by Unknown
Barrie comes back to Dumfries to-day after a hard fight, with some buffets and many triumphs, a hero, who, pen in rest, has done doughty deeds and prevailed in the great adventure of life and art, whom we have crowned with the best laurel we have to offer, a laurel which he will, I believe, be proud to wear, because it was also worn by Robert Burns, whom he has pronounced ‘the greatest Scotsman that ever lived.’ The freedom of our old burgh does not carry with it many material advantages. At one time, I understand, it conferred a privilege which Sir James would have greatly valued — that of grazing a cow on the Dock Park — but alas! in these days, when there is so little of the milk of human kindness, that privilege has been withdrawn. But the freedom is nevertheless an honourable distinction — a link in a civic chain of many links, antique and modern, inscribed with the names of men and of one woman, who have done the burgh some service in their time, or have won for it some renown.
The Barrie Link is the newest and nearest, and not the least shining of the lot, not the last, for others will come — one might, perhaps, venture to hint at Norman M’Kinnel — but near it in recent times are links representing Sir James Anderson, Lord Rosebery, Lord Wolseley, Lord Baljour, Lord Loreburn, and Jessie M’Kie, who, like Devorgilla, gave us a bridge. I do not know whether Sir James will be required to furnish armorial bearings for suspension in the Town Hall, but if so I would suggest a shield gules, quarterly, a Scotch thistle, a briar pipe — a fountain pen, and a buskin; supporters, dexter ‘ Peter Pan,’ sinister ‘The Little Minister’; crest, a golden eagle regardant, motto, ‘I thrum.’
Sir James has been the recipient of many honours, but amongst them I hope he will still find room for pride in the freedom of the burgh of Dumfries, for there are many in the burgh of Dumfries who are proud of him. It is a group of them, I believe, who have organised this joyous symposium — old school mates, old cronies I might call them, for if I may trust Barrie’s chronology, they must all be men stricken in years. Barrie told an audience in London just a month ago that he is an ‘interesting octogenarian,’ and being myself of that persuasion I cordially welcome him into the wee short ‘years ayont’ the four score. But more than that, Barrie said he was recognised as an ‘interesting octogenarian by an American biographer twenty years ago, and then he recalled Waterloo and how he took Napoleon and Jos Sedley to Cremorne. In that case he can probably also recall a dinner to Allan Cunningham when he had conferred on him the freedom of Dumfries in the Commercial Hotel, here on the 22nd of July 1831, when he met Carlyle and complimented him on his smart clothes, and after partaking freely of Bovril, drove with him to Craigenputtock in the moonlight and with the reins upon the pony’s back all the time, and along with Emerson and Lord Jeffrey smoked the pipe of silence with the greatest talker of the age.
Lowell, that wise and witty American in ‘Among my Books,’ speaks of the ‘haunting memories of the deep undying Barytone of the Sea,’ and so all of us here, and multitudes of men and women, wherever the English language is spoken, have haunting memories of the rich and resonant Barytone of Thrums, a voice of great compass, of distinctive timbre, of exquisite cadence, that has so often thrilled and delighted us. I say Thrums, because although Barrie has ranged widely over the field of literature, it is his Scottish tales, novels, and plays that mainly appeal to us for the reason that we find in them our national characteristics portrayed with the vital force and marvellous technique of a Velasquez, and with the breadth and fidelity of a Raeburn.
He has shown that in the short and simple annals of our poor there are great depths of tenderness and of pathos and nobility, and of pawky humour too. So much of what is great and good in Scotland has sprung from, the sanctities of family life, that Margaret Ogilvy has become a national emblem. It is by his sympathetic interpretation of our hyperborean traits and tendencies — not forgetting our faults and foibles — that Barrie has won our affection as well as our admiration, and we can conceive Scotland personified, saying in a verse of his own, substituting just one word for another:
I’ve ha’en o’ brawer sons a flow,
My Walter more renown could win,
And he that followed at the plough,
But Barrie is my Benjamin.
