Kilgorman Part 1
Kilgorman.
by Talbot Baines Reed.
IN MEMORIAM.
By the death of Talbot B. Reed the boys of the English-speaking world have lost one of their best friends. For fourteen years he has contributed to their pleasure, and in the little library of boys' books which left his pen he has done as much as any writer of our day to raise the standard of boys' literature. His books are alike removed from the old-fashioned and familiar cla.s.s of boys' stories, which, meaning well, generally baffled their own purpose by attempting to administer morality and doctrine on what Reed called the "powder-in-jam" principle--a process apt to spoil the jam, yet make "the powder" no less nauseous; or, on the other hand, the cla.s.s of book that dealt in thrilling adventure of the blood-curdling and "penny dreadful" order. With neither of these types have Talbot Reed's boys' books any kinship. His boys are of flesh and blood, such as fill our public schools, such as brighten or "make hay" of the peace of our homes. He had the rare art of hitting off boy-nature, with just that spice of wickedness in it without which a boy is not a boy. His heroes have always the charm of bounding, youthful energy, and youth's invincible hopefulness, and the constant flow of good spirits which have made the boys of all time perennially interesting.
The secret of Reed's success in this direction was that all through life, as every one who had the privilege of knowing him can testify, he possessed in himself the healthy freshness of heart of boyhood. He sympathised with the troubles and joys, he understood the temptations, and fathomed the motives that sway and mould boy-character; he had the power of depicting that side of life with infinite humour and pathos, possible only to one who could place himself sympathetically at the boys' stand-point in life. Hence the wholesomeness of tone and the breezy freshness of his work. His boy-heroes are neither prigs nor milk-sops, but in their strength and weakness they are the stuff which ultimately makes our best citizens and fathers; they are the boys who, later in life, with healthy minds in healthy bodies, have made the British Empire what it is.
A special and pathetic interest attaches to this story of "Kilgorman,"
the last that left Talbot Reed's pen. It was undertaken while he was yet in the prime of his strength and vigour. The illness which ultimately, alas, ended fatally had already laid hold on him ere he had well begun the book. In intervals of ease during his last illness he worked at it, sometimes in bed, sometimes in his armchair: it is pleasant to think that he so enjoyed the work that its production eased and soothed many a weary hour for him, and certainly never was other than a recreation to him.
The pen dropped from his hand ere he had quite completed the work, yet, as the book stands here, it is much as he meant to leave it. The figures of Barry Gallagher, and Tim, and the charming Kit will take their places in the delightful gallery of his young people, and their adventures by land and by sea will be followed with an increased interest that they are the last that can come from his brilliant pen.
Talbot Reed came of a right good English stock, both on his father's and his mother's side. His grandfather, Dr Andrew Reed, a Nonconformist minister of note in his day, left his mark in some of the soundest philanthropic undertakings of the century. His thoughtfulness and self- sacrificing energy have lightened the sufferings and soothed the old age of many thousands. He was one of the founders of the London, Reedham, and Infant Orphan Asylums, the Earlswood Asylum for Idiots, and the Royal Hospital for Incurables. His son, Sir Charles Reed, and grandsons, have done yeoman service in carrying on to the present day the n.o.ble work begun by him.
Talbot was the third son of the late Sir Charles Reed, Member of Parliament for Hackney, and latterly for Saint Ives (Cornwall). His mother, Lady Reed, was the youngest daughter of Mr Edward Baines, Member of Parliament for Leeds. She was a lady of saintly life, of infinite gentleness and sweetness of heart, with extraordinary strength and refinement of mind, reverenced and loved by her sons and daughters, and by none more than by Talbot Reed, who bore a strong resemblance to her alike in disposition and in physical appearance.
The service that Sir Charles Reed did for his generation, both in Parliament and as Chairman of the London School Board, and in connection with many of the religious and philanthropic movements of his time, are too well known to be recapitulated here.
Talbot B. Reed was born on the 3rd of April 1852, at Hackney. His first schoolmaster was Mr Anderton of Priory House School, Upper Clapton, under whose care he remained until he was thirteen years of age. He retained through life a feeling of warm affection to Mr Anderton, who thoroughly prepared him for the more serious work ahead of him. Only a year or two ago, Reed was one of the most active of Mr Anderton's old pupils in organising a dinner in honour of his former master.
