MY NOVELIST FRIENDS: PART I
BY far the greater number of my literary friends have been novelists. I
have counted no less than two hundred and seventy male novelists who
have visited us at Addison Mansions, and I have no doubt that I have
forgotten enough to bring the number up to three hundred.
Of Walter Besant, a short sturdy man, with a bushy brown beard and blue
eyes behind spectacles, which could be very merry or very indignant, I
have spoken elsewhere. Besant, who pronounced his name with the accent
on the second syllable (it is said because people always pronounced the
famous theosophist’s name with the accent on the first syllable, though
the recollection of its Byzantine etymology may also have guided him),
was very outspoken. He could not abide the famous Annie Besant; he
considered that she was a millstone about his brother’s neck, and made
no bones over saying so. That brother was a master at Cheltenham College
when I first went there. But I do not remember if I ever saw Mrs. Besant
there, though we saw the masters’ wives as a body in the College Chapel
every Sunday morning. Another matter on which he was outspoken was his
repulsion for George Eliot—not her works, but her personality. He once
said to me that her head reminded him of a horse’s, and on another
occasion said that no woman’s face had ever struck him as more sensual.
His own personality was splendid. He was so genial, though such a
fighter; he was so splendidly full of energy, so quick to catch on to
ideas, so masterful and wide-grasping in carrying them out; so
absolutely friendly; such a good enemy, and so astonishingly
warm-hearted. I never had a greater personal feeling of respect and
affection for any great man than for Besant.
All the world knows how much he effected for authors, and how much he
sacrificed for them. He made as large an income as any great novelist of
his time, but he might have made much more and lived another twenty
years, if he had not slaved for his brother authors.
George Meredith, who succeeded him as head of the literary craft, was
never at Addison Mansions, though his daughter came twice with Lady
Palmer. I only had the privilege of knowing him towards the end of his
life, when his time and his health were far too precious to be spent on
going to at-homes, though he was very kind about having younger authors
introduced to him at the parties which Lady Palmer gave in his honour
when he was staying with her. Once seen, George Meredith could never be
forgotten. You were delighted to find that a man who had created a
literature within a literature, the writer who by common acclaim is the
greatest of all English novelists, was so rare and impressive in his
appearance and speech. His face was singularly beautiful in its old age,
surmounted by a fleece of snow-white hair, and illuminated by bright
blue eyes, absolutely clear. He was, of course, an excellent talker, and
both his voice and his way of using it were strikingly emphatic. There
are few old men whom I have met to whom I should so unhesitatingly apply
the word majestic. The whole face, with its well-trimmed beard and
unexaggerated features, reminded me of the bearded Zeus in the group of
the three gods on the frieze of the Parthenon.
He was very gracious also to young authors, though it must have been a
severe tax on him to have so many worshippers introduced to him. For
George Meredith was not a man like Oliver Wendell Holmes. A lady whom I
introduced to him began, “It must bore you terribly, Dr. Holmes, to have
everybody who is introduced to you telling you how they admire your
books.”
“On the contrary, madame,” he said gallantly, “I can never get enough of
it. I am the vainest man alive.”
On the same occasion Holmes told me that he had been unable to do any
writing (except his short _Hundred Days in Europe_) for years, because
his entire time was taken up with answering complimentary letters.
Hardy did come to 32 Addison Mansions, Hardy who has received the Order
of Merit, and is proposed for next year’s Nobel prize for literature, as
the head of the literary craft, one of the great masters of English
fiction. I am very proud to have known Thomas Hardy; he is not only so
great, but so silent and reserved, that it is not easy to know him. I
have met him often, but seldom seen him talking, except very quietly to
an intimate friend. He has generally been on the edge of a crowd,
observing—we have the fruits of that profound observation in his novels.
That slight figure, that melancholy face, with the watchful eyes, was
always a cynosure, for Hardy has been the object of unbounded admiration
for many years. I remember his being the bright particular star about
whom the late Lady Portsmouth was always talking at her house-parties at
Eggesford, where I stayed, as far back as 1885.
I have a letter from him which is one of my most treasured literary
possessions. He wrote it to me to explain his point in introducing the
passage about the slaughtered pig after I had reviewed _Jude, the
Obscure_, at considerable length and with minute criticism in the
_Queen_. I have alluded to his almost equal eminence as a poet in
another chapter.
It is natural to couple Hall Caine with Thomas Hardy, for both of them
were brought up as architects, though they turned to literature, and
reached the topmost rung.
Hall Caine has been an intimate friend of mine for many years. Our
friendship began before he was a novelist, in the days when he was a
critic of the _Athenæum_ and the _Academy_, and an editor of poetry. His
sending me _The Sonnets of Three Centuries_ in the year in which he lost
his housemate, the poet and artist, Dante Rossetti, was the beginning of
our friendship. He began publishing novels in 1885, and two years later
leapt into the front rank of novelists with his magnificent _Deemster_.
After my return from America I began to see more and more of him. He
became a director of the Authors’ Club, of which I was Honorary
Secretary, and one of the chief speakers at the New Vagabonds Club.
In 1894 he reached, with _The Manxman_, the height of fame, at which he
has since continued. I prophesied its enormous success in a long review
of it, which I wrote for the _Queen_, which came out simultaneously with
the publication of the book. We were in Rome together at the time that
he was writing the _Eternal City_, and in Egypt together while he was
writing _The White Prophet_.
No one could be in the presence of Hall Caine for five minutes without
knowing that he was in the presence of a remarkable man. His resemblance
to Shakespeare is extraordinary, not only in the dome-like expanse of
his forehead and the Elizabethan slope of his beard, but in the burning
eyes and the shape of the eyecups. He looks the genius that he is.
Hall Caine has always had the merit of being highly approachable and
affectionate, and if his conversation is apt to centre round the work he
is doing, it is always most interesting and pregnant.
At Rome, for instance, where I very often had lunch with him in his flat
at Trinità del Monte, overlooking the city, and went for walks with him,
he was very full of the Vatican, where he constantly went to see certain
cardinals, who were most indiscreet in their confidences.
He was intimate with the Italian Government, too. I met various members
of the Cabinet at his table, and one of them, Ferraris, then
Postmaster-General, as well as editor of the _Antologia Nuova_, has done
me many acts of friendship since.
