From that day to the day of his death Whitehead was known as Colonel Lighthouse. The Colonel had a big house outside Margate, to which at week-ends he invited his theatrical and literary friends. And the highest sort of high-jinks were carried on there.
A certain Irish nobleman was on his death-bed. The priest came to him. The holy man was anxious to get ageneral confession from him. The nobleman declared he had nothing to confess. “Look back on your past life, my lord. Is there nothing you regret?”
“Nothing,” he replied; “I never denied myself a pleasure!”
He closed his eyes, fell back on his pillow, and, in that happy belief, died.
Whitehead was a gentleman of that kidney, and brings to an end my selections from an almost inexhaustible list of odd fish.
Thepromotion of clubs became a very busy industry under the consulate of Plancus. Of these promotions but few survive, and of these few none are of the proprietary kind. A club, to survive, must have arisen in response to an actual need, and out of the regular assembling of those who are kindred spirits, or who are brought together by common professional interests. The promoters of proprietary clubs are forced to provide for their enterprises both a demand and a supply. Were the gambling laws less drastic in this country, I can easily conceive that a fortune might be made by the proprietor of a roulette and baccarat club. But the promotion of ordinary social rialtos involves a considerable amount of risk. I must have belonged to a dozen of these mushroom institutions between 1870 and 1890, and I was on the committee of a fourth of them. But whether we started with palatial premises or with an unpretentious flat, the end came soon or late. Members seemed always to have an insuperable diffidence about paying their subscriptions, and proprietors had an equally insuperable objection to expelling defaulters.
For some years a gentleman named Russell displayed great pertinacity in pursuing this particular line of promotion. Mr. Russell was, I believe, the son of Henry Russell, the well-known ballad-singer. “Cheer, Boys, Cheer” Russell the old man was called. By his rendering of that song and other spirited compositions by Dr. Charles Mackay, he had added immensely to his reputation, and greatly assisted that tide of emigration that was then setting to the West. His son evidently did not believe in the depopulation of his nativeland. He was keen on the construction of places of comfortable resort which would induce people to remain right here.
Russell’s first promotion might have proved a success had it been properly financed and discreetly managed. It was founded at what was, or should have been, the psychological moment. It had really fine premises, splendid rooms, and an excellent service. It was situated at the corner of a street running off the Strand, over against St. Mary-le-Strand. It had a strong committee of well-known barristers and literary men, and it was, very happily, called the Temple Club. But in his desire to swell the roll of members, Russell encouraged laxity in the labours of the committee. Men were elected who would have been blackballed at any West End club, and men dropped in at night who were not members at all. The latter circumstance was brought to my notice in a very unpleasant way.
I had been at a performance at the Strand Theatre, and in the foyer I had met Mr. Vincent Boyes, a gentleman well known in literary and artistic circles. Boyes was a most highly respectable person, the very pink of propriety, and an inordinate stickler forles convenances. He was, moreover, a man old enough to have been my father. I invited Boyes to turn into the Temple Club for half an hour. He accepted. We entered the club, I called for some refreshment, and after it had been served we were joined by a man who was personally known to both of us. The new-comer was a soldier of fortune, a bit of a swashbuckler, a traveller, and a most amusing raconteur. It is unnecessary to mention his name in this connection. He kept us in fits of laughter for an hour, during which time both he and I had replenished the glass of the almost oppressively respectable Boyes. At the conclusion of one of the swashbuckler’s narratives, Boyes said gravely: “I’m sorry I can’t ask you fellows to have a drink with me, but I’m not a member.” “Order away, old chap—no more am I!” exclaimed the cheery raconteur. Boyes regarded the man with a look of horror. He rose from his seat, took leave of me, and stalked out of the place without flinging even a nod to the soldier of fortune. That a man should have played the host tohim in a club of which that host was not a member was to Boyes the unforgivable offence.
In that same smoking-room there used frequently to meet a little coterie of journalists, among whom were Tom Dunning, one of the most respected men in “the Gallery”; H. H. S. Pearse, special correspondent of theDaily News; and Charles Williams, war-correspondent of many dailies in succession: for Charles, although an accomplished journalist, had an Irish temper, and frequently “quarrelled with his bread and butter.” I have met many eminent romancers in my time. Charlie Williams could have given Baron Munchausen a stone and a beating. He spoke with a rasping North of Ireland accent, and his campaign anecdotes gained greatly by the stolid, matter-of-fact manner in which they were narrated. I recall now one of his campaign reminiscences. It is a quaint experience of a correspondent under fire.
“I had got under cover of a big boulder, and had tethered my horse beside me. I was just munchin’ a beskit, when a shall burst on the rock, an’ shot the nosebag right off my charger. He had shoved his daumned ould head out of cover.”
“And you?” asked Pearse.
“I just went on munchin’ my beskit.”
“But,” suggested Dunning, “if the shell took away the nosebag, it ought to have carried away the beast’s head as well.”
“It did!” replied Williams, with the utmost sang-froid.
In the same place, but on another occasion, I heard him aver with the utmost solemnity that he had been selected by the Liberal party to oppose Sir Hugh M’Calmont Cairns, when that eminent man—afterwards Earl Cairns—first stood for Belfast in the Conservative interest.
“Ef,” declared Charlie, “I’d stud against Sir Hugh when first he put up for Bel-fawst, there’d be no such a personage now as Lord Cairns, Lord High Chawncellor of England!”
He was a bit of a romancer, was Williams. It should be admitted, however, that Williams did, at a later period in his career, stand as a candidate for Imperial Parliament. He opposed Herbert Gladstone at Leeds.
Another promotion of Russell’s was his club for ladies. As a sort of major-domo for this establishment, Russell engaged the services of the obese but obliging “Fatty” Coleman, who had some time previously left the mild pursuits of a private life for the bustle of a public one. He was assistant-manager of the Aquarium when Russell captured him. “Fatty” was a broad and beaming man, of immense geniality, and in every sense a most expansive person. As the presiding genius of a club for ladies he was entirely in his element. But the time for what were irreverently called “cock-and-hen” clubs had not fully come, and this venture of the indefatigable promoter went the road to dusty death which had been taken by the unfortunate gentleman’s other efforts to divert and refine human society. The adventures of the ingenuous “Fatty” would make a volume of their own. I last encountered him in a French watering-place, where he was acting as a sort of manager’s representative to an hotel much frequented by Englishmen. He had lost some of his flesh, but none of his beaming bonhomie. There was a legend—I have never tested its authenticity—that “Fatty” had at one time held a commission in a regiment of the Guards.
While the social activities of Russell were at their busiest, the field was entered by another club-promoter. He, however, after a short experience became weary of well-doing. This was the Hon. John Colborne. The Hon. John—“Dirty Jack” was his sobriquet in his regiment—had become known to the public as the defendant in a criminal libel suit brought against him by a moneylender. John had got deep into the books of the remorseless Israelite, and, seeing no way of settling with him in coin, determined to pay him in kind; so he sat down and wrote an extremely diverting and trenchant little book entitled “The Vampires of London.” Herein the methods of usury were exposed in a fierce light. This, however, the wily Jew might have forgiven. What he could never forgive was the ridicule which the gallant officer threw on hisménage. He had invited his customer to accept the hospitality of his home, and now the secrets of that home were held up to public ridicule and contempt. The writerhad not spared the members of the family. The very children of Israel were sacrificed on the altar of John’s vengeance. The allurements of Rachael, the schemes of “blear-eyed Leah,” were set forth with fiendish particularity.
