PERFECTLY UNAUTHENTIC ANECDOTES.
which may be reproduced (with the permission of Mr. Punch) in any forthcoming volume of Anybody's Reminiscences.
"You do things so sketchily and casually," said FRITH to WHISTLER one day. "Now when I paint a picture I take pains. 'The Derby Day' cost me weeks and months of sleeplessness. I did nothing else; I gave my whole mind to it." "Oh," said WHISTLER, "that's where it's gone to, is it?"
When Mr. BERNARD SHAW made his tour of the ports in order to popularise Socialism in the Navy, he was courteously received at Portsmouth by Sir HEDWORTH MEUX. The talk happened to turn on the theatre, and the Admiral was candid enough to confess himself somewhat at sea with regard to the merits of contemporary writers. "Now, Mr. SHAW," he said in his breezy way, "I wish you would tell me who is the most eminent of the playwrights of to-day?" "Ay, ay, Sir," said Mr. SHAW promptly.
Dr. Brotherton told me that he was once with MATTHEW ARNOLD in an election crowd at Oxford, when the Professor of Poetry accidentally collided with a working-man flown with Radicalism and beer. "Go to blazes!" said the proletarian. "My friend," replied ARNOLD, "we are well met. In me you see the official representative of Literature, whereas you, I perceive, stand for Dogma."
Mrs. Brown of Newquay, who claims to be the original Mrs. Partington, told me that SYDNEY SMITH'S last years were overclouded by his inability to discover the riddle to which the answer is contained in the words, "The one rode a horse and the other rode a dendron."
Probably few people remember a Nottinghamshire poet of an earlier day who fulfilled with much conscientiousness the duties of local laureate. It was the age of Notts's pre-eminence in cricket, and that, with other reasons, inspired the bard to write some verses which opened with the line, "Is there a county to compare with Notts?" The county of Derby was jealous of its neighbour in other things besides sport, and considered itself to have scored when its own tame minstrel retorted with a parody ending:—
"Is there a county to compare with Notts?
Lots!"
Unfortunately the thing was catching, and other counties did their best to follow suit, though with considerable difficulty as to rhymes. I think it was a singer of Tavistock who won the laurels. After disposing of an adjacent rival with the contemptuous jingle, "Dorset—Curse it!" he wound up:—
"Is there a country to compare with Devon?
Heaven!"
Lady Crownderby once told me that she was among the first to see Lord HOUGHTON on his return from Spain, and she asked him what he thought of Spanish women in comparison with those of our own country. "My dear lady," replied HOUGHTON, "I feel like LOT when he escaped from the Cities of the Plain."
At a dinner given in honour of her nephew's appointment to a Rural Deanery, Mrs. Hinkson-Hanksey told me that she once rallied DISRAELI on his lack of religious profession, saying how much it compromised him in the eyes of many of his fellow-countrymen in comparison with his great rival. "My dear lady," said DISRAELI, "you are aware that the New Testament divides all men into two categories. Without specifying the class to which I personally belong, I am quite willing to admit that Mr. GLADSTONE is a sheep and possesses many of the characteristics of that admirable animal."
When I was at Hawarden in the summer of 1893, little DOROTHY DREW asked her grandfather for the loan of a book "to press flowers in." It is a process, as readers may know, not good for the book, and I thought the illustrious statesman and bibliophile looked a little embarrassed. But his face cleared in a moment, and he went out of the room and presently returned with a sufficient volume, in which the flowers were duly laid, the book being then, with the united efforts of the company, subjected to the necessary pressure under a heavy cabinet. Anxious to know which volume of his beloved library Mr. GLADSTONE had selected for desecration, I took an early opportunity of furtively examining the title of the tortured tome. It was Coningsby.