Chapter XXXVII (5)

What shall I say of Lansdowne, Viceroy of India, Governor of Canada, Leader of the Conservative party in the House of Lords, and distinguished in many more public capacities? The world knows his fame as a statesman, but I can tell them something of his ability as a cook. He taught me to make excellent omelettes, an accomplishment which has stood me in good stead at many camps and picnics. We were in the same division at Eton, and I was second to him in Collections the half I left Eton, when we were both ‘up to’ Joynes, afterwards Lower Master. Boy and man, he always had the same refined and genial manners, without the least trace of ‘side’ or conceit. One interest we shared in common was a love of fishing, and when I was writing my volume on the Salmon for the ‘Fur, Feather, and Fin’ series he lent me the account of his doings on the Cascapedia River, in Canada, for the four years when he was Governor-General of the Province. My mouth waters as I glance over the figures for the four years: 1245 salmon, weighing 29,188 lb.; 210 fish over 30 lb. The largest fish 35 lb.

Sir William Anson, who died somewhat suddenly and unexpectedly just before our last Balliol dinner, making a sadly conspicuous gap in our narrowing circle, was one of my oldest and most valued friends. We saw a great deal of one another from our boyhood onwards. We went up to Eton at the same time, and were neighbours at home in Kent. There was a half-way house where we frequently met: Bedgbury, the hospitable seat of Alexander Beresford-Hope, the Member of Parliament and Privy Councillor, whose criticism of the ‘Caucasian Mystery’ invited Disraeli’s retort about his ‘Batavian grace.’ Anson was a great favourite with Lady Mildred, who had much of the ability and sarcastic humour of her brother Lord Salisbury, whom she greatly resembled also in personal appearance. After Eton, we were contemporaries at Balliol, where we matriculated on the same day, although I, being nearly two years younger, did not actually come up till a term later. I was a candidate for the All Souls Fellowship on the occasion when he and the present Lord Justice Phillimore were elected on the foundation over which he afterwards presided with such eminent success, and shortly afterward was a fellow pupil with him of the great Thomas Chitty, the pleader, in whose chambers so many sucking lawyers destined to become great legal luminaries, from Lord Chancellor Cairns to A. L. Smith, Master of the Rolls, learnt the elements of pleading before the Common Law Procedure Act put a final end to declarations and demurrers. We were a merry as well as an industrious party, and I remember a game of cricket in which Anson took part, played with two volumes of Blackburn and Ellis for bat and wicket, and some crumpled sheets of draft paper for a ball. Even the long-suffering Chitty sent up his clerk to request us to make a little less noise.

I should not omit some notice of the part taken by Anson when at Eton in the foundation of the ‘Eton Observer,’ a magazine conducted by a committee of editors which numbered among its members Vincent Stuckey Coles, now the beloved head of Pusey House, and John Andrew Doyle, afterwards fellow of All Souls and historian. It had quite a long life for such a venture, and contained some very promising productions, notably the easy and flowing verse of Vincent Cracroft Amcotts, who was afterwards also our friend and contemporary at Balliol: the dramatist of the ‘Shooting Stars,’ an amateur dramatic club, which performed very successfully operettas founded upon Meilhac and Halévy’s librettos with Offenbach’s music. ‘Helen, or Taken from the Greek’ (‘La Belle Hélène’), and ‘Lalla Rookh,’ which adapted the story of Moore’s poem to the music of ‘Orphée aux Enfers,’ were the most notable of these compositions; in the latter, Anson, always an admirable amateur actor, took the part of Fadladeen, first the hostile critic, and afterwards the ardent admirer of the disguised prince and poet. I have photographs of him in character among the faded portraits of College contemporaries, which call up many memories when I glance at my old album. Amcotts died young, or he might have emulated the literary fame of his Balliol friend, Andrew Lang, or of his St. John’s contemporary, H. D. Traill, who when at Oxford was, like himself, a successful librettist and actor.

The ‘Eton Observer’ differed from such predecessors as Canning’s ‘Microcosm’ and Winthrop Mackworth Praed’s ‘Etonian’ by being started and conducted by boys comparatively low down in the School, two years before they reached the glories of Sixth Form. The irate ‘Swells’ assailed it both in prose and verse, comparing the ambitious editors to the frog in the fable who tried to make himself a bull! This roused the wrath of that kind and popular house master ‘Billy Johnson,’ himself to be celebrated as a poet later under his better known name of William Cory, the author of ‘Ionica,’ and he fulminated against the critics in the following impromptu epigram, which somehow still sticks in my memory:

‘The frog in the fable’s a thorough impostor!
No one can write verse but a sixth form prepostor.
The frog in the fable; we know what that means,
A priggish, impertinent usher in teens.’

When we were both called to the Bar, Anson and I went the old Home Circuit and the Kent Sessions together for some years and during the Assize fortnight at Croydon, where in those days important London causes were tried and the provincial town was full of big merchants and City solicitors, we were more than once guests of the Daniells at Fairchilds, their beautiful country place outside the town. John Daniell, our host, was married to Katherine Bradshaw, a cousin of my mother, who still retained much of the beauty and charm which earlier had inspired some characteristic lines of Tennyson; I may be pardoned for quoting them, as I do not think they have ever yet found their way into print:

‘Because she bore the iron name
Of him who doomed the King to die,
I dreamt her one of stately frame
With look to awe the passer-by,
But found a maiden tender, shy,
With soft blue eyes and winning, sweet,
And longed to kiss her hand and lie
A thousand summers at her feet.’

