SOCIETY JOURNALISM
“Sassiaty is Sassiaty: its lors ar irresistibl.”—_Yellowplush
Papers_.
SOCIETY journalism had been founded just before I began to earn a “living
wage” in Fleet Street, but its development and popularity were items of
later history. The ball was set rolling by Mr. Thomas Gibson Bowles—to
become known in other times as the intractable Conservative Member of
Parliament, and the beloved “Tommy” Bowles of the man in the street. The
familiar sobriquet only got into print after Bowles captured King’s Lynn
in the Tory interest, but he was called by that playful diminutive long
before he entered the House of Commons, although he himself was probably
unaware, as he would certainly resent, the fact. Pottinger Stephens
bestowed upon him the familiar name, and in Fleet Street and the Strand
he was always known to his Press contemporaries as “Tommy.”
That this gentleman should have turned Liberal in his old age, and that
he should have captured his ancient Conservative stronghold in Lynn for
the Rads, will not seem at all extraordinary to those who are a little
behind the scenes. Those who accomplish a great deal for their party
naturally expect that their party will do a little for them, provided
they possess the necessary qualifications. Tommy certainly had the
qualifications, and it is equally certain that he “put in” a lot of good
work for the Tories; but he was never a _persona grata_ with his leaders.
The Conservatives are rather stupid on matters of birth and parentage,
and Bowles did not come up to their standards. Having fought and lost
two elections “on his own,” the party sent him down to a forlorn hope at
Lynn. To their surprise and disgust he won the seat. For years he
served the Tories loyally in Parliament, but when there came a division
of loaves and fishes, Bowles was invariably left out of the reckoning.
In the last Parliament in which he sat on the Conservative benches, he
fell foul of his party, and personally attacked his hereditary leaders.
From his place he alluded to the Salisbury administration as “the Hôtel
Cecil,” and described the Front Bench as “a gallery of family portraits.”
Bowles acquired his knowledge of journalism and his respect for the
conventions of Society on the _Morning Post_. He had started life, I
believe, in Somerset House, which was just over the way, and he became
imbued with the notion—a very profitable notion, as it turned out—that a
paper chiefly devoted to the “hupper suckles,” written in their
interests, and employing what he used to call “the passwords of Society,”
should be a financial success. To what extent (at that period) Bowles
was in Society, or how he obtained a knowledge of its passwords, or what
those cryptic passwords were, I have never been able to find out; but, as
one astute editorial admonition is “Know what you don’t know!” those same
passwords may have been part of a pleasant myth.
His paper was duly launched at the price of twopence, and under the
admirable title of _Vanity Fair_. But the paper, smartly and even
wittily written as it was, would have failed to reach the somewhat
inaccessible class for which its founder proposed to cater had it not
been for his discovery of Pellegrini, and the appearance in _Vanity Fair_
of that Italian artist’s inimitable cartoons. The price was raised to
sixpence, the paper hit those remote circles for which it had been
destined, “Tommy’s” career was assured, and Society journalism was
established in our midst.
A tremendous number of imitators have sprung up from time to time—“they
had their day, and ceased to be”—but there were only two other
publications that enjoyed permanent success; and those two, with the
first Society organ founded by Mr. Bowles, constituted, and still
constitute, what is understood as Society journalism. The second paper
in the trio was _The World_, founded by Edmund Yates; and the third was
_Truth_, established by Henry Labouchere. I was fortunate enough to
write for all three; for two of them I have written voluminously.
Bowles used to aver that he had no staff. He wrote a great deal of the
paper himself, and his “Jehu Junior” articles, written to accompany the
cartoons, were models of what essays should be. Light, epigrammatic,
pungent, and excessively neat, they were the one possible accompaniment
to “Ape’s” caricatures. A sentence from the “Jehu Junior” article always
appeared beneath the picture. I can recall a couple. Beneath the first
picture of Disraeli was inscribed: “He educated his party, and dished the
Whigs to pass Reform, but to have become what he is from what he was is
the greatest reform of all.” When Bishop Magee made his great speech in
the House of Lords in defence of the Irish Church, his likeness appeared
in the _Vanity Fair_ gallery, and it had appended to it this extract from
the article by Bowles: “If eloquence could justify injustice, he would
have saved the Irish Church.” And the output of the able little editor
was always up to sample.
