by Unknown
As for the Society itself, during those 114 years it has given away £140,000 — always privately — all its grants are private; no one outside the Committee, except those who may be interested in particular cases, knows who applies or who is relieved. In any other conditions we should be unable to help those whom it is our greatest pride and honour to help, sometimes going to them without waiting for them to come to us. They would prefer to ‘straight up shut for the long dark.’ We have now, invested, about £50,000, and if the subscriptions at the Annual Dinner are liberal we give away about £3000 a year. Thus, this is a prosperous Society, though during the last twelve months we have lost, we may say, the flower of our office-bearers: Our President, Mr. Lecky; Sir Leslie Stephen, the Master of the Temple; and Mr. Julian Sturgis. Such men as these were willing to take upon their shoulders the practical work of this Society.
No one, I think, outside the Committee can know how many authors there are of whom, as it has been said, their stage darkens before the curtain falls. It often lies with this Society to decide whether the curtain is to fall. In the history of the Society there have been at least four cases of immortals whose stage has darkened prematurely, and, ladies and gentlemen, this Society has re-lit that stage and kept the curtain up. All the world is richer by that. On the other hand, no doubt there have been some — one or two — who might have winged their way to immortality but that the darkness was never lifted for them. There are many others whom we have been able to help to ‘chase hence the ugly night,’ names not of the magnitude of those I have referred to, but still among the very eminent men and women of letters of their day — and in their day I include our day, with its many branches of literature, among the most useful and the most delightful, to which scarcely any monetary reward goes at all.
Of course, most of our cases are not those of persons of great literary distinction. Throughout their life they may but have ‘fed a flame to torment them.’ Better perhaps for them
‘to try what further art could do
To make them love her and forget her too.’
But all our little successes are so trivial, scarcely known outside our own street; this meeting tonight, a great meeting as such things go — after all, what is it but a very little street in London? But we make believe that this street is the world, with our newspaper organs, and our dinners and our speeches, and no one to give heed except ourselves. But those ones may never have had their hour even in this street, and perhaps they began half a century ago and are still at it, long after they are dog-weary of it. One would expect many to weary of it, but that is not the experience of the Society. After fifty years of ‘dreams to sell,’ they are still fascinated, still following ‘the beams that have scorched them,’ still full of schemes for the future; and all this they explain to the Committee in letters which are often very difficult to read, it is so plain that the fingers could scarce close round the pen.
To account for such faithful service, there must have been surely some days of inspiration, one pretty thought; the linnet, you know, has only one pretty thought, but then he is such a ‘stylist.’ And everybody who has had one pretty thought for literature has soared once to the vaults of Heaven, and breathed for a moment the air the immortals breathe; perhaps their faces were not turned from him as they ‘waltzed by with the evening star on their arm.’ Perhaps the evening star has wet eyes for those of her lovers who fail most hopelessly. Perhaps she can’t abide the geniuses, though she has to go with them. Perhaps she has formed a romantic attachment — it is a pleasant fancy this — for someone down here, someone like Mr. Mason, or Mr. Seaman, or Captain Marshall. We can all conceive these three gallant bachelors, just as they were about to hook on to the evening star, being hurled from the vaults of Heaven, and falling straight down into the Literary Fund where they immediately begin to make the best of their new surroundings.
And so, ladies and gentlemen, whether we are in the sky, or here at dinner, or perhaps rather hungry outside, we of the pen — the loathly, lovely pen — are all very much brothers and sisters, and there is a large amount of good fortune and bad fortune parcelled out between us, and though our deserts are various I think we all know very well that the good and the bad are not justly distributed. I do not envy the author in any branch of literature who questions that. I wonder at him. This, of course, is a dangerous subject for a Chairman. For tonight I prefer to follow the amiable division of all books into two classes — books that one reads and books that are very able.
Ladies and gentlemen, those of us whose books are read, when we consider what is the fate of some of the best books of every year, must sometimes wonder a little uncomfortably why our books sell; if we don’t, others wonder for us. But perhaps we don’t sell. Perhaps it is only the publishers who pretend we do, so as not to hurt our feelings. In an imperfect world the awards must be often unfair; but there are occasions when we may meet to try to make them less unfair, when we give ourselves the opportunity of saying, ‘I have had too much of the luck, and I want to cut a piece off and give it to someone who has had too little.’ This is such an occasion, and I am afraid I have been saying so at horrible length. Well, I don’t know what it has sounded like to you, but all the time I have been speaking I have seemed to hear my own voice trotting behind me, like some dreadful beast in a story by Mr. Wells. However, I am sure you will all forgive an unpractised hand for the sake of the cause, and I now ask you to drink the toast of the evening, ‘Prosperity to the Royal Literary Fund.’
Replying, at the end of the dinner, to the toast of ‘Our Chairman’ proposed by Lord Tennyson.
