CHAPTER V
JOURNALISM AND THE STAGE
(1864-1880)
After he had been unseated for Windsor, Mr. Labouchere went abroad for some months, most of which time he spent at Nice. He also went to Florence, and was at Homburg, in 1868, just before the General Election. His connection with journalism began at this period, as he sent frequent letters to the _Daily News_, both from Nice and Florence. These were always remarkable for their pithiness and wit, although he had by no means developed the style which he brought to perfection two years later as "The Besieged Resident," and which made his fame as a journalist. In 1868, he became part proprietor of the _Daily News_, which it was decided to issue for the future as a penny paper.[1] Sir John Robinson thus describes the syndicate of which Mr. Labouchere became a member: "The proprietors of the _Daily News_, a small syndicate which never exceeded ten men, were a mixed body, hardly any two of whom had anything in common. The supreme control in the ultimate resort rested with three of them, Mr. Henry Oppenheim, the well-known financier, with politics of no very decided kind; Mr. Arnold Morley, a Right Honourable, an ex-party Whip, {96} and a typical ministerial Liberal; and Mr. Labouchere, the Radical, financier, freelance. Others had but a small holding, and practically did not count, save as regards any moral influence they might bring to bear on their colleagues at Board meetings."[2]
The new editor selected for the penny _Daily News_ was Mr. Frank Hill, but the paper was run at a loss until the winter of 1870, when the special war news published in its columns caused the circulation to increase in one week from 50,000 to 150,000. Mr. Robinson, its far-seeing manager, attributed the success of the paper, at this period, first, to the excellence of his correspondents, and secondly, to his having insisted upon having the whole of his news telegraphed to London, instead of being transmitted by the post. The number of the correspondents on the staff of the _Daily News_ during the war was seventeen, of which the chief was Mr. Archibald Forbes, who may be rightly described as a prince among journalists. Henry Labouchere too had the main _heureuse_ where newspapers were concerned. His Paris letters were eagerly read all over the civilised world, the excitement and interest created by them being even more vehement in America than in London. The fortune of the _Daily News_ was made,[3] and from then onwards for many years the great organ of Liberalism grew and flourished. When Mr. Labouchere sold his share[4] in 1895 he did so at a large profit. As I shall not have occasion to return again to Mr. Labouchere's financial connection with the _Daily News_, {97} I shall give in this place an account Mr. Lionel Robinson recently wrote to me of the transaction: "So many contradictory statements have been put forward in the press with reference to the late Mr. Labouchere's pecuniary interest in the _Daily News_, that you may not be unwilling to find space for the recollections of one who heard at the time, and subsequently, various versions of the story. My own impression, derived from personal intercourse, is that some time about 1868 or a little later, Mr. Labouchere purchased a quarter share in the newspaper for about £14,000, and further, that the vendor was Mr. Henry Rawson of Manchester. I do not pretend to know what were the annual profits of the paper, beyond the fact that they increased enormously during the twenty years dating from the Austro-Prussian War and its subsequent developments. It was, therefore, not surprising that when Mr. Labouchere decided to sell his share in the paper it should have commanded a high price. I have heard it, from a certain distance of time from the event, placed as high as £92,000, but my personal recollection is that the sum mentioned by Mr. Labouchere was £62,000 or thereabouts."
In one of Mr. Labouchere's letters from Nice to the _Daily News_ he gave a characteristic account of some of his compatriots abroad. The following quotation from it will show the reader that, if he had not yet acquired the style of his later work, the spirit of it was very active--the spirit which made him hate mediocrity and pretentiousness: "Here, as in almost every foreign watering-place, there is a colony of English Bohemians, who live among themselves, give each other tea parties and such mild festivities, frequent charity and other public balls, abuse each other and every one else, pet the English clergyman or denounce his doctrines, worry their Consul with every kind of complaint and requirement, and keep up a gallant and hopeless struggle to penetrate into foreign society. As most of them only speak their own language, as the men, who, no doubt, have many {98} solid virtues, are devoid of the art of pleasing in a mixed society, and the women, pillars as they are of virtue, have little of the Siren about them, foreign society does not respond to their advances."[5]
Labouchere was not so successful over his speculation in theatre property. In the October of 1867, Messrs. Telbin and Moore did up the New Queen's Theatre, formerly St. Martin's Hall, in Long Acre, and it was opened under the management of Mr. Alfred Wigan, one of the most accomplished comedians of the day. Mr. Alfred Wigan had a mysterious partner in management, and Herman Merivale, who had written a most successful farce, as the curtain raiser for the new theatre, gives a charming little account of his discovery of the identity of the mysterious personage. Alfred Wigan soon wanted some melodrama for the theatre, and Merivale wrote a play. Wigan told him that he must submit it to his partner. "Two or three days afterwards," writes Merivale, "I was sent in fear and trembling to the manager's room at the Queen's, to meet the mysterious partner. I was introduced, and, sitting at the table with a cigarette in his mouth, I saw Labouchere. 'Good Lord!' he said, 'are _you_ the eminent author?' 'Heavens!' quoth I, 'are _you_ the mysterious partner?'
