Unlike so many of our leading authors, Max Pemberton, who is a distinguished-looking man—one would take him for a diplomat—is as interesting to meet as his books are to read. He shines in society.
A mutual friend of us both is Robert Leighton. Mrs. Leighton I have mentioned above. Leighton’s gifts are of a serious editorial order, though he has written boys’ books of wide popularity. The Leightons are among the most popular figures at literary gatherings—they are so lovable that they have an immense circle of friends. Robert Leighton is recognised as having no superior as a writer on dogs. They have left their house in St. John’s Wood now and gone to live in an old-world house at Lowestoft.
When Arthur Morrison, who was already known as a brilliant journalist, one of Henley’s most incisive young men, made such a success with his Tales of Mean Streets and his Martin Hewitt stories, one imagined that he would pour out a stream of books like other writers who have “boomed.” But he has been exceedingly moderate. We had a bond of sympathy which used to bring him to our house. We had a collection of very unusual Japanese curios of the humble order, and he had one of the finest collections of Japanese prints in the country. We never saw as much of him as we wished because he lived in Essex, and when the success of his books enabled him to do his work where he liked, he grew more and more reluctant to come to London.
Another man of that generation to whom we grew much attached was Eden Phillpotts. In those days he was struggling with ill-health and over-work. London did not agree with him, and he had to write his novels in the intervals of journalism. Though he told me that they seldom went out elsewhere, he and his pretty wife were often at 32 Addison Mansions. They lived at Bedford Park in those days. While he was assistant editor of Black and White—that paper edited by so many of our friends—it seemed to be a different one every year, during its brief existence—he began to feel the strain a good deal, and finally determined to burn his ships and go back to his native Devon—he was a grandnephew of the famous Bishop of Exeter—and depend entirely upon his novels.
The experiment was a complete success. His health improved in his native air, and directly he could give the proper leisure to writing his novels, he sprang into almost the first rank—alike for the extraordinary power of his stories, for his intimate knowledge of Devonshire and Devonian character, and for the individuality of his style. Phillpotts never deteriorates. He is one of those men who carry the stamp of intelligence and simpatica on their faces. Now he is following in the footsteps of the other great novelists and getting a footing on the stage, where he will be well represented this year.
Robert Hichens is a very handsome and intellectual-looking man—if his portrait had been executed by the steel engravers of a hundred years ago it would have borne a striking resemblance to the portraits of Lord Byron. He has regular, clear-cut, refined features, of a very similar type. I have not run across Hichens as often as might be expected in Sicily and Egypt, though we have both been in these countries, especially the former, so much. But I did meet him one evening at Luxor, in the midst of one of those superb Egyptian sunsets. He was on his dahabea, which he had brought over from its usual anchorage near the bar on the Thebes side. It was a luxurious and very Oriental-looking dahabea. The saloon, separated from the cabins by heavy Persian curtains, would have made a far more picturesque scene for Bella-Donna on the stage than the steam-dahabea which appeared in the actual play. He was living on one of the old sailing-dahabeas, which are the most delightful to occupy, though people generally do not sail up from Cairo nowadays, but have them towed up to Luxor before they join them, so as to have all their time in the picturesque, temple-studded reach between Luxor and Assuan.
That meeting is riveted in my mind, because Hichens, in thanking me for a long and enthusiastic review which I had written over my signature in the Queen about his Garden of Allah, said that though I had spoken in such terms of the book, and brought out all its good points, he had a conviction that in my heart of hearts I felt a sort of repulsion for it, which was true. I thought the heroine’s falling in love with such a man at first, and her sending him back to his cell as a monk afterwards, equally repellent; while I could not help doing homage to the book, and revelling in its Eastern setting.
Some time after my return to England I was nearly brought into a very close relation with Hichens.
One morning Sir George Alexander came post-haste to call on me. I was not in. So at lunch a telegram as long as a letter arrived—would I see him in the theatre after such an act that night? The royal box was at my disposal if I cared to see the play. I telephoned my acceptance to Helmsley—a good actor, but far too good a manager to be spared to take a part—and wondered what was up. When I got to the theatre, I discovered what I was wanted for. Hichens’s Bella-Donna was coming on. All the preparations were ready for his inspection, and Hichens could not be found by telegram in Europe or Africa. Alexander asked if I would superintend the staging. The fee fixed was a liberal one. But I was in a quandary. I knew that neither J. Bernard Fagan, who had dramatised the story, nor Alexander, had ever been in Egypt, and that the play and its mounting, however well done, must be full of slips, to which I ought to object. About Alexander I was not disturbed, for I knew that his only idea would be to get the thing right. But with Fagan it might be different. He would doubtless have been studying the subject fiercely, and I should have to reckon with his amour propre, and probably lose a friend—who had been at Trinity, Oxford, like myself—that delightful Sheridan-like person and personality, so I gave rather a modified consent. I suggested that fresh efforts should be made to find Hichens, but promised that if finally he could not be found I would take his place in correcting the Egyptianities of the piece.
Fortunately, at the last minute Hichens did turn up, and I was saved from the responsibility. I was very grateful, for when the first night came, and with it stalls for the performance, there were many little points to which I should have had to take exception, though they made no difference to the enjoyment of such of the public as had not been in Egypt. Still, I am sure that Fagan would have felt sore about my correcting his scenes like a schoolboy’s Latin verses. As it happened, Alexander and Mrs. Patrick Campbell were so magnificent in their parts, and the piece was so splendidly produced, that the public did not bother itself about small details, but flocked to see the play. It could hardly have been a greater success than it was for any improvements that I could have suggested. I never saw Hichens at his residence in Taormina—we never happened to be in the Sicilian Eden at the same moment.