LADY AUTHORS AT ADDISON MANSIONS
THE great “Miss Braddon,” who is now one of the most valued of my
friends, and a not infrequent visitor, never came to 32 Addison
Mansions. She achieved fame before any living novelist. She had
published _Aurora Floyd_ and _Lady Audley’s Secret_ more than half a
century ago, in 1862, while Thomas Hardy did not write _Under the
Greenwood Tree_ and _A Pair of Blue Eyes_ till ten years after that. Her
powers are undiminished. Her _Green Curtain_, published fifty years
later, is one of the finest books she ever wrote.
Nor did I ever meet Miss M. G. Tuttiett, who, since she wrote her great
_Silence of Dean Maitland_, has been known to all the world as “Maxwell
Gray,” until I became her neighbour at Richmond. These lost years have
deprived me of a great pleasure, because, apart from my admiration for
her novels, I share two of her hobbies—her enthusiasm for her garden and
her enthusiasm for Italy.
I used to esteem it an honour and a privilege when dear old Mrs.
Alexander—Mrs. Hector was her real name—used to toil up the stairs to
our parties. Her books were delightful, and she was one of the earliest
of my literary friends, for I met her at Louise Chandler Moulton’s
before I went to America.
Still more, on account of her infirmity, did I appreciate it when Mrs.
Lynn Linton came. My intimacy with her arose from two facts. When my
novel, _A Japanese Marriage_, came out, she wrote to me in the warmest
terms about it. She not only was enthusiastic about it as a novel, but
thought it an unanswerable piece of advocacy for the relief of the
Deceased Wife’s Sister (now happily accomplished). After that I was a
frequent visitor at her flat in Queen Anne’s Mansions, and later we met
as fellow-guests at Malfitano, the beautiful villa of Mr. and Mrs. J. J.
S. Whitaker at Palermo. She looked the grande dame, and she was a great
woman as well as a great writer, admired in both capacities by all the
great writers of her day, which was a long one—long enough to include
Walter Savage Landor. Her championing of _A Japanese Marriage_ came as a
very complete surprise to me, because she was noted for severity as a
moralist, and the marriage of the hero and the heroine by the American
Consul, after the clergy had refused to marry them, in the eye of the
Law was no marriage at all, since neither of them was an American
subject—it was a mere manifesto that they meant to live together as man
and wife. That letter of hers was the beginning of one of my most
delightful friendships.
I don’t remember when I first met Mrs. Croker or Mrs. Perrin or Flora
Annie Steel, though they have all been valued friends for many years. As
they are all Anglo-Indians, I suppose that I must have met one of them
through some member of my family in the Indian Army or Indian Civil
Service, and the others through her. My family have been much connected
with India. To mention only two of them, my cousin, General John Sladen,
was a brother-in-law of Lord Roberts, and actually kept house with him
in India for a year, and his brother, Sir Edward Sladen, was the British
resident who played so great a part in Burmah, and whose statue has the
place of honour in the Burmese capital.
Of one thing I am certain, that the marriage of Mrs. Croker’s beautiful
daughter—the belle of Dublin—to one of the Palermo Whitakers, was not
the introduction, for Mrs. Croker has never been to Palermo, and I
remember her asking me all about the Whitakers’ famous gardens in
Sicily. Captain Whitaker did not live there; he was with his regiment.
It is natural to mention Mrs. Steel, Mrs. Perrin and Mrs. Croker
together, for they long divided the Indian Empire with Rudyard Kipling
as a realm of fiction. Each in her own department is supreme.
In the days when we first knew her, and she was living in Ireland, it
used to be like a ray of sunshine when pretty Mrs. Croker, with her blue
eyes and her bright colour and her delightful Irish tongue, paid one of
her rare visits to London. As I write these words, I am about to pay a
visit to her in her Folkestone home. She is exactly the type you would
expect from her irresistible books.
When I asked Mrs. Croker what first gave her the idea of writing, she
said—
“My very first attempt at writing was in the hot weather at
Secunderabad. When my husband was away tiger-shooting, and I was more or
less a prisoner all day owing to the heat, I began a story, solely for
my own amusement. It grew day by day, and absorbed all my time and
interest. This was _Proper Pride_. With reluctance and trepidation I
read it to a friend, and then to all the other ladies in the
regiment—under seal of secrecy. Emboldened by this success, I wrote
_Pretty Miss Neville_, and when I returned home with the Royal Scots
Fusiliers, I had two manuscripts among my luggage. These went the usual
round, but at the end of a year I received a small offer for _Proper
Pride_. It came out in August 1892, without my name, and was immediately
successful—principally owing to long and appreciative notices in _The
Times_ and _Saturday Review_, both on the same day. Three editions went
off in a month, and I must confess that no one was as much surprised by
this success as I was. Subsequently I sold the copyright of _Pretty Miss
Neville_ for one hundred pounds, and though now a lady of thirty, she
still sells, in cheap editions. I attribute my good fortune to the fact
that my novels struck a new note—India and army society—and that I
received very powerful help from unknown reviewers. I like writing,
otherwise I could not work. I believe I inherit the taste from my
father’s family, who were said to be ‘born with a pen in their hands’!”
Mrs. Croker tells me that it was I who first introduced her to London
literary society. I consider this one of the most charming successes of
my literary career.
Mrs. Perrin, on the other hand, since she came back from India, has
played a continuously prominent part in London literary life. She has
been a leading figure at literary clubs and receptions, and has been a
pillar of “the Women Journalists.” As story-teller and psychologist
combined, she has no superior. Those of her wide public who know her in
private life know a brilliant and charming woman of the world, with a
proved capacity for managing literary affairs.
When I asked Mrs. Perrin what started her in a literary career, she
said—
“I think I took to writing from sheer need of occupation. When I married
my husband in India, as a girl of eighteen, we were sent to a place in
the jungle where he had charge of an enormous aqueduct which was under
construction. He had several Coopers Hill assistants under him, not one
of whom was married, and I was the only English woman in the locality.
