Unfortunately, I never played cricket for Harrow at "Lords," as my two brothers George and Ernest did. My youngest brother would, I think, have made a great name for himself as a cricketer, had not the fairies endowed him at his birth with a fatal facility for doing everything easily. As the result of this versatility, his ambitions were continually changing. He accordingly abandoned cricket for steeplechase riding, at which he distinguished himself until politics ousted steeplechase riding. After some years, politics gave place to golf and music, which were in their turn supplanted by photography. He then tried writing a few novels, and very successful some of them were, until it finally dawned on him that his real vocation in life was that of a historian. My brother was naturally frequently rallied by his family on his inconstancy of purpose, but he pleaded in extenuation that versatility had very marked charms of its own. He produced one day a copy of verses, written in the Gilbertian metre, to illustrate his mental attitude, and they strike me as so neatly worded, that I will reproduce them in full.
"THE CURSE OF VERSATILITY"
"It is possible the student of Political Economy
Might otherwise have cultivated Fame,
And the Scientist whose energies are given to Astronomy
May sacrifice a literary name.
In the Royal Academician may be buried a facility
For prosecuting Chemical Research,
But he knows that if he truckles to the Curse of Versatility,
Competitors will leave him in the lurch.
"If an eminent physician should develop a proclivity
For singing on the operatic stage,
He will find that though his patients may apparently forgive
it, he
Will temporal'ly cease to be the rage,
And the lawyer who depreciates his logical ability
And covets a poetical renown,
Will discover on his Circuit that the Curse of Versatility
Has limited the office of his gown.
"The costermonger yonder, if he had the opportunity,
Might rival the political career
Of the orator who poses as the pride of the community,
The Radical Hereditary Peer.
And the genius who fattens on a chronic inability
To widen the horizon of his brain,
May be stupider than others whom the Curse of Versatility
Has fettered with a mediocre chain.
"Should a Civil Servant woo the panegyrics of Society,
And hanker after posthumous applause,
It MAY happen that possession of a prodigal variety
Of talents will invalidate his cause.
He must learn to put a tether on his cerebral agility,
And focus all his energies of aim
On ONE isolated idol, or the Curse of Versatility
Will drag him from the pinnacle of Fame.
"Though the Curse may be upon us, and condemn us for Eternity
To jostle with the ordinary horde;
Though we grovel at the shrine of the professional fraternity
Who harp upon one solitary chord;
Still...we face the situation with an imperturbability
Of spirit, from the knowledge that we owe
To the witchery that lingers in the Curse of Versatility
The balance of our happiness below."
Of course, to some temperaments variety will appeal; whilst others revel in monotony. The latter are like a District Railway train, going perpetually round and round the same Inner Circle. As far as my experience goes, the former are the more interesting people to meet.
To persons of my time of life, the last verse of "Forty years on" has a tendency to linger in the memory. It runs—
"Forty years on, growing older and older,
Shorter in wind, as in memory long,
Feeble of foot, and rheumatic of shoulder,
What will it help you that once you were strong?"