A call to the Bar and a residence in the Temple necessitate a somewhat intimate acquaintance with Fleet Street. But, of course, they do not make of one a Fleet Street man in the journalistic meaning of that phrase. Some time was to pass yet ere I could regard myself as free of the street—so to say. The haunts of the Templar are not those of the Pressman. The former, when of an afternoon he quits the “dusty purlieus of the Law,” usually hastens westward. The haunts of the journalist are in Fleet Street itself. Yet it was to barristers, after all, that I owed my initiation into the mysteries of the newspaper world.

In those days a considerable number of young barristers—and some old ones—were more or less dependent on their contributions to the Press for an income. Tired of idling in chambers and

“Beckoning the tardy briefs,
The briefs that never came.”

they had struck boldly off into the whirling, throbbing life that surrounded their quiet cloisters. Among those who were to influence my career at this stage were “Willie” Dixon, son of Hepworth Dixon, the author of “Spiritual Wives” and other books which had a mighty vogue in their day and seem now to be forgotten; Patrick Macdonald, a Scotsman with a knowledge of Law that would have landed him on the Bench had he lived to justify the opinion of the solicitors who “discovered” him too late; and Robert Williams. To the former gentlemen I owed my introduction to the Savage Club, where for a time I became a frequent visitor, though not qualified for membership under their drastic first rule—a rule which has, I understand, become considerably relaxed, in order to give admission to that Mammon of Unrighteousness with which clubmen, among others, are commanded to “make friends.” Here, for the first time, I met some of the practical journalists—the men whose profession it was to feed the palpitating monsters of Fleet Street with their mighty pabulum of “copy.”

But my real introducer was Williams. It was to his influence that I was indebted for my “chance.” His unerring advice, his ungrudging assistance, his fine faith in my aptitude, made the beginning easy for me. Robert Williams was, perhaps, the most remarkable man of his time in the Street of Adventure. He was a Welshman, with but little of the Welsh temperament save the hopefulness characteristic of that race. He was a graduate of Jesus College, Oxford, becoming thereafter a Fellow of Merton. His nickname at the University was “Scholar” Williams, which sufficiently indicates the sort of reputation he had acquired. He was one of the finest Greek scholars of his day. His “Notes on Aristotle” are still regarded as authoritative by examiners. He was, I think, tutor both to Lord Rosebery and Lord Lansdowne. He was a member of the Reform Club before he had ever seen Pall Mall. Lord Rosebery took a great interest in the career of Williams after he left Oxford and had flung himself into Fleet Street, for he married and threw up his Fellowship.

Lord Rosebery’s influence took an extremely practical turn. For instance, he bought the Examiner for Williams. But the “Scholar,” although a very accomplished contributor, had not been cut out by Nature for an editor. This he proved, not only in his conduct of the Examiner, but in the founding and editorial management of a venture which followed. He sold the property which Lord Rosebery had made over to him, and with the proceeds started a weekly illustrated paper called Sketch—to be distinguished from The Sketch belonging to the Ingram group, a much more recent candidate for popular favour. The capital which Williams had acquired by the sale of the Examiner was only sufficient to keep his new venture running for a few weeks. He transferred it to an owner of sporting papers, in whose hands it died the death.

But the finest journalistic work of “Scholar” Williams may be seen in his leading articles in the Daily Telegraph. For some years he was retained on the staff of that journal, transferring his services eventually to the Standard. He had a prodigious memory. In that respect he was the equal of Lord Macaulay. Indeed, at Oxford he was always regarded as a “coming Lord Macaulay.” He knew Dickens by heart, and his apposite quotations from that author are more frequent than allusions from Aristotle. He had a very keen sense of humour, and in exercising his gifts in that way he had no sort of compunction. Indeed, I fear that to his habit of “giving away the secrets of the Prison House” in humorous recital and to mixed audiences may be attributed the events which immediately preceded his transference from Peterborough Court to Shoe Lane.

