MINE EASE AT MINE INN
PEOPLE have short memories—particularly in the matter of benefits
received. To-day, for instance, it is the usual and the correct thing to
credit the London County Council with all that has been accomplished for
the beautification of London during recent years. Yet the two greatest
improvements carried out in my time were not done by the Council at all.
The two municipal achievements to which I allude are the Holborn Viaduct,
and that magnificent boulevard, the Thames Embankment. Now, these two
enduring monuments of municipal enterprise and foresight we owe to the
old—and much-maligned—Board of Works. When I gaze dismayed on the
hideous structure at Spring Gardens, which now admits the public through
its bowels to St. James’s Park; and when, entering and traversing the
Park, I see the grim bastion that has been erected at the end of the
duck-pond, with the object, apparently, of dwarfing Buckingham Palace
into the likeness of a row of aristocratic almshouses, I wonder whether
we were not safer, when all is said and done, in the hands of the
reprobated “Board of Shirks,” as it was called by the comic papers of its
day.
Give a man beautiful surroundings, and he will begin to live up to his
environment. With the wonderful improvement effected on the face of
London by the operations of the Board, there became heard the still,
small voice of a demand for more beautiful living. The two main elements
in living, I take it, are eating and drinking. And, rightly or wrongly,
I have always synchronized the completion of the Viaduct and the
Embankment with the first noticeable advance in catering. Before that
point of departure there were in London but two restaurants of the first
class at which one could obtain a French dinner. One of these was the
Café Royal; the other was Verrey’s. Both were—and still, happily,
are—situated in Regent Street. To-day we have restaurants which quite
easily surpass in elegance and amplitude of interior the two houses I
have named, but the Café Royal still holds its own both in the matter of
cellar and of cuisine.
There were humbler retreats at which the French manner of dining might be
enjoyed. Soho was full of these small eating-houses at which the
customers might either dine _à la carte_ at a moderate cost, or eat a
dinner of the _table d’hôte_ order for eighteen pence, with half a bottle
of wine thrown in. For this you would get a _soup maigre_, a _sole au
vin blanc_, an entrée, a bit of chicken, a morsel of Brie or Camembert,
and the smallest possible collection of nuts and raisins on a Tom Thumb
plate, which was written down “dessert” on the menu. As a rule the
dinner was not half bad, and the wonder was how it could be done at the
price. Of the wine one cannot talk so enthusiastically. Charles Lever
once described a vintage which he tasted in Italy. He spoke of it as “a
pyroligneous wine, distilled from vine-stalks, and agreeable in
summer—with one’s salad.” This admirably sets forth the virtues of the
sour but ruddy products of Bordeaux which were “thrown in” by the
enterprising exiles who catered in Soho. The best of these smaller
restaurants was Kettner’s, in Church Street, close to where the Palace
Theatre now stands. It is difficult, when one enters the elegant rooms
which are now known as Kettner’s, to call up its small beginnings. Many
of its old customers cursed the day when it was “discovered” by Mr. E. S.
Dallas, of the _Times_. Dallas was a man who could not keep a secret.
Having found out what a wonderfully well-cooked dinner the little
restaurant in Church Street could supply to the customer for a very
trifling cost, he must needs go and proclaim the fact from the house-tops
of Printing House Square. All London began to flock to Church Street,
and all London was delighted to see Madame Kettner presiding as _dame du
comptoir_, and to learn that the dainty dishes provided were prepared by
Monsieur Kettner in the basement below. This influx of visitors brought
about increased accommodation, improved service, a greater luxury in the
surroundings, until Kettner’s became what it is to-day—a West End resort
with some considerable support from fashionable society.
Prices went up, too. Dallas, who had very appropriately signed his
letter to the leading journal “A Beast at Feeding-time,” could no longer
get a portion of _sole au vin blanc_ for sixpence, and the poor French
exiles who were wont to forgather in Kettner’s little dining-room in
Church Street were driven forth to seek sustenance elsewhere in the
fastnesses of Soho. I wonder what those patient old _émigrés_ would have
said concerning an incident which happened to me some few years since at
this famous restaurant? I was dining in a private room as the guest of a
man who was wanting to “do business” with me. Beside myself there was
one other guest. After dinner our host, who was a non-smoker, asked us
to have a cigar. He called the waiter. Cigars were ordered.
“Wat price, sare?” inquired the servant.
“The best you have will not be too good for my friends,” declared our
host in an expansive mood.
