At the beginning the Authors’ Club had no exact rivals, but there were two institutions, very much intertwined, which came near it in a way—the Vagabonds Club and the Idler teas. The Vagabonds Club, in its conception, had been a little coterie of authors who met in the rooms of their friend, the blind poet, Philip Bourke Marston; but before I came back from America Marston was dead, and the coterie had been turned into a small dining club, which used to take eighteen-penny dinners at cheap restaurants, and in theory drank beer and smoked clay pipes. The committee included Jerome, C. N. Williamson and F. W. Robinson, and the Club had among its members, besides those just mentioned, Conan Doyle, Israel Zangwill, Anthony Hope, Bernard Partridge, Dudley Hardy, Phil May, Hal Hurst, Rudolph Blind, Pett Ridge, Joe Hatton, Robert Barr, Coulson Kernahan, W. L. Alden, Hall Caine, Sir Alfred East, E. W. Hornung, Sir Gilbert Parker, J. M. Barrie, Barry Pain, Arthur Morrison, Solomon J. Solomon, and, of course, George Burgin, the original and indefatigable secretary.
Of these people Jerome and Barr were editors of the Idler, Burgin was sub-editor, Doyle, Zangwill, Pett Ridge and Anthony Hope were its favourite contributors. The Idler, in those days published by Chatto & Windus, was edited in a flat in Arundel Street, Strand, and there every week, on Wednesday afternoons, as far as I remember, the editors gave a tea at which they welcomed their contributors, and any friends whom contributors chose to bring with them, and the friends of these friends thereafter. It was like the snow-ball system of selling umbrellas in the United States.
The teas were of the simplest. I do not think we had anything except bread and butter and tea, but nobody wanted more; it was sufficient that here was the common meeting-ground for men and women, where you might, and often did, meet the ablest young authors of the day. I should say that the Idler teas were the first literary gatherings in London attended by Weyman and Crockett, and they certainly were the first attended by Anthony Hope, W. W. Jacobs and Frankfort Moore.
We received the warmest welcome at the Idlers, because there were many literary Americans in London just then, and both Jerome and Barr were insistent that I should bring as many as possible of them to their teas.
At those teas the principal occupation was introducing every freshcomer to as many people as possible, as the hosts do at American at-homes; and Jerome made a good many of his arrangements for articles and illustrations with the people who came to the teas. It was characteristic of the Idler and Vagabond gatherings to talk shop and do business without any pretence of concealment.
Hal Hurst and Dudley Hardy were two of Jerome’s favourite illustrators. Other artists who were there a great deal were Robert Sauber, John Gülich, Lewis Baumer, Fred Pegram, James Greig, Paxton, A. S. Hartrick, Louis Wain, who almost always drew cats with human expressions, a little man named Martin Anderson, who called himself “Cynicus,” and had an allegorical vein of humour. He won himself undying popularity here by bringing to one of those teas a charmingly pretty young American, who was soon to feel her footing as a writer. She had not yet written The Barn-stormers. This was Alice Livingston, who is now known to all the world as Mrs. C. N. Williamson. Townsend, the present art-editor of Punch; Chris and Gertrude Hammond, who were among the most charming book-illustrators of that day; Seppings Wright, the naval war correspondent; Holland Tringham, Melton Prior, Fred Villiers and many other artists came constantly.
The great advantage of those Idler teas was that women as well as men could be present, and in those days women were not considered worthy to be admitted to authors’ banquets, except at the annual function of the Authors’ Society. Of course, you had the chance of meeting women authors at the at-homes of the Pioneer, Writers’, and Grosvenor Crescent Clubs, because they were all ladies’ institutions. But at their entertainments you met only a very few men of any importance, and not particularly many women of literary importance, other than journalistic. They were more interested in women’s movements—the Pioneer might almost be called the ancestor of the Suffragettes.[[5]]
[5]. Among the eminent women whom I remember seeing at the Idlers were Marie Corelli, Mona Caird, Mrs. Sidgwick (Mrs. Andrew Dean), Mrs. Campbell Praed, Mrs. Humphry Ward, Mrs. Lynn Linton, Mrs. Alexander, Mrs. Meynell, Miss Montrésor, Lucas Malet and Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler.
The conversations at the Idler teas were very shoppy. I remember being introduced to Ellen Fowler as the woman whose witty sayings had long been the delight of the exalted circles in which she moved, and who had been induced by the various leading authors whom she knew to write a book. This is the sort of laudation which we professional authors often hear and usually distrust. But the book happened to be Concerning Isabel Carnaby, and when I learned that the circle which she had dazzled was the circle in which the Liberal leaders moved, since she was the daughter of Sir Henry Fowler, M.P., afterwards Lord Wolverhampton, I understood that she certainly would have received an encouragement to write books from the authors and critics who were admitted to Front Bench Liberal dinners.
Mona Caird, whom we met often at the Women’s Clubs afterwards, did much for the emancipation of women in those days, for she was not only clear-sighted and convincing in what she said and wrote, but she had a winning personality which commanded the sympathies of those who were not predisposed to share her views.