A striking appearance was that of Robert Williams. I can recall vividly his form at this moment as he makes his way down Fleet Street. In figure he was a miniature Dr. Johnson—bulky, short in the neck and short in the sight. He had a broad, clean-shaven face, and, so far as his features were concerned, possessed the true forensic aspect. He went always clad in black, and invariably proceeded down the street with a book or a paper held close to his eyes. As he forged his way ahead he constantly collided with citizens hastening in the opposite direction. These frequent impacts did not seem to retard his progress or inconvenience in any way the stolid scholar who walked slowly and serenely on, oblivious of the frequent rebukes and objurgations which his progress evoked. He had a loud metallic voice, which in conversation was always raised, so that his observations were heard by persons at a considerable distance off. His laugh—well it did you good to hear Williams laugh at a joker, his own or another’s.

Williams, too, was a man who could not only laugh at a joke against himself, but could even tell a joke against himself. One of these stories is worth recalling in this place, although it has to do, not with his journalistic, but with his barristerial work. I may perhaps premise this, as elucidatory of the point of the narrative: Montagu Williams was at that time one of the most popular men at the Criminal Bar. He was the terror of evil-doers. And if he were engaged for the prosecution, the unfortunate man in the dock often pleaded guilty, “lest a worse thing happen unto him.”

It happened that Robert Williams was briefed one day to prosecute a prisoner for burglary. The trial took place at the Old Bailey, and Williams was seated just beneath the dock, and well within hearing of anything that might transpire there. The prisoner was duly put forward, the indictment read, and the malefactor asked to plead. Williams then heard the following whispered colloquy take place between the accused man and the warder:

“Who’s a-prosecutin’ me?” inquired the caged gaol-bird.

“Mr. Williams,” whispered the warder.

“Guilty, me lord!” said the prisoner to the court in the accent of penitential despair.

In due course Williams rose to enlighten the tribunal as to certain incidents in the previous career of the individual whom he was endeavouring to consign to “chokey.” The thread of his narrative was, however, cut by the following conversation, hurriedly battledored between the burglar and his custodian:

“I thort,” said the man, indignantly reproachful, “you said as Mister Williams was a-prosecutin’ me.”

“Well,” replied the warder, “that is Mr. Williams—Mr. Robert Williams.”

“Oh!” exclaimed the prisoner, as one become the subject of a sudden illumination. “I thought you meant Mr. Montagu Williams. I ain’t a-goin’ to plead guilty to that little beggar. . . . Not Guilty, me lord!”

It is satisfactory to be able to add that on this occasion, and in spite of his amended plea. Williams succeeded in consigning his cynical detractor to a long term of imprisonment.Once I accompanied Williams to the Court of Queen’s Bench. On that occasion he was less triumphant. It was at the old Courts in Westminster. Williams had to move for a new trial before three of Her Majesty’s Judges. One of them happened to be Blackburn. Williams moved on three points. He had said but a few words on the first of these heads, when Blackburn, with that brutal disregard for the susceptibilities of the Junior Bar for which he was notorious, cut my unfortunate friend short with the request: “Get on with your next point.”

Somewhat abashed, Williams proceeded to open his second argument. He had barely stated his point, when his tormentor again interrupted with—

“Let us hear what you’ve got to say about your third reason.”

Williams was nettled. The influential solicitor who had instructed him was in court. He felt that he must make a stand for his client.

“I trust, my lord, that I am not irrelevant,” he ventured, with a tone of offended dignity.

“But you are!” was the brusque retort of Blackburn (J.).

The effect of this rebuff was so considerable that Williams attacked his third point without spirit, without interruption, and without success.

I have said that some of the finest journalistic work of Robert Williams appeared as “leaders” in the Daily Telegraph. I might go farther. In my opinion, some of those leading articles were, for trip, style, reasoning, and allusiveness, the best things that had ever appeared in that newspaper. I am speaking now of the best of Williams, for he was an unequal writer, and his success depended much on the sympathy evoked by his subject. He threw the essays off with consummate ease. I remember congratulating him on this wonderful facility.

