MESSRS W. H. SMITH AND SON'S STRAND PREMISES (IN- 54 THE IDEAL.-FANCY GERMAN PORTRAIT OF GENERAL SIR SMITH, THE BRITISH SECRETARY OF STATE FOR WAR 272 LIFE OF THE RIGHT HON. W. H. SMITH. CHAPTER I. 1784-1846. NOT very long before the following pages began to be penned, Sir Charles Bowen commented with caustic goodhumour on what he termed the growing tendency of the age to write ponderous biographies of Nobody. It must always be a matter of opinion to what exact degree of eminence a man should rise above the mean level of character, or what store of achievement it should be possible to lay to his account, before the public are invited to the perusal of his biography. There is an ominous sentence in one of Horace Walpole's letters: "One can never talk very long about folks that are merely excellent—I mean, unless they do not deserve it, and then their flatterers can hold forth upon their virtues by the hour." The affection of his family—the predilection of his friends—the gratitude of those whom he may have benefited—the admiration of humbler men from among whom he may have raised himself—the success with which Fortune, so partial in her favours, so indifferent to merit, Α may have filled his sails,-all these have to be liberally discounted before the figure of a public man can be viewed in the just perspective essential to critical narrative. But when such a man has brought his life out of a surrounding no more than commonplace, when he has conducted. an ordinary commercial undertaking to a position beyond competition, and then, having accomplished what would satisfy most men as a life's work, has set himself to political enterprise, and, by sheer dint of the esteem awarded, not to audacity or surpassing powers of speech, but to unselfish integrity and faultless common-sense, has risen from one office of trust to another, till his party at a moment of extreme perplexity, by an involuntary and common impulse, turned towards him and laid upon him the hazardous duties of leader, when a man has set his hand to so much and succeeded in every step of his career, in such a life there cannot fail to be much that is worthy of record, much that will be of service for the guidance and encouragement of others. It is this feeling which has actuated the writer of the following Memoirs: there has been also the additional motive of warm personal regard towards the subject of them, and gratitude for unvarying kindness. It is difficult, in dealing with the actions and character of one lately departed, to avoid undue eulogy and to keep in right proportion incidents of private life which, however much their memory may be cherished by relatives and intimate friends, cannot be expected to occupy the interest of general readers. The object, therefore, has been åλnleveîv év åyátη—affectionately to tell the truth; to state impartially the origin and incidents of a life which rose from circumstances of comparative obscurity to those of distinction and responsibility; to show the qualities and principles which secured for William Henry Smith the unbounded confidence of THE BROTHERS SMITH. 3 those who were associated with him, and the ungrudging respect of those who, in public life, were opposed to him. Somewhere within the first quarter of the present century, the brothers Henry Edward and William Henry Smith, sons of Henry Walton Smith, who had come to London from Devonshire towards the close of the eigh teenth century, set up the business of newsmen, as it was then termed, in an unpretending shop in Duke Street, Grosvenor Square. Probably there was nothing to distinguish it from dozens of other houses doing a similar business-nothing to mark it as the source of what has grown into an important tributary of the Pactolus of British trade. In those days penny and halfpenny dailies may, indeed, have been somebody's dream, but one not more likely to be realised than any other dream. Besides the paper-tax, there was the duty imposed on each copy of every newspaper: the sheets, before going through the press, had all to be sent to Somerset House to receive the official stamp. There was also the advertisement-tax, payable by the publisher.1 But in spite of these restrictions, the business of Messrs Smith prospered and increased, so that it became desirable to secure premises near the offices of the principal newspapers. About the year 1820 the house 192 Strand was purchased, and formed into a branch office, the head office remaining in Duke Street. Now the partners in this firm were of very different degrees of capacity, and the younger brother, William, soon found that, as the scope of their transactions ex 1 The practice of withholding information as to the price of books under review in magazines or journals originated in the intention of avoiding the tax on advertisements. |