Ex Librii C. K. OGL_ / AT ALL LIBRARIES. A POWERFUL AND BRILLIANT NOVEL. THE HYPOCRITE A Story of Oxford and London Life. Crown 8vo. Art Cloth. 25. 6d. THIRD IMPRESSION. The Daily Telegraph says : " A book by an anonymous author always arouses a certain inquiry, and when the book is clever and original the interest becomes keen, and conjecture is rife, endowing the most unlikely people with authorship. The author of this book may be who and what he likes, it matters not. . . . Very brilliant, very forcible, very racy. . . . It is perfect in its way ; in style clear, sharp, and forcible ; the dialogue epigram- matic and sparkling. . . . Enough has been said to show that The Hypocrite is a striking and powerful piece of work, and that its author has established his claim to be considered a writer of originality and brilliance." A TRIP TO PARADOXIA AND OTHER HUMOURS OF THE HOUR /o R O PARADOX^ AND OTHER HUMOURS OF THE HOUR Being Contemporary Pictures of Social Fact and Political Fiction T. H. S. ESCOTT Author of "Personal Forces of the Period." "Platform, Press, Politics, and Play." "The Social Transformation of the Victorian Age. " England : Its People, Polity, and Pursuits." LONDON GREENING & CO. 20 CECIL COURT, CHARING CROSS ROAD 1899 [All rights reserved,] DEDICATORY SOME of the sketches in this little book were suggested by chance words of witty wisdom from the lips of Mr. Gladstone's successor in the Premiership. The volume is therefore inscribed to THE EARL OF ROSEBERY, K.G., with all thanks for the kindness and en- couragement shown during many years to the writer's industry. With that name I may be permitted in the inscription to in- clude that of Stanhope, whose noble house has by different members of it shown an interest in the writer ; of Sir William and Lady Priestley, as well as of my two oldest and kindest friends in literary London, Clement Scott and Joseph Knight. These two last have by their friendly interest, renewed after many years from our first acquaintance, cheered the weariness of physical convalescence after illness, and so ministered to health. T. H. S. ESCOTT. BY THE SAME AUTHOR. Social Transformations of the Victorian Age, Cr. 8w. Cloth. 6s. Press Opinions. Times. " A distinct success." Daily Mail. "A very excellent and com- prehensive survey." Leeds Mercury. "Eminently read- able and racy." Manchester Guardian. "As trust- worthy as it is undoubtedly readable." St. James's Gazette. "Mr. Escott is at his best where he describes, from great stores of experience, the actual changes that have taken place between 1837 and 1897. Society, Government, Royalty, the Church, the Press, Music, and Art, are all treated, and on each he has something worth hearing to say." BY THE SAME AUTHOR. Personal Forces of the Period. Cr. Svo. Cloth. 6s. Press Opinions. Athenaeum. "An entertaining book of gossip about many leading personalities of the day." Standard. "Mr. Escott has the gift of presenting real portraits of the men he describes. They are vivid and trust- worthy." Queen. "The book is monstrously in- teresting, for it is the work of one of our most distinguished publicists writing about men who were his personal friends and makers of England." Scotsman. " Mr. Escott writes about all these people with exact information, and with a good humour that makes the papers uncommonly pleasant to read." PREFATORY THE very slight sketches, that scarcely pretend to be tales, of which this small volume consists, apart from the relations of time in which the later stands to the earlier work, have some connection with earlier works by the present writer. England, etc. (Cassell, 2 vols. ; Chapman and Hall, i vol.), was a survey of English institutions actually at work. Social Transformations (Seeley) brought down that book to the present day. Personal Forces (Hurst and Blackett) was an attempt to show the influence on their age of certain well- known individuals. The present sketches show in outline certain of the fashions or the humours of the period, themselves the products partly of our polity, partly of those who live under it. T. H. S. E. BRIGHTON, 1899. TWELVE CLEVER AND POPULAR NOVELS THE HYPOCRITE. Third Edition, ts. 6d. THE GREEN PASSION. By ANTHONY P. VERT. 35. 6d. A SOCIAL UPHEAVAL. By ISIDORE G. ASCHKR. 6s. THE SWORD OF FATE. By HENRY HERMAN. 35. 6d. SEVEN NIGHTS WITH SATAN. By J. L. OWEN. 35. 6d. LORD JIMMY. By GEORGE MARTYN. as. 6d. FAME THE FIDDLER. By S. J. ADAIR FITZ-GERALD. as. 6d. THE RESURRECTION OF HIS GRACE. By CAMPBELL RAE-BROWN. 25. 6d. THE GATES OF TEMPTATION. By Mrs. ALBERT S. BRADSHAW. 25. 6d. THE DOLOMITE CAVE. By W. PATRICK KELLY. 35. 6d. THE LADY OF THE LEOPARD. By CHAS. L'EPINE. 35. 6d. THE DEVIL IN A DOMINO. By CHAS. L'EPINE. is. CONTENTS PACK A TRIP TO PARADOXIA . . . . , I HOW THE "HOUSE OF LORDS QUESTION" WAS SETTLED 97 How I BECAME PRIME MINISTER . . . no How HIS PARTY LOST MR. CONTANGO . . . 130 THE NEW WAITRESS . . ... 142 HOW THE HOUSE OF COMMONS BECAME A CYCLING SCHOOL . . . ... 154 A STORY OF THE STUDIO . . . 165 HOW I BECAME BISHOP OF BARUM . . 177 THE PRIME MINISTER'S LOVE AFFAIR . . . 190 LORD BOSCOBEL'S GARTER . ... 207 THE CABINET COUNCIL . . ... 228 THE " WHITECHAPEL WONDER" . ... 243 THE STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A SERMON . . . 263 A TRIP TO PARADOXIA I. TH E steamer having advanced half-way up the estuary, was now approaching the chief port of the great kingdom of Para- doxia. The shore, instead of being lined with palaces, as one of the two passengers in whom we are interested had expected, dis- played an unpicturesque fringe of rather squalid dwellings, or of very smoke-be- grimed factories. Observing a look of surprise on the face of Kalogathus, an entire stranger from the neighbouring country of Hilaria, now visit- ing Dumdum, the Paradoxian capital, for the first time, his companion and cicerone, one Glybbe, a Paradoxian native of experi- B 2 A TRIP TO PARADOXIA ence and position, anticipated the coming question by the remark, "You must know the Paradoxians are the most humble- minded people in the world, and do not live to astonish strangers with the mag- nificence of their city, therefore they show you at first all that is most poverty-stricken and least lovely." Arrived at the landing-stage, Kalogathus observed that no policemen or other state guardians of public order were in sight. " The fact is," responded his friend, " we do not need them, for the Paradoxians are notoriously the best -conducted people in the world." The words had scarcely been uttered when two men of particularly villainous aspect, and obviously not quite sober, boarded the vessel, and engaged in a struggle for the custody of the visitors' chattels and person. During the confusion that followed, the hat of Kalogathus, an A TRIP TO PARADOXIA 3 entirely new creation of the most expert and expensive Hilarian artist, was knocked off his head, crushed beneath his feet, and finally thrown into the water. Being about to express dissatisfaction at his loss his friend checked him immediately, and putting his finger to his lips, observed, " Not a word. I protest the man was very sorry for it, and, if you give him sixpence, will very likely say no more about it, for all the Paradoxians are politeness itself." When he had struggled through the gangway to the shore Kalogathus dis- covered that his watch was gone. " It is really of no consequence," rejoined Glybbe, " there are more clocks in Dumdum than in any other capital under the sun, and as for your property, I saw the man take it out of your pocket, and should not be at all surprised if, when you get to your hotel, he offered to let you have it again for a ten- pound note; the truth is, you Hilarians have 4 A TRIP TO PARADOXIA no idea of the honesty of us simple Dum- dumites." As there were no conveyances of any kind in sight, Kalogathus meekly inquired how he was to get to his first destination. His companion seemed grieved and hurt by the question. "Is it possible?" he exclaimed, "that you, who have been reading the daily paper all the way, did not know that the Dumdum cabdrivers had all struck ? " On being asked what a cab-strike might mean, Glybbe responded, " The working men of Paradoxia, you must know, are a practical people, and when they have no- thing in their pockets leave their wives and children to get on as best they may, and fastening a big card on their coats, printed with the words ' WE ARE STARVING,' adjourn to the next public-house till it is the hour to go to the theatre." "And," innocently commented Kalo- A TRIP TO PARADOXIA 5 gathus, "does this put the money they want in their pockets ? " At this point the born citizen of the most practical country in the world fairly lost his patience. " Have you Hilarians," he broke out almost angrily, "no idea of the brother- hood of mankind, or of the rights of labour and the sanctity of Trades Unions ? But see, here is my own private victoria, and in ten minutes you will be at home." They had not gone far when Kalogathus noticed from the carriage a man mercilessly beating a pale-faced woman, while two ragged children, terror-stricken, stood by. Being a person of humane impulses, and observing none of the bystanders were disposed to interfere, Kalogathus was about to descend to make the cowardly brute desist. " Do nothing of the sort," appealingly murmured Glybbe, "or they will both turn 6 A TRIP TO PARADOXIA and rend you ; surely you must be aware that Paradoxians are domesticated to a proverb, and would go to the stake for the inviolability of their home." " But the poor woman and the helpless infants," continued Kalogathus. "What are they to do ?" " They will all make it up presently," quickly explained his friend, "and go together to Bounderby Gardens to spend a happy day. Bless you, my friend," he continued, " it is only their play, and you will have to stay some time in Paradoxia before you know what a humorous people we are." Arrived at a fine street in a fashionable precinct, consisting, as it seemed, chiefly of hotels, the Paradoxian delivered the stranger to the manager of one of these caravanserais, and, whispering something into that functionary's ear, told Kalogathus he would find the charges moderate, and A TRIP TO PARADOXIA ^ promised to call upon him to-morrow. As, however, it was by this time quite plain to the Hilarian visitor that words used in common by his friend and himself had not precisely the same meaning, he took the precaution of inquiring the cost of the two conveniently furnished apartments to which he had been shown. " A mere bagatelle, my dear sir, I assure you," replied the hotel manager, flipping a fly off his highly - polished boots, "only ^25 a week, not, of course, including bath or lights ; but the reason we can let you have it so cheap is that Prince Rumpels- tiltskin, the Baratarian Ambassador, had to leave hurriedly to-day, and at the end of the season we Dumdumites always lower our charges." Having performed a mental calculation, and found that the annual cost of this domicile would considerably exceed the salary of the Prime Minister in his own 8 A TRIP TO PARADOXIA country, Kalogathus rang the bell with a view of ordering his baggage to be trans- ferred elsewhere. Instead of the waiter the rival proprietor of a neighbouring establishment rushed into the apartment, and, being informed of the stranger's diffi- culty, at once offered to provide him with superior accommodation for rather less than half the sum. Before the bargain was concluded an emissary from yet another joint-stock palace for distinguished strangers, to whom it had been rumoured incorrectly that Kalogathus was the special corres- pondent of the chief Hilarian newspaper, breathlessly entered, and drawing our friend into a little private closet, whispered in his ear