The Adventure of Living | Page 7

brought the right book, the
right reviewer, and the properly-tuned editors together, I am bound to
say that I think that the editors were right and that I had produced good
copy. At any rate, their view being what it was, I have no sort of doubt
that they were quite right to express it as plainly and as generously as
they did to me. To have followed the conventional rule of not puffing
up a young man with praise and to have guarded their true opinion as a
kind of guilty secret would have been distinctly unfair to me, nay,
prejudicial. There are, I suppose, a certain number of young people to
whom it would be unsafe to give a full measure of eulogy. But these
are a small minority. The ordinary young man or young woman is
much more likely to be encouraged or sometimes even alarmed by
unstinted praise. Generous encouragement is the necessary mental
nourishment of youth, and those who withhold it from them are not
only foolish but cruel. They are keeping food from the hungry.
If my editors had told me that they thought the review rather a poor
piece of work, I should, by "the law of reversed effort," have been
almost certain to have taken up a combative line and have convinced
myself that it was epoch-making. When a man thinks himself
overpraised, if he has anything in him at all, he begins to get anxious
about his next step. He is put very much on his mettle not to lose what
he has gained.
It may amuse my readers, if I quote a few sentences from the article,
and allow them to see whether their judgment coincides with that of my
chiefs at The Spectator on a matter which was for me fraught with the
decrees of Destiny. This is how I began my review of Swift and his
masterpiece:
"Never anyone living thought like you," said to Swift the woman who
loved him with a passion that had caught some of his own fierceness
and despair. The love which great natures inspire had endowed Vanessa

with a rare inspiration. Half-consciously she has touched the notes that
help us to resolve the discord in Swift's life. Truly, the mind of living
man never worked as Swift's worked. That this is so is visible in every
line, in every word he ever wrote. No phrase of his is like any other
man's; no conception of his is ever cast in the common mould. It is this
that lends something so dreadful and mysterious to all Swift's writings.
From this time I began to get books regularly from The Spectator and
to pay periodical visits to the office, where I learned to understand and
to appreciate my chiefs. But more of them later. The year 1886 was one
of political convulsion, the year of the great split in the Liberal Party;
the year in which Lord Hartington and Mr. Chamberlain finally severed
themselves from Mr. Gladstone and began that co- operation with the
Conservatives which resulted in the formation of the Unionist Party. I
do not, however, want to deal here with the Unionist crisis, except so
far as it affected me and The Spectator. While my father and my elder
brother remained Liberals and followed Mr. Gladstone, I followed Lord
Hartington, Mr. Chamberlain, and Mr. Goschen. My conversion was
not in any way sought by my new friends and chiefs at The Spectator
office, though they at once took the Unionist side. I have no doubt,
however, that my intercourse with Hutton and Townsend had its effect,
though I also think that my mind was naturally Unionist in politics. I
was already a Lincoln worshipper in American history and desired
closer union with the Dominions, not separation. I was for
concentration, not dispersion, in the Empire. In any case, I took the
plunge, one which might have been painful if my father had not been
the most just, the most fair-minded, and the most kind-hearted of men.
Although he was an intense, nay, a fierce Gladstonian, I never had the
slightest feeling of estrangement from him or he from me. It happened,
however, that the break-up of the Liberal Party affected me greatly at
The Spectator. When the election of 1886 took place, I was asked by a
friend and Somersetshire neighbour, Mr. Henry Hobhouse, who had
become, like me, a Liberal Unionist, to act as his election agent. This I
did, though, as a matter of fact, he was unopposed. The moment he was
declared elected I made out my return as election agent and went
straight back to my work in London. Almost at once I received a letter
which surprised me enormously. It was from Mr. Hutton, telling me

that Mr.