LITERARY CLUBS: THE IDLERS AND THE VAGABONDS
AT the beginning the Authors’ Club had no exact rivals, but there were
two institutions, very much intertwined, which came near it in a way—the
Vagabonds Club and the Idler teas. The Vagabonds Club, in its
conception, had been a little coterie of authors who met in the rooms of
their friend, the blind poet, Philip Bourke Marston; but before I came
back from America Marston was dead, and the coterie had been turned into
a small dining club, which used to take eighteen-penny dinners at cheap
restaurants, and in theory drank beer and smoked clay pipes. The
committee included Jerome, C. N. Williamson and F. W. Robinson, and the
Club had among its members, besides those just mentioned, Conan Doyle,
Israel Zangwill, Anthony Hope, Bernard Partridge, Dudley Hardy, Phil
May, Hal Hurst, Rudolph Blind, Pett Ridge, Joe Hatton, Robert Barr,
Coulson Kernahan, W. L. Alden, Hall Caine, Sir Alfred East, E. W.
Hornung, Sir Gilbert Parker, J. M. Barrie, Barry Pain, Arthur Morrison,
Solomon J. Solomon, and, of course, George Burgin, the original and
indefatigable secretary.
Of these people Jerome and Barr were editors of the _Idler_, Burgin was
sub-editor, Doyle, Zangwill, Pett Ridge and Anthony Hope were its
favourite contributors. The _Idler_, in those days published by Chatto &
Windus, was edited in a flat in Arundel Street, Strand, and there every
week, on Wednesday afternoons, as far as I remember, the editors gave a
tea at which they welcomed their contributors, and any friends whom
contributors chose to bring with them, and the friends of these friends
thereafter. It was like the snow-ball system of selling umbrellas in the
United States.
The teas were of the simplest. I do not think we had anything except
bread and butter and tea, but nobody wanted more; it was sufficient that
here was the common meeting-ground for men and women, where you might,
and often did, meet the ablest young authors of the day. I should say
that the Idler teas were the first literary gatherings in London
attended by Weyman and Crockett, and they certainly were the first
attended by Anthony Hope, W. W. Jacobs and Frankfort Moore.
We received the warmest welcome at the Idlers, because there were many
literary Americans in London just then, and both Jerome and Barr were
insistent that I should bring as many as possible of them to their teas.
At those teas the principal occupation was introducing every freshcomer
to as many people as possible, as the hosts do at American at-homes; and
Jerome made a good many of his arrangements for articles and
illustrations with the people who came to the teas. It was
characteristic of the Idler and Vagabond gatherings to talk shop and do
business without any pretence of concealment.
Hal Hurst and Dudley Hardy were two of Jerome’s favourite illustrators.
Other artists who were there a great deal were Robert Sauber, John
Gülich, Lewis Baumer, Fred Pegram, James Greig, Paxton, A. S. Hartrick,
Louis Wain, who almost always drew cats with human expressions, a little
man named Martin Anderson, who called himself “Cynicus,” and had an
allegorical vein of humour. He won himself undying popularity here by
bringing to one of those teas a charmingly pretty young American, who
was soon to feel her footing as a writer. She had not yet written _The
Barn-stormers_. This was Alice Livingston, who is now known to all the
world as Mrs. C. N. Williamson. Townsend, the present art-editor of
_Punch_; Chris and Gertrude Hammond, who were among the most charming
book-illustrators of that day; Seppings Wright, the naval war
correspondent; Holland Tringham, Melton Prior, Fred Villiers and many
other artists came constantly.
The great advantage of those Idler teas was that women as well as men
could be present, and in those days women were not considered worthy to
be admitted to authors’ banquets, except at the annual function of the
Authors’ Society. Of course, you had the chance of meeting women authors
at the at-homes of the Pioneer, Writers’, and Grosvenor Crescent Clubs,
because they were all ladies’ institutions. But at their entertainments
you met only a very few men of any importance, and not particularly many
women of literary importance, other than journalistic. They were more
interested in women’s movements—the Pioneer might almost be called the
ancestor of the Suffragettes.[5]
Footnote 5:
Among the eminent women whom I remember seeing at the Idlers were
Marie Corelli, Mona Caird, Mrs. Sidgwick (Mrs. Andrew Dean), Mrs.
Campbell Praed, Mrs. Humphry Ward, Mrs. Lynn Linton, Mrs. Alexander,
Mrs. Meynell, Miss Montrésor, Lucas Malet and Ellen Thorneycroft
Fowler.
The conversations at the Idler teas were very shoppy. I remember being
introduced to Ellen Fowler as the woman whose witty sayings had long
been the delight of the exalted circles in which she moved, and who had
been induced by the various leading authors whom she knew to write a
book. This is the sort of laudation which we professional authors often
hear and usually distrust. But the book happened to be _Concerning
Isabel Carnaby_, and when I learned that the circle which she had
dazzled was the circle in which the Liberal leaders moved, since she was
the daughter of Sir Henry Fowler, M.P., afterwards Lord Wolverhampton, I
understood that she certainly would have received an encouragement to
write books from the authors and critics who were admitted to Front
Bench Liberal dinners.
