UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT LOS ANGELES THE AFTERMATH m~ OPINIONS OF THE PRESS "The student could desire nothing better than this wonder- fully compact little guide, which seems to us to say the last word upon the matter of modern journalism. It is written, moreover, in a weighty redundant style, which is in itself a most valuable object-lesson to the beginner and a model of all that contemporary letters should be." — The Journalist. (The organ of the Trade.) "... very repetitive and tiresome stuff . . ." — Mr. Amadeus (a notorious liar, writing in The World of the Pen). "... Admirable . . . most admirable . . . one of the most charming works which have appeared in the English language . . . quite admirable ... so admirable that we remember nothing like it since Powell's criticism on Charles Lamb, or rather Lamb's Immortal reply to that criticism . . . quite admirable." — The Chesterfield Mercury. "... This is a book which those who take it up will not willingly lay down, and those who lay it down will not willingly take up. . . ." — The Rev. Charles Broyle, writing in Culture. "... How is it that England, even in her decline, can turn out such stuff as this? What other nation could have produced it in the moment of her agony? The Common Tongue still holds by its very roughness. . . ." — The Notion. (The principal organ of well-bred men in New York, U.S.A.) THE AFTERMATH Or, GLEANINGS FROM A BUSY LIFE, CALLED UPON THE OUTER COVER FOR PURPOSES OF SALE CALIBAN'S GUIDE TO LETTERS LAMBKIN'S REMAINS BY H. BELLOC NEW YORK E. P. DUTTON AND COMPANY PUBLISHERS • • • • * • PRINTED IN GREAT HRITAIN BV BILLING AND SONS, LTD , GUII-DFORD AND ESHEK > * > '(- / O <4 \ S ^ 'K ri TO CATHERINE, MRS. CALIBAN, BUT FOR WHOSE FRUITFUL SUGGESTION, EVER READY SYMPATHY, POWERS OF OBSERVATION, KINDLY CRITICISM, UNFLINCHING COURAGE, CATHOLIC LEARNING, AND NONE THE LESS CHRISTIAN PRINCIPLE, THIS BOOK MIGHT AS WELL NOT HAVE BEEN WRITTEN; IT IS DEDICATED BY HER OBEDIENT AND GRATEFUL SERVANT AND FRIEND IN AFFLICTION, THE AUTHOR " O, Man; with what tremors as of earth-begettings hast thou not wrought, O, Man! — Yet — is it utterly indeed of thee — ? Did there not toil in it also that World-Man, or haply was there not Some Other? ... O, Man I knowest thou that word Some Other?'''' — Carlyle's " Frederick the Great." v 207881 Most of these sketches are reprinted from "The Speaker," and appear in this form by the kind per- mission of its Editor. ERRATA AND ADDENDA P. 19, line 14 (from the top), for " enteric " read " esoteric." P. 73, second footnote, for " Sophia, Lady Gowl," read " Lady Sophia Gowl." P. 277 (line 5 from bottom), for " the charming prospect of such a bribe" read " Bride.'''' P. 456, delete all references to Black-mail, passim. P. 510 (line 6 from top), for " Chou-fleur" read " Chauffeur." Direction to Printer. — Please print hard, strong, clear, straight, neat, clean, and well. Try and avoid those little black smudges ! VI CONTENTS PAGB PREFACE - - - ix INTRODUCTION - - - II I. REVIEWING - - - - 23 II. ON POLITICAL APPEALS - - * 37 III. THE SHORT STORY - - - "57 IV. THE SHORT LYRIC - - - 69 V. THE INTERVIEW - - - 84 VI. THE PERSONAL PAR - - - - IOO VII. THE TOPOGRAPHICAL ARTICLE - - I06 VIII. ON EDITING - - - - - 1 14 IX. ON REVELATIONS - - - - 122 X. SPECIAL PROSE - - - - 1 38 APPENDIX I PRICES CURRENT - 145 NOTE ON TITLES - 148 NOTE ON STYLE - - - - 1 49 THE ODE - - - - - 152 ON REMAINDERS AND PULPING - - 156 vn W FURTHER AND YET MORE WEIGHTY OPINIONS OF THE PRESS "... We found it very tedious. . . ." — The Evening German. (The devil "we" did! "We" was once a private in a line regiment, drummed out for receiving stolen goods.) "... We cannot see what Dr. Caliban's Guide is driving at." — The Daily American. (It is driving at you.) "... What? Again? . . ." — The Edinburgh Review. "... On y retrouve a chaque page l'orgueil et la secheresse Anglaise. . . ." — M. Hyppolite Durand, writing in Le Journal of Paris. " . . . O Angleterre ! He merveilleuse ! C'est done toujours de toi que sortiront la Justice et la Verite. . . ." — M. Charmant Reinach, writing in the Horreur of Geneva. "... Lasciate ogni speranza voi ch'entrate." — Signor Y. Ilabrimo (of Palermo), writing in the Tribune of Rome. " 7roX\a ret Seiva KovSev avdpwwov Seivbrepov ir Aet. " — M. Negri- depopoulos DE Wohms, writing in The " t6 detvov " of Athens. " ! ! bWD " — The Banner of Israel. " V—The Times of London. vui PREFACE This work needs no apology. Its value to the English-speaking world is twofold. It preserves for all time, in the form of a printed book, what might have been scattered in the sheets of ephemeral publications. It is so designed that these isolated monuments of prose and verse can be studied, absorbed, and, if necessary, copied by the young aspirant to literary honours. Nothing is Good save the Useful, and it would have been sheer vanity to have published so small a selection, whatever its merit, unless it could be made to do Some- thing, to achieve a Result in this strenuous modern world. It will not be the fault of the book, but of the reader, if no creative impulse follows its perusal, and the student will have but himself to blame if, with such standards before him, and so lucid and thorough an analysis of modern Literature and of its well-springs, he does not attain the goal to which the author would lead him. The book will be found conveniently divided into sections representing the principal divisions of modern literary activity • each section will contain an intro- ductory essay, which will form a practical guide to the subject with which it deals, and each will be adorned ix x PREFACE with one or more examples of the finished article, which, if the instructions be carefully followed, should soon be turned out without difficulty by any earnest and industrious scholar of average ability. If the Work can raise the income of but one poor journalist, or produce earnings, no matter how insig- nificant, for but one of that great army which is now compelled to pay for the insertion of its compositions in the newspapers and magazines, the labour and organizing ability devoted to it will not have been in vain. THE AFTERMATH OR GLEANINGS FROM A BUSY LIFE INTRODUCTION A GRATEFUL SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR'S FRIEND (iN PART THE PRODUCER OF THIS BOOK), JAMES CALIBAN Few men have pursued more honourably, more usefully, or more successfully the career of letters than Thomas Caliban, D.D., of Winchelthorpe-on-Sea, near Ports- mouth. Inheriting, as his name would imply, the grand old Huguenot strain, his father was a Merchant Taylor of the City of London, and principal manager of the Anglo-Chilian Bank; his mother the fifth daughter of K. Muller, Esq., of Brighton, a furniture dealer and reformer of note in the early forties. The connection established between my own family and that of Dr. Caliban I purposely pass over as not germane to the ensuing pages, remarking only that the friendship, guidance, and intimacy of such a man will ever count among my chief est treasures. Of him it may truly be written : "He maketh them to shine like Sharon; the waters are his in Ram-Shaid, and Gilgath fraiseth him." ii i2 THE AFTERMATH I could fill a volume of far greater contents than has this with the mere record of his every-day acts during the course of his long and active career. I must content myself, in this sketch, with a bare summary of his habitual deportment. He would rise in the morning, and after a simple but orderly toilet would proceed to family prayers, terminating the same with a hymn, of which he would himself read each verse in turn, to be subsequently chanted by the assembled household. To this succeeded breakfast, which commonly consisted of ham, eggs, coffee, tea, toast, jam, and what-not — in a word, the appurtenances of a decent table. Breakfast over, he would light a pipe (for he did not regard indulgence in the weed as immoral, still less as un-Christian : the subtle word liriuKtia, which he translated "sweet reasonableness," was painted above his study door — it might have served for the motto of his whole life), he would light a pipe, I say, and walk round his garden, or, if it rained, visit the plants in his conservatory. Before ten he would be in his study, seated at a large mahogany bureau, formerly the property of Sir Charles Henby, of North-chapel, and noon would still find him there, writing in his regular and legible hand the notes and manuscripts which have made him famous, or poring over an encyclopaedia, the more conscientiously to review some book with which he had been entrusted. After the hours so spent, it was his habit to take a turn in the fresh air, sometimes speaking to the gar- dener, and making the round of the beds ; at others passing by the stables to visit his pony Bluebell, or to pat upon the head his faithful dog Ponto, now INTRODUCTION 13 advanced in years and suffering somewhat from the mange. To this light exercise succeeded luncheon, for him the most cheerful meal of the clay. It was then that his liveliest conversation was heard, his closest friends entertained : the government, the misfortunes of foreign nations, the success of our fiscal policy, our maritime supremacy, the definition of the word "gentleman," occasionally even a little bout of theology — a thousand subjects fell into the province of his genial criticism and extensive information; to each his sound judgment and ready apprehension added some new light ; nor were the ladies of the family incompetent to follow the gifted table talk of their father, husband, brother, master,* and host.t Until the last few years the hour after lunch waa occupied with a stroll upon the terrace, but latterly he would consume it before the fire in sleep, from which the servants had orders to wake him by three o'clock. At this hour he would take his hat and stick and proceed into the town, where his sunny smile and friendly salute were familiar to high and low. A visit to the L.N.C. School, a few purchases, perhaps even a call upon the vicar (for Dr. Caliban was without prejudice — the broadest of men), would be the occupa- tion of the afternoon, from which he returned to tea in the charming drawing-room of 48, Henderson Avenue. It was now high time to revisit his study. He was * The governess invariably took her meals with the family. t Miss Bowley, though practically permanently resident in the family, was still but a guest — a position which she never forgot, though Dr. Caliban forbad a direct allusion to the fact. 14 THE AFTERMATH at work by six, and would write steadily till seven. Dinner, the pleasant conversation that succeeds it in our English homes, perhaps an innocent round game, occupied the evening till a gong for prayers announced the termination of the day. Dr. Caliban made it a point to remain the last up, to bolt the front door, to pour out his own whiskey, and to light his own candle before retiring. It was consonant with his exact and thoughtful nature, by the way, to have this candle of a patent sort, pierced down the middle to minimise the danger from falling grease; it was moreover surrounded by a detachable cylinder of glass.* Such was the round of method which, day by day and week by week, built up the years of Dr. Caliban's life; but life is made up of little things, and, to quote a fine phrase of his own : "It is the hourly habits of a man that build up his character." He also said (in his address to the I. C. B. Y.) : "Show me a man hour by hour in his own home, from the rising of the sun to his going down, and I will tell you what manner of man he is." I have always remembered the epigram, and have acted upon it in the endeavour to portray the inner nature of its gifted author. I should, however, be giving but an insufficient picture of Dr. Caliban were I to leave the reader with no further impression of his life work, or indeed of the causes which have produced this book. His father had left him a decent competence. He lay, therefore, under no necessity to toil for his living. Nevertheless, that sense of duty, " through which the * Such as are sold and patented by my friend Mr. Gape- thorn, of 362, Fetter Lane. INTRODUCTION 15 eternal heavens are fresh and strong ' ' (Wordsworth), moved him to something more than " the consumption of the fruits of the earth" (Horace). He preached voluntarily and without remuneration for some years to the churches in Cheltenham, and having married Miss Bignor, of Winchelthorpe-on-Sea, purchased a villa in that rising southern watering-place, and received a call to the congregation, which he accepted. He laboured there till his recent calamity. I hardly know where to begin the recital of his numerous activities in the period of thirty-five years succeeding his marriage. With the pen he was inde- fatigable. A man more ttolkiXos — or, as he put it, many-sided — perhaps never existed. There was little he would not touch, little upon which he was not con- sulted, and much in which, though anonymous, he was yet a leader. He wrote regularly, in his earlier years, for The Seventh Monarchy, The Banner, The Christian, The Free Trader, Household Words, Good Words, The Quiver, Chatterbox, The Home Circle, and The Sunday Monitor. During the last twenty years his work has continually appeared in the Daily Telegraph, the Times, the Sieclc, and the Tribuna. In the last two his work was translated. His political effect was immense, and that though he never acceded to the repeated request that he would stand upon one side or the other as a candidate for Parliament. He remained, on the contrary, to the end of his career, no more than president of a local associa- tion. It was as a speaker, writer, and preacher, that his ideas spread outwards ; thousands certainly now use 16 THE AFTERMATH political phrases which they may imagine their own, but which undoubtedly sprang from his creative brain. He w as perhaps not the first, but one of the first, to apply the term "Anglo-Saxon" to the English-speaking race — with which indeed he was personally connected through his relatives in New Mexico. The word ' Empire " occurs in a sermon of his as early as 1869. He was contemporary with Mr. Lucas, if not before him, in the phrase, "Command of the sea": and I find, in a letter to Mrs. Gorch, written long ago in 1873, the judgment that Protection was " no longer," and the nationalisation of land " not yet," within " the sphere of practical politics." If his influence upon domestic politics was in part due to his agreement with the bulk of his fellow-citizens, his attitude in foreign affairs at least was all his own. Events have proved it wonderfully sound. A strenuous opponent of American slavery as a very young man — in i860 — he might be called, even at that age, the most prominent Abolitionist in Worcestershire, and worked indefatigably for the cause in so far as it concerned this country. A just and charitable man, he proved, after the victory of the North, one of the firmest supporters in the press of what he first termed " an Anglo-American entente.'" Yet he was not for pressing matters. He would leave the "gigantic daughter of the West" to choose her hour and time, confident in the wisdom of his daughter's judgment, and he lived to see, before his calamity fell upon him, Mr. Hanna, Mr. Roosevelt, Mr. Elihu Root, and Mr. Smoot occupying the positions they still adorn. He comprehended Europe. It was he who prophesied INTRODUCTION 17 of the Dual Monarchy (I believe in the Contemporary Review), that "the death of Francis Joseph would be the signal for a great upheaval " ; he that applied to Italy the words "clericalism is the enemy"; and he that publicly advised the withdrawal of our national investments from the debt of Spain — "a nation in active decay." He cared not a jot when his critics pointed out that Spanish fours had risen since his advice no less than 20 per cent., while our own consols had fallen by an equal amount. " The kingdom I serve," he finely answered, " knows nothing of the price of stock." And indeed the greater part of his fortune was in suburban rents, saving a small sum unfortunately adventured in Shanghai Telephones. Russia he hated as the oppressor of Finland and Poland, for oppression he loathed and combated wherever it appeared ; nor had Mr. Arthur Balfour a stronger supporter than he when that statesman, armed only in the simple manliness of an English Christian and Freeman, combated and destroyed the terrorism that stalked through Ireland. Of Scandinavia he knew singularly little, but that little was in its favour; and as for the German Empire, his stanzas to Prince Bismarck, and his sermon on the Emperor's recent visit, are too well known to need any comment here. To Holland he was, until recently, attracted. Greece he despised. Nowhere was this fine temper of unflinching courage and sterling common sense more apparent than in the great crisis of the Dreyfus case. No man stood up more boldly, or with less thought of consequence, for Truth and Justice in this country. He was not indeed 2 t8 the aftermath the chairman of the great meeting in St. James' Hall, but his peroration was the soul of that vast assemblage. " England will yet weather the storm. . . ." It was a true prophecy, and in a sense a confession of Faith. There ran through his character a vein of something steady and profound, which inspired all who came near him with a sense of quiet persistent strength. This, with an equable, unfailing pressure, restrained or con- trolled whatever company surrounded him. It was like the regular current of a full but silent tide, or like the consistent power of a good helmsman. It may be called his 'personal force. To most men and women of our circle, that force was a sustenance and a blessing ; to ill -regulated or worldly men with whom he might come in contact, it acted as a salutary irritant, though rarely to so intense a degree as to give rise to scenes. I must unfortunately except the case of the Rural Dean of Bosham, whose notorious excess was the more lamentable from the fact that the Council of the S.P.C.A. is strictly non-sectarian, and whose excuse that the ink-pot was not thrown but brushed aside is, to speak plainly, a tergiversation. The recent unhappy war in South Africa afforded an excellent opportunity for the exercise of the qualities I mean. He was still active and alert; still guiding men and maidens during its worse days. His tact was admirable. He suffered from the acute divisions of his congregation, but he suffered in powerful silence; and throughout those dark-days his sober necquid nimis* was like a keel and ballast for us all. * Petronius. INTRODUCTION 19 A young radical of sorts was declaiming at his table one evening against the Concentration Camp. Dr. Caliban listened patiently, and at the end of the harangue said gently, " Shall we join the ladies?" The rebuke was not lost.* On another occasion, when some foreigner was reported in the papers as having doubted Mr. Brodrick's figures relative to the numbers of the enemy remaining in the field, Dr. Caliban said with quiet dignity, "It is the first time I have heard the word of an English gentleman doubted." It must not be imagined from these lines that he defended the gross excesses of the London mob — especially in the matter of strong waters — or that he wholly approved of our policy. "Peace in our time, Oh, Lord!" was his constant cry, and against mili- tarism he thundered fearlessly. I have heard him apply to it a word that never passed his lips in any other connection — the word Damnable. On the details of the war, the policy of annexation, the advisability of frequent surrenders, the high salaries of irregulars, and the employment of national scouts, he was silent. In fine, one might have applied to him the strong and simple words of Lord Jacobs, in his Guildhall speech. t One main fact stood out — he hated warfare. He was a man of peace. The tall, broad figure, inclining slightly to obesity, the clear blue northern eyes, ever roaming from point to point, as though seeking for grace, the familiar soft * The Ladies were Mrs. Caliban, Miss Rachel and Miss Aletheia Caliban, Miss Bowley, Miss Goucher, and Lady Robinson. t " It is enough for me that I am an Englishman." 20 THE AFTERMATH wideawake, the long full white beard, the veined com- plexion and dark-gloved hands, are now, alas, removed from the sphere they so long adorned. Dr. Caliban's affliction was first noticed by his family at dinner on the first of last September — a date which fell by a strange and unhappy coincidence on a Sunday. For some days past Miss Goucher had remarked his increasing volubility ; but on this fatal evening, in spite of all the efforts of his wife and daughters, he continued to speak, without interruption, from half-past seven to a quarter-past nine; and again, after a short interval, till midnight, when he fell into an uneasy sleep, itself full of mutterings. His talk had seemed now a sermon, now the reminiscence of some leading article, now a monologue, but the whole quite incoherent, though delivered with passionate energy ; nor was it the least distressing feature of his malady that he would tolerate no reply, nay, even the gentlest assent drove him into paroxysms of fury. Next day he began again in the manner of a debate at the loral Liberal Club, soon lapsing again into a sermon, and anon admitting snatches of strange songs into the flow of his words. Towards eleven he was apparently, arguing with imaginary foreigners, and shortly after- wards the terrible scene was ended by the arrival of a medical man of his own persuasion. It is doubtful whether Dr. Caliban will ever be able to leave Dr. Charlbury's establishment, but all that can be done for him in his present condition is lovingly and ungrudgingly afforded. There has even been provided for him at considerable expense, and after an exhaustive search, a companion whose persistent hallucination it is INTRODUCTION 2t that he is acting as private secretary to some leader of the Opposition, and the poor wild soul is at rest. Such was the man who continually urged upon me the necessity of compiling some such work as that which now lies before the reader. He had himself intended to produce a similar volume, and had he done so I should never have dared to enter the same field ; but I feel that in his present incapacity I am, as it were, fulfilling a duty when I trace in these few pages the plan which he so constantly counselled, and with such a man counsels were commands. If I may be permitted to dwell upon the feature more especially his own in this Guide, I will point to the section " On Vivid Historical Literature in its Application to Modern Problems," and furthermore, to the section "On the Criticism and Distinction of Works Attributed to Classical Authors." In the latter case the examples chosen were taken from his own large collection ; for it was a hobby of his to purchase as bargains manuscripts and anonymous pamphlets which seemed to him to betray the hand of some master. Though I have been compelled to differ from my friend, and cannot conscientiously attribute the specimens I have chosen to William Shakespeare or to Dean Swift, yet I am sure the reader will agree with me that the error into which Dr. Caliban fell was that of no ordinary mind. Finally, let me offer to his family, and to his numerous circle, such apologies as may be necessary for the differences in style, and, alas, I fear, sometimes in mode of thought, between the examples which I have chosen as models for the student and those which perhaps would have more powerfully attracted the sympathies of 22 THE AFTERMATH my preceptor himself. I am well aware that such a difference is occasionally to be discovered. I can only plead in excuse that men are made in very different ways, and that the disciple cannot, even if he would, forbid himself a certain measure of self-development. Dr. Caliban's own sound and broad ethics would surely have demanded it of no one, and I trust that this solemn reference to his charity and genial toleration will put an end to the covert attacks which some of those who should have been the strongest links between us have seen fit to make in the provincial and religious press. 1 REVIEWING The ancient and honourable art of Reviewing is, with- out question, the most important branch of that great calling which we term the " Career of Letters." As it is the most important, so also it is the first which a man of letters should learn. It is at once his shield and his weapon. A thorough knowledge of Reviewing, both theoretical and applied, will give a man more popularity or power than he could have attained by the expenditure of a corresponding energy in any one of the liberal professions, with the possible exception of Municipal politics. It forms, moreover, the foundation upon which all other literary work may be said to repose. Involving, as it does, the reading of a vast number of volumes, and the thorough mastery of a hundred wholly different subjects; training one to rapid, conclusive judgment, and to the exercise of a kind of immediate power of survey, it vies with cricket in forming the character of an Englishman. It is interesting to know that Charles Hawbuck was for some years principally occupied in Reviewing ; and to this day some of our most important men will write, nay, and sign, reviews, as the press of the country testifies upon every side. It is true that the sums paid for this species of literary activity are not large, and it is this fact which *3 24 THE AFTERMATH has dissuaded some of our most famous novelists and poets of recent years from undertaking Reviewing of any kind. But the beginner will not be deterred by such a consideration, and he may look forward, by way of compensation, to the ultimate possession of a large and extremely varied library, the accumulation of the books which have been given him to review. I have myself been presented with books of which individual volumes were sometimes worth as much as forty-two shillings to buy. Having said so much of the advantages of this initial and fundamental kind of writing, I will proceed to a more exact account of its dangers and difficulties, and of the processes inherent to its manufacture. It is clear, in the first place, that the Reviewer must regard herself as the servant of the public, and of her employer; and service, as I need hardly remind her (or him), has nothing in it dishonourable. We were all made to work, and often the highest in the land are the hardest workers of all. This character of service, of which Mr. Ruskin has written such noble things, will often lay the Reviewer under the necessity of a sharp change of opinion, and nowhere is the art a better training in morals and application than in the habit it inculcates of rapid and exact obedience, coupled with the power of seeing every aspect of a thing, and of insisting upon that particular aspect which will give most satisfaction to the commonwealth. It may not be uninstructive if I quote here the adventures of one of the truest of the many stout- hearted men I have known, one indeed who recently died in harness reviewing Mr. Garcke's article on REVIEWING 25 Electrical Traction in the supplementary volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica. This gentleman was once sent a book to review ; the subject, as he had received no special training in it, might have deterred one less bound by the sense of duty. This book was called The Snail : Its Habitat, Food, Customs, Virtues, Vices, and Future. It was, as its title would imply, a monograph upon snails, and there were many fine coloured prints, showing various snails occupied in feeding on the leaves proper to each species. It also contained a large number of process blocks, showing sections, plans, elevations, and portraits of snails, as well as detailed descriptions (with diagrams) of the ears, tongues, eyes, hair, and nerves of snails. It was a comprehensive and remark- able work. My friend (whose name I suppress for family reasons) would not naturally have cared to review this book. He saw that it involved the assumption of a knowledge which he did not possess, and that some parts of the book might require very close reading. It numbered in all 1,532 pages, but this was including the index and the preface. He put his inclinations to one side, and took the book with him to the office of the newspaper from which he had received it, where he was relieved to hear the Editor inform him that it was not necessary to review the work in any great detail. " Moreover," he added, " I don't think you need praise it too much." On hearing this, the Reviewer, having noted down the price of the book and the name of the publisher, wrote the following words — which, by the way, the student will do well to cut out and pin upon his wall, 26 THE AFTERMATH as an excellent example of what a "short notice" should be : "The Snail: Its Habitat, etc. Adam Charles. Pschuffer. 21s. 6d. " This is a book that will hardly add to the reputation of its author. There is evidence of detailed work, and even of conscientious research in several places, but the author has ignored or misunderstood the whole teaching of and the special discoveries of and what is even more remarkable in a man of Mr. Charles' standing, he advances views which were already exploded in the days of He then took an Encyclopaedia and filled up the blanks with the names of three great men who appeared, according to that work, to be the leaders in this branch of natural history. His duty thus thoroughly accom- plished and his mind at rest, he posted his review, and applied himself to lighter occupations. Next day, however, the Editor telephoned to him, to the effect that the notice upon which he had spent so much labour could not be used. " We have just received," said the Editor, "a page advertisement from Pschuffer. I would like a really good article, and you might use the book as a kind of peg on which to hang it. You might begin on the subject of snails, and make it something more like your ' Oh I my lost friend,' which has had such a success." On occasions such as these the beginner must remember to keep full possession of himself. Nothing in this mortal life is permanent, and the changes that are native to the journalistic career are perhaps the most startling and frequent of all those which threaten humanity. REVIEWING 27 The Reviewer of whom I speak was as wise as he was honourable. He saw at once what was needed. He wrote another and much longer article, beginning — " The Snail: Its Habitat, etc. Adam Charles. Pschuffer. 21s. 6d. " There are tender days just before the Spring dares the adventure of the Channel, when our Kentish woods are prescient, as it were, of the South. It is calm . . ." and so forth, leading gradually up to snails, and bring- ing in the book here and there about every twentieth line. When this long article was done, he took it back to the office, and there found the Editor in yet a third mood. He was talking into the telephone, and begged his visitor to wait until he had done. My friend, there- fore, took up a copy of the Spectator, and attempted to distract his attention with the masterful irony and hard crystalline prose of that paper. Soon the Editor turned to him and said that Pschuffers had just let him know by telephone that they would not advertise after all. It was now necessary to delete all that there might be upon snails in his article, to head the remainder ' ' My Kentish Home," and to send it immediately to "Life in the Open." This done, he sat down and wrote upon a scrap of paper in the office the following revised notice, which the Editor glanced at and approved : " The Snail: Its Habitat, etc. Adam Charles. Pschuffer. 21s. 6d. " This work will, perhaps, appeal to specialists. This journal does not profess any capacity of dealing with it, but 28 THE AFTERMATH a glance at its pages is sufficient to show that it would be very ill-suited to ordinary readers. The illustrations are not without merit." Next morning he was somewhat perturbed to be called up again upon the telephone by the Editor, who spoke to him as follows : ' I am very sorry, but I have just learnt a most important fact. Adam Charles is standing in our interests at Biggleton. Lord Bailey will be on the plat- form. You must write a long and favourable review of the book before twelve to-day, and do try and say a little about the author." He somewhat wearily took up a sheet of paper and wrote what follows : — a passage which I must again recommend to the student as a very admirable specimen of work upon these lines. ■' The Snail: Its Habitat, etc. Adam Charles. Pschuffer. 21s. 6d. ' This book comes at a most opportune moment. It is not generally known that Professor Charles was the first to point out the very great importance of the training of the mind in the education of children. It was in May, 1875, that he made this point in the presence of Mr. Gladstone, who was so impressed by the mingled enlightenment and novelty of the view, that he wrote a long and interesting postcard upon the author to a friend of the present writer. Professor Charles may be styled— nay, he styles himself— a ' self-made man.' Born in Huddersfield of parents who were weavers in that charming northern city, he was early fascinated by the study of natural science, and was admitted to the Alexandrovna University. ..." (And so on, and so on, out of " Who's Who.") " But this would not suffice for his growing genius." REVIEWING 29 (And so on, and so on, out of the Series of Contemporary Agnostics.) " ... It is sometimes remarkable to men of less wide experience how such spirits find the mere time to achieve their prodigious results. Take, for example, this book on the Snail. ..." And he continued in a fine spirit of praise, such as should be given to books of this weight and importance, and to men such as he who had written it. He sent it by boy-messenger to the office. The messenger had but just left the house when the telephone rang again, and once more it was the Editor, who asked whether the review had been sent off. Know- ing how dilatory are the run of journalists, my friend felt some natural pride in replying that he had indeed just despatched the article. The Editor, as luck would have it, was somewhat annoyed by this, and the reason soon appeared when he proceeded to say that the author was another Charles after all, and not the Mr. Charles who was standing for Parliament. He asked whether the original review could still be retained, in which the book, it will be remembered, had been treated with some severity. My friend permitted himself to give a deep sigh, but was courteous enough to answer as follows : " I am afraid it has been destroyed, but I shall be very happy to write another, and I will make it really scathing. You shall have it by twelve." It was under these circumstances that the review (which many of you must have read) took this final form, which I recommend even more heartily than any 3 o THE AFTERMATH of the others to those who may peruse these pages for their profit, as well as for their instruction. " The Snail: Us Habitat, etc. Adam Charles. Pschuffer. 