by Unknown
My subject, you can’t think how sordid it was, and best of all, the story was to end with dots — a thing they had never let me do. And then, one night — I don’t know if I can go on with this — one night I heard a female voice, the cooing voice that they make me give them, and that I so hate. I said, with a sinking, ‘Who are you?’ and she replied, ‘I am your Seventieth Mistake.’ She said — and I think she was a little sorry for me — she said, ‘It’s no use your thinking you can get rid of me, for I am inside you.’ I clung to my manuscript and cried, ‘At any rate, it is going to end with dots.’ She said, ‘Yes, darling, dots.’ I saw she meant that she was going to be a mother. And this is 1930.
I went to Lord Crawford, dripping with disillusionment, and said he had better let me go back to the place where he found me. But in the interests of this Society he is a demon. He is quite a nice man when you know him. I don’t know him very well. I warned him that they might even try to get into my speech, and he said that if they did he would hand them a certain slip of paper to fill up. On that understanding, ladies and gentlemen, I am here to plead with you for the Royal Literary Fund. We all know that, whether you are members or not, the claims upon you are constant and heavy, but we also know that the likeliest to respond to our appeal are those who may for this and other causes have already given much. That is a knowledge which all benevolent societies share with God. The papers lying beside you — I should like you to look upon them not humorously — but rather as holy sheets.
Our work of relief is given privately, so that whom we can help is known only to us and to themselves. We hope you think it is the better way. Yet I may mention, out of the long ago, that it would once have gone hard with Coleridge if there had been no Literary Fund. We came to the aid of the widow of Robert Burns. I remember a case of more than 30 years ago of an old lady. I won’t mention her name, but she was considered in her distant youth to be a serious rival of George Eliot. When she heard what the Society wanted to do for her she ran away in her pride and hid herself. She was found with difficulty, alone in a poor apartment — forgotten, you know — winter time, no fire, a rug round her knees, writing away at another love story in a hand no one could read. We have many cases of much distinction in which we can help valiant souls to breast the hill again with triumphant results, and we have other people, always perhaps destined to be in the cold because they write other things than novels, who are sometimes the best of the lot of us. We don’t seek help, ladies and gentlemen, except from those who care for literature. We should look after our own, and we can do it. But to you who are of us and to all you who do care, and are not absolutely snowed under — as the boy in the street says — a boy! — now, how did a boy get into my speech? You see how it is! But after all, I should like to think that a London street arab was my last fairy. You know what he says: ‘Come on, guv’nor, come on, nice lady!’
The Freedom of Kirriemuir
Kirriemuir — June 7, 1930
I
IN THE TOWN HALL
PROVOST PEACOCK, Lord Airlie, Magistrates and Town Council, and Ladies and Gentlemen, when one has got out that first mouthful he feels he could say anything, but here I should like to say it again altered. My provost, my lord, my magistrates, my town council, my ladies and gentlemen. Well, you are mine as no other gathering can be, and I am yours as I can never be to any other gathering. You have done me so much honour my heart is full of it. It is so very little I have done, but even if it had been much I would have thought it all of no avail if when I came back ‘home along’ I felt that my people did not like me. You make me very proud and very happy and very wishful that I had not so often made a mess of things. One of the saddest things in life, I think, and one of the most common, is that we all have two or three people who want to think well of us and we do things that compel them to think less of us.
The only merit of this speech is that it is not one. This is just a preliminary to the orgy on the hill. In London I have a native of Kirriemuir living with me. We are often all alone, the two of us, in the flat. He is a Kirriemuir canary. He is a very familiar bird and he flies all over the different rooms and settles suddenly anywhere, sometimes even on my cigar, and while he is there we talk together about what he irreverently calls ‘the old place.’ He is very interested in what we are doing to-day, and I promised him to tell him all about it when I go back, but he said to me, ‘What I chiefly want to know is whether you are going to say anything about me and whether the audience cheered me.’ (Cheers.) Thank you, ladies and gentlemen; I shall tell him, but it certainly strikes me it would be just like him if at this moment he was listening-in.
