THE F. O.
Je suis copiste,
Affreux métier!
Joyeux ou triste,
Toujours copier!
No one knew who was the unhappy clerk who, in a pessimistic mood, wrote
those Dantesque lines with a diamond on a pane of glass in the old
Foreign Office in Downing Street. If I had been in England when the old
house was broken up, I should have tried to buy that window-pane, with
its inscription—a note of despair recalling the “Lasciate ogni speranza,
voi ch’ intrate.”
The old Foreign Office in Downing Street was a dingy building enough,
with a sort of crusted, charwomanly look about it, suggestive of anything
but Secretaries of State, ambassadors, and such-like sublimities. The
_Dii majores_ occupied tapestried[26] chambers facing the Park, but
the great mass of the rooms in which the clerks worked looked out upon
nothing but Downing Street on one side, and on the other a rookery so
richly caked with soot and dirt that the very windows must long since
have ceased to let in a ray of light—a nest of squalid slums that have
long since been improved off the face of London. One house there was
among those crazy old tenements occupied by some professional man in
a small way of business, with two pretty daughters, maidens who from
the security of their father’s abode would make all sorts of loving
demonstrations to the young scribes opposite. Meet them outside, and
their eyes would be cast demurely upon the ground, chaste and virginal.
Half an hour later they would be at their old tricks, casting the most
appealing glances across the shabby street. They were like the veiled
beauties of Constantinople, who, knowing themselves to be quite safe,
will do all they can to allure the passing foreigner.
Poor Lionel Moore, one of our dragomans, who had lived in the Levant
from childhood, used to tell such amusing stories about those elusive
sirens. One day he was walking the streets of Pera when he saw a young
Turkish lady riding upon a very smart mule, with an escort of three or
four eunuchs, gloriously apparelled, evidently a lady of quality. As she
passed Moore she partially put aside her yashmak and gave him a most
bewitching glance—such a look as St. Anthony himself could not have
resisted. He, always ready for an adventure, followed the temptress,
though the sun was scorching. When she had made a fool of him long
enough, the lady called up her chief eunuch and said, “You see that
infidel?—go and fetch him a glass of water to cool him; he must be hot.”
As Moore spoke Turkish like a native the arrow hit the mark, and he slunk
away, discomfited, down a side street.
Naturally it was with no little trepidation and a rather fluttering
heart that on a bright morning in the month of February, 1858, I for the
first time set foot inside the gloomy portals of the sacrosanct F. O.
But my alarm was soon relieved, for in the hall were two gorgeous young
clerks, sartorially superb, both acquaintances of mine, who gave me the
kindliest of welcomes, and saved me from the ordeal of making myself
known to good old Weller, the porter. The real moment of terror came
when a few minutes later, having sent in my name, I was ushered into
the room of Mr. Hammond, the Under-Secretary of State. But even in that
Holy of Holies—the temple of the Norns that governed the destinies of
nations—fear was dispelled by the great kindness of the High Priest.
Mr. Hammond was, I suppose, at that time a man of between fifty and sixty
years of age—an imposing figure, big and burly, with rather a quick,
jerky, incisive manner, which was apt to make men shy until they got
to know him well, when the goodness and sweetness of his nature seldom
failed to inspire affection. He was one of the best public servants that
I ever came across. He was an indefatigable worker, and indeed his chief
fault was that he took too much upon his own shoulders; at the same time
he was more than generous in meting out praise to others.
There are not many men left who served under him; the few that are yet
alive must, like myself, have been pained by the way in which he has
been alluded to in certain recent biographical works. Private letters,
which were meant only for the eyes of those to whom they were addressed,
and were certainly never intended to be published, should be carefully
edited before they are put into print, otherwise words set down purely
in jest, and inspired by the humour of the moment, wear a serious look
which is all the more mischievous when the writer is a great personage.
Again, Mr. Hammond has been blamed because of his famous declaration to
Lord Granville as to the peaceful outlook in June, 1870. Was he to blame
for this false view of the state of Europe? His opinion was based upon
the despatches and—what is still more important—upon the private and
confidential letters received from Her Majesty’s Ambassadors at Paris and
Berlin, and from those who in similar positions were watching the course
of affairs in other capitals.
It was the various _chancelleries_, and not Lord Hammond, which were
responsible for his statement; and the wrong forecast only shows that the
blow fell suddenly and unsuspectedly, with the swiftness of a meteorite.
Until the “editing” of the famous Ems telegram, to which I shall allude
elsewhere, took place, Bismarck himself did not know how soon the gates
of the temple of Janus were to be thrown open. The secret was well kept
because it did not exist. War was the birth of a moment. There had been
no hidden warlike preparations either in France or in Germany; indeed, so
little was this the case that Bismarck tells us that it was not until he
had consulted Moltke as to the relative states of the French and German
armies, and which of the two would be likely to gain an advantage from an
immediate declaration of war, that he lighted the torch. (“Gedanken und
Erinnerungen,” Vol. II., 99-113.) So much for the ungenerous blame which
has been cast upon Mr. Hammond for his want of political foresight—an
altogether unjust accusation, founded upon ignorance of the condition of
affairs at the time.
