London Days: A Book of Reminiscences
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A certain splendid swagger departed from London Streets when the regiments quartered in town abandoned their gorgeous uniforms and dressed less like magnificos and more like fighting men. They were fighting men though, they and their successors who held back the outnumbering German rush from the Channel ports of France in 1914, as all the world knows, and none know better than the Huns. But they were dandies too, those earlier men, and they filled the eye. Their saucy scarlet, short-waisted jackets, their jaunty fatigue caps, their tight trousers with broad red stripes, on shapely legs which seemed tremendous in length, were at once the admiration of nursemaids and the envy of small boys, lending, as they did, colour and form to these dun streets. Will the glorious colossi who strode thus habited be seen again this side of Charon's ferry; or will their successors lead the simple life in khaki and puttees?
CHAPTER III
A NORMAN INTERLUDE
After a winter in London I went to Paris for a part of the spring, stopping on the way a day in Rochester (I had the Dickens fever then), and another day in Canterbury for the Cathedral's sake. A night boat, the ancient Wave, or the antediluvian Foam, took me to Calais, and through some delay on the line there was a wait of hours. But the night was fine, and I spent it roaming through and beyond the old town, getting forty winks afterward in the station, and a breakfast of hot chocolate and bread at a place facing the harbour where I watched the fishing boats put out on a convenient tide. In Paris I knew only one person, an American friend who was studying art, taking his lessons at Julian's, and slowly, yet certainly, learning that art was not for him. He introduced me to a lot of men who knew their way about, and soon I knew my way about as well as they did, possibly, in some directions, a little better, for, with one or two exceptions, I cannot remember any who were gifted with a faculty for anything but good-fellowship and for spending their allowances from home. They knew the jargon of the studios, but as Paris seemed full of men who could paint as well as they and were threatening to do it, the charming group dissolved in a year or two, one after another, returning to their homes in various parts of the world. Not one that I know of is living now, and nearly all whom I could trace in later years had gone into trade, and flourished there.
But my acquaintance with Paris had begun. It was to be extended in subsequent years. What chiefly remains in my recollection concerning those early days is that for the first time I had the consciousness of being in a foreign country. I never had that in England, no, not for a minute, and no one, then or since, ever tried to make me feel it there. Of course, part of the difference was due to language, but not all the difference. There were subtle differences in France, and some plain, outstanding ones. The English are kindly people, hospitable, and, if I must say so—and I think I must, having lived through three years of the great war with them, to say nothing of many preceding years—they are naïve. The Englishman, if he liked you, took you to his home, but he said that the Frenchman did not. But he did, I found. And I found that the Frenchman, if less kindly, was more polite. The Frenchman had either clearer ideas or none at all about other nationalities; the Englishman—but really, these reflections do not belong in this book, but in another, if anywhere. I will not prolong them here, but say only that I was in Paris fairly often after that first visit and that I liked it the more the more I knew it.
But I am forgetting my friend Monsieur Raoul de St. Ange. I would not willingly forget my friend St. Ange. In fact, I could not forget him. He was a delightful man of fifty or thereabouts, a dear and gracious person. I had met him in London where he was giving lessons in French, and trying to make a French weekly paper pay its way and earn him something over. He was of Norman birth, and had lived fairly well in Paris up to the time of the Commune, when he had been ruined. He emigrated to London. He had a wife and two small sons. The boys were about ten and twelve respectively. This little family lived in a little house at Shepherd's Bush. The house was very simple, but it was as neat as wax. I used to help St. Ange a little with the English section of his paper, and in return he gave me lessons in French.
One day he said to me: "I must go to Normandy; a week there. It will give me the greatest pleasure if you come." And so I arranged to meet him at Amiens on my return from Paris. He had some family affairs to settle, something to do with the children, and a bit of property that had been left in trust for them. In Normandy we would see some of his people, a bit of France from the inside not the outside. I jumped at the chance. We met at Amiens, and explored the Cathedral before doing anything else. He knew somebody there, or somebody knew of him, and we were taken all over the wonderful Cathedral, from roof to crypt. We were so long at this that we concluded to spend the night in Amiens, and push on, next morning, by train to a village some thirty miles or more away, which was one of the objectives of his visit.
