His delight on these occasions was unbounded. The weekly price for these essays was three guineas,and I think he received it with all the greater zest from the consciousness that he had not rightly earned it.
Purnell’s social ambitions were few, and all social obligations he boldly repudiated. It was one of his most deeply seated convictions that no man was compelled to reply to any letter of invitation, whatever the source from which it might have come, and he defended this position with great show of legal force.
“If,” he said, “a lady had asked me whether in the event of her writing me an invitation I would reply to it, and I had answered in the affirmative, then, my dear Carribus, the agreement would be complete. But I never said anything of the kind, never would; and therefore, my dear boy, there’s no privity of contract.”
But there was one invitation he took care to answer, an invitation to pass a week-end with a certain noble lord in the country. I do not think that he was in any grave sense a “snob,” but he was deeply impressed with the sense of his powers of fascination over women, and his handsome picturesque face, I think, entitled him to the belief that it was not mere idle boasting.
At this particular party he happened to know that several charming ladies of the family would be present, and it was this fact, I think, which made him very eager, if he could, to accept the invitation. But the question of a fitting wardrobe raised a difficulty, and here again he threw himself in all candour upon Francillon and myself.
The rare letter of acceptance had been sent, andthe day for his departure had arrived, but in this question of dress he was still lamentably unprepared. We met in hasty consultation in a little eating-house called the Coal Hole, which lay down a narrow court at the south side of the Strand.
It was Saturday. The shops would soon be closing, and there was no time to lose. He had money enough for his railway ticket, but none for such idle luxuries as clothes. His only proffered contribution to the necessities of the occasion was a tarnished disreputable bag which he had brought down empty to the office in view of the projected excursion. He had no great faith in it himself, and it was discarded with scorn by those whom he had pressed into his service. And so in the end Francillon and I had to provide a modest valise and stock it with a wardrobe that would suffice for the three days’ stay, and I can recall now the air of triumph with which he started upon his journey, robed in a new pilot-jacket which we had added as the final feature of his outfit.
Our little circle on the staff of theGlobewas later joined by Churton Collins, now the Professor of English Literature at the University at Birmingham, then only a boy fresh from Oxford, but a boy whose mind was already stored with a knowledge of English literature such as I suppose few men of his generation can boast. His prodigious memory both in prose and poetry I certainly have never encountered in another; and through many an evening, when he dined quietly with us in our rooms in Great Russell Street, did we wonder and delight to listen to him as he passed fromauthor to author, not always reciting things of his own choice, but responding with equal readiness to any call that might be made upon him when the choice was made by others.
But this wondrous memory sometimes played him tricks in his first essays as a journalist. For as there was no time and no opportunity in theGlobeoffice to verify any quotation, his literary articles, which were always packed with quotations from the poets, were generally subject to correction in some small particular, and for this reason evoked a shower of correspondence which irritated and annoyed our worthy editor.
This same editor, on the other hand, was often a source of annoyance tous. Our time was short for the work we had to do during the morning, and we resented the constant pencil-notes which he used to send up from the room below, or the repeated calls up the speaking-tube, the whistle of which stood next to Purnell’s desk.
One day we determined to mark our disapproval of this vexatious and harassing policy. We were accustomed sometimes, when money was short, to be content with a lunch of cocoa and biscuits prepared by ourselves. A kettle on this occasion stood puffing on the fire, and when the whistle of the speaking-tube had gone for about the thirtieth time, a demoniacal idea of vengeance entered into the mind of Purnell. The call this time was for me, and Purnell having answered that I was coming to speak in answer, went with stealthy steps towards the fireplace and seizing the kettle poured the whole of its contents down the tube.
It is not perhaps wonderful that this resulted in something like a crisis in the internal arrangements of the office, and very nearly ended in the dismissal of the entire literary staff.
Another comrade of those days, though he rarely wrote in theGlobe, was Camille Barrère, now the distinguished Ambassador of the French Republic at Rome. Barrère and I were for many years close allies. I had assisted him in his first essay in English journalism when he contributed to thePall Mall Gazettea series of articles on the Commune, with which he had been in some sense associated. He was always a brilliant and gifted creature, and his rapid advancement from the hour when he was first befriended by Gambetta could never have been any surprise to those who knew him well.
At that time, like the rest of us, he was having a hard struggle for life. We were together on theEcho, and together on thePall Mall Gazette, and I can remember in the old days of the Arts Club how often we sat and planned vague, large schemes for the reorganisation of journalism, which should yield us more complacent editors and a rate of higher remuneration, which we fancied our merits deserved.
Barrère had passed some of his earlier years in England, and his knowledge and power over our tongue were remarkable, but now and then some small idiomatic fault would slip out unawares, and one day, when he had just received what he considered an inadequate cheque from theEcho, he cried out indignantly that he “would like to wring the throat of Arnold.”
