Beyond the Thirty-Nine Steps Page 9

  His voracious early reading of established authors, his broad education, as well as his introduction to unpublished manuscripts – good, bad and indifferent – by contemporary authors, had taught him to discern not just what might sell but also what might be of lasting quality, and this made him an increasingly accomplished critic. He followed Sir Walter Scott’s example of being a kindly and courteous one as well. Many an author, known and unknown, had their day cheered by a sympathetic review, where praise was always judicious and criticism never captious or self-regarding.

  He very soon began to spend part of each week in the offices at 1 Wellington Street in Covent Garden, writing his articles there as well as helping with much of the nitty-gritty of putting a weekly magazine together. He did not tell his legal seniors that he was doing this – something made easy by the fact that articles in The Spectator were anonymous. This was the common practice at the time, although it also had the advantage of disguising how few people actually wrote for the paper. He even deputised for St Loe Strachey for short periods at various times in 1900 and 1901, for example when the latter attended Queen Victoria’s funeral.

  The offices in Wellington Street were situated in a tall, narrow building. As JB wrote, at the time of the centenary of The Spectator’s foundation: ‘On the first floor St Loe Strachey sat, surrounded by new books, writing articles on foolscap paper in his large, illegible hand, breaking off to stride about the floor and think aloud for the benefit of the visitor, overflowing with gossip and quotations, so full of notions that it seemed as if no weekly journal could contain one half of them.’6

  On the floor above worked Strachey’s predecessor as editor and proprietor, the venerable and once great leader writer, Meredith Townsend, by then in his early seventies, who had bought The Spectator in 1861 and edited it for more than thirty years, and to whom Strachey obviously felt a great loyalty:

  On the next floor … Charles Graves [the deputy editor and nephew of Sir Edward Grey, the Foreign Secretary] had his dwelling and I my modest chair. It was our business to see to the base mechanical details of editing, to correct proofs, and above all, to keep the great men below us straight. For Townsend had sometimes a noble disregard of current news, and Strachey rarely got a classical quotation quite right. Charles Graves and I were supposed to represent the critical and unsympathetic outer world … It was a merry place, as I remember it … Among the little group of us there was complete confidence and liking. I know I benefited enormously. The kindly admonitions of Charles Graves suppled the joints of my style, which was rapidly becoming a dreadful compost of legal and philosophical jargon; and, under Strachey’s influence, one who at Oxford had been a stern and unbending Tory was in danger of becoming something very like a Whig.7

  What JB did not say about Graves was that he had a kind of genius for cultured comic verse, which had its full flowering when he wrote for Punch before and during the First World War. We are fortunate to have a poetic portrait of JB written by Graves, recalling his time at The Spectator, which appeared in a collection of his poems published in 1912.8 It merits reproducing in part, since it contains some very perceptive insights:

  TO JOHN BUCHAN

  … Ev’ry Tuesday morn, careering

  Up the stairs with flying feet,

  You would burst upon us, cheering

  Wellington’s funereal street,

  Fresh as paint, though you’d been ‘railing’

  Up from Scotland all the night,

  Or had just returned from scaling

  Some appalling Dolomite.

  Did we want a sprightly middle

  On the humour of the Kirk?

  Or a reading of the riddle

  Set in Bergson’s* latest work?

  Did we want to show that Paley’s**

  Views were based on iravra pel?*

  Or to prove that capercaillies

  Nested in the Isle of Skye?…

  Pundit, publicist and jurist;

  Statistician and divine;

  Mystic, mountaineer and purist

  In the high financial line;

  Prince of journalistic sprinters –

  Swiftest that I ever knew –

  Never did you keep the printers

  Longer than an hour or two.

  Then, too, when the final stages

  Of our weekly task drew nigh,

  You would come and pass the pages,

  With a magisterial eye:

  Seldom pausing, save to smoke a

  Cigarette at half-past one,

  When you quaffed a cup of Mocha

  And devoured a penny bun…

  In this verse, Graves managed to nail a number of facets of JB’s personality, in particular his modesty, fizzing vitality, impressive intellect and mild ascetiscm, as well as the speed at which he worked and the variety of his occupations and preoccupations.