The trial came off at the Old Bailey, and the prosecutor was represented by a rising barrister called Mr. Hardinge Giffard. That rising young barrister has, in so far as the Bar is concerned, risen and set many a day ago. He is now Lord Halsbury. The jury found for the persecuted Hebrew. The Hon. John was sentenced to certain months in gaol as a first-class misdemeanant, and ordered to pay a heavy fine. Defendants in cases of the kind were not so closely watched in those days as they are in the present year of grace, and when Mr. Colborne was called upon to receive sentence he was nowhere to be found. Having a very clear notion of the sort of verdict the jury would give, he had skipped over to France earlier in the day.
John had carried with him across the Channel a new and enlarged edition of “The Vampires,” and he at once set about issuing copies by post to advertisers desiring to acquire a work about which the trial had set all the town talking. To stop this fresh persecution, plaintiff was willing to accept any sort of terms in reason. All that Mr. Colborne desired was liberty to return to his native land, to obtain cancellation of the excessive interest on his bills, and to live thenceforth in peace with all men. His friends were enabled to arrange terms on this basis, and John was free to prosecute those schemes for improving the condition of his fellow-man to which he purposed to devote his energies. His schemes were fated to “gang agley.” He joined the Egyptian army, and died in action. It was probably the kind of death he would have wished, for, however he may have proved wanting in other qualities, no one ever doubted his high courage.
Chinery, in his club promotions, aimed at higher game. He had served as Consul-General in a West African State, was a member of the Reform and the Devonshire, was a convinced Liberal, and had a wonderfully good connection. Owing to these circumstances, he was able to muster a muchstronger committee than others who had started before him in the club industry. His first venture was the Empire Club. For this establishment he had acquired what the auctioneers call “eligible” premises. He got a lease of the house in Grafton Street, Piccadilly, which had been the last home of Lord Brougham. Men like the late (and great) Marquis of Dufferin became members. Viscount Bury was President of the club. A large membership, including many leading colonials, was assured. The management was reliable, the cellar unimpeachable, the house dinner (always presided over by a colonial Governor-General or some other potentate interested in our overseas Empire) became a welcome feature, and a long spell of prosperity seemed to be ahead of us. But our hopes did not reach fruition. Something went wrong with the accounts, and the Empire closed its doors.
The festive Chinery, in no whit discouraged, started on fresh promotions. None of them achieved the brilliant reputation of his original venture, and Chinery himself died a broken man.
At one time I belonged to a club called the Wanderers, in compliment, I suppose, to the Travellers, which was nearly opposite. The club-house occupied the corner, on the other side of Pall Mall, corresponding to that of the Athenæum. This was a comfortable and well-found establishment. Tod Heatley, the wine-merchant, was supposed to be interested in it; but it passed through many vicissitudes, and went under many names, till it was eventually devoted to more profitable purposes. Although the Wanderers had always other and higher pretensions, it was essentially a Bohemian club. A mixture of such pretensions with such actualities should be foredoomed to failure. In clubland the Wanderers was known as “The Home for Lost Dogs.”
Chief among the genuine Bohemian clubs is the Savage Club, whose home is on the Adelphi Terrace. Although the Bohemianism of this famous club is mainly traditional, it preserves the good custom of general communication among members, and encourages that spirit of playful geniality which is inseparable from the idea of Bohemianism. But the Savage Club of to-day is a very different thing from thesame association as I knew it in 1870. This, indeed, will be admitted by the official historian of the club, Mr. Aaron Watson, whose admirable monograph on the Savage leaves nothing for any future writer to tell concerning the genesis and early struggles of the Savages.
I was a guest at the Savage on about half a dozen occasions in early years, and I once passed a few hours with Christie Murray in its new and more abiding home.
It was on a dull November day, and Pat Macdonald and I were walking westward from Fleet Street. We had taken Covent Garden on our way. “Let’s see if there’s anybody in the Savage Club,” he said casually, as we left the central avenue of the market, under the shadow of St. Paul’s, of the convent garden. To me the invitation was delightful. Often I had heard of the celebrated resort of actors, authors, and musicians. With the rest of the world, I had become impressed with the idea that election to this coterie was extremely difficult. I had read with much interest the first issue of “The Savage Club Papers,” and it came upon me as a surprise that my friend Macdonald, whose contributions to literature were of the most tenuous character, should be a member, and that he should hold his membership so lightly.
Soon I discovered the reason, and this, by the way, is a rather interesting morsel of history which has escaped the vigilant eye of Mr. Aaron Watson. In those early and unsophisticated days, when a man was put up for membership at the Savage, he was given the run of the club until the date of the next election; and some men are by nature such excellent company that a club existing above all other things for congenial companionship will be apt to regard the claims of the professionally unqualified candidate as above those of the highly qualified man who happens to be a dull dog. This month of probation afforded the good fellow—“the clubbable man” of Dr. Johnson—the opportunity of asserting his claims; and although the committee was bound by its first rule, which provided that only men professionally connected with literature, the drama, or the arts, should be eligible, when they got the chance of electing a man of Macdonald’s erudition, humour, and powers of conversation,they were not likely to give that chance away. It was a strange rule, but it worked well. In those days there was no place in a club forced to forgather in a single room for men who could not talk well and laugh loudly.
Under the guidance of my friend, I crossed to the right through the inevitable slush and vegetable refuse, and we were soon mounting the steps that led to Evans’s Hotel. With the celebrated Supper-Room beneath the hotel I was already acquainted, but I had never before visited the hotel. Nor did I for a moment imagine that the club which occupied so large a place in my fancy and my esteem occupied rooms on licensed premises. The Savage Club was in possession of the room on the left of the hall as you entered the hotel. It had originally been the coffee-room, and was one of the principal apartments in the building. Evans’s Hotel is now the National Sporting Club. It was first the Falstaff, and to fit it for its new purposes considerable structural alterations were necessary, including a small private theatre, now abolished, but the lines of the old home of the Savages can still be made out.
There were very few members present on the occasion of this first visit of mine, and I was reminded of the omnipresence of the legal profession on finding that two of them were barristers. One was Mr. Jonas Levy, Chairman of the London, Brighton, and South Coast Railway; and the other Mr. Hume Williams—not the K.C. and Recorder of Norwich, but the father of that learned gentleman. Another of those present was Henry S. Leigh, the author of “The Carols of Cockayne”—a gentleman whom I came to know intimately. He had the bitterest tongue and sweetest nature of any man I ever met. The arrangements of the room testified to the simplicity of taste observed by those primitive Savages. On the tables that lined the walls were laid out clay pipes of the shape and size with which we associate the name “churchwarden,” and I observed that Leigh was drinking beer out of a pewter pot. There are no pewter pots in the Savage Club nowadays, but neither are there any Leighs.