21s. 6d. " We desire to have as little to do with this book as possible, and we should recommend some similar attitude to our readers. It professes to be scientific, but the harm books of this kind do is incalculable. It is certainly unfit for ordinary reading, and for our part we will confess that we have not read more than the first few words. They were quite sufficient to confirm the judgment, which we have put before our readers, and they would have formed sufficient material for a lengthier treatment had we thought it our duty as Englishmen to dwell further upon the subject." Let me now turn from the light parenthesis of illuminating anecdote to the sterner part of my task. We will begin at the beginning, taking the simplest form of review, and tracing the process of production through its various stages. It is necessary first to procure a few forms, such as are sold by Messrs. Chatsworthy in Chancery Lane, and Messrs. Goldman, of the Haymarket, in which all the skeleton of a review is provided, with blanks left for those portions which must, with the best will in the world, vary according to the book and the author under consideration. There are a large number of these forms, and I would recommend the student who is as yet quite a novice in the trade to select some forty of the most conventional, such as these on page 7 of the catalogue : <« Mr. has hardly seized the pure beauty of " " We cannot agree with Mr. in his estimate of " " Again, how admirable is the following :" REVIEWING 3i ' ' There is some- what of the -'s style.' -'s ' -'s At the same establishments can be procured very complete lists of startling words, which lend individu- ality and force to the judgment of the Reviewer. Indeed I believe that Mr. Goldman was himself the original patentee of these useful little aids, and among many before me at this moment I would recommend the following to the student : Absolute \ Immediate Creative Bestial Intense Authoritative in Mr. Ampitheatrical > Mrs. Lapsed Miss Miggerlish Japhetic Accidental Alkaline Zenotic Messrs. Mailing, of Duke Street, Soho, sell a par- ticular kind of cartridge paper and some special pins, gum, and a knife, called "The Reviewer's Outfit." I do not know that these are necessary, but they cost only a few pence, and are certainly of advantage in the final process. To wit : Seizing firmly the book to be reviewed, write down the title, price, publisher, and (in books other than anonymous) the author's name, at the top of the sheet of paper you have chosen. The book should then be taken in both hands and opened sharply, with a gesture not easily described, but acquired with 32 THE AFTERMATH very little practice. The test of success is that the book should give a loud crack and lie open of itself upon the table before one. This initial process is technically called " breaking the back " of a book, but we need not trouble ourselves yet with technical terms. One of the pages so disclosed should next be torn out and the word " extract " written in the corner, though not before such sentences have been deleted as will leave the remainder a coherent paragraph. In the case of historical and scientific work, the preface must be torn out bodily, the name of the Reviewer substituted for the word "I," and the whole used as a description of the work in question. What remains is very simple. The forms, extracts, etc., are trimmed, pinned, and gummed in order upon the cartridge paper (in some offices brown paper), and the whole is sent to press. 1 need hardly say that only the most elementary form of review can be constructed upon this model, but the simplest notice contains all the factors which enter into the most complicated and most serious of literary criticism and pronouncements. In this, as in every other .practical trade, an ounce of example is worth a ton of precept, and I have much pleasure in laying before the student one of the best examples that has ever appeared in the weekly press of how a careful, subtle, just, and yet tender review, may be written. The complexity of the situation which called it forth, and the lightness of touch required for its successful completion, may be gauged by the fact that Mr. Mayhem was the nephew of my employer, had quarrelled with him at the moment when the notice was written, but will almost certainly be on good terms with REVIEWING 33 him again; he was also, as I privately knew, engaged to the daughter of a publisher who had shares in the works where the review was printed. A YOUNG POET IN DANGER Mr. Mayhem's " Pereant qui Nostra." We fear that in " Pereant qui Nostra," Mr. Mayhem has hardly added to his reputation, and we might even doubt whether he was well advised to publish it at all. " Tufts in an Orchard " gave such promise, that the author of the ex- quisite lyrics it contained might easily have rested on the immediate fame that first effort procured him. " Lord, look to England; England looks to you," and — " Great unaffected vampires and the moon," are lines the Anglo-Saxon race will not readily let die. In " Pereant qui Nostra," Mr. Mayhem preserves and even increases his old facility of expression, but there is a terrible falling-off in verbal aptitude. What are we to think of " The greatest general the world has seen" applied as a poetic description to Lord Kitchener? Mr. Mayhem will excuse us if we say that the whole expres- sion is commonplace. Commonplace thought is bad enough, though it is difficult to avoid when one tackles a great national subject, and thinks what all good patriots and men of sense think also. " Pour etre poete," as M. Yves Guyot proudly said in his receptional address to the French Academy, " Pour etre poete on n'est pas forcement alien6." But commonplace language should always be avoidable, and it is a fault which we cannot but admit we have found throughout Mr. Mayhem's new volume. Thus in " Laura " he compares a young goat to a " tender flower," and in " Billings " he calls some little children " the younglings of the flock." Again, he says of the waves at Dover in a gale that they are " horses all in rank, with manes of snow," and tells us in " Eton College " that the Thames " runs like a silver thread amid the green." 3 34 THE AFTERMATH All these similes verge upon the commonplace, even when they do not touch it. However, there is very genuine feel- ing in the description of his old school, and we have no doubt that the bulk of Etonians will see more in the poem than outsiders can possibly do. It cannot be denied that Mr. Mayhem has a powerful source of inspiration in his strong patriotism, and the sonnets addressed to Mr. Kruger, Mr. O'Brien, Dr. Clark, and General Mercier are full of vigorous denunciation. It is the more regrettable that he has missed true poetic diction and lost his subtletly in a misapprehension of planes and values. " Vile, vile old man, and yet more vile again," is a line that we are sure Mr. Mayhem would reconsider in his better moments: "more vile" than what? Than him- self ? The expression is far too vague. " Proud Prelate," addressed to General Mercier, must be a misprint, and it is a pity it should have slipped in. What Mr. Mayhem probably meant was "Proud Caesar" or "soldier," or some other dissyllabic title. The word prelate can properly only be applied to a bishop, a mitred abbot, or a vicar apostolic. " Babbler of Hell, importunate mad fiend, dead canker, crested worm," are vigorous and original, but do not save the sonnet. And as to the last two lines, " Nor seek to pierce the viewless shield of years, For that you certainly could never do," Mr. Mayhem must excuse us if we say that the order of the lines make a sheer bathos. Perhaps the faults and the excellences of Mr. Mayhem, his fruitful limitations, and his energetic inspirations, can be best appreciated if we quote the following sonnet ; the exercise will also afford us the opportunity (which we are sure Mr. Mayhem will not resent in such an old friend) of pointing out the dangers into which his new tendencies may lead him. " England, if ever it should be thy fate By fortune's turn or accident of chance To fall from craven fears of being great, And in the tourney with dishevelled lance REVIEWING 35 To topple headlong, and incur the Hate Of Spain, America, Germany, and France, What will you find upon that dreadful date To check the backward move of your advance? A little Glory ; purchased not with gold Nor yet with Frankincense (the island blood Is incommensurate, neither bought nor sold), But on the poops where Drake and Nelson stood An iron hand, a stern unflinching eye To meet the large assaults of Destiny." Now, here is a composition that not everyone could have written. It is inspired by a vigorous patriotism, it strikes the right note (Mr. Mayhem is a Past Seneschal of the Navy League), and it breathes throughout the motive spirit of our greatest lyrics. It is the execution that is defective, and it is to execution that Mr. Mayhem must direct himself if he would rise to the level of his own great conceptions. We will take the sonnet line by line, and make our mean- ing clear, and we do this earnestly for the sake of a young poet to whom the Anglo-Saxon race owes much, and whom it would be deplorable to see failing, as Kipling appears to be failing, and as Ganzer has failed. Line i is not very striking, but might pass as an intro- duction ; line 2 is sheer pleonasm — after using the word "fate," you cannot use "fortune," "accident," "chance," as though they were amplifications of your first thought. Moreover, the phrase " by fortune's turn " has a familiar sound. It is rather an echo than a creation. In line 3, "craven fears of being great" is taken from Tennyson. The action is legitimate enough. Thus, in Wordsworth's " Excursion " are three lines taken bodily from "Paradise Lost," in Kipling's "Stow it" are whole phrases taken from the Police Gazette, and in Mr. Austin's verses you may frequently find portions of a Standard leader. Nevertheless, it is a licence which a young poet should be chary of. All these others were men of an established reputa- tion before they permitted themselves this liberty. In line 4, "dishevelled" is a false epithet for "lance"; a lance has no hair ; the adjective can only properly be used of a woman, a wild beast, or domestic animal. j6 THE AFTERMATH In line 5, " incur the hate" is a thoroughly unpoetic phrase — we say so unreservedly. In line 6, we have one of those daring experiments in metre common to our younger poets ; therefore we hesitate to pronounce upon it, but (if we may presume to advise) we should give Mr. Mayhem the sugges- tion made by the Times to Tennyson — that he should stick to an exact metre until he felt sure of his style; and in line 8, "the backward move of your advance" seems a little strained. It is, however, in the sextet that the chief slips of the sonnet appear, and they are so characteristic of the author's later errors, that we cannot but note them ; thus, " purchased not with gold or Frankincense " is a grievous error. It is indeed a good habit to quote Biblical phrases (a habit which has been the making of half our poets), but not to confuse them : frankincense was never used as coin — even by the Hittites. " Incommensurate " is simply meaningless. How can blood be "incommensurate"? We fear Mr. Mayhem has fallen into the error of polysyllabic effect, a modern pit- fall. " Island blood " will, however, stir many a responsive thrill. The close of the sonnet is a terrible falling off. When you say a thing is purchased, " not with this but " the reader naturally expects an alternative, instead of which Mr. May- hem goes right off to another subject ! Also (though the allusion to Nelson and Drake is magnificent) the mention of an iron hand and an eye by themselves on a poop seems to us a very violent metaphor. The last line is bad. We do not write in this vein to gain any reputation for preciosity, and still less to offend. Mr. Mayhem has many qualities. He has a rare handling of penultimates, much potentiality, large framing ; he has a very definite chiaros- curo, and the tones are full and objective; so are the values. We would not restrain a production in which (as a partner in a publishing firm) the present writer is directly interested. But we wish to recall Mr. Mayhem to his earlier and simpler st yl e — to the " Cassowary," and the superb interrupted seventh of " The Altar Ghoul." England cannot afford to lose that talent. II ON POLITICAL APPEALS It was one of Dr. Caliban's chief characteristics — and perhaps the main source of his power over others — that he could crystallise, or — to use the modern term — "wankle," the thought of his generation into sharp unexpected phrases. Among others, this was constantly upon his lips : " We live in stirring times." If I may presume to add a word to the pronounce- ments of my revered master, I would rewrite the sentence thus : " We live in stirring — and changeful — times." It is not only an element of adventure, it is also an element of rapid and unexpected development which marks our period, and which incidentally lends so con- siderable an influence to genius. In the older and more settled order, political forces were so well known that no description or analysis of them was necessary : to this day members of our more ancient political families do not read the newspapers. Soon, perhaps, the national life will have entered a new groove, and once more literary gentlemen will but in- directly control the life of the nation. For the moment, however, their effect is direct and 37 207884. 38 THE AFTERMATH immediate. A vivid prophecy, a strong attack upon this statesman or that foreign Government may deter- mine public opinion for a space of over ten days, and matter of this sort is remunerated at the rate of from 15s. to 18s. 6d. per thousand words. When we contrast this with the 9s. paid for the translation of foreign classics, the 5s. of occasional verse, or even the 10s. of police-court reporting, it is sufficiently evident that this kind of composition is the Premier Prose of our time. There must, indeed, be in London and Manchester, alive at the present moment, at least fifty men who can command the prices I have mentioned, and who, with reasonable industry, can earn as much as ,£500 a year by their decisions upon political matters. But I should be giving the student very indifferent counsel were I to recommend him for the delivery of his judgment to the beaten track of Leading Articles or to that of specially written and signed communications : the sums paid for such writing never rise beyond a modest level ; the position itself is precarious. In London alone, and within a radius of 87 yards from the " Green Dragon," no less than 53 Authors lost their livelihood upon the more respectable papers from an inability to prophesy with any kind of accuracy upon the late war, and this at a time when the majority of regular politicians were able to retain their seats in Parliament and many ministers their rank in the Cabinet. By far the most durable, the most exalted, and the most effective kind of appeal, is that which is made in a poetic form, especially if that form be vague and symbolic in its character. Nothing is risked and every- thing is gained by this method, upon which have been ON POLITICAL APPEALS 39 founded so many reputations and so many considerable fortunes. The student cannot be too strongly urged to abandon the regular and daily task of set columns — signed or unsigned — for the occasional Flash of Verse if he desire to provoke great wars and to increase his income. It may not always succeed, but the proportion of failures is very small, and at the worst it is but a moment's energy wasted. " We are sick," says one of the most famous among those who have adopted this method, " We are sick " — he is speaking not only of himself but of others — " We are sick for a stave of the song that our fathers sang." Turn, therefore, to the dead — who are no longer alive, and with whom no quarrel is to be feared. Make them reappear and lend weight to your contention. Their fame is achieved, and may very possibly support your own. This kind of writing introduces all the elements that most profoundly affect the public : it is mysterious, it is vague, it is authoritative; it is also eminently literary, and I can recall no first-class political appeal of the last fifteen years which has not been cast more or less upon these lines. The subjects you may choose from are numerous and are daily increasing, but for the amateur the best, without any question, is that of Imperialism. It is a common ground upon which all meet, and upon which every race resident in the wealthier part of London is agreed. Bring forward the great ghosts of the past, let them swell what is now an all but universal chorus. Avoid the more complicated metres, hendecasyllables, and the rest ; choose those which neither scan nor rhyme ; or, if their subtlety baffles you, fall back upon blank 4 o THE AFTERMATH verse, and you should, with the most moderate talent, lay the foundation of a permanent success. I will append, as is my custom, a model upon which the student may shape his first efforts, though I would not have him copy too faithfully, lest certain idiosyn- crasies of manner should betray the plagiarism. THE IMPERIALIST FEAST [A Hall at the Grand Oriental. At a long table are seated innumerable Shades. The walls are deco- rated with fiags of all nations, and a band of musicians in sham uniform are -playing very loudly on a dais.] Catullus rises and makes a short speech, pointing out the advantages of Strong Men, and making several delicate allusions to Caesar, who is too much of a gentleman to applaud. He then gives them the toast of " Imperialism," to which there is a hearty response. Lucan replies in a few well-chosen words, and they fall to conversation. Petronius : I would be crowned with paper flowers to-night And scented with the rare opopanax, Whose savour leads the Orient in, suggesting The seas beyond Modore. Talleyrand : Shove up, Petronius, And let me sit as near as possible To Mr. Bingoe's Grand Imperial Band With Thirty-seven Brazen Instruments And Kettle-Drums complete : I hear the players Discourse the music called " What Ho ! She Bumps !" ON POLITICAL APPEALS 41 Lord Chesterfield : What Ho ! She Bumps ! Like- wise ! C'est 5a ! There's 'Air ! Lord Glenaltamont of Ephesus (severely) : Lord Chesterfield ! Be worthy of your name. Lord Chesterfield (angrily) : Lord Squab, be worthy of your son-in-law's. Henry V. : My Lords ! My Lords I What do you with your swords? I mean, what mean you by this strange demeanour Which (had you swords and knew you how to use them) Might ... I forget what I was going to say. . . . Oh ! Yes Is this the time for peers to quarrel, When all the air is thick with Agincourt And every other night is Crispin's day ? The very supers bellow up and down, Armed of rude cardboard and wide blades of tin For England and St. George ! Richard Yea and Nay : You talk too much. Think more. Revise. Avoid the commonplace; And when you lack a startling word, invent it. [Their quarrel is stopped by Thomas Jefferson rising to propose the toast of " The Anglo-Saxon Race."] Jefferson : If I were asked what was the noblest message Delivered to the twentieth century, I should reply — (Etc., etc. While he maunders on Antony, Cleopatra, and Cesar begin talking rather loud) Cleopatra : Waiter ! I want a little creme de menthe. ( The waiter pays no attention.) 42 THE AFTERMATH Antony : Waiter ! A glass of curacao and brandy. (Waiter still looks at Jefferson.) Oesar : That is the worst of these contracted dinners. They give you quite a feed for 3s. 6d. And have a splendid Band. I like the Band, It stuns the soul. . . . But when you call the waiter He only sneers and looks the other way. Cleopatra (makes a moue). Caesar (archly) : Was that the face that launched a thousand ships And sacked . . . Antony (angrily) : Oh ! Egypt ! Egypt ! Egypt ! Thomas Jefferson (ending, interrupts the quarrel). . . . blessings Of order, cleanliness, and business methods. The base of Empire is a living wage. One King . . . (applause) . . . (applause) . . . . . . (applause) shall always wave . . . (applause) . . . (loud applause) . . . (applause) The Reign of Law ! (Thunders of applause) Napoleon (rising to reply) : I am myself a strong Imperialist. A brochure, very recently compiled (Which, pardon me, I do not mean to read), Neglects the point, I think; the Anglo-Saxon . . . (etc., etc.) George III. (to Burke): Who's that? Eh, what? Who's that? Who ever 's that? Burke : Dread sire ! It is the Corsican Vampire. ON POLITICAL APPEALS 43 George III. : Napoleon? What? I thought that he was leaner. I thought that he was leaner. What? What? What? Napoleon (silting down) . . . such dispositions ! Order ! Tete d'Armee I (Slight applause) Herod (rises suddenly without being asked, crosses his arms, glares, and shouts very loudly). Ha ! Would you have Imperial hearing? Hounds ! I am that Herod which is he that am The lonely Lebanonian (interruption) who despaired In Deep Marsupial Dens . . . (cries of "Sit down!") ... In dreadful hollows To — (" Sit down/") — tear great trees with the teeth, and hurricanes — ("Sit down!") — That shook the hills of Moab ! Chorus of Dead Men : Oh ! Sit down. (He is swamped by the clamour, in the midst of which Lucullus murmurs to himself) Lucullus (musing) : The banquet's done. There was a tribute drawn Of anchovies and olives and of soup In tins of conquered nations ; subject whiting : Saddle of mutton from the antipodes Close on the walls of ice ; Laponian pheasants ; Eggs of Canadian rebels, humbled now To such obeisance — scrambled eggs — and butter From Brittany enslaved, and the white bread Hardened for heroes in the test of time, Was California's offering. But the cheese, The cheese was ours. . . . Oh ! but the glory faded 44 THE AFTERMATH Of feasting at repletion mocks our arms And threatens even Empire. {Great noise of Vulgarians, a mob of -people, het aids, trumpets, flags. Enter Vitellius.) Vitellius : 1 have dined ! But not with you. The master of the world Has dined alone and at his own expense. And oh ! — I am almost too full for words — But oh ! My lieges, I have used you well ! I have commanded fifteen hundred seats And standing room for something like a thousand To view my triumph over Nobody Upon the limelit stage. Herod : Oh ! rare Vitellius, Oh ! Prominent great Imperial ears ! Oh ! Mouth To bellow largesse ! Oh ! And rolling Thunder, And trains of smoke. And oh ! . . . Vitellius : Let in the vulgar To see the master sight of their dull lives : Great Caesar putting on his overcoat. And then, my loved companions, we'll away To see the real Herod in the Play. (The Shades pass out in a crowd. In the street Theocritus is heard singing in a voice that gets fainter and fainter with distance. . . .) " Put me somewhere ea-heast of Su-hez, Were the best is loi-hoike the worst — Were there hain' no " — (and so forth). Finis. ON POLITICAL APPEALS 45 It is not enough to compose such appeals as may quicken the nation to a perception of her peculiar mission ; it is necessary to paint for her guidance the abominations and weakness of foreign countries. The young writer may be trusted to know his duty instinc- tively in this matter, but should his moral perception be blunted, a sharper argument will soon remind him of what he owes to the Common Conscience of Christians. He that cannot write, and write with zeal, upon the Balkans, or upon Finland, or upon the Clerical trouble, or upon whatever lies before us to do for righteousness, is not worthy of a place in English letters : the public and his editor will very soon convince him of what he has lost by an unmanly reticence. His comrades, who are content to deal with such matters as they arise, will not be paid at a higher rate : but they will be paid more often. They will not infre- quently be paid from several sources ; they will have many opportunities for judging those financial questions which are invariably mixed up with the great battle against the Ultramontane, the Cossack, and the Turk. In Cairo, Frankfort, Pretoria, Mayfair, Shanghai, their latter days confirm Dr. Caliban's profound conclusion : " Whosoever works for Humanity works, whether he know it or not, for himself as well."* I earnestly beseech the reader of this textbook, especially if he be young, to allow no false shame to modify his zeal in judging the vileness of the Continent. We know whatever can be known ; all criticism or qualification is hypocrisy ; all silence is cowardice. * This Phase closes the XXXIVth of Dr. Caliban's " Subjects for Sinners." 46 THE AFTERMATH There is work to be done. Let the writer take up his pen and write. I had some little hesitation what model to put before the student. This book does not profess to be more than an introduction to the elements of our science; I there- fore omitted what had first seemed to me of some value, the letters written on a special commission to Pondi- cherry during the plague and famine in that unhappy and ill-governed remnant of a falling empire. The articles on the tortures in the Philippines were never printed, and might mislead. I have preferred to show Priestcraft and Liberty in their eternal struggle as they appeared to me in the character of Special Commissioner for Out and About during the troubles of 190 1. It is clear, and I think unbiassed ; it opens indeed in that, light fashion which is a concession to contemporary journalism : but the half frivolous exterior conceals & permanent missionary purpose. Its carefully collected array of facts give, I suggest, a vivid picture of one particular battlefield; that whereon there rage to-day the opposed forces which will destroy or save the French people. The beginner could not have a better intro- duction to his struggle against the infamies of Clericalism. Let him ask himself (as Mr. Gardy, M.P., asked in a letter to Out and About) the indig- nant question, "Could such things happen here in England?" ON POLITICAL APPEALS 47 THE SHRINE OF ST. LOUP My excellent good Dreyfusards, anti-Dreyfusards, Baptists, Anabaptists, pre-Monstratentians, antiquaries, sterling fellows, foreign correspondents, home-readers, historians, Nestorians, philosophers, Deductionists, Inductionists, Praetorians (I forgot those), Csesarists, Lazarists, Catholics, Protestants, Agnostics, and militant atheists, as also all you Churchmen, Noncon- formists, P articular ists, very strong secularists, and even you, my well -beloved little brethren called The Peculiar People, give ear attentively and listen to what is to follow, and you shall learn more of a matter that has woefully disturbed you than ever you would get from the Daily Mail or from Mynheer van Damm, or even from Dr. Biggies' Walks and Talks in France. In an upper valley of the Dauphine there is a village called Lagarde. From this village, at about half past four o'clock of a pleasant June morning, there walked out with his herd one Jean Rigors, a herdsman and half-wit. He had not proceeded very far towards the pastures above the village, and the sun was barely showing above the peak profanely called The Three Bishops, when he had the fortune to meet the Blessed St. Loup, or Lupus, formerly a hermit in that valley, who had died some fourteen hundred years ago, but whose name, astonishing as it may seem to the author of The Justification of Fame, is still remembered among the populace. The Blessed Lupus admonished the peasant, recalling the neglect into which public worship had fallen, reluctantly promised a sign whereby it 48 THE AFTERMATH might be recreated among the faithful, and pointed out a nasty stream of muddy water, one out of fifty that trickled from the moss of the Alps. He then struck M. Rigors a slight, or, as some accounts have it, a heavy, blow with his staff, and disappeared in glory. Jean Rigors, who could not read or write, being a man over thirty, and having therefore forgotten the excellent free lessons provided by the Republic in primary schools, was not a little astonished at the apparition. Having a care to tether a certain calf whom he knew to be light-headed, he left the rest of the herd to its own unerring instincts, and ran back to the village to inform the parish priest of the very remarkable occurrence of which he had been the witness or victim. He found upon his return that the morning Mass, from which he had been absent off and on for some seven years, was already at the Gospel, and attended to it with quite singular devotion, until in the space of some seventeen minutes he was able to meet the priest in the sacristy and inform him of what had happened. The priest, who had heard of such miraculous appear- ances in other villages, but (being a humble man, un- fitted for worldly success and idiotic in business matters) had never dared to hope that one would be vouchsafed to his own cure, proceeded at once to the source of the muddy streamlet, and (unhistorical as the detail may seem to the author of Our Old Europe, Whence and Whither?) neglected to reward the hind, who, indeed, did not expect pecuniary remuneration, for these two excellent reasons : First, that he knew the priest to be by far the poorest man in the parish ; secondly, that he ON POLITICAL APPEALS 49 thought a revelation from the other world incom- mensurate with money payments even to the extent of a five-franc piece. The next Sunday (that is, three days afterwards) the priest, who had previously informed his brethren throughout the Canton, preached a sermon upon the decay of religion and the growing agnosticism of the modern world — a theme which, as they had heard it publicly since the Christian religion had been established by Constantine in those parts and privately for one hundred and twenty-five years before, his congregation received with some legitimate languor. When, however, he came to what was the very gist of his remarks, the benighted foreigners pricked up their ears (a physical atavism impossible to our own more enlightened com- munity), and Le Sieur Rigors, who could still remember the greater part of the services of the Church, was filled with a mixture of nervousness and pride, while the good priest informed his hearers, in language that would have been eloquent had he not been trained in the little seminary, that the great St. Lupus himself had appeared to a devout member of his parish and had pointed out to him a miraculous spring, for the proper enshrinement of which he requested — nay, he demanded — the contribu- tions of the faithful. At that one sitting the excellent hierarch received no less a sum than 1,053 francs and 67 centimes; the odd two-centimes (a coin that has disappeared from the greater part of France) being contributed by a road- mender, who was well paid by the State, but who was in the custom of receiving charity from tourists; the said tourists being under the erroneous impression that he was a beggar. He also, by the way, would entertain 4 50 THE AFTERMATH the more Anglo-Saxon of these with the folk-lore of the district, in which his fertile imagination was never at fault. It will seem astonishing to the author of Village Communities in Western Europe to hear of so large a sum as ^40 being subscribed by the congregation of this remote village, and it would seem still more astonishing to him could he see the very large chapel erected over the spring of St. Loup. I do not say that he would understand the phenomenon, but I do say that he would become a more perturbed and therefore a wiser man did he know the following four facts : (1) That the freehold value of the village and its communal land, amounting to the sum of a poor ^20,000, was not in the possession of a landlord, but in that of these wretched peasants. (2) That the one rich man of the neighbourhood, a retired glove -maker, being also a fanatic, presented his subscriptions in such a manner that they were never heard of. He had, moreover, an abhorrence for the regulation of charity. (3) That the master mason in the neighbouring town had in his youth been guilty of several mortal sins, and was so weak as to imagine that a special tender would in such a case make a kind of reparation; and (4) that the labourers employed were too ignorant to cheat and too illiterate to combine. The new shrine waxed and prospered exceedingly, and on the Thursday following its dedication an epileptic, having made use of the water, was restored to a normal, and even commonplace, state of mind. On the Friday a girl, who said that she had been haunted by devils (though until then no one had heard of the matter), declared, upon drinking a cup from the spring ON POLITICAL APPEALS 51 of St. Loup, that she was now haunted by angels — a very much pleasanter condition of affairs. The Sunday following, the village usurer, who called himself Bertollin, but who was known to be a wicked foreigner from beyond the Alps, of the true name of Bertolino, ran into the inn like one demented, and threw down the total of his ill-gotten gains for the benefit of the shrine. They amounted, indeed, to but a hundred francs, but then his clientele were close and skin-flint, as peasant proprietors and free men generally are the world over; and it was well known that the cobbler, who had himself borrowed a small sum for a month, and quadrupled it in setting up lodgings for artists, had been unable to recover from the usurer the mending of his boots. By this time the Bishop had got wind of the new shrine, and wrote to the Cure of Lagarde a very strong letter, in which, after reciting the terms of the Con- cordat, Clause 714 of the Constitution and the decree of May 29th, 1854, he pointed out that by all these and other fundamental or organic laws of the Republic, he was master in his own diocese. He rebuked the cure for the superstitious practice which had crept into his cure, ordered the chapel to be used for none but ordinary purposes, and issued a pastoral letter upon the evils of local superstitions. This pastoral letter was read with unction and holy mirth in the neighbouring monastery of Bernion (founded in defiance of the law by the widow of a President of the Republic), but with sorrow and without comment in the little church of Lagarde. The Minister of the Interior and the Minister of Public Worship, each in his separate way, proceeded to stamp out this survival of the barbaric period of Europe. 