The name of that village I have clean forgotten. It has passed like many other names that were supposed to be fixed there. But forgotten it is, although the place itself is associated with memories of rustic hospitality more generous than anything that has ever come my way. Well, we arrived at the village of the forgotten name, and we put up at the house of the station master, in the station building itself. There was no inn. The station master was somehow, somewhere, within St. Ange's circle of friends. He took charge of our kits and showed me to what I am sure was the best bedroom. I had a guilty feeling that the occupants must have turned out for my benefit; but one can only defer to the custom of the country.
Presently Monsieur Station Master, and Madame Station Master, and little Station Master fils appeared, each in best bib and tucker, and led the way across the fields, to a little thatched farmhouse two miles distant. The railway contingent evidently were making holiday. All the way we walked through fields of grain, in a wide path which came, by and by, to a little bridge over a chattering stream, and then to a road, and around a bend in the road to the farmhouse, thatched, moss and flowers growing in the thatch, and a family growing in the door, for the doorway was filled with humans of ages from eight to eighty, in rows and tiers. As we drew near there was such a display of waving handkerchiefs and joyous shouts as would have gratified William the Conqueror himself had he been passing.
St. Ange was smothered in embraces, and I was bidden in, not to the embraces, but to a seat in the fireside, after salutations all round. St. Ange had not been in these parts for twenty years. He was trustee for some of these younkers, and had now come to be relieved of his trust, as the younkers were of age in the eyes of the law. You would have thought that I was a benefactor, so generous were their attentions. Food and wine were pressed upon me. What the good folk were saying did not enter my comprehension; the twists of the Norman tongue were beyond me. But smiles are translatable in any language and so are hearty courtesies. Presently what appeared to be the whole population of the neighbouring countryside streamed in, and St. Ange and his American friend had to meet them all. We met like old friends. Then St. Ange took me to call upon some old folk in a cottage not far away. We must have been a couple of hours calling about. When we returned to the first place a dinner was ready for us, and we for it.
The fat of the land was before us. There was every kind of good thing that grew in Normandy. And there was wine of the country, and plenty of it. The triumph of the occasion was duck,—duck such as I never ate before, and have not eaten since, not even in Paris, where they have a subtle skill in cooking these things. I could write rhapsodies about that duck. When, even nowadays, I am seeking to whet appetite, I think of the ducks I ate in Norman cottages. No one has eaten duck who has not eaten it in Normandy where every housewife seemed to me a marvel of a cook. I was in Normandy a week, lunched and dined and supped in a different house each day—they were chiefly the homes of cottage folk—and, for abundance and good feeding, I still regard it as a land of miracle.
How I praised the duck at that first dinner, and extolled Madame's skill in cookery! Madame was pleased. Have I conveyed the impression that these were wealthy folk? It was not my intention to do so. They were Normandy peasants, which may mean anything or little as far as well-being goes. The room in which we ate was the living room, cooking-washing-eating-room. I daresay that behind a panel, or a curtain, there was an alcove with a bed. Anyhow, there was one in an adjoining room. And over the dining table was a loft to which you mounted by a ladder which was slung against the ceiling, when not wanted, by rope and pulley. The dining-room floor was of earth, hard packed, hard as nails, clean as the proverbial whistle. Everything shone with cleanliness—windows, napery, brass, pewter, plates, kettles—if all the belongings of the room had whistled there would have been a bellow as if the siren of a big liner had blown. Such cleanliness and such cooking I have not found in all the years that followed in the many English cottages I have known, but I met the combination three or four times a day for six or seven days, each time beneath a different roof.
