When the success of the new institution was at its height, “Jimmy” Davis contributed to the columns of theBatan article on “The Sunday Amusements of the Rich.” Of course, the whole thing was conceived in a mood of extreme cynicism, and Davis wrote the article with his tongue in his cheek. It was strange enough that Davis should write such an article. For what, after all, could it matter to a Jew how the Gentiles amused themselves on a Sunday? But it was still more strange that an article appearing in the columns of a paper which did not enjoy the very sweetest of reputations, should have vexed the righteous minds of the Episcopal Bench, and caused the subject of “Jimmy’s” article to be debated in the Upper House of Convocation.
And it was strange, too—in its way—that, when the debate was set down for hearing, I, a member of the Pelican Club, should have been deputed by the editor of an evening paper to attend Convocation, and write a more or less graphic description of the historic debate. My experience of the Upper House of Convocation, while assuring me that its members possessed quite a respectable amount of debating power, also convinced me that their deliberations were academic merely, and that the Bishops were terribly out of touch with actualities. The conditions under which the “House” sat were not conducive to those illusions which the laity should cherish regarding the episcopacy. Their lordships met in a dining-room on the first-floor of a house in Dean’s Yard, Westminster. A striped wall-paper was adorned at gaping intervals with engravings from Millais and Landseer. The furniture was mid-Victorian. A long telescope-table filled the middle of the room. Round this board sat the Bishops, presided over by the Archbishop of Canterbury, who took his place at the top of the table. Had their lordships not been robed in billowing white, with lawn sleeves, doctors’ hoods, and decorated with episcopal signets, the idea conveyed to the mind of the casual observer would have been that of a group of commercial travellers assembled in the commercial room of a country hotel waiting for the one o’clock ordinary. In the embrasure of a window looking out on to Dean’sYard a table was placed for the reporters. The general public was, of course, rigorously excluded. Arrangements were made only for a certain number of reporters—six, I think, was the limit. And it had been necessary to arrange for the absence of one of these gentlemen, so that I, who unfortunately have never mastered shorthand, might be present. From my coign of vantage in the embrasure I could see some Westminster schoolboys playing in the enclosure. Their shrilling shouts punctuated the earlier deliberations of their lordships. Besides ourselves of the Press and the members of the Upper House of Convocation, the only other person present was Sir John Hassard, the courteous Registrar. His chief duty seemed to be that of ushering the gentlemen of the Press in and out of this hopelessly bourgeois Upper Chamber. And this was a ceremony of frequent occurrence. When their lordships considered that the trend of the debate made it desirable that strangers should retire, the Archbishop looked over to us, smiled benevolently, and observed: “If you please, gentlemen.” It reminded me of Ponsford’s early morning admonition to customers supping late at the Albion. We rose. Sir John preceded us to the door, opened it, and bowed us out. Presently—their lordships having concluded their private colloquy—he came out to us in the passage, and ushered us in again.
To me the surroundings, coupled with the irreverent and openly familiar attitude of the chief of my colleagues, came as a shock. I had anticipated that the Upper House would have sat in some gilded chamber of their own, or perhaps in one of the chapels of the Abbey. I had imagined myself, as the representative of the profane vulgar, sitting hidden away in some lofty gallery. But here I was hobnobbing with the Bishops, as it were. It was a sense of unsolicited intimacy that possessed me. And when I reflected that I was one of the very persons whose conduct was under debate, I had the further sensation of being a spy in the camp. Mr. Basil Cook, the chief of the staff reporting in Convocation, was disturbed by none of these scruples, and when he noticed that a Bishop was speaking from a written document, he went up to the venerable orator at the conclusion of his speech,and boldly asked him for his notes. In one case, indeed, the intrepid man seemed to collar the ecclesiastic’s notes by force.
Of the debate nothing remains in my memory save the speech of the Bishop of Winchester. Tall, gaunt, marked down even then by Death, Harold Browne proved himself intellectually as well as physically head and shoulders above his brethren. His words were weighty, well chosen, impressive. His message was one of grave reproval. He deplored the introduction of the topic. He warned Convocation of the danger of registering its views in resolutions of the House. Resolutions which were foredoomed as inoperative, he argued, must stultify them as a high deliberative assembly. But the warnings of My Lord of Winchester fell on deaf ears. Their lordships were out after the Sunday amusements of the rich. They were not to be balked of their sport. They passed their resolutions. And from that hour the rich have gone on extending the scope and scenes of their Sunday amusements.
Of my own descriptive account of the proceedings, of course, I say nothing. But Sala made it the text of one of his inimitable essays. His comments, I remember, concluded with these words:
“It may interest these Reverend and Right Reverend Fathers in God to know that the resolutions which they have just registered will have about as much influence on the Sunday amusements of the rich as a similar set of resolutions passed by the Antediluvian Order of Buffaloes.”
Very soon indeed the Church discovered that, there being no hope of stemming the tide, their only chance was to make things easy and agreeable for those who were borne along by it. Accommodation for bicycles was announced here and there by a far-seeing Vicar—temporarily characterized as a “crank.” And in villages down by the banks of the Thames, Rectors began to intimate that visitors in flannels were welcome to worship. Sunday clubs multiplied on the banks of “Sweete Temmes.” Sunday golf clubs were established on a thousand links. The introduction of the automobile has precipitated matters. The word “rest” has had appointed to it the only reasonable interpretation.And the twentieth century Anno Domini has definitely declined to be bound any longer by an enactment forced on a nomadic and unruly crowd by a Jewish leader who “flourished” nearly twenty centuries before Christ.
It is interesting to note that this consummation was helped forward by the ill-advised action of a bench of Bishops. And it is amusing to remember that their lordships were acting on the initiative of a man-about-town, of Hebrew extraction, who personally did not care a cent for the observance either of the Jewish Sabbath or of the Christian Sunday.
The Pelican Club was not a very long-lived institution. The founder had not taken into account the gradual nature of all processes of evolution. He had gone too fast and too far. There was, indeed, a growing feeling in the public mind that the observance of Sunday as ordained was irrational. But the vast majority of those who confessed to that frame of mind would contend that to watch boxing contests and listen to comic songs in a hot and crowded arena was a still more irrational manner of keeping the Sabbath. The movement was toward outdoor exercise, healthy recreation, fresh air, and the open road.
When the Pelican Club ceased, it was for a short space reincarnated as the “Barn Club.” The constitution, ownership, and membership, were practically identical with those of the earlier venture. Here, however, the building was erected by Wells. He was free from the demands of a landlord, which in Denman Street had increased in exact proportion to his own growing prosperity. The new premises were in Gerrard Street, Soho. And I understand that the founder made rather a profitable deal when he disposed of the building to an electric lighting company or to a telephone company—which was it?
The name of the Pelican Club still persists in the title of a theatrical paper conducted by Mr. Frank Boyd. Never before, I should imagine, was a journalistic success achieved at so small an expenditure of either brains or capital. But Frank was ever a canny man; he understood the small public for whom he catered, gave them, at small cost, whathe considered good for them, became that enviable personage the owner of a paying newspaper property, and so continueth even unto this day.
