I had two great days in Vermont, and have a grateful remembrance of Mrs. Kipling’s hospitality. The poet read me “McAndrew’s Hymn,” which he had just done, and surprised me by his dramatic power which enabled him to sustain the Glasgow accent throughout, so that the angular Scottish greaser simply walked the room. I had brought up my golf clubs and gave him lessons in a field while the New England rustics watched us from afar, wondering what on earth we were at, for golf was unknown in America at that time. We parted good friends, and the visit was an oasis in my rather dreary pilgrimage as a lecturer.
My glimpses of Kipling since then have been few and scattered, but I had the pleasure several times of meeting his old father, a most delightful and lovable person, who told a story quite as well as his famous son. As the mother was also a very remarkable woman, it is no wonder that he carried such a cargo.
James Barrie is one of my oldest literary friends, and I knew him within a year or two of the time when we both came to London. He had just written his “Window in Thrums,” and I, like all the world, acclaimed it. When I was lecturing in Scotland in 1893 he invited me to Kirriemuir, when I stayed some days with his family — splendid types of the folk who have made Scotland great. His father was a fine fellow, but his mother was wonderful with a head and a heart — rare combinations — which made me class her with my own mother. Kirriemuir could by no means understand Barrie’s success, and looked upon their great son as an inexplicable phenomenon. They were acutely aware, however, that tourists were arriving from all parts to see the place on account of Barrie’s books. “I suppose you have read them,” I said to the wife of the local hotel man. “Aye, I’ve read them, and steep, steep, weary work it was,” said she. She had some theory that it was a four-horse coach which her good man was running, and not the books at all which accounted for the boom.
Great as are Barrie’s plays — and some of them I think are very great — I wish he had never written a Une for the theatre. The glamour of it and the — to him — easy success have diverted from literature the man with the purest style of his age. Plays are always ephemeral, however good, and are limited to a few, but Barrie’s unborn books might have been an eternal and a universal asset of British literature. He has the chaste clarity which is the great style, which has been debased by a generation of wretched critics who have always confused what is clear with what is shallow, and what is turbid with what is profound. If a man’s thought is precise, his rendering of it is precise, and muddy thoughts make obscure paragraphs. If I had to make my choice among modern stylists, I should pick Barrie for the lighter forms of expression and our British Winston Churchill for the more classical.
Barrie’s great play — one of the finest in the language — is of course “The Admirable Crichton.” I shall always hope that I had a hand in the fashioning of it. I say this not in complaint but in satisfaction, for we all drop seeds into each other, and seldom know whence they come. We were walking together on the Heath at Kirriemuir when I said: “I had a quaint thought in the night, Barrie. It was that a king was visiting India and was wrecked on the way on some island far from the track of ships. Only he and one rather handy sailor were saved. They settled down to spend their lives together. Of course the result would be that the sailor would become the king and the king the subject.” We chuckled over the idea, and when Crichton appeared, I seemed to see the fine plant which had grown from the tiny seed.
Barrie and I had one unfortunate venture together, in which I may say that the misfortune was chiefly mine, since I had really nothing to do with the matter, and yet shared all the trouble. However, I should have shared the honour and profit in case of success, so that I have no right to grumble. The facts were that Barrie had promised Mr. D’Oyley Carte that he would provide the libretto of a light opera for the Savoy. This was in the Gilbert days, when such a libretto was judged by a very high standard. It was an extraordinary commission for him to accept, and I have never yet been able to understand why he did so, unless, like Alexander, he wanted fresh worlds to conquer. On this occasion, however, he met with a disastrous repulse, and the opera, “Jane Annie,” to which I alluded in an early chapter, was one of the few failures in his brilliant career.
