Mrs. Alec-Tweedie

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CHAPTER I
THE GOLDEN AGE

UNLESS a book starts with some interest it finds no readers. The first page is often the key to the whole.

But how is one to be interesting about such commonplace events as being born and vaccinated, cutting one’s first tooth or having measles and whooping-cough? They are all so uneventful, and while important to the little “ego” are so dull to the public. Therefore I refuse to be either “born” or even cut a wisdom tooth within these pages anent a busy woman’s life, except to say that on the night of my birth my father and his friend, the famous surgeon John Erichsen (later Sir John), walked home from a meeting of the Royal Society together, and on reaching the old house in Harley Street a servant greeted them with the announcement that my mother was very ill.

Up the stairs my father hurried, while his colleague went off for the nurse. I was too small to be dressed, so my early days were spent rolled up in cotton wool—which fact did not deter my further development, as at fourteen years of age I stood five feet eight inches high. On my second day of existence I was introduced in my cradle to him who for nearly thirty years was as a second father to me—him whom I always called “dear Uncle John.”

What a horribly egotistical thing it is to write about one’s self!

Until now I have generally managed to keep I out of books by using that delightful editorial WE, but somehow this volume cannot be written as WE, and the hunting of the snark never afforded more trouble than the hunting out of I. There it is and there it remains. It refuses to be removed. It glares upon the pages, and spurns all attempts to be suppressed.

Let me humbly apologise, once and for all, for

“I.”

Some people are born smart, just as others are born good—some are born stupid—and some are born haunted by the first personal pronoun. People believe they are relating the honest truth when they speak ill of themselves, and yet it is so pleasant to relate appreciative little stories of “ego.”

Why mention my early youth in a book only meant to treat of working years?—it may be asked. Well, for this friends are to blame. Folk have constantly asked, “What first made you write? Was it an inherited gift?”

Did my second baptismal name predestine my career? On this subject my father wrote in a diary:

“The next favours I received from Fortune were domestic ones—a boy and a girl. The name of Ethel was given the little maid to please her mother, that of Brilliana to please me. Brilliana, I called her, out of respect for the only woman of the name of Harley who added by her writings to the celebrity of the race. The Letters of the Lady Brilliana Harley, 1625-43, wife of Sir Robert Harley, of Brampton Bryan, Knight of the Bath, were reprinted by the Camden Society, with introductions and notes by Thomas Taylor Lewis, M.A., Vicar of Bridstow, Herefordshire.2

“Of men authors we have had abundance: of women only one. No wonder, then, I wished our daughter to perpetuate her name.”

Thus it seems to have been my father’s wish to dedicate me to the memory of the well-known Dame Brilliana who shone in both social and literary circles in the seventeenth century. Did he, perhaps, remember that the old Romans, at the birth of a child, used to choose for it the name of some ancestor, whose career they wished to be its example, in the belief that the deceased would protect and influence the infant to follow in the same path?

This second name of mine is queer enough, and seems to have suggested penmanship, followed by a number of strange nicknames, chosen promiscuously by my friends, but all tending in two directions:

“Madame la Duchesse.”

“Liege Lady.”

“She who would be obeyed.”

“Grande Dame.”

“Esmeralda.”

“Carmen.”

“Vixen.”

Do these denote character?—for they apparently run from the sublime to the ridiculous.

My parents seem to have been less careful about choosing me a nurse of a literary turn, however otherwise excellent the woman was, for the following quaint letter to my mother from my old attendant, who was for nearly forty years in the family, is not exactly a model of epistolary art:

Apart from the undoubted virtues of my illiterate old nurse, my education proceeded on the usual infantile lines. My father taught us children a great deal about natural history, which we loved, as most children do, and many odds and ends of heterogeneous information picked up from him in those early days proved a mine of “copy” in years to come.

