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Salutation to five
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SALUTATION TO FIVE
SALUTATION
TO
FIVE
by
SHANE LESLIE
Biography Index Reprint Series
BOOKS FOR LIBRARIES PRESS
FREEPORT, NEW YORK
First Published 1951 by Hollis and Carter, Ltd.
All rights reserved
Reprinted 1970 by arrangement with The Bodley Head Limited
INTERNATIONAL STANDARD BOOK NUMBER:
0-8369-8027-1
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER:
75-126321
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
CONTENTS
RETROSPECT .. .. .. .. i
I. MRS. FITZHERBERT . . . . . . z6
n. EDMOND WARRE . . . . . . 42
m. SIR WILLIAM BUTLER . . . . . . 66
IV. LEO TOLSTOY . . . . . . . . 99
V. SIR MARK SYKES . . . . 133
^ 7104961
KANSAS CITY (MO.) PUBUC LIBRARY
MORTUIS
MORITURUS
RETROSPECT
THE five essays in biography which compose this volume
Edmond Warre, Headmaster of Eton; Sir William
Butler, British General and Irish patriot; Sir Mark
Sykes, Orientalist and traveller; Mrs. Fitzherbert, wife of
George IV; and Leo Tolstoy have little in common except
their personal interest in my mind for this preface is
autobiography.
They need framing in the manner that old photographs are
glued into a family scrap-book. They need not be relatives
but may be objects of hero-worship. All five have been so
much a part of my life that I feel I shall carry their remem
brance away with me. Warre, the god of Eton days;
Butler, my first steersman on Irish troubled water; Tolstoy,
inspiration of my Paris days; Mark Sykes, an Occidental
star who dipped under the horizons of Versailles not to
reappear, Mrs. Fitzherbert, naturally, was the one of the
five I could not know while she lived. But her mysterious
and gracious memory had remained like a family ghost in
my home and I was destined to be her final champion with
the pen.
llie others passed one by one into my impressionable ken
until I felt the debt could only be paid by writing. While
weaving each into essay form, I found my own mind s
biography collecting in the margins: like dust upon the
gilt-edge.
Life is too short to decide whether chance or heredity,
choice or environments play the strongest influences. All
shared in mine but particularly certain characters, some
strong and some quaint or queer. Thanks to books, one
can double and redouble life s brevity. In a great library
one can taste or drain the life-blood of the great writers*
But the great who have not written, one must follow awhile
and write into literature for oneself.
Autobiography is the result of following back one s own
SALUTATION TO FIVE
tracks and recording impressions which may one day be
examined like any dead film of the past.
The mind of man is like some indestructible toy. It brings
back visions out of invisible memory and it can construct
possible futures. There is no doubt which is the more
restful. Everyone who can think a little can flutter backwards
in his own life or borrow the mightier wings of great writers.
Not for nothing did the Latin for feather give us the word
for pen\
I have found the power of fluttering back one of the
pleasantest variants to life. I have envied the power of the
Lady of Shalott to sit in a trance and watch a mirrored world
pass by. The mirror of the mind is literature. The supreme
gift of an education is the power of reading, the fascination
of dipping into other worlds and being able to conjure greater
spirits than oneself.
It reconciled me to being a sap at Eton under the athletic
reign of Warre when any appreciation of literature left one
despised and avoided. This was otherwise in the more
civilised parts of the School, but I was dropped into a
dark corner.
I was glad to exchange the Playing Fields for the Champs
filys^es of Paris before I had been confirmed in Church
principles or even in the right style of rowing.
The exploration of Letters kept me busily delighted in the
Latin Quarter and I could have subscribed to what a great
poet picked as the greatest line in Kipling: concerning fools
that were flannelled and oafs that were muddy. The France
of 1 900 was largely innocent of the games of sport. Generally
speaking, the Arts took their place. I once asked what
incident most symbolised the gulf between English and
French mentality. I was told that the sight of the Bishop
of London playing a set of tennis with the President of the
United States had been the most incomprehensible to the
French. In France a Bishop and a President would as likely
meet in a cafS over a game of dominoes 1
The fact was that England emerged from the nineteenth
"century soaked in athletics. Every class clamoured for sport
which was often healthier than today, for everyone attempted
RETROSPECT
to pky. Even the cheerful British form of politics was
treated as a game. It was from the Speaker that the umpires
of England learnt their integrity.
Warre certainly made Eton and all lesser schools in her
wake athletic. That he was great in other ways our essay
will show. The intellectual side was permitted by the masters
but utterly scorned by the boys. The masters were
ludicrously uneven, some incapable, others quaint unto
caricature but amongst them were Arthur Benson and Hugh
Macnaghten. I was lucky enough to serve two halves under
Benson and four under Macnaghten. This alone was real
education according to Plato. Boys fortunate enough to
enjoy their teaching received an inspiration which has
probably never been attained since. I cannot think of any
modem Classes receiving such stimulation unless Bernard
Shaw were given a Dramatic Class at Eton or Winston were
made Head of Harrow.
Had I been at Macnaghten s House, I would have made
him the hero of my Eton essay, but I only keep a score of
letters and his memory lies in the graves of his boys who fell
in the First World War. Thank God, he did not see the
Second. The tragedy of his last years and his death in the
river were sufficient. Macnaghten proved that Fifth Form
boys will follow however high a form-master soars, provided
they think him genuine. Benson behind his veil of melancholy
made boys appreciate the niceties of language, comment,
humour and a little irony. Also he told the English anecdote
to perfection. His end was as miserable as Macnaghten s as
though overstrain had played upon the over-gifted.
It was the rugged, yet almost radiant, Warre who furnished
the background of the Eton I knew. He must have changed
our lives, if only indirectly, but I would not have changed
him, though there were cruel spots in the School he loved,
I spent a year in Paris recovering from three years at the
worst House that ever made gossip or legend at Eton. Sk
Alexander Carr-Saunders and Colonel Harry Streatfeild witness
me that some kind of recovery was needed by survivors.
It was an ironic provision by the gods that Eton at her
greatest and most envied should have developed a quartet of
SALUTATION TO FIVE
" bad houses " which all needed dissolution in the first decade
of the new century. The horrors of " Long Chamber " were
mentioned in Eton history, so perhaps strict history calls for
an allusion to the blots upon Warre s last years. No one can
say whether they contributed to his physical collapse, His
Eton was so resplendent that he never noticed the shadows.
Much can be forgotten, but incidentally not one of the four
delinquent houses was presided by a Ckssic. The four
house-masters could not have translated a Greek play between
them. .Good teachers of their subjects they were, but they
could no more conduct an Eton House than a bevy of curates
could take a Bank at Monte Carlo. These were houses, from
which escape was advisable into other houses conducted as
well as White s or the Turf Club, while the College Foundation
corresponded to the Athenaeum. Escape was not easy. I
remember Grenfells and Horners escaping from a "bad
house " thanks to powerful and alarmed parents. My younger
brother and I had to dree our weird (and very weird it was)
until he escaped to Sandhurst on the way to a soldier s grave,
while I found a mixture of freedom, faith and frivolity in Paris.
The Sorbonne was not the only world I found open. There
was also the fantastic world which I afterwards recognised in
Marcel Proust s dreamy gossip. Surely I had known some of
those painted witlings and fops of the Faubourg St. Germain,
so his books did not prove entirely phantasy to me. One of
the exquisite type he analysed made a decided grab for me but
I was warned, for he had previously tried to entangle my
great friend, Jo Stickney, an American and the most promising
Greek student at the Sorbonne. Jo Stickney had sailed into
my life as soon as I reached Paris. A tall poetical Bostonian,
the best-looking man in the Quartier, he ambitioned to return
to Harvard and from the Chair of Greek renew the literary
soul of New England. We were neighbours in the Rue
d Assas and mentally he took me by the scruff. Thanks to
his laughing knowledge of the world, I disengaged myself
from the poisonous garden which Proust has immortalised
with all its thwarted pleasures and finessed affectations, and
which Scott Moncrieff has wonderfully translated in that part
of his work called " The Gties of the Plain ". The same
RETROSPECT
corruptor of youth had crossed Stickney who warned me
amusingly. I was already learning a good deal more than
French by accompanying him to the theatre. It was of course
my first meeting with real artists, musicians and painters.
Hitherto I only knew music as taught by old Lloyd the Eton
organist and the fine arts as practised by the older Sammy
Evans, the Drawing Master. I learnt now that sin and sex
were the fibres of Art. But this Stickney contradicted and
instead of the Decadence he offered me old " Uncle Henry "
Adams, another wonderful Bostonian, who was living
obscurely in Paris but has achieved posthumous fame by the
publication of his Education of Henry Adams.
These remain very vivid days, like a little perfumed ash in
the memory. Stickney and I mocked our would-be tempter
in spite of his exquisite piano-playing. His form of temptation
was garish, for he kept a fair lady whom he offered to the
callow youths he wished to draw into tutelage. This was
always symbolised for me in later years when I saw Wagner s
Parsival and the scene when the magician summons the en
chanting Kundry to overwhelm the hero in her snaky arms.
Henry Adams was no doubt a healthier instructor and thanks
to him I went mediaeval at the sight of Chartres Cathedral.
By a chance I was with him fifteen years later in Washington
shortly before he died humming the Latin Hymns of Adam
St. Victor in gratitude to Heaven, which had spared him the
fate of his grandfather and great-grandfather, both born to be
Presidents of the United States.
All this mental and moral commotion came to me in 1902-3 :
now to be reckoned half a century back. I can re-imagine
this higher phase of my life from parts of Henry Adams*
book: surely one of the shelf that every Aryan intellectual
should know. He wrote of himself then as " tottering about
with Jo Stickney talking Greek Philosophy or studying Louise
at the Opera Comique ", This delicious phantasy of Paris had
just triumphed in musical form. Like Offenbach before, it
made a date.
Adams had just been to Russia and shuddered at its inertia,
which threatened China and John Hay, his friend who in the
name of America withstood the Slavic path. Hay had been
J
SALUTATION TO FIVE
Lincoln s secretary or batman, I heard much of him and of
Senator Cameron (did not Mrs. Cameron cause the war with
Spain?) and of Theodore Roosevelt, whom Adams described
as " the quality that mediaeval theology assigned to God he
was pure act! " Based on mediaevalism, Adams was trying
to " triangulate the future ". His prophetic book shows how
near he came, " Either Germany must destroy England and
France to create the next unification or pool interests " (not
bad for 1901).
From " Uncle Henry " I learnt that it was better to be a
hermit in the White Sea than live in the White House. Also
that the Virgin Mary was the dynamic centre of the Universe.
Had she not propulsed Chartres from the mind of man?
Incidentally I learnt that Democracy had failed. He had lived
in London when Swinburne had red-gold hair and British
ministers had been prevented with difficulty from accepting
war on behalf of the South. It was always his relief to return
to Ming china and Japanese prints.
He and Stickney cultivated the Oriental in art and I had the
pleasure of bringing round a Japanese fellow-lodger to
decipher some of Stickney s possessions. At one time he
talked of learning Japanese, having exhausted Greek and
Sanscrit. In the same spirit I took a course on Japanese
poetry from Monsieur Revon. The Sorbonne supplied much
that was lacking in Dr. Warre s curriculum.
Greek was Stickney s hobby and music his passion. When
he was not correcting his Thesis on ks sentences dans la potsit
grecqm he pkyed delicately upon the violin. There came a
terrible but triumphant afternoon when he defended his
thesis against Croiset the Dean and the pick of the Sorbonne
professors in his quiet Bostonian French. No Anglo-Saxon
had essayed this challenge before and though he was found
not to be entirely Gallic in his scholarship, they awarded Mm
their highest degree. Harvard made Mm professor.
He helped me to tidy up my Fifth Form; Greek and gave me
the Greek Anthology bound with his delicate cipher on the
morocco: the same cipher which marked the rice paper on
which he set his lovely calligraph. He offered me a walking
tour through Greece in the autumn of 1903 carrying satchels
6
RETROSPECT
and alpenstocks. Alas! I preferred to return to Donegal
and shoot grouse behind white, mauve-spotted pointers;
alas I for I never saw him again. Two years later in Harvard
he died of a brain tumour and some echo of the ancient song
was buried beyond the seas.
I kept my copy of his Thesis, intending always to translate
it for an unworthy world. Twenty years later I crawled
round Harvard beseeching someone to exchange memories
of my wonderful friend. But Harvard had entirely forgotten
the son of her culture, who had taught the Sorbonne that
America nourished something better than Hollywood cowboys
and the profligate spawn of millionaires.
When I found that Harvard had forgotten him, I felt as
though I had only imagined him. He might never have
been . . . and the years continued to pass until I picked up
George Santayana s Middle Span and found that he had once
lived for him, though he had dropped the " Jo " and styled
himself Trumbull Stickney. Whatever his mortal name, I
felt that the gods reserved something more melodious for
him in the Isles of the Blest. So Santayana had also found
him a " learned friend and poet " and known the apartment
" overlooking the quiet side of the Luxembourg Gardens ".
He also had been given the Thesis and knew the handful of
classical poems which were to be the prelude of an American
Shakespeare. Sunt lacrimae rerum*
Santayana told the end of the story, the return to the rough
ideals of Harvard and imagined: " So Newman must have
suffered when he became a Catholic. When would the ivy
mantle those new brick walls or the voice modulate the Latin
liturgy as it had done English?" I imagined him like a
goatherd of Theocritus trying to pipe in the Rockies, but Pan
had happier died in the Aegean seas than beyond Cape Cod.
As the result of listening to such as Henry Adams and
Jo Stickney in Paris I formed a slightly erroneous view of
Americans. I had enjoyed a privilege all the wealth of Boston
culd not acquire. I gathered that American men were kindly
ironical and faintly godlike, but always devoted to the higher
thought. Upon the fleshpots they cast their shoe, in Stickney s
case a Grecian sandal out of a Flaxman Drawing. I
SALUTATION TO FIVE
heard much of the Education of Henry Adams distilled as
conversation. I could not erase what I thought Americans
talked from the juvenile jelly of my brain. For the time, my
own education had been as wonderful and worthy of record
as "Uncle "Henry s.
Paris opened a literary atmosphere and satisfied my
imagination. Here one could browse upon books under the
Odeon or on the Quais, pick, sample and read without shame
or purchase. It was different from the dull quests to Mudie s
or the Eton bookseller. Funds were limited and I remember
my first choice lay between Hugo s Notre Dame de Paris and
Les mattresses de Napoleon III. Daudet was the only acquisition
I had brought from Eton. In imitation of the radiant Lettres
de mon moulin I wrote my first short story called Le maitre
Brocket (inedif). It described an Irish boy s adventures with a
monster pike. Daudet s short stories ! There is nothing like
them in English except Bewick s tailpieces.
I realised that literary life counted in France. It was not
freakish or only fiddling with life. The Dreyfus case had
set Zola high in English estimation, but be was asphyxiated
by a stove soon after my arrival, or, as the religious papers
announced, " strangled by an Angel passing at night! " He
had written his Three Gospels but had been prevented from
concluding the fourth. This did not prevent me from
attending his funeral and, as I imagined, representing the
literary side of Eton.
Of all the funerals I have attended, Zola s proved the most
exciting. I arrived early at the Rue de Bruxelles where I
viewed a huge hearse draped in black and silver with the
monogram of Z. An officer in uniform advanced to place a
wreath before the police bustled round him and removed the
card. It was Dreyfus himself and commotion was in the air.
As the procession started on the long trek to the cemetery
of Montmartre, I joined the students who were demonstrating
from the Quartier. It proved a lively march and we exchanged
bitter sallies with the Royalists and anti-Dreyfusards in the
crowds. There was a concerted plot to push the coffin and
pompes funlbres into the Seine but the police and the glittering
Cuirassiers prevented fisticuffs. It was a dull October twilight
8
RETROSPECT
by the time we straggled into the famous cemetery, where
Heine s grave used to be heaped with nostalgic visiting cards*
The scene was crowned by a funeral oration from no less than
Anatole France which left us delirious. We marched past
the grave after ransacking other graves for wreaths and dead
chrysanthemums which were tossed in salute to the shouting
of " Germinal! Germinal! " Though I have been present
at the funerals of Sovereigns and Popes, I have never enjoyed
one more.
In England there could be no parallel imaginable. There
was no mighty oration over the corpse of Henry James and
no angry clashes, that I can remember, when Swinburne or
Alfred Austin were carried discreetly to their burial.
England is not a literary or artistic country and there can
be no gloomier scene in the undertaker s calendar than a new
deposit in Poets Corner of Westminster Abbey. A new wax
effigy at Madame Tussaud s causes more popular interest.
But in France the great traction survived. Writers are still
estimated above politicians and only members of the Academy
are reckoned " immortals ". In England the immortals are a
few elder statesmen and a bunch of even older favourite
actresses.
Returning to the Quartier I started reading Zola s grim
series devoted to the Rougon-MacQuart family, a huge Saga
in supposed Naturalism, lit at times by flame or flash, but they
called for endless grubbing. Life is too short to read authors
wholesale. The best rule is to know each author by one or
three masterpieces only, but well enough to pass examination.
Out of Zola I chose Rome, Le Rive and La Dib&Ie. Le Rive
could be read in a convent.
La D&bdcle brought the word into every language. It
means the total thaw which melts the security of ice and was
applied to the French collapse in 1870 under the Bismarcktan
sun. It was a wonderful introduction to the wars which
have savaged Europe since. The military science was correct
and it should have been made a text-book for the British Army.
The English must have wondered since whether they have
not suffered a d6bicle of their own. Victorian England
seemed enthroned like a glacier above the servile seas. Her
SALUTATION TO FIVE
ice palaces were mistaken for rock-crystal, until they slid into
the surrounding ocean carrying her puzzled denizens, like
bears marooned on an iceberg, to debate angrily on questions
of food or space.
Only a novel, but La Dtbdcle set English readers ahead
of public men in realising the continental future. Punic and
Peloponesian Wars wearied the minds of British schoolboys.
They should have been set to study the American Civil War
and the Franco-Prussian campaign. Both were utterly un
known to the curriculum of Eton or any other school. On
these two wars the whole present has been poised.
Zola s ecclesiastical novel Rome I devoured after a trip to
the City, which is undestroyable but not uncapturable to pen
or apparently to armies. It was the City of Leo Xm and
Cardinal Rampolk and Camille Barr&re, 1 the French Am
bassador for ever plotting to set Italy against England, and of
Archbishops Stanley and Stonor posturing like Gog and
Magog at the gates of the Vatican : with the stumpy little King
rushing about like a schoolboy playing at being the Kaiser.
I read every sentence of Rome to myself aloud which is the
quickest way of learning to talk a language. It was an
enthralling parody of the Catholic life, immense and made to
look a little monstrous, but henceforth I could always see
ecclesiastics and their institutions as Zola painted them. In
those pages the pre-Mussolini City of Black and White Society
lives again. However anti-clerical, and in spite of the famous
chapter in which the Cardinal refuses to allow the embrace
of the dead lovers to be broken, the novel opened my eyes to
a Universal Church and system impossible to visualise from
Victorian England. The only other book which seems to
indicate such a necessity for Europe is oddly enough the
Decline and Fall by Gibbon, for, once the Roman Empire fell,
History needed something to take its place if only as a
general prop.
European countries and thek capitals were more distinct
1 Barrere was the doyen of the diplomats surrounding the Quinnal. The
British were flabbergasted and attributed his hatred of England to the treatment
his father received as an instructor at Woolwich. IThe elder Barrere had been
a Communist refugee and was credited with a share in the murder of the
Archbishop of Paris. His son used to take tea in the salon of an aunt of mine
living in Rome and played bridge watching his sous like any bourgeois.
10
RETROSPECT
before Americanising. The Latin Quarter in Paris was
noticeably French. The Cinema had not taken the place of
the Bal Bulier, and the theatre of the Odeon was a cheap
distraction for students.
French drama was startling, I found, after the English,
which in the nineties had meant Gilbert and Sullivan,
Beerbohm Tree, Dan Leno with Herbert Campbell at Drury
Lane. Paris offered the Comedie Franfaise with the classics
recited flawlessly. Louise had created a furore in my time
while Sarah Bernhardt was struggling in the Aiglon s top-boots
at the theatre of her name. Survivors who saw her must
have registered an odd emotion when Hitler sent the Aiglon s
ashes to rest beside his father in the Invalides. If only the
dream could have been completed and Sarah released from
Phe Lachaise to recite her lines for the occasion I No such
scene is imaginable unless Sir Walter were brought back to
receive the ashes of Bonnie Prince Charlie in Holyrood : or
the body of Patrick Sarsfield could be shipped to Limerick
and laid upon the Stone of the Broken Treaty.
At the Odeon one evening I heard Tolstoy s Resurrection
acted as only emotional Latins know how. The sobbing
audience was also French. I left the theatre a sadder if not
a wiser man. So this was the terrible Social Problem, on
which such rubbish had gushed, but was this the solution?
It was a highly romantic turn to the treatment of the same
in the Gospel. For many in those days Resurrection was a
turning point. I remember stopping in the middle of
Dostoievsky s Crime et Ch&timent to read Tolstoy; It was
turning from despair to hope. When I tramped the Paris
streets I imagined myself as Prince Nekludoff and I found a
Maslova in every prostitute. I felt inwardly that I could never
rest until I had communed with Tolstoy himself, but three
years at Cambridge were fated to come first.
In those days Russian novels were not read in England and
in any case the best translations were in French. This had the
advantage of preserving a foreign flavour when the characters
were so removed from the English. When I conversed later
with Tolstoy in French, the illusion that I had read him in the
original remained.
B II
SALUTATION TO FIVE
From the Rue d Assas I moved into the Rue Servandoni to
be nearer the Latin heart and under the booming shadow of
St. Sulpice, reminiscent of Manon Lescaut and of Renan.
The dark caterpillar of students still crawled on Sunday from
the seminary into the gaunt sprawling church, a signal that
Vespers were beginning.
Lectures multiplied, sacred and profane. For me a new
world of mediaevalism was opening. Gaston Paris, alas,
suddenly died and I attended the orations in his honour.
His books at least remained to enlighten me unto the poetry
and legends of the Middle Ages, of which the English then
preferred to know nothing. For them there was the Cloister
and the Hearth to wade and Scott s rococco grottoes, but
Gaston Paris made gargoyles live. There was something
beside the Wars of the Roses, if it was only the Romaunt 4e
la Rose, which he had edited, and from him came knowledge
of Tristan and Iseult and above all Villon, the Prince of
Ballad-writers with his refrains and envois. Why in the name
of literary beauty had we not learnt the "Ballad of Dead Ladies "
at Eton with the sob of true poetry, Mais oti sent les neiges
tfantant No wonder that French was despised at English
schools, a Cinderella cut off from fairy enchantment. It was
the same with Verlaine and Baudelaire: but English instruc
tion omitted every mention of the sensual however sensitively
adduced. Gaston Paris led me to Huysmans with the
suspicion that all that was lovely and all that was evil in the
Middle Ages was waiting behind some dark corner in Chartres
or Albi! It was possible that all the strange people who
knelt or prayed or peeped behind capitals in illuminated
manuscripts really existed!
Moral: one should find ways of living in more than one
century. One s own times may prove disappointing. Who
could dream that the twentieth would prove so bloody in all
terms of bloodiness 1
I attended lectures at the " Institut Catholique " under the
benign friendship of old Mgr. Pechcnard, who became Bishop
of Soissons and had his Cathedral broken over his head by
the Germans. Future Cardinals filled the Chairs and I picked
up a little Canon Law which improved my French if not my
12
RETROSPECT
Latin. This I countered by hearing the great Lavisse lecture
at the Sorbonne on French History. One could tell by the
tremors in his audience where Catholics or anti-Clericals were
sitting. Lectures could be intense in the wake of the unending
affaire Dreyfus, intense compared to the boredom of lectures
at Cambridge. Every range of French thought in every class
had been sharpened by that astonishing mishap to the soul of
France. Students were liable to stage their excitements on
the boulevards. Did the Oxford Movement ever send a mob
down the High? No gowns were torn on the Cambridge
streets in metaphysical affray or even over the Tichborne Case.
At the " Institut Catholique " I met Francois Coppe urging
open defence of the Churches before they were looted by
Civil Servants. The expulsion of the Grande Chartreuse
roused real fury in Catholic France. Had occasion arisen, I
would have gladly figured in a riot organised by the faithful,
I had to wait for Cambridge before engaging in a more
secular rag.
The criss-cross of French Life, betwixt politics, religion,
pretenders and revanches of different kinds is incomprehensible
to the English, especially as French History is scarcely taught
at all. Even English History is taught in schools in the
manner of Bradshaw s Railway Guide. If the three B s were
sincerely taught, the Bard, Bible and Bradshaw, as the elements
of national education, the ghastly results of the School Board
as well as the intellectual failure of Public Schools would not
be upon us but taught with German thoroughness and
French imagination.
In default of French History I was lucky to receive a copy
of Bodley*s France as an Eton prize. From that moment the
colours in the French criss-cross were revealed. In manner
it lies between Sorrow s Wild Wales and Bryce s account of
the United States, without the bigotry of one or the dryness
of the other. It is the exploration of a new country directed
from within. From Bodley I learnt that every Frenchman
has an enemy another Frenchman. Also that Tradition is
more powerful in Republican France than in England which
has always compromised with Whig, Liberal, Socialist and
preserved unity by stabling the muzzled wolf with the lamb.
13
SALUTATION TO FIVE
But France is always carrying on two or three Qvil Wars, of
which Dreyfus was nominee of not the last. However, what
matter? France is a living Greece not a fossilised adjunct
to the Balkans. And Paris remains the real Athens.
John Edward Courtenay Bodley became a personal friend
later and I learnt that conversation was an art and not
necessarily conducted by using the three enclytics What Ho !
Cheerio! and O.K. He was one of the last of the cultured
Europeans. He had known intimately Cardinal Manning,
Sir Charles Dilke, Oscar Wilde and a host of French leaders,
writers, boulevardiers. What an Ambassador he would have
made for England in the crucial days, but the Foreign Office
preferred to send Lord Derby, who could not talk French,
and one or two who were dumb in English.
Bodley was the only person who could appreciate every
fibre in the Dreyfus case. He was cynically impartial and
could gossip equally with a French Cardinal or Clemenceau.
He opened a very large armoire in my literary life.
The Paris into which I was thrown was the embittered
penitent of 1870. Since the disasters of the dfbdcle Paris had
tried to reform morals as extensively as Haussmann had
remade her arteries. The old Paris had gone, leaving only a
few queer street corners for Impressionists to paint. The
immense new Basilica on Montmartre labelled Gallia poenitens
dominated the city. The licence and levity of the Empire
was symbolised in the splendid nudities gracing the Imperial
Opera House.
Paris was always Catholic enough to mark a catastrophe by
a catafalque starring the vault of Notre Dame with candle-
power. I recall the horrors whispered jabout the terrible fire
which licked the noblest blood in France at the Charity
Bazaar. The religious ceremony was insufficient, for a
Dominican orator improved the occasion s agony by claiming
that the dead were the sacrifice demanded by the Divine
wrath for the sins of France. It was very Latin to lift a
terrestrial accident to such sublimity but it made the Govern
ment very angry. Later came the Messe de la Martinique
following the eruption of Mont Pele. The relations of the
dead were sufficient to fill the Cathedral. France certainly
14
RETROSPECT
understands the art of national mourning. In the old days
we used to take crape and flowers to the statue of Strasbourg
in the Pkce de la Concorde. The English have invented the
phrase " no mourning " and the most magnificent occasions
are missed. The only really widespread mourning since
Queen Victoria s funeral has been for the " ashes " of English
cricket, said to be interred in Australia under a ground, of
which Bradman keeps the key.
Only a country that has been occupied or conquered under
stands national mourning and it was the sad notes of 1870
which underlay the whole life of the Republic, like an under
current in Chopin. The same note was discernible in the
political life of Ireland or Poland.
As a student on the rive gauche I recalled very different
intervals of childhood lived in fashionable Paris.
But life in Paris for children was different from fog
bound London which still resembled Dora s horrible pictures.
Paris was still full of old beaux and characters like the Breteuils
and the Marquis de Gallifet, whose fascination to children
lay in the silver stomach which he carried as a trophy from
the war of 1 870. He was an aristocrat serving in a Republican
Government till 1900. He was one who might have voted
his King s death like Philippe Egaliti but he might himself
have been guillotined.
And there was Widor, who had survived the siege of Paris,
still playing to the adoring ladies in the organ loft of
St. Sulpice.
And there was Monsieur Eiffel himself, who had taken an
enormous fancy to my aunt Clara. He gave her the chance
of being the first lady to ascend the tip-top of the Eiffel Tower:
and a photograph used to record the date and the event.
Who now remembers Paris without the Eiffel Tower?
So much had passed since we lived on and off in Paris, late
eighties and mid- nineties. Those were the days of perfide
Albim and no orchids for the Queen of England, whom the
gtmins of the Champs filysdes used to insult when we joined
their pky. I can recall the excitement of General Boulanger,
who had fascinated the Paris crowd and incidentally Randolph
Churchill, who thought him a kind of Tory Democrat saving
15
SALUTATION TO FIVE
France. Our family lived in the Avenue Kleber and the old
Prince of Wales was sometimes brought home after the
theatre by my mother and Winston s, and very sleepy children
were dragged out of bed to shake hands and promise to be
soldiers. Later, my father used to describe how the carefree
Prince used to escape his Equerry and accompany him to
places permitted to ordinary folk but not to Royalty. He
was never so happy as playing Haroun-al-Aschid and he
considered the Parisians were his people far more than the
English Nonconformists.
By the time I was a student, he returned as King and by
his personal gesture brought France and England into union.
Of course statesmen and soldiers and diplomatists prepared
the brief and worked out the blue prints but le bon roi
Edouard achieved it by sheer courage and courtesy. This is
known to anyone who could feel the pulse of Paris at the
time. It was touch and go until he sailed into the Foyer of
the Opera and complimented a famous actress on being
symbolic of France.
It is forgotten how wildly anti-English France had become.
The Boer War, Fashoda and even English feeling about
Dreyfus had envenomed venom. French caricatures, even of
the poor old Queen, were fantastic in their malice. Caron
d Ache made Punch a very sober sheet in comparison.
The Prince figured in guises unknown to his subjects. One
I recall in which he was drawn standing in evening clothes
fingering a cigar while two heavily habited prostitutes prowled
behind. It was to me far more of a picture than Matisse and
Cezanne. I still have some of the caricatures of the Boer
War. They were devilish in their art but they revealed
something true about war.
The politics of the Quartier were violently pro-Boer, and
at one time I found myself helping tq welcome Dr. Leyds
and the Boer Generals in the streets. But the King had
accomplished the impossible and in President Loubet he
found a most amusing counterpart, who looked rather like
Kruger if he could have been dewhiskered, and dressed up by
undertakers at the Bon March6.
Loubet had succeeded President Felix Faure who privately
16
RETROSPECT
called England the enemy. No doubt his sudden death like
that of the Prince Imperial could be traced to British agents,
but that was another story! The cause of his death in a
lady s arms could be guessed from the incredible epigrams
which a Latin language allows. No doubt he was plus felix
que fort.
I tore myself from my studies to honour the King. I was
in the middle of a thesis and of an Eton novel in the style of
Zola. I temporarily returned to Anglican worship to get a
ticket to the little church in the Rue d Aguesseau, where he
was to appear on Sunday. This walk on foot to church
reconciled the Nonconformist Conscience and was considered
to have given the sacrilegious Parisians a good lesson. I had
to assure Dr. Noyes, the parson, that I was not a Fenian or
a member of any secret society burrowing on the other side
of the Seine. I sat in a back chair inwardly hoping to have
a chance of saving the King s life if he were attacked. Never
was I closer to a Sovereign as he passed, smiling at the virgin
pew-opener who collapsed in a heap. Our eyes poured tears
as we prayed for " Our Sovereign Lord and King, Queen
Alexandra (she had stayed at home), George Prince of Wales
and all the Royal Family ". Out I went on the Boulevards
on the chance of knocking over Henri Rochefort s hat. That
veteran with his foul Lanterns was holding out fiercely against
the royal charmer. All in vain: for the two nations were
locked together for peace and wartime.
Hedged with glittering Cuirassiers, King and President
attended a gala Opera which I could only see from the surging
streets. But the crowd had been won and won for ever.
Henceforth the English Royal Family had a spiritual home on
the Seine when they cared to use it. Shreds of the ancient
Society were collected at that Opera to give elegance if not
tradition to the dismal ladies of bureaucracy. It seemed
unsporting when a courtesan, whom the King had known in
Bohemian days, was asked to leave. It is a rule in French
life that ladies and actresses, wives and courtesans never meet
and it has preserved a pattern which has been entirely lost
in England.
As for women, they were around us in the Latin Quarter,
SALUTATION TO FIVE
but entirely as models or fellow-students. From friends I
learnt that chastity was an ecclesiastical virtue not merely a
recipe for training. In any case there was very little time for
women and all my memories are gentle. I adopted the tolerant
view that they should be reserved to console middle age
instead of being the desolators of youth.
Adventures were not sordid and once the language had
been mastered there were new friends and studies every
week. Monsieur Revon, who lectured on Japanese lyrics,
entertained in his country villa of a Sunday. Widor was
always at home in his organ loft at St. Sulpice, making a
mixture of High Mass and High Society. Such a lively
contrast to Church Parade after Church in Hyde Park I And
there was the Austrian Ambassadress, Countess Wolkenstein,
a friend of my mother, a really great woman who spoke of
the ancim rtgime> but she had known and protected and helped
Wagner. That was her great memory. My mother had
known such extraordinary people. Her doctor, who had
brought her into the world, Dr. Pan, had attended Thiers
on his deathbed. She had been born where he died, at
St. Germain-en-Laye. She and her sisters as girls had fled
from Paris before the siege of 1870. They had known the
Mornys and Persignys. Sweetest memory was Aunt Clara s,
for she had been chosen as the Prince Imperial s dancing
partner, had played, hunted with him. An American girl
would not cause the envy that a French one would rouse:
hence her good fortune to be asked to Compi^gne. My
own mother had been too young but the Empress Eugenie
remembered across the years and wrote to her when my
brother was killed in 1914. One very odd friend my mother
kept in Paris. When she came to see me, she always stayed
in the Ritz which conflicted with my views, but she explained
it was the cheapest hotel for her, as she knew old man Rite
himself and he insisted on giving her a tiny room whenever
she passed. One day this legendary figure showed her a
very old man slowly arranging things with much fuss. This
was the man who gave Ritz work when he was penniless on
the streets far far ago. Now he was an honoured pensioner:
qui a trouvi R*fc(.
18
RETROSPECT
The Paris of the great Exhibitions of 1889 and 1900 has
gone like the Paris of Balsac: the Paris which built the
Trocadero and le petit Palais i the Paris which entertained a
Czar of all Russias and an Emperor of India, like a Queen
of Sheba laying herself out for visits of King Solomon. How
the great ones have perished while the landmarks remain.
For me the aboding shrine was of St. Genevieve in her
Latin Quarter, for she was the protectress of Paris as well as
of students under examination. She was successfully invoked
to ward off the invaders of 1914. It must have been a narrow
shave, for German soldiers were buried in that year by the
municipal firemen. In the Second War the hateful ones
broke through, and it was the body of the Little Flower whom
the fickle Parisians carried through the city like a spiritual
disinfectant after the last Germans were expelled,
It is always St. Genevieve whom I visit and will visit if I
ever pass through Paris again. A saint enshrined is a luxury
of devotion not allowed in England. In callow youth I once
asked a French tutor to show me the shrine of Joan of Arc.
