22 MAY 1920, Page 13

THE LATE LORD GUTHRIE—A PERSONAL APPRECIA- TION.

(To THE EDITOR or THE " SPECTATOR.")

SIR,—As an English writer to an English paper, I want to record my humble appreciation of a great Scotsman. I cannot write of Lord Guthrie in any of his public capacities: it was in the circle of his own family that 1 was privileged to know him.

He was a man of very generous manners, a most courteous

host, who gave good measure to the least important guest.— scores of people of various nationalities will bear witness to this—and he had a great talent for appreciation. His "calen- dar of saints" held a vast number of names—names of men and women, young and old, living and dead—and he had the power of transmitting his enthusiasms. He revealed Scotland to me: pages of her history, her triumphs, her " lost causes and impossible loyalties" were pictured for me in that vivid and. discriminating mirror, his mind; and that shrewd glint of the eye, that "change of key " in voice and posture, lent additional interest to his subject. Many times in that famous dining- room at Swanston I have listened spellbound to his tales of melt and things, fascinated by that dry humour, that nice weighing of motive and achievement, that sure pounce upon the essential, that many-windowed vision which so rarely condemned; above all, by that large charity which made such a generous covering for the sins of others. His kindness was the biggest thing about the man. Nothing was too complex for its comprehen- sion, nothing too trivial for its notice—it was royal. There are many tales told of Charles John Guthrie, tales that show his ready wit and masterly sense of justice, his inexhaustible patience and capacity for work. I ant choosing one of a different type to set down here. It is told by his young house- maid, a girl from a remote Highland village, where camerae are almost unknown, and there were no home photographs for the young people to carry with them when they set out into the big, dangerous world. Lord Guthrie saw the pity of this and set himself to supply the need with his characteristic cheery thoroughness. He lent his own expensive Kodak to the girl, gave her two or three demonstrations upon its use, and drew up a careful scheme of procedure for her :-

" A. Stand with your own back to the sun. • B. Be sure that the person's head is in the picture—it is rather important !

C. Turn the key and bring round a new number between each exposure," &c., &c.

Then he bought a plentiful supply of films, arranged about developing and printing them (" He thought of everything." says the girl; "it was just like hint! "), and sent her off cn her journey North rosy with excitement. A week or two later there was happiness of a very high order in a certain village in the Highlands. All the old people, and young ones too, had been photographed, and various flat packages were sent off with tearful joy to the boys and girls scattered overseas.

There are many tales of this kind that might he told; and many also that would show his active sympathy for the sorrowful—that sympathy that cost hint very mucli in pain as well as in thought and in money. Several tildes during those long years of the war the knowledge of the wickedness' and suffering rampant in the world made a sick man of him. He never could have grown old; there was till the end a

certain gaiety of mind, a receptivity, that denied his seventy years; and with this was to he found on occasions that most mature of . fruits, a wise humility which could own its ignorance and be content to wait for fuller knowledge. A shorter and a better way to express this would be to say that Lord Guthrie was a Christian. " Recumbent," he said as he lay dying, "a recumbent figure—that word means more than

lying down,' it means lying on something, on Sometititig stronger than itself."

A book might very well be written upon him, but it is net my place to write it. I will content myself with quoting in conclusion those lines of Robert LOUIS Stevenson's Written of another "Felix " which are so curiously applicable to this friend also :- " I knew thee . . apt to pity, brave to endure.

In peace or war a Roman full equipt."