From 1883 on for thirty years I studied English life and English politics, literature and art as closely as I could. As editor first of the Evening News and then of the Fortnightly Review, I could meet almost anyone I wanted to meet, and as I made a good deal of money from time to time and soon got the name of giving excellent luncheons, I could meet even people of importance on an even footing. I may as well prove this at once for the benefit of the ordinary American journalist who declares in the New York World that all doors were shut in my face and that Balfour sneered at me. Such a journalist is totally incapable of reading between the lines of plain print.
The incident he refers to is recorded in Mrs. Asquith's Autobiography. "On one occasion," she wrote, "my husband and I went to a lunch given to meet Mr. Frank Harris." She goes on to tell that I monopolized the conversation and that her hero, Arthur Balfour, "scored" off me. I don't recall Balfour's "score"; I never heard him score off anyone; but the fact that the Prime Minister and his wife were asked to meet me shows that I had a very considerable position in London, and I can recall other occasions on which the Asquiths were invited to meet me by more important people.
I have explained such facts in the most modest way by saying that I gave good luncheons and had very interesting people at my table; but the Michael Monohans and other tenth-rate American critics persist in regarding me as one of themselves. How did "an obscure journalist," they wonder, come to talk with this and that celebrity on an equality? Perhaps because he was not "obscure," but happened to be an equal, and I emphasize this at the beginning because it redounds to the honour of England, and, indeed, is the chief factor in making English society the most interesting in the world.
London recognizes individual ability more quickly and more surely than any other city on earth. Consequently, there is here a diversity of talents not to be found elsewhere and a rich piquancy of varied interests that one seeks in vain in any other capital. Even Vienna and Paris seem dull after London, for in those cities you can always guess whom you will meet from the position of your host and hostess. In one room in London I have seen Prince Edward (afterwards King Edward) talking to Hyndman, the socialist agitator, while Lord Wolseley and Herbert Bismarck listened eagerly intent; at the same time near the fireplace Arthur Balfour, Henry Irving and Theodore Roosevelt hung on the lips of Whistler, who was telling a story.
I remember giving a lunch when I had the old Duke of Cambridge on my right and Russell Lowell, the American ambassador on my left, besides Beerbohm Tree and Willy Grenfell (now Lord Desborough), John Burns, the firebrand agitator, afterwards an M.P. and minister, the poet George Wyndham and Alfred Russel Wallace, all listening spellbound to the humour and eloquence of Oscar Wilde; and it was the uncle of the Queen who had asked me to invite him, as he had heard so much of Wilde's genius.
I want to tell of these men and of many others at least as justly renowned in order to give a picture of those crowded days of London in the last decades of the nineteenth and the first of the twentieth century.
As I have said, cherishing the ambition of going into the House of Commons myself, I was at first more eager to know the politicians than the poets. I took pains to be present every evening in the House for several years, until I had learned not only to know the fifty or sixty more prominent members, but also the procedure, traditions and tone of the Assembly. It is often spoken of as unique, ideal and all the rest of it, and the House of Commons must certainly be regarded as the finest deliberative assembly in the world. In the first year or so the circumstance that made the greatest impression on me was the election of Mr. Arthur Peel early in 1884 to the Speakership, instead of Mr.
Brand, whom I knew, who was retiring as Lord Hampden. At that time few members even knew anything of Arthur Peel, who was the youngest son of the famous prime minister, and who had been almost undistinguished as a member from Warwick for many years. But the moment he got on his feet to return thanks for his election everyone was thrilled. He was fairly tall, had a good presence, a dark, bearded face set off by a high aquiline nose, an ordinary, baritone voice; yet he had an air of masterful dignity that was impressive; and what he said was noteworthy.
I shall always remember one long sentence, badly constructed, but perfectly natural-the talk of a man thinking aloud and not one reciting a carefully prepared oration-yet carrying in clumsy words a curious sense of authority.
"With the support of the House," he said, "I may be permitted," and he paused-"to enforce the unwritten law, the most cherished and inestimable tradition of this House, I mean that personal courtesy, that interchange of chivalry between member and member-compatible with the most effective party debate-which is one of the oldest, and I humbly trust may always be, the most cherished of the traditions of this great Assembly." The sensation was astonishing: everyone felt that he had struck the right note, and had struck it with an almost magical dignity of personal character. From that moment the Speaker held the house in awe. Not his impartiality alone, but his greatness of character was never questioned. Ever afterwards I had a higher opinion of the House of Commons; perhaps among the ruck of silent members whom one didn't know, there might be another Arthur Peel!