The cigars came—big things swathed in gold-foil. We took a cigar each,
and St. Georgi, who had married the widow Kettner and was now running the
show, came in to see how we were getting on. Him also our host asked to
have a cigar. St. Georgi complied. That made three cigars in all. At
last the time came for paying. The bill was brought in. The founder of
the feast ran his eye over it. The document was quite in order—save for
one item.
“Here, waiter, what the doose is the meaning of this fifteen shillings?”
he asked.
“Three cigars, sare,” he replied sweetly.
“Fifteen shillings!” exclaimed our non-smoking host.
“I am sorry, sare,” replied the waiter, looking very sad indeed; “_but we
have none better_!”
It was a palpable hit. Our friend joined in the laugh—and paid.
One of the most characteristic of these foreign eating-houses on English
soil was the Café l’Étoile, in one of the streets—Rupert Street, I think
it was—which run off Coventry Street, parallel to Wardour Street. This
place was one half restaurant, and one half cabaret. A door and a
passage led from the one to the other. In the restaurant the usual
eighteen-penny dinner of many courses was served, and the usual bottle of
vinegary wine was “thrown in.” The company, if not select, was at least
sedate. Your Frenchman in London is by no means as gay a creature as on
his boulevards at home. And the few English who joined him at his frugal
meal in the Café l’Étoile as a rule maintained their insular _mauvais
honte_.
But in the adjoining cabaret things were very different. Here the
bearded exiles were enveloped in such an impenetrable cloud of smoke that
they had forgotten all about their _milieu_. They had created here their
own atmosphere, so to say. And a particularly villainous atmosphere it
was—sulphurous and pestiferous. The chatter was incessant and strident.
The clatter of the dominoes on the tables, the noise of the impact of the
mugs and glasses—these mingled indistinguishably with the universal din.
In this stifling atmosphere might be encountered some of the
off-scourings of Continental cities. The political refugee, finding
security in a country that could afford to treat him with absolute
contempt, talked treason only when in his cups. Here was the practical
politician also—the dynamitard, the artificer of bombs, the professor of
the stiletto and the revolver. Scotland Yard had the dossier of every
frequenter of the Café l’Étoile duly consigned by the police authorities
of Paris, Berlin, and St. Petersburg. It was the most noisy, the most
stuffy, the hottest, the dirtiest, the most polyglot, little hell in all
London. I do not know, but I strongly suspect that a too constant
solicitude on the part of Scotland Yard led to its disappearance. Its
site is occupied by a restaurant called the West End Hotel, the reputable
successor of an unsavoury progenitor.
To William Gorman Wills I owe my introduction to most of the Soho
restaurants. Wills liked the company he found in these places, and he
liked the prices; for he was seldom well off. Money flowed from him in
all directions, so that he never had much for his own use. It was lent
or given in lumps as soon as it was received, a good deal of it finding
its way into the pockets of impostors. For Wills was a man of genius—one
of the few I have ever met—and inherited that financial incapacity which
is the birthright of men of genius. He was an artist first of all, and
had a studio in the Brompton Road, in a crescent which stood where the
Consumptive Hospital now stands. He was a musician of distinction. He
wrote a novel which would have made the reputation of any man who paid
attention to the social arts which expedite the arrival of Fame. He
will, perhaps, be still remembered by the public for his many
contributions to the stage. His “Charles I.,” produced at the Lyceum for
Irving, was one of the most poetical acting plays of the last
century—Byron, and Lytton, and Sheridan Knowles, to the contrary,
notwithstanding. In his search after French cookery he was instant. And
I remember the delight with which he took me to Charlotte Street, Fitzroy
Square, where a new café had been opened. The dining-saloon consisted of
the two ground-floor rooms of an ordinary house thrown into one. Wills
waved his arm as if to indicate to me fine spaces—like those of the
Louvre for instance.
“All the artists of the neighbourhood will dine here,” be declared with
conviction. “If we could only get old Madox Brown to come here once, he
would never go to the trouble of having dinners cooked at home!”
Madox Brown lived in Fitzroy Square, so that the convenience of the
arrangement seemed indisputable. And Charlotte Street, as well as some
other streets with long first-floor windows, was still a thoroughfare in
which artists set up their studios. The Bohemia of “The Newcomes” was
still existing north of Oxford Street when I first knew London, and when
I have visited Madox Brown in Fitzroy Square it has given me pleasure to
think that his might be the very building which was tenanted for a time
by Colonel Newcome. But if a tithe of the artists then working in that
part of the town were to demand a meal at the restaurant newly discovered
by Wills, the majority of them must have had their dinner served to them
in the street. An invasion even of the members of the Madox Brown family
would have strained the resources of the tiny place to the utmost.