Mr. Hammond was the Foreign Office; he kept all the strings in his own
hands. Probably such a method would be impossible in these days; but
at the time of which I am writing his colossal industry and retentive
memory enabled him to direct, single-handed, the whole current work of
the department. He was indispensable. Of course those matters in which
the policy of the Cabinet were at stake were dealt with then, as now,
by the Secretary of State. But it is no small tribute to the value set
upon Mr. Hammond’s work by successive Foreign Ministers that no change of
Government affected his position or lowered his authority.
Mr. Hammond kept me with him for a few minutes, warning me that my work
at first would be very dull, and then he sent me off, saying, “Remember
that there are no secrets here; everybody is trusted, and you will find
that nothing is hidden from you. But you must hold your tongue.” I
cannot remember any violation of that rule until many years afterwards,
when I had left the diplomatic service, and when a new system had been
introduced—as I think, very unwisely; but I do remember once, when some
twenty years later there had been a scandal in the _chancellerie_ of an
embassy of another country, that one of the greatest European financiers
said to me: “Well, there is one thing of which England may be proud: the
English Foreign Office is the only one at which we have never been able
to buy information.”
That says something for the old system of nomination, though I quite
admit that there ought to be a stiffish examination of the nominees of
the Secretary of State; but subject to that condition, I think that
Lord Clarendon was quite right when he told a Committee of the House of
Commons that he would rather resign the seals of the Foreign Office than
surrender the right of nomination to a vacant clerkship.
I was told off for the Slave Trade or African department—the only one in
which there was a vacancy, and there I remained for the first two years
of my service. The presiding genius was one Dolly Oom, a great character.
I do not suppose that he was more than fifty years of age, but he looked
as old as a grasshopper. He was a great authority on dinners, and used
to give very choice little parties in a tiny house in Duchess Street.
In matters theatrical, especially in all that related to pantomimes,
he was an expert, and he was a faithful member of the Old Stagers at
Canterbury—not as an actor, but as the official apologist, and all sorts
of excuses used to be invented for bringing him on to the stage in
that capacity, when, he being a favourite of many years’ standing, his
appearance, his faultless attire, his courtly bow, which it was whispered
was a piece of royal heredity from Hanover, were received with thunderous
applause. His bosom friend and the hero of his adoration was Charles
Mathews the actor.
Work in any shape he detested; if we took him a despatch he would look
at it with a sigh, and say, “Put it on the _monceau immonde_.” What he
dubbed the _monceau immonde_ was a pile of papers “to be dealt with,”
carried backwards and forwards daily between the press and the middle
table, which used to grow and grow until Wylde, the second in command,
could stand it no longer, and would set to work to clear it all off,
while Dolly Oom, sipping weak soda-water and brandy and uttering
incapable sighs, would look on and shake his head with a look of outraged
dyspepsia. There was one point upon which dear old Dolly Oom would stand
no nonsense. All words ending in _ic_ must have a final _k_—publick,
eccentrick, etc. Soft and gentle as cotton-wool in all other matters,
in this he was as hard and inexorable as the rock of Gibraltar! Upon
that _k_ depended the validity of treaties, the whole authority of the
Secretary of State.
Wylde was a splendid worker and knew the African business well. If his
minutes of between fifty and sixty years ago had been acted upon, much
trouble and many tragedies would have been avoided. He was convinced of
the part that South Africa must at some future time play on the world’s
chessboard. Unfortunately the value of his opinion was largely discounted
by the fact that he had not the gift of writing; moreover, in those days
none but European politics were thought worthy of the brains of statesmen.
Even American affairs, until the war broke out between North and South,
aroused little interest, and as for Africa, there was only one man who
took any heed of it, and his was a cry in the wilderness.
There was none to hear, and poor Wylde’s minutes were buried without hope
of resurrection in the _campo santo_ of the Record Office.
It was rather a blow for young Oxford, full of the zeal deprecated
by Talleyrand, and eager to distinguish itself in the most secret
negotiations, to be set down to copy charter-parties and cargo-lists
of the filthy ships that were engaged in the Slave Trade, and which
sailed from New York bound for St. Thomas—nominally the St. Thomas of
the West Indies, but in reality for that ill-omened island off the
Guinea Coast where the “cargo of ebony” was to be picked up. If only
the poor slaves could have been consulted, how they would have prayed
against the measures that were taken for their protection! A slave was a
chattel worth money, and would repay care and good food on the voyage.
But with Her Majesty’s cruisers always on the alert, the poor wretches
were battened down under hatches in conditions so appalling that the
accounts of their sufferings were absolutely sickening. Only the fittest
and strongest could by any possibility survive. How many were thrown
overboard for the benefit of the sharks no man could tell.
We were furnished by Mr. Archibald, our Consul at New York, with the most
accurate information as to all the men and ships engaged in the traffic;
we knew them all, and we kept a sort of album and register, which I
started, from which we sent out slips to the Admiralty to be forwarded
to the West Coast of Africa. We got at last to find the sort of interest
in our work that the detectives of Scotland Yard have in theirs, and to
feel a certain professional pride in every conviction. It was interesting
years afterwards to hear from my old friend Billy Hewitt, when he was
commanding the _Basilisk_ in the China seas, of the prize money which
those slips had been the means of putting into his pocket when he
skippered a small vessel in the West African squadron.
There was always plenty of work, though our hours were very late. We
did not begin until twelve, or even after that, but then we did not
strike the balance as Charles Lamb did, by going away early. We were
often copying for the mails till after seven o’clock, and in stress of
political weather we had to wait till almost any hour. But the free
mornings were a great boon—I always had time for a drawing lesson at
South Kensington, or an hour’s fencing and gymnastics at Harrison’s in
Panton Street, where there was a daily gathering of the same men—amongst
them Lord Stanley, then Colonial Minister, a very regular attendant.