"Both of us had carefully concealed our hidden sin at the dinner party.[6] What struck me most was a small array of bills of the new play hung all round, each printed with a different title, that the mysterious partner might see which looked best. It was, at all events, bold expenditure. _Time and the Hour_ was the title that the authors[7] had hit upon; and Labouchere decided that it should be chosen. 'It's a splendid title, I think,' he said. 'Delighted that you {99} say so,' was my flattered answer. 'It really is, you know. Do for any play whatever that ever was written.'"[8]
_Time and the Hour_, as it turned out, was, in its way, a kind of curiosity. For the cast comprised, besides Wigan himself, a whole bouquet of coming managers, some of whom were at the beginning of their professional careers. There were J. L. Toole, Lionel Brough, John Clayton, and Charles Wyndham. Other plays acted at the Queen's Theatre under Mr. Labouchere's management were Tom Taylor's _Twixt Axe and Crown_, and H. J. Byron's _Dearer than Life_. In the former the lovely Mrs. Wybert Rousby flashed for the first time in her full beauty on the London stage, and in the latter the cast included Henry Irving, J. L. Toole, John Clayton, Lionel Brough, and Charles Wyndham, and last, but most important of all, as Lucy, that clever artist and fascinating personality, Henrietta Hodson, who afterwards became Mrs. Labouchere. Another star at the Queen's Theatre, during the first year of Mr. Labouchere's management, was Ellen Terry. She thus describes herself playing there in the _Double Marriage_. "As Rose de Beaurepaire," she writes, "I wore a white muslin Directoire dress and looked absurdly young. There was one curtain which used to convulse Wyndham. He had a line, 'Whose child is this?' and there was I looking a mere child myself, and with a bad cold in my head too, answering: 'It's _bine_!' The very thought of it used to send us off into fits of laughter."[9]
A contemporary picture of Mr. Labouchere at this time is given by Mr. George Augustus Sala, in his _Life and Adventures_. Mr. Labouchere had begged Sala to write him a play, full of exciting situations. "An appointment was made with him," said Sala, "to meet Halliday (another dramatic author) and myself at ten o'clock one evening at the Queen's Theatre. He was then one of the members for the County of Middlesex. He struck me as being in all respects a {100} remarkable man, full of varied knowledge, full withal of humorous anecdotes, and with a mother wit very pleasant to listen to. His conversation was to me additionally interesting, because, when I was in Mexico, I had gone over most of the ground which he had travelled."
The first numbers of _Truth_ abound with news of the Queen's Theatre, and the unvarnished accounts Mr. Labouchere gave of the contretemps that occurred during his management, and the strange, unexpected things that happened, possibly contributed to the lack of consideration he experienced as a theatrical manager. Here is part of an article devoted to the art of the stage, published during the first year of _Truth_: "The play on which I lost most was an adaptation of _The Last Days of Pompeii_. Everything went wrong in this piece. I wanted to have--after the manner of the ancients--acrobats dancing on the tight rope over the heads of the guests at a feast. The guests, however, absolutely declined to be danced over. Only one acrobat made his appearance. A rope was stretched for him, behind the revellers, and I trusted to stage illusion for the rest. The acrobat was a stout negro. Instead of lightly tripping it upon his rope, he moved about like an elephant, and finally fell off his rope, like a stricken buffalo. In the second act the head of a statue was to fall off, and to crush Mr. Ryder, who was a magician. There was a man inside the statue, whose mission was to push over its head. With folded arms and stern air, Mr. Ryder gazed at the statue, awaiting the portentous event that was to crush him to the earth, notwithstanding the mystic power that he wielded. The head remained firm on its neck. The man inside had solaced himself with so much beer, that he was drunk and incapable, and Mr. Ryder had, much to the amazement of the audience, to knock down the head that was to crush him. In the third act the stage represented a Roman amphitheatre. In the midst of a gorgeously dressed crowd sat Mr. Ryder. 'Bring forth the lion!' he said. The audience thrilled at the idea {101} of a real lion being marched on to the stage. Now I had no lion, and I had discarded the idea of putting a lion skin on a donkey. An attendant therefore walked in and said, 'Sir, the lion will not come.' Those of the audience who were not hissing, roared with laughter. The last act was to represent the eruption of Vesuvius and the destruction of Pompeii. The mountain had only been painted just in time for the 'first night.' I had never seen it. What was my horror when the curtain rose upon a temple with a sort of large sugar loaf behind it. At first I could not imagine what was the meaning of this sugar loaf. But when it proceeded to emit crackers I found that it was _Vesuvius_!"[10]
