CHAPTER XXV

FRIENDS WHO NEVER CAME TO ADDISON MANSIONS

I OUGHT to say something here of the interesting people I have known, who never happened to come to Addison Mansions, for one reason or another.

Distance prevented the great Dr. Boyd of St. Andrews—the famous A.K.H.B., of whom I saw a good deal in the long summer I spent at St. Andrews—from coming. Dr. Boyd possessed the most crushing powers of repartee of any person I ever met. One day, when he was walking with me along the street at St. Andrews, which leads down to the links, some one presented an American publisher, a partner in a famous firm, to him.

“I am very glad to meet you, Dr. Boyd,” said the publisher. “I enjoyed your _Scenes from Clerical Life_ so much.”

“I did not write that book, sir,” said the terrible Doctor. “I wrote _The Recreations of a Country Parson_—and you ought to know it, because your firm stole them both.”

I once unconsciously helped him in using this talent, which happened in this wise. Dr. Boyd was a reformer as drastic as John Knox. The great humanising movement in the Scottish Church, which made its services and music so much more beautiful and its attitude so much less angular, was largely his work, for he was not only one of the most eloquent of the notable ministers who worked for it, but he had any amount of backbone. An old ultra-Protestant lady, having perceived this, paid an evangelist a thousand a year to go about Scotland preaching against him. One Sunday he was at St. Andrews, on the public space where the inhabitants used to practice archery, preaching against Dr. Boyd. His preaching was all “limehousing,” an appeal to the coarsest prejudice, most banal abuse and derision. It was so ludicrous that I took most of it down in longhand, in the intervals when he paused for applause, as he did whenever he imagined that he was scoring. It so happened that I was having afternoon-tea with Dr. Boyd, and that he was preaching in his own church that evening. I began to sympathise with him in being made the subject of such a persecution.

“Were you there?” he asked. I nodded.

“Do you remember at all what he said?”

I produced my notes.

“Do you mind reading them out to me?” he asked, after a despairing glance at the writing. I did. He took no notes; but he had an admirable memory, and he evidently took it all in, for that evening, without having lowered his dignity by being present at the evangelist’s attack on him, he turned the tables on the offender from his own pulpit, with a dissection of his remarks which can only be compared to throwing vitriol, though it was all done with beautiful polish and observance of form.

He was never more amusing than when he was sympathising about the difficulties which he described Andrew Lang as experiencing when he came to St. Andrews. He was such a master of innuendo.

Dr. Boyd wrote his books in handwriting so minute that he could get two thousand words on to one foolscap page. The firm who always printed them for his publishers had large magnifying glasses fitted to the case on which his copy was fixed for setting it up. And Dr. Boyd was very proud of it.

One of Dr. Boyd’s sons has inherited his power as a writer—my friend Charles Boyd, who acted for some time as private secretary to Cecil Rhodes in South Africa.

Sir Charles Dilke, M.P., took a flattering interest in my books, and was very friendly in his intercourse with me. The most amusing reminiscences I have in connection with him are _à propos_ of a dinner at which we were both taken in, though I was too obscure for it to signify in my case.

A dinner for a high-sounding object was given at Prince’s. Sixty important public men and leading writers and journalists were invited, and Sir Charles Dilke was asked to respond to the toast of the evening.

His rising to speak was the signal for three great acetylene flares to be turned on, which reduced the scores of electric lights in the room to looking like the gas jets in the Richmond railway-station. This was taken as a compliment to Sir Charles, though it would have disconcerted any less practised speaker.

When his speech and the other speeches were over, the chairman electrified the assemblage by informing them that a new sort of gramophone would reproduce for them Tennyson’s last words in the voice in which he spoke them. It was a most impressive moment. For a few minutes one did not realise the colossal impertinence of pretending that there had been a phonograph in Tennyson’s bedroom on this solemn occasion. But, of course, the record might have been produced by a man who knew Tennyson’s voice well enough to imitate it, as certain reciters imitate celebrated actors. We did not realise this at the time. The next day the dinner was duly reported, with the names of the makers of these wonderful lamps, and this wonderful phonetic record, and later on it transpired that these two parties had paid for the dinner, which was only got up to advertise them.

