Subsequently Carl, busy climbing to that Mayorial chair, deserted; and Pett-Ridge, who may be said to have qualified himself by afterwards marrying a sister of Carl's, made our third. The only fault we found with him was that he never changed his clothes. Or if he did, it was to prove the truth of the French proverb: that the more things change, the more they remain the same. He would join us for a walking tour through the Tyrol or a tramp across Brittany, wearing the same clothes in which we had last seen him strolling down the Strand on his way to the Garrick Club: cut-away coat with fancy vest, grey striped trousers, kid boots buttoned at the side (as worn then by all the best people), spotless white shirt and collar, speckled blue tie, soft felt hat, and fawn gloves. I have tobogganed with Pett-Ridge amid the snows of Switzerland. I have boated with him. I have motored with him. Always he has been dressed in precisely those same clothes. He'll turn up at the Day of Judgment clothed like that: I feel sure of it. Possibly, out of respect to the Court, he will substitute a black tie.
We put up with him for the reason that he was—and always is—a most delightful companion. The worst one can say about his books is that they are not as good as his talk. If they were, we other humorists wouldn't have a look in.
“Three Men in a Boat” brought me fame, and had it been published a few years later would have brought me fortune also. As it was, the American pirate reaped a great reward. But I suppose God made him. Of course it was damned by the critics. One might have imagined—to read some of them—that the British Empire was in danger. One Church dignitary went about the country denouncing me. Punch was especially indignant, scenting an insidious attempt to introduce “new humour” into comic literature. For years, “New Humorist” was shouted after me wherever I wrote. Why in England, of all countries in the world, humour, even in new clothes, should be mistaken for a stranger to be greeted with brickbats, bewildered me. It bewildered others. Zangwill, in an article on humour, has written:
“There is a most bewildering habit in modern English letters. It consists in sneering down the humorist—that rarest of all literary phenomena. His appearance, indeed, is hailed with an outburst of gaiety; even the critics have the joy of discovery. But no sooner is he established and doing an apparently profitable business than a reaction sets in, and he becomes a by-word for literary crime. When 'Three Men in a Boat' was fresh from the press, I was buttonholed by grave theologians and scholars hysterically insisting on my hearing page after page: later on these same gentlemen joined in the hue and cry and shuddered at the name of Jerome. The interval before the advent of another humorist is filled in with lamentations on the decay of humour.”
There is more in the article my vanity would like to quote, but my modesty forbids. If few writers have been worse treated by the Press, few can have received more kindness from their fellow-workers. I recall a dinner given me on the eve of my setting out for a lecturing tour through America. Barrie was in the chair, I think—anyhow in one of them. In the others were Conan Doyle, Barry Pain, Zangwill, Pett-Ridge, Hall Caine—some twenty in all. Everybody made a speech. I am supposed to be rather good at after-dinner speaking, but forgot everything I had intended to say that night. It all sounds very egotistical, but that is the danger of writing one's own biography.
I had got the habit of going about in threes. I wanted to see the Oberammergau Passion Play. The party was to have consisted of Eden Phillpotts, Walter Helmore, brother of the actor, and myself. Phillpotts and Helmore were then both in the Sun Insurance Office at Charing Cross. Phillpotts fell ill, and the Passion Play would not wait, so Helmore and I went alone. That was in 1890. One went to Oberammergau then in post chaise, and there was only one hotel in the village. One lodged with the peasants and shared their fare. I visited there again a few years before the war. The railway had come, and the great hotels were crowded. The bands played, and there was dancing in the evening. Of course I had written a book about it: “The Diary of a Pilgrimage”: so perhaps I am hardly entitled to indulge in jeremiads.
Helmore knew Germany well. We came home through Bavaria, and down the Rhine. It was my first visit to Germany. I liked the people and their homely ways, and later some four years residence in Germany confirmed my first impressions.