52 THE AFTERMATH The first by telling the Prefect to tell the sub-Prefect to tell the Mayor that any attempt to levy taxes in favour of the shrine would be administratively punished : the second by writing a sharp official note to the Bishop for not having acted on the very day that St. Loup appeared to the benighted herdsman. The sub-Prefect came from the horrible town of La Rochegayere and lunched with the Mayor, who was the donor of the new stained-glass window in the church, and they talked about the advan- tages of forcing the Government to construct a road through the valley to accommodate the now numerous pilgrims; a subject which the sub-Prefect, who was about to be promoted, approached with official non- chalance, zut the Mayor (who owned the principal inn) with pertinacity and fervour. They then went out, the Mayor in his tricolour scarf to lock up the gate in front of the holy well, the sub- Prefect to escort his young wife to the presbytery, where she left a gift of 500 francs : the sub-Prefect thought it improper for a lady to walk alone. Upon the closure of the shrine a local paper (joint property of the Bishop and a railway contractor) attacked the atheism of the Government. A local duchess, who was ignorant of the very terminology of religion, sent a donation of 5,000 francs to the cure; with this the excellent man built a fine approach to the new chapel, "which," as he sorrowfully and justly observed, " the faithful may approach, though an atheistic Government forbids the use of the shrine." That same week, by an astonishing accident, the Ministry was overturned ; the Minister of the Interior was compelled to retire into private life, and lived ON POLITICAL APPEALS 53 dependent upon his uncle (a Canon of Rheims). The Minister of Public Worship (who had become increas- ingly unpopular through the growth of anti-Semitic feeling) took up his father's money-lending business at Antwerp. Next week the lock and seals were discovered to have been in some inexplicable way removed from the gate of the well and (by Article 893 of the Administrative Code) before they could be replaced an action was necessary at the assize-town of Grenoble. This action (by the Order of 1875 on Law Terms) could not take place for six months ; and in that interval an astonishing number of things happened at Lagarde. An old Sapper General, who had devised the special obturator for light quick-firing guns, and who was attached to the most backward superstitions, came in full uniform to the Chapel and gave the shrine 10,000 francs : a mysteriously large endowment, as this sum was nearly half his income, and he had suffered im- prisonment in youth for his Republican opinions. He said it was for the good of his soul, but the editor of the Horreur knew better, and denounced him. He was promptly retired upon a pension about a third greater than that to which he was legally entitled, and received by special secret messenger from the Minister of W ar an earnest request to furnish a memorandum on the fortifi- cations of the Isere and to consider himself inspector, upon mobilisation, of that important line of defence. Two monks, who had walked all the way from Spain, settled in a house near the well. A pilgrim, who had also evidently come from a prodigious distance on foot, but gave false information as to his movements, was 54 THE AFTERMATH arrested by the police and subsequently released. The arrest was telegraphed to the Times and much com- mented upon, but the suicide of a prominent London solicitor and other important news prevented any mention of his release. A writer of great eminence, who had been a leading sceptic all his life, stayed at Lagarde for a month and became a raving devotee. His publishers (MM. Her- mann Khan) punished him by refusing to receive his book upon the subject; but by some occult influence, probably that of the Jesuits, he was paid several hundreds for it by the firm of Zadoc et Cie ; ten years afterwards he died of a congested liver, a catastrophe which some ascribed to a Jewish plot, and others treated as a proof that his intellect had long been failing. A common peasant fellow, that had been paralysed for ten years, bathed in the water and walked away in a sprightly fashion afterwards. This was very likely due to his ignorance, for a doctor who narrowly watched the whole business has proved that he did not know the simplest rudiments of arithmetic or history, and how should such a fellow understand so difficult a disease as paralysis of the Taric nerve — especially if it were (as the doctor thought quite evident) complicated by a stricture of the Upper Dalmoid ? Two deaf women were, as is very commonly the case with enthusiasts of this kind, restored to their hearing ; for how long we do not know, as their subsequent history was not traced for more than five years. A dumb boy talked, but in a very broken fashion, and as he had a brother a priest and another brother in the army, trickery was suspected. ON POLITICAL APPEALS 55 An English merchant, who had some trouble with his eyes, bathed in the water at the instance of a sister who desired to convert him. He could soon see so well that he was able to write to the Freethinker an account of his healing, called "The Medicinal Springs of Lagarde," but, as he has subsequently gone totally blind, the momentary repute against ophthalmia which the water might have obtained was nipped in the bud. What was most extraordinary of all, a very respect- able director of a railway came to the village quietly, under an assumed name, and, after drinking the water, made a public confession of the most incredible kind and has since become a monk. His son, to whom he made over his whole fortune, had previously instituted a demand at law to be made guardian of his estates ; but, on hearing of his father's determination to embrace religion, he was too tolerant to pursue the matter further. To cut a long story short, as Homer said when he abruptly closed the Odyssey, some 740 cases of mira- culous cures occurred between the mysterious opening of the gates and the date for the trial at Grenoble. In that period a second and much larger series of buildings had begun to arise ; the total property involved in the case amounted to 750,000 francs, and (by clause 61 of the Regulation on Civil Tribunals) the local court of assize was no longer competent. Before, however, the case could be removed to Paris, the assent of the Grenoble bench had to be formally obtained, and this, by the singularly Republican rule of " Non-avant" (instituted by Louis XL), took just two years. By that time the new buildings were finished, eight priests were attached 56 THE AFTERMATH to the Church, a monastery of seventy-two monks, five hotels, a golf links, and a club were in existence. The total taxes paid by Lagarde to the Treasury amounted to half-a-million francs a year. The Government had become willing (under the "Compromise of '49," which concerns Departments v. the State in the matter of internal communications) to build a fine, great road up to Lagarde. There was also a railway, a Custom House, and a project of sub- prefecture. Moreover, in some underhand way or other, several hundred people a month were cured of various ailments, from the purely subjective (such as buzzing in the ears) to those verging upon the truly objective (such as fracture of the knee-pan or the loss of an eye). The Government is that of a practical and common - sense people. It will guide or protect, but it cannot pretend to coerce. Lagarde therefore flourishes, the Bishop is venerated, the monastery grumbles in silence, and there is some talk of an Hungarian journalist, born in Constantinople, whose father did time for cheating in the Russian Army, writing one of his fascinating anti- religious romances in nine hundred pages upon the subject. You will learn far more from such a book than you can possibly learn from the narrow limits of the above. Ill THE SHORT STORY The short story is the simplest of all forms of literary composition. It is at the same time by far the most lucrative. It has become (to use one of Dr. Caliban's most striking phrases) " part of the atmosphere of our lives." In a modified form, it permeates our private correspondence, our late Baron Reuter's telegraphic messages, the replies of our cabinet ministers, the rulings of our judges; and it has become inseparable from affirmations upon oath before Magistrates, Registrars, Coroners, Courts of Common Jurisdiction, Official Receivers, and all others qualified under 17 Vic. 21, Caps. 2 and 14; sub-section III. To return to the short story. Its very reason for being (raison d'etre) is simplicity. It suits our strenuous, active race; nor would I waste the student's time by recalling the fact that, in the stagnant civilisation of China, a novel or play deals with the whole of the hero's life, in its minutest details, through seventy years. The contrast conveys an awful lesson ! Let us confine ourselves, however, to the purpose of these lines, and consider the short story; for it is the business of every true man to do what lies straight before him as honestly and directly as he can. The Short Story, on account of its simplicity, coupled with the high rates of pay attached to it, attracts at the 57 58 THE AFTERMATH outset the great mass of writers. Several are successful, and in their eager rapture (I have but to mention John and Mary Hitherspoon) produce such numerous examples of this form of art, that the student may ask what more I have to teach him? In presenting a model for his guidance, and reproducing the great skeleton lines upon which the Short Story is built up, I would remind my reader that it is my function to instruct and his to learn ; and I would warn him that even in so elementary a branch of letters as is this, " pride will have a fall." It is not necessary to dwell further upon this un- pleasant aspect of my duty. Let us first consider where the writer of the Short Story stands before the Law. What is her Legal Position as to (a) the length, (b) the plot of a short story which she may have contracted to deliver on a certain date to a particular publisher, editor, agent, or creditor? The following two decisions apply: Mabworthy Mabworthy v. Craivley. — Mrs. Mabworthy v. Crawley, Dr0U ght an action against Crawley and Co. to recover payment due for a short story ordered of her by defendant. Defendant pleaded lack of specific performance, as story dealt with gradual change of spiritual outlook, during forty years, of maiden lady inhabiting Ealing. It was held by Mr. Justice Pake that the subject so treated was not of "ordinary length." Judgment for the defendant. Mrs. Mabworthy, prompted by her sex, fortune, and solicitor to appeal, the matter was brought before the Court THE SHORT STORY 59 of Appeal, which decided that the word "ordinary" was equivalent to the word " reasonable." Judgment for the defendant, with costs. Mrs. Mabworthy, at the insti- gation of the Devil, sold a reversion and carried the matter to the House of Lords, where it was laid down that " a Short Story should be of such length as would be found tolerable by any man of ordinary firmness and courage." Judgment for the defendant. The next case is the case of — Gibson?'. Gibson v. Acle. — In this case, Mr. Phillip Aele. Gibson, the well-known publisher, brought an action for the recovery of a sum of jQ$ 10s., advanced to Miss Acle, of " The Wolf cote," Croydon, in consideration of her contracting to supply a short story, with regard to the manuscript of which he maintained, upon receiving it, that (1) it was not a story, and (2) it was not technically " short," as it filled but eighteen lines in the very large type known as grand pica. Three very important points were decided in this case ; for the Judge (Mr. Justice Veale, brother of Lord Burpham) maintained, with sturdy common sense, that if a publisher bought a manuscript, no matter what, so long as it did not offend common morals or the public security of the realm, he was bound to "print, comfort, cherish, defend, enforce, push, maintain, advertise, circulate, and make public the 60 THE AFTERMATH same"; and he was supported in the Court of Crown Cases Reserved in his decision that : First: The word "short " was plainly the more applicable the less lengthy were the matter delivered : and Secondly: The word "story " would hold as a definition for any concoction of words whatsoever, of which it could be proved that it was built up of separate sentences, such sentences each to consist of at least one pre- dicate and one verb, real or imaginary. Both these decisions are quite recent, and may be regarded as the present state of the law on the matter. Once the legal position of the author is grasped, it is necessary to acquire the five simple rules which govern the Short Story. ist. It should, as a practical matter apart from the law, contain some incident. 2nd. That incident should take place on the sea, or in brackish, or at least tidal, waters. 3rd. The hero should be English-speaking, white or black. 4th. His adventures should be horrible ■ but no kind of moral should be drawn from them, unless it be desired to exalt the patriotism of the reader. 5th. Every short story should be divided by a ' ' Caesura ' ' : that is, it should break off sharp in the middle, and you have then the choice of three distinct courses : THE SHORT STORY 61 (a) To stop altogether — as is often done by people who die, and whose remains are published. (b) To go on with a totally different subject. This method is not to be commended to the beginner. It is common to rich or popular writers ; and even they have commonly the decency to put in asterisks. (c) To go on with your story where it left off, as I have done in the model which follows. That model was constructed especially with the view to guide the beginner. Its hero is a fellow subject, white — indeed, an Englishman. The scene is laid in water, not perhaps salt, but at least brackish. The adventure preys upon the mind. The moral is doubt- ful : the Caesura marked and obvious. Moreover, it begins in the middle, which (as I omitted to state above) is the very hall-mark of the Vivid Manner. THE ACCIDENT TO MR. THORPE When Mr. Thorpe, drysalter, of St. Mary Axe, E.C., fell into the water, it was the opinion of those who knew him best that he would be drowned. I say " those who knew him best" because, in the crowd that immediately gathered upon the embankment, there were present not a few of his friends. They had been walking home together on this fine evening along the river side, and now that Mr. Thorpe was in such peril, not one could be got to do more than lean upon the parapet shouting for the police, though they should have known how useless was that body of men in any other than its native element. Alas ! how frail a thing is 62 THE AFTERMATH human friendship, and how terribly does misfortune bring it to the test. How had Mr. Thorpe fallen into the water? I am not surprised at your asking that question. It argues a very observant, critical, and accurate mind ; a love of truth; a habit of weighing evidence; and altogether a robust, sturdy, practical, Anglo-Saxon kind of an atti- tude, that does you credit. You will not take things on hearsay, and there is no monkish credulity about you. I congratulate you. You say (and rightly) that Honest Merchants do not fall into the Thames for nothing, the thing is unusual ; you want (very properly) to know how it happened, or, as you call it, "occurred." I cannot tell you. I was not there at the time. All I know is, that he did fall in, and that, as matter of plain fact (and you are there to judge fact, remember, not law), Mr. Thorpe was at 6.15 in the evening of June 7th, 1892, floundering about in the water a little above Cleopatra's Needle ; and there are a cloud of witnesses. It now behoves me to detail with great accuracy the circumstances surrounding his immersion, the degree of danger that he ran, and how he was saved. In the first place, Mr. Thorpe fell in at the last of the ebb, so that there was no tide to sweep him out to sea ; in the second place, the depth of water at that spot was exactly five feet two inches, so that he could — had he but known it — have walked ashore (for he was, of course, over six feet in height) ; in the third place, the river has here a good gravelly bed, as you ought to know, for the clay doesn't begin till you get beyond Battersea Bridge — and, by the way, this gravel accounts for the otherwise inexplicable phenomenon of the little boys that will dive for pennies THE SHORT STORY 63 at low tide opposite the shot tower ; in the fourth place, the water, as one might have imagined at that season of the year, was warm and comfortable ; in the fifth place, there lay but a few yards from him a Police Pier, crowded with lines, lifebuoys, boats, cork-jackets, and what not, and decorated, as to its Main Room, with a large placard entitled " First help to the drowning," the same being illustrated with cuts, showing a man of commonplace features fallen into the hands of his religious opponents and undergoing the torture. Therefore it is easy to see that he could have either saved himself or have been saved by others without difficulty. Indeed, for Mr. Thorpe to have drowned, it would have been necessary for him to have exercised the most determined self- control, and to have thought out the most elaborate of suicidal plans ; and, as a fact, he was within forty-three seconds of his falling in pulled out again by a boat- hook, which was passed through the back of his frock coat : and that is a lesson in favour of keeping one's coat buttoned up like a gentleman, and not letting it flap open like an artist or an anarchist, or a fellow that writes for the papers. But I digress. The point is, that Mr. Thorpe was immediately saved, and there (you might think) was an end of the matter. Indeed, the thing seems to come to a conclusion of its own, and to be a kind of epic, for it has a beginning where Mr. Thorpe falls into the water (and, note you, the beginning of all epics is, or should be, out of the text); it has a middle or "action," where Mr. Thorpe is floundering about like a sea monster, and an end, where he is pulled out again. They are of larger scope than this little story, and written in a pompous manner, yet the Iliad, 64 THE AFTERMATH the ALneid, Abbo's Siege of Paris, the Chanson de Roland, Orlando Fnrioso, Thalaba the Destroyer, and Mr. Davidson's shorter lyrics have no better claim to be epics in their essentials than has this relation of The Accident to Mr. Thorpe. So, then (you say), that is the end ; thank you for the story ; we are much obliged. If ever you have another simple little story to tell, pray publish it at large, and do not keep it for the exquisite delight of your private circle. We thank you again a thousand times. Good morrow. Softly, softly. I beg that there may be no undue haste or sharp conclusions ; there is something more to come. Sit you down and listen patiently. Was there ever an epic that was not continued? Did not the Rhapsodists of Cos piece together the Odyssey after their successful Iliad? Did not Dionysius Paracelsus write a tail to the JEneid? Was not the Chanson de Roland followed by the Four Sons of Aymon? Could Southey have been content with Thalaba had he not proceeded to write the adventures in America of William ap Williams, or some other Welshman whose name I forget? Eh? Well, in precisely the same manner, I propose to add a second and completing narrative to this of Mr. Thorpe's accident ; so let us have no grumbling. And to understand what kind of thing followed his fall into the water, I must explain to you that nothing had ever happened to Mr. Thorpe before ; he had never sailed a boat, never ridden a horse, never had a fight, never written a book, never climbed a mountain — indeed, I might have set out in a long litany, covering several pages, the startling, adventurous, and dare-devil things that Mr. Thorpe had never done; and were I to space THE SHORT STORY 65 out my work so, I should be well in the fashion, for does not the immortal Kipling (who is paid by the line) repeat his own lines half-a-dozen times over, and use in profusion the lines of well-known ballads ? He does ; and so have I therefore the right to space and stretch my work in whatever fashion will spin out the space most fully ; and if I do not do so, it is because I am as eager as you can possibly be to get to the end of this chronicle. Well then, nothing had ever happened to Mr. Thorpe before, and what was the result ? Why that this aqueous adventure of his began to grow and possess him as you and I are possessed by our more important feats, by our different distant journeys, our bold speculations, our meeting with grand acquaintances, our outwitting of the law ; and I am sorry to say that Mr. Thorpe in a very short time began to lie prodigiously. The symptoms of this perversion first appeared a few days after the accident, at a lunch which he attended (with the other directors of the Marine Glue Company) in the City. The company was in process of negotiating a very difficult piece of business, that required all the attention of the directors, and, as is usual under such circum- stances, they fell to telling amusing tales to one another. One of them had just finished his story of how a nephew of his narrowly escaped lynching at Leadville, Colorado, when Mr. Thorpe, who had been making ponderous jokes all the morning, was suddenly observed to grow thoughtful, and (after first ascertaining with some care that there was no one present who had seen him fall in) he astonished the company by saying : " I cannot hear of such escapes from death without awe. It was but the other day that I was saved as by a miracle from drown- 5 66 THE AFTERMATH ing." Then he added, after a little pause, " My whole life seemed to pass before me in a moment." Now this was not true. Mr. Thorpe's mind at the moment he referred to had been wholly engrossed by the peculiar sensation that follows the drinking of a gallon of water suddenly when one is not in the least thirsty ; but he had already told the tale so often, that he was fully persuaded of it, and, by this time, believed that his excellent and uneventful life had been presented to him as it is to the drowning people in books. His fall was rapid. He grew in some vague way to associate his adventure with the perils of the sea. Whenever he crossed the Channel he would draw some fellow-passenger into a conversation, and, having cun- ningly led it on to the subject of shipwreck, would describe the awful agony of battling with the waves, and the outburst of relief on being saved. At first he did not actually say that he had himself struggled in the vast and shoreless seas of the world, but bit by bit the last shreds of accuracy left him, and he took to painting with minute detail in his conversations the various scenes of his danger and salvation. Sometimes it was in the " steep water off the Banks "; sometimes in "the glassy steaming seas and on the feverish coast of the Bight"; sometimes it was "a point or two norr'ard of the Owers light" — but it was always terrible, graphic, and a lie. This habit, as it became his unique preoccupation, cost him not a little. He lost his old friends who had seen his slight adventure, and he wasted much time in spinning these yarns, and much money in buying books of derring-do and wild 'scapes at sea. He loved those THE SHORT STORY 67 who believed his stories to be true, and shocked the rare minds that seemed to catch in them a suspicion of exaggeration. He could not long frequent the same society, and he strained his mind a little out of shape by the perpetual necessity of creative effort. None the less, I think that, on the whole, he gained. It made him an artist : he saw great visions of heaving waters at night ; he really had, in fancy, faced death in a terrible form, and this gave him a singular courage in his last moments. He said to the doctor, with a slight calm smile, ' ' Tell me the worst ; I have been through things far more terrifying than this"; and when he was offered consolation by his weeping friends, he told them that ' ' no petty phrases of ritual devotion were needed to soothe a man who had been face to face with Nature in her wildest moods." So he died, comforted by his illusion, and for some days after the funeral his sister would hold him up to his only and favourite nephew as an example of a high and strenuous life lived with courage, and ended in heroic quiet. Then they all went to hear the will read. But the will was the greatest surprise of all. For it opened with these words : " Having some experience of the perils they suffer that go down to the sea in ships, and of the blessedness of unex- pected relief and rescue, I, John Curtail Thorpe, humbly and gratefully reminiscent of my own wonderful and miraculous snatching from the jaws of death . . ." And it went on to leave the whole property (including the little place in Surrey), in all (after Sir William Vernon Harcourt's death duties had been paid) some ,£69,337 6s. 3d. to the Lifeboat Fund, which badly 68 THE AFTERMATH needed it. Nor was there any modifying codicil but one, whereby the sum of ^i,ooo, free of duty, was left to Sylvester Sarassin, a poetic and long-haired young man, who had for years attended to his tales with reverent attention, and who had, indeed, drawn up, or "Englished " (as he called it), the remarkable will of the testator. Many other things that followed this, the law-suit, the quarrel of the nephew with Sarassin, and so forth, I would relate had I the space or you the patience. But it grows late ; the oil in the bulb is exhausted. The stars, which (in the beautiful words of Theocritus) " tremble and always follow the quiet wheels of the night," warn me that it is morning. Farewell. IV THE SHORT LYRIC Many Guides to Literature give no rules for the manu- facture of short lyrics, and nearly all of them omit to furnish the student with an example of this kind of composition. The cause of this unfortunate neglect (as I deem it) is not far to seek. Indeed in one Textbook (Mrs. Railston's Book for Beginners. Patteson. 12s. 6d.) it is set down in so many words. " The Short Lyric," says Mrs. Railston in her preface, " is practically inno- cent of pecuniary value. Its construction should be regarded as a pastime rather than as serious exercise; and even for the purposes of recreation, its fabrication is more suited to the leisure of a monied old age than to the struggle of eager youth, or the full energies of a strenuous manhood " (p. 34). The judgment here pronounced is surely erroneous. The short Lyric is indeed not very saleable (though there are exceptions even to that rule — the first Lord Tennyson is said to have received ^200 for The Throstle) ; it is (I say) not very saleable, but it is of great indirect value to the writer, especially in early youth. A reputation can be based upon a book of short lyrics which will in time procure for its author Review : ing work upon several newspapers, and sometimes, 69 7 o THE AFTERMATH towards his fortieth year, the editorship of a magazine ; later in life it will often lead to a pension, to the command of an army corps, or even to the governorship of a colony. I feel, therefore, no hesitation in describing at some length the full process of its production, or in presenting to the student a careful plan of the difficulties which will meet him at the outset. To form a proper appreciation of these last, it is necessary to grasp the fundamental fact that they all proceed from the inability of busy editors and readers to judge the quality of verse; hence the rebuffs and delays that so often overcast the glorious morning of the Poetic Soul. At the risk of some tedium — for the full story is of considerable length — I will show what is their nature and effect, in the shape of a relation of what happened to Mr. Peter Gurney some years ago, before he became famous. Mr. Peter Gurney (I may say it without boasting) is one of my most intimate friends. He is, perhaps, the most brilliant of that brilliant group of young poets which includes Mr. John Stewart, Mr. Henry Hawk, etc., and which is known as the " Cobbley school," from the fact that their historic meeting-ground was the house of Mr. Thomas Cobbley, himself no mean poet, but especially a creative, seminal critic, and uncle of Mr. Gurney. But to my example and lesson : Mr. Gurney was living in those days in Bloomsbury, and was occupied in reading for the bar. He was by nature slothful and unready, as is indeed the sad habit of literary genius ; he rose late, slept long, THE SHORT LYRIC n eat heartily, drank deeply, read newspapers, began things he never finished, and wrote the ending of things whose beginnings he never accomplished ; in a word, he was in every respect the man of letters. He looked back continually at the stuff he had written quite a short time before, and it always made him hesitate in his opinion of what he was actually engaged in. It was but six months before the events herein set down that he had written — " The keep of the unconquerable mind " — only to discover that it was clap-trap and stolen from Wordsworth at that. How, then, could he dare send off the sonnet — " If all intent of unsubstantial art " — and perhaps get it printed in the Nineteenth Century or the North American Review, when (for all he knew) it might really be very poor verse indeed ? These two things, then, his sloth and his hesitation in criticism, prevented Peter from sending out as much as he should have done. But one fine day of last summer, a kind of music passed into him from universal nature, and he sat down and wrote these remarkable lines : " He is not dead ; the leaders do not die, But rather, lapt in immemorial ease Of merit consummate, they passing, stand ; And rapt from rude reality, remain ; And in the flux and eddy of time, are still. Therefore I call it consecrated sand Wherein they left their prints, nor overgrieve ; An heir of English earth let English earth receive." 72 THE AFTERMATH He had heard that Culture of Boston, Mass., U.S.A., paid more for verse than any other review, so he sent it off to that address, accompanied by a very earnest little letter, calling the gem " Immortality," and waiting for the answer. The editor of Culture is a businesslike man, who reads his English mail on the quay at New York, and takes stamped envelopes and rejection forms down with him to the steamers. He looked up Peter's name in the Red Book, Who's Who, Burke, the Court Guide, and what not, and find- ing it absent from all these, he took it for granted that there was no necessity for any special courtesies ; Peter therefore, fifteen days after sending off his poem, received an envelope whose stamp illustrated the conquest of the Philippines by an Armed Liberty, while in the top left- hand corner were printed these simple words : " If not delivered within three days, please return to Box 257, Boston, Mass., U.S.A." He was very pleased to get this letter. It was the first reply he had ever got from an editor, and he took it up unopened to the Holborn, to read it during lunch. But there was very little to read. The original verse had folded round it a nice half-sheet of cream-laid notepaper, with a gold fleur de lis in the corner, and underneath the motto, "Devoir Fera " ; then, in the middle of the sheet, three or four lines of fine copper- plate engraving, printed also in gold, and running as follows : ' The editor of Culture regrets that he is unable to accept the enclosed contribution ; it must not be imagined that any adverse criticism or suggestion is thereby passed upon the THE SHORT LYRIC 73 work ; pressure of space, the previous acceptation of similar matter, and other causes having necessarily to be con- sidered." Peter was so much encouraged by this, that he sent his verses at once to Mr. McGregor, changing, however, the word " rude " in the fourth line to " rough," and adding a comma after "rapt," points insignificant in themselves perhaps, but indicative of a critic's ear, and certain (as he thought) to catch the approval of the distinguished scholar. In twenty-four hours he got his reply in the shape of an affectionate letter, enclosing his MSS. : " My dear Peter, "No; I should be doing an injustice to my readers if I were to print your verse in the Doctrinaire ; but you must not be discouraged by this action on my part. You are still very young, and no one who has followed (as you may be sure I have) your brilliant career at the University can doubt your ultimate success in whatever profession you under- take. But the path of letters is a stony one, and the level of general utility in such work is only reached by the most arduous efforts. I saw your Aunt Phoebe the other day, and she was warm in your praises. She told me you were think- ing of becoming an architect; I sincerely hope you will, for I believe you have every aptitude for that profession. Plod on steadily and I will go warrant for your writing verse with the best of them. It is inevitable, my dear Peter, that one's early verse should be imitative and weak ; but you have the ' inner voice,' do but follow the gleam and never allow your first enthusiasms to grow dim. " Always your Father's Old Friend, " Archibald Wellington McGregor." Peter was a little pained by this ; but he answered it very politely, inviting himself to lunch on the following Thursday, and then, turning to his verses, he gave the 74 THE AFTERMATH title " Dead," and sent them to the Patriot, from whom he got no reply for a month. He then wrote to the editor of the Patriot on a post- card, and said that, in view of the present deplorable reaction in politics, he feared the verses, if they were held over much longer, would lose their point. Would the Patriot be so kind, then, as to let him know what they proposed to do with the Poem? He got a reply the same evening : " Telephone 239. " 36A, Clare Market, " Telegraph, men °* tne days of yore. is commonplace. ( ?) LoreV M°ore ? whenas tne spirit was full— But when it was rare and Provisional : see low Emily also about j CO p{ ec j t he Psalms at random; and lo ! it was even so ! (Fill in here: 'M^Hmi) Publisher Then up and arose the Daughter-Nations : Up and arose Unclesaysthat Fearless men reciting me fearlessly through the nose, Greek. ' Mem.— Some of them Presbyterian, and some of them Jews, Plagiarism. anc J some Frivolous. Change. Of the Latter-Day Church, King Solomon's sect — which is awfully rum. (Stuck.) . . . the lot of it . . . Anglo-Saxons . . . shout it aloud ... at it again? . . . back the crowd? (Fill in. Mem. — must be consecutive) Things are not as they were (common-place) (delete) Things are not as they . . . Things and the Change . . . Thing9 and . . . things . . . (Leave this to fill in) « * * * * And some of ye stand at a wicket, and they are the luckier men, But others field afar on a field, and ever and then, Whenas. Good. When-as the over is over, they cross to the other side, 714 TT * " Horeb." ^ weary thing to the flesh and a wounding thing to the pride. to goi And Cabinet Ministers play at a game ye should all avoid, It is played with youngling bats and a pellet of celluloid, And a little net on a table, and is known as the named (better) THE INTERVIEW 99 Ping and the Pong. England, Daughter of Sion, why do you do this wrong ? And some, like witherless Frenchmen, circle around in rings, England, Daughter of Sion, why do you do these things? Why do you . . . (Mem. — after Uncle to-morrow. Billy's: refuse terms.) These are the chance lines as they came — the dis- jointed words — everything — just as He wrote them down. Reader — or whatever you be — was that a small reward? Are you willing now to say that Interviewing has no wages of its own? Will you sneer at it as unfit to take its place in your art? Truly, " Better is he that humbleth himself than a pillar of brass, and a meek heart than many fastenings." VI THE PERSONAL PAR Closely connected with the Interview, and forming a natural sequel to any treatise upon that Exercise, is the Personal Par. It contains, as it were, al! the qualities of the Interview condensed into the smallest possible space ; it advertises the subject, instructs the reader, and is a yet sharper trial of the young writer's character. The homely advice given in the preceding section, where mention was made of "pride" and of "pockets," applies with far more force to the Personal Par. With the Interview, it is well to mask one's name ; with the Personal Par, it is absolutely necessary to conceal it. The danger the author runs is an attraction to Mrs. Railston, who in her book strongly advises this form of sport — she herself does Bess in All About Them. On the other hand, Lieut. -Colonel Lory says, in his Journalist 1 s Vade-mecum (p. 63): "A Personal Par should never be penned by the Aspirant to Literary honours. Undetected, it renders life a burden of sus- pense; detected, it spells ruin."* He quotes twenty- five well-known peers and financiers who rose by steadily refusing to do this kind of work during their period of probation on the press. The present guide, which is final, will run to no such * Let the student note, by way of warning, and avoid this officer's use of ready-made phrases. 