BOOK NOTES

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIII, Issue 17, 17 December 1932, Page 9

BOOK NOTES

BONAR LAW. “The Strange Case of Andi'ew Bonar Law,” by H. A. Taylor, is not at all strange when his temperament is considered, as Mr Taylor allows. Bonar Law was not one of those leaders who capture the imagination. His gifts were not “popular” in the sense that evokes mob applause. But he was a willing slave to the dictates of conscience, and steadfast in allegiance to a cause which he had embraced. He was shy and reserved, but could be moved to eloquence, as is shown in his opening speech as Prime Minister after the rupture of the Coalition in 1922. . The post was not of his seeking. His health was bad. His career is punctuated with “retires” and “resigns” on that account and undoubtedly his end was hastened by the cares of office. But who else could have taken the lead? At that date Mr Baldwin was a novitiate in politics. Mr Winston Churchill, although versatile and capable, could not be pictured in the role of Prime Minister. Mr Balfour, as he then was, to whom the sceptre would have normally passed, declared himself to be “old and tired,” Earl Curzon had the double disqualification of a seat in the Lords and a knack of making himself disliked. Since there was no one else, Bonar Law’s sense of duty made him take the reins.

Bonar Law was something of a portent. Of Scottish stock, he was born in Canada, and although many “colonials” have sat in the House, he was the first to become the immediate adviser of the Crown. Also, until 1921, only eight prime ministers had any profession another than politics, and of those eight only one —Campbell Bannerman —could be called a business man. All but four were brought up in easy or affluent circumstances. Seventeen were Etonians, five were at Harrow, and four at Westminster. Seventeen went to Oxford and thirteen to Cambridge. Bonar Law was by no means the traditional Prime Minister. He never attended a great public school, nor did ho take a degree at any university. But he had a shrewd knowledge of affairs and of human nature. “The strange case of Bonar Law” is that he differed so utterly from preconceived types. A Conservative “Chiei” is presumed to be an Anglican, and to be sympathetic towards the liquor interests. Bonar Law was a Presbyterian and a teetotaller. When he was chosen as the leader of the Unionist Party, the late W. T. Stead exclaimed in exasperation: “What is the world coming to? Who is this man who is to reign over us in the name of the party that is the bulwark of the Anglican Church and the stay of the publican. The answer is that Mr Bonar Law is a Presbyterian—who celebrated his election to the House of Commons by drinking a tumbler of milk.”

SCOTT’S LETTERS.

For lovers of Scott the most important event of this centenary year must be the appearance of the first volume in the complete edition of his letters which Professor Grierson is editing. At the very beginning Professor Grierson is lucky enough to be able to spring a surprise. He has discovered the traces of an early, hitherto unknown love affair of Sir Walter’s while lie was a youth at Kelso. A manuscript Life of Scott in the Victoria and Albert Museum by an author who cannot be traced yielded a group of letters written to a certain “Jessie.” The young Scott is an impetuous wooer, though a secret one,' for he admits that “an end would quickly be put to our meetings were they known by your friends or by mine.” Scott seems reprehensibly to have jilted this young lady—and was to be jilted (or so thought some of his friends) in his turn. Echoes of his great love-disappointment over Miss Belsches are heard in the letters of 1796, and £he next year comes his engagement to Miss Charlotte Carpenter or Charpentier. A hitherto unpublished letter shows him delicately but insistently asking his. fiancee for more details about her birth a.nd family. His relatives, he explains, “have not my apology for indifference upon the subject which is that my regard for Miss Carpenter herself was so great as to make me utterly careless upon all such matters.” However, the mystery of Miss Carpenter remains unsolved. She was understood to be the daughter of a French riding-master, but the interest taken in her by Lord Downshire has given rise to other theories about her birth—which also, in Professor Grierson’s opinion, cannot be proved. £ lie future Lady Scott, if hardly the mate for a genius, was “a woman with many tastes and humours that he shared a natural gaiety and a love for society,” a good horsewoman (naturally) and,’in her own favourite phrase, “stylish.” She thus gratified the tastes of Walter Scott on certain important points at any rate. In the arrangement of this volume the editor has abandoned a strict chronological order in order to give us, collected into an appendix, Scott’s business correspondence with the Balla.ntynes up to the year 1818. His secret business partnership with these two brothers, whom he transplanted from Kelso to set up as printers and publishers in Edinburgh, and with whom he was involved ultimately in commercial ruin, is one of the most hotly contested passages in his life. Professor Grierson now throws open the celebrated “Open not, Read not!” volume of letters, so inscribed in John Ballantyne’s hand; and we are also assisted on our way through a very thorny topic by a specially contributed letter on “Sir Walter Scott’s Financial Affairs” by Mr James Glen. Scott’s letters to his partners reveal a truly lamentable state of affairs in the business. It is the burden of his repeated complaints against James Ballantyne that lie is never kept accurately informed of the real state of the books, so that money to meet pressing demands of creditors unknown to him has to bo found by him at a moment’s notice. It can hardly be claimed that either of the brothers was particularly scrupulous, and they seem to have had very little appreciation of the fact that it was Scott alone who had lifted them from rustic obscurity and made it possible for them to play ducks and drakes with largo fortunes. The time to judge the whole question of Sir Walter’s financial transactions will come when the later volumes, containing his correspondence with Constable, see the light. Meanwhile in Professor Grierson’s judgment:—“Scott’s plunge into printing and publishing was not inspired by a sordid love of money. He was a dreamer, but his dreams had always been of an active kind —not only of ‘the disposal of ideal wealth,’ but of ‘wielding imaginary power’ . . . . the motive was not alone the desire for ampler means but the temptation of a wider, more exciting field for the exercise of his boundless energy.”