After the revolution in Portugal, which led to the exile of King Manuel and the overthrow of the Royalistrégimein favor of a republic under the presidency of Affonso Costa, I was asked by Lord Lytton to go out and report upon the condition of the prisons in that country.
They were packed with Royalists and with all people, of whatever political opinion, who disapproved of the principles and methods of the new government, including large numbers of the poorest classes. Sinister stories had leaked through about the frightful conditions of these political prisoners, and public opinion in England was stirred when the Dowager Duchess of Bedford, who had visited Portugal, published some sensational statements. I suspected that the dear old Duchess of Bedford was influenced a good deal by sentiment for the Royalist cause, although when I saw her she was emphatic in saying that she had never met King Manuel and was moved to take action for purely humanitarian reasons. Lord Lytton, a man of liberal and idealistic mind, was certainly not actuated by the desire for Royalist or anti-republican propaganda, and in asking me to make an investigation on behalf of a committee, he made it clear that he wished to have the true facts, uncolored by prejudice. On that condition I agreed to go.
I found, before going, that the moving spirit behind the accusations of cruelty appearing in the British press against the new rulers of Portugal, and behind the Duchess of Bedford, was a little lady named Miss Tenison.
“She has all the facts in her hands,” said Lord Lytton, “and you ought to have a talk with her. You will have to make a long journey.”
I made the journey to a remote part of England, where I found a very ancient little house, unchanged by any passing of time through many centuries. I was shown into a low, long room, haunted, I am certain, by the ghosts of Tudor and Stuart England. Two elderly ladies, who introduced themselves as Miss Tenison’s aunts, sat on each side of a mediæval fireplace. Presently Miss Tenison appeared and for more than a moment—for all the time of my visit—I imagined myself in the presence of one of those ghosts which should properly inhabit a house like this—a young lady in an old-fashioned dress, so delicate, so transparent, so spiritual, that I had the greatest difficulty in accepting her as an inhabitant of this coarse and material world.
She was entirely absorbed in the Portuguese affairs, and her aunts told me that she dreamed at night about the agony of the Royalist prisoners in their dungeons. She was in correspondence with many Royalist refugees, and with those still hiding in Portugal, from whom she obtained the latest news. She had a romantic admiration—though not knowing him personally—for a certain count, who had led a counter-revolution and had been captured sword in hand, before being flung into prison and treated as a common convict. She hated Affonso Costa, the President, as Russianémigrésafterward hated Lenin.
It was from this little lady, ethereal in appearance but as passionate in purpose as Lytton Strachey’s Florence Nightingale, that I gained my first insight into the Portuguese situation and my letters of introduction to some great people still hiding in Lisbon. I left her house with the sense of having begun a romantic adventure, with this remarkable little lady in the first chapter.
The second chapter of my adventure was fantastic, for I found myself in the wilds of Spain, suddenly responsible for a German wife and six bandboxes filled with the lingerie of six Brazilian beauties.... It sounds incredible, but it is true.
It happened that a tunnel fell down on the engine of a train immediately ahead of the one in which I was traveling through northern Spain on the way to Lisbon. This brought our train to a standstill in a rather desolate spot. There was vast excitement, and a babble of tongues. Most of the travelers were on their way to Lisbon, to catch a boat to Brazil which was leaving the following day. Among them was a stout little German, with a large, plump, and sad-looking wife. Neither of them could speak anything but German, but the husband, who was almost apoplectic with rage and anxiety, seemed to divine by intuition that a local train which halted at the wayside station might go somewhere in the direction of Lisbon. Entirely forgetting his wife, or thinking, perhaps that she would follow him whithersoever he went, he sprang on to the footboard of the local train, and scrambled in just as it steamed away. So there I was with the German wife, to whom I had previously addressed a few words, and who now appealed to me for advice, protection, and something to eat. The poor lady was hungry, and her husband had the money. Highly embarrassed, because I knew not how long I should be in the company of this GermanHausfrau, I provided her with some food at the buffet, and endeavored to get some news of the best manner to reach Lisbon.
Then the second blow befell me. Six extraordinarily beautiful Brazilian girls, with large black eyes and flashing teeth, did exactly the same thing as the German gentleman. That is to say, they hurled themselves into a local train just as it was starting away. Six heads screamed out of the carriage window. They werescreaming at me. It was a wild appeal that I should rescue the six enormous bandboxes which they had left on the platform, and bring them to a certain hotel in Lisbon. So there I was, with the bandboxes and the German wife.
I duly arrived in Lisbon, after a nightmare journey, with all my responsibilities, and handed over the bandboxes to the Brazilian beauties, and the German wife to the German husband. I obtained no gratitude whatever in either case.
In Lisbon I plunged straightway into a life of romance and tragedy, which was strangely reminiscent of all I had read about the French Revolution.
With my letters of introduction I called at several great houses of the old nobility, which seemed to be utterly abandoned. At least, no lights showed through the shutters, and they were all bolted and barred within their courtyards. At one house, in answer to my knocking, and the ringing of a bell which jangled loudly, there came at last an answer. A little door in the wall was cautiously opened on a chain by an old man servant with a lantern. Upon mentioning my name, and the word “Inglese,” which I hoped was good Portuguese for “English,” the door was opened wider, and the man made a sign for me to follow him. I was led into a great mansion, perfectly dark, except for the lantern ahead, and I went up a marble staircase, and then into a large salon, furnished in the style of the French Empire, with portraits on the walls of eighteenth century ladies and gentlemen in silks and brocades. In such a room as this Marie Antoinette might have sat with her ladies before the women of the markets marched to Versailles.
The old man servant touched a button, and flooded the room with the light of the electric candelabra, making sure first that no gleam of it would get through the heavy curtains over the shutters. Then he left the room, andsoon afterward appeared an old lady in a black dress with a white shawl over her shoulders.
She was the aunt of one of the great families of Portugal, some of whom had escaped to England, and others of whom were in the prisons of Lisbon. She spoke harshly, in French, of the base and corrupt character of the new Portuguese Republic, and of the cruelties and indignities suffered by the political prisoners. She lived quite alone in the old mansion, not caring to go out because of the insults she would receive in the streets, but otherwise safe. So far, at least, Affonso Costa and his police had not threatened her liberty or her possessions.
In another house in the outskirts of Lisbon, with a beautiful garden, where the warm air was filled with the scent of flowers in masses of rich color, I met another lady of the oldrégime, a beautiful girl, living solitary, also, and agonized because of the imprisonment and ill treatment of her relatives. She implored me to use what influence I had, as an English journalist, to rescue those unhappy men.
It was my mission to get into the prisons, and see what were the real conditions of captivity there. After frequent visits to the Foreign Office, I received permits to visit the Penetenciaria and the Limoero, in which most of the political prisoners were confined. The guide who went with me told me that the Republic had nothing to hide, and that I could see everything and talk as much as I liked with the captives. He was certain that I should find the Penetenciaria, at least, a model prison. The other was “rather old-fashioned.”