Calmour was a frequent visitor of ours at Chelsea. He was secretary to W. G. Wills, who wrote blank verse plays for Henry Irving: “Charles I,” “Faust,” and “The Vicar of Wakefield” among others. We had a fine old row in the pit on the first night of “Charles I.” I was for Cromwell. I was training a pair of whiskers at the time, and a royalist woman behind got hold of one of them and spoilt it. Wills was a bit of an oddity. He did not keep a banking account. He would take his money always in gold, and after paying what had to be, would fling the remainder into a lumber room at the top of his house, and double lock the door. Later on when he needed cash—or when a friend did, which to Wills was much the same—he would unlock the door and on hands and knees grope about till he had collected sufficient, and then fasten up the door again. Calmour was a playwright himself: “The Amber Heart” and “Cupid's Messenger” were his best known. He wrote also songs for “Lion Comiques,” as they were called: “Champagne Charlie” and “The Ghost of John Benjamin Binns” were his. He never earned much money, but had learnt to do with less. He lived in one room in Sydney Street, and wrote in bed, not getting up as a rule till the evening. Bed, he used to say, was the cheapest place he knew. The moment you got up, expense began. He had a large circle of friends, and his dinners could have cost him but little. In later years, he lived on a “system”; which he took with him each winter to Monte Carlo. The difference between his system and most others was that, in his case, it really did work. He would stay there till he had in his pocket a hundred pounds over and above his expenses; and then, with rare strength of mind, would take the next train home. He had the reputation of being the guest that lingers too long. He knew of his failing, and settled the thing with my wife on his very first visit. I had not been present at their conversation; and was shocked when, the moment our grandfather's clock had finished striking twelve, my wife got up and said quite sweetly: “You must go now, Mr. Calmour. And please be sure to shut the bottom door.” Before I could recover my astonishment, he had wished us good-night and was gone. “It's all right,” said my wife. “I think he's a dear.”
W. S. Henley, the actor, often came. Eden Phillpotts and myself were writing him a play. Henley, like most comic actors, yearned to play serious parts. As a matter of fact he would have played them very well. He could be both grotesque and tragic; and had naturally a rich, deep voice.
“It wouldn't be any good,” he once said, in answer to my suggestion. “I would like to play Caliban, but they'd only think I was trying to give a comic imitation of something from the Zoo. If I'm out at dinner and ask a man to pass the mustard, he slaps his leg and bursts out laughing. Damned silly, I call it.”
Gertrude Kingston with her mother and sister lived near by, in a charming little house in Ebury Street. Pinero's “Creamy English Rose” will always remain the beloved of the British theatrical public to the exclusion of all others, or Gertrude Kingston would long before now have been London's leading actress. She used to grumble at our ninety-seven stairs, but I persuaded her they were good for her figure and, not altogether convinced, she would often climb them. Olga Brandon would arrive at the top speechless, which perhaps was just as well.
Olga Brandon lived near by. She was a beautiful young woman, serene and stately. On the stage, she played queens, martyrs and Greek goddesses as if to the manner born. Off the stage, she spoke with a Cockney accent one could have cut with a knife, as the saying is, dropped her aitches, and could swear like a trooper. She was a dear kind girl. In the end she went the way of many. I remember a first night at the Vaudeville Theatre. A young actress who was playing her first big part was standing in the wings waiting her cue. She had a glass in her hand. Old Emily Thorne had just come off the stage. She stopped dead in front of the girl, blockin
g her way.
“Feeling in a tremble all over, aren't you?” suggested the elder woman.
“That just describes it,” laughed the girl.
“And you find a little brandy pulls you together—steadies your nerves?”
“I doubt if I'd be able to go on without it,” answered the girl.
Emily covered the girl's small hand with her own, and sent the contents of the glass flying. A wandering stage carpenter got most of it.
“I've known a good many promising young actresses,” she said, “and half of them have ruined their career through drink. I've followed some of them to the grave. You learn to get on without it, child.”
Henry Arthur Jones' brother had the flat beneath us. He was an acting manager, and called himself Sylvanus Danncey.