Lord Tennyson, Ladies and Gentlemen: I thank you from the bottom of my heart for the way in which the toast of my health has been proposed and received, and I can assure you that the thing I should most value in life would be the goodwill and a little of the affection of my fellow-writers. But I have no intention of making another speech. I feel, tonight, very like a cab horse that has been trying to run in the Derby and, as you know, a cab horse is always reluctant to pass its stable. Ladies and gentlemen, I at last see my stable in front of me, and nothing would induce me to go past it. I am very much beholden to you all, as is the Literary Fund also, for the splendid way in which you have responded to our appeal. And now I think you can all go away and be happy again. Strictly speaking, I understand we are going only into the next room, where the pleasantest part of the evening is to begin. We shall have the opportunity there of hearing whether the other bachelors think that Mr. Mason did justice to his toast; we shall hear from the ladies what is their candid opinion of his speech; we shall ask him man to man what he thinks of it himself. Lord Tennyson has wished me many happy returns of the day, and I thank him sincerely, but alas, ladies and gentlemen, I am afraid my birthday no longer brings to me the thrill which once it did, and I have a mind to make an offer of my birthday to any person present, preferably to any lady, who may feel that her birthday comes round with insufficient frequency. Ladies and gentlemen, I thank you for bearing with me so long.
Unveiling of Memorial to Mrs. Oliphant
IN ST. GILES’ CATHEDRAL, EDINBURGH
July 16, 1908
WHEN there is such a function as this to be gone through with in Edinburgh, how you must all miss the presence of Professor Masson. It must come upon all his old students, as it does upon me to-day — Edinburgh, but no Masson! And now Mrs. Oliphant has come back to you. It has seemed good to the people of Scotland that her face and lineaments should be carved on the walls of their capital. She used to stay here at times — it was her romantic town too — and now she returns — at your request.
It is only a few halting words that you can expect me to say of her. I am no speaker at all; and besides we are not here for speechmaking. We admire her as a woman and as a writer. The woman was the greater part of her. Throughout her life she had other things and better things to do than to write, and she was doing them all the time; they were the things that made her heart glad or depressed — never
her books. But with that part of her we have little to do to-day. The last time I saw Mrs. Oliphant — very shortly before she died — she said to me, ‘For the first time for fifty years I have nothing on my mind.’ She was not referring to her work, but take it at that; and what a mind it had been, how splendidly alive, for all those fifty years. One shrinks from using extravagant words about her; to no one would they have been so distasteful as to herself, and we are not met to compare her with this writer or with that.
She took to literature for the most honourable of all reasons — to make a livelihood; but she took to it as some finely equipped ship slips for the first time into the water. I dare say there was some such ship launched on the very day the publishers launched Mrs. Oliphant; however good a ship it was, one may wonder — Was its machinery in more perfect order than hers — its stored-up energy, was it greater than the energy events proved to be stored up in that one quiet woman? It carried its hundreds of human beings; I don’t know how many, but not more, I dare swear, than the human barque was to carry, the men and women of her pen; and however gallantly it fought the elements, not more gallantly, I am sure, than she. If it had had to come to a fight between the woman and the ship, her force against its force, I believe the ship would have gone down.
Which was her best novel? Doubtless we all have our favourites, and none stands as a pillar among the others. Of Mrs. Oliphant it could never be said, ‘One moment only was her sun at noon.’ But I suppose we would all agree that amongst the best are the various chronicles of Carlingford; and that Mr. Tozer and Miss Marjoribanks and the perpetual curate and many another of Carlingford are as near to us as some of our friends and relatives. And there is one other series, destined perhaps for a longer voyage than even ‘Salem Chapel’ — those magical stories of the unseen.
She did so much and did it so well. Put the novels aside, and there are biography and history that might keep a reader busy for years. Put them aside, the better to see the very river of essays that flowed from her to the magazines. Put all aside except those that appeared in ‘Maga,’1 one of the mothers of literature, and there is still an impressive record. If you have forgotten,
1 — Blackwood’s Magazine.
re-read them. She was doing those things because she was chosen by ‘Maga’ from a list of famous names to do them because ‘Maga’ knew she could do them best. To her fellow-writers, in particular, the sheer quantity of her output has a splendid quality. It is no special proof of her industry — others have been far more industrious — but of how gloriously her mind was cleared for action, and how rich was the soil.
The soil, of course, was her imagination. It was not one of those imaginations that have carried some writers in a single flight to the very vaults of Heaven, to play hide and seek with the stars — often suddenly to leave them and let them fall to earth. It was rather a friendly familiar, who sat with her — on the back of her chair — was always waiting for her there — never deserted her once even in the month of May, for all those fifty years — watched her growing old — heard the doleful bell emptying her house — lured her back into her writing-chair — faithful as if proud of what she had done with him — like one grown to love the white-haired lady in the pretty shawl and the white cap. I am not quite sure about the shawl, but she was fond of all beautiful things, and I think she wore a shawl, and that her familiar grew fond of it too, as he sat on the back of her chair and played with it and the cap and whispered pretty thoughts to her, like one child left to her when the others were gone.