He is our Benjamin, and he is much more than that, for Scotland has few brawer sons to-day. He is a master builder in the Temple of Letters, a cunning craftsman, a graceful idealist, a far-seeing mystic, whose books are steps to the stars, or at least to an observatory whence we may obtain better vision of them. Barrie is a psycho-analyst of the right sort, not one of those peddling practitioners with their septic probes, but a genuine clairvoyant who reveals to us ourselves and clears up for us much that has puzzled us in the men and women we have met. He has keen sensibility and artistic reticence, and these have saved him from the white heat of passion, and so we have never had Barrie in furnace. He will say that it is tricky of me to play upon his name, so I will add no more, but ask you to join with me in drinking with heart and voice to the health of Sir James Barrie, the youngest burgess of Dumfries.
Sir James Barrie, in reply, said: —
This speech is going to be a fiasco from the start. That is, first of all, owing to my great anxiety to please. I knew that when Sir James Crichton-Browne proposed a toast it would be very difficult for anyone to reply to him, and so I decided to take notes of what he said. I have only taken one note. My note is ‘Sir J. C.-B.’s great—’ — and then my pencil broke — and I can’t make out what it was — the final word. It cannot have been his great speech, because everyone knows that he makes great speeches, and if anyone here did not know it until tonight he knows it now. I would have been a fool to have made a note of such a wellknown thing as that. ‘Sir J. C.-B.’s great kindness,’ but everybody knows he is kind. What could it have been? I have a sort of feeling it was something rather sinister. I will tell you what I will do. I will go on making a few remarks, but all the time at the back of my cigar I will be trying to think what that word was. If I can find it I will jump back on it like a dog at a rabbit.
Well, you know I have not recovered yet from all the excitement of the afternoon. I feel still as if I had almost been drowned in the waters of my rhetoric. Even now I feel I am on a sort of hencoop, waiting for the flood to submerge. The one thing I regret about this afternoon is that while I was speaking I could not have stepped down and had a look at myself from the body of the hall. The silent man in eruption. If I had been a policeman I should certainly have run myself out of the building. But I admit I am tired, and my voice, as you heard this afternoon, is very hoarse, and so I hope you will kindly excuse me from saying very much tonight, or rather, I will be kind to you, and not say very much tonight. The chief reason why I am exhausted is not my speech, it is partly the London fog, and partly your tremendous hospitality.
You have not only given me walnuts — you have peppered me with them. Something’s got to be done about this word ‘walnuts,’ and I feel — (Sir James paused). Now I know — yes—’Sir J. C.-B.’s great mistake.’ That was it. His great mistake was in referring to this man M’Connachie. I thought I had at last lived that down. Now it has cropped up again, and I think we should first of all thank Sir James from the bottom of our hearts for really the wittiest speech I ever remember to have heard, but at the same time express regret that he should have a little spoiled it by introducing M’Connachie.
The reason why M’Connachie came into my head was on account of this word ‘walnuts.’ For just as I feel about M’Connachie so I have begun since five o’clock to-day to feel about walnuts. You remember there was once a shipwrecked crew who had to live for a fortnight on a barrel of shortbread and ever afterwards they shrank from the sight of it; so will Dumfries with regard to walnuts. I remember a story of Sir James in his youth in the days when I was an octogenarian. I am not quite sure whether this is a true story or whether I dreamt it, but it was to the effect that Sir James once built a magnificent house in the country, and the builders were somewhat retarded in
their work by the great number of cuckoos about the grounds. They finally got so annoyed that he put up a notice in the grounds, ‘No cuckoos allowed,’ and no cuckoos have ever been seen there since. I feel some such notice should be put up in Dumfries about walnuts.
It would be a very good thing, I think, for the company here assembled, all so convivial, to start a club, an anti-walnut club, with only one rule — that all references to walnuts are forbidden; that even it should not be allowed to use any word beginning with ‘w’ unless, perhaps, the word Wellwood. I think Sir James Crichton-Browne, in order to reward him for his really lively speech, and punish him at the same time for his reference to M’Connachie, should be elected president, and that he should have the right to punish all transgressors, and that no one speaking after me tonight should use a word beginning with ‘w’ I do not know what set me speaking about walnuts, but I think it was Mr. Geddes.
