I BECOME AN EDITOR
“ 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. Barr had made the English edition of the Detroit Free Press quite a good property; and was keen to start something of his own. He wanted a popular name and, at first, was undecided between Kipling and myself. He chose me—as, speaking somewhat bitterly, he later on confessed to me—thinking I should be the easier to “manage.” He had not liked the look of Kipling's jaw. Kipling had been about two years in London, and had just married his secretary, a beautiful girl with a haunting melancholy in her eyes that still lingers.
By writers he was recognized as a new force, though his aggressive personality naturally made enemies. The critics and the public were more squeamish then. He was accused of coarseness and irreverence. The reason, it is said, that he was never knighted was that Queen Victoria would not forgive him for having called her “The Widdy o' Windsor.” He has not missed much. Lord Charles Beresford used to tell the story—and those who knew him could easily believe it—that King Edward on one occasion said to him:
“You remember L——, that fellow at Homburg. Well, I've just made him a knight.”
“Dirty little bounder,” said Beresford; “serve him damn well right.”
The Idler was a great success, so far as circulation was concerned. Our business manager was one Robert Dunkerley. I see from “Who's Who” that he himself explains that he “took to writing as an alleviation and alternative from business, and found it much more enjoyable.” He is now John Oxenham. 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.
We had a rough crossing to Norway. Connie Doyle enjoyed it: she was that sort of girl: it added to her colour and gave a delightful curl to her hair. She had a sympathetic nature, and was awfully sorry for the poor women who were ill. She would burst in upon them every now and then to see if she could be of any help to them. You would have thought her mere presence would have cheered them up. As a matter of fact, it made them just mad.
“Oh, do go away, Connie,” I heard one of her friends murmur, while passing the open door, “it makes me ill to look at you.”
Doyle was always full of superfluous energy. He started to learn Norwegian on the boat. He got on so well that he became conceited; and one day, at a little rest house up among the mountains, he lost his head. We had come there in stoljas—a tiny carriage only just big enough for one person, drawn by a pony about the size of a Newfoundland dog, but marvellously sturdy. They will trot their fifty miles in the day and be frisky in the evening. While we were lunching, with some twenty miles still in front of us, a young officer came into the room, and said something in Norwegian. Of course we turned him on to Doyle; and Doyle rose and bowed and answered him. We all watched the conversation. The young Norwegian officer was evidently charmed with Doyle, while Doyle stood ladling out Norwegian as though it had been his mother tongue. After the officer was gone, we asked Doyle what it was all about.
“Oh, just about the weather, and the state of the roads, and how some relation of his had hurt his leg,” answered Doyle carelessly. “Of course I didn't understand all of it.” He turned the conversation.
When we had finished lunch, and the stoljas were brought out, Doyle's pony was missing. It appeared Doyle had “lent” it to the young officer, whose own pony had gone lame. The ostler, who was also the waiter, had overheard the conversation. Doyle had said “Certainly, with pleasure.” He had said it once or twice. Also the Norwegian equivalent for: “Don't mention it.”
There wasn't another pony within ten miles. One of our party, who had taken a fancy to the view, and thought he would like to spend a day or two in the neighbourhood, let Doyle have his stolja. But for the rest of that trip, Doyle talked less Norwegian.
Leprosy is still a living terror in Norway. Eating bad fish is the cause of it. Round about the fjords, preserved fish is the chief article of food during the long winter. Doyle, as a doctor, got permission to visit one of the big leper hospitals and took me with them. Not till one has seen the thing can one understand the full meaning of that awful cry: “The leper, the leper.” The strange thing was the patience of the poor marred creatures, their quiet acceptance of their fate. Above the doors were texts of scripture. “His mercy endureth for ever,” was one of them. The bell was ringing for service when we thanked our guide for an interesting afternoon. We left them trooping towards the little cold grey chapel.
