MY ARTIST FRIENDS
MY first connection with artists came through my cousin, David Wilkie
Wynfield, who was the nephew and godson of the great Sir David Wilkie.
He was a popular artist in both senses of the word, for engravers used
to multiply his pictures like “The New Curate,” and there was no more
popular figure at the Arts’ Club or in the homes of his brother artists.
A repartee of his was the origin of the picture in _Punch_, where a
painter who wants to know why he does not get into the Royal Academy is
told that he should not wear such thick boots. He and some brother
artists, of whom I think Marcus Stone and G. A. Storey are the only
survivors, took Ann Boleyn’s castle of Hever (when, if not abandoned to
the owls and bats, it had not yet become the home of the Astors), as a
summer sketching-box, and I have a picture of them grouped round the
entrance arch, which he painted.
So that he might have a better opportunity of introducing me to all his
friends, he put me up for “The Arts,” of which I remained a member till
his death. In those days it was located in a delightful old house in
Hanover Square, which had belonged to and been frescoed by Angelica
Kauffmann. There I made the acquaintance of the most famous artists of
the day, both painters and sculptors, for your artist, unlike your
author, loves to go to the club at night to relieve his mind after his
long day’s work, by playing pool or demolishing the claims of his rivals
to be considered artists in long technical conversations through clouds
of smoke. The art of blowing smoke-rings is a speciality of artists. I
have heard a famous R.A. recommend a young painter, who was complaining
that _he_ could never get his pictures into the Royal Academy, to paint
small grey pictures. “Why?” asked the disappointed aspirant. “Because
they are the pictures which Leighton needs to show off his own pictures
properly, and he always picks them out first.”
Another time, at the committee meeting when Herbert Schmaltz was up for
election, the chairman asked, “Does anybody know anything about Mr.
Schmaltz?” and the most popular landscape painter of the day replied,
“Mr. Schmaltz is a man who has taken the illustration of the Bible into
his own hands.”
It was Wynfield who introduced me to Joe Jopling. There have been few
at-homes more popular than Mrs. Jopling-Rowe’s. Jopling, who was a great
rifle-shot—he won the Queen’s Prize at Wimbledon—as well as a regular
exhibitor in the Academy, died a few years after I came to know them,
and his widow married George Rowe. Mrs. Jopling-Rowe, who is a popular
and admirable portrait-painter, and a constant exhibitor at all the
principal picture-shows, like the Academy and the Salon, when first I
knew her lived at Beaufort Street, Chelsea, but an epidemic of burglars
drove her from there to Pembroke Road, Earl’s Court, and from thence to
an old house in Pembroke Gardens. It made no difference to her at-homes,
which have always been crowded with really distinguished people, for she
has known all the leading artists, most of the leading authors and
actors, and not a few of the leading public men and women of her time.
Millais painted her portrait in her youthful prime, and if one sees her
standing near it, where it hangs in her house, one notices how little
she has altered in those intervening years, which have been so full of
painting triumphs and brilliant society.
Many artists used to come to Addison Mansions. West Kensington is not
like St. John’s Wood or Chelsea; there was no West Kensington Arts’
Club, and artists had not many meeting-places except Phil May’s studio
and our flat. Solomon, already nearing his zenith, used often to come
with his brother Albert, and so did Arthur Hacker, though they both
lived some way off. We were asked to Solomon’s wedding—we and Henry
Arthur Jones, I think, were the only Gentiles present at this splendid
ceremony, carried out with all the historical rites. Albert Solomon very
good-naturedly sat with us to tell us the significance of everything. It
was as interesting as an Easter service in a Sicilian cathedral.
It was easier for J. J. Shannon, for he lived quite close, in Holland
Park Road, in an old farmhouse, which he gradually transformed into a
charming mansion, where one used to meet most interesting people.
David Murray, the famous landscape painter, was another frequent visitor
among the Academicians, very popular for his wit and camaraderie, very
ready to help any one who needed a push in high quarters.
He has altered surprisingly little—only last summer I met him at a ball
at Sir St. Clair Thompson’s, the eminent throat specialist’s, whom I
knew as far back as 1886 when he was honorary secretary of the Club at
Florence. David was dancing as much as most of the young men, and not
looking perceptibly older than when I met him a quarter of a century
ago. He is another of the intellectual artists who read deeply, and he
is much interested in Japan. He very good-naturedly came to advise me
about my pictures when I was selling the contents of Phillimore Lodge,
but we had already parted with the celebrated Nattier of Louis XV
dressed as Hercules—a Burke heirloom—my father sold that to Colnaghi for
£1500.
Alfred Drury, that delightfully poetical sculptor, was another
Academician who came often. Drury has a beautiful voice.
It was only in our last days at Addison Mansions, after we had given up
those large evening at-homes, that William Nicholson, not an
Academician, but one of the greatest artists of them all, came.
Nicholson was not only one of the finest painters of the day in
inspiration and technique, but was the pioneer of a new movement, being
the first painter to have an artificial reproduction of daylight
installed in his studio—a costly and highly scientific combination of
various lights. By means of this painting is rendered independent of the
weather and the time. He has painted all night before now. Mark Barr, a
scientific friend of ours, who devised the apparatus for this, the most
brilliant man I ever met, brought him.
Another pioneer of art who used to come to Addison Mansions often, when
he had a studio in Brook Green, was Francis Bate, the moving spirit of
the New English Art Club. His influence on art has been profound. The
new English Art Club may have been identified with a certain extravagant
phase by scoffers, but it has embraced men like Sargent and Shannon, as
well as apostles of stiff blue cabbages.
