CHAPTER NINETEEN

Two Big Men and One Medium

Rudyard Kipling is a fine example of a great man who will forgive almost everything to Youth. He certainly forgave me as charmingly as it was possible to do so.

It happened during lunch. I felt very guilty when they said that Rudyard Kipling was coming, because two years before, when still at Oxford, I had written a letter to the _Morning Post_ on the subject of ‘Our Modern Youth,’ in which there were a great many violent (and rather silly) remarks levelled against anybody who had the misfortune to be over forty. The letter attacked, with sublime indifference, such diverse subjects as militarism, old age, imperialism, prime ministers and incidentally Kipling, whom I had never read, but who seemed to sum up a great many aggressive tendencies. ‘Where,’ I asked, in the peroration, ‘will you find the spirit of the age? Not in the flamboyant insolence of Rudyard Kipling, not in the ... etc.’

Not one of my best works, that letter. But it was written in a hammock, on a hot summer’s day, with flies buzzing round, and certainly without the thought that perhaps, one day, the writer would meet the man whom he had attacked.

However, when Kipling was announced, he came straight up to me (where I was hiding in a corner) and said:

‘You’re the young man who was so rude to me in the _Morning Post_, aren’t you?’

I admitted that this was so. ‘I’m awfully sorry ...’ I began.

‘Sorry? What for?’ said Kipling. ‘I used to be much ruder to people when I was your age. The only thing that I should be sorry for was that you didn’t make it worse.’

I heaved a sigh of relief.

‘Besides,’ said Kipling, ‘that was a jolly good phrase--flamboyant insolence--I liked it.’

And then he began to talk about literary style with a gusto that is more often found in amateurs than in celebrities.

Kipling did not strike one, in the very least, as ‘literary.’ If one had not seen his face caricatured in a hundred newspapers, one would gather that he was a successful surgeon or a prosperous architect. Especially does he convey the surgeon, with his keen bright eyes, his more-than-bedside manner, and the strong, capable hands, that push out eagerly from the white cuffs as though they were about to carve something.

Carving, too, is a phrase that might be applied to his prose. He hacks out his sentences, cuts up his paragraphs, snips at his descriptions.

I was struck, even at the beginning, with his positively encyclopædic knowledge of subjects about which he might well have pleaded justifiable ignorance. Drugs, for example. Somebody mentioned anæsthetics, and that led to a wider discussion of all drugs that partially or wholly remove consciousness. Kipling suddenly broke into the conversation, held it and dominated it, illustrating everything he said with the most apposite examples. He told me that when he was in India, as a young man, he had experimented in taking a very potent drug which even the natives can only imbibe in small quantities. ‘It laid me out completely,’ he said, ‘and I didn’t dream a bit, as I had hoped. I woke up, with a splitting headache, but fortunately I knew the cure--hot milk, as much of it as you can drink. If ever you find yourself in that condition in India, you put your last dollar on hot milk. It’s the only thing that will pull you round.’

It was an amusing luncheon party, for everybody talked about the things that most interested them. I remember Princess Alice,[1] for example, talking about Bolshevism with an authority and an understanding that came to me as rather a surprise.

[1] Countess of Athlone.

‘How do you know so much about these things?’ I asked.

‘I think it’s my duty to know about them,’ she said. And then ... ‘I _must_ tell you the story of when I went down to speak at a meeting at Poplar. Poplar at the time was seething with Bolshevism, and everybody said it was madness for me to go. To make matters worse, just before the meeting I received a message to say that the whole audience were going to wear red rosettes to show their revolutionary sympathies. Very well, said I, I’ll wear a red rosette too. So I got my maid to make me a beautiful scarlet rosette, and pinned it to my dress, where it looked charming. It quite took the wind out of their sails when they saw me get up on the platform wearing exactly the same emblem as themselves. And there wasn’t any Red Flag sung that night--only God Save the King, rather out of time, but with a great deal of fervour, all the same.’

Another rare type I met just then was Sir Thomas Lipton, whose yachts have floated all over the sea, and whose tea has floated into every interior. He wanted me to do a job of work for him, and though I had a shrewd suspicion that there would never be time to do it, I kept my appointment, simply in order to see what he was like.

Lipton himself was charming. And I admired his courage in decorating his house in a manner which some might find disturbing, but which he liked. There was no compromise with modernity. It was frankly Victorian.

From the outside the house looked quite innocuous. It was one of those roomy, squarely built mansions, that stand in respectable gardens on the outskirts of North London. But the porch showed a true individuality. It contained two highly glazed yellow pots, filled with aspidistras, standing on a floor of coloured tiles.

As soon as one entered the hall the fun began. There were black china negresses, ‘nice bright’ wallpapers, heads of healthy animals, glazed oleographs, and at every turn, photographs of some royalty in a large silver frame. One object in the billiard-room I particularly admired. This was a sofa, covered with cushions of really inspiring colours. One cushion, which was placed between a blue and orange stripe and a form of black check, had for its main design the Star-spangled Banner, worked in blue and crimson wools.

