He married in his early twenties the daughter of Hawley, the scenic and architectural artist, an Englishman living in America. She was on a visit to relatives in England, and the rash young couple, soon after the birth of a daughter, their only child, resolved to try their fortunes on the other side of the Atlantic, the plucky and fascinating little wife sharing there his bad fortune as now she shares his good. The struggle was hard enough for a time, and, if Farnol cared to relate all that he went through in those years, the story would be a human document of great interest. At my house he met Yoshio Markino. I was about to introduce the already famous Jap to the coming young Englishman, when the impulsive Markino rushed at and fondled him, crying out in delight, “Why, it’s Jacky!” They had been fellow-students at the Goldsmiths’ Institute when both were younger, and both unknown to fame. There Farnol had shown welcome little kindnesses to the lonely, warm-hearted stranger from Nippon. Their ways had parted, neither thinking to see the other again, and least of all in this dramatic fashion and in these brighter circumstances. The Broad Highway has been dramatised for America, and is to be staged in England. The Amateur Gentleman is also to be adapted to the stage. His third important story—he has done many shorter things—is likely to be of modern times.
Francis Gribble is a very old friend of mine; we belonged to the same literary clubs, and met constantly at them, and he and his charming Dutch wife were often at Addison Mansions. Gribble, who is an Oxford First Class man, besides his very able novels and his biographies, which are recognised as classics on their subject, has made a neglected aspect of Switzerland his particular province. He is the authority on the Swiss towns, like Geneva and Lauzanne, where so much of the scenes of some of his biographies had necessarily to be laid. He now spends a good deal of his time in Continental travel. I remember his telling me that it was through his study of Swiss towns that he was led on to write biography. The connecting link was his accidental perusal of that wonderful book, Benjamin Constant’s Journal Intime. He saw from it that the life of Madame de Staël needed to be written from a new point of view, then he was led on to cover the whole ground of the romantic movement in French literature from Rousseau to Victor Hugo.
Frank Hird I have known many years. I met him first as editor of some important journal—I forget what—with which I was arranging a contribution, just as I met C. N. Williamson first as sub-editor of the Graphic. I was astonished to find myself in the presence of a person who was hardly more than a boy, very good-looking, very well-bred, very well dressed. Since then I have met him repeatedly, and enjoyed the friendship of one who fully came up to my first prepossession. I have met him most, I think, at the hospitable villa of the Joseph Whitakers’ in Palermo, where he frequently stayed, and showed himself as good in private theatricals as he is as an author. The place where he seemed most in his element was when he was correspondent to one of the chief London newspapers in Rome, and I used to meet him in salons like the Countess Lovatelli’s. The Countess was the sister of the Duke of Sermoneta, one of the highest of the Roman nobility, who has a similar position to our Duke of Norfolk. The Sermoneta family have a proud record in Italian archæology; the Countess herself is an author, and, as a centre of public and literary life, the Lady St. Helier of Rome. Her “salon” is said to be the only one in which the “Whites” and the “Blacks” habitually meet. He was always the diplomatist, more than the correspondent, though he was so excellent at his own work, and would have risen high in diplomacy if he had made it his career.
Edgar Jepson and his wife were often at Addison Mansions, and I used to meet him constantly at the Authors’ Club as I now meet him at the Dilettanti. He is a man in whom his friends believed from the first, and the quality of his books and his speaking have amply justified them. Intellectually he is a typical Balliol man, but that does not prevent his being one of the delights of Bohemia, where his popularity is unbounded. Experts are agreed that on his day, he is the second best, if not the best, auction-bridge player in England. He says of himself, that he is a walking warning against writing fiction, since from his first book he made 0, from his second six pounds nineteen and nine, and from his third nine pounds ten and fivepence.
William le Queux has been an intimate friend of mine for many years. A Frenchman by birth, he is a strongly Imperialist Englishman by naturalisation, and in his writings and politics. He has led a most interesting life. He was once an artist in the Quartier Latin, but he deserted this for journalism, and was sent by The Times as a special correspondent to Russia, using the opportunity to acquire an extraordinary knowledge of the secret workings of the Nihilists, just as he has in recent years been very much behind the scenes in the Balkans and Turkey. For a while he was sub-editor of the Globe, which post he resigned as soon as his success as a novelist justified it. Since then he has travelled continually, and acquired a unique knowledge of the secret service of the Continental Powers. He is one of the most popular novelists of the day, the secret of his popularity lying in his brilliant handling of mysteries, and the use he makes of his knowledge behind the scenes in Continental politics. His books dealing with supposed invasions of England are masterpieces in their way, showing an extraordinary grasp of military details. A member of the Athenæum Club told me once that judges and bishops almost quarrelled with each other when a new William le Queux book came into the Club. His affable face, with bright, dark eyes, behind pince-nez, and an inscrutable expression, is familiar to frequenters of the Devonshire Club and the Hotel Cecil. The curious thing is that, though we have been such friends, and have been frequent visitors to the same places on the Continent, from the little republic of San Marino, of which he is Consul-General, upwards, we have never, so far as I remember, met out of England.
Bertram Mitford lived side by side with myself and “Adrian Ross” at Addison Mansions for years. He belongs to one of the oldest families in England. His father, the late E. L. Osbaldeston Mitford, of Mitford in Northumberland, which has been in the possession of his family since Saxon times, appearing in Doomsday Book, was a wonderful old gentleman; he lived to be more than a hundred years old, and, till a few years before his death, used to come up to London for first nights at his favourite theatres.
Bertram Mitford is a good sportsman, who has travelled and shot in the back parts of South Africa, and the wild lands bordering on India and Afghanistan. His travels have inspired novels which are splendid books of adventure. He has also been in Italy a good deal.
Guise Mitford, who has written one or two good novels, is his cousin, as is the stately Lord Redesdale, the head of a cadet branch of his family, who wrote the famous Tales of Old Japan. Miss Mitford, too, a once most popular authoress, was of the clan.
Mitford and I used to see each other constantly in Addison Mansions, and frequently at two or three clubs to which we both belonged, but I don’t remember ever doing the journey between together, between them and our flats. He often walked both ways for the exercise.
K. J. Key, the great cricketer, who for many years held the record for the Oxford and Cambridge match, with his 130, and was afterwards Captain of the Surrey Eleven for years, one of my most valued friends, introduced me to Charles Marriott, of whose novels he was an immense admirer. Key is a great reader. Unlike most cricketers, who prefer to watch the game intently until they go in to bat, as if they were playing whist or bridge, and wanted to see what cards were out, he used to read a book or a newspaper till it was his turn to go in, and I have no doubt that he saved a good deal of nerve energy by doing so. I think he met Marriott in Cornwall, to which they are both devoted. Certainly, they are both fond of photography. Marriott made a considerable succès d’estime with his first novel, The Column. He is, or was until recently, the Art critic of one of the great London dailies, and is a most accomplished man, of wide knowledge, and one of the best novelists of the day. Living at Brook Green, he was a near neighbour of ours, and from the time that Key introduced us to the time that we left Addison Mansions, we saw a good deal of him. Key’s wife has recently published a novel with a cricketer (not her husband) for its hero—A Daughter of Love. She is a sister of Lascelles Abercombie.