The public were quick to appreciate the charm of the soft grey studies,
in which so little was indicated and so much implied, of Theodore
Roussel and Paul Maitland. Maitland, in spite of his delicate health,
was a student as well as a painter. He was a very clear thinker, like
the late Sir Alfred East, another Academician who often joined our
symposia. I always felt that East could have made his name as easily in
literature as in art.
The artist who has played the greatest part in the book life of his time
is, of course, Walter Crane, a really profound student and thinker, who
has held all sorts of most important directorships in art, and delivered
lectures of historical importance. No artist has such a record in _Who’s
Who_, for Crane is not only an illustrator of books, but a writer, and
as eminent a socialist as he is an artist. He describes himself as
“mostly self-taught,” but he was apprenticed to W. J. Linton, and
exhibited in the Royal Academy when he was only sixteen. He lives in
ideal surroundings, in a rambling house, more than two centuries old, in
Holland Street, Kensington. The thing which always struck me more than
the old curios which find such a fitting niche in the house, are the
rubbings of the brasses of his ancestors, for Crane has a long line of
knightly ancestors, one of whom was Chancellor of England in Stuart
times. Of his work I need not speak, for he has founded one of the
schools of modern English Art.
When I asked Walter Crane if he had been turned into an artist by any
sensational incident, he said—
“My progress—if I may so call it—has been very gradual and quite
unsensational, I think—except to myself. I had the great advantage of
having an artist for a father, and never remember the time when I did
not handle a pencil of some kind, though it was often a _slate_ pencil.
I had no early struggles to have my wish to be an artist allowed and
encouraged, or any strife about the realisation of that ideal with a
bourgeois-minded family, as one so often hears about in artists’
histories. I never started for anywhere with half-a-crown in my
pocket—anything of the sort usually quickly burnt a hole in what little
pocket I may have had—and no doubt that is the principal reason why I
remain poor.
“My early fondness for drawing animals caused confident and friendly
critics to say, ‘He will be a second Landseer!’ and nothing could have
had a more glowing prospect for me at the time; but times have a way of
changing, and ideals change with them, especially when one is ‘growing
up.’
“At the age of sixteen I had what might be called my first picture
accepted at the Royal Academy—first time of asking—but the subject was
‘The Lady of Shalott,’ and my source of inspiration was by no means
Landseer, but rather the pre-Raphaelites, and I was already deeply read
in Ruskin.
“You speak of the ‘paradox of my being a socialist’ in spite of my
descent. Why should it be a paradox for one who loves beauty and
harmony, and strives to realise it in his work, but who sees around him
a world scrambling for money, glutted with riches at one end of the
social scale, and penniless and destitute at the other, while all the
time the bounty of Nature and the invention and labour of man provides
abundance—but only for those who can exchange the necessary counters,
and for those who hold the keys of the means of the maintenance of life?
“Socialism does not mean lowering the standard of life, but raising it,
and with the abolition of the struggle for mere bread, and the
substitution of co-operation for competition, it will be possible to
build a society founded upon some better basis than cash, a surplus
value. Indeed, it may be said that a true aristocracy might then become
possible, since personal qualities and character would then have their
real value, purged of the harrowing, selfish burden of private ownership
of the means of life, and estimated by service to the community.”
My most intimate artist friend is Réné de l’Hôpital, who, in spite of
his name and his descent, speaks not a word of French. De l’Hôpital is
one of those happy portrait-painters who can get a likeness; but he is
more than that; if he had a literary turn, he could write as good a book
as any one on “collecting” economically, for he has a wonderful
knowledge of old furniture and its West-end and East-end values. I know
the extent of his knowledge because he and my brother-in-law, the late
Frederick Robert Ellis, were my advisers when I sold the contents of
Phillimore Lodge, and the auctioneer said they fetched half as much
again as they were worth, because we knew their value and their points
were so well brought out. De l’Hôpital owed his knowledge partly to the
fact that he was born in a great old house full of treasures. Having
known what it was to struggle himself, when he became an artist against
the wishes of his family, he does a great deal for the poor.
De l’Hôpital, who is a French count, son of the sixth Duke de Vitry, has
had the honour of painting Prince Arthur of Connaught and Pope Leo XIII,
and was a Gold Staff officer at the coronation of King George V. He
married a daughter of John Francis Bentley, the great architect who
built the Westminster Cathedral. Mrs. de l’Hôpital has written a book
entitled _The Westminster Cathedral and its Architect_, and collaborated
with me in one of my books in which she would not allow her name to
appear.
Two painters who used to come to Addison Mansions arise in my mind with
East. Both were portrait-painters, recognised as among the soundest
executants of their craft—J. H. Lorimer and Hugh de Trafford
Glazebrook—for both were interested in literature as well as art—a not
common trait among artists—and both of them paint portraits with
enduring and outstanding merit. Lorimer, as I have said, was the son of
the late Prof. Lorimer of Edinburgh University, the eminent
international jurist who made the restoration of Kellie Castle his
hobby, and brother of Sir Robert Lorimer, who restored St. Giles’
Cathedral at Edinburgh, and a cousin of Norma Lorimer, the novelist.
Glazebrook was a brother of Canon Glazebrook, late head master of
Clifton, an Oxford friend of mine who never won the high jump, though he
could clear five feet eleven, because he happened to have for a
contemporary the only man who ever cleared six feet in the ’Varsity
sports.
A new school of black-and-white artists was coming rapidly to the fore.
Pictorial journalism on an unprecedented scale had invaded England from
America, and a number of new illustrated papers and magazines had
started, and they relied for their pictorial side on ideas which must
have seemed revolutionary to those who had been brought up on the old
standard productions of the _Illustrated London News_. The foundation of
_The Graphic_ a decade or two earlier had been a sign of the times.
