i i!l!P I)A AnA3 (5nrneU Intuetaitg ajtbratg Ktljara, Jfem gorfe BOUGHT WfTH THE INCOME OF THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND THE GIFT OF HENRY W. SAGE 1891 The date shows when this volume was taken. To renew this book copy the call No. and give to the librarian. ■■%'r HOME USE RULES All Books subject to recall ■■ All borrowers must regis- ter in the library to bor- ' row books for home use. CCD D 1QA0 D ^^ books must be re- ■ -Ofcr-Q- - ■■'^^»- ■i* turned at end of college year for inspection and repairs. Limited books must be returned within the four week limit and not renewed. Students must return all books before leaving town. Officers should arrange tar '■• the return of books wanted during their absence from town. , Volumes of periodicals ■ and of pamphlets are held in l^e library as much as possible. For special pur- poses they are given out V for alimited time. Borrowers should not use their library privileges for the benefit of other persons.. Books of special value ■ and gift books, when the giver wishes it, are not al- ' ' ' lowed to circulate. Readers are asked to re- port all cases of books marked or mutilated. Do not deface books by marks and writing. Cornell University Library DA 565.A29A3 Adventures social and Itterary. 3 1924 028 291 411 Cornell University Library The original of this bool< is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924028291411 ADVENTURES SOCIAL AND LITERARY PORTRAITS OF THE 'NINETIES By E. T. Raymond, Author of " Uncensored Celebrities." Cloth, 15s. net. (4th Impression.) " Only to glance down Mr. Raymond's list of subjects makes one realize how many giants there were in those days. . . . To read Mr. Raymond's brilliant and pene- trating studies is to know them." E'vening Standard. T. Fisher Unwin Ltd London DOUGLAS AINSLIE WHEN ATTACHE IN THE DIPLOMATIC SERVICE. Frontitplcct. ADVENTURES SOCIAL AND LITERARY By DOUGLAS AINSLIE ILLUSTRATED T. FISHER UNWIN LTD LONDON: ADELPHI TERRACE First published in iq22 (All rights reserved) Paullo leviora canamus (Let us talk for a little of lighter things) FOREWORD The following pages of Adventures should be looked upon and read as though one had chanced to meet the Author at a country-house party, and after a British breakfast, damask tablecloth, silver, silver everywhere, and roses and roUs and simmering dishes, and honey taken episodically by each guest as he and she strolls into the dining-room during! the course of the mbrning, two or three or four of the number of either sex happen to stroll out upon the soft emerald lawn and stand under the big cedar that ^ades thiem from the sun, already high risen in the sky. The Author tells some of his experiences for tweaity minutes or so, after which the iimpromptu party separates, to meet perhaps, equally by accident, after luncheon, in one of the broad bay- windows looking over thje lake and distant woodlands : one sohtary church spire gives a note of idealism' to the landscape. More stories then, and perhaps a boatinig excursion on the lake, where some may get a little wet, but they wiU not catch a severe cold', i The Author's chief regret is that he is obliged toi monopolize the conversation on this occasion (for listen- ing well to others is half of good conversation). A late famous ambassador, whose son was the author's good friend, was once stajdng with' Dr. Jowett at BaUiol. He grew cheerful and amusing with the cham- pagne, and when the port came and the ladies retired, 7 8 FOREWOED though several undergraduates remained, he b'ecatae ultra facetious. Jowett listened to the beginning of a tale that opened like a scarlet geranium anid gave signs of concluding in the orchid-house — ^then suddenly he piped out in his falsetto treble : "Sir Jasper, will you finish your story in the drawing-room'? " I hope mine may begin and end there or as above in the shade of the cedar after breakfast, without offence, although I shaU talk freely of the living asi' well as of the dead. Thought is so much more real than the physical body that it triumphs over the accident of death. The ATHENiEUM, Pall Mall, 1922. CONTENTS FOREWORD . 7 CHAPTER I EARLIEST DAYS 15 Birth in Paris — A Marquis de Marque — The Due's bet — Vanilla Ice — My Grandfather, James Grant Duff — My Godfather's Gift — Dindin — Hide-and-Seek with a Bear — Imperial Disguise — The Judge's Joke — The old Earl of Fife — In and out of Irons — Old Fyvie — A Delgaty Ghost — Delgaty repaired 1525. CHAPTER II SCHOOL, SALMON, POETRY 38 Song of the Stewart's — -Lochiel — Prince Charlie — Dotheboys- and-Parents House — ^My first Fight — Stag Beetles — My big Salmon — Golden Minutes at 'WTiipps Cross — Playing the Game — Woodcote House — Tom Brown's Schooldays. CHAPTER III ETON 55 Arrival — From Lock's to Dumford's — P. J. de Paravicini — Eton " Swagger " — " Passing " in Swimming at Cuckoo Weir — Football " Colours " Won — Don Juan Confiscated — Romps. CHAPTER IV ETON AND OXFORD 64 Escalading the Tower — A Tragedy of Good Health — Mousing — A Martinet — Balliol — The Master Examined — Enter Arthur Bourchier — Jowett and the Old Vic. CHAPTER V SWINBURNE, WILDE, AND PATER 83 Oxford Days — Bristol Restaurant — First in London — Luncheon Festivities — Bullingdon Dinners — The Ishmaelites g 10 CONTENTS Society — J. P. Nichol and Swinburne — Maturity at Seventeen — With Swinburne at Louise Molesworth's — Either or Ether — Oxford Days — " Full of the Warm South " — Oscar Wilde Trounced by H. J. Maynard — Anecdotes of Wilde — Injustice of Whistler — Wilde as Conversationalist — Walter Pater — First Meeting — ^Wilde on Walt Whitman — Lionel Johnson as Roman Catholic — The Escalade — Oxford Alpine Club — Wilde's Sentence Unjust — After Imprisonment — His Feat in Paris — A Lost Masterpiece. CHAPTER VI MERRY-GO-ROUND IO4 Anecdote of Francisque Sarcey — " Mr. Shelly " — ^William Morris and the Assafoetida — Cudgels and Communism — Arthur Bourchier and Jowett — Hon. Robert Scot Montagu — A Jovial Alcestis — O.U.D.S. — My Midsummer Night's Dream — Billiard Match with Ralph Nevill — Marquis of Clanrikarde V. Sir Robert Peel. CHAPTER VII FRANCE AND FISHING II7 Sir Robert Peel and the Marquis of Clanrikarde — A Famous Jewel — Skating and Sliding — Frog-Fishing — Paris — " Throw in the Rod " — A Monster — Julian's Best Days. CHAPTER VIII DANCING AND DUCKING I35 The Old Lord Fife — Scoones and Diplomacy — Sam Lewis Gambling — Reel Dancing in Scotland — Society in excelsis — Ball Dancing — Embassy Ball at Rome — Orloff — The Ducking of the Princess — The Tears of Poland — Pageant in excelsis. CHAPTER IX DIPLOMACY 156 Athens — Sir Edmund Monson — Lady Monson — ^Mrs. Ronalds — " Duchesses as Thick as Peas " — Maid of Athens Plain — Declaration of War Mislaid — Lord Charles Beresford — Paderewski's Prophesy of the Great War — Prussians Low Born — Sir Clare Ford — Sir Donald Wallace — Olympia — Crown Prince of Greece. CONTENTS 11 CHAPTER X PACE VENICE AND LONDON I76 Venice — Catulle Mendes — Duke of Brontg — Countess Hoyos and a Byronic Anecdote — Marquis of Huntly — Prince Bis- marck — At Homburg — The Empress Frederick — Gemran Society — Sir William Harcourt — The Duke of Devonshire — — Kaid Maclean — Herbert Spencer. CHAPTER XI ON LEAVE IN ENGLAND IQI Sir Mountstuart Grant Duff — Belling the Cat at Downing Street — Grant Duff and Disraeli — Gladstone — Joseph Chamberlain — Mr. John Morley and India — What is a Gentleman — Robert Browning and Aubrey de Vere — Tenny- son — Lord Acton — The Tempo has changed — The Club — Harry Cust and the Souls — Calv6 and Mascagni — Harry Labouchere. CHAPTER XII THE HAGUE AND DIPLOMACY 207 The Hague — Sir Horace Rumbold — Sir Francis Bertie — Colleagues at the Hague — Baron Tomtit — Lionel Bonham — My Cousin Sir Evelyn Grant Duff, British Minister at Berne — Prince Poniatowski and King Milan — Storm in a Delft Tea- cup — Prince or Waiter ? — Marquis of Dufierin-^Parid Embassy — Too Great to Care — Garibaldi's Slipper — Cult of the Turf. CHAPTER XIII AMBASSADORS AND SARAH 224 Lords Dufferin and Lytton— Charlie DuflE — The Key of the " House " — Prince Demidofi — Conder as Pugilist — The Lord Chief Justice — Sarah Bernhardt — Edmond Rostand — Jean Richepin — Sarah as debutante — Stage Craft— Anatole France. CHAPTER XIV HENRY JAMES AND OTHERS 24O Cigarettes— Lady Grant Duff and the Tiny Ghost— Books are Talks— Gladstone Garrulous— Best Stories Lost— Henry James — His "First Night " — " Author ! Author ! — Plucked Plumes — A Determined Talker. 12 CONTENTS CHAPTER XV PAGE CEOCE, BAUDELAIRE AND OTHERS 253 Salons — Waiting her Chance — Benedetto Croce — William Poel — Bernard Shaw — Aubrey Beardsley — Baudelaire — Maurice Barrfes — ^Victor Hugo — Marcel Proust — Casanova — Ernest Renan. CHAPTER XVI COACHING AND OTHER CURIOSITIES 267 Walter Pater and Renan — Sanctuary ! — J. A. Cramb — A Magician — An Indian Mystery — I Drive the Coach — Susanna Reichenberg. CHAPTER XVII LITERARY AND OTHER LIONS — ITALY .... 278 Hippolyte Taine — A Russian Diplomatist — Lessar Among the Lions — A Brave Lady — Not " My Lion " — Revels at Florence — The Rose Garden — Enchanted Ground. ITALY THE ENCHANTRESS 291 THE DUFFS AND THE GORDONS — GENEALOGICAL TABLE At end ILLUSTRATIONS DOUGLAS AINSLIE WHEN ATTACH^ IN THE DIPLOMATIC SERVICE Frontispiece FACING PAGE FANNY ELIZABETH AINSLIE. (The author's mothet) . l6 LORD NAPIER AND ETTRICK, BRITISH AMBASSADOR TO RUSSIA 22 MARY A. MORGAN. (The authoi's maternal grand- mother) 26 WAITING FOR A WOODCOCK. (Julian AinsHe, the author's younger brother) 132 DELGATY CASTLE l8o DOUGLAS AINSLIE, I922 IQ^ MISS RUTH ANDERSON AS JULIET 284 J8 Adventures Social and Literary CHAPTER I EARLIEST DAYS Birth in Paris— A Marquis de Marque— The Due's bet— Vanilla Ice — My Grandfather, James Grant Duff— My Godfather's Gift— Dindin — Hide-and-Seek with a Bear — Imperial Disguise — The Judge's Joke —The old Earl of Fife— In and out of Irons— Old Fyvie— A Delgaty Ghost — Delgaty repaired 1525. Volumes have been written about " the adventures of the soul among masterpieces." The following pages wiU also deal with masterpieces, though the majority of these wiU be inspired rather by life than by art. I have always been pleased to think that I was bom geographically a Parisian, though my father is a Scotsman and my mother's family, the Morgans, are of Welsh descent, and can consequently lay no im- mediate claim' to French blood. But I believe that those who have had the privilege of dtawing their first breath' in the city by the Seine are ' to soime extent, more or less according to temperament, touched by her wand to love of wit and beauty. I was bom on the i6th of December 1866 at 127 Rue La P^rouse. My father had come to Paris from St. Petersburg to be secretary of Embassy to Lord Cowley, who was then British Ambassador. At St. Petersburg, where he had filled a similar post, he had wooed and won my miother. 15 16 EARLIEST DAYS Paris I The word is and has always been a talisman for me, though I have but the faintest recollections of that earliest Paris, when the Imperial Eagle stiU floated above the Palace of the Tuileries and the Second Empire was dancing down thie dangerous flowery; way, which led to the Franco -German iWar. A noisy world of pleasure seekers : Quel bruit ferait le monde Le jour oA Paris se tairait ! as they used to sing. The noise that Paris then made mlist certainly have been considerable, and I gathter fronl an unimpeachable source that to this noise my infant lungs talade an early and important contribution. I am said^ indeed^ to have developed, through steady and assiduous practice, astonishing, lung-power, little appreciated by an elderly Marquis who dwelt immediately above the nursery. My dusky Nounou and miy mothler tried in vain jto stem the torrent of infantine eloquence — and the Marquis suddenly departed. I have often tried' tO; ascertain precisely (who was this first person to take an interest in my voice, b'tit have always failed. I was onqe told, however, that prior to my birth, the French servant Auguste had been asked who the Marquis was — his fuU name — was he really a Marquis? Auguste, who must have been a wag in his small way, smiled discreetly and replied : '' Monsieur, c'est certainement un Marquis, mais ce n'est pas un Marquis de Marque." Poor jmark- less Marquis I He had evidently failed to come, up to Auguste's standard of what a Marquis should be. Problem' : l^^^at was a Marquis of mark to a Parisian valet lat the end of the Second Empire? I suspect he must have been sotnte mushroom' creation of FANNY ELIZABETH AINSLIE. The author's mother, Xo face p. i6. THE DUO'S BET 17 Napoleon III, like our own batclhfes of undistinguished peers (rightly despised by those who have not been insulted in a like manner), and I remtember very weE hearing it said in Paris in the 'nineties that thb Dues and Princes of the First Empire drew a very (dear social iline between themselves, and' the results of the Louis Napoleon's ^id the Due de Mprny's coup d'etat. Certainly, the late Due de Morny, his descendant, had a good deal of that sort of fagade which so easily rubs off and reveals the common clay beneath. He was celebrated for his financial schemes, wlhich invariably ended ceteris pnrlbus — like the Second Empire. But what an amusing time they must haVe had^ those D'Orsays, those Dues de Morny and Dues de Gramont Caderousse ! — though this latter, by the way, depended not upon Napoleon, but upon ancient kings of France 'for his titular distinctions. They mUst have been like big schoolboys, always out on the sp'ree. This little joke is typical of the period, though the perpetratof was the last personage named. One April day he made a big bet that ihe would prevent the Emperor and Etanlpress, who were to go in State to the Races at Longchampis for the Grand Prix that afternoon, from driving down the ChamlpB Elys^es on dieir return tO' Paris. He pledged himself to have no intercourse in the meantimle with any of the sur- roundings of the Emiperor high or low. Those who knew pf the bet exhausted themselves in conjectures wlien they saw Gramont-Caderousse quietly lunching on the great day at the Jockey Club on the Boulevard des lltaliens with his inseparable friend, De la Hante. He remained there until late in the afternoon playing dearth and smoking^ and it was not until nearly bix 2 18 EARLIEST DAYS o'clock that he sent for his carriage, telling the coach- man to put hini and his frieiid down at a short distance from the Arc de Triomphe. The Due stepped from; his carriage followied by his friend^ and walked slowly to the edge of the curb at the Place ^de I'Etoile, in the centre of which stands the Arc de Triomphe at the top of the broad Avenue des Champs Elys^es. The thunder of the first horses returning from^ the races was heard in the distance, as the Due, wearing the rosette of the Legion of Honour, took from his pocket a simple yard measure, from' which he drew the tape as he handed the coil to his friend. The sergents de ville and n±»unted police on duty immediately approached with enquiries as to what it was proposed to do with' the measure, whereupon the Due waved them away with a magnificent gesture. They hesitated for a moment, and then, over-awed by the high grade of the rosette and the extreme seriousness of its wearer, whom' they held to be acting under mysterious Im^perial orders in connection with the roadway, proceeded to divert the whole of the racing-trafific, including the carriages containing ithe Emperor and Empress and suite, down the side avenues. Meanwhile Gramont-Caderousse had crossed the broad avenue and stood facing his friend with the yard measure in one hand spanning the distance between them, and in the other a note-book in which he was gravely studying entirely fantastic lines of figures. The cheque which he received that evening was also fantastic — but for a definite sum^ — one of those dreams that come true across the banker's counter. i ■; And was it Monsieur Mirfes or the quaint Baron !de Saint-Cricq who went to the celebrated Tortoni's when it was most crowded with rank and fashion one summer GRANT DUFF BECOMES AINSLIB 19 afternoon, and asking for a vanilla and' a strawberry iccj when he had obtained thism, quietly took off Ms boots and ladled the vanilla into one boot, the straw- berry into the other, gravely repeating the while like a lesson well learned : " Vanilla ice right boot ! Straw- berry ice left boot ! " But I must return to my cradle and add that my mother was busily running her memory's eye over such names as most appealed to her and seemed most suit- able to her first-born, such as Napoleon (we two have always immensely admired him), Augustus, Emanuel, etc., {when a telegram' came from' the " adVocate " in Aberdeen : ■'-' Your son must be christened Douglas AinsUe and nothing more by the termls of Mr. Douglas Ainslie's will." This Mr. Douglas Ainslie was my father's maternal uncle, and had just left him the whole of his property, Delgaty Castle in Aberdeenshire and Blervie in Moray, on condition of his adopting the sur- name of Ainslie in place of Grant Dufif, and calling his eldest son Douglas. Thus was I deprived of any Christian name other, than that which in old days sent a thrill through the unhappy populations of Berwick- upon-Tweed and Newcastle-upon-Tyne. But I have more than once regretted the sumairie of Grant Duff, borne by my father and father's father. Grant Duff of Eden and historian and Governor of the Mahrattas ' from Sattara for more than twelve years, under the East India Company. My late uncle, my father's brother. Sir Mountstuart Elphinstone Grant Duff, G.C.I.E., G.C.S.I., to whom I shall refer later, also distinguished himself in India as Governor of Madras, * Mr. Murray has just issued a reprint of this work, which has held its own as the chief authority on this part of our Empire for well over a hundred years. 20 EARLIEST DAYS and I myself have always felt a' strong inclination to: study that country, an inclination which did not find favour with my parents, who refused for too much love to allow me to visit India at the age of seventedni at my uncle's invitation from' Madras. I have oftemi wished that I had made earlier acquaintance with the great country, which my own blood has done somethinlg] to consolidate with the British Emipire. There is interesting evidence of the value of my grandfather's contribution in Leslie Stephen's Life of his brother. Sir James Fitz James Stephen, the Judge of the Supreme Court, whomi I used often to meet at York House. He was the best physical and mental specimen of a judge that ever I ,met. His great moral and intellectual powers were encased in a bulky and' ponderous body. He was at every point Rhaxiamanthus. Even Iwhen dealing with such kickshaws as muttonh cutlets and cold ham at the breakfast table, he did so in a severe and final mlanner, for they were sp^dilj^ condemned to disappearance, while the Judge of the Supreme Court maintained his perfectly unbiassed' supremacy. He had, of course, like all of us, his human side, and genuinely enjoyed good literature. I remember his reading the Divine Comedy with my aunt. Lady Grant Duff, who also had something of the severe and judicial about her, yet in her case coupled with and softened by a generous, loving and amiable disposition — when she allowed' it to appear. I re- member thinking as I watched the two fine heads posingi over a difficult passage that here was just such an audience as Dante would have liked. For no poet has ever been more severely judicial than he in his great works ; one feels that on many occasions he has positively enjoyed uttering the sentence of punishment JAMES GEANT DUFF 21 as he "brands" the culprit and passes on. Were I Landor I should write a dialogue between Sir Jamfes and Dante on comparative mediaeval and modern juris- prudence, with Sir Charles Darling intervening for a little light relief. Leslie Stephen's reference to my grandfather read's as follows : " The Indian Empire is the miost marvellous proof of this (he is referring to the many great actions which are completely forgotten) that the world can supply. A man died not long ago who, at twenty -five years of age, with no previous training, was set to govern a kingdom with absolute power, and who did govern it so wisely and firmly that he literally changjed' a wilderness into a fruitful land!. Probably no one who reads these lines will guess to whom! they allude. I can, however, say that they allude to JamJes Grant Duff (1789-18 58), author of the History of the Mahrattas, and father of his (Sir James Fitz Jamles Stephen's) friend. Sir Mountstuart." , My grandfather eventually returned to England and married a very beautiful girl, whose parents insisted upon his abandoning further service in India as a condition of the marriage. He refused most brilliant offers equivalent to the India Council of to-day, and retired to his estate of Eden in Banffshire on the River Deveron. Here he spent a fortune on farming, and revelled in the possession of a herd of black iCattle, still famous in the annals of the North of Scotland'. But my father tells me that his talk always returned to India : where a man's life-work was, there shall his heart be also. Shortly after my first appearance on any stage, and the vocal efforts that accompanied it, m)y parents removed to St. Germain, whence my father wient and came 22 EARLIEST DAYS daily froiil the Embassy. He describes his colleagues at that time as devoted to French society, not exactly of the Faubourg St. Germain type, which it is popularly supposed that diplomatists frequent, but which is rarely at any period entered by theml. Lurid tragedies and comedies in little have comie dowln to, me, but I' shall draw a veil over them! and over the ashes ,that have so long been at rest, for it is a curious fact that all my father's colleagues in the Chancellery at this period were in their graves within ten years of his arrival at the Embassy. For some of them, as my friend Colonel Claude Lowther used to say at Madrid : V Ambassade c'etait V EmUrassade ! His posts, prior to Paris, had been Dresden and then St. Petersburg, where the Ambassador wlas Lord Napier and Ettrick, whom' I remember when I was a very little boy, and can still visualize with the help of a quaint little photo taken by my mother, a pioneer of the gentle art of sun-painting — but the victim' of those days was fuUy conscious of being the target of ithe camera, and was indeed commanded to remain perfectly motionless for periods that to us would seem eternities. But I |do not wonder that Lord Napier submitted to all this at my mother's hands with the best possible grace, for no one has yet been met with capable of resisting her charm. Attributable no doubt to a like cause rtvas Lord Napier's acceptance of the post of godfather to the writer of these lines — ^godfather and bestower of a golden goblet surrounded with the signs of the Zodiac in relief, from which he has imbibed many milky potations. i My father, as I have said, first made my mother's acquaintance at St. Petersburg, where her father, Mr. John Henry Morgan, occupied a unique position^ He was LORD NAPIER AND ETTRICK, BRITISH AMBASSADOR TO RUSSIA. To face p, 22. "DINDIN" 23 the founder of the first Anglo -Russia^ bank, and had also an imtnense timber business. He afterwards took into partnership old Mr. John Hubbard', and did every- thing for him and for his family, which still flourishes in his descendants, and has acquired the peerage of Addington. At this period my grandfather, Mr. Morgan, married the beautiful Miss Mary Parland, my dearly loved grandmother " Dindin," whose miemory is as bright and fresh with me to-day as though I had just met her with her scent-bottle in one hand arid two pink bon-bons in the other for her pet grandson, .who is waiting at the bottom of the great winding stone staircase of Delgaty to go out fishing by the lake. She is sitting on the green bench there at the end — I can smeU the varnish on it now, and I ami againi engaged in the prodigious adVenture of the first trout which is leaping its height out of the water, ,as I am! leaping mine with joy on the bank. We land it be- tween us, and bear it home in triumph to be admired by all the family, and then by, the entire kitchen staff, before it is eventually rescued from two very, small scaly hands that pertinaciously cling to thteir treasure. Dearest of grandmothers, early called away, in your soft dark dress with the peacock blue and green lights upon it ! I have only seen you smiling, always jsweet and smiling> thirough all these years, though I fear that your own early days were by no mfeans aU made of smiles. Imagine taking a beautiful yoimg woman, accustomed to every luxury, to Archangel for her honeymoon I Yet I believe that Mr. Morgan did this. Archangel to-day is a dismal spot enough, difficult of access even before Bolshevism;. iWhat must it have been a hundred years 24 EARLIEST DAYS ago? And she had to stay there for months and months while Mr. Morgan made wonderful journeys in quest of new forests to conquer, returning to his fair young wife with tales of wild sport among the elk and the bears, which atone to a man for the desolation. Small wonder that when she returned to St. Petersburg a queen of beauty, she danced the morning in for the hearts of her courtiers. Mr. Morgan was a great sportsman, and in winter, even while Uving in St. Petersburg, used to fling busi- ness and pleasure — his pleasures were numerous — to the winds — ^when the peasant arrived with news of a bear marked down in its cave. On one occasion he answered such an appeal as usual, during a sudden thaw towards the end of February, but he had on his long snowshoes, naade for gliding over the six-foot -deep, snow, and the servant who was with him' to stand beside, as often before, with the spear in readiness, should the buUet fail to speed quite straight and the bear come on. This time my grandfather's aim was not quite so accurate as usual ; the bear rolled over, but recovered himself and saw his enemy. He was not far off, and there was no time to load the old-fashioned rifle ; but my grandfather stood his ground in quiet confidence, with his eyes on the bear, just putting his hand behind him for the spear. No spear was there! Turning,, he saw the coward scudding away with the weapon ; he had been unable to resist the promp'tings of fear when he saw the bear come on. There was no chance of escape by flight now, for the bear was hardly forty yards off and moving amazingly fast, so my, grand- father did the only thing possible — he slipped out of his snow-shoes and sunk down in the deep snow until his head was beloW its level. Thus he hoppd that the MY GRANDFATHER AND NICHOLAS I 25 wounded monster might not find him'. But bruin came on, guided by his nose, and paused over the hole in the iwhite carpet. Then rip, rip^ with a last effort, as his mighty claws rent the cheeks of his slayer, and he himself fell dead on the top of him!. , Hours passed insensible, and miy grandfather heard moujiks' voices. " He is diead', or hie is nearly idead, little brother — his blood is everywhere— better a good blow on thfe head to end his pain." He managed to speak, and offered them a thousand roubles each if they would carry him' to his sledge and take him to St. Petersburg. On his arrival there he was again insensible, and the doctors ordered him to remain in the dark for many weeks, as both eyes were menaced. He gradually began to mend and to recognize those about him' by their voices. My mother had always been his favourite, and he now insisted that she alone, a girl of seventeen, should remain at his pillow. My mother has often told mfe of that trying time, and of the shock she received when she saw her father's handsome face so fearfully |mauled. He bad long been noted as the hanldsomiest man in the capital, and the Emperor Nicholas I. made him his especial friend. I wish we possessed', as we possess his many orders and decorations, a picture of the two walking together as they so often did along the NeVski Prospekt. [Nicholas I. was the last Czat of aU the Russias to venture unescorted along the streets of Petersburg, and he, too, was noted for his height and handsome appearance. A pretty story is told of him disguised at a fancy ball, to which he had gone incognito, like Haroun al Raschid' of the Nights. He approached and entered into conversation 26 EARLIEST DATS with a certain fair lady, knowft as a wit, and after dancing iwith her, said : "Do you know with whom: you are talking? " " I think so," she replied. " Then say something that shall show mte you know, without telling." " You have the stature of your trade " (Vous avez la taille de voire metier) was thb reply. The Emperor was delighted. His Imysterious end was in harmony with what must have been a singularly noble and romantic temperament. His patronage of British enterprise in the person of Mr. Morgan was in harmony with the tradition of Peter the Great, whose visit to London is historical. The behaviour and ideals of the Bolshevists and their sympathizers outside Russia makes the life and deeds of the latter m.onarch read like a mild tract. My grandfather had three children, a son and two daughters, of whom my mother was the youngest. Before the appearance of my father at St. Petersburg a number of Russians had asked to be allowed' to pay their addresses, but Mr. Morgan was determined that neither of his daughters should marry a Russian, which apart from any selfish consideration, in view of recent events, seems to bear evidence of considerable foresight. My uncle, Deknar Morgan, the geographer and explorer of Mongolia with Prejevalsky, was also a sceptic as to Russian stability, and as trustee of my mother's future, insisted on removingi a considferable portion of it to England, greatly to the disgust of his fellow trustees. It is curious how blind mlost people were as to the instability of the Russian Emipire owmg to the instability of the Russian character, which is the true cause of the complete catastrophe. Of the many Russians I have met the late Prince Alexis Orloff, with whom I used to stay in the Rue St. Dotninique, Paris, MARY A. MORGAN. The author's maternal grandmother. To face p. 26. THE JUDGE'S LITTLE JOKE 27 wsLs the only one wiho remloviedl his fortune in timle. My greatest Russian friend had, in 191 3, a revenue of eight millions of francs, or about £400,000, from his Russian properties. In 191 6, nil. I think this would be difficult to beat. My dear sweet aunt Minnie, mother's sister, miarried an Irishman, Sir Thomas Snagge, the County Court Judge, well knowlU' at the Gai'riok Club' and on his Oxford circuit. He was an agreeable, witty man, a little too fond, perhaps, of insisting upon his joke being taken ^s sterling when it was not more than, shall we say, aluminium'. ; There he sometimes caught a tartar, as once when out shooting with us at Delgaty, he remarked to a very smaU lad next him in the line and carrying his cartridges : -' I've made an appoint- ment to meet a hare by that big tree we're coming to." The lad said nothing. They walked' on a few steps, when the hare got up right enough, and Sir Thomas discharged both barrels without producing any visible effect. '- It's no the hare that's to blame at any rate," came in a shrill treble from his Honour's side. The Judge made no more jokes with that boy. Sir Thomas left a large family, of whom' the eldest son, Mordaunt, is the most distinguished. He now occupies, curiously enough, the exatt position as County Court Judige, and covers the samle counties as his late father. The losiS of an eye at Eton football has not been allowed by him to damage his career. I observe that I have again left the cradle, and' miay as weU now do so for good and all. We went down to Fontainebleau soon after the incident of the Marquis, and my father used to go to and fromi the Embassy to the Forest. But the bricks and mortar: 28 EARLIEST DAYS of the Rue St. Honor^ and the future Embassy naadb an ever lessening appeal to him as compared with his " ain fireside " in Scotland. He had no eye for the razzle-dazzle of the Second Empire, and soon sent in his resignation. His German scholarship had won himi the Taylorian at Oxford when he was at BaUiol College. His fellow scholar on that occasion was the poet Swinburne, with whom^ however, he teUs me that, unlike his son, he had no intercourse. Swinburne won the French Taylorian the year my father won the German. While Delgaty was being got ready for us my parents took a small estate in Fife called Ramorney, and also bought 70 Lancaster Gate, which is con- nected with some of my earliest recollections. I was still in the nursery at this pieriod, but had already developed a love for zoology and' caressed a stuffed guinea-pig with ardour, greatly regretting that it was not allowed to be alive. 70 Lancaster Gate, had a wall staircase crowtied with " a domie of many coloured glass," iand I used' often to contemplate this with admiration. Where I met, at sixteen, with the line in SheUey, toy memory immediately called up the lofty building, with its dark stairway and giant ftont drawing-room facing my father's grim^ dim' study. The sdiool-room looked out upon a fine selection of angular drab-coloured brick walls and dhimineys. My brother Percy and I sat in this room with our French governess, who also instructed us (very imperfectly to judge by results) in arithtaaetic and other R's, mlade as unpleasant as possible according to the tradition which still held sway in teadhing. , Yet Mademoiselle Amaud was a delightful person — I can still see her clearly with a large pencil stuck between two buttons of hier dress. HOCK HAY OF DELGATY 29 tryirxg ,to make us familiar with' the language of my native land. The angular outlook and the bewildered pupils might have presented a theme for cubist per- spectives. lOur walks with the nurses were chiefly in Kensington Gardens, where I added entomology to nay interests jby capturing several butterflies. At a later period I sailed a boat on thie Round Pond, but imiy pleasure therein was damped' by the presence of a ttiaxi with a real little steamfer that puffed and didn't care a bit which way the wind' blew or what height were the waves. tThe Round Pond is one of the fewi things which seems to have remained quite unchanged since the 'seventies, and I can easily step back into themi by merely standing a few mbments at its brink; — same httle waves, same little ships, satnfe little folk as ,of yore including myself. Soon after this period a tutor was engaged foil, myself and my brother Percy. Mr. Edmund John MelluisH Irons was son of a stem divine, whio had written uponi St. Paul and produced' a numerous family. He was tall and rather cadaverous in appearance, with sunken eyes, a stoopi, and! a rather sinister smile. To him) our education was confided^, and we were sent up frojml Lancaster Gate to Delglaty in tihe summer of '77. Delgaty was looking its best, surroundbd with' lofty elm! and lime trees, above which it towered its hundred feet. Grim battlements and gargoyles with the bust of Hooh Hay of Delgaty fixed in his niche looked down ifrolm: the sumtnit. The origin of Hoch Hay is obiscure, but he was probably modelled upon some ancient scion of the House of Hay, former possessors of the Castle., Others relate that " Hoch Hay " was an exclamjation uttered by same warrior Hay, who gave vent to it as he Imppped his brpwl after repelling an onislaug^ht of 30 EARLIEST DAYS the Danes, in which he had been successful by Idint of harnessing his unwilling retainers to the yokci — witness the motto : Sub Jugum. Shall I continue? Delgaty has been in the hands of several proprietors, mostly of my family, since the days of Hay of Delgaty, when, with Strathbogie, it was one of the two strong- holds of the Catholics in the north of Scotland. Im the early nineteenth century, however, it passed into the hands of our cousins, the Fifes. The lats Duke told me that he had spent much of hiia childhood there, and often fished in the bum of Idoch. His father is one of my earliest recollections at Delgaty, a wonderful old gentleman with a most magnificent head of chestnut hair. I remlember I was gazing at it with adiniration when he came oVer from' Duff House to see us and was slitting in the smaU drawing-rooni ; then, to my utter amazement, he suddenly removed what appeared to mfe to be his scalp, and producing a small comb began carefully to arrange the curls of his head as it rested luppn his knee. I was too young to remember any of the good stories for which he was famed — he was equally friendly with all — patriarchal and benign as became the owner of more than a million acres — he would engage in animated exchange of pleasantries with the farmers on his way out from Aberdeen to Duff House, and on one occasion the farmers, being sure that he wouM again offer theim a draft of whisky from the capacious flask, which had already been circulating in the carriage, managed to abstract it from his pocket, expecting to enjoy his consternation at the loss. Not at all : the Earl merely placed his hand in the other pocket and produced another flask of equal size, which he handed round as though nothing out of the I HOOK MY TUTOR 31 way had occurred, disdaining to inquire as to the fate of the first. Delgaty is nearly forty Imiles from! Aberdeen. Remote country places must have been far gayer in the old days than they are now. Aberdeen in winter was the ideal of the inhabitants of the north-eastern part of Scotland, Edinburgh beinig a kind of Mecca only attained by the happy few. As to London, our cousin arid neighbour. Garden Duff of Hatton, once showed me the accounts of his grandfather who had actually penetrated to London, and (characteristically) had kept careful note of his expenses from the historical " sax- pence " to sums yet more considerable. My own for- bears used to pay potentous Visits to one another in; family chariots, which would carry themi fifty miles or so from their homies in a day. The yisit was usually three weeks. Nowadays, during the sumlmter, there is a flood of all manner of folk from' the south, who hire the old places and rush back to London when they have had their fill of fresh air and, lost sufificient salmon- flies. With the winter, the whole countryside sleeps beneath its pall of snow. iWe ^.rrived at Delgaty in the sumknler, and in the intervals of learning Latin, which Mr. Irons did teach a little, while neglecting such trifles as mathematics, history, and geography, I proceeded to teach himl ho(w to cast a trout fly. He was astonishingly igtnorant of sport in any form', and despite repeated i^vamings persisted in standing about ten yar'ds to my rear, with the natural result that the fly (my best one, as I remarked as it was being extracted) became firmly imbedded in the fleshy part of his nose. This was a painful business for both of us in mtire ^senses than one. Put shooting he was death to cartrid^ges arid 32 EARLIEST DATS dangerous to beaters, but otherwise hamiless. The old head-keeppr, Terras, used to place hiiri at remote points for " a shot at a hare," but the lattet iWas quite sale. I think he must have sufifeired from: obliquity of .vision;, but his eagerness and confidence in his own capacities were quite inexhaustible. Hopeless as a sportsman anid pedagogue, he Was better endowed as a lover, and proceeded to pay couirt to the daughter of a neighbouring laird, for which' purpose he borrowed my pony. I was delighted to lend it, as my brother and I were thus rid of his presence for a good part of thje day. Unfortunately, however, the pony rather resented the six-foot-two of the amorous preceptor, and after one or two attempts landed him feafely on the gravel drive, to our [considerable amusemtent. Poor Irons, his mild career as extempore Don Juan was cut short by the return of my parents. He was dismissed, and I believe died' soon after of hteart disease, iwhether accelerated by his experiences in the north or not I icannot teU. I have never been fortunate in pedagogues. Percy and 1 went over to see our neighbbur, dear old Mrs. Tait Gordon, of Fyvie Castle, during these months we were in the iron grip. She was a vieryi quaint old lady, most kind' to us boys, whom she plied with all manner of toffees and other treacly delights. But with grown-up visitors her methods were different. Speaking iwith a broad Scots accent, she used, after breakfast, to announce out the orders for the day : "Mr. McLachlan, ye'll go and row Lady Sempill and the Misses Duff on the lake till the stroke of twelVei, then ye can just gae and catch a few troots in the ythen to our dinner — and see ye're no late for lundh." FYVIE CASTLE— THEN AND NOW 33 " Sir Archie, ye'll tak' the Dowager of Balbumie for a walk round the policies, and see ye keep oot o' the field with the bull in't, for I ken ye can tak guidj care o' yersel, but I'm: no sae sure aboot the leddys " etc. People used to be in fits of suppressed laughter before she had finished her comlnandments . All delighted to go and stay at Fyvie to be ordered about for a day or two. I wonder if the late Lord Astor had ^vpir heard of her ; but his parties, although people wtere carefully told what to do, were not to be comlpared for amusement with the Fyvie of old days. Fyvie has paissed into the hands of a Mir. Forbtes Leith, created Lord Leith, and decorated in, what I believe is known as the best mid-Victorian taste. Its old red sandstone walls now hide their blushes beneath swathes of tartan, and the atmosphere is Scots- Belgravian. Fyvie is better known than Delgaity, and so are its legends, connected with lack of direct heirs — ^male and the three weeping stones — <" the last ye'll never git " — and tiU then there will never be an heir male to Fyvie — will keep for perhaps another volume. At Delgaty we are blessed with the ghost of the lady who was hurled from the battlements by a monk — the illustration shows that she had somfe distance to fall. Personally, I have never been honoured with a sight of her, though. I have given her ample opportunity. She is said to w;alk up the hundred steps of the grand staircase at mid- night. I have often vainly awaited her tread. But some years ago a Mrs. L. O.,' neighbour, for whom! I had just been writing verses to commemorate a son killed on the Afghan frontier, was sitting vidth me in the hall. She suddenly asked if I had ever seen ' Names altered. 