Part 5

“I very much dislike having attributed to me a prayer which I did not write. It is not, as you know, that I do not believe in prayer. I have humbly asked God’s help and guidance in everything that I undertook all through my life, and never more so than now, when I am an old man, and His call may be very near. But----” he hesitated a moment, “offering up a brief prayer--it may only be the words ‘God help me!’--before going into action, or in some time of difficulty, is one thing; and sitting down to write, to print and publish a prayer for others is quite another thing--for a soldier, at least. That was why I asked my friend the Archbishop to compose the prayer. It was for him, God’s minister, a clergyman, not for me, a soldier, to do it.”

Lord Roberts then asked me to advise him how best to prevent a recurrence of the error by which the prayer was attributed to him. I replied that if he wished I would on his behalf write to the editor of _A Cloud of Witnesses_ pointing out the mistake, and suggesting that an erratum slip, making the correction, be inserted in all copies of the book already printed, and that the Archbishop’s name replace that of Lord Roberts in any future edition.

“I shall be so much obliged if you will,” he said gratefully. “May I leave it to you, and will you let me know when you hear from him?”

I promised to do so, and carried the promise into effect, sending Lord Roberts, when I received it, the editor’s reply, in which, after expressing regret for the error, he undertook to do what was proposed. That Lord Roberts felt strongly about the matter, and was most anxious that the correction should be made, will be seen by the following letter which I received the morning after I had seen him at Downing Street:

ENGLEMERE, ASCOT, BERKS, _28th Feb., 1914_.

DEAR KERNAHAN,

Thanks for your letter of the 21st instant and for sending me the little book, which I wish I could have kept. Would it be possible to communicate with the author of the book you sent me in which the prayer of the Primate of Ireland appeared under my name? I should like to have this corrected, as it is quite wrong that I should have the credit of being the author of such a beautiful prayer when I was only the indirect means of it being written.

(Thus far Lord Roberts’ letter was typed. Then in his own strong, clear, firm hand the letter concluded as follows): This letter was dictated before I met you yesterday. I only send it as a reminder.

I may just add in conclusion that “the little book” which he twice, almost wistfully, said he wished he could have kept (if I remember rightly it told, among other things, of his son’s death in South Africa) was by the courtesy of the friend from whom I had borrowed it, reforwarded to Lord Roberts, and was by him gratefully and gladly acknowledged.

III

Even as an old man--though none of us who knew and loved him could ever bring ourselves to think of Lord Roberts as old--his energy was amazing, and the amount of work he got through was stupendous. His mere correspondence alone would have kept any other man going all day and with no moment to spare for the many great issues with which his name was connected. He accomplished so much because he practised in his own life the organisation, if not indeed the National Service which he preached to the nation--the organisation which, as he foresaw, would be so tremendous a driving power behind Germany when the time came for her to force a war upon this country, the war which he even more clearly foresaw.

As an instance of how Lord Roberts systematised his days, I may mention that a friend of mine and his, recently returned from Bulgaria, wished to see him to put certain military facts before him, and also, if I remember rightly, to present him with some interesting trophies of the war which he knew the Field-Marshal would prize. He wrote accordingly and asked for an appointment. Lord Roberts replied by return of post, from Almond’s Hotel, Clifford Street, W., to say that he was then in town but was returning to Ascot the following day. “If it will be saving you a railway journey--and I know what a busy man you are,” he wrote, “to see me here at the Hotel, instead of at Ascot, by all means let it be so. But I am afraid, if not too early for you, it must be at 8.30 in the morning, as the rest of my day is already mapped out.”

My friend smiled sadly in telling me the story. “As a matter of fact,” he said, “8.30, and even later, generally sees me tubbing, shaving, or at best breakfasting, but if 8.30 was not too early for a great soldier who had turned 80 to be up, and ready to receive visitors, I could hardly plead that 8.30 was too early for me,” and the appointment was made.

