POINTS OF VIEW
 
 POINTS of 
 
 By 
 
 L. F. AUSTIN 
 
 Edited with a Prefatory Note by 
 
 CLARENCE ROOK 
 and a Photogravure Portrait 
 
 LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD 
 NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY. MCMVI
 
 SECOND EDITION 
 
 Printed by BALLAKTYVE, HANSOM <5f Co. 
 At the BalUntyne Press
 
 PREFATORY NOTE 
 
 EJIS Frederic Austin was a Londoner 
 -a Londoner of the West End, the 
 theatres, the clubs, the restaurants, 
 the dinner-parties and the periodi- 
 cals. In spite of his Irish parenthood (for he 
 was son of Captain Thomas Austin of Dublin), 
 and in spite of his American nativity (for he 
 was born in Brooklyn on October 9, 1852), 
 he was a Londoner. And whenever he took 
 a holiday in his later years, it was at Brighton, 
 at Ostend some place suggestive of the happy 
 swirl of the pavement that he loved. For 
 just thirty years of his fifty-three he was a 
 Londoner, though the Merchant Taylors' 
 School at Great Crosby, near Liverpool, set 
 him on the way to literature and London. 
 When those thirty years were over he died 
 suddenly appropriately at the Hotel Metro- 
 pole, Brighton in evening dress. So, I think, 
 my friend would have chosen to die suddenly 
 without fuss or turmoil when the banquet 
 of life was over in his proper garb of a gentle- 
 man. . . . 
 
 During those thirty years L. F. Austin was 
 part and parcel of London. In the early days
 
 Prefatory Note 
 
 he acted as an informal private secretary to the 
 Baroness Burdett-Coutts, and even then his 
 association with Henry Irving justified him in 
 writing a biography of the actor, though it did 
 not justify him in signing himself anything but 
 Frederic Daly. The association with Irving 
 continued, and the busy actor, called upon 
 for speeches and addresses, usually consulted 
 Austin as to the framing of the picture he 
 was to set before his audience. For Austin 
 gradually developed the ready wit that sets the 
 table in a roar, and for years he was acknow- 
 ledged as one of the best after-dinner speakers 
 in London. 
 
 His industry and fertility were amazing. 
 Those who knew him only as the writer of 
 "Our Note Book" in the Illustrated London 
 News, as the " Jaques " of " The Passing 
 Mood" in the Daily Chronicle, as the causeur 
 " At Random " of the Sketch^ or as the weekly 
 contributor of " Points of View " to the Man- 
 chester Daily Dispatch^ have no idea of the 
 immense amount of work he poured into the 
 press week by week. For long we shared a 
 room at the Daily Chronicle office, and night 
 by night he wrote a leading article. Almost 
 by accident I learned that night by night he 
 wrote another leading article for a syndicate 
 
 vi
 
 Prefatory Note 
 
 that supplied the provincial press. In the 
 years during which I knew him well, when 
 we walked and talked together, and shared 
 that room in the newspaper office, his physi- 
 cal life seemed to be bounded by Ludgate 
 Circus on the east, and Hyde Park Corner 
 on the west, though his intellectual sympa- 
 thies took fanciful flights. In the forenoon 
 he would walk to the Reform Club, write and 
 lunch, and write again in the quietest room 
 available. ... A strenuous worker filled with 
 enthusiasm . . . there was never such an en- 
 thusiast as Austin on the brink of a leading 
 article ... a worker who hides his work, as 
 the conjurer does, under an assumption of 
 ease, and that assumption makes the charm 
 of Austin's work. 
 
 Unfortunately, his work was mainly ephem- 
 eral ; he never had the leisure to write a book 
 since the " Henry Irving " by Frederic Daly, 
 which was published two-and- twenty years ago. 
 But he had his audience, and one night, as we 
 drove westward together from Fleet Street, the 
 underlying seriousness of Austin struck me. I 
 had thrown out a hint as to the number of 
 people who had listened to some preacher of 
 the moment. " Five thousand ! " exclaimed 
 Austin ; " why a million people will read me 
 vii
 
 Prefatory Note 
 
 tomorrow morning, and God forgive me if 
 I've made a mistake ! " 
 
 Only a small and dainty volume, entitled 
 " At Random," and published some ten years 
 ago, remains the permanent record of Austin's 
 work. This consisted of papers previously 
 published in the Speaker and the Sketch. The 
 preface to that little volume suggests the point 
 of view that his editor and friend has taken. 
 There occurs this passage : 
 
 " A journalist who has given much of his 
 time to the solemn recitation of facts in un- 
 willing ears, who rattles the bones of statistics 
 over the stones of public opinion, may take his 
 fill now and then of whimsical fantasy by way 
 of recreation." 
 
 Here we get the real L. F. Austin the 
 essayist of wide information, of large sympa- 
 thies, with humorous eyes and a knowledge of 
 the value of words set one against the other ; 
 the literary conjurer who can toss two con- 
 tradictory statements into the air, spin them, 
 and catch them upon the point of a pen 
 until the eye becomes dizzy with amused 
 delight . . . 
 
 To many to the publisher of this volume 
 viii
 
 Prefatory Note 
 
 first of all it occurred to demand a reprint 
 of some of those fantastical toyings with the 
 great verities and the little absurdities. The 
 selection now presented is drawn mainly from 
 the Daily Chronicle of London and the Daily 
 Dispatch of Manchester. And the paper which 
 is placed at the end the last, I believe, that 
 he wrote is typical of the man. We talked 
 it over in his chambers in Jermyn Street. He 
 amused me much with his description of gout. 
 I laughed, without suspecting that he was 
 poking fun into the ribs of death. 
 
 One or two papers have been extracted from 
 the files of the Morning Leader, and the opening 
 article appeared in the North American Review. 
 It was ordered and written in anticipation of 
 Sir Henry Irving's visit to America this year. 
 The proofs were in Austin's room when he 
 was found dead at Brighton. By the time the 
 article was published, Irving and Austin, close 
 friends in life, were together " beyond these 
 voices." 
 
 It should be added that these papers have, 
 with scarcely an exception, been taken as 
 written. Here and there a word or two must 
 go an allusion that would be unintelligible 
 when the morrow is taking thought of the 
 things of itself. They are journalism, prompted 
 
 ix
 
 Prefatory Note 
 
 by the impulse and inspiration of the moment. 
 But they are journalism at its best the sugges- 
 tive comment of a sane and humorous man on 
 the day's happening. i 
 
 CLARENCE ROOK.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 Page 
 
 I. SIR HENRY IRVING .... i 
 
 II. SPARROWGRASS AND SHAKESPEARE . 21 
 
 III. JAQUES AND THE BEANSTALK . 28 
 
 IV. IN PRAISE OF WINE 35 
 V. IN PRAISE OF FOOD ... 42 
 
 VI. MEAT AND DRINK .... 49 
 
 VII. THE DRAMA OF THE LETTER-BOX . 56 
 VIII. CHEAP FOOD 64 
 
 IX. A FAMINE IN BOOKS . . . 71 
 X. THE INCOME TAX . . . . 78 
 
 XL "CLOUDS OF GLORY" ... 85 
 ; XII. AMERICA AT OXFORD ... 93 
 
 XIII. MEN AND MODES . . . .100 
 
 XIV. COUNTRY LIFE . . . .108 
 XV. AT A WOMAN'S CLUB . . . 115 
 
 XVI. IN THE FOG 122 
 
 XVII. THE PERILS OF CROWDING . . 130 
 
 XVIII. LOGIC FOR WOMEN . . .137 
 
 XIX. MOTOR CARS AND NERVOUS SYSTEMS 142 
 
 XX. Two MILLIONS . . . .149 
 xi
 
 Contents 
 
 Page 
 
 XXI. THE WHITE HAT . . .156 
 XXII. THE AFTER-DINNER SPEECH . 163 
 
 XXIII. BRIDGE 170 
 
 XXIV. OUR MOTHER TONGUE . . 177 
 XXV. WELLS OF ENGLISH . . .184 
 
 XXVI. As IT WAS IN THE BEGINNING . IQI 
 
 XXVII. THE ART AND GLORY OF EATING 198 
 
 XXVIII. DREAMS 204 
 
 XXIX. AMERICAN RETICENCE . . .211 
 
 XXX. A RACE-MEETING . . . 218 
 
 XXXI. THE ORGAN .... 225 
 
 XXXII. M'BONUS 233 
 
 XXXIII. THE HOLIDAY MOOD . . . 240 
 
 XXXIV. THE ART OF SMALL TALK . . 248 
 XXXV. AT BRIGHTON . . . .255 
 
 XXXVI. DETAINED IN GOUT-LAND . . 261 
 
 The Frontispiece Portrait is reproduced from a 
 Photograph by H. WALTER BARNETT.
 
 POINTS OF VIEW
 
 POINTS of 
 
 I Sir Henry Irving 1 
 
 ONE night last June, the walls of 
 Drury Lane Theatre resounded 
 with such acclamations as that old 
 playhouse has seldom heard in all 
 its history. A solitary figure stood in front of 
 the curtain, listening with a grave smile to the 
 enthusiasm which seemed to have no end. It 
 was Sir Henry Irving taking leave of the Lon- 
 don playgoers on the last night of his season, a 
 season made memorable at every performance by 
 scenes very similar to this. " You are all very 
 young," he said, when the audience would let 
 him speak ; and, indeed, to a veteran actor, near 
 the end of his career, the youth of this vast 
 assemblage must have been singularly gratify- 
 ing. Every night Drury Lane had been 
 thronged with young people. The younger 
 generation had knocked at the doors in a 
 sense quite different from that of Ibsen's 
 famous saying. They had come in thousands, 
 
 1 This article was completed by Mr. Austin but a few days 
 before his sudden death, and was written in the expectation that it 
 would be published, as originally intended, on the occasion of the 
 late Sir Henry Irving's projected visit to the United States in 1906. 
 
 A
 
 Points of View 
 
 not to tell the old actor that his day was done, 
 that his methods were outworn, that he must 
 yield his sceptre to another, but to swear fealty 
 to him, to crown him with fresh laurels, to 
 thunder his praises with passionate emotion. 
 
 Thus spoke Drury Lane. It carried some 
 of us back to the days when we also were 
 young, when this actor was carving his way to 
 fame, and when we clamoured our best to help 
 him. From 1905 my memory retraced the 
 course of time to 1873, the year when I was 
 first a pittite at the Old Lyceum. How we 
 jammed the pit to see Irving as Eugene Aram ! 
 As a haunted murderer, he had made his great 
 success in " The Bells " : here was another in 
 the same line. In the first act, he was the 
 melancholy wooer of the parson's daughter in 
 the peaceful vicarage ; in the second, the bones 
 of his victim were exhumed, and he shrank 
 from looking on them ; in the third, he con- 
 fessed his crime to the girl in the churchyard, 
 and enacted it over again with tremendous 
 effect. The victim, of course, had been a 
 most unworthy person ; we pittites could see 
 that with half an eye ; the displacement of his 
 bones was a provoking accident, but for which 
 the vicarage romance would have run quite 
 smoothly. Irving threw such passion into the
 
 Sir Henry Irving 
 
 enactment of the murder before the terrified 
 Ruth, that we were thrilled with sympathy. 
 We gloried in being accessories after the 
 fact. 
 
 Later came " Philip," another haunted- 
 criminal play, wherein a Spanish gentleman 
 of fiery temper shot his brother after much 
 provocation. Over the dead man's face the 
 remorseful Cain reverently drew his cloak, 
 and then stole guiltily away, followed by our 
 vehement plaudits. He who knows not what 
 it is to revel in deeds of blood on the stage, 
 when they are done with distinction, and when 
 the doer carries about with him an abiding 
 sorrow that makes him a romantic figure, has a 
 poor experience of life's pleasures. Philip had 
 not slain his brother after all. That graceless 
 person turned up again, and made love to 
 Philip's wife. Suspicious of some intruder 
 on the premises, the jealous husband ordered 
 the doorway of the room where his brother 
 was in hiding to be walled up, when lo ! a 
 repentant apparition, eager to affirm that a 
 brother's blood had not been shed, or, at any 
 rate, that enough remained to justify a frater- 
 nal embrace. It was not a very good play ; 
 its note was not particularly fresh ; still, the 
 imagination of the actor, his sovereign quality, 
 
 3
 
 Points of View 
 
 presented the idea of the haunted man with 
 undiminished glamour. 
 
 But what of his future ? Some critics pre- 
 dicted it freely enough, to the indignation of us 
 youngsters in the pit, who glowered at all the 
 bald heads in the stalls, suspecting that every 
 man with no hair to speak of wrote like a 
 cynic in the papers. He was a very good 
 comedian, said those critics of Henry Irving ; 
 witness his Digby Grant in " Two Roses " ; 
 that eccentric old gentleman who supposed 
 that delicacy of feeling could be rewarded with 
 " a little cheque." He was a good melo- 
 dramatic actor ; witness Mathias, and so forth. 
 His Charles I. was not melodrama, to be sure ; 
 the critics did not know exactly what it was ; 
 they admitted, however, that it was a pictur- 
 esque character, full of dignity and tenderness. 
 But we were not to imagine, for one moment, 
 that the actor who had done these things could 
 succeed in the dear old " legitimate." That 
 was reserved for tragedians who belonged to a 
 " school " ; whose style had broadened slowly 
 down from precedent to precedent ; whose 
 elocution rolled on like Byron's ocean ; who 
 had no angularities of deportment, like the 
 ambitious gentleman at the Lyceum ; who 
 gave you Nature in her majestic mood, with 
 
 4
 
 Sir Henry Irving 
 
 an imperious roar and an earth-shaking stamp. 
 These old tragedians loomed chiefly in our 
 fancy and in the annals of the stage, for their 
 school was no longer on the scene. But Phelps 
 was still alive ; the august shade of Macready 
 was not too remote for a critic with a bald 
 head ; and, when the audacious Irving appeared 
 as Richelieu, the sheeted dead, you might say, 
 did squeak and gibber in the London streets. 
 
 What a " first night " that was in 1873 ! I 
 can still see the bald heads growing crimson. 
 They remembered Richelieu, a very different 
 personage from this presumptuous innovator. 
 We had never seen Richelieu before, but had 
 a triumphant assurance that here was the very 
 man. Excellent figure of the " legitimate," 
 this Cardinal of Bulwer's ! Was ever such 
 wiliness, broad, under-scored, capital-lettered, 
 so plain that owls might see it by day ? But, 
 to be sure, Irving's wiliness was not broad 
 enough for the critics who had memories. 
 Hitherto he had been his own standard ; he 
 was now at grips with the Past. Is it ever 
 easy for the old playgoer to hail the merit of 
 the new actor, playing the familiar parts with 
 unfamiliar method, with new and disturbing 
 insight ? We associate the characters of the 
 drama, the characters that really live, with 
 
 5
 
 Points of View 
 
 some personality of the stage who has made a 
 lasting impress on the imagination. 
 
 When, at length, Henry Irving came to play 
 Hamlet, it was a far more serious affair than 
 Bulwer. Cradled in melodrama, his ambition 
 aspired to the lawful line of succession in 
 Shakespearian acting, as though he had been 
 born in the purple. It was not so much that 
 he offended the memory of some particular 
 Hamlet. But Hamlet was a classic, shrined 
 in tradition, guarded by the embattled phalanx 
 of the old school. Here was an actor who 
 put life into the revered abstraction, made the 
 heart of its mystery glow with a romantic 
 flame, interpreted the play of intellect and the 
 depth of passion with equal mastery ; and was, 
 in fine, the veritable Hamlet, in his dignity, his 
 melancholy, his humour, his blasting irony, in 
 all that was lovable in his nature. 
 
 I have seen lots of Hamlets since. I have 
 sat in a theatre where the partisans of the 
 Hamlet then upon the scene, and the partisans 
 of some other Hamlet fortunately absent, have 
 almost come to blows. I have known friend- 
 ships chilled, and hearths made desolate, by 
 the factions of the inky cloak. Anybody may 
 be Othello or Macbeth without breaking up 
 our happy homes; but do you dare, sir, to 
 
 6
 
 Sir Henry Irving 
 
 maintain that the Hamlet you admire is to be 
 mentioned in the same hemisphere with the 
 glorious being who trod the battlements at 
 Elsinore when I was a boy ? Then have at 
 you, sir ! This is why I do not enumerate 
 those other Hamlets. But to my thinking, I 
 have seen only one inspired Hamlet, only one 
 actor who was born Hamlet; the rest have 
 worn the inky cloak and the dejected haviour 
 of the visage ; but none of them could say 
 with conviction: "I know not seems.*' 
 
 This may stir up anathema in some quarters ; 
 and I should be rather glad if it did, for the 
 present generation is in peril of a declining 
 taste for theatrical controversy. Whenever 
 Irving essayed Shakespeare anew, the battle 
 raged as fiercely as ever. Macbeth, now ah ! 
 the first night of his Macbeth ; that was some- 
 thing like a tourney. There was a little piece 
 before the tragedy ; the queer old custom of 
 prefacing Shakespeare with a farce, as if to 
 fortify our spirits, was not yet dead. None 
 of us had ever seen Macbeth ; and we beheld 
 him now as a murderer, a conscience-stricken 
 ghost-seer, who plucks up his soldierly nerve 
 only in the last act ; in a word, the haunted 
 criminal of the early Irving play. His martial 
 deeds were talked about ; but, until he re- 
 
 7
 
 Points of View 
 
 solved to die with harness on his back, you 
 would never have thought he had the spirit 
 of a warrior. The enemy blasphemed like 
 anything ; they said that Shakespeare never 
 drew such a craven ; Macbeth was a lion- 
 hearted man, who could not have made this 
 pitiful spectacle after Duncan's murder, his 
 knees knocking together with abject fright. 
 Macbeth was an heroic part ; was this the 
 heroic way of playing it ? We had our mis- 
 givings ; it sounded so natural that heroes 
 should be represented heroically. But was 
 that Shakespeare's view ? Heavens ! how we 
 read our Shakespeare, and set what the "bleed- 
 ing sergeant " says of Macbeth's prowess on 
 the battlefield against the deadly insults to his 
 manhood from the lips of his wife ! Irving's 
 conception was right ; and Macbeth, a bloody- 
 minded villain with a turn for poetry and 
 philosophy, and a paralysing dread of ghosts 
 " Take any shape but that ! " must be deposed 
 from his heroic state. 
 
 Of course, you must not insist too strongly 
 on the meaning of Shakespeare, even when you 
 know what he does mean. Salvini's Othello, 
 who dragged Desdemona about by the hair in 
 the mad frenzy of a jealous animal, was scarcely 
 the Othello of Shakespeare, calm and sacrificial. 
 
 8
 
 Sir Henry Irving 
 
 But he was a prodigy of superb force. Fanny 
 Kemble, when she saw Irving play Shylock, is 
 reported to have said : " If Shakespeare could 
 see this, he would rewrite the part." If the 
 Shylock of the early stage tradition was the 
 Shylock that Shakespeare did see, the comic 
 Jew in a red wig and a false nose, he could 
 not have been very sensitive about the acting 
 of his characters. The dramatist who created 
 Portia and Rosalind, and saw them played by 
 boys, must have been content with strange 
 illusions. The low comedian, as Shylock with 
 red hair, tickled the groundlings, who had 
 not the faintest suspicion that Shakespeare had 
 made out the strongest vindication of the Jews 
 against their persecutors. Did nobody in his 
 day listen to Shylock's fierce irony with an 
 inkling of the truth ? "If you prick us, do 
 we not bleed ? If you wrong us, shall we not 
 revenge ? " The Jewish answer to Christian 
 villainy was to "better the instruction"; 
 hence the famous bond, a pound of Antonio's 
 fair flesh. Perhaps the absurdity of a contract, 
 wherein a subtle and crafty Jew was made to 
 overreach himself so grossly, was the poet's 
 concession to contemporary prejudice. Per- 
 haps it never struck him that no man, least 
 of all Shylock, could imagine that the law of 
 
 9
 
 Points of View 
 
 Venice or any other state would allow him 
 to exact such a forfeit from a debtor. When 
 Portia condescends to come to the point, it 
 is not her silly juggle about the shedding of 
 one drop of blood that determines the cause ; 
 it is the obvious argument that no Jew, under 
 any bond whatever, can be allowed to contrive 
 against the life of a citizen. If cutting a pound 
 of flesh off a gentleman's person is not con- 
 triving against his life, what is it ? Imagine 
 a Duke of Venice to whom this had to be 
 pointed out ! Shakespeare did not care ; he 
 took the story as he found it ; and he had 
 his recompense, perhaps, in the delight with 
 which the populace greeted the discomfiture 
 of the droll comedian with the preposterous 
 nose and the inflamed wig. The trial scene 
 must have been very humorous in those far- 
 off days, when the serio-comic brutality of 
 the Jew was outwitted by a lively boy making 
 believe to be a young woman masquerading 
 as a Junior Counsel of the Padua Bar, and 
 instructing an incredibly ignorant Venetian 
 Magistrate in the elements of law and common 
 sense. The rigours of the fun, I dare say, 
 were mitigated as time went on, when the 
 Jew became less grotesque, and Portia was 
 really a woman, though rather a pompous 
 
 10
 
 Sir Henry Irving 
 
 lady, as pompous as Fanny Kemble herself. 
 With Henry Irving as Shylock, and Ellen 
 Terry as Portia, the course of evolution was 
 complete. It was not in the malignity of his 
 premature triumph that Shylock was great ; 
 it was in the splendour of his ruin, in the 
 pathos of the broken old man tottering from 
 the court. The Victorian playgoer sat in awe 
 at the very moment of the story when the 
 Elizabethan playgoer had burst into rude 
 rejoicing. 
 
 "The Merchant of Venice" has been the 
 chief monument of twenty brilliant years of 
 Irving's management at the Lyceum. The 
 dear old " legitimate " had a splendid home ; 
 and the friends of its palmy days, who had 
 wept for its decline, began to cheer up a little, 
 although they shook their heads at the scenery. 
 People, it was said, went to the Lyceum to 
 look at the scenery, and not at the acting. 
 Heaven knows what takes some persons to 
 the theatre ; it is certainly not the play. You 
 cannot tell why others buy books ; it is not to 
 read them. But vast numbers who had held 
 aloof from theatres in earlier times flocked to 
 the Lyceum, because they found so much there 
 to gratify an intelligent taste. What Henry 
 Irving did most notably was to bring serious 
 
 ii
 
 Points of View 
 
 people back to the acted drama. The mind 
 that shaped every detail of a production, and 
 brought the beauty of scenic effect into har- 
 mony with the comedy that was enacted at 
 Venice or Messina, knew the secret of the 
 grand style. Stage-carpenters had erected im- 
 posing structures elsewhere without captivating 
 the public ; but these were structures with no 
 artistic suggestion to give them atmosphere. 
 It was distinction that reigned on the Lyceum 
 stage, not expenditure. You had the life and 
 colour of Bassanio's world, with Shylock's 
 grim dwelling in the Ghetto over the bridge, 
 so strongly in the memory that, in Venice, the 
 whole scene came back to you ; and the bridge 
 itself, with the sculptured faces of a humorously 
 Semitic cast, under which you pass from the 
 Grand Canal, had surely echoed the footsteps 
 of Shylock when he returned to his house to 
 find that Jessica had fled with her Christian 
 lover. Who has walked in Venice without 
 the Lyceum pictures rising in his mind ? I 
 recall those pictures, not on account of any 
 scenic magnificence, but because they live in the 
 imagination together with the noble figures 
 that moved in them ; just as I recall the 
 cuckoo-clock in the simple interior of Dr. 
 Primrose's parsonage, because it reminds me 
 
 12
 
 Sir Henry Irving 
 
 of the old Vicar, one of Irving's most admir- 
 able impersonations, making the inventory of 
 his household gods when misfortune had over- 
 taken him. 
 
 It is said that, as a manager, Sir Henry 
 did much for the stage, but very little for 
 the modern dramatic author. This is true ; 
 but, in a policy of poetic drama largely 
 Shakespearian, the modern author could not 
 have a conspicuous place. It would have 
 been deeply interesting to see Shakespeare at 
 the Lyceum alternating with a comedy of our 
 own day by Pinero; to see Irving exchange 
 his doublet and hose, or the ecclesiastical 
 robes of a bygone age, for the garments which 
 are worn by dramatic personages who have 
 chambers in the Albany. As a matter of fact, 
 I do not think he appeared in any modern 
 costume on the Lyceum stage more than once 
 in twenty-five years. In a dramatic sense the 
 clothes would have been too small ; he was 
 too big a personality for the English comedy 
 of our day ; he would have looked like the 
 spacious times of Elizabeth cribb'd in a May- 
 fair drawing-room. 
 
 Poetic dramas of all eras used to pour in 
 at the Lyceum ; a rage for historical char- 
 acters possessed many persons in all ranks of 
 
 13
 
 Points of View 
 
 life ; it was quite a common thing for a man 
 engaged in some humble but exacting avoca- 
 tion to toss off a five-act play in blank verse 
 on the subject of Savonarola, and to intimate 
 that on the Lyceum stage the success of this 
 modest effort was certain. Unknown authors 
 were resolved not to hide their lights under 
 bushels ; but they sent the bushels in, and 
 there was no illumination. One illustrious 
 hand wrote dramatic verse to some purpose. 
 Tennyson's " Queen Mary " and " The Cup " 
 were played at the Lyceum ; and had Tenny- 
 son lived to see the production of " Becket," 
 he would have been a gratified man. Mr. 
 George Meredith tells an amusing story of a 
 walk he took with Tennyson one day, when 
 the bard was very silent and gloomy. They 
 walked several miles, and suddenly Tennyson 
 growled, " Apollodorus says I am not a great 
 poet." This critic was a Scottish divine, and 
 neither his name nor his opinion was of much 
 consequence. Mr. Meredith said something 
 to that effect ; and Tennyson retorted, " But 
 he ought not to say I am not a great poet." 
 That was the entire conversation. 
 
 Had Apollodorus said that Tennyson was 
 not a great dramatist, he would not have out- 
 raged the heavens. When he thought of the 
 
 14
 
 Sir Henry Irving 
 
 stage in the last months of his life, Tennyson 
 was rather embittered by the failure of that 
 luckless piece, " The Promise of May." " But 
 Irving will do me justice with ' Becket,' " said 
 the poet. Justice was done indeed, and some- 
 thing more. After twelve years Sir Henry 
 has been playing " Becket " again, and the 
 spell of his personality has never been so com- 
 manding. The actor who gave us thrills 
 thirty years ago as the haunted criminal, can 
 do what he wills with us as the mediaeval 
 fanatic and martyr. By the cold reading of 
 history I judge Becket to have been an 
 obstinate bigot, resolute to protect a dissolute 
 clergy against the laws of the realm, prating 
 of " God's honour " when he meant his own 
 authority, and drunk with the power which 
 the Middle Ages gave to the priest who 
 wielded the ban of the Church. You can 
 read Tennyson's drama, and still have that 
 idea of Becket very strongly in your mind. 
 But not when you see Irving in the part ; 
 then the grasping prelate is transfigured ; he 
 is a sublime protagonist in the great conflict 
 of Church and State ; his martyrdom has a 
 beauty of sacrifice which sums up all that 
 the saints endured ; and the accusing voice 
 of history is stilled. The imagination of the 
 
 15
 
 Points of View 
 
 actor has never had a greater triumph ; he 
 seems born to impersonate ecclesiastics, great 
 Princes of the Church in all ages, and country 
 parsons like the Vicar of Wakefield. Then 
 you remember his sinister monarchs, his 
 Richard and Louis, the flamboyant quality of 
 some characters, the delicate detail of others ; 
 such a portrait in miniature as Corporal 
 Brewster, finished to the point where it is 
 just divided by a nicely calculated shade from 
 painful realism. One remembers these figures 
 with some appreciation of their diversity, look- 
 ing back upon the range of art this remarkable 
 personality has compassed. 
 
 For the actor's calling, Sir Henry Irving 
 has done more than any of his great prede- 
 cessors. None of them ever watched over 
 its interests with his jealous care. He has 
 combated prejudice with so fine a temper, 
 and pursued his art with so true a service, 
 that the public on both sides of the Atlantic 
 has come to rank him high among its worthies ; 
 and people to whom the theatre makes no 
 appeal hold his name in honour. The per- 
 sonal magnetism of any remarkable man is 
 best attested by its influence upon his eminent 
 contemporaries. In Henry Irving's case, it 
 is illustrated through some of the foremost 
 
 16
 
 Sir Henry Irving 
 
 men of his age. The Emperor William, when 
 he met the actor, betrayed a certain prepara- 
 tion for the occasion ; before a word could 
 be said by way of introduction, he launched 
 into an eloquent exposition of Shakespeare, 
 which, I am told, threw a dazzling light on 
 several obscure problems. Mr. Gladstone was 
 attracted in a different way. At one period, 
 when he was not burdened by the cares of 
 office, he was fond of watching the perfor- 
 mances at the Lyceum from a chair in the 
 " wings." One night, when the stage was set 
 for the opera ball in the " Corsican Brothers," 
 his curiosity led him into one of the boxes 
 for spectators in the scene. Up went the 
 curtain ; Mr. Gladstone was at once descried 
 by the pit and greeted with shouts of joy, 
 which caused him hastily to withdraw. This 
 was his first and only appearance in the 
 drama, outside of the dear old "legitimate" 
 at Westminster. The magnetic influence of 
 Irving induced him to give a singular per- 
 formance even there. He took the actor to 
 the House very late one evening, put him 
 under the Gallery, and sat with a grim, im- 
 passive air on the Treasury Bench. Suddenly, 
 without apparent reason, he leaped to his feet, 
 and delivered an impassioned speech, set off 
 
 17 B
 
 Points of View 
 
 with all the expressive and dramatic gesture 
 for which he was so famous. The House 
 seemed surprised ; Members looked at one 
 another, and murmured : " What is the old 
 man up to now ? " They thought it was 
 some deep, political game. But, a week or 
 two later, a friend of Irving's, encountering 
 Mr. Gladstone, mentioned the actor's visit to 
 the House, and Gladstone eagerly inquired : 
 " What did he think of my speech ? / made 
 it for him I " 
 
 Never in the least suggesting the traditional 
 player's manner off the stage, Irving has always 
 impressed most people, I think, by an inde- 
 finable air of authority. A stranger, meeting 
 him for the first time, might take him for 
 an experienced diplomatist, with that sardonic 
 humour which springs from a diplomatic 
 knowledge of human nature. Presently, the 
 observant stranger would detect in him the 
 humorist, with the true humorist's kindly 
 eye for the affections as well as the failings 
 of his species. There has never been in Henry 
 Irving any pose of any sort, but always a fine 
 simplicity ; a quietly impressive suggestion 
 that the head of the dramatic profession took 
 that profession seriously, and exacted on its 
 behalf the respect that was due to his own 
 
 18
 
 Sir Henri/ Irving 
 
 personal character. This may partly explain 
 why he fascinates liberal-minded Bishops, and 
 has a strong following among the junior clergy. 
 Even Nonconformist divines have sat at the 
 Lyceum without attempting to disguise their 
 edification ; and one of them a famous 
 preacher now dead was plainly inspired in 
 his purely dramatic moments by the secular 
 pulpit in Wellington Street. 
 
 Long before Irving received his knighthood, 
 the late Queen desired to confer that dis- 
 tinction upon him. This was as far back 
 as 1883. He was about to pay his first visit 
 to America ; and the Lord Chief Justice, Lord 
 Coleridge, who presided at a dinner that was 
 given to him by a distinguished company, 
 suggested this as an admirable occasion for 
 announcing the signal mark of the Queen's 
 favour. But, with his characteristically subtle 
 sense of fitness, Irving felt that his first 
 appeal to the American public should be 
 made entirely on his artistic merits, without 
 the shadow of a suggestion that he sought 
 to influence the judgment by such a decora- 
 tion. It was a delicate position ; the favours 
 of the Sovereign cannot be lightly put aside ; 
 but the choice was characteristic of the man. 
 Since then, the American people have given 
 
 19
 
 Points of View 
 
 him many proofs of their warm regard ; and 
 few ambassadors have done more than he 
 to make good-will between the two nations. 
 More than twenty years have passed since 
 he set an unfamiliar foot on the shores which 
 have become so friendly. There have been 
 many changes ; the ranks of the old players 
 are sadly thinned. The melancholy grace of 
 Edwin Booth is a beloved memory ; Jefferson 
 will delight us no more. Who that saw them 
 can forget the brilliant nights at the Lyceum 
 long ago, when Booth and Irving played 
 together in " Othello," and that tragedy was 
 represented with a general excellence such as 
 no man had ever known ? Henry Irving may 
 be called the last of the Old Guard, crossing 
 the ocean once more to bid farewell to the 
 great people who have made him one of 
 themselves for a generation. And when the 
 moment comes for another leave-taking, and 
 we on this side must say our own farewells 
 to him at the close of his public life, they 
 will mingle with echoes of friendship and 
 regret from a throng of American hearts. 
 
 20
 
 II Sparrowgrass and Shakespeare 
 
 SOLOMON (not the philosopher, but 
 the West End fruiterer) attracts me 
 greatly at this season by the glory 
 of his window. If I were to write 
 an Ode on the Intimations of Early Spring, I 
 should address it to Mr. Solomon, for have I 
 not stood in the lingering blasts of winter, and 
 gazed hopefully on his giant asparagus ? Yes, 
 the moment it appears in the window at thirty 
 shillings a bundle I feel the vernal sap pulsat- 
 ing in my veins. What was the song that 
 Becky Sharp used to sing the song of the 
 maiden who explains to an anxious parent how 
 she rejoices with the rose on her balcony, and 
 the bird in the tree, at the coming of Spring ? 
 
 " And so I laugh and blush, Mamma, 
 And that's the reason why ! " 
 
 And so I laugh and blush (as well as the native 
 yellow of my complexion will permit) at Mr. 
 Solomon's asparagus. And just as some people 
 study the barometer, and feel cheerful when 
 the glass is rising, so I study that bundle, and 
 note hilariously that the price is falling. For 
 when asparagus is cheap, then is the winter of 
 
 21
 
 Points of View 
 
 our discontent made glorious summer, and all 
 the chills and agues that glowered at us in the 
 doctor's eye, in the deep phials of the apothe- 
 cary buried. 
 
 Shakespeare appears to have known nothing 
 of asparagus, or I think he would have amended 
 Hamlet's brutal retort to poor Ophelia's remark 
 about the introduction to the play scene : " 'Tis 
 brief, my lord." " As woman's love," says 
 Hamlet a most wanton slander. He should 
 have said : " As the asparagus season." Alas ! 
 from the moment when that bundle of giant 
 asparagus, almost as large as the emblem of 
 authority that was carried by the Roman 
 lictors, dawns on my enraptured vision, to the 
 melancholy dinner-hour when the waiter in- 
 forms me that asparagus is no more, there is 
 a poor span of weeks. Deduct the days when 
 you cannot afford it, and how many remain 
 for the gratification of a taste which makes me 
 hope for his sake, that when Nebuchadnezzar 
 lived on grass, it was what the Cockney kitchen- 
 maids call " sparrowgrass " ? Do not think me 
 the slave of gluttony. My passion for asparagus 
 is chiefly social. Have you considered that it 
 is one of the very few dishes we are permitted 
 by civilisation to eat with our fingers ? (Don't 
 be tempted to use the clippers, for they will 
 
 22
 
 Sparrowgrass and Shakespeare 
 
 make you drop melted butter in your lap !) 
 Yes, when I hold a stick of asparagus suspended 
 in the air, and adjust my mouth at the proper 
 angle to catch the coy but seductive dainty, I 
 feel that I have returned to nature. If Rousseau 
 could behold that spectacle, he would be com- 
 forted by the thought that his philosophy was 
 not wasted. 
 
 Mr. Solomon's prophetic eye embraces 
 Summer as well as Spring. There are straw- 
 berries in his window at thirty-five shillings a 
 box. I have a misgiving that even to look at 
 them makes one guilty of what Mr. Labou- 
 chere calls " ostentatious expenditure." Even 
 Paula Tanqueray, who liked fruit when it was 
 expensive, might have shrunk from twenty- 
 four strawberries for thirty-five shillings. I 
 fall back on that philosopher renowned in 
 nursery lore as Simple Simon. Like all great 
 minds he has suffered from vulgar misunder- 
 standing. When the pieman asked him for 
 his coin, and he answered, " Indeed, I have not 
 any ! " he spoke, not with fatuity, as the chil- 
 dren are taught to believe, but with well-bred 
 disdain. He was not a zany, but a connoisseur, 
 and it was as absurd to ask for his penny as 
 it would be to ask the reviewers to pay for 
 their review copies. Now, I should like to 
 
 23
 
 Points of View 
 
 explain the case of Simple Simon to Mr. 
 Solomon. 
 
 JAQUES. Good day, Mr. Solomon. You 
 remember Simple Simon ? 
 
 MR. S. Yes, he wanted pies for nothing, and 
 never thought of selling them at a hundred 
 per cent, profit. And his name was Simon ! 
 Most unaccountable. 
 
 JAQUES. I am sorry to find that you take 
 so severely commercial a view of the story. I 
 want you to see it in its truly poetical light. 
 
 MR. S. (hastily). Afraid I have no time. 
 Won't you try our pipless oranges ? 
 
 JAQUES. No, thank you. The pipless orange 
 is a mean evasion of moral discipline. 
 
 MR. S. Or our Cape plums ? 
 
 JAQUES. There will be more than enough of 
 them in the Budget. But I see you have all 
 the delicacies of the season after next. Are 
 those the strawberries of 1 902 ? 
 
 MR. S. (with great urbanity}. Not quite. 
 But they are pretty well advanced. 
 
 JAQUES. And only thirty-five shillings the 
 box. Dear me ! (Eats one.} Let me assure 
 you that the flavour (smacks his lips) is so far 
 advanced (another smack) that one scarcely 
 overtakes it. If I were you I would call this 
 strawberry De Wet. 
 
 24
 
 Sparrowgrass and Shakespeare 
 
 MR. S. (rather curtly}. Excuse me, but it is 
 eighteenpence. 
 
 JAQUES. My dear Mr. Solomon ! Don't you 
 see I am offering you a considerable .improve- 
 ment on the story of Simple Simon ? I have 
 tasted your ware. I propose a striking name 
 for it, a name that will catch the eye of the 
 ostentatiously extravagant, and make your 
 thirty-five shilling boxes go off like matches. 
 And you ask me for my eighteen pennies ! 
 Indeed, I have not any ! 
 
 MR. S. (in a tone that suggests illumination]. 
 Well, upon my word ! 
 
 JAQUES. Yes, I knew you would see it. 
 And let me remind you of Cleopatra's price- 
 less pearl. She dissolved it in a glass of wine, 
 and I dare say it had as much flavour as your 
 strawberry. So there you have another taking 
 name the Cleopatra. Upon my word. Mr. 
 Solomon, I think I have earned that eighteen- 
 pence, to say nothing of the poetry, for which 
 I make no charge. 
 
 MR. S. (speechless, perhaps with joy], ! ! ! ! 
 
 Perhaps this imaginary dialogue is a total 
 misapprehension of Mr. Solomon. He may 
 keep those thirty-five shilling boxes simply to 
 give away, as Mr. Carnegie gives away his 
 millions. And this makes me suspect that 
 
 25
 
 Points of View 
 
 Mr. Solomon is only waiting to be asked to 
 establish the endowed theatre. For a moment 
 this week he must have felt the bitter sense 
 of ambition forestalled when he heard that 
 Mr. Carnegie had undertaken that great work. 
 It was a false report, and now the way is clear 
 for Mr. Solomon, who fills his window with 
 the fruits of the earth, to adorn a theatre with 
 the flowers of the mind. Munificent enthus- 
 iasts go about erecting free libraries. Why 
 cannot one of them try the experiment of 
 endowing a theatre purely for the circulation 
 of ideas? Some people think that no good 
 could come of it ; but then many people are 
 sceptical about the utility of the free library. 
 I have an impartial sympathy with all hobbies 
 that have a clear ideal of the public interest, and 
 as I am sure Mr. Solomon is of my opinion, 
 I hope he will not let himself be deterred by 
 mere cavil and idle prophecy. 
 
 Nor should there be any timidity on the 
 score of " ostentatious expenditure." Mr. 
 Solomon must resist the blandishments of Mr. 
 Sidney Lee, who thinks that Shakespeare ought 
 to be represented, as it were, in his shirt-sleeves. 
 Let us have all the drapery when it is becoming. 
 The last time I saw " Coriolanus," the Roman 
 populace was as little suggestive of wayward 
 
 26
 
 Sparrowgrass and 8hakespeare 
 
 passion as the depressed groups that listen to 
 unknown orators in Hyde Park on Sunday ; 
 and the Roman Senate was like "a party in 
 a parlour, all silent, and all damned." It is 
 a mistake to suppose that when Shakespeare 
 chooses ancient Rome as the scene of a drama, 
 the way to do him reverence is to play it in 
 a sort of classical Little Peddlington. I can 
 understand the contention that it is better to 
 have it that way than not at all ; but there 
 are people who will tell you that Shakespeare's 
 Rome should be left to the imagination, and 
 that any scenic picture of it distracts the 
 studious mind. I wish the man of business 
 who produced his plays at the Globe Theatre, 
 Blackfriars, were at Mr. Solomon's elbow. He 
 would vote for Rome, and not for Little 
 Peddlington. 
 
