CORRESPONDENCE.
A COMMENTARY IN AN EASY-CHAIR:
THE CIVIL LIST-" THE GRACIOUS CONSIDERATION OF THM
SOVEREIGN, AND THE GRATITUDE OF THE COUNTRY." THERE have been a great many witty things said as to the incapacity of certain intelligences for perceiving the distinction between jest and earnest, which is sometimes but a slight distinction, and liable to shift according to the sense in which it is taken. "Half in jest and whole in earnest," I have heard said as the explanation of a playful-deadly thrust to. which there might be two, but was intended to be but one meaning. It is confusing, however, to find a serious writer taking in this way my recent observation about the connection of Mr. W. H. Smith with literature, and consequent ingratitude on his part in giving the grants to the pensioners on the Civil List an eleemosynary air. I hope that writer will be consoled, if I say that I never supposed Mr. Smith to write down with his own hand the special qualification for a pension, which, as I felt myself compelled to remark, is appended to every name in the recent list, or to have any malignant intention in respect to the poor re- cipients of the public bounty. The youths at Oxford who let down a big pinafore over the Minister's head when he received his honorary degree, and hailed him with the charm- ing ditty in which Sir Joseph Porter, K.C.B., was ushered on
to the stage, might just as well be said to have insulted the respectable gentleman who was then at the head of the "Queen's Navee," as he is now at the head of her Majesty's Treasury. He is a most conscientious statesman, and no doubt gave his very best consideration to the applications for pensions put before him. But for that foolish statement about the novelist's widow which brought Mr. Besant down upon him, and which in all probability never emanated from Mr. Smith at all, but from the Silly Secretary who perpetrates all the indiscretions, I do not know, except by the reasoning of analogy, that Mr. Smith has any contempt for literary persons at all. Most people have who have anything to do with the production to the world of their performances,—except printers, indeed, who I think look upon us with a certain respect.
The rest of Mr. Jennings's statements, however, which concern plain fact, are in no way contradictory, as he seems to suppose, of anything I ventured to say on the subject,—and there is no harm in entering a little more closely into it. He gives what I had not within reach, nor probably should have thought of consulting, the letter of the Act concerning the distribution of the Civil List, that its grants are to be given "to such persons only as have just claims on the Royal beneficence, or who, by their personal services to the Crown, by the performance of duties to the public, or by their useful discoveries in science, or attainments in literature and the arts, have merited the gracious consideration of their Sovereign, and the gratitude of their country." This is a wide stipulation indeed, much wider than I had supposed : and qualifies a nurse or footman in the Royal service as much at least as Sir William Armstrong or Lord Tennyson,--possibly more, as those who have " just claims on the Royal beneficence" are mentioned first. We all know, however, that Royal flunkies and maidservants do not usually share in the distribution of this pittance, and that it has come to be understood as specially devoted to science, literature, and the arts. Even, however, in the widest meaning, there is not a word about " inadequate means of support." Whatever the necessary qualifications are, poverty is not included among them. It may be taken for granted that no one not in need would care to accept the very small sum that can be given. But even this is not a sound supposition, for I know of cases in which it has been accepted, as it was presumed to be given, as an honourable distinction, an acknowledgment that the recipient, or, more grateful still, the father, husband, or brother of the recipient, "had merited the gracious consideration of their Sovereign, and the gratitude of their country." This, and not the want of adequate support, is the condition required,—which was my -contention. Mr. Jennings has been good enough to prove my ease for me, in the most complete and satisfactory manner. Twelve hundred pounds a year is a small sum enough to -distribute as a distinction among those who have "merited the gratitude of their country,"—noble words, which would make any gift grateful and honourable. But, alas ! were it to be devoted to those who are "without adequate means of support," it would be as a drop to the sea. I must repeat, accordingly, that inadequate means of sup- port have nothing whatever to do with the matter. It is a compliment, a distinction, an honour; it is not an Alms. I am much obliged to Mr. Jennings for making this matter perfectly clear. And I trust that even the secretary, who directs the clerk who makes out the list, may perhaps take the trouble -another time not to insult her Majesty whose gracious con- sideration, and the country whose gratitude, has been honour- ably merited—not to speak of the man or woman, living or clead, who has deserved that consideration and gratitude—by adding another qualification not thought of at all, to the just claim recognised by the Act. The smaller the sum to be .divided is, the greater is the reason that its real conditions should be fully established and recognised.
