Against the advice of his agent—poor old George Dolby, who had acted in the same capacity for Dickens—Twain had stopped his lectures at the Hanover Square Rooms for a “spell” in the provinces. On the evening of the day on which we called he was to resume the course which he had abandoned. The low key in which we found him was the result of the fog, in the first place; and, in the second place, he was worrying himself by recalling the warnings Dolby had given him about the danger of interrupting the courseoriginally, his fear of the power of some new attraction, his knowledge of the fickleness of public taste. And as the afternoon advanced the fog grew more dense. We remained with the depressed humorist until Dolby arrived to escort him to the rooms. An hour before the time for commencing the lecture all four of us got into a growler, and were swallowed by the fog. I have never measured the distance between the Langham Hotel and Hanover Square, but I think I could manage it in ten minutes. It took our cabby just three-quarters of an hour to land his fare. He lost his way twice, and finally was obliged to get off the box, engage the services of an imp carrying a link, and lead his dejected horse. Dolby had been right in getting us off early. When we arrived at the hall, we had just ten minutes in hand.
Twain was in a state of the most profound depression. Stoddard and I took our places in the front row of the stalls. The house was full of fog, and only half full of audience. Dolby afterwards told me that he had experienced the greatest difficulty in inducing Twain to appear at all. An appeal to his honour and the risk of ignoring an engagement with his public at last prevailed. About five minutes after the advertised time he came out. He advanced slowly to the very edge of the platform—the tips of his pumps, indeed, went over the edge. He craned his neck, peering through the mist. In his sad, slow way he commenced:
“Ladies and gentlemen . . . I don’t know . . . whether you can see me or not. . . . But I’m here!”
You observe that there is nothing in the mere words. But their spontaneity and appositeness told at once. The effect was electrical. The audience was put into a good humour, and the lecture went with a roar of laughter and applause from start to finish.
Dr. Gordon Hake was a friend whom I made through a review of his “Poems and Parables,” printed by my Tapleyan editor. Hake was a most courtly old gentleman, and when actively engaged in the pursuit of his profession—he had been a general medical practitioner—must have possessed an enviable degree of what is known amongphysicians as “a fine bedside manner.” The doctor had a pleasant little place at Coombe End, just beyond the spot at which Roehampton Lane impinges on Wimbledon Common. Under his hospitable roof I met one or two famous men and a goodly number of men who aspired to be famous. Of the famous men I shall here make mention of one only.
George Borrow, author of “Lavengro” and “Romany Rye,” was an old friend of Hake’s, and I was invited down to Coombe End to meet that very extraordinary old gentleman. Dr. Hake had taken care to warn me that it would be as well to say nothing of my contributions to periodical literature, as Borrow had a great dislike to literary persons. My claim to that description being of the slightest, I quite gladly assented, and as a result George Borrow and I became on fairly friendly terms—or I had rather put it: the Gipsy King was less bearish to me than to some of the others with whom he was thrown into contact. I did not at that time understand his hostile attitude to contemporary professors of literature. I do now. Borrow had enjoyed for a brief period the questionable delights of being lionized in London society. His “Bible in Spain” had created a furore. An immense amount of curiosity was created as to the personality of a man who had gone through the extraordinary adventures described in that romantic book. For a couple of seasons Borrow was invited everywhere, and then as capriciously he was dropped. At the end of the sixties, when I met him, the hostesses who had fought with each other for his presence could not have told you whether the great man was alive or dead.
A big, broad-shouldered, slightly stooping man, with white hair, shaven face, and bushy eyebrows, was the George Borrow whom on a fine summer afternoon I met on the lawn at Coombe End. He was dressed in rusty broadcloth. At the moment he was about to take a walk across the common. He did me the honour to ask me to accompany him. The only book of his that I had read at that time was “The Bible in Spain.” It used to be given to me when I was quite a little boy as suitable Sunday reading. It wasvery unlike the general run of Sunday reading to which I had become accustomed. It was, indeed, a series of lurid adventures, hairbreadth escapes, desperate encounters, fire, thunder, murder, and sudden death—a boy’s book of the most pronounced type. And its title notwithstanding, I felt, even in those young days, that the incidents related must have been evolved by the teeming imagination of a novelist.
My first walk with Borrow confirmed me in the certainty of my childish instinct. Crude uncritical people, without a due respect for literary genius, would, on the strength of his conversation during that walk of mine, have characterized him offhand as a flamboyant liar. The true explanation is that he was continually evolving or devising incidents which, once given shape, remained with him as facts to be thenceforth remembered and related as occurrences duly observed. I feel sure that Borrow firmly believed that he had personally experienced all the eburescent transactions described in his “Bible in Spain.” On our way across the common he was accosted by a tramp. Borrow was infuriate. He invited the sturdy beggar to fight—he even began to divest himself of his broadcloth frock-coat; but the beggar made off. He was in search of benefactions, not of blows. Had the beggar been a gipsy, Borrow’s attitude would have been quite friendly. He would have, were it needed, administered to the wants of the swarthy nomad; but an English beggar was in the eyes of Borrow simply an habitual criminal, and as such should be soundly trounced whenever encountered.
In a road t’other side the common he took me into a beerhouse, and called for two half-pints of “swipes.” Thus in such places they call their thinnest, sourest, and cheapest ale. Borrow drank his as one enjoying a rare vintage. With difficulty I sipped a tipple, which I found to be simply villainous. In the far corner of the taproom sat a man at a table. He had finished his mug of ale, and was slumbering.
“See that fellow?” asked Borrow in an impressive stage whisper.
“Yes,” I replied faintly, for the beer was positively making me ill.
“That man is a murderer. Finish your swipes. I’ll tell you all about it when we get out.”
And once out, he proceeded to tell me all about it. Here he was at his best. You could not help listening, admiring, and—almost—believing. It was so wonderfully done: the whole invented narrative, the squalid details, the sordid motive, the escape from justice owing to the presence on the jury of a friend of the prisoner, the verdict of “Not Guilty” rendered by an eleven of the vaunted Palladium starved into acquiescence by one determined boot-eater—all this the venerable old gentleman related with the utmost sincerity and circumstantiality.
On the following morning I took a walk across the common unaccompanied. I revisited the little swipe-shop. The man who had served us was behind the bar. He was the landlord. Did he recollect serving myself and another gentleman in the taproom on the previous afternoon? Of course he remembered. There was a third person in the taproom at the time? Of course there was. Did he know anything of that third person? Of course he did. Why, that was old William Mobbs, of Putney, carter to Mr. — (mentioning a market-gardener in the vicinity).
“Anything against him?” I inquired.
“Anything agin William Mobbs!” exclaimed mine host indignantly. “William is the most virtuosest man within a ragious of twenty mile! I b’leeve he’s the qui’test, law-abidin’est old bloke in the ’ole world.”
And in this way was Borrow’s murderer rehabilitated for me by one who knew him.
This visit of Borrow’s to Dr. Hake came to an abrupt close in a somewhat melodramatic way. Two families of gipsies set up an encampment on the common. Hosts who entertained Borrow in the country had to take their chance of an incident of that kind happening, for the gipsies seemed to scent their protector out. He spoke their language, he wrote their songs. By some of them he was known as their “King.” The presence of the nomadic tribe was immediatelymade known to Borrow by one of their dirty but intelligent scouts. The “King” thereupon made a call of ceremony upon his distinguished subjects. When he returned to Coombe End, he informed Dr. Hake that his friends the gipsies were in a difficulty about their water-supply, and that he had taken upon himself to give them permission to fill their buckets at the good doctor’s well. The good doctor consented with concealed misgiving. His fears were justified. The gipsies came on to his little estate, and not only took his water, but took away anything portable that happened to be lying around.