Sometimes he let the theatre, and on that subject he was almost pathetic: "Whenever this theatre is to let," he wrote, "I am complimented by numerous persons with proposals which prove that I am regarded by them as the most credulous and confiding of human beings--hardly indeed a human being, but a simple, convenient lamb ... nothing that I can do convinces them that I am not a lamb covered with nice long wool and eager to be shorn. On these occasions I remember that the tempering of the wind to the shorn lamb is, after all, but a poetical figure, and therefore I take care to meet the tempest with a fleece on my back."[11] He had not a high opinion of dramatic artists, as men of business. "I confess," he said, "that for my own part I have never understood the meaning of high art in its dignified aspect. I never, in the course of my existence, came across one of its votaries--painter, sculptor, author, or architect--who was ready to sacrifice one farthing of his own at its shrine. I once was the owner of a theatre, and I was perpetually at war with authors and actors who wanted me to ruin myself on the altar of high art, but I soon found that this was a term which they used for their own fads. Once I produced a play by Charles Reade. It was a failure, and on the first night I was sitting with him in a box. 'They {102} seem to be hissing, Mr. Reade,' I said. 'What of that?' he replied; 'if you want to please such a public as this, you should not come to me for a play.'"[12] He had an amusing story too to relate of how he rode roughshod over Tom Taylor's artistic prejudices by insisting upon a chemical fire being lit upon the stage at his production of the latter's _Joan of Arc_, in the flames of which the heroine (Mrs. Rousby) was to perish realistically, instead of being wafted to Heaven in the arms of angels, as the author had planned she should be. But the story of his theatre-management days that he was fondest of telling was in connection with the late Sir Henry Irving. The latter, at a big banquet he gave to a party of his friends, was relating some of the events of his professional career. "And to think, Labby," he said, turning to his old friend, "that I was once receiving five pounds a week from you!" "Three pounds, Henry, my boy," retorted Labouchere quickly, "only three."
He professed the greatest contempt, and considering the financial failure of his management of the Queen's Theatre, perhaps naturally so, for those stingy votaries of pleasure who were always cadging him for orders for his theatre. "Theirs," he said, "is the meanest, most sneaky and contemptible form of beggary." But he got the better of one of these beggars. One day his tailor asked him for an order. He sent it to him, but the next morning he sent the tailor an "order" entitling the bearer to a new suit of clothes. The tailor, realising the tit for tat, sensibly complied with the request, but ever afterwards bought his tickets for the "Queen's" in the conventional manner. Another set of persons who encountered his righteous wrath in his theatre days were the would-be dramatic authors. He described how hundreds of worthless plays were sent him, resembling, in their incoherence and lack of perspective, the crude pencil drawings of infants. He gave in _Truth_ the opening of one of them, further than which, he explained, he did not read: {103} "The broad Mississippi is seen rolling its turbid flood towards the ocean, and carrying with it the debris of a village. Steamers come and go on its surface. On a frail raft a man and a woman are crossing the river. Enter the negroes from a plantation monotonously singing."[13]
He attributed the failure of his own adaptation of Sardou's _La Patrie_ to the narrow powers of appreciation possessed by Londoners. "They fancy," he wrote, "that no drama or melodrama can be good, which does not conform to certain rules. The heroine must be the purest and the best of her sex; she must engage in a struggle with adverse circumstances, and with bad men; and she must emerge, in the last act, triumphant. The audience, in fact, must leave the theatre, not only pleased with her acting, but with her. Now, the heroine of _Fatherland_ is Dolores, and the plot turns upon her betrayal of her husband. This was fatal to the success of the play, but it is an open question whether it ought to have been fatal to it. Conventionalism is the bane of advance in art."
All things considered, it was not surprising that Mr. Labouchere's proprietorship of the Queen's Theatre was a financial failure. Joseph Hatton gives a curious description of the way in which Mr. Labouchere managed the business, the facts of which he got from the same personal interview already quoted: "Sometimes he brought out plays himself. He generally lost by them, but now and then had a success. Occasionally in the preparations for a new production he would go abroad. When particularly wanted by the management, he could not be found. The work went on, however, all the same, and so did the loss. Once he was advised to cram the house for a week with orders, so that nobody could get in. The traditional 'Full' was posted at all the entrances. He did this on condition that, after a week, every one should be compelled to pay. When the second week came the house was empty. Then the actors complained. {104} They could not act to empty benches. 'Why don't you draw?' was Labouchere's reply to their grievance. 'Draw! confound it! Why don't you draw?' He announced Shakespearean revivals, proposing to produce one new play of the bard's in splendid style every year. Notices were put up at all the entrances, inviting the audiences to vote on the piece. For a long time he worked up quite an excitement by posting up the result of the voting. 'This was a capital idea; it increased the number who paid at the door immensely.' Nevertheless the Queen's did not prove a success, and it has lately been converted into a co-operative store."[14]
At every period of his life, Mr. Labouchere displayed all the happiest characteristics of the Bohemian, or, what comes to the same thing, the instincts of the real aristocrat. He was comfortably at home in whatever social milieu he happened to find himself--a camp of nomadic Indians, a Court ball, a rowdy hustings, the manager's room of a London theatre, the _vie intime_ of a royal country house, or the bourgeois domesticity of a thrifty German home--and he was welcomed and appreciated in every one of them--except by the prigs and the bores.