" Mais vous I aves^ bruU\ " he exclaimed and I was silenced.
It showed how much French history one learnt at school.
Her canonisation must be the only one which has stirred
the modern world. A weird accompaniment, seemingly too
terrible to be true, took place in England. It appeared that
one of the great French nobles at her execution refused to
allow her green faggots instead of dry. Green faggots
smoked and smothered the victim before she was burnt. At
any rate a curse descended upon his family and the last heir
was dramatically burnt to death in an English country house
near where I was staying. There was a question of foul play
and a love affair so his relatives came over to make inquiry.
They consulted Lord Derby, who told me he advised them
to dop the matter. The world is often stranger than believ
able: but the fire appeared to have been a husband s
vengeance.
France gave me a second language and a new background.
My real education was over and I was ready to take up the
conventional and artificial one proffered at the English
University. Stickney used to say life resembled a succession
SALUTATION TO FIVE
of tunnels, during which one recollected what one had passed
through and prepared for the next station, which in my case
was Cambridge.
Books, letters and the like are flotsam lying on the beaches
which stretch back into the tide, out of which each spirit
has come and into which each shall return. I learnt that
printed paper and old letters were no longer like dead seaweed.
They were full of meaning and possible enchantment, I learnt
to attach new meanings to the old autograph books at
Glaslough which my grandmother had collected during the
century. As children we had looted them for their foreign
stamps. There were notes and envelopes addressed to ** Mrs.
Leslie " by Dickens and Thackeray including the last letter
Thackeray ever wrote, which was a charming regret that the
Doctor forbade him to come to dinner.
A stage had come in my life when I sold my stamp collection
and began buying books. The philatelic fibre in my heart
had died when my dear father gave away his collection of
imperforates collected in the sixties! We were allowed to
look at them as a treat, but when a great collector asked to
see them, my father, surprised that a grown-up man cared
for such trifles, gave him the lotl Later they figured in sales
and we children had to dry our tears. In the autograph line
everything in my grandmother s folios was safe, but there
was looting of treasure at times. A great-uncle had stuck a
letter of Shelley into the Poems. That went. Worst of all
there had been a poem written by Swift to Robin and Henry
Leslie. His visit to Glaslough was more than a legend. He
had preached in the tubular pulpit: and the poem turned up
in the South Kensington Museum. A terrible looter had
left traces, for even the family pedigree written by Bishop
John Leslie, the founder of the family, had been torn out of
his Bible. Family libraries are full of such tragedies. There
was a lady in London who remembered the lost letter at Wilton,
which mentioned " The man Shakespeare ". No doubt some
Baconian devoured it when coming for a visit from Salisbury.
The best fate of autographs is to pass to Museums through
the hands of benefactors. I collected autographs Orientalwise
for their beauty not for the writer s fame. This is still a
20
RETROSPECT
possible hobby. But life is too short to collect at all. It is
best to coalesce with other collections which are in safe places.
The most remarkable part of my grandmother s collection
was the Papers of Mrs. Fitzherbert. They had reached her
in a mysterious way. Her mother had been adopted daughter
of the benevolent lady, who had clandestinely married George
IV of joyous memory. This was the gilded skeleton in
the cupboard. My grandmother and sisters had divided the
Fitzherbert loot entire: pictures, jewels and papers. The
valuables went for the most part to their brother Lord
Portarlington but my grandmother had the autographs,
including the famous box, which a faithful servant had saved
from the Duke of Wellington, when he descended upon Mrs.
Fitzherbert and burnt all her papers to save scandal. - But
there was no moral scandal only a continual embarrassment
to the Royal Family at the time. Vaguely I believed I should
be chosen to champion Mrs. Fitzherbert with my pen at
the last.
Incidentally the possession of Fitzherbert relics entails the
weirdest correspondence with claimants to the Throne in
America. The stage has been reached when letters referring
to their present Gracious Majesties in " inverted commas "
are not answered. But photographs showing likeness between
well-meaning Colonials and Queen Victoria continue to
arrive even in this year of grace. The climax came when an
American party arrived at the church in Brighton where my
great-grandmother erected Mrs. Fitzherbert s effigy wearing
the Royal wedding ring. This monument they claimed as
theirs. The old priest, Mgr. Johnson, sent a message of
alarm. As a result, it was arranged to add a sentence to the
anonymous inscription on the marble in our family name.
This constitutes myself the hereditary guardian of one of the
most interesting memorials of the Regency extant. His
present Majesty conserves the wedding licence, Lord Port
arlington the wedding ring, and my family the engagement
ting. America can have the pictures for which they have
paid handsomely.
The first novel I had attempted in Paris was about Eton.
The Public School novel is almost the only literary form which
21
SALUTATION TO FIVE
is peculiar to England. I have always considered that Talbot
Reed s Fifth Form at St. Dominic s the model of the type. I
made the mistake of writing in the style of Zola instead of
Daudet, whose Petit Chose is a sign that he could have written
such. Losing heart rather than shying at indecency, I dropped
my experiment. Twenty years later, after the First War had
tested all British institutions, I wove a tapestry in mock-heroics
of Warre s Eton. It was less fiction than a historical document
stuffed with snapshots of characters, recognisable and I hope
not unkindly. I was under the influence of Lon Bloy at
the time which accounts for all I wrote under the guise of
novels. The Oppidan was scarcely a novel but a kind of
carnival in which the masks tumbled off too easily. But
Warre was impossible to mask and I brought him in striding
and sounding to the life. It was no more than a sketch or
caricature (like that by Spy in Vanity Fair) but my subsequent
essay will do better justice to him and his times. He really
was an eminent Victorian and deficiencies only shaded his
splendour. History washes out the silly criticism of his day.
He stood in the same solid rektions to his century as Mr.
Gkdstone or Queen Victoria. The more human these can
be found, the more simply they are arranged amongst the
facsimile divinities of the era.
Family considerations have enabled me to add a final essay
on Mark Sykes, whose biography of a quarter of a century
is out of date. An even more remarkable character was his
brilliant mother, who for various reasons was treated as a
family skeleton in her lifetime. Penelope Leslie, my great
aunt, was her mother, but we were not allowed to come under
Jessica s friendship because of her defection to Rome. After
a flirtation with Ruskin as a girl, she had taken to the pen.
Her novels showed up the families with whom she was
connected, a-little unkindly. The Macdonells was an apparent
pseudonym for the Leslies. Only the very Victorian family
governess Miss Robinson appeared en clair. The Cavendish-
Bentincks and Lowthers also found themselves in distorting
mirrors. Mark was her most genuine creation.
Soldier, explorer, diplomat, politician, he was at one time
the white hope of the Tories and of the English Catholics.
22
RETROSPECT
Humourist, caricaturist and Orientalist he was also a beau
sabreur sans reprocbe. Judge of him by the friends who loved
and admired him: Aubrey Herbert, Dr. Monty Rhodes James,
George Wyndham, Howard de Walden, Ronald Storrs and
a host of Yorkshire Tykes and Arabs in the East. When he
died, his was a loss as serious to Tory Democracy as Rupert
Brooke s to English Letters or Tom Kettle s to Irish politics.
The Stately Homes have often bred strange types but
Yorkshire has seldom claimed so exotic a Squire, unless for
the famous Waterton, who like Mark was a traveller and a
pupil of the Jesuits. Mark had no time for sport or even
for the famous Sledmere stud. He went his own sweet way,
an actor and mimic at home, an explorer in the East. Life
was too great a rush for him to suffer education. It was a
rush from the age of three when his mother hurried him into
the Catholic Church under the auspices of the Duke of
Norfolk as his godfather. Jessica planned to commemorate
the return of the Sykes family into Mother Church by a plan
grandiose enough to include the building of a Cathedral in
Westminster in a style interesting to Sir Tatton. The finest
Gothic church in Vienna was to be reproduced at the cost of
the Sledmere estate. Cardinals Manning and Vaughan were
allowed to toy with the thought.
Jessica s courage was equal to her generosity. When her
brother-in-law Christopher lost his fortune in trying to
entertain the Prince s set, it was Jessica who descended
upon Marlborough House and insisted on avoiding the
bankruptcy, and so it was ! Cavendish-Bentincks and Leslies
were left gaping with astonishment. Had Jessie dared to
blackmail the Prince? That was the question which Society
asked. At any rate she saved poor Christopher by her threats
to explain the bankruptcy in Court!
Further, she was good enough conversationalist to engage
Randolph Churchill, the hardest nut at the dinner table in
those days. During Doncaster Week she always entertained
a brilliant party at Sledmere, while Sir Tatton designed
churches in an upper room. Baccarat was still the game of
high Society before it faded in the Tranby Croft scandal.
Lord Russell of Killowen was one of the Sledmere parties
SALUTATION TO FIVE
and thereby arose one of the oddest incidents possible in an
English Court of Law.
Jessica nominally ran Tatton s finances and as he had an
aversion to signing cheques, she often added the signature
which was accepted. Eventually an Insurance Company
presented a bill for .40,000 which he refused to pay. The
case came into Court and poor old Sir Tatton, with his shawl
arranged by his loving wife, entered the box. Rather than
allow his parents to disagree, Mark nobly undertook to pay
the sum out of his own prospects. One moment was of
Gilbertian tempo* Jessica s cheque books were called for,
but luckily had been mislaid and by the time they had been
fetched, the case had moved elsewhere. A family friend
noticed the amazed solicitor consulting them and finding that
the first stub recorded a baccarat debt to Lord Russell, who
was nervously presiding the trial !
Such were Mark s strange surroundings at home, but he
spent most of his life travelling, even as an undergraduate.
The unique certainly led to the unique. No one proved
quite so chivalrous, so comic, so valiant, so gifted as Mark.
He was just too good to be nothing but an M.P. for Hull,
and the good God snatched him back. Not in vain had he
been offered by his mother at the Oratory altar.
It was a young death, which felled the friends who loved
him most to the ground. Many hoped to see a Tory
Democrat, a Yorkshire Catholic in the Cabinet. There were
many threads in his hands apart from the sympathies he had
acquired in the Middle East. His knowledge of Ireland made
him the possible mediator. His powers of humour and
improvisation might have been successful even among the
playboys of the Western Shore.
To his family it was a bitter stroke, as when the tomb opens
not upon due winter nor upon gathered autumn but upon
"youth s scented manuscript". And the writing was not
finished.
It seemed difficult to reconcile his sudden death at the
Versailles Conference with the Providential scheme. The
forces for good seemed to be calling him from both East
and West. But there is another side. After thirty years it
RETROSPECT
can be realised how much he was spared. With his hatred
of injustice he might easily have met the fate which befell
George Wyndham in Ireland or Lord Moyne in the Orient.
An essay on Sk William Butler recalls my early adherence
to the Irish Cause. A General in the British Army, a friend
of Parnell, Gordon, Wolseley and Buller, he had passed
through a storm of recrimination owing to his pro-Boer
policy while holding the command at the Cape. With a long
knowledge of African Wars and of the Boers he refused to
press the threats of his employers. He was recalled and the
disastrous Boer War was waged against his advice and will
and, as it turned out, against his careful plans. Fifty years
have passed since the Century of Wars began. It began with
the Boer War which proved what Greek Tragedy called the
opening of troubles. Trouble-trouble the witches* cauldron
has never ceased to si2zle or overflow. Butler believed War
need not have come and that Kruger with all his faults
deserved to keep his small place in the burning African sun.
Fifty years have passed and History is beginning to decide
that perhaps he was right. His memory has received bitter
scorn and derision. Let this essay prove the beginning of
a vindication.
I had no fear in joining the Irish Cause when Sk William
Butler called it just: and generously answered for me when
I stood for John Redmond at the Home Rule Elections of
1909 and 1910. I salute his memory. He also could have
been the mediator between England and Ireland.
MRS. FITZHERBERT
IN the unceasing contest of Fiction against Truth in history
there have been a number of personal narratives which
leave imaginative romance remotely behind. All the
novels written in the days of the Regency could not produce
a story so strange or thrilling as the marriage of Mrs* Fitz-
herbert to the Prince of Wales who subsequently became
Regent.
There have been many obstacles to writing a full and final
version. A century after Mrs. Fitzherbert s death such a
biography appeared but by force of enemy action the number
of copies was much reduced. This essay summarises what
must remain out of print for a considerable time.
Mrs. Fitzherbert supposed that her Life would one day be
written but full of lies, as an Irish Bishop declared of Gulliver s
Travels. So many of her papers were destroyed that a
biography has seemed a miracle.
Mrs. Fitzherbert sized her own position neatly by saying
that though she was not considerable enough to become the
wife of the enamoured Prince, her name forbade her to be
mistress. No doubt it would have saved herself and the
Royal Family and Parliament endless trouble if she could have
followed suit to Mrs. Jordan, who settled down as the mother
of the Duke of Clarence s children without any worry beyond
the financial. When Clarence became King William IV, his
bastards were ennobled and one even was dispensed to receive
Anglican Orders without anybody feeling or thinking the
worse.
Mrs. Fitzherbert s difficulty lay in the form of service which
had passed between her and the Prince, which, however
illegal, irregular and clandestine, was a marriage. Even if it
were null in the eyes of the Law, it was not valueless on the
26
MRS. FIT2HERBERT
Continent or in Catholic circles. It might count for something
in the eye of God, but this the legalists might overlook.
Those whom it most concerned in the State took some trouble
to deny it and, that proving fruitless, attempted to destroy
every trace upon earth.
Whole correspondences have been burnt in the presence of
witnesses. Letters, notebooks and even the margins of
printed books have been scissored. The great secret could
not be kept secret, but it could be largely deprived of proofs.
As executor to George IV the Duke of Wellington descended
upon his true widow and burnt all the letters which had
passed between them. From the wreck Mrs. Fitzherbert
preserved the three documents preserving her name with
Posterity:
The letter which contained the Prince s proposal to
marriage;
The marriage licence signed by both;
The Will which the Prince wrote cutting off the Princess
of Wales with a shilling and bequeathing his entire
possessions to Mrs. Fitzherbert.
These were thg celebrated papers concealed in Coutt s Bank,
against which relatives and legatees and pretended descendants
knocked in vain for the rest of the century. The Gordian
knot was cut by King Edward VII who simply ordered their
removal to the secret archives in Windsor. And all this
trouble arose from a lady s efforts to keep respectable, but
her innocent efforts intrigued Society, outraged the British
Public, kept the Whigs out of power and seemed to imperil
the throne. In his History of England Sk Archibald Alison
pointed out that under other circumstances this kdy, who had
died a few weeks before the opening of the Victorian era,
might herself have sat upon the Throne.
Mrs. Fitsherbert s letters to the Duke of York were returned
to her and for two years she was perusing and burning what
was " the best private and public history of the country from
the dose of the American war to the death of the Duke ".
Her letters to George TV began in 1785 and lasted till 1806.
SALUTATION TO FIVE
"Oh dear, oh dear", sighed Creevey, "that I should not
have seen them! " And so sigh we all.
Maria Anne Stnythe came of old Catholic and Royalist stock.
Their Baronetcy dated from the Restoration. Their motto
Rsff semper fidelis (to King ever faithful) assumed poignant
values in the life of the most beautiful daughter of the House.
Her fidelity proved not merely worthy of a subject but of a
heroic spouse. What she must have suffered in keeping the
marriage secret under most malicious provocation only a
woman can understand. Her position was unique in history.
How often in life it has been necessary for a mistress to
pretend to the part of a wife. Mrs. Fitzherbert was the only
wife who for reasons of State had to pretend to be the mistress.
Her unselfish conduct throughout the life of her husband won
her the respect and affection of the whole Royal Family.
She was born almost exactly between the Protestant Revo
lution of 1688 and Catholic Emancipation in 1829. The
Faith was fading. Pressure of Laws and fines, lawyers and
fanatics had reduced the old Catholic ranks. It took a little
of the old British obstinacy to persevere. The Smythes held
on grimly and when "the White Rose of England" was
brought up in their midst, her beauty was not set to snare
neophytes but to hold together some of the old Catholic
fortunes. She was married to Mr. Weld of Lulworth, a
widower a quarter of a century older, but he died in the same
year, before he had signed a Will in her favour. She was
then secured to the old house of Fitzherbert living at Swynner-
ton Hall. She married the twenty-fifth Lord of the Manor
of Norbury but he died owing to the athletic practices he
took to ensure his life. Mrs. Fitzherbert was left a widow
for a second time before reaching the age of twenty-five*
Her life, now properly provided, should have become pious
or pleasant, according to the fashion of those times. Mrs.
Fitzherbert seemed willing to make it both, for she settled in
Mayfair when London Society vied with Versailles. She
bought a house at the Marble Arch end of Park Street where
the large modern building stands called Hereford House.
Mrs. Fitzherbert s home possessed a garden with walls
susceptible of romantic approach,
28
MRS. FITZHERBERT
There are various versions of her first meeting the Prince,
then the most desirable bachelor in Christendom: whether he
noticed her driving in the Park (then unsullied by the Hackney
vehicle) or whether he observed her in Lady Sefton s box at
the Opera and immediately demanded an introduction.
The result was not unflattering though embarrassing.
Instantly declaring himself enamoured he insisted on her
constant presence and refused to grace any party, drum or
rout to which she was not invited. He dropped every
paramour and scattered any incipient admiters of Mrs. Fitz
herbert. Life could not have been more dazzling but she
decided not to exchange the gold of good conscience for the
ill-glittering tinsel of a Royal concubine.
Flattery failing, the Prince adopted a romantic ruse in 1784.
He fell upon his sword and, when his wound was bandaged
by Surgeon Keate, threatened to tear away the bandages unless
Mrs. Fitzherbert entered Carlton House. Keate and the
Prince s friends arrived in panic at Mrs. Fitzherbert s but she
smelt the stratagem and refused to move until the famous
Duchess of Devonshire consented to accompany her. The
trembling company drove to Carlton House where Mrs.
Fitzherbert promised to marry the Prince who placed a ring
upon her finger, borrowed from the Duchess, who returned
with Mrs. Fitzherbert to Devonshire House where both
signed a paper agreeing that promises thus obtained were
entirely void.
The next move was with Mrs. Fitzherbert, who instantly
left the country. She had connexions in Holland and France,
where she had been educated by the Ursuline nuns. A letter
of 1 8 pages from the Prince followed her, threatening to end
his life and forwarding bracelets not as a lover but as ** the
tenderest of husbands ". One sentence did credit to both:
" You know I never presumed to make you any offer with a
view of purchasing your virtue. I know you too well."
The Duchess wrote in great consternation to the Prince
imploring him to consult the leader of the Whigs, Charles Fox.
The Prince had no more devoted friend but the possibility of
a Catholic wife meant the forfeiture of the Throne and the
end of the Whigs. The Prince would never be in a position
29
SALUTATION TO FIVE
to make Fox Prime Minister. The Prince eased his personal
agony by visits to Brighton, sometimes riding there and back
in five hours; or visiting Fox with hysterical threats to sell
his jewels and escape to America with his beloved. He
informed James Harris that he would pass the Crown to the
Duke of York.
Mrs. Fitzherbert s visit to Holland led to friendship with
the Royal Family who were negotiating with the English
Court in the hope that the Princess of Orange might become
Princess of Wales. The Princess consulted the tactful Mrs.
Fitzherbert, utterly unconscious that she was her most
dangerous rival.
In fact the Prince, having felt the temper of Mrs. Fitz-
herbert s conscience, decided to offer the minimum terms for
a clandestine wedding. Before she agreed to return, she had
received a letter of 37 pages which she considered an honour
able though tumultuous proposal. He was willing to be
united with her in the presence of two Catholic witnesses
chosen by herself, while he reserved the choice of a religious
Minister. He only asked that she would never reveal the
ceremony during his lifetime. He was twenty-five, she was
twenty-eight, and both felt that Fate, if not a higher Power,
had thrown them together.
The King had not allowed him to proceed abroad in spite
of his touching pleas on the score of economy. His Majesty
felt certain that the object was to marry an English kdy and
even suspected that the marriage might have taken place.
The Prince wrote and talked as though the King would
accept the situation. None the less the secrecy of the grave
was maintained over the actual ceremony which took place
on December ij, 1785. As a sop to the King, he was ready
to make over the succession to the House of Hanover to the
fevourite son, the Duke of York. Mrs. Fitdierbert s mother
was informed, the Cumberlands and Devonshkes were invited,
but none were present. There was no best man unless for
Orlando Bridgman who remained with a drawn sword on the
steps of Mrs. Fitzherbert s house. There was a considerable
difficulty in engaging a parson as several clergymen of standing
were affrighted by the prospect of committing treason.
3
MRS. FITZHERBERT
Eventually the Rev. Robert Butt was bailed out of jail and
consented to perform the ceremony for the sum of 500 and
the promise of a Bishopric, should the bridegroom ever
become King. He died before attaining his spiritual am
bitions and his name would have been forgotten if he had
not confessed his part on his deathbed.
Henry Errington and John Smythe signed as witnesses to
the certificate which was written in the Prince s best script.
The legal impediments could not have been more over
whelming: but in the Canon Law of the Church they were
free. The marriage decrees of the Council of Trent had not
been proclaimed in England and as the Sacrament of Matri
mony is conferred by the married themselves Mrs. Fitzherbert
felt that she had done all that was possible to obey the sentiment
of the Catholic Church. As for the Act of Settlement and the
Royal Marriage Act, they were not made in Heaven.
Amid a crescendo of gossip and bewildered rumour the
happy pair set up their married life. They fell under the pen
of Horace Walpole and the pencil of Gillray. Mrs. Fitzherbert
moved to a house in Pall Mall to be nearer Carlton House,
for she refused to live under the same roof as the Prince.
It was the same at the Pavilion in Brighton which she only
occupied when he needed nursing. The general opinion was
expressed by the Archbishop of Canterbury that it was
" decidedly odd ". So Brighton, the Queen of Watering
Places, rose from the waves. The choicest spirits in Society
gathered round the Steyne. Villas suitable to the Beaux and
Dandies were built under the bulbous shadows of the Pavilion.
Mrs. Fitzherbert s contribution was a small house which
survived to bear the symbolic lettering Y.M.C.A. Later she
built the Catholic mission including a little church in the
classical style. The Prince himself wandered amongst his
guests and camp-followers like the Caliph in the Arabian
Nights.
There was no shadow upon the splendid scenes enacted in
Pall Mall or the Steyne except the visibly swelling debts. The
Whigs were reluctant to extract the necessary funds from the
austere Pitt. The Prince fell back upon his closest friends in
the House, Fox and Sheridan, to obtain relief. The Debate
SALUTATION TO FIVE
was fought between Whig and Tory under a cloud of rumours.
When Fox rose to scatter the calumny of which everyone was
thinking, he never mentioned a name or a marriage except
as something " which never had and common sense must see,
never could have happened ". Pitt and his followers were
discomfited for they had bluffed and met the fate of bluffers.
Fox appeared to give a direct contradiction from the Prince s
mouth. It was accepted and the debts were paid by the nation.
If Pitt felt fooled, poor Mrs. Fitzherbert felt disgraced.
She insisted that Fox had rubbed her name in the mud. The
actual blow was broken to her by the Prince, who remarked
with the casual optimism which enabled him to surmount
impossible difficulties : " Only conceive, Maria, what Fox did
yesterday. He went down to the House and denied that you
and I were man and wife! " As Fox had done so on the
strength of a Royal letter, his feelings can be imagined when
Uncle Errington curtly informed him outside Brooks* Club
that he had been misinformed as Mr. Errington had
been present at the marriage! Fox crept away to lick
his paws.
Mrs. Fitzherbert herself was so grieved that the Prince sent
Sheridan into the House to soften or simplify matters. Mr.
Grey, to whom he bashfully owned that a ceremony had taken
place, had simply refused the task, so it came to ** Well, then,
Sheridan must say something". Sheridan s glucubrations
were received by the House of gentlemen with good-humoured
amusement and for the time the matter was over, especially
as the Royal Dukes of York and Gloucester rallied to the
injured lady. On the other hand Dukes like Rutland were
unwilling that their Duchesses should touch skirts with
Mrs. Fitzherbert.
All proceeded merrily again until the Prince s debts once
more assumed mountainy proportions. Seven years had
passed since the kst appeal to Parliament : but this time it
was clear that Pitt declined to bluff or be bluffed. The Prince
was required to give the country a Princess of Wales and the
prospect of an heir to the Throne. He realised his dilemma:
either he must declare his marriage to Mrs. Fitzherbert and
pass the Crown to the Duke of York or he must commit
3*
MRS. FITZHERBERT
bigamy. Relying on her secrecy, he decided to marry any
suitable German Princess. In compliment to Mrs. Fitzherbert,
at least he chose the uglier of Brunswick in preference to the
heroine who became Queen Louise of Prussia.
The year 1794 was spent in letting Mrs. Fitzherbert down
lightly. In June he wrote her a charming letter which she
received while dining with Clarence. There was a subsequent
communication for she inscribed the first: "This letter I
received the morning of the day the Prince sent me word he
would never enter my house. Lady Jersey."
Lady Jersey he used as a kind of bridge between his two
wives. Still the Prince was eager to make Mrs. Fitzherbert
a good allowance, which Uncle Errington regarded as honour
able alimony. The King and the Lord Chancellor hastened
to oblige him in the matter of " a Lady who has been dis
tinguished by your regard ".
Mrs. Fitzherbert, hardly believing he could enter into a
second marriage, retired with the utmost dignity and grief to
Margate, where Admiral Payne made the utmost efforts to
tranquillise her. By the time she had returned to Brighton,
it could be reported to the Prince that she only wished to
study his happiness. The Prince informed Payne that he
sought to make her position as comfortable as possible but
the marriage-knot he guillotined with the cutting words
" mats tout est fini ".
In April 1795 the Prince married the hapless Caroline who
had been fetched by Harris and received with the damping
words, "Harris, fetch the brandy"! All parties concerned
endured some agony of mind. The Prince in a fit of remorse
was seen galloping wildly round Mrs. Fitzherbert s country
retreat the afternoon previous to the ceremony. He assured
Clarence on the way to his marriage that he could never love
anyone else. The King was decidedly nervous and insisted
on Clarence not leaving his brother for some days previously.
The Archbishop made an agonising pause during the service
in case the tortured bridegroom wished to relieve his
conscience but no, looking like a deathmask, George, Prince
of Wales, was united to the Princess who duly played her
part and by January of 1796 gave Crown and Country an
33
SALUTATION TO FIVE
heiress: the Crown she was not allowed to wear and the
Country, of which she became the injured Queen.
Much tears, ink and laughter have been expended on that
unhappy lady who added one perfect jest to the history of the
times. She had the unique misfortune of being tried by the
House of Lords for adultery, when she confessed she had
committed that sin but once and that was with " Mrs. Fitz-
herbert s husband"! It is pleasant to know that the two
wives bore each other no rancour, as each had been placed
in an agonising position by the same unscrupulous husband.
Caroline expressed her admiration for the real wife knowing
she herself was only a State substitute. Mrs. Fitzherbert
ordered her house on Pall Mall to be illuminated in honour
of the official wedding. She was always doing things which
cannot have occurred to any other woman in history.
Certainly she was the only Catholic lady who ever applied
to the Pope for permission to live with the Prince of Wales
in the lifetime of the Princess. This came through the Prince s
frantic desire for Mrs. Fitzherbert s return after he had dis
missed the Princess Caroline. As soon as the Princess
Charlotte was born, he wrote a passionate Will in Mrs. Fitz
herbert s favour leaving " the wife of my heart and soul " all
his earthly property as well as the fond request that they
should be buried together with panels opened in their coffins
to permit their ashes to mingle after death.
The Royal Family added their supplications and the Duke
of Cumberland brought her a letter of passionate misery
declaring that his doom was fixed and that if her answer
remained unfavourable he would instantly communicate with
the King. This would involve a declaration of the marriage
and pkce her brother and uncle under a treasonable guise.
Mrs. Fitzherbert was really alarmed and asked only for time
during which she could appeal to Rome. She had done her
loyal utmost to uphold the intention of the Church in her
married state. She now called for support from the Pope.
While the appeal was pending the Pope died and a Conckve
took pkce in Venice which was attended by the Cardinal
Duke of York. Had he been raised to the Papacy, it would
have been the duty of " Henry IX " to settle the marriage
34
MRS. FITZHERBERT
state of the future George IV. As it was, Pius VII was
elected and received the appeal from the Rev. Mr. Nassau the
following year, 1800. The marriage was described to the
Pope in writing and handed to two consultors. "These
decided in favour of the marriage " and this decision was
delivered as the Pope s in the imperishable Latinity of a Brief.
All now was for the best and indeed the happiest years of
the romance followed. The " so-called Princess of Wales/*
to use his phrase, was banished and only Lady Jersey played
the part of a snubbed hornet, when the Prince appeared at
parties with his obvious wife. These years Mrs. Fitzherbert
described as years of poverty in that they had to borrow from
faithful servants, but they were " as merry as crickets ".
Royalty beamed and only the new Duchess of York, who
was royal from the beginning, could not bring herself to
treat her as a sister-in-law.
A new trouble rose on the horizon and that was the
possession of Mrs. Fitzherbert s adopted daughter, Minny
Seymour. She had taken to herself two adopted daughters :
Minny, who became Mrs. Dawson Darner, and Maria Anne,
who became Mrs. Jerningham. It is as well to say that after
prodigious research it is impossible to find any evidence that
Mrs. Fitzherbert s union with the Prince was fruitful except
that in one letter she addressed the husband of Maria Anne
as her " son in law ". The Catholic register in Brighton
has been mutilated but this is purely negative.
Minny Seymour was believed by the Prince to be his child.
She was his " Minny " and he was her "Prinney". He
settled money upon her and took a vast interest in her fate.
She was legally the daughter of Lord Hugh and Lady Horatia
Seymour and had been bequeathed after their deaths to Mrs.
Fitzherbert. The secret of the marriage, it is known, had
been revealed to the Seymours. The situation demanded a
series of subterfuges which could be accepted by Society.
Unfortunately the Seymour Guardians were convinced that
Minny was of their stock and that it was their duty to remove
the child not so much from a Roman Catholic influence as
from the atmosphere of a Royal liaison. Like Charles Fox
they had been misinformed. But there is no possibility
3J
SALUTATION TO FIVE
that Minny was the daughter of the Prince by Lady Horatia.
Often the accepted version is the truth and in any case legal
action was invoked, though Lord Hugh had mentioned all
his other children in his Will.
When the Guardians took action, the Prince made flattering
proposals if Minny could be safely berthed with Mrs. Fitz-
herbert, but in vain, and the matter had to be fought in the
Court of Chancery. The Prince was a good fighter and threw
his whole energies into the Seymour Case. Physicians called
attention to the dangers which removal was likely to cause
the child. The Bishop of Winchester testified to her mastery
of the Protestant Catechism. The legal Guardians insisted
on the religious grounds leaving the field open to Romilly to
point out the "peculiar advantage from the patronage and
protection of the Prince ", This was getting curiouser and
curiouser.
The appeal passed to the Lords where the Prince canvassed
on behak of Mrs, Fitzherbert. The Royal Dukes supported
the Prince except Gloucester, who was related to the Seymours.
Before a division was taken, Lord Hertford, as head of the
Seymours, undertook the guardianship which was immediately
agreed. He then entrusted Mrs. Fitzherbert with the child.
Mrs. Fitzherbert had secured the private assistance of Lady
Hertford but in regaining a child she lost a husband. Lady
Hertford henceforth demanded her acquiescence in the Prince s
devotion to herself. From this grew the liaison between the
Prince and Lady Hertford which accompanies the history
of the Regency. Even at Brighton the Prince, after spending
the mornings in private with Mrs. Fitzherbert, was afraid to
notice her the same evening in the Pavilion lest the report
should reach the arrogant Lady Hertford.
The value of Lady Hertford to the Regent was due to her
Protestant faith rather than to her features. The caricaturists
mercilessly crowned her husband with the cuckold s horns
but as in the reign of Charles IE the populace felt confidence
in " the Protestant whore ". With the madness of the King
and the Regency of the Prince a certain amount of anti-Catholic
feeling had developed. Both the Regent and Mrs. Fitzherbert
were susceptible to a hangover from the days of the Gordon
36
MRS. FIT2HERBERT
Riots. They acted in different manners. The Prince con
sidered his own safety : Mrs. Fitzherbert that of others. She
destroyed the Papal Brief authorising her to live as wife with
the Prince and scissored the names of her two Catholic wit
nesses from her Marriage Certificate. It would save them
from possible pains and penalties.
There was a movement to call the Prince to state whether
he was married to a Papist or not before he took the oath as
Regent. He decided to break for the kst time with Mrs.
Fitzherbert. The banquet he offered the Royal Family of
France made a good opportunity. This was the famous feast
which the son of the demented gave to the children of the
decapitated. It was the glittering prelude to the Regency.
Princess Caroline was not asked, but Mrs. Fitzherbert received
an invitation. She called on the Regent to ask if she sat at
a lower table or as hitherto with the Royalties. When she
learnt that she had been relegated to a lower seat she gracefully
withdrew but this time from the Prince s life for ever. She
was convinced that Lady Hertford s influence had excluded
her from the Royal table. The Protestant influence was in
the ascendant and the new Prime Minister, Mr. Perceval, had
led against Mrs. Fitzherbert in the Seymour case. The ground
was clear for the agitations which ended finally in Catholic
Emancipation.
But Mrs. Fitzherbert took no part in those controversies.
In vain she had advised the Regent to call his old friends the
Whigs to office. Lady Hertford brought in the Tories. It
took the most downright of Tory diehards, the Iron Duke
himself, to induce the Prince as King to sign die Bill admitting
Catholics to full citizenship.
Mrs. Fitzherbert was happy to find herself outside the coils
of the Regency as well as of the unpopularities of the Reign,
which were borne on the pearly shoulders of Lady Conyngham.
The Regent and his wife did not meet again. She passed into
retirement and good works at Brighton. The only occasions
which brought her to London were connected with Minny,
whose future was an equal care to her and the Regent. They
both proposed to find her a highly-placed husband. The
hek of Bridgewater House was much fancied and it was on
37
SALUTATION TO FIVE
those stairs that she met the Regent for the last time. He
was descending and stopped to speak a few words to " our
dear little angel", while Mrs. Fitzherbert, preserving her
mask, continued to ascend the stairs. They knew the art of
cutting each other in the grand manner and the eyes of Society
flashed upon them for the last time. They merely ignored
each other and left that world, to which they had never com
municated the circumstances of their union, to draw what
conclusions they wished concerning their final and lasting
separation.
Minny became the soul and solace of Mrs. Fitzherbert s life
but she chose her husband for herself a penniless younger
son, George Dawson Darner. " George " seemed to be the
fatal name in Mrs. Fitzherbert s life. To her infinite distress
and the distant raging of the King the marriage was achieved.
The romantic do not always approve romance in others.
Not even a Peer! But the Earls Fortescue and Portarlington
are descended from the marriage which Mrs. Fitzherbert
failed to grace at St. George s, Hanover Square. A tiny note
enclosing francs ("I wish I was able to make it thousands
instead of hundreds ") reached Minny in Paris to buy hats
and bonnets. But all her jewellery was destined for the
Dawson Darners. The King s chief interest was securing the
nest-egg he had laid up for Minny from passing to the husband,
who was rumoured spendthrift.
