including Augustus Moore, Eric Mackay--who wrote _Love-Letters of a
Violinist_--Linton, the landscape-painter, Beerbohm Tree, George R.
Sims, old George Grossmith, who had just finished newspaper reporting
at Bow Street, George Lay, the theatrical solicitor. Sir George
Lewis, Penley, Charlie Glenney, William Terris, the actor, Dan Leno,
then earning about five pounds a week and very glad to get a “shop,”
Brandon Thomas, who wrote _Charley’s Aunt_, Henry Pettit, young Harry
Irving, and a host of kindred spirits. Most of us were in those days
a very fourth-rate lot in all our professions, just as was our dub.
Its furniture was extremely shabby, and its only claim to distinction
was that it was established in an old Adams house and had on its
walls many oil paintings of considerable value.
When the bailiffs were put in those pictures were carefully
considered, and when at last we were sold up, the hall-porter’s book,
which everyone had to sign, sold for a big price because of the
autographs of the members and their distinguished friends.
I recollect a little incident one Saturday night at the Junior
Garrick.
Penley, who was playing in _The Private Secretary_, Charlie Glenney,
who was “resting” and myself had dined together at the club and had
gone with Penley to the theatre. The house was crowded, so we spent
the evening in “Spalding’s” dressing-room, and after Penley had
rubbed off his grease-paint and changed out of his clerical attire he
suggested that we should have supper at Rule’s, in Maiden Lane, which
we did.
Over the meal Glenney suggested that we should both spend Sunday at
his house out at Isleworth, an invitation that we accepted.
So into the Strand we sauntered, long after midnight, and Glenney,
hailing a passing hansom cab, said:
“Look here, cabby, how much do you want to take us three to
Isleworth?”
“Well, sir, I don’t know where the devil it is, but I’ll take yer for
a quid!”
The bargain was fixed. We three wedged ourselves into the cab and
drove westward, trotting along Piccadilly, Knightsbridge, and
Kensington, where I think I must have fallen asleep.
At any rate, when I again opened my eyes I found that we were at a
standstill in the country, with the sun shining and the old horse
quietly grazing on the grass beside the road.
I nudged Penley, who woke with a start, and in his thin, squeaky
voice exclaimed:
“Good Lord! Where are we?”
“I don’t know, old man,” was my reply; “there’s a breath of country
air anyhow.”
He pushed up the trap-door in the roof and shouted in his clerical
voice:
“Hi, cabby! Where are we?”
“I don’t know, sir,” replied a sleepy voice from above. “But we’ll go
and see.”
And he whipped up the old horse to explore, when at last we found
ourselves well on the Portsmouth road, near Esher, very far from
Glenney’s house. We had breakfast at the Bear, and it was high noon
before we arrived at Isleworth.
The Crichton Club was but a weak imitation of the Junior Garrick and
did not last very long. Most of its members were also the habitués
of the Junior Garrick, and on its collapse some of us went to the
Yorick, in Bedford Street, Covent Garden, founded by “Uncle Smith,”
once the leading light of the Junior Garrick. Others got themselves
elected by hook or by crook to the Savage.
Neither the premises of the Savage nor its members need any
description by me. Thirty years ago the Prince of Wales, afterwards
King Edward, used often to preside at our weekly house-dinners, and
the guests included the greatest men of the day. I can recall those
dinners, when we had Stanley, Nansen--who wrote his name on the
green wall, where one can see it still--half a dozen Lord Mayors
and as many Cabinet Ministers, foreign diplomats and statesmen
galore, as our guests, while there contributed to our post-prandial
entertainments such well-known men as Rutland Barrington, George
Grossmith, Courtice Pounds, Toft the sculptor, Phil May, Alfred
Praga, and dozens of others who were world-famous.
I have heard Alfred Praga, the President of the Society of
Miniaturists, tell an amusing story of his introduction to the Savage
Club.
“Phil May was my sponsor at this club, and on the day of my election
he perpetrated a bit of ‘spoof’ the effect of which I have hardly
lived down yet--after a membership of over twenty-five years.
“On introducing me as a new member in the bar I noticed he made
some _sotto voce_ remark that I--naturally flattered--thought were
only complimentary things about me, and that he wished to spare my
blushes. I afterwards learned that he told the fellows that I was
immensely wealthy, and was equal to anything they could order in the
way of drinks, and could simply buy the club up if I wanted to! Some
took advantage of this, but others declined on the ground that they
would never be able to return the compliment to a Crœsus like myself.