Marie Corelli I came to know while living in Chelsea. I used to meet her at the house of an Italian lady, a Madame Marras, in Princes Gate. Marie was a pretty girlish little woman. We discovered we were precisely the same age. Mrs. Garrett Anderson, the first lady doctor to put up her plate in London, was sometimes of the party. We used to play games: hunt the slipper, puss in the corner and musical chairs. I can boast that more than once I sat on Marie Corelli's lap, though not for long. She was an erratic worker and contracts would often get behind time. She lived with her adopted brother, Eric Mackay, son of the poet, and occasionally when her agent would come to the house tearing his hair because of an instalment that an editor was waiting for, and that Marie did not feel like writing, they would take her up and lock her in her study; and when she had finished kicking the door, she would settle down, and do a good morning's work.
To keep friends with her continuously was difficult. You had to agree with all her opinions, which were many and varied. I always admired her pluck and her sincerity. She died while I was writing this chapter.
Arthur Machen married a dear friend of mine, a Miss Hogg. How so charming a lady came to be born with such a name is one of civilization's little ironies. She had been a first nighter, and one of the founders of the Playgoers' Club, which was in advance of its time, and admitted women members. Amy Hogg was also a pioneer. She lived by herself in diggings opposite the British Museum, frequented restaurants and Aerated Bread shops, and had many men friends: all of which was considered very shocking in those days. She had a vineyard in France, and sold the wine to the proprietor of the Florence Restaurant in Rupert Street. She had a favourite table by the window, and often she and I dined there and shared a bottle. The Florence, then, was a cosy little place where one lunched for one and three and dined for two shillings. One frequently saw Oscar Wilde there. He and his friends would come in late and take the table in the further corner. Rumours were already going about, and his company did not tend to dispel them. One pretended not to see him. Machen when he was young suggested the Highbrow. He has developed into a benevolent-looking, white-haired gentleman. He might be one of the Brothers Cheeryble stepped out of “Nicholas Nickleby.” For ability to create an atmosphere of nameless terror I can think of no author living or dead who comes near him. I gave Conan Doyle his “Three Impostors” to read one evening, and Doyle did not sleep that night.
“Your pal Machen is a genius right enough,” said Doyle, “but I don't take him to bed with me again.”
The memory lingers with me of the last time I saw his wife. It was a Sunday afternoon. They were living in Verulam Buildings, Gray's Inn, in rooms on the ground floor. The windows looked out onto the great quiet garden, and the rooks were cawing in the elms. She was dying, and Machen, with two cats under his arm, was moving softly about, waiting on her. We did not talk much. I stayed there till the sunset filled the room with a strange purple light.
The Thames was frozen over the last year we were in Chelsea. It was the first winter the gulls came to London. One listened to the music of the sleigh bells. Down the Embankment and round Battersea Park was the favourite course.
Friends of ours lived in St. John's Wood, and possessed gardens, some even growing roses and spring onions; and their boastings made us envious. Olga Nethersole had a cottage with real ivy and a porch. Lewis Waller had a mulberry tree; and one day I met Augustus Harris carrying a gun. He told me he had bought it to shoot rabbits at his “little place” off the Avenue Road. We found an old-fashioned house behind a high wall in Alpha Place. Bret Harte was near by. He lived with great swells named Van der Velde. The old gentleman, I think, was an ambassador, and the wife, an American lady who had known Bret Harte when he was young, or something of that sort. Bret Harte remained with them as their guest till he died. He had his own suite of rooms. His hair was golden when we first knew him, but as the years went by it turned to white. He was a slight dapper gentleman, courteous and shy, with a low soft voice. It was difficult to picture him, ruffling it among the bloodstained sentimentalists of Roaring Camp and Dead Man's Gulch.