This refers to Mr. Wellwood Anderson, an old school friend of Sir James’s.
— Mr. James Geddes, another old school friend.
Mr. Geddes wrote to me that he expected me to make a speech which would be solid and sensible. No, solid and satisfying were his words. So that naturally made me think of walnuts. I don’t know why Mr. Geddes should have such a passion for walnuts — unless it is because his wife is one.
Well, you see, ladies and gentlemen, now that we have mentioned how it concerns me that anyone should have got up and made that proposal about the anti-walnut club — but I propose now-the anti-walnut club be abolished. We might erect a little memorial to it in the Academy grounds. But I must make some suggestions to you of some kind, and I want to fling out the challenge to you. I want to challenge all who speak after me to say what was the best walnut they ever had; that is to say, what was the best moment in their lives. If they are willing to follow, I shall tell you, to set the ball rolling, what was the best moment in mine. It had nothing to do with Dumfries, for though I had some walnuts in Dumfries, better, perhaps, than any I mentioned this afternoon, I will only say there are more than one still in this neighbourhood. The scheme of this must be strictly followed. I am sure the greatest moment in anyone’s life has nothing to do with their profession or whatever work to which they have devoted most of their lives. Mine has nothing to do with literature. We know what Geddes’s is. Sir James Crichton-Browne is not going to tell us the great moment of his life had anything to do with medicine, nor is Mr. Critchley 1 to tell us that his has to do with academies. Mr. Geddes
1 Mr. J. W. Critchley, Rector of Dumfries Academy.
we exempt. General Charteris’s 1 moment has nothing to do with war. It must be something far deeper than any of these little matters, merely occupations at which we make our livings. It must be something that goes down deep into the very marrow of our bones, and a little bit deeper, our great secrets.
Well, on the understanding you are all going to follow my example, I will tell you what was the great moment of my life. Unfortunately it happened only in the summer of this year, when I was asked by a cricket eleven of undergraduates playing against a Gloucester village team — the county of the Graces, remember — to fill a temporary vacancy — and they put me on to bowl, and I did the hat trick.
1 General Charteris was M.P. for Dumfriesshire.
Freedom of the Stationers’ Company
(Mr. Richard Bentley, as Master, presided, when Lord Balfour, Sir James Barrie and Mr. Rudyard Kipling were enrolled as Honorary Freemen and Liverymen of the Stationers’ Company.)
IN THE STATIONERS’ HALL
July 3, 1925
I AM very proud to be a Freeman and Liveryman of what I see was long ago called the Mystery of Art of the Stationers, but that you should care to include me seems to be yet another of the Company’s mysteries. I notice you say Balfour in England. In Scotland we say Balfour, as if the name was one we loved to linger over. I like to think that I am among the chosen because I am a master of hard facts. Eloquence, philosophy, poetry from Lord Balfour and Mr. Kipling, but from me to-day you naturally look for facts.
The most valiant name in your records is, of course, Shakespeare, and my first fact is that I propose to ask you to enter at Stationers’ Hall one more edition of his works. The other sex — if so they may still be called — have long complained that his women, however glorious, are too subservient to the old enemy for these later days, as if he did not know what times were coming for women. Gentlemen, he knew, but he had to write with the knowledge that if he was too advanced about Woman his plays would be publicly burned in the garden of Stationers’ Hall. So he left a cipher, not in the text, where everybody has been looking for them, but in the cunning omission of all stage directions, and women, as he hoped, have had the wit to read it aright, with the result that there is to be another edition, called appropriately, ‘The Ladies’ Shakespeare.’ For the first time on any stage some fortunate actress, without altering one word but by the use of silent illuminating ‘business,’ is to show us the Shrew that Shakespeare drew. Katherine was really fooling Petruchio all the time. The reason he carried her off before the marriage feast, though he didn’t know it, was that her father was really a poor man, and there was no marriage feast. So Katherine got herself carried off to save that considerable expense. On that first night in Petruchio’s house, when he was out in the wind and the rain distending his chest in the belief that he was taming her, do you really think with him that she went supperless to bed? No, she had a little bag with her. In it a wing of chicken and some other delicacies, a half bottle of the famous Paduan wine, and such a pretty corkscrew. I must tell you no more; go and book your seats, you will see, without even Sir Israel Gollancz being able to find one word missed out or added, that it is no longer Katherine who is tamed.
