Years afterwards I met Baumann when he had given up his safe seat at Peckham and unsuccessfully contested a seat in the North, I think at Manchester.
“What made you give up Peckham?” I asked. “They would have gone on electing you there as long as you lived.”
“My dear chap, life isn’t worth living when you are member for Peckham. I live in South Kensington, and while I was member for Peckham I used to find my hall full of constituents by the time I came down for breakfast, and by lunch-time you’d have thought that I was having an auction of my furniture.”
But of all the men who were at Oxford with me, no one has been so prominent, then and now taken together, in intellectual circles as W. L. Courtney. Courtney was then a rather young New College don, who had the distinction of being married to an extremely smart-looking wife. That would have been a distinction by itself in the Oxford of that day, for few were married in a way suitable to impress undergraduates. Added to that, he cut the most eminent figure in athletics of any don in Oxford. He was the treasurer of the University Boat Club, while the dons respected him as the ablest man in Oxford at philosophy. I was not there when he gave it all up to come to London and be literary editor of the _Daily Telegraph_ and editor of the _Fortnightly Review_, but I can imagine the consternation which fell upon that ancient seat of learning when their bright particular star, the admiration alike of don and undergraduate, “chucked it,” as they say, for journalism. Of course he did wisely, for in an incredibly short space of time he had as distinguished a position in London as he had had at Oxford. His influence on literature has been immense. He has stood for the combination of scholarliness and up-to-dateness. His own books range from essays on the verge of fiction to some of the most important works on philosophy published in his generation. Incidentally, the creator of _Egeria_ is our best dramatic critic, and a writer of plays.
Both the late and the present editors of the _Field_, William Senior and Theodore Andrea Cook, came to our Addison Mansions receptions. That delightful man, William Senior, the “Red Spinner” of fishing journalism, and his wife came very often to us. Theodore Andrea Cook is the ideal editor for a great sporting paper like the _Field_, for he had not only been editor of a great daily, but he had rowed in the Oxford boat, and been a Scholar of his College, and he had captained the all-England team in the international fencing matches at the Olympic games which were held at Athens. He has also written very sound books on an unusual variety of subjects (one of which, his book on _The Spiral in Nature and Art_, was most widely discussed); and is one of the most delightful writers we have of travel-books on France. Of course, everything which he has written upon sport is _ex cathedra_.