that he would be proud and pleased to entertain him royally as long as he liked, and make no charge for lodging but only for board. Struck by the liberality of the arrangement, Kalogathus had hardly given the order for the removal when a magnifi- A TRIP TO PARADOXIA 9 cent lackey, with the words blazoned on his gold hat-band " Royal Empire Residential Club," opening the door and laying his hand upon the newcomer's shoulder, told him with a stately bow that beneath his roof Kalo- gathus should not only have rent free an apartment worthy of his rank, but that venison, grouse, turtle, all the delicacies of the season, and dry champagne of a famous brand, should gratuitously grace his board. Not quite liking the idea of eleemosynary hospitality, and anxious to find repose somewhere before, Actaeon-like, he should be rent in pieces by competitive innkeepers, Kalogathus made his escape, bundled all his goods into a four-wheeled fly, and drove afar from this magnificent quarter to a quite unfashionable and somewhat dingy precinct, where he remembered to have read comfort- able lodgings were to be found with the good old Paradoxian fare at moderate charges. io A TRIP TO PARADOXIA Reaching his destination without further misadventure, he subsided into rump-steak and oyster sauce with a pint of stout in the coffee-room, and ten minutes afterwards was snoring virtuously between the sheets. " What a swindler that first hotel-keeper was," next morning remarked Kalogathus to his friend when he called upon him, " for wanting to charge me at the rate of ,1300 a year for what another would let me have for half the price, another for nothing at all, and a third not only for nothing, but with venison and champagne thrown in." " I perceive," replied Glybbe, " that as yet you understand imperfectly the use of our language. There has been no swindle in the matter the first rooms at 25 a week were cheap enough ; as for the second offer, it is what they always make, and the only reason why they do not lose money in the long run is because their terms enable them to do such a big business." A TRIP TO PARADOXIA n Kalogathus being of a logical turn of mind, and not quite following the argument, was about to ask a question, but politely fearing it might be inconvenient, checked himself, when his friend continued : " As you get to know more of Dumdum and Paradoxia, you will see that the great social feature of the century has been hotel enterprise. But come, it is now time to be getting on, as I wish you to see as much as possible of our national life in all its departments ; and first let us go to the 'Assembly of the Silent/ also known as the manufactory of statute law, of which I myself have the honour to be a member. This body is, as doubtless you know, the great depository of all power, and the real centre of government in Paradoxia." Kalogathus, who thought that, by contrast with his native official-ridden Hilaria, he had seen as yet no traces of authority in Paradoxia, could not help remarking, "That i3 A TRIP TO PARADOXIA explains, then, why your government in this country is so confoundedly bad." Jeremiah Glybbe, Esq., a puffy little man with a red face, and swelling with a sense of his own legislative dignity, drawing himself up to his full height, which was at least five feet four inches, and throwing the strongest look he could command of wounded and contemptuous dignity into his rather podgy and expressionless features, told his friend in rejoinder that he " ought to keep silence on these matters till he knew more about them," and that practi- cally the Paradoxians in general, and the Dumdumites in particular, were acknow- ledged to be the best-governed people in the world. On their drive towards their next object of interest, during which the admir- able control over the traffic in the Dumdum streets caused them to sustain only two serious accidents, Glybbe explained to his guest that the title, "The Assembly of the A TRIP TO PARADOXIA 13 Silent," was a facetious euphemism, seeing that the only member of it ever known to hold his tongue was an official, who was, of course, called " The Orator," and who was paid a handsome salary to coerce others into the doing of that which he was not allowed to do himself. " I suppose," groaned Kalogathus to him- self, after receiving this information, " I shall gradually get to understand the remarkable use made by these people of their mother- tongue." Once inside the precincts, before they had actually entered the Chamber itself, the scene rather reminded the visitor of a country fair in his native land than sug- gested any association with State business. In one corner of the stately vestibule was a refreshment booth, at which two rather wild-eyed and unkempt gentlemen seemed to be regaling themselves on a roast potato and a bottle of gingerbeer. These person- i 4 A TRIP TO PARADOX I A ages, who talked a dialect of the Parodoxian language with which even Glybbe confessed himself imperfectly acquainted, and who illustrated their remarks by a variety of gestures rather after the Hilarian than the Paradoxian pattern, were, it seemed, Blarnian members of the Silent Assembly, who, passing most of their days and nights within these walls to save the cost of lodging, presently proceeded to a secluded nook, and producing a pocket comb and looking-glass, went on to complete their morning's toilette. " I have read," mildly observed the some- what surprised Kalogathus to his cicerone, " that in Blarnia they distil a spirit from cauliflower so powerful as to take two men to carry off a small glass of it. If we were to ask that gentleman, perhaps he would kindly give me a few drops of it to wash down this hard-boiled egg, for I feel rather faint." As he gasped out these words his friend A TRIP TO PARADOXIA 15 kicked his unoffending shin as an admoni- tion to silence, and having observed that, had the Blarnian patriots overheard the allu- sion to the native beverage they would cer- tainly have claimed his blood, asked poor Kalogathus if he had not noticed a piece of white metal, about the size of a cart- wheel, tied by a ribbon as broad as a hat -band round the necks of the two gentlemen in question. On asking what might be the meaning of that which he could scarcely fail to see, our stranger was told that it proved the wearers of the decoration never to take anything stronger than water. "Is, then," Kalogathus burst forth in surprise, " drunkenness so universal in your country that everybody who is content with stale buns and gingerbeer proclaims the fact by dressing himself in that grotesque fashion ? " " My good friend," rejoined Glybbe, i6 "please remember you are in a public place, and don't ask such rude questions. In a little time you will know that these gentle- men consider it their duty to encourage the others." It was, however, as Glybbe, in the official phrase of Paradoxia, was " free to admit," somewhat unfortunate that his guest's visit should occur when the time of the Assembly was entirely monopolized by the great Blar- nian question. " My dear Glybbe," remarked the visitor, " I have read your newspapers for nearly half a century, and I can never recall a day when there was not a Blarnian question." Taking no notice of this comment, Glybbe conducted Kalogathus to a place in the gallery inside the Assembly-room, and bid- ding him to order for his refreshment any luxuries of the season, such as pineapple- drops or whelks, hurried away to take his part in the business of legislation below. The A TRIP TO PARADOXIA 17 Paradoxians being the most practical people in the world, it did not surprise Kalogathus to learn from his next-door neighbour that the chamber on which he was now looking down was constructed on such principles and dimensions as not to contain a third of those entitled to sit in it, that the competition for places was the cause of periodical revo- lutions, and the struggles for seats between its members the occasion of sanguinary frays. " Perhaps," timidly soliloquized Kalo- gathus, " these very practical people might get on better if they were a little more theoretical." Amid the babel of confused sounds and inarticulate clamour beneath and in front of him, Kalogathus for some time could only distinguish isolated words, chiefly proper names, and occasional syllables, mostly significant of reproach or vitupera- tion, taken from the sacred books of the Paradoxian people, who were, of course, 1 8 A TRIP TO PARADOXIA the most religious in the world. In the midst of the excitement, which every mo- ment grew fiercer and noisier, Kalogathus presently recognized his acquaintance of the cartwheel and blue ribbon waving a stout ashen cudgel above his head, and, to show, as Kalogathus supposed, his own humility, inviting anyone who liked to tread on the tail of his coat, a generous offer that did not, if accepted, seem likely to take any gloss of novelty off that garment. Presently this particular Blarnian patriot provoked a fiercer fray, and, wildly making for a gentleman on an opposite bench, after having begun seemingly to twist his head from his shoulders, hurled his unresisting form full length upon the floor. The m$tte now became general and wilder ; blood flowed ; eyes were blackened ; the imprecatory vocabulary of the Paradoxian language, which is not of narrow compass, began to be exhausted ; and the arena presented a A TRIP TO PARADOXIA 19 series of hand-to-hand battles like those that make up the sum of warfare of the Iliad. Kalogathus, a grateful guest, began to be frightened for the fate of his conductor and host, but was immensely relieved when he saw him safely outside the limits of the fray, peacefully taking a cup of tea and a muffin on the steps of the President's chair. The wretched Kalogathus, who had swallowed no substantial food since his steak and stout on the preceding night, began to be aware internally of the vacuum proverbially abhorred by nature, but was at this moment rejoined by Glybbe, whose arm he now perceived to be in a sling. " Perhaps," said that gentleman to his half-famished friend, " we might now find ourselves a pint of claret and a cutlet in the dining-room." While they were moving thitherwards Kalogathus observed one of the officials, as the Chamber was now empty, quietly 20 A TRIP TO PARADOXIA proceeding to remove all signs of the recent excitement, brushing up a few broken limbs, carefully removing all crimson stains, and handing over a brace of Blarnian belligerents, insatiable of battle, to functionaries whose care it was to conduct them to the place of safe seclusion reserved for Blarnian patriots overpowered by the lust of strife. While they were seated at their repast the Paradoxian legislator brushed the incident aside as one of no importance, but the House's passions, he admitted, were so heated that it really seemed at one time as if something might happen. However, the legislation which had provoked all this was now fairly disposed of, and nothing more was wanted than the ratification of the Crimson Tippets, by which he meant another section of the Paradoxian manu- facturers of statute law. " I suppose," eagerly interrupted Kalo- gathus, " it is a mere matter of form ? " A TRIP TO PARADOXIA 21 "That," responded Glybbe, "is by no means the case ; you seem to forget that we Paradoxians are a practical people, and the State does not pay Crimson Tippets to do nothing. Our House has been working for three months at this business, and now to-morrow the Crimson Tippets will begin to undo all we have done in three days." " What an absurdity ! " was the exclama- tion that Kalogathus could not repress. " My dear friend," was the other's gentle rebuke, " you really should not criticise where you don't understand. This is not absurdity ; it is what the greatest