He knew his London well. "I have lived in London many years. I have known the seamy side of London life for far more than a quarter of a century, and am familiar with every detail of the 'old days' as they are called. I can compare the present with the past, decency with disgust, order with license, and remember the time when we supped in a cellar under the Portico, where the Pall Mall restaurant now stands, when the Haymarket cafés were open as long as customers patronised them. I can recall the nights when Panton Street and Jermyn Street were lined with watchmen and confederates, and admittance was only gained to certain favoured meeting-places by giving a sign, or peeping through a slit in the door or guichet.... I have seen a Chancellor {105} and a Cabinet Minister watching with amused gaze a scene, which was at least decorous on the surface, at the Argyll Rooms in Windmill Street, and, listening to excellent music, I have sat unnoticed up in the corner of the old Holborn Casino, where the Holborn restaurant now stands. I have seen some wild scenes at the Foley Street rooms (Mott's) in the early hours of the morning, and hideous scenes at 222 Piccadilly--the 'Pic' as it was then called--since pulled down and destroyed for the now palatial Criterion. In the warm summer nights I have driven down to Cremorne, and wandered there till the daylight, in lilac and purple, came out above the tall trees and put out the yellow glare of the gas. I have even condescended to the decorous dissipation of Caldwell's dancing rooms, beloved by milliners, and now turned into a National School. I have been an eye-witness of the ups and downs of London life, and the so-called humours of the West End. I have observed the contest between common-sense and prudery, between the men of liberal mind and those determined to make the vicious virtuous by Act of Parliament. I have lived through the changes of licensing rules and closing hours, and seen one place of amusement after another shut up and confiscated--the decorous tarred with the same brush as the dirty. Cremorne and the Holborn Casino bombarded equally with Mott's and the Piccadilly Saloon,..." he wrote in the course of an article, which ended with one of the most powerful indictments of British virtue ever published,[15] and it was during the sixteen years that elapsed between his departure from the Diplomatic Service and his entrance to the House as the "Christian" member for Northampton that he acquired most of his vast experimental knowledge of the artistic and vagabond side of human nature about town.
He was close upon fifty when he entered upon his serious Parliamentary life, which was, as all who knew him well are {106} aware, but a phase, though an important one, in his extraordinarily varied career. Three episodes stand out with clearness, apart from his abortive electioneering experiences already described, in the years between 1864 and his first Northampton election--his residence in Paris throughout the siege, his connection with the _World_, as its financial editor, and his founding of his own weekly publication, _Truth_. The first of these is described in a separate chapter, and so, with equal necessity, is the third. For an account of how he came to be on the staff of the World we must go to the _Recollections_ of the late Mr. Edmund Yates himself, who relates that, previous to launching the first number of his journal upon the public, he had issued a very original prospectus. "I had also sent a prospectus to Mr. Henry Labouchere," he continued, "with whom I had a slight acquaintance, and whose services as a literary freelance might, I thought, be utilised. Some days after, I saw Mr. Labouchere on the Cup Day at Ascot, seated on the box of a coach. I asked him if he had heard from me, and he said, 'Oh, yes,' adding that he 'thought the prospectus very funny.' 'But,' I said, 'will you help us in carrying it out--will you be one of us?' 'You don't mean to say,' he replied, 'that you actually mean to start a paper of the kind set forth?' I told him most assuredly we did, and that we wanted his assistance. He laughed more than ever, and said he would let me know about it. A few days after, I heard from him, proposing to write a series of city articles, which he actually commenced in the second number."
Labouchere's preliminary article in the _World_[16] was extremely droll. It began as follows: "Some years ago, Mr. John F. Walker, having derived a considerable fortune from cheating at cards in Mississippi steamboats, determined to enjoy his well-earned gains in his native city of New York, and purchased an excellent house in that metropolis. In order to add to his income he advertised that he was a {107} 'reformed gambler,' and, for a consideration, would instruct novices in all the tricks of his trade. Mr. Walker was universally esteemed by his fellow-citizens, and died last year, greatly regretted by a numerous body of friends and admirers. In casting about for the city editor for our journal, we have fallen upon a gentleman, who, by promoting rotten companies, puffing worthless stock, and other disreputable, but strictly legal, devices, has earned a modest competence. He resides in a villa at Clapham, he attends church every Sunday with exemplary regularity, and is the centre of a most respectable circle of friends; many of his old associates still keep up their acquaintance with him, and therefore he is in a position to know all that passes in the city. This reformed speculator we have engaged to write our city article."