He would come in laden with a sheaf of blue books and despatches, speak
to no one, and between his exercises bury himself in political work. He
would leave as he came, silent and self-contained, carrying his papers
under his arm. He was immensely strong, but clumsy; he could have felled
an ox, but he would not have done it gracefully.
When the late Lord Redesdale was staying at Knowsley, shortly after Lord
Stanley had published his Iliad, he said to his host: “What does Stanley
think of your Homer?” “He knows nothing about it,” answered Lord Derby,
laughing, “he’s never read it. You see it isn’t a Blue Book!” Probably
no statesman of Lord Stanley’s value has ever been so little understood;
presumably it was his own choice, for certainly he did not wear his
heart upon his sleeve, nor could anyone accuse him of affability, or of
overmuch sympathy with his kind. Perhaps Lord Sanderson, who was not only
his private secretary, but his intimate and trusted friend to boot, is
the only man who could throw some light upon that strange character.
Lord Newton in his life of Lord Lyons has one or two ironically biting
remarks about him: “This prosaic nobleman who is credited with having
himself refused the throne of Greece.” “It must have been a congenial
task for a man of Lord Stanley’s temperament to throw cold water upon
the vague and slipshod proposals of the unlucky Emperor” (of the
French); while “Lord Stanley’s comment upon the Empress’ frank and
sensible conversation with Lord Lyons, upon the Roman question, urging
that England should take a hand in it, was that it furnished the best
reason he had received yet for keeping out of the affair altogether. The
Emperor’s reason for proposing a conference was that he disliked bearing
the responsibility which he had assumed. Why should he be asked to bear
it for him?”
Lord Stanley, afterwards Lord Derby, was certainly a remarkable man;
his speeches were dull and prosaic, but they were full of wise common
sense and they carried just weight. It always seemed to me that he
showed in his public life those same qualities which he used to bring
into Harrison’s gymnasium—the strength of a bull and the determination
of a gladiator, without one spark of enthusiasm, without one care or
thought beyond doing to the best of his great power what lay to his hand.
A well-balanced, well-informed study of Lord Stanley would be a human
document of great interest.
At the end of two years I was moved out of the Slave Trade into the
French department, which, of course, was the most important and
hardest-worked of the many divisions, for the Paris Embassy was looked
upon as a sort of branch Foreign Office; there could be no diplomatic
subject in which France was not interested equally with England,
whether in agreement or in rivalry. So every despatch of any slightest
importance—not to speak of many which had none—was marked to be copied
for Paris. I used to wonder whether Lord Cowley, insatiable worker as he
was, could find time to read all that we so painfully copied.
Such questions as those of the Danish duchies and the Danubian
principalities (still alive under the title of “the Balkans”) were the
favourite pabulum of all the Ministers at the small German courts, worthy
men whose capacity for spoiling paper was in exact proportion to the
greatness of their unimportance. I remember at Stuttgart an industrious
creature who had all the spinning powers of a hen-spider.
There were no typewriters in those days; it was all honest, strenuous
copying from mid-day sometimes till night. Still much of the work was
of absorbing interest, and the labour was lightened by delightful
companionship. Staveley was the head of the department, a right
good fellow, and a fine skater of the days when the members of the
Skating Club used to disport themselves in the Regent’s Park, or on
the Serpentine, in tail coats and top hats; Croker Pennell, a great
character, was second; Scott Gifford, a dear memory (great friend of
Goldsmid and Jenny Lind, whom I heard sing at his house); Henry Eliot,
the late Lord St. Germans, Bobsy Meade—both of them most justly popular.
Later my old friend, W. A. Cockerell, happily still alive. It would have
been difficult to find a more sympathetic crew.
Among the other colleagues we had John Bidwell, clever, agreeable,
and much loved by all who knew him well; Johnnie Woodford, a handsome
tenorino, an intimate friend, like myself, of Mario and Grisi, and much
behind the scenes of Covent Garden; Beauty Stephens a strange compound
of wit and muddleheadedness, with a wonderful gift of hitting off a
character in a couple of words; Anderson, rather solid and solemn, very
popular on the steps of the Rag, to which it always seemed as if he ought
to have belonged—indeed that wicked Stephens said of him that he “would
have been a heavy dragoon, only there was no regiment heavy enough for
him;” cranky little Cavendish, whose memoirs have been published, and to
whom, when he came back to work after a short illness, and complained
that he was not quite himself yet, John Bidwell said rather cruelly:
“Well, Dish! don’t you think that might perhaps be an improvement!”
There were a score or more of others, now alas! gone, all of whom have
left pleasant memories behind them. Of course, in so large a zoological
collection there were some who did not belong to the Phœnix tribe; we had
our apes and we had our bears; but in looking back upon those happy old
days I claim the privilege of the sun-dial, and among the hours record
only the serene.
