Part 26

May I not speak here of this gift of the Players? It is comparatively easy for those who are rocked in a golden cradle, and who at their birth are endowed with great wealth, to dispense their bounty. I do not desire to disparage the generosity of the rich. Those of our land have done much good, are now freely dispensing their wealth, and will continue to do so; but we must remember that the fortune of Edwin was not inherited. The walls within which we stand, the art, the library, and the comforts that surround us, represent a life of toil and travel, sleepless nights, tedious journeys and weary work; so that when he bestowed upon us this Club it was not his wealth only, but it was himself that he gave.

But a few years ago he was (though rich in genius) poor in pocket. He had been wealthy, and had seen the grand dramatic structure he had reared taken from him and devastated. His reverse of fortune was from no fault of his own, but from a confiding nature. When he again, by arduous toil, accumulated wealth, one would have supposed that the thoughts of his former reverses would have startled him and that he would have clutched his newly-acquired gold and garnered it to himself, fearful lest another stroke of ill-fortune should fall upon him. But instead of making him a coward it gave him courage. It did not warp his mind or steel his heart against humanity. No sterility settled upon him. His wrongs seemed to have fertilized his generosity, and here we behold the fruit.

When the stranger comes here and asks us for the monument of Edwin Booth we can say: "Look around you." For some time past he had looked forward calmly to his dissolution. One year ago to-night in this room, and at this very hour, he said to me the memorable words: "They drink to my health to-night, Joe. When they meet again, it will be to my memory."

Two years ago last autumn, we walked on the sea beach together, and with a strange and prophetic kind of poetry, he likened the scene to his own failing health, the falling leaves, the withered sea-weed, the dying grass upon the shore, and the ebbing tide that was fast receding from us. He told me that he felt prepared to go, for he had forgiven his enemies, and could even rejoice in their happiness. Surely this was a grand condition in which to step from this world across the threshold to the next!

LORD KITCHENER

THE RELIEF OF KHARTUM

[Speech of Horatio Herbert, Lord Kitchener, at a banquet given by the Lord Mayor of London, at the Mansion House, London, November 4, 1898, in celebration of the campaign in the Sudan and the successful recovery of Khartum from the Dervishes, thereby avenging the death of General Gordon. Lord Salisbury, in a brilliant speech, proposed the health of Lord Kitchener, to which the latter replied with the speech that follows.]

MY LORD MAYOR, YOUR ROYAL HIGHNESSES, MY LORDS AND GENTLEMEN:--It is not easy for me to find words to express the gratitude I feel for the manner in which the toast proposed by Lord Salisbury has been received by this magnificent audience, or for the too kind and too flattering words in which it has been recommended to your notice. Such a recognition by such an audience is more than sufficient recompense for any services which it may have been my good fortune to render. But, my lords and gentlemen, I am fully aware that it is not in my individual capacity but as representing the Anglo-Egyptian army that this great honor has been done me. [Cheers.] It is to the excellent and devoted services of the troops that the success of the campaign is due. A general would have been indeed incapable who failed to lead such men to victory; for it was not only, nor even principally, on the day of battle, that the great qualities of these troops were displayed. The cheerful endurance and soldier-like spirit with which they bore long delay during the Sudan summer, between the battle of Atbara and the advance on Omdurman, was as high a test of discipline and efficiency as the endurance exhibited in the long marches, or the courage shown at the trenches at Atbara or on the plains of Omdurman. [Cheers.]

A man may be proud indeed whose good fortune has placed him in command of troops capable of deeds like these. And remember, my lords and gentlemen, I include in this not merely the British army but the Egyptian army also. [Loud cheers.] For, proud as I may well be of having commanded the British troops in the Sudan, I am no less proud of having as Sirdar led the Egyptian and Sudanese troops to victory, side by side with men of my own race and blood. It is on behalf of those and the combined forces that are absent as well as those that are present that I desire to tender you our sincere thanks for the great honor you have done us. It has been contended and in former days with some plausibility, that the material from which the Egyptian army is recruited is not capable of being made into good soldiers, but we in the Egyptian army never held that view; we felt confidence in our men, and that confidence has been justified. We tested them at Gemeizeh, Tokar, Toski, Ferkeh, and Abu Hamed, and were not disappointed; and under the circumstances, perhaps the most competent military critics, the Dervishes [laughter] showed no disposition to underrate the fighting power of our men. And when the _rôle_ was changed and from the defensive we were able to take the offensive they soon acquired that respect for the Egyptian soldiers that all good troops engender in the minds of their opponents. [Cheers.]