of our statesmen calls 'the free play of the Con- stitution.' " By-the-bye," he added, "there is to be to-morrow in the Great Amphitheatre a demonstration against the Crimson Tippets." Observing a look of perplexity on his com- panion's face, Glybbe added, "A demonstra- tion, you should know, is so called because 22 A TRIP TO PARADOXIA it demonstrates nothing, except that if the weather is fine more people than usual will be prevented from enjoying it in our recrea- tion grounds." The event thus referred to by Glybbe was duly witnessed a few days later by the two friends. A brass band preceded the demon- strationists through the streets, till at last not less than three -score of souls, infants in arms included, were marshalled round a stunted ash tree in a picturesque meadow on the outskirts of Dumdum. Mr. Harmodius Flam, a colleague of Glybbe in the Assembly of the Silent, and also the con- ductor of the Down with Everything newspaper, informed the visitor to Para- doxia, when they met him a few moments later, that he saw before him the great Paradoxian people assembled in the majesty of their millions, and that to-morrow there was not a Crimson Tippet in the empire who would fail to tremble at the report of A TRIP TO PARADOXIA 23 the historic event. Kalogathus was about to ask another of his inconvenient questions, when the man of ink and scissors observed that he had an appointment to lunch with, as struck Kalogathus, curiously enough, one of those very Crimson Tippets whom Mr. Flam, in his newspaper, denounced as the arch-miscreants of the universe. n. Some little time subsequently, in com- pliance with his visitor's request for in- formation on the political system of Paradoxia, Glybbe expressed himself to Kalogathus after this manner. Apropos of the Hilarian's surprise at the variety of Paradoxian parties, the well-informed resident said : "As a matter of fact, we have in Paradoxia fewer political parties than in any other country in the world, and you 24 A TRIP TO PARADOXIA must know, my dear Kalogathus, that in all States these are the same in reality and in purpose, if not in number, and a better clue to them is less a history- book than a grammar. ' I want,' ' you have,' ' I will get ' decline these verbs, and apply them with the necessary changes to all communities, and you have an exhaustive exposition of the party system. Here we talk of pro- and anti - Blarnians, of Crimson and of anti-Crimson Tippetites, but in Paradoxia, as elsewhere, there are only two divisions of anv real account the 'haves' and the w 'have nots.' These are eternal." " I had heard," mildly interpolated Kalo- gathus, " much about the confusion and decay of the Paradoxian party system." "That," quickly replied Glybbe, "is the consequence of our leaders having ceased to be statesmen and become auctioneers. Our guerilla chiefs to-day pretend to rally a following which is non - existent for a policy which is unreal. Only once let our great men find out what the people really want, then combine to supply or deny that need, as the case may be, and you may be quite sure, my good Kalogathus, you will hear no more pessimistic platitudes like these. As for the question of the hour, look at that man yonder ; he is the question of the hour." The individual thus referred to was engaged outside in cleaning the windows of the apartment where they were sitting. He had now been nearly eighty minutes at work, and had not yet fully finished a single pane of glass. After having polished a couple of square inches he would com- placently survey the result of his labour, refresh himself from a little stone jar in his pocket, or, lighting his pipe, would moodily growl forth, " Cruel work, I call it," and then make a feeble show of resuming his labours. 26 A TRIP TO PARADOXIA "That man," said Glybbe, "has a wife and children waiting for bread in the river- side garret which he calls his home. He could do easily in thirty minutes what he now spreads over an hour, and could with- out trouble make five shillings for every three that his employers pay him to-day." " Is he, then," broke in the astonished Kalogathus, "a gentleman of fortune dis- guised as an artisan in a smock ? " " On the contrary," was the reply, " he belongs to a company of men who make their bread by the sweat of their brow, but who would cause his life to be not worth a week's purchase if he proceeded at all less leisurely than he is now doing. That is the difficulty we have here to solve. The whole fabric of Paradoxian industry rests upon a basis of free labour, and free it cannot be if it is regulated by the class bullies who call themselves ' representative working men.' The worst is that this sort A TRIP TO PARADOXIA 27 of thing makes honest labour the least welcome to those for whom it is the most necessary. Having long furnished the example of a race of toilers, we are in- curring the reproach of a race of shirkers, so that the pith and purpose, the nerve and pluck of the Paradoxian people, itself the product of labour, are being destroyed." "And the remedy?" inquired Kalogathus. "The restoration of duty to the place which it used to hold among us," replied Glybbe. " Your religion," soliloquized, half aloud, Kalogathus, " ought, I should think, to help you here." On hearing this Glybbe became visibly thoughtful, and even dejected. It had indeed for some time been noticeable that the blithe and even chirpy optimism which reflected his nature in his manner was becoming overcast by the influences of his friend's rather unwelcome conversation and often painfully inconvenient inquiries. The 28 A TRIP TO PARADOXIA truth is, contact with a stranger had given a new turn to this gentleman's reflections, and raised unpleasant doubts in his mind whether the conventional praises heaped upon the Paradoxian polity in all its departments were at bottom deserved by the facts, or whether he, like many of his excellent and amiable countrymen, might not unconsciously have been living in a "paradise of fools" and an Elysium of hypocrites. Instead, therefore, of replying with his usual alacrity to the invitation of Kalogathus to enter upon a fresh theme, Glybbe muttered something about this being really quite out of his line, and that the best thing for Kalogathus to do would be to summon a conference of Paradoxian divines. The stranger from Hilaria, there- fore, good-humouredly gave the conversation a fresh turn, but, as he was travelling for information, did not abandon his quest, and took the opportunity in another quarter of A TRIP TO PARADOXIA 29 examining the religious condition of Para- doxia, and, through the help of duly-qualified spiritual guides, eventually arrived at the following results. ill. That Paradoxia was the most religious country in the world, and Dumdum among its most devotional capitals, was generally maintained and circumstantially demon- strated on all sides. When Kalogathus intimated that he had heard the Paradoxians credited by some of his own epicurean compatriots with possessing a score of religions, but a single sauce, he was rebuked for the levity of his remark. As a matter of fact, it was made plain to him that in the spiritual, like the political, domain, however innumerable the contending sects and their subdivisions might be, there were practically in Paradoxia only two great schools. The faith of the community had 30 A TRIP TO PARADOXIA been changed more than once by the decree of the Silent Assembly, and its ceremonial displays were the periodical subjects of frequent legislation, but now, as ever, the real and only issue was between those who held and those who denied that the Divine Being had made a manifestation of Himself and of His will to men. Among the deniers persuasion there were, strange as it may seem, some of the most ostentatiously pious and aggressively devout members of the Paradoxian Church. Professor Nephelos, an erudite doctor in the chief university of the realm, had demonstrated to his own satisfaction, and to the great pain of his more humble- minded disciples, that the realities indicated to the Creator's judgment by the epithets good, bad, just, unjust, merciful, and so forth, were utterly beyond the power of a human mind to grasp, or even to conjec- ture, and that consequently one could not A TRIP TO PAR AD OKI A 31 be perfectly sure that superhuman codes of morality might not, in effect, enjoin the exact opposite of those things which to the human ear and intelligence they seemed to command. When, somewhat staggered by this proposition, Kalogathus mildly pro- tested that its tendency must be to drive ordinary persons into the most revolting extremes of immorality and atheism, he was abruptly told by a very superior academic that if he understood the doctrine of the Relativity of Knowledge better he would not make such ridiculous remarks. The more deeply, however, Kalogathus mused over the matter the more uncon- vinced he became, nor was he sorry to find that some of the most blameless and beneficent members of the Paradoxian com- munity shared and profoundly sympathized with his views. " We have here," remarked one of these gentlemen to him, "yet to decide whether 32 A TRIP TO PARADOXIA the Highest Object of all reverence and fear is a beneficent or a maleficent Being, and until we desist from contemplating Him through false media, because through the mists of Professor Nephelos, we shall not have reached the very threshold of Truth. These metaphysics run mad it is which constitutes the real enemy of a healing faith in the traditionally religious realm of Paradoxia. The nominal division," the present speaker continued, " may be between the two rival sects who claim to have the power of working a certain miracle ; but the vital and only actively real difference is that separating those who assert from those who specifically, or virtually, deny that the Great Architect of the visible world has placed, and is prepared to gratify, in His creatures the desire and power of faintly understanding His attri- butes has given them the faculties of thought and language, has implanted in A TRIP TO PARADOXIA 33 them rudimentary ideas of ethics, not for the purpose of mocking or tormenting them, but for their own well-being, happi- ness, and guidance here. Many of those who admit theoretically that this is so, practically in some of their sects dis- allow it. Sometimes they say that by the immutable order of the universe, the right apprehension of these high matters is the exclusive business of a caste ; sometimes, as by the sectarian opponents of these individuals, one is told that all will be clear if we listen to ' the still small voice ' of a divinely- nurtured faith." "And," inquired Kalogathus, "what does 'faith' mean?" " Faith," resumed his acquaintance very slowly and sadly, "as used by some teachers of ours, means, I regret to say, the profess- ing to believe what all the analogies of existence, all received ideas of good and evil, all social moralities, the very structure D 34 A TRIP TO PARADOXIA of the human mind itself, tell one must be untrue, and the professing to adore and love a Being who is represented by those who claim to be His exclusive votaries as the concentration and essence of the very qualities which most revolt human hearts and most revolt human affections. Some few centuries ago we in Paradoxia spent much blood and treasure to shake off the tyranny which froze the heart and paralyzed the sentiment, and to establish once for all the supreme verity that the sanctions of morality and religion must in all cases be identical, and not contradictory. I regret to have to admit," he added, "that the victory we thought we had gained was superficial and evanescent, and that to-day a war, deadlier perhaps to all which is best in our national life and ideals than the old one, is being waged between the religion- ists, who should rather be called the anti- nomians, and the enemies of anti-nomianism, A TRIP TO PARADOXIA 35 who, seeing that they are the friends of morality, are those who alone can be called religious. A little further experience and conver- sation with those who had replaced the original message from the invisible world by the garbled narrative of it from a foreign capital, subsequently showed to Kalogathus the meaning of these observations ; and that amiable inquirer saw with real grief that the bitterest enemies of peace and goodwill on earth were the descendants of the very champions who several generations earlier, in the organic struggle referred to by Glybbe, had held aloft the flag of emanci- pation from human control. One of these apologists endeavoured seriously to convince Kalogathus that reverent devotion to the order of the invisible world necessarily implied continual malice and uncharitable- ness to certain members of the seen creation. 