have been the cause of the charm he undeniably possessed. I think he was
one of the people whom one feels are nice instinctively, without any
reason. He was sympathetic and responsive, serious when the occasion
called for it, foolish when folly was in order. It wasn't only in his
drawings that he was ready to wear the cap and bells. I know an artist,
one of whose cherished memories of Phil May is of the Christmas Eve when
they both rang Lord Leighton's door-bell and ran away and back to Phil
May's studio on the other side of the road, and Phil May was as pleased
as if it had been a masterpiece for _Punch_. He was naturally
kind,--amiable perhaps because it was the simplest thing to be. In his
own house his amiability forced him to break his silence, but his
remarks then, as far as I heard them, were usually confined to the
monotonous offer "Have a cigar!" "Have a whiskey-and-soda!" or "Have a
drawing!" if anyone happened to express admiration for his work. Had we
accepted this last offer every time it was made to us, we would have a
fine collection of Phil May's, while, as it is, we do not own as much
as a single sketch given to us by him. Visitors who did not share our
scruples have found their steady attendance at his Sunday nights one of
the best investments they ever made.
Away from his own house, on our Thursday nights, relieved of the
necessity to offer anything, this being now our business, his
conversation was more limited than in his own place. My memory of him is
of an ugly, delightful, smiling, silent man, sitting astride a chair,
his arms resting on the back, a big cigar in his mouth, and around him a
band of devoted admirers as fully prepared and equipped to do the
talking for him as he was to let them do it. He held his court as
royally among illustrators as Henley among his Young Men, and if nobody
contributed so little to the talk as Phil May, around nobody else,
except Henley, did so much of the talk centre.
In my recollections of Phil May astride his chair on Thursday nights,
Hartrick and Sullivan are never very long absent. Nobody knew better
than they the beauty of his work--to hear them talk about his line was
to be convinced that the supreme interest in life was the expressive
quality of a line made with pen in black ink on a piece of white paper.
The appearance of _The_ _Parson and the Painter_ was one of the events
of the Nineties--though it was not boomed into notoriety as were the
performances of some other illustrators of the period as ingenious as
Barnum in the art of advertisement--and there was not an artist who did
not hail May as a master. But Hartrick and Sullivan went further. They
were not only such good artists themselves that they could appreciate
genius in others, they were young enough not to be afraid of their
enthusiasms. They gave the effect of being with May, with whom they
often arrived and stayed until the deplorably early hour of the morning
at which he started for home, in order that they might watch over him,
and, indeed, he needed watching. He was not readier in offering than in
giving anything he was asked for, which was one reason why there was
always a procession of waiters and actors and jockeys out of work at his
front door--why his pockets were always empty. They even discovered the
same genius in May's talk as in his drawing, though the mystery was when
they heard the talk. To this day they will quote Phil May while I wonder
how it is that while for me Henley's talk has not lost its thunder, nor
Bob Stevenson's its brilliant flashes of imbecility, nor Harland's its
whimsical twist, nor Beardsley's its fresh gaiety, nothing of Phil
May's remains save the familiar refrain "Have a cigar!" "Have a
whiskey-and-soda!" "Have a drawing!"
Obsessed by my old-fashioned notion as hostess that people could not
enjoy themselves unless they were kept moving, persisting in my vain
efforts to break up the groups into which the company invariably fell,
again and again I would lure Hartrick and Sullivan away from Phil May.
But it was no use. What they all wanted was to talk not only about their
shop but their own particular counter in it, and no sooner was my back
turned than there they were in the same groups again, Hartrick and
Sullivan watching over Phil May, supported by Raven Hill and Edgar
Wilson, both then deeply involved in youth's game of shocking the
_bourgeois_ by showing on the pages of _Pick-Me-Up_ how the matter of
illustration was ordered in France, and presently starting a magazine of
their own to show it the better, and to do their share as ardent rebels
in the big fight of the Nineties. On my shelves, close by the first
number of _The Yellow Book_ and of the _Savoy_ is the first volume of
_The Butterfly_ and on its fly-leaf is the inscription: "To Elizabeth
Robins Pennell with L. Raven Hill's kind regards," no more startlingly
original than Beardsley's inscriptions, but to me full of meaning and
memories. I cannot look at it without seeing myself fluttering from one
to another of the old Buckingham Street rooms, heavy with the smell of
smoke and powder, thunderous not only with the knocking--naturally I
quote the Ibsen phrase everybody was quoting in the Nineties--but the
banging, the battering, the bombarding of the younger generation at the
Victorian door against which it was desperate work to make any
impression at all.