On the whole, I preferred the old-fashioned prison. The “model prison” seemed to me specially and beautifully designed to drive men mad and kill their humanity. It was spotlessly clean and provided with excellent sanitary arrangements, washhouses, bakehouses, kitchens,and workshops, but the whole system of the prison was ingeniously and, to my mind, devilishly constructed to keep each prisoner, except a favored few, in perpetual solitude. Once put into one of those little white cells, down one of the long white corridors, and a man would never see or talk with a fellow mortal again until his term of penal servitude expired, never again, if he had a life sentence. There were men in that place who had already served ten, or fifteen, or twenty years. Through a hole in the door they received their food or their day’s ration of work. To exercise them, a trap was opened at the end of their cell, so that they could walk out, like a captive beast, into a little strip of courtyard, divided by high walls from the strip on either side. Up above was the open sky, and the sunlight fell aslant upon the white-coated walls, but it was a cramped and barren space for a man’s body and soul. Perhaps it was no worse than other European prisons, possibly much better. But it struck me with a cold horror, because of all those living beings isolated, in lifelong silence, entombed.
One corridor was set apart for the political prisoners, and when I saw them they were allowed to have their cell doors open, and to converse with each other, for a short time. Otherwise they, too, were locked in their separate cells. I spoke with a number of them, all men of high-sounding names and titles, but a melancholy, pale, miserable-looking crowd, whose spirits seemed quite broken by their long captivity. They were mostly young men, and among them was the Portuguese count who had led the counter-revolutionary rising and had been captured by the Republican troops. They had one grievance, of which they all spoke passionately. The Republic might have shot them as Royalists. At least that would have enabled them to die like gentlemen. But it had treated them like common criminals and convicts, and had even forced them to wear convict garb, to have their headsshaved, and to wear the hood with only eyeholes which was part of the dress—horrible in its cruelty—of all long-sentence men. My conversation with most of them was in French, but two young brothers of very noble family spoke excellent English. They seemed to regard my visit as a kind of miracle, and it revived hopes in them which made me pitiful, because I had no great expectation of gaining their release. When I went away from them, they returned to their cells, and the steel doors clanked upon them.
In the prison called the Limoero there were different conditions of life, enormously preferable, I thought, to the Penetenciaria, in spite of its filth and dirt and disease. There was no solitary confinement here, but crowds of men and women living in a hugger-mugger way, with free intercourse between their rooms. They were allowed to receive visitors at stated times, and when I was there the wives of many of the prisoners had come, with their babies and parcels of food. The babies were crawling on the floor, the food was being cooked on oil stoves, and there was a fearful stench of unwashed bodies, fried onions, tobacco smoke, and other strong odors.
The Fleet Prison, as described by Charles Dickens, must have closely resembled this place, in its general system of accommodation and social life, and I saw in many faces there the misery, the haggard lines, the despair, which he depicts among those who had been long suffering inmates of that debtors’ jail.
Many of the men here were of the aristocratic and intellectual classes, among them editors and correspondents of Royalist papers, poets, novelists, and university professors. They had not been charged with any crime, they had not been brought up for trial, they had no idea how long their captivity would last—a few months, a few years, or until death released them. But at least in equal proportion to the Royalists—I think in amajority—were men of poorer class—mechanics, printers, tailors, shoemakers, artisans of all kinds. They, too, were political prisoners, having been Socialists, Syndicalists, and other types of advanced democrats.
Some of the men told me that they had no idea whatever why they were lodged in Limoero. They had been arrested without charge, flung into prison without trial, and kept there without hope of release. Quite a number of them had been imprisoned by the Royalistrégimein the time of the monarchy, and the Republic had not troubled about them. They were just left to rot, year after year.
The political prisoners were allowed to receive food from their relatives, but many had no relatives able to provide them, and they had nothing but prison fare, which was hardly enough for life. They begged through the bars of the windows to passers-by, as I saw them, with their hands thrust through the iron gratings. Owing to the overcrowding and insanitary conditions, disease was rife, and prison fever ravaged them.
I had been told of one prison called Forte Mon Santo, on a hill some distance away from Lisbon, and as I could get no official pass to visit it, I decided to try and gain admission by other means. In the Black Horse Square at Lisbon, I hired a motor car from one of the street drivers, and understood from him that he was the champion automobilist of Lisbon. Certainly he drove like a madman and a brute. He killed three dogs on the way, not by accident, but by deliberately steering into them, and laughed uproariously at each kill. He drove through crowded streets with a screeching horn, and in the open countryside went like a fiend, up hill and down dale. I was surprised to find myself alive on the top of the hill which, as I knew by private directions, was the prison of Mon Santo.
But I could see no prison. No building of any kindstood on the lonely hilltop or on its slopes, which were bare of all but grass. All I could see was a circle of queer-looking objects like large metal mushrooms. Upon close inspection I saw that these things were ventilators for a subterranean building, and walking further, I came to a steep, circular ditch, into which some steps were cut. At the top of the steps stood a sentry with a rifle slung over his arm.
I approached this man, who regarded me suspiciously and unslung his rifle, but the glint of a gold sovereign—we used to have such things before the era of paper money—persuaded him that I was an agreeable fellow. My brutal motor driver, who spoke a bit of French, so that he understood my purpose, explained to the sentry that I was an English tourist who would like to see his excellent prison. After some debate, and a roving eye over the surrounding landscape, the sentry nodded, and made a sign for me to go down the steps, with the motor driver. I noticed that during all the time of my visit he walked behind us, with his rifle handy, lest there should be any trick on our part.
It was the most awful dungeon I have ever seen, apart from ancient dens disused since mediæval times. Completely underground, its dungeons struck me with a chill even in the short time I was there. Its walls oozed with water. No light came direct through the narrow bars of the cells in which poor wretches lay like beasts, but only indirectly from the surrounding ditch, so that they were almost in darkness. In the center of this underground fort was a cavern in complete darkness except, perhaps, for some faint gleam through a grating about two feet square, high up in the outer wall. It was just a hole in the rock, and inside were five men with heavy chains about them. Once a day the jailers pushed some loaves of bread through the grating. What went on in that dark dungeon, and in the darkness of those men’s souls,it is better, perhaps, not to imagine. The cruelty of men is not yet killed, and there are still, in the hearts of men and of nations, lurking devils worse than the wildness and ferocity of beasts....
I went to other prisons in Lisbon and Oporto. They were not like that, but, generally, like the Limoero, unclean, squalid, horrible, but with human companionship, which alleviates all suffering, if there is any kind of comradeship. In these cases one could not charge the Portuguese Republic with inflicting bodily suffering upon their prisoners in any deliberate way. The indictment against them was that, under the fair name of liberty, they had overthrown the monarchicalrégimeand substituted a new tyranny. For, among all the people I met, there were few who had been charged with any offense against the law, or given the right of defense in any trial.
A queer fellow came into my life during this time in Portugal, whose behavior still baffles me by its mystery. The episode is like the beginning of a sensational detective story, without any clue to its solution.
The first night of my arrival in Lisbon I dined alone in the hotel, and soon remarked a handsome, well-dressed, English-looking man who kept glancing in my direction. After dinner he came up to me and said: “Excuse me, but isn’t your name Jones? I think I had the pleasure of meeting you in London, some months ago?”
