Who’s Who itself must form the subject of a separate chapter.
I have no older friend in journalism than Sidney Low. We went to Oxford, I think, on the same day—he was a Scholar of Balliol and I was a Scholar of Trinity—and we certainly knew each other very well there, and have been intimate friends ever since. His ability received early recognition. Before he had left Oxford ten years, he was editor-in-chief of a great London daily, and he has written books which have become standard works, like the Dictionary of English History, which has been through half-a-dozen editions. Since he gave up editing he has represented the leading papers on the most important special missions. He has been an alderman of the London County Council, and he has been one of the chief forces in literary society. If I were asked who had introduced me to the largest number of eminent persons, I should say Sidney Low—without hesitation. No man passes saner or more moderate judgments on the great questions of the hour. Indeed, I should say that Low stands in journalism for what a man who was at Oxford with both of us—George Cave, K.C., M.P.—stands in politics—for moderation in statement, combined with great firmness of principle and judgment.
With Low’s name I must couple that of the late Samuel Henry Jeyes, who was his colleague both on the St. James’s Gazette and the Standard. He was a beloved friend of us both, but my intimacy with him began much earlier. He was my greatest friend at Trinity, Oxford, and one of the Oxford men of whom I saw most in after life. We were elected Scholars of Trinity on the same day; we had rooms on the same staircase; we went to all the same lectures till we passed mods., and I taught him to play billiards. It was the only game of manual skill which he ever did play. He lashed the adulation for sport which prevails at Oxford with the gibes of which he was such a master. When we had only been up at Oxford for a few days, A. J. Webbe, who was the special idol of Trinity because he was captain of the ’Varsity Eleven, asked all of us Trinity freshmen to meet some of the lions of the Oxford Eleven. All of us except Jeyes were vastly elated. We all, except Jeyes, talked our best cricket shop to make a good impression on the demigods. At last he could stand it no longer, and, waiting till there was a dead pause in the conversation, he said, “This b——y cricket!” I can remember the tableau still.
His reputation as a wit came up with him from Uppingham. All Uppingham men could remember how, when he was caught cribbing with a Bible on his knee at a Greek Testament lesson, and his class-master had said to him triumphantly, “What have you there, Jeyes?” he said, “A book, sir, of which no man need be ashamed,” and how when Thring, the greatest head master of his time, had asked him how he came to be ploughed in arithmetic for his Oxford and Cambridge certificate, he replied from Shakespeare, “I cannot reckon, it befits the spirit of a tapster”—a readiness which Thring would have been the first to appreciate.
Among the best things I remember him saying at Oxford are his definition of the Turks in a great debate over the Bulgarian atrocities, as a people “whose morals are as loose as their trousers, and whose vices are as many as their wives.” And it was he who said, “I don’t want to go to Heaven, because Gore (now Bishop of Oxford) is the only Trinity man who will be there, and I’d rather be with the rest.”
Jeyes never spoke at the Union—he despised it—or he would have been as great a success as the miraculous Baumann or Freeman, now Rector of Burton-on-Trent. I never remember hearing Cave speaking at the Union, though perhaps he did.
One of Jeyes’ wittiest retorts was to “Bobby” Raper, at that time Dean of Trinity, who was “hauling” him for some meretricious disregard of College discipline. The glib excuse was not wanting, but Raper was stern. “No no, Mr. Jeyes, that won’t do. You told me the exact opposite of that last term.” “I know I did, Mr. Dean, but that was a lie.”
He owed the Dean one, for the first thing he did when he went up to Trinity had been to go and call on the Dean and tell him that he had conscientious scruples against going to chapel.
“Morning chapel, you know, Mr. Jeyes,” said the Dean, “is a matter of discipline and not of religion, but if you really have conscientious objections, I’ll put on a roll-call for you at 7 a.m.”—Chapel was at 8 a.m., so Jeyes swallowed his nausea.
But Jeyes’ wit was tireless. He was a fine scholar—he made his pupils write wonderful Latin prose when he became a don at University—I presume during the undergraduacy of Lord Hugh and Lord Robert Cecil. But he tore himself away to be a journalist, and became in time an assistant-editor of the St. James’s Gazette, and later of the Standard.