James Ansdell was a retired Cape merchant. He was a genial, generous, and clever little man, and bore a somewhat striking facial resemblance to Livingstone the explorer. Why on earth James Ansdell, with a fine income and all the world open to him as an oblate spheroid of a pleasure-garden, should have selected Anderton’s Hotel in Fleet Street as the resort, of all others, to afford him the greatest amount of diversion, I have never been able to discover. But in the smoking-room of Anderton’s some five-and-twenty years ago Ansdell was to be found on every afternoon after lunch, surrounded by a little coterie of pressmen, Fleet Street nondescripts, and Cape cronies. He established himself as host of the table; and in those days that in itself was a passport to the less strenuously occupied of the journalists. Ansdell was always sure of a full company, and as he was not only a good talker, but a good listener, conversation for conversation’s sake was greatly encouraged, and time passed swiftly and agreeably enough over the Cape merchant’s coffees and whiskies and cigars.
Ansdell had met Alfred Geary at the Cape—about Geary I shall have a little to say in my next chapter—and I suppose that to Geary he was indebted for the introductions which enabled him to establish his “afternoons.” My opportunities of joining Ansdell’s circle were infrequent. The journalist of larger leisure, a smaller sense of responsibility, and more mercurial temperament, found the Ansdell reunions extremely to his taste. And there can be no doubt that the founder of the “afternoons” had contrived to surround himself with some very interesting characters.
Among them was a certain poet. The world forgets all about him—a tasteless and an ungrateful world—but in the seventies and eighties no new publication would consider itself complete that did not contain a copy of verse from his muse. And if he had been Horace himself, he could not have had a more profound belief in the authenticity of his poetic gift. He had a stout figure, a round red face, and he walked up and down the Street that is called Fleet with his head held well back, and with the severe air of a man that was determined to bring the beast of a British Public to its knees. I am afraid the good fellow was chaffed considerably at the Ansdell symposia. But his belief in his own good gifts was too profound to permit him to take offence even at the most obvious irony.
The last occasion on which I saw the poet was on the day on which the papers announced that the Laureateship, vacant for some time by the death of Tennyson, had been bestowed upon Mr. Austin. He was overwhelmed with grief and chagrin—grief, that a post so manifestly adapted to his own genius should have been given to another; chagrin, because the office had been given to one whom he regarded as his own inferior. His idea was that I should obtain for him permission, from the conductors of a journal with which I was then connected, to write the new appointment down. He was greatly incensed, I remember, by my asking him whether it mattered very much who was appointed or whether any appointment whatever were made.
“It is the cynical act of a Minister who has made science his hobby. What sort of a taste for literature can be expected to be acquired in Lord Salisbury’s laboratories at Hatfield?”
“A taste for literary retorts,” I suggested. But he would not allow the momentous subject to be side-tracked by a mere verbal pleasantry.
“I tell you,” he persisted, “it’s a filthy political job. Austin has been officially honoured, not on account of his poems, but as a reward for his Conservative leaders in the Standard. This great office has been flung like a bone to a dog by a cynical and unscrupulous Minister.”
It was strange, the way he harped on poor Lord Salisbury’s cynicism. But I was unable to obtain for him the hearing he desired, and I do not expect that it was accorded to him elsewhere.
The most picturesque figure at these informal assemblies was Brigadier-General McIver. In what service this Caledonian swashbuckler earned his last distinction I forget, but the reader will find the details in an autobiography of the General entitled “Under Fourteen Flags.” From the very title of the book it will be deduced that the General was impartial in his sympathies, and that his good sword was at the disposal of any nationality that was disposed to pay for it. In that autobiographical work the author is somewhat reticent about his life previous to the date at which he received his first command. From personal observation of the gallant officer, I should be inclined to say that he had served in the ranks as a British Tommy, and that, having a real taste for soldiering, and finding the rate of promotion in the ranks vastly too slow for his aspirations, he had left the home forces, and placed his services at the disposal of those struggling nationalities which are so often only too glad to accord high commissions to Englishmen or Scotsmen or Irishmen willing to serve under their flags. His whole bearing, dialect, and appearance, was that of the ranker.
His book, which was really written for him by an English officer “down on his luck,” is an amazing record of deeds of derring-do in Servia, in Turkey, in the Far East, and in the republics of South America. It was all one to McIver. A soldier of fortune, it mattered nothing to him whose blood he was called upon to shed, provided he was allowed to shed a great deal of it. Had the deeds which the Brigadier-General has had recorded in his name been performed under the British flag, the intrepid warrior should have earned the Victoria Cross, perhaps a peerage, and certain such a money grant as would have made him quite comfortable for the rest of his natural life. The struggling nationalities, apparently, had all been either ungrateful or impecunious, and McIver was in the habit of drawing on the resources of his generous entertainer from the Cape. That worthy individual was quite ready to meet these recurrent demands, persuaded that in listening to the lurid romances of the General he was receiving rather more than value for his money.