I followed the debates more closely than ever and I was able to do this most comfortably through the kindness of Lord Randolph Churchill, whom I came to know well about this time. As soon as he found that I had some difficulty now and then in getting a seat in the "Distinguished Stranger's Gallery," he spoke to the Speaker and to the funny little Master of Arms, Gossett, whom I never saw but in his court dress with little sword, knickers and black silk stockings; and so got me a seat on the floor of the House itself in a sort of pew set apart for the half dozen of the Speaker's friends. There I could hear and see everything, even with my short sight, as if I had been a member.
My first meeting with Lord Randolph Churchill impressed me hugely. He was always represented by Punch and the comic papers as a very small man, or even as a boy, in spite of a ferocious upturned moustache. To my astonishment I found he was a good five feet nine or ten inches in height and carried himself bravely. The peculiarity of his face was seldom or never caricatured; it consisted of a pair of prominent round grey-blue eyes, well deserving the nickname of goggle-eyes. The face was peculiarly expressive of anger or contempt, but a second glance showed that the features were all fairly regular and the shape of the head quite excellent. Altogether a personable man, but when he spoke in the House, he often stood with one hand akimbo on his hip, which, with his thick, upturned, dark moustache, gave him a cocky or cheeky look and led the would-be humorists to treat him as an impudent boy; and he was assuredly lacking in reverence for his elders and supposed leaders in the House of Commons.
At the very beginning he invited me to come one afternoon to the Carlton Club to talk over some incident in the Bradlaugh imbroglio. I was struck almost at once by the surpassing generalship in the man and by his colossal assurance. Oddly enough, I had come to the meeting without having lunched, and as I knew it was not allowed to give food to a non-member in the Carlton, I mentioned a propos de bottes that I was sharp set. At once he declared that he would have something brought up at once, and when I reminded him of the rule, he shrugged his shoulders, rang, and when the footman came, gave his order with such deliberate curtness that the man was only anxious to get away and do what he was told. I got an excellent lunch and a good bottle of wine in a jiffy: as usual, in England I found that mean rules were made for mean men.
Soon after our first meeting I talked to Randolph of Bradlaugh, for I had formed a high opinion of Bradlaugh's character when he lectured in America. Randolph was proud of an incident that Winston has told excellently in his Life, and so I make no apology for reproducing it here.
"On February 21 there was another Bradlaugh scene. The member for Northampton, advancing suddenly to the table, produced a book, said to be a Testament, from his pocket, and duly swore himself upon it, to the consternation of the members. Lord Randolph was the first to recover from the surprise which this act of audacity created. He declared that Mr. Bradlaugh, by the outrage of taking in defiance of the House an oath of a meaningless character upon a book alleged to be a Testament-it might have been the Fruits of Philosophy-had vacated his seat and should be treated as if he were dead." In moving for a new writ, he implored the House to act promptly and vindicate its authority. Mr. Gladstone, however, persuaded both sides to put off the decision until the next day. On the 22nd therefore a debate on privilege ensued. Sir Stafford Northcote merely moved to exclude Mr. Bradlaugh from the precincts of the House, thus modifying Lord Randolph's motion for a new writ. Lord Randolph protested against such a 'milk and water' policy and urged the immediate punishment of the offender. After a long discussion, in which the temper of all parties was inflamed by Mr. Bradlaugh's repeated interruptions, Sir Stafford substituted for his simple motion of exclusion a proposal to expel Mr. Bradlaugh from the House; and this being carried, the seat for Northampton was thereby vacated.
"Lord Randolph seems to have gained much credit in Tory circles for the promptness and energy with which he had acted," his son writes.
Then came the Kilmainham negotiations and Mr. Parnell's release, and on top of all the murder in Phoenix Park of Lord Frederick Cavendish and Mr.
Burke. But alas! Randolph had fallen seriously ill and was out of the fight for half a year. Everyone said that had Randolph been able to head the attack on the Kilmainham Treaty, Gladstone's government would have fallen.
He returned to a triumph. The Liberals had been asked by their Whips not to take part in the discussion on Egypt and Randolph at once jeered at them "for assisting in the capacity of mutes at the funeral obsequies of free speech."
I give this as a proof of his power of speech, though it was his captaincy I always admired, and not his eloquence. Years later, talking with Lord Hartington of Randolph's career, I found that he whom I always regarded as "the conscience of the House of Commons" agreed with me in my estimate of Randolph.