Boyd sanctified his association with the stage by marrying Miss Agnes Hewitt, a well-known actress who is understood to supply her husband with his Society gossip and his latest fashions. His original ties were rather with the Church than with the Stage. He was the son of Dr. A. K. H. Boyd, of St. Andrews, author of “The Recreations of a Country Parson”—the “Boyd that writes” of Carlyle’s famous sneer.
The passing of the Puritan sabbath has conferred benefits also on those who are entirely out of sympathy with the new order of things, and who still patronize the institution of public worship to the extent of attending church or chapel twice or even thrice on Sunday. The priests and the pastors have awakened to the fact that if they would retain their congregations they must give them bright, cheery services, and sermons which, if not eloquent or convincing, shall at least be interesting and intelligent.
Huxley flung a gibe at the “corybantic Christianity” of General Booth. But “corybantic Christianity” has held the proletariat by substituting one sort of excitement for another. And the great middle classes can only be kept in leash for a while longer by music and oratory of a kind which, a century since, our militant Protestant forbears would surely have regarded as, in themselves, grievous acts of Sabbath-breaking.
Sabbath-breaking, quotha! The Sabbath set up by the dour, morose, uncharitable religionists of my childhood has been broken into bits, nor will all the skilled science of enthusiastic collectors ever piece it together again.
Londonstreets have been cleared of their professional “odd fish” owing to the parental solicitude of the police. The expensive operations of the London County Council having swept away all the remnants of Dickensland, the police have gathered up and carried away any Dickenesque characters that survived the advent of the reforming Council. All things considered, our ædiles have acted wisely in the interests of Londoners. They have gained experience and confidence. Such early mistakes as the architecture of Shaftesbury Avenue and Charing Cross Road will never be repeated. The progress of Kingsway and Aldwych provethatat all events. If we are to lose the ancient picturesqueness, we are to have in return spacious roadways flanked by architectural dignity.
If, however, we rejoice in the erection of palaces on sites once occupied by rookeries, we must surely sometimes experience a pang of regret over the disappearance of the eccentric characters of the town—the quaint Londoners who made a living out of their eccentricities or their afflictions. Those of them who were not removed disappeared, no doubt, owing to natural causes. But no successor was admitted to have a valid claim to the vacant place. The streets are clear of mendicant freaks, and even of those quaint itinerants who performed on the chance of a public recognition of their exhibitions. Codlin and Short no longer—as in thePunchpictures of John Leech—set up their stage in West End squares. The man in soiled tights who released himself from ropes coiled and knotted by confederates in the crowdis never seen nowadays attempting his performance in the mouth of a “no-thoroughfare.” His dirty fleshings would scarcely be tolerated even on a race-course. On second thoughts, I omit him from the odd street characters whom I miss from the London thoroughfares.
But there should have been someone of his household to carry on the tradition of the little cripple who used to sit on the pavement in front of the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square, making weird noises on a German concertina. Close by, in the mouth of Suffolk Street, Pall Mall East, a most respectable young man exhibited a “happy family” in a large cage. It was a most instructive lesson in natural history, and an illustration of the power of man over cats, canaries, rats, mice, dogs, and other specimens of what are popularly known as “the lower animals,” and many a morning have I stood entranced as I watched a white mouse play with the whiskers of a cat, or seen a fox-terrier invite the familiarity of an exceedingly maleficent-looking rodent. There was some ethical teaching to be picked up also, for no doubt the result achieved by the showman was entirely the effect of moral suasion. “It is all done by kindness,” as the showman of the circus used to say.
Then there was the old fellow who used to sweep the crossing at the top of King Street, where it enters St. James’s Square. He was a rubicund customer, whose whole person seemed to reek of much good ale. He was dressed in the pink of the hunting-field, and wore the picturesque hunting-cap of the shires. He could scarcely have been a M.F.H. fallen on evil times, and haunting the clubland of the days of his vanity. Perhaps he was a huntsman or a whipper-in grown too fat or too bibulous for his work. He had certainly selected an eligible “pitch,” and must have acquired a nice competence from the fogeys, old and middle-aged, who used his crossing. His attractive livery should have descended—for I deem the original wearer long since the victim of another sort of crossing—to an emulous son. The world is growing too drab. And even an æsthetic crossing-sweeper might do somewhat to improve its colour scheme.
Do you remember the accomplished harper who madegay with his music the old flagged courts of the City? No one interfered with the performances of that descendant of David. He was permitted to make music within the sacred precincts of the courtyard in which stands Rothschild’s famous house in St. Swithin’s Lane. It was to this gracious permission, doubtless, that might be traced the rumour—repeated by the credulous sort in the City—that this player on stringed instruments was a poor relation of the financial princes of New Court. Since that musician was called away, no successor has been permitted to waken the dulcet echoes of New Court. Nor, indeed, are the efforts of strolling artists on sackbut or psaltery encouraged in the obscure byways of the City, a circumstance which is, I think, to be deplored.
Whenever I visited the City, a merchant who always fascinated me was one who had a pitch in the opening of a passage at the eastern end of the Poultry. Alas! the very passage itself is built over now, and the merchant and his wares have not become even a part of tradition. I have asked City men about him a score of times. I have never yet met one who remembers ever having seen him—ever having heard of him. They are the most expert forgetters in the world, are City men. And it is perhaps as well. A large proportion of the day’s transactions there are best forgotten. The vanished merchant of the vanished passage had set up a stand on which he exhibited miniature articles in copper. The goods were most exquisitely finished, and were perfect models—made to scale—of their originals. Culinary articles were his chief stock-in-trade—kettles, frying-pans, Dutch ovens, dish-covers, coffee-pots, saucepans—all beautifully executed, and the largest of them not more than three inches in diameter. At one time I had an entirebatterie de cuisinebought from him. He, too, should have had a successor; but possibly a successor might have found himself flattened out by the stores.
The sleight-of-hand performer has been gently pushed off the public highways. Him also I regret, and offer what incense I may to his memory. A smart-looking, precise, never-in-a-hurry young man, his expression was invariablypensive, suspicions, contemptuous. He carried a little round table with a faded red cloth fixed to it, like that of a card-table, which indeed, in a way, it was. Ah those delightful tricks! Cinquevalli and Charles Bertram have since worked their miracles for my behoof, but they have failed to arouse the same sensations which the performers of the West End street corners raised in my ingenuous mind.
Conjurers had sharp tongues, too, and their repartee was ready and pungent. I was walking down Bedford Street, Strand, one forenoon with the late Mr. J. L. Toole, the celebrated comedian. One of these roadside jugglers had set up his stand near the corner of Maiden Lane. He was performing some trick with a bottle and a piece of paper. Toole, who was uncommonly fond of practical joking, pushed through the little crowd, and, simulating the manner of a person in great pain and in a great hurry, held out twopence to the magician.
“I’ll take a pennyworth of your pills and a pennyworth of your pain-destroyer,” he groaned.
“Thank you, Mr. Toole,” coolly observed the other, who had at once recognized the actor, “but I make it a rule never to take money from brother professionals.”
His little audience laughed, now discovering the identity of the practical joker. Toole exhibited every outward sign of delight at the retort, tossed a florin to the victor, and whispered to me as we went off: “That’s a dev’lish smart chap, don’t you know; but he took my money all the same!” I do not think, however, that he relished the incident any too well.