Doyle had always a bent towards the occult. He told me once a curious story. It led him to conclusions with which he may now disagree. He and another member of the Psychical Research Society were sent down to an old manor house in Somerset to investigate a “phenomenon,” as it is now termed—“ghost story,” our grandmothers would have said. There lived in this house a retired Colonel and his wife with their only daughter, an unmarried woman of about five and thirty. For some time past, strange noises had been heard: a low moaning, rising to a wailing sob, and a sound as of a chain being dragged across the floor. Night after night, the noises would be heard. Then, for a while, they would cease. And then they would come again. The servants—so the old gentleman explained—were being frightened out of their lives: most of them had left; and even the dogs were becoming jumpy. Doyle and his friend were to say nothing about the Psychical Research Society. They were to come merely as guests, friends of the Colonel's, that he had run across in London. He had not told his wife and daughter. His idea was that no woman could keep a secret. The Colonel himself pooh-poohed the whole thing. He put it down to rats. But his wife's health was becoming affected. He was evidently more worried than he cared to show.
It was a lonely house. Doyle and his friend arrived there in time for dinner. In the evening, they played a rubber of whist with the Colonel and his daughter. It was before bridge was invented. The old lady looked on while knitting. They seemed a most devoted family. Doyle and his friend, pleading drowsiness, the result of country air, retired early. That night nothing happened. On the second night, Doyle, suddenly waking about two o'clock in the morning, heard the noises exactly as described: the low moaning, rising to a wailing sob, and the dragging of a chain. He was out of bed in a jiffy. The other man, whose turn it had been to keep watch, was in the gallery overlooking the hall, from where, he felt sure, the sounds had come. The old lady and gentleman joined them, almost immediately; and the daughter a few minutes later. The daughter, while comforting her mother, whose self-control seemed to be at breaking-point, declared she had heard nothing; and was sure it was all imagination, the result of “suggestion”; but admitted, after the old people had gone back into their room, that this was only pretence. She burst into a violent fit of weeping. Doyle's medical training came to his aid. The next night they laid their plans; and discovered, as Doyle had suspected, that the ghost was the daughter herself.
She was not mad. She protested her love both for her father and her mother. She could offer no explanation. The thing seemed as unaccountable to her as it did to Doyle. On the understanding that the thing ended, secrecy was promised. The noises were never heard again. The mysteries are with the living, not the dead.
From shining examples of industry and steadfastness I—being a lazy man myself—find it a comfort to turn my thoughts away to W. W. Jacobs. He has told me himself that often he will spend (the word is his own) an entire morning, constructing a single sentence. If he writes a four-thousand-word story in a month, he feels he has earned a holiday; and the reason that he does not always take it is that he is generally too tired. I once recommended him to try a secretary. I have found it so myself: the girl becomes a sort of conscience. After a time, you get ashamed of yourself, muddling about the room and trying to look as if you were thinking. She yawns, has pins and needles, begs your pardon every five minutes—was under the impression that you said something. A girl who knows her business can, without opening her mouth, bully a man into working.
“It wasn't any good,” he told me later on. “I put Nance on to it” (Nance was his sister-in-law). “I felt it wasn't going to be any use; and I didn't want the disgrace of it to get outside the family. I suppose I'm too far gone, or else she was too eager. She would persist in our beginning sharp at ten, and I'm never any good before twelve.”
He told me that if it hadn't been for the Night Watchman, he might have had to give up writing. He had exhausted all his own stories. For weeks he cudgelled his brain in vain. Then suddenly in desperation he seized his pen and wrote:
“Speaking of wimmen,” said the Night Watchman.
And after that, it was plain sailing. He left it to the Night Watchman. The Night Watchman talked on.
I like talking to Jacobs about politics. He is so gloriously honest.
“I'm not sure that I do want the greatest happiness of the greatest number,” he said to me one afternoon. We were driving across the Berkshire downs, behind a jolly little Irish cob of mine: it was before the days of motors. “So far as I can see, there's not enough of the good things of this world to go round evenly, and I want more than my share.”
As a matter of fact, he doesn't. All he wants to make him happy is a pipe, two Scotch whiskies a day, and a game of bowls three afternoons a week. But he's an obstinate beggar. I asked him once why he was afraid of Socialism. I promised him—I offered to personally guarantee it—that under Socialism all his simple desires would be assured to him.