 27
 
 Ill Jaques and the Beanstalk 
 
 I REGRET that the learned author of 
 " The Theatre in France and England," 
 a treatise that embraces our modest 
 generation as well as antiquity, has 
 given but scanty attention to the English 
 pantomime. He dismisses it in half a page 
 with such information as this: "The mise- 
 en-scene at the Drury Lane Theatre, in London, 
 is magnificent, and in the provinces Bristol 
 is noted for its effective scenery and rich 
 costumes." Not a philosophical word about 
 the development (or degeneration) of panto- 
 mime from the simple fairy tale (with humor- 
 ous trimmings) to the gorgeous miscellany of 
 odds and ends, the dazzling shreds of costume 
 and the purple patches of the music-hall 
 troubadour ! I expected Mr. Charles Hastings 
 to tell me why Harlequin and Columbine no 
 longer give the sanction of poetic grace to 
 scenes of outrage on law and order. Yes, 
 where is the disreputable but delightful Clown 
 of my childhood ? I remember him first in 
 the pantomime of " The Goose with the 
 Golden Eggs," more especially his interview 
 with an egg- merchant whose wares were 
 
 28
 
 Jaques and the Beanstalk 
 
 liberally displayed in baskets. " Did you 
 happen to know the Goose that laid the 
 Golden Eggs ? " said the Clown affably to 
 this tradesman. " I knew her very well. 
 A most respectable old bird until she went 
 into politics. Then she left off laying Golden 
 Eggs, and took to laying eggs for public 
 meetings. Why, you've got a lot of them 
 here. What a handy man you are ! " Then 
 he threw an egg at the policeman, and all 
 the children in the boxes shrieked with joy 
 at the pantomime " rally " that destroyed a 
 great deal of property, to say nothing of 
 moral principles. 
 
 Why have we been robbed of these delights ? 
 Mr. Hastings does not say ; but one passage 
 in his great work suggests how he might have 
 handled the theme. "From 1850 there was 
 an outburst of Puritanism which relegated the 
 plays of Shakespeare, as an illicit pleasure, to 
 the surburban theatre of Sadler's Wells." 
 This throws a new light on Phelps's enter- 
 prise, and makes me wonder how Charles 
 Kean managed to square the Puritans at the 
 Princess's. Perhaps he was liberal with 
 " orders." Some collector of theatrical curios 
 may possess a faded yellow document on which 
 is inscribed " Admit this party of Puritans to 
 
 29
 
 Points of View 
 
 a private box." But although they might 
 extend such tolerance to illicit pleasure in 
 Shakespeare, how could they endure my 
 Clown's illustration of government by party, 
 the Harlequin's habit of jumping through the 
 shop-fronts of honest tradesmen, the Colum- 
 bine's dainty nonchalance amidst larceny and 
 riot ? If Mr. Hastings will look into this, he 
 may find that another " outburst of Puritan- 
 ism" has swept away the Harlequinade. 
 Serious views as to the education of children 
 have so far prevailed that no upright citizen 
 can permit his family to enjoy the famous 
 interludes with the red-hot poker. Or can it 
 be that Scotland Yard declined to be respon- 
 sible for the safety of our hearths and homes 
 if the Force were held up twice a day in the 
 pantomime season to the derision of babes ? 
 
 This oversight on the part of Mr. Hastings 
 is all the more singular because he touches 
 some points of our theatrical history that have 
 escaped the general notice. Sir Henry Irving, 
 I fancy, does not remember his attempt to 
 revive the Miracle Play. " Under his direc- 
 tion ' The Gift of Tongues ' was put on the 
 stage in London some few years ago ; but 
 the experiment was a complete failure, and has 
 not been attempted since." Save the erudite 
 
 3
 
 Jaques and the Beanstalk 
 
 Mr. Hastings, who has ever heard of "The 
 Gift of Tongues," and its luckless production 
 by Sir Henry Irving ? How are these graces 
 hid ? The public memory is said to be short ; 
 but this is a case of tabula rasa, or what 
 Lord Rosebery calls a clean slate. Some magic 
 sponge has passed over the public mind, and 
 left not a trace on it of this episode in Sir 
 Henry Irving's career. And yet I do not 
 challenge the accuracy of Mr. Hastings, for 
 I happen to be the only man who remembers 
 a pantomime at Drury Lane entitled "Jack 
 and the Beanstalk, or the Land Where Both 
 Ends Meet." Jack was a spendthrift pursued 
 by writs, and one evening he had the humor- 
 ous idea of planting one of them in the garden. 
 Next day he did not awake till two in the 
 afternoon, for his bedroom was darkened by 
 a gigantic tree, so that he thought he was 
 in the middle of the night. The writ had 
 sprouted in this magical fashion, and as the 
 tree was very convenient for climbing, Jack 
 ate a hasty lunch and started upwards. 
 
 Thanks to expert sceneshifters, the journey 
 was short, and Jack found himself in a strange 
 country, and in the bustle of a village festival. 
 The dresses of the girls struck him as curiously 
 homely, and he said, " My dears, you are
 
 Points of View 
 
 all very nice, but how in the name of fortune 
 do you come to be dressed like that ? Dowdy 
 isn't the word ! Do get yourselves some new 
 clothes, I beg, and have them made like this." 
 Then he gave a brief sketch of the pantomime 
 finery to which he was accustomed, and the 
 village maidens perceptibly changed colour. 
 They were surprised at him, they said ; more- 
 over, who was going to pay ? " Pay ! " he 
 exclaimed. " Do not use that ill-bred expres- 
 sion. Mention my name to the dressmakers. 
 This is a new country, and my credit will 
 be quite fresh." Here the principal village 
 maiden began to sing, and Jack remarked with 
 greater wonder than ever that she had a 
 charming voice, and knew how to use it. 
 But the song was still more surprising, for it 
 set forth the moral precepts of " The Land 
 Where Both Ends Meet." There you cannot 
 get anything " on tick," and hearts are light 
 at Christmas because no bills fall due. Jack 
 said he had been concerned in many fairy tales, 
 but this was too absurd. What was the good 
 of a Beanstalk if it led to a place where you 
 had to pay your tailor ? But at this point the 
 village maidens danced an allegorical Ballet of 
 Contentment, which was followed by a pageant 
 representing the Lowly Virtues of Cottage 
 
 3*
 
 Jaques and the Beanstalk 
 
 Homes, and Jack suffered a visible change of 
 heart. Mr. Hastings will be sorry to hear 
 that this attempt to turn the Drury Lane 
 pantomime into a Miracle Play was not re- 
 warded as it deserved. 
 
 One custom of antiquity recorded by Mr. 
 Hastings might be revived with a modern 
 application. The Greek drama was often 
 commended to public notice by the levy of 
 an income-tax on the citizens to pay the 
 salaries of the actors. The salaries were some- 
 times reduced by the municipal authorities 
 when a new piece did not prove attractive. 
 This must have complicated the sentiments 
 of some frugal playgoers. Imagine a first- 
 night audience now, torn between the emotion 
 excited by the play and the desire to cut down 
 the income-tax ! I do not suggest that this 
 dilemma would help the cause of dramatic 
 art. But a novel delight might be given to 
 many households if the actor would call for his 
 little account. He would be more welcome 
 than the rate-collector, and quite as dignified. 
 You would be sitting in the study, deep in 
 your new treatise on "Moral Emblems of All 
 Nations," when the neat-handed Phyllis would 
 announce a visitor in a choking voice. " What 
 on earth is the matter with the girl ? " you 
 33 c
 
 Points of View 
 
 would remark severely. " Please, sir, I'm 
 very sorry, but I I know I shall die ! " Then 
 she would hand you a card, which was not a 
 card but a photograph, disclosing the irresistible 
 features of Mr. Dan Leno ! 
 
 Hardly had you requested him to be seated 
 when shrieks of joy would be heard from an 
 upper storey, and down would rush the children 
 to greet the genius of pantomime. Fired by 
 this homage, he would improvise a comic 
 sketch, entirely adapted, as the pantomime is 
 not, to the humorous comprehension of child- 
 hood. It would recall the Clown of happier 
 days, and you would almost weep with pleasure 
 to hear your youngest -born shrilly piping, 
 "Oh, Mr. Leno, let's heat the poker!" At 
 first there might be objections to the payment 
 of actors' salaries in this fashion ; but the 
 errands of Mr. Dan Leno would establish him 
 and his profession so firmly in the affections 
 of a multitude of children that the stoutest- 
 hearted grumbler at taxation would succumb. 
 This idea may even suggest to the Chancellor 
 of the Exchequer the expediency of making 
 Mr. Dan Leno a travelling Commissioner of the 
 Inland Revenue. It would save a deal of cor- 
 respondence in the newspapers, not to mention 
 visits of the aggrieved to Somerset House. 
 
 34
 
 IV In Praise of Wine 
 
 IN many households, and in every club, 
 there is always a sceptic who warns 
 you against the wine. " Not a bottle 
 fit to drink," he will say with em- 
 phasis ; and you gather vaguely that, save 
 in one or two cellars belonging to exalted 
 personages who ask him to dinner, there is 
 not a drop of decent wine in the land. This 
 depressing view finds some countenance in the 
 work of an American expert, Mr. Edmund 
 R. Emerson, who has written "The Story of 
 the Vine" (Putnams). Mr. Emerson is by 
 nature an enthusiast. No writer, not even 
 Omar Khayyam or George Meredith, has ex- 
 tolled the Vine with greater fervour. There 
 was a time, says Mr. Emerson, when " super- 
 stition and slander" sought to destroy cham- 
 pagne ; but what can surpass it now " in 
 tingling the torpid blood of the coward, while 
 it stirs like martial music the souls of the 
 brave and heroic," or " in adding a lustre to 
 the charm of beauty, and in imparting to the 
 pale cheek a blush that rivals the eastern sky 
 heralding to the waking west the arrival of 
 the solar god " ? After this outburst we 
 
 35
 
 Points of View 
 
 know pretty well what to expect. We learn 
 that the discovery of the cork was of " in- 
 estimable value to mankind." Without the 
 stimulus of wine where would have been the cul- 
 ture of the Greeks ? Mr. Emerson might have 
 improved upon a famous couplet by writing 
 
 ' Let laws and learning, arts and commerce, die 
 When all the wine-vats of the world run dry." 
 
 There is no better rule of health, he tells us, 
 than to drink wine regularly. Do not try it 
 for a week ; give it a lifetime, as the patent 
 medicine-makers say in their advertisements. 
 For one thing, it is an infallible cure for 
 dyspepsia. Doctors are not agreed on that 
 point, but Mr. Emerson cites the legend of 
 the Moselle which cured an ailing bishop, and 
 was called " Doctor " ever afterwards. What 
 gave the Romans strength to conquer the 
 world ? Their taste in wine may send a 
 shudder through a feeble posterity. They 
 drank Falernian, which would probably choke 
 the modern toper. They mixed it with tar, 
 assafoetida, bitumen, aloes, chalk, pepper, 
 wormwood, poppies, and boiled sea -water. 
 This was what the distiller of to-day calls a 
 " blend " ; and your ancient Roman could 
 drink a gallon " at a breath." When he gave 
 
 36
 
 In Praise of Wine 
 
 a toast, a bumper was drunk to every letter 
 of the " toasted person's name." Moreover, 
 in the best houses it was customary to drink 
 from cups of gold, which the guests used to 
 carry away, so that even if they did not relish 
 the host's liquor, they could console them- 
 selves with his family plate. This pleasant 
 hospitality is not practised now, even at the 
 tables of South African millionaires. No 
 wonder the Romans were a virile people ; and 
 if you make a wry face at the boiled sea- 
 water and its companion flavours, remember 
 that there may be worse things to-day in that 
 wineglass which it would not be worth your 
 while to take home, even if you were cordially 
 invited. 
 
 For Mr. Emerson has to confess that adul- 
 teration, which began before the Christian era, 
 is a deadly blight on the fair fame of the Vine. 
 The wine-grower's cheek ought to wear a blush 
 that rivals the eastern sky. Labels are snares, 
 and the cork, which should be of inestimable 
 value to mankind, is an impostor. Mr. Emer- 
 son weeps to think of the vineyards which are 
 credited with an enormously greater quantity 
 of wine than they can possibly yield. There 
 are brands from the Rhine which are not even 
 German cousins to the grape. An American 
 
 37
 
 Points of View 
 
 consul has solemnly affirmed that all the wines 
 which leave Marseilles for the United States are 
 liquid lies. That famous Moselle which cured 
 the bishop (all he did was to take it regularly 
 and largely) might still make it impossible for 
 an apothecary to earn a livelihood if it had 
 remained untainted by the greed of competi- 
 tion. Mr. Emerson puts in a chronicler as a 
 witness to the average daily consumption of 
 sixteen English quart bottles of Moselle per 
 head in the days when " sickness was very 
 rarely met with," and the people lived for 
 ever, in the pleasant region from which this 
 elixir took its name. How is legislation to 
 smite adulterators when "the public, as a 
 whole, are more or less ignorant as to what 
 constitutes pure wine " ? Does anybody know ? 
 The Romans, with their boiled sea-water, 
 neither knew nor cared. It was the splendid 
 indifference of a conquering race ; but eventu- 
 ally it brought about the Decline and Fall. 
 But for that sea-water, aided by tar and chalk, 
 Mr. Gibbon would not have written his cele- 
 brated history. Is the British Empire going 
 the same road ? Mr. Emerson's remarks about 
 old port are disquieting. It was England that 
 gave port its commanding position in the world ; 
 but except in the first three years of its vogue, 
 
 38
 
 In Praise of Wine 
 
 not a drop of pure port has entered this king- 
 dom ! I dissociate myself from any respon- 
 sibility for this staggering assertion. Old 
 gentlemen in the clubs, who smack their lips 
 over ostensible port, and tell anecdotes of the 
 *47 vintage, must address Mr. Emerson if they 
 feel aggrieved by the statement that even '47 
 is nothing but brandy. To appreciate it duly 
 you must have the head of the sailor who 
 visited a foreign wine-vault, where he drank a 
 number of vintages unknown to him. " And 
 werry good it was," he said, in recounting each 
 experience ; " and after that we went back to 
 the port, sherry, and other light wines of the 
 country." Upon sherry Mr. Emerson is not 
 so severe. We can fancy him singing, as Mr. 
 Edward Terry used to sing, "I'm off to the 
 bodega for a glass of sherry wine." He is 
 more than respectful to Marsala, which sprang 
 originally from Nelson's estate in Sicily. This 
 should make us exclaim with Dr. Johnson 
 (partially), " Claret for boys, port for men, 
 brandy for heroes, and Marsala for the Navy 
 League ! " 
 
 But even this cup is dashed from our lips 
 by Mr. Emerson, who assures us that the best 
 wines are nowhere exported. You cannot 
 drink real Tokay unless you are on visiting 
 
 39
 
 Points of View 
 
 terms with the Emperor Francis Joseph. You 
 may drink Chateau Yquem at a fabulous price ; 
 but all the while the cream of that wine is 
 reserved exclusively for French noblemen. 
 You may think it odd that the Italian wines 
 in Italy are not of the first order ; whereas it 
 is not in the least odd, considering that the 
 best wines are consumed by the people who 
 make them. The finest juices of the Johan- 
 nisberg vineyard enliven " the noble families 
 of the district." It is only the " inferior 
 grades " that are sold to the foreigner. This 
 is a galling inequality. Do we not send abroad 
 as good pale ale as we drink at home ? Where 
 is the policy of the " open door " ? Perhaps 
 Mr. Emerson will be accused of exaggeration. 
 We even suspect him of a patriotic motive. 
 America he declares to be the true land of the 
 Vine. Five centuries before Columbus it was 
 discovered by a Norwegian explorer, who called 
 it Vinland. President Jefferson said that 
 cheap wine was essential to national sobriety. 
 Mr. Emerson would like to blend that dictum 
 with the doctrine of Monroe. Why should 
 Americans drink foreign wines when they have 
 the Catawba, whose grandfather grape grew fat 
 on Californian summers ? The reason is that 
 " a feeling of depreciation," " a spirit of be- 
 
 40
 
 In Praise of Wine 
 
 littlement," prevails among American wine- 
 growers. They are too modest to sell their 
 own wares. Goaded by Mr. Emerson, they 
 will lose this singular shyness, and we shall 
 yet see Mr. Pierpont Morgan turn Catawba 
 into a Trust to exhilarate the world.
 
 V In Praise of Food 
 
 IN a street with which I am very intimate 
 there is, just now, an affecting sight. 
 An ambitious man has opened a new 
 restaurant, absurdly cheap, and quite 
 empty. I pass his window twice or thrice a 
 day, and see the neat white tables that would 
 groan (as the tables used to do in novels when 
 it was romantic to have a large appetite) if a 
 hungry public would give the signal. There 
 stand the waiters, toying with napkins to keep 
 their hands in. Waiters, waiters everywhere, 
 and not a soul to serve ! The bill of fare is in 
 the window, and I notice with a pang that the 
 dinner, which was cheap enough to begin with, 
 is now sixpence cheaper. Within a radius of a 
 hundred yards there must be a dozen restaurants, 
 all alive, all busily filling that vacuum which 
 makes its peremptory call at least four times 
 in the twenty-four hours ; yet nobody seems 
 able to discover this modest table-d'hote that 
 has dropped sixpence in vain appeal to the 
 frugal ! To a man of sensibility, I repeat, it 
 is an affecting sight, and as I pass that window 
 it is with a shrinking from the glance of the 
 neglected speculator indoors, lest his eye should 
 
 42
 
 In Praise of Food 
 
 say quite plainly, " You, at all events, know 
 the truth ; you have witnessed the sacrifice of 
 the sixpence ; and still you have the heart not 
 to come in and dine ! " 
 
 This reproach would not be quite just, for I 
 have had one meal in the place. It was excel- 
 lent; but the solitude struck a chill inwards, 
 that sadly hampered digestion. Your true 
 Londoner cannot bear to eat alone. He may 
 be a morose feeder, ready to bite the head off 
 the stranger at the adjoining table ; but the 
 presence of that stranger is necessary to his 
 perfect comfort. Half the charm of a restau- 
 rant is the reflection that you would rather die 
 than eat soup as your neighbour does. This 
 is one of the indispensable bonds of society. 
 The restaurant is pre-eminently social, and to 
 be quite contented there you must have com- 
 pany that provokes a slight arching of the 
 eyebrows, or appeals to you as a vision of 
 beauty. Landor said he did not mind dining 
 with one or two people, but a dinner-party 
 was " a barbarous herd." To-day we like to 
 herd in the restaurant, and the desire is not 
 barbarous, but the expression of a civic instinct, 
 for the wisdom of mankind, if it has settled 
 nothing else, has decided that dinner is the 
 communion of souls, whatever reservation you 
 
 43
 
 Points of View 
 
 may privately register as to their manoeuvres 
 with the soup. 
 
 It is sad and strange that under such con- 
 ditions the art of writing about food should 
 decay. Music you always have at the feast. 
 Tschaikowsky weaves a symphony round your 
 cutlet. There is a grill-room to which I am 
 often beckoned by a violinist with a magical 
 touch and a singular nose. When the toast- 
 master says, " My lords and gentlemen, pray 
 silence for a song," your spirit rises, and takes 
 up a listening attitude on a cloud. Minstrelsy, 
 yes ; but where is literature ? The genial author 
 of" Dinners and Diners," it is true, has achieved 
 a task that I thought beyond any man of his 
 time. He has dined at every restaurant in 
 town, given you a graphic sketch of the repast, 
 astonished you with the moderation of the bill, 
 and wrapt the whole transaction in the verit- 
 able genius of the table. Take his book to 
 one of those restaurants, and see how you fare, 
 not only with the dinner and the bill, but also 
 with the persiflage that the occasion should 
 inspire. But look at the dialogue in current 
 fiction and plays when the characters are eating 
 and drinking ! Mr. Bernard Shaw has written 
 a play about Julius Caesar, who, at an Egyptian 
 feast, after bragging that he discovered the 
 
 44
 
 In Praise of Food 
 
 British oyster, calls for barley-water. Barley- 
 water and oysters ! Why not make Cassar a 
 vegetarian ? A recent novel opens with a 
 dinner-party. The host's champagne, '74 Pom- 
 mery, is much admired, and he states with bald 
 precision that a generous duke sent him three 
 dozen ; whereupon a guest remarks, " How 
 like the duke's princely way ! " That is all 
 they have to say about '74 Pommery. 
 
 Personally the most abstemious of men, I 
 like the feasts in novels to have a poetical 
 opulence. Let them be, as Polonius warned 
 his son that waistcoats ought not to be, 
 " exprest in fancy." Let the guests discuss 
 them with taste and discernment. A literary 
 journal lately offered a guinea prize for the 
 best snatch of dialogue from an unpublished 
 novel. The successful piece was some foolish 
 love-talk on the balcony. A guinea for a 
 sparkling dialogue about a dinner might have 
 been well bestowed in the true interests of 
 literature. The writer of a manual on con- 
 versation was much derided for pointing out 
 that the menu suggests the most natural topics 
 for table-talk. The fish, for example, should 
 lead the mind to the sea, ships, the British 
 Colonies, and the advantages of emigration. 
 Why drag in the British Colonies ? When 
 
 45
 
 Points of View 
 
 you talk of fish, you ought to consider how 
 it was cooked and eaten by the Romans. Tell 
 your companion (with discretion) what passed 
 at the table of Heliogabalus. Harrow her 
 soul with the story that Bulwer Lytton re- 
 peated in " The Parisians," about the epicure's 
 dog in the siege of Paris. When provisions 
 ran short, the dog was slain by the epicure's 
 friends in league with his cook, and served up 
 at his table in a ragout. He lamented the 
 dog's mysterious disappearance, and sighed, 
 " Ah ! how poor Fido would have enjoyed 
 these bones ! " 
 
 Mr. Bernard Shaw declares that if literature 
 is to have any vital meaning for the twentieth 
 century, human nature must be rescued from 
 the tyranny of Shakespeare and Thackeray. 
 Not while breath remains in this body to 
 proclaim what cookery owes to literary genius ! 
 The Shakespearean junkettings are a constant 
 joy to the well-regulated mind. True, you 
 do not see old Capulet's " trifling foolish 
 banquet," as he modestly calls it ; but no 
 thoughtful manager ever neglects a procession 
 of lordly dishes to appropriate music during 
 a slight pause in the action. How often have 
 I seen peacocks borne on the head of the well- 
 graced "super"! Do you know what is the 
 
 46
 
 In Praise of Food 
 
 most consummate expression of villainy in all 
 Shakespeare ? It is Don John's remark in 
 " Much Ado," when another " trifling foolish 
 banquet " is in preparation : " Would the cook 
 were of my mind ! " He would have poisoned 
 the whole company ! Compared with Don 
 John, lago is a seraph. When Hamlet taxes 
 Claudius with false promises, he says, " You 
 cannot feed capons so." There is a world of 
 philosophy in that, which Mr. Shaw, as a 
 vegetarian, can never appreciate. 
 
 In an essay (little read now, I fear) entitled 
 " Memorials of Gormandising," Thackeray 
 describes a Paris dinner in the year 1841. He 
 dines with a friend, chiefly off entree 'die and 
 partridge ; but it is the steak that moves him 
 
 to rhapsody. "G and I had quarrelled 
 
 about the soup, but when we began on the 
 steak we looked at each other, and loved each 
 other. We did not speak ; our hearts were 
 too full for that ; but we took a bit, and laid 
 down our forks and looked at each other and 
 understood each other. There were no two 
 individuals on this wide earth no two lovers 
 billing in the shade no mother clasping baby 
 to her heart, more supremely happy than we. 
 Every now and then we had a glass of honest, 
 firm, generous Burgundy, that nobly supported 
 
 47
 
 Points of View 
 
 the meat. As you may fancy, we did not 
 leave a single morsel of the steak ; but when 
 it was done we put bits of bread into the 
 silver dish and wistfully sopped up the gravy." 
 This last performance makes it necessary to 
 add that the feast was held in a private room 
 in a cafe on the boulevard. Even in the 
 year 1841, sopping up the gravy with bits of 
 bread was not, I presume, an ecstasy conducted 
 in public. But we need not dwell on that 
 detail. Let us rather rejoice in the liberty, 
 equality, fraternity, and consummate cookery 
 that breathe throughout the scene. Here is 
 no affected disguise of honest rapture, and 
 although Thackeray lays down debatable pro- 
 positions, such as that " a third-rate Burgundy 
 and a third-rate claret are better than the 
 best," with what a sense of luxurious fulness, 
 spiritual and physical, you rise from his simple 
 story ! It is in itself a banquet for true heart 
 and digestion ; and if I were a millionaire, 
 I should like nothing better than to invite a 
 " barbarous herd " to just such a dinner in 
 that neglected restaurant I spoke of anon, to 
 see the proprietor beam with the first ray of 
 prosperity, and even yes ! even to see the 
 whole company sop up the gravy. 
 
 48
 
 VI Meat and Drink 
 
 IN a little book called " Diet in Relation 
 to Age and Activity," Sir Henry 
 Thompson, hale and hearty at eighty- 
 two, gives us the lessons of his lon- 
 gevity. If it were the habit of mankind to 
 profit by sound advice, most of us would carry 
 this volume in our pockets, meditate upon it 
 as our physiological breviary, and find very 
 little use for doctors. Luckily for the medical 
 profession, Sir Henry Thompson's example 
 demands a renunciation almost as difficult for 
 men in general as monastic vows. Thirty 
 years ago, at the age of fifty-two, he gave 
 up alcohol. For the sake of experiment, five 
 or six years back, he tried the effect of a 
 claret-glass of good wine at dinner every day 
 for two months. Then came back the sick 
 headaches, and pains in the joints, from which 
 he had suffered in early life until he abstained 
 entirely from alcoholic drinks. " Moreover," 
 after his abandonment of alcohol, " the joints 
 gradually lost their stiffness, and ultimately 
 became as supple and mobile as they were in 
 youth, and continue absolutely so to this day." 
 We may tell Sir Henry Thompson that we do 
 
 49 D
 
 Points of View 
 
 not suffer from sick headaches ; but how many 
 moderate drinkers of eighty-two, or even sixty- 
 two, are ready to swear that their joints have 
 all the suppleness of youth ? Are old gentle- 
 men willing to ascribe what they call rheu- 
 matism to the habitual though modest glass ? 
 There is so much controversy about alcohol 
 among the medical experts that the moderate 
 drinker plumes himself on the ancient wisdom 
 of the middle course between topers and ab- 
 stainers. On the subject of cakes Calverley's 
 schoolboy had learned that " excruciating aches 
 resulted if we ate too many." For the mode- 
 rate drinker this philosophy comprises cakes 
 and ale, and when the aches come he puts them 
 down to chills. A French writer has collected 
 the opinions of sixty physicians in Paris on 
 the effects of alcohol. Thirty-four affirm that 
 a moderate use, say a bottle of wine a day, 
 is beneficial. Nine will have no compromise 
 with alcohol in any form, and seventeen declare 
 that to the health of most people one bottle a 
 day makes no difference whatever. One doctor 
 declined to hazard any opinion on the plea that 
 the varieties of human physiology are too great 
 to warrant any positive judgment. But Sir 
 Henry Thompson is in a position to speak not 
 only for himself. " It may be fairly said that 
 
 5
 
 Meat and Drink 
 
 one example does not suffice to prove a case. 
 But it is not a single example, and really 
 designates a very large class of active men 
 among all ranks, possessing a more or less 
 similar temperament, of which a type is here 
 described, and it is for such that I have found 
 it so successful." This vision of a shining 
 band of veterans, all as supple as athletes, 
 ought to give pause to many an aged man 
 when he is about to order his evening toddy. 
 But he may say that the zeal of the convert 
 belongs to youngsters of fifty-two. 
 
 Food, not drink, however, is the burden 
 of Sir Henry Thompson's practical counsel. 
 Half our bodily ills are due to improper 
 eating. It is a common fallacy that, as we 
 grow older, we need more nourishment, " the 
 extra glass of cordial, the superlatively strong 
 extract of food." Sir Henry Thompson draws 
 an alarming picture of the head of the family 
 sinking to decay because his affectionate spouse 
 plies him with dainties he cannot digest, the 
 egg whipped up with sherry, the insidious 
 calfs-foot jelly, the inopportune cup of cocoa. 
 Many a fond wife is slowly doing her lord to 
 death, for all the world as if she were a poisoner 
 in one of Miss Braddon's early novels. She 
 urges him to try patent foods, which are so
 
 Points of View 
 
 "nutritious" that his stomach cannot stand 
 them, and she imagines that even his drinks 
 must have nutriment, forgetting that " the 
 primary object of drink is to satisfy thirst," 
 and that to take milk, for example, with meat 
 is " one of the greatest dietary blunders that 
 can be perpetrated." Even the dentist is an 
 unwitting agent of mischief. He gives you 
 a new set of masticators as efficacious as the 
 originals ; but he does not warn you that the 
 loss of your natural teeth is an indication that 
 the body needs less food than it demanded in 
 your heyday. Your tailor is also in the in- 
 nocent conspiracy, for he congratulates you on 
 the increase of your girth, as if it were the 
 glory of the citizen to cut into a deal of 
 material when he is ordering new clothes. 
 Here, we suspect, Sir Henry Thompson is 
 overdoing the case. Is a man really flattered 
 when he is told that his waist has grown 
 another inch ? " And you, poor deluded 
 victim, are more than half willing to believe 
 that your increasing size is an equivalent to 
 increasing health and strength, especially as 
 your wife emphatically takes that view, and 
 regards your augmenting portliness with ap- 
 proval." Is she sincere ? Or is her approval 
 part of that dissimulation from which women 
 
 52
 
 Meat and Drink 
 
 are not yet freed ? Does the fondest wife, 
 when the husband's broad back is turned, 
 sometimes drop a tear of aesthetic regret 
 because it is so broad ? How much is added 
 to personal dignity by physical bulk is a 
 question on which we should like to take the 
 opinion of the middle classes. Can a thin 
 man rule his household with the moral weight 
 of a stout man ? Sir Henry Thompson does 
 not go into that, but he says that not one 
 stout man in fifty lives to a good old age. 
 "The typical man of eighty or ninety years, 
 still retaining a respectable amount of energy 
 of body and mind, is lean and spare, and lives 
 on slender rations." It does not follow that 
 he must have a hungry look, and be a con- 
 spirator, like Cassius. Very thoughtfully Sir 
 Henry has put his portrait in this volume, 
 and an instructive picture it is of a spare 
 and dignified body, and an alert, but not 
 dangerous brain. Fat men may contemplate 
 it with a passing misgiving. If only they 
 had taken to " slender rations " in time, they 
 might have had, not only the prospect of 
 living as long as Sir Henry Thompson, but 
 also of escaping those confounded ailments 
 which " portliness " is heir to. 
 
 Will the middle classes take heed ? This 
 53
 
 Points of View 
 
 authority addresses to them the reproach of 
 Shylock to Lancelot Gobbo. They are huge 
 feeders. Three-fourths of their diet comes 
 from the animal kingdom. Sir Henry Thomp- 
 son is not a vegetarian, and he banters the 
 vegetarians on their partiality for eggs and 
 milk. But he maintains that three-fourths 
 of our food should be vegetable. Such a 
 dietary must increase the zest for food, especi- 
 ally by expelling from club and restaurant the 
 " penetrating odours of meat cookery." It 
 abolishes the terrible ennui of beef and mutton, 
 and ensures " a lighter and more active brain." 
 This is so revolutionary that some people may 
 suspect a likeness between Sir Henry Thomp- 
 son and Cassius after all. Others may suggest 
 this dietary for the War Office, where mobility 
 of brain is somewhat lacking. There is an 
 undoubted fascination in Sir Henry's portrait 
 of the "light feeder" whose "palate is sensi- 
 tive to mild impressions." " After the meal is 
 over, his wit is fresher, his temper more cheer- 
 ful," and he does not snore in the arm-chair. 
 Dyspepsia is unknown to him, for he eats 
 slowly (remember Mr. Gladstone's habit of 
 biting every piece of meat thirty- two times), 
 and he never drinks till the meal is ended. 
 And what are the " slender rations " ? Eggs 
 
 54
 
 Meat and Drink 
 
 or fish for breakfast, a little tender meat or 
 fowl for luncheon, soup, game, and vegetables 
 for dinner, with farinaceous pudding, and soup 
 and dry toast at bed-time. The middle classes 
 ought to manage all this without becoming 
 emaciated. 
 
 55
 
 VII The Drama of the Letter-Box 
 
 1 
 
 Deputy Postmaster-General of 
 Victoria is my ideal of the official 
 with a feeling heart. It is in his 
 power to retrieve letters from the 
 post, foolish letters written in haste, letters 
 which, if delivered, will sunder young lives, or 
 bring parental hairs in sorrow to the grave. 
 When sufficient cause is shown why he should 
 interpose, he will not allow the mill of routine 
 to grind fond hearts to powder. He has been 
 known to step into a breach that yawned 
 between two lovers an act that might entail 
 alarming encroachments on his time, were it 
 not that breaches of this kind commonly heal 
 themselves. He has befriended a young man 
 of evil habits, who had promised his parents 
 to reform, and had posted to them a most 
 virtuous letter, into which was inadvertently 
 slipped a document of a different character. 
 Severe moralists might say that in the interests 
 of truth, the Deputy Postmaster-General ought 
 not to have interfered. How was he to know 
 that when that reprobate recovered the damn- 
 ing enclosure, he would keep his vow of 
 amendment ? When my Uncle Toby swore, 
 
 56
 
 The Drama of the Letter-Box 
 
 the Recording Angel blotted out the bad 
 word with a tear. But would he have felt 
 justified in extracting from the nearest post- 
 office a letter full of hypocritical pretences of 
 noble sentiments and good deeds ? 
 
 If our own Postmaster-General were asked 
 to follow the Victorian example, I suppose he 
 would plead abstract morality (a capital sub- 
 ject for Parliamentary debate) or the sanctity 
 of official time. Distressed citizens who wanted 
 their letters back might find Lord London- 
 derry too much occupied with graver matters. 
 But why should he miss such a chance of 
 winning enduring popularity ? Once it was 
 known that he was willing to rescue people 
 who have the trick of posting compromising 
 letters, I believe there would be a large 
 demand for his statuette as a paper-weight. 
 Whenever we sat down to our correspondence, 
 we should look into his benevolent features 
 (cast with a slightly sad expression in terra- 
 cotta) and pick our phrases with unwonted care. 
 There would have to be some decentralisa- 
 tion, of course. It would not be sufficient to 
 empower postmasters all over the country to 
 return letters to the writers. It is not in the 
 sober day or the gentle twilight that we pen 
 those missives which rob us of the heart's 
 
 57
 
 Points of View 
 
 treasure, or lead to actions for slander. It 
 is after midnight that the mood is worst. 
 Have I not seen distracted women wringing 
 their hands in front of insensate pillar-boxes 
 at half-past two ? The postman who makes 
 the three o'clock collection, it is he who 
 should have authority to assuage delirium 
 and reward repentance in the lamp-light of 
 the winter morning, or the rosy flush of 
 the summer dawn. 
 
 Think what a boon this would be to the 
 dramatist. He seldom dares to create a mis- 
 understanding out of a letter, for although the 
 public will stand some old theatrical devices, 
 it grows restive when the hero comes down 
 to the footlights, and reads the heroine's final 
 farewells, which everybody knows she does not 
 mean. But suppose the dramatist were to 
 take my hint about the pillar-box ? Scene, a 
 London street; time, three A.M. The heroine, 
 in a charming tea-gown, over which she has 
 hastily thrown a valuable Indian shawl, gazes 
 distractedly into the aperture of a pillar-box, 
 and wrings her beautiful hands, one of which 
 has a picturesque inkstain on the forefinger. 
 (The actress may object to this detail ; but 
 the author must point out that it indicates 
 reckless emotion in a manner that will strike 
 
 58
 
 The Drama of the Letter-Box 
 
 home to many bosoms in the pit.) She ex- 
 plains in broken words that a letter of sixteen 
 sheets which will ruin her happiness has gone 
 through the aperture, which preserves a mock- 
 ing indifference. Dawn (by Mr. Hawes Craven) 
 appears gradually behind a steeple. A manly 
 tread is heard ; enter the postman, who pro- 
 ceeds to unlock the pillar-box. She appeals 
 to him ; he shakes his head ; how is he to tell 
 that she will claim the right letter ? " It is 
 large," she says ; " it is sixteen sheets ! " He 
 offers rough consolation. " P'raps he won't 
 read it, mum ! " " Man ! " she cries, " is 
 your stupid obstinacy to wreck my life ! " 
 He is angry. " Stupid, is it ? Not so 
 stupid as you think. Some people I've heard 
 of are fond of prigging other people's postal 
 orders ! " 
 
 Here, you see, is a truly dramatic situation. 
 Elemental passions are in conflict ; duty is 
 confronted by despair. The church clock 
 strikes the quarter ; the street lamp burns 
 dim. The audience is greatly excited, and 
 even the impassive gentleman who has charge 
 of the orchestral drum gasps for breath. A 
 stately tread is heard, and there enters a tall 
 figure in evening dress. " Lady Charlotte ! " 
 exclaims the stranger, but checks himself, and 
 
 59
 
 Points of View 
 
 is about to pass on with a cold salutation, 
 when she throws herself in front of him, 
 and begs for her sixteen sheets. " Give this 
 lady her letter," he says quietly to the post- 
 man. " I am the Postmaster-General." " I 
 dessay ! " says the postman. " Swell con- 
 federate, you mean ! " More tension ; there's 
 nothing like holding an audience on the rack. 
 Suddenly the heroine's inkstain steals into the 
 pocket of her tea-gown (I don't know whether 
 tea-gowns are made with pockets ; any way 
 this one is), and she brings out the statuette ! 
 (Of course, the critics will say next morning 
 that this is improbable ; but what is more 
 likely than that a distracted woman would 
 rush out of the house at three in the morning 
 with a paper-weight ?) The stranger removes 
 his hat, and with the aid of Mr. Hawcs 
 Craven's dawn, now broad day, discloses a 
 sad expression exactly like the terra-cotta. 
 " Beg pardon, my lord," says the postman 
 humbly, " I thought it was a put-up job 
 for postal orders." " You have done your 
 duty," says the nobleman, but refrains from 
 giving him a sovereign. The pit may not 
 like this, and somebody in the gallery may 
 cry " Shabby ! " But I think the dramatist 
 ought to enforce the principle that duty must 
 
 60
 
 The Drama of the Letter-Sox 
 
 be content with its official wages, especially 
 the wages of a letter-carrier. 
 
 I need scarcely add that the sixteen sheets 
 were addressed to the Postmaster-General him- 
 self, and that, had they reached him, they 
 would have 'blighted his career at the very 
 least. Thus his intervention at the pillar-box 
 is dramatic in the highest degree. I have 
 dwelt upon this incident because it may be 
 useful to one of those playwrights who are 
 about to solicit Mr. George Alexander's 
 favour through the medium of the Play- 
 goers' Club. Who knows that we may not 
 see Mr. Alexander in the character of the 
 Postmaster-General, and Mr. Tree as the 
 sturdy postman ? If you think the whole 
 idea is too fantastic, let me suggest another 
 reform for the benefit of hasty correspondents. 
 I see a complaint that a too ingenious adver- 
 tiser has inserted a phonograph in a figure 
 which attracts public notice by acclaiming the 
 virtues of some article of the toilette. This 
 device may go rather far. I don't want to 
 meet an automaton on casters, and hear him 
 declare in a hollow voice the name of his 
 bootmaker. But why not put the phono- 
 graph in the pillar-box ? If Lady Charlotte, 
 at three in the morning, as her jewelled but 
 
 61
 
 Points of View 
 
 inkstained hand approaches the aperture, could 
 hear the warning " Don't be rash ; think 
 before you post it ! " I might have to give 
 the touching story of her love-affair quite a 
 different turn. 
 
 I may as well admit that this article forms 
 part of a considerable work entitled " Hints 
 to Dramatists." Another book, also on the 
 eve of publication, I have called " Wrinkles 
 for Novelists." In a recent novel by an 
 eminent hand I find that a country house 
 party, composed of twenty people, all famous 
 for wit and observation, employs itself in 
 hunting down the secret of an unfortunate 
 married woman who is supposed to have a 
 clandestine affair of the heart. The taste of 
 this proceeding troubles the narrator of the 
 story now and then, for, as he remarks to a 
 friend, " You see it is none of our business." 
 That does not prevent him from pursuing 
 his course of vivisection, and describing with 
 infinite relish how the victim flutters from one 
 man to another in the vain hope of finding 
 shelter. If you want to show your insight 
 into the most subtle issues of social relations, 
 you must "just drop in," like Paul Pry. You 
 won't be so clumsy as Paul, but you will have 
 all his native delicacy. I read a story lately 
 
 62
 
 The Drama of the Letter-Sox 
 
 in which a portrait painter, celebrated for his 
 gift of revealing moral character on canvas, 
 deliberately spoiled the portrait of a financial 
 brigand to spare the feelings of his sitter's 
 daughter. You must not write novels in that 
 spirit. It is a concession to foolish sentiment.
 
 VIII Cheap Food 
 
 A~ f observer of the town, notably 
 within a radius of a quarter of 
 a mile from Piccadilly Circus, 
 must be struck by the growth 
 of restaurants, and their marvellous cheap- 
 ness. They start up every week, as it seems, 
 in quiet streets off the great thoroughfares, 
 and tempt the hungry citizen with a delectable 
 array of courses at a merely nominal charge. 
 There is one street through which I always 
 pass at an accelerated pace, because the invita- 
 tion, " Try Our Shilling Lunch," gives me a 
 sense of personal abasement. I have not tried 
 their shilling lunch, and the only reason is 
 that I fear it would impose too severe a strain 
 upon a judicial temper. I should be divided 
 between the natural desire to appraise it at 
 the value of a shilling, and no more, and a 
 horrible suspicion that I was eating the restaura- 
 teur out of house and home. When the third 
 course was set before me, I should watch him 
 out of the corner of my eye, and see his lips 
 pinched with anxiety. Members of his family 
 would try to look careless in corners of the 
 room, and all the time they would be wondering 
 
 64
 
 Cheap Food 
 
 whether this voracious stranger would eat 
 the whole of the absurdly bounteous meal, 
 or leave anything for them. You remember 
 Lewis Carroll's vision of the banker's clerk, 
 who turned out to be a hippopotamus. " If 
 this should stay to dine," he said, "there 
 won't be much for us." How could I con- 
 sume that shilling lunch if a similar reflection 
 were passing through the minds of those who 
 had provided it ? 
 