Barney Barnato commenced his financial career as a peripatetic conjurer, his beats being in the East, and not in the West End of the town. And, although I only knew him in the days of his prosperity, I did not find it difficult to discover in the millionaire the traces of the ancient calling. And, to do Barney justice, he was not in the least ashamed of his humble beginnings. In this he differed considerably from certain other South African magnates whom I have met. Who persuaded Barney to build the pretentious, over-ornamented palace in Park Lane I do not know, but I feel sure it was never undertaken on his own initiative.
There was one very odd fish who perambulated the Strand in the seventies. The cut of his clothes—which were old but well brushed—was early Victorian. His light-coloured hair was divided at the back most mathematically, and a wisp of it was drawn over each ear after a fashion set by costermongers and adopted by Lord Ranelagh. He wore his hat cocked over one ear, and he sported a straw-coloured moustache to match the hair of his head. His whole appearance was that of a dandy run to seed. He might have been a forgotten ghost of the Regency. He carried a Malacca cane with tassels, and behind him there followed a white poodle. The man and the dog made one of the features of the Strand. The poodle never left his master’s heels. Hundreds of times have I watched the pair of them pass along the street. The dandy seemed to know nobody, nor did anyone ever salute him; yet he was an intimate part of the show.
There came a day when he made his promenade—alone. And he was attired in mourning. Whether he had donned sables out of respect for the memory of his canine friend I cannot say, but the dog was dead and the man was in mourning. Shortly after this the buck of the Regency himself disappeared. Then inquiries were made. The dandy was dead. He had lodged in Westminster. He was a half-pay Major, and, except that he dressed oddly and clipped and groomed his poodle with his own hands, he appears to have had few eccentricities. His landlady wept as she spoke of him. “My dear gentleman” she called him, and she had a hundred and one stories to relate of his kindly disposition, his practical benevolence, and his racial pride. He was a Scotsman.
Of the same period as that of the Scots Major was Kitty, the old Irish flower-seller. Kitty was about seventy years old when I first made her acquaintance. She perambulated the north side of the Strand, her beat being bounded by the old Gaiety Theatre on the east, and by the Adelphi on the west. She was a “character.” She knew nearly all her customers by name, though how she acquired the information the Lord only knows. “Witty Kitty” she was called,and not without good reason. I was standing one day on the step of theGlobeoffice, talking to Henri Van Laun, the friend and translator of Taine. Kitty came up to us with her basket of sweet-smelling wares. Van Laun, who hated an interruption while in the act of unwinding one of his interminable yarns, motioned her away with a cross word and an angry gesture. Van Laun was a Jew who had the national characteristics very severely marked in nose and lips and complexion. Kitty did not at once accept her dismissal.
“Ah, buy one for the love o’ God!” she persisted.
Van Laun turned on her. He was professedly an agnostic, and fond of airing the fact.
“No, no! Who is zis Almighty zat I should buy for love of him? Hey?” he queried fiercely.
“Och, sir,” said Kitty, in sad, reproachful accents, “an’ is it pretendin’ not to know Him you are—an’ you wan of Hischosenpeople!”
The calculated accent on the “chosen” was delightful. From that day Van Laun became one of “Witty Kitty’s” most profitable customers.
Human freaks are now steadily discouraged by the police. But in an earlier time men and women were permitted to parade their afflictions or deformities in the London thoroughfares. There was a horrible cripple who used to propel himself about Trafalgar Square and its vicinity. Apparently his motive power was confined to his arms. His progress along the side-paths was like that of a seal. He was attired in a white nautical suit; he had big round eyes which he rolled about in the most curious way. Women were much frightened on beholding him for the first time, and I suspect him of having been an arrant impostor. Then there was the old lady who perambulated Whitehall, the top of her head pointing to the pavement. She was bent literally double. I once saw Mr. Gladstone (I mean, of course, the eminent man of that name) stop and address her and give her a coin. The Grand Old Man had a great taste for curios and antiquities. The one-armed sailor—he carries the other down his side—and the one-legged mill hand have been relegated to the suburbs, and even therethey have become discredited, I think. And as to the miserable wretches who used to exhibit their sores and open wounds, a public that liberally supports hospitals won’t tolerate any more of that sort around.
But while I have been recalling a few of the odd fish who frequented the thoroughfares in the quarters of the town most affected by gentlemen of the Press, I have been somehow conscious all the time that, however interesting the recollections may be, they are scarcely of the particular type of odd fish which I set out to describe. My intention was—and is—to recall some of the eccentric persons on the Press, or those eccentrics with whom the Press brought me into contact. To that task I now address myself.
One of the queerest fish of my time was Mr. William Henry Bingham-Cox. He was a tall, swarthy man—swarthy, indeed, is euphemistic, for the man was as copper-coloured as a Hindu. He had big lips and a head of curly black hair. The tar-brush had at some time played an important place in his evolution. He had at one stage of his career been a clerk in the Bank of England. On inheriting a certain legacy, he threw up his appointment in Threadneedle Street, and bought a paper—then in very low water—entitledThe Licensed Victuallers’ Gazette. He seemed from the first to be able to interest “the trade,” and greatly increased the advertising income of his purchase. It was not, however, until he conceived the happy idea of publishing bright and cleverly-written accounts of old prize-fights that theGazettebegan to feel its feet and to make big strides in the favour of the public.
Although Bingham-Cox was believed by many of his contemporaries to be as mad as Bedlam, there was a certain method in his madness. He had thesavveeto see that the new edition of the old fights must be of some literary excellence, that the stories must be retold with a graphic force and without a nauseating repetition of the worn-outclichéswhich, strangely enough, gave relish to the original accounts when, years before, they appeared in the columns ofBell’s Life. His first selection was a fortunate one. Sydney French was the chosen historian of the “fancy.” Heapproached the subject with an open mind, for he had never seen a fight and knew nothing of the prize-ring. But he was an all-round journalist, and could produce a readable column of copy on almost any given topic within the hour. “The Dean could write well about a broomstick!” exclaimed Stella. That was the sort of journalist French was. He could write well—that is to say, in an interesting way—about a broomstick. He was not always what you might callonhis subject. But he was always somewhere round about it. And he was never dull. He kept on at the fights until his death. French was on the staff of theDispatch, and found the Cox engagement a very nice addition to his income. The honorarium for the fight article ranged from seven to ten guineas a week.
When French died, Bingham-Cox was in despair. Many men had a “try” at the game. But it was not as easy as it looked. Man after man was found wanting. Among others who took a hand at the task was Mr. T. P. O’Connor, now M.P. for the Scotland Division of Liverpool. “Tay Pay” has a fine roving style of his own, but was apparently unequal to the Homeric strain essential in the epic of the Ring. Willmott Dixon was sent for, and for many years he was not only the writer of the prize-fights, but editor of the paper. French was bad to beat, but Dixon beat him, and beat him easily. Dixon had a knowledge of the Ring; he could “put up his dukes” himself, thoroughly enjoyed “a bit of a scrap,” and his Cambridge experiences stood him in good stead. His memory, too, was rarely at fault. I never met a journalist so independent of books of reference.
