My life and loves Vol. 3

by Frank Harris

  "The curious part of it is," said Lady Alwynne, "that she is in love with you for the time being; she's extraordinarily sympathetic."

  At this luncheon I declared that modern science should turn the sacrifice of Father Damien into a triumph by forming a fund to study leprosy and discover a cure.

  "The only worthy memorial to him," I said, "would be to make his selfsacrifice final by eliminating the foul disease from the world."

  Mrs. Vyner questioned me closely after lunch and then persuaded me that I should call on Prince Edward and ask him to take the initiative. "I'll speak to the Prince," she said, "and you'll see that he'll take fire at your idea; he's really a good man and eager to help every noble cause."

  A day or two afterwards I got a letter from Prince Edward, asking me to come to Marlborough House and explain my scheme about Damien. I went and found Sir Francis Knollys, the Prince's secretary. I told him I wanted to get up a committee and form a fund, to be called the Damien Fund, to make an end of leprosy in memory of the great hearted man who had given his life for the lepers. "Modern doctors," I said, "will be able to find the microbe of leprosy in six months and so cure the disease." Knollys finally agreed with me and made an appointment with the Prince for the afternoon. When Edward saw me he burst out: "I could hardly believe it was you, Harris! Your naughty stories are wonderful; but what have you to do with leprosy and a fund to cure it?"

  "It could be done so easily, Sir," I began. "I'm sure if you'll lend your great influence to the cause, it can be made successful in a year, and one of the vilest diseases that afflict humanity can be done away with."

  "All right," cried the Prince. "I'll back you up in every way: see Knollys here and arrange the plan of campaign. I'm with you heartily. We'll have the meetings here." I thanked him cordially for his support.

  The chief persons in the kingdom were put on the committee: the preliminaries were settled by Sir Francis Knollys and myself, and a large fund raised. But alas! In spite of all my efforts to keep at least one lay member on the working committee, the whole executive power fell into the hands of the doctors, who each had his own fad to air and his own personality to advertise.

  Our first meeting at Marlborough House was a huge success. All the first men in England came to the meeting and some twenty thousand pounds were subscribed in the first half hour. "What should I give?" asked the Duke of Norfolk.

  "You must remember," I said, "that as the first Catholic in the realm, your gift will certainly not be surpassed; the more you give, the more others will give."

  He gave two thousand pounds, I believe.

  While the doctors were disputing in private, strange rumors came to London from the leper settlement in Hawaii. It was said that Father Damien's leprosy had been contracted through his carnal love for some of the female lepers.

  The wretched story was contradicted, but the slander was too tasty a morsel to be rejected. The Prince sent for me hot-foot. I found him in a state of great excitement in Marlborough House.

  "Here's a pretty kettle of fish!" he cried. "Of course it's not your fault, but this Father Damien must have been a nice person. Fancy choosing lepers-eh? It gives one a shiver. I suppose it's human nature; propinquity, eh?" and he laughed. "We must change the name of our fund, though; what shall we call it?"

  "Why change, Sir?" I asked. "That would be to condemn Damien without a trial. I don't believe a word of the vile story."

  "Whether you believe it or not," cried the Prince impatiently, "everyone else believes it, and that's the thing I have to consider. Such stories are always believed, and I can't afford to be laughed at like they laugh at Damien. I don't want to be taken for a fool; surely you see that. We may believe what we please, but I have to consider public opinion."

  "As you please, Sir," I said, realizing for the first time that in these democratic days Princes, even, are under the hoof of the ignorant despot called opinion.

  "The name can be changed. "The Leprosy Fund' is as distinctive a title as 'The Father Damien Fund,' but I regret your decision."

  "Oh, come," he exclaimed, restored to complete good humor by my submission. "The Leprosy Fund' is excellent. Tell Knollys, will you, that we have changed the title, and take all steps to make it widely known! We must be worldmen, men of the world, I mean, and accept opinion and not be peculiar. It's always foolish to be peculiar; you get laughed at," and so he ran on, expounding his cheap philosophy, the philosophy of the average man and of the street. Fancy a Prince afraid to be peculiar. No wonder Edward was popular; he was always eager to pay the price popularity demands.

