Читать книгу A Passing World - Marie Belloc Lowndes - Страница 3

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I recall the winter and spring of 1914 as having been the happiest of the first eighteen years of my married life. From early childhood I had longed to write stories, and I was now becoming in a modest way established as a novelist.

In the spring of 1912, I had received a letter from a member of The Writers' Club with whom I was slightly acquainted. In this she explained she was an amateur fortune-teller, and desired to tell my fortune. The lady cast my horoscope, and sent me the result, which consisted of four closely written pages.

In a covering letter she urged me to give up the journalism from which I still drew almost the whole of my income, and begged me to devote myself entirely to novel writing. She added that if I dilly-dallied as to that form of literary work, a time would come when I should find it exceedingly difficult to publish a novel. I had always longed to do creative work; but I am diffident, and nobody, excepting my husband, had given me any encouragement. Also, after having published two novels with no success, I had come to fear I would never make any headway as a novelist. All the same, my intention persisted, and for many years I wrote early each morning part of a chapter of whatever novel I had in hand.

The famous remark made by Talleyrand concerning the gentle happiness of life as led by the men and women of his world before the French Revolution, might have been echoed by a great many Englishmen and Englishwomen of my generation belonging to the professional classes up to the end of July 1914. I was at last beginning to earn about half of my income with fiction, and The Lodger had proved a successful serial in the Daily Telegraph. Yet although this story was destined to have a far larger sale than any of my other novels, when published in book form it was badly noticed. It shocked those reviewers who had approved of The Heart of Penelope and Barbara Rebell, which had both been written in the Victorian tradition. That my first two novels should belong to that solid tradition was natural, for my favourite Victorian novel was, and still is, Mrs. Gaskell's Wives and Daughters.

The Daily Telegraph also serialized The Chink in the Armour. I laid the scene of this novel at Enghien, a popular resort within a few miles of Paris. It was the only French inland town where certain forms of gambling—I think roulette and trente-et-quarante—were permitted. I had never been there, although I had often heard of it as a gay, and somewhat improper, place. After I had written the story, I was in Paris one wintry week with a little daughter, and I suddenly decided I should like to see Enghien. I remember how sadly disappointed was the child at the forlorn appearance of the town, and even more of the famous lake, but I realized how charming Enghien must be in the summer and autumn.

Although I was working extremely hard, for I was afraid to give up my regular journalistic work, I was leading a most interesting, indeed a delightful, life, and on the eve of my forty-sixth birthday I still felt a young woman. I went out a great deal, meeting almost all my fellow-writers, and I was often at 10 Downing Street, the house of the Prime Minister.

In 1914 I had known Margot Asquith, in a real sense, for exactly twenty years. In 1894 I spent a week in a Scotch country-house where she and I were the only unmarried young women. I became truly fond of Margot, and I was on kindly terms with Mr. Asquith, although I had the feeling that his prejudice against Catholicism affected his relationship with me—this in spite of the fact that he was always a kind, courteous, and indeed a delightful, host. I became, and remained, warmly attached to his and Margot's only daughter, Elizabeth, later Princess Antoine Bibesco. I have known a considerable number of highly intelligent and charming English girls. Elizabeth Asquith stands out in my memory as the most attractive of them all. She also had a kind and generous nature—as well as what used to be called a good mind.

During the spring and early summer of 1914 I was also constantly in the London house of Margot Asquith's brother and sister-in-law, Lord and Lady Glenconner. Their house in Queen Anne's Gate was a few moments' walk from the Foreign Office, and Sir Edward Grey, who was becoming acutely anxious as to the state of Europe, dined with them almost every night, going back to the Foreign Office, after dinner, to read the cables which were then arriving from every European capital all night as well as all day.

I remember every waking hour of the week preceding the Declaration of War in the August of 1914. I learned of the letter sent to Mr. Asquith on the Sunday by the Conservative group almost before anyone else did so, and I recollect being told that its dispatch had been a great relief to Edward Grey. It may be recalled that certain members of the British Cabinet believed England could keep out of the new Franco-German war.

Meanwhile, my son, Charles Lowndes, had come home from school suffering from severe pains in his head. I felt acutely anxious, not at my boy's condition, as I should have been, but because my whole heart was in France. I had another, immediate, reason for anxiety, for it was rumoured in Fleet Street that the Government might order every daily paper to cease publication.

