MARGINAL COMMENT
By HAROLD NICOLSON
IT is with special regret, now that we arc about to enter upon the age of uniformity, that we' mourn the loss of an uncommon man. Sir Stephen Gaselee, who died suddenly last week, was something more than a Cambridge personality ; he was something more than Librarian to the Foreign Office, the Athenaeum and Magdalene College ; he was one of those rare individuals who can be eccentric without inhumanity and exceptional without affectation. His loose-knit frame, his strange deportment, his gait, which was simultaneously drawling and purposeful, combined to render him a noticeable figure ; he deliberately enhanced the unexpectedness of his appearance by choosing clothes which bore but slight relation either to space or time. The tail-coat which he invariably wore seemed longer, larger, wider than the tail-coats of ordinary mortals ; his top-hat—which, it was said, had been specially manufactured from his own design—combined in a truly remarkable way the manner of the Goncourt brothers with the manner of Coke of Norfolk ; and his trousers varied from white tussore to startling check. The impression which he created upon those who did not know him was disconcerting. I can remember crossing his path one June morning as I walked with a friend past the pelicans in St. James's Park. " Who on earth was that? " my friend asked me. " That was Stephen Gaselec," I answered, " the Librarian of the Foreign Office." " But why," my friend persisted, " why does he dress like a Lithuanian bridegroom? " The description was exact, but I could find no answer to the enquiry. Gaselee was not in any way the type of person who desires to attract attention. He was a modest man, a shy man in his way, a scholar who was interested in many curious things. It could not be said that his appearance, or even his immediate manner were graceful ; yet in heart and mind he was one of the most graceful men that I have ever known.
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When one considers, or seeks to convey to others, the personality of someone whom one has known and liked for many years, one realises how central, yet how incommunicable, an element in any individual is the quality of voice. It has always seemed strange to me that those who have gazed upon the great figures of the past have failed either to notice or to record the tone or inflexion of their speaking voices, and have thus omitted from their descriptions a factor which, in actual life, forms almost a third part of any individuality. Even those who, like Boswell, were intensely desirous to transmit to future generations a vivid physical portrait of their heroes have not been able to hand down to us any convincing sound- picture of the way they spoke. We know that Dr. Johnson wheezed and panted and thundered. We know that Napoleon spoke in a low voice, and that only when he became enraged did the Corsican accent assert itself. We know that the voice of Byron was soft and that of Shelley shrilL We know that in the deep tones of Tennyson's voice were mingled the broad vowels of the Lincolnshire wolds ; that Gladstone's tones were resonant and rotund ; and that from the 'huge mass of Bismareit's frame there came the choir-boy accents of a boy of nine. Yet when we compare these meagre indications with the effect, upon our own conception of personality, of voices such as those of Smuts, or Lloyd George, or Curzon, or Churchill, we realise that posterity, owing to the gramophone and the recording-van, will acquire a far more complete sense of per- sonality than has ever been accorded to ourselves. For when I think of Stephen Gaselee it is not his strange shape and habit that remain in my memory, but the cadence of his lovely voice—a voice in which were mingled the grace of the scholar and the delicacy of a man of taste. It was gently emphatic, softly resolute.
Gaselee was the type of conversationalist who relies less upon the taut interchange of epigram than upon the provision of irrelevant. and curious items of information. He was the hospitable type of conversationalist, in that he regarded his interlocutors not as anta- gonists but as guests ; he would open his crowded cupboard and spread upon the table varied objects of beauty and delight. He could speak about Coptic liturgy, and the origin of rhyme in Latin mediaeval literature, and the development of the Burgundy trade- routes, and the several Madeira vintages, and the history of the British colony at Oporto, and the divergent attitude adopted towards State archives by Lords Castlereagh and Palmerston. He was a most clubbable man. What rendered his presence so agreeable, what will render his abaeace such a gap, is that he did not really care for conversation which cemred entirely upon current events. He -would, with his accustomed courtesy, listen quite amicably to stories about last night's air-raid ; the boredom which he felt was not visible in any outward signs of distaste ; it would be conveyed rather by the studied politeness of his patience ; the words of the story-teller would cease upon the midnight without pain. But when the conversation switched away from the war or the Labour Con- ference or rationing, a light would kindle again in Gaselee's eye, and suddenly he would be talking quietly about the Desert Fathers or the several varieties of the Malvazia grape. The charm of the information he imparted was that, although strictly accurate, it bore generally upon the by-paths rather than upon the high-roads of experience. He was always leading one down curious lanes, parting the branches as he went, gently indicating rare ferns and flowers in the hidden coppice, suggesting comparisons and associations which one had not imagined before. And as he spoke, his accurate and modest voice gave a harmony to all he said.
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As Librarian to the Foreign Office it was his duty to safeguard and preserve important State documents. He fulfilled this duty with the conscientiousness of an ideal public archivist. It was also his duty to supervise, and sometimes to edit, the memoranda on treaty-precedents prepared by his able and industrious staff. In this also he displayed reverence, some assiduity and sense. But Gaselee had an original mind, and would never have been content merely to follow the beaten highways of his predecessors. To the ordinary work of the Foreign Office Library (an institution which has for years maintained a high standard of accuracy and research) he added two personal innovations. He showed great courage and latitude of vision in putting at the disposal of students such original documents as might, under less imaginative guardianship, have remained hidden for many years. No man could have given more generously of his time and attention to the British and foreign students who appealed to him for assistance. He went further. During his tenure of his post he was able gradually to accumulate small libraries of standard works in our several Embassies and Legations abroad. The Embassy at Berlin, for instance, was stocked by Gaselee with works upon the German Reich which would have been beyond the means of any ordinary Attache. He took a constant personal interest in the quality of those small libraries in our Missions abroad, and many a young diplomatist will have been grateful to Gaselee for providing him on the spot with works of reference and enlightenment which he would himself have been unable either to purchase or to transport.
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It is as a host, however, that I shall remember Gaselee best. I recall an evening which I spent with him in his rooms at Magdalene College. The other guest was A. E. Housman, who arrived wearing a stiff straw hat which certainly dated from the publication of the Shropshire Lad. The food was well cooked and chosen ; the several vintages were superb. I sat there late into the night listening to the two scholars discussing prosody. Housman rapped out the metres with a dry hand upon the mahogany ; the glasses tinkled as he did so ; Gaselee, with a deft mixture of deference and contra- diction, soothed that prickly soul. On and on they went talking about dochmiacs and choriambs. The bells of Cambridge echoed solemnly around us. Housman rose suddenly and perched his straw hat upon his head. Gaselee saw him out into the night. " A charming man," he said gently when he returned to me. "A charming man." "A great poet," I answered, "in any case." "And what a Latinist! " said Gaselee,.shaking his head in awed respect.
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