St. Ange and I walked back across the fields by moonlight, Monsieur, Madame, and Toddlekins Station Master, and two from our feasting house, accompanying us. That night I slept like a top. At noon what was my surprise and joy to find another duck, duly prepared and cooked by our hostess of the preceding day, waiting for me on the station master's table. It had been brought by one of her small fry with the lady's compliments. There was a compliment fit for a prince! Have I mentioned the wine that graced the basket, and the miraculous green peas that were to melt in the mouth? Ah, well, it was long ago, and it was hospitality.
In that way did Normandy receive us at every halt, whether we called at farm, or cottage, or château. Was there ever such a country for eating and drinking, I wondered. At last we arrived at Rouen. We had driven in from the country, and somewhat wearied and dusty with the journey, we were hurried by a stout and jolly man, a gigantic person who was in waiting on the road, to a delightful dwelling in the town where three generations of St. Ange's relatives welcomed us and would have haled us forthwith to the seats of honour, but that we pleaded for a wash and a change.
It was twelve o'clock when we gathered at table. It was four when we rose. And when we rose, something else was served in the next room. And I was told that we must dine at another house, at seven; I think seven was the hour. And we were to sup at a third party at eleven! But I had become accustomed to this splendour of generosity. St. Ange had warned me at Amiens that it was inevitable, and could n't be shirked. And so, after the first heroic occasion, the memorable affair of duck at the cottage, I made a great show of eating and drinking, so that these valiant Norman trenchermen would not think me rude and neglectful, and speedily I learned how to keep up the appearance of feasting and of still having a wee-bit appetite at the end. That was doing pretty well, I think, for a novice. And it required some skill in calculation, for at each table there was everything, and abundance of everything, that gourmets or gourmands could desire to eat and drink. In seven days there were twenty-one such feasts!
When we reached London, on our homeward journey, I called for sausage and mashed, and a tankard of bitter, by way of return to the simple life.
But the kindness of it all, the generous hospitality; the opening of hearts to a stranger who comes with an old friend or relative,—in forty years I have seen nothing to equal it. The gentleman who killed the fatted calf offered but a Barmecide feast in comparison with the provender of my Norman friends.
A few days after the return from France a telegram came to me from St. Ange, saying that his boy was seriously ill, and asking me to come at once. In the evening I went as quickly as I could to Shepherd's Bush. The little chap had taken a chill, pneumonia had supervened. The doctor was in the house when I arrived. "Can't live through the night," he said. The parents were with the little fellow. I dozed below in an armchair, knowing that there was need of sleep if I were to see these good people through the crest of their trouble. An hour after midnight the mother came and said: "It is finished! Yes, dead. I am anxious for mon mari. He will not move, or speak. He sits staring—comme ça. Please go to him."
I aroused St. Ange and made him come with me. All night till dawn I walked him, through Shepherd's Bush, through Hammersmith, across the Bridge, across Barnes Common, through Mortlake and Richmond, and back again, making him talk and tiring him out. That was the object, to counter his nervous excitement by physical fatigue and to divert his mind. I brought him home at sunrise, limp, exhausted. He slept for ten hours.
I had to make him see that the world had not come to a standstill, that there was no "copy" for his paper, and so on. I saw his printers, his publishers, and some other people he knew who turned out "copy." Between them all they saw him through the worst of his problems. This brought me in a practical way into connection with the outer fringes of Fleet Street and London journalism, and in my odd hours I learned how "copy" was prepared for the compositors, how proofs were corrected, how "forms" were made up, and before long was able to assist some of my new acquaintances when they were pressed for time at these games.
It was natural enough that in following these lines as a joyous amateur I should drift into journalism. I never intended to stay in it, I preferred to write books; but in those days that seemed a mad thing to do,—to write books and expect to earn money by them. In journalism, if one got his "stuff" printed, he got paid, and, if one knew the ropes, he had n't to wait forever for the payment. There was a certain attractiveness about being paid for work one liked to do, and I liked writing better than anything else. And I liked the rush and pressure of journalism as I saw these things manifested in the experience of my friends. They had adventures too; I also would have them. It seemed possible to know everybody, go everywhere, see everything, and, if one worked the ropes with skill, he might remain his own master. One saw it all through rose-coloured glasses. How else should youth see anything?