“I don't want things assured to me,” he answered quite crossly. “I'd hate a lot of clever people fussing about, making me happy and doing me good. Damn their eyes.”
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. Everything had been tried: everything had failed: this was their last chance. The sole support of widowed mother—of small crippled brother, could I not see my way? Struggling tradesmen on the verge of bankruptcy who had heard that Rudyard Kipling received a hundred pounds for a short story—would be willing to take less. Wives of little clerks, dreaming of new curtains. Would-be bridegrooms, wishful to add to their income: photograph of proposed bride enclosed, to be returned. Humbug, many of them; but trouble enough in the world to render it probable that the majority were genuine. 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.
He came on Monday, a quiet, shy young man, with dreamy eyes and a soft voice. He looked a mere boy. Even now, in the dusk with the light behind him, he could pass very well for twenty-five—anyhow with his hat on. I remember Mrs. Humphrey Ward whispering to me at a public dinner not so very long ago—
“Who is the boy on my left?”
“The boy,” I told her, was W. W. Jacobs.
“Good Lord!” she said. “How does he do it?”
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. We took him to Henley Regatta one year. We had the saddler's house down by the bridge. It was an awful week. We got drenched every day. I lent him some clothes. He is longer than I am. His arms were too long, and his legs were too long. Some Oxford boys with us dubbed him Dick Swiveller. He did suggest poor Dick.
Henham, or John Trevena as he called himself, was a neighbour of ours at Wallingford. He wrote some good books. “Furze the Cruel” and “Granite” are among the best. The woman to whom he was engaged died. But he always spoke of her as if she were living—would talk with her in his study and go long walks with her. He built himself a solitary house high up on Dartmoor. Lived there by himself for a time. And then quite suddenly he married his typist.
I suppose luck goes to the making of reputations, as it does to the shaping of most things human. Next to Hardy, I place Eden Phillpotts as the greatest of living English novelists: and Hardy has not his humour. But I take it he will have to wait till he is dead before full justice is done to him. He was staying with us; and one afternoon we went on a picnic. Landing at Dorchester lock, we climbed the Sinodun hills, where once was a Roman encampment, commanding the river. The ramparts still remain, and one may trace the ordered streets. And before that, in Druid times, it had been a British fortress. A grove of trees marks the place now. “A green crown upon a lovely hill.” It is a famous landmark for many miles around. We talked, as we boiled our kettle, of the danger of fire. There had been no rain for weeks and all the countryside was parched. The fear haunted us. The idea once started, we seemed unable to get away from it. There were dead trunks among the living that would have served as touchwood to ignite the whole.
After tea, we were preparing to light our pipes. Phillpotts was standing with his match-box in his hand. I was waiting to ask him for a light. It is most men's one economy, lucifer matches. Instead, he replaced the box in his pocket and, turning his back on me, walked down the hill. I called to him, but he took no notice. Later, I found him seated on the lock gates, smoking.
“Do you know what was happening to me just now?” he said. “A beastly little imp was urging me for all he was worth to set fire to that rotten tree against which we were standing. One lighted match would have done it, and burnt down the entire grove. If I hadn't come away, I believe he'd have nagged me into doing it.”
Love of Nature is to Phillpotts almost a religion. I wonder if there is a Devil?
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.
Gilbert Parker was another Idler man. He married in 1895 and became The Rt. Hon. Sir Gilbert Parker, Bart., M.P., L.L.D., D.C.L. It might have been jealousy—probably was, but there was a feeling that after his marriage he had become more impressive than was needful. I remember one evening at the Savage Club. He had kindly looked in upon us, on his way to some reception. He moved about, greeting affably one man after another. Eventually he came across Odell, an old actor; his address now is the Charterhouse, where Colonel Newcome heard the roll call. Odell was an excellent raconteur, one of the stars of the club. Sir Gilbert laid a hand upon his shoulder.
“You must come down and see me, Odell,” he said. “Fix a day and write me. You know the address. B—— Court.”