Jerome’s neighbour in those days, Joseph Hatton (than whom there could
have been no more striking contrast to him), was one of his and my
dearest friends. There were few men so dear to their friends as Joe
Hatton. He had an enormous circle of them in literature, and on the
stage, and so won their hearts with his geniality and loyalty that they
forgot how eminent he was, and treated him as a brother. But Joe Hatton,
in addition to the vast amount of work he did as editor and critic,
wrote some of the best novels of his day. I can see him now as he so
often came to our house, a rather small man with a brown beard, a lift
of the chin, a ready smile, and such very bright sympathetic brown eyes.
He used to bring his pretty little daughter with him before she was
grown up. How proud he was of her first successes on the stage, and the
fairy-book she wrote! He had a house with a very nice garden in St.
John’s Wood, where he gave parties at which one met all the leading
actors and actresses of the day. They could always spare time for a
reception at Hatton’s, as actors always stopped for a word with him at
the Garrick Club on Saturday nights.
Of Doyle, Kipling and Barrie, Anthony Hope and Frankfort Moore, I have
spoken in another chapter.
Stanley Weyman was such a rare visitor to London that he was not often
at our house. But I have corresponded with him a good deal. I knew when
I made _A Gentleman of France_ my book of the week in _To-day_, and
hailed the author as an historical novelist of the first rank, on what a
solid basis his work rested, for we were at Oxford at the same time, and
he took his First in History almost in the same term as I took mine. He
is a very fair man, with an eyeglass, much more like a soldier than an
author.
Poor Crockett, a big tall man, with a fair beard, the type of the Saxons
who fought against the Conqueror at Hastings, was not very often in
London, but when he was there, he was a conspicuous figure at our
at-homes. We had many tastes in common, including Italy. Crockett asked
my advice when the question arose of his giving up the ministry. He was
at that time Free Church minister of Penicuik, a little place in
Midlothian, with a salary, as far as I remember, of a hundred or two a
year, but as an author was making a thousand or two a year, and able to
earn a good deal more if he could save the time which he had to devote
to his clerical work. His congregation were aghast at the idea of losing
their beloved minister just as he had sprung into Anglo-Saxon fame, and,
with Scottish casuistry, represented to him that it would be wrong for
him to neglect the work of the Lord for any worldly object. Crockett
thought, and I agreed with him, and decided him, that he would be more
certain of doing good if he allowed some man to whom the minister’s
stipend was necessary to be minister of Penicuik, while he did his
teaching and his preaching with his pen.
F. W. Robinson’s short, thick-set figure, and heavy moustache, were as
conspicuous. It is strange how soon poor Robinson has been forgotten.
His work was popular with readers, and treated with respect by critics,
and he was one of the bigwigs at literary clubs and receptions, but with
his death all memory of him seemed to pass away, except among his old
friends.
G. A. Henty, on the other hand, though he has been dead for years now,
seems to stand before us still, with his great beard, his great pipe,
his great body, and his breezy personality. Henty loved clubs and
literary gatherings. The Savage was his particular stronghold, when he
had said good-bye to war-correspondenting in distant lands. He was the
typical chairman there, with his Father Christmas beard, and his volumes
of smoke, and his bluff personality. He had been as popular among his
fellow-correspondents. Was it not Henty who lost his only pair of boots,
when the British army marched into some capital (I think it was King
Theodore’s in Abyssinia), and took his place in the triumph in carpet
slippers, riding on a pony?
Henty’s work as a war-correspondent gave him the copy for those
wonderful books which made him the boys’ Dumas. He was a great
personality, and, as I saw, on the only two occasions when I ran across
him in a crisis, a born ruler of men.
He often came across from his house on Clapham Common to our at-homes,
and looked like a strayed Viking, or a master-mariner, among the other
authors and authoresses. Sailing was his hobby.
Speaking of Abyssinia, it is natural to me to mention Prince
Alamayu—Ali, as we used to call him. He was sent to Cheltenham College,
so that he might live in the house of Jex-Blake, then Principal of
Cheltenham, and afterwards head master of Rugby and Dean of Wells. Of
all the head masters of his time, Jex-Blake had the most considerable
reputation as a courtier and a man of the world. Alamayu was brought to
England after the capture of Magdala, and came to Cheltenham in 1872,
when he was eleven years old. He was just a royal savage when he came to
Cheltenham; if he was hot, he took his coat off and threw it on the
ground, and left it. He had no tutor to go about with him; he just mixed
with the boys in the ordinary way. And at first he had the cruelties of
his bringing-up; he once, for instance, pushed a small boy into the
water to see the splash he would make. But he soon got cured of this,
for Jex-Blake wisely left him to fight his own battles, and though a
sense of chivalry made the boys very indulgent to the poor little
orphaned black, they soon let him know that bullying was not to be one
of his privileges, though almost anything else was treated as a joke.
When Jex-Blake went to Rugby, Alamayu went with him, and thence, when he
was eighteen, he went to Sandhurst to qualify for the British Army. That
was fatal. He was his own master there, with no one to make him take
care of his health, or restrain himself in taking spirits. He soon
contracted some deadly disease—pneumonia, I think—and died. Queen
Victoria showed her regret by having him buried in St. George’s Chapel
at Windsor.
I knew him very well, because I was in the head form when he came to the
school, and was often at Jex-Blake’s house, and was asked by “Jex” to
keep an eye on him. He was a nice little boy, with a very affectionate
disposition, and not at all stupid. It was his misfortune to lose at a
critical moment of his life the firm and tactful hand which had
disciplined and protected him for seven years.
Green Chartreuse is almost as deadly as aeroplanes. I knew a man, a very
well-known man, who went mad because he drank thirty-six green
Chartreuses in one day.
It is natural to mention George Manville Fenn in the same breath as
Henty. He was another old friend of mine, and of all the men I have
known, retained his youth the longest. Fenn’s hair remained golden and
undiminished in its vigour, and his figure remained slim and upright
till he was nearly seventy. He lived at the beautiful old red-brick
house on the river at Isleworth, which stands at the gates of the Duke
of Northumberland’s park, and is known as Syon Lodge. There he turned
out those wonderful boys’ romances of his in a steady stream. Like
Henty, I met him constantly at the Savage and Vagabond Clubs, and at my
own flat. He was very fond of meeting his fellow-craftsmen. His son,
Fred Fenn, used to come too. At that time he was sub-editor of the
_Graphic_, and I think he afterwards became first editor of the _Golden
Penny_. In any case, he freed himself from the fetters of journalism by
writing _Amasis_, that admirable Egyptian comic opera, in which Ruth
Vincent won all hearts. He not only had the cleverness to write it, but
formed the company which put it on, and stood an action at law about it
triumphantly—a rare instance of grit.