100 THE PERSONAL PAR 101 extremes. Secrecy is indeed essential ; yet there are three excellent reasons for writing Personal Pars, at least in early youth. (i) The Personal Par is the easiest to produce of all forms of literature. Any man or woman, famous or infamous for any reason, is a subject ready to hand, and to these may be added all persons whatsoever living, dead, or imaginary ; and anything whatever may be said about them. Editors, in their honest dislike of giving pain, encourage the inane, and hence more facile, form of praise. Moreover, it takes but a moment to write, and demands no recourse to books of reference. (2) The Personal Par can always be placed — if not in England, then in America. Though written in any odd moments of one's leisure time, it will always repre- sent money ; and the whole of the period from July to October, when ordinary work is very slack, can be kept going from the stock one has by one. (3) It has a high economic value, not only in the price paid for it, but indirectly, as an advertisement. This is a point which Lieut. -Colonel Lory and Mrs. Railston both overlook. A short specimen, written in August, 1885, at the very beginning of the movement, by my friend, Mrs. Cowley (the Folk-Lorist, not the Poetess), for the Gazette, will make these three points clear : " The capture of that rare bird, the Cross-tailed Eagle, which is cabled from St. Fandango's, recalls the fact that the famous Picture "Tiny Tots" was formerly in the possession of the present Governor of that island. The picture is put up to auction by Messrs. Philpots next Saturday, and, judging by the public 102 THE AFTERMATH attendance at their galleries during the last fortnight, the bidding should be brisk." There is no such bird as the Cross-tailed Eagle, nor any such person as the Governor of St. Fandango's, nor indeed is there even any such island. Yet Mrs. Cowley was paid 5s. by the Gazette for her little bit of research; it was copied into most of the papers, with acknowledgment, and she got a commission from Messrs. Philpots. The former owner of "Tiny Tots" (Mr. Gale of Kew, a wealthy man) wrote a long and inter- esting letter explaining that some error had been made, and that not he, but his wife's father, had been an Inspector* (not Governor) in St. Vincent's. He begged the writer to call on him — her call was the origin of a life-long friendship, and Mrs. Cowley was mentioned in his will. I must detain the student no longer with what is, after all, a very small corner of our art, but conclude with a few carefully chosen examples before proceeding to the next section on Topographical Essays. Examples Wit and Wisdom of the Upper Classes Her Royal Highness the Hereditary Grand Duchess of Solothurn was driving one day down Pall Mall when she observed a poor pickpocket plying his precarious trade. Stopping the carriage immediately, she asked him gently what she could do for him. He was dumb- founded for a reply, and, withdrawing his hand from the coat-tail of an elderly major, managed to mumble * Of what? THE PERSONAL PAR 103 out that he was a widower with a wife and six children who were out of work and refused to support him, though earning excellent wages. This reasoning so touched the Princess, that she immediately gave him a place as boot-black in the Royal Palace of Kensington. Discharged from this position for having prosecuted H.R.H. for six months' arrears of wages, he set up as a publican at the " Sieve and Pannier " at Wimbledon, a licence of some ten thousand pounds in value, and a standing example of the good fortune that attends thrift and industry. * * * It is not generally known that the late Lord Grum- bletooth rose from the ranks. His lordship was a singularly reticent man, and the matter is still shrouded in obscurity. He was, however, a politician in the best sense of the word, and owed his advancement to the virtues that have made England famous. The collection of domestic china at Grumbletooth House will vie with any other collection at any similar house in the kingdom. * # * Dr. Kedge, whose death was recently announced in the papers, was the son of no less a personage than Mr. Kedge, of the Old Hall, Eybridge. It is hardly fair to call him a self-made man, for his father paid a considerable sum both for his education and for the settlement of his debts on leaving the University. But he was a bright -eyed, pleasant host, and will long be regretted in the journalistic world. * * # Lady Gumm's kindness of heart is well known. She lately presented a beggar with a shilling, and then dis- ioj THE AFTERMATH covered that she had not the wherewithal to pay her fare home from Queen's Gate to 276, Park Lane (her lady- ship's town house). Without a moment's hesitation she borrowed eighteen pence of the grateful mendicant, a circumstance that easily explains the persecution of which she has lately been the victim. Lord Harmbury was lately discovered on the top of a bus by an acquaintance who taxed him with the mis- adventure. " I would rather be caught on a bus than in a trap," said the witty peer. The mot has had some success in London Society. * * * Mr. Mulhausen, the M.F.H. of the North Downshire Hunt, has recently written an article on "Falconry" for the Angler's World. The style of the " brochure " shows a great advance in " technique," and cannot fail to give a permanent value to his opinion on Athletics, Gentleman-farming, and all other manly sports and pastimes. Mr. Mulhausen is, by the way, a recently- elected member of the Rock-climbers' Club, and is devoted to Baccarat. * * * There is no truth in the rumour that Miss Finn-Coul, daughter of Colonel Wantage-Brown, was about to marry her father's second wife's son by an earlier marriage, Mr. James Grindle-Torby. The Colonel is a strong Churchman, and disapproves of such unions between close relatives; moreover, as CO., he has for- bidden the young lieutenant (for such is his rank) to THE PERSONAL PAR 105 leave the barracks for a fortnight, a very unusual pro- reeding in the Hussars. * * * Lady Sophia Van Huren is famous for her repartee. In passing through Grosvenor Gate an Irish beggar was heard to hope that she would die the black death of Machushla Shawn. A sharp reply passed her lips, and it is a thousand pities that no one exactly caught its tenor; it was certainly a gem. * * * It is well known that the Bishop of Pontygarry has no sympathy with the extreme party in the Church. Only the other day he was so incensed at a service held in Ribble-cum-Taut, that he fought the officiating clergy- man for half an hour in his own garden, and extorted a complete apology. He also forbad anyone in the village ever to go to Church again, and himself attended the Methodist Chapel on the ensuing Sunday. Had we a few more prelates of the same mettle things would be in a very different condition. VII THE TOPOGRAPHICAL ARTICLE The Topographical Article is so familiar as to need but little introduction. . . . Personally, I do not recom- mend it; it involves a considerable labour; alone, of all forms of historical writing, it demands accuracy; alone, it is invariably unpaid. Nevertheless, there are special occasions when it will be advisable to attempt it; as — in order to please an aged and wealthy relative ; in order to strike up a chance acquaintance with a great Family ; in order to advertise land that is for sale ; in order to prevent the sale, or to lower the price (in these two last cases it is usual to demand a small fee from the parties interested); in order to vent a just anger; in order to repay a debt; in order to introduce a " special " advertisement for some manure or other; and so forth. Most men can recall some individual accident when a training in Topo- graphical Writing would have been of value to them. There even arise, though very rarely, conditions under which this kind of writing is positively ordered. Thus, when the Editor of the Evening Mercury changed his politics for money on the 17th of September, 1899, all that part of his staff who were unable to drop their outworn shibboleths were put on to writing up various parts of London in the legal interval preceding their dismissal, and a very good job they made of it. 106 THE TOPOGRAPHICAL ARTICLE 107 Never, perhaps, were the five rules governing the art more thoroughly adhered to. A land-owning family was introduced into each ; living persons were treated with courtesy and affection ; a tone of regret was used at the opening of each ; each closed with a phrase of passionate patriotism; and each was carefully run parallel to the course of English History in general ; and the proper praise and blame allotted to this name and that, accord- ing to its present standing with the more ignorant of the general public* It was in this series (afterwards issued in Book form under the title, London I My London) that the following article — which I can put forward as an excellent model — was the contribution of my friend, Mr. James Bayley. It may interest the young reader (if he be as yet un- familiar with our great London names) to know that under the pseudonym of ' ' Cringle ' ' is concealed the family of Holt, whose present head is, of course, the Duke of Sheffield. DISAPPEARING LONDON: MANNING GREEN At a moment when a whole district of the metropolis is compulsorily passing into the hands of a soulless corporation, it is intolerable that the proprietors of land in that district should receive no compensation for the historical importance of their estates. Manning Green, which will soon be replaced by the roar and bustle — or * The student will find a list of Historical Personages to praise and blame carefully printed in two colours at the end of Williams' Journalist's History of England. 108 THE AFTERMATH bustle and confusion, whichever you like — of a great railway station, is one of those centres whence the great empire-builders of our race proceeded in past times. For many centuries it was a bare, bleak spot, such as our England could boast by the thousand in the rude but heroic days when the marvellous fortunes of the Anglo-Saxon race were preparing in the slow designs of Providence. For perhaps a generation it was one of those suburban villages that are said by a contemporary poet to ' ' nestle in their trees. ' ' Doubtless it sent forth in the sixties many brave lads to fight for the liberties of Europe in Italy or Denmark, but their humble record has perished. Such a thought recalls the fine lines of Gray : " Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest; Some Cromwell guiltless of his country's blood." Twenty to twenty -five years ago the advancing tide of the capital of the world swept round this little outlying place ; it was submerged, and soon made part of greater London. Relics are still to be discovered of the period when Manning Green had something rural about it, as High- gate and South Croydon have now. Thus " The Jolly Drover" (whose licence was recently refused because it was not a tied house) recalls the great sheep-droves that once passed through the village from the north. It is now rare indeed to meet with a countryman driving his flock to market through the streets of London, though the sight is not absolutely unknown. The present writer was once stopped in the early morning by a herd of oxen south of Westminster Bridge, and what may seem more remarkable he has frequently seen wild animals in THE TOPOGRAPHICAL ARTICLE 109 the charge of negroes pass through Soho on their way to the Hippodrome. It is as Tennyson says : " The old order changes, giving place to the new," until at last " Beyond these voices there is peace." Another relic of the old village of Manning Green is the Court Baron, which is still held (how few Londoners know this !) once a year, for the purpose of providing a small but regular income to a relative of the Lord Chancellor. This Court was probably not held before the year 1895, but it is none the less of extreme interest to antiquarians. The first mention of Manning Green in history is in a letter to Edward Lord Cringle, the pioneer and ally of the beneficent reforms that remain inseparably associated with the name of the eighth Henry. This letter is written from prison by one Henry Turnbull, a yeoman, and contains these phrases : " For that very certainly, my good Lord, I never did this thing, no, nor met the Friar nor had any dealing with him. And whatever I did that they say is treason I did it being a simple man, as following the Mass, which I know is welcome to the King's Majesty, and not knowing who it was that sang it, no, nor speaking to him after, as God knows. And, my dear Lord, I have had conveyed to you, as you know, my land of Horton with the Grey Farm and the mere called Foul Marsh or Manning, having neither son nor any other but my own life only, and for that willingly would I give you this land, and so I have done; and, my good Lord, speak for me at Court in this matter, remembering my gift of the land. . . ." This Turnbull was afterwards executed for treason at Tyburn. There is still a Turnbull in the parish, but as no THE AFTERMATH his father's name was Weissenstein he is very unlikely to have any connection with the original family of yeomen. The land (if land it could then be called) did not, oddly enough, remain long in the Cringle family. It was sold by Lord Edward to the Carmelites, and on the dissolution of that order was returned by the grateful monarch to its original owner. We next find "Man- ning" or "Foul Marsh" drained during that period of active beneficence on the part of the great landlords which marked the seventeenth century. We are acquainted of this fact in our agricultural history by an action recorded in 1631, where it appears that one Nicholas Hedon had gone to shoot snipe, as had been once of common right in the manor, and had so tres- passed upon land "now drained at his lordship's charges, and by him enclosed." Hedon lost both ears, and was pilloried. Manning is probably alluded to also in a strong protest of the old Liberal blood* against ship-money, to which exaction it contributed is. 46. The sum need not excite ridicule, as it represents quite 4s. of our present currency. The vigorous protest of the family against this extortion is one of the finest examples of our sterling English spirit on the eve of the Civil War. The money was, however, paid. In the troubles of the Civil Wars Manning (now no longer a marsh, but a green) was sold to John Grayling, but the deed of conveyance being protested at the Restoration, it was restored to its original owners at the intruder's charge by an action of Novel Disseizin. * The Holts are still Liberal-Unionists. THE TOPOGRAPHICAL ARTICLE in After Monmouth's rebellion, Manning was in danger of suffering confiscation, and was hurriedly sold to a chance agent (William Greaves) at so low a price as to refute for ever all insinuations of rapacity upon the part of its now ducal owners. It was happily restored by a grate- ful nation as a free gift after the glorious Revolution of 1688, and the agent, who had only acquired it by taking advantage of the recent troubles, was very properly punished. King William congratulated the family in a famous epigram, which a natural ignorance of the Taal forbids us to transcribe. In 1 7 18, Manning being still pasture of a somewhat spongy nature (Guy, in his report, calls it "soggy and poor land, reedy, and fit for little "), there was a rumour that the New River canal would pass through it, and it was sold to Jonathan Hemp. The New River was proved, however, in the pleadings before both Houses of Parliament, to have no necessity for this canal, and Hemp was compelled (as it was a mere speculation on his part) to sell it back again to its distinguished owner at a merely nominal price. Nothing further can be traced with regard to Manning Green (as it was now commonly called) till the report in 1780 that coal had been found beneath it. Such a deposit so near the metropolis naturally attracted the attention of merchants, and the Family sold the place for the last time to a merchant of the name of Hogg for ^20,000. The report proved false; yet, oddly enough, it was the beginning of Mr. Hogg's prosperity. We have no space to dwell on this interesting character. " Hogg's Trustees " are an ecclesiastical household word ii2 THE AFTERMATH in our principal watering-places, and the " Hogg Insti- tute " at Brighton is a monument of Christian endeavour. He was a shrewd bargainer, a just man, and upon his mantelpieces were to be discovered ornaments in ala- baster representing Joshua and Richard Cceur de Lion. The growth of the metropolis entered largely into Mr. Hogg's enlightened prevision of the future, and he obtained promises from a large number of people to build houses upon his land, which houses should, after a term of years, become his (Hogg's) property, and cease to belong to those who had paid to put them up. How Mr. Hogg managed to obtain such promises is still shrouded in mystery, but the universal prevalence of the system to-day in modern England would surely prove that there is something in our Imperial race which makes this form of charity an element of our power. Mr. Hogg's only daughter married Sir John Moss, Lord Mayor; and Mr. Moss, the son, was the father of the present Lord Hemelthorpe. Thus something romantic still clings to poor Manning Green, of which Lord Hemelthorpe was, until his recent bankruptcy, the proprietor. There is little more to be said about Manning Green. The Ebenezer Chapel has a history of its own, written by the Rev. Napoleon Plaything, son of Mr. Honey Q. Plaything, of Bismark, Pa. The success of the boys' club has been detailed in God's London, by Mr. Zitali, of the "Mission to the Latin Races." The book is well worth buying, if only for this one essay, written, as it is, by a brand saved from the burning. Mr. Zitali was for a long time in the employ of Messrs. Mariana, the restaurant keepers, and no one is better fitted to THE TOPOGRAPHICAL ARTICLE 113 deal strenuously with the awful problems of our great cities. Manning Green is about to disappear, and all its wonderful associations will become (in the words of Swinburne) " Smoke, or the smoke of a smoke." But until it disappears, and until its purchase price is finally fixed by the committee, its historical associa- tions will still remain dear to those who (like the present writer) are interested in this corner of the Motherland. That men of our blood, and men speaking our tongue — nay, that those neither of our blood, nor speaking our tongue, but devoted to a common empire — will remember Manning Green when the sale is effected, is the pas- sionate and heartfelt prayer of James Bayley. VIII ON EDITING I come now to that part of my subject where pure literature is of less moment than organisation and the power of arrangement ; and the last two divisions of my great task concern work which has been written by others, and with which the journalist has to deal in the capacity of manager rather than that of author. These are, a few notes upon editing, and some further remarks upon Revelations, that is, unexpected and more or less secret political announcements. I deal here first with editing, by which I do not mean the management of a whole newspaper — for this has no connection whatever with the art of letters — but the selection, arrangement, and annotating of work produced by another hand, and entrusted to the journalist for publication in his columns. The work is far easier than might appear at first sight. The first rule in connection with it is to offend as little as possible, and especially to spare the living. The second rule is to cut down the matter to fit the space at your disposal. With the exception of a number of MSS. so small that they may be neglected in the calculation, it does not matter in the least what you cut out, so long as you remember that the parts remaining must make sense, and so long as you make this second rule fit in with the exigencies of the first. 114 ON EDITING 115 As for annotation, it is the easiest thing in the world True to the general principle which governs all good journalism, that the giving of pleasure should always be preferred to the giving of pain, let your annotations pleasantly recall to the reader his own stock of know- ledge, let them be as obvious as possible, and let him not learn too much from your research. This method has the additional advantage, that it also saves you an infinity of trouble. The matter is really not so elaborate as to need any further comment. I will proceed at once to my example, prefacing it only with the shortest explanatory state- ment, which will show how thoroughly it illustrates the rules I have just enunciated. The wife of one of the principal candidates for Parliament in our part of the country begged Dr. Caliban to publish a simple, chatty diary, which her sister (who was married to a neighbouring squire) had kept during some years. Dr. Caliban was too courteous to refuse, and had too profound an acquaintance with the rural character to despise this kind of copy. On the. other hand, he was compelled to point out that he could not allow the series to run through more than six months, and that he should, therefore, be compelled to cut it down at his discretion. Full leave was given him, and I do not think any man could have done the work better. Thus the lady's husband, though a good Englishman in every other way (an indulgent landlord and a sterling patriot), was German by birth and language. Here was a truth upon which it would have been uncharitable and useless to insist — a truth which it was impossible to conceal, but which it was easy to glide over; and Dr. n6 THE AFTERMATH Caliban, as the student will see in a moment, glode over it with the lightest of feet. Again, a very terrible tragedy had taken place in the Burpham family, and is naturally alluded to by their near neighbour. It was impossible to cut out all mention of this unhappy thing, without destroying the diary ; but in Dr. Caliban's edition of the MS., the whole is left as vague as may be. The particular part which I have chosen for a model — I think the most admirable piece of editing I know — is from that week of the diary which concerns the out- break of the recent difficulty with France, a difficulty luckily immediately arranged, after scarcely a shot had been fired, by the mutual assent of the two nations and (as it is whispered) by the direct intervention of High Authority. The motto which Dr. Caliban chose for the whole series (called, by the way, "Leaves from a Country Diary "), is a fine sentence from the works of Mr. Bagehot. LEAVES FROM A COUNTRY DIARY " An aristocratic body firmly rooted in the national soil is not only the permanent guarantee of the security of the State, but resembles, as it were, a man better instructed than his fellows — more prompt, possessed of ample means, and yet entrusted with power ; a man moreover who never' dies." February 2nd, 19 — . — To-day is the Purification. The lawn looked lovely under its veil of snow, and the vicar came in to lunch. We did not discuss the question of the service, because I know that Reuben disapproves of it. The vicar told me that Mrs. Burpham is in ON EDITING 117 dreadful trouble. It seems that the Bank at Moles- worth refused to cash Algernon's cheque, and that this led Sir Henry Murling to make investigations about the Chattington affair, so that he had to be asked to resign his commission. To be sure it is only in the Militia, but if it all comes out, it will be terrible for the Monsons. They have already had to dismiss two servants on these grounds. Jane has a sore throat, and I made her gargle some turpentine and oil ; Ali Baba's* hock is still sore. I do hope I shall keep my old servants, it is an unwel- come thing to dismiss them in their old age and the house is never the same again. They meet to-morrow at Gumpton corner, but not if this weather holds. February yd, 19 — . — It is thawing. There are marks of boots across the lawn on what is left of the snow, and I am afraid some one must have gone across it. I wish Reuben would come back. Called at Mrs. Burpham's, who is in dreadful trouble. Algernon has gone up to town to see his solicitor. Poor Mrs. Burpham was crying ; she is so proud of her boy. He says it will be all right. They are very bitter against the Bank, and Sir Henry, and the regiment, and the Monsons. I fear they may quarrel with Binston Parkf also. Mrs. Burpham was so curious about them ; Jane is no better. February 4th, 19 — . — Reuben came home suddenly by the 2.40 with Mr. Ehrenbreitstein and Lord Tenter- * The pet name of the white pony. The name is taken from the Arabian Nights. + The use of the name of an estate in the place of the name of its owner or owners is very common with the territorial class in our countrysides. Thus, people will say, " I have been calling at the Laurels," or " I dined with the Monkey Tree " ; meaning, " I have been calling upon Mrs. So-and-So," or, " I have been dining with Sir Charles Gibbs." n8 THE AFTERMATH worth. He asked me to put Mr. Ehrenbreitstein in the Blue room and Lord Tenterworth in the Parrot room opposite the broom and pail place, where Aunt Marjory used to sleep. I shall have to clear the clothes out of the drawers. Just before dinner Mr. Bischoffen came in from the station. Reuben told me he had asked him. I wish he would give me longer notice. He brought a secretary with him who cannot talk English. I think he must be a Spaniard — he is so dark. Jane can hardly speak, her throat is so bad ; I told her she might stay in bed to-morrow till nine. February 5///, 19 — . — Mrs. Burpham is certainly in dreadful trouble. She tells me Algernon has written from St. Malo saying it will be all right. It was very foolish and imprudent of him to go over there just now with all this trouble on with France. If only he had stayed at home (Mrs. Burpham says) she would not have minded so much, but she is afraid of his getting killed. It seems they are so savage at St. Malo.* Only the other day an English lady had a stone thrown in her direction in the street. Mr. Bischoffen's secretary is not a Spaniard ; I think he is a Pole ; his name is Brahms. There was a difficulty about the asparagus last night. It seems the Germans do not eat it with their fingers. Reuben said I ought to have got little silver pincers for it. I remember seeing them in his father's house, but papa said they were very vulgar. Then Reuben used to apologise for them, and say that his people were old- fashioned, which was nonsense, of course. I reminded Reuben of this, and he said, " Ach ! Gott !" and I had to leave the room. Ali Baba is all right ; he took a piece * A seaport in Brittany. ON EDITING 119 of sugar from my hand ; but when I felt his hock he kicked Jones severely. I fear Jones is really injured, and I have sent for Dr. Minton and for the veterinary surgeon. February 6th, 19 — . — Dr. Minton dined here last night before going to set Jones' leg, and I gave the veterinary surgeon supper in the old schoolroom. I am afraid Dr. Minton took too much wine, for he quarrelled with Mr. Ehrenbreitstein and Mr. Bischoffen about the danger of war with France. He said they had no right to speak, and got quite excited. Called again on Mrs. Burpham, and only appreciated fully to-day in what sad trouble she is. Algernon has telegraphed from Paris saying it will be all right. Meanwhile she has certainly quarrelled with Binston Park, and she even spoke bitterly against the Duke, so that means another family gone — for the Duke is very proud. I see in the Standard that our Ambassador has delivered an ultimatum, and that the French are doing all they can to shirk war. That is what Mr. Bischoffen and Reuben said they would do, but they must be taught a lesson. Newfoundlands have fallen, but Reuben says they must rise after the war. I do hope they will. The dear Bishop called. He says this war is a judgment on the French. Jane is much better, and can talk quite clearly, and Ali Baba is almost well. Also it has thawed now completely, and they can meet on Saturday as usual, so things are looking up all round. February 7th, 19 — . — Freddie goes to the Isle of Wight with the Lambtonshire Regiment, and Mrs. Burpham and the Bishop are both delighted, because it will bring him and Hepworth together. It would be 120 THE AFTERMATH such a solace to poor Mrs. Burpham if Freddie could see active service and get promotion; it would help to wipe out Algernon's disgrace, for I fear there is now no doubt of it, though he says it is all right in his last letter, which is from Marseilles. Letters still come through from France, because our Ambassador said that if any tricks were played with them he would hold the French Government personally responsible, and so cowed them. The Bishop has gone to London with his family. February Uh, 19 — . — The Standard has a large map of the North of France, where the fighting will be. It is very interesting. Reuben and his friends have gone up to town again. I saw the Reserves marching through Molesworth to-day; they are going to garrison Ports- mouth.* The afternoon post did not come in. Reuben said he would telegraph, but I have not got any message. The 12.40 train was an hour late, so I suppose every- thing is upset by the war. Maria will have to come home by Bale, and I do so dread the passage from Ostend for her; even the hour from Calais to Dover is more than she can bear. The vicar says that our Government will force the French to keep the Dover- Calais route open for civilians. He says it would be against the practice of civilised warfare to close it, and if that were done we should lay waste the whole country ; but I fear he does not know much about the legal aspect of the thing : it is his heart, not his head that speaks. It is dreadful to think what I shall do with Mademoiselle! when she comes home with Maria. One can't blame her * A large military port and dockyard on the coast of Hamp- shire. t The generic term among the wealthy for French menials of the weaker sex. ON EDITING 121 when one thinks that it is her own country that is going to be harried and her own brothers brought here as prisoners ; but it will be very difficult all the same. The man who was killed at Bigley races was not a Frenchman after all : the crowd only thought he was because he had blacked his face like a negro. It seems that Sir Henry was very hard in court, and said that the ringleaders were lucky not to be indicted for manslaughter. It has frozen again, and it is very slippery in the drive. They are having fireworks or something at Portsmouth, to judge by the sound. Jones told Jane he thought there was a bonfire as well, because he could see a glare now and then in the sky from the window in his room. His leg is setting nicely. IX ON REVELATIONS Revelations, again, as we found to be the case with editing, do not properly constitute a department of the art of letters. Though they are of far more importance than any other branch of contemporary journalism, yet it is impossible to compare their publication to a creative act of pure literature. It may be urged that such Revelations as are written in the office of the newspaper publishing them are not only literature, but literature of a very high order. They are, on the face of it, extremely difficult to com- pose. If they are to have any chance of deceiving the public, the writer must thoroughly know the world which he counterfeits ; he must be able to copy its literary style, its air, its errors. It is even sometimes necessary for him to attempt the exquisitely subtle art of forgery. The objection is well found ; but it is not of this kind of Revelation that I propose to speak. It belongs to the higher branches of our art, and is quite unsuited to a little elementary manual. The Revelation I speak of here is the ordinary type of private communication, domestic treason, or accidental discovery, dealing, as a rule, with public affairs, and brought to the office spontaneously by servants, colonial adventurers, or ministers of religion. 122 ON REVELATIONS 123 Nine Revelations out of ten are of this kind ; and the young journalist who may desire to rise in his great calling must make himself thoroughly familiar with the whole process by which they are to be procured and published. A small amount of additional matter has, indeed, sometimes to be furnished, but it is almost insignificant, and is, moreover, of so conventional a nature, that it need not trouble us for a moment. Some such phrase as " We have received the following communication from a source upon which we place the firmest reliance," will do very well to open with, and at the end : " We shall be interested to see what reply can be given to the above," is a very useful formula. Thus the words " To be continued," added at the end are often highly lucra- tive. They were used by the Courrier des Frises (a first- class authority on such matters), when it recently pub- lished a number of private letters, written (alas !) in the English tongue, and concerning the noblest figure in English politics. But though there is little to be done in the way of writing, there is a considerable mental strain involved in judging whether a particular Revelation will suit the proprietor of the newspaper upon which one is employed, and one must not unfrequently be prepared to suffer from exhausting terrors for some weeks after its publication. Difficult as is the art of testing Revelation, the rules that govern it are few and simple. The Revelator, if a domestic servant, wears a round black bowler hat and a short jacket, and a pair of very good trousers stolen from his master; he will be clean shaven. If an adventurer or minister of religion, he will wear a soft i2 4 THE AFTERMATH felt hat and carry a large muffler round his throat. Either sort walk noiselessly, but the first in a firm, and the second in a shuffling manner. I am far from saying that all who enter newspaper offices under this appear- ance bear with them Revelations even of the mildest kind, but I do say that whenever Revelations come, they are brought by one of these two kinds of men. I should add that the Revelator, like the money- lender, the spy, and every other professional man whose livelihood depends upon efficiency, is invariably sober. If any man come to you with a Revelation and seem even a trifle drunk, dismiss him without inquiry, though not before you have admonished him upon his shame and sin, and pointed out the ruin that such indulgence brings upon all save the wealthy. When a man arrives who seems at all likely to have a Revelation in his pocket, and who offers it for sale, remember that you have but a few moments in which to make up your mind ; put him into the little room next to the sub-editor, take his MS., tell him you will show it to your chief, and, as you leave him, lock the door softly on the outside. The next moment may decide your whole career. You must glance at the Revelation, and judge in that glance whether the public will believe it even for two full hours. The whole difference between a successful and an unsuccessful journalist lies in that power of sudden vision; nor will experience alone achieve it, it must be experience touched with something like genius. Libellous matter you can delete. Matter merely false will not be remembered against you; but if that rare and subtle character which convinces the mob be lacking, ON REVELATIONS 125 that is a thing which no one can supply in the time between the Revelator's arrival and the paper's going to press. Finally, when you have made your decision, return, unlock, pay, and dismiss. Never pay by cheque. Remember how short is the time at your disposal. Re- member that if your paper does not print a really good Revelation when it is offered, some other paper will. Remember the Times, the Chronicle, and Major Ester- hazy. Remember Mr. Gladstone's resignation. . . . Remember the " Maine." A few practical instances will help us to understand these abstract rules. Consider, for instance, the following — one of the wisest acts of Dr. Caliban's whole life. Dr. Caliban was busy writing a leader for the Sunday Englishman upon " Hell or Immortality "; for it was Saturday night, he had just received the weekly papers, and, as he well said, " A strong Sunday paper has this advantage, that it can do what it likes with the weeklies." He was, I say, in the midst of Hell or Immortality, when he was interrupted by a note. He opened it, read it, frowned, and passed it to me, saying : " What do you make of this?" The note ran : " I have just been dismissed from the Spectator for sneez- ing in an indelicate manner. I have a Revelation to make with regard to the conduct of that paper. Please see me at once, or it may be too late. I have with me a letter which the Sfectator will publish next week. It throws a searching light upon the Editor's mind, and lays bare all the inner workings of the paper. Price 40s." 126 THE AFTERMATH 1 told Dr. Caliban that, in my opinion, on the one hand, there might be something in it; while on the other hand, that there might not. Dr. Caliban looked at me thoughtfully and said : "You think that?" He touched an electric bell. As this did not ring, he blew down a tube, and receiving no answer, nor indeed hearing the whistle at the other end, he sent a messenger, who, by some accident, failed to return to the editorial office. Dr. Caliban himself went down and brought up the stranger. He was a young man somewhat cadaver- ous. He repeated what he had said in his note, refused to bargain in any way, received two sovereigns from Dr. Caliban's own purse, sighed deeply, and then with a grave face said : " It feels like treason." He pressed his lips hard together, conquered himself, and left us with the utmost rapidity. When Dr. Caliban and I were alone together, he opened the sealed envelope and read these words, written on a little slip of foolscap : " The following letter is accented by the Spectator , and will be printed next week." To this slip was pinned a rather dirty half sheet of notepaper, and on this was the following letter : " Balcarry Castle, " County Mayo, " Jan. igtk, iqoj. " To the Editor of the Spectator. " Dear Sir, • " Among your humorous Irish stories perhaps the following will be worthy to find a place. A dear uncle of ON REVELATIONS 127 mine, my father's half-brother, and the husband of the talented E. J. S., was bishop of Killibardine, a prelate of great dis- tinction and considerable humour. " I well remember that somewhere in the summer of 1869, his valet having occasion to call unexpectedly upon a relative (butler to the Duke of Kerry), the latter observed ' Indade, an' shure now an' is that yourself, Pat, Pat asthor, at all, at all,' to which the witty fellow answered, with the true Irish twinkle in his eye, ' Was your grandfather a monkey?' " I am very faithfully yours, " The MacFfin." Dr. Caliban was heartily amused by the tale, and told me that he had met the MacFfin some years ago at Lady Marroway's. " Nevertheless," he added, " I don't think it would be fair to comment on the little story. ... I had imagined that something graver was toward ..." He never spoke again of the small outlay he had made, and I afterwards found that it had been included in the general expenses of the paper. I have never forgotten the lesson, nor since that date have I ever accepted MSS. and paid for it without making myself acquainted to some extent with the subject. A little such foresight upon that occasion would have convinced us that a letter of this kind would never have found a place in a review of the calibre of the Spectator. Contrast with Dr. Caliban's wise and patriotic con- duct upon this occasion the wickedness and folly of the Evening German in the matter of the Cabinet Crisis. For some time the saner papers, which see the Empire as it is, had been issuing such placards as " He must go," "Make room for Joseph," and other terse and definite indications of a new policy. 