TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
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J. COMYNS CARR
[Illustration]
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA · MADRAS
MELBOURNE
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO
DALLAS · SAN FRANCISCO
THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD.
TORONTO
[Illustration]
J. COMYNS CARR
_Stray Memories_
BY
HIS WIFE
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
ST. MARTIN’S STREET, LONDON
1920
_COPYRIGHT_
GLASGOW: PRINTED AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS
BY ROBERT MACLEHOSE AND CO. LTD.
TO
OUR GRANDSONS
RICHARD AND JOHN COMYNS CARR
FOREWORD
My husband wrote his own Reminiscences in his two books--_Some Eminent
Victorians_ and _Coasting Bohemia_, and it might justly be brought up
against me that I could have nothing to add to what he has said himself.
But a critic remarked at the time that there were few “Reminiscences”
in which the pronoun “I” occurred so seldom; and it is upon this ground
that I venture to take my stand.
His friends meant so much to him that his talk is all of them. But they
also loved him, and the few who are left among those of whom he wrote,
as well as the many more of the younger generation who testify to-day
to the exhilaration of his presence and the tonic of his humour may, I
hope, find in my effort something which may recall to them his urbane
and inspiring personality.
CONTENTS
PAGE
I. COURTSHIP 1
II. THE HOME OF BOYHOOD 10
III. MARRIAGE 16
IV. HOME LIFE AND DRAMATIC CRITICISM 28
V. JOURNALISM AND LETTERS 43
VI. BOOKS AND TRAVEL 63
VII. GROSVENOR AND NEW GALLERIES 76
VIII. DRAMATIC WORK AND MANAGEMENT 83
IX. SOCIAL OCCASIONS 115
X. FOREIGN HOLIDAYS 129
XI. FISHING HOLIDAYS 156
XII. EARLY VERSE 175
_Frontispiece_
J. COMYNS CARR
From a photograph by the London Stereoscopic Co. Ltd.
CHAPTER I
COURTSHIP
It was in June of the year 1873 that I first saw my husband.
Aimée Desclée was beginning a memorable season of French Plays at the
Royalty Theatre, and it was in the capacity of dramatic critic to _The
Echo_--a post to which he had recently been appointed--that “Joe
Carr,” as his friends called him, sat awaiting the curtain to
rise on that remarkable performance of _Frou-Frou_ which set the
cosmopolitan world of London aflame in its day.
He was twenty-four years of age; but he looked more, for though he had
the complexion almost of a girl and that unruly twist in his fair,
curling hair which belongs to early youth, he was broad-shouldered and
had the strong build of the Cumberland statesmen from whom he was as
proud to claim ancestry on his father’s side as he was of the
Irish blood that came to him from his mother.
Not that I could have described him that evening: the stalls were too
ill lit and my excitement over the play was too great.
I had but lately arrived from Italy--having cajoled my father, then
English chaplain at Genoa, into letting me “see London”
under the care of my brother, resident there; so that I had just
been shot from the socially restricted life of a parson’s
daughter in the small English colony of a small foreign town into the
comparative Bohemianism of the artistic set in the London of that day
best described by my husband himself in the introduction to his book
_Coasting Bohemia_.
There was much that must have been, unconsciously to myself, of
rare educational advantage in the lovely scenery and picturesque
surroundings of my childhood’s life on the Riviera and in the
Apennines; and my parents so loved both Nature and Art that they gave
us constant change of opportunity in these directions. Yet I must
confess that as I grew up, the chestnut groves of the Apennines and
the shores of the blue Mediterranean became empty joys to me, and
even the comparative excitement of wearing my own and criticizing my
friends’ frocks in the Public Gardens of Genoa or the keener
delight of an occasional dance in a stately palace, was insufficient
to fill my cravings; and I longed for freedom and the attractions
of the world--more especially in London, which I only knew through
visits to relatives during the holidays of a short period of my life
at a Brighton school. And it was from the house of specially strict
relatives that I definitely escaped that evening, to come to the wicked
French play with my brother and his friend and housemate, Mr. Frederick
Jameson, an architect by profession, but incidentally a distinguished
musician--in later years the translator of the Wagner libretti.