Although Bowles professed to conduct his paper without the aid of a
staff, he engaged regular contributors, which is pretty much the same
thing. These gentlemen were never consulted in a body. “Collectivity”
was never “pretty Fanny’s way,” as the Tory party, too late, discovered.
But individual members of the body of contributors were occasionally
summoned to meet their editor and proprietor at his chambers. When I was
first ushered into the august presence, Bowles had rooms in Palace
Chambers, at the corner of St. James’s Street, over against the Palace
itself. He had just commenced his yachting career at that period, and
adopted the mariner’s pose ashore to the extent of receiving you in his
bare feet—to give the impression, I suppose, of rolling seas and a
slippery deck.
But if one did not meet one’s confreres in the rooms of the editor, we
were bound to encounter in the outer world—perhaps at the printer’s or
elsewhere. The printer was Peter Rankin, of Drury Court—a dour and
adventurous Scot who, having conveyed a newspaper by means of
registration from its rightful owner, continued the management of the
property on his own account. He had not the success which usually
attends these Napoleonic sportsmen in the Street of Adventure. He came
to grief and death, and nobody seemed to care. At his printing-offices I
met for the first time Willmott Dixon, then a contributor under the
Bowles banner. Dixon was at that time a fresh-coloured, stout,
broad-shouldered man with an indomitably sweet temper which indicated its
permanence in a dimple in the cheek.
Willmott Dixon had brought into Fleet Street with him much of the
ebullient spirit and readiness for practical fun for which he was noted
at Cambridge in his undergraduate days. Bon-vivant, raconteur, and
essentially good fellow, he was in general demand as a companion. After
the days of our _Vanity_, I was associated with Dixon on many other
papers, for he had the pen of a ready writer, and was in considerable
demand. Of all the men I have known, he was the quickest producer of
“copy,” and he seemed capable of coming up with his tale of work under
any and all conditions. His sporting articles and stories under the _nom
de plume_ of “Thormanby” are well known, and his accounts of the old
prize-fights are the best ever written. The amount of “copy” produced by
Dixon would equal that of any three ordinary journalists, taking a period
of years in the productive stage of each. But why should I speak of
Willmott Dixon in the past tense? He is now a hale young fellow of
seventy, and within the last few years he has published three successful
novels under his own name, one collection of sporting stories under his
_nom de plume_ of “Thormanby,” and an autobiography entitled “The Spice
of Life.” This is the sort of veteran whom Mr. Philip Gibbs should take
down Fleet Street with him one fine day, with the idea of presenting him
to the young gentlemen who weep and have hysterics when a newspaper
happens to put up the shutters. Very few, I imagine, of the invertebrate
Press gang of the period will be writing saleable novels at seventy!
Henry Pottinger Stephens, another of _Vanity’s_ regular contributors, I
first met at the office of the publisher. We were both there on the same
errand, I believe, stalking an oof bird. Stephens had just returned from
Paris, where he had been acting as one of the correspondents of the
_Times_. He also was to be my associate in other papers, my companion in
other adventures. To these I may recur in another chapter.
At what date it was I forget, but in the early eighties Bowles sold the
paper to Arthur Evans. The price was, I think, £20,000. With this
Bowles started the _Lady_, which, if not perhaps quite his own line of
country, promised a bigger income than would ever be obtainable from his
original venture. Under the new regime I continued to contribute. The
proprietor confined his attention to the City article. The literary part
of the paper was under Mr. Oliver Fry. From the time of the founding of
_Vanity Fair_ until its purchase half a dozen years ago by the
Harmsworths—a period of, say, forty years—it had but two editors. Thus,
the traditions of the paper were regarded, its tone and policy were
continuous, and it retained in consequence its old subscribers and its
old advertisers. An editorial chair held in forty years by two editors
in succession marks a record. There were several editors during the
Harmsworth epoch. But the new atmosphere did not seem to suit the old
growth. It was sold again. The cartoons have always been the mainstay
and chief attraction of _Vanity Fair_. When dear old Pellegrini died,
Bowles had discovered an accomplished successor in “Spy.” Over this name
Mr. Leslie Ward drew almost continuously for the paper for many years.
