Ever since I can remember I have lived in the company of men and women
of a “literary” turn of mind, who either gained a livelihood by writing
or used their pens as a means of augmenting other forms of income. My
memory, therefore, is a long portrait gallery of authors, novelists,
and journalists, many of whom, however, as I must immediately confess,
were utterly unknown to fame, and entirely without fortune.
My own father was an essayist and novelist in his spare time as a
Civil Servant in the Board of Education, where, in those good old days
of leisured life, he worked from eleven till four--not, I suspect,
in a very exacting way. Anyhow, it was noticed by his sons that
whenever they called upon him in his office, he was either washing
his hands, or discussing life and literature with his colleagues. A
man of overflowing imagination, enormous range of reading, passionate
interest in all aspects of humanity, and most vivacious wit and
eloquence, it was a brutal tragedy that he should have been fettered to
the soul-destroying drudgery of a government office. But he gathered
round him many worshipful friends, and was a popular figure in one
of the oldest literary haunts of London, still “going strong” as The
Whitefriars Club.
As a young boy in an Eton collar, I used to dine with him there, filled
with reverence and delight because I sat at table with the literary
giants of the day. To my father, whose genial imagination exaggerated
the genius of his friends, they were all “giants,” but I expect the
world, and even Fleet Street, has forgotten most of them by now. To
me, the greatest of them were G. A. Henty, a grand old man with a
beard like Father Christmas, who rewrote French and English history
in delectable romance--does anyone read him now?--George Manville
Fenn, the author of innumerable books of which I cannot remember
a single title--O, fleeting time!--and Ascot Hope Moncrieff, who,
under his first two names, was the very first editor of _The Boy’s
Own Paper_--surely a thousand years ago!--and the author of the most
entrancing boys’ books, and many serious and scholarly volumes.
This fine old man, who is still producing books, was our intimate
friend at home, in early days, when a great family of brothers and
sisters, of whom I came fifth, welcomed him with real honor and
affection.
Another of my father’s friends, whom I used to think the wisest man
in the whole world, was a little old gentleman of the distinguished
name of Smith, who died the other day (getting a paragraph in _The
Times_), having devoted his whole life to a work on The Co-ordination
of Knowledge. It was his simple and benign ambition to classify every
scrap of knowledge since the beginning of the world’s history to the
present time, by a card index system. He died, after fifty years of
labor, with that task uncompleted!
I had the opportunity of meeting one character at The Whitefriars’
Club, who is still famous in Fleet Street, though he is like an ancient
ghost. This was an old Shakespearian actor named O’Dell, who used to
play the part of the gravedigger in “Hamlet,” and the clown in “As You
Like It,” sixty years and more ago. Under the title of “The Last of the
Bohemians,” he had a privileged place at the Whitefriars, which he was
always the last man to leave for some unknown destination, popularly
supposed to be a seat on the Thames Embankment because of his extreme
penury. He wore a sombrero hat and a big black cloak in the old style
of tragic actors. It was this costume and his ascetic face which led
to a bet between the conductor and driver of an old horse bus passing
down Fleet Street, before the time of motor cars.
“I say, Bill,” said the conductor, “who d’yer think we ’ave aboard?”
“Dunno,” said the driver.
“Cardinal Manning! S’welp me Bob!”
“No blooming fear! That ain’t the Cardinal.”
“Well, I’ll bet a tanner on it.”
At the Adelphi the conductor leaned over O’Dell as he descended with
grave dignity, and said:
“Beg yer pardon, sir, but do you ’appen to be Cardinal Manning?”
“Go to hell and burn there!” said O’Dell in his sepulchral voice.
Joyously the conductor mounted the steps and called to the driver.
“I’ve won that bet, Bill. It is ’is ’Oliness!”
There are many such stories about O’Dell, who had a biting wit and a
reckless tongue. He is now, like Colonel Newcome in his last years,
a Brother of the Charterhouse, in a confraternity of old indigent
gentlemen who say their prayers at night and dine together in hall.
Among the historic characters of Fleet Street he will always have a
place and I am glad to have met that link between the present and the
past.
Among my literary friends as a young man was, first and foremost--after
my father, who was always inspiring and encouraging--my own brother,
who reached the heights of success (dazzling and marvelous to my
youthful eyes) under the name of Cosmo Hamilton.
After various flights and adventures, including a brief career on the
stage, he wrote a book called _Which is Absurd_, and after it had been
rejected by many publishers, placed it on the worst possible terms with
Fisher Unwin. It made an immediate hit, and refused to stop selling.