Mr. Comyns Carr, to whom they introduced me, sat behind us; and, though
he often told me that he marked me down as I came in, and somehow
associated me with the personality of Aimée Desclée herself, I took
small heed of him then, and when, as we sought a cab at the close of
the performance, he volunteered to go back and search for a valueless
brooch which I had lost, I did not have the grace to insist on waiting
for his return before we hurried off.
But I was not to be punished; that very incident furnished occasion for
a next meeting.
Through my brother he tracked me to a Bloomsbury boarding-house,
whereto insubordination to the deserved reproof of the conventional
relatives had made me condemn myself.
Oh, that boarding-house--with the city clerk’s _bon mot_,
“Why are you like the spoon resting in your tea?” And the
spinster convinced that the Italian Stornelli I sang in the evening
must be “improper!” Could I have endured it if Mr. Jameson
and my brother had not started the glorious idea of theatricals in
their rooms hard by in Great Russell Street? And if, on the second day
of my sojourn, the lodging-house slavey had not burst into the wee
bedroom looking out to the backyard where I was putting on my hat, with
the news that a gentleman was asking for me at the front door?
I never guessed who it was, but, through the sunshine that struck into
the dingy hall, I saw a strong figure on the door-step and, as I
advanced out of the dimness, a mouth hidden in a fair beard--thick and
long according to the fashion of the hour--parted in a smile; then I
recognised the young man whom I had seen two nights ago at the play.
He had brought my lost brooch, but I don’t think the excuse
was needed. I knew why he had come, though at the moment an unwonted
shyness had fallen on me, and I think I did not know whether to be
pleased or frightened.
He said, “Mayn’t I come in?”
And I recollect my vexation as I answered, “There’s nowhere
to come to! The drawing-room is full of old ladies--the sort who tell
one that a waterproof and an umbrella are the safe dress for a girl in
London.”
How he laughed! the laugh that many knew and loved him for: and any who
recollect the speckled-hen variety of the waterproof of the seventies
will not wonder.
Then he said: “But you are going out. Which way are you
going?”
My reply so well betrayed utter ignorance of London thoroughfares that
his next remark was natural.
“Well, as I know you’re a stranger, I won’t say
you’ve a small bump of locality!” he said. And how often
did he say it again in after years! “But you had better let me
take you along. I’m going that way.”
He told the lie unblushingly--and unblushing I did as he bade me and
followed him into the street.
I had been brought up with the strictness not only of my
father’s cloth but of Italian customs, and I felt I was doing a
bold thing: in those days my whole English adventure was considered
bold by Mrs. Grundy, and my poor father had already come over on a
hasty visit from Italy to place me with those relatives from whom I had
escaped; but on that occasion I was simply overborne. Long afterwards,
at a crush where Royalty was present, my husband won a bet that he
would sup in the Royal room merely by the way in which he bade the
footman drop the dividing red rope, and by the same way of bidding a
porter put his valise on a cab, he won another with J. L. Toole as to
his luggage passing unexamined on a return from abroad. So it was by
some kindred “way” that he led me forth that day--whither
I knew not. And honestly, I forget where we went. I only knew that he
took me a long way--in more senses than one--and showed me many things
that were new and told me many that were more Greek to me than I chose
to admit at the time.
I was an ignorant girl--the smattering of a brief boarding-school
education counting probably far less than the companionship of refined
parents in a land of beauty, and of the sort of cultivation in which
Joe lived and revelled I knew absolutely nothing.
I don’t know that, at that stage in my career, I ever had so much
desire to learn as I pretended--and I am not sure that Joe cared.
Yet he was in those days of his youth at the height of his enthusiasm
on matters of Art; he had just written those articles on living
painters--specially noting the so-called Pre-Raphaelites--which had
drawn considerable notice to his pseudonym of “Ignotus,”
and he was, at the moment, one of Rossetti’s favoured young
admirers.