Unlike poor Purnell, the choice of a topic never presented any difficulty to him. Almost any subject served him for a light and graceful essay, and the fertility of his invention in this regard was more than remarkable. Happily for his own sake, and for the sake of the nation which he has served with so much distinction, he need no longer rack his brains, as in the old days, for the material that would fill a column in theEcho; and though it is many years since we met, I know, through many messages that I have received from him, that he looks back with kindly remembrances to those times when we struggled side by side.
It is a strange thing about a journalist’s career, when it is successful, that at the first it seems so hard to get the work to do, and then later so hard to do the work that comes. In those early days every new opening was only won after a struggle, yet within a very few years I found myself almost overwhelmed by the tasks that were laid upon me.
From theGlobeI passed to thePall Mall Gazette, where I succeeded Professor Colvin as its Art Critic; from thePall Mallto theSaturday Reviewand theExaminer; and then a little later I joined the staff of theWorld, which had recently been founded by Edmund Yates.
These different changes of occupation brought many new friends and many new editors, but of all those under whom I have served I think I should signalise Mr. Frederic Greenwood as by far the most inspiring to his contributors. Not that to be numbered among Mr. Greenwood’s contributors always implied a peaceful career; he was anautocratic commander, whose powerful personality loved to assert itself in every department of his paper, and he and I in those days had sharp encounters with regard to that particular arena of art criticism over which I thought I was entitled to exercise independent control.
But those differences are long forgotten, and the remembrance that survives is of a keen and ardent intelligence that communicated its own warmth of purpose to all who served under his banner.
Very different in type was Mr. Harwood, the editor of theSaturday Review. On the quiet evenings that I sometimes passed at his house in Regent’s Park, when he would spend most of the time after dinner in playing on his violoncello, it seemed hardly possible to realise that he was the capable conductor of what was even then a mighty organ of public opinion.
I suppose that hardly any British journal has ever boasted among its contributors so many eminent men in so many varied ways of life as one could see gathered at the great annual dinner of theReviewin the “Trafalgar” at Greenwich, presided over by Mr. Beresford Hope.
Mr. Harwood had succeeded Mr. Cook, and had inherited many of the traditions of the great founder of theReview. His editorial office at the time I joined him was situated in The Albany, where he was assisted as sub-editor by my old friend, Mr. Walter Herries Pollock, who afterwards succeeded to the editorial chair.
I did little of the more serious work upon the paper, my duties, as a rule, being confined to thosemiddle articles, as they were called, which formed at that time one of its salient features. I suppose the aptitude for finding and treating such lighter subjects was not too common; at any rate, I know that my contributions of that sort always met with a generous welcome, and Mr. Harwood himself, despite his grave exterior, was sometimes singularly happy in the choice of subjects for fit treatment in this lighter vein.
A young man who has gained an entry into the journalistic world can sometimes get through a prodigious amount of work, and at the time I am speaking of it often happened that within the week, besides my morning duties upon theGlobe, I would furnish one, and sometimes two, articles to theSaturday Review, an article to theExaminer, another to theWorld, and, in addition, three or four columns of art criticism to thePall Mall Gazette, apart from regular work in the same department for theManchester Guardian, and occasional articles in other daily or weekly journals.
Mr. Edmund Yates, the founder and editor of theWorld, had given me a generous welcome from the first, and I recall an incident in connection with a series of articles I had done for him which at the time filled me with no little pride. In this series I had dealt week by week with the more important organs of the British press, and I was fortunate enough to win for these papers a considerable amount of attention. But, for the time, Edmund Yates had carefully withheld the secret of their authorship, and one day when I was visiting my old master at Bruce Castle School the subjectcame into our conversation, and he told me that the report was about that they were written by a prominent leader-writer of theTimes.
At this my pride could no longer contain itself, and his incredulity and astonishment when I announced myself as the author gave me a moment of the keenest pleasure.
Yates had many enemies in those days, and the new features which he had introduced into English journalism were in many quarters profoundly resented. But he was generous and warm-hearted to his friends, and beneath those lighter gifts which made for immediate success he possessed a deep, sincere love of literature. It was at his house that I first met the late Mr. Archibald Forbes, a man of rare force and grit, and possessed, as a writer, of a style of trenchant sincerity and power that in my opinion placed him easily at the head of that great race of special war-correspondents which may be said to have been founded by the late Sir William Russell. None of them all, however, could equal Sir William in social grace and readiness of wit. His store of anecdotes garnered from a rich experience of many men and many lands seemed ever inexhaustible and ever new.
Forbes was of a widely different type. His experience had been won in a harder school, but his rapid and vivid powers of expression, his ability to set forth in picturesque presentment events which had only just happened, were, I think, altogether unrivalled. When it is remembered that many of these descriptions were sent rushing over the wires at the close of a day when other men ofless energy would have been exhausted after many hours spent in the saddle, and when it is observed with what potent directness of narrative, often rising to real greatness of style, the story he had to tell was presented to his readers, it will be conceded, I think, that he had no equal in the particular branch of journalistic literature to which he had devoted himself.