The most extraordinary artist of the movement could hardly be called a
journalist proper, because most of his work was done for books published
by John Lane, and for the _Yellow Book_. Beardsley, who was a mere boy,
with his boyishness accentuated by his fair hair and consumptive’s
pink-and-white complexion, came nearly every week with a very pretty
sister who made her name rapidly on the stage. Beardsley, who had a
workmanship of spiderish delicacy and an imagination like Edgar Allan
Poe, which resulted in the creation of female types of appalling
wickedness and snake-like fascination, did not talk much “shop”; he was
more occupied with the studies on which these extraordinary creations
were founded. He was a very interesting man to talk to, very modest. He
always impressed me as a man with a wonderful future if he were not cut
off, as he was, by an early death.
Phil May, another genius of the movement, was one of our most constant
visitors. He lived, as I have said, in a studio improvised from a
stable, almost opposite Shannon, in those days. He did more than most
men to revolutionise black and white, because he was one of the first
who grasped the value of Japanese effects and introduced them into his
work. But his method of producing these Japanese effects was not
Japanese. A Japanese artist fills the brush, which he uses as pen and
pencil, with Indian ink, and secures his effects with a few dexterous
sweeps. Phil May drew his picture in the English way with comparatively
few lines, then studied his own work to see what was superfluous, and
rubbed out every superfluity. He was not the rapid worker which one
imagined from his style. After he left the Australian paper with which
he was connected, he remained a free lance for years, drawing whatever
came into his head as irresistible, and selling it to one or other
journal, and bringing out collections of his drawings of the year in his
famous annual. It was, perhaps, not the best way of making money, but it
came very naturally to him, for he was as brilliant a wit as he was an
artist. He was a man of inspirations; he could be irresistibly funny
with such simple materials as the henpecked husband. He was the reverse
of henpecked himself. He had a devoted and very pretty wife, who was
forgiving to all the faults he committed in his bland and childlike way,
and I often used to think that his jokes about henpecked husbands formed
his way of crying “peccavi.” Who that had ever seen it could forget his
picture of the husband coming home at three o’clock in the morning and
being asked, “What do you mean by coming home at this time of night?”
and pleading that there was nowhere else open? Or his picture of the
drunken lion-tamer, who had taken refuge from his wife in the lion’s
cage, with his wife outside the cage crying “You coward!”
I do not think he ever made his speech in the rooms of the Piscatorial
Society the subject of a picture, but it was worth it. He was the guest
of the evening and had dined a little too well—at any rate, as far as
drink was concerned. When he rose to respond to the toast of his health,
he looked round the room and saw dozens of glass cases stuffed with
salmon and pike of monstrous size, the pride of the Society. He took
them all in with a wave of his hand, and said, “I suppose you will tell
me that there is only one ——y kipper on that wall!”
On another occasion I was with Phil and Corbould at the Savage Club. We
stayed there very late, and when Phil finally made up his mind to go
home, he could not remember where he lived. Of course, we knew his own
studio quite well, because it was close to our homes, and we had been
there scores of times, but he was not residing there; he was staying in
lodgings, for he had just come back from the Japan fiasco. He had
received a commission from the _Graphic_ to go to Japan for a year or
more, and do sketches for them. They offered him very liberal terms, and
he accepted them. He let his studio for a year, and started off full of
good intentions. But he never got to Japan. He stopped somewhere on the
way—a very long way from England—and abandoned himself to a lotus life
of mild dissipation—we might, perhaps, have called him a
lotus-drinker—and the _Graphic_ had to bring him home again. It was soon
after he got home that this event at the Savage happened.
“Where to?” asked the cabby.
“I don’t know,” said Phil. “I have forgotten where I live; it is not my
own house.”
“Well, how am I to get you there?” asked the cabby.
“I do not know what the name of the house is,” said Phil; “but I think I
could draw it.”
“There are a good lot of houses in London,” said the cabby, “and they
are mostly all alike.”
“But there is a church near it,” said Phil; “and I could draw that.”
A menu card and a pencil were procured, and he drew a picture of the
ordinary London house and a rather toyshop church. The cabby looked at
it and said, “I know where it is; that’s Osnaburgh Terrace,” so Phil got
into the cab, and then the cabby turned round to Corbould and myself and
said, “That’s Phil May, ain’t it?” We said yes, and he unbuttoned his
coat and put the menu card carefully in his pocket, remarking, “It will
be worth something some day.”
The extraordinary thing was that any one who was so witty and such a
consummate artist should have been ignored by _Punch_ for so many years,
though he became in the end one of its most honoured contributors. The
editor approached him in a very curious way when he felt that he could
not ignore him any longer. He did it through the firm who at that time
reproduced illustrations for _Punch_.
Phil May was one of the best-hearted of men, generous to a fault, alike
with his money and in his attitude to his rivals.
Very famous people used to come sometimes to those ultra-Bohemian
gatherings in his studio, including some of the Queens of the music-hall
stage.
It was Phil May, I believe, who drew the inimitable cartoon in the _St.
Stephen’s Review_ of Mr. Gladstone, with a malevolent eye, gathering
primroses on the banks of the Thames on the anniversary of his
illustrious rival’s death, which had for its title—
“A primrose by the river’s brim,
A yellow primrose was to him,
And it was nothing more.”
The cartoon was received with universal acclaim, but the general
public—_quorum pars fui_—did not bother as to who the artist was. I did
not know Phil at the time. He was just back from Australia, where he had
been working for the _Sydney Bulletin_.
Phil May had the head of a mediæval jester, and was fond of drawing
himself in the cap and bells.
