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"Pagani’s was then a small Italian restaurant in Great Portland Street, frequented chiefly by foreigners. We were an odd collection of about a dozen. For a time — until J. M. Barrie and Coulson Kernahan came into it — I was the youngest. We dined together once a fortnight in Pagani’s first-floor front at the fixed price of two shillings a head, and most of us drank Chianti at one and fourpence the half flask. A remnant of us, later on, after Philip Marston’s death, founded the Vagabonds’ club. We grew and prospered, dining Cabinet Ministers, Field Marshals — that sort of people — in marble halls. But the spirit of the thing had gone out of it with poor Philip.
"At Pagani’s, the conversation had been a good deal about God. I think it was Swinburne who had started the topic; and there had been a heated argument, some taking Swinburne’s part and others siding with God. And then there had been a row between Rudolph Blind, son of Karl Blind, the Socialist, and a member whose name I forget, about a perambulator. Blind and the other man, whom I will call Mr. X, had bought a perambulator between them, Mrs. Blind’s baby and the other lady’s baby being expected to arrive the same week. All would have gone well but that Mr. X’s lady had presented him with twins. Blind’s idea was that the extra baby should occupy the floor of the perambulator. This solution of the problem had been put before Mrs. X, and had been rejected; she was not going to have her child made into a footstool. Mr. X’s suggestion was that he should buy Blind out. Blind’s retort was that he wanted only half a perambulator and had got it. If bought out, it must be at a price that would enable him to purchase an entire perambulator. Blind and X were still disputing, when all at once the gas went out. It was old Pagani’s customary method of hinting that he wanted to go to bed.
"Philip, to whom all hours were dark, guided us downstairs; and invited us to come round to his rooms and finish up the evening. He wanted to introduce me to his old father, who was an invalid and did not, as a rule, come to these gatherings. Accordingly, some half-a-dozen of us walked round with him, including Dr. Aveling (who wrote under the name of Alec Nelson and who had married a daughter of Karl Marx) and F. W. Robinson, the novelist, who was then running a monthly magazine called Home Chimes. Barrie was writing articles for it, and I was doing a monthly “Causerie” titled “Gossips’ Corner” and headed with the picture of a solemn little donkey looking over a hedge. At first, I had objected to the presence of this donkey, but Barrie took a fancy to him, and pleaded for him; and so I let him stay. Most of the writers since famous were among its contributors.
"In Fitzroy Square we stopped to discuss the advisability, or otherwise, of knocking up Bernard Shaw and taking him along with us. Shaw for some time had been known to the police as one of the most notorious speakers in Hyde Park; and his name was now becoming familiar to the general public as the result of scurrilous attacks, disguised as interviews, that were being made upon him by a section of the evening press. The interviewer would force his way into Shaw’s modest apartment, apparently for no other purpose than to bully and insult him. Many maintained that Shaw must be an imaginary personage. Why did he stand it? Why didn’t he kick the interviewer downstairs? Failing that, why didn’t he call in the police? It seemed difficult to believe in the existence of a human being so amazingly Christian-like as this poor persecuted Shaw appeared to be. As a matter of fact, the interviews were written by Shaw himself. They certainly got him talked about. Three reasons decided us against waking him up on the present occasion. Firstly, no one was quite sure of the number of the house. Secondly, we knew his room was up six flights of stairs; and none of us seemed eager for the exercise. Thirdly and lastly, the chances were a hundred to one that, even if we ever got there, Shaw wouldn’t come down, but would throw his boot at the first man who opened the door."
"Philip, a while before, had been sent a present of really good cigars by an admirer; and sound whisky was then to be had at three-and-six a bottle; so everything went merry as a marriage bell. Philip’s old father was in a talkative mood, and told us stories about Phelps and Macready and the Terrys. And this put Robinson on his mettle, and he launched out into reminiscences of Dickens, and Thackeray whom he had helped on the Cornhill Magazine, and Lewis and George Eliot. I remember proclaiming my intention of writing my autobiography, when the proper time arrived: it seemed to me then a long way off. I held — I hold it still — that a really great book could be written by a man with sufficient courage to put down truthfully and without reserve all that he really thought and felt and had done. That was the book I was going to write, so I explained. I would call it “Confessions of a Fool.”
"I remember the curious silence that followed, for up till then we had been somewhat noisy. Aveling was the first to speak. He agreed that the book would be interesting and useful. The title also was admirable. Alas, it had already been secured by a greater than myself, one August Strindberg, a young Swedish author. Aveling had met Strindberg, and predicted great things of him. A German translation of the book had just been published. It dealt with only one phase of human folly, but that a fairly varied and important one. The lady of the book I met myself years later in America. She was still a wonderfully pretty woman, though inclined then to plumpness. But I could not get her to talk about Strindberg. She would always reply by a little gesture, as of putting things behind her, accompanied by a whimsical smile. It would have been interesting to have had her point of view."
"The American publisher, whom we had playfully dubbed “Barabbas,” told us that Mark Twain had told him that he, Mark Twain, was writing a book of reminiscences, speaking quite frankly about everybody he had met. To avoid trouble all round, Twain was instructing his executors not to publish the book until twenty years after his death. Some time later, when I came to know Mark Twain, I asked him if it were true. “Quite true,” he answered; “I am going to speak of everybody I have met, exactly as I have found them, nothing extenuating.” He also added that he might, before he left London, be asking of me a loan, and hoped that, if he did, I should not turn out to be a mean-spirited skinflint. I still think the book was a myth, put about by Mark Twain for the purpose of keeping his friends nervous, and up to the mark. A sort of a book of the kind has, it is true, been published, since I wrote this chapter; but it isn’t a bit the book he threatened. Anyhow, he never turned up for that loan."
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As one begins the book, one realises, if one has already read the author's Paul Kelver ( - which is so if one has been going through a volume of Complete Works of Jerome K Jerome), how much of that book was really autobiographical, and one begins instead to be surprised and even indignant at details missed in Paul Kelver instead, for instance Paul being an only child, and the author not mentioning the two sisters and the younger brother he himself had.
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"Writing the word “Luther” reminds me of an odd incident. I was called Luther as a boy, not because it was my name, but to distinguish me from my father, whose Christian name was also Jerome. A year or two ago, on Paddington platform, a lady stopped me and asked me if I were Luther Jerome. I had not heard the name for nearly half a century; and suddenly, as if I had been riding Mr. Wells’ Time Machine backwards, Paddington station vanished with a roar (it may have been the pilot-engine, bringing in the 6.15) and all the dead were living.
It turned out we had been playmates together in the old days at Poplar. We had not seen each other since we were children. She admitted, looking closer at me, that there had come changes. But there was still “something about the eyes,” she explained. It was certainly curious."
"“July 18th. This morning we started to pay our long-talked-of visit to Appledore, and although we anticipated much pleasure, I had no idea of realizing half the kind attention and reception I and the dear children received. Everybody seemed to remember all my acts of kindness which I had long ago forgotten, and quite overwhelmed me with their love and affection. We enjoyed ourselves excessively. My visit has been to me like the refreshing rain after a long and dreary drought.”
"To me, too, that visit was as a glimpse into another world. At Stourbridge, as a little chap, I must have seen something of the country. But I had forgotten it."
"It was one evening when I had stolen away by myself that I found the moon. I saw a light among the tree-tops and thought at first to run home in fear, but something held me. It rose above the tree-tops higher and higher, till I saw it plainly. Without knowing why, I went down upon my knees and stretched out my arms to it. There always comes back to me that evening when I hear the jesting phrase “wanting the moon.” I remember the sun that went down each night into the sea the other side of Lundy Island, and turned the farmhouse windows into blood. Of course he came to Poplar. One looked up sometimes and saw him there, but then he was sad and sick, and went away early in the afternoon. I had never seen him before looking bold and jolly."
"It remains in my memory as quite a happy time. Not till years later did I learn how poor we were — of the long and bitter fight that my father and mother were waging against fate. To me it seemed we must be rather fortunate folk. We lived in the biggest house in Sussex Street. It had a garden round three sides of it with mignonette and nasturtiums that my mother watered of an evening. It was furnished more beautifully, I thought, than any house I had ever seen, with china and fine pictures and a semi-grand piano by Collard and Collard in the drawing-room, and damask curtains to the windows. In the dining-room were portraits of my father and mother by Muirhead, and when visitors came my mother would bring out the silver teapot and the old Swansea ware that she would never let anyone wash but herself. We slept on mahogany bedsteads, and in my father’s room stood the Great Chest. The topmost drawer was always locked; but one day, when the proper time arrived, my father would open it, and then we should see what we would see. Even my mother confessed she did not know — for certain — what was hidden there. My father had been a great man and was going to be again. He wore a silk hat and carried a walking-stick with a gold head. My mother was very beautiful, and sometimes, when she was not working, wore silks and real lace; and had an Indian shawl that would go through a wedding-ring. My sisters could sing and play and always wore gloves when they went out. I had a best suit for Sundays and visitings; and always enough to eat."
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"From Sussex Street to Poplar station on the North London Railway I found to be a quarter of an hour’s sharp walking. So I breakfasted at half-past six, and caught the seven-fifteen. ... At Dalston Junction one changed, and went on through Highbury and old Canonbury to Chalk Farm. From there my way lay by Primrose Hill and across Regent’s Park. ... School hours were from nine till three; and with luck I would catch the quarter to four from Chalk Farm and get back home at five. Then there would be tea, which was my chief meal of the day; and after that I would shut myself up in my small bedroom — in the winter with a blanket wrapped round me — and get to work on my home lessons. Often they would take me until ten or eleven o’clock, and difficulty enough I had to keep myself awake."
Jerome K. Jerome mentions schoolmates, of which Dan is familiar, been described exactly so in Paul Kelver.
"William Willett was one of my schoolmates."
"In holiday time, I took up again my wanderings, my season ticket enabling me to extend my radius."
"There was a fine old manor not far from Edmonton. I trespassed there one day. Old houses have always had a lure for me. The owner himself caught me; but instead of driving me off, took me into the house and showed me all over it. He told me how he had often passed it on his way to work, when he was a boy, apprenticed to a carpenter: and how he had dreamt dreams. I came to be a visitor there, right till the end. He had worked his way up by saving and hard work; had never smoked, had never drunk, had rarely played. At sixty — two years before — he had tasted his first glass of champagne; and at sixty-five he died, having drunk himself to death. A kindly old fellow, with a touch of poetry in him."
"There was a strange house I came upon one afternoon, down by the river. It was quite countrified; but how I got there I could never recollect. There was an old inn covered with wisteria. A two-horse ‘bus, painted yellow, was drawn up outside. The horses were feeding out of a trough, and the driver and conductor were drinking tea — of all things in the world — on a bench with a long table in front of it. It was the quaintest old house. A card was in the fanlight, over the front door, announcing “Apartments to let.” I was so interested that I concocted a story about having been sent by my mother; and asked to see the rooms. Two little old ladies answered me. All the time they kept close side by side, and both talked together. We went downstairs to a long low room that was below the ground on the side of the road, but had three windows on the other, almost level with the river. A very old gentleman with a wooden leg and a face the colour of mahogany rose up and shook me warmly by the hand. The old ladies called him Captain. I remember the furniture. I did not know much about such things then, but every room was beautiful. They showed me the two they had to let. In the bedroom was a girl on her knees, sweeping the carpet. I was only about ten at the time, so I don’t think sex could have entered into it. She seemed to me the loveliest thing I had ever seen. One of the old ladies — they were wonderfully alike — bent down and kissed her; and the other one shook her head and whispered something. The girl bent down lower over her sweeping, so that her curls fell and hid her face. I thanked them, and told them I would tell my mother, and let them know.
"I was so busy wondering that I never noticed where I walked. It may have been for a few minutes, or it may have been for half an hour, till at last I came to the East India Dock gates. I never found the place again, though I often tried. But the curious thing is, that all my life I have dreamed about it: the quiet green with its great chestnut tree; the yellow ‘bus, waiting for its passengers; the two little old ladies who both opened the door to me; and the kneeling girl, her falling curls hiding her face.
"I still believe that one evening, in Victoria Park, I met and talked with Charles Dickens. I have recorded the incident fairly truthfully in “Paul Kelver.” He was certainly most marvellously like the photographs; and he did say “Oh, damn Mr. Pickwick!”"
"The Franco-Prussian War broke out that year. All we boys were for Prussia, and “Pro-French” was everywhere a term of opprobrium. The idea that England would, forty and odd years later, be fighting side by side with France against Germany, would then have seemed as impossible, as to some of us nowadays would be the suggestion that fifty years hence, or maybe sooner, Germany may be our ally against France, as she was at Waterloo.
"My sister Paulina had married one Robert Shorland, known later on in sporting circles as the father of Frank Shorland, the long-distance bicycle champion; and that autumn we left Poplar and went to live near to her in New Southgate: Colney Hatch as it was then called. It was little more than a country village in those days, with round about it fields and woods. London was four miles off, by way of Wood Green and Hornsey, with its one quaint street and ivy-covered church: and so on till you came to the deer park at Holloway."
"In Poplar, I had been a model boy. There must be the Devil in the country for dogs and boys. I got into a bad set. It included the Wesleyan minister’s two sons, and also the only child of the church organist. ... We acquired King David’s knack of casting stones from a sling. We aimed at birds and cats. Fortunately, we rarely hit them; but were more successful with windows."
"There were squatters in those days. One had built himself a shanty where now is Holly Park, a region of respectability; and about it had pegged out some couple of acres. There he had remained undisturbed for years: until a new owner appeared, and the question arose how to get him out. It all depended on a right of way. If he had not that, he could be built round and imprisoned. Then he would be compelled to go. In the middle of the argument, the old man died; and the contest took a new turn. It seemed that where a corpse once passed was ever after a free way to living men: or so it was said. Three stout lads the old man had left behind him, together with two well-grown wenches who could also be useful with their hands, and events promised to be exciting. The landlord had his men waiting day and night to prevent the corpse from passing: while the family within the hut girded their loins, and kept the day and hour of the funeral to themselves. I had it, late one evening, from the son of the butcher, that the attempt was to be made at dawn the next morning; and was up before the sun, making my exit by the window and down the water spout. I was just in time to see the little band of mourners emerge from the cottage. The coffin was borne by the two eldest sons, assisted by a couple of friends. It was only a few hundred yards to the road. But the landlord’s men had been forewarned. It was an unholy mêlée. The bearers left the footpath when the landlord’s men came towards them, and tried to race to the road through a gap in the hedge a little lower down. But before they could reach it, one of them slipped and fell. The coffin came hurtling down, and around it and over it and all about it a battle royal took place. And while it was still raging, another coffin, carried by the two girls and their two sweethearts, had sprinted down the footpath and gained the road. The first coffin had broken open and was found to be full of stones. How it all ended I don’t know. I think there was a compromise. But the party I was sorry for, was the corpse. It was he who had taught me how to tickle trout. He would have loved to be in that last fight."
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" ... For the first few months, I found it wiser to smoke in the open, choosing quiet by-streets, so that if one scored a failure it was noticed by only a few. But with pluck and perseverance one attains to all things — even to the silly and injurious habit of pumping smoke into one’s heart and liver."
" ... The Chancellor of the Exchequer tells me that drinking during the last fifty years has increased. I feel sure there must be something he has overlooked. When I was a youngster, every corner house in London was a pub. Omnibuses did not go east or west: they went from one public-house to another. After closing time, one stopped to stare at a sober man, and drunken children were common. For recreation, young bloods of an evening would gather together in groups and do a mouch “round the houses.” To be on a footing of familiarity with a barmaid was the height of most young clerks’ ambition. Failing that, to be entitled to address the pot-boy by his Christian name conferred distinction."
"I do not speak as a prude. Some of the best and kindest men I have met have been grave sinners in this respect. But knowing how hard put to it a young man is to keep his thoughts from being obsessed by sexual lust, to the detriment of his body and his mind, I would that all men of good-feeling treated this deep mystery of our nature with more reverence. I think it would help."
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"Lisa Weber played Mazeppa. She was a magnificent creature, and in her riding costume was the nearest thing to nature that up till then had been seen upon the London stage. Nowadays she would have attracted no attention. Our ninepenny pit was converted into six shilling stalls, and money was turned away every night. Murray Wood, good soul, raised my salary to thirty shillings a week."
