Twenty Years of My Life

by Douglas Brooke Wheelton Sladen

I remember Mark Twain being similarly annoyed at a dinner of the American Society, when he had to speak after a number of verbose platitudinarians. He was quite dispirited when he rose, and confined himself to a few sentences. After the dinner was over, he told me this, and he went on to say, “But I was wrong, for the late Sir Henry Brackenbury spoke after me, and look what he did with the audience! He took them up in his hand, and moved them to tears and laughter, just as he pleased.”

That speech of Sir Henry’s certainly was magnificently eloquent. It was during, or just after, the South African War, and the phrases in which he alluded to the war swept the audience, though they were mostly Americans, right off their feet; they were as fine as John Bright’s immortal allusion to hearing the angels’ wings in his Crimean War speech. I only once heard a finer speech—the sermon preached in St. Paul’s by the present Archbishop of York, then Bishop of Stepney, upon the centenary of Nelson’s death. In that sermon over and over again the words were flames. There is nothing so inspiring as a supreme speech at a supreme moment.

Dr. G. C. Williamson, the art editor of George Bell & Sons, is one of the most potent figures in the world of art—in fact, there are few branches of art on which he has not got any reasonable information at his fingers’ tips. He has written books which have met with wide acceptation on several of them, and has been a great collector and traveller.

I met him under curious circumstances. We were both, though I did not know him then, in St. Peter’s, witnessing the Jubilee of Leo XIII. On occasions like this in Italy no one interferes with the liberty of the sight-seer, and as I was not, in the nature of things, likely to see the Jubilee of another Pope, and I had to write a description of it, I determined to seize whatever opportunity I could for seeing it, without any mauvais honte. The cathedral had been so packed for the past six hours that it was practically impossible to see anything unless you seized some coign of vantage. Williamson and I were standing close to one of the great piers of the nave, and the base had a projection some feet from the ground. I determined to stand on it, but he was between me and the pier. He very good-naturedly made way for me, and helped me to scramble up, calling out “Viva il papa re! Viva il papa re!” all the time. I offered, of course, to share my giddy eminence with him, turn and turn about, but he was a devout Catholic, and though he saw no harm in my ambitions, which he furthered so nobly, he was quite content to be in the church, and worshipping. He did not want to see more than everybody saw without striving, when at last it happened—the carrying of the frail old Pope on his Sedia Gestatoria, supported on men’s shoulders, between the snow-white flabella.

When it was all over, we exchanged cards, and that was the beginning of my friendship with the famous art critic.

It certainly was about the most impressive sight I ever saw—that vast cathedral, packed with a hundred thousand human beings, with the nonagenarian Pope dressed in snow-white garments borne on his moving throne from the High Altar to the Chapel of the Crucifix.

It is not too much to say that literary London felt a shock when it heard that William Sinclair had resigned the Archdeaconry of London which he had held with such conspicuous success for twenty-two years, and retired to a Sussex benefice. He had been one of the foremost figures in every London function of the time, since the Jubilee of Queen Victoria, and he had started life as a Scholar of Balliol and President of the Union—the University Debating Society at Oxford. Being a bachelor, there was no reason why he should restrict himself to dining at home, and, consequently, he was the most prominent figure at public dinners, of a patriotic, philanthropic or useful character, where he spoke comparatively seldom, considering what a good speaker he is. Being a connection of half the Scottish aristocracy—he is a cousin of the Lord of the Isles—he was equally conspicuous in country house parties. A constant attendant at the functions of the Authors’ and other literary clubs, his eminence as an ecclesiastic and a public man obscured the fact that his performances as an author were among the most distinguished of those present, for he has a gift of saying wise things in epigrammatic form. His magnum opus is a book on his own cathedral, and here I may incidentally remark that few archdeacons have ever exercised such influence on the Dean over the care of the cathedral. His great object was to emphasise the voice of St. Paul’s as that of the nation in its religious aspect, and it was with this view that he prevailed on the Dean and Chapter and the Crown to install the Imperial Order of St. Michael and St. George in the Chapel of the Cathedral where they meet for annual commemorations. His loss, also, from the Sunday afternoon pulpit of St. Paul’s has been distinctly felt. It was one of the institutions of London. He was a wise man to retire for leisure to write and travel while he was still in his prime.

Basil Wilberforce, the Archdeacon of Westminster, and son of the great Bishop, I came to know because we used to meet at dinner at Lady Lindsay’s. It was there that I heard him declare his firm faith in the Holy Grail—I am refering to the vessel which had been discovered a short time before at Glastonbury Abbey, and which was believed to emanate a luminous aura at night, from time to time. The Archdeacon declined the honour of having it left in his bedroom at night to test the truth of the allegation, either because he thought his emotions might act on his imagination, or because he did not think himself worthy, but I understand that it was left in Sir William Crookes’, the great F.R.S.’s room for three nights without his observing any phenomena.

I remember George Russell—the Rt. Hon. G. W. E. Russell, the editor of Matthew Arnold’s letters, and Under-Secretary for India in Lord Rosebery’s Government—who was present that night, interposing a jarring note of incredulity, which the Archdeacon very sweetly forgave in an old friend.

Until her prolonged absences from London for ill-health, Mrs. Neish, the wife of the Registrar of the Privy Council, was, on account of the remarkable rapidity with which she made her way in literature as well as for her beauty, a conspicuous figure in London literary society. She made her way so quickly because she was a born writer, and mingled the witty and the pathetic naturally. She was a daughter of Sir Edwin Galsworthy. There is literature in the family. She is a first cousin of the great novelist and playwright, John Galsworthy. Her husband’s father was a Scottish laird, who in an inspired moment advanced the capital for founding the Dundee Advertiser. She has often done the Saturday Westminster and written many nature sketches.