Another black-and-white humorist of a different type who was with us
just as much was Dudley Hardy, whose satirical sketches of ballet girls
and their admirers filled the periodicals of the day, obscuring Dudley
Hardy’s claim as an artist. He was a son of the well-known marine
painter, T. B. Hardy, and was lured from doing the really admirable work
with which his friends are familiar, by the fatal popularity of his
theatrical caricatures. It was long before he could make up his mind to
break away from that and do himself justice in painting. His sister
married a very great friend of ours, a water-colour painter of
extraordinary cleverness and charm, Frank Richards. We have many of his
pictures, mostly impressionist water-colours, which prove the heights to
which Richards could have risen if he had continued to have the leisure
to which he was born. He might have done very well in black-and-white
too. He could have come nearer to Phil May than most people, for he too
had caught the spirit of Japan in the simplicity and bold curves of his
drawing; and he had considerable humour. His limpidity and the charm of
his colouring were especially shown in his paintings of Venice.
His portrait of Dudley Hardy is simply admirable, for Dudley, with his
whimsical smile and jaunty way of wearing his hat, looks like a Parisian
notable.
For some years we saw more of Reginald Cleaver than any other artist.
Cleaver was at that time the favourite artist of the _Graphic_, as well
as a regular contributor to _Punch_. He was excellent in catching
likenesses, and his crisp and beautiful handiwork made his pictures of
passing events most attractive. The _Graphic_ always sent him to the
most important functions, such as royal weddings. He hated this work,
because he was far too gentlemanly and too shy to push, and the people
in charge of royal functions seemed to take a pleasure in putting every
disadvantage they could in the way of the artists and journalists who
had to immortalise the occasion for their fellow-countrymen. The artist
was expected to stand behind the organ or anywhere else provided he was
sufficiently out of sight; whether he could see or not was of very
little consideration. But one day Fate overtook the autocrat who used to
browbeat the Press. It was in the days when the late King was Prince of
Wales, and his brother, the Duke of Edinburgh, had just become a German
reigning prince as Prince of Saxo-Coburg Gotha. Cleaver, who was posted
where he could not see the procession as it entered, imagined that the
Duchess of Edinburgh as a reigning princess would take precedence of the
Princess of Wales, and gave her precedence in his picture in the _Daily
Graphic_. Before ten o’clock the next morning a messenger from
Marlborough House arrived at the _Graphic_ office to know the meaning of
this libel, and the editor explained that the artist had been placed in
a position where he could not see the Princess. The Princess was
furious. She attached no blame to the artist, but she sent for the
autocrat and gave him to understand that there must be no more accidents
of this kind, and from that day forward there was a great change in the
way in which artists were treated at royal functions.
We spent several of our summer holidays together. Cleaver’s sketches of
famous people at historical functions will have a permanent value. He
had no rival in fidelity and charm in this kind of work. In recent years
the world has seen too little of his work owing to his being so much
abroad. He is the elder brother of Ralph Cleaver, the well-known
political caricaturist.
Holland Tringham, a very good-looking and well-bred man, of whom I saw a
good deal at that time, had a battle royal with a millionaire duchess
over a similar question. He went down to represent one of the chief
illustrated papers at a great ball she was giving at her country house.
When he got there, he was received with scant ceremony, but began his
work. When supper-time came, the housekeeper arrived to tell him that he
would find his supper in the still room. He showed her the beginnings of
his sketch—and he was a brilliant artist—and said, “Take this to her
Grace and tell her that if she does not come and fetch me to supper with
her guests, I shall tear it up, and go home.”
Her Grace came, took him to supper, and introduced him to her friends
galore, and the picture appeared. Of course, Tringham was very sure of
his position as an artist with the paper, or he would not have risked
the chance of being sacrificed on the altar of the offended duchess. I
should like to have heard what the housekeeper told her.
There has not been so much of this snobbery lately among hostesses; the
race for publicity having become too acute.
I must have met Sambourne, who succeeded Sir John Tenniel as chief
artist of _Punch_, when I was a boy, for he married a Miss Herapath, and
when we were children she and her brothers were generally having tea at
our house in Upper Phillimore Gardens if we were not having tea at
theirs a few yards away. I never lost sight of him, and in the last
years of his life saw more rather than less of Sambourne, whose
thoroughness was always a marvel to me. No pains were too great for him
to be accurate in the details of his cartoons and whimsicalities. I
forget how many thousand photographs he told me he had, which he could
use like a dictionary. But I remember that his idea of the best day’s
holiday one could take was to go to Boulogne in the morning on a day
when there was a good sea on, lunch there, and come back in the
afternoon.
His successor on _Punch_, Bernard Partridge, was very often at Addison
Mansions in the old Idler and Vagabond days. He had already achieved
fame in two directions—as a black-and-white artist whose handiwork was
unexcelled for delicate beauty and romantic charm, and as an actor. But
he did not act under his own name; he was Bernard Gould behind the
footlights. Partridge’s father, the late Prof. Richard Partridge, was a
Fellow of the Royal Society and one of the greatest surgeons of his day.
Mrs. Partridge, then Miss Harvey, was also often at our at-homes.
Another _Punch_ and _Graphic_ artist often with us was Alexander Stuart
Boyd, whose wife, Mary Stuart Boyd, is a favourite novelist of the great
house of Blackwood. Boyd has the dry wit of his race, so it is not
surprising that such a fine artist should have found his way to _Punch_.
He now gives his time to painting and spends much of his time at a house
he has in the Balearic Islands. He was a very old Vagabond. I met him
there or at the Idler teas.
There, too, I met Hal Hurst, my neighbour and constant associate for
years, though we do not often meet now. I have various pictures of his
in my present house. Hurst, who was a very clever artist, and his friend
Alyn Williams, the president of one of the two Miniature Painters’
Societies, not only shared a studio in Mayfair, but married beautiful
young wives about the same time, who were constantly together, one very
dark and the other very fair. Mrs. Williams was the picture of health,
but suddenly she was struck down by a mysterious malady, and almost
wasted to death, a terrible shock to all who had seen much of them.
