JOURNALISM AND LETTERS

My husband has given some account of his days at the Bar in his own Reminiscences. I shall, therefore, not touch on that part of his career, as it was practically ended before I knew him—the necessity of earning daily grist for the mill having carried him entirely into the ranks of journalism.

I believe he got through a quite unusual amount of work in that profession. Many an evening did I put back our little dinner while he rushed off to Euston to give his copy of Art Criticism for the Manchester Guardian into the hands of the guard for early morning delivery: he wrote on the same subject for the Pall Mall Gazette and the Art Journal, and what with criticism and social articles for the Saturday Review and World, he was never in bed till long after midnight.

It must have been about this time that he took me with him to Paris for a short so-called holiday while he wrote his criticism for the Pall Mall Gazette on the Salon of the year.

A gladsome time it was in that most smiling of cities in spring. There was a day on which a cry of dismay arose from our party—including his fellow-worker and old friend, Adam Gielgud with his wife—when a letter arrived from Edmund Yates refusing to let Joe off his weekly article in the series of Skits on the London newspapers which were then attracting attention in the World—I think the topic for that week was The Old Maid of Journalism (“The Spectator”) and perhaps that dignified lady received a more caustic drubbing than she would otherwise have had because of the distaste with which he set to his task.

Cheerful meals in the humblest of restaurants—whenever we could run to it, in the excellent CafÉ Gaillon—now the fashionable Henry, but then of far simpler ambitions; merry meetings at the house of that good comrade of Joe’s of whom he tells the tale of exchanged French and English lessons at Kettner’s restaurant in London, and lastly a gorgeous feast in the suburban home of a fellow contributor to L’Art, to both of which festivities my sister, Mrs. Harrison—then Alma Strettell—was bidden as being of our party.

Both occasions were a pleasant peep into Parisian bourgeois life. Our first host was eager to show that he could give us a gigot of mutton as well roasted as in London, and sorely crestfallen was the poor man when the little joint came to table black as a cinder and blue when cut. Joe quickly made capital out of the catastrophe, however, by declaring that one didn’t come to Paris to eat home fare, and that it served his friend right for putting his cook to such an unworthy task.

Our second entertainment, though we did not meet such intellectual company as the distinguished writers on the Temps and the DÉbats, who so courteously helped Joe to express brilliant ideas in daringly lame French and paid such charming court to my sister and myself, was more typical of its class; for, although the young couple of the house were our entertainers, the old couple were our hosts, and it was wondrous and delightful to see the respectful attitude of the son and his wife to the parents and the undisputed supremacy which they held from their two ends of the long table set out under the trees of the flower-laden May.

A rushing week it was, into which my sister and I crammed much enthralling shopping. I can see now Joe’s reproachful face at the door of the cafÉ where we had kept him waiting half an hour for dÉjeuner after his hot and tiring morning’s work at the Salon. I made a shameless excuse to the effect that we had secured many “occasions” (bargains). And as I gave him a toothbrush which he had asked me to buy, he said: “Is this an ‘occasion’ too? I’d rather have a punctual meal than an occasional toothbrush!”

Merry hours but very far from idle ones, and he reaped an additional and unexpected reward for his labours when we got home.

We had been bidden to a cricket match at his old school the day after our return, where, in virtue of his old rank of Captain of the Eleven, he was to play as a visitor; and I seem to see the boyish blush of satisfaction with which he told his beloved master—Dr. Birkbeck Hill—that it was he and no leader-writer on the Times, as was rumoured, who was writing those humorous articles on the newspapers for the World.

My husband has told so much of the tale of his early journalistic days in his Eminent Victorians that I find little to add; but I remember a curious incident in the fine old room at Great Russell Street when George Hake—Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s secretary—came one day, ostensibly “on his own,” to have a talk with him on the series of papers on painters of the day, appearing above the signature of “Ignotus,” but of which the authorship had leaked out.

Joe has told, in Coasting Bohemia, of the rift in his friendship with Rossetti over these articles, and a sad tale it is. Mr. Hake fancied that Rossetti would like to see his friend’s bride, but, alas! he was taking too much on himself, for the visit never came off. But Rossetti was at that time already an invalid and was not to be counted upon.

It must have been some time after this that the French proprietors of that luxurious publication, L’Art, invited Joe to run a London office for its sale, in connection with which he afterwards started an English version—Art and Letters—edited and largely written by himself.

