Masques & Phases Part 8

Hichens.

Chamberlain.

Barrie.

George Alexander.

Beerbohm Tree.

I ought to add, of course, that the guests were unusually intellectual.

There were our host and hostess, their three sons--one is a scholar of King's College, Cambridge, another is at Balliol, and a third is a stockbroker; there were five M.P.'s with their wives (two Liberal Imperialists, two Liberal Unionists, and one real Radical), a Scotch peer with his wife and an Irish peer without one; a publisher and his wife; three Academicians; four journalists; an Irish poet, a horse-dealer, a picture-dealer, another stockbroker, an artist, two lady novelists, a baronet and his wife, three musicians; and Myself. I think the only point on which the sincerity of the voting might be doubted, is the ominous absence of any soldier's name on the list. Lord Lyonesse, however, is a firm upholder of the Hague Conference: like myself, he is a pro-Boer, but he will not allow any reference to military affairs, and I suspect that it was out of deference to his wishes that the guests all abstained from writing down some names of our gallant generals. Lord Kitchener, however, obtained nine votes, and I myself included Christian De Wet; but on discovery of doc.u.ments he was ruled out, in spite of my pleading for him on imperialistic grounds. I thought it rather insular, too, I must confess, that Mr. Henry James and Mr. Sargent were denied to me because they are American subjects. My own final list, as pasted in the Alb.u.m at Ivanhoe, along with others, was as follows:

H. G. Wells.

C. H. Shannon.

Bernard Shaw.

Thomas Hardy.

Lord Northcliffe.

Edmund Gosse.

Andrew Lang.

Oliver Lodge.

Dom Gasquet.

Reginald Turner.

Mine, of course, is the choice of a recluse: a scholar without scholars.h.i.+p, one who lives remote from politics, newspapers, society, and the merry-go-round of modern life. Its two chief interests lie in showing, first how far off I was from getting the prize (a vellum copy of poems, by our hostess), and secondly, that one name only, that of Lord Northcliffe, should have touched both the popular and the private imagination! I regret to say that none of the guests knew the names of Dom Gasquet or Sir Oliver Lodge. Every one, except the artist, thought C. H. Shannon was J. J. Shannon, and some of the voters were hardly convinced that Mr. Lang was still an ornament to contemporary literature.

The prize was awarded to a lady whose list most nearly corresponded to the result of the general plebiscite. I need not say she was the wife of the publisher. After some suitable expressions from Lord Lyonesse, it was suggested that we should poll the servants' hall. Pencils and paper were provided and the butler was sent for. An hour was given for the election, and at half-past eleven the ballot papers were brought in on a ma.s.sive silver tray discreetly covered with a red silk pocket-handkerchief, and here is the result:

Frank Richardson.

Marie Corelli.

John Roberts.

C. B. Fry.

Eustace Miles.

Robert Hichens.

T. P. O'Connor.

Lord Lyonesse.

Dr. Williams (Pink Pills for Pale People).

Hall Caine.

The prize (and this is another odd coincidence) was won by the butler himself, to whom, very generously, the publisher's wife resigned the vellum copy of our hostess's poems. From a literary point of view, it is interesting to note that Mr. Frank Richardson is the only master of _belles lettres_ who is appreciated in the servants' hall! The other names we a.s.sociate, rightly or wrongly, with something other than literature.

The following evening I suggested choosing the greatest English names in the nineteenth century (twentieth-century life being strictly excluded).

Every one by this time had caught the _suck-pencil_ fever. By general consent the suffrage was extended to the domestics: the electorate being thus one hundred. And what, you will ask, came of it all? I suggest that readers should guess. Any one interested should fill up, cut out, and send this coupon to my own publisher on April the first.

_I think the Ten Greatest Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century were_:

1 . . . . . . . . . .

2 . . . . . . . . . .

3 . . . . . . . . . .

4 . . . . . . . . . .

5 . . . . . . . . . .

6 . . . . . . . . . .

7 . . . . . . . . . .

8 . . . . . . . . . .

9 . . . . . . . . . .

10 . . . . . . . . . .

A prize, consisting of a copy of _Books of To-Day and Books of To-Morrow_, will be awarded for the best shot.

MR. BENSON'S 'PATER.'

In no other country has mediocrity such a chance as in England. The second-rate writer, the second-rate painter meets with an almost universal and immediate recognition. When good mediocrities die, if they do not go straight to heaven (from a country where the existence of Purgatory is denied by Act of Parliament), at least they run a very fair chance of burial in Westminster Abbey. 'De mortuis nil nisi _bonus_,' in the shape of royalties, is the real test by which we estimate the authors who have just pa.s.sed away. A few of our great writers--Ruskin and Tennyson, for example--have enjoyed the applause accorded to senility by a people usually timid of brilliancy and strength, when it is contemporary. The ruins of mental faculties touch our imagination, owing, perhaps, to that tenderness for antiquity which has preserved for us the remains of Tintern Abbey. Seldom, however, does a great writer live to find himself, in the prime of his literary existence, a component part of English literature. Yet there are happy exceptions, and not the least of these was Walter Pater.

His inclusion in the _English Men of Letters_ series, so soon after his death, somewhat dazzled the reviewers. Mr. Benson was complimented on a daring which, if grudgingly endorsed, is treated as just the sort of innovation you would expect from the brother of the author of _Dodo_. 'To a small soul the age which has borne it can appear only an age of small souls,' says Swinburne, and the presence of Pater, which rose so strangely beside our waters, seemed to many of his contemporaries only the last sob of a literature which they sincerely believed came to an end with Lord Macaulay.

It was a fortunate chance by which Mr. A. C. Benson, one of our more discerning critics, himself master of no mean style, should have been chosen as commentator of Pater. Among the plutarchracy of the present day a not very pretty habit prevails of holding a sort of inquest on deceased writers--a reaction against misplaced eulogy--tearing them and their works to pieces, and leaving nothing for reviewers or posterity to dissipate. From the author of the _Upton Letters_ we expect sympathy and critical ac.u.men. It is needless to say we are never disappointed. His book is not merely about a literary man: it is a work of literature itself. So it is charming to disagree with Mr. Benson sometimes, and a triumph to find him tripping. You experience the pleasure of the University Extension lecturer pointing out the mistakes in Shakespeare's geography, the joy of the schoolboy when the master has made a false quant.i.ty. In marking the modern discoveries which have shattered, not the value of Pater's criticisms, but the authenticity of pictures round which he wove his aureoles of prose, Mr. Benson says: 'In the essay on Botticelli he is on firmer ground.' But among the first masterpieces winged by the sportsmen of the new criticism was the Hamilton Palace 'a.s.sumption of the Virgin' (now proved to be by Botticini), to which Pater makes one of his elusive and delightful allusions. While the '_School of Giorgione_,' which Mr. Benson thinks a little _pa.s.se_ in the light of modern research is now in the movement. The latest bulletins of Giorgione, Pater would have been delighted to hear, are highly satisfactory. Pictures once torn from the altars of authenticity are being reinstated under the acolytage of Mr. Herbert Cook. A curious and perhaps wilful error, too, has escaped Mr. Benson's notice. Referring to the tomb of Cardinal Jacopo at San Miniato, Pater says, 'insignis forma fui--his epitaph dares to say;' the inscription reads _fuit_. But perhaps the _t_ was added by the Italian Government out of Reference to the English residents in Florence, and the word read _fui_ in 1871.

_Troja fuit_ might be written all over Florence.

Then some of the architecture at Vezelay 'typical of Cluniac sculpture'