3 34 EARLIEST DAYS " any of the Delgaty ghosts." I replied that I liad not. " Well, I have seen one of them/' she said quietly. " You remember, no doubt, my husband Dick? " I replied that I had known him as a little boy when he was a young man. " He died in a .tragic ,way in a railway accident ten years ago. He and I were staying at Delgaty, and had brought with us our baby girl, whose cot was by the fireplace in our bedroom on the night in question. It wajs 'mid-October and chiUy iweather, so a big fire had been made in thJe cloister room, that large south bedrbom! with the three windows, the four-poster bed, and the queer little squint -hole to the north cut into six foot thick of wall. When we came upi to bed about eleven our baby girl was sleeping peacefully and the fire burned high arid bright. Dick was a sound sleeppr, and was soon audibly in dreamland. As 1 blew out my candle, after reading a few pages of your Song of the SteW^arts, which your mother had lent me, I remember, I glanced at the cot which was between us and the fire, some little distance off in the big room. As a ^rule I slept as soundly as Dick, and I don't know what .woke me suddenly with a start. The fire had sunk to a dull red glow ; I gazed at it a moment or two, still half asleep, but could not see the cot clearly. I thougiht at first it was the dim light of the fiiie (I had not struck a match) that made the place where it should be so dark. But suddenly I caughit sight of a part of the white covering and noticed that the darkness between me and the cot had slightly moved. Thoroughly startled and aroused, I sat up in bed and stared in- tently in the direction of the cot. Again a slight motion, and this time I saw that a figure draped in A DELGATY GHOST 35 black was bending over the child. I gave Dick a violent push : he woke up with ' What is it? ' coming drowsily from his lipp. I pointed to the cot, and as I did so, saw something else white — a faint circlet of white in the air above the cradle. Suddenly it dis- appeared, and in its place I clearly saw a man's emaciated face with black eyes blazing with hatred. That, too, disappeared as suddenly as the circlet, which I then realized must have been the scapular of a taonk. Meanwhile, Dick had jumped out of bed and rushed to the child. I lit the gas and rushed to my baby. She was still sleeping peacefully ; no barm had apparently come to her, but if I had not awakened I airi sure the monk would have achieved his purpose, whatever it was. Dick said he certainly saw something move and that was all, but quite enough to set him in motion too! We searched the room and the landing opening into four other bedrooms carefully on the spot, but saw nothing. We thought it better to say nothing about the matter in the castle next day, as servants are so easily frightened. Your family never heard the 3tory." "What became of the little girl? Did she igrow! up? " " Yes, she lived till she Was twenty-three, married, and died having a baby in Janmica at the age of twenty -three." I hope my readers will not look upon me as ovier credulous iwhen I say that I have every confidence in the truth of this curious story, told in much the same words as I have used' and on an pccasion when the teller was certainly in no mbod for flights of imagination. It is also corroborated in my experience by other events, some of which I may mention later. 36 EARLIEST DAYS Aberdeenshire, though it does not contain Glamis Castle within its marches, is yet so full of haunted castles and towers that, as was once said of another castle, one does not have to reach the dwelling house to begin having experiences, but overtakes a hearse and pair in the avenue. Thus one is never really dull in the north. There is always society — of a sort. Forglen House is a near neighbour on the River Deveron, but a thing of yesterday compared with Delgaty, though the Abercrombys have been there from father to son for a good many generations, and Forglen has now got a stretch of the Deveron which used to belong to Delgaty. At Delgaty the dining-room is built out (on the left in the photo reproduced) and is about fifty yards from the kitchen on the right, with the billiard- room' above it, connected by a long passage with the main haU (in the centre of the picture). The dungeon, to the north, goes down perpendicularly about thirty feet, and must have been a pleasant place to spend a week-end in during the month of January in the eleventh century. The oldest date actually carved in the old red sandstone of the library wall is 1525, but the castle was a very much older place, repaired at that date. In the library are four heads carved in the old red sandstone, said to represent a murdered child, his parents, and the murderer, which I always thought a delightfully mediaeval toiich. At Forglen are none of these mediaeval mtemories, but modem comfort, which some prefer to gargoyles. Among these should certainly be numbered the former Lady Abercromby, formerly a strenuous social worker among the rich, and re -married to an Englishman (Lord Northbrooke) since the death of Sir Robert, who was a martyr to insomnia. COUNTY NEIGHBOURS 37 Hatton and Craigston Castles are respectively south and north of us at little distance. Annie Duff of ,Hattoa\ sweet, bronze-haired creature, was one of my earliest flirts when I was about twelve, and she and Miss Urquhart of Meldrum some years my senior. Her early death was regretted by the wihole countryside. CHAPTER II SCHOOL, SALMON, POETRY Song of the Stewart's— Lochiel— Prince Charlie— Dotheboys-and-Parents House— My first Fight- Stag Beetles— My big Salmon— Golden Minutes at Whipps Crois— Playing the Game — Woodcote House — Tom Brown's Schooldays. The north-east coast of Scotland played a very important part in the history of Scotland, but that was very paany years ago, in the days of Bruce and the Red Comyn (now written Cumtoing). The latter ruled this district in the thirteenth' century and!, unfortunately for themselves, fell out with the powerful family of Bruce, who harried Buchan (a part of Aberdeenshire), with results that were visible for centuries. This, how- ever, is not the place to dwell upon the terrible and interesting annals of the north or upon the Battle of Harlaw, fought in thel fourteenth century, about fifty miles from Delgaty, near Aberdeen, where the wild highland clans were finally defeated by the lowlanders. It was really one mode of civilization against another. I have touched upon the subject elsewhere in the Prelude to the Song of the Stewarts, which was originally published in two editions, one for the Stewart Society, and is now out of print; but 1 hope it will be reprinted. In this connection and from the anecdotal viewpoint may, however, be mentioned one of the two occasions when my imagination has done its worst whilst I slept. Would that they were more frequent 1 I would wilhngly 88 PRINCE CHARLIE'S COUNTRY 39 sleep a month to wake up with a lyric, as it were, ready-made in my brain. But the mood refuses to be induced and is no doubt dependent upon a peculiar collocation of circumstances which are rarely found in equipoise. 'I had been wandering about the Western Highlands, and at the request of Mrs. Cameron Head of Inveraillort, had consented to pass a couple of nights beneath her roof. This is the heart of the " Prince Charlie " country, for it was here he landed with his forlorn band of half-a-dozen outlaws, and by the magic of his personality and name, won over the chief oif the Camerons (Lochiel), who promised to rally his clan. It was on this v^y hiUside he waited anxiously all day until evening came, waited with sinking heart, for there was no sign of the clan or its chieftain. At the very last of the last, however, and as the sun was setting, the wild strains of the bagpipes were heard in the distance, and Lochiel, followed by all his men, came streaming, hundreds strong, across the rugged, heathery hill. How these hundreds grew to thousands and Prince Charlie marched upon and occupied Edinburgh are events that have been the theme of countless historians (headed by the greatest authority on the Jacobites, J. B. Blaikie, of Edinburgh, an admir- able writer) and novehsts galore. Well, there I was at Inveraillort, plumped down in the middle of a not very exhilarating country-house party — ^I remember Lord and Lady Sligo as purple patches !— in which were several young ladies more or less attractive. On the second and last night of my visit I was attacked in front and rear with birthday- books and requests that I would write original poems in them. To obHge the first-comer I did write five or 40 SCHOOL, SALMON, POETRY six original lines which I hope have entirely disappeared from the face of creation and was about to retire |to. rest, as I had to rise at 5.30 to catch a seven o'clock train in the morning, when a Miss Mackenzie, whom I had not previously idejitified with the Camerons, appeared with her book. I was rather taken aback and could think of nothing much to the point, so suggested writing out a poem of Verlaine's that I knew by heart. This offer was accepted, but 1 noticed on its completion that the owner of the volumfe was rather disappointed. Mrs. Head told me, as I was bidding her good-night and thianking her for the (invariably) delightful visit, that the Miss Mackenzie in question was a granddaughter of a former chief of the Clan Cameron and a direct descendant of the chief who has led his followers to join Prince Charlie. 1 remember going to bed greatly repenting that I had not been able to think of anything original to write in her book, seeing that I intended to write the Song of the Stewarts descriptive of the long and splendid rule of the dynasty which closed in so tragically, so romantically with the battles of the '45. I tossed about for a few minutes, but was very tired after a long day on the hill and soon fejU into a sound sleep. Suddenly I awoke, contrary to all my usual habits ; it was pitch dark, and when I struck a Ught my watch said 3 a.m'. In my head was coursing the lUt of a new poem, which 1 hastily scribbled down and then immediately fell asleep again until I was awakened by my servant at 5.30. I remember leaving it with the butler to be placed upoti Miss Mackenzie's plate at breakfast that morning. The poem has been several times set to music, but I think the best setting has been that of my father. Here is the poem : THE DREAM POEM 41 A STIRRUP-CUP Lady whose ancestor Fought for Prince CharUe, Met once and nevermore, No time for parley ! Yet drink a glass with me Over the water : Memories pass to me, Chieftain's Granddaughter ! " Say, will he come again ? " Nay, Lady, never. " Say, will he never reign ? " Yea, Lady, ever. Yea, for the heart of us Follows Prince Charlie ; There's not a part of us Bows not as barley. Under the breeze that blew Up the Atlantic, Wafting the one, the true Prince, the romantic. Back to his native land Over the water : Here's to Prince Charlie and Lochiel's Granddaughter ! So much then for the nonce about the north of Scotland. Returning to my boyhood, I must mention that, although the benefits to be derived from an educa- tion in Scotland are, in my opinion, quite equal and possibly (for a Scottish boy) superior to an English education, my parents decided that my brother Percy and I should proceed to Aldin House, Slough, a preparatory school for Eton. Aldin House is still visible, with its Italian facade, from the windows of the Great Western just before one reaches Slough. I believe it is or was lately a lunatic asylum ; but whether any of the former masters remained as per- manent boarders after the pandem'onium of the boys' school was closed, I have no intention of ascertaining. 42 SCHOOL, SALMON, POETRY (What a monstrous and foolish tradition this is of the private school I Boys would be better taught at home until they go to Eton. A private school like Aldin House of my day might be described as Dotheboys-and-Parents Hall. The mother is done out of her children's society, the boys are done out of more or less everything, including education. I remember our mother coming to the school when first we went and earnestly begging Mrs. Hawtrey to be kind to us in the prim drawing-room' with its Rubicon of a passage between the boys' part of the building and that reserved for the use of the head-master. Shie m%ht as well have asked Queen Victoria, for we never saw Mrs. Hawtrey. I am quite certain thait I should have learned twenty times as much at home and gone to Eton far better prepared than ever I was at Aldin House, had I remained at home in the charming society of my, mother, who was quite miserable at losing us, and we, I think, were equally wretched at losing sight of her sweet face as she waved a tear-drenched adieu and entered the carriage that was to take her to Windsor. Percy and I shared a big angle-room in the south- west corner of the building. We must have presented a quaint picture in our ill-fitting pepper-and-salt suits, the result of the village tailor's efforts, in marked con- trast to the smart cut of most of the other smaU boys. We were partitioned off from two other boys, my old friend, now Colonel, Hugh Warrender, of the Grenadier Guards — friend through all these years — and Wurz- Dundas . Hugh, even at this early age, was an exquisite, but in later years (achieved heights of sartorial perfec- tion undreamed-of by most. I remember his once answering my inquiry, as to his method by saying^ : "1 drop in at my tailor's nearly every afternoon to try MY BROTHER PERCY 43 on something, and damn the ass of a cutter, it's the only way of getting something fit to wear." Hugh is thte type of the dolce far nierde capable of throwing all the uncrumpled rose-leaves of life away, to sleep instead upon rocks, and to rise at dawn, as he proved during ' th|e war, in Palestine and elsewhere : a really distinguished solder who will be vexed at being praised. My brother Percy had a pleasant time at Aldin House : he was a dreamy boy and developed intoi a yet dreamier youth, marrying for love and dying young with a couple of charming stories to his name. He was witty and amusing in congenial company, and would have perhaps produced some fine mature work had hie been more fortunate in his choice 'of a wife. I shall always keep his little story of the Priceless Orchid among my favourite books. Our ways lay apart at Aldin House during the day, as ' I was a little above him in the school. Mr. Edward Hawtrey, on© of the masters, known as Beetle owing to his near-sightedness had, never- theless, spied out my rather exceptional suit of pepper-and-salt with a dash of mustard, and I remember his advising me to be "as like the other boys as possible," eyeing my garments critically the while. Criticism was not confined, however, to Beetle Hawtrey, but several of the boys were not slow to condemn the sartorial efforts of the far north. Among these was a bright boy named Reeve, with smooth, auburn hair and very brown, staring eyes, whose seat was exactly behind mine in school. I was suddenly made aware of his critical disapproval by receiving a series of sharp kicks during the lessop. Turning round to expostulate, I was blamed for talking and received a bad mark. Immediately after school, in 44 SCHOOL, SALMON, POETRY my turn, I handed a " bad mark " to Master iRee(v!q,i somewhere in the region of the right eye. We were at once surrounded and separated by some bigger boys who were passing. They told us not to worry — wei should have the honour of fighting it out behind the Pavilion the next day in the afternoon. My experience of the ring had been limited to boxing with my father's forefinger, which he would occasionally prod into my chest. Reeve's was an unknown quantity, but fortun- ately for me he turned out to be equally ignorant of the craft. We set about our battle with a very good will, and I can still see before me Reeve's blazing! brown eyes and ruffled hair as we pommelled one another's countenances. After two pairs of (eventually) polychrome eyes and a good deal of bleeding at the nose on both sides, a draw was the verdict given by the bigger boys who had arranged the Uttle exhibition,, carried out with perfect tact and good (though rather; painful) feeling. Reeve and I made friends afterwards, as is so often the case in schools, and I found tha,t my peculiar garments no longer met with open criticism'. I never fought again at Hawtrey's' — ^and I changed my tailor. Here, as elsewhere, the classes were far too large to be managed efficiently, and boys followed more or less their own desires. I being naturally studious, managed, however, to bring home the prizes for Frenchj, for History, and for 'Latin. I still possess fiypatia, in red calf (for Classical Lore), Farrer's Language and Languages (for French), and The Roman and the Teuton (History), in lemon and green, as relics of those early days. My family, to my surprise, did not seem greatly impressed by my success, which, to childish eyes, seemed important, and I remember MY FIRST FIGHT 45 foolishly deciding that work unappreciated wlas not worth while ; an unfortunate decision only too faithfully carried out, both at Eton and Oxford, which for me wtere one long revel, Wroken with exclamations of surprise, when the sticks of the fireworks fell back from' the sky upon my head. But fireworks have their beauty, and frolic is not all dead loss, as some would have us believe. There were moments at Hawtrey's when the whole school throbbed in harmony and acted in unison. The chief of these were not the weekly readings out of places in class, rewards ahd punishments, nor the awful adjurations to be good hurled hebdomadally at us from the pulpit. Rather were they those of the school fights and the appearance of the Stag Beetle. These great beetles used drowsily to hum their way across the playground, during the summer time, at an altitude of about tw^enty feet, followed by volleys of bats, balls, caps, stumps — ^anything that came handy. The whole school was out to capture the invader, and it was rarely that one of these beetles made its escape. Whoever eventually caught or brought it down was bound to bring it to the captain of the cricket EleVlen, who adjudged the prize to that one among us who (in the opinion of the others) least deserved it. Once I was the recipient and carefuUy carried my treasure to my bedroom', where I placed it in the top left-hand drawer of my chest. Alas, that I had not chosen the fight, for the comely aub\im-locked Bertha Buxton, matron and my first love, had a way of depositing Sn that receptacle, during the mornings a delicately buttered roll from the head -master's table. These I used secretly to consume (sharing with Percy) and, unknown to him and to all the rest of the world, bestow, in iletum. 46 SCHOOL, SALMON, POETRY ardent kisses of the dawn. What was poor Bertha's astonishment on this occasion, when, on opening thie said drawer, roll in hand, an enormous beetle spread its wings and buzzed into her face. She told me she had nearly fallen down in a faint— (and thus risked discovery in the act of conveying the illicit roll (pur rolls and cake were of greatly inferior quality). It took many kisses and semi-sincere promises of reforim in the matter of preferring beetles to Bertha, before the longed-for stream of roUs began ag'ain to flow. " Roll " bagging " at breakfast was an important feature of our training at Aldin House. This occurred only when some master, whose seat was at the top of one of the long! tables (we were 150 boys), did not appear for break- fast. The boy within nearest reach of his superiors' roU was expected to " bag " and divide it among" about twenty urchins, craving for something more palatable than the Sahara of dry bread and tasteless stodge, of which the bead -master and Mrs. Hawtrey used to nibble a very small portion once a week and declare to be excellent. 1 must say that I felt rather mean as I swallowed a piece of the precious roll about the size of a florin and thought of the whole , one that iwas (probably) awaiting my attention when I could slip away to our room. At Hawtrey's I made one friend, PhiUips, whom I meet at intervals of about a decade— -we quite lately met in Ebury Street arid I found him unchanged. Phillips taught me to drive tandem later on when 1 was at a tutor's at Folkestone. He encouraged me to ride, an accomplishment which I had acquired upon the Shetland, Fairy, and upon the Orkney, Jet, at home, but had not carried further. This was of use to me later when 1 hunted occasionally for a brief period, with astonishing SCHOOLS 47 success as regards keeping my seat in difficulties, and the tandem -driving enabled me to pilot the coach to St. Germain on the great occasion to which I shall later refer. None of the masters at Hawtrey's were sympathetic. Old Hawtrey's three sons, Jack (grim and sallow), Edward (short-sighted and cricketing)!, George (squat and menacing), all taught in the school, and Charles was, 1 believe, also to have done so, had he not (wisely) preferred a more exciting existence on the stage, to the great benefit of theatre-goers. George was also later on an actor, and I saw him give at least one fine performance. My complete cessation of interest in school-work suggested to my parents the advisability of transferring me to Mr. Ninde's school at Woodcote House, near Reading, prior to Eton. A master at Hawtrey's discovered that I was about to flit elsewhere, and had the doubtful taste to interpellate me on the subject in the middle of his class. He was a little red-haired, moustachioed man, ultra emphatic and fond of inscribing formulae upon the blackboard, but singularly incapable of transferring them thence to the memory of his pupils. On the conclusion of his sarcastic remarks, I had the pluck to say : " They don't grow carrots at Woodcote." This gbt me a punishment, which I completed with entire satisfaction and left Aldin House after two years' dalliance. In the holidays I was mostly up at Delgaty, and began my collection, of the birds of Aberdeenshire, which contains some specimens considered worth mentioning in the special treatises. Such, for instance, are the Pied Flycatcher, the Buzzard, th)e Common Sandpiper (once common), the Tufted Duck, the Slavonian Grebe. 48 SCHOOL, SALMON, POETRY I have always been fond of natural history sport rather than sport in the sense of formal shooting; — wandering about with a gun or a contemplative fishing- rod rather thati attending cover-shoots. As a boiy, how- ever, I did some careful fishing of the Deveron in the spring-time with the March Brown, and later in the year, the Governor ; the Professor and the Coachman were names of my favourite flies. My most successful day with the trout was at Dunlugas in 1882 — 144 trout, weighing 54 lbs. The average size was small, especially as there was one among the 144 of 2f lb. weight. Had I made an earlier start the bag would have been fifty heavier in numbers at least. My best with sahnon was one of thirty pounds in the Deveron at the bend in the Embankment Pool. On two other occasions I got four, the biggest about 25 lbs. The thirty- pounder also provided the most excitement of any salmon I have caught, though certain frogs in the south of France and the goldfish in old Mr. David Morgan's pond at Whipps Cross when I was a very small boy, were quite as exciting to land. The salmon in question took me close into the bank. I was using a medium Childers whose dull yellow has often with me provied the winning lure. The water was high and slightly dis- coloured, and I was trying a new make of cast known as the Hercules. Hercules was, fortunately, its nature as well as its name on this occasion, for the fish, after rushing up and down stream several times, went straight away to a deep creek far away on the other side of the pool, where, as I knew, there were some big sunken beech-tree branches. I held on with all my might trying to turn him, but he was still too strong (he' had been on about half an hour) and got among them. Suddenly the tug-tugging at the line ceased and my MY BIG SALMON 49 heart sank as I felt the dead weight of what pusjt be a branch. I turned to the keeper Gallon; and said with a sinking heart : " He's off, I think." But I still held on tight and the heavy salmon- rod was bent nearly double as an inrniense branch of beech-tree rose to the surface from the mud of the creek in which it had been imbedded. The small twigs must have covered many yards as they pricked the calm surface of the water, the thick arm round which my line was entangled remaining sub- merged. Suddenly, from the , very centre of this miniature floating forest, a magnificent salmon sprang up his full length of solid silver — sprang and dis- appeared. A moment after, I again felt the heavy tugging of the fish. .What had happened was quite clear. He had made one twist of the line round thie sunken beech-bough and his direct pulling on it, plus mine, must have dragged it out of the mud. The line was prevented from breaking by the yielding of the bough as it was slowly raised. His triumphant leap the opposite way over the branch' had been his undoing, for 1 managed to prevent his getting back into the creek and kiUed him half an hour afterwards. He weighed 29J lbs. when we got him back to Delgaty, but 1 have always added half a pound, as fish lare said to lose weight when they have been some hours out of the water. The reader, however, is quite welcome to the odd half pound if he will, but he must ^ leave me the remaining 29I ! ; I shall refer later to the fascinating sport of frog"- fishing, but may just mention here my day with the goldfish at .Whipps Cross. Old Mr. David Morgan was my grandfather's brother — a very kindly, dark, bright-eyed old gentleman, with his black skull- i 50 SCHOOL, SALMON, POETRY cap and velvet jacket. The day we went over to luncheon from Lancaster Gate he gaVe me some finei birds for my collection, a Pine Grosbeak, a RaVen and a Waxwing, all of them on the British list, though these specimens are probably of Siberian origin. After luncheon I was given; a line and a small toy fishing'-rod and told I might go and fish for the goldfish mith a crooked pin while my elders conversed. Although still quite a little boy I was already a minor brother of the angle, for I had caught a good many trout at Delgaty and knew how to set systematically about the matter. I was quite good and quiet for about an hour, while my elders strolled up and down, eventually approaching the pond. I shall always remember old Mr. Morgan's rather sceptical inquiry as to how many fish I had caught. " Please, I think I have cauglht] them all," came the reply in piping treble, and w|hat was the old gentleman's astonishment when he saw the whole contents of his fair-sized pond — about forty good-sized goldfish — neatly arranged in three rows on the bank, all of them stone d^d. I l^d not been told to put them back, and my innocent inquiry as to whether I might have some for tea was that of thte labourer worthy his hire, though! it " put the lid on it," as they say nowadays. I had the greatest fun one day in April when wading in the Dunlugas stretch, already mentioned, just Below the pool known as the Mausoleum;, for I spied a kelt salmon of about lo lbs. lying at the tail of some green weieds close to the rocks in the centre of the river. The sun was shining! brightly, and I could not resist the temptation of wading to the bank, putting down the trout -rod, and returning to try and . catch the old chap by the tail. Neil RAGGING A SALMON 51 McLaren, the, faithful keeper, was drowning on the bank. The stream ran quite smoothly at the tail of a rock over the mass of green weeds, decorated with' small white blossoms not quite as big as daisies. I could see every stone on the bottom' and the fish's dark back and languid tail as I carefully crept up-stream to grapple with him. I was about up to my middle. With every precaution I approached my hands from opposite sides to the part just above the junction of tail and body. Now's the moment I — and I gripped him fast. In one flash I Was drenched to the skin, as the salmon, terror-stricken, leapt about like a mad thing while I clung firmly to his tail. The struggle lasted about half a minute and then he was free, jumping his own height in the water over and over again, all over the deep pool just above, while I was rocking with laughter in the middle of the river, partly at my water -and-sunlight escapade and partly at Niel, who had been roused from his siesta by hearing the fish plunging about, and was now running up and down the pool shouting' to me : " See at the running fish. Master Douglas, see at the running fish." That old kelt certainly played the part of a fresh-run fish to perfection — he entered into the spirit of the game, rather like Lady Horner's victims. This game, as she explained it to mie And I practised it, only requires two players — you and your friend on your way anywhere by train. Everybody who enters the carriage joins ipso facto in the game just like |my salmon, without knowing it. The rules are simple. You must not address any remark directly to anybody but your fellow-player, but you may say anything to him (or her) which touches the fibre of generosity or that passion for aiding fellow-travellers which is shared, I believe, even by assassins on a tedious 52 SCHOOL, SALMON, POETRY journey. Every time you indirectly elicit a remark from a fellow-traveller you score one. Thus, as the Great Western non-stop to Plymouth train whizzes past Slough one remarks to one's friend : " Did you notice, my dear, in the A. B.C., when we were due at Oxford?" An elderly gentleman in the comer seat will almost certainly say : "I fear, sir, we do not stop at Oxford at all : this train runs right through to Plymouth." That is one to A, but B would get even in a moment or two with : "I quite thought this was a smoking-carriage, but I see it isn't." " I've no objection to smoking " would certainly come from the same corner. Placing one hand in the pocket A will extract a cigarette, but of course, find no match. A youth opposite will tender one that he had just used to light up with him- self, with a polite "May I offer you a light?" Two to B. You must always forget your matches — and also to buy the paper, for one of you certainly will extract the Times and the Lady's Pictorial from some kind-hearted privy councillor or criminal, especially if the fellow -player were a lady — one to her. Much can be gained rather unfairly by the fair sex by simply gazingf at the window fixedly, whether open or shut. Someone masculine is almost certain to give her an easy point by pulling the strap up or down. There are all sorts of refinements to this game, as those will find who play it. Only you must of course keep your countenances, so that other players may leave you with tranquil minds in the belief that thiey have been " kind and helpful," and " playing the game," as they say — so different from your game 1 The brief period spent at Woodcote House school enabled me to take a fairly good place at Eton— upper WOODCOTE HOUSE 53 fourth form — and I am sorry to say that my brother Percy did not accompany me there, but was sent to Radley, where he was not, I beheve, very happy. Woodcote House stands on high ground about five miles from Reading, and presents all the aspects of a country-house in its own grounds. Mrs. Ninde was a singularly handsome and attractive person, quite different from Mrs. Hawtrey in her lack of pomposity and in the interest she took in the boys. My brief sojourn at Woodcote was more like a visit, so pleasant did I find the boys and the masters. Mr. Ninde was small, dark and energetic, a handsome, determined man. Exceptions were made in my favour as it was rather a feather in the cap of Woodcote to havie attracted a boy from Aldin House. Mr. Ninde gave me especial attention and' I could not haVe gone to a more satisfactory school. The food was better than at Aldin House, and at Woodcote we were allowed to have hampers from home, which greatly added to the popu- larity of those who, like myself, possessed affectionate and generous parents. I can still quite clearly see the comfortable dining-room, the lofty square of the main schoolroom, and the rows of beds in the dormitories — '■ for we all slept in dormitories and not in cubicles as at Aldin House. I hiad one or two almost friendly scraps with the bigger boys, Buckhurst and Robinson, who at first rather resented an alien intrusion from above, as it were, into the fifth form. I also discovered', for the first time, the pleasures of patronage in the admiration inspired in a boy of loftier height than myself either at the appearance of an immense hamper from Delgaty, or at the prospect of my speedily going to Eton, or owning to a combination of these and other external qualities. He used to follow in my wake loudly 54 SCHOOL, SALMON, POETRY applauding all I said, and I remember his suggesting that some sort of gift should be presented to me by the school on my departiure I Another little item may be added to the list of my indebtedness to Woodcote : it enabled me to read Torn Brown's Schooldays with far greater appreciation, for Aldin House and Eton were in an altogether different key. Woodcote 'was an improVied edition of the older fashioned schools, less worldly and Avith' a more intense local life. Every morsel of energy was taken up with living in the tense atmosphere of Woodcote. The school came first, second and third, whereas at Aldin House other interests chipped in, and Eton, though a world unto itself in one sense, was so closely linked and knitted up with the great world, that one stepped from the one into the othet without experiencing much sense of change. : , i i . i CHAPTER III ETON Arrival — From Lock's to Durnford's — P. J. de Paravicini — Eton " Swagger " — " Passing " in Swimming at Cuckoo Weir— Football " Colours " Won — Don yuan Confiscated — Romps. Many volumes have been devoted to Eton life, and I shall dwell on none of the obvious things such p^s the Eton and Harrow, 4th of June, etc. in these Adventures, for the place filled by those few years is necessarily not very large. But there can be no doubt that Eton has a cachet of its own in experience, and contrives to stand out in the perspective of memory like a cathedral over against a popular city. Not that there was much of the cloistered life in the Eton of my day in the early 'eighties. I made my debuty not at Walter Durnford's house, but at Lock's, where I spent my first half, somewhat awed by Mr. Lock's lofty forehead and reputation for mathematical acquirements. But Lock's meant merely bed and breakfast : work was done chiefly at my tutor's almost next door, that house of red brick facing the Old' Schools. The next half I was accorded a Very tiny room on the third floor jat Walter Durnford's ' and' made acquaintance with the members of that very successful house. I was still somewhat awed by the portentous greatness of Morris, the captain of the house, in his " stick-ups " and white tie ; a solemn youth as III see him now, with his six or seven fags to get his breakfast. Harry Cust, captain of the Oppidans, impressed me with great admiration 55 56 ETON in my early Eton days as he strode up the Chlaipiel aisle at the head of sixth form^ a chlerub' with a touch of the Emperor Comttiodus. I was often to meet him in the far future as Editor of tire Pall Mall, etc. But even his greatness under- went a momentary cloud when P. J. de Paravicini, captain of the Eleven, mediuta height, dark haired, oval faced, reeled slowly ("awful swagger") up the centre of the road in his light-blue cap and white cricketing, flannels (ordinary mortals wore grey ones), or in his perfect tall hat poised at the back of the head (this was only permitted to the really great )^ in his brown-top boots (brown tops as above), his " lush " blue, " turned up " trousers (as above), his tail-coat bound with braid (braid as above), lofty stick-up collars (as above). He only died the other day and I am always glad thiat we never met in after life. He was im'perial — fer too great, while I was a small lower boy, even to know of my existence, but we might have met in after life : it would have been like playing billiards with the Pope to have played cricket with " P. J." In fact, I am sure the late Supreme Pontiff (a fair billiard player) could never inspire me with awe and admiration equal to that which I felt for " Para " as we small fry dared affectionately to call him. Probably even the Pope and the Grand Lamia' have their short names : indeed it must be so, when certainly " Para " had his. Of course there are twelve boys in the Eleven, plus one or two with a foot in it — ^nine in the Eight — and sb on illogically, but rarely does it happen that more than one or two individuals in a decade rise to the altitudes of a Paravicini. Perhaps it was his Italian blood that enabled him so perfectly to play the part of lord of all he surveyed. Perhaps the spirit that makes the small "PARA" AND PASSING 57 boy so faithful an enthusiast for his own ideal burned particularly strongly in me, but I believe that the majority of those who were then at Eton will admit — that " Para " was a paragon. Eton, the most aristocratic of schools, had the most republican spirit — nothing that came from without to support a reputation had any effect in maintaining it there. People counted for just what they were worth in school values — the bookish element being at a dis- count. This was perhaps rather unfortunate for me in view of later developments, as I have had to do a great deal of work since leaving school, college and diplomacy, in order to catch up with the average educated person. We were gorgeously Homeric at Eton in my time. Achilles, Ulysses, Ajax, Agamemnon, each had his tent and was surrounded with his adherents. The mimic battles that we fought with' Trojan Harrow had an artistic finish about them built up from boyish en- thusiasms and unequalled in after days. Cricket was never one of my games, though I was a good catch at point, so I became a " wet bob," and tried to pass in swimming that first summer half at Durnford's. Three masters used to sit m conclave, blue jacketed and brass buttoned, for all the world like genuine skippers, in a punt at Cuckoo Wier, where we smaU boys bathed. We had to jump in and swim about according to instructions, usually ending with the command : " Take your hair out of your eyes." This could not be conveniently done with both hands, as was expected, without " treading water," so that the boy who had not acquired that accompHshtaent usually sank to the bottom in the attetopt, to the huge amusement of the crowded lawn. Warre, Sydney James, Marindin and my own tutor and house- 58 ETON master, Walter Dumford, twice sat in judgment upon me before I "passed," At last I did so. Few boys, I believe, ever got through this swimming ordeal at the first attempt. I was now free of the river and might even attempt to go in an " outrigger," which at once overturns if you let go the sculls. This I immediately did, though my experience in rowing had hitherto been confined to paddling about the lake at Delgaty in one of a pair of enormous flat-bottomed fishing-boats that made the heaviest punt look like a dry beech leaf. How, at my first attempt, I managed to let go both sculls just below iWindsor Bridge, when the river was in flood, and catch them again without swamping is one of the problems that make me still wonder and echo that admirable adage : " De Vaadace, de Vaudace et toujour s de Vaudace." Paralleled once only in latter experience by the feat of remaining in the saddle during a whole day's hunting on a Pytchley Crick Wednesday — a first attempt this too, at hunting, during which an old grey horse of poor Johnny Clayton's, with a mouth of iron and an exhaustive (and exhausting,) knowledge of the country, had a capital day to hounds, and his rider certainly an exciting one. The Brocas and its boats, however, had less charms for me than the football field, where I was speedily at home at the Eton game. This gamfe differs from Rugby and. Association by the disposition of the field, the mode of startinjg the game, and the scoring. We " formed down " for the " buUy " in the middle of the field, six of the team on either side, post half posts with their " back-ups," the arms of the one side resting upon the necks of their opponents. The " corners " put the ball into the passage we thus formed between I GET MY "COLOURS" 59 the feet of the posts, and the shoving and kicking began. I had quite a turn of speed in those days, and in spite of a regime of pine-apple and green chartreuse, always found I had " wind " enough to stay the hour's struggle. I played " comer " a good deal in " house " games and matches and got my " colours " a year before any of the boys of my time, except St. John Meyrick, who was killed in the Boer War. I shall always remember the surprise of seeing my door open, just after a match against Mitchell's, and Baillie's head appear : " Ainslie, you played very well to-day ; you may have your colours," This meant that I might wear the cap and shirt of grey and cerise with a thin black dividing Une between the two, and at once raised me from the position of one of the not important smaller boys to the society of the great I BaiUie (now Lord Glenusk), who gave me my colours, was a beautiful football player with so nice a sense of balance, so quick a judgment and so accuraite an eye that he forced a rouge (three roug'es to a goal) by running the ball down the hne in the final match of the House Football Cup, which we won (kicking it against one of the opposing Warre's side and touching it behind the line) and so saving what looked like a. certain tie— nothing to nothing — after an hour's strenuous play. I was post on that occasion and it was no light post, so much so that my heart gave signs of revolt and it Was thought better that I should not play in the " field^" for which I had been " picked up." Of aU the games I have played, Eton football has always seemed to me the best, and I wish that I had been able to continue it. L remember that Durnford used often to appear in the house game, in whicH we joined with Evans's and Ainger's ; but he was 60 ETON apt to hover in the ofifiinjg and to play rather jwith his tongue than his toes, padding about backward