We became close friends almost from our first meeting, which, as I remember, was on the occasion of a dinner given by Edmund Yates to the contributors to theWorld, and later, when I became editor to theEnglish Illustrated Magazine, he rekindled some of the earlier memories of his fighting days in a series of articles that included a delightful account of the struggles which preceded his appointment as a special correspondent to theDaily News.
It was during the Franco-German War that theDaily Newsleapt into sudden prominence, in virtue of its splendid correspondence yielding a vivid picture of the conflict from both sides of the campaign, and it was incontestably to the energy and judgment of the late Sir John Robinson that this immediate success was due.
The quiet, kindly personality of Sir John would scarcely have suggested the sure and rapid power of organisation he undoubtedly possessed, and his quickness of insight in the selection of the fit man for the work to be done was vividly illustrated in the account which Mr. Forbes wrote for theEnglish Illustrated Magazineof his first meeting with the genial manager of theDaily News.
It is possible that Forbes had somewhat embroidered the sober facts of the situation in order to heighten its picturesque effect, for I remember that on my next meeting with Sir John, after the publication of the article, he was somewhat whimsically annoyed to find that his own share in this historical transaction had been slightly disfigured to suit the exigencies of Mr. Forbes’s narrative.
Forbes had asserted that at a point in the negotiations he conceived the idea that his services were not desired, and was leaving the office in disgust when Robinson ran after him and brought him back. It was this little piece of added embroidery that Sir John declared to be not absolutely historical, but I feel sure, at least, that Forbes never intended to do injustice to the manager of theDaily News, for in our many talks concerning his struggles at this time he always acknowledged how deeply he had been indebted to his great employer.
Another of the staff of theDaily Newswar-correspondents was Hilary Skinner, whose younger brother had been the dearest friend of my youth, from the time when we were schoolmates at Bruce Castle School.
Alan Skinner afterwards rose to a distinguished official position in the Straits Settlements, but at the time I am thinking of he had just been called to the Bar; and when I, at a later date, left school to begin my life in London, he and I passed many a long evening in the little set of chambers he occupied in Old Square, Lincoln’s Inn. In those days he was a versifier like myself, and, failing awider audience, we used to delight to read to one another our first essays in poetry.
The friendship between us was of the closest, and when he finally went abroad to take up his official duties, the separation, I think, was felt keenly by both. His elder brother, Mr. Hilary Skinner, was of a lighter temperament, though he must have possessed strong force of character to have endured the strenuous labours of a war-correspondent. A voluble and insatiable talker, his conversation never needed the provocation of a reply. In an endless stream of anecdote he would wander over a wide world of men and things, never halting for a word, and rarely halting at all. And yet the trials of the life he had adopted must have been a severe strain upon a constitution that was by no means robust, and I think the wear and tear of that life, though it was not long continued, set a permanent mark upon his health.
Certainly this was so in the case of Archibald Forbes, who suffered much during the later years of his life, suffering that had its origin, as he told me, in a terrible two days’ ride in South Africa when he was racing against time to reach the telegraph-office to cable his news home.
Among others of this special race of correspondents who came into my life at this time were George Augustus Sala and William Beatty-Kingston. With both, however, the record of war was only a passing incident in their journalistic career.
Sala, I think, possessed a larger assortment of odd scraps of knowledge than any man I have ever met, and although his chequered career presentedmany vicissitudes, he had cultivated, as he told me, from boyhood the habit of keeping a series of most carefully compiled commonplace books, in which were recorded, under headings sometimes quaintly chosen, every bit of information or historical allusion which even remotely bore upon the subject in hand.
He told me that in the wildest and most disordered periods in his career this habit had never deserted him, and one evening, when I was dining with him in Mecklenburg Square, he showed me one entire shelf packed with these little volumes, all written in the neatest of monkish hands, and almost without a blot or scar.
I have often wondered what has become of those note-books from which he drew such varied allusions for his characteristic articles in theDaily Telegraph. They would be a treasure-store to many a budding journalist, and as far as I could gather, from a rapid review of them during that one evening at his house, a delight even to the casual reader.
Sala, like his friend Yates, was an accomplished speaker, and a keen critic on all presumptuous pretenders in that department.
I remember one evening, coming away from a public banquet at which he had admirably distinguished himself, I ventured to ask him what he thought of the performance of a gentleman who had followed him, and who I knew rather prided himself upon his achievements in this particular direction.
“Oh!” said Sala in reply, “you mean so-and-so. Ah yes! Damned fluent, damned fool!” The comment sounds harsh, but I do not think it wasunjust. He used to tell me that in the preparation and delivery of his speeches there was always present to his mind the image of a furnished house, and that he kept his material in order and sequence by suggesting to himself, as he spoke, that he was inspecting the various apartments, from the dining-room to the attic, and that in this way he could always avoid any halt or confusion in the arrangement of the matter upon which he was speaking.