36 A TRIP TO PARADOXIA "For," he went on explanatorily, "it is my first duty to hate all that is evil. Now, how can I fail to see that my fellow-beings generally are evil ? Personally I am a water-drinker. I have outlived the period of the passions. I am the father of fourteen children ; my life is, therefore, one of great austerity. On the other hand, I admit I am mean, unconscionably shabby, and not, according to human standards, too honest or truthful ; but what of that ? It is my para- mount duty to signalize my hatred of those sins to which I myself for social and physiological reasons am not inclined. I therefore horsewhipped my wife last night because of a remark I disapproved, and shut my door upon my prodigal son because he had about him a decided aroma of cigars and brandy-and-water. In this present state of being we are so fashioned that we cannot hate the evil without hating the evil-doer. Pity for the sinner would imply condonation A TRIP TO PARADOXIA 37 of the sin ; therefore it is my first obligation to hate sin and sinner alike indiscriminately, and to do what I can to crush them both. And now, Mr. Kalogathus," concluded this exemplary pietist somewhat tartly, " I hope you are satisfied." But Kalogathus, who had himself dipped into the sacred writings of the Paradoxians, meekly expostulated that he did not quite see it. " That," replied this admirable person, who happened to be a grocer in good business, " is because you are delivered over to judicial blindness, and are, I much fear, an emissary of evil ; but now I must leave you, for I have to apply the birch-rod to my youngest child for telling a 'fib,' and after that it will be time to punish the apprentice and then talk about charities." After this conversation Kalogathus was disposed to feel less surprised than he was before at the disagreeable condition of the 38 A TRIP TO PARADOXIA public streets and squalid courts in certain parts of the great capital of Dumdum ; but the great festival of the illustrious college of Cloud Compellers was approaching, and before attending this our visitor thought he might as well relax his mind by mixing in the more modish society in Dumdum, to the chief leaders of which letters of introduction were lying at his hotel. IV. Mrs. Lightinhand was at once one of the leading hostesses in Dumdum society and one of the most accomplished and ubiquitous representatives of the tolerant cosmopolitan eclectic, comprehensive yet discriminating, spirit of her age. Kalogathus, she knew, bore in his native land an excellent character and had a modest competence, but she would have welcomed him to her hospitable and daintily-equipped home if he had been A TRIP TO PARADOXIA 39 supported by public subscriptions and was without a shred of character for his back. Being thoughtfully anxious to contribute his quota to the conversational fund of amuse- ment and instruction, our friend, on entering the drawing-room and approaching a little group which his hostess had formed round her, was about to expatiate on his experi- ences and to ask some of his usual questions. Just then a gentleman of very remarkable aspect, whose intellect had made him famous equally in society and in the State, came up, and on being asked by Mrs. Lightinhand to give a few words of advice to her little boys, then seated side by side upon the couch, and about to return to school the next day, went up to them and, as Kalogathus thought, with a rather sardonic smile, while pleas- antly patting the head of the elder brother, said, " When you go out into the world, my little fellow, be sure never to ask ' Who was the man with the iron mask ? ' or they will 40 A TRIP TO PARADOXIA call you a bore ; and you, my boy," he continued, turning to the other, " never want to know 'Who wrote the letters of Junius?' or they will call you a bigger bore than your brother." Kalogathus could not, had he wished, have helped overhearing the words, and it struck him that they might be politely intended for him. Be that as it may, our stranger met with slight encouragement to persevere in his attempts in the drawing- room to make himself agreeable. His comments and inquiries alike fell upon heedless listeners, while the ladies and gentlemen about him persisted uninter- ruptedly in a conversation charged with allusions he could not understand to persons of whom he had never heard, and spiced with an argot the interpretation of which he could only conjecture vaguely from the context. It was the same kind of thing throughout A TRIP TO PARADOXIA 41 the excellent dinner provided by Mrs. Light- inhand for her guests. When the ladies had withdrawn and coffee was served, a pale-faced youth, producing a thing in Britannia metal called by him a cigarette- box, and offering one of its contents to Kalogathus, ventured to condole with our friend on being, in the pallid stripling's phrase, " rather out of it." " If," was our friend's reply, " this sort of talk had been going on in my country, it would have been considered very provincial." Here the guest who in the drawing-room had spoken so encouragingly to Mrs. Light- inhand's little sons interposed as follows : " The more you see of us, my good sir, the more you will find out that 'smart' society and provincialism are only different names for the same thing. This moment at every dinner-table throughout the fashion- able quarter of Dumdum, in every castle, in every cottage, in every club, and in every 42 A TRIP TO PARADOXIA village tavern up and down the land, the great Paradoxian people are amusing them- selves with the same allusive small talk and gossip about those things which are part of their own lives, and which have no interest to any other creatures except themselves, for the very good reason that they have no meaning. The longer you dine out in Dumdum the less you will find there is of general conversation. If the company is large it chatters in groups and libels its neighbours in detachments. These coteries coalesce as little with each other as if they were in separate rooms or towns. The different currents of gabble never converge in one common stream of friendly inter- course." "And yet," observed Kalogathus, "the Paradoxians are the most social people in the world." " No doubt of that," said the other. "We carry the idea of joint-stock enterprise into A TRIP TO PARADOX/A 43 all that we do or see or visit. We make parties for the play, we visit the hovels of the poor in detachments, and even our acts of devotion we perform in battalions, and yet," he added, " there is no country in the world where there is less real companionship at the present moment than Paradoxia." On regaining the drawing-room, the ap- pearance of two gentlemen at once strongly arrested the gaze of Kalogathus. The first of these was a personage arrayed in the ordinary evening dress of the country, but with a shock head of tangled hair, innocent of the brush, light in colour, and silken in texture, though so rudely tumbled that this part of his person might have been imported from the neighbouring isle of Blarnia. Standing by him was a little gentleman with smooth face, amiable but rather heavy eyes, habited in a short, tailless, black velvet sack, his nether limbs encased in trunk hose of crimson silk, while his linen, instead of 44 A TRIP TO PARADOXIA being starched in the ordinary Paradoxian fashion, blossomed forth into a voluptuous wealth of muslin puffs and frills. From the evident awe with which the companion of this creature inspired the other occupants of the room, and the deferential air that some of them displayed on being presented to him, Kalogathus inferred that he was a person of high distinction. His features had been disciplined to express a super- cilious unconsciousness of all that was said and done around him. When spoken to he either remained stolidly silent or bluntly contradicted any statement from anybody that happened to reach his ears. " Who," whispered Kalogathus to his next-door neighbour, " is that insufferable brute ?" "Great powers!" was the reply sotto voce, "he is the Duke of Z , and the great leader of the Crimson Tippets." "In Hilaria," Kalogathus ventured to A TRIP TO PARADOXIA 45 comment, " he would have to fight two duels before breakfast to-morrow." " In Paradoxia," was the rejoinder, "if he was not a Crimson Tippet and a duke he would have been ducked in the first horse- pond long before now." The younger gentleman turned out to be Mr. Euphues Twang, the poet of the season, discovered by Mrs. Lightinhand for the de- lectation of Dumdum. At this moment he was trying to secure the ear of his disdainful companion to his instructive comments on the "too utterly utter," or "too distinctly precious," as illustrated in the salons and picture galleries of the year. The duke resignedly bore it as long as he could, and not till he had yawned audibly half a dozen times, and twice had even begun to doze, did he, shaking himself together like a great Newfoundland dog, find that he had an appointment at the chamber of Crimson Tippets, and vanish into the night and 46 A TRIP TO PARADOXIA the recesses of his own brougham outside. Ten minutes after he had left his political business with the Crimson Tippets the duke was whirling in a night express to the provincial town of Oldcastle, where he kept his racing stud, and the next morning early Kalogathus saw him, costumed exactly as if he had been a groom, riding for his health's sake on the "Amazons' Promenade," as the chief equestrian resort in Dumdum is called. "The fashions of dress in this place," a few days later observed to a friend Kalo- gathus, while watching the motley crowd in the neighbourhood of the "sacred prome- nade," "amuse me vastly. Your infants in their perambulators are clothed like old women, your old women like girls in their teens ; your men affect the effeminacy of women, your women ape the jackets and the masculineness of men ; your great nobles out of the season and in the pro- A TRIP TO PARADOXIA 47 vinces are, to look at, as working-men, grooms, covert-beaters, gamekeepers, and so forth ; your artisans on holidays cannot be distinguished from the ministers of one of your temples." " My dear Kalogathus," rejoined Glybbe, after listening to these remarks, "you are occupying your mind with sad frivolities, but next week I shall show you something more instructive and improving, for our Cloud Compellers, the national assembly of our wise men, meet in conference at Cuckoo Town, where you will both hear and see the great Professor Poldoodle and his famous ape." v. To make these observations and refer- ences clear, some explanation will be necessary. Many years before this a very learned Paradoxian, Professor Chang, after considerable research and many experiments 48 A