“Nothing in it, my dear fellow,” he replied. “You’ve only to follow strictly the rule of our office, and your leader will come as easy as sand off a shovel.”

“And the rule?”

“All leaders,” he replied, “are divided into three paragraphs, and no paragraph must begin with the word ‘The.’ Simple, ain’t it? Eh, what?”

An answer which seemed rather to argue that, his extraordinary journalistic capacity notwithstanding, he regarded the Press with a sentiment not far removed from cynical contempt.

And yet to have taken a first place as a writer on a journal boasting such a staff as the Telegraph then possessed should have gratified the ambition of any ordinary man. Mr. (subsequently Sir) Edwin Arnold was really Editor, though nominally working under the direction of Mr. Edward Lawson (now Lord Burnham). A courteous and accomplished gentleman, Arnold will perhaps be remembered by posterity in respect of his “Light of Asia.” That poem was an awakening for the easy-going, slow-thinking, credulous, missionary-meeting-supporting British public, who had been taught from infancy that Buddha was a false god, and the centre of a foul and degrading faith. To Sir Edwin Arnold is mainly due the fact that in England to-day there are thousands who have some appreciation of the life and the doctrines of “the teacher of Nirvana and the Law.” Sir Edwin had the courage of his Oriental convictions. He chose as his second wife a Japanese lady.

But the writer who had given the Telegraph its peculiar cachet, and whose work was readily recognized by the readers of the paper, was George Augustus Sala. Sala, I maintain, was the best all-round journalist of his time. Nothing came amiss to him. Although the Saturday and Matthew might affect to sneer at the erudition of his “leaders,” it may be mentioned here that those superior critics sometimes mistook for Sala’s the work of Williams, whose scholarship was at least equal to that of the detractors. As a descriptive writer, Sala was quite without a rival, and the public soon “tumbled” to his piping. The early vogue of the “Telly” was due to his brilliant and unceasing series of pen-pictures. One saw the pageants that he wrote about. Coronations, royal functions, the marriage of Princes, great cathedral services—these incidents lived again in his vivid columns. Sala’s versatility was amazing. He wrote at least one remarkable novel; he illustrated some of his own humours; he is the author of a ballad—printed for private circulation only—of which Swift would have been proud. His “Conversion of Colonel Quagg” is one of the most humorous short stories ever written. He wrote an excellent burlesque for the Gaiety Theatre. His articles on Hogarth, contributed to the Cornhill, at the suggestion of Thackeray, exhibit him as an art critic of insight and of profound technical knowledge. His lectures on the conflict between North and South, delivered on his return from his mission as Special Correspondent during the American War, drew the town. He was a fine linguist, and, at a time when the art of after-dinner speaking was still held in some repute, he was easily first among many rivals. In the preface to one of his books, he says of the proprietors of the paper with which he was identified: “They accorded me the treatment of a gentleman and the wages of an Ambassador.” It is pleasant to be able to reflect that, however high the scale of remuneration may have been, Sala was always worth a bit more than his pay.

There is one phrase of Sala’s which, by means of quotation, has become a household word. “‘Sir,’ said Dr. Johnson, ‘let us take a walk down Fleet Street,’” is piously repeated even by well-informed literary persons as a saying of the great dictionary-maker duly recorded in Boswell’s “Life.” Johnson and Boswell were both innocent of it. The saw was one of Sala’s harmless forgeries, and was used by him as the motto of Temple Bar when he edited that magazine. There appeared in Punch one week a clever skit entitled “Egoes of the Week.” This was a travesty of an article which Sala was then contributing to the Illustrated London News under the title of “Echoes of the Week.” The parody was merciless, and, as some thought, malicious. The weaknesses of Sala’s manner were rendered with laughable exaggeration. His peculiarities of diction were ruthlessly imitated and emphasized. Some of his friends hoped to see him incensed, and looked forward eagerly for reprisals. But Sala took the attack lying down, emulating the spirit of his own Colonel Quagg. And the reason for this evidence of magnanimity under attack somewhat puzzled his associates until it was discovered that the Punch parody was written by Sala himself!