At the time when Wills was making daily discoveries among the little
French eating-houses of Soho and Bloomsbury, he had few imitators in that
field of gastronomies. The Englishman still pooh-poohed the French
cuisine. He never hesitated to express his contempt for what he called
“kickshaws.” Give him a basin of mock turtle soup, a bit of boiled
turbot, a cut off the joint, and two vegetables, with apple pudding and
Stilton cheese to end up with, and he wouldn’t thank you for the finest
repast conceived by the first chef, and prepared by the most expert
assistants in Europe! There are still fine old English gentlemen who
hold this heresy; but they all held it then. The consequence is that
half the population, over fifty years of age, suffer from indigestion.
But while this most barbarous standard of dining obtained, it was
faithfully catered for by the fine old English gentleman’s staunch
admirer—the fine old English landlord. And to this day there persist a
few establishments which make it their business to supply the fine old
English dinner for the fine old English gormandizer.
In the early seventies all the hotels, and almost all the restaurants,
supplied nightly the heavy meals that then represented the national
taste. In an earlier chapter I have alluded to the Rainbow in Fleet
Street, and to the Albion in Russell Street, Covent Garden. These were
typical. Simpson’s in the Strand was run on the same lines. This was a
very famous house of its kind. I have not visited the place since it was
rebuilt during the alterations at the Savoy. But it carries on the old
tradition, I understand; that is to say, a customer can still have his
slabs of fish and his thick cuts from the joint, but he is granted an
option. He may have his food served in daintier guise. The smoking-room
at Simpson’s was a great rendezvous for men who knew good whisky and were
judges of a cigar. For the cigar divan next door to the restaurant was
really part of the concern. It was in that little smoking-room that I
first met Charles Kelly, the actor. He became the second husband of
Ellen Terry, and was one of the most charming men I have ever known. His
real name was Wardell, and he had thrown up his commission in a crack
cavalry regiment to “go on the stage.”
Simpson’s was celebrated for something beside its typical old English
fare, its excellent whisky, and its incomparable cigars. In a certain
upper chamber at Simpson’s there were accustomed to meet all the most
eminent chess-players of the day. Steinmitz and Blackmore could be found
there on most afternoons. And, although it was known in the outside
world that they could be seen without any let or hindrance on the part of
the proprietor, their privacy was never invaded. Only amateurs of the
game entered the chess-room. Your true Londoner differs in this from the
citizens of other towns: he never intrudes where he is not wanted. As to
the restaurant below, the dinner there was served in a square saloon at
the back of the building. The joints were trundled up to the customers
on “dumbwaiters” running on castors. The meal was of the usual heavy,
stodgy description. The older diners ate heartily, and, as a rule,
suffered horribly from dyspepsia. The waiters breathed hard, exhibited
signs of a bibulous habit, and possessed the largest feet of any men I
have seen either before or since.
In Covent Garden, the Tavistock, the Hummums, and the Bedford—each of
them hotels—served the same class of dinner. At these comfortable
resorts the meal was generally followed by a bottle of port, thus
insuring the achievement of that indigestion which the stodgy comestibles
may have failed to set up. The ordinary English restaurant was
supplemented by the chop-house. In the City, where quick lunching is a
desideratum, these establishments flourished exceedingly. In the West
End the most noted of them was Stone’s, in Panton Street, at that period
a thoroughfare with a bad name, but at the present time purged of its
earlier reputation. It has a theatre, some elegant restaurants, and
exhibits few signs of its squalid past. Panton Street has forsworn sack,
and lives cleanly.
But this chapter is not designed as a mere catalogue of the catering
houses, but as the rough sketch of an evolution illustrated by examples,
and illuminated here and there, I hope, by anecdotes, relevant and
irrelevant. I have sufficiently shown that the Englishman of the early
seventies, dining from home, liked to have served to him the same sort of
meal which was provided for him on Sundays in the bosom of his family.
The Café Royal catered mainly for foreigners. It and the Café Verrey
were—so far as Londoners were concerned—but two voices crying in the
wilderness. While as for the minor French restaurants in Soho, only
artists, poets, and other degenerate Englishmen, affected those cheery
little outposts of a great army which was presently to take possession of
the town. To-day the conquest of London by the foreigner is complete.
The French cuisine has been adopted in all the principal hotels and
restaurants, and the old fish-joint-sweets-and-Stilton menu has been
relegated to the howling wilderness.
