-< ■Si JOV' 'Jy.HOJnYDJO^' ^\WEUNIVER% ^lOSANCElfJ> %a3AINn-3WV^ -s^^lLIBRARYQ^ ^•J/OJITVOJO^ 3/?^ ^OFCAIIFO/?^ ameunivers-za vvlOSANCElfj> o ^^^ ^OFCAilF0%, ^ 5 "^AajAiNiiawv .^;OFCALIF0/?x^ .^;OF-CALIFO% ^(^AavaaiH^ ^(^Aavaaii-^- .\MEUNIVER% YQr ^tllBRARYQ^^ AWEUNIVERVa vvlOSANGElfj^ o jo^ ^.j/OdnvDJO^ %. ^ ^riijoNvsoi^"^ "^AaaAiNQ-^vw^ "^^^AbvaaiH^ R% ^lOSANCElfj> ^ v^UIBRARY/?/-^ -.vMllBRARYQr^ ^WE-UNIVERS//, 3 i^orl iiirri iiinrs i\- o ^OFCALIFOfiUA ^C I -n <-* '^Aa3AINn3WV Y aweuniver% ' >- ■<. ce. I; -^ ■i:LLA — HORRIDA BELLA 6l Over the Mont Cenis Pass— Venice — A Battle between a Crab and a Rat — At Trieste — Over the Semmering to Vienna — The Kaiser — Turner's Venice — Padua — Milan — H. M. Hyndman— " Viva Verdi ! " — The Salas of Milan. CHAPTER XXXVn. With Garibaldi in the Tyrol 70 A Badly Provisioned Army — An Interview with Garibaldi — His Career — What he did with his Uniform — His Lady Dev- otees — His Ingenuousness — Daniel Manin — Legend of a Special Correspondent — I recognise my Overcoat — Edward Dicey — Lord Ronald Gower — Garibaldi at Stafford House — Compulsory Peace. CHAPTER XXXVIII. The Liberation of Venice, 83 Mr. Frederick Hardman— The First War Correspondent — Peter Finnerty and the Walcheren Expedition — M. Plantulli — At Padua — Marshal Haynau and the Caffe Florian — Shake- speare's Familiarity with Italian Cities — Ferrara : Haunted by the Ghost of Lucrezia Borgia — Donizetti's Opera — I Rejoin my Wife — An Incident at Mestre — A Reminiscence of Niag- ara — Venice on the Eve of its Liberation — Good-nature of the Venetians — The Fenice Re-opened — Popular Enthusiasm — Enter the King. CHAPTER XXXIX. Rome and Naples -99 Perugia — Rome in 1866 and in 1894 — Papal Warriors — The Colosseum — Cardinals in State — The Holy Father on the Pin- cian Hill — Papal Money — Guide's Beatrice Cenci — Pompeii — From Naples to Marseilles. CONTENTS vil CHAPTER XL. PAGE The International Exhibition of '67, . . . .106 Paris — Napoleon's Interest in the Exhibition — The Imperial Commissioners — "Old King Cole" and his Panorama of English Literature and Journalism — The late Lord Houghton — The Commissariat — The " Test House " and its French Nickname — Baron B and his Variegated Career — The Distribution of Prizes — Napoleon III. and Ferdinand de Lesseps as Prize Winners — Vicissitudes of Fortune. CHAPTER XLI. Sultan and Tsar 114 Mr. Felix Whitehurst — Arrival of Abdul Aziz at Toulon — In the midst of Flunkeys — Attempt on the Tsar Alexander II. — Trial of Berezowski — Maitre Arago's Defence — News of Berezowski in 1 886 — Frightening a Sentinel — A Galaxy of Royalty — The First German Emperor. CHAPTER XLII. The Clerkenwell Explosion and the "Claimant," . 122 An Execution at Maidstone — Lord Mayor Allen and his Chariot — The Queen's State Carriage — The Clerkenwell Ex- plosion — The Boat Race of 1 868 — Buckstone and Toole and the Old Cognac — The Tichborne Claimant and his Friends. CHAPTER XLIII. Behind the Scenes Again, 132 A Feat of Memory' — St. Martin's Hall : The Queen's Thea- tre — Mr. and Mrs. Labouchere — An Invitation to Write a Play — Watts Phillips: a Neglected Dramatist — Edward Sothern — At Home again — The Strand Music Hall — Mr. Lionel Lawson — Mr. John Hollingshead — IVai Tyler at the Gaiety — Miss Nellie Farren, Mr. J. L. Toole, Miss Rose Coghlan. viii CONTENTS CHAPTER XLIV. PAGE The Trial of Pierre Bonaparte 140 Prince Pierre Bonaparte's Stormy Career — The Slaying of Victor Noir— Maitre Floquet — Incidents of the Trial— M. Henri Rochefort— M. Paul de Cassagnac— An Acquittal— A Solatium to the Victim's Kindred. CHAPTER XLV. The War of 1S70 152 " Kit " Pemberton— Military Linguists— Correspondents to keep in the Rear— Paris before the War— An admirer of la grosse GiT/a/^r/V— Crowded Churches— A Thoroughly Popu- lar War— At Metz— A Musical Colonel— Nicholas Woods- Henry and Athol Mayhew— Augustus O'Shea— Mr. Simpson — Sydney Hall—" Azamat Batouk "—O'Shea in Trouble — An Insubordinate Aide-de-Camp — Mr. Simpson's Tent — A Bullying Commandant — Meeting the Commandant again— Metz Demoralised. CHAPTER XLVI. Exit the Second Empire, 168 Panic in Paris — Spy Fever — I am Arrested — Mobbed by Prisoners — At the Prefecture — A Remand — A Friendly Gaoler — Lord Lyon's Intervention — A Fit of Hysterics — My Narrow Escape from being Butchered — Tales of the Prussian Uhlan. CHAPTER XLVII. Through the Wall of Rome, 180 The Lyons of 1870 — In Straits at Geneva — A Friendly Chemist — To Rome — Cadorna takes the City — The British and Foreign Bible Society to the Fore — Thomas Cook — My First Acquaintance with him — Frugal Box Book-keepers — Cornelius O'Dowd's Attacks on Mr. Cook — Departure of the Papal Garrison — A Mass Meeting in the Colosseum — The Plebiscituvi — A Review in the Campo di Marte — Might and Right. CONTENTS IX CHAPTER XLVIII. PACE Going to Law, and to Berlin, 196 A Libel — My " Extravagance " — A C}"^^^''^''^ about my Nose — Mr. Friswell, my Assailant — Heavy Damages — How the Money went — At the Opening of the German Parliament — A Tobacco and Beer Symposium — Among the French Pris- oners at Spandau. CHAPTER XLIX. In St. Paul's and at Chislehurst, 205 The Prince of Wales's Illness — The Thanksgiving Service —The Tichborne Claimant again — His Coolness — Funeral of Napoleon III. — Illness — A Resourceful Doctor — Walking over One's own Feet. CHAPTER L. Collapse of the Claimant 216 Dr. Kenealy's Career — The End of Sir Alexander Cock- burn's Summing Up — The Verdict — A Parting Glance from the Claimant. CHAPTER LI. To Spain Once More: Alfonso XII 222 My Acquaintance with Three Kings of Spain — A Call from Don Juan de Borbon — A Parlour Maid's Comment on Royalty — The Duke of Aosta — Madrid in Winter — Colonel " Howsomever " and his Stories — Antonio Gallenga, Then and Now — Archibald Forbes — Roger Eykyn — King Alfonso's Entry — A Journey to Zaragoza — Left Behind — Washing with Candles. CHAPTER LIL Down South, 238 Barcelona — A Train attacked by Carlists — Levying Tribute — Another Attack : the Tables Turned — Cordova and Seville — Don Arturo of Bobadilla introduces himself — Gibraltar — A Charge of Insulting the Sons of the Rock — The King of the Monkeys — Algeria. CONTENTS CHAPTER LIII. PAGE Another Expedition to Russia, 245 Death of Shirley Brooks — His Editorship of Punch — Lord Beaconsfield as a Patron of Men of Letters — The Difificulty of Saving on ^2,000 a Year— Demolition of Temple Bar: Daz'fy Telegraph Victory— The Griffin — To Russia again— The Flower of Russian Society — Denounced as a Turkish Spy — An Ill-tempered Courier and his Peculiarities — The Monotony of Russian Life— The American Minister— The Russian Climate— Adelina Patti and her Chasseur— Odts^a. CHAPTER LIV. In the City of the Sultan 268 The Black Sea — The Bosphorus — Campbell Clarke — Har- ems on the Tramway — Plundering St. Sophia — Mosaics and Jujubes : a Widow Lady's Penetration — Dancing Dervishes — The Dogs of Stamboul : a Story of them — Alexander Mc- Gahan — Eugene Schuyler and his Smoking Party — Frank Scudamore — Hobart Pasha — Baker Pasha — Colonel Burnaby — British Diplomatists at Constantinople — Mr. Consul Reade — The Son of Napoleon the Great's Gaoler. CHAPTER LV. The Turkish Constitution, ...... 282 M. Bar^re — Mr. Hormuzd Rassam — General Ignatieff : a Reminiscence of his Father — Sir William White — Christmas at Constantinople — Proclaiming the Turkish Constitution — Moslem Toleration — Athens — Story of a Deaf Judge — Syra — At Monte Carlo : more Ill-luck — Captain Cashless — Madame La Baronne Unetelle and her Indignation. CHAPTER LVL In Mecklenburgh Square . 299 Breaking into my own House : Story of a Caretaker and a Haunch of Venison — In " Society " again — Mr. Disraeli and Miss Braddon — -Presented to the Prince of Wales — The Grosvenor Gallery — " Paris herself Again "—A Dinner to Archibald Forbes. CONTENTS XI CHAPTER LVII. PAGE F"ROM THE Atlantic to the Pacific, .... 308 At Richmond, U.S.A. — The Carnival at New Orleans — A Cock-fight — Chicago — Over the " Rockies " — San Fran- cisco — The Palace Hotel— The Streets — Chinese Festivities — The San Francisco News Letter and Mr. Frederick Mar- riott — Edward Sothern. CHAPTER LVIII. A Murdered Tsar, 316 Another Russian Mission — Irish Stew in St. Petersburg — The Ill-conditioned Courier again — The Earl of Dufferin and Lord Frederick Hamilton — A Recognition at the Beefsteak Club — An Inopportune Attack of Lumbago — Lying-in-State of Alexander II. — A Memorial Service. • CHAPTER LIX. Coronation of Alexander III., 325 Permission to wear Court Dress — An Offer of Free Quarters declined — Entrance of Alexander III. into Moscow — A Brill- iant Scene — The Coronation — The Tsar at Dinner — A Run for the Telegraph Office — A bit of Journalistic Smartness. CHAPTER LX. To THE Antipodes, 333 A Lecturing Tour — Mr. Chauncey Depew — An Interview with President Arthur at Washington — General Butler — Failure and Success — At the Royal Palace, Honolulu — King David Laamea Kalakaua — Auckland — Mr. Dalley — Mel- bourne — " The Land of the Golden Fleece "— Wagga-Wagga — A Snub at Mudgee — New Zealand — Tasmania — A Christ- mas Dinner of Boiled Mutton and Turnips — My Wife's Death. CHAPTER LXI. Home Again— Last Words 349 Calcutta — Smitten with Fever — The Queen's Jubilee — An Urgent Note from Mr. Labouchere — Introduction to Pigott the Forger — His Confession — My Second Marriage. THE LIFE AND ADVENTURES OF GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA CHAPTER XXXIII SOME NEWSPAPER MATTERS It was shortly after the death of the Prince Consort that I became aware of the presence of a new leading- article writer in the columns of the Daily TelegrapJi. Members of the staff of great daily papers do not, as a rule, see much of one another. I had my own room at the office ; and although I occasionally met Horace St. John, I never conferred with him on journalistic mat- ters. With respect to the articles I was to write I saw only my editor, Mr. J. M. Levy, or his son Edward. I was most forcibly impressed by the style of the new leader-writer ; replete as it was with refined scholar- ship, with eloquent diction, and with an Oriental exu- berance of epithets. Some of the leaders — giving ex- pression to the universal feeling of sympathy for, and condolence with. Her Majesty in her bitter bereave- ment — struck me as being about the most pathetic ut- terances in poetic prose that I had ever read. But it was the Eastern aroma of these articles which most at- tracted my attention and excited my admiration. It occurred to me one day to ask Edward Lawson who the gentleman might be who wrote so sumptuously LIFE OF GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA about the Nilotic butterfly and the sacred rivers and temples of burning Ind ? He told me that the writer was a gentleman newly arrived from India, and that gentleman is now my very good friend, Sir Edwin Arnold, K.C.I. E., C.S.I. Shortly after this discovery I was dining with the late E. M. Dallas, of the Times, and his wife, who had been the gifted tragedienne, Miss Isabella Glyn, at their residence in Hanover Square. Among the guests were Sir Edwin Landseer and James Hannay ; and in the course of the evening the conversation turned on a leader in the Daily Telegraph, in which — alluding to some exceptionally scandalous divorce case, which was then the talk of the town — the writer observed that comments on such a case would best be made, not in the English language, but in Latin. James Hannay, who was really a verv competent Ciceronian and Horatian scholar, had a craze that no journalist save himself was entitled to claim any familiarity with the Latin tongue ; and observed, with a chuckle, that the " dog " — meaning the author of the article in question — might, if he essayed to deal with the speech of old Rome, experience some difficulties in connection with the subjunctive mood. The article was none of mine, but I conjectured, I know not with how much reason, that it was from the pen of the gentleman who wrote so eloquently about the Nilotic butterfly ; and I some- what hotly told Hannay that, to the best of my knowl- edge and belief, the author of the essay at which he was sneering was a Master of Arts of Oxford, the win- ner of the Newdigate prize for his English poem on the Feast of Belshazzar, and who had been subse- quently appointed Principal of the Sanskrit College at Poona and Fellow of the University of Bombay ; and that in all probability he had forgotten more Latin and Greek than Hannay ever knew. SOME NEWSPAPER MATTERS Dallas and Landseer were highly amused by my taking up the cudgels in defence of a colleague, con- cerning whose identity I was not at all certain. Nor have I ever known, to this day, whether Sir Edwin did or did not write the impugned leader. If he did not I beg his pardon. In any case, I have never ceased to entertain the sincerest appreciation of the genius, both as a poet and a prose writer, of Sir Edwin Arnold. The dullest, hardest-headed of prosers myself, I love the divine art of poesy with passionate devotion ; and after I am dead the world will see, I hope, the com- monplace books which I have filled with extracts from the greatest masters of poetry in ancient and modern times. Thus, as a humble professor of prose, but as one whom Providence has blessed with the faculty of admiration, and who has never been envious of his superiors in letters, I deliberately place Edwin Arnold, as a poet, next after Algernon Charles Swin- burne ; next to him Alfred Austin ; next, Lewis Morris, and next William Morris. Concerning the poetesses it would be invidious to say anything. The remainder of the bards or would-be male bards are, to my mind, only so much leather and prunella. Talking of Alfred Austin, I smile when I remember my first meeting with that elegant littcrateiir. It must have been some time in 1862. Temple Bar was paying its way, but was not making a mint of money ; and Mr. John Maxwell, its proprietor, was not indisposed to sell the copyright of the magazine for a round sum, I had finished my novel of " The Seven Sons of Mam- mon." Maxwell had relinquished his rights of " dead- lock " on the re-publication of the fiction for ^100 ; and Tinsley Brothers, of Catherine Street, had given me £^00 for five years' right of issuing the romance. But that sum was not enough to purchase the T.B. Ed- mund Yates was in the receipt of a handsome salary at LIFE OF GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA the General Post Office ; but he needed all his income, and all he could earn by assiduous literary labour be- sides, to keep up that which he considered to be proper state and dignity. Edmund liked luxury, and kept his brougham and pair, with a groom and coachman in buckskin and " pickle-jars," to say nothing of a sleek hack for riding in Rotten Row, long before age and infirmity induced me to hire a humble co2{/>e irom a job- master. My friend and sub-editor, therefore, suggested that young Mr. Alfred Austin was just the kind of gen- tleman to come forward with a portion of the necessary funds for buying Temple Bar. He was talented, he was prosperous, he was energetic. So a little dinner party was got up at Yates's residence, which was then some- where in St. John's Wood. I know it was in that dis- trict, because he fell into a mighty rage with me when I hinted that the morals of St. John's Wood were not, in those days, wholly free from reproach. Some months afterwards, when he moved into other quar- ters, he incidentally told me that his next door neighbours at St. John's Wood had been, on one side, Mesdemoiselles Lais, Phryne, and Aspasia ; and on the other side a gentleman deprived of his reason, and who was occasionally wont to escape from his keeper, and dance wild sarabands on the lawn in a costume which the Spaniards call en ciierpo, and the Red Ind- ians " all face." Mr. Alfred Austin, when we came to talk business, treated me in what I considered to be a rather dii haiit en bas manner. I half thought that he was of opinion that I had borrowed my suit of evening dress from Messrs. Blackford, in Holywell Street ; and then it sud- denly occurred to me that I had been reading a poem of his called " The Season," in which I was alluded to as the inhabitant of a garret, " wrapping my rags around me as I wrote." Considering that at the time named SOME NEWSPAPER MATTERS 5 I had an income from one source or another of at least ;^40 a week ; that I had been elected a member of the Reform Club, and was, after a manner, a country squire, I need scarcely say that the allusion to the garret and the rags was the cause of much laughter in the domestic circle at Upton Court. How little people know about one another, to be sure ! There was brilliant, whole- souled Matthew Arnold, who was so very fond of snarl- ing and sneering at the journalists whom he called the " young lions of the Daily TelegrapJiT Bless us and save us ! When he was jibing, some of the writers whom he assailed were growing middle-aged lions ; and three of us at least, who yet continue to roar daily in the columns of the Daily Telegraph — Edwin Arnold, Francis Lawley, and myself — are rather ancient lions. Many years afterwards I met Matthew Arnold at the house of Mr. George Russell, now Under-Secretary of State for India. As regards the negotiations with Mr. Alfred Austin, they had no practical issue. Him also I did not meet for a very long time ; but when I did have the pleasure of renewing my acquaintance with him I had read " The Human Tragedy," " The Golden Age," " Young's Widowhood," and many other of his enchanting poems. Naturally, my mind reverts sometimes to the lines about the garret and the rags in the satire of " The Sea- son," which contained, by the way, a line which might have been signed by Pope, or Swift, or Churchhill. It was a description of a fashionable dinner-party, and the arrival of the gentlemen when they joined the ladies in the drawing-room was thus tersely summed up — " Then the half-drunk lean over the half-dressed." Gentlemen took their wine, and a great deal of it, in 1862. Not all the two and three bottle men had passed away ; but I attribute the pleasing advent of after- 6 LIFE OF GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA dinner abstinence from port, sherry, and claret at the conclusion of the repast to two causes. First, the in- troduction of the service h la riisse, which absolved hosts from the obligation of carving, and led to the in- troduction of light and elegant dinners, in place of the heavy feeds which required to be washed down by potent beverages. If you will look at Richard Doyle's cartoon of a dinner-party in the " Manners and Customs of the English," in the Cornhill Magazine, published in 1861, you will see that the host is carving; and more than that, when the whole of the dishes were placed on the table other guests were expected to carve the viands nearest to their hands. This led to much overeating on the part of the company, to much fatigue on the part of the carvers, and the subsequent recruiting of ex- hausted nature by swilling an excessive quantity of wine before the gentlemen joined the ladies. But a far more important agent in abolishing the brutal custom of drinking wine after dinner, was that patronage of smoking, which we owe to the Prince of Wales. CHAPTER XXXIV MAINLY ABOUT A WEDDING Eighteen hundred and sixty-three was to me a very eventful year. I had left Upton Court and taken a house in Guildford Street, Russell Square. Early in March the Heir Apparent of the British Crown was married to the Princess Alexandra of Denmark. His Royal Highness went down to Dover to fetch his bride elect, and we journalists had a hard time of it when the Royal pair entered the Metropolis. We breakfasted at Guildhall, where the City authorities were very kind to us, and agreed that a couple of carriages, in which eight of us were bestowed, should form part of the civic procession which was to meet the Prince and Princess. Henry Rumsey Forster was, of course, to the fore, as the representative of the Morning Post ; and, in the in- terest of some other paper — the name of which has es- caped me — was the Rev. J. M. C. Bellew, who had been one of my contributors to Temple Bar. A noticeable personage the Rev. J. M. C. Bellew, father of the extant, talented, and well-known actor. He had, I believe, for a time, performed sacerdotal functions at Calcutta, where his congregation was very fond of him, and pre- sented him with a life-sized portrait of himself. Re- turning to England, he was for a while minister of a church in Regent Street, near Verrey's ; then he had another cure of souls somewhere in the Regent's Park ; and at the time of the marriage of the Prince he was officiating at a proprietary chapel in Bloomsbury. 8 LIFE OF GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA Subsequently he joined the Roman Catholic Com- munion : possibly with the idea of becoming a priest of that church ; but he overlooked the circumstance that although the Church of England recognises Romanist Orders, the Church of Rome does not reciprocate that theological courtesy. Ultimately Mr. Bellevv became a public lecturer, taking Shakespeare for his theme, and illustrating his lectures by means of scenery, cos- tumed groups, and choruses. He was a born actor ; and had he seriously adopted the stage as a profession, would have attained, I should say, considerable repute. Supremely handsome, of commanding presence, with a dulcet, yet sonorous voice, and perfect enunciation, he had every requisite for the making of a tragic actor. He was, withal, an excellent fellow, full of mirth and bonJiomic. We duly entered our carriage on the eventful morn- ing, and proceeded at a snail's pace towards London Bridge ; but our progress was so tedious that Forster and I agreed that but for the dignity of the thing — as the gentleman said, who was the occupant of a sedan chair, of which the bottom fell out — we might as well have walked ; and, by the time we reached the end of King William Street, we bade farewell to dignity alto- gether, and being both provided with police passes, made the best of our way across London Bridge, which was splendidly decorated for the occasion, and sped towards the " Bricklayers' Arms " goods station, where the Prince and Princess were to arrive. Never did I behold such an astounding multitude as that which crammed every foot of ground on the line of march when Albert Edward and Alexandra of Denmark en- tered the City. At the Mansion House the Royal and the civic processions were mingled in hopeless con- fusion ; nay, there were even black isthmuses of loyal subjects between one batch of carriages and another. MAINLY ABOUT A WEDDING In vain did the escort of Life Guards and strong bod- ies of City police do their best to keep at a reasonable distance the thousands upon thousands of cheering, shouting, hat-waving people who were pressing round the Royal carriage. They came so close that I saw the Princess lay her hand caressingly on the shock head of a little dirty brat, whom his mother, possibly to save the urchin from being suffocated, was holding up. Thus pounding and plunging and surging through the thoroughfares went the cortege from the INIansion House, through Cheapside, and Ludgate, and Fleet Street : the mob roaring loud enough to blow down the walls of half-a-dozen Jerichos. At Temple Bar a curious diversion took place. There the civic procession left the Royal party ; and a strong body of the Metropolitan mounted police hav- ing seen the Royal carriages and the Life Guards safely through the Bar, proceeded to charge, with the intention, so it seemed to me, of trampling under the hoofs of their horses the long-suffering group of jour- nalists, of whom I was one. 1 remember that one of our number was Mr. John Leighton, well-known as a capital caricaturist under the pseudonym of " Luke Limner," and the author of an amusing little book on the caprices of fashion, called " Madre Natura." I don't know whether Mr. Leighton had anything to do with any newspaper of the period, or how he came to be one of the journalistic crew ; he had, apparently, been hunting that morning, for he was got up in a grass-green coatee, and cords and gaiters, and flour- ished his hunting crop ; and this odd guise seemed so to exasperate one mounted constable that he went specially for Mr. Leighton, and essayed to goad him violently back into Fleet Street. Fortunately, I had at the time the questionable advantage of being "known to the police ; " and a friendly inspector linked his lO LIFE OF GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA powerful arm in mine and piloted me through this slightly too active squadron of cavalier constables. We followed the procession on foot as far as Pall Mall, but not without one final mishap, which occurred close to the equestrian statue of George III. Up came riding a very consequential Assistant Commis- sioner of Police — one Captain Labalmondiere — who, in a high-handed and authoritative manner, ordered us off, saying that His Royal Highness did not like to be followed about by newspaper men. We told this glorified " Peeler " that we had all permits to pass between the lines ; and I added that my own pass had been given me by Mr. Commissioner Mayne, one of the Chief Commissioners, to whom I was personally known. Then the lofty " Bobby " proceeded to slang me, and I slanged him in return with interest ; and it is possible he might have given me into custody for high treason or arson, for trying to pass bad half- crowns ; only, fortunately for me, the friendly in- spector was again to the fore, and whispered some- thing to the captain in blue and silver ; whereupon he gave me a farewell scowl, and rode away in a huff. I " took it out of him," as the saying goes, in the next number of Temple Bar. Farewell, Labalmondiere ! Life, a philosopher has somewhere observed, is not all beer and skittles. Similarly, I may observe that the path of that very useful servant of the public, the jour- nalist, is not altogether a highway of roses. He is continuall}^ liable, while in pursuit of his vocation, to be snubbed or insulted by Jacks in office, dressed in a little brief authority. I have mentioned this little episode because 1 wish just to give a glimpse of the difificulties which journal- ists have to encounter in the execution of the arduous and responsible duties of their profession ; but it is only fair to add that in most instances the constituted MAINLY ABOUT A WEDDING II authorities show the greatest kindness and courtesy to the representatives of the Press; this is particularly the case at the Guildhall, where, on the occasion of any important civic function, ample accommodation is afforded for those who have to chronicle the proceed- ings for the newspapers. Perhaps the functionary who takes the best care of journalists is the Lord Chamberlain, for the time being. 1 am unable to re- member the name of all the Chamberlains to whom I have had the occasion to offer my thanks for politeness and generally obliging conduct shown to my frater- nity at Royal weddings and funerals ; but the last Lord Chamberlain to whom journalistic thanks were due was Lord Carrington, who looked after our comfort and convenience most sedulously at the marriage of the Duke of York and the Princess May. And, good- ness knows ! Lord Carrington had enough to do on that memorable day in his official capacity. In the second week in March I went down to Wind- sor by the last train from Paddington, to attend on the morrow the marriage of the heir to the Crown and the " Sea Kings' Daughter from over the Sea." My travelling companion was W. H. Russell, who had been commissioned by Messrs. Day and Haghe to write the letter-press for an edition dc luxe, describing the Royal wedding, to be sumptuously illustrated by means of chromo-lithography. Shortly after ten the next morning we were admitted at the south door of the Chapel, and ascended the somewhat rickety stairs to the organ-loft. I don't think that W. H. Russell was in the organ-loft, or that he wrote the narrative of the wedding in the Times. I think he was away from us, near the altar, in Court dress ; as was also Mr. W. P. Frith, R.A., who was to paint a large picture of the wedding. Mark the difference that had taken place in levee 12 LIFE OF GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA dress since March, 1863. The painter of the most graphic scenes of English social life which we have had since the days of Hogarth was in shorts, silk stockings, a snuff-coloured coat, with cut-steel buttons, a brocaded waistcoat, a black silk bag without a wig to it, and 3. Jabot with ruffles. It is still permissible to wear that preposterous costume ; but the vast majority of gentlemen who periodically wait upon the Prince of Wales, at St. James's Palace, if they do not chance to be officers in the army or navy, or deputy-lieuten- ants, wear either a very handsome and becoming suit of black velvet, with black silk stockings ; or a sort of uniform coat, with a little gold lace at the collar and cuffs, a gold stripe down the seams of the trousers, cocked hat, and dress sword. There were just a dozen journalists in the organ loft, and among them was a gentleman who, possibly, was somewhat inexperienced in the art of special correspondence, and had been summoned in a hurry by his editor from the reporters' gallery in the House of Commons. It is a droll fact that this gentleman at one stage of the proceedings fell to stenographing the Order of the Solemnisation of Matrimony, and was quite grateful, but not at all abashed, when a colleague hinted to him that the Mar- riage Service would be found, in extenso, in a volume entitled the Common Prayer Book. Of another occupant of the gallery I have a pleasant recollection. This was a highly respectable journalist, the late Mr. James Grant, editor of the Morning Ad- vertiser. He had been a long time in the reporters' gallery in Parliament, and had earned considerable lit- erary repute by a book entitled, " Random Recollec- tions of the Houses of Lords and Commons." Mr. James Grant was, however, something more than an excellent reporter and a capable editor. He was a theolos-ian of extreme Calvinistic views ; and was the MAINLY ABOUT A WEDDING ' I3 author of many devotional works published anony- mously, among which was one entitled, " Heaven our Home." He inveighed very bitterly while we were waiting for the bridal procession, against the sinful conduct of the Corporation of London on the day of the entry of the Prince and Princess into the metropo- lis, in permitting Mr. Eugene Rimmel, the perfumer, of the Strand, to erect his bronze incense-burning trophies on London Bridge. A sad and gloomy day would it be for England if incense was to become one of the insti- tutions of this Protestant land. " There has been too much of this sort of thing lately," he remarked ; " a stop must be put to it, the public pulse must be felt; the public voice must be heard." He was only ap- peased when I pointed out to him that Her Grace the Duchess of Inverness (Lady Cecilia Underwood, the second wife of the Duke of Sussex), with a tartan man- tle thrown over her form, had just been conducted to her seat in the choir. His Scottish patriotism was aroused ; his ire was appeased, and the incense griev- ance was temporarily dismissed. Dear old " Jemmy Grant ! " He was of very hum- ble origin, and was originally, I think, a baker in some small Scottish burgh ; but his tastes were literary, and an article which he had written in connection with his native town being accepted by the editor of Black- zvood, or some other influential magazine. Jemmy was led to try his fortune in the great metropolis, where his pluck, his hard-headedness, his intelligence, his un- swerving truthfulness and integrity, raised him to an important position in that world of journalism of which he was to be afterwards the historian. There is a droll story, whether apocryphal or not I do not know, about the first magazine article of Jemmy's writing. The tale was to the effect that when the paper was published the editor sent Jemmy a cheque ; and he 14 LIFE OF GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA considered the amount of the draft so splendid, he de- termined to regale three of his cronies with a bottle of port wine at the village hostelry. So he, with the miller, and the provision-dealer, and the flesher, went off, say to the " Waverley Arms," called for a bottle of the best port, and speedily consumed it. A second, and a third bottle followed ; when one of the convivial party observed, that he should like a pint of " yill," or ale, as the port, although doubtless of first-rate quality, had made him somewhat thirsty. The order was given to the landlord, who rushed into the room in a state of great consternation. " What, gentleman ! " he said ; "ale after my red port wine? It is shocking; such a thing cannot be tolerated." There was a little liquid left in one of the bottles ; he poured it into the glass and tasted it, uttering at the same time a shriek of mingled wrath and amazement. " That gowk of a waiter," he exclaimed, " has been giving 3'ou anchovy sauce." When Jemmy became editor of the Morning Ad- vertiser, he was too often the dupe and the butt of wicked wags at the Universities of Oxford and Cam- bridge. He really had a taste for antiquarian research ; only, as ill-luck would have it, he was altogether igno- rant of the classic tongues ; and irreverent under- graduates used to send him sham inscriptions in Latin and Greek which they declared to have been copied from ancient stone tablets recently excavated. These inscriptions, when translated into English were found to be so much silly or idle rubbish ; and it was not until the editor of the Advertiser had been "sold" at least half-a-dozen times, that he thought of the expediency of consulting one of his reporters, who was a good classical scholar, before he inserted the contributions of his young friends at the Uni- versities. MAINLY ABOUT A WEDDING l5 About the wedding itself, I need say but little : the pageant having long since been considered as an historic one which has passed into the chronicles of the land. One surprise indeed was in store for the spectators ; and that surprise was one most heartily relished by them. Beyond the general impression that the youthful bridegroom would wear some mili- tary uniform, nothing was known of what his costume would be like, and a murmur of satisfaction rang through the chapel when in the bridegroom's proces- sion the Heir Apparent appeared in the scarlet and gold of a general in the ai-my, but wearing also the dark blue robes of the Garter and the Collar of the Most Noble Order on his shoulders. Only one more lifting of the curtain of the past. Directly over against the organ-loft, at the south- eastern extremity of the chapel, there was a pew or closet high up in the wall by the altar — a dusty, musty nook, first built, I have heard, in Henry VH.'s time, but swept and garnished and hung with tapestry for this grand pageant of the joining of the hands of two happy and handsome young people. In that closet, in widow's weeds, sat Her Majesty the Queen. It was eleven o'clock at night before I had finished writing my account of the wedding for the Daily TelegrapJi. The next day I wrote (or A// ^/le Year Round another article on the subject, but in a wholly different key, suggested by Vinny Bourne's dainty little poem, " The Jackdaw." You know the first verse of that tenderly humorous production — There is a bird tiiat by his note, And by the blackness of his coat ; You might suppose a crow, A strict frequenter of the Church, Where bishop-hke, he finds a perch, And dormitory too. l6 LIFE OF GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA and the last — He sees that this great round-about, The world, and all its motley rout. Church, army, physic, law. Its customs and its bus'nesses, Is no concern at all of his. And say — what says he ? — CAW ! The philosophic, bishop-looking black-coated bird was sitting at the top of the church steeple whence he sur- veyed the bustle and the raree show beneath him. He summoned it all up in the monosyllable " C-c-caw ! " and I thought that I might as well " Caw " in All the Year Round. CHAPTER XXXV ACROSS THE ATLANTIC Very early in the 'sixties there had come to the front a young lady author whom I had known from her girl- hood, and whose friendship I hope that I still retain. This was Miss Mary Elizabeth Braddon, for many years past the wife of Mr. John Maxwell. She and her mother were neighbours of ours, living in Guild- ford Street, and then in Mecklenburgh Square. One of Miss Braddon's earliest fictions was called, I think, " The Black Band ; or, the Mysteries of jNIid- night ; " but it was " Lady Audley's Secret," a novel which Mr. Maxwell was publishing in one of the many serials of which he was proprietor, that first brought its accomplished author into real celebrity, and when the work appeared in three-volume form, Messrs. Tinsley, who published it, and the writer herself, made a very large sum of money by perhaps one of the most powerful romances which, to my mind, has ever been penned since the appearance of Godwin's " Caleb Williams." It is customary in this pre-eminently tol- erant and grateful age, when an author has taken the liberty to live beyond the period which the critic thinks propitious to his consignment to oblivion, to de- clare or to insinuate that he or she has written himself or herself out, and that his or her writings have become utterl}' and intolerably stale, flat, and unprofitable. Miss Braddon has been one of the few instances of practically proving to the critics that they lie in their throats. No single trace of decrepitude or of lack of II.— 2 l8 LIFE OF GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA invention and dramatic energy can be attributed, even by the most malevolent, to the very latest of her nov- els. I began to write a novel myself in the summer of 1863 ; it was called, " Quite Alone," and was mainly a study of character : the heroine being a French lady whose profession was that of a circus rider, and who was afflicted by a most diabolical temper. Dickens was very pleased with the idea, and secured it for All the Year Round ; and my name was to be attached to it, so that my sole grievance associated with Household Words was now amply compensated. Mr. Frederick Chapman, of the publishing firm of Chapman and Hall, heard of the forthcoming fiction, and secured the copyright on handsome terms. It was about three- parts finished when there came to me, quite unexpect- edly, an offer from the proprietors of the Daily Telegraph to proceed as a special correspondent to the United States, then in the midst of war. For many months prior to the outbreak of the great contest between the North and the South, the English public resolutely re- fused to believe that Federals and Confederates would come to blows. There had come to England a very curious tvpe of American character, a Mr. George Francis Train, who had scarcely been out of his boy- hood ere he made a large fortune by mercantile trans- actions in China and Australia. His object in visiting this country was to start in the metropolis and in large provincial towns a system of tramways, such as were then common in American cities. We are plentifully endowed with tramways at the present day ; but Mr. G. F. Train, as a benefactor in this particular direction, came a little too soon ; and it is usually the fortune of premature benefactors to be reviled, spat upon, and driven out of the cities which they wish to benefit. Mr. Train began to put down a ACROSS THE ATLANTIC 19 tramway at the corner of Oxford Street and the Edg- ware Road ; but the parochial authorities soon made him take -it up again. He was indicted for causing a nuisance, tried at the Croydon x\ssizes, convicted, and iined ;^500. Prior, however, to this convincing proof of British appreciation of his merits being given to him, he was suffered to entertain the nobility and gen- try and the representatives of literature, science, and art at a series of very grand banquets. He was the readiest of speakers ; and at one of these symposia he emphatically declared his belief that not one drop of blood would be shed in the United States. It was a case, he observed, which might be likened to Edwin Landseer's picture of " Dignity and Impudence " — the North was the great calm, powerful Newfoundland ; the South was the fussy, yelping, but plucky little Scotch terrier. Only a few days after George Francis Train had made these utterances, Fort Sumter was fired upon by the Confederates, and in an instant the States, from the Atlantic to the Gulf of Mexico were ablaze. Frequent and protracted were the conferences be- tween the proprietors of the DaiVj^ Telegraph and my- self as to how my mission to America in the midst of war was to be carried out. They knew perfectly well that as the son of a West Indian lady and the grand- son of a West Indian slave-owner, my sympathies were on the side of the South ; indeed, I may say that with the exception of the Morning 5/rtr — an able journal long defunct — the North had very few friends among the organs of public opinion in the metropolis. An- tonio Gallenga and Charles Mackay had been succes- sively the representatives of the Times at New York. Gallenga was not actively hostile to the North ; but he gave mortal offence to the Manhattanites by calling New York itself " a city of one street "—Broadway. 