- 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 University of California. 
 
 Class 
 
 
 
 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2007 with funding from 
 
 IVIicrosoft Corporation 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/amongmyautographOOsimsrich 
 
GEORGE R. SIMS'S BOOKS 
 
 Post 8vo, illustrated boards, 2S. each ; cloth limp, 2S. 6d. each. 
 THE RING O' BELLS. 
 TINKLETOP'S CRIME. 
 ZEPH: A Circus Story, etc. 
 DRAMAS OF LIFE. With 60 Illustrations. 
 MY TWO WIVES. 
 TALES OF TO-DAY. 
 MEMOIRS OF A LANDLADY. 
 SCENES FROM THE SHOW. 
 THE TEN COMMANDMENTS. 
 
 Crown 8vo, picture cover, is. each ; cloth, is. 6d. each. 
 THE DAGONET RECITER AND READER: Being 
 
 Readings and Recitations in Prose and Verse selected from his own 
 
 Works by George R. Sims. 
 DAGONET DITTIES. (From The Referee.) 
 THE CASE OF GEORGE CANDLEMAS. 
 YOUNG MRS. CAUDLE. 
 
 HOW THE POOR LIVE, and HORRIBLE LONDON. 
 
 With a Frontispiece by F. Barnard. Crown 8vo, leatherette, is. 
 
 DAGONET DRAMAS OF THE DAY. Crown 8vo, is. 
 
 Crown Svo, cloth, 3s. 6d. each ; post Bvo, picture boards, 2s. each ; 
 cloth limp, 2S. 6d. each. 
 
 MARY JANE'S MEMOIRS. 
 MARY JANE MARRIED. 
 DAGONET ABROAD. 
 
 Crown Svo, cloth, 3s. 6d. each. 
 
 ONCE UPON A CHRISTMAS TIME. With 8 Illustra- 
 tions by Charles Green, R.I. 
 
 A BLIND MARRIAGE. 
 
 WITHOUT THE LIMELIGHT: Theatrical Life as it is. 
 
 THE SMALL-PART LADY, Etc. 
 
 BIOGRAPHS OF BABYLON: Life Pictures of London's 
 Moving Scenes. 
 
 ROGUES AND VAGABONDS. Crown Svo, cloth, 3s. 6d. ; 
 
 picture cloth, flat back, 2s. ; post Bvo, illustrated boards, 2s. cloth, 2s, 6d. 
 IN LONDON'S HEART: A Story of To-day. Crown Svo, 
 cloth, 3s. 6d. ; picture cloth, flat back, 2s. 
 
 AMONG MY AUTOGRAPHS. With 70 Facsimiles. Square 
 
 8vo, cloth, 3s. 6d. 
 
 London : CHATTO & WINDUS, m St. Martin's Lane, W.C. 
 
AMONG MY 
 AUTOGRAPHS 
 
AMONG MY 
 AUTOGRAPHS 
 
 BY 
 
 GEORGE R. SIMS 
 
 It 
 
 WITH SEVENTY FACSIMILES 
 
 
 LONDON 
 
 CHATTO & WINDUS 
 1904 
 
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LIST OF AUTOGRAPHS 
 
 Page 
 
 William Wordsworth 2, 3 
 
 Samuel Rogers 3, 5 
 
 Thomas Campbell 6 
 
 Bulwer Lytton 8 
 
 Charles Reade 13 
 
 D. G. Rossetti 15 
 
 Harrison Ainsworth 19 
 
 Florence Marryat 23, 24 
 
 Douglas Jerrold 26 
 
 Albert Smith ....... 28 
 
 Charles Dickens 31 
 
 George Cruikshank 35 
 
 Charles Dickens, jun. ..... 37 
 
 Bret Harte 43 
 
 ^A^illiam Black . . . . . . .46 
 
 Dr. John Brown 48 
 
 Robert Buchanan 51, 55, 57 
 
 Edmund Yates 61 
 
 Dutton Cook 65 
 
 John Forster 67 
 
 Sir Walter Besant 7i» 72 
 
 F. W. Robinson 75 
 
 George Augustus Sala . . . .81, 83, 85 
 
 General Boulanger 89 
 
 Henri Rochefort 90 
 
 Walter Thornbury 93 
 
 John B. Buckstone .,.,.. 96 
 
 226740 
 
VI 
 
 LIST OF AUTOGRAPHS 
 
 Benjamin Webster . 
 Sheridan Knowles . 
 William Ewart Gladstone 
 
 
 
 
 • 
 
 Page 
 100 
 102 
 105 
 
 John Stuart Mill 
 Viscount Amberley . 
 M. E. Braddon . 
 
 
 
 
 . 109 
 
 III 
 
 . 114 
 
 Ouida .... 
 A. C. Swinburne 
 
 
 
 
 115 
 . 116 
 
 E. Lynn Linton .... 
 
 Austin Dobson 
 
 Marie Corelli 
 
 H. M. Stanley 
 
 George IV. when Prince of Wales 
 William IV. when Duke of Clarence 
 
 . 118 
 • "9 
 121 
 122 
 . 126 
 . 129 
 
 Duke of Sussex . 
 Walter Savage Landor 
 Martin F. Tupper 
 Lord Tennyson 
 F. B. Courvoisier 
 Herbert J. Bennett . 
 
 
 
 
 . 131 
 
 134, 135 
 
 . 140 
 
 • 141 
 
 • 145 
 . 146 
 
 Mrs. Dyer . 
 Edgar Edwards 
 William Chambers . 
 
 
 
 
 148, 149 
 
 152, 153 
 
 • 158 
 
 Henry Pettitt 
 Paul Meritt 
 Henry J. Byron. 
 Sir Francis Burnand 
 
 
 
 
 
 161 
 
 163 
 164 
 
 166 
 
 Robert Reece 
 
 
 
 
 
 167 
 
 Arthur W. Pinero . 
 Henry Arthur Jones 
 Henry Herman . 
 Sydney Grundy. 
 
 
 
 
 ■ 
 
 170 
 171 
 173 
 175 
 
AMONG MY AUTOGRAPHS 
 
 There are no half-hours in my library so pleasant as 
 those in which I go to the bookshelves that hold my 
 little collection of first or early editions, the value of 
 most of them enhanced for me by the autograph of the 
 author, which I have been able to insert in the prized 
 volume. 
 
 To embellish a good book with the letter of the man 
 who gave it to the world has been a delight of mine 
 from my youth upwards. The hand that wrote the 
 lines I read has been cold in the grave this many a 
 year, but the words on the faded note-paper are still as 
 the master penned them, and often they give a truer 
 index to the man than all he wrote for print and re- 
 read and corrected as he passed it for press. Even 
 where no clue to character is contained in the author's 
 letter, there are little everyday details and incidents 
 which reveal in a few lines more than all the pages of 
 the professional biographer. 
 
2 AMONG MY AUTOGRAPHS 
 
 I take from my bookshelf a volume bound in faded 
 brown cloth. On the title-page I read " The Poems of 
 William Wordsworth, Poet Laureate, etc. etc." It is 
 the edition published by Edward Moxon in 1847, and it 
 was once a dearly valued copy, for in it, in a neat hand- 
 writing, is this dedication : 
 
 /^/?C?cJ^, 
 
 /^t>^^:^/K./S49' 
 
 In 1847, the year in which this volume was pub- 
 lished, Wordsworth suffered a terrible domestic 
 calamity in the death of his only daughter, Dora, Mrs. 
 Quillinan. Edward Quillinan, her husband, was left a 
 widower with two daughters, and Dora Wordsworth 
 was his second wife. It was two years after her step- 
 mother's death that Mr. Quillinan presented the 
 volume of Wordsworth which is now mine to his 
 daughter Jemima. A year later Wordsworth himself 
 had passed away, and was buried by the side of Mrs. 
 Quillinan in the beautiful churchyard of Grasmere. 
 
 In this volume I have inserted a letter written by 
 Wordsworth himself to " Miss Constable, 16 Cunning- 
 ham Place, St. John's Wood, London." Miss Constable 
 
WORDSAXJ^ORTH 3 
 
 was the daughter of John Constable, and the poet's 
 letter glows with appreciation of the great artist's 
 work. 
 
 Here is the letter, and a portion of it reproduced in 
 facsimile : 
 
 Mr. Wordsworth presents his compliments to the 
 Misses Constable, and thanks them for the acceptable 
 present of the Memoirs of their Father's life, which he 
 
 has just received. He lost no time in perusing the 
 book, with which on many accounts he has been much 
 interested. Mr. Wordsworth had the pleasure of 
 making Mr. Constable's acquaintance when he visited 
 this country long ago ; and through their common 
 friend. Sir George Beaumont, used often to hear of 
 him, though he had not the good fortune to fall in with 
 him, till the latter part of his life, when they met with 
 mutual pleasure. The engravings with which the 
 memoirs are illustrated are very striking, and eminently 
 characteristic of the painter's mind. Mr. W. was not 
 
4 AMONG MY AUTOGRAPHS 
 
 unacquainted with these works, and Mr. Constable had 
 gratified him with a copy of his " English Landscape," a 
 work most honourable to his genius. Pity that he did 
 not prolong his stay in this beautiful country, so that 
 we might have had its features reflected by his pencil. 
 
 Rydal Mount, June 6, 1844. 
 
 " Italy : A Poem by Samuel Rogers," was published 
 m its completed form in 1830, and I have the first 
 edition. Samuel Rogers was a wealthy man, a man of 
 taste and letters, and a liberal patron of the arts. The 
 letter of his which I have placed in " Italy " came into 
 my possession many years ago. It is written to Miss 
 Flaxman : 
 
 My dear Miss Flaxman, — My house shall always 
 open its doors to you and your friends, and I need not 
 say how much I feel flattered by your application. 
 
 May I venture to name Monday next ? On that day, 
 and at two o'clock or thereabouts (unless I hear from 
 you to the contrary), your ladies will perhaps have the 
 goodness to come. — Yours very sincerely, 
 
 Samuel Rogers. 
 
 St. James's Place, Thursday, June 28, 1832. 
 
 The breakfast-parties at St. James's Place were 
 famous. Round the poet's table gathered the wits of 
 the day. Rogers himself was the sayer of many smart 
 
SAMUEL ROGERS 5 
 
 things. Lord Dudley (Ward) had been rather unkind 
 in his criticisms of the poet, and Rogers retaliated with 
 an epigram which has remained famous to this day : 
 
 "Ward has no heart they say — but I deny it. 
 "Ward has a heart, and gets his speeches by it. 
 
 Sydney Smith used to say that if Rogers was writing 
 a few verses the street was strewn with straw, the 
 
 
 knocker was tied up, and the answer to the tender 
 inquiries of anxious friends was that Mr. Rogers was as 
 well as could be expected. 
 
 Samuel Rogers, when over ninety, found his greatest 
 delight in sitting at the window and watching the 
 changing colours of the evening sky. He died of slow 
 decay, unaccompanied by suffering, at St. James's 
 Place, in 1855. 
 
 # # # # # 
 
 My edition of " The Poetical Works of Thomas 
 
6 AMONG MY AUTOGRAPHS 
 
 Campbell" was issued by Moxon in 1837. The letter 
 I have inserted is addressed to Robert Hannay, and is 
 dated the 8th of September 1832. The statement con- 
 tained in the letter with regard to " The Mariners of 
 England," a national lyric of the sea which will endure 
 while the English language lasts, is interesting : 
 
 Sir, — I thank you for your good opinion of " The 
 Mariners of England," but they were composed, not 
 at the request of a friend, but at the impulse of Callcott's 
 
 
 ^^^/i^y^^v4^?-^ 
 
 glorious tune, "Ye Gentlemen of England." I was 
 flattered to hear that when Dr. Callcolt first saw my 
 words he instantly adopted them to accompany his air, 
 and he left behind him the words and music copied out 
 with his own hand. — I remain, sir, your very obedt. 
 servant. 
 
 Thos. Campbell. 
 
 As *' The Mariners " was originally written two lines 
 ran as follows — 
 
THOMAS CAMPBELL 7 
 
 Where Blake, the boast of freedom, fell 
 Your manly hearts shall glow. 
 
 Nelson was then ahve. "When Nelson was killed the 
 first line of the above was changed to — 
 
 Where Blake and mighty Nelson fell. 
 
 Campbell saw the battle of Ratisbon, and was by the 
 scene inspired to write his realistic " Battle of Hohen- 
 linden," which was fought some months after he had 
 left Bavaria. The poet, whose war songs and lyrics 
 sound the noblest note of patriotism, died in 1844, and 
 was buried in Westminster Abbey, some of the most 
 eminent noblemen and statesmen of the day attending 
 the ceremony, which partook of a national character. 
 * # # ■ # # 
 
 " The Last Days of Pompeii " was originally published 
 in three volumes by Bentley, in 1834, in plain, common- 
 place covers which would certainly not attract on the 
 bookstalls to-day. The letter I have inserted in the 
 first volume is addressed by the author to Mr= L. C. 
 Gent, of Manchester : 
 
 Sir, — You are welcome to insert the poem you 
 mention, " Last Days of Elizabeth," in your collection. 
 
 I am much flattered by your obliging reference to my 
 
 poems. — Yours, 
 
 E. B. Lytton. 
 Knebworth, Stevenage, Sept. i86i. 
 
8 
 
 AMONG MY AUTOGRAPHS 
 
 Bulwer Lytton was born in Baker Street, and I never 
 pass the house, No. 31, without wondering why no 
 
 s- 
 
 
 /W/ 
 
 tablet recording the fact has been fixed up. The only 
 memento of it is the name of " Lytton House," which is 
 painted up over the business premises which constitute 
 the ground-floor. Lytton was an amazingly industrious 
 
BULWER LYTTON 9 
 
 man ; he was always " writing something " or " doing 
 something." He earned fame as a poet and a politician, 
 as a novelist and a satirist, as a dramatist and as a 
 dandy. In this connection he was somewhat severely 
 handled by Tennyson. In " The New Timon," pub- 
 Hshed in 1845, Lytton referred to a certain "school 
 miss Alfred," and 
 
 The jingling medley of purloined conceits. 
 Out-babying Wordsworth and out-glittering Keats. 
 
 Immediately afterwards some scathing lines about 
 Lytton appeared in " Punch," and it has always been 
 understood that " Miss Alfred" wrote them. Here are 
 two verses : 
 
 Who killed the girls and thrilled the boys 
 With dandy pathos when you wrote ; 
 
 O Lion, you that made a noise 
 And shook a mane " en papillote." 
 
 What profits now to understand 
 
 The merits of a spotless shirt, 
 A dapper boot, a little hand. 
 
 If half the little soul is dirt ! 
 
 Bulwer Lytton wrote almost to the last hour of his 
 
10 AMONG MY AUTOGRAPHS 
 
 life. He had just completed a novel, " Kenelm 
 Chillingly," when he was seized with a great agony, 
 which proved fatal in three days. He died in 1873, 
 leaving behind him an tmf inished romance which was 
 completed by his son in 1876. 
 
II 
 
 One of the literary heroes of my youth was Charles 
 Reade. As a novelist he appealed to me strongly, but 
 it was as a dramatist that I knew him best. He was 
 always a fierce fighter, and his sturdy independence in 
 the theatrical world led to many a Homeric struggle. 
 He produced " Gold " in 1850, and out of his prison 
 studies grew the famous "It's Never Too Late to 
 Mend," a drama produced at the Princess's Theatre in 
 1865, in which was the grim scene which caused 
 Frederick Guest Tomlins, the dramatic critic of the 
 '* Morning Advertiser," to rise in his stall on the first 
 night and make a public protest against what he called 
 " its brutal realism " — a realism which was milk and 
 water compared with the scenes to which we are 
 frequently introduced in the melodrama of to-day. 
 
 I remember Reade's fierce denunciation of the un- 
 fortunate scenic artist who had painted him a cornfield 
 for " Dora," of which he disapproved ; his vigorous 
 attack on the critics who objected to " The Wandering 
 
12 AMONG MY AUTOGRAPHS 
 
 Heir" ; and the rage with which he deounced Leopold 
 Lewis and Alfred Thompson for their assertion, in that 
 wonderful production " The Mask," that Reade and 
 Boucicault had taken the plot of " Foul Play " from " Le 
 Portefeuille Rouge." 
 
 I did not know Charles Reade personally until he 
 came to the Adelphi years afterwards as the collaborator 
 of Henry Pettitt in a play called " Love or Money." It 
 was not a great success, and after the curtain was down 
 I met Reade behind the scenes and was introduced to 
 him. He had an enormous bouquet in his hand, and 
 was looking about for the leading lady in order to 
 present it to her. But something happened, and he 
 gave the bouquet to Pettitt to hold, and Pettitt gave it 
 to me to take care of while he went to find some one 
 else. Presently Reade came back with Pettitt, and we 
 talked together about the coal-mine scene in the play, 
 and certain alterations which Reade thought would 
 benefit it. I do not think Pettitt quite agreed with 
 Reade, and at any rate they walked off the stage 
 together arguing, and left me with the bouquet. 
 
 By this time the leading lady had gone home. I 
 went to the front of the house. Reade had gone. I 
 offered the bouquet to Pettitt. He said he was going 
 to the club and could not take it, so I had better 
 keep it. I took it home to my domestic circle, and 
 when it faded I took one flower and pressed it 
 
CHARLES READE 13 
 
 between the leaves of a book as a souvenir of Charles 
 Reade. 
 
 That book was the first edition of " Peg "Woffington," 
 published by Bentley in 1853. In it I have since 
 inserted a letter of Reade's, and also a slip of paper, 
 here reproduced : 
 
 Opera Comique. 
 
 Feb. 5. 
 
 Two to upper boxes. 
 
 By consent of Mr. Hingston. 
 
 Charles Reade 
 
 (Author). 
 
 /^ ^^^.^^-^^^^^T"/ 
 
 It was the custom in those days for dramatic authors 
 to give passes to theatres in which they were not 
 interested. The Mr. Hingston here mentioned was 
 E. P. Hingston, who was the agent at one time of 
 
14 AMONG MY AUTOGRAPHS 
 
 Artemus Ward, the genial showman, who lectured in 
 London in 1867. Hingston was manager of the Opera 
 Comique in 1872. "Ward, in 1868, lay ill in a street off 
 the Strand, and a literary friend of mine went one night 
 to see him. The genial showman was in a rapid 
 consumption, a disease to which he soon afterwards 
 succumbed at Southampton. But sitting about in his 
 bedroom the Bohemian visitors were smoking their 
 pipes. The scene I witnessed was a strange one, and it 
 is vividly recalled to my mind as I look at the words 
 " Opera Comique," and " By consent of Mr. Hingston." 
 " Peg "Woffington " was founded on " Masks and 
 Faces," the play which Reade had written with Tom 
 Taylor. The book is dedicated "To T. Taylor, Esq., 
 my friend and coadjutor in the comedy of ' Masks and 
 Faces,' and to the memory of Margaret Woffington, 
 falsely ' summed up ' until to-day." 
 
 The next volume I take down from my bookshelf is 
 in marked contrast to the realism of Reade. " Ballads 
 and Sonnets by Dante Gabriel Rossetti " is dedicated 
 to Theodore Watts, " the friend whom my verse has 
 won for me." Rossetti, painter and poet, impatient of 
 the technicalities of Academy training, applied to Ford 
 Madox-Brown for lessons. Madox-Brown set him to 
 paint pickle-jars. But at the house of the master he 
 
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI 15 
 
 met Holman Hunt, Woolner, and Millais, and thus 
 
 originated the Pre-Raphaelite school, of which Rossetti 
 
16 AMONG MY AUTOGRAPHS 
 
 is so striking an example. At present he is perhaps 
 best known to the general public by his "Blessed 
 Damozel." His poetry, like his painting, was Pre- 
 Raphaelite in subject and method of treatment. In the 
 first edition of the " Ballads and Sonnets " I have a 
 letter by him to a friend who had told him of a female 
 model : 
 
 My dear Knewstub, — Thanks for the photo, which 
 is very successful. I am glad you have remained thus 
 long in your present healthy neighbourhood, and hope 
 things are looking somewhat brighter. 
 
 I remember F mentioned many months back to 
 
 me that you had spoken of a very promising model who 
 was willing to sit. Do you still know of her where- 
 abouts ? — Yours truly, 
 
 D. G. Rossetti. 
 
 Mr. W. J. Knewstub, to whom this letter is addressed, 
 in 1862 joined Rossetti at Cheyne "Walk as something 
 between a pupil and artistic assistant. Mr. William 
 Michael Rossetti, in his interesting " Rossetti Papers," 
 recently published, says of him, " As quasi-pupil he 
 paid a sum down, but as quasi-assistant he did not 
 receive any salary." Dante Gabriel Rossetti, who was 
 marvellously happy in his "nonsense" verse, wrote of 
 his pupil-assistant : 
 
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI 17 
 
 There is a young artist named Knewstub 
 Who for personal cleaning will use tub, 
 
 But in matters of paint 
 
 Not the holiest saint 
 "Was ever so dirty as Knewstub. 
 
 All the Rossettis, children of that Gabriel Rossetti 
 who fled from Naples in the days of Bourbon rule, and, 
 settling in England, became Professor of Italian at 
 King's College, mside themselves names in literature ; 
 but Dante and his sister Christina Georgina were the 
 more famous. It was Rossetti who was fiercely attacked 
 by Robert Buchanan in his article " The Fleshly School 
 of Poetry," to which Swinburne replied in " Under the 
 Microscope " with a wrath and bitterness which have 
 never been equalled in a literary quarrel. Buchanan 
 in after Hfe regretted his attack on Rossetti, and made 
 heartfelt amends in his later years. He told me once 
 that it was the incident of his literary career which he 
 most deeply deplored, 
 
 Rossetti married, in 1860, the lady who had been his 
 model for " Beatrice." She was consumptive, and died 
 in 1862. The poet buried his MS. in her coffin, but 
 was persuaded to disinter it in 1869. He died at 
 Birchington-on-Sea in 1882. Among those who were 
 with him in his last hours were Mr. Hall Caine and Mr. 
 Watts-Dunton, the friend to whom his "Ballads and 
 Sonnets " are dedicated. 
 
 B 
 
18 AMONG MY AUTOGRAPHS 
 
 At the present moment a remarkable work, " A Girl 
 Among the Anarchists," has once more brought the 
 name famous in the world of art and letters prominently 
 before the public. The authoress is a daughter of 
 WilHam Michael Rossetti, a brother of Dante Gabriel, 
 himself one of the Pre-Raphaelites, and a delightful 
 "litterateur." 
 
 " The Tower of London," the novel of Harrison 
 Ains worth which Cruikshank illustrated with some of 
 his best work, was long in my possession in the original 
 monthly parts in which it was issued. Some years 
 ago I had the parts bound, preserving the covers in the 
 volume, and inserting letters of Ainsworth's and Cruik- 
 shank's. With Cruikshank I propose to deal in connec- 
 tion with " Oliver Twist " and the autograph letters I 
 possess of Charles Dickens. Here I will only reproduce 
 a portion of Harrison Ainsworth's letter : 
 
 5 Arundel Terrace, 
 
 Kemp Town, Brighton, 
 
 June lo, 1861. 
 
 My dear Sir,— I am quite shocked to think how 
 long I have allowed your last very obliging note to 
 remain unanswered. But I have been exceedingly busy 
 of late, and have put off from day to day a large 
 accumulation of correspondence, until its bulk has quite 
 terrified me. I don't think I shall resume my pohtical 
 
\{J^ILLIAM HARRISON AINS>iXi^ORTH 19 
 
 articles in " Bentley " just at present, but I am obliged 
 by your offer of aid in this respect, and on some future 
 occasion I shall be delighted to avail myself of it. 
 
 Towards the end of the month I shall be in town, and 
 
 I 
 
 I may then have an opportunity of meeting you and 
 talking matters over. 
 