  The doctors chosen to investigate were appointed by the head of the College of Surgeons, Sir Jonathan Hutchinson, and the head of the College of Physicians, whose name I forget. But Sir Jonathan Hutchinson took the chief part in the appointments and he was notorious for his belief that leprosy came from the eating of stale fish. This was the theory when he was a youth and studied medicine. It had been completely disproved by the experiments of the Norwegians, who had established the best school and hospital for leprosy in modern Europe, but Sir Jonathan knew nothing of modern research on the subject and insisted on appointing someone who believed or pretended to believe in the stale fish theory. Consequently, the commissioners went to India and returned without achieving anything. They would have been infinitely better advised if they had gone to Norway and profited by the experiments of the Norwegian investigators.

  I wanted to use the fund to send two young men to Norway and two to the leper settlement at the Cape of Good Hope, and two more to Calcutta, to study leprosy in all its phases and try to find a cure for it; whereas each of the great doctors had a new theory and a new method to propose. One declared that it was purely contagious; another believed that like syphilis, it could only be propagated through an abrasion of the outer cuticle: not one of them knew anything about the modern researches; they were all full of the conclusions they had formed on the subject after an hour's reading when they were students-one could tell the textbook each of them had used.

  I had already noticed that Sir Andrew Clarke and the other notable medical authorities were opposed to me and my ideas. But they didn't trouble me greatly, as no two of them agreed on any policy. On one point however, they were all at one: as I was not a properly qualified doctor I could know nothing of leprosy, though I had really spent more time on it than all of them put together, and had studied the latest works on it in three or four languages. I found it hopeless to dispute with the doctors, and as soon as the name of the fund was changed I resigned my position as secretary and washed my hands of the whole business, though the Prince and Knollys requested me very kindly to reconsider my decision.

  The single experience had taught me several good lessons. For one thing, I began to see the weakness of patronage in England. The Prince could only act in any case through the nominal heads of the profession concerned, and the great London doctors knew nothing about leprosy and cared less. I was convinced that no good would come of the inquiry as directed by them.

  Progress in science is only made by disinterested, able investigators: one thing was certain; if the money had been subscribed in Germany or in France, a far better use would have been made of it.

  In spite of the comparative failure of the scheme, it made the Prince of Wales like me better, and certainly turned Sir Francis Knollys, who was nominally the head of the Prince's household and his most trusted adviser, into a really close friend. When I got to know him I found that he was a lineal descendant of the Sir Francis Knollys, who was the Chamberlain of Queen Elizabeth's Court and made himself a little ridiculous when well advanced in years by falling in love with Mistress Mary Fitton, Shakespeare's love, "the dark lady of the Sonnets," and the mistress of young Lord Pembroke, Shakespeare's patron and friend.

  I felt sure this old Sir Francis Knollys was the prototype of Shakespeare's Polonius, and I could give a dozen reasons for my belief.

  One day I detailed them to Sir Francis Knollys, who was del
ighted with the identification, a little to my surprise, for Polonius does not cut a heroic figure in Hamlet. I learned to like Knollys with heart and head: he was not only kindly and fair-minded, but absolutely loyal to his friends, and more than anything else I appreciated that loyalty in London, where everybody seems inclined to run his friend down and depreciate even good ideas and unselfish endeavor.

  Snobbery is the religion of England. I had always regarded Edmund Yates, owner and editor of the weekly paper, The World, as a friend of mine, and I had taken care to have him asked to the meetings of the Damien Committee, but now he came out with a long article in The World, declaring that I had jumped from Father Damien's shoulders through the window of Marlborough House-the whole article a mere sweat of envy. I never laid any stress on the fact that Prince Edward was kind to me. But to Edmund Yates, who pretended to be my friend, my little social success was much more important than my writing or my friendship. The incident only confirmed my growing belief that most men give themselves much more readily to hatred than to love.

