The name of the Pelican Club still persists in the title of a theatrical paper conducted by Mr. Frank Boyd. Never before, I should imagine, was a journalistic success achieved at so small an expenditure of either brains or capital. But Frank was ever a canny man; he understood the small public for whom he catered, gave them, at small cost, what he considered good for them, became that enviable personage the owner of a paying newspaper property, and so continueth even unto this day.
Boyd sanctified his association with the stage by marrying Miss Agnes Hewitt, a well-known actress who is understood to supply her husband with his Society gossip and his latest fashions. His original ties were rather with the Church than with the Stage. He was the son of Dr. A. K. H. Boyd, of St. Andrews, author of “The Recreations of a Country Parson”—the “Boyd that writes” of Carlyle’s famous sneer.
The passing of the Puritan sabbath has conferred benefits also on those who are entirely out of sympathy with the new order of things, and who still patronize the institution of public worship to the extent of attending church or chapel twice or even thrice on Sunday. The priests and the pastors have awakened to the fact that if they would retain their congregations they must give them bright, cheery services, and sermons which, if not eloquent or convincing, shall at least be interesting and intelligent.
Huxley flung a gibe at the “corybantic Christianity” of General Booth. But “corybantic Christianity” has held the proletariat by substituting one sort of excitement for another. And the great middle classes can only be kept in leash for a while longer by music and oratory of a kind which, a century since, our militant Protestant forbears would surely have regarded as, in themselves, grievous acts of Sabbath-breaking.
Sabbath-breaking, quotha! The Sabbath set up by the dour, morose, uncharitable religionists of my childhood has been broken into bits, nor will all the skilled science of enthusiastic collectors ever piece it together again.
CHAPTER VIII
ODD FISH
London streets have been cleared of their professional “odd fish” owing to the parental solicitude of the police. The expensive operations of the London County Council having swept away all the remnants of Dickensland, the police have gathered up and carried away any Dickenesque characters that survived the advent of the reforming Council. All things considered, our ædiles have acted wisely in the interests of Londoners. They have gained experience and confidence. Such early mistakes as the architecture of Shaftesbury Avenue and Charing Cross Road will never be repeated. The progress of Kingsway and Aldwych prove that at all events. If we are to lose the ancient picturesqueness, we are to have in return spacious roadways flanked by architectural dignity.
If, however, we rejoice in the erection of palaces on sites once occupied by rookeries, we must surely sometimes experience a pang of regret over the disappearance of the eccentric characters of the town—the quaint Londoners who made a living out of their eccentricities or their afflictions. Those of them who were not removed disappeared, no doubt, owing to natural causes. But no successor was admitted to have a valid claim to the vacant place. The streets are clear of mendicant freaks, and even of those quaint itinerants who performed on the chance of a public recognition of their exhibitions. Codlin and Short no longer—as in the Punch pictures of John Leech—set up their stage in West End squares. The man in soiled tights who released himself from ropes coiled and knotted by confederates in the crowd is never seen nowadays attempting his performance in the mouth of a “no-thoroughfare.” His dirty fleshings would scarcely be tolerated even on a race-course. On second thoughts, I omit him from the odd street characters whom I miss from the London thoroughfares.
But there should have been someone of his household to carry on the tradition of the little cripple who used to sit on the pavement in front of the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square, making weird noises on a German concertina. Close by, in the mouth of Suffolk Street, Pall Mall East, a most respectable young man exhibited a “happy family” in a large cage. It was a most instructive lesson in natural history, and an illustration of the power of man over cats, canaries, rats, mice, dogs, and other specimens of what are popularly known as “the lower animals,” and many a morning have I stood entranced as I watched a white mouse play with the whiskers of a cat, or seen a fox-terrier invite the familiarity of an exceedingly maleficent-looking rodent. There was some ethical teaching to be picked up also, for no doubt the result achieved by the showman was entirely the effect of moral suasion. “It is all done by kindness,” as the showman of the circus used to say.
Then there was the old fellow who used to sweep the crossing at the top of King Street, where it enters St. James’s Square. He was a rubicund customer, whose whole person seemed to reek of much good ale. He was dressed in the pink of the hunting-field, and wore the picturesque hunting-cap of the shires. He could scarcely have been a M.F.H. fallen on evil times, and haunting the clubland of the days of his vanity. Perhaps he was a huntsman or a whipper-in grown too fat or too bibulous for his work. He had certainly selected an eligible “pitch,” and must have acquired a nice competence from the fogeys, old and middle-aged, who used his crossing. His attractive livery should have descended—for I deem the original wearer long since the victim of another sort of crossing—to an emulous son. The world is growing too drab. And even an æsthetic crossing-sweeper might do somewhat to improve its colour scheme.