by Unknown
Perhaps I have set myself an impossible task. Even if we can rake up a fault or two, is it advisable, at a time when the Scots in England are having a lean year? I refer, of course, to our having only one Scotsman among the two Archbishops of England, when we have been so long accustomed to having both. Mind you, I am not defending Archbishops. We have none in my Church, and that settles the matter. There, that is one of our faults — arrogance! In my native place, which is superior to your native place — there is another of our faults! — there was an English church, which we always called the chapel, and as a child I always ran past it, holding my breath. So did the other nice boys. I think I taught them. When I came to London I tried to keep up the practice, but there were too many churches.
(Looking at the Box.) You know, ever since I said the Scottish might have faults, a curious rumbling has been going on inside the Box. It objects. It is up to something. Don’t listen to me. Watch the Box.
I suppose most of you know a certain emporium in Geyanqueer Lane, E.C. At least, those of you who make speeches know it. It provides speeches. Speeches can be got there of every kind according to price, and warranted new-laid. You tell them what you want, and how far you are prepared to go, and usually they can hand the speech across at once. So I went there about this speech. Of course I went to the Scots department. There is also one for the English, but the heads of the departments are Scottish. I hadn’t chosen a good day for it, because, Parliament having met lately, there was a great rush of Cabinet Ministers and Opposition leaders for speeches, and I was rather crowded out. I met Mr. Winston in the passage buttoning up his coat and smiling. It was clear that he had got some good ones.
When my turn came I explained that I wanted a speech for a Scottish banquet, and they immediately pulled out a drawer and handed me a speech. I said, ‘Will this be original and also like all other Scottish speeches?’ They said, ‘Certainly.’ I said, ‘But what I want to dwell upon is the faults of the Scottish people.’ They said, ‘What faults?’ I said, ‘That is what I am up against.’ (The Box liked that.) They sent me forward to the Speciality Department. This department’s line is not speeches, but what are technically termed ‘Brighteners,’ little stories to make the speech bearable, and they recommend one brightener for every five minutes. They pulled out some brighteners for me and began to read me one—’There was once an Englishman and a Welshman and a Scotsman...’ I winced and said, ‘Stop, does the Scotsman win?’ They said, ‘Certainly.’
‘But,’ I said, ‘I want a brightener where the Scotsman loses.’
They gaped, and sent me down to the workshops, where I found about a dozen young men in their shirt sleeves busy turning English stories into Scottish ones, and the word ‘Shakespeare’ into ‘Burns,’ and so on. Giving them a Scotch twist, they called it — which meant always making the Scot come out on top. They showed a specimen about the difference between some English and Scottish soldiers in a convalescent home. It said, ‘The English are sober and intelligent while the Scots dissipate what talents they possess in strong waters.’ That was before it got the twist. When twisted it read, ‘The English are sober and read penny numbers, while the Scots get drunk and read standard works.’ I assure you the emporium was no help to me, though I did buy two or three of their brighteners to — well, just in case. That about the Archbishops was one. Seven and sixpence.
Seriously, we must have our faults, whatever may be the opinion of the Box. We are undoubtedly a sentimental people, and it sometimes plays queer games with that other celebrated sense of ours, the practical. The wild dances these two have had as partners, making everybody dizzy but ourselves! I say this with feeling.
Perhaps a certain self-satisfaction is another of our failings. Just at banquets. Are we inordinately pleased with that rather tawdry thing, getting on in the world? It can be accounted for largely by early hardships. If I remember aright, George II. in the’45 put £30,000 on the head of Prince Charlie, who replied by putting £30 on the head of King George II. I have sometimes wondered whether that was irony, or just the largest sum he could raise. It has been said that the Jacobites came to grief at Derby because as soon as they found a treasure, such as an old saddle, they departed for their mountain fastness, feeling that they had acquired a competency.