TRIP TO PAR AD OX I A involving much torture to unoffending animals, had convinced himself and scien- tific society generally, that the aboriginal and prehistoric man was the evolved descendant of a race of very respectable monkeys. This view held the field till, a new sensation being necessary, a rival savant, Professor Slime, made it as clear as mud that the archetypal and earliest human denizen of this earth was the first- begotten of a frog. Avidly seized at the time, and fondly cherished for a considerable season, the tadpole theory of human existence was generally credited, till at a memorable meeting of the savants an inveterate opponent of Slime, to the astonishment of his audience, produced a remarkably well- grown specimen of the tribe of Ranae, who, somewhat huskily but quite articulately, croaked forth an indignant disavowal of all human affinities. Waxing warm with A TRIP TO PARADOXIA 49 tribal enthusiasm, this highly intelligent reptile protested against the imputation of any such degrading relationship ; for could there be any beings, except man, so igno- rant and so involved in self-conceit as to ignore the fact that the immemorially ancient race of Frogs were the lineal descendants of the mighty mammoth icthy- osaurus family, and were prosperously settled in Egypt long before any human biped fouled the waters of the Nile. This declaration had the effect of once more popularizing the ape theory, on which, it was now significantly whispered, recent discoveries of Professor Poldoodle would throw a wholly novel and a surprisingly unexpected light. Poldoodle having, from his childish visits to the Zoological Gardens, conceived the idea that apes talked to them- selves, and might even be induced to talk to mankind, had lately gratified the ambition of his existence by passing a prolonged 5 o A TRIP TO PARADOXIA holiday inside a comfortably fitted-up cage in the depths of an Ethiopian forest, and at a spot frequented by the most highly fashion- able and cultured of Simian society. Not only had he satisfied himself by aural and ocular observation from behind his bars that apes hold habitually more improving conversation than the inhabitants of Para- doxia, but he had succeeded in inducing one of these bipeds to accompany him to his home in the city of Dumdum, and, as was said, to attend with him the great gathering of Paradoxian Cloud Compellers at Cuckoo Town. When the eventful day came the largest and most splendid building of Cuckoo Town was crammed with representatives of what- ever was most brilliant, cultivated, or wise in Paradoxian society. In a kind of amphi- theatre on a raised dais sat the great Poldoodle, while beside him was a spacious case or vessel covered with brown holland, A TRIP TO PARADOX! A 51 which, it was rumoured, contained the stranger from Ethiopia. After a few in- troductory remarks, apologizing on the plea of catarrh for any hoarseness of his protJgt, the professor beckoned the Simian guest, apparelled in the academic dress of Cuckoo Town, to the table. Having astonished the company by calling for a glass of iced water, the ape proceeded with great composure to deliver its address. The Simian lecturer began by protesting to the ladies and gentlemen present that for his part he was entirely without prejudice against his human fellow-creatures, and assured them that if he had not been born an ape he should feel it an honour to become a man, but, he added in a quotation picked up obviously in the classic atmosphere of Cuckoo Town, " Amicus Socrates, amicus Plato, magis arnica veritas," and therefore, speaking not only as the representative of intelligent apedom, whose official repre- 52 A TRIP TO PARADOXIA sentative he was, but as a well-wisher to humanity, whom he had no wish unjustly to disown, he felt bound, in the interests of that truth itself to the pursuit of which the halls and towers of Cuckoo Town were consecrated, to assure his hearers that the theory of his respected friend, as he would call him, Professor Chang, was totally devoid of all foundation in fact. Profound sensation, it is needless to say, followed this remarkable repudiation by the interesting Simian on behalf of his species of all share in the paternity of man. Mrs. Lightinhand requested Professor Poldoodle to bring him to her next " Thursday after- noon," and to induce him to lecture in her music-room in the same series as Arch- deacon Marmoset and other dignitaries of the Church, as well as celebrities in science, literature, or art. Lady Emily Highfalutin called him a "dear creature," while her little A TRIP TO PARADOXIA 53 girl presented him with two macaroons and a whole bag of gingerbread nuts. The Duchess of said "she adored intellect, whether in man or brute, and felt sure nothing would delight his Grace more than to see him at luncheon at Dulverton House any day the accomplished creature liked to look in." Mr. Sciolist Hum, who presided over the committee, suggested that the monkey should become an honorary member of the Pierian Club in Pall Mall. Mr. Shakespeare-Smith at once turned off an impromptu sonnet to him that appeared next week in the Hay- market Journal, written and edited chiefly by ladies of the very highest quality. Mr. E. G. W. Bolingbroke - Jones, the well- known pamphleteer, and also the chief literary impressario, as well as professional diner-out, in Dumdum, at once made a note to ask him to contribute an exhaustive paper, without any personality in it, to the 54 A TRIP TO PARADOXIA next number of the Exclusive Review, where no poor devils of professional writers were ever admitted, and the order of literary precedence was regulated by the Heralds' College. A little later Kalogathus became somewhat intimately acquainted with this most intelligent and best bred of apes. In fact, the two ultimately developed into bosom friends and confidants. " Daisy " was the name by which the interesting Simian now, of course, a lion of the first order was spoken of in the social circles he condescended to adorn. "I do not know," was his observation to the Hilarian visitor about this time, "whether to be most amused by the inno- cence or disgusted by the vanity of these droll Paradoxians. The other day, wanting a little exercise, I leapt up from my chair at the Pierian Club, tied myself by my tail round a chandelier, and did a little trapeze per- formance on my own account. A waiter A TRIP TO PAR ADO XI A 55 walked up, said I was disturbing the old gentlemen reading their newspapers, and begged me to come down. All this time I could hear about me the buzz of gossip and scandal so gross, false, and cowardly that in the depths of my native forest the talkers would have been hissed out of society." What had struck Kalogathus principally was not so much the nonsense talked in the upper circles of Paradoxian society, as the fact that these ladies and gentlemen in the presence of strangers showed their gracious- ness by remaining obstinately dumb, or by the parade of a dialect and of innuendoes only intelligible to one of their own set. VI. But another great surprise was in store for Paradoxian society, and for Kalogathus as a temporary member of it. For some 56 A TRIP TO PARADOXIA years the pundits of Dumdum and the executive committee of the erudite Cloud Compellers had denounced, persecuted, and visited with every form of social ostracism anyone who might dare to express his agreement with the sacred writings of the Paradoxian people as to the number of days in which the existing order of the visible universe was evolved. Of late it had been whispered that extraordinary testimony would soon be forthcoming to the historic accuracy of the august narrative in the minutest detail. The facts were as follows. A new member of the Royal Paradoxian Stargazers had not only discovered a wholly unsuspected planet at a distance of some forty or fifty miles from the inhabited earth, but had invented and brought to bear upon it a telescope so powerful, that comparatively small objects could be discerned with the same ease as a lady's features through a lorgnette on the other side of the great A TRIP TO PAR ADO XI A 57 Dumdum opera-house. After several years of patient survey, this enterprising observer observed on the adjacent orb a series of huge obelisks engraved with strange-looking but perfectly well-defined characters. By applying to these a camera of unusual strength, some very fine photographic im- pressions of the monoliths and their records were through the instantaneous process obtained ; microscopic examination showed the records so brought down, so to speak, from the heaven itself to be composed in characters that soon were read by scientific experts without much difficulty. In about three months there was issued from the Cuckoo Town University press a transcrip- tion in the Paradoxian vernacular of the newly-found record. To the surprise of all, and to the special disgust of a chosen company of Paradoxian priests, who some months previously had shown in a volume of essays that this portion of the Paradoxian 58 sacred writings was a myth, the results now brought to light verified that narrative at every point. Immediately the executive committee of Cloud Compellers changed their tone, discovered that genuine science had always favoured the hypothesis of the credibility of the sacred narrative, and requested permission from the State to burn alive anyone who dared to dissent from it. "It would really seem to me," Kalogathus, apropos of all the business, ventured to remark to one of the wise men of Dum- dum, "that your science is after all not so very scientific." " Hush, my friend," gently replied the other, " this is only the morning, and we shall very likely read an official contradiction of it in the extra-special edition of to-night's Celestial Post:' " I hope not," gravely observed Kalo- gathus. A TRIP TO PARADOXIA 59 " The newspaper proprietors of Dum- dum," was the rejoinder, "hope differently, because if there were no lies to contradict there would be no special editions to publish. By-the-bye," he continued, " I have been asked by my friend its editor whether you could not yourself find time to write some- thing for the Evening Oracle, perhaps a leading article." On Kalogathus appearing a little puzzled, his friend, who had had much experience as a Paradoxian journalist, reassured him. " You will have no difficulty about it ; the editor will give you your subject, and the rest will all follow as easy as lying, The leading article of the approved Dumdum type is simply an essay written in three paragraphs, never containing more than three ideas, and consisting of a series of identical proposi- tions so worded as to avoid tautology and to conceal repetition." Thus it happened that a few days later 60 A TRIP TO PARADOXIA than this Kalogathus found a " printer's devil " knocking at his door, and began a series of compositions which the editor of the Oracle obligingly approved. VII. The energetic visitor to the Paradoxian capital was, however, overtaxing his con- stitution, and soon began to experience unmistakable signs of nervous exhaustion. " How about your Dumdum doctors, my dear Glybbe ? " was the question asked of his original cicerone by the distinguished invalid. " The medical faculty in the Paradoxian capital," was Glybbe's rather pompous reply, " is admittedly the best in the world. Before you consult our chief physician I will get my own pet leech to look at you." Dr. Hippocrates Toad, the gentleman thus alluded to, a very soft-mannered per- A TRIP TO PARADOXIA 61 son, who was rising rapidly into a fashionable practice, tapped our friend's chest with something resembling an auctioneer's ham- mer, inspected his throat, made him repeat the numbers 999 first rapidly, then slowly, looked at his eyes with something which reminded him of a magic lantern, applied an electric battery to his right leg's calf with such an effect that the patient, by an in- voluntary kick, was near knocking over the apparatus and assaulting its proprietor. " Don't give way, my dear friend, to these foolish fancies. I have examined you oph- thalmoscopically and in every way ; all that you want is a little more to occupy your mind and a few of our dinners at the Sunflower Club. Dine with me there to- morrow, to meet the Duke of , and if you can get him to come, that very distin- guished and charming stranger who we society people, as you know, have christened Monsieur FitzDaisy." 