In his most courteous manner Dr. Hake told his illustrious guest what had happened. Borrow literally raged. The man who insulted his Romany friends insulted him. His friends were incapable of any act of ingratitude to a man whose hospitality he was accepting. But the worthy Hake insisted that, as a matter of mere fact, certain fowls, linen, and garden tools, had disappeared from the place at a time which synchronized with the Romany incursion. It was enough. The incensed “Lavengro” ordered his portmanteau to be packed and taken to the station. He flung out of the house, ignoring the kindlyau revoirof his gentle host. After many moons he came to his senses again, and was reconciled to one of the most amiable, hospitable, and accomplished men of his time.
On two or three occasions after my introduction I met Borrow in town. He had apartments near the Museum. He was invariably civil. But this I attribute to the fact that I was able to talk pugilistic lore with him, and to introduce him to Nat Langham’s, a centre of “the fancy,” of the existence of which it surprised me to find so great an admirer of the P.R. completely ignorant. When I proposed this excursion we were in Charlotte Street, Fitzroy Square, and Borrow had been met by me as he was walking along the side-path with a copy of the Old Testament in Hebrew held close to his failing eyes. He thrust the book into his pocket and accompanied me. I shrewdly suspect that this was the only occasion on which a Bible found its way into Nat Langham’s famous crib.
Some time after Borrow’s death I was regularly engaged in writing for the newspapers, and it came in my way to make some inquiries concerning the circumstances under which he passed away. They were grim enough. In a lonely old farmhouse, situated by the whispering reeds of a Suffolk broad, he breathed his last. He was quite alone at the time when he wasin extremis. And when at last the massive form was found lying there, cold and stark and dead, it was gathered up and pressed into a deal box. hastily put together by the village carpenter, and despatched by rail from the nearest railway-station—a sad and tragical ending, surely, for an imperious genius who had been in his day the lion of a London season, and whose writings have established a cult comparable only to that which has arisen over Fitzgerald and the libidinous old Persian philosopher, whom he made to live again in his wonderful paraphrase.
Of Dante Gabriel Rossetti I had but a passing glimpse. The poet-painter called on George Hake (a son of Borrow’s friend) when I happened to be stopping with him at Oxford. But the impression left is vivid enough. Six or seven years had passed since the bitter domestic bereavement had taken place which saddened his life and induced the habit that shortened his days. In appearance he presented neither the delicate, almost ascetic, figure of the early portraits nor the wan aspect of the later likenesses. One might have almost called him robust. He had the general aspect of a prosperous country squire. We all three chatted on current topics, and in Rossetti’s contributions to the talk he was now incisive and epigrammatic, and again fanciful and quaint. He was not for a moment pessimistic or bitter. The Rossetti presented to the public is, I know, a very different sort of individual. I can only repeat that I describe the man as I saw him during the closing years of the sixties.
Mr. Hall Caine presents a Rossetti of a very different sort. In a work of autobiography that popular writer devotes the greater portion of his book to a narrative of his relations with the poet. Mr. Caine became acquainted with the poet whenhis powers were decaying and his work practically finished; when he was habitually drugged and incapable of normal emotions; when he was deserted by his friends, and grateful for the companionship of almost anybody.
The literary venture of Mark Tapley Ainsworth failed to justify the auriferous future that his cousin, the novelist, had prophesied for it. The unfortunate owner was losing over it more money than he could afford. He called on me to announce the sad circumstance. He was as joyous as ever. He laughed merrily as he spoke of his bitter disappointment. I felt it impossible to sympathize with his mood. In my crass ignorance of the publishing world, the death of a magazine was a tragic thing. It affected me almost as the passing away of some eminent man. We lunched over the event (a sort of “wake,” it seemed to me) at the Blue Posts in Cork Street, and the proprietor of the magazine, the decease of which was about to be announced, was in the gayest of spirits. After all, the dear old chap may be excused at exhibiting some feeling of relief. It had been for him, as he cheerily explained, “a matter of always paying out, and never paying in.”
He certainly had not embarrassed himself by paying anything to me. But the regular occupation had been excellent practice, and the immediate ponderable result was the formation of a circle of acquaintances among literary men and artists. We drank, in excellent claret, to the resurrection of the dead periodical. But we honoured the toast as those who have no hope. Mark Tapley and I parted on excellent terms. We walked down the Burlington Arcade, and took leave of each other when we reached Piccadilly. His last word was a jape at the expense of himself and his venture. The last sound I heard of him was a particularly jolly laugh as he ambled off.
This collapse of the Ainsworthian magazine; my “call”; the removal from lodgings in Woburn Place to chambers in the Temple—these may be conveniently taken as roughly marking the end of my informal novitiate. I don’t know whether the habit of giving “call suppers” still persists. I was persuaded that the obligation to invite my friends toone was incumbent on me. The repast was ordered at my chambers for eight, and all my guests turned up. On the other side of Fleet Street, and nearly opposite Middle Temple Lane, was an oyster-house and restaurant called Prosser’s. At that establishment the supper was ordered. I regret to say that I recollect very little of the entertainment. My health was proposed, and a bright career at the Bar foretold for me by a gentleman who is now an ornament of the judicial bench. An artist present drew a picture entitled “Coke upon Littleton,” which evoked roars of laughter by reason of its audacious Rabelaisian humour. And an Hibernian journalist, who is now an English M.P., sang “The Wearin’ o’ the Green.” I replied—coherently—to the toast of my health. After that things became a trifle blurred. Prosser had done me too well.
A call to the Bar and a residence in the Temple necessitate a somewhat intimate acquaintance with Fleet Street. But, of course, they do not make of one a Fleet Street man in the journalistic meaning of that phrase. Some time was to pass yet ere I could regard myself as free of the street—so to say. The haunts of the Templar are not those of the Pressman. The former, when of an afternoon he quits the “dusty purlieus of the Law,” usually hastens westward. The haunts of the journalist are in Fleet Street itself. Yet it was to barristers, after all, that I owed my initiation into the mysteries of the newspaper world.
In those days a considerable number of young barristers—and some old ones—were more or less dependent on their contributions to the Press for an income. Tired of idling in chambers and
“Beckoning the tardy briefs,The briefs that never came.”
“Beckoning the tardy briefs,The briefs that never came.”
they had struck boldly off into the whirling, throbbing life that surrounded their quiet cloisters. Among those who were to influence my career at this stage were “Willie” Dixon, son of Hepworth Dixon, the author of “Spiritual Wives” and other books which had a mighty vogue in their day and seem now to be forgotten; Patrick Macdonald, a Scotsman with a knowledge of Law that would have landed him on the Bench had he lived to justify the opinion of the solicitors who “discovered” him too late; and Robert Williams. To the former gentlemen I owed my introduction to the Savage Club, where for atime I became a frequent visitor, though not qualified for membership under their drastic first rule—a rule which has, I understand, become considerably relaxed, in order to give admission to that Mammon of Unrighteousness with which clubmen, among others, are commanded to “make friends.” Here, for the first time, I met some of the practical journalists—the men whose profession it was to feed the palpitating monsters of Fleet Street with their mighty pabulum of “copy.”