Yates, I fancy, though his delivery was always admirable in effect, was accustomed to learn his speeches by heart, and in this respect resembled the late Sir Frederick Leighton, though with the latter the secret was not so well kept.
William Beatty-Kingston, the last of the special correspondents to whom I referred, had no aptitude for public speaking, but he was in many ways highly accomplished. As an amateur musician I should think he had few equals, and his absolute enjoyment when he was seated at the piano, passing from the work of one great master to another, was a delight to witness. I remember that one evening my wife and I had invited to meet him a very gifted young Italian violinist, and it was a suggestion of ours that after dinner they should try over some of the duets of the great composers.
It was easy to see that at first they took no liking for one another. The Italian, as a recognised professional, hardly concealed his sense of superiority over the amateur, and Kingston, I knew, harboured a lurking suspicion that the violinist would not be deeply interested in the work of the great German composers to whom he was enthusiastically attached.
The brief passage of the dinner was for this reason a period of armed neutrality, amusing enough to watch; and when afterwards they were persuaded to make an adventure together it was done reluctantly, and with no great hope on the part of either that the evening would present any real enjoyment. It so happened, as they both knew, that my wife and I were bound to make an early departure for a great fancy-dress ball which had been organised by some of the foremost painters of the day, but of course we invited Kingston and his companion to stay as long as they liked, and leaving them with a sufficient store of whisky and soda and cigars, we set out upon our more frivolous excursion.
The ball was kept up till late; it was past five o’clock before we returned, little thinking to find our guests still in possession; and our surprise was the greater when, on mounting to our single sitting-room in Great Russell Street, we found, in the light of the sunshine that was streaming into the room, Kingston and his companion, both with coat and waistcoat removed, pounding away as hard as they could go at some difficult composition which they were trying over for the third time. The two artists, whom we had left with some misgiving in an attitude of veiled hostility towards each other, were now, as we discovered to our surprise, the closest friends, and, although the morning was well advanced, Kingston insisted that we should sit down and listen to one or two of the gems which they had been performing, and which were now repeated once more for our benefit—the most persuasive plea he urged being that in half an hour the public-houses would be open,and that we could then replenish our slender store of whisky which they had already exhausted.
Kingston had been for some time a special correspondent to theDaily Telegraphin Berlin, and afterwards came to London as its foreign editor. Apart from his musical talent, he spoke with ease many foreign languages, and in this respect resembled Sala, whose facilities as a linguist were great, though, as he once confessed, he inclined by preference to the languages of the Latin races. As he himself picturesquely put it, “My tongue is hung in a Southern belfry.”
Of all the editors with whom my journalistic experience brought me into contact, the man who stood nearest to me as a friend was Professor Minto of theExaminer.
On theExaminerI felt free and unfettered, free to choose any topic that pleased me, and to treat it in whatever way seemed to me best. I have always thought that Minto’s great powers as a critic of literature have never been sufficiently recognised. His separate volumes on the Poetic Writers and the Prose Writers of England contain some of the best criticism of our time, and, in especial, the section in the former devoted to the tragedies of Shakespeare has hardly been equalled in fineness of perception and in sustained eloquence of style.
Though in many ways characteristically Scotch, he had a liberal and supple mind, with a wide grasp and a generous outlook on political affairs, and an appreciation even of lighter works of literature that was hardly to be suspected from his grave and sober personality.
Very delightful were the little smoking evenings he instituted in the offices of theExaminer, which were then situated near Wellington Street in the Strand. There it was that I first met the late Bishop Creighton, who was at the time a constant contributor to the paper. Theodore Watts-Dunton was also a pretty regular visitor on these simple social occasions, and there, too, I met that strangest of accomplished scholars, “Student Williams,” who had long been known as an Oxford coach, and who was now devoting himself to a journalistic career.
It is strange to reflect what a complete revolution has overtaken English journalism in the period of thirty years that has passed since the time of which I am speaking. Literature and journalism have now almost parted company, and although the older tradition still honourably survives in individual instances, it is impossible not to be conscious that the function of a journalist, as it is now most widely accepted, has entirely changed its character.
The sort of article that was eagerly sought for then is now rarely welcomed, and when we recall the names of the men who wrote for theSaturday Review, and the great body of accomplished writers who lifted thePall Matt Gazettein its earlier days into a foremost position among English journals, it will readily be conceded that the revolution is already complete. Reporting has largely taken the place of criticism, and the modern newspaper office, ordered on popular lines, more nearly approaches day by day to a powerful agency for private inquiry and detection.