  The reasons why the Prince disliked Germany, in spite of his German upbringing, have never yet been told in print. Nevertheless, they are interesting and show how petty slights and foolish misunderstandings may help to cause the greatest wars and deluge Europe with blood.

  For many years Prince Edward had been an ardent admirer of Germany and most German institutions.

  After the German Emperor began to take up yacht-racing there was a dinner at Cowes, in the early nineties, at which Prince Edward declared that there was no such enviable position in all the world as that of the German Emperor.

  "He is the greatest influence in the world," he declared, "for good or evil.

  Whatever he does is accepted and copied. All his subjects now are taking up yacht-racing because he wishes it and he'll do great things yet, you'll see: to be German Emperor is to be a god on earth."

  But when the Kaiser visited England frequently the glamor disappeared and the real difference in the nature of the two men became apparent.

  The uncle was prepared to look up to the nephew who wore the crown, but he was not content to be treated with contempt. On the other hand it was perfectly plain that the German Emperor regarded Prince Edward as a fat elderly person who sacrificed the dignity and serious purposes of manhood to the vices and amusements of youth.

  I was once at a dinner at Osborne toward the end of Victoria's life which tells the whole story.

  By the wish of Victoria the German Emperor was treated with special reverence. The famous gold dinner service even was brought from Windsor to Osborne to do him honor. The Queen would have had even the weather regulated to suit the convenience of her beloved grandson.

  The kinship and likeness between grandmother and grandson were extraordinary. They both had the same serious view of life and the same conventional view of morals. All through the dinner the Queen spoke to no one except the German Emperor, who was on her right. There was scarcely any conversation among the other diners.

  Occasionally Prince Edward, who sat opposite the Kaiser, ventured a remark, but neither of the sovereigns paid much attention to him.

  Grandmother and grandson talked together in excellent German in a low tone at the head of the table, and it took a very bold spirit among the rank and file of the guests even to whisper to his neighbor. The Prince, who sat opposite the German Emperor, was evidently ill at ease; his usual bonhomie was blighted. As the meal drew to an end he fidgeted about, looking the picture of discomfort.

  Suddenly the Queen got up to go. Everybody stood up and the German Emperor and the Prince accompanied her to the door. When the Queen disappeared there was a sigh of relief. The ice was broken. The air of constraint vanished; every one began to talk. Prince Edward was all smiles.

  The German Emperor walked back to the table and took his seat again still in profound thought. As Prince Edward seated himself, he asked the Emperor, with a smile, to take the head of the table. The Kaiser did not appear even to hear him, but with clouded brow appeared to be in deep thought: suddenly he pushed back his chair, got up and went hastily out of the room after the Queen, without a word to the Prince, leaving the whole assembly gasping.

  Prince Edward flushed; the slight was manifest. He so far forgot himself for the moment as to exclaim: "German manners, I suppose," then went on talking as usual; but the table remained in expectancy; there was a certain embarrassment in the air; the dinner was a failure.

  From that time on Prince Edward stood, not with the German Emperor, but opposed to him, and in private did not hesitate to criticize his manners and his want of consideration for others. In fine, he began to look for his nephew's faults and not for his qualities.

  A wit at the time summed the whole matter up in the phrase that has more truth than humor in it: "Morals and manners are always at daggers drawn." It was certainly the brainless rudeness of the German Emperor that first made the breach.

  When Edward succeeded to the throne, the ever-widening breach became apparent to every one. The German Emperor was not run after nor his visits solicited. When he came to England, he would stay with Lord Lonsdale or some other friend, but there was no public reception; he came and went unheralded and unwelcomed so far as the court was concerned.

