in good company 11

in good company 11

I recall another and grimmer instance of Lord Roberts’ sense of

humour. On February 27, 1914, he introduced to the Prime Minister a

Deputation whose object was to plead the cause of National Service.

When I say that it was a great occasion I am not expressing my own

opinion, but that of a distinguished member of the Deputation who has

since written and published in pamphlet form an official account of

the proceedings.

 

“Those of us who look forward,” he writes, “to an early fruition of

the hopes which we have cherished and the aims for which we have

worked for so many years past, will ever look back upon Friday, the

27th of February, 1914, as a milestone, a red-letter day in the

History of National Service.

 

“All the circumstances conspired to stamp a great occasion with the

greatness which belonged to it. The importance of the Cause needs no

illustration from the present writer. In Lord Roberts’ well-known

words, ‘National Service means not only national safety; it means

national health, national strength, national honour, and national

prosperity.’

 

“The Deputation included some of the greatest and most distinguished

men of the day, and--a most significant and important factor--the

greatness was in nearly every case not inherited but achieved by

conspicuous service in the fields of national and imperial endeavour.

Three Field-Marshals, including our veteran leader who has carried

our flag to victory with honour in Asia and Africa and served King

and country for fifty-five years; two Admirals of the Fleet, one

of whom was in command of the International Forces at Crete, and

the other commanded the International Naval Forces in China at the

time of the Boxer Rebellion; an ex-Viceroy of India, prominent

representatives of the Church and of Nonconformity; the editor of one

of the most influential weeklies, and representatives of literature,

science, and industry.”

 

Of this Deputation I was, by Lord Roberts’ personal invitation and

wish, a member, and as I arrived in good time I had an opportunity of

some conversation with him in the ante-room before we passed into the

Library in which Mr. Asquith was to receive us.

 

Seeing that one of his hands was swathed in bandages, I inquired the

reason.

 

“Oh, that’s nothing,” he said smilingly. “I’ve often been accused

of having too many irons in the fire, but this time it is a case of

having a hand too much in the fire. Just before leaving my hotel this

morning, my foot slipped on the marble paving of the hall, and in

falling forward and trying to save myself, I thrust my hand between

the bars of the fire, and so got a bit of a burn. But it’s a mere

nothing, and of no consequence.”

 

So far from being, as Lord Roberts said, a mere nothing, I have

since heard that the burn was, on the contrary, excessively painful,

but all through the lengthy and trying ordeal of introducing the

different members of the Deputation, listening to, and commenting

upon what was said, as well as listening to and replying to the Prime

Minister’s very important and brilliantly able speech, Lord Roberts

was the alertest, cheeriest, and most watchful of those present. A

burn that would have distressed and possibly have distracted the

attention of a much younger man, and that must necessarily have

caused constant and severe pain, the gallant old soldier, then

nearing his 82nd year, treated as of no consequence and dismissed

with a lightly uttered jest. To the last it was of others, never of

himself, that he thought. On this particular occasion he was pleading

(to use his own words) “as plainly as an old man has the right to

speak, in the face of emergencies which would be far less terrible

to him personally than to generations of Britons yet unborn.” That

was not many months before his death, and though I saw and talked

with Field-Marshal Earl Roberts, V.C., on other and later occasions,

I shall to my life’s end picture him as I saw him then--his burned

and bandaged hand throbbing with pain of which he showed no single

sign, thrust behind him and out of sight, as eloquently, gravely,

almost passionately, he warned his hearers of a possible national

disaster, the consequences of which would be “far less terrible to

him personally than to generations of Britons yet unborn.”

 

 

 

 

THEODORE WATTS-DUNTON AS THE “OGRE OF THE ‘ATHENÆUM’”

 

 

It was, I believe, George Meredith who, when the author of _Aylwin_

changed his name from Theodore Watts to Theodore Watts-Dunton, spoke

of him as “Theodore What’s-his-name,” and added that he supposed his

friend had made the change lest posterity might confound Watts the

poet with Watts the hymn writer.

 

Posterity, unlike Popularity--who plays the wanton at times and

cohabits with unlawful mates--keeps chaste her house from generation

to generation and needs no hint from us to assist her choice. Her

task is to rescue reputations from the dust, no less than to “pour

forgetfulness upon the dead,” and none of us alive to-day may predict

what surprise of lost or rescued reputations Posterity may have in

store.

