Complete Works of J. M. Barrie

by Unknown

  And then again you know there are 3000 waiting cases, mostly surgical. What are we to do about them? Have they to go on waiting interminably? We cannot bring them into the procession. We could not bear to bring them in any more than the nurses until we have done more for them. We should have to douse our glims as we were passing along their way, and slip by them in silence.

  There are even great figures in the past whom we could not presume to impersonate, because, well, take the case, for instance, of Sir James Young Simpson, how could we ask anyone to be him until we had brought to somewhere near accomplishment his great and glorious dream of a fine maternity hospital for this city? These are the three great objects for which there is now a big attempt being made to raise £500,000. Not so much less than half of that has been already raised, and it remains for the others to raise the other half. Not in Edinburgh alone. This is a national hospital. Can we do it? Do we feel in these hard times that it is impossible?

  There is a story of a man who came to the decision that life itself was impossible in these times. He was a Londoner, and he climbed on to one of the bridges over the Thames and got on to the parapet to fling himself over into the river when a passer-by seized hold of him and dragged him down and said, ‘I see what you mean, and if you must do it you must, but before you do it you must come with me to the Embankment for half an hour and let us argue about it.’ The other agreed. They went to the Embankment and talked the matter over, and then after a good talk they got on to the parapet, both of them, and went into the river together. Nothing is known about these men except that they were not Scots.

  Let us put it in this way about the money. Let us agree it is impossible, and then let us go and do it.

  I said I was not going to give you the history of the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh but, ladies and gentlemen, after saying it was impossible and then doing it — that has been the history of the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh for 200 years. Surely we can follow the example. While I have left myself no time to speak about the Health Exhibition there it is and you can all speak about it for yourselves. It can speak about it for itself. It is one of the many splendid ways in which the attempt to raise this money is being made. Much is being done by many.

  I know what is being done by the shopkeepers, splendid things. All sorts of people are doing it, but if all the others would come in it would be done. Besides this Health Exhibition — you must certainly keep coming here, for every time you look at it and then look inside yourselves you will see that the more you come here the less need will there be for you to go to hospitals later on. So we are going to raise the money which is still needed, and when that is done then we can have our procession. The last glorious culminating scene on that day ought certainly to have for its central figure the old iron charity box of the Infirmary which, I am told, is still in action. We should be shown — I am going to ask him to do this as soon as I sit down — we should be shown the Lord Provost dropping into that box the last of the 500,000 pound notes. By special arrangement with the Prime Minister tomorrow we shall have that this shall be not paper money but a golden sovereign, so that Scotsmen all over the world can listen in and hear the once familiar clink.

  Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for listening to me so patiently. I have now the honour of declaring the Health Exhibition open.

  To the Grant Institute of Geology

  EDINBURGH UNIVERSITY — January 28, 1932

  LADIES and Gentlemen, the University is very fortunate. We are here to acclaim the splendid generosity of Sir Alexander Grant and to hear something about it from the man of all men most worthy.

  As for myself, I am here for several reasons — one that I could not stay away when I heard what doings were going on. The other is a reason which, when I speak of it, the Prime Minister (The Rt. Hon. J. Ramsay MacDonald) may hear of with a little misgiving. I proposé to take this opportunity of presenting the Prime Minister with a little New Year gift of my own. The time-table of a Prime Minister at any time must be heavy, but never so heavy as now. All those aeroplanes make it worse. 6.32, great national gathering in Aberdeen; 6.51, Cabinet meeting in Downing Street. Nothing would give me greater pleasure now than to turn and address the Prime Minister on the political situation. Instead of doing so, I mean to present him with my gift. Before I tell you what it is, may I keep him for just one moment in suspense? I have the right as Chancellor to speak for another five minutes. I mean to give those five minutes to him. He has many glorious possessions nowadays, but it is a long, long time since he has had five minutes of his own. I give him mine, not necessarily to expend it all here. He may do with it as he likes. He may squander it in a moment, or he may give it into someone’s keeping, someone who will look after it properly for a great occasion, do with it as he will. But I trust he will use it wisely. And so having, I hope, heartened and relieved him, I call upon the Prime Minister.

  To the Edinburgh Institute of Journalists

  AT THEIR ANNUAL DINNER IN THE NORTH BRITISH STATION HOTEL, EDINBURGH

  January 30, 1932

  Mr. Robertson,1 ladies and gentlemen, the power of the Press is enormous. When we compare the power of the Press with that of the Pulpit and of Parliaments — I hope you are not making any mistake and thinking this is in my speech. This is just to test the loud speaker. Of course, I should begin in that way, ladies and gentlemen, and I know that it is the proper course when addressing a gathering of journalists, especially when you want to get round them. You know it too. Heavens, how well some of you must know it! Shall we give all that a rest tonight?