62 A TRIP TO PARADOXIA On recounting this interview to Glybbe, and expressing surprise at Dr. Toad's satis- factory report, Glybbe smiled and shook his head. " You must know," he said, " my friend, that the Dumdum doctors, who are un- doubtedly the best and greatest on the face of the earth, make it a practice only to tell their patients what it is plain they wish to be told. How else do you suppose," he continued, checking in the bud some objective utterance of Kalogathus, "that a man like Hippocrates Toad, who began life as an errand-boy and will end it as a book- maker, has pushed himself into a fashionable practice, and a house in Elysium Square ? " " I begin to think," replied Kalogathus, who was becoming restlessly anxious to leave Dumdum, and who was really very unwell, "that I had better make an appoint- ment to see Sir Oxymel Stubbs." This exalted gentleman, whose very name A TRIP TO PARADOXIA 63 almost frightened poor Glybbe into a fit, was not only the President of the Paradoxian College of Physicians, but had taken a leading part in the curing or the killing of many of the princes and statesmen of both hemispheres. The medical baronet's great skill lay in his exact knowledge of the limitations of his calling. His patients went to him, not for what he did, but for what he abstained from doing. He had, however, his foibles as well as his fortes, and one of the former was, to put it in scientific language, a rather grotesque subjectivity. When he himself felt in perfect health there was nothing much the matter with any of those whose tongues he looked at or whose chests he stethoscoped. When he was depressed with any troubles, physical or spiritual (for Sir Oxymel was not less great as a theologian than as a physician), no syllable of hygienic comfort could be ex- tracted from him. Fond of convivial 64 A TRIP TO PARADOXIA society in his earlier days, he compensated any dietetic liberties with himself in the past by prescribing a relentless austerity of regimen for those who consulted him in the present. His formulas were few, but pithy, and, as Kalogathus was soon by experience to find out, were repeated with mechanical precision to all who asked his advice. " You have offended," were the first words of this authority, addressed to his visitor in the manner of the homilist rather than the doctor, "against the laws which make for physical righteousness. At your time of life you ought to know that Nature never forgets and never forgives. The idea of your completing your nervous exhaustion by scribbling for the Evening Oracle ! Nature and Time may or may not do something for you. Live regularly, occupy your mind pleasantly, clothe loosely, towel briskly after your bath, and trust in A TRIP TO PARADOXIA 65 Providence. No prescription in the world will do you any good." And as he said this the great Sir Oxymel Stubbs made a movement which, to Kalo- gathus, appeared to imply the payment of his fee. The patient deferentially placed a neat paper parcel in the great man's hand, and rejoined Glybbe. Kalogathus intimated his dissent from his friend's optimistic view of the Dumdum faculty, saying rather bitterly, " Surely Sir Oxymel might have done something for me," only to elicit this reproach from his companion : "My dear Kalogathus, you are unreason- able. I told you that the Dumdum doctors were the best in the world, and so beyond all doubt they are. Is it possible you should be ignorant that the greatest physicians are those who try to do the least for the sick ? The medical men of Dumdum are admitted to be the most scientific in this planet. ' Prognosis,' ' diagnosis/ ' epignosis/ ' metag- 66 A TRIP TO PARADOXIA nosis,' all these we have, and have carried to great perfection ; but ' treatment ' ! my dear sir, you are sadly behind your time, or you would have known that treatment is an anachronism," and here the citizen of the most practical capital in the world gave a highly superior shrug of his shoulders. "As a sensible man you must see the wisdom of this ; nothing could be simpler. If," he jauntily added, " you get well, why then nature has done its work, and if you don't get well all the physicians in the universe could not have made you so." " In my country," observed Kalogathus, "we should call this sort of thing 'fatalism.'" " My dear Kalogathus," again interrupted Glybbe, "how often am I to remind you that we Paradoxians are nothing if not practical, and why can't you see the super- lative good sense of the Dumdum doctors is shown in hoping nature may do some A TRIP TO PARADOXIA 67 good when they have found out that they must do harm ? " "In that case," went on the pertinacious visitor, "why have doctors at all?" "I think," was his host's reply, "you had better put that question to the Presi- dent of our College of Physicians." VIII. The Dumdum hotels being proverbially the cheapest in the most frugal of all capitals, it is needless to say that by this time the visitor from Hilaria found his finances were running low. Dumdum had as many houses and as many inhabitants as ancient Rome. " The only thing," as Glybbe naively admitted, "is that one can never find in Dumdum a residence to suit one ; however, to-morrow we will go house -hunting, and try our luck." 68 A TRIP TO PARADOXIA On this quest accordingly they went. Mansions capable of housing a legion and a half were forthcoming in plenty. The novel sort of tenements which in the city of the Csesars were called "insulae," and which to-day are known as "flats," could be had at a day's notice. These were abodes of enormous altitude, execrably hideous proportions, constructed with a total disregard for the admission of light and the preservation of health. The sleeping- rooms were prison cells without bars to the windows. The domestic offices and servants' dormitories were quite as comfort- able sleeping - chambers as cisterns could possibly be made, and their atmosphere was not more injurious to health than cess- pools. When Kalogathus demurred to all these domiciles in turn, his friend rather irritably said, " Really, if you are so difficult to please, you had better build a house for A TRIP TO PARADOXIA 69 yourself. You can easily let it again for twice what it costs you." Kalogathus had now decided upon con- siderably protracting his stay among the Paradoxians, and sending for his family to join him. He had observed a vacant ground plot in a convenient situation. " The only difficulty I see about it," was the observation of Glybbe, after hear- ing of his purpose, " is the question of title." The legal arrangements and the registry system of Paradoxia were the envy of all neighbouring countries. When, therefore, with a view of negotiating his territorial purchase, Kalogathus called on the man of affairs representing the owners of the property, he was not at all surprised to hear that the combined legal acumen of Dumdum had failed, after years of in- vestigation, to identify the individuals to whom the ground rightly belonged. 70 A TRIP TO PARADOXIA " I rather think," with a vague air of hopefulness, remarked our friend's legal adviser, "we have now discovered the man we want ; but I am bound to tell you, my good sir," he went on, " there is this risk. By the time your contractor had finished your house the ownership might be disputed ; an ejectment suit might be begun, might go against you, and you and your family might be turned out of doors, which," he sympathetically added, "would be very in- convenient, at least for a stranger. The fact is, we in Paradoxia shall not have put these arrangements on a proper footing till we have codified our legal system ; and, as you probably know, Dumdum lawyers are too practical to care for anything of this kind. There is only one man in the king- dom who realizes our inconveniences or tries to remedy them, and he is allowed to do nothing, because he is a theorist and a doctrinaire." A TRIP TO PARADOXIA 71 "Is there any reason to distrust this reformer ? " asked Kalogathus. " On the contrary," replied the man of business, " there is not the slightest doubt, if he had his way, his plan would end all these confusions and delays at once ; but the Dumdum lawyers are, as I tell you, very practical men, and they shrink from a doctrinaire as they would shun the plague." After a few more interviews, it became plain to Kalogathus that the actual settle- ment of the doubt which now checked his architectural operations could not reasonably be expected within much less, at the pre- sent rate of progress, than half a century. " Truly," he wrote about this time, in a letter to a friend in his own country, " these Paradoxians are the most unac- countable people under the sun. Their idea of legislating is for one of their chambers to undo in a week whatever 72 A TRIP TO PARADOXIA the other accomplishes in a year. Their system of doctoring is for their great phy- sicians to proclaim their impotence without a blush, and when any one of their num- ber attempts to do anything, to tar and feather him as a ' quack.' Their great lawyers sit in their chambers, pocket their fees, smile at the suits which drag on through decades, and when some juris- consult shows them how thousands of pounds and scores of years may be saved, he is denounced as a traitor to his cloth, while the great journals of Dumdum hold him up to ridicule as a doctrinaire. I really think," the letter concluded, " it is time for me to be going home." " Before you leave us," remarked his host, " you must take a run with me across the channel to Blarnia, for your friends will certainly look to you for some infor- mation on the great Blarnian question when you are back among them." A TRIP TO PARADOXIA 73 The mention of this dependency of Para- doxia recalled to the mind of our traveller some lines in a Paradoxian poet read many years ago, to this effect : " But after being fired at once or twice, The ear becomes more Blarnian, and less nice." Thus warned, Kalogathus, before acced- ing to his friend's suggestion, resolved to insure his life, and to make another incur- sion into the best intellectual circles of Dumdum. Beyond the poet in the scarlet small clothes, he had as yet seen none of the 6lite among the Paradoxian literati or literatuli, "To-morrow," was Glybbe's ready pro- mise, "you shall meet as many of these people as you desire, and to begin with, our two chief historians, Cynical Suave and the great Smelfungus, who think so differently on all subjects, that an explosion would follow if they were to be alone together for many minutes." 