CHAPTER XXVII
1870
HOME AGAIN
When I reached France it seemed as if at every corner I was to meet old friends—all of them in difficulties—the result of an epidemic of plunging on the Turf—very catching. At Marseilles I happened upon an old Christ Church friend, whom I had left five years before in London, the smartest of the smart. He was staying in the same hotel, and as I arrived luggageless and in great discomfort, he very kindly supplied me with all that I wanted, amongst other things with quite the most luxurious night apparel that ever I slept in. We had a very pleasant evening together, talking over old times, and the next morning he came to see me off at the station. As the train was just moving, he put his head in at the window and said, “By the bye, old fellow, when you get to London, please don’t say you’ve seen me!”
At Paris, where I was to stay two days, my first visit was to my colleagues at the Embassy. I asked who was in Paris. “Oh!” said they, “—— is staying here,” and they gave me the address of a wretched little _hôtel borgne_ in a side street off the Boulevard. I went off to see him; it was the shabbiest house even in that shabbiest offshoot of a brilliant neighbourhood—one of those violent contrasts which are the essence of Paris. I rang at the bell and was looked over from head to foot; obviously a suspicious character. However, I sent up my card, was admitted, and joyously welcomed by my friend, who was lying in bed. It was three o’clock in the afternoon—half an hour later than my Lord Tomnoddy’s time for getting up. I asked the reason. His clothes were all in pawn! I wanted to wash my hands and asked for a towel. “I’m so sorry! I can’t lend you one; the people of the house won’t let me have any linen for fear of my pawning it, but there is a dirty flannel shirt in the corner—you can dry your hands on that!” I left him, carrying off his pawn-tickets, and went off to see whether I could make up a purse among some of our friends.
In an hour I was back with his garments liberated and a small sum of money to go on with—twenty pounds, I remember. He was soon dressed, as spick and span a dandy as you could meet in Bond Street, or on the Boulevard, handsome as a picture and as gay as if he had not a care in the world.
We went out to see another friend (not in difficulties) and I wanted to turn down the Rue Laffitte. Impossible!—there was a bootmaker there who would pounce upon him and make a scandal. So it was with several streets and several trades. At last we reached the flower-market outside the Madeleine. That was worst of all, for there was “an infernal old woman there whose fortune he had made by inventing a button-hole, and she would scratch his eyes out if he did not settle her wicked bill.” We parted in the Champs Elysées.
That night poor Greville Sartoris and I were going to see Pasca, the actress who was all the rage at the moment, and we dined first at the Café Anglais. When we got there whom should we see but my impecunious friend, beautifully got up, with a rosebud in his buttonhole, finishing a delicate little dinner with a _salade d’ananas_ and a pint of Perrier Jouet. When Georges, the waiter, came up with his bill, he said, “Tenez, Georges, il y a longtemps que je ne vous ai rien donné,” and gave him five napoleons, telling him to keep the change. I could not help exclaiming at this. “Ah! my dear fellow,” said he, “you don’t begin to know how to live on nothing at all. Those five napoleons will enable me to lunch and dine here for a month on credit!” And with that he opened his crush hat and went off to dazzle somebody else besides Georges and us.
My friend’s career had been remarkable. He was very handsome, very clever, and was successful in his profession; but he threw it up and preferred following the fortunes of the King of the Plungers. There was a short period of success, on the strength of which he mounted a little house in a very expensive street, engaged a first-rate cook, and gave choice dinners. That did not last long—there came a crisis, a crash, and an escape into that dingy disreputable hostelry off the Boulevard.
The King of the Plungers was Harry Hastings—the last Marquis—who was my fag at Eton. He was an attractive little boy, and I think that everybody liked him; but his ideas when he grew up were on too large a scale. He had no health, and by burning the candle at both ends, and in the middle, sealed his own fate.
Old Lord Wilton told me that when Hastings was Master of Hounds once the hounds came to a check and some of them were straying; he called out to him: “Blow your horn, Harry, blow your horn!” “That’s all very well, Lord Wilton,” he replied, “but if I blow my horn I shall be sick!” That did not suit the grand old horseman, one of the finest riders I ever saw, who once at Melton, when the field was stopped by a gate, came up behind, calling out: “I’ve got the key, gentlemen!” They all made a lane for him, and “the wicked Earl” as he was affectionately called, cantered up and flew over the gate like a bird.
Harry Hastings was not without a certain cleverness, and the ring knew it. Steel, the famous bookmaker of those days, was once heard to grumble as Hastings left him, after some transaction at the rails at Ascot: “Ah! my lord, Heaven’s been very gracious to you, for you look a fool and you ain’t one!”