In 1865 Talbot was entered at the City of London School, then located in Milk Street, Cheapside, under the headship of Dr Abbot, where he spent four happy and industrious years of his boyhood. He is described by Mr Vardy, a school-comrade, in the course of a recent interesting article by the Editor of the _Boy's Own Paper_, as being at this period "a handsome boy, strong and well proportioned, with a frank open face, black hair, and lively dark eyes, fresh complexion, full of life and vigour, and with a clear ringing voice ... He was audacious with that charming audacity that suits some boys. On one occasion he had very calmly absented himself from the cla.s.s-room during a temporary engagement by the French master, who, having returned before he was expected, and while Reed was away, demanded by what leave he had left the cla.s.s-room. Reed replied with (as he would probably have expressed it) 'awful cheek,' 'If you please, sir, I took "French" leave!'"
Reed was popular at school both with masters and boys. His initials, "T.B.," soon became changed familiarly into "Tib," by which endearing nickname Mr Vardy says he was known to the last by the comrades of his school-days.
It is interesting, in the light of the prominence which in all his school stories he properly gave to out-of-door sports and athletic exercises, to have it, on the authority of his old school-fellow, that he excelled in all manly exercises. He was a first-rate football- player, and a good all-round cricketer; he was an excellent oar, and a fairly good swimmer; and until the last few months of his life no man could enjoy with more zest a game of quoits, or tennis, or a day devoted to the royal game of golf. In the early days of his manhood, with characteristic unselfishness, he risked his own life on one occasion by leaping from a rock into the sea, on the wild north Irish coast, to bring safely ash.o.r.e his cousin (and life-long friend, Mr Talbot Baines, the distinguished editor of the _Leeds Mercury_), who has told me that he would, without Reed's prompt and plucky aid, inevitably have been drowned.
The large contribution he made to literature in later days amply serves to prove that the more serious studies of school were never neglected for his devotion to sport. He seldom missed the old boys' annual dinner of the City of London School. In proposing a toast at a recent dinner, he reminded Mr Asquith, M.P. (a school-fellow of Reed's) that at the school debating society they had "led off" on separate sides in a wordy battle on the red-hot controversy of "Queen Elizabeth versus Queen Mary." Every boy who has read "Sir Ludar" will remember that the hero of that charming story and Humphrey Dexter fall to blows on the same dangerous subject.
I cannot find that in his masterly pictures of public school life he drew much from his experiences at the City of London School, except, perhaps, in a few details, such as the rivalry which he describes so vividly as existing between the fifth and sixth forms in his delightful book, "The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's." In Reed's day there was no such "set" among the juniors at the City of London School as the "guinea-pigs" and "tadpoles," who play so important a part in the story; but in a room devoted to the juniors, known as the "horse-shoe," in the old school buildings in Milk Street, many of the pranks and battles of the "guinea-pigs" and "tadpoles" were played and fought.
In 1869, at the age of seventeen, Reed left school, and joined his father and elder brother Andrew in the great firm of type-founders in Fann Street. He threw himself with strenuous application into the new work, maintaining at the same time with equal keenness his interest in football, wishing nothing better than a fierce game--"three hacks on one leg, and four on the other," as he said, and glorying in his wounds.
The same strenuous energy applied to his reading at this period. A friend tells me that in a letter about this time he speaks of devouring "five of Scott's novels in a month, resulting in parental remonstrance; history; and a Greek play, in which he is not so 'rusty' as he feared."
In Fann Street his practical business energies found free play, although the bias of his mind undoubtedly lay towards literature rather than commerce; but for nearly a quarter of a century he devoted himself to this work with a degree of success that was to be expected of his talents, the conscientious uprightness of his character, and his unceasing industry. At the death of Sir Charles Reed, and of his brother Andrew, Talbot became the managing director of the Type-foundry, and held that position to the time of his death.
Reed had not long left school when his creative literary instincts began to a.s.sert themselves. His apprenticeship in literature may be said to have been served in the editing of an exceedingly clever family magazine, called _The Earlsmead Chronicle_, which circulated in the family and among friends.
