When we came back from the United States in 1891, besides our wide American circle, most of whom were in the habit of frequently visiting England in the season, we soon found ourselves in the heart of a Bohemian society, which met almost daily at one or other club or reception. Receptions had become the order of the day among London literary people, artists and actors. The epidemic came over from America at the same time as the habit of personal journalising. Certain popular newspapers devoted columns and columns every week to giving every species of good-natured gossip about the biographies and home-lives of well-known people. It was this movement which culminated in the production of Who’s Who. Interviewing was a feature of the day. From living like hermit-crabs, English authors suddenly began to realise the value of publicity in the sale of their wares.
They had always in a decorous Victorian way met at the Athenæum Club, but that did not open its doors at all. The pleasant Garrick and the Savile had an almost equal dread of literary burglars. The National Club had only a select few authors who liked its fleshpots. But their younger rivals saw in receptions a fresh element of interest to attract and benefit members. The Arts Club, the newly founded Authors’ Club, the Hogarth, the Savage, the Vagabonds, and the Playgoers, to all of which I had been elected, were free and fearless in their hospitalities, and here, and through friends I met in these clubs, I acquired the friendship of many of the world’s workers.
The Arts Club in those days was a jolly place; charming and distinguished men could be found dining there almost every night, and after dinner you played pool with the Royal Academicians, or talked scandal about the way that artists were elected, and pictures selected, to the Royal Academy. These were most enjoyable evenings.
At the Hogarth, not far off, the artists who were not in the Academy or in the Academy set, used to assemble. It is the artist’s habit to work till daylight is gone, and then to waste his time in conversation or the billiard-room. The talk, when it was not shop, was all what they call in theatrical circles “gag.” Some of their shop was quite interesting, because it ran upon new men and new methods. I liked the latter best. Artists, unlike authors, are generally more ready to detract than to praise. They wish to mount over the bodies of the slain; they do not hold out a hand to those who are lower down the hill. But they were very kind to each other with money, though they were so unkind to each other’s work, and none of them seemed to stay at home to read after they had done their work.
The Authors’ Club had been established recently enough for me to come in as an original member. The Vagabonds Club, which had been in existence for a good many years, had not yet expanded into the New Vagabonds Club, nor had the White Friars organised banquets. The old Playgoers had a good many literary members, chiefly dramatists or would-be’s. The Arts, the happy hunting-ground of famous artists, had a few; the Hogarth, the favourite meeting-place for less favourite artists, had a few more; the Savage, in spite of its traditions, and the Garrick not many more; and the editors of the Idler were in the habit of giving teas, which practically constituted a tea club without a subscription. I never was at the Yorick.
The Authors’ Club at that time took the lead in receptions. Sir Walter Besant, who founded it, made it his mission in life to bring authors together, both for the enjoyment of each other’s company, and for the defence of their common interests. For these purposes he originated both the Authors’ Club and the Authors’ Society, which had, in 1891, the same secretary, and himself for chairman of both, but which were technically unconnected.
The Authors’ Club owed its success, and especially the success of its meetings, to Oswald Crawfurd, not less than to Besant himself. Crawfurd had written a book or two, but he had no eminence in literature, beyond having put enough money into Chapman & Hall to become chairman of the company and editor of its review, the Fortnightly. But Crawfurd was rich, and at Eton, and as a Consul-General, he had won the friendship of half the well-known people in London. He used his influence, his energy and his money, prodigally, in making the new Club go. He entertained possible members both at the Club, and in his own home and at favourite restaurants; he wrote an enormous number of persuasive letters; he kept the thing going generally. The Club was his protégé as much as Besant’s.
Besant, with whom I had been in correspondence before I went to America, at the moment that he recruited me for the Club, was interested in introducing American methods at its meetings, and as I had just returned from America, the directors made me honorary secretary for this purpose.
I spent three years in America, and during that time enjoyed the hospitality of all the leading literary and Bohemian Clubs in New York, Boston and Washington. Washington, as far as I remember, had only one of any importance, but Boston and New York were rich in them, and I brought over ideas from them.
I explained to Besant what seemed to me the best features of American literary gatherings, and he evolved from them a programme for our weekly dinners at the Authors’ Club; but he thought that reading a paper, followed by a discussion, or entertaining a great author, whose health was proposed and who had to make a reply, was more suited to an English audience than telling anecdotes. I think he was right; telling anecdotes is not an English art. The American expects boundless patience from his audience while he elaborates the gist of the story; the longer he prolongs the agony, the better his audience likes it. He has made a fine art of story-telling, and does it well enough to take the place of a curtain-raiser at a theatre. The Englishman only does it in private—generally to the distress of his family—or introduces it incidentally into one of his speeches. Except barristers, and politicians, and clergymen, most Englishmen are afraid of the sound of their own voices in public, though Englishwomen often do not suffer from this disability. There is really some justification for the story of the man who was asked to give a definition of woman. He began, “Woman is, generally speaking....” “Stop there!” said his friend. “If you went on for a thousand years you would never get so near it again.”