But my real introducer was Williams. It was to his influence that I was indebted for my “chance.” His unerring advice, his ungrudging assistance, his fine faith in my aptitude, made the beginning easy for me. Robert Williams was, perhaps, the most remarkable man of his time in the Street of Adventure. He was a Welshman, with but little of the Welsh temperament save the hopefulness characteristic of that race. He was a graduate of Jesus College, Oxford, becoming thereafter a Fellow of Merton. His nickname at the University was “Scholar” Williams, which sufficiently indicates the sort of reputation he had acquired. He was one of the finest Greek scholars of his day. His “Notes on Aristotle” are still regarded as authoritative by examiners. He was, I think, tutor both to Lord Rosebery and Lord Lansdowne. He was a member of the Reform Club before he had ever seen Pall Mall. Lord Rosebery took a great interest in the career of Williams after he left Oxford and had flung himself into Fleet Street, for he married and threw up his Fellowship.
Lord Rosebery’s influence took an extremely practical turn. For instance, he bought theExaminerfor Williams. But the “Scholar,” although a very accomplished contributor, had not been cut out by Nature for an editor. This he proved, not only in his conduct of theExaminer, but in the founding and editorial management of a venture which followed. He sold the property which Lord Rosebery had made over to him, and with the proceeds started a weekly illustrated paper calledSketch—to be distinguished fromThe Sketchbelonging to the Ingram group, a much more recent candidate for popular favour. The capitalwhich Williams had acquired by the sale of theExaminerwas only sufficient to keep his new venture running for a few weeks. He transferred it to an owner of sporting papers, in whose hands it died the death.
But the finest journalistic work of “Scholar” Williams may be seen in his leading articles in theDaily Telegraph. For some years he was retained on the staff of that journal, transferring his services eventually to theStandard. He had a prodigious memory. In that respect he was the equal of Lord Macaulay. Indeed, at Oxford he was always regarded as a “coming Lord Macaulay.” He knew Dickens by heart, and his apposite quotations from that author are more frequent than allusions from Aristotle. He had a very keen sense of humour, and in exercising his gifts in that way he had no sort of compunction. Indeed, I fear that to his habit of “giving away the secrets of the Prison House” in humorous recital and to mixed audiences may be attributed the events which immediately preceded his transference from Peterborough Court to Shoe Lane.
A striking appearance was that of Robert Williams. I can recall vividly his form at this moment as he makes his way down Fleet Street. In figure he was a miniature Dr. Johnson—bulky, short in the neck and short in the sight. He had a broad, clean-shaven face, and, so far as his features were concerned, possessed the true forensic aspect. He went always clad in black, and invariably proceeded down the street with a book or a paper held close to his eyes. As he forged his way ahead he constantly collided with citizens hastening in the opposite direction. These frequent impacts did not seem to retard his progress or inconvenience in any way the stolid scholar who walked slowly and serenely on, oblivious of the frequent rebukes and objurgations which his progress evoked. He had a loud metallic voice, which in conversation was always raised, so that his observations were heard by persons at a considerable distance off. His laugh—well it did you good to hear Williams laugh at a joker, his own or another’s.
Williams, too, was a man who could not only laugh at ajoke against himself, but could even tell a joke against himself. One of these stories is worth recalling in this place, although it has to do, not with his journalistic, but with his barristerial work. I may perhaps premise this, as elucidatory of the point of the narrative: Montagu Williams was at that time one of the most popular men at the Criminal Bar. He was the terror of evil-doers. And if he were engaged for the prosecution, the unfortunate man in the dock often pleaded guilty, “lest a worse thing happen unto him.”
It happened that Robert Williams was briefed one day to prosecute a prisoner for burglary. The trial took place at the Old Bailey, and Williams was seated just beneath the dock, and well within hearing of anything that might transpire there. The prisoner was duly put forward, the indictment read, and the malefactor asked to plead. Williams then heard the following whispered colloquy take place between the accused man and the warder:
“Who’s a-prosecutin’ me?” inquired the caged gaol-bird.
“Mr. Williams,” whispered the warder.
“Guilty, me lord!” said the prisoner to the court in the accent of penitential despair.
In due course Williams rose to enlighten the tribunal as to certain incidents in the previous career of the individual whom he was endeavouring to consign to “chokey.” The thread of his narrative was, however, cut by the following conversation, hurriedly battledored between the burglar and his custodian:
“I thort,” said the man, indignantly reproachful, “you said as Mister Williams was a-prosecutin’ me.”
“Well,” replied the warder, “thatisMr. Williams—Mr. Robert Williams.”
“Oh!” exclaimed the prisoner, as one become the subject of a sudden illumination. “I thought you meant Mr.MontaguWilliams. I ain’t a-goin’ to plead guilty to that little beggar. . . .Not Guilty, me lord!”
It is satisfactory to be able to add that on this occasion, and in spite of his amended plea. Williams succeeded in consigning his cynical detractor to a long term of imprisonment.
Once I accompanied Williams to the Court of Queen’s Bench. On that occasion he was less triumphant. It was at the old Courts in Westminster. Williams had to move for a new trial before three of Her Majesty’s Judges. One of them happened to be Blackburn. Williams moved on three points. He had said but a few words on the first of these heads, when Blackburn, with that brutal disregard for the susceptibilities of the Junior Bar for which he was notorious, cut my unfortunate friend short with the request: “Get on with your next point.”
Somewhat abashed, Williams proceeded to open his second argument. He had barely stated his point, when his tormentor again interrupted with—
“Let us hear what you’ve got to say about your third reason.”
Williams was nettled. The influential solicitor who had instructed him was in court. He felt that he must make a stand for his client.
“I trust, my lord, that I am not irrelevant,” he ventured, with a tone of offended dignity.
“But you are!” was the brusque retort of Blackburn (J.).
The effect of this rebuff was so considerable that Williams attacked his third point without spirit, without interruption, and without success.
I have said that some of the finest journalistic work of Robert Williams appeared as “leaders” in theDaily Telegraph. I might go farther. In my opinion, some of those leading articles were, for trip, style, reasoning, and allusiveness, the best things that had ever appeared in that newspaper. I am speaking now of the best of Williams, for he was an unequal writer, and his success depended much on the sympathy evoked by his subject. He threw the essays off with consummate ease. I remember congratulating him on this wonderful facility.
“Nothing in it, my dear fellow,” he replied. “You’ve only to follow strictly the rule of our office, and your leader will come as easy as sand off a shovel.”
“And the rule?”
“All leaders,” he replied, “are divided into three paragraphs,and no paragraph must begin with the word ‘The.’ Simple, ain’t it? Eh, what?”
An answer which seemed rather to argue that, his extraordinary journalistic capacity notwithstanding, he regarded the Press with a sentiment not far removed from cynical contempt.
And yet to have taken a first place as a writer on a journal boasting such a staff as theTelegraphthen possessed should have gratified the ambition of any ordinary man. Mr. (subsequently Sir) Edwin Arnold was really Editor, though nominally working under the direction of Mr. Edward Lawson (now Lord Burnham). A courteous and accomplished gentleman, Arnold will perhaps be remembered by posterity in respect of his “Light of Asia.” That poem was an awakening for the easy-going, slow-thinking, credulous, missionary-meeting-supporting British public, who had been taught from infancy that Buddha was a false god, and the centre of a foul and degrading faith. To Sir Edwin Arnold is mainly due the fact that in England to-day there are thousands who have some appreciation of the life and the doctrines of “the teacher of Nirvana and the Law.” Sir Edwin had the courage of his Oriental convictions. He chose as his second wife a Japanese lady.