After that success he went straight on without a check, writing
novels, short stories, and dramatic sketches which established him as
a new humorist, and then, achieving fortune as well as fame, entered
the musical comedy world with “The Catch of the Season,” “The Beauty
of Bath,” and other great successes, which he is still maintaining
with unabated industry and invention. He and I were close “pals,”
as we still remain, and, bad form as it may seem to write about my
brother, I honestly think there are few men who have his prodigality of
imagination, his overflowing storehouse of plots, ideas, and dramatic
situations, his eternal boyishness of heart--which has led him into
many scrapes, given him hard knocks, but never taught him the caution
of age, or moderated his sense of humor--his wildness of exaggeration,
his generous good nature, or the sentiment and romance which he hides
under the laughing mask of a cynic. In character he and I are the poles
apart, but I owe him much in the way of encouragement, and his praise
has always been first and overwhelming when I have made any small
success. As a young man I used to think him the handsomest fellow in
England, and I fancy I was not far wrong.
As a journalist, it was natural that my most familiar friends should
be of that profession, and therefore not necessarily famous as men of
letters, unless they broke away from the limitations of newspaper work.
They are still those for whom I have most affection--H. W. Nevinson,
Beach Thomas, Percival Phillips, H. M. Tomlinson, Robin Littlewood
the dramatic critic; Ernest Perris, editor of _The Daily Chronicle_;
Bulloch, editor of _The Graphic_; all good men and true, and others
less renowned.
One comrade who has “gone west,” as they used to say in time of war,
was a brilliant young Jew named Alphonse Courlander. I used to meet
him, at home and abroad, on all sorts of missions, and wherever we
were, we used to get away from the crowd to talk of the books we were
going to write (and for the most part never wrote!) and the latest
masterpieces we had discovered. Alphonse had more of a Latin than a
Jewish temperament, with irresistible gayety and wit, which concealed
a profound melancholy. It was when he had drunk one glass too much, or
perhaps two, that his melancholy surged up, and he used to shed tears
over his poor little naked soul. Otherwise, he had gifts of comic
speech and mimicry, which used to make me laugh outrageously, sometimes
in the most solemn places. One trick of his was to make the face of a
codfish, which was beyond all words funny, and in order to upset my
gravity, he used to do this in the presence of royalty, or at some
heavy political function, or even during a walk down Pall Mall.
I remember one night in Ireland, when we supped with a party of Irish
journalists in a little eating house called Mooney’s Oyster Bar. A
young Irish girl was playing the fiddle in the courtyard outside, and
we called her in, and bribed her to play old Irish ballads, which are
so pitiful with the old tragedy of the race that Alphonse the Jew was
touched to his heartstrings and vowed that he was descended from the
kings of Ireland.
He was with me during the episode in Copenhagen with Doctor Cook, in
whom he had a passionate and chivalrous belief, until I shook his faith
so much that he sent messages to his paper saying that Cook was a liar,
and then later messages to say that he wasn’t. Courlander could write
in any kind of style which impressed his imagination for a time, and
his novels ranged from imitations of Thomas Hardy and R. L. Stevenson,
to W. W. Jacobs. But his best book--really fine--was a novel on Fleet
Street called _Mightier Than the Sword_, when he wrote about the
things he knew and felt. In giving me a copy, he was generous enough
to write that I was its godfather, through my own novel _The Street
of Adventure_. Poor Alphonse Courlander was a victim of war’s enormous
agony, and his end was tragic, but in Fleet Street he left no single
enemy, and many friends.
For several years while I was in Fleet Street, I lived opposite
Battersea Park, in a row of high dwellings stretching for about a mile,
and called Overstrand Mansions, Prince of Wales Mansions, and York
Mansions. Nearly all the people in the road were of literary, artistic,
or theatrical avocations, either hoping to arrive at fame and fortune,
or reduced in circumstances after brief glory. The former class were in
the great majority, and were youngish people, with youngish wives, and
occasionally, but not often, a baby on the balcony. G. K. Chesterton,
who lived in the Overstrand Mansions, immediately over my head--I used
to pray to God that he would not fall through--once remarked that if
he ever had the good fortune to be shipwrecked on a desert island, he
would like it to be with the entire population of the Prince of Wales
Road, whom he thought the most interesting collection of people in the
world. I thought so, too, and wrote a very bad novel about them, called
_Intellectual Mansions, S. W._ That book appeared in the time of the
militant suffragettes who were playing hell in London, and as my chief
lady character happened to be a suffragette, they claimed it as their
own, bought up the whole edition, bound it in their colors of purple,
green, and white, and killed it stone dead.