I will give three instances of the progress of the reform. I select
Gatti’s in the Strand, Romano’s in the same thoroughfare, and Pagani’s in
Great Portland Street. Of the three, Gatti’s is the least
characteristically French, although an excellent French meal may be
obtained there. The Gattis aimed to be all things to all men; and I hope
it may not prejudice the reader if I mention that it is to-day a
favourite resort of Mr. Lloyd George, who may frequently be seen at the
Adelaide Gallery in company with a brother Welshman, the esteemed
proprietor of _Ally Sloper_. The growth of the Gatti concern is one of
the commercial marvels of the day. It started as a café in Adelaide
Street, where fried chops and steaks with chipped potatoes were served on
marble-topped tables. The meal was washed down with generous draughts of
coffee or chocolate, and the prices were strictly moderate. To-day the
establishment has struck right through into the Strand, and spread itself
halfway along Adelaide Street. Its proprietors own two playhouses in the
immediate vicinity—the Adelphi and the Vaudeville—and supply half the
Strand with electric current from their own dynamos. It is the culinary
Mecca of the suburban, and actors as well as Chancellors find it a
convenient place at which to lunch.
As a rule a restaurant fails or forges ahead on its own merits or
demerits. But now and then the chance visit of an influential customer
lifts it from obscurity into the warm light of popular favour. You have
seen how E. S. Dallas made the fortune of Kettner’s. Carr’s, in the
Strand, was made by an article which appeared in _All the Year Round_, an
article which was generally attributed to Dickens, but was in reality the
work of one of his staff—Sala, Halliday, Hollingshead, or another; in
fact, the writers on that magazine had so entirely acquired the
descriptive trick of “the Master” that it was a difficult thing to “tell
t’other from which.” Poor Pellegrini was the man who discovered
Pagani’s. It was a poky little place, indifferently patronized, when he
first entered it. But he soon discovered that he could get there
spaghetti cooked and served as in his native Italy. It was served, too,
with a puree of tomato very different from the watery and acid
preparation to which in this country we had become habituated. Tosti the
composer followed where Pellegrini had led. The small refreshment-room
was enlarged; an “artists’ room” was established upstairs. At last
adjoining premises were acquired. Old Pagani’s was rebuilt into the
handsome and popular restaurant as it is known to the present generation
of diners. The Paganis have retired on substantial fortunes to the
mountainous land of their nativity.
In carrying out structural alterations, the Paganis, with characteristic
astuteness, determined that the “artists’ room” should not be tampered
with by the builders. In London no interior is so rich in mural
decorations contributed, gratis and off-hand, by distinguished men using
the apartment. Tosti has written up some bars of a song, dear old
Pellegrini has contributed some sketches, and other artists have from
time to time added to the exhibition, happy to enrich it if only by an
autograph. The sketches, signatures, and bits of musical composition,
have been covered with glass. In other respects the famous upper chamber
remains much what it was in the old days. In that room I have spent many
happy, interesting, and memorable nights. One of the most memorable of
these was on the occasion of a supper given by my friend Patrick Edward
Dove, to the members of the first company that performed “Cavalleria
Rusticana” in London. Dove was a barrister of Lincoln’s Inn, famous for
his knowledge of Patent Law, his acquaintance with the music of the
bagpipes (he had made a collection of several hundred pibroch “scores”),
and his unerring taste as a gastronome. When last I visited Pagani’s,
they still mixed a salad known as _salad à la Dove_. The new opera had
been produced at the Shaftesbury, conducted by Arditi, and the tenor part
had been entrusted to Vignas, a singer new to the town. All the
principals responded to Dove’s invitation, and the “artists’ room” became
the arena of more noise and enthusiasm than had ever been exhibited there
before. The tenor turned up rather late, being, I have no doubt, a nice
judge of the psychological moment at which to contrive a dramatic
entrance. These children of art and of the South proceeded “to signify
their approval in the usual manner.” They rushed upon the poor man,
and—men and women alike—fell upon his neck and kissed him. To a mere
Englishman the scene was rather embarrassing. But it was soon over, and
the rest of the night passed in immense chattering and jabbering,
everybody seeming to talk at once, and the utmost amity and joyousness
informing the polyglot crowd.
In the early days of Pagani’s the patrons of the restaurant were nearly
all Italians, and among them the most picturesque figure was that of a
very old gentleman with long silvery hair, extremely classic features,
and scrupulously clean linen, a circumstance remarkable in an Italian
restaurant of the period. The old gentleman made his appearance each day
between twelve and one, and was always respectfully saluted by his
compatriots. He had a very frugal midday meal, consisting principally of
a decoction of eggs in a tumbler. After this he would sit chatting over
his coffee with friends, who took chairs near him, until well on into the
afternoon. They were informal receptions of a kind, these afternoons of
the handsome old man; for he had been Garabaldi’s doctor, and naturally
was held in high regard by his compatriots. His disappearance all at
once from his accustomed place was, of course, much commented on. It was
supposed that he was ill. On inquiry, however, it was discovered that he
was only married. A lady had fallen in love with the dear old chap,
carried him off, and married him. The bride probably considered that the
domestic hearth was more suited to her husband than life in restaurants,
and so Pagani’s knew him no more.
