I wrote to ask him to fill the biographical form, which I had drawn up, to be the model for other members of the peerage, and with his usual consideration, he acceded. Then I wrote to Mr. Balfour to ask him to write his biography, to be a model for the untitled. The only title he bore was so proud that we usually, as I did then, forget to reckon it among titles—the “Right Honourable.” Mr. Balfour, too, acceded, and he was particularly suitable, because, in addition to being the first man in the House of Commons, recreation had a real meaning in his case, since he was known to be an inveterate golfer.
The idea of adding “recreations” to the more serious items which had been included in previous biographical dictionaries was adopted at one of the councils of war which we used to hold in the partners’ room of A. & C. Black, at 4 Soho Square. And for selling purposes it proved far and away the best idea in the whole book, when it was published. The newspapers were never tired of quoting the recreations of eminent people, thus giving the book a succession of advertisements of its readability, and shop-keepers who catered for their various sports bought the book to get the addresses of the eminent people, who were, many of them, very indignant at the Niagara of circulars which resulted.
I wonder if many people remember the old _Who’s Who?_—a little red 32mo, which looked something like the Infantry Manual with its clasp knocked off. It was a sort of badly kept index to the Peerage, as futile as an 1840 Beauty Book. We turned it into a dictionary of biography for living people, and we made it eternally interesting by persuading the people whom we included in it to give us their favourite recreations. I chose (from an un-annual biographical dictionary edited by Humphry Ward) the type, which had to be specially cast for it; I chose the people who deserved to be included in it; I drafted the letters and the forms to be filled up, which were sent to each person; and I persuaded those two very eminent men to be the bell-wethers for persuading other people to fill up their forms, an idea which was crowned with success. The late Duke of Rutland’s and Mr. Balfour’s fillings up of the forms were printed at the heads of the forms sent out to other people, and few people objected to following where they had led the way. But among these few recalcitrants were Lord Salisbury and Mr. Chamberlain, and most naval officers. Army officers, on the other hand, were generally very obliging. Architects and literary men filled up their forms best, artists and actresses worst, though actors were almost as bad. You would have thought that the actual formation of the letters in framing a reply was a torture to artists, actors and naval officers. The actresses, if you had compiled the biographies by interview, would have asked for two columns each.