… O thou wondrous Mother-age Make me feel the wild pulsation that I felt before the strife When I heard my days before me and the tumult of my life.
London in the early eighties; London after years of solitary study and grim relentless effort; London when you are twenty-eight and have already won a place in its life; London when your mantelpiece has ten times as many invitations as you can accept, and there are two or three pretty girls that attract you; London when everyone you meet is courteous-kind and people of importance are beginning to speak about you; London with the foretaste of success in your mouth while your eyes are open wide to its myriad novelties and wonders; London with its round of receptions and court life, its theatres and shows, its amusements for the body, mind and soul: enchanting hours at a burlesque, prolonged by a boxing-match at the Sporting Club; or an evening in Parliament, where world-famous men discuss important policies; or a quiet morning spent with a poet who will live in English literature with Keats and Shakespeare; or an afternoon with pictures of a master already consecrated by fame. London: who could give even an idea of its varied delights: London the centre of civilization, the queen city of the world without a peer in the multitude of its attractions, as superior to Paris as Paris is to New York.
If you have never been intoxicated you have never lived. I have felt myself made better and happier by exquisite wine, keyed up, so to speak, to a more vivid and higher spiritual life, talking better than I ever talked before, with an intensified passion that lit all the eyes about me and set souls aflame. But the rapture of such heightened life is only momentary. London made me drunk for years and in memory still the magic of those first years ennobles life for me; and the later pains and sufferings, wrongs and insults, disdains and disappointments, all vanish and are forgotten. I wonder if I can give an idea of what London was to me with the first draught of its intoxicating vintage on my hot lips and the perfumes of it in my greedy nostrils. It's impossible to describe such a variety of attractions, but I'll try, reminding my readers merely that it was my ambition to touch life on many sides.
I had never heard of Frank Burnand, but one night I dropped in to see his burlesque of Blue Beard. The play was worse than absurd, incredibly trivial.
Mr. Burnand's hero keeps a note book for jotting down the names and addresses of interesting young women; otherwise he is not much of a monster.
His mysterious Blue Chamber contains nothing more terrible than hair-dyes.
He is a beardless lad of one-and-twenty; has, however, a blue lock to show; but it's a fraud. His wife and his father-in-law are to lose their heads for discovering his secret; the catastrophe is averted by the timely arrival of troops of young ladies in fantastic martial costumes that reveal most shapely figures.
The dancing and singing, and above all the astonishing plastic beauty of the chorus girls, gave me a foretaste of London, for in Paris the chorus women were usually hags.
Miss Nelly Farren is the Baron Abomelique de Barbe Bleue and Miss Vaughan, Kate Vaughan is Lili, the Baron's bride. Here is the first verse of her song in the second act:
French language is a bother,
To learn it I don't care,
Don't like to hear my mother
Called by the French a mere.
I like a husband to myself
But the dear one is my cher
Though I've only got one father
Yet they swear he is a pere.
Then Kate danced as no one ever danced before or since, with inimitable grace, and the way she picks up her dress and shows dainty ankles and hint of lovely limbs is a poem in itself; and all about her beautiful, smiling girls, in costumes that reveal every charm, sway or turn or dance, as if inspired by her delightful gaiety. In another scene she imitates Sarah Bernhardt and there is infinite humour in her piquant caricature; some one else mimics Irving, and all this in a rain of the most terrible puns and verbal acrobatics ever heard on any stage-an unforgettable evening which made me put Burnand down as one of the men I must get to know as soon as possible, for he was evidently a force to count with, a verbal contortionist, at least, of most extraordinary agility.
I will give one proof of his quality from my memories of ten years or so later, just to give handsome little Frank his proper standing, for he was as kindly pleasant as he was good-looking and witty, and that's saying a good deal.
In the London New York Herald, a weekly paper, there had appeared the story of Lord Euston's arrest, so detailed that it was almost as libellous as the account in the Star, the ha' penny Radical evening paper, of which Ernest Parke was the editor. I knew Euston pretty well and he had told me that he meant to make it "hot" for anyone who traduced him. He was a big, wellmade fellow of perhaps thirty, some six feet in height and decidedly manlylooking, the last person in the world to be suspected of any abnormal propensities. The story in the Star was detailed and libellous: Lord Euston was said to have gone in an ill-famed house in the West Central district; and the account in the Sunday Herald was just as damning. On the Monday following, Burnand came to lunch with me in Park Lane and by chance another guest was the Reverend John Verschoyle, whose talent for literature I have already described.
For some reason or other Verschoyle at table had condemned those who married their deceased wife's sister, evidently ignorant of the fact that Burnand had committed this offence against English convention. A little later, after the ladies had left the table, Verschoyle brought the conversation on the article in the New York Herald about Lord Euston; he was positive that a Sunday paper, by even mentioning such an affair, had killed itself in London. Burnand remarked, smiling, that he could not agree with such a verdict; surely it was the function of a newspaper to publish "news," and everyone was talking of this incident. But Verschoyle, purity-mad, stuck to his guns. "How could you explain such an 'incident'," he insisted, "to your wife or daughter, if she asked you what it was all about?"