“Delighted,” answered Odell. “What number?”
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. Dudley Hardy designed us a poster. It was the first time a known artist had condescended to do poster-work. It came to be known as the “Yellow Girl.” She seemed to be stepping out of the hoarding. If high up, you feared she would land on your head; and if low down, you feared for your toes. To-day, I suppose, is now forgotten; but though I say it who shouldn't, it was a wonderful twopennyworth. Stevenson's “Ebb-Tide” was our first serial. 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 met him some time before. He was ill, and looking forward to getting out of England. It was always a difficulty getting him to talk; but once started he would go on without a break: reminding me, in this respect, of Barrie. Maybe it is a Scotch trait. A gentle, unassuming man: he seemed to have no notion that he was anybody of importance—or if he had, he kept it hidden.
Anthony Hope wrote for both The Idler and To-day. I am sorry he came into money. He might have been writing to-day if he hadn't. Poverty is the only reliable patron of literature. He was a methodical worker. He had his “office” in a street opposite the Savoy Chapel. He would reach there as the clock struck ten, work till four, then, locking the door, go home to his flat in Bloomsbury. I met him for the first time at the house of a young couple named Baldry, who have since grown older, and become dear friends of mine. Baldry and Hall Caine, in those days, used to be mistaken occasionally, by sinners out late at night, for Jesus Christ. Baldry now suggests Moses, and Hall Caine has come down to Shakespeare. Baldry was an artist and still is; but is best known as a critic. She was a slip of a girl then, and even more beautiful than she is now. She had been chief dancer at the Gaiety—Lily Lyndhurst on the programme. She confided to me, in the course of the evening, that she was the original “Dolly” of the famous “Dolly Dialogues.” Anthony Hope had—well, not exactly told her so, but given her to understand it. He had a way with him. Since then I have met quite a dozen charming women who have confided to me precisely the same secret.
To-day was an illustrated paper. Dudley Hardy, Sauber, Fred Pegram, Lewis Baumer, Hal Hurst, Aubrey Beardsley, Ravenhill, Sime, Phil May, all drew for it. As I have said, it was a wonderful twopennyworth. It was difficult to get work out of Phil May in his later years. He would promise you—would swear by all the gods he knew; and then forget all about it. 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. He was a thirsty soul. His wife used to tell the story that one night he woke her up, breaking crockery. It seemed he was looking for water. The water-bottle was empty.
“Oh, well, drink out of the jug,” suggested Mrs. May; “there's plenty of water in that. I filled it myself, the last thing.”
“I've finished that,” said May.
He had been in the office of an art dealer in Liverpool, before he came to London. They hadn't got on together. There had been faults on both sides, one gathered. The old man also came to London and established himself in Bond Street. From him, I obtained an insight into the ways of picture dealers. He looked me up one day at my office.
“Could you put your hand on a journalist,” he asked me, “who knows anything about art?”
“Sounds easy,” I answered. “Most of them know everything. What is it you want?”
“He needn't know much,” he went on. “I want him to write me an article about Raeburn. I'll tell him just what I want him to say. All he's got to do is to make it readable, with plenty of headlines. Then I want you to make a special feature of it in To-day.”
“Wait a bit,” I said. “From all I've heard, this man Raeburn is dead. Where does the excitement come in, from my point of view?”
“I'm not asking you to do it for nothing,” he explained. “Send your advertisement man to me and he and I will fix it up.”
I began to understand.
“You've been buying Raeburns?” I suggested.
“Raeburn is going to be the big thing this season,” he answered. “We're just waiting for the Americans to come over.”
Another view of the Press was afforded me by the late Barney Barnato. He had just arrived in London from South Africa; and To-Day had taken the occasion to give its readers the story of his life, putting down nothing in malice, I hope; but, on the other hand, nothing extenuating. Two days after our article had appeared, he called upon me. He was not of imposing presence; but his manner was friendly and he made himself at home.
“I've read your article,” he said. He seemed to be under the impression I had written it myself. “There are one or two points about which you are mistaken.”
