It was at an Idler tea that I first met George Bennett Burgin, with whom I was to be so intimately connected for so many years as joint Hon. Secretary of the New Vagabonds Club. He was the sub-editor of the famous Idler Magazine, and his tact and geniality were constantly in requisition, for the pugnacity of his chiefs was proverbial, and some of the best contributors were equally pugnacious.

I forget if it was a recognised part of the proceedings at the Old Vagabond dinners to have a set subject for discussion. Some one always did get up and make a short speech, and in a club which had men like Jerome and Zangwill and Barry Pain to draw on, the speaking was always witty, unless the subject forbade it. The chief difference was that people did not discuss the speech by getting on their legs to fire witticisms at the speaker. They discussed it where they sat, sometimes talking to each other about it (or anything else), sometimes raising their voices to question the man who had been speaking, or to argue with him.

There was much less discussion of the subject than there was talking of shop. The point of the gatherings was that a number of brilliant young authors and artists dined together fraternally once a month.

It was a great boon to me suddenly to be received into the intimacy of some of the busiest and best-known authors and editors and black-and-white artists of the day, to hear and take part in their “shop.”[[6]]

[6]. This Idler and Vagabond set included, besides those mentioned above, Anthony Hope, Frankfort Moore, Israel Zangwill, Eden Phillpotts, C. N. Williamson, F. W. Robinson, Joseph Hatton, Coulson Kernahan, George Manville Fenn, G. A. Henty, W. Pett Ridge, H. G. Wells, Frederic Villiers, Henry Arthur Jones, Francis Gribble, Rudyard Kipling, Arthur A. Beckett, William Watson, John Davidson, H. Breakstad the Norwegian, and Carl Hentschel, the founder of the old Playgoers Club.

Burgin, the hon. secretary of the Old Vagabonds Club, who was once private secretary to Sir Samuel Baker in Constantinople and Asia Minor, and has been a great traveller in recent years, was sub-editor of the Idler Magazine until 1899. Since then he has given himself up to novel-writing, gardening and the control of literary clubs. One of his novels, Shutters of Silence, has been through thirty editions. His books are distinguished alike by uncommon vivacity and by exceptional skill in using local colour. They are very good indeed, and if they had their rights would be among the most popular books of the day.

I have made several attempts to discover when the original Vagabonds Club was actually started, and the best account I have had of it was from Kernahan, one of the oldest members. I certainly did not join it till about five years later.

He writes—

“Marston died February 14, 1887, Valentine’s Day. Yes, I was one of those who visited his rooms, 191 Euston Road. When he founded the Club I do not exactly know. I fancy it had only just been started when, at his invitation, I joined in 1886. We dined at Pagani’s and then adjourned to his rooms, keeping it up very late. After he died the Club practically ceased, as it was he who ran it. Then I think Herbert Clark proposed that we should continue meeting and call ourselves the Marston Club—not a good name, as I always held, for it gave the idea that it was like the Browning club or society, for the study of his poems, whereas it was merely a gathering of Marston’s old friends. All the same, lots of interesting men came to it. His father, Dr. Westland Marston, for one. So things went on for a long time, and the thing was dropping to pieces for want of some one to work it, until you came along, put us in the shop window, and, lo and behold, the old Club became a new force.”

It was not so very long after I joined the Club that it fell on evil days, not, I hope, because I joined it, but because it contained Socialists, who are apt to wreck things. The course they took was most revolutionary. There were two of them on the committee, and they insisted on having committee meetings, which insisted on having a voice in the management of the Club.