His earliest printed effort appeared in 1875, in a little magazine for young people, called _The Morning of Life_ (published in America by Messrs. Thomas Nelson and Sons. It is, by the way, a noteworthy coincidence that his first and last printed work should have been issued by this house). His contribution to _The Morning of Life_ was an account in two parts of a boating expedition on the Thames, ent.i.tled "Camping Out." It has in it the promise of the freshness and vigour that were in such abundant degree characteristic of all his later descriptions of boy life.
It was in the pages of the _Boy's Own Paper_ that Reed found his _metier_. Its editor writes: "From the very first number of the paper Mr Reed has been so closely and continuously identified with it, that his removal creates a void it will be impossible to fill." Any one looking through the volumes of this most admirably-conducted boys' paper will see that Talbot Reed's work is indeed the backbone of it. In Number One, Volume One, the first article, "My First Football Match," is by him; and during that year (1879) and the following years he wrote vivid descriptions of cricket-matches, boat-races; "A Boating Adventure at Parkhurst;" "The Troubles of a Dawdler;" and a series of papers on "Boys in English History." There was also a series of clever sketches of boy life, called "Boys we have Known," "The Sneak," "The Sulky Boy,"
"The Boy who is never Wrong," etcetera.
These short flights led the way, and prepared him for the longer and stronger flights that were to follow. In 1880 his first boys' book began to appear in the _Boy's Own Paper_, ent.i.tled "The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch." Charlie Newcome, the youthful hero, is a charming creation, tenderly and pathetically painted, and the story abounds in thrilling incident, and in that freshness of humour which appears more or less in all the Public School Stories. In the following year came a story of much greater power, "The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's," by many boys considered the best of all his stories. It deserves to take its place on the shelf beside "Tom Brown's Schooldays." Indeed, a youthful enthusiast who had been reading "The Fifth Form" and "Tom Brown" about the same time, confided to me that while in the latter book he had learned to know and love one fine type of boy, in the former he learned to know and to love a whole school. The two brothers, Stephen and Oliver Greenfield, and Wraysford, and Pembury, and Loman stand out with strong personality and distinctness; and especially admirable is the art with which is depicted the gradual decadence of character in Loman, step by step, entangled in a maze of lies, and degraded by vice until self-respect is nigh crushed out.
"The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's" was followed in 1882 by "My Friend Smith;" in 1883 came "The Willoughby Captains" (by many considered his best work); 1885 saw "Reginald Cruden;" and in the same year appeared "Follow My Leader." This story--an excellent example of Reed's peculiar power and originality in depicting school life--he wrote in three months; a feat the full significance of which is best known to those who were aware how full his mind and his hands were at that time of other pressing work. Yet the book shows no marks of undue haste.
In 1886 came "A Dog with a Bad Name," followed in 1887 by "The Master of the Sh.e.l.l." In 1889 Reed made a new and successful departure in "Sir Ludar: A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess." Here he broke away from school life, and carried his youthful readers back to the Elizabethans and the glorious incident of the Armada. There is a fine "go" and "swing" in the style of this story which recalls Kingsley to us at his best.
Following hard on "Sir Ludar" came in the same year (1889) "Roger Ingleton, Minor," a story dealing with young men rather than boys, although Tom Oliphant, a delightful boy, and Jill Oliphant, his sister, take their places among the most lovable of his youthful creations.
In "The c.o.c.k-house at Fellsgarth" (1891), and in "d.i.c.k, Tom, and Harry"
(1892), Reed returned to school life for the materials of his plots, and in these fully maintained his reputation. In addition to these stories, most of which have appeared, or are about to appear, in volume form, he contributed many short stories and sketches to the Christmas and Summer numbers of the _Boy's Own_. These are also, I am glad to learn, being collected for publication in volume form.
In "Kilgorman," the last of the series of boys' books from his gifted hand, as in "Sir Ludar," he displays a fine historic sense--a capacity of living back to other times and picturing the people of another generation. Much of the scene of "Kilgorman" and of "Sir Ludar" is laid in Ireland--in the north and north-western corners of it--of all the localities in the United Kingdom perhaps the dearest to Reed's heart.