30 LIFE OF GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA Then out came W. H. Russell, as special war corre- spondent of the Times, who so unmercifully bantered the Federals for their stampede at the first battle of Bull Run, that on the opening of the next campaign the correspondents of the English press were not al- lowed to join the headquarters of the Federal Army. Then the Standard had a wonderful correspondent in New York who, under the signature of " Manhat- tan," roundly abused the North, its generals, and its statesmen three times a week ; and altogether the prospects of the representative of an English journal proposing to chronicle the events of the day in an English newspaper were the reverse of inviting. However, I was full of youth and of love of adventure, I was burning to see what the Americans were like; and I counted the days before I could complete all my arrangements and take my ticket for Boston, where it was settled that I should land. My wife, woman- like, was bitterly opposed to my going to America at all ; and the idea of my travelling in a country con- vulsed by war so preyed upon her mind that she be- came positively ill, and my departure had to be post- poned for a week till she got a little better. One cir- cumstance, however, conduced in an eminent degree to soothe her in her sorrow. I had as a travelling companion my old friend John Livesey, a son of one of the earliest leaders of the teetotal movement. In 1863 Mr. Livesey was interested, to a large extent, in some iron mines in Nova Scotia. He had crossed the Atlantic man)^ times ; and from Halifax the exigencies of business took him frequently to Boston, New York, and Philadelphia. The Daily Telegraph made me an offer of ^1,000 for a six months' tour in the States, in the course of which time I was to write two arti- cles a week. I had a dim idea that America was rather an expensive country to travel in : so I con- ACROSS THE ATLANTIC 21 suited John Livesey on the point. He reflected for u time, and then made answer : " On the whole, I should say, yes ; with the letters you have got, you will have to go a good deal into society and to entertain as well as to be entertained. But you cannot take your wife with you. A thousand pounds would not hold out for four months." My wife, I am glad to say, also had a companion during my absence ; this was the widow of Robert Brough, who, with her dear little daughter Fanny, came to live with Mrs. Sala in Guildford Street, and abode there some months. It was at eight o'clock on a dark November night that John Livesey and I departed by the express com- monly known as " The Wild Irishman " for Holyhead. My wife, who, poor woman, could scarcely move, in- sisted on coming to the railway terminus with me ; and a party of my friends were on the platform to give us a parting cheer. I shall never forget a burly, bearded guard at Euston, who, when I had parted fi'om all that was dear to me in the world, and had flung myself in a very limp -and boneless manner in the corner of the carriage of the mail, thrust his head into the window and whispered : " Excuse me, sir ; but you have another three-quarters of a minute be- fore the train starts, and you can get out and give the lady another ' hug ' " — the which I did. I am sure that guard must have been a family man, and had given some one a hug before he went on duty that night. God bless him, any way, and I hope that all his journeys have been as prosperous as mine. It is not necessary that I should go into extended detail touching that which I saw and that which I did in the United States; my sojourn in which country, allowing for a few weeks which I passed in Mexico and the Spanish West Indies in the spring of 1864, extended over a period of nearly thirteen months ; so 22 LIFE OF GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA that I received from the proprietors of the Daily Tel- egraph more than iJ"2,ooo for my journey. Livesey's prediction that I should not be able to have my vi^ife with me in the States was not altogether verified. As I incidentally mentioned in the precursor of this book, " Things I Have Seen, and People I Have Known," gold was at a tremendously high premium in America in 1864. It rose sometimes to cent, per cent. Now, I drew on my bankers, Messrs. Duncan, Sherman and Co., for gold, or, rather, the value of gold as repre- sented in Government greenbacks ; thus, for a hun- dred pounds, of which the normal value would have been five hundred dollars, I used to get from seven hundred to a thousand. The prices of articles of daily life varied according to the rate of exchange. I did not live in New York on what is called " the Ameri- can system," by which everything, except alcoholic liquors, is included in the weekly charge for board. These charges had gone up since the war ; and I think that at the first-class hotels, the St. Nicholas — long since defunct — the New York, and the Fifth Avenue, board was $4 a day. I lived at the Brevoort House, on Fifth Avenue and Eighth Street, close to Washing- ton Square, an establishment of which the proprietor was a Mr. Clark, a most courteous and obliging g^entleman. The hotel was conducted on the European system. You paid so much a day for your room, and an addi- tional four or five dollars if you wanted a private par- lour — a supplement which was to me more a neces- sity than a luxury, as I was obliged to have a good many books and papers about me for journalistic pur- poses. There was a first-rate restaurant attached to the hotel, where you breakfasted and lunched and dined a la carte. On the whole, my bills at the Bre- voort House were rarely under ;^2o a week in English ACROSS THE ATLANTIC 23 sterlincr ; but when I travelled far afield, to Boston, to Philadelphia, to Baltimore, to Washington, and to Niagara,- I experienced the full benefit of the high rate of exchange. Railway fares had not risen ; nor were the charges for expressing your luggage increased. The price of board at the best hotels was slightly, but not seriously, enhanced ; and I lived at hotels conduct- ed on the boarding system. I had brought with me a very large wardrobe, and I had need to have done so, since gloves were sometimes $3 a pair, and boots $15 — in greenbacks. Somehow or another I so managed matters that I always had around balance at Duncan and Sherman's; and I remember one day my kind friend, James Lori- mer Graham, who was an ardent partisan of the North, saying to me at the end of a lively political discussion, " You've no reason to grumble, any way ; why, con- found it, you're living on your exchange ; " and so to a certain extent I was. I had in April sufificient spare cash by me to take a trip to Havana and Mexico ; and again, in June, when the Daily Telegraph credited me with another thousand pounds, I sent home for my wife, who came out to New York and travelled with me to the chief northern cities, to Niagara, to Mon- treal, Quebec, and Toronto, and to the watering-places of Newport and Saratoga. She used often to say, laughing, that our first conversation, when I had brought her from the wharf at Jersey City, was of a somewhat prosaic nature. She immediately began to overhaul the contents of my wardrobe, and in a voice in which sweetness was mingled with severity, ob- served, " You are twenty-four pocket-handkerchiefs short ; and what have you done with your socks ? " To this, I believe, I made the wholly unpoetical reply, " Bother my socks ; have you got any gold ? " It was so long ere I had gazed on the blessed efifigy of Her 24 LIFE OF GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA Majesty on a golden disc. Sometimes, however, I was constrained to buy gold down town before making a trip to Canada. The Canadians would have nothing to do with greenbacks : their currency was in dollars and cents ; but it was a metallic one ; and if you brought any greenbacks with you, it was only at a ruinous discount that you could get them cashed. Livesey and I spent Christmas, 1863, at Montreal, in Lower Canada, taking Niagara on our way ; and on Christmas Day we dined with a hero of the Crimean War — Sir William Fenwick Williams of Kars. I also remember meeting at Montreal a very genial naval officer, Admiral de Horsey ; and it was also at Mon- treal that I had the honour to make the acquaintance of Major Wolseley, now Field-Marshal Viscount Wolse- iey. Some weeks afterwards, at Washington, and sub- sequently at New York, I made the pleasant acquaint- ance of a young gentleman named Malet, who is now Sir Edward Malet, Her Majesty's ambassador at Ber- lin. I do not mention these trifling circumstances in any spirit of vanity or conceit. 1 merely cite them in proof of what is to me, in my old age, an extremely gratifying fact. The friends I have made I have been fortunate enough to keep ; and the great folks whom I have known during a very long and, I hope, a modest and undemonstrative career, have not dropped me. I found Montreal a highly interesting city, but not quite so picturesque a one as Quebec. It was not French enough for me, although I was hospitably re- ceived in a good many French houses ; and the Arch- bishop of Montreal was so polite as to ask me to come and taste his hothouse grapes, of which his Grace cul- tivated no less than eighteen varieties. By the time that I had got to the twelfth, I am afraid that I meekly suggested that a small quantity of the juice of the grape in its fermented condition — that is to say, a glass ACROSS THE ATLANTIC of dry sherr}' — would not, under the circumstances, be unacceptable. Another friend whom I made in Mon- treal was Colonel Earle, who had recently exchanged from the Line into a regiment of the Guards ; and, as General Earle, afterwards met his death, valiantly fighting in the Egyptian campaign. I had a letter of introduction to him from Mr. Young, the editor of the Nexv York Albion, a brother of Mr. George Frederick Young, the noted advocate of Protection, who once had a furious newspaper passage -of -arms with the present Sir Robert Peel on the question of Protection versus Free Trade. Finally, through whose introduction I know not, 1 was introduced to an officer in the Scots Guards, who afterwards became one of my dearest friends, and whose premature death I bitterly lamented and still lament. This was Captain, afterwards Colonel, James Ford, the son of a Canon of Exeter, to whom students of Dante are indebted for an admirable translation of the " Inferno," and a nephew, if I mistake not, of the Ford who wrote the " Handbook to Spain," and a large number of essays on Spanish subjects, in the Quarterly Review. Montreal, early in 1863, was full of British troops and fugitive Confederates. The Scots and the Grenadier Guards were stationed at Montreal; the Rifle Brigade were at Hamilton ; and I still occa- sionally meet and talk over old times with one of the then officers of the Rifles — Lord Edward Pelham Clin- ton. I have said that Montreal was full of Confederates, ladies as well as gentlemen ; and one night, dining at the mess of the Scots Guards — 1 think that they were Scotch Fusiliers in those days — I found another civil- ian guest, whose name was Brune, a very wealthy merchant from Baltimore, but whose political proclivi- ties being strongly Southern had impelled him to cross 26 LIFE OF GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA the Anglo-American frontier in a hurry. There was such a prodigious quantity of hrst-rate claret consumed on this memorable evening that the feast was known in the annals of the regiment as " the great Brune night." " Secesh " sentiments were the rule, and sym- pathy with the North the exception. The fun became very fast and furious ; and about midnight these jocund sons of Mars persuaded me to sing, as a compliment to Mr. Brune, the famous Confederate song of " Mary- land, my Maryland!" I had just concluded the stir- ring verse : — " Thou wilt not yield the traitor toll, Maryland, my Maryland ! Thou wilt not crook to his control, Maryland, my Maryland ! Better the fire upon thee roll ; Better the shot, the blade, the bowl. Than crucifixion of the soul, Maryland, my Maryland ! " The exquisitely beautiful melody of this stirring song is that of the German Volkslied, " O Tannenbaum ! Tannenbaum ! " (Oh fir-tree) ; and of the German Studentenlied " Gaiideavius igitiir Juvenes diim Sumusr 1 say that I had just finished this verse, and was pro- ceeding to attack the concluding stanza, beginning : " I hear the distant thunder hum," when we became aware of the melodious sound of female voices outside the mess-room. Upon my word, the Confederate ladies, who had retired to rest at a comparatively early hour, had arisen from their couches, wrapped themselves in cloaks and dressing- gowns, and were singing the chorus of " O Maryland, my Maryland ! " The Grenadier Guards had a mess of their own in Jacques-Quartier Square ; and among the officers of that gallant corps were the Duke of ACROSS THE ATLANTIC 2/ Athole and Lord Abinger; the last-named nobleman was married, during his stay in Canada, to Miss Magruder, the daughter of the well known Confederate General. It was not until the summer of 1864 that I visited Quebec. Travelling, in the first instance, by steamer, on the beautiful river St. Lawrence, and by the Thou- sand Islands, the romantic, old-fashioned aspect of the old capital of Lower Canada pleased me hugely. Que- bec was then the residence of a Governor-General of Canada, Viscount Monck, and we were hospitably en- tertained at his Excellency's summer quarters near Quebec. I specially remember these viceregal din- ners, for two very different reasons. Lord Monck's butler had been the proprietor of the original Indus- trious Fleas, and his talented troupe, including the flea that drew the cannon, the flea that rode in the sedan-chair, and the flea that impersonated Napoleon Bonaparte's charger, Marengo, had all been burnt — poor little insects ! — in a terrible fire at the Governor's country seat. The next reason why Lord Monck's hospitality still dwells in my mind is, that I met at his table the illustrious Gordon, without being, in the slightest extent, aware of the fact ; indeed, I did not know it until a very few years ago, when a lady — a relative, I believe, of Lord Monck — in some Reminis- cences which she published of her sojourn in Canada, enumerated Gordon and my humble self among the guests at this particular banquet. I venture to think that the lady was rather pleased with me than other- wise, for she incidentally mentioned, in her book, that when I was presented to Lady Monck, " I bowed like a courtier." Goodness gracious me ! How did the lady expect me to behave ? Did she think that I ought to have entered the drawing-room on all-fours, or that I should have hopped about on one leg, like the burglar in Mr. Gilbert's comedy ? 28 LIFE OF GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA / Animated debates were going on in the Legislature at Quebec on the subject of the Federation of all the British North American colonies ; and one of the most animated speakers on the subject of the proposed Do- minion of Canada, was the late D'Arcy Magee, a sin- gularly gifted, accomplished, and amiable native of the Sister Isle. Good-looking, eloquent of speech, and a ready writer, he had been in his salad days, when he was green of judgment, a Young Irelander ; but emi- grating to Canada, had become a staunch Loyalist, and when I knew him, he was Minister of Agriculture. It was his mournful fate, ultimately, to be murdered by a Fenian. D'Arcy Magee and I were great cronies ; and I am indebted to him for one of the drollest elec- tioneering stories that ever 1 heard. It was at Mon- treal, at the height of some electoral contest for the representation of the city, that one of the candidates had convened a meeting of negro electors, who, in the early stages of the evening, seemed far from favour- able to him. He went on speaking, however, and dwelt over and over again on the then burning tariff question, telling his hearers that what they chiefly needed was a carefully-adjusted system of ad valorem duties. Now it chanced that there had just entered the hall a young nigger-waiter from an adjacent restaurant, who held under one arm another waiter — but a dumb one— a japanned tin tray, in fact. The negroes are very fond of rhythm ; they like sound, without troub- ling themselves much concerning sense, and somehow or another the words ad valoi'cm tickled the ears of the young darkey from the restaurant. " Ad valorum, ad valorum, ad valorum ! " he repeated in rapid crescendo, rapping meanwhile the japanned tin tray with a door- key. It was as though he had sounded the loud tim- brel in Egj'pt's Dark Sea. " Ad valorum, ad val- ACROSS THE ATLANTIC 29 orum ! " the whole audience began to shout, to scream, and to yell, clapping, meanwhile, their hands, and stamping their feet on the ground ; and then there arose an aged negro of great influence in political cir- cles at Montreal, who thus addressed his hearers : " My brudders, we must all vote for old Ad Valorum — bully for you, Ad Valorum," The candidate was returned by a thumping majority, and was ever after known in darkey circles as " Good old Ad Valorum." There was a Dominion dinner, if I mistake not, dur- ing my stay in Quebec, and I had to make a speech. Then one of the regiments of the line at the citadel asked me to mess ; and there I met dear Hawley Smart, then a captain in the 5th Foot ; he had gone out, I think, as an ensign, to the Crimea, and had won his commissions of captain and lieutenant on the field of battle. Already, in 1864, he was thinking of litera- ture, and showed me a capital sporting article which he had written, called " Saratoga Races." He and James Forde, of the Scots Fusiliers, came down to New York in the course of the j^ear, and stayed with us at the Brevoort House. Hawley Smart was a nephew of the renowned racing baronet. Sir Joseph Hawdey, at whose house, at West Brighton, I was en- abled, through the kindness of my friend, the Hon. Francis Lawley, to pass many pleasant hours. I was nervous at first about accepting Sir Joseph's invita- tion ; since — although I have long studied the history and the anatomy of the horse, and can draw the animal tolerably well — I am as ignorant as a Pottawottomi Indian of all turf matters. But, to my agreeable sur- prise, I found Sir Joseph Hawley's house full of rare books and splendid specimens of the Old Masters, among the last of which I recollect a magnificent full- length life-sized portrait by Sir Anthony Vandyck, of a Doge of Genoa, whose robes of crimson damask 30 LIFE OF GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA seemed absolutely to flow over the frame and reach the carpet. It was as agreeable to find that the racing baronet was well versed in literature, old and new, and that he was an expert connoisseur and critic in art ; nor during the day did he once make mention of such a quadruped as a race-horse. There was one drawback to enjoyment of life at Quebec. The hotels were few, and not good ; so that we put up at a boarding-house, kept by a lady by the name of Steele, where we were really very comfortable, and experienced the greatest attention and courtesy from our hostess. I was praising her to an American gentleman sta3ang in the house, whose terse comment on my panegyric was as follows : — " Kind, clever lady ! I should say so. Why, sir, she was raised on Picca- dilly." Yes, there is something in " being raised on," or born, or educated in Piccadilly. It gives one some kind of a social cacJiet. Of course, we visited all the sights of Quebec ; and I went out to the Plains of Abraham, to see the monument erected by the pious care of Lord Aylmer, when Governor of Canada, to the memory of the two heroic foes — the French Marquis de Montcalm and the English General James Wolfe — who, on this never-to-be-forgotten bat- tle-field, "met a common death, and inherited a com- mon glory." We made an excursion to a village on the banks of the St. Lawrence, called Indian Lorette ; and thence proceeded to see the picturesque Falls of Montmo- rency, much smaller than those of Niagara, but, to my mind, surpassing them in beauty. Indian Lorette was one of the queerest half-French, half-Redskin town- ships that I met with in Canada. In some respects, when you alighted from your carriage, you seemed to have landed right in the middle of the eighteenth cen- tury. There was a seigneur du village, who, the day ACROSS THE ATLANTIC 31 being Sunday, was driven to church in an old-fashioned yellow chariot, hung upon very high springs. He was an old gentleman, 'and I did not ask his name; because I was resolved to believe, for the nonce, that he could not possibly have any other name than that of the Marquis de Carabas. He had a pew in the church large enough to hold twenty worshippers, and al- though I would not swear to the fact, I think that the officiating priest prayed for him as well as for the Queen and the Governor-General. But I must return to Montreal on my way back to the States. It was at Montreal that I first met the late Sir James Macdonald, one of the ablest statesmen that Canada has produced ; and the place of my meeting him was the office of the Grand Trunk Railway, Can- ada, just after a Board meeting, at which one of the directors told me they had had to consider an applica- tion from one of the switchmen on the line, who hap- pened to be an American citizen, for three weeks' leave of absence, in order that lie jiiigJit attend to his ditties as a nicndier of the Legislature in the State of Ver- mont. There's labour-membership for you, if you like ! and we seem to be coming rapidly to a similar condi- tion of things in this country. Sir James, then Mr. Macdonald, was, facially, wonderfully like Lord Bea- consfield ; and when in Ministerial uniform, the re- semblance of the Canadian to the British statesman was so close as to be almost comic. Another distin- guished politician whom I met at Montreal was Sir George Brown, the proprietor of the Toronto Globe, who was destined, poor gentleman, to die by the hand, not of a Fenian, but of a vindictive workman. The heat of a New York summer proved too much for my wife ; although I was revelling in perpetual sunshine. We tried a villegiatura at Saratoga, and an- other at Newport; but at the end of July my wife de- 32 LIFE OF GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA clared that another month in America would kill her ; so I sent her home by one of the splendid steamships of the Cunard line, under the comm'and of that excel- lent master-mariner and Commodore of the Cunard Fleet, Captain Jenkins. He was the politest of skippers, and his name was a household word among the ladies in the upper circles of Fifth Avenue and Washing- ton Square. He was a wag, too, and I know not now how many times has been related his retort to the lady who persistently asked him " whether it was always foggy off the coast of Newfoundland." " Blame my cats, ma'am!" he replied, "do you think I live there?" The Commodore was always an adept at improvisa- tion ; and some of his patter songs were as humorous as they were spontaneous. I came home by the Cunard steamship Asia, in De- cember, just in time for Christmas in Guildford Street, but ere, for the present, I part from the great Repub- lic, I may be allowed to say a few words touching two of the closest of my many American friends. The two gentlemen I allude to are the late Samuel Ward and the still living William Henry Hurlburt. Samuel Ward, or Uncle Sam, as he was popularly known, was, when I knew him, in the prime of life. That life he had be- gun under highly favourable auspices, coming, as he did, of an ancestral New York family, and having en- joyed, as he had done, a thorough classical education. He was, furthermore, a fluent French scholar and a poet of no mean calibre. He began his career as a partner in the great banking firm of Prime, Ward, and King, in Canal Street, New York; and afterwards had been concerned in all kinds of commercial, financial, and mining adventures in Mexico and California. I have not the slightest idea as to what business " Uncle Sam " carried on in 1864. Throughout the Legisla- tive Session he was generally travelling between New ACROSS THE ATLANTIC 33 York and Washington, and interviewing, or being in- terviewed by, leading politicians, for conference with whom in the Federal capital he had a mysterious lit- tle house of his own, somewhere near Pennsylvania Avenue. Whether he rolled logs, or ground axes, or pulled wires, or was a lobbyist, or a mugwump, or bull-dosed anybody, it is no business of mine to inquire. 1 only know that he always seemed to have plenty of money, that his conversation was delightful, and his hospitality inexhaustible. His first wife, I think, had been a daughter of the house of Astor. His second spouse was a Miss Zenobia Grimes, of an old family in Massachusetts. " Uncle Sam " was a consummate gas- tronome ; although, like most genuine epicures, his appetite was a very moderate one. We used to dine much better than I can dine at this time of day in London at Delmonico's, which had then two branches " down town," one in Beaver Street, and another at the corner of Chambers Street ; and a thii'd at the corner of the then fashionable East Fourteenth Street and Fifth Avenue. Then there was another very splendid restaurant " up town," called La Maison Doree ; and finally, there was an excellent house for dinner in Lafayette Place, where Sam Ward always kept a stock of rare wines. The other intimate friend of mine, whom I first knew in 1864, was William Henry Hurlburt, who was then, as he is now, a distinguished journalist. At the time of which I speak he was a leader writer in the New York World, of which the editor was Mr. Manton Marble. I have rarely known a man so varied in accomplishments as Hurlburt. He was one of the most brilliant conversationalists I ever met with ; and he could judge things from an English as well as from an American standpoint. A scholar, a linguist, a traveller, a brilliant writer, a fluent public speaker, with a singularly melodious, yet forcible voice. 34 LIFE OF GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA All the fairies, save one, seemed to have been pres- ent at his christening. Many years after we became friends, an American lady in Rome told me that Hurl- burt, early in his career, had been an Unitarian min- ister ; and that he won the admiration of the female part of his congregation, not only by his eloquence as a preacher, but also through the circumstance that he was accustomed to ascend the pulpit stairs " with a true polka step." The friendship which I conceived for William Henry Hurlburt remains undiminished to this day. I am not one of those who desert old friends when they are under a cloud. He was defendant in an action for breach of promise of marriage, and the jury returned a verdict in his favour ; but there were some mysterious features in the case which have never been, and prob- ably never will be, cleared up ; and I am wholly at a loss to understand the acharnement with which Hurl- burt has been pursued. I was subpoenaed as a witness, to testify as to his handwriting in certain letters which were submitted to me ; but I told the plaintiff's counsel, Mr. Candy, Q.C., that I could not possibly swear that the oalligraphy of this correspondence was Hurlburt's: inasmuch as I had not received a letter from him for full twenty years ; that I had to read, every year, thou- sands of communications from all sorts of people from all parts of the world ; and, finally, that I was more than half blind. So the learned counsel affably told me to go about my business. Soon after returning to England I published the article which I had written in the Daily Telegraph under the title of " My Diary in America in the Midst of War," and I dedicated the two volumes to W, H. Russell with the simple legend " Crimea, India, America." Is there a British journalist who has done more for his country, for the Republic — I mean the term in its true sense, ACROSS THE ATLANTIC 35 La Chose Publigue, the Public Thing— than William Howard Russell? When our heroic soldiers before Sebastopol were half starving, in rags, and decimated by sickness, Russell, as war correspondent of the Times newspaper, recorded their sufferings and denounced the carelessness, the stupidity, the crass imbecility of the Government and its officials, who had been the prime cause of the misery and the mortality in the ranks of the British Army. No history of the war, into the undertaking of which England was cajoled by the tortuous policy of Napoleon III., would be complete without the amplest of justice being done to not only William Howard Russell, but to the heroic Florence Nightingale, the " Lady of the Lamp " of Longfellow. " On England's annals, through the long Hereafter of her speech and song, That light its rays shall cast Through portals of the past. " A lady with a lamp shall stand In the great history of the land, A noble type of good Enduring womanhood." By the way, Alexis Soyer, who, during his stay in the East, did yeoman's service in the hospital kitchens at Balaclava and Scutari, told me a story about Miss Nightingale, which I have not seen in print. A soldier who had been severely and shockingly wounded was in such dire agony that, after the manner of his kind, he burst into a frenzy of cursing and swearing, for which he was sternly rebuked by the surgeon, who was bandaging his wounds. " How dare he," asked the medico, " use such language in the presence of a lady." Miss Nightingale was standing close by, and she said quietly to the surgeon : " Please to mind your own busi- $6 LIFE OF GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA ness. Can't you see that the poor man is in fearful pain, and does not know what he is saying?" " America in the Midst of War " was published by Tinsley Brothers, of Catherine Street, who paid me ;^8oo for the copyright. Thus, contrasting the finan- cial results of my American tour with those of my Russian journey seven years before, I think that on the whole the balance was much in favour of the Transatlantic expedition. I went back to my old business of writing six leaders a week in the Daily Telegraph, quite unconscious that another most stirring and eventful year was before me. In April, 1865, the Emperor Napoleon III. was preparing to make a prog- ress through Algeria ; and my proprietors suggested that I should follow the Imperial party, and send home letters descriptive of what I had seen in North Africa ; so I once more bade farewell to my household gods in Guildford Street and started for Paris en route for Marseilles and Algiers. Before, however, I recount mv experiences of a trip to Barbary, I may mention a somewhat ludicrous ad- venture which happened to me in connection with that excellent American comedian, Mr. Joseph Jefferson, the unrivalled impersonator of Rip Van Winkle. One Saturday I saw an advertisement in the papers stating that on the ensuing Monday Mr. Jefferson was to make his appearance at the Adelphi Theatre in Dion Boucicault's strikingly romantic Rip Van Winkle. It seemed to me that I had often met Mr. Jefferson in society in New York, and that we had been on friendly and, indeed, intimate terms ; so I wrote to him at the Charing Cross Hotel as follows : " Dear Old Hoss, — Pork and beans to-morrow at seven. Come on." The letter was duly sent'to the hotel ; but early on Sunday morning the terrible truth broke on my mind that the actor who had been so friendly to me in New York ACROSS THE ATLANTIC 37 was not named Jefferson, bnt had an entirely different appellation ; and that I did not know Mr, Joseph Jef- ferson of Rip Van Winkle fame from the Man in the Moon. How the astounding- aberration had come about I cannot tell. I passed the day in moody per- turbation. At 7.30 p.m., lo and behold ! Mr. Joseph Jefferson, in full evening dress, duly made his appear- ance, " I wasn't going to miss a good chance," he said, as he took his seat at our humble board, and we spent a delightful evening. I may also in this connection remark that just before I went to the States I had the honour to make the acquaintance of Miss Kate Bateman, a young and beau- tiful actress, who took the town by storm by her pathetic and impassioned performance of Leah in the drama of that name, which was played for I know not how man}^ months in succession at the Adelphi. Hor- ace and Augustus Mayhew, Charles Kenney, and I used to go at least three times a week to the stalls at the Adelphi for the express purpose of weeping bitterly over the woes of the persecuted Hebrew maiden, and of being thrilled by the terrific curse which she ut- tered. I remembered the charming actress as having, when quite a little girl, played in conjunction with her sister as " The Bateman Children " at the Surrey The- atre, and also at the St. James's. Their papa was a highly typical American gentleman whom we used to call Colonel Bateman. Eventually, he became lessee and manager of the Lyceum ; and it was under his spirited management that Henry hwing made his earli- est and most brilliant successes. Colonel Bateman had one curious physical peculiar- ity ; he had a head of hair as bushy as Henri Roche- fort's ; but it was rebellious hair, hair that would not be either parted or smoothed. There was a story told about this head of hair and clever little William 860 rW -i 38 LIFE OF GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA MacCoiinell, the artist, which will bear relating. There was a dress rehearsal at the Lyceum one even- ing, and the stalls were very full. Little MacConnell was sitting just behind Colonel Bateman, who had his hat on. The artist could see nothing of what was going on ; and he touched the manager on the shoul- der, saying : " Will you be kind enough to take your hat off?" " Willingly," replied the always courteous and obliging colonel. Off went his hat, but suddenly up sprang his rebellious hair like so many quills of the fretful porcupine. " For Heaven s sake put your hat on again,'' cried little MacConnell in dismay. A very good fellow, an "all-round " one, was Colonel Bateman ; he had a varied experience as a theatrical manager in the States, and was full of droll stories of theatrical vicissitudes ; among which I remember one of his having taken a company touring in a barge down the Mississippi. Times were bad and audiences scanty. One evening when the colonel was playing King Lear to a sadly exiguous audience, in the middle of the storm scene, the actor who played Edgar rushed on to the stage and exclaimed, " By Jove ! Colonel, Cordelia has got a bite." Cordelia, who was not wanted from the end of the first to the fifth act, had been busily engaged, at the stern of the barge, in fishing. Colonel Bateman may also be credited with having introduced into London conversational circles the capital anecdote of the two Virginians who thought that they had been grossly overcharged for the re- freshments which they had consumed at a saloon in New York. After much wrangling with the saloon- keeper, one of the friends whispered to the other, " Jem, pay the bill for the honour of old Virginny ; but shoot the beggar behind the bar." The New Journalist may very probably scout this storj^ as a ACROSS THE ATLANTIC 39 chestnut ; but I have always liked to study the gene- sis of jokes and to give due credit to those persons who have first set them a-foot. I remarked that I went to Paris in April. I found at the Grand Hotel William Russell, who had come to see a daughter who was at school close to the Porte Maillot. We were at breakfast on a furiously hot morning, the 20th or the 21st of April, when we read in Galignani the news of the assassination on the 14th at Ford's Theatre, Washington, of Abraham Lincoln, President of the Republic of the United States, by John Wilkes Booth. I had known the assassin at Montreal, in Canada. He was a strikingly handsome man, dark, with a piercing gaze ; but to me he ap- peared to be in a chronic state of " whiskey in the hair" and verging on dcliriiun tremens. I am under the impression that on the night on which I took my departure for Algeria the first per- formance of Meyerbeer's opera L Africaine took place at the Academic Imperiale de Musique, but I cannot be exactly certain of this point, inasmuch as in that very compendious work called " Celebrities of the Century," it is stated that L Africaine, which had been off and on in rehearsal since 1838, when Scribe first placed his libretto in the composer's hands, was brought out at the Grand Opera in 1861 ; whereas I am now referring to 1864. At all events, I know that a certain number of tickets for representatives of the London press had been granted by the Director of the Opera, and these gentlemen, comprising Mr. James Davison, the musical critic of the Tijncs, Sutherland Edwards, and Augustus Harris, the father of the pres- ent knightly impresario, together with your humble servant, dined very comfortably at the Cafe Riche. A little before eight my musical friends went off to their stalks d'orchestre ; and I departed for Barbary. 40 LIFE OF GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA I had, however, to wait a couple of days at Mar- seilles to witness the arrival of the Emperor and his suite. Some years had passed since I had visited the Phoccean city ; and I was fairly amazed at the changes for the better which had taken place at Marseilles since the establishment of the Second Empire. The town, as I knew it first, was about the dirtiest and most evil-smelling mass of houses, inhabited by a pop- ulation as unwashed and as malodorous as could well be conceived. At least Csesar had cleansed Marseilles. At least he had sanitated it. At least, under his sway, magnihcent new streets had been built, and the his- toric Cannebiere endowed with palatial hotels in lieu of the filthy and comfortless inns of yore, reeking with the fumes of garlic and bad tobacco. The Marseillais professed to be very grateful to Caesar for what he had done for them, and they actually built and presented to the Empress a handsome palade on the sea shore, where, as they put it, their Imperial Majesties " could always have one foot in the sea." When the Empire collapsed the good city of Mar- seilles forgot all the benefits which had been conferred on it by Napoleon III.; and after the ex-Emperor's death the Municipality of Marseilles contested the right of the Empress to retain the palace, which was her own personal and private property. A lawsuit followed ; and the Municipality, in the course of the legal proceedings, had the exquisite good taste to style the Empress Eugenie, " the widow Bonaparte." Her Majesty won the day ; but with quiet disdain she renounced her rights to keep possession of the palace. Most thoroughly did I appreciate my trip to Al- geria ; it was the first taste I had had of the East, and although the lower part of the city of Algiers does not differ very much from an ordinary French seaport town, the upper part, or Kasbah, was, in 1864, alto- ACROSS THE ATLANTIC 41 gether Moorish. Strangest of sights to me were the Moorish women, gliding about the streets in what appeared to be white muslin clothes-bags and pillow- cases, and their features, all save the dark and piercing eyes, concealed by the white yas/unak, or veil. Al- giers, however, has become during the last quarter of a century such a favourite winter resort for English people that I do not propose to bore you with any detailed description of the place or the people. My business is with His Imperial Majesty Napoleon III., and his progress through Csesarian Mauritania. I had brought with me letters of introduction to the Prefect of Algiers, to General Fleury, the Imperial ]Master of the Horse, and to M. Pietri, the Emperor's. Private Secretary, and at seven o'clock one morning I had an audience of Napoleon III. himself. His Majesty was fresh from his bath, and was wrapt up in what seemed to be a railway rug, girt round his waist by a silken sash. He was most condescending, and gave me per- mission to follow the Imperial cortege to the borders of Kabylia : adding laughingl}^ the tour would be rather a costly one, but that English newspaper correspond- ents had so much money. I replied with the lowest of bows that it was the newspaper proprietors who had the money, but that the correspondents were gen- erally in a state of the direst indigence. The Emperor spoke French, and smoked a cigar during the audi- ence. It was not till 1868 that he finally abandoned the Havana for cigarettes, the fumes of which he was almost incessantly inhaling, A more dazzling progress than that of Csesar through his Algerian dominions I have rarely seen. One remembers the old historians' account of Alexander's progress through India. The dazzling uniforms of the Imperial staff contrasted strangely enough with the white burnouses of the Bedouin chiefs who came in from the desert on their 42 LIFE OF GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA grey steeds, and very often with their coursing grey- hounds in leash. It was at a place called Boufarik, after an Agricult- ural Show, that I came across a gentleman of whom history should make some mention. I found him sit- ting on a stone in the middle of a courtyard of an Arab house ; he had a large umbrella over his head, and he was perspiring profusely. There was nothing strange in those circumstances ; still my curiosity was awakened when the gentleman told me that he was of Swiss nationality, that his name was Dunant — he was waiting for an audience with the Emperor — and that he was the promoter of the Geneva Convention, or Red Cross Ambulance system, than which, I suppose, a more humane and Samaritan undertaking has not been known since the foundation of the institution of Sisters of Charity by Saint Vincent de Paul. I journeyed to Oran, the capital of the westernmost department of Algeria, on the Mediterranean. A per- formance was given at the theatre, at which the Emperor was present ; but, visiting the house on the following evening, I noticed an exceedingly droll in- cident. There was an opera troupe at Oran, and the piece played was L Italiana in Algicri — the heroine being an Italian damsel, who had been captured by Algerine pirates. Next to me, in the stalls, was sit- ting an immensely fat old Turk, one of the orthodox old-fashioned types of Osmanlis, who had not yet re- linquished his huge white turban, his caftan, and his baggy breeches for the red fez and single-breasted black frock-coat of the modern Turk. Whenever the heroine came on the stage the corpulent old Turk be- gan to laugh, and continued laughing till his very sides shook. It was not a noisy laugh ; but a series of sub- dued chuckles, similar to those in which we read that the elder Mr. Weller was wont to indulge. I asked ACROSS THE ATLANTIC the friend sitting next to me, who was the editor of a newspaper, what on earth the corpulent infidel was laughing-, about. " The opera tickles his fancy so," replieci my friend. " Thirty-five years ago, just before the capture of Algiers by the French, he was one of the wealthiest slave dealers in Oran, and his brother was a notable pirate, who, I warrant you, had kid- napped many scores of Italian and Greek ladies in his time." When, after visiting Constantine and other places too numerous to mention, the Emperor and his brill- iant followers returned to Algiers, a grand banquet and ball were given at the Palace of Mustafa Supe- rieur at Algiers. The scene in the palace gardens, in which all the trees were festooned with coloured lamps, and in which the mingling of Oriental and French military costumes was curiously picturesque, was like a dream in the Arabian Nights, grafted on the vision of some grand festivity at the Tuileries or Saint Cloud. I preserve, nevertheless, one very dis- agreeable reminiscence of the supper at Mustafa Su- perieur. The menu comprised ostrich eggs, boiled hard, cut in slices, and served with a piquante sauce. I tried a slice ; I never tasted anything so abominably nasty in my life. There is a memory of tastes as of everything else ; and while I am writing, the hideous savour and odour of that slice of ostrich o.