“A mistake,” I said, civilly; “my name is not Jones.”
He looked disappointed when I showed no signs of desiring further conversation, and went away. But presently, after studying the hotel list (as I have no doubt), he returned, and with a very genial smile, said: “Oh, forgive me! I made a mistake in the name. You are Philip Gibbs, I believe. I met you at the Savage Club.”
I knew he was lying, for I seldom forget a face, and not such a face as his, very powerful and arresting, but as I was bored with my own company, I gave him a littlerope. We took coffee together, and talked about the affairs of the world and the countries in which we had wandered. He had been to South America and other countries, and told me some very amusing yarns. I was much taken with this man, who was certainly well-educated and a brilliant talker.
The mystery appeared when he tapped at my door next morning, and said he desired to ask a favor.
I expected him to borrow money, but what he wanted was less expensive, and more extraordinary. He wanted me to go to the seashore near Cascaes and bring back to him a handful of pebbles. As he could not pay for such a service from a man in my position, he would gladly make me a friendly gift of anything that might strike my fancy in the shops of Lisbon.
No questioning of mine as to the meaning of this extraordinary request brought any explanation. He regretted that he could not enlighten me as to his reason, but for him the matter was of vital importance. I utterly refused to fetch the pebbles or to go anywhere near the seashore. It flashed across my mind that this very handsome, English-looking gentleman might be a police spy set to dog my footsteps. He certainly dogged me all right. I could hardly get away from him, wherever I went, and he pressed me to take wine with him at the open-air cafés. One night when we sat together in Black Horse Square, he became uneasy, and kept glancing over his shoulder at the crowded tables. Presently he rose, and said, “Let us take a stroll.” I agreed, and was quickly aware that we were being followed by three men.
I spoke to him.
“One of us is being shadowed. Is it you or me?”
“Me,” he said. “As long as you stay with me, I am safe. Let us slip into this place....”
He pushed open the swing door of a wine shop, and we went inside. He ordered a bottle of cheap wine, andbefore it had been brought, three men entered and sat near the door.
My strange acquaintance sipped a little wine, spoke to me loudly in English about the weather, and whispered the words, “Follow me quickly!”
He rose from the table, and went rapidly out of the back door of the restaurant into the courtyard, and out through a side door into the street by which we had entered. It was dark, but as we walked we saw, at the end of the street, under a lantern, three men standing motionless.
“Hell!” said my acquaintance.
He plunged into a narrow alley, and then through a labyrinth of little streets until suddenly we emerged on the square opposite our hotel.
“How’s that for geographical knowledge?” he asked.
“Good!” I said. “But after this I do not desire your company. I don’t understand why these men followed you, and I don’t like the game, anyhow.”
He regretted my annoyance, and was so polite and amusing that I relented toward him, especially as he told me he was going to Vigo next day.
He wished me good-by that night when he went to bed. But next morning when I left Lisbon for Oporto, he was on the platform, and said that he had changed his plans and was going to the same place as myself.
I was now convinced that he was really shadowing me, and told him so. But he shook his head and laughed.
“Nothing of the kind. I like your company, because you’re the only Englishman in this land of dagoes. Also I want you to get me that handful of pebbles.”
He returned again to the subject of those ridiculous pebbles. I could get them easily for him on the seashore by Oporto. It would give me very little trouble. It would be an enormous favor to him.... I refused to consider the idea.
In Oporto he took me into a jeweler’s shop and bought a little cedarwood box about five inches square.
“I want enough pebbles to fill this box,” he said. “Surely you can get them for me?”
“Surely you can get them yourself,” I answered.
But he shook his head, and said that was impossible.
We were again followed down the streets of Oporto. My companion drew my attention to the fact, and then sidestepped into an umbrella shop. But he did not buy an umbrella. He bought a very neat, and rather expensive, sword stick, and offered to give me another like it.
“It may be useful,” he remarked.
I declined the sword stick, but accepted the thick cudgel which he had been carrying since I knew him.
That is practically the end of the story. He left Oporto two days later, and before going made one last request. It was that I should send a telegram which he had written out, to an address in South Kensington. It was to the following effect:
“Arriving in London Saturday. Cannot get the pebbles.”
What is the meaning of that mystery? I cannot give a guess, and have sometimes thought of offering the problem to Conan Doyle.
Sometimes, also, I have wondered whether it is in any way connected with an incident that took place in the abandoned palace of King Manuel, or rather, in his garden. From the newspaper reports it appeared that some of the royal jewels had been buried before the flight of King Manuel. Perhaps it was for the purpose of digging for them that three men, of whom one was believed to be an Englishman, had entered the palace garden on the night of my arrival in Lisbon. A sentry had discovered them and fired. The men fired back, and the sentry was wounded, before they escaped over the wall.
Was that man “believed to be an Englishman” my mysterious acquaintance? I am tempted to think so, yet Icannot provide a theory for the pebbles from the seashore, the jewel box, the shadowing in the streets of Lisbon, the purchase of the sword stick, and the eagerness for my company.
All that has nothing to do with the political prisoners and my mission of inquiry. The end of that story is that after the publication of my articles inThe Daily Chronicle, and many papers on the Continent, Affonso Costa declared a general amnesty and the prison doors were unlocked for a great “jail-delivery” of Royalists.
How far my articles had any influence toward that action, I do not know. Certainly I received some share in the credit, and for months afterward there were Portuguese visitors at my little house in Holland Street, to kiss my hand—as the deliverer of their relatives and friends—much to the amusement of my wife.
But the real deliverer of the prisoners was little Miss Tenison, who had pulled all the wires from her haunted house.
Ever since I can remember I have lived in the company of men and women of a “literary” turn of mind, who either gained a livelihood by writing or used their pens as a means of augmenting other forms of income. My memory, therefore, is a long portrait gallery of authors, novelists, and journalists, many of whom, however, as I must immediately confess, were utterly unknown to fame, and entirely without fortune.
My own father was an essayist and novelist in his spare time as a Civil Servant in the Board of Education, where, in those good old days of leisured life, he worked from eleven till four—not, I suspect, in a very exacting way. Anyhow, it was noticed by his sons that whenever they called upon him in his office, he was either washing his hands, or discussing life and literature with his colleagues. A man of overflowing imagination, enormous range of reading, passionate interest in all aspects of humanity, and most vivacious wit and eloquence, it was a brutal tragedy that he should have been fettered to the soul-destroying drudgery of a government office. But he gathered round him many worshipful friends, and was a popular figure in one of the oldest literary haunts of London, still “going strong” as The Whitefriars Club.
As a young boy in an Eton collar, I used to dine with him there, filled with reverence and delight because I sat at table with the literary giants of the day. To my father, whose genial imagination exaggerated the genius of his friends, they were all “giants,” but I expect the world, and even Fleet Street, has forgotten most of them by now. To me, the greatest of them were G. A. Henty, agrand old man with a beard like Father Christmas, who rewrote French and English history in delectable romance—does anyone read him now?—George Manville Fenn, the author of innumerable books of which I cannot remember a single title—O, fleeting time!—and Ascot Hope Moncrieff, who, under his first two names, was the very first editor ofThe Boy’s Own Paper—surely a thousand years ago!—and the author of the most entrancing boys’ books, and many serious and scholarly volumes.
