fr^- .v THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA RIVERSIDE n I 55 iQflW^V IXAT^O , && /SO? /IT 7 FHK WAYFARERS LIBRARY PROPHETS PRIESTS, & KINGS Ax G^ Gardiner M. DENT tf SONS. Ltd LONDON To W. H. H. IN TOKEN OF PERFECT FRIENDSHIP BY THE SAME AUTHOR PILLARS OF SOCIETY PREFACE TO NEW EDITION IN the six years that have elapsed since these sketches were first published, much has happened affecting the subjects of them. Four have died, and the positions of several have undergone im- portant changes. Mr. Haldane, for example, has succeeded Lord Loreburn as Lord Chancellor, Mr. Rufus Isaacs has passed through several offices to the position of Lord Chief Justice, Mr. Chesterton has vanished from Fleet Street and has become a sort of mediaeval recluse at Beaconsfield, Prince Bulow has gone into retirement, Henry Bolingbroke, in the person of Mr. Bonar Law, has supplanted Mr. Balfour in the leadership of the Unionist party, Mr. Harcourt " no longer wheels the perambulator," and Mr. " Lloyd George has justified the reference to the key of the future." Apart from these and similar changes, there have been developments which would modify in some measure the views expressed as to certain of the subjects notably Mr. Snowden. But to have dealt with these changes would have meant re-writing the sketches and the loss of the angle of vision from which they were originally conceived. They represented a contemporaneous impression of men and conditions at a certain period the period immediately prior to the remarkable series of events that followed the intro- duction of the Budget of 1909. It has been thought 3 Prophets, Priests, and Kings best to preserve that impression at the expense of some conflict with the recent facts and later im- pressions. Hence, except for minor alterations and amplifications, the sketches are presented in the shape in which they originally appeared in The Daily News and in book form. The portraits in this volume are from drawings by Mr. Clive Gardiner. HAMPSTEAD, April 1914. CONTENTS PAGE KING EDWARD VII. ...... 7 GEORGE BERNARD SHAW ..... 17 ARTHUR JAMES BALFOUR ..... 27 JOHN SINGER SARGENT ...... 37 GEORGE MEREDITH ...... 45 THE PREMIER ....... 53 THE KAISER ........ 63 SIR EDWARD GREY ...... 72 JAMES KEIR HARDIE ...... 81 LORD NORTHCLIFFE ...... 88 DR. CLIFFORD ....... 98 JOHN REDMOND ....... 106 FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE . .114 THE PRIMATE ....... 121 DAVID LLOYD GEORGE . .129 MRS. PANKHURST . .138 LORD MORLEY OF BLACKBURN .... 146 RUFUS ISAACS, K.C. .156 THE BISHOP OF LONDON . .... 163 PRINCE BULOW . .170 LORD ROSEBERY . ".. 178 GENERAL BOOTH . ... 186 LORD LOREBURN . 195 THOMAS HARDY . - . 203 HENRY CHAPLIN . 212 LORD CURZON ; . 220 WINSTON CHURCHILL . , . -, , 227 THE REV. R. J. CAMPBELL . -.,.. 237 THE SPEAKER . , 244 HERBERT . SAMUEL . ,251 5 Prophets, Priests, and Kings PAGE THE TSAR .... .258 DR. HORTON ........ 268 PHILIP SNOWDEN . X. 275 ROBERT BURDON HALDANE ... .281 JOHN BURNS ..,. 289 WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN ... 298 LEWIS HARCOURT .... 37 J AUGUSTINE BIRRELL, K.C. 3 S RUDYARD KIPLING ....... 3 24 1 G. K. CHESTERTON . 33 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS GEORGE BERNARD SHAW . Frontispiece ARTHUR JAMES BALFOUR . facing page 35 GEORGE MEREDITH ..... 45 RT. HON. H. H. ASQUITH ... ,,62 SIR EDWARD GREY .... .,75 JAMES KEIR HARDIE ... ,,86 121 THE PRIMATE. ..... ,. MRS. PANKHURST ..... ,, 139 LORD MORLEY .... ,,150 THOMAS HARDY .... 203 HENRY CHAPLIN ..... ,,214 RUDYARD KIPLING ..... 325 G. K. CHESTERTON .... 332 PROPHETS, PRIESTS, AND KINGS KING EDWARD VII CHARLES LAMB, referring to the fact that he had no " ear for music, said he had been practising God Save " the King all his life, humming it to himself in odd corners and secret places, and yet, according to his friends, had still not come within several quavers of it. Lamb did not know his good fortune. King Edward probably regards him as the most enviable man in history. For his Majesty would not be human if he did not tire of that eternal reminder of the gilded cage in which he is doomed to live. Does he go to " " Church, then God Save the King thunders through aisles he in the ; does appear public, then enthusiastic bandsmen salute him at every street corner with " God Save the King "; does he go to a dinner, then grave citizens leap to their feet and break out into " God Save the King." He cannot escape the Boeotian strain. He never will escape it. It is the penalty we inflict on him for being King. It is a penalty that should touch any heart to sympathy. " If one were offered the choice, Will you dwell at ' ' Windsor