Even to-day I see St. Ange through the rose-coloured glasses of memory. It is the only way possible, for except in memory I have not seen him in all these years since we returned from Normandy and his boy died. Within a month from the funeral Raoul St. Ange and his wife vanished. They had returned to France, 't was said, but no one knew. His pupils did not know, his printers did not know, his paper was dying. I suppose he had n't the heart to face the obsequies. He merely vanished. No inquiry revealed him. Never a letter, never a wire, never a trace of any kind in forty years.
CHAPTER IV
I TAKE THE PLUNGE
I have never been so old as I was during my first three or four years in London. It is, or at any rate it used to be, a common delusion of youth that the mantle of years has descended upon its shoulders. In my case the shoulders could have carried a large mantle. I was tall and big framed, earning my living in a foreign country, where, by the way, I felt completely at home; my habits of thought were far beyond those which custom fixes for the 'teens, and all my associates were older than myself, most of them much older. In the work which circumstances and I laid out, youth was by others supposed to be a disadvantage, so that it might have been natural had I assumed the merit of a maturity which I did not possess. But I was not compelled to assume it. It was attributed to me. Nobody supposed that I was under nineteen. I was supposed to be at least half a dozen years older.
My first editor was George Parsons Lathrop, of the Boston Courier. He was a son-in-law of Nathaniel Hawthorne, and he achieved the honour of editing my copy by the alacrity with which he published it for nothing. As the suggestion was my own the acceptance of non-compensated work was entirely fair. If his paper could stand it, I could. I wanted practise, and Lathrop wanted copy. He was perfectly willing that I should practise in his columns. I did n't know him from Adam, but had written to him enclosing a "London Letter" which solicited his acceptance on gratuitous terms. Beneath my generosity was a design. Not only did I need practice but I wanted to be known as the London Correspondent of an American paper, in order to have the entrée at theatres, concerts, political gatherings, and other public functions. After sufficient practice with Lathrop, I would endeavour to sell copy in other quarters. The plan succeeded.
When the period of gratuitous service had stretched far enough, a Boston journal of much interest and overwhelming respectability, deigned graciously to pay five dollars a letter for my London "stuff." The magnitude of this offer did not shock me, but five dollars meant a sovereign, and the addition of twenty shillings to one's weekly income suggested wealth to a young scribbler in London. Three or four letters had been despatched when, one evening, an expensive acquaintance who had rooms above mine, near Queen Square, dropped in at my snug chambers and spun a yarn. He had "seen Leighton, you know, President of the Royal Academy, good sort, dev'lish good fellow. What do you suppose he 's done now? Taken up a sculptor in Paris, French of course, poor as I am, poorer, if it 's possible to be poorer than I am, and has had a piece of the chap's work sent over here for exhibit at the Academy. Sculptor could n't send it. No money. Not even a studio. Devilled for years in other men's studios. Leighton saw, says fellow must become known in London. Got artist chaps to pay expenses of sending over. Good fellow, Leighton. Go see it, you! Press Day—Royal Academy—next week. Forgot French chap's name!"
This brought to my recollection the fact that in Paris, the previous Easter, when haunting Bohemia with a pack of student friends, I had heard of a needy sculptor who was doing things of strange power, and was hard up because he would not work in accepted forms, but persisted in carving things that nobody wanted. And who, in those days, would buy sculpture from an "artist unknown"? My friends promised that I should meet the man, but I was called away from Paris before this could be arranged.
I went to the Royal Academy on Press Day, and saw the specimen of the "new man's" work. I was quite alone with it. One is always sure to be alone in the Statuary Room of the Royal Academy. An article came out of the silence. It went to my five-dollar editor. He responded with this note:
"Sorry we can't pay for any more of your letters. We printed the last one, but, really, we don't want articles about unknown sculptors, especially French ones."
The unknown sculptor, whose name, of course, I gave, was Auguste Rodin!