I had to give the Egyptian army arduous work. They had to construct the railway; they had to build gunboats, and sailing craft through the dangerous cataracts, they had to be on incessant fatigues, moving stores and cutting wood for the steamers. It may be fairly said that had it not been for the work of the Egyptian army the British troops could not have reached Omdurman without far greater suffering and loss of life, and it was not only in these pioneer duties that the Egyptian army distinguished themselves, for when they came in contact with the enemy their discipline, steadiness and courage were prominently displayed. At Ferkeh, and at Abu Hamed, they, with the Sudanese troops, turned the Dervishes out of their positions. At Atbara, they were not behind their British comrades, and at Omdurman, when Macdonald's brigade repulsed the fierce and determined attacks that were brought against them, I am sure that the thought occurred to the mind of every officer in the British brigades, who saw it: "We might have done it as well; we could not have done it better." ["Hear! Hear!"] And how was this obtained? By good training, good discipline and mutual confidence between officers and men. It was on these lines that the army was formed and organized under Sir Evelyn Wood and Sir Francis Grenfell, and I, with the assistance of the finest body of officers that the British army can produce, have merely followed in their footsteps, and developed the principles that they had already laid down.

There is one other point to which I would like to refer before bringing a speech which may have already been too long ["No! No!"] to a conclusion. In this great commercial centre it may be of interest if I allude to the financial side of the campaign. Although the accounts have not yet been absolutely closed, you may take it as very nearly accurate that during the two and a half years' campaign, extra military credits to the amount of two and a half millions have been expended. In this sum I have included the recent grant that has been made for the extension of the railway from Atbara to Khartum, the work on which is already on hand. Well, against this large expenditure we have some assets to show. We have, or shall have, 760 miles of railway, properly equipped with engines, rolling stock, and a track with bridges in good order. I must admit that the railway stations and waiting-rooms are somewhat primitive, but then we do not wait long in the Sudan. [Laughter.] Well, for this running concern I do not think that £3,000 a mile will be considered too high a value. This represents two and a half millions out of the money granted, and for the other quarter of a million, we have 2,000 miles of telegraph lines, six new gunboats, besides barges and sailing craft, and--the Sudan. [Laughter and cheers.]

Of course the railway did not cost me £3,000 a mile to construct, and many other heavy charges for warlike stores, supplies and transport on our long line of communication, including sea transports of troops from England and elsewhere had to be made; but however it was done the result remains the same. We have freed the vast territories of the Sudan from the most cruel tyranny the world has ever known, and we have hoisted the Egyptian and British flags at Khartum, never, I hope, to be hauled down. I have again to thank you, my Lord Mayor, for the great honor done us on this occasion. I have only one regret which, I feel sure, is shared by all present, and which has been given expression to by Lord Rosebery and Lord Salisbury, and that is, that Lord Cromer, who has supported me during the last two and a half years, is not here to support me to-night and to receive in person the thanks to which he is so justly entitled, and which, I am sure, you would willingly have given. [Loud cheers.]

ANDREW LANG

PROBLEM NOVELS

[Speech of Andrew Lang at the annual banquet of the Royal Academy, London, May 6, 1894. This speech on some of the aspects of modern fiction was delivered by Mr. Lang in response to the toast "The Interests of Literature," regularly proposed on these occasions. The President of the Academy, Sir Frederic Leighton, said in introducing Mr. Lang: "Your Royal Highness, My Lords and Gentlemen: Let us drink to the honor of science and of letters. If of the latter it may be affirmed without fear that few things are more often misapprehended than their true relation to art, it is not less certain that no body of men are more than artists responsive to their stimulating force. How closely science, which is knowledge, is interwoven on many sides with art, it is needless here to say. In the name of letters I have to call upon one of the most versatile of their votaries, a man whose nimble intellect plays with luminous ease round many and various subjects; delicate as a poet, acute and picturesque as a critic, a sparkling journalist, no one has pursued with more earnest and more fruitful zeal the graver study of the birth and evolution of natural myths than Mr. Andrew Lang, to whom I turn for response."]