and hear God Save the King morning, afternoon, and evening, at work and at play, at home " and abroad, or work, a free man, in a coal mine? can there be any doubt what the answer would be if one were sane? 7 Prophets, Priests, and Kings When the Archduke John of Austria disguised himself as a seaman and vanished for ever from the tyranny of Courts, he was regarded as a victim of mental aberration. He was, of course, one of the very sanest of men. No man in his senses would be a King if he could be a cobbler. For a cobbler has the two priceless privileges of freedom and obscurity, andja King has only a prison and publicity a prison, none the less, because its walls are not of stone, but of circumstance. The cobbler have friends may ; but where among the crowd that makes eternal obeisance before him is the man whom the King can call friend? Walled off from his kind, living in an unreal and artificial atmosphere of ceremonial, pur- sued by the intolerable limelight wherever he goes, cut off from the wholesome criticism of the world, fawned on by flunkeys, without the easy companion- ship of equals, without the healthful renovation of privacy, what is there in Kingship to make it endur- able ? The marvel is not that Kings should so often fail to be Kings, but that they should ever succeed in being tolerable men. Now, King Edward is, above everything else, a very human man. He is not deceived by the pomp and circumstance in the midst of which it has been his lot to live, for he has no illusions. He is eminently sane. He was cast for a part in the piece of life from his cradle, and he plays it industriously and thoroughly; but he has never lost the point of view of the plain man. He has much more in common with the President of a free State than with the King by Divine right. He is simply the chief citizen, primus inter pares, and the fact that he is chief by heredity and not by election does not qualify his view of the realities of the position. Un- like his nephew, he never associates the Almighty 8 King Edward VII with his right to rule, though he associates Him with his rule. His common sense and his gift of humour save him from these exalted and antiquated assump- tions. Nothing is more characteristic of this sensible attitude than his love of the French people and " " French institutions. No King by Divine right could be on speaking terms with a country which has swept the whole institution of Kingship on to the dust-heap. And his saving grace of humour enables him to enjoy and poke fun at the folly of the tuft-hunter and the collector of Royal cherry stones. He " laughingly inverts the folly. You see that chair," he said in tones of awe to a guest entering his smoking " room at Windsor. That is the chair John Burns sat in." His Majesty has a genuine liking for " J. B.," who, I have no doubt, delivered from that chair a copious digest of his Raper lecture, coupled with illuminating statistics on infantile mortality, some approving comments on the member for Batter- sea, and a little wholesome advice on the duties of a King. This liking for Mr. Burns is as characteristic of the King as his liking for France. He prefers plain, breezy men who admit him to the common humanities rather than those who remind him of his splendid isolation. He would have had no emotion of pride when Scott, who, with all his great qualities, was a deplorable tuft-hunter, solemnly put the wine- glass that had touched the Royal lips into the tail pocket of his coat, but he would have immensely enjoyed the moment when he inadvertently sat on it. It follows that he would disclaim that he is either a seer or a saint, though in his education every effort was employed to make him at once an Archangel and an Admirable Crichton. There has probably never been a personage in history upon whose 9 Prophets, Priests, and Kings upbringing there was expended so much thought and such variety of influences as upon that of Albert Edward, Prince of Wales. There have been cases in which equal solicitude has been displayed by fond parents on behalf of their children. In the preface to Montaigne's Essays we are told that the great writer's father resolved that his son should be a perfect Latinist, so arranged matters that the boy heard no language but Latin till he was seven or eight years of age. In his presence even the servants had to speak Latin or not at all, the result being that in Montaigne's native village there was for long afterwards a strong element of pure Latin in the local French. Montaigne was never allowed to be awakened suddenly, but was wooed back to consciousness by soft music played near his chamber. And so on.