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IN GOOD COMPANY




  IN GOOD COMPANY

  SOME PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
  SWINBURNE, LORD ROBERTS
  WATTS-DUNTON, OSCAR WILDE
  EDWARD WHYMPER, S. J. STONE
  STEPHEN PHILLIPS

  BY COULSON KERNAHAN


  LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD
  NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY MCMXVII




  SECOND EDITION


  WILLIAM BRENDON AND SON, LTD., PRINTERS, PLYMOUTH, ENGLAND




TO

THE HON. MRS. ARTHUR HENNIKER


MY DEAR MRS. HENNIKER,

It is many years since we first met at the house of one whom we both
loved, whose memory we both cherish. It was that friend’s hope that
you and I should become, and should remain friends; and that the hope
has been realised has given me many happy hours--sometimes in your
company as my gracious hostess, sometimes, scarcely less closely in
your company, as a reader of your delightful and beautiful stories.
Were your gallant General--I remember how proud he was of those
stories--alive to-day, I should have asked to be allowed to dedicate
this book to the two of you. Now that--alas for the England that he
so faithfully loved, so nobly served--he is with us no more, may I
inscribe it to yourself and to his honoured memory?

  Yours ever sincerely,
      COULSON KERNAHAN.




FOREWORD


One of the subjects of these studies said in my hearing, that
“Recollections” are generally written by people who have either
entirely lost their memory, or have never, themselves, done anything
in life worth remembering.

To the second indictment I plead guilty, but my best excuse for the
publication of this volume is that I write while the first indictment
fails. My memory is still good, and the one thing which seems most
worth remembering in my life is my undeservedly fortunate friendships.

In writing of my friends and of those with whom I was associated,
I am, therefore, I believe, giving of my best. I ought to add that
these papers were penned for inclusion in a volume of frankly
personal and intimate “Recollections.” A work of that sort is the
one book of his life in which an author is allowed some freedom from
convention. That is why I hope to be pardoned should any passage,
letter, or incident in these pages seem too intimate or too personal.

The reason why the studies are printed separately is that the ship in
which I hope to carry the bulk of my threatened “Recollections” (if
ever that ship come to port) will be so heavily weighted a vessel,
that I am lightening it by unloading a portion of the cargo at the
friendly harbour of The Bodley Head.

To drop figurative language and to speak plainly, I may add that,
though there is some attempt at a more or less finished portrait in
some of my pen-pictures, that of Lord Roberts is no portrait, but
merely a chronicle. His personality, at least, is too well known and
loved to need either analysis or description.

The paper _When Stephen Phillips Read_, mere snapshot as it is of one
aspect of his personality, was not written for the present volume,
with which, indeed, it is hardly in keeping. I include it by the wish
of Mr. John Lane who, years hence, will be remembered as the faithful
friend, as well as the generous and discriminating admirer, of the
distinguished poet, of whose work it is his pride also to be the
publisher.

Mr. Lane was anxious--knowing that my friendship with the poet was
long and close--that I should write of Stephen Phillips as fully as
I have here written of some others; but it is only under impulse
that I seek to picture the inner self and personality of my friends,
and I cannot do so while the sense of loss is comparatively new. In
the case of two of whom I have thus written, many years had elapsed
before I put pen to paper.

At his best--as the three friends who made such unexampled and such
self-sacrificing efforts on his behalf, Sir Sidney and Lady Colvin
and Mr. Stephen Gwynn, will, I think, agree--there was something
approaching the godlike in Stephen Phillips. Of what was weak, and
worse, in him I need not here speak, since, because he so loathed
hypocrisy, he hid it from none.

One day I hope to show Stephen Phillips as he really was, and as
not many knew him. I have heard him described as a man of brooding
and morbid aloofness. There is truth in the description, but it
is equally true to say that, at times, he could be as healthily
jovial and unconstrained, as high-spirited as a happy schoolboy.