But the writer who had given theTelegraphits peculiarcachet, and whose work was readily recognized by the readers of the paper, was George Augustus Sala. Sala, I maintain, was the best all-round journalist of his time. Nothing came amiss to him. Although theSaturdayand Matthew might affect to sneer at the erudition of his “leaders,” it may be mentioned here that those superior critics sometimes mistook for Sala’s the work of Williams, whose scholarship was at least equal to that of the detractors. As a descriptive writer, Sala was quite without a rival, and the public soon “tumbled” to his piping. The early vogue of the “Telly” was due to his brilliant and unceasing series of pen-pictures. One saw the pageants that he wrote about. Coronations, royal functions, the marriage of Princes, great cathedral services—these incidents lived again in his vivid columns. Sala’s versatility was amazing. He wrote atleast one remarkable novel; he illustrated some of his own humours; he is the author of a ballad—printed for private circulation only—of which Swift would have been proud. His “Conversion of Colonel Quagg” is one of the most humorous short stories ever written. He wrote an excellent burlesque for the Gaiety Theatre. His articles on Hogarth, contributed to theCornhill, at the suggestion of Thackeray, exhibit him as an art critic of insight and of profound technical knowledge. His lectures on the conflict between North and South, delivered on his return from his mission as Special Correspondent during the American War, drew the town. He was a fine linguist, and, at a time when the art of after-dinner speaking was still held in some repute, he was easily first among many rivals. In the preface to one of his books, he says of the proprietors of the paper with which he was identified: “They accorded me the treatment of a gentleman and the wages of an Ambassador.” It is pleasant to be able to reflect that, however high the scale of remuneration may have been, Sala was always worth a bit more than his pay.
There is one phrase of Sala’s which, by means of quotation, has become a household word. “‘Sir,’ said Dr. Johnson, ‘let us take a walk down Fleet Street,’” is piously repeated even by well-informed literary persons as a saying of the great dictionary-maker duly recorded in Boswell’s “Life.” Johnson and Boswell were both innocent of it. The saw was one of Sala’s harmless forgeries, and was used by him as the motto ofTemple Barwhen he edited that magazine. There appeared inPunchone week a clever skit entitled “Egoes of the Week.” This was a travesty of an article which Sala was then contributing to theIllustrated London Newsunder the title of “Echoes of the Week.” The parody was merciless, and, as some thought, malicious. The weaknesses of Sala’s manner were rendered with laughable exaggeration. His peculiarities of diction were ruthlessly imitated and emphasized. Some of his friends hoped to see him incensed, and looked forward eagerly for reprisals. But Sala took the attack lying down, emulating the spirit of his own Colonel Quagg. And the reason for this evidenceof magnanimity under attack somewhat puzzled his associates until it was discovered that thePunchparody was written by Sala himself!
Godfrey Turner was another of the “handy-men” of theTelegraph. He had not thatélanin style which characterized his colleague Sala, but he was a most agreeable essayist, and turned out some extremely neatvers de société. His song, supposed to be written by Boswell on Dr. Johnson, has genuine humour. Boswell sets out sober in the first stanza; he becomes merry as he proceeds; when he gets to the last verse he is drunk, and blurts out his real opinion of the great lexicographer. That catastrophic verse ran something like this, I think:
“‘The man that makes a pun,’ says he,‘Would e’en commit a felony.And hanged he deserves to be’—Says (hic) that old fool Doctor Johnson.”
“‘The man that makes a pun,’ says he,‘Would e’en commit a felony.And hanged he deserves to be’—Says (hic) that old fool Doctor Johnson.”
Turner was a bit of a purist, and sought always for the fittest word; and he was as particular in his dress as in his “copy.” He was a stickler for “good form,” and sometimes, when engaged on a mission, would offer a gentle hint to some eager correspondent whose manner in public offended his fastidious taste. Sometimes the hint was taken in good part; sometimes it was resented. On one occasion it secured for poor Godfrey a retort which covered him for a moment with ridicule. It happened in this way:
Some sapient person in society had come to the conclusion that the ordinary coffin was not constructed on the right hygienic principles. He contended that we should, when our turns came, be buried in coffins made of wicker-work. He constructed quite a number of these melancholy receptacles. They were brought to Stafford House for exhibition, and the leaders of Society and the representatives of the Press were invited to inspect. I attended the quaint and rather gruesome collection. Among the other journalists present were my friend Godfrey Turner and Humphreys, the sub-Editor of theMorning Post. Humphreys was an Irishman, a hopelessly eccentric individual, negligent in his dress and flamboyant in his manner. He was a fine fellow,however, had a head and beard like those attributed to Homer, and was every inch a gentleman. His foible was a belief in spiritualism. That he really believed in the actual presence of the dear departed I am convinced, for I have been in his company in the Strand and close to the offices of his own paper when he has interrupted the conversation to speak with the spirit of his great-grandfather, which had just made its presence known to him. The coffins at Stafford House seemed to appeal to his sense of humour. He became quite hilarious over them, and addressed several of the noble persons present by name, slapping belted Earls on the back, and repeating his cemetery jokes for the benefit of Countesses. This affronted the fastidious taste of Turner, who at last got Humphreys into a corner, and thus gently admonished him:
“I say, my dear fellow,dolet us try and behave like gentlemen!”
“Thry away, me boy. It costsmeno effort!” exclaimed Humphreys, leaving his discomfited friend for the society of a Viscount.
Clement Scott was another of the “young lions.” He was not very popular with the other members of the staff. Sala, I know, disliked him, for he told me so. Scott was the dramatic critic of the paper. He wrote a sugary, young-ladylike style that “took” with a large section of the public. It was a chocolate-creamy style, and “went down”—like chocolate creams. He understood the value of a phrase, and when he got hold of an effective one he ran it to death. For instance, there are poppies in the cornfields round Cromer. Probably there is a much greater profusion of poppies in cornfields in Kent or in Bucks, but Scott gives to Cromer a kind of monopoly in the right sort of poppy. The country in that part of East Anglia he “wrote up” as “Poppyland,” to the great advantage of the Great Eastern Railway Company, to which corporation he became a sort of unofficial Poet Laureate. When I first knew him, Scott had not yet “discovered” Cromer or written the syrupy sentiments of “The Garden of Sleep.” He was eloquent at that period over the beauties of the Isle of Thanet, for“Clemmy” was a personal friend of Mr. Joseph Moses Levy, the principal proprietor of theTelegraph, and was frequently his guest somewhere in the neighbourhood of Ramsgate. Clement Scott always took himself very seriously. Now, that was a pose rarely adopted by the journalists of my day. We regarded our calling as a means of obtaining a livelihood, certainly, and to that extent a serious occupation, but in the pursuit of it we gave ourselves no airs. We considered the whole business rather good fun, and were upheld by a consciousness of the fact that we were all more or less humbugs. Scott’s nonsense, however, suited the nonsense of the followers of Peterborough Court, and at a time of general scepticism it was refreshing to encounter a man who believed in something, even if that something happened to be himself.