"Altogether, I was on the stage three years. Occasionally, I obtained a short London engagement: at the old Surrey under the Conquests; at the Brit, and the Pav. Then, as now, the West End, to those without money or influence, lay behind a closed door. Most of my time I spent in the provinces. The bogus manager was our haunting fear. So long as he was making money, salaries were paid: they varied from a pound to fifty shillings. If the luck changed, the manager would disappear — generally on a Friday evening during the performance. Leaving their baskets with their landladies, the company would get back to their homes as best they could. Often they would have to tramp, begging their way by the roadside. Nobody complained: everybody was used to it. Sometimes a woman would cry. But even that was rare. There were one-night companies that played in Town halls, Institutes, Assembly Rooms and such like. Here thirty shillings a week would be the maximum salary — when you got it. “The shilling a nighters,” we were called. If one could not secure a night’s lodging for a shilling, paid in advance, one went without. In summer, one hunted for an out-of-the-way corner, or climbed the railings and slept in the church porch. In winter time, we would club together and, bribing the door-keeper, would sleep in the dressing-rooms, when there were any; and if not, upon the stage. Now and then, of course, one struck a decent company and then one lived bravely, sleeping in beds, and eating rabbit pie on Saturday."
" ... I remember selling my wardrobe in some town up north, and reaching London with thirty shillings in my pocket. Fortunately the weather was mild and I was used to “sleeping rough,” as they call it in the country. The difficulty, of course, in London was to dodge the police. On wet nights I would have to fork out ninepence for a doss-house. The best I ever struck was one half-way up Pentonville Hill, where they gave you two blankets; but one had to be early for that. Literary gents have always been much given to writing of the underworld. I quite agree there must be humour and pathos and even romance to be found there; but you need to be outside it to discover its attractions. ... The janitor was supposed to keep order; but among the outcast there is one law for the strong and another for the weak; and always there would be some hefty bully with whom it was best to make terms. By luck I came across a chum, one with whom I had gone poaching when a boy. He, too, had fallen upon evil days, and had taken to journalism. He was now a penny-a-liner — or to be exact, a three-half-penny-a-liner. He took me round with him to police courts and coroners’ inquests. I soon picked it up. Often I earned as much as ten shillings a week, and life came back to me. I had my own apartment, furnished with a bed, a table and a chair, which also served for washstand, together with a jug and basin. But after the doss-house it was luxury. ... There were hangings in the courtyard at Newgate. You could see them over the wall from the windows of the houses opposite. There was a coffee shop in the Old Bailey, where, for half a crown, they let you climb up on the roof. I found out how to make “flimsy” more saleable by grafting humour on to it: so that sub-editors would give to mine a preference over more sober, and possibly more truthful records. There was a place in Fleet Street called “The Codgers’ Hall,” where over pipes and pewter pots we discussed Home Rule, Female Suffrage, Socialism and the coming Revolution. Gladstone had raised the Income Tax to eight-pence and those of us who took things seriously foresaw the ruin of the country. Forster brought in compulsory education, and the danger was that England would become too intellectual. One evening, an Irishman threw a water-bottle at my head: what it was doing there still remains to me unexplainable. I ducked just in time, and it caught a Nihilistic gentleman on the side of the head. For the next ten minutes it was anybody’s fight; but eventually we all made friends, and joining hands, sang “Auld Lang Syne.” I took up shorthand at this period. Dickens had started his career as a Parliamentary reporter. It seemed to me I could not do better than follow in his footsteps. I attended public meetings, and on Sundays took down sermons. Spurgeon was a good man. You could hear every word he said. I remember the Sunday morning when he began by mopping his brow, and remarking that it was “damned hot.”"
"I tried school-mastering. One did not in those days have to be possessed of diplomas and certificates. I obtained an assistant mastership at a Day and Boarding School in the Clapham Road. English and mathematics were my department. But it seemed to include most things: my chief, a leisurely old gentleman, confining himself to the classics and theology. My duties included also “general supervision” of the boarders, the teaching of swimming and gymnastics, and of proper deportment during our daily walk round Clapham Common, and at church on Sundays. ... I stuck it for a term. My shorthand had suffered for want of practice. The House of Commons’ gallery loomed distant. I answered advertisements. For secretarial work my shorthand was sufficient. I could have been secretary to Herbert Spencer. A friend in London to whom he had deputed the business, tested and approved me. I was to have gone down to Brighton the next week. I was eager and excited. But my sister, when I told her, was heartbroken. The stage had been a long way towards perdition, and journalism a step further. After Herbert Spencer, what hope could remain for my salvation? During my days of evil fortune, I had hidden myself from friends and relatives; writing lying letters from no address. I had caused her much suffering, I knew, and shrank from inflicting another blow. I saw Herbert Spencer’s friend — I forget his name — and told him. He laughed, but was sure that Mr. Spencer would think that I had done right. So, instead, I became secretary to a builder in the north of London. He was a wonderful old fellow. He could neither read nor write; but would think nothing of undertaking a ten-thousand-pound contract. He had invented an hieroglyphic that his bank accepted as his signature. He would write it with the pen grasped firmly in his fist and, after each completion, would pause and take a deep breath. His memory was prodigious. Until I came, he had kept no accounts whatever. Every detail of his quite extensive business had its place in his head; and according to common report no one had ever succeeded in doing him out of a halfpenny. I tried to reform him. At first he was grateful; but after a time grew worried and dejected. Until one Saturday, he planked down five weeks’ wages in front of me and, assuring me of his continued friendship, begged me as a personal favour to take myself off. ... "
Next bit is in Paul Kelver.
" ... My next job was with a firm of commission agents. People in India — white or coloured it mattered not — sent us orders, accompanied by cheques; and we got the things and packed them into tin-lined cases and despatched them. The idea suggested in our advertisement was that we possessed a staff of expert buyers, rich in knowledge and experience: but I did most of it. I bought for far-off ladies their dresses, boots, and underwear, according to accompanying measurements. I matched their hair and chose their birthday presents for their husbands — at least, so one hopes. I selected wines and cigars for peppery old Colonels — I take it they were peppery. I judged what guns would be most serviceable to them for tiger-shooting or for hippopotami; and had saddles made for them under my own eye. It was interesting work. I felt myself a sort of universal uncle; and honestly I did my best. I was sorry when my employer left suddenly for South America."
And here's something very well known to the ex-colonies, but Jerome K. Jerome improves one's knowledge insofar as making it clear it's the Brits who established the core of corruption.
" ... When public necessity requires that a new railway line should be constructed, a new tramway laid, or a new dock built, Parliamentary sanction must very properly be obtained. This might be a simple affair. The promoters might present their case before three or four intelligent members of the House of Lords, and the needful business be at once set going. But then nobody would get anything out of it; excepting only those that did the work and the people who would benefit by the result of their enterprise. This would never do. What would become of the parasites? Opposition must be whipped up. Somehow or another, briefs must be found, marked anything up to a thousand guineas, for half-a-dozen eminent K.C.’s. The case must be argued for a couple of years, providing bills of costs for half-a-dozen Parliamentary firms, fees and expenses for expert advisers, engineers, surveyors, newspaper men. When everyone has gorged his fill and new prey is in sight, it can suddenly be discovered that really, as a matter of fact, there is nothing whatever to be said against the scheme — and never was. Maybe a hundred thousand pounds or so has been added to the cost of it. The affair ends in a dinner where everybody proposes a vote of thanks to everybody else, and thanks God for the British Constitution."
Part of his next work, but not specifics thereof, is in Paul Kelver.
"Later, I drifted to a solicitor’s office. ... "
"“Ouida” was one of our clients. Once a year, she would leave her beloved Florence to spend a few weeks in London. Her books earned her a good income, but she had no sense of money. In the course of a morning’s stroll she would, if in the mood, order a thousand pounds’ worth of goods to be sent to her at the Langham Hotel. She never asked the price. She was like a child. Anything that caught her fancy she wanted. Fortunately for herself, she always gave us as a reference. I would have to go round and explain matters. One or two of the less expensive articles we would let her have. She would forget about the others."
The specific cases he mentions, following the one above, are far more eye-openers!
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"My first book! He stands before me, bound in paper wrapper of a faint pink colour, as though blushing all over for his sins. “On the Stage — and Off. By Jerome K. Jerome” (the K very large, followed by a small j; so that by many the name of the author was taken to be Jerome Kjerome). “The Brief Career of a would-be Actor. One shilling nett. Ye Leadenhall Press. London. 1885.”"
Just finished reading that, before beginning this! He mentions a house, and it sounds familiar - it's similar to what he wrote about in Novel Notes.
"For a workroom I often preferred the dark streets to my dismal bed-sitting-room. Portland Place was my favourite study. I liked its spacious dignity. With my note-book and a pencil in my hand, I would pause beneath each lamp-post and jot down the sentence I had just thought out."
" ... Prohibition was not then within the range of practical politics, as Mr. Gladstone would have put it; and the editorial fraternity had not begun to even think about it. I remember the first man who ordered tea and toast at the Savage Club. The waiter begged his pardon, and the man repeated it. The waiter said “Yes, Sir,” and went downstairs and told the steward. Fortunately the steward was a married man. His wife lent her teapot, and took charge of the affair. It was the talk of the club for a fortnight. Most of the members judged it to be a sign of the coming decline and fall of English literature."
" ... They lived in a pretty little house in Victoria Road, Kensington. He was the first “editor” who up till then had seemed glad to see me when I entered the room. He held out both hands to me, and offered me a cigarette. It all seemed like a dream. He told me that what he liked about my story was that it was true. He had been through it all himself, forty years before. He asked me what I wanted for the serial rights. I was only too willing to let him have them for nothing, upon which he shook hands with me again, and gave me a five-pound note. It was the first time I had ever possessed a five-pound note. I could not bear the idea of spending it. I put it away at the bottom of an old tin box where I kept my few treasures: old photographs, letters, and a lock of hair. Later, when the luck began to turn, I fished it out, and with part of it, at a secondhand shop in Goodge Street, I purchased an old Georgian bureau which has been my desk ever since.
"Aylmer Gowing remained always a good friend to me. Once a week, when he was in town, I dined with him. I guess he knew what a good dinner meant to a youngster living in lodgings on twenty-five shillings a week."
"All my new friends thought it would be easy to find a publisher for the book. They gave me letters of introduction. But publishers were just as dense as editors had been. From most of them I gathered that the making of books was a pernicious and unprofitable occupation for everybody concerned. Some thought the book might prove successful if I paid the expense of publication. But, upon my explaining my financial position, were less impressed with its merits. To come to the end, Tuer of the Leadenhall Press offered to publish it on terms of my making him a free gift of the copyright. The book sold fairly well, but the critics were shocked. The majority denounced it as rubbish and, three years later, on reviewing my next book, “The Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow,” regretted that an author who had written such an excellent first book should have followed it up by so unworthy a successor.
"I think I may claim to have been, for the first twenty years of my career, the best abused author in England. Punch invariably referred to me as “‘Arry K’Arry,” and would then proceed to solemnly lecture me on the sin of mistaking vulgarity for humour and impertinence for wit. As for The National Observer, the Jackdaw of Rheims himself was not more cursed than was I, week in, week out, by W. S. Henley and his superior young men. I ought, of course, to have felt complimented; but at the time I took it all quite seriously, and it hurt. Max Beerbohm was always very angry with me. The Standard spoke of me as a menace to English letters; and The Morning Post as an example of the sad results to be expected from the over-education of the lower orders. At the opening dinner of the Krasnapolski restaurant in Oxford Street (now the Frascati), I was placed next to Harold Frederick, just arrived from America. I noticed that he had been looking at me with curiosity. “Where’s your flint hammer?” he asked me suddenly. “Left it in the cloak-room?” He explained that he had visualized me from reading the English literary journals, and had imagined something prehistoric.
"F. W. Robinson, the novelist (author of “Grandmother’s Money”), was my next editor. He had just started a monthly magazine called Home Chimes. I sent him the first of my “Idle Thoughts,” and he wrote me to come and see him. He lived in a pleasant old house in leafy Brixton, as it might have been called then; and I had tea with him in his fine library, looking out upon the garden. It was wintry weather, and quite a large party of birds were feeding on a one-legged table just outside. Every now and then, one of them would come close up to the window and scream; and then Robinson, saying “Excuse me, a minute,” would cut a slice of cake and take it out to them. He liked my essay, he told me; there was a new note in it; and it was arranged that I should write him a baker’s dozen."
"Robinson could not afford to pay any of us much. I think I had a guinea apiece for my essays; and the bigger men, I fancy, wrote more for love of Robinson than thought of pelf. In those days, there was often a fine friendship between an editor and his contributors. There was a feeling that all were members one of another, sharing a common loyalty. I tried when I became an editor myself to revive this tradition; and I think to a great extent that I succeeded. But the trusts and syndicates have now killed it. One hands one’s work to an agent. He sells it for us over his counter at so much a thousand words. That is the only interest we have in it. Literature is measured to-day by the yard-stick."
"I called my sheaf of essays “The Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow”; and again the Leadenhall Press was my publisher. The book sold like hotcakes, as the saying is. Tuer always had clever ideas. He gave it a light yellow cover that stood out well upon the bookstalls. He called each thousand copies an “edition” and, before the end of the year, was advertising the twenty-third. I was getting a royalty of twopence halfpenny a copy; and dreamed of a fur coat. I am speaking merely of England. America did me the compliment of pirating the book, and there it sold by the hundred thousand. I reckon my first and worst misfortune in life was being born six years too soon: or, to put it the other way round, that America’s conscience, on the subject of literary copyright, awoke in her bosom six years too late for me. “Three Men in a Boat” had also an enormous sale in America — from first to last well over a million. Putting aside Henry Holt, dear fellow, who still sends me a small cheque each year, God’s Own Country has not yet paid me for either book."
" ... My chief recreation was theatre-going. ... First nights were generally on a Saturday. I would leave the office at two, and after a light lunch, take up my stand outside pit or gallery entrance, according to the state of the exchequer. With experience, some of us learned the trick of squirming our way past the crowd by keeping to the wall. The queue system had not yet been imported. It came from Paris. We despised the Frenchies for submitting to it."
"We regular “First Nighters” got to know one another. And to one among us, Heneage Mandell, occurred the idea of forming ourselves into a club where, somewhere out of the rain, we could discuss together things theatrical, and set the stage to rights.
"That was the beginning of The Playgoers’ Club, which gained much notoriety; and is still, I believe, going strong: though no longer the terror to hide-bound managers and unjust critics that it was in the days of its youth."
"I speak of the Playgoers’ Club here because it led to my writing “Stageland. ... ”
"It was in The Playgoer that “Stageland” first appeared. The sketches were unsigned, and journals that had been denouncing me and all my works as an insult to English literature hastened to crib them. Afterwards Bernard Partridge illustrated them, and we published them in partnership at our own risk. It proved to me that publishing is quite an easy business. If I had my time over again, I would always be my own publisher."
Following, too, is familiar from Paul Kelver. Except for the wife part, that is.
"I see from old letters that I was studying at this period to become a solicitor. ... I was with a Mr. Anderson Rose in Arundel Street, Strand. He had a fine collection of china and old pewter, and was a well-known art collector. Sandys’ portrait of Mrs. Anderson Rose, his mother, made a sensation when it was first exhibited; and is still famous. He was a dear old gentleman. In the office, we all loved him. And so did his clients, until soon after his death, when their feelings towards him began to change. I fancy Granville Barker must have known him, or heard of him; and used him for “The Voysey Inheritance.”
"His death put an end to my dream of being a lawyer. He had been kindness itself to me in helping me, and had promised to put work in my way. I decided to burn my boats, and to devote all my time to writing. My wife encouraged me. She is half Irish, and has a strain of recklessness."
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"It was my nephew, Frank Shorland, who first rode a safety bicycle in London. A little chap named Lawson claimed to have invented it. He became a company promoter, and later retired to Devonshire. A cute little chap. The luck ran against him. It was he who first foresaw the coming of the motor, and organized that first joy ride from the Hotel Metropole to Brighton in 1896. Young Frank was well known as an amateur racer. He believed in the thing the moment he saw it, and agreed to ride his next race on one. He was unmercifully chaffed by the crowd. His competitors, on their tall, graceful “spiders,” looked down upon him, wondering and amazed. But he won easily, and from that day “spiders” went out of fashion; till they came to be used only by real spiders for the spinning of their webs.