I could speak of many people of Kirriemuir to-day, but I shall only mention two names. I should like to mention the two names of the men who I think were the biggest intellectual force in Kirriemuir in my boyhood. One was James Donald, who has already been mentioned by the Provost, and the other was David White. Those two men did an immense deal for me, helped me very much materially, and I am very grateful to them. They were also the first two literary men I ever knew, and I have never since been in a literary company that was too good for them.
Two men and no women! That won’t do; I must get in a woman. Well I will tell you something. It may not interest you much, but it will be novel to you at any rate. In the Kirriemuir Observer there is a column which I read weekly with great interest, ‘Echoes from the Past,’ little extracts from the paper itself of fifty or more years ago. I am beginning to be a little apprehensive that I may see something about myself, and if you watch that paper you may some day see something like this. I am not sure of the date, but the rest of the story is true:
‘June 7, 1880. — On Tuesday last considerable disturbance was excited in the town by the curious behaviour of a student of Edinburgh University who is a native of this place. As even fell he was observed to be hanging around the postoffice with a letter which he didn’t seem to be quite able to decide whether to post or not. Several times he almost dropped it in, then he thought better of it and disappeared. He was watched by various people. They were all wondering what was in that letter and whom it was to. At last he dropped it in and disappeared.’
That is the extract you may look for in the Kirriemuir Observer. Now I want to tell you that I was that Edinburgh student, and to tell you that the letter contained the only love poem I ever wrote, and that it was addressed to a lady in Kirriemuir. I was shy and didn’t sign it, and 4 — have no reason to believe that she ever had the least knowledge from whom it came. I never spoke to her. I can remember the first two lines of it still. It began ‘Is Venus dead? Methinks she must have left to you her face.’ — She was the first lovely thing I ever saw in young womanhood, but, as I say, I never spoke to her. She had a name of the kind that Wordsworth loved. Her name — and, now isn’t this sad? Just as I was going to tell you her name I find that we must proceed to the next item on our programme. My Provost and My Kirriemuir, I thank you from my heart for the great honour you have done me.
II
On the Cricket Ground
(A cricket match was to take place between the West of Scotland and Kirriemuir. The speech was to open the new pavilion presented by Sir James Barrie.)
It is easy to make a speech anywhere else, but to do it here, on this hill of memories, to people who are more like me, inside, than any other people are — I tell you I would rather go in to bat over there against the West of Scotland’s bowling. Shakespeare’s Cordelia lamented that she was unable to heave her heart into her mouth, but my difficulty to-day is to keep mine out of it. I remember once being called upon in America to speak to a women’s college containing 900 girls, and I said I couldn’t, but that if they would come outside one at a time I would make 900 speeches to them. I had cause to regret that offer.
But I could make it with confidence to you because we are all linked together. I have sometimes met you — some of you — on the brae, and thought for a moment that you were my old friends, your parents or grandp
arents, they were so like you, but younger. Strongest link of all is that so many of your forebears now lie with mine in a sacred place close to this spot — only that wall separating us. In my lonely first year in London I began to write something about what might happen here on the Last Day. There had been some convulsions of nature. Rumblings. Portents. The people here on the Last Day are your descendants — or perhaps they are yourselves, for it might happen tonight. They are afraid to go to rest. They huddle in their houses, or gather together in the churches. Up here, on the other side of that wall, the earth loosens. Down in the town a door opens, and someone enters who has not been there for a long time. There is a great concourse of others like him coming down the fields. None of them knows as yet that anything has happened. They are coming home as usual. When they open their doors they wonder who you are, and why at sight of them you have gone on your knees.
