We slept the night there, and paid our bills to Henry in the morning. Norma Lorimer, who was with us, had a room which smelt horribly of disinfectants. Henry said that the dentist, who came up once a week from Seattle, had used that room as his surgery the day before, but the inhabitants said that the corpse was there.
This was nothing to an experience of Lewis Clarke, a son of the celebrated Marcus Clarke, who wrote For the Term of his Natural Life, and edited the first complete edition of Adam Lindsay Gordon’s poems—a man who has had an extraordinarily adventurous life. This happened to him, I think, in the wilds of New Guinea. He had gone to sleep under a tree. During the night there came on a violent wind, and he was awakened by something cold and heavy, which kept brushing his face. Whatever it was, it only just touched him, and when he brushed it away, yielded lightly to his touch. After pushing it away for a while, he came to the conclusion that it did not matter, and got to sleep again. In the morning he was awakened by an awful stench, and when he opened his eyes to see what it was, found the bare toes of a dead Chinaman, who had hanged himself, knocking against his nose.
When I was at Canton, I went to visit our Consul-General there. I was with him in his office one day when he was trying a case. An Englishman had gone out shooting, and a Chinaman had sent his children after him, with instructions to get into the line of fire and be shot, which duly happened. The affectionate father then brought an action against the Englishman for damages occasioned to him by the injuries to his children. It was perfectly plain that the children had had themselves shot on purpose, but to my utter surprise the Consul made the Englishman pay.
When the parties had left the room, I reproached him with the miscarriage of justice. His only reply was, “I know it, my dear fellow, as well as you do; but I have been Consul here for thirty years (I forget exactly how many he said), and it is impossible for me to conceive any circumstances under which the British Government would support me.”
I may add that he was much loved and respected by the British community, whom he was unable to protect.
CHAPTER XXVII
MY ACTOR FRIENDS
Since I came back to London a score of years ago, I have known at least a hundred actors and actresses, but they did not all visit us at Addison Mansions—some, whom I knew quite well, never could summon up the energy to go as far west as West Kensington. Actors like to live right in the centre of things, or right out in country air. There is quite a colony of them at Maidenhead; Maxine Elliot lives near Watford, in the Manor House which belonged to my uncle Joseph, and Edward Terry had a house at Barnes, which is now sublimed into Ranelagh Parade.
Among our chief actor friends were the Grossmiths. Weedon Grossmith, with his pretty wife, came constantly. That diffident manner of his hides brilliant abilities. We are apt to forget that besides being one of the finest comedians of the day, he was once a regular exhibitor at the Royal Academy (which furnished him with the subject for a farce). What has made Weedon so “immense” is his absence of mauvais honte. He has dared to play the humiliating parts, of which he is the finest living exponent, with perfect sincerity. He has often said to me, “Why don’t you write me a play, Douglas? If you make me a bally enough little fool, I’ll take it; if you make me a big enough coward, I’ll take it; if you make me a bad enough cad, I’ll take it. It is my art to put this kind of character into the pillory.” And so it is; there is no one who can excel him in depicting the ignoble, foreign as it is to his own character.
His brother George, with his wife and daughters and his son Lawrence—George the younger had already flitted from the paternal nest, and was earning forty pounds a week—were also constant visitors. Lawrence was always the mirror of smartness. I think he was very bored with that sort of party, but he adorned it.