He told me how annoyed Gladstone was with Randolph over the Bradlaugh business. "He doesn't believe in Christianity," said Gladstone, "yet is not ashamed to use the religious prejudices of others to gain some paltry political advantage."
"But at length," said Lord Hartington, "the chiefs of both parties found themselves in one lobby and the majority of the House with Randolph in the other, which convinced me that Randolph was a strategist without an equal.
And later no one ever led the House of Commons as he did: he knew the House better than it knew itself. As a Parliamentarian he had no equal, no second, even, in my experience."
In our first talk I recognized the qualities in Randolph of a great captain, not as clearly as I saw them later, but clearly enough to see in him a reincarnation of the peculiar power of his ancestor, the first Duke. He had, too, at this time an extraordinary geniality and a passionate belief in the efficacy of a series of reforms which I thought merely lenitive, but which he lauded as distinctively English. I shall have much more to say of him later, but here, because it has become the fashion to sneer at him, I wish to put it on record that no one could meet him, as no one could meet Parnell, without recognizing greatness in him. Both of them made a far deeper impression on me than Gladstone, though he was infinitely the most articulate of the two.
In these first years of my editorship I got to know A. M. Broadley, who wrote for the World and made himself prominent as a defender of Arabi Pasha and Egyptian independence. It was Broadley who introduced me to Colonel Burnaby, who, too, was a whole-hearted partisan of Lord Randolph Churchill. Fred Burnaby was another extraordinary personality, physically, I think, the finest specimen of manhood I've ever seen: over six feet four inches in height and some forty-seven inches around the chest. Stories innumerable were told of his bodily strength and most of them, I believe, were true. When he joined the Horse Guards, some young subalterns got two donkeys through the window into his bedroom. Coming home late one night, Burnaby found them, and taking one under each arm, carried them quietly downstairs. I saw him once take a poker in his hands and bend it. He was good-looking withal: large forehead and chin, straight, heavy nose and really fine, kindly, laughing eyes set well apart, while a heavy dark moustache partially concealed assuasive lips. Had I met him fifteen years earlier I might have made a hero of him, for he was intelligent as well as strong; he spoke, too, half a dozen languages and was completely devoid of snobbism or "side." I always felt grateful to him for taking me up as he did. It pleased him that I had read his Ride to Khiva, and he told me a story about it that amused me.
On his return to England after his famous "Ride," he was invited to dinner at Windsor to tell the Queen about his adventures. Of course he obeyed the order, got into the train at Waterloo and fell fast asleep, did not change at Weybridge, but went on to Basingstoke, where he woke up. He had then to persuade the station master to make up a special train and send him back to Windsor. "The dearest dinner I ever had in my life," was his humorous comment on the incident.
We were talking one afternoon about bodily exercise and muscular development when somewhat to my astonishment, Burnaby was all in favour of moderation. "Especially in youth," he said, "we can easily overdo it and develop our muscles at the cost of our vital energy. I don't know how to put it better," he went on, "but I'm sure I'm overdeveloped. I've seen little slips of fellows get the passionate love of fine women, while great athletes are never remarkable as lovers." He spoke with bitterness and I took it as a personal confession, for I had noticed the same truth; and everyone knew later that poor Burnaby's marriage was not happy. Yet Roman ladies and even empresses chose gladiators as lovers: why?
Burnaby came to grief in a way that throws a certain light on the English aristocratic code. One of his brother officers, a captain, I think, had an intrigue with a lady and used to go to meet her at some rooms in the Temple.
One day Burnaby on his way to Broadley crossed this officer in the square.
Probably he told Broadley jokingly of the recontre. At any rate next week in the World, which Broadley wrote for, there appeared a paragraph warning the officer in question not to be caught on his way to No- in the Temple, as everyone knew the attraction.
The officer called a meeting of his brother officers in the regiment and accused Burnaby of being the tell-tale. Burnaby, essentially truthful, could only say that he did not recall mentioning the fact; but it leaked out that Broadley was the paragraphist and the officers thereupon sent Burnaby, the colonel, to Coventry; and a little later, when Prince Edward was to dine with the regiment, the officers notified Burnaby that ft he appeared, no other officer would come to the table. This boycott cut Burnaby to the heart. Before going out to serve in the Sudan with Wolseley's expedition to save Gordon, Burnaby invited me to dinner in his rooms. I had often dined with him before and was always interested. He touched life on a great many more sides than the ordinary English officer; he was well read in three or four literatures and eagerly receptive to all that was fine in art and life. He was an excellent companion, too; told a good story with subtle humour and was essentially large-hearted and generous. In memory I put Fred Burnaby almost with Dick Burton among the noblest men I've known. After the dinner he told me quietly he didn't intend to come back alive. "It seems funny," he remarked in the air, "to be under sentence of death, but within a month or so I shall have entered the great 'Perhaps', as Danton I think called 'the undiscovered country'."