  1 Mr. W. S. Robertson, Chairman of the Edinburgh Branch of the Institute of Journalists.

  It was not my own proposal — it has been officially suggested to me that, in your hour of dalliance, you would prefer me to try to go back into some of the by-ways that I once trod long ago and see if I could pick up some little of past journalism, which, indeed, when I came to Edinburgh, was partly on the Dispatch, but also on some other Scottish newspapers of which we may say a word by and by. Of course, I am very glad to get on to that old subject. But we must not just be too daring. There are some things that are talked of at meetings of journalists when this toast is proposed that must be spoken of again, and there is one in particular we cannot pass by. We must say something once more about the vexed question — What is the difference between journalism and literature? It so happens that I cannot perhaps exactly tell you what the difference is, but I can say what sort of difference there is in it, and to do so I have got to go away back to the earliest recollections of my childhood.

  When I could not have been more than four, another little boy came running to me — he was about my age — to tell me that an old man we knew had ended his life rather terribly and that, if I came running quickly with him, I would see the blood. Off we both went at full pelt, and I did see it. Well, in running so promptly to the scene of the tragedy did I not — O, you wives of journalists! — did I not prove that I had the journalistic instinct? On the other hand, did not my friend, in so generously coming and sharing his news with me instead of keeping it to himself, show that he had no journalistic instinct?

  Another memory of past days. The years roll on, and I am now six — this memory is not one of my own. It was told me by a friend who assured me of its accuracy. A fewr of us boys were playing out of doors at a very messy game, but one was not allowed to play in it because he was in mourning, he was in his ‘blacks,’ and I suppose the sad way in which he looked at us in play appealed to my better nature, and I offered to change clothes with him. We went up a passage and did this, and then he disported himself playfully and messily in the game, while I sat on a cold stone and wept sadly for I never knew whom. That, O mothers of poets, was literature.

  Well, a good many years roll on now, and I have just left Edinburgh University. I had not a complete dress suit at the time, but I could look properly arrayed if I backed against the wall. And it was thus I stood while the gown was being put upon me in
an anteroom in preparation for the graduation ceremony. That being over, journalism was now my oyster. All journalists — this includes every one of you — must be very familiar with correspondents who write to ask what is the best way to get on to the Press. In the present state of Governments I should not wonder though Sir Archibald Sinclair may be asking us that question tonight. Of course the correct answer to that is that there is no way of getting on to the Press, and I hope Sir Archibald will remain where he is. Well, I did not know that the Press was barred to humans, and so I got on to it. And the way I got on to it was this — I read an advertisement in the Scotsman applying for a leader writer on a newspaper in the English Midlands — it was really Nottingham, and I must have applied with a good deal of journalistic instinct, because I got a letter back asking me to send some samples of my leaders. Then I realised that I had never written any leaders, and, indeed, so far as I could remember, had never read any. In these difficult circumstances I sent them an old college essay. It was, I remember so well, on ‘The Fool in King Lear.’ And so, ladies and gentlemen, it was Shakespeare who got me on to the Press.

  I was in Nottingham nearly a year, and, after that, I never was on a newspaper again. All I did was freelance work. And even during the time I was there I was sending articles occasionally to London papers, most of them returned, but some used. On one which had been rejected, the editor — Greenwood of the St. James’s Gazette, the man who was my saviour — perhaps, just to soften the blow, wrote, ‘But I did like that Scots thing’ which I had sent him some days before. Well, when I wrote ‘that Scots thing,’ I had thought I had exhausted the subject; but when I found an editor who liked it, I sat down to write Scots things, and I may be conceived for some months afterwards sitting at my loom weaving them. It is strange to me now to think — I was up then in Scotland again — it is strange to me to think that when I left my beloved little native town — a weaving town then — I little thought that I was going to be a weaver all my life. All the others have now given weaving up, and I am the only weaver left.

  Very soon I wrote to Greenwood that I was very anxious to get to London, where I knew I could live on a pound a week, but that I left the issue with him. If he said ‘Come,’ I would go. If he said ‘Stay away,’ I would remain. He hurriedly replied ‘Don’t come,’ and so I went. That burning of one’s boats! That night train up to London! Looking back upon it there is something rather glamorous about it. There may have been some glamour in it even at the time, but there was some danger too — a very few assets except just a penny bottle of ink to fling at the Metropolis. I do not know; perhaps when one goes up there — many of you may have been, many of you younger ones will probably go — I think there is sometimes a kind little god sits up unseen on those little places above which are for light articles only. He may sit up there, and perhaps pipe his eye for such adventurers as you and I. He would help us if he could, and sometimes he does help us.

  Now, I am going to tell you about the most romantic affair in my life. It passes the love of woman. Ladies, if they like, can go out for about the next five minutes. I hope no man will be jumping up to tell us his love-story, because it is all too public for that, and besides, you see, it could not come up to this strange romance which would appeal to no one except, perhaps, journalists. When my train reached St. Paneras in the early morning, I was dragging my wooden box to the left luggage, when my eyes alighted on the most beautiful sight in London. It was the evening bill of the previous night’s St. James’s Gazette, and in large letters on it were these lovely lines, ‘The Rooks Begin to Build,’ and that was the title of an article which I had sent to the St. James’s a few days before, and so I knew that before I had been more than one minute in London I had made two guineas. I do not know what you would have done in these circumstances, but I sat down on my box impeding all the other travellers, and for a long time I gazed at that placard. Ladies and gentlemen, even now I will not listen to one word against rooks.