There was no station—or permanent settlement; our houses were temporary
erections of mud, and we were miles from the railway. The landscape
consisted of a sea of yellow grass about the height of a man, and there
was only one road, which lay behind our bungalow—the grand trunk road
that is the backbone of India. I began to write here, just to amuse
myself, and then when we went to less isolated spots, I gained
confidence and used to send little articles and turn-overs to the
_Pioneer_—the principal Indian daily paper. These were nearly always
accepted, and so I took courage and wrote a novel called _Into
Temptation_, which ran through that prehistoric magazine _London
Society_, long ago defunct. The book came out in two volumes and had
very fair notices. Then I wrote another called _Late in Life_, which ran
serially in an Indian weekly, off-shoot of the _Pioneer_, and in England
through the _Belgravia_, and then came out in two volumes. So you may
imagine—or rather, realise—how long ago I began! Both these novels are
now to appear revised and corrected in Messrs. Methuen’s 7_d._ series.
“However, I did not receive the financial encouragement I had hoped for
from these first efforts, and I lost heart. For nearly ten years I wrote
nothing but a few Indian short stories. Then when my husband was offered
an appointment at home, and we retired before we had ‘done’ our full
time in India, I collected these stories, and they came out under the
title of _East of Suez_. The book was a success and since then I have
written and have been published steadily.
“I am deeply interested in India, in the people and their religions, and
histories and social systems, and as I was sixteen years in the country
I had an opportunity of receiving lasting impressions, and of gaining
invaluable experience. I come of a family which has been officially
connected with India for five generations. My great grandfather was with
Lord Cornwallis, on his staff, at the taking of Seringapatam, and the
surrender to Lord Cornwallis of Tippoo Sahib’s two little sons as
hostages. He was afterwards Chairman of the old East India Company—known
in those days as John Company.
“I cannot think of anything more anecdotal in my experience as a
novelist—I can only remember the disappointments and the difficulties of
what success I have made, at which, perhaps, I may now bring myself to
smile, but I do not think they would be interesting if related!”
A few years ago Mrs. Steel was also one of the most prominent figures in
London literary society. She had written _On the Face of the Waters_,
one of the finest historical novels in the language; she was a hard and
earnest worker in all sorts of movements, and as a fighting speaker
there were few to match her. She could make a good set speech, but her
set speeches were nothing to the oratory of which she was capable if,
when she was totally unprepared, indignation stung her into springing to
her feet to denounce the offender. Then her words came as blows come
from a man who hits another man because he is incensed beyond endurance.
A face full of life and expression added force to her words.
Since Mrs. Steel settled down on an estate in Wales, she has been little
in London. But in those days she had a sort of country house on the
Notting Hill slope of Campden Hill. She is a keen politician, and not
long ago sold the opening page of _On the Face of the Waters_ as her
subscription to the Women’s Cause.
Another author lost to London is Sarah Grand. She used to be our
neighbour; she shared a flat in the Abingdon Road with her step-son,
Haldane McFall, the art critic, and author of that remarkable novel,
_The Wooings of Jezebel Pettyfer_. I met her soon after the success of
_The Heavenly Twins_—a young woman with indignant blue eyes, very
reserved, but with a rare charm of manner behind her reserve. I was
introduced to her, I think, by Heinemann, who was often at our at-homes.
He had, as I understood, purchased _The Heavenly Twins_ from her ready
printed, copyright and all for a hundred pounds, but when the success
came had torn up the agreement, and substituted a royalty agreement,
paying the royalties from the beginning. She had already, I gathered,
received twelve times the original sum in royalties.
Alfred Walford often came to see us—his wife, Mrs. L. B. Walford, more
occasionally, since she was the mother of a large family as well as many
books, and they lived in Essex. Alfred Walford used to chaff himself
about his connection with literature being to produce the paper on which
it was printed. He was a paper-maker; and she, at that time, was the
favourite novelist of the Colonies. She was the daughter of that
Colquhoun of Luss who wrote that famous book _The Moor and the Loch_.
The gentle-faced “Miss Thackeray,” the great novelist’s daughter, now
the widow of Sir Richmond Ritchie, I did not know in those days, but I
used to meet her afterwards at Lady Lindsay’s. There was a time when her
_Old Kensington_ was my favourite novel.
And here I must say something about my old and dear friend, Lady
Lindsay, who has so recently passed away, and whose lameness prevented
her from toiling up the stairs to our at-homes very often. For many
years I was constantly at her house, both at her famous dinner-parties
and running in to have a talk about books when I was sure of finding her
alone, for she was good enough to be much interested in my work.
[Illustration:
“MISS BRADDON”
_Drawn by Yoshio Markino_
]
The daughter of a Cabinet Minister, the Right Hon. Henry Fitzroy (son of
the first Lord Southampton), a descendant of Nathan Meyer de Rothschild,
who founded the fortunes of his House, and sister-in-law of the Loyd
Lindsay, V.C., who became Lord Wantage, she knew nearly every noted
person of her time, and those whom she did not know, she generally could
have known but for some prejudice against them. At her dinner-parties
you met men like Tennyson and Gladstone and Layard of Nineveh—great
politicians, great nobles, great authors, great painters, but hardly any
one from the theatrical world. I was nearly always the least important
person present. Eight was her favourite number, though sometimes there
were a dozen at her famous round table. The conversation used to be
brilliant; the company was arranged with a view to that—naturally the
chief guest often got possession of the table, and we sat and chronicled
the historic scene in our hearts.
Afterwards, when one went up into the drawing-room, our eyes rested on
pictures by Sandro Botticelli and Titian, sixteenth-century Italian
wedding-chests, and other inheritances of the great. She wrote more than
one volume of poems which went into several editions.
It is natural to mention beside her another great lady who was in touch
with all the notabilities of her time, Walpole’s descendant, Lady
Dorothy Nevill, who married a descendant of Warwick the Kingmaker’s
elder brother, the Baron of Abergavenny. Her husband was at one time the
heir-presumptive of the Marquis of Abergavenny. She happily gave her
reminiscences to the world, as Lady Lindsay always meant to do, so
readers know her connections, though she was too modest to show how
Disraeli leaned upon her advice. Among the most interesting things which
I remember in her house in Charles Street, Berkeley Square, were the
unique mementoes of her ancestor, the tremendous Sir Robert Walpole, the
Asquith of the eighteenth century. It was she who told me that Nelson
was called Horatio because Horace Walpole presented his father to the
living of Burnham Thorpe, which is still in the gift of the Earls of
Orford.