I came to know G. K. Chesterton at that time, and every time I saw him
admired more profoundly his great range of knowledge, his immense wit
and fancy, his genial, jolly, and passionately sincere idealism. From
my ground-floor flat, every morning at ten I used to observe a certain
ritual in his life. There appeared an old hansom cab, with an old horse
and an old driver. This would be kept waiting for half an hour. Then G.
K. C. would descend, a spacious and splendid figure in a big cloak and
a slouch hat, like a brigand about to set forth on a great adventure,
and though he was bound no further than Fleet Street, it was adventure
enough, leading to great flights of fancy and derring do. After him
came Mrs. Chesterton, a little figure almost hidden by her husband’s
greatness. When Chesterton got into the cab, the old horse used to
stagger in its shafts, and the old cab used to rock like a boat in a
rough sea.
At luncheon time I often used to see G. K. C. in an Italian restaurant
in Fleet Street where, with a bottle of port wine at his elbow, and a
scribbling pad at his side, he used to write one of his articles for
_The Daily News_, chuckling mightily over some happy paradox, which had
just taken shape in his brain, and totally unconscious of any public
observation of his private mirth.
As literary editor of _The Tribune_, I tried to buy Chesterton away
from _The Daily News_, at double the price they paid him, but he was
proof against this temptation. “_The Daily News_ has been very good
to me,” he said, “and though I loathe their point of view on many
subjects, I’m not going to desert them now.” He agreed, however,
to contribute to _The Tribune_ from time to time, and as I had
arranged the matter, he had a kindly feeling toward me which led to
an embarrassing but splendid moment in my life. At a preliminary
banquet given by the proprietor of that unfortunate paper to a crowd
of distinguished people who utterly neglected to buy it, G. K.
Chesterton sat, as one of the chief guests, at the high table. I had
been obscurely placed at the back of the room, and this distressed the
noble and generous soul of my good friend. When he was asked to speak,
he made some general and excellent observations, and then uttered such
a panegyric of me that I was dissolved in blushes, especially when he
raised his glass and asked the company to drink to me. Some of them,
including the proprietor, were not altogether pleased with this
demonstration in my favor, but, needless to say, I cherish it.
Among my happy recollections of G. K. C. is one day at luncheon hour
when he was “guyed” by a group of factory girls in Fleet Street, and
took their playfulness with jovial humor, careless of his dignity; and
an evening at the Guildhall when King Albert of Belgium was the guest,
and I encountered Chesterton afterward wandering in the courtyard like
the restless ghost of a roistering cavalier, afraid to demand his hat
from the flunkeys, because he had not the necessary shilling with which
to tip them.
Chesterton is one of the great figures of literary England, and will
live in the history of our own time as one of the wittiest and wisest
men, worthy of a place in the portrait gallery of the immortals. His
great figure, his overflowing humor, his splendid simplicity of faith
in the ancient code of liberty and truth, put him head and shoulders
above the standardized type of little “intellectuals” with whom the
world is crowded.
I have the pleasantest recollections of “Intellectual Mansions,”
Battersea Park, but, after living there for four years or so, I
moved over the bridge to the little house I have already mentioned,
in Holland Street, Kensington, a few yards away from the old world
Paradise, Kensington Gardens. It was a little house in a little street,
which I still think the most charming in London, with fine old Georgian
mansions mixed up with little old shops, so that an admiral lived
next to a chimney sweep, and that great artist, Walter Crane, was two
doors or so removed from an oil and colorman, who sold everything from
treacle to paraffin. We had everything in Holland Street that adds to
the charm of life--a public house at the corner, a German band which
played all the wrong notes once a week, just as it ought to do, and a
Punch and Judy show.
A near neighbor and close friend of mine at that time was E. W.
Hornung, the author of _Raffles_ and many better books not so famous.
He was the brother-in-law of Conan Doyle, whose enormous success with
Sherlock Holmes probably set his mind working on the character of that
gentlemanly thief, Raffles, with whom, personally, I had no sympathy at
all.
Hornung and I used to “jaw” about books and writing, and, as an obscure
journalist and unsuccessful author, I used to stand in awe of his fine
house, his powerful motor car, his son at Eton. He was a heavily built
man, with a lazy manner and a certain intolerance of view which made
him despise Socialists, radicals, or any critics of the British Empire
and the old traditions, but I came to know the underlying sweetness
and sentiment of his character, and his passion of patriotism. He used
to drive me sometimes to places like Richmond Park and Windsor Forest,
and there we used to walk about under the trees, discussing the eternal
subject of books. Deep peace was about us in those old woods. Neither
he nor I imagined in our wildest flights of fancy that one day he would
be living in a hole in the ground under the ruins of Arras, and that
life and death would knock all thought of books out of our minds.