I had always had a woman doctor; my husband and our children were looked after by Dr. Henry Troutbeck, who as a little child had been with me at a dame's school during the two winters my mother had spent in Westminster after my father's death. I was very fond of Dr. Troutbeck, and I had great faith in him; so I felt much dismayed when I learned the outbreak of war had caught him in Switzerland. The very young locum who was looking after Dr. Troutbeck's practice sent for a nurse, and on the Friday of that first week of war he suddenly told us he wished for a second medical opinion, as our boy's condition puzzled as well as alarmed him. The specialist arrived after my husband had left for The Times office; he was accompanied by a friend who was also a doctor, and they both examined the boy. I was then told our son had acute mastoid trouble, and that an immediate operation was essential, and must be performed in a nursing-home where he should be taken as soon as an ambulance could be procured. The specialist informed me that the usual fee for the operation was a hundred guineas, but that he would accept thirty guineas, and he offered to arrange for a considerable reduction in the usual nursing-home charges. I went into our study, and telephoned to my husband. He told me to hold on, and within a few moments came back to say the Editor of The Times had himself got in touch with St. Thomas's Hospital, and arranged for our boy to be taken in there at once.

I had cashed an American cheque for sixty pounds the day before war had been declared, and I had put the notes and gold in a box where I kept some lace which had belonged to my English grandmother. I took out of the box three gold sovereigns and three shillings, and I remember, as I thanked him, the look of surprise which flashed across the face of the specialist when I handed him the fee. A moratorium had been declared, and no one was paying out any money.

An ambulance arrived two hours later and, as my son was being carried out of the house, I told myself that he had gone through our front door for the last time.

The nurse was a very young woman, and her whole mind was set on going to France at the very first possible moment. So when we reached the gates of St. Thomas's Hospital she refused to go any further, though I begged her to wait for at least the few minutes it would take her to explain my son's case to the house surgeon.

Charles Lowndes was carried into what looked to me like a mortuary, for there were slabs of stone or marble, on one of which he was laid to be examined by a doctor. My secretary, a dear friend, was in our house that day, and I had dictated to her a short account of my son's illness. I took the typed page with me to the hospital, and handed it to the doctor. The boy was then taken to what I learned afterwards was a surgical ward. I was in a sad state of distress, but I could hardly help smiling when in reply to my question to the sister in charge of the ward, "May I see the surgeon?" she looked as if I had made a most improper suggestion as to that gentleman, as she exclaimed, "Certainly not! Come back to-morrow morning, and I will tell you what it will be right for you to know."

I bade her goodbye, and no doubt she supposed I was about to go home. But I had seen a notice in the hall which stated that as long as a patient was on the danger list, his next-of-kin could stay in the hospital. So I sat down in the great hall which in St. Thomas's Hospital overlooks the Thames, and is open to the air on one side. There I waited till I saw the doctor who had examined my son. Going up to him, I asked if I might stay in the hospital till after the operation had been performed. He said brusquely, "What makes you think your son is going to have an operation?" I replied, "Because two noted specialists"—and I gave their names—"have declared that if he does not have an operation to-day he will die in agony before to-morrow morning." He said firmly, "If your son has an operation to-day he will certainly die, for he is not in a fit state to have an immediate operation." This doctor and I became good friends; indeed he was exceedingly kind to me during the weeks which followed, and I never pass St. Thomas's Hospital, now badly shattered by the bombs which fell during the second World War, without giving him an affectionate thought. I came to know him and his charming young wife; he admired my brother's verse, and this formed a tie between us, apart from my gratitude for all the kindness he showed me in connection with my son's illness. I felt a pang of pain when I learned, after peace had been declared, that he had died as a result of his increasingly hard work.

Charles Lowndes was soon moved to what I think was called the medical side of the hospital. In a short time he was put into a comparatively small room of which the door opened on the left of the passage leading into a large ward. There, during that first August of the first World War, I sat for many hours of each day, writing and correcting proofs.

My son's condition remained very serious, and none of the doctors seemed able to discover what was the matter with him. I was told that on one occasion nine physicians were gathered round his bed. Then one day the house surgeon said to me, "Has your boy been in contact with a case of scarlet fever?" I reminded him that, in the account of the boy's illness I had dictated, I had stated there had been cases of scarlet fever at Westminster School just before the outbreak of war. In that statement I had also told how he had gone to a swimming-bath just before he had fallen ill. The account I had written was found, and his illness was diagnosed as rheumatic fever complicated with suppressed scarlet fever. Till then it had been believed he had an abscess on the brain, and was bound to die. This, however, I did not learn at the time.