and forward Hke a red-wattled turkey-cock and clucking out encouragement or interperation, as the occasion suggested. ■ He used also to do a sort of turkey-trot up and down- stairs of an evening in his house, just as we |were retiring to rest. I found this rather tiresome, as jt was one of the few moments of the day when one could open a book to read. U recollect his once con- fiscating Byron's Don Juan, which I had brought from home and was reading when he suddenly pounced upon me. This was the only occasion I ever knew him! to take an interest in poetry. I had also a copy of Shelley's poems, which I tlhoiught it safer to present to the house library. There was some discussions as to whether it was suitable, and I remember the remarkj being made that AinsUe would be the only one to read it. One boy, in a speech at another house (Marindin's), declared that all boys had liked Eton so far as he knew with the exception of "a boy called Shelley." So much for literature in the Eton of the 'eighties, though there may have been houses less Philistine than Dumford's. We made up for it, however, with romps and escapades of all sorts in which, as a small boy, d was a ringleader. One fascinating game consisted in supplying one boy out of about ten or more with a squirt full of ink and water, and shutting the door of a small room in which the lights were extinguished. The game consisted in the boy with the squirt catching one of the others and squirting the liquid down his back under his collar. The victim then became, in his turn, pursuer. The effect upon the furniture ROMPS 61 and fittings of the rooms selected for this game was remarkable. The table in the centre was smashed almost at once as it generally covered two or three boys, determined not to be squirted, who clung per- tinaciously to its legs. Crockery was swept off the mantelpiece and camie crashing to the ground in picturesque fragments . Ink and water everywhere, as the jug and basin were generally broken pretty early in the day. The game becamie very popular in the house and we had to limit th^ number of participants. Also the authorities were not slow in detecting the extraordinary tendency of the furniture to deteriorate in certain rooms, but they did not discover the game while it was in full swing in my room or Bowater Vernon's, Clinton's, Meyrick's, Coventry's or LasceUes's, as we had look- outs posted dbwn the passage and staircase, and at the slightest hint stopped the scrimmage, struck a light, and were deeply studious of Caesar's Gallic War (nothing to our scrimmage) or Herodotus, which we carried in our pockets. St. John Coventry had a most gmleless face, with his mop of fair hair and blue eyes, and I remember his doing spokesman for us in a voice of injured innocence justly pained at Dumford's suspicions. .We sat round in a circle upon quaking chairs, calm and studious, having but a second before been struggling wildly in an inchoate mass. It was against the rules of the game to utter any loud sound which mig'ht lead to detection, so during the scrimmagte nothing was audible but gulps and grunts of discomfort and the creaking and cracking of furniture, save when there was a fall of crockery, which we had to risk. We played another variety of this game at evening prayers, read by Durnford at the end of the crimson- clothed dining-room table, along which ran two parallel 62 ETON benches upon which' we sat or rested our arms as we knelt. iWe used to catch hold of one another's hands under the table and then yo ! heave ho ! pull devil, pull baker — the heavy table creaked and groaned as it slowly rose up in the air, inch by grudging inch. Now and then there was an awful pause in the reading, which was fortunately conducted in stentorian tones, and then the table would hastily return to the ground with a bump. The voice would again take up the reading and ag'ain the table would rise and again fall suddenly. This was a most exciting pursuit and we used to have regular matches with teams on either side of the table. The wonder was that nothing ever came of it, but so far as I remember no reproof was administered. Not content with playing " post " for the house in the " bully " at football during the afternoon, sub- merged with the ball beneath a surging mob of muddied athletes, like a hedgehog rolled up, in the evening, during the winter half, I used often to defy some ten or twelve stalwarts to enter my room', hurling insults and Grammars and Gradus ad Parnassum at their hea;ds. A stampede would ensue: I would rush down the passage and throw myself upon the floor, back to the door and feet against boot -box, whichj in its turn 'wais in contact with the " b'urry " (bureau), then thie clothes- chest, then the wall. A strong line of defence I They used to " form up " in the room' opposite and then come on, treading in time : one two, one two, then, bang against the door with the leader's shoulder. I was never forced out of my position, but the door developed a large crack in the centre. This assault and b'atfering would be repeated two or three times, after which I used to execute my favourite manoeuvre of rising very ROMPS 63 quietly from the floor and standing behind thie door with a big jug of water. On they came, crashing down and falling over one another head foremost on the floor and passage, while I damped their ardour with a cold douche, then leapt on top of thte struggHng mass with shouts of triumph. Any article of furniture in the room as yet unbroken was, of course, smashed in pieces during these manoeuvres. CHAPTER IV ETON AND OXFORD Escalading the Tower— A Tragedy of Good Health— Mousing— A Martinet — BalHol— The Master Examined— Enter Arthur Bourchier— Jowett and the Old Vic. But the most exciting times, as we grew bigger, were excursions to the Castle Hotel, Windsor, and return by escalade after lock-up. St. John Coventry, St. John Meyrick, Francis Pelham-Clinton and I were the first to discover a way out of Dumford's house by one of the windows, with a drop of only about five feet into the stone-flagged entrance-passage. The Castle, the .White Hart and indeed all hotels and several streets of Windsor were out of bounds, so we had to use great circumspection as to our goings-in and comings-out. There was a very sporting young! biUiard-marker who used to survey the street for us prior to our appear- ance in it, and I have often rushed back to cover when he dropped the signal handkerchief. Brandies and sodas, cigars and cigarettes made us men of the world for a brief period between schools. We used to play pool and billiards with the townfolk, and Coventry more than held his own,. He was a natural player, and I remember on one occasion when the game was called Mr. Coventry twenty — Mr. Smith forty-eight — in a g'anle of fifty — ^that Marshall, the marker, backed Coventry, who duly rolled up with his thirty break. We should all have been expelled if we had been 64 ESCALADING AT ETON 65 caught, and this knowledge added a fearful joy to our adventures in Windsor. Peril was by no means over at night when we left the Castle : we had to get into the house Avithout arousing suspicions. I remember one night the three of us, Coventry, Meyrick and myself, arrived back from the Castle at about tea-time, in mid -winter. We had long before given elaborate instructions to young Guthrie, a lower boy who occupied the room with the window of entrance, that he was to open the moment he heard pebbles being thrown against it, under threats of vengeance dire if he failed to be prompt. On this occasion we threw up the pebbles and waited with confidence for the window to be opened, as we saw there was a hght in the room and had no doubt it was occupied. To our surprise it remained closed, so we renewed the rain of pebbles. At length it was very slowly raised an inch or two, and Meyrick, a strapping lad six feet tall, clambered up first from the ledge upon which we three were poised, and with a vigorous push thrust it wide open and plunged out of the black night into the centre of the room, followed by Coventry and myself, with imprecations on the head of young Guthrie, who had thus delayed our return and made us run great risk of detection. " What the devil do you mean by not opening the window at once? " came as in one breath from three stalwarts in tall hats and white ties, bHnking in the bright light of two lamps, and looking everywhere for the diminutive culprit. At last a very faint, small voice came from behind ja; screen : " I'm very sorry ; my brother is getting tea and I thought you were burglars j " and we saw the prettiest of pretty Uttl© girls, like Dulcie in Vice Versa, crouching down in terror fast melting; into admiration 5 66 ETON AND OXFORD for our audacity. Of course we apologized humbly, and Coventry, one of whose fags Guthrie was, let him off fagging for the rest of the half. Dulcie was delighted with the adventure, and her brother, who was a regular sport, joined our card club in the High Street when he got into Fifth Form. This club was quite unique of its sort and was founded by myself, Ednam^ Royston, R. T. ElHson, F. Pelham- Clinton and a few others who were mostly not members of Durnford's. Here we elderly gentlemen of seventeen could enjoy our rubbers in peace and quiet, a cigar and brandy-and-soda at our sides, and the bright, coloured pasteboards, with their bold bad kings of hearts and clubs tO' symbolize our enterprise. It was indeed a perilously situated resort this little club, consisting of a couple of back rooms over a fruiterer's on the left, past Barnes Pool Bridge. Masters were, of course, constantly passing to and fro, and stories of our exploits got about in the school ; for this secret was not so well kept as that of the Castle bnUards, since our members were recruited from other houses besides Durnford's. I remember how we used to enjoy ourselves, and how we used to laugh at one of our members who insisted upon bringing in a rope ladder to be used by the members of the club in case the house were attacked from the front. Nothing, however, transpired in my time so far as the beaks were concerned, though a fellow member of the club told me only the other day, when we were talking over old times, that when he was leaving Eton he had been told by his house-master that he knew about' the club, but had thought better to say nothing. Tell that to the Marines, or if the house -master did know, liien it was his duty to inform the authorities. This mention of the rope-ladder reminds me of an LYON AT THE TOWER OF LONDON 67 adventure that occurred to a good friend of mine at a much later date — Lyon of the Grenadier Guards. He had made a biggish bet with' some brother officers that he would climb into the Tower of London between i a.m. and 3 a.m. in the mornin|g, when, of course, every entrance was bolted and barred. He was off duty on the night in question and con- sequently had no business there at all. Of course it was understood that neither side was to do anything to disturb the ordinary course of events. Lyon presented himself in dtie course, about 2 a.m., at the especial point of the pile which he had studied with a view to escalad© and began) his careful, but perilous ascent. After about half an hour's efforts he had raised himself with bleeding ffnger-tips to just below the level of the first parapet. He heard the heavy tramp tramp of the sentry as he stalked to and fro. Waiting until the steps seemeid to be at the remotest point from his position, he pulled himself up' the remaining couple of feet and was just scramblingi over when he saw a bayonet about an inch' from his nose, and a stentorian voice shouted : " 'Alt I Who goes there? " Lyon, utterly reckless with exhaustion, but determined to win his bet, was then heard to ejaculate : " Don't be a d d fool my good fellow, but pull me up and- I'll give you a fiver." Poor Lyon I He was a real sport and had and gave his friends a splendid time, while the Guards enjoyed many little privileges of which I am told they havle since been deprived. He was a regular sybarite and used frequently to appeal on parade after a " white " night, as indeed did also my oldest^ and best Eton friend. Captain St. John Coventry, who was in the same battalion. Lyon was really wonderful considering the 68 ETON AND OXFORD frail health which he " enjoyed." He inherited, I believe, a capital of about £150,000, and I remember Coventry's telling me that Lyon's doctor had informed him about the same time that a couple of years ,was all he could expect of life. His lungs and his heart were in a deplorable condition according to this 'JEsculap. Lyon took the doctor at his word, and decided at least to have a good time. He decided that he and his capital should live and die together, and consequently started expenditure at the rate of £75,000 a year. The first year passed pleasantly enough between Ascot, Epsom, Newmarket, Paris, Monte Carlo (he had left the regiment). He had got through some months of the next year and rather over £100,000 of capital when he found himself menaced with signs of gfood health. He did his best with bouquets and stage -doors and suppers and all-night sittings at cards, but all was of no avail. His health continued steadily to improve in the most disquiet- ing manner and 1 remember lunching with him at the old Bristol while he detailed his symptoms. iWhat was to be done? His spare, ascetic form' shook with emotion as he poured the foaming Pommery, with an all too steady hand, into my tumbler. I suggesteid a visit to the home circle — could nothing be done by the wrath of a pere noble to undermine the nervous system? A course of well-conducted dinner-parties, swith country neighbours, stiffened with bazaars and a little pew-work with the collecting plate? A lenient smile, a pleasant twinkle of the eye — it was the pere noble's capital that he had inherited. He had no living relations, no country place and therefore no country neighbours. iWe finished luncheon, I remember, in the delightful society of Kate iVaughan, who, like the writer, had a; standing inyitation to drop in to a champagne lunch. 1 LYON'S LAST DAYS 69 I lost sight of him for some years until we chanced upon one another at Monte Carlo, wherd I was on my way to Italy. There he was : the Lyon of the present, just as frail as the Lyon of the past, but lapparently endowed with perpetual youth, for he had not visibly changed in any respect, but looked' just as wistful, just as ascetic as any other hard-working viveur. I asked him to dine that night at the Paris and lie came. |He told me the sad story of his robust health' : at the end of the second year the £150,000 capital had duly died of consumption — not so its former owner — ■; on the contrary he was left with an excellent appetite and ultra expensive tastes, without the means to gratify either. II sympathized discreetly and then came a little bit of comedy, half pathetic, half humorous, which often accompanied the doings of Lyon. He put his hand in the pocket of his dinner-jacket and from & hermitically sealed glass tube produced a cigar : "It's all I have now to offer : i|t'!s a very good cigar I believe — smoke it on your way to Italy — and put not thy trust in doctors." He waved his hand as he strolled away in the starry perfumed dusk of Monte Carlo;, Some months later I read of his death in the papers. Harley Street had been out in its calculation about ten years. Eton, with all its faults, is a most wonderful institution, and if the royal dictumi : " Institutions corrupt men," be true, then all I can say is that institutions such as Eton are excellent for boys. Having said so much, let us proceed to find the sun- spots. These adventures purposely avoid wordy dis- cussions of all sorts and I am not going to be led into a pamphlet on our upper-class educational system. I merely state facts. In tny, day, we were certainly 70 ETON AND OXFORD worse taught than the boys at the middle-class schools, and compared with continental education, the system was absurdly inadequate. I much doubt if it be possible to teach forty noisy boys in one class. Some of our masters inspired awe and kept physical but not mental order, while many were only imper- fectly in control of the back benches, and some altogether lacked prestige and failed entirely. One master in particular, who taught French, was so obviously incapable of maintaining discipline that his division was reduced from forty to ten, but even these ten gave him more than enough to do. " If any of you young devils had a spark of generosity about you, you would desist from chattering when I am trying to explain this difficult passage to the two or three of you who are not incorrigibly idle." (Cries of " saps ! " "scugsl".) Thus Mr. Evergreen (I alter names here) ; but the logic of his appeal to the finer feelinig;S of those he condemrted as young devils was not apparent to us and the din continued. Another master whom I always pitied, while expiring^ with' laughter at his adventures in education, was a fine scholar and editor of several Latin poets. He was very tender- hearted towards animals, and also extremely short- sighted. A thorough gentleman in his gold-rimmed spectacles, I can see him now peering into his Horace as he proceeded to give us a super-excellent version of one of the Odes. Meanwhile, however, strange events were taking place in that spacious summer school- room, with its door wide open to admit the breeze of June, and forty imps of fifteen upon its benches. From several pockets would appear small boxes containing white mice, and these would be allowed by their owners to run along the floor and desks. Suddenly a hand ETONIAN ALARUMS 71 would be raised. " Please sir, I see a mouse. Shall 1 kill it sir? " " No, don't touch the poor little beast, I'll come and catch it." So old Socrates would rush out of his rostrum and begin his search for the mouse under the benches. INeedless to say, he never even caught sight of it, but all over the class sprang ,up boys with : " Please sir, I see another mouse," and then there would be violent bangs on the floor as though the new mouse were being stamped upon. This would exasperate Socrates beyond measure and he would rise up to denounce the culprit, whom, of course, he could not detect any more than hei could the mice. Books would then be buzzed about — not at the mice — and a perfect pandemonium' ensue. Socrates would become crimson with rage, and I remember a wonderful climax attained by the introduction of a large collie dog as he was scribbUng yellow tickets to ensure " swishing " for the ring-leaders — or those he beheved to be the ring- leaders. The dog, hearing him' shouting, began to bark. At first he could not see it, but when he did, he threw down -his red chalk pencil and rushed to: the bench near the door where two boys were holding it by the collar. He seized the boys and the dog in one wild embrace and fell himself, on the floor, as I very nearly did at the same time — for laughter. Other masters when thus " ragged " were more vicious, and I remember on one occasion at early school (mathematics), when I was quietly discussing with my old friend. Sir Robert Gresley, the respective merits of a pair of postage stamps which we had brought with us to help while along the time, the heavy iron door -key whizzed between his head and mine, and went smash against the wall just behind us, where it dislodged a large piece of plaster. iWe looked upon 72 ETON AND OXFORD it as rather a good joke, but an inch or two to right or left would have very likely resulted in manslaughter. To resume. Considering that while at Eton about £400 a year was paid for my education, aind I pupppse for most of the others, we should have had far smaller classes, and no masters should have been appointed who were unable to keep order. Nowadays, I believe, the educational authorities are everjrwhere aUve to the complex of qualities and attainments necessary to make a good teacher. My experience was that no master ever taught me anything* that 1 could not have learned myself. I never had any expert guidance at home or elsewhere. Consequently my private schools, as weU as the University, were in the nature of a revel, with brief interludes of apphcation for the purpose of passing examinations. Had 1 come under the influence of a powerful personality, instead of that of a martinet with the mind of a drill-sergeant, the results would have been widely different. I was naturally of a studious disposition. Some will say that it is a boy's own fault if he fails to develop his powers at school. But the ethics of a school hke Eton are far too strong for a boy, unless he is supported by his teachers. There; ought to have been a tutor for every five or six boys,j and this would have been easily met out of the amounts paid by our parents. The masters, however, would not have been able to retire on £13,, 000 a year, which was often the case in my time with those who had houses. Each boy should have the close attention of an expert mind concentrated upon his mental and moral development at this critical period. It would be far less fun for the boy of course, but in the end a great boon, both to the individual and to Society. Of course a WHAT HAVE THE POOR GIRLS DONE? 73 good many young'sters have not much in them for good or ill, but this would enable more attention to be paid to those who had something worth developing'. Certainly I am all against mollycoddling or any inter- ference with the free intercourse of personality between boy and boy. This reminds me of what occurred recently at a meeting in London, held to air the views of a living, and every successful young novelist,, who has attacked the pubhc-school system. The meeting was largely attended by teachers of both sexes, and the novelist had just been saying that for boys pi delicate fibre Uke himself, it would be preferable that there should be mbced' education, boys and girls attend- ing the same classes. As he sat down, a young school- mistress rose and asked if she might put a question. Permission being given, she simply said : " What have the poor girls done to deserve such a fate? " Shouts of applause 1 ' ! ' i ; i ■ ' My notion of a tutor is one whom boys could consult and ask for friendly advice. I used to object very strongly to my door being flung wide open at any hour of the day or night to reveal the red face of our little turkey-cock inquisitorially glaring'. I see that Lord Frederick Hamilton, in his book of reminiscenses, says that his privacy was never invaded in that day. Perhaps he did not read Byron at sixteen, but from what he says I think he would agree ithat even schoolboys are entitled to a little privacy, even if they do read Byron and smash furniture. On arriving at Oxford for matriculation at Balliol), I had little notion of the relative positions of the Oxford Colleges, and thought that one had merely to quahfy in a few rudimentary subjects before being taken into the arms of Balliol. My father having been a 74 ETON AND OXFOED Balliol man and also his brother. Sir Mountstuart Graiit- Duff, and my first cousin Arthur having recently also been a member of the College, I had some claim to the attention of Jowett, who certainly received me kindly, entertaining me at breakfast and luncheon. Then he chirruped out a few inquiries as to my family and then relapsed into silence without giving me any infor- mation as to the wlays of Balliol. I passed the matriculation examination and Was told, to my surprise, that I could join the College as soon as I had passed Responsions. Unfortunately I selected Algebra instead of Euclid as one of my subjects, and w^as ploughed in that paper, though one of the examiners went out of his way to extol my renderings of the first three books of the Odes of Horace. I shouldj have better appreciated his squaring his mathematical colleague. I joined the Unattached and took lovely rooms just facing the church, side by side with Balliol. Here I began to entertain a number of old Etonian firiends, and soon met with other interesting people, such as Ion Thynne, Edgar Jepson and Victor Plarr, to whose notebook, which he has very kindly put at my disposal, I am' indebted for some of Wilde's sayings and other matters in this chapter. At the end of the next term I again failed to qualify in Algebra, though again complimesnted upon my Latin. I began to take an interest in Euclid, and finally qualified in all the subjects. Responsions w^s like one of those games in which you have to do a number of different things successfully — failure in one of them entailing failure in all. I invariably dropped the egg in the soup ladle, after having jumped the hurdles, said the Lord's Prayer backwards, stood on my head, made a break of thirty at billiards and sworn an FIKST IN GREATS! 75 affidavit. The wiseacres who invented Responsions should have substituted this list of subjects which, at any rate, would ensure a steady eye, hand and head. Having the blue paper slip containing the certificate, I imagined that now, at any ratet, I was entitled to enter Balliol without more ado. But so it was not to be, and thereupon ensued a scene Which must have been rare in the experience of the " Master." Thus we fell out. I had made the acquaintance of the philosopher and coach, St. George Stock, a delightful man, who suggested my taking Euclid instead of Algebra for Responsions. I asked him Whether he thought I should get a First in Greats on three years' reading instead of four, as I did not propose to stay at the University the full four years. Stock, like a wise man, replied that he Would not guarantee it, as he thought that my Greek scholarship might not ^he did not say would not) come up to the standard of a First in so short a. time, although in other respects it was quite possible that I should be successful. This Was enough for a head- strong boy : it must be a guaranteed First' in Greats or a mere Passi ! One laughs as one thinks of the folly of it to-day. But Jpwett was also very much to blame on that distinctly warm! summer morning when We exchanged views on education. He sat in his chair like a long-eared owl disturbed, chirping out at intervals : " You must take one of the Honour Schools if you come to Balliol." I explained that I Was not sure of getting a first (as though it mattered whether I got a first or a fiftieth, provided I had the education). " You must take an Honour School," came back the unvarying reply. Jowett had then only " to talk to me like a father," and convince me that it would make but little difference to anyone what class I got. I 76 ETON AND OXFORD continued to claim thq right of taking a Pass while he Went on like an automaton with his reply, until we were interrupted with a tap 'at the door, and the appear- ance of Mr. Forbes, the Master's factotum, with a bundle of papers. I bowed and said that I would not come if I had to take Honours. I had refused Balliol, so now we were quits. But the whole business of matriculation for Balliol in those days was a farce. My good friend Victor Plarr thus describes his own adventures on arriving at about the same period on (a quest similar to mine. At the viva, Plarr sat next to a yotmg workman with! hobnail boots : " It was a wonder he dared to assume this easy attitude (he sat with one leg folded over the other). . . . He would have made an excellent plumber and gas-fitter. ... Without any sort of preliminary, Jowett came out in high piping treble with the truly absurd question — ' What is the diate of David? ' This floored our industrial friaid. He suggested ' 500 B.C.' As if the date of David mattered a pin, as if Jowett, an avowed sceptic, cared a pin for David or his epoch. ... In a bird-like way the Master turned to me, and I said meekly ' 1000 B.C.? ' which, I believe, is near the orthodox mark, though pirobably it is far from the correct date. Jowett said no more, and sent us off. Result of matriculation : Earl Russell and the Hobnail were admitted among others, because they represented interesting social extremes.'^ Balliol, as represented by Jowett, wished to " keep up a reputation for advanced views, and hence found promise not only in earls educated as agnostics, but in hobnaUs." Another friend of mine Was thus addressed in a cheery way by one of the Balliol authorities Xsrill living), "GIVE MB A PEN" 77 who himself had taken a Second in Modem History : "The fact is, we don't want second-rate men here." My friend answered this masterful jab on the jaw" with one on the chin : '- Then how the devU are you here, Mr. ? " Although I w^as not a member of Balliol, I had so many friends there that I was constantly in the College, and heard most of what was going on. Jokes were many about the Scottish Professor, Forbes, who is com- monly reputed to have translated the Plato, while Jowett's contribution was that of signing his name with minusculous neatness. The Master was certainly able to do that, as witnessed' by the anecdote of the Thirty- nine Articles, which it was reported that he would refuse to sign. " Give me a pen," was his sole reply. The mystery and legend as to the Master has equal value with that famous Papal Bull, which French and Latin scholars will at once be able to place by its initial phrase : Digitus in Oculunt. Forbes was a kindly soul, and the College rhyme : Here am I : my name is Forbes But now the Master me absorbs ; only too correctly describes the poor feUoW's fate. He |was shockingly overworked as tutor anldi examiner and the Master's factotum. But the Master did' not have it all his own way always, though very nearly always he did. My unique and exquisite friend, the Rev. F. Bussell, then a scholar of Magdalen CoUege, provided an exception. He was on one occasion invited to take a walk by the Master. This was a mighty honour, which made the bravest both abound in vanity and tremble lest they should be nonplussed, browbeaten, and altogether squashed by 78 ETON AND OXFORD the epigrammatic and reply-forbidding snubs of Balliol's Master and the University's Vice-Chancellor. Bussell was stout of heart, but not only that, he invariably wore a gardenia in his button-hole, a white satin stock with a diamond horse-shoe pin and an eye-glass kept in place solely by prehensile contraction of the ocular muscles. They sallied forth along the drear expanse of the Banbury Road, Bussell striding forWafd like Ajax about to visit Achilles, Jowett pattering along at his side, a diminutive Calchas. As a rule, undergraduates invited to join in this portentous perambulation awaited an indication from the Master as to the course that he desired the conversation to take. Not so Bussell, an expert Hellenist, who afterwards took Firsts in Mods, and also in Greats. He was determined that the conversation should run on lines familiar to, himself, and as he wlas at that time making an exhaustive study of Byzantine Greek writers, he began by asking the Master if he were acquainted with' the works of (say) Palseologos Porphyrogeneitos. Upon the Master chirp- ing out a negative, Bussell lightly ran over a hst of some twenty historians, grammarians and rhetoricians of the Byzantine period, concluding each name with an inquiry as to whether the Master werte acquainted with the work in question. " No, no, no, no," chirped Jowett in reply, redoubling his efforts to keep pace with his youthful companion. Suddenly, at the conclusion of the list, Bussell stopped, the Master rather astonished (but also rather pleased, owing to the pace), also stopped (m the middle of a fair-sized puddle), and heard Bussell enunciate the following appalling words : " Well, what have you read, Master? " History is entirely silent as to what occurred after this stupendous audacity. An old professor of Croce's used to say to his class when ENTER ARTHUR BOURCHIER 79 they came to a certain date in the sixth century, A.D., " Here the curtain comes down on ancient history and immediately rises upon mediceval." So perhaps it was with Jowett and Bussell — ^the curtain came down with a nm upon Bussell the imdergraduate, to rise again at once upon Bussell, the expert Hellenist, whom Jowett would be careful to cherish on the chance of his be- coming distinguished in after life. The above little anecdote shows Jowett with the laugh' against him, but, of course, he had the " qualities of his defects," as I heard a member of an iiltra-fashion- able club remark the other day, turning topsy-turvy, a commonplace of the moralists w'ithout having the least notion that he was doing so. Jowett had undoubtedly a breadth of mind wanting in many pedagogues. Evidence for this is certainly to be found in the per- mission to act at Oxford, wnmg frohi him' by my old friend, Arthur Bourchier. I have thought it amusing to obtain the eminent actor's account of the proceeding from his owtt lips, and readers of the following brief narrative will please understand that the pen has been handed over to the present iessee of the 'Strand Theatre, who will tell them what occurred on the historical occasion, preluded with the alarums and excursions in which he joyed at that time. So enter Arthur Bourchier disguised as a man of letters. \ HOWj I FOUNDED THE O.U.D.S. My dear Douglas, ;How many of us are there to whom the Old Vic. at Oxford (and let me underline " Oxford "), is not a painful memory. The extraordinary regulation that permitted such a fire-inviting, ramshackle, appalling 80 ETON AND OXFORD building to be kept open for, at any rate, the com- mencement of each term, was on a par with the recent astonishing ban on the Grand Guignol plays imposed by the present Vice-Chancellor. But there it was. It was invariably the scene of disorderly riots on the p>art of undergraduates, and on the historic occasion of which I speak, 1 was myself one of the culprits. A party of us from Christchurch, who had come from a particu- larly merry dinner, more than fiUed the stage box. The play presented was a somewhat weird domestic drama, entitled My Jack, and apparently it was being depicted by the " Z " Company of the undertaking. At the beginning of the play the hero, " Jack," came on to the stage in a pair of trousers calculated to make any undergraduate hilarious, but which were too utterly provocative for our box-load to stomach. Cries of " Take off those trousers," with a sort of dirge, which spread to the whole house, of " Trousersi I Trousers ! Trousers I " began, and was chanted loudly through the first act to the evident discomfort of the unfortunate players. Towards the close of the act the hero managed to make himself audible with the remark, " Father, I go to India." A volley of cheers from' our box and the rest of the audience, greeted this remark, and in the very short silence that remained a stentorian voice cried^ " And if you come back in those trousers we wiU take them off." Dxiring the next act the hero did not appear. In the various intervals between the scenes the bars were visited with equal frequence, and when the third act curtain rose on the uplifting picture of the old village home, With some beautifully stuffed doves peeping out from a very rickety dove-cot, and the heroine murmured, " Father, herte comes the village," our spirits rose high. " The village " came on— three scene-shifters INTERVIEWS THE VICE-CHANCELLOR 81 and the call-boy 1 The Band struck up, and everyone shouted — " Here he is 1 here he is ! Jack back home safle at last." Could we believe our eyes? — ^and in those same trousers ! It Vas too much I The mutiny broke out. On to the stage dashed the ring*Ieaders from the Box ; round the dove-cot, out through the stage door, rushed the terrified hero — eagerly pursued. A most disgraceful scene took place in Commarket Street, 'with the result that the trousers Were borne back in triumph' to the theatre, which was then in an uproar. A; stampede and a free fight ensued, and, with great difficulty, the police cleared the building. Next morn- ing the ringleaders were, very rightly, "hauled up" before the then Vice-Cihancellor — Professor Jowett of Balliol. I Was elected spokesman, and in a speech full of fierce invective, I hurled defiance at his benign head, saying that if the authorities had no sense of justice, they might at least have one of humour, and as a protest against the foolish' prohibition of legitimate drama in Oxford, and the allowance of such an abortive building as the Old Vic. in its place, the only thing we could do was to give vent toi o^ir feelings in the manner which we had done. To the astonishment of all, the great little man looked me full in the face and said, " The others may go. You stay." The result of that interview was that he turned a most attentive ear to all my arguments in favour of establishing the Drama as part — not only of Oxford education, but recreation. My arguments as to the lliate tiights involving much drinking and heavy losses at cards, as against the less expensive and more salutary occupation of rehearsing, thoroughly appealed to him, the result being that he finished by saying—" I Will allow you to play Shakespearean plays or Greek plays, provided you can 6 82 ETON AND OXFOED get ladies to appear in the ladies' characters ; and also, if you can get funds for a proper theatre to, be built, I will license it, and will come there at the opening performance." This was indeed' a triumph', and a year or so later the New Theatre at Oxford was opened by the Oxford University Dramatic Society with' a performance of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, and as both the theatre and the O.U.D.S. are now part of the Varsity curriculum, the episode of the Old Vic. once more proves that out of evil good often comes. March 20, 1922. PS. — All this is, of course, ancient history to you, my dear Douglas. Were we not in those historic rooms of ours in King Edward's Street, not far from! the above scene of carnage : did' we not sit up till the small hours over our pipes and plain soda, while you chid me for my rashness, and, like conspirators, we gradually germinated the scheme of taking the high hand with the authorities, and playing for neck or nothing? So really, my dear Douglas, you were, perhaps, the most important accessory. As I Write all this, the photo of that charming bust of dear old Jowieitt looks cunningly down on me. CHAPTER V SWINBURNE, WILDE, AND PATER Oxford Days — Bristol Restaurant — First in London — Luncheon Festivities — Bullingdon Dinners — The Ishmaelites Society — J. P. Nichol and Swin- burne — Maturity at Seventeen — With Swinburne at Louise Molesworth's — Either or Ether— Oxford Days—'' Full of the Warm South " — Oscar Wilde Trounced by H. J. Maynard— Anecdotes of Wilde — Injustice of Whistler — Wilde as Conversationalist — Walter Pater — First Meeting — Wilde on Walt Whitman — Lionel Johnson as Roman Catholic — The Escalade— Oxford Alpine Club— Wilde's Sentence Unjust— After Im- prisonment — His Feat in Paris — A Lost Masterpiece. Thank you, my dear friend, for your contribution, I again take that oar in hand 'which one of the troubadours declared to be heavier than the oar of the galleys. I shall proceed to padldle gently along and down the stream of Oxford life in those days in the company of that gentlest of people, Charles Leveson- Gower, who told me of what must have been the most exciting event of his life, when he went to see his tutor, Forbes, Avith an essay for his inspection. " Come in," replied Forbes, cheerfully, to his modest tap. Leveson- Gower entered at the sound of this encouraging voice, and as he did so, an entire bottle of superfine scarlet ink whizzed past his head, to smash in rosy pattern on the wall. " Luminous " Leveson, as we used to call him from his smooth hair and invariably ultra-shining, bright appearance, imm'aculate at all points, hastily withdrew. Other BaJliol men who used often to come round to revel at the rooms in the Cottimarket, whither I now had migrated and shared with one of my best friends, Albert Osborne, who had got tired of living 84 SWINBURNE, WILDE, AND PATER in College, were Edward A. Mitchell Innes, now a K.C. ; Victor Morier, son of the Ambassador, Sir Robert ; Billy Tyrell, now Permanent (or is it Eternal?) Secretary at the F.O. ; Hubert Beaumont, son of my friend the great financier and man-of-the-world, the late Lord Allendale, and A. H. E. Grahame. Albert Osborne was very pale and fair, with smooth hair. I hardly knew him when he was at MiLUiLll'tJ at Eton, as he was slightly older, but at Oxford we shared not only rooms, but at that period, ideas. He was a most delightful companion on any adventure, and invariably maintained that extraordinary calm which will, 1 think, go out of the world with my generation as, indeed, it must admit all this democratic push and hustle. I remember when Oscar Wilde appeared to review a performance of the O.U.D.S., to which we both belonged as original members, he was asked to give his impres- sions of Osborne. I always think he hit him off to a T. : " ' I will turn you to stone,' said Pallas Athene, if you barken not to the words of my wisdom. ' Ah, but I am marble already,' said Osborne — ^little Osborne, and passed on." It was the useless but decorative society of such people as Osborne and Cuthbert Clifton, whom Osborne introduced to me at the Bristol, in Coirk Street — the first restaurant in London run on modem lines — that kept me out of the Union Debating Society, where I might have enjoyed the flower of rhetoric from' puch lips as those of the present Archbishop of York and Lord Robert Cecil — the latter I only met occasionally at the Gridiron Club, of which we Avfere fellow-mfembers. Luncheon was the chief feast in those days, and we certainly did ourselves -vvtell : oysters and champagne wtere the order of thfe day, both' at College BULLINGDON 85 feasts and at lodgings. I remember some young Sybarites actually mingling Vintage Lafitte claret with Pommery and Greno champagne. On one occasion, at my new rooms over Wheeler's in the High, about ten of us rushed out and found the fire-escape, which, I believe, was put rather out of commission owing to the antics which we performed with that machine. We were very rightly fined ten pounds apiece for this dangerous frolic. BuUing'don dinners were great func- tions, and I remember frequently proceeding to them with Osborne and Morier in a hansom — rather a tight fit, as Morier was almost a giant. Business began early, and with the dlisappearalnce of the fish, a large number of roysterers were in eighteenth-century high spirits. Bread use'd! to fly about sometinties in heavy chimks. I remember one of these hitting a rather hot-headed youth of my acquaintance, notwi partner in a historical banking firm, plumb on the side of the head. He immediately seized a lump of crust and threw it in the direction of the aggressor as hard as he could. It struck an empty tumbler, shivering it to atoms. The whole cheek of one of the Cravens sitting near me was instantaneously covered with blood from the spHnters of the glass. But the revel went on just the same, minus the victim, who retired from the scenes. In 1885, we some of us founded a literary society, called the Ishmaelites, where we read papers on literary subjects. Ion Thynne read one on Swinbumie, I treated of Edgar Allan Poe, etc. The Ishmaelites Would have liked to have been far more alarming than they really were. My greatest Oxford friend, on the literary side, was J. P. Nichol, whom 1 met, in 1886, during my last year. He was a Balliol mlan, " Snell exhibitioner." 