The staff of writers selected by Mr. Yates for the first year of the _World_ was a singularly efficient one. It comprised, besides Mr. Labouchere, Mr. T. H. S. Escott, Dr. Birkbeck Hill, Lord Winchelsea (who contributed articles on racing and turf matters), M. Camilla Barrère, Mrs. Lynn Linton, Mr. F. I. Scudamore, Mr. Archibald Forbes, and Mr. Henry Lucy (who commenced, in the eighth number, his series of Parliamentary Sketches, "Under the Clock"). But, in spite of the excellent writers engaged on its production, the _World_ did not sell well. Again it was the _main heureuse_ of Henry Labouchere that gave the necessary push to make the new weekly go. Mr. Yates writes as follows: "Mr. Labouchere was dealing with City matters in a way which they had never been dealt with before, and ruthlessly attacking and denouncing Mr. Sampson, the city editor of the _Times_, whose position and virtue had hitherto been considered impregnable. All these features ... received due appreciation from our provincial _confrères_, and the 'trade,' but, as yet, they seemed to have made no impression on the public. We were in the desperate condition of having a good article to sell without the power of making that fact known. At last, and just in the nick of time, we obtained the requisite {108} public notice, and without paying anything for it. A stockbroker, a member of the Stock Exchange, who conceived himself likely to be attacked for certain practices by Mr. Labouchere in the city article, threatened to horsewhip that gentleman, should such observations appear, and Mr. Labouchere had the would-be assailant brought before the Lord Mayor for threatening to commit a breach of the peace. The case was really a trivial one, and it was settled by the defendant being bound over in sureties for good behaviour. But it had been argued at full length, each side being represented by eminent lawyers; Mr. Thesiger, Q.C., appeared for the defendant and Mr. (afterwards Sir) George Lewis for Mr. Labouchere. A great deal was said about the _World_, and its determination to purge Capel Court of all engaged in iniquitous dealings. All that was said was reported at length in the daily papers. The effect was instantaneous; the circulation rose at once, and the next week showed a very large increase of advertisements."
The case, as Mr. Yates says, was a trivial one, but remarkable for Mr. Labouchere's irresistibly funny way of giving evidence. It was tried on October 14, 1874, at the Guild Hall, and in answer to the Lord Mayor, he gave the most absurd account of the assault as it occurred:
"'I said to him (Mr. Abbott): "I presume that if you were attacked in a newspaper unfairly, you would bring an action for libel, and if you won it you would get heavy damages." He replied: "I should not go into Court; I know what newspapers want; they always want to go into Court, it is a fine advertisement for them. I should horsewhip the man." "Well," I said, "under the circumstances, the observation is a personal one, and I reply to you, in the words of Dr. Johnson, 'I shall not be deterred from unmasking a scoundrel by the menaces of a ruffian.'" He then said he presumed I meant this for him, or something of that sort. I said, "Well, it looks like it. You were just now talking about horsewhipping; why don't you begin?"'
{109}
"_Mr. Thesiger_: 'In that tone of voice?'
"'Very much like that,' drawled on Mr. Labouchere. 'He then stared at me, and I repeated: "Well, why don't you begin?" I don't know what his object was, but he rolled himself about and threw up his hands. I presume he intended to frighten me by an exhibition of what he imagined to be a pugilistic attitude more than anything else. I again said: "Why do you not begin?" He then hit me a blow."
"Have you any fear of Mr. Abbott?" asked Mr. Lewis, later on in the proceedings. "Well, no," replied Mr. Labouchere. "When I was at Spezia, I used to bathe a good deal in the Gulf and there were a quantity of porpoises--" But what Mr. Abbott's behaviour had to with porpoises, was never revealed to the Court, for, in spite of the hisses of the audience, who wanted to hear the end of Mr. Labouchere's story, Mr. Thesiger interrupted, saying sharply: "This is really making a farce of a Court of Justice."
"I am a calculator, not a speculator," was one of Labouchere's retorts to Mr. Thesiger. "A distinction," said Mr. Thesiger, when summing up for his client, "that Mr. Labouchere will be able to explain to his own satisfaction, but perhaps not to that of other people."
Mr. Grenville Murray was another able writer on the staff of the _World_, and was for some time Mr. Yates's partner in the proprietorship of the paper, but the partnership was dissolved because Mr. Yates disapproved of Murray's repeated attacks upon Lord Derby. It would have been well if Mr. Labouchere had been as prudent as Mr. Yates. When Mr. Labouchere started _Truth_, he persuaded Mr. Grenville Murray to write some of his "Queer Stories," and it was one of these that brought upon the editor of _Truth_ the wrath, never to be assuaged, of a very important personage. Mr. Labouchere told me once that, by some accident, he never saw the "Queer Story" in question, until it had actually appeared in print. Had he done so, he should never have {110} permitted its publication. Reference had already been made to Mr. Labouchere's somewhat imprudent championship of the ex-Consul of Odessa, but, when it was asserted in a much-read weekly that Mr. Labouchere was the proprietor of the Queen's _Messenger_,[17] he was obliged to send the following letter to the _Times_:
2 BOLTON STREET, July 5, 1869.
SIR,--Having been informed that the proprietorship of the _Queen's Messenger_ has been attributed to me by a weekly newspaper, I shall be much obliged to you to allow me a space in your columns to deny the statement. I have not, and never had, directly or indirectly, anything to do with the _Queen's Messenger_.
HENRY LABOUCHERE.