Whether it was the deadly dulness of the autumn afternoon or my own lack of responsiveness, or whether it wasthat I had cherished exaggerated expectations, or whether it was the result of a conspiracy of all these causes, I cannot say, but my first visit to the Savage was a disappointment and a disillusion. A year or more went by before I was afforded an opportunity of reviewing my earlier impressions. This time I had no cause to complain of the quality of the entertainment. “Jimmy” Albery, who had recently made his name with “Two Roses”; H. S. Leigh; E. A. Sothern; George Honey, the actor; Arthur Boyd Houghton, the artist; and Andrew Halliday, the author and journalist-dramatist, were among those present. My earlier impressions were at once erased. Never had I been thrown into the society of a number of grown men where such a spirit of fun, ofcamaraderie, of irresponsibility, and of the joy of life, prevailed and sparkled. They talked in the spirit of schoolboys, but with the point of seasoned wits. It was altogether a delightful experience.
It was at the Savage Club that I first saw the game of poker played. The game had been introduced by some Americans who enjoyed the privileges of corresponding membership in respect of their connection with the Lotus Club, New York. It was shortly made taboo by a ukase of the Portland and Turf Clubs, and disappeared from the card-rooms of all the West End clubs. I have always thought this rather a pity. Poker is one of the best games to be got out of a pack. It calls into exercise other faculties beside memory, judgment, skill, and a nice knowledge of the value of cards. You want to be a bit of a physiognomist. Your own expression should be under control, and your manner absolutely inscrutable. It is in respect of their natural endowment in these qualities that the Yankees make such good poker-players. I became greatly interested in the game, and it was indirectly through my instrumentality that its rules were first published in this country. General Schenk drew up the enactments governing the science of the pastime, at the request of Lady Waldegrave. Lady Waldegrave had them set up in type at Strawberry Hill. She had a few dozen copies printed for the use of her acquaintances. I became the proud possessor of one of these copies. A friendof mine—or perhaps I should say a gentleman whom up to that time I had regarded as a friend—induced me to lend him the brochure to settle some dispute which had arisen between certain correspondents on his paper; for my friend was a rather distinguished writer on the sporting press. I never saw that book again, but to my intense surprise and chagrin I found the whole of the Strawberry Hill rules published in the columns of my friend’s paper, with their place of origin given, and Lady Waldegrave’s authority cited.
The transaction did more harm to the gentleman who had betrayed my confidence than it did to me. In those days an act of the kind would be generally reprobated. Dog did not eat dog when Plancus was Consul. Nowadays I am given to understand that it would be regarded as a bit of smart journalism.
As I write, the memory of that first game of draw-poker comes vividly back to me, and, singular as it may seem to you, it comes back to an accompaniment of music. It was night, and in the supper-room below and at the back the little pale-faced choristers in their Eton suits were singing glees for Paddy Green’s customers. These vocal exercises were resented by grumpy members of the club, but to me distance enhanced the beauty of the singing, and I never hear poker mentioned now, such is the strange influence of the association of ideas, that I do not instantly hear the far-away voices of boys singing:
“Oh, who will o’er the downs with me—Oh, who will with me ride?Oh, who will up and follow meTo win a blooming bride?”
“Oh, who will o’er the downs with me—Oh, who will with me ride?Oh, who will up and follow meTo win a blooming bride?”
Poor words, perhaps; set to old-fashioned glee music, no doubt; introducing in the last line a word rendered vulgar by a merciless modernity, admitted. But, Lord! how sweet the memory of them comes back to me over the years—how inexpressibly sweet, yet how incalculably sad! for nothing but the haunting memory is left. My contemporaries of that time have, nearly all of them, satisfied their curiosity concerning the Great Secret. The pale-faced choirboys have grown to manhood, developing, perhaps, into “fat and greasy citizens.” Only the song remains.
Baker Green, editor of theMorning Post, was a member of the Savage at a somewhat later date. He was a great hulking figure of a man, with a terrible mordant humour of his own, and a devilish solemn manner of stating the most absurd propositions. His monocle was as inseparable from him as that of Sir Squire Bancroft. His peculiar style of humour may be best illustrated anecdotically.
A member who loomed large in the life of the club in the days when the Imperial Institute was being nursed into life was Somers Vine. In respect of his services rendered to the Institute the excellent man received the honour of knighthood. It is to be feared that Baker Green had no great liking for Sir Somers. Of this sentiment on the part of his fellow-member, Vine, it must be supposed, had no inkling, for one evening, bubbling over with hospitality and brotherly kindness, he approached Baker Green in the club.
“I wish, my dear fellow, you would come down and spend a week at my place at Chislehurst,” he said.
“Delighted,” replied the other.
“I live at Vine Court,” explained the knight.
Baker Green took out his pocket-book as if to make a note.
“What Court did you say?” he asked innocently.
“Vine Court,” replied the pleased Sir Somers.
“Yes—er—and what number?” inquired the remorseless Green.
It is perhaps needless to add that the proposed visit was never paid.
Sir W. S. Gilbert was an occasional visitor at the supper-rooms beneath the club. The incident I am about to relate is scarcely relevant to the subject with which the present chapter deals, but as it happened on the premises, so to speak, I may be pardoned for introducing it. At Evans’s it was the custom to pay for your supper to a waiter who stood at the door—a lightning calculator who, by the means of a legerdemain which was all his own, was able to add about 25 per cent. to every bill without the victim beingable to see exactly how it was done. Gilbert rather resented the arithmetical methods of “John,” and at last came to the determination to pay “John” off by tipping him a penny instead of the sixpence which had hitherto been hispourboire. On the night on which his resolution was to be carried into effect his bill amounted to exactly hall a crown. He handed that coin to the magic calculator, and then handed his tip of one penny. “John” looked at the coin, smiled a deprecating smile, and, handing it back to the donor, said in a tone of subdued solicitude: “Perhaps you may be going over a bridge, sir.”
There was a toll levied on those crossing Waterloo Bridge in those days. The retort hit in two ways. The first suggestion was that the gentleman lived at the other side of the water; and the second, that he had been reduced to his last copper. The comment was, in fact, quite Gilbertian—as “John” himself was perfectly well aware.
The doyen of the club was W. B. Tegetmier. He seemed a survival almost of another age. For he was the same W. B. Tegetmier to whom Darwin, in his “Descent of Man,” makes so many acknowledgments of assistance in connection with experiments in the breeding of pigeons. He was one of the first men to use the bicycle as a means of getting to and from his office at theField, which was then in the Strand. He must have been well over sixty at the time, and he continued to use the machine till he was well over seventy. A wonderful, wiry, active, peppery-tempered little man with a kindly expression indicating a heart more kindly still. Not that he could not say a hard thing when he thought it absolutely necessary. By his intimates he was always called “Teg.” But should any man who was not an intimate presume thus to address him, he would quickly resent the familiarity. Thus, on one occasion Mr. Bowles, a barrister and brother-Savage, finding the little naturalist there, addressed him by his sobriquet.
“Hallo, how are you, Teg?” said the devoted man, bent on geniality.
“Quite well, thank you—Po!” answered the other icily.
