Page images
PDF
EPUB

of

whose charms and dresses were infinite; and gone also are some others who sat round that table. Of those who remain, the young are now middle-aged, the middleaged are old: have not they also partly perished? How many a fleeting image of life has passed through Chatsworth since the first duke built it two hundred years ago. There dwelt the sometime Prime Minister, the fourth duke,-"Prince of the Whigs," as he was ironically called by Tories. The gay society under the lethargic fifth duke and his beautiful and lively duchess was followed by the long and curious bachelor reign of the sixth duke, and that in turn by more than thirty years of a sober and stately régime under the "scholar duke" and his daughter, Lady Louisa, who acted for him as hostess. The episode of the eighth duke, when Chatsworth was a centre of a political world, blended with that which is eternal and frivolous, has now been followed by a society which may perhaps be called less austere than that under the seventh duke, and more sober than that under the eighth, and, happily, Chatsworth, for the first time during the last hundred years or more, is now cheered by a charming group of Cavendish children, who are also entirely the children of the house.

I rather wish that I had made full notes of what I saw and heard both at that time and during the rest of life; but, like most men, I have been prevented by a blend of oc

cupation, indolence, and aversion to private recording. I used to feel, in working for the Duke, not only admiration and affection, but a kind of pity, great as his position was. He had the air of a man overburdened with affairs, political, social, territorial, who never had really the time to live the life which he would have liked. One felt that he would have been happier as an ordinary country gentleman of good means, breeding stock, and racing, hunting, and shooting in a moderate way. When he asked one to do any particular piece of work, he had an air of genuine sympathy with one's probable boredom under it. This made it the more pleasant to work for him-one was at any rate relieving him of part of a distasteful burden. The pleasure was the greater, because he trusted his subordinates freely.

Like in this to the older English statesmen, but unlike to most of the more modern, the Duke never aspired at all to the honours of authorship. When the present Lord Shuttleworth

collected and published the Election speeches made in 1879-80, Lord Hartington stated in his own short preface that he had given his consent with reluctance, "because the object with which they had been delivered has not been attained; and if they contributed at all to the result of the late Elections, it was the sole use to which they were destined." In 1894 I wished to write an article in a certain monthly review on the Labour

Commission. The enterprising went steadily on to the end. editor said condescendingly If a thing were dull, he treated and truly that I was an un- it faithfully as such, and made known writer, but that if the no attempt to improve the Duke would write a preface to flavour by artistic cookery. the article it would carry The story of the Duke's saying, weight with the public. I "I fell asleep, and dreamed that told this to the Duke, who I was addressing the House of said, "Well, if you will write Lords: when I woke, I found the preface, I will sign it." I that I was," is at any rate ben did so, embodying the main trovato. It is certainly true idea of the following article, that immediately after and the Duke signed it un- cluding his troublesome speech altered, as he had signed, in in the Lords, which contained his time, a thousand minor his explanation of the circumofficial despatches. The editor stances attending his resignawas satisfied: he had the name tion in 1903, when, moreover, which he wanted, and all the he was not very well, he fell commentators noticed the visibly and soundly asleep, preface and not the article. without waiting to hear what This, I believe, was the only any one would say of it. contribution of his life to any periodical review.

On one occasion a "league," of which the Duke was honorary president, was being wound up for want of members and funds. A manifesto was drafted stating that that the the league was brought to an end because it had accomplished its mission. "I never before put my name to anything quite so disingenuous," wrote the Duke to a friend, but he signed as a matter of business.

Some of the anecdotes there were not many of them -which have been elicited by the publication of the 'Life' of the Duke are characteristic, especially, I think, the wellauthenticated tale of Lord Hartington's "aside" while he was making an elaborate statement of facts and figures in the House of Commons. "This is damned dull," he said to his neighbour, and then

Many anecdotes are mere trifles, and are really no more amusing when told of a man moving on the heights of public life than of a man in a far more obscure position. The real and permanent interest in the life of a man of action lies in the part which he took in events. The Duke of Devonshire's great nature and most real self came out at the call of public affairs. affairs. In the

biography of a man of thought the interest would lie in the effect which various tides of thought had upon his mind, and the part taken by his mind in influencing the thought of others. The biography of a man whose career was purely that of a leisured member of society should no doubt consist of a series of social anecdotes concerning him and his friends. No general and all-embracing rule can be laid down in this art.

Perhaps the best model for a biographer dealing with the life of an English statesman is that of Homer in the Iliad. Homer depicts the two opposing camps, each with difficulties and internal oppositions of its own, and the conflicts on the open plain, and each hero is drawn in broad and simple lines, with some incidental sketch of his origin and former deeds and of his physical appearance the rest of him brought into relief by his own words and actions. If the Iliad had been named the Achilliad the designation would not have been far wrong. But had the poem been purely an Achilliad, the account of many minor conflicts which did not concern the main theme might have been omitted or condensed into a general description of battle, though the reciting bards would no doubt thereby have missed much guerdon on their tours through the lesser cities of Greece, where men were more interested in their own local hero than even in the great Achilles.