An old member of the staff of the _World_, in a recently published article commenting upon certain unintentional misstatements of a definite nature that had appeared from time to time in the press in connection with the two gifted editors respectively of the _World_ and _Truth_, said, after dealing with one relating to Mr. Labouchere's supposed partnership with Mr. Yates: "Equally contrary to fact is the statement, even more generally made and accepted, that Mr. Labouchere severed his connection with the _World_, and founded _Truth_, as the sequel of personal differences between himself and his sometime editor. No such personal differences occurred at any period; and, though Yates would have been more than human if he had rejoiced at the decision of a particularly able member of his staff to leave him, in order to start another journal, planned on parallel lines and appealing to the same {111} public, he was far too shrewd a man of the world to show any sense of grievance or resentment. It happened that the news of Mr. Labouchere's project first reached his editor's ears through the medium of a third person; and on being challenged by Yates, as to the truth of the rumour, the imperturbable 'Labby' characteristically replied that he had decided for the future to have a pair of boots of his own with which to do his own kicking. Rivals, in a journalistic sense, as they thenceforth necessarily became, the friendly personal relations between the two were maintained to the last, and the weekly mutual corrections of 'Henry' by 'Edmund' and vice versa, which caused so much diversion to the readers of both papers, were conducted at all times in an entirely amicable spirit."[18]
Mr. Montesquieu Bellew, another journalist of that time, was an _intime_ of Mr. Labouchere's. On the occasion of Mr. Bellew's son choosing the stage as his profession, Mr. Labouchere took the opportunity of writing in _Truth_ a racy article, in which he related the whole story of his friendship and travels in company with this most unconventional parson. They must indeed have been a queer pair, and it is interesting to imagine the effect they must have produced together at the various _tables d'hôte_ and social functions they attended on their journey. They became acquainted in this wise. Mr. Labouchere was idling one day on the steps of his hotel at Venice, when he noticed a gentleman paying his bill and tipping the porters preparatory to taking his departure. His carriage was waiting for him at the door. "Where are you going?" said Mr. Labouchere, on the impulse of the moment. "To the Holy Land," replied the stranger. "Wait five minutes," replied Labouchere, "and I will come with you." He flew to his room and flung his clothes into his portmanteau and joined Mr. Bellew, who was waiting for him. He did not, however, discover the identity of his travelling companion until they reached Jerusalem, although he knew that he was {112} a clergyman, because every night before retiring to rest Mr. Bellew pressed a manuscript sermon into his hand, for "night-reading." At Jerusalem, Mr. Bellew broke to him that, his bishop being in the place, he should probably be asked to preach in the English Church. Labouchere took this as a hint that Mr. Bellew would like him to be present, so he made his plans accordingly. Finding out at what precise moment of the service the sermon would begin, he marched into the church with great impressiveness, at the head of a large band of Arabs and others, whom he had bribed to accompany him. This, he explained afterwards to Bellew, was to create in the bishop's mind the impression that Bellew was such a prodigy of piety that even the inhabitants of the country places of Syria had heard of his fame and were come in flocks to gaze upon him. The bishop's annoyance on the occasion he assured Bellew was entirely due to his jealousy of his more popular _confrère_. They quarrelled on the journey. Bellew pointed out to Labouchere a small stream. "That," he said, "is the source of the Jordan." Labouchere pointed out another stream, declaring that that and that alone was the source of the Jordan. They argued the matter hotly, but Labouchere was not aware how deeply Bellew had taken the affair to heart, until he found himself in bed that night with no manuscript sermon under his pillow. But Bellew was a Christian and a man of tact. The next day in the course of their wanderings, they came upon another minute trickle of water. "That," said Bellew, with a note of conciliation in his voice, "is the source of the Jordan; we were both in the wrong yesterday." "Of course it is," assented Labouchere; "how in the world we came to make such a mistake I can't imagine." From Jerusalem they went on to the Dead Sea. Bellew had picturesque-looking long white hair, which he would comb and arrange before a looking-glass that accompanied him on all his travels. This looking-glass got upon Labouchere's nerves, so one day "I got hold of it," he related, "and sent it to join Sodom and Gomorrah beneath the {113} gloomy waters that stretched out beneath us. The next night, we pitched our tent in the desert. Dire was the confusion on rising. The looking-glass could not be found. I held my tongue respecting its fate. Probably some day or another some eminent explorer, poking about the bottom of the Dead Sea, will fish up this looking-glass, and we shall have archæologists divided in opinion, one half proving that it belonged to a lady of Sodom and the other half that it was the property of a gentleman of Gomorrah. Bellew was equal to the occasion. He managed to arrange his hair by looking into the back of a dessert spoon."[19] Mr. Bellew contributed a most interesting account of his journey to the East in the first number of _Temple Bar_ called "Over Babylon to Baalbeck."[20] He does not, however, mention in it his travelling companion, nor any of the incidents referred to by Mr. Labouchere in his account of the same journey. Mr. Bellew subsequently joined the Church of Rome, and died in 1874. On one of Mr. Labouchere's frequent visits to Italy, he met Dumas _père_, with whom he had an amusing adventure. Strolling into a restaurant at Genoa for breakfast, he perceived Dumas at another table, and, seated by his side, a very pretty girl, dressed like a Circassian boy, young enough to be Dumas's granddaughter. To continue the story in his own words: "Dumas told me that they had just landed from a yacht and were spending the day in Genoa. He introduced the girl to me as Emile. After luncheon he proposed that we should all take a carriage, and go and see a show villa in the neighbourhood. When we reached the villa, we were told that it was not open to the public on that day. 