IV

Like most Irishmen, Lord Roberts had a keen sense of humour. At a public dinner at which I was present he had for a near neighbour, at the high table, Lord Willoughby de Broke, who in his after-dinner speech had occasion to refer to the Territorial Army.

“If I am asked,” he said, “whether a young man should join the Territorial Army, my answer is invariably ‘Yes,’ and for three reasons. The first reason is that he will, perhaps for the first time in his life, be coming under the salutary influence of Discipline, and I say confidently and without fear of contradiction, that there is no finer influence for a young fellow than that of Discipline.”

These were sentiments that appealed to a soldier, and of the many approving cries of “Hear! Hear!” which came from all parts of the room, none rang more whole-heartedly than those of Lord Roberts.

“My second reason,” went on the speaker, “is that the young man will thereby be discharging a patriotic duty. To-day we are all thinking too much of our rights, rarely of our responsibilities, and in my opinion every able-bodied young fellow, whether he be a duke’s son, a draper’s son, or the son of a costermonger, should be trained to defend his country against an invader in her hour of need.”

Once again Lord Willoughby de Broke was expressing the very sentiments with which Lord Roberts’ name was so closely associated, and again it was the great soldier’s “Hear! Hear!” which was most emphatic.

“And lastly,” concluded the speaker, “my reason for advising every young fellow to join the Territorial Army is that it gives him a chance of--getting away from his wife for a night or a week or a fortnight without putting him to the trouble of hashing up some silly excuse which she knows is as palpably a fake and a lie as he does himself.”

Thus far Lord Willoughby de Broke had spoken with such grave earnestness that we were all prepared as heartily to endorse his third reason as his previous ones. Lord Roberts had, in fact, raised his right hand above his left to applaud when the speaker sprang this surprise upon us, and especially upon those of us who were married, for the dinner was graced by the presence of Lady Willoughby de Broke and Lady Roberts, as well as by other ladies, the wives, daughters, and sisters of those present.

For one second the company, if I may so phrase it, “gaped” open-mouthed at the trap into which they had been led, and then there was a great roar of laughter, in which no one more heartily joined than did Lady Willoughby de Broke, Lady Roberts, and Lord Roberts himself.

I recall another and grimmer instance of Lord Roberts’ sense of humour. On February 27, 1914, he introduced to the Prime Minister a Deputation whose object was to plead the cause of National Service. When I say that it was a great occasion I am not expressing my own opinion, but that of a distinguished member of the Deputation who has since written and published in pamphlet form an official account of the proceedings.

“Those of us who look forward,” he writes, “to an early fruition of the hopes which we have cherished and the aims for which we have worked for so many years past, will ever look back upon Friday, the 27th of February, 1914, as a milestone, a red-letter day in the History of National Service.

“All the circumstances conspired to stamp a great occasion with the greatness which belonged to it. The importance of the Cause needs no illustration from the present writer. In Lord Roberts’ well-known words, ‘National Service means not only national safety; it means national health, national strength, national honour, and national prosperity.’

“The Deputation included some of the greatest and most distinguished men of the day, and--a most significant and important factor--the greatness was in nearly every case not inherited but achieved by conspicuous service in the fields of national and imperial endeavour. Three Field-Marshals, including our veteran leader who has carried our flag to victory with honour in Asia and Africa and served King and country for fifty-five years; two Admirals of the Fleet, one of whom was in command of the International Forces at Crete, and the other commanded the International Naval Forces in China at the time of the Boxer Rebellion; an ex-Viceroy of India, prominent representatives of the Church and of Nonconformity; the editor of one of the most influential weeklies, and representatives of literature, science, and industry.”

Of this Deputation I was, by Lord Roberts’ personal invitation and wish, a member, and as I arrived in good time I had an opportunity of some conversation with him in the ante-room before we passed into the Library in which Mr. Asquith was to receive us.