 This is morbid sensitiveness, no doubt ; but 
 I manage to conquer it in a restaurant where 
 the charge is eighteenpence. For this ridicu- 
 lous sum you have a profusion of excellently 
 cooked viands, admirable service, a spacious 
 and cheerfully lighted room, and the smiles 
 of the proprietor. He is a very swarthy man, 
 with intensely black eyes, and in the costume 
 of his country he would look, I am sure, a 
 picturesque brigand. I have not questioned 
 him about his ancestors, but I like to think 
 that they were Sicilian brigands, and that his 
 eighteenpenny lunch is a form of restitution. 
 Many years ago a friend of mine was invited 
 to a shooting party in Sicily. On the evening 
 of his arrival, the host was called from dinner 
 to see a stranger, with whom he transacted 
 business. Then he brought this visitor into 
 
 65 E
 
 Points of View 
 
 the dining-room and introduced him to the 
 company. He was a very swarthy man, with 
 intensely black eyes, who drank a glass of 
 wine, saluted everybody gravely, and took his 
 leave. " Gentlemen," said the host, " that is 
 the chief of the local brigands. I have paid 
 him his regular fee, he has made a careful 
 note of you, so your lives will be quite safe 
 to-morrow." " Safe ! " murmured the com- 
 pany. " Oh, yes, it is the custom here. If 
 I had not been able to pay the money down, 
 one or more of you might have been shot." 
 I like to imagine that my host of the restaurant 
 is a descendant of that chief, and that the 
 eighteenpenny lunch is a reparation to civilised 
 society for his grandsire's method of ransom. 
 
 I imparted this theory to a friend who found 
 me the other day at this economical repast. 
 "Ah!" he exclaimed heartily; "you're a 
 sensible man, Jaques, after all. Like me, you 
 are always looking for a cheaper place to lunch 
 at than the club. Clubs will break up, you 
 may depend, if this restaurant competition is 
 carried much further. A day will come when 
 we shall dine sumptuously for sixpence, and 
 then our club committees will begin to see 
 their mistake." " You don't see your mis- 
 take," I remarked. " You are like the man 
 
 66
 
 Cheap Food 
 
 in Gilbert's play, who, when he proposed to a 
 girl, told her that his ideal in life was to find 
 the nicest dinner for ninepence." " Sixpence," 
 he muttered, eating at a great rate. " Let me 
 tell you," I went on, " that I take this eighteen- 
 penny lunch, which is ridiculous at the price " 
 " Quite right ; not nearly enough of it " " I 
 say ridiculous at the price, for it might as well 
 be given away." " Most true ; why isn't it ? " 
 " I take it that I may play a humble but 
 necessary part in a great drama of atonement." 
 " My gracious ! " he ejaculated, with his fork 
 suspended in the air. " What have you been 
 doing ? " " Look in the padrone s face," I said. 
 " Don't you see that he has had brigandage 
 in his family ? " Then I related the Sicilian 
 story. He stared at the padrone, who at once 
 approached the table, wreathed with smiles, and 
 expressed the hope that we had enjoyed the 
 fare. " Oh, very much so," said this rapacious 
 clubman. " But my friend here thinks that, 
 as you give so much for eighteenpence, you 
 might as well give it for nothing. Yes," he 
 added, struck by an idea; "why not celebrate 
 the Coronation by keeping a free table ? " The 
 padrone considered this proposal for a moment, 
 and then said, with a beautiful gesture of bene- 
 volence, " If the King will pay ! " 
 
 67
 
 Points of View 
 
 The King has already provided at his own 
 cost for a Coronation dinner to half a million 
 of his poorest subjects, and I don't think any 
 further call can be made on his munificence. 
 But are there no public bodies with spirit 
 enough to make arrangements with these 
 restaurants for, let us say, a week's rejoicing ? 
 In a certain street, instead of hurrying on with 
 embarrassed gaze, I might pause, and cheer- 
 fully read this inscription : " To the King's 
 Lieges. Try Our Coronation Lunch and Keep 
 Your Shilling." I could try it without that 
 sense of personal abasement of which I spoke 
 anon. The thought that some spirited public 
 body was paying the piper would be a legiti- 
 mate source of refreshment. Moreover, it 
 would give a romantic air to our municipal 
 procedure. I am not enough of an antiquary 
 to say how long it is since loyal corporations 
 showed their enthusiasm for the crowning and 
 anointing of the Sovereign by spreading good 
 cheer for the populace in the open streets. 
 Probably this custom had its most exhilarating 
 observance at the Restoration. The mind goes 
 fondly back to the times when oxen were 
 roasted whole, and carved in the grand style, 
 when liquor flowed from market-crosses, and 
 no man was so poor as to lack a cup of canary. 
 
 68
 
 Cheap Food 
 
 I say the imagination plays round such scenes 
 without dwelling harshly either on the quality 
 of the liquor, or on its possible disturbance to 
 the social equilibrium. Romance touches the 
 natural joy of the people with delicate fingers, 
 and even history records no headaches. 
 
 I fear it would be difficult to revive these 
 ancient revels. The idea of a beer-barrel 
 broached in the street is repugnant to the 
 modern spirit of decorum, and few citizens 
 would have a relish for beer out of the gutter. 
 The old market-cross, with spouting gargoyles, 
 must have been a cheerful sight. At Edin- 
 burgh, I am told, it poured out a merry stream 
 of claret in honour of King Charles, though 
 the claret imported for this festival by careful 
 burgesses may not have been the finest vintage. 
 But where are the gargoyles in London, con- 
 veniently disposed for this public ministration ? 
 The luckless fountain in Piccadilly Circus, 
 which affronts both beauty and utility with a 
 feeble trickle, might fill its neglected basin 
 with juice of a moderately generous grape. 
 Or the grave and statesmanlike personage who 
 has been brought from New York to brew his 
 national cocktails in the American bar at the 
 Criterion, might dedicate the fountain to the 
 triumphs of his art. But the spirit of our 
 
 69
 
 Points of View 
 
 licensing laws is opposed to these efforts to re- 
 create our Merrie England. The Strand might 
 flow with milk and honey without causing 
 a breach of the peace, and Trafalgar Square 
 fountains of ginger-beer might sparkle inno- 
 cently in the sun. But I doubt whether these 
 compromises with the old romance would com- 
 mand any favour. Indeed, an ox roasted whole 
 in the Mile-end Road might be voted vulgar 
 by local opinion. 
 
 Regretfully, then, we must dismiss the past. 
 But the free restaurant for a week ; does not 
 that idea make philanthropy romantic ? No 
 luxurious feeding, mind ; only the simple and 
 abundant fare which these astonishing aliens 
 provide for next to nothing. I believe that if 
 they had a week's endowment, so that they 
 could serve the public without charge, many 
 a gouty citizen would be converted to frugal 
 habits, and would bless the Coronation as the 
 beginning of a new life. 
 
 70
 
 IX A Famine in Books 
 
 MACAULAY once said that the 
 labour of reading a certain book 
 he had under review was as hard 
 as the labour of thieves on the 
 treadmill. I have always thought that the 
 author, who was horribly cut up on that oc- 
 casion, might have retorted that the treadmill 
 was just what such a reviewer deserved. But 
 I have little heart to-day to invent repartees 
 for authors, seeing that none of them offers me 
 the treadmill or any other form of exercise. 
 Here I sit without a solitary book to review, 
 because the publisher chooses to suspend his 
 business at this time of the year. He has the 
 strange notion that people on their holidays 
 don't need books, whereas it is plain, from the 
 weather reports of all the holiday resorts in 
 Europe, that the new book would be a perfect 
 godsend to the poor soul who is immured 
 indoors the livelong day by rain. However, 
 it is not of his sufferings I am thinking, but of 
 my own. I am not away for a holiday. I 
 want to earn a livelihood by the discreet, 
 luminous, and impartial exposition of the 
 merits and demerits of current literature. But
 
 Points of View 
 
 the bread is taken out of my mouth and out of 
 other mouths which open reproachfully wide 
 whenever I am near them. Pleasant for a 
 father to overhear remarks like these in his 
 well-disciplined household : " Dad hasn't cut 
 up a single book all this week ! " " How do 
 you know ? " " 'Cos mummy says there won't 
 be any jam for a month ! " No jam for these 
 poor innocents ! No pickled author on the 
 sideboard ! It is heartrending. 
 
 A wag of my acquaintance is fond of liken- 
 ing my honest industry to the behaviour of the 
 wolf in the nursery story. Little Red Riding 
 Hood, he says, pays me a call. She is a novel 
 by a new hand, and has a pretty, timorous, 
 appealing air. " Oh, grandmamma " (she takes 
 me for her grandmother, poor simpleton !), 
 " what very sharp eyes you have got ! " " All 
 the better to read you with, my dear ! " " And 
 oh, grandmamma, what very large teeth ! " 
 " All the better to " ; the rest is panto- 
 mime, which greatly diverts the members of 
 my family. But at this season the Little Red 
 Riding Hoods leave off calling. Or give the 
 allegory a more classic turn. Perseus is out of 
 town, taking the waters at Homburg, or other- 
 wise wasting his time. Andromeda is still in 
 manuscript at her publishers, and the Dragon 
 
 72
 
 A Famine in Books 
 
 (I am the Dragon) snaps his jaws at nothing, a 
 most unremunerative employment. Do you 
 take my drift ? Perseus is the reading public ; 
 Andromeda the romance that he and I have 
 many a tussle over. I don't say the allegory 
 is a perfect fit ; but, at any rate, here's a poor 
 old performing Dragon, neglected and hungry, 
 and all because this is not the Andromeda 
 season ! Surely a scandal that demands the 
 immediate notice of the Society for the Pre- 
 vention of Cruelty to Animals. And I read 
 letters in the daily papers, imploring house- 
 holders not to repair thoughtlessly to the sea- 
 side, leaving the poor cat to starve in the 
 empty mansion ! 
 
 Yes, if you like, I will put off the airs of the 
 Dragon, and come down to the estate of the 
 harmless, necessary cat. Why should the care- 
 less publisher go out of town without providing 
 a sufficient supply of new books to keep me 
 moderately sleek ? You have often laughed, 
 I dare say, at the two cats in that ingenious 
 poster on the hoardings, one of them in the 
 pride of life and advertisement, and the other 
 a lean, wretched creature, the victim of skim 
 milk. Skim milk, indeed ! But the cat who 
 now addresses you has no milk whatever ! I 
 proposed to my editor last week to review over 
 
 73
 
 Points of View 
 
 again some of the old books of the past season, 
 with especial reference to the ignorant, reckless, 
 and even flagitious manner in which they 
 had been reviewed by other journals. " Skim 
 milk ! " he sneered. I will not repeat the for- 
 cible expletive wrung from me by despair. It 
 caused the editor to turn on his heel. You 
 may have noticed that when the haughty aris- 
 tocrat in the novel has goaded his plebeian but 
 high-spirited adversary to frenzy, he always 
 turns on his heel. It is the mark of cynical 
 breeding, and editors have it to perfection. 
 My suggestion was a very good one. Nothing 
 is so trying to a right-minded reviewer as the 
 distemper of other reviewers. You have put 
 an author in his proper place, and written 
 beneath your handiwork the warning, " Cursed 
 be he who moveth his neighbour's literary 
 landmark ! " and lo ! another reviewer comes 
 along and moves it without compunction. 
 Some weeks ago I praised a novel with judicious 
 heartiness, and straightway there appeared a 
 review elsewhere, condemning the book with- 
 out mercy, especially on the points I had cited 
 for approbation. This reminds me of an in- 
 cident which shows publishers in a new light. 
 I met the publisher of this very novel, and he 
 said, " I don't like it as much as you do. It 
 
 74
 
 A Famine in Books 
 
 is not nearly as interesting to me as your 
 review." I know this anecdote will be received 
 with incredulous scorn ; but it encourages me 
 to believe that a publisher with so fine a mind 
 must have a feeling heart. Why should he 
 not hurry through the press next week a crowd 
 of new books with no particular charm for him, 
 solely that he may have that disinterested en- 
 joyment which he confessed to me ? I see him 
 pondering my notices of these works with an 
 expression of rapt delight. What a lesson in 
 altruism for the whole publishing world ! 
 
 I had another scheme. Why not review 
 imaginary books ? It has been done. Some 
 renowned dissertations have sprung from this 
 very artifice. A supposititious history of South 
 America would make some lively writing about 
 the customs of the Aztecs. An unreal edition 
 of the works of Mrs. Aphra Behn, with intro- 
 duction and notes by an Oxford professor, 
 would be a capital peg for an essay on com- 
 parative modesty. You will scarcely believe 
 that the scheme was vetoed on the ground that 
 readers would ask for these publications at the 
 libraries and booksellers, and, finding they had 
 no existence, would complain of being hoaxed, 
 and would view with distrust all other judg- 
 ments in the same quarter, even upon such 
 
 75
 
 Points of View 
 
 trivialities as politics and trade. After that I 
 saw nothing for it but to write a letter to Mr. 
 Carnegie. " Your deep interest in literature,'* 
 I said to him, " is shown by your extraordinary 
 bounty. I never open a newspaper without 
 learning that you have endowed another free 
 library, and brought fresh blessings on your 
 name from people who cannot buy books, 
 and would not if they could. Sir, you must 
 be aware that the policy to which you have 
 devoted your life and fortune does not inspire 
 universal esteem. The powerful class of authors 
 dislikes it, and the still more powerful class of 
 publishers regards it with unconcealed animo- 
 sity. But there is another class, not in the best 
 odour with either of these, and therefore deserv- 
 ing of your generous consideration. I allude 
 to reviewers. Their calling is singularly hard, 
 for as they have to exercise impartial judgment 
 they must deny themselves the license of the 
 historian, the soul-flight of the poet, the fan- 
 tasy of the novelist, and the garrulity of the 
 biographer. Thus deprived of the attractions 
 which appeal to most readers, they have to lead 
 laborious lives of uncomplaining virtue. At 
 this season of the year they have no books to 
 review, and their children cry for bread. May 
 I suggest that you should establish a Reviewers' 
 
 76
 
 A Famine in Books 
 
 Sustentation Fund, and endow it with five 
 millions ? The sum may seem rather large, 
 but I must remind you that nobody but your- 
 self is likely to subscribe, not even Mr. Pass- 
 more Edwards, for he has been a newspaper 
 proprietor and editor, and is incapable of taking 
 reviewers at their own valuation. Let me beg 
 you to give this proposal your immediate and 
 favourable attention. It is real philanthropy, 
 and you must excuse me for remarking that your 
 philanthropic zeal has not always been happily 
 directed. P.S. I am willing to act as Secre- 
 tary of the Fund (at a reasonable salary), and 
 to enter upon my duties at once." 
 
 To this communication, I grieve to add, I 
 have not yet received a reply. 
 
 77
 
 X The Income Tax 
 
 I 
 
 is about the time when the 
 Chancellor of the Exchequer girds 
 himself for the horrid task of 
 bleeding his helpless victims. I 
 can see him examining his case of instruments 
 with a callous smile. That insinuating blade 
 with a twist and a curl, like a Malay creese, is 
 the income tax. The handle, you will observe, 
 is worn with much usage. It is the operator's 
 favourite weapon ; for it lets out a great deal 
 of innocent blood with a very slight exertion. 
 That slender stiletto, reposing in a velvet corner, 
 is the duty on cigars. Having but a moderate 
 taste for tobacco, I cannot understand why this 
 implement is always used so gingerly. It pro- 
 duces but a crimson drop or two, whereas it 
 might the multitudinous seas incarnadine if 
 it were handled by fearless justice. Let the 
 Chancellor of the Exchequer call me in before 
 he rolls up his sleeves for butchery, and I will 
 show him how to cup the right people. Look 
 across the Channel. The French Chamber has 
 decided that if a man be worth many millions 
 he shall pay half to the coffers of the State. 
 There is said to be a commotion amongst the 
 
 78
 
 The Income Tax 
 
 millionaires, but that moves me not a jot. If 
 I had twenty millions, let us say, I would cheer- 
 fully give the State half, and live frugally on 
 ten. How any reasonable man can want to 
 debate such a proposition passes my compre- 
 hension. 
 
 The psychology of the Income Tax Com- 
 missioners has a fearsome interest for me. I 
 take them to be kindly-disposed men in the 
 ordinary relations of life. They have their 
 share, no doubt, of the domestic joys, wives 
 who love them, and children eager to walk in 
 their footsteps. Their profession is the pur- 
 suit of truth, the most ennobling pursuit, you 
 might say, if it were not upon the track of 
 your income and mine. Then it becomes a 
 subtle indelicacy. So far as I have observed, 
 no consciousness of this disturbs the repose of 
 the Commissioners. Without a blush they will 
 offer you gentle incentives to pay your income 
 tax several times over by making a return in 
 every district in which you have any visible 
 employment. I dare say this present article 
 will provoke a shower of yellow papers, ending 
 with an assessment of Jaques at some fabulous 
 amount. An American friend of mine, with a 
 domicile in London, had an interview with the 
 Commissioners, who proposed to tax his invest- 
 
 79
 
 Points of View 
 
 ments in the United States. He demurred to 
 this, and after much discussion they waived the 
 claim, but intimated that if he brought any 
 money from America they would assess him on 
 that. " Gentlemen," he said, "you are earnest 
 seekers after the heart of things, and I will not 
 deceive you. Whenever I go home and gather 
 up a pile of dollars, I will cable you the exact 
 figure, so that you can fix it up in a yellow 
 paper, and make the Chancellor of the Ex- 
 chequer a happy man. Yes, gentlemen, I give 
 you the word of an American citizen that I 
 shall not rest quietly in my grave until I 
 have paid the whole cost of the South African 
 war ! " 
 
 But I am told there is a source of revenue 
 that our Government inquisitors persistently 
 neglect. The banks are said to revel in a 
 wealth of unclaimed balances. A man forgets 
 all about his money in one bank, and opens an 
 account at another. Or he sells his securities, 
 deposits the proceeds with a banker, and then 
 disappears. Years afterwards a trader, blown 
 out of his course in the South Sea islands, lights 
 upon a strange outcast with matted hair, a 
 white man who has forgotten his native speech, 
 all except the words " Bank has got it ! " which 
 he mutters with an uncanny chuckle. Your 
 
 80
 
 The Income Tax 
 
 old-fashioned miser, who led his relatives an 
 exasperating dance by hiding his gold under 
 hearthstones, or in the trunks of trees, was a 
 very poor bungler at a practical joke. As often 
 as not his ghost haunted the spot where the 
 treasure was buried, and then somebody with a 
 sound nervous system came and dug it up. 
 But to leave your fortune in a banker's safe, 
 and then lose your wits in Polynesia, is a refine- 
 ment of eccentricity that puts all the ancients 
 to shame. Still, it is the lapse of memory that 
 is most remarkable. I can never forget my 
 balance at the bank, for the inexorable deduc- 
 tions that make it dwindle are my daily fare 
 of mental arithmetic. The wonder is that the 
 august corporation which is good enough to 
 take charge of it should employ a staff of 
 clerks to post it in their ledgers. 
 
 I appeal to my suffering brethren who are in 
 the same case. Why should we be taxed to 
 the bone when these wayward sons of fortune 
 leave riches untold without an owner? The 
 Government might take their unclaimed bal- 
 ances and lighten our burdens. Or they might 
 be divided amongst deserving citizens on the 
 principle of awarding the largest proportion to 
 those who can be proved to have given their 
 bankers the greatest trouble with the smallest 
 
 81 F
 
 Points of View 
 
 accounts. Amongst this company of estimable 
 veterans I see myself in an honourable and lucra- 
 tive place. My claim is all the more pressing 
 because it has been plain to me for some time 
 that Jaques has a special dignity. I notice that 
 the beautiful ladies who adorn the centre of this 
 Daily Chronicle page are always looking my way. 
 Even when they are just married, and enveloped 
 with their wedding drapery, they forget the 
 bridegrooms, and shyly solicit my approval. 
 This makes me uneasy about my own ward- 
 robe, which is by no means befitting to a man 
 who is honoured by these fair speechless mes- 
 sages. Moreover, I learn from the expert 
 who writes in the Pall Mall Magazine that the 
 "well-dressed man" must spend at least 400 
 on his original outfit, and ji2O a year in keep- 
 ing it up. True, you can be "reasonably 
 clothed" for ^90 and 50 a year for main- 
 tenance ; but what would those ladies think 
 of me if I stooped to such a compromise? 
 
 The Pall Mall expert says he knew " a very 
 distinguished man whose wife, being of a frugal 
 mind, bought some cloth, and made him a pair 
 of trousers ; but he became so tired of the 
 constant question as to whether he was trying 
 to introduce the Turkish fashions into London, 
 that he gave the garment to the Hindu cross- 
 
 82
 
 The, Income Tax 
 
 ing-sweeper of St. James's Square." This im- 
 pressive anecdote would deter the most cautious 
 temperament from economy. I abandon my- 
 self to the luxury of imagining that I already 
 possess a fur coat, with Persian lamb collar and 
 cuffs, and mink linings, together with much 
 raiment for display in town and country, in- 
 cluding three pairs of white hunting-breeches, 
 and six pairs of white duck trousers. I have 
 eighteen dress shirts, and as many white silk 
 handkerchiefs, eighteen pairs of black silk half- 
 hose at twelve-and-six a pair, and three suits 
 of silk pyjamas at fifty shillings a suit. I have 
 lots of hats, including an opera hat. Some 
 people think that opera hats have gone out ; 
 but they came back, because " more silk hats 
 were spoilt at a theatre than in church." Ha ! 
 then the opera hat is an economy. Away with 
 it ! I will wear only silk hats at the play. 
 Nay, I will be known as the man who is never 
 seen twice in the same hat. Yes, the opera 
 hat must go, and also the "bowler." It is 
 unsuited to my chevelure, and is surely the 
 most hideous headpiece that ever was invented. 
 My hatter shall make a new hat from my 
 design ; it shall be known as the " Jaques," 
 and be worn by all the brethren who are resolved 
 to have justice from the Exchequer.
 
 Points of View 
 
 A much-respected ecclesiastic once assured 
 me that he came into possession of a valuable 
 fur coat in a singular way. He had done some 
 service to an Oriental people by thrusting their 
 wrongs into the faces of apathetic statesmen. 
 One day he received a letter from a remote 
 part of Asia, begging him to accept a small 
 token of gratitude. Presently there arrived 
 a box of furs, and my friend thought they 
 would be useful for a winter coat. When he 
 took them to the furrier, it occurred to him to 
 ask how much they were worth. The furrier 
 smiled, and said, " I won't tell you what I 
 think they are worth ; but if you wish to sell 
 them, I will give you three hundred pounds." 
 The ecclesiastic was startled, for the Orien- 
 tals he had befriended have a reputation for 
 hard bargains, and not for open-handed senti- 
 ment. He goes about now wrapped in a costly 
 tribute from some unknown Asiatic ; and I 
 wonder whether a little pamphleteering on 
 behalf of a lost tribe of Israel will bring me 
 a similar reward. Can I take up the cause of 
 some down-trodden Persian lamb, and get its 
 grateful wool for nothing ? 
 
 8 4
 
 XI "Clauds of Glory" 
 
 STEVENSON, as Mr. Graham Balfour 
 has just reminded us, had a most 
 retentive memory of his childhood. 
 Everything that concerned himself 
 from the earliest years had for him that 
 romantic interest that is usually reserved for 
 personages in fiction. He attributes this some- 
 where to the imaginative sensitiveness of an 
 only child, and I wonder that this particular 
 branch of inquiry has not been followed up 
 by scientific students of the human mind. 
 It would be interesting to know whether a 
 small dog, supposing it to be the only puppy 
 of its hearth and home, is more introspective 
 than a puppy with the customary number of 
 brothers and sisters. I mention this merely 
 because it seems to be the kind of illustration 
 that would naturally occur to any one who 
 took the subject very seriously as a part of 
 the evolutionary scheme. We read a great 
 deal about eldest sons, especially in relation 
 to the pleasing custom of primogeniture, so 
 characteristic of a civilisation that boasts of 
 securing "equal opportunities for all"; and 
 we also read a great deal about younger sons, 
 
 85
 
 Points of View 
 
 their adventures in the colonies, and their dis- 
 abilities for matrimony of the highest class. 
 But I should like to see only sons form a 
 learned society, so that the " Transactions of 
 the O.S.," published quarterly, might en- 
 lighten us as to the comparative intensity 
 of this preoccupation with childhood's trivial, 
 fond records. 
 
 From inquiries that I have cautiously prose- 
 cuted I gather that most men are very shy 
 with such early reminiscences. They do not 
 say to you, with a far-away backward light in 
 their eyes, " Ah ! yes. I will tell you a vastly 
 interesting thing that happened on the day I 
 was short-coated." If you ever get that in- 
 formation, it is from a maiden aunt, or from 
 an old family retainer ; and if the story should 
 be told in the man's presence, ten to one he 
 denies it, or professes that it has escaped his 
 memory. A friend of mine took me aside, 
 and said, " You writing fellows have to do 
 strange things for a living, so I suppose your 
 curiosity about my childhood is all in the 
 game of literature and science. If you pledge 
 your word never to reveal my name, I will 
 tell you my earliest recollection. Very well. 
 Looking back I see a ship lying in the docks 
 of some great seaport I think it is New 
 
 86
 
 Clouds of Glory 
 
 York. The shades of evening fall. Over 
 the ship's side steals a very small urchin down 
 the gangway to the quay. He belongs to the 
 vessel in some capacity, I forget what ; the 
 captain may have been his father. He secretes 
 himself in a barrel, containing a deposit of 
 sugar, rich brown sugar. Very late that 
 night, about half-past nine, there is an alarm 
 on the ship ; the crew run hither and thither ; 
 they peer into the dark waters as if expecting 
 to see a drowned body ; a woman wrings her 
 hands. Presently the boatswain spies the 
 barrel ; he looks in ; the boy is snatched up 
 and clasped in his mother's arms. There is 
 rejoicing, there is spanking, there is a dose of 
 rhubarb magnesia. Ugh ! " 
 
 That man is a K.C., and I shall be greatly 
 astonished if he does not become Lord Chan- 
 cellor. Another friend, high up in the 
 medical profession, remarked when we were 
 discussing this subject, "Have you noticed 
 that I never eat apple-dumpling ? Well, I 
 once ate an apple - dumpling that memory 
 cannot digest. It was at boarding-school, 
 where I had a habit of early rising. While 
 the dormitory was still wrapped in slumber I 
 would dress quietly, omitting the washing, 
 which was too noisy, and wander out into 
 
 87
 
 Points of View 
 
 the garden to watch the mist rolling up from 
 the river. One morning I strayed inadver- 
 tently into the kitchen, and opened a cup- 
 board. A cold apple-dumpling was there. 
 Unused to crime, I hesitated ; but all was 
 quiet ; the mist was still on the river. I 
 listened at the foot of the stairs ; but nothing 
 came down save a gentle snort, most likely 
 from the mathematical master in a dream. 
 I ate that apple-dumpling. A few hours later 
 it was missed. The boys in my dormitory 
 testified to my suspicious habit of rising early. 
 I explained that I wanted to see the mist roll 
 up from the river. The cruel part of it was 
 that I had not really cared for the dumpling, 
 which gave to my love of nature the air of 
 hungry pilfering. After that, whenever I 
 was restless at dawn, a head would pop 
 up and cry, * Hullo ! no dumpling ! ' and 
 promptly the whole room would pounce on 
 my clothes. I never saw the mist roll up 
 again. I never ate dumpling again." 
 
 You perceive that these memories deal with 
 illicit eating, although, in the doctor's case, 
 there was a higher thought, clogged unhappily 
 by the sceptical materialism that surrounded 
 him. It will be worthy of note, when his 
 biography comes to be written, that through- 
 
 88
 
 " Clouds of Glory 
 
 out his professional life he set his authority 
 against heavy puddings. Thus has he turned 
 the irony of a childish humiliation to the dis- 
 interested service of his species. I know a 
 novelist who, after taking my pledge to con- 
 ceal his identity, admitted that he owed his 
 earliest inspiration to the unconscious weight 
 of three mature ladies in a four-wheeled cab. 
 " I had run an errand for my mother," he 
 said, " and as I was crossing a street, the cab 
 knocked me down, and went over my right 
 leg. Two benevolent strangers picked me 
 up, and took me home in a carriage. On the 
 way I heard one remark that the three old 
 women in the cab could not have weighed 
 together less than six hundred pounds. When 
 the doctor examined my leg, it was found, 
 to the general surprise, not to be broken. 
 I can still see the benevolent strangers look- 
 ing at me respectfully. 'Six hundred 
 pounds, plus the weight of the cab ! ' they 
 exclaimed, ' This lad's bones must be made 
 of uncommon stuff.' Then they congratulated 
 my mother, who smiled proudly through her 
 tears." 
 
 Here he paused, and I said, " Very interest- 
 ing ; but, as you have not developed into a 
 Sandow, what is the point of the anecdote ? " 
 
 89
 
 Points of View 
 
 " Oh, the impatience of journalism ! " said he. 
 " You don't give a man time to unfold his 
 story according to the rules of art." He 
 turned on his heel, and walked away, and I 
 tried in vain to connect the heavy old ladies 
 and the marvellous leg with the beginning of 
 that talent which delights a multitudinous 
 public with legends of blood and blackmail. 
 Next day we met again, and he resumed quite 
 cheerfully, " Short story in two parts. Part 
 Two. My mother, as the kind reader may 
 not have forgotten, was proud of her boy. 
 But the expression of her face was soon 
 changed to terror. My leg had swollen 
 enormously ; it was the leg of Daniel Lam- 
 bert. Observe the quaint felicity of this 
 image. Lambert, if I remember rightly, 
 weighed over forty stone, and that was about 
 the fighting weight of the three old ladies 
 who had done me this unpremeditated wrong. 
 But it was not the size of my leg that appalled 
 my anxious mother. I had fallen into an 
 uneasy slumber, and was awakened by a prick- 
 ing sensation in the monstrous limb. My 
 eyes started from my head, for they fell upon 
 a scene at which the stoutest heart might have 
 blenched." "Cheek," I corrected; "hearts 
 don't blench." " Very well," he said. "That's 
 
 90
 
 Clouds of Glory" 
 
 the reviewer all over ! Good morning." You 
 may not believe it, but I had to ask him to 
 lunch to get the rest of the narrative. " Part 
 Three," he continued after his third glass of 
 port. " My mother and I were pale as death, 
 but the doctor did not seem to mind. On 
 my leg were three black palpitating things, 
 gorging my blood. They dropped off, one 
 after the other, leaving a thin red trickle. 
 Three thin red trickles ! Leeches," he added 
 solemnly. " Now you know what turned my 
 mind, even in the golden glow of boyhood, 
 to the darker side of life." 
 
 Here are three typical cases of reminis- 
 cence, not without value to a judgment upon 
 character and opportunity. But the men who 
 told me these stories under pressure would 
 never dream of telling them in general society. 
 The personal experiences they like to relate 
 are sophisticated, full of what they suppose 
 to be ripe wisdom. Moreover, for most of 
 us our childhood is another existence, by- 
 gone and forgotten. Here and there a 
 sensitive temperament has preserved impres- 
 sions of that embryonic stage, calls up scenes 
 at will, analyses, a little morbidly perhaps, 
 characteristics which had their germs in 
 the well-remembered sensations of the child. 
 
 91
 
 Points of View 
 
 Sometimes this is simply a melancholy review ; 
 sometimes it is a discipline. But considering 
 that the child is always father to the man, 
 there is a widespread unconsciousness of the 
 paternity. 
 
 92
 
 XII America at Oxford 
 
 MANY years ago I had a school- 
 mate who went to Oxford. He 
 is now an ornament of the 
 Church, a man of broad views, 
 who gives his parishioners vigorous fillips of 
 common sense. Weather-beaten souls (with 
 eminent names), tossed from spire to spire by 
 variable winds of doctrine, sit under him often, 
 as if they found his pulpit a comforting light- 
 house. But such is the perversity of the secular 
 mind, or if you like the phrase better, such is 
 the tenacity of the trivial which, for some of 
 us, is a substitute for a more useful memory, 
 that whenever I listen to him discoursing on 
 the pitfalls of modern life, I murmur reproach- 
 fully, " Oh yes, my dear fellow, but you never 
 warned me against that ' cup ' ! " Thereby 
 hangs a tale which carries me back to the time 
 when I paid him a visit at Oxford, and, in the 
 common room of his college, helped him to 
 consume a modest supply of a comfortable ale 
 called " archdeacon," which, I have no doubt 
 such is the power of Oxford tradition is still 
 performing archidiaconal functions. Not at 
 that does memory point a querulous finger. 
 
 93
 
 Points of View 
 
 It was the mysterious " cup," my friend, brewed 
 for the luncheon you gave to a party of which 
 I was the humblest member. Beauty was there 
 with her mother matre pulchrd filia pulchrior, 
 as one undergraduate remarked with academic 
 propriety. A taste for letters was naturally con- 
 spicuous at your table. Would that we had 
 drunk nothing but the Pierian spring ! 
 
 For some demon was in that " cup." It 
 stood, I remember, in the middle of the table, 
 in a large glass vessel, of chaste design. Its 
 tint was amber ; in its lucent depths there 
 lurked green foliage, symbol of the vine. You 
 see I am moved to blank verse by the thought 
 of it. You had the pleasant fantasy to send it 
 round and round the board as a loving bowl, 
 which we grasped with both hands in turn ; 
 and when Beauty put it to her lips, at least 
 one person in the company wanted to quote 
 
 " Or leave but a kiss within the cup, 
 And I'll not ask for wine," 
 
 but was quelled by the maternal eye. Ah ! 
 had there been only kisses in that "cup"! 
 To what malevolent sprite did you confide 
 the brewing ? Suddenly a mist enveloped the 
 table, and when it had cleared away, Beauty 
 and her mamma had vanished. You were in 
 
 94
 
 America at Oxford 
 
 the midst of a deeply interesting anecdote of 
 the Master of your college when this obscurity 
 came over us. Alas! the tale was never finished, 
 and instead of the burst of discreet merriment, 
 which would have been its due, there came the 
 gasping question, " What, in heaven's name, is 
 it made of?" as several haggard men sat star- 
 ing at the witches' caldron which had undone 
 the decorous feast. 
 
 This sad adventure came back to me when 
 I was at Oxford the other day, and chanced to 
 make the acquaintance of an American family. 
 At this season Oxford is given over to Ameri- 
 cans, who take placid possession, as they do of 
 Stratford-on-Avon, making the stray English 
 visitor feel that he is an interloper. They are 
 not millionaires. You do not meet Mr. Pier- 
 pont Morgan in the cloisters. Mr. Carnegie, 
 who is fond of telling American youth that 
 reading novels in free libraries is an excellent 
 use of their time, but that the ancient classics 
 can tell them nothing save the crimes and 
 follies of Greek and Roman savages well, you 
 don't run against Mr. Carnegie at Oxford. 
 But there is more than a sprinkling of the 
 people Mr. W. D. Howells describes so admir- 
 ably the Americans who are not bursting with 
 new inventions or with projects for buying the 
 
 95
 
 Points of View 
 
 universe. They are simple enough to be im- 
 pressed by the age of our institutions, and in 
 the shadow of the college towers they are not 
 troubled about the pace or the price of things. 
 They look like gentle strangers from a some- 
 what arid climate, to whom you can safely tell 
 that old story about the rolling and watering 
 of the green sward in the college " quad." 
 Indeed, I tried it on my American family with 
 perfect impunity. "Yes," I said, "one of 
 your compatriots asked a gardener how he 
 made the grass so green, and he answered, 
 1 Well, we lays it down about the Middle 
 Ages, and we sows it, and looks at it a bit, 
 and the Wars of the Roses comes along, and 
 Old Noll ; but they don't make no difference, 
 for we goes on a-rollin' and a-waterin' until 
 we get it just as green as you see.' ' 
 
 They laughed at this in a most comforting 
 way. Some Americans you meet give you the 
 idea that their country manufactures all the 
 jokes for home consumption, and exports the 
 surplus. But my new acquaintances had that 
 freshness of mind which perceives the under- 
 lying gravity of our humour the depth of 
 the roots, so to speak, whence springs the 
 spreading chestnut-tree. Charmed with such 
 simplicity, to which one might have quoted 
 
 96
 
 America at Oxford 
 
 " Evangeline " without running the risk of 
 being told that it was " a back number," I 
 accompanied them on the river, and guided 
 them up the little tributary stream that runs 
 by the tower of Magdalen. Term was over, 
 but here and there was still a studious youth 
 curled up in a punt under a tree, pondering 
 some classic tome with knitted brows. I ex- 
 plained that this was the custom of the place, 
 a rigid law, indeed, which had never been 
 broken save by a rash undergraduate, who 
 brought a fair damsel one day to destroy the 
 academic peace. She persisted in mismanaging 
 his punt, making it circle in the narrow stream, 
 until her graceful figure and her large eyes 
 drew all the students out of the groves to 
 " bump " the punt solely for the pleasure of 
 apologising to this attractive intruder. "A 
 shocking scene," I added, " which greatly 
 agitated the University ; but such is the force 
 of tradition in Oxford that no enactment was 
 needed to prevent a repetition of this incident. 
 The spirit of culture overcame that passing 
 weakness. Even the rash undergraduate grew 
 to be a recluse. At one time he had set the 
 flippant example of naming punts after the 
 heroines of the lighter poets. When you saw 
 him reclining in a craft called Who is Sylvia ? 
 
 97 G
 
 Points of View 
 
 you were not surprised to note that he was 
 reading a newspaper rather pink in colour. 
 But he re-christened his boat Minerva, and I 
 don't think that during term there is anything 
 more feminine on the river." 
 
 During this improving discourse the Ameri- 
 can paterfamilias looked thoughtfully at his 
 son, a boy of fourteen, who blushed under his 
 father's gaze, as American boys still blush in 
 the novels of Mr. Howells. His sister rallied 
 him gently, and then said to me, " He just 
 colours up because he knows what poppa is 
 thinking about. Poppa wants to put him 
 under that tree with a good, solid book, and 
 make sure that he don't look up when any 
 girl comes along, and makes a punt go round 
 and round, and every boy's head go round 
 with it ! " " That's what I shall expect of 
 him when he comes here," said his father 
 gravely. "He's young," I remarked; "you 
 are looking ahead." " We Americans always 
 look ahead," he retorted. It was the first 
 touch of national spirit I noticed in him. 
 "When he has had a course at Yale, I expect 
 him to win a Rhodes scholarship in our State, 
 and come to Oxford. Nothing is overlooked, 
 Mr. Jaques. I have even chosen the college 
 he is to enter." When I heard its name I had 
 
 98
 
 America at Oxford 
 
 a sudden misgiving. Perhaps I turned a little 
 pale, for he said, " Have you anything to say 
 against it ? Isn't it as good as the others ? " 
 The boy looked at me anxiously, and a shade 
 of mistrust came into his sister's eyes. " Ex- 
 cellent college," I stammered. " It sends the 
 cream of English youth into all the professions, 
 especially the Church. The archdeacon is par- 
 ticularly good and not too strong." " But I 
 don't want to be an archdeacon," said the boy. 
 " No career for archdeacons in our State," said 
 his father. I explained that " archdeacon " 
 was the college ale, and told them what Sydney 
 Smith said about archidiaconal functions, and 
 they laughed joyously. Bless the simplicity 
 which can still laugh at Sydney Smith ! 
 
 But oh, my boyhood's friend, you who warn 
 me from the pulpit against pitfalls, what am 
 I to say to these simple Americans about that 
 " cup " ? How can I let the lad go to your 
 college without arming him against the perils 
 lurking in a large glass vessel, of chaste design ? 
 Nobody believes in magic potions now. Love 
 philtres are scoffed at. But don't tell me there 
 was nothing uncanny in that smiling liquor 
 which played such havoc with our wits. 
 
 99
 
 XIII Men and Modes 
 
 NO man, I take it, is a hero to his 
 tailor. As may have been in the 
 picturesque times when Horace 
 Walpole sat down to breakfast 
 in partridge-coloured silk hose ; for man used 
 to ruffle it then in finery which made him a 
 redoubtable rival of woman in the feminine 
 arts. He loved colours, and had the courage 
 to wear them. As late as the Reform Bill 
 he was still leading the fashions ; and it was 
 what D'Orsay wore that took the public 
 eye, not the drapery of the reigning beauty. 
 Disraeli made an indelible impression on a 
 contemporary chronicler as " the man in the 
 green trousers." Dickens was heroic in a 
 fancy waistcoat, running over with gold chains. 
 Nobody dreamed of the coming era when the 
 sceptre of fashion would be yielded absolutely 
 to woman, and men would be content to dress 
 with a sheeplike and unobtrusive monotony. 
 Why, it is within living memory that young 
 bucks swaggered down Piccadilly in check 
 trousers of a pattern which provoked the 
 joyous comment of the street-boy. Who dares 
 to wear them now? Save for a sprightly 
 
 100
 
 Men and Modes 
 
 waistcoat here and there, we are all clad in 
 such sad-coloured raiment that a Puritan 
 of Cromwell's time, if he came to life 
 again, would think the reign of the Latter- 
 Day Saints had indeed begun. I hope he 
 would not stay long enough to discover his 
 error. 
 