While this journalistic work was in its earliest stages, I was still seriously engaged in trying to fit myself for work at the Bar. My earlier knowledge of the Law had been gained under the tutorship of Professor Stewart Brice, who had successfully prepared me for my examination at the London University. And now, during the last six months of my studentship, I read in chambers with Charles Crompton, who was a prosperous Junior of the Northern Circuit. Charles Crompton had taken high honours at Cambridge, and was an accomplished lawyer; but his gift of speech was small, and would always have left him unfit for the higher honours of leadership. It was through his influence that I was elected as Junior to the Northern Circuit, which then covered a larger area than is assigned to it now. When I was Junior the towns visited included Appleby, Durham, Newcastle, Carlisle, Lancaster, Manchester, and Liverpool, and until I began to feel the pinch of the great expense which these Circuit tours involved, I keenly enjoyed every hour of the time in which, by my patient presence in theCourts, I was endeavouring to master the principles of the Law.
But before I joined the Circuit, I had already received my first brief from a cousin who was desirous of encouraging me in my new career. I was to appear in the Divorce Court in an undefended case, and my cousin endeavoured to stiffen my nerves for the ordeal by assuring me that the proceedings would be merely formal and the verdict would follow as a matter of course.
It was before Lord Penzance that the trial took place, and when the pleadings had been opened and I had made the statement that the case was undefended, a voice from the well of the Court retorted in acrid tones, “I beg your pardon!” and then a little man rose whom I gathered, in my confusion, to be the respondent. My amazement and dismay are beyond words to describe, and if it had not been for the Judge, who realised the situation and came to my rescue, I think my first brief would have been my last.
As Junior of the Circuit I was brought into close contact with some of the greatest advocates of the time—Holker, Russell, Herschell, Sam Pope, among the leaders; Gully, Henn Collins, Bigham, and a host of others of the Junior Bar who have since risen to distinction. The present Lord Justice Kennedy joined the Circuit at the same time as myself and we shared our lodgings in several of the northern towns.
The post of Junior rather attracted me. According to tradition, that officer is supposed to represent the interests of the Junior Bar, and it isrecognised as part of his duty on every occasion that offers that he should keep in check the superior pretensions of the Queen’s Counsel.
As Junior also I was one of the recognised spokesmen for the Circuit on the occasion of all public banquets and entertainments; and I remember that it was at a dinner given by the late Lord Armstrong in his capacity as High Sheriff of the County, a dinner served in the great banqueting-hall at Jesmond Dene, the walls of which were richly decorated with many important examples of modern art, that I made my first essay as a public speaker.
But what interested me most keenly at the time was the opportunity which the daily working of the Courts afforded of appreciating and distinguishing the great talents of the men who then graced the Circuit.
The first who won my admiration, and it was not wonderful, was Charles Russell, and I remember, in the constant discussions which occupied the Junior end of our table at the evening mess, I always stoutly maintained that he would prove the greatest advocate in England.
He already possessed that dominating personality which was felt by Judge and Counsel alike, and an instance of his imperious temper came to me very early in our acquaintance. Though I had seen and admired him constantly in Court, I had not been introduced to him till I met him one evening in the rooms of Mr. M‘Connell in the Adelphi Hotel, Liverpool. Russell was always a keen cardplayer, though I am assured by those who arebetter able to judge, a player not distinguished by any exceptional skill. There were four of us present that evening, and Russell at once insisted that the table should be brought out for a rubber of whist. I nervously explained to him that I knew scarcely anything of the game, but my objection was curtly overborne in a manner that left me no alternative. By an unhappy fate Russell cut me as a partner, and the blunders which I had clearly foreseen must occur, endured at first with some semblance of equanimity, at last ended in an explosion of rebuke that only made the more inevitable a series of even worse blunders in the game to follow.
By this time Russell had lost all patience, and, to say the truth, so had I, and with a courage and audacity, which I certainly could not have exhibited had I then known him better, I pointed out to him that the fault was his own, that I had warned him of my incompetence, and yet in the face of that confession he had forced me to join in the game.
To my utter amazement he became suddenly gentle and self-controlled, and said, “Yes, yes, you’re right. I had forgotten that. I had no business to speak to you like that.”
Other instances of Russell’s commanding personality, though they belong to a later time, come back to me now.
During the progress of the famous Belt trial, through the kindness of Sir George Lewis I one day found my way into Court; but I had scarcely taken my seat when Russell, with an imperious gesture, beckoned me to his side. “Carr,” he said, “you know about Art?” and before I knew whitherhis statement tended I found myself in the witnessbox confronted with the two test busts on which the issue in the case mainly depended.
The last time we met in public was on the occasion of a dinner to be given to Sir Henry Irving on his return from America, when Sir Charles Russell was in the chair. As I entered the anteroom where the guests were assembled Russell took me by the lapel of my coat and drew me aside. “You ought to be doing this,” he said. “Youcando this sort of thing; I can’t.”
