He was a law reformer. Again unlike most successful men who are apt to be content with things as they are. The letters he wrote to The Times on such matters as the creation of a Court of Criminal Appeal, alteration in the law of divorce, the administration of Justice, and other high legal questions show him a great scientific lawyer, with a mastery of principles. He has essentially a legal mind, and he wrote with a luminous precision and force not always characteristic of the legal mind. And he had what every judge on the bench ought to have, and a few of the greatest really have, an unerring perception of such facts as are essential, and a power of dismissing all the rest. Sir George Jessel had that; one of the greatest judges. Students of ethnology may remark with interest that both were Jews. When such a man quits the stage it is an irreparable loss to his friends, to his clients, and to the world generally. The feeling is more than regret, for ties are broken which never existed before and will never exist again. Sir George Lewis's position was unique because his personality is unique. So will his fame be. Reputation in the law is for the most part transitory. But this will endure.
CHAPTER XXXIII
MR. MILLS—A PERSONAL APPRECIATION AND A FEW ANECDOTES
I recross the Atlantic for a moment. There died lately in California a man known on both sides of the ocean, known in more worlds than two, one of the strongest and certainly one of the most amiable figures in the world of business, Mr. Darius Ogden Mills.
Of late years, since Mr. Reid has been Ambassador, Mr. Mills had become a figure in London. He interested Englishmen because he was a new type, or, rather, because he was individual; because he was Mr. Mills. Type implies a plurality; and not only was there but one Mills, there was none other to whom you could compare him. Englishmen have formed a notion of their own about Americans of the class to which, in respect of his wealth, Mr. Mills belonged; and a high notion. They have seen much, for example, of Mr. Pierpont Morgan, and they seemed inclined to suppose all great financiers to be, in manner as in fact, masterful, dominating, huge in physique, born rulers of other men. They had never seen much, if anything, of Mr. Harriman, who hid away his great qualities beneath a personality almost insignificant in appearance save for the ample head and burning eyes.
Mr. Mills was perceived to be like neither of these, nor like any third. He was much more like an Oxford professor; like the late Rev. Mark Pattison, rector of Lincoln, the Casaubon of George Eliot's novel. Mr. Mills had the gentleness, the refinement, the distinction of the scholar. It must have been born with him. He went to no college. He had little college learning. He had lived in rough times and among rough men; had twice crossed the continent on foot and in the saddle, with a cloud of Red Indians ever on the horizon, and had lived in San Francisco during those stormy years when Bret Harte's heroes, gamblers, and ruffians set up their turbulent rule. But there was a light in Mr. Mills's pale blue eyes which kept those gentlemen at a distance. This delicately-featured face ended in a jaw which was an index of a character not to be trifled with.
Upon all this London remarked with some surprise, and then with great respect and liking. They liked his simplicity of manner as much as his sagacity of speech, and his silence almost as much as his conversation. An American who was an American to the finger-tips but never waved the flag; a man of affairs who seemed in the world only a man of the world; a millionaire in whose pockets the jingle of the dollar was never heard; such was the rare picture Mr. Mills presented. He won their sympathies because he never tried to. These islanders like a man who is just himself, yet is absolutely free from self-assertion. They gave him first their respect, then their regard, and finally their affection.
I have seen all these feelings shown in the Metropolitan Club in New York in an unusual way. Mr. Mills used to come into the card-room of an afternoon. There would be two or three or more rubbers of bridge going on. Bridge is a passion, but men would stop in the middle of a rubber and ask Mr. Mills if he would not take a hand or make up a new rubber. Bridge being not only a passion but the selfish game it is—necessarily so, like business—the tribute was a remarkable one. If he declined, somebody would remember suddenly he had an engagement and beg Mr. Mills as a favour to take his place. As he moved about in the club men rose and walked across the room to greet him, a thing less rare in New York but unknown in London, where a club has been defined as a place in which a man may cut his best friend and no offence taken. The general ceremoniousness of club life in New York would close all the clubhouses in London. So would the despotism of New York club committees.
Men listened to him or waited for him to speak in a way which suggested not only a desire for an opinion but an attachment to the man. He himself was one of the best listeners ever known. When he spoke it was briefly. He could say what he wanted to in a sentence or a few sentences. In this he was like another and a greater Oxford Don—I suppose the greatest of his time—Jowett, the Master of Balliol. Both sat long silent while others were talking and both seemed to use, and Jowett certainly did use, the interval in fashioning his thoughts into epigrams. Jowett's epigrams often stung, and were meant to sting, for he thought presumption and ignorance ought to be punished. Perhaps Mr. Mills did but he did not think he had been appointed to punish them.