A sage once said the child should choose its own parents. He might have gone farther and said that the child should choose its own school, because if school-fellows have often had as much influence as mine did on me, then school companions are a matter of importance. Youth is the time of selfishness and irresponsibility. How cruel we are through thoughtlessness! How we stab and wound by quick, unmeditated words! The journey onwards is a stony one, but we all have to pass along if we are to attain either worldly success or, greatest of all blessings, mastery of self. I often wonder why people are so horrid at home. We know it, we deprecate it, but we don’t seem to have the pluck or the courage to change it. We suffer the loneliness of soul we all endure at times, even more than we need, because of our own foolish pride and want of sympathy with our surroundings. We could be so much nicer and more considerate if we really tried. We mean to be delightful, of course; but we signally fail.

In those far-away kindergarten days in Harley Street there were a little boy and three grown-up gentlemen with whom I made friends. The little boy grew up and went to Mexico, where I met him after a lapse of twenty-five years, a merchant in a good position. He was able to do a great deal for me during my stay there, and proved as a brother in occasions of difficulty.

Sir Felix Semon became a great physician, and Dr. von MÜhlberg a German Ambassador. The more elderly gentleman was studying at the British Museum, and only lodged at the house. Dr. von Rottenburg was also a German, and he used to pat my head every morning on the stairs and talk to me about my playthings, calling me “leetle mees.” When I grew up this famous philosopher, diplomat, and writer never forgot the little black-eyed girl going to school with her doll, and was one of my dearest and best friends in Germany.

On his return to Berlin he published, in 1878, a book called Begriff des Staates. It was a learned volume and created much sensation in Germany. One day he was sitting in the Foreign Office when he received an invitation to dine with the great Bismarck. He was amazed, but naturally accepted. At the dinner were only two other men, the Imperial Chancellor and his son Herbert. The former talked to von Rottenburg about his book in most flattering terms. On his return home that night his wife asked him how he had got on.

“Not particularly well,” he replied. “I was so awe-stricken by the wondrous capacity, the bulk of both body and mind of Bismarck, that I seemed paralysed of speech and said practically nothing.

“Why were you invited?” enquired his spouse.

“I haven’t the slightest idea,” was his reply. “Anyway, I am afraid I made but a poor impression.”

A week later von Rottenburg was again sitting in his room when Count Wilhelm Bismarck was announced.

“My father wishes to see you to-morrow,” he said.

“Indeed, and may I ask what for?”

“That is his business, not mine. Be pleased to call at such an hour.”

Perplexed as to the repetition of the invitation the young diplomat called as desired. Bismarck was sitting at his table writing. The man who held the destiny of Europe in his hands looked up and nodded.

“Sit down,” he said, and went on signing letters.

When he had finished blotting the last bold signature, turning to von Rottenburg, he said:

“Do you wonder why I sent for you?”

“To tell the truth, I do.”

“I wish to make you Chief of the Chancellery.”

Von Rottenburg was naturally amazed, but said nothing.

“Do you understand what I say?” repeated Bismarck. “I wish to make you Chief of the Chancellery.”

“Well—er—but——”

“There is no well or but about it.”

“But, you see, I am rather ambitious.”

“Are you? I am glad to hear it.”

“And such being the case, perhaps——”

“Man!” thundered Bismarck from his seat as he thumped the table; “Do you understand the importance of what I am offering you?”

“I quite realise the immense honour, but at the same time I am interested in my present work, and am doing so well at the Foreign Office that I should be sorry to relinquish——”

“Are you married?” interrupted the Chancellor.

“Yes, to an English lady.”

“I congratulate you. I believe English women are the best wives and companions in the world.”

Here let it be remarked that Bismarck was a great English scholar. He spoke the language fluently, he read Tom Jones from cover to cover four times, and was never without his Shakespeare in the original, whole pages from which he could quote.

“Go home,” said the Prince; “tell your wife what I have offered you and ask her advice. But mind, if you come to me you will have to be my slave. Where I go you must go, and it is only fair that you should ask her permission. Women should be more considered than they are. Go home, I tell you, and ask your wife.”

Still bewildered, flattered but faltering, von Rottenburg went home. He told his wife of his extraordinary interview with the Chancellor, and she at once exclaimed:

“Of course, you must accept.”

“Must I?”

“Why, of course you must. A chance comes once to every man; let him accept it gladly when it does come.”

Accordingly he accepted the post of Chief of the Chancellery, and began his ten years’ service directly under the Iron Chancellor.