Mrs. Fitzherbert consoled herself by a tour in the Midlands,
where she visited Grosvenors and Cavendishes as well as the
home of the Fitzherberts whose name she had carried
triumphantly through all obloquy. Thenceforward she settled
down in Brighton as the Queen of Respectability. The kst
illness of the King brought her anxiously to Town. Minny
had remained the only link and her girlish letters still passed
conveying discreet sympathies "from the person in whose
house I am now living ". But in 1830 the King was dying
in the arms of Lady Conyngham but under the attention of
Sir Henry Halford, " the good physician," who also attended
Mrs. Fitzherbert. Through Halford Mrs. Fitzherbert s last
letter reached the dying King in spite of Lady Conyngham s
vulture-like presence. Halford had sent Mrs. Fitzherbert the
38
MRS. FIT2HERBERT
true bulletin and prepared her for the worst. Lady Conyng-
ham s influence had kept the King from Brighton during
these years, dreading a reunion between the King and his wife.
She had consulted Divines on the propriety of her remaining
that winter at the King s couch and they had ruled that she
had better stay in case her place was taken by a fresh scandal!
By summer die end had come and Mrs. Fitzherbert s last
letter of anxious love was given to the King to read and
place under his pillow. But he was too weak to make reply
or summons. The Great Summoner stood at the gates of
Windsor.
In deep distress Mrs. Fitzherbert waited in her Tilney Street
house hoping that she might be able to afford forgiveness in
person, but in vain. At three of a June morning a friend,
who had heard the great bell of St. Paul s toll, called at her
house to inform her of her third widowship.
Mrs. Fitzherbert returned to Brighton which soon attracted
the new King William of sailorlike memory. Very courteously
he returned nine portraits of Mrs. Fitzherbert. There was a
tenth which she highly prized, a diamonded miniature by
Cosway, but this was buried with the King, round his neck.
Bishop Carr had seen the miniature attached to a silver chain
and the grim Duke of Wellington had ventured to open the
spring. So Mrs. Fitzherbert felt consoled and unforgotten.
In a manner the romance had ksted till death.
The new King immediately authorised Mrs. Fitzherbert s
servants to wear mourning while the Conyngham and Hertford
domestics were not permitted an inch of Royal crape. More
was to come, when the King sent her an official invitation to
the Pavilion. She replied inviting him to make the first call
himself. She was then released from her marriage-promise
and could show the King the document which made her his
sister-in-law. With appropriate sentiment he burst into tears
and offered her the title of Duchess which Fox had originally
offered on the part of the Whigs. She refused what savoured
of a " Duchess of Kendal " but accepted the weeds of a
widow and the Royal livery for her servants.
The King also gave the livery to his illegitimate son by
Mrs. Jordan, adding the Royal arms with the baton sinister.
39
SALUTATION TO FIVE
Poor Munster was desperately in love with Minny and *he
match was encouraged by the King: but as Mrs. Fitzherbert
quietly remarked: " One is enough from that family! " The
unfortunate Munster allowed Minny to make up his quarrels
with the good-natured King and never ceased to haunt
Mrs. Fitzherbert s house in Brighton and London until the
day when he shot himself. It was Minny s birthday and a
posthumous gift arrived: a dock with the date and her
name-letters inscribed instead of the hours.
Henceforth life was very quiet for Mrs. Fitzherbert. Her
Oratory had brought Mass to Brighton and charity amongst
the destitute. It was a red letter day when word was received
from her nephew Thomas Weld that he had been raised to the
Cardinalate by Gregory XVI. She was putting her house in
order and handed a sheaf of the Duke of Kent s letters to
Minny. "And when I am gone, I wish you to offer them
to Princess Victoria."
Two months after Mrs. Fitzherbert s death the great Queen
came to the throne. The Pavilion was abandoned as a Royal
residence and Brighton gradually became the Queen of the
Cockneys, commoner and commoner. Few tourists have the
taste to salute Chantrey s masterpiece of George IV in bronze.
Fewer still visit the marble tomb in the Catholic Church
where Mrs. Fitzherbert clasps hands for ever in prayer with
her three wedding rings extended towards the sanctuary.
POSTSCRIPT
At the last moment only has a document been found in the
script of Minny s husband which clears up a number of details
hitherto uncertain in biography.
Nov. 14, 1836.
Mrs. Fitzherbert told us this evening, that the first time
she ever saw the Prince, was when she was driving with her
husband Mr. Fitzherbert. They were in Park Lane, when
he turned round and said: Look, there is the Prince 1
The second time was a few days subsequently when she
was going with her husband to a Breakfast given by Mrs,
Townley at Corney House, Chiswick (Lord Macartney s).
40
MRS. FITZHERBERT
As they were turning down the Lane she perceived that
the Prince had followed her and had stopped to look at her.
After Mr. Fitzherbert s death she lived a great deal with
the late Lord Sefton who was her half-uncle, both the
fathers being issue of the same mother. She was scarcely
out of her weeds and unwilling to go out and be seen.
He urged her to go to the Opera with him and she agreed
on his consenting to her going in a cap and bonnet and a
veil. She left the opera leaning on Henry Artan s arms and
when at the door with her veil down waiting for her
carriage the Prince came up to him and said: Who the devil
is that pretty girl you have on your arm, Henry? The
latter told the Prince who she was and then introduced the
Prince to Mrs. Fitzherbert.
The Prince then appeared to have sought Mrs.
Fiteherbert s society in all ways, and for this purpose
gave a Supper. She went to it and seeing that she had
attracted the attention of the Prince avoided going down
to supper with him and took the arm of the Lord
Chesterfield. All this occurred about the year 1780. The
Prince then determined on giving a Ball at which she was
to be the Queen, but she declined going to it and the Prince
was so annpyed at this determination that when he found
out that she did not intend to be present, he called his
carriage and drove to Park Street in search of her. She
did not let him in, being gone to bed. Her house was that
one in Park Street at the corner of Hereford Street, now
made into two or three, and it was there in the Dining
Parlor that the marriage with the Prince subsequently was
celebrated.
GEORGE DAWSON DAMER.
n
EDMOND WARRE
Edmond Warn, by C. R. L. Fletcher.
Fifty Years of Eton, by Hugh Macnaghten.
Changing Efon, by L. S. R. Byrne and E. L. Churchill.
Article in The Dictionary of National Biography 9 by H, E.
Luxmoore.
MS. notes by Arthur Benson.
Personal Memories and Letters.
THE Victorian age produced a type of public servant,
subject to immense public esteem and private hero-
worship but quite unknown abroad. They were the
great Head Masters from Thomas Arnold to Edmond Ware.
Then the mould broke. Harrow, Uppingham and Loretto
knew them.
Mr. Fletcher s Life of Edmond Warre is a mosaic of
anecdotes, athletic triumphs and schoolboy distinctions
amongst his pupils. It covers the hurly-burly of Eton
history. It lacks the precision of Spy s famous caricature
in Vanity Fair or the majesty of Sargent s canvas in School
Hall. To see Warre steadily and see him whole, the reader
must step down the corridors of Time. But however far
he may step, the figure of Eton s greatest Head will not
lessen.
Outside Eton, Warre had no personal history, though his
voice and rumour reached the ends of the Empire. His
whole life was wrapped in the School until he became Eton
as much as Arnold was ever Rugby or Thring Uppingham.
English Head Masters took their stature by him. To invite
him to a Head Masters Conference was like asking Jove to
attend a Board meeting. As a boy he passed Newcastle
4*
EDMOND WARRE
Scholar of 1854 to Balliol. After a trivial Fellowship of All
Souls he returned to Eton for life.
Even as an Eton boy he created legends. He had exchanged
one House for another because in his growing strength he
had kicked down a wall. In later years it would have sufficed
him to sit on one. A puny infant in childhood, he was on
his way to become the colossus of Eton. As a fagmaster he
fagged General Sir Redvers Buller. He sat in ckss with
Swinburne, whose kte arrivals at Early School with his red
and tousled hair he compared to the rising sun. Swinburne
did not write the particular kind of verses for which Eton
was famous, and in any case Warre heartily disapproved of
anything so sensitised as a poet. Poetry unto Prose in his
eyes was as Cricket unto Rowing, not capable of heroics.
Hard work, hard living and hard rowing made Warre s
ideal, to which he did not add a hard heart. His power was
one of steady concentration which enabled him to win the
first rank in scholarship without being a real scholar at alL
The same power was turned upon rowing, the Volunteer
Movement, the Classical Trireme, gardening, and above all
upon the School curriculum, and always with the same
surpassing results. Whatever subject he mastered, he put
into visible practice and invariably experienced the divine
happiness to find that it was good.
The inner life, the strange atmosphere of Public School, is
never written, or if it leaks into the disguises of fiction, is
overlooked with pretended horror. Schools pass through
varying phases. These may be caused by different generations
of boys but they can be severely fashioned by a strong Head.
The Eton into which Warre had been thrown was morally
rough and irreligious save for the routines of Chapel. At
Oxford Warre was remembered as "aggressively moral ".
The time had come when the Selwyns and Lytteltons were
reacting nobly against the low strain of schoolboy life.
England was believed to be best ruled with a minimum of
religious fuss or profession. Eton was content with the
lowest common multiple, set out with good tone and
uninquiring acceptance. The education offered at Eton
sufficed for Squires who might develop into statesmen
D 43
SALUTATION TO FIVE
and only needed the ready withal of Greek and Latin
quotation in the House. Sixth Form cultivated a type
of Bishop who was a gentleman first and could afford to
smile or sigh on re-reading St. Paul s Greek. Discipline
was supplied by the boys themselves, who fought with bare
knuckles under the famous Wall. The influence of masters,
moral or otherwise, was nil.
There had been a Commission and improvements were
called for in education, not in religion, which kept on the
low side of the Church. The Catholic revival at Oxford had
upset the dim denizens of the Eton Cloisters like rumours of
an approaching plague.
Houses were still conducted by extraordinary Dames out
of the eighteenth century who kept a certain order tempered
by ridicule. House Masters, if they behaved like gentlemen,
could be successful, but some tolerated a form of Liberty
Hall and more astonishingly still were tolerated themselves.
The fates and characters of Etonians depended on the pre
vailing tone of each House. There were young bloods, who
saw fair play and decency, but there were survivals from the
Regency, the grandsons of the Bucks and Beaux of pre-
Victorian days. Eton could be a cruel place and there were
dark corners over which a veil was gracefully dropped. The
headmastership of the flogging Keate was taken as a joke.
His passions were unslackened by an elegant and beautiful
wife and he flogged for any reason or no reason. False
quantities could lead to the block, for Latin Verse was the
white flower cherished and tended unto blood. The most
famous story, retailed round the Empire, related to a Con
firmation Class who were jestingly put on the flogging Bill.
The astounded candidates for Grace received the Sacrament
on the tip of the birch. But then Eton can survive any Head.
After Keate came "lofty lavenderesque " GoodalL Then
Hawtrey. Then Balston. Then Hornby.
From Oxford Warre descended like a fledgling Olympian
upon Eton. He was well drawn at that time by George
Richmond, a kind of pre-Raphaelite Sargent. The broad-
shouldered Christian hero faced his rowdy world with the
same personal beauty Richmond extracted from Newman.
44
EDMOND WARRE
But what a gulf lay between the sensitive mystic, whose
fingers drew the bow across the violin at Oriel and Mr. Duty-
before-Beauty, whose mighty hands had brought him to the
Presidency of the Oxford Boat.
At Oxford Warre showed himself oarsman and soldier.
It was his destiny to make Eton a great rowing school and
as near a Military Academy as the Volunteer Movement
allowed. At Oxford he was number One in the muster-roll
of the Volunteers, a corps whose number 3 5 was the John
Morley who left the Cabinet in 1914 rather than declare war
on Germany. Apparently Warre s influence had not con
tinued in his case. Another Volunteer who certainly slipped
through his aggressive morality was J. A. Symonds, the
aesthetic tempter of the coming generation. Symonds and
Swinburne, Warre put outside the Pale, " Black is black and
white is white ** was the sentence he imposed upon himself
and others. This may be correct in a school copy-book, but
life is one bewildering tangle of shadows amid the silvers and
of darkness upon the white of day. Of course what Warre
meant was that he could not tolerate a third sex in thought
or friendship any more than he could admit a fourth dimension
into the teaching of Maths.
With these admirable ambitions he returned as a " temporary
master** and was called upon to restore order in a House
which had reached chaos. This House was under a benign
Mr. Thackeray whose delicacy in Greek verse was an hoiiour
to Eton. Warre produced order in a week and was rewarded
by being made permanent. This was in 1860 and exactly
sixty years later he was buried in Eton. Such was his span.
His first modest appearance as a Master appears in the Lists
as " Edward Warre, B.A." [sic]
It was curious that Warre s career at Eton began and ended
with the problem of wrestling with indecorous Houses.
There was always a House worthy to be called Liberty Hall.
But there were many excellent Houses and even their standard
was raised when Warre became a House-Master. Warre used
to grade the Houses as Battleships, Cruisers and Destroyers.
He could not imagine a convict-ship amongst them, but he
was suddenly confronted with ugly facts such as Thackeray s
45
SALUTATION TO FIVE
under Head Master Balston and " Pecker " Rouse s under his
successor Hornby. They were part of the school legend.
Mr. Rouse s young gentlemen poached game from neighbour
ing coverts and lived like outlaws. Whenever one of their
number was expelled, the others copied the dramatic custom
of Execution days and hoisted a black flag, which generally
flew for a week.
Warre s Head had been Hawtrey, an amiable eccentric, who
dressed like a perfumed dancing master and carried his Classics
as gracefully as his liquor. His successor Balston enters Eton
annals as the predecessor of Hornby. Warre was given
Balston s pupils, who also needed a little taming, and he
should have taken over Balston s office as well. However,
the languid, gentlemanly Hornby kept Warre from Sixth
Form room until 1884. For two generations the combined
efforts of Fellows and Head and Provost had been directed to
postponing Reform, But with the dissolution of the impossible
Fellows into what was called a Governing Body, the principal
obstacles were cleared. Whatever that Body did, they did
not govern, at least while Warre was Head. Their pompous
styles and names were reminiscent of the stuffed titles by
which Companies fortify the minds of their shareholders.
No parent reading the names could fail to believe that his son
would receive example worthy of a scholar and a gentleman.
But Victorian Eton neither professed nor attempted educa
tion. It was not wanted and even Warre was far from being
an educator. He was an organiser, a militarist, an oarsman.
His House, of course, was a splendid nursery of Governors,
soldiers and County magnates. Parents judged House-
Masters by the gossip in Clubs or Regiments and Warre s
House was famous. His boys were swept forward by his
mighty voice and towering presence. His moral character
subdued the impertinent and ridiculed the scornful. His huge
strength frightened the bully and chivied the loafer. He
accepted a certain intellectual measure, but he believed first
and foremost in the athletic safeguard. Hitherto games had
been voluntary and unorganised. The whole House played
for the House in a merry rout. Colours and Elevens now
became distinguishable. Games became compulsory like
46
EDMOND WARRE
morals, depending on each other in the programme of muscular
Christianity. Warre would not listen to a sneak nor act as
a spy. He advertised his approach by tramping in heavy
boots down creaky passages. Boys knew where he was and
his trust was seldom abused. Of course his House was
Number One.
Of Warre s physical strength, stories were told with whole
some effect. Once he had picked up two youths (one was
Andrew Lang) and carried them under his arms over a Scottish
Burn. While staying with Irish cousins at Tynan in Armagh,
he performed a feat henceforth called " Warre s Leap ".
Shut out one evening, he cleared a five-bar gate that opened
into a stony descent. For generations the oaken posts
remained in testimony until one was thrown by an American
lorry. But the greatest memory comes from the time of a
Windsor election, which Hornby had forbidden the school to
enjoy. In case the order was insufficient, a band of ushers,
twelve or more, were placed on Windsor Bridge while Warre
sauntered to Barnes Pool Bridge immediately under the
College. For some hours Warre kept a boisterous mob at
bay. The scions of " Young England " were jeering and
jibing but not proceeding. Every rush was checked by Warre
calling out the boys by name. Those were days when he
knew every boy in the School. The day came when a visitor
asked him if he still knew every boy. " No/ was his famous
reply as Head Master, " but every boy knows me."
When he had decided his duty on Barnes Pool Bridge was
over, he walked away. Five minutes kter twelve masters on
Windsor Bridge were unable to emulate Horatius and a swarm
of boys broke their ranks without difficulty.
In athletics Warre s House began to crush all opposition.
Their only rival was the venerable family of Evans. Both
Houses were sworn to blackball each other for entry into the
sacred company of " Pop ", the athletic Society which really
ruled the school. When the two Houses met in the fierce
match of 1873, Warre stepped out and angrily stopped the
swearing and fouling with which both sides had disgraced
the Field. Has any Eton Master ever dared hold up a match
since? This was aggressive morality indeed.
47
SALUTATION TO FIVE
By all accounts Watre was magnificent in his House but
there were deficiencies. He encouraged scholars but the
literati were unknown. He boasted all three Indian Governors
at one time but there was never a Laureate or artist. He had
no sympathy with queer or quaint boys. The unconventional
was scorned and injustices could occur. One of his show
pupils, Bill Beresford, V.C., remembered, and when passing
Eton halted the Twelfth Lancers in order to tell Warre that
he had him swished unjustly. Warre stood astonished and
silent, for his repartee was limited.
Curiously enough, he disapproved of humour directed
against himself. He asked his House to appoint delegates to
the School Mission and they chose the least distinguished boy
in the House. The Eton Mission, like the Volunteers and
the Ten Commandments, was not a laughing matter, and like
Queen Victoria, whom he revered on this side of idolatry, he
was not amused. Nor was he amused when his Dame was
** broziered " over a quarrel about jam puffs and the boys
called insatiably for more. He could take a defeat but not a
joke. If things went really wrong, he was puzzled in a
humble sort of way.
As Major in the School Volunteers Warre figured in a series
of famous Reviews. In the eighties Queen Victoria reviewed
some 40,000 Volunteers in the Home Park. Before the Eton
contingent reached the saluting base, Warre gave an indistinct
command, which threw the boys into the kilted ranks of a
Scottish regiment. The A.D.C.S, headed by Lord Wolseley,
rushed to the rescue and separated them before they could
proceed. On another occasion Warre gave so loud a command
that his charger took fright and threw him heavily. Even so,
his dignity was not impaired in the eyes of the boys. On a
Field day, when there were guests, he served the boys with
watered champagne, a truly British compromise.
On important matters Warre took sides and his side tended
to win in the way that an avalanche is more powerful than a
snowstorm. He stood for Rowing against Cricket because
the oar called for nobler endurance. He stood for moderate
reforms against the Diehards of the Foundation. He was
Matthew Arnold s " Philistine " set over the governance of
48
EDMOND WARRE
Jerusalem. Against Culture, Belles Letfres or any of the
Movements that moved ever so gently under the Victorian
crust he was adamant.
It was against his wish or conscience that Shelley s bust was
placed in Upper School, that William Morris lectured to the
Upper Boys in a red tie and that Swinburne wrote the Eton
Ode commemorating her 450th year. If he gave way on all
these points it was with the reservation that " Black is black
arid white is white ".
In 1887 the Fortnightly Review published English passages
selected by living Men of Letters. Dr. Warre s selections
may illustrate his taste. He chose from Shakespeare Qaudio s
speech on the horrors of death, Milton s " Hail Holy Light >%
from Paradise Lost, Tennyson s ** Of old sat Freedom on the
heights *, a passage from the " judicious " Hooker, and
Napier s account of the Fusiliers at Albuera.
The Philistines and the Aesthetes met in conflict under the
rule of Hornby, whose attitude was expressed in one grim
sentence: "I rather wish Shelley had been at Harrow I"
Warre and Oscar Browning were the Protagonists. Browning
despised games and read Dante to his boys. Warre made
work creditable but Browning made it interesting. His
House had some pretension to being an Academy compared
with Warre s gladiatorial establishment. The clash came
when Eton had to decide between two very different ways of
running a House. Browning introduced Music and Modern
History. He might as well have taught the boys to dance
and knit, for the scorn he roused. When he took good-
looking boys for drives, Hornby insulted him. Eton Masters
timidly divided between Warre and Browning. But Hornby
could not be impartial, such was his personal hatred* It was
pointed out that Warre could row, Hornby could skate, both
in the first class, but Browning could only tricycle! Hornby
dismissed Browning, unfairly catching him through a joint in
his harness. The cultural stream of Eton was turned or at
least absorbed in the Thames for a generation.
It was as River Master that Warre took a lead unknown in
English school-mastering. He consented to coach the Eight,
but on the curious condition that the Captain invited him
49
SALUTATION TO FIVE
on each occasion, so careful was he of usurping a power
traditionally belonging to the boys. For a quarter century
he coached the Eight and thereby influenced the Varsity boat
race for the same period. He kept his own powers long
enough. In 1865 he competed at Henley for the Goblets
with another assistant Master under assumed names. It
could not have been wholly approved in the sedate Cloisters,
for a sermon was preached the following Sunday in Chapel
on the wickedness of sailing under false colours I
His ideal was very very high. On one occasion he stopped
the boat he was coaching and after an unusual silence he said:
" This is the first time I have seen perfect rowing." And
the vision apparently passed.
There is no doubt that he taught Rowing better than any
other subject or than any other Coach. For hours he stood,
rode or ran, teaching young oarsmen. He would spend an
hour tubbing a pair in a gig. In mature age he wrote The
Grammar of Rowing, profanely alluded to as God s Instructions
to Noah. A famous caricature depicted Queen Victoria
peeping out of Windsor Castle while Warre passed on the
river and asking : " What is that terrible noise ? " It might be
added that the Queen approved of Dr. Warre as one of the safe
supports of Empire. He was believed to be the only person who
sang her a comic song in private. No amusement was recorded.
He created the traditions of " wel bobbery ", leaving the
cricket to " Mike ", the corresponding instructor of dry-bobs.
He finally obtained leave for the Eight to row at Henley from
Hornby, who was also a man of the oar. This concession
was made in exchange for an orgy called <c Oppidan Dinner "
and " Check-nights ". The custom of drinking champagne
on Rafts after School races continued well into Warre s
Headmastership. Even so a Captain of the Boats had to act,
for Warre hated abolisliing tradition, even when boys became
intoxicated.
Too late perhaps he became Head, but it was the signal for
Eton to enter her zenith. In 1884 he received the symbolic
birchrod from the Captain of the School elegantly tied with blue
ribbons. Miss Evans* House was now without rival and Warre
made the Cloisters Headquarters for his Draconian reforms.
jo
EDMOND WARRE
The time had come to fulfil the words he had written at
the outset of his Mastership: "I shall show God s work to
this generation." Ten generations of boy life did not
distinguish much between Warre s works and God s. There
was no opposing it.
A School Office was created and occupied by old soldiers.
A Book Pound was instituted. Annual Examinations were
exchanged for Trials at the end of every Half. That Peers
could be superannuated showed how deeply the great Reform
Act of 1834 was still working.
Most alarmingly it was announced that the Head would
inspect Divisions without notice. These visitations became
a vivid feature of School life much to the humour of the
retired Hornby. No boy could forget the scene when a
creaking door swung open and a black-robed giant advanced
to the desk. Boys staggered to attention. Masters became
incoherent and wiped away their sweat with blotting paper.
The booming voice, with which the Head sought to reassure
the startled boys, only increased the panic. Boys set to
construe, stuttered or broke down. In the end the Head
took the lesson, made one of his famous quotations, and
passed on his tremendous way. Masters with presence of
mind switched him to one of his classical fads : the raft of
Odysseus or the propulsion of Triremes, for there were
" wet-bobs " in the Classics if not in the Scriptures.
Arthur Benson once described such a visitation during a
class for Lysias : " I had been girding at the attenuated stuff
and he began praising it for its beauty and interest. He made
a little speech about good taste in writing, avoidance of
humour, often offensive, * there, put your pen through it *.
He spoke of his own sermons and how after writing a few
pages a horror came over him (I don t wonder) and he struck
it all out. His greatness gleamed through the loose and
inconsequent talk, rambling metaphors, rapid quotations,
quite unintelligible to the boys, like tongues of fire
through smoke. He roared so loud once or twice that the
room rang."
He made a point of visiting French classes where the
tactful Frenchmen in charge were adepts in disguising that
SALUTATION TO FIVE
his scholarship was better than his accent. Monsieur Hua
was a favourite with boys, who understood he told French
stories to King Edward, which were not retailed in class.
As French hours were generally used for preparing work for
Classical Masters, Warre retaliated by making Classical Masters
teach an hour of French every week. He dropped the
teacher of Hebrew after 1885 though a Hebrew class was
becoming possible to recruit. It was a false supposition that
the Semitic specialist became a chaplain at Harrow. Signor
de Asarta taught Italian throughout the Warre regime but
unfortunately was not known by sight. Whereas the plump
and pompous Herr Ploetz was famous for spats and scholar
ship, and could certainly teach. Warre brought in Mr. Byrne
and under cheerful Englishmen modern languages received
respect instead of resistance.
Once it was allowed that the sons of gentlemen should
learn Science, every effort was made to introduce the modern
Laboratory. Dr. Porter taught a rather exciting Department
on his own. He used certain experiments for instilling fear
in his pupils. Lower boys were once told that he had raised
a dead cat to life with a battery. Upper boys were shown a
glass of colourless liquid and told that if it fell to the ground
the whole of Eton would disappear in atoms. One fine day,
according to Arthur Benson, it tipped over and Dr. Porter,
who was also a clergyman, fell on his knees and recited a
Collect. This was a Class the Head never ventured to visit.
"* Ah yes, but that is Science and I know no Science/*
One change was marked by boys for the good. The
floggings were reduced in number and quality. Disdaining
to use his god-like strength on naked urchins, he merely
combed them with the birch, while the gowned praepostors held
them down and elevated their vesture in the traditional manner.
Masters themselves were given rules and discouraged from
smoking. They were to consider themselves always on duty
but espionage was forbidden.
Warre found more opposition in Sixth Form than amongst
Masters. Without any subtlety of wit or love of classical
shades, he suffered in comparison with Hornby, who delighted
his pupils with the quips and phrases worthy of a more
5*
EDMOND WARRE
civilised century. Warre s heavy instructions were received
with yawning contempt. His teaching was " weighty rather
than inspiring". Guileless and conscientious, he gave
information in School with the same straightforwardness
which was so successful on the River. Even in his last years
the Sixth Form kept a book labelled " The Wisdom of Warre "
and a boy, turned out of Sixth Form for apparent irreverence,
did not care to explain that it was Warre and not the Deity
he was mocking. Realising that all was not smooth going,
he called in Hugh Macnaghten and the Sixth glimpsed
Euripides and Sophocles from an inspired scholar. The
Head carried on with Livy. A great commander knows how
to use his deputies in the field.
His favourite Captain of the School recorded:
" He had far too much on his hands and could not see the
wrong in some of his Houses. He always used to say to me:
* Blessed are the Pure in Heart , and called me his facile
princeps Captain of the School (excuse blowing of trumpets)
and in his house, alone with him, I have seen him cry, for he
loved Eton and knew in his ageing tread and failing abilities
that the job was too big for him!
" * I will not allow this filthy habit of smoking! It s bad
for yeh morally and physically too, so to speak. Dea nt yeh
want to be healthy, fine-blooded Englishmen? Not like
those pale-faced French boys with their sneaky ways and
sniggering manners ! All this was followed by a loud gallumph
and a rolling of his tongue and a moment of wise pondering/*
Like all great men he was easier to mimic than to imitate.
It was said that four words summarised his teaching on
any subject: chimaera bombinans in vacuo\ He was a singular
combination of the magnificent and the ridiculous, and the
nearer boys got to him, the less magnificent and the more
ridiculous did he appear: yet the Masters for all his absurdity
respected the man, if not his judgment, and were devoted to
him. It was said that if he was not a great man, he was a
great gentleman.
His greatest test was when he had to decide whether the
son of a great Minister of State should be expelled or not.
This actually had occurred under a predecessor. But Warre
53
SALUTATION TO FIVE
gave the benefit of the doubt and no one could say if he was
right or wrong.
Jubilee year brought up the really great question whether
the Eton and Harrow Match should occupy three days instead
of two. With the years it had become as important as the
Boatrace and as glittering as Ascot. A Petition in favour of
three days was signed by eight Old Etonian Presidents of the
M.C.C. The Harrow Head was not unfavourable, but Warre
refused to be cornered and during some blundersome corre
spondence in The Times he complained that " the turn thus
given to the question is to throw without notice publicly in
time of excitement the onus of deciding it on the shoulders
of the Head Master of Eton ". They were broad enough in
all conscience, but they were the shoulders of a rowing man.
The ponderous decision was rolled forth:
" It should be remembered Eton is very differently situated
from Harrow. We have our annual match with Winchester.
We have Henley Regatta. Whatever may be best for cricket
may not necessarily be best for the School."
" Mike " and the M.CC. Presidents were scattered like chaff.
The Book of ** The Wisdom of Warre " was kept by Sir
Stephen Gaselee, John Capron, Chris Stone, Robin Quirk
and others. They delighted in his West Country accent
" Kum, Kum, boys! when you begin to think of the negative
side of Zero, you are, so to speak, lost in the abyss of Infinity ".
Perhaps he was right.
He was an odd mixture of granite and humility, for he was
reproachful of himself, when he found a Sixth Former had
scribbled to his neighbours: "Can you stand this stuff?"
Apparently not.
It was no use defending the Bible with the old Oxford
thought. Mrs. Humphrey Ward s son was high in the Sixth
when he referred approvingly of the Tubingen School and
dared to quote Weiszacker. He was summoned to the Head,
who spoke sternly and rather angrily, asking why Eton
should go to German Theology. As for Weiszacker
"they re all wise acres" was his concluding and perhaps
unanswerable shot.
It was no wonder that recruits for the Church began to
J4
EDMOND WARRE
diminish. In a certain sense Warre s whole regime was
underical. The test was that Monday military exercises
were taken out of Chapel not School time. The music in
Chapel was of {ne best village-concert style with Anthems sung
by a hired choir. The Sermons were safe, Sundayish and some
times insufferable. Arthur Benson described Confirmation as
a huge garden-party faintly overshadowed by a sense of religion.
The eighties and the nineties proved Warre s golden era.
He reigned, ruled and enriched Eton life. The Volunteers,
literally " Dr. Warre s own ", flourished. The Eight almost
appropriated the Ladies Plate at Henley. Eton rapidly
approached the thousand mark. Royalty beamed. The
Queen deigned to open the Schools called after herself. It
was a return visit for the glamorous torchlight procession,
which Warre organised for her first Jubilee, a year which
also covered his natal fiftieth. The thoughts of both
personages seemed to dwell upon each other at times and the
Head even dreamed the words and tune, which the boys sang
at the Castle. The Queen was overjoyed and Warre became
a Royal Chaplain. In 1901 the Queen died and for the kst
time Warre marshalled the boys in her honour.
By the new century Eton had become Dr. Warre s Academy
rather than King Henry s Foundation. He had thought and
wrought and as far as possible taught the School into his
own image. Eton was now wholly athletic and semi-military.
All aestheticism was chivied out of the ranks. Any un-
English movement from Ritualism to Vegetarianism had been
suppressed. The Eton Society was no longer intellectual
and would no doubt have blackballed Mr. Gladstone had he
returned. " Pop " wore gala clothes and ruled the rest of
the School by sheer force. They exhibited the last flicker of
the Regency Corinthians.
The great difference in taste between Warre s and the
present day can be judged from the programme of" Speeches "
delivered by the boys. The modern has intruded on the
Classical. Even Browning (no relation of Oscar) was not
sanctioned except the ridiculous rant about bringing the
Good News From Ghent. As for the Eing and theBook, it was
clearly putting ideas into the boys heads.
55
SALUTATION TO FIVE
In a famous metaphor delivered in a speech to the Masters
Warre advised keeping a tight hand as long as the rein was
fairly loose. This was variously interpreted, including the
suggestion that Warre did not mind them being tight as long
as they avoided looseness ! Some of the Masters punished
themselves for their own subserviency by jesting against
Warre. There broke forth a Lilliputian warfare amongst the
Staff, between the Classical and more Modern. The Battk
oftheBooks was refought chiefly over Greek. Warre s dilemma
was that though by Grace he was a die-hard Classic, he had
created Army Class which had dropped Greek. He had
militarised Eton and he could not die in both trenches.
Times were slightly tumultuous and he had better have
retired. He had a good chance in 1896 when doctors insisted
on his taking a rest, but he only gave up Early School. Again
in 1900 he might have departed in an aureole of glory. He
declined a hint from the Eton Premier Lord Salisbury who
offered him the Deanery of that name. In fact there was no
moving him though his mighty rowing heart was weakening.
He had worn himself out in sleepless supervision of the
School. Unending concentration had loosened the mighty
fibres* He could be upset and he showed timidity in face of
letters in the Press, even in face of the Paterfamilias bogey.
He could no longer close controversies with an apt quotation.
Ushers did not stop quarrelling when a huge but beautiful
hand was laid on their shoulders and the words " Blessed
are the Peacemakers " softly boomed in their ears.
Who was to tell Warre that Eton could continue without
him, and perhaps better? The School seemed to enjoy
singing the hymn: " When War shall be no more ", though
seriously they would have kept him for ever. Something of the
kind overcame the Conducts (who curiously enough conduct
service) and the Head s favourite hymn was substituted :
" Come, O Thou Traveller unknown,
Whom still I hold but cannot see,
My company before is gone
And I am left alone with Thee."
This was quite true of the old man, whose splendid company
56
EDMOND WARRE
of assistants were going or gone: Arthur Ainger, Edward
Austen-Leigh ("the Flea"), "Badger 5 * Hale, Walter Durn-
ford, "Mike", Henry Luxmoore. With two or three
exceptions there were never such wonderful Houses.
Latterly he was rumoured to be seeking a successor. His
mantle was waved first towards Arthur Benson and later
towards Francis Rawlins. He suggested Holy Orders to
Benson as a first step to the swishing block, but that exquisite
writer was thrown by the fluttering of the Holy Dove into a
melancholia from which he never entirely recovered. Neither
was eventually chosen and the Governing Body produced
the real candidate, a Lyttelton who had once captained
Miss Evans hated House. Such can be the whirligigs of
Time !
The old man stayed into the new Reign, which was
auspicious enough. The new King visited the Royal Founda
tion in a Royal Barge as though in recognition of a rowing
Head. But Fate had reserved him severe thrusts which only
a younger man could have borne. For his peace and happiness
he had better have retired when the going was good and the
future like his mystical fellow-traveller unknown.
Warre continued like some permanent monument on the
Eton scene. Visitors and old boys looked for his stalwart
figure in the way that they pointed out the Wall, Founder s
Statue or the Crimean Cannon in front of the New Schools.
The boys even accepted his over-audible sermons. They were
stiff, uninspiring and rather tedious, but that booming voice!
It alarmed and yet it lulled. Who that ever heard him thunder
the Commination Service in Chapel could forget " Cursed
is he that removeth his neighbour s landmark" surely a
thrust at Mr. Gladstone s politics. As for the Ten Command
ments listeners could recall echoes down the years, especially
of the divine injunction upon the most human of frailties.
It was like the voice from Sinai.