Two things have remained in my mind concerning those summer weeks of 1914. The first was coming out of the hospital at six o'clock one evening, and seeing on the newspaper placards the news of the fall of Namur. I realized, with a sensation of anguish, what this would mean to France. The second thing I remember was the sudden arrival at the hospital of certain of the soldiers who had fought at Mons—those who will live in English history as "the Old Contemptibles".

The Germans have an expression which means "joy in another's pain". I have only once felt that despicable feeling. I felt it, coupled with a certain bitter amusement, when I became aware that the nurses who had looked forward so eagerly to the coming of the wounded that they had done everything in their power—and that power was considerable—to stay the influx of ordinary patients, were having a most unpleasant time with the gallant survivors of the British Expeditionary Force. These men were naturally all Regulars, and to me they recalled the most famous of Kipling's characters. They were full of cheer, full of courage, and regarded the war as being as good as won. Splendid fighters they had already proved themselves, but they were very different to what the nurses had expected them to be, and with these patients it proved impossible to keep up the ordinary hospital discipline. They insisted on smoking in bed, and their relations and friends brought them bottles of gin and whisky cleverly concealed about their persons.

Well do I remember, when the King and Queen visited the hospital for the first time after the beginning of the war, going into a stifled fit of real hysterical laughter—a thing which had only happened to me twice in my life—when I overheard one of the sisters telling the Queen how much they all enjoyed nursing these heroes.

During the summer of 1914 I led a strange, and in a sense a most unnatural, life. I arrived at the hospital at nine o'clock each morning, and I stayed till six, bringing sandwiches for my lunch. I also kept there everything necessary to make an early afternoon cup of tea.

Meanwhile my son went on suffering from acute pains in his head, and there was still nothing to show what was the matter with him. Two of my women friends came to see us at St. Thomas's, and each told me, long afterwards, that she had felt there was no hope of Charles Lowndes leaving the hospital alive. But I, on my side, once he was in St. Thomas's, believed he would get well. The war filled my mind to the exclusion of everything else, yet it never occurred to me that a time could come when he, too, would be in the fighting line.

And now I come to the strangest part of the story. The frightful pain in my son's head was finally cured by massage, administered by a Swedish masseur attached to the hospital. So at last I was able to take him by road, in a friend's car, to a little holiday house we had at Epsom. Almost at once he had a serious relapse, but I battled through with it alone, and eventually he became once more the strong healthy boy he had been before his illness. I wrote to a friend, "I have had no change at all this dreadful summer. I had hoped to go to France for a few days, for of course all my men relations aged under forty-five are fighting, and I want to see their mothers, sisters, and wives. But Lord Haldane says the Channel has become very unsafe, as there are German submarines about."

Evening after evening, as I walked home after having spent the day by my son's bedside, I told myself that after all it was well that the stillborn child, whose loss I had so bitterly mourned, had not lived to take his place among the youths whose leaving for Flanders now rent my heart.

Owing to my mother's early friendship with Dante Gabriel Rossetti I was familiar with his verse. Only once have I seen quoted the lines:

The hour which might have been but could not be,

Which man's and woman's heart conceived and bore,

Yet whereof life was barren, on what shore

Bides it the breaking of Time's weary sea? ...

But lo! what wedded souls now hand in hand

Together tread at last the immortal strand

With eyes where burning memory lights love home?

Lo! how the little outcast hour has turned

And leapt to them and in their faces yearned:

"I am your child: O parents, ye have come!"

Now and again, in writing to my mother, I struck a cheerful note, such as, "The Rothschilds say it must end next winter, as Germany will then be bankrupt". And again, "The news looks really good this week, because people expect the Russians to be in Silesia before Christmas, and that this will be the beginning of the end. As to possible raids, who can tell? Hilaire thinks a descent on the coast unlikely, though possible."

A little later I wrote, "I don't believe in either Zepps or an Invasion. I did believe Zeppelins might come over London till I learned they are very fragile. The Germans have not yet ventured to send a Zeppelin over France. But I can't help being impressed by the preparations which are now being made with a view to their coming over London." I did not add that I had been told by a member of the Government that it was thought that if they did come, there would be ten thousand casualties. I did, however, write, little thinking of what was going to happen twenty-six years later, "I have been told by a man concerned with our defences that they can do very little damage". And the next day, "I had a long talk with Sir Edward Grey last night. He seemed fairly cheerful; and he is quite convinced, in his quiet way, that England will win through. But he said the fighting is very fierce, and I could see he felt very anxious about his nephew."