128 THE AFTERMATH The Evening German had for several days headed its leading article, " Why don't he resign?" A member of the unscrupulous gang who ever lie in wait for whatever is innocent and enthusiastic called, just before press, upon the editor of the Evening German, passing himself off as the valet of the minister whose resignation was demanded. He produced a small sheet of MSS., and affirmed it to be the exact account of an interview between the minister and his doctor, which interview the valet had overheard, "concealed," as he put it, "behind an arras." He said it would explain the situation thoroughly. He received no less than 25 guineas, and departed. Now let the student read what follows, and ask himself by what madness a responsible editor came to print a thing so self -evidently absurd. WHY HE DOES NOT RESIGN ! We have received upon an unimpeachable authority the verbatim account of an interview between him and his medical adviser, which we think thoroughly explains the present deadlock in Imperial affairs. We are assured upon oath that he was in bed when the doctor called just before noon yesterday, and that the following dialogue took place : Minister (in bed) : Good-morning, Doctor, I am glad to see you. What can I do for you? ... I mean, I am glad to see you. Pray excuse the inadvertence of my phrase, it is one that I have lately had to use not a little. ON REVELATIONS 129 Doctor : Pray let me look at your tongue and feel your pulse. So. We are getting along nicely. At what hour were you thinking of rising? Minister : At twelve, my usual hour. I see no reason for lying in bed, Doctor. {There was a despair- ing tone in this phrase). I am well enough, Doctor, well enough. {Here he gazed sadly out of the window into St. James's Park). I am a Minister, but I cannot minister to a mind diseased {this rather bitterly). There is nothing the matter with me. Doctor {cheerily) : My dear Mr. , do not talk so. You will be spared many, many useful years, I hope. Indeed, I am sure. There is, as you say, nothing the matter — nothing organically the matter; this lassi- tude and nervous exhaustion from which you suffer is a distressing, but a common symptom of mental activity. {Here the doctor dived into a black bag). Let me sound the chest. Minister: Will it hurt? {This was said rather anxiously). Doctor : Not a bit of it. I only wish to make assurance doubly sure — as we say in the profession. {He put the stethoscope to the chest of the Cabinet Minister). Now draw a deep breath . . . no, deeper than that ... a really deep breath. Minister {gasping) : I can't. Doctor : Tut, tut. . . . Well, it's all a question of lungs. {Here he moved the stethoscope again). Now sing. Minister : La ! La ! . . . La ! Doctor : Nothing wrong with the lungs. Only a little feeble perhaps. Do you take any exercise ? 9 130 THE AFTERMATH Minister (-wearily): Oh! yes . . . I walk about. . . . I used to walk a lot in Ireland. ... I'm not like Ch n; he never takes any exercise (bitterly); but then, he was brought up differently. (Sadly) Oh Doctor ! 1 am so tired ! . . . My back aches. Doctor : Well, Mr. , a little rest will do you all the good in the world. You have the Easter recess in which to take a thorough rest. Do not lie in bed all day ; get up about five and drive to your club. What- ever you do, don't write or think, and don't let them worry you with callers. (The Doctor here prepared to leave). Minister (hopelessly) : Doctor . . . there is some- thing I want to ask you. . . . Can't I give it up ? Doctor (firmly) : No, Mr. , no. Upon no account. I have told your uncle and your cousins so fifty times. It is a point upon which I must be firm. Politics are a necessity to you all. I would not answer for you if it were not for politics. (Sympathetically) You are none of you strong. Minister (heaving a deep sigh) : No. I am not strong. . . . Alas ! . . . Chaplin is. But then, Chaplin's built differently. ... I wish you would let me give it up, Doctor. Doctor (kindly) : No, my dear Mr. , no! Pray put such thoughts out of your head. Every man must occupy his brain and body. Most men discover or choose an occupation, but I have not been a family doctor for thirty years without distinguishing these from such rare organisms as yours — and your family's. The House of Commons is the saving of you. (The Doctor here paused, gazed anxiously at Mr. , and said ON REVELATIONS 131 slowly) Perhaps, though, you take your work too seriously. It is often so with highly strung men. Do as little as you can. Minister : I do . . . but still it wearies me inex- pressibly. Doctor : Not so much as writing a book would, or travel, or country walks. Minister (shaking his head) : I never felt so tired after " It May be True," nor even after " I Greatly Doubt It," as I do now (smiling a little). They sold well. Doctor : And why ? Because you were engaged in politics. Believe me, dear Mr. , without that one regular employment you would do little or nothing. It is the balance-wheel that regulates your whole system. Change the rules, and, if you will, limit debate to a minimum, but do not think of giving up the one thing that keeps up your circulation. More men die from inanition than I care to tell you. Minister : Very well, Doctor . . . (weakly and quietly) it is nearly one; I must sleep . . . Good-bye. (The Doctor here went out on tip-toe. The Minister slept. There was a great silence.) The Evening German suffered severely, and would have been ruined but for the prompt action of the Frankfort House; and the whole incident shows as clearly as possible what perils surround the most tempt- ing, but the most speculative, sort of journalistic enter- prise. The student may tell me — and justly — that I have offered him none but negative examples. I will com- 132 THE AFTERMATH plete his instruction by printing one of the best chosen Revelations I know. At the time when a number of letters addressed to Mr. Kruger by various public men were captured, and very rightly published, a certain number were, for reasons of State, suppressed. To Dr. Caliban, reasons of State were no reasons ; he held that no servant of the people had a right to keep the people in ignorance. Within a week, a detective in his employ had brought a little sheaf of documents, which, judged by internal evidence alone, were plainly genuine. They were printed at once. They have never since been challenged. 497, Jubilee Row, B'ham, i9-7-'99- Dear Sir, We must respectfully press for the payment of, our account. The terms upon which the ammunition was furnished were strictly cash, and, as you will see by the terms of our letter of the 15th last, we cannot tolerate any further delay. If we do not hear from you relative to same by next mail, we shall be compelled to put the matter into the hands of our solicitors. Yours, etc., John Standfast, Pro Karl Biffenheimer and Co. ON REVELATIONS 133 II. Yacht Fleur de Lys. Prince ne Daigne. Paleeme, Sicile. Ci, la feste de VAssomftion de la T.S.V. (Vieux Style) Van de N.S.J.C. MCM (1900). Monsieur Mon Frere, Nous vous envoyons nos remerciemens pour vos souhaits et vous assurons de la parf aicte amictie qui liera toujours nos couronnes alliees. Faictes. Continuez. Agreez, Monsieur Mon Frere, l'assuranee de notre consideration Royale la plus distinguee. Orleans, pour le Roy, Chetif. Vu, pour copie conforme, Lc Seneschal, Bru. III. Offices of the " Siecle," Paris, Chef-lieu of the department of the Seine, France. 6, Thermidor, 108. My good Kruger, It is evidently necessary that I should speak out to you in plain English. I can't go into a long disser- tation, but if you will read the books I send herewith, The Origin of Species, Spencer's Sociology, Grant Allen's Evolution of the Idea of God, etc., you will see why I can't back you up. As for your contemptible 134 THE AFTERMATH offer, I cast it back at you with disdain. My name alone should have protected me from such insults. I would have you know that my paper represents French opinion in England, and is now owned by an inter- national company. I am the irremovable editor. Yours with reserve, Yves Guyot. P.S. — I have been a Cabinet Minister. I send you a circular of our new company. It is a good thing. Push it along. IV. The Chaplaincy, Barford College, Old St. Winifred's Day, iqoo. My dear Mr. Kruger, Your position is at once interesting and peculiar, and deserves, as you say, my fullest attention. On the one hand (as you well remark) you believe you have a right to your independence, and that our Government has no moral right to interfere in your domestic affairs. You speak warmly of Mr. Chamberlain and describe him as lacking in common morality or (as we put it) in breeding. I think you are hardly fair. Mr. Chamberlain has his own morality, and in that summing up of all ethics which we in England call "manners," he is indis- tinguishable from other gentlemen of our class. He has had a great deal to bear and he has latterly borne it in silence. It is hardly the part of a generous foe to taunt him now. I fear you look upon these matters a little narrowly and tend to accept one aspect as the ON REVELATIONS 135 absolute. The truth is that international morality must always be largely Utilitarian, and in a very interesting little book by Beeker it is even doubted whether what we call "ethics" have any independent existence. This new attitude (which we call " moral anarchism ") has lately cast a great hold upon our younger men and is full of interesting possibilities. If you meet Milner you should discuss the point with him. I assure you this school is rapidly ousting the old "comparative-positive" in which he and Curzon were trained. There is a great deal of self-realisation going on also. Lord Mestenvaux (whom you have doubtless met — he was a director of the Johannesburg Alcohol Concession) is of my opinion. Believe me, my dear Mr. Kruger, with the fullest and warmest sympathy for such of your grievances as may be legitimate, and with the ardent prayer that the result of this deplorable quarrel may turn out to be the best for both parties, Your affectionate Friend of old days, Joshia Lambkin, M.A., Fellow and Chaplain. V. {Telegram.) Send orders payable Amsterdam immediate, Liberal party clamouring . . . (name illegible) risen to ten thousand, market firm and rising. Waste no money on comic paper. Not Read. (Unsigned.) Finally this damning piece of evidence must close the terrible series. 136 THE AFTERMATH VI. To the Rev. Ebenezer Biggs, Capetown. The House of Commons, My dear Sir, Afri1 l0th - l8 "- You put me in a very difficult position, for, on the one hand, I cannot, and would not, work against the interests of my country, and on the other hand, I am convinced that Mr. Chamberlain is determined to plunge that country into the war spoken of by John in Revela- tion ix. Anything I can do for peace I will, but for some reason or other the Times will not insert my letters, though I write to them twice and sometimes thrice in one day. Sir Alfred Milner was once very rude to me. He is a weak man morally, mainly intent upon " getting on"; he has agreed since his youth with every single person of influence (except myself) whom he happened to come across, and is universally liked. I fear that no one's private influence can do much. The London Press has been bought in a lump by two financiers. Perhaps a little waiting is the best thing. There is sure to be a reaction, and after all, Mr. Chamberlain is a man of a very low order. His mind, I take it, is not unlike his face. He thinks very little and very clearly. . . I have really nothing more to say. Always your sincere friend, Edward Bayton. No one knew better than Dr. Caliban that a Revelation is but weakened by comment. But the war was at its height, and he could not read without disgust such words, written in such a place by such a man. ON REVELATIONS 137 He added the note : " We understand that the law officers of the Crown are debating whether or no the concluding sentences of this dis- graceful letter can be made to come within 26 Edward III., cap. 37, defining high treason. It is certainly not a physical attack upon the Person, Consort, or offspring of the Crown, nor is it (strictly speaking) giving aid to the Queen's enemies. On the other hand, it is devoutly hoped that the attack on Mr. Chamberlain can be made to fall under 32 Henry VIII., 1, whereby it is felony to strike or 'provoke' the King's servants within the precincts of the Palace. The infamous screed was certainly written in a palace, and Mr. Chamber- lain is as certainly a servant of the Queen. He certainly was provoked — nay nettled. The latter clauses of the act, condemn- ing those who attack the doctrine of Transubstantiation to be roasted alive, have, of course, fallen into desuetude. The earlier, milder, and more general clauses stand, and should be enforced." Let me not be misunderstood. I think it was an error to pen that comment. Strong expressions, used in a time of high party feeling, may look exaggerated when they survive into quieter times. But if it was an error, it was the only error that can be laid to the charge of a just and great man in the whole course of forty years, during which period he occasionally edited as many as five journals at a time. X SPECIAL PROSE Mrs. Caliban begged me to add a few words on " Special Prose," and to subjoin an example of that manner. She has suggested for the latter purpose Mrs. Railston's "Appreciation of William Shakespeare," written as a preface for the Charing Cross Shakespeare in 1897. She has even been at the pains of asking Mrs. Railston's leave to have it included in this volume, a permission that was at once granted, accompanied with the courteous request that Mrs. Railston's name, address, and private advertisement should accompany the same. Were I dependent upon my own judgment alone, the wisdom of adding such a division at the close of these essays might seem doubtful. Special Prose is an advanced kind of literature, too great an attraction to which might at first confuse rather than aid the student ; and I should hardly make a place for it in a straight- forward little Textbook. Mrs. Caliban's wishes in all matters concerning this work must be observed, and I have done what she desired me, even to the degree of printing Mrs. Railston's advertisement, though I am certain that great Authoress does herself harm by this kind of insistence. ... It is no business of mine. . . . It is only fair to add that prose of this sort is the highest form of our Art, and should be the ultimate 138 SPECIAL PROSE 139 goal of every reader of this Guide. If, however, the student is bewildered in his first attempt to decipher it (as he very well may be), my advice to him is this : let him mark the point to which he has persevered, and then put the whole thing aside until he has had some little further practice in English letters. Then let him return, fresh from other work, some weeks later, and see if he cannot penetrate still further into the close-knit texture. Soon he will find it almost like his own tongue, and will begin to love and to understand. Not many months will pass before it will mean to him something more than life, as he once imagined, could contain. Having said so much, let me hasten to obey Mrs. Caliban's command. WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE An Appreciation. By Margaret Railston. How very manifestly well did not Montaigne (I think it was) say in his essay upon Value that the " inner part of Poesy is whilom hid, whilom bare, and it matters little whether it be bare or hidden. ' ' That was a sentence such as our Wordsworth might have quoted at the high court of Plato when the poets were arraigned as un- worthy to be rooted in his Republic. For the most part these dear poets of our tongue will rather have it bare than hidden, leaving the subtleties of " The Misan- thrope " to another race, and themselves preferring the straight verbal stab of "The Idiot Boy" or "Danny Deever " ; so that many of us see nothing in the Rhymed i 4 o THE AFTERMATH Heroics of the Grand Siecle. Yet Moliere also had genius. " Moliere a du genie et Christian 6te" beau." That sentence given nasally by a Coquelin to a theatre- full of People of the Middle-Class should convince also us of the Hither- North that flowers may blow in any season and be as various as multiplicity may. William Shakespeare, without all question and beyond any repining, is — or rather was — the first of our Poets, and was — or rather is — the first to-day. So that, with him for a well and the Jacobean Bible for a further spring of effort, our English Poets make up (" build " Milton called it) the sounding line. But William Shakespeare also is of us : he will have it on the surface or not at all ; as a man hastening to beauty, too eager to delve by the way. And with it all how he succeeds ! What grace and what appreciation in epithet, what subtle and subconscious effects of verb ! What resonant and yet elusive diction ! It is true Shakes- peare, that line — " Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May." And that other — " Or stoops with the Remover to remove." And these are true Shakespeare because in each there is we know not what of ivory shod with steel. A mixture of the light and the strong, of the subtle and the intense rescues his simple words from oblivion. But another, not of our blood, would have hidden far more ; he shows it all, frankly disdaining artifice. Also the great Elizabethan needs room for his giant limbs, for his frame of thought and his thews of diction. SPECIAL PROSE 141 Cite him just too shortly, choose but a hair's breadth too mickle an ensample of his work, and it is hardly Poesy, nay, hardly Prose. Thus you shall have Othello — the Moor they call him — betrayed and raging, full of an African Anger. What does he say of it? Why very much ; but if you are of those that cut out their cameos too finely ; you slip into quoting this merely : " Oth. Hum ! Hum !" And that is not our Shakespeare at all, nor e'en our Othello. Oh ! no, it is nothing but a brutish noise, meaning nothing, empty of tragedy, unwished for. It was Professor Goodie who said that " none needed the spaces of repose more than Shakespeare," and taught us in these words that the poet must have hills and valleys ; must recline if he is to rise. But does not Shakespeare, even in his repose, seem to create? The Professor will indeed quote to us the mere sprawling leisure of Stratford, and shame us with such lines as — " Mac — The Devil damn thee black, thou cream-faced loon, Where got'st thou that goose look?" Which is Shakespeare at full length. But we also, that are not over sure of Shakespeare's failing, can answer him with such excerpts as these : " Hen. — Therefore do thou, stiff -set Northumberland, Retire to Chester, and my cousin here, The noble Bedford, hie to Glo'ster straight And give our Royal ordinance and word That in this fit and strife of empery No loss shall stand account. To this compulsion I pledge my sword, my person and my honour On the Great Seal of England : so farewell. Swift to your charges : nought was ever done Unless at some time it were first begun." i 4 2 THE AFTERMATH This also is Shakespeare in his repose, but a better Shakespeare than he whom the Professor would chal- lenge. For though there is here no work or strain in the thing, yet it reeks of English. It is like the mist over our valleys at evening, so effortless is it and so reposeful, and yet so native. Note the climax " On the Great Seal of England ' ' and the quaint, characteristic folklore of the concluding couplet, with its rhyming effect. Note also how sparing is William Shakespeare of the strong qualificative, however just it may be. For when our moderns will speak hardly of " the tolerant kine " or " the under-lit sky," or of " the creeping river like a worm upturned, with silver belly stiffened in the grass," though they be by all this infinitely stronger, yet are they but the more condensed and self-belittled. Shakespeare will write you ten lines and have in all but one just and sharp adjective — " stiff -set " ; for the rest they are a common highway ; he cares not. And here he is in the by-paths ; a meadow of Poesy. I have found it hidden away in one of the latter plays ; the flowers of his decline : " Fear no more the heat o 1 the sun, Nor the furious winter's rages ; Now thine earthly task is done, Thou'rt gone home and ta'en thy wages. Golden lads and lasses must, Like chimney-sweepers, come to dust." There is in that a line I swear no one but Shakespeare would have dared. "Thou'rt gone home an ta'en thy wages." Commonplace? A text on the wall? A sermon-tag ? All you will, but a frame for glory. This then is William Shakespeare in a last word. A SPECIAL PROSE 143 man at work full of doing ; the F ipyov : glad if you saw the mark of the chisel ; still more glad if you did not see it. And if it be queried why are such things written of him ? Why do we of the last and woeful days turn and return the matter of our past? We say this. Vixen Fortes ; that is, no fame were enduring save by continued iterance and echo of similar praise, nor any life well earned in the public sheets that dared not touch on any matter and remodel all. It is for ourselves and for William Shakespeare that these things are done. For ourselves, that is a private thing to hide under the veil of the Home-lofe. For William Shakespeare, that is the public duty, that his fame may not fail in the noise of new voices. And we can borrow from him and return to him what he said of another with such distinc- tion of plane and delicate observance of value : " So long as men shall breathe and eyes can see, This lives, and living, this gives life to thee." [Notices in this manner can be furnished at reasonable notice upon any poet, preferably a young or a modern poet, on the usual terms. The style is produced in seven distinct sizes, of which this is No. 3. Please state No. when ordering. All envelopes to be addressed. Mrs. Margaret Railston, c/o Charlie Bernberg, 48, Upper Gannimore Gardens, Shepherd's Bush, W. All envelopes to be marked " Appreciation.^ Accounts monthly. All cheques to be crossed " Becker, Becker, and Bernberg."] APPENDIX PRICES CURRENT In all ordinary lines Prices were well maintained and rising at the outbreak of the Spanish- American War. They rose sharply thenceforward till the second week of the war in South Africa, since which date they have been sagging, touching bed rock in the spring of this year (March, 1903). There has been a slight reaction since the beginning of the season, but it is not supported, and the market is still extremely dull. Patriotic Poems have fallen out of sight, and Criticism is going begging : in some offices books are no longer given to their reviewers : sub-editors have latterly been asked to bring their own suppers. The pinch is being felt everywhere. Police reports are on piece-work and the Religious Column is shut down to half shifts. Leader writers have broken from 1, 1 00 a year to 300. Editors have suffered an all- round cut in wages of 25 percent. Publishers' carrying- over days are more anxious than ever. Several first-class houses were hammered on the last contango, and the Banks are calling in loans. Private capital can hardly be obtained save for day-to-day transactions, and even so at very high rates of interest. The only lines that are well maintained are City Articles and Special Prose. Snippets are steady. 145 10 146 THE AFTERMATH The following list is taken from Hunter's Handbook, and represents Prices at the close of May : PROSE (Prices in shillings Special Prose Street Accidents ... Reviews Police Court Notices Guaranteed Libels Unguaranteed ditto Deferred ditto Pompous Leaders Smart Leaders Ten-line Leaderettes Political Appeals Attacks on Foreign Nations Dramatic Criticism Historical Work Religious Notes ... Attacks upon Christianity VERSE (Prices in fence per line.) Bad Verse ... No price can be given — very variable. Good minor Verse 3d. (much the same as last year). Special Verse ... 1 / - (a heavy fall). per thousand words.) Rise or Fall. 3°/- 35/- Unchanged. 10/- 12/- - 5/- 7/6 I0/- - 20/- «5/- l8/- - 5/- 25/' 3°/- - 3/- 5/- 7/- + 2/- 14/- 16/- + 4/- 8/- 10/- -25/-! ■ 9/- n/6 + 3/" . 10/- w- Unchanged. • i'5/- 17/- -3°/- 3/- 3l* -48/-!! 20/- 25/- Unchanged. • 6d.? (Practically no demand). . 12/- 18/- - 8/- 4/- 4/6 - 5/- (A very heavy fall for this kind of matter). APPENDIX 147 •| 3 ....= . . J £ . 2 *& 2 mo d h n n o tn > v ^ -> O .O O O O .« .m ^ „ D- g: c « § +- o c u = t » toco r^o ui » " a, ir. ^ I h* k « « to * 8 !g * JJ * z^s m S ' 5 : ' a ■ s l O ft « 2 J J J 2 *" 3 rS» a r^ ^.|^^-^^^> o-j c ^ 2 « CJ ^ *JS = m m « wi -S oT •> « .3 a II :::::•: ? 8. § I d ^ { . %t m> |.-S«a | Q^^ 1 . ::::::. £-00. 2 .c 'a & [£] a 3 c w 5 — s *• § 45 JVga * - « *> * xo.a.g g aB -jj ^ es Jv "-* ■ * — - *"**■-" "*"-- *"-■*-. t-1. X v— 1 -j 1) 5 « ? * M N N U) Tf N ^ . « j; !: " > ,, S .a »o *-- « m m o t» 1 '"S t»-" C S ^ „° « ~ £~ .2 o « 5 ::::::: 2 g « ° « & § T3 ^> n S a> _e >• u 3 s 2 pj u ^? ^> 2 ^ S,2 2 L'.y 5 K a <° -5 ^ ° J ='° © 2 ■i2 S ^+* H<^ W w Heg pj ,-fM • +- 2 ++ « «» *- <2 '§ a 148 THE AFTERMATH (The Sections dealing with "The Detection of Classical Authors" and "The Vivid Presenta- tion of History" have been omitted by request of the Family. It is perhaps as well.) NOTE ON TITLES The young journalist will never make an error as to the title of an individual, and his proper style and address, if he will but learn to trust the books of reference pro- vided by the office. They are far more accurate than other works of the kind.* Contrast, for instance, Bowley's Peerage and Baronetage with Bowley's Register of Events during the Past Year. What may be called " derivative titles " differ in the most complicated manner according to the rank of the parent. It would be quite impossible for the journalist to attempt to learn them. He had far better write plain " Lord " and " Lady " where he has occasion to, and on all other occasions whatsoever, "Mr." or, if he prefer the term, " Esquire." In conversation no Lord should be addressed as "My Lord," but a Bishoj should always be so addressed ; no Duke should be called "Your Grace" to his face, but it is courteous to bestow this honour upon an Archbishop. It is still more important to avoid the term "milady" in speaking to the consorts of the above named, especially * They are often inaccurate with regard to the past history of the families mentioned, and verv often wrong in the spelling of the family name; but these details are furnished by the families themselves, upon whom the responsibility must rest. APPENDIX 149 in the case of bishops' wives, to whom the title does not apply. Baronets, on the other hand, must always be addressed as "Sir," followed by a Christian name. The omission to do this has led to grievous trouble. The principal English titles are : Prince, Duke, Marquis, Marquess (a more recent creation), Earl, Baron; then comes a division; then Irish Peers, Baronets, Knights, and finally Members of the Victorian Order. The principal foreign titles are : Count, Viscount (which by the w^ay is also an English title, but I forgot it), Vidame, Chevalier, Excellency, Graf, Furst, Mar- grave, Baron, Boyar, Monsignor, and Grandee — the latter used only in Spain, Ceuta, and the other Spanish dominions beyond the seas. Imperial titles are : The Maharajah, the Maharanee, the Akon of Swat, the Meresala of Baghirmi, the Oyo of Oya, the Allemami of Foutazallam, the Ameer, the Emir, the Bally-o-Gum of Abe-o-Kuta,* and others too numerous to mention. All these should, in general, be addressed as "Your Highness." Colonials are called " The Honourable." NOTE ON STYLE One does well to have by one a few jottings that will enable one to add to one's compositions what one calls style in case it is demanded of one by an editor. I would not insist too much upon the point; it is simple enough, and the necessity of which I speak does not often crop up. But editors differ very much among * I omit the ex-Jumbi of Koto-Koto, a rebellious upstart whom the Imperial Government has very properly deposed. 15° THE AFTERMATH themselves, and every now and then one gets a manu- script returned with the note, "please improve style," in blue pencil, on the margin. If one had no idea as to the meaning of this a good deal of time might be wasted, so I will add here what are considered to be the five principal canons of style or good English. The first canon, of course, is that style should have Distinction. Distinction is a quality much easier to attain than it looks. It consists, on the face of it, in the selection of peculiar words and their arrangement in an odd and perplexing order, and the objection is commonly raised that such irregularities cannot be rapidly acquired. Thus the Chaplain of Barford, preaching upon style last Holy Week, remarked " there is a natural tendency in stating some useless and empty thing to express oneself in a common or vulgar manner." That is quite true, but it is a tendency which can easily be corrected, and I think that that sentence I have just quoted throws a flood of light on the reverend gentleman's own deficiencies. Of course no writer is expected to write or even to speak in this astonishing fashion, but what is easier than to go over one's work and strike out ordinary words? There should be no hesitation as to what to put in their place. Halliwell's " Dictionary of Archaic and Pro- vincial Words" will give one all the material one may require. Thus " lettick " is charming Rutlandshire for "decayed" or "putrescent," and " swinking " is a very good alternative for "working." It is found in Piers Plowman. It is very easy to draw up a list of such unusual words, each corresponding with some ordinary one, and APPENDIX 151 to pin it up where it will meet your eye. In all this matter prose follows very much the same rules as were discovered and laid down for verse on page 86. The second canon of style is that it should be obscure, universally and without exception. The disturbance of the natural order of words to which I have just alluded is a great aid, but it is not by any means the only way to achieve the result. One should also on occasion use several negatives one after the other, and the sly correc- tion of punctuation is very useful. I have known a fortune to be made by the omission of a full stop, and a comma put right in between a noun and its adjective was the beginning of Daniel Witton's reputation. A foreign word misspelt is also very useful. Still more useful is some allusion to some unimportant historical person or event of which your reader cannot possibly have heard. As to the practice, which has recently grown up, of writing only when one is drunk, or of introducing plain lies into every sentence, they are quite unworthy of the stylist properly so called, and can neyer permanently add to one's reputation. The third canon of style is the occasional omission of a verb or of the predicate. Nothing is more agreeably surprising, and nothing more effective. I have known an honest retired major-general, while reading a novel in his club, to stop puzzling at one place for an hour or more in his bewilderment at this delightful trick, and for years after he would exclaim with admiration at the style of the writer. The fourth canon of style is to use metaphors of a striking, violent, and wholly novel kind, in the place of 152 THE AFTERMATH plain statement : as, to say " the elassics were grafted on the standing stirp of his mind rather than planted in its soil," which means that the man had precious little Greek, or again, ' ' we propose to canalise, not to dam, the current of Afghan development," which means that the commander of our forces in India strongly refused to campaign beyond the Khyber. This method, which is invaluable for the purpose of flattering the rich, is very much used among the clergy, and had its origin in our great Universities, where it is employed to conceal ignorance, and to impart tone and vigour to the tedium of academic society. The late Bishop of Barchester was a past master of this manner, and so was Diggin, the war correspondent, who first talked of a gun " coughing " at one, and was sent home by Lord Kitchener for lying. The fifth canon of style is, that when you are bored with writing and do not know what to say next, you should hint at unutterable depths of idea by the intro- duction of a row of asterisks. THE ODE The writing of Odes seems to have passed so completely out of our literary life, that I thought it inadvisable to incorporate any remarks upon it with the standing part of my book, but I cannot refrain from saying a few words upon it in the Appendix, since 1 am convinced that it is destined to play a great part in the near future. APPENDIX 153 I will take for my example the well-known Ode {almost the only successful modern example of this form of composition) which was sung on the beach at Calshott Castle, by a selected choir, on the return of Mr. Joseph Chamberlain from South Africa; and I will use some passages from it in order to emphasize the leading principle that the Ode defends for its effective- ness almost entirely upon the music accompanying it. Thus, Mr. Daniel Witton's opening lines : " What stranger barque from what imperial shores The angry Solent dares to what mysterious goal?" would seem tame enough were it not for the wonderful rising of the notes which accompany them ; and the famous outburst : " She to Southampton steers !" is equally dependent upon the crash of music and the •combined voices of the whole choir. It is difficult for us, who have heard it rendered in the Albert Hall, to appreciate what the words would be without this adven- titious aid. Even the lovely single line, •' Lift up your head, Southampton, dry your honourable tears," would be less without the delicate soprano floating above its syllables. I will admit that the passage on the bodyguard of National Scouts is very fine, but then, precisely in proportion as it is effective qua literature, it fails to impress when accompanied by music, though the author of the score was wise enough to set it to a somewhat monotonous recitative. If the student will read the 154 THE AFTERMATH lines slowly to himself, first with, and then without, the notes, he will see what I mean. " And who more fit than they Whose better judgment led them to betray An aged leader and a failing cause Because — Because they found it pay." Mr. Daniel Witton did not write that word "because " twice over in his original manuscript. He put it in twice to please the musician (whose ignorance of the English tongue was a great handicap throughout), and, as I at least think, he made an error in so doing. All that passage where the great politician "... taking off his hat," comes into the palace at Pretoria, where "... in awful state alone, Alone, the scientific Monist sat, Who guards our realm, extends its narrow bounds, And to achieve his end. Is quite prepared to spend The inconceivably imperial sum of twice three hundred times five hundred thousand pounds," shows the grave difficulty of wedding the verse to the music. The last line is intolerably clumsy, when read without the air accompanying it ; and the whole illus- trates very well my contention that music should be the chief thing in the composition of an ode, and that the libretto should be entirely subservient to it. A still better example is found in the great chorus " Pretoria," which begins — " Pretoria with her hundred towers Acknowledges his powers," APPENDIX 155 and " Johannesburg," which ends — " Heil ! heil ! hoch ! heil ! du ubermenslich' wohl-gebornen Graf von Chamberlein, While underground, While underground, Such rare and scattered Kaffirs as are found Repeat the happy, happy, happy, happy, sound." And of course the lyric at the end — " All in his train de luxe Reading selected books, Including Conan Doyle's ingenious fiction And popular quota- Tions, verses by the way For which he has a curious predilection, And Mr. Werther's work Called ' England shall not shirk,' Or ' The Cape to Cairo, Kairouan and Cadiz,' And ' Burke,' and ' Who is Who,' And ' Men and Women ' too, And ' Etiquette for Gentlemen and Ladies,' " Et cetera, et cetera. All that lyric depends entirely for its effects upon the little Venetian air taken from Sullivan, who himself took it from Verdi, who got it from a Gondolier. The words by themselves have no beauty whatsoever. Indeed, I think in the whole Ode there is but one exception to the rule I have laid down, and that is at the very end, where they sing of the accomplished task and, in a fine hyperbole, of the " Great story that shall shake the affrighted years." The last five lines are such good music and such good verse that I cannot dissociate one from the other : " Chorus. And now returns he, turns, turns he to his own — Trombone. Ah, maddened with delight, I welcome him upon the loud trombone. 