Our talk was ended. At the dinner he hardly spoke at 
 all. As soon as it was over, he took Robson Roose into 
 another room and disappeared. 
 
 We met the next time in the inner lobby of the House 
 of Commons. He stopped and came over to me and 
 shook hands. 
 
 "Yes, the eyes are better," he said, "much better, thank 
 you and thanks to you in some part for what you said." 
 Next year, 1888, Hicks-Beach returned to the House 
 of Commons, eyes cured, health completely reestablished. 
 His originality had not cost him his influence with his 
 party, for he was at once made President of the Board of 
 Trade, and held the office till the Liberals returned to 
 power in 1902. 
 
 In those three years he fulfilled the hopes of his friends 
 and grounded his reputation ; he won the permanent of- 
 ficials in his department, and became known as an able 
 administrator.
 
 LORD ST. ALDWYN 171 
 
 In 1905 the Conservatives again carried the elections 
 and Hicks-Beach was appointed Chancellor of the Ex- 
 chequer, the highest office in the government after that 
 of Prime Minister. 
 
 Twenty years before, at fifty, he had been leader of the 
 House for a short time. He had af certain curt abruptness 
 of manner, the outward and visible sign in him of an 
 aloofness of mind, which the ordinary member of Par- 
 liament resented, regarded as unjustifiable conceit in one 
 who was hardly more than a poor baronet, a country 
 squire. Some one, annoyed by his imperiousness, called 
 him "Black Michael." I think Swift MacNeil was the 
 godfather, and the nickname showed extraordinary 
 divination, for it was not suggested by appearance. Sir 
 Michael Hicks-Beach was tall, about six feet in height, 
 and wore a short, brown beard ; his face was rather long, 
 his head long, too. At fifty he looked forty and was 
 neither dark nor fair : why, then, Black Michael ? 
 
 Throughout his dark days of pain and neglect the nick- 
 name was unused, yet it was curiously appropriate and 
 forecast the future. The contempt Hicks-Beach felt for 
 the party that threw him over in 1887, when as Irish 
 Secretary he had acted to the highest in him, left its 
 mark, reinforcing his natural melancholy. At the Board 
 of Trade he did his work and kept to himself and the 
 consciousness of power grew upon him. Always proud 
 and self-centered, he became prouder and more ac- 
 customed to trust his own judgement, as he saw how his 
 ablest subordinates had to bow to it. 
 
 Now, ait nearly seventy, he took up the work of
 
 172 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS 
 
 Chancellor of the Exchequer, feeling sure that the higher 
 the pedestal, the better his height would be appreciated. 
 Even before his first Budget he surprised the House by 
 taking a line of his own again and again in debate. 
 There was iEsight in the man which gave him new ex- 
 pressions. Never fluent, much less rhetorical, regarded, 
 I indeed, as somewhat inarticulate, he yet coined the 
 ' phrase "the open door" in China, which stuck and was 
 ; adopted in both Germany and France. Impartial ob- 
 servers began to revise their previous superficial estimate 
 of him, began to wonder whether by any chance Hicks- 
 Beach was a great man. His first Budget deepened the 
 high opinion of him which was again being put forward 
 by permanent officials of the department. He got up 
 in a crowded House and without at trace of hesitancy or 
 of preparation put forth the annual balance-sheet with 
 a clearness and mastery of figures that surprised every 
 one. He hardly used a note. He stood there, a tall, lean 
 man, doing his job, without frills of any sort, without 
 waiting for applause or even noticing it when it came. 
 He ended in the same conversational way by declaring 
 that in an English Treasury official, parsimony was the 
 chiefest virtue: waste the ordinary democratic pitfall. 
 No rule, however, without exceptions ; reluctantly he had 
 borrowed from the Sinking Fund ; he would do so again 
 if necessary: no canons holy, no command sacred in a 
 rich and growing concern save economy. 
 
 The curt phrases, the command of the position, the 
 even strong voice, never loud, always clear, the conver-
 
 LORD ST. ALDWYN 173 
 
 sational tone, had an astonishing effect: "very able . . . 
 a big man" was the verdict of those capable of judging. 
 
 Next morning the papers praised him almost without 
 reserve. Some critics in the House next night tried to 
 pick holes. He listened in silence till the last one had 
 aired his fad and then got up and declared he had only 
 .heard one thing worth noticing in the four hours. He 
 dealt with the objection like a master and then walked 
 out of the House as if he did not care a copper what the 
 Members thought of him. Suddenly every one spoke f 
 him as "Black Michael" : his daring to speak the truth, 
 his felt disdain, the underlying pessimism and me- 
 lancholy justified the nickname. 
 
 But there was deep and generous kindliness in the man 
 besides imperious strength. I went to see him shortly 
 before his second Budget. Every one was excited about 
 it ; the South African War had cost a great deal ; the re- 
 covery after it was surprisingly slow ; thinking men were 
 beginning to realize the new truth that half of all the 
 wealth of a country is produced every year, that money 
 spent on powder and shot is worse tham thrown away, 
 that unproductive production is more wasteful than un- 
 productive consumption ; in fine, that fighting costs more 
 than money and luxuries must be paid for twice over. 
 
 I found that though Hicks-Beach hadn't read much 
 political economy, he had grasped essentials, approaching 
 every question from the moral side, found them all sur- 
 prisingly simple. Again and again he emphasized the 
 need of economy : "Can't have your cake and eat it ... 
 the whole country wanted the war, now they must pay
 
 174 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS 
 
 for it ... war usually idiotic. . . . Chamberlain too com- 
 bative." 
 
 When the talk was over I asked him might I use what 
 he had told me in my paper. He got up and whistled : 
 
 "Whew! What would the House say if I gave the 
 Budget provisions first to a newspaper . . ." He smiled, 
 shaking his head. "I'm afraid that's impossible." 
 
 "But my paper is so small." I replied, "it would have 
 little importance . . . every one in power would pretend 
 not to believe it ... many would think I was forecasting 
 the future from the past." He still shook his head, smil- 
 ing. I had not found the true argument. Again I tried : 
 "Nothing you have told me would have any effect on 
 the Stock Exchange. I shall expect you to deny that you 
 gave it to me for publication." Quickly he rejoined: 
 
 "No, no, I sha'n't disavow you; I want to help you. 
 H'm, h'm . . . What you say about the Stock Exchange is 
 true. That's the real reason such things are kept secret 
 and divulged to the House first." A moment's thought 
 and suddenly he exclaimed : "Go ahead : tell it all ; I 
 don't care, let 'em grumble, d n them." 
 
 I got up at once, fearing second thoughts, and possible 
 reservations; but he had dismissed the subject from his 
 mind. 
 
 "You keep as young looking as ever," he remarked 
 pleasantly. "How do you manage it? You look thirty, 
 yet you must be near fifty?" 
 
 "More," I replied, laughing. "I could return the com- 
 pliment; you look fifty, and yet . . ."
 
 LORD ST. ALDWYN 175 
 
 "Seventy, seventy," he repeated. "Three score years 
 and ten ... I'll soon say vixi," he added half-bitterly. 
 
 The only expression in a foreign language I ever heard 
 him use ; struck by it probably at Eton "I have lived." 
 
 I looked at his face: it was worn; lines everywhere: 
 deep-set, sad eyes, as if they shrank from seeing life 
 stripped of youth's roseate glamour. 
 
 "Lots still to do," I cried. "The last fight, the best." 
 
 "Curious," he exclaimed, putting his hands on my 
 shoulders. "You say the things I've been saying to my-' 
 self. There may still be something worth fighting for," 
 he mused . . . and we parted. 
 
 The result justified my guess. I published the three 
 chief provisions of the Budget and they appeared in print 
 and on posters all over London some days before Hicks- 
 Beach made his Budget speech in the House ; but no paper 
 took any notice of the pronouncement. It did me some 
 good and no one any harm. 
 
 One Irishman in the House remarked that he seemed 
 to have heard Hicks-Beach's speech before : "the pro- 
 visions of it were in the air, so to speak" : the pin-prick 
 made members smile. 
 
 Some years later a proposal to take Salisbury Plain 
 for army manceuvers on a grand scale passed the House 
 of Commons. The landlords had to be bought out : their 
 lands therefore were valued and the contest between so- 
 called private rights and national needs began. As usual 
 in England the nation's pocket suffered. When the 
 private telegraph companies were taken over by the post- 
 office the state had to pay three times their real value.
 
 1 76 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS 
 
 So now the landowners held out for and obtained three 
 prices and more for every acre of land the government 
 wanted. Michael Hicks-Beach, now 'Lord St. Aldwyn, 
 owned a small slice of Salisbury Plain. I believe about 
 . 33 acres. When it came to bargaining for it, he asked, I 
 think, 163,000, and was stiff against any reduction. 
 
 The matter came up in the House of Commons : some 
 Liberal had stumbled on the "pot of roses," or more pro- 
 bably the Liberal Chancellor of the Exchequer took care 
 that the secret should be known in order to show how 
 much more honest he was than his Conservative pre- 
 decessor. However this may be, the question was put and 
 his answer was : 
 
 "Yes, Lord St. Aldwyn asked and received 163,500 
 for thirty-three acres." (I can't be sure of the exact 
 amount.) 
 
 Members looked at each other: the price was in- 
 credibly high. 
 
 The next question was even more illuminating: What 
 was the government valuation? The answer came pat 
 13,500." 
 
 The effect was stunning : no hypocritical veil could re- 
 sist such a stab. Suddenly a whisper "Black Michael 
 had taken 150,000 exactly to keep his peerage on"- 
 a smile on every face broad as the figures. 
 
 A month or two later I met Lord St. Aldwyn by what 
 men call chance. After the usual greetings: 
 
 "Will you come my way?' he asked. 
 
 "It is the only way I can go now," he added smiling, 
 "but I still walk as much as I can."
 
 LORD ST. ALDWYN 177 
 
 I hardly knew what to say : he looked his age ; the im- 
 mitigable years had done their work. "Black Michael" 
 was an old, old man; the end in sight. 
 
 Suddenly our previous conversation and the memory 
 of the land-sale came into my head together : : wais that 
 his "last fight?" 
 
 I felt uncomfortable. Did he notice my silence? I 
 can not tell. I cannot tell how the talk began, nor how 
 much of it was plain speech on his part or inference on 
 mine. I can only give my impression. He began, I think 
 about titles, asking me to omit the "handle" as before. 
 
 "You don't care for titles, do you ? I don't think I do 
 either, much still I have a son, you know, Quenington. 
 If I had had only my three gals, I'd never have asked the 
 King for the title ; though to tell truth he proposed it him- 
 self. In England it's part of the reward " 
 
 I nodded my head : I could not speak : I had hoped so 
 much more from the man who at the outset had fought 
 Lord Clanricarde and all his own world to boot, for 
 right's sake and justice. 
 
 I had always hoped and believed that wise men grew 
 less selfish as the came near the end. Eyes unseeled, 
 desires quenched, the soul-wings lifting . . . and now . . . 
 it was too painful. 
 