Godfrey Turner was another of the “handy-men” of the Telegraph. He had not that Élan in style which characterized his colleague Sala, but he was a most agreeable essayist, and turned out some extremely neat vers de sociÉtÉ. His song, supposed to be written by Boswell on Dr. Johnson, has genuine humour. Boswell sets out sober in the first stanza; he becomes merry as he proceeds; when he gets to the last verse he is drunk, and blurts out his real opinion of the great lexicographer. That catastrophic verse ran something like this, I think:

“‘The man that makes a pun,’ says he,
‘Would e’en commit a felony.
And hanged he deserves to be’—
Says (hic) that old fool Doctor Johnson.”

Turner was a bit of a purist, and sought always for the fittest word; and he was as particular in his dress as in his “copy.” He was a stickler for “good form,” and sometimes, when engaged on a mission, would offer a gentle hint to some eager correspondent whose manner in public offended his fastidious taste. Sometimes the hint was taken in good part; sometimes it was resented. On one occasion it secured for poor Godfrey a retort which covered him for a moment with ridicule. It happened in this way:

Some sapient person in society had come to the conclusion that the ordinary coffin was not constructed on the right hygienic principles. He contended that we should, when our turns came, be buried in coffins made of wicker-work. He constructed quite a number of these melancholy receptacles. They were brought to Stafford House for exhibition, and the leaders of Society and the representatives of the Press were invited to inspect. I attended the quaint and rather gruesome collection. Among the other journalists present were my friend Godfrey Turner and Humphreys, the sub-Editor of the Morning Post. Humphreys was an Irishman, a hopelessly eccentric individual, negligent in his dress and flamboyant in his manner. He was a fine fellow, however, had a head and beard like those attributed to Homer, and was every inch a gentleman. His foible was a belief in spiritualism. That he really believed in the actual presence of the dear departed I am convinced, for I have been in his company in the Strand and close to the offices of his own paper when he has interrupted the conversation to speak with the spirit of his great-grandfather, which had just made its presence known to him. The coffins at Stafford House seemed to appeal to his sense of humour. He became quite hilarious over them, and addressed several of the noble persons present by name, slapping belted Earls on the back, and repeating his cemetery jokes for the benefit of Countesses. This affronted the fastidious taste of Turner, who at last got Humphreys into a corner, and thus gently admonished him:

“I say, my dear fellow, do let us try and behave like gentlemen!”

“Thry away, me boy. It costs me no effort!” exclaimed Humphreys, leaving his discomfited friend for the society of a Viscount.

Clement Scott was another of the “young lions.” He was not very popular with the other members of the staff. Sala, I know, disliked him, for he told me so. Scott was the dramatic critic of the paper. He wrote a sugary, young-ladylike style that “took” with a large section of the public. It was a chocolate-creamy style, and “went down”—like chocolate creams. He understood the value of a phrase, and when he got hold of an effective one he ran it to death. For instance, there are poppies in the cornfields round Cromer. Probably there is a much greater profusion of poppies in cornfields in Kent or in Bucks, but Scott gives to Cromer a kind of monopoly in the right sort of poppy. The country in that part of East Anglia he “wrote up” as “Poppyland,” to the great advantage of the Great Eastern Railway Company, to which corporation he became a sort of unofficial Poet Laureate. When I first knew him, Scott had not yet “discovered” Cromer or written the syrupy sentiments of “The Garden of Sleep.” He was eloquent at that period over the beauties of the Isle of Thanet, for “Clemmy” was a personal friend of Mr. Joseph Moses Levy, the principal proprietor of the Telegraph, and was frequently his guest somewhere in the neighbourhood of Ramsgate. Clement Scott always took himself very seriously. Now, that was a pose rarely adopted by the journalists of my day. We regarded our calling as a means of obtaining a livelihood, certainly, and to that extent a serious occupation, but in the pursuit of it we gave ourselves no airs. We considered the whole business rather good fun, and were upheld by a consciousness of the fact that we were all more or less humbugs. Scott’s nonsense, however, suited the nonsense of the followers of Peterborough Court, and at a time of general scepticism it was refreshing to encounter a man who believed in something, even if that something happened to be himself.