I was brought into the matter because Barrie’s health failed on account of some family bereavement. I had an urgent telegram from him at Aldburgh, and going there I found him very worried because he had bound himself by this contract, and he felt in his present state unable to go forward with it. There were to be two acts, and he had written the first one, and had the rough scenario of the second, with the complete sequence of events — if one may call it a sequence. Would I come in with him and help him to complete it as part author? Of course I was very happy to serve him in any way. My heart sank, however, when, after giving the promise, I examined the work. The only literary gift which Barrie has not got is the sense of poetic rhythm, and the instinct for what is permissible in verse. Ideas and wit were there in abundance. But the plot itself was not strong, though the dialogue and the situations also were occasionally excellent. I did my best and wrote the lyrics for the second act, and much of the dialogue, but it had to take the predestined shape. The result was not good. However, the actual comradeship of production was very amusing and interesting, and our failure was mainly painful to us because it let down the producer and the caste. We were well abused by the critics, but Barrie took it all in the bravest spirit.
I find, in looking over my papers, a belated statement of account from Barrie which is good reading.
Our association was never so closely renewed, but through all my changing life I have had a respect and affection for Barrie which were, I hope, mutual. How I collaborated with him at cricket as well as at work is told in my chapter on Sport.
Henry Irving is one of the other great men whom I have met at close quarters, for his acting of Gregory Brewster brought us in contact. When he was producing “Coriolanus “he came down to Hindhead and used to drop in of an evening. He was fond of a glass of port — indeed, he was one of the four great men who were stated (probably untruly) by the Hon. G. Russell to drink a bottle each night — being the only trait which these great men had in common. The others, I remember, were Tennyson, Gladstone and Moses Montefiori, and the last I believe was really true. Like all bad habits, it overtook the sinner at last, and he was cut off at the age of 116.
Irving had a curious dry wit which was occasionally sardonic and ill-natured. I can well believe that his rehearsals were often the occasion for heart-burnings among the men and tears among the ladies. The unexpectedness of his remarks took one aback. I remember when my friend Hamilton sat up with me into the “wee sma’ hours “with the famous man, he became rather didactic on the subject of the Deity or the Universe or some other tremendous topic, which he treated very solemnly, and at great length. Irving sat with his intense eyes riveted upon the speaker’s face, which encouraged Hamilton to go on and on. When at last he had finished, Irving remarked: “What a low comedian you would have made! “He wound up his visit by giving me his copy of “Coriolanus “with all his notes and stage directions — a very precious relic.
Many visions of old times rise before my eyes as I write, but my book would lose all proportion should I dwell upon them. I see Henley, the formidable cripple, a red-bearded, loud-voiced buccaneer of a man who could only crawl, for his back appeared to be broken. He was a great poet and critic who seemed to belong to the roaring days of Marlowe of the mighty line and the pothouse fray. I see Haggard too, first as the young spruce diplomatist, later as the worn and bearded man with strange vague tendencies to mysticism. Shaw, too, I see with the pleasant silky voice and the biting phrase. It was strange that all the mild vegetables which formed his diet made him more pugnacious and, I must add, more uncharitable than the carnivorous man, so that I have known no literary man who was more ruthless to other people’s feelings. And yet to meet him was always to like him. He could not resist a bitter jest or the perverted pleasure of tak
ing up an unpopular attitude. As an example I remember Henry Irving telling me that when Shaw was invited to his father’s funeral he wrote in reply: “If I were at Westminster Henry Irving would turn in his grave, just as Shakespeare would turn in his grave were Henry Irving at Stratford.” I may not have it verbally exact, but that was near enough. It was the kind of outrageous thing that he would say. And yet one can forgive him all when one reads the glorious dialogue of some of his plays. He seems subhuman in emotion and superhuman in intellect.