I argued passionately against his decision, told him his life and achievements as a great adventurer loomed bigger in my eyes than the whole corps of officers. "I'd give a wilderness of monkeys and mediocrities," I cried, "for one Burnaby. For God's sake, get hold of yourself and live out a great life to a noble end."
"Perhaps you don't know of the way I'm boycotted?" he asked.
"I've heard of it through Broadley," I replied; but I had heard, too, that Colonel Ralph Vivian, who was immensely popular, had turned away from Burnaby markedly a few weeks before in Hyde Park, and I had realized for months past that Burnaby was wounded to the soul.
Now he unburdened his pent-up sorrow.
"Life's a more difficult game than we are apt to imagine in youth," he began.
"Who could have a better start than I? Fairly well born with perfect health, great strength, height, too, and not so ugly as a wolf, as the French say; endowed besides, with fair brains, good verbal memory, love of adventure and travel and minded seriously to make the best of all my advantages. At thirty-five invited to Windsor, a personage in society with an uncommon reputation, and the position of a Colonel of the Guards; and at forty through no crime, no fault of my own an outlaw, an outcast." (He spoke with intense bitterness.) "I have no chance of recovery and am the worse off that the outside is still brilliant. Thank God, I know how to die!" And the whole face was transfigured, lit up by indomitable resolution and joyous courage.
"Don't talk like that!" I cried, appalled by the chill of death in the air. "I can't listen to you; it's not worthy of your brains or sense. You have done no intentional wrong," I went on. "Your position is really the revolt of commonplace idiots against a personality, someone of distinction and achievement. It's your business to live it all down, walk through it unheeding.
You remember Goethe said, 'When the King rides abroad, the village curs all bark at his horse's heels.' Let 'em bark."
But Burnaby would not be encouraged. "If things were different at home," he sighed, "I might try. But no, I'm a failure, Harris; have come to grief everywhere, so 'one fight more, the best and the last'"; and again the eyes, gladly.
I can't reproach myself. I did all I knew, argued with him, assured him that the highest public opinion would not condemn him; begged him for the sake of all of us who cared for him to play the game out. At length he interrupted me:
"The die is cast: I'm going out to the Sudan at the beginning of the week. I'll consider what you've said and I'm infinitely obliged to you for saying it, but each man, my friend, must 'drie his own weird'."
Tears were in my eyes and my heart was sore as we parted. All the world knows how nobly Burnaby gave his life in the battle of Abou Klea in the Sudan. The Arab rush had broken the British square and the next moment the dervishes would have entered and swept away the formation, when the giant Burnaby hurled himself into the gap in front of his old comrades of the Blues and stemmed the torrent. As the square reformed behind him, Burnaby still fighting, though bleeding from a dozen wounds, went down with an Arab spear through his throat. He had saved a thousand lives and turned disaster into victory. Bennett Burleigh, the famous war correspondent of the Telegraph, wrote to me afterwards that Burnaby saved 'all our lives.'
As I read of his heroic death I cried like a child and then wondered whether his fellow officers were still proud of their idiotic boycott. To me dear Fred Burnaby was the hero of the Sudan, and not Charles Gordon.
I never cared for Chinese Gordon greatly, perhaps because he was so extolled on all hands, beslobbered with the cheap adulation of those who didn't even know him by sight. I went to interview him for the Evening News when he came over from Brussels at Gladstone's behest and was about to start for the Sudan to free the garrisons beleaguered by the forces of the Mahdi.
Perhaps because I didn't expect much, I got little or nothing from him.
According to Stead and the Pall Mall Gazette, he was a "Christian hero…
Christ's warrior," a blasphemous contradiction in terms only possible in England or America. Charles Gordon was un-English in one respect: there was absolutely no "side" about him; he was transparently simple and sincere.
He was good-looking too, with a remarkable forehead, both broad and high.
But I discounted large foreheads, for my experience rather justified the German word:
Gross Stirn
Wenig Gehirn. though Victor Hugo's praise is apt to infect all of us. Hugo said finely that a large forehead had much the same effect as an expanse of sky in a landscape.