Another of the “young lions” who roared in the Peterborough Court menagerie was Drew Gay. Phil Robinson perched for a while on the staff, and flitted elsewhere. All those I have named have finished their accounts with this world. Bennet Burleigh still lives, a prosperous gentleman, and the doyen of war-correspondents. Burleigh professed strong Socialistic principles at a time when they were regarded by respectable people as the most damnable heresies. My first experience of a Socialist Club was gained through Bennet Burleigh. He introduced me one night to the Social Democratic Club. This select association held its meetings in the cellars of a new building in Chancery Lane. One had to dive down two flights of stone steps to the subterranean rooms of the club. The rooms were full of gaunt, long-haired men of both home and foreign growth, and women in clinging (and not very cleanly) raiment. Whiskies and sodas were hospitably dispensed, and most of the women were smoking cigarettes and trying to look as though they were quite used to it and liked it. I encountered Dr. Tanner, the Member for Mid-Cork. He introduced me to a bright, interesting old lady, whose name I forget. We had an edifying chat, she and I, and when, a few nights afterwards, I met Tanner in the Lobby of the House of Commons, I asked him about the lady to whom he had introduced me.“Oh,” replied Tanner good-humouredly, “that was the celebrated Madeline Smith. She is a married woman now.”

“You don’t mean Madeline Smith, the murderess?” I asked.

“I mean Madeline Smith, who was tried for murder, and for whom the jury found a Scotch verdict of ‘Not proven,’” he reminded me.

“And of such is the Social Democratic Club?” I observed.

“Que voulez-vous?” said Tanner, shrugging his shoulders.

But I have wandered somewhat wide of the matter in hand, which was to afford a little idea of the principal members of the staff among whom Robert Williams became enrolled.

Fleet Street—the thoroughfare itself, I mean—has undergone considerable change since those days. Nearly all the Dickens features have been shorn away from it, and the Dickens-land that impinged upon it has ceased to be recognizable. From the West we then entered Fleet Street through Temple Bar. In the north wing of that historic but obstructive gateway an old barber plied his calling. He reminded me of Mr. Krook in “Bleak House.” He was never what you would call quite sober. His face was blotched and fiery with his excesses, and his hand that held the razor trembled so violently that one wondered how he got through the day without wounding some of his customers. Once the operation commenced, however, the trembling ceased, and the razor sped unerring, steady, expert. What became of the old fellow when Temple Bar was taken down I have never heard. He would hardly, I imagine, have survived his disestablishment.

Sir Henry Meux bought the old structure, and had the Bar erected again as one of the entrances to Theobald Park. I have no doubt that Lady Meux had a word to say in the matter, for Lady Meux was a “sport” all over. I first knew her as Valerie Reece, of the Gaiety Theatre, where she was noted as being the most high-spirited of an extremely high-spirited lot. Her early days at Theobald Park were remarkable for some sporting events of a novel and exciting kind. Thus—or so the story went—her ladyship ordered a cargo of monkeys from India, and had the unfortunate Simian immigrants let loose in the park. As they fled gibbering from branch to branch, the determined little sportswoman took pot-shots at them, and had good fun while the supply held out.

Close by Temple Bar stood the old “Cock” Tavern. It was a snug, smelly, inconvenient, homely, stuffy, and (I should imagine) hopelessly insanitary old crib, much resorted to by barristers at lunch-time, for the chops and steaks were excellent. The “Cock” port was also reputed above reproach, but I never quite acquired the port habit, and should not like to obtrude my opinion; but I “hae ma doots.” The tavern will live for a while in Tennyson’s lines:

“O plump head-waiter at the Cock,
To which I most resort.
How goes the time? ’Tis five o’clock.
Go fetch a pint of port.”