Lady St. Helier, another great London hostess, at whose house I have met
some of the most celebrated people of the day—Lady St. Helier and her
daughter, Mrs. Allhusen, never came to see us till we had left Addison
Mansions for the Avenue House, Richmond. No woman has been more
integrally a part of the life of her time than Lady St. Helier, who
wrote an admirable volume of reminiscences. Mrs. Allhusen has the
inspiration of owning a house where one of the masterpieces of
literature was written—Gray’s _Elegy_. For the house in which Gray wrote
it after the inspiration, which came to him as he was leaning over the
gate of Stoke Poges Churchyard, has been enlarged into Stoke Court, and
the room in which Gray wrote out the _Elegy_ forms part of Mrs.
Allhusen’s writing-room.
Marie Corelli, like Hall Caine, has a dislike of literary receptions. I
cannot remember if she ever came to Addison Mansions, though we have
been friends for many years, and I remember going to brilliant
dinner-parties at her house in Longridge Road. Her stepfather, Charles
Mackay, who adopted her, was one of my earliest literary friends.
Her stepbrother, Eric Mackay, author of the famous _Love-letters of a
Violinist_, lived with her, and he came to our at-homes so frequently
that I think she must have come with him sometimes. They were a very
musical family. It is always said that Marie Corelli, had she so chosen,
could have won as much fame in music as she has in literature. Her books
illustrate Hall Caine’s axiom that the greatest novels are those which
deal with the elemental facts of human nature. Her grasp of human nature
has won her countless readers in both hemispheres.
It is not universally known that Marie Corelli is an admirable
speaker—so lucid, so convincing, able by perfect elocution to reach the
furthest corner of the large hall of the Hotel Cecil without raising her
voice. Though she lives at Stratford-on-Avon, and is identified with all
its functions, she is frequently to be seen in London at places like
Ranelagh or dancing at the great balls at the Albert Hall.
Almost alone of the chief lady novelists of that time, Mrs. Humphry Ward
was never at Addison Mansions. The most interesting thing I remember in
conversation with her was her confession to me one day when we were at
Mrs. W. K. Clifford’s that she enjoys handling the character of a person
who is a failure better than the character of a person who achieves
success. Heroes apparently do not appeal to her.
Mrs. W. K. Clifford was often at Addison Mansions. She is a very old
friend of mine, and a great personality. Mrs. Clifford is an admirable
example of the modern woman, breezy, wholesome, warm-hearted,
clear-visioned, lucid in expression, interested in all questions of the
day, and withal one of our best novelists. Early in life she suffered a
loss which would have overwhelmed most women, for she lost her husband,
Prof. W. K. Clifford, F.R.S., who was already reckoned the third
mathematician in Europe, at the same age as Wolfe fell at Quebec,
thirty-three, when they had only been married four years, and she was
still a girl. He was the most brilliant Fellow of Trinity (Cambridge) of
his day, and the youngest Fellow of the Royal Society. There is nothing
he could not have done and would not have done if he had lived, for
there was no side of life which did not appeal to him. People of every
rank and of every shade of thought came to see him, and no matter how
little they agreed with him, they were always hypnotised for the hour.
He had wonderful dark-lashed blue eyes, like his daughter, and a
wonderful soul seemed to be looking out of them.
But she did not allow her loss to prostrate her, and she has lived to
see her house one of the Meccas of literature in London, and her
daughter, Mrs. Fisher Dilke, a recognised poetess.
Talking of Mrs. Clifford reminds me of the chequered career of _The
Love-letters of a Worldly Woman_. It was published just twenty years
ago, and though the first edition sold out immediately, no second
edition was published in England, but in America, where it was
non-copyright, it sold enormously. There were a dozen pirate editions of
it, including a marked edition, which means one with the most popular
passages indicated. Such a height of popularity did it reach that it was
actually sold at street-corners in New York! But I have heard that Mrs.
Clifford only got fifteen pounds royalties off the whole dozen editions.
The first batch of love-letters in this volume appeared anonymously in
the _Fortnightly_, and were generally attributed to Oscar Wilde. As a
piece of poetical justice when Housman’s _An English-woman’s
Love-letters_ were published seven years later, they were attributed to
Mrs. Clifford. _The Love-letters of a Worldly Woman_ was a remarkable
book, and fully deserved its American popularity.
Mrs. Clifford is, above all things, an idealist and a lover of good
work. She has said, in one of her books, “in good love and good work lie
the chance of immortality for everything that is worth having or being;
and yet, though I’ve aimed at the sun, and longed to put into the
beautiful world something worthy of it, I have never hit higher than a
gooseberry bush, or achieved anything that gave me satisfaction. And
I’ve been so full of enthusiasms and dreams ... perhaps one of the
dreams will come true some day—who knows? For if I live to be ninety, I
shall still feel, as I do now, that the soul of me is as young and fresh
as ever; and it is a sense of the beauty of things, of the kindness that
underlies human nature, even when it’s choked with weeds at the top,
that gives one courage, and helps one to do.”
Beside Mrs. Clifford I should mention Margaret Woods, whom I first met
when I was an undergraduate at Oxford, and her husband, the present
Master of the Temple, was my tutor, engaged to her while I was his
pupil. I remember his asking me and other undergraduates to meet her in
his rooms. I do not think he told us why, but we knew. She was one of
the few charming women that the monastic Oxford of that day contained.
Her father, afterwards the famous Dean of Westminster, was master of
University College; I used to go to his Socrates lectures. He was
dissatisfied with the progress we were making, and boldly—it was very
bold at Oxford—charged us with paying too much attention to athletics,
and it was then that he made his famous mot, that he had never taken any
exercise in his life, except by occasionally standing up when he was
reading. I have heard that it is equally true of Mr. Chamberlain, but it
was Dean Bradley who said it. The Bradleys were an excessively clever
family. The Dean had a brother or a half-brother a great philosopher, a
don at Merton, and another, Andrew Bradley, a Fellow at Balliol, who
became Professor of Literature at another University. I forget what his
sister, Emma Bradley, did, but she was famous. Three of his daughters,
Mrs. Woods, Mrs. Birchenough, Mrs. Murray Smith, are authoresses, Mrs.