 He went on impatiently. 
 
 "Reward! I could not live on my pay as Cabinet 
 Minister : what's 5,000 pounds a year for a, man with a 
 country place to keep up and a town house besides? I 
 was a poor baronet, an intolerable position .... poverty is 
 a bad counselor ... in a member of the governing
 
 178 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS 
 
 classes idiotic. A temptation and worse . . . the public 
 will gain through paying their real leaders properly. 
 The house gives a second-rate general a title and 50,000 
 pounds to keep it up on (was he thinking of Kitchener ?). 
 Why shouldn't they give me money for over fifty years 
 of work a small reward, I call it ... very small." 
 
 That, then, was the Apologia! It flashed through my 
 mind that that was the soul of the man, that he was all of 
 a piece, English, long-headed, practical in spite of his 
 idealism, a real man in a real world, with strong paternal 
 love probably for his son, and a great desire to do right, 
 to act fairly, to justify himself if he had failed of the 
 high mark. Most men become more selfish and not less 
 as the grow old : it is only the poets and seers the choice 
 and master-spirits of the world who turn sweeter with 
 the years, and strong and true though Hicks-Beach was, 
 he was not one of the Sacred Band. Yet, on the whole, 
 and compared with other men, even with other men of 
 genius like Lord Randolph Churchill, he was a good man, 
 not a bad one, an honest man, too: at least as Hamlet 
 said of himself, "indifferent honest!" as honest as the 
 evil times permitted. I was glad I could reconcile my 
 faith with my deep liking for the person. 
 
 "I agree with you," I said when he had finished. "The 
 laborer is worthy of his hire. I have known no better 
 laborer than you in England, but many who demanded 
 and took a much greater reward." 
 
 "I felt sure you would understand," he said : "the few 
 do, and the others don't matter. I'm glad to have had 
 this talk.
 
 LORD ST. ALDWYN 179 
 
 "I wish you'd come down to Coin St. Aldwyn and stop 
 a week this summer. The place looks so much better in 
 summer: you'd know then how a man comes to love it. 
 I'm always glad to get back home." I excused myself 
 after thanking him, and we parted. 
 
 I stood and looked after him. 
 
 "One of the ablest and certainly the most honest Eng- 
 lish statesmen of my time," I said to myself. 
 
 ******* 
 
 In the last week of April 1915 came the news that his 
 son, Lord Quenington, had been killed at the front in 
 France, leaving, however, a young son to inherit the place 
 and title. A week later the great Earl gave up, too, and full 
 of years (he was over eighty) was gathered to his fathers 
 in the old house he loved so well. The park and the 
 gardens rise before me as I write: the English wild 
 flowers on the borders five yards deep are swaying and 
 curtsying in the sun and warm southwest wind while the 
 chestnut trees are holding ivory lamps against the green.
 
 Augustus John
 
 AUGUSTUS JOHN 
 
 IT was Montaigne who said that height was the only 
 beauty of man, and indeed height is the only thing 
 that gives presence to a man. A miniature Venus 
 may be more attractive than her taller sisters, but a man 
 must have height to be imposing in appearance or indeed 
 impressive. 
 
 Of all the men I have met Augustus John has the most 
 striking personality. Over six feet in height, spare and 
 square shouldered, a good walker who always keeps him- 
 self fit and carries himself with an air, John would draw 
 the eye in any crowd. He is splendidly handsome with 
 excellent features, great violet eyes and long lashes. 
 Were it not for a certain abruptness of manner he would 
 be almost too good-looking; as it is, he is physically, 
 perhaps, the handsomest specimen of the genus homo that 
 I have ever met. 
 
 And John has the great manner to boot. I remember 
 one night at dinner he threw back his head in flagrant 
 disagreement with something said, and quoted Rossetti's 
 famous translation of the Villon verses : "Where Are the 
 Snows of Yesteryear," with a pasionate enthusiasm that 
 swept aside argument and infected all his hearers. Every 
 one felt in the imperious manner, flaming eyes and 
 eloquent cadenced voice the outward and visible signs 
 of that demonic spiritual endowment we call genius. 
 
 181
 
 182 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS 
 
 John has had a curious history. He went to the Slade 
 School of Design in London as a boy and studied there 
 for some years. He was a quiet, studious youth, rather 
 solitary in his habits, in no way remarkable or even con- 
 spicuous. One summer holiday, however, a friend tells 
 me, he went to the Welsh coast for the sea-bathing. He 
 dived in one day and struck his head on a rock. His 
 companions pulled him out and carried him home. He was 
 put to bed and the doctor declared that his patient must 
 be kept quiet; he was probably suffering from concus- 
 sion of the brain. 
 
 In a few months, however, John got all right again 
 and went back to London and school, where for the first 
 week he wore a skull cap. But to the astonishment of my 
 informant he was a new John ; a John who was curiously 
 arrogant and contemptuous even of the great masters. 
 He surprised everybody at once by his wonderful power 
 of drawing and his weird and defiant looseness of living. 
 The friend who tells me the story declares that John owes 
 his genius to that blow on the head. I give the tale for 
 what it is worth, because it corresponds loosely to the fact 
 that John came into possession . of his astonishing talent 
 for drawing and his habit of unconventional living with 
 surprising abruptness. 
 
 I came to know John pretty well in London and was 
 at once an enthusiastic admirer of his drawing if not of 
 his painting. He was, and is, a draughtsman of the first 
 rank, to be compared with Ingres, Durer and Degas, one 
 of the great masters, but the quality of his painting is 
 poor gloomy and harsh reflecting, I think a certain
 
 AUGUSTUS JOHN 183 
 
 disdainful bitterness of character which does not go with 
 the highest genius. 
 
 John stayed with me once for two or three days in the 
 south of France. He was an extraordinary interesting 
 companion. He had just been through the north of Italy, 
 had studied at Orvieto the mosaics and frescos of Signo- 
 relli, and been enormously impressed by them. He 
 talked enthusiastically of the master's brains and powers ; 
 he would place him, he declared, above Michaelangelo 
 and/ Leonardo, a supreme artist. 
 
 I was the more inclined to listen to him, because he 
 showed himself on occasion a very good judge of litera- 
 ture, with a curious liking for what I would call the ab- 
 normalities of real life, which he found infinitely more 
 suggestive and more inspiring than any artistic conven- 
 tions. He was well-read in modern English verse, but 
 had a .particular passion for the Romany tongue and the 
 vagrant gypsy people. 
 
 "Whatever is out of the common appeals to me",he said, 
 "and here you have a nation of nomads who acknowl- 
 edge no canons of civilized life and yet manage as pariahs 
 if not as outlaws to exist and propagate their kind. I 
 not only respect and admire their fanatic independence, 
 but I enjoy talking to them and living with them. I 
 have tried it in Wales and found them far more sym- 
 pathetic and companionable than my own race, and I have 
 tried it in France just as successfully, perhaps, because 
 the gypsy women are frankly sensuous and their men 
 prefer stealing to huckstering. Besides they haven't a
 
 184 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS 
 
 touch of religious hypocrisy, and that's what I most 
 detest." 
 
 John is a rebel at heart, perhaps, even more of a rebel 
 than I am. He praised some of my stories beyond 
 measure, so that I gave him the first sketch of my book 
 on Oscar Wilde, but he did not like my pointing out to 
 Wilde that his peculiarity was vicious, he himself a sort 
 of arrested development. He would have it that Wilde 
 had as much right to his tastes and their gratification as 
 any man. "Pheasant or partridge," John declared 
 cynically, "who shall decide; let every man eat what he 
 prefers." 
 
 "Even human flesh?" I queried. 
 
 "Why not," replied John defiantly; "if it came my 
 way and pleased me, I should eat it." 
 
 His view of life is that of the realist-skeptic. He 
 regards all belief in progress and improvement as a super- 
 stition. What is, is all we have and there is no use in 
 grumbling or kicking. After all, this world is a pretty 
 good place for the healthy and fortunate. Live your life 
 to the full is the whole duty of man, according to John. 
 He woul'd accept Shakespeare's phrase in Lear, "Ripeness 
 is all"; but still the idea of perfection commands the 
 homage of the sincere and rules conduct. 
 
 Ten years ago as to-day John was a law unto himself 
 and lived outside all English conventions and English 
 social life in spite of the fact that many great ladies and 
 some men would willingly have made a lion of him. 
 
 Sir Hugh Lane, the Irish art critic, was one of his 
 earliest admirers. He went down, it will be remembered,
 
 AUGUSTUS JOHN 185 
 
 in the Lusitania. After he had made his money Sir Hugh 
 took a house in Chelsea and determined to get Augustus 
 John to execute some frescoes in the hall and dining- 
 room. John, it is said, got a large sum down and im- 
 mediately went to work, first prudently stretching canvas 
 over the walls so that his work might not be exposed 
 to the inclemencies of weather. He had sketched in 
 several nudes from the life when one day a lady came in, 
 Lady Lane, I think, and was dreadfully shocked. She 
 insisted that John should stop. He packed up his material 
 and left Lane to finish the picture himself, if he cared 
 to. I saw his work and thought it superb; no greater 
 master of line has lived. 
 
 During the war he was made a major in the Canadian 
 army. The farewell party he gave in Chelsea is stiil 
 talked of as the wildest orgy London had seen for many 
 a year. Twelve or fifteen painters and writers sat up all 
 night drinking, and when in the morning the Staff car 
 came to the door for John, the tipsy guests gave him a 
 great send off. When he arrived at Boulogne it is said 
 he was still drunk and became disorderly when he was re- 
 primanded for having his spurs on upside down. He 
 would wear the damned things, he declared, as he pleased. 
 After some months a letter came to the War Office from 
 his commanding officer declaring that Major John had 
 imbibed enough atmosphere and whiskey to paint the 
 whole of France red. 
 
 On his return to England he soon showed that he had 
 not altered, for he was nearly court-martialed for knock- 
 ing down a superior officer who contradicted him at a
 
 i86 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS 
 
 social gathering- at the Duke of Manchester's. John is 
 regarded as frankly impossible in society in spite of his 
 good looks and splendid talent. To me the rebel is al- 
 ways infinitely more interesting than the conventional 
 gentleman. I cannot help believing that the rebel gives 
 more to humanity than the conventional person, because 
 he learns more and because of the something daemonic in 
 him which alone could induce him to revolt in England, 
 the home of convention. Yet I do not believe it helps to 
 kick against the pricks too often or too hard. 
 
 The question remains, what has John given to the 
 world ? A good critic the other day assured me that John 
 was the first living English painter ; that his great cartoon 
 forty feet long and fifteen feet high of the Canadians 
 opposite Lens in the winter of 1917-18 is one of the great 
 cartoons of the world, worthy to be compared with those 
 of Michelangelo and Leonardo. I do not agree with this 
 estimate : it seemes too quiet far too orderly to represent 
 gassed and choking troops. Yet from the reproduction 
 of it that I have seen it appears to me to be fine 
 John at his best. The scene depicts Canadian 
 troops, stretcher bearers and German prisoners', while on 
 the left French women and children are flying from the 
 scene ; in the background a shell bursting and between it 
 and a flare of light a great figure of the Christ, evidently 
 a sort of village shrine. A profoundly interesting cartoon 
 that may well be of high value. 
 
