The Romance of a Pro-Consul Part 1

The Romance of a Pro-Consul.

by James Milne.

A WORD TO THE READER

When Sir George Grey died, twelve years ago, he left a message as well as a name to the English-speaking people. It was that their future rested in the Federal Idea of communion and government. He saw, vision-like, the form of this new age arise, because changed needs called it. As Pro- Consul he laboured for it unceasingly in our over-sea Commonwealths, and South Africa has most lately given answer. Now, at a historic turning in British Inst.i.tutions, we hear of "Federal Home-Rule," and that may be a signpost to far travel along the road which Sir George Grey "blazed."

Certainly it sends us to the s.p.a.cious life and high thoughts of the "Father of Federation," whom Time in its just goodness will also call the Walter Raleigh of the Victorians. Hence this people's edition of a book wherein, "he, being dead, yet speaketh."

JAMES MILNE.

LONDON, March 1911.

THE ROMANCE OF A PRO-CONSUL

I PERSONAL AND PARTICULAR

'Perhaps there is something in old age that likes to have a young mind clinging to it.' Sir George Grey was speaking of the famous people he had known in his youth long, long before. He struck an inner note of nature which is surely equally valid the other way? Whenever I think of the remark, I am inclined to discover one reason why I came to know Sir George so well.

I met him, as I have met other characters of English story in our own day. You go into these great waters, seeking that all who care may know.

You cry across them, answer comes back or it does not, and there endeth the lesson, until the next time.

It was different with Sir George Grey. He hauled me straight in-board, saying, 'Now, call upon me often, and we'll talk mankind over. Going by myself, no two people can meet without being a means of instruction to each other, to say nothing else. You are where the swing of events must be felt, and I am in the back-water of retirement. It may entertain us both, to study new subjects under old lights.'

Thus flew many an hour, and many an evening, and the memory of them is green and grateful to me. Here was an incident, there a reflection, and always it was Sir George Grey intimate, whether in a frame large or small. It is the rivulets, babbling to the big stream, that really tell its tale, for without them it would not be; and so with the river of life. Beside me, a scarred veteran looked back upon himself, hailing some venture from the mist of years. Again, it might be an event on the wing; or the future, and him bending eagerly forward into its suns.h.i.+ne.

We wrote things, he inspiring, I setting down, and by and by I exclaimed: 'Why, I am getting, to be quite a depository of your memories and ideas.'

At that he smiled, 'And who, do you fancy, would thank you for them?'

Thus a portrait of Sir George grew with me, and I was for stroking it down somehow. 'Oh well,' quoth he, 'let's try and gather together what may be fresh, or suggestive, in my experiences, and yours be the blame.

Whatever you do must have a certain spirit of action--you know what I mean!--or n.o.body will look at it. You'll need to whisk along.'

In Froude's phrase, the life of Sir George Grey had been a romance, and that was the road which caught me. No wonder, for it was a broad road, in the sense that his whole being was a romance. He saw things beneath a radiant light, and he saw many which to others would have been invisible.

Nor, was his grasp of them less accurate, because he strained his eye most earnestly for what was most beautiful. The romantic element in his outlook gave colour, vividness, meaning to the unconsidered trifles--in fine, you had a chronicle and a seer.

On the one hand, then, I sought for the texts with a likely stir in them; on the other for those of personality, streaked by affairs. The references were consulted, or Sir George's own words of old delved among; and from his discourse there sprang a regular series of notes. 'It's a kind of task,' he remarked once, 'that might easily enough lend itself to vain-glory. We must avoid that.'

If there is anything that could so be read, I alone am the sinner; for with his memories there go my interpretation and appreciation of him.

What should I do but write of Sir George Grey as I beheld him, of his career as one captured by it? His nature, like every rich nature, had folds, but I only knew their warmth. With that, I step round the mountain side.

II HOME IS THE WARRIOR

Things call to each other after the great silence has fallen, scenes come together, and that is how it seems here.

A s.h.i.+p, bound on a far voyage, lay in Plymouth waters the day that the Queen succeeded to the throne. It was laden with an expedition for the new wonderland of the Australias, whither it duly sailed. As leader, the expedition had a young lieutenant of the 83rd Foot Regiment, George Grey.