Woods being one of the best novelists of the day, and in my opinion the
best of all poetesses in the English language. When Tennyson died there
was a movement in favour of her being made the laureate, and no woman
has ever had such claims for the post. She made her mark very young with
_A Village Tragedy_ and _Esther Vanhomrigh_, and has written notable
books ever since. Beautiful workmanship, singularly broad humanity, and
truth to life are the characteristics of her prose. In poetry she has
the gifts of both Brownings. She lives in an ideal home, the panelled
Master’s House at the Temple, which has, however, one drawback, that the
only way out of it to a cab on a wet night is to be carried in a sedan
chair; a sedan chair of the eighteenth century is kept in the hall for
the purpose, and passes from one Master of the Temple to another.
Charles Kingsley’s daughter, Mrs. St. Leger Harrison—the “Lucas Malet”
of fame—used to come to us sometimes before she went back to live at
Eversley, immortalised by her father; and once her cousin, the famous
African explorer, the other Mary Kingsley, came. Lucas Malet is all that
one might expect of Charles Kingsley’s daughter and the writer of _Sir
Richard Calmady_.
It seems natural to mention the author of _Concerning Isabel Carnaby_
beside the author of _Sir Richard Calmady_. The two books made a stir
about the same time, and the public mixed their titles with great
impartiality. The author of the former, Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler, now
the Hon. Mrs. Felkin, with her sister, Edith Fowler, was a good many
times at Addison Mansions. I have told the story of her becoming an
authoress in my chapter on the Idlers and Vagabonds.
I should have mentioned Beatrice Harraden before. When you see this
small, slight, delicate-looking woman, with her bright eyes, you are
forcibly reminded of the invalid heroine of _Ships that Pass in the
Night_. But Beatrice Harraden is a public school woman; she was at
Cheltenham College—the ladies’ College—and has taken the liveliest
interest in all the interests of women since. She was cured, I fancy, of
some pulmonary disease by going to California. She now has one of the
most unique flats in Hampstead. I do not remember how I met her, but it
was a long time ago, and I was very elated, because I always thought
_Ships that Pass in the Night_ one of the best-written short novels in
the language.
Helen Mathers has for many years been a dear friend of ours. She was
another of the authors whose acquaintance it elated me to make. Although
she is much about the same age as myself, she made her two successes
with _Comin’ Through the Rye_ and _Cherry Ripe_ when I was a boy at
school. Her husband, Henry Reeves, the eminent orthopædist, was one of
the very first doctors to make practical use of the X-rays. She had a
son in the army who promised to be her worthy successor in literature
had he lived, as the writing which he achieved proved. Her real name was
Mathews. She was a cousin of the Estella Mathews who married my near
neighbour, George Cave, K.C., M.P., who was in my team, as was Mr.
Justice Montague Shearman, when I was Captain of the Public Schools
Football Club at Oxford, and who now occasionally plays golf with me
when he can get a day off from the Courts, and from the case against
Home Rule.
Frances Hodgson Burnett I first met in Washington, where she was the
wife of a well-known doctor, and the mother of two beautiful boys in
velvet Patience suits, locally called Fauntleroy suits, in honour of her
book _Little Lord Fauntleroy_. But she was not an American; she was an
Englishwoman born in Manchester, who had made her fame with a book about
the north of England, called _That Lass o’ Lowrie’s_. Eventually she
came back to live in her native England, first of all in a house in
Portland Place and afterwards in a manor house in Kent. Her gigantic
success with books and plays did not turn her head; she was always the
same gracious human woman she had been when she was making her way.
John Oliver Hobbes, on the other hand, though she lived so much in
England, and wrote all her books over here, was an American-born, the
daughter of John Morgan Richards, who was at one time Chairman of the
American Society in London, and had as much to do with _entente
cordiale_ between England and the United States as any American
Ambassador at the Court of St. James’. He was, as it were, a sort of
social ambassador. The great house in Lancaster Gate in which he lived
till he retired from business was a focus of entertainment for both
branches of the Anglo-Saxon race.
Mrs. Craigie was a friend of our present Queen. She was extraordinarily
clever and extraordinarily charming. She always gave every one to whom
she was talking the knowledge that for the time being nobody else
existed for her. In intellect she was the equal of any contemporary
woman writer; added to this, she was very pretty, very engaging, very
well dressed, and certainly proved the truth of the proverb “Whom the
gods love, die young.” She had the gift of bringing out the wit as well
as the best qualities of others.
Another American authoress who has spent most of her life and done all
her writing in England is Irene Osgood, who came here as a very
beautiful young bride of fabulous wealth, and rented a house which was
one of the shrines of English literature—Knebworth, the home of Bulwer
Lytton. She did not write _Servitude_, the book by which she will be
remembered, there, but at Guilsborough, in Northamptonshire, another
seat which she took for the hunting.
Yet another American authoress, who was also young and beautiful when
she came to England, was Amelie Rives, who was at that time wife of J.
A. Chanler, a great-grandson of the original Astor, but is now Princess
Troubetzkoi. The daughter of a Virginian country gentleman, she simply
leapt into fame with a book called _Virginia of Virginia_, which took
the Americans by storm. She was irresistibly clever, and very
striking-looking, with her pale gold hair, clear dusky complexion, and
big blue eyes.
Gertrude Franklin Atherton, a remarkable-looking Californian with the
same pale gold hair and rather the same complexion as Amelie Rives,
whose mother was a great-grandniece of Benjamin Franklin, was at one
time a very frequent visitor of ours. She was a long time getting her
recognition, and then suddenly leapt into her full fame. But those who
used to meet her socially knew from the first that she was a woman of
commanding intellect. She had an odd trick of wearing a quill thrust
through her hair.
Mr. and Mrs. C. N. Williamson are among my oldest literary friends. I
made Williamson’s acquaintance when he was sub-editor of the _Graphic_,
and asked me to write an illustrated article on Adam Lindsay Gordon.
