OTHER AUTHOR FRIENDS
ONE is apt to let fiction speak for itself, as if it represented the
whole of literature. But it does not. Several of the men mentioned below
are novelists, but they owe their importance more to other books.
The late W. H. Wilkins, who was much at our house, is an example.
Wilkins, who was the son and heir of a West Country Squire, was an
extraordinary mixture—a man of fashion, who was at the same time an
industrious museum-worker. He wrote admirable books on the Georgian
Courts. But he will be best remembered as the editor to whom Lady Burton
entrusted her manuscripts for publication. It was from him that I
learned the irreparable loss which she inflicted on literature by
burning a number of Burton’s manuscripts because of the grossnesses
which they contained. There was no reason why any of these grossnesses
should have been published—the manuscripts could have been printed with
lacunæ where these passages occurred, and the manuscripts could have
been left to the nation in the British Museum on condition that the
offending passages never were published. But the idea of burning
unpublished works about Arabia, by the greatest of all explorers of
Arabia and students of Arab customs, was too infamous. Wilkins put it
down to her religion. She was a very ardent Roman Catholic.
He had a good deal to do with the _Ladies’ Realm_ in its early days,
when it was published by Hutchinson, and I believe he had a good deal to
do with the formation of the fortnightly part publications for which
this house is famous. He certainly was a friend and constant adviser of
Hutchinson’s. His books enjoyed a considerable sale. The novel he wrote
in collaboration with Herbert Vivian was one of the last of the
three-volumers.
Wilkins was a man of strong likes and dislikes, very affectionate to his
friends. Like E. H. Cooper, he was a well-known figure in society as
well as in literary circles—and, curiously enough, he, too, was lame.
Joseph Shaylor, the managing secretary of the Whitefriars Club, and the
managing director of Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent & Co., the
largest wholesale booksellers in the world, I have known almost as long.
It is interesting to note that Shaylor, besides being the largest dealer
in books commercially, has a most intimate and discriminating knowledge
of all the books which are worth reading, and issues delightful little
books on books, including his dear little annual _From Friend to
Friend_.
Every one knows his volume called _The Fascination of Books_. His career
is a romance; it reminds one of Dick Whittington. He has himself told us
that he is a self-made man—_i. e._ he has had nothing but his own
intelligence and grit to help him. He was born in Stroud in 1844, where
he was apprenticed to a bookseller named Clark. It was part of Shaylor’s
duty to fetch the London papers from the train in the morning. In 1864
he came to London, at once entering the firm of Simpkin, Marshall & Co.
His diligence and business acumen generally was noted, and after a while
he was given charge of one of the departments. It became increasingly
evident to his employers that their confidence in, and judgment of, this
young man from the country had not been misplaced, and within five or
six years after the formation of the company, as it now stands, Shaylor
was elected to the position of one of the managing directors.
Shaylor is an authority on the history of books and bookselling, and has
many interesting stories to tell of how things were done in the trade
years ago, when life was more leisurely. In those golden days, reviewers
had some power; a good review in _The Times_ sold two hundred thousand
copies of _The Fight at Dame Europa’s School_, timidly brought out in
the very smallest way, and an article in _The World_ sold four hundred
copies of _Called Back_. How a book sells depends very much upon the
original subscription before publication, of which Shaylor, as head of
the world’s biggest buyers, thinks it worthy. Of him it may be justly
said that he has his finger on the pulse of English literature and that
his diagnosis is accepted by the world.
Ernest Thompson Seton—who took for his pen-name Ernest Seton
Thompson—came to us first many years ago, when he became engaged to a
friend of ours, the beautiful Grace Gallatin, daughter of the Speaker of
the California House of Representatives. A descendant of the last Earl
of Winton, he went to Canada when he was only five, and lived in the
backwoods for ten years. Then he went to school and college in Canada,
and had two years’ art-training in London before he returned to Manitoba
to study natural history, eventually becoming naturalist to the Manitoba
Government. In 1898, when he was thirty-eight years old, he published
his _Wild Animals I have Known—the Biographies of Eight Wild Animals_,
which went through ten editions in the first year, and was the
foundation of his fame and large fortune. He founded the outdoor-life
movement, known as _The Woodcraft Indians_, which has a membership of
nearly a hundred thousand, and in addition to his soundness as a
naturalist, he is the most dramatic lecturer I have ever heard. He
lectures on the psychology of wild animals as if they were human beings,
and is said to be the most popular lecturer living. His books about wild
animals have delightful sketches of animal playfulness and humanness in
their margins, some of which are by himself, and some by his wife.