Bingham-Cox was a great theatre-goer. His widowed sister kept house for him over the offices of the paper in Southampton Street, Strand. She usually accompanied her brother on these outings, and, though his paper had no recognized position in the theatrical world, “William Henry” used to besiege the acting-managers for stalls and boxes. When he succeeded in capturing a couple of free seats he was as pleased as Punch, although they usually cost him three or four times their market price, for he invariably indicated his appreciation of the manager’s civility bysending him a box of cigars. As the cigars were generally “Flor de Cuba” or “Cabañas” of a famous crop, one may imagine that acting-managers were not unwilling to oblige him if they could. The strange man did not smoke himself, and was horrified if anyone came smoking into his office.
Occasionally he contributed to his own columns. His contributions were usually of a more or less libellous nature. He called me in on one occasion to advise about the opening paragraph of a short dramatic notice which he had written. The thing was in proof. It dealt with a play by Sims and Buchanan called “The English Rose.” From the tone of the essay I inferred that the eccentric proprietor had been unsuccessful in getting free stalls at the Adelphi, where the play had been produced. The paragraph about which he seemed particularly anxious was the opening one. It ran in this way:
“This is the most extraordinary production we have ever been invited to witness. It is an Irish melodrama. It is entitled ‘The English Rose.’ It is written by a Scotsman and a Jew, and it has been put on the stage by two gentlemen of Swiss nationality.”
“What do you think of it?” he exclaimed, grinning and showing his gleaming white teeth.
“I think you are wrong about your facts.”
He glared at me, exposed his teeth more than ever, stuck his thumbs in the armholes of his waistcoat, and asked:
“What! what! Wrong in my facts! Nonsense, my friend, nonsense!”
“In the most material statement you are wrong,” I persisted; “for Buchanan is not a Scotsman, and Sims is not a Jew.”
“Ah,” he cried, grinning more fiercely, “then it’s not a libel!”
“That’s as may be,” said I; “for to my mind the law of libel resolves itself into this: Whether twelve men on their oaths consider that the words published by A have injured B.”
He went to his desk, initialled the galley, rang the bell, and handed the slip to the man answering the summons, with theintimation: “For the printer.” Then, turning to me, he said defiantly: “I’ll let it go.”
Whether it everdidgo I never inquired. The reminiscence comes back to me unbidden. It had clean vanished from my memory from that day to this.
He was constantly—but, as I believe, quite unconsciously—giving offence to all sorts and conditions of men. His black beard, curly hair, gleaming teeth, and fierce grin, obtained for him an offensive sobriquet thus bestowed: One of his contributors sent him a letter resigning his position on the staff. He alleged but one reason for this course. It was: “I can no longer put up with the antics of a Barbary ape.” The eccentric recipient of the letter, instead of putting it into the fire and forgetting all about it, assembled the members of the staff, and read the document as though it proved the hopeless insanity of the writer. Having read it, he ran round the room, pretending to scratch his arms after the manner of a caged monkey, uttering the most comical squeals and chattering his teeth no end.
He was drawn over the incident by Pottinger Stephens, who was running a weekly calledThe Topical Times. In that smart little journal a question was asked the following week in these words: “When did Mr. Bingham-Cox receive the degree of B.A.?” The unfortunate man did not see what lay under the inquiry. He wrote a letter on the note-paper of the Junior Athenæum—the “Junior Prigs,” as it used to be called—explaining that he had dispensed with the advantages of a University training, and that he was not a B.A. The letter appeared in Pot’s paper in due course; but with this heading: “Mr. Bingham-Cox denies that he is a B.A.” The person of the newspaper proprietor was less sacrosanct in the jocund days than in these greyer times.
Bingham-Cox was a collector in his way. He was very keen on engravings, and was by no means a bad judge. He started on his hobby long before the “engraving craze” set in, and his collection became worth four or five times the price he gave for it. The first-floor above the office was full of his samples from floor to ceiling. One day whenI was looking over the gallery in his company, he invited me to select a couple of the engravings. I chose two—by no means the least valuable in the collection—and was about to ask when I might send for them, when he whipped out a notebook, and saying, “I’ll leave them to you in my will,” made an elaborate pretence of recording the incident. He was a collector of musical instruments, and had a piano or an American organ on every landing in the house. The most intolerable trials to which he subjected his friends were his recitals on one or other of these instruments. As he crashed out his Masses and fugues he rolled his head, showed his teeth, and grinned awfully, as though he thoroughly enjoyed witnessing the torture he inflicted.
The end of his story is a mingling of tragedy and comedy. He sold his paper. During the years in which he had conducted it he always “lived over the shop.” He could never have spent a fourth part of his net profits, and the balance had been well and luckily invested. When he received the purchase money for theGazetteand left Southampton Street, he was worth considerably over £100,000. When he crossed the threshold of his old offices his astuteness and his luck seem to have deserted him. He bought a brewery in St. Albans, where he had a house. From the first this venture was foredoomed to failure. He became the prospective Unionist candidate for the division. But Captain Middleton and the Central Office would have nothing to do with him, and ran a candidate of their own against him. Bingham-Cox persisted, and actually went to the poll. At this period I became more intimately associated with the eccentric man. I made some speeches for him, and even canvassed the independent electors. More than once during the campaign I thought it my duty to inform him that his methods, should he be elected, must insure his being unseated on petition. He only bared his teeth at the suggestion. He was quite sure of winning, and he was equally sure that there would be no petition.
One of my trials in accompanying him was being obliged to drive about with him in a little village cart, painted a vivid green, and drawn by a big black donkey. Thecandidate, with his swarthy face, grizzly beard, and fierce expression, might have been theavant-courierof some travelling show. The little villagers evidently accepted him as something of the sort, and accompanied the strange vehicle and its grinning occupant in and out of their hamlets with joyful “whoops.” He was badly beaten at the polls. I don’t believe that even the well-bribed employés in the brewery voted for him. Then the brewery itself went smash, and Bingham-Cox returned to Southampton Street (the new owners of the paper having found less expensive premises), and recommenced life as a newspaper proprietor.
His new paper was calledThe Rocket. His idea was to give the public aTruthfor a penny. The title was an ill-omened one. The paper went up like the explosive after which it was named, and came down like the stick. He sent for Clement Scott, and instructed him to write an article dealing abusively with stage-players. Clemmy agreed provided his name was kept a profound secret. Bingham-Cox promised. The worthy man had probably suffered from some further slight at the hands of the managers. “Cut ’em up! Slash ’em! Flay ’em alive!” he exclaimed to the accommodating contributor. Scott, secure in his anonymity, proceeded to cut up, slash, and flay, the unfortunate mummers in a strain of pious indignation that was peculiarly his own. The article duly appeared with Clement Scott’s name in large letters both at the top and bottom of it. Scott never really got over the incident, and his reproaches had no effect on his employer. “Breach of faith indeed! Why, you have broken faith with a whole profession!” was the only satisfaction he could get from his betrayer.
TheRocketwas a failure from the first. It stopped for want of funds. For the unfortunate man had been drained dry. Even the engravings and the musical instruments had gone. In a few short years his fortune had melted. He was overdrawn at the bank; he had not a cent in the world. One morning the word went round that he had been found dead in bed, and there was no inquest.