Another of the “young lions” who roared in the Peterborough Court menagerie was Drew Gay. Phil Robinson perched for a while on the staff, and flitted elsewhere. All those I have named have finished their accounts with this world. Bennet Burleigh still lives, a prosperous gentleman, and the doyen of war-correspondents. Burleigh professed strong Socialistic principles at a time when they were regarded by respectable people as the most damnable heresies. My first experience of a Socialist Club was gained through Bennet Burleigh. He introduced me one night to the Social Democratic Club. This select association held its meetings in the cellars of a new building in Chancery Lane. One had to dive down two flights of stone steps to the subterranean rooms of the club. The rooms were full of gaunt, long-haired men of both home and foreign growth, and women in clinging (and not very cleanly) raiment. Whiskies and sodas were hospitably dispensed, and most of the women were smoking cigarettes and trying to look as though they were quite used to it and liked it. I encountered Dr. Tanner, the Member for Mid-Cork. He introduced me to a bright, interesting old lady, whose name I forget. We had an edifying chat, she and I, and when, a few nights afterwards, I met Tanner in the Lobby of the House of Commons, I asked him about the lady to whom he had introduced me.
“Oh,” replied Tanner good-humouredly, “that was the celebrated Madeline Smith. She is a married woman now.”
“You don’t mean Madeline Smith, the murderess?” I asked.
“I mean Madeline Smith, who wastriedfor murder, and for whom the jury found a Scotch verdict of ‘Not proven,’” he reminded me.
“And of such is the Social Democratic Club?” I observed.
“Que voulez-vous?” said Tanner, shrugging his shoulders.
But I have wandered somewhat wide of the matter in hand, which was to afford a little idea of the principal members of the staff among whom Robert Williams became enrolled.
Fleet Street—the thoroughfare itself, I mean—has undergone considerable change since those days. Nearly all the Dickens features have been shorn away from it, and the Dickens-land that impinged upon it has ceased to be recognizable. From the West we then entered Fleet Street through Temple Bar. In the north wing of that historic but obstructive gateway an old barber plied his calling. He reminded me of Mr. Krook in “Bleak House.” He was never what you would call quite sober. His face was blotched and fiery with his excesses, and his hand that held the razor trembled so violently that one wondered how he got through the day without wounding some of his customers. Once the operation commenced, however, the trembling ceased, and the razor sped unerring, steady, expert. What became of the old fellow when Temple Bar was taken down I have never heard. He would hardly, I imagine, have survived his disestablishment.
Sir Henry Meux bought the old structure, and had the Bar erected again as one of the entrances to Theobald Park. I have no doubt that Lady Meux had a word to say in the matter, for Lady Meux was a “sport” all over. I first knew her as Valerie Reece, of the Gaiety Theatre, where she was noted as being the most high-spirited of an extremely high-spirited lot. Her early days at Theobald Park were remarkable for some sporting events of a novel and exciting kind. Thus—or so the story went—her ladyshipordered a cargo of monkeys from India, and had the unfortunate Simian immigrants let loose in the park. As they fled gibbering from branch to branch, the determined little sportswoman took pot-shots at them, and had good fun while the supply held out.
Close by Temple Bar stood the old “Cock” Tavern. It was a snug, smelly, inconvenient, homely, stuffy, and (I should imagine) hopelessly insanitary old crib, much resorted to by barristers at lunch-time, for the chops and steaks were excellent. The “Cock” port was also reputed above reproach, but I never quite acquired the port habit, and should not like to obtrude my opinion; but I “hae ma doots.” The tavern will live for a while in Tennyson’s lines:
“O plump head-waiter at the Cock,To which I most resort.How goes the time? ’Tis five o’clock.Go fetch a pint of port.”
“O plump head-waiter at the Cock,To which I most resort.How goes the time? ’Tis five o’clock.Go fetch a pint of port.”
And one notes here that Tennyson owns up to the barbarous custom of drinking port at five o’clock in the afternoon! Well, the “Cock” has gone by the board. A curious incident disturbed its declining days. A carved rooster was the sign of the tavern, and stood over the narrow entrance in Fleet Street. While the owner was under notice to quit his building, the sign was stolen one night, and has never been recovered from that day to this. Another “Cock” Tavern has been opened on the opposite side of Fleet Street, and lower down. This place also displays as its sign a carved rooster, which is believed to be the original from over the way. But it isnotthe original bird. That ancient fowl has become the property of the great American people. The wonder to me is how they missed collaring Temple Bar!
The widening of Fleet Street by throwing back the building line of the south side has naturally involved the removal of a good number of landmarks; and even where the widening has not been carried out, one observes, with certain pangs of regret, the disappearance of some well-beloved feature. The banking-house of Hoare (“Mr. W.,” as the squeamishlady called him) still stands, the carved wallet in its forefront bearing witness to the “pride that apes humility.”
But Gosling’s, as I knew it, is gone. Gosling’s I have always identified with Tellson’s in “A Tale of Two Cities.” “It was very small, very dark, very ugly, very incommodious. . . . After bursting open a door of idiotic obstinacity with a weak rattle in its throat, you fell into Tellson’s down two steps, and came to your senses in a miserable little shop, with two little counters where the oldest of men made your cheque shake as if the wind rustled it while they examined the signature by the dingiest of windows, which were always under a shower-bath of mud from Fleet Street.” The description exactly fits Gosling’s before it got itself a new façade and became the mere branch of a bigger bank. And the Dickens Fellowship should have looked to it, and preserved for the nation this memorial of the master.
Close by was a shop for the sale of mechanical toys, in the window of which a steamer laboured heavily in a sou’-westerly gale, the rolling waves kept in a state of agitation by clockwork, and the whole effect being particularly real and naturalistic. The proprietor of this scientific toy-shop was eventually attacked by the virus that runs through Fleet Street. He became a newspaper proprietor, and a successful one. His translation happened in this way: Young Kenealy, son of the eminent but erratic counsel for the Claimant, founded a paper calledModern Society. His pious object was to rehabilitate his late father, and this could only be accomplished by reopening the whole of the dreary Tichborne case, of which the public was heartily sick. The paper did not pay, and it was eventually acquired, as a property, by the owner of the clockwork ocean. He, worthy man, had no axe to grind. He retained the services of a pliant editor, and made the organ a vehicle for that sort of gossip which goes down so well with suburban matrons. The paper went up by leaps and bounds. The new proprietor gave himself airs, dressed the part, exhibited himself in the Park, and in a brief period had managed to shed all traces of the obsequious Fleet Streettradesman. He crossed the bar years since—perhaps in his mechanical steamer—but his paper persists to this day.
At the corner of Chancery Lane, and above the shop of Partridge and Cooper, was a new restaurant called “The London.” The proprietor was a sanguine man, but made the mistake of being a little before his time. The Fleet Street men of his period preferred to lunch and dine uncomfortably. The owner of “The London” did us too well, and attended too scrupulously to the nicer amenities of the table. We tried the establishment, and then returned to our husks. Outside the new restaurant stood a burly commissionaire, with puffy red cheeks and purple nose. When the restaurant closed its doors for ever, the commissionaire remained, eager to perform the errands of all and sundry. He was rather a picturesque old fellow, and was for a long time one of the features of that end of the street. He wore a red shako, which added greatly to the picturesqueness of his appearance, and I should not be surprised to learn that in private life he drank heavily.