Romano had been a waiter at the Café Royal; and while engaged in this
capacity he must have picked up a great deal of experience of London
Society and its ways, which stood him in good stead when he found himself
the owner of a smart restaurant in the Strand. A good many men, and,
indeed, some well-known publications, like to pose as the “discoverers”
of Romano’s. As a matter of fact, Romano was discovered by George
Piesse, an epicurean West End book-maker; and its first regular customers
were the London representative of the _New York Herald_, and the
ubiquitous and frugal “Ape.” It gradually became known to those who
liked _œuf à la cocotte_ and other Parisian delicacies. Then it made one
of those sharp and sudden ascents into popularity, its prices ascending
with a proportionate sharpness and suddenness. At luncheon-time there
was a difficulty in getting a table in the long narrow saloon, looking
like a disused shooting-gallery. The bar that ran in front was crammed
with book-makers, pressmen, chorus-ladies, champagne-shippers, and young
peers seeing life. In a word, Romano’s was “booming.” Bessie Bellwood
made it one of her usual haunts of an afternoon; Hughie Drummond dropped
in after a day on the Stock Exchange; “Billy” Fitzwilliam was a supporter
of its clever proprietor; poor “Kim” Mandeville (afterwards Duke of
Manchester) was a regular customer. The two least popular members of the
congregation joined somewhat later. These were the Marquis of Ailesbury
and Abingdon Baird, commonly called “the Squire.” These two gentlemen
rarely appeared in public except accompanied by a couple of “bruisers,”
and their attitude to society in general entirely justified the
precaution they took in providing themselves with bodyguards—or
body-blackguards, shall I say? Romano’s was for a long time the
rallying-point of the more rapid section of men-about-town and their lady
friends. But it was always more than this. Romano had learned his
business in the best French school in London, and in his catering he
always regarded the traditions of _la haute cuisine_, and he had a fine
taste in wine, the advantages of which were at the disposal of his
customers.
The evolution which I have described as working itself out in three
establishments, all of which originated in small and unpromising
beginnings and under somewhat adverse conditions, was elsewhere evident.
While the small caravanserai of Soho, with its cheap dinner and _vin
compris_ was extending itself into the outer streets, and even as far as
the suburbs, the founding of more swagger restaurants was taking place
all round, and competent chefs began to look to London, and not any more
to Paris, as the summit of their ambition. The Savoy was one of the
first to take full advantage of the new direction of public taste. But
at the present moment it has a hundred competitors, from the restaurant
at the Waldorf, on the eastern confines of dinner land, to the Ritz, on
its western frontier.
Having now indicated the extent and importance of the reform which has
been effected in our eating and drinking during the passing of a few
short years, I must return for a moment to my muttons, and record one or
two of the fading memories of other days. There was a table reserved in
the Café Royal grill-room at which, of an afternoon, there was always a
considerable amount of laughter. Here were wont to meet MacMahon, the
inventor of the electric “tape” machine; Jenks, a gentleman who had made
a million by running gaming-hells; Ives, of the _Morning_; and Jo
Aaronson, the brother of the well-known New York entrepreneur. There
were others who were made welcome at this grill-room gathering, so that
as often as not the table had to be doubled by adding another. Aaronson
was a quaint American with a national sense of humour, a nice knowledge
of the moment at which to “chip in” with a story, and a slight stutter,
which gave an added value to everything he said. I remember one day
quite well when, with a face drawn and melancholy, he recounted to us the
details of a misfortune which had overtaken him. His uncle John had died
in London, and Jo had been entrusted with the melancholy duty of having
the body cremated and buried. Jo described the cremation with great
detail and picturesqueness, showed himself receiving the sacred ashes in
an urn, and hurrying with his precious vase to the railway-station, in
order to catch a train to town. When Jo arrived in town, he hurried out
of the train, got into a cab, and automatically told the driver to go to
his club. It was not until Jo arrived at the club that he recollected
that he had forgotten all about Uncle John! He had placed the ashes of
the deceased in the hat-rack of the railway-carriage in which he had
travelled, and, when he arrived at Waterloo, had forgotten all about it.
And the ashes of Uncle John have not been recovered even unto this day.