Life in the north has become very different since those days, but with a good many of us still the first marvellous sight that awaits us in England is people having a meat dinner every day. Even after we can afford that delirium we go steady. This is canniness, and we admit the soft impeachment; but if the word is changed to ‘nearness’ we do not admit that we are near. There never was a more hospitable people. And again, experience has taught us that one of the best ways of being hospitable is to throw lifebelts into the seas we have scrambled out of. That was the origin of the Scottish Corporation.
A week or two ago I looked on at ‘Pay Day’ in the chapel of the Corporation, when some hundreds of aged and worthy Scots were receiving the monthly help that I have called their lifebelts. Not alms; they take it as their right, and as such it is given, their right and ours. So many lifebelts were a proud sight for any Scotsman. As most of us know, these people were housed in past ages in a ‘Hospital,’ but long ago it was decided that this was too like a poorhouse, and since then the lifebelts go to their own homes. I think the day that resolution was passed was the best in the history of the Corporation.
These people are ourselves. A turn of the wheel, and we might be there and they here. Of course, among the thousands who seek succour yearly of this society there are black sheep as well as white, and our secretary and his assistants know how to deal with them. There must also be a larger number who are neither white nor black; and those, I am afraid, are ourselves also. So many follies, and worse, committed by all of us, that we perhaps have not had to pay for, and they have. God gives the bad birds places in which to build their nests. What a hole we should be in, you and I, if we had got only bare justice from life, and some of them have not got even that. Starved of the necessities of life, of which the chief is love. Ah, gentlemen, the saddest thing in the world is the waste of love. There is so much of it squandered, thrown away because we do not know what to do with it, or forlornly because no one seems to want it. If it could be stored it would be a greater heating power than electricity. The Scots Box has stored a little of it.
Yes, but in conclusion, the Scots Box has also spoilt my speech. What has become of those Scottish faults and flaws I was to parade before you? All gone whistling down the wind? No, but while our attention was elsewhere the Box must have got hold of them, and it has them now locked up inside, so that I cannot parade them. It would not let me give away the old country. This Box (as you will learn when my play is ready) is as Scottish as peat, and so am I, and so are you, and I ask you what is to be done about it except to dree our weird?
And now I sit down at last, thanking you for your forbearance. The toast is the Royal Scottish Corporation, coupled with the name of its oldest member, the Scots Box.
Responding to the toast of his health, proposed later in the evening by Lord Balfour of Burleigh, Sir James Barrie said: —
Lord Balfour of Burleigh has wondered how some of my Scottish phrases translated in other languages. He mentioned ‘The Little Minister.’ When this was going to be produced in America I said to the American manager, ‘What will the Scotch be like?’ He replied, ‘Don’t you worry about the Scotch. You would not know it was Scotch, but the American public will know.’
Now one little matter about the Box. I think you will like to be told that the Box and I have made it up and we are now the best of friends. When the Box heard what sum had been collected it whispered agitatedly — several of us heard it—’ I hope it does not mean scots.’ (A silver coin worth 13 and eighth d.) This is interesting because, I should say, it is the only occasion on which the Box could think anything could mean better than Scots. I have taken a great fancy to this Box. It has been lost twice. I warn you that it may
disappear again.
To the Newspaper Press Fund
AT THEIR ANNUAL DINNER, AT THE MAYFAIR HOTEL, LONDON — April 23, 1929
MY one desire tonight, and I am sure it is yours also, is to be nice to Mr. Baldwin. It is not his fault that he is a Worcestershire man. After all, Shakespeare was very near being a Worcestershire man, but his mother nipped across into Warwickshire to give the boy a chance.
If Shakespeare had come to London nowadays I suppose he would have become a journalist. No signed articles for him. You know I don’t think he would have written plays; he would have turned them into novels, thrillers for which Mr. Baldwin, and perhaps most of us, admits a dark partiality. ‘Hamlet,’ if written in these days, would probably be called ‘The Strange Affair at Elsinore.’ How hard on me to have to make a speech when I know that the Prime Minister would far rather I told him a detective story.
At that moment the telephone bell rang (said Sir James, using his wineglass as a receiver).
