Tracks of a Rolling Stone Part 28

Here a message was handed in, and something was whispered in his ear.

'Very well, put it down.'

'From Paris,' said Sir Anthony, guessing perhaps at its contents.

But not until the plaster was comfortably adjusted did Plutus read the message. He smiled and pushed it over to me. It was the terms of peace, and the German bill of costs.

'200,000,000!' I exclaimed. 'That's a heavy reckoning. Will France ever be able to pay it?'

'Pay it? Yes. If it had been twice as much!' And Plutus returned to his sticking-plaster. That was of real importance.

Last autumn-1904, the literary world was not a little gratified by an announcement in the 'Times' that the British Museum had obtained possession of the original ma.n.u.script of Keats's 'Hyperion.' Let me tell the story of its discovery. During the summer of last year, my friend Miss Alice Bird, who was paying me a visit at Longford, gave me this account of it.

When Leigh Hunt's memoirs were being edited by his son Thornton in 1861, he engaged the services of three intimate friends of the family to read and collate the enormous ma.s.s of his father's correspondence. Miss Alice Bird was one of the chosen three. The arduous task completed, Thornton Hunt presented each of his three friends with a number of autographic letters, which, according to Miss Bird's description, he took almost at random from the eliminated pile. Amongst the lot that fell to Miss Bird's share was a roll of stained paper tied up with tape. This she was led to suppose-she never carefully examined it-might be either a copy or a draft of some friend's unpublished poem.

The unknown treasure was put away in a drawer with the rest. Here it remained undisturbed for forty-three years. Having now occasion to remove these papers, she opened the forgotten scroll, and was at once struck both with the words of the 'Hyperion,' and with the resemblance of the writing to Keats's.

She forthwith consulted the Keepers of the Ma.n.u.scripts in the British Museum, with the result that her _trouvaille_ was immediately identified as the poet's own draft of the 'Hyperion.' The responsible authorities soon after, offered the fortunate possessor five hundred guineas for the ma.n.u.script, but courteously and honestly informed her that, were it put up to auction, some American collector would be almost sure to give a much larger sum for it.

Miss Bird's patriotism prevailed over every other consideration. She expressed her wish that the poem should be retained in England; and generously accepted what was indubitably less than its market value.

CHAPTER XLVII

A MAN whom I had known from my school-days, Frederick Thistlethwayte, coming into a huge fortune when a subaltern in a marching regiment, had impulsively married a certain Miss Laura Bell. In her early days, when she made her first appearance in London and in Paris, Laura Bell's extraordinary beauty was as much admired by painters as by men of the world. Amongst her reputed lovers were Dhuleep Singh, the famous Marquis of Hertford, and Prince Louis Napoleon. She was the daughter of an Irish constable, and began life on the stage at Dublin. Her Irish wit and sparkling merriment, her cajolery, her good nature and her feminine artifice, were attractions which, in the eyes of the male s.e.x, fully atoned for her youthful indiscretions.

My intimacy with both Mr. and Mrs. Thistlethwayte extended over many years; and it is but justice to her memory to aver that, to the best of my belief, no wife was ever more faithful to her husband. I speak of the Thistlethwaytes here for two reasons-absolutely unconnected in themselves, yet both interesting in their own way. The first is, that at my friend's house in Grosvenor Square I used frequently to meet Mr.

Gladstone, sometimes alone, sometimes at dinner. As may be supposed, the dinner parties were of men, but mostly of men eminent in public life.

The last time I met Mr. Gladstone there the Duke of Devons.h.i.+re and Sir W.

Harcourt were both present. I once dined with Mrs. Thistlethwayte in the absence of her husband, when the only others were Munro of Novar-the friend of Turner, and the envied possessor of a splendid gallery of his pictures-and the Duke of Newcastle-then a Cabinet Minister. Such were the notabilities whom the famous beauty gathered about her.

But it is of Mr. Gladstone that I would say a word. The fascination which he exercised over most of those who came into contact with him is incontestable; and everyone is ent.i.tled to his own opinion, even though unable to account for it. This, at least, must be my plea, for to me, Mr. Gladstone was more or less a Dr. Fell. Neither in his public nor in his private capacity had I any liking for him. n.o.body cares a b.u.t.ton for what a 'man in the street' like me says or thinks on subject matters upon which they have made up their minds. I should not venture, even as one of the crowd, to deprecate a popularity which I believe to be fast pa.s.sing away, were it not that better judges and wiser men think as I do, and have represented opinions which I sincerely share. 'He was born,'

says Huxley, 'to be a leader of men, and he has debased himself to be a follower of the ma.s.ses. If working men were to-day to vote by a majority that two and two made five, to-morrow Gladstone would believe it, and find them reasons for it which they had never dreamt of.' Could any words be truer? Yes; he was not born to be a leader of men. He was born to be, what he was-a misleader of men. Huxley says he could be made to believe that two and two made five. He would try to make others believe it; but would he himself believe it? His friends will plead, 'he might deceive himself by the excessive subtlety of his mind.' This is the charitable view to take. But some who knew him long and well put another construction upon this facile self-deception. There were, and are, honourable men of the highest standing who failed to ascribe disinterested motives to the man who suddenly and secretly betrayed his colleagues, his party, and his closest friends, and tried to break up the Empire to satisfy an inordinate ambition, and an insatiable craving for power. 'He might have been mistaken, but he acted for the best'? Was he acting conscientiously for the best in persuading the 'ma.s.ses' to look upon the 'cla.s.ses'-the war cries are of his coining-as their natural enemies, and worthy only of their envy and hatred? Is this the part of a statesman, of a patriot?