He had his favourite texts: "Pray for the peace of
Jerusalem (assistant masters, stop quarrelling 1 for
Jerusalem and Eton were one). They shall prosper that
love thee " (this was a thought for the Eton Mission and the
old Etonian Association which marked his reign). He hardly
57
SALUTATION TO FIVE
knew his immense power over the boys, who could be in
fluenced deeply for life without ever contacting him. They
listened attentively to his Sermons like recruits on parade but
could dislocate few aphorisms from the steady resonance.
Once he called out to the astounded boys: " Clear the water
and keep your feather low " ! This was a hint to avoid
swagger. There was a memorable sermon in Lower Chapel,
which neither boy, Master nor Dame could interpret. Some
feared he was breaking down. " I was afraid he would never
leave off," grunted the Lower Master. But listening to
Warre was like listening to the mounting murmur of Mass in
a Cathedral distance. Reverence he always obtained, for the
boys believed he could do no wrong.
Warre was more effective speaking outside the pulpit.
In Chapel, with his gold-rimmed spectacles and lifted head,
he resembled a blinded eagle feeling rather helplessly around.
But when he faced a moral question face to face with the
School, his voice cleared and his eyes flashed. Who could
ever forget when Fifth and Sixth were summoned to Upper
School? On one occasion there was a rather ridiculous row.
A boy was expelled and there was a minor demonstration
when the departing cab drove to the station. Some two
hundred boys filled Keate s Lane. A bouquet was lowered
from a top window and the departure was softened by confetti
and cheers. A mild riot was cleared up by " Pop " with
their canes. It need have gone no further, but Warre believed
the School had condoned what came under his "Black is
bkck " formula. He spoke words as terrible as ever Moses
addressed to the Children of Israel. The School was frightened
and even Masters became nervous. They were to understand
that those who had cheered had done Eton more harm than
they could ever retrieve! That speech of Warre was re
membered by very different boys when the rest of their Eton
lives grew dim. Grizzled veterans would meet behind the
Pavilion at Lord s and murmur:
" Do you remember the row? "
" I still quake in my boots when I think of the Head in
Upper School."
It was amusing to boys to watch Generals and Ministers
58
EDMOND WARKE
standing beside him on the Fourth of June with their hats off.
He liked to be kindly, but that voice was so terrifying that it
could be believed that he might have been a successful
lion-tamer.
On a later occasion the School was summoned to a happier
scene. In Lent 1902 the keyholes of classrooms had been
filled with plaster of Paris before Trials. Warre angrily
stopped all Leave until the guilty surrendered. Weeks and
weeks passed until " Pop " gave him their word as gentlemen
that the guilty were no longer members of the School. The
School was summoned and Leave publicly restored. There
was a scene of stupendous enthusiasm. It was one of those
moments when everyone wished to die for him.
Incidentally the Head congratulated the School that no one
had " sneaked " on this occasion. He never allowed Masters
to practise espionage. He believed that his own tremendous
moral influence was sufficient. He made men House Masters
and gave them as complete liberty as Colonial Governors in
their spheres. They must manage to rule without informers.
Some Masters held that a danger to morals was the exception,
but on this point boys were most sensitive, for such cases
involved expulsion.
House Masters did not always carry out the Head s regula
tions and suggestions. He had been urgent about fire drills,
but nothing had been done by anybody. Boys slept in rickety
old warrens behind iron bars. The inevitable might have
been delayed a century, but it came when a mental incendiary
among the boys fired Mr. Kindersley s House in 1903. Two
boys perished in the trap. The blow fell heavily upon the
Head s shoulders. It is doubtful if he ever spent another
happy day at Eton. He was too crushed to attend the Inquest
held upon the dead boys laid out pitifully in their Pupil-room.
The wife of the Vice-Provost, Mrs. Cornish, provided the
flowers. Fire-reform naturally followed at Eton and at every
Public School which caught alarm in the land.
Consolation, if any, came in these darkening days with the
buildings which sprang up to mark his career. Already the
quaint landscape of Eton had been considerably changed.
Queen s Schools, the Lower Chapel, Mechanics School, which
E 59
SALUTATION TO FIVE
was ahead of the times, the Drill Hall, the big new Houses on
the road to Eton Wick. These last were certainly of the type
that Mrs. Cornish called the " Sanitary linoleum School ".
As a visible climax to Warre s career came the great Memorial
Hall to the South African dead. The Boer War had justified
Warre in many ways. It had been an Old Etonian war,
comparing lists with all other Schools. The stone was
solemnly laid and three years later a dome of mushroom
Renaissance was raised in company with a Library in cheerful
bad taste. It was unfortunately spared by the German
bombers who later wrecked the exquisite Upper School. It
remained Warre s monument and at least had been capable of
containing his mighty voice. Like all the buildings he erected
it might have been so much better and so much worse.
In 1904 Warre proposed a new set of changes in the School
life, but Provost and Fellows pulled themselves together and
advised him to leave them to his successor. " Dr. Warre was
deeply moved. He wrote a letter resigning his position and an
nounced in Chambers that he haddoneso. If I am standing in the
way of the good of the School, he said, it is time for me to go."
But still he held motionless to the helm. He seemed more
withdrawn than ever. He was still the only possible Head
and the Staff were more or less tail. He seemed buoyed by
his great past. He looked into a boy s face and recalled his
father. Sometimes he stared stonily in an old pupil s face
and failed of the name.
Much is omitted from the history of Schools and therefore
from the lives of Head Masters. The liberty which Warre
gave to his House Masters was sometimes abused and several
unsatisfactory Houses were taken as a matter of course. If a
boy was lucky, he found himself at a brilliant House like
Miss Evans or Macnaghten s. If he was unlucky, he could
be very unlucky indeed.
The blows came rather unexpectedly. The House, which
nearly ten years previously had been the cause of the Head s
memorable expostulation in Upper School, came under his
notice owing to a parent s letter. The parent was a Peer.
The Head relieved the Master of his House. The Master
was popular (too popular perhaps) with his pupils and a
60
EDMOND WARRE
number of them at Cambridge signed an indignant protest.
They pointed out that the Head was retaining in his service
the Master of a House far less worthy. The Head was moved
to answer the rather impudent letter and to refer his young
correspondents to the account he would give on the Day of
Judgment. But they were right, for a stern parent (a Baronet
this time) shortly took action and another House was dissolved
in disgrace. Even its House Colours were never revived by
another, which was a unique happening in history.
Warre s biographer discerned an "intermittent series of
shocks " affecting his health in those last unnecessary years.
These troubles more than the disastrous Fire lowered his
spirit. He felt he had been wounded in the House of trusted
friends. No doubt he hated iniquity but he also hated
removing an established House-Master. Perhaps, if there
had been a little honest " sneaking ", his grey head would
have descended more happily towards the grave. Better still,
if he could have visitated Houses in the same way that he
appeared in Classes. But alas he had never made the attempt.
A survivor of this less worthy House, afterwards a First
at Oxford, has written: " The general impression of misery
and injustice is indelible and I cannot forgive those who
allowed these conditions to go on. Also probably Warre
thought it was a good House. What was there behind that
notable presence? More modesty and humbleness and less
intellect and perception than one would suppose. He was
Head during a bad time in our social history and his liberty
of action was curtailed. I think he had a wooden mind.
But he was just, kindly and honest."
Esm6 Wingfield-Stratford, a Fellow of King s albeit an old
Etonian (so much have times changed), sketched him at his
best: e *His magnificent presence enhanced by his billowing
gown, reading Absence in School Yard, must in itself have
been no inconsiderable asset to the School ... He was just
what you imagine John Bull might have been minus his fat.
And I can never think of Warre without being reminded of
what Mazzini once said after a visit to the Zoo Have you
noticed the face of a lion? Do you not think it is a very
foolish fece? Well, that is Garibaldi s."
61
SALUTATION TO FIVE
Wingfield-Stratford, like most of the School of 1900,
realised the sinister side: "It was characteristic of Warre
that be should also have continued to avert his eyes from the
sadistic orgies that were part of the regular routine in not a
few of the Houses under his suzerainty."
It seems ungenerous to saddle Warre s memory with the
legend of Houses which only unbelievable carelessness could
have overlooked. He had made Eton richer in every way
in work and play as a builder, an organiser. By sheer
prestige he had imposed the ideals of Christian gentlemen.
Scholars in College, oarsmen in the Boats, the Eton Volunteers,
the Eton Mission, athletics and foreign languages flourished
under his touch. History could only record the rosy and
golden but does true History prefer to omit the darker side ?
Nor was there more than a black patch, which could scarcely
be believed in later and happier days when Houses reach the
same good level. In that case let the blame rest on a nameless
House-Master, a survivor of whose House writing to the
author remembers " the unhappiest years of my life which
we spent together. I believe Mr. was probably a
harmless individual but I think that quite a few of our con
temporaries, who have gone under, might have survived, had he
never been an Eton Housemaster. I know it took me quite a
few years to live down the stigma of having been at
the worst House there has ever been at Eton. By the law
of averages there must have been a fair proportion of normal
c good fellows * in that House. I can t remember one I ever
wish to see again. What was wrong that he and that incredible
woman managed to produce such an appalling crowd of
young hooligans as we all were? We weren t even healthy
savages. You were always older than your years. You kept
your head, bloody at times but unbowed. I shall never
forget the quite incredible change which came in my life
when I was taken away. I suppose we knew ourselves to be
pariahs and hanged ourselves on the bad name that had been
given us. The present generation just won t believe you.
For indeed a true story of Mr. s in our time would rival
any * Borstal Nights which could ever be written. *
So writes a Colonel of the Guards who kter met his principal
62
EDMOND WARRE
torturer attached as a probationer. There were no happy
meetings in after life between boys. Another grim meeting
occurred when L minor found himself inspecting a
particularly hated character attached to the Rifle Brigade.
The British Army brought such to justice and standards of
decency. And the rest is silence.
It was the brutality rather than the morality which shocked,
as when two Houses competed as to which could claim the
record for " smacking ** the unlucky fags. Two future
Varsity oarsmen could attribute their firm seats in the boat
to their weekly thrashings at s House. One found a
soldier s grave after being Captain of the Cambridge Boat.
To the writer he assigned his " bottom of tin * to his treatment
by a sadist fagmaster but he added, "It set me rowing! "
It was no House for weaklings where such inclinations as
attending Holy Communion, reading the Spectator or collecting
wild flowers were treated with unmannerly contempt. Canings
in those days were divided into those which made blood ooze
through the trousers or not!
Even an attempted suicide did not warn the authorities;
but when the crash came, Warre took no excuse and made
no exceptions. There was an end of that House and Eton
sighed her relief. It is pleasant to think that, when the sons
of Labour enter the Eton ranks, they will find such unpleasant
conditions entirely removed. Only Squires* sons could have
stood what we stood between 1900 and 1904.
No book of Eton Memoirs will lack a portrait of Warre,
whether written by Masters or boys. They all accumulate
to his praise and honour and it is well that the memory of old
unhappy things should drift away. Parents must not dream
that such things are possible in these days. In fact they may
send their children to Eton or Roedean with equal confidence
in the propriety and kindness .they will meet.
And again, let not Warre be wholly blamed for everything
that occurred at Warre s Eton. An Admiral depends on his
Captains for the discipline and morality of the ships: and
may depend in vain.
In one respect it was a pity Warre did not influence the
Victorian youth and that was in his love of gardening and
63
SALUTATION TO FIVE
Botany. He delighted in talking to a Botany class which he
could illuminate with Classical allusions. He loved to play
with the leaves of the Sensitive Plant though sensitive boys
hardly seemed to him to exist. Perhaps Mimosa pudica would
have made the botanical equivalent of a certain type of boy,
but the majority of Etonians in his reign could be likened to
hardwoods and hardy shrubs.
We are told officially that "he remained at his post too
long ". But at last the end came and with the end came his
last School. There is always something moving in such a
moment. Gladstone s kst minutes in the House of Commons
have been dramatically recorded by John Morley. Lord
Clifden remembered Warre s last School. It was a Saying
Lesson. " I was the last boy to come up and say my piece
and therefore found myself alone with him. When I had
done it, he shut the book and said these words: Finis laborum
meorum. It was a terribly impressive moment and I would
have given anything in the world to have made a suitable
reply, preferably in Latin, as I stood there representing all
the thousands that the dear old man had benefited." His
own words were upon him for the time had come to shoulder
his pack and go.
Whatever his private griefs and shocks, Warre retired in
1905 mantled with public esteem. He soon returned as
Provost, Hornby having once more kept him waiting too long.
It would have been more convenient for Eton if he could
have become Provost in 1900. As things were, he was soon
crippled and the boys visioned him in a bath chair. The
mighty physique defied the advance of age or even Death.
It was not till 1920 that he met the Unknown Traveller of
his dreams.
When he died, it seemed difficult to conceive that his
greatness had been achieved in so small a world. But all
who ever came under his influence felt assured that he could
have repeated that same greatness with unswerving simplicity
whether he had gone to Canterbury or the Woolsack or the
Throne of the Moguls. And in each place his Classical
quotations would have been appropriate.
Four Head Masters have succeeded Warre, chosen by the
EDMOND WARRE
Governing Body as carefully as Popes are chosen by a more
sacred College. Their names have not passed like Warre s
into the history of England. It would be interesting, if at
the ceremony of induction a famous warning, which is uttered
to new Popes, were paralleled at Eton. " Non videbis annos
Petri" Popes are told; and each new Head Master should be
solemnly informed in Chapel (perhaps as an anthem), " Thou
wilt not see the times of Warre ! "
He was buried in that forgotten corner of Eton which holds
so many dead Dominies, Dames and worthies of Eton.
Miss Evans lies near by where her boys left her in peace.
But the great grave is Warre s.
There is a tradition that the Irish will enjoy the privilege
to be judged by St. Patrick in person on the Last Day. It
would be a happy thought on the part of the Eternal to allow
the last Eton Absence to be read by Edmond Warre, for on
that tremendous Day his voice for once would not be
frightening.
m
SIR WILLIAM BUTLER
Sir William Butler s Autobiography
The Milner Papers Headlam
The Life of Joseph Chamberlain, by J. L. Garvin
THE names of most of the British Generals engaged in
the Boer War have met merciful oblivion. The name
which the Boers respect and remember longest will be
Lieut-General Sir William Butler. Not only did he take no
part in the disastrous fighting, but had he had his will, there
would have been no fighting at all.
William Butler was born in Ballyslateen, in the County of
Tipperary, in 1838, part of what was called in the old maps
" Butler s County ", for his family was descended from James
ninth Earl of Ormond, who died in 1546. A great deal
can be garnered from his Autobiography. It would be difficult
to say which weapon showed him die more Irish: pen or
sword. He had a devastating sense of irony, a love of old-
fashioned punning and word-play and a sense of the historical
past, which he investigated entirely without the use of
text-books.
He remembered visiting Richmond Penitentiary as a child,
where a very impenitent and burly figure swayed him in his
arms, while the most famous and melodious voice in Europe
hurrahed for Tipperary! " The big man was Daniel O Connell
and the time must have been in the June of 1844." Butler
cherished such memories from the past, but his next
experiences were not so hilarious: the Irish Famine and
the slow noiseless slaughter of " the finest peasantry in the
world". As an old soldier he added afterthoughts to a
schoolboy s, whatever they were in the forties. " A second
66
SIR WELIJAM BUTLER
or third-rate despot could have at least parried the blow;
but a constitutional government face to face with a sudden
crisis is as helpless as a stranded whale in an ebb-tide/*
He watched the evictions at their worst and his mentality
was marked for life. Henceforth a peasant or a farmer was
God s best, and whoever struck the man with the hoe had
struck God s plan for the world. In days to come he married
Elizabeth Thompson, the famous painter of the Roll Call,
and at his inspiration she painted an eviction scene which is
now cherished by the Irish Nation.
The young Ensign of the Sixty Ninth was posted to the
East. The old Army had perished in the Crimea and Butler
could only find a few survivors of those " whose charging
shouts had been heard on fifty European and Asiatic battle
fields. More than half of them were Irish, no matter what
might be the title borne by the regiment to which they
belonged."
The old Colonel died soon after Butler s arrival in India,
while endeavouring to shout one of those complicated
commands devised at Whitehall without thought of hot
climates. The words were still those for wielding the flint
locks, the Brown Bess of the Peninsular War. Butler himself
lived into the more civilised era of the Gatling and the Maxim.
As for the voyage in an old Trooper, "there was no
Plimsoll in those days " and the leaking ship only survived
by keeping the angry soldiers at the pumps.
A life of experience sharpened his pen. Could Conrad or
Stevenson have described die horrors of a Hurricane better
than this paragraph?
" There is no sea and no sky and no air. They have all
become one vast, blank, solid, gigantic animal, compared to
which the lion is a lamb, the whale a minnow, the biggest
cannon a child s popgun. There is no sea running as in an
ordinary storm; beneath this awful wind the sea crouches
for a time like a lashed hound; and that is exactly what it is.
It cannot get up and run before that vast wall of wind. It
lies down at first and the wind mows it like grass, shaves it
off in swathes of white foam, which are caught up into the
rushing wind itself, so that no eye can open against it, and no
6?
SALUTATION TO FIVE
face can face its saltness. But the roar is the thing that lives
longest in memory; it seems to swallow even the thunder, as
though that too, like the sea, had been brayed into it."
Here was a power of description and outlet to his turbulent
Celtic soul, which helped him through many a reverse and
difficulty. Life, even when it struck with hurricane force,
was always interesting. When the Present became dis
appointing or odious, his curiosity delighted in the Past.
Links, living links were his hobby. In the old Fort at
Vellore he found a survivor of the Battle of the Nile. " What
was it like? Well, it was like the sound of the waterwheel
of a big mill."
That was all, but he had better luck at St. Helena, where he
found an old Irish soldier, who had guarded the Emperor
himself. He could point where the sentries were placed
below the ridge by day and drawn close to Longwood by
night. This old Irishman had seen the Emperor working in
the garden or feeding fish in the pond. He had even entered
the house in charge of the Chinamen who fetched the water
from the spring. He remembered the big wind tearing up
the trees the night before the Emperor died: " the awfullest
wind that was ever on the island ". Was it sent by the same
power that carried away the soul of Cromwell in a mighty
raging gale?
Was it an irony of fate that Irish soldiers stood sentinel
over the dying Emperor and over his tomb ? Had he brought
his Armies to Ireland instead of Russia, perhaps he would
not have languished in the dead gullies of St. Helena. It
was a Sergeant Sullivan who stood over the dismembered
body and with his bayonet prevented a rat removing the
Imperial heart 1 But what a superb compliment the British
paid to their old enemy when soldiers took turn to watch,
day and night, lest the dreaded one should rise from the
grave. Pilate ordered the same precautions. "Had there
been no St. Helena there might have been no Second Empire,"
ruminated Butler.
Whenever he had a chance to slip off a Trooper, he paid
pilgrimage to the empty tomb at Longwood where he knew
so well " the dark cypress trees, the broken willow, the iron
68
SIR "WILLIAM BUTLER
railings, the big white flagstone in the centre of the railed
space all the lonely encompassing lava hills merging into
the gathering gloom of night; and only a yellow streak of
afterglow to make the profound depths of this valley seem
more measureless ".
On his return to England he devoured old books of battles
and far forgotten things. There were no wars on hand and
he set out to tramp the old Flemish battlefields from Fontenoy
to Waterloo. He was fifty years away from Waterloo. It
was not till 1909 that he wrote : " We are not yet one hundred
years from Waterloo. It is quite possible that there are
thoughtful people in England today, who are not quite so
keen as their fathers were upon the leg-up on the high horse
of Europe which we gave Germany in that memorable
campaign."
Butler served in the good old days of promotion by Purchase
and had himself " been five or six times purchased over " by
junior officers. The Barracks and military life at home
presented no interest. He dashed to find excitement in any
corner of the world, such as Canada for service during the
Fenian raid. It was a chance of exploring the unknown
latitudes he afterwards described in The Great Lone Land. He
dashed to Paris in time to see the surrender of followers of
the Commune. In the Autobiography he gave a glimpse of a
wounded, defiant woman going with hands bound in a cart
to execution: a kind of reparation for Marie Antoinette in
her tumbril.
In his Irish home or the dingy red-brick barrack at Chatham
he wrote about the immense lonely spaces he had crossed on
foot in Canada and which few eyes had ever seen before.
Thanks to memory he relived his endurances in the Canadian
wastes and wrote out those distant scenes in a manner that
called the attention of the authorities: an attention which
could not be purchased. The gift of remembering is a very
soldierly quality. Well might he write:
" What an infinite blessing is the mystery of memory! No
possession or instinct belonging to man can touch that single
gift to look back, to remember, to be young when you are
old, to see the dead; to have ways of escape, to be free, all
SALUTATION TO FIVE
this out of Memory. Surely this was the breath of Life
breathed into the brain of man when God gave him a living
soul." And so through life he cherished historical dreaming
and travelling recollections: book-writing and every chance
he could take to make a new expedition or dash into the
unexplored. He could not afford, perhaps did not relish,
the home-sports of the Victorian officer. When he was
refused for service on an expedition setting out to find
Livingstone, he returned to the Canadian unknown. From
the Arctic snows he passed to the torrid sands of Africa, when
the young soldier crossed swords with the formidable historian
Froude.
Naturally, on Irish and Catholic matters the great historian
thought Butler fair game and chaffed him in company over a
" Winking Virgin " in Madeira. The answer came slap and
unexpected: the young Irishman had seen so many winking
ladies in England that the sight was no novelty. One on the
Saxon I The Butlers had suffered the Penal Laws, and when
touched, the young soldier could defend the Old Faith.
When his travels had reached print, his light could be hid
no longer and a man of deciding character entered his life.
General Sir Garnet Wolseley summoned him to accompany
him on a series of African adventures. Butler found him the
ideal soldier " on whom command sat so easily and fitly that
neither he nor the men he commanded had ever to think about
it ". He sketched the " broad and lofty forehead over which
brown chestnut hair closely curled: sharp, penetratingly blue
eyes ". This was the unfailingly successful General in whom
Queen and Army and public delighted. Butler s description
is not far different from his sketch of another of his military
heroes, General Gordon: " I never saw thought expressed so
clearly in any other man s eyes. Above these windows of
his soul rose a fine broad brow, over which a mass of curly
brown hair . . ."
Later Butler wrote the Lives of Colley and Gordon who
both died tragically under Africa s uncompassionate skies.
His Life of General Napier was so successful that he was asked
to write Marlborough s in a series. At first he was all afire
but when he found that the magnificent soldier was not an
70
SIR WILLIAM BUTLER
honest man, he surrendered the task to Wolseley who had the
good luck to be given access to the archives at Blenheim.
Half the happiness of his life came from his heroes:
Napoleon in the past and in the present Wolseley, Gordon,
Colley and, thanks to his Irish Nationalism, ParnelL They
were men indeed. Upon them he made his meditations and
his writing. If he ever had the leisure, he intended to give
his masterpiece to Napoleon. For his strategy in the
Waterloo campaign he had an immense admiration. If
Butler had been in the place of Ney, perhaps the Great
Captain would not have been defeated. Sarcastically he
recorded "that vast force of about a million men which
those brave fellows, the Kings and Emperors of Europe, had
gathered round the French frontiers to fight the single soldier
whose army two months earlier had numbered a bare five
hundred all told ".
The death of the Prince Imperial moved him more deeply
than he could ever say. The representative of his hero
Napoleon the Great the combination of the warrior dynasty
with the white flower of youth and the hopeless blot left on
the escutcheon of England by his abandonment to the assegais
of the Zulus.
As fate ordained, Butler was posted at Durban and he
collected the funds to make the funeral passage honourable:
"... the saddest but the most impressive sight I had ever
witnessed. It was the sunset hour; the Eastern slope of the
Berea was in shadow but the town beneath, the ships in the
roadstead and the deep blue Indian Ocean beyond the white
line of shore were all in dazzling light. The Regiments that
had gone up country had left their bands on the coast, and
one after the other, these took up the great March of the
Dead, until the twilight, moving Eastward towards the sea,
seemed to be marching with us as we went. Night had all
but closed when we carried the coffin into the little Catholic
Church ... a few French nuns prayed by the dead, relieving
each other at intervals through the night. *
The Empress Eugenie, touched by Butler s act, sent him a
jewelled pin of the Prince with her deep gratitude for the
Order of the Day which he issued at Durban.
SALUTATION TO FIVE
He could never keep in check a sarcasm which showed
signs of descent from Swift s " savage indignation ". His
wording was inclined to make stupidity writhe, and this was
never helpful to a military career. Like Swift his feeling for
Liberty often rejected the policy of the Empire, whose gallant
mercenary he was. He could write praise or pity for the
foes with whom he engaged. Egypt should remember his
words after Tel-el-Kebir addressed to her fallen patriots:
" Peace be to them, lying under those big mounds on the
lone desert ten thousand, it is said. No word should
soldier utter against them; let that be left to the money
changers. They died the good death. Dust to dust. They
did not desert the desert and Egypt will not forget them."
It was the same pen which recorded the Comet otherwise
unmentioned in accounts of the Battle: "before day came,
the great Comet stood above where the sun would rise. It
resembled a vast wheatsheaf of light or a flaming broom sent
to sweep the stars from the threshold of the sun."
When British officers write in such style their conduct is
not always accountable. When Arabi Pasha, the defeated
General, -was brought in "and saluted us with dignity. I
noticed that only one officer besides myself returned the
prisoner s salute. That one was General Drury Lowe. I
was in good company."
Arabi might have taken heart from those two salutes.
Unknown but unaccountable Englishmen were working for
him against " the Levantine jackal, the Khedivial eunuch ",
who had practically settled his judicial murder, Wilfrid Blunt
despatched the legal aid to defend the prisoner and more
effectively still, Butler wrote secretly to a personal friend of
Gladstone to the effect that if Arabi was executed, Gladstone s
enemies would snatch the chance to pursue him with the cry
of blood-guiltiness to the grave. So the Eunuchs were
disappointed, but if Arabi had been executed instead of exiled
to Ceylon, his statue would crown Cairo today. Three years
later Gladstone s enemies were able to affix on him the blame
for Gordon s death which the grave has not quenched.
Gordon at this time was living in another world like a
Knight of the Round Table, but he was liable to descend to
SIR WILLIAM BUTLER
do battle with Evil. It was sometimes the Slave Trade and
at another the Egyptian bondholders who discerned that
" the presence in Palestine of their great antagonist could only
appear as a menace to their designs upon Egypt ". Gordon
was one whom officials as well as slave-traders and bondholders
must loathe. He was not only incorruptible but he was non-
dirigible. He would only obey his conscience and in the
midst of sudden Messiah-like impulses he was always ready
to retire into obscurity. Few admirers studied and described
him as well as Butler.
When the final tragedy had arrived and Gordon was
enduring his lonely passion in Khartoum, Butler struggled
to relieve him. At one moment he hoped he had brought
about salvation through boats. There were weeks and
months of delay and Gordon seemed able to hold out for
ever, but there was worse than stupidity involved. With
damning discernment Butler put his finger on the omission:
" to secure the route Korosko to Khartoum after Gordon
had passed along it to his destination ". The authorities in
Cairo may have been stupid, but they were not particularly
interested in securing Gordon s safe return. The Korosko
road alone would have protected him, but by the time that
Gladstone was alarmed and the public subversive it was too
late. In vain Butler fought The Campaign of the Cataracts.
At the time he described the Despatch of the Secretary of
State for War covering these matters as " absolutely without
a parallel in history; the force of fiction, make-believe and
pretence could go no further ". Twenty-five years kter he
wrote that he could not say "where the ugly suspicious
circumstances ended and the dense stupidities began ". He
did not believe that it was all an accident that Gordon was
conveniently left to the Mahdi. Queen Victoria might shed
her imperial grief upon his memory. His stainless memory
might wring the bewildered British soul. The bondholders
would not grudge Royal tears or the empty tomb in St. Paul s.
" Their antagonist " had been obliterated for ever.
Butler was one of those soldiers who sometimes understood
the moves in which the military were expected to acquiesce.
Naturally he incurred dull enmity amongst the files and
73
SALUTATION TO FIVE
fuglemen of Whitehall. Nevertheless he had an Angel
Guardian in the highest spheres of the War Office. Wolseley
always admired and protected him. It was possible he even
enjoyed, thoughhe could not approve, some of Butler s stinging
epigrams. He soon had abundant opportunity to do so.
Butler was always ready to retire into his " mental citadel "
and write. His energy sent him shooting with Parnell in
the Wicklow Mountains or following Gordon s footsteps in
the Holy Land. From a period of meditative obscurity he
was summoned to write a report about Army Ordnance. He
sat down with gusto to the task. Blue Books and Red Tape
he tossed aside. The Nile and Natal had given him visual
knowledge of Army ways. Sheathing the sword, he wrote
an essay which made the readers in the War Office wince.
It passed into print, but the Secretary of State, belonging to
a ruling family of decorous efficiency, issued a stiff order to
Butler to withdraw every word. All copies were recalled
and incinerated. The recommendations were all adopted in
time but without credit to Butler. It was the phrasing which
hurt the officials. For years some of the phrases were quoted
by soldiers under breath.
It was clear that any hope of a career was over. Men with
ability to express ideas are thought dangerous. Their dis
missal can also be dangerous. In wartime a dangerous man
can always be posted to a dangerous post. Unostentatious
employment is die better course in times of peace. In Butler s
case it was remembered that the defences of London had been
neglected since the threat of Napoleon s invasion. He was
ordered to select sites for forts. This occupied him pleasantly
for a year. Early in 1890 Wolseley, who knew a soldier
when he met one, offered him command at Alexandria or
Singapore. Butler believed that Africa always held the
destiny of British Generals and chose to go to Egypt. The
Khedive Tewfik died in the following year but Butler s views
were sliced out of the Autobiography by the publisher, leaving
blocks of asterisks (pp. 361-2) and History the less for a
little truth.
Alexandria made a base for Napoleonic study, and Butler
visited the battlefields of Austerlitz and Wagram. He
74
SIR WILLIAM BUTLER
collected evidence to disperse the chief scandals on his hero s
fame: the supposed poisoning of the wounded at Jaffa, or
the letter by which he was said to have absolved himself
from the disaster of the Nile.
From Alexandria he passed to Aldershot and from Aldershot
to Dover, whence he shared in the Manoeuvres of 1895.
General Redvers Buller on one occasion ordered Butler to
move his guns. Seeing it was a false move Butler quietly
disobeyed the order. When Buller later sent a counter
manding order Butler could report that the guns were back
already!
Buller won that battle thanks to Butler. His next battle
was in South Africa but that he did not win. From Dover
Butler held the South-Eastern Command and looked across
the Channel from the majestic Castle. The far-travelled
Odysseus seemed set for a sunset of peace and honour. The
War Office seemed proud, if a little nervous, of him. There
was nothing against him except the sting of his epigrams and
it was obvious that he would never show the signs of genteel
timidity which the bravest warriors are expected to adopt in
the presence of civil servants.
He was now a happy man, honoured and promoted:
surrounded by a growing family, painted by his talented wife
and admired by Queen Victoria, who had a woman s eye
for a General on horseback who could add to the splendour
of a Royal Review.
Africa always fascinated him: Africa which was dreaded
in the Ckssics as a " strange mother of monsters ". To
Butler the secret of Africa was her power of wiping out the
" Uitlanders " of History, whether Greek or Roman, Arab
ot Turk. " How quickly the 300 Bishoprics of Augustine s
age disappear 1 " The whole Continent, not Sierra Leone
alone, was " the White Man s Grave ".
Butler believed in the old-time British as against the
" mercenary clamour of the speculator ", the new immigrant.
He shed showers of epigrams. It was " The difference
between the gamekeeper and the gamester": or between
Thackeray s Collector at Bogglywallah and " The old gentle
man who died in the Charterhouse ". He discerned the
F 75
SALUTATION TO FIVE
Bounder (word untranslatable out of English) and he foretold
that Fate would " slay or Africanise the Bounder ".
For Butler there was Mary Kingsley, Froude who advocated
the justice, which Sir George Grey gave, Said Solomon (whom
Froude called " one of the best men I ever knew ") and a
certain Bishop Colenso, whose love for the natives was " one
of those superb devotions to the ideal ". Then there were
the tragedies Lord Chelmsford at Isandula, Colley at Majuba
and the Prince Imperial dying under the assegais. Africa
kept a sheaf of arrows waiting for unsuspecting British
Generals.
Only Butler suspected the future. It was forgotten how
queer he was, always siding in principle with the cc lesser
breeds", such as the Irish or the Egyptians. Wolseley
guaranteed him and no one in the War Office dared
murmur.
But Tragedy in the Greek manner was moving behind the
scenes and the happy domesticity in the Keep of Dover
Castle was not to be the happy ending. Africa had not done
with Butler and the principles he had been allowed to hold
and express in theory were to be tested. He was due to be
subjected to the dramatic irony of a Greek play.
All was cloudless until Christmas 1895. General Butler
ordered a route march for his Brigade. The Routine was
being carried out, when an officer, who had been in London
the previous day, whispered to him that an immediate military
raid was threatening die Transvaal. The General forgot the
route march and while riding home his detective memory
recalled that a year previously he had inspected some equip
ment for the Chartered Company. He had asked what they
were wanted for. He was told they were wanted against a
native chief. He had not asked if the chief s name was Paul
Krugerl "Hardly anyone else wondered why the new
Rhodesian Horse required so much equipment" (Sarah
Millin s Rhodes}.
Butler was thinking furiously, and before the route march
was over, his informant had been ordered to return to London
to tell his friends that invaders of the Transvaal would get
the most infernal dusting of their lives I
76
SIR WILLIAM BUTLER
Four days later the news of the Jameson Raid thunderbolted
London and excited the pens of the Poet Laureate and the
German Emperor. Jameson fought and retreated from
KrugersdoTp. It was his Sta/togtad so to speak.
The preliminary vibrations were typically received by the
Stock Exchange, not by the War Office. A War Office is
never a warmonger, certainly not in English history. Butler
summarised the results of the Raid: " The civilian conspirator
in high and low place had, conformably to custom, escaped.
It was poor Captain Bobby or equally simple Major Freddy
who was doing time in gaol ".
Butler saw Rhodes and Chamberlain web-spinning while
Jameson and his crazy Raiders played the part of flies. They
had no use for unsuccessful flies tangling the web or, as
Rhodes put it, " upsetting the applecart ". Chamberlain tried
to stop Jameson when it was too late.
If Butler knew something about " the seamy side of South
Africa wars ", the plotting powers knew something about
Butler. He was a marked man and could not be left out
of schemes.
Rhodes has his historical splendour and a whole country
as a namesake but in any memoir of Butler he must occupy a
shady background. It should be mentioned that good judges
like Sir Harry Johnston and Lord Sydenham noticed the
extraordinary change which overcame him after his fall from
a horse in 1892. The crystal vision had clouded. The
delightful personality had become hurried, worried and
carelessly sinister. This was the Rhodes against whom Butler
pkyed blindfold chess.
It is difficult to describe Rhodes influence and power in the
nineties. He seemed to gather up all the abilities and vices
of the old Empire-builders in his person. If Gladstone had
been " an old man in a hurry ", Rhodes was a young one
in haste. He was a greater man -than Butler but not a better
man. He had set Principalities and Powers above Principles.
In his mighty Arsenal, Bribery took its proper pkce, but
Rhodesian Bribery was magnificent. It was best expressed
in his advice to General Gordon to " square the Mahdi ".