This fine old man, who is still producing books, was our intimate friend at home, in early days, when a great family of brothers and sisters, of whom I came fifth, welcomed him with real honor and affection.
Another of my father’s friends, whom I used to think the wisest man in the whole world, was a little old gentleman of the distinguished name of Smith, who died the other day (getting a paragraph inThe Times), having devoted his whole life to a work on The Co-ordination of Knowledge. It was his simple and benign ambition to classify every scrap of knowledge since the beginning of the world’s history to the present time, by a card index system. He died, after fifty years of labor, with that task uncompleted!
I had the opportunity of meeting one character at The Whitefriars’ Club, who is still famous in Fleet Street, though he is like an ancient ghost. This was an old Shakespearian actor named O’Dell, who used to play the part of the gravedigger in “Hamlet,” and the clown in “As You Like It,” sixty years and more ago. Under the title of “The Last of the Bohemians,” he had a privileged place at the Whitefriars, which he was always the last man to leave for some unknown destination, popularly supposed to be a seat on the Thames Embankment because of his extreme penury. He wore a sombrero hat and a big black cloak in the old style of tragic actors. Itwas this costume and his ascetic face which led to a bet between the conductor and driver of an old horse bus passing down Fleet Street, before the time of motor cars.
“I say, Bill,” said the conductor, “who d’yer think we ’ave aboard?”
“Dunno,” said the driver.
“Cardinal Manning! S’welp me Bob!”
“No blooming fear! That ain’t the Cardinal.”
“Well, I’ll bet a tanner on it.”
At the Adelphi the conductor leaned over O’Dell as he descended with grave dignity, and said:
“Beg yer pardon, sir, but do you ’appen to be Cardinal Manning?”
“Go to hell and burn there!” said O’Dell in his sepulchral voice.
Joyously the conductor mounted the steps and called to the driver.
“I’ve won that bet, Bill. It is ’is ’Oliness!”
There are many such stories about O’Dell, who had a biting wit and a reckless tongue. He is now, like Colonel Newcome in his last years, a Brother of the Charterhouse, in a confraternity of old indigent gentlemen who say their prayers at night and dine together in hall. Among the historic characters of Fleet Street he will always have a place and I am glad to have met that link between the present and the past.
Among my literary friends as a young man was, first and foremost—after my father, who was always inspiring and encouraging—my own brother, who reached the heights of success (dazzling and marvelous to my youthful eyes) under the name of Cosmo Hamilton.
After various flights and adventures, including a brief career on the stage, he wrote a book calledWhich is Absurd, and after it had been rejected by many publishers, placed it on the worst possible terms with Fisher Unwin. It made an immediate hit, and refused to stop selling.After that success he went straight on without a check, writing novels, short stories, and dramatic sketches which established him as a new humorist, and then, achieving fortune as well as fame, entered the musical comedy world with “The Catch of the Season,” “The Beauty of Bath,” and other great successes, which he is still maintaining with unabated industry and invention. He and I were close “pals,” as we still remain, and, bad form as it may seem to write about my brother, I honestly think there are few men who have his prodigality of imagination, his overflowing storehouse of plots, ideas, and dramatic situations, his eternal boyishness of heart—which has led him into many scrapes, given him hard knocks, but never taught him the caution of age, or moderated his sense of humor—his wildness of exaggeration, his generous good nature, or the sentiment and romance which he hides under the laughing mask of a cynic. In character he and I are the poles apart, but I owe him much in the way of encouragement, and his praise has always been first and overwhelming when I have made any small success. As a young man I used to think him the handsomest fellow in England, and I fancy I was not far wrong.
As a journalist, it was natural that my most familiar friends should be of that profession, and therefore not necessarily famous as men of letters, unless they broke away from the limitations of newspaper work. They are still those for whom I have most affection—H. W. Nevinson, Beach Thomas, Percival Phillips, H. M. Tomlinson, Robin Littlewood the dramatic critic; Ernest Perris, editor ofThe Daily Chronicle; Bulloch, editor ofThe Graphic; all good men and true, and others less renowned.
One comrade who has “gone west,” as they used to say in time of war, was a brilliant young Jew named Alphonse Courlander. I used to meet him, at home and abroad, on all sorts of missions, and wherever we were,we used to get away from the crowd to talk of the books we were going to write (and for the most part never wrote!) and the latest masterpieces we had discovered. Alphonse had more of a Latin than a Jewish temperament, with irresistible gayety and wit, which concealed a profound melancholy. It was when he had drunk one glass too much, or perhaps two, that his melancholy surged up, and he used to shed tears over his poor little naked soul. Otherwise, he had gifts of comic speech and mimicry, which used to make me laugh outrageously, sometimes in the most solemn places. One trick of his was to make the face of a codfish, which was beyond all words funny, and in order to upset my gravity, he used to do this in the presence of royalty, or at some heavy political function, or even during a walk down Pall Mall.
I remember one night in Ireland, when we supped with a party of Irish journalists in a little eating house called Mooney’s Oyster Bar. A young Irish girl was playing the fiddle in the courtyard outside, and we called her in, and bribed her to play old Irish ballads, which are so pitiful with the old tragedy of the race that Alphonse the Jew was touched to his heartstrings and vowed that he was descended from the kings of Ireland.
He was with me during the episode in Copenhagen with Doctor Cook, in whom he had a passionate and chivalrous belief, until I shook his faith so much that he sent messages to his paper saying that Cook was a liar, and then later messages to say that he wasn’t. Courlander could write in any kind of style which impressed his imagination for a time, and his novels ranged from imitations of Thomas Hardy and R. L. Stevenson, to W. W. Jacobs. But his best book—really fine—was a novel on Fleet Street calledMightier Than the Sword, when he wrote about the things he knew and felt. In giving me a copy, he was generous enough to write thatI was its godfather, through my own novelThe Street of Adventure. Poor Alphonse Courlander was a victim of war’s enormous agony, and his end was tragic, but in Fleet Street he left no single enemy, and many friends.
For several years while I was in Fleet Street, I lived opposite Battersea Park, in a row of high dwellings stretching for about a mile, and called Overstrand Mansions, Prince of Wales Mansions, and York Mansions. Nearly all the people in the road were of literary, artistic, or theatrical avocations, either hoping to arrive at fame and fortune, or reduced in circumstances after brief glory. The former class were in the great majority, and were youngish people, with youngish wives, and occasionally, but not often, a baby on the balcony. G. K. Chesterton, who lived in the Overstrand Mansions, immediately over my head—I used to pray to God that he would not fall through—once remarked that if he ever had the good fortune to be shipwrecked on a desert island, he would like it to be with the entire population of the Prince of Wales Road, whom he thought the most interesting collection of people in the world. I thought so, too, and wrote a very bad novel about them, calledIntellectual Mansions, S. W.That book appeared in the time of the militant suffragettes who were playing hell in London, and as my chief lady character happened to be a suffragette, they claimed it as their own, bought up the whole edition, bound it in their colors of purple, green, and white, and killed it stone dead.
