Delphi Complete Works of Jerome K. Jerome (Illustrated) (Series Four) (486 page)

Gertrude Kingston with her mother and sister lived near by, in a charming little house in Ebury Street. Pinero’s “Creamy English Rose” will always remain the beloved of the British theatrical public to the exclusion of all others, or Gertrude Kingston would long before now have been London’s leading actress. She used to grumble at our ninety-seven stairs, but I persuaded her they were good for her figure and, not altogether convinced, she would often climb them. Olga Brandon would arrive at the top speechless, which perhaps was just as well.

Olga Brandon lived near by. She was a beautiful young woman, serene and stately. On the stage, she played queens, martyrs and Greek goddesses as if to the manner born. Off the stage, she spoke with a Cockney accent one could have cut with a knife, as the saying is, dropped her aitches, and could swear like a trooper. She was a dear kind girl. In the end she went the way of many. I remember a first night at the Vaudeville Theatre. A young actress who was playing her first big part was standing in the wings waiting her cue. She had a glass in her hand. Old Emily Thorne had just come off the stage. She stopped dead in front of the girl, blocking her way.

“Feeling in a tremble all over, aren’t you?” suggested the elder woman.

“That just describes it,” laughed the girl.

“And you find a little brandy pulls you together — steadies your nerves?”

“I doubt if I’d be able to go on without it,” answered the girl.

Emily covered the girl’s small hand with her own, and sent the contents of the glass flying. A wandering stage carpenter got most of it.

“I’ve known a good many promising young actresses,” she said, “and half of them have ruined their career through drink. I’ve followed some of them to the grave. You learn to get on without it, child.”

Henry Arthur Jones’ brother had the flat beneath us. He was an acting manager, and called himself Sylvanus Danncey.

Marie Corelli I came to know while living in Chelsea. I used to meet her at the house of an Italian lady, a Madame Marras, in Princes Gate. Marie was a pretty girlish little woman. We discovered we were precisely the same age. Mrs. Garrett Anderson, the first lady doctor to put up her plate in London, was sometimes of the party. We used to play games: hunt the slipper, puss in the corner and musical chairs. I can boast that more than once I sat on Marie Corelli’s lap, though not for long. She was an erratic worker and contracts would often get behind time. She lived with her adopted brother, Eric Mackay, son of the poet, and occasionally when her agent would come to the house tearing his hair because of an instalment that an editor was waiting for, and that Marie did not feel like writing, they would take her up and lock her in her study; and when she had finished kicking the door, she would settle down, and do a good morning’s work.

To keep friends with her continuously was difficult. You had to agree with all her opinions, which were many and varied. I always admired her pluck and her sincerity. She died while I was writing this chapter.

Arthur Machen married a dear friend of mine, a Miss Hogg. How so charming a lady came to be born with such a name is one of civilization’s little ironies. She had been a first nighter, and one of the founders of the Playgoers’ Club, which was in advance of its time, and admitted women members. Amy Hogg was also a pioneer. She lived by herself in diggings opposite the British Museum, frequented restaurants and Aerated Bread shops, and had many men friends: all of which was considered very shocking in those days. She had a vineyard in France, and sold the wine to the proprietor of the Florence Restaurant in Rupert Street. She had a favourite table by the window, and often she and I dined there and shared a bottle. The Florence, then, was a cosy little place where one lunched for one and three and dined for two shillings. One frequently saw Oscar Wilde there. He and his friends would come in late and take the table in the further corner. Rumours were already going about, and his company did not tend to dispel them. One pretended not to see him. Machen when he was young suggested the Highbrow. He has developed into a benevolent-looking, white-haired gentleman. He might be one of the Brothers Cheeryble stepped out of “Nicholas Nickleby.” For ability to create an atmosphere of nameless terror I can think of no author living or dead who comes near him. I gave Conan Doyle his “Three Impostors” to read one evening, and Doyle did not sleep that night.

“Your pal Machen is a genius right enough,” said Doyle, “but I don’t take him to bed with me again.”