YOUR ROYAL HIGHNESS, MR. PRESIDENT, MY LORDS AND GENTLEMEN:--He to whom it falls or rather on whom falls the task of replying for English literature may well feel ground to dust by the ponderous honor. Who can be the representative of such a Parnassian constituency of divine poets, philosophers, romancers, historians, from Beowulf to the last new novel? The consciousness is crushing. The momentary representative feels himself to be like Mr. Chevy Slyme "the most littery fellow in the world," who is over-borne like the bride of the Lord of Burleigh--

"By the burden of an honor Unto which she was not born."

Naturally he flies to thoughts which whisper of humility. He finds them easily. In the first place literature is but a very insignificant flake on the foam of the wave of the world. As Mr. Pepys reminds us, most people please themselves "with easy delights of the world, eating, drinking, dancing, hunting, fencing," and not with book learning. Easy he calls them! I wish they were:--

"I cannot eat but little meat, My stomach is not good."

Still less can I dance or hunt. Yet to the general public these things come easier than reading; and their good-humored contempt keeps us poor "littery gents" in our proper place and frame of mind. I have lately read somewhere about a man of letters who conceived himself to be the idol of the great and good-natured American people. They sent him the kindest letters, they invited him to lecture, but ah! when his publishers' accounts came in, he found there "To American sales: six and twopence!" [Laughter.] Here is matter for mortification!

Again, one is not so much to speak for English literature as to speak about it; one is not a representative but a reporter; we critics are but the cagots or despised pariah class in the world of letters. If we ever give in to the belief that we might attempt something creative, we, like the insects celebrated by the poet, "have lesser" critics upon our backs to bite us [laughter] and to remind us of our limitations. Our function in the game is like that of the scorers and umpires at Lords or the Oval; men of accurate intellectual habit, and incorruptible integrity from whom not much is to be expected with bat or ball. We are not to do anything "off our own bats." For these reasons I only talk humbly of literature as an interested professional observer. When the philosopher Square spoke of religion, he meant the true religion, and when he said the true religion he indicated the Protestant religion, and by the Protestant religion he meant the religion of the Church of England. In the same way if I venture a few remarks on English literature I mean modern English literature, and by modern English literature I mean modern English novels.

We are indeed quite destitute of poets. As Henry V is said by a French chronicler to have ennobled all his army on the eve of Agincourt, so perhaps it might be well to make all our poets poets-laureate [laughter]--there must be a sip for each of them in the butt of malmsey or sack. But when the general public says "literature" the general public means fiction.

Now, though I have some optimistic remarks to end with, it does appear to myself that the British novel suffers from diverse banes or curses. The first is the spread of elementary education. Too many naturally non-literary people of all ranks are now goaded into acquiring a knowledge of the invention of Cadmus. When nobody could read, except people whose own literary nature impelled them to learn, better books were written, because the public, if relatively few, was absolutely fit. Secondly, these new educated people insist on our national cursed "actuality." They live solely in the distracted moment, whereas true literature lives in the absolute; in the past that perhaps never was present, and that is eternal; "lives in fantasy."

Shakespeare did not write plays about contemporary problems. The Greek dramatists deliberately chose their topics in the tales of Troy and Thebes and Atreus's line. The very Fijians, as Mr. Paisley Thomson informs us, "will tell of gods and giants and canoes greater than mountains and of women fairer than the women of these days, and of doings so strange that the jaws of the listeners fall apart." They do not deal with "problems" about the propriety of cannibalism or the casuistry of polygamy [Laughter.] The Athenians fined for his _modernité_ the author of a play on the fall of Miletus because he reminded them of their misfortunes. But many of our novelists do nothing but remind us of our misfortunes. Novels are becoming tracts on parish councils, free love and other inflammatory topics [laughter], and the reason of this ruin is that the vast and the naturally non-literary majority can now read, and of course can only read about the actual, about the noisy wrangling moment. This is the bane of the actual.

Of course I do not maintain that contemporary life is tabooed against novelists, but if novels of contemporary life are to be literature, are to be permanent, that life must either be treated in the spirit of romance and fantasy as by Balzac and the colossally fantastic Zola; or in the spirit of humor as by Charles de Bernard, Fielding, Thackeray, Dickens. The thrifty plan of giving us sermons, politics, fiction, all in one stodgy sandwich [laughter] produces no permanent literature, produces but temporary "Tracts for the Times."