^^ distinctly recurs to me. I left Algeria shortly after Midsummer, and came home in a sufficiently leisurely manner. Being at Marseilles, I naturally proceeded to Nice, which was unbearably hot, and spent a couple of days at some- what cooler Monaco, where there was a little bit of a gambling house in the upper town itself. Then I travelled to Paris ; and so took the train to Strasburg, wandered up and down the Rhineland for a week or 44 LIFE OF GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA two, and then wooed Fortune at the Kursaal, at Hom- biirg. I backed the red steadily, and won a good round sum ; prudently avoiding, for some time, any speculation on the numbers at roulette. But a non- professional gamester is sure to make a fool of himself at some time or another, before he bids farewell to the tables. Just for fun, you know, I backed thirty-six, my own age, at the period named, with a gold Freder- ick ; and thirty-six won. Then, of course, I took to plastering the tapis vert with gold pieces enplein, a cJieval, and so forth ; always " insuring," as the silly term goes, on zero ; and in a day or so I was very com- fortably di'cavc\ or " cleaned out." It was ten o'clock at night ; and having, as I thought, lost the whole of my available cash, I was turning in deep disgust from the table, when a friendly croupier called out to me, " But, Monsieur, you had a louis on zero." Yes, I had "insured" on zero, and I thought that I had lost it; but as it turned out that zero had won, I left a portion of my winnings on zero, and zero came up again. Then I gathered up my winnings ; went off to the trcnte-ct-quarante tables, and won more money before the Kursaal closed than I had ever won in my life. My luck continued for an entire week, and it appeared to me that it would be a very excellent thing to invest a portion— the major portion — of my booty in jewellery for my wife. Every afternoon when I returned from Homburg to Frankfurt, to dine at the Hotel de Russie, I used to buy valuable bracelets and necklaces, rings and chatelaines, at the principal shops in the Zeil ; and it was positively delightful at night to open the nice little morocco jewel cases, lined with white or blue satin, and gaze at the sparkling baubles within. My luck turned, and away went the balance of my winnings. Then, naturally, I had recourse to the good offices of Herr Hirsch, Herr Wolf, Herr Kohn, Herr ACROSS THE ATLANTIC 45 Hahn, Herr Fuchs, etc., etc., dealers in second-hand jewellery, and I punctually lost the proceeds of my sales. I kept the morocco cases, however ; and when I returned to Guildford Street, Russell Square, I turned those incomplete symbols of conjugal affection out of my travelling bag ; and related, half laughingly and half groaning, the story of my discomfiture. At least the empty cases showed that my intentions had been, in the first instance, praiseworthy. But the road to a certain place, we all know, is paved with good intentions, and empty morocco cases which have once contained gems may be among them. By this time the autumn was far advanced. But my friends in Peterborough Court thought that another foreign tour would do me good, and them- selves no harm ; so we arranged a lengthened Conti- nental journey, in which I was to be accompanied by my wife, which was to begin at Brussels, and termi- nate at St. Petersburg, and Moscow. IM}- proprietors knew perfectly well Avhat they were about ; thev wished to continue my training as a journalist, and as special correspondent, so that when I was at home, and leading articles on the institutions and manners of foreign countries were required, I could write en plcine connaissancc dc cmisc. We left England in November ; stayed awhile at Brussels ; did the field of Waterloo, and, by some odd caprice of Fate, went out of our way to the city of Cassel, as dull and dreary a German town as could well be met with, but which had, to me, an odd attrac- tiveness, due, I should say, to my having frequently read that wonderfully vehement and superbly phrased pamphlet of Mirabeau : — the " Avis aux Hessois." His Highness Frederick 11., Elector of Hesse-Cassel, em- bellished the capital of his dominions with several very handsome public buildings, art galleries, and so forth : 46 LIFE OF GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA the expenses being defrayed out of his own private purse. His wealth had been acquired by trafficking in the flesh and blood of his subjects, whom he lent, for a consideration, to the King of Great Britain, to fight his battles in America and elsewhere. Five thousand Hessian troops were hired to fight against the Pretender in Scotland ; and the English Govern- ment paid twenty-two millions of dollars for twelve thousand Hessians who were sent to America between 1776 and 1784. It was this system of dealing in white human fiesh and blood that incited Mirabeau to pen his furious tractate, which I have always considered to be one of the principal portents of the Revolution of 1789. Then we visited the historic gardens and palace of Wilhelmshohe, the North German Versailles. That palace was to be, only five years later, the residence of Napoleon HI. as a prisoner of war. We went to Hamburg, and thence to Holland, passing a very pleasant time at Rotterdam, at Amsterdam, and at The Hague. At the handsome Opera House, at the last- named city, they were playing Halevy's opera. La Juivc. Many of my readers may be aware that the great majority of the chorus singers at Dutch theatres are always Jews ; and it was extremely funny when the Jewess — who was a Christian young lady, with blue eyes and auburn hair — made her first appearance in the piece, to find her pursued by a howling mob who were lyrically supposed to be Christians, but who were in reality Israelites, and who passionately de- manded that the accursed Jewess should be drowned, or hanged, or burnt. Coming out of Holland, we returned to North Ger- many ; and so, passing through Cologne, took up our quarters at the comfortable Hotel de Russie, hard by the Schloss Briicke at Berlin. There we spent our Christmas ; and I was making arrangements to pro- ACROSS THE ATLANTIC 47 ceed to Konigsberg, en route for St. Petersburg, to see what the Tsar's capital looked like in winter, when I re- ceived a telegram containing only these words : — " Rev- olution, Spain. Go there at once." The instructions were certainly vague ; still I understood them at once, and thoroughly. It was a bitterly severe winter ; but there Avas otherwdse no impediment to my journeying to Madrid at once. My wife accompanied me as far as Paris, whence I sent her back to England. I only stopped three hours in the French capital, and then, travelling night and day, took the railway to Bordeaux, and thence across the Pyrenees to Madrid. There w^ere no wagon-lits in those days. I had left my slip- pers behind me wdiile hurriedly packing at Berlin, and I never took my boots off till I reached the Spanish capital. Even then it could scarcely be said that I took my boots off ; since they had to be cut from my swollen feet. The revolution in Spain turned out a sorry " fizzle " ; there had been a military pi'onnncia- miento agfainst the government of Oueen Isabella in one of the regiments in garrison near Madrid ; but after a few^ courts-martial had been held, a few officers and soldiers shot, and a few deputies deported to the Balearic Isles, confidence w'as restored and order reigned in Madrid. I had a letter of introduction from the Foreign Office to Sir John Crampton, Her Bri- tannic Majesty's Minister to the Court of Queen Isa- bella, who, like all the British diplomatists with whom I have come in contact in the course of ray wander- ings, treated me with the utmost cordiality. But I was even more fortunate in finding at a stately man- sion the playfellow of my childhood, dear " Vicky " Balfe, now become the Duchess of Frias, the wife of a grandee of Spain of very ancient lineage, whose father had been Ambassador Extraordinary at the Court of St. James's at the coronation of Queen Vic- 48 LIFE OF GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA toria. Balfe, the composer, was also staying- with his daughter and son-in-law. I was continually at their house, and met there the youthful Duke of Alva and a number of Spanish nobles of the sangre aziil, the por- traits of whose ancestors looked down on j^ou in the deathless canvases of Titian and Valasquez, The kindly Duke of Frias was much pleased with the in- terest which I told him that 1 had long taken in the Avork of the Spanish painter and etcher, Don Francisco Goya y Lucientes, whose " Bull-fighting " and " Pris- oners " series of engravings I had already acquired. It is to the generosity of the Duke of Frias that I owe the addition to m.y collection of Goyas the " Desastres de la Guerra," the " Caprichos," and the " Prover- bios ; " together with copies in monochrome of the two famous studies of an Andalusian belle, " La Maja," one draped and the other undraped ; the model it has now been ascertained having been not by any means, as was commonly asserted, an eccentric Duchess of Alva, but a once popular Spanish actress. There was just one little embarrassing circumstance attendant on my knowing Her Majesty's Minister Plenipotentiary as well as the Duke and Duchess of Frias. The first husband of Victoi'ia Balfe was Sir John Crampton himself; but the marriage had been annulled for reasons which it is perfectly unnecessary to specify here, but which reflected no moral discredit on either party. Now, I used to go with tolerable frequenc}^ to the Embassy ; and his Excellency would often ask me how the Duchess of Frias was looking. There was scarcely a day, on the other hand, that I did not see either the Duke or Duchess ; and my former playfellow would usually ask how Sir John Crampton was looking. Have I not said, and more than once, that this is an extremely funny world, if we only took care to keep our eyes open to the comic episodes ? ACROSS THE ATLANTIC 49 In Madrid also did I gain the friendship of a still living and revered journalistic confrere, whom the Times had sent out as special correspondent to describe the incidents of the revolution which turned out to be a fizzle — Antonio Gallenga, and his devoted, accom- plished, and still living wife; and I remember Mrs. Gallenga summing up the Spanish character thus tersely and vividly : " We went to Toledo," she said ; "and there were seven men in cloaks gathered under an archway, close to the hotel, and smoking cigarettes. We spent five hours sight-seeing in Toledo ; and, re- turning to the hotel to pay the bill, and return to the railway station, we found the same seven men wrapped in cloaks, and smoking papelitos, gathered under the archway." The man in the capa or cloak — which, by the way, he arranges in precisely the same manner that the ancient Romans disposed their togas — is a permanent institution in Madrid. He is all over the city ; but it is chiefly in the great Square, the Puerta del Sol, with a fountain in the middle, where converge the principal streets of the city, that the man in the cloak congregates with other mysterious Madrilefios, in more or less shabby mantles. You may see some- thing of the same kind every afternoon in the Piazza Colonna at Rome ; but the Spanish loafer hangs about the Puerta del Sol from ten in the morning until late at night. It may be assumed that at early morn he has taken the national breakfast of a cup of chocolate made very thick, with a glass of cold water — the Span- ish drinking-water is the most refreshing in the world — and a slice of bread ; but whether he ever lunches or dines, I am not prepared to state ; nor, again, can I certify that he has any other wearing apparel under- neath that cloak. What is he ? Some say that he is a cesante — an ex-Government clerk, who for reasons of economy has been eliminated from the service without n.— 4 50 LIFE OF GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA any pension. There he was, however, in the spring of 1865 ; there he was the next time I returned to Madrid, more than ten years afterwards ; and there he is, I have not the slightest doubt, in 1894, in apparently the same cloak, wearing the same sombrero, and puffing at the s3.YaQ papelito. It was in Madrid, too, that I renewed my acquaint- ance with worthy Mr. James Ashbury, then a young millionaire, whom I had first known in the United States, and who had come to Spain on some matter of a railway or a mining concession. In company with Mr. Ashbury, I visited that astonishing monument of art and devotion, the Escorial, which English people, for some reason unknown to me, persist in spelling Escurial ; just as they say aiito da fc instead of auto de fe, and guerra al cucJiillo instead of a cuchillo. The last was the terse reply of Palafoz at Saragosa to the French general who summoned him to surrender. Gjierra a cuchillo answers in Spanish to our " war to the knife ; " but guerra al cuchillo would mean " war against the knife." I can see now the gridiron-planned palace monastery rising from the foot of the jagged Sierra in gloomy, almost savage, state. We did the Escorial thoroughly, but as a museum of curios there was not much to behold. The monastery was stripped of its treasures by Napoleon's legions, and most of the good pictures have been removed to the Museum at Madrid. A few old monks were pottering about, and showed us the rare coloured marbles and the prodigious frescoes by Luca Giordano, commonly called " Luca fa Presto," or " Luke in a Hurry." Chiefly in connection with this dreary edifice there dwells in my mind the Pan- teon, or royal tomb-house, in which are deposited, among other defunct Spanish sovereigns, the ashes of Charles V. The friars showed us also the black mar- ble shelf on the edge of which Queen Isabella of Spain ACROSS THE ATLANTIC 5 I had, with a pair of scissors, scratched her name, as in- dicating the spot where, in the fulness of time, her re- mains would rest. We declined an invitation to visit the adjoining Panteon de Los Infantes, commonly called " El Pudridero," where, among other members of the royal house of Spain, moulder the bones of the unhappy Don Carlos. We returned to Madrid just in time for the Car- nival, which, at the time of which I speak, was quite an important festival in aristocratic Madrid society. The streets throughout the day presented a veritable masquerade ; there being a great many more masked and fancifully-attired persons in the street than indi- viduals in ordinary costume. Of course I except the loafers or mooners of the Puerta del Sol, who, wrapped in their capas, gathered as usual round the great foun- tain, and regarded the brilliant scene around them with stale and accustomed looks, puffing their papelitos meanwhile. In the Prado the cavalcade was marvel- lous to behold in its variety and splendour. All the equipages of all the grandees in Madrid seemed to be passing up and down the great drive ; but the armorial bearings on the panels of the carriages were carefully concealed by many-coloured draperies ; and the coach- men and footmen, as well as the occupants of the vehicles, wore masks and dominoes. The very horses were veiled, and, save to eyes long experienced in carnavalesque proceedings, it was almost impossible to identify the turn-outs of even one's most intimate friends. In Italy they have a saying: — "In carnevale Ogni scherzo e legale." In carnival time all practical jokes are justifiable. Whether the}' have a kindred saying in Spain, I know 52 LIFE OF GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA not ; but I prudently bore the Italian one in mind when a tall gentleman, dressed as a Crusader, quietly removed from my mouth the cigar I was smoking and trampled it under foot. I knew what was coming. He produced a handsome morocco cigar-case, with a monogram in gold, opened it, presented me with a superb regalia imperiale of Cabanas make, and, making me the gravest of bows, departed. A friend told me the same morning, that as he was writing a letter in the coffee-room of his hotel, a perfect stranger, masked, of course, too, came up to his table, took the letter from him, and to all appearance proceeded to read it. He had not, however, done anything of the kind, for in an instant he returned the half-finished missive, and showed my astonished friend that he had been holding the letter upside-down. In the evening we went to a grand mask ball at the Opera. Very few of the ruder sex were masked or in dominoes; the vast majority were in evening dress ; and the fun of the even- ing was for the ladies, who were all masked up to their eyes, to say impertinent things to you in a shrill fal- setto. I think that ere midnight I was told that I was a monster of ugliness, that I had run away with the wives of several of my most intimate friends, and that I had taken refuge in Madrid because Great Britain had at that time no extradition treaty with Spain, and because I was " wanted " at home for burglary, incen- diarism, forgery, and an attempt to poison my grand- mother. The Spaniards have an exquisitely keen scent for the foreigner ; although he may minutely conform to Cas- tilian manners and customs, and speak the language with irreproachable fluency, they will at once spy him out as an estranjero. A French lady whom I had the advantage to know, the wife of a Spanish officer of rank and a Roman Catholic, told me that when she ACROSS THE ATLANTIC 53 went to matins at the church of the Atocha at Madrid she always adopted the Spanish custom of wearing a black mantilla; and she flattered herself that after long practice and with the help of her maid she had suc- ceeded in looking, so far as her head and shoulders were concerned, altogether Castilian. But it was no good. One morning a ragged street-urchin " spotted " her; and, pointing at her with the forefinger of de- rision, cried to an equally tattered brat, his companion, '■' Mira la Frances ! " " Look at the Frenchwoman." The Pronimciamiento which had brought me in the depth of winter from Berlin, having ignominiously col- lapsed, Gallenga judged that it was time to return to Printing House Square. We resolved, however, ere he departed to make a trip across the Sierra Morena and see what Seville, Cordova, and Granada were like, and we purchased tickets entitling us to occupy a coupe in a train leaving Madrid for the South the next morn- ing ; but that self-same afternoon the Times recalled Gallenga by wire ; and he liberally gave me his ticket, by means of which I made the first part of the journey in great comfort. In the matter of travelling, as in- deed in most other things, the Spaniards are a pecu- liar race. In Germany they used to say that only crowned heads, Englishmen, and madmen travelled first-class. In Spain, in my time, it was the second- class and not the first one that was the least patron- ised. The really poor used the third - class ; but everybody with the slightest pretensions to gentility travelled first ; and I usually found the first-class car- riages inconveniently crowded, although the occu- pants thereof frequently look as though their circum- stances were not precisely of a nature to warrant their paying first-class fares. I remember a typical instance of an entire family at a wayside station entering a carriage of which hitherto 54 LIFE OF GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA I had been the only occupant. There were appar- ently a grandmother, a mother, a wife, and a young lady of eighteen, the daughter, perhaps, of an ancient hidalgo with white hair and moustache. The ladies were not precisely in rags, but they were desperately shabby ; as for the caballero, he had to all appearance selected his attire from one of the old clothes' shops hard by the Plaza Mayor, Such a shocking bad hat as he had, I have rarely beheld. Stay ! there was a boy about eleven, as seedy as his sire. The family brought with them a prodigious assortment of bun- dles and brown-paper parcels emitting a faint and not altogether agreeable odour. These they were carry- ing with them ; no doubt for the purpose of not hav- ing to pay for the conveyance of their luggage, the charges for which in Spain are very high ; and when 1 meekly protested against the bundles and parcels being scattered all over the carriage, and even behind my seat, the small boy rose, and addressing me as " Ustcdr the conventional abbreviation of " Vuestra Merced^' *'your worship," proceeded to tell me in a fluent oration that I ought to think myself honoured by travelling in such company. Where the honour came in I failed to see, but I was subsequently consid- erably amused by the transformation which took place in the garb of my travelling companions just before we reached Madrid. The shocking bad hats, the greasy mantillas, the patched and faded cloaks gave way to quite spruce and smart garments ; and when we reached the capital I found two stalwart footmen in handsome liveries waiting for the family, and who, after assisting them to alight, proceeded to gather up all the bundles and parcels. I suppose that the head of the house was a Don with the longest of pedigrees, and I hope that he drove a coach-and-six, and was the owner of a palatial mansion in the Calle del Alcazar. ACROSS THE ATLANTIC 55 My experiences in travelling from Madrid in the di- rection of the Sierra Morena were widely different and not on the whole so pleasant. We travelled with- out any incident to speak of throughout the night ; and at dawn we had entered the province of La Man- cha : an arid, barren, treeless land, swept by blasts in winter and scorched by sun in summer ; but imperish- ably memorable and intensely interesting to all stu- dents of Cervantes. For this is the country of Don Quixote. After passing the gorge of Despenaperros we came to a little rickety village called Venta de Car- denas. The " Handbook of Spain," reminds us that, in a sierra close by, the Knight of the Rueful Counte- nance began his penance, and that near Torre Nueva he liberated the galley slaves. In fact, there is scarcely a rood of ground in this region that does not remind you of the immortal company of men and women made palpable, visible, and vascular by the genius of Don Miguel de Cervantes y Saavedra. I was in no mood, however, to dwell upon the beau- ties of Don Quixote that February morning ; since, at Venta de Cardenas, the train for Madrid broke down. La Mancha is mainly table-land, and is said to be two thousand feet above the sea level ; but although ap- parently a plain, it is very undulating, and in the dips an occasional streamlet creates something like ver- dure. The great want of the region is, as a rule, water, and in the present instance Venta de Cardenas, like poor Ophelia in Hamlet, had too much water ; the streamlets had been swollen into torrents, rolling down from the neighbouring sierra, and the country for miles and miles around was flooded ; so we were forced to leave the train and wait until the waters had subsided. This was misery number one. Misery number two arose from the circumstance that there was nothing to eat at the Venta de Cardinas. " No hay nada " (there is noth- 56 LIFE OF GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA ing whatever) is a common reply to any questions you may ask as to the condition of the larder at a Spanish inn ; save and except only at the time of puchero or boiled fresh beef garnished with garbanzos or chick peas, and sausages highly impregnated with garlic : which national dish is usually served in the provinces at noon. It was seven in the morning when our break- down occurred ; and there was not even the morning chocolate and bread to be obtained. 1 had had noth- ing since seven on the preceding evening, and was des- perately hungry. No era nada ! There was positively nothing to eat ; and although I thoroughly believe that tobacco allays the pangs of hunger, even a confirmed smoker does not care about smoking more than three cierars before breakfast. I had had no breakfast at all at the time when my third weed had been consumed ; and to add to our woes, it was bruited about that it was extremely uncertain whether the quantity of pti- cJiero available would sufihce to feed even a third of the passengers. Thus famine-stricken and shivering with cold, the dcsdicliados ejected from the water -logged train were grouped on the summit of a hill, and using, I am afraid, in many instances language unfit for repe- tition in polite society. At length there came splashing through the water from the south of the Venta a diligencia or stage coach draAvn by eight mules. There had evidently been floods in another part of the district, and these freshets had stopped another train. The occupants of the dili- gencia appeared to be excellently well victualled and were munching sausages, bread and cheese, and cakes with great gusto. In particular, I took note of a stout- ish gentleman with a black closely-clipped moustache, who, notwithstanding the plaid ulster which he wore, together with a Glengarry cap, I at once set down in mv mind as a French commercial traveller. In his ACROSS THE ATLANTIC 57 right hand he carried a black bottle, and under his left arm he bore, somewhat ostentatiously I thought, a long, thick loaf of bread with a lovely crust to it. I went up. to him, addressed him politely in the French language, told him that I had had nothing to eat for fifteen hours, and begged him to let me have for prompt payment a portion of his crusty loaf. He re- plied very brusquely that he had not yet had his breakfast, and that he had ample use for the provisions which he was carrying. Meanwhile, 1 was measuring him very carefully ; and observed that he was rotund of stomach, and could, if occasion demanded it, be easily winded. So I took the crusty loaf from him ; broke it in half ; gave him back one moiety — not the larsfest one — and handed him at the same time a silver dollar. How he raged! how he stormed! what oppro- brious names he called me. MalJwnnete ! — excessivcmcnt malhonnete, were the mildest of his powers of eloquence. But in the end he pocketed the affront and the silver dollar even as ancient Pistol pocketed the groat that Llewellyn gave him to heal his cudgelled pate withal. We abode at the Venta de Cardenas till nightfall, but gangs of navvies had been despatched both from the north and the south ; dams had been thrown up ; the waters, also, were subsiding ; and after travelling a few miles in mule carts, we touched dry land again, rejoined' the rail, crossed the mountains, and found ourselves in the lovely city of Cordova. I had already made the acquaintance of a Cordova in Mexico ; but the Andalusian Cordova is infinitely more interesting than the fourth-rate Mexican town. No more winter after you have crossed the Brown Mountains. It was only mid-February ; yet we were in the midst of orange and olive groves in full bloom. We found, too, a really comfortable Fonda or hotel, which was positively as clean as a new pin; and in this connection let me say. 58 ■ LIFE OF GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA that much of the old Mahometan cleanliness is still to be found in Andalusia; it is only in the north that dirt reigns with almost unrivalled sway. Seville is as clean as Cordova; Cadiz is spotless; I saw nothing objec- tionable in the way of sanitation at Granada, and the only really dirty town that I have lighted upon in the south of Spain is Malaga. Naturally, my first visit was to the famous cathedral, which was anciently an Arab mosque, and is still pop- ularly known as " La Mezquita ; " just as at Stamboul, even the Turks will sometimes speak of the largest of their mosques as "Santa Sophia" {Ao^ra Sophia, the Holy Spirit— not a feminine saint as the Franks usu- ally assume). There are so many naves and transepts crossing and recrossing each other in this astounding edifice that the interior has been called a forest or lab3^rinth of pillars, and the strangeness of the sight is enhanced b}^ the circumstance that the columns are in no way uniform or of the same length ; they are of jasper, porphyry, verd antique, and other precious marbles; and have been adjusted to fit in between the arches and the pavement by the Procrustean process of either sawing off a portion of the shafts when they were too long, or piecing them out with huge, dispro- portioned capitals. The Carnival was in full swing at Cordova ; and in a peregrination of the city I was enabled to witness one of the prettiest Spanish variants of that festival, in what are called esciiclas de baile, or ambulatory dancing schools. One sat in the courtyard of the Fonda, or in the patio of some friend's house ; when suddenly, about eight or nine in the evening, there would come the shining apparition of a bevy of children, boys and girls, in full ballet costume, who proceeded to execute, with fairylike grace and dexterity, a series of national dances, such as the cJiica, the fandango, the giiaraclnia, ACROSS THE ATLANTIC 59 the caronga, the trapola, the segiiidilla manchega, and the zapatcado. These small performers, who were under the. guidance of a wrinkled old gentleman in a cloak, who played on the guitar while they danced, never asked for any backshish ; but if you slipped a dollar in the old gentleman's hand he did not refuse it, and incidentally expressed his hope that you might live a thousand years. It was not, however, until I had left Cordova, and gone further south, to Seville, that I saw the Carnival in its full glory. The enchanting city ! Over and over again have 1 been there since 1865 ; but in Seville, as in Rome, you discover something new and something delightful every time you revisit the town. This work, however, does not profess to be in any degree of the nature of a guide-book ; and for that reason I will not say anything more about the curiosities of the capital of Andalusia, save just to mention that on Shrove Tuesday, at Vespers, in the cathedral, I wit- nessed the unique spectacle of the little choristers dancing before the Altar. The urchins are dressed up in slashed doublets and trunk-hose, with ruffs en- circling their chubby faces, short mantles, and little toy rapiers ; and at a given stage of the service, they dance a slow and solemn measure, which gradually quickens into quite a ]oyo\\% fandango, clacking, mean- while, their castanets. Some English ladies who were with me began to cry while the little fellows with the ruffs were footing it. At what will not tender-hearted women weep ? I know one lady who always sobs when she is at a review, and witnesses a musical ride of the Royal Horse Artillery. I intended to have gone on from Seville to Granada and to Malaga, but Fate said no. The cruel wire brought me, one morn- ing, a despatch — the usual brief despatch — running thus : " War between Italy and Austria imminent. 6o LIFE OF GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA Go to Venice." So I retraced my steps, and bidding farewell to that land of Spain I love so well, I made haste to reach Paris, and went down to Calais to meet my wife, with whom I travelled to Italy by the Mont Cenis route. CHAPTER XXXVI BELLA — HORRIDA BELLA You ladies and gentlemen of England, who live at home at ease, and take, it may be, your autumnal holi- day on the Continent in August or in September, have little idea of the discomfort, and occasionally the dan- ger, of a journey from France to Italy thirty years ago. We chose the Mont Cenis route — the pass, you will remember, selected by Horace Walpole, who, while crossing it, had the misfortune to see his little lap-dog run away with by a wolf. In these days the tourist is conveyed swiftly, securely, and comfortably in a saloon carriage, with very probably a restaurant- car attached to it, through that extraordinary monu- ment of engineering skill, the Mont Cenis tunnel : the run from Savoy into Piedmont lasting less than five- and-twenty minutes; but in 1865 you had to crawl from Lans-le-bourg to Susa in a diligence drawn by fourteen or sixteen mules. The road was a very fine one, constructed between i8q2 and 181 1 by that great benefactor and scourge of the human race. Napoleon I. At the culminating point, some ten thousand feet above the level of the sea, there was a tolerable hotel, where you could get delicious lake trout and remarkably good cheese ; but it was the length of time consumed in the lagging dili- gence, and the horrible jolting and creaking of the machine itself that reduced you to a condition ap- proaching despair. It was more amusing crossing the mountain in winter time ; when the diligence was 62 LIFE OF GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA placed on a sledge. Then came the Fell railway over the mountain, which did its work very well, although you usually emerged from your railway compartment as black as a sweep, from the smoke of the locomotive. I had already been to Venice, in the early days of All the Year Round, but the City of the Sea was new to my wife, and the place gave her never-ending pleasure. It was during this, my second visit, to the Queen of the Adriatic, that I witnessed a very curious encoun- ter between a crab and a rat, a description of wdiich I gave to my friend, the late Frank Buckland, the nat- uralist. The battle of which I speak came off in this wise. We were staying at the Hotel Victoria, a very comfortable house, on a canal branching from the Canalazzo. It was a late spring afternoon ; the tide was out ; and at that time of the day the side canals of Venice do not smell very sweetly. I happened, however, to be looking from my window, when I be- came aware of a large water-rat, nearly as large, I should say, as my old friend, Marshal Bllicher, at Up- ton Court, who — pardon the misuse of the personal pronoun — was, to all appearance, going out to tea — that is to say, he was running swiftly along the stone ledge of the basement of a palace opposite, and was obviously on pleasure bent. On his way he met a crab — a line spiky fellow, who had been washed up on to the ledge, and was thinking of tumbling himself into the water again. But it apparently occurred to the rat that undressed crab would be a very nice dainty at the tea party to which he was bound and he forthwith attacked the crustacean. " Oh Lord ! " the Yankee bear-hunter is said to have exclaimed, when he came in contact with the animal. " Don't you help the b'ar, and don't you help me ; but just stand clear, and you'll see the biggest b'ar fight that ever was." Persons of sporting proclivities should have seen that BELLA — HORRIDA BELLA 6^ fight between the crab and the rat. The rat's policy was to turn the crab over on his back ; but the crus- tacean so firmly gripped the rodent in his claws that he won the victory, and tumbled over with his captive into the canal. Possibly his brother crabs had a high old time of it that evening on marinated rat. I have often seen the smile of incredulitj' rise on the lips of my friends when I have told this story ; but Frank Buckland told me that there was nothing phe- nomenal in the encounter, and that it was quite within the margin of probability that the crab should win the fight. All I know is, that I saw the rat and the crab, last locked in an inimical embrace, disappear in the waters of the Adriatic. We only remained a short time in Venice. A further despatch bade me go to Vienna ; so we crossed to Trieste, where there was a horrible north wind, called the dora, blowing. " It is so strong, sir," remarked the affable cashier of the banker on whom I had a letter of credit, " that you might place your hat and stick on that wind and accept half-a-dozen bills on it without any of the objects reaching the ground." We reached Vienna b}' that extraordinary railway over the Semmering,*the " corkscrew " railwa)-, as it has been called, and the only one in Europe — ac- cording to a facetious engineer — on which the traveller can see the back of'his own neck, so continually wind- ing is the line. There is a railway closely resembling the Semmering between Sydney and the Blue Moun- tains of New South Wales. It was early in May when we arrived in the Kaiser- stadt, and alighted at that comfortable hotel, the " Archduke Charles," in the Karnthner-Strasse. I had a letter from the Foreign Office to Lord Blomfield, Her Britannic Majesty's Ambassador at the Court of Vienna, and experienced the usual diplomatic kindness and hospitality. Vienna was in a tremendous state of 64 LIFE OF GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA excitement, a rupture between Austria and Italy being expected every day. The excitement took a religious as well as a political aspect. There were pilgrimages to the shrine of Maria Hilf, and the devotional agita- tion of the masses culminated on the Feast of Corpus Christi— a glittering pageant, to witness the passing of which a friend obligingly procured for us a window in a house in the Graben. I saw His Imperial, Royal, and Apostolic Majesty, the Kaiser Francis Joseph, walking in the procession, with a bevy of Archdukes, just before the Cardinal Archbishop of Vienna, who bore the Pyx, with the Host, under a sumptuous canopy. Again did I behold the Kaiser, in the garden of Schonbrunn, whither we had repaired to see the Palace picture gallery, and the room in which the poor young Duke of Reichstadt, the only son of Napoleon the Great, breathed his last. The Emperor drove up to the great door of the Schloss in a light victoria, accom- panied only by a single aide-de-camp, and without any escort. He was in the white-and-gold uniform, and crimson trousers, with plumed cocked hat, of an Aus- trian Field-Marshal, and that uniform is, to my mind, the handsomest and tastefullest in the whole world, excepting always that of our own Household Brigade. Francis Joseph, in May, 1866, could not have been more than six-and-thirty years of age ; but not often have I seen a countenance of a comparatively young and good-looking gentleman so deeply marked by an expression of sadness and anxiety as that which ap- peared in the lineaments of the Emperor that day at Schonbrunn. All the walls and all the cafds of Vienna were pla- carded with appeals to the patriotism of the subjects of Kaiser Franz Josef. " Das Vaterland Riift,'' was the heading of these posters ; but I had got my travelling BELLA — HORRIDA BELLA 6$ instructions by telegraph, and made as much haste to get out of the Kaiserstadt as ever I possibly could. We came down again b}^ the Semmering to Trieste, and took the Austrian Lloyd steamer late at night for Venice, reaching the Lido at daybreak. Very many are the aspects under which I have be- held the beautiful city. You know there are at least half-a-dozen notable painters, each of whom has his own particular Venice — I mean his own peculiar way of treating the city, chromatically. Canaletto's is an eighteenth-century, matter-of-fact, surprisingly faith- ful, but somewhat prosaic, Venice. So is that of his almost compeer, Guardi. Among English painters, Holland made us familiar with a V^enice soberly rich in colour. Cooke, the Royal Academician's Venice was full of atmosphere, but rather frigid. Clarkson Stan- field's Venice was breezy and cheerful ; but Turner's was, and always will be, the Venice after my own heart, although he gave on canvas a scheme of colour applied to Venetian pictures en permanence ; whereas, in reality, the Turneresque Venice only fascinates your sense at certain periods, usually in April and May. It was into the Canalazzo of Turner's Venice that the Austrian Lloyd steamed on a golden May morning. The city presented, as we neared it, a rainbow appear- ance. The Ducal Palace, the Piazza San Marco, the Molo, the Zecca, the Basilica — all so many " harmonies " in pink, and blue, and gold, and white, seemed to dance in the water. When you landed you were welcomed as usual by the pigeons that haunt the domes and but- tresses of the cathedral ; on the broad bosom of the Grand Canal, the sable gondolas flitted hither and thither, or emerged from the minor canals, the gon- doliers uttering their customary — and, to the stranger's ear — • incomprehensible cry. That evening, on St. Mark's Place, there was the customary popular gather- II.— 5 66 LIFE OF GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA ing to hear the Austrian military band play ; and the officers, in their white tunics, sauntered up and down, ogling the grisettes and such foreign ladies of comely mien as were present; but the upper classes kept sulkily aloof from the Piazza ; the Venetian ladies rarely left their palaces, and when they did venture abroad were invariably habited in mourning ; and the great Opera House, La Fenice, had been closed for years ; notwithstanding the offer of a liberal subvention on the part of the Austrian Government. Patrician Venice, educated Venice, cultured Venice, would have nought to do with the loathed Tedeschi. The next day war was declared between Austria and Italy ; but three days' grace were allowed to all foreigners who wished to leave the Dominio Veneto. My people in Fleet Street had telegraphed me: "Garibaldi in the Tyrol in force; join him. Letters to him waiting Milan." Not an instant was to be lost. I conjectured that the expedition would be a some- what hazardous one ; so I could not take my wife with me. The manager of the Albergo Victoria, Mr. Robert Etzensberger, a highly intelligent German- Swiss, kindly undertook to see after m}^ wife, and provide her, if needful, with funds, should her sup- plies run ovit ; for on the morrow Venice was to be placed in a state of siege. Then I betook myself to the British Consul-General, Mr. Perry, the brother of a well-known English judge, Sir Erskine Perry, and a grandson, I believe, of the celebrated journalist, Perry, of the Morning CJironicle. The Consul-General told me that my wife should have every assistance in case of need, and that although she would be the only Eng- lish lady left in the besieged city, there was no reason to think that any disturbances would take place, the Austrian garrison being formidably strong. It was as well, however, Mr. Perry added, to be BELLA— HORRIDA BELLA 67 careful ; and the need for caution had also struck the Ottoman Consul, who had incited his Government to send up a Turkish corvette to the Lido, for the pro- tection of the good old monks of the island convent at San Lazzaro, who are Turkish subjects. How often have I been rowed out to the island to converse with the excellent friars ! — who are still as proud as ever of the visit paid to them by Byron, and who make a modest revenue by selling strangers a curious product of their printing press, the prayers of St. Narses in thirty-seven languages. It was not with the lightest of hearts that I left my only treasure in the world in a foreign city, and took the train which, on a long causeway, crosses the la- goon to Mestre, whence I hastened to Padua. That city the Austrians were holding, and they were also in strong force at Verona ; but they had evacuated Vi- cenza, which city had at once been imbandierata, or hung with banners bearing the national Italian colours, by the exulting inhabitants. Presently I reached Verona ; and, after considerable trouble, obtained from the military authorities a permit to cross the frontier at Peschiera. The railway had been monopo- lised for military purposes ; so that we were fain to make the journey to the shores of the Lake of Garda by diligence. At Milan I found letters to General Garibaldi, to several members of his staff, and to Mrs. Chambers, who, with her husband. Colonel Chambers, were warm and generous friends of the Hero in the Red Shirt. Also, in the city of the Duomo, did I find several of my brother special correspondents, among whom I may mention Mr. George Henty, then, as now, a member of the staff of the Standard newspaper ; Mr, Bullock, who represented the Daily Ncivs ; and Mr. Henry Hyndman, who had come out in the interest of the Pall Mall Gazette. 