That portion of the statement which concerns himself was, at any rate, partly true. Russell was never quite at home in these lighter ways of oratory. It needed the pressure of a great issue to exhibit his powers of eloquence at their best, and even in the House of Commons I fancy he never quite justified his unrivalled position at the Bar.
But in that special gift of eloquence that makes for power in advocacy there was surely no man of his time who could claim to be his equal. Within the arena of the Court his personality imposed itself; in the stress of conflict it could even be menacing. It exercised its influence upon the jury; it was not unfelt upon the Bench. Like all great advocates, he was at his best when the gravity of the issue summoned all his resources. He was only fully inspired when his individuality was fully and deeply engaged, and for that he needed the spur of something definite, concrete, and individual. His gifts of oratory were conspicuous. In those northern Circuit days I used constantly to notice a greater freedom and picturesqueness of gesture, a more complete surrender to a mood of passionate utterance than any of his fellows could command. These things were his in virtue of his birthright as an Irishman. But they were not at his service upon an issue that was coldly intellectual or remotely abstract. There was in his nature that purely combative element that could only find its full expression in the battle of litigation; the clash of ideas left him comparatively cold: he was so far an artist that he needed to be moved and stirred by facts that were moulded into a definite story of individual fortunes—then, and only then, the full force of his personality came into play. At such moments his strength far outmeasured the weight of gifts that were merely intellectual; such gifts, however considerable, were then enforced by qualities of character and even of temper very difficult to define but still more difficult to resist.
In after years he once told me that his habit had always been to prepare his cases chronologically. He wanted to know what was missing in the story he had to tell, to be prepared in anticipation for any surprise coming from the other side that might suddenly be brought to fill the vacant gaps in his own narrative. And this simple process of preparation showed itself in his methods as an advocate. His power of presenting his case had something of the charm a story-teller can command. It was always lucid, direct, and consecutive, never halting or confused. Sir William Gilbert once told me that on a certain occasion he was in Court listening to his own counsel opening to the jury the story of his own case. He said he was charmed, by the interest of thenarrative as it was gradually developed, and that the only criticism that occurred to him was that the substance of the speech bore no relation to the contention he had come into Court to establish. Such a reproach, I think, could never at any period in his career have been made against the late Lord Russell.
I did not at first recognise that Russell had in his constant opponent, John Holker, a man of intellectual power, as great, or perhaps even greater, than his own. Holker had little of the grace that Russell could boast; his personality was outwardly heavy and uncouth; his language, rarely eloquent, was sometimes even rough and halting. But in his grasp of every case presented to him, and in his power of imposing the view he sought to uphold upon a northern jury, even Russell was not his equal. A man of great physique, in person cumbrous and heavy, and in facial expression unalert and uninspiring, he sometimes gave to his hearers rather the impression of a giant talking in his sleep.
But as I watched him from day to day, it very soon became convincingly clear to me that the giant was there. He seemed to notice nothing, and yet nothing escaped him. His method of appeal to the jury had something almost of cunning in its apparent helplessness.
Even when he was nearing success, and the verdict was within his grasp, he still retained the air of a man whose cause was in danger owing to his inferior grace of style and his halting powers of eloquence. He had that persuasive art of convincing the jury that he was a plain man like themselves, and that the cause of justice was likely to suffer by reason of the superior intellectual attainments of his opponents, unless he and they laid their heads together as plain men, and stood shoulder to shoulder in earnest endeavour to vindicate the right.
It was only afterwards that I got to know that beneath this heavy and impenetrable exterior there lurked a keen and supple sense of humour. On the occasion of the annual Grand Night the leader who presided did not always take the personal trouble to invent or devise the sort of burlesque address interspersed with lyrical effusions which was deemed appropriate and indispensable. I remember my friends, the late Mr. M‘Connell and Hugh Shield, who was known as the laureate of the Circuit, very often came to the assistance of the leader who felt himself unequipped for this lighter task imposed upon him.
But when it came to Holker’s turn, despite the fact that he was engaged on nearly every case sent up for trial, he chose to do the whole himself, and very admirably it was done.
Herschell’s intellect differed widely from both. In power of logical statement, in clear and coherent reasoning, and in the ability to conduct an argument without a flaw from start to finish, he was certainly not the inferior of either. But his nature on the emotional side, as far at least as advocacy was concerned, was poorly furnished. He lacked the warmth to sway a jury. He was unable to realise any disability in others that he did not possess in himself, and the consequence was that he had often concluded his address to the jury before theseunfortunate gentlemen had apprehended the essential features of the case he was trying to enforce. And for this reason his appeal as an advocate was far less potent than that of either of his two great rivals. The cold steel of his intellect never reached white heat. His eloquence lacked the picturesque adornments which in their different ways they could both command, and in this respect he stood in even more striking contrast with Sam Pope, who, in a brief flight of advocacy, once or twice impressed me more than them all.