86 SWINBURNE, WILDE, AND PATER whatever that may be, but far more important, a: real poet in outlook and temperamtent. He wlas a member of another literary society, the Dolores,, whtere they, declaimed' Swinburne's magical lines. Thynne used to wail rather than sing the lines, but w|as in high repute as a Swinburnian reciter. I greatly preferred Nichol's mode, which was far more melodious, and based upon direct pxperience, as his father, the Scottish Professor, had been a great friend of the poet, who used to stay with the family. I possess a copy of a poem' by Rossetti, entitled Shameful Death, copied entirely in the childish hand- writing of Swinburne. It formed part of a bundle of unprintable but exceedingly amusing letters that Swinburne had written to the Professor", chiefly on literary subjects. , He was at the time engaged in a dispute with the editor of Shelley, Buxton Forman, with whose name he played terrible tricks. The correspondence is shot through with radiant flashes of light, mingled with outburts of childishness. The hand- writing clearly shows the curious elements of which the poet was composed. Of my friend, J. P. Nichol, he had said when he saw him fioi' the first timfe : "If ever I saw a yomig man with a took of genius, there he stands ! " This was a unique compliment from Swin- burne — ^at least, I never heard of his apostrophizing anyone else in like manner. My friend 'vm.s indeed a genius, though he will never be recognized as such owing to the deep strain of mystical quietism which ran through him, turning all the gauds of life to d'ust. He could with gr^at ease have become a tutor and fellow of Balliol had he deigned to, Work for the Schools and take the high class to which his amazing abilities entitled him. At the age of seventeen, a poem of his was J. p. NICHOL 87 published, I think, in the Nineteenth Century : by twenty- one or so he was at his highest period of development. He never deigned to oiTer any of his verse elsewhere, though some of his sonnets were equal to Rossetti's, and his knowledge of the pre-Raphb,elites and their ways was unrivalled. He was like a youthful king sitting in the ruins of his splendid palace. His astonish- ing verbal memory for verse or prose brought any of our poets before us in connection, for he wtould quote pages of CrashaW, Milton, Keats, Swinburne or Rossetti as though he were reading over their shoulders as they wrote. At the time we met I was passing through the fiery furnace of a love affair, and we used to spend hours of an evening together in my rooms at 13, King Edward Street (I changed my rooms each term). Here we made a considerable number of rather melodious sounds, reciting poetry in English and French, and it was typical of the environment that the proprietor of the house eventually objected to the " noise " of our recitations, though the street Was the noisiest in Oxford ; shouts of all sorts of hiinting-mten, blowing of co,ach-horns at jaj.1 hours of the night being accepted by the Philistine proprietor as in the natural order of things. Nichol also disagreed with Jowett in the matter of his studies as I had done. The Master, too, had been impressed with Nichol whfen h© first saw him, and correctly thought he perhaps had another great poet under his wing. And so, indeed, he had, but of course worldly success being Jowett 's standard, the moment he saw that " young Nichol " was not going to try for a fellowship, he dropped him like a cold egg at one of those breakfast parties to which were bidden hobnails, earls — and possible genius. 88 SWINBURNE, WILDE, AND PATER Nichol, to his intense disgust, was on one occasion forced to write a book by the necessity for obtaining a little cash ! This he did contemptuously, almost at a sitting : it is a monoglraph on Victor Hugo, and by far the best study of the French poet in our (language, though Nichol always spoke of it with contempt and said he took no pains with it. The fact was that tiis intuition was so infallible and the riches of memory and imagination at his command were so great that when obliged to open a door of his miser's cabinet, pieces of eight came tumbling over one another upon the publisher's counter in golden piriofusion. There is a beautiful piassag'e in Gautier's Mademoiselle de Maupin, which applies to my friend. It begins " J'aime ces silencieux qui emporte lear secret dans la tombe," and I always felt that Nichol, wdthl those wild blue eyes of his flashing their intuitions, sawt something that for others was concealed. My own intercourse with Swinburne was only occasional, and much later in life, but I may as well mention now what rises in the membry. I too enjoyed the hospitality at Putney of which my, old friend and fellow dramatic critic, Max Beerbohm, has made so entertaining a dish. I too sat at the table between the two old men, Watts-Dunton and Swinburne, during the repast, which certainly was not nearly so interesting to me as conversation alone with the poet in his library. He always gave me the impresison of two things : a great red-plumed eagle pinioned and unable to rise from the gtround more than a few feet. He would sit by me on the sofa, and as he gtrew interested in the sound of his own words, hfe would spread his arms like wings and agitate his body just like a bird taking flight, While his large green eyes blazed with' SWINBURNE AT LUNCHEON 89 enthusiasms of the past, kindled in thb enthusiasm of the present moment. This was very evident to me also on one of the last occasions that we met in London at a house hoispitable also to the poet, Mrs. Molesworth's, authoress of the Cuckoo Clock. Mrs. Molesworth's daughter, Juliet, is the wife of my brother Julian, whose feats in another field I hope to mention. Swinburne loved Mrs. Molesworth's work, about which he has written, and included her in his very short visiting list. On the occasion of this last meeting, I remember his shouting to Watts (bothi were very deaf) as they entered the room : "Be sure you call the cab and let us get away immediately after limch." Watts shouted back in repjly that he would not fail to do so. Luncheon, as at Putney, was nath'er a strained meal : I remember Miss Olive Molesworth's asking which of the tiny twin nieces, Mary or Alice, Swinburne preferred. At first he did not realize what was meant, but when he did, replied with his usual emphasis : " Both delightful children : of course there is no difference whatever between themi " [(this sentence was punctuated with those queer staccato movements of the body to wihiidhl I have referred). This was not very encouraging, but after luncheon I managed to get him started on Baudelaire by quoting a few lines from the exquisite farewell to the great French poet, and from that, by way of the " Leucadian leap " to Sappho, to Byron and to his own prowess in swimming. At once he began to talk of his visit to Sark, and described his early morning vow to swim out to sea until the sun was fuUy risen above the horizon. He r'ose and fell rhythmically -with the waxing and waning of his own words, and it was one of the miost felicitous 90 SWINBUENE, WILDE, AND PATER moments in a life crowided with exquisite impressions thus to see the golden and purple and silver of that morning in the Channel as the poet brought it back to life and laid it before the eyes and ears. Meanwhile time had been going" on, but Swinburne was now wound up, clocks and cabs had no meaning for him^ and when Watts came up and discreetly shouted that the cab was waiting, he was waved imperiously away with a single gesture, and I enjoyed an avalanche of sound and colour lasting far into the afternoon. The other impression given to me by Swinburne was of a diver walking with great care on the bed of the ocean. With infinite precautions he would approach an arm-chair, carefully inspect and feel it ; having manoeuvred his way round the rocks and boulders represented by other chairs and tables. Wherever he was, I had the feeling, that he did not belong" to terra firma Hke you and me, but should really be some thousands of feet above or beloiv his present level — in the empyrean or the abysses of the ocean. To return to those undergraduate years at Oxford, as I look back upon themi they rise again like Keats' beaker, " full of the warm' south," " with beaded bubbles winking at the brim "—bubbles of the champagne we so often quaffed, and of that more aery Vintage that runs only in the veins of youth triumphant. My time was about equally spait in revelling with the revellers and tread- ing the fairylands that poetry opens to the ken of those who will take the trouble to court her, not on bended knee, but with the gallant assurance of the knightly lover as Keats advised. Only once again have I trodden equally enchanted ground, and that was in the late 'nineties at Florence, where a gay band of us did astonishing things beneath the light of the moon. At Oxford, as at BALLIOL AND THE RAILWAY CONTRACTORS 91 Florence, everyone who was not revelling seemed pleased to make a flowery way for the revellers — with the exception at Oxford of the Proctors and Bulldogs, who were paid to be unpleasant, and hardly earned their wages, so little did they interfere with our pro- ceedings : indeed one grew almost to like their square chins and boots as shading for our revels. At Oxford, it is true, the revels were often conducted within doors, whereas at Florence we frequently danced through the streets, headed by our mlisic and by fair maidens, strewing flowers on the unamazed Florentines. They accepted us, rather to our surprise, as quite normal, and, I fear, looked upon our proceedings with a critical eye — an eye that had witnessed the processional triumphs of so many poets onwards from Petrarch to Ariosto, and their successors could hardly be expected to lighten up at gauche Anglo-Saxon and semi-Celtic gambols of blond young barbarians from' Ultimla Thule — ^thou^K they were lenient, very lenient, and always niade a lane for us to pass across the Piazza 1 Balliol and Christ Church and New College men were my chief associates ; Jowett I saw ocdasipnally, but had no further intercourse with him'. The last occasion was when he went to Shelley's College University in order to commemorate the author of Adonais, (who had been sent down for his earlier writings). I can seei him trotting along now in his Vice-Chancellor's robes, with ja few other University dignitaries in the rear. Balliol |Was certainly sufficiently atheistic in the 'eighties, and there used to be a joke which always tickled mte, about the Balliol College Chapel with its " gatint-ribbed barrel roof," to quote again friend Plarr. When it was pro- posed by an enlightened set of railroad contractors to run a railTway right into Oxford, Balliol was said to have 92 SWINBURNE, WILDE, AND PATER jumped at the suggestion, and to have offered their Chapel as terminus. Oscar Wilde visited Oxford as a critic of the drama in my time and amtased a great many people with his paradox. The flow of his language and the quickness of his wit were astonishing. Yet he did not always have it his own way, and I remiember, during a discussion on poetry, after he had been preaching his creed of beauty as the sole value, my friend, H. J. Maynard of St. John's, sprung up and trounced him vigorously for neglecting ethics. Wilde was quite nonplussed by Maynard's youthful vigour, and could only murmur : "Stern young moralist, stem young moralist." This was a iekt on Maynard's part, and indeed among all my Oxford acquaintances Maynard went nearest to living what I would call the Shelleyan life : ethics were very prominent in his mind, yet the sesthetic side was by no means absent, and I have clear memory of some beautiful Spenserian stanzas, which he once read to me at Delgaty. They were perfumed like a flowering branch of Shelley's Sensitive Plant. He be- came a judge in India, and I have only met him once since his retirement, on a pension, some years ago. I like to greet him here. Wilde was, indeed, rarely nonplussed!. I was never myself a member of the Crabbet Park Club, one of the niles of Which was that no member must have been gudty of serious work, but my friend Harry Cust and the present Lord Curzon of Kedlestone both belonged. The former told me that on one occasion Wilde was the guest of the Club at dinner, and some of the members wished him to be elected a member. Among these was not numbered Lord Curzon. An objection was raised that the proposed member was not eligible, WILDE'S REPARTEES 93 because he had been guilty of doing serious wiork, namely, reading the lessons in a surplice as a ",demi." at Magdalen College, Oxford. Wilde at once rose to reply, admitting the fact, but pleading) extenuating circumstances as followls : " I always read the lessons with an air of scepticism', and was invariably reproved by the Warden after Divine Service, for ' levity at the lectern.' " Then, too, his viva voce in Rudimenis of Faith and Religion at Oxford. He was put on to construe from' the Greek of the New Testament, at the verse of St. Matthew which records the sale of the Saviour for thirty pieces of silver by Barabbas. Wilde, who got a First in Greats and taught Mrs. Langtry Latin, con- strued a few verses rapidly and correctly. The examiner interrupted : " Very good, that will do, Mr. Wilde." " Hush, hush," replied the candidate, raising! an admonitory finger, " let us proceed and see what happened to the unfortxmate man." Plarr tells of Wilde's appearance at Osirian Edward's breakfast table, and of his dictum' that my friends. Ion Thynne and Edgar Jepson, were respectively the Byron and Shelley of their day. Here he was quite wrong, for Thjnine was more like the hero of Huysmann's A Rebours, and Jepson, I am sure, will not claim to have resembled either poet. He is too fine a poet in prose to care for such comparisons in conversation. But Plarr records other sayings of Wilde with more of the genuine ring to their metal. Sounding brass may be, but who could make the small brass of conversation so variously and umusingly resonant as Wilde? Of Sir Frederick Leighton, he said that " He always seems to paint in scented soaps ; " of T. Carlyld, " He is a Rabelaisian moralist ; " of sham' classicism, 94 SWINBUKNE, WILDE, AND PATER " |We can like all the bad work of pU ages bbt our own, yet even Firth may come to be admired for his quaint- ness and moral force a thousand years hence." .Whistler and others have been very unjust to Wilde in accusing him of plagiarism'. He certainly prigged, but who among g'reat wits has not done so? He always added a twist of his ovm that made the joke as much his as if he had minted the oriiginal metal, which, by the w'ay, existed as metal long, long before. The fact was that Whistler, a wit himself, was jealous of excellence anywhere. I always hope that Sir Coleridge Kennard will carry out the project that he told me of some years ago at Rome, as we strode up and down his sun-kissed paradise terrace in the Via Gregoriana and capped one another's Wildiana. He was collecting from: the lips of those that had heard them with a view to publication, all the un- rendered Wilde stories and epigrams. I can add a trifle or two to those I have mentioned, but always regret that I saw so little of the most brilliant con- versationalist of my time — I have heard others of note, such as Pater, Whistler, Beardsley, d'Annunzio, Renan and Croce. I remember a laird in the south of Scot- land, who had entertained' Wilde on one of his lecturing tours, iteUing me that he had asked the lecturer if he would like to see the garden and then go for a walk. Wilde said he would' be delighted. The garden was about a quarter of a mile fromi thte house, and thither they proceeded. After duly inspecting, flowers and shrubs the host turned to his guest with : "Well, shall we go for our walk? " " Go for our walk ! Why, we have just come back from a long and' delightful waji," was the rieply. It is curious how rarely the Irish buU comes I MEET WALTER PATER 95 into Wilde's epigramSj though in paradox, at any rate, wondferful effects are alitainable with it. Wit- ness thie foUowingi by an Irish baronet of my acquaintance which happened' the other day in my own presence. Our visit to, tihe same hospitable and charming lady happened to coincide. The con- versation turned upon social undesirables. The baronet declared that it was highly reprehensible to introduce any of these into a respectable family circle. With such virtuous sentiments we all agreed, and our hostess then remarked, addressing the baronet with a smile : " I hope Sir Timothy (a substituted name) has not mfet any one objectionable in our family circle." " Indeed amid I have, M'jrs. ," came from' the baronet in his richest brogue. " And who may I ask was the individual in question? " " It was Patthrick Murrphy, and I introduced him to you meself." I wonder if this will appear so excruciatingly funny in print as it did on flyingf from the lips of its creator, who spoke, of course, in aU seriousness. No doubt the reason that Wilde never committed anything in this line was his possession of an acutely logical mind that controlled' the flow of his fancy within its banks. What a pity that it did' not control his conduct ! At Oxford I met him! several times, and was one day walking along lih'e gravlel path behind Keble when I jnet him in company with a pale-fac^d, rather sad- looking man. I was very proud when they stopped, anJd I was introduced to Walter Pater. Pater, to whbm I shall refer later, I got to know better than Wildfe, though here, too, I regret that I did not see more of him at Oxford and' in London. I went a few timtes to luncheon with Wildb at Tite Street when his wife 96 SWINBURNE, WILDE, AND PATER Constance was alive. I had known her somie years before as Miss Lloyd, and she had come to stay with us at Delgaty, where I had' written verses to her eyes and presented her with a coronal of water-lilies |and one of linncea bore alls. This rare and beautiful little creeper of the north I had discovered when, as a child of five, I had trotted into the wood during^ the mionth of June and found beneath the great Scots firs a tiny white bloom growingi upon long tendrilled stems with rounded leaves, less tihan a threepenny piece in size., I brought a handful of it to my father and mbthpr; neither of whom at once recoglnized the plant, although' both were botanists. Of late years its afea of growth' has extended, and I daresay that it now covear's ten yai^ds square, but it i has never been found elsewhere on Delgaty, and is, I believe, known only in a very few places in Great Britain. Less rare in Norway, Linnaeus, the great botanist, called it by his own name, so touch did its fairy -like grace caress his eye. And very iwell it looked as a coronal to the brow of Constance with a water-lily or so lolling at her virginal breast. On one occasion, I remJemlber Wilde's declaiming against Walt Whitman, whose crudities of langiuagie have always offended me. In an interview that he had with him, the author of Specimen Days remarked with' satisfaction : " I aim at making my verse look all neat and pretty on the pages, like the epitaph on a square tombstone." My friend, Victor Plarr the poet, who also heard the anecdote told by Wilde, but on a different occasion (in Herbert Home's rooms), adds that while repeating the quotation Wilde held up an imaginary page and pointed along it. Certainly Wilde's prose is classical, and it was amusing to hear him! .disputingi lalmicably on i tha,t( fiilst mteetingi with Pater, who, had KEATS' SONNET ON BLUE 97 dropped his favourite remark to mfe when I had shyly pleaded guilty to having written a dramatic poem Escarlamonde : "Why do you write poetry? It is so much more difficult to write prose." Of Wilde's verse very little of first-rate quality exists, but his Ballad of Reading Gaol and The Harlot's House are jewels that wiU glitter on later worlds than ours. Of this latter poem I possess a holog'raph manuscript with a complimentary inscription by the author to the effect that he had never heard it better said. I remember on the occasion of my repeating it, his reading first Poe's Annabel Lee, of which he was very fond, and then Keats' sonnet on Blue, the latter "fro mi the virginal MS., which he said had been given to him! after one of his lectures in the United States by a very old lady who declared that she was related to Keats — I think he said a niece — and that she had been prompted to present him with it owing to his beautiful reading of the Ode on a Grecian Urn. The friend I have already quoted also describes evenings at 20, Fitzroy Street, where there was a sort of late pre-Raphaelite colony. Here came Wilde on one or two occasions and received much worship from! Lionel Johnson and Dowson, who " seemed to kneel before him side by side." It was said' that the great man wore a black shirt-front. Dowson I only met once or twice with my friend, J. P. Nichol, already described, but of Lionel Johnson I saw a good deal at Oxford in my last year, when I had migrated from the unattached to Exeter College, where I was equally " unattached." He was a truly delightful companion, frail and slightly built, steeped in the Greek and Latin classics and a keen Roman Catholic. He first introduced me to Newman's 7 98 SWINBURNE, WILDE, AND PATER Apologia and Defence of Faith, which I rememb'er reading and afterwards discussing with him in his rooms at New College to a late hour, and on more than one occasion having to take my departure by- dropping from somebody's college window that was just above the level of Holywell Street. At about mid- night Johnson would put down the Apologia and say : " I think, my dear Ainslie, that the labourer is worthy of his hire, especially if he toil through the silent watches of the night. Shall it be champagne or (sal- volatile and water? " With great firmness I invariably selected the former beverage, while that scholar and gentleman, my host, generally took " a little of both." Johnson was also a great admirer of Pater's work, and some of his best work is descriptive of iPater's curious perfections . Those escalades of windowis became almost a part of the routine of collegte life. I had already had some practice in the art at Eton, and flatter myself that even now; I could cope wtith some problems in bars, bricks and glass that would paralyse my conttemporaries at any rate. After I had gone down, what must have been a pleasant little social club, was formed at Oxford under the title of " The Oxford Alpine Club." As described to me by the alarmed mother of one of its most distinguished members, this club used to meet after midnight in the room of each in succession. Entrance was, of course, obtained by escalading thie college wall by means of ropes, grappling irons, and other customary Alpine tools. After a little light refreshlnent, assuming that the host of the evening was a member of Balliol, the members of the club .would leave that college by the wall separating it from Trinity, and then, stlrolling across thte Broad, would dropi LUORETIA LACKS A TARQUIN 99 in upon the Rector of Exeter, but finding: him' plungted' in profound slumbers they would have the consideration not to awake him, but proceed, of course " across country " by way of Brasenose to Christ Church, where a light supper would be provided. The members became very expert at thte negotiation of the big jumps, and all went as merrily as an American divorce until one day an old membter of the club came down pn a visit,, and joined in the jaunt as in former days. Whether it' was that the light supper at the " House " had included too much lobster and chamipagne or that his memory had been clouded with the frivolities of Mayfair, he made a sad mistake on his way (through New College, turning' the handle of the wrong door and plunging at three in the morning into the apart- ment of a spinster of some fifty summers, nearly related to the Head of the College. Of course she was at once convinced that her fate was to be Lucretia's and rent thle air with piercing shrieks. Un- fortunately, instead of rapidly retreating! the way he came, my friend began an elaborate apology for mistaking the door, and an explanation of the chief aims and objects of the Oxford Alpine Club. Long before he had finished she was convinced that instead of Tarquin, an escaped lunatic stood before her, and the shrieks redoubled. Quantities of undei'graduates in every shade of dressing-gown, with a sprinkling of blinking dons came crowding up the staircase and filled the quad. The fat was in the fire, and my poor friend had to pay considerable sums in the Vice-Chancellor's Court, besides being struck off aU manner of books and warned off the sacrosanct precincts within the University's jurisdiction. To return for a moment to Wilde. I saw but little 100 SWINBURNE, WILDE, AND PATER of him after leavingi Oxford beyond' the two or ithtee occasions of lunching in Tite Street ; he becarafe thte fashion about the samfe time, and' was dining out ^a great deal, often without his wife. Also, for the ,first time, I began to h'ear stories of an unjpleasant nature about him and decided to drop the connection, as (any- thing of that sort has always been inexpressibly shocking and distasteful to me, though I hope that I am' broad- minded enough to recognize and appreciate uniquely splendid intellectual qualities whenever they appear. It is easy enough for perfectly normal people, like the present writer, and ninety-nine hundredis of the com- munity to blame those afflicted in the manner of poor iWilde, but I think that with the advance of mental pathology, British will fall into line with Continental jurisprudence and recognize that his case called rather for confinement under the care of doctors than for a savage sentence worse than death. Thus it was that I saw nothing of him' for many years, though ;I occasionally met and heard of him' from those who did see him, such as the late Lady Ripon, who as Lady De Grey, stood by him aU through his troubles and told me several curious little details about his life in prison and afterwards when he was released. The last time I met her was at Lady Northcliffe's at luncheon at 22, St. James's Place, during' the war, when she sat between the late Lord Northcliffe and myself and regaled me with those scraps of London gossip which are nothing but flimsy in themselves until the limelight of a bright and kindly wit like hers dresses them up and sets them dancing in the ballroom of the brain — and are not bank notes flimsy? Wilde also had in a supreme degree the capacity for rendering interesting or amiusing, ahnlostf any material WILDE'S AMAZING FEAT 101 that he touched, and I remember a rather common httle theatrical propHrietor telling me of the strange circumlstances that oonneicted himi for a short time with Wilde, after his nelease from prison. Wilde was in Paris at the time, and it was a question pf gettinjgj him to finish a pilay, for which he had already received (and spent) two hundred pounds " in advance of royalties." The syndicate was beginning to get anxious about this two hundred, yet was quite prepared' to venture a grieat deal more if there were a good prospect of obtaining the play. Wilde was notoriously short of money, some said even of food, and thiat he Was living chiefly on absinthe, so the syndicate decided to make an appointment at one of the big restaurants — I think he said the Cafe de Paris. Six o'clock was the hour fixed, and the little manager, who might be described as gross but not green sat waiting anxiously, flanked on either side by dapper beady-eyed individuals of like kidney. At about seven the lace-covered swing doors swayed slowly arid admitted the dramatist, looking very unkempit and miserable. He approached the table, and with a semi-circular bow to the trio which ignored their proffered paws said : " Gentlemen, I have here with me one of the four acts of the play that I promised to dehver to you finished to-day. Certain things have occurred to make it impossible for me to write down the remaining acts, but they are all here " (touching his forehead he sank into a chair facing them and ht a cigarette) " only you must give me wine, yeUow sparkling wine, and plenty of it. Then I (will tell you all the play, and I will write down the last thriee acts to-morrow." Champagne was at once ordered, and also food, which Wilde hardly touched. As the wine rapidly disappeared and reappeared in new 102 SWINBURNE, WILDE, AND PATER bottles the play grew like a flower upon thq lips of the poet, holding the three of them' entranced, so that they even forgot their material interests as they listened to the wondrous dialectic. For he made each personage live and, as it were, walk about before entering the action, introducing themi, one by one, sketched with in- fallible pnecision in a few strokes. Then he went on with the actual dialogue, sparkling all over with wit and humorous characterization, like a heap of rubies and, diamonds mbved before the eyes and arranged in the form of a crown by this Faber'ger in wiords. He did much more than repeat the play from memory, for he suggested the acting, the scenery, the stage, and even the aristocraitic audience, adding all sorts of sly comments and interpolations in the form of stagle asides and directions. They ambunted to flashlights thrown upon the unwritten script, and gave his hearers the impression of being present at a successful first- night performance. Thus he improvised and created' for about an hour and a half ; then he suddenly declared that he must leave them, but would infaUibly deliver the remainder of the play within the week. They handed to him' a smiall further sum' on account, which he accepted with the gesture of one conferring a great favour, which was perfectly |true, and repeating the semi- circular magnificence of his bow and again ignoring proffered paws plunged into the stream of the Avenue de riOp6ra, never to be seen alive by any of thiem' again. What became of the one Written act of the play? I believe that it eventually passed into the possession of one of his many false friends, under whose name a garbled version of the play was served up unsuccess- fully after Wilde's death. Garbled' indeed', even if memorized from parts of (the telling heard or over- PERFORMED ONCE ONLY 103 hear'd. The piay itself, in all its splendour of thought and expression, surpassing for brilliancy A Woman of No Importance and the irresistible Ernest, had but one performance — in the Cafe de Paris on a winter's night before an audience of three. There will never be another. CHAPTER VI MERRY-GO-ROUND Anecdote of Francisque Sarcey — "Mr. Shelley" — William Morris and the Assafoetida — Cudgels and Communism — Arthur Bourchier and Jowett — Hon. Robert Scot Montagu— A Jovial il/cesfts— O.U.D.S.— My Mid- summer Night's Dream — Billiard Match with Ralph Nevill — Marquis of Clanrikarde v. Sir Robert Peel. I HAVE given a good deal of space tq these glimpses of Wilde, though, of course, I saw a number of other people during those years, and have tried to bring! some of them into the picture, but he was by far the most brilliant, and often there is the semblance of some- thing to catch hold of in a personality, which turns out to be thin air after all. Of Sarcey, the great French dramatic critic, it is told in this connection that on one occasion he decided (like most dramatic critics if they would be honest and confess) that he would do a bit of a job' and puff his friend's pon. It was not a question of a play, but of a book of poems on this occasion, for Sarcey also gave lectures on literature. He duly appeared and faced a crowded audience armed with notebooks, holding the volume on which he was going to lecture in his hand. He had inserted markers to guide him in selecting! for quotation certain passages which had seemed on a first perusal less bad than the rest. " Ladies and Gentlemen," he began, " I am going to teU you to-day about a new ppet, a remark - X04 "MR." SHELLEY 105 able young man, whose first volume of verse you see in my hand. According to my usual custom, I will begin by reading to you some of the most striking and beautiful passages and then comment upon them. For instance, the following — he turned the pages to the first quotation — " Does it not strike you ? " he glanced down the page and continued : " No, no, we will pass on to the next. No, that's wbrse." And so, on and on he went until he came to the sixth marker, and desperately pluingedl this time into the reading aloud of the passage in question. When he came to the end he said, " Does not this strike you as singularly beautiful? " Then his native honesty and sincerity got the better of him and' he continued : "I am sure it does not, for a worse written, worse con- structed set of verses it has rarely been toy misfortune to read aloud." And so he went on, nowl quoting freely from all the marked passages and explaining to the highly amused audience what an exitraordinarily bad writer was his friend's son — heartily damining what he had set out to belaud. A like reason prevents the present writer, who is equally grieved, from dwelling upon the people who loomed big enough in those days, but have since sunk into oblivion, like that New CoUeg'e don who during my first term took part in a dis- cussion upon Shelley's writings, referring all the time to the poet as " Mr. Shelley," and to suchl work as the Epipsychidion as "pretty verses." I remember springing to my feet and hurling unmeasured invective at the unlucky speaker, who shrivelled up altogether and finally slunk out of the room, although, as I was afterwards informed, he was one of the lights of the College Debating Society. I believe he died during 106 MERRY-GO-ROUND the term, so that on this occasion, at any rate, poetic justice was done. It is curious and admirable what force the sincere expression of a passionate con- viction gives. Shelley amounted almbst to a religion with some of us in those days, and like most young men, I passed through* a p'hase of vague uncritical socialistic sentiment, inspired by the poet. This led me to attend a meeting held by Williaml Morris and Aveling in Holywell Street with a view of preaching Socialism to the undergraduates. The mieeting! was packed, and I remember that I was sitting close to the platform where Aveling first held forth in a rather unconvincing way. His place !was soon taken by the old paper-hanging poet, and we all sat tensely awaiting his eloquence. Suddenly, just as he was opening his lips, with the gospel of universal equality upon them, there came a cry of : " My God, what an awful stench ! " from the third row of seats. People sprang up and rushed away from' the infected' spot, but the appalling odour spread all over the hall, and I saw the beaming countenance of my friend Arthur Capel, emerging through the mist of the assafoetida, which he had so accurately timed to explode at the psychological moment. The " nice " ladies present mlade a rapid exit, and people rushed to and fro. Aveling slunk away like a jackal, but Morris wlas splendid. Like an old white-maned lion he stood his ground and roared from the platform that he was ready to fight any four of " you young blackguards." Shouts of laughter and cheers greeted me as with' one or two others, including H. J. Maynard, I climbed on the platform to support him. The leonine front showed by the old poet prevented further extremes of ragging, but the audience was in no mood to hea.r 'of any Utopia WILLIAM MOREIS 107 which began by smelling so bad. There was nothing for it but to retire in good order, which twe proceeded to do at the invitation of Morris. He had rooms at the Clarendon, and thither we adjourned. On arrival he ordered whiskies all round, and his astonishment was frank w'hen Maynard and I and other young sprigs Shelleyan refused the beverage on the ground that we never took alcohol. " What is happening to the younger generation? " growled old Morris, as he drank up all the whiskies himself and regtaled us epically with the breath of mighty songs. My friend Plarr records of this mleeting that he went to it as a steward, though his views did not and do not coincide with those of Webb, Lenin, Shawi or Trotsky. The journal Justice was to be sold at the meeting, so Plarr asked Morris if he utterly despised profit. " I do utterly despise it," replied Morris, plumping into the pitfall. " Then why do you sell Justice? " Morris then grumpily gave orders that Justice was to be given away. Plarr further adds that Ion Thynne knocked Vere down with a cudgel. This I did not see, and perhaps the Hon. Antony Vere will tell us what happened to him! at the meeting. He appeared to me to be winning all along the line. Plarr also declares that he was so pleased with Thyime at the time that he presented him with the Colloquies of Erasmus (1671). Whether this gift was bestowed as a reward for knocking dovsm Antony Vere or is rather to be looked upon as a token of general appreciation for his learning in the Greek and Latin Fathers in the original tomes, which decorated and concealed his shelves and floor in the small roomi at New College, and of the Longleat pheasants which abounded at his hospitable breakfast table beneath the gigiantic Japanese 108 MERRY-GO-ROUND umbrella that shaded its centre, I do not know. He has jbeen dead a good many years now, and passed' most of his time latterly at Fort Augustus with the monks, or at Rushlmore with his brother Alec, where we stayed together the last time I saw himl. He presented me at Oxford witli a copy of that great French work, the Fleurs du Mai of Baudelaire in the wickedest binding that he could' devise. It is a beautiful volume. I shall not bequeath it to the Carnegie Free Library. The edges of the leaveis are a vivid sulphur, the binding dappled green calf, the sides of light and deeper and a deepest green as it breaks against a nest of treacherous golden serpents in the centre, and again and again upon golden dragons and livirig gargoyles at the comers. The back is a rich network of golden tracery among serpents concealed in a meadow of green. Within, the dedication to a fellow lover of the Muses and some lines in Greek from' Homer. We were, some of us, naively subtle and perverse in those days, which has not p;revented us from turning out quite decent citizens in after life. Perhaps it was a pose, and Ion Thynne was rather thfe moralist of his later days, than a mediaeval necromancer controlling! sinister potencies. Serpents were the fashion in "neckwear" at breakfast. We generally carried one or two loose m our pockets. Jepson kept his black brood in the ivy outside his windowi at Balliol. I preferred the lighter variety with a Cubist pattern. My landladies disliked both. With the exception of Lord Robert Cecil, none of my acquaintances at Oxford have become very prominent in politics, though there were some fine speakers among them, notably the late R. C. Fillingham, who took orders and was niuch in the public eye R. C. FILLINGHAM 109 through his attacks on Ritualism' in the Church of England. These were not limited to rhetoric, but assumed a drastic form which led to his appearance in the Law Courts on more than one occasioii. Delightful in conversation, he managed to carry with him in pulpit, platform; or witness-box, that same easy breezy style, punctuated with witticisms and delivered with the air of a man of the world lenidowed with complete knowledge, and letting his audience enjoy just the quintessence — and no more. lOne felt he had all the rest about him in his ample pockets, or at any rate in his overcoat within easy reach. Fillingham was a far more brilliant man than many members of the present Cabinet, and it is curiously true that the world " knows nothing of its greatest men " in a sense different from that of Philip van Arteveldt, where a discontented man is supposed to be speaking. Certainly in politics it is a complex of qualities miostly practical that win the great positions, and the like applies in the Church, at the Bar, and (in England) on the Stage. The virtuosi like Fillingham rarely come into the full limelight. My old friend, Arthur Bourchier, happens to be a very fine comedian, unsurpassable in certain parts, especially social comedy and in certain Shakespearean characters. Had he, however, always worked under the directions of a stage-manager his artistic achieve- ment would probably have been greater. But what has made his success since those Oxford days when he was at New Inn Hall, that handy retreat to Christ Church and other Colleges, longi since abolished, has been his practical social sense. His cleverness in flattering that vain old pedagogue Jowett and persuad- ing him to not only permit but to patronize the theatre at 110 MERRY-GO-ROUND Oxford as Vice-Chancellor, and the foundation of the O.U.D.S. (Oxford University Dramatic Society) of which the present writer is an original mtember, were part and parcel of that practical judgment which has given him success arid provided the steppingi-stones for his London career. In those far-off days I remtember at one of the meetings of the lO.U.D.S. there wajsi considerable opposition to some schemie of Bourchier's. He heard the various speakers out, then sprang to his feet with an utterance that carried conviction as