Richard Jefferies never came to see me at Addison Mansions; he was dead,
I think, before we went there. But I have a long and pathetic letter
which he wrote to me some time before he died, setting forth the
cross-fire of diseases from which he was suffering, and asking me if I
thought the climate of the exquisite Blue Mountains of New South Wales
would afford him any relief. One can picture how the genius of Jefferies
would have blossomed forth amid that matchless gorge scenery (where you
hear the bell-birds calling) and amid the natural history curiosities of
a new land.
Grant Allen, who lived in a charming house in the Haslemere district,
was a constant visitor to our flat. We had visited his people in Canada
before we met him. His father was the principal inhabitant at Kingston,
Ontario, the dear old-fashioned town which contains Canada’s Military
Academy. The old Allen had a fine house with a delightful garden, right
on Lake Ontario. Grant Allen was a remarkable-looking man, with his long
red beard, and keen, hawk-like face. He always reminded me of the gaunt,
red-bearded faces one sees on knights and lovers in the great French
tapestries of the fifteenth century. And he had the same spare figure as
they have, and the same habit of arching his back. He was a remarkable
man, who, famous as he was, never got his due as a writer. He was never
an F.R.S., though half the Fellows of the Royal Society were his
inferiors in scientific attainments, and he never reached eminence as a
novelist, though he wrote some amazingly clever and powerful books. He
had a great contempt for actresses on account of their want of
conversation. He said they could not talk about anything but the stage.
I once came away with him from a party at H. D. Traill’s, where he had
taken down to supper a woman who was beyond dispute the greatest actress
of her time. He was complaining loudly about it; he said that he thought
she was the most stupid woman he had ever met.
But he was happy in his friendships. His brother-in-law, Franklin
Richards, father of the publisher, Grant Richards, was recognised as one
of the soundest philosophers of his day at Oxford—I say this though his
lectures were entirely thrown away on me. I had to attend them because
he was a don of my College, but Philosophy was Chinese to me.
One of Grant Allen’s greatest friends in the last part of his life was
Richard le Gallienne, who went to live in that house in the wood beyond
Haslemere to be near him. Le Gallienne had a sort of summer-house in the
wood, a long way from the house, in which he wrote those charming poems,
secure from interruption. I often went to see him in the days when he
lived in the King’s Farm at Brentford, which was not a very farm-like
house. But I only once went to see him at Haslemere, and on that
occasion I found him at the summer-house, dressed as carefully as if he
had been in town, but with an eye on country effects. He had on a black
velvet coat and waistcoat, and a rich black evening tie, but immaculate
white flannel trousers; and I must admit that even in this costume he
managed to look appropriate.
When we were living at Cherwell Lodge, Oxford, that delightful marine
villa across the Cherwell from the Gothic part of Magdalen, Grant Allen
brought his best friend to see us, Edward Clodd, the secretary of the
London Joint Stock Bank, who, in the intervals of a business career, had
written a number of great books, beginning with _The Childhood of the
World_.
W. D. Howells only came once to see us at Addison Mansions, but I saw
more of him when I was living in New York, when he used to come in at
tea-time to that little hall-room we had for a sitting-room in that
boarding-house in West Forty-second Street. It gave me pleasure to see
him under my own roof, because I remembered how eagerly I bought and
read his novels when I was at Oxford, and David Douglas was bringing out
_A Chance Acquaintance_, _Their Wedding Journey_, and so on, in the
dainty little shilling paper volumes which were the fortunate precursors
of the modern sevenpenny. Howells was rather a stout, bull-necked man,
very capable-looking, and in those days had a thick mop of grey hair. In
after years we knew his Italian books, written while he was a Consul in
Italy, almost by heart. They are photographic in their fidelity.
George W. Cable was another American who came to the flat but once. Like
Howells, he seldom honoured England with a visit. His books, and John
Burroughs’, too, I first knew in the little David Douglas Library, and I
well remember reading his _Old Creole Days_ all night, because I was so
fascinated with it.
I was staying at the house of my sister’s father-in-law, the Court Lodge
at Yalding, at the time, and the month was June—I had just come down
from Oxford. At some impossibly early hour—midnight seemed only just to
have slipped past—the dawn streamed in, and made me blow my candle out,
and the birds began their comment on the peach garden. Five-and-thirty
or forty years have passed since then, but the delight of Cable’s
poetical touch remains still in my memory. Cable always rather reminded
me of Hardy, though being a Southerner from New Orleans he is darker
skinned. When he wrote _Old Creole Days_, he was the idol of the South,
but later, when he took up the colour question on the other side, he
would have been torn to pieces by the mob of New Orleans if they had got
hold of him, so he took up his residence in Massachusetts.
I always slept in the haunted room in that house, a very old house, with
a kitchen and vaulted cellars going back to the time of Edward III. It
contained a very large cupboard, between the old-fashioned chimney-piece
and the window, in which somebody is supposed to have been bludgeoned to
death, the corpse afterwards being dragged across the floor, and when
the window had been thrown up with a bang, flung on the flags below. At
one particular season of the year, the noises which indicate this
procedure plainly have been heard by various people. I have forgotten
when it happened, but it must have been a very long time ago, for
everything to have been done so openly.
I have slept in that room repeatedly, alone, and never heard the noises
or thought about it being haunted, but I should not like to sleep in the
kitchen, for it was only separated by a moth-eaten sort of door from the
wickedest-looking cellars I ever remember, which, unless something has
been done to them since then, lose themselves in pitch-dark spaces.
Another author, whose delightful essays on nature used to be brought out
in those dear little volumes of David Douglas’s, and whom I read with
even more enthusiasm in those days, was John Burroughs, whom I visited
in his home at West Park, on a broad reach of the Hudson. He told me
that he wrote most of those essays when he was a clerk in the Treasury
at Washington, where his duties were to sit opposite the safes, and see
that no improper person had access to them. I have forgotten what safes,
but I suppose they were those which contained the United States gold
reserve. He used to project the scenes in _Wake Robin_ and _Pepacton_ on
the blank doors of the safes in his mind, as the cinema projects
dissolving views on the lecturer’s sheet. The sedentariness of this
pursuit gave him acute indigestion, and he was advised that nothing but
manual labour and a vegetable diet would cure it. When I was with him, I
think he lived entirely on asparagus, lentils and onions. He could eat
about three pounds of asparagus at a sitting, as I suppose other people
could if they weren’t going to have any meat or pudding. He told me one
thing which filled my soul with joy. As manual labour was part of the
cure, he started a vineyard, in a position chosen with great care, on a
steep sloping bank of the Hudson facing due south. His grapes ripened
here three or four weeks before any one else’s, with the result that he
got a hundred pounds a ton for them instead of four pounds. Bravo,
literature!