1` Who have merited the gracious consideration of their Sovereign, and the gratitude of their country." These are very -fine words indeed, and it is well to recall them, to take away the flavour of penury and sad destitution in which last year's gift was enwrapped. Put in its true sense, thus, the little pension, be it £25, be it—magnificent award !--£100, becomes a jewel which, put upon the widow's sables or the orphan's coat, would make them shine,—and this is how it was intended to be, I am glad to be confirmed in believing, not a bedesmails
badge. In the earlier ages, a knight and hero had no higher aspiration than to be so considered (besides more substantial recompenses, such as captured towns and castles, and other small matters by the way). It is the foundation, theoretically, of all honour. A splendid statesman, Lord of the Treasury, Minister of the Interior, or whatever be may be called, has, in fact, no better, sometimes by no means so good, a reason for being where he is. It is the real meaning of the Garter, the Croix de St. Louis, the Golden Fleece, and all other fine distinctions. To have these words said over his grave, becomes a dead soldier better than salvoes of artillery. In short, next to the Well done, good and faithful servant," of the eternal award, this is the best any man can hope for or desire. It was a wise and generous Act of Parliament which gave any public mark of such a noble rank in the country to the little-noticed and often undecorative, as well as undecorated, classes who follow literature and the arts. To be sure, the sign of honour is not of an ornamental kind; the tiny dividend (income-tax carefully subtracted) cannot be hung at any man's button-hole. Still, it is honest and innocent money, not enough to raise the covetousness of any demagogue, and carrying honour—which we might even spell with a capital, Honour—with it, not a public profession of beggary. I for one desire that this should be emphatically noted : and perhaps in another year the reader will keep an eye upon the list to see how it comes out, as, if life and faculty last, the writer will also take care to do,—and I invite Mr. Jennings, who has so kindly come to my aid as an expositor of the law of the question—a little out of my own range—to do so too.
After all, when one comes to think of it, a writer who has earned the gratitude of his country and the consideration of his Sovereign, is as noble an object, to say the least, as the policeman whose pension-list has been so much more hotly discussed. Free education and free libraries are among the questions of the day, and great sums of money have been dedicated to both. To what use, if there were no writers to supply them ? At the very fountain-head of all is the literary person, who might dam up the stream or cut it off altogether. What a poor and shabby figure we should cut in the world, with all our Colonies and all our navies, the Empire upon which the sun, &c., had we no books ! And in what benighted solitari- ness of living should we all be dwelling within our own shores, toppling over most probably into the seas on all sides of us, if explorers and travellers and conquerors, opening new worlds, had not carried some poor minion with them to record their discoveries, or packed up a pen along with their compasses and swords. Why, we should never have known how Mr. Stanley drove his niggers, black and white, and dreamed of the dinner which was out of reach on Christmas Day, but for that little implement. Think of that ! We might have thought the hero of the day only a very enterprising journalist, the smartest of correspondents,—and even in that capacity, he could have been nothing but for the faculty of the ready-writer. Think, we say, of that ! There is another gentleman, a subject of Queen Elizabeth, who has as much in common with Mr. Stanley as Macedon had with Monmouth—to wit, that their names begin with the same letter—of whom we may perhaps be allowed to say that he was the first and greatest subject of his Queen, and has merited the gratitude of his country from that time to this for a line of benefits unbroken descending through the centuries. Indeed, he never had any pension, or ribbon, or cross of honour. He was neither married nor buried in the Abbey. Distinctions in his day went the way of young Southampton and the rest, but did not come near him. It is
better in our time, our great poet having been made a Baron at the tail of all the vulgarer Peers,—which neverthe- less was not a bad thing. One wonders, by-the-way, if, say at a fashionable party, Lord Tennyson would have his place, and go out of the room after the Lords of coal and liquor who had been " created " before him ? There is no doubt, we fear, as to what the Heralds' College would say on the subject; but would even the most fashionable of hostesses have strength of mind to carry it out?
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