 But John's pictures, as I have said, fail to satisfy me in 
 spite of the really magnificent quality in them. 
 
 I remember a picture called "The Orange Jacket" in
 
 AUGUSTUS JOHN 187 
 
 which a gypsy woman's face and figure are set forth with 
 astonishing vividness; the black head; the hair all over 
 her forehead matching her black eyes ; the thick lips and 
 intentness of the gaze balanced by the orange-red of the 
 jacket and the white and blue of the blouse. But I prefer 
 a picture called "The Red Handkerchief." A girl's figure 
 with wind-tossed hair. I remember still the shadowy eyes 
 and the blue dress set off by a red handkerchief carried 
 in the right hand. The figure is superbly rendered ; very 
 summarily, yet the lissomeness given to the slight round 
 form is arresting splendidly sensual this with the spi- 
 ritual note as well in the brooding mystery of the eyes. 
 
 "The Washing Day" comes before me as I write. A 
 woman in a garden washing at a basin with her red shirt 
 picked out with white and a red cap of the same material 
 on her black fiair ; clothes of various colors are drying 
 over the line in the distance, and each color from the 
 green of the trees to the ochre of some piled-up brick is 
 of value in a consummate composition. 
 
 Some of John's landscapes, too, are unforgetable ; a 
 little lake in the mountains; the heathy foreground just 
 indicated while the sky's worked out in realistic detail of 
 an astounding beauty and the whole synthetised into an 
 emotion of evening and haunting tranquil loveliness. 
 
 Finally I recall two gypsy girls in profile, half figures, 
 draped in bright colors ; both are finished minutely to 
 every whorl even in the ears ; perhaps, because they are 
 not even pretty, there is over the whole a feeling of 
 brooding, sullen, bestial sensuality, arresting yet sugges- 
 tive as a personal confession.
 
 1 88 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS 
 
 And yet I am not content. I had hoped that John 
 would be with Rembrandt and Velasquez a new star in 
 the firmament. But he is content, it seems, to be in the 
 second line with men like Degas. Still, he is only about 
 forty and may yet do greater work than any he has given 
 us. He seems to have turned his head away from the 
 modern school ; he has gone half-way along the road with 
 Cezanne, but not the whole way. I remember a picture 
 of Gauguin even, a Tahitian Venus thrown naked on her 
 face on a bed, that is at once more sensual and more 
 finely conceived than anything John has done. And 
 Cezanne has painted one or two heads of contemporaries 
 with more astonishing mastery than anything John has 
 shown. Yet with his prodigious talent he mav still do 
 wonders. I can only hope that he will yet fulfill the 
 dreams of his youth. He would be inclined, I am afraid, 
 to add cynically the French proverb, Songes sont men- 
 songes. 
 
 In this sketch I seem to have laid stress on John's 
 drinking. I have never seen him the worse for drink nor 
 do I believe that that vice has any attraction for a man 
 of his high intellect and imperious character. He would 
 drink, I imagine, if at all, out of a sort of bravado and 
 because he can no doubt by virtue of splendid health 
 stand a good deal without showing any signs of it. But 
 the legend about him in London is of drink and orgies, 
 because he defies conventions, and drunkenness is the 
 English symbol of all rebellion, whether moral or im- 
 moral, because the English have no conception of any 
 revolt coming from above. The Jews, it will be remem-
 
 AUGUSTUS JOHN 189 
 
 bered, in the same spirit, spoke of Jesus as being a wine- 
 bibber and a sinner. 
 
 John's pitfall is not drink. 
 
 If John does not realize himself to the uttermost, 
 doesn't mint all the gold in him, it will be, I am sure, 
 because he has been too heavily handicapped by his extra- 
 ordinary physical advantages. His fine presence and 
 handsome face brought him to notoriety very speedily, 
 and that's not good for a man. Women and girls by the 
 dozen have made up to him and he has spent himself in 
 living instead of doing his work. Art is the most ab- 
 sorbing of all mistresses and the most jealous : "You 
 must feel more than any other man," she orders, "and 
 yet remain faithful to the high purpose." Many are 
 called and few are chosen.

 
 Coventry Patmore
 
 COVENTRY PATMORE 
 
 "This land of such dear souls, this dear, dear land, 
 Dear for her reputation through the world." 
 
 Shakespeare. 
 
 THIS is what England has always been to ma, "the 
 land of such dear souls." Her reputation through 
 the world is not what Shakespeare thought it, 
 thanks mainly to her politicians ; but I have said enough 
 about that elsewhere. Here I am only concerned to 
 tell of the dear souls in England, and among them in my 
 time none was dearer than Coventry Patmore, partly be- 
 cause of the extraordinary whimsies and peculiarities 
 that set off his fine mind and noble generosity of 
 character. 
 
 It seemed to surprise Englishmen even to see us to- 
 gether. Patmore as a high poet and Catholic protagonist 
 was of the elect and select, for then as now the Catholic 
 hierarchy and the Catholic nobility were the guardians 
 so to say of Society's Holy of Holies, and that Pat- 
 more should be seen about with an American and Socialist 
 journalist, appeared to the average Briton ai desecration. 
 When they found out that I admired and loved him and 
 that he liked me and my work, they were still more 
 astonished, for as ai rule he held himself aloof from men 
 with a singular dignity and used his position as poet and 
 
 191
 
 192 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS 
 
 seer to speak his mind at all times with perfect sincerity 
 and most un-English frankness. 
 
 His judgements were by no means infallible; always 
 tinctured indeed by personal feeling, but they came from 
 such an austere moral height that they always commanded 
 respect in England and acquiesence if not acceptance. 
 
 I remember once the question of the hundred best books 
 was brought up by Mr. Frederick Greenwood, the editor 
 of the St. Jannes Gazette, and Coventry Patmore aston- 
 ished the table when he was appealed to, by the statement : 
 "When I was in the British Museum I used to say there 
 were forty miles of useless books ; all the good literature 
 of the world could be put in forty feet." 
 
 "Why The Fathers of the Church alone would fill that 
 space," cried one who would be witty. 
 
 "Fathers of the Church indeed in the true sense," was 
 Patmore's incisive retort. 
 
 There was a sort of gasp at the novelty of the thought 
 and .phrase, but I agreed with the judgement enthusi- 
 astically ; in fact, I had always thought that four feet even 
 would be sufficient; that all the memorable things in 
 Shakespeare for instance would go in a dozen pages. 
 
 It surprised me to think of Coventry Patmore in the 
 British Museum and so I asked him about it, and he told 
 me quite unaffectedly a remarkable story. It appeared 
 that his father had been very well off till he took a hand 
 in the great railway gamble of 1845 and lost nearly every- 
 thing. Coventry had just published his first book of 
 poems at twenty-one and for a couple of years had to 
 live by his pen. He always attributed his lung weakness
 
 COVENTRY PATMORE 193 
 
 and delicacy of constitution in later life to this period of 
 privation, but I believe he exaggerated the matter; 
 poverty and even long-continued hunger at twenty-one 
 very seldom affect the constitution. But he resented the 
 petty miseries and told me with keenest pleasure how a 
 casual meeting with Mr. Monckton Milnes, aifterwards, 
 Lord Houghton, at Mrs. Procter's, had changed his whole 
 outlook. A few days after the meeting he was astonished 
 at receiving a letter from Milnes telling him to present 
 himself at the British Museum where he would be ac- 
 cepted as one of the assistants, Mr. Milnes having already 
 written to the Archbishop of Canterbury and other 
 Trustees about him. 
 
 It seems that after dinner in the drawing-room, Milnes 
 said to Mrs. Procter: 
 
 "Who is your lean young friend with the frayed coat 
 cuffs?" 
 
 "You wouldn't talk in that way," the lady answered, 
 "if you knew how clever he is and how unfortunate. 
 Have you read his Poems?" 
 
 Milnes took them away in his pocket and wrote to her 
 next morning: "If your young friend would like a post 
 in the library of the British Museum, it shall be obtained 
 for him, if only to induce you to forget what must have 
 seemed my heartless flippancy. His book is the work of 
 a true poet, and we must see that he never lacks butter 
 for his bread." 
 
 Patmore told me incidentally thait the "poems" which 
 had won him this recognition were "trash, and not worth 
 considering."
 
 194 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS 
 
 What other country is there where a man of Monck- 
 ton Milnes' position would have thought it his duty to 
 help a poverty-stricken young poet? Another "dear 
 soul" was the man Carlyle christened "Dicky Milnes, the 
 canary bird." 
 
 So in 1846 Patmore was appointed to a position which 
 he declared of "all the world was the best suited to him." 
 He kept his place for twenty years and then retired with 
 the respect of everyone and the maignificent pension of iix 
 or seven hundred dollars a year, which was the largest 
 the trustees could allot him. 
 
 Frederick Greenwood, I think it was, who introduced 
 me to Coventry Patmore shortly before I took over the 
 editorship of the Fortnightly Review in '87. Patmore 
 at the time was sixty-three or sixty-four years of age. 
 He must have been tall as a young man ; he was still per- 
 haps five feet ten or so, thin to emaciation, with an up- 
 right dignity of carriage and imperiousness of manner; 
 his likings and dislikings already aphoristic as if he had 
 thought much about the subjects and come to very de- 
 finite and pointed conclusions. His forehead was curious- 
 ly broad like Caesar's ; his chin, large and bony ; his eyes, 
 too, gray, keen, challenging; altogether he looked like a 
 man of asction rather than a poet. 
 
 The extravagant contradictions in him appealed to me 
 intensely. At a dinner at the Grosvenor Hotel once with 
 Greenwood he showed himself a more extreme Tory 
 than Greenwood. At one moment he referred to the poem 
 in which he called the enfranchisement of the working 
 class "the great crime" ; the next he declared that Glad-
 
 COVENTRY PATMORE 195 
 
 ^ 
 
 stone would assuredly be damned for his "oklocratic sen- 
 timentalities". He is known to have written the famous 
 parody of the triumphant telegram which Kaiser Wilhelm 
 sent to his wife after the victory of Woerth in 1870: 
 "This is to saiy, my dear Augusta, 
 We've had another awful buster. 
 Ten thousaind Frenchmen sent below, 
 Praise God from whom all blessings flow." 
 
 Patmore cared nothing for the social uplift of the 
 working class ; "no spiritual improvement in it," he 
 opined ; he would not see that some material betterment 
 had to come before any spiritual growth was possible. 
 He preached the gospel of peace and love, yet at the same 
 time insisted upon an increase of militarism ; got into a 
 fever about the smallness of the British navy, aind saw 
 the hope of the world in British domination. 
 