"Very easily," retorted Burnand, still smiling, but with keen antagonism in his sharp enunciation; "I'd say: 'my dear, Lord Euston feels himself above the ordinary law, and having nothing better to do, went to this notorious gambling house to play. He thought the game was going to be poker, but when he found it was baccarat he came away.' "
No wittier explanation could be imagined; even Verschoyle had to try to smile. Curiously enough, in the libel action which Lord Euston brought against the Star newspaper, and which resulted in the condemnation of Ernest Parke, the editor, to a year's imprisonment, the explanation of Lord Euston was something like Burnand's excuse for him. He said that someone in the street had given him a card with poses plastiques on it; as he was at a loose end that night, he went to the address indicated. When he found that there were no poses plastiques, he came away.
One may say that burlesques and wit like Burnand's could also be found in Paris, but the comic humour, plus the physical beauty of the chorus girls, were not to be found there, nor the tragedy. Ernest Parke was a convinced Radical and a man of high character, yet he was sentenced to a year's imprisonment for reproducing, so he told me, a police inspector's statement, and one which in any case did Lord Euston no harm at all. Yet no one in London expostulated or thought of criticizing the judge, though it seemed to me an infamous and vindictive sentence only possible in England. The preposterous penalty discovers a weak and bad side of the aristocratic constitution of English society. The judges almost all come from the upper middle class and invariably, in my experience, toady to aristocratic sentiment. Every judge's wife wants to be a Lady (with a capital, please, printer!), and her husband as a rule gets ennobled the quicker the more he contrives to please his superiors in the hierarchy. If Lord Euston had been Mr.
Euston of Clerkenwell, his libeller would have been given a small fine, but not imprisoned, though the imputation even of ordinary immorality would have injured him in purse and public esteem grievously, whereas it could not damage Lord Euston in any way.
And now for a contrast.
It was early in the eighties-I know it was a cold, windy day-that I went up to Haverstock Hill to call upon Dr. Karl Marx at his modest home in Maitland Park Road. We had met some time before, after one of Hyndman's meetings, and were more or less friends. Hyndman had contradicted something I had said, and when I quoted Engels as on my side, he told me that he knew Engels and spoke German as well as English. Seeing that a large part of the audience was German, I challenged him to reply to me and began speaking in German. When the meeting was over a German came up and congratulated me and asked me would I like to know Karl Marx? I replied that nothing would give me greater pleasure and he took me out and introduced me to the famous doctor. He was by no means so famous then as he is now forty years later, though he well deserved to be.
I had read Das Kapital some years before. The first book, indeed, all the theoretical part, seemed to be brain-cobwebs loosely spun; but the second book and the whole criticism of the English factory system was one of the most relentless and convincing indictments I had ever seen in print. No one who ignores it should be listened to on social questions. When I had absorbed it, I sent for Marx's other books, A Life of Lord Palmerston and Revelations of the Diplomatic History of the Eighteenth Century. The Palmerston is written by one who had no feeling for character: the hero, an Irishman alive to his finger-tips, is buried under an erudition that prevents one seeing the forest for the trees; but the Revelations contain the best picture extant of the progress of Russia from the time she threw off the Tartar yoke to the latter half of the eighteenth century.
In person Marx was broad and short, but strong with a massive head, all framed in white hair; the eyes were still bright blue, by turns thoughtful, meditative and quick-glancing, sharply curious. My German astonished him; where had I got the fluency and the rhetoric? Talking of religious belief, I had said that der Lauf des menschlichen Gedanker-ganges ist filr mich die einzige Offenbarung Gotten (the course of the progress of human thought is to me the only revelation of God). "Wunderbar! echt Deutsch!" Marx exclaimed (peculiarly German), which was the highest form of praise to a German of that time. He met me with critical courtesy, evidently surprised that an Englishman should have read not only Das Kapital, but all his contributions to periodicals. I told him I thought his book on the English factory system the most important work on sociology since The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith: on the one hand the advocate of socialism, on the other the individualist, while both forces, I thought, must meet in life and an equilibrium between them must be established. Marx smiled at me, but didn't even attempt to consider the new idea. He made much the same impression on me that Herbert Spencer made twenty years later, but Spencer was contemptuous-angry under contradiction, whereas Karl Marx was inattentively courteous. But both had shut themselves off from hearing anything against his pet theory, one-sided though it was. And just as Herbert Spencer was worth listening to on everything but "the field I've made my own," so was Karl Marx. He was the first to tell me how the French
bourgeoisie had massacred thirty thousand communists in Paris in cold blood after the defeat of 1870; but he condemned this bloodshed just as passionately as he condemned the strain of brutality in the anarchist Bakounin. His deep human pity and sympathy were the best of him, the heart better than the head-and wiser. Much in the same way, Spencer saw that savagery in man was developed and perpetuated in the standing armies of Europe, though wholly at variance with the spirit of forgiveness preached from a thousand pulpits. Marx and Spencer, like Carlyle and Ruskin, were of the race of Polyphemus-one-eyed giants; but the latter pair were artists to boot!