68 LIFE OF GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA In 1866, Mr. Hyndman was about as brilliant a young gentleman as I have ever met with ; an Oxo- nian, a noted cricketer, somewhat giv^en to sporting, full of life and gaiety, a ripe scholar, and some hopes of being able, at no distant period, to formulate a Uni- versal Theorem ; and, finally, a staunch Tory. I very rarely see him now. I am told that he is the same Mr. Henry Hyndman who has achieved considerable notoriety as a Social Democrat, and mixes himself up with people whom persons of culture would, I should say, be as a rule somewhat chary of associating with. But stay ; Mr. William Morris, decorator, poet, and translator of the Odyssey, is likewise, I am told, a Social Democrat ; and I must not talk politics. I have long ceased to have any of my own. But whether my old friend Henry M. Hyndman be a Conservative or a Radical, a Legitimist, an Imperialist, or a Bonapartist, a Know-nothing, a Copper-head, a Protectionist, a Free-trader, a Young Czech, or an Old Czech, a Cler- ical or a Liberal, a Chauvinist or an Anti-Semite, I am convinced that he can never be anything else than the genial and high-minded English gentleman that he was in 1866. Milan was in a ferment ; the newspapers teemed with patriotic leading articles ; the music-sellers were selling thousands of copies of a specially composed martial h3^mn called the " Grida di Guerra," and " Ga- ribaldi's Hymn," and another stirring melody, " Va Fuori d' Italia, Straniero," were ground on every street organ. A grand performance was given at the Scala, in aid of a fund for the benefit of the Italian wounded. The last time that I had been in that superb Opera House was in 1859, j^^st before the war between France, Italy, and Austria, which terminated in the evacuation of the whole of Lombardy by the last-named Power. The Milanese could not bring themselves to dispense BELLA — HORRIDA BELLA 69 with the Scala, as Venetians had dispensed with the Fenice ; but they partially consoled themselves for their subjugation by the TcdescJii, by whistling and cat-calling all the singers and all the dancers who were applauded by the Austrian officers in the stalls ; while at the close of the performance there was usually a shout from the pit of " 'Viva Verdi ! " which was a covert way of acclaiming " Vittorio Emmanuele Re d' Italia," the first "V" standing for "Viva," and " V, E, R, D, I " for the remaining letters. At the outset of this Autobiography I mentioned there were three distinct branches of my family in Italy, and that I was a humble scion of the Roman branch. I am somewhat glad to have set forth the fact, since I found in ISIilan no less than three Salas, none of whom were members of the Brahminical classes. There was a Sala who was a baker ; while another followed the useful, but plebeian calling of a tinsmith ; the third, I think, was a carriage-builder, and was rich, which slightly increased my respect for him, and I should have liked to claim him as a brother Roman. When I got down to Como, on my way to join Garibaldi in the Tyrol, I found yet another Sala, a lady, whose Christian name was Catei'ina, and who sold sausages and tripe. I do hope that the worthy lady did not belong to the Roman branch. CHAPTER XXXVII WITH GARIBALDI IN THE TYROL I FOUND Garibaldi in a miserable town somewhere in the Northern Tyrol ; his army of red-shirts had eaten and drunk up everything that was edible or potable ; and the solitary caffe of the place bore an announce- ment over the door that it was closed ^^ per mancansa di tutto " — for want of everything. I suppose that there was never an army in the field, except, perhaps, in some South American Republic, so sorrily supplied as was Garibaldi's host of caviicie rosse. There was some kind of commissariat ; but the provend was ir- regular and insufficient, for the reason that the com- missaries were unable to procure the provisions they wanted. The red-shirts were brave enough, and were leavened to some extent by veterans who had formed part of the Thousand of Marsala, who, under their heroic leader, captured the Two Sicilies ; but the mass of the Garibaldini were raw youths, patriotic clerks, and shop assistants, who scarcely knew their drill. They did not plunder ; and besides, as you may sur- mise, immediately war was declared all the available poultry seemed instinctively to hide themselves in re- mote holes and corners, undiscoverable by marauding parties. Such looting as did take place was probably more among the officers than the rank and file ; since I re- member a Marquis, commanding a body of mounted Garibaldini, sending me a note in which, with his compliments, he stated that he had got some friends to WITH GARIBALDI IN THE TYROL 7 1 dinner. A salad was to be included in the repast, and could I lend him an egg ? He added in a postscript that he hoped to be soon able to reciprocate my cour- tesy ; as, this being Tuesday, he had every reason to believe that his servant would be able to steal a chicken by Sunday, at the latest. The idea of the faithful orderly laying siege, and opening the trenches, and storminor the citadel in which the fowl was en- sconced was mirthful. I had a long interview with Garibaldi on the after- noon of my arrival at headquarters. He received me in the friendliest manner ; and told me that there was not the slightest need for me to have brought a letter of introduction to him, as he was well aware that the newspaper which I represented had always been a firm friend of Italy. He added that he would do what he could for my colleagues and myself, but that he was very badly off for stores and for munitions of war; in fact, he said with a smile, he was almost in the same posi- tion as the proprietor of the caffc, who had been fain to close his establishment in consequence of a " nian- cama di tiitto!' I could not help reading between the lines as he spoke ; and fancying that he was somewhat sore at what he considered to be either the indifference or the animosity of the Italian military authorities to the irregular force which he commanded. There are innumerable portraits, busts, and statu- ettes extant of Giuseppe Garibaldi ; and it would be wholly useless, not to say impertinent, to give a de- tailed description of this heroic man. Still, it must be remembered that he has been dead twelve years ; that the public memory is fleeting; and that the young British adolescent, fresh from school or col- lege, was a small boy when Garibaldi died. He was verging on sixty years of age when I first beheld him. Of middle height ; somewhat spare, moderately 'J2 LIFE OF GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA full short beard and moustache ; hair still auburn although beginning to be flecked with grey, and a wonderfully lucid blue eye. He was clad in the camicia rossa, or red woollen shirt, which is so closely associated with himself and the brave fellows he led ; and in connection with this historic garment, it may be mentioned that this red shirt was simply the ar- ticle of attire worn at that period in the American mer- chant service. Garibaldi had followed a great many callinafs while he was in the United States. Among: other things, he was foreman to, if not in partnership with, an Italian manufacturer of soap and candles at Staten Island, New York ; and early in the 'lifties he was a skipper of a vessel trading between Philadelphia and Genoa. It is a matter of history that the authori- ties of the last-named seaport forbade him to cast anchor in the harbour, and sent him away, packing. A soldier, a sailor, and a patriot, one quality was cer- tainly lacking in Giuseppe Garibaldi — there was noth- ing of the statesman, in the Machiavellian or Talley- rand sense, about him. He could not tell lies ; he knew not how to negotiate, to cog, to finesse, or to cajole. His own convictions were unswervingly Re- publican ; but, recognising the fact that Italy was in the main monarchical, and that the country yearned to be united under the constitutional sway of a Prince of the House of Savoy, he cheerfully yielded to the general wish of his countrymen ; and after his magic- all}^ swift conquest of Naples and Sicily, he quietly handed them over to Victor Emmanuel II., whom he knew to be as courageous and as truthful as he was : and on his way to attack the fortress of Gaeta, the last stronghold of the Neapolitan Bourbons, he hailed the King of Sardinia as King of Italy. Practically, it was by Giuseppe Garibaldi that the " Re galantiionio " was crowned. WITH GARIBALDI IN THE TYROL 73 It is amusing to remember an anecdote told me by one of Garibaldi's secretaries, M. PlantuUi, touching Garibaldi's uniform as a General in the regular Italian army. The uniform itself is a very handsome one, in- cludinof larofe o-old epaulettes of loose bullion strands. This imposing costume, together with a plumed cocked hat, General Garibaldi wore only on two oc- casions. He donned it when he boarded a British man-of-war to tender thanks to the Admiral, who had protected the landing of the Thousand at Marsala. He wore the uniform again at his interview with Vic- tor Emmanuel, after the conquest of the Two Sicilies ; but when he returned to his island home at Caprera, it is a comical fact that he presented his General's much-gold-laced panoply to his cowherd, who gravely drove cattle about the fields of Caprera in this gor- geous martial panoply. Exposure to wind and rain and a scorching summer sun very soon reduced the stately garb to a lamentable state of tarnished seedi- ness ; and the cowherd, who preferred freedom of ac- tion to being tightly buttoned up, always wore the coat open, so as to display a coarse canvas shirt, with a red woollen sash round the waist. It was the de- light of Garibaldi and his friends, when they met this cowherd, gravely to salute him in military fashion, and acclaim him as " inio Gcncrald' Menotti Garibaldi, the General's eldest son, was not with us at the outset of the campaign ; but his younger brother, Ricciotti, was serving as a private in one of the regiments of red-shirts. Two English ladies were also in our company, and eventually did much Sama- ritan service to the Garibaldini. First, there was Mrs. Chambers, who had come out with her husband, Col- onel Chambers, to look after Garibaldi's personal com- fort and see that he was \vell provided with pocket- money. It was the singular lot of this singular man 74 LIFE OF GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA to be platonicallj loved and cherished by a noble gathering of English ladies, who seemed to regard him as a Fighting Brother who must be taken care of. His life was as pure as the cause for which he fought, and the voice of calumny was never for an instant raised against the devoted Englishwomen who tended him with love and devotion. Another of his lady- adherents was Madame Jessie Merriton White Mario, whom I remembered as having been, in her unmarried days, a sedulous student in the reading-room of the British Museum, but who in 1866 had become the wife of an Italian gentleman and friend of Garibaldi. I have said that he was no statesman ; he was too blunt and too simple-minded to practise any of the de- vices of statecraft. Although the co-operation of Na- poleon III. had enabled the Italians to wrest Lom- bardy from the Austrians, he never forgave him for not redeeming his promise to emancipate Italy from the Alps to the Adriatic. He always alluded to the Emperor as " cc Monsieur ; " and disdainfully spoke of the cession to France of Nice and Savoy as a " mer- chnonio " — a vile, illicit, and contraband transaction. Our brief campaign was not a very glorious one. We were badly off for a field-train, and it was difficult to procure mules to drag the few movm tain-howitzers that had been doled out to Garibaldi by the Italian Government, Expert marksmen did not abound in the ranks of the Garibaldini ; whereas the Austrians had a plentiful supply of Tyrolese sharpshooters, who could be seen through our field-glasses systematically " potting " the red-shirts at long range ; while ser- geants and corporals stood behind to score the results of each volley. As to the special correspondents, their means of locomotion were various and the reverse of comfort- able. Sometimes we managed to hire a light carriage WITH GARIBALDI IN THE TYROL 75 for a few days ; sometimes we got about on mule or donkey-back ; and sometimes we were forced to walk. Dr. Maginn once observed that for duelling purposes, any one might be considered a gentleman who wore a clean shirt once a week, 1 am afraid that during the Garibaldian campaign I entirely lost the qualification of a gentleman in respect to duelling. One of my col- leagues had been fortunate enough to purchase a rick- ety little open shandrydan, drawn by two miserable screws, one of which he christened Homer because he was blind, and another General La Marmora because he manifested a chronic disinclination to advance. At night-time these lamentable Rosinantes were tethered to some convenient underwood ; and then, my col- league, having carefully arranged the harness under the carriage, placed over it a waterproof-sheet and slept the sleep of the just; at least, he knew that the harness would not be stolen ; and as for the screws they were scarcely worth stealing. The weather — it was now June — was delightful — not too hot during the day, and not too cool at night ; and as most of the journalists were young and strong, it was rather diverting than otherwise to have to rough it. There was little to eat beyond some dreadfully distasteful and hard meat, which purported to be salt beef, but which I am the rather inclined to believe was salt horse, together with some mouldy biscuits; but one of us had laid in a good store of chocolate in tablets at Milan ; and chocolate, when savoury provisions run short, is a capital stay or hold-fast. Garibaldi was the most abstemious of mankind ; still he could, on occasion, be festive ; and by the camp fire at night I have seen him smoke his little Cavour cigar and sing his little song. Of his utter unworldli- ness, his singleness of mind, and his childlike belief that a large proportion of mankind were as virtuous as 76 LIFE OF GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA he was, I remember, a striking illustration in a remark which he made when someone in a mixed company at the bivouac was dwelling on the necessity of reforming the Italian Criminal Code. " I would reform the code," observed Garibaldi, " and the codes of all other nations into the bargain, with this scatola of zolfanclli;" and as he spoke he held a box of lucifer matches. Most marked, indeed, was the difference as a politician be- tween Giuseppe Garibaldi and another of his contem- poraries, as patriotic, as devoted, and as upright as he, I mean Daniel Manin, the chief of the short-lived Re- public of Venice, in 1848. When the Austrians regained their sway over the Dominio Veneto, the President of the Republic of Saint Mark took refuge in Paris. He had been bred an advocate; but there was no employment available for him at the Parisian Bar. He was very poor ; and as a means of subsistence he obtained an engagement to give lessons in Italian to the daughters of the cele- brated French dramatist Ponsard. Or, perhaps it was Legouve. Week after week did he toil and moil in attempts to drum the conjugations of the Italian irreg- ular verbs into the heads of the young ladies ; but one afternoon, losing all heart, he quietly remarked : " I am good for nothing but to be a ruler over men ; " and so made his pupils a low bow, put on his hat, and de- parted. Garibaldi was the born soldier, or rather the born chief of partisans ; he was another Hofer, another Schill, another Tell — if there really was ever such a personage as William Tell — but he was not a director of policy or a framer of laws. We had a bit of a battle with the Austrians at a place called Montesuelo ; and in connection with this engagement, which was not wholly advantageous to the red-shirts, a ludicrous story is told of one of the special correspondents. I suppose that in every camp. WITH GARIBALDI IN THE TYROL ^^ from that of the Tenth Legion of old down to those of the armies of modern times, there are always current a large number of more or less apocryphal stories which, in campaigning parlance, are known as " shaves." I know not how much truth, if there be any, there is in the little story which I am about to tell, for I did not witness the incident to which it refers myself ; still, as "shaves" went, it may be considered as a sufficiently humorous one. At the time when the battle was at its height one of the Garibaldini battalions, decimated by the fierce fire of the Austrian Infantry, was waver- ing, and seemed in imminent peril of being hopelessly broken. The special correspondent of whom I speak was a tall, thin, good-looking gentleman, who habitually dressed in a light brown-hoUand suit, and enhanced the picturesqueness of his white pith helmet by attach- ing thereto a white muslin pugree. His only weapon was an alpenstock, and his usual means of locomotion was the open shandrydan with the two bandy-legged ponies, of which I have already spoken. Suddenly — I tell the tale as it was told to me — there appeared in front of the half-routed battalion of red-shirts this nota- ble journalist, mounted on a white horse. He had a light paletot over his brown holland ; and waving his alpenstock wide in air and the pugree streaming from his helmet behind, he shouted in a stentorian voice, '' Avanti, ragazd, Avanti .f' And the story went on to say that his appearance so stimulated the martial energy of the wavering red-shirts that they re-formed their wavering line, charged the enemy, and repulsed them with serious loss. Whether they took the rider of the white horse for " Garibaldi's Englishman," or for one of the Seven Champions of Christendom, or for one of the Great Twin Brethren who fought in the battle of the Lake Regillus, 1 cannot tell. 78 LIFE OF GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA An ancient Roman writer, however, has observed that there is no falsehood so flagrant but that it has an element of truth in it. For the accuracy of one por- tion of the " shave " touching the correspondent on the white horse I can vouch. I had the pleasure of meeting him when the fight was over ; and immedi- ately perceived that the overcoat he wore, a drab sum- mer paletot, was mine own ; and I remembered that I had left the garment at Peschiera just before the Aus- trians had entered that town in force. My friend said that he had annexed the coat, as lawful booty of war, having found it on the body of a slain Austrian officer ; but that as he knew the coat was my property, he now laughingly restored it to me. But mark the caprice of Fate ! In those days I always wrote with the dark blue ink which Dickens invariably used, and which most of his young men also made use of out of liking for their Chief. 1 had brought to Italy a tin flask Avith a screw top, and holding about a pint, and I had left this flask, about three-parts full, at Peschiera. In the other pocket I had left a memorandum book. When I came to examine the pockets of my coat, I found my tin flask, sure enough ; but the ink had been poured away ; the bottle had been washed out, and it was half full of rum ; my notebook had disappeared, but in its stead was a pack of playing cards. The myster}'' of the white horse I was never able to clear up. Was the Austrian officer who came to grief a mounted one ; and did my friend also annex his horse as lawful booty of war ? About this time came to the front another English war correspondent, my good friend Edward Dicey, now a Companion of the Bath. A Cambridge man, he had travelled extensively in Italy, and knew Gari- baldi very well. He had long been a colleague of mine as a leader writer on the Daily Telegraph ; and I WITH GARIBALDI IN THE TYROL 79 suppose that he was one of that band of " young lions " about whom the late Mr. Matthew Arnold used to write such very smart things. There was yet another visitor to Garibaldi's camp who has honoured me from that day to this with con- stant and thoughtful friendship. This was Lord Ron- ald Gower, a younger brother of the late Duke of Sutherland, whose mother, the good and beautiful Duchess of Sutherland, was, as I have said more than once in the earlier part of this book, one of my mother's most steadfast and most generous patronesses. The Duke, her son, was an enthusiastic admirer of Garibaldi, and was his host at Stafford House on the occasion of the visit of the Liberator of the Two Sici- lies to London — a visit so magnificently begun in the popular enthusiasm which it excited, but which was brought to a sudden and mysterious termination. Lord Ronald Gower shared his brother's admiration for Garibaldi. I shall have something to say later on touching his lordship's accomplishments as a drafts- man, a sculptor, and a writer on art and vertu ; but I should like him to tell me, should he chance to read this page, if there be any truth in the following little story which I heard in Italy touching Garibaldi's visit to the Duke. It is to this effect. When Garibaldi, after a pro- tracted and triumphant progress from the east to the west of the metropolis, arrived at Stafford House, he was exhausted by fatigue ; declined to partake of the banquet prepared for him ; and said he should like to have some bread and cheese and a bottle of pale ale, and then retire to rest ; which he presently did. The next morning, at eight, the servant came to his door to ask if he lacked anything. There was no Garibaldi in the room. The domestic came again at ten ; but the quandam Dictator of Naples was still absent. Being 80 LIFE OF GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA diligently sought for, he was found in the great picture gallery ; where he was quietly sauntering and admiring the masterpieces of painting on the walls. Breakfast was ready, he was told. The General expressed his thanks, but said that he had already breakfasted. " Breakfasted ! " exclaimed in astonishment his inter- locutor. " Yes," calmly replied the frugal hero, " I get up at six ; I feel hungry ; there was a little bread and a little cheese left, I eat him, and there was also a little beer remaining, and I drink him." If this be a "shave," it is a tolerably close one as an illustration of the Spartan simplicity of Giuseppe Garibaldi in all things. We had another fight with the Austrians some days after Montesuelo, in which the Garibaldini remained masters of the field ; and, indeed, it may be said that although Garibaldi had won no striking victories in his campaign, he had at least continued to advance into the enemy's country, and had well planted his foot on the soil of the Southern Tyrol. After the engage- ment, of which I have spoken, the Italian troops halted at a village where there was a small poverty-stricken tumble-down little church ; and there being no hospital nor convent available, the wounded were carried into the church. There was adequate surgical aid at hand, and there was a miserable deficiency of hospital ap- pliances, especially of bandages ; and it is a fact which the humane, the merciful, and the compassionate should lay to heart, that the two noble Englishwomen, Mrs. Chambers and Madame Jessie Meriton White Mario, tore up every rag and stitch of their under- clothing to make bandages withal, and came out of that church with nothing but their gowns to cover them. After another successful brush with the enemy, Garibaldi believed that he would be able to push on WITH GARIBALDI IN THE TYROL 8 1 as far as Trent and occupy that important town ; but, alas \ — did not Mr. Kinglake remark, in '' Eothen," that, alas ! was an ejaculation which everybody wrote and nobody uttered ? — there appeared at head-quar- ters an open barouche and pair, in which was seated an Italian staff-officei", in a dark blue uniform and gold bullion epaulettes, who turned out to be an aide-de- camp of King Victor Emmanuel. The Prussians had routed the Austrians at Koniggratz ; there was to be peace between the two Powers ; and Italy, much to her disgust, was instructed by her French friend — Garibaldi's rr Monsieur — to make peace with the Kaiser. As a consolation, howevei*, the Dominio Veneto was to be given up to her ; and thus the Em- peror Napoleon practically was to redeem his promise of freeing Italy from the Alps to the Adriatic. Rome only, and the States of the Church, were excepted from the stately kingdom conferred on the whilom Sovereign of Sardinia : — the luckiest monarch, I should say, that has lived for centuries. Still, al- though the glittering prize of Venice, Verona, Padua, Vicenza, and Mantua was dangled before their eyes, the Italians felt sore with the peace which had been concluded without giving them Rome. They were sore at having been worsted by the Austrians in the Quadrilateral ; since, although the TcdcscJii did not pursue the Italian army, but re-entered Mantua at nightfall, the Italian army had been forced to fall be- hind the Mincio, and though they vehemently de- clared Custozza to have been a drawn battle, there was a general consensus of European opinion that Austria had won the day on the 24th June, 1866. They were sorer at having been signally defeated by the Austrian fleet, commanded by Admiral Tegethoff, at Lissa, in the Adriatic, and although the Italian Commander, Admiral Persano, stated somewhat vain- II.— 6 82 LIFE OF GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA gloriously in his despatch, that the Italians remained masters of the scene of battle {jioi siamo padroni delle segue di Lissd), it is certain that Tegethoff rammed and jammed the Italian warships into a cocked-hat, as the Americans would say, and sunk one huge ironclad right out. As for Garibaldi, he was more than sore ; he was enraged ; and made haste to throw up 'his command, and return to his island home at Caprera. At the conclusion of this — well, let us say, equivocal — campaign, the little band of English special correspon- dents broke up. Hyndman and the present writer re- turned to Milan ; Henty left for Ancona, in the har- bour of which he witnessed the fearful catastrophe of the foundering of the ironclad Affondatore, a disaster which took place just as the enormous vessel was en- tering the port. CHAPTER XXXVIII THE LIBERATION OF VENICE At Milan we found the late Mr. Frederick Hardman, a well-known travelling correspondent of the Tiines, who afterwards represented that journal in Paris. Mr. Hardman may be considered as one of the pio- neers of that peculiar class of journalists of whom William Howard Russell has been for a long time the acknowledged doyen and chief. Hardman had served the Times during the Carlist and Cristino war in Spain, in which there did good service for another journal the late Mr. Charles Lewis Gruneisen — another pio- neer of special war correspondents. He was on the Cristino side ; had been captured by the Carlists, and w^as about to be shot, when he was rescued from his impending fate by the intercession of the late Lord Ranelagh, who had taken service in the cause of Don Carlos de Borbon. There was, as we are all aware, no special war correspondent at Waterloo ; although I have heard it stated that an agent of the house of Rothschild, and an English commercial traveller, were on the field on the i8th June, 1815. So far as I can make out, the first recognised war correspondent of a newspaper was a gentleman — I have never heard his name — who represented the Times at the siege of Antwerp, in 1831. Much earlier in the century the Walcheren expedition was joined in an informal and unrecognised manner by a journalist named Peter Finnerty, who, on his return, told the British public a great deal more about that unfortu- 84 LIFE OF GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA nate naval and military blunder than the British Gov- ernment of the day cared to have published :— " Lord Chatham, with his sword drawn, Was waiting for Sir Richard Strachan ; Sir Richard, longing to be at 'em. Stood waiting for the Earl of Chatham." Who wrote this epigram ? There are many variants of the lines which I have quoted. In one version, Lord Chatham is the waiting earl, and his sword is a " sabre." In another, Sir Richard Strachan is not "longing," but "eager." Peter Finnerty, at some period of his career, managed to get in prison, if not into the pillory, for libel ; and he always ascribed his prosecution to the maleficent influence of Lord Castle- reagh. Peter was a humorist; and the revenge he took on his potential persecutor was peculiar. When- ever he met his lordship in the street he always took off his hat and made him a series of profound bows, which Lord Castlereagh, who had not the slightest idea of who Peter was, never failed to return with true patrician courtesy. Peter was at one time art- critic for one of the London daily newspapers, and whenever a portrait of Lord Castlereagh came under his notice at any picture exhibition, he took care to describe the effigy of the noble lord as that of one of the loveliest of mankind, insinuating, however, before he had got to the end of his critique, that his lordship was an embodied counterpart of Old Nick. The autumn was demoniacally hot at Milan ; and I longed for the seaside. Another motive impelled me towards the shores of the Adriatic. Peace was con- cluded, but the Convention by which Venice was to be ceded to the Italians was not yet signed. The city was still in a state of siege, and my wife was still shut up there. Half-a-dozen times I ran down to Mestre THE LIBERATION OF VENICE 85 on the Tiain land ; and a friendly milkwoman, and an equally obliging laundress used to fetch and carry our correspondence in their barges across the lagoon. It was announced, however, that in another fortnight or three weeks the siege would be raised ; although Ven- ice would continue to be garrisoned by the Austrians until the beginning of November. Meanwhile, civil- ians from the outside would have free ingress to the place. The interval I passed in travelling in the company of M. Plantulli, Garibaldi's whilom secretar}^, or aide- de-camp, through the liberated Dominio Veneto, which, with the exception of Verona, had been wholly evacu- ated by the TcdcscJii. M. Plantulli was a lively, festive little gentleman, a quondam student, I take it, of the University of Naples, and an Italianissimo of the Ital- ianissimi. He worshipped Garibaldi ; and, young as he Avas — he was scarcely thirty — he had done good service in the cause of his beloved country. At the age of sixteen he had served that country both in meal and in malt ; for, at the early age I speak of, having been implicated in a political conspiracy against the Government of King Bomba, it was Signor PlantuUi's patriotic, but scarcely agreeable, lot to be condemned to hard labour for life and in chains. He got out of durance, however, with one of the Thousand of Mar- sala, and entered Naples in triumph with his Chief. " We at once," he used to say, " proceeded to the Royal Palace of Capo di Monte, and apartments were assigned to all the members of the General's staff. They put me into an immense bedroom, with crystal chandeliers hanging from the ceiling, and candelabra carrying twenty wax tapers each, all of which I took care to light. There was a huge four-post bedstead, with pillars of the Corinthian order, with gilt capitals, and draped with sumptuous damask. I did not un- S6 LIFE OF GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA dress, but I threw m^-self on the bed, which was cov- ered by a quilled counterpane of eiderdown, covered with silk and gold brocade ; and, lying on my back, dug both my spurs into the bed with the exultant fancy that I was digging them into the corpse of the prostrate and vanquished Bomba, or rather his effete son Bombina." PlantuUi and I visited Padua; where I made at once for the historic Caffe Pedrocchi, a place of entertain- ment which, so it is said, had never been closed for a single night in the course of three consecutive centu- ries. There is another ca^e at Venice that has a similar social record — the Caffe Florian. When Marshal Hay- nau was in command in the city he issued a general order, directing that all the caffcs should be closed at midnight. The proprietor of Florian's waited on His Excellency, and represented that Venetian social life did not virtually begin until midnight. " I care noth- ing for that," the Marshal sternly replied ; " if you don't have your shutters up by twelve o'clock, I shall send you to gaol." " But, Excellency," submissively- urged the r^Tjf^-keeper, " I have not got any shutters ; and Florian has never had any since the days of Ma- rino Faliero." He had brought down, it is true, that unfortunate Doge by rather a long shot; but Haynau, who was in the main not altogether inhuman, laughed, told the lanalord to go about his business, and prom- ised that he should not be molested. I have no desire, as I have already hinted, to pad out my Autobiography with guide-book notices of dif- ferent towns, at each of which I made a few days' sojourn ; still 1 cannot help dwelling briefly on just two subjects. Wandering from Milan to Mantua and from Padua to Verona and Vicenza, there grew up in one, day after day, a stronger and stronger impression — an impression which has become an unalterable con- THE LIBERATION OF VENICE 8/ viction — that Shakespeare knew every rood of ground and every building in the cities, the scenes of which he had laid in the Merchant of Vejiice and in OtJicllo, in The Two Gentlemen of Verona, in Romeo and Juliet, and in The Taming of the Shrew. Few tourists who have visited Northern Italy have escaped being pestered by ciceroni, who have offered to show them the tomb of Juliet at Verona; the shop of the apothecary at Man- tua ; and the Palazzo del Moro, on the Grand Canal, at Venice ; but it was the constant study of ostensibly petty details in Shakespeare's Italian plays that led me to the full and fast belief that he was familiar from actual experience and observation with the Northern Italy of his time. There is not in his works the slightest indication that leads a reader, who is as familiar with the Penin- sula as he is with his own country, to think that the Bard of all Time knew anything personally about Rome ; whereas the plays which I have mentioned seem to me to bear the strongest testimony to his thorough knowledge of, among others, the cities which I have cited. Next you will pardon me if I venture on yet an- other brief excursus, not at all of a guide-book char- acter, on Ferrara. I don't wish to talk about the gloomy, unhealthy city, either from an artistic and architectural, or a historical point of view ; but, dur- ing the three days, PlantuUi and I abode in an imper- fectly sanitated hotel, about fifty times as large as it should have been to meet the requirements of its aver- age number of guests, I was haunted by the ghost of Lucrezia Borgia. Not by her historic phantom. Those who have read the late Mr. Gilbert's admirable monograph on Lucrezia, know that the much ma- ligned Duchess died in her bed in honour and fair re- pute. She had had, it is true, four husbands ; but S8 LIFE OF GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA where is the harm in that circumstance? How many spouses had the Wife of Bath ? — and did not another lady, when she espoused her fourth consort, cause to be engraved inside her wedding ring this sweet little posy — " If I survive, I will have five ? " It may be true that Donna Lucrezia's early married life may have been a little breezy ; but if she did cause to be stabbed or murdered a few people whose room she preferred to their company, it must be remem- bered that the application of cold steel under the fifth rib of objectionable people was an integral part of the manners of the epoch ; and the cup of cold poison was very plentifully administered, and that the science of chemical analysis was in its infancy. For the rest, Lucrezia was a \ery good wife to her fourth husband, Don Alfonso d'Este. She patronised literature and the arts ; she favoured, it is said, the cause of the Reformation in Italy ; she corresponded with Bembo, and she pensioned Ariosto. The dame who haunted me was the Lucrece Boriria of Victor Hugo's tragedy, and the Lucrezia of Donizetti's opera, which was nearly the first that I ever witnessed. I can hear now, in my memory for melody, Grisi as Donna Lucrezia, Rubini as Genarro, and Brambilla as Mafio Orsini ; but I forget who was the Don Alfonso, and who the Gubetta. There came back to me at Fer- rara the strains of " Com' e bello," the dulcet melody of " Di pescator ignobile," the terrific denunciation of the masked lady by Genarro's companions at Venice, and the glorious brindisi in the last act, " II segreto per esser felice." Why is it that Lucrezia Borgia is never played in England, nowadays ? Is it that modern hy- per-criticism deems the glorious opera too puny for THE LIBERATION OF VENICE 89 modern ears, depraved and distorted by Wag-nerism ; or is it because we have wo prima donna at present who could do justice to the part of the heroine? Why have we no impersonators of Norma, of Semiramide? Is it that we have no operatic singer who is equal to the requirements of " Al dolce guldarni " or of " Qual mesto gemito?" Tell us, Sir Augustus Harris, tell us why. Not alone, however, was I pursued by the appari- tion of Donizetti's Duchess. I had visions of the fierce, passionate, much -hating, much -loving woman. I knew Victor Hugo's tragedy by heart, since, as a boy, I read it in secret at night or at early morn. Its resting-place was between the mattress and the pail- lasse of my bed ; for Liicrcce Borgia was a play which had been sternly placed in the domestic Index Expur- gatorius. With what grave joy did I find myself in desolate, evil-smelling Ferrara, which is too vasty, not only for the guests in its hotels, but for its inhabitants, so that you can hire a palace with scores of rooms in it, each as big as a barn, for about £']^ a year. But the Ferrara which revealed itself to me was the city of Victor Hugo. First, I mentally strayed to Venice, and saw the masked lady bending over her sleeping son ; I watched the young nobles enter and virulently denounce the guilty daughter of Pope Alexander VI. Then I came back to Ferrara, and conjured up the scene in which the reckless young patrician, headed by Genarro, hacked out of the escutcheon over the ducal palace, the first letter of Borgia — leaving it OR- GIA. Then that quaint conversation in the street be- tween les dciix homines vetus de noir, Gubetta and Rus- tighello ; the stormy interview between the Duke and his wife ; his indignant apostrophe to her, beginning, " Tenes, Madame, je hais voire abominable fainille^' and her famous retort, ''■ Prcncz garde, Don Alfonse d'Este, mon qnatrieme mari^ 90 LIFE OF GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA And so on to the last act — the banquet at the Prin- cess Negroni's, the glorious brindisi, followed by the Penitential Psalms, chanted in lugubrious strophes by the sable-clad friars bearing torches, who, drawing aside, reveal seven coffins. Then enters the implaca- ble Donna Lucrezia. " Vouz inavez donnd un bal h Ve- nisc^' she says, addressing the poisoned nobles, "y> vous rends nn soupcr a Ferrarey They are all dead men, but Genarro lives long enough to slay his wicked mamma. Curtain. End. Thus it is in the play, at least; but there was no end to the tragedy, to my mind, while I sojourned in the fatal city. There seemed to me to be an uncomfortable number of farmacic, or druggists' shops, in Ferrara ; and a dozen times a day I used to fancy that I saw the brougham of Donna Lucrezia standing at the door of one of these establishments. I was, in truth, glad enough to get away from the gloomy old place ; since Ferrara had begun to work upon my nerves. I distrusted the food at the hotel — it was normally very nasty food — and half suspected that the Baleful Duchess had been putting arsenic into the risotto, or mix vomica into the wine. But the state of siege at Venice was raised ; and I was suffered to rejoin my beloved partner in life. She had got on, during my absence, tolerably well, and had been comforted during the last few weeks of her virtual beleaguerment by the letters transmitted to her by the friendly milkwoman and the obliging laun- dress. Mr. Etzensberger, the manager of the Hotel Victoria, had stood by her manfully, and there was an account of somewhat alarming proportions to be paid ; a bank post-bill — are there any bank post-bills now? — which had been transmitted to her on mj^ account from London, having either been stolen, or gone hope- lessly astray on its way through Southern Germany, whence, in due course, it should have reached Venice. THE LIBERATION OF VENICE 9I I must recall a rather interesting incident which I witnessed at Mestre,the station where I took the train which rattles over the railway causeway across the lagoons. I had to wait a considerable time ; whiling which time away with a cigar, 1 became aware of a four-horsed drag, or four-in-hand, splendidly horsed and splendidly " tooled " by a gentleman in a grey box-coat with mother-of-pearl buttons as large as cheese plates, and collar and cuffs of fawn-coloured velvet. He wore a white silk hat with a black band. The two grooms in the dickey sat rigidly upright, folding their arms like a couple of statues ; and by the driver's side was a handsome lady, fashionably attired. The gentleman rose, pointed with his whip in the di- rection of the lagoons, said to the lady, " Venice is over there, I reckon," and straightway turned his team, and drove composedly back along the narrow road. Let us not accuse him too hastily of indiffer- ence to the beauties of the Queen of the Adriatic. Possibly he had driven that drag right through France, down south to the Riviera, and then along the marvellous CJicmi)i dc la CornicJie to Genoa, whence he would go, without much difficulty, to Mestre. But what could he have done with a four-in-hand at Ven- ice? I do not remember that the Grand Canal, even in the severest of winters, has ever been frozen over. There was something, however, especially whimsical in a gentleman driving such a long distance and con- tenting himself with what may be called a Pisgah view of the Italian Palestine. At least, four English Gren- adiers, whom I was aware of once at Niagara, saw more of the Falls than the gentleman in the box-seat of the four-in-hand saw of Venice. It was in this wise. I was at Niagara, on the Canadian side, in the winter of 1863. Four strapping sergeants of the Grenadier 92 LIFE OF GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA Guards, then in garrison at Montreal, in their warm grey great coats, had got leave to visit Niagara. I saw them emerge from the railway station ; I watched them proceed, with military deliberation and exacti- tude of step, to the Table Rock ; they took a view — a brief, but comprehensive one — of the Horseshoe falls, immediately following it by the simple evolution known as right-about-face, and marched back to the railway station again. Julius Cccsar tells us, in his " Commentaries," that he came into Gaul *' with sum- mary diligence ; " but he stayed there somewhat lon- ger than the four sergeants did at Niagara. Typical British soldiers were they. They might have been brethren of the famous Four Sergeants of the Indian Mutiny, who, with the sacks of powder on their backs, marched across the open and blew up the Cashmere Gate at Delhi. We had the merriest of autumns in Venice ; al- though there was still a strong Austrian force there, and the Austrian Governor-General, Baron Alemann, periodically issued alarming proclamations forbidding the display of what his Excellency ambiguously termed '' stoffe coloratc,'' which coloured stuffs were, indeed, banners and pennants of the Italian tricolour, which certain r^^r-keepers had prematurely hoisted, not out- side, but inside their