  Added to all this excitement, JB was in some demand socially. He had already been marked out as an interesting and coming man before he left Oxford, since many of the university’s alumni were in the higher reaches of politics and society. He had not been in London a fortnight before he was dining with Lady Arthur Russell** in South Audley Street, in company that included the Home Secretary, the party then going on to see She Stoops to Conquer at the Haymarket Theatre. On another occasion, he told his sister: ‘We went to the Hippodrome pantomime. I wish that Mhor [his little brother Alastair’s nickname, a Gaelic word meaning ‘the Great One’] could have seen it. It is really a fine spectacle and the performing seals are immense!’99

  The elder statesmen R. B. Haldane and Arthur Balfour, as well as senior judges such as Lord Halsbury, began to take an interest in the young man and he dined almost every week with Canon Ainger, the humane, godly and witty Master of the Temple Church.* ‘I frankly enjoyed dining out. For a minnow like myself there was the chance of meeting new and agreeable minnows, and the pleasure of gazing with awe up the table where at the hostess’s side was some veritable triton.’10 When no invitation was in the offing, he would go to one of his clubs, the Devonshire, the Cocoa Tree (mentioned by his beloved Thackeray) or the Piccadilly, all in St James’, where he could depend on meeting Oxford friends or being introduced to some ‘figure’ in politics or business. He began to spend weekends at houses in the country, such as the one belonging to the Gilbert Murrays, at Churt in Surrey.

  During his lifetime, and indeed afterwards, JB was sometimes accused of being ‘on the make’ or, even more damning, ‘a Scotsman on the make’. While he lived, this charge almost certainly came from men either in receipt or expectation of inherited wealth, who had little sympathy or understanding for those not born with their advantages and without the desire or facility to dissemble. Later, the accusation came from those who saw how far he had managed to go, and suspected that it could only have been possible through sheer ambition, which excluded everything else, in particular the wants of family and friends.

  By the time that he arrived at Oxford, JB knew that he and his brothers would have to support their parents, certainly in old age but possibly long before that, as well as their unmarried sister, Anna, who was not expected to earn money for herself. Only dutiful sons could prevent an impecunious old age for a church minister who, when working, had been entirely dependent on the generosity of his congregation. If JB had been truly ‘on the make’ he would have gone into the City, like his flatmate, Richard Denman,** where he might well earn a fortune, rather than embracing the much more precarious professions of the Bar and quality journalism. JB’s obvious ambition may not have been very attractive to rich men who could afford to be more languid, but it is entirely understandable. And, as we shall see, there were times when he worked against his own financial self-interest; for example, by going into public service rather than business in South Africa, as well as writing memorial volumes after the First World War, instead of thrillers, which his wartime successes suggested would be a great deal more profitable. Indeed, JB’s well-wishers must sometimes ha
ve despaired at how much time he was always willing to give to unremunerative or unremunerated projects.

  After a few months as planned, JB left Rowcliffes’ to become a pupil in a set of Chambers in Harcourt Buildings, his ‘pupil master’ being John Andrew Hamilton, later Lord Sumner, a Lord Justice of Appeal. ‘That was a privilege for which I shall always be grateful, for it gave me the friendship of a great lawyer, who, in the evenings when the Courts had risen, would discourse cynically and most brilliantly on men and affairs.’11 What Hamilton would also have told him, however, from bitter early experience, was that barristers lived a rackety life; even the really good ones were often ‘briefless’, and therefore impecunious, for long periods.12

  He studied hard to make himself a good lawyer, reading the law reports assiduously, but also the lives of lawyers, which most people would find very dull. He analysed every one of Lord Mansfield’s judicial decisions, and decided to write his Life in three volumes, a project he began but never finished.* He thought the position of a judge the most honourable, dignified and independent of all, and one to which he aspired in the fullness of time. Progressive traditionalist that he was, he loved the rituals of the Inns of Court – ‘the sense that here was the hoar-ancient intimately linked to modern uses’.13 He also thought that the very exactitude of the law was an important corrective for people like him who were principally educated in the humanities and, he might have added, temperamentally inclined to juggle a number of balls in the air at one time.