Mona Caird, whom we met often at the Women’s Clubs afterwards, did much
for the emancipation of women in those days, for she was not only
clear-sighted and convincing in what she said and wrote, but she had a
winning personality which commanded the sympathies of those who were not
predisposed to share her views.
It was at an Idler tea that I first met George Bennett Burgin, with whom
I was to be so intimately connected for so many years as joint Hon.
Secretary of the New Vagabonds Club. He was the sub-editor of the famous
_Idler Magazine_, and his tact and geniality were constantly in
requisition, for the pugnacity of his chiefs was proverbial, and some of
the best contributors were equally pugnacious.
I forget if it was a recognised part of the proceedings at the Old
Vagabond dinners to have a set subject for discussion. Some one always
did get up and make a short speech, and in a club which had men like
Jerome and Zangwill and Barry Pain to draw on, the speaking was always
witty, unless the subject forbade it. The chief difference was that
people did not discuss the speech by getting on their legs to fire
witticisms at the speaker. They discussed it where they sat, sometimes
talking to each other about it (or anything else), sometimes raising
their voices to question the man who had been speaking, or to argue with
him.
There was much less discussion of the subject than there was talking of
shop. The point of the gatherings was that a number of brilliant young
authors and artists dined together fraternally once a month.
It was a great boon to me suddenly to be received into the intimacy of
some of the busiest and best-known authors and editors and
black-and-white artists of the day, to hear and take part in their
“shop.”[6]
Footnote 6:
This Idler and Vagabond set included, besides those mentioned above,
Anthony Hope, Frankfort Moore, Israel Zangwill, Eden Phillpotts, C. N.
Williamson, F. W. Robinson, Joseph Hatton, Coulson Kernahan, George
Manville Fenn, G. A. Henty, W. Pett Ridge, H. G. Wells, Frederic
Villiers, Henry Arthur Jones, Francis Gribble, Rudyard Kipling, Arthur
A. Beckett, William Watson, John Davidson, H. Breakstad the Norwegian,
and Carl Hentschel, the founder of the old Playgoers Club.
Burgin, the hon. secretary of the Old Vagabonds Club, who was once
private secretary to Sir Samuel Baker in Constantinople and Asia Minor,
and has been a great traveller in recent years, was sub-editor of the
_Idler Magazine_ until 1899. Since then he has given himself up to
novel-writing, gardening and the control of literary clubs. One of his
novels, _Shutters of Silence_, has been through thirty editions. His
books are distinguished alike by uncommon vivacity and by exceptional
skill in using local colour. They are very good indeed, and if they had
their rights would be among the most popular books of the day.
I have made several attempts to discover when the original Vagabonds
Club was actually started, and the best account I have had of it was
from Kernahan, one of the oldest members. I certainly did not join it
till about five years later.
He writes—
“Marston died February 14, 1887, Valentine’s Day. Yes, I was one of
those who visited his rooms, 191 Euston Road. When he founded the Club I
do not exactly know. I fancy it had only just been started when, at his
invitation, I joined in 1886. We dined at Pagani’s and then adjourned to
his rooms, keeping it up very late. After he died the Club practically
ceased, as it was he who ran it. Then I think Herbert Clark proposed
that we should continue meeting and call ourselves the Marston Club—not
a good name, as I always held, for it gave the idea that it was like the
Browning club or society, for the study of his poems, whereas it was
merely a gathering of Marston’s old friends. All the same, lots of
interesting men came to it. His father, Dr. Westland Marston, for one.
So things went on for a long time, and the thing was dropping to pieces
for want of some one to work it, until you came along, put us in the
shop window, and, lo and behold, the old Club became a new force.”
It was not so very long after I joined the Club that it fell on evil
days, not, I hope, because I joined it, but because it contained
Socialists, who are apt to wreck things. The course they took was most
revolutionary. There were two of them on the committee, and they
insisted on having committee meetings, which insisted on having a voice
in the management of the Club.
The Club would not stand it; it transformed itself into a New Vagabonds
Club without the offending members. I took a leading part in the
transformation. I became associated with Burgin in the honorary
secretaryship because I persuaded a hundred well-known men, like
Crockett and Weyman and Reginald Cleaver, to join the Club, and we
retained the old committee, minus the impossibles, and strengthened by
the inclusion of Frankfort Moore and Joe Hatton. And this was a
well-behaved committee, because I do not think it met once during its
whole existence of not far short of twenty years. Burgin and I were the
honorary secretaries and managers, and we used to decide everything,
without even thinking of the committee, who, as reformed, had only one
idea in their heads, which was that they were not to be bothered unless
there was some real necessity for it.