 Now all this makes a melancholy show for 
 any tailor with taste and initiative. I see 
 that the organ of his enterprising trade as- 
 cribes our poor spirit to " the modesty of the 
 average man." This deplorable weakness hin- 
 ders the adoption of some happy suggestions. 
 For instance, it is proposed that for evening 
 dress we should sparkle, like Dizzy, in green 
 trousers, or plum, or crimson. A crimson 
 suit now would go uncommonly well with 
 black eyes and a swarthy complexion. Are 
 you fair, my young friend ? Does a boyish 
 pink still mantle on your cheek in moments 
 of emotion ? Then pale blue is your tint 
 for evening wear. For myself I fancy plum ; 
 it would give a rich but gentle flush to a 
 complexion which is a trifle autumnal. What 
 say you, O comrades of the Middle Age ? Does 
 not this idea revive in your jealous bosoms 
 some hope of cutting a dash in the shining 
 eyes which wander over us at present as in- 
 101
 
 Points of View 
 
 differently as if we were pillar - boxes or 
 policemen ? Shall not each of us say : 
 
 " I do mistake my person all this while ; 
 Upon my life, she finds, although I cannot, 
 Myself to be a marvellous proper man. 
 I'll be at charges for a looking-glass, 
 And entertain some score or two of tailors, 
 To study fashions to adorn my body " ? 
 
 To wit, the plum-coloured suit, or the ver- 
 milion, or the silver-grey ! And what holds 
 us back when such a prospect to the impulsive 
 ardour gives the charge? Nothing but "the 
 modesty of the average man " ! 
 
 An observant woman has made the shrewd 
 remark that if men were more careful of their 
 dress they might develop the national char- 
 acter. They might be more adaptive in their 
 commercial methods, more alert and novel in 
 their exports. Surely, there were more ideas 
 in circulation when men wore green trousers ! 
 That everlasting black coat at dinner ; what 
 does it typify but a spiritless acquiescence in 
 the humdrum ? Minds are reduced to one 
 pattern ; we are as much alike as the houses 
 in Gower Street. Every citizen is expected 
 to carry an umbrella, and is deemed eccentric 
 when he takes his neighbour's. The really 
 original man never has an umbrella. Dizzy 
 
 102
 
 Men and Modes 
 
 never had an umbrella. " When it comes on 
 to rain," he explained, " I take shelter under 
 the umbrella of the first pretty woman I see." 
 Who has the courage now for such impudence, 
 or the genius to make it agreeable ? What 
 services might we not render to our country 
 to literature, science, and the arts if we 
 broke up this desperate sameness of garb, 
 and radiated in divers colours ! Don't talk 
 to me about "the modesty of the average 
 man " ! That can be overcome by organisa- 
 tion. I do not undertake to appear at an 
 evening party, or to sit in Mr. George Alex- 
 ander's stalls, in my suit of softly glowing 
 plum without a little backing. We must 
 form a brotherhood ; it might be called the 
 Prismatic League ; and the members should 
 be sworn never to dine in the plain black 
 garments of an effete generation. When this 
 became known, hostesses would be eager to 
 invite the Prismatics for the sake of the 
 novelty; and then we should be enabled to 
 spread our civilising message. 
 
 Of course, a reform of this character would 
 run some initial risk of misconception. In a 
 crush of arriving guests in the hall, you might 
 overhear something like this : " I had no idea 
 that our host kept so many pampered menials." 
 103
 
 Points of View 
 
 11 And all in different liveries, too ! But some 
 of them must be strangers. There's a foot- 
 man over there in scarlet." " The Royal 
 livery! The King's here!" "Pooh! That 
 fellow must be one of the musicians the 
 Red Manchurian Band. Wonder whether he 
 plays the tom-tom or the sackbut." He looks 
 moderately civilised ; let's ask him." There- 
 upon an inquiring youth, with a bland smile, 
 accosts you : " Speak English ? " " Cer- 
 tainly." "That's all right. Going to give 
 us your native wood-notes wild, eh ? What's 
 the national instrument of Manchuria reed 
 or brass ? " " Can't say ; but you would do 
 very well as a tinkling cymbal." " Hullo ! " 
 says the bland youth. " Don't you belong to 
 the Red Manchurian Band ? " " Certainly not. 
 I am a member of the Prismatic League ! " 
 Such a misunderstanding might retard the 
 movement for a short time. It would be 
 still more embarrassing to be mobbed by 
 nocturnal roysterers, and arrested by the police 
 as the cause of the disturbance. Imagine an 
 interview next morning with Mr. Plowden, 
 who avows in his book that he has a severe 
 eye for people with "abnormal ears." What 
 would he say to the dishevelled but innocent 
 Leaguer in evening green ? Mr. Plowden : 
 
 104
 
 Men and Modes 
 
 " What is the meaning of this masquer- 
 ade ? " The Leaguer : " No masquerade, I 
 assure you. I was going peacefully home last 
 night after a dinner-party " Mr. Plow- 
 den : " Were they all dressed like you ? " 
 The Leaguer (impressively) : " By no means ! 
 That would be quite contrary to the principles 
 of the League. Some of us were in red, some 
 in yellow. My friend Jaques, in his favourite 
 
 plum, looked perfectly " Mr. Plowden: "Is 
 
 this a League of Mad Hatters or Crazy Tailors?" 
 It is always difficult to reason with a magis- 
 trate ; but when so much is at stake the 
 attempt must be made. The Leaguer : " Will 
 you permit me to explain, sir? I am a 
 member of the Prismatic League ; and it is 
 our cardinal principle that for evening dress 
 we shall choose all the colours of the rainbow." 
 Mr. Plowden (looking at his Clerk, and tap- 
 ping his forehead) : " Dear me ! Very sad 
 case ! " The Leaguer (with dignity) : " You 
 are quite mistaken, Mr. Plowden. All our 
 members are as sane as I am." (Voice at the 
 back of the court : " I tell yer my 'usband 
 was worse than that. 'E used to crawl on the 
 roof in his shirt and mew ! ") The Leaguer 
 (persuasively) : " The object of the League, 
 Mr. Plowden, ought to appeal especially to 
 105
 
 Points of View 
 
 you." Mr. Plowden (with gentle forbear- 
 ance) : " Indeed ! " The Leaguer : " Yes, sir. 
 You say in your excellent book that the police- 
 magistrate cannot impress the public as he 
 ought because he wears no distinguishing mark 
 of his judicial office. Now if you were dressed 
 
 like me " (Great laughter. Mr. Plowden 
 
 shakes his head, and murmurs, " Poor fellow!") 
 The Leaguer : " Of course, sir, I mention that 
 only by way of respectful illustration, and not 
 to excite that mirth in your court which you 
 so much deplore. Briefly, my case is this : 
 the Prismatics have banded themselves together 
 to break the monotony of evening dress, and 
 so impart to the national character that variety, 
 and that original impulse, which in these days 
 of foreign competition it sorely needs. Last 
 
 night I was dining for this great purpose " 
 
 Mr. Plowden : " Never mind ; that will do 
 now. You are remanded for medical in- 
 quiries." This incident, with its ramifications, 
 including leading articles in all the papers, and 
 a contribution by Sir James Crichton-Brown 
 to the British Medical Journal, would wrap the 
 cause in gloom for a while. But we should 
 not be discouraged, and we should refuse the 
 invitation to appear at the leading music-halls 
 for enormous salaries. 
 
 106
 
 Men and Modes 
 
 I foresee a time when the movement will be 
 triumphant, and will take its place in the 
 chronicles of fashion which eclipses the first- 
 night notices of a new play. " In a brilliant 
 audience," I shall read with complacency, " the 
 men's costumes, as usual, far surpassed the 
 toilettes of the ladies in brilliancy and audacity 
 of design. That great social reformer, Jaques, 
 it is true, wore his characteristic and historical 
 plum. But Mr. Plowden was the observed of 
 all observers in his judicial robes green slashed 
 with yellow, and capriciously picked out with 
 crimson." 
 
 107
 
 XIV Country Life 
 
 I HAVE a friend, a distinguished writer, 
 who has lately surprised me by a 
 sudden and seemingly incurable passion 
 for the country. Town I imagined to 
 be his life-blood ; and as for nature, I should 
 have thought there was enough of that for a 
 man who lived within bird-call of Kensington 
 Gardens. But he has lately taken a house in 
 Surrey, and there I found him dispensing 
 bread, and an allocution dimly suggestive of 
 St. Francis, to an assemblage of hungry birds 
 on the lawn. "My dears," said he, "this 
 person who has just arrived is a sad illustra- 
 tion of what I have been telling you about 
 the canker-worm of life in cities. You need 
 not hop ; it is not a nice worm ; it is a bitterly 
 unprofitable worm from which you would turn 
 with a shudder. My friend here, in the pride 
 of his blindness, thinks I am having a mighty 
 dull time, and he is going to amuse me with 
 flotsam and jetsam from the Dead Sea gaiety 
 of London. He will sneer in his bland way 
 at the calm of this beautiful garden, and at 
 you, my little parishioners, to whose temporal 
 wants I delight to minister, whilst you teach 
 
 108
 
 Country Life 
 
 me how much the human pastor may learn 
 from the feathered laity. Yes, he will laugh 
 at us ; but we have our laughter too, wiser 
 and deeper, for out of his own newspapers we 
 can confound his boasted philosophy ! " 
 
 Here he diverged to the columns of a 
 journal, and read to me some official statistics 
 about the alarming growth of urban popula- 
 tion. " My dear Jaques," he proceeded, 
 " don't you see that if this goes on there 
 won't be elbow-room in London ? It is no 
 use clamouring for wider streets ; all these 
 millions of human beings will choke your 
 new avenues. When I took my last walk 
 in Piccadilly, I saw a despairing notice to 
 pedestrians, jutting from a lamp-post : ' Keep 
 to the Right.' Imagine that emblem of order 
 in the rapids of Niagara ! Now what is the 
 plain duty of the citizen ? Manifestly to 
 reduce the congested mass by living in the 
 country. Sir, I am a pioneer. You come 
 down from town with your ineffable air of 
 being up-to-date, never suspecting that you 
 are lagging miserably behind the wisdom even 
 of statistics. And you smile don't contradict 
 me I say you smile in a patronising way on 
 my rural contentment, although I have done 
 you a service by yielding to you my dwindling 
 109
 
 Points of View 
 
 share of the London pavement ! " At this 
 point a servant appeared with a fresh loaf, 
 which was promptly broken and scattered 
 among the birds. "That's the fourth loaf 
 this morning," remarked the pioneer's wife 
 thoughtfully. " Our baker is baking himself 
 to death. The seedsman is out of bird-seed, 
 and has sent to town for a sack. He has 
 also sent for goldfinches from Seven Dials. 
 He says that since we came the local industries 
 have fairly hummed." 
 
 My friend took a few animated strides. 
 "Mark," he said, "what one can do with a 
 resolute purpose to revive the prosperity of 
 the agricultural districts." " But why keep 
 goldfinches ? " I asked respectfully. " Because 
 canaries have no character," he answered. 
 " Besides, I have a scheme for winning the 
 confidence of all these wild creatures that you 
 see. It would never occur to you." " Salt 
 on their tails," I murmured. " When I have 
 trained the goldfinches," he continued, ignor- 
 ing the interruption, " to eat out of my hand, 
 the sight will tame the others." "With a 
 handful of crumbs you can make the intimate 
 acquaintance of any sparrow in Kensington 
 Gardens," I said. "Pooh! man. You know 
 as little of bird-life as the people who write 
 
 no
 
 Country Life 
 
 books on ornithology. There are no wild 
 birds in Kensington Gardens. The place is 
 an enervating aviary, for the birds are brought 
 up there without their natural enemies. Pam- 
 pered puppets of nursemaids and children, they 
 have never known the stimulating perils of 
 freedom. You might as well study the birds 
 that sing on the stage in a woodland scene in 
 Shakespeare." " He spends a whole morning 
 watching our birds through an opera-glass," 
 remarked his wife. " I have watched nightin- 
 gales through an opera-glass," I said. " In 
 
 the 'Country Girl' at Daly's " "Look 
 
 at those chaffinches," my host broke in. "The 
 same pair honour my wife's ' At Home ' every 
 day. I feel as if I had pronounced the bene- 
 diction on their nuptials, and I would swear 
 in any court to their conjugal fidelity. I 
 knew a case in which a little acid was 
 dropped on the feathers of two chaffinches, 
 leaving a crimson spot on each. They were 
 never seen apart." " With such a brand of 
 publicity," I suggested, " they would scarcely 
 venture." 
 
 Here the servant brought a large plate of 
 toast. " Too much bread, you know," ex- 
 plained my hostess, " is rather gouty ; so we 
 distribute toast, and escape the task of tying up 
 in
 
 Points of View 
 
 inflamed claws with red flannel." " And thus 
 miss an opportunity of fostering another local 
 industry. But toast seems to demand a deal 
 of pecking," I added, as the chaffinches retired 
 baffled from a huge slice. "What about beak- 
 ache ? " " Your ignorance of birds, my dear 
 chap," put in the host, " is truly urban. You 
 will be wondering next how these birds can 
 eat so much. Pray consider the muscular 
 energy needed to sustain them on the wing 
 and keep up the flow of song." "Think of 
 the tits," said his wife, " and their perpetual 
 tittering." " Prima donnas, I have heard, 
 require copious supplies of stout and oysters." 
 " Well, imagine what they would require if 
 they had wings." My friend took a few more 
 strides, and peered into a tree. " If you were 
 an observant man, Jaques," he said, "you 
 would see papa blackbird now giving young 
 master blackbird a lesson in piping. How 
 many ornithologists can tell you that when 
 the young blackbird is turned out of the 
 parental nest to shift for himself he will 
 come back at the end of a year and receive 
 this tuition from his father? The domestic 
 affections of birds offer a lesson which is 
 
 wasted on man." " And the cuckoo " I 
 
 began. "The cuckoo," said he, "is a freak. 
 
 112
 
 Country Life 
 
 You should observe the true paterfamilias of 
 the foliage when he is commanded by his 
 spouse to sit on the eggs in her brief absence. 
 He catches your eye, and tries to hide his crest, 
 pretending to be a hen. Mamma returns, 
 scolds him for his clumsiness, and resumes 
 her place in a grand maternal way, while he 
 sits deferentially on a twig and pacifies her 
 with a trill. It is a family picture that might 
 soften the most callous heart." 
 
 We were now joined by a neighbour with 
 a wistful eye, who is no novice in the country, 
 and I was struck by the relish with which he 
 narrated capital anecdotes of town life, lapsing 
 into impassive silence when my friend made a 
 fresh excursion into the habits of birds. We 
 were soon deep in reminiscences of the theatre, 
 and of wayward figures in society. In driving 
 from the station I had noticed the new post- 
 office, and my flyman had informed me that, 
 a stingy Government having refused to bear 
 the whole cost of the building, a benevolent 
 duchess had subscribed the balance. " Quite 
 true," said the neighbour, " and to crown the 
 obligation she might sit on a stool and sell 
 stamps." " Heavens ! " said my host with a 
 gesture of disdain. " Don't talk as if you 
 were craving for a fashionable bazaar in the 
 
 "3 H
 
 Points of View 
 
 Botanical Gardens. See ! Here's a starling. 
 He brings luck. 
 
 ' Now I must tell you of the starling ; 
 He really is a perfect darling : 
 When you're feeling weak and ill 
 He comes and soothes you with his bill.' 
 
 Tell us about your beautiful green snake," he 
 added, turning to the neighbour. " Ah ! yes," 
 responded the other wearily. " My youngster 
 had a green snake, which was sent from town 
 in a box. He thought it would fascinate 
 frogs, and possibly swallow them. But the 
 day of its arrival it crept into my wife's work- 
 basket and was found dead with a reel of 
 cotton in its jaws. We buried it with funeral 
 rites. If you come to my place I'll show you 
 the grave." 
 
 The pastimes of the country seem to me a 
 little sombre. I hinted this to my friend's 
 wife, and she said, " Not for the birds and 
 the animals. For a week or two after we 
 came, all the domestic pets of our landlord, 
 who had moved out for us, called regularly 
 at tea-time, especially the Angora cat, which 
 preferred cream to milk. You have seen how 
 contented the birds are. And I don't think 
 the sports are sombre for the baker and the 
 seedsman." 
 
 114
 
 XV A t a Woman's Club 
 
 \ 
 
 I HAVE been forced to tell Olivia that 
 I cannot take tea at her club any 
 more. This is a considerable privation 
 to me, for Olivia is at her best about 
 five o'clock, and whips the cream of the beau 
 monde with vivacious art. I do not say that 
 the beau monde belongs conspicuously to Olivia's 
 club, which is the haunt of ladies in the learned 
 profession, chiefly the feminine branches of 
 journalism. But journalism is a dairy which 
 supplies you with the cream of things in 
 general, and this, as I have said, is daintily 
 whipped by Olivia, whose skill is well known 
 to the readers of various ladies' papers. Un- 
 happily, it is the only cream that appears at 
 tea-time. That is the burden of my woe, 
 though not the worst of it. To speak plain 
 truth, the tea at Olivia's club is the worst 
 that ever flowed from the spout of earthen- 
 ware. Mounting the staircase, as I have told 
 her, I feel like Socrates going to his hemlock- 
 " Shall I be funny now, or shall we have tea 
 first ? " I remarked on the last occasion, as we 
 exchanged greetings. " If you are impatient 
 to begin, my dear man," said Olivia, " pray 
 "5
 
 Points of View 
 
 do." " Don't you know it is a quotation ? 
 I must be apt and illusive ; that is my 
 business. Nothing like keeping your hand 
 in. The quotation is from the Pantaloon in 
 
 Barrie's play. Shall I be funny now, or " 
 
 "Pantaloon!" echoed Olivia. "Why I thought 
 you were Socrates." " They are much of a 
 muchness in my case," I explained. "The 
 most jovial Pantaloon would find it difficult 
 to be funny after tea in this club ; and Socrates, 
 after his hemlock, you remember, was not gay." 
 That was how the breeze came on to blow 
 rather stiffly. "Let us be serious," I said. 
 " It is amazing to me that you can sit down 
 to tea without cream " " Cream," in- 
 terrupted Olivia, " is a luxury that should 
 be banished from the simple life. Besides, 
 it spoils the flavour of my tea." "Anything 
 that spoilt the flavour of that," I suggested, 
 " would be a public benefit, if I may speak 
 with the manly frankness of a guest. But it 
 is not only you whose life is at stake. At 
 a moderate computation there must be two 
 hundred women at this moment drinking this 
 sinister fluid. They swarm here every after- 
 noon. Why, if men thronged a club as 
 women throng yours, we should have a civil 
 war. A man joins a club on the understanding 
 
 116
 
 At a Woman's Club 
 
 that the other members will be there inter- 
 mittently. To be there always we would 
 vote an indecent abuse of the rules." I may 
 remark here that, when animated, I have a 
 Celtic habit of waving the right hand. " Do 
 you know," broke in Olivia at this point, 
 " when I watch your taper fingers describing 
 graceful curves, I always think of a butterfly, 
 and wish I had a net to catch it ! " At this 
 there was a distinct movement among the two 
 hundred tea-drinkers an unmistakable ripple 
 of amusement. "Oh yes!" Olivia went on. 
 " They're all listening. How can they help 
 it when you make yourself a public orator ? 
 Besides, they like to hear a man descanting 
 on the selfishness of men's clubs. With you 
 a club seems to be a place where you expect 
 to find half-a-dozen people to glare at. Come, 
 now ! Women are the only good fellows after 
 all ! Here we flock together to be sociable, 
 and when you speak we follow with fascinated 
 interest the motions of your beautiful hand. 
 Shall I give you another cup of tea ? " 
 
 "Another cup!" I repeated. "Do you 
 know that in my club this tea would be 
 flung in the teeth of the committee? Do 
 you know you could guy a man with one 
 of these crumpets ? " " I haven't succeeded 
 117
 
 Points of View 
 
 to-day," remarked Olivia demurely. " There's 
 something in the management of a woman's 
 club," I proceeded, "which makes for martyr- 
 dom. You have not asked me to lunch, by 
 the way ! " " Oh ! " she cried, " if you're as 
 eloquent as this at tea, what would you be at 
 lunch ? And at dinner ! But I'll tell you 
 what you can do for us. You shall talk 
 these noble sentiments into a gramophone, 
 and I'll keep it going all the evening ! " 
 " This irrelevant persiflage, madam, does not 
 deceive me," I said. " Do you poison your- 
 selves for love ? " " Inquisitor i " murmured 
 Olivia, with her eyes cast down. " Or is it 
 only a pose ? Must you be saints in your 
 injuries, even when you injure yourselves with 
 your own meals ? Now, in a man's club we 
 do not make a virtue of courting dyspepsia. 
 An offended member writes some plain words 
 to the committee, or backs his bill with suit- 
 able epithets. Here a waitress hands you a 
 wretched little slip of paper with no room to 
 write anything, even if you had the courage. 
 At my club we have just appointed a vigilance 
 committee to overhaul the kitchen, and if 
 necessary, to send up the head of the cook 
 on a lordly dish. Oh yes ! if a man's club 
 is to be carried on we must show the pitiless 
 
 118
 
 At a Woman's Club 
 
 spirit of the feudal barons, who used to nail 
 the ears of a careless varlet to the door. But 
 ours is a humanitarian age, and, of course, 
 we should compensate his widow and orphans. 
 You ought to try our resolute policy here. 
 The minion who made the horrible brew in 
 this teapot ought to be summoned to your 
 presence and admonished with hatpins. The 
 scars would remind her of her duty." 
 
 Here I paused and nibbled fiercely at a piece 
 of cake. " You must not suppose," I went 
 on, " that I cherish any personal grievance 
 because the tea you gave me is unspeakably 
 bad. As a philosopher, I have a natural 
 desire for social improvement. Now, why 
 should women's clubs be so completely differ- 
 entiated from men's clubs ? In our friend 
 H. G. Wells' s Utopia women's dress, he says, 
 is not so extravagantly differentiated from 
 men's dress as we see it in this imperfect 
 age. For instance, that very smart hat you 
 are wearing to-day would never do in Utopia. 
 Women don't wear hats there except to keep 
 the sun off." There was another mirthful 
 undulation of the two hundred. " Yes, and 
 any woman who persists in wearing flounces 
 and fallals, laces, and feathers keeps them for 
 the entertainment of her domestic circle, and 
 
 119
 
 Points of View 
 
 seldom ventures to exhibit them to the public 
 eye." " What a lot of callers she must have!" 
 said Olivia. " Don't you see the men crowd- 
 ing to her club at tea-time?" "Ah!" I 
 retorted triumphantly, " but in Utopia the 
 woman's club won't be differentiated from the 
 man's club by its infernal tea." 
 
 "In Utopia," rejoined Olivia, "the woman's 
 club will be managed by you and Mr. Wells, 
 no doubt. That is what you are driving at, 
 dear philosopher. I have listened to your 
 tirade with the patience of an angel ; but 
 what it comes to is simply this that you 
 cannot grasp the idea of a club where all the 
 thought is not about eating and drinking. In 
 a man's club you talk of nothing else, and 
 you call the eternal subject politics, and the 
 interests of the nation ! I assure you that here 
 we get through an entire day without saying 
 a word about our victuals. That is our blessed 
 differentiation from you ! " 
 
 There was something like a suppressed cheer 
 from those tea-drinkers. They rejoiced in the 
 discomfiture of man. Ha ! they didn't know 
 I was going to write this article. At Olivia's 
 club, let me tell you, there's a billiard-room ; 
 and when two ladies play a game of a hundred 
 up it lasts about a fortnight ! You see I am 
 
 I2O
 
 At a Woman's Club 
 
 dipping my pen in what Marie Corelli calls 
 the " secret fount of gall " ; only it isn't secret, 
 but quite shameless. For Olivia's defence of 
 the billiards bless you, she would defend 
 anything feminine ! you had better consult 
 those ladies' papers wherein she sparkles every 
 week. 
 
 121
 
 XVI In the Fog 
 
 1 
 
 is, I am told, a sprightly 
 nobleman now in a crack regi- 
 ment who once volunteered for 
 the public service in a singular 
 capacity. He went up for examination by 
 the authorities who select the London cab- 
 men. Before you can take out a license to 
 drive a cab you have to satisfy those discerning 
 persons that you know your way about town, 
 and are not hopelessly unfamiliar with the 
 management of horses. This nobleman dis- 
 played a surprising knowledge of London. 
 The byways of Mile End were as clear to 
 him as the pleasant vales of Kensington, and 
 he drove one of the examiners in his hansom 
 down the steps below the Duke of York's 
 Column and up again, to the great delight of 
 the bystanders. The examiner was a little put 
 out (he is said to have uttered unseemly cries 
 during the journey), and when he alighted he 
 gasped, " Do you expect to get your license 
 after this behaviour ? " " Well, I'm not very 
 keen about it," said the sprightly nobleman, 
 " but I wanted to show you that I can manage 
 a horse. Suppose you were lost in a fog, 
 
 122.
 
 In the Fog 
 
 and your cab went sliding down these steps, 
 wouldn't you like your cabby to know how 
 to land you safely ? " The examiner was not 
 conciliated when the nobleman explained that 
 he had no desire to drive a cab for a livelihood, 
 but wanted to be ready in emergency to pop a 
 tipsy or bewildered cabman inside the hansom 
 and take the reins himself. 
 
 I was reminded of this example of public 
 spirit by an incident in the fog which has 
 enveloped us for a whole week. A cabman, 
 trying to turn a corner where there was none, 
 made his horse dance mournfully on the side- 
 walk, and a nervous lady in the cab remon- 
 strated with her companion. " George," she 
 said, " I am sure this man has never driven 
 a horse before." " Likely enough," said 
 George. " On a foggy night, I believe, they 
 always put on a new hand. It gives him 
 practice." " Don't be stupid ! " said the 
 lady severely. " Why can't you drive ? " 
 " Neglected education, my dear. And even if 
 I could, how would you like to have the cab- 
 man here beside you ? When I turned him off 
 his perch, we couldn't leave him in the street, 
 you know." " I would rather have him beside 
 me than you. He, at any rate, would be sym- 
 pathetic and respectful ! " " No, he wouldn't. 
 123
 
 Points of View 
 
 He would say that I had never driven a horse 
 before, and he would probably swear." " At 
 you. I mean he would be sympathetic and 
 respectful to me." "Do you mean to say it 
 would make no difference to you if a cabman 
 swore at your husband ? " " It might, if you 
 drove badly. Then I should suspect that you 
 deserved it." " Thank you. Perhaps you 
 wish I were the cabman instead of him ! " 
 " Oh, if I thought you would know the busi- 
 ness, I should be enchanted ! " 
 
 Now, if George had qualified himself to 
 drive a cab, and had braced his nerve with 
 that exercise on the Duke of York's staircase, 
 all this bitterness might have been avoided. 
 His wife (a woman of spirit, as you perceive) 
 would have been proud of him ; and the story 
 would have made George the hero of dinner- 
 parties for a whole season. I tried to be a 
 hero once on the strength of having saved a 
 cabman's life. He was driving me in a fog, 
 when the horse's belly-band and one of the 
 reins broke simultaneously. I leaped out and 
 stood aghast on the pavement, while the horse 
 went round in a circle until the cabman 
 shouted, " Catch 'old of 'er 'ead ! " It was 
 a horrid moment ; the animal loomed grimly 
 through the fog ; with rigid arm outstretched 
 
 124
 
 In the Fog 
 
 I made a lucky clutch. The cabman got 
 down, and in a voice of emotion said, " You've 
 saved my life. Another moment and she'd 
 'ave been off into the traffic." I believe he 
 spoke sincerely, but I wish I had given him 
 my address and requested him to send me a 
 written certificate. That story has never been 
 a success. Whenever I reach the first climax 
 in this style : " Half-way between two lamp- 
 posts, just where the fog was blackest, I heard 
 the belly-band and one of the reins snap like 
 pistol-shots, and in a flash I saw myself in an 
 ambulance and a good-looking nurse at the 
 foot of my hospital-bed ; but in the next flash 
 I was out of that cab, and safe and sound on 
 my feet " I say that when I reach that point 
 there is an expression of chilly incredulity on 
 the faces of the company. A friend took me 
 aside on one occasion, and said, in a kindly 
 way, "You had better tone that down, old 
 chap. The belly-band may snap, or the rein, 
 but not both. And leave out the pistol-shots 
 and the hospital-nurse." 
 
 This does not deter me from relating another 
 adventure. One morning this week, about one 
 o'clock, I was passing the National Gallery, 
 when I noticed two dim figures in the dense 
 fog, a tall man and a boy. The tall man said, 
 125
 
 Points of View 
 
 " Pardon me, but if you are going in the 
 direction of Shaftesbury Avenue you may be 
 of service to my young friend here, who tells 
 me that he is in search of that thoroughfare. 
 I am but a poor guide, for I have been in the 
 East for many years, and to-night I have been 
 dining with an old friend at a fashionable 
 hotel, the Hummums, and upon my word, in 
 this fog, I am just as much astray as this 
 young gentleman." I looked at him closely 
 in a faint lamplight, and saw a kindly brown 
 face that seemed oddly familiar. His clothes 
 had an ancient cut, and he carried a light 
 malacca cane. "This is the National Gal- 
 lery," I remarked, " and we are in Trafalgar 
 Square." " The National Gallery ! " he ex- 
 claimed. " I hope my young friend, whose 
 acquaintance I made but a minute ago, will 
 give some of his leisure hours to that great 
 collection of masters. Nothing trains the 
 mind, sir, like pictures. They soften much 
 the manners, as the old Latin author says. 
 But Trafalgar Square, I fear, does not exer- 
 cise that refining influence on the people. I 
 have read of demonstrations, sir, of rude defi- 
 ance of authority." " That seldom happens 
 now," I said. " During your absence abroad, 
 London has been visited by such heavy and 
 126
 
 In the Fog 
 
 prolonged fogs that when the people wanted 
 to demonstrate in Trafalgar Square they could 
 not find it. So when the fog lifted, and the 
 processions were tired out, they found them- 
 selves at some spot with placid associations, 
 like Pinner." 
 
 He seemed pleased with this political de- 
 velopment, and I continued : " Besides, there 
 is very little now to demonstrate about. Since 
 these fogs settled down upon us we have 
 pretty nearly solved the social problem. Poor 
 people soon acquired the habit of wandering 
 from their homes, and losing themselves in 
 the almost perpetual night. The papers an- 
 nounced one day that a number of persons 
 who had gathered on the doorstep of a member 
 of the aristocracy, rang the bell and requested 
 shelter. The footman was disposed to pack 
 them off with rough words ; but the master 
 came out and invited the whole party to 
 supper. His friends said afterwards that a 
 succession of dull dinner-parties had unhinged 
 his mind, and he said that his new guests were 
 vastly more original and amusing than the 
 old. Whether his example was good or bad, 
 it worked something like a revolution. The 
 poor made a practice of assembling at the 
 doors of the nobility, whose curiosity was 
 
 127
 
 Points of View 
 
 stimulated by the remarkable collection of 
 Whitechapel anecdotes with which the first 
 nobleman's visitors had enriched him. It be- 
 came the fashion to ask the poor to dinner, 
 and they gradually took free quarters in the 
 West End, until the distinction between 
 poverty and wealth was almost nominal. I 
 undertake to say that you might ring at any 
 Belgravian mansion to-night, and be shown into 
 the best spare bedroom, while the cook would 
 cheerfully rise from his couch to prepare a hot 
 repast." 
 
 " I rejoice to hear it," said the stranger. 
 " For myself I care nothing. But I think 
 that such a lodging as you mention would be 
 of benefit to our young friend, who would thus 
 have an opportunity of mixing with people of 
 breeding. Why go to Shaftesbury Avenue, 
 
 my boy, if " The boy broke into a 
 
 shriek of laughter. " Why, he's a-kiddin' of 
 you, gov'nor," said this amiable urchin. 
 " He's one of them newspaper chaps as 
 makes folks like you believe anything. I 
 ain't been a printer's devil without knowing 
 the likes o' him ! " " You have amused 
 yourself, sir, at my expense," said the 
 stranger quietly. " So this is now the 
 mission of the Press. How different from 
 128
 
 In the Fog 
 
 the days of my friends Mr. Warrington and 
 Mr. Pendennis ! Quantum mutatus ab illo ! " 
 He swung his cane and vanished in the fog, 
 and I believe he was the ghost of Thomas 
 Newcome. 
 
 129
 
 XVII The Perils of Crowding 
 
 Eus consider the Crowd a good Bank 
 Holiday subject. Some years ago an 
 ingenious Frenchman wrote a treatise 
 on the psychology of the Crowd. 
 His theory was that, when people congregate, 
 they will behave collectively in a manner in 
 which they would not behave individually. 
 Not an unreasonable theory, when you reflect 
 that people gathered in the London streets 
 will cheer the King of Spain, whereas one 
 solitary person in a street would probably be 
 too bashful to lift his voice. But it is often 
 the fate of philosophical theories to grow out 
 of all proportion to common sense. This is 
 what has happened to the Crowd : it has be- 
 come a monster. Doctrinaires have made it 
 so terrifying that I am afraid to sit down to 
 dinner when the company numbers, let us say, 
 a baker's dozen. 
 
 Sir Martin Conway, who has an amazing 
 article in the Nineteenth Century entitled "Is 
 Parliament a Mere Crowd ? " tells us gravely 
 that to be quite rational a crowd should not 
 consist of more than nine persons. Above 
 that number it becomes dangerous. I have 
 
 130
 
 The Perils of Crowding 
 
 met people who refused to dine with thirteen 
 at table. The other evening a friend of mine 
 who came late to dinner, and was told by way 
 of jest that there were thirteen of us, turned 
 pale, started from his chair, and said he would 
 go home. His wife was ill, and he would not 
 risk the omen. With some difficulty we proved 
 to him by infallible arithmetic that we were 
 only ten. But we ought to have known that 
 the number ten was as damning as thirteen. 
 Let us put our shocking state in the words 
 of Sir Martin Conway, " A Crowd is a creature 
 devoid of religion, devoid of human morals, 
 ungoverned by reason, the victim of every 
 kind of sentiment and sentimentality, puffed 
 up with pride, and belongs in the scale of 
 living creatures to the realm, not of men, but 
 of beasts." 
 
 That's the sort of dinner-party we were ! 
 Ten innocent citizens, who had gathered for 
 a modest feast, and (as we thought) a flow 
 of soul, was transformed by worse than Circean 
 magic into beasts that lack discourse of reason ! 
 When I was a lad there was a popular ditty 
 about the " Ten Little Nigger Boys," whose 
 numbers were gradually and sadly diminished. 
 
 " Ten little nigger boys going out to dine 
 One had a "
 
 Points of View 
 
 Dear me ! I forget what calamity befell him, 
 but it reduced the party to nine. This was 
 long before that ingenious Frenchman wrote 
 his treatise ; and so we used to sing with 
 mistaken sorrow how persistent misfortune 
 reduced the number to eight, and so on, until 
 "there were none." Blessed none! Those 
 little negro boys didn't know, and we didn't 
 know, that as they faded away they ceased to 
 be the irreligious, inhuman, sentimental, con- 
 ceited, and beastly crowd, and rose in the 
 spiritual scale to angelic bliss. 
 
 Paterfamilias, when he counts his brood at 
 breakfast after reading this column, may re- 
 mark to his wife in an agitated tone, " My 
 dear, there are eleven of us ! " " Yes, John, 
 and why not ? " she will say placidly, with a 
 fond glance at her youngest and chubbiest. 
 " Certainly, my dear," John will respond ; 
 " but, according to the Daily Dispatch, Sir 
 Martin Conway would call us a crowd, in- 
 human, irreligious " "What!!!" Mrs. 
 
 John will cry, snatching the paper from his 
 trembling hand. Pray be calm, gentle reader. 
 Sir Martin is good enough to say that his 
 theory does not apply to the family. Your 
 eleven darlings are never of one mind and 
 temper. Little Jane cultivates her individuality 
 132
 
 The Perils of Crowding 
 
 by pinching little Gerald. When you hear 
 screams from the nursery you can say with 
 a sigh of relief: " My children are not victims 
 of every kind of sentiment ! " 
 
 The philosopher says nothing about schools, 
 and I wonder whether the Crowd in the play- 
 ground offers any guarantee of religion and 
 humanity. But when the boys go out into 
 the world, then it is all up with them. Think 
 of the Crowd at cricket two elevens and a 
 concourse of spectators ! Think of the various 
 public bodies which must debase the man who 
 joins them ; literary and scientific societies, 
 municipal councils, the House of Commons ! 
 When he deals with the Parliamentary Crowd, 
 Sir Martin hurls the thunderbolts of a Hebrew 
 prophet. Are you aware that in providing 
 for great public ceremonials coronations to 
 wit Parliament takes care to grab the best 
 seats ? This is because it is a Crowd, puffed 
 up with pride. " There is no earthly reason 
 why Parliament should be any better housed 
 than a board school." And look at that 
 stately pile at Westminster, with its Clock 
 Tower and Big Ben ! What would the Board 
 of Education say if the local authorities were 
 to give every elementary school a taller tower 
 and a Bigger Ben ? Have you ever reflected
 
 Points of View 
 
 that it is the "crowd-dignity" of M.P.'s 
 which " leads them to declare that, as repre- 
 senting the country, they must be gloriously 
 entertained," this " crowd-dignity " being the 
 kind of sentimentality that naturally springs 
 from a lack of human morals ? If you have 
 ever dined at the House of Commons, you 
 will know what to think of committees, 
 especially the Kitchen Committee, and their 
 glorious entertainments. Why, in old memoirs 
 you will read how eminent Parliamentarians 
 consumed enormous quantities of port while 
 waiting for divisions ; how in the House itself, 
 Joseph Hume would eat eighteen oranges in 
 the course of a single speech, while his fellow- 
 members sprawled on the benches cracking 
 filberts. And all this because they were a 
 Crowd ! 
 
 The Parliamentary Crowd, being " an amor- 
 phous creature without a brain," it has to 
 get its thinking done by a council called a 
 Cabinet. But you must go further back a 
 moment ; the constituencies are Crowds, amor- 
 phous creatures with no brains, and they elect 
 " the amorphous Parliament," so you behold 
 in the present Cabinet the political thinking 
 apparatus of the whole nation. But the 
 Cabinet, numbering nineteen or so instead of
 
 The Perils of Crowding 
 
 nine, is itself a Crowd, as amorphous as the 
 rest ; so the inner camarilla say Mr. Balfour, 
 Mr. Akers-Douglas, and Lord Halsbury 
 supply us all with thought. When one of 
 them makes a speech you know that you 
 are getting water straight from the main. 
 The quaintest thing is that the House-Crowd 
 sometimes upsets the Cabinet-Crowd, or the 
 Nation-Crowd makes a clean sweep of both. 
 If the world had only known the nature of 
 Crowds ages ago, say about the time of Simon 
 de Montfort, would Parliaments have come into 
 existence ? Apparently Sir Martin Conway 
 thinks not ; but there is a still greater problem. 
 If, before society began, when man was still 
 boasting the life of the blessed Individualist, 
 and avoiding such entanglements as commit- 
 tees, conversaziones, and tea-meetings if he 
 could have then foreseen to what debase- 
 ment a gregarious instinct might lead, would 
 he not have remained a free and independent 
 cave-dweller, and so have preserved his reason, 
 morals, and religion ? 
 
 Well, well ! This speculative retrospect 
 doesn't help us much. What are we to do 
 now ? If you can detach yourself from the 
 Crowd, you may write like Sir Martin Conway, 
 compared with whom Diogenes was a flighty
 
 Points of View 
 
 optimist and Timon a humanitarian. You 
 may say that the Crowd is "a mean creature 
 of low habits, untrustworthy, incapable of 
 settled opinions, passionate, and of sickly 
 sentimentality." Yes, but even Diogenes 
 lived in a tub, and you probably live in a 
 club. Sir Martin Conway, a famous moun- 
 taineer, dwells, I presume, on a peak in the 
 Andes, far from the madding crowd and its 
 contagion. But the Club-Crowd ; I feel it 
 pressing on me now, even as I write " devoid 
 of all the higher intelligences that are present 
 in the individual brain." O my individual 
 brain I know it is going ! 
 
 136
 
 XVIII Logic for Women 1 
 
 MISS CONSTANCE JONES is 
 Principal of Girton College, and 
 her Primer exposes the fallacy 
 that women are incapable of 
 logic. At Girton, it is clear, Major Premiss 
 is not mistaken for a gentleman in the King's 
 uniform ; and although Syllogisms have their 
 Moods, these are not of the feminine variety. 
 All the Moods have technical names, and one of 
 them is Barbara ; but even Barbara shows signs 
 of severe mental training. The " Syllogism in 
 Barbara " does not lead a Girton girl to reason 
 thus : John is a monster ; all men are like 
 John ; all men are monsters. 
 
 We have known pessimism generated in a 
 feminine mind by a process not unlike this. 
 But Barbara does not need a little judicious 
 petting on the part of John to recover her 
 spirits, and her faith in mankind. She does 
 not concern herself with John at all. In the 
 Primer of Miss Constance Jones she operates 
 in this manner : All opposed to fiscal reform are 
 too conservative ; all Radicals are opposed to 
 
 1 " Primer of Logic," by E. Constance Jones. London, Murray, 
 is. 6d. 
 
 137
 
 Points of View 
 
 fiscal reform ; all Radicals are too conservative. 
 It is not an expression of political opinion, but 
 an illustration of Premisses that justify the 
 Conclusion. No ; Barbara is not an insidious 
 Tariff Reformer ; she is simply a Figure ; and 
 a Figure in logic has nothing to do with small 
 waists. 
 
 Many admirable women have scoffed at logic. 
 They have treated it as a masculine attribute, 
 and have shown that woman has no use for 
 it. If she can conceive by swift intuition what 
 man can master only by a laborious process 
 of reasoning, of what service to her would be 
 a logical mind ? But is man entitled to claim 
 logic as his natural inheritance ? How many 
 of us can affirm that our minds work syste- 
 matically according to the technical apparatus 
 of the Girton Primer ? Are we all ready to 
 detect the Fallacy of Amphibology, wherein 
 we have " an ambiguity of construction which 
 allows of a plurality of interpretations " ? 
 Why, this very Fallacy of Amphibology 
 (though nobody knows it by that highly re- 
 spectable name) is the life and soul of our 
 Parliamentary system. Without it the House 
 of Commons would be reduced to silence. 
 There is only one man there who shows it 
 up, and that is the Speaker. But imagine a 
 
 138
 
 Logic for Women 
 
 Minister answering a question without the help 
 of Amphibology ! 
 