This is one of the two cleverest pieces of journalism I remember. The other happened on the night that King Edward died. A great London linen-draping firm had an elaborate intelligence system during the well-beloved monarch’s last illness. They were well served. I happened to see the head of the firm about twelve hours before the nation was plunged into mourning.

“You may take it from me,” he said, “that his Majesty won’t live another twenty-four hours.”

As he was in the habit of making impressive statements, I discounted what he said. But he was right, and acting on his information, he bought up all the available mourning in the market, and scored a huge business victory. I met him long afterwards, and alluded to the information which he had given me.

“I wasn’t the only one who took pains to know,” he said, “for that night, at the hour the King died, I was driving from the hotel, where I had been dining, to my office, with the correspondent of one of the great French newspapers. As we passed the Palace, one of the top windows was opened, and a person came to it with a lighted candle, and blew it out. ‘Did you see that? Do you mind driving me to the West Strand post-office?’ said my French friend. ‘Why, no,’ I said; ‘but what do you want to go there for?’ ‘To send a cipher-wire to my paper that his Majesty is dead.’ ‘Isn’t it a great risk?’ I asked. ‘If it was, I would take it. But even a good rumour is worth something.’”

The Frenchman was right, and he won his victory.

The late Lord Dufferin was another man who was very kind to me about my writings. I suppose that they appealed to him for the same reason that they appealed to Dilke. Both of them were deeply interested in Greater Britain, and in travel generally, and I have written books full of enthusiasm for travel and the Colonies.

Lord Dufferin never forgot any one who had served him. When his new title forced a new signature on him, he sent a new photograph with the Dufferin and Ava signature to all his journalist friends, though some of them had passed out of his sphere for years.

He always did the right thing. I remember the late Lord Derby beginning a speech at a dinner at Winnipeg at which I was present, “As Lord Dufferin, who seems to have left nothing unsaid, observed,” etc.

On that same vice-regal progress to the West, I was showing Lord Derby some Kodaks I had taken on various occasions at which he had been present—crowded functions in cities, full-dress rehearsals of Chippeway Indians on the war-path, and the like. One print was from a negative which I had of these Chippewas, with their necklaces of cartridges and their feather head-dresses, taken on the top of the massed choirs of Manitoba, singing “God save the Queen.” Lord Derby begged this photograph from me, “That’s a photograph of the whole trip,” he said.

He remained surprisingly popular, considering the maladroitness of one of his aide-de-camps—a delightful Guardsman who is now dead. I have heard this A.D.C., whom Nature had gifted with the most graceful manners, say appalling things.

At one provincial capital, the mayor gave a ball in Lord Derby’s honour. I had just been presented to the mayor, and was standing quite close to him, when Lord Derby came in. When the official presentation was over, Lord Derby, who always wished to get on a friendly footing with his hosts, asked his A.D.C. in a whisper, “What is the mayor, M——?” The Governor-General wished to know if his host bred cattle, or ran a timber-mill, or owned a hotel, or what, so that he might say the appropriate thing. But the A.D.C.’s reply, which, like Lord Derby’s “What is the mayor, M——?”, was perfectly audible to that functionary, was “Toned-down Jew.” So much for the _entente cordiale_ at—we will call it Medicine Hat.

At a ball given by Lord Derby, I watched that same A.D.C. taking an important politician, whom he should have known perfectly well, to introduce him to his own wife, a young and pretty woman who considered herself one of the lions of Canadian society. The situation struck me as a promising one, so I listened to hear what he would say.

“Mrs. Um,” he said; “may I introduce Mr. Um-um to you?” She looked up at him with an amused smile, and he continued quite blissfully, “He’s a stupid old buffer, but I’ll get you away from him as soon as I can.”