I had the honour of attending two of the Saturday dinnersof the Savage Club. There was nothing quite like those dinners then; there has been nothing quite like them since. No after-dinner speeches were permitted, but when the meal—a very simple one—was at an end, the members set about entertaining their guests and themselves by song, anecdote, recitation, imitation, and playing upon instruments—for some of the finest instrumentalists in England were Savages. Old George Grossmith—father of George Grossmith, the well-known illustrator of Gilbert and Sullivan opera and platform entertainer, and grandfather of George Grossmith junior of the Gaiety Theatre—gave us a reading from the first chapter of “Bleak House”; Signor Foli sang “Simon the Cellarer”; Oscar Barrett and John Radcliffe fluted to us; Hamilton Clarke presided at the piano; Charles Collette pattered; George Honey gave some side-splitting stories, ably seconded in this department by dear old “Lal” Brough. The whole thing went with a “zip.” There was no hesitation on the part of performers; the neophyte who “broke down” in his performance was as heartily cheered as the veteran who rendered a passage reserved for such a gathering. Indeed, the feeling that one was listening to an entertainment which the public could not have for love or money added not a little, I imagine, to the sense of pleasure in those who took part in the post-prandial entertainment.
The Arundel and the Wigwam were conducted much on Savage lines, and the Junior Garrick, to which I have made reference in an earlier chapter, was decidedly a Bohemian institution. It had two periods. It originally existed as a members’ club; but a large number of influential members quarrelled with the committee and withdrew. The financial position of those who remained was not sufficiently strong to justify them in continuing it. And it seemed a pity to close the doors; for the club occupied a fine house at the corner of Adam Street and Adelphi Terrace. It remains an excellent example of Adam architecture, and contains some magnificent Adam ceilings and cornices. The drawing-room on the first-floor, with its unrivalled view of the Thames, is a spacious and well-proportioned apartment.The room beneath it was our dining-room, and the billiard-room was at the top of the house.
Now, whereas the Savage never suffered from any schism, the Junior Garrick was the victim of no less than two. The first while it was a members’ club; the second, when it had become a proprietary club. The first offshoot organized itself into the Green-Room Club, which flourishes to this day, and is at present housed in Leicester Square, nearly facing the Alhambra. This is now the principal club, entirely composed of stage professionals. The second offshoot of the old “J.G.C.,” as we liked to call it, was the Yorick. I know the Yorick still exists, for I recently saw in the daily Press a letter dated from that address.
In these days the Bohemian thinks it no longer good form to roam around the town attired in the negligent seediness of the impecunious student of the Quartier Latin. Unkempt locks, extreme squalor, and dirty finger-nails, are no longer regarded as essential characteristics of the social Bohemian. In the process of evolution we have now arrived at the evening-dress Bohemian. The Eccentric Club at Piccadilly Circus is his chosen resort. The phenomenal success of this club is attributable to the fact that the principal members of the original committee were business men; that it has been enabled to develop on a very small capital—some £700, I think; and that it was so fortunate as to acquire the premises, furniture, and fixtures, of an expiring institution at a ridiculously small figure.
This flourishing society grew out of the ashes of the old Coventry, a proprietary club which existed for some years in Coventry Street. When that rather cosy resort went the way of all proprietary clubs, a few of us met at Rule’s, in Maiden Lane, with a view of seeing whether a sufficient number of old Coventry members could not be induced to found another social centre in which men who had for some years come to regard the Coventry as their ordinary place of meeting. The idea caught on. The title “Eccentric” was decided on at our very first meeting. The old premises of the Pelican were to be had on reasonable terms. And we commenced, with a good list of members, in those sacredprecincts. Among the actors who joined were “Lal” Brough and Arthur Roberts, and among the artists were Phil May, Julian Price, and Paleologue. The last-named gentleman adorned the walls of the club-house with some very spirited mural decorations. So spirited, indeed, was the fresco from the atelier of Paleologue, that when the club gave what were called “ladies’ days” Paleologue’s canvas had to be removed for the occasion. Knowing who some of the ladies were, and understanding something also of the characteristics of the committee-men who succeeded in carrying this proposal, the arrangement always struck me as being particularly quaint and insular.
One of the paintings of Julian Price was an inimitably clever likeness of Drummond, our head-waiter. No man was ever half so respectable as Drummond looked; and Price has caught his mild, inquiring, deprecatory expression to a nicety. His trim black whispers increase the pallor of his face, and, to mark the members’ appreciation of his high reputation, the artist has endowed him with a halo. We had taken Drummond on from the Raleigh Club. In carrying out his duties, Drummond was unaffected by the circumstances passing around him. The most mirth-provoking joke might be let off in his presence, but Drummond never turned a hair. When joking took a practical turn, and when he became the subject of the joke, affairs took on another complexion. And Drummond’s reason for resigning at the Raleigh was—or was said to be—that Lord Marcus Beresford, in an access of boyish irresponsibility, had put Drummond into the ice-chest, shut the lid on him, and had then forgotten all about him. Fortunately, another waiter had occasion to go to the refrigerator before a fatality occurred, or poor Drummond would have become just so many pounds of frozen meat.
This extraordinary man, notwithstanding his serious mood, was the most painstaking, obliging, and solicitous club waiter I have ever met. He understood the gastronomic tastes of every member, and was infinitely desirous of giving satisfaction. He had one or two curious methods of pronunciation; I believe they had been imposed on himby facetious members of the Raleigh. Thus, he always said “sooty” instead of “sauté.” It became quite a habit to ask Drummond what potatoes were ready, for the sake of hearing his quaint version: “What potatoes to-day, Drummond?” “Potatoes, sir? There’s biled, mashed, and sooty.”
Drummond’s reason for accepting service at clubs which remained open all night long, and frequently until four and five in the morning, was a singular one. It seems that he was a proper religious man, and held the office of deacon in connection with some conventicle in the suburbs. In accepting a position in a club where all-night sittings were the rule, he was free for every Sunday. I have seldom heard of a man sacrificing more for his religion—have you? If Drummond be still alive, he must be an old man by now, and may his declining years be peaceful! If he be dead, may the turf lie light on him!
The safeguard of a strong committee will never stand between a proprietary club and eventual extinction. One of the strongest committees I have known was got together by Mr. Earn Murray when he founded the United Arts Club. The promoter was enterprising, sanguine, and ambitious. But the only two private members of the club who ever succeeded in achieving notoriety were “Old Solomon,” the racing tipster, and Percy Lefroy, the murderer of Mr. Gold.
Our legislature, which always does things in a grandmotherly sort of way, thought to purify the West End and suppress the Cyprian by closing the night-houses in the Haymarket and in the streets impinging thereon. The abolishing of those squalid dens did not, indeed, result in her disestablishment, but in the betterment of the conditions under which she carried on her sad but—if the unco’ guid will permit the use of the word in this relation—necessary calling. Phryne, like the poor, we shall always have with us. The obvious duty of society, therefore, is not to take measures for her suppression, but measures for her amelioration and regulation. School Board education and an acquired knowledge of the laws of hygiene have done much for her. When one compares the toilet, the costume, andthe manners, of thedemi-mondaineswho nightly frequent the back of the dress-circle of certain houses of entertainment with the tawdry, over-painted, giggling, solicitous creature of thirty years ago, then, and only then, can one understand the gratifying change that has taken place in the habitude of this inalienable excrescence on the body politic.