"The coming of the “safety” made bicycling universally popular. Till then, it had been confined to the young men. I remember the bitter controversy that arose over the argument: “Should a lady ride a bicycle?” It was some while before the dropped bar was thought of, and so, in consequence, she had to ride in knickerbockers: very fetching they looked in them, too, the few who dared. But in those days a woman’s leg was supposed to be a thing known only to herself and God. “Would you like it, if your sister showed her legs? Yes, or no?” was always the formula employed to silence you, did you venture a defence. Before that, it had been: “Could a real lady ride outside an omnibus?” or “Might a virtuous female ride alone in a hansom cab?” The woman question would seem to have been always with us. The landlady of an hotel on the Ripley Road, much frequented then by cyclists, went to the length of refusing to serve any rider who, on close inspection, turned out to be of the feminine gender; and the Surrey magistrates supported her. The contention was that a good woman would not — nay, could not — wear knickerbockers, “Bloomers” they were termed: that, consequently, any woman who did wear bloomers must be a bad citizeness: in legal language, a disorderly person, and an innkeeper was not bound to serve “disorderly characters.” The decision turned out a blessing in disguise to the cycling trade. It stirred them to invention. To a bright young mechanical genius occurred the “dropped bar.” A Bishop’s wife, clothed in seemly skirts, rode on a bicycle through Leamington.
"Bicycling became the rage. In Battersea Park, any morning between eleven and one, all the best blood in England could be seen, solemnly peddling up and down the half-mile drive that runs between the river and the refreshment kiosk. But these were the experts — the finished article. In shady by-paths, elderly countesses, perspiring peers, still in the wobbly stage, battled bravely with the laws of equilibrium; occasionally defeated, would fling their arms round the necks of hefty young hooligans who were reaping a rich harvest as cycling instructors: “Proficiency guaranteed in twelve lessons.” Cabinet Ministers, daughters of a hundred Earls might be recognized by the initiated, seated on the gravel, smiling feebly and rubbing their heads. Into quiet roads and side-streets, one ventured at the peril of one’s limbs. All the world seemed to be learning bicycling: sighting an anxious pedestrian, they would be drawn, as by some irresistible magnetic influence, to avoid all other pitfalls and make straight for him. One takes it that, nowadays, the human race learns bicycling at an age when the muscles are more supple, the fear of falling less paralyzing to the nerves. ... Providence is helpful to youth. To the middle aged it can be spiteful. The bicycle took my generation unprepared."
"I cannot help fancying that London was a cosier place to dwell in, when I was a young man. For one thing, it was less crowded. Life was not one everlasting scrimmage. There was time for self-respect, for courtesy. For another thing, one got out of it quicker. On summer afternoons, four-horse brakes would set out for Barnet, Esher Woods, Chingford and Hampton Court. One takes now the motor ‘bus, and goes further; but it is through endless miles of brick and mortar. And at the end, one is but in another crowd. Forty years ago, one passed by fields and leafy ways, and came to pleasant tea gardens, with bowling greens, and birds, and lovers’ lanes."
" ... On Sundays, for half a crown, one travelled to Southend and back. Unlimited tea was served on board, with prawns and watercress, for ninepence. We lads had not spent much money on our lunch, but the fat stewardess would only laugh as she brought us another pile of thick-cut bread and butter. I was on the “Princess Alice” on her last completed voyage. She went down the following Sunday, and nearly every soul on board was drowned. So, also, I was on the last complete voyage the “Lusitania” made from New York. They would not let us land at Liverpool, but made us anchor at the mouth of the Mersey, and took us off in tugs. We were loaded up to the water line with ammunition. “Agricultural Machinery,” I think it was labelled. ... Gatti’s in the Strand first introduced ices into London. Children were brought up from the country during the holidays to have a twopenny ice at Gatti’s. It was at the old Holborn Restaurant that first one dined to music. It was held to be Continental and therefore immoral; and the everlasting woman question rose again to the surface: could a good woman dine to the accompaniment of a string band?
"As a matter of fact, it didn’t really matter in those days. A giddy old aunt from the country would sometimes clamour to be taken out, but “nice” women fed at home. At public dinners, a gallery was set aside for them. They came in — like the children — with the dessert; and were allowed to listen to the speeches. Sometimes they were noticed, and their health drunk. The toast was always entrusted to the comic man, and responded to by the youngest bachelor: supposed to be the nearest thing to a lady capable of speech. In all the best houses there was a “smoking-room” into which the master of the house, together with his friends, when he had any, would retire to smoke their pipes or their cigars. Cigarettes were deemed effeminate. A popular writer in 1870 explained the victory of Germany over France by pointing out that the Germans were a pipe-smoking people, while the French smoked cigarettes. If there wasn’t any smoking-room he smoked in the back kitchen. After smoking, and before rejoining the ladies, one sucked a clove. It was said to purify the breath. I remember, soon after the Savoy Hotel was opened, a woman being asked to leave the supper-room for smoking a cigarette. She offered to put it out; but the feelings of the other guests had been too deeply outraged; forgiveness, it was felt, would be mere weakness. A gentleman, seen in company with a woman who smoked, lost his reputation.
"Only mansions boasted bathrooms. The middle-classes bathed on Saturdays. It was a tremendous performance, necessitating the carrying of many buckets of water from the basement to the second floor. The practical-minded, arguing that it was easier for Mohammed to go to the mountain, took their bath in the kitchen. There were Spartans who professed themselves unhappy unless they had a cold “tub” every morning. The servants hated them. ... It was the Americans who introduced baths into England. Till the year of Jubilee, no respectable young lady went out after dusk unless followed by the housemaid. ... There came a season when Fashion decreed that skirts should be two inches from the ground; and The Daily Telegraph had a leader warning the nation of the danger of unchecked small beginnings. Things went from bad to worse. A woman’s club was launched called “The Pioneers.” All the most desperate women in London enrolled themselves as members. Shaw, assumed to be a feminist, was invited to address them. He had chosen for his text, Ephesians, fifth chapter, twenty-second verse, and had been torn limb from limb, according to the earlier reports. And The Times had a leader warning the nation of the danger, should woman cease to recognize that the sphere of her true development lay in the home circle. Hardly a year later, female suffrage for unmarried women householders in their own right was mooted in the House of Commons, and London rocked with laughter. It was the typewriter that led to the discovery of woman. Before then, a woman in the city had been a rare and pleasing sight. The tidings flew from tongue to tongue, and way was made for her. The right of a married woman to go shopping by herself, provided she got back in time for tea, had long been recognized; and when Irving startled London by giving performances on Saturday afternoons (“matinées” they came to be called) women, unattended by any male protector, were frequently to be noticed in the pit."
" ... At Chelsea, where we met over a coffee shop in Flood Street, we had an Irish party, which was always being “suspended”: when it would depart, cursing us, to sing the “Marseillaise,” and “The Wearin’ of the Green,” in the room below. Rowdy young men and women — of the sort that nowadays go in for night clubs and jazz dancing — filled the ranks of the Fabian Society; and revelled in evenings at Essex Hall. They argued with the Webbs, and interrupted Shaw. Wells had always plenty to say, but was not an orator. He would lose his head when contradicted, and wave his arms about. Shaw’s plays always led to scenes on the first night. At “Widowers’ Houses,” there was a free fight in the gallery. Shaw made a speech that had the effect of reconciling both his friends and enemies in a united desire to lynch him. The Salvation Army came as a great shock to the Press. It was the Salvation Army’s “vulgarity,” its “cheap sentiment” that wounded the fine feelings of Fleet Street. Squire Bancroft was the first citizen of credit and renown to champion the Salvation Army. Fleet Street rubbed its eyes. It had always thought the Bancrofts so respectable. But gradually the abuse died down.
"Soho, when I was a young man, was the haunt of revolutionaries. I came to know a few of them. ..."
"Science informs us that another Glacial period is on the way — that sooner or later the now temperate zone will again be buried under ice. But, for the moment, we would seem to be heading the other way. Snow-drifts in the London streets were common in my early winters. Often the bridges were impassable, till an army of sweepers had cleared a passage. I have watched the sleighs, with their jingling bells, racing along the Embankment. One year, we had six weeks of continuous skating. There was quite a fair on the Serpentine, and a man with a dog crossed the Thames on foot at Lambeth. Fogs were something like fogs in those days. One, I remember, lasted exactly a week. Gas flares roared at Charing Cross and Hyde Park Corner. From the other side of the road they looked like distant lighthouses. Link-boys, waving their burning torches, plied for hire; and religious fanatics went to and fro, invisible, proclaiming the end of the world."
" ... Some credit is due to the motorists of those days. It was rarely that one reached one’s destination. As a matter of fact, only the incurable optimist ever tried to. The common formula was: “Oh, let’s start off, and see what happens.” Generally, one returned in a hired fly. Everywhere along the country roads, one came across them: some drawn up against the grass, others helplessly blocking the way. Beside them, dejected females sitting on a rug. Underneath, a grimy man, blaspheming: another running round and treading on him. Experienced wives took their knitting and a camp stool. ..."
"They were of strange and awful shapes, at the beginning. There was one design supposed to resemble a swan; but, owing to the neck being short, it looked more like a duck: that is, if it looked like anything. To fill the radiator, you unscrewed its head and poured the water down its neck; and as you drove the screw would work loose, and the thing would turn round and look at you out of one eye. Others were shaped like canoes and gondolas. One firm brought out a dragon. It had a red tongue, and you hung the spare wheel on its tail.
"Flying-machines, properly speaking, came in with the war. We used to have balloon ascents from the Crystal Palace on fine Thursdays. You paid a guinea to go up and took your chance as to where you would come down. Most of them came home the next morning with a cold. Now the journey from London to Paris takes two hours. Thus the wheels go round; and to quote from a once popular poet: “Ever the right comes uppermost, and ever is justice done.”"
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"“Three Men in a Boat. To say nothing of the dog,” I wrote at Chelsea Gardens, up ninety-seven stairs. But the view was worth it. We had a little circular drawing-room — I am speaking now as a married man — nearly all window, suggestive of a lighthouse, from which we looked down upon the river, and over Battersea Park to the Surrey hills beyond, with the garden of old Chelsea Hospital just opposite. Fourteen shillings a week we paid for that flat: two reception-rooms, three bedrooms and a kitchen. One was passing rich in those days on three hundred a year: kept one’s servant, and sipped one’s Hennessy’s “Three Star” at four and twopence the bottle."
"I did not intend to write a funny book, at first. I did not know I was a humorist. I never have been sure about it. In the Middle Ages, I should probably have gone about preaching and got myself burnt or hanged. There was to be “humorous relief”; but the book was to have been “The Story of the Thames,” its scenery and history. Somehow it would not come. I was just back from my honeymoon, and had the feeling that all the world’s troubles were over. About the “humorous relief” I had no difficulty. I decided to write the “humorous relief” first — get it off my chest, so to speak. After which, in sober frame of mind, I could tackle the scenery and history. I never got there. It seemed to be all “humorous relief.” By grim determination I succeeded, before the end, in writing a dozen or so slabs of history and working them in, one to each chapter, and F. W. Robinson, who was publishing the book serially, in Home Chimes, promptly slung them out, the most of them. From the beginning he had objected to the title and had insisted upon my thinking of another. And half-way through I hit upon “Three Men in a Boat,” because nothing else seemed right.
"There wasn’t any dog. I did not possess a dog in those days. Neither did George. Nor did Harris. ... Montmorency I evolved out of my inner consciousness. There is something of the dog, I take it, in most Englishmen. Dog friends that I came to know later have told me he was true to life."
"Harris was Carl Hentschel. I met him first outside a pit door. His father introduced photo-etching into England. It enabled newspapers to print pictures, and altered the whole character of journalism. The process was a secret then. Young Carl and his father, locking the back kitchen door, and drawing down the blind, would stir their crucibles far on into the night. Carl worked the business up into a big concern; and we thought he was going to end as Lord Mayor. The war brought him low. He was accused of being a German. As a matter of fact he was a Pole. But his trade rivals had got their chance, and took it. George Wingrave, now a respectable Bank Manager, I met when lodging in Newman Street; and afterwards we chummed together in Tavistock Place, handy for the British Museum reading-room: the poor students’ club, as it used to be called.
"We three would foregather on Sunday mornings, and take the train to Richmond. There were lovely stretches then between Richmond and Staines, meadowland and cornfields. At first, we used to have the river almost to ourselves; but year by year it got more crowded and Maidenhead became our starting-point. England in those days was still a Sabbath-keeping land. Often people would hiss us as we passed, carrying our hamper and clad in fancy “blazers.” Once a Salvation Army lass dropped suddenly upon her knees in front of us and started praying. ... "
"Sometimes we would fix up a trip of three or four days or a week, doing the thing in style and camping out. Three, I have always found, make good company. Two grow monotonous, and four or over break up into groups. Later on we same three did a cycle tour through the Black Forest: out of which came “Three Men on the Bummel” (“Three Men on Wheels,” it was called in America). In Germany it was officially adopted as a school reading-book. Another year we tramped the valley of the Upper Danube. That would have made an interesting book, but I was occupied writing plays at the time. It lingers in my memory as the best walk of all. We seemed to have mounted Wells’ “Time Machine,” and slipped back into the Middle Ages. Railways and hotels had vanished. Barefooted friars wandered, crook in hand, shepherding their flocks. Peering into the great barns, we watched the swinging of the iron flails. Yoked oxen drew the creaking wains. Outside the cottage doors, the women ground the corn between the querns. We slept in the great guest room side by side: tired men and women with their children, Jew pedlar, travelling acrobat. ... Another of our excursions was through the Ardennes. But that was less interesting, except for a strange combination of monastery and convent with a sign-post outside it offering accommodation for man and beast, where monks did the cooking, and nuns waited, and the Abbess (at least so I took her to be) made out the bill. It was in the ‘nineties. If one asked one’s way of the old folk, one spoke in French; but if of the young, one asked in German and was answered cheerfully. On the whole, one gathered that the peasants were nearer to Germany. It was in the towns that one found the French."
"Subsequently Carl, busy climbing to that Mayorial chair, deserted; and Pett-Ridge, who may be said to have qualified himself by afterwards marrying a sister of Carl’s, made our third. ... He would join us for a walking tour through the Tyrol or a tramp across Brittany, wearing the same clothes in which we had last seen him strolling down the Strand on his way to the Garrick Club: cut-away coat with fancy vest, grey striped trousers, kid boots buttoned at the side (as worn then by all the best people), spotless white shirt and collar, speckled blue tie, soft felt hat, and fawn gloves. I have tobogganed with Pett-Ridge amid the snows of Switzerland. I have boated with him. I have motored with him. Always he has been dressed in precisely those same clothes."
"“Three Men in a Boat” brought me fame, and had it been published a few years later would have brought me fortune also. As it was, the American pirate reaped a great reward. But I suppose God made him. Of course it was damned by the critics. One might have imagined — to read some of them — that the British Empire was in danger. One Church dignitary went about the country denouncing me. Punch was especially indignant, scenting an insidious attempt to introduce “new humour” into comic literature. For years, “New Humorist” was shouted after me wherever I wrote. Why in England, of all countries in the world, humour, even in new clothes, should be mistaken for a stranger to be greeted with brickbats, bewildered me. It bewildered others."
"I had got the habit of going about in threes. I wanted to see the Oberammergau Passion Play. The party was to have consisted of Eden Phillpotts, Walter Helmore, brother of the actor, and myself. Phillpotts and Helmore were then both in the Sun Insurance Office at Charing Cross. Phillpotts fell ill, and the Passion Play would not wait, so Helmore and I went alone. That was in 1890. One went to Oberammergau then in post chaise, and there was only one hotel in the village. One lodged with the peasants and shared their fare. I visited there again a few years before the war. The railway had come, and the great hotels were crowded. The bands played, and there was dancing in the evening. Of course I had written a book about it: “The Diary of a Pilgrimage”: so perhaps I am hardly entitled to indulge in jeremiads.
"Helmore knew Germany well. We came home through Bavaria, and down the Rhine. It was my first visit to Germany. I liked the people and their homely ways, and later some four years residence in Germany confirmed my first impressions."
"Marie Corelli I came to know while living in Chelsea. I used to meet her at the house of an Italian lady, a Madame Marras, in Princes Gate. Marie was a pretty girlish little woman. We discovered we were precisely the same age. Mrs. Garrett Anderson, the first lady doctor to put up her plate in London, was sometimes of the party. ... "
" ... The Florence, then, was a cosy little place where one lunched for one and three and dined for two shillings. One frequently saw Oscar Wilde there. He and his friends would come in late and take the table in the further corner. Rumours were already going about, and his company did not tend to dispel them. One pretended not to see him. Machen when he was young suggested the Highbrow. He has developed into a benevolent-looking, white-haired gentleman. He might be one of the Brothers Cheeryble stepped out of “Nicholas Nickleby.” For ability to create an atmosphere of nameless terror I can think of no author living or dead who comes near him. I gave Conan Doyle his “Three Impostors” to read one evening, and Doyle did not sleep that night.