 Believe me, 
 
 Very truly yours, 
 
 W. Harrison Ainsworth. 
 
 Ains worth took a public, weary of the stupidities of 
 the fashionable novel, by storm with his "Rookwood," 
 and his account of Dick Turpin's ride to York was 
 considered then, as it is now, a wonderful piece of de- 
 scriptive writing. " Jack Sheppard," also marvellously 
 
20 AMONG MY AUTOGRAPHS 
 
 illustrated by Cruikshank, was received by the critics 
 with knitted brows. It undoubtedly glorified a mean 
 and vulgar thief. It was popular on the stage for many 
 years, but several times it was suggested that the Lord 
 Chamberlain ought to prohibit a performance which 
 could not fail to have a demoralising effect on youth. 
 Ainsworth was a prolific — almost a terrific — writer. 
 In 1881, when he was seventy-seven years of age, a 
 banquet was given him in Manchester, his native town, 
 by the Mayor. In a speech the Mayor said that there 
 were 250 volumes of Mr. Ainsworth's writings in the 
 Manchester PubUc Library. Ainsworth died the 
 following year. The public congratulation by his 
 native town may be considered the close of his long 
 and prosperous career. 
 
Ill 
 
 It was all on a wild March morning, in 1890, that I saw 
 a lady, panting and distressed, but still running along, 
 close to my house in Regent's Park. She managed to 
 gasp out, " Stop, thief ! " and then she had to stand still 
 to recover her breath. I looked about, but saw no 
 thief. He had long since made his escape. Then I 
 went across the road to the lady, and inquired if I 
 could be of any assistance. 
 
 The lady was Florence Marryat, daughter of the 
 great nautical novelist who had been the dehght of my 
 youth. There was a time when I knew "Japhet in 
 Search of a Father " almost by heart, and could have 
 told you what every chapter in " Snarleyow, the Dog 
 Fiend," was about. Many a night had " The Phantom 
 Ship" haunted my dreams in my school days, and 
 "Masterman Ready" had seemed to me a very much 
 more interesting work than anything the Latin authors 
 that were being constantly drummed into my head had 
 ever written. 
 
22 AMONG MY AUTOGRAPHS 
 
 Florence Marryat told me her story. A man had 
 stolen her purse, and she had endeavoured to pursue 
 him. I asked her to come into my house and rest, and 
 she sat for a little time in my study. Looking at my 
 bookcases, she noticed that I had several first editions 
 of her father's works. I had only one little letter of the 
 Captain's, and that was not of very great interest. " If 
 you like," said Miss Marryat, " I will send you one of 
 my father's letters to put in a book, and also some 
 pages of his manuscript." 
 
 The charming authoress kept her word, and to-day, 
 in my fio-st edition of "The Pirate and the Three 
 Cutters," I have not only a page of the Captain's neat 
 manuscript, but the following letter : — 
 
 Friday " good." 
 
 My dear Fan, — I have done your business and hold a 
 bill at 3 months for £150. .. . 
 
 I have signed the receipt in your husband's name, for 
 it appears that all a wife does or produces out of her 
 brain is the property of her husband, and that she has 
 no claim to it. All she can do is to put her head in 
 Chancery — i.e.^ do nothing. 
 
 Now send me all instructions and I shall obey. As 
 for your compunctions to receive the £150 (which, by- 
 the-bye, I perceive all very much reduced in the post- 
 script) I can only say that if you had had so much to 
 do with Booksellers as I have, you would be aware of 
 the propriety to take all you can get without " remorse.'' 
 
FLORENCE MARRYAT 
 
 23 
 
 I have just let the part of Langham 400 acres to a good 
 responsible man for 12 years. He intends being a 
 Decoy Man to work the Lake, and he not only gives me 
 a high rent for the land, but £90 a year for the right 
 of fishing and taking ducks, etc. The other part I can 
 let with ease, as it is just the farm people like, and I 
 have raised my rent from £540 a year to £900 and 
 more as near as I can estimate. Not bad in such 
 times as these. 
 
 God bless you, old girl. — Yours ever truly, 
 
 F. Marryat. 
 
 /e^>^^ 
 
 ^^^x*^ 
 
 ^- ^^l^' 
 
 "The Pirate and the Three Cutters" was published 
 by Longmans in 1836, and is illustrated with en- 
 gravings from drawings by Clarkson Stanfield, R.A. 
 Marryat, the most popular sea-novelist we have ever 
 had, saw plenty of active service before he settled 
 down to fiction and farming. But he did better with 
 the former than the latter. He made a fortune by his 
 novels, and his receipts from farming one year were 
 £154 2s. 9d., and his expenses £1657 Os. 6d. 
 
 The first part of the letter I have given refers to 
 
24 AMONG MY AUTOGRAPHS 
 
 fiction, for it refers to publishers. The latter portion is 
 interesting because of the mention of "decoy." The 
 Captain had at one time a hobby. He flooded some 
 hundreds of acres of his best grazing ground, got his 
 
 /J^jfU. .^^-^ ^^-^^ 
 
 
 decoy into full working order, so as to send some 
 thousands of birds up to the London market ; " and 
 then he drained it again." Captain Marry at died at 
 Langham, in Norfolk, the place mentioned in the above 
 letter, August 9, 1848. 
 
FLORENCE MARRY AT 25 
 
 Florence Marryat was herself a distinguished 
 novelist. Her early works were delightful. Her later 
 ones dealt largely with spiritualism, in which she was 
 a firm believer. Shortly before her death she told her 
 friends that on a given day of a given year she would 
 try to return, to prove that " there is no death." That 
 was the title of one of her later novels. The letter I 
 give below is bound up in a charming specimen of her 
 earlier style, " Her Lord and Master." 
 
 Dear Mr. Sims, — I send you with much pleasure an 
 autograph letter of my father's (I have only three, all 
 of the same size) and a page of his MS. of "The 
 Poacher," also the Is. you kindly lent me — and a 
 thousand thanks for the kindness with which you 
 received me to-day. — Yours very truly, 
 
 Florence Marryat. 
 
 The shilling referred to was the result of the thief 
 having left the lady without the wherewithal to pay her 
 fare back to "West Kensington. 
 
 A humourist of a different character from Marryat 
 was Douglas Jerrold, but I take them together, for 
 Jerrold's "Black-Eyed Susan" is the most popular 
 play that was ever written around nautical characters 
 in harbour. And Douglas Jerrold was in his earlier 
 yiears nautical too. His father was an actor, and the 
 
26 AMONG MY AUTOGRAPHS 
 
 lessee of Sheemess Theatre. Before he was ten years 
 old Douglas Jerrold wore his Majesty King George's 
 uniform as a volunteer on board the good ship 
 " Namur." He left the sea and worked as a printer. 
 During these years his greatest friend was Laman 
 Blanchard, the author. I have the first edition of 
 Jerrold' s " Punch's Letters to His Son," published by 
 Orr and Co., of Paternoster Row, in 1843. It is the copy 
 presented by Douglas Jerrold himself to the son of 
 Laman Blanchard. 
 
 To his young friend Sidney Blanchard, son of his 
 
 " oldest." 
 With Douglas Jerrold's best wishes and sincerest 
 
 regards. 
 Jan. 1843. 
 
 Jerrold's plays, like all his writings, are filled with 
 witty sayings. The "mots" of Jerrold are part of our 
 literature. He said scores of clever things which are put 
 down to other people. In 1852 Jerrold became editor 
 of *' Lloyd's " at a salary of £1000 a year. His drama, 
 
DOUGLAS JERROLD 27 
 
 " Black-Eyed Susan," ran for three hundred nights. It 
 is on record that the sum received by the author for 
 this colossal success was £ 70 ! Douglas Jerrold died 
 in 1857, and was buried in Norwood Cemetery, 
 
 I value my little book not only for the handwriting of 
 the brilliant humourist, but because by a happy co- 
 incidence a Blanchard and a Jerrold were among my 
 earliest literary friends and "confreres." 
 
 Another humourist and playwright may fittingly find 
 a place here with Jerrold. Albert Smith earned fame 
 and wealth by his novels — " Christopher Tadpole," 
 illustrated by Leech, "The Adventures of Mr. Ledbury 
 and his Friend Jack Johnson," and "The Pottleton 
 Legacy " — wrote for the stage, and edited several jour- 
 nals ; but his fame rests largely on his " Ascent of 
 Mont Blanc," and the marvellous entertainment — for it 
 was a lecture with scenery — which he gave in con- 
 nection with his mountaineering accomplishment. The 
 entertainment was given over a thousand times, and 
 always to packed houses. I have the first edition of 
 " The Story of Mont Blanc," published by David 
 Bogue in 1853, as clean, as fresh, as perfect as the day 
 it was issued from the press. 
 
 In this I have inserted a little autograph letter of 
 Albert Smith's which is on a dramatic subject, but not 
 quite so dramatic as his ascent of the monarch of 
 mountains, for it was a burlesque of " Valentine and 
 
28 AMONG MY AUTOGRAPHS 
 
 Orson," which was running at the Adelphi. Here is 
 the letter : 
 
 12 Percy Street, Wednesday. 
 
 Dear "Webster, — Thanks for the cheque. All right. 
 Our letters crossed on the way. — Yours always, 
 
 Albert Smith. 
 
 This letter, which came to me folded in half, is en- 
 dorsed on the back by Benjamin Webster : 
 
 Albert Smith. 
 Payment for 25 nights of 
 " Valentine and Orson." 
 
 Albert Smith was born in 1816, and died in 1860, 
 He studied medicine in Paris, and made considerable 
 use of his experience in " Ledbury." He did an 
 
ALBERT SMITH 29 
 
 immense amount of magazine and periodical work, 
 but his lectures and entertainments, which were in the 
 style of Matthews' " At homes," made him more money 
 than all his other work put together. 
 
 Albert Smith was a great friend of Dickens, and I 
 had in my possession a " Penang lawyer," a stick 
 which Smith sent to Dickens when he was on his well- 
 known " Trip to China," The stick had a silver band, 
 on which was inscribed "From Albert Smith to Charles 
 Dickens." It was shown in the recent Dickens Exhi- 
 bition, together with Dickens's own sketch for the desk 
 which he used for his readings, and his written 
 instructions for the making of it. This is among my 
 most cherished possessions. 
 
IV 
 
 "Oliver Twist" was first published in "Bentley's 
 Miscellany." It made its first appearance in book 
 form in 1838, in three volumes, as — " Oliver Twist ; 
 or. The Parish Boy's Progress. By Boz." All the 
 world knows that the illustrations, twenty-four in 
 number, were by George Cruikshank. I have the 
 volumes in their original cloth binding, and in the first 
 I have inserted a letter written by Charles Dickens in 
 1841, and a letter of George Cruikshank's of a much 
 later date. 
 
 The assertion was made by Cruikshank, after 
 Dickens's death, that the artist suggested the title and 
 the subject to the author. This assertion John Forster 
 completely disposed of in his " Life of Dickens." 
 Cruikshank did suggest a name for the hero. That 
 name was " Frank Faithful," or " Frank Steadfast." 
 Dickens rejected both, probably with a shudder, and 
 called his hero " Oliver Twist." This marvellous com- 
 bination of humour and pathos, of the comedy and 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 31 
 
 tragedy of crime, is the work of Dickens which has 
 perhaps most deeply impressed itself upon the pubHc 
 mind. Oliver and Bumble, Fagin and the Artful 
 
 ^/-/OijeJlm^ 
 
 // :i/i^/-^^ ^/^<f 
 
 Dodger, Bill Sikes and Nancy— we are as familiar 
 with them to-day as when they first made their appear- 
 ance before a spellbound world over sixty years ago. 
 "Oliver Twist" has been translated into a dozen 
 
32 AMONG MY AUTOGRAPHS 
 
 languages. I picked it up in Spanish, as "El Hijo 
 de la Parocha," on a cheap bookstall in Madrid. 
 
 The letter I give below was written by Dickens 
 shortly before he went to Edinburgh to be entertained 
 there at a public dinner, with Professor "Wilson in the 
 chair : 
 
 Devonshire Terrace, 
 
 May the Thirteenth, 1841. 
 
 My dear Thompson, — Your sisters are going to dine 
 with us — and no strangers, or indeed anybody else that 
 I know of — on Tuesday at five. "Will you give me the 
 pleasure of seeing you ? Take your blister off, and 
 come. — Faithfully yours, 
 
 Charles Dickens. 
 
 S. J. Thompson, Esq. 
 
 At the time this letter was sent Dickens was writing 
 the closing chapters of " Barnaby Rudge," the story of 
 the Gordon Riots which gave Dolly Varden to the rose- 
 bud garden of English girls, and introduced us to an 
 immortal raven. The raven, by the way, who was 
 made a member of the Dickens household that the 
 author might study it, died before the completion of 
 the book. His last words were " Hulloh, old girl." 
 Dickens assured Maclise that some time previously the 
 bird had uttered incoherent remarks as to the disposal 
 of its property, which consisted chiefly of the fruits of 
 petty larceny. 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 33 
 
 It was while " Barnaby Rudge " was running that 
 Lord Jeffery dined with Dickens at Devonshire Place, 
 and referred to him in a letter written in May 1841 as 
 giving dinners " rather too sumptuous for a man with a 
 family, and only beginning to be rich." Dickens com- 
 plained bitterly of the pecuniary reward he received 
 for some of his earlier works. He quarrelled with 
 Bentley over " Oliver Twist." In a letter to Forster 
 he says, " The profits which ' Oliver ' has realised to its 
 publisher and is still realising, and the paltry, wretched 
 sums it has brought to me ! " Again, " And I have still 
 the slavery and drudgery of another work on the same 
 journeyman terms — ^the consciousness that my books 
 are enriching everybody connected with them but 
 myself. ... I am struggling ... to fill the pockets 
 of others, while for myself and those dear to me I 
 can realise little more than a genteel subsistence." 
 
 That he wrote in 1838 ; by 1841 he had turned the 
 tables on the publishers, and, as Lord Jeffery says, was 
 " beginning to be rich. " He realised enormous sums as 
 the years went on. For one short story, "Hunted 
 Down," he received from the " New York Ledger " 
 1000 guineas. That is held to be a record payment 
 for a story which, when published afterwards in " All 
 the Year Round," only filled a few pages, and was 
 under ten thousand words. I have the story, "not" 
 in "All the Year Round," but in a Christmas number 
 
 c 
 
34 AMONG MY AUTOGRAPHS 
 
 issued by John Camden Hotten, and called the " Picca- 
 dilly Annual." In a letter to Tom Hood, which I have, 
 Charles Dickens, the son, speaks his mind plainly as to 
 the Hotten enterprise. 
 
 The letter of George Cruikshank, which I have 
 inserted in the first volume of "Oliver TVist," is 
 of a much later date. For obvious reasons, I have 
 suppressed the title of the engraving referred to, and 
 the name of the engraver : 
 
 Dec. 4th, '69, 
 263 Hampstead Road, N.W. 
 
 My dear Mr. Reid, — The " party " who " undertook " 
 to engrave was , and in this instance he be- 
 haved very badly — for it was very badly engraved by 
 some of his assistants. He never touched it himself 
 until after I had seen a proof — a "very bad" proof — 
 but a very strong proof that he had behaved very 
 badly. I "touched the proof" — and he then touched 
 the plate — but I "never touched a penny," although 
 
 a partner in this matter with Mr. , the publisher, 
 
 who paid the engraver, and " repaid himself," and sold 
 the plate to ! 
 
 I find that the only impression of this plate that I 
 have is the one "framed and glazed," which perhaps 
 you would kindly look at some morning as you are 
 passing. The picture which I painted for the Prince 
 Consort is in Buckingham Palace ; and I should very 
 much like "you" to see the picture, and if you felt 
 disposed to do so I would make an arrangement for 
 that purpose. 
 
GEORGE CRUIKSHANK 35 
 
 In a few days — days should I not see you here — you 
 may expect to see in the "Print Room" of "The 
 British Museum " — Yours truly, 
 
 Geo. Cruikshank. 
 
 The Mr. Reid to whom this was written was the 
 head of the Prints and Drawings Department of the 
 British Museum, and in connection with his friendship 
 with Cruikshank I can tell a curious story. My friend 
 and collaborator, Mr. Arthur Shirley, was in early life 
 in this department also, and he has frequently known 
 Cruikshank come with a drawing to the Museum to 
 ask Reid if it was a genuine Cruikshank or not. Many 
 of Cruikshank' s early drawings were placed on the 
 
36 AMONG MY AUTOGRAPHS 
 
 market when he had become world-famous. The 
 people to whom they were offered would sometimes 
 submit them to Cruikshank to know if they were 
 genuine. It was in these cases that he occasionally 
 sought the assistance of his friend Reid. 
 
 Some of his most remarkable caricatures were done 
 for WiUiam Hone's political squibs. His most famous 
 work in this connection was, however, " The Banknote," 
 a drawing of a £l-note, the gallows and its victims 
 being cleverly worked into the design. Hone made 
 over £ 700 by this, and Cruikshank had the gratification 
 of knowing that it brought about the abolition of the • 
 penalty of death for banknote forgery. 
 
 It was with "Rookwood," in 1836, that his connection 
 with Harrison Ainsworth commenced, and in the same 
 year he began his artistic partnership with Dickens in 
 " Sketches by Boz." 
 
 "The Bottle" was his first contribution to the 
 Temperance movement. " The Drunkard's Children," 
 a later drawing, is said to have been the means of con- 
 verting the artist himself. Ever after that he was a 
 strict teetotaler. I met him in the later years of his life 
 on three occasions at public dinners. His first act in 
 sitting down was to reverse all the wineglasses in front 
 of him as a sign to the wine- waiters to pass him by. 
 
 He spent the later years of his life at 263 Hampstead 
 Road, and died there in 1878. 
 
CHARLES DICKENS < 37 
 
 To the day of his death he cherished the behef that 
 he had given Ainsworth the idea for " Jack Sheppard " 
 and Dickens the idea for " OHver Twist." In both 
 instances he was honestly mistaken. He was a fine 
 
 old fellow, and was full of vitality to the last. "When 
 he was eighty years of age his favourite amusement 
 was to sing a rattling comic song to his guests, and he 
 would wind up by dancing a hornpipe. 
 
38 AMONG MY AUTOGRAPHS 
 
 It may not be inappropriate here to quote a letter 
 written to me in connection with " The Pickwick 
 Papers" by the great novehst's eldest son, who was 
 my intimate personal friend : 
 
 43 Fairholme Road, W. 
 14 July 1895. 
 
 My dear Sims, — Perhaps it is not a matter of any 
 great importance, but I know you like to be accurate! 
 and so write to point out to you that the row between 
 Pott and Slurk took place in the kitchen, and not the 
 smoking-room, of the Saracen's Head at Towcester ; 
 and also that it was at the Angel at Bury St. Edmunds 
 that Sam compared himself — to Job Trotter, by-the- 
 bye, and not to Mr. Pickwick — to a walking brandy 
 bottle. — Sincerely yours, 
 
 Charles Dickens. 
 
 ' • Carados," I notice, says, " ' Another gap in our 
 i^nks,'*said Paul Meritt, when the sage of Chelsea 
 passed away." It was when Victor Hugo, himself a 
 dramatist, passed away, and I heard poor Paul say it. 
 
 The letter was called forth by a paragraph I had 
 written in the " Referee " in connection with a day and 
 a night that I spent at Towcester when on a driving 
 tour. One other personal connection with the Dickens 
 family I may perhaps note in passing. When I sat in 
 the dock of the Guildhall Police Court, charged with 
 libelling a gentleman of fistic fame by saying that he 
 
CHARLES DICKENS 39 
 
 was hired to make a disturbance at certain meetings 
 during the Hackney parliamentary election, Mr. Henry 
 Fielding Dickens, another son of the novelist, and now 
 Recorder of Maidstone, defended me, and restored me 
 at the end of the day's proceedings to my family and 
 friends without a stain on my character. 
 
Long years ago, when my old friend Sir John R. 
 Robinson, then editor of the " Daily News," asked me 
 to dine with him at the Reform Club, he introduced me 
 to three men whom I had always been anxious to know 
 and to listen to. One was Andrew Lang, happily still 
 with us, and as scholarly an essayist and charming a 
 poet as ever. The others were Bret Harte and William 
 Black. 
 
 The poems of Bret Harte had appealed to me 
 strongly as a youth in the days when I scribbled verse 
 and sent it to the popular periodicals, and regularly 
 had it returned or heard no more about it. 
 
 Colonel John Hay and Bret Harte I studied in the 
 limp-covered shilling editions that were issued in the 
 old days by John Camden Hotten. Colonel John Hay 
 inspired me first, and I tried to catch his style in a 
 poem which I wrote when I was about twenty. This 
 poem, called " Jack's Story," after going the round of 
 the London periodicals, eventually found a home in 
 
BRET HARTE 41 
 
 the " San Francisco News Letter," a vivid and original 
 journal, which had on its staff my afterwards friend 
 and colleague, Ambrose Bierce. 
 
 I told Bierce that it was John Hay and Bret Harte 
 who had first started me on the perilous path of 
 " poetry," and I believe Bierce told both of them in 
 America. 
 
 At any rate, on my way to Malvern one day, long 
 afterwards, I was at Paddington station, sitting in a 
 compartment of a train that was just about to start, 
 when a gentleman came to the carriage-window and 
 said, "George R. Sims?" "Yes," I said. "Glad to 
 meet you. I am Colonel John Hay." A hurried grip 
 of the hand, and the engine shrieked and whirled me 
 away. That was the only time I met the author of 
 " Little Breeches." 
 
 When Bret Harte died I wrote a brief memoir of him 
 in the " Referee," and Sir John Robinson sent me a 
 kindly letter telling me that when Bret Harte came to 
 London and met Sir John he told him he would Hke to 
 see me. The little dinner at the Reform was arranged 
 that I might be, among others, introduced to the man 
 who wrote those wondrous songs of the sierras. 
 
 I have a letter of Bret Harte's, written when he was 
 Consul at Glasgow. I had letters from him myself, for 
 I got to know him very well, as we were at one time 
 close neighbours in Hamilton Terrace, but these letters 
 
42 AMONG MY AUTOGRAPHS 
 
 have been so carefully put away that I cannot find 
 them. Here is the letter I have inserted in " "Works of 
 Bret Harte," the edition published in 1872, to which 
 the Rev. J. M. Bellew, the father of Kyrle Bellew, the 
 actor, wrote the preface, introducing the American 
 writer to the British pubHc. The letter is a humorous 
 reference to something that happened to the author's 
 " proofs." 
 
 Consulate of the United States of America, 
 Glasgow, January 29, 1882. 
 
 Gentlemen, — I enclose revise corrected. I beg to call 
 your attention to error in first line of " April " number, 
 where the parenthesis intended for the printer and 
 proof-reader is quietly and calmly introduced into the 
 " text." Please have it stricken out, as it is a simple 
 absurdity there. 
 
 I have enclosed the slip, having underlined the 
 direction to the proof-reader, which I fondly believed 
 he would understand, when I returned the first proofs. 
 — Yours, &c., Bret Harte. 
 
 Bret Harte was of Dutch descent, and was bom in 
 1837, at Albany, New York. His father, a school- 
 master, died when his son was a boy, and the 
 straitened circumstances of the family sent the lad 
 into a store. He was seventeen when he left for 
 California, taking his mother with him. He tramped 
 to the mines of Sonora, and there became a school- 
 
BRET HARTE 43 
 
 master. He soon, however, drifted into journalism, 
 and became editor of the " Eureka Journal." Then he 
 
 ^ '^ 
 
 went to 'Frisco, worked at case, and became editor of 
 the " Golden Era." It was when editing the " Overland 
 Monthly" that he wrote in it "The Luck of Roaring 
 
44 AMONG MY AUTOGRAPHS 
 
 Camp," and from that moment his fame was secured 
 in both hemispheres. 
 