Alice Livingston was an American girl, who came over to England to spend
a year with some friends, and has never been back in her own country for
more than three months at a time since. She had a letter of introduction
to C. N. Williamson, who introduced her to a number of London editors,
and thus gave her a chance of success in story-writing. After their
marriage she wrote many serial stories, some of which appeared in book
form; but the first great “Williamson success” was _The Lightning
Conductor_, suggested by their earliest motoring adventures in France
and Italy. C. N. Williamson having expert knowledge as a mechanical
engineer (he intended to be one, before he determined to become a
writer), it was easy to mingle amusing mechanical details of motoring
with the story, a feature which appealed to lovers of automobiles in the
days, ten or eleven years ago, when the sport was an uncertain
adventure.
They both love story-telling—Mrs. Williamson used to “print” stories
when she was six years old, before she could write—and have written a
good many popular travel novels since _The Lightning Conductor_. They
love also to see the far corners of the world, though they contrive to
spend two or three months each winter in their Riviera house, and a
month or two in summer among their friends in London.
Next to travelling, they love to build houses, and make them beautiful.
If they see some land on a hillside with a splendid view, they can
hardly resist buying it, and planning exactly the sort of house which
ought to exist there. This means that they sell their last house, and
begin another, with a different sort of garden, but there must always be
a bull-dog in it, rejoicing in the name of Tiberius, or “Tibe.”
Madame Albanesi, one of the most successful novelists of the day, and
wife of the well-known musician, is an old friend of ours. She had long
been one of the most successful writers of serial fiction in popular
journals, but it was not until after her marriage with Signor Albanesi
that she turned her attention to novels—one of the earliest of these
books receiving remarkable reviews. She conceived the idea of
advertising these reviews herself, with the result that she was
approached by a number of leading publishers for her next book, and
happily followed with the book which established her name—_Susannah and
One Other_, a book which has been running for over ten years, and is
still selling. The book-reading public only required to have its
attention adequately drawn to her novels, to see what admirable stories
they were—faithful to life, pulsing with human nature.
I asked Madame Albanesi what first made her write. She said that she
could not remember when she had not tried to write in some form or
other, and that happily for her, when she was quite a girl circumstances
threw her into a circle where her gift of imaginative writing was warmly
encouraged, and opportunities were found for turning this gift to the
most satisfactory results. I remember Madame Albanesi telling me that an
interesting fact in connection with her earlier writing was that her
imagination was so fertile that she used—before she was twenty years
old—to keep three or four serials running at the same time. She never
had less than two going at once, and wrote them in instalments from week
to week, and never took a note. Everything was published anonymously,
and a new serial would begin before the old one was finished. Madame
Albanesi regards her serial work as being the very best training for
telling a good story.
I ought to have mentioned earlier, since she belonged to that
generation, John Strange Winter, a shining light in Bohemia at the epoch
of which I am writing. She made her first success when I was at Oxford,
with _Bootles’ Baby_, and _Hoop-la_, but she had lost her vogue before
we went to live at Addison Mansions, though her name remained a
household word, and she continued to publish a number of popular books.
She was then living in an old house at Merton near Wimbledon, but
shortly afterwards came to live at West Kensington, because she found
Merton too far out.
She was a woman of inexhaustible energy, and had a very kind heart. She
was exceedingly good to young authors and journalists; she made their
cause her own; she welcomed them to her house, and visited theirs. She
was a sister-in-law of George Augustus Sala. She was unfortunate in
losing her public; she would have it again if she were alive now. But at
that time a wave of preciousness and morbidness, which left her
stranded, was passing over the country.
“George Egerton” and “Roy Devereux,” very pretty and clever women, were
at the top of that wave among women, the former with books like
_Keynotes_, the latter, and George Egerton’s beautiful sister, Miss
Dunne, with brilliant and virile journalism in the _Saturday Review_,
the _Pall Mall_ and elsewhere. Lane was their publisher, Beardsley was
their illustrator, H. G. Wells headed the list of their male rivals,
followed by Arthur Machen, H. D. Lowry and others. I have all their
books—such slim books for novels. Fisher Unwin had another school of
them, headed by John Oliver Hobbes, as daring from the sex point of
view, but lighter in touch, which he published in long slim books with
yellow paper covers at eighteenpence each. _Some Emotions and a Moral_
came out in this series, which I heard some one ask for at Smith’s
Library quite seriously as _Some Morals and a Reputation_. These were
Wells’s _Time Machine_, _Stolen Bacillus_, and _Wonderful Visit_ days.
I asked George Egerton, who was in camp at Tauranga during the Maori war
as an infant, and as a child was in her uncle Admiral Bynon’s fleet
while he was bombarding Valparaiso, and who I knew was intended for an
artist, what had made her turn writer. She told me—
“Why I wrote? Because I had to. Why I wrote as I did? Because I felt
woman could only hope to do one thing in literature—put _herself_ into
it. Write not in breeches, but in corsets. That I took the name of
George Egerton was partly because I did not think any publisher would
take stories of that kind written by a woman, partly to see if my sex
would make itself felt. _Keynotes_ went into seven languages in two
years. I am not dead abroad. At the Goethe Centenary in Weimar the Dr.
Professor who gave the lecture on literature of the century, spoke of
Rudyard Kipling and George Egerton as the two who had introduced a new
note, a new method, into English literature ‘in our time.’
“I gave up writing books when I found that authors are ‘unsecured
creditors’—not worth the candle unless one can reel off popular stuff. I
can’t. I go to America with plays. I make any money I make there. I
shall arrive here too. I am doing a big book now, and I am starting a
book of recollections. If one attaches credence to the fortune-tellers,
I am to live to be an old woman. It might be amusing, if only to
demolish the men and women of straw one has seen lauded to the skies, in
one’s memory.”
Marie Belloc, who had not then married Lowndes of _The Times_, was a
constant visitor. She belonged very much to the Idler and Vagabond set
of which we saw so much, and was already longing to write novels, though
many years were to go by before she was able to fulfil her wish. She is
a sister of Hilaire Belloc, the free-lance M.P. of the last Parliament,
one of the wittiest writers of the day, who has the further distinction
of having been a driver in a French artillery regiment and a Scholar of
Balliol afterwards. It should be added that he was twenty-three when he
went up to Oxford.