I subsequently heard that the article was the first about Rodin to be published in America, and that an artist and fellow townsman of mine, Henry Bacon, then in Paris, brought it to his attention. Months afterward, having followed me half around the world, there arrived by post a big and battered parcel. It contained a photograph of the sculpture I had seen, the bust of Rodin's "St. John Preaching", and the large mount bore Auguste Rodin's autograph with a grateful message to me. I had the trophy framed and hung over the fireplace in my chambers, and there, whether the fireplace were in England or America, it has hung ever since. If I were the first to give Auguste Rodin public recognition in my country, he was the first anywhere to acknowledge my stumbling work.
Vocation was pressing its claims more heavily than usual about that time and there was little opportunity to pursue a project I had formed for writing a series of articles upon "The London of Disraeli." Everybody in pendom had written of "Dickens' London", and "Thackeray's London", and after "Endymion" had made its loudly trumpeted appearance, it occurred to me that Disraeli had a London which the makers of articles had not seized upon and which would yield "material" for interesting copy. This, if well illustrated, might appeal to some magazine editor in America and subsequently become a book. At the same time I was gathering notes and impressions for a series of papers which might be called "Odd Corners of London." For things of this kind America seemed to promise an especially good market, and I believed that I could supply it fairly well. One thing after another delayed this little plan. Vocation was taking up more time and at higher pressure than is compatible with hobby-riding. It has a habit of doing so. Then a visit to America intervened, for the purpose of spending my twenty-first birthday, and the following five or six months, at home. The return to England was followed by a rush of work in the City, and this by an illness of some weeks' duration. All the while the Disraeli subject lay untouched until, one day in 1882, I met a character in a Disraeli novel, who was much more of a character outside it.
It was a day of powerful rain. The Pullman Company were to run their first train in England over the Brighton line from Victoria Station. They had invited a regiment of celebrities and a few odd sticks. Among the latter I was included by some official of my acquaintance who thought I might write an article for some overseas paper. Taking a place in a smoking car I was solitary for but a minute, when George Augustus Sala entered hurriedly and plumped himself down beside me, saying: "What a beastly, blowy, wet morning!"
"The worst since Noah's time," said I.
"If this train gets to Brighton and returns through the flood, it will be another case not only of pull man, but also of pull devil, pull baker," said Sala.
"There 's copy for you," said I.
"Oh, are you a journalist?" asked Sala.
"I 'm hoping to be. It's an aspiration."
"Desperation, more likely," he said. "Don't do it, young man, not if there 's a good crossing to sweep in your neighbourhood. Journalism is the worst trade in the world."
"Every man says that of his own profession," I replied.
"Profession be hanged! What do we profess? We stain paper, and look as wise as owls, and know a damned sight more than we ever tell. Most of us bleat in our folds like sheep; few of us have the chance to go about the world and see things, and even they work like slaves to entertain the public while their owners take the profits. The worst trade in the world, sir; work harder, know more than any other—about human nature, anyhow—and get less for it than any other; what we write is forgotten the day after it's printed, and when we can't grind out any more, when they 've squeezed our brains dry, we 're thrown on the dust-heap to be buried by a benevolent association. Don't go into journalism unless you own the paper! That's where the profits are—big circulation and advertising revenue, politics and peerages! I 'm too old for aiming at ownership now; besides, I 'm a writer, not a screw! Journalism be hanged. If I 'd been a chef in a millionaire's palace, or a fashionable hotel, I 'd have done better."
Possibly. At any rate he would have been the prince of chefs as he was "the prince of journalists", or was it the king the public called him? He was supposed to earn fabulous sums with his pen. If he earned them he spent them, for he left nothing when he had "gone west." He was an artist in cookery, had a knowing taste in wines; he had been everywhere, seen everything, knew everybody, and on the shortest possible notice could write an article upon anything or nothing. He had a flaming face, small, glittering eyes, a build and frontage not unlike that of Pierpont Morgan of later fame, and a reputation for wit and story-telling. He had also a reputation for geniality. He was as genial as a thunderstorm. His rumblings and clatters might pass quite harmless, or sear you with a flash. His familiar signature was "G.A.S."