Several of those who were in the Foreign Office at the same time with me
reached great distinction. Lord Vivian became Ambassador at Rome, Philip
Currie, so long private secretary to the great Lord Salisbury, and one
of the staunchest of my friends, was raised to the peerage, having been
Ambassador successively at Constantinople and Rome. Lord Sanderson,
after being for a long time Under-Secretary of State, was also raised to
the peerage. Sir Francis Bertie, some years junior to me, ought to be
leaving the Embassy at Paris, after a most brilliant career, under the
age limit, but such a man cannot be spared at a critical moment, and so
he is staying on with the due reward of a peerage. Robert Meade went to
the Colonial Office, earned the highest distinction under many chiefs,
including Mr. Joseph Chamberlain, who knew the value of a good man.
Drummond Wolf also went to the Colonial Office as private secretary to
Lord Lytton in 1858; then was sent as Colonial Secretary to the Ionian
Islands, and when they were given up (_proh pudor!_) was offered his
choice between a C.B. and a K.C.M.G. Not without an eye to its financial
value he chose the latter; but he was afterwards promoted into far
higher regions, as G.C.B., Minister to Persia, where it is said his
rather risky stories delighted the Shah, and finally as Ambassador to
Spain. All these and others whom I have not mentioned have played their
part in the world, contributing their quota to its advancement. And after
all, that is what makes life worth the living—that is what distinguishes
man from a possible ancestral jelly-fish.
1860.—Those were days of freedom, when men might sit up and feast and
amuse themselves as late as they pleased. Grandmotherly legislation
had not yet set its canon by which, when the clock strikes the curfew
the lights in all hostelries must be extinguished, the grandchildren
must fly from bar and refreshment room, and be sent virtuously, even if
supperless, to bed.
On the night of the 16th-17th of April, 1860, the inns and public houses
in London remained open all night; some twelve thousand persons did not
go to bed at all, for on the morning of the 17th the great fight for the
championship of the world was to take place—somewhere—between Tom Sayers
and Heenan, the great American fighter known as the Benicia Boy. The
whereabouts was kept so dark that it was not until the last moment that
we who had taken tickets were even allowed to know from what station we
were to go. The whole affair was shrouded in mystery. The two principals
were being closely watched by the police, and Tom Sayers only made good
his escape from Newmarket in a horse-box in the disguise of a stableman
in charge of one of the horses belonging to Sam Rogers, the trainer. As
for us, we had to hang about Ben Caunt and Nat Langham’s public-houses
waiting, until we received our sailing orders and rushed off to London
Bridge, the start having been fixed for four in the morning.
No fight had ever created so much excitement; it was the first contest
of an international character, so that the fever was as high in the New
World as in the Old. In the hurrying crowd there were great numbers of
Americans, while peers, members of Parliament and men of high degree
jostled the bullet-headed, broken-nosed members of the prize ring,
pickpockets, bookmakers, publicans and sinners. The Sunday papers went so
far as to say—but that was absolutely untrue—that such big-wigs as Lord
Palmerston and a sporting Bishop were present. So great was the interest
that even the _Times_ devoted three of its sacrosanct columns to a
masterly description of the battle. I believe it was the first time that
such an honour was conferred upon the prize ring, and it is said that the
secret of the authorship is now unknown even to the _Times_ chief.
My companion that night was Henry Coke, Lord Leicester’s brother, who
has himself chronicled the event in his clever book “Moss from a Rolling
Stone.”
The train stopped near Farnborough. It was an ideal spring dawn, as
sweet and fresh as the perfume of the pinewoods could make it, and the
birds were singing as if they would burst their throats. It seemed a
shame and a desecration to use such a morning as we were about to do;
but we were too much excited, too eager, stirred by the cruel lust of
fighting, to take heed of that. The ropes and stakes were soon set up and
there was an immense amount of pushing and scrambling for places near
Tom Sayers’ corner, so we had to stand among the Americans near Heenan.
That, however, was a good place to see from, for Heenan, having won the
toss, naturally chose the corner in which he would have the sun at his
back, and those opposite to us had the disadvantage, like Tom himself, of
having the sun in their eyes.
When Sayers first threw his cap into the ring, he was dressed in a most
appalling suit of dark green tartan. His taste in dress was always
grotesque, for during his last years, when he had retired from the
ring, he must needs wear hessian boots with tassels, gartered with the
inscription “Tom Sayers, Champion” round the knee. But when he stripped
he was the picture of an athlete. He was a short, good-humoured looking
man, with a tremendous development of the neck and shoulders, which
gave the driving power to his blows; his dark skin, brown and tanned,
looking as though he had been carved out of old oak, shone in the morning
sun. There was no question about it: he was trained to perfection; the
muscles in the back especially were so sharply defined that they might
have been mapped round with a pencil. Heenan, on the contrary, seemed to
me—and many good judges shared my opinion—to have been trained a little
too fine, and perhaps rather too rapidly; the skin upon his face seemed
loose, and that would account for the way in which it swelled and puffed
up under the terrible punishment of Tom’s iron knuckles.
But one thing struck everybody present: how was Tom Sayers, superb
fighter as he was, to stand up against that giant? Yet he did, and what
is more, in my opinion if ever a man won a fight he did. There was a
foul claimed in the hurly-burly confusion at the end, but upon that I
do not rely. I go by the condition to which his dauntless courage and
generalship ended by reducing his enemy.
A great deal was said about the number of times that Sayers was knocked
down. What happened was this. Quite early in the fight Sayers had drawn
first blood from Heenan, when there arose such a shout of triumph as had
hardly been heard since the myrmidons cheered at the death of Hector.
