MR. MAURICE BARING'S REMINISCENCES.*
IT has become almost a proverbial saying that everybody can write one good book—the story of his own life. The proverb would admit of fewer exceptions than any proverb in the world if only the author could be depended upon to tell the whole truth. Our own feeling is that an autobiography is bound to be interesting, even if the author tells a proportion of the truth. If he gives in the barest and most unskilled fashion the mere facts about his childhood, his relation to his parents, his school- days, his search for a career and so on, he cannot help being interesting, because at every stage he provides material for a comparison with our own experience. Without wishing to be paradoxical, we might even say that if he has a real gift of dullness he still cannot be dull, because the fact of his dullness is in itself an interesting subject of speculation. Why is he dull ? What made him dull ? Was he born dull, or did he achieve dullness ? Did it come through the wrongness of his education or the tediousness of his surroundings ?
These reflections, anyhow, represent the private feelings of the present writer about autobiography. He has often wondered why it should have become a convention that nobody ventures on autobiography till he is old. This convention deprives authors of the field of literary exploration upon which they might venture with the least chance of disaster. Mr. Maurice Baring has dared the convention ; ho muses retro- spectively while he has still, let us hope, as many years before him as he has already spent. But, of course, even if his under- taking had not been in the senses we have mentioned a perfectly safe one, he would not have failed—he is too practised a hand for that. We confess that when we began to read his book our first impression was that the scale upon which he wrote of nursery life was too large and therefore too solemn. Trifles seemed in danger of being turned into sententiousness. But the reading of a few more pages sufficed to correct that impression. Mr. Baring undoubtedly has the knack of this kind of writing. His art had tried to conceal itself from us for a few moments, but we were very soon firmly convinced of its existence. To tell the truth, we became absorbed.
We have not often read a more satisfactory presentation of the realism of nursery life than Mr. Baring's description of the convulsive events which followed the declaration of one of his sisters that she wEis a fairy. Mr. Baring, then aged, let us say, seven, was deeply in love with his French governess, known as Cherie, and informed his sisters that one day he would be married to Cherie. Whereupon his sister Elizabeth, who had already claimed, without challenge, the position of Queen of the Fairies, • The Puppet Show of Memory. By Maurice Baring. London : W. Heine- mann. ins. net.]
said, "Just as you are going to be married to Cherie and when you are in church I will turn you into a frog." No sooner had Elizabeth made this ominous remark than her brother ran out of the room and howled in a manner which filled the whole house from the housemaids' rooms aloft to the housekeeper's room in the basement. Members of the family and servants emerged in alarm from various rooms. Between uncontrollable sobs the boy explained the cause of his grief. The whole household then appealed to Elizabeth—" Say you're not a fairy." Elizabeth's retort was, "How can I say I am not a fairy when I am one?" a. statement which Maurice himselfafelt to be all too true and well founded. More sobs and yells accordingly followed. There was universal indignation against Elizabeth. Cherie intervened to say that the wedding would undoubtedly take place in spite of all the fairies. Elizabeth was taken away to be reasoned with in a calmer atmosphere. An hour and a half later, having been heavily bribed with promises and temporarily sent to bed, she consented to compromise. Her final concession was, "I'll say I'm not a fairy, but I am." The good news was announced to Maurice by diplomatic elders in the form that Elizabeth had said she was not a fairy. Serenity was thus restored. People who do not enjoy this story cannot be interested in children ; and people who do not think that Mr. Baring has told It well cannot recognize the art of narrative when they see it.
Mr. Baring was not happy at his private school, yet it seems to have been chosen with a view to his being carefully tended. How often this kind of thing happens. Private schools are much better managed than formerly ; the boys are scrupulously looked after, if not actually coddled, and they are more elabor- ately entertained with various amusements than ever before. And yet there is something in the attitude of little boys towards one another—something verging on hostility or cruelty—which often wrecks the whole scheme. Mr. Baring says :—
" The masters laughed at me mercilessly for my pronunciation of English. I don't know what was wrong with it, except that I said yellow, aint for aren't, and an for aunt, but I did my best to get out Of this as soon as possible. Apart from idio- syncrasies of pronunciation, my voice seemed to them comic, and they used to imitate me by speaking through their noses whenever I said anything. The boys at first entirely ignored one, simply telling one to shut up if one spoke, .but the boys in my own division soon became friendly, especially an American boy called Hamilton Fish the third. Why he had a three after his name I don't know. He was the first man to be killed in the American-Spanish War in Cuba. There was no bullying. One boy, although he was in the first division, was charming, and treated one likes grown-up person. This was Basil Black- wood. Even then he drew pictures which were the delight of his friends. Another boy who was friendly was Niall Campbell. Dreadful legends were told about Winston Churchill, who had been taken away from the school. His naughtiness appeared to have surpassed anything. He had been flogged for taking sugar from the pantry, and so far from being penitent, he had taken the Headmaster's sacred straw hat from where it hung over the door and kicked it to pieces. His sojourn at this school had been one long feud with authority. The boys did not seem to sympathise with him. Their point of view was conventional and priggish."