Many funny incidents group themselves around the person of the French proprietor, whose English, though insistently fluent, was of the lamest, and I think Joe sometimes led him on in the expectation of some pleasant malapropism.

“How are you now?” he would ask, when the poor gentleman had “suffered the sea.”

“Only ’alf and ’alf, my friend,” the Frenchman would reply. “But I must back tonight. I make my trunk at four.” And his apt mots on the super-sensitive lady-assistant who “always begin to tear for nothing” and “forgive never man that he ’ave not married her” afforded Joe continual delight.

But a courtlier host than that Frenchman never existed. He would entertain us royally at the old Maison DorÉe when we went to Paris though he ate but little himself and always preferred the humbler CafÉ Duval; so little, in fact, was he in accord with most men of his nation upon the food question that, when Joe gave him the usual fish dinner at Greenwich, he was naturally dismayed at the explanation, after several courses had been passed by, of “Mon ami, je ne mange jamais du poisson.”

Art and Letters, though an artistic was not a financial success, but it may have led to the one of his many adventures of which he was perhaps the most proud: the planning and editing, at the request of Messrs. Macmillan, of their beautiful magazine, the English Illustrated.

He has spoken so well himself of his pleasant intercourse with the men who worked for him—struggling men in those days but known to fame since—that there is little left for me to record, save to note that among the many tributes from his many friends I prize not least those of his collaborators of that time, with the oft-repeated testimony to his having helped them to the first-rung on the ladder of success.

Mr. Stanley Weyman, whose first book, The House of the Wolf, was published in those pages, comes first to my mind, and those who have read my husband’s Eminent Victorians will recollect the striking proof of the accuracy of his critical faculty in the incident of Mr. Weyman’s bringing him two letters—written with an interval of many years—in which he criticized a play of that brilliant novelist’s in almost identical words, although the first letter was written openly to the author and the second—in forgetfulness of the fact—to a theatrical agent who had not divulged the playwright’s name.

Robert Louis Stevenson was one of his cherished contributors, and I recall an angry rebuke from that great man to the Editor, who had dared to strike out a word in the title of one of his articles at the moment of going to press; it is pleasant to add that a placated and highly amused reply followed on Joe’s deft and short method of extricating himself from the position: “My dear Stevenson—You see, I knew that the extra word was a slip of the pen,” he wrote, “for I should as soon have expected you to talk of female bitches as of male dogs. Yours etc.”

Sir James Barrie wrote one of his early essays for the English Illustrated Magazine, and in a kindred branch of the adventure—that of illustration—Mr. Hugh Thomson was discovered by Joe—a poor Irish lad living on the scanty pay of advertisements for a business firm, and devoting all his leisure to flights of fancy in the most delicate realms of the humorous eighteenth century subjects in which he has always excelled. Joe confessed to me on the day when the boy sought an interview, with his portfolio under his arm, that he did not at first believe he had done the drawings himself. But he gave him a subject, and when he returned with it after a day or two his doubts were set at rest, and he offered him the post which he held for so long with distinction.

The relations between editor and artist were always affectionate and I have two letters from the latter—one to Joe and one to myself—full of a touching gratitude such as perhaps only an Irishman could have expressed. The one quoted below is of later date.

So much for the affectionate reverence in which one held him who was starting life’s race when that “famous interview” took place. Joe was comparatively young himself then, but as the years went on there were many of greater disparity in age, who did not fail to pay him the same tribute; indeed, I don’t think there was ever any sense of difference in this respect between him and the many good comrades in many classes of society who rejoiced to work with him because he always lightened labour with kindness and good humour—who rejoiced to play with him because he was never afraid of, or at a loss for, the right word at the right moment, were it grave or gay, appreciative or pungent as the occasion required.

He was always the encourager, never the discourager, of sincere and patient effort: bombast and a pandering to mere popularity, he could censure with words of biting wit, but he never laughed at those who sent their arrows at the moon though he knew well enough that such might not achieve financial prosperity. His unfaltering advice was always that everyone should stick to what he best loved to do.

“My dear,” I remember his saying to me one day, when I had tried and signally failed to write a popular farce, “it takes a more competent fool than you to know just what kind of foolishness the public wants. Don’t you be put off what you can do because you fancy it is not what they want.”