Some of my friends were becoming extremely worried as their dividends were being "passed". That anxiety was spared my husband and myself, both then and during the rest of our married life. We had no capital, and we were never able to save. But I did not allow this fact to disturb me unduly. What troubled me as time went on were the rising prices. I became very uneasy, and I wrote, "The war is costing ten pounds a second now, and will soon cost twenty pounds a second. Everything in the way of necessities is going up by leaps and bounds. I feel rather worried about this." As a matter of fact I was acutely anxious, as all my journalistic work had stopped.

Few of the people I knew left London during the first months of a war which was to last four years, and I went out almost every evening, while my husband was at The Times office, to see my friends and acquaintances. What was happening in Flanders filled every one's mind to the exclusion of all else, and very soon long lists of casualties were being published in every newspaper.

Yet there were times, during that strange summer and autumn of 1914, when it appeared to me as if I alone realized what war meant. Most of my childhood and girlhood in France had been overshadowed by the memories of those about me concerning what had happened there during 1870-1871; thus not only war, but war with Germany, was to me a frightful reality.

With the exception of a few British and French officers, and the German High Command, I think it may be said with truth that no one in Europe had any conception of what modern warfare would be like. This, however, was not true of a certain General Grierson. Not only was he a brilliant soldier; he was a remarkable man with a fine mind who had given the whole of his grown-up life to the study of war. He was also one of the very few Englishmen who knew the German Army; for he had been Military Attaché in Berlin, and spoke German perfectly, a rare accomplishment among the British officers of that day.

I was acquainted with a woman who was a close friend of General Grierson, and I recall a conversation during which she told me his views. He had no illusions as to the might, power, and scientific knowledge, of those commanding the German Army. Those people who even now, when writing of 1914, think poorly of Sir John French, may be reminded that Grierson was the first officer Sir John asked should be attached to his staff, after the Expeditionary Force had left for France. But in a French train, while on his way to the Front, General Grierson died from what was described as a stroke, a few minutes after drinking a glass of lemonade.

The censorship of all war news had been put in the hands of a brilliant young lawyer. Rightly or wrongly, he regarded the British public as apathetic, and just after the battle of Mons there appeared in a British newspaper an alarmist account of the first military operations. It began with words which approximated to "Oh God, that I should have to reveal what you are about to read!" Then followed a terrifying description of the fate which, according to this correspondent, had befallen the Expeditionary Force. He wrote as though that Force had disintegrated. This report from an unknown war correspondent—though it was soon discovered who he was—created fierce anger and surprise rather than the fear the writer had hoped it would induce. What appeared certain to those who knew the man, was that he had lost his nerve. The fact that the article had been passed by the War Office deeply shocked a great many people.

As was the case in the second World War, very few men and women thought it conceivable their country could be vanquished. This feeling of confidence was an immense asset to the British people, and proved the truth of Foch's dictum that an army is never beaten until it believes itself to be.

At that time of my life I had a large circle of friends and acquaintances, and I only knew one person among them—a woman who had been brought up in Germany—who thought it possible the Allies might lose the war. Even so, pathetic and terrible stories began to seep through. They were not published in the newspapers; they were passed from one to another by word of mouth.

The death which most impressed me at the beginning of the war was that of a man for whom I had a great liking. This was General Hubert Hamilton, who belonged to a famous Irish military family. I had often met him in the house of his sister, Lady Allendale, whose first husband, Sir George Colley, had perished in the battle of Majuba Hill. I remember how astonished I felt when I learned that Hubert Hamilton and his staff had been killed many miles behind the lines, while they were smoking on the terrace of a French château.

As many of my friends were older than myself, almost every married woman I knew had one or more sons already fighting, and I used to open The Times every morning with a feeling of acute fear and pain.

During that first summer of the war I was amazed at the confidence shown by those about me. Many who should have known better were certain the war would only last a short time; this was so even after what could truly be called the tragedy of Mons.

In the first World War, next to the loss of my brother's eldest son, Louis Belloc, what most distressed me, partly because I regarded it as a serious loss to his country, was the death of Denis Buxton, the son of Lord and Lady Buxton. The finest strain of the Society of Friends ran in his veins, for he was a great-great-nephew of Elizabeth Fry. Though under twenty when he was killed, Denis Buxton had a mature mind, and he had already mapped out his life in a way that was in those days most unusual. He and I once had a discussion as to his future. It took place in the long narrow drawing-room of Fort Belvedere, which was then occupied by his uncle, Colonel Baring. Denis was exceedingly modest, and not apt to speak of himself, but on that occasion he told me he meant to go into Parliament, and intended to make politics his career. As he talked I felt him to be very different from the other youths with whom I was at that time thrown in contact. His whole being was absorbed in the thought of giving those contemporaries whose circumstances and birth made it difficult, if not impossible, to lead lives which would be of value to their country, the chance to do so. Not only was he highly intelligent and cultivated, he also possessed a delightful gift of humour. I often think of Denis Buxton, and it is as if I could see him standing before me. I am grieved that I never saw him in the country home he loved so truly.