Another contrast.
It was about this time that I first met Lord Randolph Churchill's brother, the Duke of Marlborough. Though he was perhaps ten years older than I was, we became friends through sheer similarity of nature. He too wanted to touch life on many sides. He liked a good dinner and noble wine whether of Burgundy or Moselle, but above all, he loved women and believed with de Maupassant that the pursuit of them was the only entrancing adventure in a man's life. After a dinner at the Cafe Royal one night, he discoursed to me for an hour on the typical beauties of a dozen different races, not excluding the yellow or the black. He had as good a mind as his brother, but nothing like Randolph's genius as a captain or leader of men. I may tell one story of him here, though it took place much later, when I was editing the Fortnightly Review. I had met Lady Colin Campbell in Paris and found that she spoke excellent French and Italian because she had spent her childhood in Florence. Shortly after I was made editor of the Fortnightly Review-in 1887 it was, I think-Mrs. Jeune told me I ought to meet Lady Colin and publish some of her articles. I said I should be very glad to renew acquaintance with so pretty a woman. One day Mrs. Jeune brought about a meeting and told me to go to the back drawing-room where Lady Colin was waiting for me. I went upstairs and opened the door and there was Lady Colin toasting her legs in front of the fire. As soon as I spoke she dropped her skirt, excusing herself on the ground that she had got her feet wet and cold, but the exhibition seemed intentional, the appeal gross. At any rate, it put me off, and I soon found her articles were just as obvious as her tall, lithe figure and great dark eyes and hair. I had rejected one or two of her papers when the Duke asked me to dinner and soon told me, without unnecessarily beating about the bush, that he was in love with Lady Colin and had promised her that I would publish her next paper. I told him I couldn't do it, but he pressed me so earnestly that at length I said, "If you will write me an absolutely frank article, setting forth the sensuous view of life you have often preached to me, I'll accept Lady Colin's contribution blindfold; but I want absolute frankness from you."
He broke in, laughing. "It's a bargain and I am greatly obliged to you; I'll write the article at once and let you have it this week." "Life and Its Pleasures," I soon saw, was frank to indecency. I should have to expurgate it before publishing, but it was sure to cause a huge stir.
I put the article away for some real need and assured the Duke that I would publish it sooner or later. I wish I had kept the paper, but I remember one passage in it which contained his defence. "There are persons," he wrote airily, "who will object to my frank sensuality. I have been asked in astonishment whether I really could see anything to admire in the beautiful knees of a woman. I have no doubt there are little birds who sip a drop or two of clear water at a lake-side and wonder what a healthy frog can find in the succulent ooze that delights his soul. Such prudes, and they are numerous and of both sexes in England, remind me of the witty Frenchman's joke. The talk had come to a discussion of differences between a chimpanzee and a gorilla: 'What animal do you think is the most like a man?' the hostess asked and at once the Frenchman replied, 'An Englishman, Madame, surely.'"
The Duke had as many witty stories at command as anyone I have ever known, and he told them excellently.
He attributed many of them to Travers, the famous wit of New York in the seventies who died alas! without leaving any inheritors of his talent.
Travers was a real wit without alloy. I have a dozen stories of his which are good and one or two worth preserving. When Fiske and Gould had come together to exploit the finances of the Erie railroad and rob the American people of many millions of dollars, Fiske gave a luncheon party on his yacht and of course, among others, invited Travers. The financier took the wit all over the yacht and finally in the cabin showed him his own portrait painted by Bougereau, whom he called the most famous French painter, and a portrait of Gould, by some American, hanging near it. "What do you think of 'em?" he asked triumphantly.
"Surely some-something's lacking," stuttered Travers with a puzzled look, for he exaggerated his stutter and pointed his witticisms with an air of bewilderment, just as Lord Plunkett used to do in London.
"Lacking," repeated Fiske; "what do you mean?"
"Mean," ejaculated Travers; "why, that the S-S-S Saviour should b-b-b-be between the two thieves!"
Only one better story than this has come out of America in my time and I'll put it in here to get rid of it. A young American went to a hotel and saw the manager about getting some work; he was hard up, he said, and hungry, and would do almost anything.
The manager put him off on the head waiter, who was slightly coloured, but famous for his good manners. He heard the lad's plaint and then, "I guess you'll do your best and work all right, but has you tact?"
"Don't know what tact means," said the lad, "but I'll get some if you tell me how!"
"That's it," replied the darky, with a lordly air, "that's it. No one I guess kin tell you what tact is or how to git it, but I'll try to make it clear to you. The other day a lady's bell rang. She was a real beauty from old Verginny and all the waiters wuz busy, so I decided to go up myself and wait on her.
"When I opened the door there she was, right opposite me, in her bath. Yes, in her bath. Of course I drew the door to at once, saying, "Scuse me please, Sir, 'scuse me!' Now the "scuse me' was politeness; but the 'Sir!' That was 'tact.' See!
Tact!' "