he thumped it into the table, though it still mkkea me laugh when I repeat it : " d^ n and (supply local colour). I, A. B., known on two Continents to be thwarted by a parcel of b-o-y-s ! " (He iwas quite unknown outside a smaU circle at that timtei). I was never an actor, but used to contribute articles on those early Shakesperean productions to the Oxford Magazine, arid was (and am') always imimensely enter- tained with Bourchier's society, for if he will allow me to say so, he is invariably quite as good companyi off the stage as upon it. We used frequently to meet, and I heard aU the secrets of the stage as we knew it at Oxford, and learned in little what went on and goes on in the management of great theatrical affairs. Brightest of the many brilliant youngi men who took part in the Greek and Elizabethan plays done in my time at Oxford, was my dear old friend, Robert Scott Montagu, brother of my good friend, Lord' Montagu, of Beaulieu. He was a member of New College, fuU, of the joy of living, and endowed with a jmost charming personality. I remember during the run of an early production of the Alcestis of Euripides in Greek that we of the O.U.D.S. were all hospitably entertained at an early luncheon party by an opulent patron of THE O.U.D.S. Ill the budding drama. Champagne flowed and only- ceased flowing when it was time to adjourn to the theatre to hear Bourchier as Death (Thanatos), supported by the chorus in his great speech beginning : " Thou knowest my ways." The speech came forth with great eloquence, and the chorus of Canaphoroi ^^(basket bearers), with baskets on their heads, signified their approval (as indeed was their duty) by verbally ratifying the sentiments of Thanatos, and at the same time swaying their heads in rhythmic coincidence with the beats of the iambic verse. On the occasion in question, however, the chorus agreed so emphatically with Thanatos that they swayed not only their heads, but also their bodies, and the audience were astonished at seeing the baskets, which were in unstable equilibrium, beginning to topple over amid the ill-suppressed hilarity of their bearers. I do not think any baskets actually did fall (they mutually propped one another up), but I rarely laughed so much in a theatre as upon that occasion. I hope that Professor Gilbert Murray was not present during this comic perform- ance of the tragedy. I met him.! occasionally at H. J. Maynard's rooms in St. John's CoUeg|e while we were undergraduates, but have not done so since Oxford, save at the Philosophical Congress, also at Oxford, held quite recently. His versions of the Greek classic poets are not well known to me, as I prefer to read them in the original with the old-fashioned Bohn trans- lation, or better still the Loeb, to help me rapidly over difficult passages. But I have pleasant memories of his serious, kindly face. The O.U.D.S. brought me into contact with a number of men from different Colleges and with some who did not belong to the University, such as Claude and 112 MERRY-GO-ROUND Eustace Ponsonby, whom I first met during the Canterbury Cricket Week where I was the guest of Arthur Bourchier. The performances at the theatre and in the field have been so often described that I shall indulge in no repetition of other folk's texts, po digging out of old programmes and menus. Here, as elsewhere, what went on behind the scenes was often more amusing than what happened " in the front of the house." I shall never forget Scrobbies' acting, with a large pocket-handkerchief as sole stage " property," of a leading Canterbury Stroller's performance — when crossing the Channel in stormy weather. The victim, who was present on the occasion, finally rose up in his wrath'to igtfapple 'with his. tormentor and the curtain fell upon this one-act farce. Claude Ponsonby is as fine an actor in modem or restorative comedy as ever I wish to see, and it is a thousand pities that he never accepted the offers made to him by Sir Charles Wyndham. Poor Alan Mackinnon was the win|ged Ariel of all our productions, as my friend Wi. L. Courtney (then fellow and tutor of New College) was our Mentor, Bourchier and he did wonderful things in blue pencil to the text of the Bard, but William Poel had not as yet penetrated to Oxford, or those who knew about him were determined that We should not know. We were too proudly delighted to be producing Henry /V at all to give much thought to the sequence or omission of scenes and the retention of the complete text. I have come now to the end of my three years at Oxford without, I hope, proving tedious by the enumera- tion of facts and dates that can elsewhere be obtained in profusion. Personally this whole period was like an acting of the Midsuniptier Night's Dream. Things WALKING ON AIR 113 just went on happening! delightfully, one after tH© other. Brilliant and amusing people kept appear- ing from nowhere and doing their very best to charm or to entertain. Mother EarthI was herself buoyant beneath our stepis, which had in them that delightful springi that my old diplomlatic colleague, Charles des Graz, a Cambridge (running) blue declares left him when he left the University. Edward Mitchell- Innes, K.C. and Morris, the University coach, of whom I saw much in those last days at Oxford,, will know what I mean. I think, too, that the constantly present acted drama made everyday ithingB assume a sort of glamour. We were walking! upion enchanted ground in an enchanted meadow. For many years 1 have been able to return to this meadow and to w'alk there occasionally, and I hope to convey some slight impression of it to the reader.: I left Eton attended by the conn|plete works of Gray duly signed and' attested by Dr. Hornby, the head master ; from Oxford Tvith the slips of blue paper certifjdng that I had qualified for the B.A. degree. The reading necessary for a Pass hardly inter- fered at all with the ordinary course of amusement.; At both places I dwelt exactly three years, so that neither had the chance of getting stale, though I sometimes have regretted that I did not spend a fourth year at Eton in order to enjoy the glories of " Pop'," and of a higher position in the boats than the mbdest •" Defiance " with which 1 left. But I ami sure that it is well to drain no cup, however sweet, to the dregs, for the aliquid amari is certainly there to miingle with it. I spent a few weeks in London before going to Tours to study French^ and saw a good deal of Albert Osborne, Ralph' Nevill, and others I had known at 8 114 MERRY-GO-ROUND Eton or at Oxford^ or bbthl. We frequented the Bristol, which was then the only available restaurant of the present modern type, though such ancient institutions as the Caf6 Royal and Rule's and Romano's of course existed. Another favourite haunt was Long's Hotel, and it was in the billiard -room^ there that took place my great match of 500 upi level for a pony at billiards with Ralph Nevill. We were neither of us great performers, but our methods were, and always have been, different — we frequently played in after days at the St. James's Club, of which I was a member for thirty years. Ralph attracts the attention of the goddess of fortune by smacking her hard, while I |try to win her favour with gentler methods. On this occasion we had a small igallery of friends plus, of course, an omniscient marker. We ploughed away through the first fouf hundred, and the game was called 470 all. Then ensued marvellous' ups and downs of luck, ending in the score being called : Nevill 498, Ainslie 499. Fortune was fickle to her gentler votary on this occasion. Nevill smacked her even harder than usual — ^ais hard as he could. The astonished red ball, which had probably never had such a whack in its life, leapt into the air the height of the lamp-shades and colliding withi the gas bracket, banged down upon the edge of the table and rolled strenuously (about the floor while the white coursed round and roimd the table like a mad world in miniature. I had won the match by a single point. This was certainly the most amtising and exciting game I ever played, though I have looked on at equally entertaining matches at the club between Nevill and the late General Kelly, whose adjurations addressed to the balls, the general company, and the Higher Powers OLD SIR ROBERT PEEL 115 of the Universe Were interspersed' with frequent whiskies and sodas, asides to himself, and cotaiments to the marker upon his dafk' fate in being! eternally con- demned to face such an antaigonist. Yet the General, although usually the loser, always preferred Nevill as an adversary. The billiard-room^ in those days was fully attended in the afternoon, but has lately been entirely deserted for the card room. One of its most original frequenters when I first joined the club was old Sir Robert Peel, with his broad-brimtned tall hat perched at an extreme angle over one eye, his flowing cravat a la D'Orsay, brick-red comtplexion, flashing brown eyes, tall and commanding appearance, and portentous frock coat. Thus attired one felt he could bluff the world. On one occasion he engaged in a game withi a youthful scion of Israel possessed of millions, recently elected to the club. The game was only for a fiver, but Sir Robert attached as much importance |to it as though it had beeni for five hundred, and when his opponent fluked the red and made a twenty break off it, his comments were loud and long. Shortly after this the red again went in by accident, and again the Hebrew added some points to his score. This caused the brimming cup of Sir Robert's indignation to overflow. Stepping down from the bench upon which he had been sitting, with one hand thrust into the breast of his mighty garment, the other raised in the best House of Commons' mianner, he proceeded to pulverize ' his unfortunate antagonist. I think he accused" him of every known crime, in an ever-rising flow of impassioned indignation. His opponent, whomi he had approached and fixed with those basihsk eyes wias a little sallow man, and he rapjidly began to wilt under 116 MERRY-GO-ROUND this itreatment. He cast a piteous giance round the room, but no one made a move toward^s coming ,to the rescue. Then he looked at the door and .suddenly, reached a resolution. Muttering something about coming back directly, he rushed out of the roomi, and so far ajs I know, was never again seen in the club> from which he soon riesigned. Sir Robert was triumphant on this occasion, and continued his oration to me and one or two others some tiratel after the dramatic departure. Certainly this was an ingenious way of winning a match and five pounds — for Sir Robert insisted on payment. CHAPTER VII FRANCE AND FISHING Sir Robert Peel and the Marquis of Clanrikarde — A Famous Jewel — Skating and Sliding — Frog-Fishing — Paris — "Throw in the Rod" — A Monster — Julian's Best Days. One of the most amusing spiectacles of those early days was a passage at arms, upon a pohtical or social subject, between Sir Robert and the Mlarquis' of Clanrikarde. This wonderful old personage was in- troduced to me by our mutual friendj Charles Ed'ward Jemingham, of whom I saw a great deal between 1895 and 1 9 10. An introduction had to be effected with care, for Clanrikarde, so Jemingham told me, had once turned away from some aspirant for an introduction, shaking his head and sa,ying testily : "I don't want to know him, I don't want to know him," quite loudly enough for the unfortunate individual in question to hear, for he was lurking in the immediate neighbourhood. The encounter between Sir Robert and the Marquis generally began upon the question of dates. Sir Robert would say, grandiloquently wavingi an imimtense oratorical arm' : " When I went out of office with Lord Derby in 1865," whereupon Clanrikarde, with steely blue cold eyes fixed upon his victim', would' remiark in a sharp shrill voice, like the stab of a stiletto : " That's a remarkable statement, as Lord' Derby was not in office at all at the time. You are out in your reckoning as to dates by a dozen years or so. As 117 118 FRANCE AND FISHING to the facts, heaven knows how far out you are, — I'm' sure you don't yourself." This would infuriate Sir Robert, who would rush forward to impale himSelf like a bull upon the points of Clanrikarde's memory which was amazingly accurate, and always ended by catching his opponent upon one horn or another of the dilemmas which he provided for Sir Robert, always mOre than a little hazy about his doings, both before and especially after luncheon. Clanrikarde's costume was as wonderful as himself, which is saying a good deal.; I have often met hiimi on the steps of the Travellers' or the St. James's Club attired in a very seedy old black frock-coat bound with newish broad braid, which threw the greenish tinge of the main garment into high reliefj and served part|ly to conceal his trousers, which are far better described by tjie word " bags," for they were more like a pair of sacks into which his bare limbs had been popped by some pitying coal hteaver than the nether garmentis of ordinary humanity; He may have worn a shirt, but I never distinctly perceived one, and incline tp the belief that he economized in this article and made the under-vest do shirt duty. Blazing in the middle of a bedraggled patched necktie, which looked as if it had been made out of a rag from' some old bed-quilt past further service, was a splendid jewel — an Oriental ruby worth some thousand's of pounds, surrounded by big brilliants of the finest Water. His boots were unlike any footgear I ever saw, resembling derelict coal-boxes with lumps of coal protruding from! them, for they were full of bumpp, — hills and dales — and I never could' make out whether they were button- boots or lace-boots because, certainly one of theml had a button or two here and there, ypt both were pierced MARQUIS OF CLANRIKARDE 119 with eyeholes and fastened with string (bootlaces run into money and need renewal every few years). The whole was crowned with a tall hat that had a peculiar gloss upon it, and was adorned with a broad band of silk running half-way up its sidbs. This curious little figure was to be seen emerging from; his rooms in the Albany about mid-day, and toddling down to one or anotih'er of his clubs where he would grumble over the price of provisions. His dinner was like certain Oriental manuscripts, beginning at the end and thence proceeding by way of bananas and ice-creaims towards the joint, and concluding with a plate of clear soup. He used often to explain to me that his mfethod of dining gave the internal .organs less trouble, as they were able to deal with the more difficult problems presented by thi^ sweets at the start, and found the quiet of the clear soup, at the conclusion, very comforting. Frequently, towever, when provisions were scarce and dear, he would content himself for luncheon with the simple permy bun consumed on a bench in the Green Park, prior to dropping in at Christie's for a sale of blue china, of which ,he possessed a very fine collection. One day, I 'remfember his asking me if I took an interest in it, and on my replying in the affirmative, but .regretting that I could never trust my eye, he put his hand into the tail-coat pocket of the garment described (whiere the buns were also kept) and produced a most! beautiful Sevres saucer of the cele-. brated turquoise blue. ''I alway|S take this saucer to sales," he said, " and compare it with the piece I am' thinking of buying. Anything that approaches it is sure to be good." He also mentioned a sad occasion at Christie's when he had directed an agent to go on bidding for a piece of china until he drew out his 120 FRANCE f AND FISHING pocket haridkterchief. The agenit was staridirig! facing himi the other side of the table in a crowded room. The bidding started briskly^ and the vase was soon over £ioo, which was Clanrikardle's intended limit. He told me that it went to £350 before the ha^nmer fell, and the agent trotted round to say he had bought it for him' ! The handkerchief had remained in place. There were all sort'is of tales current at one time as to Clanrikarde's being identical with the notorious money-lender Sanguinetti. Jemingham once told me tihat Clanrikarde had come up to him! and said : "I hear they say I'm Sanguinetti, the money-lender. I don't mind them saying that in the least, but what does rather annoy me is that Sangtuinetti is also going about saying that he's not the Marquis of Clanrikarde." I am not sure if Lord Lascelles, the lucky nephew, now possesses the celebrated jewel known as the Merman. This jewel has been once exhibited in London, arid consists of a single pearl which, by a freak of Nature, is shaped exactly like the torso of an adult man, beautifully modelled. The Italian craftsman, some Leonardo da Vinci, added the splendid angry head of the sea-denizen with its golden curls and the curved tail of green enamel, with! its pendant pearls and rubies. The whole produces a marvellous effect of completeness and vibrates with the Ufe given to it by the artist. Years ago it was jn the UfSzi collec- tion at Florence whence it mysteriously disappeared and was not heard of for many yeairls, until, as Clanrikarde told me, and I have no reason to doubt his veracity, it turned up in India and' was offered to Lord Canning, who was then Viceroy. He bought d,nd kept it with two other treasures in a despatch-box, which came back with hint when he returned to ithis A FAMOUS JEWEL 121 country. These were a jewel of astxinishing beauty, known as the Emperor of China's seal, said to have excelled the Merman — and Queen Victoria's love-letters. The three were together in his despatch-hox in Hanover, Square when he was taken ill, and drove down to the seaside — I think it was Hastings., The box was handfed to him in his carriage. He neverl returned, and the Emperor's seal and the love-letters disappeared. Lady Waterford declared that he centainly had them with him at the time of 'his death. Ely the terms of Canning's will, Clanrikarde became the owner but was obliged to sell the jewel, which was bought back by his fathef and thus returned to his possession. He told me that Rothschild had offered him up to £9,000 for the jewel, which he had' refused, adding that he would not accept £10,000. Ope more reminis- cence of the jewel's adventures fromi his lips.; He told me that on one occasion Lady Carming went to a drawing-room and by some inadvertence on the part of her coachman was put dowin at the ordinary entrance. Having no means of making herself knovrai there she started on foot to find the entree entrance, but soon got lost in the crowd, where she was observed by a policeman, who came up to her and politely saluting asked if he should lead her to the entree entrance. She gratefully accepted and when they arrived there told him he mig'ht call in Hanover Square the next day, where there would be a little present awaiting himi for his timfely guidance. " And before we part, I should like to know how you guessed I was seeking the entree entrance? " "Oh, your ladyship, the moment I saw them pearls and rubies I knew you must have the entry." She was wearing the famous jewel. Clanrikarde had been, in early life, a diplomlatist at 122 FRANCE AND FISHING the Grand Ducal Court in Florence. He often held forth about Ireland and' the way he liad been let down by the Conservative Government. He was bitter as to the treatment meted out to him! by the late Lord Salisbury, who had, he said, always been prepared to sacrifice him to catch the popular vote. He gave mfe a minute account of interviews with other statesmen now living, to which it will perhaps be possible to refer in greater detail in the course of a few years, as they form an interesting commentary upon thte state of Irish pohtics at the time. Clanrikarde had a good deal of wit, and was by no means d;evoid of humour. He was said to have always been snubbed by old Lady Cork, his sister, whom I met several times, but never heard say anything approachingi in interest the pungent epigrams and flowing stores of accurate knowledge of her brotjher. I never saw them! together, but there must have been somte psychical disequilibrium' between the two, for Clanrikarde would have been excellent company in the most cultivated society. As to his Irish estates and the accusations of rack-renting, he told me that these estates had already been enormously reduced in rental when he inherited them, and that he was invited to make further enormbus reductions upon these reductions. He said that he was determined not to be robbed, and that his tenants branded him: as a merciless landlord because he refused to allow them' to rob him. I have put his side of the case because one has always heard the other stated with immense vehemence but lack of documentary support. " Give a dog a bad name " was certainly true of Clanrikardie, who, no doubt, was astonishly mean, and would rather have died than have casually lent anyone a fiver, thoug'h he possessed over three million steflingl, but I have always SKATING AND SLIDING 123 heard that on great occasions he was capable of great things — that, for instance, he intervened to save his brother from bankruptcy, paying all his debts. He was a devotee of the old-fashioned figure skating, and very fond of m'arking out a few square yards for himself at Prince's skating rink, in which to practise his quaint little figures, circling round his topi h'at. Hie very much objected to intruders upon these sacred precincts, and I remember on one occ'asion the testy old gentleman kept muttering " D n, d ^n," in 'a stage Whisper every time Lady Randolph Churchill brushed past him. This went on for some time, when suddenly she swooped down upon him when he had one bulbbus boot in the air and sent him flying in a sitting position alorig the ice. Facilis decimus Averni. But I Imust return for a few moments to that earlier period when I was learning French at Tours. We were a large party of young Englishman at La Gruette, round Monsieur Cr^mi^re's hospitable board. Mostly the aspirants for French speaking, were younger than I, and they vied with one another in practising — ^the English language. With Henry Bell I made friends and together we explored the neighbourhood in search' of lepidoptera or played tennis at the Croizats', where the tricolor flag waved on one side of the net, the Union Jack on the other. Altogether a delightful time among the acacias and the vinesi, alive with sunhght and countless shades of green. There was also a terrace, with a view downward on the Loire. Here, on the long Jime evenings, we would stride up and down smoking cigarettes and discussing our plans for the future. George Cr'awley came out later, and joined me in a circular visit to the famous Chateaux, so much described of late years that I will not dwell 124 FRANCE AND FISHING upon thtem here beyond' saying that I preferred the veiled seclusion of Azay-le-Rideau to thie miore splendid display of Blois, Amboise and Genonceaux. Crawley spoke quite good Frendh', and I madte mly first start in t!he language with him. But it was evidtent that I should not acquire the desired facility unless I went tio isome place where English was not spoken, for I found that I soon exhausted all comtaon themes with amiable, obese Madame Crfemi^re and her peripatetic husband, who had seen so many generations of young Englishnuen pass before his eyes and with all exchanged the like platitudes. He was constantly pottering about the garden and the vines in list slippers, sometimes with a watering pot, at others with a Walking-stick jn his hand. His charming niece, Juliette, used to appear at meals, and sometimes it was possible to take a few first steps in Gallic compliments with her. I left them to follow the ligrht. Delightful days and pleasant, homely, kindly people. How true it is that humanity never knows when it is well off. Being a " brother of the angle " I naturally looked round for a chance of luring the wary fin into the basket. The Loire, of co|urse, presented opportunities, and of these I availed myself in moderation, for it was some distance from the house, and the sport, When obtained, was rather of the negative than the positive sort — I mean there was a deal of waiting! for a Iminimum of bites, which made me greet Jean Richepin's verse read in the sleepy punt, with mtich approval : — . . . le pfecheur k la ligne Qui vit et meurt vierge et martyr. Virgin of fish we certainly often were, though our waiting in the comfortable recesses of the bargie-like FROG-FISHING 125 arrangemtent provided by the fisherlmian did not amount to martyrdom. But during; my visit to Azay-le-Rideau I made the discovery of a new kind of anglingi Which I can heartily recommend to those in search of air, exercise and amusement. Strolling through a lush meadow in the neighbourhood of that enchanted palace, I came upon a blouse-clad rustic armed withl a long and tapering hazel pole, intently gazing at the opposite side of a deep broad ditch!. He was standing on the very edge, his clogs imbedded in loose-strife, m'arsh mallows, forget-me-nots, marigolds and clover. Willows over- grew the trickling! water, and countless twining grasses and branches almost entirely concealed it from! the view. One inferred its presence only from this rich variety of vegetable life that covered the slopes of the banks and ran right across from side to side. By peering between the boughs of willow and alder, it became possible, here and there, to detect a small space of water unconcealed. The rustic stood on the bank gazing at his bait, and I gazed at him. A slight motion agitated tJie point of his tapering pole. Suddenly he jerked it high in the air, and to my amazed amusement I observed that the bait was a piece of red flannel rolled into a ball, and the fish — a frog — at that moment flying through the air with the red flannel sticking to the minute teeth in his jaw. When it fell to the ground in the de&pi igTeen of the grass the shock jerked out the ball oif flannel, and Master Grenouille, quite uninjured by his sudden flight skyward, started off full tilt for his native ditch. The rustic at once threw dow!n his pole and bolted in pursuit— it was a grand handicap — and froggie's long-legged leaps were one too many 126 FRANCE AND FISHING for the heavy wooden clogs of my friend ; that one g'ot safe to cover, and there was no possibility of luring him forth again. The only thing to be done was to mbve a few paces down the ditch and find another likely looking eye of water amid the herbs. This being achieved, I observed that the mfethbd is simple, and that it was genuine angling — a luring of the saurian to the basket, not a forcing him' to enter it -willy-nilly. And I observed, too, that there went Considerable .art and craft to tihe sucOessful capture of the succulent vocalists — (spring chi<^ken are not in it with Grenouilles a la mode de Touraine). The red flannel knust be just the right size, neither too small nor too big, and it miust further be properly, not too t|ightly nor too loosely, rolled. The strinlg to which it is attached must be strong, because it often catches in bushes and needs some force to disentangle. Then there is a good deal of art in impartingt just the correct motion to tiie fascinating crimison mouthful. Frog'gie is easily alarmed too, and one mjust stand back from the precise place where the event is goingi to mature, or the prey will rem'ain perdu ajnlong the sedges. Frequently in this kind of fishing, alone of all the kinds I have practised, one's victim inhabits the same element as oneself, and is seated comfortably on the bank when one approaches. He watches the amusing movements of the crimson circle for some moments before he decides to leap down into the Water and swallow the lovely thing. This he does, not crudely and all in one, but boldly leaps to within about four inches and then approaches gradually (if the bait be properly agitated) before finally deciding! to gulp it down. When he does at last take it into his mouth one must give him comfortable time to get it well in, and select. PAEIS 127 for the supreme flight heavenward, the psychological moment when the minute roughnesses of the flannel are in contact Avith his minute teeth. Even when pne thinks one has judged well he somtetimies turns out to have imperfectly swallowed the bait, and consequently becomes detached frotn it when only a few feet from' tihe bank. In that case even more rapid mteasures are {necessary, and the odds are heavily on the frog. I have often almost fallen down with laughing to observe the frantic plunge made by my friends after tihe elusive frogs, so frequently ending in the escape of the latter. I introduced the fashion of frog-fishing among the other young men at La ,Gruette, and we would often be four or five at a few, yards distance from one another. .We generally brought home a good basketful after a morning's eff^orts. These are, of course, the edible frogs, larger than those little green beauties, the sybarites of the olives, that make thei ,noise of an evening and live upon small flies. The advantage of this kind of fishing is that out of one capiture ypu always get the excitement of two captures, and if you are imprudent enough' to peep into the closed basket before delivering it in the kitchen you may quite well see your hard-won luncheon departing in all directions, with incredible celerity, to safie cover. On the whole, I place a good day with frog somewhere between lamprey and salmon fishing — it is more strenuous than either. Despite these fascinations I decided' that I must go to Paris, and there complete the building of which the scaffolding only had been laid. In the Rue de la Sante, at the extreme end of the Boulevard St. Michel, I found what I required in the persons of Monsieur and Madame Bouchardot, a Protestant pasteur and his wife, who knew not a word of English. I must speak 128 FRANCE AND FISHING French or starve. I started a translation of Sterne's Sentimental Journey into Eo^^lisl)^, which was corrected by the pasteur^ I making rapid stridesi, and in the course of a few weeks was able to join in Jny host's conversation with his wife and their friends, and had begun to read right and left in French literature, wisely accepting the suggestions of Monsieur Bpuchardot and beginning with Racine and Moliere. I remember at this time also studying Fourier's Theorw des Quc^re Mouvements and his notions of the phalanstery and the i'dieal life of share -and -share -alike, which, when he wrote had not assumed the noxious form given to it by the Jew Marx. I completed my studies with a little harmless light exercise at the Bal Bullier, which was just round the comer, and gave me glimpses of the last of the Grisettes and of Parisian life that were rather surprising to lone accustomed to the staider joys of Albion. From that date I have always kep|t in touch with France and with French literature, to which I owe so much. I returned by the Isle of Wight to England, iand' spent a few exquisite days at Shanklin, which has lever since been to me as a shrine. I have elsewhere given expression to its " tumbled wealth of green," and to the great sapphire eye of the sea as glimpsed through boughs swaying to the breeze of June and to the moments thenei, when Nature shrouds her face and squadrons of white rain come riding across the Chine. I can always '- re- capture the rapture " by returning there, and' this' I hlave also been able to do with other less exquisite scenes..| That summer and autumn of 1886 I passed at Delgaty, where I caught a number of salttioni in the Deveron, and did some shooting, but my brother Julian, who followed me at Eton, has always been the expert in the latter branch of sport. "THROW IN THE ROD" 129 My father was at one time a keen salmtm-fiisher, and had two remarkable advientures, the first at Laithers, whene I have often fished. On the occasion in question, a big sahnon was rising close to him, in the late autumh, at the bottom' of the pool known as the Turning! Wheel, which is backed by a steepi, wooded bank, and trees in places grow out over thb water. One of these was ,just before him, as by a rare fluke his fly struck the side of a rising fish as it was in the air, and caug^ht hold. The fish made a bee line at a great pace dowtn-strealmi, the line tearing out of the reel as the [fish reached the rapids about thirty yard's below. My father held on as hard as he could without breaking the line, but nothing could stop the fish. He turned to Terras, his head-keeper, who Was just above him, and shouted : " Shall I throw in the rod? " Terras confirm,ed thei suggestion, and the heavy eighteen-foot rod disappeared in the calm, deep, foam-flecked water where the fish had been hooked. They then rushed down the bank to the rapids to see if there were any ;signi of the fishj but nothing was visible ; for travelling the pace he was no doubt the rod had been before them!. Oyer a hundted; yards of line was out when it was thrown in, and the fish must be in the pool beyond the rapids — the rod and reel might, of course, have stuck in a stone or been carried against the bank. They walked down to the pool below, known as Burn End, from a stream that flows into it further down. Its black, swirling waters burst over a rock at the further side and continued for quite a quarter of a mile withbut an intervfening shallow. The case appeared hopeless : The waters wild closed o'er my child, And I was left lamenting. 9 130 FRANCE AND FISHING Soi they stood, rodless, surveying the scene of the dis- appearance, and were just iturningi away to harness the dogcart and drive home w^ben one of the Harveys, who own Camousie, the property that faceis Laithers on the other side of the river, appeared on the opposite bank to fish., He was armed with some heavy tackle and leads to draw across the bottom, and drag out any diseased fish there might be in the pool — and pre- sumably any others also ! Be this as it may, my father informed him that he had lost his rod and believed it to be lying at the bottolml of ithe pool. No doubt the fish had broken away long ago. Harvey thereupon made a cast across the stream with his bunch of big hooks, and at the third attempt said : "I feel your rod." Slowly, slowly he raised it to the surface : my father waded across the shallow above and joined him, joyfully gripping the dripping butt of green ash, which had passed through its ordeal unscratched. He wound up fifty yards or so of line, never suspecting for a moment that his fish would still be there, but what was his astonishment suddenly to feel it tugging away, and as fresh as if it had just been hooked. He landed it in twenty minutes ; weight about twenty pounds. I ' ' I Personally, I was never fortjmate in the Turning Wheel, but Stewart of Laithers told me that, on one occasion, he was fishing behind some of the big rocks which break its bubbling . surface at the top of the pool. There he rose and " rugged " an immense fish' lying in to the further side in comparatively shallow water. Vainly he tried again, and had just finished fishing the lower part of the pool when the youngest of the Harveys, a Cambridge blue and an athlete, appeared at the top to fish it from the Carnousie side. A MONSTER 131 "I've ' rugged ' a monster at the top of the pool," shoutfed " Laithers " to his friend! : " he won't look at me again, but perhaps he m^ay be tempted from your side." He came and sat down opiposite the place where he had risen the fish, while Harvey began at the very top and fished it carefully dowin to the critical cast. He was " in " to something at once that felt exactly like the rock, which was just visible above the surface? .Was it the rock? Harvey put on a heavy strain with his powerful rod, but there was no response from the other end. The line remained absolutely taut and tense. He held on like this for some minutes. " I doubt it's the rock," shouted Laithers to Carnousie with the faintest suspicion of a piscatorial chuckle. " No, I'm sure it's the fish," shouted back Carnousie : " it gave an unmistakable tug, but I can't move it. It must be tied to thie rock." " Give line and go a little Ibelow him' ; you're bound to move him' then." This manoeuvre Was tried but proved absolutely in- effective : the monster kept his position without any apparent difficulty, and' refused' to budge an inch. For twenty minutes Harvey held on, and' then bfecame dtesperate. He dbcidied thiat he would try to gaff the fish where it was. The wa|ter Was not very deep. Winding up very carefully and keepin'gl thie full strain on the fish, he enntered the rapid stream' in iwhich he just managed to keep a footing!, withi the rod in his left hand resting against his side, the gaff in his right. He proceedted thus about ten yards, and at last paw the dark outline of the salmon lying just below the rock in about five fedti of water. He himself was standing in over four fee|ti whien he miade a long aim and got the iron of the glaff over his back and into him. Had he not! been in tip-top training, with muscles 132 FRANCE AND FISHING like steel, he would never have dragged the great fish to the gravelly beach. It was all he could do in that rapid current, although a salmon is, of course, rendered practically helpless when the gaiif is driven well home. I have a photo of the fish, a clean-run salmon of forty-five pounds. My brother's feats in the way of game shooting! are really surprising and at one time he was looked upon as the best shot in the north of Scotland I He told me that his best day's pheasant shooting was at our neighbour's. Sir George Abercomby's, at Forglen House. On this occasion he shot seventy-seven high pheasants at one stand without a miss. Flight shooting at Woodpigeons comings in to roost always amused mte, but iny own achievements were as nothing to his seventy-five, sixty- five and fifty-five by himself in a couple of hours on three successive Wednesdays at Craigston Castle, also within a walk of Delgaty. Here, in the tiny burn which runs past the ancient Castle, from which it is separated only by a gentle grassy slope, I remember as a little boy of nine coming over to fish) wifth a wormi, for trout. Francis Pollard Urquhart kindly had the mill-water above turned on for us to darken the water and soon Ada, Leonora, Octavia Pollard Urquhart, my brother Percy and I were busily tossing yellow troutlings on to the soft, thick, velvety grass. I went alone down- stream below the bridge where we had been told the fishing was not so good. The water here ran darkly smooth and deeper between close banks. I cast jmy worm rather too near the opposite bank BhS I thought, and feared it would catch in the meadow-sweet and other herbage which over-arched the currents. I almost jerked it out and made another cast. It stopped travelling down- stream. I struck. Was it in the roots WAITING FOR A WOODCOCK. Julian Ainslie, the author's younger brother. JULIAN'S BEST DAYS 133 of a plant? It felt likei it. Yet no, there was too heavy a tug, when I pulled^ toi bie a, submerg|ed weed. I had never felt anything like it before. Suddenly all my doubts were dispelled by the Hne darting down-stream like an arrow. I rushed after it with hasty steps through the long, high grasses, which had not been cut in this portion of the stream where we were not expected to fish. Suddenly it turned the other way and went up-stream with equal rapidity. Thus up and down it coursed with the little boy after it, panting with excitement and shouting for all he was worth. But at first no one heard him : the party had adjourned to the Castle for tea. At last, however, a woodcutter in a neighbouringt thicket emerged and catae to the rescue -with a landing-net which he ran to secure at the house. I had seen nothing of the fish, though a more expert angler would have certainly done so. He kept boring alongf o^ the very bottom. The woodcutter was certainly very adroit, for he quickly slipped the net under him and hoisted out what appeared to my enraptured leyes toi bie a monster. He turned the scale at just under three pounds, and I shall always remember the pathetic remark of the keeper Will, that he had fished the burn for twenty years and more without making such a capture and now a young gentleman had come and caught the triton. I was filled and thrilled with pride. To revert for a motnent to my brother Julian, his best day's general shootingl was in Norfolk, when he rented Congham Hall, and with four other gtins got "470 pheasants, 170 brace of partridges and a lot of duck and teal." iWe had at one time a delightful neighbour, Mr. Bacon, an American, connected, I beHeve, with the 134 FRANCE AND FISHING Vanderbilt family. The story runs that soon after he had rented Netherdale on the Deveron, the keeper wrote in the spring to New York, where he was detained on business, to ask if they should try for salmon in his absence. " No," he is said to have cabled in reply, " keep salmon till I return in the autumn." That was in the early days, but he soon learnt salmon lore and his hospitality knew no bounds. To dwell a few further moments on sport, my brother tells me that the most comical experience he remembers was at a covert shoot at Mountblairy, years ago, when a beater wlas accidentally hit in the face. He was rather badly hurt and my brother, Iwlho, had not fired, was doing what he could for him, when the head- keeper came up full of the cares of the day. He looked at the man lying on the grass, and' said : " Oh ! fire-shot are ye? Aweel 1 Awa back tae ma hoose and wash yer face, and come back as quick as ye can " — and the man did it 1 I hasten to add that the victim was none the worse for the mishap, and was duly rewarded by the pepperer. Reckless shooting is the abomination of desolation in sport. CHAPTER VIII DANCING AND DUCKING The Old Lord Fife — Scoones and Diplomacy — Sam Lewis Gambling — Reel Dancing in Scotland — Society m excelsis — " Ball Dancing — Embassy Ball at Rome— Orloff— The Ducking of the Princess— The Tears of Poland — Pageant in excelsis. In East Aberdeenshire we suffered considerably at one time from this affliction in the shape of a neighbour (now dead) who was a popular and agreeable mjan, and had commanded a regiment with distinction in earher life. He is said to have been the only man who had shot another in the soles of his feet. He achieved this distinction by telling the keeper at a rabbit-shoot