Our most successful dinner, at which about six hundred people were
present, was held in honour of Field-Marshal Lord Roberts—the idol of
the nation. Lord Roberts has a wonderful memory, not only for faces, but
for the records which go with the faces. When I met him the other night
at the Authors’ Society dinner, of which likewise he was the guest, he
took me by the arm, and whispered, “Isn’t _Who’s Who_ getting very fat?”
which was his way of showing that he remembered that I was the author of
_Who’s Who_ in its present form—or, rather, in the form which it bore
from 1897 to 1899, when its figure was not so middle-aged.
That Vagabond dinner to Lord Roberts was in honour of the publication of
his celebrated _Forty-One Years in India_, and the Authors’ Society
dinner to him was also in its honour, though so many years later.
Jerome took the chair to Lord Roberts at the Vagabonds. He was very
interested in _Forty-One Years in India_. He had commissioned me to
write the long review of it in the _Idler_, and I am sure that he and
the Field-Marshal, V.C., though looking at everything from an exactly
opposite standpoint, got on like a house on fire.
The dinner to Lord Roberts was the very largest we ever had, though the
lunches to Sarah Bernhardt and to Sir Henry Irving were about as
numerously attended. Irving made himself perfectly charming, but when he
came to reply to the toast to his health, the audience were confronted
by the curious phenomenon that the first actor in Europe was totally
unable to make himself heard even half-way across the hall, and if they
could have heard what he said, they would have been confronted by the
equally curious fact that he was no speaker. That, however, is
nothing—very few actors can speak, always excepting my friend, Tree,
who, if he is in the mood, brings the house down time after time with
his naïveté.
There were few eighteen-carat dramatic celebrities whom we did not
entertain at the Vagabonds—Irving and Sarah Bernhardt, Wyndham and Mary
Moore, the Trees and Mrs. Patrick Campbell, the Bourchiers and the
Maudes, the young Irvings, and Lena Ashwell, occur to me first.
Sarah Bernhardt’s appearance was a very memorable one. Mr. Balfour was
in the chair. He was Prime Minister at the time, and had important
business at the House of Commons that afternoon. Sarah was
three-quarters of an hour late. I, who had charge of the guests, while
Burgin was making sure that all his orders for a banquet of five hundred
people had been carried out, felt more nervous than I had ever felt in
my life at the slight which was being offered to so great a man. I
racked my brain for adequate apologies, but Mr. Balfour said, with his
perfect manners, “Please don’t worry yourself about that, Mr. Sladen.
Tell me about Japan.”
If Sarah was as great as he was in other respects, she certainly was not
as great in this respect, for a day or two afterwards, T. P. O’Connor
asked Sarah and Mortimer Menpes, and Norma Lorimer and myself, to have
tea with some M.P.s on the terrace of the House of Commons. We duly
arrived—even Sarah was fairly punctual—and were herded in the lobby of
the House, like people waiting to see the editor in a newspaper office,
while a search was made for T. P. O’Connor. He could not be found
anywhere, and a long time passed. I do not know how long it was, but it
seemed years, because Sarah was so angry. She had expected to be met at
the door with due ceremony—perhaps the leaders of both parties, the Lord
Chancellor, and the Speaker—but nobody met her at all, and none of us
could speak French well enough to understand the unmeasured language she
was using about O’Connor. Finally, she lost her temper altogether, and
though she had told me on several occasions that she could not speak
English, she was quite equal to telling us in our own language what she
thought of T. P. Finally, some wholly unsuitable member of the Irish
party—Dillon, or somebody just as gloomy—came, waving a telegram.
O’Connor, it appeared, had been caught in a railway accident coming back
from the Henley Regatta, miles from a telegraph office. As soon as he
got to a place where he could telegraph from, he did telegraph, but
Sarah was not appeased, even though Menpes offered to go to her island
off the coast of Brittany and arrange a Japanese room for her.
I remember a similar contretemps, almost equally amusing, when George
Cawston, one of the directors of the Chartered Company, gave a great
supper at Willis’s rooms in honour of a South African millionaire. He
invited a number of eminent people to meet him—politicians, soldiers,
authors, actors, artists and public people generally, most of whom knew
each other. The millionaire, who was very “swollen-headed,” was
shamelessly late. So, finally, Cawston decided to begin without him. The
people made up parties, and sat down at the various little tables, and
enjoyed the munificent supper, and finally went away not knowing or
caring whether the millionaire had been there or not. They had most of
them never heard of him.
Sarah came to us a year later to a huge afternoon reception, which we
got up in her honour, and she honoured us by giving us a long and
magnificent recitation from _L’Aiglon_ (which she had just produced), in
which she was supported by her leading man.
We entertained other famous soldiers besides Lord Roberts, such as Lord
Dundonald, when he came back from the great exploit of his life, the
relief of Ladysmith, and Sir Ian Hamilton. Cecil Raleigh, I remember,
took the chair to Sir Ian Hamilton, and showed his versatility by making
a really admirable speech. I do not remember who it was who took the
chair to Lord Dundonald, but he told a characteristic story of Lord
Dundonald in his earlier service in Egypt.