He was looking at me out of his little eyes. There came a twinkle into them.
“I've always been friendly with the Press,” he continued. “I've made a note of where you've gone wrong, here and there. What I'd like you to do is to write another little article—no immediate hurry about it—just putting things right.”
He had taken from his pocket-book a sheet of note-paper. He rose, and breathing heavily, he came across and laid it on the desk before me. It was covered with small writing. I took it up to read it. Underneath it, there was a cheque for a hundred pounds, payable to bearer and uncrossed.
He was sadly out of condition, it was evident, but he had been a prize-fighter. Besides, violence is always undignified. I handed the cheque back to him; and crumpling up his sheet of paper threw it into the waste-paper-basket. He looked at me more in sorrow than in anger. A sigh of resignation escaped him. He took a fountain pen out of his bulging waistcoat and, leaning over the back of the desk, proceeded quite calmly to make alterations: then pushed the cheque across to me. He had made it for two hundred pounds and had initialled the corrections.
It was my turn to give it back to him. I wondered what he would do. He merely shrugged his shoulders.
“How much do you want?” he asked.
He was so good-tempered about it, that I could not help laughing. I explained to him it wasn't done—not in London.
There came again a twinkle into those small sly eyes.
“Sorry,” he said. “No offence.” He held out a grubby hand.
Barry Pain was of great help to me upon To-day. He wrote for me “Eliza's Husband,” which myself I think the best thing he has done. “Eliza” is a delightful creation. Another series he wrote for To-day we called “De Omnibus.” They were the musings, upon things in general, of a London omnibus conductor, with occasional intrusions from the driver. One is glad of the disappearance of the old horse 'bus, for the sake of the horses; but the rubicund-faced driver one misses with regret. His caustic humour, shouted downward from his perch, was a feature of the London streets. I remember once our driver making as usual to pull up by the kerb at the top of Sloane Street, outside Harvey & Nichols. A gorgeous “equipage”—as the newspaper reporter would describe it—drawn by a pair of high-stepping bays, and driven by a magnificent creature in livery of blue and gold, dashed in between and ousted us. Our driver bent forward and addressed him in a loud but friendly tone:
“Good-morning, gardener,” he said. “Coachman ill again?”
The conductor also was a kindly soul—would recognize one as a fellow human being. One would hardly dream of trying to be familiar with the modern motor-'bus conductor.
It was to Barry Pain that the reproach “new humorist” was first applied. It began with a sketch of his in the “Granta”—a simple little thing entitled “The Love Story of a Sardine.”
Le Gallienne was another of my “Young Men,” as the term goes. “The Chief” they used to call me. “Is the Chief in?” they would ask of the young lady in the outer office. Just a convention, but always it gave me a little thrill of pride, when I overheard it. Le Gallienne was a great beauty in those days. He had the courage of his own ideas in the matter of dress. I remember at a matinée, a lady in the stall next to me looking up at him. He was sitting in the front row of the dress circle.
“Who's that beautiful woman?” she asked.
It has come to be the accepted idea that woman is more beautiful than man. It is a masculine delusion, born of sex instinct. I give woman credit for not believing it. The human species is no exception to the general law. The male is Nature's favourite. I remember at Munich a young officer going to a ball in his sister's clothes. He made a really lovely woman, but over-played the joke. It led to a duel the next morning in the Englischer Garten between two of his brother officers; and one of them was killed.
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.
He lives behind a high wall in an unpretentious house that he built for himself long ago on the downs beyond Dorchester. We called upon him there, just before the war. His wife was away and it happened to be the servant's afternoon out. His secretary opened the door to us. His wife died a little later and she is now the second Mrs. Hardy. It was a warm afternoon, and we walked in the garden. At first, he appears to be a gentleman of no importance; but after a while, behind his quietness and simplicity, you catch glimpses of the real man. He shows himself in his poetry to be one of the deepest thinkers of the age. The unassuming little gentleman looking at you with pale gentle eyes does not suggest it. There was a whispering towards tea-time between Hardy and the lady. Hardy was worried. It seemed Mrs. Hardy, careful soul, not anticipating visitors, had before leaving locked up all the spare tea-things. We had some fun searching round. My wife and daughter were with me, making five of us. We got together a scratch lot; and sat down to table.
