Sir Evelyn Wood, one of the few men who have ever won the V.C. both as a sailor and a soldier—he was a midshipman before he was a soldier, and made a famous ride with dispatches—and he has been called to the Bar since—supplemented his speech in reply to the toast with a selection of rattling anecdotes.
Sir Ian Hamilton, the General who saved Ladysmith by his victory at Wagon Hill, described the touch and go of his battle, which saved Ladysmith, in the slang of ordinary conversation, which made it extraordinarily impressive. It was very appropriate, too, for slang was the language of the brief council of war which Sir Ian held with the Colonel of the Devons before they launched the charge which saved the day.
One of the most interesting dinners we ever had was the dinner we gave to Zola in the Whitehall Rooms. We had other guests, varying from Stepniak, the Nihilist, to Frank Stockton and Bill Nye, the American humorists. Stockton told one of his characteristic American after-dinner stories of the “lady or the tiger” sort. Nye was really wonderful. He said that he himself belonged to an old French family—that the Nye family used always to spell their name Ney, but they changed it because one of the family was unfortunate. This allusion to the bravest of the brave brought the house down, but it took about a quarter of an hour to explain it to Zola.
Henry Arthur Jones was extraordinarily interesting—Jones, if you catch him in the right mood, can make a really fine speech, full of imagination.
One man whom I first met at the Authors’ Club, and whom I afterwards got to know better, though I have not seen him for many years—Lucien Wolf, had an extremely original way of working. Besides his ordinary press work, once a month he contributed a presentation of the foreign politics of the world to one of the principal Reviews. As foreign editor of a daily paper, he had the subject at his fingers’ ends, but it troubled him in a subject so full of tangled threads to break off his work for meals and to go to bed. Writing that article took about forty-eight hours, and during that time he hardly left his study; he did not go to bed at all; like the Admiral who gave them their name, he had sandwiches brought to him where he sat. He apparently felt no ill-effects from this tremendous effort of will-power and industry, though, of course, he looked very tired. His articles on foreign affairs in the monthly Reviews took the premier place.
Poulteney Bigelow was a character at the Authors’ Club in those days. The son of an American Ambassador—minister, as they were then called—he was, for some reason or another, an intimate personal friend of the German Emperor, with whom he constantly stayed, and of whom he treasured many anecdotes. He once nearly persuaded the Emperor to dine at the Authors’ Club. He disappeared for a while, and went out West in the United States again, from which he came back very full of the shooting exploits of Theodore Roosevelt, another of his friends.
Bigelow always maintained that the Spanish-American war was the best thing which ever happened for the relations between Great Britain and the United States. He said that the garrison, who died like flies in the Philippines, were mostly drawn from the South-Western States, where the hatred of England had been liveliest, and their colonial experiences made them understand how considerate the English were to subject peoples, and how very inconsiderate subject peoples were apt to be to their rulers.
We had quite a bevy of leading editors among our members, some of whom put in an appearance pretty constantly, but it never was a very active editor’s club; I think they were too afraid of would-be contributors.
William Sinclair, the Archdeacon of London, who was the principal figure at London functions for nearly a generation, was a pillar of the Club. He was a constant attendant at its house dinners, and apart from his influence and position, was a brilliant raconteur. Sometimes, like a true Scotsman, he told a story against himself, as when he told us why he was such a popular preacher at the Guards’ chapel—because the men said that he was the only person who ever preached to them with a voice like a sergeant-major.
Sinclair had met everybody of any importance in his time. He had one beautiful story of a Scotsman who suddenly became a Cabinet Minister on four or five thousand a year, and sported a butler. Sinclair, who was staying with him, in all innocence asked what the man’s name was, and his hostess said, “I don’t know; we always call him waiter.”