"“Your pal Machen is a genius right enough,” said Doyle, “but I don’t take him to bed with me again.”"
"The Thames was frozen over the last year we were in Chelsea. It was the first winter the gulls came to London. One listened to the music of the sleigh bells. Down the Embankment and round Battersea Park was the favourite course."
" ... Zangwill is, and always has been, a strong personality. You either like him immensely or want to hit him with a club. Myself I have always had a sincere affection for him. We have in common a love of Lost Causes, and Under Dogs. He confessed to me once that he had wasted half his life on Zionism. I never liked to say so to him, but it always seemed to me that the danger threatening Zionism was that it might be realized. Jerusalem was the Vision Splendid of the Jewish race — the Pillar of Fire that had guided their footsteps across the centuries of shame and persecution. So long as it remained a dream, no Jew so poor, so hunted, so despised, but hugged to his breast his hidden birthright — his great inheritance to be passed on to his children. Who in God’s name wanted a third-rate provincial town on a branch of the Baghdad railway? Most certainly not the Zionists. Their Jerusalem was and must of necessity always have remained in the clouds — their Promised Land the other side of the horizon. When the British Government presented Palestine to the Jews, it shattered the last hope of Israel. All that remains to be done now, is to invite contracts for the rebuilding of the Temple.
"The London Jew’s progress, a Rabbi once informed me, is mapped out by three landmarks: Whitechapel, Maida Vale, and Park Lane. The business Jew is no better than his Christian competitor. The artistic Jew I have always found exceptionally simple and childlike. Of these a good many had escaped from Maida Vale, and crossing the Edgware Road had settled themselves in St. John’s Wood. Solomon J. Solomon had his studio off Marlborough Road. He was, I think, the first artist to paint by electric light — a useful accomplishment in foggy London. He started to paint my portrait once, while staying with us at Pangbourne, but complained I had too many faces. At one moment I looked a murderer and the next a saint, according to him. I have the thing as he left it unfinished. It reminds me of someone, but I can’t think whom. ... Sarah Bernhardt hired a house one spring. She brought a pet leopard with her: a discriminating beast, according to the local tradesmen. It dozed most of its day in front of the kitchen fire, and, so long as errand boys confined themselves to the handing in of harmless provisions, would regard them out of its half-closed eyes with a friendly, almost benevolent expression. But if anyone of them presented an envelope and showed intention of waiting for an answer, it would suddenly spring to its feet, and give vent to a blood-curdling growl that would send the boy flying down the garden."
"In the field where Barrie sat there were lambs. One of them strayed away from its mother, turned round three times, and was lost. It was in a terrible to-do, and Barrie had to put down his story and lead it back to its mother. Hardly had he returned to his stile before another lamb did just the same. The bleating was terrific. There was nothing else to do, but for Barrie to put down his work and take it back to its mother. They kept on doing it, one after another. But the wonderful thing was that, after a time, instead of looking for their mothers themselves, they just came to Barrie and insisted on his coming with them and finding their mothers for them. It saved their time, but wasted Barrie’s."
"From St. John’s Wood we went to Mayfair — to a little house, one of a row at the end of a cul-de-sac overlooking Hyde Park. George Alexander had told me of it. He had Number Four. It was there I first met Mark Twain. Hardly anyone knew he was in London. He was living poorly, saving money to pay off the debts of a publishing firm with which he had been connected. (Walter Scott’s story over again.) Our children had met at a gymnasium. I found there were two Mark Twains: the one a humorist, the other a humanitarian reformer poet."
"They say a man always returns to his first love. I never cared for the West End: well-fed, well-dressed, uninteresting. The East, with its narrow silent streets, where mystery lurks; its noisome thoroughfares, teeming with fierce varied life, became again my favourite haunt. I discovered “John Ingerfield’s” wharf near to Wapping Old Stairs, and hard by the dingy railed-in churchyard where he and Anne lie buried. But more often my wanderings would lead me to the little drab house off the Burdett Road, where “Paul Kelver” lived his childhood.
"Of all my books I liked writing “Paul Kelver” the best. Maybe because it was all about myself, and people I had known and loved.
"It changed my luck, so far as the critics were concerned. Francis Gribble, God bless him, gave me praise — the first I had ever tasted, and others followed.
"I ought, of course, to have gone on. I might have become an established novelist — even a best seller. Who knows? But having “got there,” so to speak, my desire was to get away. I went back to the writing of plays. It was the same at the beginning of me. My history repeats itself. Having won success as a humorist I immediately became serious. I have a kink in my brain, I suppose I can’t help it."
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"A lady, on one occasion, asked me why I did not write a play.
"“I am sure, Mr. Jerome,” she continued with a bright encouraging smile, “that you could write a play.”
"I told her I had written nine: that six of them had been produced, that three of them had been successful both in England and America, that one of them was still running at the Comedy Theatre and approaching its two hundredth night.
"Her eyebrows went up in amazement.
"“Dear me,” she said, “you do surprise me.”"
"I take it Du Maurier’s dictum really sums up the matter: that a play that is worth producing, produces itself."
" ... Managers clamoured then for adaptations from the French. Sydney Grundy, one of the most successful authors on the English stage, never wrote an original play. He was quite frank about it. “Why should I cudgel my own brains,” he would say, “when I can suck other men’s?”"
"“Woodbarrow Farm” was my first full-sized play."
"Dan Frohman took the play for America. He wrote me that he was staying at the Hotel Victoria and would call and see me. We were living then in Alpha Place. My wife thought it would be an artful plan to lunch him well first and talk business with him afterwards. He accepted our invitation. We felt we had him in our hands. It was a gorgeous lunch. There was caviare and a stuffed bird and tricky things in French. For two days and a half my wife had lived with Mrs. Beeton. I saw to the cocktails myself, and after there was Château Lafitte and champagne. I can still see my wife’s face when Frohman, in his grave emphatic way, explained that his digestion did not allow him to lunch; but might he have a few of the greens and some dry toast with a glass of apollinaris? But he smoked a cigar with me afterwards, and gave me good terms for the play."
"It was during another play of mine, “The Prude’s Progress,” that a marriage was solemnized between my heroine, Lena Ashwell, and my light comedian, Arthur Playfair."
"The brothers Frohman, Charles and Dan, were good men to do business with. Their word was their bond. Charles used to say that no contract was ever drawn that a clever man could not get out of, if he wanted to. Towards the end, I never bothered him to sign anything. We would fix the terms over a cigar, and shake hands. He was a natural born sentimentalist: most Jews are. He spent a good deal of his time when in England at Marlow, where now stands a memorial to him. I had a house upon the hills, and Haddon Chambers used to rent a cottage at Bisham, near the Abbey. On a sunny afternoon, one often found Charles sitting on his own grave in Marlow churchyard — or rather on the spot he hoped would one day be his grave: a pleasant six foot into four of English soil, under the great willow that overhangs the river. He was still in negotiation for it the last time that I talked to him there. He went down in the “Lusitania,” the year following."
"Frohman, until the end, would give no sign of what he was thinking. One hoped he was awake, but was not sure. He never pretended to know what the public wanted, and had a contempt for anyone who did.
"“I’ll tell you what a play is going to do, after I’ve seen the second Monday night’s returns,” he would say. “Some people will tell you before; but they’re fools.”
"First-night receptions tell nothing. First nighters are a race apart. Like the Greeks, they hanker after a new thing. The general public, on the other hand, are faithful to their old loves."
"The last play I wrote for Charles Frohman was in collaboration with Haddon Chambers. He paid us a good sum down, but never produced it. We had made our chief comic character a Lord Mayor of London, and Frohman was nervous about it. He had the foreigner’s fixed notion that the Lord Mayor of London is, next to the King, the most exalted personage in all England; and feared that to put him on the stage in company with ordinary mortals would be to outrage all the better feelings of the British public. I am sorry. He was a jolly old chap and, I think, original. We had given him a sense of humour."
"“New Lamps for Old,” I wrote for Cissy Grahame."
The following seems familiar from Paul Kelver.
"The last time I saw poor Miss Eastlake, she was running a cheap boarding-house in Gower Street. As the result of an illness, she had lost all her beauty and had grown tremendously stout. She was still playing the heroine. She was finer than I had ever seen her: patient and cheerful. She made a jest of the whole thing."
"I wrote three plays for Marie Tempest, two of which she never played in, and the third she wished she hadn’t. It was her own fault. She wanted a serious play, and I gave her a serious play. She loved it when I read it to her. “Esther Castways” was the name of it. She was magnificent in it, and on the first night received an ovation. But, of course, the swells wouldn’t have it. She had made a groove for herself; and her public were determined she should keep it. We ought to have known that, all of us. I didn’t get on with her at rehearsals. I wore a red suit. I rather fancied it myself; but somehow it maddened her; and I was obstinate and wouldn’t change it, though she offered to buy it off me that she might burn it. My daughter made a successful first appearance in the play. Marie took a liking to her. She liked young girls, and was always very nice to women. It was men she hadn’t any use for, so far as I could gather. A pity she ever got into that groove. She was a great actress pinned down to frocks and frivolity. Lillah McCarthy gave me an insight into female psychology when she told me that the first thing she did with a new part was to dress it. She could not imagine how the woman would think and feel till she had visualized the clothes that she would wear. Then she began to understand the woman, working from the clothes inwards. I can understand: because The Stranger in “The Third Floor Back” came to me like that. I followed a stooping figure, passing down a foggy street, pausing every now and then to glance up at a door. I did not see his face. It was his clothes that worried me. There was nothing out of the way about them. I could not make out why it was they seemed remarkable. I lost him at a corner, where the fog hung thick, and found myself wondering what he would have looked like if he had turned round and I had seen his face. I could not get him out of my mind, wandering about the winter streets; and gradually he grew out of those curious clothes of his.
"“Miss Hobbs” (or “The Kissing of Kate,” to give the play its original title), produced by Chas. Frohman in America with Annie Russell as Kate and wonderful old Mrs. Gilbert as Auntie, was my first real money-making success: if a gentleman may mention such detail. She has been a good child to me, God bless her. The Princess Paulowa presented her in Russia and is now showing her round Italy. She was a great success in Germany. I was living in Dresden at the time; and the Kaiser sent me his congratulations, through an official of the Saxon Court, who brought it to me in a big envelope: so he couldn’t have been all bad. How the coming of the Great War was kept from us common people may be instanced by the production of my play, “The Great Gamble,” at the Haymarket, six weeks before the guns went off. The scene was laid in Germany. One of our chief characters was a dear old German Professor. German students, in white caps, sang German folk songs and drank Lager beer. We had incidental music, specially written, in the German style. The hero had been educated in Germany and the heroine’s mother’s co-respondent was an Austrian. For a solid month, we rehearsed that play without a suspicion that the Chancelleries of Europe were one and all making their secret preparations to render it a failure. Talk of organized opposition! It was a conspiracy.
"“Fanny and the Servant Problem” I wrote for Marie Tempest. She was otherwise engaged when it was ready; and Frohman not wanting to wait, we gave the part to Fannie Ward. I think myself she made a quite delightful “Fanny,” and Charles Cartwright’s Butler was a joy. Alma Murray played the Lady’s Maid. I had not seen her for nearly twenty years. She had been one of the first to put Ibsen on the London stage. But for that, she might have had her own theatre and been a leading light. But in those days the feeling against Ibsen was almost savage, and no player prominently connected with his plays was ever forgiven. For some reason or another, “Fanny” failed in London. So Fannie Ward took it to America, and there it was a big success, under the name of “Lady Bantock.” The Americans love a title. Afterwards it was converted into a musical comedy and ran for four seasons. With Hamlet, I object to actors speaking more than is set down for them. But a gag by the American actor cast for the music-hall manager was quaint, I confess. He finds the Bible that her Uncle and Butler has placed open on Fanny’s desk. He turns over the pages, and seems surprised. “What have you got there?” asks his companion. “I don’t know,” he answers. “It’s all about the Sheenies.”
"“Fanny” has been translated and played in almost every European country, except Portugal.
"“Cook” (I called it “The Celebrity,” and if I had originally called it “Cook” my manager would have wanted to call it “The Celebrity”) proved to me, I am sorry to say, that the power of the critics to make or mar a play is negligible. I have never written anything that has won for me such unstinted praise. I could hardly believe my eyes when I opened the papers the next morning. Generally, if your play does get through, it is the actors who have “saved” it. But in the notices for “Cook,” favourable mention was made even of the author. We all thought we were in for a record run; and I ordered a new dress suit. I ought to have remembered Charles Frohman’s advice and waited for the second Monday. But “Cook” also has succeeded abroad, so I comfort myself with the prophet’s customary consolation."
"I wrote “The Passing of the Third Floor Back” for David Warfield. I worked it out first as a short story. It was John Murray, the publisher, who put the idea into my head of making it into a play; and when I saw Warfield in “The Music Master,” it seemed to me he was just the actor to play it. ... It was not an easy play to write: one had to feel it rather than think it. I was living in a lonely part of the Chiltern hills with great open spaces all around me, and that helped; and at last it was finished. I had arranged to return to America to produce “Sylvia of the Letters,” a play I had written for Grace George; and I took “The Passing” with me. I read it to Warfield and Belasco late one night at Belasco’s theatre in New York. We had the house to ourselves; and afterwards we adjourned to Warfield’s club for supper. ... They were both impressed by the play, and we found ourselves talking in whispers. I fancy Belasco got nervous about it, later on. We fixed things up next morning at Miss Marbury’s office, and he asked me to see Percy Anderson, the artist, when I got back to England, and get him to make sketches for the characters. It was while he was drawing them, in his studio at Folkestone, that one morning Forbes-Robertson, who had a house there, dropped in upon him. Forbes was greatly interested in the sketches; and Anderson showed him the play.
"Forbes-Robertson wrote me telling me this; and saying that if by any chance arrangements between myself and Belasco fell through, he would like to talk to me. His letter arrived the day after I had had one from Belasco, making it clear that he did not want, if possible, to be bound to his contract; so for answer, I called upon Forbes-Robertson in Bedford Square; and read the play to him and his wife. He also was nervous; but Gertrude Elliott swept all doubts aside and ended the matter."
"In London, on the first night, the curtain fell to dead silence which lasted so long that everybody thought the play must be a failure, and my wife began to cry. And then suddenly the cheering came, and my wife dried her eyes."
"W. T. Stead used to gather interesting people round him, on Sunday afternoons, at his house in Smith Square. Soon after the production of “The Passing of the Third Floor Back” I received an invitation from him to discuss “The Gospel according to St. Jerome.”"
"Forbes-Robertson was doubtful about taking the play to America. It was his sister-in-law, Maxine Elliott, who insisted. It was at her theatre in New York that he opened.
"Matheson Lang took it East. In China, a most respectable Mandarin came round to see him afterwards and thanked him.
"“Had I been intending to do this night an evil deed,” he said, “I could not have done it. I should have had to put it off, until to-morrow.”"
................................................................................................
"“The Idler. Edited by Jerome K. Jerome and Robert Barr. An illustrated monthly magazine, Price sixpence,” was Barr’s idea. But the title was mine. ... "
"The Idler was a great success, so far as circulation was concerned. ... We had pleasant offices in Arundel Street, off the Strand, and gave tea-parties every Friday. They were known as the “Idler At Homes,” and became a rendezvous for literary London. Burgin, G. B., was our sub-editor. He was a glutton for work, even then; and his appetite seems to have grown. He thinks nothing of turning out three novels a year. I once wrote two thousand words in a single day; and it took me the rest of the week to recover. Wells is even yet more wonderful. He writes a new book while most people are reading his last; throws off a history of the world while the average schoolboy is learning his dates; and invents a new religion in less time than it must have taken his god-parents to teach him his prayers. He has a table by his bedside; and if the spirit moves him will get up in the middle of the night, make himself a cup of coffee, write a chapter or so, and then go to sleep again. During intervals between his more serious work, he will contest a Parliamentary election or conduct a conference for educational reform. How Wells carries all his electricity without wearing out the casing and causing a short circuit in his brain is a scientific mystery. I mentioned once in a letter to him that I was a bit run down. He invited me to spend a day or two with him at Folkestone: get some sea-air in my lungs and a rest. To “rest” in the neighbourhood of Wells is like curling yourself up and trying to go to sleep in the centre of a cyclone. When he wasn’t explaining the Universe, he was teaching me new games — complicated things that he had invented himself, and under stress of which my brain would reel. There are steepish hills on the South Downs. We went up them at four miles an hour, talking all the time. On the Sunday evening a hurricane was raging with a driving sleet. Wells was sure a walk would do us good — wake us up. While Mrs. Wells was not watching, we tucked the two little boys into their mackintoshes and took them with us.