I came to know G. K. Chesterton at that time, and every time I saw him admired more profoundly his great range of knowledge, his immense wit and fancy, his genial, jolly, and passionately sincere idealism. From my ground-floor flat, every morning at ten I used to observe a certain ritual in his life. There appeared an old hansom cab, with an old horse and an old driver. This would be kept waiting for half an hour. Then G. K. C.would descend, a spacious and splendid figure in a big cloak and a slouch hat, like a brigand about to set forth on a great adventure, and though he was bound no further than Fleet Street, it was adventure enough, leading to great flights of fancy and derring do. After him came Mrs. Chesterton, a little figure almost hidden by her husband’s greatness. When Chesterton got into the cab, the old horse used to stagger in its shafts, and the old cab used to rock like a boat in a rough sea.
At luncheon time I often used to see G. K. C. in an Italian restaurant in Fleet Street where, with a bottle of port wine at his elbow, and a scribbling pad at his side, he used to write one of his articles forThe Daily News, chuckling mightily over some happy paradox, which had just taken shape in his brain, and totally unconscious of any public observation of his private mirth.
As literary editor ofThe Tribune, I tried to buy Chesterton away fromThe Daily News, at double the price they paid him, but he was proof against this temptation. “The Daily Newshas been very good to me,” he said, “and though I loathe their point of view on many subjects, I’m not going to desert them now.” He agreed, however, to contribute toThe Tribunefrom time to time, and as I had arranged the matter, he had a kindly feeling toward me which led to an embarrassing but splendid moment in my life. At a preliminary banquet given by the proprietor of that unfortunate paper to a crowd of distinguished people who utterly neglected to buy it, G. K. Chesterton sat, as one of the chief guests, at the high table. I had been obscurely placed at the back of the room, and this distressed the noble and generous soul of my good friend. When he was asked to speak, he made some general and excellent observations, and then uttered such a panegyric of me that I was dissolved in blushes, especially when he raised his glass and asked the company to drink to me. Some of them, including theproprietor, were not altogether pleased with this demonstration in my favor, but, needless to say, I cherish it.
Among my happy recollections of G. K. C. is one day at luncheon hour when he was “guyed” by a group of factory girls in Fleet Street, and took their playfulness with jovial humor, careless of his dignity; and an evening at the Guildhall when King Albert of Belgium was the guest, and I encountered Chesterton afterward wandering in the courtyard like the restless ghost of a roistering cavalier, afraid to demand his hat from the flunkeys, because he had not the necessary shilling with which to tip them.
Chesterton is one of the great figures of literary England, and will live in the history of our own time as one of the wittiest and wisest men, worthy of a place in the portrait gallery of the immortals. His great figure, his overflowing humor, his splendid simplicity of faith in the ancient code of liberty and truth, put him head and shoulders above the standardized type of little “intellectuals” with whom the world is crowded.
I have the pleasantest recollections of “Intellectual Mansions,” Battersea Park, but, after living there for four years or so, I moved over the bridge to the little house I have already mentioned, in Holland Street, Kensington, a few yards away from the old world Paradise, Kensington Gardens. It was a little house in a little street, which I still think the most charming in London, with fine old Georgian mansions mixed up with little old shops, so that an admiral lived next to a chimney sweep, and that great artist, Walter Crane, was two doors or so removed from an oil and colorman, who sold everything from treacle to paraffin. We had everything in Holland Street that adds to the charm of life—a public house at the corner, a German band which played all the wrong notes once a week, just as it ought to do, and a Punch and Judy show.
A near neighbor and close friend of mine at that time was E. W. Hornung, the author ofRafflesand many better books not so famous. He was the brother-in-law of Conan Doyle, whose enormous success with Sherlock Holmes probably set his mind working on the character of that gentlemanly thief, Raffles, with whom, personally, I had no sympathy at all.
Hornung and I used to “jaw” about books and writing, and, as an obscure journalist and unsuccessful author, I used to stand in awe of his fine house, his powerful motor car, his son at Eton. He was a heavily built man, with a lazy manner and a certain intolerance of view which made him despise Socialists, radicals, or any critics of the British Empire and the old traditions, but I came to know the underlying sweetness and sentiment of his character, and his passion of patriotism. He used to drive me sometimes to places like Richmond Park and Windsor Forest, and there we used to walk about under the trees, discussing the eternal subject of books. Deep peace was about us in those old woods. Neither he nor I imagined in our wildest flights of fancy that one day he would be living in a hole in the ground under the ruins of Arras, and that life and death would knock all thought of books out of our minds.
His boy was his greatest pride, a fine lad, fresh from Eton, and steeped in the old traditions which Hornung thought gave the only grace to the code of an English gentleman. (He had no patience with any other school of thought.) The boy stood one day on the curbstone in High Street Kensington, on a day after war had been declared and the streets were placarded with posters, “Your King and Country Need You.” He raised his hat to my wife, and said, “Do you think I ought to join up?” He joined up, like all boys of his age, and, like most of them in the list of second lieutenants, at that time, was killed very soon. His letters from the front were full offaith and pride. He loved his men, the splendor of being an officer, the thought of the great adventure ahead for England’s sake. He did not live into the times of disillusion and the dull routine of mud and misery....
His father was broken-hearted. His only idea now was how to get out to the front, in spite of being too old for soldiering, and too heavy, and too asthmatical. It was my idea that he should join the Y.M.C.A., and he seized it gladly as a chance of service and heart healing. I met him in his hut at Arras, serving out tea to muddy Tommies, finding a man, now and then, to his enormous joy, who knew his son. Always he was in the spiritual presence of that boy of his. For the sake of that, and for the men’s sake, he endured real agonies of physical discomfort in a drafty hut, with a stove which would not burn, and cocoa as his only drink. The fastidious author ofRaffles, who had been particular about his creature comforts, and careful of the slightest draft!
He started a lending library for soldiers in the trenches, and I lent him a hand with it now and then. It was in a hut on the ruins of the Town Hall of Arras and because of the daily bombardment, he slept at night in a dugout below an avalanche of stones. I promised to give a lecture to his men on the history of Arras, and “mugged it up” from old books in an old château. The date was announced, and posted up on a placard. It was the 21st of March, 1918! No British soldier needs reminding of the meaning of that date. It was when 114 German divisions attacked the British line and all hell was let loose, and, for a time, the bottom seemed to fall out of the world.
I did not deliver that lecture. I was away at the south of the line, recording frightful happenings. But I heard afterward, from Hornung, that through the smoke and dust of heavy shelling which churned up old rubbish heaps of ruins in Arras, two Scottish soldiers in tin hats loomed up to hear the lecture.... Poor Hornung survived thewar, but not long. His soul was eager for that meeting with his son.