And one notes here that Tennyson owns up to the barbarous custom of drinking port at five o’clock in the afternoon! Well, the “Cock” has gone by the board. A curious incident disturbed its declining days. A carved rooster was the sign of the tavern, and stood over the narrow entrance in Fleet Street. While the owner was under notice to quit his building, the sign was stolen one night, and has never been recovered from that day to this. Another “Cock” Tavern has been opened on the opposite side of Fleet Street, and lower down. This place also displays as its sign a carved rooster, which is believed to be the original from over the way. But it is not the original bird. That ancient fowl has become the property of the great American people. The wonder to me is how they missed collaring Temple Bar!

The widening of Fleet Street by throwing back the building line of the south side has naturally involved the removal of a good number of landmarks; and even where the widening has not been carried out, one observes, with certain pangs of regret, the disappearance of some well-beloved feature. The banking-house of Hoare (“Mr. W.,” as the squeamish lady called him) still stands, the carved wallet in its forefront bearing witness to the “pride that apes humility.”

But Gosling’s, as I knew it, is gone. Gosling’s I have always identified with Tellson’s in “A Tale of Two Cities.” “It was very small, very dark, very ugly, very incommodious. . . . After bursting open a door of idiotic obstinacity with a weak rattle in its throat, you fell into Tellson’s down two steps, and came to your senses in a miserable little shop, with two little counters where the oldest of men made your cheque shake as if the wind rustled it while they examined the signature by the dingiest of windows, which were always under a shower-bath of mud from Fleet Street.” The description exactly fits Gosling’s before it got itself a new faÇade and became the mere branch of a bigger bank. And the Dickens Fellowship should have looked to it, and preserved for the nation this memorial of the master.

Close by was a shop for the sale of mechanical toys, in the window of which a steamer laboured heavily in a sou’-westerly gale, the rolling waves kept in a state of agitation by clockwork, and the whole effect being particularly real and naturalistic. The proprietor of this scientific toy-shop was eventually attacked by the virus that runs through Fleet Street. He became a newspaper proprietor, and a successful one. His translation happened in this way: Young Kenealy, son of the eminent but erratic counsel for the Claimant, founded a paper called Modern Society. His pious object was to rehabilitate his late father, and this could only be accomplished by reopening the whole of the dreary Tichborne case, of which the public was heartily sick. The paper did not pay, and it was eventually acquired, as a property, by the owner of the clockwork ocean. He, worthy man, had no axe to grind. He retained the services of a pliant editor, and made the organ a vehicle for that sort of gossip which goes down so well with suburban matrons. The paper went up by leaps and bounds. The new proprietor gave himself airs, dressed the part, exhibited himself in the Park, and in a brief period had managed to shed all traces of the obsequious Fleet Street tradesman. He crossed the bar years since—perhaps in his mechanical steamer—but his paper persists to this day.

At the corner of Chancery Lane, and above the shop of Partridge and Cooper, was a new restaurant called “The London.” The proprietor was a sanguine man, but made the mistake of being a little before his time. The Fleet Street men of his period preferred to lunch and dine uncomfortably. The owner of “The London” did us too well, and attended too scrupulously to the nicer amenities of the table. We tried the establishment, and then returned to our husks. Outside the new restaurant stood a burly commissionaire, with puffy red cheeks and purple nose. When the restaurant closed its doors for ever, the commissionaire remained, eager to perform the errands of all and sundry. He was rather a picturesque old fellow, and was for a long time one of the features of that end of the street. He wore a red shako, which added greatly to the picturesqueness of his appearance, and I should not be surprised to learn that in private life he drank heavily.

