Sir Edward Ward we entertained for his share in another and yet more memorable defence, for it was to him, more than anybody else, that England owes the preservation of Ladysmith. He foresaw what was coming, and before it was too late got on the track of everything edible and potable in Ladysmith; he made the horses, which were not going to be of any use, into chevril, a horsey form of Bovril, and if the siege had gone on much longer, he would have found a way of making suprêmes out of old boot-soles. He made the provisions last by his foresight and administrative capacity, and he was almost as invaluable with his indomitable pluck and cheeriness. He was for years Permanent Secretary of War, and it is a mighty pity that he is not Secretary of State for War, for which his unparalleled knowledge of Army administration and his robust commonsense would make him the ideal appointment. No detail is too small for Ward to attend to it; no person is too small for him to listen to courteously and patiently. He made a great impression on the Vagabonds, for he has an Irishman’s wit in speaking, and is most soldierly looking, a man of Herculean build.
Sir George Reid, the High Commissioner of Australia, is one of the best speakers we had at the Club; he is very witty when he is witty, and from time to time turns serious with marked effect. I had known him many years before he came to the Vagabond dinner; I made his acquaintance in the early ’eighties, when I held the Chair of History in the University at Sydney, and he was the only Free-trader of any influence in Australia. Since then he has been the Premier of Federated Australia, and now most worthily represents the Commonwealth, for he has impressed on the Government that he is a force to be reckoned with, even where the colonies are only vaguely affected.
In decided contrast to him was the Princess Bariatinsky—Lydia Yavorska, the Russian actress who married a cousin of the Czar. We entertained her as a recognition of her splendid acting in Ibsen’s Doll’s-House, where her foreign accent was no drawback, and her tragic power had scope.
There are other Vagabond dinners which, I remember, went off with much éclat, though I cannot recall their incidents—dinners to great sailors like Lord Charles Beresford and Lambton, now Meux, and Shackleton of Antarctic fame, dinners to great soldiers like Sir Evelyn Wood; dinners to great artists like Lord Leighton and Sir Alma Tadema and Linley Sambourne, all, unfortunately, now dead, and J. J. Shannon, still with us and still young; dinners to great actors like Ellen Terry and Tree, Wyndham and Mary Moore and the younger Irvings and the Bourchiers and the Asches and Forbes-Robertson and Lena Ashwell; and dinners to great authors like Doyle, Mrs. Humphry Ward, Hall Caine, H. G. Wells, Mrs. Burnett, Jerome, W. L. Courtney and Robert Barr. They were all great occasions, with two, three or four hundred present, but readers will wish to be spared the details of dinners to perfectly well-known people unless they brought out some fresh trait, or some priceless anecdote.
It is to be hoped that the Vagabond dinners will come to life again, not on the huge and expensive scale which is going out of vogue, but little meetings of really eminent people gathered at some restaurant in Soho, to eat a dinner which reminds them of joyous Bohemian days in Paris or Italy, and to enjoy the pleasures of a general conversation upon the topics of Bohemia, such as we used to have in the days when we met as men only (which we will never do again), before we were reformed Vagabonds.
The Argonauts, a little dining club which Frankfort Moore and I founded, before the Vagabonds allowed ladies at their dinners, to dine every Sunday or every other Sunday at Mrs. Robertson’s tea and luncheon rooms in Bond Street, where we had our club-room, would give a good example to follow. We seldom had a guest or speeches. A number of well-known people used to dine together for the pleasure of each other’s company. We left our places as soon as we had finished dinner, and broke up into little knots to converse. There you really could see your friends, and introduce interesting people to each other.[[7]]
[7]. The members of this club, as far as I can remember, were: Conan Doyle, E. W. Hornung, Justin McCarthy, M.P., J. K. Jerome, S. R. Crockett, Anthony Hope, Gilbert Parker, Oswald Crawfurd, W. H. Wilkins, J. Bloundelle-Burton, Frankfort Moore, Moncure D. Conway, Rudolf Lehmann, Edward Heron Allen, Barry Pain, Arthur Playfair, Arthur Diósy, Reginald Cleaver, G. A. Redford, Lewis Hind, Herbert Bailey, Walter Blackman, G. W. Sheldon, Edward Elkins, Edgar Fawcett, Louis F. Austin, Bernard Partridge, John Charlton, Sir James Linton, Mortimer Menpes, Basil Gotto, Emerson Bainbridge, M.P., Sir J. Henniker-Heaton, M.P., Penderel Brodhurst, C. N. Williamson, Arthur A’Beckett, H. B. Vogel, Horace Cox, Grant Richards, Joe Hatton, Percy White, Clarence Rook, Henry Arthur Jones, Adrian Ross, Herbert Bunning, Judge Biron, Grimwood Mears, Rudolph Birnbaum, Ben Webster, Mrs. C. N. Williamson, Flora Annie Steel, John Oliver Hobbes, Florence Marryat, “Iota,” Mrs. Campbell Praed, Annie Swan, Arabella Kenealy, George Paston, Norma Lorimer, “Rita,” Mrs. Stepney Rawson, Violet Hunt, May Whitty, Rosalie Neish, Mrs. Alec Tweedie, Mrs. C. E. Humphry, and Mrs. Oscar Beringer. To these I must add one of the two famous Greenes who were singers; I cannot find the initial. It will be observed that there was hardly a person in the club whose name was not well known.
At these Vagabond dinners, the ordinary procedure was for two or three or four hundred members, male and female, to assemble to do honour to a famous guest. As soon as dinner was over, the chairman proposed the health of the King, and made the stereotyped joke about any lady, who wished, being permitted to smoke. He had this excuse at the Vagabonds, that many of the men smoked before they had received permission. Then he proposed the health of the guest, and the guest replied. All guests made the same jokes about the name “Vagabonds.” I rather think that they must have been supplied to them by the toast-master at the Hotel Cecil, who always “prayed silence” with special gusto for “Mr. Hanthony ’Ope,” because no other name gave him the same chances.
When the guest had finished his speech, which was usually a very good one, because we chose them for their speaking, unless they were very eminent, we retired into the adjoining hall for an entertainment of singing, story-telling and conjuring, which I always thought spoilt the evening, much as I appreciated the performances of men like Churcher and Harrison Hill and Bertram, or Willie Nichol, or Reggie Groome, for when you had a number of eminent people collected together, far the best form of entertainment was to introduce them to each other. I remember the positive pain I felt at Lady Palmer’s, when, a few minutes after she had introduced me to George Meredith for the first time, Johannes Wolff, the violinist, played a thing of Beethoven’s which was as long as a sermon. I wanted to hear George Meredith so much more than him, having regarded him as one of the greatest masters of literature all my life, and wishing to surrender to the extraordinary charm of his way of speaking. I sympathise with a famous tenor, who told me that the first time he heard Handel’s Messiah, when they came to the Hallelujah Chorus, he said, “Let’s get ‘oot,’ there’s going to be a row.”
Personally, I used to try and induce the most interesting people present, except the guest of the evening, to stay outside, and have whiskies and sodas. They generally hadn’t the good taste to prefer singing to whiskies and sodas; I hadn’t, either, though I don’t drink whisky.