Indeed, his work has appeared there up to a comparatively recent date.
When Edmund Yates founded the _World_, a departure in Society journalism
was made. The new candidate for popular favour was to depend on its
writing alone for its success. Yates had no misgivings about the
propriety of engaging a staff. Bowles always held himself aloof from,
and socially superior to, the Fleet Street man. Yates had been a Fleet
Street man himself, and was unlikely to make that mistake. He liked to
meet his contributors socially. He was at one with them. And they had
an immense liking for their chief. For, although Yates was as savage as
a Mohawk when he “went for” his enemies, he was devoted to his friends.
Not infrequently, in the journalistic world, you will come upon
soft-hearted sayers of hard-hearted things. Yates was a man of that
sort. Warm in his friendships, genial in his manner, sympathetic to the
tyro, he was out for scalps the moment he scented a hint of offence—it
mattered not whether the offence was intended for him or for one of his
friends.
In the inception of his “Journal for Men and Women,” Yates had the
assistance of Henry Labouchere and Grenville Murray. And among the
principal writers engaged to support the new venture were Bernard Becker,
Henry Pearse, Dutton Cook, and Christie Murray. A. M. Broadley did not
join till later on, I think; though when he did join he proved himself
extremely useful in picking up those Society items upon which the _World_
depended very much in the effort to prove acceptable to the “classes.”
Yates liked to have about him as staff officers men of goodly presence,
gentlemanly address. And he had a horror of anything soiled or slovenly
in the attire of his contributors. This latter characteristic of the
_World’s_ editor accounted for the engagement of lady journalists. It
was, indeed, the paragraph of one of his women contributors that involved
him in the criminal libel suit brought by Lord Lonsdale, resulting in the
incarceration of Yates in Holloway—a severe punishment in respect of a
stupid little paragraph, and a punishment the effects of which Yates
carried with him to his dying day. There was one of the contributors who
scarcely came up to the standard of physique which the editor regarded as
desirable. This was Mr. (now Sir) H. W. Lucy. Yates gave that gentleman
his first great chance of showing his paces as an independent descriptive
reporter of proceedings in the House of Commons. Lucy’s weekly
contribution was entitled “Under the Clock, by one of the Hands.” The
title was supplied by the chief.
Lucy was a smart little fellow of tremendous industry and always
conscious of his own ability to make his way in the world. His hair,
turning grey even in that far-off time, stood up like the quills of the
porcupine. He always gave you the impression of a man who had suddenly
waked up in a fright. And the expression that seemed his normal one was
that of a gentle surprise. He became, at another stage in his successful
career, associated with a little Irishman—Mr. Harry Furniss—an artist for
some time connected with _Punch_. It was a very quaint sight to see the
two little chaps pottering through an art gallery in search of subjects
for their merciless ridicule. Furniss, red-headed and rotund of paunch,
looking like a sort of duodecimo edition of a City Alderman, whispered
his jokes to his companion, accompanying the witticisms with an engaging
smile, Lucy accepting them with his habitual look of gentle wonder.
Yates himself wrote the neatest, most scintillating, and most readable
paragraphs of any man who has ever essayed that extraordinarily difficult
art. But neither the appeal to Society, nor the descriptive pictures of
Parliament, nor the now sparkling and now vitriolic paragraphs of the
editor, brought on that happy event which is known in the newspaper world
as “turning the corner.” That is the happy moment when the paper becomes
increased in circulation, and advertising returns to the point at which
it pays. It is always the unexpected that happens, and the contributions
which raised the _World_ from the commercial Slough of Despond were a
remarkable series of articles on “West End Usurers,” attributed to Mr.
Henry Labouchere. As a matter of fact, however, the material was
collected by several persons, and I understood at the time that the
proofs were submitted to Sir George Lewis before they were passed for the
press.