One visitor of mine in the little house in Holland Street, which was often overcrowded with a mixed company of writers, artists, and odd folk, was a distinguished little man who came only when there was no one else about. At least, he preferred it that way, using my house as a little retreat from the madding world. This was Monsignor Hugh Benson, the famous preacher and novelist. The son of an Archbishop of Canterbury, he had shocked his family by joining the Catholic Church, in which he found perpetual adventure and delight. He loved its ritual, its color, its legends, its romance, its history, its music, and its faith, like a small child in a big old house constantly discovering new wonders, mysteries, and enchanting treasures. He had the heart of a boy, and an enthusiasm for life and work which would not let him take any rest. As a preacher, he was constantly flying about the country for special sermons and missions, and he preached, or, as he used to say, “praught,” with a passion that almost choked him and tore him to pieces. In spite of a painful little stutter, and intense shyness, he was extraordinarily eloquent, and every sermon was crammed with hard thinking, for he did not rely on sentiment for his effect, but on sheer intellectual reasoning.
That was only one part of his day’s work. He had an enormous correspondence with people of all denominations or none, who used to write to him for advice and help, and every letter he received he answered as though his own life depended on it.
At my house he used to go to his bedroom at ten o’clock to deal with the day’s budget. But when that was done with, he used to get out a manuscript book and begin to enjoy himself. That was when he was writing one of his novels—and as soon as one was finished, he began another.
“My dearest dream of Heaven,” he told me once, “is to be writing a novel which goes well and is never finished. What more perfect bliss than that?”
Among his other passions—and all he liked he loved—was music, and he used to strike wonderful chords on my piano, and one particular combination of notes which he called the “deep sea chord,” because, if you shut your eyes and listened, you could hear deep waters rushing overhead!
He killed himself by overwork, and I heard of his death when I was crossing a field outside Dixmude, which was a blazing ruin, in the autumn of the first year of war.
He used to envy my place in Fleet Street, and say that if he were not a priest, he would like to be a journalist.
It is most astonishing as a reminder of the rapid progress of mechanical science during the past twenty-one years that a journalist like myself, still young, and almost a babe compared with veterans of Fleet Street still on active service, should have seen the first achievements in aviation, the first motor cars plying for hire in the streets, and the first moving pictures—three inventions that have changed our human destiny and mentality in an incalculable way, and the last not least.
It was, I think, in 1900 that I encountered the first motor “taxi” in Paris, one of those rattle-bone machines which, as far as Paris is concerned, have not improved enormously since that time. But it seemed nothing short of a miracle then, and it was not until several years later than they ousted the dear old hansom of London, which now survives only as a historical relic.
It is difficult to think back to the time when the klip-klop of horses’ hoofs was the most characteristic noise of London by night, when one sat in quiet rooms above the street. It had a sound of its own, and a touch of romance which is missed by the older generation, accustomed now to the honking of motor horns. The younger generation cannot imagine life without that trumpeting.
I remember being sent by my paper to describe a night journey in a motor car as a new and exciting adventure, as it certainly was to me at that time when I traveled down to the Lands End, and saw, for the first time, the white glare of headlights on passing milestones and bewildered cattle, and passed through little sleeping villages where the noise of our coming was heard as aportent, by people who jumped out of bed and stared through the window blinds. In those days a man who owned a car was regarded as a very rich and adventurous fellow, as well as something of a freak, and he was ridiculed with immense enjoyment by pedestrians when he was discovered, frequently, lying in the mud beneath his machine which had hopelessly broken down. Indeed, many people had a passionate hostility to motorists and motoring, and a great friend of mine so hated the sight of an automobile that he used to throw stones after them. He was a rich man, with carriages and horses, which he vowed he would never abandon for “a filthy, stinking motor car.” Now he never moves a yard without one. I am the only consistent enemy of motor cars left in the world. I hate them like poison.
For professional purposes, however, I have been a great motorist, and I suppose that during the four and a half years of war I must have covered sixty thousand miles. I have hired motors in England, France, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Germany, Austria, Poland, Russia, Turkey, Asia Minor, and the United States. I have had every sort of accident that may happen to a motorist this side of death. Wheels have come off and gone rolling ahead of me down steep hills. Axles have broken beneath me. I have been dashed into level crossing gates, I have escaped an express train by something like three inches, and I have had my car smashed to bits by a collision with a lorry which laid my right arm out of action for three months.
Yet I was not such a “hoodoo” as a motorist as a delightful friend of mine named Coldstream. Whenever he sat in a motor car he used to expect something to happen to it, and it always did. The door handle would drop off, just as a preliminary warning. Then one of the cylinders would miss fire, as another sign of impending disaster. Then the back axle would break, orsomething would happen to prevent any further journey. Once, going with him from Arras to Amiens, we put two motor cars out of action, and then borrowed an ambulance, about ten miles from Amiens. After the first four miles it broke down hopelessly, and, finally, we had to walk the rest of the way.
Moving pictures have caused something like a revolution in social life, and on balance I believe they have been and are an immense boon to mankind—and womankind, especially in small country towns and villages which, until that invention, had no form of entertainment beyond an occasional magic-lantern show, or “penny reading.” They bring romance and adventure to the farm laborer, the errand boy, the village girl, and the doctor’s daughter, and despite a lot of foolish stuff shown on the screen, give a larger outlook on life, and some sense of the beauty and grace of life, to the great masses. They give them also a comparison of the present with the past, and of one country with another. Perhaps in showing the contrast between one class and another, in extremes of luxury and penury, they are creating a spirit of social discontent which may have serious consequence—but that remains to be seen.
I was an actor, for journalistic purposes, in one of the first film dramas ever produced in England. The first scene was an elopement by motor car, and the little company of actors and actresses assembled in the front garden of a large empty mansion in a suburb in the southeast of London, namely Herne Hill. The heroine and the gentleman who played the part of her irate father entered the house, and disappeared.
Meanwhile a number of business men of Herne Hill, on their way to work in the city, as well as various tradesmen and errands boys, were astonished by the sight of two motor cars, half concealed behind the bushes in the drive, and by the group of peculiar-looking people,apparently engaged in some criminal enterprise. They were still more astonished and alarmed at the following events:
(1) A good-looking youth advanced toward the house from a hiding place in the bushes, and threw pebbles at a window of the house.
(2) The window opened, and a beautiful girl appeared and wafted kisses to the boy below. Then disappeared.
(3) The front door opened, and the beautiful girl rushed into the arms of the boy. After ardent embraces, he came with her to one of the motor cars, placed her inside, and drove off at a furious pace.
(4) Another window in the house opened, and an elderly gentleman looked out, waving his arms in obvious indignation, bordering on apoplexy.
(5) Shortly afterward, he rushed out of the front door after the departing motor car (which had made several false starts), with clenched fists, and the words, “My God! My God!... My daughter! My daughter!”
By this time the Herne Hill inhabitants gathered at the gate were excited and distressed. One gentleman shouted loudly for the police. Another chivalrously remarked that he was no spoil-sport, and if the girl wanted to elope, it was none of their business. A fox terrier belonging to the butcher boy, ran, barking furiously, at the despairing father, who was still panting down the drive. Then the usual policeman strolled up and said, “What’s all this ’ere?” Explanation and laughter followed. Nothing like it had ever been seen before in respectable Herne Hill, but they had heard of the cinema and its amazing drama. So this was how it was done! Well, well!