premises. Still, everybody in Venice knew that Baron Alemann's sway was destined to be a very short one ; and the sewing together of stoffc colorate, and the making of tricoloured cockades went on in secret, but briskly. Great preparations were also made for re-opening the Fenice Theatre, which splendid house — the successor of the theatre once glorified by the scenery painted by the illustrious Antonio da Canal, commonly called Canaletto — had been closed for many a long day during the Austrian domination. It was also understood that the lessees THE LIBERATION OF VENICE 93 of the Teatro Malibran, where the principal amuse- ments used to consist of rope-dancing and sword-swal- lowing-, together with the Teatro Apollo and the Teatro San Samuele were also putting their houses in order. The Hotel Victoria was full. Henty and Hyndman had joined us to witness the liberation of Venice from foreign rule ; while from Milan had been despatched, as representative of that important journal La Pcrseve- ranza, a certain Dr. Carlo Filippi, a profound but ver- satile scholar, and a skilled musician, who used to fascinate the ladies — ^especially two charming daugh- ters of a Prebendary of St. Paul's, who were travelling with their uncle — by the grace and vivacity with which he would sing, accompanying himself on the pianoforte, songs in that Venetian dialect which has been made attractive, and even fascinating, to Italian scholars in some of the comedies of Goldoni. The Venetian dia- lect is one of the Softest and sweetest forms of patois which I know ; and contrasts very favourably with the harsh minga of Milan and the guttural Bolognese. In the local speech oi Venice nearly every word is mellifluous, and consonants are discarded as much as possible. Thus '■'■padre " is "pare,"' and " madrey " marc.'' The Venetians, too, have a passion for making all nouns feminine, and I have even heard a gondolier speak of Victor Emmanuel as la Re. The poor fellow might, to be sure, have pleaded that in pure Tuscan, as well as in French and German, Maj- esty is always of the feminine gender. On the 3rd of October Venice and Venetia were surrendered by Austria to the French Government, to be handed over to Italy — Kaiser Francis Joseph being too proud to cede directly this splendid appanage of his Crown to a Power which he had twice beaten in battle. The formal transfer of the city took place on 94 LIFE OF GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA the 17th October, at noon, the Commissioners of Na- poleon III. being presided over by that General Le- boeuf, who, as Marshal Leboeuf, played a not very brilliant part in the Franco-German War of 1870. The Convention was signed at the Hotel de Ville, and the cession proclaimed to the whole city by a salute of a hundred guns. The Italian colours were run up to the summit of the three tall masts in front of the Cathedral of St. Mark. The Austrmn sc Invar s-gclb w^s hauled down ; and General Baron Alemann — a stout little gentleman, of pleasant mien — was absolutely cheered by the crowd as he embarked at the Molo on board the gunboat which was to convey him to Tri- este. The Venetians, notwithstanding all that English people read in "The Bravo" and similar romances, have always been a kindly, affectionate, and placable folk. When Fra Paolo was stabbed, in consequence of some theological controversy connected with the Coun- cil of Trent, he knew full well that the stiletto which wounded him was not held by a Venetian hand ; and as he sank swooning to the ground, he murmured " stilo Romano^ I have been told that during the long occupation of Venice by the TedescJii, it was with the greatest rar- ity that Austrian sentinels were ever assaulted, or that attempts were made to assassinate them ; and if there be a city on the face of the globe most favourable, in a topographical sense, to the perpetration of midnight murders, that city is assuredly Venice. You have only to stab your man and tip him over into 6ne of the side canals ; and away the tide carries the corpse into the Adriatic. The moment that the Austrian Governor had taken his departure, the Italian troops, who had been massed at the railway terminus hard by the Papadopoulo Pal- ace and gardens, were quickly shipped on board roomy THE LIBERATION OF VENICE 93 barges, which were towed by four steamers down the Grand Canal to the Molo. The first barge was crowded with " Guardie Civili," or gendarmes ; and the people who filled the gondolas and wherries on the Grand Canal cheered these gallant police-constables in their cocked hats, and red, white, and blue plumes, uproar- iously. It is not often the gendarme's lot to be cheered. A few days after the entry of the Italian garrison a plebiscitum was taken ; and the result was that 651,758 votes were cast for the annexation of the Venetian to the kingdom of Italy. There were only 69 votes recorded against union. Venetian Deputies at once proceeded to Turin to communicate the result to Victor Emmanuel ; and meanwhile the Italian offi- cers at the garrison of Venice proceeded to make them- selves as comfortable as possible in their new quarters. They crowded Florian's and the Specchi caffcs ; but the proprietor of an establishment which hitherto had been mainly patronised by the TedescJii, hastened to take down his sign, which was that of " LTmperatore d'Austria," and to put up something Italian and patri- otic instead. A few discontented Venetians, suspected of " Aiistri- acante" sympathies, complained in an undertone that the Italian military bands, which discoursed every evening sweet strains on the Piazza San Marco, did not play half so well as had been done by the Austrian military bands, whose instrumentation was simply per- fect ; but these grumblers were soon frowned out of countenance. Then the Italian officers loudly de- manded that the Fenice Theatre should be opened. The impresario wanted to wait until the arrival of His Majesty ; but the military gentlemen would brook no delay. Then the unhappy manager urged that he had no company, either operatic or choregraphic : in an- swer to which plea he was bidden to send for a com- g6 LIFE OF GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA pail}' from Vicenza or Rovigo, which he presently did ; and the compan}^ speedily arrived and alighted at the Hotel Victoria. A queer troupe they were, I hesi- tate to say that the prima donna was fifty and one- eyed, or that the basso profondo had a wooden leg ; but they were certainly not artistes of the calibre, either physical or artistic, that English Opera-goers were accustomed to see at Her Majesty's Theatre in the Haymarket, or that they see at present at the Royal Italian Opera, Covent Garden. There arose, moreover, a slight difficulty in the cir- cumstance that the prima jnima, or leading dumb-show actress, and the prima ballerina insisted on doing the washing of their gauzy draperies at home, and on hanging them out to dry from the upper windows of the hotel, which in the Middle Ages had been a stately palace. But this is an incident which very frequently happens in the towns of provincial Italy, when even marchionesses and duchesses not unfrequently do their light washing at home, and convert the window-sills of their mansions into drying-grounds. Mr. Etzens- berger, however, politely but firmly set his face against the practice, and he was also obliged to tell the man- ager that he could not tolerate the proceedings of the company in ordering their dinners from a neighbour- ing and cheap " trattoria,'' or cook-shop, instead of partaking of the principal meal of the day at the table d'hote. The English guests from the Hotel Victoria filled two rows of the stalls at the Fenice on the night when the theatre was reopened. I cannot recall the name of the opera performed, because it was interrupted at least twenty times by the audience shouting for the " Marcia Reale " to be played, or for '' Garibaldi's Hymn" to be sung; and when the over- fatigued artistes could no longer sing, the pit and gallery THE LIBERATION OF VENICE 97 howled the hymns themselves. Then they called for vivas for the Rt Galantiiomo ; then there was a shout of " Ke Eletto in Campidoglio ! " meaning that they want- ed to see their elected King installed as Sovereign of United Italy at the Capitol of Rome. Vivas for Ama- deo, Duke of Aosta ; vivas for the Italian Army and Navy then resounded from the auditorium ; one wag- gish occupant of the pit crying, " By all means bring the cavalry to Venice ; " while another facetious gen- tleman in the galler}^, pointing to the red and silver shield of the House of Savoy, which cognisance was displayed in the centre of the arch of the proscenium, called out, " Sale e tabaccJii^' in allusion to the Royal escutcheon placed over the doors of all Italian shop- keepers who are licensed to deal in the Government monopolies of salt and tobacco. But the most fre- quent, the noisiest, and the most enthusiastic vivas of the evening were those thundered for " La Perla di Savoiay " The Pearl of Savoy " was and is the good and beautiful Margherita, Queen of Italy. The King made his entry into Venice on the 7th of November, accompanied by a brilliant staff, and es- corted by his own special body-guard in cuirasses, plumed helmets, and jack-boots; but who had obvi- ously not brought their horses with them. His Maj- esty entered one of the State barges, which for weeks previously the municipality of Venice had been deco- rating for the use of their Sovereign and his court. When the King stepped into his barge at the railway terminus, a great roar went up from the multitude. " At last," quietly observed Dr. Filippi to me, " the Venetians are satisfied ; they have got their King in a gondola." As for the people in the gondolas and open boats, it is no exaggeration to say that, without much difficulty and at twenty different points, you might have crossed the Grand Canal on foot — so pro- II.— 7 98 LIFE OF GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA digious and so closel}' wedged together were the em- barcations. But the Prefect of Venice with a boat full of Guar die Civili preceded the Royal flotilla ; and with inimitable dexterity the gondoliers managed to make a lane or water-way for the King to pass, the boats closing up behind him immediately afterwards. There was a levee en masse of the old Venetian no- bility, many of whom were not in gondolas, but in large " barchi," or barges, the hulls of which were gilt down to the water-line, canopied with crimson and blue and cloth of gold and silver ; while there were faisccaiix of flags at stem and stern, and the rowers were clad in rich Venetian costume. I only wonder that when the King landed at the Piazetta, the people did not catch His Majesty up in their arms and carry him away bodily into the Cathedral of St. Mark. " I have not been to mass," said a Venetian to me, " for twenty years ; but I have been to St. Mark's this morning, and I mean to go there every day for a fort- night. You see the King is in our midst." I hope that the gentleman's devotional feelings did not wholly die away at the expiration of fourteen days. Then there was a rush to the Royal Palace, the fagade of which fronts the Basilica, and of course the " Re Eletto " had to show himself at one of the windows to be acclaimed over and over again with volleys of cheers. At night St. Mark's Place was illuminated " architectonically " — i.e., the lines horizontal, vertical, and semi-circular of all the columns and cornices and arcades of the Piazza were traced in threads of fire ; as was also done with the lines of the Byzantine fagade of the cathedral, the fairy-like little Loggetta, and the two great columns on the Piazetta ; the Campanile became a tower of fire ; and the horses of St. Mark were outlined with gas-jets. CHAPTER XXXIX ROME AND NAPLES Ere royalty took its departure, my wife and I, follow- ing instructions from headquarters in Fleet Street, bade farewell — but not, as we hoped, a lasting one — to Venice and went south. Our destination was Rome, where we were to remain until the following January. By this time the winter had begun, and in Venice, although the day of the royal entry had been a fine and sunny one, the weather was disagreeably raw and occasionally foggy. It grew worse by the time we got to Bologna ; and we arrived at Perugia in a snow- storm. I had never been in that artistic city before ; I did not know there was a clean hotel there ; and we passed the night at the post-house, one of the dirtiest Italian inns that I have ever met with. The house was ver}' ancient, and in a photograph would have been handsome. Our bedroom was immense, with a curiously-timbered roof, an antique carved wainscot, and walls hung with possibly mediaeval, but unmis- takably ragged and rotting, tapestry. The landlord and landlady were politeness itself ; and a chamber- maid, who, to all appearance, had not been washed from the time of Perugino, hastened to kindle a wood fire on a huge open hearth. The fumes of the faggots nearly choked us, to begin with ; but when the perils of impending suffocation passed away, we were able to enjoy a capital supper of fish, flesh, and fowl, washed down by some of the rarest old wines I have ever tasted. Whether it was Chianti or Montefiascone, I 100 LIFE OF GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA am not aware, but it was undoubtedly a vintage of true " Est., Est., Est.'' character. Tliere was a gap in the railway to Rome, owing to the snow ; and we had to leave Perugia in a lumber- ing old bcrline de voyage, painfully dragged by two wretched nags, which reminded me of the steeds har- nessed to the calessino of my colleague in Garibaldi's campaign in the Tyrol. We found, however, the rail- way available again at a station called Saint Some- thing or Another, and about six in the evening arrived at the railway terminus at Rome. The station was a deplorable one— small, inconvenient, foul, and to all appearance, structurally tumbling to pieces. In the dirty Custom House the dirtier Papal doganicri gave us an infinity of trouble : tossing about our belongings with their unwashed hands, and delving to the very bottom of our trunks in quest of any books which we might have brought with us ; but I had been fore- warned of the tricks and manners of these gentry, and had brought no literature whatever with me. Had I had any with me, the Custom House officers might, perhaps, have impounded my " Murray's Handbook," and assuredly they would have seized any Anglican Bible or Testament in a passenger's luggage. We stayed at Rome till a fortnight after Christmas, at the Hotel d'Angleterre, in the Via Bocca di Leone, over against the palace of the Duca Torlonia, and close to the Via Condotti, the Piazza di Spagna, and the Corso. I have been, perhaps, twenty times to the Eternal City since 1866 ; and I have never even thought of staying at any hotel there save the Albergo d'ln- ghilterra. Every day was a new revelation and a new series of delights ; but I may not be guide-bookish, and must refrain from saying anything about the public buildings or the antiquities of the place. It will be ex- cusable, however, if, for the benefit of the younger ROME AND NAPLES lOI ofeneration, I mark a few of the differences between the Papal Rome of 1866 and the Monarchical Rome of 1894. At the first-named period the streets swarmed Avith monks and beggars : the paving was bad, and the light- ing worse. The Papal police were lazy and cowardly, and the Papal officials notoriously venal. There was a brigade of Papal Zouaves enrolled for the purpose of defending Rome against the Italians, and which con- sisted mainly of Frenchmen from the South and of Irishmen. Some of these sacerdotal warriors were very fine fellows of most martial mien. The Papal Zouaves were either succeeded or preceded by another auxiliary corps called the Antibes Legion, which had been raised almost entirely in the southern departments of France. The caffes were crowded at night with the Zouaves and the Legionaries, whose principal amusement next to playing dominoes, smok- ing, and coffee drinking was warmly to shake hands with each other as they entered or departed from the room. The frequency of these amicable salutes was, perhaps, that the majority of the Romans did not care to shake hands with the gallant condottieri of his Holi- ness Pio Nono and preferred to scowl at them ; mut- tering meanwhile curses, not loud but deep. The Colosseum, in the last days of Papal rule, had been, in its more ruinous portions, carefully under- pinned and buttressed by Pius IX. and his predeces- sor Gregory XVI.; but the arena had not yet become the scene of the extraordinary excavations carried out during the last twenty years by Professor Lanciani and other erudite antiquaries. Scholars could only surmise the existence of the dens of the wild beasts be- neath the arena ; nor had they even surmised that the, animals and many of the parayjhernalia of the amphi- theatre were raised from the subterraneans by means 102 LIFE OF GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA of mechanical " lifts." The vast circular area of the Colosseum, as I first saw it in 1866, was marked at in- tervals by the Stations of the Cross ; and on Sundays sermons were preached there from a pulpit in the centre by Franciscan and Dominican friars. As for the Cardinals, the Princes of the Church, who at present are very rarely seen in public, and then only in modest coupes, drove about in full scarlet, in open carriages and pair, and carriages and four ; the horses decked with gilt and beribboned with scarlet ; the Pope likewise often took an aftei-noon drive on the Pincian Hill. I can recall the venerable and benevo- lent Pontifex Maximus distinctly in ^soutane or cassock, with a cape of fine white camlet, and his good old face — from which beamed the sweetest of smiles — sur- mounted by a shovel-hat of crimson velvet, worn fore and aft. When the weather was fine the Pontiff would, from time to time, alight from his equipage and, fol- lowed by a couple of domestic prelates, take a little walking exercise, freely bestowing his blessing on the crowds who, kneeling, lined the sides of the Prom- enade. The Papal money consisted of paper currency, which was generally at a discount, and of silver and copper coins of about equal value with the franc and pieces of fifty centimes current in France and Belgium. These had superseded the old /« deed, we did leave much of our belongings at the luggage- room of the Grand Pacific Hotel when we started on a journey still further west. Travelling by the Chicago and North-Western Railway, we reached Council Bluffs, once the home of Mrs. Amelia Bloomer : the lady who invented the peculiar feminine costume of which, in the modified form of knickerbockers, the English public is now witnessing a revival. Crossing the bridge over the river, we " detrained," as the French say, at Omaha, which, in 1879, was an insignifi- cant town, with a few thousand inhabitants, and with only one habitable hotel — The Planters' House. We only stayed a day at Omaha, and then took the Cen- tral Pacific Railroad for Ogden, in the territory of Utah. We had a drawing-room car, splendidly fur- nished, and with two comfortable bed-rgoms and a kitchen ; and so well stocked were our larder and cel- lar that beyond fresh eggs in the morning we had no occasion to purchase anything at the refreshment- rooms on the line. Crossing the Rocky Mountains was rather tedious ; as the speed sometimes does not exceed fifteen miles an hour. But it is a long lane that 312 LIFE OF GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA has no turning ; and in due time we found ourselves at Ogden ; and then availed ourselves of a branch line to Salt Lake City, the Mormon capital. I have de- scribed all the incidents of this expedition in a book called " America Revisited." Coming back to Ogden, we began the descent of the Pacific Slope ; found our- selves one morning at Sacramento City in glorious spring weather, with the birds singing and the camel- lias growing in the open air, and a few hours after- wards we were comfortably installed at the Palace Hotel, San Francisco. This huge caravansary seemed to me the largest American hotel I had ever seen : it cost I know not how many hundreds of thousands of dollars to build ; and thoroughly to decorate it would cost, I should say, a good many more hundred thousands. The pro- prietor of the amazing pile in 1879 ^^^s Senator Shar- on ; and when we asked for a modest sitting-room, bed-room, and bath-room, there was placed at our dis- posal a suite of about twelve or fourteen spacious apartments. Whether these rooms were on the tenth or the sixteenth floor of the hotel it does not in the least signify ; seeing that the lifts or " elevators " ap- peared to my dazed sense to be as capacious as the old ascending -room at the Colosseum in the Regent's Park. I knew, as I thought, absolutely nobody in the modern El Dorado ; but before we had been a week in 'Frisco we had a host of friends — millionaires, ar- tists, journalists, lawyers, and what not. The whole place seemed to me the realisation of some brilliant but somewhat bizarre vision. The hospitality which we experienced knew no bounds ; but the millionaires who feted us, and whom we found in gilded saloons hung with lustrous fabrics, and sparkling with plate, crystal, pictures, and statuary, resided for the most part in houses built entirely of wood — San Francisco FROM THE ATLANTIC TO THE PACIFIC 313 being, as I was warned, a town chronically subject to the infliction of earthquakes. When I asked whether by dwelling in palaces of timber the residents on " Nob Hill " — the popular name for the fashionable quarter of 'Frisco — did not expose themselves to the perils of fire, I was informed that the wood of which the edi- fices were built was of a practically uninflammable nature. The streets of San Francisco were to me a source of never-ending delight. There I saw for the first time the electric tram-cars, the capacity of which was pith- ily summed up by a Chinese critic as " No Pushee ; no Pullee ; go like Hellee." Of the Celestials themselves, in their own picturesque and indescribably filthy dis- trict known as Chinatown, I saw a great deal both by night and by day. The rejoicings consequent on the Chinese New Year were in progress. We dined one evening at the house of a wealthy merchant from Canton ; and the next evening we visited a Chinese restaurant. Of many strange, and to me, incompre- hensible dishes did we there partake. Still, myste- rious as was the incmi, I continue to nourish the fond hope that the bill of fare comprised neither puppy nor kitten ; neither stewed rattlesnake nor skunk au g7'atin. We went to two large Chinese theatres ; at one there was an afternoon performance and the house was crammed; at another at the evening performance there was scarcely standing room, and my olfactory memory yet retains a lively impression of the aroma of that pigtailed audience. At one theatre the com- pany were playing a comedy ; I am not aware of how many acts it was in, as it had been going on for six weeks and was not half concluded. At the other house an historical tragedy had been unwinding the scaly horrors of its folded tail for full four months. That perhaps need excite little surprise. The Acts of 314 LIFE OF GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA the Bollandists are not yet within measurable distance of completion; and what letter of the alphabet, I may ask, has as yet been reached by the compilers of the dictionary of the French Academy ? I completed my investigations of life in Chinatown by a nocturnal visit, under the auspices of a captain of police, to the gambling-houses and opium-smoking dens of the yel- low people. I spoke rather hastily when I said that I knew no- body on arriving at 'Frisco. I was destined to meet there a very old, old friend. I had often heard of a weekly periodical called Tlie San Francisco Neivs Letter, a kind of transatlantic TrutJi, only a little more per- sonal, and a little livelier — not to say more libellous — than Mr. Labouchere's amiable sheet. I was aware that the Nczvs Letter had been owned and edited for many years by Mr. Frederick Marriott, the whilom proprietor of Chat ; but a great gulf of time yawned between 1848 and 1879; ^'^d I scarcely even surmised that Mr. Marriott, who was middle-aged when he left England, was still living. I sought information re- specting him from Mr. George Smith, the polite chief clerk of the Palace Hotel, who immediately made answer, " Living, indeed ! I guess that Fred Marriott is altogether a live man ! Go and see him." So I went to the office of the Nczvs Letter ; sent in my card, and a moment afterwards was grasped by the hand by my ancient friend, grown very old and somewhat feeble, but still alert and vivacious. I recognised his features and his voice at once ; but he owned that he would have failed to do so had he met me in the street. He intioduced me to his son — a fine, handsome young fellow, who on the morrow, after the pleasantest of dinners at the house of Mr. Marriott senior, drove me in a vehicle to which I would not have the hardihood to give a definite name, but which was drawn by a fast FROM THE ATLANTIC TO THE PACIFIC 315 trotting mare, through the Golden Gates Park to the Gates themselves, which the Australians would call " heads," and which form the entrance to the harbour of 'Frisco. There is a capital hotel here overlooking the blue Pacific ; and close to the balcony of the room where we lunched rose from the waves the great Seal Rock, on and around which hundreds of seals were disporting themselves, barking and splashing, romping and turning somersaults, as it is the manner of those jocund mammals to do. Charles Kingsley's " Poacher's Widow " saw the Merry Brown Hares come Leaping ; but I will back the Golden Gate seals for downright whole-hearted fun against any inarticu- late creatures that I have come across. They are, one and all, the most festive of " cusses." Another English friend did we meet at the Golden Gates Hotel. This was Edward Sothern, the inimi- table Lord Dundreary, who was fulfilling an engage- ment at one of the San Francisco theatres ; but who seemed to me an utterly worn-out and broken-backed man. He was so exhausted before the middle of luncheon that he had to lie on a sofa for full two hours before he could be driven back to San Francisco. We went to the theatre that night to see Our American Cousin. The house was full, and I think that the occa- sion was the four-thousandth one of Sothern's enacting a part with which he will be ever as closely identified as Joseph Jefferson will be with that of Rip Van Winkle. Some fifteen months afterwards, at the Prin- cess's Theatre, London, I saw Sothern in a private box opposite our own, and went round between the acts to greet him ; he looked more lamentably ill than he had done in 1879, ^"d a few weeks afterwards he was dead. Poor Lord Dundreary ! CHAPTER LVIII A MURDERED TSAR I CAME home in the spring ; and I do not find that anything of sufficient importance to merit record here occurred during the year 1880. It was different in 1 88 1. One Sunday, in the second week in March, I was present at a dinner-party given by the Earl of Fife, who then lived in Cavendish Square. Prince Lobanoff, the Russian Ambassador, was to have been one of the guests ; but His Excellency was detained at the Embassy by affairs of a gravely serious nature. Early in the afternoon Lord Fife received a telegram from Chesham House stating that an attempt had been made on the life of the Emperor Alexander II. at St. Petersburg ; and that His Majesty was grievously wounded. The first course of the dinner had not concluded when another despatch arrived from Bel- grave Square saying that the Tsar was dead. Natu- rally this terrible tragedy formed the principal subject of conversation throughout the evening ; but I myself was for personal reasons uneasily preoccupied by the shocking catastrophe at St. Petersburg. I reflected ruefully that, in all human probability, ere many hours were over I should be on my way towards the snow- clad plains of Russia. I dreaded lest a messenger from the office should be waiting for me on my return home with instructions for me to proceed Due North by Monday morning's express from Charing Cross. I dreaded that messenger as much as the naughty boy dreads the advent of the schoolmaster. A MURDERED TSAR 317 I thought that at least I would tire the juvenile Mercury from Fleet Street well out. It was nearly midnight when the party at Lord Fife's broke up ; and I wandered from club to club till three in the morning. No messenger had been in quest of me, so I learned when I returned to Mecklenburgh Square ; and my wife did not even know of the horrible crime which had been perpetrated at St. Petersburg. Of course the morning's papers were full of news about the latest Nihilist atrocity, but it was a private and not a public communication which I was nervously awaiting. The communication arrived, sure enough, just before lunch ; it came from Mr. Le Sage, the man- aging editor of the Daily Telegraph, and was to this effect : — " Please write a leading article on the price of fish at Billingsgate, and go to St. Petersburg in the evening." My duty was before me, and I had to do it ; and my wife understood quite as well as I did what course of action to adopt under the circumstances. I merely said: "Office; passport; money," lighted a cigar, and went to work on the fish leader. By four o'clock she had returned with my Foreign Office pass- port, vised by the Russian Ambassador ; with a letter of credit, and a large supply of rugs and fleecy hosi- er}'. I had no fur pelisse ; but I thought that I could easily buy one so soon as I arrived in the Russian cap- ital ; and that meanwhile a great coat of stout beaver, wadded and lined with quilted silk, would keep out the cold well enough. So I hastened, if not precisely like a " Tartar's bow," as directly and expeditiously as ever a Channel steamer and express trains would carry me, through Brussels and Cologne, and Berlin and Konigsberg, to Petropolis. It was an exceptionally cold winter ; but Russian rail- way compartments are rather over- than under-heated ; and I suffered little from the cold until I found myself 3l8 LIFE OF GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA settled down in a large hotel, kept by an intelligent Frenchman, in the Nevskoi Perspektive. I cannot exactly settle in my mind whether it was this hotel or another one in the Izaak's Ploschad where one of the most pleasing features of the table d'hote was the appearance there, once a week, of several mighty tureens of splendidly made Irish stew. Whence the landlord had got the recipe for this grand dish I am uncertain ; but its ensemble would, I am convinced, have excited the enthusiastic admiration of every son of Old Erin. The proprietor told me that once a week he had a live sheep sent up by railway from Finland. At once, when I heard this, did my mind revert to the live turtles which, nearly fifty years before, I used to see stolidly crawling about the floor of a pastry-cook's shop in Old Bond Street, w4th a little flag labelled "■ Soup to-morrow " stuck in the centre of their cara- paces. That doomed mutton from the Gulf of Finland ought to have had hung round his neck an equivalent to the Greek " Thanatos'' — " Irish stew on Saturday." Officers of the Imperial Guard, merchants and bankers and tchinovniks, used to flock to the hotel at the close of every week to partake of that delicious dish ; and a murmur of approbation would arise from the guests at the dinner-table when the stew, in a good-sized bucket, was carried by two sturdy blond-bearded moujiks into the salle a manger, to be afterwards more elegantly served up in tureens. The great charm of the suc- culent preparation was that it thoroughly warmed you. As Jane Welch Carlyle used to say of a glass of sherry, " it made all cosy inside." But unfortunately there was the outer as well as the inner man to be considered ; the cold out of doors was excruciatingly intense ; and my well-padded paletot was, comparatively speaking, no more a defence against the frost than a race-course dust-coat would have been. A MURDERED TSAR 319 To my dismay, I found that in consequence of the as- sassination of the Emperor all the shops, with the ex- ception of those where articles of food were sold, had put up their shutters, and would not reopen until after the funeral of the Emperor. So I continued to shiver. The ill-conditioned courier who had been a stud groom turned up again in as chronically snarling a condition as ever. " There's a new English Ambassador here," he remarked ; " Lord Augustus Loftus is gone away ; and you don't know the new one." I told him I had had the honour to know the Earl of Dufferin for many years, and that I proposed to wait on His Excellency at once, and bade him accompany me. I fancy that the lU-Condi- tioned One was rather pleased than otherwise when he noticed that I had no sclioiiba — not even a sheep-skin toidojipe with the woolly side in. The varlet knew very well, so I was afterwards told, that I could have sent for a furrier and hired a pelisse by the week or month ; but it was evidently the ex-stud groom's mission to gloat over the misery of people who were good to him. Lord Dufferin was kindness itself ; and I was also glad to meet at the Embassy young Lord Frederick Hamilton, the brother of the Duke of Abercorn. I only mention his name because in his case I am able to recall an odd instance of aural memory on my own part. I have often said that I have a most treacherous memory for names ; and that, owing to imperfect vi- sion, my recollection of faces is wretchedly uncertain ; but as the old saying truthfully reminds us, when Heaven closes one door it opens another, and I have a singularly retentive memory for people's voices. Quite recently, coming up from Brighton for a day or two, I dined at the pleasantest of London clubs, " The Beefsteak." During my repast I noticed that a good- looking gentleman opposite to me was eyeing me in- tently and smiling meanwhile. His countenance did !20 LIFE OF GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA not present the slightest purport or significance to me ; nor did there even come over me the dim impres- sion that I had seen him at some time in some part or another of the world. He was simply a " swell," and only impressed me as one. Presently, however, he be- gan to talk ; and remarked that I did not know in the least who he was or where I had last met him. "Yes, I do," I replied quickly; "you are Lord Frederick Hamilton, and I saw you at the British Embassy at St. Petersburg twelve years ago." It was by his voice that I had recognised him. Lord Dufferin has gone through Hfe, so it has seemed to me, with the main object of rendering gentle ser- vices to those who needed assistance. He helped me to a material extent in March, 1881, by obtaining for me an invitation to the house of a wealthy English merchant whose windows commanded a near and clear view of the Winter Palace, whence the corpse of the Tsar was to be borne across the bridge which spans the Neva, to be interred in the chapel, or rather the cathedral, of the fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul. I could have procured from the Russian Minister of the Interior, or from one of the Imperial Chamberlains, a card of admission to the church ; but I should have had to wait two or three hours in the crowded edifice, and should only have witnessed the funeral ceremony itself, whereas from the merchant's residence I could see the whole stately procession winding its way from the palace to the fortress. I called at. the Embassy early on the morning of the funeral ; and Lord Duf- ferin, who was in diplomatic uniform, and who in- tended to witness the first part of the mournful page- ant, and then to make his way to the fortress and join his brethren of the Corps Diplomatique in the church, drove me in his sledge from the Embassy to the close neiofhbourhood of the Winter Palace. A MURDERED TSAR 32 1 I had by this time provided myself, through the intermediary of an old friend, then British Consul at St. Petersburg, with a very comfortable furred pe- lisse ; but I had gone through some dire tribulation before I obtained my schoiiba. Constant driving about the streets, both by day and by night, had half killed me with cold ; and one day, when it was snowing al- most without intermission, I had constantly to throw into the roadway masses of frozen snow which had ac- cumulated on the cushion at my back. The conse- quence was that three days before the funeral I awoke in the morning utterly prostrated by an attack of lum- bago. The pain of the ailment was excruciating ; but the worst of it was that I was physically unable to stand, or sit, or dress myself. I sent for a Russian doctor, who as usual spoke French fluently. He told me that the attack was not constitutional, and would pass away. " There are three ways," he continued, " of treating you. First, I could take the case medic- inally — that would last, perhaps, three weeks. Two alternatives remain. We might send for the four Dale- carlian women." He explained to me that the four fe- males from Dalecarlia were as tall as grenadiers and as strong as farriers ; and that their vocation was to kneel upon, punch, pinch, smite, and buffet the bodies of persons afflicted with lumbago, sciatica, and rheu- matism. In brief, they were professors of a rude kind of massage. I declined their service.s, as I did not wish to become a mass of bruises. " Then there is the last alternative," said the doctor ; " we will try Yody I had not the remotest conception of what " Vod'" might be, but the medico proceeded to tell me that the medicament was iodine. "Would its effects be immediate?" I asked. This was Tuesday morning, and if I was not well by Wednesday evening I should consider myself, journalistically speaking, an irretriev- n. — 21 322 LIFE OF GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA ably ruined and disgraced man. " You will be cured in twenty-four hours," quietly replied the doctor. He brought his specific; and while two friends held me down, he painted my veins with four coatings of io- dine. Possibly I shrieked with agony during the oper- ation, and it was certainly as well that my friends were muscularly strong ; else I am afraid that I should have " gone for " that doctor, iodine, paint-brush and all ; as it was, by noon on Wednesday I was " as fit as a fid- dle ; " but my flesh was horribly raw ; and I did not care to tell the Ambassador that beneath my garments I was girt with cotton-wool soaked in oil. When I got to England again I looked up Dr. Tanner's " Index of Diseases ; " and found among the local applications for lumbago, "iodine paint," which is composed of io- dine, iodide of potassium, and rectified spirits of wine. This was the compost with which I had been badi- geonn^ ; but it did its work, with a vengeance ; and I should strongly advise all ladies and gentlemen sud- denly attacked with lumbago to try " Yod!' If they would prefer a different treatment, they will find that the obliging Dr. Tanner gives them a choice of blis- ters, or belladonna and aconite, or acupuncture, or ironing the part, a piece of brown paper being placed between the skin and the hot iron ; but I pin my faith to " Yodr The thoroughfares through which we drove were densely crowded ; while the route of the funeral cortege was lined on each side by troops, including several batteries of artillery. A special police permit had to be obtained before a window in a house in the line of procession could be opened, since there was no know- ing from what casement a murderous shot might be fired. The pageant was magnificent in the extreme ; but the most touching part of the spectacle was the illustrious group which followed on foot on the snow- A MURDERED TSAR 323 covered roadway the funeral car of Alexander II. — the'young Emperor Alexander III., a numerous body of the Princes of the Imperial family, and our own Prince of Wales supporting the Chief Mourner. It was awful to think when the procession had entered the fortress, and the minute-guns were sullenly firing at the close of the ceremony, that the dull roar of the cannon must have been audible to the accomplices of the assassin of the Tsar, who were immured in the stone casements of the citadel. As I have said, the funeral itself I did not see, but on the Sunday following the deposition of the body I witnessed the lying-in-state of the dead Tsar in the Ca- thedral of St. Peter and St. Paul. The coffin was placed on a dais, forming an inclined plane, in the middle of the church, which was hung with rich sable draper- ies, while on either side the bier were lighted wax candles in towering candle-sticks of silver-gilt. The lid of the coffin had been removed, and as the specta- tors passed in single file they were expected to incline themselves and kiss the right hand of the corpse, which hand was covered with a piece of yellow silk gauze. The remains of him who a few days before had been Autocrat of All the Russias were clad in full military uniform, and wnth a constellation of stars and medals on the breast. The body had been embalmed, and the injuries in the face skilfully plugged and painted over; below the waist, I was told, the limbs of the victim of the devilish bomb outrage were only so much padding, cloth, and leather. " Oh, eloquent, just and mighty Death ! what none have Dared thou hast Done Thou hast taken all the Pomp, Pride, and Ambition of Man, and Covered it over with the two Narrow Words, Hie jacety Thus wrote, in his dungeon in the Tower, Walter Raleigh more than two hundred and fifty years ago. 324 LIFE OF GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA Lord Dufferin was so good as to procure for me a ticket for the trial of the Nihilist conspirators, whose chief, the actual assassin, had been mortally wounded by his own murderous petard simultaneously with the death of the Tsar. But my attending the trial of Sophie Perofskaja, Hersie, Heljmann, Risakoff, Ribai- chick, and Michailoff might also have involved the necessity of seeing those culprits hanged ; and since that dismal private execution at Maidstone in 1867 I had made up my mind not to be present at the judicial strangulation of any of my fellow-creatures. So I re- turned home, after having attended a deeply interest- ins: memorial service for the dead Tsar, held at a mosque close to the Nevskoi — the Russians tolerate every religion except the Jewish one — which service was attended by many officers and soldiers of the Tartar regiments of the Guard, and by half the hotel and restaurant waiters in the capital, who are Moham- medan Tartars, and whom the landlords preferred to Christians, as the Tartars are all teetotallers. CHAPTER LIX CORONATION OF ALEXANDER III It was a very different Russia that I paid a flying visit to in May, 1883. The Tsar Alexander III. was to be crowned with the utmost pomp and magnificence at Moscow. I received my usual instructions to depart Due North ; but on this very special occasion I was to be accompanied by Mr. J. M. Le Sage, who was to undertake the onerous duties of despatching a number of telegrams which would certainly fill a formidable array of columns in the Daily Telegraph. We had some few difficulties to surmount ere we started. We were politely but firmly informed that all newspaper corre- spondents who proposed to be present at the Imperial Coronation would be expected, as a preliminary, to forward their cartes de visile to the Chancellerie of the Russian Embassy — a very sensible precaution — and I improved on the idea by gumming on to my passport half-a-dozen little portraits of myself of the exact size of a postage-stamp, which had been taken by a friendly photographer in San Francisco. Again, it was con- veyed to us that we could not possibly be permitted to enter the Kremlin on the eventful 27th May unless we were in uniform or in Court dress. Fortunately for Mr. Le Sage, he had long been a member of the Court of Lieutenancy of the City of London ; a proud posi- tion which entitled him to assume a scarlet tunic with silver epaulettes, a sword with a gilt scabbard, and a cocked hat and plumes. But I had never been to Court ; and as regards uni- 326 LIFE OF GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA form I was not even a member of the Ancient Order of Foresters. The obstacle, I am glad to say, soon vanished ; the then Lord Chamberlain — Lord Sydney, 1 think — permitted me to wear levee dress, with the understanding that I was to be presented at Court directly on my return home ; and it was consequently in the highest spirits that about five o'clock one sunny May afternoon we started for the Continent by the London, Chatham and Dover Railway. At Berlin we found our resident correspondent, who made much of us ; and without any obstacle we reached the Russian frontier. The tin cases containing our gala costumes proved of considerable service to us at the Custom House ; the sight of Mr. Le Sage's scarlet panoply and plumed cocked hat apparently induced in the mind of the douaniers the impression that he was not a deputy- lieutenant but a major-general at the very least ; while an equally favourable opinion of myself was enter- tained by the officer who examined ray paraphernalia. " I can see what you are," he remarked, turning over quite gingerly my levee dress, " captain of an English gunboat going to join 3'our ship at Cronstadt." 