Then, for no apparently sufficient reason, she suddenly picked up again,
threw off her malady completely, and was restored to her old radiant
health; it was like coming back from the grave. The Royal Family have
been great patrons of Williams’ miniatures.
Oddly enough, I knew the president of the other society of miniature
painters equally well—Alfred Praga, an Italian by extraction, a
well-known and popular member of the Savage Club. Praga lives in a
picturesque grey house off Hornton Street. His wife is a well-known
writer.
With them it is natural to mention the brilliant Robert Sauber, a German
by extraction, who for years was one of the most popular artists in
journalism; whatever paper or magazine you took up, it was almost sure
to have a cover with a charming female figure designed by Sauber. I have
a delightful specimen painted for the menu of the Vagabond Club on some
important occasion. But Sauber was not only a journalistic artist; he
has been painting large decorative panels and ceilings and portraits for
the last thirteen years, and has done no illustrations for the last
twelve years. He is an exhibitor at the principal Salons in London,
Paris and Munich.
While mentioning _Punch_ artists, I forgot two who were constant
visitors at Addison Mansions—John Hassall and Chantrey Corbould.
The man who helped to keep our at-homes going more than any one else was
Chantrey Corbould, the artist, a godson of the great Sir Francis
Chantrey, whose bequest is almost as famous as his sculpture; he was a
nephew also of Charles Keene, the immortal _Punch_ artist and etcher, on
the mother’s side. Edward H. Corbould, his father’s eldest brother,
taught the Royal Family.
Corbould was a huge man, with a very jovial, high-coloured, handsome
face, and a very horsey appearance, as becomes one of the best
hunting-picture artists who ever drew for _Punch_. He had a very loud
and hearty laugh, which could be heard all over the house, and told good
stories, and always had a court of the ladies of Bohemia round him in
the inner room. He had one golden quality; whenever he saw a woman
sitting neglected, he went over and fetched her to join his circle, and
the older and uglier she was, the more particular he was to do it.
I was wrong in saying that we never had an entertainment at our
at-homes—Corbould’s stories were an entertainment, but people had not to
keep silent with them; the more noise they made, the better he liked it.
He was very funny sometimes.
When I asked Corbould what first turned his attention to Art, he said—
“I was always for the Arts. Charles S. Keene, my mother’s brother, took
me in hand, saying ‘sketch from Nature,’ so I am altogether self-taught.
I never went to any Art school. Keene’s idea was that I should
eventually step into a ‘staff appointment on _Punch_.’ I began under
Shirley Brooks, then Tom Taylor, and later under F. C. Burnand. Tom
Taylor promised me the first vacancy at ‘The _Punch_ Table,’ but he
died, and F. C. Burnand took on Furniss. I began with _Punch_ in the
early ’seventies; later I worked for the _Graphic_, the _Illustrated
London News_, the _Daily Graphic_ (1890), etc. I have always loved
‘gee-gees.’”
John Hassall is a universally popular man, and certainly one of the most
capable artists of the day. One cannot be sure to what heights he will
rise. He was not much more than a boy when he first came to our house,
and he was not much more than a boy when he first got into _Punch_. As
he is a brilliant caricaturist, with a strong political sense, he could
be the Conservative F.C.G. whenever he chooses. Probably he would
dislike the drudgery of producing constant political cartoons—all work
done against time. G. R. H., the famous cartoonist of the _Pall Mall
Gazette_, found the work too exacting, and Hassall, the most popular
poster designer of the day, has many irons in the fire which require
attending to. But he is a born caricaturist of the unexaggerating kind
which the future will demand.
Joseph Pennell, the artist, and his charming wife, one of the best
travel-writers in America, have been friends of ours for many years.
They live in an old house in Buckingham Street, Strand, near the gate,
which now does nothing on the Thames Embankment but is, I suppose, the
last of the water-gates of the Thames. Pennell conferred one of the
great pleasures of our lives on us by making us go to Le Puy, at the
source of the Loire, which he had been drawing for some periodical. The
statues of saints and tiny chapels standing up on needle rocks against
the sky, which look so fascinating in his sketches, are not a whit less
fantastic in real life, and, until quite lately, you could see from the
plain High Mass being celebrated in the cathedral, which was at the
western end of the rock. The great west doors were flung open for the
purpose, until the mortality among the priests became too great. At Le
Puy the old market-women wear their hats over their caps, and frogs are
as cheap as dirt—real edible frogs.
I went to a banquet given by the town to its most famous son, M. Dupuy,
who was then Prime Minister of France, and was, as it happened, a
native, though he did spell the Puy in his name with a small p. We paid
three francs a head—less than half-a-crown—for the banquet, including
wine, and an introduction to the Premier.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
INDEX
of the leading people about whom Personal Reminiscences or New Facts are
related.