  Edward's early experiences as king almost forced him to take a new attitude towards affairs. The Queen had died in the early part of the South African war. King Edward hated the war-was liberal-minded enough to feel that war in one of her colonies was not likely to do England any good; he shared, too, the common feeling that the German Emperor was giving the Boers at least moral support. Every setback in the field made the King more determined to put an end to the war, and as soon as Pretoria was taken and President Krueger had fled the country, he used all his influence to bring about peace, peace at almost any price.

  It will be remembered that peace was made possible at length by the promise of England to give three million pounds to the Boers to rebuild the farm houses that Lord Kitchener had burnt down. That this proposal of Botha's was accepted was due to King Edward's personal intervention. With the common sense of a man of the world, he saw that fifteen million dollars was a flea bite, not worth talking about. More, as he said, would be spent in a week's war. It was absurd to haggle over such a sum.

  As soon as peace was established, everyone felt grateful to the King for having divined the unconscious wishes of his people. He was put on a pedestal; many persons remembered that he had broken the habit of drink in England, and now he had brought about peace in South Africa; almost everyone began to hope that the kindly, good-natured man of the world might be a better ruler than his all too severe and moral mother.

  If there was one thing King Edward appreciated and knew all about, it was popular opinion. He soon saw that he had won the confidence of earnest and serious people and at once began to take himself seriously. Everything he did had turned out to be right; why should he not assume the initiative in politics? Not only did he leave the Kaiser uninvited, but he paid a visit to Paris-a state visit-and so pleased the great body of English Liberal opinion, which naturally preferred democratic France to imperial Germany.

  Then in 1905 he invited the French fleet to Cowes and gave the French admiral and his officers a great banquet at the Royal Yacht Squadron Club when the Entente Cordiale was confirmed.

  The great banquet that followed in the Guildhall only ratified the agreement, and when Admiral Caillard, driving through London, took off his hat to the statue of Nelson in Trafalgar Square, amid a cheering crowd, everyone felt that at length the two peoples were united in heart and in purpose.

  In 1906 French officers from the General Staff came across to London and in consultation with the British military authorities fixed on the place in the north of France where the British army was to assemble if the Germans invaded France. From that time on there was a complete military understanding between the two peoples.

  One little incident, as yet unrecorded, did a good deal
to change King Edward's dislike of the Kaiser into contempt. It was rumored in London that the Kaiser had fallen in love with a lovely Italian: soon the report became clear and detailed; the lady was a fair, if not a super-subtle, Venetian, the Countess M… Whenever the Kaiser went to Italy he met her and spent some time with her. The scandal delighted King Edward. Eagerly he asked anyone who might know:

  "Is it true? Do you know her? Is she really lovely? Are they devoted to each other?"

  Question on question.

  "Well, Sir," came the reply, "it is true at least that the Kaiser visits her whenever he can, spends every moment of free time with her: it is true that countless photographs of him all autographed are all over her rooms; and… "

  "Tell me," cried King Edward, "is he taken in uniform or in mufti?"

  "In both, Sir," was the reply.

  "Then he loves her," was the King's comment. "It is true. Oh, those moralists; they are always the worst…" and he laughed delightedly.

  This discovery increased his self-assurance in the most extraordinary degree; he began to speak of himself as a diplomat, and French nobles, like the Marquis de Breteuil, and French politicians of all kinds flattered and praised him to the top of his bent.

  Many streams added volume to the great current: the King's personal preference for the French over the Germans was the most obvious force; then came the influence of liberal England; but the main river was the individual rivalry of Germany, now challenging England in the most vital way.

  Early in King Edward's reign people began to notice that the production of German steel was exceeding that of English steel; that German industries were competing on an even footing in neutral markets with English industries-beginning, indeed, to oust the English products from one market after another.

  Experts went to visit Germany and came back praising German methods and German education; bodies of workingmen returned to eulogize German state socialism. Statesmanship, as understood in England, could not follow the rising tide of rivalry with approval. The Entente Cordiale with France was confirmed in form, and hardly had British politicians arrived at an understanding with Delcasse when the possibility of war with Germany was mooted.