Heenan then scored by twice knocking Tom down. Those were fair knock-down
blows, and great was the exultation of the American party. Shortly
afterwards in guarding a tremendous blow with his right arm, Tom received
an injury which rendered it useless. It was said that the small bone was
broken, but that was afterwards denied. In any case, he was evidently in
cruel pain, and the limb began to swell up and was practically paralysed.
This was all the more hard upon him, as in fighting he was wont to rely
so greatly on his right—his “Doctor” as he used to call it, because “it
would finish off his man.” Most men would have given in at once. Not so
Tom Sayers. He had lost his best weapon, and he was suffering torture;
the great giant was towering in front of him, threatening and terrible;
but never for one moment did Tom flinch or falter; his gallant soul
forced him to hold on, and having only one arm, he must now fight with
his brains.
From that time forth, whenever Heenan delivered one of his slashing
blows, there was no guardian right with which to parry it, so Tom caught
it as a man catches a cricket ball, yielding to it, and thus went down
with the blow, smiling and unhurt. It was the only way—I watched it over
and over again, and when at each knock-down the Americans wildly shouted
victory for Heenan, I felt that they were counting unhatched chickens.
All of a sudden there was a crash which rang almost like metal over the
field. Tom Sayers, ducking before a deadly blow from his assailant, had
dashed in with his left and cut open Heenan’s cheek with an ugly gash
which presently swelled and almost closed one eye at once. The American,
big man as he was, staggered under it. From that moment I felt that,
given fair play, the battle was won, and that, as I can affirm from what
I heard around me, was the fear in the American corner.
Round after round Tom came up, with dogged determination written in his
unscarred face, relying upon the same tactics, attacking first one eye
and then the other until Heenan was rapidly getting blind. Then came a
dastardly act. The American, having got Sayers’ head in chancery under
his left arm, twisted his right round the rope of the ring and with the
purchase so gained tried to strangle Tom, who struck out at him gamely,
but was unable to break loose. He was getting black in the face when the
umpires cut the rope. It was a mean and a cruel trick and was practically
the last act of a fight in which Sayers had all the honours.
The end was at hand. For some time past a blue cloud of policemen had
been hovering in the distance without attempting to interfere. Heenan’s
backers saw their chance, the ring was broken into by the Americans, the
police, seeing that matters were taking a nasty turn, rushed in, and the
ring became a seething mass of surging, pushing, scrambling men, the
principals trying in vain to continue a fight in the midst of what was
now a mere angry, howling mob.
As for Heenan, so blind was he that he struck his own second, and it was
also said that he hit Sayers when the latter was sitting on his second’s
knee. A foul was claimed, but it was not possible for the referee to act
in such a tumult, or, indeed, to see. There was a general stampede for
the train.
Heenan could no longer see and had to be led by two men. There was a
little quick-set hedge over which Tom Sayers flew as gaily as a bird.
Heenan was in some fashion pushed or dragged through it, a helpless
“man-mountain,” so mauled that he was scarcely human. Barring his
disabled arm, Tom seemed none the worse; his face hardly showed a
scratch. There can be no reasonable doubt that if Heenan’s friends,
seeing his plight, had not forced their way inside the ropes and broken
up the ring, five more minutes must inevitably have given Tom Sayers
a glorious victory. As it was, the mere fact that he, one-armed and
inferior in height, weight and reach to an adversary who looked fit to
crush him, should only have lost his chance owing to a dirty trick, was
simply marvellous. It was an exhibition of bulldog courage which in its
way will probably never be beaten.
One thing should in justice be recorded. Heenan’s backers behaved badly,
but they were a very low class, and I am bound to say that I did not see
a single American gentleman among them. The men whom I knew afterwards in
New York would have been as disgusted as I was.
It was a great event. Heenan was certainly a magnificent specimen of
humanity and a great athlete. In build and figure he reminded me of the
statue of the dying gladiator. He stood six feet one and a half inches,
while Tom Sayers only measured five feet eight and a half inches. But
Tom was a wonder. There have been greater boxers—Jem Mace to wit; but
as a fighter he was incomparable. Apart from his courage, his tact and
judgment were phenomenal—not once did he let an opportunity slip. Relying
upon these qualities, his great soul never hesitated when there was a
question of pitting himself against such giants as the Tipton Slasher,
Aaron Jones and others. He was ready to face any odds. Nat Langham was
the only man who ever beat him. The fight with Heenan, which lasted two
hours and six minutes, was his last appearance in the ring.
When we think of the sums earned by Carpentier, Jack Johnson and the
glove fighters of to-day, it seems almost incredible that fifty-five
years ago a fight for the international championship should have taken
place for no more than £200 a side, and that the subscription got up for
Sayers should have amounted only to a sum of £3,000, settled upon him
with remainder to his children, on condition that he should never fight
again.
Heenan fought once more in England, with Tom King, who beat him.
Curiously enough, on this occasion Sayers was his old adversary’s second.
Tom King was a splendidly handsome man. I saw him make his first
appearance in London at a benefit at the Canterbury Hall, a tall slip of
a lad, six feet two inches, looking like a young Apollo. He had been a
sailor and his long arms were phenomenally developed by hauling at the
ropes, in days when there were still ropes. He was matched, with the
gloves of course, against a huge negro. The two smote at one another,
rushing round the ring with as little science as schoolboys; it was a
mere “rough and tumble.” Harrison, the famous fencing master, who was
standing by me, turned round to me and said, “That youngster, properly
trained and taught, ought to make a champion.” It was a sound prophecy,
for Tom King worked hard, made himself into a famous fighter, defeated
Jem Mace, the prince of boxers, and finally won his battle with Heenan
for £2,000. Prices were beginning to go up. Neither man ever fought
again. Tom King, who was a steady, clever fellow, became a bookmaker and
gathered together a comfortable fortune.