* * * * *
The next day I was in London. I wonder whether other men feel the same shyness about coming home that I have always done, especially after having been a long time away in some remote country where everything is strange and topsy-turvy, as different from England as is the tinkling of a _samishen_ or _koto_ from the sonorous art of Bach or Beethoven. Then again, even an attaché is in his small way a person of some little consideration abroad, but Ambassadors, Governors, Ministers Plenipotentiary themselves, as soon as they reach London, are whirled like straws in the maelstrom, and count as little. Lord Dufferin gave the best and wittiest expression to this shrinkage of greatness when he said: “Twenty-five minutes of Pall Mall are enough to take the conceit even out of a Viceroy of India!”
Then think of the poor little attaché whose sleigh at a place like St. Petersburg (Petrograd from henceforth) has taken precedence of those of all the magnates in the land, and forgive him if for a moment he thought himself Somebody—pity him when he awakes from his dream and realizes that he is Nobody!
But the strangest feeling of all was the wonder as to how I should be received by those whose welcome had been looked to with such loving anticipation, and such timorous anxiety. I felt like a sort of pale and faded version of the prodigal son. I need have been under no fear. My father’s old servant, the faithful friend of a quarter of a century, met me at the station. The tears were in his good, old, kind eyes. My father was waiting for me at Hobart Place, and in half an hour my dear old cousin, Lord Redesdale, in spite of a sharp attack of gout, came in to shake me by the hand. It did not take long to make me feel as if I had never strayed away from home. Peking, Mongolia, Japan, the revolution, faded like shadows of dreamland. There were more grey hairs in my father’s head, a few coming in my own—otherwise little change. The Great Reaper had been merciful, for of those nearest and dearest to me the scythe of death had spared almost all.
I lost no time in reporting myself at the Foreign Office, where I found very few changes. Mr. Hammond was as kind as ever, and said many pleasant things to me about the work that I had done in the East, for he was always generous in his appreciation of any endeavour on the part of his subordinates. What pleased me very much was that I was to have a year’s leave. I had been a good deal knocked up by the strenuous life of the last two years in Japan, and my old friend, Dr. Quain, had commanded a rest, so the idea of a long holiday was very welcome—the more so as I was getting ready my “Tales of Old Japan” for the press, a formidable first plunge into the world of letters. Lord Clarendon, who was then Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, hearing that I was in the office, sent for me and kept me with him for some time, talking over the intricacies of the Japanese revolution, and bade me go and see him in Grosvenor Crescent. My own colleagues were to the full as gracious as the big men, so I had no reason to complain of my first visit to the Foreign Office.
Altogether I felt that I had come back to a kind and generous world, and when I went into certain drawing-rooms with the same arm-chairs, the same curtains, and the same Sèvres vases on the chimney-pieces as of yore, I hardly needed the cordial greeting to assure me that I was as much at home there as I had been five long years ago.
By no one was I made more welcome than by Mrs. Sartoris (Adelaide Kemble). She was a very old friend of ours, and I had known her from my boyhood. Her house was a gathering-place for all that was most distinguished in Letters and Art. Her dinners were perfection—never more than eight or ten—for her dining-room was small, and she knew better than to crowd her guests. She was now no longer young, but so witty, so full of pleasant memories, and one of the best leaders of talk that I ever knew. Of an evening she would be surrounded by such men as Charles Dickens, Matthew Arnold, Leighton, while Sir Charles Hallé would sit down at her piano and accompany Joachim or Madame Norman Neruda, the great artists playing just for the love of music and of her. The society was very catholic, for she was equally beloved of the stately dames who were the law-givers of the great world. She herself would sometimes sing some song of Gounod or Alary; her voice had grown rather thin, but the way in which she told the story of her song was exquisite.
I used to go most afternoons to tea in Park Place, just for the pleasure of hearing her talk. She had little patience with the affectations of the modern æsthetes then just coming into vogue. I remember once at the Monday Popular Concerts one of those young men coming up to her and saying: “Oh! Mrs. Sartoris, did you notice that divine diminished seventh?” “My dear boy,” was the answer, “don’t talk nonsense—a diminished seventh is mere grammar. You might as well rave about the divinity of an ablative absolute in a poem.”
She told us one day that as she had been hunting, as was her wont in the old shops in Wardour Street, a man, obviously a foreigner, followed her rather offensively. At last she turned round upon him and lifting her veil, said: “Il paraît que monsieur est amateur d’antiquités.” The man fled before the grand severe face. She had the beautiful features and the solemn expression of the Kemble family, reminding one of the great portrait of her aunt, Mrs. Siddons. When she was in a serious mood it was the countenance of a sibyl. It was a loss indeed when she, smitten by the unbearable grief of her son’s tragic death, thrown by his horse larking over a hurdle, sought refuge in solitude and silence. People even now delight in her “Week in a French Country House”—a description of life in the château of the Marquis de L’Aigle, who married Mrs. Sartoris’ sister-in-law. It was a dainty book illustrated by Leighton, but for myself I even preferred her “Past Hours.” Those who never knew her may there see the reflection of her brilliant talk; but nothing can give the effect of her words as she uttered them, her eager face lighted up by the fire of her fine imagination.
