SIR THOMAS UPTON.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 11872, 25 January 1902, Page 5 (Supplement)

SIR THOMAS UPTON.

I have known Sir Thomas Lipton for a long score of years, almost from his early beginnings. I knew him when he was plain Tom Lipton, and when the giddy world of sport and fashion and popularity, through which he now sails with such ease and unerring instinct, was unknown to him, and when he was equally unknown to it. I remember the day when, seated in the small American office chair which is his throne—in the great building in the City Road, which then was painfully new— told me - the astounding fact that up to that hour he had never dined out. once in London, and had never once been inside a theatre. .

His chief place of business in those now far-off days was in Glasgow, and his one occupation, interest, pleasure in life, was his business. He was in his office as early as many hundreds of clerksas early as any of the hundreds of young lady typewriters were in his employ; and lie lunched there; very often he dined there; and very often—indeed, ■ usually—• he left there when it was not far from midnight, ana when there was neither time, nor opportunity, nor energy left for any form of social or other amusement. And then, one day, London awoke and discovered the very remarkable man who had been living in contented obscurity for so many years in its midst. And the modest, self-effaced man of businesscontent with his Jot—was dragged, willy-nilly, into all the giddy stream of London's tumultuous life; into great banquets and solemn functions; and, finally, when his modesty, his good nature, his simplicity, had won him all hearts, he gained a place in the heart of the now highest and always the most beloved lady in the land by giving to one of her favourite schemes for the relief and the enjoyment of the waifs and strays and weaklings of our society a subscription that was as princely as the charity itself. And so there came to be another Lipton from the one I had known— in the sense that he lived as much in the glare of the world as he had hitherto lived in its quiet and self-obscured by-ways. But not another Lipton in any other sense; for I find him the same, simple, unaffected, keen, absorbed business man now as he was when he still had to eat his first public dinner and go to his first theatre in London. This was a sufficiently remarkable transformation ; but yet I felt that, until J heard Lipton at his dinner the other night, I had never understood or realised the full man. And yet I ought to have done so, for already I had wondered at the marvellous success with which he had carried himself through an ordeal, the shoals and quicksands of which only those who know England and America could adequately appreciate. Here was a man who had twice attempted to take from America one of the glories on which she most prides herself, who had entered what I have called a- powder magazine of susceptibilities and passions— yet lie had never given offence. But that is not the full catalogue of the achievement. I have unbounded respect for the extraordinary energy, enterprise, and daring of the American press : but I do not think any severer trial can be put on a public man than having to run the gauntlet of the American inter viewer. That able, merciless, übiquitous being has powers of: insight very often equal to those of an ideal Sherlock Holmes, his penetrating glance and his direct and searching question would do credit to a great cross-examiner, and his freezing and searching eye is as irresistible and relentless as that of an inquisitor. And ioi every moment of every day of every week for several' months the very slightest wordthe very whispers of Sir Thomas —have been subject to the scrutiny of that great interviewing race. And just fancy that not once— even for a single seconddid the nerve, the tact, and the good humour and self-control of Sir Thomas Lipton desert him under such a tremendous trial and this will give you some idea of the immense and instinctive tact of the man.

All this came home to me as I listened to his speech at that splendid banquet which was such a testimony to his popularity among his own countrymen .as well as among Americans. After-dinner speaking is one of the most trying ordeals any man can go through. The Duke of Devonshire is not given to epigram; and it (is worth, therefore, preserving the one epigram with which the Muse of Historywhich has been, stolidly reporting him verbatim for two generationshas been able to preserve. " Af-ter-dinner speaking," said the duko in this one ewe-lamb moment of inspiration, "is the making of speeches by those who don't want to speak to those who don't want to hear."' Lipton was able to perform the almost impossible feat of making a speecn every word of which told, was welcomed, kept the audience in wild hilarity, except when ib was necessary to strike an occassional serious note.

How, in heaven's name, Lipton learned the art I don't know; but he is a bo-11 artist, in speech. As an example: He was talking of the universal kindness with which he had been treated by the Amencans; and then came this sentence as the wind-up of that part of his speech: Everything possibly was done to make things easy and pleasant for me, with one exception," and then there came a pau;;e which I can truly describe far at least as my feelings were concernedas awful. With 0110 exception"—what could it have been? Was there some trick—some small slight or insult— which we had not heard, and which was now to stalk across the floor of that generous and pleasant board where Americans and Britons were seated in such perfect amity together? Or was L'ipton just for one second to forget himself —to lose that splendid self-control which had carried him through so many months of feverish anxiety and interviewing and harassing doubts and hopes and fears? Would the magnificent and almost infallible tact, that had never failed mm before, fail him now when the strain was removed ? Vain fears! It was all the fellow's cunning histrionics. The awful pause was the old but ever new oratorical device of raising expectation in order to have the better laugh at its disappointment. For when the dead silence which followed the pause of Sir Thomas Lip tori —a solemn testimony to the feeling of suspense, excitement, and nerves which it createdcame to an end this is what Lipton meant as the one exception to this good and hospitable treatment: "With only one exception, and that was the trifling matter of letting me lift the Cup." The reports in the papers, which give you a very poor idea of the cleverness and skill of the speech, state that this was followed by " laughter." , If the word had been "loud and long-continued laughter it would have been a more accurate description.

I have not space to deal with all the lighter passages in the speech; suffice .fc to say that Sir Thomas chose just the right points to tickle his audience —as this passage, for instance, the only one I can quote will prove: — " Speaking of that recalled an incident which occurred on the steamer going out to the races in America, and which went to show how American pressmen liked to keep ahead of "the times. When we arrived in the Teutonic at the quarantine station, Sandy Hook, or possibly, I should say New York Harbour, we were at once boarded by an army of pressmen and potograpliers, who immediately surrounded us. The first question one of them asked was, 'Say, Sir Thomas, if Shamrock XI. gets licked will you challenge again next year (Laughter.) Going oufc with my heart full of big hopes, you may imagine how I felt at that question. (Laughter.) Before I could answer he wanted to know who would build the next boat, and what type of boat she would be. Well, I told him I considered those questions just a little ,bib premature) and that he might give me some chance to see if Shamrock could win, or what she could, do. He then said: 'Is the report correct that, in the event of Shamrock winning, Mr. Watson and you intend to get married V' (Laughter.) I replied that I had no authority to speak on behalf of Mr. Watson—(laughter)but did not my interviewer think that one big job was enough to tackle at a time? I added that I considered we had quite sufficient trouble ahead—(loud laughter and cheers) —without doing anything so rash." (Laughter.)T.P., in' M.A.P.