  Despite having protested vehemently that he never would do such a thing, he did in fact sit once more for an All Souls Fellowship that autumn. Again he failed, but this time the failure seems to have had much less effect on him, since he had moved on to other things. He wrote to his brother, Willie, now at Brasenose, ‘I felt annoyed at the time but have forgotten it now. It seems to have been a very close thing, and I had heaps of letters from different All Souls fellows saying how disappointed they were.’14 He had come to realise that leaving Oxford had been, in many ways, a lucky escape. In December he felt sufficiently financially secure to leave dreary Brick Court for much nicer quarters at 3 Temple Gardens, which he shared with Richard Denman, Harold Baker and Cuthbert Medd, and from where he could see the river and hear the calls of wild birds as they flew upstream in winter.

  So busy was he pursuing his own study of the law, in particular his biography of Lord Mansfield, that he failed to prepare properly for his Bar Finals exams and ploughed them in January 1901. At the same time, Hamilton ‘took Silk’ (was appointed a King’s Counsel), so JB moved on to Sidney Rowlatt’s chambers. Rowlatt was junior counsel to the Inland Revenue, so JB had the chance to learn more than the rudiments of tax law and legal practice: ‘From Rowlatt I learned many lessons, chief of which was that scholarship was as valuable in law as in other things … Moreover, he stripped the subject of pedantry and dullness; he had the same boyish zest in tracking out a legal conundrum as in sailing his little yacht in the gusty Channel.’15 JB also did work for the Attorney-General, Robert Finlay, to whom Rowlatt recommended him.

  He wrote copiously for both The Spectator and Blackwood’s Magazine, and the family felt the benefit. That spring he sent Anna a fur coat (‘I thought I might as well get a good one, for it will wear better…’) and a book of theological essays to his father, although he rather doubted – unfairly – that his father would read them, ‘such is his invincible distaste for theology…’16

  At Whitsun 1901 he was invited by Auberon Herbert’s uncle, Lord Cowper, to stay at Panshanger in Hertfordshire. Cowper was known for hosting house parties of thirty guests or more, so this was an important step in JB’s progress into both political and aristocratic circles, since these intersected. The guest list included Lady Curzon, Arthur Balfour and several members of the Cecil family. This may have been when he first met Lord Robert Cecil, who became a lifelong friend and political ally.

  When he was not invited away for a weekend, he would travel into Hertfordshire for a day’s fishing on the dry fly, accompanied by Andrew Lang, the prolific and talented writer of fiction, poetry and literary criticism, best known now for his books of fairy tales and folklore. He was an old friend of JB’s from the Borders, and the man to whom Musa Piscatrix was dedicated. Lang would tease him about losing his Scottish ways, although coming from Lang, who lived in London for half his life, that was a bit rich.

  In June, having passed his Bar Finals at last, he was ‘called to the Bar’, and joined the Northern Circuit. Then, as now, it was possible to have tenancy in Chambers in London but with your principal work coming from elsewhere. He was kept busy with work for Rowlatt – a Parliamentary Bill – and had to dash between the offices of The Spectator, the House of Commons and Chambers, since he was deputising for Strachey again, but also helping to prepare the case for the Crown in the infamous Earl Russell appeal before the House of Lords. (Lord Russell had been convicted of bigamy at the Old Bailey, and the conviction was upheld by the House of Lords. He went to prison for three months.)