The café off which the grill-room opens, and which covers the greater
portion of the ground-floor, became the most cosmopolitan rallying-point
in London. For while the atmosphere of the place attracted Continental
visitors of all nationalities, the quality of both the viands and wine,
with the excellence of the cooking and service, soon made it a favourite
resort of self-respecting Englishmen. Among the illustrious exiles who
from time to time have sipped coffee over its domino-tables were Pilotel,
the artist, who had left Paris after the Commune. Under that
extraordinary form of misgovernment Pilotel had been Minister of Fine
Arts. In London he discovered his _métier_ in designing models for the
Court milliners, and fashion-plates for the ladies’ newspapers. A ribald
wag once nicknamed him “the waister,” employing that word, not in any
derogatory sense, but as a tribute to the wasp-like proportions with
which the great big man could endow a woman’s bodice.
Boulanger has waxed voluble over his fortunes in this Regent Street
refuge. And here the notorious Esterházy, in later days, has consoled
himself in exile, his moments soothed by the adulation of a female
admirer. Here I have sat with Fred Sandys, the artist, while he has
discussed politics from the Conservative point of view with Michael
Davitt, the Nationalist, the only Irish politician I ever met who gave me
the idea that he believed all he said. It all comes back to me—the
rattle of the dominoes on the marble slabs, the air charged with the
blue, acrid smoke from a hundred cigarettes, the quick transit of the
white-aproned waiters, the pungent odour of the _café noir_, the flow of
conversational chatter in half a dozen languages, the _froufrou_ of the
passing skirt, the flash of dark eyes, the smile on vermilion lips, the
high-pitched laugh over some picture in _Le Petit Journal pour Rire_, the
general air of life and the joy of it. The history of the cellar at this
famous restaurant is one of the romances of the wine trade, and would be
out of place here. But it may just be noted that, when the vineyards in
the South of France which had supplied the brandy grape were, in the
seventies, laid bare by the phylloxera, the proprietor had provided for a
shortage in the eighties; and when that shortage made itself felt,
Frenchmen willingly paid the three shillings which were demanded then for
a liqueur-glass of _fin champagne_.
Verrey’s, on the other side of Regent Street, I have mentioned as the
second West End establishment at which a French dinner could be obtained
in those gastronomically evil days which preceded the great awakening.
When I first knew Verrey’s, it was run by old George Krehl, a most
entertaining man of the old school. He was not a Parisian, or, indeed, a
Frenchman at all; but he had been educated in the French methods, and his
bisque was the most delicate to be obtained in London. At the death of
the old man the restaurant descended to his son George, who has since
died. George the younger Krehl was a dog-fancier in rather a large way
of business. He ran a paper called _The Stock-keeper_, devoted to the
interests of the “fancy.” Krehl the Younger introduced some new breeds
to Society, among which were the basset-hound and the schipperké.
In old Krehl’s time Tennyson resorted to the restaurant during his visits
to town. The poet took quite a fancy to the proprietor, and Krehl
preserved many souvenirs of the poet—plans of battle drawn on backs of
menu-cards, and other trifles whereby Tennyson thought to make his
meaning quite clear to a foreign listener.
It was in the old Krehl’s time that I received an invitation to dine with
an Australian magnate of British birth, on a visit to the mother-country.
The dinner was served in what was then known as the Cameo Room, and the
occasion became memorable to me by reason of an acquaintanceship then
made, which was destined to ripen into a lasting friendship. It was in
this way. I found myself seated next to a clergyman. The circumstance
at first caused me to curse my luck, for I have never taken much stock in
parsons. But before we had got to the fish I found that my neighbour was
not at all of the class of clergyman with whom, to that time, it had been
my fortune to get acquainted. He was a man of medium height, about fifty
years of age, broad-shouldered, and of portly figure. His grey beard was
trimmed and pointed, and he wore a moustache. His name was Bachelor, and
he was a gaol chaplain.
At that time I discovered nothing of the life-work of the individual
sitting beside me; nor from himself did I ever hear anything, save
incidentally, of his services to his generation—services never
acknowledged, and services sometimes resented and always neglected by the
authorities. I had beside me that night, in fact, one of those who, in
their own persons, illustrate the truth of Henry Taylor’s apothegm: “The
world knows nothing of its greatest men.” Here, at least, something may
be recorded as a memorial to him. And at the same time the narrative may
be enlivened by one or two of those stimulating recollections of which he
seemed to be an inexhaustible mine. I never sat down to a dinner at
which I enjoyed myself more. My new friend was a man of the world, a
gourmet, a fine judge of wine, and withal a practical philanthropist,
unresting, untiring, and undespairing.