Shaw was always a thorn in Irving’s side, and was usually the one jarring note among the chorus of praise which greeted each fresh production. At a first night at the Lyceum — those wonderful first nights which have never been equalled — the lanky Irishman with his greenish face, his red beard, and his sardonic expression must have been like the death’s-head at the banquet to Irving. Irving ascribed this animosity to Shaw’s pique because his plays were not accepted, but in this I am sure that he did an injustice. It was simply that contrary twist in the man which makes him delight in opposing whatever anyone else approved. There is nothing constructive in him, and he is bound to be in perpetual opposition. No one for example was stronger for peace and for non-militarism than he, and I remember that when I took the chair at a meeting at Hindhead to back up the Tsar’s peace proposals at The Hague, I thought to myself as I spied Shaw in a corner of the room: “Well, this time at any rate he must be in sympathy.” But far from being so he sprang to his feet and put forward a number of ingenious reasons why these proposals for peace would be disastrous. Do what you could he was always against you.
Perhaps it is no bad thing to have the other point of view continually stated, and the British stand that sort of thing better than other nations. Had Shaw said in America what he said in England about the war whilst it was in progress he would have been in personal danger. There were times, however, when his queer contrary impulses became perfectly brutal in their working. One was at the time of the Titanic disaster, when he deliberately wrote a letter at a time when the wounds were raw, overwhelming every one concerned with bitter criticism. I was moved to write a remonstrance, and we had a sharp debate in public, which did not in any way modify our kindly personal relations. I can recall a smaller but even more unjustifiable example of his sour nature when he was staying at Hindhead. A garden-party had been got up for some charity, and it included the woodland scenes of “As You Like It,” which were done by amateurs, and very well done too. Shaw with no provocation wrote a whole column of abuse in the local paper, spattering all the actors and their performance with ridicule, and covering them with confusion, though indeed they had nothing to be ashamed of. One mentions these things as characteristic of one side of the man, and as a proof, I fear, that the adoption by the world of a vegetarian diet will not bring unkind thoughts or actions to an end. But with it all Shaw is a genial creature to meet, and I am prepared to believe that there is a human kindly side to his nature though it has not been presented to the public. It took a good man to write “Saint Joan.”
Wells, too, I have known long, and indeed I must have often entered the draper’s shop in which he was employed at Southsea, for the proprietor was a patient of mine. Wells is one of the great fruits which popular education has given us, since he came, as he is proud to state, from the heart of the people. His democratic frankness and complete absence of class feeling are occasionally embarrassing. I remember his asking me once if I had played cricket at Liphook. I said that I had. He said: “Did you notice an old fellow who acts as professional and ground-keeper?” I said that I had. “That was my father,” said Wells. I was too much surprised to answer, and could only congratulate myself that I had made no unpleasant comments before I knew the identity of the old man.
I have always had my doubts as to those elaborate forecasts of the future in which Wells indulges. He has, it is true, made a couple of good shots which have already materialised in the tanks and in the machine which would deliver news in our own houses. But he has never shown any perception of the true meaning of the psychic, and for want of it his history of the world, elaborate and remarkable as it was, seemed to me to be a body without a soul. However, this also may be given him, and it will make his equipment complete. I remember discussing the matter with him, when George Gissing, Hornung, he and I foregathered in Rome early in this century, but apparently my words had no effect.
Willie Hornung, my brother-in-law, is another of my vivid memories. He was a Dr. Johnson without the learning but with a finer wit. No one could say a neater thing, and his writings, good as they are, never adequately represented the powers of the man, nor the quickness of his brain. These things depend upon the time and the fashion, and go flat in the telling, but I remember how, when I showed him the record of some one who claimed to have done 100 yards under ten seconds, he said: “It is a sprinter’s error.” Golf he could not abide, for he said it was “unsportsmanlike to hit a sitting ball.” His criticism upon my Sherlock Holmes was: “Though he might be more humble, there is no police like Holmes.” I think I may claim that his famous character Raffles was a kind of inversion of Sherlock Holmes, Bunny playing Watson. He admits as much in his kindly dedication. I think there are few finer examples of short-story writing in our language than these, though I confess I think they are rather dangerous in their suggestion. I told him so before he put pen to paper, and the result has, I fear, borne me out. You must not make the criminal a hero.