You can be too lonely in your first year in London. Once I thought I had murdered a man, a Chinaman. It seems grotesque now, but I believed it. I thought I put him in a great box, which I painted black, and got a spade and buried him in a back garden. When I came to I saw what had happened. It was no dream, but I had sat too long night after night staring at my lodging’s mantelshelf. In the middle of it was a little box and the figure of a Chinaman, both a few inches high. I had stared at them till they assumed gigantic proportions. So it came about. The thinking I painted the box black is curious. I believe it came out of the days of my boyhood up here, when I sometimes sat with Eassie, the joiner, while he was making coffins. You can be too lonely in London.
That spade. That was not the spade with which in my childhood I split the upper lip of Mr. James Robb. We were digging up a gooseberry bush in his mother’s garden, and I missed the bush but got him. We then bolted in opposite directions. When this ceremony is over Mr. Robb will perhaps oblige by showing my mark. It is still there. Some collector of autographs might make an offer for this my first one. I seem to associate Mr. Robb with spades. It was with his spade that he and I and a son of Mr. Brand the banker did a dark deed. I don’t know how Dr. Arthur Mill escaped being in that ploy. We dug up rozetty roots once — only once — in Caddam Wood and sold them from a barrow at Kirrie doors for a halfpenny the bundle. Time we were at school.
The first school I was at was Howie’s, but I was only there for one day. Ran away. The Prime Minister1 has told me that he was under Howie for years — in some little place farther north. Strange to think that if I had stuck to Howie and he had run from him, he might to-day be twelfth man in the Allahakbarries and I might be flying in an aeroplane to Lossiemouth.
1 The Rt. Hon. J. Ramsay MacDonald.
The fishing around here, the luscious names of our waters, the reprehensible conduct of Robb in luring me to raise a sluice on the Whiteburn to make the trout think a spate had begun. It makes me still so nervous of policemen that when Lord Byng was made head of them in London I sent him a pair of white sleeves as an olive branch. Robert Louis Stevenson once went fishing here, and though I never had the good fortune to meet him, he wrote me many years afterwards from Samoa, and described how he had stayed at the Airlie Arms, and sat under a very terrifying minister. He had a curious experience when fishing in the Noran. As he sat on the bank he heard some of his trout still wobbling in the basket. A scunner came over him, and he vowed, and he kept his vow, never to angle for trout again. He was eighteen at the time and I was seven, but, oh, why wasn’t I on the outlook for him, if only to carry his bag to the station? I suppose I was away with Robb.
I want to tell you about a very happy affair that is closely connected with this pavilion. Robb and I used to play together till mysterious night fell, and then the one would accompany the other halfway home. After we parted we whistled to each other to intimate that no doolie had got us so far. It was a note we had invented, and no one could whistle it except ourselves. Distance and the rugged things of life separated us as the years rolled on; we seldom met again for nigh half a century. We had sworn eternal friendship, but the rope seemed to have snapped. Then two years ago I was here on a sad errand, and the two of us went wandering away across the hill through Caddam and other parts that had once all led to the Quarity and to where
‘Prosen proud, with rippit loud,
Comes ravin’ frae his glen,
As gin he micht and Esk affricht,
And drive him back again.’
If I were to build a pavilion for myself it would be there.
Well, that day in Caddam I made a grand discovery. That the great friend of my childhood was still the one who was closest to me in my dotage. I can’t tell you what a pleasure and satisfaction that has been to me. During our walk in the wild Mr. Robb said to me gruffly, in case we got sentimental, you know: ‘We used to have a private way of whistling to each other.’
‘Did we?’ I said, growling for the same reason. We were both so thrawn, you understand, that it would have flichtered a Southerner. ‘I could do it now,’ he said. ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘I suppose you have forgotten it?’ said he. ‘It was a long time ago,’ I said. ‘Just so,’ said he. But I could see by his face that he wished I had remembered. I couldn’t keep it up any longer, so I joukit behind a tree and whistled our whistle. He jumped and whistled it back. All through Caddam Wood we went gaily whistling that old whistle — and on my word, ladies and gentlemen, I think that is largely how it comes about that I offer you this pavilion.
