Bohemian Days in Fleet Street

by William Mackay

In relating the incident to me, Kelly concluded thus:

“And Wilson Barrett was right. The following morning they brought the papers up to my bedroom. Times, a solid column of sugar-candy; Telegraph, a column and a quarter of molasses, laid on thick; Post, syrup suited for Society. I dressed in a hurry, raced through my breakfast, ordered a hansom, and told the man to drive like the devil to the Princess’s Theatre. I was anxious to see the queue waiting to book, as discerned in the prophetic vision of my actor-managerial confrère. Never before did the journey from St. John’s Wood to Oxford Street appear so long. It was just on noon when we passed through Oxford Circus, but by the time we passed Peter Robinson’s I could see a crowd gathered in front of the theatre. ‘By Crœsus, Barrett’s right again!’ I said to myself as I paid the cabby and turned to enter the house; and then the horrible truth burst upon me. The crowd was entirely composed of Wilson Barrett’s creditors!”

There was very little pose about the pressman of the jocund days. There was an editorial pose, of course—that was as essential as an ecclesiastical or as a judicial pose—but among the rank and file nothing of the sort was known, and nothing of the sort would have been tolerated. Journalists were like so many schoolboys grown up, and affectations of all kinds were an abomination to them; yet the seed for some of the artistic make-believe which is now so wide spread was sown in an earlier and, I venture to think, a more healthy time.

Thus, what a mighty growth of rank vegetation has followed the discovery by Swinburne of Fitzgerald’s paraphrase of the “Rubaiyat” of Omar Khayyám! Swinburne’s “find” in Quaritch’s shop was, perhaps, the most important event that ever took place there. From a commercial point of view the transaction was naught, for the neglected verses were rescued by the poet from the “All these at twopence” box of the expert in old editions. Nor was there anything at all sensational in the circumstance of one poet lighting upon the undiscovered genius of a brother bard. One can understand Swinburne’s keen delight and sympathetic appreciation, but what of the rising flood of slushy adulation which has followed on the part of men who are without literary discrimination or poetic insight? The names of eminent members of the Press appear in the lists of those assembled to do honour to the memory of the Persian voluptuary. This is a pity, I think. To be in harmony with their object, these celebrations should be orgies, and as long as they are conducted on any other lines they should be left to the professors of a vapid dilettantism.

Omar Khayyám had a fine sense of humour, and, scanning mundane affairs from his retreat in Paradise, he must sometimes shake with laughter as he regards the class of admirers who assemble and meet together, drinking to his memory, sending roses to be planted on his grave, and ruffling it for a night in the character of irresponsible roisterers. There is a touch of the comic about the situation that just redeems it; otherwise, it were pitiful. What on earth does old Omar make in that galley? The dominant note of the diners is that of a stifling modernity. The purveyors of literary gossip are here, with the prurient and the anæmic, and the few normal persons who are present are here from a mere desire to gratify their curiosity or their gregariousness. All are in the attire decreed by social convention for functions of the sort. Many of them wear spectacles. When the hour strikes, and the operation of the Licensing Act compels them to bring their feast to an end, they “taxi” off to their suburban villas, where they pay rates and elect Borough Councillors. Here they are “waited up for” by their faithful wives, middle-aged and highly respectable matrons, to whom, with more or less lucidity, they relate all they have been doing and saying in honour of a lusty human animal of primeval instincts, who, had he any “say” in the matter, would eloquently resent the familiarity which is being taken with his name by persons with whom he could never have had anything in common.

And this reflection reminds me of an incident related to me by Sala. He told it of James Hannay. That accomplished writer was a great admirer of the works of Horace, and on December 8—the poet’s birthday—he gave a dinner in honour of his favourite author. At these annual assemblies the majority of the guests were men having a scholarly acquaintance with the writings of Quintus Horatius Flaccus. On one of these anniversaries it happened that the scholarly persons were all prevented from attending, and Hannay found himself surrounded at dinner by friends whose knowledge of Horace, if anything at all, was of a schoolboy and negligible kind. It was Hannay’s custom on these occasions to propose one toast—“The Memory of Horace.” He rose to make his customary address, which he brought to a conclusion in the following words:

“Would that the great poet were with us now! Here he would tell us of his Venusian home under the shadow of the Apulian Hills; here he would explain the recondite personal allusions in his ‘Satires’; here he would lift the veil from his inner life in quoting passages from the ‘Epistles’; here he would recite, as only he could, his lighter or his graver ‘Odes,’ happily conscious of the fact that not one person in his hearing understood a word of the language in which he was speaking!”

And, according to Sala, no one resented the pleasantry. It may be assumed that Hannay was more exercised about the memory of Horace than he was about his own. One never hears him quoted now; yet he established a claim on the memory of posterity far more valid than that of a score of writers who have become accepted as speaking with authority. His “Satire and Satirists” proves him to be as fine a master of satire as many of those with whom he deals. His “Singleton Fontenoy” is full of wit and humour, and the shrewd wisdom of a thorough man of the world. He wrote largely in the Quarterly Review, was a contributor to Punch, and a regular writer on the Press. There is no English critic to whose pages I revert with keener satisfaction; but that taste is not general. Hannay, alas! has written his name in water.

Charles Reade wrote one of the greatest novels produced in the Victorian era—I refer, of course, to “The Cloister and the Hearth”—and he was probably one of the greatest personalities of his own time. I knew him fairly well. Like Robert Buchanan, he was ready to rush into newspaper correspondence on the slightest provocation, and, having once commenced operations, he hit out in a way that was perfectly wonderful; yet—again like poor Buchanan—he was a man with a soft heart and a generous nature. He would roar through a whole column, hurling at his opponent the most weird and lurid denunciations, but he bore no malice. He was afflicted now and then with righteous indignation, but once the steam was let off, he cooed like a sucking-dove. In the height of his argument he would coin the most wonderful phrases, for Reade never raged as the heathen rage. Tom Purnell “had at” the old gentleman in the Athenæum, and Reade was out after his scalp in rather less than no time. His philippic on this occasion incidentally enriched the English language by the addition of a word. “Pseudonymuncule” was the epithet which he forged for the confusion of his opponent.

Reade was a big burly man, with a grey beard, short clipped. Henry Byron once described him as “Great Briton,” and the phrase was apt enough. A tumultuous, overwhelming personage was Reade. His advertisements to “Thief Takers,” offering rewards to those who caught unscrupulous persons pirating his works, were surely the “maddest, merriest” things ever set up in type; yet they were quite seriously meant by their author. On the subject of piracy he was always in deadly earnest. One of his last contributions to the Press was a series of articles in the Daily Telegraph on “Ambidextrous Man.” On this subject he waxed as emphatic, insistent, and eloquent as if the world were arrayed in one great stupid conspiracy against his contention. As a matter of fact, the world did not care a farthing about it one way or the other. Perhaps his most dramatic exhibition of violent indignation was afforded when the authorities wanted to acquire his house at Albert Gate. Among other devices to which he resorted in order to bring his persecutors to their senses was a very characteristic one. He had a huge board affixed to the forefront of his dwelling, and painted thereon, for all the world to see, was the legend “Naboth’s Vineyard.” One would have imagined that this would have stricken his enemies with a sense of shame. In that direction, however, I regret to say, it failed.