74 A TRIP TO PARADOXIA Suave's writings were well known to our explorer. No one had ever seemed to him so perfectly to handle the Paradoxian language, and to educe such a living melody from its not very musical syllables; for no master of the violin ever obtained more miraculous symphonies from his in- strument, or with greater ease, than did Cynical Suave from the tongue that an- swered with absolute obedience to the lightest touch of his magic pen. The two great men were at this moment within a few feet of each other in the duchess's drawing-room, and as yet there were no signs of a disturbance usually consequent upon the vicinity of acid to alkali. Mr. Suave was an elderly man of upright figure, with a commanding brow, a flute- like voice, in which, with a curiously caressing manner, he continued to say the most disagreeable things impartially about everybody. The compliments which the A TRIP TO PARADOXIA 75 enthusiastic Kalogathus paid him were overheard by the industrial but irascible Smelfungus. Waiting his opportunity, he beckoned our friend aside into a small divan leading out of the drawing-room itself, and declared himself after this fashion : " H'm, h'm," said Smelfungus in his most superior way, "you really speak, my good sir, as if your idea of history was a portrait gallery." " Not a bad idea, either," the visitor was about blithely to remark, when this austere student of parchment, charters, and muni- ment-rooms continued : " Now in these days history is, above all, a science. What you ought to wish to know is not how men and women formerly lived and loved, dressed and went about, but what the archives, at present being access- ible to us, tell you of the great impersonal or ethnological movements of the past." 76 A TRIP TO PARADOXIA "That, my good sir," rejoined Kalogathus, " with all due deference to you, is what I care nothing about." " I suppose, then," rejoined Smelfungus, visibly nettled, "you think that history ought to deal with human beings." Observing a look of surprise pass over our friend's countenance, this great man continued : "That is a very childish view of the historian's business, and it is astounding that an intelligent person, as you seem to be, should cling to so puerile a superstition." The professor then went on, with per- emptory communicativeness, to insist that no really good history of any state or nationality could be written from which human nature was not entirely, or as far as practicable, eliminated. " Mr. Suave gives you pretty pen-and- ink pictures, and tells you what the people he writes about were really doing and say- A TRIP TO PARADOXIA 77 ing ; but seriously, do you suppose, my good sir, that sort of thing is history ? " After having apologetically confessed that he did, Smelfungus hissed out : " History ! It is gossip ! You might as well call a society journal," and here, with visible loathing, he pointed to one of these prints on the drawing-room table, "a news- paper. Ask Mr. Dryasdust yonder, the editor of our famous Antediluvian periodical whether I am not right, and whether he would publish the personalities which you seem to have mistaken for historical writing." The conductor of this fossilized organ of Paradoxian criticism being within ear- shot of the remark, was at once free to confess his unqualified agreement with his friend, the illustrious Smelfungus. " History," he continued, "should be only the elucidation of impersonal forces, the evolution of formulae, and these were, of 78 A TRIP TO PARADOXIA course, as rigidly impersonal as the Gulf Stream or the law of gravitation." For himself he rejoiced to think the Antediluvian under his control had so successfully excluded all approach to per- sonality as never to have published a single article with an ounce of human interest. The consequence was, and with pride he confessed it, that the circulation of the Antediluvian, which under the control of his predecessor, Joe Babbletongue, was, he blushed to say, enormous, had now sunk to zero, and the periodical itself, rather than pander to the debased taste for personality, would in six months' time be carried on at a loss. After this naive confession Kalogathus was scarcely surprised when a few days later he read in an evening newspaper that the proprietors of the Antediluvian, not sharing their editor's superiority to the popular taste, were about to dispense with A TRIP TO PARADOXIA 79 Mr. Dryasdust's services, and would pro- bably transfer the control of their periodical to Mr. Cynical Suave. " Next week you shall see," was Glybbe's promise that night to our friend, " some very illustrious personages, the supreme heads of our State, at work. A marble monument is to be unveiled to the great toothpick reformer of our times ; no end of Crimson Tippets and representatives of sovereignty itself will be there." It was a lovely morning, and a pictur- esque scene. Sculpture was not the forte of the Paradoxian artists ; but the present was an exception, and the marble effigy of the late Asclepius Molar about to be, in the approved Paradoxian phrase, "inaugu- rated," was unanimously voted a "speaking likeness" of that defunct benefactor of humanity. The carriage and pair containing the august personage who was to grace the 8o A TRIP TO PARADOXIA occasion drove up through a lane of ob- sequious worshippers small boys prostrated themselves before the high-bred steeds, ladies fluttered perfumed handkerchiefs, and robust washerwomen, carrying home the clothes, stopped to see what they could of the sight, and were so overpowered by the agitated loyalty of the moment and the suffocating pressure of the crowd, as only to keep themselves from fainting by recourse to a black bottle from the cavernous re- cesses of their pockets. Illustrated narra- tives of the life of the exalted being about to perform the opening ceremony were on sale, and while they were waiting Kalo- gathus was able to master the contents of one of these volumes. Nothing could be more various than the presentations of the subject of the little work, or to poor Kalo- gathus more perplexing. On one page this sublime being was depicted in the costume of a field -marshal reviewing his battalions A TRIP TO PARADOXIA 81 in the foreground. A little later on the same original had donned the uniform of the Lord High Admiral, glancing com- placently from the quarter-deck at the manoeuvres of rival squadrons. In another the illustrious creature blazed forth in the crimson and ermine proper to the president of the whole legal system of Paradoxia. Turning over a few more pages, the be- wildered Kalogathus descried the same facial lineaments surmounted with the busby of a Muscovite Cossack. The opening illustration of the next chapter in this treatise was that depicting still the same individual disguised as a doctor of theology in the scarlet gown indicating the graduate of Cuckoo Town University. The next surprise of this kaleidoscopic series was the august being habited in the rough tweed and leather gaiters of the Paradoxian sportsman. Yet again he was displayed in the full-dress garb of a member of the 8z A TRIP TO PARADOXIA Crimson Tippets. After this as a geologist with his hammer ; and next, in quick succes- sion, as a yachtsman sweeping the horizon with his spy-glass. Presently the distin- guished original presented in this protean fashion was visible in his full length, to the expectant eye of Kalogathus, the wearer of the ordinary frock coat affected by well-to-do Dumdumites, with a well- set-up figure, a cheerful expression, and an indescribable charm of manner. " Tell me," asked Kalogathus of his companion, "what makes that gentleman so supreme a personage among you ? Has he absolute power over the administration of your laws, the sailing of your ships, the mobilization of your troops, the discipline of your universities, or the expenditure of your public moneys ? " " On the contrary," replied Glybbe, evi- dently taken aback a little at the inquiry, "he is no more above the law than the A TRIP TO PARADOXIA 83 meanest Paradoxian peasant ; as for our church, he only shares its ministrations in common with the poorest in the land ; he has no official connection with our fleets ; he could not order a single soldier in a line regiment to move an inch ; and every fraction of his income is voted for him by the Assembly of the Silent." " I shall be glad then to know," pursued the indefatigable stranger, "what makes him the first personage in your realm." " Because," somewhat abruptly replied Glybbe, "he is the representative of a great principle. But I must really tell you, my friend, your inquisitiveness is getting un- reasonable ; you must be careful, or you will develop into a first-class bore." 84 A TRIP TO PARADOXIA IX. On their journey to the neighbouring coasts of Blarnia, Kalogathus elicited from Glybbe and his fellow-passengers a concise and tolerably consecutive account of the history of that country. Probably no two communities in the world had ever held anything like the relations, long existing between Paradoxia and her dependency, without a decisive rupture. Every incident in their relations was an anomaly, every attempt at reform a paradox, every passing spasm of revolutionary outbreak an absurdity. To begin with, Blarnia had been the gift of a foreign potentate who had no right to dispose of her to a Paradoxian monarch who never desired her possession. The most practical people in the world adminis- tered Blarnia on principles diametrically opposed to those underlying the govern- A TRIP TO PARADOXIA 85 ment of every other people flying the Paradoxian flag. The Blarnians had ever protested that they knew what they wanted for themselves, and if only they were allowed to have it, would be loyalty itself towards the Paradoxian crown. As it was, their normal condition remained one of ingrained insurrection and chronic irrecon- cilability towards their more powerful neighbour. " I suppose, then," ventured Kalogathus, " these Blarnians must be a particularly cross-grained, ill-conditioned race." " On the contrary," replied his friend, "they are, out of Blarnia, the most orderly, peaceful, and amiable folk imaginable, and perhaps they might be the same in Blarnia itself if we only gave them a chance ; but to do this we should have to stoop to see things with Blarnian eyes, not to ignore the ethnic peculiarities of the country and the historic genius of the race. Now it is 86 A TRIP TO PARADOXIA a first principle of Paradoxian statesman- ship that an imperial people such as we Paradoxians are cannot, with any regard for our own dignity, demean ourselves to do this. Just as Smelfungus writes his history on abstract principles, so we insist upon ruling Blarnia upon our own a priori ideas. The day of Paradoxian greatness would be gone, and our imperial glory departed for ever, when we condescended to do otherwise." Glybbe was in ordinary matters a cool- headed and unemotional person ; he waxed excited in manner and flushed in face while he enunciated these sentiments. It struck Kalogathus that he had read words to exactly the same effect in a morning news- paper, from which he suspected Glybbe to derive his ideas on every subject, for the business of journalism in Paradoxia is not so much to guide public opinion as to in- tensify private prejudice. A TRIP TO PARADOXIA 87 After many years of anarchy and blood- shed, certain Paradoxian statesmen were now endeavouring to remedy the real evils of Blarnia, and to supply her true wants. The attempt was proving slowly successful, but Kalogathus was fully prepared to find the Paradoxian administrators, for persevering in this attempt, denounced as revolutionary fanatics and derided as bookish doctrinaires. It was not easy, as Kalogathus found after a few days in Blarnia, to elicit a candid opinion from the natives of their grievances and wants. " You seem," he said to a peasant at a fair, "to be very prosperous here just now." " Your honour may well say that," was the cheerful reply. " And yet," observed the visitor, " I see signs of sad poverty in some places." "True to you, your honour," at once responded the same speaker ; ' ' it 's clane 88 A TRIP TO PARADOXIA dying for want we are from one year's end to another." "And yet you have all probably got a tidy little sum in the savings bank." " Bedad ! " observed this complaisant patriot, " we could just pave all