Marie Stuart Boyd, of the same set, the wife of the well-known _Punch_
and _Graphic_ artist, did not begin to publish her delightful books till
nearly ten years later, though she was a regular contributor to
important Reviews.
Mrs. Frankau (“Frank Danby”), who came with her sister, Mrs. Aria, had
at that time dropped writing for engraving, and did not resume it till
some years later. _Pigs in Clover_, and her other successes in fiction,
belong to a much later date.
One of the most daring and witty of women writers, Violet Hunt, was
constantly at our at-homes. With a father who was a well-known artist, a
Fellow of Corpus Christi, Oxford, and a friend of Gladstone’s, and a
mother who wrote novels of repute; and brought up in the brilliant set
which gathered round Burne-Jones and Ford Madox Brown, it was no wonder
that she should be extraordinarily clever, and no one was surprised when
she produced scintillating books like _The Maiden’s Progress_ and _A
Hard Woman_. South Lodge, their house on Campden Hill, was a Mecca for
distinguished literary people. It was there that I first met Andrew
Lang, Robert Hichens, Somerset Maugham, Katherine Cecil Thurston in a
crowd of writers of high calibre. It was one of the few houses where
Lang was natural without being rude.
I now come to a group of able women writers whom I met at clubs like the
Pioneers and the Writers’, though they mostly came often to our at-homes
afterwards. First among them I may place that brilliant and delightful
writer, Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick, who published her early novels under the
pseudonym of “Mrs. Andrew Dean.” Her husband, Mr. Alfred Sidgwick, is
the author of well-known works on logic, and one of the earliest of the
modern school of philosophers, known as the Pragmatists. He is a cousin
of Mr. Henry Sidgwick (d. 1900), the distinguished Professor of Moral
Philosophy at Cambridge, who married Mr. A. J. Balfour’s sister, the
guardian spirit of Newnham.
Mrs. Sidgwick’s novels have always been full of verve. She has steeped
herself in the literature of three countries, and until she married knew
the world better from the Continental point of view than from the
English. But her marriage took her amongst English people, so that she
has had unusual opportunities of understanding two nationalities
intimately. In those days we saw a good deal of her because she lived at
Surbiton, but for many years past she has lived in Cornwall.
At the same club I met Miss Montrésor, whose delicate health has
prevented her seeing much of London literary society, though she lives
in South Kensington. With her _Into the Highways and Hedges_ she leapt
into fame at a single bound. Miss Montrésor is a genius. Her intuition
enables her to describe with fidelity phases of life with which she
cannot have had any acquaintance. When she wrote _Into the Highways and
Hedges_, my friend Sheldon, who was the London manager of D. Appleton &
Co., gave me five pounds to write a careful opinion of it, to see
whether his firm, to whom it had been offered, should publish it or not.
I gave them a long opinion, in which I told them that they could not
possibly refuse such a book. But they did refuse it, because almost any
American publisher will refuse any novel which is not by a novelist who
has already made a great name. Some other New York firm took it, and it
was the book of the year in America.
At a club, too, I met Annie Swan (whose husband, Dr. Burnett Smith, was
last year Mayor of Hertford), twenty years and more ago, a woman
completely unspoiled by success, which came to her early and without
stint, and remained. She stands at the very head of the writers of the
wholesome school of fiction. In those days she lived at Hampstead, in a
house called “Aldersyde,” after the novel which gave her her fame. She
is one of those people whose obvious sincerity charms you the moment you
meet them. I don’t know whether she is interested in spiritualism, but I
did on one occasion meet Florence Marryat and Dora Russell together at
her table.
Of Florence Marryat (Mrs. Francis Lean), the daughter of the immortal
Captain Marryat, I saw a good deal at one time. She was a very regular
attendant at a dining club called the Argonauts, which Frankfort Moore
and I got up because the Vagabonds would not then admit ladies to their
banquets. Spiritualism played an immense part in her life. She was also
a very voluminous writer. I remember her telling me that she had written
more than seventy novels. She was a tall, striking-looking woman, whose
eyes suggested intimacy with the occult.
The Leightons, who are among my most valued friends, I certainly met at
some club—Marie Leighton is the best newspaper serial writer of the
day—a story-teller born, and, like her husband, a great authority on
dogs. One at any rate of her thrilling stories has been dramatised and
others are sure to follow, as the managers of the melodrama theatres
recognise how immensely dramatic her stories are.
“Lucas Cleeve,” another frequent visitor at our house, wife of Colonel
Kingscote, and daughter of Sir Henry Drummond Wolff, M.P., who made with
Mr. Balfour, Lord Randolph Churchill, and Sir John Gorst the celebrated
Fourth Party, had an extraordinary facility for writing novels of a
certain merit, and, like her father, was a great linguist and traveller.
Sir John Gorst introduced me to her. I met him at Castle Combe, which
now belongs to him, and then belonged to his brother, the late Edward
Chadwick Lowndes. I was staying with my brother-in-law, Robert Watkins,
the agent of the estate, which is one of historical interest, for its
archives prove it to have been irretrievably wasted by Sir John
Fastolfe, Knt., Shakespeare’s Falstaff, who had married the widow of the
last of its Scroop owners, and managed the estate for her. He built the
chancel arches in the church, fine and early Perpendicular. The Scroop
and Falstaff house has long since disappeared, while the Cromlech of a
British Chief, and a Roman Camp, continue almost perfect. I was often
the guest of Sir John’s eldest son, Sir Eldon, when I was in Egypt, and
his younger son, Harold, and his charming wife, have been our intimate
friends for many years. Mrs. Harold Gorst, who was a Miss Kennedy of the
famous Shrewsbury School family of scholars, has an extraordinary
knowledge of the life of the poor in London, and her novels reflect it
with a fidelity which should have won them ten times their circulation.
Quite a prominent place among the authoresses who used to assemble on
those evenings at Addison Mansions is occupied by novelists who began as
my secretaries, and whom I trained to write.
I have been singularly fortunate in my choice of them. Not only have
they given me so much satisfaction as secretaries that I have only had
to send one away for inefficiency, and none for any other reason, but
they have made such good use of the opportunities they had for observing
the ways of book-writing, that in the twenty-seven years since the first
came to me, they have between them had more than twenty-seven books
published and paid for by leading firms like Hutchinson, Heinemann,
Methuen, Hurst & Blackett, Constable & Co., Chatto & Windus, Eveleigh
Nash, Mills & Boon and Stanley Paul.