The favourite luncheon haunts of the journalist in the consulate of Plancus were the Cheshire Cheese in Wine Office Court, and the refreshment bar of Spiers and Pond at Ludgate Hill Railway-Station. At the latter place, between the hours of one and three, you were pretty certain to meet a number of confrères. Christopher Pond, one of the partners who ran the bar and restaurant at Ludgate Hill, was to be seen here on most days of the week. He was a big, broad-shouldered, hearty man, who made no secret of his desire to conciliate the members of the London Press. Among those who were daily worshippers at this shrine were Tom Hood, the Editor ofFun; Henry Sampson, then one of Hood’s staff, but afterwards to become famous as the founder of theReferee: “Bill” Brunton, the artist; Charles Williams, the war-correspondent; and John Augustus O’Shea, of theStandard. John Corlett used to drop in occasionally, and John Ryder, who lived down the line, invariably called in on his way to the theatre. Ryder was a fine raconteur, and he had the largest and most varied assortment of amusing reminiscences of any man I haveever met. Mr. Henry Labouchere used to tell a story of “Jack” Ryder which was eminently characteristic of the actor. When Labouchere produced “The Last Days of Pompeii” at the old Queen’s Theatre in Long Acre, Ryder was his stage-manager, and, in his desire to make the production as naturalistic as possible, he asked Labouchere to obtain some real lions. Labouchere demurred; Ryder pleaded.
“But,” objected Labouchere at last, “suppose the lions broke loose?”
“Well,” answered John cheerily, “they’d have to eat the band first.”
Another habitué of the Ludgate Hill resort was Louis Lewis. This extraordinary little man was a brother of the late George Lewis. Like his more illustrious relative, Louis also was a solicitor. One day Brunton had been having his lunch at the table in the corner, and before leaving the artist had made a drawing, on the tablecloth, of a somewhat Rabelaisian character. Louis Lewis entered as Brunton left, and took the seat which had been vacated by the artist. He at once saw the drawing, which appealed to such sense of humour as he possessed, and began to ogle it, laughing with a peculiar subdued chuckle which was peculiarly his own. At that moment Christopher Pond happened to come in. He noticed the mirth of little Louis, and proceeded to ascertain the cause of it. When he grasped the gross intention of the drawing, and as he conceived Lewis to be the author of it, he became extremely indignant, ordered his waiters to turn the innocent and protesting man off the premises, and informed those trembling menials that if any of them ever served the offender again it would mean instant dismissal. The smirched cloth was then removed, and at the laundry all evidence that could convict the real culprit was in due course destroyed. But the incensed solicitor served a writ on Pond the very next day, and the action was “settled out of court.”
There was a gentleman connected with the sporting Press in the seventies called Barney Briant. No one knew exactly what it was he wrote, or whether he wrote at all, but he hadobtained an undoubted reputation as a sporting writer of parts. His most salient physical peculiarity consisted in the fact that his elbows seemed to have become glued to his sides. If Barney shook hands with a man—and he was for ever shaking hands—he moved his arm from the elbow only, never from the shoulder. I observed on this peculiarity to Reginald Shirley Brooks (assuredly one of the most amiable and most talented of the men of his time), and his explanation was illuminating.
“You see,” said Shirley, “Barney spends nearly the whole day in the narrow passage in front of the Cheshire Cheese bar. To do this in comfort, he has to keep his elbows well screwed in, to let the customers pass to and from the dining-room. In the course of generations the arms of his descendants will grow from the waist.”
The incident is recorded in this place as illustrating better than any mere verbal description the exiguous nature of the main passages of the Cheshire Cheese. The bar in the passage has been disestablished this many a year. It was a sort of glass case with barely room for two barmaids, a beer-engine, and some shelves of bottles. Sala called it “the bird-cage,” and the name stuck to the structure ever after. In recent years the Cheshire Cheese has attracted a considerable clientele on a claim that it was the favourite Fleet Street resort of Dr. Johnson. Mr. Seymour Lucas, the Royal Academician, indeed, adopted the theory without any exhaustive inquiry, and painted a picture in which the Great Bear is depicted “taking his ease” in this inn. There are some things which we may not know about the author of “Rasselas,” but among them, most assuredly, cannot be numbered the houses of entertainment which he frequented. Boswell followed old man Johnson about to all his “pubs,” and the fact that there is no mention in Boswell’s “Life” of his hero having visited the “Cheese” is evidence presumptive that he neverdidvisit it. In his time the tavern in Wine Office Court was the nightly resort of the respectable tradesmen of Fleet Street who still lived above their shops—the last sort of company upon which the Doctor would think of intruding.
But if the Johnson legend must be dismissed as mythical, the chops, steaks, beefsteak puddings, and stewed cheeses, were substantial and indisputable. Godfrey Turner wrote in one of the Christmas annuals, then in great favour, a description of a meal at the Cheshire Cheese. The thing was wonderfully well done, and gave considerable umbrage to the proprietor, and to some of the literary gentlemen whom the writer introduced. The waiter in the room downstairs was one Tom Brown, who used to drive up from his place in the suburbs in a smart dogcart. William, who had no other name, was a short red-haired man with (appropriately enough) mutton-chop whiskers, very prominent teeth, a pink-and-white complexion, and a perennial sheep-like smile. Diners gave him their orders with minute particularity, assured that he would communicate their wishes to the cook, which William never did. This is the sort of thing that would happen:
First Customer: “A mutton chop very well done, please, waiter.”
William: “Well done, sir? Yessir.”
Second Customer: “Underdone chop, William.”
William: “Chop underdone, sir? Very good, sir.”
[ExitWilliam.
William(heard without): “Cook, two muts down together, cook!”
On Saturday an enormous beefsteak pudding delightfully fortified with larks, oysters, mushrooms, and other seasoning, was served. This monster of the pudding tribe was put down to boil at one o’clock in the morning, and was served with great ceremony at one o’clock on the afternoon of the same day. Moore, the proprietor, cut the savoury mountain up. Every seat was taken a quarter of an hour before the dish made its appearance, and late-comers had to turn disconsolate away. On one fateful morning—a cold, foggy day in mid-winter—the usual congregation of pudding-worshippers had gathered together, hungry, expectant, keen-set. At the stroke of one the step of William was heard on the stair, and a pungent steam was wafted to the waiting gourmets. Then all at once was heard a slip, a groan, and,last of all, an awful crash. William, with the pudding in his arms, had slipped on the top of the flight of stairs leading to the hall, and the place was flooded with broken pudding-bowl and dismembered pudding, now mixing itself ineffectually with the sawdust of the floor. Mingled sighs and oaths arose on all sides. The mischief was, alas! irreparable.
After this, William was pensioned off by Moore, but the devoted old man could not be induced to quit the scene in which most of his life had been passed. He was not permitted to resume his official position as a waiter, but he turned up every morning at his usual time, and remained on the premises until closing-time. They were puzzled at first what to do with him. At last it was resolved to put him into a leather apron, and let him pretend to be having a very busy time in the cellar. From that cool and cobwebby grot he made frequent emergences during meal-times to indulge the one pleasure left him—that of a little familiar talk with an old customer. One day William was missed and his old customers knew instinctively that he was dead. The old fellow left considerable personality and some real estate.