Heenan was the husband of the beautiful poetess, Ada Isaac Menken,
whose talent Swinburne admired so much, and who dedicated her poems to
Charles Dickens. When she was on the stage her wonderful beauty created a
_furore_ in _Mazeppa_. I took a special interest in Heenan because he was
a pupil of Aaron Jones, to whom I have alluded in my account of Oxford
days, and who went out to America in 1858. In the words of the Chinese
sage, we were _T’ung yen_ (“same ink”), that is to say, we had dipped
our pens in the same ink, which, being further interpreted, means that
we were pupils of the same master. So much can a Confucius say in two
syllables.
Let me go back a year. In the autumn of 1859 came the volunteer
movement—a clarion cry in answer to the memorial of the French colonels
who were spurring on their Emperor to make war upon this country. All
England was bristling with martial ardour. The Duke of Westminster, then
Lord Grosvenor, started the Queen’s Westminsters; Lord Elcho the London
Scottish; Lord Ranelagh, the “Brompton Garibaldi”[27] as he was called,
the South Middlesex. Most of us clerks joined the movement. Wylde,
who had seen service in Spain with Sir de Lacy Evans, became second in
command to Lord Ranelagh, and, when his colonel died, succeeded him; I
was one of the early recruits of the Queen’s Westminsters. We had great
fun, but it needed no little courage to appear in uniform, for the grey
tunics were irresistible as matter for chaff by the many-headed.
The Foreign Office had always been active in volunteering, for when the
Queen reviewed the Volunteers in Hyde Park in 1860, one of the privates
in the Queen’s Westminsters was old Mr. Byng—“Poodle” Byng—about whose
identity Sir Herbert Maxwell has got into such a muddle in his “Life of
Lord Clarendon.” He had been a clerk in the Foreign Office and had been
a private in the Volunteers when they were reviewed by King George the
Third. He was called “Poodle” on account of his crisp, curly hair—made a
_mésalliance_—and continued to be a pet in Society as a bachelor until
his death.
I remember how, in one of the extravaganzas by Planché brought out by
Charles Mathews and Madame Vestris at the Lyceum, a huge poodle was
brought upon the stage. There was a large gathering of well known people
in the audience, and Poodle Byng was in a box with some great ladies.
When the great curly dog came to the front there was loud applause, and
the stalls turned their glasses upon Mr. Byng, who stood up in his box
and bowed his acknowledgments of the compliment. Sir Herbert Maxwell
confounds him with Mr. Byng, a Privy Councillor, another well-known man
of political importance, whereas the Poodle could not lay claim to being
anything—unless, indeed, it was something to have been reviewed by George
the Third and half a century later by Queen Victoria.
A clerk in the Foreign Office at that time carried with him a passport
to all that was best in political, diplomatic, literary and artistic
society. The best clubs, from the Travellers’ downwards, opened their
doors to him, unless there was something personally objectionable in him.
And if the Devil found no idle hands among us for mischief during the
daytime, our evenings were bright and well filled, for even during the
dullest months there was always something to be done; not that by my
allusion to Dr. Watts I wish it to be inferred that that something was
always mischievous—indeed, I think we were fairly good boys, as boys go,
with not much more than just so much of wickedness in us as suffices to
give a spice to life.
Week-ends were at that time unknown. Saturdays and Sundays were the great
days for dinners, and anybody who had attempted to decoy a youth into
the country for a Saturday-to-Monday party would have been looked upon
as kind, perhaps, but a lunatic certainly. Lady Palmerston’s Saturday
night parties at Cambridge House, now the Naval and Military Club, were
gatherings at which everybody that was distinguished above his fellows
in any branch of life was to be seen. Lady Palmerston, gracious, and
still showing great traces of beauty, presided over a tea-table in
a little inner room to which special favourites were admitted. Lord
Palmerston, gay, smiling and full of geniality—still “Cupid” not only to
his contemporaries but also to the youngest and most attractive of the
matrons, for to the end he retained a great eye for beauty—had a kind
word for everybody, young and old. It was not only the Megatherium that
was made welcome.
Once I got into disgrace. It was in 1862. Lady Palmerston gave a ball,
and I was told off to lead the cotillon. There had been some late nights
in the House of Commons, and Lord Palmerston was looking fagged and worn
though he was smiling as ever—at three in the morning I thought the
hostess would be glad if the ball came to an end and she, who must also
have been very tired, for she always sat up for him, might go to bed,
so I stopped the cotillon, expecting great praise; but Lady Palmerston,
on the contrary, was furious, and for three whole weeks I received no
Saturday invitation; but when the fourth Saturday came round I was
forgiven, taken into favour again, and bidden to listen to the friendly
song of the tea-kettle in the inner sanctum.
