BRITISH readers of my Memoirs may be inclined to complain that I have
dealt at too great length with my American experiences and impressions.
But they must not forget that quite a large proportion of my life has been
spent in the United States and in the British Dominions overseas. I have
indeed been a persistent wanderer for more than twenty years and it is
difficult for me to tell anything like a comprehensive story of my life
without these frequent wanderings into other lands and among other people.
Besides, my "home supporters" should remember also that there were always
very substantial inducements of a financial nature dangling at the end of
every other voyage across the foam, I could have remained and worked the
British halls for nine or ten months in each year, earning enough to keep
the wol from the door. But I found that the oftener I went away for an
extended period the greater was my welcome back in London and the
Provinces. In London alone I used to play seasons of six or eight weeks in
one theatre and all old professionals will tell you that this is a most
comfortable and pleasant way of working—if you are sufficiently popular to
fill the house at every performance.
For another thing the joy of
getting home again after a long and arduous foreign tour has always been
very real, so far as I am concerned. The last day or two on the steam ship
ploughing her way nearer and nearer Southampton or Liverpool have
invariably seen me in a highly excited condition as in fancy I once again
trod the heather hills of Argyllshire or strolled through the West-end of
dear old London. Yes, even such a trick as Blackwood played on me
recently at Waterloo Station could not damp the wild enthusiasm with which
I always return to my own country. The incident I mention took place just
outside the station. There was a whole bunch of camera men wanting to snap
me but for some curious reason they saved their "ammunition" until we got
near a cab-rank. The boys posed me right up against the front of a taxi
and asked me to smile my broadest smile at the same time pointing with one
finger in the direction of a placard stuck on the front window of the cab.
I did as I was told never troubling to read the placard and it was not
until next morning that I discovered the real significance of the
photograph prominently displayed in every London newspaper. There was
Harry Lauder standing beside a taxi-cab and gleefully pointing to a notice
"Great Reduction in Fares." In response to a request for something special
from the press photographers the jocular Blackwood had hit upon this
amusing idea, well knowing that it would go down with the public as a
"characteristic Lauder touch!"
I had fairly
long spells at home both in 1917 and 'i8. There were many contracts
waiting to be worked off in different towns all over the country but I did
manage to get an occasional spell at Dunoon or Glen Branter. Up till the
time of John's death his mother and I were exceedingly fond of our
Highland estate. It was a wild but a bonnie place. I had farms and
moorland and hills, with fine stretches of fishing in the rivers and on
Loch Eck. The house itself was large and comfortable, with every possible
modern convenience, and Invernoaden, close by, had been put into thorough
repair against the time when John and his bride would come home to it.
John's death at the front knocked all our schemes and our dreams on the
head. The Glen became tenanted with ghosts. At every turn we were reminded
of our dear lad; what might have been was ever uppermost in our thoughts.
One spot we fondly loved in spite of the shattering of all our hopes. It
was a beautiful knoll on the north side of the main road from Dunoon to
Strachur. From its summit we could look right across the glen to the two
houses, and the vista, no matter whether the sun smiled or the Highland
mist was hanging low over the hills, always made a strong appeal to my
wife and I. Here, we resolved, would be set up a monument to John's
memory. And in due time a simple but striking redstone monolith crowned
the top of the grassy knoll. Inside the iron railings surrounding John's
memorial we left sufficient room for a grave on either side—one for Nance
and the other for myself. [(Lady Lauder is buried on the right-band side
of the monument to the memory of her son.)]
Frankly, I do not think that I was ever fated to settle down as a Highland
"laird." Certainly I was never meant to be a farmer; of that I am now
convinced. But conviction only came after my experiences had cost me a
tremendous amount of money. To begin with I bought Glen Branter on the
"top of the market" for properties of this description. It was so far from
civilization (I merely use the phrase in its popular sense for, make no
mistake, the people of our Highland glens are among God's elect not only
for kindliness of heart but in character and intellectual equipment) that
building, alterations and improvements generally were on a very costly
scale. Moreover my luck as an agriculturist always seemed to be dead out.
If I bought five thousand sheep at four, pounds a head, hoping they would
soon be worth five with a general food shortage prevalent all over Great
Britain, I was to discover a few weeks later that the price had gone down
instead of rising. If I purchased another two thousand at three pounds a
head to "level up" the next advice I had from my manager was that sheep
values had dropped to "ten bob a leg." If I planted ten thousand young
trees in the faith and hope that some day they would grow into valuable
timber, or at least lend a picturesque aspect to an otherwise
uninteresting piece of land, the ravenous deer came down from the hills
overnight and devoured every shoot! If I built a dam across a stream to
make a reservoir "the rain descended and the floods came" sweeping away
the labour of months. If I paid a hundred and twenty pounds each for a
pair of Clydesdales I found they were only worth half the money a month or
two later. Again, if I reared a pedigree foal of considerable potential
value it was sure to fall and break a leg; if I acquired half a dozen
aristocratic much cows at an aristocratic price four of them—at
least!—were almost certain to die of some mysterious disease never before
known in that part of Scot- land. And if I set out, as I did, to build a
few new roads through the estate I very speedily discovered that it would
have been cheaper to construct a couple of residential thoroughfares
through the busiest parts of London!
All my
life, right up to the time I became one myself, I had envied the "landed
gentleman" with his life of freedom in the open-air, his horses, his
cattle, his dogs, his fruitful fields—everything "yielding its increase"
even while he slept. Don't you believe a word of it. The picture is all
wrong. I know. I've had some. I was lucky to get out of Glen Branter with
my leather leggings and a haunch of preserved venison! Fortunately the
Forestry Commission of the British Government came along with an offer
soon after the war to take over the Glen for afforestation purposes. With
bankruptcy staring me in the face, or at least, shall I say, peering its
ugly head round the corner, I accepted the offer. My farming and
stock-breeding ambitions were dead. I might be a good enough comedian, I
told myself, but I had proved a rank failure as a prosperous country
squire! Joking apart, however, we would never
have left the Glen had John lived. It is situated in one of the loveliest
parts of Argyllshire, a county which I adore beyond all others in
Scotland. It grows the finest larch trees and lug shrubs in Great Britain.
Its sweeping hills are populated by the blue hare, the fox, the raven, the
black-cock and the buzzard-hawk. "Bunny" roams and multiplies everywhere
in spite of the presence of its natural enemy, the "whutterit," to employ
our old Scots word for the weasel and stoat. I still have my home in
Dunoon, and when my time arrives to pass over I shall go to rest beside
John's monument on the top of the little hill "up the Glen."
|