Arthur T. Pask was a name with which the public becameacquainted in the eighties. He wrote in Christmas numbers, annuals, and story magazines. He had established relations with theStandard, and used to write “turn-overs” for that journal. His copy always appeared to me to be devoid of merit, but personally he was a most interesting man. He was engaged in the Affidavit Department of the Royal Courts of Justice. One would have imagined that in that office he would come across plenty of material for his fictions. He preferred, however, to evolve these from his inner consciousness, and to this end he appeared to live in a set of circumstances of his own invention. At one time he became subject to the hallucination that he kept a yacht. He appeared in Fleet Street one day in the most weird sort of nautical rig. With his yachting cap, white shoes, and reefer jacket with brass buttons, he had the appearance of the steward of a penny steamer. He breathed a sea-air. His conversation was of the “Royal Squadron”; his similes were drawn from out the vasty deep. He had acquired something of the roll of the mariner, and his acquaintances humoured him in his delusion, and, if they laughed, Arthur himself also was perfectly happy. One of his nautical impromptus uttered by him during this phase has remained with me. We began discussing a comet then due in the heavens, and were talking the customary foolishness about the chances of that heavenly body striking the earth. Pask was equal to the occasion and ready with an expedient. “By Jove!” he exclaimed breezily, “we must throw out cork-fenders over our lee bow!”
A remarkable figure in those Fleet Street days was that of a man who was known by two nicknames, and whose real name appeared to have been quite forgotten. He was tall and thin, had a broken nose, a small stubbly moustache, and had acquired the peculiarly disagreeable habit of addressing every person with whom he had business as “Cocky.” This curious person had originally been a baker in Fetter Lane. But while his hands were busy in the bakehouse, his heart was in the race-course, and when his batch of bread was out of the oven and in the baskets of the distributors, the honest tradesman was off to theterminus to catch a train to Newmarket or Doncaster or Epsom. He became as well known on the race-course as Steele or the Duke of Westminster or John Porter. And the nickname bestowed on him—it originated in the Ring, no doubt—was “the Flying Baker.” There could, of course, be but one end to a sporting career of the kind. As Dick Dunn once said to him, not unkindly, “You should be bakin’ ’em, not backin’ ’em!” But no backer ever takes that sort of advice; he has so much faith in his own good luck, coupled with his sound knowledge of a handicap, that he keeps on to the end—the invariably bitter end. The “Flying Baker” had hoped to break the Ring, but the Ring broke the “Flying Baker.” The hungry creditors refused to be satisfied by bread alone. The unfortunate victim went through the Court, and Fleet Street and Fetter Lane knew him no more—for a time.
After a space of years he reappeared in his old haunts. He had obtained a post on one of the sporting papers. Whether he was on the editorial staff, or in the publishing department, or a mere messenger, I do not know. He came round to chambers with a note for me one day.
“I want an answer to this, Cocky,” he observed.
“You’re a bit familiar, don’t you think?” I ventured to remark.
“What say, Cocky?” he inquired, with the most innocent air in the world.
I considered it unadvisable to pursue the conversation. I wrote my reply to the note he had delivered, and handed it to him without a word.
“Well, so long, Cocky!” he said as he shambled off.
In this reincarnation of his he was known in Fleet Street as “Newman Noggs.” His real name need not be recorded here, as it is borne to-day by a son who has risen to considerable eminence in one of the artistic professions.
Myodd fish should have been disposed of in a single chapter, but one has lingered over the memory of them. After all, they contributed the comic element—or some of it—to many hours that lapsed in laughter. And shall one not be grateful to them or to their memories?
A considerable proportion of my Press work had to do with the theatres. I was acquainted with most of the actors and managers of my time, and some of the oddest fish that ever swam into my ken were connected with the “profession.”
There was, for instance. William Duck—manager, theatre-owner, impresario. Duck commenced life in some very humble capacity in the West of England. By a practice of punctuality, civility, a strict attention to business, and the other virtues which are supposed to furnish forth the complete British tradesman, he became a music-seller and purveyor of musical instruments. In this capacity he evolved, by easy stages, into a booker of theatre seats. And although Duck would not know a good play from a bad one, he saw in the theatre an easy way to fortune. He felt his feet by dabbling a little as “sharer” in likely ventures. But he found himself, and, incidentally, founded his fortune, when, acting alone, he purchased the country rights of “Our Boys.”
How much Duck netted out of that most diverting comedy I cannot say; but I know that it was a prodigious sum. When first the money came tumbling in, the happy man built him a lordly pleasure-house. In his new mansion there were prominent two works of art: a statue of William Shakespeare and a life-size portrait of Henry Byron. But,of the two, Duck always considered the author of “Our Boys” to be the greater genius. He thought no end of the writer of the play that brought him his first really big returns. I met him, in deep mourning, a short time after Byron’s death.
“Ah, sir,” he said, shaking his head, “we’ll never see another man like him—not inourtime.”
And Byron took every advantage of his admirer’s infatuation. Anything that Byron brought him in the shape of a play Duck bought. When Duck followed his idol to the Elysian Fields, his executors came upon a whole press full of Byron manuscripts which were little more than “dummies.” Byron had parted with his birthright for a mess of pottage, and considered that he was justified in thus getting back a bit of his own.
Becoming interested in productions running at one or two of the West End houses, Duck was now frequently to be met “in front,” and became known to members of the Press. He was an exceedingly common-looking man, and one of his eyes always oozed moisture, which caused him to raise his handkerchief to his face while he conversed—a habit which acquaintances at first found a little disconcerting. He was extremely ignorant—or, to speak by the cards, extremely uneducated—and he never employed an aspirate except when it was absolutely unnecessary. Which reminds me of a story.
When “Our Boys” was being played for the first time at Plymouth, Duck recollected having heard Byron say that he had never visited that town; so he wired to his favourite author to come down as his guest. Byron wired his acceptance. He probably had a new bundle of manuscript to pass on to his patron. Duck was at the station to meet the traveller with a programme for the afternoon’s enjoyment. He was anxious, above all things, that Byron should see Plymouth’s famous Hoe. So, when they had exchanged the customary civilities, Duck explained:
“I’m agoin’ to take you round to see the sights; an’ fust of all I think we’d better take a little stroll round the ’O!”
“Don’t you think,” asked Byron, fixing him through his monocle, “that first of all we’d better take a little stroll round the H?”
Duck looked amazed at his guest. He had not the remotest idea of the point of Byron’s joke. He felt, in his confused way, that “’Enery Byron was gittin’ at ’im.” He smiled feebly, shook his head in modest deprecation, and answered:
“’Ar, youwill’ave your little joke, sir; but it ain’t the haitch after all, it’s the ’O we’re agoin’ to see—the ’O.”
“O!” was Byron’s monosyllabic comment.
William Duck had in his company as “leading man” a capital actor named Edward George. Much of the success of “Our Boys” in the provinces was due to the admirable impersonation of Perkyn Middlewick by that excellent comedian. While on tour, and playing in one of the large towns in the North, an admirer of George presented him with a cameo pin, having the likeness of Lord Byron carved on it. Duck, who noticed everything, and who had twice as much curiosity as an old woman, seeing the pin in the scarf of the comedian, immediately said:
“Pretty pin, Mr. George! ’Ad it giv’ to you?”