My first secretary was Norma Lorimer, who came to us in her teens,
before our memorable journey to America, Canada and the Far East. She
has accompanied us on every important journey we ever made in Europe,
Asia, Africa and America since I returned from Australia. When
typewriting came in, she ceased to be my secretary, because she was
never a typist, but she continued to live with us, and act as hostess,
since my wife’s health has never permitted her to undertake the strain
of managing the large literary, artistic and theatrical receptions which
we held weekly for a good many years.
During that period Miss Lorimer made an immense circle of friends, which
included practically every one in our acquaintance. Men like Fisher of
the _Literary World_, and Robert Barr urged her to write a book for
years before she could persuade herself to put pen to paper, though
seeing so many of my books put together, and transcribing when they were
finished, had familiarised her with the process of book-making, and
though she had assisted me at every stage, in sight-seeing with an
armful of guide-books, in making copious notes, in studying all the
available authorities on the subject, and in digesting and arranging the
information if it was a travel-book, or in giving her advice about the
story if it was a novel. She must have been with us quite ten years
before she published her first book, _A Sweet Disorder_. Since then,
besides the two books in which she collaborated with me, _Queer Things
about Sicily_ and _More Queer Things about Japan_, she has brought out
_Josiah’s Wife_, _Mirry-Ann_, _By the Waters of Sicily_, _Catherine
Sterling_, _On Etna_, _By the Waters of Carthage_, _The Pagan Woman_,
_By the Waters of Egypt_, _By the Waters of Italy_, _The Second Woman_,
_A Wife out of Egypt_, and _By the Waters of Germany_.
It gives me great satisfaction to think that she was my pupil in
writing, for most of these books will stand reading again and again for
the admirable sayings and analyses of life with which they are strewn,
as well as for their stories, and the knowledge displayed in them. They
are redolent with the atmosphere of the Isle of Man, Japan, Italy,
Sicily, Tunis and Egypt, and one of them, _Josiah’s Wife_, contains a
brilliant picture of America, where she lived with us for nearly three
years.
Miss Lorimer comes of a very clever family. Her uncle, James Lorimer,
was Professor of International Law in the Edinburgh University, and
wrote some of the standard books upon the subject. He was a man of
international reputation. His hobby was the restoration of Kellie Castle
in Fifeshire, which he acquired from Lord Kellie and Mar, and, as the
Latin inscription sets forth, “rescued it from the bats and the owls.”
Living at Kellie was the inspiration of three of his clever children.
His youngest son, now Sir Robert Lorimer, has become the most famous
living Scottish architect. He had the high honour of building the Chapel
of the Knights of the Thistle in St. Giles’ Cathedral, Edinburgh. His
second son, J. H. Lorimer, the Scottish Academician, is recognised as
one of the soundest painters of the day. One daughter, Lady im Thurn,
caught the trick of the beautiful moulded plaster ceilings at Kellie,
done by a wandering band of Italian artists in the seventeenth century,
and was entrusted with the execution of the moulded plaster ceilings
which Lord Bute had made for his House of Falkland. Another daughter is
an author, and the other married Sir David Chalmers, the only man who
ever earned two pensions as Chief Justice of two tropical colonies.
My next secretary was Miss Maude (Mary) Chester Craven, who had
quarrelled with her stepfather, and was seeking to make her own way in
the world.
She was a singularly clever girl, very much interested in literature,
with a great sense of humour, and a great idea of “copy.” Had she come
to me later, when I was writing the various volumes of _Queer Things_
series, I should have been able to make better use of her help. She was
most generous and self-sacrificing, and when she had thrown herself into
the subject, you could hardly get her away from the papers. And she was
very well read on certain subjects.
A few years after she left me she wrote an excellent book called _Famous
Beauties of Two Reigns_. Since then she has found a niche all to herself
in book-producing—teaching people who have led interesting lives, and
have good stories to tell, but have had no literary experience, how to
put their biographies together and editing them herself. The books
produced in this way have proved some of the greatest sensations of our
times. Lady Cardigan led off, followed by the adventurous ex-Crown
Princess of Saxony, and Lord Rossmore’s racy recollections came as an
_entr’acte_ to the drama of Meyerling as narrated by Countess Larisch.
Editing these books has made Miss Craven—she is now Mrs. Charles
ffoulkes, wife of the Master of the Armour of the Tower of London—an
admirable raconteur, and she told me that the late M. Charles Sauerwein,
directeur of _Le Matin_, had offered her a large sum to write her
reminiscences of her “sitters,” but conscientious scruples prevented her
from accepting the tempting offer, as to disclose all she knew would
have caused trouble in London and elsewhere.
The ex-Crown Princess of Saxony, for instance, was a most ingenuous
person, who would have written a chapter, had Miss Craven permitted her,
on “why the royal honeymoon bored her to tears,” and much more that
would have caused endless scandal and heartburnings to the Saxon court.
“Our Louise,” as she was termed by her subjects, had a positive mania
for cleanliness, and she told Miss Craven that once when she was
travelling with her mother the water supply gave out and she was in
despair how to wash her hands. But necessity originated a brilliant
idea, and at the next stop Louise rushed to the buffet, and returned
with a waiter staggering under many bottles of mineral water, with which
she performed her ablutions. “Surely,” remarked the Grand Duchess of
Tuscany, “there is no accounting for your vagaries, Louise!”
Miss Craven asked the Princess what she most desired to do when the
dullness of palace life obsessed her. “To post a letter in a pillar-box
like any one else,” was the reply. Once, coming from the Continent, she
overheard some fellow-passengers discussing her rather freely, and
entering into the spirit of the adventure, Louise joined in the
conversation, and for once saw herself as others saw her. “Well,” said
she, as the train slowed into Charing Cross, “you’ve had an opportunity
of meeting that terrible woman—I am the ex-Crown Princess,” and when the
horror-stricken occupants of the compartment saw her name upon her small
luggage, they realised that the pretty, vivacious, fair woman was none
other than the former wife of the King of Saxony.
