INTRODUCTION

TOHERBERT A. L. FISHER

INTRODUCTION

Though no prominent citizen is now-a-days permitted to pass “beyond the veil” without an account of him being drawn up for posterity, yet books of this sort have recently grown so common that some warrant for the publication of a new biography may well be demanded.

Mr Burden’s public position, combined with his sterling piety and considerable wealth, would alone merit such recognition: to these must be added the fact that he was a Justice of the Peace for the County of Surrey. His connection, moreover, with Imperial Finance has, through the medium of the Press, lent a very general interest to his name even in those parts of London with which he was personally unfamiliar.

I am well aware that the task of writing this history could have fallen into abler hands, but it could have been achieved by no one more devoted to his subject, or more familiar with the final catastrophe of this singularly beautiful and modest life. That I possessed the qualifications necessary for a work of this kind, was so evident to writers like Charles Egton, T. T. Batworthy, George K. Morrel, and Mrs Hooke as to cause them to withdraw voluntarily from a field in which they had already—I regret to say—laboured with some assiduity.

If, in the face of such a testimony, Mr and Mrs O’Rourke persist in issuing their ill-informed and prejudiced version of the last sad months, I fear I am powerless to dissuade them.

I had at first intended my notes for the perusal of friendly eyes alone: to my astonishment, I find them praised almost enthusiastically by two powerful critics (—journalists; valued friends; men whose fingers are ever upon the pulse of the nation), and a little later I learntthat the Directors of the M’Korio Delta Development Company would not be displeased to see printed such a vindication of their methods as my pen had produced. I was assured by Lord Benthorpe, in person, that no salaried agent upon the daily press, nor any professional author they had employed—not even “Ultor”—had given them the full satisfaction they had received from my manuscript. I, therefore, reluctantly consented to rewrite and publish the whole, with such added embellishments of style and fancy, as a wider public deserves.

It has eagerly been enquired by many clergymen and others whether I had before me a moral purpose in the compilation of this work.

I cannot pretend that I had intended it at the outset to convey any great religious or political lesson to the world, but I will confess that long before my monograph was perfected a conscious meaning inspired my pen. Rather let me put it more humbly, and say that I became vividly sensitive to a GuidingPower of which I was but the Instrument. Each succeeding phrase, though intended for nothing but a statement of fact, pointed more and more to the Presence of some Mysterious Design, and I arose from the Accomplished Volume with the certitude that more than a mere record had been achieved. The very soul of Empire rose before me as I re-read my simple chronicle. I was convinced of the Destiny of a People; I was convinced that every man who forwarded this Destiny was directly a minister of Providence. I was convinced that the Intrepid Financier, the Ardent Peer—nay, the Soldier of Fortune, whom twenty surrenders cannot daunt—had in them something greater than England had yet known.

To such convictions the reader owes those snatches of hymns, those citations from the sermons of eminent divines, and those occasional ethical digressions which diversify and enliven the pages now before him.

Of the form of the book I have little to say. Type, paper, and binding I left to the choice of specialists, as did I also the impagination, the size of the margin, the debate as to whether the leaves should be uncut, and the proportion of public advertisement requisite to a merited fame.

The proofs I read myself.

The question of illustration was discussed at some length. An excellent photograph of Mr Burden was unfortunately discovered to be the property of a firm who had flattered him by making it a complimentary portrait during the last short period of his public fame. They demand for its reproduction a sum I have certainly no intention of paying. No other picture of him exists save a faded daguerreotype taken many years ago on the occasion of a fancy dress ball. It represents Mr Burden in the character of Charles I., and seemed to me wholly unsuitable.

The principal characters connected with the M’Korio have, however, consentedto sit to a mutual friend, and his sharp if rapid impressions of their strong features coupled with a few sketches of Mr Burden, drawn from memory, will aid my readers to a fuller comprehension of my work.