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

“Oh, that’s nothing,” he said smilingly. “I’ve often been accused of having too many irons in the fire, but this time it is a case of having a hand too much in the fire. Just before leaving my hotel this morning, my foot slipped on the marble paving of the hall, and in falling forward and trying to save myself, I thrust my hand between the bars of the fire, and so got a bit of a burn. But it’s a mere nothing, and of no consequence.”

So far from being, as Lord Roberts said, a mere nothing, I have since heard that the burn was, on the contrary, excessively painful, but all through the lengthy and trying ordeal of introducing the different members of the Deputation, listening to, and commenting upon what was said, as well as listening to and replying to the Prime Minister’s very important and brilliantly able speech, Lord Roberts was the alertest, cheeriest, and most watchful of those present. A burn that would have distressed and possibly have distracted the attention of a much younger man, and that must necessarily have caused constant and severe pain, the gallant old soldier, then nearing his 82nd year, treated as of no consequence and dismissed with a lightly uttered jest. To the last it was of others, never of himself, that he thought. On this particular occasion he was pleading (to use his own words) “as plainly as an old man has the right to speak, in the face of emergencies which would be far less terrible to him personally than to generations of Britons yet unborn.” That was not many months before his death, and though I saw and talked with Field-Marshal Earl Roberts, V.C., on other and later occasions, I shall to my life’s end picture him as I saw him then--his burned and bandaged hand throbbing with pain of which he showed no single sign, thrust behind him and out of sight, as eloquently, gravely, almost passionately, he warned his hearers of a possible national disaster, the consequences of which would be “far less terrible to him personally than to generations of Britons yet unborn.”

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

It was, I believe, George Meredith who, when the author of _Aylwin_ changed his name from Theodore Watts to Theodore Watts-Dunton, spoke of him as “Theodore What’s-his-name,” and added that he supposed his friend had made the change lest posterity might confound Watts the poet with Watts the hymn writer.

Posterity, unlike Popularity--who plays the wanton at times and cohabits with unlawful mates--keeps chaste her house from generation to generation and needs no hint from us to assist her choice. Her task is to rescue reputations from the dust, no less than to “pour forgetfulness upon the dead,” and none of us alive to-day may predict what surprise of lost or rescued reputations Posterity may have in store.

Over one of these reputations it is surely possible to imagine Posterity--I will not disrespectfully say scratching a puzzled head, but at least wrinkling in perplexity her learned brows. She will discover when straightening out her dog’s-eared literary annals that the name of one writer, who at the beginning of the last decade of the nineteenth century had a great if somewhat esoteric reputation among his brother authors, was not then to be found in any publisher’s list, and for the somewhat curious and incontinent reason that at that time he had published no book. It was not until the publication of _Aylwin_ that the name of Theodore Watts, or as he afterwards elected to be called Watts-Dunton, became widely known outside what are sometimes not very felicitously described as “literary circles.”

To-day the tremendous issues of the Great War have, as it were, at a besom stroke of the gods, brushed into one box, to set aside, upon a shelf, all the trappings, furniture and paraphernalia of non-industrial arts and the like. Authors, artists, actors, musicians, professors, as well as the mere politician, are, and rightly, relegated to the back of the stage of life, and it is the soldier and the sailor--not by their own seeking--who bulk biggest in the public eye. But in those days of little things--the last decade of the last century--and outside the so-called “literary circle” of which I have spoken, there were other and outer circles of men and women much more keenly interested in books and authors, especially in the personality of literary celebrities, than would be possible in these days of tragic and tremendous world-issues. In such circles many curious, interesting and even romantic associations were woven around the name of Theodore Watts.