And in a letter written perhaps in a more serious spirit to one often oppressed by a sense of failure I find the words: “There is no such thing as failure—excepting the failure to see and love the beauty of life.”

These are among the graver memories of him: his generation will remember him most readily for what Sir James Barrie, writing to me of him as “a man for whom I had a mighty admiration,” appreciatively describes as “his positive genius for conversation.” The latter word is so apt because it perceives that the Celtic gift of repartee was the most finely pointed of his arrows: he was generally at his best when some might have fancied that he was going to be non-plussed.

One day he told me of a dinner at which King Edward VII., then Prince of Wales, was the honoured guest. Someone had whispered to the Prince that my husband was a Radical, and he, turning to him, asked if such a thing could be true.

“I am a Radical, Sir,” replied Joe, and after a little pause added: “but I never mention it in respectable society.”

The table was silent for an instant, but the Prince led the way with a laugh and all was well.

A funny little incident, told me in the small hours when Joe came home, described the dire discomfiture of one of his greatest admirers when, having invited him to supper that he might silence “a conceited young ass” by his superior wit, the “conceited young ass” so fancied himself as to monopolize the whole conversation: this fiasco, though not to his own glorification, caused Joe infinite delight; but the disgusted host was only consoled after he had arranged a duel for my husband with Robert Marshall, the playwright, a recognised wit—the condition being that neither should think before speaking: I consider that here an unfair advantage was taken—any one who was a friend of Joe’s knowing full well that this was just the whip of which he loved the lash. Be it added that this tilt between the two knights cemented their friendship.

A host of these incidents took place in his well-loved Garrick Club, of which—by the testimony of many friends—he was the heart and soul and some add the good genius. I believe there were quarrels not a few that he averted or headed by his tact and kindly humour—quarrels that might sometimes have led to sorrowful decisions by the Club Committee to which he belonged. He told me one day of a humorous end to an earnest expostulation he had held with poor Harry Kemble—greatly beloved in spite of his known weakness: “Every word you say is true, my dear Joe,” the actor had replied with the tears streaming down his great cheeks—“but what if I like it?”

It is good to remember that that colossal figure—of which our daughter, seeing it on the stage when she was a child, asked tremulously, “Is it a human being?”—remained to the end an honoured institution of the Club.

Of Joe’s tactful capacity as a peacemaker I was a witness at the home of my mother’s family—the beautiful Gothic Abbey of Bisham near Marlow. We were staying with my cousin, George Vansittart, who was then the owner. He was the kindest of men, but had a peppery and ill-controlled temper, and nothing so inflamed it as the growing habit with trippers on the Thames of landing upon his grounds. His gardeners and keepers were sternly bidden to warn off these rash people, and he himself, if walking or shooting in Bisham woods—quite a mile from the Abbey—would angrily bid them begone.

One day he and Joe were sitting in his ground-floor library facing the river, when he espied a boat containing a lady and a man making across stream towards the big trees shading his lawns. He jumped up—his face flushed, and watched the man rise, a powerful figure, ship his sculls and push into shore. “By——, the insolent brute! Under my very nose!” shrieked the incensed squire. And, seizing a heavy stick he strode out of the French window—Joe following somewhat alarmed.

My cousin took no pains to soften the language with which he addressed “the insolent brute” before he was half-way across the lawn, and Joe hastened as he saw the big man step defiantly out of the boat while the woman wept and implored him unavailingly to return. Joe caught my cousin by the arm—he was getting on in years—for as he drew near he saw that the intruder was an actor—of no great refinement—known in the profession for a swaggering bully.

“There’s a lady in the boat, Mr. Vansittart,” said my husband. Instantly my cousin stopped, and the man, recognising Joe, greeted him surlily and presently turned back to his companion now fainting on the bank. Joe followed him, and George Vansittart, returning to the house, called out to his butler, who was hastening to the scene: “Take out some brandy and water for the lady and see she needs nothing.” Joe brought back a message of thanks from the poor thing, and was far too anxious lest the outbreak should affect my cousin’s health to mind his remark that he was to be congratulated upon his acquaintance.