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. So, also, was Fiona McLeod, the poetess, who wrote the “Immortal Hour.” About her, there came to be a mystery. Some people must have gone about pulling other people's legs. George Meredith, in a letter to Alice Meynell, dated from Box Hill, writes: “Miss Fiona McLeod was here last week, a handsome person, who would not give me her eyes.” All I know is that Sharpe himself made no secret of the fact that he and Fiona McLeod were one and the same person. It was after an Omar Khayyam dinner, at Caversham near Reading, that, walking in the garden, I mentioned to him my admiration of the lady, and my wish to obtain some of her work. He laughed. “To confess the truth,” he said, “I am Fiona McLeod. I thought you knew.” He told me that, when it came to writing, he really felt himself to be two separate personalities; and it seemed the better course to keep them apart.
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. Mrs. Scarlett, our landlady, who keeps the village shop, remembers him as a gentleman somewhat “thin on the top,” with side whiskers and a high-domed forehead. He wore generally a stove-pipe hat at the back of his head (at rather a rakish angle, so I gather), an Inverness cape with a velvet collar, and a black stock round his neck. In voice and manner, Mr. Zangwill reminds her of him. He used to frighten the good fisher folk, at first, by his habit of taking midnight walks along the shore, talking to himself as he went by. A favourite working place of his was the ruined church upon the cliffs. It was still a landmark up to a few years ago, standing out bravely against the sky. But now its stones lie scattered on the beach or have been carried out to sea, and not a trace remains. There, with his back against a crumbling buttress, he would sit and write of mornings, till Mrs. Scarlett, to whom in those days steep pathways were of small account, would fetch him home to lunch. No one knew of his retreat: until one day some yachting friends dropped in at Mrs. Scarlett's shop to replenish their larder, and so discovered him.
Mrs. Scarlett's shop was, of course, the hub of the village. The gossips would gather there and talk. But Fitzgerald had a way of getting rid of them. Putting on his hat—at the back of his head, according to that rakish custom of his—he would bustle out and join them.
“Ah! Mrs. Scarlett,” he would say, “you are talking about something interesting, I feel sure of it. Now tell me all about it.”
The ladies would look from one to another, and assure him it was nothing of importance.
“No, no. You must not keep it from me,” Fitzgerald would persist. “Do let me hear it.”
It would occur to the ladies, one after another, that tasks were awaiting them at home. Excusing themselves, they would drift away. After a time, it came to be sufficient for Mrs. Scarlett to indicate by signs that Fitzgerald was in the little front room, working. He used to write, sitting by the window, in the easy chair (it isn't really very easy), with his writing-pad on his knee. The ladies would make their purchases in whispers and depart.
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. I have the satisfaction of boasting that it was the longest case, and one of the most expensive ever heard in the court of Queen's Bench. It resolved itself into an argument as to whether domestic gas could be made out of water. At the end of thirty days, the unanimous conclusion arrived at was, that it remained to be seen; and the 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.
A big catastrophe has, at first, a numbing effect. Realisation comes later. It was summer time, and my family were in the country. I dined by myself at a restaurant in Soho, and afterwards went to the theatre; but I recall a dull, aching sensation in the neighbourhood of my stomach, and an obstinate dryness of the throat.
Of course it meant my selling out, both from The Idler and To-Day. Barr's friends took over The Idler, and Bottomley bought most of my holding in To-Day. But it had, from the beginning, been a one-man paper, and after I went out, it gradually died.
I had always dreamed of being an editor. My mother gave me a desk on my sixth birthday, and I started a newspaper in partnership with a little old maiden aunt of mine. She wore three corkscrew curls on each side of her head. She used to take them off, before bending down over the table to write.
My mother liked our first number. “I am sure he was meant to be a preacher,” she said to my father.
“It comes to the same thing,” said my father. “The newspaper is going to be the new pulpit.”
I still think it might be.