Adcock, St. John, 200
Ainslie, Douglas, 114
Alamayu, Prince, 256-257
Albanesi, Madame, 133
Alden, H. M., 48
Alden, W. L., 102
Alexander, Boyd, 226
Alexander, Sir George, 277, 278
Alexander, Mrs. (Mrs. Hector), 119
Allen, Grant, 258-259
Allhusen, Mrs. Henry, 126
Angell, Norman, 171
Argonauts’ Club, The, 179-180
Arnim, Countess von, 244
Arnold, Sir Edwin, 116-117
Ashwell, Lena, 331-332, 345
Atherton, Gertrude Franklin, 131-132
Austin, Alfred, 263
Authors’ Club, The, 146-161
Ayrton, Edward, 319
Balfour, Rt. Hon. A. J., 153, 168, 235
Barker, Granville, 339
Barlass, Douglas, 111
Barr, Robert, 101-102, 162-163
Barrie, Sir J. M., 77, 157, 158
Bashford, Lindsay, 199-200
Bate, Francis, 348
Battye, Aubyn Trevor-, 320-321
Baumann, A. A., 194
Beardsley, Aubrey, 352
Becke, Louis, 242
Beerbohm, Max, 302-303
Belloc-Lowndes, Marie, 135
Beresford, Lord Charles, 171
Bernhardt, Sarah, 167-169, 341
Besant, Annie, 251
Besant, Sir Walter, 58, 147-150, 182, 251
Bigelow, Poulteney, 155
Bird, Isabella, 317
Boldrewood, Rolf, 241-242
Bond, Acton, 339-340
Boosè, J. R., 250
Boothby, Guy, 242
Bourchier, Arthur, 338-339
Bourget, Paul, 66
Bourne, Cardinal, 218-219
Boyd, A. K. H., 307-308
Boyd, A. S., 357-358
Brackenbury, Sir Henry, 303
“Braddon, Miss,” 119
Bradley, Dean, 128
Brandes, Georg, 6
Brinsmead, John, 4
Brodhurst, J. Penderel, 119
Bullen, Frank, 242, 288-289
Bulloch, J. M., 198-199
Bunning, Herbert, 66
Burgin, G. B., 162, 164-165, 166, 176
Burnett, Mrs. Frances Hodgson, 130
Burroughs, John, 260, 270
Burton, Sir Richard, 10
Cable, G. W., 260
Caine, Hall, 113, 157, 253-254
Callaghan, Admiral Sir G., 210-211
Calthrop, Dion Clayton, 289
Campbell, Frances, 243
Campbell, Mrs. Patrick, 278, 345
Cardigan, Lady, 141-142
Carman, Bliss, 111-112
Castle, Egerton, 267
Cave, George, K.C., M.P., 130, 191
Cawston, George, 169
Chambers, Haddon, 244
Churchill, Rt. Hon. Winston, 175
Clarke, Lewis, 327
Cleaver, Reginald, 355-356
“Cleeve, Lucas,” 138
Cleveland, President, 30, 50
Clifford, Mrs. W. K., 127-128
Coffin, C. Hayden, 329-330
Coke, Desmond, 289-290
Cook, Theodore Andrea, 195
Cooper, E. H., 290-291
Corbould, A. Chantrey, 353, 354, 358-359
Corelli, Marie, 25, 126
Cornish, Herbert, 202
Coronation, The, 200
Couch, Sir A. T. Quiller-, 283-284
Courtney, W. L., 194-195
Crane, Walter, R.I., 349-350
Craven, Miss Maude Chester, 140-142
Crawfurd, Oswald, 148
Creighton, Bishop, of London, 153, 170-171
Crockett, S. R., 255
Croker, Mrs. B. M., 120-121
“Danby, Frank,” 135
Darnley, Countess of, 245
Davidson, John, 107
De l’Hôpital, René, 350-351
De Lorey, Eustache, 67, 218, 226
De Morgan, William, 266-267
Denison, George Taylor, 32
Derby, late Earl, 310-311
Devonshire Club, 187
Dickens, Charles, 1
Dilettante Club, The, 62
Dilke, Sir Charles, M.P., 308-309
Dillon, Dr., 302
Diósy, Arthur, 177
Dobson, Austin, 104
Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan, 73-77, 156-157, 176
Dufferin, late Marquis of, 310
Dundonald, Earl of, 81, 169, 170
Dunn, James Nicol, 197
Edward, H.M. King, 181, 187, 309, 341
Egerton, George, 134-135
Eliot, George, 251
Escoffier, M., 198
Fagan, J. Bernard, 278
Farnol, Jeffery, 291-292
Fawcett, Edgar, 112
Fenn, Fred, 258
Fenn, G. M., 257
Field, Eugene, 54
Fletcher, Benton, 223
Forbes-Robertson, Sir J., 90, 334-336
Ford, I. N., 321-322
Fowler, Ellen Thorneycroft, 129, 164
France, Anatole, 67
Fraser, John Foster, 319-320
Frederic, Harold, 264-265
Freeman, Rev. H. B., 194
Fry, C. B., 172
Garvice, Charles, 280-283
George V., H.M. The King, 41
Gilbert, W. S., 237
Gissing, George, 269
Glazebrook, Hugh de Trafford, 351
Glazebrook, Canon M. G., 351
Gore, Right Rev. C., Bishop of Oxford, 10, 11, 153, 192
Gorst, Mrs. Harold, 138
Gorst, Sir John, 138
Gosse, Edmund, 26, 103
Grace, W. G., 198
“Grand, Sarah,” 124
“Gray, Maxwell,” 119
Gribble, Francis, 292-293
Grossmith, George, 176-177, 328-329
Grossmith, Weedon, 328, 338
Haggard, Sir H. Rider, 284-285
Hamilton, General Sir Ian, 154, 169
Hardy, Dudley, 355
Hardy, Thomas, 117, 208, 253
Harland, Henry, 288
Harraden, Beatrice, 129-130
Harris, Sir Augustus, 149
Harte, Bret, 94-95