Recurring to that appreciation of him by the young in his last years, which is one of the sweetest tributes to Joe’s memory, many alert and boyish faces rise up before me; eager over some animated discussion in which the give-and-take was always even between the older man and the younger, or alight with laughter at his quaint wit and merry censure of some foible of the day; for though he could laugh at its foibles he was never out of heart with the world, which was always to him a good world, even when he prophesied that, through some crucible, the crazes of the last twenty years would have to pass for elimination. “They have got to have this epidemic,” he would say of Cubist painter and eccentric poet, “but they’ll get over it, and meanwhile the good old world will go on quietly as usual and young folk will fall in love and want poets to sing for them and so the best things must come to the top in the end.”

Apart from this sort of, as he called it, “half-baked” thought, he was always ready to weigh and consider every new aspect of life; and if no passing mode could deceive him or put him out of heart, either with his life-long heroes or with his own methods of expression; yet to the last hour he was always keen—not only for fresh work himself, but to see the work of the world develop. In the words of Mr. Stopford Brooke, quoted in the Life by Prof. L. P. Jacks, he would have said: “Whether in this world or another we will pursue, we will overtake, we will divide the spoil.”

And so, whether he were hanging over the garden gate of our holiday home gathering information from the labourers who passed along the road, or discussing ethical problems with his sons and their friends, he was always “pursuing”—and the young were always at home with him, for he never wanted to lead only to express his opinion and listen to their reply.

One of these younger men—Mr. Hammond, by no means an “obscure” one—writes: “There have been few men whose companionship was so delightful to all who had the privilege of knowing him.... I always remember with gratitude that he allowed even young and obscure people to enjoy the pleasure of his best conversation—one of the rarest intellectual pleasures that I have ever known.”

And Mr. Hugh Sidgwick—killed in the prime of his own rare intellectual career—follows with what might be called an echo: “I can’t say how much I owe to him and to you for the many happy hours I spent at your house. He never let the barrier of the generations stand between him and us young men and we all of us looked on him as a real friend and the most delightful of companions. There are memories of many good talks and jovial discussions—with Mr. Carr always leading and contributing more than his share of life and vivacity to them. And it was inspiring to us—more perhaps than appeared—to meet one who was so young in heart, so full of life and so sensitive to all the beauties of all the arts.”

The words of W. A. Moore—blessed with his own Celtic temperament and eager fighting quality—sound the same note:

“It was a great thing to have known him,” he writes from Salonica, “I can never forget him for he was a most radiant personality.” It is a curious thing that a kindred epithet—“joyous personality”—was a favourite one of his own, and he would maintain that you could see two men in the Seven Dials—one lean, soured and scowling, his companion stout, merry, humorous and full of vitality, though both dwelt on the same gutter and wore the same threadbare garments.

It is, of course, quite impossible to give on paper any idea whatever of the charm and brilliancy which these and many more testimonies prove; to quote some words spoken by our friend Sir Arthur Pinero, “It is rather like trying to remember the summers of years ago!” and he left so few letters, possibly because he possessed that “genius of conversation,” that he has few words to say for himself; but it may not be inappropriate here to quote two which he wrote to an old friend who had affectionately watched his whole career and highly appraised his powers and judgment.

The first is in answer to an appeal as to whether it showed “symptoms of senile decay” not to be able to admire The Hound of Heaven by Francis Thompson, which had been hailed with a shout of praise from a section of the public. I quote it as showing Joe’s own confession of faith in regard to the poetry that endures.

In relation to the above I cannot refrain from quoting an appreciation of my husband written some little while later by the late Theodore Watts Dunton. He had asked for news of his old friend after his first serious illness, and the following passage occurs in his acknowledgment of the reply:

“Although he belongs to a later generation than mine, he and I are as intimate as brothers and I deeply prize the intimacy. There is no man on this earth whom I love more. Moreover I have always asserted that he is a man of genius—a true poet, with wings clipped, for the present, by the conditions of life.”

As his intimates know, Charles Dickens was one of the brightest stars in my husband’s firmament. During all the years of our marriage, I never remember him without a volume of Dickens and one of Boswell’s Life of Johnson beside his bed. Many a “night’s talk” with the life-long friend to whom he wrote as above had been devoted to ineffectual attempts to converting him to a real appreciation of Dickens—attempts which, as the following letters show, were finally successful.

Later this was his great indictment of the Cubists also, well known to his friends in the Club.

The following letter is to the same correspondent written during the last year of his life and in much more satisfied mood on the subject of his hero.