On a spring afternoon, fifty-seven years later, there landed at the same port, from a New Zealand liner, an aged man who received marked attention. He was as a gnarled oak of the wide-ranged British forest, and the younger trees bent in salute to him. It was Sir George Grey, returned finally to the Motherland, which had sent him forth to build nations.

He had gone in a tubby wooden craft, the winds his carrier, across oceans that were pathless, except to the venturer. He returned by steam, through seas which it had tamed to the churn and rumble of the screw. What thought in the contrasting pictures of the world! The two Englands might have met each other in the street, and pa.s.sed, strangers.

'From the windows of my hotel at Plymouth,' Sir George recalled, 'I watched the citizens proclaim the young Queen. Who among them could have imagined the glorious reign hers was to be? It was to surpa.s.s in bounty of achievement all foretelling.'

Now, he would meet, for the last time, the Sovereign who, like himself, had tended the rise of Oceana. This was at Windsor, to which he had summons soon after he reached England. He had been exalted a member of the Privy Council, and must be sworn in by the Queen. The tribute was cheerful to him, since the very nature of it set seal upon his services to the Empire. The longing for some word of England's remembrance had a.s.suredly been in his heart, which had often been left desolate. It was all rapture to England, like a child's to its mother.

'For mere honours themselves,' was his broad att.i.tude thereon, 'I entertain no special regard. A t.i.tle to one's name, a red ribbon, or something else, what are they but baubles, unless there is more? What more? Why, they hand down a record of the public work that a person may have endeavoured to perform. In that respect they should have esteem, being the recognition of efforts to serve Queen and people.

'Nothing could be more unfortunate than that a country should neglect services rendered to it. The loss is its own, because, apart from justice to the individual, his example is not kept alive to encourage others coming after. In so far, then, as that reasoning may apply to myself--not very far, perhaps--I do sincerely value any honours I have received. Not otherwise; and it is easy to understand that a distinction, granted without adequate cause, might exercise a really pernicious effect upon the tone of a nation.'

While Sir George awaited the Queen's commands at Windsor, she sent him them. He was not to go on his knees, a usual part of the ceremony of swearing in a Privy Councillor. She had remembered, with a woman's feeling, that here was a patriarch, nimble no longer.

The meeting between Queen and servant was stately, in that they were the two people who linked most intimately Great and Greater Britain. To them Oceana was a living, sentient thing, not merely a glorious name and expanse. It had squalled in their ears. They could go back to the beginnings, could witness the whole panorama of the Colonies unroll itself. They stood for the history of a high endeavour, which had been n.o.bly crowned. Oft, there had been weary clouds across the sky, not seldom heavy darkness. But the sun was kept s.h.i.+ning, and finally all had become light. Oceana was grown up, and she gathered the four corners of her robe into that Windsor audience chamber.

Of the Queen's order Sir George had the simple deliverance, 'It showed how careful Her Majesty is to manifest a strong consideration for all those who come in contact with her, a most taking quality in a Sovereign.' Yet, for the first time in his life, he was to disobey that Sovereign. Nothing, not even her protest of 'No, no,' could stop him from getting down on his knees, as if he had been a younger subject. The infirmities were conquered by his desire to pay to the Queen that reverence and loyalty which had always been hers. The bonds of age were burst, although his quaint complaint about himself that very evening was, 'You know I want a minute or two to get in motion.'

Despite bowed shoulders and rusty joints, he still had something of the lithe, strenuous carriage of his youth. In his dignity of manner, there almost seemed to you a glimpse of the gallant age when forbears had gone whistling to the headsman. He was of a line which counted in English history, which among its women had a Lady Jane Grey. His mother, with the mother's wistful love and pride, had traced that line for him. He was not deeply moved, unless by the romance and the tragedy that gathered about it.

But the aristocrat abode in the democrat, nature's doing. He was of the people in being whole-souled for them; he was not by them. Verily, he had been through the winters in their interest. The ripe harvest was in his hair, which had become thin above a face, rugged with intellect; over a broad, decisive brow, strewn with furrows. It was a head of uncommon shape, with b.u.mps and a poise, indicating at once the idealist and the man of action. There it spoke truly, for Sir George was both; the two were one in him.