  In early July, Richard Denman left the bachelor lodgings in Temple Gardens and those left – JB, Harold Baker and Cuthbert Medd – acquired a comically lugubrious manservant called Mole: ‘ex-artillery man, a profoundly meditative and serious person, very respectable, a little slow’, who made very good porridge, but had a habit of boiling eggs ‘to the consistency of a Mauser bullet. He is very good at folding clothes and all kinds of valet work.’17 (Paddock, in The Thirty-Nine Steps, bears a close resemblance to Mole.) With so much ‘gaiety’, JB required a Jeeves to keep his dress clothes pressed, and enough shirts folded for his ‘Saturday-to-Monday’s in the country. Because it was the Season, he was going out in the evening a great deal, however much he protested that he hated dancing.

  He told his sister in early June: ‘I dined with Lady Arthur on Wednesday – Paul Phipps, Miss Florence Wolseley (an heiress, begorrah!),* the Lindleys and Lady Mary Morrison. Then we went to Lady Sligo’s dance, which was very crowded. The Duchess of Northumberland had the most amazing diamonds I have ever seen. Then I went on to Lady Tweedmouth’s which was horribly packed. I danced once with Lady Grizel Cochrane, and then I got away early.’18 One wonders how early ‘early’ was. He told Charlie Dick, in one of his now rare letters to his old friend: ‘I think I have at last found my feet in London – that is, I can enjoy life and at the same time get through a great deal of work. Last year I was rather experimenting, gay and serious by turns, but now things have got relegated to their proper places.’19

  Into this settled, busy, but mildly precarious life came a crashing thunderbolt. One day in early August, JB was summoned to the Colonial Office to meet Lord Milner, High Commissioner of South Africa, who was in England for a holiday and to recruit staff for the reconstruction of the occupied Boer republics of the South African Republic and the Orange Free State now, or shortly to be, under British control. ‘He was convinced that for so novel and strenuous an undertaking he needed both youthful energy and unconventional minds,’20 wrote Leo Amery, who was one of the young men he wanted on his staff. However, as Amery was working for The Times on its History of the War in South Africa and did not feel he could let the newspaper down, he suggested instead that Milner approach JB, whom he had known at Oxford.

  Besides Amery’s recommendation, Milner had also discovered from Joseph Chamberlain, Secretary of State for the Colonies, that JB had been the author of an article on South Africa that had recently appeared in The Spectator. In it, he had written that the task of reconstruction after the war was comparable to that after the American Civil War and that it would mean ‘years of work before us, only to be undertaken by responsible and serious men’.21

  On the spot, Milner offered the young man the chance to go out to South Africa as one of his private secretaries, writing a few days later from RMS Saxon, on his way back to South Africa: ‘A certain sum has been put at my disposal to enable me to provide myself with extra secretarial assistance during the exceptionally heavy work
immediately before me. Any men, whose service I may secure, will not be salaried officials, or members of the official hierarchy, but will be, individually, working exclusively for me and directly under me. As between themselves they will have no rank or seniority, and I am making an independent arrangement with each of them, the terms of which I should prefer not to be divulged.’ He was prepared to pay JB £1,200, for a year’s contract initially, but renewable. ‘I cannot foresee the shape of the new administration, and you will have to find out what you think of the country and its prospects. The whole thing, as I told you, is a “gamble” for you. But personally I think it is a good chance.’22

  A very good chance for JB, certainly, but Milner was taking a big chance with him, since the young man had no practical administrative experience of any kind and might very well turn out to be damagingly naïve, dangerously maverick or both. He wanted JB to write reports for him, help with despatches to London and, as JB told Denman, ‘do certain pieces of special confidential work’.23 Without a doubt, this Liberal politician also wanted JB to act as a conduit to St Loe Strachey at The Spectator, for South African administrators and policy-makers needed friends cheering them on back home. Indeed, while he was in South Africa, JB wrote every fortnight to Strachey as well as (anonymous) articles for The Spectator and elsewhere.

  Milner had told Sir Percy Fitzpatrick, the South African businessman and politician: ‘… I mean to have young men. There will be a regular rumpus and a lot of talk about boys and Oxford and jobs and all that … Well I value brains and character more than experience. First-class men of experience are not to be got. Nothing one could offer would tempt them to give up what they have … I shall not be here for very long but when I go I mean to leave behind me young men with plenty of work in them…24