VIII
In my less responsible intervals it amused me to find the painters
running their own shop, or their own little counter, quite apart from
the illustrators, and carrying on all by themselves their own special
campaign against that obdurate Victorian door. Their campaign, as they
ran it, required less talk than most, for they were chiefly men of the
New English Art Club--the men who gave the shows where Felix Buhot smelt
the powder--the men who were considered apostles of defiance when the
inner group held their once-famous exhibition as "London
Impressionists"--the men about whom the critics for a while did nothing
save talk--but men who had the reputation of talking so little
themselves that, when a man came up for election in their Club, his
talent for silence was said to be as important a consideration with them
as his talent for art. Not that the silence of any one of them could
rival Phil May's in eloquence--they never learned to say nothing with
his charm. Often the poverty of their conversation had the effect of
being involuntary, as if they might have had plenty to say had they
known how to say it. More than one struggled to rid himself of his
talent with at least an air of success.
The big booming voice of Charles W. Furse was frequently heard, but in
it a suspicion of an Academic note unfamiliar in our midst, so that,
young as he was, combative, enthusiastic, "a good fellow" as they say in
England, still in his Whistler and rebel period, his friends predicted
for him the Presidency of the Royal Academy. The first time I ever saw
him was the year he was showing at the New English two large upright,
full-length portraits of women, highly reminiscent of Whistler, and, on
press day, was being turned out of the gallery by the critics who, in
revolutionizing criticism, were fighting against the old-fashioned
Victorian idea of press views with the artists busy log-rolling and an
elaborate lunch, or at least whiskey and cigars behind a screen. The
New English men compromised by staying away, but they clung to the
lunch, a feast chiefly for their commissionaire and their salesman and
the grey-haired critic, a survival, who could not reconcile himself to
change and whom I heard once, in another gallery, pronounce the show
admirable, "perfect really, your show, but for one thing missing--a
decanter and cigars on the table." Furse, who had not heard the critic's
cry for reform and could not understand his banishment, lingered in the
passage, button-holing everybody who came out, trying to pick up a hint
as to what we were all going to say about him. He considered himself a
red-hot rebel and the prophetic picture of him scaling Academic heights
annoyed him extremely, though he so soon became an Associate of the
Academy that I think, had he lived, time would have proved the prophets
right.
Walter Sickert's voice, too, was frequently heard at the beginning of a
Thursday night, but his promise of brilliancy never struck me as leading
anywhere in particular, my personal impression being that with his talk,
as with his art, the fulfilment scarcely justified the promise.
D.S. MacColl, young arch-rebel at the time little as the formal official
of to-day suggests it, his bombarding of the Victorian door directed
chiefly from the sober columns of the _Spectator_, and later of the
_Saturday Review_, was always well armed with words for the Thursday
night battle, conscientious in distributing his blows and shaping them
in strict deference to his sense of style, just a touch of the preacher
perhaps in his voice and in his fight for art and freedom, as he was the
first to acknowledge; more than once I have heard him explain
apologetically that his right place was the pulpit for which he had been
designed.
Arthur Tomson, one of the best friends in the world, was a spirited
revolutionary who went to the length of founding and editing a paper of
his own to promote revolution--the _Art Weekly_, which, not being able
to afford illustrations, conducted its warfare solely by its articles,
and strong, fearless, knock-you-down articles they were since we all
wrote for the paper while it lasted. It did not last long, however, but
shared the fate of most revolutionary sheets with more brains than
capital. Arthur Tomson himself, out of print, was a quiet, if staunch
fighter, another of the old Thursday night group who knew that his years
on this earth were to be short. He was not the gayer for it as Harland
and Beardsley were, but the sadder, it may be because he foresaw the
end long before it came, and he was given to the melancholy that found
expression in so many of his paintings.
Wilson Steer, Tonks, Professor Brown passed, and no more, across the
stage of our Thursday nights, all three, as I remember them, scrupulous
in upholding the reputation for silence of their Club. Conder flitted in
and out of our rooms, always agreeable but not the man to lift up his
voice in a crowd.
Occasionally, a visitor from abroad appeared--Felix Buhot every Thursday
that one winter, or, more rarely Paul Renouard, in London for the
_Graphic_, his appearance an event for the illustrators who already
reverenced him as a veteran. Or else it was a representative, a
publisher, of _les Jeunes_ over there, bringing fresh stimulus, fresh
incentive, especially if his coming meant fresh orders and fresh
opportunity to say what had to be said freely and without restraint.
Once it was Jules Roque from Paris, of the _Courrier Français_ in which
he published the drawings of Louis Legrand and Forain and other artists
accepted as models by the young men of our Thursday nights who believed
in themselves the more defiantly when asked to figure in such good
company. Once it was Meier Graefe from Berlin, big, handsome,
enterprising, not yet encumbered with Post-Impressionism and its
outshoots, seeking American and British contributors to the German
_Pan_, a magazine as big and enterprising as himself if not always as
handsome, and the younger generation of London had the comfort of
knowing that if the Victorian door in England held firm, the door of
Europe had opened to them.