It would ill become me to say more. We are here for a special purpose, to do honour to one of our illustrious dead, her ‘task accomplished, and the long day done.’ It is for the future to sum her up; we know that she was the most distinguished Scotswoman of her time, and a steady light among the band of writers who helped to make the Victorian reign illustrious. A national memorial in this historic pile means that here is another of its children by whom Scotland has said ‘Well done.’ By your wish, and it is a solemn thought this, Mrs. Oliphant joins the great shades who take care of Edinburgh, and patrol the city, inaudible.
The Freedom of St. Andrews
THE TOWN HALL, ST. ANDREWS
May 4, 1922 1
Mr. PROVOST,2 Gentlemen of the Council, Ladies and Gentlemen, you can see my voice is not in the hall to-day. So you will excuse me for not saying much. I feel humble rather than proud in the generosity of the remarks of the Provost to-day, but I feel uplifted and glorious on account of his gift.
Lord Wester-Wemyss,3 of whom it has been suggested by another eminent soldier — a soldier this time as eminent as himself — that I should say some things, as I have been saying so many things about the other one. I think Lord Wester-Wemyss knows a great deal more than I know about most things, but there is one thing I know more about than Lord Wester-Wemyss. This is not a nautical matter, though I wish it were.
1 — Sir James Barrie’s Rectorial Address, Courage, had been delivered at St. Andrews University the day before.
2 — The Rev. Andrew D. Sloan, D.D.
3 — Lord Wester-Wemyss was also receiving the freedom of St. Andrews.
On the train coming up, I was reading an old book about St. Andrews, a hundred years old — a very good book, published in Cupar — and it told a story which is no doubt familiar to many of you, but which I am perfectly sure is unknown to Lord Wester-Wemyss; and I shall be happy to complete his education.
It is a story about a charter having been granted by Malcolm II about a thousand years ago to St. Andrews, and when it was granted he made use of the phrase ‘I command that no one exact anything unjustly from these burgesses.’ I feel it would be very unfair, not to me, but to those who have heard me talking for about twenty-four hours on end, if I were to make many remarks to-day. I see Lord Wester-Wemyss leaning forward, so I will tell him the rest of the story. It has some connection, it is a reply, so to speak, to that story of the Provost about how Fifeshire men once managed to burn one Forfarshire man. We do not do these things singly when we take them up in Forfarshire. Malcolm was assassinated soon after he had given St. Andrews this charter, and the murderers fled into Forfarshire. When they came to Forfar Loch, they raced across the ice. It was in winter time; but the chronicler says the ice was not strong enough to bear such a weight of guilt as that of those Fifeshire men — and so they were all drowned.
Now I will tell you more about Lord Wester-Wemyss. This is more by way of exposure this time. I remember meeting Lord Wester-Wemyss in a certain place just after the Zeebrugge affair; and I said to him about it, using the vocabulary of the dreadful game you play in this neighbourhood, I said to him it seemed to me he and his Navy had taken that hole in one. He said, ‘Oh, a neat little affair.’ Afterwards, when he had that rather remarkable meeting, Foch and he, with the German delegates — I do not know what he thought about that, but, again, in the vocabulary of the links, it seemed to me what he and Foch said to the Germans in effect was that they must replace the divots. I do not know what he thought of that meeting, but I am sure for my own part, and I think you will agree with me, it was ‘quite a neat little affair.’
The Provost has been saying something about children, not perhaps a very wise subject. Children and ladies — there have been no remarks about ladies since I came here at all. They are excluded. I have not been asked to address a meeting of ladies. Any number of men — well, students. By the way, I have made it up with the lady students. We are the best of friends. I think the ladies of Scotland are undoubtedly the most attractive ladies in the world, and that the most attractive of them are the ladies of St. Andrews, and that of the ladies of St. Andrews there are none who can hold a candle to the red gown students. There is one lady, however, in St. Andrews, not a student, who is certainly the most remarkable woman in St. Andrews. I suppose you know whom I mean. But if you don’t, I will tell you. I mean Principal Irvine’s baby. This speech would have been a very different affair if it had not been for that baby; and so, I d
are say, would Lord Wester-Wemyss’ speech. This child, as soon as I arrived in St. Andrews, obviously having been coached to say it — she made use of this remarkable expression — in fact, she continued to say it for several hours. She said, ‘Ip, ip, oo-ay.’ Since then, when I have been sitting up in bed preparing speeches, she sits solemnly at the foot of the bed, and I pitch a little bit of the speech at her, and when I finish she says, ‘Ip, ip, oo-ay.’ I have no doubt at this very moment she is sitting waiting for me at the foot of my bed. When I think of that, I cannot regard my visit to St. Andrews as being absolutely a failure.
Well, gentlemen, this honour — I am very proud of it. St. Andrews is no mean city to be made a burgess of, and I hope I shall never disgrace it. You have had many famous men who have added a stone to the greatness of St. Andrews. How terrible it would be to be one of those who have taken a stone away. I thank you.