156 THE AFTERMATH The Bass Drum. I, in more subtle wise, Upon the big bass drum. The Tenor. And I upon the trembling flute, that shrieks and languishes and dies. All Three. Welcome, and make a widowed land rejoice : Welcome, attuned voice ; — Sweet eyes !" It is a very fine ending, and I congratulate Mr. Daniel Witton upon it most sincerely. . . . ***** It reminds one of the Bacchse. ***** Should the student desire to attempt something of the kind for himself, he cannot do better than to invite a musical friend and compose the ode strictly in con- junction with him; neither should write separately from the other, and let there be no quarrels or tantrums, but let each be ready to give way. I suggest, as a subject for this exercise, a Funeral Ode upon the same statesman, to be sung when occasion serves. ON REMAINDERS AND PULPING Should the student aspire to collect his journalistic work, or the less ephemeral part of it, into book form, he will do well to apply to some old and established firm of publishers, who will give him a reasonable estimate for its production, plus the cost of advertising, ware- housing, wear and tear, office expenses, etc., etc., to which must be added the customary Fee. The book so issued will be sent to the Press for notice APPENDIX 157 and review, and will, some weeks later, be either Re- maindered or Pulped. It is important to have a clear idea of these processes which accompany an author throughout his career. A book is said to be Remaindered when it is sold to the second-hand bookseller in bulk; 10 per cent, of the sums so received, less the cost of cartage to and fro from shop to shop, and the wages of the Persuader who attempts to sell the volumes, is then credited to the author in his account, which is usually pressed upon the completion of the transaction. The less fortunate must be content with Pulping. In the midst of their chagrin they will be consoled by the thought that their book enjoys a kind of resurrection, and will reappear beneath some other, and — who knows ? — perhaps some nobler form. The yery paper upon which these words are printed may once have formed part of a volume of verse, or of Imperialist pamphlets subsi- dised by the South African Women's League. A book is said to be Pulped when it is sold at so many pence the thousand copies to the Pulpers* for Pulping. The transformation is effected as follows : First the covers are thoroughly and skilfully torn off the edition by girls known as "Scalpers" or "Skin- ners," and the Poems (or whatnot), after going through this first process, are shot in batches of twenty-four into a trough, which communicates by an inclined plane with open receptacles known technically as "bins." Hence the sheets are taken out by another batch of hands known as ' ' feeders ' ' — for it is their duty to ' ' feed ' ' the mar- * Messrs. Ibbotson, of Fetter-lane, and Charlton and Co., of St. Anne's, are the best-known Pulpers. 158 THE AFTERMATH vellous machine which is the centre of the whole works. The Poems (as we may imagine them to be) are next thrown by the " feeders," with a certain rapid and practised gesture, into a funnel-shaped receiver, where they are caught by Six Large Rows of strong Steel Teeth* known as the "Jaws," which are so arranged as just barely to miss each other ; these work alternatively back and forth, and reduce the hardest matter to shreds in an incredibly short time. The shreds so formed fall on to a wide endless band, which carries them on into the " bowl," where they are converted under a continual stream of boiling water, into a kind of loose paste. Lest any trace of the original Poetic (or Prose) composition could remain to trouble the whiteness of the rapidly forming mixture, this water contains a 30 per cent, solution of Sardonic Oxide, two kilogrammes of which will bleach one thousand kilos of shredded Poems or Essays in from thirty -five to forty minutes. When the Poems or whatnot have been finally reduced to a white and formless mass, they are termed -pulf and this pulp is laid out into frames, to be con- verted once more into paper, Art, glazed, and medium. This principle of "the Conservation of Paper" or, as Lord Balton (Sir Charles Quarry) has himself called it, "the Circulation of Literature," is naturally more developed among the Anglo-Saxon peoples than upon the Continent. The patriotic reader will be pleased to * Until Lord Balton (then Sir Charles Quarry) invented this part of the machine, poems, apologies for Christianity, etc., in fact all kinds of books, had to be torn laboriously into minute pieces by hand. It is difficult for us to realise now-a- days what exertion this involved. We live in an age of machinery ! i APPENDIX 159 hear that whereas of existing German books barely 35 per cent, are pulped within the year, of French books not 27 per cent., and of Italian but 15 per cent. ; of our total production — which is far larger — no less than 73 per cent, are restored to their original character of useful blank paper within the year, ready to receive further impressions of Human Genius and to speed on its accelerated round the progress of Mankind. Amen. INDEX Abingdon, History of, by Lord Charles Gamber, see Pulping, p. 187. Action, Combination of, with Plot, Powerful Effect of, in Modern Novels, see Pulping, p. 187. Advertisement, Folly and Waste of, see Pulping, p. 187. Affection, Immoderate, for our own Work, Cure of, see Pulping, p. 187. All Souls, College of, see Pulping, p. 187. Amusements of Printers and Publishers, see Pulping, p. 187. Art, Literary, Ultimate End of, see Pulping, p. 187. Astonishment of Young Poet, see Pulping, p. 187. Authorship, Vanity of Human, see Pulping, p. 187. Baronets, Family Histories of, see Pulping, p. 187. Benjamin Kidd, see Kidd. Beaune, Wine of, Its Consoling Qualities, see Pulping, p. 187. Beotius, Decline in Sale of Works of, see Pulping, p. 187. Bilge, Literature so Termed, see Pulping, p. 187. Bird, The Honourable, his " Essay on Popery," see Pulping, p. 187. Books, see Pulping, p. 187. Bore, Books that, see Pulping, p. 187. Boston, Effect of, upon American Culture, see Pulping, p. 187. Cabs, Necessity of, to Modern Publisher, see Pulping, p. 187. Cabs to Authors, Unwarrantable Luxury, see Pulping, p. 187. Call, Divine, to a Literary Career, see Pulping, p. 187. Curse, Publishers a, see Pulping, p. 187. Curzon, Lord, his Literary Works, see Pulping, p. 187. i ii THE AFTERMATH Damn, Expletive, When Used, see Pulping, p. 187. Damn, Thirteen Qualifications of Same, see Pulping, p. 187. Daniel in Lion's Den Compared to a Just Author, see Pulping, p. 187. Dogs, Reputation Going to the, see Pulping, p. 187. Dowagers, Novels Written by, see Pulping, p. 187. Doyle, Conan, see O'Doyle. Dozen, Trade Term for Thirteen, see Pulping, p. 187. Dreyfus, Literature upon, see Pulping, p. 187. Education, Futility of, see Pulping, p. 187. Eighty Club, see Female Suffrage, also Suffrage. Elders, see Suzanna. England, Source and Wealth of, see Pulping, p. 187. Evil, Origin of, see Pulping, p. 187. Fame, see Pulping, p. 187. Fate, see Pulping, p. 187. Finesse, see Pulping, p. 187. Finland, Doom of, see Pulping, p. 187. Francis of Assisi, Saint, Modern Books on, see Pulping, p. 187. Fuss, Folly of, see Pulping, p. 187. Genius, Indestructibility of, see Pulping, p. 187. Hanging, Suicide by, when Caused by Failure, see Pulping, p. 187. Heaven, Monkish Fables upon, see Pulping, p. 187. Hell, ditto, see Pulping, p. 187. Howl, The Sudden, When Excusable, see Pulping, p. 187. " Huguenot," pseudonym, his " Influence of Jesuits in Europe," see Pulping, p. 187. India, Lord Curzon's Views on, see Pulping, p. 187. Inspiration, Sole Source of Poetry, see Pulping, p. 187. Jesuits, Their Reply to " Huguenot," see Pulping, p. 187. INDEX iii Kidd, E'enjamin, Philosophy of, see Pulping, p. 187. Kruger, Memoirs of, see Pulping, p. 187. Lamb, Charles, Centenary Edition of, see Pulping, p. 187. London, Fascination of, see Pulping, p. 187. " Lunaticus," his Essays on Foreign Politics, see Pulping, p. 187. Luzon, " How Old Glory Floats Over" (Putnam and Co., 3 dollars), see Pulping, p. 187. Mach6, Papier, see Pulping, p. 187. " Mamma," " Darling Old," Story for Children, by the Countess of K , see Pulping, p. 187. Milner, Lord, Proclamations of, see Pulping, p. 187. Moulds, Modern Books Printed from, see Pulping, 187. " Mucker," " To Come a," Publishers' slang, see Pulping, p. 187. Name, Real, of " Diplomaticus," see Pulping, p. 187. O'Doyle, Conan, Political Works of, see Pulping, p. 187. Opper, Caricatures of England by, see Pulping, p. 187. Paper, How Procured, see Pulping, p. 187. Profits, Half, System of, see Pulping, p. 187. Pulping, p. 187. Queen of Roumania, Verses by, see Pulping, p. 187. Rhodes, Cecil, Numerous Lives of, see Pulping, p. 187. Rot, Inevitable End of, see Pulping, p. 187. Rubbish, Common Fate of, see Pulping, p. 187. Sabatier, see Pulping, p. 187. Soul, Human, What is the, by James Heading, see Pulping, p. 187. Suffrage, Female, Arguments For and Against, by Members of the Eighty Club, see Pulping, p. 187. Suzanna and the Elders, Sacred Poem, see Pulping, p. 187. iv THE AFTERMATH Tax, Bread, Repeal of, see Pulping, p. 187. Times Newspaper, History of War in South Africa, see Pulping, p. 187. Times, Obituary Notices of, Reprinted, see Pulping, p. 187. Times, All Republications from, see Pulping, p. 187. Transvaal, Truth About, by Patrick FitzPatrick, see Pulping, p. 187. Uganda Railway, Balance-sheet of, see Pulping, p. 187. Vanitas, Vanitatum, see Vanitatura. Vanitatum, Vanitas, see Pulping, p. 187. Vindex, his Great Biography of Cecil Rhodes, see Pulping, p. 187. W. X. Y. Z., see Pulping, p. 187. LAMBKIN'S REMAINS DEDICATION TO THE REPUBLICAN CLUB I AM DETERMINED TO DEDICATE THIS BOOK, AND NOTHING SHALL TURN ME FROM MY PURPOSE DEDICATORY ODE I mean to write with all my strength (It lately has been sadly waning), A ballad of enormous length — Some parts of which will need explaining.* Because (unlike the bulk of men, Who write for fame and public ends) I turn a lax and fluent pen To talking of my private friends, t For no one, in our long decline, So dusty, spiteful, and divided, Had quite such pleasant friends as mine, Or loved them half as much as I did. ***** The Freshman ambles down the High, In love with everything he sees, He notes the clear October sky, He sniffs a vigorous western breeze. * But do not think I shall explain To any great extent. Believe me, I partly write to give you pain, And if you do not like me, leave me. + And least of all can you complain, Reviewers, whose unholy trade is, To puff with all your might and main Biographies of single ladies. 165 166 DEDICATORY ODE " Can this be Oxford ? This the place " (He cries), " of which my father said The tutoring was a damned disgrace, The creed a mummery, stuffed and dead? " Can it be here that Uncle Paul Was driven by excessive gloom, To drink and debt, and, last of all, To smoking opium in his room ? "Is it from here the people come, Who talk so loud, and roll their eyes, And stammer ? How extremely rum ! How curious ! What a great surprise. ' ' Some influence of a nobler day Than theirs (I mean than Uncle Paul's), Has roused the sleep of their decay, And decked with light their ancient walls. " O ! dear undaunted boys of old, Would that your names were carven here, For all the world in stamps of gold, That I might read them and revere. ' ' Who wrought and handed down for me This Oxford of the larger air, Laughing, and full of faith, and free, With youth resplendent everywhere." Then learn : thou ill-instructed, blind, Young, callow, and untutored man, Their private names were * Their club was called Republican. ***** * Never mind. DEDICATORY ODE 167 Where on their banks of light they lie, The happy hills of Heaven between, The Gods that rule the morning sky Are not more young, nor more serene Than were the intrepid Four that stand, The first who dared to live their dream, And on this uncongenial land To found the Abbey of Theleme. We kept the Rabelaisian plan :* We dignified the dainty cloisters With Natural Law, the Rights of Man, Song, Stoicism, Wine, and Oysters. The library was most inviting : The books upon the crowded shelves Were mainly of our private writing : We kept a school and taught ourselves. We taught the art of writing things On men we still should like to throttle : And where to get the blood of kings At only half-a-crown a bottle. * Eheu Fugaces ! Postume ! (An old quotation out of mode) My coat of dreams is stolen away, My youth is passing down the road. ■*#•*■** * The plan forgot (I know not how, Perhaps the Refectory filled it) To put a chapel in : and now We're mortgaging the rest to build it. 168 DEDICATORY ODE The wealth of youth, we spent it well And decently, as very few can. And is it lost ? I cannot tell ; And what is more, I doubt if you can. The question's very much too wide, And much too deep, and much too hollow, And learned men on either side Use arguments I cannot follow. They say that in the unchanging place, Where all we loved is always dear, We meet our morning face to face, And find at last our twentieth year. . . . They say (and I am glad they say), It is so ; and it may be so : It may be just the other way, I cannot tell. But this I know : From quiet homes and first beginning, Out to the undiscovered ends, There's nothing worth the wear of winning, But laughter and the love of friends. ***** But something dwindles, oh ! my peers, And something cheats the heart and passes, And Tom that meant to shake the years Has come to merely rattling glasses. And He, the Father of the Flock, Is keeping Burmesans in order, An exile on a lonely rock That overlooks the Chinese border. DEDICATORY ODE 169 And One (myself I mean — no less), Ah ! — will Posterity believe it — Not only don't deserve success, But hasn't managed to achieve it. Not even this peculiar town Has ever fixed a friendship firmer, But — one is married, one's gone down, And one's a Don, and one's in Burmah. ***** And oh ! the days, the days, the days, When all the four were off together : The infinite deep of summer haze, The roaring boast of autumn weather ! ***** I will not try the reach again, I will not set my sail alone, To moor a boat bereft of men At Yarnton's tiny docks of stone. But I will sit beside the fire, And put my hand before my eyes, And trace, to fill my heart's desire, The last of all our Odysseys. The quiet evening kept her tryst : Beneath an open sky we rode, And mingled with a wandering mist Along the perfect Evenlode. The tender Evenlode that makes Her meadows hush to hear the sound Of waters mingling in the brakes, And binds my heart to English ground. i 7 o DEDICATORY ODE A lovely river, all alone, She lingers in the hills and holds A hundred little towns of stone, Forgotten in the western wolds. ***** I dare to think (though meaner powers Possess our thrones, and lesser wits Are drinking worser wine than ours, In what's no longer Austerlitz) That surely a tremendous ghost, The brazen-lunged, the bumper-filler, Still sings to an immortal toast, The Misadventures of the Miller. The vasty seas are hardly bar To men with such a prepossession ; We were? Why then, by God, we are — Order ! I call the club to session ! You do retain the song we set, And how it rises, trips, and scans? You keep the sacred memory yet, Republicans ? Republicans ? You know the way the words were hurled, To break the worst of fortune's rub? I give the toast across the world, And drink it, "Gentlemen : the Club." CONTENTS PAGE DEDICATORY ODE - - - - 165 PREFACE - - - - " 173 I. INTRODUCTORY - - - "177 II. lambkin's NEWDIGATE - - - 186 III. SOME REMARKS ON LAMBKIN'S PROSE STYLE 1 92 IV. LAMBKIN'S ESSAY ON "SUCCESS" • - 1 96 V. LAMBKIN ON " SLEEP " - - - 202 VI. LAMBKIN'S ADVICE TO FRESHMEN - - 205 VII. LAMBKIN'S LECTURE ON " RIGHT " - - 211 VIII. LAMBKIN'S SPECIAL CORRESPONDENCE - 217 IX. LAMBKIN'S ADDRESS TO THE LEAGUE OF PROGRESS ----- 226 X. LAMBKIN'S LEADER - - - " 2 33 XI. LAMBKIN'S REMARKS ON THE END OF TERM 236 XII. LAMBKIN'S ARTICLE ON THE NORTH-WEST CORNER OF THE MOSAIC PAVEMENT OF THE ROMAN VILLA AT BIGNOR - - 241 XIII. LAMBKIN'S SERMON - - - - 247 XIV. LAMBKIN'S OPEN LETTER TO CHURCHMEN - 254 XV. LAMBKIN'S LETTER TO A FRENCH FRIEND - 260 XVI. INTERVIEW WITH MR. LAMBKIN - - 266 I 7 I PREFACE The preparation of the ensuing pages has been a labour of love, and has cost me many an anxious hour. " Of the writing of books," says the learned Psalmist (or more probably a Syro-Chaldseic scribe of the third century) "there is no end"; and truly it is a very solemn thought that so many writers, furnishing the livelihood of so many publishers, these in their turn supporting so many journals, reviews, and magazines, and these last giving bread to such a vast army of editors, reviewers, and what not — I say it is a very solemn thought that this great mass of people should be engaged upon labour of this nature; labour which, rightly applied, might be of immeasurable service to humanity, but which is, alas ! so often diverted into useless or even positively harmful channels : channels upon which I could write at some length, were it not necessary for me, however, to bring this reflection to a close. A fine old Arabic poem — probably the oldest complete literary work in the world — (1 mean the Comedy which we are accustomed to call the Book of Job)* contains * There can be no doubt that the work is a true example of the early Semitic Comedy. It was probably sung in Parts at the Spring-feast, and would be acted by shepherds wear- ing masks and throwing goatskins at one another, as they appear on the Bas-relief at Ik-shumul. See the article in Righteousness, by a gentleman whom the Bible Society sent out to Assyria at their own expense ; and the note to Appendix A of Benson's Og: King oj Bashan. 173 174 PREFACE hidden away among its many treasures die phrase, "Oh ! that mine enemy had written a book !" This craving for literature, which is so explicable in a primitive people, and the half-savage desire that the labour of writing should fall upon a foeman captured in battle, have given place in the long process of historical develop- ment to a very different spirit. There is now, if any- thing, a superabundance of literature, and an apology is needed for the appearance of such a work as this, nor, indeed, would it have been brought out had it not been imagined that Lambkin's many friends would give it a ready sale. Animaxander, King of the Milesians, upon being asked by the Emissary of Atarxessus what was, in his opinion, the most wearying thing in the world, replied by cutting off the head of the messenger, thus outraging the religious sense of a time to which guests and heralds were sacred, as being under the special protection of Zei5s (pronounced " Tsephs "). Warned by the awful fate of the sacrilegious monarch, I will put a term to these opening remarks. My book must be its own preface, I would that the work could be also its own publisher, its own bookseller, and its own reviewer. It remains to me only to thank the many gentlemen who have aided me in my task with the loan of letters, scraps of MSS., portraits, and pieces of clothing — in fine, with all that could be of interest in illustrating Lambkin's career. My gratitude is especially due to Mr. Binder, who helped in part of the writing ; to Mr. Cook, who was kind enough to look over the proofs ; and to Mr. Wallingford, Q.C., who very kindly con- PREFACE 175 sented to receive an advance copy. I must also thank the Bishop of Bury for his courteous sympathy and ever-ready suggestion; I must not omit from this list M. Hertz, who has helped me with French, and whose industry and gentlemanly manners are particularly pleasing. I cannot close without tendering my thanks in general to the printers who have set up this book, to the agencies which have distributed it, and to the booksellers, who have put it upon their shelves ; I feel a deep debt of gratitude to a very large number of people, and that is a pleasant sensation for a man who, in the course of a fairly successful career, has had to give (and receive) more than one shrewd knock. The Chaplaincy, Burfoed College, Oxford. P.S. — I have consulted, in the course of this work, Liddell and Scott's Larger Greek Lexicon, Smith's Dic- tionary of Antiquities, Skeat's Etymological Dictionary, Le Dictionaire Franco- Anglais, et Anglo-Francais, of Boileau, Curtis' English Synonyms, Buffle on Punctua- tion, and many other authorities which will be acknow- ledged in the text. LAMBKIN'S REMAINS BEING THE UNPUBLISHED WORKS OF J. A. LAMBKIN, M.A., Sometime Fellow of Burford College. I INTRODUCTORY It is without a trace of compunction or regret that I prepare to edit the few unpublished essays, sermons, and speeches of my late dear friend, Mr. Lambkin. On the contrary, I am filled with a sense that my labour is one to which the clearest interests of the whole English people call me, and I have found myself, as the work grew under my hands, fulfilling, if I may say so with due modesty, a high and noble duty. I remember Lambkin himself, in one of the last conversations I had with him, saying with the acuteness that charac- terised him, " The world knows nothing of its greatest men." This pregnant commentary upon human affairs was, I admit, produced by an accident in the Oxford Herald which concerned myself. In a description of a Public Function my name had been mis-spelt, and though I was deeply wounded and offended, I was careful (from a feeling which I hope is common to all of us) to make no more than the slightest reference to this insult. 177 12 178 LAMBKIN'S REMAINS The acute eye of friendship and sympathy, coupled with the instincts of a scholar and a gentleman, per- ceived my irritation, and in the evening Lambkin uttered the memorable words that I have quoted. I thanked him warmly, but, if long acquaintance had taught him my character, so had it taught me his. I knew the reticence and modesty of my colleague, the almost morbid fear that vanity (a vice which he detested) might be imputed to him on account of the exceptional gifts which he could not entirely ignore or hide; and I was certain that the phrase which he constructed to heal my wound was not without some reference to his own unmerited obscurity. The world knows nothing of its greatest men ! Josiah Lambkin ! from whatever Cypress groves of the underworld which environs us when on dark winter even- ings in the silence of our own souls which nothing can dissolve though all attunes to that which nature herself perpetually calls us, always, if we choose but to remember, your name shall be known wherever the English language and its various dialects are spoken. The great All-mother has made me the humble instru- ment, and I shall perform my task as you would have desired it in a style which loses half its evil by losing all its rhetoric ; I shall pursue my way and turn neither to the right nor to the left, but go straight on in the fearless old English fashion till it is completed. Josiah Abraham Lambkin was born of well-to-do and gentlemanly parents in Bayswater* on January 19th, 1843. His father, at the time of his birth, entertained * The house is now occupied by Mr. Heavy, the well-known financier. INTRODUCTORY 179 objections to the great Public Schools, largely founded upon his religious leanings, which were at that time opposed to the ritual of those institutions. In spite therefore of the .vehement protestations of his mother (who was distantly connected on the maternal side with the Cromptons of Cheshire) the boy passed his earlier years under the able tutorship of a Nonconformist divine, and later passed into the academy of Dr. Whortlebury at Highgate.* Of his school-days he always spoke with some bitter- ness. He appears to have suffered considerably from bullying, and the Headmaster, though a humane, was a blunt man, little fitted to comprehend the delicate nature with which he had to deal. On one occasion the nervous susceptible lad found it necessary to lay before him a description of the treatment to which he had been subjected by a younger and smaller, but much stronger boy ; the pedagogue's only reply was to flog Lambkin heartily with a light cane, " inflicting," as he himself once told me, "such exquisite agony as would ever linger in his memory." Doubtless this teacher of the old school thought he was (to use a phrase then common) "making a man of him," but the object was not easily to be attained by brutal means. Let us be thankful that these punishments have nearly disappeared from our modern seminaries. When Josiah was fifteen years of age, his father, having prospered in business, removed to Eaton Square * The old school house has been pulled down to make room for a set of villas called "Whortlebury Gardens." I believe No. 35 to be the exact spot, but was unable to determine it • " 1 urately on account of the uncourteous action of the present proprietor. 180 LAMBKIN'S REMAINS and bought an estate in Surrey. The merchant's mind, which, though rough, was strong and acute, had mean- while passed through a considerable change in the matter of religion ; and as the result of long but silent self- examination he became the ardent supporter of a system which he had formerly abhorred. It was therefore determined to send the lad to one of the two great Universities, and though Mrs. Lambkin's second cousins, the Crumptons, had all been to Cambridge, Oxford was finally decided upon as presenting the greater social opportunities at the time.* Here, then, is young Lambkin, in his nineteenth year, richly but soberly dressed, and eager for the new life that opens before him. He was entered at Burford College on October the 15th, 1861 ; a date which is, by a curious coincidence, exactly thirty-six years, four months, and two days from the time in which I pen these lines. Of his undergraduate career there is little to be told. Called by his enemies " The Burford Bounder," or " dirty Lambkin," he yet acquired the respect of a small but choice circle who called him by his own name. He was third froxime accessit for the Johnson prize in Biblical studies, and would undoubtedly have obtained (or been mentioned for) the Newdigate, had he not been pitted against two men of quite exceptional poetic gifts — the present editor of " The Investor's Sure Prophet," and Mr. Hound, the well-known writer on " Food Statistics." He took a good Second-class in Greats in the summer of 1864, and was immediately elected to a fellowship * I am speaking of 1861. INTRODUCTORY 181 at Burford. It was not known at the time that his father had become a bankrupt through lending large sums at a high rate of interest to a young heir without security, trusting to the necessity under which his name and honour would put him to pay. In the shipwreck of the family fortunes, the small endowment was a veritable godsend to Josiah, who but for this recognition of his merits would have been compelled to work for his living. As it was, his peculiar powers were set free to plan his great monograph on " Being," a work which, to the day of his death, he designed not only to write but to publish. There was not, of course, any incident of note in the thirty years during which he held his fellowship. He did his duty plainly as it lay before him, occasionally taking pupils, and after the Royal Commission, even giving lectures in the College hall. He was made Junior Dean in October, 1872, Junior Bursar in 1876, and Bursar in 1880, an office which he held during the rest of his life. In this capacity no breath of calumny ever touched him. His character was spotless. He never offered or took compensations of any kind, and no one has hinted that his accounts were not accurately and strictly kept. He never allowed himself to be openly a candidate for the Wardenship of the College, but it is remarkable that he received one vote at each of the three elections held in the twenty years of his residence. He passed peacefully away just after Hall on the Gaudy Night of last year. When his death was reported, an old scout, ninety-two years of age, who had grown 182 LAMBKTN'S REMAINS deaf in the service of the College, burst into tears and begged that the name might be more clearly repeated to him, as he had failed to catch it. On hearing it he dried his eyes, and said he had never known a better master. His character will, I think, be sufficiently evident in the writings which I shall publish. He was one of nature's gentlemen; reticent, just, and full of self- respect. He hated a scene, and was careful to avoid giving rise even to an argument. On the other hand, he was most tenacious of his just rights, though charitable to the deserving poor, and left a fortune of thirty-five thousand pounds. In the difficult questions which arise from the superior rank of inferiors he displayed a constant tact and judg- ment. It is not always easy for a tutor to control and guide the younger members of the aristocracy without being accused of pitiless severity on the one hand or of gross obsequiousness on the other. Lambkin, to his honour, contrived to direct with energy and guide with- out offence the men upon whom England's greatness depends. He was by no means a snob — snobbishness was not in him. On the other hand, he was equally removed from what is almost worse than snobbishness — the morbid terror of subservience which possesses some ill-balanced minds. His attitude was this : that we are compelled to admit the aristocratic quality of the English polity and should, while decently veiling its cruder aspects, enjoy to the full the benefits which such a constitution confers upon society and upon our individual selves. INTRODUCTORY 183 By a genial observance of such canons he became one of the most respected among those whom the chances of an academic career presented to him as pupils or parents. He was the guest and honoured friend of the Duke of Cumberland, the Duke of Pembroke, the Duke of Limerick ("Mad Harry"), and the Duke of Lincoln; he had also the honour of holding a long conversation with the Duke of Berkshire, whom he met upon the top of an omnibus in Piccadilly and instantly recognised. He possessed letters, receipts or communications from no less than four Marquises, one Marquess, ten Barons, sixteen Baronets, and one hundred and twenty County Gentlemen. I must not omit Lord Grumbletooth, who had had commercial dealings with his father, and who remained to the end of his life a cordial and devoted friend.* His tact in casual conversation was no less remark- able than his general savoir faire in the continuous business of life. Thus upon one occasion a royal personage happened to be dining in Hall. It was some days after the death of Mr. Hooligan, the well- known Home Rule leader. The distinguished guest, with perhaps a trifle of licence, turned to Lambkin and said, " Well, Mr. Bursar, what do you think of Hooligan?" We observed a respectful silence and wondered what reply Lambkin would give in these difficult circumstances. The answer was like a bolt from the blue, " De mortuis nil nisi bonum," said the Classical Scholar, and a murmur of applause went round the table. * Mr. Lambkin has assured me that his lordship had main- tained these relations to the day of his death. 