Henry James, in virtue of his long sojourn among us, belongs to England
almost as much as he does to America. He still lives in London in the
winter, but in the warm part of the year he retires to a delightful
Georgian house on the crest of the hill at Rye, one of the most
old-world places in England. Henry James’s house and garden are exactly
what you would choose for him—the most refined and dignified and subtle
novelist in the language. The house is called “Lamb’s House,” but it has
nothing to do with Charles Lamb, though it is exactly the house which he
would have chosen, when fortune came to him. All the garden is adorable,
but especially the Dutch court behind the house, and the kitchen-garden,
surrounded by the most ancient cottages in Rye, with roofs red and
chimneys bewitched. Between the garden and the kitchen-garden is a
red-brick Georgian pavilion, facing the top of the street, as the
Tempietto faces the long sloping lane which leads up to the Sculpture
Gallery of the Vatican, and it is not less beautiful than the Tempietto.
Everything is appropriate; the novelist even bought the cottages at the
back of the kitchen-garden, to prevent them being rebuilt, and thus
ensured the permanence of a perfect setting. He has a singularly noble
head and face, the type one would like to imagine for a Cicero.
Richard Whiteing, who leapt into fame at a comparatively late age, with
_No. 5, John Street_, after having been one of the most important
newspaper writers in England for many years, is another man whom you
would pick out in any crowd for his splendid head.
Sir Gilbert Parker, who was a regular habitué of our at-homes before he
went into Parliament and became such an overworked man, was in those
days a slim, black-bearded Colonial, with noticeable blue eyes. He was
born in Canada, the son of a British officer stationed out there, and
knew Australia as well as Canada—in fact, I met him because we had both
been in Australia. He was at that time a busy journalist and in the
first flush of his success as a novelist, and no one could have deserved
it better, for his novels had the historical fidelity and felicity of
Francis Parkman, in addition to their graceful and romantic style. In
spite of the solid work he has done in politics, he will be remembered
as an author more than as a politician, though now we clap him on the
back for the splendid spade-work he does for the Conservative Party. As
a writer he fires the imagination, like the bugles in his famous story.
Henniker-Heaton, on the other hand, will be remembered not for his
biographical dictionary of Australians, which was the precursor of
_Who’s Who_, but for his achievement in politics—a postal reform as far
reaching as that of Rowland Hill, the father of the post-office. I
prophesied his success in print nearly thirty years ago. He is a shining
example of what a man who has a great ideal can do by singleness of
vision; nothing could shake him from his ideal of a universal penny
post; ridicule was poured on it; the big battalions were brought up
against it; but he pursued it doggedly. He showed infinite patience,
infinite good-nature, infinite tact. He brought his personal influence
to bear on politicians of both sides. He went to conferences all over
the world; he entertained delegates from all parts of the world; he
collected and classified every species of statistic; he accumulated
irresistible facts until he had a penny postage, not universal, because
it does not bridge the twenty miles between Kent and France,[8] but
universal for the possessions of the Anglo-Saxon nations, for the United
States came into the agreement as well as the Empire. Nor did his
activities stop at the post-office; for he has achieved reforms of
almost equal magnitude in telegraphic charges. Now he is taking a
well-deserved rest, and I cannot help thinking that he would take it
very usefully if he had a flat in Berlin, and saw the Kaiser every day.
A monarch of the force and intelligence of the Kaiser could not help
seeing the irresistibleness of the argument that a letter ought to be
taken from London to Hamburg and Berlin for the same price as it is
taken to the heart of British Borneo, and if he once happened to notice
it, he would brush away the cobwebs which impede it.
Footnote 8:
Now happily soon to be accomplished.
To Alfred Austin I was never attracted, except by his enthusiasm for
gardens and Italy. He was made Laureate because he was a leader writer,
not because he was a poet, and possessed neither the ability nor the
affability for the post. Had he gone on writing about blackthorn and
blackbirds, he would have left a greater name as a poet, and would not
have been made the victim of the famous story which is told of a
Scottish law lord, who, meeting him at a country house, said, “Well, Mr.
Austin, are you still writing ‘pomes’?”
“One must do something to keep the wolf from the door,” replied the
poet, with official modesty.
“And is that what you use those ‘pomes’ for?” asked the man of law,
giving one visions of a small man with a big moustache belabouring a
wolf on the door-step with a roll of manuscript.
I know of only one more malicious story, which relates to the bestowal
of a bishopric. While it was in the balance, Lord Salisbury was
suffering from one of his fits of insomnia, and, as his custom was, sent
for an M.P. son, whose speeches were the only thing which could make him
sleep. His son bothered him all night to bestow the see—it was the
premier bishopric—on its present holder. At last Lord Salisbury lost
patience. “Oh! give it to him, and leave me. I prefer insomnia.”
It was _à propos_ of insomnia that Lord Salisbury made his finest retort
in the House of Lords. A new Liberal peer, to whom the leader was
particularly acid, because, having been a whip in the House of Commons,
he was rather conscious of his importance, was, in spite of the fact
that his income arose chiefly from a brewery, advocating Local Option,
because he said that the number of public-houses was a temptation to
drink. “Of course,” said Lord Salisbury, “I do not enjoy the same
opportunities as the noble Lord does for knowing the effect of the
number of public-houses upon the amount which is drunk, but I don’t see
his line of argument, because, though I live in a house with forty
bedrooms, I never feel the slightest inclination to sleep.”
The Irish Party, too, came in for his acid wit. Who has forgotten his
comment on the member of the Irish Party who libelled him, and went to
America, when he lost the action, to escape paying the costs? Lord
Salisbury only shrugged his shoulders, and said that escaping was the
_forte_ of the Irish, adding, “Some prefer the fire-escape, and some the
water-escape.”
Harold Frederic owed some of his vogue as a novelist in this country to
Mr. Gladstone, who had an immense enthusiasm for his great novel, _In
the Valley_. Frederic, a big burly man, with a burly moustache, was the
ablest American journalist in London, till the advent of Isaac Nelson
Ford for the _Tribune_, and Harry Chamberlain for the _Sun_ and the
Laffan Agency. Frederic represented the _New York Times_. He was a man
coarse in his speech, and rather coarse in his fibre, and full of
prejudices, but he had the gift of political prophecy, and, like Balaam,
his utterances were dictated by the voice within him, and not by what he
had come to say. His letters to his paper were splendid journalism. He
used often to come to Addison Mansions, because he lived just round the
corner in the old house on Brook Green. He might have been with us now,
if he had not been a Christian Scientist. He was an enormous consumer of
alcohol, though I never knew him the worse for liquor, and when he was
taken with his last illness, the professor of Christian Science, who was
called in by a woman who had great influence over him, was not able to
insist upon banishing spirits as a regular practitioner would have done.