But I knew nothing of all this; nor of his having already begun his
career of a “wit” as Junior of the Bar on the Northern Circuit. In
fact, what I recall of him then is not his wit but his tenderness.
He was the ardent pursuer, the first man I had met with whom I was
afraid to flirt, because--in spite of some tremulousness in his eager
insistence--there was something that said: “I mean to succeed.”
So I stood dreaming before the masterpieces of the National Gallery,
and he, I am bound to say, was content with much silence as we sat in
the large, cool rooms on that hot May day.
Later on, when he was showing me what to admire, I would teaze him by
pointing to some atrocity in Art, and say: “That is what I really
like.” But not that day.
And when the hour came for me to return to the boarding-house, I think
his sole thought was upon the contriving of our next meeting. As we
passed the British Museum--he looked up at the windows of my brother’s
rooms facing it, and said: “Sheridan Knowles’ ‘Hunchback,’ you said.”
“Yes,” I replied. “And I do Julia and Mr. Jameson Master Walter. But it
may all fall through because he can’t find a man for the lover. It is
desolating.”
I can recall the slow look he gave me; but then he smiled and said:
“Is that what you would say in your foreign tongues?”
I got cured of such expressions later on, but that day I think I was
ashamed of my careless speech, for I knew better; and I shook hands
with him with a sense of disappointment as the slavey opened the door
into the dingy brown hall. Had I been too flippant and free to please
such a clever man?
That evening, however, when I went to the rehearsal in Great Russell
Street, Mr. Comyns Carr was there; of course he had offered himself to
play that lover’s part. He was busy enough--though not so busy
as he had been before I knew him, when reading for his Law Scholarship
at the London University. He had, in fact, if I remember rightly, just
returned from his first experience on the Northern Circuit and was
beginning to supplement his earnings at the Bar by literary efforts.
But he was not too busy for this adventure, and there followed three
weeks of rehearsals under Mr. Jameson’s management, during which
my assets for the stage were calmly discussed, Mr. Jameson declaring
that they were good, and finally winning my brother’s consent to
the bidding of his theatrical friends--John Hare among them--to decide
the question.
But Joe always pooh-poohed the notion.
And when I said: “Well, I’m going to earn enough to keep
me in London somehow. I’m not going back to that dead-alive
life at home!” he only said cryptically, “There are other
ways.”
I think I was a bit huffed at the time and crowed when a lightly spoken
word of praise came to me presently from a very authoritative quarter.
For one day, as we sat resting from our labours in one of the window
seats of the beautiful Adams room where Burne-Jones had once painted
and that Whistler had not long left, a light rap fell on the door and a
voice long loved by us all called out: “Anybody at home?”
as the radiant face of Ellen Terry peeped merrily in upon us.
There was little work done that day; but our stage manager, whose old
friend she was, bade me speak one of my speeches, and she said: “A
good carrying voice, and she finishes her words.” No merit to me, who
had been bred in a land where folk open their throats and where I had
heard cultivated English only; but I was naturally flattered and, when
“the night” came and I was awkward and terrified and John Hare smiled
pleasant nothings and my kindly, ambitious stage-manager’s ardour was
damped, I might have been sore cast down but that a new excitement and
glamour had flashed into my life.
Joe Carr’s “way” was carving its straight course.
Many a time I had been caught wandering aimlessly up Gower Street
pretending a shopping excursion and swearing that I had not seen him on
the opposite pavement, and many a half-hour had we both pretended to
enjoy the Elgin Marbles in the British Museum, but in truth it was only
three weeks after that theatrical performance when I put my key one day
into the door of the Dispensary over which were those historic rooms
and felt rather than saw a figure behind me, and knew that the great
moment had come for me and that I was to be carried off my feet.
As once before he said: “May I come in?” And I answered
nothing and left the key in the door (of which I never heard the end),
and he followed me up to the big studio where we were to spend the
first year of our wedded life.
I had come there that day for a singing lesson from Mr. Jameson and,
when he returned presently, I am sure he guessed no more than we did
that in four months he would be in America and would have rented his
rooms to us for our first home.