Shakespeare has heard that he is to be understood at last — another of my facts. They say that a look of expectancy has come over the face of his statue in Leicester Square. If the actress who is to play the real Katherine has the courage to climb the railings, while the rest of London sleeps, she may find him waiting for her at the foot of his pedestal to honour her by walking her once round that garden, talking to her in the language not of Petruchio but of Romeo. Who is she to be? Dame Terry, please come back and get your long-deferred reward.
Alas! some say that Shakespeare was like the cuckoo, which gets other birds to lay its eggs for it — my last fact. Few in this company but have heard of the ghost of Stationers’ Hall, at once your glory and your terror. As I understand, all of you who are members have seen it. It is what gives you the look that is to be found on no other faces. Lord Balfour, Mr. Kipling, and I, we don’t have the look — not yet. But I learn that we are presently to be led by the Master to another place and shown the ghost, so you may now survey the three of us as we are for the last time. The ghost is a scrap of paper which proves that Bacon did not write the plays, and so far good, but — I get this from ‘The Ladies’ Shakespeare’ — but Bacon was not the only author in that household. The document is signed by Shakespeare, and is in these words: ‘Received from Lady Bacon for fathering her play of Hamlet — five pounds.’
Ah me! But, gentlemen, there is a brighter side to everything. For instance, let me sit down. After all, that old liveryman was the wise one who said to Ben Jonson — was it?—’I know not, sir, whether Bacon wrote the works of Shakespeare, but if he did not it seems to me that he missed the opportunity of his life.’
To the Australian Cricketers
AT A LUNCHEON GIVEN BY THE LONDON DISTRICT OF THE INSTITUTE OF JOURNALISTS AT THE CRITERION RESTAURANT, PICCADILLY
April 20, 1926
How much sweeter those sounds (of loud cheers for the speaker) would be to me if I had got them for lifting Mr. Mailey over the ropes. If I were to say one-tenth of what I could say about cricket, especially about my own prowess at it, there would be no more play to-day. Once more I buckle on my pads. I stride to the wicket. I take a look round to see how Mr. Collins has set his field — and, oh horrible! I see Mr.
Gregory waiting in the slips. What can he be waiting for?
I get one consolation from Mr. Gregory’s name — he is obviously a MacGregor. I have no doubt that he inherited his bowling from his ancestor, Rob Roy MacGregor, who, as the books tell us, used to hurl rocks at the stumps of the Sassenach.
Mr. Gregory is now joined in the slips by Mr. Hendry and Mr. Mailey. Three to one! I don’t know what they think they look like, with their arms stretched out imploringly, but to me they look as if they were proposing simultaneously to the same lady. Even though one of them wins her, what can he do with her? I hope they will remember this in the first Test Match, and that it will put them off their game.
The first Test Match! Fancy speaking that awful mouthful in words of one syllable. All the awful words this year are to be in one syllable. The three T’s — Test, Toss, Tail. The first Test Match is about to begin. We are all at Trent Bridge. The English captain wins the toss — and puts the Australians in. I think he must have something up his sleeve. I don’t quite catch sight of his face, but I saw him having a secret conversation with Mr. Warner’s old Harlequin cap, and I believe they are up to something. Maurice Tate takes the ball. You know his way. He then puts his hand behind his back; an awful silence spreads over the universe. The Prime Minister, in the House of Commons, in the middle of his speech is bereft of words. It has been said, probably by Mr. Gregory, that drowning men clutch at straws. On a balcony in the pavilion nine members of the Australian team pick up straws and clutch at them. Mr. Noble pauses in the middle of drawing up the complete Australian averages of the tour. Mr. Hill in Australia is suspended between Heaven and the inkpot. Maurice Tate takes a little walk, which is to be followed by a little run.