184 LAMBKIN'S REMAINS Indeed his political views were perhaps the most remarkable feature in a remarkable character. He died a convinced and staunch Liberal Unionist, and this was the more striking as he was believed by all his friends to be a conservative until the introduction of Mr. Gladstone's famous Bill in 1885. In the delicate matter of religious controversy his own writings must describe him, nor will I touch here upon a question which did not rise to any considerable public importance until after his death. Perhaps I may be permitted to say this much ; he was a sincere Christian in the true sense of the word, attached to no narrow formularies, but following as closely as he could the system of Seneca, stiffened (as it were) with the medita- tions of Marcus Aurelius, though he was never so violent as to attempt a practice of what that extreme stoic laid down in theory. Neither a ritualist nor a low-churchman, he expressed his attitude by a profound and suggestive silence. These words only escaped him upon one single occasion. Let us meditate upon them well in the stormy discussions of to-day : " Medio tutissimus ibis." His learning and scholarship, so profound in the dead languages, was exercised with singular skill and taste in the choice he made of modern authors. He was ignorant of Italian, but thoroughly conversant with the French classics, which he read in the admirable translations of the ' ' Half-crown Series. ' ' His principal reading here was in the works of Voltaire, wherein, however, he confessed, " He could find no style, and little more than blasphemous ribaldry." Indeed, of the European languages he would read German with the INTRODUCTORY 185 greatest pleasure, confining himself chiefly to the writ- ings of Lessing, Kant, and Schiller. His mind acquired by this habit a singular breadth and fecundity, his style a kind of rich confusion, and his speech (for he was able to converse a little in that idiom) was strengthened by expressions of the deepest philosophic import; a habit which gave him a peculiar and individual power over his pupils, who mistook the teutonic gutturals for violent objurgations. Such was the man, such the gentleman, the true " Hglaford," the modern " Godgebidden Eorldeman- thingancanning," whose inner thoughts shall unroll themselves in the pages that follow. II LAMBKIN'S NEWDIGATE POEM WRITTEN FOR " NEWDIGATE PRIZE " IN ENGLISH VERSE By J. A. Lambkin, Esq., of Burford College N .B. — [The competitors are confined to the use of Rhymed Heroic Iambic Pentameters, but the introduction of Lyrics is permitted]. Subject: "The Benefits Conferred by Science, especially in connection with the electric Light For the benefit of those who do not care to read through the Poem but desire to know its contents, 1 offend the follow- ing headings : Invocation to the Muse Hail ! Happy Muse, and touch the tuneful string ! The benefits conferred by Science* I sing. His Theme : the Electric Light and its Benefits Under the kind Examiners'! direction I only write about them in connection With benefits which the Electric Light Confers on us; especially at night. * To be pronounced as a monosyllable in the American fashion. t Mr. Punt, Mr. Howl, and Mr. Grewcock (now, alas ! deceased). 186 "j LAMBKIN'S NEWDIGATE 187 These are my theme, of these my song shall rise. My lofty head shall swell to strike the skies,* And tears of hopeless love bedew the maiden's eyes. Second Invocation to the Muse Descend, O Muse, from thy divine abode, Osney To Osney, 'on the Seven Bridges Road ; For under Osney 's solitary shade The bulk of the Electric Light is made. Here are the works, from hence the current flows Which (so the Company's prospectus goes) Power of Works there Can furnish to Subscribers hour by hour No less than sixteen thousand candle power, f All at a thousand volts. (It is essential To keep the current at this high potential In spite of the considerable expense.) Statistics concerning Them The Energy developed represents, Expressed in foot-tons, the united forces Of fifteen elephants and forty horses. But shall my scientific detail thus Clip the dear wings of Buoyant Pegasus? * A neat rendering of " Sublimi feriam sidera vertice." f To the Examiners. — These facts (of which I guarantee the accuracy) were given me by a Director. i88 LAMBKIN'S REMAINS Poetical or Rhetorical Questions Shall pure statistics jar upon the ear That pants for Lyric accents loud and clear ? Shall I describe the complex Dynamo Or write about its commutator? No ! The Theme changes To happier fields I lead my wanton pen, The proper study of mankind is men. Third Invocation to the Muse Awake, my Muse ! Portray the pleasing sight That meets us where they make Electric Light. A Picture of the Electrician Behold the Electrician where he stands : Soot, oil, and verdigris are on his hands; Large spots of grease defile his dirty clothes, The while his conversation drips with oaths. Shall such a being perish in its youth? Alas ! it is indeed the fatal truth. In that dull brain, beneath that hair unkempt, Familiarity has bred contempt. We warn him of the gesture all too late ; Oh, Heartless Jove ! Oh, Adamantine Fate ! His Awful Fate Some random Touch — a hand's imprudent slip- The Terminals — a flash — a sound like " Zip !" A smell of burning fills the startled Air — The Electrician is no longer there ! * * * * * LAMBKIN'S NEWDIGATE 189 He changes his Theme But let us turn with true Artistic scorn From facts funereal and from views forlorn Of Erebus and Blackest midnight born.* Fourth Invocation to the Muse Arouse thee, Muse ! and chaunt in accents rich The interesting processes by which The Electricity is passed along : These are my theme, to these I bend my song. Description of Method by which the Current is USED It runs encased in wood or porous brick Through copper wires two millimetres thick, And insulated on their dangerous mission By indiarubber, silk, or composition, Here you may put with critical felicity The following question : " What is Electricity?" Difficulty of determining Nature of Electricity "Molecular Activity," say some, Others when asked say nothing, and are dumb. Whatever be its nature : this is clear, The rapid current checked in its career, Baulked in its race and halted in its course! Transforms to heat and light its latent force : * A reminiscence of Milton : " Fas est et ab hoste doceri." f Lambkin told me he regretted this line, which was for the sake of Rhyme. He would willingly have replaced it, but to his last day could construct no substitute, 19© LAMBKIN'S REMAINS Conservation of Energy. Proofs of this : no Experiment needed It needs no pedant in the lecturer's chair To prove that light and heat are present there. The pear-shaped vacuum globe, I understand, Is far too hot to fondle with the hand, While, as is patent to the meanest sight, The carbon filament is very bright. Doubts on the Municipal System, but — As for the lights they hang about the town, Some praise them highly, others run them down. This system (technically called the arc) Makes some passages too light, others too dark. None on the Domestic But in the house the soft and constant rays Have always met with universal praise. Its Advantages For instance : if you want to read in bed No candle burns beside your curtains' head, Far from some distant corner of the room The incandescent lamp dispels the gloom, Advantages of Large Print And with the largest print need hardly try The powers of any young and vigorous eye. Fifth Invocation to the Muse Aroint thee, Muse ! inspired the poet sings ! 1 cannot help observing future things ! LAMBKIN'S NEWDIGATE 191 The only Hope of Humanity is in Science Life is a vale, its paths are dark and rough Only because we do not know enough. When Science has discovered something more We shall be happier than we were before. Peroration in the Spirit of the Rest of the Poem Hail ! Britain, mistress of the Azure Main, Ten Thousand Fleets sweep over thee in vain ! Hail ! mighty mother of the brave and free, That beat Napoleon, and gave birth to me ! Thou that canst wrap in thine emblazoned robe One quarter of the habitable globe. Thy mountains, wafted by a favouring breeze, Like mighty hills withstand the stormy seas. Warning to Britain Thou art a Christian Commonwealth. And yet Be thou not all unthankful — nor forget As thou exultest in Imperial might The benefits of the Electric Light. Ill SOME REMARKS ON LAMBKIN'S PROSE STYLE No achievement of my dear friend's produced a greater effect than the English Essay which he presented at his examination. That so young a man, and a man trained in such an environment as his, should have written an essay at all was sufficiently remarkable, but that his work should have shown such mastery in the handling, such delicate balance of idea, and so much know-ledge (in the truest sense of the word), coupled with such an astounding insight into human character and contem- porary psychology, was enough to warrant the remark of the then Warden of Burford : "If these things" (said the aged but eminent divine), "if these things" (it was said in all reverence and with a full sense of the responsibility of his position), " If these things are done in the green wood, what will be done in the dry ?" ■ Truly it may be said that the Green Wood of Lambkin's early years as an Undergraduate was worthily followed by the Dry Wood of his later life as a fellow and even tutor, nay, as a Bursar of his college. It is not my purpose to add much to the reader's own impressions of this tour de force, or to insist too strongly upon the skill and breadth of treatment which will at 192 LAMBKIX'S PROSE STYLE 193 once make their mark upon any intelligent man, and even upon the great mass of the public. But I may be forgiven if I give some slight personal memories in interpretation of a work which is necessarily presented in the cold medium of type. Lambkin's hand-writing was flowing and determined, but was often difficult to read, a quality which led in the later years of his life to the famous retort made by the Rural Dean of Henchthorp to the Chaplain of Bower's Hall.* His manuscript was, like Lord Byron's (and unlike the famous Codex V in the Vatican), re- markable for its erasures, of which as many as three may be seen in some places super-imposed, ladder-wise, en echelle, the one above the other, perpendicularly to the line of writing. This excessive fastidiousness in the use of words was the cause of his comparatively small production of written work ; and thus the essay printed below was the labour of nearly three hours. His ideas in this matter were best represented by his little epigram on the appearance of Liddell and Scott's larger Greek Lexicon. " Quality not quantity " was the witty phrase which he was heard to mutter when he received his first copy of that work. The nervous strain of so much anxiety about his literary work wearied both mind and body, but he had his reward. The scholarly aptitude of every particle in the phrase, and the curious symmetry apparent in the great whole of the essay are due to a quality which he pushed indeed to excess, but never beyond the boundary * The anecdote will be found in my Fifty Years of Chance Acquaintances. (Isaacs and Co., 44s. net.) '3 194 LAMBKIN'S REMAINS that separates Right and Wrong ; we admire in the product what we might criticise in the method, and when we judge as critics we are compelled as English- men and connoisseurs to congratulate and to applaud. He agreed with Aristotle in regarding lucidity as the main virtue of style. And if he sometimes failed to attain his ideal in this matter, the obscurity was due to none of those mannerisms which are so deplorable in a Meredith or a Browning, but rather to the fact that he found great difficulty in ending a sentence as he had begun it. His mind outran his pen; and the sentence from his University sermon, " England must do her duty, or what will the harvest be?" stirring and patriotic as it is, certainly suffers from some such fault, though I cannot quite see where. The Oxymoron, the Aposiopesis, the Nominativus Pendens, the Anacoluthon and the Zeugma he looked upon with abhorrence and even with dread. He was a friend to all virile enthusiasm in writing but a foe to rhetoric, which (he would say) "is cloying even in a demagogue, and actually nauseating in the literary man." He drew a distinction between eloquence and rhetoric, often praising the one and denouncing the other with the most abandoned fervour : indeed, it was his favourite diversion in critical conversation accurately to determine the meaning of words. In early youth he would often split an infinitive or end a sentence with a preposition. But, ever humble and ready to learn, he determined, after reading Mrs. Griffin's well-known essays in the Daily American, to eschew such conduct for the future ; and it was a most touching sight to watch him, even in extreme old age, his reverend white LAMBKIN'S PROSE STYLE 195 locks sweeping the paper before him and his weak eyes peering close at the MSS. as he carefully went over his phrases with a pen, scratching out and amending, at the end of his day's work, the errors of this nature. He commonly used a gilt " J " nib, mounted upon a holder of imitation ivory, but he was not cramped by any petty limitations in such details and would, if necessity arose, make use of a quill, or even of a fountain pen, insisting, however, if he was to use the latter, that it should be of the best. The paper upon which he wrote the work that remains to us was the ordinary ruled foolscap of commerce ; but this again he regarded as quite unimportant. It was the matter of what he wrote that concerned him, not (as is so often the case with lesser men) the mere accidents of pen or paper. I remember little else of moment with regard to his way of writing, but I make no doubt that these details will not be without their interest ; for the personal habits of a great man have a charm of their own. I read once that the sum of fifty pounds was paid for the pen of Charles Dickens. I wonder what would be offered for a similar sacred relic, of a man more obscure, but in- directly of far greater influence; a relic which I keep by me with the greatest reverence, which I do not use myself, however much at a loss I may be for pen or pencil, and with which I never, upon any account, allow the children to play. But I must draw to a close, or I should merit the reproach of lapsing into a sentimental peroration, and be told that I am myself indulging in that rhetoric which Lambkin so severely condemned. IV LAMBKIN'S ESSAY ON "SUCCESS" On "Success" : its Causes and Results Difficulty of Subject. — In approaching a problem of this nature, with all its anomalies and analogues, we are at once struck by the difficulty of conditioning any accurate estimate of the factors of the solution of the difficulty which is latent in the very terms of the above question. We shall do well, perhaps, however, to clearly differentiate from its fellows the proposition we have to deal with, and similarly as an inception of our analysis to permanently fix the definitions and terms we shall be talking of, with, and by. Definition of Success. — Success may be defined as the Successful Consummation of an Attempt or more shortly as the Realisation of an imagined Good, and as it im- plies Desire or the Wish for a thing, and at the same time action or the attempt to get at a thing,* we might look at Success from yet another point of view and say that Success is the realisation of Desire througli action. Indeed this last definition seems on the whole to be the best ; but it is evident that in this, as in all other matters, * Lambkin resolutely refused to define Happiness when pressed to do so by a pupil in June, 1881 : in fact, his hatred of definitions was so well known as to earn him the good- humoured nick-name of " the Sloucher " among the wilder young scholars. 196 LAMBKIN'S ESSAY ON "SUCCESS" 197 it is impossible to arrive at perfection, and our safest definition will be that which is found to be on the whole most approximately the average mean* of many hun- dreds that might be virtually constructed to more or less accurately express the idea we have undertaken to do. So far then it is evident that while we may have a fairly definite subjective visual concept of what Success is, we shall never be able to convey to others in so many words exactly what our idea may be. " What am I? An infant crying for the light That has no language but a cry." Method of dealing with Problem. — It is, however, of more practical importance nevertheless, to arrive at some method or other by which we can in the long run attack the very serious problem presented to us. Our best chance of arriving at any solution will lie in attempting to give objective form to what it is we have to do with. For this purpose we will first of all divide all actions into (#) Successful and (2) Non-successful t actions. These two categories are at once mutually exclusive and collectively universal. Nothing of which Success can be truly predicated, can at the same time be called with any approach to accuracy Unsuccessful ; and similarly if an action finally result in Non-success, it is quite evident that to speak of its "Success" would be to trifle with words and to throw dust into our own eyes, * rh /xccrov. t This was the first historical example of Lambkin's acquaintance with Hebrew — a knowledge which he later turned to such great account in his attack on the pseudo- Johannes. 198 LAMBKIN'S REMAINS which is a fatal error in any case. We have then these two primary categories : what is true of one will, with certain reservations, be untrue of the other, in most cases (we will come to that later) and vice-versa. (i) Success. (2) Non-success. First great Difficulty. — But here we are met at the outset of our examination by a difficulty of enormous dimensions. There is not one success; there are many. There is the success of the Philosopher, of the Scientist, of the Politician, of the Argument, of the Commanding Officer, of the Divine, of the mere unthinking Animal appetite, and of others more numerous still. It is evident that with such a vast number of different sub- sidiary categories within our main category it would be impossible to arrive at any absolute conclusions, or to lay down any firm general principle. For the moment we had erected some such fundamental foundation the fair structure would be blown to a thousand atoms by the consideration of some fresh form, aspect, or realisa- tion, of Success which might have escaped our vision, so that where should we be then? It is therefore most eminently a problem in which we should beware of undue generalisations and hasty dogmatism. We must abandon here as everywhere the immoral and exploded cant of mediaeval deductive methods invented by priests and mummers to enslave the human mind, and confine our- selves to what we absolutely know. Shall we towards the end of this essay truly know anything with regard to Success? Who can tell ! But at least let us not cheat ourselves with the axioms, affirmations, and dogmas LAMBKIN'S ESSAY ON "SUCCESS" 199 which are, in a certain sense, the ruin of so many ; let us, if I may use a metaphor, "abandon the a priori for the chiaroscuro." Second much greater Difficulty. — But if the problem is complex from the great variety of the various kinds of Success, what shall we say of the disturbance introduced by a new aspect of the matter, which we are now about to allude to ! Aye ! What indeed ! An aspect so widespread in its consequences, so momentous and so fraught with menace to all philosophy, so big with portent, and of such threatening aspect to humanity itself, that we hesitate even to bring it forward !* Success is not always Success: Non-success (or Failure) is an aspect of Success, and vice-versa. This apparent paradox will be seen to be true on a little consideration. For " Success " in any one case involves the " Failure " or " Non-success " of its opposite or correlative. Thus, if we bet ten pounds with one of our friends our "Success" would be his "Non-success," and vice- versa, collaterally. Again, if we desire to fail in a matter (e.g., any man would hope to fail in being hanged f), then to succeed is to fail, and to fail is to succeed, and our successful failure would fail were we to happen upon a disastrous success ! And note that the very same act, not this, that, or another, but the very same, is (according to the way we look at it) a "successful" or an "unsuccessful" act. Success * It is the passage that follows which made so startling an impression on the examiners. At that time young Lambkin was almost alone in holding the views which have since, through the Fellows of Colleges who may be newspaper men or colonial governors, influenced the whole world. t Jocular. 200 LAMBKIN'S REMAINS the re lore not only may be, but must be I ailurc, and the two categories upon which we had built such high hopes have disappeared for ever ! Solemn Considerations consequent up on this. — Terrible thought ! A thing can be at once itself and not itself — nay its own opposite ! The mind reels, and the frail human vision peering over the immense gulf of meta- physical infinity is lost in a cry for mercy and trembles on the threshold of the unseen ! What visions of horror and madness may not be reserved for the too daring soul which has presumed to knock at the Doors of Silence ! Let us learn from the incomprehensible how small and weak a thing is man ! A more Cheerful View. — But it would ill-befit the philosopher to abandon his effort because of a kind of a check or two at the start. The great hand of Time shouts ever " onward " ; and even if we cannot discover the Absolute in the limits of this essay, we may rise from the ashes of our tears to better and happier things. The Beginning of a Solution. — A light seems to dawn on us. We shall not arrive at the full day but we shall see "in a glass darkly " what, in the final end of our development, may perhaps be more clearly revealed to us. It is evident that we have been dealing with a relative. How things so apparently absolute as hanging or betting can be in any true sense relative we cannot tell, because we cannot conceive the majestic whole of which Success and Failure, plus and minus, up and down, yes and no, truth and lies, are but as the glitter- ing facets of a diamond borne upon the finger of some titled and wealthy person. Our error came from foolish self-sufficiency and LAMBKIN'S ESSAY ON "SUCCESS" 201 pride. 'We thought (forsooth) that our mere human conceptions of contradiction were real. It has been granted to us (though we are but human still) to discover our error — there is no hot or cold, no light or dark, and no good or evil, all are, in a certain sense, and with certain limitations (if I may so express myself) the Aspects At this point the bell rang and the -papers had to he delivered up. Lambkin could not let his work go, however, without adding a few words to show what he might have done had time allowed. He wrote: " No Time. Had intended examples — Success, Academic, Acrobatic, Agricultural, Aristocratic, Bacillic . . . Yaroslavic, Zenobidic, etc. Historical cases examined, Biggar's view, H. Unity, Univ. Conscious- ness, Amphodunissa,* Setxm k ^~~~." * The MS. is here almost illegible. V LAMBKIN ON "SLEEP" f 7 Jus little gem was written for the great Monograph on " Being,' 1 '' zvhich Lambkin 7iever lived to complete. It was included, however, in his little volume of essays entitled " Rictus Almae Matris." The careful footnotes, the fund of information, and the scholarly accuracy of the whole sketch are an example — (alas! the only one) — of what his full work would have been had he brought it to a conclusion. It is an admirable example of his manner in maturer years.] In Sleep our faculties lie dormant.* We perceive nothing or almost nothing of our surroundings ; and the deeper our slumber the more absolute is the barrier between ourselves and the outer world. The causes of this "Cessation of Consciousness" (as it has been admirably called by Professor M'Obvy)t lie hidden from our most profound physiologists. It was once my privilege to meet the master of physical science who has rendered famous the University of Kreigenswald, j and I asked him what in his opinion was the cause of sleep. He answered, with that reverence which is the glory of * The very word " dormant " comes from the Latin for " sleeping." t I knew Professor M'O. in the sixties. He was a charm- ing and cultured Scotchman, with a thorough mastery of the English tongue. + Dr. von Lieber-Augustin. I knew him well. He was a charming and cultured German. 202 LAMBKIN ON "SLEEP" 203 the Teutonic mind, "It is in the dear secret of the All- wise Nature-mother preserved." I have never forgotten those wise and weighty words.* Perhaps the nearest guess as to the nature of Sleep is to be discovered in the lectures of a brilliant but some- times over-daring young scholar whom we all applaud in the chair of Psychology. " Sleep " (he says) " is the direct product of Brain Somnolence, which in its turn is the result of the need for Repose that every organism must experience after any specialised exertion." I was present when this sentence was delivered, and I am not ashamed to add that I was one of those who heartily cheered the young speaker.! We may assert, then, that Science has nearly con- quered this last stronghold of ignorance and super- stition.'! As to the Muses, we know well that Sleep has been their favourite theme for ages. With the exception of Catullus (whose verses have been greatly over-rated, and who is always talking of people lying awake at night), all the ancients have mentioned and praised this inno- cent pastime. Everyone who has done Greats will remember the beautiful passage in Lucretius, § but perhaps that in Sidonius Apollinaris, the highly * How different from the cynical ribaldry of Voltaire. t Mr. Buffin. I know him well. His uncle is Lord Glen- altamont, one of the most charming and cultured of our new peers. X See especially " Hypnotism," being the researches of the Research Society (xiv. vols., London, 1893), and " Supersti- tions of the Past, especially the belief in the Influence of Sleep upon Spells," by Dr. Beradini. Translated by Mrs. Blue. (London : Toobv and Co., 1895.) § Bk. I. or Bk. IV. 2o 4 LAMBKIN'S REMAINS polished Bishop of Gaul, is less well known.* To turn to our own literature, the sonnet beginning " To die, to sleep," etc.,t must be noted, and above all, the glorious lines in which Wordsworth reaches his noblest level, beginning — " It is a pleasant thing to go to sleep !" lines which, for my part, I can never read without catching some of their magical drowsy influence. J All great men have slept. George III. frequently slept, § and that great and good man Wyclifre was in the habit of reading his Scriptural translations and his own sermons nightly to produce the desired effect. || The Duke of Wellington (whom my father used to call " The Iron Duke ") slept on a little bedstead no larger than a common man's. As for the various positions in which one may sleep, I treat of them in my little book of Latin Prose for Schools, which is coming out next year.^1 * " Amo dormire. Sed nunquam dormio post nonas horas nam episcopus sum et volo dare bonum exemplum fidelibus." App. Sid. Epistol., Bk. III., Epist. 26. (Libermach's edi- tion. Berlin, 1875.) It has the true ring of the fifth century. t So Herrick, in his famous epigram on Buggins. A learned prelate of my acquaintance would frequently quote this. t The same lines occur in several other poets. Notably Tufper and Montgomery. § See " Private Memoirs of the Court of Geo. III. and the Regent," by Mrs. Fitz-H 1. _ || See further, The Morning Star of England, in Stirrers of the Nations Series," by the Rev. H. Turmsey, M.A. Also Foes and Friends of John of Gaunt, by Miss Matchkin. TJ " Latin Proses," 3s. 6d. net. Jason and Co., Piccadilly. VI LAMBKIN'S ADVICE TO FRESHMEN Mr. Lambkin possessed among other great and gracious qualities the habit of writing to his nephew, Thomas Ezekiel Lambkin,* who entered the college as an undergraduate when his uncle was some four years a Fellow. Of many such communications he valued especially this which I print below, on account of the curious and pathetic circumstances which surrounded it. Some months after Thomas had been given his two groups and had left the University, Mr. Lambkin was looking over some books in a second-hand bookshop — not with the intention of purchasing so much as to improve the mind. It was a favourite habit of his, and as he was deeply engaged in a powerful romance written under the pseudonym of "Marie Corelli "t there dropped from its pages the letter which he had sent so many years before. It lay in its original envelope unopened, and on turning to the flyleaf he saw the name of his nephew written. It had once been his ! The boy had so treasured the little missive as to place it in his favourite book ! * Now doing his duty to the Empire nobly as a cattle-man in Minnesota. \ Everyone will remember the striking article on this author in The Christian Home for July, 1886. It was from Lambkin's pen. 205 206 LAMBKIN'S REMAINS Lambkin was so justly touched by the incident as to purchase the volume, asking that the price might be entered to his account, which was not then of any long standing. The letter he docketed "to be published after my death." And I obey the wishes of my revered friend : "My dear Thomas, " Here you are at last in Oxford, and at Burford, ' a Burford Man.' How proud your mother must be and even your father, whom I well remember saying that ' if he were not an accountant, he would rather be a Fellow of Burford than anything else on earth.' But it was not to be. " The life you are entering is very different from that which you have left behind. When you were at school you were under a strict discipline, you were compelled to study the classics and to play at various games. Cleanliness and truthfulness were enforced by punish- ment, while the most instinctive habits of decency and good manners could only be acquired at the expense of continual application. In a word, ' you were a child and thought as a child.' " Now all that is changed, you are free (within limits) to follow your own devices, to make or mar yourself. But if you use Oxford aright she will make you as she has made so many of your kind — a perfect gentleman. " But enough of these generalities. It is time to turn to one or two definite bits of advice which I hope you will receive in the right spirit. My dear boy, I want you to lay your hand in mine while I speak to you, not LAMBKIN'S ADVICE TO FRESHMEN 207 as an uncle, but rather as an elder brother. Promise me three things. First, never to gamble in any form ; secondly, never to drink a single glass of wine after dinner ; thirdly, never to purchase anything without paying for it in cash. If you will make such strict rules for yourself and keep them religiously you will find after years of constant effort a certain result developing (as it were), you will discover with delight that your character is formed ; that you have neither won nor lost money at hazards, that you have never got drunk of an evening, and that you have no debts. Of the first two I can only say that they are questions of morality on which we all may, and all do, differ. But the third is of a vital and practical importance. Occa- sional drunkenness is a matter for private judgment, its Tightness or wrongness depends upon our ethical system ; but debt is fatal to any hope of public success. " I hesitate a little to mention one further point; but — may I say it? — will you do your best to avoid drinking neat spirits in the early morning — especially Brandy? Of course a Governor and Tutor, whatever his abilities, gets removed in his sympathies from the younger men.* The habit may have died out, and if so I will say no more, but in my time it was the ruin of many a fair young life. "Now as to your day and its order. First, rise briskly when you are called, and into your cold bath, you young dog'.f No shilly-shally; into it. Don't splash the water about in a miserable attempt to deceive * Lambkin was, when he wrote this letter, fully twenty-six years of age. t Only a playful term of course. 208 LAMBKIN'S REMAINS your scout, but take an Honest British Cold Bath like a man. Soap should never be used save on the hands and neck. As to hot baths, never ask for them in College, it would give great trouble, and it is much better to take one in the Town for a shilling ; nothing is more refresh- ing than a good hot bath in the Winter Term. " Next you go out and ' keep ' a Mosque, Synagogue, or Meeting of the Brethren, though if you can agree with the system it is far better to go to your College Chapel ; it puts a man right with his superiors and you obey the Apostolic injunction.