 Bret Harte in appearance was quite unlike what his 
 early tales and poetry suggested him to the public. 
 Belle w said of him, " He looks as if he dated his letters 
 from St. James's Square rather than San Francisco." 
 I saw him for the last time only a little while before 
 he died. He came into Verrey's with a friend, and I 
 had a few minutes with him. But he could scarcely 
 speak, and the incident was a very painful one to me, 
 remembering him as I did in the days of his strength 
 and manly beauty. The throat trouble was then acute, 
 and we who loved him were heartbroken to know that 
 the end could not long be delayed. Bret Harte knew 
 it too, and there was something in the last grip of the 
 hand he ever gave me that said " Farewell." 
 
 "William Black made his first great success with " A 
 Daughter of Heth," published in 1871 ; but " The 
 Strange Adventures of a Phaeton," which followed, in 
 1872, made a wider mark. It is a delightful description 
 of a driving tour from London to Edinburgh, with a 
 little fiction thrown in. This was immensely popular, 
 and was practically used as a guidebook by many 
 cultured Americans travelling the same route. The 
 letter I have inserted in the first edition of " The 
 
WILLIAM BLACK 45 
 
 Strange Adventures" was written by Black to my 
 friend and workfellow, and editor of many years, the 
 late Henry Sampson. 
 
 Sampson and Black were old newspaper comrades, 
 and both at one time lived in Buckingham Street, 
 Strand, where also at one time Mr. B. L. Farjeon, the 
 novelist, had chambers. I do not know why our 
 publisher omitted to reply to Black's request ; it was 
 certainly an accident, as there was nothing in the paper 
 that could suggest a fear of the eminent novelist de- 
 siring it in order to find something libellous concerning 
 himself. Sampson always had the highest opinion of 
 Black and his work. 
 
 Paston House, Paston Place, 
 
 Brighton, October 15. 
 
 Dear Sampson, — Last week I wrote to your business 
 manager asking him to send me a volume of the 
 " Referee," bound or unbound, for any recent year, 
 and honourably offering to pay for the same. As he 
 has not answered my note, I imagine that he suspects 
 me of some dark and sinister motive ; whereas I am 
 not. I wouldn't harm a fly ; I am merely introducing a 
 sporting character into my next novel, and want to 
 keep myself correctly coached. Would you do me the 
 kindness of enlightening his mind on that point — if one 
 year's numbers of the " Referee" are procurable ? 
 
 When I last saw Mrs. Chart, in July, she told me you 
 were then in Brighton ; and I meant to have called on 
 you ; but found myself overwhelmed with the worries 
 
46 AMONG MY AUTOGRAPHS 
 
 attending our pilgrimage to Scotland. Are you likely 
 to be back in Brighton this winter ? — Yours very 
 faithfully, William Black. 
 
 It is needless to say that a bound volume was placed 
 at Black's service, and Sampson wrote offering in 
 
 addition to give the writer personally any information 
 he might desire. 
 
 William Black wanted to be an artist, and he studied 
 in his native city, Glasgow ; but he became a painter 
 with the pen instead of the brush, and in 1864 he came 
 to London as a professional journalist. He was on the 
 staff of the "Morning Star," the journal on which 
 Edmund Yates was the entertaining " Flaneur," many 
 
WILLIAM BLACK 47 
 
 years before he founded and edited the " World." 
 Black was the "Star's" special correspondent during 
 the Prusso- Austrian War of 1866. For four or five 
 years he was assistant editor of the "Daily News" ; 
 and so it was quite a "Daily News" dinner that Sir 
 John Robinson gave to Bret Harte. 
 
 William Black died on December 10, 1898. I have 
 an excellent portrait of him hanging in my dining-room, 
 because I have John Pettie's picture known as " On the 
 Ground First." The figure is clad in the garb of the 
 days of the old romance, but the features are those of 
 William Black. The great Scotch novelist frequently 
 lent his features to the canvas of the great Scotch 
 Royal Academician. 
 
 Here let me add another Scotch autograph. Who 
 does not know the homely, pathetic story of " Rab and 
 his Friends " ? It is the simple tale of a poor Scotch 
 carrier and his dog. It had, in its day, as great a vogue 
 as the tales of Dickens. All the world wept over poor 
 Rab. 
 
 I have the first edition, and it is the copy presented 
 by Dr. John Brown, the author, to the famous and 
 delightful actress Miss Ada Cavendish. 
 
 I remember Ada Cavendish when in her youth and 
 beauty she made her first great bid for fame in " Ixion," 
 
48 AMONG MY AUTOGRAPHS 
 
 Sir Francis Burnand's burlesque, at the Royally. I 
 remember her Mercy Merrick in " The New Magdalen." 
 " Pass the English lady" rings in my ears to this day. 
 I remember her Miss Gwilt in the weird " Armadale " 
 story. I remember her marriage with my friend Frank 
 
 Marshall, who gave us not only plays, but the " Irving 
 Shakespeare" ; and I remember the days when the 
 once brilliant favourite of the footlights was stricken 
 down by a painful and mortal illness. 
 
 It was then that she gave " Rab and his Friends" to 
 a friend of mine, who, knowing my love for the story, 
 my friendship for Frank Marshall, and my admiration 
 of his wife, gave the sad souvenir to me. 
 
VI 
 
 Robert Buchanan was my friend and close companion 
 for many years. I have most of his works, and among 
 them many of the very early editions which arc now rare. 
 I have " Undertones," the volume of poetry published by 
 Edward Moxon in 1863, and "David Grey," published 
 by Sampson Low, Son and Marston in 1868 ; and I 
 have those later works which he published with such 
 extraordinary rapidity in the intervals of play-writing, 
 theatrical lesseeship, financial worry, and much fierce 
 letter- writing in and out of the newspapers. I have 
 the books which he brought out himself at his own 
 office in order to be his own publisher, *' The Ballad 
 of Mary the Mother " and " The Devil's Case," both 
 " published by the author," one in '96 and one in '97. 
 
 This idea of being his own publisher was part of what 
 may be called " the unwisdom of Robert Buchanan." 
 He was a man who never quite calculated consequences. 
 When he quarrelled with theatrical managers, he took 
 a theatre himself ; when he quarrelled with publishers, 
 
50 AMONG MY AUTOGRAPHS 
 
 he went into their trade. In both instances the result 
 was unsatisfactory. He brought out a charming piece 
 at a matinee at the Adelphi, " The Bride of Love." In 
 it his sister-in-law, Miss Harriet Jay, made a great 
 success. It was hardly the play for the evening bills. 
 It was poetic, dreamy, scholarly ; it was everything 
 but dramatic. Yet, because he wanted it in the evening 
 bills and could not get managers to share his enthusiasm, 
 he took the Lyric Theatre and put up a poetical play 
 with the makeshift matinee scenery. By this specula- 
 tion he lost thousands of pounds, and loaded himself 
 with difficulties which hampered him to the end of his 
 days. 
 
 There were as many sides to Robert Buchanan's 
 character as there were to his genius. Over generous 
 to comparative strangers, he was often scarcely just 
 to intimate friends. Bitter, almost malignant, when in 
 a quarrel he took pen in hand, he was tender and gentle 
 as a woman when his sympathies were excited. 
 
 My first acquaintance with him came about through 
 a generous letter which he sent me at the time I was 
 publishing my first attempts at verse in narrative form, 
 under the title of " The Dagonet Ballads " and " Ballads 
 of Babylon." 
 
 One day this letter came to me, and I need not say 
 brought a glow of pleasure to my cheeks, which at that 
 time were very white, for I was seriously ill and about 
 
ROBERT BUCHANAN 51 
 
 to pass from the doctor's hands to those of the 
 
 surgeon : 
 
 5 Larkhall Rise, 
 
 Clapham, December 5, 1880. 
 
 Dear Sir, — Permit a disinterested reader to tell you 
 how much he has been surprised and touched by some 
 
 of your " Ballads of Babylon." I know by experience 
 that such testimonies, when they come unexpectedly, 
 sometimes convey pleasure ; and it is also in my mind 
 that long ago, when "I" also wrote poems of Babylon, a 
 generous-hearted friend of yours, the late Mr. Tom 
 Hood, wrote out of the fulness of his heart such words 
 as gave me great content. 
 
52 AMONG MY AUTOGRAPHS 
 
 Be that as it may, I feel the strength and courage of 
 your poems so much that I send you this hasty brief. 
 One ballad— in which you tell the story of the poor 
 outcast who rescues the clergyman she once branded — 
 is to me indescribably noble and affecting, and worth 
 all the aesthetic jargon of the period. 
 
 I write thus to you, and I believe I shall have an 
 opportunity of writing to the public also, before long, 
 on the same theme. — Faithfully yours, 
 
 Robert Buchanan. 
 Geo. R. Sims, Esq. 
 
 The writer amply fulfilled his promise shortly after- 
 wards in the pages of the " Contemporary Review." 
 
 It was many years later that we came together as 
 workfellows. The Messrs. Gatti proposed to me that 
 I should enter into partnership with Robert Buchanan 
 to supply a series of plays for the Adelphi Theatre. 
 Buchanan had always been a prolific playwright, and 
 his plays were generally big successes or big failures. 
 Years afterwards, when I worked with him almost day 
 by day, and came to know his methods, I ceased to 
 wonder at the inequality of his workmanship. I 
 doubt if any dramatist of culture ever wrote with such 
 rapidity. He wrote straight away, page after page 
 being filled with his neat handwriting, while he smoked 
 the eternal cigarette. There was no looking up at the 
 ceiling, no pausing for the right word. It was this 
 
ROBERT BUCHANAN 53 
 
 " writing the scene straight off" that made some of his 
 best work ineffective from the dramatic point of view 
 when it came to a popular playhouse. He despised the 
 exit line, and continued a scene beyond the point at 
 which it attained — speaking theatrically — its climax. 
 
 I remember an instance which illustrates this defect. 
 He had to send a party of soldiers into a church to look 
 for a man who was supposed to be concealed there. 
 Here are the lines as he wrote them : 
 
 Officer : Enter the church, Sergeant, and bring the 
 fellow out ! 
 
 Sergeant : Those are your orders, Captain ? 
 
 Officer : Yes. 
 
 Sergeant : Then I must obey them. Into the church, 
 lads. Follow me ! 
 
 Of course that was set right at rehearsal, because the 
 sergeant was played by a real sergeant, and the soldiers 
 were real soldiers. The military words of command 
 were substituted, and the sergeant did not argue with 
 his superior officer. 
 
 But when writing Buchanan would never dream of 
 stopping for such a detail. 
 
 Many of his plays were big financial successes, notably 
 one or two of his adaptations. But in many, where a 
 little care would have made success certain, he came to 
 grief through over rapidity of execution. 
 
54 AMONG MY AUTOGRAPHS 
 
 He turned out work at a rate which was appalling. 
 He would produce half a dozen plays in a year, and 
 have another half-dozen ready for production. In the 
 pigeon-holes of his study, at Merkland, he had always a 
 score of unacted plays, ranging from comic operas to 
 historical tragedies. On one occasion, when an American 
 manager was in town looking for new plays, Buchanan 
 had an idea which he thought would suit him. In one 
 week he turned the idea into a three-act comedy, took 
 it to the manager, read it to him, received £200 on 
 account, and at the reading threw out an idea for a 
 serious drama. The American manager liked the idea. 
 Buchanan went home, and in three days had a scenario 
 of five-and- twenty pages ready. 
 
 And all this time he was correcting the proofs of a 
 book which was about to appear, at work on a long 
 poem, writing daily letters to the papers on a highly 
 controversial subject, and seeing his solicitor with regard 
 to an action at law which was pending. 
 
 My collaboration with this tireless worker was always 
 a happy one, because " the Bard," as we liked to call 
 him, was a delightful companion, and his conversation 
 was always brilliant and exhilarating. I spent some of 
 the happiest years of my life in close companionship 
 with Robert Buchanan, and rarely on our " work 
 days," or rather nights, did I quit his hospitable roof 
 till the small hours of the morning. 
 
ROBERT BUCHANAN 55 
 
 Here is the letter in which Buchanan acknowledged 
 the suggestion that he should enter into partnership 
 with me to supply Adelphi melodrama. The reference 
 
 to Jericho is explained by the fact that I had written 
 asking him to come to an early decision, as I wanted a 
 holiday, and was thinking of going to the Holy Land : 
 
56 AMONG MY AUTOGRAPHS 
 
 Dear Mr. Sims, — Can call on you to-morrow or 
 Thursday before 12, or between 3 and 5 — "morning" 
 preferred. Or glad to see you here after 5 to-morrow, 
 or on Thursday morning. Will you kindly wire your 
 choice ? It seems urgent that we should forgather at 
 once, as you are going away so soon. With kind re- 
 gards. — Truly yours, Robert Buchanan. 
 
 G. R. Sims, Esq. 
 
 P.S. — How the deuce am I to collaborate with you in 
 Jericho ? ! \ 
 
 Our first play, *'The English Rose," made a good 
 deal of money for all of us. Buchanan sold out after a 
 time, and the Messrs. Gatti and myself gave him £2500 
 for his share. 
 
 Then came " The Trumpet Call," in which Mrs. 
 Patrick Campbell practically made her London debut, 
 and we were financially even more successful. 
 
 Both " The EngHsh Rose " and " The Trumpet Call " 
 are still playing in England and in the United States. 
 
 The other plays were not so fortunate. Buchanan 
 had grown tired of Adelphi methods. He had a great 
 poetic scheme in his mind, and he was afraid that his 
 connection with popular melodrama would be against 
 him when he appealed to the critical world with his 
 masterpiece. 
 
 I think at this time he was financially worried as 
 well, and neither his heart nor his brain was in his 
 theatrical work. 
 
ROBERT BUCHANAN 57 
 
 I will give one more letter because it is signed " The 
 Bard." In the " Times " notice of the admirable life of 
 
 M&xlbatoui]}. 
 
 Oct 55-, 
 
 
 her brother-in-law by Miss Harriet Jay the critic objects 
 to the insertion of a " reminiscence " by myself, in which 
 " the Bard " is frequently mentioned. " We could have 
 
58 AMONG MY AUTOGRAPHS 
 
 done with less of 'the Bard,' " says the critic. Every- 
 one has a right to his opinion, but the story of Buchanan's 
 life would have been incomplete without a reference to 
 this phase of it. He was always known as "the Bard," 
 and alluded to as " the Bard " by the little company 
 who gathered constantly at his house on " supper- 
 nights," and at the little Sunday dinner-parties. It was 
 a term of affection and respect bestowed upon' him 
 originally, I think, by his friend and frequent companion 
 Mr. Henry Murray ; and Buchanan himself, as the letter 
 shows, had smilingly adopted it. The letter is written 
 from the country seat of that Marquess of Ailesbury 
 who was known to sporting fame as " Ducks." Buchanan 
 was one of a small party staying there for a few days : 
 
 Savernake Forest, 
 Marlborough, 
 
 Oct. 28. 
 
 Dear George, — I enclosed you a bit of scenario. I 
 shall be up to-morrow (Saturday) and we can then put 
 our wits together. I like the idea more and more. 
 
 Awful weather ! Just going out to get wet thro'. 
 
 The Bard. 
 
 I have referred to Miss Jay's story of his life's work 
 and his literary friendships. But there is another book, 
 which may be published one day — the autobiography 
 which Robert Buchanan had himself prepared, and in 
 
ROBERT BUCHANAN 59 
 
 which he had frankly set forth his ideas of his con- 
 temporaries. 
 
 It is probably owing to the frankness with which he 
 has in these pages expressed his personal views that 
 they are being held back. There are many celebrities 
 still living who would be rendered exceedingly uncom- 
 fortable by their publication. 
 
VII 
 
 I made the acquaintance of Edmund Yates by call- 
 ing upon him in answer to the letter which is given 
 below, and which I have inserted in the first edition of 
 "After Office Hours," a collection of his early efforts 
 made during the days when he was still in that 
 Government Department which has given so many 
 briUiant men to literature and journalism — the Post 
 Office. 
 
 I had been an admirer of his for many years. I had 
 devoured his novels, and read his delightful notes in 
 the " Morning Star," where he gossiped daily as 
 " Flaneur," and continued that form of " personal " 
 journalism which he may be said to have founded in 
 " The Lounger at the Clubs," written for the " Illus- 
 trated Times" in 1855. Out of "The Lounger at the 
 Clubs" grew eventually the idea that brought Yates 
 fame and fortune— the "World." The "World" had 
 been started nearly five years when the Httle note 
 reached me that was to make me a lifelong friend ; 
 
EDMUND YATES 61 
 
 3 Portland Place, W., 
 
 April 22, '79. 
 
 My dear Sir, — If you have any leisure, I should be 
 very glad to avail myself of your services, were you so 
 disposed. 
 
 3. PORTLAND PLACE. W 
 
 /^^2' 7^' 
 
 ^^2^% 
 
 /.^^.^^ 
 
 
 f 
 
 7^-^^ 
 
 ^^*4^ 
 
 If you would call on me here any morning before 
 twelve, we might have a chat. — Faithfully yours, 
 
 Edmund Yates. 
 G. R. Sims, Esq. 
 
62 AMONG MY AUTOGRAPHS 
 
 Yates was anxious that I should write a series of 
 "poems" for the "World" in the style of "The 
 Dagonet Ballads." I accepted the commission, and 
 " The Ballads of Babylon " duly appeared in the 
 journal. Among them was " Ostler Joe," which years 
 afterwards was to make such a sensation in Washing- 
 ton and to give Mrs. Brown Potter to the stage. 
 
 I did not stay on the " World " very long, as the 
 theatre suddenly became a source of large profit to me, 
 and I had my hands full of dramatic work. But from 
 the day I first met Yates in Portland Place to that sad 
 night in May 1894, when he sank down in the stalls of 
 the Garrick Theatre, stricken with the mortal illness 
 that in a few hours was to end his life, he was my 
 constant and generous friend. 
 
 I remember when "The Lights of London" was 
 produced at the Princess's Theatre there was one 
 notice sent out to several of the provincial papers 
 which was evidently intentionally spiteful. The writer 
 said, " This play will serve one useful purpose : it will 
 surely for a number of evenings keep a certain number 
 of disreputable people of both sexes less dangerously 
 employed than they would be in the streets." 
 
 Yates saw the notice in a provincal paper, cut it out, 
 and sent it to me with the following note : 
 
 Keep this and find out the writer. I have found it 
 useful all my life to know who my enemies are. 
 
EDMUND YATES 63 
 
 I do not think I took the trouble, but I was grateful 
 to the busy man who in many ways afterwards did me 
 substantial service. 
 
 One more letter of his I may be pardoned for insert- 
 ing here, because it is connected with a colleague of 
 mine. The letter was written in 1880 : 
 
 3 Portland Place, W. 
 
 Wednesday, January 7, 1880. 
 
 My dear Mr. Sims, — Will you oblige me by showing 
 this note to " Carados " — I have not the faintest idea 
 who he is — and ask him if he would favour me with 
 five minutes' business chat ? I am always here up to 
 twelve o'clock, or we might make another appointment. 
 — Sincerely yours, 
 
 Edmund Yates. 
 
 I called on Yates, because at that time the identity 
 of "Carados," of the "Referee," was a secret, and 
 explained why I could not send the rightful owner of 
 that signature to him. 
 
 I cannot remember now what Yates wanted with 
 " Carados." It could not have been for dramatic work 
 on the " World," as in 1880 Mr. Dutton Cook was still 
 the dramatic critic. 
 
 Dutton Cook, a letter from whom I have inserted in 
 " Nights at the Play," remained the " World's" repre- 
 sentative until his death, in 1883. In 1884 Mr. William 
 Archer took up the appointment, and the " World " has 
 
64 AMONG MY AUTOGRAPHS 
 
 never since been without the brilliant criticisms of 
 " W. A." 
 
 Button Cook's letter is written to Mr. Henry- 
 Sampson, who was then editing " Tom Hood's 
 Annual." 
 
 I remember as I write a conversation I had with 
 Yates when, after a serious illness, I went to Brighton 
 to recruit. He was living there then, and came to see 
 me. He expounded a theory that every seven years 
 men are subject to some organic change, during which 
 they are liable to serious illnesses. " If they get over 
 that period," he said, " they generally go on for another 
 seven years without much trouble. I have experienced 
 these changes myself. I am all right now ; but I dread 
 sixty-three. I have an idea that it will be a crucial age 
 for me." 
 
 Serious illness came to Edmund Yates about that 
 time. His friends noticed a grave alteration in his 
 manner and appearance. He went away in the winter, 
 and remained in the South of France. But he came 
 back in the spring. Mr. Clement Scott described his 
 appearance that fatal night at the Garrick Theatre as 
 painful to all his old friends. There was a look in the 
 face that made men turn to each other and whisper. 
 The play was only just over when Yates fell heavily 
 to the ground, and was carried back to the Savoy 
 Hotel, where his wife was waiting for him. He never 
 
EDMUND YATES 65 
 
 spoke again, but died during the night. The serious 
 illness came at the age he had looked forward to with 
 
 li A-.^ IS]-''- 
 
 foreboding. He died before he had completed his 
 sixty-third year. 
 
66 AMONG MY AUTOGRAPHS 
 
 The two most painful episodes of Edmund Yates' 
 career were his quarrel with Thackeray, which led to 
 his leaving the Garrick Club, and his imprisonment for 
 the libel on Lord Lonsdale published in the " World." 
 In the former case the sufferer was a young man who 
 had written a gossiping article which to-day would be 
 thought nothing of, in the latter the editor of the 
 " World " went to prison rather than break through an 
 honourable editorial rule and give up the name of the 
 writer of the offending paragraphs. 
 
 He was a delightful novelist, with a good deal of the 
 Dickens influence upon him ; but it was by the founding 
 of "Society" journalism as we understand it to-day 
 that he made his abiding mark. 
 
 When the " World " was started, one of the persons 
 most interested in its success was Yates's old friend 
 John Forster. Forster is best known to the public to- 
 day by his life of Dickens, but he was an indefatigable 
 biographer. He died in harness, having just completed 
 the first volume of his life of Swift. He was for some 
 years editor of the " Examiner," and for about eleven 
 months editor of the " Daily News." Forster had the 
 reputation of being obstinate and overbearing, but 
 those who knew him intimately spoke of him always as 
 a generous and tender-hearted man. 
 
 The following letter, written in 1851, 1 have inserted 
 in his " Life of Oliver Goldsmith " : 
 
JOHN FORSTER 67 
 
 58 Lincoln's Inn Fields, 
 
 ist Dec. 1851. 
 
 Dear Sir, — I am afraid I shall shock your printer by 
 the extent of my corrections — but I could not else make 
 sense out of it. I have now certainly supplied the 
 substance of what I said — such as this proof suggested 
 it to me. If you could let me see a revise I would 
 return it to you " by the bearer" — if the printer's boy 
 who brings it be instructed to wait. — Always yours 
 truly, 
 
 John Forster. 
 
 
 John Forster died in 1876, leaving a most valuable 
 library, which he bequeathed to the South Kensington 
 Museum. Included in his bequest were the principal 
 Dickens MSS. Yates says of him, " Most people who 
 knew him would be of the cabman's opinion, that 
 
68 AMONG MY AUTOGRAPHS 
 
 Mr. John Forster was a very ' harbitrary gent,' but to 
 me he was, I am bound to say, always friendly and 
 helpful. It was through Dickens's influence and recom- 
 mendation mainly, no doubt, that he made me an ex- 
 ception to his general rule ; but I think he also had a 
 personal regard for me." 
 