“It’s a present,” admitted the actor.
“Anybody’s portrait? Hey, Mr. George?”
“Yes. It’s a portrait of Byron,” was the reply.
Duck started, came nearer to George, held his face close to the cameo, and then fell back laughing consumedly. When he had succeeded in controlling his merriment, he exclaimed:
“You’ve bin took in, my dear feller:’tain’t a bit like ’im!”
William Duck, you see, knew of only one Byron. And that was “H. J.”
When Byron’s play had run under Duck’s management for five hundred nights in the provinces, the grateful manager thought that he would like to celebrate the event, and testify to his appreciation of the efforts put forth by the members of his company. It was, if I remember aright, in Liverpool that the play achieved its five hundredth night. Duck’s idea was to give a supper at his hotel. “Comes cheaper ’n a lunching,” one hears him say. He also determined—it must have cost him a pang, for William was mean, and that’s the truth—to give a little present to each member of the cast. He purchased some cheap bangles for the ladies, and a “charm” of more or less precious metal for the watch-guards of each of the gentlemen.
The memorable night arrived. Duck took the chair, presiding with rustic geniality over the pleased, and indeed surprised, comedians. Supper at an end, Duck hammered for silence, and rose, amid cheers, to make the speech of the evening. He told the devoted band of players what a lot he thought of them, how their efforts had helped the success of the comedy, and, in a word, how tremendously pleased he was with affairs generally. He concluded his address in the following peroration:
“But, ladies and gentlemen, them’s mere words. I wished to present everyone ’ere a solid token of my feelin’s, so I ’ave determined to give each member of my company a little momentum of the occasion. . . . Waiter!” he called out to the smiling attendant, “bring in them momentums!”
H. J. Byron, in pre-Duckian days, added to the joys of the town by inventing “malaprops,” which he used to put into the mouth of poor Mrs. Swanborough, of the Strand Theatre. But the advent of Duck put an end to that branch of industry as far as Byron was concerned. Duck found his own “malaprops,” and in their presence the pale contrivances of the wit were “As moonlight is to sunlight or as water is to wine.”
By the way, I would like to say here, in justice to an amiable lady long since dead, that Mrs. Swanborough was not at all the sort of person that the Byron anecdotes make her out to be. I was for years acquainted with her, and I never knew her to be guilty of such solecisms as the “H. J.” series put to her account.
The banquet and the presentation of “momentums” exhausted Duck’s capabilities in the direction of hospitality and largesse; for he was penurious above all things, and desperately thrifty. In the drawing-room scene in “Our Boys,” the stage directions provide for a chandelier in the centre of the ceiling. In the London production thiswas ablaze every night with wax candles. The first night on tour, the property-master had provided candles on the original scale. Duck nearly had a fit when he saw the illumination. He summoned the property-man to his office, and—botheyes now shedding tears—he ordered that in future the candles be reduced in number by one half, and those that were used to be cut in four pieces. The expression of the property-man was one of mingled distress and contempt. Observing which, Duck, wiping his eyes, observed with a smile:
“The shorter they har, the longer they’ll last. See? Hey?” I suspect he saw, for he spat on the carpet; and made his exit without a word.
I remember another London manager who was before Duck’s time, and who possessed some of his peculiarities. This was Giovanelli, who engaged in theatrical and other entertainments in the east and north of the town. How this extraordinary individual came by the name Giovanelli I never knew. He was a Cockney Jew, with all the engaging characteristics of that delightful hybrid. His friends called him “Jo” for short. He had seen the world, had Giovanelli. Among other places which he had visited was Australia. It was on returning from that colony, I think, he adopted the rolling Italian name which he bore in after-life. What name he went out in is one of those interesting facts lost to the annals of the stage.
Besides running a theatre in the East End, the versatile “Jo” acted as a low comedian. He did not, however, quite fancy himself in the dual role of actor-manager, and neither, indeed, did the public. Therefore he always engaged a low comedian in his company to supplement his own efforts in that line. Indeed, the low comedian was the most important member of East End companies, the “comic relief” in melodrama being greatly to the taste of the untutored patrons. “Jo” once engaged an actor who seemed to go all right at rehearsal, but who on the first night excited the sibilation of “the bird.” At the end of the performance Giovanelli sent for him. He handed him some golden coins.
“That’s your week’s salary, my boy. You needn’t come again.”
“I demand your reason for this summary dismissal,” said the chagrined performer, standing greatly on his dignity.
“Well,” said Giovanelli, shrugging his shoulders, “if youwill’ave it—it’s because you’re a dam bad low comedian.”
“And what priceyouas a comedian?” exclaimed the other.
“I know, I know, my boy,” replied Giovanelli, in his oily, deprecating way; “but, you see, the public won’t standtwodam bad low comedians.”
Some time since I saw in the Death advertisements of theTimesan announcement of the decease of Mr. Richard Barnard. “Dick” Barnard was one of the most impenetrable mysteries of the Strand. He was always well dressed; he posed as a racing man, as a journalist, as aflâneur. He managed to procure first-night invitations to all the important premiers. He had scraped an acquaintance with some of the best-known men on the turf, and was hand-in-glove with theatrical managers. The major portion of his time was spent in Romano’s bar. But, for all his pose, Barnard never owned a race-horse, never was a journalist, never had the slightest interest in the stage. His success was founded on a well-groomed person, a supercilious manner, the judicious communication of any good racing information that came his way, and—indomitable cheek. For Dick was an adventurer pure and simple, having abandoned the career of billiard-marker in Birmingham for the greater possibilities of the Metropolis.
Like most of his kidney, his life was a series of financial “ups and downs.” Sometimes he was full of money; as often he was stony-broke. It was during one of these latter periods that he was sitting in “the Roman’s” lonely and disconsolate. To him entered, like a ray of sunshine, a man-about-town in his little way, a votary of the drama, and an habitué of Romano’s. He was one of those, also, who took Dick Barnard seriously, supposing him to be a person of great influence on the Turf, the Stage, and in Society.
Dick brightened up at the advent of his friend, but, of course,he did not evince any particular elation. His satisfaction was naturally enhanced when the young man from the country invited him to lunch.
Barnard accepted in the manner of a man who was conferring a favour. They went into the narrow dining-saloon behind the bar—that was the onlysalle à mangerRomano boasted in his halcyon days—and ordered luncheon for two from Otto the waiter. During lunch Barnard related such items of news as he thought would interest. And in return for these bits of scandal his friend told him that he had just been down in the Boro’ selling his father’s crop of hops, and that he was carrying home the spoils in his note-case—spoils amounting to several hundred pounds. To a man who had not fingered a banknote for a month of Sundays this was news indeed.
They did themselves fairly well—as well as a bill of fifteen shillings will allow two lunchers to do themselves at “the Roman’s.” When coffee had been served, and the lofty-minded Otto had gone to take orders from another customer, the young gentleman leaned across the table, and whispered to Barnard:
“I’ll pass you a tenner under the table; please pay the bill and give me the change outside.”
“Certainly, sonny,” said Dick; “but may I ask the reason of all this mystery?”