  Well, we won’t go on with all my affairs, but during the next two or three years I commenced a number of things. I was also writing for the Dispatch, but it was not the only paper I was writing for in Edinburgh. There was a paper in Edinburgh called the Scotsman, and I wrote a good deal in the Scotsman for a long period, and I question whether even to-day’s editor, who, I am glad to know, is here tonight, knows anything about my contributions. I believe there was a secret. I don’t know why. Cooper was editor at the time, and I believe it was known only to him and myself. Why we kept it secret — he did it, not I — I suppose nobody knows; it always remained a secret. If you like to go delving in the Scotsman office, of course, you would not find any names. Besides that, there was Henley’s paper, which I wrote a good deal in. Henley, who came up with such a brilliant list of contributors, so brilliant that it would have killed any journal. And there was, of course, the Dispatch, with Riach, most of all. Riach was one of the greatest friends of my life. I never come to Edinburgh even now without seeing him more clearly than any one else. There is no one who remembers those days of our little party except, I think, one man, a man who, as we all know, is an honour to Scotland, and Scottish journalism in particular, my friend John Geddie.

  Mr. M’Michael1 has come back, I understand, and is here tonight. I am glad to hear he came back; but, of course, he is now a Londoner. Mr. M’Michael, like a cautious Scot, went to London, taking his rooks with him, but there must be many young journalists contemplating that rather dangerous journey, and I hope they will find their rooks waiting them at a London station. I would give them a rook apiece if I could. I believe in the end, however they may rise, they may be this or that, but ultimately I am pretty sure they will think the best time of all was when they had some such experience as that of mine in the days when they were young.

  1 A member of the SCOTSMAN staff.

  Even the rooks — of course, they are thinking mostly about their nests, but if you could get hold of a candid old rook, which is perhaps questionable, but if you could, I dare say he would admit to you that the best fun of all was in his successful manipulation of the first twig.

  And now I have really finished, and feel that perhaps I should not have mentioned the old rook, in case you think I was referring to myself. I want you to forget this evening as it is, to forget all my dullness and wrinkles and all the rest of it, and think of me instead, not as an old rook, but as a gay young bird sitting on that box at the station hailing all those who come up from Edinburgh.

  Here, ladies and gentlemen, is to Journalism — she was a very good friend to me, she was — and here is to the anonymity of the Press, the young journalist’s best friend. Any poor student would be inviting starvation if he went to London and had to be known, and cut a figure in certain papers. Let him never forget that most of the big things that have been done by the Press have been anonymous. That little god sitting up in the train, though he is there piping his eye for us — I cannot tell you his name, because he is anonymous.

  So, ladies and gentlemen, I now thank you very sincerely for the kind way in which you have listened to me. I now propose the toast — a toast I ought not to propose, seeing I have been so connected with Edinburgh journalism. It seems to me I have qualified to be a member of this branch of the Institute which I am now proposing, the Institute of Journalists.

  Lord Grey’s 70th Birthday

  AT A LUNCHEON PARTY GIVEN BY SIR JAMES BARRIE IN HIS FLAT IN ROBERT STREET, ADELPHI — May 4, 1932

  Sir James’s guests, in addition to Lord Grey of Falloden, were: —

  The Prime Minister, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Mr. Stanley Baldwin, the American Ambassador, the French Ambassador, Sir Simon, Mr. W. S. Morrison, Mr. Neville Chamberlain, Sir Herbert Samuel, Sir Reginald Poole, Mr. J. W. Mackail, Mr. J. R. Clynes, Mr. Runciman, Sir Austen Chamberlain, Mr. T. L. Gilmour, Lord Snowden, Mr. A Cecil, Colonel Arthur Murray, Mr. H. A7. Gladstone, the Warden of All Souls, the Marquess of Salisbury, Sir Roger Keyes, the Marquess of Londonderry, Mr. John Buchan,
Mr. Winston Churchill, Mr. Birrell, Mr. Geoffrey Dawson, Mr. Spender, Lord Macmillan, Colonel Freyberg, Mr. Evan Charteris, Sir Douglas Shields, Sir Donald Maclean.

  My dear Lord Grey — our dear Lord Grey — I once thought of writing at the foot of the invitations to this Birthday Party the words ‘No candles.’ My canary said, ‘If you do that you will spoil the whole thing.’ And yet I think the candles are here; this company, Lord Grey, are your Birthday Candles.

  The canary did not think that would do either. I ought to explain that my canary, like myself, is an Angus bird; and indeed we both wish this Party could have been held up there in our native Kirriemuir. In London after nightfall he and I are alone in this eyrie, and I sometimes have a sudden craving for food. I cook it myself, and if it smells of bacon he wakes up, thinking morning has arrived, and comes out of his cage and we have our meal together, and naturally we fall into talk. The last time this happened he said to me, ‘Who is this Grey that is having a Birthday?’ and I said, ‘The famous statesman, you know,’ and he said indifferently, ‘No, I don’t know.’ Presently he cried out, ‘You don’t mean Our Grey?’