1 did not precisely own the soft impeachment, but I bowed, and, of course accidentally, placed three or four choice Havanas on the lid of the tin case, which— the cigars, not the case — the officer as accidentally pocketed. I found Russia considerably altered from the coun- try that I had visited in 1856 and 1881. The most not- able change that I observed was what I may call the Sclavonification of military costume. In the days of the Emperor Nicholas and of his successor German uniforms, both in the Russian army and irr the police, were almost slavishly copied. In 1883 the German helmet or Pickelhaube had entirely disappeared, and the cocked hat had almost as completely vanished ; the substitute for this head-gear being the Circassian bon- CORONATION OF ALEXANDER III 327 net or busby of black Astrakhan wool. Another curi- ous innovation was visible in the general discarding of metal buttons ; in place of which you now saw only hooks-and-eyes ; and the third remarkable social revolu- tion was visible when we reached Moscow. The hotel- keepers professed not to understand a word either of French or German ; and although I had not quite for- gotten my Russ, we had hard work to do before we could find the hotel to which we had been directed. I must here mention that the Russian Government be- haved with the greatest liberality towards the foreign representatives of the Press, who had free quarters assigned to them at a splendid and exclusively Musco- vite hostelr3\ Nay ; the Imperial generosity went so far as to offer each special correspondent a consider- able sum of money to defray his travelling expenses ; and, finally, after the Coronation we were each pre- sented with a decoration of silver and gold enamel, embellished with the Imperial crown, the double- headed eagle, and two crossed swords. I thought, however, that my proprietors might think it rather un- dignified on my part if I played the 7-6lc of a " dead- head ; " so, while gratefully accepting the decoration — which, of course, I never wore — we politely declined the free quarters and the travelling expenses ; and, thanks to the assistance of a Dutch gentleman to whom we had been recommended for business pur- poses, we obtained a billet at a very comfortable Ger- man hotel in the heart of the city. I could never cor- rectly gather the name of our Batavian friend, but it was something like " 03'Sterbank," by which appella- tion we usually called him. He was, I believe, in some way connected with a department of the Imperial Master of the Ceremonies ; at all events, I know that for a consideration he obtained for us, four clear days before the Coronation, an exhaustive programme of the 328 LIFE OF GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA ceremonial ; which schedule enabled me to despatch to London at least three columns of readable matter before the pageant itself took place. Readers inexperienced in the ways of the great newspaper-world might open their eyes with astonish- ment, or smile the smile of incredulity, if I told them the amount of pounds sterling which we disbursed every day at the telegraph office. I know that my fre- quent recourse to the bank on which I had a letter of credit seemed wholly to perplex the amicable cashier who handed me the required cash. " What ! " he would say, "another thousand roubles! Is it baccarat GV ecarte ?'' I would reply, with a smile, that it was chess. The Duke of Edinburgh was staying at the Krem- lin ; and His Royal Highness sent for me and promised to render me any assistance that was in his power to extend. At the Imperial Palace, also, I found Lord Wolseley ; and another British visitor of distinction was Lord Clanwilliam, as representing the Royal British Navy. Among the English newspaper cor- respondents was my old friend Alfred Thompson, ar- tist, dramatist, and journalist, who had been sent out to Moscow to represent the Daily Ncivs. Alfred had, in his youthful days, been a subaltern in a crack cav- alry regiment, the Carabiniers ; so that he was all right as regarded the wearing of uniform. The name of the correspondent of the Standard has escaped me ; but 1 remember him through the perfect fluency with which he spoke Russ. He told me that it was the practice in modern journalism, as regarded Russia, for special correspondents at St. Petersburg to spend at least six months in a village ; boarding either with the pope or priest, or with the starosta or mayor ; so as to acquire a colloquial familiarity with the soft-flowing but grammatically thorny Muscovite speech. Finally, CORONATION OF ALEXANDER III 329 I made the acquaintance of a most capable and amiable journalist, Mr. Lowe, who was acting as correspondent of the Times. We witnessed the solemn entrance of the Tsar into Moscow. We had come provided with letters of in- troduction to Count Woronzoff Daschkoff, who had courteously handed us over to an exalted Tchinovnik named Waganoff, at whose office we called every fore- noon, and who kept us pleasantly au courant with everything of note that was going on. M. Waganoff put us in communication with the Military Governor of the Kremlin ; and this dignitary gave us permission to witness the spectacle of the Imperial entry from the ramparts of the palace-fortress ; where our compan- ions were a crowd of officers of the Imperial Guard, whose views were not exclusively Sclavonic, and who chatted with us very cordially, telling us a number of things worth listening to and remembering. The cor- tege itself seemed to me to be of interminable length. It was not the first time that I had seen the Imperial state carriages. I had witnessed their preliminary ex- hibition in 1856 prior to the Coronation of Alexander II. Many of them are sufficiently antique vehicles, a few of them even dating from the reign of the Em- press Elizabeth — heavy coaches and chariots, brave in carving and gilding, with their panels profusely adorned with sham diamonds, and drawn by tall grey Holstein horses. But what most struck me was the magnificence of the costumes of the Oriental poten- tates who had come to Moscow to do homage to the White Tsar. The Khan of Khiva and the Ameer of Bokhara were both there, attended by a numerous es- cort of Oriental magnificos ; and they and the housings of their steeds were one mass of brilliants, rubies, em- eralds, pearls, and precious stuffs. It was not then my fortune to have witnessed an Indian Vice-regal Dur- 330 LIFE OF GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA bar — I was to see one in 1886 — and my breath was al- most taken away by the superb display, a little bar- baric in some of its details, which was visible from the ramparts of the Kremlin. Two or three days afterwards the Coronation took place. It were useless to dwell in detail on a cere- monial which was described at fullest length in the newspapers of the time. I could have swollen these volumes to thrice their size had I distended them with excerpts from my writings as a newspaper correspond- ent ; but my object, throughout, has been to place my readers behind the scenes of my life, and not to parade myself behind the public footlights. I will just hint, however, that the Tsar, who is, like Melchisedec, Priest as well as King, and is thrice anointed, entered the Ikonostast, or altar-screen ; received the Imperial dia- dem from the hands of the Patriarch ; consecrated it on the altar, and crowned himself, and subsequently the Empress. To me the most interesting scene in the pageant took place immediately after the Coro- nation. I had a Russian friend who was a correspond- ent of the Journal dc St. Pctcrsboiirg ; and he got me a huge green-and-white card of admission to the palace of the Kremlin itself. Our object was to see the Tsar at dinner. We were frequently stopped by the police. But, to begin with, we were both in Court dress ; and then, in accordance with the advice of my companion, I con- tinually waved the big green-and-white ticket above my head and shouted " Billet ! Billet ! " so that at length, pushing through a crowd of courtiers and offi- cers, we reached the foot of the grand staircase of the palace. My companion knew the topography of the edifice well, and eventually we reached a gallery, look- ing down from which we could just descry His Im- perial Majesty sitting alone at a table not much bigger CORONATION OF ALEXANDER III 33 1 than the stand of a sewing-machine. The Tsar wore his crown ; but a great officer of the household held his sceptre, and another the orb. The courtiers who served him knelt as they placed the dishes on the table ; and my companion told me that the repast was a normally Muscovite one, beginning with the na- tional dish of stcJii, or cabbage-soup. On the whole, it struck me that the Tsar of All the Russias looked slightl}' uncomfortable at his repast. I experienced a slight disappointment before I re- turned to the hotel. Lord Wolseley had promised to give me some inner details of the banquet ; but when I strove to find him in his quarters at the Kremlin my progress was impeded by a gigantic sentry of the Preobajianski Guards, who absolutely refused to let me pass. That check, however, did not so very much matter. Before even the Coronation was over 1 had finished another column of matter, hastily pencilled in the most abbreviated longhand on slips of paper; mv cocked hat serving^ as a writino:-desk. I handed my manuscript to Mr. Le Sage, who quietly rose from his seat, and with a grave and dignified manner made his way through the crowd. I watched his retreating figure narrowly ; and I noted that, when he had got into the open, his slow and measured pace quickened into a trot ; and that then, tucking his sword under his arm, he ran as hard as ever he could in the direc- tion of the telegraph office. I had about two and a half columns to write after the banquet in the Krem- lin ; so returning to the hotel and refreshing myself with a meat-pie and a tumbler of hot tea without milk or sugar, but with a slice of lemon in it, 1 sat down and set to work. I have never been a ra})id writer ; and it took me three hours and a half to commit be- tween three and four thousand words to paper. My labours, as it turned out, were enlivened by the un- 332 LIFE OF GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA conscious assistance of the dvornik, or porter, who oc- cupied a little hutch in the courtyard of the hotel. Full of exuberant patriotism, this worthy wearer of a greasy caftan and a red cotton shirt began about six o'clock to sing a loyal song in I know not how many verses ; accompanying himself on the balalaika, a kind of lute of triangular form ; and quaffing at short inter- vals copious draughts of vodka. Then his voice began to quaver ; then he hiccoughed ; then he was sick ; and then he went to sleep and snored. I had just be- gun my second column when Ivan Ivanovich woke up ; resumed his song ; again got tipsy, and was again indisposed. He was at his third " turn " when I turned down my lamp. There was just one other little item in connection with the Coronation of Alexander III. I compute that altogether we sent home about seven columns of de- scriptive matter to Fleet Street. Upon my word ; the next morning, the entire narrative appeared in Russian in the Official Gazette of Moscow. Some astute employe', who knew English, had deftly translated my article slip by slip before it was placed on the wires. A smarter device of practical journalism I fail to re- member. Into the ethics of the transaction I do not propose to enter. Ethics in Holy Russia are still in their infancy. CHAPTER LX TO THE ANTIPODES Forbearing reader, I am approaching the conclusion of, I hope, a not intolerably tiresome performance. For some years I had entertained a project of visiting the Australian Colonies, and I was told by many ex- perienced friends that I should make much money there if I delivered a series of amusing lectures on my journalistic and viatorial adventures. Now, I have never been a good lecturer. In the first instance, I have too rapid an utterance to be easily followed by my audience ; and for that reason, probably, although I have continually made speeches in public, my remarks have very rarely been reported at length. When I have been bent on making a lengthened speech on some matter of moment, I have sent for a Parliamentary shorthand-writer ; paid him his guinea, and dictated the speech to him ; then, when he has transcribed his notes in longhand, I have taken the manuscript down to the dinner or the meeting at which I was to speak, and handed the " copy " to the gentlemen of the Press, who have made use of it or omitted to use it just as they pleased. Another obstacle to my success as a lecturer has been the bad habit, of which I have never been able to cure myself, of cruising about the platform with my hands in my pockets ; so that very often that which 1 had been saying has been quite, or nearly, inaudible to my hearers. Finally, I am obliged to speak extempore : first, because I am unable to learn anything of consider- able length by heart ; and next, because I am partially 334 LIFE OF GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA blind and cannot read even the largest type with ease by lamp-light. However, I determined to make the attempt ; and havinsf arrano^ed in mv mind a oreneral scheme for four lectures — one on Wars and Revolutions which I had seen ; another upon Foreign Lands which I had visited, a third on British Journalism, and a fourth on the Statesmen and Politicians of ray time — a gentleman named Bowden was enthusiastic and ill-advised enough to pay me i^500 in advance for ten discourses, to be delivered in the United States ; as it was by the trans- atlantic route that I had resolved to visit the Antipodes. And he further covenanted to defray my travelling and hotel expenses between New York and Chicago — stipulating, however, that these expenses were not to include any kind of intoxicating liquor. It was through the intermediary of my good friend and then solicitor, Mr. George Lewis, of Ely Place, that the agreement was concluded ; and I remember distinctly the keen gratification which I felt when Mr. Lewis handed me a crisp Bank of England note for £ 500 ; remarking at the same time that cheques in early transactions were sometimes of a phantom nature. Then came the question of who was to undertake the management of my lectures in Australia. I had had some embryo negotiations with Mr. Smythe, of Melbourne, familiarly known in Australia as " Little Smythe," and whom I have always regarded as the Napoleon of lecturing-agents. He had been the entre- preneur of Archibald Forbes on his lecturing tour in the Colonies ; and had helped him to clear a sum of some iJ" 1 2,000 sterling. But Mr. Sm3-the wished to have personally a taste of my quality as a lecturer, before closing with me ; and suggested that I should pay his passage home and back to Melbourne in order that he might judge of my style as an elocu- TO THE ANTIPODES 335 tionist; to which I replied that I would see him in the lowest pit of Tartarus before I parted with so much as a guinea ; whereupon the embryonic negotia- tions fell through. It chanced, however, that there was in England at the time a ver}- able actor, Mr. George Rignold, who, conjointly with a Mr. Alison, was the lessee of the Theatre Royal, Melbourne, Mr. Rignold was an intimate friend of my next-door neigh- bour, Lewis Wingfield ; and he expressed great eager- ness to come to terms with me for a course of lect- ures ; the conditions were that 1 should receive half the gross takings of every entertainment, he paying all advertising expenses, the hire of theatres and halls, and the salary of i^io a week of an agent - in - advance. These matters being settled, it was about Christmas- time I bade adieu to my friends. I shrank from expos- ing my wife to the fatigue of a journey across the American continent ; so we agreed she should go to Australia by long-sea ; and I secured a state-room for her in one of the steamships of the Orient Line which touch at Naples. I went down to St. Leonards to bid farewell to my dear old friend, Viscountess Comber- mere. Then I dined with the Baroness Burdett-Coutts, who gave me a letter of introduction to the King of the Sandwich Islands, whom I had previously met at her villcggiatura at Holly Lodge ; and finally Lord Rosebery bade me God-speed, and furnished me with letters to the Governors and Prime Ministers of all the Australasian Colonies except New South Wales : the Governor of which. Lord Augustus Loftus, I had the honour to know. My wife and I held our Christmas dinner, not in Mecklenburgh Square, where all the furniture had been laid up in ordinary, but at the Midland Hotel, St. Pan- eras ; where among our guests were Mr. and Mrs. 336 LIFE OF GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA Labouchere. On Boxing Day, 1884, my wife and I went down to Liverpool, where I embarked on board a big Cunarder bound for New York. The passage was a horribly tempestuous one ; but I have been in a storm, morally and physically speaking, for the best part of my life ; and, fortunately, 1 am not subject to sea-sickness; although since my illness in 1873 I have never possessed proper sea-legs. Off Sandy Hook Mr. Bowden boarded us in a tender, and straightway con- ducted me to the New York Hotel, Broadway, where 1 found a group of interviewing journalists awaiting my arrival. They drank a great deal of champagne ; smoked a large number of cigars, and published the next morning articles varying in tone about my views on all kinds of topics, my attire, and my Nose. I de- livered my first lecture not at New York, but at Bos- ton ; the audience was a large but not a crowded one ; although the chair was taken by the genial " Autocrat of the Breakfast Table," the late Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes. The next lecture was attended by an even smaller gathering, and the third by a thinner one still. Mr. Bowden was inclined to think that the presence in Boston of Madame Adelina Patti, who was giving a series of concerts there, had something to do with the paucity of my patrons ; and then it occurred to him that what was known as " The Week of Prayer " was in progress in the capital of Massachusetts, and that many seriously-minded people had been deterred by devotional reasons from coming to hear me. So back we went to New York, where I was splen- didly entertained at dinner by the members of the Lotos Club. Among the after-dinner speakers were the facetious General Horace Porter, and the equally humorous lawyer and orator Mr. Chauncey Depew, who made a great point in his speech by saying that I was going to Australia by way of Portland, in the TO THE ANTIPODES 337 State of Maine : a city which I never had the pleas- ure of visiting ; but he repeated the assertion over and over again, and every time he reiterated it the company laughed uproariously : — a circumstance which strengthened a long-existing conviction in my mind that in after-dinner speaking and " stage-gag- ging " you have only to continually repeat something —" What's o'clock ? " or " That's the idea ! " or " How do you feel now?" or "Still I am not happy!" — to excite the hilarity of your hearers. My lectures at Chickering Hall, New York, were passably well-attended ; but I had a very sparse audi- ence at Brooklyn, where in the chair in the church where I discoursed was the well-known American divine, the Rev. De Witt Talmage. At Philadelphia I had an overflowing audience, chiefly due, I should say, to the exertions of Mr. George W. Childs. Washington, where the wintry weather was terribly severe, turned out a miserable failure ; but I spent a pleasant time there as the guest of Eugene Schuyler, at whose house I met General Sherman and General " Phil " Sheridan. I had the honour, also, of being presented to, and holding a long conversation with, the President of the Republic, Mr. Chester Arthur; and I renewed my friendship with Senator Bayard. At the Capitol I was introduced to an American war- rior, lawyer, and statesman, of whom I had heard a great deal, and concerning whom during the War of Secession I had written frequently, not altogether in a complimentary manner. This was General Ben- jamin Franklin Butler. He Avas most genial ; and asked me whether I had ever been at New Orleans. I replied that I had sojourned for a considerable time in the Crescent City in 1879. '* Ah ! " he cheerfully remarked, " if you had been down at Orleans in 1864 I would most certainly have hanged you — Yes, sir ! " II. — 22 338 LIFE OF GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA and I thoroughly believe that the General would have been as good as his word. A most decided, uncompromising personage " Ben " Butler. It is true that rude people used to call out "Spoons!" when he appeared at the theatre: the derisive exclamation being founded on the clearly libellous calumny that when in command at New Orleans he had shown a penchant for appropriating the valuables of recalcitrant Southerners ; but, be it as it may. General Butler struck me as being a born ruler of men. I remember his coming to take mili- tary command at New York late in '64, when politi- cal riots, fomented by the Democratic party, were ap- prehended. His very arrival inspired a wholesome terror. He was waited upon at his head-quarters at the Fifth iVvenue Hotel by the Mayor and Aldermen of the Empire City. An American friend who was present on the occasion observed that when the depu- tation retired from General Butler's awe-exciting pres- ence, " their socks were full of toe-nails." B. B., they knew, was not a man to be trifled with. Worse luck in Baltimore ; although my good friend Mr. Otho Williams and his accomplished daughter. Miss Susan Williams, did all they could for me. Still direr misfortune at Cincinnati. Here the hitherto cheery Mr. Bowden fairly lost heart, and wrote me a letter saying that there was no armour against Fate, and that he must " chuck the lectures up." He added that he had made arrangements for me to lecture at St. Louis and at Chicago ; but that I must bear the expenses myself, and that he intended to go to Buffalo for a change of air. I have never seen him since, but T met a relative of his at San Francisco, to whom I re- lated the story of his unsuccessful speculation in my brains and tongue. The sole comment of the gentle- man at San Francisco was " Ah ! just so; it's so like TO THE ANTIPODES 339 him." Why so like him ? Was he always giving away five-hundred-poiind notes in wild-cat schemes, 1 wonder? Henry Irving and Ellen Terry were play- ing at Chicago when 1 arrived there, and the presence of those admirable artists, who were drawing overflow houses every night, militated, of course, against my chances of success. The last straw that broke the camel's back was the circumstance that Mark Twain, who came to see me, was himself lecturing in the city. However, I did my best. I gave away three hun- dred cards of admission to the clerks at the Grand Pacific Hotel. Henry Irving likewise consented to distribute another hundred passes, and I had a fairly well-filled house; while the money taken at the doors just paid for the hire of the hall and the cost of ad- vertising. Lecturing, so the proprietor of the hall was good enough to tell me when he gave me a re- ceipt for his charges, was " played out " in the States. I thoroughly agreed with him ; and resolved to keep m}^ mouth shut in public until I reached the Antip- odes. But the asrent and I were both mistaken. I went to Omaha ; crossed the Rockies, and descended the Pacific Slope in the usual adorable spring weather. At Sacramento I found the editor of an important San Franciscan paper, who had come to welcome me to the Golden State ; and with him was an Italian gen- tleman, whose name I have forgotten, but whom I will call Risotto. He was of Semitic extraction, and he was most anxious that I should deliver a course of six lectures at 'Frisco. I frankly told him of my fail- ure in the Northern and Western States, and warned him that to speculate in myself was a perilous vent- ure. "■ Accidente ! '' he made answer. " Dese eastern folk, dey know noting, noting at all. You shall draw crowds efery night, or my name is not Risotto. Corpo 340 LIFE OF GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA di Bacco ! " He offered me the usual terms of fifty per cent, on the gross takings. I agreed ; and arrived at San Francisco quite in a merry mood, and took up my old quarters at the Palace Hotel. My success as a lecturer was triumphant. The theatre in which I held forth was crammed every night ; and my impres- ario was only disappointed at my declining — through cautious apprehension that it might come to the ears of the Australian Mrs. Grundy — to lecture on the Sab- bath. Punctually at ten o'clock every morning the ener- getic Neapolitan used to wait upon me with a long rouleau of gold eagles or twenty-dollar pieces, and I took about three hundred pounds' worth of these hand- some coins to Australia and sold them to the Commer- cial Bank at Melbourne. Whenever he handed over the rouleau to me, my friend used to ask, " Are you content?" " Contentissimo,'' I would reply. " Yes," he would continue, " this is what Risotto de Neapolitan Chew can do. Dose eastern folk, dey know noting ; dey have teste di formaggio. Accidente ! " The mem- bers of the Bohemian Club, who are no more Bohemian in their ways than the members of the Lotos Club at New York are eaters of the zizypJms, entertained me at a grand banquet, on the morrow of which I embarked on board a steamer bound for Auckland, New Zealand. My Italian friend saw me off ; and just as the ship was starting he clasped me fraternally by the hand, say- ing, " Got bless you ! Risotto the Neapolitan Chew bids you farewell. Be happy, carissimo. I have made much more money than you." The steamer had a right good English skipper and a Chinese crew. The Celestial stewards were continu- ally winking and simpering, but they were civil and attentive. There was a dead calm on the Pacific ; and for seven days we ploughed our way through what TO THE ANTIPODES 34 1 seemed an unbroken sheet of molten glass. We did not meet a shark; but we saw several "schools" of porpoises and a few albatrosses. At the week's end we made the harbour of Honolulu, where everybody within hail seemed to be crying " Aloha ! " Not being skilled in the Hawaiian tongue, I am quite ignorant as to what "Aloha!" may mean; but I take it to be a conventional exclamation equivalent to the English " All right," the American " Bully for you," and the Spanish "■ Honibre !'' So soon as I landed I was bus- tled by some newly made friends into a wagonnette and conveyed to the Royal Palace, a handsome stone edi- fice, of architectural pretensions quite equalling those of the Schloss of a German Grand Duchy, and stand- ing in tastefully laid-out grounds, rainbow-hued with tropical plants and flowers. There was a sentinel in a smart uniform on guard at the entrance gate; and a few more soldiers were lounging about at the door of the guard-room. His Hawaiian Majesty was not residing at the Pal- ace itself ; he was dwelling in a commodious wooden bungalow in the grounds. I sent in my card ; and in a few minutes I was ushered into the presence of the late King David Laamea Kalakaua. The Royal sitting-room was simply but elegantly fur- nished ; and behind the arm-chair of the occupant were two tall book-cases full of well-bound volumes. The King rose when I entered ; gave me his hand, bade me be seated ; and during a prolonged audience expressed, among other things, the hope that I was going to stop at least a month at Hawaii, and " visit the largest volcano in the world." I had to state, with regret, that the steamer was leaving at the expiration of four hours. I found His Majesty a stalwart and well-built gentleman, with an intelligent expression of countenance, and speaking excellent English. When 342 LIFE OF GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA in the afternoon the steamer left Honolulu, the King sent down his own private band, with a German band- master, to bid us farewell ; and the friendly, choco- late-coloured Polynesians pelted us with flowers and oranges. In another week we were at Apia in the Samoan Islands ; and another seven da}- s brought us safely to Auckland, always in unremitting sunny and windless weather. I forget at what stage of our voyage we crossed the Line ; but I know that Neptune did not make his appearance on board ; nor do I re- member when it was that we lost a day ; but I can vouch for the fact that on a certain Wednesday the captain caused to be affixed to the looking-glass in the saloon this brief notice, " To-morrow will be Friday." It was on a Sunday morning that we arrived at Auckland. A party of journalists came off in a boat and boarded the steamer ; and I was marched off to the principal hotel, the smiling landlady of which es- tablishment informed me that Miss Genevieve Ward, the trag^dicjinc, had been staying in the house, and had just left for the Hot Lakes. After luncheon, the steamer again took her departure, and on the fifth morning aftei'wards we entered the indescribably beautiful harbour of Sydney, and anchored at the Cir- cular Quay. The Mayor of Sydney and Mr. Alison, one of my entrepreneurs, were waiting for me ; and I was told that my first lecture was to be delivered in the Town Hall, Melbourne, on the morrow of St. Patrick's Day. After luncheon, I went to Government House ; paid my respects to Lord Augustus Loftus ; and was subsequently conducted to the Public Offices, where I was introduced to most of the Cabinet Min- isters, including a great friend of Lord Rosebery, the late Hon. William Bede Dalley, who had been mainly instrumental in sending the New South Wales contin- gent to the Soudan. TO THE ANTIPODES 343 Mr. Dalley was one of the most cultured gentlemen and the most fluent orators I ever had the honour to meet. The Postmaster-General presented me with a free railway pass available for some months for my- self and my wife ; and I may here mention that every one of the Australasian Colonies showed us similar courtesy, and it never cost us a penn}- for railway travelling during our stay in the Colonies. Before leaving for Melbourne the members of the Atheneeum Club — a society in which Lord Rosebery during his stay in Australia took great interest — entertained me at dinner, the chair being occupied by Mr. Dalley. The railway journey from the capital of New South Wales to that of Victoria occupied from six in the evening until about eleven the following morning. But midway, at the frontier of the two colonies, there was an examination of luggage at a Victorian custom- house. The line of railway seemed to run principally through tractless forests of tall gum-trees. At the railway terminus at Melbourne I found my wife and Mr. and Mrs. George Rignold waiting for me on the platform ; and we at once adjourned to Menzies' Hotel, then, and perhaps now, the very best hotel in Australia. I found Melbourne a really astonishing city, with broad streets full of handsome shops, and crowded with bustling, well-dressed people. For two days we held almost continuous receptions at the hotel ; and I wish that I had preserved the hundreds of cards of the ladies and gentlemen who were so kind as to visit us. The next evening I lectured for two hours at the Town Hall, which was crowded, and the receipts amoimted to more than ^^300. At the second lecture the aggregate takings were only ;^8o. I am afraid, to begin with, that the hall was much too large for my purpose, and that my voice was scarcely audible to 344 LIFE OF GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA the occupants of the back seats. I remember at my first lecture being struck by two very curious circum- stances. First, that what I intended to be a glowing eulogium on Mr. Gladstone was received in dead si- lence; and that every allusion I made to Lord Beacons- field was responded to by a thunderous storm of hand- clapping and cheering. I went to Government House ; was received by Sir Henry Loch, and dined with His Excellency, who, with Lady Loch, was present at my third lecture ; but I must frankly own that as a lecturer I was not particu- larly successful in Melbourne. I realised, however, large sums in Australia. In Sydney I did remarkably well ; and in New Zealand even better in a financial sense : — my agent there being the " Little Smythe " with whom I had had the embryonic negotiations al- ready mentioned. I earned, moreover, between March and December, something like ;^ioo a Aveek by the republication in the Melbourne Argus; the Sydney Morning Herald ; another journal at Adelaide, South Australia, the Auckland Herald, and the Calcutta Eng- lishman, of my letters under the title " The Land of the Golden Fleece," for which I was receiving another ;^20 a week from the Daily Telegraph. I got four per cent, for my money on deposit in the Commercial Bank of Australia, and, in fact, by the end of the year I had realised a competence — which, for a literary man, might be considered handsome — for my old age ; but within a year of m}^ return to England I lost all my laboriously acquired shekels in one great crash. I had my ups and my downs during my lecturing tour on the Australian continent ; journeying, as my wife and I did, into the remotest " back-blocks " of the Bush. In some towns our success was magnificent, in others the takings did not exceed ;^io. At Adelaide, at Brisbane in Queensland, and indeed throughout the TO THE ANTIPODES 345 last-named colony, the money rolled in gloriously. At one township wiiere there was a rather handsome thea- tre, I peeped — as lecturers as well as managers will do — through the usual orifice in the drop-curtain to see what kind of a house there was; but to my dismay the pit — there Avere no stalls — was tenanted only by three men and a boy. It was a ca-se, I thought, of Hull and Lieutenant Gale's lecture on " Aerostation " over again. But the case was pleasantly altered when the curtain rose. The most expensive seats in the house were in the dress circle, which had been invisible to me through the hole in the curtain ; and I found the boxes crowded w' ith the " quality " of the place — mag- istrates, clergymen, and wealthy squatters. We had hot roast fowl for supper that night. Great iinailcial success was also our lot at Wagga- Wagga, a really pretty town, with the name of which all those who remember the Tichborne ti'ial will be fa- miliar. The Assizes w^ere on when we arrived ; and by good luck the Crown Prosecutor turned out to be an old friend of mine. I had a capital house on that and the succeeding night — the Judge came, the bar and the solicitors mustered in full force ; the prosecu- tors and the witnesses were all to the fore ; and I could almost have believed that the prisoners, escorted by friendly warders, were likewise present. It was at a place called Mudgee that I underwent one of the most serious snubs that I ever experienced, although I must admit that I have not unfrequently, while making a speech, been more or less " shut up " by an unsympa- thetic audience. Once, taking the chair at the Hol- born Town Hall, in advocacy of a movement for es- tablishing a tram-car system in the parish of St. Pan- eras, I began my address with — " Ladies and gentle- men. When I was last in the United States " whereupon a gentleman in the gallery cried out : 346 LIFE OF GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA " Why the devil didn't you stop there ? " This was not very encouraging, but my rebuff at Mudgee was much more mortifying. It came ^rom the lady who, as I have elsewhere related, exclaimed " Rubbidge ! " when I had come to the end of what I thouo:ht was a pathetic and picturesque description of the appearance of Her Majesty Queen Victoria at her Coronation in June, 1838. It was at Brisbane, in Queensland, that I found Miss Genevieve Ward, whose dramatic tour, in com- pany with that excellent actor Mr. Vernon, had been one uninterrupted triumph. She made, I apprehend, as much if not more money than I did ; and she had the sense, 1 hope and believe, to keep her winnings. We afterwards had the pleasure of meeting her both in Melbourne and Sydney. Of the many score of places, many of them with wholly unpronounceable native names, I took careful count in a ledger which I kept, but which I have mislaid. I know, however, that in the autumn, under the auspices of " Little Smythe," I went to New Zealand, and lectured with bright success at Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, Dunedin, Invercargill, and other places. ,At Welling- ton, the capital of the colony, I had the advantage of meeting the Governor, Sir William Jarvis, whom I had not seen since the old Canadian days in 1864. Moreover, I received from an unknown source ;i^ioo as an honorarium for visitinof the wonderful Hot Lakes district and formally opening some of the baths. I saw the marvellous Pink and White Ter- races, since utterly annihilated by a succession of dreadful earthquakes. Returning from New Zealand early in December, I lectured four or five times, but with indifferent suc- cess, at Hobart and other towns in the beautiful and hospitable island of Tasmania — the sanatorium, the TO THE ANTIPODES 347 Isle of Wight of Australia. In the third week of De- cember my wife left me to go to Melbourne to pack up our things with the intent of departing for India ; and three days after she left I crossed to Sydney to draw out some money from a banking-house there. I spent my Christmas Day at sea, not very convivially ; there was no roast beef and there was no plum pud- ding, and I dined on boiled mutton and turnips, and a pint of Bass's pale ale. At Sydney I left my card with Lord Carrington, the newly arrived Governor, who at once sent down a trooper to the hotel where I was staving and asked me to dinner that same even- ing. At the end of the repast His Excellency, after proposing the Queen's health, told me that that was the only toast usually drunk at Government House ; but that he meant to drink the health of my wife, which he did. We walked afterwards in the garden, and gazed at the blue velvet sky — not Melaina astro)i (" black with stars "), as the Greek playwright some- what paradoxically puts it in Electra — but studded al- most overwhelmingly with the dazzling luminaries of the Southern Cross. " What a beautiful country ! " exclaimed Lord Carrington, " and what a happy time you must have had." Yes ; I had had, all things con- sidered, a happy and most prosperous time. Next evening, having settled all my money matters, I took the train ; and on the platform at Melbourne I found, not my wife, but Mr. Smythe, who told me that my dear partner had caught a chill at sea in Bass's Straits ; that she was lying dangerously ill at Menzies' Hotel, where a consultation of three physi- cians had just been held. It was New Year's Eve ; the weather was ferociously hot, with a hotter wind, and a " brickfielder," or dust-storm, blowing through Melbourne's broad streets. I found my wife inarticu- late in the agonies of peritonitis ; she only spoke once, 348 LIFE OF GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA when, pressing my hand, she said, " Go to India, dear, and complete your education." That night she died. At three o'clock in the afternoon of the next day I had to bury her. I had no mourning attire ; and I was oblisred to borrow different articles of sable dress from different friends. Everybody was pitiful and kind to me. The Governors of every one of the Australasian Colonies sent me condoling telegrams ; and similar missives reached me from Lord Rosebery and from Henr}^ Irving. The Bishop of Melbourne, now Bishop of Manchester, wrote me a touching letter. The Ven- erable Archdeacon of Melbourne, then nearly eighty years of age, and who died only a few days ago, came and prayed with me. Genevieve Ward was away ; Mrs. Menzies and her daughter were touchingly kind to me, but I fancy that during a full fortnight I was more or less off my head. CHAPTER LXI HOME AGAIN — LAST WORDS The Chairman of the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company, so soon as the news of my sad bereavement had been cabled to London, telegraphed to Melbourne to the Company's agent there, instruct- ing him to give me, if I wished to visit India, a free passage to Calcutta, Madras, and Bombay, and back to England. When I was well enough to travel, 1 boarded one of the magnificent P. and O. steamers at Williamstown ; and three weeks later, after a brief stay at Colombo and Kandy, in the enchanting island of Ceylon, I arrived at Calcutta. Lord Dufferin was away, in Burmah ; but he had telegraphed to Calcutta to say that I was to be asked to the Vice-regal coun- try residence at Barrackpore, and on his return to the City of Palaces he showed me all his usual goodness. Sir W. W. Hunter, a Member of Council, too, to whom I had been recommended by Genevieve Ward, " put me up " at a house which he had rented somewhere on the Hugli. We crossed the river one night to wit- ness some religious ceremony at a Hindoo temple. I caught a chill on the water, and two days afterwards, at a hotel in Calcutta, I awoke with a high fever. When