Harvey, Martin, 337
Hassall, J., 358, 359-360
Hatton, Joseph, 254-255
Hay, Colonel John, 30, 50, 150, 321-322
Hearn, Lafcadio, 68
Hedgcock, Walter, 185
Helmsley, C. T. H., 278
Henley, W. E., 26, 117-118
Henniker-Heaton, Sir J., 263
Hentschel, Carl, 86-87, 176
Henty, G. A., 256
Hichens, Robert, 277-278
Hicks, Seymour, 183
Hind, Lewis, 188-189
Hird, Frank, 293
“Hobbes, John Oliver,” 131, 175
Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 27, 96, 145, 252
“Hope, Anthony” (A. H. Hawkins), 78-79, 175-176, 180
Houghton, H. O., 27
Howells, W. D., 259
Humphris, Edith M., 324-325
Hunt, Violet, 135-136
Hurst, Hal, 358
Ingram, Rt. Rev. A. F. Winnington-, Bishop of London, 153
“Iota” (Mrs. Mannington Caffyn), 243
Irving, Sir Henry, 167, 344
Jackson, Frederick, 321
Jacobs, W. W., 98-99
James, Henry, 261-262
Jefferies, Richard, 258
Jepson, Edgar, 293-294
Jerome, Jerome K., 65, 82-91, 96, 158, 162-163, 167, 188, 334
Jerrold, Walter, 195-196
Jeyes, S. H., 25, 191-194
Jones, Henry Arthur, 154, 209, 336-337, 347
Jowett, Rev. Benjamin, Master of Balliol, 10, 338
Kenealy, Alexander, 201
Kenealy, Arabella, 201
Kernahan, Coulson, 165-166, 270-271
Key, K. J., 295
“Kingston, Gertrude,” 342
Kipling, Rudyard, 77
Knight, Joseph, 334
Knoblauch, Edward, 287
Lamb, Captain Thomas, 298-299
Lambs, The, 297, 298-299
Lambton (Meux), Admiral Sir Hedworth, 171
Landor, A. H. Savage, 30, 37, 314-316, 322
Lane, John, 134, 269, 352
Lang, Andrew, 104, 308
Larisch, Countess Marie, 141
Lawrence, Sir Walter, Bart., G.C.I.E., 8
Le Gallienne, R., 108, 259
Lehmann, Rudolf, 94
Leighton, Marie Connor, 137, 275-276
Leighton, Robert, 275-276
Le Queux, William, 294
Lewin, P. Evans, 250
Lindsay, Lady, 114, 124-125
Linton, Mrs. Lynn, 119-120
Locke, W. J., 269
Longfellow, Miss Alice, 27
Lorimer, Norma, 139-140, 212-213, 215, 327
Lovatelli, Countess, 293
Low, Sidney, 191
“Maartens, Maarten,” 66
McCarthy, Justin, M.P., 108
McCarthy, Justin Huntly, 108
Mackay, Charles, 25
Mackellar, C. D., 323-324
Mackenzie, Compton, 296-297
“Maclaren, Ian,” 161
Maclaughlan, Hugh, 238
“Malet, Lucas,” 129
Markino, Yoshio, 69-72, 226-227, 228
Marriott, Charles, 295
Marryat, Florence, 137
Marston, R. B., 199
Martin, A. Patchett, 183, 249, 250
Martin, Robert Jasper, 151-154
Mason, A. E. W., 273-274
“Mathers, Helen,” 130
Maude, Cyril, 344
Maugham, W. Somerset, 286-287
Maxwell, Gen. Sir J. G., 318
Maxwell, W. B., 279
May, Phil, 92, 352-355
Meredith, George, 181, 252
Miles, Eustace, 172
Millais, Sir J. E., P.R.A., 7
Mitford, Bertram, 294-295
Monkswell, Lord, 297
Montrésor, Miss, 136-137
Moore, T. Frankfort, 79-80, 166
Mordaunt, Elinor, 245-246
Morris, Sir Lewis, 103
Morrison, Arthur, 276
Morrison, Dr. G. E., 15, 246-248, 312
Moulton, Louise Chandler, 26, 52
Murray, David, 348
Myers, F. W. H., 104-106
Nansen, Frithjof, 187, 320-321
“Neilson, Julia,” 329, 330, 345
Neish, Mrs. Charles, 306
Nethersole, Olga, 337
Nevill, Lady Dorothy, 125
Newman, Cardinal, 8-9, 219
Nicholson, William, 348
Nicoll, Sir W. Robertson, 197, 282
Nimr, Dr., 224
Norman, Sir Henry, M.P., 247
Nye, Bill, 154, 177
O’Connor, T. P., 168, 198
Odell, J. S., 186
Ohrwalder, Father, 317-318
Oliver, Edwin, 201
O’Rell, Max, 100-101
Osgood, Irene, 131
Pain, Barry, 102
Pankhurst, Christabel, 172, 173
Parke, Ernest, 200
Parker, Sir Gilbert, 262
Parker, Louis Napoleon, 287
Partridge, Bernard, 357
Paternoster, G. Sidney, 62, 200
Pemberton, Max, 274-275
Pennell, Joseph, 360
Percival, Bishop of Hereford, 23
Perrin, Mrs. Charles, 121-123
Phillpotts, Eden, 276-277
Praed, Mrs. Campbell, 241
Prowse, R. O., 297
Raper, R. W., 10, 192-193
Ratti, Henry, 240
Reid, Rt. Hon. Sir George, 178-179
Reid, Sir H. Gilzean, 201-202
Reid, Whitelaw, 322
Renshaws, The, 297-298
Richards, J. M., 322-323
Ridge, W. Pett, 98, 172
“Rita,” 244
Rives, Amelie, 131
Roberts, Field-Marshal Earl, V.C., 120, 167, 169
Roberts, Morley, 285-286
Robertson, Rt. Rev. A., Bishop of Exeter, 10
Robertson, Sir George Scott, M.P., 177-178
Robertson, Mrs. Ian, 334
Robins, Elizabeth, 341-342
Robinson, F. W., 255-256
Robinson, Fletcher, 275
Rockman, Ray, 340-341