Judging from the style in which some of them were written, concerning men
notoriously wealthy, their filtration through Ely Place was an entirely
necessary proceeding. When the victim was unlikely to resent attack or
attempt reprisals, the onset was at times very warm indeed. Poor Hubert
Jay Maurice was one of these latter. One never knew what the dapper
gentleman’s real name was—probably Moses. He had been known as Mr. Jay
and as Mr. Maurice. And he ended his days as Mr. Didcot, a music-hall
agent, having succeeded in giving his only daughter in marriage to the
cadet of a noble house. The Didcot article appeared during Christmas
week, and ended with the pregnant sentence: “Indeed, this young man’s
career has been so shameless that at this festive season of the year we
will not ask our compositors to set it up in print.”
The success of the _World_ once secured, the circulation went up by leaps
and bounds, and Mr. Labouchere, quick to appreciate the effect of his own
suggestion, and willing to secure for himself the profits to be made by
exhibiting and denouncing the evil that is in the world, soon determined
to run a paper of his own. This was _Truth_, the third in the triad of
publications that made good a claim to the title of Society journals.
Labouchere went to work very carefully and systematically in founding the
journal which will always be associated with his name—a journal, it
should be at once admitted, which, while it did much in the way of airing
personal dislikes, did much more in ridding Society of pests and
parasites, of swindlers and charlatans, than any other journal of our
time.
My friend Robert Williams was consulted concerning the founding of the
new paper. And from him I used to hear how matters were progressing.
From him, for example, I learned that Mr. Horace Voules, of the _Echo_,
had accepted the position of manager to the new venture. Voules always
reminded me of the description of another Mr. Vholes as described in
“Bleak House.” You recall the passage, perhaps? “If you want
common-sense, responsibility, respectability, all united—Vholes is _the_
man!” Williams was fond of telling a story of the interview between
Labouchere and Voules at the time of the engagement. The story was _ben
trovato_. But my own subsequent acquaintance with Mr. Voules convinced
me that there was not any element of fact in it. The dialogue as
reported by “Bobbos” ran thus:
LABOUCHERE: “I understand, Mr. Voules, that, in dealing with the outside
public, you are apt to be rather haughty in your manner?”
VOULES: “Indeed!”
LABOUCHERE: “Now, in your interviews with my little public, I desire that
you will tone yourself down a little toward their level.”
VOULES (_bridling_, _but dignified_): “Mr. Labouchere, ’aughty I never
ham; but I ’ope I ’ave a proper pride.”
I can testify personally that, when I knew him, Horace Voules was
perfectly sound in the matter of his aspirates. To me, indeed, he
appeared to be over-solicitous about them.
No sooner had “Labby,” as he began to be called, got his venture
launched, than he opened an attack on the owners of the _Daily Telegraph_
in the most systematic, sustained, and unrelenting vein of personal
journalism. Mr. Labouchere’s memoirs, which are in hand, may perhaps
relate that old story. It is no business of mine to stir up the puddle.
Man of the world, politician, diplomatist, cool-headed as Labouchere had
always proved himself, he here undoubtedly permitted himself to be
betrayed into a series of libels on an old friend, which were in no way
creditable to him. His attacks thereafter were legitimate crusades
against the undetected jackals who prey on the public. And the public is
considerably in his debt in respect of them. While as to his more
piquant and personal libels, it must be reluctantly admitted that their
appearance and the circumstances which resulted from them added
considerably to the jocundity of those Fleet Street days.
There were quite a number of stories current then as illustrating the
delightful insouciance of Labouchere. Here are four of them:
When he was in the diplomatic service, he was sent on a mission to St.
Petersburg. Before starting he had a dispute with the Foreign Office
about his expenses. F.O. had its idea of the scale; Labouchere had his.
But the Office refused to reconsider its decision. Labouchere took his
leave, crossed the Channel, and was, to all appearance, lost. A week
after the appointed time he had not arrived at St. Petersburg. A
representative of F.O. was sent out on his trail. He was traced to
Paris, and from thence to Vienna, where he was run to earth. In reply to
his discoverer, he coolly said:
“The Foreign Office refused to pay me my expenses, and _I’m walking to
St. Petersburg_.”