Hallo, hallo, hallo. Yes, I’m here. I’m speaking. Who are you? — It’s Scotland Yard — The Yard asks you as a favour, ladies and gentlemen, not to wipe your glasses, as the waiters are plainclothes men taking finger-prints. Who? No i? Oh! (Looking at Mr. Baldwin.) Yes, he is here — He is in great danger. They want to know if he has a gun — They say it is the most astounding case the Yard has ever had to call me in to help them with — A complete change has come over London since we sat down to dinner. — The streets are seething with men in masks and princesses with daggers in their stockings. — They have broken out of every detective story No i has ever read, and all of them are after him. — He will never return to Downing Street alive unless I can bring him. — He and I must leave the hotel first and alone, and, as soon as we two leave, it is to be blown up. — End of Chapter One of ‘The Strange Affair at Chequers.’
When I was interrupted — by Lord Byng — I was about to say that... Some Pressmen have discovered that I am an old timer, and asked me to speak a little about my own journalistic days. For a year only was I a real journalist, that is to say, on the staff, and then on a provincial daily, when I wrote — oh, so many leaders. Curiously, I can remember only one of them, and that the first one, and only the first sentence of that one. It was ‘Is Sir Thomas Somebody, we wonder, a Conservative?’ Who Sir Thomas was I have no idea, and even less can I understand why I wondered whether he was a Conservative. But I find myself wondering still whether I began all my leaders with those words, whether indeed there is any other way of beginning a leader, and I have sometimes thought of looking at leader columns to see.
Of course London was in my eye. I had sent a few articles to the most glorious editor I have ever known, Frederick Greenwood — if it had not been for him and for another later, Robertson Nicoll, I suppose I would have had to go back and become a clerk. I indited to Greenwood a prose sonnet, saying that if he thought I could make a pound a week in London I knew I could live on it, but that, whatever his advice was, I should follow it. He replied promptly, ‘For Heaven’s sake, stay where you are’ — so I came up next week. Synopsis of the next ten chapters — The Scotsman in the Iron Mask. Gradually I made my only noteworthy discovery, that I myself had no mind, but that I could enter for the space of a column into the minds of other people. This continues. For instance, I could not for the life of me tell you what I am thinking just now, but I could tell you what our Chairman was thinking when he shook hands with all this large company, and I could tell you what Mr. Baldwin is thinking now. He is thinking, ‘The coffee is good, and the tobacco is good, and so let the man maunder on.’ In my multitudinous articles, I assumed characters as varied as the envelopes in which I got most of them back. My experiences as a medical man — I can still smell the dispensary I was never in; I have been a member of the House of Commons, and a policeman at its doors — see my article about how I was locked up in the Clock Tower; I was vagrants of all sorts, and as many men of property; I have been the last blacksmith of Gretna Green, and deans and bishops, so that it is a wonder gaiters did not grow on my legs. I could have filled an anonymous ‘Who’s Who,’ if you can conceive such a work. I was even every kind of lady. I suppose you are now looking upon the first woman journalist. There was a fascinating series you should not have missed about my life as a civil engineer in India, where I threw a bridge across the Irrawaddy. I forget how many thousand coolies I employed, but even now I can look over your heads and see the rickshaws being trotted across the bridge I threw....
I noticed tonight, gentlemen, that quite a number of you, when offered succulent dishes, waved them aside. How now, sirs, what has come over you? Have you forgotten certain cookings by a lodging fire — and an adjacent shop? That shop used, as if the scene were Verona, to open its casements to the dewy night, so that its Juliets, the chops, might more alluringly address us. Oh, Romeo, Romeo, wherefore has thou but half a crown in all the world, which as thou turnest it in thy fevered hand begins to feel like a two shilling piece. It is the little sixpence-halfpenny chop that is speaking.