The result was that he took stimulants (which were worse than poison to
him) whenever he felt bad, and ruined his chance of recovery.
Rider Haggard I have spoken of elsewhere.
Frank Hopkinson Smith is a man I should have liked to see more of at
Addison Mansions; he was one of the men I liked best among my friends in
American literary clubs. He was an engineer by profession, who had
carried out many important contracts. Writing, though he was one of the
best writers in America, was an afterthought with him. Like Du Maurier,
that delightful man and delightful writer, he stumbled upon his most
brilliant gift.
Du Maurier became a novelist because he had become such a master of
situation and polished dialogue in his pictures and their titles. Frank
Hopkinson Smith grew to be a novelist out of the anecdotes which he told
so brilliantly at story-tellers’ nights at the Century Club. He had a
fund of stories about the Italian labour which he employed in contracts.
He always used to declare that engaging Italian labour was as simple as
Kodaking, which had for its motto, “You press a button—we do the rest.”
He said that no matter how many men he needed, all he had to do was to
ring up an Italian boss the night before, and tell him that he wanted so
many men for a certain kind of job. Then they would be at any station in
the city at seven o’clock the next morning, with the proper tools. He
added that he always put a clause into the contract that if any of them
murdered each other, the number was to be made up at once.
“That is their weakness,” he said, “but they only practice it on each
other. It’s the only kind of labour I would undertake a contract with.
They’re better than the Irish, anyway.”
“I don’t agree with you,” said Vermont, the sculptor; “they’re so
cruel.”
“Cruel!” retorted Hopkinson Smith. “What price this? An Irishman named
Larkin hired an organ-monkey from an old Dago for a dollar a day. The
monkey was often badly bruised when he came back at night, and looked
frightened to death when Larkin came to fetch him in the morning. So one
Saint’s day when the old Dago had a holiday, he determined to follow
them up and watch them. The Irishman drove along till he came to the
bridge over the railway at the bottom of Twelfth Avenue, where the coal
carts all pass on their way up from the depot. Then he took the monkey
out of the cart, and tied him to a post ten or twenty yards away from
the bridge, but in full sight of it. Then he drove his horse and cart to
a convenient place a little way off, and awaited events.
“Presently the coal carts began to stream across the bridge, and the
monkey in terror ran up to the top of the post. The whole way across
every carter took cock-shots at it with pieces of coal. Occasionally one
hit it, and then the monkey screamed with rage and pain. As soon as
there was a cart load of coal lying at the foot of the post, Larkin
brought up his horse and cart and shovelled them in, first putting the
monkey where he could not be seen, to show that the sport was over for
the present. When he was loaded up, he hitched the monkey to the cart
again, and drove into New York to the retailer who bought the coal from
him.
“But the next morning, when he came for the monkey, he found not only
that monkey, but every monkey in the organ-grinders’ quarter, gone, and
when he got down to the bridge, the place was looking like a zoo.”
Suddenly the popular anecdote-teller wrote _Colonel Carter of
Cartersville_, one of the best American novels of its generation.
William de Morgan, the other novelist who achieved his first book
success so late in life, was never at Addison Mansions, but I had the
honour of meeting him at a much more interesting place—the little
_atelier_, somewhere in the Kilburn district, where he made the famous
lustre tiles by which he was known before he took to literature. George
Joy, the artist who painted the famous picture of Gordon meeting his
death at Khartum, took me to see De Morgan, knowing how enthusiastic I
was over the famous Mazzara Vase, and the other pieces preserved in
Sicily of the old Sicilian Arab lustre ware.
Of Bret Harte and Maarten Maartens I have spoken elsewhere.
Egerton Castle, whose _Young April_ is the most delightful book of the
romantic school, in which Anthony Hope, Henry Harland, and a few others
have written with such charm, was a rare visitor. Any one could see that
he had been a soldier. But the militariness of his active, upright
figure is no doubt partly due to the fact that he is one of the finest
fencers in the country. He has been a representative of England in the
international contests. He is likewise, as his books show, a notable
connoisseur, and he has ample means to indulge his tastes, not only from
the wide popularity of the novels which he writes, mostly in
collaboration with his wife, but from his having owned one of the chief
daily newspapers, the _Liverpool Mercury_, which is now amalgamated with
the _Liverpool Post_. The Agnes Castle who collaborates with him is, of
course, his wife, not his sister.
Percy White was a constant visitor. He has been my intimate friend since
he published his first novel, _Mr. Bailey Martin_, that merciless
dissection of suburban snobbery. I used to write for him when he edited
_Public Opinion_, and that was a long time ago. He was one of the
handsomest men in literature, with his merry, boyish face, dark eyes,
and bright golden hair. C. B. Fry, the greatest all-round athlete in the
records of sport, is his nephew, and, though darker, reminds me very
much of Percy White as he was. Florence White, who paints portraits, is
his sister.
Percy White’s books have never met with the circulation they deserve. If
he had been born an American, they might have had the largest
circulation in the world. He is just the writer whose circulation would
have spread like wildfire, if he had lived in America, and written of
American social life as he has written of ours. No one could have
expressed the good and the bad in the American character with the same
light touch and ruthless penetration. His is just the pen to depict the
iron courage and the insight of genius which, with or without chicanery,
lead to the amassing of millions—the selfishness, made endurable by grit
and personal charm, of the American woman—the brilliant wit and pathetic
lack of humour in Americans as a nation—the business side of sport.
Once upon a time I introduced him to a man whom I will call the Vidler,
who ran a newspaper, and never paid anybody anything except by
advertisements in that paper. He made periodical business journeys,
collecting advertisements for his paper—my heart bled for the
advertisers—and used to engage an editor to look after his paper while
he was away. He chose Percy White for the honour on this occasion, and
asked me if I could bring them together. I gave White his message,
warning him that he would only be paid in promises, and was surprised to
hear that he was willing to discuss the matter with the Vidler. The
Vidler gave him a wonderful dinner at the Carlton, probably not paid for
yet, and then took him back to his chambers to discuss the matter in
hand. White sat up with him nearly all night, gravely taking down notes
of his projects for the paper, but reserved his decision, which resulted
in a negative. I met him the next day, and asked him how he had got on,
and when I heard how late he had been kept, apologised for all the
trouble to which I had put him, knowing how little chance there was of
his getting any pecuniary advantage out of it.