When the news of the fall of Khartum reached the army which might have
relieved Khartum, if Sir Charles Wilson had pushed on, taking the risks
as Lord Roberts would have taken them, after the victory of Abu Klea,
the General asked for an officer to volunteer to carry the dispatches to
Sir Redvers Buller at the base. It was necessary to have some one with a
knowledge of astronomy, because he had to find his way across the
desert, to avoid the great loop of the Nile above the Second Cataract.
There were many men who would have risked the dangers of meeting
wandering parties of dervishes, but there was only one of the force who
was not only prepared to take the risk, but possessed the requisite
astronomical knowledge, and that was Lord Cochrane, a subaltern in the
2nd Life Guards, the future Lord Dundonald. He carried out his mission,
and in an incredibly small number of hours presented the dispatches to
Sir Redvers, whom he found sleeping under a palm tree. As soon as he had
delivered them, he collapsed with exhaustion.
He is a grandson, of course, of the immortal frigate Commander, the
fighting Lord Cochrane, the Almirante Cochrane who was the liberator of
South America, and is a distinguished inventor. He invented the pocket
heating apparatus for soldiers to carry when doing sentry work in cold
climates, the extra light carriages used for machine-guns in the Boer
War, and the apparatus for enabling cavalry soldiers to turn out ready
for duty as quickly as firemen.
From time to time we entertained distinguished ecclesiastics such as the
late and the present Bishops of London and the ex-Bishop of Ripon.
Creighton was much the best guest of the three, for he had a most saving
gift of humour.
For some reason or other, on the night that he was with us, at the
conclusion of his speech returning thanks for the way in which his
health has been proposed, he had to propose the toast of journalism,
coupled with the name of the editor of _The Times_. He said, “I do not
know much about newspapers; I read so few of them. I have only one test
for them, and that is their suitability for wrapping up shooting boots.
And, judged by this standard, _The Times_ is the best newspaper.”
It was not easy to get the better of Creighton, with his humour to back
up his wisdom and firmness. But my dear old friend, the late Father
Stanton, who was a frequent visitor to Vagabond entertainments with F.
E. Sidney, once got the better of him, and he was very amusing in
telling the story of it.
Creighton, it appears, went to a service of Stanton’s, because he wished
to wean him from certain ritualistic practices. After the service was
over, they had a talk in the vestry, which was quite cordial, because
Creighton knew the essential greatness and goodness of Stanton’s
character. Stanton, who was very astute and tactful about getting his
own way, and yet avoiding trouble with his Bishop, adroitly kept the
conversation away from dangerous points, and finally the Bishop gave up,
and called for his carriage. Stanton escorted him to the carriage door,
and as he was driving off, Creighton got out what he had come to say.
“I don’t like that incense of yours, Stanton.”
“Nor do I, my lord, it’s wretched stuff—only three and sixpence a pound,
but I can’t afford any better.”
“Do without it, Stanton, do without it altogether,” said the Bishop.
Lord Charles Beresford was another of our guests, and so was Admiral
Lambton. Both of them made a violent attack on _Bridge_, which they said
was sapping the energy of the nation by the awful waste of time to which
it led.
Beresford was very amusing. He said, “The Navy is the finest thing in
the world for a man. If I hadn’t been in the Navy, I should have been in
prison.”
I only once saw Beresford seriously put out, and that was when he had to
speak after that great man, Seddon, the Premier of New Zealand, whose
patriotic attitude about the Boer War counted for so much in making the
democratic colonies support the mother country so splendidly against the
Boers. Seddon, like other New Zealanders I have known, could make a
great speech, but did not know when he had used up all he had to say. In
the first part of that speech for the Vagabonds, he began with great
éclat, and then maundered on and on about “Womman,” as he pronounced her
generic name, while Beresford grew so impatient that when his turn came
to speak he excused himself with a few witty sentences about their
having heard so much good speaking.
Seddon brought two charming daughters with him, and one of them made a
felicitous retort to a maladroit person who condoled with her on her
father’s not having been knighted like the leader of the Conservative
Opposition in New Zealand, Sir William Russell, whose name had appeared
in the Gazette of the day before.
“I don’t mind,” she said; “Billy’s a darling.”
Norman Angell, the apostle of peace, in books like his famous _The Great
Illusion_, and also the _Daily Mail_ correspondent of Paris, was our
guest on one occasion.
The most unexpected turns happened at times. One night we had an
athletic dinner, with C. B. Fry and Eustace Miles for our chief guests,
and Pett Ridge in the chair. There was hardly a word talked about
athletics the whole evening, for Pett Ridge is most interested in work
among the poor, and so are Fry and Miles, and the speeches related
almost entirely to the serious side of the humorist and the athletes.
