May 3, 191 7 
LAND & WATER 
13 
Life and Letters 
By J. G. Squire 
IN this age everybody writes his reminiscences. The 
jockey fills five hundred pages with descriptions of how 
Lord William Beresford once patted him on the back, 
and denials that he really pulled the horse or made the 
bet that time when his license was suspended. The journalist 
gives his version of the Hawarden Kite story, and regrets 
tiiat Fleet Street is not so Bohemian as it used to be, though 
(as he always adds) there is a great deal to be said for sobriety. 
Tlie politician, when he is certain he is never going to get 
back to ofifice again, lets out a little of the truth about some- 
thing that was done thirty years ago. The fashionable person 
dictates " tilings he can tell " to somebody who can write. 
And the whole lot of them say that they once met Sir Henry 
Irving, and that he was every inch a gentleman. Quality, 
however, has not risen with quantity. Any life affords materials 
lor a masterpiece, but the number of people w^Im) know how 
to make use of their materials is deplorably few. 
***** 
Even people who can observe and can write do not often 
pr(xluce good books of this kind, 'fhv reasons are obvious. 
\\'hen you sit down to write what you remember, the interior 
censor at once gets to work. You are mentioning somebody, 
you remember something about him ; but it would not do to 
say it while the man, or his wife, is still alive, and even if he is 
dead you will be considered rather ill-mannered if you say 
that he had a red nose or took a bribe from a gas company. 
Or you were involved in some enterprise, the origin or conduct 
of which would greatly interest people if they knew about it ; 
but vou still have friends (or even shares) in it, and you put 
the brake upon your speecli. We all of us know crowds of 
people with whom we are on speaking terms, but whom we 
consider blackguards, fools or weaklings ; but ordinary 
manners, in some cases, and ordinary prudence in others, 
would prevent us Jfrom describing them faithfully in print. 
And even if we admire people we do not care to parade our 
admiration or to rush into print with stories, which they 
would prefer to remain private, of their nobility or generosity. 
The result is that good books of reminiscences are few. 
They are written in the main bv three very small classes. 
There are the people who are so free from the desire of applause 
that they leave their memoirs behind them to be published 
posthumously. There are the people who care so little for - 
the world's opinion of their character (Mr. George Moore is 
an example) that they will describe, and even libel, their 
friends while they are alive. And there are the people 
wlio are so simple that they do not know when they are 
blurting out inconvenient truths. 
***** 
All this refers to memoirs which are mainly the record of 
things seen. Memoirs which state frankly what has gone on 
in a man's mind are rarer still. Even Pepys did not publish 
liis self-exposure in his' life-time ; he wrapped it up in a 
ci]>her. And the more respectable the autlior the less 
likely is he to allow the truth to aj^pear. It is significant 
tliat three of the most interesting hooks of memoirs of the 
last decade have come from persons who were not oppressed 
by position or the need of preserving the world's respect ; 
I mean, Mr. Davies' Autohiogra(>hy of a Super- Tramp, 
j'he Ragged Tronaered Philanlliropists, which was written 
by a bricklayer, and The Autobiography of a Bath-Chair 
Man. The autobiograpiiical parts of' modern liiograjjliies, 
not having been written for publication, are usually a little 
better than ordinary autobiographies ; but even these are 
always cautiously treated by editors. For the fact is that 
the truth cannot be told about one's contem.poraribs or about 
oneself. Life would be intolerable if it were. If we want to 
deal honestly with people or events, they must have been 
dead or ovit for at least fifty j^cars. 
***** 
So most " lives " and i)ooks of reminiscences are pale 
shadows of what tiiey might be. Yet, except when there is 
a paper famine, one would not dejirecate the general com- 
pilation of biographies and autobiographies. Any bio- 
graphy, whether th'at of a Colonial Premier or that of a divorced 
princess, throws light on hinnan ciiaracter : aufl I had rather 
be left with the reminiscences of a Rural Dean than witli a 
second-rate novel. However carefully men may labour to 
hide their own or other people's characterii.tics, the truth 
always peeps through, and the memoir has never been 
written which uives no insitiht into human couraije or human 
devotion, human blindness, complacency, sensitiveness, 
callousness or vanity. These qualities are not exhibited only 
in books of classic rank. 