She had the greatest horror of evil-speaking and slandering. I was present once when somebody told an ugly story about a young married couple. She turned upon the speaker with withering scorn, and her eyes flashed as she said: “Why can’t you leave them alone? If you must abuse somebody abuse us old people. Don’t help to destroy any chance that the young ones may have of being happy. Besides, how do you know that you are not lending a hand in spreading a lie?” And so she crushed the pedlar of scandal, who had to carry his pack elsewhere.
I cannot remember whether her description of the violoncellist—a sly hit at her friend, the famous Piatti—who “bore his cross meekly in a world too much peopled with amateurs,” has ever been printed; even so it is worth repeating. One evening there was a discussion as to the relative advantages of married and unmarried life. She remained silent until a great friend of hers—an old bachelor—stuck up stoutly for the freedom of the unmarried. Then very softly she said: “Poor fellow! with nothing better to go home to than a flat candlestick!”
One night towards the end of May I was at the theatre with Charles Dickens and old Lady Molesworth. Just we three in a private box. Between the acts we had great fun. Dickens was in high spirits, brim-full of the _joie de vivre_. His talk had all the sparkle of champagne, and he himself kept laughing at the majesty of his own absurdities, as one droll thought followed another. He was not always in such a vein, for if he thought he was being lionized he would sit mumchance; but he really liked the old lady and of course I did not count; so he was at his ease and at his very best, so bright, so merry and—like his books—so human.
During the evening Lady Molesworth insisted on his naming a night to go and dine with her. The date was fixed and on the following day the invitations came out for a day in June. Alas! That dinner never came off, for on the 9th of June, two or three days before the night agreed upon, the whole English-speaking world was stricken with grief. Dickens was lying dead at his beloved Gad’s Hill. It seemed impossible. He had been so brilliant that night. He was only fifty-eight years of age, twenty years younger than I am at this time of writing, and though we knew that he suffered terribly from exhaustion after his readings, which seemed to sap all his energy, undermined as it had been by the strain of many troubles, added to hard and incessant work, he was at times still so young and almost boyish in his gaiety that it was an unspeakable shock.
Those murderous readings which killed him were enthralling. Never shall I forget the effect produced by his reading of the death of Steerforth; it was tragedy itself, and when he closed the book and his voice ceased the audience for a moment seemed paralysed, and one could almost hear a sigh of relief.
Had he, as he was once minded to do, taken up acting as a profession he would have been as famous as Garrick. Would the gaiety of nations have been as darkly eclipsed as it was when he died and “Edwin Drood” remained a mystery?
Lady Molesworth was a great figure-head in London society. At her house were to be met all the prominent personages in the great world, from the Prince of Wales downwards, and there was always a goodly leaven of Art and Literature. She had herself been a singer in early life, and was very kind to young and struggling professional musicians. When she married Sir William Molesworth she was the widow of Mr. Temple West, and it was her influence which converted Sir William, a mathematician, philosopher, and as much a recluse as a Parliamentarian and Secretary of State could be, into a man of the world. Their dinners under her auspices became famous, and when he died his last injunction to her was said upon her authority to have been “Keep up the little dinners.” He left his place in Cornwall, Pencarrow, to her for her lifetime, and in her hospitality there and in Eaton Place she liberally and loyally carried out his behests. The “little dinners” did more to keep the dead philosopher’s memory green than his great edition of “Hobbes” in sixteen volumes.
* * * * *
Here I may say a word about the early days of the Marlborough Club.
The Prince of Wales was above all things a man of the most social habits; the companionship of congenial friends was a necessity to him; he was essentially what Dr. Johnson called a clubable man, and so there came a moment when he felt the need of a club where he might go and play a rubber and smoke a cigar with his intimates without formality, as the spirit moved him. He made inquiries as to what club would best suit his purpose. White’s, then the smartest club in London, was suggested. Would he be free to smoke where he pleased? The old curled dandies of the terrible bay window, to walk below which was a terror to the young and innocent, said No!—there must be no smoking except in the appointed place. To them tobacco was as great an abomination as Ashtaroth to the Sidonians. That sealed the fate of White’s.
There was a freehold plot of land opposite Marlborough House. The site was bought, the house was built, and the Prince founded the club, himself becoming President. I was not an original member, for I was in the Far East when it was opened in the late autumn of 1869, but I was elected in the following May, immediately on my return home. Lord Tweeddale, then Lord Walden, was Chairman of the Committee, of which I became a member in 1871. At Lord Tweeddale’s death in 1878 Lord Colville of Culross was elected chairman, and when he died in 1902 I received the following letter from the secretary of the club.