“Don’t apologise, my dear Douglas,” he said; “I got a whole book out of
him. He’s the finest study I ever met in my life.”
As Percy White did not take up the appointment, I set myself to find a
man who was willing to take the post, and would not suffer for it. I
found a man who was as sharp a diamond as the Vidler himself. He was
duly engaged, and I always wondered which did the other in the eye. I
have my suspicions, because when I met the Vidler a year or two
afterwards at Monte Carlo, he did not allude to the finish.
George Gissing did not come often, though we had the great link of both
knowing and loving the Ionian Sea.
If Gissing had not died, and there was no reason why he should have died
if he had taken ordinary care of himself—he would only be fifty-six if
he were alive now—he would have had a reputation like Barrie or Bernard
Shaw by this time, for even during his lifetime people were just
beginning to wake up to the extraordinary qualities of his writing. I am
not comparing him to either of those two; I only make the comparison
because everything pointed to his having popularity. Every now and then
some excellent writer achieves popularity. No one knows why. His
excellence is against his having a wide public, and it is very seldom
possible to tell why one is taken and another left. As the Bible proverb
says, “Two women shall be grinding at the mill; one shall be taken and
the other left.”
Gissing had a genius for imparting romance to the sordid.
W. J. Locke often came in those days. He was secretary to the Royal
Institute of British Architects, and combined with it the post of
literary adviser to John Lane, the publisher—a collaboration which
resulted in the publication of many notable books, of which none were
more eventually successful than his own, except, I suppose, H. G.
Wells’s, and I think that it was he who advised Lane to bring out the
works of Wells, and Harland’s _The Cardinal’s Snuff-box_, and Kenneth
Grahame’s _Golden Age_.
Locke was always one of the most distinguished-looking persons in a
room, with his tall, slight figure, very well dressed, and his
hair—golden, with a natural wave in it—beautifully valeted. His
theatrical successes did not begin till much later, nor had he developed
his powers as a public speaker. He published admirable and solidly
successful books before he took the reading world by storm with _The
Beloved Vagabond_, and his novels won the respect of his
fellow-craftsmen from the first. In those days he lived in a modest flat
at Chelsea, and was a pretty regular attendant at literary clubs and
receptions.
Coulson Kernahan was one of the most prominent figures in the set,
because he had both a brilliant personality, and was producing a
remarkable series of books, beginning with _A Dead Man’s Diary_. Coulson
is one of our oldest and most intimate literary friends. I met him again
directly I came back from America. He was at that time literary adviser
to Ward, Lock & Co.
When James Bowden split from his partners, Ward, Lock & Co., and started
a publishing business of his own, Kernahan went with him, and continued
his profoundly imaginative series with books about Heaven—long, thin
volumes, longer and thinner even than the John Oliver Hobbes booklets,
which Fisher Unwin was bringing out. They sold by the hundred thousand.
They were the literary topic of the day, till Norma Lorimer in despair
said, “Kernahan is growing too chummy with his Creator.”
In another line his imagination produced _Captain Shannon_, a mysterious
and thrilling adventure book. But he was soon to find his _métier_, and
leave thrilling fiction to Mrs. Kernahan. He became a lecturer, for
which his brilliant personality, his eloquence, his gift of humour, and
his conviction, had cut him out. He went to live in the country; he
lectured; he became an officer in the Territorials. And now he has
turned them all to account in the service of the Empire, to which he is
so passionately devoted, by going round as a caravan-lecturer to make
the youth of the country awake to the national peril from
unpreparedness.
At a National Defence meeting, last summer, at which Kernahan was the
chief speaker, with Rudyard Kipling in the chair, Kernahan told his
audience of his last good-bye word with Captain Robert Scott.
The hero of the South Pole asked him what he was doing, and whether he
had any new book on the stocks.
“No,” was the reply; “I am neglecting my scribbling to work for Lord
Roberts and National Defence.”
“Good!” said Scott, with unwonted warmth and enthusiasm. “Good! I’m with
you there!”
Speaking of Lord Roberts, the grand old soldier is very appreciative of
the work Kernahan is doing in this direction. The veteran Field Marshal
not only wrote a eulogistic introduction to the Territorial author’s
book on soldiering, but when the latter has been addressing great
audiences on National Defence, has on several occasions sent telegrams
to the chairman, asking that his thanks be conveyed to the speaker, and
warmly commending Kernahan’s patriotism and the work he is doing for his
country. Kernahan is almost as widely known for his friendships as for
his writings. He has known intimately many distinguished men and
women—authors, actors, soldiers, artists, explorers and politicians. On
the walls of his library are many signed and inscribed portraits of
celebrities, as well as pictures inscribed to him by the painters. On
his shelves are numerous books dedicated or inscribed to him by the
writers. One takes up a volume of Swinburne and finds written in it, “To
Coulson Kernahan, whom Swinburne dearly loved, and who as dearly loved
him. From his old and affectionate friend, Theodore Watts-Dunton.”
Another bears the inscription, “With the kind regards of Arthur James
Balfour.” Yet another, “To Coulson Kernahan, from his old chum, Jerome
K. Jerome.”
He is famous too, or I should say infamous, as “infamous” is the only
word to apply to it, for the illegibility of his handwriting. His friend
Harry de Windt, brother of the Ranee of Sarawak, tells a good story of
this. It is to the effect that Kernahan once received a letter which ran
as follows—
“Dear Kernahan,—Many thanks for your letter. The parts we could make out
are splendid. We are using the rest as a railway pass. No one can read
enough of it to say that it isn’t a railway pass, and as life is too
short for any one to find out what it really says, the collector has in
the end to let us through.”
Of Horace Annesley Vachell, one of those whom the gods love, well born,
more than usually prepossessing in appearance and disposition, a
sportsman, and one of the best novelists of the day, I saw a good deal
when he first came back from California, and brought me a letter of
introduction, asking me to help him to meet the literary people in
London. I was immensely attracted to him, as attracted to him as I was
to his books, for which he had a good foundation in the variety of life
which he had led. He started with Harrow and the Rifle Brigade, and had
been many things, from a rancher in California to an artist, before he
found his vocation in literature. _The Hill_, his famous Harrow school
novel, increased his popularity wonderfully, but he was an admirable
writer from the first, both in story and style. I have heard it stated
that on one of his great books his publishers made the sporting
suggestion that he should receive no advance on account of royalties,
but a thirty per cent. royalty from the beginning, and that he accepted
the offer.