Occasionally one of the older, the very much older generation came in to
make us feel the younger for his presence--none more imposing than
Sandys, most distinguished in his old age, wearing the white waistcoat
that was the life-long symbol of his dandyism, full of Pre-Raphaelite
reminiscences, and reminiscences of the Italian Primitives could not
have seemed more remote. J. sometimes met Holman Hunt in other
haunts--at dinners of the Society of Illustrators and elsewhere--and
reported him to me as a talker who could, in the quantity and
aggressiveness of his talk, have given points to Henley and Henley's
Young Men, so I regret that he never was with us to talk over
Pre-Raphaelite days with Sandys. The only other possible representative
of Pre-Raphaelitism who came was Walter Crane, if so he can be called,
for the tradition fell lightly on his shoulders, was a mere re-echo in
his work; the only one of Sandys's contemporaries was Whistler, and
their meeting of which J. and I have written in another place, does not
belong to the story of our Thursday nights, for they were a thing of the
past when Whistler returned from Paris, where he had gone to live almost
as they began.
Nor did Sandys often appear on Thursdays. He seemed to prefer the
evenings when we were alone, to my surprise, for the homage he received
when he did come on Thursday must have been pleasant. Drawings of his
hung prominently in our rooms, J. then haunting the salesrooms for the
originals of the Sixties as industriously as the barrows and shops for
their reproductions. And to the man who prefers fame to reach him during
his lifetime, surely it should have been an agreeable experience to sit,
or to be enthroned as it were, in so friendly an atmosphere, with some
of his own finest work on the wall behind him for background, and
surrounded by a worshipping group asking nothing better than to be
allowed to sit at his feet and listen to his every word--which was a
sacrifice for his worshippers in Buckingham Street who rejoiced in the
sound of their own voices as did most of the company. But the Nineties
are not more wonderful and stimulating to the young men of to-day who
look back to them so admiringly, than the Sixties were to us whom they
kept up into the small hours of many a Friday morning, inexhaustible as
a subject of our talk, and Sandys, standing for the Sixties and all we
found in them so admirable, could command any sacrifice. The respect for
the Sixties was an article of faith, a dogma of dogmas in the Nineties.
If the now younger generation write articles and books about the
Nineties--those amazing documents in which I scarcely recognise an age I
thought I knew by heart--we were still more zealous in writing books
about the Sixties. And we collected the drawings and publications of the
Sixties. When J. and I now allowed ourselves an afternoon out, it was to
wander from Holywell Street to Mile End Road, from Piccadilly to
Holborn, searching the booksellers' barrows and shops for the unsightly,
gaudy, badly-bound volumes that contained the illustrations of the
Sixties--illustrations ranked amongst the finest ever made. Our
bookshelves that are still filled with them represent one of the most
animated phases of the Nineties. And we looked upon the "men of the
Sixties" as masters, among them giving to Sandys a leading place.
If he was not any longer doing the work for which we took off our hat to
him, he certainly looked the leader--tall, handsome, dignified, just
enough of a stoop in his shoulders to become his age, his dress
irreproachable, the white waistcoat immaculate, pale yellow hair parted
in the middle and beautifully brushed, beard not patriarchal exactly but
eminently correct and well cared for, manners princely. It was clear
that he liked the rôle of master and his voice was in keeping with the
part. But he was a master who presided at his best over a small
audience, and, no doubt knowing it, he avoided our Thursdays.
He was also a master given to small gossip. We heard from him less of
art, its aims and ideals, its mediums and methods, than of the sayings
and doings of the Pre-Raphaelites who were his friends and
contemporaries. The name of "Gabriel" was ever in his mouth. It was
Rossetti whom he most loved--or love is not the word, less of affection
revealed in his memories than a sense of injury, as if it had somehow
been the fault of "Gabriel" and the others that he had not come off as
well as they, though of all "Gabriel" had been most active in seeing
him through the tight places he so successfully got himself into. This,
no doubt, was the reason Rossetti felt entitled to a little laugh now
and then over Sandys's difficulties. Sandys was a man who needed to be
seen through tight places until the end, as we had occasion to know by
the urgent note he sent us on a Saturday night, more than once, from the
_Café Royal_, his favourite haunt in his later years, where a variety of
unavoidable accidents, with a curious faculty for repeating themselves,
would keep him prisoner until his friends came to his relief.
