When his speech and the other speeches were over, the chairman electrified the assemblage by informing them that a new sort of gramophone would reproduce for them Tennyson’s last words in the voice in which he spoke them. It was a most impressive moment. For a few minutes one did not realise the colossal impertinence of pretending that there had been a phonograph in Tennyson’s bedroom on this solemn occasion. But, of course, the record might have been produced by a man who knew Tennyson’s voice well enough to imitate it, as certain reciters imitate celebrated actors. We did not realise this at the time. The next day the dinner was duly reported, with the names of the makers of these wonderful lamps, and this wonderful phonetic record, and later on it transpired that these two parties had paid for the dinner, which was only got up to advertise them.
This is one of the two cleverest pieces of journalism I remember. The other happened on the night that King Edward died. A great London linen-draping firm had an elaborate intelligence system during the well-beloved monarch’s last illness. They were well served. I happened to see the head of the firm about twelve hours before the nation was plunged into mourning.
“You may take it from me,” he said, “that his Majesty won’t live another twenty-four hours.”
As he was in the habit of making impressive statements, I discounted what he said. But he was right, and acting on his information, he bought up all the available mourning in the market, and scored a huge business victory. I met him long afterwards, and alluded to the information which he had given me.
“I wasn’t the only one who took pains to know,” he said, “for that night, at the hour the King died, I was driving from the hotel, where I had been dining, to my office, with the correspondent of one of the great French newspapers. As we passed the Palace, one of the top windows was opened, and a person came to it with a lighted candle, and blew it out. ‘Did you see that? Do you mind driving me to the West Strand post-office?’ said my French friend. ‘Why, no,’ I said; ‘but what do you want to go there for?’ ‘To send a cipher-wire to my paper that his Majesty is dead.’ ‘Isn’t it a great risk?’ I asked. ‘If it was, I would take it. But even a good rumour is worth something.’”
The Frenchman was right, and he won his victory.
The late Lord Dufferin was another man who was very kind to me about my writings. I suppose that they appealed to him for the same reason that they appealed to Dilke. Both of them were deeply interested in Greater Britain, and in travel generally, and I have written books full of enthusiasm for travel and the Colonies.
Lord Dufferin never forgot any one who had served him. When his new title forced a new signature on him, he sent a new photograph with the Dufferin and Ava signature to all his journalist friends, though some of them had passed out of his sphere for years.
He always did the right thing. I remember the late Lord Derby beginning a speech at a dinner at Winnipeg at which I was present, “As Lord Dufferin, who seems to have left nothing unsaid, observed,” etc.
On that same vice-regal progress to the West, I was showing Lord Derby some Kodaks I had taken on various occasions at which he had been present—crowded functions in cities, full-dress rehearsals of Chippeway Indians on the war-path, and the like. One print was from a negative which I had of these Chippewas, with their necklaces of cartridges and their feather head-dresses, taken on the top of the massed choirs of Manitoba, singing “God save the Queen.” Lord Derby begged this photograph from me, “That’s a photograph of the whole trip,” he said.