'Inform your master,' said Dumas to the servant, 'that Alexandre Dumas is at his door.' The servant returned, and told us that we could enter. We were ushered into a dining-room, presenting a typically Italian domestic scene. The father and mother of the family were present, and several well-grown boys and girls. Dumas was somewhat taken aback for a {114} moment, but introduced Emile and me vaguely as '_mes enfants_.' As we were asked to sit down to coffee we made ourselves at home. Afterwards the owner showed us his garden. He and Dumas walked first. Emile and I wandered about hand-in-hand to denote our brotherly and sisterly affection. The Circassian was in a playful mood, and told me that Dumas was of a jealous disposition, which grandfathers sometimes are. He had one eye on the beauties of the garden and the other on his children. 'What are you doing?' said Dumas. I replied that I was embracing my sister. As he could not well object to this, for once, I think, I got the better of the lady's eminent grandfather." He had a story too of the younger Dumas. Labouchere was at the wedding of Mlle. Maria Dumas, and her brother, on coming to the sacristy with all the family friends for the signature of the register, looked at the document for a minute, as if perusing it carefully, and then said with mock gravity, "The accused have nothing further to add for their defence? Be it so!" And then he signed.
Mr. Labouchere's curiosity at this period of his life was insatiable. He wanted to know what it felt like to be a criminal about to be hanged. So, having procured an invitation to see all over Newgate, he carried out his experiment, and described his sensations in the columns of the _Daily News_. After giving a vivid account of the prison and some of its inmates, he wrote the following realistic lines: "And now we were led through a long stone passage open to the sky. This was the Newgate graveyard. Beneath each flag is the corpse of a murderer, and on the walls opposite are their initials, which have been cut by the warders to guide them through this murderous labyrinth. At the other end of the passage is the execution yard. The scaffold is put up the night before an execution, in a corner close by the door through which the condemned prisoner issues. The court is surrounded by high gloomy walls, and looks like the ante-chamber of Hades. I asked the warder whether in his opinion murderers {115} preferred being executed in public or private. He opined the former. 'The crowd keeps them up,' he said. 'They are not so firm, now it takes place in private.' I understand this feeling. If I were going to be hanged myself I should like the ceremony to take place _coram populo_. I should feel myself already dead in that dreary yard; and I should prefer, I imagine, after weeks or months of prison life, to have one more look at the world, even though that world were a howling mob, before quitting it for ever.
"We passed through the chapel and were shown the chair on which the prisoners condemned to death are perched--in obedience to what seems to me a barbarous custom--to hear their last sermon, and then we entered the 'Press Room.' It is a room of moderate size with plain deal tables, benches, and cupboards. One of these latter the warder opened, and showed us Jack Sheppard's chains, and other interesting relics, which are as religiously preserved as though they had belonged to saints. A leather sort of harness was also brought out. It consisted of two belts with straps attached to the lower one for the wrists. This is the murderer's last dress, and with it round him he walks to the scaffold. I tried it on, and when my hands were buckled to my side, I pictured to myself my sensations if I had been waiting to fall into the procession to the neighbouring yard. I heard my funeral bell toll; I saw the ordinary by my side; the warders telling me that my time was up; Calcraft bustling about eager to begin. So strong was the impression that I hastened to get out of the prison, and was not fully convinced that I was not going to be hanged until I found myself in the midst of a crowd in Fleet Street, who, for reasons best known to themselves, were cheering the 'Claimant,' who was issuing from a shop, while a chimney sweep who was passing by was welcomed as Bogle, being mistaken for that dusky retainer."[21]
With reference to the "Claimant," Mr. George Augustus {116} Sala has a curious story to relate about him and Mr. Labouchere, who, of course, took the greatest interest in the famous trial. "I saw a great deal of the Claimant during 1872," says Mr. Sala, "and I remember once dining with him and the late Mr. Serjeant Ballantine at the house of Mr. Labouchere, who then resided in Bolton Street, Piccadilly. The senior member for Northampton had, upon occasion, a curious way of putting things; and over the walnuts and the wine--of which our host was not a partaker--he startled us all by coolly asking his obese guest, 'Are you Arthur Orton?' 'Good Heavens, Mr. Labouchere,' exclaimed the stout litigant, 'what do you mean?' 'Oh, nothing in particular,' quoth Mr. Labouchere; 'help yourself to some more claret.'"[22]
Mr. Labouchere however afterwards was quite convinced that the Claimant was not Orton. When the latter was released from penal servitude in 1884, he published the following reminiscence:
"It is a curious fact that during his trial the London papers sold more copies than during the Franco-Prussian War, or any other recent eventful epoch. I confess that it never was proved absolutely to my mind that he was Arthur Orton; on the other hand, whilst there was the strongest presumption that he was, he entirely failed to make out that he was Sir Roger Tichborne. I remember once during the trial, in company with Mr. G. A. Sala, passing an evening with the 'stout nobleman' at his hotel in Jermyn Street. We found him very pleasant, and he told us many tales of his existence in Australia. He certainly had a wonderful command over his features. On that last day of the civil trial, the room at the hotel was filled with adherents, many of whom were Tichborne bondholders. Suddenly the Claimant walked in. He leant against the mantelpiece, took his cigar out of his mouth, and announced the fatal news. Great was the excitement, great was the despair and {117} the indignation. But the Claimant calmly smoked on, apparently the only person in the room who had no sort of interest in the matter."[23]
Soon after Mr. Labouchere's founding of _Truth_, he became involved in several lawsuits, the most famous of which, at this period, was the one which indirectly led to his expulsion from the Beefsteak Club. He invariably commented with great wit and asperity upon his enemies, frustrated and otherwise, in the columns of his paper, and there is no doubt that its enormous popularity depended in large degree upon the fearlessness and unconventionality with which he attacked all persons of high degree and low, guilty of injustice, bullying, _snobisme_, or wilfully ignorant prejudice, who, for long, had been silently endured by their weaker brethren, for no other reason than because there had never before been a--Labby.