When the night-houses were closed, and the police instructed to keep the West End streets clear at midnight, there opened, here and there, clubs for the accommodation of Phryne and her friends. So that the closing of the frowsy saloons in which she had been wont to congregate was a blessing in disguise, and, indeed, fixes the date of the gratifying amelioration in her manners. For in the clubs a certain decorum was observed even in the ballroom, which afforded theraison d’êtreof social rialtos of the small-hours. The proprietors saw to that; for the recurrence of disturbance or the report of sinister incidents might occasion a raid. Election to these clubs was not, as may well be supposed, a very difficult matter. One was proposed on the doorstep, seconded on the hall mat, and unanimously elected a member in the cloak-room. But the men “on the door” knew perfectly well whom to admit and whom to dismiss. The bully, the exploiter of frailty, thesouteneur, were kept ruthlessly outside. Thus the proprietor protected at once himself and his customers. He ran a sort ofbon marchéin fact, where no middleman operated between the goods and the patrons of the exchange.
The children of Israel—whose mission in these later years is to be both our paymasters and our panders—were particularly zealous in the promotion of this kind ofréunion bohémiene. Belasco opened the Supper Club in Percy Street, Tottenham Court Road. Sam Cohen provided the “Spooferies” in Maiden Lane. He had previously run the concern as a baccarat club, its useful career in that direction having ended in a raid, and a prosecution of the greatest number of persons ever called up at Bow Street to answer a single charge. Sam must have been a bit of a cynic in his way, for the house in which the “Spooferies” met was next door to the Jewish synagogue. A Hebrew namedFoster established a similar place in Long Acre, and a coreligionist of his called Moore—a euphuism, I apprehend, for Moses—opened the Waterloo Club in Waterloo Place, Pall Mall. There were others. But those I have named are the only ones of which I had a personal knowledge. This admission may, I fear, horrify those readers who are of the dawn of the century. I can assure my prudish friends, however, that were I mischievously inclined I could give them a list of names of persons who were at one time young men about town, but who now occupy prominent positions in the Senate, at the Bar, and, generally speaking, in the public life of the country, who were to be seen, in the jocund years, thoroughly enjoying themselves in such Bohemian society as was to be found at the “Spooferies” or the Supper Club.
I can see—in my mind’s eye, Horatio—some adipose, sleek, and eminently respectable householder, some Member of Parliament, London County Councillor, West End physician, fashionable painter, or what not, who has taken up these reminiscences to while away an hour. I can see this staid citizen, this respectable family man, this stickler for morality, this Justice of the Peace, and all the rest of it, squirming as he reads the above passage. With a blush he lays down the book, and, looking suspiciously around, murmurs: “Damn the fellow, he meansme!” Yes, I undoubtedly meanyou. But you may read on without apprehension, my excellent friend, for I am the soul of discretion. Your early trespasses are safe. In return I would only ask this: that, remembering that you and I have sown some wild-oats in the same fallows, you should exercise a little more common-sense and charity in dealing with the peccadilloes of your juniors, and that, generally speaking, you would carry yourself with a less pompous air of conscious rectitude.
Thereare jokers and jokers. Professors of the art of practical joking are disappearing before an advancing civilization like the Red Indian of the Far West. The evanishment of the verbal joker is due to a deplorable shrinkage in the national sense of humour. There will soon be left to us the joker which is the fifty-third card in the pack, and is incapable of any sense or emotion whatever.
But in the days of my vanity grown men carried with them into a tun-bellied middle-age the fine flow of animal spirits and inordinate capacity for fun which nowadays would be deprecated by the well-regulated schoolboy. In Fleet Street one would have thought that there would have been no time for any joking beyond an occasional interchange of verbal pleasantries. But even in that busy thoroughfare the practical joker found—or made—occasions for the exercise of his fearsome talents.
It is something of a truism to say that the real man is very seldom the man as he is observed in his public appearances. Who, for instance, who only knew Edmund O’Donovan as the learned writer of travel articles in theQuarterly Review, the accomplished special correspondent of a one-time influential daily, the honoured guest of savants, the respected lecturer before Royal Societies—who, I say, who saw O’Donovan with his Society war-paint on could have imagined the wild, undisciplined, half-mad, but wholly delightful creature that was exhibited at intervals to Society in conventional garb. He was the maddest and the most modest Irishman I ever met. When he returned from his extraordinary adventures in Merv, he did not put up atsome swagger hotel in London, where he would be easily accessible to Society intent on making him the lion of a season. He lodged at a public-house in Holborn kept by a fellow-countryman of his, named Peter Cowell. This house was at the time known to the police in connection with the visits of Irish patriots of the physical force party in national politics. It was the resort of the scattered remnants of a disintegrated Fenianism.
Cowell revered his strange guest, and when customers heard the sounds of revolver practice in the upper part of the house, you may be sure that he did not give his patrons the true explanation of the noise. The fact was that O’Donovan, in bed at midday, had grown greatly annoyed at the crude art evinced in the engravings that Cowell had hung upon his walls, and that he was engaged in shooting those masterpieces into smithereens. This revolver practice in his bedroom only ceased when there was nothing breakable left to fire at. “Glory be to God!” said Peter Cowell, in relating the circumstance to a correspondent, “there’s not a pictur’ nor a frame nor a utinshill of anny kyoind that Misther O’Donovan hasn’t brukan’ ped for!”
Two foreign gentlemen who refused to give their names, but who had some important intelligence to convey, called at my office. I signalled down that I would see them. I expected men in European garb. But the two weird creatures who shuffled into my sanctum were clothed in undressed animal skins reaching almost to their feet. They were shod in the same material. And their head-dress was also a fur so fashioned that only the eyes and nose of the individuals were visible. The curious part of the equipment was that the visitors carried pistols in their skin belts. I think that it was this little circumstance that “gave the show away.” I looked very hard at the taller of the two men, and then, feeling sure in my surmise, I said cheerily:
“My dear O’Donovan, how are you? I’m delighted to see you.”
“Faith, I knew you’d know me!” he declared, in a tone that entirely disguised his disappointment. “Come out and have a drink.”
Now, this hospitable invitation placed me in something of a dilemma. For in the first place I did not wish to offend O’Donovan by refusing, and in the second I had no desire to walk up Fleet Street in the company of companions so strangely clad. I suggested that, if O’Donovan and his friend would go on to the “Cheese,” I would follow when I had finished writing the letter on which I was then busy.
“That’s a beastly picture of Dizzy,” said O’Donovan quietly. He had taken his revolver from his belt, and was pointing with it to “Ape’s” cartoon of Beaconsfield which hung opposite my desk.
I understood the hint. I rose and accompanied my remorseless friend. My worst anticipations were realized when I reached the office door. Quite a large crowd of Fleet Street loafers—and I think that in the Street of Adventure we could have boasted of as many loafers to the square yard as any thoroughfare in London—pressed round the door. The Fleet Street loafer is often exhilarated by the sight of strange visitors; but he had never yet seen visitors quite so strange as these. The crowd did not make any demonstration. But Cockney criticisms of the general appearance of my companions were freely bandied about. We had to cross the street and encounter the jibes of cab-drivers and omnibus cads. The crowd followed us right up to the doors of the tavern to which I had been invited. Here was another assembly. For O’Donovan had already visited the Cheshire Cheese, and had announced his intention of returning to lunch. I believe that old Moore had during that afternoon the most anxious time of his life. The fun waxed fast and furious. But there is safety in a multitude of any kind, and the intrepid traveller had so many friends and admirers in this gathering that I was soon able to slip away unnoticed.