that he had wounded a rabbit which had crawled into a hole close by. While the keeper ;was lying flat on the g'round with his arm down the hole trying to reach the rabbit, another rabbit appeared and made for the same refuge. The Colonel immediately fired both barrels at it, with the result above mentioned. On one occasion, at his own shoot, he proved himself so dangerous in the morning that his guests declined to come out after liinch to shoot the rabbit warren. They finally relented' after the Colonel had given a solemn promise that he would remain on the other side of a substantial wall. They made a start, but were soon appalled to find that shot was mysteriously coming in all directions into the Une of guns and beaters. It was then discovered that the Colonel was walking along! the top of the waU shooting 135 136 DANCING AND DUCKING indiscriiminately at all that mbved'. He once remarked' at a shoot that he had been fortunate enough to kiU a right and left of roe-d^eer. At the pick-up Jt was found' that what he had really killed was one roe-deer .and his host's brown retriever. Th,e old Lord Fife of an earlier gieneratibn, whom' I have already mentioned in relation to his whisky and his wig, was also reputed to have been apt to discharge his right barrel at anything! moving. On one occasion the object in question happened to be a beater's yellow gaiter. His lordship aimed straight at what he believed to be the yellow rabbity and bowled it over in the dense fern, giving! it as he remarked^ the other barrel " to' put it out of its misery " when he observed that the undergrowth continued to be violently agitated. '' Adyentures ane to: the adventurous " is one of the truest of saws and when I returned to London, after visiting my parents in Aberdeenshire, I set out on several. The first of these was the frequentation of Scoones's cramming est,ablishlment for the Diplomatic S,ervice. It was in Garri'ck Street, andB. Scoones, the manager, proprietor and presidingl genius, was a most amiable and delightful man. Bright dark eyes in a sallow face sparkled with life and intelligence as he stood before one of the grates of his many lecture- rooms and instructed some thirty young gentlemen how they should all obtain the five or six vacancies likely to become available in that career. Heads I win, tails I don't lose, might be said of the excellent Scoones and his establishment : he did but profit legitimately by the ludicrous system of so-called " competition " examination by nomination for the Diplomatic Servicte. We were all kept on tenterhooks prior to an exiamination as to whether we THE LATE LORD SALISBURY 137 should receive " nominations " or not. These were really all in the gift of the Hon. Eric Barrington, private secretary to the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, at that time the late Lord Salisbtay. Of the latter, many are the stories current as to his immense capacity for failing to recognize even those with whom he was in daily contact. Thus he is reported to have asked on one occa- sion who Was the " rather agreeable " young man who had twice brought dispatches to Hatfield for signature. At first there was some doubt as to who this imight be, but eventually it was discovered that my old friend, Henry Foley, one of the junior secretaries, was thd person in question. He had been in attendance on his Lordship for two years. But funnier than this (though I fear that to some this anecdote may be a marron glace') is the descrip- tion of that day when a neighbouring" squire dropped in to luncheon. Lady Salisbury was rather apprehensive that her husband might fail to recogiiize this somewhat obscure person, and was greatly relieved to find when Lord Salisbury entered the dining-room a little later that he immediately engag^ed their homespun guest in conversation, which he kept up vigorously till the end of the repast, when the squire rather hastily took his leave. Lo,rd Salisbury then casually rem'arked : " I Vas glad Lord Roberts dropped in to luncheon to-day ; but I fear he is not what he was intellectually. He appeared to me to be retaarkably vague as to our military dispositions in Egypt, atid his views on Indian questions seemed even more nebulous. But we all grow older." il believe that it was thought advisable not to disillusionize him as to the identity of his late guest. These anecdotes are no doubt founded upon an inattention to the externals of daily intercourse on the 138 DANCING AND DUCKING part of Salisbury, but that he was well aware of the main point came under my own direct observation when I was on the late Sir Edmund Monson's staff at Athens. Sir Edmund was an amiable Chief, though his habit of perpetually quill driving with a quill that did not ryn but galloped across the foolscap, kept us all too busy in the Chancellery on many a balmy after- noon. Sir Edmund was far more interested in Greek pontics than was Lord Salisbury, and he would often metaphorically wring his hands and tear his hair over the apathy displayed by the Secretary of State towards the iniquities of Delyannis and the manoeuvres of Tricoupis. But when real trouble began to brew, and a Grseco-Turkish war was threatened, telegrams came pouring in from the previously apathetic Secretary of State, who was doubtless well aware of Sir Edmund's quill -driving propensities. I have always admired and wished I dared to emulate that trait , in the late Lord Salisbury of ignoring all club bills. Years ago I was a member of the Junior Carlton Club, and when the Senior opposite was closed Lord Salisbury used occa- sionally to honour us with his presence at luncheon at the Junior. He used always to stalk majestically away when he had finished as though he were in bis private house and the steward never dared present him with the bills, which used to accumulate until they were paid off in a bunch by his secretary. A delightful relic of days when no club servant would present a tray of silver change until the silver had been washed. Conceive a trayful of well-washed Bradburys. That pulp exactly represents our present democracy as compared with the clear-cut coin of the past. To return to the diplomatic examination and the FRIENDSHIP WITH THE SECRETARY 139 arbiter of the nominations, we naturally all paid court to Eric Barrington so far as we were able : the rooms at Scoones's re-echoed with : " Eric has asked me to lunch," or " I saw Eric in PaU Mall, yesterday," from the lips of those whom he was supposed especially to favour. I think Barrington did his best to make a pint bottle contain a magnum — certainly there were a good many nominations for each examination, but the way adopted for those who were particularly wanted by the Foreign Office was to fix an examination suddenly for a particular date so selected as to suit the favoured candidates and to exclude any dangerous competitors who were pertnitted to cut one another's throats on a later occasion. Another favourite dodge was to carry the name of the desired one right to the top of those who had failed to obtain a place in a competition — say make 'him comie out fifth where there were four vacancies — then when a fifth vacancy occurred the pet was popped into it without more ado. Other devices were also adopted Tor increasing the chances of certain candidates. Thus I remember, when I was at Scoones's, that just before an examination Sir Augustus Paget, Ambassador at Vienna, whose son was a fine German scholar, wrote to the Foreign Office to say that 300 marks was not, in his opinion, sufficient for German. A couple of hundred marks were at once added to that subject. The same sort of thing went on for years under the successors of Eric Barringjton : it was a question of paying successful court to the private secrci&ry of the Secretary of State, not only for " nominations," but also for posts when in the Service. My fathetr belongied to the golden spoon-fed days before the competition for nomina- tions of unspeakably worthy people connected with Radi- 140 DANCING AND DUCKING cal M.P.'s. They had merely to prove they Idiew Fr'ench and German and could write a dispatch in those days. The governing class throughout Europe — socially there was no other Continent — understood one another d demi mot and " ran the show " to perfection. Prior to the age of those bom with the golden spoon in their mouths was that of those qui se donnaient la peine de naitre — ^cardinals in toddUng clothes. As Clanrikarde used to whisper to me, with his wonderful boots resting on the rim of the fender in the silence room' at the St. James's Club : " The mischief was done at the time of the French Revolution : a little firmness then and we should have been in the saddle for many generations. Now nothingi can stop the landslide." .Will the soft-handed homy-headed sons of soil led by Mt. Clynes provide a happier world? Very possibly, — for the Clynes' family and friends, but not for humanity as a whole. They will be dreadfully expensive. iWe shall return bankrupt to a benevolent tyra;nny by a very long and a very weary road. ' Studies at Scoones's fully occupied our time during the day, but youth is rich in vitality apd some !of us broke away to found a Bohemian Club combining with others less afflicted with examinations. This club was the Corinthian in York Street, St. James's Square, on the left as you enter the Square, and' I still possess the certificate of my foiunder's share, duly countersigned by old John HoUingshead of the Gaiety. HoUinigtehead' was a great ally of George Edwiardes — Gaiety George — and the level of culture attained by the latter caterfer for the public taste may be gaug'ed by a delightful remark he once made in my hearing. It was at a supper-party at Romano's that some one b'e.g'an talking about Shakespeare, a subject which had' ISADORA DUNCAN 141 few attractions for Edwardes, who listened, rather sleepily, until the remark was made : "I'm sure one could find it in Holinshed." Edwardes at once woke up with : " Lordy, I never knew old John had any, truck with Shakespeare." Edwardes was a very pleasant person to meet if you were on the side of the knife handle, as I have heard Russians put the possession of the pull, but the other face of the metal was not so pleasing. His true personality is exactly hit off -with the French faux bonhontme. Certainly he could be most agreeable when it suited his book and there was la; goold slice of cake loir himself and, of course, we young men found it very useful to be friends with the manager of the Gaiety, and even with his myrmidons, Pallant and otherg, who Qould speak the Open Sesame that let us past the Ceit)ferus of the stage-door. I remember in this connection a story that makes me smEe as I write it, of how I intro- duced the fair Isadora Duncan to a dear old hunting friend (long dead). He promptly became enamoured of the Terpischore of California, and followed exactly the correct tradition by driving up the following night to the stage-door with an immense bouquet. Un- accustomed to the ways of theatres, he pushed past the stage-doorkeeper's box before the latter had time to ask him whoim' he wanted. He began wandering hopelessly about the wings in search of her dressing- room and at last ran against the Cerberus, who had pursued but lost him in the intricacies of a forest of scenes and stage accessories. Then ensued an epic duel of words which very nearly ended in blows, the man rudely shouting to the intruder to come back, the intruder damning his eyes and continuing" his search, followed by the infuriated stage-doorkeeper. Finally 142 DANCING AND DUCKING my friend said : " Nothing will make me leave this theatre until. I have handed my bouquet to Miss Isadora Duncan." " She's not here," shouted the man with desperate calm : " Come along out of this." " She is here and I shall find her," replied my friend. " She asked me to call to-night at the Lyceum and ask for her." " But ihis, aint the Lyceum— it's the Gaiety ; the Lyceum's just opposite. If you hadn't a rushed past me like that you'd have saved us both a deal of trouble," shouted the Cerberus, who recovered his temper when he found the laugh was on his side. My friend joined in it and tipped him: a sovereign, which led Cerberus tO' add in gratitude : " You may come 'ere and look for Miss Duncan at that price any night of the week you Mke, and if so be you can't find 'er, maybe you'll find another to suit you — we sort o' specializes in 'em 'ere ye know"." The Corinthian Club formed a delightful place of meeting when it was first started : there was a magnificent ballroota with a balcony overlooking! it and a cosy lounge behind that, a dining-room on the other side of the entrance hall. We had a capital privatej band, and in the afternoons and evenings it was very gay. Albert Osborne, A. H. E. Grahame, Victor Morier, Talbot and Cuthbert Clifton, Leslie Melville and many other friends and acquaintances, mostly of Eton, Harrow, Oxford or Cambridge formed a nucleus round which gathered most of the youngi men from eighteen to the early twenties. The ladies were recruited chiefly from the Gaiety and other theatres of that sort. They were much more Bohemian and far less pretentious in some respects than the irdddle-class chorus ladies of to-day. There was, of course, a great deal of money spent, chiefly by those who did not possess any. This SAM LEWIS 143 paradox was explained by the near neighbourhood of Sam Lewis, whose offices were almbst opposite the Bristol Restaurant (since fallen from its high estate). Sam had a cheerful, jovial personality and used frequently to remark semi-pat emally : "I like to see the young 'uns have a good time." He was reputed! (truly, I have no doubt) to do knimense deals with Continental magnates in need of cash, but he did not disdain even younger sons, who might (who can tell?) succeed to thousands any day. To these he would often advance a monkey or so on their simple sig- natures. He would even lend small sums of money to young men in good regiments who would go back and extol his generosity at mess, and thus perhaps lead some of their wealthier brother officers into his net. Sam was a capital raconteur and I have often thought what a wonderful secret history of London in the 'eighties and 'nineties he and the solicitor, Georgfe Lewis, might have compiled. Between them they must have known all the secrets. Of course such a history would be impossible and both these — experts — were honourable men. Sam was an habitue of Monte Carlo, where he lost many of the thousands he made in London. One day the chef\ de partie at trente et quarante objected to Sam's putting his feet on one chair while he sat on another, whereupon Sam came out in the best Cockniey with : "I've paid ye over a 'undred thousand to 'ave the right to put my feet on this blasted chair and I'm ruddy well going to do it." Lord Frederick Hamilton, in one of his interesting volumes, describes the young men of his day as wearing the " colours " of the lady of their heart in the stalls of the Gaiety, and that one youngl man pushed his infatuation for Miss Duncan (black and white) to 144 DANCma AND DUCKING the extent of having black and white kid gloves made for the puripose at the theatre. Wie of a later date never went to those extremes of dress, though a good many people got very much into debt for the sake of their Twinkle Toes (to borrow my friend Burke's pretty title for his admirable study) . Some of the Twinkle Toes were worth it, and I remetaiber one of them, Lydia Manton, a charming little sapphire-eyed brunette, who took her own life because the man she liked had left her in order to marry. There were other Bohemian resorts of the time which we occasionally patronized, such as the Gardenia in Leicester Square, a long, low-roofed floor with supper- room above. Here the compiany of both' sexes was much mlore mixed, and though the fun was fast and furious, the early mornings spent there inclined one to return to the more civilized Corinthians, or to Evan's — now t!he National Sporting Club. This was a charming resort during the few years of its existence. The same class as frequented thei Corinthians came here : light-hearted Bohemian maidens, who were out for a good time without much afterthought. It wias a club, and most of us belonged to both'. I was not one of the founders of Evans's : it was generally said to be run by the old Duke of Beaufort. At any rate, he was there every evening with Miss Connie Gilchrist and glad to introduce her to young men who could dance well. Evan's afterwards becamle the New Club, and I have also attended the Caledonian Ball there. Indeed, I think that was thte only occasion I ever wore the kilt south of the Tweed. Our family being Grant Duff, we have the right to wear both the Grant ,and the Duff tartans. Personally I affect the former. The tartans of the clans are, by many, supposbd to represent CALEDONIA DANCES 145 primordial antiquity in costume, but modern research: has, I believe, proved that their origin cannot be traced very far back. In the old days, when the Highlands were mostly within what were called the "Rough Bounds," commtmications were difficult and the com- plicated patterns displayed in many tartans would liave been impossible to execute for lack of dyes. A reel danced out of the kilts seems a pipsaic enough affair to the onlooker, but it's pleasure taken in grim earnest for the Celt. Many years ago, at Delgaty, during a ball given after the big] covert-shoot, I remember some unfortunate Sassenach engaging himself in the mazes of the ileel without a sufficiently close acquain- tance with the cornect way of changingi arms when the men dance together in the centre and the ladies look on. He managed to scrapie, somfehbw, through the slow time, but when the quick time began with the usual shouting and the spirit of ecstatic revel as Hig'h- landers — Lords of Creation — had entered the souls of the dancers, he kept continually giving; the wrong arm to the other man and getting! in his way at the critical moment. At last this beoamie too much to bear*, and the Scot in question took hold of the peccant stranger round the waist and hurled him to the side of the room', with the recommlendation to bide in yon easy chair and keep out of the reel I The Scot then took up his dancing and went through the quick time then in the centre alone to his own satisfaction, thouglh to the amazement of the partner of his vis-d-vis, who remained a disconsolate figlure untU rejoined by a 'sadder and a wiser man. These anecdotes and happeningis may appeair to have But little connection with the great happening of the examination to enter the Diplomatic Service, nor indeed 10 146 DANCING AND DUCKING have th'ey, save that they were events taking place at about the same titne and are to my mind less tiresom;e than the chroniclingi of crammed French and card indexes, which filled the other part of my life for some years. I did not get my notnination for diplomacy until I was twenty-four. ; I shall therefore mkke no scruple of diverging frottii the macadam of examination to the Adams — and Eves — of the ballroom. iWe, of course, received plenty of social invitations during this period in London. Young men are always in request at dances, and we were weU aware of the fact. Dancing was not the fashion in the early 'nineties as it is now. We never thought of dancing in the afternoon, and if we did go to a ball in Society I ami afraid that most of us went after ,11 p.m. witih an eye to supper, after perhaps a turn or two in the ballroom. That we did not care much' for dancing at that time is not surprising, seeing that most of us had but rudimentary ideas of the art and believed that all was done when we had hauled our partners round the room!, more or less in time, to the tune of waltz or polka. Reversing, and aU kinds of " American tricks," were looked' upon as bad form' as tlhey were likely to impede the progress of those who were less dexterous at gettingj round without too, much bumping into people. Then I' fear that the happy-go-lucky attractions of Bohemia made even the slight restrictions of Society ballroom's irksomfe. iWhat one was practically free of at the time I first began to go about London was the type of man who " ought not to have been asked," as being, outside the pale of Society or of Bohemia, which w!as as exclusive in its own way as Society as regard^ the men who frequented it. Nowadays, I coinstantly hear that BRITISH NO MASKERS 147 altogether undesirable men have been brought to the best houses by women in Society who ought to know better, ;and indeed do know better, but being unable to obtain the genuine article accept the other rather than go without. Any one at all doubtful used to be extremely well looked after and sharply criticized and kept in order, whereas now there are too many of them — ^the social level has declined with the advent of the democracy which has risen above its former level. The memoirs of older mten and women who I have met make it clear that, before my time, both Society and Upper Bohemia were much more strictly guarded than wh^ I first knew them : now it is the Deluge. The splendid paying fancy balls of to-day were not known in the 'eighties and 'nineties, at least, on any- thing like the scale. iWe British are in any case not very good at manoeuvring in masks, and I remember, at a private m'asked baU given at Holland House, a good many years ago, that a womlan 1 knew who had been to masked balls abroad and understood the art of accosting and intriguing other masks, was severely snubbed by several of the men and wotnten whom she addressed, and either knew personally or knew all about. It was absurd to object to her doingi this, as no one could have obtained an entrance uninvited^, as all the masks had to be doffed a moment for private inspection on arrival. The reason why the mask is not popular with us is that although people are willing to dress up in something becoming or moderately bizarre, they always wish to remain themselves and resent conversing with any one not on their visiting list. By far the finest masked' and fancy balls that I have 148 DANCING AND DUCKING attended have been abroad ; the most beautiful was given by our representative at Rome, my friends, Sir Rennel and Lady Rodd, the next most beautiful at Paris, by the Princesse de L^n. Both eclipsed in artistic merit the stately m'apiificence of the Devonshire House fancy ball, the reason beinig this— at Devonshire House nearly everyone was British and therefore not naturally, artistic, whereas in Rome three-quarters were Italians to the manner born in matters of art, and in Paris, at the Princesse's, I suppose that not half a dozen British were asked : the French' Were the cream of the Faubourg St,. Germ'ain, withl a sprinklingi of a few foreign diplomatists. Both at the Rodds' and at the Princesse de Leon's, those who were invited had regularly to rehearse their entry for some weeks before the event — the ball was frequently postponed, and some of the Itahans were said to have rehearsed for a whole year ! If they did not rehearse they certainly conversed sufficiently about it, for I heard' a new story every day. 1 wore, on that occasion, a magtnificent Chinese Prince's marriage robe of coral-coloured watered silk, heavily embroidered with great golden dragons clambering in five-clawed imperial splendour all over my back. On my head a sort of papal tiara of Oriental pearls, in my hiand a painted fan, and round my neck a string of emerald- jade beads. My feet were encased in black satin turn- up slippers and my stockings of white silk were scarcely visible, as the robe descended to my heels. I acquired this latter magnificence fromi my old friend. Sir Herbert Dering, now British Minister at Sofia, on his return from Pekin. He was in comrr^nd of the Embassy forces during the Boxer Rebellion, and no doubt it was due to his coolness of head and able disposition THE GREATEST FANCY BALL 149 of our tiny forces that we won through as wtell as wte did. The first occasion on which I had worn this robe was at the painter's, Walter Crane's, where it com- pletely eclipsed all other costumes at a fancy dress party, whereas it was merely a single gem ia the splendour of the Embassy ball. I remember at the Crane's, where 1 found Harrington Mann, Charles Shannon, Jamfes,' Pryde, and a^ ntmiber of other delightful friends among the paintiers, the joke was to come up to me and say : " My dear Ainslie, I'm' so glad to see you, but I wish you'd be kind enough to turn your back on me." They, were buzzing like bees in admiration of my back — not very, flattering to the other side, as I vainly explained. The Rodds' fancy ball was fully described in the Italian, British and American Press at the time, and surely there has never been anything to equal it else- where. The greatest Itahan families were practically, all represented, and viedl witti one another in the splendour of the imaginative setting which they gave to the material gorgeousness of costxunes and jewels. Many, not merely solme of the women shone as though they were shrines, so covered and canopied were they with priceless heirlooms in diamond, pearl, ruby, emerald, opal and sapphire. I remtember, rather late in the evening, offering an arm to an exquisite httle Sicilian, whose head-dress seemed to be on fire with' the blazing light of precious stones in tiara and coronet. Her first remark was : " My head is aching with' rubies and diamonds. Give me some lanonade." A connoisseur in such matters told' me that she had, on her head alone, far more than two millions of francs worth of jewels (about £50,000), and as her dress was also resplendeht in the same manner the total must 150 DANCING AND DUCKING have Keen somethin|g; fabulous. Yet the whole effect was perfect. Good taste can ally itself with magnifi- cence as well as with moderatioHj for both are art. I retaember that there ihad to be a guard of police to. protect the ladies of this famous ball when we went to the Argentina theatre to be photog'raphed afterwards. But the crowds were qmte harmless after all. Both here and at the Princesse de Leon's one did not enter the ballroom in the ordinary way, but formed part of a group or coMpagnie as the Parisians .called it. il shall always remember my own black and silver Henri II costume at the latter ball, with its trunk hose, which felt very cold as one was waiting in the hall for the carriage, in the early hours of the morning* ! I was then staying with my, friend, Prince Alexis Orloff, in the Rue St. Dominique, who exercised his diplomatic privilege and wept in the magnificent white uniform of the Imperial Guard. " Pouf," as he was called, seemed at first Imerely fat and good-natured, but in reality he had inherited plenty of intelligence from his father, the celebrated Russian Ambassador to Paris. He was one of the very few Russians pf hiy acquaintance who had the intuition of the approaching avalanche in Russia, and removed the greater part of his very large fortune to France and I believe also to England, in 1913. " Pouf" had the greatest admira- tion for Englishmen, although he did not like London — he talked English with a cockney accent — or Eng- land. He was a regular sybairite and rarely left the charmed circle of the Rue St. Dominique or the Riviera, where he used alwiays to take a large house and import an army of servants. He used to say that the English alone did not flatter or try to obtain favours. I used frequently to run, over and stay, a few "POUF" AND THE PEINCESSE 151 days with him while I was " reading for diplomacy " : it was like entering fairyland, so remote from' London lodgings were those spacious rooms, heavy with scent burned on a brazier, and a white -statued fountain - tinkling garden opening out from: the great red silk dining-room and Mbrary, with its reassuring! rows of diplomatic histories and other decorous tomes, which I fear endured many frivolous conversation^. For " Pouf " was very fond of the Parisienne du monde — he did not care for the cabotines'—" filles d'e concierge," he called them. He gave most amusing little luncheons and dinners, ending often in some wild prank. I remember being the only non-Russian at a luncheon-party, after which the ladies actually ducked a disagreeable old Princesse GaUtzine in the lovely marble fountain in the garden, sparkhng! that after- nooin in May in aU its beauty. They disliked her for some reason, I never could clearly tti'ake out. It was la question of total immersion carried out with great rapidity after much discussion in thdr own language which, alas, I understand so imperfectly, although my, mother speaks it like a Russian. The Princesse was' in and out before I could protest, and I must confess that I could not help laughingl when she appeared wigless, dripping like a water-rat and spluttering with mud and rage. She was, howeVer, none the worse for this post-prandial baptism — certainly not her tongue — but that would have been impossible. The Galitzin family is veriy numerous in Russia, and as all the sons and daughters of a prince were respec- tively prince or princess, the story runs that on one occasion a princely member of the clan was stopped at a toll-gate and asked for ten kopecks. He felt his pockets and found that he had forgotten his purse. 152 DANCING AND DUCKING He decided to oblige the toll-kfeepier to let him pass by letting fly the splendour of his patronymic. " I am the Prince Galitzin : 1 haVe forgotten my purse ; let ime pass and 1 'will pay you double whew I return." " IVe heard that story before," said the toll-keeper, " and as to your being Prince Galitzin, for that matter, so am I : but you must pay the money, now all the same." The Orloffs are descended from the famous lover of the Empress Catherine, celebrated by Byron. The coup d'etat which placed her on the throne has been marvellously described by a former ambassador to St. Petersburg, Count Roederer. 1 possess a copy of this masterpiece in little — for the whole is con- tained in fifty moderate-sized pages of print. Some day I shall translate it. H« gives an extraordinai^ ■vivid picture of the Empress driving into St. Petersburg) with her lover and her hairdresser seated opposite to her in the carriage, quite uncertain as to whether she was to be put to death immediately or to be receivjed by the army with acclamation. The latter turned out to be the case. Roederer used to tell the story of his embassy in the eighteenth century salons of Paris after he had retired from diplomacy. It used to be the fashion for fair hostesses to beg him to do so. As he grew old, his friends begged him! to write down the narrative, which we possess, as he used to teU it and! as it came from' his pen. The Russian Government did its best to obtain the suppression of this document by bringing pressure to bear upon the French Govern- ment, but fortimately for us the book was already, in type and in a good many hands. It is little known in France and less with us. To return for a moment to the Costumfe ball jat Rome, I have said that we entered in companies thfere CONTESSA CASERTA 153 and at the Princesse de L^n's. The entrances of the Comddie Frangaise at the Princesse de Ldon's, followed by the Com^die Italienne, were exceedingly brilliant, only partly Qwinjg- to the costumes. The acting was for fully a half in the buoyantly joyous effect of the ensenible. Perhaps the Rodd's Ball was a little less hilarious than the L^on ball, but it was incomparably more Imagnificent, and the acting was beautiful there also owing to the large number of Italians present — ' and lltaMans simply do anything artistic naturally. " Toute Vltalie blazonnee Halt Id," one might say in the words that Th^ophile Gautier apphed to one of the books of Hugo's Legende des Siecles. At this distance of time, names of individuals mig'ht be expected to fade, but they are all as vividly before the memory now as when I strode solemnly along, followed by my friends Count de la Feld, Carlo Placci and other temporary Chinese hiandarins — pre- eminence went rather by robe than by rank — we grave and reverend Signers being atjtended by a bevy of the fairest among the maidens who danced decorously and Ughtly along in contrast to the measured tread of the mandarins . Ittitnediately ahead of us was the Golden Folly of the Contessa Caserta, clad entirely in a robe of gold upon gold, embroidered and decorated all with loops and festoons of the precious metal. Her crown of gold relaxed its severity only to admit a few rubies and tQ permit her wealth of gilded curls to fall upon her golden shoulders. She held a golden orb in 'onle! hand^ a sceptre in the other, and was followed! by a train of loviers, whose bodies were covered entirely with gold leaf so that they shone with precious gold fromi head to gilded toe— their very, loin cloths shone with' crysopjrase and other gems of 154 DANCING AND DUCKING yellow %ht. With them travelled great hounds, also gilded and adorned with sun-kissed leashes, at which they strained when they entered the ballroom and scented the lions. These, with a few panthers and jaguars were quietly couched at the feet of little Princesse Obolensky — she had entered mounted upon one of them^ though the story went "that they had been heavily drugged the night before they left their cages. Grouped in insolent splendour upon a divan reclined or lolled the Persian court entirely in harmbneis of hlue and green. Their turbans, their dresses were drenched with waves of light that came partly from their jewels, partly from the eyes which wiere the finest, not only in Rome, but in Italy, in Europe and in the New world. Round the neck of one of them — ^Dorotea Radziwill— shone the most celebrated of pearl necklaces, known as the Tears of Poland. Before we took up our stations to complete the picture, we had to, pass before the entire Pantheon of Olympus, gathered round the awful splendour of Juno, the Ambassadress, seated upon her throne and attended by Rainbows and Loves, marshalled beneath the sceptre of Princesse Potenziani as Venus the Queen ^ In and out of the groups as they approached the 'central dais danced a weirdly, wondferful being, in wild beast skins, half human, half faun, light and agile as Ariel. Sometimes he spirang in the air as thougih touched .with divine frenzy, at others he seemed to roll himself upon the earth as though the beast in him had triumphed'. This inspiringly artistic peirsonage was Tyrwhit of our Embassy, and his whimsicalities added just that touch' of the improm|ptu to the motions of the different groups that must have been given by the fool in stately, ducal processions of olden times. , BALLROOMS OF THE BRAIN 155 The Ambaissador looked iSir Walter Kal'eigh', every inch of hirri, in white silk and diamond-hilted rapiier, his white silk cap, heavy with drooping pearls, and the jewels of the Garter displayed across his doublet of moirM silk. An unforgetable evening and morning this. It has made me incurious of all other qostume balls past, present, amd to comie — the Indians say delightfully that when it lis said of a man that he has eaten of " all vegetables " in the world, that does not mean he has eaten all the Vegetables in the world, but merely that he has tasted of som.e of all the different kinds. That is certainly the case with the present writer, who feels he has been to all the parties that ever have been given in London, Paris or Rome and met all the interesting people ; although truthfully speaking*, like all other mortals, he has merely been present at a very few of every sort. But >the most wonderful of aU parties is, after all, that afforded by the talk of an interesting man, when to speak, he lights " the ballroom in' his brain " and sets his fancy or his memory dancing for one's benefit. i CHAPTER IX DIPLOMACY Athens — Sir Edmund Monson — Lady Monson — Mrs. Ronalds — " Duchesses as Thick as Peas " — Maid of Athens Plain — Declaration of War Mislaid — Lord Charles Beresford — Paderewski's Prophesy of the Great War — Prussians Low Born — Sir Clare Ford — Sir Donald Wallace — Olympia — Crown Prince of Greece. The privilege of thie pen is that, like Sir Boyle Roche's bird, it can be in several places at the pame time. Indeed, the last chapter has flitted about a good deal — from the desks of the excellent Scoones in Garrick Street to the ballroomB of Paris and Rome. Thus perhaps it may have been less tiresomie than, if I had' kept the reader's pose to the grindstone as toine was kept in the early 'nineties, despite those varieties of experience with which I have attemlpted a little mural decoration. Eairly in 1890, we h^ard that an examination might he held at any, time. I had bieen a good' deal in Germany during the previous year trying to acquire perfection in that tongue, which when Stendhal was asked if he knew*, he replied' that he had spent five years in anlearning. This necessity for expertismi in German was due to Sir Augusjtus Paget's request, to which I have already referred^ that mbre tniarks might be given for proficiency. This placed it on a level of French. Those in the batch that wient up; with mie were the present Sir Horace Rumbold, our present Ambassador at Constantinople, the late Lord Terence Blackwood, my old friends '' Tout " Beaumont, now 156 ATHENS 157 Sir Henry Beaumont, and Sir Herbert Bering. The examination took place in the middle of a very, cold winter, and whether it was due to thje draughty lodgings which I foimd in Bond Street on my sudden return from Delgaty, or to some other cause, I developed a very fine attack of bronchitis before it was more than half concluded, which necessitated my retiring to bed, and put me out of coimt on that occasion, which turned out to be the only one available for m^,' as I was soon after over twenty-five. Thus I found myself out of the direct line for the profession, and decided that it would be a pity to forgo the experience of, at any rate, a few years in the careen as an honorary attach^, which would ensure for me exactly the same position as I should at first have occupied, had I been able to complete the examination and' been successful. I knew plenty of people, both' at the Foreign Office and in diplomacy, and it was only a question where I should first go on this ad'veoiture. I had long been interested in Greece, ancient and taibdern, and as tih'e Ministjer, Sir Edimund Monson, had been saying for some timte previously that he wiould' like an attach^ at the Legation I decided, with Henry Foley, that I should go thither, stopping* a short time with my first cousin, now Sir Evelyn Grant Duff, British Minister at Berne during the Waa-, whbi was then Third Secreta^ry at Rome. He gave me a very pfeasant timte, and I made the acquaintance of several interesting Italians, whom I afterwards met again during! my many visits. Modem Athens has so often been described that I shall certainly dip no brush in violet and ultramarine to paint its external beauties. The Hon. Sir Edmund' Monson was a delightful Chief, who entertained the whole of his Staiff to luncheoin every, day. He was a 158 DIPLOMACY capital raconteur, not nearly so lengtlhy in his verbal as in his written narratives, pausing! only now and then to draw his fine long fingers through his grey beard. His eye was brigiht brown and vivid, and' he never wore glasses even in the cruel glare of the Athenian mid- day, though he told me that he had begun to feel the effects. The beard seemed' to grow longer and' longer while I was at Athens, until it became positively patriarchal. Afterwards, when I dined' with him' in Paris, while he was Ambassador, I found that it had been removed at the suggestion of King Edward, who was rarely wrong in such' matters. In the pulpit of a Sunday, Sir Edmund made a fine shbw. The beard was very much in its right p'lace when he was discussingi the ethics of Abraham' in his relation to Isaac fils and John Stuart Mill. Sir Edmund is the only diplomiatist I have knowin who loved to play the parson, though' all dip'lomlatislts have to do so to the extent of marrying British subjects who m'ake properly attested applica- tion. His career was rather exceptional, for he obtained his nomination and appointment to a diplomatic post, which he resigned with a view to standing! for the City of Oxford. Oxford failing to elect him' to ;Parlia- ment, he decided to enter the Consular service, and obtained a post somewhere ini Austria-Hungary, where he had acrimonious epistolary, correspondence with the F. O. on the subject of his communicating direct with the Office or through the Embassy at Vienna. The latter was the rule for the rest of the Consular service, but Sir Edmund maintained that he was a privileged person, owing to his previous diplomatic career. He was eventually transferred to a South American Con- sular post. There he met and married a beautiful Miss Munro, and soon after began' agitating to return AN ARCHDUCHESS FORGOTTEN 159 to the diplomatic service. His brothef, Lord Oxen- bridge, and powerful friend's at thie F. O,. eventually did the job for him', and at the period I have mentioned he was on his rapid way upward in the career, with the plums of the profession, Brussels and Paris, about to dtop into his mbuth. As to Lady Monson one felt that she camte far nearer the Tanagra type in flesh and blood than any of the statuettes in the Museum:. She was a truly beautiful little person, devoted to her family of lusty boy babies. The story used to run that in later days, as Ambassadress entertaining an Austrian Archduchess at tea, she had been known to remark suddenly : " I can hear Tommy crying in the nursery and so please excuse me fbr a moment." The Archduchess patiently waited five minutes, ten minutes, until she finally realized that she had been completely forgotten in favour of Tommy. She went away disconsolate, a wiser and perhaps a bet,ter Archduchess. The most brilliant woman in London, whose only defect in conversation is that, as a rule, she is inaudible, once remarked to me that she proposed starting a society for bringing '-' a httle darkness and discomfort into the lives of the very rich." The events of the last seven years have certainly done this for all Archduchesses. As the narrative is for a mblment moving among tihe formbr great ones of the earth, I may bere insert a little m'ot said to have been uttered at Jmiy, old' friend, Mrs. Ronald's in Eaton Place ever-thronged reception