Astonishing things happened in that early film drama, as old as the hills now, but novel and sensational then. The irate father giving chase in another powerful motor,(which moved at about ten miles an hour) was arrested by bogus policemen with red noses, thrown off the scent by comic tramps, and finally blown up in an explosion of the car, creating terror in a Surrey village, which thought that anarchists were loose. After many further incidents the runaway couple were married in a little old church—I walked in front of the camera as one of the guests—while two of the actors were posted as spies to give warning of any approach of the country clergyman. He, dear man, appeared in the opposite direction, and was horrified to find a wedding going on without his knowledge, and an unknown parson (who had dressed behind a hedge) officiating in the most unctuous way. For me it was a day of unceasing laughter, for there was something enormously ludicrous about the surprise of the passers-by, who could not guess at what was the real meaning of the mock drama. Now it is a commonplace, and no one is surprised when a company of film actors takes possession of the road.
Looking back upon the almost miraculous progress of aviation, it seems to me, and to many others, that humanity rose very high and fell very low when it discovered at last the secret of flight. For thousands of years, perhaps from the days when primitive man stood in a lonely world and watched the easy grace, the swift and joyous liberty of the birds above his head, there has been in the soul of man the dream of that power to fly. Men lost their lives in vain attempts, as far back as the myth of Icarus, whose waxed wings melted in the sun. Scientists studied the mechanism of birds, tethered their imagination to rising kites, sought vainly for the power to lift a heavy body from the earth. At last it was found in the petrol-driven engine, and men were seen to rise higher than the clouds, and to travel through the great spaces of the sky like gods. A pity that this achievement came just in time for world war, and that the power andbeauty of flight was used for dropping death upon crowded cities and the armies of youth, crouching in ditches beneath those destroying dragons!
I had no clear vision of that, in spite of the wonderful prophecy of H. G. Wells, when I watched the first feeble attempts of the early aviators in England and France. Those first aviation meetings did not promise mastery of the air except by the eye of faith. For hours, and sometimes for days, we waited on the edge of flat fields while men like Graham White, Latham, Blériot, Hamel, and other pioneers whose names, alas! I have forgotten—there is something terrible and tragic in that quick forgetfulness of heroic adventure—tinkered with their machines, stared at the wind gauge, would not risk the light breeze that blew, or rose a little, after running like lame ducks around the field, and crashed again like wounded birds. Death took a heavy toll of them. There was hardly one of those early meetings in which I did not see one or more fatal accidents.
I was close to the Hon. Charles Rolls, a very gallant and splendid fellow, when he fell. That was at the meeting in Bournemouth which I have mentioned before, when the Mayor challenged noonday itself in an artificial nose, and everybody seemed bewitched by some spell of midsummer madness. There was a flower carnival in progress and pretty girls all in white and sprigged muslin, mounted on floral cars, flung confetti and bouquets at the crowd, who pelted them back. From the flying field, while this was going on, Charles Rolls rose in his machine to perform an evolution which had been set as a competition. It was a death trap at that period of flying, for he had to fly four sides of a small square, and then alight in the center of it. No breeze was stirring, or very little, and the sky was cloudless. But rising sharply to form one side of the square, Rolls’s machine side slipped and fell like a stone. His body lay there for a momentbefore the spectators were conscious of tragedy. Then they rushed toward him.... A few yards away, the floral cars continued their procession, and the pretty girls pelted the laughing crowds with blossoms.
That was later than the beginning of flight. The first time I realized the almost limitless possibilities of heavier-than-air machines was at Doncaster, when Colonel Cody was among the competitors. The Doncaster meeting had been a great failure from the public point of view. There was very little flying, owing to bad weather and elementary aëroplanes. The aviators sulked in their tents, and the gloomy atmosphere was deepened by some financial troubles of the organizers, so that the gate money was seized to liquidate their debts. At least, that was the rumor, as I remember it. But there was one cheerful man, ever ready with a friendly word and jest. That was Colonel Cody who, after many kite-flying experiments, on behalf of the British government, which had failed to give him any financial aid, was putting the finishing touches to a homemade biplane, with the help of his son. It was a monstrous and clumsy affair. It had great struts of bamboo, an enormous spread of wing space, and a petrol tank weighing half a ton. This structure, which was tied up with string, and old wire, and bits of iron, was nicknamed St. Paul’s Cathedral, and Noah’s Ark, and all kinds of ridiculous names, by correspondents who did not believe in its powers of flight. But they loved to talk to old Cody, dressed like “Buffalo Bill” (though he was no relation of the original Colonel Cody of showman fame), with long hair which he used to wind up under his hat and fasten with an enormous bodkin with which he also used to pick his teeth. I laughed loud and long at the first sight of his immense aëroplane, and refused to credit his childlike assertion that it would fly like a bird. But one morning early, he enlisted volunteers to haul it out of its hangar and set its engine goingwith the noise of seven devils. “Poor old Cody!” said a friend of mine. “One might as well try to fly with a railway engine!”
Hardly were the words out of his mouth, than the great thing rose, and not like a bird, but gracefully and gently as a butterfly, was wafted above our heads, and flew steadily across the field. We chased it, shouting and cheering. It seemed to us like a miracle. It was a miracle—man’s conquest of flight.
Presently, after three minutes, I think, “something happened.” The great aëroplane staggered back, flagged, and took a nose-dive to earth, where it lay with its engine dug deep into the soil and a confusion of twisted wires and broken canvas about it. With two or three other men—among them a brilliant and well-remembered journalist, Harold Ashton—I ran forward, breathlessly, and helped to drag Cody from beneath the wreckage, dazed and bloody, but not badly hurt. His first words were triumphant: “What did I tell you, boys? It flew like a bird!”
It was patched up again, and flew again, until Cody was killed. He was truly one of the heroic pioneers, obstinate in faith, heavily in debt, unhelped by any soul, except that son of his who believed in “the old dad.” It was he who cured me of scepticism. After seeing his heavy machine fly around the course, I knew that the game had been won, and that one day, not one man, but many, might be carried in an aëroplane on great strong wings.
Edgar Wallace, war correspondent, novelist, poet, and great-hearted fellow, was at Doncaster with Harold Ashton and others, and I remember we played poker, which was new to me, after the day’s work. The landlord of the inn in which we stayed watched the game for a few minutes, and saw Wallace scoop the pool with a royal flush. The old man’s eyes fairly bulged in his head. “It’sa great game, that!” he remarked, and insisted on taking a hand. Wallace had phenomenal luck with his hands and so raked the landlord’s money out of his pockets that he fled in dismay. “It’s a devil’s game!” was his final verdict. However, that has nothing to do with the triumph of flight, except on the part of the landlord.
