As a rule, authors are but dull dogs in conversation. They keep their good things for their books. Those who expect in literary society the feast of reason and the flow of soul, find themselves for the most part wofully disappointed. More is to be got out of the amateurist set—that fringe which would be if it could, and which hangs on to the main body as the best thing it can do in the circumstances. But authors of the professional and bread-winning class will talk only of things already known, repeating what they have written, but taking care not to forestall what they have not yet printed. They, and all professionals of any denomination whatsoever, are also given to talk shop among themselves; and shop is usually disagreeable to the outsider.
We might do worse than cultivate Conversation as an Art. Time has room for all things in his hand, and life has need of variety. Desperately busy and terribly in earnest as we may be, blowing bubbles has yet its value. Moreover, the true art of conversation is a lesson in good-breeding, which, in its turn, is the fine fleur of civilisation; and thus, from the rootwork of manner to the efflorescence of matter, there is something to be gained by the perfection of the art.
IN QUEER COMPANY.
IN TWO PARTS.—PART I.
If the following account of what happened to me a few years ago serves no other purpose, it may pass muster as an illustration of two old sayings, namely, that ‘One half of the world does not know how the other half lives,’ and that ‘Truth is often stranger than fiction.’
It was late on a very cold afternoon during the winter of 1876-77, that I was hurrying westward along the Marylebone Road, congratulating myself upon having turned my back upon the bitter east wind, and comparing the climate of London towards the end of December with that which I had been enjoying exactly twelve months previously, when at Calcutta, as one of the Special Correspondents with the Prince of Wales. I had got nearly as far as the Edgware Road, when a man touched his hat to me and asked me for the wherewith to get a night’s lodging. He did not look like an ordinary or a professional beggar. His clothes, although very shabby, were evidently well made. He looked so pinched and weary, that I stopped and fumbled in the ticket-pocket of my overcoat for a sixpence to give him. He stared at me very hard indeed whilst I was getting the money, and as I handed it to him, broke out with an exclamation of wonder, asking me whether my name was not so-and-so. I replied that it was; and asked him where he had ever seen me before. To make a long story short, this poverty-stricken man asking alms on the public streets turned out to be a gentleman I had known many years before, when he was a captain in one of our crack lancer regiments, and had a private fortune of his own of more than fifteen hundred a year. When I had last seen him, he was a man of little over thirty; but was now on the wrong side of fifty; and owing to want, care, hunger, cold, and dirt, looked very much older. He had always been a very fast man. Betting, cards, and doing bills at sixty per cent., had worked out their legitimate ends upon him. I had lost all sight of him for fully twenty years, but remembered having heard that he had been obliged to sell out on account of his many debts. All this, and much more too, he related when he came to my house, as I had told him to do, and helped him as far as it was in my power, with a little money and some old clothes.
When I asked him what he intended to do for the future, he said that if he could only get a decent outfit and a few pounds for travelling expenses, he had an opening in Paris that would soon put him on his legs again. It so happened that I knew slightly two or three men who had been in the same regiment with this individual; and of these there was one who was very well off. I therefore wrote out an appeal for the poor fellow, sent it to the different parties; and was greatly pleased when I found that instead of realising, as I had hoped, some ten or fifteen pounds, the contributions sent me came to upwards of thirty pounds. With this money I first got the unfortunate man a fairly good outfit of clothes, and then made over to him the balance left, about six pounds, to use as he liked. He was exceedingly grateful; and asked me to express his thanks to those who had responded so generously to my letters. It was about a fortnight after I had met him on the Marylebone Road that he called to bid me farewell, and to thank me again for all I had done, which, after all, was merely having written some half-dozen letters, and taken a little trouble in getting his clothes as good and as cheap as I could. He told me that he was leaving for Paris that evening.
For five or six months I neither saw nor heard anything about him. At the end of that time I received a note from this individual, telling me he was in London, saying he would like to see me, and giving me his address at a respectable hotel near Leicester Square. I wrote an answer; and as I happened to be going into the neighbourhood, called at the hotel, intending to leave it there. But as the waiter told me that the gentleman was at home, and was then writing in the coffee-room, I went there, and found my former acquaintance, who seemed delighted to see me. He had evidently prospered since I last saw him. He was well, if perhaps somewhat flashily dressed; had what seemed to be a valuable pin in his neck-scarf, a thick gold chain from one waistcoat pocket to another, and two or three rings on his fingers. He looked more like a Frenchman than an Englishman; and would certainly have passed a better muster at Brebant’s or in the Café du Helder than he could have done in a London club. But what showed more plainly than anything else that he had done well, and what pleased me greatly, was that he there and then pulled out a roll of bank-notes and insisted upon repaying me what I had collected for him from his former friends. It was in vain that I protested that those gentlemen had parted with their money as a gift and not as a loan; that I did not know where to find them at present; and that I begged he would not think of repaying me the small portion I had contributed to the amount. No; nothing would serve him but to make me take the money and to give it back as best I could to those who had assisted him in his great distress.
As a matter of course, I was very curious to know by what means he had, in some measure at anyrate, recovered his position in the world; or how he had managed to fill his empty purse. But to all my questions he gave the most evasive answers. Remembering what his pursuits used to be long ago, I felt certain that he had got into some lucky vein of play or of betting, and that he was making a living either by cards or on the racecourse. But after a few days’ observation of what he did, I was sure that I was labouring under a mistake. Just at that time of the year several of our great race-meetings were in full swing; but he never went near any of them; nor did he ever attempt to go back amongst the men who had been his companions long ago. I offered to get his name put down as an honorary or visiting member of one or two good clubs; but he invariably declined. When he asked me, as he often did, to dine with him, it was always at one or other of the best foreign restaurants in London. When I called on him at his hotel, he seemed to be always busy either writing or receiving letters. One night I looked him up about eleven P.M. on my way back from the theatre. But they told me at the hotel he always went out between nine and ten P.M., and seldom came back before the small-hours of the morning.
In London, a busy man has little or no time to think of any one’s affairs except his own; but I confess that this gentleman used often to puzzle me not a little. His seeming prosperity in money matters as compared with his former circumstances, and the singular life he led, caused me often to wonder what were the sources whence he derived his income, my curiosity being not a little increased by his evident desire to keep me in the dark as to the truth of the case. But the solution of a difficult social problem almost invariably comes to hand when least expected, and this case was no exception to the rule.