“July 16th, 1902.
“MY LORD,
“I have the honour to inform you that at a special meeting of the General Committee held this afternoon your lordship was unanimously elected chairman of the committee for the ensuing year, and that you were proposed for the office by His Majesty the King, seconded by His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales.
“I have, etc.,
(Signed) C. H. STONE, “Secretary.”
I may be perhaps forgiven for recording an honour which is unique in club life. From that year to the present (1915) I have been re-elected every year.
From 1869 until the time when, after his accession, His Majesty removed to Buckingham Palace the Marlborough Club was King Edward’s favourite haunt. It was so convenient. He was able to cross over from Marlborough House with his gentleman-in-waiting, or, on his return from the opera or the play, to send away his carriage and walk home. When he took possession of the Palace it was less handy for him; he had to keep a carriage and servants which made a difficulty, and so the club saw less of him. But he continued—as, indeed, does King George—to take the greatest interest in its welfare, nothing being done without its being submitted to him, and once a year to the end, on his return from abroad, he did me the honour of dining with me there.
The hours in the old days of the club were very late. The Prince never seemed to know what fatigue meant. He would sit playing whist or writing letters—he was a most punctual and voluminous correspondent—till any hour. Often a party of us would stream into St. James’s Street in the grey dawn, to be distributed by hansom cabs in various directions, and sleep out the morning, cross if any mischance should awaken us. He, on the contrary, would often be off by the first train, radiant with health and strength and good humour, to attend some distant function, where he would shine as if he had spent the whole night in bed; for with him pleasure was never allowed to interfere with duty. After about 1880 he became more prudent and more conscious of the necessity of sparing a certain amount of time for sleep. Even then he did much work late at night.
American bowls were much the fashion in those days and the ground floor of the club was turned into a bowling alley, which has now been parcelled off into two billiard rooms. A good many of us regretted the noisy old alley which was a meeting-place for the happy little crowd that laughed there every night, none gayer, none more bright, none more instinct with the joy of life than the brilliant young Prince himself. Such was the Marlborough Club in the seventies. Downstairs skittles, fun and frolic; upstairs whist and the seriousness of the catacombs. Hartington, James Clay, Batchelor, St. Albans, Owen Williams and others, all as solemn as schoolmasters; the Prince himself leading the gravity up above as he had been leading the gaiety below, and playing a capital rubber. There are very few of the old set left and as one of the survivors wrote to me the other day, upon the death of another, “the leaves are falling fast.”
One afternoon—it was 1872, but I prefer to tell the story here—I was all alone in the club when Sleeman, the then steward of the club, came into the room surcharged with importance and told me that the Emperor of the French, who was a member, was down below, and asked permission to bring in the Duc de Bassano, who was his Lord Chamberlain. It was his first visit and I ran down to receive him, took him upstairs, and established him in an arm-chair with the evening paper. After a while he called me up and began questioning me as to my profession and the various posts at which I had been. We had a long talk, for he had to kill time waiting for his train.
Louis Napoléon, whose faculty of silence is a matter of history, was, when he chose, a very agreeable talker, and his conversation was pointed by a certain dry, sardonic humour accentuated by his rather saturnine appearance. He was looking miserably ill, his face ashen grey, and his lack-lustre eyes significant of the pain by which, for years, he had been tortured; his figure was bowed and aged—obviously a man waging an unequal war with disease. He talked a good deal about the missionary question in China and Corea, upon which he was thoroughly well posted, and he also spoke with a great deal of feeling about the murder of his men, the sailors of the _Dupleix_, in 1868. After half an hour’s talk with him I understood the charm which he exercised over men and women when he chose to do so. I also understood that when Kinglake fired all the arrows of bitterness at him there could be but one cause—a woman.
* * * * *
To go back to the year 1870. There was a great performance of the _Barbiere_ with Mario as Almaviva. I happened to be in the stage-box; Mario saw me, gave me a little friendly sign of greeting and welcome home. To my surprise who should come into the box between the acts but the Prince of Wales. He began talking in his old friendly way, very anxious to hear all about the Duke of Edinburgh’s reception in Japan, and bade me to dinner, _en petit comité_, on the following Sunday. It was a delightful little party of about ten people in the small upstairs dining-room—quite without ceremony.
The season of 1870 was brilliant. London was at its gayest. But London might dine, flock to the play or the opera, and dance to the strains of Strauss’s famous waltz, “An der schönen blauen Donau,” then a novelty; but trouble was brewing, the dogs of war were straining at their leashes, though men knew it not; and at the very moment when there was the most need for his services the pilot was torn from the helm—Lord Clarendon died.
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