Agents and henchmen were swept into hero-worship and
77
SALUTATION I D FIVE
undevlating support. He used both Jewish and Gentile
adventurers, whom he despised. He himself sat high above
his flagrant Press, which existed no doubt to unify South Africa
but also to crush the Boer Republics by revilernent and
eventually by a prudent approach to force. Dr. Jameson s
approach had been the reverse of prudent*
The Rhodes Press promised probity and progress which
Butler translated as "Assyrian shrewdness and Teutonic
training ". To him the great sin against England was " the
purchase of the Press to vilify the Dutch ".
Rhodes bribed magnificently. Even Parnell had accepted
10,000 for Irish Home Rule. It was certainly one way of
keeping Ireland within the Empire. The same Rhodes
bribed the ancient University of Oxford from his grave and
Cambridge men can be excused for smiling at the statue
which keeps the fame of Rhodes amongst the pious benefactors
of that cosmopolitan seat of Education. Only the irreverent
would suggest placing Dr. Jameson and Barney Barnato in
adjoining niches beside him.
Butler had come under Rhodes eye, and shortly before he
went to Alexandria he was offered unlimited power and
20,000 a year for five years to take over Rhodes new colony
south of the Zambesi. His refusal marked him at least as
singular. He was content to wash his hands of South Africa
for ever, but the War Office had a habit of consulting him.
He had South African campaigns at his fingers* ends and he
was asked whether Laing s Nek should be occupied with
troops. He replied that would mean immediate war with
the Dutch. He told himself he was arguing with " the most
stupendous factor of folly " he had ever known. He was at
the time steadily writing the Life of poor General Colley who
had fallen at Majuba. He thought while he wrote, and asked
himself: "the total trend of things; that is the difficult
matter to grasp in life: where is this thing going? "
As a matter of fate " the total trend of things " (a good
translation of the Zeitgeist} was about to pick him up on its
way. Something was puzzling the War Office intensely in
South Africa, but General Butler, who alone could unravel
their questioning, puzzled them equally. Suddenly, out of
78
SIR WILLIAM BUTLER
the African blue, Butler was offered the military command at
the Cape. This time it was Butler who was puzzled.
What had happened behind the scenes ? At the Cape was
an ambitious, highly principled product of Balliol, Alfred
Milner: a pet pupil of Jowett, now High Commissioner.
Later years revealed his private correspondence with Chamber
lain as Secretary for the Colonies. In October 1898 when
the General at the Cape died, Milner was afraid the War
Office would make it a billet " for some worn-out General ".
Milner proposed the brave Lord Methuen who ended as a
prisoner of the Boers. Chamberlain was asked ** to get the
appointment filled by special selection and not the ordinary
official routine ".
The War Office certainly made a " special selection ", but
one which shattered the liopes of the " Raiders ". It is good
policy to hurl your severest critic into the breach. But only
Wolseley could have filled the post without consulting
Chamberlain. What Wolseley had in mind will never be
known. Was he giving the Colonial Office a soldierly cuff or
had he decided to give Butler a supreme chance? No one
knew Butler s character better: and no one knew the diffi
culties better than Butler. When the unbelievable cipher
arrived, he accepted but reluctantly.
Chamberlain sulkily acquiesced. Presumably each hoped for
the best while vaguely fearing the worst. But neither dreamed
how bad the other would turn out to be. They differed on
everything it was worth differing about.
There was one momentous interview with Chamberlain,
Butler sat watching " the eager, white, sharp, anxious, tight-
drawn face " which was watching him no less. A series of
minor topics were reviewed but a casual reference to the
South African Republics ended ominously: " If they should
force us to attack them then the blow would have to be a
crushing one ". If Chamberlain spoke these words, he was
suggesting a military policy which has become familiar to an
unhappy world. Small countries should not conscientiously
force great Powers to attack them.
A few days later Butler at sea passed Milner, who had
promptly returned to take counsel over the new situation.
79
SALUTATION TO FIVE
This meant that Butler would arrive as High Commissioner
as well as General in command. Little did he conceive there
was a brewing storm. His obvious view was that Wolseley
had appointed him as the only General with experience to
deal with the Boers in peace or war. Cynics might hope that,
if he could not ride the storm, he would be swallowed thereby.
There were plans maturing behind the scenes but he had been
" sent upon that momentous errand at the shortest notice
without any warning, without any orders ". He had not
received the slightest hint of contingent war except in
Chamberlain s words. Twenty years later he had decided
that ** prominent people were at work to bring that War about
at an early date ". He found no sign in the field, no prepara
tion of transport, no reinforcements but if people thought
Jameson could rush the Transvaal with a company of amateur
troopers, they could not believe an increase of Regulars was
necessary. Butler went out blindfold while officials wondered
what line he would take when the bandages fell off. Milner s
biographer wrote of " this clever but erratic Irishman ". At
best they hoped for an obedient cog. That he would prove
their damning critic unto the Day of Judgment hardly seemed
possible. His to obey and not to reason why. Anxious
curiosity passed to furious but suppressed annoyance. Butler
was a pro-Boer!
Rhodes never had the courtesy or perhaps the time to call
on the new arrival, with the result that they never met, though
they passed each other like ships in the night at the end of
the year: " Our eyes met for an instant. The expression of
his face struck me as one of peculiar mental pain. I seemed
to have seen it once before ".
There was an Eclipse of the Moon that night, and in later
years Memory served a vivid scene: " The face of the Moon
seemed to have been washed over with a blood-stained cloth
and the old garden with its lofty cypress trees looked in the
sombre light like a nocturnal graveyard."
Butler surveyed his task. The military he could deal with,
but civilian life was made sordid by a lying Press denigrating
everything Dutch. Racial animosity was cultivated for its
own sake. With a single staff-officer he visited Johannesburg,
80
SIR WILLIAM BUTLER
described to him as " Monte Carlo superimposed upon
Sodom and Gomorrah". It was not a beautiful fruitage
of Empire.
The disgusted General asked himself what freak had dumped
a gold mine into a land of " primitive Christian farmers "*
He never minced words, and wrote home that " Houndsditch
and the Stock Exchange are not the sources from which the
redemption of South Africa is to be looked for ". English
investors were fed alternate " booms and bogeys ".
One of the bogeys was Kruger: a Bible-sniffing Pecksniff
to the English Press: to Butler "a poor lion-hunter who
could cut off half his own hand when a gunshot had
shattered it ".
Butler knew a South African history which was unknown
to Birmingham Sunday Schools. He set himself in the line
of the great Englishmen like Sir George Napier, Sir George
Grey and Sir Harry Smith. " The victor of Albuera [Napier]
made roads across the mountains. He of Aliwal [Smith]
made friends with the Dutch Boers. They built dorps and
named them after him and his wife." But Ladysmith so
pleasantly named became a tragic corner in the relations of
Briton and Boer.
He regarded himself as a pointsman on the line between
South Africa and Whitehall. Whitehall "knew nothing of
the truth, has never known it, and apparently will never
know it ". Every transmission from the other end existed
only to mislead and inflame the Empire. Butler gave the
Home authorities warnings as clear as the brief despatch which
a certain Hand wrote over the banquet-hall of Belshazzar.
After Rhodes and some pet myrmidons left for London at
the end of 1898, Butler cabled home what he considered a
plot to explode South Africa: "It is needless to indicate the
original train-layers: they are nearer to you than to me! "
He decided that he would make his plans without provoking
the Boers, who became convinced that the Empire had sent
a just man into a land seething with greed and aggression.
He surveyed the frontiers and thought thus : " As commander
of the troops I held the balance. There would be no war
while I was there. If the Raiders raided, I would inexorably
81
SALUTATION TO FIVE
run them in; if the Boers raided, I would as inevitably run
them out; but I knew that the chances were a thousand to
one that the Boers would not do anything of the sort while I
held the helm."
While there are Commanders like Butler, there are no wars.
The Boers respected and feared him. Long afterwards, one
of their leaders said to him : " It was lucky for us, General,
you did not take the field against us ". They did not respect
the British Statesmen, and after three years of war they ceased
to fear British Generals. As for the worthy Methuen, whom
the officials had tried to steer into the Cape Command, the
day came when the Boers threatened to shoot anyone who
wounded or killed him I
Butler felt strong enough to have his way if supported from
the War Office. But Wolseley, having thrown him into the
great testing position, could do no more. The War Office
was far too confused to have a policy. Butler was left to deal
with Boer and Briton on his own. To the Irish humanitarian
both were brothers. "The British officer and the Boer
farmer have always been by nature and inclination good
friends. Both were open-air sportsmen . . ." This was
not the opinion of the Rhodes Press. Financial and filibuster
agencies pervaded the situation. Jew or Gentile, Butler
utterly loathed the instruments which were being used in the
name of British Empire and Freedom.
It was his ambition to federate South Africa on the same
lines as " the creation of Canada by Lord Durham ". This
was " legitimate and lasting Empire-building ". The rape of
a gold-bearing neighbour meant the postponement of a
peaceful South Africa for a century. Butler found few
supporters in Africa but Olive Shreiner was one and her
letter the only survivor of his correspondence. England was
being misinformed, but Butler remembered that Canonists
allow an appeal from an ill-informed Pope to one better
informed. He was convinced that the Pendulum of Fair Play
would swing in his direction. Milner " must see the awful
volume of lies which the syndicate gangs have so long passed
off as truth upon the British public ". Milner found himself
championing the Uitlanders, many of whom were far from
82
SIR WILLIAM BUTLER
British, though they appealed wildly to the British Flag.
Jowett s disciple must have found himself in an atmosphere
remote from the Oxford Common-room. " If there was a
being unfitted to that atmosphere it was Milner" is the
comment of Sarah Millin, biographer of Kruger.
Butler had no idea why Rhodes was in such a desperate
hurry. He maintained the correctest relations with Milner,
who was no less an idealist than himself. The difference
between the two men was that Milner was academical, Balliol
of Balliol, whereas Butler was practical. If Butler had a
complex, it was for the peasant the farmer the man of the
soil, whether Irish, Egyptian or Dutch.
Butler and Milner were scrupulously fair to each other, but
the slow degeneration of Jowett s pupil cannot be concealed
in the Milner Papers. Milner had lived on the heights with the
translator of Plato s Republic. Slowly he was pulled down to
the level of the Rand. He hated being pushed into hostility
against a man like Butler. To a fellow-official he wrote:
" Don t think that Butler is a bad fellow. He is hasty and
rhetorical, fearfully deficient in judgment. But he is well-
meaning enough and a most agreeable companion/
The condescending Milner made all the excuses he could
to officials, whose chief thought was to get rid of a General
whose first speech at Grahamstown "to the inner circle of
the party working for war had come like a shell ".
He reported to Selborne in May of 1 899 : " very secret. . . .
He has behaved perfectly well towards me since my return.
He does not meddle in political affairs in any way. On the
other hand he keeps me absolutely at arm s length over
military matters . . . convinced there is more danger in
interfering than in letting things take their course . . . the
last thing I should think of would be to suggest his removal
at this juncture for he has got hold of the threads."
But how could Butler be stirred to stir up the Boers so
that they should force him to take action? Milner asked the
War Office to give him a hint, which "should carry no
suggestion of its source "1
Milner was rapidly sliding down hill: facilis descensus Averni.
A month kter he wrote to Chamberlain: " The General. He
SALUTATION TO FIVE
is too awful. He has, I believe, made his military preparations
alright, but beyond that I cannot get him to make the least
move ... at the same time there is nothing to lay hold of.
He never interferes with my business and is perfectly polite.
But he is absolutely no use!! " For what was he no use?
queries the historian.
The only use which Plato would allow to soldiers was
soldierly or strategical. Politically no use was Butler for he
was "a violent Krugerite"! In that sense, no doubt, Fox
and Burke were " violent Washingtonites ". The key
question in Butler s career touched his military preparations
before the disasters which broke upon Army and Empire
after his return home. Milner s biographer says he was
" queering the pitch " On the contrary he was preparing
the military pitch for some very rough bowling. The War
Office recommended advances, threats, offence against the
Boers. He realised that his only defence was to draw in his
inadequate horns. He had estimated 40,000 troops were
necessary. He was urged to take the offensive with a tenth:
"advanced positions upon and even over the frontiers, the
adoption of which must have led to the earliest and most
complete disasters ". How right he was in declining to let
limited troops be "shot into hostile space having behind
them military voids many hundred of miles in length".
The great lonely spaces of Canada or the Veldt had given
Butler vistas unvisioned in the best Aldershot tactics. In
vain was he urged to snap up the passes of the Drakensburg.
He went his way planning " easy retirement in face of superior
numbers ", but the plans which he kept secret from Pretoria
and Pall Mall were not communicated to Milner.
Lord Sydenham, who was then close to The Times, wrote
over thirty years later: "Grave injustice was done to Sir
William Butler, who was a very able man. The war
was made by the gold and diamond Jews, who captured
Milner. ... I knew Sir William and we compared notes.
I am certain that he foresaw what was coining and why, and
that he warned the Government in vain. Both he and I
estimated the forces required at about three times that which the
War Office accepted, and we were both far under the mark/
84
SIR WILLIAM BUTLER
In his memoirs My Working Life Lord Sydenham wrote:
" After careful study I arrived at 80,000 men as the minimum
force which would be needed. ... I discussed this question
with Sir William Butler, who with far greater knowledge than
mine, had reached almost exactly the same figure. We were
both mistaken." Forty or eighty thousand, the Empire
eventually needed 200,000.
The months of 1899 were hastening away and everyone
was in a hurry. Butler considered Milner was playing a
secondary, rather pitiable part. At least, pity was Butler s
feeling after interviews with Milner in May. Milner wished
pressure brought on the Transvaal Government while the
Franchise was being mooted for Uitlanders. Butler laughed
at the idea of moving troops. Then he spoke flat. There
were " occult influences at work, backed by enormous means
and quite without conscience, to produce war in South Africa
for selfish ends ". He wrote to his War Office chief of the
" certainty of misery and misfortune to this country greater
than it has heretofore known in its history ".
Butler was playing as lone and despairing a game as his
hero Gordon in Khartoum. " Yet not one word of warning,
official or private, was coming from the War Office." Oddly
enough officially " the outlook was one of profound peace,"
but under the mill-pool raged the corrupt eddies of filibuster
and financier, thwarted from possessing the land of gold and
diamonds which belonged to another.
The threads were in Butler s hands but Chamberlain was
trying to worry and worm them away. He proposed to
doctor Butler s Despatches, which Butler utterly refused,
cabling (May 26, 1899): "General could only regard his
concurrence in proposed omission of passages as a stultification
by himself of his own opinions to which he still adheres ".
Then Chamberlain gave Butler up. A new tack was hastily
tried and within a week Milner was conferring at Bloemfontein
with Kruger. Perhaps Kruger might prove less obstinate
than the Irishman! There are passages of pathetic bitterness
in Butler s Autobiography. When Kruger realised at the
Conference that by the Franchise (votes for aliens) or force,
his Republic was doomed, his feelings overcame him and he
SAU r \TION TO FIVE
bent his head and wept: " It is our country you want. It is
our country you want! " What else ?
The failure of the Bloemfontein Conference was a turning
point in African history. Incidentally it marked the Third
Act of the Tragedy for Butler. He was still determined to
check wickedness in high places. He was trying desperately
to save a ship whose rudder was set upon the rocks. He had
received a vital letter from Mr. Schreiner, the Prime Minister
of the Cape. It might be presumed that having defeated
Rhodes at the Polls he was a fitter person to negotiate with
Kruger than Miner, who like every envoy from England
had become a Rhodes-man, whether he wished or not. The
stakes were now running high and the players were reckless.
Butler forwarded Schreiner s letter through a higher personage
to one higher still: to the Queen!
As a feudal and Catholic Irishman, Butler accounted the
Queen more highly than many so-called Loyalists. It was part
of the tragedy that events were being pressed forward in her
name. Not since the Flavian Emperors had the world tasted
so long of Imperial Peace. The Roman world within and
without knew that Justice stood blindfold but sworded
behind the Legions.
Butler sent the War Office a letter he had received from
Pretoria pregnant with heavy truths : " The white races of
the Transvaal are loyal to Queen Victoria. You find some
picture of her in nearly every home, especially among the
Boer homes. They say, these Boers and their wives, that
they do not believe in the words of English Ministers but they
do in the words of Queen Victoria . . ."
Butler loathed the cloud of shysters and adventurers who
had settled like flies scenting carrion upon the confines of
the Transvaal. It was hateful to him that the campaign of
corruption and coarse abuse was carried out under the British
Flag, and ultimately under the name of the Queen. Her
Tragedy was advancing no less : for she had passed her fourth
triumphant Act and the last was at hand.
Butler had one confidant whom he trusted in the high
ranks, General Buller, and to him he wrote from the Castle,
Capetown (June 21, 1899):
86
SIR WILLIAM BUTLER
" The Jews and a few others seem to be doing the work
of the devil here to their hearts content and to the despair
of tens of thousands of honest sober-minded and loyal people.
So far as I can read the real undercurrent of all the blinds
and manoeuvres going on it is this. The Chartered
Company is on the verge of Bankruptcy. The revenue is
250,000 the expenditure 750,000. Be it, Rhodes (and
John Bull as a sleeping partner) are paying so far the deficit.
The gold in Rhodesia, though rich in many places, is
c scrappy * and pocketty *. The natives are ill-treated
they object to be forced into the mines and run away. The
output has decreased of late. What then is to be done?
Why ! get hold of the Johannesburg fields. There gold in
vast and regular paying quantities is to be found. The gang
has got hold of three fourths of the London Press. Their
agents here say so. They have also got some papers in
Berlin and Paris. All the flag-wagging, expansion-railroad to
Cairo, etc., are means to hide the end. To John Bull in his
stall it looks all right. Behind the secret it is a poor game.
You are lucky in having the clean square work of Aldershot
to do. I should never have accepted this billet, had I known
the true state of matters, and it cost me a mint of money and
the best quarters in England to come out, but perhaps the
quarters had something to say to the offer."
The sands were running faster than ever: "the supposed
peaceful, diplomatic, cautious Colonial Office running mad
for war; the warlike War Office seemingly bent upon profound
Peace ". Here was a touch of the irony so loved by the
Greek dramatists.
The War Office became hopelessly confused as various
branches took varying action without reference to the
Cbmmander-in-Chief. In July Redvers Buller (secretly desig
nated to succeed Butler) told the Under Secretary for War
that every Department was cabling in a different sense " to
that poor unfortunate General at ,the Cape, and you will
drive him mad **.
Butler was far from being driven mad. He went ahead
with his preparations to save the Army which he loved from
disaster. He was a link with an Army which had fought
SALUTATION TO FIVE
for Freedom. He came to ask: " What has become of those
old Greek Gods, for not only are the figures gone but the
faces have also vanished? What subtle change has come
upon the race ? Is it the work of railroads, Free Trade, the
Penny Press, Democracy, Education ? **
Butler had no idea that Chamberlain, Milner and the
Governor of Natal, Hely-Hutchinson, were arranging a plan
of campaign without the least reference to him! All he
knew was that Milner favoured a " ring " round the Republics
and that a raid had been suggested from Rhodesia on Pretoria.
This was simple folly like some of the advice from London:
"I was being urged from London to go forward with my
puny detachments into the Republics ". The real planning
was being done there where Rhodes, in far too great a hurry
for half-measures, was steadily interviewing Chamberlain.
Butler felt that " more powerful forces were joined with the
old agencies in the effort to force a racial war upon South
Africa ". Every effort was made to push Butler into the
eddies. Milner asked Butler to organise this precious raid
from Rhodesia. Butler saw the trap and asked for orders in
writing signed by the High Commissioner. As no instruc
tions had arrived from home, he decided to use his own
judgment lest "it would be said that I had precipitated a
conflict before we were prepared for it; perhaps brought on
a war when the Home Government desired peace ". Milner
flinched, but he had the necessary sarcasm to say: " It can
never be said, Sir William Butler, that jou precipitated a
conflict with the Dutch ".
It would have to be precipitated by other channels than
the military. Butler felt insulted, drew himself up and said:
" I understand your meaning. There can be no further use
in my continuing the interview." Milner was left cowed
and angry.
The end was in sight but not without further swordplay
between Milner and Butler* The War Office was now
ordering transport and asking for " any observations ".
Butler answered angrily:
" You ask my observations. I believe that a war between
the white races, coming as a sequel to Jameson Raid and the
88
SIR WILLIAM BUTLER
subsequent events of last three years, would be the greatest
calamity that ever occurred in South Africa.**
Milner was shown the words and demurred. It was a wrong
impression and so forth. There was no further protest when
Butler declared he made them in the highest interests of the
Empire and for the honour of Her Majesty s Army! But
these were not the predominant considerations at the time.
The interests of the Rand came first. Chamberlain replied:
" You cannot understand too clearly that, whatever your
private opinions, it is your duty to be guided in all questions
of policy by those who are fully aware of our views and whom
you will, of course, loyally support * . The plans he had
kept to himself were not called for till June.
Butler had higher views of a soldier s duty, but they were
not wanted. By the end of June Milner was cabling to say
the General s political opinions impaired his efficiency.
"Things have become critical now. Butler or I will have
to go **.... At this juncture we are told that " the effect
of Butler s attitude was to check the despatch of 10,000 men
advocated by Wolseley **. Nothing could be more utterly
removed from the truth. From beginning to end he had
said 40,000 soldiers would be too few. They scorned his
estimate (which events terribly proved insufficient), and
expected him to raise a rabble of volunteer raiders. He left
it to the War Office to reinforce, mobilise or act. He never
forced the War Office as he was expected. He advised them
and waited for orders which never came. He had no
intention of taking orders from Milner, who had reached the
stage of abusing him to the authorities : " it is indeed terrible
to feel that the man on whom one ought to be able to rely
and who above all others ought to be on the alert, keeps one
at arm s length and resolutely buries his head in the sand ".
Butler happened to be very much on the alert. Somehow
he had accurately gauged the strength of the Boers, the only
soldier who had done so, and he made the only possible
dispositions. Had he remained in his command, many a
disaster would have been avoided and many a brave man
would have escaped burial in the sand aforesaid. But had
he remained, the Boers would never have had the folly to take
89
SALUTATION TO FIVE
alarm and invade Natal. Kruger s Generals respected Butler
in every way. The War Office had to do something so they
sent a reproof.
Early in July Butler resigned his command. A month
later it was accepted and he was told to hand over to
Major-General Symons, an immediate victim of the war.
Butler was told to return home as soon as possible and " to
avoid demonstration by those hostile to English views ", as
though he had wished for bands and banners from the Dutch.
" English views " being of course the views of the Rand, the
Raiders and Rhodes. The instruction bore Chamberlain s
touch and nettled Butler to write; "Oh the pity and the
poverty of it all! "
The Dutch in Capetown would gladly have seen him off
but they knew it would be misunderstood. Alone he stood
on the deck and looked for the Lion s Head on Table Mountain
which the Dutch have always connected with their fortunes
under the Southern Cross. It was shrouded with a cloud, or
perchance may we say clouded with a shroud.
^ It was August 23, 1899, and Milner cabled to Chamberlain:
" After long dragging the end has come quickly. ... It has
been an awful experience ". Words which might have suited
the Diaries of a certain well-meaning High Commissioner
in Roman Judaea.
Before Butler left the Cape, the brush that had painted " The
Roll-call" painted a stirring picture of the General riding against
the background of the mountains he had always admired.
His magnificent physique never showed better than on
horseback. He resembled one of King Arthur s Knights
riding out on a lonely quest in the uniform of a British
Lieutenant-General. A saddened face perhaps but haunting
certainly to any Boer or Briton who had ever gazed into
those fearless eyes. In his holster he carried the conscience
of England: the England which from time to time preserves
the world by her own example.
Twenty years previously he had given military honours to
a dead Prince and the Empress remembering wrote in
sympathy. Butler s letter to the Empress is almost the only
one erf" his to survive:
9
SIR WILLIAM BUTLER
" Today I put beside it another message from the same
valiant and unforgetting heart. It is the more prized because
I think that between its lines the note of South Africa, always
sad, can be read. But, Madam, it is only a passing cloud/*
The War broke out in October 1899.
AFTERMATH
The moment Sir William Butler was withdrawn, the Boers
despaired. Knowing they would be challenged for their
country they foolishly issued the Ultimatum. This they
would not have dared or wished to do, had Butler been in
command. He himself returned to bear the fiercest accusa
tions in silence. The Jackal and the Jackass were released
upon his name and honour. It was not his fault that two
Christian folk were flung into murderous grips. It was not
only the Gates of Janus which were closed but the New
Testament.
Before the actual outbreak Butler tackled a high official
in London (he would never say who it was: Chamberlain
or Salisbury or Wolseley?). The great man could only say
poohpooh! The war would not cost ten millions and by
Christmas the Flag would fly over Bloemfontein !
Butler, so voluble in warning and despatch, became tongue-
tied. The War Office respected his silence and he was given
the Western Command as well as Leave. They knew or
began to know that he knew too much. Or was it Wolseley s
hand moving unseen ?
Parliament and Public relied on Buller who was hurried to
the scene. Like Butler he knew the facts for he had been
Adjutant General and he did not conceal his contempt for
people who put financial interests first. He was under no
illusions and knew the Government s preparations were
inadequate totally. His representations to Lord Lansdowne,
Secretary of War, though not unsupported by Wolseley, made
not the slightest impression. He failed even to see the Prime
Minister, the somewhat Olympian Salisbury who had left it
to " Joe " to loose the dogs of War.
The brave and unfortunate General was thrown into the
G 91
SALUTATION TO FIVE
gap. Butler rushed to Southampton to wish him Godspeed.
This conversation occurred:
Butler: " Have you cut the wires with Whitehall? "
Buller: * William, worse luck I have not."
Butler : " Then I am sorry for you. Unless you have
power to put Milner on board ship and send him to England,
you will find your work at the Cape cut out for you."
Buller found Milner in a state of complete panic and saying
much to the Staff which in calmer moments he would not
have allowed himself to admit. What Milner said strikingly
confirmed what Butler had written to Buller.
Butler was travelling with his sons in Spain when the
" Black Week " of disasters occurred. " They ll have to send
me out now" was his first thought. But the pride of
Chamberlain could not have endured calling on his critic to
clean up the ghastly mess. Butler would gladly have served
under Buller whom he greatly loved, great contrast as they
were, the Dog of Devon and type of Tipperary.
Meanwhile the Boer War continued disastrous. Milner s
" ring " strategy proved as effective as the mice who proposed
belling the cat. Generals committed blunders for which Boy
Scouts today would be reprimanded. Picked regiments
marched into massacre or surrender. Heroism of the men
was constantly unavailing. The pity was that trenches of
dead Scotch and Irish boys, to say nothing of English from
farm and holt, were smoking to the pitiless skies: for what?
It was a question of time months or years before a
nation of farmers could be dispossessed of their fatal in
heritance underground
Butler was blamed and vilified. With grim humour he
gave the Daily Mail credit for one thing. He said they charged
a halfpenny whereas the others charged a penny for their lies.
He was accused of not warning the authorities 1 He had not
made the proper dispositions or preparations!! The War
Office, knowing the facts, relied on his soldierly silence. The
climax came when a Secretary for War stated that orders,
clear and helpful, had been sent to him at the Cape!
At the first disasters, which he had made every disposition
to avoid, he offered to go out again in any capacity, but the
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SIR WILLIAM BUTLER
authorities were determined to drink down their own dregs.
Instead of the Corunna-like retreats which Butler believed
the only possible way of meeting the impact of the Boers,
the Generals were making frontal attacks and forward marches.
Perm Symons fell. Wauchope fell. Buller attacked across
the Tugela and lost his guns. White was shut up in Ladysmith
and Butler kept wondering why he did not fight his way out.
The War turned on Ladysmith which Butler had considered
a " tragic selection ". Troops had been planted there in 1897
to ** have a steadying effect upon the Boers ". They had
included a battery of guns which Boer visitors had been
invited to see in practice.
The Autobiography follows with a fine specimen from the
General, when roused as a raconteur. To impress the Boers
a herd of goats were tethered as targets on Waggon Hill. No
representative of the S.P.CA. was present or he would have
prevented the shrapnel being pkyed on the unlucky animals
for twenty minutes. The result was incredible. There were
twenty goats living on Waggon Hill at the beginning of the
action. With cease-fire there were twenty-two all alive, for
one nanny had been frightened into twins. " This was all very
funny ", wrote Butler, " but for me it had another aspect ... a
blind belief amongst our own people that these guns could be
shot forward at any given moment to end at one blow the
Boer resistance." Even so it was felt that British guns
should have found other targets than pregnant goats !
What then was Butler s plan which he would not divulge
to Milner? "Here at Glencoe was the true military
position. . . . Going to Dundee instead of stopping at
Glencoe probably cost England 200 millions sterling." The
initial error was of the first magnitude. In the situation both
he and the War Office preferred to be silent. In any case
the volume of abuse soon shifted to the War Office. He
realised that he was sitting on the sunny side of the thorn-
hedge of criticism. It was a pity that he never lived to read
what Lord Esher wrote to Harcourt before Christmas : " And
what a justification of the unfortunate Butler ! However, it
is all too wretched to write about." The British Army had
endured their Bkck Week: defeat upon defeat.
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SALUTATION TO FIVE
The War lasted for years. Butler s reading of History was
that the Devil always gets in first, but the wheels of God
start grinding slowly, and in Africa more slowly than else
where. Before the War was over, Rhodes died, after enduring
siege in Kimberley. Kimberley was relieved, but there waited
him an enemy at the gates who is not accustomed to lift siege.
It was clear now why Rhodes had been in such a desperate
hurry. Milner was in at the death but he did not find
Kitchener sufficiently severe at Vereeningen. Brave men are
lenient to each other, but Milner wrote of an " awful ten
days but I saved more than I expected ". Butler also had
been found " awful ".
When the War was over in 1902 Butler cruelly remarked:
<c We looted the Boers and the Jews looted us ". The Cynic
will add that everybody was served right.
No Generals survived in reputation save Roberts and
Kitchener. Roberts returned before the close and was
received by the Queen. It was the last audience she gave.
The War was part of her tragedy and she failed to survive.
Before the last Boer commando had been scattered and the
last farm-house burnt to ashes, the great Queen died, mag
nificent in her mourning grief.
The new King made Esher his unofficial Vizier and sent him
to listen to Butler under examination (February n, 1903).
" Sir William Butler ", reported Esher, " met with the usual
fate of those who give unpalatable advice. That much of the
advice he gave has since proved correct, is not possibly of
advantage to him in certain quarters. There is no doubt
that he is among the ablest of Your Majesty s servants and
possesses an intellect capable of grasping large problems and
of dealing with men in a practical manner. His Irish blood
may possibly influence his temper and political judgment but
leaves his military capacity untouched. Intellectually he
stands (as he does physically) a head and shoulders above the
majority of his comrades. His evidence upon the preparations
for War only proved once more that uncertain counsels
prevailed throughout the summer of 1899."
A few days later Esher reported an interview with
the Secretary of War. Mr. Broderick was thinking of
94
SIR WILLIAM BUTLER
recommending Butler to the King as Quartermaster-General
but the Cabinet were not favourable. This was not unexpected,
for Butler s words under examination had made their wounds
smart. Esher told Broderick " that in purely military matters
no more capable soldier could be found in Your Majesty s
forces ", but he asked the King to keep this interview secret:
"Lord Esher, as Your Majesty is aware, conceals nothing
from his Sovereign ". The public were not to be told.
Much is not intended ever to reach the Historian, but
sometimes Truth takes a jump out of her well! Naturally
everyone concerned was dead before the Esher Papers yielded
what Historians have been slow to notice: tne military
vindication of Sir William Butler.
Time brings strange surprises and Butler, without reading
much that was written behind the scenes, realised that his
enemies feared to have him disgraced. In 1905 he was made
President of the Committee inquiring into War Stores
Scandals. His Report was full of sarcastic humour which
brought the usual official indignation, especially such phrases
as cc Pantaloons in Puttees " or " Harlequins in Helmets ".
His pen betrayed him, but there was no contradicting the
underlying truth of his words. In the following year the
King added G.C.B. to his name.
He was sent by the Tribune to write letters from the new
scenes in South Africa following the return of the pro-Boer
Liberals to power. His letters were printed under die saucy
title From NabotVs Vineyard \ It was a bitter reminder for a
Catholic General to give to a Bible-reading public. After
all, Kruger had once told Rhodes that ill-gotten goods were
accursed.
Butler might well have enjoyed his revenge, but he was
seeking ways of reconciliation. He only asked that there
should be "no old Raiders in command or in Council".
This did not prevent Dr. Jameson eventually becoming Prime
Minister, but the Arch-filibuster was dead: gathered to the
glorious Motoppo Hills in a tomb commensurate with his
dreams.
Butler had no word against the dead. The only dead man
the Irish ever abuse is Cromwell, and Butler added his share
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SALUTATION TO FIVE
when he retired to Ireland and studied the byways of Irish
History.
To Cromwell he devoted an Essay which ended: "You
remember the choice which Cromwell gave the unfortunate
Irish Hell or Connaught. I turn to the last page of Crom
well s latest biographer and read: c where Connaught Square
now stands, trodden under foot and beaten by horse-hoofs
lies the dust of the Great Protector/ "
And with an ironic chuckle he passed on. Out of Crom
well s ** displaced persons " was hammered the Irish Nation.
As Alba made the Dutch nation in Europe, was it possible
that Rhodes and the War he engineered made the permanent
hard core of the Dutch nation in Africa? Butler spoke
memorably of the Boers for not committing one outrage in
the four years following a war ** which saw every Boer home
stead destroyed, all stock killed, even Boer Bibles carried off".
His books never made comfortable reading, sometimes even
unpleasant, and they passed accordingly out of print. Their
very titles were like flames and they sparkled with epigrams
illustrating his Philosophy such as :
" In the Services the servants have ever been better than
the masters."
c< The Pagoda Tree has its roots in the military graveyards
of India."
" Did not a son of Cain build the first city ? "
" Between the coster and the cottier there comes that gulf
which measures the distance between victory and defeat."
<c The cradle of an Army is the cottage of the peasant."
" The Roman nose could not have stood an Arctic winter,
hence the limits of the Roman Empire. "
" Valley of Ajalonl The wonder is that the Sun and Moon
do not often stand still to have a longer look at it."
Others have dealt with him since in books. Butler proved
somewhat of a stumbling block to the biographers of Chamber
lain and Milner. They have dismissed him as an eccentric
and ebullient Irishman, rather a joke and not to be taken
over-seriously. It will be best to add to their weak and
makeshift commentary the opinion that Wolseley left of
Butler in his book, The Story of a Soldier s Ufe, as " possessing
SIR WILLIAM BUTLER
the warmest and most chivalrous of hearts. Had he lived
in mediaeval times, he would have been the knight-errant
of everyone in distress. Sympathy for all human, indeed for
all animal suffering, was in him an active living force, always
striving to help the poor in body, and to comfort the weak-
hearted. A loyal subject of the Crown, he yet always enter
tained a heart-felt sympathy for those whom he believed to
be a down-trodden race, and a lost cause appealed to all his
deepest feeling. He was the first to recommend the raising
of a Regiment of Irish Foot Guards and he has lived to see
carried out what he was scouted at and ridiculed for by some
unwise men at the time."
An early adventure of Butler s boyhood survived in memory
to make stirring pages in Red Cloud, a book he wrote for
boys about the Great Prairie, afterwards republished with a
foreword by the Chief Scout, Baden-Powell, who mentioned
that he had learnt from Butler s Story of a Failure how to deal
with native levies.