Conversation amid such surroundings was bound to be exciting. Lipton got under way, and let flow an apparently inexhaustible stream of reminiscences. There was something very appealing in listening to the candid confessions of an entirely self-made multi-millionaire, who gloried in the fact that he _was_ self-made.

Lipton told me that he was the first English tradesman who really understood advertising.

‘When I got my first little shop,’ he said, speaking with a beautiful Scottish burr, ‘I realized two things: first, that if you wanted to sell more goods than the man next door, you had to sell better goods. Secondly, that if you wanted to sell a _great many_ more goods, you had to make people look at ’em, whether they wanted to or not.

‘D’you know what I did?’ And here he slapped his thigh and chuckled to himself, ‘I got hold of two fat pigs, painted “Lipton’s Orphans” on their backs, and used to lead ’em home from the market-place every day. That was good advertising, wasn’t it?’

I agreed.

‘But even better’s to come, even better’s to come!’ (Here the secretary departed, and I had a suspicion that he had heard the story before.) ‘I trained those pigs to lie down in the middle of the road just opposite my wee shop! Think of it. Two braw pigs lying down like that. They stopped the traffic. When we got a crowd round, somebody would say “Why! _There’s_ the wee shop!” And they’d all trot along and look at my window. What d’you think of that?’

And then he told me the story of Lipton’s Bank Notes--almost the best piece of publicity that can ever have been invented. One of his chief slogans was: ‘Lipton gives £1 value for 15_s._,’ something to that effect, and in order to spread this slogan all over England he had £1 notes issued with a note in very small type at the bottom that goods to the value of £1 could be bought for only 15_s._ at any of Lipton’s stores. So beautifully were these notes engraved that occasionally they would be used, by canny and dishonest persons, in place of the real article. The authorities learnt this and Lipton had to stop his notes. But not before several little comedies had occurred.

‘D’you know,’ said Sir Thomas, with a sparkle in his eye, ‘that a man in an hotel at Edinburgh actually gave me one of my own notes as part of my change? Did I what? No, I didn’t. He was a clever fellow, and I let him keep it.

‘_And_ ...’ here he leant back in a sudden paroxysm of mirth, ‘I was travelling in the train once with two elders and they were talking of the collection at the Kirk the Sabbath before.

‘“Five pounds seventeen and elevenpence,” said one of ’em.

‘“Aye,” said the other, “but three of the notes were Liptons.”’

Lipton has, of course, a real veneration for Kings and Queens. He adores them with a fervour that at times almost becomes poetical, and he can never quite rid himself of the shy wonder that he, the ex-factory boy who started life on 2_s._ 6_d._ a week, should have risen to such heights.

He took me into his drawing-room (which I believe he called a parlour) and showed me some of his collection of royal photographs, with the remark that:

‘No other commoner in the United Kingdom has ever entertained the same number of crowned heads.’

Looking at the photographs, I could quite believe it. Royal photographs are all very well in small numbers, but in quantities they become a little oppressive. There were several rows of them on the piano, all in heavy silver frames, there were pictures of Queen Victoria on the wall, slightly fly-blown, there were portraits of King Edward, stout and urbane, on the mantelpiece, and every table had on it a photograph of some high-busted lady or be-whiskered gentleman, signed Augusta or Charles or Emelia or John, or some such name, with the signature written in that curious scrawl which denotes either a royal origin, success behind the footlights, or delirium tremens.

And yet--Lipton himself was still simple and charming. His pride was so naïve that one could not possibly object to it. ‘The Kaiser said to me ...’ ‘Her Majesty remarked ...’ ‘The Prince of Wales and I ...’--they were all only little pats on the back of the ex-factory boy.

Even when he said to me:

‘I’ve the largest collection of Press cuttings in the whole world,’ the remark seemed, by the way in which it was said, to be in the best of taste.

The quality which I found most lovable about Sir Thomas Lipton was his intense devotion to his mother. That was the only time when he was really serious. He told me that all his life he had worked for her and for her alone, and that he had never found any other woman in the world who could make him forget her. And his very last words to me were:

‘You stick to your mother, laddie, as you would stick to life. As long as you do that, you won’t go far wrong.’

* * * * *

I don’t know what it is about Hugh Walpole that I find, no doubt wrongly, a little worrying, unless it is his appearance of complacency. He _is_ so successful, isn’t he? I have really no right to mention him at all, for I only met him once, and that was at a station, when we were both ‘seeing off’ a mutual friend to America--a situation which was sufficient to make enemies of us for life. But I had heard--oh, a great deal about him from the friend in question, who was a very delightful American woman who has been fairy godmother to a great many young authors and artists.

We were in Venice together (the very delightful American woman and I) and one day she said, ‘Let’s go and get some lemons for Hugh Walpole.’

‘Lemons? They’ll go bad long before we get home.’

‘Not real lemons. Glass apples. Venetian glass. Hugh has taken a new house in London and I want to give him a present.’

So we entered a gondola, pushed off across the silver water, and were soon in Salvati’s, buying beautiful glass lemons for Hugh.

