Then came the question of whom we should invite to write their biographies to be models for the biographies of other people. I selected the Duke of Rutland for the peers, and Mr. Balfour for the commoners. The Duke, both as Lord John Manners and as Duke, had occupied one of the first places in the eyes of his fellow-countrymen. He had filled his place in the Cabinet with distinction; he had been the typical aristocrat; his exquisite politeness had helped the democracy to forgive him for writing “Let Wealth and Commerce ... die. But give us still our old nobility.”
I wrote to ask him to fill the biographical form, which I had drawn up, to be the model for other members of the peerage, and with his usual consideration, he acceded. Then I wrote to Mr. Balfour to ask him to write his biography, to be a model for the untitled. The only title he bore was so proud that we usually, as I did then, forget to reckon it among titles—the “Right Honourable.” Mr. Balfour, too, acceded, and he was particularly suitable, because, in addition to being the first man in the House of Commons, recreation had a real meaning in his case, since he was known to be an inveterate golfer.
The idea of adding “recreations” to the more serious items which had been included in previous biographical dictionaries was adopted at one of the councils of war which we used to hold in the partners’ room of A. & C. Black, at 4 Soho Square. And for selling purposes it proved far and away the best idea in the whole book, when it was published. The newspapers were never tired of quoting the recreations of eminent people, thus giving the book a succession of advertisements of its readability, and shop-keepers who catered for their various sports bought the book to get the addresses of the eminent people, who were, many of them, very indignant at the Niagara of circulars which resulted.
I wonder if many people remember the old Who’s Who?—a little red 32mo, which looked something like the Infantry Manual with its clasp knocked off. It was a sort of badly kept index to the Peerage, as futile as an 1840 Beauty Book. We turned it into a dictionary of biography for living people, and we made it eternally interesting by persuading the people whom we included in it to give us their favourite recreations. I chose (from an un-annual biographical dictionary edited by Humphry Ward) the type, which had to be specially cast for it; I chose the people who deserved to be included in it; I drafted the letters and the forms to be filled up, which were sent to each person; and I persuaded those two very eminent men to be the bell-wethers for persuading other people to fill up their forms, an idea which was crowned with success. The late Duke of Rutland’s and Mr. Balfour’s fillings up of the forms were printed at the heads of the forms sent out to other people, and few people objected to following where they had led the way. But among these few recalcitrants were Lord Salisbury and Mr. Chamberlain, and most naval officers. Army officers, on the other hand, were generally very obliging. Architects and literary men filled up their forms best, artists and actresses worst, though actors were almost as bad. You would have thought that the actual formation of the letters in framing a reply was a torture to artists, actors and naval officers. The actresses, if you had compiled the biographies by interview, would have asked for two columns each.
Many people thought it necessary to write me rude letters, demanding what right I had to intrude upon their privacy, and ordering me not to include their names. To one of them, the head of an Oxford College, I wrote, “Dear Sir, If you had not been head of —— College, no one would have dreamt of including you, but since you are, you will have to go in whether you like it or not.”
The late Duke of Devonshire said that his recreation had formerly been hunting. One man said that he did not see how the ownership of four hundred and fifty thousand acres made him a public person. A prominent authoress first of all refused to fill up her form at all. I wrote to tell her that in that case I should have to fill it up for her. She showed no concern about this until I sent her a proof of the biography, in which I made her out ten years older than she really was, and said that I meant to insert the biography in that form unless there was anything she wished to correct. She then corrected it, and added so much that it would have taken the whole column if I had inserted all she sent.
W. S. Gilbert wrote the rudest letter of anybody. He said he was always being pestered by unimportant people for information about himself. So I put him down in the book as “Writer of Verses and the libretti to Sir Arthur Sullivan’s comic operas.” He then wrote me a letter of about a thousand words, in which he asked me if that was the way to treat a man who had written seventy original dramas. Next year he filled up his form as readily as a peer’s widow who has married a commoner.
Bernard Shaw said in 1897 that his favourite recreations were cycling and showing off, and informed the world that he was of middle-class family, was not educated at all “academically,” and coming to London when he was twenty, for many years could obtain no literary recognition, even to the extent of employment as a journalist.
But the most humorous experience I had in connection with Who’s Who was when I succeeded in bringing a certain actor-manager to book. He had repeatedly promised to fill in his form, and failed to do so, when I found myself next to him at a public dinner to which we had both been invited. “Why did you not send me that biography?” I asked him, and he said, “Well, the real reason is that I thought I should have to say how damned badly I have behaved to my wife.”
The book was a complete literary success; the newspapers gave it column reviews, chiefly consisting of the unsuitable recreations of prominent people.