Grey of Fallodon
by [Houghton Mifflin, $3.75]
GREY, as Foreign Secretary, stood less in need of a biography than any other pre-war statesman, because his own Twenty-Five Years was one of the most perfect political autobiographies we know — calm, objective, self-critical, as nearly honest as a man can be with his own conscience, and charmingly written. It shows him, in his favorite poet’s words, as a ‘ central peace subsisting at the heart of endless agitation.’
There was, however, another Grey embodied in the flesh with Grey the Foreign Secretary. This other Grey was the countryman-naturalist, the author of Flyfishing, Fallodon Papers, The Charm of Birds, and the husband of Dorothy Widdrington.
Mr. Trevelyan, writing con amore with his usual insight and charm, shows that the two Greys, outwardly so different, were essentially complementary. Without the refreshing intervals of calm at the Hampshire Cottage or Fallodon, Grey could never have got through the drudgery at the Foreign Office. How great this burden was may be indicated by the fact that in 1895, when he was Parliamentary Under-Secretary, 41,041 papers were received at the Foreign Office; the corresponding total for the year 1916, when he finally resigned, was 298,460. Likewise, without his distinguished service as Foreign Secretary, he would have been known only as what Dorothy at first mistook him for: l’héritier anglais, an English country gentleman; he would never have been honored for that nobility of view and purpose in foreign politics which elevated him to a plane quite above that of the Continental statesmen of his day.
Grey’s love of Nature developed with his earliest years. His political interests awoke relatively late. At Oxford, as appears from the Balliol minute-book of Jowett in 1881: ‘Sir Edward Grey, having been repeatedly admonished for idleness, and having shown himself entirely ignorant of the work set him in vacation as a condition of residence, was sent down, but allowed to come up to pass his examination in June.’ On account of his interest in his ducks and his frequent week-ends from London while in office, he has sometimes been criticized as not being sufficiently interested in his political tasks. Mr. Trevelyan shows that the criticism is unjust. ‘Politics made his chief bond with his most intimate friend Haldane; they were always talking about them; for Hegel was a tiresome mystery to Grey, and Haldane could scarcely tell a robin from a sparrow. . . . During his long working hours Grey was utterly absorbed in the Foreign Office work. He could not indeed bring to the Sphinx riddle of the European tragedy the high spirits of a Palmerston; he wrote no “rhyming despatches” like Canning; but he was not, like the greatest of his predecessors, reduced to cutting his throat. The craftsmanship of his official letters, memoranda and speeches shows that his whole mind was given to their composition. But the reaction was strong when the tired man left off.‘
Mr. Trevelyan has fortunately been able to enrich his volume with a great mauy unpublished private letters which illumine both sides of Grey’s life. They show the fortitude with which he stood his great afflictions: his beloved Dorothy thrown from a pony-cart and killed just as Grey became Foreign Secretary; two brothers killed by wild animals; both his houses burned down; and increasing blindness while still in office. Mr. Trevelyan also gives an excellent sketch of British Foreign Policy under Grey from 1905 to 1916, but he has few important revelations. He answers many, but not all, the serious criticisms which have been brought against his friend’s pre-war policy.
SIDNEY B. FAY