I have now tried to sketch, however indifferently, some of the centres round which the Fleet Street maelstrom roared. Ceaselessly for more than twenty years I whirled round and round in its irresistible eddies. One never hoped, one never wished, for deliverance from the seething circle. Once caught up in it, the daily round was discovered to possess a fascination overwhelming, imperious, inexorable. It was a career the most strenuous, at once, and the most irresponsible. There was a sense of freedom, yet one was a slave of the lamp; a feeling of power, yet one was the mere mouthpiece of an organ. By the outsider one was alternately hated and courted, and one went one’s way.
As free-lance, as a member of a “staff,” as special correspondent, as leader-writer, book-reviewer, and dramatic critic, my experience has been considerable, and I have generally found my work delightful; but its greatest charm, after all, has been in the society of the comrades whom Ihave met by the way. Good-fellowship, loyalty to one another, a fine sense of chivalry, a constant readiness to help the lame dog over the style, a stern ostracism of the unhappy wight who evinced a congenital inability to play the game—these were the characteristics of the men of my time. Sitting down in the afternoon of my day to recall that pleasant past, I now, as I intimated in my opening chapter, drop all pretence of sequent autobiography, and proceed to present such groups and incidents, such characters and scenes, suchmotsand anecdotes, as may appeal to those who live in another time and pursue their calling under other conditions.
“Sassiaty is Sassiaty: its lors ar irresistibl.”—Yellowplush Papers.
“Sassiaty is Sassiaty: its lors ar irresistibl.”—Yellowplush Papers.
Societyjournalism had been founded just before I began to earn a “living wage” in Fleet Street, but its development and popularity were items of later history. The ball was set rolling by Mr. Thomas Gibson Bowles—to become known in other times as the intractable Conservative Member of Parliament, and the beloved “Tommy” Bowles of the man in the street. The familiar sobriquet only got into print after Bowles captured King’s Lynn in the Tory interest, but he was called by that playful diminutive long before he entered the House of Commons, although he himself was probably unaware, as he would certainly resent, the fact. Pottinger Stephens bestowed upon him the familiar name, and in Fleet Street and the Strand he was always known to his Press contemporaries as “Tommy.”
That this gentleman should have turned Liberal in his old age, and that he should have captured his ancient Conservative stronghold in Lynn for the Rads, will not seem at all extraordinary to those who are a little behind the scenes. Those who accomplish a great deal for their party naturally expect that their party will do a little for them, provided they possess the necessary qualifications. Tommy certainly had the qualifications, and it is equally certain that he “put in” a lot of good work for the Tories; but he was never apersona gratawith his leaders. The Conservatives are rather stupid on matters of birth and parentage, and Bowles did not come up to their standards. Having fought and lost two elections “on his own,” the party sent himdown to a forlorn hope at Lynn. To their surprise and disgust he won the seat. For years he served the Tories loyally in Parliament, but when there came a division of loaves and fishes, Bowles was invariably left out of the reckoning. In the last Parliament in which he sat on the Conservative benches, he fell foul of his party, and personally attacked his hereditary leaders. From his place he alluded to the Salisbury administration as “the Hôtel Cecil,” and described the Front Bench as “a gallery of family portraits.”
Bowles acquired his knowledge of journalism and his respect for the conventions of Society on theMorning Post. He had started life, I believe, in Somerset House, which was just over the way, and he became imbued with the notion—a very profitable notion, as it turned out—that a paper chiefly devoted to the “hupper suckles,” written in their interests, and employing what he used to call “the passwords of Society,” should be a financial success. To what extent (at that period) Bowles was in Society, or how he obtained a knowledge of its passwords, or what those cryptic passwords were, I have never been able to find out; but, as one astute editorial admonition is “Know what you don’t know!” those same passwords may have been part of a pleasant myth.
His paper was duly launched at the price of twopence, and under the admirable title ofVanity Fair. But the paper, smartly and even wittily written as it was, would have failed to reach the somewhat inaccessible class for which its founder proposed to cater had it not been for his discovery of Pellegrini, and the appearance inVanity Fairof that Italian artist’s inimitable cartoons. The price was raised to sixpence, the paper hit those remote circles for which it had been destined, “Tommy’s” career was assured, and Society journalism was established in our midst.
A tremendous number of imitators have sprung up from time to time—“they had their day, and ceased to be”—but there were only two other publications that enjoyed permanent success; and those two, with the first Society organ founded by Mr. Bowles, constituted, and still constitute,what is understood as Society journalism. The second paper in the trio wasThe World, founded by Edmund Yates; and the third wasTruth, established by Henry Labouchere. I was fortunate enough to write for all three; for two of them I have written voluminously.
Bowles used to aver that he had no staff. He wrote a great deal of the paper himself, and his “Jehu Junior” articles, written to accompany the cartoons, were models of what essays should be. Light, epigrammatic, pungent, and excessively neat, they were the one possible accompaniment to “Ape’s” caricatures. A sentence from the “Jehu Junior” article always appeared beneath the picture. I can recall a couple. Beneath the first picture of Disraeli was inscribed: “He educated his party, and dished the Whigs to pass Reform, but to have become what he is from what he was is the greatest reform of all.” When Bishop Magee made his great speech in the House of Lords in defence of the Irish Church, his likeness appeared in theVanity Fairgallery, and it had appended to it this extract from the article by Bowles: “If eloquence could justify injustice, he would have saved the Irish Church.” And the output of the able little editor was always up to sample.
Although Bowles professed to conduct his paper without the aid of a staff, he engaged regular contributors, which is pretty much the same thing. These gentlemen were never consulted in a body. “Collectivity” was never “pretty Fanny’s way,” as the Tory party, too late, discovered. But individual members of the body of contributors were occasionally summoned to meet their editor and proprietor at his chambers. When I was first ushered into the august presence, Bowles had rooms in Palace Chambers, at the corner of St. James’s Street, over against the Palace itself. He had just commenced his yachting career at that period, and adopted the mariner’s pose ashore to the extent of receiving you in his bare feet—to give the impression, I suppose, of rolling seas and a slippery deck.
But if one did not meet one’s confreres in the rooms of the editor, we were bound to encounter in the outer world—perhaps at the printer’s or elsewhere. The printer wasPeter Rankin, of Drury Court—a dour and adventurous Scot who, having conveyed a newspaper by means of registration from its rightful owner, continued the management of the property on his own account. He had not the success which usually attends these Napoleonic sportsmen in the Street of Adventure. He came to grief and death, and nobody seemed to care. At his printing-offices I met for the first time Willmott Dixon, then a contributor under the Bowles banner. Dixon was at that time a fresh-coloured, stout, broad-shouldered man with an indomitably sweet temper which indicated its permanence in a dimple in the cheek.
Willmott Dixon had brought into Fleet Street with him much of the ebullient spirit and readiness for practical fun for which he was noted at Cambridge in his undergraduate days. Bon-vivant, raconteur, and essentially good fellow, he was in general demand as a companion. After the days of ourVanity, I was associated with Dixon on many other papers, for he had the pen of a ready writer, and was in considerable demand. Of all the men I have known, he was the quickest producer of “copy,” and he seemed capable of coming up with his tale of work under any and all conditions. His sporting articles and stories under thenom de plumeof “Thormanby” are well known, and his accounts of the old prize-fights are the best ever written. The amount of “copy” produced by Dixon would equal that of any three ordinary journalists, taking a period of years in the productive stage of each. But why should I speak of Willmott Dixon in the past tense? He is now a hale young fellow of seventy, and within the last few years he has published three successful novels under his own name, one collection of sporting stories under hisnom de plumeof “Thormanby,” and an autobiography entitled “The Spice of Life.” This is the sort of veteran whom Mr. Philip Gibbs should take down Fleet Street with him one fine day, with the idea of presenting him to the young gentlemen who weep and have hysterics when a newspaper happens to put up the shutters. Very few, I imagine, of the invertebrate Press gang of the period will be writing saleable novels at seventy!