Alas! I had many an occasion afterwards on which I was compelled to
make him explain away his little joke, and only gradually was I able
to take my proper place as a humble exponent of one of the great
impecunious professions.”
After being a member of the Savage some ten years, Max Pemberton
resigned, and so did I. Why, I really cannot tell to this day.
Perhaps it was because I had been invited to join the Committee of
the Lyric Club, the handsome and luxurious premises of which had just
been built at the corner of Whitcomb Street and Coventry Street, just
off Leicester Square.
It was a Society club, of which Lord Lonsdale was the chief founder.
It possessed all sorts of innovations, including a big private
theatre, where theatrical shows could be given on Sunday evenings,
and private dining-rooms fitted as yacht cabins, Indian bungalows,
etc., where the food was in keeping with the desired effect. Dinner
in the yacht cabin was served by stewards in uniform, and in the
Indian bungalow by Indian servants, and so forth.
It was the first club of its kind to have lady guests, and its chief
feature was its Sunday-night theatrical entertainments. The club
appealed to me as a Bohemian.
Indeed, I was a member of the Lyric Club all through the innumerable
vicissitudes it withstood for many years. At last it died and was
resuscitated as the Prince of Wales’s Club, under which title it
dwindled away and was closed for a long time. It later became the
Motor Club.
Each time I pass its portico to-day a sad tragedy is recalled to me,
and which I will now relate.
Living in the Rue des Petit Champs, in Paris, was a friend of
mine, Henri Jurgens, the well-known impresario. One afternoon,
meeting me in the American bar of the Hôtel Chatham, over which the
ever-humorous “Johnnie” so long presided, he invited me to dine with
him at his flat.
“I found two new girls the other day, singing and dancing at a little
café in Marseilles. They are coming to dine with me to-night and I’m
giving them a trial turn at Olympia afterwards,” he said. “Come and
dine too.”
I accepted, and found two very handsome, dark-eyed, and very modest
young French girls. Provençal from their accent, neatly but poorly
dressed, wearing cotton blouses and dark skirts.
It was a merry meal, during which Jurgens urged them not to be
frightened at appearing before a Paris audience.
“They are no more critical than they are in Marseilles,” he assured
them.
The elder was a dancer, and the other, a few months her junior, a
café singer.
While we sat in a box in the theatre they went on one after the
other, among the “early turns,” and both were voted successes. The
dancer executed a Spanish dance with castanets, showing wonderful
agility, while the other sang two gay chansonettes with a splendid
voice and looked very charming in her stage dress.
The dancer was afterwards known as La Belle Otero, and the singer
was her friend, Liane de Vries. In the later years of their huge
successes, when they both became the rage of Paris and of London, and
earned huge salaries, I often reflected on that night at M. Jurgens’s
flat.
About a year after their first appearance in Paris, Mademoiselle de
Vries, who was notable for her great beauty, came to London to sing
at the Alhambra, and, knowing her well, I invited her to sing at the
Lyric Club one Sunday night.
She came, and delighted the audience, which consisted mostly of
well-known Society people. Afterwards she had supper with me, and
then, as we sat together in the corner of the room, she told me in
confidence that M. Jurgens had proposed marriage to her.
“I have refused three times,” she said. “He is such a dear, and
has been so very good to me, yet I really cannot marry a man I do
not love. This morning I had a telegram from him. He will be here
to-morrow, so I shall leave London as early as I can in the morning,
as I do not want to meet him.”
“Where shall you go?”
“I really don’t know. I have written to the Alhambra management
terminating my engagement.”
That was all she would tell me; but she seemed greatly perturbed.
Presently, while she was standing in the hall with her cloak on, and
I was getting into my coat, a cab stopped and my friend Jurgens, who
was a member of the club, dashed in.
The girl gave vent to an exclamation of amazement and he excitedly
persuaded her to go outside with him and get into the cab. For nearly
half an hour the cab remained there, while the pair held an animated
conversation.
Then they drove off. That was the last I ever saw of my poor friend
Jurgens. Next day he telegraphed me farewell from Dover, and that
same night he committed suicide in his flat in Paris.
That is why I can never pass the corner of Whitcomb Street and
Coventry Street without a painful memory.