He was full of anecdote, which was quite in the order of things, the
Sixties having supplied anecdote for a whole library of books and
magazines. Could I tell Sandys's stories with Sandys's voice I should be
tempted to repeat them yet once again, though many were told us also by
Whistler, and these J. and I have recorded in the Life. Whistler told
them better, with more truth because with more gaiety and joy in their
absurdity. And yet, the solemnity of Sandys added a personal flavour,
gave them a character nobody else could give. I have not forgotten how
he turned into a parable the tale of the cross-eyed maid in the Morris
Shop in Red Lion Square, whose eyes were knocked straight by a shock
the company of Morris, Marshall, and Faulkner administered deliberately,
and then were knocked crooked again by a shock they had not provided for
or against. And, as Sandys recalled them, the strange beasts in
"Gabriel's" house and garden might have been let loose from out of the
Apocalypse. But Sandys's voice has been stilled forever and the
anecdotes have been published oftener, I do believe, than any others in
the world's rich store of _clichés_. The great of his day had all the
Boswells they wanted--a retinue of admirers and cuffs ready--at their
head William Michael Rossetti to pour out book after book about his
brother, to leave little untold about the group that revolved round
"Gabriel." Even the third generation, with Ford Madox Hueffer to lead,
has taken up the task. The anecdotes have grown familiar, but it is
something to have heard them from the men who were their heroes.
IX
Well--our Thursdays were pleasant, an inspiration while they lasted, and
for a time I thought they must last as long as we did. But nothing
pleasant endures forever, the bravest inspiration flickers and dies
almost before we realize its flaring. The stern duty of Friday morning
always haunted me in anticipation, for I have never been able to take
lightly the work I do with so much difficulty, and Friday morning itself
often brought even J. up with a sharp turn to face the fact that man was
born into the world to labour in the sweat of his brow, and not simply
to talk all night until no work was left in him.
That may have been one reason for our giving up so agreeable a custom.
Another perhaps came from the discovery that the freedom of our Thursday
nights was sometimes abused. A certain type of Englishman would travel a
mile and more for anything he did not have to pay for, even if it was
for nothing more substantial than a cigarette, a sandwich, a
whiskey-and-soda. There were evenings when, looking round the packed
dining-room, it would occur to me that I did not recognise half the
people in it. Friends introduced friends and they introduced other
friends until, in bewilderment, I asked myself if our Thursday night was
ours or somebody else's. And I fancied a tendency to treat it as if it
were somebody else's,--to take an ell when we meant to give no more than
an inch, and J. was as little inclined as I to furnish a new proof of
the wise old proverb. One day a would-be wit who was regular in his
attendance and his talk, and who should have known better, asked J.,
"Are you still running your Thursday Club?" and so helped to precipitate
the end. We were not running a Club for anybody, and if the fame of our
Thursday night filled our rooms with people who behaved as if we were,
the sooner we got rid of them the better.
Besides, as the weeks and the months and the years went on, many who had
come and talked and fought our Thursday night through ceased to come
altogether. Where I failed in breaking up the groups Time, with its
cruel thoroughness, succeeded and began to scatter them far and wide.
Death stilled voices that had been loudest. The _National Observer_
passed out of Henley's hands and Henley himself into the Valley of the
Shadow. Bob Stevenson said his last good-night to us. Beardsley,
Harland, Arthur Tomson, George Steevens, Phil May, Furse,
Iwan-Müller--one after another of our old friends, one after another of
those old masters of talk set out on the journey into the Great Silence.
It is hard to believe they have gone. I remember how, when they were
with us and the talk was at its maddest and somebody would suddenly take
breath long enough to look out of our windows, whose curtains were
never drawn upon the one spectacle we could offer--the river with the
boats trailing their lights down its shadowy reaches, and the Embankment
with the lights of the hansoms flying to and fro, and the bridges with
the procession of lights from the omnibuses and cabs and the trails of
burning cloud from the trains--Henley would say, "How it lives, how it
throbs with life out there!" and I would think to myself, "And how it
lives, how it throbs with life in here!"--with a life too intense, it
seemed, ever to wear itself out. And yet now only two or three of the
old friends of the old Thursday nights are left to look down with us
upon the river where it flows below our windows--upon the moving lights
of London's great traffic, upon London's great life and great beauty,
and great movement without end.
It is not only the dead we have lost. Time has made other changes as sad
as any wrought by Death. The young have grown old,--have thrown off
youth's "proud livery" for the sombre garment of age. The years have
turned the rebel of yesterday into the Royal Academician of to-day. The
inspired young prophet who protested week by week against mediocrity in
paint, settled down to keeping the mediocre paintings against which his
protests were loudest. He who thundered against the degeneracy of
journalism accepted the patronage of the titled promoter of the
half-penny press. Architects carried their respectability to the
professional chair it adorns, and illustrators rested in the comfortable
berths provided by _Punch_. Friendships cooled, and friends who never
missed a Thursday look the other way when they meet us in the street.