When I wrote to Vachell to ask him what had made him turn his attention
to writing, he wrote back—
“MY DEAR SLADEN,
“Bad times in California turned me to scribbling, although
I had written some short stories for the magazines. I am rather
proud of the fact that I burnt my first very long novel on the
advice of a friend, who said that he could find a publisher for
it, and yet urged cremation instead!”
Vachell told me that one of the triumphs in his career which he valued
most was the winning of the half-mile race for Sandhurst against
Woolwich, which gave them the victory in the Sports that year, 1881.
Later he was asked to run against Myers, the famous American, but wisely
refused to do so.
He told me an amusing story of the hundred-pound prize which _T. P.’s
Weekly_ offered for the person who could discover most mistakes,
typographical and so forth, in one of his novels, which he had been
unable to revise himself. A parson wrote to him most indignantly, saying
that there were no mistakes at all in the book, and that he was
surprised that Vachell should lend himself to a cheap dodge for
advertising a novel. He hinted that Vachell had obtained money from
him—he had bought a six-shilling copy—under false pretences! Vachell in
return sent him one announcement of the result of the competition. The
man who won the prize discovered nearly _four hundred_ errors! This
sounds quite incredible, but it is true, as a most lengthy document in
his possession proves. The knowledge of his works displayed by the
winner fairly confounded him.
He had some strange personal experiences in California. A big cowboy
rushed out of a saloon in the West, one day, followed by another cowboy
brandishing a big six-shooter. The first cowboy took refuge behind the
only cover in sight, a telegraph-post. He dodged round this, while the
second cowboy emptied his pistol into the post. All six bullets were in
the post! Afterwards, when he was chaffed by me for missing his man, he
retorted, “Boys, the son of a gun shrunk!” Both cowboys were full of
sheep-herder’s delight.
And he told me another amusing Californian anecdote.
“I met a pretty girl whom I had not seen for months. She informed me
that she was engaged to be married, and when I asked for details, she
replied, ‘He is not very rich in this world’s goods, but in morals, Mr.
Vachell, he’s a millionaire.’ She married her moral millionaire, and
about a year later I met her again. She was alone. Remembering her
phrase, I said, ‘How is your moral millionaire?’ She replied instantly,
‘He’s bust!’ I heard later that she had just divorced him.”
And a short while ago he sent me one of the best newspaper bulls I
remember, which appeared in the _Western Daily Press_ review of _Loot_,
on Dec. 19, 1913.
“Mr. Vachell, who is perhaps most widely known as the author of one of
the best modern stories of school life, _The Hell_, in which Harrow is
described,” etc.
Another of those whom the gods love is A. E. W. Mason, who met with
success very early. Mason was a Dulwich boy, and a Trinity, Oxford, man,
and was on the stage before he took to literature, to his permanent
advantage, for it gave him that practical acquaintance with stage-craft
which hastened his success as a dramatist.
From the moment that he published _The Courtship of Morrice Buckler_ it
was recognised that Mason was a romance-writer with the charm of an
Anthony Hope. And his reputation has gone on increasing. _The Four
Feathers_ was a book of genius. Unlike most authors, Mason has remained
a bachelor, consoling himself with yacht-sailing among the Hebrides when
he grows tired of social distractions and politics. For some years he
represented the important constituency of Coventry in Parliament as a
Liberal. And he was one of the few Liberals who dared to be independent,
which is probably the reason why he gave up politics. He was one of the
most boyish-looking members in the House, blue-eyed, clean-shaven,
fresh-coloured and slim. He has changed very little since he left
Trinity. He is a charming public speaker, and his boyishness is one of
his great charms in speaking. My friendship with Mason began on our
first visit to Salcombe, the little Devonshire town on the wooded inlet
which lies behind the Bolt Head. He had sailed into the inlet in a small
yacht, and came to see me as an old Trinity man. Mason is one of the men
who count.
Max Pemberton has had many successes in his half-century of life.
Educated at Merchant Taylors, and Caius, Cambridge, he nearly got into
the Cambridge boat. He started his literary life by editing one of the
chief boys’ papers and writing boys’ books—his _Iron Pirate_ had a
prodigious vogue among future men. From this he soon passed to editing
_Cassell’s Magazine_, which occupied ten of his fifty years, and writing
novels, with their scenes laid in romantic and half-civilised
countries—what one might call “Balkan” novels. In these he has hardly
any rivals, because to an instinct for construction, and skill in
dialogue and description, he adds unusual ingenuity in contriving plots
and selecting subjects, and accuracy in handling facts. Pemberton’s
novels present most vivid pictures of the far countries in which their
scenes are laid.
I met him first at the Savage Club; we were sitting next to each other
at dinner, and he introduced himself as the editor of _Cassell’s
Magazine_, and asked if I felt disposed to write a series of Japanese
stories for him—the stories which were afterwards worked up to _When We
were Lovers in Japan_ (_Playing the Game_). I was very much flattered by
his proposal, and from that day to this we have remained intimate
friends. This series was followed by the series of Sicilian stories
which were worked up into my novel, _Sicilian Lovers_. In both series I
was to give as much local colour as possible.
After this we began to go to each other’s houses, and I well remember
the first time that we went to Pemberton’s, before he had moved to
Fitzjohn’s Avenue. It was a Sunday evening, and he had asked us to meet
poor Fletcher Robinson, who would have been one of the greatest
journalists of the day if he had survived. He was born to it, for he was
a nephew of old Sir John Robinson, who managed the _Daily News_ for many
years. He was, at the time of his death, assistant-editor of a great
daily, and he was one of the persons whose death was attributed to
incurring the displeasure of the celebrated Egyptian mummy in the
British Museum. He was a huge, fair man, with curly sandy hair; he was
beloved of society, and a poet as well as an editor.
The popular account of his death is that, not believing in the malignant
powers of the celebrated mummy-case in the British Museum, he determined
to make a slashing attack on the belief in the columns of the _Daily
Express_, and went to the museum, and sent his photographer there, to
collect the materials for that purpose: that he was then, although in
the most perfect health, struck down mysteriously by some malady of
which he died. The ancient Egyptians certainly seem to have been able to
protect the tombs and coffins and bodies of their dead by active
spiritual powers, which I respect. But in any case, the adage of
chivalry, _de mortuis nil nisi bonum_, ought to prevent people from
behaving unkindly to anything that concerns the dead.
