Other humorists of the little circle—it is to be noted how many there were—were Robert Barr, Barry Pain and W. L. Alden. Barr, as co-editor of the Idler, was a pivot of literary society like Jerome. But his home for a considerable portion of the period was a long way down in Surrey, too far for his friends to pursue him to it. This was not without design, for he was a man so fitted to shine in literary society, that his one chance of writing his delicate and delightful novels was to bury himself in the country.
He made his reputation as “Luke Sharp,” the most brilliant humorist of the Detroit Free Press, at that time the most-quoted paper in America, and he was very American both in appearance and speech. His brusqueness and pugnacity were at times terrifying, but underneath them lay a gentle nature and a most affectionate heart. He was a man who inspired and returned the warmest affection. His grim humour was famous: it suited the handsome features, marred with smallpox, the close-trimmed naval officer’s beard, the sturdy frame, the strong American accent, much better than his dainty love-stories did. There was no more popular speaker; his influence among his fellow-journalists was unbounded. He and his pretty and charming wife, an excellent foil for his pugnacious exterior, were frequent hosts at the Idler teas, and frequent guests at our flat. Barr was very biting about England’s national foibles, but they never moved him to such outbursts of righteous indignation as the intermittent immoralities of the United States Government.
He remained faithful to his birthplace till his premature death, for he called two successive homes of his in the South, Hillhead, after the district of Glasgow in which he was born. In his later days he was so much the editor, so much the novelist, that one forgot the humorist, except when he was convulsing a knot of friends, to whom he was talking at a reception, or the audience he was addressing across a dinner-table.
Barry Pain and W. L. Alden, on the other hand, were always humorists. Alden, who had a most whimsical mind, had been the American Consul-General at Rome, and had, in consequence, been made a Cavaliere by the Italian Government. His title was part of his humorous equipment. It seemed so droll that a typical, middle-class American like Alden, should be a cavalier. Both he and his wife were kindly and agreeable people, but most of his personality went into his writing.
Barry Pain, on the other hand, had a forceful personality. Whenever you meet this cheery cynic, with his bright dark eyes, you know that you are in the presence of a man who was born to be editor of Punch. He was a constant speaker at literary clubs, though I don’t think that he liked speaking at first. His speeches were full of the same brilliant paradoxes as his books. His cynicism was tempered by overflowing good-nature. He was always such a hearty man. He was another of the people who soon flew into the country to get away from parties, and have time for his numerous contributions to weekly journals. But while he lived in London he was very often at our house. I made his acquaintance at the Lehmanns’—he married Stella Lehmann—soon after he had come down from Cambridge. At Cambridge he had been R. C. Lehmann’s bright particular star in Granta, and Lehmann, who had wealth, good looks, and a brilliant athletic record to back up his very great abilities as a writer, had at once become influential in London journalistic circles.
CHAPTER X
THE POETS AT OUR AT-HOMES
To use the famous expression applied by Dr. Johnson to his College at Oxford, we had quite a nest of singing-birds at 32 Addison Mansions, for, to mention only three of them, William Watson, John Davidson and Richard le Gallienne were at the same time habitués of our at-homes, and Bliss Carman, the Canadian, was constantly with us when he was over here.
Sir Lewis Morris, who was considered likely to succeed Tennyson as laureate at a time when those young poets were in the nursery, sometimes walked down from the Reform Club to call on us, but he always came on odd afternoons, a tall man, with a gaunt red face, who in those days was inclined to put his poetical triumphs behind him, and be the Liberal politician. Personally, I much preferred the poems of Lord de Tabley, a delightfully dignified, gentle and affable personage. His poems have never received full justice; for Graeco-Roman atmosphere he must be classed with those who come just below Shelley, Keats and Matthew Arnold—above Horne’s “Orion,” I think.
Edmund Gosse, who introduced me to Lord de Tabley, introduced me also to the late H. O. Houghton, at that time head of the eminent publishing firm of Houghton, Mifflin & Co., the John Murrays of America, and to the late Richard Watson Gilder, editor of the Century Magazine, two men at whose houses I met all the most famous authors of Boston and New York respectively. Gosse, who had for his brother-in-law the late Sir Alma Tadema, lived in those days at Delamere Terrace, and at his house on Sunday afternoons you always met authors of real distinction, men like Lord de Tabley, Maarten Maartens, Austin Dobson, or Wolcott Balestier, Kipling’s brother-in-law, the type of genius in a frail body. Edmund Gosse, besides being one of those poets, rare nowadays, who preserve the traditional grace of form, the distillation of thought which characterises the poetical masters of the “Golden Treasury,” was instrumental in giving England Ibsen and the other Scandinavian giants of the generation.