Jerome, too, is an old friend. He is an adventurous soul, and at one time started a four-in-hand. I remember sitting on the top of it, and when one of the leaders turned right round and took a good look at the driver I thought it was time to get down. Maxwell also is an old friend. He is, of course, the son of Miss Braddon, who married a publisher of that name. I respect him for doing a man’s work in the war when, though he was fifty years of age, and had led a sedentary life, he volunteered for a fighting battalion, a credit which he shares with A. E. W. Mason. Maxwell’s work has always greatly appealed to me, and I have long looked upon him as the greatest novelist that we possess.
I never met Robert Louis Stevenson in the flesh, though I owe so much to him in the literary spirit. Never can I forget the delight with which I read those early stories of his in the “Cornhill,” before I knew the name of the author. I still think that “The Pavilion on the Links “is one of the great short stories of the world, though there were alterations in the final form which were all for the worse, and showed prudery upon the part of the publishers. Stevenson’s last year at Edinburgh University must have just about coincided with my first one, and Barrie must also have been in that grey old nest of learning about the year 1876. Strange to think that I probably brushed elbows with both of them in the crowded portal.
From his far-away home in Samoa he seemed to keep a quick eye upon literary matters in England, and I had most encouraging letters from him in 1893 and 1894. “O frolic fellow-spookist “was his curious term of personal salutation in one of these, which showed that he shared my interest in psychic research but did not take it very seriously. I cannot guess how at that time he had detected it, though I was aware that he had himself in early days acted as secretary to a psychic research or rather to a spiritualist society in Edinburgh, which studied the remarkable mediumship of Duguid. His letters to me consisted of kind appreciation of my work. “I have a great talent for compliment,” he said, “accompanied by a hateful, even a diabolic, frankness.” He had been retailing some of my Sherlock Holmes yarns to his native servants — I should not have thought that he needed to draw upon anyone else — and he complained to me in a comical letter of the difficulty of telling a story when you had to halt every moment to explain what a railway was, what an engineer was, and so forth. He got the story across in spite of all difficulties, and, said he, “If you could have seen the bright feverish eyes of Simite you would have tasted glory.” But he explained that the natives took everything literally, and that there was no such thing as an imaginary
story for them. “I, who write this, have had the indiscretion to perpetuate a trifling piece of fiction, ‘The Bottle Imp.’ Parties who come up to visit my mansion, after having admired the ceiling by Vanderputty and the tapestry by Gobbling, manifest towards the end a certain uneasiness which proves them to be fellows of an infinite delicacy. They may be seen to shrug a brown shoulder, to roll up a speaking eye, and at last the secret bursts from them: ‘Where is the bottle? ‘“In another letter he said that as I had written of my first book in the “Idler “he also would do so. “I could not hold back where the white plume of Conan Doyle waved in front of me.” So, at least, I may boast that it is to me that the world owes the little personal sketch about “Treasure Island “which appeared in that year. I cannot forget the shock that it was to me when driving down the Strand in a hansom cab in 1896 I saw upon a yellow evening poster “Death of Stevenson.” Something seemed to have passed out of my world.
I was asked by his executors to finish the novel “St. Ives,” which he had left three-quarters completed, but I did not feel equal to the task. It was done, however, and, I understand, very well done, by Quiller-Couch. It is a desperately difficult thing to carry on another man’s story, and must be a more or less mechanical effort. I had one experience of it when my neighbour at Hindhead, Grant Allen, was on his death-bed. He was much worried because there were two numbers of his serial, “Hilda Wade,” which was running in “The Strand “magazine, still uncompleted. It was a pleasure for me to do them for him, and so relieve his mind, but it was difficult collar work, and I expect they were pretty bad. Some time afterwards a stranger, who evidently confused Allen and me, wrote to say that his wife had given him a baby girl, and that in honour of me he was calling her Hilda Wade. He was really nearer the truth than appeared at first sight.
Delphi Complete Works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Illustrated) Page 1422