The man who accompanied O’Donovan on this occasion was Frank Power—one of the most accomplished humbugs that ever made a way in life by means of a glib tongue, a vivid imagination, and an entire absence of scruple of any kind. O’Donovan subsequently engaged him as secretary, and he was to have accompanied his employer during themarch with Hicks Pasha. It was characteristic of Power that when the march was made Power remained behind in Khartoum. He was once mentioned in the House of Commons. A question was asked by an Irish Member as to the qualifications of Mr. Frank Power, who had contrived to get himself made British Consul at Khartoum. Mr. Gladstone, whose imagination was at times as vivid as that of Power himself, replied promptly that the gentleman in question was an “esteemed merchant” of that city.
In letters home, O’Donovan freely expressed his belief that the chances of his ever returning to England alive were extremely small. It is inconceivable that he should not have communicated this opinion to Power. That young gentleman, holding that discretion is the better part of valour, had an attack of dysentery at the very moment when his services should have—under ordinary circumstances—become of any value to his chief. He did not accompany the intrepid column that marched across the sands to inevitable and complete annihilation. As to O’Donovan, I know that he died as he would have wished to die. No survivor of that ill-fated expedition was allowed to escape with the story of the fight. But I can picture O’Donovan in the midst of the mêlée, his eyes bright with the fury of battle, his wild Irish “Whirroo!” appalling even his frantic assailants, his desperate play with revolver, his final collapse on the hot bosom of Mother Earth, his warm Irish blood reddening the sands of the African desert.
John Augustus O’Shea, of theStandard, was another war-correspondent who was very much given to practical joking, and disguise generally played a prominent part in his plans. On one occasion he was commissioned by his editor to describe a certain Lord Mayor’s Show. Elephants were to play a part in this particular pageant; and it occurred to the accomplished correspondent that from the back of an elephant he might obtain an unrivalled view of the rivals of the route. George Sanger was providing the elephants, and O’Shea experienced no difficulty in obtaining permission to ride in a howdah and illustrate the fidelity of Indian Princes to the Empire. Sanger was also able to provide theOriental costume essential to the part, together with the stage diamonds without which no self-respecting Prince ever goes out elephant-riding. His face was made up to the proper tint; his turban was a triumph of millinery; and as O’Shea passed through Fleet Street in the character of an Eastern potentate, and in the train of a London Lord Mayor, not a soul recognized him.
Indeed, the completeness of the disguise led to some inconvenience. For when the show was at an end, and O’Shea went on his elephant to Sanger’s stables in the Westminster Bridge Road, he found himself pressed for time, and unable, therefore, to abandon his disguise. He got into a hansom just as he was, and drove off to Shoe Lane to write his descriptive article for theEvening Standard. He was about to pass the commissionaire who stood sentry at the office door. But that old soldier did not recognize a member of the staff in the garb of a pious Hindu, and O’Shea, unable to curb his love of practical joking, soundly rated the old soldier in an improvised gibberish which the warrior, no doubt, thought he recognized as something he had been acquainted with in the East. O’Shea endeavoured to push past. The man “on the door” barred his progress. The war of strange words between them grew loud and furious. The commissionaire called to a member of the crowd that was gathering round the door to go for the police, and upstairs the sub-editor was anxiously waiting for O’Shea’s copy.
Before the police could arrive Gilbert Venables came on the scene, recognized the correspondent under the disguise of the dusky Indian, and explained matters to the faithful doorkeeper. The anxiety of the sub-editor was soon appeased, and O’Shea sat down to reel off a column of humorous descriptive copy such as he alone on that staff could produce. “The Giniral”—as O’Shea was called in Fleet Street—was one of those strange men who think that it is never time to go to bed. Even when he got home in the small-hours he never felt inclined to “turn in.” And as he never could do without company of some sort, he bought an owl. This bird he installed in his “study,” and whenhe went home in the morning he related some of the more piquant experiences of the day to the wise-looking fowl. When the owl exhibited any signs of inattention or betrayed symptoms of sleepiness, O’Shea would recall him to a sense of his responsibilities by throwing a slipper or any other handy missile at his feathered companion. As some of these missiles hit their mark, the life of the sagacious bird was neither peaceful nor protracted.
On one occasion the festive little correspondent was sent into the country to describe a two-day function, the exact nature of which I forget. On the morning of the second day another representative of the London Press gave a breakfast at his hotel to some of his colleagues. Those invited were of the swagger order of pressmen—Bernard Becker, Harry Pearse, Godfrey Turner, Edmund Yates, and some others. O’Shea heard of this social function, and, I dare say, rather resented the fact that he had not been invited. He got there, however, for in the middle of the meal O’Shea’s card was brought in to the founder of the feast. The host did the only thing he could do under the circumstance: he desired the visitor to be shown in. After a few minutes something was heard rumbling along the hotel passage. The door of the sitting-room in which O’Shea’s distinguished contemporaries were breakfasting was thrown open, a Bath-chair was trundled into the apartment by a couple of men, and in the Bath-chair sat O’Shea, a red Gibus on his head, a churchwarden pipe in his mouth, and on his wrists a pair of handcuffs. These he held up to us appealingly. But it suited him to pretend to be a deaf-mute, and his companions explained that the gentleman was a little mad, that they were his keepers, and that, as it was dangerous to thwart him, they were bound to accede to his request to be shown in to the present distinguished party.
O’Shea kept the game up for a long time. He resisted all efforts to induce him to appearin propria personaand sit down at table. He shook his head, he made queer guttural noises, and when he felt that he had entirely upset everybody he made signs to his companions to wheel him away. He was taken from the hotel to the public promenade,and was driven up and down that select area, still in red Gibus, handcuffs, and long clay pipe, followed everywhere by an interested crowd. Eventually the police interfered, and in the afternoon “the Giniral” appeared before the scandalized breakfast-party of the morning clothed and in his right mind.
A powerful practical joke of a double-barrelled kind was played by a Fleet Street artist, and got into the papers of the time. There were two black-and-white artists in the Street of Adventure. One was H. Furniss with an “i”; the other was H. Furness with an “e.” The one was an Irishman; the other was a Yorkshireman. The latter was the perpetrator of the joke. Joseph Biggar, the well-known Parliamentary obstructionist, was so unfortunate as to have been made the defendant in an action for breach of promise of marriage. What was still more unfortunate was that he lost his case, and was cast in heavy damages. Furness (with an “e”) herein saw an opening. He drew a cheque for the amount of the damages incurred, and forwarded it to Jo Biggar in a letter glowing with expressions of sympathy and admiration. Biggar attributed this act of princely generosity to Furniss (with an “i”), and sent to that gentleman an acknowledgment of his great indebtedness. Meanwhile the joker had stopped his cheque at the bank, and Jo Biggar had given the correspondence—the donor’s letter and his own reply—to the Press. Biggar was covered with shame, Furniss (with an “i”) was aroused to indignation, and Furness (with an “e”) had proved himself—as is the nature of furnaces, however spelt—to be very hot stuff.
But it was among my theatrical friends that I found the most patient, enterprising, and scientific prosecutors of humour in action. J. L. Toole was very fond of the practical joke. But he did not carry his schemes out on the generous scale that seemed the proper proportions to certain of his colleagues. His jokes were small personal affairs, never calculated to give pain or annoyance, and invariably described in some paper or another. “Howdothese things get into the papers?” Sothern was a past-master in thefine art of practical joking. Some of his most notorious successes in that line have been narrated in works of biography or autobiography by other men. But I was a witness of two of his efforts in this way which I have never seen described in print. They indicate the time, thought, and pains, which Sothern was always prepared to spend over the elaboration of a practical joke in order that it might eventually be presented complete and perfect. He possessed a true actor’s faith in efficient rehearsal.