The business of a biographer, as opposed to that of the general historian, is to concentrate his attention, and that of his readers, upon the character and principal actions of a single hero, but this cannot be done without showing his collisions with or friendship for others, and also much of the general field of battle and the varying events. Thus political biography and political general history must lie very near together, although they do not

cover quite the same ground, and require a different method of treatment. The answer to critics who complain that in political memoirs too much space is given to the narrative of events, seems to be that the real life of a man of action lies in the part which he took in events, and the effect which events had upon him. His life, therefore, cannot be made to stand out truly without an adequate account of events so far as they touched him. So far as they did not touch him. the biographer can and should leave them alone, and here is the difference between the ground covered by him and by the historian.

I agree with the canon which Sir Sidney Lee has laid down in his excellent little book called 'Principles of Biography,' when he says: "One cannot detach a sovereign or a statesman from the political world in which he has his being. But it is the art of the biographer sternly to subordinate his scenery to his actors.' This rule is to be borne in mind together with the other rule, that every book must contain in itself all that is necessary for its understanding by the reader of average intelligence and information. To some extent the two rules are conflicting, and every biography must be a more or less successful compromise between them.

The biographer of a statesman whose life has been spent among great events will discover, when he has discharged

his main duty, that he has not overmuch space left for describing those details of private life in which his hero probably does not differ materially from other mortals of his own nation and caste. The writer will also find that, if he introduces these details copiously, he will ruin the dramatic character of his narrative.

Enough should be said in the case of a statesman who went in for racing to show that this was his relaxation, but it would surely be an error in art art to give full details of his turf career in a political biography. If, again, he should have been a devotee to domestic life and affections, this fact also should be sufficiently intimated, but should not be proved by copious and distracting extracts from family correspondence. Homer gives only so much of the conversation between Hector and his spouse, or Helen and Paris, as is strictly related to the main theme of the Siege

of Troy.

The reverse treatment, the introduction of much that is quite irrelevant to the main theme-often, perhaps, in order to please some persons or groups,-has injured many modern Memoirs. It is true that in the case of some manysided characters there is room for two or more books, from different points of view. But the vie intime of Napoleon, for instance, should not be mixed up too much in one book with his career as a soldier or statesman; nor should the religious life of Mr Gladstone be mixed, more than is necessary and relevant, with his political life. Lord Morley recognised this in his 'Life,' when he left most of the letters on ecclesiastical topics to be published later by Mr Lathbury. One can ask for no better authority to justify leaving the sporting career of the late Duke of Devonshire to be dealt with, if it be equally worth while, by some later writer.

[blocks in formation]

I FIRST saw the Glen when I was eleven years old, a small boy consumed with a passion for trout. Adventuring on a rusty bicycle I had penetrated to remote dales, and made baskets in streams which no 'Anglers' Guide' ever heard of. One day I had fished the sources of the Cauldshaw, and, the sun being yet high, bethought me of the Fawn, which flowed on the other side of the narrow watershed. I shouldered my rod and tramped up the mossy spaces of the burnhead, till I waded deep in the bracken of the ridge. There on the summit the heather ended as if ruled by a gardener's line. I was looking into a narrow glen which ran from a round hope till a broad green hill baulked the view. From beginning to end there was no house, not even a sheepfold or a dyke. I remember my amazement at its indescribable greenness. There was the yellow-green of moss, the old velvet of mountainturf, the grey-green of bent on the hill-brow; but all was green, without tree or crag or heather bush to distract the eye. Through the middle of it ran the Fawn, a very fishable stream to my notion, and I ran down the brae with hope high in my heart.

But I never cast a fly in those waters. Long before I

was down the hill the eeriness and the solitariness of the place weighed on my mind. There was no man here, and no sign of man. There were no whaups crying, or grouse to upbraid my presence. It was still as the grave, but for the lilt of the stream; and it was terribly green. I remembered a line of a song that ploughmen used to whistle-"The wild glen sae green"-and I thought how much deeper this green wildness was than any rock and heather. The still slopes and folds of hill seemed to my unquiet eye to stretch to eternity.

At the edge of the burn was a rude mound, embanked like some Roman fort. With a fluttering heart I began to put my rod together. The Fawn dashed and swirled in noble pools, but I could not keep my eyes on it. The green hills shut me in, and the awe of them brooded over me. I was mortally afraid, and not ashamed of my fear. I could not give a name to it, but something uncanny was in the air: not terrible exactly, or threatening, but inhumanly strange. I clutched my rodthe butt and middle piece were put together and fled the way I had come. I do not think I stopped running till I fell panting by the side of the Cauldshaw among the friendly heather.

Copyright in the United States of America.

« PreviousContinue »