The memory lingers with me of the last time I saw his wife. It was a Sunday afternoon. They were living in Verulam Buildings, Gray’s Inn, in rooms on the ground floor. The windows looked out onto the great quiet garden, and the rooks were cawing in the elms. She was dying, and Machen, with two cats under his arm, was moving softly about, waiting on her. We did not talk much. I stayed there till the sunset filled the room with a strange purple light.

The Thames was frozen over the last year we were in Chelsea. It was the first winter the gulls came to London. One listened to the music of the sleigh bells. Down the Embankment and round Battersea Park was the favourite course.

Friends of ours lived in St. John’s Wood, and possessed gardens, some even growing roses and spring onions; and their boastings made us envious. Olga Nethersole had a cottage with real ivy and a porch. Lewis Waller had a mulberry tree; and one day I met Augustus Harris carrying a gun. He told me he had bought it to shoot rabbits at his “little place” off the Avenue Road. We found an old-fashioned house behind a high wall in Alpha Place. Bret Harte was near by. He lived with great swells named Van der Velde. The old gentleman, I think, was an ambassador, and the wife, an American lady who had known Bret Harte when he was young, or something of that sort. Bret Harte remained with them as their guest till he died. He had his own suite of rooms. His hair was golden when we first knew him, but as the years went by it turned to white. He was a slight dapper gentleman, courteous and shy, with a low soft voice. It was difficult to picture him, ruffling it among the bloodstained sentimentalists of Roaring Camp and Dead Man’s Gulch.

Zangwill and his family were denizens of the Wood. His brother Louis also wrote books, calling himself “Z.Z.” “The World and a Man” remains the best known of them. Zangwill was accused of being a “New Humorist.” He edited a comic journal called
Ariel
, and discovered the English “Shakespeare”: Shakespeares were being discovered everywhere just then. J. T. Grein, the dramatic critic, had discovered a Dutch Shakespeare, and another critic, not to be outdone, had dug up one in Belgium. In the end, every country in Europe was found to possess a Shakespeare, except England. Zangwill did not see why England should be left out, and discovered one in Brixton. Judging from the extracts Zangwill published, he certainly seemed as good as any of the others. The Bacon stunt was in full swing about the same time; and again it was Zangwill who discovered that Shakespeare’s plays had all been written by another gentleman of the same name. I first met Mrs. Zangwill at a dinner. She was Miss Ayrton then, daughter of the Professor, and had been assigned to me. It is not often that one vexes a woman by taking her to be younger than she really is; but I quite offended her that evening. She looked fifteen, and I did my best to adapt myself accordingly. I have a youthful side to me, and flattered myself for a time that I was doing well. Suddenly she asked me my age, and, taken aback, I told her.

“Well, if you are all that,” she answered, “why talk as if you were fourteen?”

It seemed she was quite grown up. She told me her own age. She evidently thought it a lot, but anyhow it was more than I had given her credit for; and after that we found we had plenty of interests in common. I have always thought how wonderfully alike she and Lady Forbes-Robertson are to one another in appearance. I hope neither of them will be offended, but one can never tell. I was assured once, by a mutual friend, that I reminded him tremendously of Mr. Asquith; and then he added as an afterthought: “But don’t ever tell him I said so.”

Zangwill is, and always has been, a strong personality. You either like him immensely or want to hit him with a club. Myself I have always had a sincere affection for him. We have in common a love of Lost Causes, and Under Dogs. He confessed to me once that he had wasted half his life on Zionism. I never liked to say so to him, but it always seemed to me that the danger threatening Zionism was that it might be realized. Jerusalem was the Vision Splendid of the Jewish race — the Pillar of Fire that had guided their footsteps across the centuries of shame and persecution. So long as it remained a dream, no Jew so poor, so hunted, so despised, but hugged to his breast his hidden birthright — his great inheritance to be passed on to his children. Who in God’s name wanted a third-rate provincial town on a branch of the Baghdad railway? Most certainly not the Zionists. Their Jerusalem was and must of necessity always have remained in the clouds — their Promised Land the other side of the horizon. When the British Government presented Palestine to the Jews, it shattered the last hope of Israel. All that remains to be done now, is to invite contracts for the rebuilding of the Temple.