Lady Cardigan (whose recollections “Labby” described as a classic)
disliked the blue pencil, for she saw no reason why you should not say
what you like in a book. She was a most brilliant anecdotist, and Miss
Craven said she could tell good stories for a fortnight without
repeating herself. One, which related to a well-known Bacchanalian
member of the aristocracy, is worth recalling. The gentleman in question
once kissed a pretty housemaid, who made a decidedly original protest.
“I wonder, my Lord,” said the girl, “that a nobleman like you don’t
drink champagne. Brandy do colour your breath.”
Lady Cardigan held the opinion that sauce for the goose was sauce for
the gander. “Men fall in love with ballet-girls, barmaids and servants,”
she once remarked, “so why shouldn’t women fall in love with men of
inferior station if it amuses them?”
Maude Craven could tell of flutterings in the dove-cotes of Mayfair, and
of many skeletons in ancestral cupboards whose bones must have rattled
in dread of what Lady Cardigan’s marvellous memory could have recalled
about them.
The lady who followed Miss Craven had only been with us for a short time
when the doctors told her that she could not live in England. She went
to California and got married. Miss Marie Ivory, who followed her,
married a famous artist.
Miss Ethel Phipps, the next, was with us for several years, and
accompanied us to Italy and Sicily, and inaugurated the system of
tissue-paper scrap-books, which I have found so useful in collecting the
materials for my books of travel. And she was an excellent typist, the
first excellent typist we had had, though I took up the use of the
typewriter quite early. The first I ever had was a Remington which I
bought in 1883 in Sydney from a man named Cunningham who reported law
cases for the _Sydney Morning Herald_. He sold it to me for half the
price he had given for it (I paid him about fifteen pounds, I think),
because the judges would not look at his notes when they were in
typewriting. He had bought the instrument under the idea that the extra
legibility would be received with acclaim. The judges thought that the
machine might not write down what the reporter meant it to—they credited
it with the powers of a planchette, which was then very fashionable.
Miss Phipps wrote a very amusing little book called _Belinda and
Others_, which Warne bought from her and published both in England and
America.
When she left us because she was needed at home, her place was taken by
a very clever and interesting girl fresh from school, who has made a
great name for herself in fiction—Miss Ethel May Stevens, whose pen-name
is Ethel Stefana Stevens. We took her to Sicily almost directly she came
to us, and Italianised her surname into the nickname Stefana, by which
even her own relations grew to call her.
The moment I saw her I was struck by her brilliance and intelligence,
and I did not require to learn that she had carried everything before
her at Miss Douglas’s famous school in Queen’s Gate, to know that she
was much the ablest of the ladies who answered my advertisement when
Miss Phipps had to leave us.
At various times she travelled all over Italy and Sicily with us, and
visited Tunis and Carthage. She was with us for several years, and a
great worker. On her fell the almost incredible labour of typing out and
keeping sorted the immense mass of materials accumulated chiefly from
Italian sources, for the Encyclopædia called _Things Sicilian_, which
forms the bulk of my _Sicily, the New Winter Resort_.
She had studied a great deal before she came to us, and besides a good
knowledge of French and German and music (she played the violin
charmingly), had a strange accomplishment—she spoke Romany, the Gipsy
language, so fluently that when she made up a little, even gipsies took
her for a gipsy. She had learnt it in the New Forest, which was near her
home. She began before she had been very long with us the gipsy novel,
which now, after many years, she has taken up again. It was a story with
a strong love interest in it, but it gave no promise of the admirable
gift of writing which she has shown in her published works like _The
Veil_ and _The Mountain of God_. In the large amount of reviewing which
she did for me—against time, it was true—she had a habit of introducing
stock phrases and introductory periphrases, such as “the worst of the
whole matter was that,” “that redoubtable,” “the venerable form of.” Her
criticisms of books were in judgment very good, but in expression they
were verbose and lacking in distinction. She was always studying in the
fine library which I had collected as a reviewer. Besides gipsy-lore and
music she was especially interested in everything connected with
occultism and amulets, and the Black Art generally, and everything
connected with the Orient. It was in the three excellent chapters which
she wrote for my _Carthage and Tunis_, where they are signed with her
own initials, E. M. S., instead of the E. S. S. she uses now, that Miss
Stevens first showed what she could do when she tried. The chapters are
Chapter VI, Volume I, “The Lavigerie Museum at Cairo”; Chapter XVIII,
Volume II, “Superstition in Tunis”; Chapter XX, Volume II, “A Tunisian
Harem, and the Tombs of the Beys.”
It was when she was visiting Tunis with us that she first heard the
“East a-callin’.” She found it absolutely irresistible. In the short
time that we were there she began to learn Arabic, and acquired quite a
good knowledge of Arab amulets, and the Egyptian amulets in the museum
at Carthage. She afterwards paid another visit to Tunis before she wrote
her memorable book, _The Veil_, one of the most successful novels of its
year.
In search of a fresh Oriental subject, she next went to Haifa, the
Syrian seaport, where she was lucky enough to live in the little colony
which surrounded the present head of the Bahai movement, and to see a
great deal of the inner working of that movement, which is said to count
half the Shia Mohammedans (chiefly Persians) among its secret adherents.
So high an opinion did Abbas Effendi form of her abilities, that he
invited her to stay in his house and gave her a special course of
instruction, which lasted over many months, in the philosophy of the
sect.
Her stay at Haifa also supplied her with the materials for her second
novel, _The Mountain of God_. Since then she has published several able
and successful books, just as _The Earthen Drum_, _The Long Engagement_,
_The Lure_ and _Sarah Eden_, for the material of which she paid two
visits to Jerusalem.
My next secretary, who was with me for seven years, has also had three
books published by leading firms.
It is not by any means an uncommon thing for authors’ secretaries to
become authors. One of the most conspicuous examples is Mary E. Wilkins,
now Mrs. Freeman-Wilkins, who was for a long time secretary to Oliver
Wendell Holmes. I well remember the day when he stopped me in the street
in Boston (U.S.A.), to say, “I have a hated rival. My secretary, Mary
Wilkins, has just published a novel—a much better one than I ever
wrote.”
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