Zangwill and his family were denizens of the Wood. His brother Louis also wrote books, calling himself “Z.Z.” “The World and a Man” remains the best known of them. Zangwill was accused of being a “New Humorist.” He edited a comic journal called Ariel, and discovered the English “Shakespeare”: Shakespeares were being discovered everywhere just then. J. T. Grein, the dramatic critic, had discovered a Dutch Shakespeare, and another critic, not to be outdone, had dug up one in Belgium. In the end, every country in Europe was found to possess a Shakespeare, except England. Zangwill did not see why England should be left out, and discovered one in Brixton. Judging from the extracts Zangwill published, he certainly seemed as good as any of the others. The Bacon stunt was in full swing about the same time; and again it was Zangwill who discovered that Shakespeare's plays had all been written by another gentleman of the same name. I first met Mrs. Zangwill at a dinner. She was Miss Ayrton then, daughter of the Professor, and had been assigned to me. It is not often that one vexes a woman by taking her to be younger than she really is; but I quite offended her that evening. She looked fifteen, and I did my best to adapt myself accordingly. I have a youthful side to me, and flattered myself for a time that I was doing well. Suddenly she asked me my age, and, taken aback, I told her.
“Well, if you are all that,” she answered, “why talk as if you were fourteen?”
It seemed she was quite grown up. She told me her own age. She evidently thought it a lot, but anyhow it was more than I had given her credit for; and after that we found we had plenty of interests in common. I have always thought how wonderfully alike she and Lady Forbes-Robertson are to one another in appearance. I hope neither of them will be offended, but one can never tell. I was assured once, by a mutual friend, that I reminded him tremendously of Mr. Asquith; and then he added as an afterthought: “But don't ever tell him I said so.”
Zangwill is, and always has been, a strong personality. You either like him immensely or want to hit him with a club. Myself I have always had a sincere affection for him. We have in common a love of Lost Causes, and Under Dogs. He confessed to me once that he had wasted half his life on Zionism. I never liked to say so to him, but it always seemed to me that the danger threatening Zionism was that it might be realized. Jerusalem was the Vision Splendid of the Jewish race—the Pillar of Fire that had guided their footsteps across the centuries of shame and persecution. So long as it remained a dream, no Jew so poor, so hunted, so despised, but hugged to his breast his hidden birthright—his great inheritance to be passed on to his children. Who in God's name wanted a third-rate provincial town on a branch of the Baghdad railway? Most certainly not the Zionists. Their Jerusalem was and must of necessity always have remained in the clouds—their Promised Land the other side of the horizon. When the British Government presented Palestine to the Jews, it shattered the last hope of Israel. All that remains to be done now, is to invite contracts for the rebuilding of the Temple.
The London Jew's progress, a Rabbi once informed me, is mapped out by three landmarks: Whitechapel, Maida Vale, and Park Lane. The business Jew is no better than his Christian competito
r. The artistic Jew I have always found exceptionally simple and childlike. Of these a good many had escaped from Maida Vale, and crossing the Edgware Road had settled themselves in St. John's Wood. Solomon J. Solomon had his studio off Marlborough Road. He was, I think, the first artist to paint by electric light—a useful accomplishment in foggy London. He started to paint my portrait once, while staying with us at Pangbourne, but complained I had too many faces. At one moment I looked a murderer and the next a saint, according to him. I have the thing as he left it unfinished. It reminds me of someone, but I can't think whom. De Laszlo had the same trouble with me not long ago, but got over it by luring me to talk about myself. In his portrait of me there is a touch of the enthusiast. Cowen the composer had a big house in Hamilton Terrace and used to give delightful concerts. Sarah Bernhardt hired a house one spring. She brought a pet leopard with her: a discriminating beast, according to the local tradesmen. It dozed most of its day in front of the kitchen fire, and, so long as errand boys confined themselves to the handing in of harmless provisions, would regard them out of its half-closed eyes with a friendly, almost benevolent expression. But if anyone of them presented an envelope and showed intention of waiting for an answer, it would suddenly spring to its feet, and give vent to a blood-curdling growl that would send the boy flying down the garden.
The first time I met her was at one of Irving's first-night suppers on the stage of the Lyceum: a forlorn, somewhat insignificant little figure without a word of English. Nobody knew her. (They were informal gatherings. You just showed your card and walked on to the stage.) The only thing she would take was a glass of wine. I wanted to introduce her, but she was evidently hurt at not having been recognized and made a fuss of. She complained of a headache, and I got her a cab. There were tears in her eyes, I noticed, as I shut the door.
My Life and Times Page 10