The breakfasts of Sam Rogers, the banker-poet, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, may have been very interesting reunions; but they could not have been half as amusing as the breakfasts of Sothern given during the closing years of that century. No one was invited to these gatherings who was not either odd or interesting or witty. The conversation was kept up to the mark by a host who could play on the faculties of his guests as a musician on the strings of an instrument.
One Sunday forenoon at Sothern’s Londonpied-à-terrein Vere Street, John Maclean, of the Gaiety Theatre, was present. Maclean was what was called in those days a “useful actor.” He was a wonderfully fine mimic, and was particularly good at reproducing the different shades of Irish and Scotch dialects in all their varying enormity. He used to tell a story about George Cordery, the property-master at the Theatre Royal, Dublin, and Barry Sullivan, the tragedian, which introduced admirable imitations of both those worthies. The story itself would lose most of its point by translation into cold print. It described an altercation between the tragedian and the property-master as to the correct cue for the lowering of the cauldron in “Macbeth,” Cordery insisting that “filthy ’ags” was the cue, because he had been so taught by his “old mawster, Mister Phellups—an’ ’e was a man as knew ’ow to play Macbeth.” Sullivan insisted on the cue being, “May eternal curses light upon you!” At the last rehearsal of the Witch scene, Barry Sullivan stalked over to the trap through which the cauldron was to disappear, and called down to the property-master:
“Do you know the cuenow, Mr. Cordery?”
“S’wulp me, Goad!” came back the voice of the exasperated George, “I shall never forgit it. It’s ‘May etarnal cusses light upon you!’—meanin’ nothing personal to you,Mr. Barry Soolivan!”
The breakfast at an end and cigars lighted, there was always experienced a feeling of suspense and expectancy. Sothern requested Maclean to give his famous imitation of the tragedian and the property-master. After the usual amount of demur, Johnny rose to do as he had been bidden. Sothern placed his victim on the hearthrug, where, with his back to the fire, he could command the entire company, and where he was at the farthest point from the entrance to the room. The gifted imitator launched into his narrative, and soon had the assembly in a roar. But just when he had come to the height of the colloquy between the tragedian and his subordinate, the door of the room was suddenly opened, and Sothern’s man announced:
“Mr. Barry Sullivan!”
The tragedian entered, bowing right and left, and shaking hands with his host.
“Go on with your recitation, Johnny!” cried Sothern.
But Maclean had collapsed and taken refuge behind the chair of a friend. Nor was he greatly reconciled to the situation when it was discovered that the new-comer was not Sullivan at all, but a brother comedian made up for the part.
Another of Sothern’s practical jokes was carried out with the assistance of Sir Charles Wyndham—in those days innocent of any pretensions to the accolade. This particular experiment was six months in the working, and by the elaborate means adopted its victim was kept on the tenterhooks of suspense during all that time. The late Mr. Edgar Bruce, then lately joined to the ranks of “the profession,” was the unfortunate dupe. Bruce was an ambitious young gentleman, and the joke was so contrived as to play on this characteristic. It commenced in this way: Sothern had it put about that he had been approached by the Russian Minister on the possibility of getting together a company of English comedians to play in St. Petersburg. He personally could not accept the flattering command. He pretendedto offer it to Wyndham, and Wyndham handed the proposal on to Bruce. Bruce jumped at it, and then, and for a period of six months, the fun waxed fast and furious. Bruce was invited to meet the Minister. An old nobleman smothered in orders, but having no language but French and his native tongue, was introduced to Bruce at a luncheon given for the purpose. At that time Bruce had no French, and the conversation was carried on with Wyndham as interpreter. Preliminaries were settled. An agreement was signed. There remained nothing now but to engage a company. Here again his good friends Wyndham and Sothern came to the rescue. They made a careful selection of actors and actresses who were let into the secret.
Eventually the affair got paragraphed in the newspapers. The public was as greatly duped as Bruce himself, and those interested in theatrical matters gossiped knowingly about the visit of the English comedians to Russia. Constant devices were adopted to raise, and sometimes to dash, the hopes of the victim. Once Sothern borrowed a thousand pounds’ worth of diamonds from his jeweller, and lent them to Miss Edith Chalice—one of the supposed Bruce Company—who exhibited them to the deluded victim as a gift from the Minister, asking him to name any little souvenir he would desire for himself from the same potentates. Bruce made his desires known; but that was as far as the matter ever went in that particular direction.
I was at a Bohemian party given by Val Bromley one night at his studios in Bloomsbury Square, when there was an amusing exhibition of the system adopted by Sothern and Wyndham to arouse the anxiety of poor Bruce. All three of them happened to be at this jolly function. At about one o’clock in the morning a sudden altercation broke out between Sothern and Wyndham; they stood in the middle of the studio in attitudes of menace, their voices were raised. “Never dare to speak to me again!” shouted one of the angry men. “You are a contemptible scoundrel, sir!” roared the other. The war of words grew hot, the gestures more threatening, and Bruce ran from friend to friend in the room, crying: “For Heaven’s sake pacify them!My whole future is ruined if those two men quarrel!” He spoke with the greatest emotion, and his face was deadly pale. At length one of the disputants cried out: “A friend of mine will wait upon you in the morning, sir!” and strode out of the room, speedily followed by his brother-conspirator. Soon after this the whole thing was “given away” by one or other, or by both, of the authors of the joke. But the curious part of the thing is that Edgar Bruce had for six months so convinced himself that he was a manager that he could not rid himself of the character. He had achieved the reputation. He had, moreover, made openings for himself among performers, costumiers, authors, and musicians. In six months he had gained experience of the managerial methods, and, being a manager in imagination, he crystallized into a manager in reality. His first managerial experiment was, I think, at the Royalty Theatre in Dean Street, Soho. Here he engaged as his representative in front of the house a comparatively unknown young man called Augustus Harris, little imagining that he was employing an Augustus Druriolanus in the making. He subsequently built the Lyric Theatre, and he died a comparatively rich man. The theatrical career of Edgar Bruce is the only practically good thing that I have known to result from the playing of a practical joke.
These carefully-devised experiments on a large scale, becoming known, naturally fired the ambition of imitators and a number of gabies, whose only indication of humour consisted in the fatuous smirk with which they greeted one in season and out of season, set up as professors of the game. Certain of these misguided young men formed themselves into a nomadic club called “The Who-bodies.” But a better name for them was invented by Wallis Mackay, who lashed them unmercifully in his “Captious Critic” under the name of “Theodore Hooklings.”