 With a spice of malevolence I quoted to him Emerson's 
 last speech before leaving. England : "If the heart of Eng- 
 land fail in the chances of a commercial crisis, I shall look 
 to the future of humanity westward of the Alleghany 
 Mountains." 
 
 In spite of his youthful admiration for Emerson, Pat- 
 more shrugged his shoulders and barked derisively ; "and 
 the future of poetry I suppose in Wailt Whitman." 
 
 I took up the challenge instantly. "You might do 
 worse," I said, "some of W r alt Whitman can be read side 
 by side with the last chapter of Ecclesiastes." 
 
 "I'd like to hear that," he scoffed. So I recited some 
 verses to him and at once he grew thoughtful and at 
 length admitted reluctantly: "That's fine; I hadn't seen
 
 196 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS 
 
 it ; but most of his stuff is drivel ; no power of self- 
 criticism in htm the hall-mark and obverse of creative 
 genius. Poe is the only singer America has produced, 
 and even he " 
 
 Patmore was a most excellent host and after the meal 
 gave us a bottle of Comet port, which Greenwood plainly 
 relished. 
 
 "Tennyson's tipple," I remarked. 
 
 "You pay my wine a poor compliment," answered Pat- 
 more, laughing. "Tennyson used to send for his port to 
 the nearest pub; it was quantity and not quality he 
 wanted; strength, not bouquet." 
 
 "Do you admire his work?" I asked; "nearly all his 
 later stuff bores me; after thirty he had nothing new in 
 his pouch." 
 
 "Patmore," interrupted Greenwood, "was the man who 
 found the true word for it. He called the early poetry 
 Tennyson and the latter poetry Tennysonian." One 
 could not but laugh. 
 
 A little while after this I got a letter from Patmore 
 asking me to remember my promise to come down to 
 stay with him ait Hastings. I went down for a weekend 
 and never enjoyed a couple of days more in my life. 
 
 Eager to get the heart of his mystery, pondering how 
 best to extract a confession of his beliefs and hopes, I 
 was taken aback by his house, which was really the finest 
 house in Hastings, with a dozen or more bedrooms and 
 a superb drawing-room and a cozy study in front. From 
 his work in the British Museum I had expected modest 
 comfort and res angnsta domi, but found wealth and a
 
 COVENTRY PATMORE 197 
 
 mansion set in three or four acres of ground which had 
 been converted into an old ItaUian garden with country 
 house terraces and forest trees, all in the middle of a busy 
 watering place and almost on the old London road. A 
 proper dwelling for a poet, but how did Patmore get the 
 money to keep up this large and luxurious life ? 
 
 As unaffectedly as he had told about his poverty he 
 told of his misery after the death of his first wife, "The 
 Angel in the House," a wretched loneliness which ended 
 in coughing and weakness and drove him for a long 
 winter to the Riviera amd Rome. Rome, which made 
 Luther a Protestant made Coventry Patmore a Catholic. 
 There he met his second wife, a religious devotee, pro- 
 posed to her and was accepted, then found out that she 
 was rich, which shocked him so that for a time he 
 questioned the advisability of marriage ; did not think he 
 was good enough. But in the long run he married her 
 and enjoyed fourteen years of almost perfect happiness. 
 
 Curiously enough he made no secret of the fact that he 
 had loved his first wife better. "I made a half-joke to 
 Mary about it once," he said. "I wrote her : 
 
 "I could not love thee, dear, so much, 
 Loved I not Honor more." 
 
 Honor was the name he gave his first wife, Emily, in 
 his poem The Angel in the House. When I went to bed 
 that night with this confession in my ears I threw 
 myself on the bed and laughed till I ached. It never even 
 occured to the poet that Mary might resent the secondary 
 place, and indeed it seems never to haive occurred to her, 
 a fact which convinced me that my knowledge of women
 
 198 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS 
 
 and their power of self-abnegation was worse than in- 
 adequate. 
 
 "For dear to maidens are their rivals dead," Patmore 
 writes in Amelia with a sublime absence of humor. 
 
 His second wife was forty-two when she married ; the 
 bond between these two seems to have been more spiritual 
 than is usually the case. Mary had no children of her 
 own apparently contented herself with playing foster- 
 mother to her husband's household. By all accounts she 
 was peculiarly shy and timid. 
 
 Patmore had the originality of a fine mind developed 
 in solitude ; he loved convivality and men's talk occasion- 
 ally; but had always lived with his own thoughts, and 
 like the monarch his words were stamped with his own 
 image and superscription. 
 
 On my first visit we spent the whole daiy together and 
 found various points where our minds touched. He was 
 delighted that I liked Pascal ; but to my wonder praised 
 him not for loftiness of thought as much as for his hatred 
 of Jesuit priests. 
 
 "I knew we should get along together," he chirped, "as 
 soon as I heard you tell Greenwood that you hated Man- 
 ning and* loved Newman ; the one's a self-seeking priest, 
 the other a spiritual guide and apostle." 
 
 Emerson, he confessed, had led him to Swedenborg; 
 but when I mentioned Garth Wilkinson and Emerson's 
 praise of him, he surprised me by lifting his eyebrow's 
 and shrugging his shoulders in contempt. 
 
 "Swedenborg," he persisted, "is inspired, plainly in- 
 spired."
 
 COVENTRY PATMORE 199 
 
 I pressed him about Boehme, but he had not read him, 
 and so I was again at a loss and could at first get no clear 
 light on his mystical faith. 
 
 But on a later visit he talked to me enthusiastically of 
 the Spaniard St. John of the Cross and from the Span- 
 iard's sensual ecstasies I began to get glimpses of Pat- 
 more's real belief. To my astonishment he was a mystic 
 in only one point. His love for his first wife was so 
 passionate, so overwhelming, that it became an inspiration 
 to him, so much so that when on the point of going over 
 to Rome he hesitated; how could he reconcile the faith 
 and fervor of "The Angel in the House" with Catholic 
 doctrine ? With ingenuous casuistry it was suggested to 
 him that such ecstatic love was the very soul of the 
 Catholic religion and at once aill his difficulties disap- 
 peared. Ever afterward he talked like the Biblical com- 
 mentators of. the desire of the soul for the Church, as 
 the desire of the woman for the man by whom she reaches 
 fruition, and more than once he told me that this was 
 the theme of his greatest and most mature work, the 
 Sponsa Dei, which he had worked at for five or six years. 
 
 Some time later in his study he said he had burned 
 this prose book, his finest work, because it might have 
 become a stumbling block to weaker brethren: Father 
 Gerard Hopkins, an extraordinary half-genius, had 
 thought some passages lent themselves to misconstruction, 
 as indeed they did, and he had, therefore, burned the 
 manuscript. 
 
 That evening after dinner Patmore's mood grew more 
 and more confiding and intimate. I found he admired
 
 200 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS 
 
 Schopenhauer almost as much as I did, and this led me 
 again to question his mysticism. 
 
 "Your mind and mine," he explained, "are antipodes 
 one of the other, and therefore reailly in close relation. 
 For example, you shocked me yesterday by talking of 
 the Song of Solomon in the Bible as a mere love song ; a 
 ,hymn of passion you called it. I always think of the 
 relation between husbatnd and wife as the relation of the 
 soul to Christ, an intimacy of supernal joy, of highest 
 inspiration; I regard this merging of one's self in a 
 supreme unity as the passionate symbol of the love of the 
 soul for God. This to me is the truth of truths, the 
 burning heart of the universe." 
 
 He said this with ai sort of mystical rapture, gripping 
 the arms of the chair and chanting out the words with 
 quivering voice and intense feeling. ... A moment later 
 he began again as if to justify himself; "all women to me 
 when unspoiled by men are wonderfully good, angels that 
 make the home, and I look forward to reunion with ab- 
 solute certitude. If I told you, if I could tell you, that 
 she has come to me often with heavenly counsels of 
 
 grace " he got up and moved about the room and 
 
 finally took a cigarette and relapsed into a silence broken 
 only by an occasional sigh. 
 
 This then was the heart of him, his secret, so to speak. 
 The phrase of Tertullian has been used about him 
 "Metis natnraliter Catholica" ; but I would qualify this by 
 saying that it was love for a women led him to love of 
 the Divine as he said himself: "Love that grows from 
 one to all."
 
 201 
 
 "Love is my sin," cries Shapespeare ; but love was Paft- 
 more's religion, the faith by which he lived and died, and 
 no one has sung the delirious idealization of first love 
 with such impassioned ecstasy: 
 
 "His merits in her presence grow 
 
 To martch the promise in her eyes, 
 And round her happy footsteps blow 
 
 The authentic airs of Paradise." 
 Or take his mysticism in prose : 
 
 "The obligatory dogmata of the Church are only 
 the seeds of life. The splendid flowers and the 
 delicious fruits are all in the corollaries, which few, 
 besides the saints, pay any attention to. Heaven be- 
 comes very intelligible and attractive when it is 
 discovered to be Woman. 
 
 A Mohammedan would have applauded his creed! 
 Patmore, I felt, was always too insubordinate to be a 
 representative Catholic ; yet by virtue of a fine mind and 
 passionate devotion he stands with Cardinal Newman in 
 the great English Catholic revival of the nineteenth 
 century, much as Dante stood six centuries earlier, called 
 and chosen "to justify the ways of God to men." Little 
 by little I became atware of the fragrance of his nature 
 like an incense rising ever in gratitude and love to Him 
 who had made his paths the paths of peace. 
 
 I wonder when I say Catholic mystic if I can get my 
 readers to understand at all the profound joyful piety of 
 the man. There was no high poetry but what was re- 
 ligious to him. He would have no work of art that did 
 not concern itself chiefly with God and man. He saw my
 
 202 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS 
 
 story "Montes" in the Fortnightly Review and wrote me 
 a flaming condemnation of it. The execution was almost 
 perfect, he said, but the matter was horrible. I answered 
 him by pointing out that my theme was much the same 
 as that of Othello. He accepted this at once, but stuck 
 to his verdict. No authority, not even that of Shakespeare, 
 could induce him even to modify his judgment. I give 
 it here ; in his own words ; for I regard it as intensely 
 characteristic : 
 
 Dear Mr. Harris: 
 
 The manner, the technical element, in your three 
 papers seems to me to be beyond criticism. The severity 
 with which you confine yourself to saying things, in- 
 stead of talking about them, is wholly admirable. My 
 criticism must be about the matter. 
 
 The "Matador" as a piece of mere representation 
 could scarcely be improved upon. The matter too, is 
 novel and striking. But I am of the very small minority 
 who will be disposed to complain that it wants what is 
 most essential in art, a properly human interest. The 
 hero is a wild beast, the heroine a bitch. 
 Another page of the same letter gives his views on my 
 Modern Idyll, the story of a Western Minister's love for 
 his deacon's wife. Patmore's condemnation is passionate 
 enough to prove that I have not underrated his religious 
 fervor or overpraised his power of expression. He says 
 that A Modern Idyll is probably characteristic of America 
 and shows there "a state of things compared with which 
 Dante's and Swedenborg's hells are pleasant to contem- 
 plate. Yet I doubt, nay, more then doubt, whether this
 
 COVENTRY PATMORE 203 
 
 actual hell, this putrid pool irrisdescent, with the cant of 
 pietism and steaming with profanation of divine names 
 and ideas, is not too horrible to be exposed as you have 
 exposed it. 
 