The guests at those parties would have furnished the sitters for a whole
National Portrait Gallery. The great Lord Shaftesbury, his gigantic
stature towering above all others, the solemn gravity of his rather
melancholy countenance relieved by its goodness and loving kindness. His
wife, Lady Palmerston’s eldest daughter, still beautiful in spite of her
handsome family of grown-up sons and daughters; her sister, Lady Jocelyn,
irresistibly fascinating; Lord John Russell’s diminutive figure, with
pinched, eager features, reminding one of Holbein’s portrait of Erasmus,
the divine begging-letter writer; Lord Clarendon, sunny and handsome, as
radiant and eager as if he had not all his life been a martyr to gout and
the affairs of State—both poison; Delane, the Jupiter of the _Times_,
burly and genial, compeller of men; Borthwick, of the _Morning Post_,
who achieved the feat of writing for the _Owl_ a letter signed by the
French Emperor of such apparent authenticity that the Emperor actually
contradicted it. Laurence Oliphant, a mystic in lavender kid gloves, full
of spiritualism, strange creeds, and skits upon Society; Macaulay, a
whirlwind of talk and knowledge; Lord Sherbrooke, that wonderful Albino
blinking out of his pink, almost blind eyes, delighting everybody with
his conversation and himself with the belief that his chief joy was
in the contemplation of beautiful scenery which, alas! he never saw.
The Duke of Newcastle, red and bearded; Mr. Gladstone; Disraeli—for
the drawing-room at Cambridge House was a neutral territory, on which
foes might meet in pseudo amity. Quin, the great homœopath, dealing in
allopathic doses only where wit and fun and good, kindly humour were
concerned. Bernal Osborne, always brilliant; Alfred Montgomery, one of
the very few remaining bright satellites of the firmament in which Lady
Blessington and D’Orsay shone as the chief stars; Charles Villiers, a
host in himself; Charles Greville, the writer of the famous memoirs; and
how many others!
But why go on making a sort of _Morning Post_ list of the famous men
of those days! Of some of them I shall speak later. What a dream of
Fair Women! The Duchess of Manchester—like the lovely Gunning, twice
a Duchess—then in the heyday of her beautiful youth; Lady Constance
Grosvenor, with the majesty of a Juno and the smile of a Hebe; Mrs. Dick
Bulkeley, who looked as if she had sat for Millais’ “Cinderella” and
had come straight out of fairy-land; Lady Mary Craven, the very type of
lovely English womanhood bursting from bud into bloom; Baroness Alphonse
de Rothschild, with liquid almond-shaped eyes, and the sweet complexion
of a tea-rose, and how many more!
How well I remember another beauty walking up that staircase; Greuze’s
Crûche Cassée in person, a frightened child of seventeen, with great,
wondering eyes new to the world which one day she was to command! Among
the elder women notable were the three glorious Sheridan sisters, Mrs.
Norton, to look upon whom was a joy, to talk with her an education. Lady
Dufferin, who seemed to be an incarnation of one of her own poems:
“Oh! Bay of Dublin, my heart your troublin’,
Your beauty haunts me like a fever dream,”
and the Duchess of Somerset, the lovely Queen of the Eglinton Tournament,
whose witty sayings ran round the town like a veritable _feu follet_.
Of course the very pick of the diplomatic body was represented. Count
Apponyi, the Austrian ambassador, a grand representative of the proud
Hungarian noblesse—his wife, a Russian by birth, great amongst great
ladies; the Persignys, he the close and well-beloved friend of Louis
Napoléon, and his wife—a delightful madcap—a grand-daughter of Marshal
Ney—the _brave des braves_—were the most popular of the Ambassadors.
D’Azeglio, tall, handsome and rather pompous, the intimate friend of
the Shaftesburys, was always a marked figure. Count Nicholas Pahlen,
brother of the hero of the conspiracy against the Emperor Paul in 1801—a
man of great stature, though bowed by age, pale, stony-eyed and rather
grim-looking, with a most surprising knowledge of the family histories
of all Europe, must be famous for having, though a foreigner, by his
influence forbidden smoking in the morning-room of the St. James’s Club
for something like a quarter of a century—indeed, so long as he lived.
Another great character was old Count Sztreletzki—a great traveller,
diner-out and raconteur. He had a capital story which he used to tell,
interlarded, as all his talk was, with little jerky “H’m! H’m’s!” given
in what the Chinese call the “rising tone,” about the Duc de Malakoff who
preceded the Duc de Persigny’s second appointment as French Ambassador.
The grumpy, coarse old warrior had been invited to Strathfieldsaye in
September for partridge shooting. In a field bordering a wood a number
of cock pheasants were strutting about in all the confidence of a close
month. This was too much for the Marshal, who was immediately seized with
an uncontrollable desire to slay one. The Duke of Wellington consulted
Smith the keeper, who opined that “We might put it down in the book as
a partridge.” So the Marshal stalked an old cock on the ground, blazed
and missed him—fired a second time and wounded the bird, who tried to
run away, but the ambassador rushed after him, caught him and dashed his
brains out against a tree, crying out, “Enfin, brigand! je te tiens!”
“That,” said the Duke to Smith, as they were watching the achievement,
“is the great Field-Marshal Duke of Malakoff, who smoked out four hundred
Arabs in a cavern in Algeria.” “Well, your grace,” answered the keeper
contemptuously, “a man who would treat a cock-pheasant like that, and in
September too, there is no saying what he might not do to a Arab.”
As I write, the ghosts of bygone days rise up before me. The ghosts
of men who were wise and great and noble; the ghosts of women who
fulfilled their mission in life by being supremely beautiful, gracious,
and attractive. That was the secret of their power—of their influence;
invested with those regalia they ruled their world.