 A man may acquire a certain breadth of 
 mind from his contact with the world, but to 
 call him a logical being is gross exaggeration. 
 All his personal feelings are at war with the 
 Girton Primer. He is not a disembodied 
 Figure like Barbara, but a creature of passions 
 and prejudices, which cannot be eliminated 
 from his nature. He attaches himself to a 
 party, and his party shouts its war-cries with- 
 out the slightest regard for Syllogisms. He 
 upholds the religious dogmas in which he was 
 born, and what has logic to do with them ? 
 Looking back on the history of mankind, will 
 anybody say that logic has played more than 
 an infinitesimal part in it? Sentiment often 
 a vastly misdirected sentiment has played a 
 prodigious part ; and we, in whom a particular 
 sentiment has weakened with the lapse of ages, 
 may smile at the follies of our ancestors, in 
 whom it was dominant ; but our own contri- 
 bution to the sum of wisdom will be equally 
 diverting to those who come after us. 
 
 For this reason the historical student at 
 Girton, convinced by her reading that human 
 nature is incurably illogical, may be tempted to 
 smile at the Primer of Miss Constance Jones. 
 
 i39
 
 Points of View 
 
 What is the use of Syllogisms which carefully 
 avoid actualities ? There was a period in the 
 history of our currency when a ten-shilling 
 piece was called an angel. So a specious Syl- 
 logism may be constructed thus : All women 
 are angels ; all angels are worth ten shillings 
 apiece ; all women are worth ten shillings. 
 This is not the mood of Barbara, needless to 
 say. She would scorn to attribute angelic 
 qualities to all women, although some eminent 
 men have done it without a blush. 
 
 That all women are angels is a poetical 
 figment ; to reduce them to the value of 
 ten shillings is sordid pessimism. Both the 
 pessimism and the figment are interesting ; 
 and the logic which entertains neither is not. 
 Nothing in life has any real hold upon us 
 except its fallacies. You find a proof of this 
 in the one human touch of the Girton Primer. 
 "Jevons says that Jeremy Bentham was so 
 much afraid of being misled by the Fallacy 
 of Accent that he used to employ a person to 
 read to him who had a particularly monoton- 
 ous way of reading." Poor old Jeremy ! He 
 wanted to guard his precious intellect against 
 the cajolery of the human voice. 
 
 Rob the orator of his persuasive music ; rob 
 woman of her tearful accents ; strip humanity 
 
 140
 
 Logic for Women 
 
 of every fascinating irrelevance ; banish the 
 fallacious promptings we draw from Nature 
 with every breath ; and then you may have a 
 race of beings fitted to conduct their affairs in 
 accordance with the Girton Primer. Does no 
 misgiving cross the mind of Miss Constance 
 Jones when she contemplates the figure of 
 Jeremy Bentham listening to a voice without 
 a soul ? Could there be a greater fallacy than 
 his assumption that, in his own mind, he was 
 distilling what he heard into pure reason, un- 
 affected by personal bias ? Let the Girton girl, 
 who despairs of reasoning as dispassionately as 
 Barbara in her Mood, take heart. The Primer 
 of Miss Constance Jones can be quite safely 
 neglected for the more humane ministrations 
 of that accomplished scholar. 
 
 141
 
 XIX Motor Cars and Nervous Sys- 
 tems 
 
 I HAVE no prejudice against motor cars, 
 but I have a nervous system. It received 
 a shock some years ago, when a friend 
 of mine, who keeps a perfect stud of 
 motor cars, drove me from London to Broad- 
 stairs one Bank Holiday. It seemed to me 
 that it was London, London all the way ; 
 streets thronged with children, who might at 
 any moment be reduced to pulp, and with 
 accusing witnesses of our behaviour in a car 
 which had the crushing dignity of a Pickford 
 van. When we came to any open country, we 
 scoured it " scoured the plain " is the classic 
 phrase, I think although, to judge from the 
 dusty expression we left behind us, the plain 
 was none the cleaner for the operation. There 
 was at times a sensation of not touching earth 
 at all, but of ploughing air ; a thrilling sensa- 
 tion which approached delirium. It was useful 
 in a way, for it has enabled me to understand 
 ever since why the motorist, however cautious, 
 when his car is on a bit of unfrequented road, 
 feels the imperious need of letting her go. 
 America is the land of popular phrases, which 
 
 142
 
 Motor Cars and Nervous Systems 
 
 spring heaven knows whence, and mean heaven 
 knows what. I remember a season when the 
 popular phrase in every American city was, 
 " Let her go, Gallagher ! " Who Gallagher 
 was, who or what she was, and why he ought 
 to let her go, I asked in vain. I asked 
 American statesmen, philosophers, and jour- 
 nalists, and they didn't know. Nobody knows 
 to this day. But on the way to Broadstairs I 
 gave a crazy shout " Let her go, Gallagher ! " 
 feeling that Gallagher must be the other name 
 of Phoebus Apollo, who used to drive the 
 horses of the sun, but is now the chauffeur of 
 that celestial Panhard. 
 
 Since then my nervous system has been shy 
 of Gallagher. Electric broughams that glide 
 about the town with a gentle hum (the cabmen 
 call them " 'ummin' birds," meaning to be de- 
 risive ; but it is really a poetical compliment) 
 are entirely to my taste. I'd own one if I 
 could afford it. When I see electric broughams 
 waiting at the portals of the mighty the 
 portals which have blossomed out in awnings 
 and other symptoms of the evening party I 
 think how delightful it must be to the ladies 
 who will be whisked home in the early morn- 
 ing with a sound as of bees beginning the day's 
 employment how delightful to know that
 
 Points of View 
 
 they are not keeping horses standing in the 
 chill air ! If I owned an electric brougham, 
 and had been invited to that evening party, I 
 should not be able to resist the humanitarian 
 impulse to say to some lady whose horses were 
 waiting : " What a blessing it will be for the 
 poor horse when he is no longer kept out of 
 his nice warm stable ; when science has done 
 away with him and his stable, and set up a garage 
 instead ! " So you see that any observations of 
 my nervous system that may seem unfriendly to 
 motor cars in general are not prompted by envy. 
 
 Envy, I am grieved to note, is freely attri- 
 buted by some motorists to critics who say 
 that the natural human craving for speed 
 should be restrained by law. I can produce 
 two reputable witnesses to swear that my ner- 
 vous system has declined their frequent invi- 
 tations to another spin with Gallagher. They 
 are devoted to motor cars with a tender solici- 
 tude which other men bestow on wives and 
 families. They cannot understand how any 
 man can take, as I do, the view that high- 
 ways even the unfrequented bits are not 
 meant for the untrammelled energies of loco- 
 motives and engine-drivers. But they do not 
 suspect me of coveting their blessed engines. 
 
 There is something pathetic in the motorist's 
 144.
 
 Motor Cars and Nervous Systems 
 
 belief that if he has a car capable of a high 
 speed he ought to enjoy it. He clings to that 
 unfrequented bit of road where he can " let 
 her go " as if it were created for him. What 
 use is it to anybody else ? The pedestrian 
 cannot appreciate it, with his three or four 
 miles an hour. The cyclist is not worthy of 
 it, for he may be fagged and listless. A four- 
 in-hand cannot do it justice, for the coachman 
 must be careful of his horses. And when it 
 comes to pace, what are even wild horses com- 
 pared with wilder motors ? Yes, that unfre- 
 quented stretch of high-road belongs to the 
 motorist, whose use of it should be left to 
 his unfettered discretion ; and yet there is a 
 terrific fuss about the legal limit of speed 
 whenever he avails himself of his sovereign 
 prerogative. Nervous systems are appalled by 
 the very sight of him. Police lie in ambush 
 to catch his number. Cyclists with red flags 
 warn him of the lurking foe, much as certain 
 small fish are said to warn certain big fish, 
 prowling in the deep. So the motorist who 
 wants to scour the plain at the speed of an 
 express train, whenever he thinks proper, re- 
 gards himself as a poor hunted creature, and 
 the law as an instrument of oppression, which 
 is a disgrace to a free country. 
 
 MS K
 
 Points of View 
 
 I note that Mr. Scott Montagu, who is a 
 man of sense, is projecting a corporation of 
 motorists, to be called " The Considerate Driv- 
 ing League." He tells his brother-motorists 
 this week that " public indignation is again 
 rising strongly against, not the use, but the 
 abuse, of roads by motor cars " ; that members 
 of Parliament are beset by furious constituents ; 
 and that if the Motor Car Act should be re- 
 newed next year the penalties may be doubled 
 and the speed halved. That seems very likely 
 indeed. As it is, many local authorities are 
 demanding that in their areas the speed should 
 be reduced to ten miles an hour. Evidently 
 they are not in the mood to make over those 
 unfrequented bits of highway for the motorists 
 to sport with. Mr. Scott Montagu has drawn 
 up some " Maxims " for his league. Members 
 are required to " drive slowly through towns 
 and villages, when approaching cross roads or 
 turning corners, when passing schools, cottages, 
 and churches, on dusty or muddy roads when 
 passing cyclists and pedestrians, when entering 
 a main road from a side road. These and 
 other directions in the same spirit are admir- 
 able indeed. But are not some of them very 
 like counsels of perfection ? When you are 
 tasting the first fine, careless rapture of a spin 
 
 146
 
 Motor Cars and Nervous Systems 
 
 with Gallagher, are you in the humour to check 
 him at every corner and cross road ? Will a 
 cottage or two cool your ardour, or even a 
 church ? Are you going to drive slowly past 
 every pedestrian because the road happens to 
 be dusty ? Where is it anything but dusty, if 
 you are scouring it ? " Always assume," says 
 Mr. Scott Montagu, " that it is your business, 
 not the other man's, to avoid danger." Well, 
 if the members of the Considerate Driving 
 League can act up to such instructions, they 
 will present one of the most remarkable spec- 
 tacles of discipline that human nature has 
 seen. 
 
 But these " Maxims " do testify to the up- 
 rising of the nervous systems. They show 
 a recognition of the fact that the public will 
 not tolerate the caprices of excessive speed. 
 When the law fixes a limit, and the motorist 
 claims the right to disregard that limit under 
 conditions chosen by himself, he is in danger of 
 provoking the Legislature to fix another limit 
 of a far more peremptory kind. It may be 
 necessary to prohibit the sale and use of motor 
 cars above a certain capacity. When no car 
 can travel faster than twenty miles an hour, the 
 police need not lurk in ditches, and the little 
 fish will not render that charming service to 
 J47
 
 Points of View 
 
 the big fish. When I put this contingency to 
 my motorists, who cherish their cars with a 
 love passing the love of woman, they turn pale 
 with emotion. They see their hearts' delight 
 sacrificed by a ruthless despotism. They assure 
 me earnestly that if so monstrous a law should 
 be enacted they will never drive a motor car 
 again. They predict the ruin of a great and 
 growing industry and the downfall of England ! 
 Well, my nervous system tells me that 
 twenty miles or even less would serve all 
 reasonable purposes of business and sport, even 
 on the bits of road which could be warranted 
 free from cottagers or other obstacles to the 
 impetuous Gallagher. People who want more 
 had better make a motoring tour in Central 
 Asia. If they prefer to stay in this populous 
 isle, let them gratify their love of speed 
 by taking express trains, which are controlled 
 by " Maxims " less stringent than Mr. Scott 
 Montagu's and more feasible. 
 
 148
 
 XX Two Millions 
 
 IF you came suddenly into possession of 
 two millions sterling, what would be 
 your state of mind ? We have all 
 imagined the irruption of a million 
 into our humdrum, hand-to-mouth existence ; 
 how we should be as simple as ever in our 
 tastes ; affable to early friends ; sympathetic 
 to organised charity, without turning a deaf 
 ear to private woe ; generous patrons of arts 
 and letters, without a craving to build free 
 libraries. With the possession of a bare 
 million you could not emulate the educa- 
 tional zeal of Mr. Carnegie. But upon 
 the elderly dame who sweeps a certain cross- 
 ing, and was found one day engrossed 
 in a romance called "A Young Lady of 
 Quality," I should like, were I a millionaire, 
 to settle for life a subscription to Mudie's. 
 Our present inquiry, however, relates to the 
 contingency of two millions. Do you suppose 
 that such affluence would simply mean a 
 proportionate enlargement of ease, a mere 
 doubling of the opportunities set forth above, 
 the endowment, for example, of two crossing- 
 sweepers with a life interest in the sacred fount 
 149
 
 Points of View 
 
 of current fiction ? Or are you prepared for 
 the obligation which the ever-progressive con- 
 science of the age has inspired an American 
 statesman to fix upon the possession of two 
 millions, making it a landmark in the history 
 of morals ? 
 
 The American statesman has brought in 
 a Bill which defines the limit of honesty in 
 opulence. He says that to own more than 
 two millions sterling is not decent. You may 
 have something like seventy thousand a year 
 and be a welcome figure in society ; but if 
 you have as much again you ought to be 
 shunned. If I understand the American 
 statesman, he would penalise this excess on 
 the principle of our new law for the cor- 
 rection of habitual topers. Any citizen con- 
 victed of owning more than ten million dollars 
 should be put on the Black List, and excluded 
 for three years from Wall Street and other 
 marts of industry. Does not this throw a 
 cloud, my friend, over our little fantasy of 
 sudden wealth ? If you became possessed of 
 those millions, you would be in constant dread 
 lest they should increase and multiply. In- 
 stead of giving away money as cheerfully and 
 methodically as Mr. Carnegie, you would 
 plunge into a career of indiscriminate phil-
 
 Two Millions 
 
 anthropy. The newspapers would hint that 
 your reckless benefactions were pauperising 
 the poorer classes. You would not have 
 a moment free from hypochondria. At a 
 certain restaurant I often see a gloomy 
 stranger dining by himself. There was a 
 great commotion on the telephone one even- 
 ing ; somebody had urgent need of him. 
 " Not here," was the response ; " he always 
 goes to bed at half-past ten." " Strange 
 habit," I remarked to the waiter. " Yes," 
 he said. " That is a very wealthy man." 
 Behold your fate when your investments 
 swell beyond the pale of decency. To bed 
 at ten- thirty to hide your shame ! 
 
 Depend upon it, the American statesman 
 has observed a growing sensitiveness among 
 the opulent, a desire for drastic legislation. 
 Mr. Henry James, studying American society 
 with a detached mind in Europe, has perceived 
 the sensitiveness. In his novel, " The Wings 
 
 ' D 
 
 of a Dove," there is an American girl, Milly 
 Theale, who has inherited vast riches. Failing 
 to induce an Englishman to share this burden, 
 she dies of it. To the discerning eye this 
 is poor Milly's tragedy : the dove is crushed 
 by her immoral millions. She leaves some 
 of them to the Englishman in her will ; but
 
 Points of View 
 
 he, too, is so sensitive that he will have none 
 of them. Oddly enough, Mr. W. D. Howells, 
 usually alive to moral lessons, misses this 
 one altogether in his dissertation in the 
 North American Review on Mr. Henry James's 
 art. Milly, says Mr. Howells, is a " lovely 
 impalpability," and " New Yorkish in the 
 very essences that are least associable with 
 the superficial notion of New York." She 
 is the " distilled and wandering fragrance " 
 of that city. Moreover, she has " a Bostonian 
 quality, with the element of conscious worth 
 eliminated and purified as essentially of ped- 
 antry as of commerciality." Such analysis 
 ought to reveal the truth to Mr. Howells ; 
 but the subtlest pulsation of the inpalpable 
 is hidden from him, and he ascribes Milly's 
 refinement to " conditions of illimitable ease, 
 of having had everything that one could wish 
 to have " ; in short, of all that excess above 
 ten million dollars which preys upon the 
 poor girl's mind, and hastens her doom. 
 
 American society has other fragrances, not 
 all distilled from repugnance to the over- 
 growth of dross. Mark Twain tells us that 
 the Christian Science Trust is amassing dollars 
 at such a rate that within thirty years it ought 
 to be the wealthiest corporation in the world.
 
 Two Millions 
 
 Mrs. Baker Eddy, founder of the Trust, is 
 not a "lovely impalpability," but a woman 
 of business. " The Trust gives nothing 
 away; everything it has is for sale. And 
 the terms are cash ; and not only cash, but 
 cash in advance. Its god is Mrs. Eddy first, 
 then the Dollar." The headquarters of the 
 Trust are at Boston, and the element of con- 
 scious worth is not eliminated. It has a 
 college, where the student is taught Christian 
 Science for the modest charge of sixty pounds 
 the course of seven lessons. Mark Twain 
 anticipates that by 1930 the Trust will rule 
 the Republic by the force of votes and a 
 boundless exchequer. Mrs. Eddy is already 
 held by her adherents to be divinely inspired. 
 After her death she will be an object of public 
 worship ; and pilgrimages to her tomb will 
 be enormously lucrative to her executors. 
 The Trust does not waste money on charities. 
 Any disciple who may be perplexed by this 
 branch of Mrs. Eddy's economy is reassured 
 in these terms : " We must have faith in Our 
 Mother, and rest content in the conviction 
 that, whatever She does with the money, it 
 is in accordance with orders from Heaven." 
 This process, Mark Twain calculates, should 
 make the resources of the Trust in thirty
 
 Points of View 
 
 years about a billion dollars ; and if a billion 
 means, as some arithmeticians say, a thousand 
 millions, the Trust will have a capital of 
 two hundred millions sterling, without any 
 of the misgivings that would haunt you and 
 me if a paltry couple of millions should 
 descend upon each of us. 
 
 This is not one of Mark Twain's jokes. 
 Mrs. Eddy, he says, has a million adherents 
 now, all possessed by the belief that Christian 
 Science relieves the elect not merely from 
 bodily ills, but also from "frets, fears, vexa- 
 tions, bitterness, and all sorts of imagination- 
 propagated maladies and pains." The world 
 is filled with sunshine, and the heart with 
 gladness. If you suffer from melancholy, 
 you send for the Christian Science student 
 who has taken his lessons at sixty pounds the 
 course of seven ; he utters an incantation, and 
 straightway you imagine that all is well. It 
 does not appear that the incantation will 
 bring material comfort, if you are in poverty ; 
 but it will make you regard poverty as a 
 delusion, like toothache or sciatica. " If 
 Christian Science," says Mark Twain, " with 
 this stupendous equipment and final salvation 
 added cannot win half the Christian globe, 
 I must be badly mistaken in the make-up of 
 '54
 
 Two Millions 
 
 the human race." Half the Christian globe, 
 lighter-hearted than Mark Tapley, persuaded 
 that want is a baffled nightmare, bereavement 
 a joy, that life is not a walking shadow but 
 a song this is itself a forecast which does 
 Mark Twain's imagination considerable credit. 
 Perhaps the Trust already regards him with 
 smiling assurance as more than half converted. 
 But why did Mr. Henry James sacrifice 
 Milly, the lovely and impalpable, when she 
 might have given her superfluous dollars to 
 the Trust, and spread her dovelike wings in 
 the Bostonian atmosphere of conscious worth ? 
 And why need you and I sit mournfully in 
 the shadow of the American statesman's Bill ? 
 If the Trust is going to administer the Re- 
 public in the year 1930, the millionaires may 
 as well be cured of hypochondria at once. 
 Mark Twain hints not obscurely that Mrs. 
 Eddy's principles will triumph in Great Britain. 
 Then why not let fortune have her own way ? 
 You can reconcile yourself to those two 
 millions sterling, and a possible increment, 
 without subscribing a farthing to the Trust. 
 And instead of going to bed at half-past ten, 
 you can hear the chimes at midnight in a 
 modestly cheerful company.
 
 XXI The White Hat 
 
 I REMEMBER wearing a tall White 
 Hat a great many years ago, because 
 in that golden age every man wore a 
 White Hat in summer time. It was 
 the period when trousers of a black and white 
 check pattern rather a large check, too were 
 considered " high-toned," as the Americans 
 say, in league with the frock coat. About 
 that time I possessed, but was afraid to wear, 
 a pair of check trousers, made out of a shawl 
 (you know the striking patterns of old-fashioned 
 shawls) which had belonged to a thrifty aunt. 
 She, good soul, thought she was doing me a 
 service in days when there was little money to 
 spend on trifles, and I had not the heart to say 
 that trousers of such an origin would scarcely 
 commend themselves to the public eye, except 
 in some remote parts of Scotland. As a matter 
 of fact, the public eye nearly started out of the 
 public head at the sight of them. Rude little 
 street boys seemed to think those trousers had 
 been made for their special joy. Worse still, 
 charming damsels whom one naturally desired 
 to impress, arched their eyebrows, and mur- 
 mured, " Well, I never ! " So I was glad to 
 
 156
 
 The White Hat 
 
 dispose of those checks to a friend who was 
 then in a solicitor's office, and he wore them 
 with great intrepidity. To-day he is one of 
 the most eminent of King's Counsel ; he repre- 
 sents a great constituency in the House of 
 Commons ; and he is tolerably certain to end as 
 Lord Chancellor. Sometimes I think that my 
 aunt and I were the architects of his fortunes. 
 
 Why did the White Hat decline from its 
 proud eminence and almost disappear from the 
 haunts of men, save, perhaps, TattersalFs and 
 the Turf? A few old gentlemen continued to 
 wear it here and there ; it imparted a pleasantly 
 rakish air to advancing years ; but young men, 
 for the most part, gave it up. Some of them 
 may have been deterred (as I was in that affair 
 of my aunt's translated shawl) by the rude 
 little street boys, who were not yet subdued 
 by compulsory elementary education. I have 
 seen a timid youth, escorting his sister or his 
 cousin, greatly embarrassed by the shrill cry of 
 " Who stole the donkey ? The man in the 
 White Hat ! " How well I remember hearing 
 him on one occasion eagerly assuring his com- 
 panions that he had not stolen the donkey, and 
 was, indeed, quite incapable of stealing donkeys! 
 Moreover, he pointed out that if he had com- 
 mitted this felonious act, he would naturally
 
 Points of View 
 
 do his best to efface all trace of it by wearing 
 a black hat. But the sting of the street boy's 
 gibe would not be drawn by logic. He was 
 equally disconcerting when he inquired, with an 
 air of great eagerness : " Who's your hatter ? " 
 It was evident that if you had tried to counter 
 this sally by giving him the desired information, 
 he would have responded gravely, " Thank you, 
 I shall lose no time in ordering a tile like 
 yours ! " 
 
 I suppose that the board schools quelled 
 the spirit of inquiry or directed it into other 
 channels. When the street boy went to school 
 and learned sums and dates, his appetite for 
 knowledge was satiated, and he had no longer 
 that burning wish to make your hatter's ac- 
 quaintance. When I hear people complain 
 about the ill-effects of the board school educa- 
 tion on the manners of the young, I contrast 
 the average town urchin of to-day with an 
 earlier generation, and wonder how this tame, 
 spiritless atom can be called rude ! You seldom 
 hear his voice ; he seems almost to have lost 
 the art of whistling. When I think of the 
 street boys I used to know, who shouted with 
 immense relish the refrain of a popular ballad 
 
 " So let the world jog along as it will, 
 I'll be free and easy still," 
 158
 
 The White Hat 
 
 I see that the boys of the present time, with 
 all the vivacity crushed out of them by the 
 educational machine, do not even know what 
 ease and freedom mean. 
 
 Yes ; but this may be the very reason why 
 the White Hat is beginning to bloom again. 
 It cometh up as a flower, timidly, as if not 
 quite sure that the nipping blast of juvenile 
 ridicule is over. It is said that the highest 
 personage in the realm is striving to encourage 
 the nervous blossom. There is a story of a 
 distinguished man who went to his hatter's to 
 buy a new silk hat for the garden party at 
 Windsor. "Let me recommend the White 
 Hat," said the smiling tradesman. The dis- 
 tinguished man, who has a taste for literature, 
 drily observed : " Ah ! I remember now that 
 in 'Alice in Wonderland' the Mad Hatter 
 wears a White Hat." " Sir," said the trades- 
 man with dignity, " let me tell you that at the 
 garden party a White Hat will be worn by 
 the highest personage in the realm." " Good 
 heavens ! " exclaimed the distinguished man 
 uneasily, " if what you say be true my remark 
 
 savours of ' " High treason," said the 
 
 hatter grimly. " But I will not inform against 
 you. And now what do you say to a White 
 Hat ? " The troubled customer bought it
 
 Points of View 
 
 hastily and repaired to Windsor. He strolled 
 through the Castle grounds, and saw many of 
 his friends, but there was not a White Hat 
 amongst them. "Hullo!" said they, " where 
 did you get that hat ? " " Don't be vulgar," 
 said he. " Vulgar," said they, rather nettled, 
 
 " we have asked you a civil question " 
 
 " Oh yes, of course ! And your civil question 
 is a line from a stupid comic song, and what's 
 more, it is out of date, like you and your black 
 silk hat ! " 
 
 A ripple of mirth fluttered through the 
 historic trees. "Out of date!" echoed the 
 gleeful crowd. " Why, man, no White Hat 
 has been seen at Windsor since George the 
 Fourth. And his was a beaver." A spasm 
 of misgiving shot through that distinguished 
 man. " So was the Mad Hatter's ! " he said 
 to himself. But there was nothing for it but 
 to keep a bold face. " Just you wait," he 
 said to the crowd, " until you see the highest 
 personage in the realm. If he is not wearing 
 a White Hat, I'll stand new black hats for the 
 lot of you." " Agreed ! " they cried joyously. 
 " But if you are wrong, you'll stand me White 
 Hats for the next ten years," he went on, 
 secretly annoyed at his own bravado. They 
 concurred with rapture. News of this extra- 
 
 160
 
 The White Hat 
 
 ordinary wager ran through the garden party, 
 and everybody said that the distinguished man 
 had seen his best days, and was evidently going 
 in the top storey. But suddenly the band 
 struck up the National Anthem, and the 
 highest personage in the realm appeared on 
 the scene ; and with him was the next highest 
 personage in the line of succession ; and lo ! 
 they were both wearing White Hats ! "By 
 Jove ! " murmured the distinguished man under 
 his breath, " my hatter is not mad after all ! " 
 But to the crowd who surrounded him, and 
 overwhelmed him with congratulations, he 
 merely said, " Ah ! you see ! " And they all 
 agreed that his best days were only just be- 
 ginning. 
 
 Now, I am assured on excellent authority 
 (as we say in the newspapers) that this was 
 the origin of the present revival ; but I meet 
 one man after another, who says, " Pooh ! If 
 you were not so decidedly unobservant you 
 would have noticed that I have worn a White 
 Hat these two seasons. Why, man, I started 
 the fashion ! " I met a popular dramatist, and 
 said to him : " Hallo ! You in a White Hat ! " 
 " My dear fellow," he replied, " it was new 
 for my daughter's wedding last year. And 
 pray observe that it isn't your commonplace 
 161 L
 
 Points of View 
 
 White, but a delicate shade of grey, and I have 
 had this new grey suit made to match it." " I 
 see you like a big black band." " * Butcher's 
 mourning,' they call it in the trade. I don't 
 know why." When I related this to an emi- 
 nent dramatic critic his comment was charac- 
 teristic. " He means his own trade. That 
 mourning is for his last play, which I had the 
 pleasure of cutting up ! " 
 
 I have a friend who has come out strong 
 in a tall cream-coloured hat, which harmonises 
 with his rather saturnine beauty. It is clear 
 that the White Hat does not suit every man. 
 I am expecting a fulminator in the Times from 
 Mr. Bernard Shaw against the attempt to im- 
 pose this formula upon a masculine community 
 which ought to express itself in a stimulating 
 variety of hats. Mr. Shaw has denounced our 
 evening dress, especially the artificially whitened 
 shirt, which, he says, is " seriously unclean." 
 In his eyes the White Hat may be no better 
 than a soiled dove. I am not without hopes 
 that he will start a propagandist mission and 
 visit the principal towns of England in a Green 
 Hat. If he will I shall be with him, hat and 
 soul. Erin-go-bragh ! 
 
 162
 
 XXII The After-Dinner Speech 
 
 SIR FRANCIS BERTIE, our Ambas- 
 sador in Paris, has made a bold 
 innovation. At the banquet of the 
 British Chambers of Commerce, when 
 his health was drunk, he rose and " bowed his 
 acknowledgments." The company were taken 
 aback. A silent Ambassador at a public dinner: 
 who had ever heard of such a paradox ? I 
 remember a feast given by a literary club, 
 with the Persian Minister in London as the 
 chief guest. The club was devoted to Omar 
 Khayyam, and one of the members was ready 
 to toast the guest with quotations from Omar 
 and Hafiz in the original. But he had no 
 luck, for the Minister, having eaten his dinner, 
 unfolded his overcoat and like the Arabs 
 silently stole away. That affair is an "Asian 
 mystery" to this hour. Perhaps Sir Francis 
 Bertie had heard of it, and thought it an ex- 
 cellent example. Why should Ambassadors 
 imperil diplomacy by making after-dinner 
 speeches ? Mr. Choate makes them in abund- 
 ance ; but, then, American diplomacy is noted 
 for its frankness. It is only in Europe and 
 Asia that diplomatic secrets have to be guarded. 
 163
 
 Points of View 
 
 Perhaps Sir Francis was guarding them when 
 he " bowed his acknowledgments." 
 
 There is another hypothesis, which brings 
 me to the serious point of this article. After- 
 dinner speaking is a special and peculiar art. 
 You may hold the House of Commons en- 
 tranced by the hour ; you may keep a public 
 meeting hanging on your lightest word. Yet 
 after dinner you may bore your audience to 
 death, or make a slip which moves them to 
 fatal mirth. This singular phenomenon im- 
 pressed itself on me early in youth. When 
 but a lad I was present at a municipal banquet 
 given to Charles Dickens in a city not far 
 from Manchester. I did not take my little 
 porringer and eat my dinner there, as Words- 
 worth would say ; but I sat in the gallery and 
 heard the speeches. What do I remember ? 
 Simply the dreadful thing that happened to 
 the gentleman who proposed the toast of 
 " The Ladies." He was a very clever, very 
 fluent barrister, who had distinguished him- 
 self mightily in the Courts. But when he 
 proposed this toast he made that fatal slip. 
 " Speaking for the ladies," he said, " and for 
 
 myself as one of them " There was a 
 
 titter, and I caught a gleam from Dickens's 
 wonderful eyes. He responded to the toast, 
 
 164
 
 The After-Dinner Speech 
 
 and began thus : " The learned lady who has 
 
 just sat down " Well, the shout that 
 
 stormed through the hall still rings in my 
 ears. Perhaps that clever barrister is now a 
 judge ; but I wonder whether the lesson he 
 received on that memorable night made him 
 reticent after dinner. Is he careful now to 
 " bow his acknowledgments " ? 
 
 As for boring our audiences with the best 
 intentions, how many offenders have I known ! 
 Men of parts, mind you, none of your in- 
 audible worthies, county magnates and the like, 
 who remain long on their legs, extolling " The 
 Army, Navy, and Reserve Forces." No ; I am 
 thinking of poets, statesmen, scholars, novelists, 
 and colonial governors. I remember a poet, 
 one of the most brilliant men of his generation, 
 who responded for "The Drama/' and bored 
 us with the argument that the theatre was no 
 place for the public. It should be the private 
 sanctuary of the dramatist, who would give 
 away boxes and stalls to his enlightened friends. 
 We thought this was a joke at first ; but it 
 was a thesis, and threatened to consume the 
 night. Now, Britons never, never will be 
 slaves to the after-dinner bore. We put him 
 down by banging plates with the handles of 
 forks. It is sometimes a brutal thing, but 
 165
 
 Points of View 
 
 then I remember another poet, a lovable 
 
 being from America, who lost himself entirely 
 in a monologue. I believe he had forgotten 
 all about us, and thought he was alone on an 
 Alpine peak, like Manfred. The pathetic 
 look that came into his eyes when he under- 
 stood that we were executing him as a bore 
 I shall never forget. 
 
 I have known a popular novelist, at a 
 dinner in his honour, drive the company to the 
 fork-handles. That incident was not without 
 humour. Another novelist of my acquaint- 
 ance had the unhappy idea that the art of 
 after-dinner speaking consists in saying any- 
 thing that comes into your head, and keeping 
 everybody waiting until it does come. One 
 of his pauses was interrupted by somebody 
 with this quotation 
 
 " It cometh not, we said ; 
 We are weary, weary, weary, 
 We would we were in bed." 
 
 You will scarcely believe it, but that novelist 
 accused me of having spoiled his oration. I 
 remember a Spanish scholar, who mistook a 
 dinner-table for an institute, where one listens 
 patiently to lectures ; also a colonial governor, 
 who seemed to think we were a legislative 
 assembly, and that he was opening the session. 
 
 166
 
 The After-Dinner Speech 
 
 He braved the fork-handles right gallantly, 
 but I have never been certain whether this was 
 the dauntless spirit of the haughty pro-Consul, 
 or whether he had got the speech by rote, and 
 had to go on until he ran down, like a clock. 
 
 How are these misadventures to be avoided ? 
 What is the art of after-dinner speaking ? I 
 should say, in the first place, that it is the art 
 of pleasing. Remember that for about ten or 
 fifteen minutes you have to tickle the fancy of 
 people who have dined. You are a showman 
 a cut or two, maybe, above the gentleman 
 who entertains the company with a " humor- 
 ous sketch," and who is sometimes rather a 
 dangerous rival, by the way ; still, you are a 
 showman. You must calculate your effects 
 with the utmost nicety, and make them with 
 such a spontaneous air that although nobody 
 really supposes them to be improvised, you 
 can sometimes create the illusion that they 
 are. You must have the whole bag of tricks 
 carefully sorted before you sit down to dinner, 
 and yet you must be able to fashion a fresh 
 one out of something in the conversation, or 
 a hint from a previous speaker, and fix it 
 neatly in its proper place. The occasion of 
 the dinner and the people who will be there 
 furnish you beforehand with a theme which 
 167
 
 Points of View 
 
 must not resemble anybody else's theme. You 
 must know by sympathetic instinct that it will 
 surprise and charm. Surprise, indeed, is the 
 secret of the composition : to arrest atten- 
 tion with the opening sentences, and then 
 keep curiosity at full stretch until you reach 
 your grand disclosure, throwing in dramatic 
 "asides," and artfully provoking interruptions 
 which you know exactly how to meet : this is 
 the show. 
 
 " Phew ! " you may say. " What a business ! 
 Who is going to take all that trouble?" 
 Very few do take it. The art of after-dinner 
 speaking has no commercial value. Lecturers 
 are paid ; preachers are paid ; demagogues get 
 their little account ; but the consummate artist 
 who makes fifteen minutes sparkle after dinner 
 finds no cheque under his plate. " It's the 
 deuce of a job," he said to me, as we walked 
 away from one of his triumphs. " You see, it 
 is on my mind for days. I prepare it in the 
 street mostly. When you notice motor cars 
 pulled up short, and policemen wildly waving 
 their arms, you may guess that I have thought 
 of a capital phrase in the middle of a crossing. 
 Then I spout it twenty times over in my bed- 
 room. Then, if one's nerves are not quite the 
 ticket, there's the risk of dropping a sentence 
 
 168
 
 The After-Dinner Speech 
 
 and upsetting the whole blessed caboodle. Oh, 
 it's the deuce of a job, and all the reward is 
 the art of it ! " He looked with wistful rap- 
 ture at the stars. I wonder whether he will 
 retire from the profession one day and be 
 content, like Sir Francis Bertie, to " bow his 
 acknowledgments ! " 
 
 169
 
 XXIII Bridge 
 
 I POINTED out to him, in one of the 
 journals which expound the mind of 
 women, the passage which had tickled 
 my fancy. Something of the kind I 
 had read before ; that women no longer crave 
 for the society of man ; that they make agree- 
 able coteries without his help ; that they carry 
 on animated conversations, in which he and his 
 concerns play no part ; that he is an overrated 
 adjunct of civilisation ; and that, speaking 
 broadly, he has been found out. "You, as 
 a squire of dames," I said to my friend, " can 
 tell me whether this is an omen or only a bit 
 of feminine bluff. Is it the periodical dressing 
 down that man deserves, or is it a genuine 
 development of sociology which calls for serious 
 notice from Mr. Herbert Spencer ? Is it a 
 solemn warning, in short, or only a new finesse 
 of coquetry ? Does woman sing the old song 
 to us with plaintive meaning 
 
 ' I don't want to play in your yard, 
 I won't love you any more ' ? 
 
 Or does she ? " " My dear Jaques," he 
 
 broke in, " you are the complacent sentimen- 
 
 170
 
 Bridge 
 
 talist who always asks a string of silly questions. 
 And you take it for granted that woman has 
 no real interest apart from man, and that when 
 she starts off at a tangent she can be brought 
 back with an indulgent smile, and a little 
 sugar." 
 
 " You mistake me," I returned with dignity. 
 " This is a genuine inquiry, and I am soliciting 
 a few statistics." "A few fiddlesticks!" he 
 retorted. " Let me show you the shallowness 
 of your philosophy about women. A year or 
 two ago it was said that the craze for bridge 
 would soon pass, because women could not go 
 on sitting day and night in comparative silence. 
 No game of cards could kill the love of gossip. 
 And yet, at this moment, there are houses 
 where gossip is never heard, where all the talk 
 
 at dinner turns on cards " " And a spade 
 
 is called a spade with innocent freedom ! " 
 "You have not grasped the situation," he 
 continued. " Imagine a dinner-party where 
 you are the only guest who does not play, 
 and to whom the terminology of bridge has 
 no more meaning than the theology of Tibet. 
 It is an excellent dinner, but you notice that 
 it is uncomfortably hurried. When you turn 
 to your neighbour, a too dexterous servant 
 whisks away your plate. When you linger 
 171
 
 Points of View 
 
 over some toothsome dainty, you are soon 
 aware that the rest of the company are watching 
 you with cold surprise. You explain to your 
 companion, with a delicately facetious air, that 
 you are no gourmet, but really this is a capital 
 dinner; and she remarks that dinners now- 
 adays are such a waste of time when the green 
 card-tables are waiting in the drawing-room ! " 
 " But your celebrated fund of topical anec- 
 dote ! " I asked, " what becomes of that ? " 
 " Bridge has killed anecdote ; the women don't 
 want to hear it." " Nonsense," I said. 
 
 " ' The ladies of St. James's wear satin on their backs, 
 They sit all night at ombre with candles made of wax.' 
 
 When women did that they lived in the most 
 gossiping age that we know. If ombre did 
 not still their tongues, why should bridge ? 
 And why were you asked to that dinner-party 
 if not to tell your stories, constantly recruited 
 from the best sources ? " " With your un- 
 progressive mind, my dear Jacques," he an- 
 swered, " you naturally forget that ombre was 
 an eighteenth-century game, and we are now 
 in the twentieth century. I can only tell you 
 that when we repaired to the green tables which 
 were waiting in the drawing-room, a religious 
 hush fell upon the scene. When an hour had 
 
 172
 
 Bridge 
 
 passed, and nobody had spoken ten words, I 
 put in one of my liveliest yarns. There was 
 not a smile. I doubt whether they had heard 
 me, but at the end they all rose simultaneously, 
 walked round the tables with a rapt, ecstatic 
 air, and then sat down again, as if they had 
 performed some necessary rite." " Changing 
 seats for luck," I suggested. "A common 
 trick with gamblers." " Much you know 
 about it," said he contemptuously. " When 
 they broke up, one of the women had won a 
 shilling, and had not uttered a syllable for four 
 hours. She put the shilling in her purse with 
 reverence, and her face shone with a spiritual 
 ardour. I may as well tell you she is a girl I 
 am uncommonly fond of, and that all this time 
 she was simply unconscious of my existence." 
 
 " But you were asked to the party to meet 
 her, I suppose?" "The reason appeared in 
 all its moral beauty next day, when my hostess 
 sent an urgent message that she wanted to see 
 me. When I arrived, she said, ' I want to talk 
 to you seriously about dear Julia, who has told 
 me that you wish to marry her. The sweet 
 child is one of us, but alas ! I fear you can 
 never be. Your presence at our little gather- 
 ing last night was meant to be a test, and you 
 sadly disappointed me. You talked at dinner
 
 Points of View 
 
 about worldly things the theatre and import 
 duties ; and when we were deep in bridge, you 
 actually told a story ! ' I murmured my con- 
 trition, and expressed the hope that she had not 
 seen the point. ' Heaven forbid,' said she, ' and 
 I am sure dear Julia never saw it ; but her 
 partner did, for he has written to me this morn- 
 ing to say that it was a most disturbing element, 
 and that he hopes he shall never meet you again. 
 Now, please forgive me if I speak to you very 
 plainly. Julia tells me that you dislike bridge, 
 and that you have refused to learn it, and I can 
 easily understand why. You are a born story- 
 teller, and the whole object of story-telling is 
 to gratify the taste for scandal, a base element 
 of human nature, with which the bridge-player 
 is at war. You must have some good qualities, 
 or dear Julia would not think as much of you 
 as she does ; but you cannot enter into the 
 communion of bridge, and therefore you cannot 
 make her really happy. How could she marry 
 a man who would always be telling her stories 
 about import duties and the theatre ? ' 
 
 " Now," added my friend, " you may have 
 some idea of the new feminine movement of 
 this century." " But you don't mean to tell 
 me," I said, " that you have acquiesced in this 
 interference with your love affair ? Don't you
 
 Bridge 
 
 suspect there is some game besides bridge at 
 that house ? What about the lady's partner, 
 who was so upset by the point of your 
 anecdote ?" " Oh, he's old enough to be Julia's 
 great-grandfather. It is astonishing how bridge 
 keeps these old buffers alive when they are dead 
 to everything else. I believe that, in some family 
 vaults, the skeletons sit up every night with the 
 cards, and it's a rule of propriety not to rattle 
 their bones ! But I am trying to divert Julia's 
 mind now by taking her out in a fast motor 
 car. When I am driving forty miles an hour, 
 and avoiding market-carts and village geese, it 
 is no time for telling her stories. The fines 
 are troublesome, but I have nearly persuaded 
 her that a honeymoon in a motor would be a 
 beautiful calm with a little dust, but no 
 gossip ! " 
 
 When I saw him again, a few weeks after 
 this instructive conversation, he handed me a 
 letter. " I'm done, after all ! " he said. " She's 
 married the great-grandfather." "Your motor 
 car was lovely," she wrote, " and to go miles 
 and miles without a sound but the startled 
 quack of the village goose was so peaceful ! 
 But when I learned that under the new Bill 
 you would be liable to three months' imprison- 
 ment without the option of a fine, I saw to
 
 Points of View 
 
 what an awful scandal our honeymoon might 
 give rise. Just think what people would say, 
 and how much you would have to say when 
 you come out of gaol ! I love you, but I must 
 not run that risk. Only my beloved bridge 
 gives me rest, and to-morrow morning I shall 
 marry the best bridge-player in London ! Best 
 for me, and best for you. You need not go to 
 prison now ! " 
 
 176
 
 XXIV Our Mother Tongue 
 
 PROFESSOR Brander Matthews, of 
 Columbia University, is good 
 enough to report from time to 
 time upon the " healthy develop- 
 ment of our mother tongue." He has an 
 article in Harper s Magazine upon the proper 
 use of foreign words. Our mother tongue 
 cannot do without the foreigner. He is as 
 needful as the food supply, and you cannot 
 prohibit him like bounty-fed sugar. " Why 
 not speak English ? " asks Mr. Matthews, 
 who shows us how to naturalise the foreigner 
 by giving him an English plural, or taking 
 him out of the italics which mark him as 
 an alien. Thus encore is French, but encore 
 is English. The enthusiast who shouts " En- 
 core ! " after a favourite song little thinks 
 how much he owes to France. What did he 
 shout before this useful importation ? The 
 French enthusiast, by the way, cries ".fiw/" 
 when he wants the song again. To an English 
 ear it sounds like " Beast ! " which may be the 
 reason why our mother tongue has not made 
 it one of the family. But how could the great 
 heart of the people throb responsive to the 
 
 177 M
 
 Points of View 
 
 universal sentiment of the music-hall without 
 au revoir? "Say au revoir, but not good- 
 bye ! " warbled many a golden-haired songstress 
 a few seasons ago. Here was the triumphant 
 alien, italics and all. Even Professor Brander 
 Matthews would scarcely venture to turn au 
 revoir into " See you later " ! 
 