The boyish adventure was an attempt to raid the eagle s
nest on the over-hanging descent down Cooma-sa-harn in the
Galtee mountains. He lost hold of the rope by which he
descended but recovered it, thanks to an attack by the mother
eagle herself. Baden-Powell commended his scout-craft on
this occasion but forays on eyries are not to be commended
to the ordinary Boy Scout!
The story reads incredibly but not less incredibly than the
famous story he told of shooting eleven snipe at one shot in
a hollow near Bansha. No doubt some were hit by the
ricochets but it became part of his legend in Ireland.
All his books remain out of print and his memory has been
forgotten. Only the Dictionary of National Biography has
erected a fair and pleasing memorial to him in the National
Cemetery of that name. But the only Englishman for whose
opinion Butler cared a farthing dip had written to him from his
deathbed : " I always regarded you as a host in yourself ready to
undertake any difficult job and the more dangerous it was, the
more you enjoyed it ". When Roberts gave up the Com-
mandership in Chief he said that Butler was the man to succeed
him except that he was always on the side of the underdog.
97
SALUTATION TO FIVE
Of his powers with the pen no less than Ruskin had
noted in his Bible of Amens that Butler " could have written
all my books about landscape and pictures ",
Nothing was really lacking to Butler in life except
the opportunity of a great campaign. He did not survive the
few years, when he would certainly have been offered the
command of the Irish National Volunteers. On the other
side he would have found Milner again, who had volunteered
for Carson s Covenanters. But Fate smilingly pulled the
blinds. In 1910 he died in his Irish home. It had been a
long and troublesome way back to Tipperary.
IV
LEO TOLSTOY
ON a bright snowy morning in the December of 1907 I
awoke for the first time at Ysnaya Polyana in the
remote regions of Central Russia. I looked around to
find I was sleeping in a school room, for it was thronged with
empty desks. I was lying in a corner and wondering the
where and why of the unfamiliar present, I remembered
vividly that I was a guest of Tolstoy.
It is difficult to recall the immense prestige which this
extraordinary man enjoyed throughout Europe towards the
turn of the last century. He was the great figure in many
spheres. He was the greatest living Russian, at least the best
biown, the most constantly discussed and the most admired
of all Moscovy. In the world of Letters he stood on the top
of world literature as well as of Russian writing. In every
country he was translated and read as a superb novelist. But
he was more. He was a philosopher, a leader of mankind,
an interpreter of God. On every point he threw the world
as well as his own country into controversy. Although he
was a Christian and a Pacifist he thrived in the Czardom,
and although he was a vegetarian he had survived endless
Russian winters. He was the only Continental worthy of
pilgrimage in the manner that Englishmen used to visit
Rousseau or Goethe. There was more than a superb example
of the writing power to visit at Ysnaya Polyana. There was
a code, a new indication to life.
Life with the close of the nineteenth century was self-
satisfied, well-assured but maddening to the idealist. Every
thing that was second-rate was glorified. Mediocrity was
worshipped in the form of a golden image* Stagnation was
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SALUTATION TO FIVE
satisfactory because it was an era of the lotus-eater. Tennyson s
poem about that happy condition reflected Victorian life.
The rumour of Tolstoy s life, which would not attract so
much attention today, spread like the moving light of a
comet across the face of a dead planet. That a wealthy and
titled nobleman should abandon his class and privilege and
descend to the life of a peasant was astonishing enough.
That he did so in the name of Christianity was startling and
threw landowners and church-going people in every country
into contradictions or at least into questioning perturbation.
A few wild noblemen followed his example on the Steppes.
It would have been interesting if an English peer with vast
estates had done the same in the Shires during the reign of
Queen Victoria. Perhaps it might have changed English
country life. It might have led to a Christian Labour Party.
Squires might today be holding their own as yeomen farmers.
Labourers might be filling the empty churches of the country
side. The town would not have defeated and depressed the
countryside so utterly.
Tolstoy seemed to have achieved little except the tremendous
advertisement for his books and the world fame which dogged
his attempts to reach social annihilation. At first it was
rumoured that he had successfully combined Christianity with
Socialism and then with Communism. The truer version was
that he professed literal Christianity and Nihilism in one
breath.
It was an astounding experience for a Cambridge man in
his fourth year to wake up one morning knowing that he
would breakfast with Tolstoy. It was difficult to say which
had most inspired the social idealists of that time: novels like
Rfsurrection or the pictures of the emaciated, bearded Count
slowly pushing an obsolete plough through the fields. Break
fast was simple indeed, but it was followed by a mental feast
when Tolstoy invited me to visit his workroom and discuss
the scattered pages of what would prove his last and most
important message to mankind. For a young man to walk
with Tolstoy on the scenes of his labours was like a throbbing
dream. No hero-worshipper can have enjoyed such time as
was given to me to enjoy. There is an enjoyment Paradisally
100
LEO TOLSTOY
promised to biographers when they meet their subjects for
the first time. Upon this earth Boswell must have felt it,
when first introduced to Dr. Johnson but who else?
Whether I was ever destined to write a single word about
Tolstoy, I drank the Boswellian fervour to the sparkling dregs.
He was very old and I knew I should not see him again.
No moment was to be lost and no word unrecorded. I
believe I was the last of the long line of disciples who had
visited him from every country to learn if Christianity was
practicable in ordinary life according to the actual injunctions
of the Gospel : or at least according to the stark interpretations
which he gave to the most disputed documents of history.
If I was the last, he took singular care to impress me with
his doctrines. It seems difficult to believe that I am one of
the few human beings alive who can answer the question:
" And did you see Tolstoy plain? "
Ysnaya Polyana was an old-fashioned forty-roomed house,
wooden built, with gleaming white columns and balconies,
needless to say destroyed since by the Germans. I always feel
that, had Napoleon been the recent invader of Russia,
he would have protected such an interesting domicile.
" The great Emathian conqueror bid spare
The House of Pindarus when temple and tower
Went to the ground."
So dealt Alexander of Macedon with the eagle s nest. But
the family home of Tolstoy was savagely wrecked. The huge
white park with the frozen lakes must still remain like the
glittering shroud about the grave of the great man with whom
I walked awhile.
He was more than condescending. He was communicative.
He told me much of his own life which I have since filled up
from the libraries of books which the name of Tolstoy has
evoked in all lands. They have become wearisome and
overwritten, for not only was the old man discursive but so
were all his relatives and friends. Not only did he record
every incident in his own life and every thought he ever
thought about himself or others, but others have heaped up
all they thought or remembered.
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Some brief record of that prolonged and prodigious
existence is due, but not to the extent which has been imposed
on the world. Men of Letters have a tremendous advantage
over posterity. Propaganda in the past was ecclesiastical.
In the present it has been wholly political, but in the far future
it will belong to those who have known how to write them
selves into literature.
In many ways Tolstoy lived the life of thousands of his
Russian contemporaries. He was human, ambitious and
erring like thousands of his class in every European country.
He was not the first child to imagine a scheme for ruling the
world. Every Messiah or Universal Provider must have had
similar thoughts at some time. He was not the only under
graduate to fail at the University or to develop lazy and
irregular hours. His third year found him immersed in
Montesquieu but he withdrew to his heritage of serfs deep in
the country and made his home the base for future studies.
Trailing the milestones of his life, the reader like an explorer
is always watching for the first sign that marked him so
completely unique and different from all other Russians and
indeed from all others of the human race. Accordingly, the
reader trails and trails through unceasing books and bio
graphies and is left asking the question: What was the essential
difference ? It must lie in his genius.
He and his brothers sought the secret of happiness not in a
blue bird, but on a green stick which they buried in the woods.
He gave himself the appearance of a prig endeavouring to
turn himself into a prodigy. He tried to learn medicine,
languages, the arts and agriculture. He would have been
blissfully happy with an Encyclopedia Britannica*
Education in Russia always had a fascination lacking in
Erfgland, as so many subjects were forbidden or frowned
upon by the Czardom and the Holy Synod.
His ambition was to learn everything and to help everybody.
The note of intense, bubbling, aggressive humanitarianism
was struck early, but there have been many who have tried
to cast away rank and fortune in order to assist those born
to darkness and misery.
He possessed incalculable strengths, mental, sexual and
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LEO TOLSTOY
physical* He crushed the hours of youth into a crowded
programme. He prepared himself to live a life for his peasants,
which was the kst thing they expected or wanted from their
master. His early idealism can be traced in his writing.
He described himself in The Morning of a Country Squire and it
will be the same self he will describe to the end. One wonders
whether he lived his life to make his own copy or wrote his
books as a chart to steer his life.
He declared himself his brother s keeper. The sights he
had seen amongst the serfs had stricken him as they struck
the good Lord Shaftesbury in Victorian days. Both set out
to wrestle against vice, poverty, cruelty, superstition.
Shaftesbury was an Evangelical. Tolstoy became one, but
something very much more Oriental. There was a romance
about him. He descended among the stricken serfs like a
Fairy Prince and, though in the end he indulged in the same
platitudinous preaching, he carried out his Gospel to the
literal end. Shaftesbury succeeded in causing legislation on
behalf of miners and toilers, but he never flung aside the dress
of respectability or ceased to be an ornament of the House
of Lords.
The world was fascinated by Tolstoy in his rough peasant
dress, living a life utterly shorn of luxury and even of many
necessities. But there have been many ascetics who have
starved and worked themselves to penury. There have been
hermits and naturalists who have struggled to live with
Nature. Thousands of reformers have stripped themselves
in order to proclaim the Will of God. All these things
Tolstoy accomplished, but what was the magic that lifted him
above them all in human history and left only St. Francis and
the Buddha above him in the esteem of mankind?
He set himself to accomplish two dreams of his childhood.
He had imagined the secret for making wars to cease, and
he felt it was possible to love all people at once. He certainly
proposed a dull manner of world: History without conflicts,
and love without passion or romance.
He began with his own peasants, whom he ordered to be
educated and made free at least to his thinking. But no
gratitude was his. They only admired strength of body and
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SALUTATION TO FIVE
only obeyed the whip. The failure of the experiment filled
him with despair and he passed to the fine life of Moscow and
Petersburg. He became a dandy and even sent his washing
to Holland. It was part of the vanity which made him a
showman all his life. It was consoling to gamble and even
to lose heavily, for gambling did not lower him in the eyes of
noble or peasant. He wrote rules for card-playing. He
studied gambling, like thousands of gamblers in the past, and
invented a slow cast-iron system. But inspiration was always
breaking through, and again and again he lost money. So
little was money-making his genius that he one day cheerfully
cast it out of his life.
The military career seemed to offer success and power.
Bodily strength, vanity, horsemanship all pointed to the
Army. Fate herself was making suggestions. He nearly
joined the Imperial Guard when it was marching on Hungary.
He nearly accompanied a relative departing on a Staff to
Siberia. He kept himself always in magnificent trim.
Gymnasium by day balanced an indulgence in gypsies by
night: "The gay descendants of the illustrious Pharaohs ".
Then he pulled himself together in one of his fierce recalls
to conscience. Women and smoking were deposed from his
life. Already he was passing to periods of prayer from
bouts of pleasure. On his estate he had seigneur s right to
order a pretty serf to be brought to him as simply as putting
a mare under his saddle. One thing saved him from
debauchery in Society. He possessed a remarkable ugliness.
His atrocious nose had as lasting a result on his fate as Cleo
patra s on history. The fair ladies, he noted, kept " garments of
bronze " in his direction: a kind of moral " iron curtain ".
He even hoped that syphilis would come to cave in his nose.
By 1 8 5 1 he must find an outlet. He joined in the Caucasian
Campaign. A small people stood between Russia and the sea,
not for the first or last time. Tolstoy floated down the
Volga building up his increasing purpose. Seeking the
splendid outdoor life, he spent two years amongst officers to
whom fighting, loot, drink and women were part of the day s
work. The experiences were all saved for the pen, for his
sword and pen worked simultaneously.
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LEO TOLSTOY
Amid the Cossacks he comes into his own and can show
such a feat as lifting a fellow on his hands. Out of the
roughness he collects his literary sustenance. All is grist to
his literary mill: but beside the pleasures of style and self-
expression his conscience begins to scream in a Diary.
Bravery of body is accompanied by introspection of spirit.
He stares and stares into that paper mirror which so many
of the company of Narcissus have inked from St. Augustine
to Rousseau. It was Benjamin Franklin actually who taught
Tolstoy to keep a moral Diary: that vermin-board on which
the great Sensitives have exhibited their sins of stomach or sex.
The Diary took the place of a Confessor with Tolstoy.
In the mid fifties came the Crimean War. This untoward
breakage of peace was a turning point for three famous persons
at least: the Emperor Nicolas, who died of chagrin, Miss
Nightingale and Tolstoy, who became a hero of the War.
Once more he lived the double life of sword and pen. He
fought in a perilous bastion and he wrote, showing that his
emotions could combine with his intellect. Thousands had
the same emotions and hundreds his intellect, but he
could bring them into the one flame. This is the real receipt
for genius and the new Emperor Alexander II recognised it.
He gave orders that Tolstoy s life was not to be lost. Russia
owed that at least to Czardom.
The war was over and the glamour of Western culture
radiated upon the strictly disciplined Orient. In politics and
religion Russia turned her back towards what was variously
called progress or Liberalism. Literature was the crude
outlook for her mind and that was restricted to a very small
company at the head of which reigned Turgenev. Travel
was a noble s privilege. "Tolstoy went farther afield than
the salons of Moscow and Petersburg. He reached Paris
and London. In Paris he was horribly moved by a visit to
Napoleon s tomb in the Invalides "the deification of
a criminal " but less so by the execution of a real criminal
on the guillotine. London was not so exciting but
he heard Palmerston speak and Dickens lecture and
attended a lecture in South Kensington, one wonders about
what?
IOJ
SALUTATION TO FIVE
Writing had come to him as easily as riding or mental
introspection.
He had read Rousseau, Stendhal and Dickens. His reading
told him he could achieve books in his own manner. The
first ray of genius gleamed in his account of Childhood, which
the Emperor read to his wife with tears.
The Caucasus filled his mind with the characters that
are so necessary to writers. The Crimea inspired him
to write Sebastopol in December which stirred Czar and
Society.
Tolstoy sold his country house, leaving only the wings, to
finance a magazine for the troops. He was dismayed by the
corruption and asked whether officers were being shot in the
back by their own men. The war was fantastically mis
managed on both sides. Owing to the badness of their maps
they could seldom get to grips!
War was only an episode in his life but it seethed in his
brain the literary description of war the protest against any
war at all. He was politically combative, challenging Church
and Society, other landowners and writers even poor old
Turgenev. For times they were friends and there was a
delicious scene when Tolstoy and Turgenev made a see-saw
to amuse the children. Turgenev opened his arms to Tolstoy
as a fatherly friend, but Tolstoy was already simmering with
ideas far beyond staid Liberalism. He instantly attacked
Turgenev and the Liberal Aristocrats, who were little less
than the Whigs in English politics. If he intended to throw
up his place in the aristocratic class, he had no intention of
becoming a complacent bourgeois. He would become a
peasant or nothing. There was a futile quarrel with his
literary nurse followed by challenges to a duel. One wonders
would a duel between Dickens and Thackeray have brought
them back to friendship? In the end Turgenev could only
watch Tolstoy from afar like an outraged hen watching her
brilliant but ugly duckling.
He could not abide Turgenev s well-meant supervision,
though he was a keen admirer. When Tolstoy wrote the
Story of a Horse, Turgenev went so far as to believe his spirit
had been once incarcerated in one. He was breaking into
106
LEO TOLSTOY
bud with more than short stories. Huge masterpieces were
moving through the dark recesses of his brain.
After many trials of the female sex, whom he treated
alternately with horror and impulse, he married. He married
but one woman and they remained together until the last days
of his life. Marriage influenced him, checked and changed
him far more than he cared to recognise. In Sonya he found
his match emotionally. She was equally fierce and passionate,
with a gift of hysteria which he could only parallel by his
excitable mysticism. He put her immediately to the sternest
test. He gave her, as an innocent girl, his introspective
Diaries of orgy to read. She staggered but survived into
matrimony. It was not surprising that she took to writing
overwrought Diaries herself. It was her only self-defence.
Sonya brought fecundity and jealousy into the home.
Strong and staunch, she could not bear even her own silly
suspicions and disguised herself as a peasant woman to see
if her husband would accost her in the woods. His Diaries
haunted her. But she meant well and did better, for she
suffered his sexual assaults and his morose reactions from the
marriage bed with equal submission. She was strong and
lively, turning somersaults or copying his growingly untidy
manuscripts. She wrote silently and unceasingly for him like
the perfect literary wife.
Amid the enforced silence of servants and children the
great books were being built. The writing of Peace and War
dominated those years. The Artist had asserted himself in
his mind and he desired perfection, hence the unending
deletions and alterations. A great Master s manuscript is
like a battlefield, with the ink spkshed like blood and sentences
broken like the soldiers limbs. Sonya never tired of writing
and rewriting the mass of script.
He proposed to write Russia s Epic, the whole history of
the country since 1805, covering the invasion by Napoleon
and the reigns of Alexander I and Nicoks I into the Crimean
War. By now he knew he was a writer supremely. A horse
had once jolted him into the unconscious, out of which he
had returned inspired to write Russia s book. Spain, Italy
and England seem to outsiders countries of one book:
SALUTATION TO FIVE
Quixote, Dante or Shakespeare. National or historical
characters live in stereotypes of style, upon which the national
languages rest* It was so with Tolstoy. Hurling himself
into archive and memoir, Tolstoy recreated Russia s greatest
hours. Heroes and characters were lifted out of mausoleum
or mud and made to move like living marionettes, but that
did not suffice. " Real flesh and blood were needed. He
threw his family into the inkpot. The character of " Natasha "
is composed of the protesting Sonya and her sister Tanya.
Tolstoy himself moves through his novel as Prince Vezukhov,
not the first or the last of the many aliases of his pen.
To compare dead and living History, compare Tolstoy s
War and Peace with Gardiner s slow, minutely factual volumes
describing the years of the Civil War. Tolstoy took six
volumes to describe eight years. He was no more able to
reach the Crimea than Macaulay was able to reach the wars
of Marlborough. He was weighed down by his mass of
material, out of which he cut living scenes. Compare
Stendhal s slight and personal sketch of Waterloo with
Tolstoy s panorama of Borodino: one of those fatal battles
which cksh from epoch to epoch between the East and the
West. Between East and West? Marathon, Lepanto,
Sebastopol, Stalingrad.
The result of the book was prodigious. Russia recognised
herself and the world slowly realised the greatest of novels
had been written. There was a torrent of criticism, foamed
with glittering praise. The reading population of Russia was
divided into conflict. The Liberals found it reactionary: the
reactionaries the reverse. Bourbon aristocrats refuse to learn
to go forward, but Liberals never know how to take a sweeping
glance back. Both are consumed in their present futilities.
History moves above and beyond their tumid conflicts. All
the great writers tread upon contemporary politics. Hence
forth Tolstoy knew that he was great amongst the greatest.
He had shown that History is not enskved to the Dictators
but the reverse: Dictators are tossed by event.
The old house at Ysnaya Polyana had been sold but it was
rebuilt to house Tolstoy s married life. Brain and brawn
were equally vigorous and he lived the life of lover and
108
LEO TOLSTOY
husband, peasant and proprietor, reader and writer all together
and all to crescendo. His strength was hurled into production:
child was begotten upon child while new books gripped his
thoughts.
He had attempted to thrust a hundred years of Russian
history into a single novel, but even Tolstoy had stumbled
over the years. He turned round to tell the tragedy of a
woman s life: a hundred months, a hundred days of Anna
Karenina. There was no lady like her since EmmaBovary had
disturbed the sacred curtain that concealed European woman.
Since Balzac no writer had measured the feminine shallows
with so fine a pen.
A slight incident made the literary source. A neighbour s
mistress was found mutilated on the railway. The Society
machine had taken her soul and the passing train conveniently
killed her body. Tolstoy surveyed the pathetic remains.
Out of them he took blood and flesh to live again and a heart
to beat, break and passionise. All Russia that could read,
read the book which an iron will, combined with delicate
psychology, filled to the last page. The Russia of the seventies
made the background: Russia, the whole Russia and nothing
but Russia. The writing world recognised that their master
had come and they collapsed. A corner of Vanity Fair had
been picked up and intensified by a giant. Anna Karenina
gives herself to Vronsky, the lover, who really prefers steeple-
chasing and really made one with his horse not with her.
Anna passes into remorse and jealousy: two acids which eat
quickly into the unguarded heart. Her suicide is a last
attempt to haunt, if she cannot hold her lover. Pitiful but
not guilty is Tolstoy s conception of her frail heart, but he
sets the terrible motto over the book " Vengeance is mine :
I will repay ".
Tolstoy cannot resist joining in the social fray under the
alias of Levin, whose romance with the Princess reflects his
own love-making and married life. The Princess like Sonya
flits like a satin-winged butterfly in Moscow till she becomes
the property of her lover. Scenes of childbirth follow such
as even the Classics had not portrayed. The birth of her first
child is as great an event in the book as it was at Ysnaya Polyana,
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SALUTATION TO FIVE
War and Peace was as static as History. His war characters
were taken from the statuary of the age-great names in Russia s
history.
Peace flowed back like a softly penetrating tide over the
weeds and wrecks. The dead buried the dead and the past
was sealed unalterably with them. The vast book was more
than a Classic. It was like the immense cloud overhanging
Russia s soul.
Anna Karenina might have been a living piece, which Balzac
might have left behind on his Polish trip, as though some of
the Comedie Humaine had survived and picked up Russian
speech and clothes. The novel of human society was made
from a different mould from the colossal Peace and War\ as
different as a conversation-piece is from a military cemetery.
It was full of the anxieties and excitements which are undying
to the human race: the conflicts which are not settled by the
plans of a General or placated by Treaties, In the Crimea
Tolstoy had realised that Generals were all swept by the
storm of events which they tried to ride as unridiculously as
possible. But people like Anna Karenina made their own
storm, and perished therein even though it were a storm of
the teacups.
During these years he rested his happiness on country life
in his family. Though he demanded the impossible from
marriage he was no doubt the Levin of Anna Karenina. This
was his greatest power, the magic of transporting phases of
real life into the finest literature squeezing the wild grapes
into bottles of Tokay. The delightful scene of Natasha s
first Ball in Peace and War reflects the night when Tolstoy
took his sister to a Ball at Tula given for Alexander III.
It was something to know he was ever happy. Though
humour died out his life, he had dearly loved a frolic and
there are rare records of practical joking. To amuse the
children he crawled in attired as a bear. He was delighted
when his daughters visited him dressed as wailing supplicants.
And now begins the search and research for self and God.
The historic theme had been exhausted. The heart of woman
has been surveyed from the gay to the gruesome. There is
something finite and recurrent about them all. But the great
no
LEO TOLSTOY
adventure lies in the unknown. What is the unpredictable
destiny of Leo Tolstoy ? Above all what is he to make of the
God that made him? To his wife s dismay he gave up art
to solve existence. She had chosen a literary hero but he
insisted on becoming a peasant and making shoes. Like a
soul uncertain of its terminus, good or evil, he has started on
the long journey which will be closed forty years later.
During lifehe lost faith in everything : not only in traditional
creeds but in the Liberalism and Socialism for which the
choice spirits of Russia accepted martyrdom. Materialism he
disdained. There must be a morality outside of Churches.
There must be a God outside the Universe, stern, pitiful,
impulsive perhaps and not unlike Tolstoy himself. It was
something to be able to recreate God in his own image:
temporary of course but leading him to the eternal model.
He seemed destined to endure perpetual unhappiness and
never to be comforted by the prodigious literary success.
He was writing for all the Russias, for the Continents, for the
Planet. One pinch of religious Faith would have been so
helpful. He fell back upon the prophet of empty pessimism,
upon Schopenhauer. It was like using a hair of the mad dog
to cure madness. It only left him angry that he could not
find a single reason for existence. It was like climbing a
rope and trying to hang oneself as soon as one reached
the top. He never rose further or higher than Nihilism. The
word had been already stolen by the Anarchists from the
philosophers. It made a splendid panache for them to flout
the good God. But if nought was nought, then there was
no God to be rude to. Honest blasphemy like the Black
Mass was a furious recognition of the existence of God.
Ex nihilo nibil fit. So Nihilism was no good.
Eventually Tolstoy came nearer to the great Nihilists like
the Ecdesiastes of the Bible and the Buddha of Nirvana.
He had not yet searched the Scriptures nor dreamed that the
Ecclesiast had attained the end of that philosophy or that
Solomon in the Song of Songs had found peace in sensuality.
Yet he should have been happy. Everything he wrote
increased his fame. Every orgy with his wife produced a
child, or the inspiration of a chapter. But he was not content
in
SALUTATION TO FIVE
with the happy family life. Neighbours, serfs, farm-stock,
crops and hunting made up a world of interests and good
living. His very ideas were progressing abroad, for the Czar
Alexander II freed the serfs. A gentle shudder crossed the
surface of Russian life as Tolstoy began to develop his Gospel
to the bitter end.
But too often he quailed before his own thoughts. Was
his life a sham? Was God deceiving him? Others in all
ages have had these devastating ideas and turned into a
woman s arms for oblivion or cast their mental lava into the
moulds of Art. Gambling or sport offered lower levels of
outlet. When Tolstoy sank, he sank as deeply as he could
into the slough of melancholia. Of course there was the
immediate solution by suicide and for that reason he gave up
hunting. There were times when he had to keep himself at a dis
tance from instruments of sudden death. It was easier to recollect
how many fools and silly women had chosen that escape.
He worked as though the only certain possibility was that
Life was the prolonged last day of a criminal who had been
sentenced by an unknown Judge for an unknown crime.
There was not time to read a quarter of the best books or to
study enough to attain solutions. No wonder that so many
abandoned work and worry and accepted the little luxuries
their living allowed.
But whether Life is a fragment, a second of Eternity or a
measure of Time, Tolstoy rushed from Philosophy to
Literature, from Literature to Science and back again from
Science to Literature and Philosophy. But answer there was
none. He questioned the Eternal of Eternity and was
baulked eternally. For long the God he questioned seemed
to be himself, but with careful research he persuaded himself
there was an exterior God. In a despairing moment he
adopted the Faith of the peasants as well as their clothes.
Their Faith in God he accepted without their Church. It
was not enough to write his Confession like St. Augustine.
He produced his new Faith. It was simply non-Resistance to
Evil. Accordingly he implored Alexander III to spare his
father s murderers but the Czar let him know he would only
pardon an attempt on his own life.
112
LEO TOLSTOY
He never passed any further, neither forward or backwards,
even at the end when he clearly doubted God s faith in himself,
Leo Tolstoy.
His religious attitude was simple but he could not remain
silent and he became insufferable to his family. However
much the angels rejoice in heaven over the public return of
one misbeliever, his neighbours on earth can be needlessly
bored or distracted.
He once clothed himself in the white garment of a neophyte
in the Orthodox Church only to tear it to shreds. To his
destructive mind dogmas were skittles, and once overthrown,
they could lie in the Devil s Alley.
When he turned himself to grapple with the Scriptures like
a humble Hercules, there was the chance that he might create
for the Russian folk what Luther had done for the German.
The great writer, the burning reformer and the passionate
searcher for truth combined in Tolstoy, but the Russian
Bible was not achieved. It is true the message interested him
more than the literary form of the message. Having dissected
Theology, he analysed the Greek of the New Testament:
but he was unfitted to be a theologian or a scholar. He made
his own gospel and supplied his own rectifications. St. Paul s
amazing appendix to the Gospels had added force and fervour
but Tolstoy s fervour only diluted them and finally dehydrated
Christianity as religion. He made it into a hysterical gesture.
He railed and ranted like all the preachers. He reduced the
whole to skin and bones and then filled the frame from his
own bloodless soul. He fell for Gospel upon the single
injunction to resist no Evil. It is the quintessence of the
Nihilist, and is best met by the suggestion that if assassination
should not be punished by death, the assassins should com
mence themselves by meting out less final punishment to
their victims.
Like all reformers he turned upon his own family. They
had to suffer his beliefs whether they could bring themselves
to believe or not. Sonya was never out of domestic harness.
She struggled with children and tutors, potatoes and receipts:
the housewife graduating to matriarch. But she was married
to a patriarch, not unlike the Old Testament variety, and
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SALUTATION TO FIVE
she was never allowed to hold her head high or to insist on
an opinion. While her lord wrestled with God at the mystic
ford, her place was at the sink. She was sick of his religion,
but like the true Oriental wife she was still sick with love,
but self-perfection meant rejecting family.
From time to time he descended from his Godlike perch,
wrote, thought and preached no more. The flesh, which he
had temporarily discounted, recalled him to his aching sense
of lust. The Godhead had to wait till he satisfied his man
hood. Sonya was extraordinarily patient and only prayed he
should not suffer anxiety during her pregnancies.
The spirit of the Great Renunciation was always upon him.
Every time the dregs of sensualism were cleared up and the
proud body mortified at the tail end of the plough, the world
was informed. Property was disowned. Meat and liquor
and tobacco were rejected. The Gospel teaching was followed
in all its strictness. Human cheeks, he preached, were made
to be skpped not kissed. It was the veritable teaching of
Christ. As for drink " the first Distiller is the Devil ".
If at one time he found himself surrendering to the fear of
death, he defeated that fear by making life a more unpleasant
alternative. The sweets of family life were sinful and could
only be reconciled with Christian life by dragging wife and
children to beggary. Walking barefoot and wearing peasant s
dress revolted them, but gradually they learned to submit.
Mowing took the place of croquet. He was full of the
Evangelical idea that aristocrats should shovel in the streets
and gladly performed chores in the house. His family were
always a trouble, for he discovered what Hermits and Stylites
(who affected a wretched life on the tops of columns) had
already discovered: that basic Christianity was incompatible
with family life, especially with a strong-minded wife.
Sonya held out all the time. This was not Christianity:
this was not decent human life in her opinion. As she wrote,
<c for him washing is an event ". There were intervals when
the relentless ascetic consented to live in Moscow and hold a
court of literary vanity amid the fleshpots and inkpots of the
great City, Disciples and disputants, admirers and cranks
thronged his levee. The poor Countess breathed the
114
LEO TOLSTOY
atmosphere of adulation. She felt that she had married a great
man. He himself excused this return to Society as the only
possible means of proselytising his friends, He might be Lot
paying a seasonal visit to Sodom. And there was Lot s wife
looking back at the town life she was giving up 1 To keep the
family circle intact, it was necessary to make some surrender to
their worldliness. The dreamers, the crazy, the simple of
soul flocked around him. He brought a fellow-prophet to
preach in the elegant drawing rooms. It is extraordinary how
much the readers of his books were prepared to endure*
Were Ruskin, William Morris or Bernard Shaw allowed to
take such liberties in the salons of London?
Ever seeking new miseries, Tolstoy visits the slums of
Moscow and suffers a humanitarian crisis. He decides frankly
that wealth is simply theft from the poor. He returns to the
fields and forests and forces himself to go poor more violently
than ever. His enormous strength enables him to cut wood
in the mountain, to work in the fields and struggle with
house-work. Clothes become coarser and his daughters have
to wear the shoes he makes for them. He insists on peasants
food and drinks tea in their fashion. Sonya submits but
scolds him for wanting to play Robinson Crusoe.
Unfortunately, like all die Prophets, he lost all sense of
humour, but the advertising value was enormous. The land
gossiped about his eccentricity. Many reviled him, some
believed and all who could, made themselves acquainted with
his books. As a novelist, preacher and social comedian he
seemed in the first rank. But to his family he was a wearisome
bore tending to create tragedy. Sonya fought for her children,
their rights and comforts. However much they quarrelled,
they never split the roof-tree. She only asked to hold the
purse-strings before every kopek was scattered. In the end
she allowed herself to be subdued and he began to make
converts in his own family. His daughter Tanya was the
first, but Sonya remained suspicious that the new life under
mined her position. She became jealous no longer of women
but of men, the disciples, " the dark people ", who began to
arrive on aU sides. They only asked to become peasants but
their doctrines were Communism, vague and overwhelming
SALUTATION TO FIVE
in simplicity as Communism was, before it had been regulated
by Marx. She asked angrily whether they wanted to break
her wedding ties? and with a flash of the bitterest irony:
" Perhaps this too is Christianity? "
Tolstoy himself seemed to have loosened any sacred bond,
for after walking away as a tramp he returned to upbraid her
guilty of holding him in sin, to which he returned in his
physical anguish. He alluded to his children as his sins ever
before him.
"When his daughters entered into happy marriages, he
treated them as though they had taken to some kind of drugs.
Marriage marred the perfect life.
By this time not his books and teachings only were public
fare. All the emotions, feuds and follies of Ysnaya Polyana
were widely reported over Russia. Thousands of Russians
watched him working out his soul. Was it not the Russian
soul he was leading through the torture of contradictions to
redemption? Like a great Polar explorer, who takes the
ambitions, adventures and endurances imagined by the public
on his own shoulders; Tolstoy became the great Pilgrim
struggling towards the Pole that Russian reformers dreamed.
He knew by now he was in search of God; Communism,
Christian asceticism, poverty were only stages on the road.
He was their " Little Father 5> , but he was engaged on the
mighty process of reaching the Great Father himself.
Everything was shed on the road: his class, his property,
his married life and his rights as a human being. He could
not find or see God, but he accepted the peasant as a substitute
and laid everything at his feet. To reach God necessitated
becoming a peasant. This was at least the first and easiest
step. Disciples had no difficulty in throwing up the com
plications and unhappinesses of civilised life, commerce, army
or trade in order to be at peace with themselves.
Colonies of Christian Communism begin to form in different
corners of Russia. These Slavic Quakers refused the aid of
laws or police or banks. Officers and landlords laid down
their wealth. But without organisation most of them
came to nothing. The peasants could not resist stealing the
attractive farm gear, which the new tillers of the soil brought
116
LEO TOLSTOY
with them. There was the additional temptation that the
owners declined to prosecute. Tolstoy himself suffered
agonies when peasants were imprisoned for stealing his timber.
He wished them only to be frightened and then forgiven.
Tolstoy never minced words or sheathed a phrase in velvet.
The thirst for wealth was " the thirst of fleas hurrying to a
pile of vomit ", he insisted. If property was theft, then
writing for money was prostitution. Violent discussions
arose with his family when he proposed giving away his
writings to the publishers. They could only endure the
privations of the life he ordained for them by the thought of
the vast profits which his writings produced. In the end he
made over his property to the insistent Sonya. It was a
compromise but then Marriage itself was a compromise with
sensuality and " sin ". Yet the Tolstoy household continued.
Sonya kept it together with her threats including the possibility
that she would follow the end of Anna Karenina.
Tolstoy defied the hugest giants as his enemies. No
Quixote had ever yet threatened to destroy not only War
but the State. War was simply the clash of ** professional
assassins ". The State waged War and therefore must be
destroyed. God said so. Christianity said so. Tolstoy said
so. Liberalism with all its padded bourgeois life he had long
dismissed, but Socialism was no better, because it scorned the
mighty Christian weapon of passive resistance. It was no use
offering material promises which could not be fulfilled.
Hatred would not destroy oppression. Envy could not sap
the rich.