of a Sunday aftiemoon during the height of the London season. The twjo smiall drawing-rooms were crowded with people, so was the staircase, so was evtery nook and cranny, so that the musicians were hardly able to strike the notes of the piano or to move their violin 160 DIPLOMACY bows without collidingi with a hat or flatteningi out somebody's aristocratic nose. Twb ladies are supposed to arrive at this juncturte, one an hctbitu^ee of the ht>use and friend of the hostess, the other a newcomer. By- dint of vigorous pushing! and Imlerciless treading upon toes ;they had reached the topi of the staircase, whence it was just possible to view the occupants of the inner room by standing on tip,toe. The leader had even seen and nodded to her hostess, who had welcomed her across a dozen heads. The newcomer did not respond to a slight motion of the hand urging her to advance jso as to be introduced to Mrs. Ronalds. She remained gazing into thte inner roomi with a petrified' stare. Her friend whispered to her : " What are you staring at? Why don't you come on? " " Lookj look ! " replied the other, pointing and continuing to stare : " Duchesses as thick as peas ! " ' i ' I don't know whether others will be as amiused by this anecdote as I was when it was first told to me by a delightful and brilHant American friend^ now her- self a (sweet) British' pea as above, who used to say, when asked casually what shb was going to do some afternoon in Rome, would reply : '- Oh, I don't knowi : a little shopping and afterwards a little snobbing tUl tea- time." Thackeray makes great use of the " Uttle word snob," though he does not give its true derivation which was first pointed out to mte at the club by that inbst pleasant Prince, Francis of Teck^ — I suppose I must myself have been " snobbing " on that occasion. The derivation is, of course, from' the Italian nobile with the privative s added as an affix. The word is formed quite regularly Hke m!any othier Italian words, such as snaturare, meaning! to alter the nature of ; PAUL BOURGET 161 snebbiare, to cliear away the clouds ; snodare, to untie knots ; snevare, to enervate. Before Thackeray, the word: was correctly applied to the whole population not of the same social class as those able to " ruffle it " at Ranelagh or Cremorne. With the advent of our democracy, an imlnense stimulus was given to the activity of the new snobs, [largely recruited from the Liberal Party, which cursed' the privileges of the Upper House, while secretly ready tp geU its soul in order to obtain entrance thereto. In Austria-Hungary, with' its feudal traditions, the barriers between the social classes in pre-war days were far more rigid, and as it was put to me by a French diplomatist, there were just three degrees in Viennese society; the old feudal families like Kleinmichel, Trautsmansdorff, Esterhazy, and a smlaU number of others ; then a far larger and excellent society of secondary rank, which was equivalent to our Mayfair and Belgravia, and finally, a far larger one comprising the State employees below the highest rank, who were always on thie look-out for a dipiom'atist whom- they might boast of obtaining to dine with them'. Bonnes fortunes were very easily achieved in this latter set, owing to the immense impprtance attached to the diplomatic uniform. In Paris, the fine flower of snobbishness has, I think, blossomed only to a sliglhlt extent, and there is always a distinction between the French and' English varieties. I have often heard an excellent Parisian remark to another: " il est tres snob: il va beaucoup dans le monde," where there is no intention to depreciate, and where, indeed, the notion is rather to extol the worldly wisdom of the individual in question. M. Paul Bourget, the noveUst and academician, is well known for his 11 162 DIPLOMACY adoration of the noble Faubourg, and I have known him, on more than one occasion^ interrupt a literary conversation in order to exchange platitudes with some anodyne Comtesse. This, of course, would not chime witji the comlmunistic viewls of Mi. Anatole France, who, as he says, dbes not frequent the Academy as he does not find it possible to sit within several places of Monsieur Bourget and breathe the particular atmosphere in wh'ich revels the author of Mensonges. France is, howtever, in imy opinion an aristpcrat himiself in all his ways, from his crimson Cardinal's cap to his taste in poetry anli letters. One can well uriiderstand his distiaste for the bended knee of Bourget. To the Legation at Athens, in Sir Edtnund Monson's day, came all sorts of notabilities, strange types like old Prince Cantacuz^ne, the Russian Military Attache, who asked leave always to wear uniform! as he ihad passed so many years of his life buttoned up to the chin that he felt quite uncomfortable in civilian dtess. Tricoupis was Prime Minister during part of the time that I wals at Athens, and' 1 had a ;good miany chats with him. He knew London and the St. James ''s Club well, wherein I sympathised with him^ but did not share his admiration for Mr. Gladstone. He was a native of Misjsolonghi, where Byron died, and I remember asking if the poet's memory was preserved there. " Most certainly it is," he replied. " There is a istatue to him, and I knew his old boatman who obtained a post tjhere when it was known that he had been the poet's boatman. I also knew thie lady who inspired the poem' : ' Maid of Athens ere we part ' ; she was old and ugly when I knew her, and I cannot see ,that she can ever have been beautiful or interesting ; there was nothing in her." He spoke quite good English, save ATHENS AN OVEN 163 tihat like his sister, whose piarties I used' to attend in the Odos Akadettiias, he was ap;t to drop his aspirates. He told me that he wore the same rather thick clothes all the year round, and I myself found, during ,the furnace weather, that one got through the day better in rather thick clothes, which kept out some of the sun's rays, while in thin clothes one was simply grilled to a turn. He said that he was alwlays tOQ busy to feel the heat, but added that it was necessary to stay at home during the hot plart of the day, " and then the evenings are so lovely." I must say that, to my northern blood, the difference between day-time and night-time was that between the furnace in full blast and the furtiace with rather less coal on. We used to go down to thte seashore at Phalerum late at .night by train to try and get a breath of fresh air from) the sea. Returning to Athens was re -entering! the oven. One began melting? in bed at about 6 a.m'., when the sun rose, and this process continued until one was again ori the beach at Phalerum at midnight. I am' told Madrid is as hot as Athens in sumtner ; also the Persian Gulf. But I am sceptical as to this. I will admit it of one other place only, and even then Athens at 3' p.m., when the sim has been at work all day, would in my opinion win. The old Prince Cantacuz^ne used to tell mfe stories of 'his early days in the diplomatic career. Tb put it -mildly, he did not greatly esteekn' either the Serb's or the Bulgarians, and gave this account of the preliminaries to war between those countries. He was en paste at Sofia. The Serbis had withdrawn; their Charge d'Affdires and left Rhangabie, the Greek Minister, in charge of their interests. As the Serbs had no cipher, aU their telegrams were read by the 164 DIPLOMACY Bulgarian officials^ and copies sent to their War Office. At 1 1 p.tri. one night arrived the Serbian declaration of war in the shape of a telegram! addressed' to Rhangab^. Madame Rhangab^ was suffering at the time from angina pectoris, and h own. To listen rightly — that is the important thing' — the extraction from! the quartz of one's interlocutor of the gold that he has not noticed adheringi to it. It adds greatly to the interest and' stimulates him' if it is a bit of his unnoticed gold that you ha;ve taken and used for your repartee. Such a talker was Charlefs Brookfield, who, however, wag always ready to slice his opponent's nose if given a chance, apd such another was Gilbert. iWith' both I have talked at one of toy clubs. The iattei: had an artful wa,y of luring the un- wary into Verbal pitfalls which he had previously planted with sharp stakes. .Brilliant as they were, neither could be trusted with the bottom' off the foil. Both were too fond of making the crimson trickle. But despite this practical fault in what should' bfe an artistic performance, I would not have missed hearing them' for worlds. None of us could feel bored, because if the attention were allowed to wander the individual in question was sure to be pinked. 246 HENRY JAMES AND OTHERS In direct contrast to these cut-and-thtusters was dear old Henry James, best of men and wtorst p{ dramatists. He used to go about the gl-eat business of talking in a more subtle but not less effective manner. This manner might bfe described as determined hesitation. It was absolutely fatal to interrupt James, even with' the most appropriate vocable. That simply meant the resumiption of thie entire narrative from' the beginning with the suggested word resolutely excluded. I shall never, for instance, iotget meeting him in the callow days of our friendship upon the bridge of the Rialto at Venice. We neither of us had an umbrella and the sky looked decidedly threatening. James placed his hand upon !my, shoulder, remarked' that we had both saUied forth to the fray, modern Paladins unarmed — with here he paused and began fumbling as usual for a word. Meanwhile several heavy drops fell, and I became anxious to get under cover, so I very impru- dently hazarded the fatal word — umbrella. The mischief was done ; his grasp upon my shoulder tightened as he frowned, not in anger, but in the mental effort to find an alternative word. His brow was wrinkled with thought, he tapped the pavement with his toe as the heavy drops tapped our bowlers. Escape was hopeless before an eminent American novelist (he was not yet naturalized British) in the throes of composition. He looked up the canal anxiously ; then he looked equally anxiously dowin the canal, emitting the while strange little gurgling sounds in his throat, which connoted the throttling of crowds of harmless, excellent vocables, only too anxious to be of service. It began to pour and I felt so desperate that I wrenched myself free with the unfeeling remark : " Well, it's an umbrella that I want at any rate." I left dear James gazing THE PLAY'S NOT THE THING 247 after me as the raindrops tricked from the tip of his hat on to his nose. He was ptill seeking! the correct word (other than umbrella) when I turned the corner of the bridge. We met at luncheon a little later in the .hospitable Palazzo of Mrs. Bronson, a delightful American lady who used to entertain :a good deal at Venice. I have often wondered how long! he did stand there in the rain before the right substitute occurred to him'. By rigihtB he should be there now, but eVen James liked his luncheon. I believe I might have inquired with perfect safety, for James was great -hfearted, and quite incapiable of bearing m'alice for the unkindest of thrusts. For years I used often to meet him in Society, which like many others he verbally detested and really loved. He generally sidled up with some quaint remark, some ultra -recondite joke about someone present. In his last years it was roses, roses almost all the way for him I am glad to say, but like lesser men — and better driamatists^he had his bad quarters of an hour. I shiall never forget, for instance, his invitinjg me to his box on the occasion of the first iperfbrm'ance of a play of his at the St. James's Theatre. The play, adapted from a tale of his own, was singularly jUn- dramatic. A delicate psychological :web^ verbally unwoupd by iiis deft fingers from! the skein in iwhich he had originally wound' it. But the coarse glare of the footlights and the clumSy-fisted players kept breaking and tearing the dialogue at every point. The audience became impatient, or at least a section of it, for of course the author had his ffriends in the house, and I remember my friend', Edith Lady Allandale, applauding vig'orously with me and others in our box. During the first two aicts there ,were a 248 HENRY JAMES AND OTHERS few rude remarks from' pit and gallery, but by ithie time the last act was reached the tone was .distinctly unfriendly. George Alexander leased the theatre and produced the play in which he had' a leading! part, and he was, of course, included in this censure, as .the actors must .always be associated with a theatrical' failure as they are with a theatrical success. I could see that this failure angered him by the workings, of his mouth while on the stage, but I was pot prepared' for what wias to, follow. At the lall of the curtain there were plenty of cat -calls and hisses countered to some extent with Vigorous applause from our box and' from! certain frienidly pjarts of the house. Jamies had mlaide one or tWo brief appearances in the box, but had disr appeared during the last act, antt I did not •khow' if he were in the house . Certain rather injudicious, friends cried : " Ajathor ! Author ! " To our surprise, James took the call, encouraiged also perhaps by our friendly applause, and stood there alone, bowing in the middle of the stage, armed, no doubt, with an arsenal of subtleties to be let loose upon an audience of un- appreciative first-nighters. As we know who have studied him and his works, Jamfesian witticisms depend upon at least a hundred yards of time-fuse before there is the least chance of the tiniest coruscation. There he stood, apparently hypnotized by the uproar for which his appearance had been the signal, mumbling* arid bowing away before the curtain. I longed to leap on to thte stage and lead him' off. At last he seemed to have reached a dim apprehension; of the fact that he was not being universally applaudfed', and looking round at the boxes where were his friend's, in a bemused sort of way, he at length did make up his mind to retire. THE BRIDGE OF IVORY 249 Surprises were not over for the evening, however, for hardly had the excellent James disappeared when Alexander took his place before the curtain. His temper was jevidently no better, and the heavy jowl worked ominously. ; [ I forget the actual words he used, but the gist of his remarks was that if the play had failed to please, then it was by no means the actors who were to be blamed, but solely the author. He washed his hands of the whole matter. I well remember gasping as I heard him and feeling that for his sake I did not know which way to look. James certainly suffered severely that evening and I was always careful to avoid the subject, though I now rather regret that I failed to obtain his opinion of Alexander. He was a steady friend, arid' 1 used to see him' from time to time at the Athengeum' up to nearly the end. I had begun to publish my versions of the Esthetic and Practical Philosophy of Benedetto Croce about this time, when he glided up to me one day and sententiously laying a gentle hand upon my shoulder began : " What is this, toy dear friend, are you really abandoning us who dwell — however humbly — be it well understood^ — upon the — er — yes — rslopes of Parnassus — in ordfer tO: — er — er — er — yes — walk with the — er — yes— Stoics in in the— er— Portico? " I replied (to my astonishment he appeared on this occasion to await a reply), that I had no intention of deserting my hovel upon the said slope, erected in the vicinity of his palace ; that between Parnassus and the Portico was a Bridge of Ivory which' those who cultivated poetry and philosophy daily and nightly crossed. ' 250 HENRY JAMES AND OTHERS Smiling^ dear Jamies opened his mouth, evidently about to develop a counter-thesis of somfe sort — fitting up my hovel perhaps with a few plumes plucked from the Wings of the Dove, when one who shall be nameless, but remain unblessed, came to interrupt us with some futile and wholly reasonable remark. This was almost the last time I saw! him, looking strangely like an actor to those accustomed to the hair upon his face — he clean shaved in the last years of his life. This delightful muser aloud could not be called a conversationalist, though he disliked' musing long in solitude, even at Rye in that delightful house where my friend E. F. Benson now lives retired from; the world. James was indeed a failure as a recluse. I recollect that one of his finest monologues after his establishment at Rye and rapid return thence to the Metropolis dealt with his misfortune in being dragged away from his studies and his solitude to attend the luncheon party of some pushing Duchess. I knew that he would not have missed it for the world, and I felt that he felt he had not convinced me, for his insistence upon his devotion to the ascetic life filled up quite twenty minutes of my time, pleasantly enough it is true. He tore himself away — to go to the party in question. On another occasion I remember I had again been lunching with him' in De Vere Gardens, and we had reached the coffee stage when the name of Mr. Francis Turner Palgrave was announced' as waiting in the hall. James for the first time ceased talking^ rose and placed his hand upon my shoulder with that gesture of apprehension so comtnbn to him'. " My dear boy," he said, " our — er— delightful chat — our — free interchange of— er views — ^upon — ^yes I suppose I may say so — ef— tjhe most vital literary A GREAT TALKER 251 questions of the — er — day^ — is — I — greatly regTet — er — tx3 say — at an end : the greatest bore in London is coming upstairs. We shall — er — neither of us — er — igfet — a word in— er — thenceforward^ — (I smiled symlpatheti- cally). Don't go — please— indeed— I beg! of you — er — to stay and have — er — pity upon me — 'but I seize this — ■ er — opportunity to say — er — ^good-bye — ^for there will — certainly — not be — er — ^another opportunity." Before I had time to m'ake my first remark since we had sat down to luncheon, the voice of Mr. Francis Turner Palgrave was heard resounding as he removed his hat in the hall. James was right, he Was a great speaker, eVer vocal, and as he entered the room gripped the conversation with a hold which never relaxed during his visit. He held on steadily, despite James's attempts to break through, in response to the cordial Palgravian greeting that was extended to him. Palgrave 's really fine oration lasted a little under an hour, during which he touched upon all subjects that could conceivably interest anybody, and proved that all were dull. His method was masterly : it consisted in the use of the refrain. These refrains, selected from among the last five or six remarks that he made, were, of course, frequently varied. They were used as a sort of dam to block the current of any possibly invading speech. It was thus rendered almost imtpossible for anyone to break through while Mr. Palgrave was selecting his next theme from his Golden Treasury talk so widely different from the other. Another powerful ingredient was that all he said Avias sensible, de- plorably so in fact, for it led his hearers to make silent vows to loathe and detest those very views for ever and ever. 252 HENRY JAMES AND OTHERS James was always happiest, likte mlany another less eminent person, when quite certain that whatever he said would be received with adlmirative symipathy, and above all, inexhaustible patience, while he was fumbling about in his memory for what he believed to be the ideal word. Very often that which he selected would be so remote from! the context that one had to think of what Jamtes mUst have rejected in his pursuit of the exquisite and exotic, in order to be quite sure as to what he had really meant to say. Dear Jamfes ! Peace to his ashes. I shall always miss him and his gentle art of hesitation, of which he made great literature. CHAPTER XV CROCE, BAUDELAIRE, AND OTHERS Salons— Waiting Her Chance— Benedetto Croce— William Poel— Bernard Shaw — Aubrey Beardsley — Baudelaire — Maurice Barres — Victor Hugo — Marcel Proust — Casanova — Ernest Renan. Salons have been tried over and over again in London, but they have never been really, successful. iWhat is the reason? Simply because London is not Paris. One has merely got to observe a knot of Frenchmen dis- coursing at a cai6 or in a club to see something at any rate of the machinery that is behind a salon. The art of speaking well is tflught to children of both sexes in Paris and is not tatght in London. English people would not tolerate it. Although we are the most governed and the least free country in the world, the touching myth is still clung to by millions that we are free. .We are free to the extent of being free to be silent, and a Frenchman once defined conversation with an Englishman as — silence. Plenty of Enghsh people make no effort to join in conversation, much less to be entertaining. That is practically unheard of in France, where it would be looked upon as bad taste not to exert oneself while in the society of others. In Paris the rapidity of conversation at parties is often vertiginous, and it is difficult enough to follow, much less to make a contribution, when people are screaming jokes at one another from opposite ends of the table. I remember being seated next to a charming little 253 254 CROCB, BAUDELAIRE, AND OTHERS lady at such an entertainment. Shrieks of laughter were echoing all over the room, people were capping one another's " impossible " jokes with others yet more perpendicular, but my small friend sat still and wistful. She was waiting her opportumity. Suddenly she plunged into the tray, almost shrieking out a witticism^ which was immediately caught up and applauded in the midst of the torrent. Then^ she turned to me w^ith a sweet, satisfied smile and said : " Enfin, j'ai r^ussi k placer mbn mot — taaintenant causons." Having suc- ceeded in her ambitioii she was content ; she had been recognized — she had placed her joke. But we did not long converse : soon she was again trying to " place " a witticism, and indeed in Paris it would be looked upon as bad manners to be occupied exclusively with one's neighbour, however much one might be devoted to her. Conversation as a fine art is almost exclusively con- fined to the Latin countries : in Italy it is even more dramatic than at Paris. !I have dealt elsewhere with my first meeting with Benedetto Croce, the philosopher of Naples. But here I niay legitimately, refer to the excellent quality ol the talk that I have enjoyed at his house and also in the streets of Parthenope, as Naples used to be called^ after a fabulous marine goddbss or nymph. Conversa- tions begun within doors and carried on by a round dozen of friends and acquaintances accustomed to dodging the traffic while keeping tight hold of the argument. Listen to that tall, dark, deep-eyed, swarthy com- plexioned' man if you are fortunate enoughl to be within earshot and, for the moment, safe upon the pavement. He is enclosing the entire universe in that FLASHES AT NAPLES 255 sweep of the anmi : that is Giovanni Gentile, the philosopher of Palermo and now of Romte, maintaining the absolute imlmlanence of the Spirit in the Uiniverse, without differentiation of any activities. His opponent, shorter in stature, with the fine, white, deUcate hands of the artist and that wonderful pair of piercing gray eyes in a m'assive hiead is the celebrated Benedtetto Croce, who replies with an equally energetic gesture that the world we 'Hve in would be inexplicable if that were so and that the true division is fourfold — aesthetic, logic — but we haVe been almost run over by a frantic carrozza while contemlpilating these eminent men, who seenl to be immune to dangers from the traffic to which they are so well acquainted. See another brilliant thinker in my excellent young friend, Di Ruggiero, who dashes across the road to join them and probably to support Gentile ; but Croce is a master of dialectic and may well be trusted to defend himself against the two of them. Let us drop behind for a moment and join another interesting and fascinating person in Di Giacomo, the dialect poet and dramatist of Naples, celebrated now throughout the peninsula, entirely thanks to Croce, who is Dantean in his power of creating reputations with a few words. Di Giacomo had an article dedicated to him in the Critica and sprung at once into fame. He is a delightful comipanion, and once we paid a visit to Rome together. His eyes are dark -brown, danger- ously alert and understanding. He is rather bulky in build, but by no means unwieldly. He is not a young man now and his success has inspired many other dialect poets. His little dramatic pieces deserve attention : but they are difficult to follow, being all written in the dialect of Naples, which widely differs 256 CROCE, BAUDELAIRE, AND OTHERS from Italian spoken elsewhere. ' He tells me that inspiration always comes to him in the dialect fornix though he speaks Itahan perfectly and is in charge of the Ludovisi-Palla Library. He told me that when we reached Rome he felt just like a foreigner arriving in a strange land. Di Giacomo is also a great authority on the eighteenth century, which has not for him ceased to exist — Casanova is still escaping from the Piombi Prison at Venice and they still wear masks on the Grand Canal. In my wanderings, I have met men and women of many centuries besides the nineteenth and twentieth. Certainly Di Giacomo is a Neapolitan of the eighteenth century. With us there was Aubrey Beardsley, who also belonged to that period in France, though with his genius he reached out into the future and has influenced black and white work more than any other artist of our time. The truost perfect sixteenth-century type we have among us in England is my good and great friend, William Poel, who might have stepped straight from' a canvas by Holbein' into the nineteenth century. His work as the advocate of Shakespeare, to be acted as he himself intended to be acted and in obtaining a pure text of our great national poet, is so well known that I shall not touch upon it here. I hope we may sit for many more years upon the Council of the London Shakespeare League together, to the confusion of the merely commercial Stage. Mr. Poel's real name is Pole, like the sixteenth-century Cardinal's, and his reason for changing it as quaint and original as his reasons for doin|g most things. As a boy he left home surreptitiously — to join the stage — and did not dare to flaimt the paternal patronymic behind the footUghts WILLIAM POEL 257 in those benighted days. He is an altogether de- lightful talker and lecturer. .With him the colloquial element enters almost as much into the lecture as into ordinary conversation. The fact is that he knows his own subject so perfectly, the England of the time of Shakespeare, that it simply exudes from him' without apparent effort of any sort. His long, rather ascetic face and brilliant brave hazel eyes are well known to artistic audiences on both sides of the Atlantic. His delivery is sometimes very rapid, and his whole face flashes up with excitement when debating some vital point. He has many notes and stops in his voice, and achieves exquisite modulations in repeating Shakespeare. He has a naive and aimable socialism of his own, which he carries out to the letter. He told me for instance then, when last he went over to Pittsburg to lecture, the remuneration was excellent, but the art students of the city wished to present him, in addition, with a pair of silver candlesticks on the day of his departure. This was done with great pomp and ceremony, the hall being crowded with admirers and subscribers. Anybody else would have accepted the beautiful candlesticks with an appropriate little speech of thanks, but not so William Poel. On the contrary, he refused them very politely, saying that he had already been extremely well paid for his lectures and could not think of carrying anything away from Pittsburg to which hte was not really entitled I William Poel is an original thinker on theatrical subjects, and only the other day Mr. Bernard Shaw had the grace to admit on the platform that " we have all plundered William Poel." ;When he began to make his name known, to become a power on the stage, the managers thought it would be well to rope him in and muzzle him. They therefore invited 17 258 CROCE, BAUDELAIRE, AND OTHERS him to a private meeting, at which were present George Alexander, Beerbohm Tree, George Edwardes and a dozen other leading managers. They expounded their views as to how things ought to be and would be done. Poel heard them to the end^, and then said that he totally disagreed with their methods and their aims, and must refuse to join them in their intentions of preventing the public from having the best work and preventing young dramatists from' getting a hearing, and thereupon walked out of the room. I wish I had been present : their faces must have been a study. I remetnber the scene when Mr. Poel and the present writer swept the board at the General Meeting of the London Shakespeare League, Sir Henry Brabrooke, the Chairman, resigning and the policy that we are follow- ing to-day being adopted by a large majority. l mentioned Beardsley above as being of the eighteenth century, and that was certainly the impres- sion I had of him during the last period of his ,]ife, when we met through the agency of his dear sister Mabel, whom all artistic London loved. iHe was then living at a small hotel at Dieppe. jHe used to await my coming in the little gravelled garden of, an after- noon, and we sat with coffee cups before us. Our table was placed beneath the shadow of an acacia tree in this garden, and the sounds of the promenade were delightfully dulled and made remote for us by a wall of ivy. With Beardsley entered the eighteenth century. He had a wonderful capacity for creating atmosphere, not only in his art, but in his words and clean-ciut, dramatic gestures, with those blazing brown eyes, above them that smoothly-flattened auburn hair and the long, ascetic -looking face, rendered so tragically keen by ill- ness. He was immersed at that time in the reading BEARDSLEY DAZZLING 259 of Gautier and in the illustrative work of Waltteau, Fragonard and other French masters of his century. I shared his admiration for Thdophile Gautier, ithe " impeccable " poet, m'aster of pirose, and soon we were hard at it in the discussions of the mysterious doings of Rosette in Mademoiselle de Maupin and of Mademoiselle herself. Suddenly he produced from his pocket a suite of marvellous pen-and-ink drawings of Mademoiselle de Maupin. I can see him now pro- ducing them, with a rapid cicular glance to make sure that we were undisturbed. The great adventuress, in one of these drawings, sits at her toilet-table in Venice, upon which are placed four candlesticks. She looks too wonderful for words, and is in the act of adding just a suspicion of additional belletto to the carmine already upon her cheeks. " The nearest I have ever been able to get to a beautiful woman," whispers Beardsley in his low voice at my elbow, as I admire. Her mask lies beside her, and no doubt there is a masked cavaUer in the gondola below ready to carry her, by what mysterious meanderings of canals, to what marvellous revel with other masks as mysterious as she. Longhi with the experience of the years between : a masterpiece in Uttle. Beardsley's talk was dazzling in the extreme : it was like a sun -glass that concentrates such intense light where focussed that one felt if it remained there long it would set the subject aflame, as indeed it did, and we can study some of the flames va. the Books of Drawings. I remember his describing the styles of the above and other masters in a few words which bit like an etching pen into the plate. I was able to tell him some anecdotes about Gautier, which I had recently culled from the monograph about '' the perfect magician 260 CROCE, BAUDELAIRE, AND OTHERS of Frendi letters," as Baudelaire described him in a celebrated dedication. These set him off into fits of cheerful laughter, so I followed up with others of the poet of Fleurs du Mai dying his hair green and expect- ing therewith to astonish Auguste Vacquerie. Vacquerie entered and glanced at the hair, but made no comment whatever upon it, plunging at once into a literary dis- cussion . The poet became more and more uneasy, at last blurting out : " But don't you notice anything un- familiar about me to-day, mon cher Vacquerie? " " No, nothing at all out of the way : I see your hair is now green, but as it is an almost universal fashion to weat it that colour I did not wish to congratulate you upon being commonplace." Baudelaire was furious. Beardsley now in high fettle rapped out his contribution of alas, unprintable anecdote and re- flection like a prince throwing down golden ducats. I searched my memory for another anecdote about Baudelaire and found the following, which made him laugh more consumedly even than before, but his flushed cheeks were a signal that it must be the last. The little incident is, I believe, perfectly true ; it reached me in a roundabout way, but has never, I believe, appeared in print even in France. Baudelaire was famous 'as a mystifier : nothing he enjoyed more than astonishing his admirers — and others, and he would take infinite pains to inveigle his victim. Legends of his making would-be Don Giovannis circumambulate frozen fountains in January by means of letters indited by himself as Dulcinea are numerous, but on this occasion the victim was Jnerely a student of seventeen, who had once mfet Baudelaire and' conceived for him the highest admiration. This very young man was meditatively pursuing his way up the Boulevard Saint- BARRE'S AT MAXIME'S 261 Michel one afternoon when he sawi Baudelaire comingi in his direction. His heart beat fast: should he venture to salute the poet? Certainly he would not be remembered, but nevertheless, as they passed one another, off 'went the youthful hat in a sweep of copious admiration. But, O joy I Could it be for him? Yes, the great man had actually stopped and was advancing with outstretched hand. " My friend " (joy redoubled !), " I wonder if you could do me a great favour : I am in need of money." Astonishment, but like lightning the youth's memory ran over the state of his finances. It was the end of the quarter and he was almost penniless. He found five francs and offered them at once to the poet. " No," said Baudelaire, " that is too much ; fifty centimes is all I want : then he whispered : c'est une histoire de femme. Among later writers that I have met in Paris, there is one, Maurice Barr^s, who has attained to great celebrity. I suppose few have influenced the generation of Frenchmen now between forty and fifty-five so pro- foundly as he. His pale, sallow face has rarely been seen in London, though I once heard him lecture at Burhngham House during the war. He has long been a member of the Acad6mie Frangaise. Miy first meeting with him was at a dinner-party given by Madame Alphonse Daudet. Her vivacious and entertaining son, the well-known deputy journalist and duellist, L^on Daudet, was among the guests and made Barr^s tell some of his best stories. We finished the evening (or rather morning), I remember, at Maxime's, having crossed the Seine on foot. Barres at first reserved, once started was most entertaining and evidently entirely unmoved by the rather excessive merchants of smiles who surrounded us at all the tables. 262 CROCE, BAUDELAIRE, AND OTHERS The din was prodigious, but our conversation con- tinued as if we were still on the tranquil left bank of the river. At Daudet's request, Barrfes described his one and only visit to Victor Hugo, as a very young man. Vacquerie had insisted upon it that the author of Tdches d'encre should b'e presented to the poet of the Legends des Slides, so the apppint- ment was made, and they sat awaiting the great man's entrance in the magnificent salon with the red velvet hangings. At last the door was flung open and Victor Hugo entered with hands outstretched in the direction of Barrfes, who stood perfectly unmoved at the side of his introducer. " Young man," exclaimed the poet, as he embraced his urunoved guest, " I have read your verses : they are exquisite." " Master," replied Barr^s, " I never wrote a verse in my life." Barrfes described Hugo as gaping amazedly at him and then finding some banal excuse to disappear. Barr^s, in aipipearance so coldly sinister, has always suggested to me what St. Just must have been when he addressed the Revolu- tionary Tribunal in favour of adopting the most severe measures. His literary influence now is perhaps not equal to that of Charles Maurras, but is still consider- able. In politics he has made less mark, though he represented Nancy for several years and long presided over the "patriotic league." One more Parisian talker who has lately become promi- nent and I have done. Marcel Proust, author of Du cot 6 de chez Schwann and other fiction w^ithout end was quite unknown to fame whten I first met him in Paris at his father's. Boulevard Malesherb'es. His pale, long face, with deep hollows under the eyes, proclaimed the invalid, and indeed he used not to appear before night- fall even in those early days, alleging (during the MARCEL PROUST 263 summer at least) that his hay-fever made circulation in the daytime unendurable. His random' style, which appears to have no point from which it starts, and no end towards which it proceeds apparently suits the present generation of Society Parisians. I frankly confess that I cannot read him with enjoyment, although I enjoy his conversation, which is rather like that of a man in a pleasant dream who is able to share it with you. His favourite place and moment for unveiling the secrets of his soul are between three and four of the morning, at the conclusion of a party which began at midnight and which one leaVes with fiim, sharing a taxi. He will conduct you to your domicile, say good-bye with a warm hand-clasp and then laimch forth into the most amusing characterization (not erring on the side of good-nature) of the people you have been with and incidentally of everybody else in the Tout Paris. He has been compared to Choderlos de Laclos, but I should say that Proust's talent is the exact opposite of the sober and intense author of Liaisons Dangereuses. His style is like a feather-bed ; Laclos's, like the rapier that rips it. Of these desultory chats in club windows or in the bow-windows of county-house libraries during a week- end, when sevel-al men of different pursuits and a few " odds and ends of wives " — as the late Lord Cromer used to call certain fair ones of Cairene society — are gathered together. The actual place of the happening matters so little, providing that the ingredients are present, and these consist of the spirit of man — and woman — when set free from the ordinary trammels of convention and money-getting — Paris, London, Rottife, Biarritz — ^or an inn by the wayside in Greece. 