My thanks are due to Messrs Marian, solicitors, who procured for me the best advice of counsel upon passages since omitted; to Mr Banks, Lord Benthorpe’s butler, who has provided me with much of my material. To the anonymous author of “A History of Upper Norwood”; to Mr English, sometime editor ofThe Patriot, now manager of “The Feathers” Tavern, Greenwich; to the Master of St Barnabas College, Oxford; to the chaplain and especially to the porter of the same college; to Mr Carey employed at St Catherine’s College, long a servant of Mr Cosmo Burden’s; to Lord Garry, to Mr Tammin, to Mrs Gough, to Charles Parker, Henry Grimm, Peter Cowdrey, C. T. Knowles, T. Cummins, Loring, Gibbs, Hepton, Rubble and Tuke, and to many othersof lesser note who will, I trust, accept this general recognition in place of a more personal expression of gratitude.

The MSS. and correspondence which have reached me from all parts of the world have been of the utmost service. I cannot congratulate myself too warmly on the receipt of Mr Barnett’s blotting-pad which his office-keeper had the courtesy to retain for me. The autograph letters from Prince Albert and Baron Grant to the first Lord Benthorpe have proved most useful material; his grandson, the present peer, who figures so prominently in these pages, was good enough to sell them at an astonishingly cheap rate to a gentleman who was my agent.

Such notes, memoranda of obligations and short agreements as have reached Mr Cosmo Burden through me, he is indeed happy to have received, and he begs me to render thanks for him most heartily in this place. I am further to assure all who read these lines that any further scraps in his handwriting thatmay be received—especially any letters addressed to Miss Capes—will be warmly and substantially acknowledged.

It will be noticed that I have alluded throughout these pages to Lord Lambeth under his original name as Mr Barnett. The public are more familiar with him in this form, for Barnett is and remains the name he has rendered famous; and, moreover, his acceptance of the Peerage was not announced till half this edition had been struck off. I have his permission for the retention of his simple English surname. Similarly I speak throughout my work of the Right Rev. the Right Honourable,[1]the Lord Mauclerc, Bishop of Shoreham, as “the Rev. the Honourable Peregrine Mauclerc.” The death of his lordship’sbrother, and his own induction to the See of Shoreham, occurred too late for me to make the requisite alteration.

One word more.

I trust I have nowhere forgotten that delicacy in mentioning the private affairs of others which is the mark of the gentleman.

If I have spoken strongly of Mr Abbott, it must be remembered that a patriotic duty has claims superior to those of convention: moreover, Mr Abbott has himself made a verbal declaration of the strongest kind, accompanied with an oath, that he is indifferent to my opinions.

It may be mentioned in this connection that the unhappy difficulties of the Benthorpe family, on which I was compelled (however reluctantly) to touch, are of no further moment, since young Mr Benthorpe has wooed and won Antigua, the only daughter of the Count Brahms de la Torre de Traicion yCrapular, a Spanish nobleman of immense resources.

For the rest, I have throughout striven earnestly—and I believe successfully—to avoid giving the slightest pain to any sentient being.

“He prayeth best who loveth bestAll things both great and small;For the great God who loveth us,He made and loves them all.”—Coleridge

“He prayeth best who loveth best

All things both great and small;

For the great God who loveth us,

He made and loves them all.”

—Coleridge

Or words to that effect.

Chelsea, 1904

FOOTNOTES:[1]The phrase used by “Asterisk” in theDaily Americanof April 9th has no meaning.Very Rev.,Very Honourable, are titles that cannot exist in combination. As to the “Most”: “MostHonourable,MostRev.,” of “Clara,” in theEvenudg German, it is not impossible, but is here inaccurate. His Lordship is not a marquis, nor has he any intention of ascending the steps of the Archiepiscopal throne.

[1]The phrase used by “Asterisk” in theDaily Americanof April 9th has no meaning.Very Rev.,Very Honourable, are titles that cannot exist in combination. As to the “Most”: “MostHonourable,MostRev.,” of “Clara,” in theEvenudg German, it is not impossible, but is here inaccurate. His Lordship is not a marquis, nor has he any intention of ascending the steps of the Archiepiscopal throne.

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