 Chaperon is our very own now, and you 
 wonder how Mrs. Grundy managed without 
 it. When the Earl of Southdown complained 
 to Mrs. Rawdon Crawley that, during his 
 visits to the little house in Mayfair, Miss 
 Briggs never left the room, he described the 
 faithful Briggs as a watch-dog. Watch-dog 
 is a crude expression. Chaperon is delicately 
 suggestive of guardianship. " Our British 
 kin," complains Mr. Matthews, "seems to be 
 inclined to prefer the French costumier over 
 the simple English costumer ; and they like 
 to call a wig-maker a perruquier just as they 
 have lately taken to speaking of a napkin as 
 a serviette" And yet if Mr. Matthews will 
 consult any memorable London playbill, he 
 will read beneath the list of characters the 
 plain, severe English legend, " Wigs by Clark- 
 son." There is a story of a famous actor who 
 was visited in his dressing-room at the theatre 
 one evening by a famous singer. The singer, 
 
 178
 
 Our Mother Tongue 
 
 who had been invited to see the actor's per- 
 formance, did not like it, and wondered how 
 he was to avoid the subject. After several 
 desperate excursions, he saw the actor's wig 
 put upon its block. " Capital wig ! " he 
 exclaimed with enthusiasm. " Glad there's 
 something you like ! " growled the actor. 
 
 Serviette, says Mr. Matthews, is "a freak 
 of nomenclature so widespread in the British 
 Isles that the homely napkin-ring is now 
 beginning to be vendable as a serviette-ring." 
 Dwellers in boarding-houses where the table- 
 napkin in its ring is the boon companion of 
 the bottle which prolongs itself like the 
 widow's cruse is this true ? Music-hall 
 singers still like to be called artistes; the 
 actor's rile is apparently more distinguished 
 than his part ; and a comic actress acquires 
 a dainty exotic grace when you call her a 
 comedienne. Perhaps such words cling to our 
 theatrical parlance because we have not yet left 
 off taking plays from the French. Mr. 
 Matthews calls upon us to write technic 
 instead of technique, and revery instead of 
 reverie. This is asking too much ; but many 
 readers will feel a glow of sympathy with the 
 critic who says, " There is no reason why we 
 should take pleasure in describing a young 
 179
 
 Points of View 
 
 man engaged to be married as a fiance" The 
 word grates upon the sense of fitness because 
 it belongs to a set of marriage customs quite 
 foreign to ours. If the man is a fiance, the girl 
 ought to have a dot. But what would you 
 call him ? Not Susan's betrothed, for that 
 term is usually feminine ; moreover, it has 
 an air of old-fashioned sentiment quite un- 
 suited to modern speech. There is a rank 
 of society in which he would be joyously 
 hailed as Susan's young man ; in a rank 
 above that he would be Susan's intended. 
 Neither of these expressions may commend 
 itself to a still higher circle of refinement. 
 Then what is our mother tongue to do ? Mr. 
 Matthews is not helpful, and I am forced to 
 suggest that we should borrow from the French 
 again. Why not Susan's " future " ? " Mon 
 futur," says the French damsel when she in- 
 dicates the fortunate man. The word may 
 not come from the Faubourg St. Germain ; 
 but somehow it makes Susan's lack of dot less 
 conspicuous. 
 
 Mr. Matthews would have us get rid of 
 the pedantry of classic plurals, and boldly say 
 appendixes and indexes instead of appendices 
 and indices. Surely nobody says indices, but 
 most of us say memoranda, and not memor- 
 180
 
 Our Mother Tongue 
 
 andums, though we say formulas, and not 
 formulas. Our mother tongue is too skittish 
 to be bound by any rule of assimilation. 
 Even Mr. Matthews does not insist upon 
 phenomenons. I should like to direct his 
 attention to the editor of Harper s Magazine, 
 who is more in need of reproof than his 
 "British kin." The readers of Harper's are 
 apprised that a new novel will shortly begin in 
 that periodical. " In this wonderful historical 
 romance of the days of the Spanish Armada, 
 deepened by a pervading psychological interest, 
 the author has not only entered upon a higher 
 field of imaginative fiction than in her previous 
 novels, but seems, if that were possible, to 
 have transcended herself." As an advertise- 
 ment this is pretty full-blooded, and ought 
 to appeal to the editor's colleague, Mr. 
 Howells, whose taste for historical romance 
 is well known. " It is not great names," 
 proceeds the oracle, " as measured by pheno- 
 menal sales, but the quality of the work, that 
 impresses readers." Is Mr. Matthews im- 
 pressed by an editor who uses " phenomenal " 
 in the sense of wonderful ? Mr. Vincent 
 Crummies had a daughter, who was known 
 as the " Infant Phenomenon," a title supposed 
 by her papa to indicate a prodigy. Mr. 
 
 181
 
 Points of View 
 
 Matthews knows better. Will he impress 
 upon the editor of Harper's that there is 
 a graver peril to our mother tongue in that 
 magazine than the coming of the Spanish 
 Armada ? 
 
 He is fond of dwelling on the advantages 
 of the " short cut," on " simplifications which 
 will be bitterly opposed in the future by the 
 ultra-conservative, just as the simplifications 
 already adopted were opposed in the past by 
 the linguistic Tories of the preceding cen- 
 turies." Are we "linguistic Tories" if we 
 decline to write crisises as the plural of crisis ? 
 Mr. Matthews admits that the word has an 
 " unpleasant hissing," but dismisses that as a 
 pedantic objection. He does not see that he 
 is neglecting his " short cut " for a longer 
 word. He wants to say bacilluses instead 
 of bacilli, and taunts the people who, " if 
 they dared, would like to write omnibi." I 
 should like to write omnibi, but it is too 
 late. I acquiesce gracefully in the use of 
 omnibuses, but rather than yield to 'buses I 
 will shed the last drop of my blood. That 
 is a personal eccentricity, no doubt ; but as 
 Mr. Matthews expects our " sturdy common 
 sense " to choose the forms of speech which 
 are "the least roundabout and the most 
 
 182
 
 OUT Mother Tongue 
 
 direct," what have we to do with bacilluses ? 
 I remember a dissertation of his, in which it 
 was argued that we should legitimise the 
 ungrammatical phrase " he don't," because it 
 is a shorter cut than "he doesn't." Perhaps 
 Mr. Matthews has lectured at Columbia 
 University on the felicitous embellishment of 
 our mother tongue by the celebrated song, 
 " 'E dunno where 'e are." It is a pleasing 
 illustration of one of his principles ; but how 
 does it harmonise with crisises ? 
 
 Of all the " linguistic Tories," the most 
 strenuous was Miss Rhoda Broughton, in the 
 years when she denied to her nonchalant 
 heroines the ordinary contractions in colloquial 
 use. " It threatens to rain, does not it ? " 
 said Nancy and Joan and Hester, who were 
 by no means prim in other respects. Our 
 mother tongue refused to be trained by these 
 charming young pedagogues. A few years 
 ago some fashionable ladies invented a dialect 
 which carried the theory of " simplifications " 
 very far. I heard one of them say that " the 
 dimpy was divvy," and this, when translated, 
 meant that a certain dinner-party was divine. 
 After this, Mr. Matthews and his bacilluses 
 are "ultra-conservative" indeed. 
 
 183
 
 XXV Wells of English 
 
 MR. H. G. WELLS, who would 
 have the English-speaking peoples 
 all speak exactly alike one ac- 
 cent, one idiom, one intonation 
 must be disturbed by Professor Lounsbury, of 
 Yale, who continues in Harpers Magazine 
 those researches to which I have already 
 adverted. Mr. Lounsbury, being a professor, 
 has a native bias towards authority; but he 
 admits that English pronunciation is a per- 
 petual civil war. The peace of households is 
 destroyed by the vain efforts of seniors to 
 correct the speech of juniors in accordance 
 with the family dictionary, or some supposed 
 standard of usage. A distinguished friend of 
 mine, who has probably addressed to the public 
 ear more words than any man living, arched 
 his expressive eyebrows lately when I used the 
 word "inexplicable" with the accent on the 
 "plic." He asked me why, and I said it was 
 my humour. " Better change it," he re- 
 marked drily, "or people will smile." "Let 
 'em smile," I answered defiantly. What is 
 there to smile at ? When you say " inexpres- 
 sible" you put the accent on the "press"; 
 
 184
 
 Wells of English 
 
 when " inconsolable " you linger mournfully 
 on the " so." If a thing is " indisputable," 
 it gets its emphasis from the third and not 
 the second syllable. Why utter a word, as 
 Professor Lounsbury says, as if you were 
 " giving the impression that part of it has 
 been swallowed " ? Put the accent on the 
 "ex" in this very word "inexplicable," and 
 you seem to be taking a pill with uneasiness. 
 " There is no authority at all for such a 
 course," says the professor. 
 
 Smiling, indeed, is out of place. When the 
 lady who is wooed in Mr. Chevalier's ballad 
 answers " Yus," you are diverted by her 
 Cockney ignorance. If she answered " Yis," 
 you would smile all the same. Permit me 
 to tell you that, in the politest of centuries, 
 the eighteenth, " Yes " was extremely vulgar. 
 You have smiled, no doubt, at the street- 
 urchin who, on the chance of your bounty, 
 enacts a compendious drama at your door on 
 the 5th of November. He approaches with 
 great respect a martial hero who is leaning 
 on a wooden sword. " My lord," says he, 
 " the duke is wownded," and you go off in a 
 burst of ignorant merriment. " Wownded," 
 according to classic authority, is perfectly 
 correct. There used to be a turmoil in the 
 
 185
 
 Points of View 
 
 pit over John Philip Kemble's pronunciation 
 of certain words. He pronounced " aches," 
 for instance, as if they were " aitches," and the 
 pittites who preferred, like Calverley's school- 
 boy, to rhyme the word with cakes, because 
 " excruciating aches resulted when we ate too 
 many," disputed noisily with the actor. In 
 ruder times than ours a man was not even 
 allowed to pronounce his own name as he 
 thought fit. There is the historic case of 
 Angus Reach, who did not like to rhyme 
 with peach, and called himself " Ree-ak." At 
 dinner on one occasion he was put down 
 by Thackeray, who said, " Mr. Ree-ak, I'll 
 trouble you for a pee-ak." But if my name 
 were Reach I would go to the rack rather 
 than surrender my right to call myself what 
 I pleased. 
 
 Professor Lounsbury, I am glad to say, will 
 have none of this intolerance. He relates the 
 anecdote of the poet Rogers, who held that 
 nobody should "contemplate" save with the 
 accent on the "tern." "The now fashionable 
 pronunciation of certain words," said Rogers, 
 " is to me at least offensive. * C<?-template ' 
 is bad enough ; but ' <W-cony ' makes me 
 sick." To please old Rogers, Juliet had to 
 appear in a " balcony." There are still people 
 
 186
 
 Wells of English 
 
 in America who pronounce " museum " with 
 a feline emphasis on the first syllable. I was 
 struck by this in the early days when I made 
 the acquaintance of an American ballad which 
 began thus : 
 
 " Old blind boss 
 Going to Jerusalem, 
 Kicked so high 
 Put him in a Mu-seum 
 Down in Alabama ! " 
 
 My intimacy with the " blind hoss," who 
 became a scientific trophy of his native State, 
 was contemporary with my first essay in the 
 pronunciation of Euclid. The horrid hour 
 comes back to me as vividly as yesterday. 
 I stood up in class to recite the exposition 
 of that deadly masterpiece on the isosceles 
 triangle, but had got no further than " the 
 angles at the base of an issoseals," when a 
 contemptuous voice informed me that it was 
 not a fish. It was my first experience of 
 popular derision. How the boys laughed 
 puppets to an usher's jest and servile to a 
 shrewish tongue ! But as Euclid's word has 
 become English, surely my natural instinct was 
 sound ! 
 
 Let no man snub you with a dictionary. 
 Dr. Bacon, a New England divine, was re- 
 proached with some pronunciation which was 
 
 187
 
 Points of View 
 
 not " according to Webster." Webster lived 
 in his parish, so Dr. Bacon delivered himself 
 thus : " What right has Webster to dictate my 
 pronunciation ? He is one of my parishioners, 
 and he ought to get his pronunciation from me, 
 and not I from him." But you must not let 
 yourself be brow-beaten by the pulpit. " Not 
 a single one of our pronouncing dictionaries," 
 says Mr. Lounsbury, " is a final authority, not 
 even the concurrent voice of all of them put 
 together." And if all the pulpits concurred 
 with the first curate I ever listened to, who 
 had a painful habit of saying " know-ledge " 
 when he meant " knolledge," it would still 
 be your duty to protest, even at the risk of 
 excommunication. The oracle I chiefly lose is 
 Dr. Parr. Somebody in his presence put the 
 accent on the fourth syllable of Alexandria, 
 and cited the authority of Bentley. " Bentley 
 and I," said Dr. Parr, " may call it Alexandra, 
 but you had better pronounce it Alex^wdria." 
 No unity of the English-pronouncing peoples 
 for Parr ! His example makes me yearn to 
 hold converse with Mr. Wells, so as to devise 
 a system of pronunciation distinctive of our- 
 selves. It would be so pleasant to say to a 
 presumptuous scholar, " Wells and I call it 
 ' wind,' with the ' i ' long ; but you had better 
 
 1 88
 
 Wells of English 
 
 keep it short, like the common people." Why 
 they have kept it short, despite the poets, who 
 rhyme "wind" with "mind" and "find," no 
 human being is able to tell. 
 
 Mr. Wells, as I understand him, is for 
 establishing a sort of lingual Zollverein ; no 
 Colonial preference; no "dumping" of Ameri- 
 can phrases on our classic speech ; no excuse 
 for an erring intonation on the plea that it is 
 traditional in Nevada or at the Antipodes. 
 Mount a certain Time-Machine which Mr. 
 Wells has made famous, and you may reach a 
 day in the remote future, when our magis- 
 trates will try offences against the standard 
 of English, and in the current police news 
 you may read something like this: "At Vine 
 Street, Patrick Molloy appeared yesterday on 
 a serious charge of mispronunciation, and the 
 use of words unknown to the Education Code. 
 Constable Jones (G. 506) deposed that on the 
 previous night the prisoner had jostled him 
 in Piccadilly, called him a 'spalpeen,' and 
 made use of a shocking expression which 
 sounded like ' begorra ! ' The prisoner became 
 violently excited, and his accent was so offen- 
 sive as to lead to a breach of the peace. The 
 magistrate (to the prisoner) : ' What have you 
 to say ? ' Prisoner : ' The fact is, your honour, 
 189
 
 Points of View 
 
 I had been dining with some friends from 
 Ireland, and after a keg or two I got just a 
 bit of the brogue.' The magistrate : ' Brogue ! 
 How dare you utter such a word in this 
 
 court ? ' Prisoner : ' Bedad, your honour ' 
 
 The magistrate (sternly) : ' Silence ! Fourteen 
 days' hard labour ! ' The prisoner was then 
 removed to the cells." 
 
 But Professor Lounsbury alleges that an 
 authoritative standard of English for the world 
 is " a task beyond the power of any one person 
 or any number of persons to accomplish." He 
 says this must be so as long as we continue to 
 write one language and speak another. Our 
 marvellous spelling has resisted all the efforts 
 of reformers ; and even Mr. Wells, perceiving 
 that it must be overthrown, commends the job 
 to some other strategist. Shall we ever see 
 that heroic genius ? " Most of us love our 
 orthography," says Mr. Lounsbury, " for its 
 uncouthness, its barbarousness, its unfitness to 
 do the very work for which orthography is 
 presumed to exist at all." Men of letters are 
 distinguished by this misplaced devotion. And 
 you may be sure that even when the new era 
 has dawned, and repression is doing its work at 
 Vine Street, one or two of them will be found 
 to stand in the dock with Patrick Molloy. 
 
 190
 
 XXVI As it was in the Beginning 
 
 A American writer warns us to ex- 
 pect no new ideas in the twentieth 
 century. We are to take the 
 prospect with equanimity, for, when 
 you come to think of it, there has been nothing 
 new in speculation since the days of Greek 
 philosophy. Darwin's theory can be traced 
 back to Heraclitus. You would find it diffi- 
 cult to deliver an original discourse at the 
 Royal Institution without repeating Plato. 
 All the literary artists borrow from their 
 predecessors. They repel the charge with 
 indignation, not reflecting that the air is full 
 of minute particles of the dead, so that the 
 very act of breathing is unconscious plagiarism. 
 You will find " The Pilgrim's Progress " buried 
 in old French that Bunyan never heard of; 
 and when Poe explained with such complacent 
 elaboration how he wrote " The Raven," he 
 did not know that it was first written in 
 Chinese two thousand years ago. This, no 
 doubt, is why the lawyers have always been 
 so grudging with literary copyright. If a 
 man buys a watch, it becomes his exclusive 
 property, and cannot be taken from him, or 
 191
 
 Points of View 
 
 from his family, except with criminal intent. 
 But if he writes a book, his proprietary interest 
 has a limit of time. And he ought to think 
 himself lucky, seeing that he has merely served 
 up some other man's ideas, as Darwin served 
 up Heraclitus. 
 
 I don't say this is entirely convincing ; but 
 it ought to reconcile us to the inevitable barren- 
 ness of the twentieth century. Don't flatter 
 yourself that you may live to see men fly. 
 The flying man will be merely a repetition 
 of a gentleman in Greek mythology. Besides, 
 intelligent people, says our American com- 
 forter, are already bored by science. That is 
 why they welcomed Mr. Balfour's "Founda- 
 tions of Belief." He had no theory of his own, 
 but he made fun of others. Mr. Howells im- 
 plores novel-readers to listen to reason, and 
 ponder their social responsibilities. They are so 
 tired of reason that they clamour for historical 
 romances, in which social responsibilities are 
 clean forgotten. Tolstoy offered a fresh sensa- 
 tion by the frankness of his insight ; but even 
 a fearless dissection of the inner man loses its 
 charm. Zola's idealism and naturalism are 
 both shelved. Does anybody read " La R6ve," 
 or even " La Terre " ? When it was said that 
 the author of " La Rve " had taken flight into 
 192
 
 As it was in the Beginning 
 
 the realm of angelic innocence, a distinguished 
 French critic remarked that to Zola with wings 
 he preferred Zola on all fours. I repeated this 
 epigram to a conscientious student of modern 
 literature, and he said, " Zola ? Oh, you mean 
 the man who found the forty-eight hairpins ? " 
 If this question were set by an examiner, 
 "Where did M. Zola find the forty-eight 
 hairpins ? " how many candidates would be 
 ploughed ! By mere luck, I happen to know 
 the answer, and I mean to keep it to myself 
 as one of those rare accomplishments that 
 distinguish a man in the crowd. 
 
 " Who can plume himself," says Anatole 
 France in his delightful essay, " Fools in 
 Literature," " that he has never said any- 
 thing silly ? " Who can plume himself that, 
 if he has never had an original idea, neither 
 has anybody else ? With no pretension to 
 originality, I have discovered a man who is 
 original without knowing it. Dining in one 
 of my favourite grill-rooms, I overheard the 
 conversation of two young bucks of the City 
 at an adjoining table. They talked for a 
 while of the sad reverse of fortune that had 
 befallen some friends. " They had three 
 thousand a year, and lived at the rate of 
 ten thousand. I remember old Mrs. G.'s 
 
 T 93 N
 
 Points of View 
 
 horror when I told her I had ridden in an 
 omnibus. She said it was vulgar. ' My boy 
 would never ride in an omnibus.' Six months 
 after they went to smash I met young G. in 
 a 'bus going to Paddington. He punched my 
 ticket ! " Then the talk turned on literary 
 matters, and the other youngster struck out 
 an idea which, to me, was as a nugget to a 
 gold-seeker. " I say, old chap, who wrote 
 ' Mansfield Park ' ? " " Oh, I forget her name 
 for the moment. The same woman that wrote 
 ' Pride and Prejudice.' ' " Why, of course, I 
 remember her now Jane Eyre ! " I concealed 
 my joy with a great effort. You see it would 
 never do to let such a genius know that he had 
 contributed a new idea to a jaded universe. 
 Once make him self-conscious, and he might 
 never utter a golden thought again. So I put 
 my readers on their honour never to repeat 
 this story. If they hear a hoarse murmur 
 that sounds like " Swear ! " rising from below, 
 they will know that I am adjuring them from 
 the cellarage, like the ghost of Hamlet's 
 father. 
 
 If there is a man who has bitter reason to 
 deplore the lack of original ideas, he must be 
 the thief of Gainsborough's Duchess. Picture 
 him brooding over his booty for twenty-five 
 
 194
 
 As it was in the Beginning 
 
 years, and then finding no better use for it 
 than restitution ! Don't tell me that restitu- 
 tion is an original idea, for there are cases 
 without number in which stolen property has 
 been restored by compunction. Is it compunc- 
 tion in this case ? Is it cynical to suggest that 
 a quarter of a century gives a thief ample 
 time to turn over all the possible alternatives. 
 Plainly, the canvas could not be sold or dis- 
 posed of in any way that would yield him a 
 substantial interest on his audacity. Think 
 of him waiting all these years for an inspira- 
 tion, staring at the portrait in secret until the 
 very sight of the fair Georgiana became hateful 
 to him, and the art of the painter was sub- 
 merged in contempt. He is reported to have 
 grown honest, and to be leading an obscure, 
 but highly respectable, life. For his own sake 
 this should be true ; but would it not be more 
 original to have persuaded himself that the 
 picture is not genuine, that it is neither Gains- 
 borough nor the Duchess ? I cannot help 
 cherishing an immoral hope that he is now 
 writing a pamphlet entitled "The Sham 
 Duchess : By the Fool who Stole Her." 
 
 There is an amusing writer amongst us 
 who does not despair of the twentieth century. 
 He admits that the Caucasian is played out, 
 '95
 
 Points of View 
 
 and that Shakespeare, of whom he has no very 
 high opinion, exhausted human nature, as we 
 know it, for the purposes of the drama. But 
 he expects humanity to be transformed, in order 
 to provide the poets, novelists, and dramatists 
 of another age with fresh themes. He foresees 
 a time when there will be no more innocence 
 or guilt, no more revenge, idolatry, self-seek- 
 ing, or any of the passions that now make life 
 so interesting, and its artistic representation so 
 monotonous. But what is to supplant them ? 
 Any answer to this question would have the 
 merit of originality ; but I regret to say there 
 is no answer. The late Mr. Bellamy, who 
 described with so much gratification the 
 triumph of Socialism in his romance, "Look- 
 ing Backward," entered into very minute 
 details of the commercial and municipal 
 economy of his new Jerusalem. But he said 
 not a word about its literature and drama. 
 To this day we have not a notion how the 
 complete absorption of egotism in the service 
 of the State is to be expressed in art. Every 
 one can see that it is a beautiful ideal : no 
 more selfishness, no more grasping, no more 
 competition ; every man in his proper place ; 
 no more envy. Crime having disappeared, 
 you can never be guilty ; nor can you take 
 
 196
 
 As it was in the Beginning 
 
 credit for superior morality. With no conflict 
 of interests, no emulation in good works, no 
 good works, which will be unnecessary, what is 
 to be the function of drama, and what the 
 salt of private conversation ? Without the 
 breath of gossip, and without the ghost of 
 innuendo, how is the Jaques of a future day to 
 earn a decent living ? 
 
 Let me tell you the French fable of the 
 Persian king. He ordered his sages to write 
 the history of mankind. They were thirty 
 years at it, and brought him 6000 volumes on 
 twelve camels. "Too long," he said, "write 
 me an abridgment." After twenty years they 
 brought an abridgment in 1500 volumes on 
 three camels. " I am too old to master this," 
 he said, " abridge again." In ten years they 
 compiled 500 volumes, and loaded one camel. 
 The king, now very infirm, protested once 
 more, and so five years were spent on one 
 volume, which came to him on an ass, like 
 Roscius. He was dying, and the chief of the 
 sages, also near his end, said, " Sire, I can sum 
 up the history of mankind in these words : 
 They were born, they suffered, they died." 
 Don't you think that will always be the gist 
 of it, however original we may become ? 
 
 197
 
 XXVII The Art and Glory of Eating 
 
 I 
 
 "^HERE'S no denying it; we can't 
 get away from the subject of food. 
 It comes up even in the most 
 tremendous crises in the fate of 
 nations. Just as your nerves are strung to 
 the highest pitch by the battle news from the 
 Korean Straits, what does your eye light upon 
 in a corner of the morning paper ? Simply a 
 warning from Baron Suyematsu against our 
 neglect, not of some important element in the 
 politics of the Far East, but of a vegetable 
 which is greatly relished in Japan ! The 
 Mikado's dynasty has eaten it for centuries ; 
 there may be some virtue in it which explains 
 the national character; and yet we leave it to 
 grow wild, and seldom give it a thought 
 except in landscapes at the Royal Academy. 
 It is bracken, and it ought to be plucked in 
 its "curling stage" in the early spring. "If 
 plucked at the right time," says the discerning 
 Suyematsu, who is evidently something more 
 than a diplomat, "and properly prepared, it 
 can be eaten as asparagus, which vegetable it 
 to some extent resembles ; in another form it 
 makes a good substitute for spinach." We 
 
 198
 
 The Art and Glory of Eating 
 
 have never done learning from Japan ! You 
 may be indifferent, in your Western pride, to 
 the moral precepts which go to make bushido ; 
 but when it comes to a new vegetable, a possible 
 rival of asparagus, a substitute for spinach 
 that everlasting spinach ! who will say his 
 heart is not stirred by a grateful impulse ? 
 
 And what if the bracken that runs sadly to 
 waste in our island should have in it a tonic 
 for the national spirit ? I shall not be sur- 
 prised to hear that among the folk-songs of 
 Japan there is a strain like this : 
 
 " When the nerve begins to slacken, 
 Let us pluck the early bracken ; 
 Let us cook the curly bracken, 
 It will save the cheek from pallor, 
 It will fill the heart with valour, 
 It will have a savour pleasant 
 To the taste of Prince and peasant. 
 Fate their souls can never blacken 
 While they eat the curly bracken ! " 
 
 A little exaggerated, perhaps ; but that is the 
 way with folk-songs. You may depend upon 
 it, at any rate, that the Japanese have none 
 of that shamefacedness about food which is 
 the mark of our superior culture. I am not 
 sure that the man who eats too much is a 
 worse citizen than the man who despises his 
 meals in the name of ethics. " Sir, respect 
 199
 
 Points of View 
 
 your dinner," wrote Thackeray in the delight- 
 ful essay which he called " Memorials of Gor- 
 mandising." " Idolise it, enjoy it properly. 
 You will be by many hours in the week, many 
 weeks in the year, and many years in your life 
 the happier if you do. Don't tell us that it 
 is not worthy of a man. All a man's senses 
 are worthy of employment, and should be 
 cultivated as a duty." 
 
 For the moralist who professed a lofty dis- 
 dain for the choice of viands, who said, " Give 
 me a slice of meat, and a fig for your gour- 
 mands ! " Thackeray, who was a bit of a 
 moralist himself, has no mercy. "You fancy 
 it is very virtuous and manly all this. Non- 
 sense, my good sir ; you are indifferent because 
 you are ignorant, because your life is passed 
 in a narrow circle of ideas, and because you are 
 bigotedly blind and pompously callous to the 
 beauties and excellencies beyond you." Then 
 he proceeds to discourse for many pages on 
 the " beauties and excellencies " of dinners in 
 Paris, where this essay was written ; not costly 
 dinners, such as you find now in the diatribes 
 against the luxury of the age, but dinners 
 within the means of the struggling literary 
 man. There was a dinner at a club, where 
 ten people fared sumptuously at fifteenpence
 
 The Art and Glory of Eating 
 
 a head. They had pheasants amongst other 
 things ! Such a dinner at such a price now- 
 adays would make a club almost too famous 
 How the candidates would swarm ! I believe 
 they would force their way into the hall in a 
 solid phalanx, and insist upon being elected 
 without formality. 
 
 Another of those Paris dinners consisted of 
 beefsteak and partridge. When the steak was 
 finished "we put bits of bread into the silver 
 dish and wistfully sopped up the gravy." 
 Two Britons did this in a foreign land, and 
 one of them was not ashamed to record it. 
 Nor was he ashamed to say that " the soothing 
 plant of Cuba is sweeter to the philosopher 
 after dinner than the prattle of all the women 
 in the world." I suppose a remark like that 
 brought down feminine anathema on bachelor 
 feasts sixty years ago. Such innocent and 
 cheap indulgence, it may have been thought, 
 had a tendency to depress the marriage market. 
 But to-day the growth of restaurants is coin- 
 cident with a change of manners, and men sit 
 at public tables with their nearest and dearest 
 and the " soothing plant," listening deferen- 
 tially to the talk they would not dream of 
 calling " prattle." Woman has become an 
 expert diner-out ; the blameless matron is a 
 
 201
 
 Points of View 
 
 connoisseur of entries and a judge of dry 
 champagne. No marriageable damsel seeks 
 to inspire a sentimental interest by profess- 
 ing that she is never hungry. Why, I have 
 known her to refuse soup for the very reason 
 Thackeray assigns for discarding that dish. 
 " I would recommend a man to reflect well 
 before he orders soup for dinner. My notion 
 is, that you eat as much after soup as without 
 it, but you don't eat with the same appetite" 
 Yes, I have heard the charming Julia say that 
 very thing, when she has glanced at the dimen- 
 sions of the menu ; and I have never thought 
 this frankness the least admirable of her en- 
 gaging qualities. 
 
 But there is a blight on the modern dinner- 
 party the blight of haste. Whether it be 
 the habit of driving in motor cars at an illegal 
 speed or of hurrying the meal so as to repair 
 as soon as possible to the bridge-table, there 
 is a growing tendency to race through the 
 courses. I say this is disrespectful to your 
 dinner, and I invoke the shade of Thackeray 
 to pronounce it lese majeste in the worst degree. 
 The art and glory of eating are grievously 
 impaired if you gobble up the dishes instead 
 of gently absorbing them into a physiological 
 symphony, to the accompaniment of what
 
 The Art and Glory of Eating 
 
 shall I say ? the music of Julia's voice. 
 Agreeable conversation, in which you bear 
 your part manfully, is absolutely essential to 
 full enjoyment. It is therefore deplorable to 
 notice, when you glance round the table sud- 
 denly, that the rest of the company have 
 finished the course you have scarcely begun, 
 and are regarding you with a gloomy stare. 
 
 Kind friends, this is not the way to dine. 
 You may not appreciate the aesthetic objection ; 
 let me give you another. Your way of dining 
 leads to dyspepsia ! I know a very distin- 
 guished man of letters who must have been a 
 gobbler in early life, for he is now compelled 
 to eat so slowly that he nearly always dines 
 alone ! With his fine imagination he has per- 
 suaded himself that he likes it, and that to 
 have his eggs and bacon stark cold of a morn- 
 ing, before he is half-way through his break- 
 fast, is one of the deepest joys. But if (as I 
 suspect) you have no imagination to speak of, 
 my gobbling brothers, what a life for you when 
 you have to sit in solitude masticating cold 
 bacon ! 
 
 203
 
 XXVIII Dreams 
 
 I HAVE often envied those people who 
 have the pleasant gift of dreaming in- 
 teresting dreams, and never fail to relate 
 them with great precision at breakfast 
 next morning, or to set them down in diaries, 
 scrupulously dated, so that when a dream 
 comes true there is unimpeachable evidence of 
 the oracle. But in dreams I have no luck. 
 They are to me, for the most part, like a 
 primitive kinematograph, which vibrates so 
 violently that it is only a crowd of blurred 
 images. But yesterday morning there was a 
 difference. Instead of waking with the usual 
 exasperating sense of having seen or done 
 remarkable things which I could not recall, I 
 had a very clear picture in my mind of a great 
 commotion at the club. Agitated members 
 glared at me, and declared that this scanda- 
 lous affair should be reported at once to the 
 committee. In a trice I was summoned before 
 that august tribunal ; every man looked grave ; 
 it was said to be a clear case, and I felt some- 
 how that it was a clear case ; but what it was 
 all about I have not the slightest idea. 
 
 Now, by an odd coincidence, there came to 
 204
 
 Dreams 
 
 me at breakfast a copy of the Nineteenth Century, 
 containing an article called " The Way of 
 Dreams," by Lady Currie. The night before 
 her first London dinner-party, she dreamed 
 that she was taken in to dinner by a very ugly 
 old gentleman. This actually happened ; for 
 the young man who had been assigned to her 
 at the party did not turn up, and she fell into 
 the hands of an octogenarian who apologised 
 to her for being " an old creature like a chim- 
 panzee." She told him her dream, and he told 
 her that his mother, who had been dead seventy 
 years, regularly haunted his dreams by pursuing 
 him upstairs with a birch-rod. His philosophy 
 of the dream-state was that " something or 
 somebody desired to communicate with the 
 sleeper, just as something or somebody might 
 desire to play upon a pianoforte or upon a 
 stringed instrument." Why his mother should 
 want to play upon him with a birch-rod he did 
 not say ; but he explained the confused nature 
 of dreams by " something irresponsive in the 
 brain of the dreamer." This suggestion 
 startled me. Was it possible that a dead, 
 but still beneficent, kinsman had tried to warn 
 me in my sleep against that mysterious affair 
 at the club ? Was he anxious to say, " My 
 dear fellow, with the best intentions in the 
 205
 
 Points of View 
 
 world you are going to get yourself into a 
 confounded mess unless you take care " ? Take 
 care of what ? It is all very well to talk about 
 the sleeper's irresponsive brain ; but if people 
 send you warnings in your sleep, why don't 
 they take care, instead of shuffling the respon- 
 sibility on me ? 
 
 This is the more disquieting because Lady 
 Currie relates a remarkable experience of a 
 still more alarming tenor. She dreamt that 
 she was calling at a house in a squalid street. 
 The door was opened by a dreadful-looking 
 woman with a beard ; there was a smell of 
 soapsuds in the passage ; two men like under- 
 takers seemed to be moving a coffin into a 
 room. Lady Currie thought she went into 
 this room and noted the furniture and the 
 curtains ; then she looked out of the window, 
 and saw a soldier of the Life Guards in his 
 scarlet jacket, a young woman on each arm. 
 A month after, Lady Currie called at a house 
 on an errand of charity. As soon as the door 
 opened, she smelt soapsuds, and saw the dread- 
 ful woman with the beard. In a room upstairs 
 she found the furniture she had seen in the 
 dream ; and when she looked out of the win- 
 dow, sure enough appeared the Life Guards- 
 man and his charmers. When she had made a 
 206
 
 Dreams 
 
 few more visits, she learned that a ruffian in the 
 house had on three occasions been prevented by 
 some trivial accident from attempting to rob 
 and possibly to murder her. Lady Currie com- 
 plains that the premonition, so precise as to 
 furniture, a harmless beard, and a quite irrele- 
 vant soldier the soldier, as usual, was not 
 evidence totally obliterated the miscreant who 
 had designs on her jewellery. Here, I think, 
 she is a little unjust. What of the under- 
 takers and the coffin? But it may be urged 
 that one needs a stronger hint of grave per- 
 sonal risk ; a gentleman behind a door with 
 a knife, for instance, would be more useful 
 than a soldier with a girl on each arm. More- 
 over, as nothing happened to Lady Currie, 
 what was the good of the dream after all ? 
 
 This is the intolerable complexity of such 
 visions. Had Lady Currie understood the 
 warning, and made off as soon as she scented 
 the soapsuds, she would have taken a precau- 
 tion which, as the course of events showed, was 
 unnecessary. She came scatheless through the 
 danger before she was aware of it. That clear 
 case against me at the club may be brought to 
 naught by a train of circumstances of which I 
 am blissfully ignorant. Or it may not. What 
 is a poor dreamer to do ? It is a very different 
 207
 
 Points of View 
 
 case from Laurence Oliphant's. He told Lady 
 Currie how he dreamed in Jermyn Street of a 
 " sandy-bearded son of toil," who gazed at him 
 with grey eyes, " having in them a sad look of 
 appeal." In the middle of his forehead was a 
 large hole, dripping blood. A year later, in an 
 American forest, Oliphant met some English 
 navvies, one of whom looked hard at him. It 
 was the man of the dream. There was no hole 
 in his forehead then ; and if Oliphant had 
 joined the party, who were on their way to a 
 local beershop, he might have saved the man's 
 life. But he went thoughtlessly for a ride, and 
 when he returned in an hour he found that the 
 poor navvy had been killed in a quarrel by the 
 blow of a pickaxe. Was Oliphant responsible 
 for his death ? If not, what was the use of 
 dreaming of a stranger whose looks said plainly, 
 " You are to remember me when we meet 
 again, and save me from getting this hole in my 
 forehead." I saw a member of the committee 
 yesterday looking at me with a startled and 
 rather wistful air. Can it be that I have 
 appeared to him in a dream as an innocent 
 victim of that coming scandal ? 
 
 Another peculiarity of dreams is their pro- 
 pensity to practical joking. When Lady Currie 
 was young, she once had a chaperon in an old 
 ao8
 
 Dreams 
 
 country-house, and on New Year's Eve this 
 lady suggested that whatever the company 
 might dream that night should be taken as 
 bound to happen in the coming year. Next 
 morning everybody was a delighted narrator of 
 dreams except the chaperon. She had " black 
 lines under her fine eyes," and looked ten years 
 older. The poor lady had dreamed that she 
 was at a funeral service in church when Death 
 appeared " in the horrid semblance of a skele- 
 ton," and shot a black arrow at her from a 
 bow. She dodged this, and went out into a 
 churchyard where there was a newly-made 
 grave. Turning away, she found that her 
 dress was pinned to the ground by another 
 black arrow, and she saw the skeleton grinning 
 at her behind a tombstone. Quite sure that 
 this dream was an omen, she fell into melan- 
 choly, " ate nothing, and went unusually often 
 to church," until it was thought she had some 
 fatal malady. Towards the end of the year 
 she made fifty little packets of souvenirs for 
 her friends, and put postage stamps on them 
 all. They were to be delivered on New Year's 
 morning when she would be dead. But a week 
 after that, Lady Currie found her joyfully re- 
 moving the stamps with the help of hot water. 
 A twelvemonth of penance, you may say, must 
 209 o
 
 Points of View 
 
 have done her good ; but is any sound moral 
 principle observed when penance is exacted on 
 false pretences ? 
 
 Then dreams are interpreted in a hundred 
 ways. Who knows that to dream of skeletons 
 and funerals does not mean longevity ? In the 
 East, as Lady Currie reminds us, these things 
 are not left to guesswork. You take your 
 dream to a learned interpreter. A Turkish 
 lady dreamt that her son in the army was 
 officially shot by a file of soldiers. She hurried 
 to the interpreter, but made it appear that the 
 young man was the son of a friend. " Oh," 
 said the interpreter, "to be shot in a dream is 
 to rise to the highest honours." "It is my 
 own son ! " cried the joyous mother. " Very 
 sorry, madam," said the interpreter. " But as 
 you mentioned another gentleman the honours 
 must be his ! " And they were ; so the disap- 
 pointed woman told Lady Currie. I am going 
 to submit my dream to Lord Kelvin, without 
 pretending that it happened to a friend. For 
 it may turn out that a club scandal means a 
 legacy from an Australian uncle ! 
 