The duties of the Junior of the Circuit sometimes placed me in somewhat ludicrous conflict with authority, and it happened that on my first Circuit I was forced, as the spokesman of the Bar, into a somewhat heated controversy with the Attorney-General, the late Lord Coleridge.
Charles Russell had been sent by the Crown with a special retainer to prosecute Mrs. Cotton, the notorious murderess who had poisoned a number of her nieces and nephews for the sake of small village insurances she had effected on their lives. This aroused the indignation of the Bar at Durham, who thought that Mr. Aspinall, who held the position of Attorney-General for the County, was entitled to the brief. And it was Herschell who prompted me in the letters of protest which I was instructed to send to Lord Coleridge, and which were afterwards published in theTimes.
That same trial of Mrs. Cotton stands out vividly in my remembrance from among the many criminal cases which I have witnessed in the Courts. I remember Russell telling me afterwards that theseveral cases actually proved against her, amounting, I think, to five or six, were only a few from among many others in which her guilt was equally assured; and yet, during her trial, this elderly woman, who in appearance resembled rather a comfortable monthly nurse, never evinced the smallest trace of emotion or concern.
It was proved that she had sat up night after night assiduously nursing her victims, as, one after another, they succumbed to the poison she had administered. And yet it was only when her advocate, whose case from the first was hopeless, endeavoured to appeal to the jury by a purely fanciful picture of her constant affection for these helpless children, that Mrs. Cotton—moved rather, as it would seem, by the artistic skill of his eloquence than by any deeper feeling—shed a few tears such as might have been wrung from a spectator at a play.
My own experiences as a barrister are too slight to deserve any record. Mainly through the kindly influence of Charles Crompton I appeared in one or two civil causes, but these were before an arbitrator and not in open court. Once, and once only, I was entrusted with a brief to defend a person who was accused of having stolen a moth-eaten pillow from a passing barrow containing the household effects of a neighbour who was shifting her quarters.
I was assured by my friends on Circuit that had I chosen to pursue my career I should have made an effective advocate. But the expenses incident to this side of my calling were already beginning to press heavily upon me; and as I was then almostentirely dependent on what I could earn for myself, I rather grudged the constant drain upon my income as a journalist which my life at the Bar involved; and when in the month of July 1873 I became engaged to be married, I quickly perceived that the only speedy prospect of making a home for my wife was to devote the whole of my energies to literature and journalism, in which I had already made a successful start.
But the profession of the Law, so eagerly adopted and so speedily abandoned, has always had for me a strong fascination, and among its professors, both past and present, I have counted many of my closest friends.
Emery WalkerDANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTIFrom the portrait by himself in the National Portrait Gallery.To face page 59.
Emery WalkerDANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTIFrom the portrait by himself in the National Portrait Gallery.To face page 59.
Emery Walker
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
From the portrait by himself in the National Portrait Gallery.
To face page 59.
I can hardly say what it was that gave to my early efforts in journalism a decided bent towards the study of Art; for although my first experiments, as I have already said, were made as a dramatic critic, I very soon found myself employing the best of my energies in another direction.
My elder sister had already begun a serious study of painting, and that no doubt partly influenced my taste as a boy. Not that my keen interest in the drama ever lapsed, even during the period when I was qualifying myself as an Art Critic; but it lay dormant for a time, in so far at least as my journalistic occupation was concerned; and apart from my daily work upon theGlobe, and those lighter essays on general and social topics contributed to theExaminerand theSaturday Review, my main energies for several years to come were destined to be employed in the criticism of pictorial art.
It is not quite easy now to realise the extraordinary interest with which the annual exhibitions at the Royal Academy were then greeted by those whose minds had been awakened to the new movement in painting.
I can remember year after year, from the age of sixteen, presenting myself on each opening Monday at eight o’clock in the morning at the doors of Burlington House, and snatching an hour there before making my way to the City. The pre-Raphaelite movement had begotten a freshly awakened spirit, not only in the workers themselves, but in those who worshipped them. The advent of Ruskin had kindled a new flame which made a study of Art something more than mere dilettantism. It was with something almost of religious fervour that we awaited the advent of a new Millais or Holman Hunt, for it was then only on rare occasions that we had the chance of seeing an example of the work of Rossetti.
Art in more recent days has come to make, even in the hands of its greatest professors, a more technical appeal, and those of us who are not of the calling are now somewhat sternly bidden to confine ourselves to dumb appreciation, and are severely warned not to venture to deliver opinions on matters in which we are not qualified by special study.
This is the fate of all art, either literary or pictorial, at those seasons of impaired vitality when it falls under the domination of men of the “métier.” It is the assured sign of a passing period of decadence. The moment when the artist has missed the spirit which links his work with the wider emotional movement of his generation, is always the moment when he most zealously and most loudly acclaims the detachment and independence of his calling.