I must not delay you further, for the cricketers are avid to begin, and we to watch them. I think we are very beholden to our distinguished architect and to those who have helped him to carry out so successfully my idea of a whistle. And to the West of Scotland for so boldly challenging us.
And to the famous Australian cricketers1 who now become Kirriemarians. Our site on the Hill is as grand as Broad Ha’penny, the cradle of cricket, and the outlook is one of the fairest in our land. May doughty deeds be done here with bat and ball and at the goal-posts.
1 C. G. Macartney and A. A. Mailey, who Sir James had invited to play for Kirriemuir.
My love for cricket began as I sat on the Hill cheering for renowned Kirrie Club. I see them still, pausing at Charlie Wilkie’s lodge to pick up their implements, sometimes even letting me help to carry the cricket bag. The bats, I believe, were made by Jock Wright the joiner. Peter Lindsay was after my time, and, alas, I never saw him smite them. But I remember some of the players; yes, and their action at the crease lingers like music in my mind. Dundas with his wily underhands, Morrison our stylist, Doig whom we welcome back to-day, Haggert, Stewart, Worlie who was always out trying to make a six, Alec Lowson. It is good to know that Mr. Lowson is with us still. May he often sit here and recall, as I do, how he used to mow the wickets down. Ladies and gentlemen, I now declare the pavilion open for play.
Dinner to Australian Cricket Team
London — September 8, 1930
SIR KYNASTON STUDD (The giver of the dinner, and President of the M.C.C.) said to me, ‘If you know nothing about the game it does not matter. We must have a left-handed speaker.’ I gathered from him that, in proposing the toast of the Australian cricketers, the first question to arise is how to get Woodfull out. Mr. Woodfull is to reply to this toast. As I have something to say to him, I am very glad that he is not sitting near me.
Sir Kynaston said to me, with a tear in his eye, ‘I suppose you may as well begin by saying that the better team has won,’ but I saw that, in the doleful situation which we have really met, what was really needed was something more left-handed than that. It has struck me that Mr. Woodfull might have prepared a few remarks on the assumption that I was going to say the better team had won. Therefore I have no intention of saying that the better side won.
Personally, between you and me, I have not the slightest doubt that the better side won. I would go further, I would say that I look upon this team as one of the greatest Australian teams. But Mr. Woodfull, where are you? Don’t you even think that I would ever admit it. The score board now
reads O — I — O.
The next man in is — . Sir Kynaston made out a list of the various combatants, and he told me that when I mentioned this name it would be received with hearty but hollow cheers. The name, so far as I can make it out, is Mr. Badman. I feel very sorry for Mr. Badman. I do not doubt that he meant to do better. When the Australian team returns home they will be met, as we can well imagine, by countless thousands of Australians all straining at the leash to hear from Mr. Woodfull which side won the Test Match, and when they hear there will be tremendous rejoicings. The team will be taken to hotels and public places and feasted, all with the exception of Mr. Badman, he has carried this plan of his of not knowing how to get out to such an extent that he now cannot get out of anything. He won’t be even able to get out of the ship when all the others are merry and bright. We now leave him pacing the deck, a dark and gloomy figure.
I warn you — Kippax, Ponsford, Jackson — I warn you all, if you go on as you are doing you will soon be in the same plight.
Down at the foot of the table there is a small boy — Mr. McCabe. I don’t know whether as a treat Mr. McCabe will be allowed to attend banquets with the men. The nicest thing I have heard about the Australians is that Mr. Ponsford and Mr a’Beckett used to sit up every night with Mr. McCabe until he fell asleep because he was afraid of the dark. I know a boy who is a collector of autographs, and who has followed the Australian team to every hotel they have stayed at in England collecting McCabe’s night-lights.
Mr. Oldfield is smiling as if I was not going to say anything about him. The lovely way in which he pulls off those little things on top of the wicket without a sound! So courteous! You feel that, in the English way, he is saying ‘So sorry.’ What do you think would happen to Mr. Oldfield if some day, when he was batting, he turned round and saw he was also keeping wicket?