Rolfe, Eustace Neville, 207
Roosevelt, Theodore, 224
Rose, Algernon, 159-160
Rosebery, Lord, 235
“Ross, Adrian,” 113-114
Rowe, Mrs. Jopling, 64, 347
Rusden, G. W., 248-249
St. Helier, Lady, 125, 293
Salisbury, late Marquess of, 264
Sambourne, Linley, 357
Sarrûf, Dr., 224
Sauber, Robert, 358
Savage Club, 181-187
Saxony, Ex-Crown Princess of, 141, 142
Schmalz, Herbert, 347
Scott, Capt., R.N., 173
Seaman, Sir Owen, 200
Seddon, Rt. Hon. J. R., 171
Selous, F. C., 313-314
Seton, Sir Bruce, 26
Seton, Ernest Thompson, 173-174, 302
Seymour, Admiral Sir Edward, 151
Seymour, Admiral Sir Michael Culme, 34
Shannon, J. J., R.A., 348
Sharp, William, 25, 112, 113
Shaw, Bernard, 65, 237
Shaylor, Joseph, 301-302
Sherman, Gen. W. Tecumseh, 30
Shorter, Clement, 196-197
Shorter, Dora Sigerson, 115-116
Sickert, B., 92-93
Sidgwick, Henry, 105-106
Sidgwick, Mrs. A., 136
Sidney, F. E., 80
Sinclair, Archdeacon, 155, 156, 304-305
Sladen, Arthur, C.M.G., 6
Sladen, Sir Charles, K.C.M.G., 14
Sladen, Douglas Brooke (my father), 1
Sladen, Col. Sir Edward, 120
Sladen, Gen. John, 120
Sladen, John Baker, D.L., J.P., 1
Sladen, Lieut. Sampson, R.N., 6, 69
Smith, Frank Hopkinson, 265-266
Smith, Goldwin, 32
Solomon, Solomon J., R.A., 347
Southesk, the late Earl of, 238
Spender, Harold, 200
Spender, J. A., 200
Spielmann, M. H., 306
Stanley, Lady (Dorothy), 316-317
Stanley, Sir H. M., 105, 316
Stanton, Father, 10, 80-81, 170-171
Stedman, Edmund Clarence, 27, 52, 96
Steel, Mrs. Flora Annie, 123, 175
Steevens, G. W., 318
Stepniak, Sergius, 67, 154
“Stevens, Miss E. S.,” 143-145
Stockdale _versus_ Hansard, 1
Stockton, Frank, 97-98, 154
Stoker, Bram, 80
Strindberg, August, 67
Stubbs, Bishop of Oxford, 12
“Swan, Annie S.,” 137
“Swift, Benjamin,” 285
Taylor, J. H., 72
Tedder, H. R., 158
Tennyson, 309
Terry, Fred, 329
“Thirlmere, Rowland,” 114
Thomas, Brandon, 183
Thomas, Margaret, 249
Thomson, Basil, 325
Thring, G. Herbert, 158-160
Thurston, Katherine Cecil, 136
Tree, Sir H. Beerbohm–, 344
Trench, Herbert, 110
Tringham, Holland, 356-357
Turner, Henry Gyles, 248, 249
“Twain, Mark,” 53, 95-97, 303
Tynan, Katherine, 116
Vachell, H. A., 271-273
Vagabonds’ Club, The, 162-182
Van Horne, Sir William, 31
Victoria, H.M. Queen, 189-190
Villiers, Fred, 326
Visetti, Albert, 115
Ward, Sir Edward, K.C.B., 178
Ward, Mrs. Humphry, 126-127, 241
Ward, John, F.S.A., 318
Watson, A. E. T., 202-203
Watson, H. B. Marriott, 279-280
Watson, R. Seton-, 323
Watson, William, 106
Watt, A. P., 204
Watts-Dunton, Theodore, 113
Webbe, A. J., 191-192
Webster, Ben, 330-331
Weigall, A. E. P., 318-319
Welch, James, 107, 332-333
Wells, H. G., 99-100
Weyman, Stanley, 255
Wheelton, Mr. John, Sheriff, 1
Wheelton, Mary (my mother), 4, 5, 6
Whistler, J. MacNeill, 64
Whitaker, G. H., 199
White, Gleeson, 112
White, Herbert K., 197
White, Percy, 267-268
Whittier, John Greenleaf, 27
Wilberforce, Archdeacon, 305-306
Wilde, Oscar, 64, 108-111
Wilkins, Mary E., 145
Wilkins, W. H., 300-301
Williamson, Alice (Mrs. C. N.), 132-133, 163
Williamson, C. N., 132-133
Williamson, Dr. G. C., 304
Willoughby de Broke, Lord, 174-175
Wills, C. J., 320
Wingate, Sir Reginald, 317, 318
“Winter, John Strange,” 133-134
Wolf, Lucien, 154-155
Wolseley, Field-Marshal Viscount, 151-152
Wood, Field-Marshal Sir Evelyn, V.C., 154
Wood, J. S., 201
Woods, Rev. H. G., Master of the Temple, 11
Woods, Margaret, 128-129
Worsfold, Dr. Cato, 159
Wright, Huntley, 330
Wyndham, Sir Charles, 343-344
Wynfield, David Wilkie, 346
Yeats, W. B., 106-107
Zangwill, Israel, 88, 91-94
Zola, Emile, 67, 154
------------------------------------------------------------------------
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BRUNSWICK STREET, STAMFORD STREET, S.E.,
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● Transcriber’s Notes:
○ Missing or obscured punctuation was silently corrected.
○ Typographical errors were silently corrected.
○ Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation were made consistent only
when a predominant form was found in this book.
○ Text that was in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).