Dr. Dillon, whose articles in the _Daily Telegraph_ on the Balkan
question during the war formed the most illuminating comment on the
subject, I have been meeting for years at Violet Hunt’s. He is an
elderly man, who looks more the scholar and the recluse than the
publicist with his finger on the pulse of all Eastern Europe.
Max Beerbohm, Sir Herbert Beerbohm-Tree’s brother, is recognised as one
of the most brilliant wits and intuitive critics of the day, as well as
our most inspired caricaturist. There are few educated people in England
who are not familiar with his work. I met him first at a dinner of the
Women Journalists. We were both guests of the Club, and Mrs. T. P.
O’Connor, who was in the chair, said to me, “You know Max Beerbohm,
don’t you?”
I did not know him, though I had always wanted to know him, because I
was a great admirer of his work and his wit. I said, “No, I don’t,” and
was about to add what pleasure it would give me, when he took the words
out of my mouth by saying, “I refuse not to be known by Mr. Douglas
Sladen.” That was our introduction.
He was in splendid form that night. He and a man with an unpronounceable
Polish name, who was one of the leading foreign journalists in London,
were deputed to reply for the visitors. The Pole, who spoke very broken
English, at interminable length, made Max Beerbohm very angry, because
he hated the idea of speaking to a jaded audience, so when at length his
colleague sat down, and he rose to make his speech, he began, “I, too,
am a foreigner. I go about in holy terror of the Tariff Reform League.”
The audience recognised that he was really alluding to the Aliens Act,
and rocked with laughter.
I remember Mark Twain being similarly annoyed at a dinner of the
American Society, when he had to speak after a number of verbose
platitudinarians. He was quite dispirited when he rose, and confined
himself to a few sentences. After the dinner was over, he told me this,
and he went on to say, “But I was wrong, for the late Sir Henry
Brackenbury spoke after me, and look what he did with the audience! He
took them up in his hand, and moved them to tears and laughter, just as
he pleased.”
That speech of Sir Henry’s certainly was magnificently eloquent. It was
during, or just after, the South African War, and the phrases in which
he alluded to the war swept the audience, though they were mostly
Americans, right off their feet; they were as fine as John Bright’s
immortal allusion to hearing the angels’ wings in his Crimean War
speech. I only once heard a finer speech—the sermon preached in St.
Paul’s by the present Archbishop of York, then Bishop of Stepney, upon
the centenary of Nelson’s death. In that sermon over and over again the
words were flames. There is nothing so inspiring as a supreme speech at
a supreme moment.
Dr. G. C. Williamson, the art editor of George Bell & Sons, is one of
the most potent figures in the world of art—in fact, there are few
branches of art on which he has not got any reasonable information at
his fingers’ tips. He has written books which have met with wide
acceptation on several of them, and has been a great collector and
traveller.
I met him under curious circumstances. We were both, though I did not
know him then, in St. Peter’s, witnessing the Jubilee of Leo XIII. On
occasions like this in Italy no one interferes with the liberty of the
sight-seer, and as I was not, in the nature of things, likely to see the
Jubilee of another Pope, and I had to write a description of it, I
determined to seize whatever opportunity I could for seeing it, without
any _mauvais honte_. The cathedral had been so packed for the past six
hours that it was practically impossible to see anything unless you
seized some coign of vantage. Williamson and I were standing close to
one of the great piers of the nave, and the base had a projection some
feet from the ground. I determined to stand on it, but he was between me
and the pier. He very good-naturedly made way for me, and helped me to
scramble up, calling out “_Viva il papa re! Viva il papa re!_” all the
time. I offered, of course, to share my giddy eminence with him, turn
and turn about, but he was a devout Catholic, and though he saw no harm
in my ambitions, which he furthered so nobly, he was quite content to be
in the church, and worshipping. He did not want to see more than
everybody saw without striving, when at last it happened—the carrying of
the frail old Pope on his _Sedia Gestatoria_, supported on men’s
shoulders, between the snow-white _flabella_.
When it was all over, we exchanged cards, and that was the beginning of
my friendship with the famous art critic.