I grew apparently convalescent I was again " put up," or entertained, at the house of Mr. J. O. B. Saunders, the proprietor of the Calcutta. En£^/is/iman ; and when, after a few weeks' stay under his hospitable roof, I began to feel quite well and strong, 1 shipped myself on board the P. and O. steamer Ballarat, and 350 LIFE OF GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA returned home by way of Colombo — ^where I met Sir Edwin Arnold, who was revisiting India — Madras, Aden, the Red Sea, the Suez Canal, and Marseilles. I reached London just in time for the Queen's Jubilee, and of the ceremonial in the Abbey I wrote a long account in the Daily Telegraph. I had not, however, been more than three weeks in Mecklenburgh Square when the fever, or rather the fag-end of it, came back to me, and I believe that the malady is in my bones still. I was more or less an invalid for nearly a year. I may here be allowed to say something about one of the last public transactions in which I have been concerned. In February, 1889, I was the occupant of a flat in Victoria Street, Westminster, and one Satur- day, between one and two p.m., a knock came at my study-door, and 1 was handed a letter which had been brought in hot haste by a servant who was instructed to wait for an answer. The missive was of the briefest possible kind, and was from my near neighbour Mr. Henry Labouchere, M.P., whose house was then at 24, Grosvenor Gardens, and the note ran thus : "Can you leave everything, and come here at once ? Most im- portant business. — H. L." I told the servant that I would be in Grosvenor Gardens within a quarter of an hour, and, ere that time had expired, I was ushered into a large library on the ground floor, where I found the Senior Member for Northampton smoking his sempiternal cigarette, but with an unusual and curi- ous expression of animation in his normally impassive countenance. He was not alone. Ensconced in a roomv fauteuil a few paces from Mr. Labouchere's writing-table there was a somewhat burly individual of middle stature and of more than middle age. He looked fully sixty ; al- though I have been given to understand that his age did not exceed fifty-five ; but his elderly aspect was HOME AGAIN — LAST WORDS 35 I enhanced by his baldness, which revealed a large amount of oval os front is fringed by grey locks. The individual had an eye-glass screwed into one eye, and he was using this optical aid most assiduously, for he was poring over a copy of that morning's issue of the Times, going right down one column and apparently up it again ; then taking column after column in suc- cession ; then harking back as though he had omitted some choice paragraph ; and then resuming the se- quence of his lecture, ever and anon tapping that ovoid frontal bone of his, as though to evoke memories of the past, with a little silver pencil-case. I noticed his somewhat shabby-genteel attire ; and in particular I observed that the hand which held the copy of the Times never ceased to shake. Mr. Labouchere, in his most courteous manner and his blandest tone said, " Allow me to introduce 3'^ou to a gentleman of whom you must have heard a great deal, Mr. ." I re- plied, " There is not the slightest necessity for naming him. I know him well enough. That's Mr. Pigott." The individual in the capacious fauteuil wriggled from behind the Tiincs an uneasy acknowledgment of my recognition ; but, if anything could be conducive to putting completely at his ease a gentleman who, from some cause or another, was troubled in his mind, it would have been the dulcet voice in which Mr. Labouchere continued :" The fact is that Mr. Pigott has come here, quite unsolicited, to make a full confes- sion. I told him that I would listen to nothing that he had to say save in the presence of a witness, and remembering that you lived close by, I thought that you would not mind coming here and listening to what Mr. Pigott has to confess, which will be taken down, word by word, from his dictation in writing." it lias been my lot, during a long and diversified career, to have to listen to a large number of very queer state- 352 LIFE OF GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA ments from very queer people ; and, by dint of experi- ence, you reach at last a stage of stoicism when little, if anything, that is imparted to you excites surprise, Mr. Pigott, although he had screwed his courage to the sticking-place of saying that he was going to con- fess, manifested considerable tardiness in orally " own- ing up." Conscience, we were justified in assuming, had " ofnawed " to an extent sufficient to make him willing to relieve his soul from a dreadful burden ; but conscience, to all seeming, had to gnaw a little longer and a little more sharply ere he absolutely gave tonofue. So we let him be for about ten minutes. Mr. Labouchere kindled another cigarette. I lighted a cigar. At length Mr. Pigott stood up and came forward into the light by the side of Mr. Labouchere's writing- table. He did not change colour; he did not blench ; but when — out of the fulness of his heart, no doubt — his mouth spake, it was in a low, half-musing tone, more at first as though he were talking to himself than to any auditors. By degrees, however, his voice rose, his diction became more fluent. It is only necessary that in this place I should say in substance that Pigott confessed that he had forged the letters alleged to have been written by Mr. Parnell ; and he minutely described the manner in which he, and he alone, had executed the forgeries in question. Whether the man with the bald head and the eye-glass in the library at Grosvenor Gardens was telling the truth or uttering another batch of infernal lies it is not for me to de- termine. No pressure was put upon him ; no leading questions were asked him ; and he went on quietly and continuously to the end of a story which I should have thought amazing had I not had occasion to hear many more tales even more astounding. He was not voluble, but he was collected, clear, and cohei-ent ; nor, HOME AGAIN — LAST WORDS 353 although he repeatedly confessed to forgery, fraud, deception, and misrepresentation, did he seem over- come with anything approaching active shame. His little peccadilloes were plainly owned, but he appeared to treat them more as incidental weaknesses than as extraordinary acts of wickedness. When he had come to the end of his statement Mr. Labouchere left the library for a few minutes to ob- tain a little refreshment. It was a great relief to me that Pigott did not confess anything to me when we were left together. There came over me a vague dread that he might confess his complicity with the Rye House Plot, or that he would admit that he had been the executioner of King Charles I. The situation was rather embarrassing ; the time might have been tided over by whistling, but unfortunately I never learnt to w^histle. It would have been rude to read a book ; and, besides, to do so would have necessitated my taking my eyes off Mr. Pigott, and I never took them off him. We did get into conversation, but our talk was curt and trite. He remarked, first taking up that so-often-conned Times, that the London papers were inconveniently large. This being a self-evident proposition, met with no response from me ; but on his proceeding to say, in quite a friendly manner, that I must have found the afternoon's interview rather stupid work, I replied that, on the contrary, so far as I was concerned, I had found it equally amusing and in- structive. Then, the frugal Mr. Labouchere coming back with his mouthful, we went to business again. The whole of Pisfott's confession, beginning with the declaration that he had made it uninvited and without any pecuniary consideration, was read over to him line by line and word by word. He made no correc- tion or alteration whatsoever. The confession covered several sheets of paper, and to each sheet he affixed n.— 23 354 LIFE OF GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA his initials. Finally, at the bottom of the completed document he signed his name, beneath which I wrote my name as a witness. One day, not very long after my return from India, and while I was miserably ill, there came to visit me a tall, comely lady, who brought me a letter from dear old Antonio Gallenga. She sought my assistance in some matter of lady journalism. Eventually she be- came my faithful and efficient secretary. I mourned my dear lost Harriet for four dismal years. But time was good to me. I thought it wicked and ungrateful to Providence to continue to dwell in sulky solitude, eating my own heart when I had the means of making another person happy ; and four years ago I was married at St. Margaret's Church, Westminster, to Bessie, the third daughter of the late Robert Stan- nard, C.E., the tall and handsome lady whom Antonio Gallenga had sent to me. THE END. INDEX A'Beckett, Gilbert Abbot, burlesque on "The Light of Other Days has Faded," i. 49; his A^ncs Sorel, 54 ; at a theatrical performance at Charles Dickens's house, 92 ; a frequenter of the St. James's green-room, 92 ; shyness and wit, 92, 93; "stock- author " at the St. James's, 93 ; as magistrate and journalist, 94 ; death, 94 ; his periodicals, 94 ; humour- ous leaders in the Times, 328 Abdul Aziz, Sultan, his visit to Paris, ii. 114-117 ; deposition, 271 Abercorn, Duke and Duchess of, i. 213 Abinger, Lord, ii. 27 About, Edmund, ii. 109 -Ackermann, Messrs., i. 214, 234, 238, 249, 252, 259 Actors and cast-off court dresses, i. 91 Adelaide, author's lecturing visit to, ii- 344 Adelphi Theatre, and Wright the comedian, i. 129 Affondatore, foundering of the, ii. 82 Ainsworth, Harrison, at Gore House, i. 45, 46; his "Rookwood" and " Jack Sheppard," 86, 87 Aix-la-Chapelle, a gambling, advent- ure at, i. 230, 231 Albany, Duke of, and the "Gentle Life," ii. 198 Aldridge, Ira, negro tragedian, i. 189 Alemann, Baron, Austrian Governor- General of Venice, ii. 92 Alexander II., Tsar, attempt on his life in Paris, ii. 117, 118; at the Guildhall, 215 ; assassination, 316 et seq. Alexander II I., Tsar, his coronation, ii. 325 et seq. Alfonso, King, ii. 154, 224, 225 ; en- trance into Madrid, 229, 230 ; in- cident on leaving Madrid, 231, 232 Algiers, ii. 39-43, 244 Alison, Miss, actress, afterwards wife of Captain Seymour, i. 95 Aiken, Henry, i. 259 All the Year Round, i. 318 Allen, — , tenor at the Princess's Thea- tre, i. 129 Alma-Tadema, Mr., ii. 305 Alva, Duke of, ii. 48 "America Revisited," ii. 336 et seq. American War, ii. 18 et seq. Anderson. Mr. James, as Mark An- tony, i. 138 Anecdotes : A " fairy godmother," i. 7, 8 ; Sir Edward Lawson, and the author's "rummy" eye, 15; Ma- dame A. J. J. Sala and Madame Vestris, 22 ; Malibran and Madame A. J. J. Sala, 27, 28; Paganini, 28- 30 ; the Waterloo hero at Cricklc- wood, 33, 34 ; Duke of Wellington and Madame A. J. J. Sala, 38-40 ; Donizetti in the inaison de sa?!fe\ 41 ; Sultan Mahmoud and his musical tastes, 42, 43 ; Berlioz and the fugue, 43, note; Cherubini and the ugly applicant for an engagement, 43, note; Countess Blessington, Harri- son Ainsworth, and Count D'Orsay, 45 ; " Vive le Raw," 49 ; author re- hearsing at Princess's Theatre, 57 ; widow of Morris Barnett, 57 ; Mrs. Stirling and the author, 64 ; Charles Dickens and the dramatic version of " Oliver Twist," 64 ; the ex-bar- maid of the Colosseum, 71, 72 ; the invalid and " Pickwick,' 74 ; " Pick- wick " and the schoolboy in church, 356 INDEX 74; "going to the dogs " and re- turning thence, 93; Sir Wilham Gregory and the study of Greek, loi ; the Duke of Orleans and the price of a ringlet, iii ; Henry Wal- lack and his grammatical slip, 115 ; Mr. Weiss and his "shape," 128; the cook and the manuscript of " The Bride of Castelnuovo," 152, 153 ; Macready and Charles Kerri- son Sala, 153-157; Macready and the performance of Philip von Arte- velde, 158 ; Macready and Maddox, 158 ; Charles Matthews and the un- paid seven-and-sixpence, 158, 159 ; Macready and Hemming at the Haymarket Theatre, 167, 168 ; Ma- dame Grisi singing a verse of the National Anthem, 184; derivation of the name " Spencer," 191 ; T. L. Holt and his thousand sovereigns, 200 ; Frederic Soulie and the foot- bath of gold, 200; France afflicted with the "measles," 211; the old lady of New Brighton, 235-237 ; Brougham leaving his home, 236 ; Brougham and his " crackit " head, 236; Hartley Coleridge and "lily- white muffins," 236, 237 ; the Hull confectioner, 240, 241 ; the author and Jullien, 283, 284 ; the Canter- bury Pilgrim and the case of bran- dy, 288 ; the female soldier in the French army, 296 ; Prince Bismarck and the Russian character, 302 ; the bill-sticker before the magistrate, 321, 322; dinner-party at Edmund Yates's, 328, 329 ; prejudice against representatives of " penny papers," 332; Edmund Yates's and Hogarth's works, 354, 355 ; incident at Leeds in a litigation case, 365 ; Mr. Jeho- saphat's "nevvy,"338; Thackeray and Higgins at the Egyptian Hall, 372, 373 ; James Grant at the " Wav- erley Arms," ii. 13, 14 ; a Montreal dinner and the song of " Maryland," 26; the negro electors and ^' ad valorem^' 28, 29 ; " Raised on Picca- dilly," 30 ; Captain Jenkins and the fogs off Newfoundland, 32 ; Miss Nightingale and the swearing sol- dier, 35 ; Colonel Bateman and his hair, 37; "Cordelia" fishing from the barge, 38 ; the two Virginians and the saloon-keeper, 38, 39 ; W. H. Russell and the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, 39 ; the Algerian slave-dealer and the opera-singer, 42, 43 ; the traveller in Spain and the loaf of bread, 56, 57 ; the rat and the crab, 62, 63 ; an officer of Gari- baldi's and the author, 70, 71 ; Gari- baldi and his General's uniform, 73 ; Dr. Maginn's definition of a gentle- man for duelling purposes, 75 ; the special correspondent and the wav- ering Garibaldian troops, 77 ; Gari- baldi at Stafford House, 79 ; Mrs. Chambers and Madame Mario tend- ing wounded Garibaldian soldiers, 80 ; Lord Castlereagh and Peter Finnerty, 84 ; M. Plantulli in the palace of King Bomba, 85 ; Marshal Haynan and the Caffe Florian, 86 ; the four-in-hand at Mestre, 91 ; the four English Grenadiers at Niagara, 91, 92 ; assassination of Era Paolo, 94 ; the English lady and the legend of Beatrice Cenci, 104 ; the Paris sentinel and the author, 119 ; the two actor-managers and the rare cognac, 127-129; Mr. H. Labou- chere and Watts Phillips, 148, 149 ; a mixed telegram on the eve of the Franco-Prussian war, 156 ; the " out- door " charwoman in Paris and the colonel, 157 ; the French colonel in the hotel at Metz, 159 ; the German tailor in Paris, 169 ; modes adopted by Confederates to show animosity towards Federals, 189, 190 ; Mr. Labouchere and the " Claimant," 207, 208 ; Don Juan de Borbon and the parlour-maid, 222, 223; "Col- onel Howsomnever " and his stories, 226-228 ; George IV. and the pro- posed place of imprisonment of Na- INDEX 357 poleon I., 227 ; a game of " simili- tudes " at Pope's Villa, 231 ; Antonio Gallenga and the author, 230, 231 ; King Alfonso and the beggar, 232, 233 ; at a dinner-party with soiled hands, 236 ; washing with waxen candles, 236, 237 ; the author and the Spanish child at the table de hote, 241, 242; the author and his interpreter in Russia, 256, 258, 264- 266 ; Byzantine mosaics and jujubes, 270, 271 ; the poodle and the pariah dogs at Constantinople, 271, 272 ; dogs of Eyoub and the two English- men, 273, 274 ; the American stu- dent at Constantinople and the "sophisticated tobacco," 275-277; constructing a political telegram at Constantinople, 283, 284 ; a beggar at a pasha's luncheon, 288 ; religious toleration at Constantinople, 289, 290 ; the lawsuit and the deaf judge, 293; twin brothers, 293 ; "Captain Cashless " and the author, 295, 296 ; the Irish journalist and the author's sympathy for the Confederates, 309 ; the author's description of the cor- onation of Alexander III., and a smart device of a Russian journalist, 332 ; incident at the Holborn Town Hall, 345. Anglesey, Marquis of, and the last shot fired at Waterloo, i. 12, 136 Angling in the Upper Thames, i. 219, 220 Anstie, Dr., ii. 213, 214 Antonelli, Cardinal, ii. 191 Aosta, Duke of, ii. 224, 281 Arab troupe of acrobats at the Colos- seum, i. 69-71 Arago, M. Emmanuel, defends Bere- zowski for his attempt on the Tzar's life, ii. 118 Arctic expedition by balloon, projected by Lieutenant Gale, i. 238-240 Army; purchase system, ii. 153; edu- cation of officers, 153,154 Arne, Dr., his Artaxerxrs, i. 59 Arnold, Sir Edwin, commences writ- ing for the Daily Telegraph, ii. 5, 350 Arnold, Matthew, ii. 5, 79 Arthur, Mr. Chester, ii. 337 Arthur, Sir George, i. 146 Ashbury, Mr. James, ii. 50 Athens ; the new town, ii. 291 ; the Acropolis, 292 Athole, Duke of, ii. 27 Auckland, ii. 342 Austin, Mr. Alfred, as a poet, ii. 3, 5 ; author's first meeting with him, 3, 4 Austin, Mr. Charles, i. 359, 360 .Austin, Mr. Ware, i. 360 Austin, Wiltshire Staunton, and Ttni- fle Bar, i. 359, 360 "Australian Nights' Entertainment, The," i. 188 Austria; war with Italy, ii. 66 82 Authorship, Coleridge on, i. Aylmer, Lord, ii. 30 " Baddington Peerage, The," i. 313 Bagshaw, Dr., ii. 214 Baker, Pasha, ii. 278 Balfe, Michael William ; criticisms of his Maid of Artois, i. 48 ; in the Siege of Rochellc, 49 ; lesseeship of the Lyceum, 123 ; his wife and chil- dren, 123, 124 Ballet girls of 1843, i. 142 Balloon ; Lieutenant Gale's project for searching for Sir John Franklin, i. 238-242 ; accident to the author, 246, 247 ; the " Nassau," 125, 247 Barbary, A trip to, ii. 36, 39-43 Barere, M., ii. 282 Baretti's trial for murder, i. 336 Barker, George, i. 58 Barnett, Benjamin, i. 56 Barnett, Morris, i. 54-57 " Basket-weaving Poet, The," i. 188 Bateman, Colonel, ii. 37, 38 Bateman, Miss Kate, in Leah, ii. y] Bathe, Sir Henry de, i. 164 " Batouk, Azamat," ii. 162 Bayard, Senator, ii. 383, 337 Baylis, Harry, i. 168 Bayly, Haynes, i. 47 358 INDEX Heaconsfield, Lord, at " Soyer's Sym- posium," i. 244 ; kindness to men of letters, ii. 247 ; introduces himself to author, 304 Beatrice Cenci ; Guido's portrait, and legend, ii. 103, 104 ; author's collec- tion of portraits, 104 I'.cauregard, Comtesse de, formerly Mrs. Howard, i. 153 Beefsteak Club, i. 146 ; ii. 319 Bell, Mr., aeronaut, accident to his balloon, i. 246, 247 Bellew, Rev. J. M. C, ii. 7. 8 Bellini, his funeral, i. 43, 44 ; attrac- tive appearance, 44 Belt libel case, i. 135 Benazet, M. , and the Salon Frascati, i. 109 Benedetti, Count, ii. 156 Benedict, Sir Julius, i. 317 Bennett, Charles H., his artistic works, i. 271 ; early difficulties, 272 Bennett, Mr. George, as Henry VIII., i. 190 Bentley' s Miscellany ; Harrison Ains- worth follows Dickens as editor, i. 87 Berezowski, his attempt on the life of the Tsar, ii. 118, 119 Berlin ; opening of the German Par- liament, ii. 202 ; a Beer Symposium of students, 202, 203 ; fortress of Spandau, 203 Berlioz, i. 43, note Bernard, Dr. Claude, trial at Old Bailey for conspiracy against Napo- leon III., i. 351, 352 Betty, Mr. Henry, i. 191 Beverly, William Ro.xby, marries Miss Sophie Burbage, i. 142 ; engages the author as assistant scene-painter, 149 Bewick, Thomas, and his pupils, i. 17s Bibles in Rome, ii. 185 Bill-sticking, i. 321, 322 Hilly Taylor, pantomime, i. 252, 253 Birket-Foster, employed as a draughts- man, i. 171 Birmingham, and Mr. Joseph Gillott, i. 240 Bishop, Sir Henry R. , and the Marri- age of Figaro^ i. 22 Bishop, Mrs. H. R., i. 29 Bismarck, Prince ; speech at the open- ing of the German Parliament, ii. 2C2 Bizet, Sophie, i. 26 Black Sea, colour of water, ii. 268 Blessington, Countess of, i. 44 ; opin- ion of appearance of D Orsay and Ainsworth,45 ; her toilette, 45 Bloomer, Mrs. Amelia, ii. 311 Bloxam, Mr., ii. 129, 130, 207 Blunt, Mr., Consul at Salonica, ii. 279 Boat race, University, ii. 127, 128 Bogne, Mr. David, his connection with the Illustrated Times, i. 269 Bolton House School, i. 133-141 Bonaparte, Pierre, his stormy career, ii. 140-142 ; trial for killing Victor Noir, 145-151 Booth, Sir Feli.x, and the expedition to the North Pole, i. 24, 25 Booth, John Wilkes, ii. 39 Borbon, Don Juan de, ii. 222, 223 Boston, ii. 336 Boucicault, Dion, as ''stock-author" at the Princess's, i. 93, 168, 256 ; his adaptation of the Freres Corses, 255 ; his Lo7idon. Assurance, 255, 256 ; retentive memory and ap- pearance, 256 ; at Edmund Yates's, 329 Boufarik, ii. 42 Box-keepers of theatres, i. 117 ; ii. 186 Boyle, Mr. Frederick, ii. 143 Bozomania, i. So, 81 Bradbury, Mr. Henry, i. 318, 319 Braddon, Miss, and " Lady Audley's Secret," ii. 17, 304 Brady, Mr. Cheyne, i. 312 Braham, Augustus, i. 62-65 Braham, Charles, i. 63 Braham, Miss Frances (afterwards Countess Waldegrave), i. 63, 73 INDEX 359 Braham, John, and St. James's Thea- i tre, i. 53, 58-60, 62-65; becomes j lessee of the Colosseum, 67 ; last years and death, 73 Braham, John Hamilton, i. 63 Braham, Ward, i. 63 " Breakfast in Bed," ii. 136 Bright, John, and Dr. Kenealy, ii. 218 Brighton : Old Steine, i. i ; Pegge's Royal Hotel, i ; burial place of author's eldest sister, 3 ; apartments of Sir Wathen Waller, 11 ; royal kitchen at the Pavilion, 11; asso- ciated with the author's youth, 19- 30 ; ball at the Old Ship Assembly Rooms, 27 ; Mahomed's Baths, 168 Brisbane, author's lecturing visit to, ii- 344 British Museum Reading Room, i. 188 Brough, Barnabas, i. 170 Brough, Miss Fanny, i. 93, 305 ; ii. 21 Brough, Mr. Lionel, and the Savage Club, i. 263 Brough, Robert Barnabas, i. 93 ; con- tributor to the Man in the A/oon, 170 ; marriage, 170 ; joint-author with his brother of burlesques, 170 ; on the staff of the Jllustratcd Times, 269 ; at Brussels, 305 Brough, William, i. 93 ; joint-author with his brother of burlesques, 170, 327 Brougham, Lord, gives lessons to the author in public speaking, i. 87 Brooks, Charles Shirley, i. 163 ; and the Man in the Moon, 163 ; griev- ance against Punch, 165 ; relations with Douglas Jerrold, 165 ; ii. 245 ; early life and marriage, i. 165, 166 ; ii. 246, 247 ; and the Morning Chronicle^ i. 327 ; ii. 245, 246 ; ii. 221 ; as editor of Punch, 246 ; stories and verse, 246, 247 ; pension granted to widow by Lord Beaconsfield, 249 Brown, Sir George, ii. 31 Browne, Hablot K. (" Phiz''), his il- lustrations to "Pickwick," etc., i. 75 ; illustrates " Baddington Peer- age," etc., 314 Browning, Robert, ii. 304 Brunswick, Duke Charles of, and the Princess's Theatre, i. 128, 129 ; writes his Life, 195, 196 Brussels, the delights of, i. 231 ; ii. 45 Bucca, Xina, i. 2 Buchanan, Mr. Robert, and Temple Bar, i. 359 . Buckland, Frank, ii. 62, 63 Buckstone, Mr. J. Baldwin, ii. 127, 128, 136 Bullock, Mr., of the Daily News^ ii. 67 Bulwer, Mr. Henry (afterwards Lord Dalling), ii. 226 Bunn, Alfred, i. 176 Buonarotti, Michael Angelo, incident of his old age, i. 18 Burbage, Miss Sophie, afterwards Mrs. W. R. Beverly, i. 142 Burdett-Coutts, Baroness ; and an en- tertainment at the Duchess of St. Albans', Brighton, i. 24 ; author's friendship with her, ii. 303, 335 Burnaby, Colonel Fred, ii. 279 Burne-Jones, Mr. Edward, ii. 305 Burton, Decimus, architect of the Col- osseum, Regent's Park, i. 67 Butler, General Benjamin Franklin, ii. Byron Memorial in Park Lane, i. 130 Cadiz, ii. 58, 241 Caf6 de I'Europe, its proprietor and its frequenters, 168, 169, 316 Calthrop, Claude, i. 71 Calvert, Mr., wood engraver, i. 173, 175 Cambridge, Duchess of, her remem- brance of Napoleon I., ii. 120, 121 Cambridge, Duke of, opens the ex- hibition of 1862, i. 376 Campbell, Thomas, i. 47 Canaletto, his work at the old Fcnice Theatre, ii. 92 Canizzaro, Duchess of, i. 25, 27 36o INDEX Canterbury Pilgrims and the wine merchant, i. 288 Carlists attacking trains, ii. 238-240 Carlyle, Mrs., her facetious estimate of the author's capacities, i. 313, 314; ii. 318 Carnival at Madrid, ii. 51, 52 ; at Cordova, 58, 59 ; at Seville, 59 ; at New Orleans, 309 Carr, Mr. Comyns, his resemblance to Albert Smith, i. 164 ; and the Gros- venor Gallery, ii. 305 Carrington, Lord, as Lord Chamber- lain, ii. II, 347 Carthagena, ii. 244 Cassagnac, M. Paul de, ii. 141 ; at the trial of Pierre Bonaparte, 149 Cassel, ii. 45 Castlereagh, Lord, and Peter Fin- nerty, ii. 84 Chambers, Mr., aeronaut, i. 247 Chambers, Mr., banker, i. 250 Chambers, Colonel and Mrs., friends of Garibaldi, ii. 67, 73, 86 Chambers, Q.C. , Mr. Montague, ii. 199, 200 Chambers, Robert, i. 319 Chambers, Sir William, architect of Somerset House, and the State car- riage, ii. 125 Chapter House, Westminster, meeting to advocate its restoration, i. 376 Charles of Brunswick, Duke, and the lessee of the Princess's Theatre, i. 128, 129 Charter House, some of its literary and dramatic inmates, i. 125, 126 Chartists ; meeting on Kennington Common, i. 182, 183 ; riots in the provinces, 185 " Chasse-iteigex," ii. 262 Chat ; author's first contribution, and appointment as editor, i. 181, 182; "The Australian Nights' Enter- tainment," 188 ; author's salary as editor, 209 ; author sells his share in the copyright and goodwill, 211 Chatham, Lord, lampooned in an epi- gram, ii. 84 Cheap Press, The, i. 321, 322 Cherubini as director of the Royal Conservatoire of Music, and anec- dote, i. 43, note Chesterfield, Earl of, as special con- stable, i. 183 Chicago, ii. 310, 311, 338, 339 Child's Bank, ii. 250 Childs, Mr. G. W., proprietor of the Public Ledger, ii. 308, 337 Chippendale, Mr., ii. 136 Cholera epidemic of 1832, i. 8, 9 Cincinnati, ii. 311 Civita Vecchia occupied by Italian troops, ii. 184 Clanwilliam, Lord, ii. 328 Clarendon, Earl of, riot on the death of one of his servants, i. 9 Clark, Sir James, i. 12, 97 Clarke, Mr. Campbell, ii. 269, 283, 293 Clarke, Marcus, i. 187 Clayton, Mr. Benjamin, i. 228 Clayton (Calthrop), John, i. 71 Clayton, Sir Oscar, ii. 304 Cleaver, Mr. Reginald, his drawings in the Daily Graphic, i. 268 Clerkenwell e.xplosion, ii. 125-127 Clinton, Lord Edward Pelham, ii. 25 Cockburn, Sir Alexander, i. 146; ii. 199, 200, 201 ; summing up in the Claimant's case, 219 Cocks, Mr. Somers, i. 99 Cole, Sir Henry, i. 345 ; and the Paris International Exhibition of 1867, ii. 108, no Cole, Mr. J. W. , allusion to his "Life and Theatrical Times of Charles Kean," i. 252 Coleridge on the trade of authorship, i- 364 Colosseum, Regent's Park, The, i. 69 et seq. ; performance by Arabian acrobats, 69-71 Colosseum, Rome, ii. loi Combermere, Field-Marshal Viscount, i. 24 Combermere, Viscountess, i. 24 ; ii. 303. 335 INDEX 361 Comic Times, The, i. 277 Corppton, Mr., i. 161 Conservative Magasine^ The, i. 222- 226 Consort, Prince, death of, i. -iT^,, 374, 375 Constable, Sir Clifford, ii. 130 Constantinople ; view from the Bos- phorus, ii. 268 ; Hotel de Byzance, 268 ; as described by N. P. Willis, Miss Pardee, and Theophile Gautier, 270 ; harems on tramways, 270 ; visit to mosque of St. Sophia, 270 ; By- zantine mosaics, 270, 271 ; dancing and howling Dervishes, 271 ; dogs, 272-274 ; a smoking party, 275-277 ; Mr. Scudamore's appointment at the Post Office, 277 ; proclamation of new constitution, 288 ; discomforts, 288 ; manners of the people, 289, 290; in- stance of religious toleration, 289, 290 ; a Moslem cookshop, 288 Consuls, literary men as, i. 275, 276 Convict ship in the Thames, A, i. 122 Cook, Grattan, i. 61 Cook, Mr. Thomas, and his Tourist Agency, ii. 186-188 Cooper, John, recites a monody at Drury Lane Theatre, i. 49 ; friend- ship with Macready, 157 Cooper, Miss, i. 190 Copeland, Mr. W. H., of Theatres Royal, Dover and Liverpool, i. 117; ii. 186 Cordova, ii. 57, 58, 241 Cornhill Alagazine, i. 354-356, 358 Costa, Sir Michael, at Her Majesty's Theatre, i. 89 Costello, Dudley, i. 179 Coutts, Mr. Thomas, i. 24 Covent Garden Theatre ; first appear- ance of Madame A. J. J. Sala, i. 22 ; performance on the eve of the e.x- pected Chartist riots, 184 Coxwell, Mr. Henry, i. 239 Crampton, Sir John, i. 123; ii. 47, 48 Crellin, Mr., i. 143 Creswick, Mr. , tragedian, i. 258 CrJcklewood, i. 31-33 Crimean War, ii. 34, 35 Cross, Viscount, and the "Claimant," ii. 221 Crosse, Mr., and his menagerie, i. 264 Crown Court, King Street, i. 80, 81 " Crowquill, Alfred" (see Forester, Alfred) Cruikshank, George, his illustrations to Dickens's works, i. 75 ; his illustra- tions to "Jack Sheppard," 87; fu- neral, 95 ; his advice to the author, 171, 172 Cruikshank, Robert, i. 175 Cunningham, Peter, i. 366, 367 ; his " Handbook for London," 367 Curee, Dr., i. 14 Daily Telegraph, i. 15 ; author's article on Dickens, 309 ; author's first visit to the office, 315, 316 ; author's first articles, 316, 329, 330 ; the first offi- ces, 329 ; commencement of Sir Ed- win Arnold's connection, ii. 5 ; advo- cates the demolition of Temple Bar, 250 Dallas, E. M., ii. 2 Dalley, Hon. William Bede, ii. 342, 343 Dance, Charles, i. 129, 163 Dancing Dervishes, ii. 271 Dandies at Gore House, i. 45, 46 ; of seventeen, 76, 77 Darling, Miss Caroline, lessee of The- atre Royal, Dover, i. 116 Davenport, Mr. H. L. , i. 190 Davidge, Mr., as Malvolio, i. 190 Davis, Mr., his affair with Colonel Eld, i. 27 Davison, Mr. James, ii. 39 Deanery Club, i. 147 Delavigne, Casimir, the two sons of, i. 108 Depew, Mr. Chauncey, ii. 336 Derby, Lord, and the paper duties, i. 320; and the "Book of Nonsense," 320 Dervishes at Constantinople, ii. 271 Dicey, Mr. Edward, ii. 78, 79, 209 362 INDEX Uickens, Alfred, engineer, i. 349, 367 Dickens, Charles ; his adaptation of one of the " Sketches by Boz," i. 59 ; the dramatic version of his " Oliver Twist," 64 ; author's first acquaint- ance with him, 74; excitement cre- ated by his works, 74, 75 ; theatrical at his London residence, 92; and Macrone's purchase of the copyright of " Sketches by Boz," 144 ; and the Billy Taylor pantomime, 253 ; his estimate of Louis Napoleon, 254 ; author's article on him in the Daily Telegraph, 309 ; matrimonial troub- les and quarrel with publishers, 317 ; starts All the Year Round, 318, 345 ; ii. 18; first appearance as a public lecturer, 132 Dickens, jun. , Mr. Charles, ii. 200 Dickens, Frederick, i. 367, 368 Dicks, Mr. John, at Mentone, ii. 296 Dickson, Colonel, of the Tithes Com- missioners' Office, i. 99 Dilke, Sir Charles, ii. 304 Dilke, Charles Wentworth, i. 245 Dixon, Wm. Hepworth, i. 378 Dizi, Madame, i. 103 Dogs of Constantinople and Eyoub, ii. 271-274 Donizetti, his compositions and his acquaintance with author's mother, i. 40; his last days, 41; appoint- ment given to his relative by the Sultan, 41, 42 Dore, Gustave, ii. 109 D'Orsay, Count, Lady Blessington's opinion of his appearance, i. 45 D'Orsay, Lady Harriet, afterwards wife of Mr. Spencer Cowper, iii ; and the sale of a ringlet to the Duke of Orleans, iii Dover: a meeting with the Duke of Wellington, i. 38 ; the Theatre Roy- al and some of its lessees, 114-120; a military funeral, 120 Dramatists, remuneration of, i. 93 Draper, Mr. Edward, on the staff of the Illustrated Times, i. 271 Drury Lane Theatre : performance of Alaid of Artois^ i. 48 ; of jf alius CcEsar, 13S ; the Meiningen Troupe, 141 ; the production of Monte Crista, 180 Dufferin, Earl of, ii. 319, 320, 324, 349 Dumanoir, i. ic8 Dumas, Alexandre, the younger, at school with the author, i. 108 ; ii. 109; " Durham Letter," Lord John Russell's, i. 214 Duvernay, Mile., i. 62 Dyne, John Godfrey, Principal of Bol- ton House School, Turnham Green, i- '^12,' 139. 140 Earle, General, ii. 25 East, Mr. Quartermaine, ii. 130 " Echoes of the Week," i. 366 Edgware, i. 9 Edinburgh, Duke of, his marriage, ii. 215; a proposal to make H.R.H. the "King of Byzantium," 275; at the coronation of the Tsar Alexan- der III., 328 Edwards, Mr. Sutherland, on the staff of the Illustrated Times, i. 271, 304 ; musical critic of the Times, ii. 39, 286 Egan the Elder, Pierce, his sporting books and reminiscences of sporting characters, i. 202-204 Egan the Younger, Pierce, i. 204 Eld, Lieut. -Col., Master of the Cere- monies at Brighton, i. 27 Elliot, Sir Henry, ii. 279 Ellis, Mr. George, and the pantomime of Dilly Taylor, i. 252, 253 Envelopes, introduction of, i. 122 Escorial, The, ii. 50 Etzensberger, Mr., ii. 66, 90, 96 Eugenie, Empress, and her palace at Marseilles, ii. 40 ; her influence in promoting the war with Prussia, 155 Execution, last public, ii. 127 Executions, newspaper reports of, ii. 123 Exeter 'Change, i. 56, 317 ; ii. 137 INDEX 363 Ivvplosion at Clerkenwell House of Detention, ii. 125-127 Kykyn, Mr. Roger, ii. 229 Eyoub, mosque and dogs of, ii. 273, 274 Fairfield, Captain, author's godfather, i. 6 " Fairy Godmother," A, i. 7, 8 Family Herald, The, and the author's first literary efforts, i. 179 Farren, Miss, i. 320 Farren, Miss Nellie, in Wat Tyler, ii. 138. 139 Farren, William, i. 50, 96 ; in the Dou- ble-bedded Room, 161 ; and the cock salmon, 191 Faucit, Miss Helen {see Martin, Lady Theodore) Faucit, Saville, i. 174 Fawcett, Sir George, ii. 286 Fearon, Madame, i. 126, 127 Fenians : Outrage at the House of De- tention, ii. 126, 127 Ferrara : associations of Lucrezia Bor- gia, ii. 87-90 Fieschi, i. 51, 52 Fife, Duke of, ii. 203, 316 Fiiippi, Dr. Carlo, ii. 93, 97 Finnerty, Peter, and the Walcheren Expedition, ii. 84 ; and Lord Castle- reagh, 84 Fitzclarence, Lady Augusta, one of the author's godmothers, i. 7 Fitzherbert, Charles, i. 19 Fitz-James, Mr., i. 173 Fitzroy Theatre, i. 94 Fitz-Williams, Mrs., i. 190 Fleet Prison, i. 127 Flunkeys, adventure amongst, ii. 115, 116 Fonveille, M. de, ii. 142, 144-147 l''orl)ach. Rattle of, ii. 166 Forbes, Mr. Archibald, ii. 168, 229, 243 ; dinner in his honour, 306, 307; lect- uring tour in the Colonies, 334 I'"ord, Lieut. -Col., i. 2, 3 ; ii. 25 P'orester, Alfred, and his " No Pop- ery " cartoons, i. 214, 215 Forster, Henry Ramsey, i. 333 ; ii. 7 Forster, Mr. John, allusion to his "Life of Charles Dickens," i. 251 Fortescue, Mr. Chichester (afterwards Lord Carlingford), i. 63 Foster, Peter Le Neve, i. 245; ii. 222 Fox, Sir Charles, i. 245 Francis Joseph, Emperor, ii. 64, 120 Franco-Prussian War, ii. 196 ct seq. "Frank hunters," i. 122, 123 Frankfurt, ii. 44 Franklin, Sir John, projected balloon expedition in search of, i. 239, 240 Frascati Salon, concert given by au- thor's mother, i. 108, 109 French Revolution of 1848, and the expulsion of English workmen from France, i. 179, 180 Frere, Sir Bartle, i. 146 Frias, Duke of, i. 123 ; ii. 48 Friswell, Mr. James Hain, defendant in an action for libel, ii. 198-201 Frith, Sir. W. P., ii. 11 Frost-bite, a preventive for, ii. 263 Fuseli, Henry, i. 173 Gage, Lieut. -Col., i. 19, 20 Gaiety Theatre, ii. 137 ; production of Wat Tyler, 137-139 Gale, Lieutenant, his balloon project for searching for Sir John Franklin, i. 238-242 ; killed at Bordeaux, 242 Gallenga, Antonio, ii. 19, 49, 53, 143, 146, 228, 229, 230, 231, 232, 235-237, 274 Gallini, Sir John, i. i, 138 Gambling at the Salon Frascati, i. 109 ; at Aix-la-Chapelle, 234 ; at Hom- burg, 323, 324; ii. 44; at Monte Carlo, 364 Garcia, Evelina, at the Princess's The- atre, i. 129 Garcia, Pauline, at a concert in Paris, i. no Garibaldi: condition of his army, ii. 69 ; interview with the author, 70, 71 ; appearance and occupations in the United States, 72 ; character and designs in Italy, 73 ; uniform as a 364 INDEX General in Italian army, ^ji \ the support accorded him by English ladies, 74; and Napoleon III., 74; reception in London and incident at Stafford House, 79 ; return to Cap- rera, 82 Garrick Club, and the portraits of Charles James Matthews, i. 32 " Gaslight and Daylight," i. 335, 361 Gay, Mr. Drew, ii. 243 Gendarme, The Prussian, i. 231 Geneva, author's experiences in, ii. 182 George I., and one of his partialities, i- 43 George IV. , death of, i. 8 Gibraltar, ii. 243, 244 Gibson, General Randall, ii. 309 Gifford, Countess of (formerly Lady Dufferin), i. 25 Gilchrist, Dr., i. 152 Gladstone, Mr., ii. 304, 344 Glossop, Miss, i. 54 Glossop, Mrs. Fearon, i. 126 Glover, Mrs., in the Love Ckase, i. 96 Glover, Rudolph Gustavus, i. 367 ; ii. 103 Glyn, Miss, i. 190; ii. 2 Godwin, George, of the Builder, i. 61 ; his pamphlet on "Temple Bar," ii. 251 Gold fever in London, i. 194 Goldsmith, Oliver, his benevolence, and the school in which he learned it, i. 206 Goodford, Dr., i. 372 Gordon, General, ii. 27 Gore House, author's visit as a youth, i. 44 ; some of the visitors, 44-47 Gormandising in society, i. 20, 21 Gower, Lord Ronald, and Garibaldi, ii. 79 Graham, Sir James, ordering letters to Mazzini to be opened at the Post Office, i. 287, 288 Graham, James Lorimer, ii. 23, 128 Granada, ii. 58, 243 Grant, James, of the Morning Adver- tiser, ii. 12-14 Granville, Lady, at a concert in Paris given by author's mother, i. 109 Granville, Lord, i. 375 Grattan, Mr. H. P. ,i. 127 Grattan, Mrs. H. P., i. 129, 165 Great Eastern steamship, its history, i- 344-350 Great E.xhibition, The, i. 215, 216 " Great Exhibition wot is to be. The," i. 216, 217 Green, Mr. Charles, and the Nassau balloon, i. 125, 239, 247 Greenacre, James, murder committed by, i. 83 Greenbaclis, value during American War, ii. 23, 24 Green-room, The ; probable origin and meaning of term, i. 90, 91 ; of St. James's Theatre, 91-96 ; of the Haymarket Theatre, 96, 97 Greenwood, Mr. Frederick, on the staff of the Illustrated Tunes, i. 271, 314 Greenwood, Mr. James, i. 314 Gregory, Sir William, and the study of Greek, i. loi Greig, Admiral, ii. 261, 262 Greig, General, ii. 261, 262 Grieve, Thomas, i. 50 Grieve, William, i. 50 Grimes, the name of, and the pewter- ing trade, i. 38 Grimstone, and his " Eye Snuff," i. 12 Grisi, Giulietta, at a concert in Paris, i. no; singing a verse of the Na- tional Anthem at Covent Garden Theatre, 184 Grosvenor, Lord Robert (afterwards Lord Ebury), his Bill to suppress Sunday trading, i. 265 Grosvenor Gallery, ii. 305 Grousset, M. Pascal, ii. 142 Gruneisen, Mr. Charles Lewis, ii. 83 Gubbins, Miss, afterwards Viscountess Combermere, i. 25 Guerbel, Count Constantine de, i. 298 Guido, and his portrait of Beatrice Cenci, ii. 103, 104 Guthrie, Mr. G. J., surgeon, i. 12, 97, 98 INDEX 365 Haghe, Louis, i. 171 Hague, The, performance of La yuive at, ii. 46 Halford, Sir Henry, i. 8 Hall. Mr. and Mrs. S. C, i. 95 Hall, Mr. Sydney, ii. 161 Halle, Mr. C., ii. 305 Halliday, Mr. Andrew, ii. 133 Halstead, Mr. Murat, ii. 311 Halswelle, Mr, Keeley, as an artist, i. 268, 269 Hamilton, Lord Frederick, ii. 319, 320 Hamlet, Mr., landlord of the Prin- cess's Theatre, i. 125 Hamlet : Shakespeare said to have played the part of the Ghost, i. 118, 119 Hannay, James, on the staff of the Illustrated Times, i. 272, 273 ; early life, 272, 273 ; admiration of Thack- eray for, 273 ; epigram on Robert Brough and the author, 274 ; satire on three essayists, 274 ; literary works and editorship of the Edin- burgh Courant, 275 ; British Consul at Barcelona, 275, 337 ; ii. 2, 211 Hanover Square Rooms : Bolton House School examination and dra- matic performance, i. 138, 139 Hanoverian horses, ii. 125 Harcourt, Sir William Vernon, and the Saturday Review, i. 363, 364 ; ii. Hardman, Mr. Frederick, ii. 83 Hardman, Sir William, i. 249 Harley, John Pritt, stage-manager at St. James's Theatre, i. 60, 61 Harris, Sir Augustus, i. 126 ; ii. 39, 134 Harrison, Captain, of the Great East- em, i. 345, 347. 349 Hart, Mr. Ernest, ii. 205 Hawley, Sir Joseph, ii. 29 Hayes, Miss Catherine, vocalist, i. 86 Haymarkct Theatre ; the green-room, i. 97; engagement of author's moth- er, 97 ; performance of the l.ove Chase, 97 ; Mrs. A. J. J. Sala's ben- efit, 98 Haynau, Marshal, and the Caffe' Pier- ian, ii. 86 Hayward, Abraham, ii. 304 Hemming, Mr. , proprietor of the Cafe de I'Europe, i. 167 ; offends Mac- ready, 168 Henderson, Mr., one of the contract- ors for the Great Exhibition, i. 244 Henty, Mr. George, ii. 67, 82, 93, 243 Her Majesty's Theatre ; its green- room, i. 89 ; Sir Michael Costa and the singers, 89,90 ; Laporte's lessee- ship, 250 ; Mr. Lumley's lesseeship, 249, 250 Herbert, Hon. Allen, ii. 178 Hermit of St. Albans, The, i. 368 Heme Bay, i. 121, 122 Hessian troops hired by the English Government, ii. 46 Higgins, Matthew, i. 372 Hine, Mr. H. G. , as artist on Punch, i. 170 ; his after career, 171 Hobart Pasha, ii. 275 Hobart Town, author's lecturing visit to, ii. 427 Hodder, George, i. 333 Hogarth, Mr. George, i. 318 " Hogarth Papers," i. 354-356, 358 Hogg, Dr. Jabez, i. 169 Hollingshead, John, his belief that Shakespeare played the part of Ghost in Hamlet, i. 118, 119, 3.;5 ; lessee and manager of the Gaiety Theatre, ii. 137 ; and Wat Tyler, 137-139 Holmes, Dr. Oliver Wendell, ii. 336 Holt, Mr. Thomas Littleton, his jour- nalistic partnership with Mr. Gil- bert a Beckett, i. 94 ; editor of C/^^A 181, 182 ; his numerous journalistic ventures and his final collapse, 197- 202 ; and the Iron Times, 199-201 ; sub-editor of Conservative Maga- zine, 225; and the "Leave Us Alone Club," 266, 267 Homburg, gambling adventures at, i. 323, 324 ; ii. 44, 137, 205 Honolulu, author's visit to, ii. 341 Hood, Jr., Tom, i. 367, note 366 INDEX Hook, Theodore, his appearance and wit, i. 46, 47 ; his sketch of a green- room, go Hope, Mr. Beresford, i. 376, 377 " Hopeful," Mr., induces the author to set out on a gambhng adventure at Aix-la-Chapelle, i. 227 ei scq.; his fortunes at the gaming table, 234 Horn, Mr., of the Journal de St. Pet- ersburg, ii. 254 Horner, Mr., his panorama of London at the Colosseum, i. 67 Horsey, Admiral de, ii. 24 Horton, Miss P., i. 54; afterwards Mrs. German Reed, 58 Houghton, Lord, a pall-bearer at fu- neral of George Cruikshank, i. 95 ; and the Paris Exhibition of 1867, ii. 109, 304, 307 Household Words : author's first arti- cle, i. 251 ; author sent to Russia to prepare articles on his experiences, 282, 283 ; the number of articles by author, 310; sold by auction, 318 " How I Tamed Mrs. Cruiser," i. 314, 361 Howling Dervishes, ii. 271 Hudson, Georg-°, i. 179 ; author's ar- ticle in the Conservative Alagazine on, 224, 225 Hugo, Victor, allusion to his " Rhin," ii. 104 Hull, Lieutenant Gale's lecture at, i. 240-242 Hullah, Mr. John, and the music of The Village Coquettes, i. 59 "Hullah System," The, i. 134 Hunt, Leigh, i. 367, note Hunter, Sir W. W., ii. 349 Hurlburt, William Henry, ii. 32-34 Hyde Park Sunday closing agitation, i. 265 ; desertion of the Lady's Mile on Sundays, 265 Hyndman, Mr. Henry M. , ii. 67, 68, 82, 93 Ignatieff, General, ii. 284, 285 Ikons at Kieff, ii. 263 Illustrated London News and Mr. Her- bert Ingram, i. 169, 314 ; and " Echoes of the Week," 366 Illustrated Times, its proprietors and staff, i. 269, 270 ; sold to Mr. Her- bert Ingram, 314 Imperial, Prince, at Sandhurst, ii. 154 [ Income Tax, its unjust and iniquitous character, ii. 249 I Incomes of literary men, ii. 248, 249 Indian Lorette, ii. 30 Indian Mutiny, incident in the, ii. 92 Ingram, Herbert, and the Man in the Moon, i. 169 ; buys the Illustrated Times, 314 ; starts the Welcome Guest, 314 ; with the author on the j Great £astern, 2^s, 24S, 366 ; Ingram, Sir William, i. 345 Institute of Journalists, i. 365 International Exhibition (London), 1862, i. 375, 376 International P-xhibition (London), ; 1871, ii. 205 International Exhibition (Paris), 1867, ii. 106-113 ; architectural features, 107 ; mterest of Napoleon III., 107 ; the Commissioners, 107, 108 ; Sir Henry Cole's literary exhibit, 108 ; opening, 109 ; commissariat, 109, no; " Le Cottage Anglais," iio; beer ea/e's, iii ; distribution of prizes, 112, 113 ; royal visitors, 120 Internat'onal Exhibition (Paris), 1878, ii- 305 Ireland, discontent of, 1848, i. 185 Iron Times, The, i. 199-201 Irving, Henry, entertains the Meinin- gen Troupe, i. 141 ; ii. 339 Italy : war with Austria, ii. 66-82 ; cur- rency, 102 Ivanoff, i. 43 Jackson, Colonel Basil, ii. 280, 281 Jaime, the dramatist, i. 108 James, Mr. Edwin, defending Claude Bernard at the Old Bailey, i. 351 James, Sir Henry, i. 311 Janin, Jules, i. 339 Jarvis, Sir William, ii. 346 lis' D EX 1(^7 Jefferson, Mr. Joseph, ii. 36, 37, 315 Jerrold, Blanchard, i. 328 ; and Tem- J>le Bar, 359, 367 Jerrold, Douglas, relations with Shir- ley Brooks, i. 165 ; his resemblance to Montgolfier, 256 Jewesbury, Miss Geraldine, i. 313 Johnson, Dr., and " Queenie," i. 7 ; opinion of Milton's appearance, 44 ; his compassion and the school in which he learned it, 206 ; his allu- sion to the internal aspect of St. Paul's Cathedral, ii. 206 Jones, Mr Atherly, i. 365 Jones. Mr. Mason, recites " Paradise Lost," ii. 132, 133 Jones, Mr. Owen, i. 245; "Journey Due North," i. 282-306, 322, 325, 361 Jullien, M., unintentionally carica- tured by the author, i. 2S3, 284 Kalkbrenner, i. -jj, 78 Kean, Charles, i. 93, 255, 257 Kean, lidmund, and the Savage Club, i. 263 Keeley, Mr. and Mrs., at the Prin- cess's Theatre, i. 129 Keith, Viscount and Viscountess, i. 6.7 Kemble, Charles, i. 22 Kenealy, Dr. : scholarship and early life, ii. 217; defence of the " Claim- ant," 218 ; and John Bright, 218 Kenny, Charles Lnmb, i. 129, 197 ; and the Man in the Mcon, 165 ; and Tem- ple Bar, 359 Kieff, ii. 263 Kilpack's '■ Divan," i. 125 King's Theatre, Haymarket (afterward Her Majesty's), i. i Knight, Charles, i. 319 Knobel, Air. Edward, i. 16 Knout, The, in Russia, i. 290 Koniggratz, Battle of, ii. 81 Ko'zebue, August von, and the apoc- ryphal will of Peter the Great, ii. 254 Lablache, i. 43 ; at a concert in Paris, no Labouchere, Mr. Henry, and the Queen's Theatre, ii. 132-134 ; inter- est in Watts Phillips, 136, 148, 149 ; and the " Claimant," 207, 208 ; and Truth, 314, 336; and Pigott, 350- 353 Lacy, Mr. Walter, i. 129 Lacy, Mrs. Walter, i. 98 " Lady Chesterfield's Letters to her Daughter," i. 361 Lady's Newspaper, The, i. 176 Lamb, Lady Caroline, and her page, i. 58 " Land of the Golden Fleece," The, ii- 344 Landells, Ebenezer, i. 171. 