I certainly did not understand Gordon. When I asked him why he gave up his intention to go to the Congo in order to go to Khartoum instead, he smiled, saying the need in the Sudan was more urgent. "He would go to the Congo later," he added, "if God willed." I gathered that he looked on himself as an instrument in God's hands to do whatever he was called upon to do. His fatalistic belief seemed to me childish, the result of success and much praise working on a poor brain. His conceit or, if you will, his faith, went beyond reason. He had no insight into men or events. As soon as he reached Khartoum he startled Baring and shocked Gladstone by asking that his old enemy, Zebehr Pasha, the notorious slave-trader, should be sent up from Cairo to help him. Now some of us remembered that Zebehr Pasha's son, Suleiman, got up a rebellion in 1879 in Darfour against Gordon and his lieutenant, Gessi. Gessi beat Suleiman in battle, took him prisoner, and then in cold blood had him executed. Baring was of the opinion that Zebehr would do Gordon harm, and Gladstone's prejudice against the slave-dealer being insuperable, Zebehr was denied to Gordon.
As if to mock his belief in providence, events fought against Gordon from the beginning. Scarcely had he reached Khartoum when the Mahdi's lieutenant, Osman Digna, took Sinkat by storm and put not only the Egyptian garrison, but every man, woman and child in the place to the sword. No wonder the garrison at Tokar made friends with their savage foe and surrendered on terms, a great many going over, heart and hand, to the enemy. Then Khartoum was threatened and a Christian England forced Gladstone's hand and a military expedition was set on foot to save the saviour.
General Wolseley of course led the British forces and he determined, in memory, I imagine, of his Red River Expedition, to go up the Nile instead of taking the short cut by Suakim and Berber. The whole, silly tragicomedy discovered to me as by a lightning flash all the unspeakable stupidity of government by democracy, which means today by an ill-informed press and a sentimental loud-voiced minority.
Yet amid all the hubbub there came suddenly the voice of an authentic man.
One morning The Times published a letter from the Mahdi, if I remember rightly, to the English government. It was astoundingly well written and translated into pure Biblical English of the best. I haven't got it, I'm sorry to say, but it made an indelible impression on me as the greatest document published in my time, superior even to the letter Parnell published when Gladstone threw him over in the O'Shea divorce case. The Mahdi asked the English why they were coming out against him with horse, foot and artillery?
Didn't they know that if they were working with God and for His high purpose, a small force would be invincible? Whereas if their aim was selfish and cruel, no force would be sufficient. Tell me what you want, he said practically, and if it is right and just, you will have no difficulty; on the other hand, if your purpose is secret and evil, you are only ploughing the sand.
Addressed really to Gladstone, the wording of the appeal was irresistibly comic; the old Christian rhetor hoist on a petard of his own manufacture.
The whole summer England followed the expedition up the Nile with breathless interest. At length in December, after the victory of Abou Klea, a dash to Khartoum was resolved on. As if to demonstrate the utter worthlessness of his judgment, Gordon sent down a message on 29 December that "Khartoum was all right and could hold out for years." But Wolseley knew better and early in January, Sir Charles Wilson made his dash for Khartoum; he found the town had already fallen and the Mahdist forces fired on his steamer from the walls. "Gordon a prisoner" was the first report; and then came the truth. Hearing the noise of the Mahdist inrush, Gordon ran out of his palace with drawn sword and was stabbed to death in the entrance to his palace. The whole costly expedition was turned thereby into a fiasco.
Were the forces to return and give up the Sudan to the slave-dealer and the Mahdi? Gladstone wished to do this, but aristocratic England could not so easily accept defeat!
As soon as Wolseley returned to England I made it my business to see him, and I was interested to find that his view of men and affairs was not very different from my own. Wolseley was always to me a lightweight: no power of personality, no depth of insight, an ordinary English gentleman with much experience of affairs. By dint of rubbing against abler men than himself he had got a sort of clever woman's flair for what was going on above his head; eminently kind and fair-minded, too, with an ambition altogether out of proportion to his capacity. All this and more was illustrated by some stories he told me. I had been asking him about courage and he astonished me by saying that a volunteer army was always better than a conscript army. "One in three of the conscripts," he added, "is sure to be a coward and that minority may bring disaster at almost any time." Somehow or other he convinced me.