Of literary or artistic society at Lady Palmerston’s Saturdays there were
scarcely any representatives; indeed, Dicky Doyle, and Monckton Milnes,
afterwards Lord Houghton, were almost alone. Lord Lytton was there, but
rather like Macaulay, because he was a statesman, than on account of his
success in Letters. And yet there were great men at that time—Carlyle,
Thackeray, and Dickens, Tennyson and Browning, were the kings of
book-land, but they had to be sought elsewhere. Little Holland House,
where the Prinseps and Watts ruled the roast, was a better covert to draw
for the priests of Apollo and the Muses than Cambridge House.
Another lady whose salon in Carlton Gardens was famous, was Frances,
Lady Waldegrave. Her theatricals and her gatherings attracted the best
of London. She was a capital actress, and always managed to collect a
good company in support of her own talent. Her brother, Mr. Braham, was
stage manager. I was the _jeune premier_. At Strawberry Hill she gave
delightful, almost historic dinners, which often ended in being moonlit
garden parties, where the guests would wander in a midsummer night’s
dream, until the first glimmer of dawn reminded them that they were some
miles from home and that even fairies must be flitting back from the
poetry of flirtation under the stars to the prose of daylight.
There can be few matters in which custom, or fashion, has veered round
more completely than it has done in the matter of tobacco during my
life-time. The Foreign Office was when I entered it the only public
department in which smoking was allowed. That was a legacy from Lord
Clarendon, who, an inveterate smoker himself, was far too kindly to
inflict upon his subordinates what would have been a cruel privation to
himself, so we smoked at our work, but the other departments, and the
public in general, looked rather askance upon us for the privilege, for
smoking was considered to be the outward and visible sign of idleness and
incompetence. Smoking in the streets or in the Park was a thing not to be
dreamt of. To carry a cigar in Pall Mall or St. James’s Street would have
caused a man to be classed as “an unredeemed cad.”
Bulwer’s “My Novel” is not much read now, I fancy, and more’s the pity,
for it gives a rare picture of what it calls in its sub-title the
“varieties in English life” during the early fifties. It was published in
1852. Harley L’Estrange, coming back from abroad, goes for a stroll with
his dog in Hyde Park in the evening. He throws himself upon a bench under
a tree. “‘Half-past eight,’ said he, looking at his watch, ‘one may smoke
one’s cigar without shocking the world. It is the most barefaced lie in
the world, my Nero,’ said he, addressing his dog, ‘this boasted liberty
of man! Now here am I, a freeborn Englishman, a citizen of the world,
caring—I often say to myself—caring not a jot for Kaiser or mob; and yet
I no more dare smoke this cigar in the Park at half-past six, when all
the world is abroad, than I dare pick my Lord Chancellor’s pocket, or hit
the Archbishop of Canterbury a thump on the nose.’” So much for smoking
in London. In country houses we were badly off indeed. When the ladies
left the drawing-room, the men who wished to smoke were sent down to the
kitchen or the servants’ hall, to fight the rival perfumes of beer, tepid
beef, cheese and onions.
The banishment of cigars from the statelier rooms once led to my turning
a chance acquaintance into something like a friendship. Sir William
Middleton, a grand gentleman of the old school, gave a party at his
beautiful place, Shrubland, in Suffolk, in honour of the Duke and Duchess
d’Aumale. The gardens were exquisitely beautiful, the house comfort
itself, the cook an artist of high repute, but there was no smoking-room.
The Duke was a confirmed smoker, and, strange to say, I alone in all that
large party was able to keep him company. We were sent off—not to the
kitchen, for in his case that would never have done—but to some remote
turret, whence it was hoped that no noxious fumes might penetrate the
rest of the house, and there we sat and smoked till the small hours.
The Duke was the best of company, telling stories of his old campaigns
against Abd el Kader in Algeria and humming snatches of the songs with
which the piou-pious were wont to enliven the night round the camp-fire.
He had all the verve and dash of the French soldier, combined with vast
stores of learning and a fund of ready wit. How the French army loved
him! How they delighted in his _esprit Gaulois_! How they revelled in
the story of his marching through Burgundy, and coming to a vineclad
slope, asking what vineyard it was. “The Clos de Vougeot” was the answer.
Out rang the word of command: “Halt! Front! Present arms!” Had the Duc
d’Aumale been the eldest son of Louis Philippe, it might have made a
difference in the history of France.
Sir William Middleton was a great character, famous for his gardens, in
days when gardening was less the fashion than it is now, and for his
wigs, innocent frauds which deceived no one, except, perhaps, himself. He
had a wig for every day of the month graduated in length. On the 31st of
the month he went into Ipswich wearing the longest wig and came out again
wearing the shortest—he had been to have his hair cut. One night there
was a great dinner at Sir Anthony de Rothschild’s “to have the honour
of meeting” a royal personage. It was a man’s dinner, and Sir William
Middleton was sitting next to Mr. Bernal Osborne, who was as bald as a
billiard-ball. In handing round some dish one of the gorgeously-liveried
footmen caught Sir William’s wig in his aiguillette or a button: off came
the wig. The unhappy footman lost his wits, and seeing two bald heads,
crammed down the wig on the wrong one. B. O., as he was affectionately
called, was delighted, and roared with laughter. To Sir William it was a
tragedy.