The favourite luncheon haunts of the journalist in the consulate of Plancus were the Cheshire Cheese in Wine Office Court, and the refreshment bar of Spiers and Pond at Ludgate Hill Railway-Station. At the latter place, between the hours of one and three, you were pretty certain to meet a number of confrÈres. Christopher Pond, one of the partners who ran the bar and restaurant at Ludgate Hill, was to be seen here on most days of the week. He was a big, broad-shouldered, hearty man, who made no secret of his desire to conciliate the members of the London Press. Among those who were daily worshippers at this shrine were Tom Hood, the Editor of Fun; Henry Sampson, then one of Hood’s staff, but afterwards to become famous as the founder of the Referee: “Bill” Brunton, the artist; Charles Williams, the war-correspondent; and John Augustus O’Shea, of the Standard. John Corlett used to drop in occasionally, and John Ryder, who lived down the line, invariably called in on his way to the theatre. Ryder was a fine raconteur, and he had the largest and most varied assortment of amusing reminiscences of any man I have ever met. Mr. Henry Labouchere used to tell a story of “Jack” Ryder which was eminently characteristic of the actor. When Labouchere produced “The Last Days of Pompeii” at the old Queen’s Theatre in Long Acre, Ryder was his stage-manager, and, in his desire to make the production as naturalistic as possible, he asked Labouchere to obtain some real lions. Labouchere demurred; Ryder pleaded.

“But,” objected Labouchere at last, “suppose the lions broke loose?”

“Well,” answered John cheerily, “they’d have to eat the band first.”

Another habituÉ of the Ludgate Hill resort was Louis Lewis. This extraordinary little man was a brother of the late George Lewis. Like his more illustrious relative, Louis also was a solicitor. One day Brunton had been having his lunch at the table in the corner, and before leaving the artist had made a drawing, on the tablecloth, of a somewhat Rabelaisian character. Louis Lewis entered as Brunton left, and took the seat which had been vacated by the artist. He at once saw the drawing, which appealed to such sense of humour as he possessed, and began to ogle it, laughing with a peculiar subdued chuckle which was peculiarly his own. At that moment Christopher Pond happened to come in. He noticed the mirth of little Louis, and proceeded to ascertain the cause of it. When he grasped the gross intention of the drawing, and as he conceived Lewis to be the author of it, he became extremely indignant, ordered his waiters to turn the innocent and protesting man off the premises, and informed those trembling menials that if any of them ever served the offender again it would mean instant dismissal. The smirched cloth was then removed, and at the laundry all evidence that could convict the real culprit was in due course destroyed. But the incensed solicitor served a writ on Pond the very next day, and the action was “settled out of court.”

There was a gentleman connected with the sporting Press in the seventies called Barney Briant. No one knew exactly what it was he wrote, or whether he wrote at all, but he had obtained an undoubted reputation as a sporting writer of parts. His most salient physical peculiarity consisted in the fact that his elbows seemed to have become glued to his sides. If Barney shook hands with a man—and he was for ever shaking hands—he moved his arm from the elbow only, never from the shoulder. I observed on this peculiarity to Reginald Shirley Brooks (assuredly one of the most amiable and most talented of the men of his time), and his explanation was illuminating.

“You see,” said Shirley, “Barney spends nearly the whole day in the narrow passage in front of the Cheshire Cheese bar. To do this in comfort, he has to keep his elbows well screwed in, to let the customers pass to and from the dining-room. In the course of generations the arms of his descendants will grow from the waist.”

The incident is recorded in this place as illustrating better than any mere verbal description the exiguous nature of the main passages of the Cheshire Cheese. The bar in the passage has been disestablished this many a year. It was a sort of glass case with barely room for two barmaids, a beer-engine, and some shelves of bottles. Sala called it “the bird-cage,” and the name stuck to the structure ever after. In recent years the Cheshire Cheese has attracted a considerable clientele on a claim that it was the favourite Fleet Street resort of Dr. Johnson. Mr. Seymour Lucas, the Royal Academician, indeed, adopted the theory without any exhaustive inquiry, and painted a picture in which the Great Bear is depicted “taking his ease” in this inn. There are some things which we may not know about the author of “Rasselas,” but among them, most assuredly, cannot be numbered the houses of entertainment which he frequented. Boswell followed old man Johnson about to all his “pubs,” and the fact that there is no mention in Boswell’s “Life” of his hero having visited the “Cheese” is evidence presumptive that he never did visit it. In his time the tavern in Wine Office Court was the nightly resort of the respectable tradesmen of Fleet Street who still lived above their shops—the last sort of company upon which the Doctor would think of intruding.But if the Johnson legend must be dismissed as mythical, the chops, steaks, beefsteak puddings, and stewed cheeses, were substantial and indisputable. Godfrey Turner wrote in one of the Christmas annuals, then in great favour, a description of a meal at the Cheshire Cheese. The thing was wonderfully well done, and gave considerable umbrage to the proprietor, and to some of the literary gentlemen whom the writer introduced. The waiter in the room downstairs was one Tom Brown, who used to drive up from his place in the suburbs in a smart dogcart. William, who had no other name, was a short red-haired man with (appropriately enough) mutton-chop whiskers, very prominent teeth, a pink-and-white complexion, and a perennial sheep-like smile. Diners gave him their orders with minute particularity, assured that he would communicate their wishes to the cook, which William never did. This is the sort of thing that would happen:

