Bohemian Days in Fleet Street

by William Mackay

There were two artists in the Ansdell entourage. The one was Mat Stretch, the other George Cruikshank junior. Both were contributors to the comic papers. The work of Mat Stretch was at one time in great demand. He possessed a vein of humour which was quite his own, and his drawings always found a place in one or other of the humorous publications. Cruikshank had a stiff style and an exaggerated method. I never could stand his work, nor, indeed, did I care very much for the little creature himself. He was by way of being a bit of a dandy. He wore a very glossy silk hat tilted over one ear; his clothes were usually of a sporting cut, and he affected the style of a patron of the turf. Before the growing popularity of camera pictures both he and Mat Stretch fell back. The camera, if not artistic, is at least reliable, and any reliability which Cruikshank might have at one time evinced became impaired by his conviviality. It is to be feared, indeed, that he was not a bigoted subscriber to the teetotal tenets of his illustrious relative. George the Elder drew “The Bottle.” George the Younger was fonder of drawing the cork.

Ansdell, the chairman of these afternoon reunions, was a widower. When he took to himself a second wife, Cruikshank junior regarded it as something in the nature of a personal affront that the permission of the circle at Anderton’s had not been obtained in the first place. Perhaps Ansdell knew that George would never give his consent. At all events, he got married without asking for it. The agreeable afternoon functions were broken up, and Fleet Street knew James Ansdell no more.

The smoking-room at Anderton’s Hotel is abundantly provided with windows at the back, and over the front part of it, which is cut off from the back by a partition, there is a dome light. But the place is so built in that the walls of neighbouring erections cut off the sunlight, and on the brightest days this particular apartment is always tenebrious. On gloomy days the artificial lights are switched on. At Anderton’s Hotel the redoubtable Richard Pigott spent some of the last days of his smirched career, and the smoking-room was the favourite resort of the devoted forger.

Pigott’s favourite position was at the writing-tables under the glass skylight in the lower part of the room. There he spent many hours of those days of the Parnell Commission pending and during his call to the witness-box. I had occasion to interview him on two occasions during this momentous period—almost literally period—in his career. I always found him writing away like mad and smiling sweetly to himself the while. Never, surely, did the results of a literary man’s efforts yield so much immediate pleasure to their author as Pigott’s “copy” seemed to afford to him. When I addressed him and explained my desires, he gathered up his sheets of “copy” and deposited them in a black leather bag which always accompanied him.

He was a most benevolent-looking rascal. His white beard and whiskers were carefully trimmed; his rubicund face was invariably wreathed with smiles; his portly figure had an aldermanic contour; and altogether he suggested the railway director or the rich stage uncle. No one would have taken him for the editor of a tenth-rate provincial paper, or the clumsy forger who was so careless in his criminality as to sign his victim’s name at the top rather than at the bottom of a letter on the acceptance of which everything depended.

Once I met him in Coventry Street late at night, and asked him into the American Bar of the Criterion. He hesitated a good deal before accepting my invitation, and was evidently ill at ease while he remained there with me. He was greatly disconcerted by the apparent interest which two men who were drinking cocktails were taking in him. They certainly looked our way and whispered together. Pigott took leave of me hurriedly and left the place. I called on him next day, desirous, if possible, of ascertaining his exact suspicion about the men, whose presence had so obviously disturbed him, and their connection with a conspiracy of which he was obviously in dread. But Pigott could be as close as an oyster when he desired. He assured me that he had not particularly noticed anyone at the Criterion, and explained that he never really liked the place. The “company is so mixed, you see,” declared the venerable liar.

Pigott presented a strange psychological problem with singular physiological developments. Immediately after the appearance of his forgeries in the Times, he suddenly lost flesh: the incessant smile and inflated waist had disappeared; his face was haggard; he was but the shadow of his former self. Pigott was a sick man. The thing accomplished, fear possessed him and reacted on his body. But he put on flesh again, and when he appeared before the Commission he was the same sleek, obese, oleaginous charlatan of former days. On his oath he was as unctuous and specious as when off it, and quite untrammelled by its obligations.

His flight to Spain, and his suicide when his pursuers were close on his trail—these are matters of history. That which is not quite a matter of history is an incident redounding very much to the charity and humanity of Mr. Labouchere. It will be recollected, perhaps, that the exposure and flight of the traitor and forger were brought about at a conference which he had with Sala and Labouchere at the house of the latter. That which has gone unrecorded is that Labouchere charged himself with the maintenance of the dead man’s children.

It was curious to note the effect of the exposure of the Pigott forgeries on the London public. The Man in the Street came out very strong on the occasion. Up to that time Parnell was a much-hated politician. But your Cockney has fine sporting instincts always, and the finest instinct of the sportsman is a love of fair-play. It was felt now that a deadly wrong had been done to the leader of the Irish people—for leader of the Irish party he never was and never pretended to be. He led the people; but he drove the party like a herd of pigs. I was on the steps of the Royal Courts when Parnell came out after the disclosure. Quite a crowd of people were assembled on the pavement. Parnell was accompanied by George Lewis. On the appearance of the lawyer and his client, quite a hearty cheer was raised. The eminent solicitor—usually so impassive—was quite evidently moved and pleased. But Parnell passed on untouched, sphinx-like, contemptuous. As far as he was concerned there might have been no demonstration, no expression of sympathy, no British public at all. Tall, gaunt, unbending, he moved on, a sad, lonely figure of a man, I thought. His, however, was the immobility that covered a very genuine sense of power.

After the divorce proceedings, which broke the rod of iron with which he had hitherto ruled his so-called Parliamentary following, had come to an end, the Irish tribune proceeded to his native country to face the thing out in the constituencies. A friend of his and of mine met him on the platform at Euston Station, and, on behalf of a news association, asked him to impart something of his plans and views.