 For hours after reading it, I felt shocked and sickened 
 as I do not remember to have been by any other writing ; 
 and I cannot think that anything but evil can come to the 
 ordinary reader of it. 
 
 Kipling never did anything better than the "Triptych" ; 
 that is to say, the kind of thing which was thought worth 
 doing could not have been done better. 
 
 Of course Kipling with his Tory Imperialism appealed 
 to Patmore intensely; when one objected to his shallow 
 cleverness and cocksureness Patmore replied : "To paint 
 this age of ours he had to use vulgarity as a pigment." 
 
 Patmore's point of view interested me immensely, for 
 it is the attitude of latter-day Christianity. They clothe 
 the statues in St. Peter's with tin just as the ladies in 
 Chicago are supposed to clothe the piano legs in pyjamas. 
 And the Bishops of the Anglican Church agree with the 
 Catholic Cardinals that sins of the flesh are chiefly to be 
 reprobated. 
 
 "Tigers devouring a deer may be ai subject for art," 
 Patmore argued, "but not for great art. . . . The passions, 
 desires and appetites which men share with the brute 
 creation are not a fitting subject for supreme presenta- 
 tion ; it is only the things that are purely human, or if 
 you will, divine, that make high art possible." 
 
 "There are long-calculated revenges," I objected,
 
 204 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS 
 
 "meannesses and envyings, too, that are purely human, 
 yet viler than the beasts." 
 
 But he wouldn't have it. The human part of man was 
 all good one with the divine. 
 
 And just as he cared nothing for the sociail struggle ot 
 our age, so he cared little for the star-sown field of space. 
 In one poem in The Unknown Eros, his finest work, he 
 has put the two beliefs side by side : 
 "Put by the Telescope! 
 Better without it man may see, 
 Stretch'd awful in the hush'd midnight, 
 The ghost of his eternity." 
 
 Fancy a sane man writing those three words, "better 
 without it !" Yet the passionate fervor of the next three 
 lines explain if they cannot justify the absurdity. 
 
 I got to love Patmore. An optimist in everything that 
 concerned himself and his private life, a pessimist with 
 regard to others and to politics ; perfect faith in a Heaven 
 of eternal bliss, absolute disbelief in any progress in the 
 world or even improvement, he would inveigh for hours 
 against what he called the "rot" of the daily press and 
 the vile lies it disseminates and then tell a joke against 
 himself with the hugest delight. Nor was he ever prudish 
 or mealy mouthed ; he left "prudery to the Puritan half- 
 believers," he said, scornfully. 
 
 Patmore was grateful by nature in all things as few 
 men are. He told me how he had sought and obtained a 
 very early copy of St. Thomas Aquinas in seventeen 
 volumes on vellum, and had given the book to the Brit- 
 ish Museum.
 
 COVENTRY PATMORE 205 
 
 "I owe so much to the Museum," he said simply, "I 
 was glad to acknowledge my immense debt." 
 
 He had the highest artistic standard. "An imperfect 
 line," he said, "lies on my conscience like a sin and I never 
 rest until I have got it right, even if it costs me years." 
 
 And he lived up to this. Here is an ode of his, De- 
 parture, that I think is of supreme quality ; it is evidently 
 to his first wife, Emily, though written years after her 
 death, and is drenched in love and pathetic as the slow, 
 heavy tears of age which always remind me of the drops 
 of moisture that exude from stone: 
 
 DEPARTURE. 
 
 "It was not like your great and gracious ways ! 
 Do you, that have nought other to lament, 
 Never, my Love, repent 
 Of how, that July afternoon, 
 You went. 
 
 With sudden unintelligible phrase, 
 And frighten'd eye, 
 Uupon your journey of so many days, 
 Without a single kiss, or a good-bye ? 
 I knew, indeed, that you were parting soon ; 
 And so we sate, within the low sun's rays, 
 You whispering to me, for your voice was weak, 
 Your harrowing praise. 
 Well, it was well, 
 To hear you such things speak, 
 And I could tell 
 
 What made your eyes a growing gloom of love, 
 As a warm South-wind sombres a March grove.
 
 206 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS 
 
 And it was like your great and gracious ways 
 
 To turn your talk on daily things, my Dear, 
 
 Lifting the luminous, pathetic lash 
 
 To let the laughter flash, 
 
 Whilst I drew near, 
 
 Because you spoke so low that I could scarecly hear. 
 
 But all at once to leave me at the last, 
 
 More at the wonder than the loss aghast, 
 
 With huddled, unintelligible phrase 
 
 And frighten'd eye, 
 
 Upon your journey of all days 
 
 With not one kiss, or a good-bye, 
 
 And the only loveless look the look with which you pass'd ; 
 
 'Twas all unlike your great and gracious ways. 
 
 Yet fine as Patmore's best work is and of a magnificent 
 and austere simplicity, it is seldom sensuous and pas- 
 sionate enough to belong to the highest poetry. He never 
 comes near the best of Goethe or Keats or Shakespeare. 
 His simplicity often degenerates into triviality ; his sen- 
 timent is often mawkish. Some one said of him once 
 wittily : "Patmore never realizes the sublime in others, or 
 the ridiculous in himself." 
 
 Just as some of us think we have outlived Catholicism, 
 so we have certainly outlived Patmore's literary judg- 
 ments. He never dreamed of a synthesis of Paganism 
 and Christianity, of the reconciliation of body and soul, 
 and so the best of our modern insight was beyond him. 
 He liked Carlyle because "he and I are the only two who 
 dare to dislike and despise Heine," and at the same time 
 dismissed "Carlyle, Ruskin and Thackeray as second-rate
 
 COVENTRY PATMORE 207 
 
 minds" ; indeed, he seemed to place Ruskin above Car- 
 lyle, which to me was worse than blasphemy. 
 
 With many of Patmore's literary opinions I was in 
 cordial agreement. I, too, loved Coleridge and Keats, 
 and thought little of Shelley and Clough and other gods 
 of popular idolatry. Rossetti, however, I esteemed more 
 highly than Patmore, who scoffed at his scanty knowl- 
 edge of English literature and summed him up by de- 
 claring he was "tense and not intense" an epigram- 
 matic misstatement. In talk he often raged against Ros- 
 setti as a sort of anti-Christ, though they had once been 
 friendi and Rossetti was one of the first openly to praise 
 Patmore's poetry. 
 
 But Patmore was often finely right, as when he de- 
 clared that Tennyson's best work, though a miracle of 
 grace, was never quite "the highest kind" ; and he ex- 
 plained this unconsciously by recording the fact that "his 
 (Tnny son's) incessant dwellings upon trifles concern- 
 ing himself, generally small injuries, real or imaginary, 
 was childish." Browning he underrated and Blake, too, 
 as much as he overprized Mrs. Meynell, whom he 
 seriously proposed for Poet Laureate. 
 
 Coventry Patmore though always masterful, often 
 arbitrary and prone to contradict, was a staunch friend, 
 a kind and generous host : and above all, a prince of com- 
 panions to a man of letters, a very interesting poet, a 
 noble husband and father. He represented to me all that 
 was best in English life, and if he showed the religious 
 spirit in wild exaggeration, that too is English and in- 
 tensely characteristic.
 
 208 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS 
 
 To American readers I must prove that my praise of 
 his poetry and natural piety is justified, so I give here 
 his poem The Toys because of its universal appeal : 
 
 THE TOYS. 
 
 "My little Son, who look'd from thoughtful eyes 
 
 And moved and spoke in quiet grown-up wise, 
 
 Having my law the seventh time disobey'd, 
 
 I struck him, and dismiss'd 
 
 With hard words and unkiss'd, 
 
 His Mother, who was patient, being dead. 
 
 Then, fearing lest his grief should hinder sleep, 
 
 I visited his bed, 
 
 But found him slumbering deep, 
 
 With darken'd eyelids, and their lashes yet 
 
 From his late sobbing wet. 
 
 And I, with moan, 
 
 Kissing away his tears, left others of my own ; 
 
 For, on a table drawn beside his head, 
 
 He had put, within his reach, 
 
 A box of counters and a red-veined stone, 
 
 A piece of glass abraded by the beach 
 
 And six or seven shells, 
 
 A bottle with bluebells 
 
 And two French copper coins, ranged there with 
 
 careful art, 
 
 To comfort his sad heart. 
 So when that night I pray'd 
 To God I wept, and said : 
 Ah, when at last we lie with tranced breath,
 
 COVENTRY PATMORE 209 
 
 Not vexing Thee in death, 
 
 And Thou rememberest of what toys 
 
 We made our joys, 
 
 How weakly understood, 
 
 Thy great commanded good, 
 
 Then, fatherly not less 
 
 Than I whom Thou hast moulded from the clay, 
 
 Thou'lt leave Thy wrath, and say, 
 
 'I will be sorry for their childishness.' " 
 
 No wonder he was confident in his own pride of 
 place: many have been complacently sure of the laurel 
 wreath with less reason. He wrote in 1886 as a preface 
 to his complete works : 
 
 "I have written little, but it is all my best ; I have 
 never spoken when I had nothing to say, nor spared 
 time or labor to make my words true. I have re- 
 spected posterity, and, should there be a posterity 
 which cares for letters, I dare hope that it will 
 respect me." 
 
 Before I met him Patmore had married for the third 
 time, and at sixty tasted "the full delight," as he said, for 
 the first time of being a father. He was too busy, too full 
 or care and too preoccupied with love to feel the relation 
 very keenly with his first brood ; but now he was fond to 
 folly and delighted to repeat words of the boy-child, which 
 were anything but remarkable. Patmore's ducks had 
 always been swans. He even includes some of his eldest 
 son's poetry with his own and used to insist that it was 
 of the highest quality. 
 In this sketch I seem to have emphasized too much
 
 210 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS 
 
 Patmore's aristocratic Attitude and beliefs ; I should have 
 added that he regarded the servants in his own house 
 like his children and was not only kind but generous in 
 his solicitude for the poor. After a storm once at Hast- 
 ings that wrecked some of the poorer dwellings, he gave 
 with both hands "to put the outcasts on their feet again," 
 as he expressed it. And this he regarded as a simple duty ; 
 "we are all of the household of God," was his phrase. 
 
 And so he lived and died; on the surface a mass of 
 contradictions because at odds with his time, but in spirit 
 of a singular integrity; an aristocrat by nature and con- 
 viction in a growing, all-invading democracy ; a lover 
 and Catholic mystic in a sordid, scientific age ; an English- 
 man who might have respected a Rabindranath Tagore, 
 but would certainly have avoided friendly intercourse 
 with him; an Englishman, I repeat, full of whimsies; a 
 ferocious individualist born out of due season, yet lovable 
 and beloved bv his own even to reverence.
 