He was at one time Attaché at our Embassy in Washington. The Minister
was suddenly recalled to London, and Labouchere was left in charge. On
the morning following the departure of the Ambassador, one of the members
of the United States Government called. “Minister in?” he inquired
curtly of Labouchere. “Not in,” replied Labby, lighting a cigarette.
“Guess I’ll call again,” said the big politician. “Ah, do!” said
Labouchere sweetly. An hour afterwards the same Great Man again put in
an appearance. “Minister in yet?” he inquired sharply. “Not yet,”
answered Labouchere from behind the paper which he was reading. “Can you
give me any idea when he _will_ be back?” asked the important senator
impatiently. “I haven’t the remotest idea: _he sailed for Europe
yesterday_,” was the soft answer not altogether calculated to turn away
wrath.
When he stood for Northampton, Labouchere’s colleague was Charles
Bradlaugh, who frankly avowed his atheism to the shoemakers and other
horny-handed artisans who were his supporters. Now, Labouchere, who was
an old campaigner, knew that the Liberals of the constituency would not
stand _two_ atheists. The moment his address was circulated, the
Nonconformists took fright, and, although religious topics were
altogether absent from the astute candidate’s pronunciamento, eager
Dissent sniffed heterodoxy in every line of it. Labouchere thereupon sat
down and wrote an autograph letter to every Nonconformist divine, on the
register and off it, asking each of them to meet him, and for the purpose
of discussing those topics which all good Liberals hold dear. He hired
the biggest room in his hotel. He had a line of chairs drawn up in
uncompromising rows along the two principal side-walls. At the end of
the room was a table with a tumbler and a carafe of water. Lying
promiscuously around were copies of the _Daily News_ and the _Christian
World_. The invited ministers turned up to a man. The candidate’s agent
met them and conducted them, with every demonstration of respect, to the
seats allotted to them. When Labouchere, waiting in an ante-chamber, was
informed that they were all come, he entered the room. He bowed right
and left, a sad smile on his lips, a black suit enveloping his person,
and a general air of Chadband emanating from all parts of him. He took
his place behind the table, poured out a tumbler of water, drank it down
with all the gusto of one who thoroughly enjoyed it, and forthwith
addressed his sad audience.
“My reverend friends,” he began, “I have invited you to meet me in order
that we may interchange views on those topics which are of first-class
importance to Liberals, and more especially to Liberals attached to the
great, influential Nonconforming bodies. But before proceeding to the
consideration of mere worldly matters, I shall ask the Reverend Mr.
So-and-So to engage in a few words of prayer, beseeching the Lord’s
blessing on our deliberations.”
That did the trick for him at Northampton.
“That gentleman an atheist!” said the Reverend Mr. So-and-So to a friend
as they left the hotel. “He’s the first political candidate I ever knew
to ask the Divine guidance in his campaign. He shall have my vote and
my—er—little influence.”
Those who know anything about the depth of Labouchere’s religious
feelings and the extent of his personal affection for Dissenters will
best appreciate the humour of the situation.
When Labouchere was member for Middlesex—that was long before the
Northampton days—the Lord Taunton who sat in the Upper House was his
uncle. A member of the House of Commons who had mistaken the
relationship addressed Labouchere one day on the Lobby.
“Ah, Labouchere,” he said, “I’ve just been in the other House, and I
heard your father deliver a most admirable address.”
“I’m more than pleased to hear it,” said Labby; “for my father has been
dead these ten years, and until the present moment I never knew where he
had got to!”
Between Labouchere on _Truth_ and Yates on the _World_ there commenced a
species of “snacking” or sparring which promised from time to time a rush
into active and bitter hostilities. The paragraphs of one paper bristled
with allusions to the slips of “Edmund,” and the other paper retorted
racily on “Henry,” and we all looked out eagerly for an outbreak of real
hostility; but it never came. The doughty champions both feared and
respected each other, and they expended any gall which they may have
secreted during their meditations on other victims. The papers still
adhere pretty nearly to the lines laid down by their founders, though
lacking the personal supervision of those distinguished editors. Yates
died suddenly—tragically—on leaving the stalls of a theatre, and
Labouchere, abandoning both the senate and the editorial seat, retired to
Florence, where he recently died. The memoirs of “Labby” should be a
stimulating and piquant collection.