"“We’ll all have a blow,” said Wells.
"They were plucky little beggars, both of them, and only laughed. But battling up the Leas against the wind, we found the sleet was cutting their small faces. So we made them walk one each behind us with their arms around our waists, while we pressed forward with ducked heads. And even then Wells talked. But one day Nature got the better of him and silenced him. That was when he was staying with me at Gould’s Grove near Wallingford. We climbed a lonely spur of the Chilterns, and half-way up he gave out, and never spoke again till we had reached the top, and had sat there for at least five minutes, looking down upon the towers of Oxford and the Cotswold Hills beyond. Southampton water gleamed like a speck of silver on the horizon, and at our feet we marked — now rutted and grass-grown — the long straight line of the old Roman way that led from Grimm’s Dyke, past the camp on the Sinodun hills, and so onward to the north.
"I can’t remember, for certain, whether it was to Wells at Folkestone when I was staying with him, or to me at Wallingford when he was stopping with me, that there came one afternoon a company of garden city experts on the hunt for a new site. The head of the party was an American gentleman who had devoted most of his life to the building of garden cities. He had been invited over to assist with his experience. He never got further than the two words “garden city.” At that point, Wells took the matter in hand, and for twenty minutes he explained to the old gentleman how garden cities should be constructed; the inherent imperfectability of all garden cities that had hitherto been built; the proper method of financing and running garden cities. The old gentleman attempted a few feeble interruptions, but Wells would have none of them.
"“Your ideas are all right,” said the old gentleman, when Wells at last had finished, “but they are not practical.”
"“If the ideas are right,” said Wells, “your business is to make them practical.”
"Of Shaw, it is said that he is never at rest unless he is working. Shaw once told me that he only had three speeches. One about politics (including religion); one about art (together with life in general); and the other one about himself. He said he found these three — with variations — served him for all purposes.
"“People think I am making new speeches,” he said. “I’m repeating things that I have told them over and over again, if only they had listened. I’m tired of talking,” he said. “I wouldn’t have to talk one-tenth as much, if people only listened.”
"He used to say there were two schools of elocution: one the Lyceum Theatre (in Irving’s time) and the other Hyde Park. He himself had graduated in Hyde Park, mounted on a chair without a back, opposite the Marble Arch. There is only one way of countering Shaw on a platform. It is hopeless trying to cross wits with him. The only thing is to force him to become serious. Then I have known him to flounder. His mind works like lightning. I remember the then President of the Playgoers’ Club coming to him one day. It was at the beginning of the cinema boom. He was an earnest young man.
"“We want you to speak for us on Sunday evening, Mr. Shaw,” he said, “on the question: Is there any danger of the actor being eliminated?”
"“You don’t say which actor,” answered Shaw, “and, anyhow, why speak of it as a danger?”
"Shaw is one of the kindest of men, but has no tenderness. His chief exercise, according to his own account, is public speaking; and his favourite recreation, thinking. He admitted to me once that there have been times when he has thought too much. He was motoring in Algiers, driving himself, with his chauffeur beside him, when out of his musings came to him the idea for a play.
"“What do you think of this?” he said, turning to his chauffeur; and went on then and there to tell the man all about it.
"He had usually found his chauffeur a keen and helpful critic. But on this occasion, instead of friendly encouragement, he threw himself upon Shaw and, wrenching the wheel out of his hands, sat down upon him.
"“Excuse me, Mr. Shaw,” the man said later on; “but it’s such a damn good play that I didn’t want you to die before you’d written it.”
"Shaw had never noticed the precipice.
"Conan Doyle used to be another tremendous worker. He would sit at a small desk in a corner of his own drawing-room, writing a story, while a dozen people round about him were talking and laughing. He preferred it to being alone in his study. Sometimes, without looking up from his work, he would make a remark, showing he must have been listening to our conversation; but his pen had never ceased moving. Barrie had the same gift. He was a reporter on a provincial newspaper in his early days, and while waiting for orders amid the babel and confusion of the press room, he would curl himself up on a chair and, quite undisturbed, peg away at something dreamy and poetic.
"A vigorous family, the Doyles, both mentally and physically. I remember a trip to Norway with Doyle and his sister Connie: a handsome girl, she might have posed as Brunhilda. She married Hornung the novelist. Another sister married a clergyman named Angel, a dear ugly fellow. They lived near to us at Wallingford, and next door to them happened to live another clergyman named Dam. And later on Dam was moved to Goring, and found himself next door to a Roman Catholic priest whose name was Father Hell. Providence, I take it, arranges these little things for some wise purpose."
"During the Suffrage movement Mrs. Jacobs became militant. Husbands lived in fear and trembling in those days. Ladies who, up till then, had been as good as they were beautiful, filled our English prisons. Mrs. Jacobs, for breaking a post-office window, was awarded a month in Holloway. Jacobs did all that a devoted husband could do. Armed with medical certificates, he waited on the Governor: with all the eloquence fit and proper to the occasion, pointed out the impossibility of Mrs. Jacobs’ surviving the rigours of prison régime. The Governor was all sympathy. He disappeared. Five minutes later he returned.
"“You will be pleased to hear, Mr. Jacobs,” said the Governor, “that you have no cause whatever for anxiety. Your wife, since her arrival here a week ago, has put on eight pounds four ounces.”
"As Jacobs said, she always was difficult."
"Editorial experience taught me that the test of a manuscript lies in its first twenty lines. If the writer could say nothing in those first twenty lines to arrest my attention, it was not worth while continuing. I am speaking of the unknown author; but I would myself apply the argument all round. By adopting this method, I was able to give personal consideration to every manuscript sent in to me. The accompanying letter I took care, after a time, not to read. So often the real story was there. ... Running through all of them, the conviction that literature is the last refuge of the deserving poor. The idea would seem to be general. Friends would drop in to talk to me about their sons: nice boys but, for some reason or another, hitherto unfortunate: nothing else left for them but to take to literature. Would I see them, and put them up to the ropes?
"That it requires no training, I admit. A writer’s first play, first book, can be as good as his last — or better. I like to remember that I discovered a goodish few new authors.
"Jacobs I found one Saturday afternoon. I had stayed behind by myself on purpose to tackle a huge pile of manuscripts. I had waded through nearly half of them, finding nothing. I had grown disheartened, physically weary. The walls of the room seemed to be fading away. Suddenly I heard a laugh and, startled, I looked round. There was no one in the room but myself. I took up the manuscript lying before me, some dozen pages of fine close writing.
"I read it through a second time, and wrote to “W. W. Jacobs, Esq.” to come and see me. Then I bundled the remaining manuscripts into a drawer; and went home, feeling I had done a good afternoon’s work."
"I made a contract with him for a series of short stories. He was diffident — afraid lest they might not all be up to sample. I had difficulty in persuading him. The story he had sent me had been round to a dozen magazines, and had been returned with the usual editorial regrets and compliments. I fancy the regrets came to be sincere.
"We had an old farmhouse on the hills above Wallingford. William the Conqueror had a friend at Wallingford, who opened the gates to him. It was there he first crossed the Thames. In return, William granted to the town a boon. Curfew still rings at Wallingford, but at nine o’clock instead of eight. We would hear it clearly when the wind was in the west; and always there would fall a silence. The house was on the site of an old monastery. The ancient yews still stand. There was a corner of the garden that we called the Nook. A thick yew hedge, the haunt of birds, surrounded it, and an old nut tree gave shelter from the sun. It made a pleasant working place. An interesting tablet might be placed above its green archway, commemorating the names of those who at one time or another had written there: among others, Wells, Jacobs, Doyle, Zangwill, Phillpotts. Zangwill wrote stories of the Ghetto there; but wasted much of his time, playing with the birds, digging up worms with the end of his pen to feed the young thrushes and blackbirds.
"It was a lonely house, on a western slope of the Chilterns. There were two front doors. One had to remember which way the wind was blowing. If one opened the wrong one, there was danger of being knocked down; and then the wind would rush through all the rooms and play the devil before one got him out again. I had a liking for being there alone in winter time, fending for myself and thinking. The owls also were fond of it. One could imagine all manner of sounds. Often I have gone out with a lantern, feeling sure I had heard the crying of a child. I remember reading there one night the manuscript of Wells’ “Island of Doctor Moreau.” It had come into the office just as I was leaving; and I had slipped it into my bag. I wished I had not begun it; but I could not put it down. The wind was howling like the seven furies; but above it I could hear the shrieking of the tortured beasts. I was glad when the dawn came.
"Locke came to live at Wallingford. He had a bungalow down by the river, and lived there by himself until he married. He used to work at night. We could see his light shining across the river. His future wife lodged with an old servant of ours. He would tell my girls stories of the Munchausen family, descendants of the famous Baron. He used to stay with them in France. The family failing, judging from Locke’s stories, still clung to them. An heirloom they particularly prized was the sling used by the late King David in his contest with Goliath. Locke had seen it himself: a simple enough thing, apparently home-made."
"A Scotchman who signed himself Cynicus drew cartoons for The Idler: clever sketches, with a biting satire. He had a quaint studio in Drury Lane; and lived there with his sisters. One used to meet Ramsay MacDonald there. He was a pleasant, handsome young man — so many of us were, five and thirty years ago. He was fond of lecturing. Get him on to the subject of Carlyle and he would talk for half-an-hour. He would stand with his hat in one hand and the door-handle in the other, and by this means always secured the last word."
"The Idler was not enough for me. I had the plan in my mind of a new weekly paper that should be a combination of magazine and journal. I put my own money into it, and got together the rest. ... To-day, I suppose, is now forgotten; but though I say it who shouldn’t, it was a wonderful twopennyworth. ... Myself, I never read the serial in a magazine. A month is too long: one loses touch. But a week is just right: one remembers, and looks forward. Stevenson agreed with me. ..."
"I had a useful office-boy. He had a gift for sitting still and doing nothing. He could sit for hours. It never seemed to bore him. James was one of his names.
"“James,” I would say, “you go round to Mr. Phil May’s studio; tell him you’ve come for the drawing that he promised Mr. Jerome last Friday week; and wait till you get it.” If Phil May wasn’t in, he would wait till Phil May did come in.
"If Phil May was engaged, he would wait till Phil May was disengaged. The only way of getting him out of the studio was to give him a drawing. Generally Phil May gave him anything that happened to be handy. It might be the drawing he had intended for me. More often, it would be a sketch belonging, properly speaking, to some other editor. Then there was trouble with the other editor. But Phil May was used to trouble."
This James the office boy is in Tommy & Co.
"There is nothing of the celebrity about Thomas Hardy, O.M. He himself tells the story that a very young lady friend of his thought that O.M. stood for Old Man; and was very angry with King Edward. The order was created to give Watts, the painter, a distinction that he could not very well refuse. He had declined everything else. The last time I saw Thomas Hardy was at a private view of the Royal Academy. He was talking to the Baldrys. The papers the next morning gave the usual list of celebrities who had been present: all the famous chorus ladies, all the film stars, all the American millionaires. Nobody had noticed Thomas Hardy."
"An interesting club, established in London about thirty years ago, was the Omar Khayyam club. I was never a member, but frequently a guest. In the winter, we dined at Anderton’s Hotel in Fleet Street, and in the summer, wandered about to country inns. William Sharpe, the poet, was a member."
"I am writing these memoirs in a little room where, years ago, Edward Fitzgerald sat writing “The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.” The window looks out across the village street; and some of those who passed by then still come and go."
"To-Day was killed by a libel action brought against me by a company promoter, a Mr. Samson Fox, whose activities my City Editor had somewhat severely criticised. ... Judge, in a kindly speech, concluded that the best way of ending the trouble would be for us each to pay our own costs. Mine came to nine thousand pounds; and Mr. Samson Fox’s to eleven. We shook hands in the corridor. He informed me that he was going back to Leeds to strangle his solicitors; and hoped I would do the same by mine. But it seemed to me too late."
"Of course it meant my selling out, both from The Idler and To-Day."
................................................................................................
"Étaples had just been discovered by the English artists. Dudley Hardy was one of the first to see the beauty of its low-lying dunes and pools of evening light. I became an habitué of the Continent. I discovered that with a smattering of the language, enabling one to venture off the beaten tracks, one could spend a holiday abroad much cheaper than in England. Ten shillings a day could be made to cover everything. Zangwill once told me that he travelled through Turkey in comfort on twenty sentences, carefully prepared beforehand, and a pocket dictionary. A professor of languages I met at Freiburg estimated the entire vocabulary of the Black Forest peasant at three hundred words. Of course, if you want to argue, more study is needful; but for all the essentials of a quiet life, a working knowledge of twenty verbs and a hundred nouns, together with just a handful of adjectives and pronouns, can be made to serve. I knew a man who went to Sweden on a sketching tour, knowing nothing but the numbers up to ten; and before he had been there a month, got engaged to a Swedish girl who could not speak a word of English. Much may be accomplished with economy. At Ostend, in the season, one can enjoy oneself for eleven francs a day; but to do so one should avoid the larger hotels upon the front. It was the smell of them, and of the people dining in them, that first inclined my youthful mind to Socialism.
"Paris is a much over-rated city, and half the Louvre ought to be cleared out and sent to a rummage sale. On a rainy day with an east wind blowing, it isn’t even gay; and its streets are much too wide and straight: well adapted, no doubt, to the shooting down of citizens, with which idea in mind they were planned, but otherwise uninteresting. All the roads in France are much too straight. I remember a walking tour in Brittany. All day long, the hot, treeless road stretched a straight white line before us. We never moved; or so it seemed. Always we were seven miles from the horizon, with nothing else to look at. There must have been villages and farmsteads scattered somewhere around, but like the events of a Greek drama one had to imagine them. The natives were proud of this road. They boasted that an army corps could march along it thirty abreast without ever shifting a foot to right or left. But they did not use it much themselves. From morn to eve, we met less than a score of people; and half of them were mending it. A motoring friend of mine told me that touring in France was ruination. A tyre burst every day. It was the pace that did it. “But must you go so fast?” I suggested. “My dear boy,” he answered, “have you seen the roads? You don’t want to linger on them.”
"The best things about Paris are its suburbs. I am sorry they are rebuilding Montmartre. I never grew tired of the view, and one lodged there cheaply. ..."
"Provence is the most interesting part of France. The best way is through Blois and the region of the great châteaux. ... Maybe the British workman does not take so disproportionate a share of the cake for leisureliness as he is supposed to do. But everything goes slow, or else stands still, in sunny, sleepy Provence. I used to like it in the summer time before the tourists came. We English get accustomed to extremes. I remember, after déjeuner in a cool cellar, strolling through Les Beaux. The houses are hewn out of the rock on which the town stands: so much of it as still remains. From one of the massive doors a little child ran out, evidently with the idea of joining me upon my walk. And next moment came its mother, screaming. She snatched up the child and turned on me a look of terror.
"“Mon Dieu!” she exclaimed. “To promenade here in the heat for pleasure! You must surely be Monsieur the Devil himself. Or else an Englishman.”
"Another time, at St. Petersburg on a mild winter’s morning (as it seemed to me), I went out without a greatcoat; and made a sensation in the Nevski Prospect."
"The Russians are a demonstrative people. On stepping out of the train at St. Petersburg, I found a deputation waiting to receive me. The moment they spotted me, the whole gang swooped down upon me with a roar. A bearded giant snatched me up in his arms and kissed me on both cheeks; and then light-heartedly threw me to the man behind him, who caught me only just in time. They all kissed me. There seemed to be about a hundred of them: it may have been less. They would have started all over again, if Madame Jarintzoff had not rushed in among them and scattered them. Since then, my sympathies have always been with the baby. I knew it was affection; but in another moment I should have burst out crying. I never got used to it."
"Not far from Freiburg, there stands, upon the banks of the Rhine, a little fortress town called Breisach. During the middle ages, the townsfolk of Alt Breisach must have been hard put to it to maintain their patriotism always at high-water mark. Every few years it changed hands. Now France would seize it, and then, of course, all the good citizens of Breisach would have to thank God that they were Frenchmen; and be willing to die for France. And hardly had the children been taught to hate the Deutscher Schwein, when, hey presto! they were Germans once again. God this time had sided with the Kaiser; and all the men and women of Alt Breisach — all of them that were left alive — praised “Unserer Gott.” Until the next French victory, when they had to hurry up and praise instead “Notre Dame,” and impress upon their children the glory of dying for France: and so on for three hundred years. Patriotism must have been a quick-change business to the citizens of Alt Breisach."