The world at large did not know how earnest Fry is about good works
until he refused to go to Australia in the all-England Eleven because he
could not leave his work on naval training for boys until a certain sum
was raised for the training-ship. In those days it regarded him merely
as one of the greatest batsmen ever seen, and the only man who had ever
had five blues at the university, and been captain or president of the
university in three different kinds of games. Some of them remembered
too, that he was a Scholar of his College, and got a First. None of
them, I am quite sure, knew that he would have been unable to go to
Oxford at all, because he had no money to go on, except his scholarship
at Wadham, if he had not borrowed the money, and repaid it out of his
own earnings after he left the university. Could anything be more
magnificent than that the man who holds the record of all Englishmen,
and for that matter, that of all recorded men, for achievements in
games, should have paid for himself at the university? Yet there were
some people in the Club that night who expressed their disapproval to me
at the Club’s entertaining a mere athlete!
But there were many more who expressed their disapproval of our
entertaining Christabel Pankhurst as our guest of the evening—most of
them ardent Radicals, who disliked the practical jokes of the
suffragettes upon Cabinet ministers. We Conservatives felt no more
sympathy for people who do idiotic damage, but were more tolerant. I did
not propose the toast, although I was in the chair, and have always
desired to give the vote to women with the proper qualifications. I
called upon an old friend, a very successful barrister, whom I suspect
of being an ardent Liberal, though he is an ardent suffragist—Fordham
Spence—to propose it. He made the kind of points which could not fail to
enlist the sympathies of a popular audience—asking which of the men who
were present would have the pluck to go to prison and starve themselves
for a principle, as these women did. He pointed dramatically to our
guest, a pretty, slim girl, who hardly looked out of her teens, and told
us what she had done. He was the clever advocate all through; he begged
the question almost as flagrantly as Miss Pankhurst herself, when she
got up to reply to the toast.
I prefer to hear the arguments of the suffragists stated in the
dispassionate way in which Mrs. Fawcett states them, pure appeals to
reason and justice, stated without any attempts to draw red herrings
across the trail—in fact, stated by a judge, instead of pleaded by an
advocate. I think they would be difficult to resist. The weak point of
the militant suffragettes is that they not only do things of which
moderate people cannot approve, to attract the public attention, but
they have no consideration for our commonsense; they talk to us like
Socialists talk to a mob in Trafalgar Square, not as a great Scientist,
like Lord Kelvin, would address the British Association. That is the
convincing way.
I do not know if Miss Pankhurst made many converts to the cause that
night; she certainly made many personal friends. An hour or two later I
met her at a supper given by Mr. and Mrs. Stanley Mappin at the Savoy,
and had the good fortune to sit next to her once more. She was off duty
then, and saying that she really must begin to play games again to keep
her “fit” for her work.
Two of the most successful dinners we ever had were to Captain Scott,
the Antarctic explorer, and Ernest Thompson Seton. At the Scott dinner
the great hall of the Hotel Cecil was packed to its utmost limits,
though it was not due to any premonition that he might not come back.
Before Scott perished the world had got into the idea that Arctic and
Antarctic exploration was not really so dangerous as going out with a
friend who was learning to drive a car. But Scott had such an
irresistible personality; he looked the very type of man whose courage
and resourcefulness and indomitable endurance would get him and those
who depended on him out of the tightest place. And he would have got his
party through if the supplies in the hut had been left at their proper
strength. Scott was one of those blue-eyed men who can meet any danger
with a smile, and are absolutely devoid of fear. I never knew a man for
whom I had a more instinctive liking, or to whom I should so naturally
turn for support when facing death. Few men are such an asset to their
race as he was.
Ernest Thompson Seton held his audience as no other Vagabond guest has
ever done. The born naturalist and the natural orator are combined in
him. He made a lecture, which had probably done duty several times as a
lecture, do duty for his personal reply to the proposal of his health;
it did not betray its origin, and yet it was a moving plea for the whole
brute creation; he invested the lower animals, probably unjustly, with
all sorts of human traits and human feelings, and made the audience feel
for them as they feel for the hero or heroine in a tragedy. It was
really wonderful; I never heard such a mixture of ingenuity and
eloquence, or a speech more thrillingly delivered. He is the apostle of
animated Nature.
I was abroad when the Club entertained Lord Curzon and Winston Churchill
and Lord Leighton, but I was present when Lord Willoughby de Broke made
such a popular guest. The position was rather a difficult one; not
having noticed the views which Jerome had been expressing on the House
of Lords to the local yokels, I asked him to take the chair, because he
was the most successful playwright in the club—he had just produced _The
Third Floor Back_—and our guest was one of the best amateur actors.
Jerome’s speech was not marked by his usual verve; like Balaam, he had
come to curse, and he was so won over by the splendid manliness of the
guest that he was unable to do anything but bless. Lord Willoughby de
Broke would doubtless have given us a much more entertaining evening if
Jerome had spoken of him to us as he spoke of his fellow-peers to the
yokels, for no one is so ready with a retort. Who does not remember his
retort at the meeting which he was addressing in favour of Mr. Balfour.
He was saying something in praise of him, when a voice at the back
called out “Rats!” He smiled sweetly—“I was speaking of Mr. Balfour,” he
said, “not of the first Lord of the Admiralty.”