Fortunately we have among us many novelists--young ones luckily--who are true to the primitive and eternal Fijian canons of fiction. [Laughter.] We have Oriental romance from the author of "Plain Tales from the Hills." We have the humor and tenderness--certainly not Fijian I admit--which produced the masterpiece, "A Window in Thrums." We have the adventurous fancy that gives us "A Gentleman of France," "The Master of Ballantrae," "Micah Clarke," "The Raiders," "The Prisoner of Zenda," and the truly primeval or troglodyte imagination which, as we read of a fight between a knob-nosed Kaffir dwarf and a sacred crocodile, brings us in touch with the first hearers of Heracles's or Beowulf's or Grettir's deeds, "so strange that the jaws of the listeners fall apart." Thus we possess outlets for escape from ourselves and from to-day. We can still dwell now and then in the same air of pleasure as our fathers have breathed since the days of Homer.

Such are the rather intolerant ideas of a bookworm who by no means grudges the pleasure which other readers receive from what does not please him to enthusiasm. And pleasure, not edification, is the end of all art. We are all pleased when we write; the public of one enthusiast every author enjoys, and the literary men who depreciate the joys of their own art or profession may not be consciously uncandid, but they are decidedly perverse. [Laughter and applause.]

WILFRID LAURIER

CANADA

[Speech of Sir Wilfrid Laurier, Premier of Canada, at a banquet given by the Imperial Institute to the Colonial Premiers, London, June 18, 1897, on the occasion of Her Majesty's Diamond Jubilee. The Prince of Wales presided. In introducing Sir Wilfrid Laurier, he said: "Gentlemen, this is not the time nor is it necessary to allude to the loyalty of our great colonies. We have heard what has been spoken here to-night, and we shall hear still more. We know that our colonies look toward the mother country with affection; and in the hour of need and danger I feel convinced that they will always come forward to our assistance. [Cheers.] During the remarkable record reign of Her Majesty the Queen great changes have occurred. When she came to the throne, there were only thirty-two colonies; now there are sixty-five. [Cheers.] As Lord Lansdowne has said we have met here in times of peace. God grant that it may last, but should the occasion come when our national flag is endangered I have but little doubt, gentlemen, that the colonies will unite like one man to maintain what exists and what I hope will remain forever as integral parts of the British Empire. It is now my pleasant duty to propose the toast of the evening: 'Our Guests the Colonial Premiers.' We welcome them as ourselves. We hope that their stay here may not be made in any way irksome to them. I feel sure that no one will be more grateful than the Queen herself to see that these gentlemen have come here on the invitation of the Colonial Office to do honor to a great epoch in our history. This toast we connect with the health of the Hon. Wilfrid Laurier. I now beg you with all the honors to drink this toast--'Our Guests, I may say, our friends, the Colonial Premiers.'"]

YOUR ROYAL HIGHNESS, MY LORDS AND GENTLEMEN:--The toast which your Royal Highness has just proposed in such graceful terms is one which is important at all times and opens a subject which at the present time perhaps more than at any other engrosses and absorbs the minds of all thinking men. ["Hear! Hear!"] During the few days in which my colleagues and myself have had the privilege to be in England, we have had hourly evidences that the Colonies at the present moment occupied no small part in the affections of the people of England. [Cheers.] Sir, Colonies were born to become nations. In my own country, and perhaps also in England, it has been observed that Canada has a population which in some instances exceeds, in many others, rivals the populations of independent nations, and it has been said that perhaps the time might come when Canada might become a nation of itself. My answer is this simply: Canada is a nation. [Cheers.] Canada is free, and freedom is its nationality. Although Canada acknowledges the suzerainty of a Sovereign Power, I am here to say that independence can give us no more rights than we have at present. ["Hear! Hear!"]

Lord Lansdowne has spoken of a day when perhaps our Empire might be in danger. England has proved at all times that she can fight her own battles, but if a day were ever to come when England was in danger, let the bugle sound, let the fires be lit, on the hills and in all parts of the Colonies, though we might not be able to do much, whatever we can do shall be done by the Colonies to help her. [Cheers.] From all parts of this country since I have been here, both in conversation and in letters, I have been asked if the sentiments of the French population of Canada were characterized by absolute loyalty towards the British Empire. I have been reminded that feuds of race are long and hard to die, and that the feuds of France--the land of my ancestors--with England have lasted during many generations. Let me say at once that though it be true that the wars of France and England have their place in history, it was the privilege of the men of our generation to see the banners of France and England entwined together victoriously on the banks of the Alma, on the heights of Inkerman, and on the walls of Sebastopol. [Cheers.]