CHAPTER VIII.
A Very Snobbish Chapter.
"I've got a little list."—The Mikado.
Captain Hawley Smart, at the Garrick one day, at lunch, gave me a valuable friendly warning.
"In your book," said he, "do not fall into that diary mistake, characteristic of most autobiographers; and some autobiographers indulge in it very badly. I mean writing: 'May 14th.—Dined at the Duke of A——'s: present, Lord and Lady B——, Count C——, Marquis of D——, &c.' Much better write down a list of all the people you have met, and say: 'Dined with, or met, this lot some time or other.'"
Unfortunately, I do not keep a diary, and have no list of "people I have known;" but I can truthfully say that during the last twelve or fourteen years I have had the privilege of meeting what the Society papers repeatedly call "everybody, who is anybody." What! everybody? Well, nearly everybody! I have met Royal Princes in their palaces, and Republicans in their republic houses. I am personally acquainted with Bishops and Bradlaugh. I have shaken hands with Sarah Bernhardt and Miss Bessie Bellwood. I have been visited by millionaires who are nobodies, and by beggars who are somebodies. I have exchanged courtesies with Gustave Dore, and another celebrated painter has exchanged umbrellas with me. I know Sims Reeves and "Squash." I manage to get on with peers and peasants; I talk a little about the weather to the former, and a little (very little) about the crops to the latter.
I believe I am a Conservative, but I own to a great admiration for Gladstone. I am not alone in that respect, except that I "own up" to my admiration, and other Conservatives do not. I regret exceedingly that I never met Lord Beaconsfield; but when I commenced to "go out," he had almost ceased doing so. I met Mr. Gladstone at a garden party as recently as the autumn of 1887, and was asked to meet him in June, 1888. It is a pleasure to converse with him, or, rather, to hear him converse with you. At the former party, a lady said to me, "If that horrid man comes here, I shall walk through that window on to the lawn. I would not stay under the same roof with him." She evidently thought there was no chance of his coming; in point of fact, she afterwards admitted as much to me. When he did arrive, she followed him about, curtsied as he passed, as if he were the Queen, repeatedly offered him her chair, and indulged in that particular kind of adoration in the presence which is usually indulged in by people who are ultra-bitter during the absence.
But though I have not kept a list of the notable people I have met, I have kept the letters of those who have written to me as a friend or acquaintance. I cannot count myself as one of the "pestilential nuisances who apply for autographs," as Gilbert describes them in The Mikado; still, I must plead guilty to pasting in a book, or keeping in my desk, every letter addressed to me personally that has a good name attached. When I say every letter, I do not include letters addressed to me professionally or purely on business matters: those are merely of passing value to me. I simply treasure the letters of those with whom I have become actually acquainted. This collection is the collection of a Snob, no doubt; and I can only beg of those of my readers who sensitive to Snobbish actions to pass this chapter over, for my sake as well as theirs.
I would add that my wife and I do not possess a card-basket, where the only countess's card will keep shifting to the top, of its own accord, in the most remarkable fashion; nor do we advertise our evening parties in the Morning Post, nor publicly announce that we have removed to a hired cottage at Datchet during the fixture of a telephone pole to the roof of our family mansion in Dorset (pronounced Dossit) Square.
I will take the letters as they come, simply calling attention to the contents or the writers as I imagine they may interest or amuse the readers. The first—the most interesting to me, perhaps, as it turned the tide of my professional life—is the letter from Arthur Sullivan, asking me to go on the stage, which has already appeared in a former chapter. The next is from J. R. Planche, whom I shall always remember with the greatest pleasure, and whose little parties were delightful.