He was known to be the personal friend of Tennyson, Matthew Arnold, James Russell Lowell, Browning, and William Morris. Dante Gabriel Rossetti and George Meredith had in the past made their home with him at Chelsea, and Swinburne had been his house mate for many years at Putney. Rossetti and Swinburne had written and spoken of him in terms which to outsiders seem extravagant, and both had dedicated some of their best work to him. It was also known that he had lived for some time with gipsies, was one of the three greatest living authorities on gipsy lore and the gipsy language, and had been the friend of George Borrow. This curiosity was stimulated by the fact that Watts-Dunton was then very rarely seen at literary dinners or functions, and was supposed more studiously even to avoid publicity than some of his craft who might be named were supposed to seek it. Cryptic allusions in the literary journals, reviews, and magazines to a long-completed novel, deliberately and cruelly withheld from publication, and tributes to his encyclopædic knowledge, did not a little to increase this curiosity.

Thus far the reputation which Theodore Watts had attained did not altogether belie him, but there was yet another “Theodore Watts”--“Watts of the _Athenæum_” he was sometimes called--who had no existence except in the imagination of certain small literary fry by whom he was popularly supposed to be something of a “Hun” of the pen, a shark of the literary seas, who preyed upon suckling poets. I remember a morning in the early nineties, when I was to lunch at Putney with Watts-Dunton and Swinburne. Being in the neighbourhood of Temple Bar about eleven, I turned in for a cup of coffee and a cigarette at a famous Coffee House, then much frequented by editors, journalists, poets, rising authors and members of the literary staff of the publishing houses and newspaper offices in or around Fleet Street, as well as by members of the legal profession from the Temple and the New Law Courts.

At the next table sat a young man with long hair, a velveteen jacket and a flowing tie. He was talking so loudly to a friend, that unless one stopped one’s ears there was no choice but to overhear the conversation.

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

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

“Only a review of my poems.”

“Good?”

“Bad as it can be--bad, that is, as four contemptuous lines of small print can make it. A book, which as you know represents the thought, the passion and soul-travail of years; a book written in my heart’s blood--and dismissed by the _Athenæum_ in four contemptuous lines!”

There was a pause too brief, if not too deep for tears. Then: “Theodore Watts, of course!” he added between set teeth. “I expected it. Everyone knows he is so insanely jealous of us younger men that he watches the publishers’ lists for every book by a young poet of ability to pounce upon it, and to cut it up. What has he done, I should like to know, to give him the right to pronounce death sentences? Why, the fellow’s never even published a book of his own.

“Shall I tell you why? He _daren’t_. There is a novel called _Aylwin_ written and ready to publish many years ago. Murray has offered him a small fortune in advance royalties, I hear.”

Again the young man paused dramatically and looked darkly around the room, not apparently from fear of his being overheard, but because he wished to invite attention to the inner and exclusive knowledge which he possessed. Then, in an ecstasy of anger that had a fine disregard for so trivial a matter as a confusion of metaphors, he thundered:

“Because that viper Theodore Watts has stabbed so many of us in the back anonymously in the _Athenæum_, he daren’t bring out his novel. He can never say anything bad enough about a ‘minor poet,’ as he scornfully calls us, but he knows that some of us do a little reviewing, and that we are waiting for him to publish his book that we may get a bit of our own back.”

It so happened that I had in my pocket that morning a letter from Watts-Dunton deprecating the slating in the _Athenæum_ of a book of minor poetry by a friend of mine, and I remembered a sentence in the letter. “By minor poet, meaning apparently a new and unknown poet,” which prefaced a generous if discriminating and critical appreciation of my friend’s poems.

To intrude into a conversation between strangers was, of course, as much out of the question as to make known to others, without first obtaining the writer’s permission, the contents of a letter written to myself. Otherwise I could easily have convinced the aggrieved young poet, not only that it was not Theodore Watts who had cut up his book, but that so far from being a literary Herod and a slayer of the poetic innocent, he was, as a matter of fact, Herod’s literary antithesis. As the writer of the letter and those mentioned in it are no longer with us, no harm can be done by printing part of it here:

“Like the rest of us, our Philip was mortal, and, like all of us, he could be harsh. I got Maccoll to let him review the minor bards. He was so terribly severe upon most of them that I was miserable; and I fear that I had to ask Maccoll to be chary in sending them to him, or at least I got M. to remonstrate with him for his extreme and unaccountable harshness. My sympathies, as you know, are all with the younger men. I love to see a young poet, or for the matter of that _any_ young writer, get recognition.