* * * * *
Some seventeen years ago I followed my old friend George R. Sims
to the Devonshire Club, and there became one of a little literary
circle that embraced Sir W. Robertson Nicoll, Clement Shorter, Max
Pemberton, Sir George Sutton, Arnold White, and Frank Richardson,
of “whiskers” fame, and G. H. Fosdike Nichols, who is “Quex” of the
_Evening News_, and knows more about people and their doings than
any other man in London. Years have gone, but we all survive as I
write this, save poor Sims, Robertson Nicoll, and the erratic Frank
Richardson.
I have been a member of a good many dining clubs: first the Old
Vagabonds, then the New Vagabonds, and afterwards of the Argonauts;
all three having as their leading lights that dual control of my old
friends Douglas Sladen and G. B. Burgin; the one hirsute and the
other bald, but who, when working together to run a dining-club,
formed the most perfect combination in the world.
All three clubs have been many times described, therefore I need
not remark much about them, except that at the meetings of the New
Vagabonds at the Hotel Cecil one met everyone worth knowing and
everyone who had “done something.” Alas! It is a thousand pities that
the New Vagabonds no longer exists.
I recollect when I asked Lord Roberts to become its president he
looked at me very gravely, and asked:
“What name did you say?”
“The New Vagabonds,” I replied. And I recited the roll of membership,
which included many famous names associated with art, literature, and
the drama.
“Well,” he said, “it’s title sounds uninviting, but I suppose I’ve
been as much of a roving vagabond as most of you. Yes, if they want
me to become its president I will.”
Mr. G. B. Burgin, in his excellent book, _Memoirs of a Clubman_,
tells a story concerning myself at the first dinner of the New
Vagabonds over which Lord Roberts presided.
He relates how, while I sat next to the president and was wearing
miniatures of my decorations, a girl, indicating myself, asked him,
“Who is that distinguished General with the wistful face next to Lord
Roberts?”
Mr. Burgin also recalls an incident connected with the pronunciation
of my somewhat unusual name--NOT _a nom-de-plume_, as so many have
believed. He says:
“I was coming up to town one day when a girl and her mother got into
the train. The girl carried a book under her arm. When they were
comfortably settled the mother said: ‘Give me that book of Le Quek’s,
dear,’ and the daughter replied: ‘Excuse me, mother, but I think you
mean Le Kook’s.’ They appealed to me, and I said authoritatively that
the proper pronunciation was ‘Le Kew’; another man in the corner
broke in with ‘Le Kicks,’ and they were still kicking over it when I
left the train.”
Mr. Burgin was, of course, correct. My name has, however, always been
a stumbling-block, and more especially so, since Pinero wrote “The
Gay Lord Quex.”
I am one of the earliest members of another club, which is known
as “Our Society.” It was started by Arthur Lambton--to whom I
believe I acted as literary godfather--Ingleby Oddie, now coroner
for Westminster, H. B. Irving, Lord Albert Godolphin Osborne, and
Herbert Crosse, its object being the study of criminology. Professor
Churton Collins, Sir Melville Macnaghten, of Scotland Yard, George
R. Sims, Eveleigh Nash, Sir A. Conan Doyle, Max Pemberton, Filson
Young, Arthur Diòsy, J. B. Harris-Burland, P. W. Everett, Thomas
Marlowe, editor of the _Daily Mail_, with Sir Sydney Russell Wells,
Sir George Turner, and Sir H. Waterhouse as representatives of the
medical profession, soon gathered round our board, and by the rules
membership was strictly limited to forty.
Lord Northcliffe, when he joined, nicknamed us “The Forty Thieves.”
About three or four dinners are held annually, and at them the latest
mystery of crime is earnestly discussed, though there is a rule that
our deliberations are entirely secret, and no word of them ever
divulged. We have somehow now earned the sobriquet of “The Crimes
Club.” About a dozen guests are allowed, and nowadays our membership
has been increased to sixty.
Among the regular attendants, in addition to those mentioned above,
are the Duke of Newcastle, Lord Portarlington, Lord Sackville, Lord
Kintore, Sir Eric Drummond, Admiral Sir E. Inglefield, General Sir
A. Balfour, Sir Wilfred Atlay, Sir Godfrey Baring, Sir John Hall,
Sir Henry Jerningham, and Colonel G. Cornwallis-West, while legal
celebrities such as Sir E. Marshall-Hall, K.C., Sir H. Curtis
Bennett, K.C., and Mr. Theobald Mathew are all to be seen around the
table.