Bachelor, after his ordination, went out to Australia as chaplain to the
first Bishop of Tasmania. He passed from that position into the more
active situation of chaplain to the penal settlement there. From the
beginning he took a strong human interest in his “parishioners,” and he
set to work in the grim employment unhampered by traditions or
instructions, or preconceived notions of any sort. From the very start,
his theory was that the men to whom he had now become ghostly adviser
differed from those outside the settlement chiefly in the fact that they
had been found out. Of course he differentiated the material with which
he had to deal. This the Governor of the settlement discovered during
his first interview with the new “sky-pilot.” The conversation between
them at length turned on the question of a servant for his reverence—a
menial who had, of course, been selected from among the convicts.
“I’ve chosen a first-rate chap for you,” said the Governor. “Capital
cook, good valet, nice quiet manner, talks French like a native, and can
mend your linen like a needlewoman.”
“What’s he in for?” inquired Bachelor.
“Forgery,” replied the Governor.
“Couldn’t you let me have a murderer?” inquired the new chaplain.
“If you like,” replied the Governor, shrugging his shoulders, and
regarding the new settler as a man suffering from a loose tile or so; and
a murderer whose domestic accomplishments fitted him for the post was
duly allotted to the parson.
“You see,” he said, in relating the circumstance, “I counted on the
fellow’s gratitude; and I counted right. The chances of a murderer
obtaining the position were about a million to one; and this fellow,
knowing that fact, exhibited a dog’s fidelity, a woman’s solicitude, and
the devotion of a fanatic to my person. He would at any moment have
given his life to save mine.”
Shortly after Bachelor arrived in Tasmania with its first Bishop, his
lordship sent out an invitation to the “leading citizens,” asking them to
a reception at the “palace.” The day after the invitations went out, the
editor and proprietor of a newspaper in Tasmania called at the “palace,”
and demanded to see the new prelate. Now, this particular owner and
conductor of an organ of public opinion kept his property going by a
systematic levying of blackmail—an easy and lucrative game in those early
days; for very few of the “new rich” in Tasmania would care to have
questions publicly asked about their origin. “Do you grow your own
hemp?” asked Charles Lamb of his Australian correspondent. I need not
labour a point which is still sore in Tasmania. The Bishop declined to
see the caller. Bachelor, as his chaplain, was deputed to conduct the
interview.
“I’m the editor and proprietor of a newspaper in Tasmania, and I want to
know why I’m not invited to the Bishop’s tea-fight?” said the truculent
visitor, dashing _in medias res_.
“In your place I should accept the situation. I should not probe after
reasons,” answered the chaplain with characteristic suavity.
“Gammon, parson! I’ve got to know. See? An’ if you don’t tell me now,
I’ll repeat the question in the columns of my paper!” exclaimed this
Australasian _littérateur_.
“Sounds rather like a threat, don’t you think?” observed Bachelor, with
perfect temper; “and, if you _will_ have it, I think I may now give you
his lordship’s reason for declining to invite you.”
“Let her go!” said the editor encouragingly.
“The Bishop’s reason for omitting your name is simply this: that, in the
old country, a man conducting a paper on your lines would be considered
outside the social pale.”
The editor laughed uproariously. When he had recovered his breath, he
answered in these remarkable words:
“Innercent lambs! Outside the social pale, hey! Lookye here, parson!
You jest tell his lordship from me that, _in Tasmania_, _no man is
outside the social pale—until he’s hanged_!”
In Sydney once it became the duty of Bachelor to see a well-known man out
of the world through the trap of a gallows. Captain Knatchbull, a cadet
of an old Kentish family, had been, while in command of one of H.M.’s
ships, guilty of an offence against the civil law, for which he was tried
and transported. He escaped from the convict settlement, and turned up
in Sydney half mad with exposure and starvation. In the Bush he had
probably perpetrated a crime which was never laid to his charge, for he
had got rid of his convict garb, and appeared in New South Wales fully
attired in the clothes of a victim who was probably done to death before
parting with them. The desperate man entered a baker’s shop in a back
street. The shop was empty. The man stretched his arm over the counter,
and pulled out the till. The woman owning the shop suddenly appeared on
the scene, and caught hold of the marauder’s wrist, screaming the while
for assistance. Knatchbull flung himself free, picked up the bread-knife
from the counter, and silenced the poor woman for ever. He was caught
red-handed. He was brought to trial, when the prosecuting counsel was
Robert Lowe, destined for future fame in England, where he was to be
Chancellor of the Exchequer and a peer of the realm. On the scaffold he
was attended by Bachelor.
“Is there any last word you would like to say?” whispered the chaplain in
his ear.