VIII 
 
 In 1887, the year in which Walter Besant wrote me the 
 following letter — a letter which I have inserted in " All 
 Sorts and Conditions of Men," the famous book he 
 wrote after death had ended his long and prosperous 
 collaboration with James Rice — we were working to- 
 gether on the plot of a play that never got beyond the 
 plot. 
 
 I had known Besant for a good many years, but it 
 was not until the end of 1886 that we came together in a 
 kind of literary, or rather dramatic, partnership. The 
 partnership never passed the initial stage, but it was a 
 very delightful one to me. 
 
 It gave me many happy hours in the society of a man 
 whose companionship was helpful and exhilarating, and 
 one memorable day which I spent with him in his 
 native town of Portsmouth. In the few hours we 
 wandered there together he gave me a new interest in 
 the famous old seaport. He showed it me as I had 
 never seen it before. 
 
70 AMONG MY AUTOGRAPHS 
 
 Our play was to be a Portsmouth play. We went 
 down to look at certain scenes which we had deter- 
 mined to put on the stage. There was a commission 
 for the work. I had secured that from the Messrs. 
 Gatti before we commenced. The piece was to be done 
 at the Adelphi, and "William Terris, whom Besant 
 thought an ideal actor for a young naval officer, was to 
 play the hero. 
 
 But something happened before we got very far with 
 the scenario. Besant was very busily engaged on other 
 work, and time was pressing. In the most generous 
 manner possible he one day came to me and said that, 
 if I did not mind, he would prefer to stand out of the 
 contract, and let me go back to my old collaborator, 
 Henry Pettitt. I did so, and together we wrote a 
 nautical play. It was " The Harbour Lights," which 
 ran for over five hundred nights at the Adelphi, and in 
 the provinces is running still. 
 
 Here is the letter which Besant wrote me at the time 
 we were arranging to meet and talk over the dramatic 
 scheme : 
 
 12 Gay ton Crescent, Hampstead. 
 
 My dear Sims, — I will walk down the hill — if there is 
 no fog — on Sunday morning. 
 
 I am glad you Hke my Cowboy's Story. It isn't 
 " Buffalo Bill " at all. Three out of the four situations 
 in the story are his own personal experiences, and Mike 
 
>Xr ALTER BESANT 71 
 
 Alison — the real name — was really his friend and 
 rescuer. He was only seventeen when he had these 
 lively adventures. — Yours very sincerely, 
 
 W. Besant. 
 24/11/87. 
 
 Walter Besant was a many-sided man. He was 
 interested in art, in French literature, and in Palestine, 
 
 
 in London ancient and modem, and in the work and the 
 pleasure of the people. The People's Palace, in which he 
 took such an interest, was a fabric built on a dream, the 
 dream to which he gave form in one of his books. 
 He intended it to be a palace of delight for the toilers 
 of mean streets and dull neighbourhoods. It was not 
 his fault that the idea was better than the execution. 
 
 In the midst of his continuous output of romance, he 
 devoted himself to the stern realities around him. He 
 was an active philanthropist, and one of the most 
 earnest students of London life. His books on London 
 are classics to-day. And with all this he was the 
 doughty champion of his brethren of the craft. He 
 
72 AMONG MY AUTOGRAPHS 
 
 founded the Incorporated Society of Authors, edited 
 the "Author," and was always to the front on the 
 question of copyright, the grievances of authors, and 
 the injustices of a certain class of publishers. Few 
 literary men have lived more useful, more strenuous 
 lives than Walter Besant. He was indeed a knight of 
 the pen, and literature was honoured in its most 
 honoured son when he was bidden to arise " Sir 
 AXi^alter." 
 
 The reference in the letter quoted is to a story he 
 wrote as the Christmas number of "All the Year 
 Round," " I'll tell thee, Dick, where I have been." It is 
 interesting to know that the incidents in this charming 
 tale were all true, and within the personal knowledge 
 of the author. 
 
 Here is one more letter of Besant's, which I give be- 
 cause it is written from the Incorporated Society of 
 Authors, the society for which he worked so loyally 
 and with all his heart and soul. The postscript is 
 characteristic. Besant, like many busy men, resented 
 rumours of Lis illness and incapacity for work. 
 
 Incorporated Society of Authors. 
 
 My dear Sims, — I am very glad to hear that you are 
 coming. Where will you sit ? With the guests or with 
 the humbler fry like myself ?— Yours ever, 
 
 W. Besant. 
 
 July 12/88. 
 
MC^ALTER BESANT 73 
 
 P.S. — I am " not " ill — I am " not " ordered away — I 
 
 LORD TeNHYSON. O.C L.. 
 
 PRESIDENT. INCOHPOBATH) SOCIKTY OP IDTHORS. 
 
 WALTER BESANT. _ „ 
 
 CHA.RMAN. 4, POITVCAL St«EET. 
 
 Lincoln's Inn Fwlds, 
 
 jast stanley little. w.c 
 
 EXECUTIVE see. 
 
 - ^l^ kc^ ^^ 
 
 am " not " unable to write (see " World " of this week). 
 
74 AMONG MY AUTOGRAPHS 
 
 "Writing of one collaboration that never reached the 
 practical stage, I am reminded of another. 
 
 The works of F. W. Robinson, the novelist, had been 
 my favourite reading as a youth. Who does not re- 
 member " Owen : a Waif," and " Mattie : a Stray," 
 " The House of Elmore," " Slaves of the Ring," " Grand- 
 mother's Money" ? But the book that I liked best, 
 perhaps, of all, because from the first I took an intense 
 interest in all that concerns crime and criminals, was 
 his " Female Life in Prison." 
 
 When I made the acquaintance of the author who 
 had delighted me for so many years, it was through 
 the introduction of Savile Clarke, who was one of my 
 most intimate journalistic friends, and a member of a 
 little Bohemian club where I spent more of the night, as 
 a rule, than was good for me — the Unity, in Holywell 
 Street. 
 
 I had told Savile Clarke that I had been reading a 
 book of Robinson's in which I thought there was 
 some good dramatic stuff that might be used on the 
 stage. The book was " Carry's Confession." Savile 
 Clarke told Robinson, and brought us together. After 
 his first visit to me, Robinson sent me the following 
 letter, which I have inserted in the book to which it 
 refers : 
 
F. W. ROBINSON 
 
 75 
 
 30 St. James's Road, Brixton, S.W. 
 28/3/90. 
 
 Dear Mr. Sims, — Here are the books. " Carry's Con- 
 fession" page 276 and finishing on pp. 317 to 32 are 
 dramatic I fancy. 
 
 The " Very Strange Family " will remind you, when 
 
 <?d/ 
 
 'Vv*^ 
 
 
 ■c<?/^^ 
 
 you have leisure to read it, of the book you mentioned 
 yesterday, " Under the Spell." 
 
76 AMONG MY AUTOGRAPHS 
 
 Let me take this opportunity of thanking you for 
 your very hearty welcome to Clarence Terrace — it was 
 a real pleasure to me to meet " Dagonet." 
 Kind regards, 
 
 Yours very truly, 
 
 F. W. Robinson. 
 Geo. R. Sims, Esq. 
 
 We met several times afterwards, once at a club 
 where the members sat and played chess in a room the 
 walls of which were lined with fish in glass cases. It 
 was during an evening spent at this club that Robinson 
 told me of the interest which he took in all that con- 
 cerned police and crime, and more especially the 
 hidden life of the criminal after he had become a con- 
 vict. " The Diary of a Prison Matron " was practically 
 written by Robinson. Singularly enough, almost the 
 last work he did was a series of sketches of life and 
 character at the police courts. These sketches appeared 
 in the " Daily Graphic." 
 
 About that time I had found the opportunity I wanted 
 of using the incidents in " Carry's Confession " in con- 
 nection with a scheme which would have appealed to 
 Robinson immensely, as it embraced certain phases of 
 prison life on which he was an authority. I drew out 
 the plan, and was about to write to him asking him to 
 make an appointment, when I heard that he was 
 
F. W. ROBINSON 77 
 
 seriously ill. Soon afterwards I read that he had 
 passed away. 
 
 It was Mr. Robinson who, when editing a magazine, 
 " Home Chimes," introduced Jerome K. Jerome and the 
 "Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow" to the reading 
 world. Some of Mr. J. M. Barrie's " Auld Licht Idylls" 
 first appeared in Mr» Robinson's magazine. He may be 
 said to share with Dr. Robertson Nicoll, the scholarly 
 editor of the " British Weekly," the honour of having 
 discovered the man who immortalised Thrums. 
 
IX 
 
 I knew George Augustus Sala first in the old Bohemian 
 days of Fleet Street. That is to say, I knew him by 
 meeting him constantly at dinners and public gatherings. 
 But for nearly twenty years it was only a formal 
 acquaintance. It was not until 1890 that we began a 
 correspondence. After that we became friends, and in 
 the last years of his life I saw and knew as much of 
 Sala as any one did. 
 
 He was one of the early "Fun" contributors, but 
 before I had joined the staff, in 1874, he had dropped 
 away. I found a letter from him the other day 
 addressed to the editor, in which he gave his reasons. 
 The rate of remuneration was not sufficient for a man 
 who in the 'seventies was in the zenith of his fame as a 
 journalist, and who, in his own words, was travelling 
 for the " Daily Telegraph " with the salary of an 
 ambassador. Sala had roughed it in his early days. I 
 heard him, long years ago at a public dinner, declare 
 that many a night as a boy he had slept behind the 
 
GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA 79 
 
 piled-up baskets of Covent Garden and had known the 
 hunger pain. 
 
 He began to work somewhere about the age of 
 fifteen, and his name appears among the illustrators of 
 Reach and Albert Smith's " Man in the Moon." But 
 his first real chance came when Charles Dickens started 
 " Household "Words." Sala was one of the first con- 
 tributors, and in after life he was always grateful to 
 " Boz." He wrote in his memoir of the great novelist, 
 " The first five pounds which I ever earned in literature 
 came from his kind hand." It was for Dickens he went 
 to Russia and wrote " A Journey Due North," the first 
 of a series of chatty travel books which Sala continued 
 to pour out almost to the end of his career. 
 
 When the Levy-Lawsons bought the " Telegraph," 
 and lifted it out of the slough into one of the most 
 popular journals of the day, Sala was appointed 
 special correspondent, and his style was so marked that 
 it became quite the thing for the comic journalists of the 
 day to imitate it. The initials " G. A. S." were better 
 known for years than any other initials before the 
 public, and Sala was not only one of the chief of the 
 young lions of the " Telegraph," but a voluminous 
 contributor to periodicals and magazines. " The Prince 
 of Specials " was the title he was proudest of, but he 
 wrote a good many novels, some of them in such a 
 hurry that he did not quite know how to wind them up ; 
 
80 AMONG MY AUTOGRAPHS 
 
 and he poured out booklets and pamphlets on every con- 
 ceivable subject, from " The Taming of Mrs. Cruiser " 
 to an essay on a draper's establishment at Liverpool. 
 
 His greatest success in the book line was "Twice 
 Round the Clock," a series of light London sketches 
 originally pubHshed in the " Welcome Guest." It is in 
 a first edition of "Twice Round the Clock" that I 
 have inserted the following letter : 
 
 36 Medina Terrace, 
 
 Hove, Brighton, 
 Sunday, November 30, 1890. 
 
 Dear Mr. Sims, — I have been reading with intense 
 interest and genuine pleasure your admirable article on 
 Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum ; but you won't 
 mind my telling you (I hope) that mad murderers were 
 treated with kindness and consideration in England long 
 before Broadmoor was built ; and there are "not" 
 many of us (not being all Grand Old Men) old enough to 
 remember when the treatment of the insane was a black 
 blot on our civilisation. Absolute cruelty to lunatics in 
 public asylums practically ceased in 1815, when the 
 horrible old Bedlam in Moorfields was demolished, and 
 the new Bethlehem Hospital was built in St. George's 
 Fields ; and by 1839 all mechanical restraints had been 
 banished, not only thence, but from the county asylums 
 for pauper lunatics. 
 
 I remember, full thirty years ago, being shown over 
 Bedlam by the resident physician, Dr. — afterwards Sir 
 — ^Charles Hood. Criminal lunatics were at that time 
 
GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA 81 
 
 among the inmates ; their maintenance being paid 
 for by Government. The murderers' ward was the 
 counterpart of the one which you have so graphically 
 described in the " Referee." The assassins read, 
 smoked, played cards and chess, and so forth ; while 
 the homicidal women had their bird-cages, window- 
 
 l^ WntulfiS sidt,cJ-/(!^(>/ TraJA TrpU, rrOJ> .Alx^ SviapM,^ ^£Ui/nlf toc^. 
 
 a^Ai/rduTdii/ry- -di- 0^cu> f^^ a/*^dbd /ff63 /^^ 2fu cti-numaJ liA/nci/tit ojUc , 
 •urmovt^ /atr, /?>cc/icurr> Jn ^3iJ}^dmx>fr. d e^(jUJ jay rmu , J4C t/' ^ J^t 
 
 'U^^.., ^"'^'^^^^^^.^^. 
 
 gardens, and piano. I had a long talk with Edward 
 Oxford, the conceited pot-boy who shot at the Queen, 
 and who had been in Bedlam since 1841. He was 
 quite sane, " and had always been so," the doctor said. 
 There also, busy at his easel, was Dadd the painter- 
 parricide ; and on the women's side, at fancy needle- 
 work, was Mrs. Brough, the Queen's wet-nurse, who, in 
 an access of puerperal fever, had murdered two or 
 three of her children. It was not until '*1863" that 
 the criminal lunatics were removed from Bedlam to 
 Broadmoor. I could say more ; but it is so infernally 
 cold that my fingers can scarcely hold the pen. 
 
 Faithfully yours, 
 
 G. A. Sala. 
 G. R. Sims, Esq. 
 
82 AMONG MY AUTOGRAPHS 
 
 The letter was called forth by an account I had given 
 of a visit I had recently paid to Broadmoor, where I 
 played whist with some famous murderers, and in the 
 evening assisted at the patients' ball, when I had the 
 honour of dancing with some famous murderesses. 
 
 Sala wrote a marvellously neat hand. Some of his 
 copy in his early days was absolutely copper-plate. 
 He had been apprenticed to an engraver, which may 
 have had something to do with the neatness of his 
 handwriting. In one of his books, " Breakfast in Bed," 
 I have inserted the complete MS. of a sketch of his, 
 " Cloudy Memories of an Old Passport : One Day in 
 Denmark." 
 
 The commencement which is here reproduced will 
 show what marvellous "copy" Sala's was, and how 
 delightful it must have been to printers in the days 
 when the typewriter was not invented, and every man 
 wrote his own hand. Some of these hands were so 
 terrible that when the copy came to a printing-office 
 experts familiar with the caligraphy of the author had 
 to be specially engaged. Two notable instances were 
 the late "Walter Thornbury and the late Dean Stanley. 
 The present writer's hand was at one time the despair 
 of the composing-room, and once, at a meeting of com- 
 positors on Clerkenwell Green, a specimen of it was 
 produced and received with groans. 
 
 Here is a sample of Sala's beautiful •* copy " : 
 
GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA 83 
 
 CLOUDY MEMORIES OF AN OLD PASSPORT 
 
 n 
 
 One Day in Denmark 
 
 A tramp through the streets of Copenhagen on a raw 
 spring morning is not the most interesting promenade in 
 the world. Moreover, it was Sunday ; and a Lutheran 
 Sunday in high latitudes is more remarkable than agree- 
 able. It is a cross between the bitter, frowning, scowHng 
 red-hot poker Sabbath, as it is observed in Scotland 
 and, to a modified extent, in England, and the gay and 
 festive Continental " Dimanche " or " Domenica " — call 
 it what you will. The Protestant rehgion as under- 
 stood by Danish and Swedish Lutherans (the surly 
 Prussians are 
 
 J/ J i. tn^a f^*<vtcft iAt' Mil*. yt<^«</*t«*»^, JiAHtjU^ei ,>tx^ ^ff //t?>*^ -^ ^ieuJ) , eu tJ tJ trh<A. ' 
 ^ ^- JvoWc^cC,. '^^. lo -^ rn4,ciyu:cO oxJi^.i^ tnyUo^^ .omU^ Oojcfocy t>^i /u^/i4.t 
 
 Some time since I told in another place the story 
 of Sala's — so far as I know — soHtary attempt at play- 
 writing. It was a burlesque of "Wat Tyler, M.P.," 
 and was produced at the Gaiety Theatre in 1869, imder 
 the management of my friend Mr. John HoUingshead. 
 
84 AMONG MY AUTOGRAPHS 
 
 Sala came of theatrical stock. His father was con- 
 nected with the management of the King's Theatre 
 in the Haymarket. His mother, Madame Sala, sang at 
 Covent Garden. Sala himself, at the age of seventeen, 
 was assistant to Mr. William Beverley, the scene 
 painter, and helped at the Princess's Theatre at a salary 
 of fifteen shillings a week. 
 
 He had been sketching for illustrated periodicals and 
 " penny dreadfuls " until 1848, when at the age of 
 twenty he definitely entered the field of journalism. 
 His first book, produced in 1850, was " Hail, Rain, Sun- 
 shine, Speed," a guide for Continental tourists, which 
 he wrote and illustrated himself. It was in 1851, the 
 year of the Great Exhibition, that he wrote his first 
 article in " Household Words." In '55 Henry Vizetelly 
 brought out the "Illustrated Times," and Sala was 
 engaged. The editor of the " Daily Telegraph," 
 struck by a leader in the "Illustrated Times," asked 
 Edmund Yates if he knew the writer. Yates gave 
 Sala's name, and he was at once engaged for "the 
 largest circulation," on which he was a bright particular 
 star till within a few years of his death. 
 
 In early life, at the age of six in fact, Sala had a 
 serious attack of measles. While he was recovering, 
 owing to his being left in a draught, he lost his sight. 
 In time he recovered the use of one eye, but the sight 
 of the right eye was never restored. 
 
GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA 85 
 
 In 1891 things were still going well with him, and he 
 was occupying a handsome flat in Victoria Street. I 
 remember a dinner-party there, of which the amusing 
 menu is in his own handwriting : 
 
 ^.^ 
 
 ^Aui^^ic£y- 
 
 
 
86 AMONG MY AUTOGRAPHS 
 
 Sala loved good things, and was an expert in the 
 gastronomic art. 
 
 Soon after 1891 his health began to fail. He started 
 a weekly periodical, " Sala's Journal," but it was not a 
 success. He died at Brighton, on Sunday, December 8 , 
 1895, in his sixty-seventh year. He had had a long and 
 wearing illness, and at one time was delirious. In this 
 state he lived his old life over again, and was con- 
 stantly under the impression that he was assisting at 
 some of the brilliant pageants which he had so 
 marvellously described in the " Daily Telegraph." But 
 he grew calmer towards the close, and the end came 
 painlessly and peacefully. 
 
I first saw General Boulanger, one New Year's morning 
 many a long year ago, in the courtyard of the Hotel du 
 Louvre, in Paris. The courtyard was then the court- 
 yard of the hotel ; to-day it is covered in, and with the 
 hotel has become part of the great Magasin du Louvre. 
 In those days the hotel was separate from the Magasin, 
 but in the courtyard there was a door leading to the 
 • ' Administration . ' ' 
 
 On this New Year's morning the employes of the 
 Magasin had gathered together in the courtyard in 
 order to go in a body and wish " la bonne annee " to 
 the chief of the great enterprise. I was in the court- 
 yard watching them, when my attention was attracted 
 by a small single-horse brougham, which stood waiting 
 for some one. I noticed that there were double reins ; 
 one set the coachman held, and the other set was 
 fastened round the splashboard of the brougham in 
 front of the coachman's seat. 
 
 " "Whose brougham is that ? " I asked. 
 
88 AMONG MY AUTOGRAPHS 
 
 " It is the brougham of General Boulanger. He lives 
 always in the Hotel du Louvre." 
 
 A few minutes later "le brav' General" came out in 
 full array. He was on his way to pay some New Year 
 calls. I turned to a friend who was with me, and said, 
 " General Boulanger is not a brave man. He proves 
 his cowardice by that double set of reins." 
 
 I met Boulanger frequently after that, and I saw a 
 good deal of him in London when he was living in 
 Portland Place. In common with a distinguished 
 English actor, he could not wear a high hat ; it always 
 slipped on to one side of his head or on to the back. 
 At Kempton Park one day I watched him backing 
 horses. He wagered small amounts ; but his face wore 
 an anxious look all through the race. Once, when his 
 horse came in second, I heard him sigh. The book- 
 makers soon learned who the little Frenchman in the 
 waggling high hat was, and I gathered from the con- 
 versation that they were disappointed. They had 
 expected to see a hero, after the wonderful picture 
 of the General on his famous black charger which had 
 been reproduced by our English illustrated papers. 
 " He'll never do any good, if looks go for anything," 
 said one prominent metallician to me ; and I intimated 
 that I had formed that opinion long ago. 
 
 The card given below, " General Boulanger, with his 
 sincerest thanks." was sent by him to M. Georges 
 
GENERAL BOULANGER 89 
 
 Jacobi, at that time musical director of the Alhambra, 
 and M. Jacobi gave it to me the day after he received 
 it: 
 
 I was in Paris the night that Boulanger waited for 
 the result of the elections at the Restaurant Durand, 
 in the Place de la Madelaine, and the supreme moment 
 came when he had Paris at his feet and was afraid 
 of his own triumph. Ths tragedy that ended the 
 General's life was — I say it with every sympathy for 
 the unfortunate man — a tragedy of cowardice. But 
 Boulanger had been forced by fate into a position for 
 which he was totally unfitted. He was indeed a lath 
 painted to look like iron. "When the wind blew the 
 lath bent. "When the storm arose the lath broke. He 
 committed suicide because he had lost the one human 
 being who still had faith in him. When she was gone 
 he had no faith in himself. 
 
 Henri Rochefort, whose card and handwriting I give 
 below, was for a long time my friend and neighbour in 
 Clarence Terrace, Regent's Park. The card he sent to 
 
90 AMONG MY AUTOGRAPHS 
 
 me the day he quitted London for Paris. Seeing what 
 his attitude to the country that gave him hospitaHty 
 has been since, one might almost say the day he shook 
 the soil of England from his feet. 
 
 A thousand thanks for your kind remembrance, my 
 dear confrere, but you have not finished with me, 
 for my intention is to come back often to the great city 
 of London. 
 
 Rochefort was a remarkable figure, with his erect 
 bearing, his French features, and his wealth of piled-up 
 snowy hair. All the cabmen knew him, and I am 
 bound to say liked him, for he was generous to a 
 degree. To me he was always dehghtfully amiable, 
 and he took a great fancy to Robert Buchanan, at 
 whose house I met him more than once. 
 
GENERAL BOULANGER 91 
 
 He was very fond of horses, and had a pair that 
 used to be taken regularly every morning to his front 
 door to be fed with sugar. 
 
 Once I took him to the Moore and Burgess Minstrels, 
 and that was an entertainment he never forgot. He 
 could not understand it at all. " They black their faces 
 and sing about dead children," he said, when I had 
 translated a song. " But you English are marvellous. 
 Indeed, it is true that you take your pleasure sadly." 
 
 Rochefort told me that he had never tried to learn 
 English because he was afraid that it would spoil his 
 style. But Mademoiselle Marguerite, his beautiful 
 niece, who accompanied him everywhere, learnt it and 
 spoke it very prettily. It was she who always told the 
 cabmen where to drive to when Rochefort wanted to 
 attend a picture sale. A picture sale was his favourite 
 hobby, and he was a frequent buyer. The reader will 
 see that his farewell message to me breathes friendship 
 to England. I suppose the exigencies of the situation 
 in France compelled him to alter his views, so far, at 
 least, as he printed them in " L'Intransigeant." 
 