We continued to see a good deal of the Pembertons till Max took Troston
Hall in Suffolk because he found that London gaieties interfered with
his work. But a few years later he felt drawn back to London, and took
chambers in St. James’s, though he kept Troston on, and it was in those
chambers that he wrote one of his great successes, the revue _Hallo
Ragtime_—the best and most popular revue ever written.
Unlike so many of our leading authors, Max Pemberton, who is a
distinguished-looking man—one would take him for a diplomat—is as
interesting to meet as his books are to read. He shines in society.
A mutual friend of us both is Robert Leighton. Mrs. Leighton I have
mentioned above. Leighton’s gifts are of a serious editorial order,
though he has written boys’ books of wide popularity. The Leightons are
among the most popular figures at literary gatherings—they are so
lovable that they have an immense circle of friends. Robert Leighton is
recognised as having no superior as a writer on dogs. They have left
their house in St. John’s Wood now and gone to live in an old-world
house at Lowestoft.
When Arthur Morrison, who was already known as a brilliant journalist,
one of Henley’s most incisive young men, made such a success with his
_Tales of Mean Streets_ and his _Martin Hewitt_ stories, one imagined
that he would pour out a stream of books like other writers who have
“boomed.” But he has been exceedingly moderate. We had a bond of
sympathy which used to bring him to our house. We had a collection of
very unusual Japanese curios of the humble order, and he had one of the
finest collections of Japanese prints in the country. We never saw as
much of him as we wished because he lived in Essex, and when the success
of his books enabled him to do his work where he liked, he grew more and
more reluctant to come to London.
Another man of that generation to whom we grew much attached was Eden
Phillpotts. In those days he was struggling with ill-health and
over-work. London did not agree with him, and he had to write his novels
in the intervals of journalism. Though he told me that they seldom went
out elsewhere, he and his pretty wife were often at 32 Addison Mansions.
They lived at Bedford Park in those days. While he was assistant editor
of _Black and White_—that paper edited by so many of our friends—it
seemed to be a different one every year, during its brief existence—he
began to feel the strain a good deal, and finally determined to burn his
ships and go back to his native Devon—he was a grandnephew of the famous
Bishop of Exeter—and depend entirely upon his novels.
The experiment was a complete success. His health improved in his native
air, and directly he could give the proper leisure to writing his
novels, he sprang into almost the first rank—alike for the extraordinary
power of his stories, for his intimate knowledge of Devonshire and
Devonian character, and for the individuality of his style. Phillpotts
never deteriorates. He is one of those men who carry the stamp of
intelligence and _simpatica_ on their faces. Now he is following in the
footsteps of the other great novelists and getting a footing on the
stage, where he will be well represented this year.
Robert Hichens is a very handsome and intellectual-looking man—if his
portrait had been executed by the steel engravers of a hundred years ago
it would have borne a striking resemblance to the portraits of Lord
Byron. He has regular, clear-cut, refined features, of a very similar
type. I have not run across Hichens as often as might be expected in
Sicily and Egypt, though we have both been in these countries,
especially the former, so much. But I did meet him one evening at Luxor,
in the midst of one of those superb Egyptian sunsets. He was on his
_dahabea_, which he had brought over from its usual anchorage near the
bar on the Thebes side. It was a luxurious and very Oriental-looking
_dahabea_. The saloon, separated from the cabins by heavy Persian
curtains, would have made a far more picturesque scene for _Bella-Donna_
on the stage than the steam-_dahabea_ which appeared in the actual play.
He was living on one of the old sailing-_dahabeas_, which are the most
delightful to occupy, though people generally do not sail up from Cairo
nowadays, but have them towed up to Luxor before they join them, so as
to have all their time in the picturesque, temple-studded reach between
Luxor and Assuan.
That meeting is riveted in my mind, because Hichens, in thanking me for
a long and enthusiastic review which I had written over my signature in
the _Queen_ about his _Garden of Allah_, said that though I had spoken
in such terms of the book, and brought out all its good points, he had a
conviction that in my heart of hearts I felt a sort of repulsion for it,
which was true. I thought the heroine’s falling in love with such a man
at first, and her sending him back to his cell as a monk afterwards,
equally repellent; while I could not help doing homage to the book, and
revelling in its Eastern setting.
Some time after my return to England I was nearly brought into a very
close relation with Hichens.
One morning Sir George Alexander came post-haste to call on me. I was
not in. So at lunch a telegram as long as a letter arrived—would I see
him in the theatre after such an act that night? The royal box was at my
disposal if I cared to see the play. I telephoned my acceptance to
Helmsley—a good actor, but far too good a manager to be spared to take a
part—and wondered what was up. When I got to the theatre, I discovered
what I was wanted for. Hichens’s _Bella-Donna_ was coming on. All the
preparations were ready for his inspection, and Hichens could not be
found by telegram in Europe or Africa. Alexander asked if I would
superintend the staging. The fee fixed was a liberal one. But I was in a
quandary. I knew that neither J. Bernard Fagan, who had dramatised the
story, nor Alexander, had ever been in Egypt, and that the play and its
mounting, however well done, must be full of slips, to which I ought to
object. About Alexander I was not disturbed, for I knew that his only
idea would be to get the thing right. But with Fagan it might be
different. He would doubtless have been studying the subject fiercely,
and I should have to reckon with his _amour propre_, and probably lose a
friend—who had been at Trinity, Oxford, like myself—that delightful
Sheridan-like person and personality, so I gave rather a modified
consent. I suggested that fresh efforts should be made to find Hichens,
but promised that if finally he could not be found I would take his
place in correcting the Egyptianities of the piece.
Fortunately, at the last minute Hichens did turn up, and I was saved
from the responsibility. I was very grateful, for when the first night
came, and with it stalls for the performance, there were many little
points to which I should have had to take exception, though they made no
difference to the enjoyment of such of the public as had not been in
Egypt. Still, I am sure that Fagan would have felt sore about my
correcting his scenes like a schoolboy’s Latin verses. As it happened,
Alexander and Mrs. Patrick Campbell were so magnificent in their parts,
and the piece was so splendidly produced, that the public did not bother
itself about small details, but flocked to see the play. It could hardly
have been a greater success than it was for any improvements that I
could have suggested. I never saw Hichens at his residence in
Taormina—we never happened to be in the Sicilian Eden at the same
moment.
[Illustration:
W. B. MAXWELL
_Drawn by Yoshio Markino_
]
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