It was there in Sussex, twenty miles from the sea, that I had spent some happy days in the summer of 1914, just before the outbreak of war. Gathered together were the foreign members of a committee which had just met in London to consider means of saving life at sea, yet within a few weeks the U-boats were hard at work sinking British ships. During that visit I had made friends with the German delegate. He spoke perfect English, though he had never been to England before. I recall feeling grieved that the French delegate did not appear to such advantage as did the German, for the Frenchman could not speak a word of English.

In that same party was the then Lord Harcourt. He was one of the most cultivated and agreeable men I had ever met, and I remember discussing with him at some length the question of his father's letters. A dull life of Sir William Harcourt had been written by a man who had not known him. I pressed Lord Harcourt to publish a selection of Sir William's letters, as I had heard they were extremely amusing, and full of pungent wit. They are still unpublished.

I have wondered since that visit whether Lord Buxton, who under a quiet reserved manner was very shrewd, and had a sound judgment, foresaw even in a dim measure the coming calamity. But not one of the members of the Liberal Party I was then meeting in London, not even Mr. Asquith, had a suspicion of Germany's plans. Their minds were wholly absorbed with the troubles in Ireland and a possible rebellion in Ulster.

Although so much of that, to me, memorable house-party remains clear in my mind, I have but a vague recollection of a great political meeting in Brighton, at which we were all present. A brilliant speech was made by the Prime Minister's elder daughter (now Lady Violet Bonham Carter), who was one of the finest political speakers of that day.

One of the pleasantest traits in Margot Asquith's character was her interest in every kind of human being. This was remarkable at a time when London society, though far more catholic than was Paris society, was, even so, composed of sets and cliques. To give only one example, the man who stands out most clearly in my memory as having been perhaps the most interesting of my fellow-guests in Margot's hospitable house was Basil Zaharoff. There were those who called him "the mystery man of Europe". But as a matter of fact there was nothing mysterious about him. Though I believe he was of Greek birth, he was to all intents and purposes a Frenchman, and had been educated in France. Two facts were certainly true. The first was that of his immense wealth—he was said to have a finger in every financial pie in Europe, and it was believed that he owned the majority of the shares in the Casino at Monte Carlo. The second fact was that he had married a connection of the Spanish royal family, by whom he had two daughters.

At the time of the outbreak of the first World War Basil Zaharoff was hated in one section of the London world—the section composed of the intellectual Socialists, headed by the Sidney Webbs. They all regarded Zaharoff as a war-monger, owing to the fact that he had a large share in the Creusot armament firm. When war came he at once threw his great wealth and immense influence on the side of the Allies.

Although I last saw him over thirty years ago, and though he had a quiet and what the French call an effaced personality, I remember Basil Zaharoff very clearly. This is partly because, although he spoke English well, he was more at home in French, so I was generally put next to him both at 10 Downing Street, and in the house of the Reginald McKennas. No man of his day can have had a shrewder notion of the part money plays, or can play, in life. He was believed to be the richest man in Europe, and he gave huge anonymous gifts not only to the British Red Cross, but to every kind of war charity. There were certain members of the Government who regarded him with deep suspicion. This suspicion was increased when the following story became known. A girl in the political world was engaged to be married. Basil Zaharoff sent her a bouquet, and when she opened the envelope which contained the name of the donor, she found, in addition to his card, a thousand pounds in notes.

Sir Basil was much courted in Government circles, for it was thought he was in a position to swing Greece to the side of the Allies. He was certainly strongly pro-Ally, and deserved the knighthood of which, to my thinking, he was amusingly proud.

When I was in his company I felt sure he was a Frenchman. I also felt sure of something else. This was that every man or woman, in his opinion, had his or her price. What astonished me was the way certain of his English acquaintances—I cannot call them his friends—sponged on him.

I recall that, on one occasion, when I was anxious concerning some childish ailment of my younger daughter, he learned the fact, and wrote me a touching little note. I regret I did not keep that note, for he was certainly one of the outstanding figures of what was an extraordinary time of European history.