Arthur Lambton, to whose untiring efforts the club is due, and who
acts as honorary secretary, takes the chair, and the procedure
is, that a member reads a paper on some recent criminal case, and
sometimes it is followed by a discussion in which counsel, who has
acted for the prosecution or for the defence, takes part. The cases
are analysed and the mentality of the guilty one dissected in a
manner that is of intense interest to those who study the psychology
of crime. My own small contributions have been the description of
the crimes of Landru, and how I helped the Sûreté to investigate
them, and also a small description of spies I have met. It certainly
is the most exclusive and most interesting club in London, and its
subscription is two half-crowns yearly!
There is, of course, a long waiting list, but no vacancy occurs,
unless a member resigns or dies. An additional loss to that of Lord
Northcliffe, one of our best-known and most popular members, who has
recently died, is caused by the death of my old and valued friend
Arthur Diòsy, traveller and lecturer, whose striking features,
with the long-upturned moustachios, were so well known in London
drawing-rooms.
He was my friend through thirty years, and in many ways a most
remarkable figure in Bohemian London. Though born in London, he was
the son of Martin Diòsy, a Hungarian refugee and patriot. After being
educated in Germany, he learnt Japanese and became an advocate for
an Anglo-Japanese alliance, founding the Japan Society and being its
chairman. He knew Japan better than any other Englishman and--let me
whisper it--lectured for years on that country before he had ever
visited it!
I recollect though we were close friends, we had not seen each other
for about six years, when I happened to arrive in Biskra, on the
desert border in Algeria. The hotel was a third-rate one, the others
all being full.
Passing along the corridor, I heard a voice. Diòsy’s was peculiar and
once heard was always remembered, so I knew who was my fellow-guest.
“What ho! Arthur!” I cried.
“Who’s that?” asked Diòsy, with his strange, rolling tongue. Then he
turned the corner, and, facing me, said:
“By the beard of the Prophet, behold the mystery-monger!”
I met Arthur Diòsy constantly all over Europe. When we sat together
at the Crimes Club we used to exchange jokes about our travels. Lord
Northcliffe, who was one of his great admirers, said one night at the
club when we were all there together:
“Look, Quex! Look at the wily old Jap! Take good stock of him, for
he’s wonderful. He can lecture on any mortal subject on earth at five
minutes’ notice.” And so he could.
Poor Arthur Diòsy! He was a man after my own heart, and I hesitate to
let my pen run further across this page.
It was only just before last Christmas that, having eaten
kippers together, at one o’clock in the morning, in the Ham-Bone
Club--London’s only really Bohemian Club, of which I am about to
tell you--I strolled with him as far as Jermyn Street, and we stood
outside the house where he had rooms.
“Well, my dear Le Queux,” he said, “_au revoir_ to you. You are going
ski-ing in Switzerland, and I go to the Riviera. We shall both be
back in town in March and we will then pick another pair of those
succulent kippers, which are such a speciality of the Ham-Bone--eh?”
We grasped hands and parted, while I walked along to the Devonshire
in the moonlight.
He went out to Cannes, and, alas! died there a few weeks later.
And as I write this, his cheery caricature drawn by Sava Botzaritch
still laughs out to me from its silver frame.
I referred to Arthur Lambton as the energetic organizer and secretary
of the Crimes Club. He tells a good story about a murder. It will be
recollected that Devereux murdered his wife, put her body in a trunk,
and then poured glue all over her. When the trunk was opened she was
taken out stiff and viscous like a fish.
Being at breakfast with his father, the late General Arthur Lambton,
my friend asked: “Anything in the paper this morning?” “No,” replied
the General, “except that I see a gentleman named Devereux has put
his wife in aspic!”
I have mentioned the Ham-Bone Club.
It is but vaguely known to Society, and then only through the Press
publishing an occasional paragraph concerning it. Few even of
artistic and literary London are aware of its existence.
As befits the only real Bohemian set still left in London, it keeps
almost exclusively to itself. And yet it is surprising how many
interesting and notable men--whose names are household words--gather
together in stables and hay-lofts that have been transformed into
the club premises. There artists, sculptors, editors, and other men
of note go to enjoy themselves, to eat a cheap dinner, to laugh,
to dance, to sup off kippers, and to find delight in innocent but
exciting “ragging.”
[Illustration: Caricature of William Le Queux.]
