A REMINISCENCE OF LORD BRYCE.

Press, Volume LVIII, Issue 17401, 11 March 1922, Page 12

A REMINISCENCE OF LORD BRYCE.

To spend the whole of a day with Lord Bryce was to feel what a lot a man might do with his life if he let slip no chance of seeing and getting to know, says a correspondent in the "Manchester Guardian." When he was 77 he was for a couple of days the guest of Sir Douglas Haig in 1916 at his Advanced Headquarters during the Battle Of the Somme, and I was the subaltern ordered to show him the northern .half of our front. For twelve hours of a Lairing July day he never ceased to observe and investigate. In the presence of anything learnable he was like seaweed in presence of moisture. In the first hours of our road journey north from i ear Amiens he pumped mo, I ! firmly believe, of every definable item ' that my military experience could add to his "tores. "When lie was not taking in he wa3>giving out, in perfect form and order When we had passed Doullens, St. Pol, and Bruay we had to call at the fine Chateau de Labuissiere to ask the First Corps leave to visit their sector of front, and _he assigned the chateau to its place in the history of French domestic architecture, described the great pre-Revolution activity m country-house-building in I. ranee and compared vividly the single-minded pursuit of comfort in tho middle-sized English country house of the period with the uneasy attempt at grandeur common in the corresponding French house, often only one room thick, with its thinness marked by lateral wings, and with its avenue narrowing at one end so as to yield an illusion of greater length. " I took him to the Fosse de Braquemont for a general view of our Loos salient. It was a fine high heap of collicry refuse, up which the (Victor of Ararat scrambled like a boy. He had had a prettv good walk already to reach , its foot. From the top you peered round or through some serening object and saw through your glass the wide sweep of the double front/line, seaming the chalk. T showed him where our troops had Started from, in the autumn of 1915. where they had got to, and where they had had to come back to. Bryce took it all methodically in, with questions and comments which showed that he had fully grasped the inn of the battle before. Where was Hul'uch? Where was Hujsnes? Then he demanded mora. Having seen the front as on a sketch map, ho llow wanted to fee a small portion mora closely. This meant at least an hour's additional walking and scrambling before I could r»ow him, from a garretwindow in a lialf-ruined 1 lock of miners' model-dwellings, north-west ot Lens, the innocent and vacuous-looking frontal system swimming in haze below. As we plodded back to the car, wliHi was waiting on the lee side of a thick-set house a mile to the west, Bryce made perfectly clear to my mind the geological relation of the Lens coalr. f le ld and the Loos chalk to the deeper coal of Kent and the chalk downs of Surrey. It now came out that I had brought sandwiches from Amiens. He almost crowed over the hour thus saved for sight-seeing. My drive? had eaten his while we were away, so we ate as the car went north towards the other great salient. As we went through Locon, La . Gorge, and Estairea to Bailleul, the eun of that afternoon would have been somniferous if Bryce. had not talked, or if his:talk had not. been what it was. Wherever you _ tapped him there came out fascinating facts vivaciously put and piquantly well marshalled. I showed him one of our common sights of the roadside—a native Indian trooper, off duty, gathering himself a great armful of:wild poppies in bloom. Immediately I began to be. given- interesting thoughts about the place of the poppy in the poetry of the West and the mysticism of the Earl arid the flora, of both, and the possible relations of botanical freaks to artistic and spiritual products. Put down dully, like this, in a few words, it must sound as if he had been-a bore. ' :.But it was all ,exciting, really. "; At Bailleul I reported, again to a corps command, which telephoned on ahead of us to a divisional command at Westeroote. So when we got there a genial major-general was ready to show the distinguished guest the famous show-place of his iront, the Scherpenberg hill, with, its wide view oyer the whole plain and salient' of Yprea. And on the hill there was . a moment of danger. The stalks of- the towers of Ypres were shining white in the' distance. Bryce was visibly casting upon them the eye of desire. In his eagerness he made a slip, and said, "May I go down there. General?'? before I could bump in with some rude interruption. He had not quite grasped the fact that a guest so distinguished as an old ambassador and Cabinet Minister who wears the Order of Merit is apt to be treated by a simple solas a piece of'.rare and fragile china—and also that it is sometimes safer to . act on the absence' of a veto than to . ask for an express permission. But th* lightning swiftness with which, the slip once made, he saw and retrieved it, turning the talk swiftly into'another direction', showed that it was no. mere man of bqpks whom we had sent to do our diplomacy at Washington-

In Ypres itself . he was the perfect companion. • He could tell you which of . the heaps of rubble had'.beei} the most beautiful private house in the town. He could tell you the'relative industrial s"tutus of Ypres and Popcringhe in various centuries. He could discriminate with knowledge between the. qualities of the different bits of stained glass that we picked up amon" the stones of the Town Hall and the Cathedral. The English officer who was then town major of Ypres, where town majors only lasted for a short time, had become a bit of a local antiquary, and could scarcely part with Bryce when I said we must go.. We had to motor to Calais that night. And I think it was oniy durin<r that five-hour , journey across Northern France that Bryce came out in his full richness. He must now have walked some ten miles, stood a tropical heat for nine hours, and endured the bumping of a car, driven over bad roads at a speed not commonly practised at home, for all the hours that he had not walked. He now insisted on getting out at every town we passed through nil the endless summer evening Poperinghe, Abeelo, Cassel, Argues, St. Oflier. and the rest—-to examine th© church and any other building of note The many ".step gables" in the big square at Cassel launched him into tho relations of French and Scottish architecture. The crowded churches of St. Omer started hirii on the religious interactions of England and all this part of France, whence comes the Douai Bible that Roman . Catholics read, and frhere the .Titus Oates of Walter Scott thought itT plausible to plant so many of his lies. Everything that he saw seemed to touch a spring in him, and let living knowledge out; mover mere flat stuff distilled out of books, but aerated with delight in the doings of Nature and of mankind. He was a very cornucopia of things known, understood, and enjpyed. One would have wondered at it m a man of any age, but in a man of nearly fourscore the combination of that degree of physical vigour with that degree of intellectual vivacity and curiosity seemed still more wonderful. It did one good to see what a "lusty winter, frosty but kindly," a wise man's old age may be.