“Robinson is the only fogey-brother I boom. Please tell him when you see him that if I do not write to him much, it is not because of any cooling of love. Thirty years ago he knew me for the worst correspondent in the world. The first letter he ever wrote to me (in sending me his novel _No Church_) I answered at the end of six months. I wish I could help it, but I can’t. My friends have to take me with all my infirmities on my head.”

“Our Philip,” I may say, was Philip Bourke Marston, the blind poet; “Robinson” was F. W. Robinson, the novelist--both friends of Watts-Dunton and mine--“Maccoll” was the then editor of the _Athenæum_.

Had I known Watts-Dunton better (it was in the early days of our long friendship that this Coffee House incident happened), I should studiously have refrained from mentioning the matter to him. But thinking it would do no more than amuse him, I was so unwise as to tell the story over the luncheon table. Swinburne was vastly amused, and rallied his friend gleefully for being what he described as “the ogre of suckling bardlings,” but Watts-Dunton was visibly distressed, and took it so much to heart that I had cause to regret my indiscretion. He brooded over it and rumbled menacingly over it, recurring to the matter again and again, until lunch was over, vowing that it mattered nothing to him what this or that “writing fellow” thought of him as a fellow writer, but that to be credited with cruelty, and with willingness to give pain, to the younger generation, with whom he was so entirely in sympathy, was monstrous, was unthinkable, and was cause for cursing the day he had ever consented to review for the _Athenæum_.

Here are some extracts from another letter in which he reverts to the matter, and also incidentally gives an interesting peep of Swinburne and himself on holiday:

“The crowning mistake of my life, a life that has been full of mistakes, I fear, was in drifting into the position of literary reviewer to a journal, and not drifting out for a quarter of a century. I not only squandered my efforts, but made unconsciously a thousand enemies in the literary world whom I can never hope now to appease until death comes to my aid. Swinburne sends you his kind regards. He and I are here staying at one of the lovely places in the Isle of Wight, belonging to his aunt, Lady Mary Gordon. It is a fairy place. Her late husband’s father took one of the most romantic spots of the Undercliff and turned the shelves of debris into the loveliest Italian garden reaching down to the sea. It is so shut in from the land that it can be seen only from the sea. It puts, as I always say, Edgar Poe’s _Domain of Arnheim_ into the shade. I know of nothing in the world so lovely. I have been writing a few sonnets, but Swinburne does nothing but bathe.”

This reference to Swinburne idling reminds me of another letter I received from Watts-Dunton, in which he pictures yet another great poet, Tennyson, hard at work and at eighty-two. The letter has no bearing on the matter immediately under discussion, but by way of contrast I venture to include it here:

ALDWORTH, HASLEMERE, SURREY, _26th Sept., ’91_.

MY DEAR KERNAHAN,

My best thanks for your most kind letter which has been forwarded to me here where I am staying with Tennyson. When I get home I will write to suggest a day for us to meet at Putney. Tennyson, with whom I took a long walk of three miles this morning, is in marvellous health, every faculty (at 82) is as bright as it was when his years were 40. He is busy writing poetry as fine as anything he has ever written. He read out to me last night three poems which of themselves would suffice to make a poet’s fame. Really he is a miracle. This is a lovely place--I don’t know how many miles above the level of the sea--bracing to a wonderful degree.

Ever yours, THEODORE WATTS.

The accepted tradition of Watts-Dunton as what Swinburne had called the ogre of the _Athenæum_ goaded him, was a bugbear and a purgatory to him to his very life’s end.