The London Jew’s progress, a Rabbi once informed me, is mapped out by three landmarks: Whitechapel, Maida Vale, and Park Lane. The business Jew is no better than his Christian competitor. The artistic Jew I have always found exceptionally simple and childlike. Of these a good many had escaped from Maida Vale, and crossing the Edgware Road had settled themselves in St. John’s Wood. Solomon J. Solomon had his studio off Marlborough Road. He was, I think, the first artist to paint by electric light — a useful accomplishment in foggy London. He started to paint my portrait once, while staying with us at Pangbourne, but complained I had too many faces. At one moment I looked a murderer and the next a saint, according to him. I have the thing as he left it unfinished. It reminds me of someone, but I can’t think whom. De Laszlo had the same trouble with me not long ago, but got over it by luring me to talk about myself. In his portrait of me there is a touch of the enthusiast. Cowen the composer had a big house in Hamilton Terrace and used to give delightful concerts. Sarah Bernhardt hired a house one spring. She brought a pet leopard with her: a discriminating beast, according to the local tradesmen. It dozed most of its day in front of the kitchen fire, and, so long as errand boys confined themselves to the handing in of harmless provisions, would regard them out of its half-closed eyes with a friendly, almost benevolent expression. But if anyone of them presented an envelope and showed intention of waiting for an answer, it would suddenly spring to its feet, and give vent to a blood-curdling growl that would send the boy flying down the garden.

The first time I met her was at one of Irving’s first-night suppers on the stage of the Lyceum: a forlorn, somewhat insignificant little figure without a word of English. Nobody knew her. (They were informal gatherings. You just showed your card and walked on to the stage.) The only thing she would take was a glass of wine. I wanted to introduce her, but she was evidently hurt at not having been recognized and made a fuss of. She complained of a headache, and I got her a cab. There were tears in her eyes, I noticed, as I shut the door.

Joseph Hatton had a house with a big garden in the Grove End Road, and gave Sunday afternoon parties. One met a motley crowd: peers and painters, actors, and thought-readers, kings from Africa, escaped prisoners, journalists and socialists. It was there that I first heard prophecy of labour governments and votes for women. Stepniak, the Russian Nihilist, was a frequent visitor; a vehement dark man, with an angelic smile. I met him one Sunday afternoon in an omnibus. We walked together from Uxbridge Road to Bedford Park. We were bound for the same house. The way then was through a dismal waste land, and the path crossed the North London Railway on the level. We had passed the wicket gate. Stepniak was deep in talk, and did not notice an approaching train, till I plucked him by the sleeve. He stood still staring after it for quite a time; and was silent — for him — the rest of the way. The following Sunday he was killed there by the same train. He had betrayed some secret, it was said, to the Russian Police, and had been given the choice between suicide or denunciation. The truth was never known.

We had an excellent cook named Isaacs who claimed to be related to quite important people of the same name: but whether with truth I cannot say. She encouraged us to be extravagant and give dinner-parties. W. S. Gilbert was a good talker. A strain of bitterness developed in him later, but in the nineties he was genial. I remember Miss Fortescue explaining that the Greeks had a custom of carving speeches on their seats. It seemed there was a term for these which she had forgotten. She appealed to Gilbert: “What were they called?” “
Arrière-pensée
, I expect,” replied Gilbert. He and Crosse (or Blackwell, I am not sure which) had a dispute concerning shooting rights. Gilbert began his letter: “If I may presume to discuss with so well known an authority as yourself the subject of preserves.” Another evening he told us of a new dramatist just discovered by an American manager with whom he had been lunching. The manager had almost despaired of words with which to describe his prodigy. At last he had hit upon an inspiration: “I’ll tell you what he is,” explained the manager, “he’s Mr. Barrie—” there followed an impressive pause—”with humour.”

Barrie could easily be the most silent man I have ever met. Sometimes he would sit through the whole of a dinner without ever speaking. Then, when all but the last one or two guests had gone — or even later — he would put his hands behind his back and bummeling up and down the room, talk for maybe an hour straight on end. Once a beautiful but nervous young lady was handed over to his care. With the
sôle-au-gratin
, Barrie broke the silence:

“Have you ever been to Egypt?”

The young lady was too startled to answer immediately. It was necessary for her to collect herself. While waiting for the
entrée
, she turned to him.