Another revelation of progress rapidly achieved happened at Blackpool, which coincided with the Doncaster meeting. I went on from one to the other and found the weather at Blackpool frightful, from the point of view of flying. Rain poured down heavily, and the wind was violent—so savage, indeed, across the flat fields of the flying ground that it uprooted the poles of the press tent and made the canvas flap like clothes hung out to dry on a gusty day. Before this pavilion finally collapsed in the gale, I used it as a writing place, and remember sitting there with Bart Kennedy, with our collars tucked up, trying to keep our paper dry and our tempers cool. Bart Kennedy who, as a young man, had tramped about the world, not as a literary adventurer but as a real vagabond of the old style, earning his bread by casual labor, discovered in later life the gift of words, which he used in a crude, forceful, ungrammatical, but somewhat biblical, style to describe his experiences of life in the wild places of the world, and the philosophy which he had extracted therefrom. He posed as a rebel and a man of primitive soul in the artificial environment of civilization, and was adopted by the Harmsworth Press as an amusing freak. Although he was conscious of his own pose, and played it for all it was worth, it was based on sincerity. He was truly a rebel and a natural man, with the honesty, brutality, simplicity, and courage of the backwoodsman. In that tent at Blackpool, I remember his talking to a carpenter who was trying to fix the tent poles.
“Say, old friend, have you ever heard of Jack Cade?”
The carpenter scratched his head, thoughtfully.
“Can’t say I remember any lad of that name. He isn’t one of my pals.”
“He was a carpenter like you,” said Bart Kennedy. “Lived five hundred years ago, and tried to gain liberty for the workingmen of England. An honest rebel, was Jack Cade. Why don’t you fellows learn the spirit of revolt? You’re all as tame as sheep, without the pluck of a louse.”
The collapse of the tent interrupted this dialogue, in which “Bart,” as we called him, endeavored to raise rebellion against the British Constitution.
There was “half a gale,” as seamen would have called it, with the wind at sixty miles an hour, and to the amazement of the spectators, who had given up all hopes of watching a flight that day, an aviator mounted into the fury of the storm. It was Latham, the most dare-devil of the early adventurers of flight, the most passionate and ill-tempered of them. I think it was a kind of rage which made him go up that afternoon. He was “fed up” with waiting for moderate weather, and with the little ladies who surrounded him with adulation and rivalry, as many of those aviators were surrounded by girls who were their hero worshipers and their harpies. It was the most astounding flight that had been seen up to that time. Latham’s machine was like a frail craft in a rough sea. The wind furies shrieked, and tried to tear this thing to pieces. It staggered and strained, and seemed to be tossed like a bit of paper in that wild wind. At times the power of the engine seemed to be exactly equaled by the force of the wind, and it remained aloft, making no progress but shuddering, as it were, until Latham wrenched it round and evaded the direct blast. He flew at a terrific speed, with the wind behind him, rising and dipping with tilted wings, like a sea gull in a storm. The correspondents on the press stand went a little mad at the sight and rose and cheered hoarsely, with a sense offear, because this man seemed to be courting death. We expected him to crash at any moment. One voice rose above all the others, and roared out words which I have never forgotten. “You splendid fool! Come down! Come down!”
It was Barzini, the Italian correspondent, the most brilliant descriptive writer in the world. Like an Italian of the Medici family, with long nose and olive skin and dark liquid eyes, Latham’s heroic exploit stirred him to a passion of emotion, and tears poured down his face. His description of that flight was one of the finest things I have ever read.
One of the most exciting episodes of those early days of record making was when Graham White competed with Paulhan in a race from London to Manchester. With Ernest Perris, the news editor ofThe Daily Chronicle, and Rowan, one of the correspondents, I set out in a powerful motor car to follow the flight, which began shortly before dark. Graham White’s plan was to fly by night—the first time such an exploit had been attempted—and he thought that our headlights might help as some guide outside London. We lost him almost at once, and after a wild motor ride at a breakneck pace in the darkness, decided that we should never see him again. He had probably hit a tree, and was lying dead in some field. Many other correspondents had motored out, but we lost them all, and halted at the side of a lonely road where we heard voices shouting to each other in French.
“Perhaps they are Graham White’s mechanics,” I said to Perris.
This guess proved to be right, and upon inquiry from the men, we found that Graham White had had engine trouble, and had alighted in some garden not far from where we stood.
It was a little country village, though I cannotrecollect its name or whereabouts, and after tramping across fields, we saw a house with lights shining from all its windows. It was the village rectory, remote from the world and all the excitements of life, until, out of the darkness, a great bird had dropped into the garden, with the noise of a dragon. From the wings of the bird a young man, dirty, half-dazed, freezing cold, and drunk with fatigue, staggered out, banged at the door, and asked for food and a place to sleep. The clergyman’s wife and the clergyman’s daughter rose to the occasion, as Englishwomen do in times of crisis. They dressed themselves, made some coffee, cooked some boiled eggs, lighted big fires, and unfroze the bird man. He was already abed, after a plea to be called at the first gleam of dawn, when we arrived. Presently other motorists arrived, all cold and hungry and muddy. The country rectory was invaded by these wild-looking people and the clergyman’s pretty daughter, with shining eyes, served us all with coffee and eggs, and seemed to enjoy the excitement as the greatest thing that had happened in her life. I have no recollection of the clergyman. I dare say the poor man was bewildered by the sudden tumult in his house of peace, and left everything to his capable wife and the swift grace of his little daughter.
Before the dawn Graham White was down from his bed, thoroughly bad-tempered and abominably rude, for which there was ample excuse, as word was brought that Paulhan was well ahead, although he, too, had dropped into a field. Perris and I urged him not to fly again before daybreak, but he told us to go to the devil, and insisted on getting away in the darkness. We took to the car again, waited until we heard the roar of Graham White’s engines, and saw him pass overhead like a great black bat. Then we chased him again, and lost him again. He came to earth with more engine trouble in a ploughed field not long after dawn. A little crowd of peoplegathered round him, and I saw some of the correspondents who had started from London at the same time as ourselves—now disheveled, pale, and dirty in the bleak dawn. One young man, belonging to the oldMorning Leader, I think, carried a red silk cushion. His car lay overturned in a ditch, but he still clung to the cushion, he told me, as his one hold on the actuality of life, which seemed nothing but a mad dream.
Another historic event was the All-round-England race, which became a duel between two famous Frenchmen, Vedrennes and Beaumont. The first named was a rough, brutal, foul-mouthed mechanic, with immense courage and skill. The second was a naval officer of most charming and gallant personality. Beaumont came back to Brooklands after his successful and wonderful flight, only a few minutes ahead of Vedrennes. A great crowd of men and women, in which there were a number of pretty ladies who had motored out early from London, had assembled at Brooklands to cheer the winner, but, as always among English crowds, their sympathy was excited by the man who had just missed the first prize. When Vedrennes appeared in sight, there was a rush to meet him. He stepped out of his machine, and looked fiercely around. When some one told him that Beaumont had arrived first, he raised both his clenched fists and cried out a foul and frightful oath—fortunately in French. Then he burst into tears, and, looking round in a dazed way, asked if there was any woman who would kiss him. A little Frenchwoman in the crowd stepped shyly out, and Vedrennes flung his greasy arms about her and kissed her emotionally. It was characteristic of the French soul that in the moment of his tragic disappointment he should have sought a woman’s arms, like a boy who goes to his mother in distress. I have never forgotten that little episode, and I have seen similar things in time of war.