Part 15 (1/2)
We got to talking about socialism. ”Its basis,” he said, ”is materialism, not man. Herbert Spencer said: 'By no political alchemy can you get golden conduct out of leaden instincts.' And that's a good standard for testing politicians. None better.”
Drummond was always looking at the bright side of life, illuminating it with common sense. And he loved a joke as well as anybody. He told with gusto of the fun he had at the Chicago Exhibition when, one evening, a dozen Arabs and Turks strode through the grounds, gazing gravely at the marvels of that western civilisation.
”Marvellous,” he repeated. ”We shall never see anything like it again.
Nor like those Arabs. If you could have seen them, as they pa.s.sed from light to darkness at an exit gate, while, choking {182} with laughter, they removed the sheets and pillow cases, and silk handkerchiefs, and colored tablecloths which had served them as robes and turbans and sashes, you would have said they were as marvellous as anything in the show. And when they wiped the colour from their faces, you would have recognised several of the most learned professors in America and one Scotsman with a smudge on his cheek.” He roared at the recollection.
He was a professor at twenty-five. And his pupils were university graduates studying for the ministry. It was part of their duty to study natural science, to know something about the world they would preach in and the stupidity of trying to dig science out of Scripture.
Well, Drummond was the man for his work. And besides natural science, his work was for philanthropy and a rousing, liberalising evangelicism.
At the end of his week in the cla.s.sroom he would run over to Edinburgh and hold a religious service with a thousand young men attending earnestly.
”How do you get into personal touch with your college students?” I asked him.
”There you touch a tender point,” he said. ”There is n't enough personal touch in the colleges of Scotland! We put too much faith in lectures. Young men come but rarely into personal touch with their professors. I knew very little of mine. And that's the rule. A man must break through the routine; the professor must, the student must.
Personal touch would open both of them. Take So-and-So at the University. He lectures in the {183} morning to one hundred and fifty or two hundred students. In the afternoon to two hundred more. No personal touch in that; no opportunity for it. Youth can't be taught in droves, or saved in ma.s.ses. And yet, if you go in for individual development, or by small groups, you multiply the work beyond all possibility. Our system is wrong. It neglects character for the sake of compet.i.tion. But what can be done? Effort, individual effort, is the only thing worth a bawbee. All the rest is formulae.”
He said that, as far as his own efforts went, he did what he could, in every way that he could. The development of personal responsibility was what he drove at. ”That's the aim and end of life. If you don't base education on it, what is the use of education? Come. We are responsible for our physical condition. Let's go for a walk!”
Even in Scotland there are moments without rain. Pallid things that might have been stars peeped through the scudding clouds. We walked on, with good, easy strides, and talked,--talked of patriotism for one thing. ”We don't have to teach that in Scotland,” he said. ”We take it for granted. Every Scot is born with it. And there 's no immigration in Scotland. We 're luckier than you, in America, where you have--what is it? A million a year pouring through the steerages?
I asked about that in my visits, but could n't find that you were teaching patriotism, except by fits and starts, in widely separated places. They were talking of teaching it there in the schools. What a funny idea! School is n't the place to acquire {184} patriotism. Home is! But where you have immigration on a huge scale the conditions differ, I confess.”
The talk swung over to Gladstone. Drummond was very friendly with him.
I had said that I thought the G.O.M. a vindictive old gentleman.
Drummond laughed: ”Oh, but we wors.h.i.+p him. We take him very seriously.”
”Yes, and he ill.u.s.trates your favourite theory about taking an interest in things.”
”Right! He is interested in things--movements, tendencies of thought, theology, religion, literature. I can't, though, quote him as an authority on science. But his interest, his active interest in things, keeps him fresh and young, and out of grooves. He is interested in things, in ma.s.ses, nations, races, mountain ranges, literature, not art--literature above all, theological literature most of all.”
”In Home Rule but not in Home Rulers,” I interrupted.
”Does not the greater include the less?”
”Sometimes,” said I, ”but in politics it does not include even what is set down in black and white. Where would you put Gladstone as compared with your other hero, Moody? Moody, you say, was the biggest human being you ever knew.”
”I won't retract that. Gladstone throws a greater spell over his hearers, and, when one meets him, an incomparable fascination. Moody's influence will last the longer, and so will his work.”
This was interesting, to say the least of it. Then we turned home.
Four years later, Drummond died. Only forty-five!
{185}
CHAPTER XIII
SIR HENRY IRVING
Too much is said about the evanescent nature of an actor's fame. Is it so evanescent? Or are we believing, according to habit, merely what we have been told? Burbage's fame has lived as long as Queen Elizabeth's, and that is long enough. Suppose the Great Queen's fame eventually should chance to live longer than that of her subject, what is there evanescent about the latter since it has lived already through the three hundred years which separate us from his death? Betterton's fame may yet outlive that of the sovereigns under whom he flourished,--Charles II, William and Mary, and Queen Anne. What reason have we to suppose that it will not? Betterton's name has been one of the highest, most honoured names in England for two centuries and a half. Garrick's fame has lived as long as Doctor Johnson's, and Garrick had no Boswell. Mrs. Siddons is as well known to-day as, say George III, and more favourably known. Talma's fame has not been eclipsed by Napoleon's. Of Rachel we know as much as of the Empress Josephine. It is easier to tell offhand who was a famous actor one hundred and fifty years ago than {186} to say who was Prime Minister at the same time. Plunket was a greater orator, by all accounts, than Gladstone or Canning, Disraeli or Bright. Tell me--without looking him up in a Book of Reference--who was Plunket? Who were the chancellors of exchequer during Henry Irving's reign? Who were the leaders of the House of Commons? How long must fame last to satisfy all reasonable requirements? The names of how many princes, generals, preachers, statesmen, survive their deaths a hundred years?
An actor's fame, however short it may be, is long enough. How long has the fame of Roscius lasted? An actor has more than fame. He has the public's affection, its money, its applause, its cheers. And he has these nightly, besides the name that lingers after death. How will you prove now that Macready's name is less well known than Macaulay's? Are you safe in a.s.serting that Edmund Kean's name will not add another century to its credit? Or Kemble's name? What reason is there for a.s.suming that Byron's will live longer than that?
Even if the art of acting die, and the acted drama with it, overwhelmed by the cinema, it does not follow that the names and memories of the great players who have already lived will perish the more quickly. We may cherish them with a lively curiosity as the eminent practisers of a lost art, cherish them, in fact, because we are no longer able to replace them. The cinema could never have given us Sir Henry Irving, or the Kendals, the Bancrofts, or John Hare, or Edwin Booth, or Joseph Jefferson, or {187} Sir Johnston Forbes-Robertson. No, not if it unreeled to a million spectators an hour, and its daily receipts exceeded the transactions at the Bank of England!