This post is by appointment for three years, and, as a rule, men are not reappointed, but von Rottenburg was enjoying his fourth term when Bismarck went out of office. During all those ten years von Rottenburg rarely left the side of his Chief—the greatest man of his day.

Speaking of the storm and stress of those years, he once said:

“No one can realise the strain of that time. Bismarck was the most remarkable man in the world. His physical health was as wonderful as his mental capacity. He had so much to do, so much to bear, so much to arrange, that I naturally saved him in every way I could, therefore nearly everything of importance went through me. That alone was a great responsibility. I settled all I could, arranged what interviews I thought necessary, and played buffer between him and the great world outside. But I often felt he reposed too much confidence in me.”

Bismarck objected to German being written or printed in Latin characters, and never read a book not printed in German letters. Von Rottenburg told me Bismarck had the greatest mathematical head he ever knew and a colossal brain. A man of huge bulk, vast appetite, and unending thirst, he was once at a supper-party in Berlin where six hundred oysters were ordered for ten people. He ate the greater share.

“Thank Heaven!” once exclaimed von Rottenburg; “during all those ten years of constant attendance and companionship with Bismarck we hardly ever had a disagreeable word, and instead of taking power from me, year by year he placed more upon my shoulders.”

“Practically nothing went to the Chancellor that did not pass through my hands. I shiver to think of the times I was disturbed at night with messages of importance, telegrams, special messengers, or letters marked Private; all these things seemed to have a particularly unhappy knack of arriving during the hours one should have had repose. It was very seldom, however, that I went to Bismarck, as I never disturbed him at night unless on a matter of urgent business, feeling that his sleep was as important to him as his health was to the German nation.”

“No, I don’t think I am tidy,” von Rottenburg once exclaimed. “I had to be tidy for so many years that I fear I am a little lax nowadays, although I can always find the papers I want myself, and generally know where I have put everything. During those years with Bismarck I had to be so careful, so exact and methodical. One of his little hobbies was that when he was staying in an hotel, or anywhere away from home, he, or I, would carefully search the waste-paper baskets to see no scrap of paper that could in any way be made into political capital was left therein.

“Bismarck was most particular about this. He destroyed everything that might, he thought, make mischief, or would do harm of any kind.”

Did von Rottenburg destroy his wondrous diaries which I saw a few weeks before he died? Of them I may have more to say in the future.

Another of my very earliest recollections is of Madame Antoinette Sterling. She came from America to sing in England, and often stayed at the residence of my grandfather, James Muspratt, of Seaforth Hall, near Liverpool. In this house in earlier years James Sheridan Knowles wrote some of his plays, and in it also Baron Justus von Liebig—who invented his famous soup to save my mother’s life—Charlotte Cushman (the American tragedienne), Charles Dickens, and Samuel Lover had been frequent and ever-welcome guests.

At the time that Antoinette Sterling arrived in this country sundry cousins, who were all quite little children, sat, open-mouthed and entranced, before the fire in that beautifully panelled, well-filled library at Seaforth Hall, while she squatted on the floor amongst us and sang, “There was an old Nigger and his name was Uncle Ned,” or “Baby Bye, here’s a fly.” How we loved it! Again and again we wildly demanded another song, clapping our hands, and again and again that good, kind soul sang to her juvenile admirers—maybe her first English audience.

Seaforth Hall was built by my grandfather about 1830, at which time four miles of beach divided him from Liverpool. The docks of that city are eleven miles long to-day, and the Gladstone Dock is now in the field in which we children used to ride and play. It was named “Gladstone Dock” because that great statesman was born at a house near by. The next dock will probably be on the site of my grandfather’s dining-room, and may berth the largest ship in the world, that monster now being built by Lord Aberconway (John Brown and Co.).

During his early years my father went a great deal into Society, being presumably considered a clever, rising young physician who had seen a good deal of the world, and was an excellent linguist: so by the time he moved to the house now numbered “25, Harley Street,” in 1860—a step followed later by his marriage with Emma, daughter of the above-named James Muspratt—he was well established in the social world.