His boy was his greatest pride, a fine lad, fresh from Eton, and
steeped in the old traditions which Hornung thought gave the only grace
to the code of an English gentleman. (He had no patience with any
other school of thought.) The boy stood one day on the curbstone in
High Street Kensington, on a day after war had been declared and the
streets were placarded with posters, “Your King and Country Need You.”
He raised his hat to my wife, and said, “Do you think I ought to join
up?” He joined up, like all boys of his age, and, like most of them in
the list of second lieutenants, at that time, was killed very soon. His
letters from the front were full of faith and pride. He loved his men,
the splendor of being an officer, the thought of the great adventure
ahead for England’s sake. He did not live into the times of disillusion
and the dull routine of mud and misery....
His father was broken-hearted. His only idea now was how to get out to
the front, in spite of being too old for soldiering, and too heavy, and
too asthmatical. It was my idea that he should join the Y.M.C.A., and
he seized it gladly as a chance of service and heart healing. I met him
in his hut at Arras, serving out tea to muddy Tommies, finding a man,
now and then, to his enormous joy, who knew his son. Always he was in
the spiritual presence of that boy of his. For the sake of that, and
for the men’s sake, he endured real agonies of physical discomfort in
a drafty hut, with a stove which would not burn, and cocoa as his only
drink. The fastidious author of _Raffles_, who had been particular
about his creature comforts, and careful of the slightest draft!
He started a lending library for soldiers in the trenches, and I lent
him a hand with it now and then. It was in a hut on the ruins of the
Town Hall of Arras and because of the daily bombardment, he slept at
night in a dugout below an avalanche of stones. I promised to give a
lecture to his men on the history of Arras, and “mugged it up” from
old books in an old château. The date was announced, and posted up on
a placard. It was the 21st of March, 1918! No British soldier needs
reminding of the meaning of that date. It was when 114 German divisions
attacked the British line and all hell was let loose, and, for a time,
the bottom seemed to fall out of the world.
I did not deliver that lecture. I was away at the south of the line,
recording frightful happenings. But I heard afterward, from Hornung,
that through the smoke and dust of heavy shelling which churned up old
rubbish heaps of ruins in Arras, two Scottish soldiers in tin hats
loomed up to hear the lecture.... Poor Hornung survived the war, but
not long. His soul was eager for that meeting with his son.
One visitor of mine in the little house in Holland Street, which was
often overcrowded with a mixed company of writers, artists, and odd
folk, was a distinguished little man who came only when there was no
one else about. At least, he preferred it that way, using my house
as a little retreat from the madding world. This was Monsignor Hugh
Benson, the famous preacher and novelist. The son of an Archbishop of
Canterbury, he had shocked his family by joining the Catholic Church,
in which he found perpetual adventure and delight. He loved its ritual,
its color, its legends, its romance, its history, its music, and its
faith, like a small child in a big old house constantly discovering new
wonders, mysteries, and enchanting treasures. He had the heart of a
boy, and an enthusiasm for life and work which would not let him take
any rest. As a preacher, he was constantly flying about the country
for special sermons and missions, and he preached, or, as he used to
say, “praught,” with a passion that almost choked him and tore him to
pieces. In spite of a painful little stutter, and intense shyness, he
was extraordinarily eloquent, and every sermon was crammed with hard
thinking, for he did not rely on sentiment for his effect, but on sheer
intellectual reasoning.
That was only one part of his day’s work. He had an enormous
correspondence with people of all denominations or none, who used to
write to him for advice and help, and every letter he received he
answered as though his own life depended on it.
At my house he used to go to his bedroom at ten o’clock to deal with
the day’s budget. But when that was done with, he used to get out
a manuscript book and begin to enjoy himself. That was when he was
writing one of his novels--and as soon as one was finished, he began
another.
“My dearest dream of Heaven,” he told me once, “is to be writing a
novel which goes well and is never finished. What more perfect bliss
than that?”
Among his other passions--and all he liked he loved--was music, and
he used to strike wonderful chords on my piano, and one particular
combination of notes which he called the “deep sea chord,” because, if
you shut your eyes and listened, you could hear deep waters rushing
overhead!
He killed himself by overwork, and I heard of his death when I was
crossing a field outside Dixmude, which was a blazing ruin, in the
autumn of the first year of war.
He used to envy my place in Fleet Street, and say that if he were not a
priest, he would like to be a journalist.