Sometimes he was accused by an envious press of being a liar. The title he had chosen for his paper possibly provoked the criticism. He was rather sensitive on the subject, and expressed a certain amount of annoyance whenever the well-known ditty of Sir Henry Bridges, "Labby in our Abbey," which was published in M. A. P., was mentioned.[24] In _Truth_ he once produced what may be called an apposite alibi when confronted by the accusation. Some correspondent had referred rather pointedly to the existence of Lying Clubs in the last century. "There is no occasion to go back to the last century to prove the existence of Lying Clubs," {118} he wrote. "When I was at Bishop-Auckland in County Durham, a few years ago, I found a Lying Club existing and flourishing. There were different grades of proficiency. If a man could not lie at all, he was expelled. If he lied rather badly, he was given another trial. I never knew any one expelled. I was blackballed."
[1] _The Daily News_ was the first Liberal daily paper to be published in London and at first cost fivepence. It was afterwards reduced to threepence.
[2] Sir John Robinson, _Fifty Years of Fleet Street_.
[3] It was humorously said at the period that Mr. Robinson (the Manager of the _Daily News_) and Count Bismarck were the only persons who had gained by the war, and that only the former deserved to do so.
[4] Mr. Labouchere gave the following reasons for severing his connection with the _Daily News_. "On Mr. Gladstone's withdrawal from public life," he wrote in _Truth_, "the party, or rather a majority of the officialdom of the party became tainted with Birmingham imperialism. My convictions did not allow me to be connected with a newspaper which supported a clique of intriguers that had captured the Liberal ship, and that accepted blindly these intriguers as the representatives of Liberalism in regard to our foreign policy."
[5] _Daily News_, Feb. 8, 1869.
[6] Merivale and Labouchere had recently met at a dinner party at the house of the former's father.
[7] Merivale had collaborated with Palgrave Simpson in the construction of the play.
[8] Herman Merivale, _Bar, Stage, and Platform_.
[9] Ellen Terry, _The Story of my Life_.
[10] _Truth_, August 16, 1877.
[11] _Ibid._, June 12, 1877.
[12] _Truth_, Nov. 12, 1887.
[13] _Truth_, November 8, 1877.
[14] Joseph Hatton, _Journalistic London_.
[15] "The Ghastly Gaymarket," _Truth_, Dec. 8, 1881.
[16] _The World_, July 15, 1874.
[17] Mr. Grenville Murray, who was the editor of the _Queen's Messenger_, was assaulted by Lord Carrington on account of an article he wrote about the latter's father, and out of the case which Mr. Grenville Murray brought against Lord Carrington arose Mr. Murray's prosecution for perjury, which resulted in his departure from England. He died in Paris in 1881. It was at the time of the scandal aroused by the article for which Lord Carrington assaulted Grenville Murray, that Mr. Labouchere was accused of being the proprietor of the paper.
[18] _The World_, Jan. 23, 1912.
[19] _Truth_, October 11, 1877.
[20] _Temple Bar_, December 1, 1860.
[21] _Daily News_, February 19, 1872.
[22] G. A. Sala, _Life and Adventures_.
[23] _Truth_, October 23, 1884.
[24] The first and last verses are as follows:
Of all the boys that are so smart There's none like crafty Labby; He learns the secret of each heart, And lives near our Abbey; There is no lawyer in the land That's half as sharp as Labby; He is a demon in the art And guileless as a babby!
The ministers and members all Make game of truthful Labby, Though but for him it's said they'd be A sleepy set and flabby; And when their seven long years are out, They hope to bury Labby; Ah then how peacefully he'll lie, But not in our Abbey!
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