* "Then comes your breakfast. Eat as much as you can ; it is the foundation of a good day's work in the Vineyard. But what is this ? — a note from your Tutor. Off you go at the appointed time, and as you may be somewhat nervous and diffident I will give you a little Paradigm,! as it were, of a Ereshman meeting his Tutor for the first time. " [The Student enters, and as he is half-way through the door says : ] " St. : Good-morning ! Have you noticed what the papers say about — [Here mention some prominent sub- ject of the day. ] " [The Tutor does not answer but goes on writing in a little book; at last he looks uf and says:] " Tut. : Pray, what is your name? " St. : M. or N. "Tut.: What have you read before coming up, Mr. ? * A considerable discussion has arisen as to the meaning of this. f A jocular allusion. LAMBKIN'S ADVICE TO FRESHMEN 209 "St. : The existing Latin authors from Ennius to Sidonius Appollinaris, with their fragments. The Greek from Sappho to Origen including Bacchylides. [The Tutor makes a note of this and resumes . . .] " Tut. : Have you read the Gospels? " St. : No, Sir. " Tut. : You must read two of them as soon as possible in the Greek, as it is necessary to the passing of Divinity, unless indeed you prefer the beautiful work of Plato. Come at ten to-morrow. Good-morning. " St. : I am not accustomed to being spoken to in that fashion. [ The Tutor will turn to some other Student, and the first Student will leave the room.] " I have little more to say. You will soon learn the customs of the place, and no words of mine can efficiently warn you as experience will. Put on a black coat before Hall, and prepare for that meal with neat- ness, but with no extravagant display. Do not wear your cap and gown in the afternoon, do not show an exaggerated respect to the younger fellows (except the Chaplain), on the one hand, nor a silly contempt for the older Dons upon the other. The first line of conduct is that of a timid and uncertain mind ; it is of no profit for future advancement, and draws down upon one the contempt of all. The second is calculated to annoy as fine a body of men as any in England, and seriously to affect your reputation in Society. " You will find in every college some club which contains the wealthier undergraduates and those of prominent position. Join it if possible at once before 2io LAMBKIN'S REMAINS you are known. At its weekly meeting speak soberly, but not pompously. Enliven your remarks with occa- sional flashes of humour, but do not trench upon the ribald nor pass the boundary of right-reason. Such excesses may provoke a momentary laugh, but they ultimately destroy all respect for one's character. Remember Lot's wife ! " You will row, of course, and as you rush down to the river after a hurried lunch and dash up to do a short bit of reading before Hall, your face will glow with satisfaction at the thought that every day of your life will be so occupied for four years. " Of the grosser and lower evils I need not warn you : you will not give money to beggars in the street, nor lend it to your friends. You will not continually expose your private thoughts, nor open your heart to every comer in the vulgar enthusiasm of some whom you may meet. No, my dear Ezekiel, it would be unworthy of your name, and I know you too well, to fear such things of you. You are a Gentleman, and that you may, like a gentleman, be always at your ease, courteous on occasion, but familiar never, is the earnest prayer of " Josiah Lambkin." •VII LAMBKIN'S LECTURE ON "RIGHT" Of the effects of Mr. Lambkin's lectures, the greatest and (I .venture to think) the most permanent are those that followed from his course on Ethics. The late Dean of Heaving-on-the-Marsh (the Honourable Albert Nathan-Merivale, the first name adopted from his property in Rutland) told me upon one occasion that he owed the direction of his mind to those lectures (under Providence) more than to any other lectures he could remember. Very much the same idea was conveyed to me, more or less, by the Bishop of Humbury, who turned to me in hall, only a year ago, with a peculiar look in his eyes, and (as I had mentioned Lambkin's name) said suddenly, like a man who struggles with an emotion :* : ' Lambkin( !)t . . . did not he give lectures in your hall ... on Ethics?" "Some," I replied, "were given in the Hall, others in Lecture Room No. 2 over the glory-hole." His lordship said nothing, but there was a world of thought and reminiscence in his eyes. May we not — knowing his lordship's difficulties in matters of belief, and his final victory — ascribe some- thing of this progressive and salutary influence to my dear friend ? * " Sicut ut homo qui " — my readers will fill in the rest. t 1 he note of exclamation is my own. 211 212 LAMBKIN'S REMAINS On "Right" [Being Lecture V . in a Course of Eight, delivered in the Autumn Term of 1878.] We have now proceeded for a considerable distance in our journey towards the Solution. Of eight lectures, of which 1 had proposed to make so many milestones on the road, the fifth is reached, and now we are in measurable distance of the Great Answer ; the Under- standing of the Relations of the Particular to the Universal. It is an easy, though a profitable task to wander in what the late Sir Reginald Hawke once called in a fine phrase ' ' the flowery meads and bosky dells of Positive Knowledge." It is in the essence of any modern method of inquiry that we should be first sure of our facts, and it is on this account that all philosophical research worthy of the name must begin with the physical sciences. For the last few weeks I have illus- trated my lectures with chemical experiments and occa- sionally with large coloured diagrams, which, especially to young people like yourselves have done not a little to enliven what might at first appear a very dull subject. It is therefore with happy, hopeful hearts, with spark- ling eyes and eager appetite that we leave the physical entry-hall of knowledge to approach the delicious feast of metaphysics. But here a difficulty confronts us. So far we have followed an historical development. We have studied the actions of savages and the gestures of young children ; we have inquired concerning the habits of sleep-walkers, and have drawn our conclusions from the attitudes LAMBKIN'S LECTURE ON "RIGHT" 213 adopted in special manias. So far, then, we have been on safe ground. We have proceeded from the known to the unknown, and we have correlated Psychology, Sociology, Anatomy, Morphology, Physiology, Geo- graphy, and Theology {here Mr. Darkin of Vast, who had been ailing a long time, was carried out in a faint ; Mr. Lambkin, being short-sighted, did not fully seize what had happened, and thinking that certain of his audience were leaving the Hall without permission, he became as nearly angry as was possible to such a man. He made a short speech on the decay of manners, and fell into several bitter epigrams. It is only just to say that, on learning the occasion of the interruption, he regretted the expression " strong meat for babes " which had escaped him at the time). So far so good. But there is something more. No one can proceed indefinitely in the study of Ethics without coming, sooner or later, upon the Conventional conception of Right. I do not mean that this concep- tion has any philosophic value. I should be the last to lay down for it those futile, empirical, and dogmatic foundations which may satisfy narrow, deductive minds. But there it is, and as practical men with it we must deal. What is Right? Whence proceeds this curious conglomeration of idealism, mysticism, empiricism, and fanaticism to which the name has been given ? It is impossible to say. It is the duty of the lecturer to set forth the scheme of truth : to make (as it were) a map or plan of Epistemology. He is not concerned to demonstrate a point ; he is not bound to dispute the attitude of opponents. Let them fall of their own weight (Ruant mole sua). It is mine to show that things 2i 4 LAMBKIN'S REMAINS may be thus or thus, and I will most steadily refuse to be drawn into sterile argument and profitless discussion with mere affirmations. " The involute of progression is the subconscious evolution of the particular function." No close reasoner will deny this. It is the final summing up of all that is meant by Development. It is the root formula of the nineteenth century that is now, alas ! drawing to a close under our very eyes. Now to such a funda- mental proposition I add a second. " The sentiment of right is the inversion of the subconscious function in its relation to the indeterminate ego." This also I take to be admitted by all European philosophers in Germany. Now I will not go so far as to say that a major premiss when it is absolutely sound, followed by a minor equally sound, leads to a sure conclusion. God fulfils himself in many ways, and there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. But I take this tentatively : that if these two propo- sitions are true (and we have the word of Herr Waldteufel,* who lives in the Woodstock Road, that it is true) then it follows conclusively that no certainty can be arrived at in these matters. I would especially recommend you on this point {here Mr. Lambkin changed his lecturing voice for a species of conversational, inter- ested, and familiar tone) to read the essay by the late Dr. Barton in Shots at the Probable : you will also find the third chapter of Mr. Mendellsohn's History of the Soid very useful. Remember also, by the way, to con- sult the footnote on p. 343, of Renan's Anti-Christ. * Author of " Prussian Morals." LAMBKIN'S LECTURE ON "RIGHT" 215 The Master of St. Dives' Little Journeys in the Obvious is light and amusing, but instructive in its way. There is a kind of attitude (this was Lambkin's fer oration, and he was justly froud of it) which destroys nothing but creates much : which transforms without metamorphosis, and which says " look at this, I have found truth!" but which dares not say "look away from that — it is untrue." Such is our aim. Let us make without unmaking and in this difficult question of the origin of Right, the grand old Anglo-Saxon sense of "Ought," let us humbly adopt as logicians, but grimly pursue as practical men some such maxim as what follows : " Right came from nothing, it means nothing, it leads to nothing ; with it we are nothing, but without it we are worse than nothing."* Next Thursday I shall deal with morality in inter- national relations. * These are almost the exact words that appeared in the subsequent and over-rated book of Theophile Gautier : " Rien ne mene a rien cependant tout arrive." VIII LAMBKIN'S SPECIAL CORRE- SPONDENCE Lambkin was almost the first of that great band of Oxford Fellows who go as special correspondents for Newspapers to places of difficulty and even of danger. On the advantages of this system he would often dilate, and he was glad to see, as he grew to be an older, a wealthier, and a wiser man, that others were treading in his footsteps. " The younger men," he would say, ' ' have noticed what perhaps I was the first to see, that the Press is a Power, and that men who are paid to educate should not be ashamed to be paid for any form of education." He was, however, astonished to see how rapidly the letters of a correspondent could now be issued as a book, and on finding that such publications were arranged for separately with the publishers, and were not the property of the Newspapers, he expressed himself with a just warmth in condemnation of such a trick. " Sir " (said he to the Chaplain), " in my young days we should have scorned to have faked up work, well done for a particular object, in a new suit for the sake of wealth " ; and I owe it to Lambkin's memory to say that he did not make a penny by his " Diary on the Deep,"* in which he collected towards the end of his * It was by my suggestion {quorum -pars -parva fui), that was added the motto " They that go down to the sea in ships, they see the wonders of the Lord." 210 SPECIAL CORRESPONDENCE 217 life his various letters written to the Newspapers, and mostly composed at sea. The occasion which produced the following letter was the abominable suppression by Italian troops of the Catholic Riots at Rome in 1873. Englishmen of all parties had been stirred to a great indignation at the news of the atrocities. "As a nation" (to quote my dear friend) " we are slow to anger, but our anger is terrible." And such was indeed the case. A great meeting was held at Hampstead, in which Mr. Ram made his famous speech. "This is not a question of religion or of nationality but of manhood " (he had said), " and if we do not give our sympathy freely, if we do not send out correspondents to inform us of the truth, if we do not meet in public and protest, if we do not write and speak and read till our strength be exhausted, then is England no longer the England of Cromwell and of Peel." Such public emotion could not fail to reach Lambkin. I remember his coming to me one night into my rooms and saying " George " (for my name is George), " I had to-day a letter from Mr. Solomon's paper — The Sunday Englishman. They want me to go and report on this infamous matter, and I will go. Do not attempt to dissuade me. I shall return — if God spares my life — before the end of the vacation. The offer is most advantageous in every way : I mean to England, to the cause of justice, and to that freedom of thought without which there is no true religion. For, understand me, that though these poor wretches are Roman Catholics, I hold that every man should have justice, and my blood boils within me." 2i8 LAMBKIN'S REMAINS He left me with a parting grip of the hand, promis- ing to bring me back photographs from the Museum at Naples. If the letter that follows appears to be lacking in any full account of the Italian army and its infamies, if it is observed to be meagre and jejune on the whole subject of the Riots, that is to be explained by the simple facts that follow. When Lambkin sailed, the British Fleet had already occupied a deep and commodious harbour on the coast of Apulia, and public irritation was at its height ; but by the time he landed the Quirinal had been forced to an apology, the Vatican had received monetary com- pensation, and the Piedmontese troops had been com- pelled to evacuate Rome. He therefore found upon landing at Leghorn* a telegram from the newspaper, saying that his services were not required, but that the monetary engagements entered into by the proprietors would be strictly adhered to. Partly pleased, partly disappointed, Lambkin re- turned to Oxford, taking sketches on the way from various artists whom he found willing to sell their productions. These he later hung round his room, not on nails (which as he very properly said, defaced the wall), but from a rail ; — their colours are bright and pleasing. He also brought me the photographs I asked him for, and they now hang in my bedroom. This summary must account for the paucity of the notes that follow, and the fact that they were never published. * Livorno in Italian. SPECTAL CORRESPONDENCE 219 [There was some little doubt as to whether certain strictures on the First Mate in Mr. Lambkin's letters did not affect one of our best families. Until I could make certain whether the Estate should be credited with a receipt on this account or debited with a loss I hesi- tated to publish. Mr. Lambkin left no heirs, but he would have been the first to regret (were he alive) any diminution of his small fortune. I am glad to say that it has been satisfactorily settled, and that while all parties have gained none have lost by the settlement.] THE LETTERS S.S. Borgia, Oravesend, Sunday, Sept. 27th, 1873. Whatever scruples I might have had in sending off my first letter before I had left the Thames, and upon such a day, are dissipated by the emotions to which the scenes I have just passed through give rise.* What can be more marvellous than this historic river ! All is dark, save where the electric light on shore, the river-boats' lanterns on the water, the gas-lamps and the great glare of the townt dispel the gloom. And over the river itself, the old Tamesis, a profound silence reigns, broken only by the whistling of the tugs, the * Or " have given rise." Myself and my colleagues attempted (or had attempted) to determine this point. But there can be little doubt that the version we arrived at is right both in grammar and in fact. The MS. is confused. t Though posted in Gravesend this letter appears to have been written between London and the Estuary. Some say in Dead Man's Reach. 220 LAMBKIN'S REMAINS hoarse cries of the bargemen and the merry banjo-party under the awning of our ship. All is still, noiseless, and soundless : a profound silence broods over the mighty waters. It is night. It is night and silent ! Silence and night ! The two primeval things ! I wonder whether it has ever occurred to the readers of the Sunday Englishman to travel over the great waters, or to observe in their quiet homes the marvellous silence of the night? Would they know of what my thoughts were full? They were full of those poor Romans, insulted, questioned, and disturbed by a brutal soldiery, and I thought of this : that we who go out on a peculiarly pacific mission, who have only to write while others wield the sword, we also do our part. Pray heaven the time may soon come when an English Protectorate shall be declared over Rome and the hate- ful rule of the Lombard foreigners shall cease.* There is for anyone of the old viking blood a kind of fascination in the sea. The screw is modern, but its vibration is the very movement of the wild white oars that brought the Northmen f to the field of Senlac; Now I know how we have dared and done all. I could conquer Sicily to-night. As I paced the deck, an officer passed and slapped me heartily on the shoulder. It was the First Mate. A rough diamond but a diamond none the less. He asked me where I was bound to. I said Leghorn. He then asked me if I had all I needed for the voyage. It seems that I had strayed on to the part of the deck reserved * This passage was set for the Latin Prose in the Burford Scholarship of 1S75. ^ was won by Mr. Hurt, now Chaplain of the Wainmakers' Guild. f Norman. + Hastings. SPECIAL CORRESPONDENCE 221 for the second-class passengers. I informed him of his error. He laughed heartily and said we shouldn't quarrel about that. I said his ship seemed to be a Saucy Lass. He answered, " That's all right," asked me if I played "Turn-up Jack," and left me. It is upon men like this that the greatness of England is founded. Well, I will "turn in" and "go below" for my watch; "you gentlemen of England" who read the Sunday Englishman, you little know what life is like on the high seas ; but we are one, I think, when it comes to the love of blue water. Posted at Dover, Monday, Sept. 28, 1873. We have dropped the pilot. I have nothing in par- ticular to write. There is a kind of monotony about a sea voyage which is very depressing to the spirits. The sea was smooth last night, and yet I awoke this morning with a feeling of unquiet to which I have long been a stranger, and which should not be present in a healthy man. I fancy the very slight oscillation of the boat has something to do with it, though the lady sitting next to me tells me that one only feels it in steamboats. She said her dear husband had told her it was " the smell of the oil " — I hinted that at breakfast one can talk of other things. The Eirst Mate sits at the head of our table. I do not know how it is, but there is a lack of social reaction on board a ship. A man is a seaman or a passenger, and there is an end of it. One has no fixed rank, and the wholesome discipline of social pressure seems entirely lost. Thus this morning the Eirst Mate called 222 LAMBKIN'S REMAINS me "The Parson," and I had no way to resent his familiarity. But he meant no harm; he is a sterling fellow. After breakfast my mind kept running to this question of the Roman Persecution, and (1 know not how) certain phrases kept repeating themselves literally " ad nauseam" in my imagination. They kept pace with the throb of the steamer, an altogether new sensation, and my mind seemed (as my old tutor, Mr. Blurt, would put it) to " work in a circle." The pilot will take this. He is coming over the side. He is not in the least like a sailor, but small and white. He wears a bowler hat, and looks more like a city clerk than anything else. When I asked the First Mate why this was, he answered, " It's the Brains that tell." A very remarkable state- ment, and one full of menace and warning for our mercantile marine. ***** Thursday, Oct. i, 1S73. I cannot properly describe the freshness and beauty of the sea after a gale. I have not the style of the great masters of English prose, and I lack the faculty of expression which so often accompanies the poetic soul. The white curling tips (white horses) come at one if one looks to windward, or if one looks to leeward seem to flee. There is a kind of balminess in the air born of the warm south ; and there is a jollity in the whole ship's company, as Mrs. Burton and her daughters remarked to me this morning. I feel capable of anything. When the First Mate came up to me this morning and tried to bait me with his vulgar chaff I answered roundly, SPECIAL CORRESPONDENCE 223 " Now, sir, listen to me. I am not seasick, I am not a landlubber, I am on my sea legs again, and I would have you know that I have not a little power to make those who attack me feel the weight of my arm." He turned from me thoroughly ashamed, and told a man to swab the decks. The passengers appeared absorbed in their various occupations, but I felt I had ' ' scored a point ' ' and I retired to my cabin. My steward told me of a group of rocks off the Spanish coast which we are approaching. He said they were called " The Graveyard." If a man can turn his mind to the Universal Consciousness and to a Final Purpose all foolish fears will fall into a secondary plane. I will not do myself the injustice of saying that I was affected by the accident, but a lady or child might have been, and surely the ship's servants should be warned not to talk nonsense to passengers who need all their strength for the sea. Friday, Oct. 2, 1873. To-day I met the Captain. I went up on the bridge to speak to him. I find his name is Arnssen. He has risen from the ranks, his father having been a large haberdasher in Copenhagen and a town councillor. I wish I could say the same of the First Mate, who is the scapegrace son of a great English family, though he seems to feel no shame. Arnssen and I would soon become fast friends were it not that his time is occupied in managing the ship. He is just such an one as makes the strength of our British Mercantile marine. He will often come and walk with me on the deck, on which occasions I give him a cigar, or even sometimes ask him 224 LAMBKIN'S REMAINS to drink wine with me. He tells me it is against the rules for the Captain to offer similar courtesies to his guests, but that if ever 1 am in Ernskjoldj, near Copen- hagen, and if he is not absent on one of his many voyages, he will gratefully rememl)er and repay my kindness. I said to the Captain to-day, putting my hand upon his shoulder, " Sir, may one speak from one's heart?" "Yes," said he, "certainly, and God bless you for your kind thought." " Sir," said I, " you are a strong, silent, God-fearing man and my heart goes out to you — no more." He was silent, and went up on the bridge, but when I attempted to follow him, he assured me it was not allowed. Later in the day I asked him what he thought of the Roman trouble. He answered, " Oh ! knock their heads together and have done with it." It was a bluff sea- man's answer, but is it not what England would have said in her greatest days ? Is it not the very feeling of a Chatham ? I no longer speak to the First Mate. But in a few days I shall be able to dismiss the fellow entirely from my memory, so I will not dwell on his insolence. Leghorn, Oct. 5, 1873. Here is the end of it. I have nothing more to say. I find that the public has no need of my services, and that England has suffered a disastrous rebuff. The fleet has retreated from Apulia. England — let posterity note this — has not an inch of ground in all the Italian Peninsula. Well, we are worsted, and we must bide SPECIAL CORRESPONDENCE 225 our time ; but this I will say : if that insolent young fool the First Mate thinks that his family shall protect him he is mistaken. The press is a great power and never greater than where (as in England) a professor of a university or the upper classes write for the papers, and where a rule of anonymity gives talent and position its full weight.* * These letters were never printed till now. J 5 IX LAMBKIN'S ADDRESS TO THE LEAGUE OF PROGRESS Everybody will remember the famous meeting of the Higher Spinsters in 1868; a body hitherto purely voluntary in its organisation, it had undertaken to add to the houses of the poor and wretched the element which reigns in the residential suburbs of our great towns. If Whitechapel is more degraded now than it was thirty years ago we must not altogether disregard the earlier efforts of the Higher Spinsters, they laboured well each in her own sphere and in death they were not divided. The moment however which gave their embryonic conceptions an organic form did not sound till this year of 1868. It was in the Conference held at Burford during that summer that, to quote their eloquent circular, " the ideas were mooted and the feeling was voiced which made us what we are." In other words, the Higher Spinsters were merged in the new and greater society of the League of Progress. How much the League of Progress has done, its final recognition by the County Council, the sums paid to its organisers and servants I need not here describe ; suffice it to say that, like all our great movements, it was a spontaneous effort of the upper middle class, that it concerned itself 226 ADDRESS TO LEAGUE OF PROGRESS 227 chiefly with the artisans, whom it desired to raise to its own level, and that it has so far succeeded as to now possess forty-three Cloisters in our great towns, each with its Grand Master, Chatelaine, Corporation of the Burghers of Progress and Lay Brothers, the whole supported upon salaries suitable to their social rank and proceeding entirely from voluntary contributions with the exception of that part of the revenue which is drawn from public funds. The subject of the Conference, out of which so much was destined to grow, was " The Tertiary Symptoms of Secondary Education among the Poor." Views upon this matter were heard from every possible standpoint; men of varying religious per- suasions from the Scientific Agnostic to the distant Parsee lent breadth and elasticity to the fascinating subject. Its chemical aspect was admirably described (with experiments) by Sir Julius Wobble, the Astronomer Royal, and its theological results by the Reader in Burmesan. Lambkin was best known for the simple eloquence in which he could clothe the most difficult and confused conceptions. It was on this account that he was asked to give the Closing Address with which the Proceedings terminated. Before reciting it I must detain the reader with one fine anecdote concerning this occasion, a passage worthy of the event and of the man. Lambkin (as I need hardly say) was full of his subject, enthusiastic and absorbed. No thought of gain entered his head, nor was he the kind of man to have applied for payment unless he believed money to be owing to him. Nevertheless it 228 LAMBKIN'S REMAINS would have been impossible to leave unremunerated such work as that which follows. It was decided by the authorities to pay him a sum drawn from the fees which the visitors had paid to visit the College Fish-Ponds, whose mediaeval use in monkish times was explained in popular style by one who shall be nameless, but who gave his services gratuitously. After their departure Mr. Large entered Lambkin's room with an envelope, wishing to add a personal courtesy to a pleasant duty, and said : " I have great pleasure, my dear Lambkin, in pre- senting you with this Bank Note as a small acknow- ledgment of your services at the Conference." Lambkin answered at once with : "My dear Large, I shall be really displeased if you estimate that slight performance of a pleasurable task at so high a rate as ten pounds." Nor indeed was this the case. For when Lambkin opened the enclosure (having waited with delicate courtesy for his visitor to leave the room) he discovered but five pounds therein. But note what follows — Lambkin neither mentioned the matter to a soul, nor passed the least stricture upon Large's future actions, save in those matters where he found his colleague justly to blame : and in the course of the several years during which they continually met, the restraint and self- respect of his character saved him from the use of ignoble weapons whether of pen or tongue. It was a lesson in gentlemanly irony to see my friend take his place above Large at high table in the uneasy days that followed. ADDRESS TO LEAGUE OF PROGRESS 229 THE ADDRESS My dear Friends, I shall attempt to put before you in a few simple, but I hope well-chosen words, the views of a plain man upon the great subject before us to-day. I shall attempt with the greatest care to avoid any per- sonal offence, but I shall not hesitate to use the knife with an unsparing hand, as is indeed the duty of the Pastor whosoever he may be. I remember a late dear friend of mine [who would not wish me to make his name public but whom you will perhaps recognise in the founder and builder of the new Cathedral at Isaacsville in Canada*]. I remember his saying to me with a merry twinkle of the eye that looms only from the free manhood of the west: "Lambkin," said he, "would you know how I made my large fortune in the space of l>ut three months, and how I have attained to such dignity and honour? It was by following this simple maxim which my dear mother t taught me in the rough log-cabin I of my birth : ' Be courteous to all strangers, but familiar with none.' "§ My friends, you are not strangers, nay, on the present * The late Hon. John Tupton, the amiable colonial who purchased Marlborough House and made so great a stir in London some years ago. t Mrs. Tupton, senior, a woman whose heroic struggles in the face of extreme poverty were a continual commentary on the awful results of our so-called perfected Penal System. X There is great doubt upon the exactitude of this. In his lifetime Tupton often spoke of "the poor tenement house in New York where I was born," and in a letter he alludes to " my birth at sea in the steerage of a Liner." § This was perhaps the origin of a phrase which may be found scattered with profusion throughout Lambkin's works. 230 LAMBKIN'S REMAINS solemn occasion I think I may call you friends — even brethren ! — dear brothers and sisters ! But a little bird has told me. . . . {Here a genial smile -passed over his face and he drank a draught of pure cold water from a tumbler at his side.) A little bird has told me, I say, that some of you feared a trifle of just harshness, a reprimand perhaps, or a warning note of danger, at the best a doubtful and academic temper as to the future. Fear nothing. I shall pursue a far different course, and however courteous I may be I shall indulge in no familiarities. " The Tertiary Symptoms of Secondary Education among the Poor" is a noble phrase and expresses a noble idea. Why the very words are drawn from our Anglo-Saxon mother-tongue deftly mingled with a few expressions borrowed from the old dead language of long-past Greece and Rome. What is Education? The derivation of the word answers this question. It is from "e" that is "out of," " duc-o " " I lead," from the root Due — to lead, to govern (whence we get so many of our most important words such as " Duke " ; " Duck " = a drake; etc.) and finally the termination " -tio " which corresponds to the English " -ishness." We may then put the whole phrase in simple language thus, " The threefold Showings of twofold Led-out-of-ishness among the Needy." The Needy ! The Poor ! Terrible words ! It has been truly said that we have them always with us. It is one of our peculiar glories in nineteenth-century England, that we of the upper classes have fully recog- nised our heavy responsibility towards our weaker fellow- citizens. Not by Revolution, which is dangerous and ADDRESS TO LEAGUE OF PROGRESS 231 vain, not by heroic legislation or hair-brained schemes of universal panaceas, not by frothy Utopias. No ! — by solid hard work, by quiet and persistent effort, with the slow invisible tenacity that won the day at Badajoz, we have won this great social victory. And if anyone should ask me for the result I should answer him — go to Bolton, go to Manchester, go to Liverpool ; go to Hull or Halifax — the answer is there. There are many ways in which this good work is proceeding. Life is a gem of many facets. Some of my friends take refuge in Prayer, others have joined the Charity Organisation Society, others again have laboured in a less brilliant but fully as useful a fashion by writing books upon social statistics which command an enormous circulation. You have turned to education, and you have done well. Show me a miner or a stevedore who attends his lectures upon Rossetti, and I will show you a man. Show me his wife or daughter at a cookery school or engaged in fretwork, and I will show you a woman. A man and a woman — solemn thought ! A noble subject indeed and one to occupy the whole life of a man! This "Education," this " Leading- out-of," is the matter of all our lives here in Oxford except in the vacation.* And what an effect it has ! Let me prove it in a short example. At a poor lodging-house in Lafayette, Pa., U.S.A., three well-educated men from New England who had fallen upon evil times were seated at a table surrounded by a couple of ignorant and superstitious Irishmen ; these poor untaught creatures, presuming upon their numbers, did not hesitate to call the silent and gentle- * Mr. Lambkin did not give the derivation of this word. z^z LAMBKIN'S REMAINS manly unfortunates " Dommed High-faluthing Fules"; but mark the sequel. A fire broke out in the night. The house was full of these Irishmen and of yet more repulsive Italians. Some were consumed by the devour- ing element, others perished in the flames, others again saved their lives by a cowardly flight.* But what of those three from Massachusetts whom better principles had guided in youth and with whom philosophy had replaced the bitter craft of the Priest? They were found — my dear friends — they were found still seated calmly at the table ; they had not moved ; no passion had blinded them, no panic disturbed : in their charred and blackened features no trace of terror was apparent. Such is the effect, such the glory of what my late master and guide, the Professor of Tautology, used to call the " Principle of the Survival of the Fittest." (Applause, which was only checked by a consideration for the respect due to the Sacred edifice.) Go forth then ! Again I say go forth ! Go forth ! Go forth ! The time is coming when England will see that your claims to reverence, recognition, and emolu- ment are as great as our own. I repeat it, go forth, and when you have brought the great bulk of families to change their mental standpoint, then indeed you will have transformed the world ! For without the mind the human intellect is nothing. * "Alii igni infamiae vitamalii fuga dederunt." — Tacitus, In Omnes Caesar es, I. viii. 7 X LAMBKIN'S LEADER Mr. Solomon was ever determined to keep the Sunday Englishman at a high level. " We owe it " (he would say) "first to the public who are thereby sacrificed — I mean satisfied — and to ourselves, who secure thereby a large and increasing circulation. " [ " Ourselves ' ' alluded to the shareholders, for the Sunday Englishman was a limited Company, in which the shares (of which Mr. Solomon held the greater number) were distributed in the family ; the tiniest toddler of two years old was remembered, and had been presented with a share by his laughing and generous parent.] In this laudable effort to keep "abreast of the times" (as he phrased it), the Editor and part Pro- prietor determined to have leaders written by University men, who from their position of vantage enjoy a unique experience in practical matters. He had formed a very high opinion of Lambkin's journalistic capacity from his unpublished letters as a special correspondent. Indeed, he was often heard to say that " a man like him was lost at Oxford, and was born for Fleet Street." He wrote, therefore, to Mr. Lambkin and gave him " Carte Blanche," as one French scholar to another, sending him only the general directions that his leader must be "smart, up-to-date, and with plenty of push," it was to be "neither too long nor too short," and while it 233 234 LAMBKIN'S REMAINS should be written in an easy familiar tone, there should be little or no seriously offensive matter included. Mr. Lambkin was delighted, and when at his request the article had been paid for, he sent in the following : THE LEADER " The English-Speaking Race has — if we except the Dutch, Negro, and Irish elements — a marvellous talent for self-government. From the earliest origins of our Anglo-Saxon forefathers to the latest Parish Council, guided but not controlled by the modern ' Mass Thegen ' or local ' Gesithcund man,' this talent, or rather genius, is apparent. We cannot tell why, in the inscrutable designs of Providence, our chosen race should have been so specially gifted, but certain it is that wherever plain ordinary men such as 1 who write this and you who read it* may be planted, there they cause the desert to blossom, and the waters to gush from the living rock. Who has not known, whether among his personal acquaintance or from having read of him in books, the type of man who forms the strength of this mighty national organism? And who has not felt that he is himself something of that kidney? We stand aghast at our own extraordinary power, and it has been finely said that Nelson was greater than he knew. From one end of the earth to the other the British language is spoken and understood. The very words that I am writing will be read to-morrow in London, the day after in Oxford — and from this it is but a step to the utter- most parts of the earth. * The italicised words were omitted in the article. LAMBKIN'S LEADER 235 " Under these conditions of power, splendour, and domination it is intolerable that the vast metropolis of this gigantic empire should be pestered with crawling cabs. There are indeed many things which in the Divine plan have it in their nature to crawl. We of all the races of men are the readiest to admit the reign of universal law. Meaner races know not the law, but we are the children of the law, and where crawling is part of the Cosmos we submit and quit ourselves like men, being armed with the armour of righteousness. Thus no Englishman (whatever foreigners may feel) is offended at a crawling insect or worm. A wounded hare will crawl, and we Read that ' the serpent was cursed and crawled upon his belly ' ; again, Aristotle in his Ethics talks of those whose nature (4>v