[Illustration:
G. B. BURGIN
_Drawn by Yoshio Markino_
]
Later on, at that same meeting, a heckler asked him where he got his
title, and was told “just where you got your d——d ugly face—from my
father.”
He gave us some pretty flashes of wit that night, but not of the
scathing order which makes him one of the protagonists who fight against
Home Rule. With his physical strength and activity, his dauntless
courage, and his power of swaying great assemblages with his speeches,
he is a born leader.
There were few well-known literary men and women in the London of the
time who were not guests of the Vagabonds Club. The best speech we ever
had from a woman author was, I think, from Flora Annie Steel, who,
contrary to the habit of most speakers, explained to start with that she
was likely to make a very good speech because we had taken her
unexpectedly, and she was very angry with the last speaker—whom she
proceeded to mince.
But charming Mrs. Craigie, “John Oliver Hobbes,” made us a very
fascinating one when she was our guest of the evening. That was the
night on which she complained that people persisted in identifying her
with her heroines, especially with the kind of heroine whom a woman does
not wish to be suspected of drawing from herself, like her “Anne” (I
think in _The Gods, Some Mortals, and Lord Wickenham_).
Anthony Hope, who was the next speaker, complained that he had never had
such luck, that he had been hoping ever since he wrote _The Prisoner of
Zenda_ that somebody would confuse him with Rupert of Hentzau, but that
no critic had ever obliged him.
Once, at any rate, he was the guest of the Club, and he occupied the
chair, I should say, nearly every year during its existence. I wish I
had kept a record of the _bons mots_ which never failed to adorn his
speeches. One of them comes to my mind as I write these words; he said
that the reason why England and the United States were not better
friends arose from their inability to understand each other’s humour.
He and Conan Doyle were the mainstays of our chair at the New Vagabonds.
Doyle may have taken it even oftener than he did. He was the chairman we
instinctively chose for a great occasion, like that on which we had Lord
Roberts for our guest, though he did not actually take the chair that
night, for we could rely upon him to say the generous and dignified
words which would express the feelings of the Club, as he did in
proposing the health of Lord Roberts at the Authors’ Society dinner,
when he said that Lord Roberts was the one guest who, short of royalty,
must always take the first place in any gathering of his countrymen, the
first, not only in rank and distinction, but in the grateful love and
veneration of Englishmen.
Doyle was in the chair at the farewell dinner which the Club gave in
honour of Burgin and myself at the Connaught Rooms, and said just
exactly the right things to make us feel very proud, and to voice the
regret of the Club at meeting for the last time. The Club did not
exactly die, because it was amalgamated with the O.P. Club.
Carl Hentschel was a very prominent member of both clubs, and when
Burgin and I were unable to carry on the Vagabonds any longer, he very
kindly came forward, and was willing either to take over the honorary
secretaryship of the Vagabonds, or to amalgamate the two clubs. Finally,
seeing that Bohemians had more dining clubs than they had the leisure to
attend, we decided in favour of amalgamation, and there is some talk now
of the Playgoers combining with them both.
George Grossmith was one of our best members. We had him as a guest, and
he often gave us an entertainment. One of his most felicitous efforts
was when he proposed his own health, and was very sarcastic about
himself. But that was a favourite vein of humour with him. Those who
were at the great party which he and Weedon gave at the Grafton
Galleries will remember the story of the clergyman’s wife who was
getting up a bazaar, and suggested that they should ask George Grossmith
to give them a performance, because he was such a fool—“You can always
get him to do things for nothing,” she explained, and added, “The best
of him is that he can be humorous without being funny.”
She was right about his being generous; that was always characteristic
of George Grossmith.
Bill Nye distinguished himself in an equally original manner when he was
the guest of the evening. It was Independence Day, and he had enjoyed
such a reception from the American colony that he was sleepy, to say the
least of it, before he reached the New Vagabonds. Not one word could the
chairman get out of him during the dinner, but no sooner had the
chairman said, “Gentlemen, you may smoke,” than Nye got up and returned
thanks for all the handsome things which had been said about him. He
spoke at great length, and with the greatest fluency, and it was only
with considerable difficulty that he could be stopped. He is the only
man I ever remember to have come to one of the dinners so tired, though
I have seen others unbend as the evening grew old; and it was entirely
due to the accident of his arriving in London on Independence Day. And,
as poor Phil May said, of course, your tongue does sometimes run away
with you, when you are on your legs.
Arthur Diósy (the son of that Martin Diósy who was secretary of the
Hungarian Revolution), who was chairman of the Japan Society for years,
had talked so learnedly about Japan, and had mouthed the Japanese names
so lovingly, that every one imagined that he had been in Japan for at
least half his lifetime. Most people went further, and, not knowing that
the Hungarians were Mongols who conquered parts of Europe a thousand
years ago, imagined, from the Mongolian type in his features, of which,
as a Hungarian, he was so proud, that he was a Japanese. Even the name
did pretty well if you spelt it wrong. When he did go to Japan for the
first time, and received an enormous welcome from the Japanese
authorities as the founder of the Japan Society, and the practical
originator of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, we, his fellow-members of the
Vagabond Club, gave him a dinner in honour of the event.