It certainly was about the most impressive sight I ever saw—that vast
cathedral, packed with a hundred thousand human beings, with the
nonagenarian Pope dressed in snow-white garments borne on his moving
throne from the High Altar to the Chapel of the Crucifix.
It is not too much to say that literary London felt a shock when it
heard that William Sinclair had resigned the Archdeaconry of London
which he had held with such conspicuous success for twenty-two years,
and retired to a Sussex benefice. He had been one of the foremost
figures in every London function of the time, since the Jubilee of Queen
Victoria, and he had started life as a Scholar of Balliol and President
of the Union—the University Debating Society at Oxford. Being a
bachelor, there was no reason why he should restrict himself to dining
at home, and, consequently, he was the most prominent figure at public
dinners, of a patriotic, philanthropic or useful character, where he
spoke comparatively seldom, considering what a good speaker he is. Being
a connection of half the Scottish aristocracy—he is a cousin of the Lord
of the Isles—he was equally conspicuous in country house parties. A
constant attendant at the functions of the Authors’ and other literary
clubs, his eminence as an ecclesiastic and a public man obscured the
fact that his performances as an author were among the most
distinguished of those present, for he has a gift of saying wise things
in epigrammatic form. His _magnum opus_ is a book on his own cathedral,
and here I may incidentally remark that few archdeacons have ever
exercised such influence on the Dean over the care of the cathedral. His
great object was to emphasise the voice of St. Paul’s as that of the
nation in its religious aspect, and it was with this view that he
prevailed on the Dean and Chapter and the Crown to install the Imperial
Order of St. Michael and St. George in the Chapel of the Cathedral where
they meet for annual commemorations. His loss, also, from the Sunday
afternoon pulpit of St. Paul’s has been distinctly felt. It was one of
the institutions of London. He was a wise man to retire for leisure to
write and travel while he was still in his prime.
Basil Wilberforce, the Archdeacon of Westminster, and son of the great
Bishop, I came to know because we used to meet at dinner at Lady
Lindsay’s. It was there that I heard him declare his firm faith in the
Holy Grail—I am refering to the vessel which had been discovered a short
time before at Glastonbury Abbey, and which was believed to emanate a
luminous _aura_ at night, from time to time. The Archdeacon declined the
honour of having it left in his bedroom at night to test the truth of
the allegation, either because he thought his emotions might act on his
imagination, or because he did not think himself worthy, but I
understand that it was left in Sir William Crookes’, the great F.R.S.’s
room for three nights without his observing any phenomena.
I remember George Russell—the Rt. Hon. G. W. E. Russell, the editor of
Matthew Arnold’s letters, and Under-Secretary for India in Lord
Rosebery’s Government—who was present that night, interposing a jarring
note of incredulity, which the Archdeacon very sweetly forgave in an old
friend.
Until her prolonged absences from London for ill-health, Mrs. Neish, the
wife of the Registrar of the Privy Council, was, on account of the
remarkable rapidity with which she made her way in literature as well as
for her beauty, a conspicuous figure in London literary society. She
made her way so quickly because she was a born writer, and mingled the
witty and the pathetic naturally. She was a daughter of Sir Edwin
Galsworthy. There is literature in the family. She is a first cousin of
the great novelist and playwright, John Galsworthy. Her husband’s father
was a Scottish laird, who in an inspired moment advanced the capital for
founding the _Dundee Advertiser_. She has often done the _Saturday
Westminster_ and written many nature sketches.
One of the principal figures in literary society, and one of my most
valued friends, is M. H. Spielmann, the great art critic who discovered
and bought the lost Velasquez a year or two ago. Spielmann was for
seventeen years editor of the _Magazine of Art_, and is an authority on
_Punch_ and its contributors, as well as on painting and sculpture. He
is the author of several standard works, and has been juror in the Fine
Arts’ section of innumerable exhibitions. He is also a keen politician
on the Conservative side, though he is the brother-in-law of the Rt.
Hon. Herbert Samuel, and is an admirable speaker. But you always feel
that it is not his accomplishments which count in Spielmann, though he
has so many; it is himself—his shining character, his almost feminine
gentleness and considerateness, combined with unusual firmness and
principle. There are few men in London who could be so ill spared as
Spielmann.
[Illustration:
THE JAPANESE ROOM AT 32 ADDISON MANSIONS.
(_From the Painting by Yoshio Markino._)
]
------------------------------------------------------------------------