"Munich is a fine town, but its climate is atrocious. I used to think that only we English were justified in grumbling at the weather. Travel soon convinced me that, taking it all round, English weather is the best in Europe. In Germany, I have known it to rain six weeks without intermission. In France, before going to bed, I have stood a pitcher of water in front of a blazing fire, dreaming of being able to wash myself in the morning. And, when I woke up, the fire was still burning, and the pitcher contained, instead of water, a block of solid ice. In Holland, there is always a cold wind blowing. In Italy, they have no winter. “In your cold England,” they say, “for six months in the year you have to sit over a fire to keep yourselves warm. In Italy we have no fires. You can see for yourself.” They are quite right. There isn’t even a fire-place. They carry about a little iron bucket containing two ounces of burning charcoal. I have never tried sitting on it. It is the only way I can think of, for feeling any heat from it. Two good friends of mine have died of cold in Italy. In Russia — well, Englishmen who grumble at their own climate ought to be made to spend either a summer or a winter there. I don’t care which. It would cure them in either case."
"Waterloo is a pleasant bicycle ride from Brussels; through the Forêt de Soignes, where little old Thomas à Kempis once walked and thought. It was always good fun to take an Englishman there, and get a Belgian guide I knew, an old Sergeant, to come with us and explain to us the battle. We would be shown the Belgian Lion, on a pyramid, proudly overlooking the field; and would learn how on the 18th of June, 1815, the French were there defeated by the Belgian army, assisted by the Germans, and some English.
"We tried to winter once in Lausanne. But Swiss town life holds few attractions. We had a villa at the top of the hill. The view was magnificent. But of an evening one yearns rather for the café and the little theatre."
"It gave me a good conceit of myself, living abroad. I found I was everywhere well known and — to use the language of the early Victorian novel — esteemed and respected. I cocked my head and forgot the abuse still, at that time, being poured out upon me by the English literary journals. If it be true that the opinion of the foreigner is the verdict of posterity, said I to myself, I may come to be quite a swell dead author.
"Speaking of my then contemporaries, Phillpotts I found also well read, especially in Germany and Switzerland. Zangwill was known everywhere in literary circles. Barrie, to my surprise, was almost unknown. I was speaking of him once at a party in Russia. “Do you mean Mr. Pain?” asked one of the guests. Shaw had not yet got there. Wells was popular in France, and Oscar Wilde was famous. Kipling was known, but was discussed rather as a politician than a poet. Stevenson was read and Rider Haggard. But of the really great — according to Fleet Street — one never heard."
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"Advanced friends of mine, with a talent for statistics, tell me that, when the world is properly organized, nobody will work more than two hours a day. The thing worrying me is, what am I going to do with the other twenty-two. Suppose we say seven hours sleep, and another three for meals: I really don’t see how, without over-eating myself, I can spin them out longer. That leaves me fourteen. To a contemplative Buddhist this would be a mere nothing. He could, so to speak, do it on his head — possibly will. To the average Christian, it is going to be a problem. It is suggested to me that I could spend most of these hours improving my mind. But not all minds are capable of this expansion. Some of us have our limits. During the process, I can see my own mind wilting. It is quite on the cards, that instead of improving myself I’d become dotty. Of course, my fears may be ungrounded. One of Shaw’s ancients, in “Back to Methuselah,” to whom some young persons have expressed their fear that he is not enjoying himself, retorts in quite the Mrs. Wilfer manner: “Infant, one moment of the ecstasy of life as we live it would strike you dead.” After which, according to the stage directions, he “stalks out gravely.” And they, the young persons, “stare after him, much damped.” ... we may eventually acquire the habit of doing nothing for fourteen hours a day without injury to our liver. But it will have to come gradually. In the interim, we shall have to put in more play."
"The genius has no call to shirk his work. He likes it. Shaw never wastes his time. Hall Caine is another. You hear that Hall Caine has gone to Switzerland for the winter. You picture him dancing about on a curling rink with a broom; or flying down a toboggan slide without his hat shouting “Achtung.” You find him in his study, at the end of a quiet corridor on the top floor of the hotel, doing good work. I lured him out into the snow one day. He was at St. Moritz, at the Palace Hotel, and I was at Davos with my niece. It was snowing. Sport was off. But Satan can always find some mischief for idle legs. It occurred to us to train over and disturb Hall Caine in the middle of his new novel. It happened to be “The Christian.” Often a good book will exert an influence even on the author himself. He received us gladly and when, after lunch, I proposed a walk, answered with gentleness that he would be pleased.
"He said he knew a short cut to Pontresina. It led us into a snowdrift up to our waists.
"“I know where we are now,” said Caine. “We are in a hollow. We ought to have turned to the right.”
"We turned to the right, then and there. A minute later, we were up to our necks.
"“I’ve been to Pontresina,” I said. “It’s not particularly interesting.”
"“Perhaps you’re right,” said Caine.
"It is easier to get into a snowdrift, than to get out. It was dusk before we reached Celerina. We left Caine walking up the railway track, and made ourselves for the station. It was still snowing.
"“No joke,” I said, to my niece in the train. “We might have been buried alive. Such things often happen.”
"My niece, Nellie, is a pious girl, and a great admirer of Hall Caine.
"“I should have felt anxious,” she said, “if we hadn’t had Mr. Hall Caine with us. I felt so sure that Mr. Caine was being watched over.”
"St. Moritz used to be a homely little place. The Kuln was the only hotel, practically speaking. My wife and I stayed at the Palace the first winter it opened. They charged us seven francs a day, inclusive. I am told that since then prices have gone up."
" ... I had a first-class court at “Monks Corner” on Marlow Common. It costs much labour to keep a grass court in good condition. They say that at Wimbledon, on the centre court, each blade of grass has its own pet name. I didn’t go so far as that, but there was rarely a day I did not spend an hour there on my knees. ... "
"Doyle was great on winter sports; and was one of the first to introduce ski-ing into Switzerland. Before that, it had been confined to Norway. All Davos used to turn out to watch Doyle and a few others practising. The beginner on skis is always popular."
"The last time I put on skis was at Arosa, the first year of the war. We were an oddly mixed lot. American girls and German officers skated hand in hand. French, Germans and Italians clung together on the same bob-sleigh. A kind gentleman from St. Petersburg, who claimed to be related to the Tzar, gave lessons in Russian every morning to three Austrian ladies from Vienna, who were fearful that after the war they might have to talk it."
"One of the most dangerous things that can happen when ski-ing is to strike a sunk-fence. A broken ankle is generally the result of that; and once I came upon a man, sitting on the edge of a precipice, over which his skis were projecting. He dared not move. He had plunged his arms into the snow behind him and was hoping it would not give way. But having regard to all the dangers that a skier is bound to face, the marvel is that so few accidents occur: and even were they umpteen times as frequent, I should still advise the average youngster to chance it.
"The thing to beware of is exhaustion. Ski-ing, like riding, requires its own particular set of new muscles. Until these have been built up, avoid long excursions. It was at Villars I first put on skis. One, Canon Savage, got up a ski-ing party and asked me to come in. I told him I was only a beginner, but he said that would be all right; they would look after me; and at eight o’clock the next morning we started. On the way home, I found it impossible to keep my legs. I would struggle up merely to go down again. Towards dusk, I fell into a drift, and lost my skis. The fastenings had become loosened. They slipped away from under me, and I watched them sliding gracefully down the valley. They seemed to be getting on better without me. I had taken an equal dislike to them and, at first, was glad to see them go. Until it occurred to me that with nothing on my feet but a pair of heavy boots, I had not much chance — in my then state of exhaustion — of extricating myself. I shouted with all the breath I had left. Maybe it wasn’t much; and anyhow the Canon and his party were too far ahead to hear me. Fortunately a good Christian, named Arnold, thought of me and came back. I mentioned the incident to the Canon the next morning, but his sense of humour proved keener than mine. He found it amusing."
"Most of my life, I have dwelt in the neighbourhood of the river. I thank old Father Thames for many happy days. We spent our honeymoon, my wife and I, in a little boat. I knew the river well, its deep pools, and hidden ways, its quiet backwaters, its sleepy towns and ancient villages. It is pleasant to feel tired when evening comes and the lamp is lighted in the low-ceilinged parlour of the inn. We stayed a day at Henley for the Regatta."
"Zangwill used to be keen on croquet, but never had the makings of a great player. Wells wasn’t bad. Of course, he wanted to alter all the laws and make a new game of his own. I had to abandon my lawn, in the end. I had laid it out in the middle of a paddock where the farmer kept his young bulls. They couldn’t resist the sight of the fresh green grass. I had fenced it round with barbed wire, but they made light of that. They would gather into a little group and confabulate, and then suddenly would lower their heads and charge. Sometimes they got through and sometimes they didn’t: but it used to distract us. I remember a nightingale that would perch on one of the sticks and sing — often while we were playing. Nightingales love an audience. There was another that had his nest in a garden of ours by Marlow Common. Like the swallows, they return each year to the same loved spot. If one went to the gate and whistled, he would soon appear and, perching on the branch of an old thorn, sing for so long as one remained there, listening."
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"“How do you like America?”
"“Oh,” I said, “are we there?”
"“Soon will be,” he answered. “How do you pronounce your name?”
"I told him. He repeated it louder, for the benefit of the others — some dozen of them, grouped around him. They made a note of it.
"“What would you say was the difference between English and American humour?”
"A chill north wind was blowing, and I hadn’t had my breakfast. I did my best."
"I wondered where they had come from. Out of the sea, apparently. I had been pacing the deck, scanning the horizon for my first sight of New York, and suddenly had found myself in the midst of them. Their spokesman was a thick-set, red-haired gentleman. He had a military manner. The rest were a mixed collection. Some of them looked to me to be mere boys.
"“Say, can you tell us a story?” he questioned me.
"I stared at him. “A story?” I repeated. “You want me to tell you a story?”
"“Why, sure,” he answered.
"What on earth did they mean! Did they want me to start off and spin them a yarn, at a quarter to eight in the morning? And if so, was it to be adventure or romance, or just a simple love episode? I had a vision of being, perhaps, expected to sit down in the centre of them, taking the youngest of them on my knee.
"He saw I was bewildered. “Anything happened to you on the voyage,” he suggested, “anything interesting or amusing?”"
"I make no charge against the American interviewer. One takes the rough with the smooth. I have been described, within the same period of seven months, as a bald-headed elderly gentleman, with a wistful smile; a curly-haired athletic Englishman, remarkable for his youthful appearance; a rickety cigarette-smoking neurotic; and a typical John Bull. Some of them objected to my Oxford drawl; while others catalogued me as a cockney, and invariably quoted me as dropping my aitches. All of them noticed with unfeigned surprise that I spoke English with an English accent. In the city of Prague, I once encountered a Bohemian ruffian who claimed to be a guide — a Czecho-Slovakian, I suppose he would be called to-day. He had learnt English in New York from a Scotchman. Myself, I could not understand him; but the New York interviewer would, I feel sure, have found in him his ideal Englishman. To anyone visiting America for a rest cure, I can see the American interviewer proving a thorn in the flesh. In pursuit of duty, he makes no bones about awakening you at two o’clock in the morning to ascertain your opinion of the local baseball team; and on arriving at your hotel, after a thirty-six hours’ journey, you may find him waiting for you in your bedroom, accompanied by a flashlight photographer. But not many people, I take it, go to America for their health."
"The most impressive thing in America is New York. Niagara disappointed me. I had some trouble in finding it. The tram conductor promised to let me know when we came to the proper turning, but forgot; and I had to walk back three blocks. I came across it eventually at the bottom of a tea garden, belonging to a big hotel. My tour did not permit me to visit the Yellowstone Park. But I saw the Garden of the Gods in Colorado, and it struck me as neglected. The Rockies are imposing, but lack human interest. The Prairies are depressing. One has the feeling of being a disembodied spirit, travelling through space, and growing doubtful as to one’s destination. To the European, what America suffers from is there being too much of it. In Switzerland, one winter, I met a man from Indianapolis. We were looking out of the window on our way to Grindelwald.
"“This would be quite an extensive country,” he said, “if it were rolled out flat.”
"In America everything seems to have been sacrificed to making an extensive country. In Arizona, they point out to you the mirage; but to the stranger it still looks like salt. The American lakes are seas surrounded by railways. In New Orleans, there are old-world nooks and corners, but these are disappearing."
"California is beautiful (one can forget the “movies”). I was in San Francisco the week before the earthquake. I asked if there had been an earthquake; but my host said no. For years the roads had never been repaired, the mayor and corporation (“Grafters” they are termed in America) having found another use for the money.
"In Florida, one seems to have dropped back into antediluvian times, or, to be more exact, the third day of the Creation, before God had quite finished separating the dry land from the waters, and creeping things sat about, wondering which they were.
"Virginia has an atmosphere and speaks English; but the new towns in the Middle states, with their painted canvas “Broadways,” suggest a Wild West exhibition at Earl’s Court. One looks instinctively for the sign-board, pointing to the switchback. Here and there, New England reminds one of the old country. I forget who it was said he would like to come back and see America when it was finished. One has the fancy that, returning in a thousand years or so, one might find there little cottages standing in gay gardens; pleasant rambling houses amid soft lawns and kindly trees. But there will never rise the clustering chimneys with the blue smoke curling upward. America will still be central-heated. I missed the friendly chimneys. Elsewhere in America, there is no country. There are summer resorts, and garden cities, and health centres; and just outside the great towns long avenues of “homes,” each on its parallelogram of land. The larger ones have verandahs and towers and gables; and the smaller ones are painted red. ... America never walks. I am told that now every fifth American owns an automobile and the other four crowd in. In my time, you took a surface car. I used to dream of going for a walk, and when I asked my way, they would direct me to go straight on till I came to nine hundred and ninety-ninth street — or some such number — and there I would find the car.
"“But I want to walk,” I would explain.
"“Well, I’m telling you,” they would reply, “you walk to the end of the block. The car starts from round the corner.”
"“But I don’t want the car,” I would persist. “I want to walk — all the way.”
"Then they would dive into their pocket and press a twenty-five cent piece into my hand and hurry off to catch their own car.
"But New York reminds you of nothing, suggests no comparison. New York is America epitomized: fierce, tireless, blatant if you will, but great. Nature stands abashed before it. The sea crawls round it, dwarfed, insignificant. Trees, like waving grasses, spring from its crevices. The clouds are rent upon its pinnacles."
"I have made three American tours. It was offered to me to make a fourth just after the war. My agent assured me there would be no difficulty about drinks; but there were other reasons also, and I shirked it. The first must be twenty years ago by now. That it was not as profitable to me as it might have been was my own fault. Never in my life have I felt so lost and lonesome as during my first days in New York. Everything was so strange, so appallingly “foreign.” I had never been outside Europe before. Never, so it seemed to me, would I be able to adapt myself to the ways and customs of the country. And then there was the language problem. In Vevey, on Lake Leman, there sits cross-legged — or used to sit — a smiling small Italian shoeblack: behind him on the wall a placard with this wording, “English spoken — American understood.” I thought of him, as I wandered bewildered through the New York streets, and wondered how long it had taken him.
"At the end of a fortnight, I cabled what would now be called an S.O.S. to my wife, and she, gallant little lady, came to my help.
"And she it was who persuaded me to further extravagance, as is the way of women. Major Pond, or rather his good widow, had booked me a stupendous tour. It took in every state in the Union, together with Canada and British Columbia. Five readings a week, the average worked out; each to last an hour and twenty minutes. I showed my wife the list. She said nothing at the time, but went about behind my back, and got round my agents. Among them, they decided that, to avoid a funeral, I had best have help; and found one Charles Battell Loomis."
"I envied him. The lecturer through America has to cultivate adaptability. For one night a rich man would hire us to read to his guests in a drawing-room. He was always very kind, and would make us feel part of the party. The next evening we would find ourselves booked to perform in a hall the size of Solomon’s Temple, taking Mr. H. G. Wells’ figures as correct. There was a “Coliseum,” I think they called it, down South. I forget the name of the town. But I am sure it was down South, because of the cotton that floated on the wind, and turned our hair grey. Even Loomis had found the place difficult. The first few dozen rows must have heard him. Anyhow they laughed. But beyond and above brooded the silence of the grave. By rare chance, we had a few hours to spare the next morning; and coming across the place I stepped in, wondering how it looked in daylight. Men were busy hauling scenery about. It served for all purposes — mass meetings, theatrical performances, religious revivals, prize fights. On one wet fourth of July, a display of fireworks had been given there with great success. A small lady in black was standing just inside the door, likewise inspecting. It was Sarah Bernhardt. She was billed to play there that evening. She was finishing a tour with a few one-night stands, and had been travelling all night. She recognized me, though we had met only once before, at a Lyceum supper in Irving’s time.