The humour which is not of a practical kind appears to have died away out of our literature, our legislature and our judicature alike. Nay, it is fading out of our street life with the disappearance of the omnibus cad and the driver of the hansom. Even the gamin is losing his characteristicgaiety in the solving of puzzles in his favourite publications or in calculating the odds in turf handicaps. The last of the Parliamentary wits was Bernal Osborne. He scintillated before I entered on a journalistic career, but I well remember the stimulation which the newspaper reports of his utterances afforded me in my younger days. In contesting Waterford at a General Election, he was opposed by Sir Patrick O’Brien, a very old man whose enunciation was not of the clearest. Following the revered Baronet on the hustings, Osborne, exactly mimicking the tones of his rival, commenced: “Pity the sorrows of a poor old man whose trembling limbs have borne him to these hustings!” Then, addressing himself to one of the nasty points of the other candidate’s attack, he said: “But when the honourable Baronet describes me as the rejected of seven constituencies, I hurl the accusation back in his teeth—if he has any!” In the House he was equally ready. Liskeard was among the constituencies that had rejected him. A question arising regarding that now happily disfranchised borough, it was referred to Bernal Osborne. He immediately rose and said: “I regret, sir, that I am unable to recall any particulars respectingthat highly respectable street!” Viscount Amberley was a small, baby-faced man. When he sat in Parliament, and when Bernal Osborne was at the Admiralty, Amberley asked some inconvenient question regarding that Department. Osborne smilingly informed the House: “That is a matter which was settled when the honourable Viscount was in his—er—perambulator!”
Bernal Osborne’s patronymic was Bernal. He was a Jew and the son of Mr. Ralph Bernal, who was for many years Chairman of Committees in the House of Commons. He added the name Osborne to his own on marrying Lady Osborne, with whom he did not always agree. When he married he was a dashing young officer and Aide-de-Camp to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. I suppose he was not quite so successful in the dull domestic round, for he and his wife led a cat-and-dog life. They soon separated, and during the period of this first grass-widowhood the lady wrote a novel in which her husband was depicted, under athin disguise and in very lurid colours. Society was greatly diverted. Bernal begged his wife’s forgiveness. A reconciliation was effected, the novel was withdrawn from circulation, and Bernal settled down once more as the model married man. The vivacity of his disposition, however, and his great extravagance, occasioned fresh quarrels. There was another separation, succeeded shortly after by a reissue of the wife’s literary caricature of her refractory husband.
Bernal Osborne was what, in more heroic times than these, was known as a “diner-out”—that is to say, a man who was asked to dinner entirely on account of the sparkle of his conversation. Nowadays the sparkle is the monopoly of the champagne. The very last of the “diners-out” was Father Healy of Bray, in County Wicklow. For some years before his death, that wittiest of Irishmen was invited to London during the season, and was to be met night after night at the tables of the leaders of Society. He was a wit of parts, and the curious thing about him was that he never for a moment supposed that he owed his acceptance in Society to his wit and humour. He always believed that the great ones of the earth inviting him to their tables were anxious to ascertain his views on Irish politics. Dining one night at the table of Lord Ardilaun, he met a prelate of the Church of England. Healy by no means appreciated the tone of easy condescension adopted by the Bishop. His lordship was patronizing, and Healy bitterly resented anything of the kind. He bided his time. It came, as all things do to him who knows how—and how long—to wait.
“I’ve lived sixty years in this wicked world,” at length said the Bishop, smiling and expansive, “and I have never yet been able to see the difference between a good Catholic and a good Protestant.”
“Faith, me lord,” answered Healy, “you won’t be sixty seconds in the next before you’ll know all about it!”
Dowse is a name utterly forgotten by the present generation. Yet Dowse afforded a great deal of occupation to the pressmen of his day in reporting his sayings. He was a rough-looking Irishman, red-headed and rotund. Originally, as a boy, he had herded goats about the mountains nearDungannon. He contrived, however, to get an education, read for the Irish Bar, was duly called, became Solicitor-General for Ireland, and, in the fulness of time, Chief Baron of the Irish Exchequer. He was famous for his “bulls,” and when in the House of Commons succeeded in introducing one at least before which those of Sir Boyle Roche are simply negligible. A question was put to him, while he was Solicitor-General, respecting certain religious riots that had broken out in Londonderry. Dowse explained that the riots had been occasioned by the ceremony connected with the “shutting of the gates.”
“And that,” he continued, “is an anniversary that takes place twice a year in Derry!”
Bernal Osborne has been, I confess, rather irrelevantly introduced into this chapter, for I never knew him. But I had the honour of knowing Baron Dowse. And I enjoyed the still greater privilege of dining at the table of Father Healy, to whom I was introduced by Mr. John Gunn, of the Gaiety Theatre, Dublin. Healy was one of the handsomest as Dowse was one of the ugliest of men.
The illustration of the science of humour on the judicial bench is now the province of ermined jokers. Perhaps nothing could give a more vivid idea of the decadence of the bench in this respect than a comparison of the Ally Sloperian japes of certain living judges with the polished shafts of the late Lord Justice Bowen. Lord Bowen’s was the true Attic salt. And because he knew its quality, he never offered it to either the groundlings or the gallery. The reappearance of his shafts—bright and polished as they were—only caused him to shudder, even when followed in the newspaper by the reportorial “(laughter).” To some of our Judges, the constant appearance in the columns of their jokes, followed by “laughter” in brackets, would appear to be a chief end of their existence. Indeed, a Judge, quite recently dead, has occasionally supplied me, what time I sat in an editorial chair, with little impromptus which he has let off in the course of the day. For verily all is vanity.
Two examples of Lord Bowen’s wit may be recorded here. Bowen was a Liberal in politics, but, like a great manyother thinking men, he deserted his party when Mr. Gladstone introduced his Home Rule Bill. Tackled by one who regarded him as guilty of political apostasy, and challenged as to his then opinion of Mr. Gladstone, he replied, in those mincing, modulated tones which he had acquired at Balliol:
“Mr. Gladstone’s is one of the greatest and most complex minds of our time. He possesses all the apostolic fervour of St. Paul with all the moral obliquity of Ananias.”
On the occasion of the Jubilee of Her late Majesty Queen Victoria, the Judges met to decide on an address from their body to be presented to their Sovereign. A draft was submitted by one of their number. It commenced with the words:
“Madam, conscious as we are of our own infirmities.” But immediate objection was taken by their lordships to this opening, and suggestions were invited. The measured calculated drawl of Bowen made itself heard:
“Suppose we substitute for the paragraph this: ‘Conscious as we are of one another’s infirmities!’”
Mr. Commissioner Kerr was a Judge whose rasping voice and strong Glasgow accent issued from the bench of my time utterances both strange and strong. The old gentleman was, in effect, brutally rude, and that’s a fact. He was particularly hard on solicitors. On one occasion I heard him open a charge in this way:
“There are a number of hairpies who infest this coort. An’ when I use the words ‘hairpies,’ I do not wish to be meesunderstood. I refer to the soleecitors who lie in wait about the corridors of the coort.”
I was present also when the following colloquy took place between the bench and a perfectly respectable witness to whom Kerr had evidently taken an instinctive dislike:
Kerr: “What air you?”
Witness: “I’m a merchant.”
Kerr: “What’s your mairchandise?”
Witness: “I’m an importer of lemons.”
Kerr: “An importher of lemons! Why, ye ken you’re naething mair nor less than a huckster!”
Lewis Glyn the barrister, whom Kerr hated to see comeinto his court, once got very much the better of the learned Commissioner. Glyn, in addressing the court, had indulged in a French expression.
“Talk the Queen’s English, Misther Glyn. We don’t want anny of your bad French in this coort,” snapped out the Commissioner.
“I beg your Honour’s pardon, but I thought that by this time the court had become so accustomed to strange dialects that one more or less would not matter,” answered Glyn sweetly.