The complete success of the three papers about which I have been writing
naturally provoked a considerable amount of the sincerest form of
flattery, and imitators sprang up like mushrooms, willing to share the
rewards apparently reserved for those who catered for Society. These
misguided adventurers discovered too late that even a Society editor must
have his aptitudes—his special qualifications. Some of the new
candidates for popular favour died the death. Others of them—dumb
witnesses to that hope that “springs eternal in the human breast”—never
in their lives arrived at paying-point, yet exist to this day. They pass
from proprietor to proprietor. No one ever hears at what price they
change hands. No one ever sees a copy sold on a stall. There is no
trace of their existence in the clubs. Now and then one comes upon a
back number in the coffee-room of an hotel. They are the pathetic
derelicts of the Press—the pariahs of journalism. They persist by reason
of their absolute badness. Their persistence recalls the inference set
forth in the lines of Henry S. Leigh’s verses about Uncle John:
“If Uncle John goes living on,
How wicked Uncle John must be!”
It is amusing to note how proprietors, editors, and contributors, will
differ as to the motive power which has given the first substantial rise
in circulation. Voules always held—he has told me so a dozen times—that
the success of _Truth_ was brought about by the fashion articles of
“Madge.” And Lucy of the _World_ became possessed by the belief that the
popularity of the Yates venture was partly due to the appearance therein
of his articles from the gallery of the House of Commons. He determined
to establish a paper on the lines laid down by Yates. And his leading
article was to be his own series, entitled “Under the Clock, by One of
the Hands.”
Lucy selected _Mayfair_ as the name of the venture on which he was about
to embark. There should be no mistake about his _title_ to rank as a
Society journalist. In that matter he could ruffle it with the best of
them. He was, however, beset with difficulties from the beginning. In
the first place—to his immense surprise and disgust—he found that Yates
entirely declined to abandon his right in the heading of the
Parliamentary articles, which continued to appear, from another “Hand,”
until long after the death and burial of Lucy’s bantling.
Lucy found certain members of the staff of _Mayfair_ intractable; the
intractable aids declared that they found things impossible. And no one
was greatly surprised when the new purveyor of social wares put the
shutters up. Incidentally, Mr. Lucy’s paper was the means of enriching
that harvest of English literature which is garnered by Mudie. It led to
the publication of a couple of novels. In one of these works Mr. Lucy
drew a character which was instantly recognized as a portrait of Mr.
Christie Murray. Murray had been one of the intractables on the strength
of the _Mayfair_. Christie was not only impatient of attack, but he was
very well equipped for hitting back, which in due course he proceeded to
do. Anyone interested in the literary amenities of the jocund days may
find some diversion in referring to Christie Murray’s “The Way of the
World.” Such merry jousts are inadmissible in these less strenuous
times.
A much longer period of existence was granted to the _St. Stephen’s
Review_, founded by Mr. William Alison. In the editorial scheme, this
organ was to play Parliamentary measures—so to speak—in addition to its
piping for Society. Its political cartoons by Tom Merry did good service
on more than one electoral campaign. Alison was a member of the Junior
Carlton Club, so that it is needless to indicate the policy for which his
paper stood. Alison had chosen for his sub-editor one of the strangest
of the strange persons who crowd the journalistic mart. His name was
William Tasker. He wrote vapid verses and slushy prose by the ream, over
the name of “Edgar Lee.” But if his literary output was of a middling
sort, his lying was first-rate. He had become so much the servant of the
habit that he often believed his own stories. Alison never contradicted
him, and so the faculty increased, and the facility acquired by the
little professor became quite marvellous. He was an extremely
ill-dressed man, and grew the mutton-chop face fungi for which Frank
Richardson affects such a distaste. He always wore a red tie, and it was
always a soiled one. A bland, propitiatory smile played about the
corners of his mouth. He would rush up to one in the Strand with this
sort of news: “I’ve just been to Downing Street, and Disraeli told
me—this is quite private, mind you—that he’ll go to the country in June.”