To him, in more senses than one, Ireland was a land of romance. The happiest a.s.sociations of his life were there. There he wooed and won his wife, the daughter of Mr Greer, M.P. for the County of Londonderry; and he and she loved to return with ever new pleasure to inhale the pure air of Castle-rock or Ballycastle, or to enjoy the quiet of a lonely little resting-place in Donegal, on the banks of Lough Sw.i.l.l.y, to recuperate after a year's hard work in London. It was something to see the sunshine on Reed's beautiful face when the time approached for his visit to the "Emerald Isle." When he was sore stricken in the last illness, he longed with a great longing to return, and did return, to Ireland, hoping and believing that what English air had failed to do might come to pa.s.s there. Three weeks before his death he writes to me from Ballycastle, County Antrim: "I wish you could see this place to-day bathed in sunlight, Rathlin Island in the offing, Fair Head with its stately profile straight across the bay, and beyond, in blue and grey, the lonely coast of Cantire, backed by Goatfell and the lovely hills of Argyle." He loved Ireland.
But for himself and for his family there were in Ireland a.s.sociations of sadness that made the place sacred to him. His young and beloved brother Kenneth, with a comrade and kinsman, W.J. Anderson, in 1879 started on a canoe trip in Ireland, intending to explore the whole course of the Shannon and the Blackwater, together with the connecting links of lake and sea. In a gale of wind on Lough Allen--known as the "wicked Lough"--the canoes were both upset, and the two young men were drowned.
The shock in the family circle can be imagined. It was the beginning of many sorrows. Two years later, in 1881, Sir Charles Reed died; and in 1883 the family was again plunged into grief by the sad death of Talbot's eldest brother ("my 'father confessor' in all times of trouble," Talbot used to say of him), the Reverend Charles Edward Reed, who was accidentally killed by a fall over a precipice while he was on a walking expedition in Switzerland. Lady Reed, it may be here said, died in June 1891.
While most people will think that Talbot Reed's boys' books are his best bequest to literature, he considered them of less importance in the work of his life than his book ent.i.tled "A History of the Old English Letter Foundries; with Notes Historical and Bibliographical on the Rise and Progress of English Typography" (Elliot Stock, 1887), the preparation of which cost him ten years of research and labour. His boys' books were the spontaneous utterance of his joyous nature, and their production he regarded in the light of a recreation amid the more serious affairs of life. He had an ambition, which the results of his labour fully justified, to be regarded as an authority on Typography. I can remember his amus.e.m.e.nt, and perhaps annoyance, when he had gone down to a Yorkshire town to deliver a lecture on some typographical subject, to find that the walls and h.o.a.rdings of the town were decorated with posters, announcing the lecture as by "Talbot B. Reed, author of 'A Dog with a Bad Name!'"
But all scholars and book-lovers will regard this work of his on "The History of the Old English Letter Foundries" as being of supreme value.
In it, as he himself says, he tells the story of the fifteenth century heroes of the punch and matrix and mould, who made English printing an art ere yet the tyranny of an age of machinery was established.
Whatever Talbot Reed's pen touched it adorned, and in the light of his mind what seemed dry and dusty corners of literary history became alive with living human interest.
Besides this great work, he edited the book left unfinished by his friend Mr Blades, ent.i.tled "The Pentateuch of Printing," to which he added a biographical memoir of Mr Blades.
All that related to the craft of printing was profoundly interesting to Reed, whether viewed from the practical, or the historic, or the artistic side. His types were to him no mere articles of commerce, they were objects of beauty; to him the craft possessed the fascination of having a great history, and the legitimate pride of having played a great part in the world.
Reed delivered more than one admirable public lecture on subjects related to the art of printing. One he delivered at the Society of Arts, on "Fashions in Printing" (for which he received one of the Society's silver medals), and another on "Baskerville," the interesting type-founder and printer of Birmingham in the last century, to whom a chapter of "The History" is devoted.
Only two years before his death Reed was one of a small band of book- lovers who founded the Bibliographical Society, a body which aims at making easier, by the organising of literature, the labours of literary men, librarians, and students generally. From its start he undertook, in the midst of many pressing personal duties, the arduous task of honorary secretaryship of the young society--an office which he regarded as one of great honour and usefulness, but which entailed upon him, at a time when his health could ill bear the strain, hard organising and clerical work, cheerfully undertaken, and continued until a few weeks before his death. The first two published Parts of the Transactions of the Bibliographical Society, edited by him, are models of what such work ought to be.