"“My God!” she said, throwing up her arms. “Why, it’s as deep as hell. How do they expect me to reach them?”
"“They don’t,” I told her. “They want to see you, that’s all. They are a curious people, these Americans. They paid last night to see me. They must have known they would not hear me.”
"“But they will not see her,” she answered. “They will see only a little old woman. I am not Sarah Bernhardt until I act. It would be a swindle.”
"“Well, isn’t that their affair?” I suggested.
"She drew herself up. She was quite tall when she had finished — or looked it.
"“No, my friend,” she answered, “it is mine. Sarah Bernhardt is a great artist. And I am her faithful servant. They shall not make a show of her.”
"She held out her hand. “Please do not tell anyone that you have seen me,” she said. She drew down her veil and slipped out.
"What actually happened I do not know. They were posting notices up when we left, announcing with regret Madame Sarah Bernhardt’s sudden indisposition."
"I have always found American audiences most kind. Their chief fault is that they see the point before you get there, which is disconcerting. One morning I woke up speechless with a sudden cold. I could not even use the ‘phone. I telegraphed to my chairman, explaining, and asking him to call the reading off. In half-an-hour the answer came back: “Sorry you won’t be able to read but do come or it will be a real disappointment to us we want to see you and thank you for the pleasure your books have given us as for fee that has been posted to your agent and is too unimportant a matter to be talked about among friends.”
"I went and had a delightful evening. They put me in the middle of the room and entertained me. We had music and songs and stories. I whispered a few to my chairman, and he translated them. They turned the whole thing into a joke. At the end, one of them, a doctor, gave me a draught to take in bed. I wish I had asked him what it was. My cold was gone the next morning.
"At Salt Lake City, we ought to have arrived with an hour to spare, instead of which our train was three hours late. A deputation met us on the platform with hot coffee and sandwiches. They put us into cabs and took us straight to the platform. An audience of three thousand people had been waiting patiently for two hours. Our chairman, in his opening, apologized to us for the train service; and asked everybody to agree that, as we must be tired, we should be asked to read for only half-an-hour, unless we felt ourselves equal to more. Both Loomis and myself felt bucked up, and gave them the full programme. Not one of them left before the end, which must have been about twelve o’clock; and if they didn’t like it they were good actors."
"Once only — at Chattanooga — did I meet with disagreement: and then I was asking for it. Two negroes had been lynched a few days before my arrival on the usual charge of having assaulted a white woman: proved afterwards (as is generally the case) to have been a trumped-up lie. All through the South, this lynching horror had been following me; and after my reading I asked for permission to speak on a matter about which my conscience was troubling me. I didn’t wait to get it, but went straight on. At home, on political platforms, I have often experienced the sensation of stirring up opposition. But this was something different. I do not suggest it was anything more than fancy, but it seemed to me that I could actually visualize the anger of my audience. It looked like a dull, copper-coloured cloud, hovering just above their heads, and growing in size. I sat down amid silence. It was quite a time before anybody moved. And then they all got up at the same moment, and turned towards the door. On my way out, in the lobby, a few people came up to me and thanked me, in a hurried furtive manner. My wife was deadly pale. I had not told her of my intention. But nothing happened, and I cannot help thinking that if the tens of thousands of decent American men and women to whom this thing must be their country’s shame, would take their courage in both hands and speak their mind, America might be cleansed from this foul sin."
"American hospitality is proverbial. If I had taken the trouble to arrange matters beforehand, I could have travelled all over America without once putting up at an hotel. Had I known what they were like, I would have made the effort. In the larger cities they are generally of palatial appearance. If their cooking and attendance were on a par with their architecture and appointments, there would be no fault to find with them. ... It appears from the statistics of the Immigration Bureau that there arrive every year in the United States well over four thousand professional cooks. What happens to them is a mystery. They can’t all become film stars."
"Roosevelt was President at the time of my first tour; and was kind enough to express a wish to see me. By a curious coincidence, he had received that morning a letter from his son, then at school, talking about my books. He had the letter in his hand when we were shown in. Somewhat the same thing happened the first time I met Lloyd George. A relation had written him, a day or two before, urging him to read my last book. He was then in the middle of it. I couldn’t get him to talk about anything else. There was a delightful boyishness about Roosevelt. You were bound to like him if he wanted you to. My wife has still the gloves in which she shook hands with him. They lie in her treasure box, tied with a ribbon and labelled.
"Joel Chandler Harris (“Uncle Remus”) lives in my memory. A sweet Christian gentleman; even if he did spit. We spent an afternoon with him at Atlanta. Frank Stanton dropped in, and brought with him a volume of his songs which he had dedicated to me. James Whitcomb Riley was kind and hospitable, but made me envious, talking about the millions his books had brought him in.
"I was in America when Maxim Gorky came to lecture upon Russia. He was accompanied by a helpmeet to whom he had not been legally married. America is strict on this point. So was Henry VIII. At a Press lunch in Chicago, I sat next to a man who that morning had published a leader, fiercely demanding the immediate shipping back to Europe of Maxim Gorky and his “concubine.” America must not be contaminated and so forth. A few evenings before he had introduced Loomis and myself to his mistress, a pretty Swedish girl with flaxen hair. His wife was living abroad, the air of Chicago not agreeing with her. I admit the sign-post argument. I have found it useful myself. But in America there would appear to be almost more sign-posts than travellers. I have been about a good deal in America. My business has necessitated my spending much time in smoking-cars and hotel lounges. My curiosity has always prompted me to find out all I could about my fellow human beings wherever I have happened to be. I maintain that the American man, taking him class for class and individual for individual, is no worse than any of the rest of us. I will ask his permission to leave it at that.
"The last time I visited America was during the first year of the war. America then was all for keeping out of it. I had friends in big business, and was introduced to others. Their opinion was that America could best serve Humanity in the bulk by reserving herself to act as peace-maker. In the end, she would be the only nation capable of considering the future without passion and without fear. The general feeling was, if anything, pro-German, tempered in the East by traditional sentiment for France. I failed to unearth any enthusiasm for England, in spite of my having been commissioned to discover it. I have sometimes wondered if England and America really do love one another as much as our journalists and politicians say they do. I had an interesting talk with President Wilson, chiefly about literature and the drama. But I did get him, before I left, to say a little about the war; and then he dropped the schoolmaster and became animated.
"“We have in America,” he said, “twenty million people of German descent. Almost as many Irish. In New York State alone there are more Italians than in Rome. We have more Scandinavians than there are in Sweden. Here, side by side, dwell Czechs, Roumanians, Slavs, Poles and Dutchmen. We also have some Jews. We have solved the problem of living together without wanting to cut one another’s throats. You will have to learn to do the same in Europe. We shall have to teach you.”
"Undoubtedly at that time Wilson was intending to remain neutral. Whether his later change of mind brought about good or evil is an arguable point. But for America the war would have ended in stalemate. All Europe would have been convinced of the futility of war. “Peace without Victory” — the only peace containing any possibility of permanence would have resulted."
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"To the democrat, America is the Great Disappointment. Material progress I rule out. Beyond a certain point, it tends to enslave mankind. For spiritual progress, America seems to have no use. Mr. Ford has pointed out that every purchaser of a Ford car can have it delivered to him, painted any colour he likes, so long as it’s black. Mr. Ford expresses in a nutshell the mental attitude of modern America. Every man in America is free to do as he darn well pleases so long as, for twenty-four hours a day, he does what everybody else is doing. Every man in America is free to speak his mind so long as he shouts with the crowd. He has not even Mr. Pickwick’s choice of choosing his crowd. In America there is but one crowd. Every man in America has the right to think for himself so long as he thinks what he is told. If not — like the heretics of the middle ages — let him see to it that his chamber door is locked, that his tongue does not betray him. The Ku Klux Klan, with its travelling torture chamber, is but the outward and visible sign of the spirit of modern America. Thought in America is standardized. America is not taking new wine, lest the old bottles be broken.
"The treatment of the negro in America calls to Heaven for redress. I have sat with men who, amid vile jokes and laughter, told of “Buck Niggers” being slowly roasted alive; told how they screamed and writhed and prayed; how their eyes rolled inward as the flames crept up till nothing could be seen but two white balls. They burn mere boys alive and sometimes women. These things are organized by the town’s “leading citizens.” Well-dressed women crowd to the show, children are lifted up upon their fathers’ shoulders. The Law, represented by grinning policemen, stands idly by. Preachers from their pulpits glorify these things, and tell their congregation that God approves. The Southern press roars its encouragement. Hangings, shootings would be terrible enough. These burnings; these slow grillings of living men, chained down to iron bedsteads; these tearings of live, quivering flesh with red-hot pinchers can be done only to glut some hideous lust of cruelty. The excuse generally given is an insult to human intelligence. Even if true, it would be no excuse. In the majority of cases, it is not even pretended. The history of the Spanish Inquisition unrolls no greater shame upon the human race. The Auto-da-fé at least, was not planned for the purpose of amusing a mob. In the face of this gigantic horror, the lesser sufferings of the negro race in America may look insignificant. But there must be tens of thousands of educated, cultured men and women cursed with the touch of the tar-brush to whom life must be one long tragedy. Shunned, hated, despised, they have not the rights of a dog. From no white man dare they even defend the honour of their women. I have seen them waiting at the ticket offices, the gibe and butt of the crowd, not venturing to approach till the last white man was served. I have known a woman in the pains of childbirth made to travel in the cattle wagon. For no injury at the hands of any white man is there any redress. American justice is not colour blind. Will the wrong never end?"
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"One of my earliest recollections is of myself seated on a shiny chair from which I had difficulty in not slipping, listening to my father and mother and a large, smiling gentleman talking about Peace. There were to be no more wars. It had all been settled at a place called Paree. The large gentleman said Paris. But my mother explained to me, afterwards, that it meant the same. My father and my mother, so I gathered, had seen a gentleman named Napoleon, and had fixed it up. The large gentleman said, with a smile, that it didn’t look much like it, just at present. But my father waved his hand. Nothing could be done all at once. One prepared the ground, so to speak."
"I remember feeling a little sad at the thought that there would be no more war — that, coming too late into the world, I had missed it. My mother sought to comfort me by talking about the heavenly warfare which was still to be had for the asking. But, in my secret heart, it seemed to me a poor substitute.
"With the coming of the Alabama claim things looked brighter. My father, then President of the Poplar branch of the International Peace Association, shook his head over America’s preposterous demands. There were limits even to England’s love of Peace.
"Later on, we did have a sort of war. Nothing very satisfying: one had to make the best of it: against a King Theodore, I think, a sort of a nigger. I know he made an excellent Guy Fawkes. Also he did atrocities, I remember.
"At this period France was “The Enemy.” We boys always shouted “Froggy” whenever we saw anyone who looked like a foreigner. Crécy and Poitiers were our favourite battles. The “King of Prussia,” in a three-cornered hat and a bob-tailed wig, swung and creaked in front of many a public-house.
"I was at school when France declared war against Prussia in 1870. Our poor old French Master had a bad time of it. England, with the exception of a few cranks, was pro-German. But when it was all over: France laid low, and the fear of her removed: our English instinct to sympathize always with the underdog — not a bad trait in us — asserted itself; and a new Enemy had to be found.
"We fixed on Russia.
"Russia had designs on India. The Afghan War was her doing. I was an actor at the time. We put on a piece called “The Khyber Pass” — at Ashley’s, if I remember rightly. I played a mule. ... At the end, I stood on my hind legs, and waved the British flag. Lord Roberts patted my head, and the audience took the roof off, nearly.
"I was down on my luck when the Russo-Turkish War broke out. There were hopes at first that we might be drawn into it. I came near to taking the Queen’s shilling. I had slept at a doss-house the night before, and had had no breakfast. A sergeant of Lancers stopped me in Trafalgar Square. He put his hands on my shoulders and punched my chest.
"“You’re not the first of your family that’s been a soldier,” he said. “You’ll like it.”
"It was a taking uniform: blue and silver with high Hession boots. The advantages of making soldiers look like mud had not then been discovered.
"“I’m meeting a man at the Bodega,” I said. “If he isn’t there I’ll come straight back.”
"He was there; though I hadn’t expected him. He took me with him to a Coroner’s inquest, and found a place for me at the reporter’s table. So, instead, I became a journalist."
" ... MacDermott was our leading Lion Comique. One night he sang a new song: “We don’t want to fight, but by Jingo if we do.” Whatever happened, the Russians should not have Con-stan-ti-no-ple, the “no” indefinitely prolonged. It made a furore. By the end of the week, half London was singing it. Also it added the word Jingo to the English language.
"Peace meetings in Hyde Park were broken up, the more fortunate speakers getting off with a ducking in the Serpentine. The Peacemonger would seem to be always with us. In peace-time we shower palm leaves upon him. In war-time we hand him over to the mob. I remember seeing Charles Bradlaugh, covered with blood and followed by a yelling crowd. He escaped into Oxford Street and his friends got him away in a cart. Gladstone had his windows broken.
"And, after all, we never got so much as a look in. “Peace with Honour,” announced Disraeli; and immediately rang down the curtain. We had expected a better play from Disraeli.
"To console us, there came trouble in Egypt. Lord Charles Beresford was the popular hero. We called him Charlie. The Life Guards were sent out. I remember their return. It was the first time London had seen them without their helmets and breastplates. Lean, worn-looking men on skeleton horses. The crowd was disappointed. But made up for it in the evening.
"And after that there was poor General Gordon and Majuba Hill. It may have been the other way round. Some of us blamed Gladstone and the Nonconformist conscience. Others thought we were paying too much attention to cricket and football, and that God was angry with us. Greece declared war on Turkey. Poetical friends of mine went out to fight for Greece; but spent most of their time looking for the Greek army, and when they found it didn’t know it, and came home again. There were fresh massacres of Armenians. I was editing a paper called To-day, and expressed surprise that no healthy young Armenian had tried to remove “Abdul the damned,” as William Watson afterwards called him. My paragraph reached him, by some means or another, and had the effect of frightening the old horror. I had not expected such luck. The Turkish Constitution used to be described as: “Despotism tempered by assassination.” Under the old régime, the assassin, in Turkey, took the place of our Leader of the Opposition. Every Turkish Sultan lived in nightly dread of him. I was hauled up to the Foreign Office. A nice old gentleman interviewed me.
"“Do you know,” he said, “that you have rendered yourself liable to prosecution?”
"“Well, prosecute me,” I suggested. Quite a number of us were feeling mad about this thing.
"He was getting irritable.
"“All very well, for you to talk like that,” he snapped. “Just the very way to get it home into every corner of Europe. They can’t be wanting that.”
"The “they” I gathered to be the Turkish Embassy people.
"“I am sorry,” I said. “I don’t seem able to help you.”
"He read to me the Act of Parliament, and we shook hands and parted. I heard no more of the matter.
"It was about this time that America made war upon Spain. We, ourselves, had just had a shindy with America over some God-forsaken place called Venezuela, and popular opinion was if anything pro-Spanish. The American papers were filled with pictures of Spanish atrocities, in the time of Philip II. It seemed the Spaniards had the habit of burning people alive at the stake. Could such a nation be allowed to continue in possession of Cuba?
"The Fashoda incident was hardly unexpected. For some time past, France had been steadily regaining her old position of “The Enemy.” Over the Dreyfus case it occurred to us to tell her what we thought of her, generally. In return, she mentioned one or two things she didn’t like about us. There was great talk of an Entente with Germany. Joe Chamberlain started the idea. The popular Press, seized with a sudden enthusiasm for the study of history, discovered we were of Teutonic origin. Also it unearthed a saying of Nelson’s to the effect that every Englishman should hate a Frenchman like the Devil. A society was formed for the promotion of amicable relationship between the English and the German-speaking people. “Friends of Germany” I think it was called. I remember receiving an invitation to join it, from Conan Doyle. An elderly Major, in Cairo, who had dined too well, tore down the French flag, and performed upon it a new dance of his own invention. This was, I believe, the origin of the Fox-trot. One of the Northcliffe papers published a feuilleton, picturing the next war: England — her Navy defeated by French submarines — was saved, just in the nick of time, by the arrival of the German Fleet."
"The Boer War was not popular at first. The gold mines were so obviously at the bottom of it. Still, it was a war, even if only a sort of a war, as the late Lord Halsbury termed it. ..."