The reply might be: “Hang it all! I’ve just left the House of Commons.
Dizzy is on his feet, and has been for the last three-quarters of an
hour.” But that sort of facer never disturbed Tasker. He would shake
his head and smile a deprecatory smile, as he answered: “Optical
illusion, my dear fellow. I tell you I’ve just left him in Downing
Street. I mentioned your name to him, and he said: ‘Sound man that; give
him my regards.’ And I said I would, and so I have.” I have heard him
tell, with every detail, of his sprinting prowess. He could not run
fifty yards. And he would descant on his success on the race-course, who
did not know the meaning of a handicap. He survived for some years the
passing of the journal with which he was associated. These he devoted to
palmistry, astrology, and other wizard sciences, the profession of which,
to a scientist knowing how to advertise—and where—may, even in these
advanced days, yield a living of sorts.
But the surpassing claim of the _St. Stephen’s Review_ to the respectful
regard of posterity is the fact that it introduced Phil May to the
British public. A Bohemian of Bohemians was Phil May when he was
discovered, and a Bohemian of Bohemians he continued to the end—the all
too early end. When he began to contribute to Alison’s paper, he was
engaged in designing dresses for Alias the costumier. Alias had some
funny stories about the difficulty he experienced in keeping Phil at his
work. One day he arrived at the office having come through a heavy
shower of rain. His boots, coat, and hat, were soaked. The humane
little employer fussed about, induced him to remove his boots and coat,
and provided him with slippers and a studio jacket. “I shall ’ave them
dried,” he explained as he hurried off. The dear little chap, however,
locked them up, assured that Phil May would not venture abroad without
his boots and coat and hat. The hour was eleven of the forenoon. The
programme of Alias was to hurry off, see his customers at one or two
theatres, and return about one o’clock and take Phil—who he hoped would
then have made several good designs—out to lunch. Passing Romano’s, he
thought he would turn in and take a liqueur of brandy. He entered.
There were shouts of laughter at the end of the bar. In the midst of an
admiring crowd of “the boys” stood Phil May, fully attired in the
costumier’s stock. He wore red Hessian boots to beyond his knees. On
his head was the shako of a gendarme, and his slim figure was enveloped
in a brigand cloak built for a big man. Of course the designs of the
dresses had not been touched.
“I came here to see if they had got my boots,” Phil explained to the
exasperated costumier. “Will you take anything?”
“I vill take YOU!” replied the little man, leading his designer into the
Strand, where they were followed to the shop by a delighted crowd of
urchins, who were divided in opinion as to whether the thin gentleman in
costume was “Awthur Roberts” or “’Enery Hirving.”
When Phil had “come into his own,” when he was the favourite artist on
_Punch_—favourite of the public, that is to say—he continued in the
Bohemian courses which he had acquired in the lean and struggling years.
At one time he was ordered horse exercise; and when he got the horse, it
was thought, by the authorities at home, that it would be an excellent
idea for Phil if he went into Fleet Street on horseback when business
took him that way. This, it was thought, would insure his safe and early
return to the domestic hearth. It answered well—for a bit. But one
afternoon Phil was riding home from Fleet Street to his house in
Kensington, and in passing through Leicester Square, thought that he
would drop in at the “Cosy Club,” a small club then recently founded. He
gave his horse in charge of an urchin to hold for him. It was then four
in the afternoon. At two o’clock in the morning a police constable
entered the club to inquire whether one of the members had left a horse
in charge of a boy outside. The secretary remembered that May was the
proud possessor of a steed. But May had left the club at midnight. He
had forgotten all about his horse, and had driven home in a hansom.
Of the making of penny Society papers there was no end. But of those
papers themselves there was generally an early end, and of these one may
more conveniently treat in the chapter “De Mortuis.”