 Turning from two Parisians in London, I take down 
 a volume written by a Londoner who knew and loved 
 his London, and had its story at the tips of his fingers, 
 from which it was continually rimning down into his 
 pen. "Walter Thombury was one of the most in- 
 dustrious of literary men. He was a novelist, a poet, 
 
92 AMONG MY AUTOGRAPHS 
 
 an art critic, a traveller, a biographer, and a prince of 
 Bohemia. In the year 1874, when the letter was written 
 which I have placed in his "Haunted London," I was 
 assisting in getting up a benefit for a popular low 
 comedian, who, though not often on the stage now, is 
 "still" a popular low comedian. So it came about 
 that Walter Thombury's characteristic letter enclosing 
 money for two stalls came into my possession. Thorn- 
 bury, as will be seen by the sample, wrote a puzzling 
 hand. It was nearly as bad as Dean Stanley's. There 
 are two words in his letter, the two preceding the signa- 
 ture, which I never was able to decipher, and I cannot 
 now : 
 
 13 Abingdon Villas, Kensington, W. 
 November 10, 1874. 
 
 My dear Low very lo. Comedian, — Please send me 2 
 stalls for your benefit — though far from flush after 
 4 months' illness and idleness. I enclose the xes — 
 borrowed, of course. Right you are, &c. &;c. 
 
 Yours truly, 
 
 A. B. C. Odell, Esq. G. Walter Thornbury. 
 
 Thombury, in addition to his terrific output in the 
 book Hne, wrote hundreds of sketches and short stories 
 for " Chambers's Journal," " Household Words," and 
 "All the Year Round." He travelled in Spain and 
 
G. AXJ^ALTER THORNBURY 93 
 
 
 ^ 
 
 /?. 
 
 /'^^^ J^^ "^ 
 
 2. 
 
 /^^ 
 
 
 /^ 
 
 
 ^..-^/", 
 
 
 ^4<^^^^/^ 
 
94 AMONG MY AUTOGRAPHS 
 
 Turkey and the United States, and wrote his experi- 
 ences, but his travels in "Haunted London" will, I 
 think, carry his name farthest into the years to come. 
 He was a marvellous worker, and was slaving away till 
 within a few days of his death. He died suddenly in 
 1876, a victim to ceaseless production at high pressure. 
 He was only forty-eight when the blow fell, and the 
 pen dropped from the dead hand that had been tireless 
 in life. 
 
XI 
 
 I have a number of plays written by John Baldwin 
 Buckstone bound together, and in the volume I have 
 inserted not only a letter written by the eminent author- 
 actor-manager of the famous theatre in the Haymarket, 
 but also a most interesting document in his own hand- 
 writing and signed by him. That document is the 
 original draft of the address presented to Charles 
 Dickens in acknowledgment of his presiding at the 
 festival of the Royal General Theatrical Fund : 
 
 To Charles Dickens, Esq. 
 
 Sir, — "With every feeling of respect and gratitude, the 
 Directors of the General Theatrical Fund Association 
 take this opportunity of thanking you, not only for your 
 presidency on this occasion, but for your constant and 
 valuable presence at every anniversary festival held in 
 its behalf. 
 
 From the commencement of this institution you have 
 been its best friend, and the Directors hope that for 
 many years to come they may continue to rejoice in 
 
96 AMONG MY AUTOGRAPHS 
 
 the possession of your great services, zeal, and warm 
 wishes. 
 
 (Signed) By order of the Directors, 
 
 John B. Buckstone, Chairman. 
 
 '"^ h^ U^-e^ /cf^ >^ t^A^' *»*^ eyni!.^^i:^Zj>df ^ 
 ^ux^ ^t^- i*^ /ir^ ^er»x/^ /i^te^^^^^^-*^ *^ ^^ 
 
 It was at a dinner of the Royal General Theatrical 
 Fund, when Buckstone was chairman, that he told the 
 remarkable story of his early career. He was one of a 
 company of strolling actors, and he told how on one 
 occasion he had walked from Northampton to London 
 on 4Jd. He wpre a costume made up of his own well- 
 
JOHN BALDWIN BUCKSTONE 97 
 
 worn clothes and a chintz waistcoat which he used to 
 play country boys in, and carried in his hand a bundle 
 which contained a red wig and a pair of russet boots — ■ 
 his theatrical wardrobe. His walking boots were a 
 pair of old dancing pumps tied up at the heels with 
 packthread. He walked forty miles the first day, and 
 thirty-two the second, arriving at the " Mother Redcap," 
 Camden Town, with just enough money among the 
 company to pay for a pint of porter. 
 
 At the time he made this speech Buckstone was 
 already the lessee and manager of the Haymarket 
 Theatre. It was at the Haymarket that I remember 
 Buckstone, for his great Adelphi successes, " Green 
 Bushes " and " The Flowers of the Forest," were 
 already melodramatic classics when I was born. My 
 first remembrance of his acting was in the part of Asa 
 Trenchard, in Tom Taylor's " Our American Cousin," 
 a play made memorable by Sothern's wonderful Lord 
 Dundreary, an impersonation that took the town by 
 storm. Then my memory carries me on through the 
 Gilbertian era, when " The Palace of Truth, " Pyg- 
 malion and Galatea, and " The Wicked World " were 
 drawing all London. My last remembrance of Buck- 
 stone was in connection with a first night, when my 
 friend Dillon Croker, happily still with us, and Mr. F. G. 
 Westmacott Chapman, since passed away, produced, at 
 the Haymarket, a burlesque version of a famous old 
 
 Q 
 
98 AMONG MY AUTOGRAPHS 
 
 classic, called " Love's Paradise," in which Mrs. Alfred 
 Mellon played a part. This play was not a great 
 success, and I met Buckstone wandering about at the 
 back of the dress circle, and was introduced to him, and 
 had a few minutes' conversation with him. That was 
 almost the end of the " Bucky " regime — we all called 
 him " Bucky " in those days. He died on the 30th of 
 October 1879, a few weeks after Mr. John S. Clarke 
 had organised for him at the Haymarket a series of 
 farewell benefit performances. 
 
 Buckstone had a remarkable personality on the stage , 
 and " imitations of popular actors " always included 
 him. He was a player for nearly sixty years, and was 
 during oneperiod of his life the most popular character- 
 actor in London. 
 
 His Ufe has yet to be written. I was talking only a 
 week or two ago with Mr. John Lane, the publisher, on 
 this very subject, and I believe that he has at present a 
 life of John Baldwin Buckstone in contemplation. It 
 will be deeply interesting as a picture of theatrical life 
 and literature in the early and mid- Victorian eras. 
 
 When Buckstone took the Haymarket Theatre he 
 succeeded Benjamin "Webster. Webster was one of the 
 leading actors at the Olympic with Madame Vestris. 
 He "starred" with Madame Celeste, and there are 
 plenty of middle-aged playgoers to-day who could 
 prate to you by the hour of the Webster regime at the 
 
BENJAMIN A)O^EBSTER 99 
 
 Adelphi, of his Robert Landry in " The Dead Heart," 
 and his Joey Ladle in " No Thoroughfare," the Charles 
 Dickens-Wilkie Collins play in which Fechter made 
 such a deep impression as Obenreizer. 
 
 But the greatest fame came to Webster, perhaps, 
 when he played Penn Holder in his own play, adapted 
 from the French, " One Touch of Nature." It is in a 
 copy of this play that I have inserted the following 
 letter. It was written by Webster to his son, and from 
 his son it passed to me : 
 
 Bognor, July ist. 
 
 My dear Ben, — I hope that you are getting well and 
 can soon return here. All are well here, and it is 
 beautiful weather. 
 
 I saw Shirley Brooks at the Newspaper Fund dinner, 
 and he promised to send his contribution to-day or to- 
 morrow to the Adelphi. Strange to say I have never 
 heard from Theodore Martin. 
 
 Your affectionate Father, 
 
 B. Webster. 
 
 Benjamin Webster retired from the stage in 1874. I 
 saw him in the last original part he played, Rodin 
 the Jesuit, in a version of " The Wandering Jew " by 
 Leopold Lewis. In one scene he had to kneel. He was 
 so feeble that he coulJ not rise without the assistance 
 quickly rendered him by Mr. James Fernandez, who 
 
100 
 
 AMONG MY AUTOGRAPHS 
 
 was playing in the same scene. Webster died in 1882. 
 His daughter was the wife of Sir Edward Lawson. 
 Had this gentle and charming lady lived she would to- 
 day have been a peeress. 
 
 In March 1874 a farewell benefit performance was 
 
 
 y^ Jf 
 
 J" 
 
 C^iC^X^ 
 
 / - ^ ■p L %..-<^ 
 
 
 .^^.^fcri. 
 
 given for him at Drury Lane. The amount realised 
 was over £2000. Webster was the last manager of 
 the old Adelphi, pulled down in 1858, and the first 
 manager of the new Adelphi, built on the old site. 
 
 Webster produced several plays by Sheridan Knowles 
 at the Haymarket, among them " The Love Chase," in 
 '37, almost immediately after the commencement of his 
 
SHERIDAN KNO^)C^LES 101 
 
 lesseeship. The first play was " The Bridal," adapted 
 from Beaumont and Fletcher. I give these details 
 because in the printed prompt copy of Sheridan 
 Knowles' " The Hunchback " — the cut and marked 
 copy — I have inserted a Sheridan Knowles letter. The 
 author of " The Hunchback " is writing to a collaborator 
 whom he addresses as Beaumont, and signs himself 
 Fletcher : 
 
 I Park Street, Torquay, Devon. 
 
 My dear Beaumont, — A happy New Year, and many 
 a one, to you, Mrs. Bm., and yours — God bless you ! 
 I should be glad to hear from you, if only to hear that 
 you continue well, and that all you have are well. Mrs. 
 Knowles heartily joins me in kind wishes to all. 
 Remember me to Miss Andrew, Mr. John, Mr. "Wilkin- 
 son, and Lady Gladys and family. 
 
 Poor Fletcher has had a slight shock of paralysis, but 
 homoeopathy, with the blessing of God, has brought 
 him round. The novel will be out, I expect, before the 
 end of the month. I think you will like it — who does 
 not like his own offspring ? 
 
 Send me all the news you can, for this is a dull, dull 
 place. 
 
 I was attacked last week — speech and right side 
 affected — the symptoms, thank God, quite gone . They 
 were not " severe" — not "very." Stomach, I believe, 
 they say is. 
 
 I keep up teetotalism. What shall we set about next ? 
 The time is coming " when no man can work." 
 
102 AMONG MY AUTOGRAPHS 
 
 God's Mournful "Will be done ! 
 
 Yours affectionately, 
 
 Fletcher, 
 Vulgarly called J. S. Knowles. 
 
 Beaumont — the matchless ! 
 " Keep the attack to yourself." 
 
 
 
 
SHERIDAN KNOWLES 103 
 
 Sheridan Knowles, many of whose plays — notably 
 " The Love Chase" and " The Hunchback "—hold the 
 stage to this day, was an Irishman. He was in his 
 time a soldier, a doctor, a schoolmaster, an actor, a poet, 
 a novelist, and a dramatist, and at one period he preached 
 at Exeter Hall. 
 
 In 1862, being in his seventy-eighth year, he was 
 entertained at a public banquet in his native city of 
 Cork, and died a few months afterwards. 
 
 The letter I have reproduced is interesting. The 
 desire to conceal from the public the ravages of ill- 
 health is common to the busy, eager brain-toilers of the 
 world. " The time is coming when no man can work " 
 is the haunting idea that induces much of the melan- 
 choly characteristic of the literary temperament. 
 
XII 
 
 As I take from my library shelf " Studies on Homer 
 and the Homeric Age," by William Ewart Gladstone, 
 and open it and read the letter which is here given, my 
 memory wanders back over the years when I was a 
 devout Gladstonian, giving all the hero worship that 
 was in me to this giant of the halcyon days of the 
 Liberalism in which I was reared. My grandfather 
 was one of the leaders of the Chartist movement, and a 
 fervent politician. In my younger days John Bright 
 and Gladstone were constantly held up to me as my 
 grandfather's ideals of men of the people. I began my 
 journalistic life as an ardent Gladstonian, and under the 
 editorship of Ashton Dilke, at that time member for 
 Newcastle, I flung myself eagerly into the fight between 
 Disraeli and Gladstone which was then raging. I saw 
 much of the venerable statesman in his later days, and 
 heard him speak not only in the House, but at several 
 banquets which were not of the political order. Then 
 came a time when his grip of the great public relaxed, 
 
AX^^ILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE 105 
 
 when it was the fashion to forget his glorious past, 
 and chaff his collars and make merry over his birthday 
 axe. 
 
 The following letter was written to Mr. John 
 
 h^ «^iyvc-w^-v fL_c^^^,^ /<^>^^^ <i-<L.- 
 /u-*-.-<-^<-4-»^^ <^L,<,.«,*^ »^Uja*-c^ Z<.>c«-.^ 
 
 y o^.,>..^,.^,^>ic. 
 
 -^ 
 
 Saunders, the well-known novelist and dramatist, who, 
 bom in 1810, lived a busy Ufe till almost the time of his 
 death, in 1895. Saunders brought out, in 1846, the 
 " People's Journal," one of the earliest illustrated 
 papers. He wrote " Love's Martyrdom," which was 
 
106 AMONG MY AUTOGRAPHS 
 
 played with a splendid cast at the Hay market Theatre. 
 But by the present generation he is best remembered as 
 the author of " Arkwright's Wife " and " Abel Drake," 
 two powerful plays, in which he collaborated with Tom 
 Taylor. He wrote a great many excellent novels, one 
 of his last being '* Israel Mort, Overman," a powerful 
 story of life in the "Welsh mines : 
 
 II Carlton House Terrace, S.W. 
 July 31, 1869. 
 
 Dear Sir, — I postponed thanking you for your letter 
 of the 13th, and for the very obliging present of your 
 work, from my desire to peruse the volumes in the first 
 instance. 
 
 A recent indisposition found for me the opportunity 
 sooner than I had expected, and I have read the whole 
 with great interest and much admiration both of its 
 power and its moral aims. 
 
 I have the honour to be, 
 
 Dear sir, 
 
 Your faithful Servant, 
 
 J. Saunders, Esq. W. E. Gladstone. 
 
 To enter into the career of William Ewart Gladstone 
 in an article of this nature would be impossible. Here 
 I forget his politics, and remember only his magnetic 
 personality, the charm of his gentler oratory, and his 
 
WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE 107 
 
 many incursions into literature. I was reminded of the 
 " Grand Old Man " in a curious way only this winter. 
 At a popular health resort I had the rooms which he 
 had once occupied, and my landlady told me quite a 
 number of anecdotes connected with his stay. The 
 ones that interested me most concerned the little 
 family gathering round the dinner- table. One of Mr. 
 Gladstone's sons was with his father and mother, and 
 whenever an argument commenced, and the son 
 expressed an opinion of his own, Mrs. Gladstone would 
 hold up a warning finger and exclaim, " Now, don't 
 contradict your father." The great statesman arid con- 
 troversialist had reached an age when contradiction is 
 not good for the body or the mind. 
 
 Here is a letter from John Stuart Mill, which I have 
 inserted in a copy of his work " On Liberty," published 
 in 1859. The great philosopher and metaphysician 
 played a very important part in the literature and 
 politics of his country for many years. He entered 
 Parliament, but there he was a failure. Much was 
 expected of him, but, like many famous men who have 
 been great in other ways, he was out of his element in 
 the House of Commons. The most romantic episode of 
 Mill's career was his worship of Mrs. Taylor, a worship 
 which amounted to idolatry. After twenty years of 
 platonic affection, Mill was enabled by the lady's 
 widowhood to make the relationship nearer and dearer. 
 
108 AMONG MY AUTOGRAPHS 
 
 He married her. He went to live in Avignon, the town 
 which was once the Papal city : and in Avignon he 
 died, in 1873. It is from Avignon that the following 
 letter is dated. It refers to the situation created by Mr. 
 Gladstone contesting two seats simultaneously, Green- 
 wich and South Lancashire : 
 
 Avignon, 
 
 Sept. 27, 1868. 
 
 Dear Sir, — I beg to acknowledge your communication 
 of the 12th inst., requesting me to become a member of 
 Mr. Baxter Langley's committee, with a view to his 
 being returned for Greenwich if a vacancy should be 
 created by Mr. Gladstone being elected for that borough 
 but not requiring the seat. 
 
 1 warmly applaud Mr. Baxter Langley's public 
 spirited conduct in withdrawing in favour of Mr. Glad- 
 stone ; but, while the present election is pending, and I 
 am a member of Mr. Gladstone's Committee, I prefer 
 not to join the Committee of any other candidate. 
 
 I am, dear sir, ' 
 
 Yours very sincerely, 
 
 J. H. Hodges, Esq. J. S. Mill. 
 
 After his death Mill's autobiography was published. 
 It was a remarkable narrative, and made an immense 
 sensation. One of the most striking passages in it was 
 that in which he tells the story of his love for his wife. 
 " For seven years and a half that blessing was mine. 
 
JOHN STUART MILL 109 
 
 for seven and a half only. I can say nothing which 
 would describe in the faintest manner what that loss 
 was and is. But because I know that she would have 
 wished it, I endeavour to make the best of what life I 
 
 have left, and to work for her purposes with such 
 diminished strength as can be derived from thoughts 
 of her and communion with her memory." This 
 veneration for his wife was the one " religion " of Mill's 
 life. 
 
 Mr. Baxter Langley, who retired and made way for 
 
110 AMONG MY AUTOGRAPHS 
 
 Mr. Gladstone at Greenwich, had an idea of a " Church 
 of Progress," and there came into my possession some 
 time ago a number of letters written to him on the 
 subject by some of the most eminent thinkers of the 
 day. 
 
 From the number I select one which is particularly 
 interesting, as being written by Viscount Amberley, the 
 eldest son of John Earl Russell, the famous statesman 
 of the Gladstonian era. Viscount Amberley sat for 
 some time for Nottingham. He was a man of very 
 advanced opinions on religious matters, and he 
 published a work, " An Analysis of Religious Belief," 
 in the first volume of which I have inserted the follow- 
 ing letter : 
 
 Rodborough Manor, 
 
 Sept, 29, 1869. 
 
 Dear Mr. Langley, — I should have been very happy 
 if possible to take part in your opening service, but 
 unfortunately I have been engaged for some time to 
 spend October 3rd at Bristol, and I must therefore beg 
 you to accept my best wishes for your success instead 
 of my presence. 
 
 Yours very truly, 
 
 J. B. Langley, Esq. Amberley. 
 
 Viscount Amberley died during his father's lifetime, 
 and is buried at Chenies. He was the father of the 
 
VISCOUNT AMBERLEY 111 
 
 Earl Russell who at various times has furnished inter- 
 
 (J LirdJlMfyvr^ /ift^L^ 
 
 esting matter to the newspapers, and who was not long 
 
112 AMONG MY AUTOGRAPHS 
 
 since the central figure in a trial for bigamy in the 
 House of Lords. 
 
 Viscount Amberley, had he lived, would have been 
 the father-in-law of the countess who was the wife of 
 Mr. William Browne, or, as he preferred to be called, 
 " Mr. Archibald Stuart," late " Prince of Modena." 
 
XIII 
 
 Hitherto I have only dealt with the autographs of 
 dead celebrities, and for the good and sufficient reason 
 that I do not feel justified in publishing the letters of 
 authors and authoresses who are still with us. But I 
 may be permitted, perhaps, to devote a chapter to some 
 living authors whose letters it is my good fortune to 
 possess. These letters I have inserted in a copy of 
 some celebrated work of their pen. I shall not give 
 the letters in these instances, but there can be no 
 breach of good faith in publishing facsimiles of the 
 signatures. 
 
 In the first edition of " Lady Audley's Secret " I have 
 a delightful letter from my friend Miss Braddon. Here 
 is a little personal note. Some summers back I was 
 telling the popular authoress of my early attempts to 
 become a writer. I told her of the poetry I sent 
 to a halfpenny journal, and of the kindly encourage- 
 ment which was given me by the editor in the 
 Answers to Correspondents" page: "There is pro- 
 
114 
 
 AMONG MY AUTOGRAPHS 
 
 mise in your work. Persevere, and you will probably 
 succeed." 
 
 And then Miss Braddon gave me a piece of informa- 
 tion which, under the circumstances, was quite dramatic 
 
 Her mother was editing the halfpenny journal at the 
 time. It was Miss Braddon's mother who generously 
 gave me the first lift on the road to authorship. Miss 
 Braddon is, as every one knows, in private life Mrs. 
 Maxwell. 
 
 Another lady writer who was famous in the days of 
 my reading was " Ouida," whom, years after she had 
 taken the public by storm, we knew to be Miss de la 
 Rame. 
 
 I have inserted Ouida's letter in that book which 
 always appealed to me more, perhaps, than any other 
 romance of the writer, whose style was so distinct 
 
" OUIDA " 115 
 
 that it has been burlesqued again and again by our 
 humourists— once by Bret Harte, and more than 
 once by the genial editor of " Punch," Sir Francis 
 Bumand. 
 
 ^UuLjf MJt im ^t^^^^^jQ^^^S) * 
 
 <-^-^— - «^^^^^/Z> • 
 
 "Ouida" is, I believe, a childish corruption of 
 Louisa. 
 
 I can remember a time when the reading world 
 thrilled with anticipation when a new work of Ouida's 
 was announced. Many of her romantic heroes gripped 
 hold of the popular imagination, and have held on to 
 the present day. The wonderful Guardsmen took us 
 first, but the tenderer characters have kept a place in 
 
116 AMONG MY AUTOGRAPHS 
 
 hearts that have grown cold to the charm of handsome 
 miHtary men with a past. Ouida I saw once, and once 
 only. That was in the English Reading Room in 
 Florence. She is, as admirers of her works know, 
 devoted to animals, and she has done much in Italy 
 to ameliorate their condition. •' Two Little Wooden 
 Shoes" is my favourite Ouida, and bound up with that 
 is the letter I possess. 
 
 It happens frequently, when I go "Wimbledon way, 
 
 , / that I come upon our great 
 
 i^run>t i^iAj English poet, Algernon Charles 
 
 J/^' / J Swinburne, striding along for 
 
 *^ his morning walk. In the first 
 
 edition of his "Poems and Ballads" — the edition 
 
 which Moxon published and afterwards withdrew, I 
 
 have a letter of the poet's. 
 
 And here I may tell a little story, one which up to 
 the present I have kept strictly to myself. My first 
 introduction to literary work was made in the offices 
 of the "Dark Blue" magazine. I held some sort of a 
 post which might be called assistant sub-editor. John 
 Christian Freund, the editor, was a friend of my family, 
 and he gave me a chance. I used to go to the office in 
 the Strand every day from eleven to four, and " assist" 
 Mr. John Freund and Mr. Keningale Cook. I had 
 through my hands a good deal of MS., which it was 
 my duty to return to the author with the proof. In 
 
ALGERNON CHARLES SAX/'INBURNE 117 
 
 this manner a proof of a poem written by Swinburne 
 came my way, and in my youthful presumption I 
 struck out one word and suggested a substitute on the 
 margin. 
 
 It was so long ago — ^1871 — that I almost forget what 
 the poet wrote back. But I know it was prose. Freund 
 came to me, recognising my handwriting, and said, 
 " Did you write that on Swinburne's proof ?" " Yes," 
 I replied ; " it was only a suggestion." 
 
 Freund laughed and explained matters to the great 
 poet, and I have no doubt that when he knew the truth 
 he laughed also. 
 