I am an original member of the Japan Society, and had the honour of
giving them their opening address in the season of 1912.
We had a very interesting guest in Sir George Scott Robertson, the
doctor who was knighted for his successful defence of Chitral when the
combatant officers were all _hors de combat_. Robertson not only wrote
his name on the golden roll of the besieged who have endured to the end
and who have prevailed, but he gave us one of the best speeches we had
ever heard at the Club. He told us marvels of his other claim on his
country—his exploration of Kafiristan, a country which had kept its
population pure from other strains, and had preserved unique monuments
until, in our own generation, the Afghans began to absorb it, and he
proved himself a great orator, with a well of biblical English flowing
into his impromptu speech.
Sir Edward Ward we entertained for his share in another and yet more
memorable defence, for it was to him, more than anybody else, that
England owes the preservation of Ladysmith. He foresaw what was coming,
and before it was too late got on the track of everything edible and
potable in Ladysmith; he made the horses, which were not going to be of
any use, into chevril, a horsey form of Bovril, and if the siege had
gone on much longer, he would have found a way of making _suprêmes_ out
of old boot-soles. He made the provisions last by his foresight and
administrative capacity, and he was almost as invaluable with his
indomitable pluck and cheeriness. He was for years Permanent Secretary
of War, and it is a mighty pity that he is not Secretary of State for
War, for which his unparalleled knowledge of Army administration and his
robust commonsense would make him the ideal appointment. No detail is
too small for Ward to attend to it; no person is too small for him to
listen to courteously and patiently. He made a great impression on the
Vagabonds, for he has an Irishman’s wit in speaking, and is most
soldierly looking, a man of Herculean build.
Sir George Reid, the High Commissioner of Australia, is one of the best
speakers we had at the Club; he is very witty when he is witty, and from
time to time turns serious with marked effect. I had known him many
years before he came to the Vagabond dinner; I made his acquaintance in
the early ’eighties, when I held the Chair of History in the University
at Sydney, and he was the only Free-trader of any influence in
Australia. Since then he has been the Premier of Federated Australia,
and now most worthily represents the Commonwealth, for he has impressed
on the Government that he is a force to be reckoned with, even where the
colonies are only vaguely affected.
In decided contrast to him was the Princess Bariatinsky—Lydia Yavorska,
the Russian actress who married a cousin of the Czar. We entertained her
as a recognition of her splendid acting in Ibsen’s _Doll’s-House_, where
her foreign accent was no drawback, and her tragic power had scope.
There are other Vagabond dinners which, I remember, went off with much
éclat, though I cannot recall their incidents—dinners to great sailors
like Lord Charles Beresford and Lambton, now Meux, and Shackleton of
Antarctic fame, dinners to great soldiers like Sir Evelyn Wood; dinners
to great artists like Lord Leighton and Sir Alma Tadema and Linley
Sambourne, all, unfortunately, now dead, and J. J. Shannon, still with
us and still young; dinners to great actors like Ellen Terry and Tree,
Wyndham and Mary Moore and the younger Irvings and the Bourchiers and
the Asches and Forbes-Robertson and Lena Ashwell; and dinners to great
authors like Doyle, Mrs. Humphry Ward, Hall Caine, H. G. Wells, Mrs.
Burnett, Jerome, W. L. Courtney and Robert Barr. They were all great
occasions, with two, three or four hundred present, but readers will
wish to be spared the details of dinners to perfectly well-known people
unless they brought out some fresh trait, or some priceless anecdote.
It is to be hoped that the Vagabond dinners will come to life again, not
on the huge and expensive scale which is going out of vogue, but little
meetings of really eminent people gathered at some restaurant in Soho,
to eat a dinner which reminds them of joyous Bohemian days in Paris or
Italy, and to enjoy the pleasures of a general conversation upon the
topics of Bohemia, such as we used to have in the days when we met as
men only (which we will never do again), before we were reformed
Vagabonds.
The Argonauts, a little dining club which Frankfort Moore and I founded,
before the Vagabonds allowed ladies at their dinners, to dine every
Sunday or every other Sunday at Mrs. Robertson’s tea and luncheon rooms
in Bond Street, where we had our club-room, would give a good example to
follow. We seldom had a guest or speeches. A number of well-known people
used to dine together for the pleasure of each other’s company. We left
our places as soon as we had finished dinner, and broke up into little
knots to converse. There you really could see your friends, and
introduce interesting people to each other.[7]
Footnote 7:
The members of this club, as far as I can remember, were: Conan Doyle,
E. W. Hornung, Justin McCarthy, M.P., J. K. Jerome, S. R. Crockett,
Anthony Hope, Gilbert Parker, Oswald Crawfurd, W. H. Wilkins, J.