Reed was a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, and for many years was an active member of the Library a.s.sociation. His own library of books bearing on Typography, Bibliography, and many a kindred subject, the harvest of many years' collecting, is unique. It was a pleasure to see the expression of Reed's face when he came upon a new book really after his mind, or, still better, an old book, "Anything fifteenth century or early sixteenth," he used to say; any relic or sc.r.a.p from Caxton's or De Worde's Press; any specimen of a "truant type" on the page of an early book; or a Caslon, or a Baskerville in good condition; or one of the beauties from Mr Morris's modern Press. Charles Lamb himself could not have looked more radiant or more happy in the sense of possession.
Reed laboured successfully also in another department of literature--in journalism. For many years he wrote a non-political leading article each week for the _Leeds Mercury_. His wide culture, his quiet humour, and light, graceful touch, were qualities that gave to his journalistic work far more than an ephemeral value. In politics Reed was a life-long Liberal; he utterly disapproved, however, of Mr Gladstone's latter-day policy in Ireland. Reed was a member of the Reform Club and of the Savile Club.
In these notes I have written rather of Reed's work than of the man himself. This is as he would have had it. There was in him a magnetic charm that attracted all who came near him, and which bound his friends to him as by "hooks of steel." Erect and manly in bearing, he stepped along, never apparently in a hurry, never dawdling. One had only to look in his beautiful face, the bright kind eyes, the high wide brow, and to come under the spell of his winning smile, to obtain a glimpse of the n.o.ble soul within.
A calm, strong nature his, facing the world, with all its contingencies, bravely and with constant buoyant cheerfulness. He walked through life with eyes and heart wide open to the joy of the world, brightening and lightening it for others as he went. He was always ready to stretch out a helping hand to the weak and falling ones who came across his path.
Never merely an optimist, he yet lived and died in the full, simple faith that--
"G.o.d's in his heaven, All's right with the world."
Socially, Reed was the life and soul of any party of friends. There were certain American student-songs which he was wont to sing with a quiet and inimitable drollery, very refreshing to hear, and which those who heard them are not likely readily to forget. His love of music was part of his nature. His reposeful, wooing touch on the piano or organ, either when he was extemporising or when he interpreted one of the masters, expressed the inner working of his own gentle spirit. Whether in his own family, or among friends, or in the midst of his Foundry workmen, he was universally beloved.
A true, loyal, and friendly spirit like his was sure to have "troops of friends." To three friends in Highgate he wrote, during his last sad visit to Ireland, the following beautiful letter. Mrs Reed was at the moment detained in Highgate, nursing their eldest boy, who was ill.
"Westoncrofts, Ballymoney, _October 6, 1893_.
"Talbot, the exile, unto the faithful a.s.sembled at the hour of evening service at H---; to H--- the beloved banker, and S--- our brother, and H--- our joyous counsellor, and all and sundry, greeting: peace be with you! Know, brethren, that I am with you in the spirit; neither is there any chair in which I would not sit, nor pipe I would not smoke, nor drink I would not drink, so as I might be one with you, and hear your voices. In good sooth, I would travel far to catch the wisdom that droppeth from the lips of H---, or sit among the philosophers with S---, or laugh with the great laugh of H---. I would do all this, and more also, could I make one with you around the familiar hearth.
"Yet know, brethren, that I shall come presently, and strictly demand an account of what is said and done, what mighty problems are solved, what joys are discovered, what tribulations are endured, in my absence.
"Meanwhile, I would have you to know that I am here, not without my teachers, for I read daily in the great missal of Nature, writ by the scribe Autumn in letters of crimson and gold; also in the trim pages of the gathered fields, with borders of wood-cut; also in the ample folios of ocean, with its wide margins of surf and sand. These be my masters, set forth in a print not hard to read, yet not so easy, methinks, as the faces of friends. Perchance when _she_ cometh, in whose light I interpret many things, I shall have rest to learn more therefrom; for now I am as a sail without wind, or a horn without his blower, or a stone without his sling.