There was also the still more provocative seven-penny. Have I not joined you at that window, gazing at its contents threateningly? There were even some marked ninepence, haughty things that looked disdainfully through the likes of us, as who should say ‘Go to, you dogs, I am not for such as you.’ There are no such snobs as chops. I don’t know who were the swells that bought the ninepennies — perhaps our chairman — some evening when he was giving a party. But the sixpence-halfpennies and the sevenpennies, aha, gentlemen, we have lived, you and I, whatever we may look like tonight!
Those tremulous days — were they as happy as they seem through the smoke of this banqueting hall? If the smoke were to clear away too much, which of us would not be the first to shiver? The street of lodgings that we used to pace, waiting hungrily for the postman with the proofs, which are editors’ loveletters — would we, even for the prize of living our lives differently, writing our works differently, would we, if we could, resume those pacings on flagstones that are perhaps still indented with our shoes? Yes, for that prize I know one of us who would.
‘Time, so complained of,
Who to no one man
Shows partiality
Brings round to all men
Some undimmed hours.’
Undimmed hours! Yes, let us hope so. And yet, could memory so beguile, if in the present that shivering fit were on us? It is on a good many in Fleet Street tonight. That is why we are here. But so comfortably here. Perhaps the gifts we give are just dope to ourselves so that we may not shiver.
I can’t sit down without expressing my surprise that a previous speaker went out of his way, as it seemed to me, to say something derogatory about Worcestershire. Worcestershire is not only one of the fairest of our counties, but I am sure we here agree, in all sincerity, it has given to England, and to us tonight, the happiest thought any county has had for a long time, our No. 1.
The Press, it is true, have sometimes dissembled their love, but you see he is such a very independent gentleman. Nothing gets in the way of the Press so much as that, though there is nothing I venture to say which in their hearts they more admire. The undimmed hours that he has given to me can only — perhaps I am praising him too much. I should like to hedge a little. There are ladies here, and when it comes to the matter of undimmed hours, we must all admit that, in comparison with woman, even the Prime Minister cuts but a sorry figure. He is more truthful than they, but yet — . And even woman, can she stand the test when one recalls the undimmed hours of sixpence-halfpennies and the sevenpennies?
The whole thing is very difficult, we are getting out of our depth. I leave it to you, with gratitude for your forbearance — and I am sure with the warm thanks of everyone in the room to our much loved No. 1.
Freedom of Edinburgh
IN THE USHER HALL, EDINBURGH July 29, 1929
My Lord Provost1 and Town Council and Ladies and Gentlemen — This honour from Edinburgh! Yesterday I happened to see in an
English newspaper an account of what this ceremony would be like. Also, it told what the two new burgesses were like. It is said that no mortal man could conceive two people — two Scots — more unlike each other than Mr. Adamson2 and the other man. Now that is my misfortune. It went on to praise his many qualities, and wound up by saying that he also possessed what we all here know to be the grandest attribute of a Scotsman, namely, that he had all the dourness of his countrymen.
2 Sir Alexander Stevenson.
3Mr. William Adamson, M.P., Secretary of State for Scotland, who was also being presented with the Freedom.
I want you now to watch me, and find out whether I am not dourer than he is. He said various things in what I am sure we all thought was a most beautiful speech; he has said many touching things that voice my feelings to-day as well as his own. Like him, I cannot imagine ever having anything I can value so much as this fine casket and what it means. Well, yes, I can. I would value it even more if I had seen in it a private key to Holyrood. That is the beginning of my dourness. That key and a candle, and all the rest of Edinburgh to go to bed... and what do you say to it, my Lord Provost? He said that some people are never satisfied.
If I could only be as satisfied with myself to-day as I am with my burgess ticket, but, despite the moving words of the Lord Provost and the very generous words of the Secretary for Scotland, I know very well, with the poets, that all my life I have only been trying to catch the wind with a net. I suppose all the howes and hills and waters of Scotland which creep nearer to Edinburgh in the night look upon her as their Royal Mother, and now to be told by her leading citizen that somehow she is pleased with the contents of my net, and just a few withering leaves left behind by the wind! All I can say is that I am at her feet.