Knatchbull looked up, cast a critical eye over the ghastly apparatus,
and, nodding his head in the direction of a defect, said, with the utmost
composure:
“Yes. _There’s a kink in that rope_!”
In another second his lifeless body was swinging at the end of the
incriminated hemp. He afforded, then, did Captain Knatchbull, the
supreme instance of “the ruling passion strong in death.” He must pay
the extreme penalty, but he had respectfully suggested that the execution
should be ship-shape.
When he returned to England, Bachelor was appointed to Dartmoor. While
he was abroad he could only get at the Home Office by means of a
correspondence. Now he would be able to pay personal visits to the high
officials in Whitehall during his holidays. No man ever made himself a
greater nuisance to a Department in the sacred cause of humanity than did
Bachelor. But humanity is a mere unofficial generality with which
Whitehall has nothing whatever to do. He bombarded permanent officials,
and he obtained introductions to successive Home Secretaries with a view
of effecting some amelioration in the condition of the convict. When, by
his own personal influence with the prisoners at Dartmoor, he was
successful in quelling the biggest and most elaborately organized mutiny
known up to that time, he became no more of a _persona grata_ than he had
been before the outbreak. Officially he was merely the gaol chaplain.
It was not the business of the Department to discover that they were
dealing, not only with a humanitarian, but with a man who had forgotten
more criminology than all the outsiders who write so glibly on the
subject in journals and magazines had ever known.
I at once confess that Bachelor was not attracted to me at this dinner at
Verrey’s by any qualities of my own. He understood that I was on the
Press, and he always endeavoured to create an interest in his views among
pressmen whom he met. For some time he had urged on the Home Office the
necessity there existed for supplying prisoners with a newspaper. His
theory, founded upon years of intelligent observation, was that under our
prison system a man becomes either abnormally ingenious or abnormally
bestial. And he held that nothing except literature could successfully
divert and dissipate ideas which were likely to become obsessions; and
that the most interesting literature would be news—very carefully edited,
of course—of the outer world. American officials are not so hidebound as
the home-made article; and the idea of my friend, neglected and contemned
in England, was welcomed and adopted in the United States, where the
principal penitentiaries now run their own newspapers.
We worked together subsequently at this notion of a gaol journal, and I
got out a “dummy” which showed pretty fully what the proposed organ
should be. At the Home Office the science of circumlocution is better
understood than in any other Department in Whitehall. There was
voluminous correspondence, meaning much on the part of the parson,
meaning little more than a lavish waste of the tax-payer’s stiff
stationery to the Home Office. Other ardent souls would have sunk under
the continuous disappointments, delays, shufflings, impertinences, and
utter indifference, of the Office; but Bachelor’s was not a nature to
sink under anything. He was a man of the world; his sympathy with his
incarcerated parish did not stand in the way of his own reasonable
pleasures. So he kept on pegging away at Home Secretary after Home
Secretary, always hopeful, cheerful, _débonnaire_. At last his reward
came. A large parcel of monthly magazines of the _Leisure Hour_ and
_Good Words_ type was delivered at his house, with a communication from
the Home Secretary. The chaplain was requested to go through the bundle,
and select such of the publications as, in his opinion, might be usefully
circulated among prisoners.
Had such an act of brutal cynicism been played on the average man, he
would have probably pitched the periodicals into the dustbin, and ceased
to interest himself in the unfortunate creatures for whom he struggled in
vain. But Bachelor had a finer temper than the average man. He
reflected that a few crumbs are better than no bread at all. He
congratulated himself that he had obtained some concession—small though
it was—for those whose cause he had been fighting through weary years.
He sat down before the bundle, conscientiously read through every
magazine contained in it, and made his selection of publications deemed
to be “suitable” under the very strict and elaborate instructions laid
down by the Office in the covering letter.
And so it happens that the Cameo Room in Verrey’s became always
associated in my mind with convicts and their champion. In those days a
dinner served there was the last word in modern luxury. A big chandelier
with the hundred pendent crystals hung from the centre of the ceiling.
In mid-Victorian days the chandelier, with its prismatic glass pendants,
was regarded as the most swagger thing in the decoration of a saloon.
Candles guttered under their red shades, science not having as yet
supplied the simple preventive contrivance. The dinner was beyond cavil
or criticism. The contents of the cellar had been carefully selected,
and its temperature was religiously observed and maintained. But the
conditions attendant . . . As the wheels of my taxi turn from the rattle
of the Strand and run silent over the rubber pavement on the courtyard of
the Savoy, I recognize how far, in some matters, we have travelled in a
very few years.