 Walt Whitman
 
 X 
 
 WALT WHITMAN 
 
 IS THERE any relation I wonder between the size 
 of a land and the greatness of the men born in it? 
 It seems to me sometimes as if the small countries 
 produced the big men and great countries nothing but 
 mediocrities. Rome, for instance, never produced any 
 man at all commensurate with her grandeur; Athens 
 and Jerusalem on the other hand gave birth to the 
 greatest of men. 
 
 Reflecting in this way it occurred to me that if our 
 globe were ten times as large as it is, we men would 
 have to be mere pigmies; for if we were of our present 
 stature we should be glued to the ground by the force 
 of gravitation and una'ble to advance at all even by 
 steps which are after all nothing but a series of fallings. 
 On the other hand, if our world were only a tenth part 
 of its present size, we men would have to be much 
 larger in order that gravitation might keep us from 
 skipping out of the world's pull altogether. 
 
 And so there may be some subtle and hitherto un- 
 explained connection between small countries and great 
 men and great countries and little men; but I soon re- 
 assured myself; the relation can hardly be inexorable, 
 for America has produced three or four great men Poe, 
 Lincoln, Emerson and Walt Whitman. 
 
 211
 
 212 
 
 Or do I now deceive myself? I think not. Whitman 
 was so (healthy and above all so well-proportioned that 
 he perhaps seems smaller than he was. At any rate, 
 this one can say with certainty, he is so far the most 
 characteristic American and therefore also the most 
 original. 
 
 But many Americans, Lowell among them, thought 
 Lincoln "the first American," and Whitman himself 
 praised him enthusiastically. How are we to decide 
 whether Lincoln or Whitman was the greater? What 
 is the criterion? Whitman supplies us with the measur- 
 ing rod and, strange to say, it is also Goethe's, and 
 historically approved I verily believe. Whitman writes : 
 "Strange as it may seem tfhe topmost 'proof of the race 
 is its own born poetry .... the stamp of entire and 
 finished greatness to any nation must be withheld till 
 it has put what it stands for in the blossom of original 
 first-class poems." Goethe goes even further and of 
 course puts the idea much better : 
 
 "I have often said and will often repeat that the 
 
 final cause and consummation of all natural and 
 
 human activity is dramatic poetry." 
 
 It may be objected that these are two writers agreeing 
 that poetry is the highest product of civilized man, but 
 men of action might contradict them. 
 
 History, however, sustains the literary view. Carthage 
 was rich and 'prosperous; Carthage disappeared and left 
 no trace. Rome was mistress of the world for centuries ; 
 her language became the language of all civilized 
 peoples. Rome fell and her place in our esteem and in
 
 WALT WHITMAN 213 
 
 our thoughts bcomes smaller and smaller as time goes 
 on, whereas the place of Athens and Jerusalem becomes 
 bigger and bigger arid already the position of Jerusalem 
 is higher than that of Rome or even of America because 
 her poets and prophets were greater and are still a living 
 force. Whoever then in America has produced the 
 greatest poetry is the greatest man. I "believe I am justi- 
 fied, therefore, in claiming pre-eminence for Whitman. 
 
 There is an amusing little side-light on Whitman to 
 be won 'here. Scarcely has he established the fact to 
 his own satisfaction that the highest purpose of civiliza- 
 tion is the production of noble poetry when he goes on 
 to talk of Scott and Tennyson, who, like Shakespeare, 
 exhale that principle of caste which "we Americans thave 
 come on earth to destroy." Not to produce high poetry 
 then tut to destroy the spirit of caste is the great pur- 
 pose of America. At his inspired moments Whitman 
 knew better; again and again in his prose he recurs to 
 the reverence we owe great men, to the benefit we all 
 receive from that sacred admiration. If by the spirit 
 of caste Whitman meant the adoration of wealth, or 
 birth, or manners, or dress, or all of these, then indeed 
 we may be said to have come here to destroy, but the 
 false gods are only dethroned in the interests of the 
 true god, and Whitman and Goethe are certainly justi- 
 fied in insisting that the poet and prophet will be more 
 and more highly esteemed as man moves up the spiral 
 of growth. 
 
 Great men are good companions, exhilarating and 
 delightful as morning sunshine; their shortcomings even
 
 2i 4 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS 
 
 predict the future, for all imperfections forecast fulfil- 
 ment and our faults pre- figure better men yet to be born. 
 But great men are a little difficult to know ; even their 
 lovers, to w<hom they give themselves freely, only come 
 to understanding little by little. They are of infinite 
 diversity; they say with Whitman 
 
 Do I contradict myself? 
 
 Very well then I contradict myself; 
 
 (I am large, I contain multitudes). 
 
 They are strange, too, and defy classification; at one 
 moment the son of Man, at another the son of God; 
 they are mysterious, ever conscious that they are a 
 mystery, even to themselves, as indeed we all are. 
 
 But as a rule in youth they smack of the soil and b'e- 
 tray the school, show us their beginnings and growth; 
 the books they read and did not read. If you know the 
 language they use and their time and condition, you 
 have the key to them. 
 
 Tthis man W'hitman has few obvious marks of the 
 school or of reading or of condition; he abjures all 
 signs of servitude. 
 
 "You shall no longer take things at second or third 
 hand, nor look through the eyes of the' dead, nor feed 
 on the spectres of books. 
 
 "You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take 
 things from me. 
 
 "You shall listen to all sides and filter them from 
 yourself."
 
 WALT WHITMAN 215 
 
 He asserts himself loudly: 
 
 "Clear and sweet is my soul 
 
 Welcome is every organ and attribute of me and of 
 any man healthy and clean." 
 
 Whitrrtan is a pure man and as strange as the new 
 continent where he was born. He is large like his land 
 and ridh in many ways, btrt incult for the most part and 
 undeveloped, a great uncut gem with one small facet 
 polished perfectly as if to show the supernal radiance 
 of it. 
 
 For many years this strangeness, this want of culti- 
 vation, this untamed exuberance, the waste and wildness 
 as of desert and mountain range, put me off; I regarded 
 Emerson as the greatest American; but Emerson was 
 bookish and a Puritan, and as I grew older I came to 
 think more of the body and its claims and pleasures and 
 Emerson's thin-blooded judgments became ridiculous to 
 me. The Frendh proverb "ban animal bon hommi" im- 
 posed itself and the English prudery and conventionalism 
 in Emerson distressed me as something worse than pro- 
 vincial, as a positive deformity, and I turned with de- 
 light to Whitman's broad humanity: 
 
 "I am the poet of the body and I am the poet of the 
 
 Soul 
 
 Walt Whitman, a kosmos, of Manhattan the Son, 
 Turbulent, fleshy, sensual, eating, drinking and breeding. 
 No sentimentalist, no slander above men and women or 
 
 apart from them, 
 No more modest than immodest.
 
 216 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS 
 
 Without shame the man I like knows and avows the 
 
 deliciousness of his sex, 
 Without shame the woman I like knows and avows hers." 
 
 I began to do these penportraits with the fixed resolve 
 only to write of men and women of importance whom 
 I had known personally, and never to forget that one 
 touch of soul-revealing drawn from intimate personal 
 knowledge was worth pages of critical appreciation. The 
 future will do its own criticising and its own appreciat- 
 ing; but generations still unborn must be grateful for 
 just that personal knowledge of the "Shining Ones" which 
 only those who knew them in the flesh, can supply. 
 
 Now I never knew Whitman: I mean by that, I saw 
 him in passing, heard him speak in Philadelphia in the 
 winter of 1876 I 'believe it was; b*ut hardly got from him 
 more than an "Ay, Ay" to acknowledge understanding; 
 yet an impression of the simplicity of the man remains 
 with me and of his sanity and health fulness. 
 
 He came on the platform slowly as if since his stroke 
 he found walk'ing a little difficult; he showed his age, 
 too, in greying beard and hair; but his eyes were 
 fine steadfast, clear and he had a certain air with 
 him, the effect of goodly height, strong erect figure and 
 greatness of nature. He certainly owed nothing to dress 
 for his unstarched shirt was open at the neck, his waist 
 coat persisted in rucking up and his short-coat stuck out 
 behind, making me smile at his likeness to a large Cochin 
 fowl. But the whole impression was dignified, imposing; 
 his voice was clear, his utterance deliberate, slow; his
 
 WALT WHITMAN 217 
 
 choice of words seemed to me good ; a big man thought- 
 ful, clear of eye and human, friendly to all. 
 
 Even this outline-sketch may be colored a little by 
 later knowledge won from reading. However, I give it 
 for what it is worth; having seen him in the flesh and 
 heard his voice help me to realize him, and this large, 
 untutored manhood. 
 
 In the same early poems, I have already used, Whit- 
 man makes his full confession in two lines: 
 
 "I believe in the flesh and the appetites, 
 Seeing, hearing, feeling are miracles and each part and 
 tag 1 of me is a miracle." 
 
 Tlhis might have been written by Goethe. Here for 
 the first time we meet an Anglo-Saxon who has cut him- 
 self free from Puritanism and prudery without denying 
 the mysteries. 
 
 In the fall of '81 shortly before Emerson's death, 
 Whitman recalls the fact that "twentyone years before 
 on a bright sharp February midday I walked with Emer- 
 son, flhen in his prime, keen, physically and morally 
 magnetic, armed at every point, and when he chose, 
 wielding the emotional just as well as the intellectual. 
 During those two hours he was the talker and I the lis- 
 tener. It was an argument, reconnoitering, review, 
 attack, and pressing home (like an army corps in order, 
 artillery, cavalry, infantry), of all that could be said 
 against that part (and a main part) in the construction 
 of my poems, "Children of Adam." More precious than 
 gold to me that dissertation it afforded me, ever after,
 
 2i8 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS 
 
 this strange and paradoxical lesson; each point of Emer- 
 son's statement was unanswerable, no judge's charge or*r 
 more complete or convincing, I could never hear the 
 points better put and then I felt down in my soul the 
 clear and unmistakable conviction to disobey all and pur- 
 sue my own way. 
 
 "'What have you to say to such things?' said E., 
 pausing in conclusion. 'Only that while I can't answer 
 hem all, I feel more than ever to adhere to my own 
 theory, and exemplify it," was my candid response. 
 
 "Whereupon we went and had a good dinner at the 
 American House. And thenceforward I never wavered 
 or was touched with qualms (as I confess I had been 
 two or three times before)." 
 
 The -poems under this heading "The Children of 
 Adam," are all devoted to the sex-urge and 'have earned 
 Whitman the reproach in his own country and in lesser 
 degree in England, too, of being pornographic. From a 
 French or Latin or Russian standpoint the poems arc 
 rather reticent and are indeed sadly to seek in several 
 ways. But even an Anglo-Saxon before objecting to them 
 might have considered the fact that they only fill fifteen 
 pages out of over four hundred or less than four per 
 cent, of the whole, which is surely a disproportionately 
 small amount to be given in any full life to things sexual. 
 No wonder then that Emerson's arguments instead of 
 convincing Whitman of wrongdoing filled him with the 
 conviction that he had been right and removed all faintest 
 doubts on tihe matter, or "qualms" as he calls them puri- 
 tanically.
 
