Chapter VIII
THEY HAVE ONLY THEMSELVES TO BLAME
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If people will write memoirs, they must expect to suffer. They have only themselves to blame if life becomes almost intolerable from the waves of praise and censure. I am going to speak of some books of memoirs and biography—highly personal and decidedly unusual books, in the main by persons who are personages.
The Life of Sir William Vernon Harcourt concerns Sir William George Granville Venables Vernon Harcourt, who was born in 1827 and died in 1904. He was an English statesman, grandson of Edward Vernon Harcourt, Archbishop of York. He was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, and was called to the bar in 1854. He entered Parliament (for Oxford) in 1868, sat for Derby 1880-95, and for West Monmouthshire, 1895-1904. He was Solicitor-general 1873-74, Home Secretary 1880-85 and Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1886, 1892-94 and 1894-95. From March, 1894, to December, 1898, he was leader of the Liberal Party in the House of Commons. He wrote in the London Times under the signature of “Historicus” a series of letters on International Law, which were republished in 1863. His biography, which begins before Victoria ascended the throne and closes after her death, is the work of A. G. Gardiner.
Memoirs of the Memorable is by Sir James Denham, the poet-author of “Wake Up, England!” and deals with most of the prominent social names of the end of the last and commencement of this century, including Mr. Gladstone, Lord Beaconsfield, Lord Byron, Robert Browning, the Bishop of London, Cardinal Howard, Lord Dunedin, Lewis Carroll, Lord Marcus Beresford and the late Bishop of Manchester. The book also deals with club life and the leading sportsmen.
The Pomp of Power is by an author who very wisely remains anonymous, like the author of The Mirrors of Downing Street. I shall not run the risks of perjury by asserting or denying that the author of The Mirrors of Downing Street has written The Pomp of Power. As to the probability perhaps readers of The Pomp of Power had better judge. It is an extremely frank book and its subjects include the leading personalities of Great Britain today and, indeed, all the world. Lloyd George, Field-Marshal Sir Henry Wilson, Lord Haig, Marshal Joffre, Lord Beaverbrook, Millerand, Loucheur, Painleve, Cambon, Lord Northcliffe, Colonel Repington and Krassin of Soviet Russia are the persons principally portrayed. The book throws a searchlight upon the military and diplomatic relations of Britain and France before and during the war, and also deals with the present international situation. It may fairly be called sensational.
Especially interesting is the anonymous author’s revelation of the rôle played in the war by Field-Marshal Sir Henry Wilson, so lately assassinated in London. The author was evidently an intimate of Sir Henry and, just as evidently, he is intimately acquainted with Lloyd George, apparently having worked with or under the Prime Minister. He is neither Lloyd George’s friend nor enemy and his portrait of the Prime Minister is the most competent I can recall. Can he be Philip Kerr, Lloyd George’s adviser?
I praise, in this slightly superlative fashion, the picture of the British Prime Minister by the author of The Pomp of Power ... and I pick up another book and discover it to be E. T. Raymond’s Mr. Lloyd George: A Biographical and Critical Sketch. The author of Uncensored Celebrities is far too modest when he calls his new work a “sketch.” It is a genuine biography with that special accent due to the biographer’s personality and his power of what I may call penetrative synthesis. By that I mean the insight into character which coördinates and builds—the sort of biography that makes a legend about a man.
Mr. Raymond does not begin with the “little Welshman” but with a Roman Emperor, Diocletian, our first well-studied exemplar of the “coalition mind.” These are the words with which, after a brilliant survey of the Prime Minister’s career, the author closes: