The "Spectator" in the 'Eighties and 'Nineties
MY connexion with the Spectator began in May, 1884, as the result of the acceptance of an article which had been rejected at least half-a-dozen times elsewhere. I had just left Manchester for London, and, on the strength of this welcome and unexpected success, obtained an introduction to the Editors from my brother Alfred, who had occasionally contributed verse— including " Father O'Flynn "—to the Spectator, pre- sented myself at 'Wellington Street and was received with the utmost kindness by Hutton and Townsend.
The old house, now pulled down, stood at the corner of the west side of Wellington Street, just before it broadens into Lancaster Place. It was a small London residential house, not intended originally to be an office; yet in Rintoul's days the paper was printed on the premises and Rintoul and his family lived there. It must have been an uncommonly tight fit ! The back room on the second floor was used in the 'eighties as a bedroom by Hutton on Friday night when the paper went to press. It was in the front room of the same floor that I first saw the two remarkable men who had already been associated as joint Editors and co-proprietors for some twenty-three years. They were unlike in manner, speech, and appearance. Hutton was bearded and somewhat Socratic in countenance. He could be gruff and brusque, but I always found him extraordinarily kind, and, as Townsend said of him, there was always a caress in his letters. He also had what some people were disinclined to give him credit for—a keen sense of the ludicrous. For example, Hutton wrote, when Artemus Ward gave his famous lecture on the occasion of his visit to London in 1866, by far the best analysis of the peculiar quality of his humour, now neglected and forgotten in his own country, where professors sniff at Artemus for his crude jocularity and lament Lincoln's admiration of his papers as a sign of weakness.
FOr all his deep seriousness Hutton was neither a prig nor a prude. How often have I heard him say of someone who had irritated him, " He be d--d," quoting from Walter Scott, one of his heroes. His industry and journalistic achievement were wonderful in view of his physical drawbacks, for he could only see out of one eye, and had to hold book or paper right up to it, his eye laboriously travelling along each line to the end and then going back to the next. Yet he did all his writing himself, and never dictated anything. His handwriting was small, delicate, and not too legible; while Townsend wrote in a large rolling schoolboy hand, Which he had deliberately' adopted at the suggestion of his old chief, John Clark Marshman—the founder and first editor of the Friend of India, which Townsend edited from 1852 to 1859—when the printers had com- plained of the difficulty of deciphering his script.
The amount of work which Hutton And Townsend did for the paper left little time for social relaxation. But Hutton, besides being an active member of the famous Metaphysical Society, used to entertain his friends, generally at the Devonshire Club. Townsend, on the other hand, belonged to no club, and did not go out into society, but liked seeing his friends at his house in Harley Street on Monday after- noons. He resembled Hutton in his generous readiness to recognize new-comers and encourage aspirants. I remember being at once flattered and alarmed by his saying to me at our first interview that he hoped I would be useful in " lightening the incorrigible serious- ness of the Spectator." Whether I was successful or not I cannot tell ; but some twenty years later, when I was attached to the staffs of both the Spectator and Punch, a writer in another weekly, alluding, to this dual allegiance, was moved to remark that it explained why Punch was so dull and the Spectator so futile. The Spectator had its limitations ; it carried some " pas- sengers," of whom I was one ; but to call Hutton and Townsend futile was like speaking disrespectfully of the Equator. They were delightful to work for, and never failed to acknowledge what they considered worthy of praise—sometimes, as I have known, in the tangible form of paying double for an article which specially pleased them. The organization of the office was somewhat casual in those days. Favoured contributors went to the office on Tuesdays and looked round for a book to review. It was thus that while still a raw apprentice I discovered a small paper-bound volume .with the title Soldiers Three, was allowed to carry it off, and wrote the first notice of R. K.'s work that appeared in the Spectator.
The long association of Hutton and Townsend was unclouded. Only once in the whole of their thirty-six years' partnership did they ever have a serious. difference, and then, as Townsend told me, it was amicably settled by reference to their common, friend, Walter Bagehot. Townsend admired his colleague greatly, and his admiration was sometimes expressed with characteristic fervour. I once told him of my having witnessed Hutton's narrow escape from being run over in the Mall, whereon he remarked : " Hutton is as blinl as a bat, but he has the courage of forty, bloodhounds ! Townsend conibined numerical precision with extrava- gance, as when I once heard him say " There are forty- three people who I wish were dead," though I cannot imagine his wanting to kill anything larger than a wasp. He invariably wrote with authority, and not as the scribes ; he discarded qualifications and reserves ; his sweeping generalizations and predictions were not always sound, but when he made a hit it was a palpable one. His method of writing was curious. When he sat down to write an article, it flowed from his pen. He generally allowed himself just two hours, and did not resent being interrupted; but could take up the thread of his argument without any loss of continuity. The articles written by the two men were generally recognizable by their subject and style. Neither of them indulged in tricks or mannerisms, though there were certain words, such as " dreamy," to which Townsend • was specially addicted. I should say that he was the greater journalist, but that Hutton was the deeper thinker and finer literary critic. But it sometimes happened that, whether from unconscious imitation or long association, one found it hard to be- certain of the authorship—whether Townsend was writing like Hutton or vice versa.
Amongst- other contributors whom I came across in the 'eighties were John Dennis,. the son of the author of The Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria, and Daniel Lathbury, the. editor of the Guardian in its palmy days, who for many years was a regular leader writer for the Spectator and the Economist, a staunch Churchman and a man who combined=what is rare in journalists— real saintliness of character with a strong sense of humour. Later on I came to know Talbot Baines, who had been editor of the Leeds Mercury, and was, until he became secretary of the National Society, a frequent and well-equipped writer on economics. I always think of him in connexion with a remark I once heard him make about Lord Shaftesbury, the great philan- thropist : " If there is a Seventh Heaven, Lord Shaftesbury is there." And those who knew and loved Talbot Baines will, I think, be ready to say that he, too, earned his place in that inner circle reserved for holy and humble men of heart. In the 'eighties Herman Merivale the younger, best remembered by his Faucit of Balliol, one' of the best novels of Oxford life, wrote frequently on the drama. At Baffled he had been a contemporary of Swinburne, who himself had been a contributor, both in prose and verse, to the Spectator in the 'seventies, an association which, in view of the reception of Poems' and Ballads, certainly acquits the Editors of any prudish intolerance. Another distinguished writer, of very different aims, who for a while contributed a " Commentary from an Easy Chair " to the Spectator, was Mrs. Oliphant, 'few whose genius, and especially for The Beleaguered City, Townsend had the highest admiration. It was in the 'eighties, again, that Mr. D. S. MacColl was for a while art' critic before he migrated to the Saturday Review.
Other valued staff writers in the 'eighties and 'nineties whom I counted as friends as well as colleagues besides St. Loe Strachey were the Rev. Alfred J. Church and C. J. Cornish. Mr. Church was for many years in charge, of the department of " Current Literature," which ''contained short notices of books not of the first importande. He dealt with a large number every week, hut his brief reviews were not bald summaries ; he was a Sbtind and sagacious critic. The numerous works in Which he popularized the classics are well known, and I via4 recently delighted to read the testimony of Mr. Belloc to- their stimulating influence. They owed their value to the fact that he united to fine scholarship a gift of simple but graceful narrative. He had also a happy knack . for verse, and I still remember his admirable translation of the famous lines of Claudian on Stilicho's victory at. Pollentii—a revival of Roman soldiership as Claudian himself was a revival of Roman poetry :— • " Here mighty Stilieho the Goths o'erthrow,
And valiant Marius here the Cimbri slew ; Both buried lie beneath Pollentia's plain, No more, 0 foolish world, the Roman yoke disdain."
All scholars should be thankful to Mr. Church for his version of a passage in which " Silver Latin " recaptures for a moment the majesty of the golden age in that *splendid line : Discite vesanae Roinam non temnere gentes. C. J. Cornish wrote regularly for many years on natural history, sport, pastimes, and country life with unfailing vivacity and accurate observation. In later years, when I was Assistant Editor, I endeavoured to secure .W. H. Hudson as an occasional contributor, but he excused himself on the ground that he could never write to order, and added, with charming generosity, that the Spectator had really no need of his services when it had already got so admirable a writer on nature as Cornish on its regular staff. Cornish's premature death was a grievous loss, but we were most fortunate in securing as his successor another versatile and accom- plished writer in Eric Parker. I like to think that I may have possibly helped to influence Strachey's choice by the .review which I wrote in 1901 of The Sinner and the Problem—f he first of the many volumes that have come from the pen of' one to whom lovers of the country and sport and all Etonians have such good reason to be grateful.
. I have spoken above of Hutton and - Townsend's quickness in recognizing and encouraging young writers. It was this mixture of flair and generosity which led them, very soon after his leaving Balliol, to enlist St. Loe Strachey as a contributor, and to detect in him those remarkable qualities which justified their offering him, while still a young man, a position with prospects of .partnership which induced him to leave the Bar. I , had met Strachey in my last year at Oxford at the house of Henry Nettleship, a good man as well as a great scholar, to whom I owed my first appointment ; the acquaintance was renewed in the middle 'eighties, when I assisted him in editing the Liberal Unionist, the monthly official organ of the newly formed party, and this association led to his offering me the post of Assistant Editor of the Spectator in 1899, when he had become principal Editor after Hutton's death. It had been a great privilege to work for his predecessors ; and I was not less fortunate in being associated, on . even more intimate terms, with so considerate and appreciative a chief as their successor.
C. L. GRAVES.
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