“The fact is, I’ve no smaller change, and I owe Otto a bit,” was the answer.
“Oh!” said Dick sympathetically.
The tenner was duly passed under the table. The young man lit a cigarette and left the room, passing out into the “roaring Strand.” He waited for a quarter of an hour cooling his heels on the pavement, when he was rejoined by his friend.
“Your change, old chap,” said Dick sweetly, as he handed the youth five shillings.
“But, my dear fellow, that was a ten-pun note I gave you,” he said.
“I know,” replied Dick. “But, you see,I owed Otto a bit too.”
How the ingenuous youth explained matters to his father, I have never heard.
In 1871 I first made the acquaintance of E. J. Odell, the actor. He then seemed to be a man well advanced in middle age. He is still alive—one of the features and mysteries of the Strand. He is the last of the Bohemians—the survival of days (to quote Eccles) “as is gone most like forever.” He has contrived to make a lasting reputation as an actor. His impersonations were usually in burlesque or opera-bouffe. I can personally recall two of his Metropolitan engagements. One of these was in a burlesque at the Gaiety. But he failed there to justify the high expectations of the management. Even at rehearsal there were difficulties. Bob Soutar was stage-manager, and, being a bit of a martinet, he and Odell did not quite “hit it.”
Odell played on tour as Gaspard the miser in “Les Cloches de Corneville,” and I believe acquitted himself very creditably, which is no small thing to say of any performer following Shiel Barry in the same part. For Barry’s performance was one of the finest bits of acting seen on the London stage in my time. On the first night of Shiel Barry’s appearance in the part, I first understood the meaning of the phrase (Edmund Kean’s, is it not?), “The Pit rose at me.” When the curtain fell on the second act of “Les Cloches,” moved by the intensity of Shiel Barry’s acting in the final scene of the act, the audience rose to their feet in all parts of the house. It was an outburst of genuine enthusiasm which called the performer before the curtain again and again. Lord Kilmorey—at that time Lord Newry—was sitting next to me in the stalls. He does not strike one as being a very emotional sort of nobleman; but he was carried away like the rest of us by a wave of pulsating fervour which was quite irresistible.
But to return to Odell. If that gentleman has not achieved a long record of successesonthe stage, he has certainly made a great reputationoffit. My friend Hollingshead was right when he described Odell as a monologue entertainer. His entertainments, to be successful, must,however, be of a private or semi-private nature. Certain of his ballads are conceived more or less on the lines of Sala’s “Bet Belmanor.” One of them was a weird thing commencing:
“Oh! was it in the garding,Or was it in the ’all?”
“Oh! was it in the garding,Or was it in the ’all?”
He had an unctuous manner of rendering this gem which was quite his own—a manner unique and of humour all compact.
There can be little doubt that Odell deliberately adopted the pose of an eccentric. He enjoyed the surprise and interest occasioned by his appearance when he promenaded the Strand. He had a thin, clean-shaven face which would have been ascetic were it not for a perennial smile. He wore his hair long; rolling down on his shoulders, it fell in a brown cascade. Above was a wide black sombrero tilted rakishly on one side. His coat—worn summer and winter—was an ulster cut very wide in the skirt. He walked with a curious swaying gait which caused the ulster to undulate its skirts from side to side. If his object were to attract public attention to his person, he most undoubtedly succeeded. Country cousins encountering the strange figure were sure to spot him as a celebrity of some sort, and inquire as to his identity. Every gamin, in that thoroughfare of gamins, was ready with the answer:
“’Im? W’y, that’s Odell, the hactor!”
Odell has a very pretty wit of his own, and there is no member of the Savage Club—of which he is one of the oldest members—who can hope to get the better of him in repartee. I remember hearing him sit very severely on a pompous member of the old Lancaster Club, in the Savoy. Odell happened to invite one or two of his friends to drink with him. The rude and pompous person approached the group, and Odell, on hospitality intent, invited him to have a drink.
“Thanks,” replied the would-be wit, “I only drink with gentlemen.”
“Then, sir,” flashed out Odell, without a moment’s hesitation, “let me assure you thatyou will never die of delirium tremens!”
Odell’s age has always been as profound a mystery as his place of residence. Much time and ingenuity have been expended by his associates in the endeavour to unravel these mysteries. As the place of his birth has never been divulged, there is an insuperable difficulty in obtaining information under the first head; while as to the second, he has never been known to leave his club until all the other members have departed. Of all London, Odell holds the record of “latest to bed.” The genial Bohemian has in his old age been very well treated by his clubs—more particularly by the Savage. But what the Savage Club would be without Odell one cannot imagine. The chief of the Bohemian clubs cannot afford to lose the chief of the Bohemians.
Your average pressman, with an observing eye and an open mind, is bound to knock up against a greater number of charlatans than the member of any other profession. For publicity is to the charlatan the breath of his nostrils, and the Press is the most potent engine in procuring publicity of which the charlatan has any knowledge. And it will be borne in mind that your properly-constituted charlatan does not at all care what description of publicity he attains so long as the quantity is all right.
“Better be damned than mentioned not at all”
“Better be damned than mentioned not at all”
is his motto. Notoriety rather than celebrity is his aim.
Taking this as the measure of his aims, I conceive that the Marquis De Leuville was the greatest charlatan that loomed through all the jocund years. To begin with, he was no more a Marquis than I am; and, to complete the absurdity of his pretensions, although he bore a high-sounding French title, he was not a Frenchman. But he had every possible claim to the title of “odd fish.” He was an Englishman. His name was Oliver, and the place of his nativity was the city of Bath. Various accounts have been circulated concerning his early life. Some of these legends declared him to have been a hairdresser’s assistant; others, that he had commenced as page-boy to a Bath doctor. About these matters he himself was persistentlyreticent. The literary world first heard of his existence by means of a novel in three volumes—at that time the simple and inexpensive method of publishing a couple of shilling’s worth of fiction. I forget the title of the book, I never read it; but I discovered some time after its appearance that, although the title-page described it as “by the Marquis De Leuville,” it was the work of one of those literary “ghosts” of whose labours, all through his artistic career, the “Marky,” as he was called, liberally availed himself.
The “Marky’s” novel was reviewed in the daily and weekly Press. In many quarters it was even favourably reviewed. For there are snobs in Fleet Street, as there are everywhere else, and there were certain book-reviewers who would consider it bad form to say anything that was not quite civil about the productions of a Marquis, even though the title he bore was only a French one. The appearance, and newspaper acceptance, of the book established those friendly relations with the Press concerning which our friend Oliver had been so solicitous. Having once established his footing in Fleet Street, the “Marky” was most assiduous in his attention to those individuals with whom his work had found favour. By them he was introduced to others. And so he extended his connection like a good commercial traveller. It was rather unfortunate for the adventurer that, at the moment of his advent as a writer, Mr. Henry Labouchere had just commenced, inTruth, that crusade against impostors, charlatans, and social parasites generally, which at once made his paper and protected the public—one of those rare occasions by which public benefactors have made anything out of their labours. In the most matter-of-fact way Labouchere laid bare the pretensions of the mock Marquis, and left him without a rag of reputation to his back.