If this is to be a history of my life, as it is rapidly appearing to become, I had better get the subject of Venetian glass off my chest at once. It used to drive me quite mad with excitement, and still does--in Venice. On the morning in which the very delightful American woman and I went in search of the lemons, a new and most divine set of glass had just come in fresh from the factory. There were pieces of yellow glass that were like frozen sunlight, shadowy goblets that seemed to be bubbles poised on a puff of smoke, dim bowls that might just have been taken dripping from the green depths of the sea, pots of plain, clean glass with tiny fruits in sharp colours on the tops, little twinkling plums and vivid sour green apples. There were rich goblets engraved with golden dragons, and tall slim cups of grey glass, like pale ladies coming out of a mist.

We chose our lemons, entered the gondola, and drifted down the grand canal. I did not particularly want to hear about Hugh Walpole, but he was apparently ‘in the air,’ so I asked why he was so great a success in America.

‘Because they think he’s typically English. They also think he’s exceeding clever,’ said the very delightful American woman (who may be referred to as the V.D.A.W.).

‘But he’s neither.’

‘How do you know? You’ve never met him’ (which was perfectly true). ‘He _is_ typically English. His face is like an old English squire’s. And he is very clever. Or at least we think so.’

And then the V.D.A.W. delivered herself of a very good piece of literary criticism.

‘You’ll find Hugh Walpole’s books in every best bedroom in the United States, except possibly, in the very best ones, where you will not find works in English but in French, to show that we have travelled. Way out in the Middle West, there will be a copy of _The Dark Forest_ or _The Prelude to Adventure_ carefully placed on a table near the radiator. It will probably never have been read, but it will be there. That’s culture.’

An extraordinary idea. ‘How does one get this reputation for culture?’ I said. ‘My books have just as nice covers as Hugh Walpole’s, and there is no reason why they should not also have the benefit of steam heat.’

‘You’re too young,’ was the only answer I got.

However, I learnt more about Hugh Walpole, and at least discovered that he had this very admirable quality--the capacity to plod. Right at the beginning, apparently, Henry James had told him that if he went on, and on, and on, he would eventually get there. It seems to me that he _has_ gone on, and on, and on, but that he has not got there. Still, the going is good.

Then I met him. The scene was Victoria Station on a raw morning in winter, with little wisps of yellow fog lurking under the high roof. The V.D.A.W. was ensconced in her carriage behind a large bouquet of roses which he had given to her. In her lap was an American magazine which he had also given her. I noticed with a slight amusement that it was ‘featuring’ a story by Hugh Walpole himself.

When the train bearing the V.D.A.W. had departed into the fog, we walked out of the station together.

‘I hate seeing people off,’ he said.

‘So do I. Especially people I like.’

‘Quite.’

He paused in the middle of the station and scratched his head.

‘I should like to write a guide,’ he said, ‘on how to see people off. It would be done in several moods. Grave and gay. Topics to be avoided. Time-limits.’

‘The chief thing,’ I suggested, ‘would be to strictly limit’ (I noticed that the split infinitive made him blink, genteel man of letters that he was) ‘to strictly limit the number of times one said, “Well, good-bye.” We must have said it at least sixteen times this morning. Every whistle made us say it.’

‘I don’t remember saying it more than once,’ he remarked.

Then we entered the Tube, and endeavoured to converse by shouting feverishly into each other’s ears. (Oh! There is no doubt that we were meant to be enemies for life.)

‘I hear you’re doing dramatic criticism and book-reviewing,’ he screamed.

‘No, I’m not,’ I bellowed. ‘I’m only a reporter.’

Bang, bang, bang.

‘Well,’ he shrieked, ‘that’s not as bad as the other.’

‘What is not as bad as which?’ I howled.

‘I mean that book-reviewing’ (and here the train suddenly came to a halt so that his voice boomed out like a sergeant-major’s) ‘is far more soul-destroying than reporting.’

I should like to see Hugh Walpole battering at East End doors on windy nights in winter, trying to gain admission to a house where a murder has just been committed, and see which he thought was more ‘soul-destroying.’

‘I did book-reviewing for a long time on the _Evening Standard_,’ he confided, in a hoarse whisper, ‘and’ (here the train started, so he again had to yell) ‘it nearly killed me.’

Bang, bang, bang.

‘And what about the dramatic criticism?’ I howled.

He gathered all the remaining wind that was in his lungs and shrieked, ‘Don’t know so much about it. But I should think that would rot your brain before long.’

He got out at Charing Cross, and as I hurtled along towards the unaristocratic destination of Blackfriars, I pondered on the type of mind that thought dramatic criticism would rot the brain. To see, night after night, the curtain rise on the flash and light of the drama. To feel, as every daylight faded, that some new pageant was gathering to spread itself out before one’s eyes. To sit in the warm, scented darkness and analyse the motives, the construction, the technique of the play, even if it is a bad play. To have always the hope, sometimes justified, that one would be caught up in the sudden rapture that comes from great acting. Is that ‘rotting the brain’? Not, I think, to a young man. However, Hugh Walpole is not a young man. He was born middle-aged. But he is rapidly achieving his first childhood.