 WALT WHITMAN 219 
 
 He sings "the body electric," and "a woman waits for 
 me," and "the ache of amorous love," and yet I would 
 call him ill-equipped on this side and uninteresting. He 
 is frank, indeed, outspoken even, but astoundingly super- 
 ficial the heights and depths of passion have not been 
 plumbed by him. Turn to "Solomon's Song," in the 
 Bible and compare the two and you will find that the 
 Jewisih singer is infinitely Whitman's superior. Take the 
 verses : 
 
 I sleep; but my heart waketh; it is the voice of my 
 beloved that knocketh, saying open to me, my sister, 
 my love, my dove, my undefiled, for my hair is wet 
 with dew and my locks with drops of the night. 
 
 I don't need to quote a verse or two more in order to 
 sound the deeps of desire ; but let these two phrases from 
 the heights be further witness: 
 
 "Thy lips are like a thread of scarlet" . . . and thy 
 love "terrible as an army with banners." 
 The dread that always accompanies supreme passion 
 was never more splendidly rendered. It makes everything 
 in Whitman on this subject 'petty and slight. And this 
 is the only real objection to tte urged against "The Chil- 
 dren of Adam" poems (an objection which Emerson 
 surely never dreamed of), that they contain no new, great 
 word on the matter, are in fact commonplace and as such 
 unworthy of the eternal theme. 
 
 Think of the threnody of the Jewish song: 
 
 "Many waters cannot quench love: neither can the 
 floods drown it; if a man would give all the substance
 
 220 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS 
 
 of his house for love, it would utterly be contemned . . . 
 
 And then the conclusion of the whole matter: 
 
 "For love is strong as deatfh . . . jealousy is cruel as 
 
 the grave." 
 
 It is not for their love- songs that the English and 
 Americans are likely to be heard in the Court of Nations. 
 And if they ever sought a hearing on this count they 
 would do well to shoose Shakespeare or Swinburne (he 
 wrote "In flhe Orchard" and "The Leper") to represent 
 them rather than Whitman. But prudery in the United 
 States has the malignity of an ague-fit and Americans 
 shiver and burn with it alternately and are proud of its 
 virulence, as children are proud of a physical deformity. 
 
 And accordingly Whitman fared ill at their hands, 
 for many years after the publication of "The Leaves 
 of Grass," till the day of his death indeed and long 
 afterwards, his name was taboo in polite society, and 
 in sipite of his lofty democratic and religious utterances 
 his 'book has never become popular in these States. 
 Whitman's high position in the world of letters to-day 
 has b'een given to him by foreign masters and he has 
 been imposed on the American public by their eulogies, 
 one more prophet not without honor save in his own 
 country and amid his own kin. 
 
 Whitman himself testifies, without taint of bitterness, 
 indeed with a noble unconcerned acceptance, to the com- 
 pleteness of the American boycott. Shortly before his 
 death in the summer of his seventy-second year he 
 wrote : 
 
 "All along from 1860 to '91, many of the pieces in
 
 WALT WHITMAN 221 
 
 'Leaves of Grass' and its annexes, were first sent to 
 publishers or magazine editors before being printed 
 in the L. and were peremptorily rejected by them, and 
 sent back to their author. The 'Eidolons' was sent 
 back by Dr. H., of 'Scribner's Monthly' with a lengthy, 
 very insulting and contemptuous letter. 'To the Sun- 
 Set Breeze' was rejected by the editor of 'Harper's 
 Monthly' as 'being 'an improvisation' only. 'On, On, 
 Ye Jocund Twain' was rejected by the 'Century' 
 editor as being personal merely. Several of the pieces 
 went the rounds of all the monthlies, to be thus sum- 
 marily rejected. 
 
 "June, '90. The rejects and sends back my 
 
 little poem, so I am now set out in the cold by every 
 big magazine and publisher, and may as well under- 
 stand and admit it Which is just as well, for I find 
 I am palpably losing my sight and ratiocination." 
 And this ostracism is the more extraordinary because 
 Whitman is a typical American in faults as in virtues. 
 For example, he is perpetually praising "Democracy" 
 and the "average" man; but when challenged on the 
 matter he has to admit that the American democracy 
 so far is a rank failure and the average man even in this 
 blessed land leaves a great deal to be desired: 
 
 "For my part, I would alarm and caution even 
 the political and business reader, and to the utmost 
 extent, against the prevailing- delusion that the estab- 
 lishment of free political institutions, and intellectual 
 smartness, with general good order, physical plenty, 
 industry, etc. (desirable and precious advantages as
 
 222 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS 
 
 they all are) do, of themselves, determine and yield 
 to our experiment of democracy the fruitage of 
 
 success." 
 
 And though a little later he quotes Lincoln's famous 
 apothegm "Government of the people, by the people, for 
 the people," with high approval, in reality he is not 
 blinded by words or sounding phrases ; he writes : 
 
 "Genuine belief seems to have left us. The under- 
 lying principles of the States are not honestly believed 
 in (for all this hectic glow and ttoese melodramatic 
 screamings) nor is humanity itself believed in. What 
 penetrating eye does not everywhere see through the 
 mask ? The spectacle is appalling. We live in a atmo- 
 spere of hypocrisy throughout. The men believe not 
 in the women, nor the women in the men. A scorn- 
 ful superciliousness rules in literature." 
 And he sums up: 
 
 "I say that our New World democracy, however 
 great a success in uplifting the masses out of their 
 sloughs, in materialistic development products, and in 
 a certain highly-decorative superficial popular intel- 
 lectuality, is, so far, an almost complete failure in its 
 social aspects, and in really grand religious, moral, 
 literary and esthetic results. In vain do we march with 
 unprecedented strides to empire so colossal, outvying 
 the antique, beyond Alexander's, beyond the proudest 
 sway of Rome. In vain 'have we annexed Texas, Cali- 
 fornia, Alaska, and reach north for Canada and south 
 for Cu'ba. It is as if we were somehow being endowed
 
 WALT WHITMAN 223 
 
 with a vast and more and more thoroughly-appointed 
 
 body, and then left with little or no soul." 
 
 No wiser words of warning have yet been written in 
 America. 
 
 Whitman is hypnotized by his love of "democracy" 
 and the "average" man ; yet he cannot but see that some- 
 thing is wrong with the formula and the creature. 
 
 "Will the time hasten," he cries, "when fatherhood 
 and motherhood shall become a science and tihe noblest 
 science? To our model the portrait of personality 
 needed in these States to our model a clear-blooded, 
 strong- fibred physique is indispensable." He waits, too, 
 "an erect attitude, a complexion showing the best blood, 
 a voice whose sound outvies music; eyes of calm and 
 steady gaze, yet capable also of flashing." Plainly Whit- 
 man's "average" man is a superman and his democracy 
 a Utopia that in reach of imagination would shame Sir 
 Tthomas More's. 
 
 It might plausibly be argued that in spite of himself 
 Whitman is an aristocrat from head to foot and demands 
 physical, mental and moral perfection from all citizens. 
 
 On the other hand, it is only fair to admit that Whit- 
 man's passion for equality holds in itself a forecast of 
 the future and its own justification. Who can doubt now 
 in this marvellous year of 1919 that we are moving to- 
 wards equality, destined gradually to realize it more 
 and more in our institutions and in our lives, and with 
 it the brotherhood of man. It seems to me significant 
 that Whitman's poem "To Him That Was Crucified" 
 as one brother and lover to another should be immediate-
 
 224 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS 
 
 ly followed by the verses to the "Felons on Trial in 
 Courts" and prostitutes which ends in this way: 
 "Lusts and wickedness are acceptable to me, 
 I walk with delinquents with passionate love, 
 I feel I am of them I belong to those convicts and pros- 
 titutes myself, 
 And henceforth I will not deny them for how can I 
 
 deny myself?" 
 
 In just this spirit Debs talked the other day on his 
 trial : "As long as one man is in prison," he said, "I am 
 in prison," and we all thrillled to the eternal truth. 
 Whitman's humanity, too, knows no exclusions : 
 "Not till the sun excludes you, do I exclude you." 
 He looks out upon "lab'orers, the poor and Negroes" 
 with the same sense of kinship; he is human to the red 
 heart of him and full of love; Mood-brother to all men 
 born. And this sense of universal sympathy and brother- 
 hood is as fine as anything in him and does, as he saw, 
 differentiate him as an American singer from all 
 European singers as yet, conferring on him a singular 
 distinction. But I cannot, alas, say even this much with- 
 out lamenting in the same breath the fact that the ma- 
 jority of Americans of this time appear to (have no 
 inkling of their high calling, for they have been unabde 
 even to maintain the legal rights of free men handed 
 down to them through half a dozen generations and pro- 
 tected explicitly by the Constitution. The torturing of 
 conscientious objectors, too, in our prisons during the 
 war, remains as an indelible stain on American civilaza- 
 tion.
 
 WALT WHITMAN 225 
 
 Whitman, too, has his faults and in especial a shallow 
 optimism which is peculiarly American; he says that 
 "there are no liars or lies at all," but that "all is truth 
 without exception," and all is health too, I presume, 
 especially to those dying untimely of foul inherited dis- 
 eases ! 
 
 Again and again, too, his critical faculty betrays him. 
 'I can't imagine any better luck befalling these States 
 for a poetical beginning and initiation than has come 
 from Emerson, Longfellow, Bryant, and Whittier. Emer- 
 son to me stands unmistakably at the head, but for the 
 others I am at a loss where to give any precedence. Each 
 illustrious, each rounded, each distinctive . . . Long- 
 fellow . . . competing with the singers of Europe on 
 their own ground and witfti one exception, better and 
 finer work than any of them." 
 
 The exception, if you please, being Tennyson, as 
 Whitman tells us elsewhere. Was there ever such critic- 
 ism? The one, authentic, American poet, Poe, omitted 
 altogether and Longfellow declared superior to Brown- 
 ing, Swinburne and Arnold in England, to Hugo, Ver- 
 laine and Sully Prudhomme in France, to Carducci in 
 Italy ; Longfellow, who is not worthy of being named 
 witJh the least of these immortals. Bryant and Whittier 
 too "illustrious and distinctive." It needed only one 
 phrase to reach bathos and we get it : "Shakespeare as 
 depicter of the passions is excelled by the best old Greeks 
 as Aeschylus." 
 
 And with these blunderings I must set down also the 
 dreadful neologisms which stain and disfigure most of
 
 226 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS 
 
 his work such as, "promulge," "eclaircise," "deliveress," 
 "partialist," "diminute," "ecleve," "acceptress" "exalte," 
 "finale," "dolce," "affetuoso," "ostent," "inure," "ef- 
 fuse," "imperturbe," "buster," "Americanos," "rapport," 
 and hundreds of similar blots upon tJhe page. 
 