And for what else shall we admire Mr. Gladstone? Walter Bagehot, alluding to his egotism, wrote of him in his lifetime, 'He longs to pour forth his own belief; he cannot rest till he has contradicted everyone else.' And what was that belief worth? 'He has scarcely,' says the same writer, 'given us a sentence that lives in the memory.'

Even his eloquent advocate, Mr. Morley, confesses surprise at his indifference to the teaching of evolution; in other words, his ignorance of, and disbelief in, a scientific theory of nature which has modified the theological and moral creeds of the civilised world more profoundly than did the Copernican system of the Universe.

The truth is, Mr. Gladstone was half a century behind the age in everything that most deeply concerned the destiny of man. He was a politician, and nothing but a politician; and had it not been for his extraordinary gift of speech, we should never have heard of him save as a writer of scholia, or as a college don, perhaps. Not for such is the temple of Fame.

Fama di loro il mondo esser non la.s.sa.

Whatever may be thought now, Mr. Gladstone is not the man whom posterity will enn.o.ble with the t.i.tle of either 'great' or 'good.'

My second reason for mentioning Frederick Thistlethwayte was one which at first sight may seem trivial, and yet, when we look into it, is of more importance than the renown of an ex-Prime Minister. If these pages are ever read, what follows will be as distasteful to some of my own friends as the above remarks to Mr. Gladstone's.

Pardon a word about the writer himself-it is needed to emphasise and justify these _obiter dicta_. I was brought up as a sportsman: I cannot remember the days when I began to shoot. I had a pa.s.sion for all kinds of sport, and have had opportunities of gratifying it such as fall to the lot of few. After the shootings of Glenquoich and Invergarry were lost to me through the death of Mr. Ellice, I became almost the sole guest of Mr. Thistlethwayte for twelve years at his Highland shooting of Kinlochmohr, not very far from Fort William. He rented the splendid deer forest of Mamore, extensive grouse moors, and a salmon river within ten minutes' walk of the lodge. His marriage and his eccentricities of mind and temper led him to shun all society. We often lived in bothies at opposite ends of the forest, returning to the lodge on Sat.u.r.day till Monday morning. For a sportsman, no life could be more enjoyable. I was my own stalker, taking a couple of gillies for the ponies, but finding the deer for myself-always the most difficult part of the sport-and stalking them for myself.

I may here observe that, not very long after I married, qualms of conscience smote me as to the justifiability of killing, _and wounding_, animals for amus.e.m.e.nt's sake. The more I thought of it, the less it bore thinking about. Finally I gave it up altogether. But I went on several years after this with the deer-stalking; the true explanation of this inconsistency would, I fear, be that I had had enough of the one, but would never have enough of the other-one's conscience adapts itself without much difficulty to one's inclinations.

Between my host and myself, there was a certain amount of rivalry; and as the head forester was his stalker, the rivalry between our men aroused rancorous jealousy. I think the gillies on either side would have spoilt the others' sport, could they have done so with impunity. For two seasons, a very big stag used occasionally to find its way into our forest from the Black Mount, where it was also known. Thistlethwayte had had a chance, and missed it; then my turn came. I got a long snap-shot end on at the galloping stag. It was an unsportsmanlike thing to do, but considering the rivalry and other temptations I fired, and hit the beast in the haunch. It was late in the day, and the wounded animal escaped.

Nine days later I spied the 'big stag' again. He was nearly in the middle of a herd of about twenty, mostly hinds, on the look-out. They were on a large open moss at the bottom of a corrie, whence they could see a moving object on every side of them. A stalk where they were was out of the question. I made up my mind to wait and watch.

Now comes the moral of my story. For hours I watched that stag. Though three hundred yards or so away from me, I could through my gla.s.s see almost the expression of his face. Not once did he rise or attempt to feed, but lay restlessly beating his head upon the ground for hour after hour. I knew well enough what that meant. I could not hear his groans.

His plaints could not reach my ears, but they reached my heart. The refrain varied little: 'How long shall I cry and Thou wilt not hear?'-that was the monotonous burden of the moans, though sometimes I fancied it changed to: 'Lord how long shall the wicked, how long shall the wicked triumph?'

The evening came, and then, as is their habit, the deer began to feed up wind. The wounded stag seemed loth to stir. By degrees the last watchful hind fed quietly out of sight. With throbbing pulse and with the instincts of a fox-or prehistoric man, 'tis all the same-I crawled and dragged myself through the peat bog and the pools of water. But nearer than two hundred yards it was impossible to get; even to raise my head or find a tussock whereon to rest the rifle would have started any deer but this one. From the hollow I was in, the most I could see of him was the outline of his back and his head and neck. I put up the 200 yards sight and killed him.