176 Landseer, R. A., Charles, i. 173 Landseer, Sir Edwin, ii. 2 Lansdowne House, i. 47 Laporte, AL, and his lesseeship of Her Majesty's Theatre, i. 250 Lawley, Hon. Francis, ii. 5, 29, 180 Lawrence, Mr., surgeon, i. 12 Lawrence, Mr. Frederick, ii. 133 Lawson, Sir Edward, i. 15, 315; ii- 200, 201, 216, 220 Lawson, Mr. Lionel, i. 316; ii. 137 Layard. Sir Henry, ii. 241, 283 Le Flo, General, ii. 262 Le Play, M. , and the Paris E.xhibition of 1867, ii. 107 Le Sage, Mr., ii. 317, 325, 326, 331 Le Thiere, Baron, i. 26 Le Thiere, Miss Roma Guillon, i. 26, 131 Lear, Mr., painter, i. 320 " Leave Us Alone Club," The, i. 266, 267 Leboeuf, Marshal, on the condition of the French army, ii. 94, 157 Lefevre, Marshal, i 296 Leffler, Adam, i 64 Leigh, Percival, i. 168 Leighton, Mr. John, ii. 9 Leisure Hour, i. 313 Lcmarchant, Sir Denis, i. 147 Lemon, Mark, i. 165 ; ii. 246 368 INDEX Lennox, Lord Henry Gordon, i. 379 " Leonine City," The, ii. 183, 184 Leslie, Mr., British Consul at War- saw, ii. 261 Leslie, Mr. Henry, ii. 261 Letters opened by Post Office author- ities, i. 287 Lever, Charles, his attack on Cook's Tourist Agency, ii. 187 Levy, Mr. Edward, i. 316 Levy, Mr. J. M., i. 315, 316; ii. 306 Lewis, Sir George, and the action for libel against Mr. Friswell, ii. 197, 198. 324 Lexicographers, characteristics of, i. 90 Libel action against Mr. Friswell, ii. 198-201 Lincoln, Mr. Robert, ii. 311 Lincoln, Abraham, his assassination, ii- 39 Lindsay, Sir Coutts, ii. 305 Linley, George, and "The Bride of Castelnuovo," i. 151, 152 Literary men, incomes of, ii. 2-18, 249; their studies, 297, 298 Livesey, John, ii. 20, 21 Livius, Mr. Barham, i. 96 Lloyd, Mr. Edward, proprietor of " Penny Dreadfuls,'' and afterward founder of Lloyd's Weekly A^e-cvspa- per, i. 173, 174 TJoytTs Weekly Xcwspapcr, i. 328 Lobanoff, Prince, ii. 316 Loch, Sir Henry, and the " fairy god- mother," i, 7 ; ii. 344 Loder, Edward, and the Night Dan- cers, i. 151 Loder, John, leader of the orcliestra at the Princess's, i. 151 Loftus, Lord Augustus, ii. 253, 265, 342 London : illustrations of its " small- ness," i. 57, 58, 85 ; panorama at the Colosseum, Regent's Park, 67 ; Mr. Zangwill's descriptions, 268 London edited by the author, i. 278 " Looking at Life," i. 335, 361 Lord Mayor's Shows, li. 124 Loseby, Miss Constance, in Wat Ty- ler, ii. 137 Lowe, Mr., correspondent of the Times in Moscow, ii. 329 Lowe, General Edward, ii. 280 Lowe, Sir Hudson, ii. 280, 281 Lowe, James, i. 313 Lucas, Mr. Samuel, i. 319 Lucrezia Borgia as represented by "Vic- tor Hugo, ii. 88, 89 Lucy, Mr. H. W., and Colonel Fred Burnaby, ii. 279 Lumbago, treatment for, ii. 321, 322 Lumbley, Mr. Benjamin, as a special constable, i. 183 ; kindness to the author, 249 ; his connection with La- porte and lesseeship of Her Majes- ty's Theatre, 249, 250 Lush, Mr. Justice, ii. 219 Lutz, Herr Meyer, ii. 210 Lyceum Theatre, i. 57 Lyons, condition in September, 1870, ii. 181 Lyons, Lord, ii. 168, 177 Lytton, Lord, and his novels, i. 84, 86 Macaulay, Dr., i. 312, 313 Macdonald, Sir James, ii. 31 , Macfarren, G. A . i. 78 Macgahan, Alexander, ii. 274, 275 Mackay, Charles, ii. 19 Maclise, Daniel, at Gore House, i. 45 Macmahon, Marshal, ii. 158, 166 Macready, William Charles, i. 49, 98 ; as Brutus, 138 ; as Othello, 154, 15s ; his temper at rehearsals, 153-157 ; as Cardinal Wolsey, 155, 156 ; his priv- ate character, 157, 158 ; and Hem- ming's mistake, 167, 168 Macron, John, publisher, and the copyright of " Sketches by Boz," i. 144 Maddox, Mr. John Medex, i. 66, 67 ; lesseeship of the Princess's Thea- tre, 124-129 ; gives employment to the author, 149 ; and Macready, 158 Madrid, the carnival, 47, 49-53 : clitnate in winter, 225, 226 ; entry of King Alfonso, 229, 230 INDEX 369 Magee, D'Arcy, ii. 28 Maginn, Dr. William, i. 86; ii. 75 Mahomet, Mr. Frederick, i. 168, 169 Maidstone, private execution at, ii. 122, 123 " Make your Game," i. 326 Malaga, ii. 58 Malahide, Lord Talbot de, i. 378 Malet, Sir Edward, ii. 24 Malibran, Marie Felicie, i. 27, 28 ; in the Maid 0/ Artois, 48; death, 50 Alan in ike Moon, The : its editors, i. 163 ; author employed as draughts- man, 163 ; contributions by Angus Reach, 167 ; financiers and editorial office, 169, 170 ; Robert Brough's contributions, 170 ; sketches by Hine, 170 ; vignette of constable and civilian, 185 " Manhattan," ii. 20 Manin, Daniel, ii. 76 Mantua, ii. 86 Marble, Mr. Manton, ii. 33 Mario, Madame Jesse Merriton White, ii. 74, 80 Marriott, Frederick, proprietor of Chat, i. 181, 182 ; his Death War- rant, Railway Dell, and other journalistic ventures, 192, 193 ; edits San Francisco News Letter, ii. 314 Marseilles : its improvement under Napoleon III., ii. 40 Marston, Mrs. H., i. 190 Martin, Lady Theodore, i. 50, 174 Mason, Monk, inmate of the Charter House, i. 125 Masters of the Ceremonies at Brighton and other places, i. 27 Matthews, Charles : incident of the debt of seven-and-sixpence, and the dinner at Willis's Rooms, i. 158, 159 ; in Clarissa Harlowe, 160 ; at the Lyceum, 162 Matthews, Charles James, portraits by, i. 32 Maude, VC, Colonel, ii. 262 Maxwell, Mr. John, i. 82 ; and the starting of Temple Bar, 358 ; ii. 17, 200 Mayhew, Athol, ii. 164 Mayhew, Augustus, on the staff of the Illustrated Times, i. 270 ; and the Rugeley murder, 271, 272; goes to Homburg with the author, 323, 324 Mayhew, Henry, his " London Labour and London Poor," i. 166; war correspondent at Metz, ii. 161, 164 Mayhew, Horace, i. 168 Mayhew, Julius, i. 51 ; journalistic ventures of himself and his brothers, 95 Mayne, Sir Richard, i. 260 ; ii. 10 Mazzini, Giuseppe, his letters operved at the General Post Office, i. 287 McGarell, Mr., guardian of Mrs. A. J. J. Sala before marriage, i. 4 McMurdo, General, i. 95 Mead, Mr. Tom, i. 190 Medex, Mr. Samuel, i. 124 Meiningen Troupe, The, at Drury Lane, i. 141 Melbourne, author's lecturing visit to, ii. 343. 344 Mellon, Harriet {see St. Albans, j Duchess of) ! Memory, cultivation and discipline of the, i. 8, 18 Menken, Miss Ada Isaacs, her per- formance of Mazeppa, her volume of poems, &c. , i. 194; hallucination with regard to her real name, 195 Mentone, ii. 296 Metz : condition on the eve of the Franco-Prussian War, ii. 158 ; as- semblage of war correspondents, 160; supposed spies, 161, 164 Meux, Sir Henry, i. 36, ii. 251 Michau, Madame, i. 25, 26 Milan, ii. 67 ; scene in Opera House on the eve of war with Austria, 68. 69 ; branches of the Sala family, 69 Miller, Thomas, "the basket-weaving poet," i. 188 Milman, Dean, at the Duke of Wel- lington's funeral, i. 260 Milton, Dr. Johnson's opinion of his appearance, i. 44 11.^ — 24 370 INDEX Mitchell, M. Robert, and English war corresiiondents, ii. 155 Monaco, i. 229 ; ii. 43 Monck, Lord, ii. 27 Moncrieff, — , dramatic author, i. 125 Mont Cenis Railway, ii. 61, 62 Monte Carlo, ii. 293, 294 Montes, Lola, i. 194, 195 Montmorency, Falls of, ii. 30 Montreal, ii. 24-26, 31 Moore, Thomas, i. 47, 58 Morison, Peter, of the Bank of De- posit, finances London, 279, 280 Morinng Advertiser under the editor- ship of James Grant, ii. 14 Morning- Chronicle, i. 327 Morning Herald, i. 55 Morning Post^ i. 55 ; article on au- thor's letter to the Times on balloon- ing, 247, 248 Aforning Star, ii. 19 Morris, Mr. Lewis, comparative mer- its as a poet, ii. 3 Morris, Mr. William, comparative mer- its as a poet, ii 3, 68 Morton, Madison, his death at the Ciiarter House, i. 125 ; and Box and Cox, 161 Mosaics of St. Sophia mosque, ii. 270 Nfoscow, ii. 259 ; coronation of Alex- ander III., 325-332 Mowatt, Mrs. Cora, at the Olympic Theatre, i. igo Murat, King of Naples, i. 295 Murders by Thurtell, Greenacre, and others, i. 82-87 Murillo's picture of '' San Juan de Dios," i. 206 Murray, Miss, i. 57 Mussulman school. A, i. 70 " My Diary in America in the Midst of War," ii. 36 Naples : journey from Rome, ii. 104, 105 Napoleon the Great, i. 125 ; the ques- tion of his justification for returning to France from Elba, ii. 194, 195; Sir Hudson Lowe's custodianship of him, 2S0, 281 Napoleon, Prince Jerome, ii. 114 Napoleon, Louis : his costume at Gore House, i. 46; his Boulogne expedi- tion, 112; as special constable, 183; and the Duke of Brunswick, 196 ; as President of the French Repub- lic, 211; his coup d'etat, 253; at- tempt on his life by Orsini, 351 ; and the Crimean War, ii. 35, 36 ; progress through Algeria, 40, 41, 43 ; the au- thor's audience of him, 41 ; and the Austro-ltalian War, 74, 81 ; the cession of Venice, 94 ; and Pierre Bonaparte, 141 ; and war corre- spondents, 154, 155 ; leaves Metz for the front, 166; funeral at Chisle- hurst, 209, 210 Nassau balloon, i. 125, 247 Nathan, Mr., costumier, i. 139 Nelson, Marsh, i. 125 Nerot's Hotel, i. 53 New Orleans, ii. 309, 310 New York : Gallenga's description, ii. 19; hotels, 22, 23 ; Delmonico's and La Maison Doree, 33 ; authors lecturing visit, 336,337; the Lotus Club, 336 Newgate novels, i. 80-88 Niagara, ii. 23, 24, 91, 92 Nice, ii. 43, 293, 294 Night houses, i. 335-337 Nightingale, Miss Florence, ii. 35 Nisbett, Mrs., in the Love Chase, i. 96 " No Popery " agitation, The, i. 214 Noir, Victor, killed by Pierre Bona- parte, ii. 142, 145 Norfolk, Duchess of, i. 98 Norton, Hon. Caroline, i. 25 Novels, Newgate, i. 80-88 O'Connor, Feargus, i. 182 Odessa, ii. 262-266 Ogden, ii. 311, 312 Old Bell's Messenger, i. 197 Old lady, her inevitable presence at public meetings, i. 241 INDEX 371 Ollivier, M. Emile, and the Franco- Prussian War, ii. 158 Olympic Theatre, i. 93 Omaha, ii. 311 Once a Week, i. 318, 319 Onslow, M.P. , Mr. Guildford, ii. 130 Oran, ii. 42 Orleans, Duke of, and the purchase of a ringlet from Lady Harriet D'Or- say, i. Ill Orsini, Felice, his attempt to assassi- nate Napoleon III., i. 351 O'Shea, Mr. John Augustus, ii. 161- 164 O.xenford, John, a rhyme on the ups and downs of families, by, i. 3 ; his review of " A Journey Due North," 323 " Paddy Green's," i. 263 Padua, ii. 67; the Cafe Pedrocchi, 86 Paganini, generosity to Mrs. A. J. J. Sala, i. 30 ; story respecting his sin- gle-string concerts, 28, 29 Paget, Lord Alfred, i. ir, 345 Palmerston, Viscount, and the lines on the death of his wife, i. 20 Palmerston, Viscount, Foreign Secre- tary, speech on the Don Pacifico question, i. 223 Panorama of London at the Colos- seum, i. 67 Panton, Colonel, i. 336 Paolo, Fra, assassination of, ii. 94 " Papal Aggression," i. 214, 215 Paper duty. The, i. 319. 322 Paris: author's school days at the Pension He'non, i. 106-113 ; the The- atre Comte, 107, 108 ; a concert at the Salon Frascati given by author's mother, 108, 109 ; ta.x on receipts at theatres, 109 ; Lady Harriet D'Orsay andher ringlet. Ill ; rumours of war with England, 112, 113; disturb- ances outside the British Embassy, 113 ; after the Revolution of 1848, 179, 180, 211, 212 ; Louis Napoleon's coup d'etat, 254 ; the Rue aux Feves and the " Lapin Blanc," 255 ; Inter- national Exhibition of 1867, ii. 106- 113 ; visit of Sultan Abdul Aziz, 114- 117 ; Berezowski's attempt on the Tsar's life, 117 ; condition on the eve of the war with Prussia, 155-158 ; spy mania, 168 el seq. ; Revolution of 4th September, 178 ; International Exhibition of 1878, 306 " Paris herself Again," ii. 306 Parkinson, Joseph Charles, i. 350, 367 ; ii. 122, 168, 306 Parr, Dr., and his "private slaughter houses," i. 102 Parry, John, i. 96 Parry, Serjeant, ii. 199, 200 Paten, Miss, i. 129 Patti, Madame Adelina, ii. 260, 415 Pavilion, The, Brighton, and the royal kitchens, i. 11 Pearce, Mr., correspondent at Con- stantinople of the Daily iVews, ii. 274 Peel, Sir Robert, his death, character, and the respect of the people for him, i. 222-224 ; and the title of the Conservative Magazine^ 224, 225 Pemberton, "Kit," war correspon- dent, ii. 152, 153 " Penny Dreadfuls," their owner, i. 1-73. 174 " Penny papers," prejudice against, i. 321, 332, 333 Penny postage system, i. 122, 123 Periodicals edited by Mr. Gilbert a Beckett, i. 94 Perry, Mr., Consul-General at Venice, ii. 66, 67 Pcrsano, Admiral, and the Italian de- feat at Lissa, ii, 81, 82 Perugia, ii. 99 " Pestalozzian " system, The, i. 134 Peter the Great, apocryphal will of, ii. 254 Petticoat Lane, drawings by Mr. Keeley Halswelle of scenes in, i. 268, 269 Phelps, Samuel, i. 190 Phillips, Sir Benjamin, his kindness to Shirley Brooks, ii. 247-249 n^ INDEX Phillips, Henry, basso in Maid of A r- tois, i. 49 Phillips, Watts, author of the Dead Heart, i. 172 ; pupil of George Cruik- shank, 172 ; ii. 134 ; varied gifts and character, 134-136; and the "Claim- ant," 207, 208 '• Phiz " {see Browne, Hablot K. ) " Pickwick," excitement created by, i. 74 " Pic-nic Papers, The," i. 144 Pigott and his confession at Mr. La- bouchere's. ii. 350-353 Pions in French schools, i. 106, 107 Pitt, William, and Nerot's Hotel, i. 53 Plantulli, M., Gas'ihaXdi's aide-de-camp, ii. 84, 85 Planche' as " stock-author," i. 93 Poets, modern, their comparative merits, ii. 3 Pole, Lady, and Mrs. A. J. J. Sala, i. 22 Pompeii, ii. 104 Pond, Mr. Richard Radcliffe, adver- tisement manager of the Conserva- tive Magazine, i. 225 ; ii. 137 Portch, Mr. Julian, i. 323 Porter, General Horace, ii. 336 Post-houses in Russia, ii. 263 Poverty as a school for compassion, i. 204-209 Power, Miss, and Tetnple Bar, i, 358 Power, Harold, i. 51 Power, Tyrone, i. 51, 98 Princess's Theatre, i. 57, 93 ; under the lesseeship of Mr. John Mede.x Maddox, 124, 126-130 ; cost of erec- tion, 125, 126 ; the ballerine, 142 ; author's employment there, 150, 151 ; engagements of Macready and Fan- ny Kemble, 150, 151 ; performance of the A'ight Dancers, 151 ; of Cherry and Fairstar, 165 ; production of Billy Taylor, 252, 253 ; Corsican Brothers, 255-257 Private theatricals at Charles Dick- ens's house, i. 92 ; at Bolton House Academy, 137 Prussia : war with France, ii. 152-167 ; Punch and Shirley Brooks's " Our Flight with Punch," i. 165; Birket- Foster's travesty, 171 ; ridicules pro- posed balloon expedition to the .\rctic Regions, 239 ; ridicules the volunteers, 350 Punchinello, i. 264 ; ii. 137 Purchase system in the army, ii. 198 Puzzi, Madame, i. 41 Quebec, ii. 27-30 Queen's Bench Prison, i. 128 Queen's Theatre, ii. 133, 134 "Quite Alone," ii. 18 Qui.xote, Don, country of, ii. 55, 56 Raglan, Lord, i. 39 Railway mania of 1845, i. 147, 148, 199, 200 Rainbow Tavern, i. 327 Rainforth, Miss, in Artaxerxes, i. 59 ; in the Beggars Opera, 60 Ranelagh, Lord, ii. 83 Rassam, Mr, Hormuzd, ii. 282, 283 Ravenscroft, Mr. Francis, i. 99, 100 Ravogli, Giulia, i. 44 Reach, Angus Bethune, and the Man in the Moon, i. 163-165 ; his numer- ous productions and energy, 166, 167. 393 Reade, Mr., Consul at Tunis, ii. 280, 281 Reade, Charles, i. 95 Red Cross Ambulance system and its promoter, ii. 42 "Red Lion " Club, i. 333 Red Sea : colour of water, ii. 268 Reed, Mrs. German, i. 58 Reeve, John, i. 368 Reeves, Mr. Sims, i. 317 Reform Club, ii. 5 Reichstadt, Duke of, ii. 64 Religious toleration at Constantinople, instance of, ii. 289, 290 Reunion Club, i. 262 " Reynard the Fo.x," i. 176 Reynoldson, "stock-author," at the Princess's Theatre, i. 160, 161 INDEX 373 Richmond (Virginia), ii. 308, 309 Richmond, Mr. W. B., ii. 305 Rignold. Mr. George, ii. 335, 343 Rivers, Lord, ii. 130 Roberts, Mr. Thomas, ii. 129 Rochefort, M. Henri, at the trial of Pierre Bonaparte, ii. 142, 144, 147, 148 " Rock-scorpions," ii. 244 Rome : railway station and Custom House, ii. 99 ; Hotel d'Angleterre, 100 ; differences in its condition in 1866 and 1894, loi, 102 ; Colosseum, loi ; the Pope amongst the people, 102 ; currency, 102 ; portraits of Beatrice Cenci, 103, 104 ; evacuated by the French, 183 ; entry of Italian troops through the "hole in the wall," 185; departure of foreign legionaries, 189 ; Hotel d'Angle- terre, 190 ; choosing a Provisional Government, 191 ; the plebdiscitum, 191 ; entry of General La Marmora and papal protests, 191, 192 Romer, Miss, i. 59, 170 Romer, Frank, i. 170 Romer, William, i. 173 Rosebery, Lord, i. 363 ; ii. 303, 304, 335 Ross, Sir John, i, 24, 25 Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, i. 339 Rothschild, Mr. Leopold de, ii.304 Royal Academy of Music and the an- nual ball, i. 76 Rugeley murder, The, and the Illus- trated Titiics^ i. 271 Russell, Lord John, caricatured in Punch as Jack Sheppard, i. 171 ; his " Durham Letter," 214 Russell, John .Scott, i. 344, 345 Russell, Dr. William Howard, i. 322, 333; ii. II, 20, 34, 35. 39, 83. 154, 243 Russia : the author's visit, i. 286-305 ; opening letters of foreigners, 287 ; the use of the knout, 290, 291 ; ob- literating paragraphs in newspapers, 292, 293 ; author's second expedi- tion, ii. 253 ; climate and devices to ensure warmth, 259, 260 ; sledge- travelling, 263 ; post-houses, 263 ; paper currency, 266 ; former regu- lations for the departure of foreign- ers, 352, 353 ; murder of Alexander II., 316; coronation of Alexander III-. 325. 330-332; change in mil- itary costumes, 326, 327 ; liberality of the Government towards foreign representatives of the press, 327 Ryder, John, his friendship with Ma- cready, i. 157; in Clarissa Harlcnuc, 160 Sacramento City, ii. 312 Sadler's Wells Theatre : Mrs. War- ner's Shakespearean characters, i. 190 St. Albans, Duchess of, at Brighton, i. 24 St. George, Miss Julia, i. 190 Saint Georges, M., and Les Puits d' Amour, i. 123 St. James's Theatre ; site and cost of building, i. 53; opening, 54; per- formance of Artaxerxes, 59-61 ; per- formance of the Beggar's Opera, 60 ; burlesques, 64 ; The Rerolt of the Workhouse, 64, 65 ; French operas. 65 ; frequenters of the green- room, 92-96 St. John, Horace, i. 331, 332 St. John, James Augustus, i. 331 St. Martin's Hall, ii. 132, 133 St. Paul's Cathedral : thanksgiving service on the Prince of Wales's re- storation to health, ii. 205 ; internal characteristics, 205, 206 .St. Petersburg : journey from Berlin, i. 285, 286 ; opening letters at the Post Office, 287 ; Hotel Heyde, 288, 289, 291 ; infliction of punishment with the knout, 290, 291 ; obliterat- ing newspaper paragraphs, 392, 393 ; the Bolschoi Morskaia, 393 ; the Maison Martius, 293-297 ; ball at the Russian Legation, 298, 299 ; the Russian Boyard, 301 ; glimpses of Russian character, 302, J/ 4 J/ INDEX 303 ; a professor of natural history, 303 ; water parties on the Neva, 305 ; author's second expedition, ii. 253-267 ; a singular specimen of an interpreter, 256-259 ; an American lady's opinion of the city, 259; mur- der of Alexander II., 316; a tasty dish at a tad/e d'hote, 318 St. Sauveur, General de, interview with English newspaper correspond- ents, ii. 163, 164 St. Thomas's Hospital, Opening of, ii. 205 Sala, Cardinal, i. 2 Sala, Count, ii. 255 Sala, or Salla, Mile., ii. 318, 319 Sala, Albert, i. 4, 75, 99, 131, 218 Sala, Miss Augusta, author's sister, i. 3, 13. IS. 17. 51. 57. 66, 75, 97, 99, loi, 130, 218, 409 Sala, Augustus John' James, author's father, i. i ; his declining fortunes, 32, 23 ; death, 23 Sala, Madame A. J. J., author's moth- er, i. 3 ; parentage and school days, 4-6 ; her study of English literature, 6; "At Homes" at Brighton, 20, 21 ; portrait, 21 ; first appearance at Covcnt Garden Theatre, 22 ; pupil of Velluti, 23 ; adopts the musical profession, 23 ; royal pat- ronage, 23 ; some of her pupils, 36 ; an unexpected meeting with the Duke of Wellington, 38 ; some of her London friends, 41-52 ; as singer and actress at St. James's Theatre, 53, 59 ; in Tom Thumb, 61 ; in Guy IMatmerhig, 61 ; danc- ing the " Cachucha," 62; per- forms at the Colosseum, 68 ; in the Love Chase, 96 ; illness, 97 ; date of death and place of interment, 97; benefit at the Haymarket Theatre, 98 ; partiality for the lash in domes- tic discipline, 102 ; gives a concert at the Salon Frascati, Paris, 108, 109 ; at the Theatre Royal, Dover, 114, 118-120; at the Princess's Thea- tre, 124 ; kindness to the ballerine. 142 ; resumes the teaching of sing- ing, 153 ; returns to Brighton, 163 ; her son, Charles Kerrison, on re- tiring from the stage, resides with her, 258 ; gives a concert in Lon- don, 317 Sala, Charles Kerrison, i. 4, 97, 99, loi, 118, 131 ; engagement at the Princess's Theatre, 152, 153-157, 219 ; writes a pantomime in conjunc- tion with his brother and Mr. George Ellis, 252 ; in the Corsicari Brothers^ 256 ; at the Surrey Theatre, 256, 257 ; retirement from the stage and death, 258 Sala, Claudio Sebastiano, author's grandfather, i. I, 2 Sala, Miss Eliza, afterwards Mrs. Crel- lin, i. 103. 143, 144, 145, 218 Sala, Frederick, i. 3, 47 ; a student at the Royal Academy of Music, 76 ; costume, 76 ; musical training in Paris, 77, 78, 98, 99; settles at High Wycombe, 131, 261 Sala, George Augustus : birthplace, i. I ; parentage and descent, 1-7 ; his study of great theologians, 6 ; god- father and godmothers, 6 ; early cultivation of memory, 8 ; reminis- cences of North Audley Street, 9 ; sent to Edgware, 9 ; blindness, 10, 15 ; partial restoration of sight, 15; learning to read and write, 15, 16; his retentive memory, 17, 48, 49 ; recollections of childhood, at Brigh- ton, 19-30 ; death of his father, 22, 23 ; politics, 23 ; early recollections of Baroness Burdett-Coutts, 24 ; "lent out" at Brighton, 26; at Cricklewood, 31-33 ; dislike of the pianoforte, 35 ; a reminiscence of the Duke of Wellington, 38; at Gore House in childliood, 44-46; recollections of performances at Drury Lane Theatre, 48-50 ; in Re- gent Street, 51 ; plays as " Mr. William Watling " at St. James's Theatre, 56 ; places of residence after marriage, 57 ; aversion to sing- INDEX 375 ing and reciting, 60 ; models a scene in L' Ambassudrice, b6; first acquaint- ance with Dickens and his works, 74i 75 ; early association with eldest brother, 77-79 ; at school in Paris, 77.78; "playing at Dickens," 80; early studies in literature, 87 ; re- ceives lessons in public speaking from Lord Brougham, 87 ; writes a tragedy in boyhood, 81 ; familiarity with the green-room, 88-96 ; a pall- bearer at George Cruikshanks fun- eral, 95 ; recollections of his moth- er's benefit at the Haymarket Thea- tre, 98 ; recollections of household servants, 97 ; mistaken for his broth- ers, 118 ; early education, 100-102 ; liking for Greek, loi ; aversion to the discipline of English schools, 102 ; experiences under corporal punishment, 102 ; nervous illness, 103 ; sent to a school in Paris, 104 ; schoolboy life in Paris, 106-113 ; some of his school-fellows, 108 ; evenings at the apartments of Lady Harriet D'Orsay, no, in; returns to England, 113, 114 ; writes a novel at the age of thirteen, 115 ; resi- dence at Dover, 114-120 ; visit to Heme Bay and return to London, 121 ; behind the scenes at the Prin- cess's Theatre, 127 ; lack of scholas- tic teaching, 132 ; education and rec- reations at Bolton House School, 133-141 ; school examination, and dramatic performance at Hanover Square Rooms, 138-141 ; dislike for the German language, 141 ; hero- worship of Napoleon, 141 ; works at a miniature painter's, 142 ; making up tradesmen's books, 143, 147 ; drawing railway plans, 147, 148 ; painting for George Wieland, 148 ; assistant to W. R. Beverly and ]. M. Maddox, 149 ; writes the libretto of The Bride of Castelnuovo, 151 ; translates Une Chambre a deux Lits, 161 ; helps \V. Beverly at the Ly- ceum, 162 ; poverty, 163 ; commis- sioned by Albert Smith to draw for the Ma7i in the Moon, 163 ; in the coffee-room of the Cafe de I'Europe. 168, 169; Illustrates a "Bowl of Punch," 170, 171 ; advice given to him by George Cruikshank, 172 ; employed by Mr. Calvert to illus- trate " Penny Dreadfuls," 173, 174 ; illustrates Bunn's "Word with Punch," 176; draws for the Lady's Newspaper, 176 ; collecting crazes, 176, 177 ; learns to etch, 177, 178 ; first appearance in print, 178 ; at the performance of Monte Crista, 180, 181 ; contributes to Chat, and is appointed editor, 181, 182; sworn a special constable, 182 ; his "Aus- tralian Nights' Entertainment " and " Natural History of Beggars," 188 ; dramatic criticism, 189 ; recollec- tions of Pierce Egan the Elder, 202- 204 ; poverty again, 204-209 ; salary as editor of Chat, 209 ; sells a quack medicine, 209, 210 ; a trip to Paris, 211-212 ; publishes "Hail, Rain, Steam and Speed," 212; friendship with the Abercorn family, 213; a "No Popery" commission from Messrs. Ackermann, 214 : " the Great Exhibition wot is to be," 216, 217 ; receives a legacy, 218 ; angling in the Upper Thames, 219, 220 ; in Buckingham Street, 220; starts the Conservative Alagazitie, 222 226 ; political convictions with regard to France, 225 ; dislike of mountainoui scenery, 229 ; gambling adventure with Mr. " Hopeful "and Dr. .Strauss at Aix-la-Chapelle, 227-234 ; pre- pares a new comic panorama of the Great F^xhibition, 234, 246; visits Paris with Dr. Strauss, 234 ; trip to Lancashire and the Isle of Man, 234, 235 ; buys a share in a Ijalloon, 238 ; writes a lecture for Lieutenant Gale, 239; in the money-taker's Ijox at the balloon-meeting at Hull, 241, 242 ; i)aints a panorama for " Soy- cr's Symposium," 243, 244 ; connec- \^6 INDEX tion with Soyer, 244, 245 ; at the Great Exhibition, 245 ; in a balloon accident, 246, 247 ; letter to the Times on balloon ascents, 247, 248 ; decides to give up art and to qual- ify himself for journalism, 248, 249 ; friendship with Mr. Lumley, 249; first article in Household Words and his long connection with that per- iodical, 251 ; articled to an en- graver, 252 ; writes in conjunction with his brother and Mr. G. Ellis, a pantomime for the Princess's The- atre, 252 ; visits Paris on the day of Louis Napoleon's coup d'etat, 253- 25s ; production of his version of the Frlres Corses at the Surrey Theatre, 255, 256 ; executes a panoramic view of the funeral procession of the Duke of Wellington, 259, 260 ; at the Duke's funeral, 260; trip to Paris, 260; lotus-eating, 259-281; his lecture on the French coup d'etat, 262; member of the Reunion Club, 262 ; one of the founders of the Sav- age Club, 263 ; writes for Punchi- nello, 264 ; one of the originators of __the Leave Us Alone Club, 266, 267 ; reflections on the interference of social reformers, 267 ; a visit to Pet- ticoat Lane with Mr, Keeley Hals- welle, 267, 268 ; first acquaintance with Edmund Yates, 269, 270; writes for the Illustrated Times, 269, 270 ; Hannay's epigram on " S. and B.," 274 ; on hard work, 278 ; becomes editor of Lotidon, 279; project for a large English hotel, 280, 281 ; in Paris again (1856), 282 ; commis- sioned by Dickens to visit St. Peters- burg and Moscow, and to write ar- ticles for Household IVords on his experiences, 283 ; his travelling com- panion to Berlin, 283, 284; quarters in St. Petersburg, 288, 289, 291 ; at Brussels, writing his articles on Russia for Household Words, 305, 306 ; a quarrel with Dickens, 309, 310, 311 ; the number of articles written for Household Words, 310 ; " Haddington Peerage," and " How I Tamed Mrs. Cruiser," 313, 314; first visit to the offices of the Daily Telegraph, 315, 316 ; writes for Wel- come Guest, 317, 326 ; visit to Paris, 317 ; reconciliation with Dickens and contributions to All the Year Rojind, 322; publishes "A Journey Due North," 322, 323 ; a gambling ad- venture at Homburg, 323, 324 ; "Make Your Game," and "Twice Round the Clock," 326, 327; a din- ner at Edmund Yates's, 328, 329 ; early work on the Daily Telegraph, 329, 330 ; politics, 330 ; mode of working, 331, 332; adventure in a night house, 335-337 ; marriage, 338 ; domestic cookery, 341, 342 ; a trip on the Great Eastern, 344-350 ; volunteer review, 350-354; "Ho- garth Papers " in Cornhill Magazine, 354, 355, 356, 358; starts Temple Bar Magazine, 358 ; his writings criticised in the Saturday Review, 360; "The Seven Sons of Mam- mon," "Gaslight and Daylight," " Looking at Life," "Lady Chester- field's Letters to her Daughter," 361 ; income, 364-366 ; remarks on his style, 363, 364 ; devotes himself entirely to journalism, 365, 366 ; in- cident at Leeds, 365 ; long connec- tion with the Daily Telegraph, 365 ; residence at Upton Court, 369-373 ; at the Prince Consort's funeral, 374 ; at the International Exhibition of 1862, 375, 376; addresses a meeting in the Chapter House, Westminster, 376-378 ; elected a member of the Reform Club, ii. 5 ; at the wedding of the Prince and Princess of Wales, 7-16 ; special correspondent for Daily Telegraph in America during the war, 18-34; a trip to Barbary, 36, 39-44 ; interview with Napoleon III., 41; at Homburg again, 44; Continental journey, 45-47 ; travels in Spain, 47-60; war correspondent INDEX 377 in Italy, 66 ct seq. ; interview with Garibaldi, 71 ; in Northern Italy, 86, 87 ; at Ferrara, 87-89, 90 ; in Venice, 92-98 ; experiences in Rome in 1866, 99-105 ; in Paris during the Exhibition of 1S67, 106-113; resi- dence at Putney, 122 ; introduction to iVfr. Henry Labouchere, 132 ; "Breakfast in Bed," 136; at Hom- burg again, 137; Wat Tyler^ 137- 139 ; at the trial of Pierre Bonaparte, i4o-i5rf correspondent in the war of 1870, 152-167 ; in Paris on the eve of the war, 155-157 ; at Metz, 158- 167 ; arrested in Paris as a spy, 171- 178 ; leaves Paris for Geneva, 180- 182 ; enters Rome with Italian army, 185 ; recalled to England, 192 ; on the ethics of the occupation of Rome, 193, 193, 194 ; plaintiff in a libel action, 196-202 ; in Berlin, 202- 204 ; at the funeral of Napoleon III., 209, 210 ; illness, 210-215 ; at Thomas Castro's trial for perjury, 216-221 ; a second visit to Spain, 222-244 ; 'n ^ train attacked by Carlists, 238-240 ; visits Gibraltar, 243, 244 ; a second visit to Algeria, 244 ; advocates the demolition of Temple Bar, 250-252 ; another expedition to Russia, 253- 267 ; at St. Petersburg, 254-259 ; at Moscow, 259 ; at Warsaw, 260- 262 ; travelling to Odessa, 262-266 ; experiences in Constantinople, 268- 289 ; visit to Athens, 291-293 ; at Nice and Monte Carlo, 293-296 ; in Mecklenburgh Square, 299-307; sec- ond visit to United States, 308-315 ; mission to St. Petersburg on the murder of the Tsar, 316-324 ; at the coronation of Alexander III. at Mos- cow, 325-332 ; lecturing tour in the United States, 333-340; in Australia and New Zealand, 342-346 ; at Hon- olulu, 340, 341 ; his wife's death, 347. 348 ; visit to India and return to England, 349, 350 ; witness to Pigott's confession at Mr. Labouchere's, 350- 353 ; second marriage, 354 Sala, Henrietta, i. 3 -Sala, Miss Sophia, i. 103, 144, 145, 211, 218 Salisbury, Marquis of, Ambassador- Extraordinary at Constantinople, ii. 279 Salt Lake City, ii. 312 San Francisco : Palace Hotel and hos- pitality, ii. 312 ; streets, Chinese restaurant and theatres, 313, 314 ; the Neijus Letter and its editor, 314 ; Golden Gates, 315 ; author's lectur- ing visit, 340 Sansbury, Mr. .leader of orchestra at St. James's Theatre, i, 6i Saturday Review on the Daily Tele- graph, i. 360 : its criticisms on the author's writings, 360 Saumarez, Mr. Do, ii. 177 Savage Club, first meeting place, i. 263, 316 Schiller, Mr. Carl, miniature painter, i. 142, 143, 166 ; ii. 247 Schuyler, Eugene, ii. 275, 276, 290, 337 Scots Fusiliers at Brighton, and the hospitahty of Mrs. A.J. J. Sfila, i. 19, 20 Scott, — , artist, of Brighton, i. 100 Scott, Mr. Clement, i. go, 364. 367, note Scott, Sir Gilbert, i. 379 Scribe, M. , and Les Putts d' Amoin\ i. 123 Scudamore, Frank Ives, ii. 277, 278 "Seven Sons of Mammon, The," i. 361 ; ii. 3 Seville, ii. 59, 241 Seymour, Hon. Mr., i. 298 Shakespeare said to have been the original ghost in Hamlet, i. 118, 119 ; his knowledge of Northern Italy, ii. 87 Sheehan, John, i. 125 Shepherd, Mr. Richard, i. 258 Sheridan, General " Phil," ii. 337 Sheridan, Mrs. Thomas, the daugh- ters of, i. 25 Sherman, General, ii. 337 378 INDEX ShirrefF, Miss, i. 59 Siddons, Mrs., as Queen Katliarine, i. 45 Simon, Henrietta Catherina Floren- tina (see Sala, Mrs, A. J. J.) Simpson, Mr., lessee of Cremone Gar- dens, i. 58 Simpson, Mr., of the Illustrated Lon- don News ^ ii. 161, 164 Simpson's Cigar Divan, i. 220 Sims, Mr. G. R., his remuneration as a dramatist, i. 94 Sledge travelling in Russia, ii. 262- 266 Smart, Hawley, ii. 29 Smith, Albert, i. 129 ; and the Man in the Moon, 163, 165; at home, 164; character, 164, 165 ; gives author a commission for the Man in the Moon, 165, 199 ; some of his books, 170; in a balloon accident, 247; on "The Great Hotel Question," 280 Smith, Arthur, i. 318 Smith, Mr. George, i. 356, 357 Soane, George, and the Night Danc- ers, i. 151 Society : customs at the beginning of the century and now, i. 20, 21 ; ladies' toilettes, 45 ; costumes of dandies, 46, 76, 77 Solitary cell. The, in French schools, i. 106 Somerset, Duchess of (formerly Lady Seymour), i. 25 Somerset, Lord Fitzroy (see Raglan, Lord) Songs, Old, i. 35, 47 Sotheby, T. H., and Temple Bar, i. 358 " Sothern, Edward Askew, ii. 136, 315 Soyer, Alexis, i. 46 ; his restaurant at Gore House, 243 ; ii. 35 " Soyer's Symposium," i. 244-246 Spain: Revolution, ii. 47 ; the author's travels, 47-60; railways, 53, 54 I au- thor's second visit, 221, 244 Spandau, Fortress of, and its French prisoners of war, ii. 203, 204 Spencer, Lord, and the jacket called by his name, i. 191 Spy mania in Metz, ii. 161-164 : '» Paris, 168 ct scq. "Stags," i. 173 Stamboul, view from the Bosphorus of, ii. 268, 269 Standard Theatre, i. 162 Stanhope, Countess, i. 98 .Stanley, Miss, at St. James's Tlieatre, i. 60 State carriage, The, and its cost, ii. 125 Steele, Dr. |. P., ii. 211-213 Stettin, i. 286 Stirling, Mrs., i. 64, 221 "Stock-authors," i. 93, 94, 160, 161 Stone, Mr., i. 97 Strachan, Sir Richard, lampooned in an epigram, ii. 84 Strand Music Hall, ii. 137 Strand Theatre, i. 160, 192 Strasburg, ii. 43 Stiauss, Dr. Gustave Liidwig Moritz, and the Charter House, i. 125, 126 ; his article in the Cofiservative Maga- zine, 225 ; accompanies author to Aix-la-Chapelle, 227, 234 Strickland, — (Van Burn), at St. James's Theatre, i. 60 Sultan Mahmoud, his importation of foreign musicians and anecdote of his musical tastes, i. 42, 43 Sunday Times, i. 305, 331 Sunday trading. Lord Robert Gros- vcnor's Bill for the suppression of, i. 265 Surrey Theatre : appearance of Ir.a Aldridge, negro tragedian, i. 189; production of Tlie Corsicans, 258 Sutherland, Duchess of, i. 98 ; ii. 79 Sutherland, Duke of, and the Great Eastern accident, i. 345, 347 ; ii. 306, 307 Swearing in polite society, i. 33 Swinburne, Mr. Algernon Charles, ii. 3 Sydney, author's lecturing visit to, ii. 344 INDEX 379 Tables d'hote and English tourists, ii. io6, 107 'I'aine, Henri, ii. log Talmage, Rev. De Witt, ii, 337 Tamlmrini, i. 43 ; at a concert in Paris, no. 113 Taylor, Sir Henry, and his drama Philip von Artevelde, i. 158 Taylor, Tom, ii. 245, 246 Taylor, Miss (afterwards Mrs. Walter Lacy), i. 98 Temple Bar : its demolition advocated in the Daily Telegraph, ii. 250; re- moval to Theobald's Park, 252 ; sculpture memorial and commemo- rative medal, 252, 253 Temple Bar Magazine and John Shee- han, i. 129; its commencement, 358 Templeton, tenor in Maid of Artois, i. 49 ; at the Princess's Theatre, 129 Tennant, Sir Emerson, opinion of Sir Hudson Lowe, ii. 281 Tennyson, Lord, and the lines, "Form, form, riflemen, form," etc., '■ 352 Ternan, Mrs., i. 190 Thackeray, his " Catherine : a Story," i. 85 ; charged in Ireland with libel- ling Miss Catherine Hayes, 86, 147, y^T- 339. 357 ; and the autograph book at New Orleans, ii. 310 The'atre Comte, i. 107, loS Theatricals, private, at Charles Dick- ens's house, i. 92 ; at Bolton House Academy, 137 Thie'blin, Nicholas, ii. 162 Thillon, Madame Anna, at the Prin- cess's Theatre, i. 66, 129 Thomas, Mr. W. Moy, i. 90 Thompson, Mr. Alfred, of the Daily Xews, ii. 328 'Ihornton, Sir Edward, ii. 308 Thorwaldsen Museum, i. 285 Thrale, Mrs. Hester, mother of Lady Keith, i. 7 ; home at Southwark, 36 ; compared with Countess Walde- grave, 87 Tichborne Case, The, ii. 130, 131, 206- 208, 216-219 Tierney, Sir Matthew, i. 8 Times, The, authors letter on balloon- ing, i. 247, 248 ; on the Sunday Closing Bill, 265 ; review of " A Journey Due North," 325 Tinsley, Edward, i. 353, 354 Tobacco at public dinners, i. 334 ; ii. 6 Toilette of ladies, i. 45 Toledo, ii. 49 Tomlins, Mr. Frederick Guest, i. 187 Toole, Mr. John Lawrence, ii. 127, 128, 136; in Wat Tyler, 138 Toulon : arrival of Sultan Abdul Aziz on his way to Paris, ii. 114 Trench, Archbishop, i. 377 Train, George Francis, ii. 18, 19 Train, The, started by Edmund Yates and others, i. 278, 284 " Trainband Society," The, i. 284 Trieste, ii. 63, 65 Tupper, Martin Farquhar, lines attri- buted to him, i. 352 Turner's pictures of Venice, ii. 65 Twain, Mark, ii. 339 " Twice Round the Clock," i. 326, 327 Uhlans, Prussian, ii. 179 Unetellc, Madame la Baronne, ii. 296, 297 Uniform of Household Brigade, i. 34 Upton Court, i. 369-373 Valentine, Henry, his stories of act- ors, i. 186 Vaughan, Cardinal, i. 215 ; ii. 190 Velluti, i. 23 Venice : encounter between a rat and a crab, ii. 62, 63 ; as represented by various artists, 65 ; the state of siege, 84, 85; Caflfe Florian, 86; dialect, 93 ; on the eve of the Austrian evacuation, 92, 93 ; transference to France and entry of Italian troops, 93p 94 ; result of the plcbiscitum, 95 ; Fenice Theatre, 95, 96 ; entry of Victor Emmanuel, 97, 98 ; character of the people, 94 ; illumination ot St. Mark's Place, 98 ; and Austrian trade, 189 ;8o INDEX Venta de Cardenas, ii. 55-57 Verona, ii. 67; tomb of Juliet, 87 Vestris, Madame, in Marriaj^c of Fi- garo^ i. 22 ; at the Princess's. 158 ; at the Lyceum, 162 Veztprt', Madame Jenny, and St. James's Theatre, i. 58 Vicenza, ii. 67 Victoria, Queen, and Madame A. J. J. Sala's concerts, i. 23; and Mrs. Sala's benefit at the Haymarket Theatre, 98 ; -reviewing the volun- teers, 350-354 ; at the Prince of Wales's wedding, ii. 15 ; state car- riage, 125 ; opens St. Thomas's Hospital, 205 Vienna, ii. 63 Villemessant, M., ii. 109 Villiers, Hon. Mrs. Georgina, one of the author's godmothers, i. 6 Vizetelly, Henry, i. 171 ; his connec- tion with the Illustrated Times. 270 ; goes to Homburg with the author, 323. 324 Vizetelly, James, i. 171 Volunteers : rise and growth of the movement, i. 350 ; review in Hyde Park, 350-354 ; ridicule of Punch, 350 ; presentation to the Queen at Buckingham Palace, 354 Waddy, Q. C, Mr., i. 365 Wagga - Wagga, author's lecturing visit to, ii. 345 Waldegrave, Countess, i. 63, 73, 74 Wales, Prince of, and smoking at pub- lic dinners, ii. 6 ; his wedding, 7-15 ; his illness and recovery, 205, 206 ; at Gibraltar, 243 ; presentation of the author, 304 ; at the funeral of Alexander II., 323 Walker, Dr., "Graveyard Walker," i. 244 and note Walkinshaw, Misses, i. 166 ; ii. 247 Wallack, Henry, lessee of Theatre Royal, Dover, i. 115 Wallack, James, i. 115 Wallack, Lester, i. 115 Waller, Sir Wathen, i. 11 Walpole, Horace, and his lap-dog, ii. 61 War correspondent, the first, ii. 83 Ward, Mrs., of St. Petersburg, i. 293, 297, 298, 303, 316 Ward, Miss Genevieve, i. 284, 298, 303, 317 ; ii. 342, 346, 348, 349 Ward, Samuel, ii. 32, 33 Warner, Mrs., at Sadler's Wells Theatre, i. 190 Warsaw, ii. 260-262 Washington, ii. 337 Wat Tyler, ii. 137-139 Waterloo : how the battle was won. i. 135, 136 ; and war correspondents, 83 Waterloo hero at Cricklewood, The, i- 33 W.atts, Mr. G. F. , ii. 305 Weber, a water-colour drawing of, i. 32 Webster, Benjamin, i. 96 Weiss, Mr., and his "shape," i. 128 Welcome Guest, i. 314, 326, 335 Wellington, Duke of, and Mrs. A. J. J. Sala, i. 38-40; battle of Waterloo and Eton, 135, 136 ; preparations for quelling expected chartist riot, 183, 254 : funeral, 260 West, Mrs. W., i. 62 Westminster, Marchioness of, i. 98 Westminster, Marquis of, i. 36 Weston, Mr. Edward, ii. 214 White, Sir William, ii. 279, 285, 286 Whitecross Street Prison, i. 127 Whitehurst, Mr. Felix, ii. 114, 117, 154, 229 Whittaker, Mr., edUor oi Levant Her- ald, ii. 290 Wieland, George, i. 148 Wigan, Alfred, and the author's ju- venile tragedy, i. 81, 95, 96 ; in the Corsicati Brothers, 257 ; ii. 133 Wilberforce, Bishop, i. 378 Wilde, Mr. Oscar, i. 46 Wilholmshohe, ii. 46 Wilks, Mr., publisher of Chat, i. 1S2 " Will " of Peter the Great, ii. 254 William I., Emperor, at the Paris Ex- INDEX S8l hibition of 1867, ii. 120 ; his event- ful career, 120, 121 William IV. and Nerot's Hotel, i. 53 William of Orange, the ethics of his invasion of England, ii. 194 Williams, Q. C, Montagu, his resem- blance to Charles II., i. 256; au- thor's counsel in libel suit, ii. 199 Williams, Mr. Otho, ii. 338 Williams, Sir William Fenwick, ii. 24 Wills, Mr. W. H. , managing editor of Household Words, i. 254, 307, 311 Windsor Castle, kitchens at, i. 11 ; and the death of the Prince Consort, •■ 374- Wingfield, Lewis, i. 360 ; ii. 299, 300, 413 Winstanley, Mrs., i. 190 Wiseman, Cardinal, i. 215 Wolff, M. Albert, ii, 109 Wolseley, Lord, ii. 24, at the corona- tion of Tsar Alexander III., 328, 331 Women as soldiers, i. 296 Wood, Mr. and Mrs., at the Princess's Theatre, i. 129 Woods, Nicholas, ii. 160 Woolner, Mr. T., ii. 305 " Word with Punch, A," i. 176 Worth, Battle of, ii- i£6 Wren, Sir Christopher, and Temple Bar, ii. 250 Wrench, Mr., British Vice-Consul at Constantinople, ii. 290 Wright, — , comedian at the Princess's Theatre, i. 129 Wyatt, Matthew Digby, i. 245 Wynn, — , professional name of Charles Kerrison Sala, i. 153 Yates, Edmund, i. 51, 75 ; his allusion to private theatricals at Charles Dickens's London residence, 92 ; author's first acquaintance with him. 269, 277 ; contributions to the Illus- trated Times, 270 ; edits the Comu Times. 277; one of the founders of the Train, 278, 284 ; president of the " Trainband society," 284, 307, 315, 328, 329 ; as a volunteer, 354 ; sub-editor of Temple Bar, 359 ; ii. 3, 4, 122, 306 Yates, Frederick, lessee of Adelphi ; Theatre, i. 92 Young, Mr. George Frederick, ii. 25 Zangwill, Mr. , his descriptions of He- brew life at the East End, i. 268 UNIVERSIT ) 03 jut 1^ 2 1st rm L9-Series 49 =0 %OJnV>JO>' ^- ^^Awaaii^' ^^{: ) ^OFCAL .v> '"7- -\^