 2IO
 
 XXIX American Reticence 
 
 IN California, as I learn from an American 
 magazine, there is a "Jaw of privacy." 
 It is based on the theory that a man's 
 personality belongs to himself, and not 
 to the newspapers. He may take them into 
 partnership by authorising the publication of 
 his portrait ; but unauthorised publication may 
 land the offender in a heavy fine, and even in 
 the county gaol. This sanctity of the person 
 does not extend to holders of public offices, nor 
 to convicted criminals. The moment you are 
 qualified for a State salary or penal servitude, 
 your portrait becomes the lawful prey of art 
 editors. Dismissed from office by the uprising 
 of the electorate, your features are veiled in 
 privacy once more. It is as if Mr. Balfour 
 were at the mercy of the photographer and 
 printer, and as if Sir Henry Campbell-Banner- 
 man could consign them both to dungeons. 
 But for caricaturists there is no room in Cali- 
 fornia. Any caricature which " in any manner 
 reflects upon the honour, integrity, manhood, 
 virtue, reputation, or business or political 
 motives of the person so caricatured, or tends 
 to expose the person so caricatured to public 
 
 211
 
 Points of View 
 
 hatred, ridicule, or contempt," is visited with 
 condign penalties. It is no use going to 
 California with the idea that you can make a 
 decent livelihood by drawing funny pictures of 
 Californian statesmen. At steamship offices in 
 London, when you want to take a passage to 
 America, you are asked this startling question, 
 " Are you a polygamist ? " If you intimate 
 that you are bound for San Francisco, there 
 will probably be this supplementary inquiry : 
 " Are you a caricaturist ? " 
 
 Further, I must warn the emigrant that he 
 cannot write in California with the freedom 
 which is supposed to distinguish American 
 journalism. If a man is dead, you must not 
 " blacken his memory " ; if he is alive, you 
 must not publish his " natural or alleged de- 
 fects." Experiments in either line are "sub- 
 ject to a penalty of one thousand dollars for 
 each offence." This makes candour in obituary 
 notices an expensive luxury. Historians and 
 biographers who do well in California may 
 sometimes find it prudent to employ such 
 material as exists beyond the borders of the 
 State. There is, indeed, a possibility of emi- 
 nent men living and dying there in oblivion 
 because no chronicler is allowed to linger on 
 their infirmities. Controversy is the breath of
 
 American Reticence 
 
 fame, and how can a man be famous if he is 
 neither abused nor vindicated ? After a time 
 Californian statesmen will make secret advances 
 to the silenced masters of vituperation. " This 
 system doesn't pay," they will remark. " We 
 may be as pure as snow, but we are badly in 
 need of a little calumny. Our friends are 
 becoming apathetic. Calumny is the thing to 
 stir them up. The public is bored because 
 nobody dares to say that we are not arch- 
 angels. Please make it hot again for our 
 natural or alleged defects, and we will recoup 
 you for the damages ! " 
 
 But it is proposed to paralyse the national 
 inquisitiveness, and establish " the principle of 
 an inviolate personality, or the right to be let 
 alone." Compared to this, the Declaration of 
 Independence was a puny affair. Think of 
 seventy millions of Americans, every one of 
 them jealously guarding the family privacy, and 
 never infringing a neighbour's. I do not say 
 this prodigious self-denial is impossible to so 
 enterprising a people. Just as Mr. Carnegie 
 gives away his money, so the American journals 
 may abandon all those luxuries of sensation 
 which seem most dear to them. We had a 
 reign of saints in this country for about a dozen 
 years. It was followed by a long period of 
 213
 
 Points of View 
 
 violent debauch. I fear that the Puritan Com- 
 monwealth of American privacy would be suc- 
 ceeded by the Restoration of riotous gossip. 
 This, no doubt, is the miserable worldling's 
 attitude toward deep and searching reform. It 
 has been adopted by some of the American 
 courts in dealing with the great doctrine of 
 inviolate personality. In the World's Fair at 
 Chicago the statue of a lady named Schuyler, 
 inscribed "Woman as a Philanthropist," stood 
 beside the statue of another lady, called 
 " Woman as a Reformer." The family of 
 Mrs. Schuyler, who was dead, pleaded that 
 this sculpture would have annoyed her, more 
 especially by her proximity to the other statue ; 
 but after three trials the grievance was dis- 
 missed as " too trivial to excite any real mental 
 tress or injury." With equal callousness an 
 English court might dismiss the plea that no 
 waxwork figure should be exhibited at Madame 
 Tussaud's unless the kinsfolk of the original 
 were permitted to select his vis-a-vis. 
 
 In another case, the widow of an eminent 
 inventor sought to " restrain the publication of 
 his biography and picture, upon the distinct 
 ground that it was an invasion of her right 
 of privacy." Full of the new doctrine which 
 is partially inscribed on the statute-book of 
 
 214
 
 American Reticence 
 
 California, she maintained that her husband's 
 memory was her exclusive property. She might 
 write a biographical fragment on his tomb- 
 stone ; but for a strange hand to intervene, 
 and flaunt a book through the world, was a 
 sacrilegious intrusion. Here you have the 
 great principle in its most austere form ; but 
 the American judges would not tolerate it. 
 " Under our laws," they said, " one can speak 
 and publish what he desires, provided he commit 
 no offence against public morals or private 
 reputation." They have laid it down, more- 
 over, that any restraint of published opinion 
 would have to be extended to speech, that an 
 embargo on printed gossip must be logically 
 followed by an embargo on conversation, " for 
 one, as well as the other, invades the right to 
 be absolutely let alone." Well, why should not 
 Wisconsin, envious of California, enact that no 
 citizen, outside of the family circle, may discuss 
 his neighbour's affairs, and that each repetition 
 of a scandalous anecdote be punished with fine 
 and imprisonment ? The county gaols would 
 soon be full. Wisconsin gossips would pro- 
 bably migrate to other States ; but this 
 manoeuvre might quicken the spread of the new 
 doctrine through all the Legislatures, until it 
 became far mightier than the precept of Monroe. 
 215
 
 Points of View 
 
 The chief characteristic of the American is 
 that he wants to know. He cannot know if 
 every personality is secluded from observation, 
 if no editor is allowed to print any citizen's 
 " record." But such is the force of new ideas 
 in America that I should not be surprised to 
 see the whole people resolved to better the ex- 
 ample of California. This should have a remark- 
 able influence upon literature. American readers 
 are at present wrapped up in historical romance, 
 which Mr. Howells calls " ignorance and im- 
 becility." But historical romance is chiefly 
 concerned with the private lives of real person- 
 ages who have long been helpless dust. The 
 Legislature of New York State, at the in- 
 stance of Mr. Howells, will declare that the 
 historic dead must be protected against the 
 novelist, and that any work of fiction going 
 further back than Mr. McKinley's Adminis- 
 tration shall be suppressed, and the author 
 and publisher locked up in a county gaol. 
 Mr. Howells would enjoy a triumph so richly 
 deserved, but I fancy it would be brief. A newly- 
 awakened conscience, especially a national con- 
 science, is terribly open-eyed. The American 
 conscience would soon perceive that all fiction 
 is gossip, and that contemporary gossip is 
 the worst of all. Historical romancers gossip 
 
 216
 
 American Reticence 
 
 about people who have been dead for ages ; but 
 the people in Mr. Howells's novels are walk- 
 ing about now. They are well known in Ohio. 
 At Oshkosh you run against them in the 
 street. Is it likely that the novelist who makes 
 so free with the private affairs of living men 
 and women will be let off on the plea that his 
 characters are creatures of fancy ? 
 
 I foresee, then, a great change in the mind 
 and habits of the American democracy. His- 
 tory, biography, and fiction will be abolished, 
 and the newspapers will confine themselves to 
 the Wall Street quotations. Political cam- 
 paigns will be notable for high - breeding 
 and the absence of excitement. Conversation 
 will mark the extinction of curiosity. I am 
 not idealist enough to believe that society on 
 this exalted plane can endure. It will relapse 
 into a scandal which will paint the inmost 
 recesses of privacy a brilliant scarlet. But it 
 will leave to future generations a memory to 
 point a thousand morals. 
 
 217
 
 XXX A Race-Meeting 
 
 I HAD been much impressed that morn- 
 ing by a picture of M. Maeterlinck in 
 one of the illustrated papers. He was 
 driving his motor car with the deter- 
 mined look which, from a thousand expres- 
 sions of the human countenance, you would at 
 once single out as motormc. " And this is 
 the poet," I reflected, " who would abolish 
 action in drama, who thinks the vehemence of 
 Othello primitive and unspiritual, who would 
 have us, on or off the stage, commune with 
 our souls in silence. Here he is in a motor 
 car, which beats the most vengeful Othello at 
 snorting, and fills the air with the hum as of 
 a thousand hives. Perhaps it is the poet's 
 fancy that he is living the life of the bee, and 
 sipping the honey of ideas from the landscape 
 when speeding through it at forty miles an 
 hour." At the club I had picked up Sir 
 Henry Thompson's treatise on the motor car, 
 and found that astonishing veteran approach- 
 ing ninety years with the liveliest interest in 
 the science of locomotion. When most old 
 gentlemen are content to survey life from an 
 easy-chair, and to deplore the intemperate 
 218
 
 A Race-Meeting 
 
 hurry of the age, Sir Henry Thompson writes 
 a sympathetic book about machines which skim 
 the plain much more swiftly than Camilla, to 
 the horror of rural constables and the Guild- 
 ford magistrates. 
 
 This was an odd preparation for my drive 
 that morning on a coach, the old-fashioned 
 coach-and-four, very little altered from the 
 coach that was superseded in travel by the 
 railway some sixty years ago, though lighter 
 and smarter than that ancient vehicle. This 
 is not O'Connell's " Derby dilly with its six 
 insides," for nobody sits inside. The interior 
 is a cloak-room, a bandbox, a dressing-case. 
 You sit outside much as aforetime, and play 
 the horn, when it is in order. On this occasion 
 something had happened to that instrument, 
 and it gave out a thin and heart-rending wail, 
 which was suppressed as impertinent to the 
 festival of the day. For the coach was going 
 to a race-meeting, the first I had ever seen, a 
 confession which tickled the company so much 
 that they agreed to claim it as a common 
 experience. " Our first race-meeting ! " they 
 murmured joyously. " Do you happen to 
 know whether the jock .y rides on the horse's 
 neck or holds on by he tail ? " Then the 
 hum of a motor car smote our ears. " Gentle- 
 219
 
 Points of View 
 
 men," I said, "as this is our first race-meeting, 
 don't you think we are rather lacking in re- 
 spect to the spirit of the age ? If Sir Henry 
 Thompson now were going to a race, do you 
 suppose he would be content to sit on the top 
 of a coach ? " " Do you mean to say," they 
 responded vehemently, " that you would rather 
 be on a motor ? " I explained that personal 
 preference had nothing to do with the case. 
 I was happy on the coach, but could not shut 
 my eyes or ears to the progress of invention, 
 which was humming past us with triumphant 
 energy. 
 
 " My dear Jaques," said our host, "you do 
 not perceive the fitness of things. When you 
 drive to a horse-race, it is proper to drive 
 horses. Talk about respecting the spirit of 
 the age ! How can you respect the racehorse 
 by driving up to the course on a puff of 
 
 petroleum ? " If Maeterlinck were here 
 
 " Maeterlinck ! " growled the company. "What 
 on earth- -?" "Yes," I said, "he would 
 show you that with a forty-horse-power motor 
 you would have the spirits of forty horses in- 
 stead of four. That is why he drives a motor 
 car, you may depend. The horses are not 
 there, but he sees them with his poet's eye. 
 He sees forty magnificent steeds tossing their 
 220
 
 A Race-Meeting 
 
 heads far away in front of him. We see only 
 
 four charming animals, I admit, but " 
 
 At that moment a motor car came humming 
 round a corner, and one of the horses, rearing, 
 upset a cyclist, who rolled in the dust, but was 
 on his feet in an instant, clamouring for com- 
 pensation. " Now this happily illustrates my 
 point," I continued, when the turmoil had 
 subsided. " If you had Maeterlinck's forty 
 horses they might all be wild, and rearing all 
 the time ; but they would not damage any 
 cyclists, and so you would have nothing to 
 pay. This is how poetry adapts itself to the 
 practical concerns of life. By clinging to a 
 tradition, we are not only out of date but 
 horribly prosaic. My dear friends, there is no 
 romance of old times about the coach. I have 
 no doubt that somebody is photographing us 
 with the kinetoscope for a picture with this 
 title, ' Going to the Races : Old Stagers, 1902.' 
 And this is our first race-meeting ! " 
 
 When we arrived at the course I was struck 
 by the stillness and solemnity of the crowd. 
 A race-meeting, I had always understood, was 
 a popular carnival. I expected minstrelsy and 
 merry-making. Two gentlemen hazarded a 
 little music, but their hearts were not in it. 
 One of them played the mandoline by force 
 
 221
 
 Points of View 
 
 of habit, while he carried on an earnest con- 
 versation about his private affairs. Taking a 
 little stroll, I met a sombre-looking stranger 
 who said, " Intruder's the favourite." "Ah ! " 
 I returned. " It's an omen ! " " It's six to 
 four," said he. " My friend," I put it to him 
 persuasively, " don't venture odds against 
 omens." " Omens be blowed ! " he retorted 
 with a certain briskness. " Where d'ye think 
 you've come to?" "I have come to see 
 Intruder, but not the Intruder you mean. 
 Hark ! When the motor hums, my Intruder 
 comes. It is the death-knell of the racehorse ! 
 Don't you see that the shadow of this com- 
 ing change lies heavily on the spirits of the 
 people ? How languid they are ! Look ! The 
 winner passes the post with scarcely a cheer. 
 Nobody cares. There's a mounted policeman 
 thrown from his horse. Time was when this 
 would have made merriment for an afternoon. 
 Nobody laughs. What does this mean ? " 
 " Means that your top storey wants a spring 
 cleanin'," said the stranger promptly. "No, 
 my friend, you have the quick humour of your 
 class, but no divination. What it means is 
 that the horse is about to disappear." " Oh, 
 horse-stealin' is your job ! " he suggested play- 
 fully. "To disappear," I went on, "before 
 
 222
 
 A Race-Meeting 
 
 the forces of mechanism. This pastime of 
 racing will endure, no doubt, but in a different 
 form. Chariots will urge their wild career 
 round the course, drawn by viewless horses, 
 far swifter than your favourite. It is the 
 sense of that which makes this crowd dumbly 
 discontented. They feel that the speed of the 
 racehorse is a mockery. They yearn for the 
 humming, maddening whirl of the Intruder ! " 
 I developed this theory at luncheon on the 
 top of the coach. "As this is our first race- 
 meeting," I said, " it is important to settle 
 one great principle. Is it the horse we love, 
 or the speed of the horse ! " " The love of 
 horses," said our host, " is ingrained in the 
 hearts of the English people. You cannot 
 imagine England without a national breed of 
 horses. Racing stimulates the breed, and 
 betting stimulates racing. You remember 
 how clear that was made by a noble Duke, 
 whose attachment to the Turf is the romantic 
 side of his character." " Yes, but apart from 
 his speed, what does the public care about a 
 racehorse ? The horse is being ousted from 
 the road by a machine with a vastly greater 
 pace. Why not from the course ? Besides, 
 when the people have grasped Maeterlinck's 
 idea, they will know that forty poetical coursers 
 223
 
 Points of View 
 
 in the mind's eye are far swifter than any 
 animal that was ever bred by betting. No, 
 the horse is very well in a stately pageant, or 
 in an old lady's phaeton in the country, or 
 ambling gently round a circus with a dazzling 
 creature striking beautiful attitudes on his 
 back. These four greys of yours, my dear 
 friend, would be in their proper places to-day 
 if you were an hereditary monarch going to 
 your coronation. Unhappily, that is not the 
 case, or I might be appointed keeper of your 
 Royal conscience." " Six to four," said a voice 
 below. It was the sombre-looking stranger's. 
 " Oh, go it ! " he exclaimed, " this ain't a race- 
 meetin', this ain't. This is the openin' of 
 Parlyment ! " 
 
 He looked at us as if we were taking the 
 bread out of his mouth. That night I had a 
 dream of M. Maeterlinck winning the Derby 
 in a motor car, with Sir Henry Thompson a 
 good second. Then came a procession of de- 
 jected men, who cried fiercely to me, "Bettin' 
 don't breed motors. The public won't back 'em . 
 We've got to make an honest livin' some other 
 way." " Where are you going to make it ? " 
 I asked with respectful curiosity. "On the 
 Stock Exchange," they answered. This, you 
 will admit, was a very fantastic vision. 
 
 224
 
 XXXI The Organ 
 
 MR. BARRIE must beware. In 
 his new play he shows his hand 
 a little too plainly. I have 
 met members of the leisured 
 class who could not tolerate the "Admirable 
 Crichton." "I wanted to kick him," said 
 one of them to me, quite frankly and simply, 
 when I praised the butler. The kicking was 
 merited because Mr. Crichton, of the servants' 
 hall, presumed to have more brains on a 
 desert island than a peer of the realm. Mr. 
 Barrie has now passed from the brain to 
 another organ, which plays a more active part 
 in the lives of all of us. He has studied the 
 diet of the leisured class, and finds it excessive. 
 There was a time when the aristocracy was 
 content with three large meals a day ; but we 
 have the testimony of Mr. George Russell 
 that some illustrious personages must now 
 have six. Mr. Russell stayed in a country 
 house with a pair of them. They breakfasted 
 in private, made an excellent luncheon with 
 the house-party, consumed great quantities of 
 sandwiches and cake at tea-time, dined copiously, 
 supped alone, and had a cold chicken and a 
 225 P
 
 Points of View 
 
 bottle of claret installed in the bedroom, that 
 they might not starve in the course of the 
 night. When Mr. Barrie read that, he must 
 have felt that it was high time to apply the 
 moral influence of the stage to the organ 
 which is more active than the brain. 
 
 That member of the leisured class, quoted 
 above, has already expressed his resentment. 
 " Disgusting, I call it ! " he has remarked to 
 me with his artless directness. " I am a 
 patron of the drama. I like to have a box 
 and take my friends to the play after dinner. 
 Shan't take 'em to Wyndham's ! What ! 
 Patronise a piece which insults a man for 
 dining well ! It's cowardly ! " " Hitting 
 below the belt," I suggested. " Yes, by 
 George ! " said he. " Right in the pit of 
 
 one's " " Of the organ," I interrupted. 
 
 " As there is going to be a heated contro- 
 versy on this subject, let us avoid expressions 
 which are plain to the point of coarseness. In 
 that, at any rate, Barrie has set an excellent 
 example. He symbolises the organ with a 
 poetical figment, and even gives it an endear- 
 ing feminine name. Don't show yourself 
 inferior in delicacy." " Delicacy ! " he ex- 
 claimed with infinite scorn. " I'm not ashamed 
 of what I eat. If I am always hungry at 
 226
 
 The Organ 
 
 meal-times, what the deuce has that to do 
 with Barrie ? Hang it all, a man's food is his 
 private affair." I said he was too sensitive, 
 and told him the anecdote of Lord Melbourne, 
 who objected to religion when it invaded the 
 sanctity of private life. But he would not be 
 comforted. " I don't want to go to the 
 theatre to be preached at about my appetite. 
 Nice thing to have people in your box guying 
 you between the acts ! " Then it came out 
 that his prowess at the table was the theme 
 of innocent diversion to his friends. No 
 wonder he was shy of " Little Mary " ! 
 
 In the old days, when English muscle was 
 built up with beef and venison pasty, the 
 stout trencherman exulted in his achievements. 
 But now he is touchy. He resents advice, 
 except from his doctor, and seldom acts on 
 that. If you are at table with him, and 
 make a playful allusion to the capacity of the 
 organ, you run the risk of making an enemy. 
 Figure, then, the peril of Mr. Barrie ! Lewis 
 Carroll described the man who came down 
 to breakfast at afternoon tea, and dined on 
 the following day. This was a gentle hint 
 to epicures ; but it was supposed to be a gibe 
 at absence of mind. Mr. Barrie, disdaining 
 circuitous strategy, makes a frontal attack on 
 227
 
 Points of View 
 
 the organ. He has noticed that the class 
 from which our rulers are chiefly drawn eats 
 too much, that the public service suffers 
 accordingly, that the War Office makes a 
 dreadful mess, that with incessant deglutition 
 we are sinking to decay. The medical pro- 
 fession writes prescriptions ; and once a year 
 the organ visits Homburg. These are fashion- 
 able palliatives which do not touch the evil. 
 Having shown that, to make a proper use of 
 the national brain-power society must be re- 
 constructed by the elevation of Bill Crichton 
 to the House of Lords, Mr. Barrie now pro- 
 poses to put our governing bodies on a 
 regimen. " Quarter rations for the aristoc- 
 racy ! " is the motto of this stern reformer. 
 I explained all this in guarded terms to my 
 leisured friend. " Oh yes," said he, " I see 
 what the fellow's driving at. Do you know 
 there's a peer in this play who marries a 
 female quack ? And all because she converts 
 him to a snack at noon and six o'clock tea ! 
 No dinner for the peerage ! " 
 
 I suggested that Mr. Barrie might be in- 
 duced to mitigate the rigour of this treatment. 
 Take my own diet ; coffee and two thin slices 
 of bread and butter at eight-thirty ; glass of 
 milk and a buttered scone at midday ; piece 
 228
 
 The Organ 
 
 of plum-cake and a bottle of ginger-ale at 
 half-past one ; tea and two pieces of dry toast 
 at five ; and at 8 P.M. the modest club 
 dinner at three shillings, with juice of the 
 grape at thirteenpence. " In these simple re- 
 pasts," I urged, "there is nought that tempts 
 the organ to grossness, with the possible ex- 
 ception of blackberry and apple pudding, 
 which is frequent at this season. Mr. Barrie 
 might frown upon that ; he might say that 
 in blackberry and apple pudding there lurked 
 the seeds of national decadence. Peers, he 
 might point out, would be sure to eat too 
 many of them ; and puddings, tied up with 
 red tape, would always be boiling at the War 
 Office. We might compromise on an allow- 
 ance of two blackberry and apple puddings 
 per head for ordinary Government servants 
 in the month of September, and three for 
 Ministers, except during the reconstruction of 
 a Cabinet. In a war they might hamper 
 operations in the field, and would therefore 
 be prohibited by special Army Order." My 
 friend gazed at me with stupefaction. " Thir- 
 teen penn'orth of liquor," he murmured, 
 " must be made of blackberries, like the 
 pudding ! Glass of milk ! Buttered scone ! 
 Why, man, you must suffer infernally 
 229
 
 Points of View 
 
 from " " Organache ? Oh dear, no ! I 
 
 have not seen a doctor for two years, and I 
 have the clearest ideas as to the true great- 
 ness of my country." He turned away, still 
 muttering, " Buttered scone ! " and I did not 
 deem it prudent to tell him that, when the 
 Constitution is suspended during the enact- 
 ment of Mr. Barrie's ideas, a Committee of 
 Public Safety will enforce my diet by a 
 house-to-house visitation through the West 
 End. 
 
 A modern philosopher has painted in 
 dazzling colours the destiny of the human 
 race. He is not of those who think that 
 the nature of man is incapable of change, 
 and that he will be a predatory and gorman- 
 dising animal to the last syllable of recorded 
 time. Nor is this philosopher discouraged 
 by the scientific pundits, who warn us that 
 the sun is in a decline, that his benevolent 
 glory will one day be turned to a cinder, 
 that our planet will become a waste of glaciers, 
 and the last man, making his last journey on 
 snow-shoes in desperate search of a meal, 
 will perish miserably. The philosopher smiles 
 serenely at that picture. There will be no 
 last man. Long before the sun is cold, man 
 will have ceased to be human, as we under- 
 
 230
 
 The Organ 
 
 stand humanity. He will have transcended 
 the fleshly envelope, which is now sensitive 
 to heat, and frost, and privation ; he will 
 still be man, and no angel, but he will be no 
 more of this planet in particular than of any 
 other; he will turn his back, if he pleases, 
 on the solar system, and roam untrammelled 
 through the universe. What his diet will 
 be under such conditions I cannot conjecture ; 
 but it is clear that he will not be a slave 
 of the organ. The organ, indeed, will be 
 abolished or translated. If man does not 
 live on air, the chameleon's dish, he will have 
 some nutriment quite beyond our present 
 notions of cookery. 
 
 Incalculable ages must pass before this 
 ideal is accomplished ; but, as the philosopher 
 I am reverently quoting does not cease to 
 impress upon us, it is the duty of every 
 generation to take care that a better genera- 
 tion shall follow. That, you may depend, is 
 the moral of Mr. Barrie's play. He bids 
 his own generation take heed that there are 
 at least five enemies of progress which must 
 be combated, if not subdued ; and their names 
 are breakfast, luncheon, tea, dinner, and supper, 
 to say nothing of that insidious fowl, and that 
 bottle of claret, in the watches of the night. 
 231
 
 Points of View 
 
 By slow but patient effort we must do our 
 best to conquer them, feeling assured that an 
 infinitely remote generation will appreciate our 
 efforts when the sun is at last extinct, and 
 the Organ is no more. 
 
 232
 
 XXXII M l Bonus 
 
 A a man of moods, my friend 
 M'Bonus is without an equal in 
 my experience. He has the sober 
 qualities of the prosperous British 
 merchant and the model husband and father ; 
 but there is a side of him that contradicts this 
 steadfastness with capricious humour. In a 
 different skin, and under another sky, he would 
 have been one of those captivating vagabonds 
 who allow themselves to be tamed for a while 
 at an outpost of civilisation, and then lapse 
 into the desert without warning. In London 
 he betrays his incurable restlessness by taking 
 houses, always under the earnest pretence that 
 they suit him exactly, and that he desires 
 nothing better than to live in them until the 
 last pulsation of old age. I remember a charm- 
 ing flat, where he was quartered for about 
 three months. "A real home," he called it 
 in the early days ; then it became " that con- 
 founded place where you were always meeting 
 funny people on the stairs." This peculiarity 
 is a source of infinite diversion to his friends, 
 who lay wagers at his table about the next 
 migration ; and the oddest thing of all is that 
 233
 
 Points of View 
 
 Mrs. M'Bonus, with the most singular sense 
 of humour I have ever seen in woman, shows 
 an untiring appreciation of the joke. 
 
 How many Londoners who pass their lives 
 in the monotony of terraces must envy this 
 reputable nomad ! Do what you will, there is 
 something about a terrace that stamps itself 
 on the human character, and I have often 
 thought that after many centuries, when our 
 streets are buried in strata, geologists will say 
 that we belonged to the Terrace Age, just as 
 we speak superciliously of generations that tried 
 to make both ends meet in paleolithic times. 
 There is no trace of the terrace in M'Bonus. 
 When, like a butterfly, he alights on a house 
 that chances to be in a row, he proceeds at 
 once to give it a startling personality. To his 
 present hearth and home, formerly the pro- 
 perty of an eccentric nobleman, he has added 
 the novelty of a tradesman's entrance. The 
 prim gravity of the interior has been broken 
 up into recesses, where the butler, who has a 
 travelled air, as of one who has seen many 
 domiciles, and doesn't believe in them, mar- 
 shals bottles behind screens, and doubtless 
 speculates as to the next flitting. To be sure, 
 there is very little room ; but M'Bonus, in the 
 enthusiastic stage, has visions of a time when 
 234
 
 if' Bonus 
 
 the children (now thriving at Eastbourne) will 
 grow to be majestic young women ; and then, 
 hey, presto ! partitions will vanish, and next- 
 door will contribute its share of a substantial 
 mansion, with architectural devices that will 
 astonish the street. 
 
 Give him time, and I believe my friend 
 would end by transforming London ! When 
 Darwin published his work on earth-worms, 
 we were not a little surprised to learn that the 
 real business of these unobtrusive creatures was 
 not to wriggle on fishing-hooks, but to digest 
 the crust of the earth for the general benefit. 
 Imagine the excitement of a future age when 
 science disclosed that M 'Bonus had lived in 
 so many London streets, removed so many 
 partitions, and changed so many fa9ades, so 
 that our metropolis was his re-creation ! In 
 the light of such fame, who would care to 
 talk of Wren or Inigo Jones ? This dream 
 passes through my mind while the rest of the 
 company are moving Mrs. M'Bonus to gentle 
 laughter by painting her utter distraction be- 
 tween the house in town and the house at 
 Eastbourne. " You will travel up and down 
 the line," says one humorist, "with a season 
 ticket until the fatal morning when the claims 
 of the children on your maternal heart, and 
 235
 
 Points of View 
 
 the claims of William M'Bonus on your wifely 
 affection, will be so nicely balanced that you 
 will stick at a station midway, unable to move 
 in either direction, with your arms extended 
 like a semaphore, one towards Eastbourne and 
 the other towards London ; and there you will 
 remain without bite or sup ; and the evening 
 papers will have sympathetic headlines 'Sad 
 Dilemma of a Wife and Mother : Torn to 
 Pieces by Conflicting Duties ' and the morn- 
 ing papers will offer prizes for the best solu- 
 tion of a problem that is breaking the nation's 
 heart ! " 
 
 Now, my friend's pride in his children, which 
 is very great, is chastened, I sometimes think, 
 by a secret alarm. Every thoughtful father 
 must wonder rather dubiously whether his off- 
 spring, when they grow up, will approve his 
 views of life. Heredity so seldom extends even 
 to such ordinary mental baggage as political 
 opinions and a taste in literature, that it can 
 scarcely be expected to sustain an extraordinary 
 habit of folding the family tent and stealing 
 over the map of London. Those babes at East- 
 bourne (I call them babes, because they are not 
 yet in their teens) already have a lively out- 
 look on the world. To Miss Molly M'Bonus, 
 when she was about four, I entrusted the rem- 
 236
 
 M ( Bonus 
 
 nant of a battered heart, which she has made 
 light of ever since. With what a pang I listen 
 to her father's tales of her precocious humour 
 so rare because it retains the unspoilt charm 
 of childhood ! " Your pal," he is good enough 
 to call her on these occasions ; but whilst I am 
 honoured by the compliment so alien, alas ! 
 from the reality I can see he has an uneasy 
 sense that, before that clear-sighted young judge, 
 we may both be in the dock at any moment. 
 He wants to say to me, I know, " She must 
 have found you out already ; that isn't difficult ; 
 but do you think she suspects that the Post- 
 Office Directory is chiefly occupied with my 
 changes of address ? " 
 
 When you think of it, there is something 
 rather moving in this spectacle of two middle- 
 aged men so apprehensive of a child's keen 
 insight. I have noticed that M'Bonus, whose 
 great delight it is at this season to take his 
 children to the pantomime, has delegated that 
 task to one of his brothers. This showed a 
 poor confidence in me ; but I let that pass. 
 Uncle Frank appears to have had an exciting 
 time at the Hippodrome. At one point of the 
 entertainment a dumb servitor, charged with 
 a message from some choleric person, wrote on 
 a blackboard with a piece of chalk the letter 
 2 37
 
 Points of View 
 
 " D." Then was heard the singularly clear and 
 penetrating soprano of Miss Molly M'Bonus, 
 " Uncle Frank, what does ' D ' mean ? " This 
 was embarrassing, for many heads were promptly 
 turned that way, and seemed to await the answer 
 with the liveliest interest. Swiftly reviewing 
 the orthodox possibilities of " D," Uncle Frank 
 perceived the futility of Dormouse or Drome- 
 dary, and took refuge in silence. Then turn- 
 ing to the nearest perfect stranger, Miss Molly 
 M'Bonus touched him on the arm, and said in 
 her silvery tones, " Uncle Frank won't say what 
 * D ' means. Will you be so kind as to tell 
 us?" Blushing confusion of the nearest per- 
 fect stranger, and unmeasured joy of all the 
 other perfect strangers within earshot ! 
 
 When I heard this story I taxed M'Bonus 
 with the evasion of his parental duty. He was 
 highly pleased with himself, for he had taken 
 his mother, a beautiful little old lady with 
 snowy hair and the complexion of a milkmaid, 
 to dine at a fashionable restaurant, where she 
 was the envy of all the professional beauties 
 of the hour. " Bless you ! " said he, " do you 
 think I am going to a pantomime with your 
 pal ? How am I to know that some acrobatic 
 fugitive would not jump through one window 
 and out at another ? And what would she say
 
 M l Bonus 
 
 to that ? She might say, in a voice perfectly 
 audible all over the house, ' That's what papa 
 does ! ' A nice figure I should cut in the pre- 
 sence of my countrymen ! " I admitted the 
 possibility that his migratory aptitude might 
 be shown up in this fashion, although the 
 pantomime of to-day is not so rich as it used 
 to be in side-lights on our private affairs. But 
 I begged him to consider whether it was worth 
 while to persist in the task of transforming 
 London, into which he had insensibly drifted, 
 when this might have an unfavourable aspect 
 to his progeny. "Why wait," I said, "until 
 they are majestic young women ? Why not 
 pull down that partition at once, lots of par- 
 titions, and occupy the whole street, but pause 
 there ? " It is sound advice ; but who can cure 
 a nomad ? 
 
 239
 
 XXXIII The Holiday Mood 
 
 1 
 
 have the holiday mood without 
 the holiday : that is a state of mind 
 which breeds malice or a gentle 
 irony, according to your disposition. 
 There are persons in this humour who, when 
 they learned that Euston was thronged with 
 sportsmen going North for the Twelfth, 
 turned to a paragraph of the daily paper 
 headed " Grouse Prospects," and read with 
 ferocious gusto that the prospects were con- 
 sidered bad, that the birds had pneumonia, 
 or some malady which made it unlikely that 
 they would be " strong on the wing." Being 
 no sportsman, I take this to mean that the 
 grouse, until now a most foolish bird, under- 
 stands at last that the Twelfth is the day of 
 doom for his kind, and is lying low, like Brer 
 Rabbit. This lesson in evolution should cheer 
 the housekeeper who waits in vain for that 
 inviting placard at the poulterer's, " Grouse 
 is Cheap To-day." Is not life, indeed, one 
 incessant lesson in adaptiveness ? Visitors to 
 the sea, I am told, shiver on the brink, and 
 fear to launch away. The unseasonable chill 
 in the temperature makes the bathing-machine 
 240
 
 The Holiday Mood 
 
 a deserted tenement. I take this news with 
 philosophy, for has not my editor gone to 
 Dieppe ? He is a resourceful man, and I 
 should be sorry to hazard a doubt as to his 
 capacity for adaptiveness. But as he paces 
 the shore, and gazes pensively at Kingsley's 
 cruel, crawling foam (Ruskin objected that 
 foam was neither cruel nor crawling, but it 
 may be too cold for even the most venture- 
 some toe), I should like him to think of me 
 sporting in the brine of the morning bath. 
 (For particulars consult advertisements of sea- 
 salt.) 
 
 Are there no holiday haunts in town ? Must 
 we roam far from the pavement that mothers 
 us before we can throw off the burden of daily 
 cares ? I should not be surprised to hear that 
 the spectacle of the Beefeaters on Coronation 
 Day has prompted many footsteps in the 
 direction of the Tower. The tourist agents 
 
 D 
 
 would never admit it, but I have a suspicion 
 that the Paris hotelkeepers are the poorer for 
 the attractions of Paris at the Earl's Court 
 Exhibition. If you find the Tower too heavy, 
 or Earl's Court too light ; if you crave for 
 mountain scenery, the foaming torrent, the 
 picturesqueness of life in the Tyrol well, 
 there's the Hippodrome ! I say the waters do 
 241 Q
 
 Points of View 
 
 not come down at Lodore with more riotous 
 energy than they show on Mr. Moss's stage, 
 when they burst a mill-dam, and whirl to 
 destruction horsemen, a coach and four, and 
 a bridge in that arena which a few minutes 
 before was a peaceful cycle-track. No mere 
 illusion, mark you ; none of your theatrical 
 panoramas. There's a soldier swimming for 
 his life. He was shot just now by a bandit, 
 and though the bullet did him no harm he 
 was pitched from his horse into the flood. 
 The youngsters who watch him with round 
 eyes can swear to that. Granted that the 
 duel to the death between Count Antonio and 
 his wicked brother, the brigand chief, is a 
 trifle tame. But there is no mistake about 
 the torrent, which sweeps the struggling 
 horsemen right through the circus to some 
 comfortable haven out of sight, where, I hope, 
 they are rapidly dried and provided with suit- 
 able refreshments. 
 
 Consider now that if you took an actual 
 journey to the Tyrol, this is precisely what 
 you would not see. There would be no 
 brigand chief abducting his brother's bride in 
 her coach and four, no jealous lady of his 
 acquaintance brandishing a knife without any 
 danger to the bystanders. You can have these 
 
 242
 
 The Holiday Mood 
 
 violent delights by staying in town ; moreover, 
 you can gratify the junior members of your 
 household to an unheard-of degree. On the 
 point of economy I should say it was cheaper 
 to take them to the Hippodrome twice a 
 week than to take them to the seaside for a 
 fortnight. I put this to a matron whose excited 
 little brood had watched the careering waters 
 with a joy which cannot be painted in prose 
 or verse. " Yes," she said, " but I am uneasy 
 about Freddy ; he is so full of ideas. He 
 would think nothing of turning on the taps 
 in the bath-room to make a cataract on the 
 stairs." " No fun in that ! " said Freddy 
 scornfully. " If I could turn on all the 
 water in the street, that would be something 
 like. Wouldn't the old cab-horses jump ! 
 Don't you see the bobbies swimming about ! 
 Perhaps they can't swim. That would be 
 larks!" "What did I tell you?" said his 
 mother, looking at me. "This excitement 
 is not good for Freddy. Now the seaside 
 always calms him." " Donkey-rides ! " mur- 
 mured Freddy in a tone of disgust. "I like 
 donkey-rides," said his small sister. He pro- 
 ceeded to point out to her the absurdity of 
 craving for that animal when you might 
 have the ecstasy of being swept away on 
 243
 
 Points of View 
 
 horseback by the bursting of a mill-dam, 
 to say nothing of a lively fusillade from 
 bandits. 
 
 Meanwhile, I reminded his mamma that 
 some parts of the Hippodrome programme 
 were quite as soothing as the seaside. There 
 was the performance of a young gentleman 
 in an Eton suit who calls himself Chinko. 
 He came on the stage with an umbrella and 
 a portmanteau. Scene : the playing fields 
 of Eton ; distant view of the College. The 
 holidays have begun, and Master Chinko is 
 thinking of some gaiety in town, possibly a 
 music-hall. He tosses the umbrella, and 
 catches it in the air. Up goes the portman- 
 teau ; his hat joins the eccentric flight ; he 
 juggles deftly with all three. Warming to 
 this innocent and graceful accomplishment, 
 he takes off his coat, and juggles with plates 
 which are handy on a table tastefully spread 
 for luncheon. " I will now juggle with nine 
 billiard-balls," he says, "a trick never before 
 attempted." Up they go in graceful curves, 
 and the Muses Nine and other branches of 
 learning at Eton are put out of countenance. 
 "Surely this is good for Freddy," I re- 
 marked to the young hopeful's mother. "Not 
 billiards," said she, frowning. " Possibly not," 
 244
 
 The Holiday Mood 
 
 I conceded. " I am no player, for I have 
 heard that the game consumes a vast amount 
 of time and tobacco in poorly ventilated rooms. 
 But if Freddy can keep nine billiard-balls in 
 the air, why should he trouble himself with 
 the inferior art of knocking them about a 
 table ? And what an inducement to exhibit 
 his charming dexterity to a few admiring guests 
 in the domestic circle ? " 
 
 Yes, I should like to impress these home- 
 like joys upon citizens who are sighing after 
 foreign casinos. At the Hippodrome I re- 
 trieved the beatitude of childhood when docile 
 steeds pranced to the music, and Mile. Ella 
 Bradna performed those equestrian feats which 
 live in the romance of our earliest memories. 
 We change the fashion of our drama, and 
 heroines have notions and experiences that 
 would be incredible to a bygone generation. 
 But that fair image on the back of the circus 
 horse remains untouched by years, as I observed 
 to Freddy's mother, who thought it was a 
 foolish sentiment at my time of life. The 
 ring-master is still the ideal of politeness, with 
 the habit of repeating everything that is said 
 to him, as if to give it the hall-mark of dig- 
 nity ; and the Fratellini Brothers have all the 
 spontaneous farce of the sawdust, which is 
 245
 
 Points of View 
 
 so much droller than any other farce. What 
 better holiday for the dramatic critic than to 
 watch these clowns, whose humours call for 
 no subtle analysis ? What more restful sight 
 for the leader-writer than the Sisters Klos, 
 suspended in graceful festoons, two of them 
 swinging on the slim and shapely arm of the 
 third ? Why is it that the male gymnast, 
 who is advertised as a " gladiatorial marvel," 
 is an unsightly apparatus of muscle, whereas 
 the Sisters Klos seem no more muscular 
 than languid lilies ? One of them carries 
 the others hanging from her teeth ; and 
 yet the shape of her jaw, I rejoice to say, 
 belies this singular vigour. These mysteries 
 offer gentle exercise to the mind of the 
 man of letters after months of fatiguing 
 research. 
 
 It may not sting the bosom of the sportsman 
 to know that Mile. Bradna has a pretty trick 
 of firing a gun as a signal for a flight of tame 
 pigeons, which come circling round her head. 
 But I did not fail to note that this was good 
 for Freddy. "Better for him to be here," I 
 said to his mother, " than in any of those 
 Continental watering-places where pigeon- 
 shooting is a pastime." I have convinced 
 that excellent lady, in short, that the only 
 246
 
 The Holiday Mood 
 
 reasonable and moral place for a holiday is 
 this diversified wilderness that we live in, and 
 I cannot see why we should not all hold the 
 same opinion until we have a decent oppor- 
 tunity of backsliding. 
 