Prophecy streaked his condemnations and in this he lived
up to the type of all Messiahs, even the greatest. He foretold
the coming of the most abominable of tyrannies : that of the
depraved and ignorant worker. Even a Socialist State was
wrong, as it conveyed a moral contradiction in that it coun
tenanced prisons. As a Utopian Christian he called for
non-resistance instead of Revolution.
Theory never ceased to entangle him in practice. When
famine had broken out and Christian practice required practical
measures, he felt at a loss. Money was poured upon him
but he believed it was wrong to touch money, which was the
"7
SALUTATION TO FIVE
vomit disgorged by the rich. The hungry should be loved
not fed. Having conquered this repulsion he organised
funds and feeding transport. Thousands of starving peasants
were kept alive by this contradiction, for to Tolstoy the rich
were feeding the poor with food the poor grew for the rich.
The whole world had answered his appeal, for his trumpet
was international. The Government did not enjoy their own
sores and failures being trumpeted abroad. The Imperial
orders were that " failure of crops " should be mentioned but
not a word of famine. They also were striving to correct
facts with phrases.
Nobody understood the Russian peasant better than Tolstoy.
If he deified him as part of his theory, he could vilify him as
an animal in Literature. His Stories of the People are matured
work, for after he had cleansed the temple of Art he was
bound to provide some substitute. Here again his Genius
offered splendid assistance. He had hurled Drama, even the
name of Shakespeare, down the drain. In return he produced
The Powers of Darkness, a pky in which peasants pass through
animality into crime. Darkness is the word indeed, but the
shadow is poised as artistically as the "clear-obscure" of
Rembrandt. The light streams from heaven when the
peasant-criminal confesses sin. The masterpiece was read
aloud to the peasants themselves whose comment was,
** More fool he! " They could not understand the yearning
for inner peace at the cost of domestic disturbance.
The pky fell under the Censorship until it was read aloud
to the Emperor. None dared applaud or revile in the audience
until the Emperor spoke: ** A wonderful play ! " and it
immediately became a part of Russia s literary heritage.
The Powers of Darkness was a grim name for a Pastoral play,
but a Russian Pastoral can only be ghastly. The preacher,
who made the peasant the model of his life and kbour, was
also the flaming artist who drew this terrible revektion.
When it had uncovered all its bestial squalor, the ray of
divine light seemed too kte.
From the peasant speech and the peasant religion he stood
aside and as an artist only he gibbeted the living peasant to
118
LEO TOLSTOY
whose levels he had descended. As a consolation he added
the convulsions of conscience. Perhaps he was only depicting
himself again, at least as he would have been, had he been
peasant born.
No portrayer of the peasant ever delved so deep or ruminated
such horrors.
The Playboy of the Western Shore was a light comedy in
comparison. Synge glorified the dialect of the Irish peasant,
and left him pirouetting in comic misunderstanding. If he
had attempted to apply The Powers of Darkness to Connaught,
the Irish audience would have left the Abbey Theatre
smouldering. Hardy in his portrayal of an Unmerry England
never dared take his characters into the depths sometimes
revealed at Assizes. But Tolstoy descended into the Well of
Truth and dragged her out of the muddy sediment, naked and
horribly unashamed. Truth, that can be all lovely, can also
be all hideous. Only, as the Emperor remarked at the dose
of the reading " A wonderful play! "
Peace and War remains Tolstoy s superb and greatest achieve
ment, for from beginning to end it is a work of art. He is
one with History, one with life, one with Russia when he
writes the mighty screed. Literary masterpieces may follow,
but they are also stained by the extrovert and even more by
the controvert. The voice crying in the wilderness, the
embittered preacher, the frustrated teacher made havoc of the
Kreut^er Sonata and Resurrection. They remain splendid
enough, but the writer was on the war path. The curse of
sex made even the happiness of marriage into a mirage. He
hurled himself as rancorously (and with less reason) as Swift
against the whole sexualism of man and woman. He con
tinued to hate the woman he loved as a wife. Only in hours
of temperamental need would he even speak to her. All this
disorder passed into the glowing Kreut^er Sonata. Poor
Sonya felt she was attacked and degraded by the book. In
return she pluckily wrote a novel to hurl back blame on her
husband but publication was prevented. By a real exercise
of Christian forgiveness she sped to Petersburg to persuade
the Emperor to lift the censorship which had naturally befallen
the Sonata.
119
SALUTATION TO FIVE
Herein Tolstoy painted sexual jealousy to the life. The
Sonata itself was the exquisite music played by a violinist,
whose violin gave the last touch needed to fire the sensuality
of a woman. She becomes the lover of the musician and
when surprised by her husband suffers death for her sin.
Music had powers upon Tolstoy which he resented, and he
attacks it as furiously as he attacks all forms of sensuality.
It seems as though in his madness he demanded total chastity
in marriage. Even the consummation of marriage was the
sin leading to the direct results. But the Apostle of this
stern self-sacrifice appears to be over-sexed himself. With
agonised heart he held the front-line of icy self-restraint only
to fall back into occasional self-reproaching retreat. Retreat
was merely a return into the arms of his wife who continued
to avenge herself by satisfying his passion. It was no doubt
very Russian, especially as both gave the fullest vent to their
emotions on paper. No doubt many a married couple could
write such contradictions and hostilities if they wished to
expose themselves to Posterity. As a result many readers
know more about the Tolstoy matrimony than about their
own private lives.
Resurrection was the delivery of his soul, a superb novel only
spoilt by querulous preaching before the close. It was taken
partly from an incident in his own life and partly from
another s. In his bitterly-repented youth he had seduced a
servant girl who was cast out of the home to perish. Another
seducer recognised a victim of his own while serving as a
juryman, visited her in prison and offered marriage to repair
his fault. She died of typhus in the real story, but Tolstoy
made the ideal version into a lantern for the world. He por
trayed himself in the role of both seducers and condemned
himself to follow the girl on the road to Siberia. It was as
though a great artist wrote a Tract and enlarged it into an
adventure of pity and beauty. His perpetual theme returned:
darkness breaking into light. Out of the horrors of prostitu
tion, crime and Siberian exile he drew the splendid scene of
the girPs resurrection, rewon by a man s love after destruction
by his lust. Jelix culpa\
Resurrection came nearest to an autobiography or at least to
1 20
LEO TOLSTOY
the life of heroic self-sacrifice which Tolstoy hid wished,
perhaps wilfully, for himself. " I am all in Resurrection " were
his own words.
In Resurrection Tolstoy faced the great Social Problem, or
as it is more romantically described The White Slave Traffic.
Greater than he had grappled with it in vain. No doubt
Christ had given the terrible problem its quietus but in
sentences of perfection which left the normal man to despair.
Tolstoy was struggling to fulfil those stark words out of
which all Christian asceticism has been built. Those who
made themselves eunuchs for the Kingdom of God were
commended. It was certainly the Tolstoyan ideal. Likewise
He commended the gentle and generous treatment of women
whom men had made to transgress the woman of Samaria
the woman that was a sinner in the city the Lady of the
Town called Magdala.
But the divine teaching did not prevent the continuance of
Prostitution as part of life in Christendom. Women were
enslaved and destroyed down the ages. No State was able
to regulate and no Church to outlaw the shadow which
overhung womanhood. The whole of modern Prostitution
plagued the spirit of Tolstoy and, once he had won the ear
of the world, he plucked the great evil and thrust it into the
face of civilisation.
Christianity was his solution and Resurrection was his way
and means. The pathetic pilgrimage of the hero into the
snowy wilds following the lost one struck a note of senti
mentality, but it was a Christianised version of the Abb6
Prevost s famous scene when the Chevalier de Grieux followed
Manon to the convict lines of New Orleans.
Tolstoy s book was less a work of art than the story of
Manon, for the Abbe conveyed no moral, only exposed the
crucifixion which could be brought about by Love. But
Tolstoy wanted every prostitute redeemed, if possible by her
first seducer. The means should be sheer love and nobility
on the part of men but what men will ever scour the streets
or sack the brothels ? Modern Christianity has compromised.
The utility and necessity of the vast system is accepted by the
State under a cloak of hypocrisy or a series of shuffling by-laws
121
SALUTATION TO FIVE
and medical regulations. Religious Institutions are provided
to help and harbour the infinitesimal small proportion of
wrecks that can be drawn into their gates. The public
conscience is thus salved, but not Tolstoy s and he cast aside
the attitude of the Churches with scorn. Unfortunately he
could not restrain his pen in Resurrection from inscribing a
bitter parody of the Holy Liturgy. It brought him the
excommunication of the Orthodox Church. From hence
forward the Holy Synod was his watching enemy. Already
the Emperor had been pressed to imprison him in a monastery.
But civil governors are often wiser than the children of
ecclesiastical light The Emperor refused to make a martyr
of the prophet, and for all practical purposes Tolstoy was
protected indirectly by the Imperial power till the hour of
his death.
From time to time the spirit of the Buddha was upon him.
He never had the peace of mind to become " the Light of
Russia ", but he went threatening to leave (and incidentally
relieve) his protesting family for ever. He was influenced by
the Hindu custom of retiring to the woods at the age of sixty
in order to search for God. At least he could not bear to
devote his last years " to gossip and tennis "1 He sought the
inner change which no outside revolution or political reversion
could bring.
In the West he would have become a silent Trappist or a
self-immured Carthusian monk, but in the East he felt called
to take the part of a Messiah, if he could only be rid of his
family, of his estates, of his income. He was involved in the
tentacles of the Society he was trying to destroy.
The extraordinary thing is that he was never able to cut
himself away until the very end when there was no life to
return to. He wrote letters of farewell and made agonised
scenes like those annual farewells which Prima Donnas force
upon their sobbing audiences. Nevertheless he remained at
Ysnaya Polyana. It was easier to express himself by the pen
and another remarkable play, The Light Shines in Darkness*
described himself and his sufferings. It is not difficult to
recognise the wails of Sonya to her impossible mate: " You
love the whole world including the drunken but you hate
122
LEO TOLSTOY
your family and me. How Christian! " So it is, for it is
written that except a man hate his father and mother, he
cannot . . . Art he dethroned. Chekhov could only laugh
when he wrote: " I cannot abide Shakespeare but your plays
are even worse! "
He began to look on his own masterpieces as rubbish.
All his artistry had been used to draw readers into his preaching
circle. There he had nothing to offer except the path that
was stern and the field that was sterile. He re&sed to write any
more fascinating novels, comparing himself to the old courtesan
who declines to return to old and pleasing ways. Philosophy,
preaching and pestering were the final occupations of his pen.
He never ceased acquiring subjects which he regurgitated
in ink. He read and reread the literature of Europe. He
vomited Shakespeare and Wagner. He suddenly learnt Dutch
as he had once guzzled Greek. He mastered medicine and
studied diseases, not without making mistakes in his writing.
In only two spheres he treads surely in that of mystic
annihilation and in his knowledge of the hearts of women.
These he understands almost as God understands them.
He is still the unsurpassable author of Anna Rarenina and the
Kreufcgr Sonata. They will survive him when all his teaching
has failed and he himself has found personal nothingness.
And this thought he hated as though he suspected that he
would be remembered only as a writer and disdained as a
prophet. When Gorki spoke of him as an old sorcerer, he
had the artist in view. On the lowest level human beings
prefer conjuring tricks to all the storming and shouting of
the Saints. A conjuror of word and phrase, a magician of
letters, the fashioner of tales which the human race will carry
away down the ages he shall be immortal. But not the voice
crying in the wilderness, for in the wilderness there is no echo.
His list of writers was not entirely crankery. There were
famed figures who corresponded with him like Shaw and
Edison or actually reached him like William Bryan, Masyrak
or Romain Holland.
He decided that Shaw had more brains than were good for
him. He allowed Edison to place his voice on the phonograph
record but he approved Edison as a vegetarian.
SALUTATION TO FIVE
He corresponded with Gandhi, an unknown agitator in
South Africa, encouraging him as a disciple. In this manner
his influence spread through the world.
Above all whom he most approved was Henry George,
whose theory of land-tax seemed to solve the troubles of the
peasant on one side and of the aching property-owner on the
other* They believed in each other, Tolstoy and Henry
George, but neither Mahomet nor the Mountain could ever
reach each other.
It is difficult, of course, for Englishmen to appraise Tolstoy.
It may prove simplest to draw parallels. What Napoleon
was in France, what Byron was in England Tolstoy was in
Russia, although their professions and careers were utterly
dissimilar. They were the three architypes, by which the
Continent understood their different countries. It is only a
coincidence that Tolstoy should have made his masterpiece
out of Napoleon s Russian campaign and that Byron should
have admired the Emperor with an immense hero-worship.
All three were desperate outlaws of the old Society and yet
Ae pageants of their lives were followed with some of the
admking horror and dread with which a Greek play was
heard in Athens. Napoleon was the romantic and sinister
aftermath of the French Revolution. Byron was the Romantic
Movement itself, which filled the gap between Waterloo and
the Revolution of Forty-Eight. Tolstoy symbolised,
prophesied and serenaded all the coming Russian Revolution
of the present day. Lenin thought his pacificism obstructed
the Revolution in 1905 but nevertheless he prepared the
Russian mind for Communism, Amazed, admiring and
horrified, other European thinkers thought and watched
those terrible ones. The men of property and orthodoxy
quailed but believed in the pendulum of reaction. Certainly
Napoleon was followed by the Bourbon and the continued
triumph of the middle class. The Revolution was castrated
by Waterloo. Byron s Romantic Raid against convention
was submerged by Victorianism. The avalanche, unleashed
by Tolstoy without knowing or suspecting what was ahead,
has submerged half of Europe and all Russia. Not until it
has reached bottom will it be possible to estimate the real
124
LEO TOLSTOY
deluge or possibly the slow thaw. But Tolstoy s share in
world upheaval cannot be unassumed. Who would deny
that time has shown him to be Peter the Great in sheep s
clothing I
Byron could not resist appearing and reappearing in the
same Byronic character that he had created for himself in
Childe Harold, the Corsair or Don Juan, It was the same with
Tolstoy, who was the hero of all his own novels. Both
dragged their bleeding hearts across the gaze of Europe, one
seeking the sinister in man and the other extracting all that
was possible to extract from God. If one applauded the Devil
and the other approached the Divine, both were left stranded
in the end and were compelled to make departures from the
earthly scene which would disturb and agonise their readers.
Neither could afford to die at home in bed and both escaped
an embarrassing wife. Hate or love never seemed to make
much difference to them as long as they were assured of the
rapt attention of multitudes in every country. Byron s
view was:
" He who surpasses or subdues mankind
Must look on the hate of those below ".
Tolstoy, no less a frenzied egotist, was content to surpass
mankind in sheer sensational Christian behaviour. He looked
down upon their love from the isolation of his pillar. Without
the magic wand of literary genius, would either of them have
ever passed beyond the ken of a small disgusted and flabber
gasted neighbourhood? Would Byron have been more than
a decayed dandy or Tolstoy more than a religious crank
cranking in the snows? But Genius . . , Genius . . .
The day came when the last disciple arrived at Ysnaya
Polyana, and perhaps modesty should add the least.
More than two score years have passed since I woke up
and rubbed my dreaming eyes under Tolstoy s roof-tree. A
good deal of water has flowed down the Volga since and many
snows have joined the snows of 1907. So much has passed
away including the great Russian Autocracy and when that
Empire fell, all others followed. The world is now without
SALUTATION TO FIVE
any Emperor for the first time since Caesar. The Russian
State has been disembowelled. Ysnaya Polyana has been
sacked and scattered, but Tolstoy has survived. The great
historical question is to what extent his life and teachings
loosened that Empire and contributed to a new Autocracy
which would have granted him far less tolerance in his day.
Somewhere in those woods he lies, where once a little snub-
nosed boy played and dreamed that he would magically
over-rule the world.
I had travelled southward from Moscow to Tula. I left
the scene of the Kremlin wreathed in snows. In the early
morning the great gilded domes of hundreds of churches rose
above the white-shadowed streets and caught the rays of the
rising sun. For awhile they resembled inverted bowls shot
with fire. A pilgrim is bound to notice these things, for he
does not pass the same way again. Amid the city of the
Arabian Nights rose one Western building, the majestic
four-square white-marbled Basilica which had been dedicated
to the Saviour who had delivered Russia from Napoleon.
In splendid grandeur it commemorated the campaign that
occupied the pages ofPeate and War. Who could believe then
that every stone of that Temple would be swept away while
the book endured? It looked a hundred times more lasting
than the soaring towers and domes of iridescent gilt. At my
feet lay the entire artillery park of the Grande Armte\ not one
gun of which had returned across the Beresina.
All roads in Russia lead to Moscow. Napoleon had passed
this way and left his carte de visit* , for every gun was wreathed
with his cipher. The snow was falling and gently obliterating
them once more as in 1812.
My pilgrimage was to Ysnaya Polyana and I started on a
cold, miserable, lonely last lap through the endless woods
and plains. The perpetual view reminded me of a Grimm s
Fairy Story. It must end in a Castle or a Giant or a Fairy
Princess. It seemed utterly impossible that I should ever
reach my destination. I sank into a loneliness of despair.
I was travelling rapidly into the unknown. I had not been
able to book to Ysnaya Polyana but I purchased a ticket to
Tula after tipping an official dressed like a Field Marshal
126
LEO TOLSTOY
I found I had lost my ticket from Moscow before nightfall
and prepared to explain that I was a pilgrim, a travelling
student. Candles were lit in the slow old wooden coaches
and smoothly we passed onward into the ever-falling snow.
No one ever asked for my ticket. On the contrary a kind of
mixed committee of officials and students (judging by their
caps) investigated me kindly at every stop. I ceased to be
lonely. I had become the object of general benevolence
though there was neither speech nor language between us.
Then I suddenly reflected the kind official whom I had
asked my way to Ysnaya Polyana must have realised for whom
I was seeking. Word had passed down the train that yet
another seeker was making his way there and perhaps the
railwaymen were accustomed to absurd and helpless foreigners
struggling to reach Tolstoy.
I left the train at Tula under direction. Porters and station
officials were only too pleased to show me my way. Everybody
was cheerful and voluble except myself. I was taken to
another train and taken out. I was given information I
could not understand and asked questions I could not answer.
I think I broke the monotony of that day for numbers of
Russians. An Irishman with a passport from Sir Edward
Grey was a novelty. I used the passport in place of the lost
ticket. I pointed to Sir Edward s signature and murmured,
" le grand Liberal Anglais " 9 for there was a froth of French
amid the voices of my guides. I realised that I had fallen
amongst friends who looked upon England as the lantern of
the West: the source of Liberal institutions and the future
enlightener of Russia. It was only while travelling amongst
strangers that Russians would talk politics. English politics
were an immense interest. I did my best to explain the
Liberal Programme of 1906 which had swept the General
Election the previous year but Chinese Slavery in South
Africa or Irish Home Rule seemed to ring no bell, though all
I said was translated quickly to the crowd. Then I was asked
about the greatest of all Englishmen. Who could it be but
Darwin? I could cWtn to be at Darwin s University and I
allowed the awestruck listeners to believe I had been if not
the great man s colleague, at least a most promising pupil.
SALUTATION TO FIVE
They did not seem to know that Darwin was dead but no
matter. It was very helpful for me on my journey which
after endless conversation came to an end I never knew
where but I was snatched up by unknown drivers and placed
in a sledge, my baggage thrown on my knees and away we
drove into the icy night. Russia had taught me indifference
to time and space. I closed my eyes under my frozen eye
lashes and hoped that my general insensibility was not the
first symptom of frost-bite. . . .
I found myself outside a white-porched country house with
lights shining upon the snow. The door opened and a doctor
emerged ckd in a blouse. It must have been Dushan. He
addressed me in French and I was brought shivering into the
warm air. Various quiet people came out and inspected me
and passed within. The doctor took me to a schoolroom
and left my baggage on a rough bed: but I felt more ekted
than if I had entered the Imperial Palace. He informed me
that Tolstoy invited me to join him and his family at supper.
I removed my collar and tie in deference to the dress of the
household. I regretted I had not brought a peasant s smock
from England.
Into a wide white-washed room I stepped and Tolstoy
himself motioned me to a place. He sat there incredibly
crumpled, like a bearded gnome. Only his flashing black
eyes signalled greatness. Before I could take my seat, he had
addressed me a question or two. Naive and simple, it was
embarrassing. Did I believe in God? Was I vegetarian?
I could only bow to each question as in a dream. To the
second query the Countess answered for me. Casting her
eyes on my figure, stalwart from three years* rowing at Cam
bridge, she muttered that I could not possibly be a vegetarian.
All this in French, which was certainly the proper language
for the next query. With a piercing glance he asked my
relations to women! Under the Tolstoyan Catechism no one
seemed disconcerted except myself. But there is no modesty
in the East and a traveller into Russia realises that he has
crossed the great Divide. False modesty I found none in
Tolstoy s conversation any more than in the Bible, which is
as Eastern as the Arabian Nights. At any rate it was more
128
LEO TOLSTOY
satisfactory to sup like Nebuchadnezzar than feast "with
Balshazzar. Family pictures hung on the walls, including
Prince Volknyski, a hero of War and Peace.
I did not realise that I was the last of a long line of pilgrims,
madmen, disciples and cranks who had found their way to
Ysnaya Polyana. I seemed to have passed the scrutiny. I
received nothing but kindness and hospitality. The Countess
set herself to be pleasant and took me aside to chat. She had
recently appealed to the Governor of Tula for armed assistance
to protect their cabbages from the starving peasants. This
step had caused the old man great anguish as she explained
to me. So this was the formidable Sonya Androvnova who
had borne his children and with those hands had copied the
MSS. of War and Peace seven times ! A book which requires
an effort of the will to read even once. She was sunken and
humbled, I thought, as though she recognised that he was
the Master in every way. Her energies seemed softened and
the peasant s clothing, which she told me she detested, obliter
ated personality in a woman. It was the reverse with Tolstoy,
who was made, like John the Baptist, distinguished thereby.
She spoke of her own noble behaviour and a little sadly of
the lack of carpets on the dean wooden floor and of her
luxurious home in Moscow* But I had come into the wilder
ness to admire the clothing of the prophets and to share their
food. I felt uncomfortable in my travelling (Hope Bros.) suit.
It seemed out of pkce and I had a feeling that for the only
time in my life ladies were admiring my clothes. All the
women wore the same coarse, ill-cut garments and once more
the Countess explained how they had given in after a long
struggle and were now satisfied to dress as he wished them.
" Tu vicisti, O Galilaeer
All was immensely peaceful during my stay and I was never
left alone but carried off into conversation by the doctor, who
begged me write down Tolstoy s every word, or the Countess,
or most wonderfully by the great man himself. The atmos
phere was one of all pride and passion spent, but I continued
to be a matter of mild interest The Countess had obviously
accepted what Destiny had provided for her. The immense
interest of the whole world was worth living for: but to have
129
SALUTATION TO FIVE
lived with a demoniac must have been an unnerving experience.
The impartial visitor passed from pity to admiration.
The old man was in fine fettle during my visit. He lived
up to everything I had read or imagined about him. I could
only admire the mighty health which sent him out to work
on the farm of a dark winter morning. When I descended
in the morning to breakfast, he was coming in from the
snowy scenes, his tangled beard wet with the elements, his
high boots covered with snow and his long sinewy arms the
arms of a ploughman rather than of a scrivener.
After he had written awhile in his study, I was admitted to
be shown manuscripts and pictures, all explained in the rasping
voice of a preacher. He exhibited a picture of a vested priest
blessing a new Vodka and spirit store. " That is what is wrong
with Russia." And I resolved to join the anti-Saloon League.
He spoke generally of the persecuted: of the Poles, the
Jews and of his Doukhobors whom he had enabled to
emigrate carrying their Pacifism to Canada for other Govern
ments to deal with. Occasionally he uttered a quiet denuncia
tion of Patriotism " the sin condemned in the Gospels ".
Of wars and soldiery he was even angrier in condemnation.
And his final sentence was the most memorable. One day,
perhaps soon, Europe would have to choose between him
and the Bayonets!
I often pondered these words of the Prophet, for the choice
of the Bayonets has been imposed twice since that date upon
a broken Continent.
A prophet he was, though he detested many of the evils
which followed in his train. To many his excommunication
by the Holy Synod was the first tocsin of the Revolution.
He replied with an appeal to the Czar offering minimum and
not unpractical terms. The Revolution might have been
averted by a simple and popular Bill of Rights, The country
had begun to seethe and as Tolstoy put it: "A man standing
on tiptoes cannot stand there long". He desperately
endeavoured a compromise, which reached the Czar through
the hands of a Grand Duke, but only brought the feeble
reassurance that Tolstoy need not worry as the Czar would
not show it to anyone!
130
LEO TOLSTOY
On the other hand he pleaded with the Revolutionaries to
withhold their bombs. He hated their excesses and as for
the planners he said: " Economic ideals are not ideals at all ".
He called for self-perfection not class-hatred and passive
resistance instead of active bombs. His influence was so
great in Russia that the early Revolution was slowed down
largely by his teaching. He incurred the hatred of the real
Anarchists and lost an immense following. Lenin and his
followers had come to the conclusion that Tolstoy s trumpet-
ings were insufficient to topple the walls of the Kremlin.
But when he laid down that man s life belongs not to the
State but to Him who gave it, he had laid the seeds of eventual
destruction for both the Czardom and the Soviet.
My last glimpse of Tolstoy came when he sped me from
his own portals. The Countess, touched by my hero-worship,
thrust a photograph into my hand which she had taken of the
old man standing in the snow. And over the film he had
written my name and his. The date was halfway between
the Wars of Napoleon HI and the greater War which was
fondly believed to have closed the reign of the bayonets for
ever. Perhaps so, but the place of the bayonets was taken by
something far more terrible. It was time for the old Peace
maker, the anti-Martian, to die.
He found his life poisoned by contradictions. He had
denounced property as the source of all evils and in old age
he found himself struggling over copyrights and testaments.
No wonder he was subjected to caricature and ridicule.
Yet meekly he answered the critics. He met accusations of
hypocrisy with the greatest humility. But his heart gnawed
his fetters and he was always planning some last defiant
gesture, some act better than suicide which was only a
defiance of God. He was determined to make all his writings
public property in spite of Sonya and Sonya herself was to be
abandoned at the last. ... He planned to escape from his
home like a schoolboy flighting from school. But it was not
his wife it was from himself he determined to fly. He had
found the Truth and freed his soul, but his body lay in the
fell clutch of circumstance and he awaited his last days in
which to cast that aside for ever.
SALUTATION TO FIVE
Two years after my visit he rose from his prophetic fears
and in agony that he had failed in his mission, that he had
neither delivered man from Patriotism, Prostitution and
Poverty, nor found the God with whom he believed he shared
so many traits, he struggled out into the snow took flight
from his family for ever and died in one of those little
Russian railway stations which mark no particular place and
from which a few dim tracks lead nowhere. The human
family stays struggling in the darkness without much more
hope than expressed in his last prayer: "From Thee have I
come and to Thee I shall return. Thy Will be done/*
132
SIR MARK SYKES
Mark Sykes: His Life and Letters, by Shane Leslie, with an
Introduction by Winston Churchill.
Trial and Error, by Chaim Weizmann, First President of Israel.
Palestine the Reality, by J. M. N. Jeffries.
The Seven Pillars of Wisdom, by Lawrence of Arabia,
MARK SYKES is only remembered by those who
knew him and once cherished his bright promise,
Otherwise he is quite forgotten in speech and print
save for occasional reference in books about the Middle East
and in sighs occasioned by Zionism.
Yet Mark Sykes was a favourite in the race for fame in
good King Edward s days days when Queen Victoria and
Mr. Gladstone had been lately laid to rest to the murmur of
an Empire s lamentation: days when three young men
successively snatched the banner of " Young England ", that
Disraeli devised in Coningsby. Whoever remembers Curzon,
Churchill and Sykes young will attest these words. But the
dead cannot remember and few contemporaries remain.
All three were determined to ride their ambitions far and
all three made the House of Commons their first lap. All
three prepared themselves with adventurous travel and
sharpened their pens in the manner of Borrow or Kinglake.
Borrovian in familiarity with the scenes they condescended
to view, they wrote in the vintage otEotben, There was not
one of the three who did not carry the key to 10 Downing
Street in his travelling suitcase.
Far different their fates. Cur2on reached all but the top
rung. Mark fell from the second or third. It was for Winston
to write of him to the present compiler: * The Great War
135
SALTJTATION TO FIVE
was made tragic by the loss of many young men -whose feet
had hardly touched the first rung of their careers . . . some
had as young men reached the distinction of the House of
Commons. Prominent amongst them was one who refused
ministerial office during the War, and who if he had lived
would in all probability have reached the Cabinet. Of the
young men who made their way to the fore after service in
the Boer War, none set out with a more determined and
original programme than Mark Sykes."
It was on St. Patrick s Eve 1879 that Jessica Sykes (half a
Leslie and half a Cavendish-Bentinck) bore a son to
Sir Tatton Sykes. The combinations in her blood should
have really doubled dullness but the ways of heredity are
strange. An unexpectedly talented mother, Jessica gave Mark
all her gifts and none of her follies. A rather embarrassing
gift was that of the Apostolic Faith which is not helpful in
English politics. Sir Tatton gave him one of the great names
of Yorkshire. Tatton s father had been the "Great
Commoner" of the Ridings. The name of Sykes, two
hobbies and big wealth were Sir Tatton s contributions at the
cradle. Mark had no interest in the hobbies, which pertained
to breeding racehorses and designing Gothic churches. The
old man could be described as Pugin at Tattersall s.
Mark gloried in the democratic descent of the Sykes from
a mayor of Hull who invested what he made from hemp and
tallow in planting the wolds. He confessed : " I cannot feel
superbly feudal."
Mark had looked into Yorkshire forebears and come to
some prehistoric conclusions: "I am not an Anglo-Saxon,
but a Woldsman, consequently a pirate: we came from the
North sea. We massacred and destroyed all the wretched
flint-making people and drove them off the Wolds and now
they live between York and Selby. . . . We are not money
makers but seizers and snatchers."
It did not sound like Mark s character. The only previous
Sir Mark Sykes was remarkable as the first clergyman to be
created a Baronet. The second Sir Mark proved to be the
first Baronet to take a hand in the fulfilment of Scripture
prophecy: the return of the Jews to Palestine.
134
SIR MARK SYKES
For so delicate a task in the future it was only right that
his education should be out of the ordinary. He spent little
time at Sledmere which he described as " an English Gentle
man s house in the Eighteenth Century ". That was never
Mark s ideal.
Nevertheless Sledmere must have been a delicious home
for an only son, who had the run of the Estate, the command
of retainers and the prospect of incessant adventure. Before
Mark was fifteen he had visited Assouan on the Dervish
frontier, for Sir Tatton had some of the characteristics of the
Wandering Jew, certainly in travelling and perhaps in the
accumulation of garments on his person. These he was liable
to discard at the least change in temperature. A footman
followed to retrieve overcoats shed in the grounds. Mark
used to describe his embarrassment in York Station when
his father stopped to remove a superfluous pair of trousers
on receiving a warning from the barometer.
Their travel was widespread. Mark reached India, under
the rule of the last of the Whig noblemen, Lord Lansdowne,
found himself barefooted amongst the Arabs of the Desert
and as though by Magic Carpet was transported to Mexico
to observe the zenith of Porfirio Diaz: a not inhuman fore
runner of European dictatorship. Sir Tatton in his time had
touched corners of the globe unknown even to Cook. Of
the Druses of Lebanon Mark recorded: "When I was a
little boy of ten I was taken by my father to their mountain,
again when I was eleven, again when I was thirteen, and
lastly, five years later, I visited them alone."
In mid-nineties there was a pause at Sledmere. A com
panion was found for the lonely and diminutive traveller in
young Howard de Walden, an Etonian, who found Mark " a
large round, amiable boy " but liable to mention the Fourth
Dimension which is bad form amongst schoolboys. Their
play did not include cricket but they attempted to fight " a
genuine bull ", and Mark arranged for the new Gothic church
to be used as a storming exercise with ladders. He had
discovered the works of Vauban in the library and the smooth
lawn was laid out in bastions, lunettes and redans, all that
would have been approved by Uncle Toby. By a curious
SALUTATION TO FIVE
coincidence Lawrence Sterne had once applied for a chaplaincy
at Sledmerc. His ghost at least would have delighted in
the scene.
" One might do anything at Sledmere but frighten the
mares. Now and again Mark s antics would evoke a wild
old spectre flapping from the house and a sort of high nasal
litany would come down the wind: * You mustn t frighten the
mares ! You mustn t frighten the mares I * " So remembered
Howard de Walden.
Mark s education needed attention, especially in classical
languages. In 1888 he had been dropped on Lord Grenfell
the Sirdar, who had found him the most intelligent boy he
had ever met and taught him the rudiments of ancient
Egyptian: but this was deemed insufficient for a future
Squire. He had no knowledge of the Bible but he knew Sir
Richard Burton s Arabian Nights, notes and all, very well.
He might have been born an old rake for all their effect upon
him. At the Institut St. Louis in Brussels or at Beaumont he
regarded his school-fellows as children. Between the Druses
of Lebanon and the English Jesuits, between the Bookies of
Newmarket and the Croupiers at Monte Carlo, Mark absorbed
the values of the modern world with bright and unbored eyes.
His mother raced and gambled, but she imposed a close
appreciation of Swift and Dickens upon her son.
By 1890 he was entrusted to the Jesuits at Beaumont who
had the great common sense to let him follow his bent.
Provided he accepted their religious teaching and was loyal
to Loyola, he was allowed to invent games, tell Oriental
stories and act plays. At one time he was interested enough
in piracy to join a Navy Class. He accustomed a stock of
stagbeetles to become drunk on school beer. He collected
the loafers into gangs for Red Indian purposes. He showed
himself inimitable in school acting and was given a prifce for
elocution. Even Jesuit missionaries could learn something
from his set-piece on a Turkish General talking French. To
prevent him acquiring an excess of useless knowledge ht
naotfaer constantly swept him away on far journeys from which
he returned wkh a collection of travellers tales and lethal
weapons.
SIR MARK SYKES
The winter of 1894 he spent at Sledmere studying Marshal
Saxe on fortification. Later he wrote a short life of his hero
and became an authority on the Battle of Fontenoy. On his
sixteenth birthday he left England for Monte Carlo, taking
with him three fox-terriers and one tutor. He decided that
the foreign school-system overworked the pupils and preferred
the, company of the Croupiers. His mother dragged him to race
courses and Casinos until he was utterly bored by both. He was
found behind the Jockey Club at Newmarket deep in Swift.
From Monaco he passed to Brussels for a year s schooling,
but chiefly as a means of visiting the chief towns of Belgium.
From foreign Schools he learnt to put a cosmopolitan edge
on his future demeanour with men. Tradition he declared
was the true object of education and without that spirit he
saw English public schools beating the waves as vainly as
the Persian King.
Sir Tatton would have preferred to make a Harrovian of
him, but in this and everything was overruled by Jessica.
He managed to whisk Mark to famous criminal trials instead
of the pantomime. Likewise he would have chosen Gothic
Oxford but Cambridge was preferred for being nearer to
Newmarket. Mark was sent to Jesus College perhaps because
Arthur Gray, a strenuous Yorkshireman, was tolerant of aa
itinerant Catholic boy who had no intention of passing even
the " Little Go ". Easter 1897 found him matriculating and
taking rooms in Jesus Lane for himself and suite which
included a tutor, a companion and a maitre de cbambre. For a
person of his experience he found the University rather
narrowing, but for the first time he met men more briUJant
though not so variable as himself.