Then the talk came on Gordon, as most talks did about that time. "Oh you know," he began, "Gordon and I were in the Crimea together, every day side by side for hours in the trench before the Redan."
"Really," I exclaimed. "That must have been interesting!"
"Very interesting," he went on "and an object lesson in that courage we were talking about. Towards the end the trench got within eighty yards or so of the ramparts of the fort and was so shallow and muddy-wet that it did not give us much shelter. At six o'clock each evening we went off duty and others came in our stead. Gerald Graham, now General Sir Gerald Graham, was the bravest man I ever knew: six feet-odd in height and handsome to boot. Every night as the clock struck Graham used to get up, put his hands in his pockets and stroll off towards his quarters. Soon the Russians remarked this and gathered in the evening on the near rampart for a pot-shot at the big Englishman. As luck would have it, they always missed him. I remonstrated with him again and again. 'It can be only a question of time, Graham,' I said, 'and they'll get you. For God's sake, don't be so foolhardy.' But Graham went on turning himself into a cockshot every evening for weeks and I assure you after ten days or so it was a miracle how he escaped, for some hundreds used to shoot at him and the bullets buzzed like bees."
"You didn't imitate him?" I asked, laughing.
"No, indeed," Wolseley replied seriously. "Even at that time I meant to be Commander-in-Chief of the British Army if I could manage it, and so every evening I crawled along the muddy wet trench for a couple of hundred yards or so on my belly till I was fairly out of range. I thought myself far too valuable to make myself a cockshy."
"And Gordon," I asked, "Gordon was a subaltern with you. How did he act?"
"None of us could make Gordon out at that time," Wolseley replied. "One evening he'd get up, bold as brass, link arms with Graham, and stroll off with him as if the nearest Russian marksman was a thousand miles away. I came to understand bit by bit that it was all a question of his prayers with Gordon. If God had accorded him some sign of approval, he'd stroll away with Graham wholly unconcerned; if, on the other hand, he was left in doubt of the divine guidance, he'd crawl through the mud lower than I thought necessary, and longer. Gordon was a queer fish; but Graham was the bravest of the brave.
"I remember afterwards in the Chinese war meeting Graham by chance,"
Wolseley continued. "One evening I saw a big man on horseback in the mist and ran across to ask some question. When I reached him I saw it was Graham and in my delight I slapped him on the thigh as I put my question. "That's all right,' he answered me, 'but please don't slap that thigh: I've just got a bullet in there,' and as I looked at my hand, it was all crimson. Graham paid no more attention to wounds than to danger. You know he got the V.C. I tried time and again to get it but had no luck; life will not give us all our desires."
To my amazement he was disappointed! Fancy a leader of armies wanting the Wolseley was an interesting man, though I think these stories of Gordon and Graham the best I ever got from him. Still, he had led an eventful life and his memories of the Civil War in America fascinated me and I shall have to tell them later, for they explain why I worked to get him made Commander-in- Chief and so attain the summit of his ambition. For a good many years we met and dined together half a dozen times every season and he was always an excellent host; and perhaps he enjoyed my cow-punching stories as much as I delighted in his memories of Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee.
It was at Wolseley's house much later when he was the Ranger at Woolwich that I made a little jest which has been attributed to others. Alfred Austin had just been appointed Poet Laureate by Lord Salisbury, though he had no more poetry in his composition than a house-fly. He had other merits, however. For years he had written leading articles in the Standard and praised Lord Salisbury in and out of season. Accordingly, when Lord Tennyson died, Lord Salisbury appointed Alfred Austin to the post: "Alfred the Little, after Alfred the Great," as some anonymous wit declared. Of course Lord Salisbury should have appointed Swinburne or any one of half a dozen poets greater than this little creature, but no! He appointed his eulogist-a disgraceful outrage on English poetry, the gravity of which he was incapable even of understanding.
I had met Austin often and thought him a mere journalist and place-hunter without talent or personality, but this evening when we met at Wolseley's he treated me with marked condescension. "I've known Mr. Harris," he said,
"when he was merely editor of the Evening News."
His tone was so high and mighty that I replied, "I hear now that you write poetry as well as prose; which do you intend to use in the future?"
"Oh now," he replied, "I must write a certain amount of poetry."
"Why?" I replied, pretending ignorance.
"Oh, to keep the wolf from the door," he replied, smiling.
"I see," I retorted, "I see, very good: you read your poetry to the wolf, eh?"
Austin used to avoid me afterwards, but the word pleased me infinitely, perhaps, because I was seldom witty.