"It was the Kaiser’s telegram that turned the wind. I was in Germany at the time, and feeling was high against the English. We had a party one evening, at which some Dutch ladies were present — relations of De Wet, we learnt afterwards. I remember in the middle of the party, our Dienstmädchen suddenly appearing and shouting “Hoch die Buren,” and immediately bursting into tears. She explained to my wife, afterwards, that she couldn’t help it — that God had prompted her. I have noticed that trouble invariably follows when God appears to be interesting Himself in foreign politics.
"In France it was no better. Indeed, worse. In Paris, the English were hooted in the street, and hunted out of the cafés. I got through by talking with a strong American accent that I had picked up during a lecturing tour through the States. Queen Victoria was insulted in the French Press. The Daily Mail came out with a leader headed “Ne touchez pas la Reine,” suggesting that if France did not mend her manners we should “roll her in the mud,” take away her Colonies, and give them to Germany. The Kaiser had explained away his famous telegram. It seemed he didn’t really mean it. ..."
"At the time, there was much discussion throughout Europe as to when the twentieth century really began. The general idea was that it was going to bring us luck. France was decidedly reforming. On the other hand, Germany was “dumping” things upon us. She was dumping her goods not only in England, but in other countries, where hitherto we had been in the habit of dumping ours, undisturbed. After a time we got angry. There was talk of an Entente with France, who wasn’t dumping anything — who hadn’t much to dump. The comic papers took it up. France was represented to us as a Lady, young and decidedly attractive. Germany as a fat elderly gentleman, with pimples and his hair cropped close. How could a gentlemanly John Bull hesitate for a moment between them!
"Russia also, it appeared, had been misunderstood. Russia wasn’t half as bad as we had thought her: anyhow, she didn’t dump.
"And then, out of sheer cussedness as it seemed, Germany, in feverish haste, went on building ships.
"Even the mildest among us agreed that Britannia could tolerate no rival on the waves. It came out that Germany was building four new cruisers. At once we demanded eight. We made a song about it.
"“We want eight, And we won’t wait.”
"It was sung at all the by-elections. The Peace parties won moral victories.
"Sir Edward Grey has been accused of having “jockeyed” us into the war — of having so committed us to France and Russia that no honourable escape was possible for us. Had the Good Samaritan himself been our Foreign Secretary, the war would still have happened. Germany is popularly supposed to have brought us into it by going through Belgium. Had she gone round by the Cape of Good Hope, the result would have been the same. The Herd instinct had taken possession of us all. It was sweeping through Europe. I was at a country tennis tournament the day we declared war on Germany. Young men and maidens, grey-moustached veterans, pale-faced curates, dear old ladies: one and all expressed relief and thankfulness. “I was so afraid Grey would climb down at the last moment”—”It was Asquith I was doubtful of. I didn’t think the old man had the grit”—”Thank God, we shan’t read ‘Made in Germany’ for a little time to come.” Such was the talk over the tea-cups.
"It was the same whichever way you looked. Railway porters, cabmen, workmen riding home upon their bicycles, farm labourers eating their bread and cheese beside the hedge: they had the faces of men to whom good tidings had come.
"For years it had been growing, this instinct that Germany was “The Enemy.” In the beginning we were grieved. It was the first time in history she had been called upon to play the part. But that was her fault. Why couldn’t she leave us alone — cease interfering with our trade, threatening our command of the sea? Quite nice people went about saying: “We’re bound to have a scrap with her. Hope it comes in my time”—”Must put her in her place. We’ll get on all the better with her afterwards.” That was the idea everywhere: that war would clear the air, make things pleasanter all round, afterwards. A party, headed by Lord Roberts, clamoured for conscription. Another party, headed by Lord Fisher, proposed that we should seize the German Fleet and drown it. Books and plays came out one on top of another warning us of the German menace. Kipling wrote, openly proclaiming Germany, The Foe, first and foremost.
"In Germany, I gather from German friends, similar thinking prevailed. It was England that, now secretly, now openly, was everywhere opposing a blank wall to German expansion, refusing her a place in the sun, forbidding her the seas, plotting to hem her in.
"The pastures were getting used up. The herds were becoming restive."
"I heard of our declaration of war against Germany with cheerful satisfaction. The animal in me rejoiced. It was going to be the biggest war in history. I thanked whatever gods there be that they had given it in my time. If I had been anywhere near the age limit I should have enlisted. I can say this with confidence because later, and long after my enthusiasm had worn off, I did manage to get work in quite a dangerous part of the front line. Men all around me were throwing up their jobs, sacrificing their careers. I felt ashamed of myself, sitting in safety at my desk, writing articles encouraging them, at so much a thousand words. Of course, not a soul dreamt the war was going to last more than a few months. Had we known, it might have been another story. But the experts had assured us on that point. Mr. Wells was most emphatic. It was Mr. Wells who proclaimed it a Holy War. I have just been reading again those early letters of his. A Miss Cooper Willis has, a little unkindly, reprinted them. I am glad she did not do the same with contributions of my own. The newspapers had roped in most of us literary gents to write them special articles upon the war. The appalling nonsense we poured out, during those hysterical first weeks, must have made the angels weep, and all the little devils hold their sides with laughter. In justice to myself, I like to remember that I did gently ridicule the “War to end war” stuff and nonsense. I had heard that talk in my babyhood: since when I had lived through one of the bloodiest half centuries in history. War will go down before the gradual growth of reason. The movement has not yet begun.
"But I did hate German militarism. I had seen German “offizieren” swaggering three and four abreast along the pavements, sweeping men, women and children into the gutter. (I had seen the same thing in St. Petersburg. But we were not bothering about Russia, just then.) I had seen them, insolent, conceited, over-bearing, in café, theatre and railway car, civilians compelled everywhere to cringe before them, and had longed to slap their faces. In Freiburg, I had seen the agony upon the faces of the young recruits, returning from forced marches under a blazing sun, their bleeding feet protruding from their boots. I had sat upon the blood-splashed bench and watched the Mensur — helpful, no doubt, in making the youngsters fit for “the greatest game of all,” as Kipling calls it. I hated the stupidity, the cruelty of the thing. I thought we were going to free the German people from this Juggernaut of their own creation. And then make friends with them.
"At first, there was no hate of the German people. King George himself set the example. He went about the hospitals, shook hands with wounded Hans and Fritz. The Captain of the Emden we applauded, for his gallant exploits against our own ships. Kitchener’s despatches admitted the bravery of the enemy. Jokes and courtesies were exchanged between the front trenches. Our civilians, caught by the war in Germany, were well treated. The good feeling was acknowledged, and returned.
"Had the war ended with the falling of the leaves — as had been foretold by both the Kaiser and our own Bottomley — we might — who knows? — have realized that dream of a kinder and better world. But the gods, for some purpose of their own, not yet perhaps completed, ordained otherwise. It became necessary to stimulate the common people to prolonged effort. What surer drug than Hate?
"The Atrocity stunt was let loose.
"A member of the Cabinet had suggested to me that I might go out to America to assist in English propaganda. On the ship, I fell in with an American Deputation returning from Belgium. They had been sent there by the United States Government to report upon the truth — or otherwise — of these stories of German frightfulness. The opinion of the Deputation was that, apart from the abominations common to all warfare, nineteen-twentieths of them would have to be described as “otherwise.”"
At this point he says what seemed true to many, but was proved horribly otherwise after allies discovered evidence of Nazi atrocities that they had not the remotest clue about until then; and while Germany denied knowledge thereof, the denial wasn't always truthful.
"It was these stories of German atrocities, turned out day by day from Fleet Street, that first caused me to doubt whether this really was a “Holy War.” Against them I had raised my voice, for whatever it might be worth. If I knew and hated the German military machine, so likewise I knew, and could not bring myself to hate, the German people. I had lived among them for years. I knew them to be a homely, kind, good-humoured folk. Cruelty to animals in Germany is almost unknown. Cruelty to woman or child is rarer still. German criminal statistics compare favourably with our own. This attempt to make them out a nation of fiends seemed to me as silly as it was wicked. It was not clean fighting. Of course, I got myself into trouble with the Press; while a select number of ladies and gentlemen did me the honour to send me threatening letters."
Well, if he lived to know otherwise, would he admit how incorrect casual impressions of tourists could be? Or even long-term and frequent visitors?
"The Deputation published their report in America. But it was never allowed to reach England."
"America, so far as I could judge, appeared to be mildly pro-French and equally anti-English. Our blockade was causing indignation. In every speech I made in America, the only thing sure of sympathetic response was my reference to the “just and lasting” peace that was to follow. I had been told to make a point of that. A popular cartoon, exhibited in Broadway, pictured the nations of Europe as a yelling mob of mud-bespattered urchins engaged in a meaningless scrimmage; while America, a placid motherly soul, was getting ready a hot bath and bandages. President Wilson, in an interview I had with him, conveyed to me the same idea: that America was saving herself to come in at the end as peace-maker. At a dinner to which I was invited, I met an important group of German business men and bankers. They assured me that Germany had already grasped the fact that she had bitten off more than she could chew, to use their own expression, and would welcome a peace conference, say at Washington. I took their message back with me, but the mere word “conference” seemed to strike terror into every British heart."
"I sailed from Southampton in company with Spring-Rice, brother to our Ambassador at Washington, and our Chef de Section, D. L. Oliver, who was returning from leave in England. ... Passing down the Channel was like walking down Regent Street on a Jubilee night. The place was blazing with lights. Our transport was accompanied by a couple of torpedo destroyers. They raced along beside us like a pair of porpoises. Every now and then they disappeared, the waves sweeping over them. About twelve o’clock the alarm was given that a German submarine had succeeded in getting through. We returned full speed to Southampton dock, and remained there for the next twenty-four hours. On the following night, we were ordered forward again; and reached Havre early in the morning. The cross-country roads in France are designed upon the principle of the Maze at Hampton Court. Every now and then you come back to the same village. To find your way through them, the best plan is to disregard the sign-posts and trust to prayer. ... At Vitry, some hundred miles the other side of Paris, we entered “the zone of the Grand Armies,” and saw the first signs of war. Soon we were running through villages that were little more than rubbish heaps. The Quakers were already there. But for the Quakers, I doubt if Christianity would have survived this particular war. All the other denominations threw it up. Where the church had been destroyed the “Friends” had cleared out a barn, roofed it, and found benches and a home-made altar — generally, a few boards on trestles, with a white cloth and some bunches of flowers. Against the shattered walls they had improvised shelters and rebuilt the hearth-stone. Old men and women, sitting in the sun, smiled at us. The children ran after us cheering. The dogs barked. Towards evening I got lost. I was the last of the three. Over the winding country roads — or rather cart tracks — it was difficult to keep in touch. I knew we had to get to Bar-le-Duc. But it was dark when I struck a little town called Revigny. I decided to stop there for the night. Half of it was in ruins. It was crowded with troops, and trains kept coming in discharging thousands more. The poilus were lying in the streets, wrapped in their blankets, with their knapsacks for a pillow. ... I pushed on at dawn; and just outside Bar-le-Duc met Oliver, who had been telephoning everywhere, enquiring for a lost Englishman. I might have been court-martialled, but the good fellow let me off with a reprimand; and later on I learnt the trick of never losing sight of the car in front of you. It is not as easy as it sounds. At Bar-le-Duc we learnt our destination. Our unit, Convoi 10, had been moved to Rarécourt, a village near Clermont in the Argonne, twenty miles from Verdun. We reached there that same evening.
"We were a company of about twenty Britishers, including Colonials. Amongst us were youngsters who had failed to pass their medical examination, and one or two officers who had been invalided out of the army. But the majority were, like myself, men above military age. Other English sections, similar to our own, were scattered up and down the line. The Americans, at that time, had an Ambulance Service of their own: some of them were with the Germans. A French officer was technically in command; but the chief of each section was an Englishman, chosen for his knowledge of French. It was a difficult position. He was responsible for orders being carried out and, at the same time, was expected to make things as easy as possible for elderly gentlemen unused to discipline: a few of whom did not always remember the difference between modern warfare and a Piccadilly club. ... Marketing was good fun. It meant excursions to Ste. Menehould or Bar-le-Duc, where one could get a bath, and eat off a clean tablecloth. For mess-room, we had a long tent in the middle of a field. In fine weather it was cool and airy. At other times, the wind swept through it, and the rain leaked in, churning the floor into mud. We sat down to la soupe, as our dinner was called, in our greatcoats with the collars turned up. For sleeping, we were billeted about the village. With three others I shared a granary. We spread our sleeping sacks upon stretchers supported on trestles, and built ourselves washing-stands and dressing-tables out of packing-cases that we purchased from the proprietress of the épicerie at a franc a piece. Later, I found a more luxurious lodging in the house of an old peasant and his wife. They never took their clothes off. The old man would kick off his shoes, hang up his coat, and disappear with a grunt into a hole in the wall. His wife would undo hidden laces and buttons and give herself a shake, put her shoes by the stove, blow out the lamp, and roll into another hole opposite. There was a house near the church with a bench outside, underneath a vine. It commanded a pretty view, and of an evening, when off duty, I would sit there and smoke. The old lady was talkative. She boasted to me, one evening, that three officers, a Colonel and two Majors, had often sat upon that very bench the year before and been quite friendly. That was when the Germans had occupied the village. I gathered the villagers had made the best of them. “They had much money,” added Madame."
"From rain the weather had turned to frost. Often the thermometer would register forty degrees below zero. The Frenchmen said it was “pas chaud.” A Frenchman is always so polite. It might hurt the Weather’s feelings, telling it bluntly that it was damn cold. He hints to it that it isn’t exactly warm, and leaves the rest to its conscience. Starting the cars was horse’s work. We wrapped our engines up in rugs at night and kept a lamp burning under the bonnet. One man made a habit of using a blow-pipe to warm his cylinders, and the rest of us gave him a wide berth. ..."
"One day, in a wood, I chanced upon a hospital for animals. It was a curious sight. The convalescents were lying about in the sun, many of them still wearing bandages. One very little donkey was wearing the Croix de Guerre. His driver had been killed and he had gone on by himself, with a broken leg, and had brought his load of letters and parcels safely up to the trenches. ... Some of the officers had made gardens in front of their dug-outs; and the little cemeteries, dotted here and there about the forest, were still bright with flowers when I first saw them. A major I used to visit had furnished his dug-out with pieces of genuine Louis Quatorze: they had been lying about the fields when he had got there. We used to drink coffee out of eggshell china cups. In the villages further back, life went on much as usual. Except when a bombardment was actually in progress, the peasants still worked in the fields, the women gossiped and the children played about the fountain. Bombardment or no bombardment, Mass was celebrated daily in the church — or what was left of it. A few soldiers made the congregation, with here and there a woman in black. But on Sundays came the farmers with their wives and daughters in fine clothes and the soldiers — on week days not always spick-and-span — had brushed their uniforms and polished up their buttons.
"But within the barrier, which ran some ten kilometres behind the front, one never saw a woman or a child. Female nurses came no nearer than the hospitals at the base. It was a dull existence, after the first excitement had worn off. ... The general opinion among the French was, that the English had started the war to capture German trade, and had dragged France into it. There was no persuading them of their mistake."
"The war ended in 1918. From 1919 to 1924 there was every prospect of France’s regaining her old position as The Enemy. Reading the French papers, one gathered that nothing would please France better. At the present moment (1925) a growing party would seem to be in favour of substituting Russia. It may be that the gods have other plans. The white are not the only herds. The one thing certain is that mankind remains a race of low intelligence and evil instincts."
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"It was a queer place, this Heaven of my people. It rather frightened me. Gold entered a good deal into the composition of it. You wore a golden crown, and you played upon a golden harp, and God sat in the centre of it — I pictured it a bare, endless plain — high up upon a golden throne; and everybody praised Him: there was nothing else to do. My mother explained that it was symbolism."
"There were three subjects about which, when I was a young man, respectable folk were not supposed to talk: politics, sex, and religion. I remember how fervently my early editors would seek to impress upon me this convention. Round about me, must have been many, sharing my doubts and difficulties. We might have been of help to one another. But religion, especially — even in Bohemian circles — was strictly taboo. To be interested in it stamped a youngster as not only priggish but unEnglish. Books dealing with the subject from the free thinker’s point of view I knew existed: but for such I had no use. The usual standard works in support of orthodox opinion I did read. I do not think it altogether my fault that, instead of removing, they had the effect of increasing my perplexities.
"I passed through a period of much mental suffering. The beliefs of childhood cling close. One tears them loose at cost of pain. Gradually, I arrived at what Carlyle terms the centre of indifference. What did we know — what could we know? What were all the creeds but the jargon of a High Court affidavit, to be sworn before the nearest solicitor at a fee of eighteenpence? “I have been informed, and I believe.”"
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October 15, 2020 - October 20, 2020.
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