Little incidents of the kind are always allowed for in the calculations of an adventurer. The Marquis De Leuville, following the example of “ole Brer Fox” in the allegory, determined to “lay low an’ say nuffin.” When the Labouchere disclosures were forgotten, the scandal blownover, and the sportsmen of Carteret Street busy on the trail of some other quarry, the Marquis-who-was-not-a-Marquis and author-who-was-not-an-author made his reappearance. Invitations to garden-parties at the Priory, Kilburn, issued by a Mrs. Peters, descended like a shower of snow on newspaper offices. And those who accepted them were received at the Priory by a very affable, not to say merry, widow, who had very sensibly discarded the trappings and the suits of woe. This was Mrs. Peters, the owner of the house and grounds. And in these pleasant surroundings we found the Marquis installed. The game was a very pretty one. Mrs. Peters was the widow of a wealthy coach-builder. And in the chaste fastnesses of Kilburn she had thought to establish asalon. Here she would play the part of Madame Récamier to the Chateaubriand of a Bath Oliver!
Quick to read between the lines, the journalists who had been induced to accept an invitation to the Priory were able now to piece together the whole story. The giddy relict of the deceased coach-builder was the founder of the “Marky’s” fortunes. Her cheque had paid for the French marquisate. The Marquis De Leuville was, indeed, a work of fiction conceived, constructed, and given to the public, by Mrs. Peters. And it was a work of fiction transcending in human interest anything in the same line which could be produced by Oliver or his “ghosts.” Thesalonat Kilburn failed to fulfil the hopes of its promoters; Society—even society with a little “s”—fought shy of it. It was felt that Mrs. Peters as Madame Récamier and her protégé as Chateaubriand did less than justice to their several parts.
A suite of rooms was then taken for the Marquis in Victoria Street, Westminster, somewhere opposite the Army and Navy Stores. Here the indomitable humbug gave receptions, issuing the invitations in his own name. At these receptions one met the most weird characters—the shy denizens of the fringe of Bohemia, ostracized clerics, unread authors, swashbucklers of doubtful nationality, but about whose character there could be no sort of doubt whatever.
Mr. Harry De Windt, in his interesting book of reminiscence, gives an anecdote concerning the Marquis and his Victoria Street receptions, which, if worth telling at all, was worth telling correctly. I now relate the incident as it was repeated to me by Mr. Charles Collette, the well-known actor. At one of these assemblies in Victoria Street the Marquis invited two or three of the guests to remain and “have a bite” with him. When the general body of the guests had retired, these selected individuals were taken to the dining-room, where the merry widow was discovered awaiting them. Half a dozen people sat down to a meal which consisted chiefly of potatoes and mutton cutlets. Collette sat on the left of the Marquis, who took the head of the table. The Marquis was not a pretty eater, and that’s the truth. He detached a whole cutlet from the bone, and put it into his mouth as one bite. Looking up, he saw the amazed expression on Collette’s face.
“I’ve got a devil of a twist,” explained the Marquis.
“I see. An Oliver twist,” said Collette sweetly.
De Leuville called on me once in Fleet Street while I was editing a weekly paper. One of my contributors had fallen foul of a poem bearing the nobleman’s name. The reviewer had discovered in the verses every fault which the author of a poetical composition could by any possibility commit. De Leuville’s principal object in seeking an interview was, he declared, to prove to me that “shore” was a true rhyme to “Samoa.” He did not quite succeed. He was a man with a big, round, foolish face; he wore a moustache and imperial. He had very broad shoulders, and wore his collar so low as to give him something of adécolletéappearance. His black tie was big and flamboyant, and suggested the boulevards—as it was, no doubt, intended to do. His hair was long, and his broad-brimmed silk hat was worn slightly tilted to one side, indicating that he was rather a dog of a Marquis. He wore stays, which had the effect of adding, apparently, to the width of his shoulders. On his fingers were large rings of eccentric design. And the man literally stank—there is no other word for it—of unguents and essences. That was the first occasion on which I had the doubtfulpleasure of seeing the Marquis De Leuville. The last time I encountered him was about three years since at Boulogne. He was a greatly altered marquis. His long grey hair fell over his shoulders; he wore a black soft felt hat, a black velvet dinner-jacket. He looked a rather seedy and shrivelled Marquis. Altogether he had the appearance of a stunted Buffalo Bill fallen upon evil days. He was accompanied in his visits to theétablissementby a group of octogenarian lady admirers. He lived in an hotel at one side of the estuary; they lived in a hotel on the other. Everything was entirely respectable and platonic. And it was quite pathetic, I thought, to hear the shrill voice of the merry widow—for the “Marky,” like the Pope, was still supported by “Peters’ Pence”—rebuking a friend, and announcing emphatically:
“My dear, the Marquis has a soul above gambling!”
Messengers came and went between the hotels, and a pleasant interchange of amenities was constantly taking place. The Marquis, from his retreat near the railway-station, despatched little presents of scent and trifling sonnets to his mistress’s eyebrow. These manuscripts the recipient read in her high piping voice to her satellites, describing them as “p’tee morr-sow.” And I suppose in exchange for the bottles of strange smells and the poems there was a generous supply of “Peters’ pence.”
During his stay in Boulogne the Marquis invented a new boot-varnish, the secret of applying which belonged to himself alone. He spent quite an hour a day varnishing his boots, the result being that he was evicted, one after another, from half the hotels in the town. His varnish had a nasty habit of communicating itself to table-linen, carpets, or any other hotel property that happened to touch it. But Oliver stuck to his boot-varnish, and permitted himself to be driven from hostelry to hostelry rather than abandon it. He afforded a fine example of the old nobility sacrificing itself on the altar of principle. A year after I had seen him in Boulogne I read of his death; and the devoted chatelaine of the Priory, Kilburn, soon followed him into a realm where charlatanism is, we may imagine, at a discount.
Colonel Whitehead was another gentleman who thought it well to establish relations with gentlemen on the Press—on the principle, I suppose, that it is well to make friends of the mammon of unrighteousness. The Colonel was a great admirer of the stage, more particularly that department of the stage which devotes itself to the encouragement of histrionic talent in good-looking young women. He was a haunter of stage-doors, was admitted, here and there, to thecoulisses, and was one of those patrons of the drama whose patronage takes a practical turn in the case of its female professors. In order to indulge his tastes in this direction, he leased the Canterbury for a season, revived the ballet with some of its ancient glory, and thoroughly enjoyed himself among the members of the corps. But the experiment was a costly one, and his operations were subsequently carried on at a less ruinous scale of expenditure.
He was one of the original members of Russell’s Club for Ladies. Here he would turn up of a night with the largest shirt-front in London, in the middle of which sparkled a diamond of prodigious size. The Colonel was sitting one night in the drawing-room of the club, waiting, no doubt, for one of those ladies for whose special convenience Russell had founded his club. A boyish officer in one of the regiments of Guards was sitting not far off staring at the Colonel, whose get-up fascinated him. The youthful Guardsman was not nearly as sober as he might have been. Having gazed, fascinated, for a length of time at the Colonel, he called out: “Waiter!”
“Yessir,” said the servant who answered the summons.
“Oh—er—waiter, who’s (hic) that man with the lighthouse in his stomach?”