First Customer: “A mutton chop very well done, please, waiter.”

William: “Well done, sir? Yessir.”

Second Customer: “Underdone chop, William.”

William: “Chop underdone, sir? Very good, sir.”

[Exit William.

William (heard without): “Cook, two muts down together, cook!”

On Saturday an enormous beefsteak pudding delightfully fortified with larks, oysters, mushrooms, and other seasoning, was served. This monster of the pudding tribe was put down to boil at one o’clock in the morning, and was served with great ceremony at one o’clock on the afternoon of the same day. Moore, the proprietor, cut the savoury mountain up. Every seat was taken a quarter of an hour before the dish made its appearance, and late-comers had to turn disconsolate away. On one fateful morning—a cold, foggy day in mid-winter—the usual congregation of pudding-worshippers had gathered together, hungry, expectant, keen-set. At the stroke of one the step of William was heard on the stair, and a pungent steam was wafted to the waiting gourmets. Then all at once was heard a slip, a groan, and, last of all, an awful crash. William, with the pudding in his arms, had slipped on the top of the flight of stairs leading to the hall, and the place was flooded with broken pudding-bowl and dismembered pudding, now mixing itself ineffectually with the sawdust of the floor. Mingled sighs and oaths arose on all sides. The mischief was, alas! irreparable.

After this, William was pensioned off by Moore, but the devoted old man could not be induced to quit the scene in which most of his life had been passed. He was not permitted to resume his official position as a waiter, but he turned up every morning at his usual time, and remained on the premises until closing-time. They were puzzled at first what to do with him. At last it was resolved to put him into a leather apron, and let him pretend to be having a very busy time in the cellar. From that cool and cobwebby grot he made frequent emergences during meal-times to indulge the one pleasure left him—that of a little familiar talk with an old customer. One day William was missed and his old customers knew instinctively that he was dead. The old fellow left considerable personality and some real estate.

I have now tried to sketch, however indifferently, some of the centres round which the Fleet Street maelstrom roared. Ceaselessly for more than twenty years I whirled round and round in its irresistible eddies. One never hoped, one never wished, for deliverance from the seething circle. Once caught up in it, the daily round was discovered to possess a fascination overwhelming, imperious, inexorable. It was a career the most strenuous, at once, and the most irresponsible. There was a sense of freedom, yet one was a slave of the lamp; a feeling of power, yet one was the mere mouthpiece of an organ. By the outsider one was alternately hated and courted, and one went one’s way.

As free-lance, as a member of a “staff,” as special correspondent, as leader-writer, book-reviewer, and dramatic critic, my experience has been considerable, and I have generally found my work delightful; but its greatest charm, after all, has been in the society of the comrades whom I have met by the way. Good-fellowship, loyalty to one another, a fine sense of chivalry, a constant readiness to help the lame dog over the style, a stern ostracism of the unhappy wight who evinced a congenital inability to play the game—these were the characteristics of the men of my time. Sitting down in the afternoon of my day to recall that pleasant past, I now, as I intimated in my opening chapter, drop all pretence of sequent autobiography, and proceed to present such groups and incidents, such characters and scenes, such mots and anecdotes, as may appeal to those who live in another time and pursue their calling under other conditions.