***** 
I think the heaviest biography I ever read was the two 
volume Life of the late Sir Charles Tupper.^ It was almost 
impossible to get through its wastes of dead detail, and the 
ghmpses one got into the hero's mind were very rare, and 
very desolating when one got them. Yet, as one read on, 
the effect began to acquire something of the monumental ; 
and one was left with a permanent wonder at our race which 
can produce a man at once so able, so worthy, so dogged, and 
so stupendously uninteresting. And there was another feature 
of it which may be obsetved in all biographies, however 
arid ; and that was that after hundreds of pages of dead and 
buried controversy, drab diaries and commonplace letters, 
one would come across something which made a permanent 
addition to the picture gallery of memory. There was, for 
instance, a meeting between the Canadian Statesman and 
Martin Tupper, at which the two men, with equal eagerness, 
tried to establish a common ancestry. And there was a 
beautifully naive account, by Sir Charles himself, of a large 
dinner on board the yacht of King Edward (then Prince of 
Males) throughout which the hero was in the seventh heaven, 
his bliss coming to a chmax when, amid universal applause 
and with great depth of feeling, Mrs. Brown-Potter recited 
Casabianca. 
***** 
In the same way the connoisseur in humanity will find 
something in Sir (ieorge Reid's book My Reminiscences, 
by the Kt. Hon. Sir George Reid (Cassell, i6s. net). For the 
mcvst part Sir George's chapters are filled with pohtical matters 
which it would be mere affectation to call exciting. Those who 
are interested would prefer fuller and more accurate accounts 
than any autobiography could give them : all they w^int 
from an autobiography at most is supplementary private 
information. Sir (jeorge, like so many other public men, 
tends to forget at times that a public man is only a facade 
with a private man behind him. He does not tell us what 
sort of people his friends and enemies were, and he does not 
deliberately tell us what sort of man he is himself. He tells 
us that he became Prime Minister of Australia, High Com- 
missioner and M.P. for St. George's, Hanover Square. But 
we never really understand haze/ ; ancl we are left pretty 
vague as to his opinions. He tells us, lapsing into frank- 
ness, that when he was in Australia, his political opponents 
used to call him " clown " and " buffoon." But this book 
does not bear out the charge : it is, for the most part, as 
solemn as a Bluc-Book. There is one subject which he can 
never resist : his- own , physical proportions. These pre- 
vented him from going into the trenches when Tie was at the 
Front, and compelled him to remain on deck when he was 
inspecting a Dreadnought. He misses, ^however, the best 
opening that his narrative gives him. ^ L'or he once dined with 
Mr. Taft, and Mr. Taft, in point of size, beats him hollow. (To 
Mr. Taft has been ascribed the politest act in history : he 
once, I have heard, got up in a tram and offered his seat to 
■ three ladies). Sir George unaccoHntably fails to realise the 
picturesque possibilities of this encounter ; and the best 
jest he gives about his physique was not made by himself, 
but by an interru])ter at one of his meetings who, when the 
speaker was observing that his time was short and he should 
soon be going to another world, called out : " By Jove, 
George, the fat wjll be in the fire then." Jokes on this 
subject are a little elementary, but one could have wished 
more of them, failing any better ones. For Sir George, as 
a rule, has assumed a seriousness that one feels is not quite 
natinal to him. 
***** 
Yet here, as everywhere,., there are a few anecdotes worth 
preserving. The one about Sir George telling King Edward 
tl;^t a friend of his kept in a glass case a cigar that his Majesty 
lK?fl given hiin coiiiun>s up a pretty picture. (It did not 
ccMiie (|uite fresh to me, unfortunately, as a N'orthern M.P. 
once told me that an ex-mayor of his .borough kept framed 
in his drawing-room relics of a royal visit to the station 
waiting-room, in thv form of the butt-end of a cigar and a 
piece of toast retaining the semicircular mark of the illastrious 
teeth). And quite fre([uently. Sir George, in spite of all his 
caution, allows one to see the hidden springs of his own mind. 