 A year or two later I met John Thomson, then the 
 dramatic critic of the " "Weekly Dispatch." Thomson 
 had at one time been Swinburne's secretary. Swinburne 
 lodged in a house kept by Thomson's mother. One 
 night he went down into the kitchen and discovered 
 Thomson, a youth of eighteen, reciting Milton's " Para- 
 dise Lost" to the blackbeetles. He found that the lad 
 had a marvellous memory and a keen appreciation of 
 poetry, and for a time made him his amanuensis. It 
 was John Thomson who gave me his column of " Waifs 
 and Strays" to write in the "Weekly Dispatch," and 
 that is how I became a journalist. So perhaps I may 
 claim, in a roundabout way, that I owe my first start 
 in journalism to Swinburne. If he had not taken up 
 John Thomson, John Thomson would not have gone 
 
118 AMONG MY AUTOGRAPHS 
 
 on to the staff of the "Dispatch" — he was recom- 
 mended by Swinburne — and Thomson would not have 
 introduced me to the " Weekly Dispatch," and later on 
 to Henry Sampson, who put me on the staff of " Fun," 
 
 and carried me with him to his new venture, the 
 "Referee." 
 
 Before I leave the " Dark Blue " I must tell another 
 little story, and it will necessitate my giving in this 
 selection the autograph of one who is, alas, no longer 
 with us. I have placed in "Paston Carew" a letter 
 from Mrs. E. Lynn Linton, and also a blue paper 
 summons to appear and give evidence at the City of 
 London Court on her behalf in an action against the 
 editor of the " Dark Blue." A little dispute had arisen, 
 and I was subpoenaed as a witness. 
 
 Mrs. Lynn Linton gave us the phrase " the girl of 
 the period," and was always thought to be bitter 
 against women. Those who knew her intimately told 
 
MRS. LYNN LINTON— AUSTIN DOBSON 119 
 
 a different tale. She was a brilliant and caustic writer. 
 Some of her best work was not popular with the great 
 masses, because it touched a deeper and more philo- 
 sophic note than the general reader cares for. But 
 Elizabeth Lynn Linton was one of the greatest female 
 
 ^^/* y^'^S sy^rx^ y^2<' — y^^''::^-?^^^^ ^''j) ^^'^ ^>^?^r ^^^^i:y^<r^2 
 
 writers of her day, and her work will live. I made 
 her acquaintance and obtained her autograph through 
 being subpoenaed as a witness against my first editor. 
 
 As this chapter of "My Autographs" runs on the 
 personal note, I may perhaps tell another story. About 
 a year ago I was present at a dinner given by the 
 Whitefriars Club to Mr. Austin Dobson. In the volume 
 which he calls " Proverbs in Porcelain" I have inserted 
 a letter addressed to myself from Mr. Austin Dobson, 
 and the manuscript of one of his poems, in a hand- 
 writing as neat as that of George Augustus Sala. 
 
120 AMONG MY AUTOGRAPHS 
 
 At the dinner, when several speakers had testified to 
 the position which Mr. Dobson had made for himself in 
 literature, Mr, Clement Shorter, who was in the chair, 
 asked me if I would speak to the subject of the even- 
 ing. I am a modest man in the matter of after-dinner 
 oratory, but I could not resist the temptation to remind 
 the guest of the evening of something which he had 
 himself forgotten. 
 
 "When I first went on to " Fun," I wrote for " Tom 
 Hood's Annual" some poetry which I called "A 
 Rondeau." 
 
 Mr. Austin Dobson had some of his delightful verse 
 in the same annual. He read my rondeau, and wrote 
 me a most charming letter, telling me exactly what a 
 rondeau ought to be, and where my attempt failed to 
 justify the title which I had given it. 
 
 Mr, Dobson told me that night at the Whitefriars 
 that he had quite forgotten the circumstance. But I 
 had kept the letter for a quarter of a century. As a 
 memento of the occasion of its resurrection I gave 
 it to the chairman of the evening, Mr, Clement 
 Shorter, the brilliant editor of the "Sphere" and the 
 " Tatler." 
 
 In "Barabbas" I have a very interesting letter from 
 Miss Marie Corelli, whom I have had the pleasure of 
 knowing from the early days of her fame. 
 
 I have said that I am bashful in the matter of after- 
 
MARIE CORELLI 121 
 
 dinner oratory. Some years ago I had to make a 
 speech at a dinner given by the foreign journahsts of 
 London. I sat between Miss Marie CoreUi and Mr. 
 ^ Eric Mackay, and when I knew that I was to speak 
 just before Miss CoreUi I felt even more nervous than 
 
 ^. 
 
 /t-CC^^^ 
 
 usual. My speech was just as halting as the speech of 
 the brilliant authoress who followed me was fluent and 
 graceful. 
 
 Last year Miss CoreUi wrote a charming story for 
 the benefit of the " Referee " Children's Dinner Fund. 
 I wish I could reproduce the delightful letter she sent 
 in reply to my bold request, but that would be a breach 
 of etiquette. 
 
 A letter from the distinguished explorer Sir Henry 
 M. Stanley embellishes my copy of " Through the 
 Dark Continent." It is written to Count Armfelt, who 
 for many years was my constant travelling companion 
 on my trips abroad. Count Armfelt was himself in his 
 
122 AMONG MY AUTOGRAPHS 
 
 younger days an explorer. He was in Khartoum for 
 many months, and commanded a body of black troops 
 in the equatorial provinces. He was at one time 
 secretary to General Gordon, and he gave me letters 
 of Gordon and Emin Pasha, which I hope in due 
 
 
 course to reproduce. It was concerning Egypt that 
 Sir Henry M. Stanley wrote the letter the signature 
 of which is all I can here permit myself to give. 
 
 Count Armfelt was at this time hoping to go to 
 Egypt in connection with the emerald mines supposed 
 to exist in the Soudan ; and he went, but was unable, 
 owing to the military regulations, to pass into the 
 region he wished to explore. 
 
 In the next chapter I shall once more deal with 
 the letters of celebrities who are no longer with us, 
 and resume my old plan of quoting and reproducing 
 the letters. I propose next to deal with the autographs 
 I possess of the Prince Regent and his brothers the 
 Duke of Sussex and the Duke of Clarence, afterwards 
 
HENRY M. STANLEY 123 
 
 "William IV. The letter of George IV. was written, 
 when he was Prince of Wales, to Mrs. Robinson, the 
 actress. It is part of the correspondence of " Florizel 
 and Perdita," and is written by the Prince when poor 
 Perdita was in great pecuniary trouble. 
 
XIV 
 
 This is the story of three royal brothers and the 
 women they wooed and won : George IV. and Mrs. 
 Robinson, the Duke of Sussex and Lady Augusta 
 Murray, and the Duke of Clarence — afterwards Wil- 
 liam IV. — and Mrs. Jordan. The story of Florizel and 
 Perdita has been told in history and in romance. Mary 
 Robinson, who will always be known as '' Perdita," was 
 playing that part in "A Winter's Tale" in 1779, when 
 George Prince of Wales, then in his eighteenth year, 
 became enamoured of her. He sent her a letter signed 
 " Florizel," a meeting was arranged, and the wooing 
 went on in quite a Romeo and Juliet manner. Mrs. 
 Robinson was obdurate. She was a married woman, 
 and remembered it, although her husband had used her 
 badly ; and she was a reigning favourite of the foot- 
 lights, and hesitated to leave them for the doubtful 
 allegiance of a royal lover. But eventually the Prince 
 agreed to give her a bond of £20,000, to be paid when 
 he came of age. The romance was not cf long dura- 
 
GEORGE P. 125 
 
 tion. After about two years, the Prince transferred his 
 affections to another, and sent poor "Perdita" a note 
 saying they must meet no more. The bond was not 
 paid, but Fox ultimately obtained the forsaken favourite 
 a pension of £500 a year. Later Mrs. Robinson fell 
 into poverty. "When she was staying in Brighton she 
 sent the Prince a piteous letter. The Prince wrote her 
 in reply, and that letter, reproduced here, is in my 
 possession, and I have inserted it in that exeeedingly 
 interesting book " Mary Robinson," by Mr. J. Fitzgerald 
 MoUoy. The letter shows that the Prince was not 
 utterly indifferent to the troubles of the woman he had 
 loved and cast off : 
 
 Dear Mrs. Robinson, — I have received your letter, 
 and it really overcomes me, the scene of distress you 
 so pathetically paint ; I will certainly wait upon you, 
 but I am afraid it will be late before I can come to the 
 Ship, as I have company with me. Should it be within 
 " the compass " of my " means " to rescue you from the 
 abyss you apprehend that " is before" you, and for you 
 mention Mr. Brent, I need not say that the temptation 
 of gratifying others and at the same time, and by the 
 same means making one's self happy, is too alluring to 
 be neglected a single moment ; however, you must allow 
 me to be thus explicit and candid, that it must in great 
 measure depend upon the extent of what will be neces- 
 sary to be done for your service, and how far my funds 
 may be adequate, as well as my powers equal to attain 
 
126 
 
 AMONG MY AUTOGRAPHS 
 
 
 ^^ ^r^-'^^*-*^..-^^^^ y^^^e^^ yi^^<-ti^,w^^ A^^^i^^fi^. 
 
 >c;:^ 
 
 "J*-**-/ 
 
 'j^^'^C^'M^ 
 
 *p^fC^i*.<^ 
 
 C*^^*..^C*^^^ y A*^ ^ ^^-f^ ^ 
 
 / 
 
 ■^^ V**-* ^.^ 
 
 that object. In the meantime only rest assured of my 
 good wishes and good intentions. 
 
 I am, dear Mrs. Robinson, 
 
 Very sincerely yours, 
 
 To Mrs. Robinson, George P. 
 
 Ship Inn, Brighton. 
 
 Mary Robinson, actress, authoress, and royal mis- 
 tress, was of Irish descent. She was born in Bristol, 
 
GEORGE P. 127 
 
 >cJ:) 
 
 
 in 1758. Her father was the captain of a British 
 whaler. When Miss Darby — the original name of the 
 family was McDermott, but the great-grandfather 
 changed it — was quite a child her father the captain 
 sailed to America. He went to establish a whale 
 fishery on the coast of Labrador, and to civilise the 
 Eskimo, in order to employ them in the undertaking. 
 While the family were suffering tortures at his long 
 absence, it was discovered that he had sailed with a 
 lady who had consented to reside with him for two years 
 " in the frozen wilds of America." 
 
128 AMONG MY AUTOGRAPHS 
 
 Mr. Darby's expedition was a failure. The Indians 
 burned his settlement and murdered his followers. He 
 lost his fortune and gave a bill of sale on his whole pro- 
 perty. Mary and her mother were soon homeless. 
 Later on Mrs. Darby started a girls' school at Chelsea, 
 and Mary was a teacher in it. The school was broken 
 up, and Mary went to Oxford House, Marylebone, to 
 finish her education. The dancing-master there was 
 Mr. Hussey, who was ballet-master at Covent Garden 
 Theatre. Through him the young girl, who had deve- 
 loped great talent as a reciter, was introduced to David 
 Garrick, who gave the young aspirant, of whose 
 abilities he thought highly, a great chance. She was to 
 appear as Cordelia. 
 
 In the meantime she had adventures. She met and 
 married, being then about sixteen, Mr. Robinson, a 
 young gentleman apprenticed to the law, who gave out 
 to her mother that he was heir to a great property. 
 But Robinson, whatever his fortune was, ran through 
 it quickly. He was later on arrested for debt, and his 
 young wife spent some time with him in a debtors' 
 prison. On December 10, 1776, she made her appear- 
 ance as Juliet at Drury Lane Theatre. Then came a 
 long series of triumphs as an actress, which culminated 
 in the fascination of the Prince of Wales. 
 
 Poor "Perdita" was sorely tempted when the royal 
 wooer came. Her husband was living in profligacy on 
 
CLARENCE 
 
 129 
 
 her salary. After her desertion she feared to go back 
 to the stage. She went to France, and Marie Antoinette 
 called her " La Belle Anglaise." Later on, broken in 
 health and fortune, she went to Brighton by the order 
 of her doctor. It was while she was staying there that 
 
 she sent the Prince the appeal to which the letter I have 
 reproduced was the reply. Mrs. Fitzherbert was then 
 in the height of her splendour. 
 
 "Perdita," after being crippled many years by rheu- 
 matism, died in December 1800, and was, by her own 
 request, buried in Old "Windsor churchyard. 
 
 The Duke of Clarence, afterwards William IV., the 
 second of the royal brothers whose autographs I give, 
 was the lover of Mrs. Jordan, another Drury Lane 
 actress. Dorothea Jordan was born in Waterford, in 
 1762. Her mother was the daughter of a clergyman, 
 and was at on^ time an actress at Smock Alley Theatre, 
 
 I 
 
130 AMONG MY AUTOGRAPHS 
 
 Dublin. Then she married a man who described him- 
 self as of the theatrical profession ; but he was in reality 
 a scene-shifter. Dorothea Jordan — her real name was 
 Bland — soon took to the stage. She played many parts, 
 and her manager persecuted her. To escape from him 
 she and her family left Dublin and arrived, in the 
 greatest poverty, in Leeds. There she played for 
 eighteen shillings a week. After many adventures she 
 came to London and " starred " at Drury Lane. It was 
 there that the Duke of Clarence fell in love with her 
 and gave her an establishment. She bore him many 
 children, all of whom took the name of Fitzclarence. 
 
 Mrs. Jordan died in the summer of 1816, in a gloomy 
 old house near the palace of St. Cloud. She had lain 
 on the sofa nearly all day, waiting for letters from 
 England. After the arrival of the mail they told her 
 that there was nothing for her. She feU back with a 
 deep sob and died. 
 
 The Duke of Clarence had a peculiar habit of making 
 speeches on every possible occasion. "When he became 
 "William IV. this habit was the cause of frequent con- 
 sternation at Court, for he invariably managed to say 
 something exceedingly unpleasant in the course of his 
 " ramble." On one occasion, at a dinner given to cele- 
 brate his birthday, he replied to the toast of his health 
 by violently abusing the Duchess of Kent, who sat next 
 to him. The banquet broke up in confusion ; the 
 
CLARENCE 131 
 
 Duchess ordered her carriage ; the Princess Victoria, 
 our future Queen, wept hysterically. 
 
 The third brother, whose autograph is here given on 
 what was known as a "frank" in the days when 
 official signatures passed letters through the post with- 
 
 *<^^T^t^-V/ 
 
 --P^ 
 
 out payment, had also his " romance." "While living 
 abroad for his health he married, in Rome, Lady 
 Augusta Murray, second daughter of the Earl of Dun- 
 more ; and, to tie the knot doubly, went through 
 the ceremony of marriage with her again later on at 
 St. George's, Hanover Square. George IV. made use of 
 the Royal Marriage Act to declare the union null 
 and void. 
 
 For some years the Duke ignored the royal decree, 
 but finally left his wife and tried to get the children of 
 the union from her. He afterwards married Lady 
 
132 AMONG MY AUTOGRAPHS 
 
 Buggin. a widow, and she was created Duchess of 
 Inverness. 
 
 Each of the three royal brothers had his romance. 
 The moral of all three, so far as the fair sex is con- 
 cerned, is, " Put not your trust in Princes." 
 
Walter Savage Landor was born in 1775, and lived a 
 full and varied life, keeping himself much in evidence 
 until his death in 1864. He was a remarkable man, and 
 it has been said of him that for nearly ninety years he 
 was a typical English public schqolboy, full of humour, 
 obstinacy, Latin verse, generous impulses, chivalrous 
 sentiment, and powers of enjoyment. 
 
 The Latin verse was certainly much in evidence 
 throughout his career. At Rugby, when the headmaster 
 offended him, he revenged himself by Latin verse of an 
 insolent character. When she quarrelled with his wife 
 in England, he left his home at 4 a.m. and started for 
 the Continent, where he eased his mind with Latih 
 verse. "When he lost a lawsuit he wrote scathing Latin 
 verse about his adversary. Forster, the friend of 
 Dickens, became the friend of Landor, and helped him 
 to publish an edition of his collected works ; but 
 - Forster put his foot down on the Latin verse. He 
 would have none of it. When, in the 'fifties, Landor 
 
134 AMONG MY AUTOGRAPHS 
 
 had mental trouble, and wrote a libel which led to his 
 being cast in damages to the tune of £1000, he went 
 out of the country and wrote some more Latin verse. 
 He also wrote some English prose about the case. 
 
 
 
 -2-^- 
 
 -«.»sJP 
 
 which he sent to Forster to get pubHshed. Forster 
 declined, and Landor quarrelled with him ; but made 
 it up before his death, and resumed a friendly corre- 
 spondence. 
 
 Swinburne was a great admirer of Landor, and dedi- 
 cated to him his " Atalanta in Calydon" ; and there were 
 reasons why the young poet who sang freedom and 
 
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 135 
 
 Hugo, and Italy and Mazzini, should admire Walter 
 Savage Landor. 
 
 Landor as a boy, as a youth, as a man, was ever in 
 revolt against tyranny, or what he considered to be 
 
 ,^T^,-<^ 
 
 tyranny. I shall dwell a little on this side of his 
 character, because it is interesting in connection with 
 the autograph letter which I have inserted in his " Last 
 Fruit Off an Old Tree," and which is reproduced here 
 in facsimile. 
 
 At school he was generally in a state of rebellion. At 
 college he though that a certain person was a tyrant, 
 and he fired bullets through his windows into an empty 
 room. Quite early in his career he was called " The 
 Mad Jacobite," and when he was nominated for a com- 
 mission in a Militia regiment the officers objected on 
 the plea that his "advanced" opinions would make 
 
136 AMONG MY AUTOGRAPH 
 
 him an unpleasant comrade. Later on he actually 
 fought for the Spaniards against the French, and found 
 money for "the cause." Bearing these facts in mind, 
 the following letter becomes distinctly interesting : 
 
 Bath, March i8. 
 
 Dear Madam, — I have waited two days since I re- 
 ceived the honour of your letter, that I might acknow- 
 ledge the receipt of the parcel which it announced to 
 me as dispatched by the Midland Railway. It has not 
 yet arrived. This often has happened to me in the 
 office here. I would make personal inquiries were I not 
 detained in my room by a painful sciatica, my tormentor 
 for nine entire weeks. Perhaps you may have seen 
 the "Times" of the sixteenth or fifteenth. It contains 
 a letter of mine, showing the difference between assassi- 
 nation and tyrannicide. Nothing can excuse the late 
 attempt made by Orsini. I would not hazard the life 
 of one woman or one child for any change of dynasty. 
 Orsini was a brave and virtuous man — but this one 
 action checks my pity for his fate. 
 
 Believe me, dear Madam, 
 
 Yours most respectfully, 
 
 "Walter Savage Landor. 
 
 This letter was written in 1858, immediately after 
 Orsini had attempted to blow up the Emperor 
 Napoleon III. and the Empress Eugenie as they were 
 
yXTALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 137 
 
 driving to the Opera. The outrage took place on the 
 night of January 14. Orsini flung three bombs at the 
 Emperor's carriage. They exploded with terrible 
 and murderous effect, but leaving the Emperor and 
 Empress practically uninjured, though they were 
 splashed with blood. The bombs, which had been 
 manufactured in England, hurled bullets in every 
 direction. There were three terrible explosions. The 
 Emperor's cocked hat was perforated ; the Empress's 
 cheek was grazed ; sixty-six bullet marks were after- 
 wards counted on the carriage. Only the fact that it 
 was lined with iron plates saved the lives of the occu- 
 pants. The streets were splashed with blood in every 
 direction ; over a hundred people were seriously 
 wounded ; and some were killed outright. Orsini, 
 who had left London for Paris under the name of 
 Alsopp, was arrested with three accomplices — Fieri, 
 Rudio, and Gomez. All were sentenced to death, but 
 only Orsini was executed. 
 
 Felix Orsini had given his whole life to revolution, 
 or, as he maintained, " to Italy." "When he was twenty- 
 five he was sent to the galleys at Civita Vecchia for life. 
 But Pope Gregory XVI. died and Pius IX. succeeded. 
 Pius pardoned Orsini, who at once became the agent for 
 the Italian Revolutionary party, which worked from 
 London, where Mazzini — a very different stamp of man 
 from Orsini — was their chief. Orsini got into trouble 
 
138 AMONG MY AUTOGRAPHS 
 
 again, and was arrested, and expelled the country, and 
 came to London. 
 
 In 1855 he was arrested in Italy again, and con- 
 demned to death. He was confined in a fortress from 
 which no prisoner had ever escaped. But Orsini 
 made the record, and' getting clear away once more 
 turned his steps to hospitable London. There he 
 wrote a book, "My Prisons in Austria and Italy," and 
 delivered lectures on his experiences. It was in London 
 he conceive'd the plan of assassinating Louis Napoleon, 
 whom he looked upon as the author of Italy's wrongs* 
 "Walter Savage Landor, who had himself championed 
 Italy's cause, thought Orsini a brave man ; but the 
 letter here given shows that he had no sympathy with 
 massacre in the sacred name of Liberty. 
 
 If you were to look about for a writer who offered 
 the greatest contrast to "Walter Savage Landor, you 
 would not have to continue your search one moment 
 after your mind's eye had alighted on the name of 
 Martin Tupper. The author of " Proverbial Philo- 
 sophy" was the butt of the critics, the target of the 
 comic journalists, the joke of society for close upon fifty 
 years. 
 
 Yet he was a man with strong common-sense ideas, 
 and the work of his which nobody took the trouble to 
 read had much in it that showed he was really a philo- 
 sopher as well as a philanthropist and a reformer. 
 
MARTIN F. TUPPER 139 
 
 The letter which I have inserted in his " Proverbial 
 Philosophy" mentions that immortal work, and is 
 doubly interesting because it explains that the letter 
 intended for the poet Tupper was delivered by mistake 
 to the poet Tennyson : 
 
 Underbill, Cintra Park, Upper Norwood, 
 September i8, 1880. 
 
 Dear Sir, — Your request — accorded within — reaches 
 me circuitously ; hence the delay : for you sent it to 
 Haslemere (Tennyson's place) ; whence it went to 
 Albery — my place ; but I am at present " here." How- 
 ever, all's right now. 
 
 The " Sibylline" sent is very scarce ; but if you want 
 more, you can write and ask for a few, reprinted by 
 M. H. Sutton, Esq., Whitley, Reading — who has my 
 leave to reproduce this Protest for good- doing's sake — 
 and he probably will give copies. 
 
 My "Pro. Phil." has long been in 4 series ("Ward & 
 Lock), 1 vol., and is very soon to be issued by Cassell 
 in an illustrated form. 
 
 Where does Dr. Abbot live ? His book is a deep 
 and full one. — Truly yours, 
 
 Martin F. Tupper. 
 
 Mr. Edgar Wilkinson. 
 
 Martin Tupper was the son of a famous physician, 
 and was bom in 1810, at 20 Devonshire Place, Maryle- 
 bone Road. His " Proverbial Philosophy," because it 
 was almost universally ridiculed, utterly obscured the 
 
140 AMONG MY AUTOGRAPHS 
 
 many efforts he made with his pen to champion re- 
 forms which have since been successfully accomplished. 
 He was an earnest advocate for a more friendly under- 
 standing between England and America, and he wrote 
 
 eloquently and patriotically in favour of the Volunteer 
 movement. His name has been adopted as a synonym 
 for commonplace ; but even in the days when he was 
 as much a public jest as the poet Close he had a select 
 body of admirers. I can remember, in the days of my 
 youth, a devoted band in the faithful city of Worcester 
 — where, though I was not born, I was christened — who 
 
MARTIN F. TUPPER 141 
 
 looked upon Tupper as the poet of the age, and knew 
 his philosophy by heart. I almost knew it by heart in 
 my young days, for the reason that my boyhood was 
 largely passed at Worcester among the Tupperites. I 
 am afraid I have forgotten it now. Martin Tupper was 
 
 f'A 
 
 9 I 
 
 a vain, genial, earnest man, who never resented the 
 ridicule that was showered upon him, but took himself 
 seriously to the last. In 1873, serious financial reverses 
 having fallen upon him, he was granted a Civil List 
 pension. He died in 1889. As Tupper mentions above 
 the fact of his letter going to Tennyson, I may perhaps 
 here find a place for the autograph letter which I have 
 inserted in " Queen Mary." The letter is in Tennyson's 
 writing, but in the third person. It will be noticed that 
 it is written in the same year as Martin Tupper's : 
 
 With Mr. Tennyson's best thanks for the interesting 
 letter. July 9/80. 
 