At King s he met Dr. Montagu James, later Provost, whose
knowledge of mediaeval detail was as uncanny as his stories
about ghosts. But he was also as quick a mimic as Mack
and though his programme was limited to the Dons of his
College he entertained Mark immensely. Mark frequented
the rooms of learning and never failed to impersonate a
Yorkshireman, a Dragoman or a Turkish official. It was stifl
a very pleasant world, although a War about something
stkring somewhere in South Africa.
SALUTATION TO FIVE
Mark devoted himself when in Cambridge to raising the
dramatic standards of the A.D.C. and editing a freelance
paper called the Snarl. But Cambridge terms were only
interludes between his constant explorations in the East.
That the Orient was the more important side of his life could
be realised by visitors who found him in Arab dress smoking
a Hookah, reciting scenes from his journeys or correcting
proofs of books he was about to launch on the world. On
one occasion this astonishing undergraduate was found enter
taining the Sultan s brother-in-law.
Cambridge fortunately did not prove utterly deficient in
knowledge of the East. Professor E. G. Browne combined
a Fellowship at Pembroke with Persian patriotism. Mark,
being Imperial, was drawn with difficulty towards the lesser
races but in the end his views had softened if not changed.
Comparing Mark with another gentleman adventurer, Wilfrid
Blunt, Browne remarked that Blunt saw the romance and
chivalry of the East, while Sykes had an eye for the comic
and burlesque. At the same time his intuition gave him that
flash of understanding which fails the more exact student.
Browne gave him credit for the greatest capacity for not
learning that he had ever met!
The fruits of his travels were appreciated. In the Hauran
he discovered an unrecorded inscription. Dr. James found
the Greek transcriptions in his notebook ** astonishingly
faithful and intelligent **. The Royal Geographical found his
discovery of the " Hill of Bones " of great importance. He
had reported his find freely but in vain : " Presently a German
will mention them in a text book as his own discovery and
British science will translate the text book and the world will
be informed of the discovery ". It was like the story of the
discovery of Neptune by Adams of St. John, for which the
credit went to France after a similar exhibition of sloth.
The Diaries of his trips became a book called Through Five
Turkish Provinces. It was a young man s book, underlining
the comic, but astonishing his Cambridge tutors. The Press
were surprised that an undergraduate could obtain leave to
visit Baghdad and Mosul, and his references to Armenians
appeared cold-blooded. He illustrated Oriental perversity by
138
SIR MARK SYKES
supposing the gift of a coat: " he will cut ojfF the sleeves for
gaiters and then use the body as an umbrella". His
Dragoman seemed prophetic of later days when he spoke of
* roast whale and potted hyena ", meaning veal and ham! He
described the splendid Bridge at Mosul whose position re
minded him exactly " of the Turkish wag, who said: I built
the bridge and if the river doesn t choose to run under it,
that is not my fault ". Mount Ararat he saw at sunrise when
the enormous bulk practically eclipses the sun before its
emergence over the peak. A sight never before or since
described.
At this point his education had come to an end, for on his
return he was called to active service in South Africa where
a War as menacing as Ararat had been darkening the Sun
of Empire.
Mark subjected his views on the rights and wrongs of
Briton and Boer to his soldierly duty. Cambridge Thought
had been the nurse of Imperialism. A contemporary, Forbes
Robinson, had been taken by a fellow Christ s man (called
Smuts) to visit President Kruger, who had told him that
21,000 of the rebellious Outlanders had died three years
before they signed the Petition for Franchise I To which
Smuts made the comment that the Transvaal might become
" a second Ireland 5,000 miles from home ". Incidents like
these fortified pro-Boer feeling in England. Mark delved
into history: " Never has there been a war when the peace
party was composed of such wretched specimens. Every war
in which we have been engaged has been vigorously opposed
by a few. Compare the opposition to the Napoleonic Wars
and the supporters. Pitt for it, Fox against. The Crimea,
Lord Palmerston for it, Cobden and Bright against. Compare,
I ask you, Chamberlain with Pitt . . . and if you can without
smiling, compare Fox with Stead and Labby! "
The War proved a puzzle for the Aldershot-pattcrned
Army, although the Boers were disappointed of the redcoats
which made such good marks in previous wars. Mark s
Eastern travels had fittened him and though he had come of
age to one of the richest successions in Yorkshire, he wrote
cheerfully home with a touch of savage humour and a spate
SALUTATION TO FIVE
of caricatures which kept the Army laughing. Incidentally,
though not under the name, he created " Colonel Blimp "
and illustrated a comic Drill Book for him. With his memory
of Vauban and Saxe he set out to build the type of field
fortifications in which the British Army later spent a European
War. For the time they proved excellent against Boers who
had lost their artillery. His work procured his name in
Despatches, though there was no mention of the famous
stimulant he invented for native workers the three W s
Water, Whisky and Worcestershire sauce! " They are really
rather nice people (I like them better than Englishmen) but
hush! What dreadful blasphemy have I whispered I " An
Alice in Wonderland war it was. " The local Boer leader is
a charming Frenchman, who gives cigarettes to all the
prisoners he takes, as well as a very good luncheon, after
which he sends them in stark naked 1 *
Wonderland passed to Blunderland, and Mark s letters,
serious enough, never omitted a timely scream. He found
himself in action at last with artillery support: " Now comes
the comic portion of the story. You see the gunners were
shooting at the wrong place and hit it, while we shot at the
wrong place and hit the right one and the joke is I only
fired to amuse the men and thought nothing was there."
As for the Blockhouses by which Kitchener finished the
War: " Some were built by common civilians, others by the
Royal Engineers. The common civilians built ordinary
Blockhouses as they were ordered. True, they turn bullets,
are good to shoot through and afford a pleasant shelter, but
who could not do that? "
The three Blockhouses built by the Engineers he treated to
Swiftean shafts. The first took double time to build (attri
butable to double brains) but collapsed in a thunderstorm just
as it was completed. The second was built on a river bank
twice as solidly but unfortunately "sailed gaily into die
river " bank and all. The third fell before finished
He passed his time with endless reading but amid his service
he could claim: "I have lampooned the General, exposed
the Royal Engineers, and arrested civilians. I also fed
twenty-four Boer babies and their twelve Mamas for two days***
140
SIR MARK SYKES
The job he most enjoyed was training Basutos : " I make them
sing their war-songs and the final charge in the attack is very
impressive."
As for the Engineers, they built a watch-tower without a
roof which Mark crowned with an old Kaffir cooking-pot
upside down, " quite bullet proof and shields the observer
from the foe **. Incidentally he had applied the system which
was to underlie the future tin-hat of the Army. But what was
this to the boyish mind which later camouflaged a piece of
cannon in Sledmere Park.
He was fond of recording incidents which never appeared
in the official history. From Rhenoster Bridge (December 30,
1900) he reported an action allowing him to " wear the medal
without shame ".
"... I joined the column just as the moon went down.
Our movements were shrouded in the deepest mystery.
Slowly through the dust and gloom the conquering column
wended its way, onward, ever onward. After about one hour s
march we came to a sudden halt. We had lost our way!
Did this daunt us? Never. We threw out outposts and
prepared to await until dawn. Suddenly a voice in the
darkness hailed: Halt, who comes there?* And who do
you think it was? Why, the sentry on the camp we had
started from!**
Mark s love and laudation was poured upon the hard-used
and ill-paid Militia. With grinning sarcasm he suggested
they should be used " in building farms for the returned Boer
prisoners or, if there is a dearth of Kaffir labour, to dig the
mines for the Jews at Johannesburg! **
He had no illusion as to whom the War would profit. " I
am glad to say the Outlanders must now serve as soldiers if
they wish to get back to their beloved mines. *
After two years living under canvas he returned home in
an open carriage with postilions surrounded by mounted
tenantry. A feudal fete followed worthy of a novel of
Disraeli. But Time s chariot wheels seemed ever pressing
behind him. He decided to marry and speedily return to the
East. Proposals to bring him into Parliament he scattered
with insult. " I have told them that I am neither a buffoot*,
j* t4*
SALUTATION TO FIVE
an office seeker nor a hypocrite, that I cannot talk sonorous
twaddle for endless hours/ So it was for the minarets of
the East, not Westminster, that he thrust again.
One problem required adjudication. His parents had been
involved in scandals and kwsuits. He had made peace
between them and decided that the solution was to send his
father to visit New Zealand with a chef. It was almost the
only place in the world unknown to Sir Tatton. His mother
was more difficult. Brilliant and wanton and in prudence
very wanting, she figured in several scenes on racecourses.
They are not written in the annals of Mayfair. Once King
Edward VII had to be rescued from her at the Jockey Club
enclosure in Newmarket. Not that she proffered him em
braces but that her mood led her to poke the royal ribs. On
another occasion her Puritan sister, Mrs. Arthur James,
actually drove over her at Ascot rather than allow her to
join her smart party. Mark was always magnanimous to the
woman who taught him the Faith, Swift and Dickens. The
manner of her end was grim or, as he said, " it was like the
last phase of Napoleon/*
Into this divided household Mark introduced his beloved
Edith Gorst and married her. Her visit to Sledmere was
cut short by the family solicitor who called to remind her she
had promised Sir Tatton that her visit would be a short one!
The poor old gentleman had no particular reason to approve
of brides on the premises.
The Yorkshire papers announced that Mark s honeymoon
would be spent in Jerusalem. However, he had time to
take his bride to Ireland and associate himself with George
Wyndham, a figure of chivalry as Chief Secretary quartered
in the Phoenix Park. Although he found traces of the feuds,
fatalism and fun of the Orient in Ireland, Mark decided his
real bent was the Middle East, Besides, his masterpiece was
to cover the whole Ottoman Empire. Within twenty-four
hours he wrote: " Give me a native regiment to organise, a
rebellion to raise, a map to make, a blockhouse line to construct
and I will do it: anything but this life of a cat. . . ."
Before long he was surveying earthquakes in the Balkans,
delighting in Sir Nicolas O Connor in Constantinople, while
14*
SIR MARK SYKES
his wife produced a genuine heir at Therapia. Constantinople
he described as though in parody of Second Corinthians as
** indestructible, all-corrupting, yet seemingly incorruptible ".
The following year appeared Dar-ul-Islam, the fruits of his
swift prenuptial dash of 1,600 miles into some unknown
country which he succeeded in mapping. Rudyard Kipling
wrote after reading it at a sitting for his sole knowledge of
Turkey: "I can smell the smell (much like ours in India I
take it) of the towns. What you said about the cold in warm
climates went to my bones. Nothing is colder than the East
when she chooses. I am very glad you like the Turk. . . . You
ought to have been born in the East." H. G. Wells decided
the book would " be a great lark to read ". The pithiest
review came from the Spectator to the effect that: ** Travel
books are of three kinds. There are the learned books and the
ignorant books and the books written by Captain Mark Sykes 1 "
For a time he became attached to Sir Nicolas O Connor
in the leisurely way he had served George Wyndham.
Apparently Irishmen could understand the Turk and during
O Connor s embassy "there was never a day when British
policy was in doubt nor yet ever one when its representative
was disliked ". For lack of such a working tandem as
O Connor and Sykes, Turkey was allowed later to slip into
war against England.
Meantime with escort and mules and wife Mark scoured
Turkey-in-Asia which, to the English mind, was only the
field of St. Paul s egotistical journeys. Mark s recipe was
practical: "Wipe Omar Khayyam, Bernard Shaw out of
your mind, learn the Book of Job by heart for philosophy,
the Book of Judges, the Arabian Nights (Burton s translation)
for ethics. Ride by balance, not by grip, keep your girths
loose, look out for rat-holes, be polite and dignified in your
conversation." His final summary was : " When I see this
country and see our long lost opportunities it makes me mad.
I dare say we are meant to be masters of Turkey and that is
why we are carrying on like this. The ways of God are
inscrutable. I cannot help seeing the finger of destiny in all
this and yet we are a declining nation."
To him the signs of the times were dimly but prophetically
143
SALUTATION TO FIVE
apparent. He felt it was his duty to scout and scour the Middle
East, make himself amusing to all men, tolerant to all Creeds
and prepare for any work England might one day throw to
him. It was nearer than he dreamed.
Mark had found himself in the odd position of a Yorkshire
squire attached to the Roman Communion. He realised it
tended more to prevent a political career than even the public
scufHings of his ill-assorted parents. It made him very devout
and strangely for a pupil of the Jesuits he had a sense of
mysticism. Stranger still to the outsider, he was immensely
tolerant. His travels threw him outside the swaddling clothes
of English Catholicism or of the political dislike of the Irish
inculcated by Conservatives. He found Irelands elsewhere
than in the East Atlantic. As for difference in rite he recalled
some funny sideshows. Once he attended Coptic Mass in
the desert when prayers were included for the Royal Family
and Sir Mark Sykes and brood. On an odder occasion he
found the Nestorian Church had consecrated a Boy Bishop
and why? Because the kte Primate s family had become
Chaldaean Catholics 1 He must have been the only English
man to discover that Jacobite Christians were really Kurds.
He learnt, as the late Lord Lovat learnt in Abyssinia, that the
sacrifices of Abraham may continue under the New Law.
But these are matters which are probably hidden from
Canterbury as well as from Roman Congregations.
When old Sir Tatton died as Mark believed in the spirit of
the Church Invisible, he entered at night with one companion
into the beautiful Anglican Church his father had built and
recited the Office of the Dead, the Requiem Mass (without the
Consecrations) and finally the Absolutions. Stranger things
have occurred in the Church of Engknd: and who would
say him Nay?
In humorous mood Mark sketched an Anglican Church
Pageant in the course of which a final Tableau showed the
Bishop of London taking the Cardinal of Westminster and
General Booth to a benefit performance at the Empire Theatre.
It should be added that by that time the Empire Parade of
courtesans was no longer tolerated, and the imagination of
the pious was not embarrassed by Mark s sketch.
144
SIR MARK SYKES
He was like every true traveller, impressed by the Moslem
achievements. The Prophet was " in earnest, mad if you
will, but a scheming, crafty, vainglorious impostor never! "
He considered the acceptance of polygamy " an unparalleled
disaster for the world " even as an antiseptic to the Oriental
vice. He realised the position held by Sodomy in the East
and naively suggested introducing the British Public School
into India at least as the best manner of cure. Though he
disbelieved in European grafts on the East, he wished the
same " good wholesome school " upon the Turks, for whom
he always extended qualified admiration and hopes.
Turks and Moslems 1 They caused him worry and
watchfulness for the rest of his life. What curious prescience
sent him on his uncomfortable journeys far from country-
house luxury and political ambitions at home? At one time
he reported he had ** been living on the ground without a
tent for the last fifteen days and eating the veriest garbage ".
Was it to provide the War Office with sketches and plans of
unmapped territory? No man rode or worked or wrote in
such a desperate hurry.
He collected lists of Tribes unknown to the Royal Geo
graphical Society. He learnt there were not 700 real Turks
in male descent at Constantinople. " Damn those Turks : they
are perfectly appalling and yet so important. I am coming to
the belief that the Turk as such is a myth." But the myth
was soon realised in war and appallingly for England. It
was Russia whom he termed a disease, and when Edward
Grey agreed to partition Persia by Treaty with the Czar, Mark
wrote furiously: " Another slice of the human race is to be
sludged under the worst government in the world, no matter
what happens in the future. . . . We English are to have
free play in the inaccessible mountains of the Hindu Kush,
the grilling and pestiferous shores of the Persian Gulf/*
Mark stormed through what he called " the Caliph s Last
Heritage " He studied intensively the old Turkey and the
new Turk. The corruption and futility roused his wildest
humour. He found ** an expensive modern road whose first
section was in ruins before the last was finished ". Surely
it was better to live amongst the Arabian Nights and learn
SALUTATION TO FIVE
about great kings and travellers. He railed and roared with
delight at the inefficacy of Turkish ships, on which "all
natural laws are permanently suspended ". A Turkish
steamer can proceed with engines which no ship chandler
could accept as scrap iron. On Turkish steamers there is no
reason why the chart should not be used as a table cloth for
the captain s dinner.
In fact he thoroughly enjoyed himself dancing the Puck
betwixt East and West. Lord Curzon in his youthful travels
had allowed bowing Orientals to believe he might possibly
become a consort of Queen Victoria. Mark found himself
mistaken for " the King of England s daughter in disguise! "
as good a travelling dress as any.
If they thought he was a spy he did not care. He made no
secret of his maps and sketches, using Turkish soldiers to
mark base-lines and tipping the police handsomely so that
they could report they were keeping him under careful
observation. He could deal with any Easterner except the
misfits who had been educated by American missionaries.
To complete his view of the Moslem he returned by Egypt,
Tunisia, Algeria and Spain which he crossed by mules provided
by his friend and schoolmate of Beaumont days, the Duke of
Alba. Railways he was able to avoid entirely. His comment
on Egypt had already been made : " By God s will this wonder
ful Egypt, half vision and half nightmare, is the work of
Cromer who knew not Gordon nor yet native opinion **.
Comparing French and British methods: " The English
Empire has been formed to amuse and employ an aristocracy,
the French Empire to profit a democratic bureaucracy **. He
had little use for France or Italy in their African projects.
" We only rule by favour of Moslems because we play the
game nine times out of ten/*
By this time Mark was a first-hand and comparatively
first-class authority on the East. The time had come for him
to deliver words of wisdom and warning in the House of
Commons.
He had long declared for Tory Democracy and accordingly
stood for the home Division of Buckrose at the Elections of
1909 and 1910, Each time he was defeated by two hundred
146
SIR MARK SYKES
votes in a constituency which his uncle Christopher had once
lost by one. The difference probably represented the un
forgiving Protestants. He was variously assailed as " Nabob,
Papist and Enfant Terrible ".
Mark saw further ahead than the Liberal-Tory scuffles of
that day. The question he set himself could be repeated
today: "Will the great fluctuating majority be captured by
the Socialists, anti-nationalists, humanitarians, atheists or can
England be saved from herself? " At any rate he set out to
place her on the ways of salvation. Life was hastening but
Luck suddenly hastened to keep step. The sitting member
for Hull was unseated on petition and Mark was given
his place.
Before the end of 1911 he made his maiden. It counted
with F. E. Smith s as one of the memorable successes in that
manner of speech. After John Dillon had wearied the House,
Mark rose to comment on Anglo-German relations as adduced
by Edward Grey. Mark spun the rosary of peril from Tunis
to Travancore. Roars of laughter rippled round his anecdotes,
but otherwise Aubrey Herbert recorded it was heard " in the
rare complete silence that the House sometimes gives to a
distinguished contribution to its debates *. The result had
certainly never happened before. The Liberal Prime Minister
rose to congratulate the Tory recruit, a pleasant gesture of
which Asquith of Balliol was capable. Mark airily disposed
of his success as a fluke. But flukes are unprepared. By
arid desert and betwixt Sinai and Scinde he had worked for
this hour. The Tories were flattered by his arrival but Mark
himself was flabbergasted by a Party he found " somnolent
and stupid". He met one Tory who was neither, who
assured him he was the eventual leader, adding " you must
never look ahead ". This was F. E. Smith, but Mark
commented: " This is desperate for this fellow has no belief,
no principle ".
The maiden speech delighted Yorkshire as though a colt
had scored a century in his first match against the Australians*
It was said that there was only one Tory in the Buckrose
Division who had not lost his head with delight over Mark s
maiden; and that was Mark himself .
SALUTATION TO FIVE
The dominant characters, Lloyd George and Winston, were
Liberal and Buchan (Lord Tweedsmuir) noted that "the
Opposition confined itself to opposing though a few younger
men, like Mark Sykes and Aubrey Herbert, stood for some
thing more than a negation ". But Mark was not born to be
a negative or reside in camera obscura.
His few short years ahead were swayed upon the eddies of
the Irish trouble. It was realised that a Tory Democrat
might be the right man to snatch the wheel from the Unionists,
who were without a chart, and the Liberals, who were without
pilot. " It is a question ", he said, " of two ships in a fog
trying to avoid a collision." Mark began by crossing swords
with Redmond and ended by debating against Carson.
As a Unionist he declared that Pitt s Union had failed.
"The essential to a settlement is that there shall be no
victory/* The year of Fate, 1914, was under way before
Mark made his great appeal outside Party. Turning to the
excited opponents he blamed both: "We have drifted on
passions until we, have divided class from ckss, creed from
creed, in order to further our policies until the military forces
and the very Throne have been involved in our quarrels ".
Then he advanced his solution. He appealed entreatingly
for a Federalism with the temporary exclusion of Ulster. It
meant peace for England and unity in Ireland. After 35
years of " solutioning ", Ireland today would be in a happier,
at least more elastic., state than the present dual deadlock,
unless of course such deadlock is desirable to all time.
Mark naturally fell under Tory suspicions, while Carson s
Ulstennen decided that a Papist in the Unionist camp could be
as dangerous as " a nigger in the pile ". Labour in Hull were
hailing a future leader. The Irish began to dream that if
liberals failed them, Tory Democracy evolved from George
Wyndham to Mark Sykes, might one day fill the Bill.
No sooner had arms been landed by both combatants in
Ireland and the field set for Civil War between the Volunteers
of the North and the South than a Kaiser, afraid of his own
bellicosity, let slip the Hounds of War which the statesmen of
the world have been struggling to confine to Hell s Kennels
ever since.
148
SIR MARK SYKKS
The Irish trouble was postponed, but when it came up for
settlement, neither Redmond nor Sykes was there. Both
were destined to die overwhelmed by their own endeavours.
It is interesting that the Irish in Yorkshire, although his
political opponents in Hull, had come to watch him with
such hope and belief that they attributed his early death to
foul means. It was a mighty relief to Belfast Orangemen
and to Ulster Unionists that he died when he died. He might
so easily have turned their flank.
War now has a familiar ring but in 1914 it rang like a
Firebell at a children s tea party. Mark was one of the few
Englishmen who was absolutely ready and he left the House
to take up immediate tasks until the hour of his death.
At home he had struggled to make Territorials a success.
As far back as 1910 he had called for Kitchener to organise
Haldane s " Paper Dragon ". Meantime he raised Yeomanry
amongst his farmers, turned the wagoners of the Wold into
military drivers, conducted forced marches from Sledmere to
Richmond, from Doncaster to Scarborough, defended Burdale
Tunnel from a midnight attack whereat people only smiled.
" Our Mark playing Boy Scout " or " Now the War Office
will feel what an enfant terribk is! "
Even his dramatic Play of warning had been censored for
fear of giving offence to a European Power.
But Mark was terribly serious. He told the House that
the danger of invasion " is like the doctrine of eternal punish
ment. Some believe in it and some do not, but prudent
people take precautions/* The British are not prudent, only
somnolent, but in any case a year after this speech they woke
up and declared War for themselves.
On the Eastern field he was sorely needed. During ten
years he had supplied maps and reconnaissance of Asia Minor
to the War Office. By curious foresight he had mapped
N.W. Mesopotamia and South of Jerusalem, parts which the
authorities had left to the unborn combatants of Armageddon
to put into map cases. He spoke prophetically of a German
frontier, and then a Russian frontier descending upon the
East. He had not envisaged the day when England would
have skedaddled.
149
SALUTATION TO FIVE
Kitchener quickly placed Mark on the general staff for
service in the East where he had mapped 5,000 miles of
military roads in his day. Thither and hither he was plunged
for the next four years. He suggested the Arab Revolt even
before Turkey had made the mistake Italy made in a later war
by joining the eventual losers when dressed up as cock-crowing
conquerors. Mark saw clearly that the end of the Ottoman
Empire at the hands of the Young Turks meant that War
could not be averted. He wished Bulgaria to be bribed
either with their lost provinces or with payment of their
debts. It would have saved British lives and prestige if his
advice had been taken, but the Bulgars were cheerfully added
to the Kaiser s forces.
Mark s war achievements in the East came under two heads :
First the Sykes-Picot Treaty dividing the aims of France
and the aims of England.
Secondly, his briefing of Balfour for the Zionist Declaration.
After interviewing Bulgarians, the Khedive, Armenians,
he catalogued and caricatured Moslems of every degree with
soft intemperate art in the effort to make home officials under
stand. The real difficulty in the Middle East was the obstinate
claim of the French upon Syria, dating from the Crusades-
It was not unlike the hold of England upon Ireland in the past.
When Mark returned to England at the end of 1915 he was
instructed to make an arrangement with the French. He was
expected to prove equally pro-Arab and pro-French and to
promise Arabs their freedom while satisfying French pride of
possession. It was like promising Irish Freedom while
bidding Orange Ulster draw the lines of partition. In the
East the line of partition was called the Sykes-Picot Treaty:
and was the result of the -cabined and confined conditions
imposed on Mark by his own Government. To be loyal to
them and the Arab and the French ally passed the wit of man,
but he tried. One Lawrence (later surnamed " of Arabia ")
also tried his hand at drawing the Arab from the Turk and
crossed Mark s path. In years to come the author of the
Seven Pilbtrs of Wisdom described Mark as "a bundle of
prejudices, intuitions, half-sciences. His ideas were of the
outside; and he lacked patience to test his material before
150
SIR MARK SYKES
choosing his style of building. . . . Laughs were his
triumphs. His instincts lay in parody; by choice he was a
caricaturist rather than an artist; even in statesmanship. He
saw the odd in everything and missed the even. He would
sketch out in a few dashes a new world, all out of scale, but
vivid as a vision of some sides of the thing we hoped. His
help did us good and harm."
So Lawrence was also a caricaturist. The pity is that we
have not Mark s counter-sketch.
Mark s War wanderings were greater even than in days of
peaceful exploration. Five times he crossed the Mediterranean,
twice the North Sea. Late in 1915 he went to India as
Kitchener s envoy to discuss Mesopotamia with the Viceroy.
He would have accompanied Kitchener on his kst and fatal
trip to Russia, had it not been cancelled in the previous week.
Already he had found his way to the Czar at Petersburg and the
Grand Duke, Commander in Chief in the Caucasus, to bring
them the results of his secret conference with Georges Picot.
Mr. Jefferies described the Sykes-Picot Treaty as dividing
the lionskin while the Turkish lion was still alive. The
consequential map was like one that children draw when
parcelling the moon into coloured strips* French and British
were to divide Syria, and, so secret was the proceeding, that
McMahon, the British Commissioner in Egypt, knew nothing.
In fact he was kept in the same darkness as the Sultan himself
and the poor man was engaged in making extensive promises
to the Arabs, all of which they swallowed " in the Name of
God the Merciful, the Compassionate ". Palestine guaranteed
to the Sheriff of Mecca by McMahon was secretly withdrawn
from him by Sykes. It was not Mark s fault, for the military
situation was desperate and the Arabs had to be enticed into
revolt. McMahon at least sent the Sheriff a gift of 20,000 in
gold : but that " eminent, energetic and magnanimous
Minister ", as the Sheriff hailed him, received the shock of his
life when Mark called with a coloured map and asked " what
do you think of my Treaty ? " It was the first hint McMahon
had of its existence. The aforesaid " God the Merciful, the
Compassionate " allowed the bewildered High Commissioner
to be quietly recalled*
SALUTATION TO FIVE
Matk now had to nurse the Zionist bantling and finds
record in Dr. Weizmann s Trial and Error. In February 1917
" Sir Mark spoke with the utmost freedom of the difficulties
which confronted us. I may say that he placed all his diplo
matic skill at our disposal and that without it we should have
had much heavier going than we did. . . . His chief concern
at the moment was the attitude of the Powers. Sir Mark had
been in Russia, had talked with the Foreign Minister Sasonov
and anticipated little difficulty from that quarter." France
was the difficulty, wanting all Syria and much of Palestine.
The Zionists must talk to the French, which meant, it was
pointed out, that the French Rabbis would press for a French
Palestine! " Sir Mark went on to speak of the Arab problem.
Within a generation the movement would come into its own,
for the Arabs had intelligence, vitality and linguistic unity.
But he believed the Arabs would come to terms with us
particularly if they received Jewish support in other matters.
Sir Mark anticipated the attitude of the greatest of the Arabs,
the Emir FeiseL" The inevitable Picot was introduced
personally into the conversations but neither of the begetters
mentioned their Treaty ! Dr. Weizmann learnt it in the nature
of a shock the following month: "startling information,
unjust to England, fatal to us and not helpful to the Arabs ",
It was not until Allenby captured Jerusalem that the
egregious Picot received his shock. The conqueror kindly
permitted him to join the entering procession, after which
Picot proposed he should set up Gvil Government the next
day! Lawrence has described the soldierly snub which he
received. At any rate that was the end of Monsieur Picot.
The fall of Jerusalem, trumpeted as the climax of all the
Crusades, was accompanied by the unsuspected appearance
of the horizons of Zionism. This was destined to pky an
absorbing and final influence in Mark s life. It appears that
he received a hint one of those brain-waves which the
insignificant often impose on the world-players that if a
national home were promised to the Zionists the effect in
America would be immense.
In the United States the Allies had been strongly opposed
by Irish-Americans and by Germans including German Jews.
SIR MARK SYKES
The fact remained that the United States had dekyed their
entry into the War alarmingly. This could be laid on President
Wilson, for ever with his ear to the ground and his vision in
the clouds. Wilson s advisers included Justice Brandeis the
Zionist leader. Mark Sykes took the hint like flame and
submitted the idea to Balfour. Now that wise observer of
the ways of nationalities and sub-nations had profited by his
trip to Washington. He had come to a conclusion that
England s critics in America must be diminished. This
could be achieved only by granting Irish Home Rule or a
Zionist Home. The Irish-Americans by now were tucked
away in the American armies. They might trouble Wilson
one day but not England at war. Zionism was the winning
card and it was played with Mark s enthusiasm but behind
Balfour s poker-face !
Still, Mark found influences were working against him at
the Foreign Office but the trust which Jew, Arab and
Armenian felt in him made him indispensable. Strange
scenes were discerned upon the Foreign Office steps where
the Zionist envoys were gathered in foggy expectation.
Within, the Cabinet were deciding the text of Balfour s
Declaration. Suddenly Mark appeared with the actual
document, calling out: " Dr. Weismann, it s a boyl "
The boy grew to become an enfant terribly but for the time
Balfour roused immense satisfaction from the Jewry of the
world. As it was stated that " nothing should be done which
may prejudice the civil and religious rights of the existing
non- Jewish communities ", the Arabs should have been
equally assured.
The Balfour Declaration was issued in a letter to the nearest
title known to a King of the Jews, that of Lord Rothschild
(November 2, 1917). In March following Mark was arranging
for the departure of a Zionist Commission with French and
Italian envoys thrown in. An audience with the King had
been his suggestion, but this was postponed owing to dis-
quietening telegrams from Cairo. The Arabs were , asking
astonished questions. Dr. Weizmann pleaded for the audience
and was engaged with Mark in wrathful discussion.- Tho,".
argument continued until Mr. Balfour was seen slowly
SALUTATION TO FIVE
mounting the stairs of the Foreign Office. After half an
hour s privacy Mark emerged to say that Mr. Balfour thought
the audience should take place and was at that moment
"telephoning to the Palace to explain that the whole mis
understanding had arisen through his own late arrival at the
office "1 Sometimes indeed British diplomacy bears a touch
of the Oriental.
With the Armistice of November n, 1918, the " remaining
sands " of Mark s life were due to fall. The East had made
him a fatalist and even had he known, he would not have
acted otherwise. He was as sure as any Moslem of the
Kadehr which is graven on every man s forehead.
On the day following the Armistice he reached Jerusalem
and visited the Holy Sepulchre before proceeding to the
German Hostel on the Mount of Olives. Henceforth he
moved as in a dream for he was worn almost to a shadow. The
General Election was but a murmur on the horizon. He had
other works in hand but he must have smiled to find himself
returned by ten thousand of a majority: " Anyway, I cannot
bother my head about it now as I have more important
things to do. Is Europe in the throes of death or pangs
of birth?" a question to which thirty years have given no
answer.
His immediate concern was to gather up the tangled threads
in Syria. That wretched Picot Treaty haunted him and
Zionism dogged his steps. He set forth for Paris to support
the League of Nations: " No revenge but justice, reparation
and security. I have accepted neither honour nor office/
Like Lawrence he refused the Michael and George, the
consolation prize of Empire. Both felt dismay at heart for
the future of the Arabs. Mark had designed them a flag
which he saluted himself amid immense enthusiasm. People
rose to acclaim him. He had become a disposer of boundaries,
an abettor of nationalities, a guardian of England s promises.
He was trusted by them as the heaven-sent arbiter of their
destinies.
To Paris then he went, looking like a deathmask, with a
Pandora s box for luggage, wherein opposing hopes stifled
each other* By February 1919 he had reached a hotbed of
SIR MARK SYKES
intrigue, unblessed by God or Pope. Mark had to save
Arabs from Jews and both from the claims of the French.
The fate of the Armenians was written on his weakening
heart: " If the Arabs desert the Armenians, may God desert
them". The bitterness which he had found rising in
Palestine had entered him. On February 7 he counselled
with Lawrence and on February 16 he died. Lawrence
wrote: " ... his kst week in Paris tried to atone. He had
returned from a period of political duty in Syria, after his
awful realisation of the true shape of his dreams, to say
gallantly, I was wrong: here is the truth. His former friends
would not see his new earnestness and thought him fickle
and in error; and very soon he died. It was a tragedy of
tragedies, for the Arab sake."
Such was Lawrence s finality of pronouncement. He had
happier died himself in Paris for he lived to achieve
immense fame. But he saw the Arab betrayed and his own
promises trodden into the dust. He also came to " awful
realisation of the truth " and in his strange manner sought
atonement, refusing honours, relinquishing rank and name,
re-serving in the lowest rank until the Merciful and Com
passionate gave him the chance to cast his life away upon the
roadside. For him also the Kadebr was engraven.
There was great mourning and crying of woe when Mark
died. He had faced danger and disease in every corner of
Asia and Africa. It was ironical that the Sunderer of Societies
and Destroyer of Delights should find him in a luxurious
Paris hotel. At any rate he attained the peace surpassing the
understanding of any Peace Conference. In Jerusalem and in
Westminster his Requiem was sung. Jews, Arabs and
Armenians were united in grief. " The Armenian Nation "
managed to send a wreath of red roses to his funeral before
their own extinction. His Yorkshire monument was worthy
of his life. His father had built a soaring Eleanor Cross on
the Wolds and against one panel his figure lifesize was
blazoned, armoured and sworded in bronze. In the back
ground stood the Holy City and for scroll over his head
the Laetare Jerusalem. No Crusader was ever more featly
honoured.
155
SALUTATION TO FIVE
It was generally believed that, had he lived, he would have
altered many things in the final decisions of the victors. As
it was, Statesmen, Kings and Prelates all bespoke the certain
advance awaiting his career. They believed he would have
reached the heights. Alas, when he found himself in the
depths, he had no longer the will to live. Some sought to
draw a consoling moral. Lord Curzon, whose hour of agony
was yet to come, wrote: * Such lives seem intended as a
model and an inspiration and possess a proportion and beauty
like some work of art half-finished but yet perfect. . . ."
The Latin Poet had said all this before:
" Ah scelus^ ah facinus\ properas quid flere, viator^
Non licet hie vitae de brevitate queri"
His Cambridge College quietly added his name to the
bottom of their War Memorial, where a contemporary
passing was heard to murmur some such words as: " Oh,
some College Servant ? I don t remember the name a fine
old English one all the same! "
156
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