Henry Pottinger Stephens, another ofVanity’sregular contributors, I first met at the office of the publisher. We were both there on the same errand, I believe, stalking an oof bird. Stephens had just returned from Paris, where he had been acting as one of the correspondents of theTimes. He also was to be my associate in other papers, my companion in other adventures. To these I may recur in another chapter.
At what date it was I forget, but in the early eighties Bowles sold the paper to Arthur Evans. The price was, I think, £20,000. With this Bowles started theLady, which, if not perhaps quite his own line of country, promised a bigger income than would ever be obtainable from his original venture. Under the new regime I continued to contribute. The proprietor confined his attention to the City article. The literary part of the paper was under Mr. Oliver Fry. From the time of the founding ofVanity Fairuntil its purchase half a dozen years ago by the Harmsworths—a period of, say, forty years—it had but two editors. Thus, the traditions of the paper were regarded, its tone and policy were continuous, and it retained in consequence its old subscribers and its old advertisers. An editorial chair held in forty years by two editors in succession marks a record. There were several editors during the Harmsworth epoch. But the new atmosphere did not seem to suit the old growth. It was sold again. The cartoons have always been the mainstay and chief attraction ofVanity Fair. When dear old Pellegrini died, Bowles had discovered an accomplished successor in “Spy.” Over this name Mr. Leslie Ward drew almost continuously for the paper for many years. Indeed, his work has appeared there up to a comparatively recent date.
When Edmund Yates founded theWorld, a departure in Society journalism was made. The new candidate for popular favour was to depend on its writing alone for its success. Yates had no misgivings about the propriety of engaging a staff. Bowles always held himself aloof from, and socially superior to, the Fleet Street man. Yates had been a Fleet Street man himself, and was unlikely to makethat mistake. He liked to meet his contributors socially. He was at one with them. And they had an immense liking for their chief. For, although Yates was as savage as a Mohawk when he “went for” his enemies, he was devoted to his friends. Not infrequently, in the journalistic world, you will come upon soft-hearted sayers of hard-hearted things. Yates was a man of that sort. Warm in his friendships, genial in his manner, sympathetic to the tyro, he was out for scalps the moment he scented a hint of offence—it mattered not whether the offence was intended for him or for one of his friends.
In the inception of his “Journal for Men and Women,” Yates had the assistance of Henry Labouchere and Grenville Murray. And among the principal writers engaged to support the new venture were Bernard Becker, Henry Pearse, Dutton Cook, and Christie Murray. A. M. Broadley did not join till later on, I think; though when he did join he proved himself extremely useful in picking up those Society items upon which theWorlddepended very much in the effort to prove acceptable to the “classes.”
Yates liked to have about him as staff officers men of goodly presence, gentlemanly address. And he had a horror of anything soiled or slovenly in the attire of his contributors. This latter characteristic of theWorld’seditor accounted for the engagement of lady journalists. It was, indeed, the paragraph of one of his women contributors that involved him in the criminal libel suit brought by Lord Lonsdale, resulting in the incarceration of Yates in Holloway—a severe punishment in respect of a stupid little paragraph, and a punishment the effects of which Yates carried with him to his dying day. There was one of the contributors who scarcely came up to the standard of physique which the editor regarded as desirable. This was Mr. (now Sir) H. W. Lucy. Yates gave that gentleman his first great chance of showing his paces as an independent descriptive reporter of proceedings in the House of Commons. Lucy’s weekly contribution was entitled “Under the Clock, by one of the Hands.” The title was supplied by the chief.
Lucy was a smart little fellow of tremendous industry and always conscious of his own ability to make his way in the world. His hair, turning grey even in that far-off time, stood up like the quills of the porcupine. He always gave you the impression of a man who had suddenly waked up in a fright. And the expression that seemed his normal one was that of a gentle surprise. He became, at another stage in his successful career, associated with a little Irishman—Mr. Harry Furniss—an artist for some time connected withPunch. It was a very quaint sight to see the two little chaps pottering through an art gallery in search of subjects for their merciless ridicule. Furniss, red-headed and rotund of paunch, looking like a sort of duodecimo edition of a City Alderman, whispered his jokes to his companion, accompanying the witticisms with an engaging smile, Lucy accepting them with his habitual look of gentle wonder.
Yates himself wrote the neatest, most scintillating, and most readable paragraphs of any man who has ever essayed that extraordinarily difficult art. But neither the appeal to Society, nor the descriptive pictures of Parliament, nor the now sparkling and now vitriolic paragraphs of the editor, brought on that happy event which is known in the newspaper world as “turning the corner.” That is the happy moment when the paper becomes increased in circulation, and advertising returns to the point at which it pays. It is always the unexpected that happens, and the contributions which raised theWorldfrom the commercial Slough of Despond were a remarkable series of articles on “West End Usurers,” attributed to Mr. Henry Labouchere. As a matter of fact, however, the material was collected by several persons, and I understood at the time that the proofs were submitted to Sir George Lewis before they were passed for the press.
Judging from the style in which some of them were written, concerning men notoriously wealthy, their filtration through Ely Place was an entirely necessary proceeding. When the victim was unlikely to resent attack or attempt reprisals, the onset was at times very warm indeed. PoorHubert Jay Maurice was one of these latter. One never knew what the dapper gentleman’s real name was—probably Moses. He had been known as Mr. Jay and as Mr. Maurice. And he ended his days as Mr. Didcot, a music-hall agent, having succeeded in giving his only daughter in marriage to the cadet of a noble house. The Didcot article appeared during Christmas week, and ended with the pregnant sentence: “Indeed, this young man’s career has been so shameless that at this festive season of the year we will not ask our compositors to set it up in print.”
The success of theWorldonce secured, the circulation went up by leaps and bounds, and Mr. Labouchere, quick to appreciate the effect of his own suggestion, and willing to secure for himself the profits to be made by exhibiting and denouncing the evil that is in the world, soon determined to run a paper of his own. This wasTruth, the third in the triad of publications that made good a claim to the title of Society journals. Labouchere went to work very carefully and systematically in founding the journal which will always be associated with his name—a journal, it should be at once admitted, which, while it did much in the way of airing personal dislikes, did much more in ridding Society of pests and parasites, of swindlers and charlatans, than any other journal of our time.
My friend Robert Williams was consulted concerning the founding of the new paper. And from him I used to hear how matters were progressing. From him, for example, I learned that Mr. Horace Voules, of theEcho, had accepted the position of manager to the new venture. Voules always reminded me of the description of another Mr. Vholes as described in “Bleak House.” You recall the passage, perhaps? “If you want common-sense, responsibility, respectability, all united—Vholes istheman!” Williams was fond of telling a story of the interview between Labouchere and Voules at the time of the engagement. The story wasben trovato. But my own subsequent acquaintance with Mr. Voules convinced me that there was not any element of fact in it. The dialogue as reported by “Bobbos” ran thus: