Bohemian Days in Fleet Street

by William Mackay

When the success of the new institution was at its height, “Jimmy” Davis contributed to the columns of the Bat an article on “The Sunday Amusements of the Rich.” Of course, the whole thing was conceived in a mood of extreme cynicism, and Davis wrote the article with his tongue in his cheek. It was strange enough that Davis should write such an article. For what, after all, could it matter to a Jew how the Gentiles amused themselves on a Sunday? But it was still more strange that an article appearing in the columns of a paper which did not enjoy the very sweetest of reputations, should have vexed the righteous minds of the Episcopal Bench, and caused the subject of “Jimmy’s” article to be debated in the Upper House of Convocation.

And it was strange, too—in its way—that, when the debate was set down for hearing, I, a member of the Pelican Club, should have been deputed by the editor of an evening paper to attend Convocation, and write a more or less graphic description of the historic debate. My experience of the Upper House of Convocation, while assuring me that its members possessed quite a respectable amount of debating power, also convinced me that their deliberations were academic merely, and that the Bishops were terribly out of touch with actualities. The conditions under which the “House” sat were not conducive to those illusions which the laity should cherish regarding the episcopacy. Their lordships met in a dining-room on the first-floor of a house in Dean’s Yard, Westminster. A striped wall-paper was adorned at gaping intervals with engravings from Millais and Landseer. The furniture was mid-Victorian. A long telescope-table filled the middle of the room. Round this board sat the Bishops, presided over by the Archbishop of Canterbury, who took his place at the top of the table. Had their lordships not been robed in billowing white, with lawn sleeves, doctors’ hoods, and decorated with episcopal signets, the idea conveyed to the mind of the casual observer would have been that of a group of commercial travellers assembled in the commercial room of a country hotel waiting for the one o’clock ordinary. In the embrasure of a window looking out on to Dean’s Yard a table was placed for the reporters. The general public was, of course, rigorously excluded. Arrangements were made only for a certain number of reporters—six, I think, was the limit. And it had been necessary to arrange for the absence of one of these gentlemen, so that I, who unfortunately have never mastered shorthand, might be present. From my coign of vantage in the embrasure I could see some Westminster schoolboys playing in the enclosure. Their shrilling shouts punctuated the earlier deliberations of their lordships. Besides ourselves of the Press and the members of the Upper House of Convocation, the only other person present was Sir John Hassard, the courteous Registrar. His chief duty seemed to be that of ushering the gentlemen of the Press in and out of this hopelessly bourgeois Upper Chamber. And this was a ceremony of frequent occurrence. When their lordships considered that the trend of the debate made it desirable that strangers should retire, the Archbishop looked over to us, smiled benevolently, and observed: “If you please, gentlemen.” It reminded me of Ponsford’s early morning admonition to customers supping late at the Albion. We rose. Sir John preceded us to the door, opened it, and bowed us out. Presently—their lordships having concluded their private colloquy—he came out to us in the passage, and ushered us in again.

To me the surroundings, coupled with the irreverent and openly familiar attitude of the chief of my colleagues, came as a shock. I had anticipated that the Upper House would have sat in some gilded chamber of their own, or perhaps in one of the chapels of the Abbey. I had imagined myself, as the representative of the profane vulgar, sitting hidden away in some lofty gallery. But here I was hobnobbing with the Bishops, as it were. It was a sense of unsolicited intimacy that possessed me. And when I reflected that I was one of the very persons whose conduct was under debate, I had the further sensation of being a spy in the camp. Mr. Basil Cook, the chief of the staff reporting in Convocation, was disturbed by none of these scruples, and when he noticed that a Bishop was speaking from a written document, he went up to the venerable orator at the conclusion of his speech, and boldly asked him for his notes. In one case, indeed, the intrepid man seemed to collar the ecclesiastic’s notes by force.

Of the debate nothing remains in my memory save the speech of the Bishop of Winchester. Tall, gaunt, marked down even then by Death, Harold Browne proved himself intellectually as well as physically head and shoulders above his brethren. His words were weighty, well chosen, impressive. His message was one of grave reproval. He deplored the introduction of the topic. He warned Convocation of the danger of registering its views in resolutions of the House. Resolutions which were foredoomed as inoperative, he argued, must stultify them as a high deliberative assembly. But the warnings of My Lord of Winchester fell on deaf ears. Their lordships were out after the Sunday amusements of the rich. They were not to be balked of their sport. They passed their resolutions. And from that hour the rich have gone on extending the scope and scenes of their Sunday amusements.

Of my own descriptive account of the proceedings, of course, I say nothing. But Sala made it the text of one of his inimitable essays. His comments, I remember, concluded with these words:

“It may interest these Reverend and Right Reverend Fathers in God to know that the resolutions which they have just registered will have about as much influence on the Sunday amusements of the rich as a similar set of resolutions passed by the Antediluvian Order of Buffaloes.”

Very soon indeed the Church discovered that, there being no hope of stemming the tide, their only chance was to make things easy and agreeable for those who were borne along by it. Accommodation for bicycles was announced here and there by a far-seeing Vicar—temporarily characterized as a “crank.” And in villages down by the banks of the Thames, Rectors began to intimate that visitors in flannels were welcome to worship. Sunday clubs multiplied on the banks of “Sweete Temmes.” Sunday golf clubs were established on a thousand links. The introduction of the automobile has precipitated matters. The word “rest” has had appointed to it the only reasonable interpretation. And the twentieth century Anno Domini has definitely declined to be bound any longer by an enactment forced on a nomadic and unruly crowd by a Jewish leader who “flourished” nearly twenty centuries before Christ.

It is interesting to note that this consummation was helped forward by the ill-advised action of a bench of Bishops. And it is amusing to remember that their lordships were acting on the initiative of a man-about-town, of Hebrew extraction, who personally did not care a cent for the observance either of the Jewish Sabbath or of the Christian Sunday.

The Pelican Club was not a very long-lived institution. The founder had not taken into account the gradual nature of all processes of evolution. He had gone too fast and too far. There was, indeed, a growing feeling in the public mind that the observance of Sunday as ordained was irrational. But the vast majority of those who confessed to that frame of mind would contend that to watch boxing contests and listen to comic songs in a hot and crowded arena was a still more irrational manner of keeping the Sabbath. The movement was toward outdoor exercise, healthy recreation, fresh air, and the open road.

When the Pelican Club ceased, it was for a short space reincarnated as the “Barn Club.” The constitution, ownership, and membership, were practically identical with those of the earlier venture. Here, however, the building was erected by Wells. He was free from the demands of a landlord, which in Denman Street had increased in exact proportion to his own growing prosperity. The new premises were in Gerrard Street, Soho. And I understand that the founder made rather a profitable deal when he disposed of the building to an electric lighting company or to a telephone company—which was it?