The walls of its big, narrow room, are covered with framed
caricatures of the better-known members. There is a bar at one end
with a big barrel on the counter, and little tables set around,
together with a piano that is played by a young Armenian pianist and
composer of great promise, whom everyone calls “Marcantonio.”
The place is crowded with members dancing with artists’ models,
mannequins from West End dressmakers, and other pretty girls who
were only allowed to join the club after the committee had made most
searching inquiries and had proved that they were all regularly
employed in some profession or another.
The Ham-Bone is the gayest yet most wholesomely minded of all the
London night clubs.
You may go to the Embassy, where it is expensive, the
Forty-Something, Rector’s, and a dozen other night dance clubs, but
the Ham-Bone reigns supreme for fun, frolic, and a real good time.
The Bohemians of London run it.
* * * * *
I have attended other eccentric London clubs. There was the now-long
defunct Thirteen Club, established to counteract the superstition
attached to that supposed unlucky number. I knew the “Magic Circle”
or professional conjurers’ club, and am still a member of the
Tatlers. Recently I was guest with Lord Birkenhead and Arthur Lambton
at a new club formed by Oxford undergraduates, on similar lines to
our Crimes Club. Their name is “The Thugs.”
I had a long discussion with the ex-Lord Chancellor, as to whether
the right pronunciation was Tugs, Thougs, or Thugs. He pronounced
that it should be “Tugs,” so “Tugs” it is.
That night, indeed, he was made a Tug, and seemed to thoroughly enjoy
it.
The club is one that we shall hear more of in the near future.
Another club of which I was once a member, may claim to be one of
the most exclusive clubs in the world--the Florence Club in Florence.
The members, which consist for the most part of the proud but
penurious Tuscan aristocracy, actually black-balled a British Prince!
After that, Major Percy Chapman, British Consul-General in Florence,
Montgomery Carmichael, British Consul to Leghorn, and all the English
members resigned, _en bloc_, including myself. For some years, too, I
was a member of the Travellers’ Club in Paris, and later of the Turf
Club in Cairo and the International Sporting Club at Monte Carlo.
But of all clubs, I prefer the Devonshire, with its old-fashioned
comfort, and its fine traditions.
A good medical story was told me recently by my friend, Dr. Cyril
Horsford, the well-known laryngologist and aurist, of Harley Street.
While acting as specialist at the hospital at Genoa during the war,
he found that to many of those rendered dumb by shell-shock, speech
could be induced by touching the patients’ throat in a certain
way and suddenly asking him a question. Late one evening a man
was brought in and put to bed. He was unable to utter a word, so
Horsford asked him if he would like to speak again. The man smiled
incredulously, whereupon Horsford told him that he would restore his
speech at twelve o’clock to-morrow. The patient, however, wrote down
that he would bet him all he possessed that he would not.
In the morning the specialist had many patients to see and at last
the man in question was shown in. Horsford recognized him and acted
as he had done in other cases, whereupon the man at once spoke.
“Ah! you see!” said the doctor, “I’ve won my bet!”
“Excuse me, sir, you ’aven’t,” replied the man. “You said twelve
o’clock, it’s ten minutes parst!”
The most disreputable-looking person who ever entered the portals
of the Devonshire Club was old Lord Clanricarde. I often chatted
with him. He was shabby and parsimonious to the extreme. He had a
mania for collecting paper-bags. He used very often to stay at the
Victoria Hotel at St. Leonards, and I frequently met him out on the
Promenade doing his shopping. This consisted of buying a couple of
bananas, or an apple, or perhaps a bun, which he would eat in a
shelter and then carefully preserve the bag until he had a pile upon
his dressing-table, when his man upon his departure would carefully
tie them up and take them away. He left, as is well known, his great
fortune to the Lascelles family.
Even London police-court magistrates may be “taken in.” An
acquaintance of mine, a well-known metropolitan stipendiary, met a
few weeks ago an actor in another club of which I am a member.
They became friendly, and eventually the magistrate lent him £100 on
the “wife-and-starving-family” appeal. The actor did not pay, the
magistrate could not afford to risk publicity by putting him to the
county court, so he rather foolishly wrote to the committee of the
club asking them to remove the name of the delinquent from the list!
The actor is now a hundred pounds the richer, and his worship will, I
fear, have to whistle for his money!
There are several variations of the following Devonshire club story,
but I give the true one, for which Eveleigh Nash vouches.