He is always most eager to be judged by the comrades of his craft when he realises, thoughperhaps only half consciously, that his appeal is no longer to the simple. It is the moment when art leans towards bric-a-brac, when the painter or the sculptor is no longer spurred by the larger desire to have his work understanded of the people, when he is content in each little coterie with the appreciation of his disciples who in their turn aim at nothing better than the approbation of their master. That any work worthy of the name, whether in literature, painting, or sculpture, must of necessity conform to the irrefutable laws of the medium in which it is expressed, is little better than an outworn platitude. But to concede so much is only to admit the inevitable limitations of every art; it is the acceptance of its inherent conditions, not the definition of its essence; and the endeavour to refuse to artists rightly equipped for their task the larger function of imaging the wider passions of life, is simply to rob the record of the past of its greatest and most enduring achievements.
For my own part I have never made any pretence of bowing before these inordinate pretensions of the masters of mere technique. They form part of a gospel that has always been widely preached: in my youthful day it spread upon its banner the specious motto of “Art for Art’s sake”; but it reappears under many disguises, and rests ultimately and always upon the assumption that the men of the “métier” are the sole and exclusive judges of the worth of any artistic product.
Certainly, if this dictum had prevailed in the time I am recalling, the great movement which won all our youthful enthusiasm, a movement beyond question the greatest and most influential in the Art of Europe during the nineteenth century, would never have found strength to develop. Never did young men of their calling meet with more embittered opposition from the accepted masters of the time; and if it had not been that a true impulse inspiring their work stirred a deeper response in a section of the public than was accorded to them by their fellow-painters, they would most surely have lacked the encouragement and the praise which to every artist is as the breath of his life.
The thought and feeling of the time, as it found expression in every art, was moved by something deeper than the merely artistic impulse. That much-bespattered Victorian Era, whatever its limitations, could claim at least this cardinal virtue, that the men who are its foremost representatives were able to forge anew the links that bind life and art together. The gifts they owned were too great to let them stand in any fear of the threatened danger of “the literary idea”; and if occasionally they had to acknowledge a measure of failure, the fear of such failure never drove them to take refuge within the safe confines of mere technical accomplishment.
The spirit of poetry, re-awakened in literature, had found its way into art, and themselves the comrades of the poets of the time, the leaders of the little band whose efforts were destined to revolutionise English painting, gladly confessed in their own work, though in varying measure, the newly kindled ambition to embody in art that quality of imagination that had hitherto found expression only in literature.
And this movement towards a wider idealism was helped, not hindered, by the strenuous desire for the faithful presentment of actual reality which stood as a dominant article of faith in the pre-Raphaelite creed.
At the head of this revolution in taste, which has left a lasting mark, not only upon the painting of England, but also in some degree upon the art of all Continental nations, two names I think stand pre-eminent, those of G. F. Watts and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. From them came the poetic inspiration which lay at the root of all the greatest achievements of the time. Others there were, like Millais, more greatly endowed with the painter’s gift, but even he, whose genius was destined ultimately to find its own more congenial exercise in portraiture and landscape, confessed in his earlier days the commanding domination of men who, in intellect and imagination, were his leaders and his masters.
The work of Mr. Watts, based on an earlier tradition, was open to all the world, but it was only by rare chance and good fortune that the student of that day had the opportunity of making acquaintance with the paintings of Rossetti. I remember it was while I was on Circuit that I had my first sight of some examples of his work in the collection of Mr. Rae of Birkenhead, and there, too, I found pictures of Madox Brown, another of the group who did not publicly exhibit. I think it was a study of Mr. Rae’s collection that induced me to publish in theGlobenewspaper a series of articles on painters of the day over the signature of “Ignotus” in the year 1873.
Certainly it was the publication of these papersthat formed the occasion of my making the acquaintance of several of the artists whose talent I had endeavoured to appreciate. It was my intention at the time to refashion the series and to issue them as a separate volume, and with that view I wrote to several of them asking them for some personal details of the earlier days of their studentship. The answers I received were in nearly every case characteristic, and it was by means of my correspondence with Rossetti that I afterwards became a visitor at his house.
It was through my friend Mr. George Hake, who was at that time staying with him, that I first obtained a personal introduction to Rossetti, but we were already known to each other by correspondence.
In his letter to me dated from Kelmscott in November 1873 he writes: “As a painter, and I am ashamed at my age to say it, I have never even approached satisfaction with my own progress until within the last five years. My youth was spent chiefly in planning and designing, and whether I shall still have time to do anything I cannot tell.”
As a matter of fact, Rossetti had at that date produced most of the work by which he will be best remembered. As a lad of twenty he had painted “The Girlhood of Mary the Virgin,” followed shortly afterwards by “The Annunciation”; and some of the most beautiful of his drawings, the exquisite portrait of “Miss Siddal,” the “Hamlet and Ophelia,” and the large drawing of “Helen arming Paris,” already stood to his credit.
At the time I first knew him he had already painted “The Loving Cup,” “The Beloved,” “Mona