Fond mothers often imagine that because a boy has not been altogether happy at his private school he will find a public school still worse. That was not what Mr. Baring found, and he is not peculiar in his experience. From the first moment he loved Eton and it has remained one of the inspirations of his life. But we must return for a moment to the private school to quote a pointed little satire in verse which was written by one of the boys. There were sons of several well-known people at the school, and when one term Maurice Baring was allowed to go home just before the appointed end of the term other little boys assumed (as they would !) that favours were being shown to families which had titles. Here is the lampoon :—
" The Honoumbles are going away to-morrow, And ten to one the Count goes too.
We poor swinies we don't go,
We poor swinies we don't go. The llonourables are going away to-morrow, And ten to one the Count goes too."
One of Mr. Baring's most vivid recollections of Eton is of a school lecture at which Mr. Gladstone was present. At the end Mr. Gladstone leapt to his feet and made an impassioned speech on classical education. The last sentence of his peroration was as follows :—
"But this, Mr, Provost, I venture to say, and say with confidence, and it is not a fancy of youth nor the whim of the moment, but the conviction forced upon me even more by the experience of life than by any reasoning quality, that if the purposes of education be to fit the human mind for the efficient performance of the greatest functions, the ancient culture, and, above all, the Greek culture, is by far the best and strangest, the most lasting, and the most elastic instrument that could possibly be applied to it.'" Mr. Baring adds that when Mr. Gladstone said this his eyes flashed, he opened and raised his arms and his body seemed to expand and grow tall.
It is difficult to pick and choose among Mr. Baring's stories for quotation. They nearly all have a whimsicality or subtlety that would have eluded most memories. We must, however, give a special good mark to the following little incident, which happened when Mr. Baring was living with a German family :— " Domestic life in the Theme family was full of infinite charm and many amusing little incidents. Dr. Timme grew a melon, which he kept in a encumber frame. It was not a satisfactory melon, for it never grew to be larger than a tennis bell. It was hard and green. Nevertheless, one day Dr. Timme made the announcement that the melon would be ready for eating in a fortnight's time. trierzehn Tagen wird die Malone gegessen,' were his actual words. Frau Dokter looked seepticaL When the fortnight had elapsed Theme brought in the melon, which was still no bigger and no softer, and said, ` Bente eaten wir die Melons' (' To-day the melon -will be eaten I), and he cut it with difficulty into twelve bits. Frau Dokter said it was unripe, and not fit to be eaten, and that it VMS quite hard and green. 'No,' said Timme, Dada ist die Stifle, sse bleibt immer (` It is that kind of melon : an evergreen *). He added later, 'Man Man salts immer unreifes Obst wen. Die Thire suchen sat &Amer unreifea Obat atm ' C One ought always to eat unripe fruit. Animals eat unripe fruit for choice a.'
That is surely a very bright idea for snecess in melon-growing. It is the kind of story in which Mr. Baring excels, though he deals in more robust affairs 11.4 for instance, when he engaged in an inkpot fight in the .Chancellery in Paris and covered the walls and staircase and himself and his friends with ink, red and black, or when he let loose a. live snake in the Foreign Office in London. At Cambridge, where he could not pass his "Little Go," his company was sought after by scholars and men of letters. We will end by quoting what Mr. Baring says about Dr. Verrsdl, the classical scholar, whose theories and emendations excited admiration but sometimes also consternation :— "When I told Dr. Verrall that we were reading Boileau he was delighted. He said : Hew I wish I was reading Boileau; instead of which, when I have time to read, I read the latest Kipling story? He said he spent his life in vain regret for the books be wanted to read, but which he knew he never would read. He could not help reading the modern books, but he often deplored the sad necessity. I stuck up for the modern books ; I said I would far rather read Kipling than Boileau. I supposed in Boileau's time people said : Here I am, wasting my time reading Boileau, which I must read so as to follow the conversation at dinner, when I might be reading le Raman de la Rose.'"
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