GOOD STORIES

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 60, Issue 4285, 27 May 1940, Page 7

GOOD STORIES

THE MARSH REMINISCENCES (By AUDAX) Mr Winston Churchill drew a prize when in 1907 he selected Edward Howard Marsh, a brilliant Cambridge and Colonial Office trained civil servant of 35, to be his private secretary. Edward Marsh was connected by marriage or by friendship with half the serious-minded aristocracy and the inner groups of all parties and more than half the writers, painters, actors and bonvivants of the English world of the period. He is now a man approaching 68, and has enjoyed such a prodigality of wealth in interesting contracts that he need offer no apology for the publication in a war period of one of the most interesting books of reminiscences of modern times—“A Number of People” (London: Heinemann and Hamish Hamilton). “Eddie” Marsh’s intimate friends and family circle comprised and still oomprise some of the brightest spirits. In this book we meet Noel Coward, Oswald Sickert, George Bernard Shaw, Ivor Novello, Malcolm MacDonald, Francis Brett Young, the Churchills, Sassoon, D. H. Lawrencq, W. B. Yeats, Osbert Sitwell and a dozen other old-young men of talent or genius. But behind them and earlier in the reminiscences we have picture after picture of that strange end of the century era in which the religious Tories regarded W. E. Gladstone as the Personal Devil. In the same period Queen Victoria had described sunsets as growing “pinker and pinker,” and chuckled with delight when American ambassador Choate brushed court etiquette aside and cheerily held out his hand to her with the greeting, “How do you do, Queen Victoria.” All the great figures of the political arena march before us and on most Sir Edward Marsh has fresh light to shed. ROSEBERY AND “BOOTLES’ BABY” Here, for example, is a new story of that Empire orator, Liberal Premier and Derby winner Lord Rosebery:—“My contemporaries will remember a fabulously successful story called ‘Booties’ Baby,’ .by Mrs ArthurStannard, whose pseudonym was John Strange Winter. The authoress said ‘How do you do?’ to him (Rosebery) at a party, and when she realised that he didn’t know who she was went on: ‘l’m afraid you don’t remember me—Mrs Arthur Stannard (a pause). You know, John Strange Winter (another pause). You know, ‘Booties’ Baby’.” Lord Rosebery disengaged himself as best he could, and said to the next person he saw: ‘l’ve just been accosted by a most extraordinary woman. First she said she was Mrs Somebody; then she said she was John something else; then she said she was somebody’s baby., I think she must be a lunatic’.” COLONIAL OFFICE PERSONAGES Having been so long and so closely associated with the Colonial Office in the intervals between the holding of thlree private secretaryships, down to his retirement in 1937, Sir Edward naturally has much to say of his political chiefs in that department. For Mr Malcolm McDonald he professes, “admiration and personal affection.” Of X fi. Thomas’s resignation he goes so far as to say, . “I would put my. hand, in the fire on it that he had done nothing he knew or felt to be wrong.” Amusing samples are given of “J.H.’s” verbal blunders. Thomas once said of a critic, to Marsh, “He doesn’t carry much ice.” “No,” answered the smiling secretary, “and he doesn’t cut many guns either.” This verbal twisting delighted the staff so much that it invented new Thomasisms of its own. One of them, says Marsh, viz., “That bitches my pitch,’’ was actually brought off by Thomas a week later. Mrs Patrick Campbell elsewhere (in the hoblf is quoted as an exponent of the art of manipulating proverbs. Marsh once told her that a detrimental acquaintance had turned over a new leaf. She quickly replied ominously: “Ah, but leaves blow back.” There are, of course, many stories of Winston Churchill in most of his many capacities. When Churchill heard someone ask Marsh what his politics were, he interposed with the remark, “I hope Eddie’s a modified Winstonian.” T. E. Lawrence is shown to have expressed himself in a letter dated July 3, 1939, on the present British Prime Minister and recent First Lord of the Admiralty thus:— “The general election means that Winston goes out, I suppose. For himself, I’m glad. He’s a good fighter, and will do better out than irv and will come back in a stronger position than before. I want him to be P.M. somehow.” RUPERT BROOKE’S SINCERITY Quite naturally our author writes much concerning his friendship with

Rupert Brooke, which he deciares, “was certainly one of the most memorable things in my life.” The portrait painted is of a young man of deep sincerity and marvellous gifts unspoiled by praise, “nearer completeness and perfection than anyone I have known.” Yet this peerless youth, whose portrait and poems are to be found in tens of thousands of homes in the Empire, had his frivolous moments, for we .find him concluding a letter to Marsh from the steamer Cedric in May, 1913, thus: Otherwise there’s not much to chronicle: except the Canadian girl who takes men into a corner to sing the Canadian National Anthem: Splash me! Oh, splash me! Splash me with the ocean blue! Mash me! Oh, mash me! And I promise you I’ll mash you! Later Brooke wrote to his friend: —’“l spent the day in the country •outside New York flirting with Louise. It’s the first time I ever flirted with anybody called Louise, so I’m rather tired.” The last letter quoted, written from the Grantully Castle “off Greece,” on March w 9, 1915, and therefore in the first year of that Great War which ended his life, Brooke wrote, anticipating fate: “You are to be my literary executor. But I’d like mother to have my MSS till she dies—the actual paper and ink, I mean—then you.” REPROVING THE UNPUNCTUAL We will ’leave this fascinating collection of anecdotes and jjen portraits with one of Sir Edward’s lighter stories on delicate ways of reproving the unpunctual. “The scene,” he remarks, “was a luncheon party at the Broughams; the appointed time 1.30. Till 1.45 we waited for Lady Cunard; and at 2 o’clock she arrived, full of apologies—she had been buying a chandelier. Old Lord Brougham, a handsome patriarch with magnificent silver hair, looked straight in front of himself, and said in a pensive tone—‘l once knew a man who bought a chandelier AFTER luntcheon’.” Yet, sad to relate, when Sir Edward Marsh himself was to be invested with the K.C.V.O. by the King in private audience at Buckingham Palace at noon one day in 1937, Sir Edward Marsh had not arrived at the palace by 12.15! This time neither his Majesty nor his private (secretary, Lord Wigram had any cutting reproof. He was received the same afternoon, as Marsh relates, “without allusion to my lese-majeste; and my cup was crowned by a chance meeting with the Queen as I walked away down a corridor.” .