I often heard him speak of the delightful gatherings he attended and so much enjoyed in those early days before I had opened my eyes on this wonderful world, when women like Charlotte Cushman, Catherine Hayes, Helen Faucit, Mrs. Charles Kean, Mrs. Kemble, and Mrs. Sterling added grace and charm to the company: when the scientific giants were Faraday, Tyndall, Sir David Brewster, Graham, Sir Henry Holland, and William Fergusson: and in the literary world he was brought into contact with Thackeray, Dickens, George Eliot, Matthew Arnold, Samuel Lover, Theodore Hook, and Mark Lemon.

The people at whose houses he visited became his constant guests; so later his children grew up in a delightful atmosphere, in a home of culture, where art, science, and literature were amply represented.

Meetings like these, even in earliest childhood, with bright souls, persons of culture, intellect, polished manners, and brilliant gifts, all leave strong impressions on a plastic youthful mind, and the memory is undoubtedly an influence through life.

But the commanding figure in Harley Street in my early years was not to be found among the doctors: it was Mr. Gladstone, while Mrs. Gladstone’s individuality was hardly second to that of her husband.

When Mr. Gladstone first came to live there the mob broke his windows, and shouted and yelled outside his house because of his hostility to Disraeli’s policy in the Russo-Turkish War (1876-8). The Jingo fever was at its height. There was tremendous excitement, and ultimately the street had to be cleared by mounted police. To the surprise of everyone, in the full tide of the tumult, the Gladstones’ front door opened, and out walked the old couple, arm-in-arm, and passed right into the midst of the very people who had been hurling stones through their windows. With the grand manner of an old courtier the statesman took off his hat, made a profound bow to the populace, and before the mob had recovered from its astonishment, he had walked away down the street with his wife.

It was a plucky act, and one which so surprised the boisterous assembly that they utterly subsided, and soon dispersed quietly.

Mr. Gladstone’s habit every morning was to leave home about half-past nine or ten o’clock and walk down to his work. My sister Olga (wife of Dr. Francis Goodbody), then a very little girl, used to go out with her nurse about the same time to Regent’s Park for her airing in a “pram.” Some twenty or thirty houses divided my father’s from Mr. Gladstone’s, and therefore, as the elderly statesman and the little girl both left home about the same time, they often met.

“Well, how is dolly this morning?” he would say, and then he would chaff the child on not having washed dolly’s face, or tell her that the prized treasure wanted a new bonnet. In fact, he never passed her without stopping to pat her on the head, and make some little joke such as children love. She became very fond of her acquaintance and came home quite disappointed if she had not seen “my friend Mr. Gladstone,” as she always called him.

Years afterwards, when Mr. Gladstone had ceased all association with Harley Street, and was Prime Minister, I fell a victim to the desire to possess his autograph. Few people now realise how difficult a thing it was to secure, for the public imagined that the statesman showered post cards, then a somewhat new invention, on his correspondents by hundreds and thousands. I asked his friend Sir Thomas Bond what was best to do. His advice was shrewdness itself. Mr. Gladstone, he assured me, had great objections to giving his autograph. He could not himself ask him point-blank for his signature. “But if,” said he, “you will send one of your books as a presentation copy to him, with a little note on the title page, ‘To Mr. Gladstone, from the Author,’ I will take it across and ask him to write you an acknowledgment.”

I did so, and Mr. Gladstone wrote me a charming little letter in his own hand:

Not long before his death I had another letter from him, short, as all his communications were, but always long enough to include the gracefully drawn compliment which, one fears, has died out of the art of letter-writing as now practised:

The mention of Mr. Gladstone in connection with Harley Street brings to mind his famous physician, Sir Andrew Clarke, who was a great personal friend of my father.

At one time Sir Andrew Clarke had the largest practice in London, besides holding the proud position of President of the Royal College of Physicians. Thanks chiefly to a charming personality, he was one of the most successful and most beloved of all the London medical men, and to him is doubtless due the widespread discovery that a careful diet is a better means to health than promiscuous floods of medicine.

These were some of the friendships and associations that surrounded my childhood: such was the soil that nourished my infant roots in kindliness and encouraged my green idea-buds to put forth into leaf.