 Not one of these newcomers seems to have gained or 
 deserved rights of naturalization in the language, and if 
 one compares them to those coined by Coleridge, such 
 as "atavism" and "atavistic," which do satisfy a need 
 and enrich the common treasure-store, one will quickly 
 realize the advantage of a thorough education. 
 
 Even wfaen Whitman has a great theme and feels 
 poignantly he perpetually hurts us with some word that 
 is curiously inept and out of 'place. For instance, his 
 dirge on Lincoln. "O Captain, my captain," has this line 
 in it: 
 
 "For you bouquets and ribbon'd wreaths for you the 
 shores a-crowding." 
 
 How he could have written "bouquets" here without 
 feeling the slhock and incongruity, I can't imagine. 
 
 It seems to me that his love of so-called "free verse" 
 springs from the same source ; he not only resents bond- 
 age of any sort, but he is not highly articulate, not a 
 master of his craft, a born singer. True, he has used free 
 verse now and then most happily; but for each trium- 
 phant success 'how many comparative failures! 
 
 And both before and after him others have used free- 
 dom with happier results. Again and again in the Bible, 
 for instance, as in fthe I3th chapter of Corinthians, and 
 the last chapter of Ecclesiastes, and elsewhere prose has
 
 WALT WHITMAN 227 
 
 yielded as magical effects as have ever been attained by 
 any poetry bond or free. Whitman's continual use of free 
 verse has founded a school and, notably in America, has 
 produced imitators who have not even studied the Biblical 
 methods. There is no special virtue in rhythm ; but nearly 
 all the (highest utterances in the world's literature have 
 been musical, and free verse when it is unmusical is even 
 more repulsive than halting or ill-bounding prose. 
 
 On this point I almost agree with Ruskin who wrote : 
 
 "Irregular measure (introduced to my great regret in 
 its chief wilfulness by Coleridge) is the calamity of 
 modern poetry." 
 
 Of course one must remember that in talking of litera- 
 ture Whitman always takes the position that verbal ex- 
 cellence is of no moment, mere filigree and ornament; 
 again and again he affirms that die deep purpose of his 
 own poetry and indeed of all poetry is the religious pur- 
 pose. He goes further here than even Emerson or Car- 
 lyle; he says: 
 
 ''There can be no sane and complete personality, nor 
 
 any grand and electric nationality without the stock ( ! ) 
 
 element of religion imbuing all the other elements .... 
 
 so there can be no poetry worth the name without that 
 
 element (religion) behind all." 
 
 But he is not content with vague generalities on this 
 matter; "I am not sure," he says in the preface to the 
 Centennial Edition of his works in 1876 when he was 
 already 58 years of age : "I am not sure but the last in- 
 closing sublimation of race or poem is w<bat it thinks 
 of death."
 
 228 
 
 And he goes further : 
 
 "In my opinion it is no less than this idea of immor- 
 tality, above all other ideas, that is to enter into and vivify 
 and give crowning religious stamp of democracy in the 
 New World." 
 
 And as if this were not enough he proceeds to tell us 
 that "it was originally my intention after chanting in 
 'Leaves of Grass' the songs of flhe body and existence 
 to compose a further and equally needed volume based 
 on those convictions of perpetuity and conservation which 
 . . . make the unseen soirl govern absolutely at last." 
 
 "I mean to exhibit . . . the same ardent and fully ap- 
 pointed personality . . . with cheerful face, estimating 
 death not at all as the cessation but as somehow wftiat I 
 feel it must be, the entrance upon by far the greatest part 
 of existence and something that life is at least as much 
 for as it is for itself. 
 
 "But the full construction of such a book is beyond my 
 powers and must remain for some bard in the future. 
 
 "Meanwhile not entirely to give the go-by to my original 
 plan. ... I end my books with thoughts or radiations from 
 thoughts on death, immortality and a free entrance into 
 the spiritual world." 
 
 And in his famous "Passage to India," he cries : 
 "O daring joy but safe ! are they not all the seas of God ? 
 O, farther, farther, farther sail!" 
 
 It is no vain 'boast of his that tihe "brawn of 'Leaves 
 of Grass' is thoroughly spiritualized everywhere.
 
 WALT WHITMAN 229 
 
 He is convinced of the necessity of this for "the Moral 
 is the purport and lasting intelligence of all Nature." . . . 
 though "there is absolutely nothing of the moral in tfhe 
 works or laws of Nature." 
 
 And to make "full confession" he adds: 
 
 "I also sent out 'Leaves of Grass' to arouse and set 
 flowing in men's and women's hearts, young and old, 
 endless streams of living, pulsating love and friendship, 
 directly from them to myself now and ever." He declares 
 that this affection and sympathy will yet bring about the 
 perfect union of all the States. 
 
 Tihinking it all over, I feel that Whitman's unpopularity 
 in America is almost as difficult to explain as Whistler's. 
 When writing of Whistler I drew attention to the fact 
 that his overwhelming love of beauty and his avoidance 
 of anything coarse or mean, sordid or ugly, shotf.d hav r e 
 made him an immediate favorite in both Eng4and and 
 America. It had not that effect, strange to say ; and so 
 when I think of Whitman's (healthy animalism and the 
 small space he gives it in his work and his passionate 
 devotion to the implicit morality of things, to religion and 
 even to immortality, I feel that he of all men should have 
 been immediately popular in America ; he is far and away 
 the most characteristic product of this country; why did 
 his countrymen decry his gospel and reject him? His 
 purpose is their purpose, his belief their belief, his hope 
 their hope! 
 
 Let us look at his best for a moment, for after all it 
 is in his highest achievement even more than in his short- 
 comings that we discover the soul of a man.
 
 230 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS 
 
 The "Prayer of Columbus" is Whitman's best work; 
 by much, I think, the noblest poem yet produced in these 
 States. There is hardly a weak verse in the whole litany 
 and tfhere are lines in it of pure sutflimity : 
 "O I am sure they really came from Thee 
 The urge, the ardor, the unconquerable will, 
 The potent, felt, interior command, stronger than words, 
 A message from the Heavens whispering to me even in 
 
 sleep, 
 These sped me on. 
 
 "The end I know not, it is all in Thee, 
 
 Or small or great I know not haply what broad fields, 
 
 wthat lands, 
 Haply the brutish measureless human undergrowth I 
 
 know, 
 Transplanted there may rise to stature, knowledge worthy 
 
 Thee, 
 Haply the swords I know may there indeed be turn'd to 
 
 reaping-tools, 
 Haply the lifeless cross I know, Europe's dead cross, may 
 
 bud and blossom there. 
 
 One effort more, my altar this Weak sand; 
 
 That Thou O God, my life hast lighted, 
 
 With ray of light, steady, ineffable, vouchsafed of Thee, 
 
 Light rare untellable, lighting the very light, 
 
 Beyond all signs, descriptions, languages; 
 
 For that O God, be it my latest word, here on my knees, 
 
 Old, poor, and paralyzed, I thank Thee.
 
 WALT WHITMAN 231 
 
 Ever since my first reading of Whitman I had held that 
 this was his best ; but I had no proof that he thought so 
 till the other day. In order to picture him I had to read 
 both 'his poetry and his prose through from beginning to 
 end. His very last poem is "A Thought of Columbus," a 
 greeting to him across the sea of time, soul-plaudits for 
 him and acclamation of his great achievement. The very 
 last page of 'his prose too, his final word and testament 
 to his readers and to America is the confession of the 
 same faith he put in the mouth of Columbus in the 
 "Prayer" poem and is clothed in the self same words. 
 It must be accepted then that the faith he attributes to 
 Columbus is his own faitth and the hope, his hope; he 
 writes : 
 
 "The Highest said: 'Don't let us begin so low 
 isn't our range too coarse too gross? . . . The Soul 
 answered : No, not when we consider what it is all 
 for the end involved in Time and Space. 
 
 ''Essentially my own printed records, all my vol- 
 umes, are doubtless but off-hand utterances of my 
 Personality, spontaneous, following implicitly the in- 
 scrutable command, dominated by that Personality, 
 vaguely, even if decidedly, and with little or nothing 
 of plan, art, erudition, etc. If I have chosen to hold 
 the reins, the mastery, it has mainly been to give the 
 way, the power, the road, to the invisible steeds." 
 "The potent felt interior command" of the great 
 poem has become 'the inscrutable command' of the last 
 page of his prose; his mission is from the Highest and 
 he follows it implicitly.
 
 232 
 
 It is curious that the metaphor he uses in the very 
 last sentence has already been used magnificently by 
 Goethe in his "Egmont." Whitman often reminds me 
 of the great German. I ought to say that coming after 
 Goethe he has borrowed from <him, as I think he has 
 in this instance. My readers shall judge. Goethe wrote : 
 "As if whipped by invisible Spirits the Sunhorses 
 of Time have run away with the light car of our Des- 
 tiny and nothing remains for us but with resolute 
 hearts to hold fast the reins avoiding now the 
 rock on the right, now the abyss on tihe left-; whither 
 we are speeding who can tell ; hardly can we even re- 
 member whence we came!" 
 
 One more question remains to be answered: What 
 is Whitman's position in the world of letters? Is he 
 one of those who steer humanity and reveal unsuspected 
 powers in human nature? 
 
 It seems to me that he is nearer akin to Browning 
 than to any other English singer; but as soon as we 
 think of t>hem together Whitman's shortcomings and 
 Whitman's noble attempt to reconcile Christianity and 
 paganism declare themselves. Browning's "Rabbi ben 
 Ezra" is as fine, I think, as Whitman's "Prayer to 
 Columbus," and Browning has done several other things 
 as good as the Rat>bi. There are 'besides love-lyrics of 
 the best in Browning and a hundred pictures of men and 
 women from Andrea del Sarto to Bishop Blougram 
 painted with intense vividness and reality. Browning 
 has played critic very rarely, but whenever he does he 
 use original insight and is most excellently educated to
 
 WALT WHITMAN 233 
 
 boot. His skill in words is not of the first order; b'ut 
 he is far above Whitman's crude provincialisms and ill- 
 advised borrowings from imperfectly understood for- 
 eign tongues. Where it not for "Tlhe Prayer of Colum- 
 bus," I should rate Poe almost as highly as the author 
 of the "Leaves of Grass." 
 
 Yet I cannot leave Whitman on this note: he is 
 boldly a pagan, and stands for the nobility of the flesh ; 
 yet the very spirit of Jesus is in him ; somewhere in his 
 prose he asks about a book : "Does it help the Soul ?" 
 and he recognizes, as Browning recognizes, that this is 
 the all important question. Again and again Whitman 
 speaks to the soul in its own language most nobly en- 
 couraging it and is thereby fully and forever justified. 
 
 Even when singing of the body and its parts as sacred 
 he says: 
 "O I say these are not the parts and poems of the body 
 
 only, t>ut of the soul, 
 O I say now these are the soul!"
 
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