 247
 
 XXXIV The Art of Small Talk 
 
 I SEE that a journal which stirs the 
 feminine mind is appealing for a 
 " useful little handbook of short con- 
 versations suitable for certain occasions 
 when speech fails." Surely there are already 
 little handbooks for this purpose ; but I 
 thought they were designed for the use of 
 diffident man. It is quite a new idea that 
 woman, before setting out for the ball, dinner- 
 party, picnic, or whatever may be the scene 
 of conquest, would take a last nervous peep 
 into a manual of small talk, if she had one 
 handy. Can you imagine her arriving breath- 
 less, and hastily taking counsel with a friend 
 in the ladies' cloak-room ? " Oh, my dear ! 
 do tell me what is the correct thing to say 
 when a man mentions the weather. He will 
 say, ' Rather showery lately.' ' Yes,' I say, 
 and then I shall say, ' But I suppose we 
 must expect showers in April.' Yes, yes, 
 I've got it now. I do hope I shan't forget 
 it, though ! " 
 
 Does woman's native speech, does her 
 natural wit fail so lamentably that she wants 
 a pocket-mentor, in red morocco, to coach 
 
 248
 
 The Art of Small Talk 
 
 her in this fashion ? Go to ! When she is 
 in the mood for talk, she needs no prompter ; 
 and when she is silent, she has her reasons. 
 Flashes of silence are very becoming when 
 there are lots of things, including mischief, 
 lurking under very pretty eyelashes. 
 
 But when a man is silent, it is usually 
 because he is feeling rather stupid. What 
 is he to say to this bright young creature, 
 who looks at him with a critical air? In 
 the old days, when girls were prim and 
 insipid, and quite thankful for the smallest 
 attention from the august male, there was no 
 particular strain upon his intellects. You 
 could get a sequestration for humour then 
 by quoting Dundreary's sprightly remarks 
 to the lady he took in to dinner. " Does 
 your sister like cheese ? Does your brother 
 wag his left ear ? " I have seen a whole 
 table convulsed by that artless fun. To be 
 sure, it was at Christmas-time in the long, 
 long ago, and we were pulling crackers, and 
 even finding mirth in the venerable riddles 
 that wrapped up the sugar-plums. " Why 
 is a bald head like heaven ? Because it is 
 all shining and no parting." What fond 
 memories that awakens ! But would you 
 venture to try it now on the damsel who 
 249
 
 Points of View 
 
 is still regarding you with the look that says, 
 " I don't think you are very amusing, though 
 you mean well ! " 
 
 Dr. Carl Peters, who has written a friendly 
 book about us, complains that in English 
 society people will never discuss anything. 
 But small talk is not discussion. You must 
 steer clear of fate, pre-knowledge, free-will, 
 and the fiscal question. " Many topics will 
 be suggested by the menu" writes a lady 
 who has thought the matter out. "The 
 fish reminds you of the sea. If it should 
 be salmon, there is Scotland, and you can 
 talk about Holyrood, and Mary Queen of 
 Scots," Oh, can you ! With the sort of 
 young woman I have in my eye, you had 
 better not. But glancing down the menu, 
 you perceive asparagus. Now, here's a chance. 
 You can talk about asparagus, its incomparable 
 flavour, its costliness, the lamentable shortness 
 of its season, till your eyelids can no longer 
 wag, as Mr. H. B. Irving says at the Adelphi 
 Theatre. 
 
 Ten to one the lady, too, is an enthusiast. 
 All women are fond of asparagus, despite the 
 difficulty of eating it with grace. Your 
 companion eats it like an artist, and you 
 tender warm congratulations. You draw her 
 250
 
 The Art of Small Talk 
 
 attention to the performance of a neighbour 
 who holds a stick of asparagus in the air 
 and rises to it like a trout to a fly. Then 
 you touch the pathos of this vegetable. Day 
 and night ! how expensive it is ! Why is 
 there so little of it ? Why is its stay so 
 brief? (You must not make these questions 
 too audible, or your host will think you are 
 accusing him of stinginess.) Then you look 
 the girl in the eye and murmur, " But this 
 is not the worst. They say asparagus is 
 full of rheumatism. So are green peas. No 
 diet, I hear, is absolutely safe except Brazil 
 nuts." You will have done pretty well so 
 far, and may do better still if your partner 
 is disposed to talk at large about ailments. 
 If not if, as I suspect, she is full of health 
 and high spirits, you will have come to no 
 great harm by showing her how rheumatism 
 lurks among the kindly fruits of the earth. 
 Why, they say it is even in strawberries ! 
 You can mention that at dessert, and re- 
 mark that the early strawberries one sees in 
 shop windows are priced at eighteenpence 
 apiece ! You may ask her if she has ever 
 noticed the advertisement of " peach-fed 
 hams." Just think of it pigs fed on 
 peaches ! In America, of course. And here 
 251
 
 Points of View 
 
 a decent peach may cost you half-a-crown ! 
 Pigs, indeed ! 
 
 Of anecdote, perhaps, it is well to be chary. 
 It is idle to say that women have no sense 
 of humour ; but they have a great many pre- 
 possessions which may blind them to the 
 point of your best story. Now, if this very 
 charming girl to whom you have talked so 
 successfully as far as the dessert, chances to 
 have ecclesiastical leanings, of which you know 
 nothing, would it be quite discreet to tell 
 her the tale of the Archbishop's parrot ? 
 The Archbishop of Canterbury told it to 
 Sir Mountstuart Grant Duff, who relates it 
 in his "Diary." At Lambeth Palace a few 
 years ago there was a parrot, carefully brought 
 up by a chaplain. It lived in the Archbishop's 
 study ; and when there was a Pan- Anglican 
 Conference, and colonial bishops called at 
 Lambeth, the parrot looked at them fixedly, 
 and remarked to them in turn, "You are 
 an ass ! " It would be unpleasant to see 
 the face which had smiled at your " peach- 
 fed hams " turn suddenly cold, and to learn 
 afterwards that one of those colonial bishops 
 was the lady's uncle. 
 
 Anecdotes have another danger. One is 
 apt to tell them with too much animation. 
 252
 
 The Art of Small Tallc 
 
 I remember a tea-party which was fearfully 
 depressed by a Hungarian gentleman, who 
 revelled in the English tongue, which he 
 spoke with the fluency possible only to the 
 foreigner. The native is seldom fluent, and 
 never at tea-time. Our Hungarian talked 
 freely of Shakespeare, knowing him by heart, 
 and gave us a sketch of Italian acting, which 
 he declared to be the best in the world, with 
 imitations of the leading Italian actors in their 
 great parts. By this time we were paralysed, 
 and he finished us off by enacting the dramatic 
 scene in which he had dismissed the English 
 governess of his small son. " Dear miss," 
 he said to her, " you do not know enough 
 English to teach my boy. You know only 
 four hundred words." The company looked 
 helplessly at one another, as who should say, 
 " How many do we know ? This terrible 
 man will smother us with words ! " His 
 huge discourse, you see, was not small talk. 
 
 I have one or two thrilling adventures of 
 my own, which I narrate to congenial ears. 
 One of them is the rescue of an Oriental 
 magnate from a gambling haunt in a Con- 
 tinental watering-place. The point of the 
 story is that he had several thousands of 
 pounds about his person, and that as he was 
 253
 
 Points of View 
 
 very drunk, he would have lost everything 
 if I hadn't dragged him out. Unluckily, I 
 tried this drama one day on a lady at lunch. 
 It was too big for the scene, and it ended, 
 I fear, by convincing the table that I was 
 a dangerous character. 
 
 Beware of animation, then, and let your 
 small talk be really small. A young friend 
 of mine, who has a natural gift of pleasing, 
 was much disturbed to find himself unpopular 
 with chaperones. " Hang it all ! " he says, 
 " I can't be pleasant to a girl without her 
 people thinking I am making love to her." 
 " Perhaps she is of that opinion, too," I 
 suggest. "Stuff!" says he. " I just rattle 
 on to amuse her. But what do you think 
 the elder sister of one of these girls said to 
 me ? I was just beginning with her in the 
 middle of a dance, you know, when she said, 
 'That will do, thank you. We'll dance, 
 please, and not talk.' ' " She was afraid of 
 your blarney," I remark. Needless to say, 
 my young friend is Irish. " Small talk, my 
 son, was invented to keep girls from falling 
 in love with the wrong man. You are not 
 playing the game." So I have written this 
 article mainly for his benefit. 
 
 254
 
 XXXV At Brighton 
 
 I AM never at Brighton without feeling 
 that its oldest associations cry aloud 
 for redress. It is one of those haunts 
 of bygone manners which should be 
 modernised as little as possible. The muni- 
 cipality ought to consist of antiquaries, bent 
 on preserving, not old buildings merely, but 
 also the particular note of fashion which made 
 the place famous a century ago. If I were 
 Mayor of Brighton I should wear a wig 
 running over with little brown curls, such 
 as adorned the head of the Prince Regent 
 Prinny of the Pavilion making innocent little 
 boys and girls (see contemporary memoirs) 
 believe that they were real. 
 
 And I should call a public meeting at the 
 Pavilion, and explain to my fellow -townsmen 
 the duty of showing our respect for the really 
 immortal part of Brighton by outward and 
 visible symbols. " It is no use," I should say, 
 " talking about the modern spirit here. There 
 is no twentieth century for Brighton ; we be- 
 long to the Regency. We may think no small 
 beer of ourselves ; but let me tell you that 
 the illustrious figures of the past have longer 
 255
 
 Points of View 
 
 lives than ours. It is we, not they, who are 
 shadows. We play our little parts in our 
 prosy way, and then vanish, and are no more 
 seen ; but they linger here for ever. 
 
 " Yes, my friends ; I never pass through 
 Old Steyne without seeing a carriage, and 
 footmen wearing the scarlet liveries of royalty, 
 and a stately lady stepping in or out ; and I 
 know it is Mrs. Fitzherbert, of all the injured 
 women in history, perhaps the only one who 
 was truly a saint in her injuries. Yesterday 
 she granted me an interview. I gather from 
 sounds at the back of the hall that some of 
 you don't believe that. Well, it is far more 
 real to me than this meeting. And, although 
 I am Mayor of Brighton, let me say that a 
 public meeting in this Pavilion, consecrated 
 by tradition to wine, woman, and song, is a 
 profanity which only the dire necessities of my 
 office force me to sanction. 
 
 " Well, Mrs. Fitzherbert was gracious enough 
 to speak to me. She beckoned me to the 
 carriage-door, and said, ' Mr. Mayor, I must 
 congratulate you.' ' Madam,' I said, ' to what 
 do I owe this felicity ? ' ' To your wig, Mr. 
 
 Mayor,' said she ; ' it reminds me of of 
 
 She seemed to be struggling with emotion. 
 
 ' Of Prinny, madam,' I suggested. ' I beg 
 
 256
 
 At Brighton 
 
 your pardon. I should not speak of his Royal 
 Highness I mean his late Majesty with such 
 unseemly familiarity.' ' Oh, pray do, Mr. 
 Mayor ! ' she said ; ' it sounds friendly. Poor 
 George had his faults, and I am afraid that 
 people think only of those when they think 
 of him at all.' 
 
 "'Madam,' I said, 'I think of his late 
 Majesty very often. As Mayor of Brighton 
 I consider this my official duty. But for his 
 constant patronage we should have been no 
 better than a fishing village. Before my term 
 of office expires I shall have persuaded the 
 town, I hope, to pay a lasting tribute to his 
 memory.' ' You have begun well, Mr. Mayor,' 
 said she, glancing at my wig. ' You must go 
 on, I do not say you must wear his clothes, for 
 
 your figure is scarcely ' ' I know, madam, 
 
 I know. His was Portly ! ' ' Don't be dis- 
 couraged, Mr. Mayor,' she went on with that 
 gentle kindness for which she was so justly 
 beloved. ' No man could dress like my hus- 
 band. Even when we were so poor that we 
 had not five pounds between us, his brain was 
 busily designing new waistcoats.' 
 
 " ' Madam,' I said, * the poor Mayor of 
 Brighton cannot emulate such genius.' 'But 
 you can wear more befitting garments than 
 
 257 R
 
 Points of View 
 
 these, Mr. Mayor,' she remonstrated, pointing 
 to the wretched costume in which a man of 
 our time, even a mayor, goes about his daily 
 business. At that moment I took a great 
 resolution. * I pledge you my word, madam,' 
 I declared solemnly, ' that for your sake, for 
 Prinny's I mean his late Majesty's sake, 
 and for the sake of Brighton, I shall dress 
 like a Regency buck ! ' 
 
 " My friends, I have called this meeting 
 to take you into my confidence the first 
 duty of a public man. You cannot think 
 that our present mode of dress is worthy of 
 our historic associations. It is ugly and it is 
 meaningless. I go into the hall of the Hotel 
 Metropole, and I see a big man with a white 
 bowler hat at the back of his head, and a 
 coffee-coloured overcoat. What is he ! Some 
 gentleman says, * Bookie ! ' You are wrong, 
 sir ; he is an Irish peer. But how is one to 
 tell that from his dress, which has no char- 
 acter, either of the peerage or of Ireland ? A 
 green coat, now, a fancy waistcoat sprigged 
 with shamrock, and an Irish harp with a 
 coronet on it as a scarf-pin, would give us 
 some clue at least to his nationality and his 
 position in society. 
 
 " I must tell you quite frankly that I mean
 
 At Brighton 
 
 to wear a blue coat, a flowered waistcoat, a 
 large stock adorned with a meandering rivulet 
 of gold chain, to signify my office ; pale orange 
 trousers, hessian boots, and a beaver hat. In 
 the few agitated hours that have passed since 
 my interview with Mrs. Fitzherbert, this simple 
 costume is all I have been able to devise. 
 There are many among you, I have no doubt, 
 who will easily surpass it in richness and 
 originality. Some gentleman says, ' Oh no ! ' 
 He is too modest. 
 
 " Let me call your particular attention to 
 the beaver hat with a rolling brim. You do 
 not see it now, except in old prints, or when 
 a hatter puts one in his window as a curiosity. 
 I am told that in some rural districts, where 
 everybody is ten miles from a railway station, 
 a beaver hat of degenerate shape is sometimes 
 seen on the head of a farmer. But think of 
 the Regency beaver, and then of the hat we 
 wear now a perfect nonentity of a hat ! It 
 may do in London, where, I believe, they call 
 it a tile. The heads of Londoners are roofed 
 with commonplace tiles. But in Brighton we 
 should wear something that consorts with our 
 character and station in history; and that is 
 the beaver. 
 
 " Yet do not run away with the idea that, 
 259
 
 Points of View 
 
 after all, this is a matter of opinion, and every 
 man must choose according to his natural gifts. 
 By no means ! We cannot have our beavers 
 and our hessians guyed by a mob too indolent 
 or too captious to follow our example. Women 
 may wear what they please ; I am not so rash 
 as to dictate to them. But I propose that no 
 man shall be allowed to ruffle it in the King's 
 Road, on the sea-front, or in any hotel, save in 
 the costume of the Regency. Call this tyranny 
 if you please ; but you will live to be grateful 
 to the tyrant, and to raise monuments in his 
 honour." 
 
 This is the speech I should make if I were 
 Mayor of Brighton. The present holder of 
 the office is welcome to the idea. Let him use 
 it without acknowledgment, and I shall not 
 complain. He may have a little trouble with 
 people who talk about the liberty of the sub- 
 ject a foolish phrase. I am all for liberty in 
 its proper concerns : Parliamentary elections, 
 leading articles, and similar trifles ; but cos- 
 tume should be governed by artistic fitness, 
 and this can be enforced only by a benevolent 
 despotism. 
 
 Besides, the neglect of Prinny's memory in 
 Brighton is a scandal. 
 
 260
 
 XXXVI Detained in Gout-land 
 
 A American orator is said to have 
 described his native country as 
 bounded on the north by the 
 Aurora Borealis, on the south by 
 the gates of Hell, on the east by the Garden 
 of Eden, and on the west by the Day of 
 Judgment. 
 
 The boundaries of Gout-land are not so 
 magnificent. Its few square feet (all of them 
 gouty) may be traversed with a hop and a skip. 
 But you do not hop unless you have gout in 
 one foot ; when it is in both you lie on your 
 back, and muse upon a neglected line in Shake- 
 speare. What did Launcelot Gobbo mean 
 when he read in the palm of his hand that he 
 was to be in peril of his life by the edge of a 
 feather bed ? Don't you see ? Launcelot was 
 to be laid up with the gout, the fruit of high 
 living in the servants' hall at Belmont when 
 Bassanio married Portia. Peeping over the 
 edge of the bed in a lonely attic, forgotten by 
 the household in the wassail that went on for 
 weeks after the nuptials, the gouty cripple may 
 well have shuddered at the thought of chasms, 
 precipices, and other perilous descents. 
 261
 
 Points of View 
 
 So the first advantage of gout in both feet to 
 any studious person is a new illumination in 
 Shakespearean criticism ! Let Mr. Sidney Lee 
 note that. 
 
 And not only is gout a stimulus to thought- 
 ful inquiry ; it braces the nerve for adventure. 
 Your feet fret each other like a pair of ill- 
 matched horses ; twin-brethren they should be, 
 and yet they fight for the pillow at the end of 
 the bed, lodged there to do them ease. In the 
 fratricidal strife, a book goes over the preci- 
 pice ; or a copy of the Morning Leader flutters 
 down, looking in that dizzy gulf like edelweiss 
 to the Alpine climber. 
 
 As you gaze at it, you are inspired by a 
 great resolve. Those quarrelsome feet emerge 
 sullenly from their lair ; they tremble in space ; 
 you slide slowly down the precipitous face of 
 the cliff; you hang for one wild moment by 
 your elbows on the edge ; and then then a 
 considerable bump, and lo ! you are on the 
 rolling prairie, waving the Morning Leader in 
 triumph. 
 
 There is a description in Pope of Camilla, a 
 very agile lady, whose movements were so 
 swift that she was said to scour the plain. 
 You are scouring the plain too, so far as 
 friction goes (note for Pope's next editor : Was 
 
 262
 
 Detained in Gout-land 
 
 Camilla a housemaid ?) ; but you are doing it 
 in a slow and stately manner. 
 
 On the other side of the plain is the Bell, 
 placed by some infinite wisdom as remote as 
 may be from your hand. Once in touch with 
 the Bell, you can summon the Minion, who 
 has forgotten something ; milk for your tea, 
 salt for your fish a thousand and one things 
 are forgotten by the Minion. You think 
 luxuriously of the winged words you will let 
 fly when you see him. Gout is a great be- 
 getter of words that fizzle in the air like little 
 blue flames. So, with a fierce and panting joy, 
 you make for the Bell. 
 
 You hear its unconsecrated summons rattling 
 in an upper storey ; then you recross the plain 
 with some haste. 
 
 There are two motives for this. Somewhere 
 about the middle (the spot ought to be marked 
 by a mournful effigy say, a prostrate gladiator 
 with a broken sword) you are exposed to 
 scrutiny from without. Any neighbour who 
 casts a wandering eye through his window (a 
 murrain on him for an idle rogue !) perceives a 
 white and agitated figure on its beam-ends, and 
 greets the spectacle with a broad smile. The 
 other motive for haste is fear lest the Minion 
 should come before you have regained that 
 263
 
 Points of View 
 
 dignified retreat, wherein you can launch at 
 him mandate and anathema. 
 
 You clamber up the precipice backwards 
 (putting the Alpine Club to shame) ; you dig 
 your way up with desperate elbows, the gouty 
 feet protesting with violent twinges ; and you 
 are safe at last, just as the door opens, and the 
 Minion receives a little blue flame right in 
 the eye. 
 
 He reminds you of portraits of old trage- 
 dians Junius Brutus Booth more particularly ; 
 there is the same overhanging brow, the gleam- 
 ing eyeball, the uplifted hair, as of one who 
 has regular converse with the Ghost of Hamlet 
 senior. Add to all this the tragedy of a man 
 under a curse. Imagine young Hamlet, not 
 doubtful about his mission, not irresolute, but 
 simply forgetting it. " Behold in me," says 
 the face of the Minion, " the Doomed For- 
 getter of the Thousand-and-One. What is it 
 this time, O Knight of the Burning Feet ? 
 Ha! the milk!" 
 
 The prevailing sense of doom in Gout-land 
 (you feel that your feet will fight for that 
 pillow for ever and ever, as the Lion and the 
 Unicorn fight for the Crown) turns your mind 
 to the old Elizabethan dramatists. I never 
 open them at any other time ; but now their 
 
 264
 
 Detained in Gout-land 
 
 horrors have a soothing fitness ; it is positively 
 appetising to read the fifth act where everybody 
 sets to and dies violently. 
 
 Shakespeare is much too tame ; give me 
 Webster and Ford. Here be poisonings, i' 
 faith ! What think you of anointing the sur- 
 face of a picture, so that when a lady kisses it 
 dutifully ('tis the portrait of her husband) she 
 is taken off straight ? Or of poisoning the 
 lining of a gentleman's hat, so that when he 
 puts it on he complains at once that his brain 
 is on fire ? The fair and faithless Julia, swear- 
 ing she will not reveal the Cardinal's secret, 
 though there is a cavalier in hiding who is 
 to hear everything, kisses the book, and dies 
 on the instant. Poison and perjury there's 
 nothing like it ! 
 
 The stage-directions in Ford are especially 
 toothsome. This, for instance : " Enter Gio- 
 vanni with the Heart of Annabella on a 
 Dagger." There is a dinner-party going on ; 
 and dying sets in at once with great briskness. 
 I am wild to write a play wherein the most 
 stirring scene shall be heralded thus : " Enter 
 the Minion with two Gouty Feet on a Tray." 
 
 But my chief delight is Nero in the old play 
 which has come down to us with no author's 
 name ; Nero, the actor, who ordered the theatre 
 265
 
 Points of View 
 
 doors to be guarded when he was on the stage 
 to prevent any bored playgoer from escaping, 
 so that some men fell down and pretended to 
 be dead ; Nero, inspecting a list of rash per- 
 sonages who frowned or looked sad at his 
 acting, or went to sleep, and thus signed their 
 own death-warrants. Mr. Stephen Phillips, I 
 trust, will not omit this characteristic of the 
 Roman Emperor, who, when about to die, ex- 
 claimed, " How great an artist is lost in me ! " 
 
 Such are the recreations of Gout-land. 
 Think yourself happy if you ever take a 
 holiday there ; say a matter of three weeks. 
 You dream o' nights that you are trying to 
 leave before the fall of the curtain on Nero, 
 but your feet won't let you. 
 
 And in the morning comes a cheery letter 
 from an old friend, who writes : " Gout is a 
 capital thing for keeping off other ailments ; 
 as long as you have it, you need not fear 
 dyspepsia, typhus, and blood-poisoning." 
 
 Blood-poisoning ! Ha ! You get all you 
 want of that from Webster and Ford. 
 
 THE END
 
 MEN AND LETTERS 
 
 By HERBERT PAUL 
 
 Crown 8vo. 53. net. Fourth Edition. 
 
 Daily News. " Mr. Herbert Paul has done scholars and the 
 reading world in general a high service in publishing this 
 collection of his essays. ... To write an essay that shall tickle 
 the understanding, as a sauce by Brillat Savarin must have 
 tickled the palate, is a task attempted by many and accom- 
 plished by few. Among these few Mr. Paul must be ranked. 
 ... It must be read as a whole by all who appreciate urbanity, 
 humour, and a style which glitters like the point of a rapier 
 wielded by a master of the fence." 
 
 Punch. "A delightful book of essays. Mr. Paul's book is 
 as light and his style as brilliant as his reading is wide, and his 
 memory accurate. His fund of good stories is inexhaustible, 
 and his urbanity never fails. On the whole, this book is one of 
 the very best examples of literature on literature and life." 
 
 Star. " A volume of critical essays to lose sleep over. . . . 
 There are thirteen essays in this fascinating book, and as one 
 reads each seems better than the other. ... I commend this 
 delightful book to all lovers of good literature." 
 
 Sphere. " Excellent. . . . Thirteen entertaining essays, 
 therefore a pleasure to read." 
 
 Manchester Guardian. " Writing papers. They proclaim 
 themselves to be the work of a scholar who has taken con 
 amore to journalism, and of a journalist who still cherishes and 
 revels in his scholarship." 
 
 Guardian. "A delightful book. Everyone who cares for 
 good literature and good talk should buy it at once." 
 
 Times. "The reader, then, expects to find in such a book 
 classical scholarship, wide historical and political learning, and 
 familiarity with all the best of the modern literature of England. 
 In this he will not be disappointed. . . . However, Mr. Paul 
 carries his learning lightly, expresses himself with a readiness 
 that is never at fault, and is possessed of a wit. ... A book 
 which is both learned and eminently readable, a rare com- 
 bination." 
 
 Standard. " Always scholarly and often witty literary 
 verdicts." 
 
 Spectator. ". . . Mr. Paul's sparkling book. His style is 
 extraordinarily pointed. . . . These essays are all of them 
 interesting, most of them are even brilliant."
 
 BOOKS BY VERNON LEE 
 
 THE SPIRIT OF ROME: LEAVES FROM 
 
 A DIARY. Crown 8vo. 35. 6d. net. 
 
 Academy. "It breathes the very essence and spirit of Rome. . . . 
 Vernon Lee is a master of descriptive writing, but we know no work of 
 hers (nor, for that matter, of any one's), to compare for beauty with many 
 of the exquisite pages among these notes." 
 
 Daily Telegraph. " A new volume of essays from the pen of Vernon 
 Lee is sure of a welcome from all readers who appreciate literary 
 artistry . . . the author is well equipped for the difficult task which she 
 has essayed that of representing the ' spirit ' of the most fascinating of 
 cities by means of the printed word ; she is gifted with the power of 
 seeing the essential items in a scene." 
 
 Scotsman. " Full of exquisite passages. . . . Vernon Lee's impres- 
 sions are set down in language vivid and beautiful." 
 
 THE ENCHANTED WOODS AND OTHER 
 ESSAYS ON THE GENIUS OF PLACE. Crown 8vo. 
 35. 6d. net. 
 
 Outlook. "The book is one to be enjoyed for its sheer beauty of 
 style by those who have never visited the places described ; but those 
 who have will enjoy the amazing aptness of epithet ... in her extra- 
 ordinary sensitiveness to moods of time and place, Vernon Lee's attitude 
 recalls that of Mr. Henry James." 
 
 Guardian. "Vernon Lee's peculiar gift is to be seen at its best in 
 her latest book, 'The Enchanted Woods.' . . . She represents her feel- 
 ings in broad, bright touches, at once powerful and delicate." 
 
 HORTUS VIT^E: OR, THE HANGING 
 
 GARDENS : MORALISING ESSAYS. Crown 8vo. 33. 6d. 
 net. Second Edition. 
 
 Outlook. " Vernon Lee possesses a mind richly imbued with the lore 
 of the finest literature, and distinguished by just that touch of paradox, 
 of the unexpected, which is the other indispensable requisite of the true 
 essayist. Also her philosophy is never aggressively didactic, but always 
 refreshing and helpful." 
 
 The Spectator. " The grace of diction that marks one who is at once 
 a mondaine and a cosmopolitan, and a grace of thought that sometimes 
 recalls Mrs. Meynell and sometimes R. L. Stevenson, and even here arid 
 there reminds one of Emerson. . . . No book quite so good of its kind 
 has lately been published." 
 
 Literary World. "There is easiness, grace, and a southern sug- 
 gestion of ' sweet do-nothing ' about her writing which is pleasant to 
 minds jaded by the stress and strain of living under our cloudier skies." 
 
 HAUNTINGS : FANTASTIC STORIES. Crown 
 
 8vo. 35. 6d. net. 
 
 Daily Express. "Such a rare gift of vivid writing as Vernon Lee 
 has would seem to provide the most realistic and picturesque vehicle 
 possible for the telling of tales of the supernatural. . . . Every chapter 
 is glowingly vivid with perfect word-pictures."
 
 THIRD EDITION 
 
 HERETICS 
 
 By GILBERT K. CHESTERTON 
 
 Author of "The Napoleon of Netting Hill " 
 
 Crown 8vo. 55. net. 
 
 SOME PRESS OPINIONS 
 
 World. "Thoroughly and exuberantly Chestertonian, 
 bristling with quaint epigram, droll illustration, and daring 
 paradox, and marked by a sustained brilliancy of criticism 
 and analysis." 
 
 Daily Telegraph. " Mr. Chesterton is an original and 
 unconventional thinker. These papers are in his accustomed 
 vein ; bright, whimsical, clever, and amusing." 
 
 Daily News. '" There is here all that joyfulness in action, 
 easy brilliance, and skill at the presentation of a case which 
 have made this writer so delightful a controversialist." 
 
 Manchester Guardian. "Thoroughly sane and virile." 
 
 Echo. " Passages of marvellous power." 
 
 Evening Standard. " Mr. Chesterton's intellectual gam- 
 bols are an increasing joy." 
 
 Graphic. "The brilliant maker of paradox finds abundant 
 scope for his wayward and delightful humour in his present 
 volume. . . . Every page contains some witty phrase, some 
 daring flight of fancy, or some startling turn of thought." 
 
 Onlooker. " A book of gorgeous parodoxes and brilliant 
 epigram." 
 
 Clarion. " A collection of delightful essays bristling with 
 epigrams and flashes of humour. ... A clever, healthy, 
 inspiring book, and will greatly add to the reputation the 
 author has already won by his ' Napoleon of Netting Hill.' " 
 
 Weekly Scotsman. " This brilliant book . . . scintillat- 
 ing epigram and unorthodox thought." 
 
 Newcastle Daily Chronicle. "A volume which makes 
 delightful reading, and the more delightful because it is 
 impossible to read it without encountering in every page 
 in every phrase almost abundant food for thought . . . 
 his brilliant wit, his verbal and mental agility are as evident 
 as they are in everything he writes." 
 
 Morning Leader. "Mr. Chesterton is as inimitable, as 
 elusive, as pungent as ever. His wit plays with unimpaired 
 vivacity, his convictions grow more and more genuine and 
 surprising."
 
 THE CHAMPAGNE STANDARD 
 
 By MRS. JOHN LANE, Author of "Kitwyk," &c. 
 Crown 8vo. 6s. Third Edition. 
 
 The Tribune. " Mrs. Lane has given her readers not 
 ' fatal wine' but sparkling champagne of the most excellent 
 quality and most stimulating effect." 
 
 Academy. "Mrs. Lane may congratulate herself on 
 having that blessed sense of humour which is one of the 
 most valuable possessions in life. In any case, English- 
 women should be grateful to her for writing them this 
 delightful, candid book, which is full of original and bright 
 ideas." 
 
 Morning Post. "Mrs. Lane's 'Champagne' overflows 
 with witty sayings too numerous to cite. . . . Her book will 
 be read again and again." 
 
 Times. "More men would be found at tea-parties if 
 there were more women who could talk to them as Mrs. 
 Lane talks to the public." 
 
 Daily Telegraph. "Engagingly easy reading ... an 
 exceptionally pleasing volume." 
 
 Outlook. "Those lively papers ... in which Mrs. Lane 
 deals with the contrast between English and American life 
 and manners are full of interest and scarcely less full of 
 surprise. . . . For all Mrs. Lane's essays of observation and 
 comparison we have nothing but praise." 
 
 Pall Mall Gazette. "Mrs. Lane's papers on our social 
 manners and foibles are the most entertaining, the kindest 
 and the truest that have been offered us for a long time. . . . 
 The book shows an airy philosophy that will render it of 
 service to the social student." 
 
 Daily Mail. "Mrs. Lane has succeeded in being both 
 pungent and witty without a trace of the bitterness to which 
 the satirist is licensed." 
 
 Daily News. " In her latest volume Mrs. Lane presents 
 herself as a breezy satirist of society. Her equipment for 
 the task is exceptional." 
 
 Mr. JAMES DOUGLAS, in Star. "Mrs. Lane has the 
 American quality of racy candour, and her style crackles 
 with Transatlantic originality. She has also the gift of 
 humour and high spirits. . . . She startles you and stimu- 
 lates you." 
 
 Globe. " Mrs. Lane's bright and witty pages . . . her 
 treatment of the themes is both novel and charming." 
 
 Scotsman. " Always sparkling and delightful."
 
 THE CROWN LIBRARY 
 
 A SERIES OF VOLUMES EMBRACING MEMOIRS, 
 
 HISTORY, BELLES-LETTRES, POETRY, 
 
 NATURAL HISTORY, &c. 
 
 Crown 8vo. Price 55. net each. 
 
 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF SEL- 
 
 BORNE. By GILBERT WHITE. Edited by GRANT ALLEN. 
 Illustrated by EDMUND H. NEW. 
 
 THE COMPLEAT ANGLER. By IZAAK 
 WALTON and CHARLES COTTON. Edited by RICHARD LE 
 GALLIENNE. Illustrated by E. H. NEW. 
 
 MEMOIRS OF MADEMOISELLE DES 
 
 ECHEROLLES. With an Introduction by G. K. 
 FORTESCUE. Portraits, &c. 
 
 JANE AUSTEN: her Homes and her Friends. 
 By C. HILL. Illustrated by E. G. HILL, &c. 
 
 JUNIPER HALL: a rendezvous of certain illus- 
 trious persons during the French Revolution, including 
 Alexander D'Arblay and Fanny Burney. By C. HILL. 
 Illustrated by E. G. HILL, &c. 
 
 MEMOIRS OF LADY FANSHAWE. Written 
 
 by Herself. A New Edition. With an Introduction 
 by BEATRICE MARSHALL, a Note upon the Portraits by 
 ALLAN FEA, and numerous Illustrations. 
 
 STORY OF THE PRINCESS DES URSINS 
 
 IN SPAIN (CAMARERA-MAYOR). By CONSTANCE 
 HILL. With Twelve Illustrations and a Photogravure 
 Frontispiece. New Edition. 
 
 THE REFORMATION IN ENGLAND. By 
 
 S. R. MAITLAND, Author of "The Dark Ages." With 
 numerous Portraits. 
 
 THE LIFE OF ST. MARY MAGDALENE. 
 
 Translated from the Italian of an unknown Fourteenth- 
 Century Writer. By VALENTINA HAWTREY. With an 
 Introductory Note by VERNON LEE, and Fourteen Full- 
 page Reproductions from Old Masters. 
 
 THE BOYHOOD AND YOUTH OF 
 
 NAPOLEON I., 1769-1793. With Portraits. By 
 OSCAR BROWNING. 
 
 THE WESSEX OF THOMAS HARDY. 
 
 By BERTRAM WINDLE. With nearly 100 Illustrations, 
 Maps, &c., by EDMUND H. NEW.
 
 THE LIFE & LETTERS OF 
 
 R. S. HAWKER 
 
 Sometime Vicar of Morwenstow 
 By HIS SON-IN-LAW, C. E. BYLES 
 
 With numerous Illustrations, including Lithographs by J. LEY 
 PETHYBRIDGE, Two Sketches by the Earl of Carlisle, repro- 
 ductions from contemporary Prints, Portraits, Photographs, 
 &c. Demy 8vo. 73. 6d. net. 
 
 Times. " Dr. Johnson's wrath at the suggestion that a friend's eccen- 
 tricity of dress and religion should be counted to him for madness, is a 
 matter of history. . . . Mr. Byles has a better case than Dr. Johnson 
 had, and his effort to disprove the charge results in ... a triumphant 
 acquittal. A well-written life is not, as Carlyle declared it to be, almost 
 as rare as a well-spent one : it is a much rarer thing indeed. Mr. Byles 
 has given us a book which will earn the gratitude of those whose love of 
 poetry urges them to a knowledge of the poet." 
 
 Athenceum. "An authoritative and satisfactory biography. Mr. 
 Byles has performed his task by no means an easy one with skill and 
 good taste. The book has evidently been with him, as with his pub- 
 lisher, a genuine labour of love." 
 
 CORNISH BALLADS AND OTHER 
 POEMS 
 
 By ROBERT STEPHEN HAWKER 
 
 Edited, with a Preface, by C. E. BYLES. With numerous 
 Illustrations by J. LEY PETHYBRIDGE and others, and a 
 special binding designed from oak carvings in the churches 
 of Morwenstow and Welcombe. Crown 8vo. 55. net. 
 
 This book contains Hawker's complete poetical -works, including 
 several pieces previously uncollected. 
 
 Academy. " His fragment of the ' Sangraal ' is worthy to be compared 
 with Tennyson's treatment of the subject. . . . The excellent popular 
 edition. . . . Essential to every lover of the Cornish poet." 
 
 Globe. "Unquestionably the most desirable of all editions of 
 Hawker's verse. ' 
 
 FOOTPRINTS OF FORMER MEN 
 IN FAR CORNWALL 
 
 By ROBERT STEPHEN HAWKER 
 
 Edited, with an Introduction, by C. E. BYLES, and containing 
 numerous Illustrations by J. LEY PETHYBRIDGE. Crown 
 8vo. 53. net. [Uniform with "Cornish Ballads."] 
 
 Academy. "It is admirable prose strong, simple, broad, with a 
 living breath in it." 
 
 Literary World. " Reading these sketches, we come upon passages 
 which Ruskin himself might have written. There is in them a rare rich 
 flavour of the author's individuality, something of the atmosphere, the 
 colour, the rugged grandeur of the coast." 
 
 World. " His book is a peculiarly delightful one, full of that in- 
 describable charm which permeates Scott's novels. . . . The style is 
 inimitable, the anecdotes are quaint and original, and the illustrations 
 are well chosen and excellently reproduced ; and a word of praise is due 
 to the tasteful binding."
 
 BOOKS ABOUT MUSIC 
 MUSIC AND MUSICIANS. 
 
 By E. A. BAUGHAN. 53. net. 
 
 ,% Included in Mr. Baugharis volume are articles on 
 Strauss, Programme Music , a lengthy estimate of the Wagnerian 
 music-drama, appreciations of Jean de Reszke, Ternine, and the 
 great operatic artists of the day, criticisms of Ysaye, Joachim, 
 and other celebrated instrumentalists, &c. 
 
 MUSICAL STUDIES. 
 
 By ERNEST NEWMAN. Crown 8vo, 55. net. 
 
 Manchester Guardian. "This book of penetrating and brilliant 
 essays. . . . Mr. Newman has long been regarded as one of our most 
 acute and independent critics. " 
 
 Outlook. "This book deserves a warm welcome. It is a fine pro- 
 duct of that freedom of thought, that keen perception, and that close 
 grappling with artistic problems which we have learned to expect from 
 Mr. Newman." 
 
 PHASES OF MODERN MUSIC. 
 
 Strauss MacDowell Elgar Loeffler Mascagni 
 Grieg Cornelius Wagner. " Parsifal " and its signifi- 
 cance. By LAWRENCE OILMAN. Crown 8vo, 45. 6d. net. 
 
 Daily Mail. " An American criticism of prominent modern com- 
 posers, singularly picturesquely written." 
 
 Manchester Guardian. " Representative of the best contemporary 
 American criticism. . . . May be almost unreservedly commended." 
 
 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF 
 PETER ILICH TCHAIKOVSKY, 
 
 1840-1893. 
 
 By his Brother MODESTE. Translated, Edited, and 
 Arranged from the Russian Edition by ROSA NEW- 
 MARCH. With numerous Illustrations and Facsimiles, 
 an Introduction and Notes by the Editor. Demy 8vo, 
 2is. net. Second Edition. 
 
 Spectator. " Intensely interesting as the revelation of a remarkable 
 personality ; its pages are charged with romantic interest of that strange 
 quality peculiar to the works of the great Russian novelists ... a host 
 of attractive and engrossing features in this remarkable book ... we 
 must congratulate Mrs. Newmarch on the zeal and intelligence with 
 which she has accomplished her task." 
 
 Westminster Gazette. " It is no exaggeration to describe the work 
 as one of singular fascination." 
 
 Mr. ERNEST NEWMAN in Manchester Guardian. " For the present 
 large and handsome volume we have nothing but praise, and for Mrs. 
 Newmarch's translation no praise can be too high." 
 
 Times. "A most illuminating commentary on Tchaikovsky's music."
 
 THE SINGING OF THE FUTURE 
 
 By D. FFRANGCON-DAVIES 
 
 With an Introduction by Sir EDWARD ELGAR and a 
 Portrait of the Author. Demy 8vo, 73. 6d. net. Second 
 Edition. 
 
 Times. " On almost every page there are sentences which 
 might well be committed to memory." 
 
 Spectator. "The book is a valuable and stimulating contri- 
 bution to musical aesthetics ; it is animated throughout by a 
 lofty conception of the responsibilities of the artist, and it 
 enforces with spirit and with eloquence the sound and whole- 
 some doctrine that the vitalising element of song is thought." 
 
 Morning Post. " It denotes great insight and knowledge on 
 the part of the author, and is enthusiastically and eloquently 
 written." 
 
 Daily Chronicle. " This interesting and valuable work . . . 
 every word of which should be read and carefully studied by 
 professors and pupils alike. . . . The work renders conspicuous 
 service to art, and deserves the highest praise." 
 
 Truth. "The general tone and spirit may be heartily com- 
 mended. . . . The excellent spirit which informs the author's 
 work and the elevated ideals which it inculcates." 
 
 Speaker. "His book is written in such a way as to be 
 interesting not only to the singer, but to all who care generally 
 for music and its connection with poetry . . . ought to have a 
 strong influence for good both upon teachers and pupils." 
 
 Evening Standard. " Certainly a book with a purpose . . . 
 goes very thoroughly into the heart of the subject . . . may be 
 cordially commended to the notice of all who are either singers 
 or students." 
 
 Musical Times. "A clever book, a valuable book, a read- 
 able book ... to quote even a tithe of the wise things contained 
 in this important volume would convey an inadequate idea of 
 the wealth of thought to be found therein. " 
 
 Referee. "The most experienced artist may profit by pon- 
 dering its pages, and to all young singers the book should 
 prove invaluable. ... It will excite discussion and opposition, 
 yet it sets forth little that has not been endorsed by deep 
 thinkers and great artists." 
 
 Standard. " Few will be found to gainsay anything Mr. 
 Ffrangcon-Davies urges for more thought, more high endeavour, 
 a broader outlook on art and things in general, and a deeper 
 culture on the part of those who are in the arena as performers, 
 or who are preparing with many hopes and pains for a like 
 career." 
 
 Academy. "An attempt to place before its readers the very 
 highest ideas of singing as an art, together with some sugges- 
 tions, the result of long personal experience, for practically 
 attaining such ideals." 
 
 8
 
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