264 CROCB, BAUDELAIRE, AND OTHERS Certainly my progresses across Europe in the 'eighties and early 'nineties had much of the quality, of the Arabian Nights Entertainment — I was so con- stantly in the habit of meeting) with astonishingly interesting people of all sorts of ages and positions, and each one of these was able to lift the comer of a veil revealing infinite vistas of country unexplored. Casanova is very well in his wlay, but his eternal pre- occupation with love affairs of a secondary, not to say tertiary order, always seemed to me a narrowing of the possible horizon, an unnecessary restriction of experience. As I have mentioned Casanova, 1 may here tell a little tale about his posthumous amativeness, which was Handed preciously to me by one who had it on the best authority. It has not before seen the light. The celebrated adventurer died, as is well known, at Dux in Bohemia, and was laid to rest in the church- yard of the little town. Some twenty years after the burial, the^ space containing graves being entirely covered, another cemetery was chosen, and the old graves became gradually overgrown i with rich vegetation, entirely covering slabs and headstones, which had many of them sunk deep into the ground. A right of way was con- sequently claimed, and scores of feet came trooping and stamping! down the already vanishing monuments, but it was noticed that all the pretty girls of the district found their frocks torn when they crossed a certain patch of grass. Examination was made, and it was discovered that they had all caught their skirts in the top of Casanova's headstone, which iwas but just visible above the soil. I suppose this is the most remarkable instance of the " ruling passion strong in death " upon record. But as I said, Casanova always seembd to me a ERNEST RENAN 265 trifle narrow — circumscribed, and in my early manhood, I preferred to take my condottiere w'ith a little sauce a la Rejian, which wias then fashionable. I had the advantage of meeting the historian-moralist at my uncle's Grant Duff's, though not so far north as he actually once penetrated, namely to Eden, my uncle's lovely estate on the Deveron, in Banff- shire, which wias afterwards sold to old Lord Fife, already mentioned among the heroes of the battue. What the author of the Vie de Jesus did there I caimot imagine, but he probably limited himself to quarter -decking the lawn overlooking the river with his host, who was about equally addicted to country pursmts. I remeimber that the first time I saw him was at the College de France, where he was then Professor. Bearing with me my uncle's introduction, I scaled the staircase with fear and trembling, eventually entering the presence of the great Hebraist in a state bordering upon aphasia. He received me with that delicious suavity which seems to have com- pletely vanished out of the world with the advent pf democracy, and in reply to my apologies for my French, which (at that early datei) was by no means perfect, affirmed that he, too, was ignorant, woefully, absurdly ignorant of England, and would be glad to have a little information upon the subject. Being fairly weU grounded in the geography of the British Isles, I plucked up courage at this remark and thought for an instant of providing the aimable old gentleman before me, who kept washing his hands with invisible soap, while he applied the same useful article of the toilet to my very sketchy pronunciation of his exquisite tongue, with a brief statement of the principal manufacturing centres, rivers and sporting estates of 266 CROCE, BAUDELAIRE, AND OTHERS Great Britain, but upon second thoughts and guided by a sort of suppressed twinkle in his benevolent but penetrating eyes, 1 decided to refrain, and (wisely) limited myself to extolling his works, so far as 1 was acquainted with them. He agreed with all I said, which certainly encouraged me to proceed, and I ventured upon several rather doubtful assertions, which he did not take the trouble to correct. He sat there like a Buddha, and as long as I was prepared to burn incense, he was ready to inhale it. He had a way of swaying; his big htead from side to side, and only paused in this in order to remark : " How well said 1 " Or he would raise his arms in the air as though about to bestow a benediction and then think better of it (or worse of the recipient) and let them fall gently upon his knees. Of course he did not think it worth while to instruct me in thie rudiments of comparative philology, but all. the same proved himself an excellent and ^kindly host ; Madame Renan, however, took upon herself to instruct me in the art of making! a tomato salad sauce worth a wilderness of emendations. i , CHAPTER XVI COACHING AND OTHER CURIOSITIES Walter Pater and Renan— Sanctuary ! — J. A. Cramb— A Magician — An Indian Mystery — I Drive the Coach— Susanne Reichenberg. Pater and Renan I believe never met, but they had a good deal in common. The one wrote the most perfect English, the other the most perfect French prose of his time. Renan was once a priest and never lost the priestly mode of address ; Pater, though never in orders, was of an extremely religious temperament ; Renan, as I remarked above, agreed with all that was said and sometimes could hardly refrain from^ the benediction ; Pater adopted a similar method upon many occasions. There must be some living still (apart from his sister. Miss Hester, my dear friend) who have often heard his " I-have-no-doubt-you-are-quite- right," his " Ah ! yes," with which he met the on- slaughts of uneducated criticism. I gave some of my reminiscences of Pater to my friend, M,i:. A. C. Benson, when he was writing his monograph, but the following little details were not included, and so far as I know, have never seen the light. The story is told of him when he was Fellow of Brasenose College, Oxford, that on one occasion he had the usual share of College examination papers for matriculation to look over and mark at the be^ginning of term. All the others were sent in, but Pater's not being forthcoming, his fellow-examiners decided to call upon him in 267 268 COACHING AND OTHER CURIOSITIES his College rooms. After tapping for some time at his door, they were admitted by Pater himself, pale-faced and ascetic in appearance;, and graciously motioned to seats in his library. The table was strewn with Greek, Latin, and Italian texts, and the manuscript of the Renaissance lay in the centre, with the pen beside it. But the Fellows looked in vain for the neatly tied-up bundle of examination papers, which had been duly delivered some days previously by the College " scout." At last one of them ventured to inquire if the papers had been marked by Pater. To their astonishment he replied that he had received no papers so far as he could recollect — he was not even aware that the examination for matriculation was being conducted. They were in despair : the papers were certainly delivered — what was to be done. Suddenly some one had an idea : " Shall we repeat the names of . the young men in for the examination? Perhaps that might recall the matter." "Ah ! yes, that will be well, very well." Thereupon they started off reading from the. list. Pater listened with an absolutely unmoved countenance of palted unrecognition until they reached the name of Sanctuary. " ,What a beautiful and suggestive name," he remarked. That was all they could elicit from him'. The papers were, II b'eUeve, eventually discovered reposing upon a chair in the hall, untouched. They had indeed found sanctuary which', so far as Pater Was concerned, would never have been violated. A friend of mine, who used to know Pater, allows me to tell how she used at one timfe to live almost next to the author of Marias the Epicurean, and upon one occasion had the misfortune to faint in the kitchen of her parents' house. The cause of this was the sight of a number of black beetles, and these horrible J. A. CRAMB 269 creatures ran all over her face while she was lyinigi helpless upon the floor. She was picked up', and soon returned to her senses and to the unsympathetic smiles of the family. Pater happened to be dining with them that evening, and after the family had exhausted their wit in chaffing the poor young lady about her mis- adventure. Pater drew her quietly aside and said : " I wish to tell you that I have great sympathy with you in your misadventure, the more so as I have myself experienced a like sensation of pullulating horror while contemplating the innumerable stars in the Milky Way." Pater alone was capable of such a phrase. There was another friend of those days, almost the exact antithesis of Renan and Pater, who used to frequent the society of my dear friend, J. P. Nichol, already described. This was J. A. Cramb, who enjoyed a gUmpse of fame as prophet of the Great War, but unfortunately died without receiving his full meed of recognition. Professor of History at Queen's College, Harley Street, where his lectures must have astonished the fair young ladies, his pupils. Cramb" was abouit the last person one would have supposed suitable for such a post, though I have no reason to doubt that he filled it excellently well, overflowing as he was with historical knowledge and possessor of the proverbial golden mouthpiece. Cramb would burst into the stillness of my room like a tornado overdue, his hair erect upon his head,, his long arms asway, his longer legs striding up and down the narrow space as he damned the villainy of the times, the lack of seriousness, the incapacity to look in the face the fact of Germany's immense accre- tion of power as a direct menace to ourselves. " Dom it, Ainslie I " he would say (pronouncing as written). 270 COACHING AND OTHER CURIOSITIES and thumping the nearest object with a titanic fisi, " Dom it, we cannot and we must not go on like this : Roberts is the only man in the country who does not seem to be sound asleep and snoring. Can't we do something to wake 'em up? " iWhat he did was to publish his remarkable bookj, Origin and Destinies of Imperial Britain, which received! scant or superficial notice in the Press. At that time it was more fashionable to listen tq certain of our Ministers with their stories of Germany's pacific intentions and the villainy of our aristocracy. I can see their faces and hear their tongues wagging against poor old Robesrts stumping the country for aU he was wbrth and telling the unwelcome truth. Cramb, like William Poel, was a man of the sixteenth century. He might quite well have been one of the galaxy that clustered round Shakespeare, Peele or Nash — not Greene, let us hope — ^Dekker or Marston. For Webster he was not sufficiently sombre, for Cyril Turner not cruel enough. But his language and his behaviour were alike those of a miin belonging; to another period of history than that through which we are passing. I met another such while I wlas in Paris at the Embassy striving variously to sever the monotony of red tape — ^that lion among magicians, MacGregor Mathers. He practised the black art (which, with him, was never worse than piebald) in the immediate vicinity of the Invalides. Thither to an obscure ground floor I would betake me on a blazing sumhier afternoon, to find Mathers pouring over the pages of the KaMbala with blinds closely drawn to keep out the sun and a dim smoke rising from' a crucible in a corner of the room. The mise en scene was most effective, enlivened and heightened, as it was, by the presence of Mrs. Mathers, A MAGICIAN 271 beautiful as the evening star, herself a magician of no mean powers. — some said even more potent than those of the mighty MacGregor himself. Anyhow, it was all very wonderfxil, and a great relief from the Saliaran desert of Siamese affairs, which at that time occupied the attention of Her Majesty's Embassy. My horoscope was, of course, taken, by which it appears certain that Jupiter is in the ascendant and controls my destiny, though a certain goddess of extreme attractiveness has been and always will be apt to take ai hand in the game ; but considering the part she played in the career of Jupiter himself, this is hardly to be wondered at in the case of a mere mortal. Matheirs was a man of the Louis XI period, and, I suppose, he had his reasons for living in the city where that amiable monarch spun his web so successfully. Astrology, I am con- vinced, is as exact a science as, shalhwe say, hydraulics, and infinitely more exact than such fantastic guess- work as political economy. I often smile at the seriousness with which serious people vaunt the dog- matic assertions of some John Stuart Mill, as though they were absolute truth', and then drop them! like a hot potato when the new man comes along with the new formula. The astrologers have always said : Give us the exact moment of your birth, and we will tell you what and whence you are and will be. I comtaend my readers to a recent article in that excellent publi- cation, the Mercure de France, for exhaustive treatment of astrology on scientific lines. The fact of the matter is that we know very little indeed as to our origin, and as to the potentialities of our bodies, even in this life. The following curious story was told me a few years ago, at Florence, by an Englishman who had studied the Indian Phil- 272 COACHING AND OTHER CURIOSITIES osophy and Religion of Yoga. He was travelling in the interior, and on the occasion in question, had his gun in his hand, and came to. a deep, rather wide stream in the jungle. Pleased with the quiet beauty of the spot, he thought he would sit down and rest for a. while during the hot hours of the day. He had just installed himself comfortably on the bank, after taking the usual precautions against reptiles, when he was conscious of a slight movement among' the bamboos on the other side of the river. He remained motionless and was glad he did so, for to his surprise, instead of the wild animal that he expected, he saw a very old man, clad in a single shawl-like garment, with matted hair and eyes that appeared to see nothing, gazing straight before him. He approached the opposite bank and sat down almost facing my friend, who was concealed by the vegetation, yet could see him perfectly. A long time passed, perhaps two, perhaps three hours, during which the old man sat with his eyes fixed upon the stream, apparently in deep contemplation. Suddenly, he made a movement, stretching out a lean long arm to grasp something that was floating down the stream close in to the bank upon which he was sitting. He drew it towards him, and then my friend saw that it was the dead body of a youth, which had thus floated to the feet of the Yogi. A wisp of straw in the mouth signified that he was dead. The old man drew the body out of water with tender precautions, then, partly carrying, partly dragging it vnth him, disappeared into the dense jimgle. My friend was deeply interested in this act, and anxious to discover what he had done with the youth's body, thus mysteriously sent dawn to him, as it were, upon the stream, and so mysteriously drawn AN INDIAN MYSTERY 273 forth. Unfortunately there was no bridge for somle miles in either direction and the stream was deep and broad. He did not care to swim over, as it teemed with crocodiles. So he decided to wait the possible return of the old man after he had buried the corpse and to question him as to his mysterious appointment to meet it on its downAv^ard way. For to him it was clear that the Yogi expected the corpse. He sat there a long while, vmtil the light began to fade, but the old man did not return, and he felt that it was time to seek his quarters some miles distant. He marked however the place on the bank and the next day at dawn crossed the stream by a bridge further up its course and followed the bank until he came to the spot where the old man had been sitting. Striking into the jungle from' this point, he and a friend made a careful examination of the ground, cover- ing every foot of it systematically. About twenty yards from the bank, propped up against a tree trunk, they found the naked dead body of the old man. Of the youth's naked body they could perceive no trace any- where, nor of the garment that the old niian had worn. Other tales equally remarkable have reached me at first-hand and I am convinced that in India is know- ledge obtained by concentration of thought and possibly other means of a psycho-physical character, which transcends anything of which we in Europe are aware. Returning to the Paris days, from' which I have wandered, in order to return to them' with joy renewedj an incident in the memoirs of the Princesse de Talleyrand reminds me of another in my diplomatic career, which has, in common with it, only the fact that^ both are connected with coaches. My adventure arose one day when I was walking with Count Boutourline and 18 274 COACHING AND OTHER CURIOSITIES (Monsieur) Marie de La Hante. Boutourline was very literary, and at the same time much' interested in horses, and it appeared that he had arranged fori an excursion to St. Germain by coach the following day. The coach had been hired, the party invited, and a magnificent dinner ordered at St. Germain. They were all French- men and Russians, including the Due de Morny, Vicomte de Breteuil, Brdvem de La Gardie of the Russian Embassy, and two or three others. All was thus arranged, and Boutourline had proposed to drive the coach, and consequently have by him', on the box seat, Mademoiselle Reichenberg of the Theatre Frangais, who at that time was still playing ingenue roles and in full possession of her charm and beauty. But here was the difficulty : none of the others would trust them- selves to the tender mercies of Boutourline, and as aU had subscribed equally to the evening's amusement, all were equally entitled to a voice in the mlatter of the driver. Morny suggested that he should take the place of Boutourline, but this was at once howled down by the other Frenchmen present, who preferred, they said, sudden death to the loss of a few Iknibis in the inevitable collisions with other trafific if the Due were to be en- trusted with the reins. The final discussion, to which we were proceeding when the narrative opened^, took place in the establishment of the owner of the coach and horses. Suddenly someone had a new idea : " Let Ainslie drive." I was flabbergasted at this proposal, the more so, as almost at once the various-voiced dis- putants sank their differences, and agreed to trust their lives — ^and Mademoiselle Reichenberg — to my skill. I had accepted the invitation, and put up my share of the outing a day or two before, but never anticipated such a climax. The fact of the matter was that I was A COACHING PARTY 275 about the only one of the party whq was not ready and willing to drive, and at the same time the only one the others would trust. A great compliment, not to me, but to the English character ^{Anglais with many foreigners does duty for British). Vainly I protested that I had never driven a coach in my life,, though' I ihad driven most other vehicles, including thfe tandem, in which Phillips and I used to toil over to Dover from Folkestone, many years previously. That did not seem to disturb them in the least, and as all were equally determined that no one of their number should drive — and it was considered infra dig. to be driven by the coachman — I found myself, to my astonishment, and considerable perplexity, upon the box. The reins were indeed a handful, even after tandem reins, and I had but little time to bestow upon the vision of blue smiles and silk that found her way to my side. Allans I and the leaders were let go, springing forward at once over the stones of the courtyard. I determined' to be lured to no flights of folly, but to proceed with' utmost de- liberation, and above aU, to remember that the French rule of the road is the opposite to our own. I found that the leaders were .rather inclined to pull, so when we got out of the main traffic of Partis', I let them go, more or less, their own pace, thougli' always taking care that it did not break into a gallop. Even so I found, after the first twenty minutes, that my arms were aching as though they were being pulled out of their sockets. I cannot imagine how certain 'friends of mine persist in driving coaches for their pleasure. Our pace was considerable, and indeed, one of the few remarks that reached me from' the vision of beauty on my left, was to the effect that we were " eating up the road." Boutourline and the others, however, made up for my 276 COACHING AND OTHER CURIOSITIES silence by shouting rem'arks to one another and to our one fair lady, which (I afterwards discovered'), obtained for me, in her estimation, the useful reputation of a " strong man," or its French equivalent. We arrived in the early afternoon, and wandered about in the forest until seven o'clock. Most of the time I. was listening to the outpourings of Pierre Boutourline, as he translated his Russian poems into French for my edification, and that of Mademoiselle Reichenberg. The dinner was a crescendo of gaiety, the interest centering, of course, round the lady, and I remlember how deeply (and silently) I regretted that I could not cope with the others in their use of the idiomi. Our fair guest set us all off into fits of laughter by exactly mimicking the Americans who came to her for lessons in French elocution, and then won our admiration with selections from' her repertory as the ingenue iternelle. The drive back was a dream. The road was, luckily, almost free of traffic, and the horses seemed to have reconciled themselves to my hands, for they gave no trouble, and I even ventured to lay a humble little verbal tribute like a bouquet de deux sous at the feet of our fair companion, who had been pelted all day with such gorgeous flowers of rhetoric. To my great surprise, it was accepted with alacrity, although so slight a thing, and I then learned what I have ever remembered since, that in a competitive examination it is always best to do your best howtever hopeless the case may seem, without regard to the superiority of the other candidates — especially when the examiner does not wear trousers. Mademoiselle Susanne Reichenberg used to live in a secluded little blind-street, not far from' the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne, and thus close to the centre of ANATOLE FRANCE 277 things, yet enjoying the quiet of the country. The Villa Said has since becomfe celebrated as the residence of Anatole France, one of the best talkers, as he is one of the greatest writers of our day. It is a gteat advantage, when meeting a distinguished talker, to find him in the company of his peers, who are able to draw him out, so that the burden of starting the game by beating about the bushes does not fall upon the visitor, who may feel justifiably shy of disturbing coverts so closely preserved. France, in his vivid red velvet cap in his own study, is a very different person from' France at a reception, defending himself from the vigorous onslaughts of his admirers. CHAPTER XVII LITERARY AND OTHER LIONS— ITALY Hippolyte Taine — A Russian Diplomatist — Lessar Among the Lions— A Brave Lady — Not " My Lion " — Revels at Florence — The Rose Garden — Ruth Anderson —Enchanted Ground. Taine, whom I first met in a crowd, and afterwards in the quietude of his dwelling in the Rue Cassette, was also a person who gained greatly in being taken apart from his usual environment of avid students and empty-headed people of social position. I remembfer that what first broke the ice with the historian of French contemporary civilization were my manoeuvres with my opera-hat which, as used to be the fashion, I had carried with me into my aunt's drawing-room* in Great Stanhope Street. Taine frankly burst out laughing at the in- genuity of Gibus, whose genius wlas thus revealed to him for the first time, borrowed my hat, put it several times through its collapsible drill and returning it to me said he would purchase one on the morrow and at the same time added an invitation to visit him in Paris. It was at his house thiat my youthful ears, tuned then to the French of Stratford-atte-Bowe, were first thrilled with the Academician's pronunciation of the definite article. " Une homme de monde," calmly uttered the august Academician, passing the pepper without flinching or exhibiting the smallest sense of having committed a solecism. " Une homme du monde a a,ffinti6," he repeated, regardless of his youthful inter- locutor's eyes, that were almost tumbling into his soup- 278 LESSAR AMONG THE LIONS 279 plate. It was not until long afterwards that I ventured to inquire why he had — er — ^turned a man into— er-a woman upon that occasion. He laughed heartily, Snd explained that with certain purists in pronunciation the fuU value of the vowel " u " was not given unless it was thus elongated into what, to ears not accustomed to shades of soimd in French, might appear to be' a feminine. I have miade so many lions roar, in the course of these pages, that I have no scjmple in adding a couple of genuine incidents in connection with the king of the forest and emperor of the desert. The first refers to my good friend^ Lessar, formterly Russian Minister at the Embassy in Londbn. Lessar, a lean man with' a limip: and the eyes of a hawk, used to boast that he was the only Russian who bad ever had a British Blue Book entirely deVotedl to his activities. He hlad long been the Russian Emissary in Persia, and had' sat on all the Boundlary Comlmissaries between this country, Persia, Afghanistan, and Russia — who was then supposed to nourish insidious dfesigtis regarding our Eastern possessions. He had inhabited such cities as Merv, Tashkent and Tiflis, having' been Governor of the latter. When he liked, he was an excellent raconteur, and many an interesting! evening have I spent with him! lat the St. Jamies'is and the Marlborough. He did not go much into Society beyond' the strict necessity of official reldeptions : he said that he had found far better talk in thbse remote ipiaces where men had time to think about their lives and those of others than in the great iWestem capitals, where like Sir Claude Phillips in Max Beerbohm's cari- cature of that distinguished frequenter of parties, everybody was for ever " going on " too busy to 280 LITERARY AND OTHER LIONS— ITALY converse — ^and never getting anywhere. Lessar gave me a copy of the f ambus Blue Book with a very amiable dedication, and I hope some day to accord it a place of honour among my books in the " dome-shaped library " of my dreamis. Poor fellow, he suflfered a good deal from: his back, and' for days at a time was hardly at all visible to the external World, dbingi his ofRcial work in his owtn roomis. He was completely indifferent to lifp, which he looked upon as a miea-e spectacle that is bound to pass aWay, and has few moments that can leave a thrill. The fact was that he had already experienced practically all the thrills that lean be obtained in a sublunar diplomatic existence. There was at one time an oyster scare : hardly anybody ate oysters, but Lessar took a dozen at luncheon and a dozen at dinner, because, as he explained, they are rather pleasant to the taste, and' now one has also in eating them the entrancing possibility of hastening the adventure of death. About this time he evolved another mode of obtaining an emotion. There was a lion-tamer with his cageful at the iWestminster Aquarium^ and the excellent Ljessar one day invited me to lunch with him and' watch him walk through the cage with the tamer. The tamer had said that there was only one lion from whom there was anything to fear, but he was a Tartar! I The Way it was done was by identifying Lessar With the tamer. Lessar wore a jacket and trousers of the same fawn colour, and rested his left hand on the shoulder of the tamer, who preceded him into the cage. Each carried a heavy steel bar in his right hand. There Were four lions and two lionesses. As the tamer predicted, the Tartar sprang forward at Lessar, but he was immediately received with such a solid thump on the neck from^ the ANOTHER LION STORY 281 tamer's isteel bar that he slunk back into his corner, and for the rest of the entertainment limited himself to giving a superb view of his dentition and rousing the echos of the lofty hall vsrith noble roars. In this he Was joined by the remaining five : they m'ade the scetit- bottles on the adjacent perfumery stall leap. Lessar and the tamer proceeded in the most leisurely manner, united as described', and if looks could protect, certainly tih'e isteel of firml resolve in the eyes of the Russian was as useful as the steel bar had been. On emerging from the cage Lessar remarked that it had quite given him an appetite for luncheon, ^so we adjourned to Romano's, where we had oysters — of course ! — and other good things. Had Lessar been gobbled up instead of his luncheon I was to go and break it gently to, the Ambassador de Stahl, a delightful man of the world, who would no doubt have taken it as Stendhal did the retreat from Moscow, above described. The other lion story, more recent in date, happened to my friend, the Hon. Mrs. Kenneth Dundas, whose husband was killed fighting our enemies in the Great War. They were then living near Nairobi, and the neighbouring country Was well supplied' with lions. A couple of friends came to stay with them' for a few days' lion ishooting. The morning after their arrival they sallied out, a party of four, Captain and Mrs. Dundas and the two friends. The country was an open undu- lating plain with here and there a small bush, ^ot large enough to conceal a lion, so they had no doubt that if the game were about they would come upon it. They walked "miles and miles," as Mrs. Dundas describes it, each carrying a rifle. At last she became so tired that she said she must go homte. Her husband 282 LITERARY AND OTHER LIONS— ITALY persuaded her to hold on until they could look |dbvm from: the top; of the slope they wtere then ;approachingi. O. Joy I Thtere in a cup-shaped hoUoW, noti more jthan 1 20 yards away, were four magnificent bieasitsr- two lions and' two; lionesses. As the only lady of the party, Mrs. Dundas was given .first shot, and killed one of the two lions dead. The two (lionefeses' immediately decamped, and one of the guests let g^o' at the other lion, which he Wounded badly. The beast saw and made for them crouching low and covering the groimd amazingly fast, got within twenty yards. The other guest and her husband fired and missed. Meanwhile Mrs. Dvmdas had time to reload, but did not fire. " Why not? " I remember asking when she first, told me the story. " I didn't like to, fecawsiei ii wasn't my lion, she' replied (the italics are mine). By this time it was not more than ten yards off (of course the narrative takes longer than the event), so she asked her husband : "Shall I fire?" "Yes," he repiiedl, so she and he (having just reloaded) fired together, and rolled the monster over stone dead — just in time. " It would certainly have got one of us in another second," she remarked placidly describing the incident. " Because it wasn't my lion " is to my mind a uniquely British saying. Only on the calm lips of the British could the ethics of the pheasant shoot be applied to a lion's charge. Wiiat chance had the Germans against a country which can produce such magnificent sporting sang-froid? How many of my countrymen have discovered Italy from the artistic point of view. Browning, of course, was one, and there are many others, but few enough considering our ever-growing population of those who SEE ITALY AND LIVE 283 can aflford the journey. Florence is, of course, the chief rallying point of our race, but other towns of the peninsula have also their unique charms. No country so much as Italy inspires one with the sense of the infinite potentialities of life. From the days of the Renaissance when, as was said at the time, a new race of men seemed to walk the earthy Italy has possessed this capacity for bestowing a unique stimulus to the higher modes of existence. Intensity of life and exquisite beauty are the two chief mtessages of Italy and these she is destined to preach' throug'h the ages, with Russia a blinded bear groping in mud and darkness to the east, the Germanic, Czeco-Slovak and Jugo-Slav sehii -barbarous States at hter very giates. Italy is the marvel of the world^ but one should not visit marvels in the com^pany of Thomas Cook — at most permit that admirable firm' to prepare the externals in the way of railway tickets, and do the rest yourself. But how are we to "do the rest, and what is it? " I may be asked. The rest varies with the individual : he must create his opportunities. Personally I have found it excellent to go to Florence and revel, and apply oneself afterwards to the literature and art. I shall supply a few notes as to how I revelled, which may afford a clue to others wise enough to be foolish while they are young. Florence in the eighteen-nineties was probably not very different externally from! thb Florence of the seven- teen -nineties. But the charm' of the city draws artistic people from all parte of the world^ and in the 'ninetieb it was certainly one of the mo'st interesting and amusing of cities. I had by this time left the Paris Embassy for good and was a free lance. The society to which I refer was largely coismjo- 284 LITEEAEY AND OTHER LIONS— ITALY politan — English, Americam, French, Austrian, Italian. Mr. Rolshoven's, the painter's studio, was one of the chief rendezvous, and there were others not five minutes' walk from the Piazza Vittorio Emmanuele. It was full springtide in that happy clime, where one is sure of the sun, and we were all either ourselves' in the springtime of our lives, or at lea^st in quite early summer. We frequented various trattorias, avoiding the fashionable restaurants, but mostly preferred rather sketchy snacks of food paiftaken of between the dances or processions or whatever wab the fashdon of the day or night. We would think nothing! of descending from the summits of some star-pointing turret of Ghibelline date head.ed by the music that invariably acconapanied us — our perambulating orchestra of three entertaining Italians— a man with' a fiddle, one with a sort of glorified concertina and another with a horn from which proceeded wteirdly beautiful sounds — for it goes without saying that our performers were artists and incapable of straying into discojd. We proceeded to dance through the streets, led by Miss Ruth And'erson, that most graceful and beautiful girl who. fascinated all those whom she met. Tall, with dark hair like tendrils, expressive arms and handSj and eyes like the Italian night, one could have sworn that she was Italian-born and treading the streets of her native town. Then there was Mrs. Bishop, who was also a graceful dancer. Crowds assembled, but behaved with perfect decorum, gravely making a circle round our chief pier- formers and applauding their really artistic motions with that invariable and sur^ recognition which Italians have for aU art manifestations, big and' little. Ours was of course of the latter sort, buit I do not think it would be possible in any country but Italy. b ^ z o en a M a < A ROSE-PARTY 285 Sometimes we would dine at a trattoria called, I think, Paoli's, and after frolicking about there with dance, song, and recitation, we would emerge upon the piazza and proceed towards our favourite tavern in the centre of the town, with its lofty terrace open to tjhe stars and adorned with great pots of red roses, heavy with night and perfume. Armfuls of flowers were in our ladies' arms, and they would stand and fling them down to the crowd asstembled below, which scrambled and jostled to possess the memories of such a nigiht,. I rememiber that Rolshoven remarked a prapos of one of these nights : " Such things have not been done in Florence since Dante's time." Tlmt was a real compliment from the leading painter of the many established in Florence. On another occasion we had a " Rojsie Party " at the Houghtons, on the terrace overlooking, the Arno. Great torches flamed in their sockets, yeUowl and orange, against the blue-black rippling of thie stream. At one end of the tierrace was a re4 rose-tree, and down either side a series of little rose-bushes, white, yellow, and red. At the other end, a bed of tall white lilies, which swayed and sighed on thle light breeze as a poor old wayfarer finds his way into this Enchanted Garden. He falls asleep under the red rose-tree. Then the lilies dance to him and wake him' up^ and he sits up tol watch the dance. Thfen all the little rose-bushes dance a wild, happy dance around him;, and take away his long grey beard, and his hump^ and his stick, and make him into a young man again. He dances with therri. Then thte Spirit of Memory cobies into the Garden bearing the rejected cloak and stick. The way- farer becomles terrified, but the little rose-bushes cluster around him, and one of the lilies takes it upon herself! 286 LITERARY AND OTHER LIONS— ITALY to expel the Spirit of Memiory fromi the Garden. She dances hinl away, and then slowly sways back to the rose-bushes and the traveller who lies asleepi at last under the rfed rose-tree. The lily then dances slowly to herself, and ends her dance with her back to, the sleeping traveller, the rose-tree, and the rose-bushes, solitary in the Sleeping Garcfcn. That was a wonderful evening ! I can see the loggia now, with its uneven sloping floor and Miss Ruth Anderson, the Queen Lily, dancing upp^ it as though she really walked on air, and was only touching the floor out of politeness to her host. Beardsley's favourite plate was on the wall, about which jhe had quarrelled with Houghton. Whose was it? Finally they dtecided to share it, each a fortnight altfernately, until Beardsley, when he knew he was going to die, resigned it altogether to his friend. A voice at my felbo'w asks : and did' you know Pater? Yes, he had a heiad like a mask of old ivory, set with the sapphires that Weire his eyes, and with that a drooping moustache and slowi deliberate moyeraents as though a priest within were moving the idol. The Lily left me, and the dance began. jAlexanderl was the Spirit of Memiory, in black, with a wreath of irises, Chattie Hereward the Wake was wonderful in the rose dance, Rolshoven and I danced with the Lily Queen, Houghtpn wore grey flannels and a wreath of tiny pink roses 1 He appeared by no means eccentric among us. When at last thfe Lily Queen's aunt im'^ peratively demanded' her presence, a dancing ring was formed around hier, which }t was found imipossible ,to pierce. The aunt was ^nally included in the ring and made to dance withi the rejuvenated old man in the hope that the rejuvenation migiht prove to be contagious I , ' , , | ' ' . . > RUTH ANDERSON 287 Another wonderful day wte spent at Signa in the garden of a gorgeous villa ; in such' a, garden (perhapg it was the very one) Boccaccio sat ,to tell his tales. It was like thte stage in the garden scene ofi a production of Twelfth Night. It made one rub one's eyes and wonder if pne were not ,dream,ing some fairy tale or lost legend. Tlhere were the laroad grass -walks flanked by cypresses and ending in an old gateway, far at the other end', the old stone tierrapes of lovfelyi colours and stone figures erect or couchant against dark ilex trees, and here and there stone balustrades, and beyond a view of Florence sh'imtoeringi in the blue distance. The suggestion for acting was too strong to be resisted, especially witihl Ruth Andfersoni among us ; so with a background of green, ^and on a bit of old jterrace, she did parts of As You Like It, and Iselections from' Omar Khayyami by an old pillar overshadowed with ilex with a goblet of red wine in her hand. All wore garlands in the mode of the thirteenth century. We had a Bacchante with red hair twined in ivy, Rolshoven — a true artist ready to enter into the spirit of any revel — Rolshoven himself wore a wreath' with two horns in the front madte out of fir cones — as a satjyr. Mr. Alucetti wore fir, Arthur Herbert a wreath of laurel, and looked' like a Ronian Emiperor (my poor friend was afterwiardis drowned as King's Messenger parrying dispatches between London and the Hague), Francis Stirling*, an ivy wreath with jberries falling in bunches about his ears, Ruth Anderson, wild briar foliage prankt with anemones. Anemlones every- where starred the grass, with here and' there a patch' of purple, and now and then a |tiny scarlet flame. It was all too giood' to be true' — and proved' it by dis- appearing with that marvellous day, that wonderful place 288 LITERARY AND OTHER LIONS— ITALY made for the capering of gbats and the light footsteps of nymphs. We jhad lunch by an old fountain where goldfish roamed and a hoary old Triton guarded them. The whole place seemed to belong to a Trince from! no- where, an old magnificent and even invisible host and to this day I have no notion to whom the villa belonged. It was wonderful, and' makes the very ink vibrate with the blood of youth ! That splendid' sun, those flitting fleecy clouds, grass studded with mauve and white, and tjhe taU dark corn'mlanding cypresses : add to this the old warm stone-worki — warmed by the passionate sun himself — and our youtjh — and then keep calmi if you can. We enjoyed the minutes, every one of them; imitating the statues who surveyed us— so gravely- donning wreaths renewed, with the ppnd for looking- glass. |We tried to be classical ! I wonder if any of my readers will understand the feeling for other days that animated usi — other stories, other lives, played out in this enchanted ground. We all had what may be described as the early Italian fever : lit gripped us more strong'ly even than love, in any of its forms, in that pld gard!e!n of distant yesterdays. Ruth Anderson was the inspiration of us all — would I could rouse old Landor from: his villa over the hill at Fiesole to write another Rose Aylmer in her honour — ^in her Early Italian robe, shining in and out between those cypresses and statues ; as a wood- nymph she leapt and tossed about the flowers that were handed to her in armfuls, dancing with starry flowers in her hair and the water for a mirror, or chasing a goat to wreath leaves around its neck' — ^or flying' from the satyr swiftly over that green girass with her bare feet, fleeter by far than he, gyrating in and out of the ITALY THE ENCHANTRESS 289 ilex shrubs and round the cypresses — to fall panting upon some stone bench, utterly free and careless beneath that blue Italian sky. Semel insanavfmus omnes — we have all, I suppose, been mad once, and I should be glad to say gpod-bye to sanity for a few days at any time if I could again find myself in that Florence of the 'nineties. I have purposely avoided all tourist talk of picture galleries and places of interest, for thtese, although I frequented them incidentally, were miich less real than that first fervour of knowing Italy, which I have striven (so imperfectly) to convey in these last pages of my " Adventures." The literature and art of Italy followed for me in the wake of this first vital awareness of the splendour of Italy and of all that it means for us natives of thie north. That winter I decided to sperad at all casts in Italy, tfliough it irteant cancelling various engagements in England. I was at Milan at the time, and just as on a former occasion in the Western Highlands, as previously recorded in these " AdVentures," awoke with a poem in my head, which I venture to transcribe as a valedictory offering to those readers who have done me tihe honour to accomipany me upon this little trip to Cythera and Arcadia by way of Piccadilly, the Corso and the Elysian Fields of Paris. In this volume I have said but little of Italy. In another, which is in preparation, I shall attempt to do her more efficient justice, my chief contribution hitherto having been to make the literary criticism and philosophy of Croce known to the English-speaking world ten years or so earlier than would have been the case, had I not visited Naples in 1906. Hundreds of professors and students had passed through Croce's city for years 19 290 LITERARY AND OTHER LIONS— ITALY without apparently being struck in any wtay with' the splendour of the new thought, upon which our literary critics have since based themselves, from Mr. Glutton Brock and Mr. Walkley downwards. ITALY THE ENCHANTRESS. Italy, Italy, England how clear she cries, ■" Come o'er the Alps again, come o'er the snow. Dance through the vintage of France with the dear free eyes. Dance with the n)rmphs of the Seine as you go." Italy, Italy, why should I cUng to thee. Thou that hast worshippers better a score. Poets and painters and lovers to bring to thee Passionate kisses and memories of yore ? Italy, Italy, I too I loye thee well, I that have scarce touched thy cheek with my lips. Scarce seen the sun kiss thy turreted citadel. Scarce seen thy smile set the world in eclipse. Laura Petrarca, Paolo Francesa, Beatrice Dante, the cadences fall. Muse of the Harmony Ariostesca, Tasso, the silvery syllables call. Italy, Italy, I too was made for thee, Changed at my birth for some child of the mist ; I dwelt afar while he sang and he played for thee Music on lutes that my fathers had kissed. Now at the last I have found and I cleave to thee, Land that my footsteps have trodden so late. Well will it be if my passing may leave to thee One northern pearl for the Crown of thy State : Pearl not of oyster that slumbers in ocean. Fair but unworthy thy forehead to bind. Pearl of the thought of eternal devotion, Italy, Queen of the heart and the mind ! 291 PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY UNWDI BROTHERS, LIMITED PRINTERS, LONDON AND WOEING