Developing a doctrine of federalism designed to revitalise the concept of Empire.
1902, Created Viscount. Honorary colonel in the Kaffarian Rifles.
Clubs, White’s, Army & Navy etc.
‘And the informal?’ Holmes enquired.
‘Passion for order and efficiency. Love of cut-and-dried solutions. Contempt for British Party politics. Respect for authoritarianism.
Member of The Kipling League.
Heroes: Bismarck, Frederick the Great, Sir Hiram Maxim.
Described by close female acquaintance as ‘one moment passionately loving and the next aloof and unapproachable, the most remarkable character of cunning, caution, sophistry and nobility one could imagine.’
Allies in the Press: proprietors of the Daily Mail, Morning Post, The Speaker, Pall Mall Gazette. The Johannesburg Star (Geoffrey Dawson).
‘Imperialist with a missionary purpose.’
To the Daily Telegraph his refusal to bend to liberal whim was taken to display ‘an original force of character which rejects all moulding by force of circumstance’.
Detractors: Daily News, Manchester Guardian.’
After I related this, Holmes asked, ‘And does this book of reference have an entry on that little-known personage Sherlock Holmes?’
‘Fourteen pages,’ I replied with satisfaction, ‘full of your awards and sub-titles including Honorary Fellowship in the Royal Society of Chemistry. It even précis your monograph on the hands of slaters, sailors, cork-cutters, compositors, weavers and diamond-polishers.’
He nodded at the valise. ‘Did you also bring the Cassell’s Concise Cyclopaedia?’
‘I did, Holmes,’ I affirmed, reaching into the Gladstone for the tome. ‘And heavy it is.’
‘What does it say about the Kipling League?’
I turned to the ‘Ks’.
‘Kipling League.
Formed circa 1889 as a cultural off-shoot of the Primrose League (see Beaconsfield). Originally a reading-circle for admirers of Rudyard Kipling’s verse and prose.
By 1902 transmogrified into a private movement propagating Kipling’s conservative colonial agenda.
Supporters believed to include John Buchan.
Holds discussions critical of Count Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy, the Russian writer whose philosophy includes non-resistance to evil and the abolition of governments and nationality.
The League is rumoured to have forced the resignation of the ‘effete’ Joe Chamberlain, and strenuously opposed the election of the Liberal Government.
1903, Rules amended to exclude women from membership.
Rites according to the equestrian order.
Membership by invitation only.
Meetings unpublicised, irregularly held at (London) the Bellona Club and (Sussex) Crick’s End. On the Continent at the Flotille in Paris. No minutes kept.’
Holmes stared thoughtfully out of the carriage window. ‘Such men exist to do harm to their enemies,’ he commented. ‘It would be hard to throw light into the shadowed corners of such a league.’
He held up a hand, deep-set eyes upward, as though enquiring of the Deity. ‘Does this invitation arise from more than damp weather, I ask?’
‘Holmes,’ I said, amused. ‘Can you not accept we are but a diversion from the tedium of the countryside on a rainy day, what more? You underestimate your fame.’
‘Watson, neither Siviter nor Van Beers are idle or uncomplicated men. As to my public speaking,’ Holmes continued, looking across at me ruefully, ‘you have thrown me to the lions by your insistence.’
‘Our Mrs. Hudson, who regularly visits the vaudeville, has given me an invaluable tip, Holmes,’ I assured him.
‘Which is?’
‘Don’t turn your back on the audience.’
‘Why not?’ Holmes asked, mystified.
‘That’s when they spatter you with rotten eggs.’
Our train entered a lengthy tunnel, damping down the sound of our laughter. Holmes sprang to the window to shut out the smoke and steam. We emerged and immediately pulled to a halt alongside a platform at Tunbridge Wells. A station attendant took the form and two half-crowns and set off for the nearby telegraph office. We crossed a foot-bridge to the local train on a nearby platform. Less than thirty minutes later, announcing itself with a shrill blast of steam, our train arrived at Etchingham.
The small country railway station stood at the bottom of a long, twisting, steep road down the valley side from the village of Hurst Green. Not far from where we alighted rose a sturdy manorial fourteenth-century church topped by a copper vane. Rabbits hopped among the crumbling tombstones. Above us, a kestrel hung in the air, hunting for voles and mice secreted among the thistles and long grass of the river-bank some 30 yards away. Yellow Coltsfoots decked the rusty lines. In the field adjacent to the station, grazing almost to the platform edge, roamed black-faced sheep and dark red cattle. My immediate impression just two hours from the bustle, noise, dust, smell and flurry of Baker Street was of quietness and beauty, a countryside forged with craft and care by the millennial hand of Man. Soon the brantgeese would be arriving from their Arctic home.
We remained for a moment on the platform in front of a large enamelled advertisement exhorting us to purchase Abdulla Superb Cigarettes (Turkish, Egyptian, Virginia). The train left us with a minatory scream.
I looked across the tracks to the village side, reached by a pedestrian bridge. Commercial wagons were assembled in a small public space. A smart private coach-and-pair awaited its master, the coachman perched high on its box. At its side stood a dray drawn by two dappled horses, their tails tied up with ribbons. Tucked among the disciplined group of horse-drawn wagons like a monster visitor from an alien world stood a large green motor-car, the driver at the wheel. He wore a coat made of dreadnought against the warm light rain. Assuming, rightly, this was Dudeney, we waved to indicate our arrival and began to cross the railway tracks.
Our Arrival At Crick’s End
The car crept towards us through the wagon yard, the low throaty sound of the engine just audible over the whinnies and whoas of the horse-and-cart community. I marvelled at the sight of this open-topped giant.
Dudeney introduced himself with a bob of a leather-clad head as he held open the passenger door. We climbed in and lay back on the extraordinarily comfortable leather seats. Our conveyance would have been at home at a session of the Chamber of Indian Princes - gold- and silver-plated cars, cars with hoods of polished aluminium and bodies of costly woods, cars in purple, lavender, sky-blue, orange, emerald green, vermillion. Cars upholstered in satins, velvets, brocades.
While our chauffeur waited for the horse-drawn traffic to clear, he offered a detailed description of the vehicle, starting with the pre-selector epicyclic gears, working his way with calm enthusiasm to the worm-drive rear axle, tiller-steering and finally the four-cylinder water-cooled overhead valve engine. Siviter had named the Lanchester ‘Julia’. In return, I remarked I had read Siviter’s cat-and-rat fable and was looking forward to viewing Crick’s End electricity at work.
A young newspaper vendor leant over to push a copy of the Sussex Express into my hand (‘The Paper for Uckfield, Heathfield, Crowborough. Established 1837’). Even as I passed him a coin, Julia leapt forward with a mighty roar, scattering the last of the horse-drawn wagons. Before us bobbed our chauffeur’s helmeted head and shoulders, piloting the Lanchester like a Wright Brothers’ Flyer. A few more seconds and we passed beyond Etchingham to a broad ridge road. There we gained a small companion. Within inches of my face, a boy peddled hard and with intent, his heavy bicycle and wicker panier emblazoned Thomas Blinks Butcher in gold lettering. In a well-practiced manoeuvre, he obtained a precarious handhold on Julia. By this enterprise he achieved a speedy ride to his first delivery half a mile later, dropping away at a large, dark house set back in a laurel-clumped lawn.