142 AMONG MY AUTOGRAPHS 
 
 The philosophy of Tennyson has "become" pro- 
 verbial. Many of his ringing lines are now familiar in 
 our mouths as household words. He sang sweetly for 
 an age that loved tenderness and gentleness and pretty 
 conceits. Most of his poems are gems. The poets of 
 our day do not affect gems. Jewellery is no longer 
 fashionable for men. 
 
XVI 
 
 As I search through my collection of autographs, and 
 come upon those of celebrated — or perhaps one ought 
 to say notorious — criminals, I feel that it would not be 
 right to omit them entirely from this volume. 
 
 I will not dwell upon the crime more than is necessary 
 to recall it to the mind of the reader ; but the hand- 
 writing will, I think, prove interesting to the students of 
 caligraphy. 
 
 I have a large number of letters in my possession 
 written from the most terrible address that ever fell to 
 the lot of human being — the condemned cell. I have 
 the handwriting of one or two famous criminals — Kttle 
 notes they have written with lead-pencil while being 
 tried for their lives. These, of course, are unsigned, 
 but they came into my possession under circumstances 
 which leave no doubt of their authenticity. 
 
 It is from these letters and notes — in every case 
 written by criminals who have paid the last penalty of 
 the law — that I shall make my selection, All are of to- 
 
144 AMONG MY AUTOGRAPHS 
 
 day, with the exception of the signature with which I 
 commence the series. 
 
 Lord "WiUiam Russell, who lived at 14 Norfolk 
 Street, Park Lane, was found murdered in his bed on 
 the morning of "Wednesday, May 6, 1840. His throat 
 had been cut. His Swiss valet, Franfois Benjamin 
 Courvoisier, was a few days later arrested and charged 
 with the crime. The damning evidence against 
 Courvoisier was that of Madame Piolaine, who kept 
 the Hotel de Dieppe, in Leicester Square. Courvoisier 
 had formerly been a waiter at this hotel. After the 
 murder Courvoisier called and handed a packet to his 
 old mistress, and asked her to take care of it. Madame 
 Piolaine read in a French newspaper an account of the 
 murder. In that account it was mentioned that the 
 Swiss valet Courvoisier last saw his master alive. 
 Madame Piolaine at once began to connect Courvoisier 
 and his packet with the crime. In the presence of her 
 solicitor she opened it. It contained a quantity of 
 silver with the Bedford crest — Lord "William Russell's 
 — upon it. 
 
 Courvoisier was found guilty and sentenced to death. 
 In Newgate he wrote several confessions. He was like 
 many convicted murderers, exceedingly fond of writing 
 about himself and his emotions. The love of pen and 
 ink remained with him to the end. On the morning of 
 his execution he was writing for two hours, having been 
 
COURVOISIER 
 
 145 
 
 specially called at four o'clock that he might have time 
 for his correspondence. 
 
 He wrote to all his relatives and to some of his 
 friends. To one — a young woman — he sent a lock of 
 his hair in a little packet, and signed his name. I have 
 
 the packet and the lock of hair, and the signature is 
 here reproduced in facsimile, 
 
 Calcraft was the executioner. Courvoisier was only 
 twenty-three at the time of his execution. 
 
 The murder of his wife by Herbert John Bennett on 
 the beach at Yarmouth is in every reader's recollection, 
 and the details need not be given. 
 
 He was even younger than Courvoisier, but a much 
 more cool and collected criminal. I watched him 
 narrowly through his trial, and he never faltered until 
 
146 
 
 AMONG MY AUTOGRAPHS 
 
 the last day. At the end he tripped lightly up the 
 steps to hear the verdict of the jury, and after sentence 
 of death walked quietly away without any support 
 from the warders. 
 
 The crime was brought home to Bennett, long after 
 its commission, by a washing mark. On some of the 
 murdered woman's clothing the washing mark "599" 
 was found. This was advertised widely by the Press, 
 and eventually a laundress came forward and stated 
 that was the washing mark she had put upon the linen 
 of a family of the name of Bennett. She gave the 
 address, police inquiries were made, and the guilty man 
 was arrested on the eve of his marriage with another 
 woman, whom he had been courting at the time he 
 committed the crime ! 
 
 A collar of Bennett's is in my possession. On it are 
 the washing mark and his name written in marking 
 ink. The mark and written name are here reproduced : 
 
BENNETT 147 
 
 Bennett's fortitude broke down in the condemned 
 cell, and shortly before the day of execution he gave 
 way to paroxysms of rage. The murder was a 
 particularly brutal one, and was calculated and 
 executed with considerable cunning. A peculiar fea- 
 ture of this case is that while he was paying his 
 addresses to the girl he was going to marry the subject 
 of the mysterious murder on Yarmouth beach was 
 frequently discussed by the girl and her brothers in his 
 presence. 
 
 After committing the murder on Saturday night, 
 Bennett went to a Yarmouth hotel, procured a bed, 
 slept soundly, and in the morning made a hearty break- 
 fast of tea, bread and butter, and eggs and bacon. He 
 then took the train for London to Liverpool Street, 
 and met his sweetheart in the afternoon at the Marble 
 Arch. 
 
 Mrs. Dyer was a wholesale murderer of babies. She 
 kept a baby farm, and was in the habit of disposing of 
 her charges by dropping them into the river. She was 
 arrested at Reading, where she was carrying on her 
 business. The details are fresh in the public mind, and 
 need not be here elaborated. 
 
 This grey-haired murderess of helpless children was 
 quite a sentimental old lady where her " business " was 
 not concerned. She loved poetry, and she loved 
 romance. A pathetic story appealed to her at once. I 
 
148 AMONG MY AUTOGRAPHS 
 
 have a number of letters written by Mrs. Dyer before 
 and after her conviction. Here is a piece of poetry 
 which she wrote after she had been cast for execu- 
 tion : 
 
 S^^- ^/ ^^ y^^^ y.^^^ >4^^ <^^-^. 
 
 >^^^ Jl7%J^ <^^^^ ^ jU>^^ '^.• 
 
 [^The old lady was always writing out hymns and 
 little pieces of poetry from memory more or less 
 correctly. 
 
 "When in prison she wrote to a relative to send her 
 some books to read. One of the books she particularly 
 asked for was " East Lynne." A few days after 
 reading it she wrote to thank the sender, and said that 
 it was a beautiful book, and that she had cried her eyes 
 out over the death of little Willie. 
 
 Here is a letter of good advice written to a relative. 
 It must always be remembered, however, that letters 
 written from prison are "read" by the governor, and 
 have to be initialled by him before they leave the goal. 
 
DYER 149 
 
 The fact that their letters are going to be read by the 
 
 yw^ ^/2j^ ^^^^^ ^Ttr^'^ 
 
 
 /^ii_ 
 
 gaol authorities accounts for many of the pious senti- 
 
150 AMONG MY AUTOGRAPHS 
 
 ments which are generally found in the prison corre- 
 spondence of criminals : 
 
 "When the letters came no stamp on, I had not then 
 got my money. Now I have and have a plenty of 
 stamps dont send me any more have you heard from 
 Mrs Palmer what does she say of course you will go 
 home with her you will soon hear from "Willie I 
 have wrote to him and you must not keep any thing 
 from your Brother tel him the truth never atempt to 
 deceive him God help and bless you booth ask the 
 Lord for strength and guidance my dear child I have 
 written a letter for my dear Annie keep it til Willie 
 come home and do as he advise you, once more God 
 Bless you I hope I shal se you soon send me all the 
 news. With love your loving mother 
 
 A. Dyer. 
 
 xxxx 
 xxxx 
 
 Mrs. Dyer was duly executed. After her death a 
 sale of her effects took place. The highest priee was 
 realised by a baby's chair. 
 
XVII 
 
 The strange story of Edgar Edwards is too recent to 
 need much recapitulation. On December 1, 1902, a 
 young man, "William John Darby, keeping a small shop 
 in Wyndham Road, Camber well, together with his wife 
 and child, was barbarously murdered. The bodies 
 were cut up, put in a sack, and removed on a cart 
 to a house at Leyton. In this house Edgar Edwards 
 attempted to murder a man named Garland, whom he 
 had lured to the place under the pretence of buying 
 his business. The neighbours, alarmed by cries for 
 help, ran to the house, the police came, and Edgar 
 Edwards was given into custody, and his victim taken 
 to the hospital. It was then that a search of the house 
 resulted in the finding of some cards having Darby's 
 name and address. "When the police went to the 
 address, it was discovered that the Darby family had 
 disappeared. Eventually the garden at Leyton was 
 dug up, the bodies were discovered, and Edwards was 
 charged with the murder, 
 
152 AMONG MY AUTOGRAPHS 
 
 I was present at the Old Bailey when this extra- 
 ordinary criminal was put upon his trial. He refused 
 to plead. When asked if he was guilty or not guilty, 
 he replied in a gruff voice, " I don't think you ought to 
 ask me such a question." 
 
 There was never any doubt of his guilt, and there 
 
 y*.^<»C/tx Jieu*vcOl A4./K' ^,*-e*/t-'-.***'-»v *^<^ c.t.-C'^o-v-w , / ^*^a*-'£m^ ..v,^^ j^-'-L^/ty^ ,-^<C<^ 
 
 was practically no defence. When the verdict was 
 returned and the usual question was put to the prisoner, 
 he exclaimed insolently, " Oh, hurry up ; get it over ! " 
 
 After sentence was passed, and the chaplain's 
 "Amen" echoed through the silent court, Edwards 
 uttered a melodramatic " Ha ! ha ! " 
 
 His crime was a brutal one — a deliberate butchering 
 of three people for the sake of a few pounds. The 
 man's conduct at his trial was outrageous. He was an 
 
ED^)(;^ARDS 155 
 
 habitual criminal with a criminal history ; and yet after 
 the prison doors had closed upon him he became, 
 according to the accounts that appeared in the news- 
 papers, a most devout Christian and a sentimental 
 letter- writer. He was a Methodist, and the Methodist 
 ministers who attended him published, after his execu- 
 tion, quite a glowing account of his religious fervour. 
 Some of the sentimental letters that he wrote are in 
 
 oiyt^o^ -^♦»-c-t,-6' y>uo^ yi^t^^'*'''*^ x^*^ ^**~?- 
 
 my possession, and it is from them I take the extracts 
 which are here given in facsimile. 
 
 Edwards had at one time of his career lived with 
 a woman, by whom he had a son. It is to her that 
 the first letter, of which a portion is reproduced, is 
 addressed. 
 
 I omit the name, as there is no need to give further 
 painful publicity to one who suffered terribly at the 
 time of the investigation, and behaved admirably under 
 most trying circumstances. 
 
154 AMONG MY AUTOGRAPHS 
 
 The letter is written on a double sheet of the regula- 
 tion blue paper. The front page is as follows : 
 
 U nn replying to tnii 
 
 
 is letter, please write oi^K^ env^ope 
 
 !tM . .PB l 8QH. WAM BiWflBIH 
 
 The following regulations as to communications^ by Visit 
 or Letter^ between prisoners and their friends ^ are notified 
 for the information of their correspondents. 
 
 The permission to write a7td receive Letters is given to 
 priso7iers for the purpose of enabling them to keep up a 
 connection with their respectable friends and not that they 
 may be kept informed of public events. 
 
 All Letters are read by the Prison Authorities. They 
 must be legibly written and not crossed. Any which are 
 of an objectio7iable tendency y either to or from prisoners^ 
 or C07itai7iing slangs or improper expressions^ will be 
 suppressed. 
 
 Prisoners are per^nitted to receive and to write a letter 
 at intervals^ which depend on the rules of the stage they 
 attain by industry and good conduct; but matters of 
 special importance to a prisoner may be communicated at 
 any time by Letter [prepaid) to the Gover^ior^ who will 
 inform the prisoner thereof if expedient. 
 
 In case of misconduct^ the privilege of receiving and 
 writing a Letter may be forfeited for a time. 
 
 Money y Books, Postage Stamps^ Food, Tobacco^ Clothe?^ 
 
EDWARDS 155 
 
 &c.i should no^ be sent to Prisoners^ for their use in prison^ 
 as nothhig is allowed to he received at the Prisoji for that 
 purpose. 
 
 Persons attempting to clandestinely communicate with) 
 or to introduce any article to or for prisoners^ are liable to 
 fine and imprisonment^ and any prisoner concerned in 
 such practices is liable to be severely punished. 
 
 Prisoners^ friends are sometimes applied to by un- 
 authorised persons^ to send Money ^ ^c, to them pri- 
 vately, under pretence that they can apply it for the 
 benefit of the prisoners^ and under such fraudulent pre- 
 tence, such persons endeavour to obtain money for them- 
 selves. Any Letter containing such application^ received 
 by the friends of a prisoner ^ should be at once forwarded 
 by them, to the Governor. 
 
 Prisoners are allowed to receive Visits from their 
 friendsy according to rules, at intervals which depend 
 on their stage. 
 
 When Visits are due to prisoners notification will be 
 sent to the friends whom they desire to visit them. 
 
 The letter itself is written on the inner pages and the 
 one outside page. It is a long letter, and I make only 
 one extract. It is dated February 24, some little time 
 after his condemnation. 
 
 I wish you to clearly understand that the matter is 
 entirely in your hands, use your discretion ; I should 
 very much like to see you but I certainly should not 
 like you to come if it will upset or distress you in any 
 way,whatever. 
 
156 AMONG MY AUTOGRAPHS 
 
 The chief reason for my wishing to see you is to 
 make final arrangements about Char he. Both you 
 and CharHe have the first and only claim upon me and 
 to further this end I think it wise to discuss the matter 
 with you. 
 
 The letter is throughout a remarkably well- worded 
 one, and will be a surprise to those who saw the man 
 in court, and who remember that he pawned an 
 umbella for eighteenpence on the morning of the day 
 that by a swindling pretence he got into the Darbys' 
 shop, remained there as the intending purchaser, and 
 brutally butchered the whole family in cold blood, 
 afterwards cutting them up and burying them in a 
 garden of a house at Leyton, which he had on that 
 day in some way acquired possession of. 
 
 With the three bodies lying in the garden, he at- 
 tempted to murder Mr. Garland, who would probably 
 have been also interred in the garden cemetery. For- 
 tunately, Garland was a strong man, and saved his life 
 by fighting for it and shouting for help. Edwards 
 meant to kill Mr. Garland with the sash-weight he had 
 found so effective with the unfoitunate Darbys. 
 
 One finds some difficulty in understanding how such 
 a brute could have had delicate and refined sentiments 
 in his family affairs. But he had. His one frequently 
 expressed wish was that his fate should be kept a 
 secret from his mother. 
 
ED^)O^ARDS— CHAMBERS 157 
 
 In another letter which I have he shows almoit equal 
 respect for the memory of his father : 
 
 Dear Harry, — Just received your letter and am sur- 
 prised to hear the account you give about the various 
 statements made against poor dear Father, of course 
 they are untrue, and were not given by my sanction. 
 
 It was stated at the trial that the father of " Edgar 
 Edwards" died a dipsomaniac. In this letter, written 
 a few days before his execution, the son is indignant 
 that the memory of his father should have been 
 maligned. 
 
 Edgar Edwards was executed on Tuesday, March 3. 
 His last words as the Wesleyan minister, who had 
 accompanied him to the scaffold, stepped aside were, 
 " God bless you all." Whatever else the unhappy man 
 was, he was certainly a psychological study. 
 
 Here is a letter written by a condemned murderer 
 
 two days before his execution, William Chambers, an 
 
 electrical engineer, and at one time a ground man at 
 
 Lord's, was executed on December 4, 1902. He had 
 
 gone from London to Eversholt, where his wife was 
 
 living with her mother, and murdered them both. In 
 
 the letter which lies before me he puts the crime down 
 
 to influenza : 
 
 Dec. 2, igo2. 
 
 I was so glad to have a few lines from you and that 
 some one thinks about me. I am placed in this awfull 
 
158 AMONG MY AUTOGRAPHS 
 
 position through mother-in-law and to sisters. They 
 
 A^u iA4fY^ r^^ ""^ ^^ ^//f/ 
 
 "^ -Aql^^ ^ufL^e^ ^**cic? 
 \ \ yicLA J^^u^i^/yfite' ^**^ /^^p'^y^ ^7t^<^ A-^-*^'^ 
 
 
 sb^ '..^:^<;^ nP^JU<^ tpuA- e^ir^ ^^^ 
 
 <AZC6r oou g^.'ij'-^^ .<X4M>U^ /-*^rt-^w.- — 
 
 fetched my poor wife from her home when I was out 
 
CHAMBERS 159 
 
 and caused me to go wrong in my head, but I never was 
 a drunkard — you no that and your brothers. Give my 
 kind regards to your brothers and hope they are well 
 and kind regards to all old friends. I am so sorry and 
 greaved for my poor dear wife, and also her mother. 
 You have seen my wife and my home and drunkards 
 do not have homes like mine, but God bless her, and I 
 hope I shall meet her in heaven, — "With all good wishes 
 from yours in great sorrow, 
 
 William Chambers. 
 
 Thanks for your letters and for your brother's kind 
 message. No more cricket, George. Good-bye, I am 
 making my peace with God. 
 
 In a postscript written at the side of the letter he 
 adds : 
 
 I never though I should come to this. Influenza up- 
 set my mind, never been the same man since. Hoping 
 yoiu: wife and child are well. 
 
 The line in the letter that perhaps strikes one most 
 is, " No more cricket." It was the ruling passion strong 
 in death. 
 
XVIII 
 
 Among some of the most interesting autographs I 
 possess are those of the dramatists I have either colla- 
 borated with or had the privilege of knowing. My 
 earliest dramatic friends were Henry Pettitt and Paul 
 Meritt. Henry Pettitt, when I first knew him, was a 
 writing-master at the North London Collegiate School. 
 I saw him for the first time as he made his bow in 
 front of the curtain at the Grecian Theatre on the first 
 night of " British Born." He had collaborated in a 
 play with Paul Meritt, who was at that time engaged at 
 the Grecian in the front of the house. Paul Meritt had 
 previously been in the carpet business, in the service of 
 Thomas Tapling and Co., of Gresham Street. 
 
 Both Meritt and Pettitt came eventually to the 
 Adelphi and Drury Lane with their melodramas, and 
 Pettitt was for many years my valued collaborator. It 
 seems a good many years ago that I sat with Pettitt 
 and Meritt under a big tree in Richmond Park, and we 
 talked about the future and the wonderful things that 
 
HENRY PETTITT 161 
 
 W2 meant to do. Both Meritt and Pettitt were then at 
 the Grecian, and I was working from nine to five in the 
 
 4^. .^^-^^^ A,.... -^ 
 
 City, and going to Fleet Street in my luncheon hour to 
 get work on " Fun " and the " Weekly Dispatch." 
 
 It was in " The World " that Augustus Harris came 
 into the combination and started the revived fortunes 
 of Drury Lane. 
 
162 AMONG MY AUTOGRAPHS 
 
 Some time previously I had had a belated stroll with 
 Harris after the Royalty Theatre was closed. At that 
 theatre I had my first comedy, " Crutch and Tooth- 
 pick," playing, and Harris had a short burlesque, 
 " Venus," which he had written in conjunction with 
 Edward Rose, following it. 
 
 There was no idea then of Harris going to the Lane, 
 or of my going to the Princess's ; but as we strolled 
 along in the moonlight on our way to a Bohemian club 
 Harris told me the plot of a drama, and said, " I shall 
 do that some day," and then I told him the plot of a 
 drama I had in my head, and said that some day per- 
 haps I should do that. Both plays came out in due 
 course. One was " The "World " at Drury Lane, and 
 the other was " The Lights o' London" at the Prin- 
 cess's. 
 
 Paul Meritt, who was of PoHsh origin — his real name 
 was Metzger — was a man of heavy build. He was a 
 bright, amusing companion, but had one or two pecu- 
 liarities. One of them was an intense desire to eat any- 
 thing at once that took his fancy. I remember him one 
 afternoon, in the neighbourhood of Drury Lane, taking 
 a great fancy to some pease-pudding. He went into the 
 shop, bought some, and ate it from the paper — to his 
 own huge delight and the great embarrassment of 
 Henry Pettitt and Augustus Harris, who were walking 
 with him. 
 
PAUL MERIT!' 163 
 
 Paul Meritt died a few years ago, at the age of fifty- 
 two. He had somewhat dropped out of the swim for 
 
 HE Hollies. 
 Jtembroke I^quare, 
 
 I^ENSINGTON.W. 
 
 the last year or two of his life. Henry Pettitt, on the 
 contrary, died in harness, and left a fortune of nearly 
 
164 AMONG MY AUTOGRAPHS 
 
 fifty thousand pounds. His funeral procession passed 
 through miles of London adorned with picture posters 
 of his then running successes — " A Woman's Revenge " 
 
 at the Adelphi, and "A Life of Pleasure" at Drury 
 Lane. Many of his plays, and several in which I was 
 connected with him, are still running in the provinces. 
 
 There was a time in the memory of many of the 
 critics who are still in the stalls on the first night when 
 the name of Henry J. Byron was one to conjure with in 
 the theatrical world. Byron was the wit of his day. 
 His burlesques made the fortune of the Strand, his 
 comedies made the fortune of the Vaudeville, where 
 the run of " Our Boys " was phenomenal ; and he him- 
 self appeared with great success in several of his own 
 plays in the part of an amiable " swell." Perhaps 
 his greatest success as an actor was as Sir Simon 
 Simple in " Not Such a Fool as he Looks." Byron was 
 
HENRY J. BYRON— F. C. BURNAND 165 
 
 an inveterate punster as well as a wit. The audience 
 always sat open mouthed at his first nights waiting to 
 roar at his jokes. He told me once that many of the 
 "lines" which were greeted with shouts were surprises 
 to him. He had not see them in such a very humorous 
 light himself at the time he wrote them. 
 
 Henry J. Byron was a general favourite. Pressmen 
 and " pros" loved him, and the good things he said in 
 company were talked about and written about con- 
 stantly. He made an estimable old lady connected 
 with the management of a West-End theatre his Mrs. 
 Malaprop, and earned her undymg fame by the odd 
 sayings he attributed to her. Byron's peculiarity was 
 taking a house, living in it for a time, then taking 
 another and keeping the old one on his hands unlet. 
 When he died he had about four houses for which he 
 was paying rent, and he had not entered three of them 
 for two years. There was hardly a West-End theatre 
 of his day that had not produced a play or a burlesque 
 of his. He wrote pantomine, burlesque, comedy, and 
 drama ; he edited a comic paper, and he was a constant 
 contributor to the comic Press. Born in 1834, he died 
 on April 12, 1884. 
 
 The Byron days were also the days of Burnand and 
 Boucicault. The " Three Busy B.'s " they were called. 
 Sir Francis Burnand is still with us, and his frank, 
 bright humour still cheers us weekly in the pages of 
 
166 AMONG MY AUTOGRAPHS 
 
 " Punch." But in the Byron days he was a prolific 
 playwright, and, like his " confrere," his wit was his 
 strong point. A list of his productions would fill a page 
 of this volume. Those by which he is perhaps best 
 
 /I ^/7/!C^^U^ic^u>^ 
 
 remembered by old playgoers were "Ixion," which 
 took the town by storm at the Royalty, and " The 
 Colonel," which was a colossal success at the little 
 Prince of "Wales's, in Tottenham Court Road, when it 
 passed under the management of Mr. Edgar Bruce. 
 Sir Francis (then plain Mr.) Burnand wrote Adelphi 
 drama in his day. " Proof," which is still a favourite 
 in the provinces, was one of his great melodrematic 
 successes. Present-day playgoers have the happiest 
 memories of the delightful " La Cigale " at the Lyric, 
 which was, I think, almost the last big venture of our 
 popular humorist in stage work. 
 