The chief secret of his personality seemed to rest in his eyes, and it was in them you met the dreamer of dreams. 'So I was often called,' he would mention, 'and the answer is to hand. Many of the dreams which I dreamt have been realised; that knowledge has been permitted me. Whether it is any comfort I'm not sure, because, after all, my dreams are not nearly exhausted.

'Dreaming dreams! I trust that Englishmen will never cease to do that, for otherwise we should be falling away from ourselves. To dream is to have faith, and faith is strength, whether in the individual or in the nation. Sentiment! Yes, only sentiment must remain, probably, the greatest of human forces governing the world.'

The store, reflected in Sir George's eyes, was what gave him his control over men. In those depths, blue as a summer sky, were many lights, which caught Robert Louis Stevenson and were comprehended of him. The return observation was, 'I never met anybody with such a bright, at moments almost weird, genius-gifted eye, as that of Stevenson.' Sir George could fire imagination in the most ordinary mortal, carrying him off into enchanted realms. He sailed to strange skies, a knight-errant of a star, and he could tow the ma.s.ses with him. He lifted them out of themselves, and put a label on their vague yearnings. They had imagination, the instinct upward, and were grateful to have it discovered.

The poetry of Sir George's nature flavoured his language, alike in manner of delivery and turn of phrase. It had a quaint old-world style; it fell slowly, in a low, soothing voice. He might have spent his, days in the cloister, rather than in the din of hammering up hearths for the Anglo- Saxon. Perhaps it was that he had talked so long to the hills of Oceana, catching their simplicity and music. You were reminded of the measured English of an old and lovable book, just as you grew used to read in his face what he was to say, before the words had begun to flow. Never was there a face more quick to reflect the mind, more pliable to humour, more luminous at some stirring idea or deed, more indignant at the bare notion of a wrong inflicted, softer at the call of sympathy.

Sir George had travelled to Windsor with the Earl of Rosebery, then Prime Minister, and that was an agreeable memory. Being asked what characteristics he noted as most prominent in the Premier, he replied: 'Oh, his extraordinary readiness at seeing the humorous side of anything, his almost boyish love of fun. He seems to have a power of dismissing the weight of public affairs, of diverting himself with the playfulness of youth.' Sir George was living in Park Place, St. James's, and on returning from Windsor the Premier drove him there. His rooms were at Number 7, and here the street ended in a sharp incline, with somebody's yard beyond.

Sir George suggested that the coachman should stop, and let him down at a point where the horses could readily turn. 'Not at all,' Lord Rosebery insisted, 'I'll drive you to the door and we'll manage to turn somehow.'

A trifle anxious, Sir George waited on his door-step to see how this was to be done.

'Quick of eye,' he related, 'the coachman discerned the possibilities of the yard at the top of the incline. Accordingly, he whipped into it, wheeled round, and trotted gently away past me. There sat the Premier in the carriage, waving his hat in a triumph, the fun of which quite infected me.'

Sir George appreciated kindly attentions the more, in that he was himself a king in courtesy, with his heart ever on the latch. He estimated the side of Lord Rosebery's character, thus manifested, to be among the best ornaments he could have. 'It seems clear to me,' were his words, 'that he is a man of sincerity and simple n.o.bility, one who wishes with all his heart to do what he can for his fellow men.' That was Sir George's test of all public effort, as it had been what he applied to himself. There could be none higher.

Mere weight of years could not quench the ardour and hope which had always burned so brightly in Sir George Grey. As well expect him to forget that chivalrous manner of his, bewitcher of the veriest stranger.

He would, find his tall hat, search out his staunch umbrella, and convoy the visitor forth, when the hour of parting had arrived. Nothing less would suffice him, and as to his company, it was a delight for ever.

Another veteran might have been lonely with a younger generation knocking at the door, indeed in full possession. He was not; he strode in the van with the youngest.

Yet he felt, perhaps, the void time had wrought in the circle of his friends. He held the fort silently, while the long scythe cut another swathe very near him. He heard that his friend, James Anthony Froude, who had been lying ill in Devons.h.i.+re, was steadily losing strength.