 

Over one of these reputations it is surely possible to imagine

Posterity--I will not disrespectfully say scratching a puzzled head,

but at least wrinkling in perplexity her learned brows. She will

discover when straightening out her dog’s-eared literary annals

that the name of one writer, who at the beginning of the last

decade of the nineteenth century had a great if somewhat esoteric

reputation among his brother authors, was not then to be found in

any publisher’s list, and for the somewhat curious and incontinent

reason that at that time he had published no book. It was not until

the publication of _Aylwin_ that the name of Theodore Watts, or

as he afterwards elected to be called Watts-Dunton, became widely

known outside what are sometimes not very felicitously described as

“literary circles.”

 

To-day the tremendous issues of the Great War have, as it were, at

a besom stroke of the gods, brushed into one box, to set aside,

upon a shelf, all the trappings, furniture and paraphernalia

of non-industrial arts and the like. Authors, artists, actors,

musicians, professors, as well as the mere politician, are, and

rightly, relegated to the back of the stage of life, and it is the

soldier and the sailor--not by their own seeking--who bulk biggest in

the public eye. But in those days of little things--the last decade

of the last century--and outside the so-called “literary circle” of

which I have spoken, there were other and outer circles of men and

women much more keenly interested in books and authors, especially

in the personality of literary celebrities, than would be possible

in these days of tragic and tremendous world-issues. In such circles

many curious, interesting and even romantic associations were woven

around the name of Theodore Watts.

 

He was known to be the personal friend of Tennyson, Matthew Arnold,

James Russell Lowell, Browning, and William Morris. Dante Gabriel

Rossetti and George Meredith had in the past made their home with

him at Chelsea, and Swinburne had been his house mate for many years

at Putney. Rossetti and Swinburne had written and spoken of him in

terms which to outsiders seem extravagant, and both had dedicated

some of their best work to him. It was also known that he had lived

for some time with gipsies, was one of the three greatest living

authorities on gipsy lore and the gipsy language, and had been the

friend of George Borrow. This curiosity was stimulated by the fact

that Watts-Dunton was then very rarely seen at literary dinners or

functions, and was supposed more studiously even to avoid publicity

than some of his craft who might be named were supposed to seek it.

Cryptic allusions in the literary journals, reviews, and magazines

to a long-completed novel, deliberately and cruelly withheld from

publication, and tributes to his encyclopædic knowledge, did not a

little to increase this curiosity.

 

Thus far the reputation which Theodore Watts had attained did

not altogether belie him, but there was yet another “Theodore

Watts”--“Watts of the _Athenæum_” he was sometimes called--who had

no existence except in the imagination of certain small literary fry

by whom he was popularly supposed to be something of a “Hun” of the

pen, a shark of the literary seas, who preyed upon suckling poets.

I remember a morning in the early nineties, when I was to lunch at

Putney with Watts-Dunton and Swinburne. Being in the neighbourhood

of Temple Bar about eleven, I turned in for a cup of coffee and a

cigarette at a famous Coffee House, then much frequented by editors,

journalists, poets, rising authors and members of the literary staff

of the publishing houses and newspaper offices in or around Fleet

Street, as well as by members of the legal profession from the Temple

and the New Law Courts.

 

At the next table sat a young man with long hair, a velveteen jacket

and a flowing tie. He was talking so loudly to a friend, that unless

one stopped one’s ears there was no choice but to overhear the

conversation.

 

“Seen this week’s _Athenæum_?” he asked his friend.

 

“Not yet. Anything particular in it?” was the reply.

 

“Only a review of my poems.”

 

“Good?”

 

“Bad as it can be--bad, that is, as four contemptuous lines of small

print can make it. A book, which as you know represents the thought,

the passion and soul-travail of years; a book written in my heart’s

blood--and dismissed by the _Athenæum_ in four contemptuous lines!”

 

There was a pause too brief, if not too deep for tears. Then:

“Theodore Watts, of course!” he added between set teeth. “I expected

it. Everyone knows he is so insanely jealous of us younger men that

he watches the publishers’ lists for every book by a young poet

of ability to pounce upon it, and to cut it up. What has he done,

I should like to know, to give him the right to pronounce death

sentences? Why, the fellow’s never even published a book of his own.

 

“Shall I tell you why? He _daren’t_. There is a novel called _Aylwin_

written and ready to publish many years ago. Murray has offered him

a small fortune in advance royalties, I hear.”

 

Again the young man paused dramatically and looked darkly around the

room, not apparently from fear of his being overheard, but because he