 At the time that Byron and Burnand were supplying 
 the big demand for burlesque — a form of entertainment 
 that has almost disappeared from the playbills — Robert 
 
ROBERT REECE 167 
 
 Reece was running them hard in the matter of prolific 
 production. 
 
 Reece, who in addition to being a facile rhymester 
 and punster was an accomplished musician, was the 
 
 ^.r^:^- yd 
 
 frequent collaborator of H. B. Famie, and was respon- 
 sible with him for the English version of " Les Cloches 
 de Comeville," Planquette's delightful opera, which is 
 still running. Reece was also responsible for many of 
 the Gaiety burlesques in the ever- green John HoUings- 
 head's time ; the still remembered " AH Baba " was one 
 of the earliest. 
 
 Reece had some property in Barbados, and it was a 
 source of constant anxiety to him. "Whenever he ought 
 to have been elated by a success something was wrong 
 with the Barbados plantations. I knew poor Reece, 
 one of the gentlest and most lovable of men, intimately, 
 
168 AMONG MY AUTOGRAPHS 
 
 and I never met him without hearing that something 
 had happened in Barbados. If it was not a hurricane 
 which had destroyed his sugarcanes, it was a flood. 
 If it was not a flood, it was a fire. If it was not a fire, 
 it was labour trouble. Even at his funeral the subject 
 cropped up. I met a relative of his, and asked him 
 some sympathetic questions about my friend's last 
 days. " He was in no pain," was the reply, " but just 
 before the finish he was very upset by some bad news 
 from Barbados." 
 
XIX 
 
 In "The Second Mrs. Tanqueray," the epoch-marking 
 play which brought Mr. Arthur Wing Pinero to the 
 front rank of serious dramatists, and attracted the atten- 
 tion not only of the English-speaking world, but of the 
 whole of the Continent, I have placed a charming little 
 letter, which I received from the author as long ago as 
 1886. 
 
 I have very pleasant memories of the early Pinero, 
 who played with Irving, drew funny pictures of him- 
 self in the " Era " Almanac, and requested, in the 
 great theatrical organ, that all communications should 
 be forwarded to him to a prettily named lodge at 
 Gravesend, 
 
 I remember "Daisy's Escape," which was, I fancy, 
 almost the young actor's first attempt at play writing, 
 and the comedies that came tripping along the path of 
 popularity one after the other in merry mood. Mr. 
 Pinero did not in those days look at life so realistically 
 as he does now. But he had pathos then as well as 
 
170 AMONG MY AUTOGRAPHS 
 
 humour, and his " Sweet Lavender " was a dainty 
 English flower that shed fragrance over a garden too 
 crowded at that time with gaudy foreign blooms. But 
 his plays were even then plays to read as well as to see, 
 and the volumes that contain " The Cabinet Minister," 
 
 
 " The Schoolmistress," and " The Magistrate " are still 
 as interesting as those which contain "Iris " and " The 
 Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith." 
 
 Mr. Pinero has, perhaps more than all his " confreres," 
 the art which conceals theatrical artifice. He is a 
 master of stagecraft as well as a master of phrases, and 
 
HENRY A. JONES 171 
 
 it is only on very rare occasions that he attempts to 
 argue with his critics. 
 
 It was when "The Romany Rye" was in rehearsal 
 
 Creen Room Club, 
 20, Bedford Street, WC. 
 
 
 { 
 
 at the Princess's Theatre that I met Henry Arthur 
 Jones, who was then collaborating with Henry Herman 
 in the play which was to follow mine, "The Silver 
 King." If I remember rightly, it was Mr. Jones who 
 
172 AMONG MY AUTOGRAPHS 
 
 came to our relief when we wanted some real gipsies 
 for the encampment scene, and found them for us on a 
 common some fifteen miles out of London. I am not 
 sure that the "Queen" of the tribe who came to see 
 Mr. Wilson Barrett to make the necessary arrange- 
 ments for a theatrical engagement was not personally 
 conducted by the brilliant dramatist, who has won 
 world-wide fame since the days that he wrote a little 
 one-act play, " A Clerical Error," which "Wilson Barrett 
 produced, and who has been recently engaged in 
 "Whitewashing Julia" in the provinces. Mr. Henry 
 Arthur Jones's plays are also " library plays," and it is 
 in a copy of " Saints and Sinners," a great Vaudeville 
 success, that I have placed the letter, a facsimile of a 
 portion of which is given here. Mr. Jones is a great 
 believer in the rights of authors, rights which he has 
 asserted on more than one occasion with a publicity 
 which has been in no way disadvantageous to the 
 business at the box-office. 
 
 Henry Herman, who was Henry Arthur Jones's first 
 collaborator, was quite a character in the theatrical 
 world. He called himself Darco, or D'Arco, if I re- 
 member rightly, when I knew him first as the joint 
 author of a musical comedy or farce which had some- 
 thing to do with a parrot. He blossomed into fame as 
 Henry Herman when he became business manager for 
 Wilson Barrett. He did a version of " Adrienn^ 
 
HENRY HERMAN 
 
 173 
 
 Lecouvreur " for Modjeska at the Court Theatre ; he 
 collaborated with Henry Arthur Jones in a version of 
 " A Doll's House " called " Breaking a Butterfly " : he 
 collaborated with W. G. "Wills in " Claudian" ; and he 
 wrote "Fay o' Fire," the musical play in which, I fancy, 
 
 
 /yy/- 
 
 Miss Marie Tempest made, at the Opera Comique, her 
 first London appearance as a "prima donna." But 
 fame and fortune came to him with " The Silver King," 
 and, though he made money with " Claudian," his good 
 luck deserted him to some extent afterwards. 
 
 Herman — "Daddy Herman," as he was constantly 
 
174 AMONG MY AUTOGRAPHS 
 
 called in theatrical circles — was a man of considerable 
 culture and very wide knowledge. He was an Alsatian, 
 and never quite lost his foreign accent. His favourite 
 expression was " See, see." "With these words he ter- 
 minated almost every sentence he addressed to you in the 
 course of an argument. Herman had a glass eye, and 
 never disguised the fact from any one, except on one 
 occasion from a cabman who had mercilessly thrashed 
 his horse while driving Herman home to his residence 
 at Hampstead. 
 
 Herman objected to the man's cruelty, but said 
 nothing till he got out of the cab. Having first carefully 
 removed his glass eye, he held it out between his finger 
 and thumb, and exclaimed, " That's what you have 
 done, you scoundrel ; see, see ! You have cut my eye 
 out with your whip. I shall give you into custody ; 
 see, see ! " 
 
 The cabman gave one horrified glance at the eye, 
 exclaimed " Oh, Jerusalem ! " and without waiting for 
 his fare whipped up his horse and drove off at a furious 
 rate. 
 
 Herman, in addition to writing plays, was a novelist, 
 and on one or two occasions he collaborated with Mr. 
 David Christie Murray. The best novel produced by 
 this collaboration was " One Traveller Returns." 
 While Herman and Christie Murray were writing a book 
 together they took a villa situated in a lonely spot 
 
SYDNEY GRUNDY 175 
 
 between Nice and Monte Carlo. They used to go to 
 Nice or Monte Carlo of an evening for the theatre or 
 the concert-room, and there came the trouble. They 
 had to walk home along a road that had rather an evil 
 reputation. Two or three people walking along it from 
 Monte Carlo had been set upon and robbed, and in one 
 
 instance a gentleman returning from the Kursaal late 
 at night had been murdered. 
 
 Herman did not care for that walk in the small hours 
 because, as he said, he had only one eye to keep a look- 
 out with. So eventually the collaborators, who had 
 taken the villa for three months, went to an hotel at 
 Nice, and their villa residence saw them no more. 
 
 Mr. Sydney Grundy's neat handwriting I have 
 
176 AMONG MY AUTOGRAPHS 
 
 inserted, not in a published play, but in a novel ; one he 
 wrote, I believe, in his Manchester days, when he was 
 still at the Bar, and the theatre was his amusement, and 
 not his profession. The book is called " In the Days of 
 His Vanity." It was when " The Member for Slocum " 
 was running at the Royalty that I met Sydney Grundy 
 one evening in the smoking-room attached to the 
 theatre, and we exchanged views on many subjects in 
 general and the stage in particular. Mr. Grundy, who 
 has the Scribe method of construction in addition to the 
 gift of happy dialogue, has always had a high reputa- 
 tion with the critics, though in his early days he fell 
 foul of one of them, and kept up a correspondence in 
 the " Era " which was vastly entertaining to everybody 
 but the critic concerned. 
 
 Mr. Grundy has given us some delightful plays. The 
 best examples of his talent are, perhaps, " Sowing the 
 Wind " and " A Pair of Spectacles," an adaptation of a 
 French comedy so skilfully done that the atmosphere 
 is entirely English. In his early days Sydney Grundy 
 had many grievances — one of them lasted a consider- 
 able time, and the Censor was the offender. The 
 Reader of Plays refused to license an adaptation 
 which Grundy, with a collaborator, had made of a 
 French play. The Censor heard a good deal about 
 that refusal for many months to come. Eventually 
 the play found its way to the stage. It was called 
 
SYDNEY GRUNDY 177 
 
 " The Novel Reader," and Miss Lottie Venne played 
 the heroine. 
 
 Mr. Grundy is as great a favourite with the Americans 
 as he is with us, and we are all anxiously waiting for 
 him " to oblige again." " The Degenerates " was 
 perhaps his last great success, although " Frocks and 
 Frills " made considerable stir owing to the magni- 
 ficent opportunities provided by the dramatist for the 
 dressmakers. 
 
 The End 
 
 Prioted by Ballantvne, Hanson, &= Co. 
 London 6;" Edinburgh 
 
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 In the Midst of Life. 
 
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 I Chronicles of No-Man's Land. 
 
 Zondon: CHATTO 4^ WIND US, 111 St. Martin's Lane, W.C, 
 
2 
 
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 BY ROBERT BUCHANAN. 
 
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 Love Me for Ever. 
 
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 Miss or Mrs.? 
 
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 Frances. 
 
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 Diana Barrington. 
 
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 Married or Single ? i 
 
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 BY ALPHONSE DAUDET. 
 
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 A Strange Manuscript found 
 in a Copper Cylinder. 
 
 BY DICK DONOVAN. 
 
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 Caught at Last! i 
 
 Tracked and Taken. I 
 
 Who Poisoned Hetty Duncan ? 
 The Man from Manchester. ; 
 A Detective's Triumphs. I 
 
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 Wanted! | Link by Link. 
 From Information Received. 
 Tracked to Doom. 
 Suspicion Aroused. 
 Riddles Read. 
 
 Mystery of Jamaica Terrace. 
 The Chronicles of Michael 
 Danevitch. 
 
 BY MRS. ANNIE EDWARDES. 
 
 A Point of Honour. 
 Archie Lovell. 
 
 BY EDWARD EGGLESTON. 
 Roxy. 
 
 BY G. MANVILLE FENN. 
 
 The New Mistress. 
 Witness to the Deed 
 The Tiger Lily. 
 The White Virgin. 
 
 BY PERCY FITZGERALD. 
 
 Bella Donna | Polly. 
 The Second Mrs. Tillotson. 
 Seventy-five Brooke Street. 
 Never Forgotten. 
 The Lady of Brantome. 
 Fatal Zero. 
 
 BY PERCY FITZGERALD, &c. 
 
 strange Secrets. 
 
 BY R. E. FRANCiLLON. 
 
 Olympia. | One by One. 
 
 Queen Cophetua. 
 
 A Real Queen. 
 
 King or Knave. 
 
 Romances of the Law. 
 
 Ropes of Sand. 
 
 A Dog and his Shadow. 
 
 BY HAROLD FREDERIC. 
 
 Seth's Brothel's Wife. 
 The Lawton Girl. 
 
 PREFACED BY BARTLE FRERE. 
 
 Pandurang Hari. 
 
 BY CHARLES GIBBON. 
 
 Robin Gray. 
 
 For Lack of Gold. 
 
 What will the World Say ? 
 
 In Honour Bound. 
 
 In Love and War. 
 
 For the King. | Fancy Free. 
 
 Queen of the Meadow. 
 
 In Pastures Green. 
 
 The Flower of the Forest, 
 
 A Heart's Problem. 
 
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 Of High Degree. 
 
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 By Mead and Stream. 
 
 Heart's Delight. 
 
 Loving a Dream. 
 
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 James Duke, Costermonger. 
 
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 The Lost Heiress. 
 The Fossicker. 
 A Fair Colonist. 
 
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 Eve. I Red Spider. 
 
 BY ANDREW HALLiOAY. 
 
 Every-Day Papers. 
 
 BY THOMAS HARDY. 
 
 Under the Greenwood Tree. 
 
 BY BRET HARTE. 
 
 An Heiress of Red Dog. 
 
 The Luck of Roaring Camp. 
 
 Californian Stories. 
 
 Gabriel Conroy. 
 
 Flip. I Maruja. 
 
 A Phyllis of the Sierras, 
 
 A Waif of the Plain-. 
 
 A Ward of tie Golden Gate. 
 
 BY JULIAN HAWTHORNE. 
 
 Garth. I Ellice Quentin. 
 
 Dust. I Fortune's Fool. 
 
 Beatrix Randolph. 
 
 Miss Cadogna. 
 
 Love — or a Name. 
 
 David Poiudexter's Dlsap. 
 
 pearance. 
 The Spectre of the Oamera. 
 
 London: CHATTO ^' WIJVDl/S, 111 St. Martin's Lane, W.G. 
 
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 Rujub, the Juggler. 
 
 BY HEADON HILL. 
 
 Zambra, the Detective. 
 
 BY JOHN HILL. 
 
 Treason-Felony. 
 
 BY MRS. GASHEL HOEY. 
 
 The Lover's Creed. 
 
 BY MRS. HUN6ERF0RD, 
 
 In Durance Vile. 
 
 A Maiden all Forlorn. 
 
 A Mental Struggle. 
 
 MarveL 
 
 A Modem Circe. 
 
 Lady Venier's Flight. 
 
 The Red-House Mystery. 
 
 The Three Graces. 
 
 An Unsatisfactory Lover. 
 
 Lady Patty. 
 
 Nora Creina. 
 
 The Professor's Experiment. 
 
 April's Lady. 
 
 Peter's Wife. 
 
 BY MRS. ALFRED HUNT. 
 
 The Leadeu Casket. 
 yelt-Coiidenined. 
 That Other Person. 
 
 BY MARX KERSHAW. 
 
 Colonial Facts and Fictions. 
 
 BY R. ASHE KING. 
 
 A Drawn Game. 
 
 'The Wearing of the Green.' 
 
 Passion's Slave. 
 
 Bell Barry. 
 
 BY EDMONO LEPELLETIER. 
 
 Madame Sans-Geue. 
 
 BY JOHN LEYS. 
 
 The Lindsays. 
 
 BY E. LYNN LINTON. 
 
 Patricia Kemball. 
 Atonement of Learn Dundas. 
 The World Well Lost. 
 Under which Lord ? 
 With a Silken Thread. 
 The Rebel of the Family. 
 ' My Love I ' 
 lone. 
 
 Paston Carew. 
 Sowing the Wind. 
 The One Too Many. 
 Dulcie Everton. 
 
 BY HENRY W. LUCY. 
 
 Gideon Fleyce. 
 
 BY JUSTIN MCCARTHY. 
 
 Dear Lady DisJain. 
 
 The Waterdale Neighbours. 
 
 My Enemy's Daughter. 
 
 A Fair Saxon. 
 
 Linley Rochford. 
 
 Miss Misanthrope. 
 
 Donna Quixote. 
 
 The Comet of a Season. 
 
 ifaid of Athen?. 
 
 Camiola: Girl with a Fortune. 
 
 The Dictator. 
 
 Red Diamonds. 
 
 The Riddle Ring. 
 
 BY HUGH MagGOLL. 
 
 Mr. Stranger's Sealed Packet. 
 
 BY GEORGE MAGDONALD. 
 
 Heather and Snow. 
 
 BY MRS. MAGDONELL. 
 
 Quaker Cousins. 
 
 BY W. H. MALLOGK. 
 
 The New Republic. 
 
 BY J. MASTERMAN. 
 
 Half-a-Dozen Daughters. 
 
 BY BRANDER MATTHEWS. 
 A Secret of the Sea. 
 
 BY L. T. MEADE. 
 
 A Soldier of Fortune. 
 
 BY LEONARD MERRICK. 
 
 The Man who was Good. 
 
 BY MRS. MOLESWORTH. 
 
 Hathercourt Rectory. 
 
 BY J. E. MUDDOGK. 
 
 Stories Weird and Wonderful. 
 The Dead Man's Secret. 
 From the Bosom of the Deep. 
 
 BY D. CHRISTIE MURRAY, 
 
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 Joseph's Coat. 
 Val Strange. 
 A Model Father. 
 Coals of Fire. 
 
 By the Gate of the Sea. 
 The Way of the World. 
 A Bit of Human Nature. 
 First Person Singular. 
 Cynic Fortune. 
 Old Blazer's Hero. 
 Bob Martin's Little Gkl. 
 Time's Revenges. 
 A Wasted Crime. 
 In Direst Peril 
 Mount Despair. 
 A Capful o" Nails. 
 
 BY D, CHRISTIE MURRAY AND 
 HENRY HERMAN. 
 
 One Traveller Returns. 
 I'aul Jones's Alias. 
 The Bishops' Bible. 
 
 BY HUME NISBET. 
 
 'Bail Up!' 
 
 Dr. Bernard St. Vincent. 
 
 BY W. E. NORRIS. 
 
 Saint Ann's. | Billy Bellew. 
 
 BY GEORGES OHNET. 
 
 Doctor Rameau. 
 
 A Last Love. I A Weird Gift 
 
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 Whiteladies. 
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 Greatest Heiress in England. 
 BY OUIOA. 
 
 Held in Bondage. 
 
 Strath more. 
 
 Chandos. 
 
 Under Two Flags. 
 
 Idalia. 
 
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 Puck. 
 
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 Pascarfel. 
 
 Signa. 
 
 In a Winter City. 
 
 AriadnS. 
 
 Moths. 
 
 Friendship. 
 
 Pipistrello. 
 
 Bimbi. 
 
 In Maremma. 
 
 Wanda. 
 
 Frescoes. 
 
 Princess Napraxine. 
 
 Two Little Wooden Shoes. 
 
 A Village Commune, 
 
 Othmar. 
 
 Guiideroy. 
 
 Ruffino. 
 
 Syrlin. 
 
 Santa Barbara. 
 
 Two Offenders. 
 
 Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos. 
 
 BY MARGARET AGNES PAUL. 
 
 Gentle and Simple. 
 
 BY JAMES PAYN. 
 
 Lost Sir Massingberd. 
 
 A Perfect Treasure. 
 
 Bentinck's Tutor. 
 
 Murphy's Master. 
 
 A County Family. 
 
 At Her Mercy. 
 
 A Woman's Vengeance. 
 
 Cecil's Tryst. 
 
 The Clyflards of Clyffa 
 
 The Family Scapegraca 
 
 The Foster Brothers. 
 
 The Best of Husbands. 
 
 Found Dead. 
 
 Walter's Word. | Halves. 
 
 Fallen Fortunes. 
 
 What He Cost Her. 
 
 Humorous Storie-. 
 
 Gwendoline's Harvest. 
 
 Like Father, Like Son. 
 
 L(md(m: CHATTO ^ WIND US, 111 6t. Ma/rtin's Laiie, W.C. 
 
4 
 
 POPULAR TWO-SHILLING NOVELS, 
 
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 A Marine Residence. 
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 £200 Reward. 
 
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 By Proxy. 
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 A Grape from a Thorn. 
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 For Cash Only. 
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 BY MRS. CAMPBELL PRAED. 
 
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 Mrs. Tregaskiss. 
 
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 BY CHARLES READE. 
 
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 Hard Cash. 
 
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 LoveMe Little, LoveMeLong. 
 
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 Singleheart and Doubleface. i 
 
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 other Animals. 
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 Readiana. 
 
 BY MRS, J. H. RIDDELL. 
 
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 Fairy Water. 
 
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 Women are Strange. 
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 Round the Galley Fire. 
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 Is be the Man ? I Heart of Oak. 
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 The Last Entry. 
 
 BY ALAN ST. AUBYN. 
 
 A Fellow of Trinity. 
 
 The Junior Dean. 
 
 The Master of St. Benedict's. 
 
 To his Own Master. 
 
 Orchard Damerel. 
 
 In the Face of the World. 
 
 The Tremlett Diamonds. 
 
 BY GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA. 
 
 Gaslight and Daylight. 
 
 BY GEORGE R. SIMS. 
 
 The Ring o' Bells. 
 Mary Jane's Memoirs. 
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 Tales of To-day. 
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 Zeph : a Circus Story. 
 My Two Wives. 
 Memoirs of a Landlady. 
 Scenes from the Show. 
 The Ten Commandments. 
 Dagonet Abroad. 
 Rogues and Vagabonds. 
 
 BY ARTHUR SKETCHLEY. 
 
 A Match in the Dark. 
 
 BY HAWLEY SMART. 
 
 Without Love or Licence. 
 The Plunger. 
 Beatrice and Benedick. 
 Long Odds. 
 The Master of Rathkelly. 
 
 BY T, W. SPEIGHT. 
 
 The Mysteries of Heron Dyke. 
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 By Devious Ways. 
 Hoodwinked. | Back to Life. 
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 Quittance in Full. 
 A Husband from the Sea. 
 
 BY R. A. STERNDALE. 
 
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 BY R. LOUIS STEVENSON. 
 
 New Arabian Nights. 
 
 BY WALTER THORNBURY. 
 
 Tales for the Marines. 
 
 I BY ANTHONY TROLLOPE. 
 
 The Way We Live Now. 
 Mr. Scarborough's Family. 
 
 ■ The Golden Lion of Granpfere. 
 , The American Senator. 
 
 Frau Frohmann. 
 
 Marion Fay. 
 [ Kept in the Dark. 
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 I BY FRANCES E. TROLLOPE. 
 
 : Anne Furne^s. 
 
 Mabel's Progress. 
 i Like Ships upon the Sea. 
 
 ■ BY T. ADOLPHUS TROLLOPE. 
 
 1 Diamond Cut Diamond. 
 
 I BY MARK TWAIN. 
 
 Tom Sawyer. 
 
 A Tramp Abroad. 
 
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 Pleasure Trip on Continent 
 
 The Gilded Age. 
 
 Huckleberry Finn. 
 
 Life on the Mississippi. 
 
 The Prince and the Pauper. 
 
 Mark Twain's Sketches. 
 
 A Yankee at the Court of 
 
 King Arthur. 
 The £1,000,000 Bank-note. 
 
 BY SARAH TYTLER. 
 
 Noblesse Oblige. 
 
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 What She Came Through. 
 
 Beauty and the Beast 
 
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 Saint Mud go's City. 
 
 Disappeared. 
 
 Lady Pell. 
 
 Buried Diamonds. 
 
 The Blackball Ghosts. 
 
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 Mistress Judith. 
 
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 The Queen against Owen. 
 
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 Artemus Ward Complete. 
 
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 Trust-Money. 
 
 BY MRS. F. H. WILLIAMSON. 
 
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 BY J. S. WINTER. 
 
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 Englishman of the Rue Gain. 
 
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