One day Katherine Bradshaw, driving with her mother and Alfred Tennyson, looked at her watch. ‘Don’t do that,’ said the Poet; ‘if it looks at you it will stop!’

She was as clever and delightful as she was beautiful, and those were happy days when we lounged in the summer evening in that beautiful garden, so near and seeming so far from the ‘fumum et opus strepitumque’ of the noisy Courts we had just left. Her children, who still live there, gathered round us while we read or recited poetry. I can remember Alfred Thesiger’s rendering of Tennyson’s ‘Gardener’s Daughter,’ all its vivid nature touches appealing the more to us because we were camped where ‘the cedar spread his dark-green layers of shade,’ ‘the voices of the well-contented doves’ forming a fit accompaniment to the musical lines. I think the presence of her brother Henry Bradshaw, the beloved Cambridge Librarian, who much resembled his sister, added a charm which those of his friends who are still living will recall with gratitude and affection. The tragedy which burst like a thunder-cloud upon this peaceful holiday group fell with its full weight upon Willie Anson. I shall never forget that day in August 1873 when a messenger of ill tidings broke in upon us with the news of the terrible accident at Wigan which wrecked the carriage in which Sir John Anson and his two daughters were travelling north, killing him instantly. The calamity touched me the more closely as the father and sisters were on their way to Poltalloch, where I was myself shortly due for one of those happy ‘Autumns in Argyllshire’ which had already begun.

Our friendship remained unbroken, and we had many happy meetings, although Anson drifted away from the Bar into other spheres of greater usefulness. I was more than once his guest at All Souls, where the two sisters who happily escaped from the accident which robbed him of a father made ideal hostesses. He was hardly ever absent from our Balliol dinner in the Match week, and was President in 1884 and 1907. Another bond of union arose between us when he became a fellow director of the old Law Life Assurance Society, where we had many happy weekly Wednesday gatherings until that ancient and successful institution allowed its existence to be absorbed by and renewed in the Phœnix. Balliol was strongly represented on the Board, which numbered among its eight Barrister Directors my brother-in-law, W. R. Malcolm, the doyen of Coutts’ Bank, Sir Henry Graham, Anson, and myself.

As the youngest member of the Club I formed a link with a somewhat junior generation of Balliol men who added a Lord Chancellor, a Lord Justice of Appeal, and a Judge of the High Court to this notable list. I remember how we welcomed ‘Bob’ Reid, prince of scholars, cricketers, and athletes, when, much to the disgust of the President of Magdalen, he flung up his demyship at that College to compete for the open scholarship at Balliol, which he gained with the greatest ease. He came up from Cheltenham with a high reputation for running, among his Crichton-like gifts, but never competed in the University or College sports. Once at least he kept wicket for the University at Lord’s, and his career as a scholar gave promise of the eminence he afterwards attained in the profession over which he presided on the woolsack as Lord Loreburn. He only once competed for a fellowship, and when he did not obtain the success to which he believed he was entitled on the merits, his strong and firm, some would say obstinate, character forbade him to become candidate for another College, though doubtless many Common Rooms would have welcomed such an addition to their numbers.

Bargrave Deane, the Judge of the Probate and Divorce Court, was then and is still one of my most valued friends. He was a fine cricketer, having played in the Winchester Eleven before he came up to the University, and although he never got his ‘blue’ he was a most useful member of the College team, and often played in University matches, though not at Lord’s. He also rowed in his College Eight, and was an officer of the Oxford Volunteers, as he was later in the Devil’s Own, of which I think he was for some time colonel. He was a magnificent rifle shot, and showed equal skill in the forest and at the competitions at Wimbledon—it was before the days of Bisley. His father, the Queen’s Advocate, Sir James Parker Deane, used to take a moor in Scotland, where I was privileged to share the sport; I remember seeing Bargrave bring down with a rifle a grand roebuck, running away from him at a long range, and how I envied and admired his skill. He was a fine fisherman, and not only cast a beautiful line, but made flies for salmon and sea-trout as well as he used them. Farwell, the late Lord Justice of Appeal, I did not know so well, but he was much looked up to and respected when at Balliol, and was very popular throughout his long and successful career at the Bar and on the Bench. Of Lansdowne, as Viceroy of India, Governor of Canada, statesman and politician, I need say nothing. Here I think rather of the boy who was with me at Eton. He was a great favourite with Jowett, who early recognised his outstanding ability and promise.

Since my time many Balliol undergraduates of intermediate generations have risen to high positions. To-day we boast of the Prime Minister, the Speaker, and Earl Curzon, Chancellor of the University, to name only three of the most important. But at this time of our national need I prefer to dwell upon that noble band who have willingly offered themselves in their country’s service. By October 1915 no less than fifty-four members of my old College had already given their lives in the War; two had gained the Victoria Cross, three the Distinguished Service Order, eight the Military Cross, one corporal (now a Captain) the Distinguished Conduct Medal, while twenty had been mentioned in despatches, and three had gained foreign Orders. To-day the empty halls and lecture rooms bear even more eloquent witness than they did when full to overflowing to the debt England owes to my beloved College.

_LADY CONNIE._

BY MRS. HUMPHRY WARD.

Copyright, 1915, by Mrs. Humphry Ward in the United States of America.