A vivid description of the body is not desirable. It was almost fleshless, wasted away, except his wounded haunch. That was nearly twice its normal size; about one half of it was maggots. The stench drove us all away. This I had done, and I had done it for my pleasure!

After that year I went no more to Scotland. I blame no one for his pursuit of sport. But I submit that he must follow it, if at all, with Reason's eyes shut. Happily, your true sportsman does not violate his conscience. As a friend of mine said to me the other day, 'Unless you give a man of that kind something to kill, his own life is not worth having.' This, to be sure, is all he has to think about.

CHAPTER XLVIII

FOR eight or nine years, while my sons were at school, I lived at Rickmansworth. Unfortunately the Leweses had just left it. Moor Park belonged to Lord Ebury, my wife's uncle, and the beauties of its magnificent park and the amenities of its charming house were at all times open to us, and freely taken advantage of. During those nine years I lived the life of a student, and wrote and published the book I have elsewhere spoken of, the 'Creeds of the Day.'

Of the visitors of note whose acquaintance I made while I was staying at Moor Park, by far the most ill.u.s.trious was Froude. He was too reserved a man to lavish his intimacy when taken unawares; and if he suspected, as he might have done by my probing, that one wanted to draw him out, he was much too shrewd to commit himself to definite expressions of any kind until he knew something of his interviewer. Reticence of this kind, on the part of such a man, is both prudent and commendable. But is not this habit of cautiousness sometimes carried to the extent of ambiguity in his 'Short Studies on Great Subjects'? The careful reader is left in no sort of doubt as to Froude's own views upon Biblical criticism, as to his theological dogmas, or his speculative opinions. But the conviction is only reached by comparing him with himself in different moods, by collating essay with essay, and one part of an essay with another part of the same essay. Sometimes we have an astute defence of doctrines worthy at least of a temperate apologist, and a few pages further on we wonder whether the writer was not masking his disdain for the credulity which he now exposes and laughs at. Neither excessive caution nor timidity are implied by his editing of the Carlyle papers; and he may have failed-who that has done so much has not?-in keeping his balance on the swaying slack-rope between the judicious and the injudicious. In his own line, however, he is, to my taste, the most scholarly, the most refined, and the most suggestive, of our recent essayists. The man himself in manner and in appearance was in perfect keeping with these attractive qualities.

While speaking of Moor Park and its kind owner I may avail myself of this opportunity to mention an early reminiscence of Lord Ebury's concerning the Grosvenor estate in London.

Mr. Gladstone was wont to amuse himself with speculations as to the future dimensions of London; what had been its growth within his memory; what causes might arise to cheek its increase. After listening to his remarks on the subject one day at dinner, I observed that I had heard Lord Ebury talk of shooting over ground which is now Eaton Square. Mr.

Gladstone of course did not doubt it; but some of the young men smiled incredulously. I afterwards wrote to Lord Ebury to make sure that I had not erred. Here is his reply:

'Moor Park, Rickmansworth: January 9, 1883.

'My dear Henry,-What you said I had told you about snipe-shooting is quite true, though I think I ought to have mentioned a s.p.a.ce rather nearer the river than Eaton Square. In the year 1815, when the battle of Waterloo was fought, there was nothing behind Grosvenor Place but the (-?) fields-so called, a place something like the Scrubbs, where the household troops drilled. That part of Grosvenor Place where the Grosvenor Place houses now stand was occupied by the Lock Hospital and Chapel, and it ended where the small houses are now to be found. A little farther, a somewhat tortuous lane called the King's Road led to Chelsea, and, I think, where now St. Peter's, Pimlico, was afterwards built. I remember going to a breakfast at a villa belonging to Lady Buckinghams.h.i.+re. The Chelsea Waterworks Company had a sort of marshy place with ca.n.a.ls and osier beds, now, I suppose, Ebury Street, and here it was that I was permitted to go and try my hand at snipe-shooting, a special privilege given to the son of the freeholder.

'The successful fox-hunt terminating in either Bedford or Russell Square is very strange, but quite appropriate, commemorated, I suppose, by the statue {342} there erected.

Yours affectionately, 'E.'

The successful 'fox-hunt' was an event of which I told Lord Ebury as even more remarkable than his snipe-shooting in Belgravia. As it is still more indicative of the growth of London in recent times it may be here recorded.

In connection with Mr. Gladstone's forecasts, I had written to the last Lord Digby, who was a grandson of my father's, stating that I had heard-whether from my father or not I could not say-that he had killed a fox where now is Bedford Square, with his own hounds.

Lord Digby replied:

'Minterne, Dorset: January 7, 1883.

'My dear Henry,-My grandfather killed a fox with his hounds either in Bedford or Russell Square. Old Jones, the huntsman, who died at Holkham when you were a child, was my informant. I asked my grandfather if it was correct. He said "Yes"-he had kennels at Epping Place, and hunted the roodings of Ess.e.x, which, he said, was the best scenting-ground in England.