Bloundelle-Burton, Frankfort Moore, Moncure D. Conway, Rudolf Lehmann,
Edward Heron Allen, Barry Pain, Arthur Playfair, Arthur Diósy,
Reginald Cleaver, G. A. Redford, Lewis Hind, Herbert Bailey, Walter
Blackman, G. W. Sheldon, Edward Elkins, Edgar Fawcett, Louis F.
Austin, Bernard Partridge, John Charlton, Sir James Linton, Mortimer
Menpes, Basil Gotto, Emerson Bainbridge, M.P., Sir J. Henniker-Heaton,
M.P., Penderel Brodhurst, C. N. Williamson, Arthur A’Beckett, H. B.
Vogel, Horace Cox, Grant Richards, Joe Hatton, Percy White, Clarence
Rook, Henry Arthur Jones, Adrian Ross, Herbert Bunning, Judge Biron,
Grimwood Mears, Rudolph Birnbaum, Ben Webster, Mrs. C. N. Williamson,
Flora Annie Steel, John Oliver Hobbes, Florence Marryat, “Iota,” Mrs.
Campbell Praed, Annie Swan, Arabella Kenealy, George Paston, Norma
Lorimer, “Rita,” Mrs. Stepney Rawson, Violet Hunt, May Whitty, Rosalie
Neish, Mrs. Alec Tweedie, Mrs. C. E. Humphry, and Mrs. Oscar Beringer.
To these I must add one of the two famous Greenes who were singers; I
cannot find the initial. It will be observed that there was hardly a
person in the club whose name was not well known.
At these Vagabond dinners, the ordinary procedure was for two or three
or four hundred members, male and female, to assemble to do honour to a
famous guest. As soon as dinner was over, the chairman proposed the
health of the King, and made the stereotyped joke about any lady, who
wished, being permitted to smoke. He had this excuse at the Vagabonds,
that many of the men smoked before they had received permission. Then he
proposed the health of the guest, and the guest replied. All guests made
the same jokes about the name “Vagabonds.” I rather think that they must
have been supplied to them by the toast-master at the Hotel Cecil, who
always “prayed silence” with special gusto for “Mr. Hanthony ’Ope,”
because no other name gave him the same chances.
When the guest had finished his speech, which was usually a very good
one, because we chose them for their speaking, unless they were very
eminent, we retired into the adjoining hall for an entertainment of
singing, story-telling and conjuring, which I always thought spoilt the
evening, much as I appreciated the performances of men like Churcher and
Harrison Hill and Bertram, or Willie Nichol, or Reggie Groome, for when
you had a number of eminent people collected together, far the best form
of entertainment was to introduce them to each other. I remember the
positive pain I felt at Lady Palmer’s, when, a few minutes after she had
introduced me to George Meredith for the first time, Johannes Wolff, the
violinist, played a thing of Beethoven’s which was as long as a sermon.
I wanted to hear George Meredith so much more than him, having regarded
him as one of the greatest masters of literature all my life, and
wishing to surrender to the extraordinary charm of his way of speaking.
I sympathise with a famous tenor, who told me that the first time he
heard Handel’s _Messiah_, when they came to the _Hallelujah Chorus_, he
said, “Let’s get ‘oot,’ there’s going to be a row.”
Personally, I used to try and induce the most interesting people
present, except the guest of the evening, to stay outside, and have
whiskies and sodas. They generally hadn’t the good taste to prefer
singing to whiskies and sodas; I hadn’t, either, though I don’t drink
whisky.
But the Hotel Cecil, where we held the Vagabond dinners, was not as bad
as the Savage Club. In the old days there, if you did not wish to spend
your evening glued to one chair, listening to singing, you had to stand
in a tiny bar, the size of a scullery, and hear the same jokes from the
same steady drinkers, just as you would have heard the same songs every
Saturday evening if you had stayed in the room all the time. The Savage
is a much more literary club now, and the accommodation is better
arranged. I do not want to say anything against the old Savage. Those
performances were good enough for anybody to listen to once, even King
Edward VII, who, when he was Prince of Wales, dined there, and said that
he had never enjoyed himself so much in his life. What I objected to was
the constant repetition of the same performance Saturday after Saturday,
without having any place for members to sit and talk if they did not
want to hear the music. But I have been to many Bohemian dinners in my
time, and I have not met many men, except Walter Besant, who confessed
that performances made him feel, as they make me, that he would have a
nervous breakdown if he listened to them for half-an-hour longer. I have
noticed that most men, when they go to a club of this kind, where there
are a number of really eminent people in the room, have no objection to
listening to one vapid song after another, instead of being introduced
to, we will say, Lord Kelvin, or Tennyson, or Sir Henry Irving, and this
though they could have an equally good performance any night of their
lives by paying for a seat in the promenade of a music-hall. When will
people understand that the two sorts of entertainments ought to be kept
separate—that the great object of a literary dinner is for one to meet
men who write, or the people whom all the newspapers are writing about?
You can go to a concert by paying for it; you cannot meet these people
by any other means except introduction, and the hour or two after you
have done eating at a public dinner is all too short a period for the
chance of introduction to the world’s workers.
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