the way from Fair Head to Waterford Harbour with golden guineas." Having made several further attempts in his usual truth-seeking spirit to reach the real facts of the case, and having in every instance received replies in comparison with which the answers of the Sphinx would be lucidity itself, Kalogathus desisted at last from interrogation, but, keeping his eyes wide open, concluded that the true con- dition of Blarnia was neither worse nor better than that of most other countries on this imperfect planet. While Kalogathus and his friends were seated over their dessert in one of the chief hotels of a thriving Blarnian town, Glybbe, A TRIP TO PARADOXIA 89 who prided himself upon being all things to all men, carelessly took up a pair of nut- crackers, and handling them in such a manner as to suggest the image of a pistol, said, with something like a wink to the Blarnian gentleman sitting opposite to him "Had much of this sort of thing lately?" " Ah ! and if you only knew more about us, you might have known the divil a bit of shooting have we in Old Blarnia to brighten us up now." The words had scarcely left the speaker's mouth when a crashing sound was heard beneath his feet, and a small bullet, very unceremoniously making its entrance through the floor, shattered the speaker's plate, and knocked out of his ringers the filbert he was about to place in his mouth. A shock- headed waiter, rushing into the room, said " Beg pardon, gentlemen, but thought you 90 A TRIP TO PARADOXIA would wish to know they only fired in the air." It turned out that in this particular town, where shooting was so utterly unknown, a duelling party had been improvised for the special amusement of Kalogathus in the apartment immediately beneath. The two principals, who were of mixed Blarno- Columbian descent, and both furnished with patent Columbian " hair- triggers," had determined to settle their differences by the ordeal of battle across the dinner-table, with this result. The excitement soon proved contagious, and the single pistol-shot had awoke the most pugnacious echoes of the whole place. In half an hour a free faction- fight worthy of the best days of Adelphi melodrama was raging merrily outside. The fact proved to be that the great Paradoxian statesman, bent upon descend- ing to posterity as the pacificator of Blarnia, had unexpectedly arrived. He was given, A TRIP TO PARADOXIA 91 of course, a really Blarnian welcome. The next morning Kalogathus, from his dressing-room window, looked down upon a scene of charred timbers and ruined walls. On his return to Dumdum a few days later, our visitor was dining at the house of one of the astutest members of that semi- foreign army of occupation who control much of the commerce of Paradoxia, the Count Vieuxchateau. This gentleman was not socially very agreeable, but his oppor- tunities of knowledge were large, his criticism was impartial, his opinion was worth having. Commenting on our friend's surprise, provoked by the condition of Blarnia, at the haphazard manner in which the imperial affairs of Dumdum were con- ducted, the count expressed himself as follows : "If the business of my firm were man- aged with as little method as the affairs of 92 A TRIP TO PARADOXIA the Paradoxian Empire are administered, I should in a fortnight's time not have a capable clerk in my employ, and after six months my house, which has survived the wreck of dynasties and the crash of em- pires, would be hopelessly insolvent. Come and lunch with me any day in Obolus Alley at three o'clock, you will find us all there, and you may perhaps learn a thing or two." This was the greatest compliment paid Kalogathus during his sojourn in Dumdum. Only men whom Count Vieuxchateau deemed of real consequence were ever invited to the hospitalities of Obolus Alley. The truth is, the contributions of our friend to the Paradoxian press, and especially to the select periodical whose editor boasted that he drew the line at barons, had won him a considerable reputation in the land of his stay. Had he been able to prolong his A TRIP TO PARADOXIA 93 sojourn, he would certainly, together with the accomplished Simian, now everywhere famous as Monsieur FitzDaisy, have been invited to visit in royal state the first magis- trate at the most famous castle in the Paradoxian kingdom, but the hospitalities paid to the two were drawing to a close. Monsieur FitzDaisy pined for the society of his kind in the Ethiopian jungle ; Kalogathus himself desired to return to his modest property in his native Hilaria. The only invitation which the two had accepted and which as yet remained un- fulfilled was to a f&e champdtre at the Porphyry Hall, a stately palace with mag- nificent grounds famed for its pyrotechnical displays, in the suburbs of Dumdum. The two drove down together in Monsieur Fitz- Daisy's victoria. All the rank and fashion of the Paradoxian metropolis were there. Before dinner, illuminated addresses were 94 A TRIP TO PARADOXIA presented, with silver caskets to enclose them, to "the two most illustrious guests of the year, Signer Kalogathus and Monsieur FitzDaisy, on the eve of their return to their native countries." The heart of the generous ape was really touched while he read the parchment ; he was pricked by the thought of his perhaps too severe criticisms on Paradoxian man- hood, womanhood, and humanity generally. He averted his head, lifted up a highly- laced pocket-handkerchief to his eyes, for, like the sensitive and high-bred brute that he was, he could not repress a tear at this fresh display of kindness on the part of the human relatives whom so discourteously he had repudiated. The firework display, the closing scene of the gala programme, was about to terminate. The artist had expended his supreme efforts in the set piece, now awaited with breathless excitement. A TRIP TO PARADOXIA 95 After a blaze of " Roman candles," a coruscation of "rockets," and a sustained brilliancy of " Sicilian lights," there were discerned from the terrace on which the spectators were, two dazzling and multi- coloured presentments of the guests of the evening. Monsieur FitzDaisy and Signor Kalo- gathus shook each other's hands with convulsive warmth as they beheld the effigies of their two selves vividly traced in resplendent hues thrown out into mag- nificent relief against a dark background, scientifically arranged to heighten the dis- play and intensify the effect. Arm in arm, the two friends, the obser- vant man and the hypercritical ape, de- scended the stairs, entered the victoria, drove back to Dumdum, and the next day started for their respective homes. But the final spectacle they had beheld long dwelt before their mental vision, and the 96 A TRIP TO PARADOXIA applausive thunders which bade them fare- well in the palace of the Porphyry Hall can even to this day be recalled by their appreciative ears. How the " House of Lords Question" was Settled A TALE OF THE TERRACE OR, MRS. PONSONBY-JONES'S REVENGE I. THIS is the way in which it all came about. Even that most indefatigable squire of dames, Mr. Hazelrig, Leader of the Popular Chamber in Lord Fitztempest's Government in the early days of the twentieth century, was beginning to think that the House of Commons Terrace look- ing over the Thames might do with a little of the favour shown it during the H 97 98 THE "HOUSE OF LORDS QUESTION* season by Mrs. Ponsonby- Jones and her vivacious sisters. This lady, the wife of a prosperous north - country member, exulted over some remains of youth and beauty. She possessed, indeed, married daughters and grandchildren. But her complexion often reproduced the freshness of her teens ; and if juvenile manners and still more juvenile dress can redeem matronhood from age, Mrs. Ponsonby -Jones was not more than five-and-twenty. She had been one of the first Parliamentary ladies to discover the opportunities, social and amatory, of the Terrace. She and her daughters, it was calculated, had eaten more strawberries and drunk more cups of tea on that agreeable elevation than all the other Parliamentary womankind of the United Kingdom put together. The whips could not get their men to sit out debates, or failed at the critical moment to marshal them into the division lobby. The explanation was that A TALE OF THE TERRACE 99 honourable gentlemen were ministering to the wants of the fair invaders of St. Stephen's, headed by their dauntless captain in petticoats. Other members' womankind were encouraged by such an example. The counter attractions of the Terrace withdrew an increasing number of the younger M.P.'s from their duties to their constituents within the House itself. The newspapers took up the subject. Articles going near to breach of privilege impiously compared the riparian purlieus of the Chamber to the old Cremorne or to the more recent Empire Theatre. Questions, transparently pointed at Mrs. Ponsonby- Jones and her "monstrous regi- ment," were asked of the First Commis- sioner of Works and the Home Secretary. Petitions on the subject began to pour in. The "first representative assembly in the world" was manifestly being brought into contempt. Public opinion proclaimed that something must be done. too THE "HOUSE OF LORDS QUESTION" II. THE HOUSE OF COMMONS AND MRS. PONSONBY-JONES'S INVASION At last the head of the Government, Lord Fitztempest, conferred seriously with his second in command, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Hazelrig, as to how the scandal should be dealt with. The Premier had a very low opinion of the Popular House ever since he himself ceased to sit in it. He disliked it at this moment more than ever, because Mrs. Ponsonby- Jones was his personal detestation. Lady Fitztempest had lately taken up the she-parliamentarian with the double-barrelled name, who was there- fore a great deal too much at Stormont House, to the Premier's unconcealed dis- gust. A TALE OF THE TERRACE 101 III. THE PRIME MINISTER'S THUNDER- BOLT Presently it became known that Lord Fitztempest was resolved to deal with the abuse by a coup d'ttat. Three Cabinets were held within a week. As the result of these, Mr. Hazelrig brought forward a proposal curtly declaring that the presence of lady guests within the precincts of Parliament was not in the interests of public business. Mrs. Ponsonby - Jones had her men ready to oppose the motion. Her husband, a meek little person, who never presumed to appear in the same drawing- room as his wife, made his maiden speech against it. But the House was in one of its hot fits. There was an all-night sitting. The lady - killers and philanderers of the 102 THE "HOUSE OF LORDS QUESTION" Assembly carried obstruction to unprece- dented lengths. But at 3 a.m. on the morning of August nth the Ministerial proposal was carried by a three to one majority. The House of Commons had seen the last for some time of Mrs. Ponsonby-Jones. IV. MRS. PONSONBY-JONES'S REVENGE The real Parliamentary struggle with the lady of a north -country member was, however, only beginning. That indefatig- able amazon congratulated herself that her duel with the peer - Premier had been delayed until the suppressed sex had ceased to exist, and women throughout the United Kingdom shared with men a vote in return- ing members to Westminster. The organization which got rid of Free Trade was insignificant by the side of that A TALE OF THE TERRACE 103 which Mrs. Ponsonby-Jones and her friends prepared for getting rid of the House of Lords. No such display of stateswoman- ship had ever been witnessed or dreamed of. That which democratic dukes and communistic earls had in vain threatened against an assembly wherein a perverse destiny had afflicted them with seats, was soon in a fair way of being accomplished by this amazing champion of the rejected habitudes of the Ladies' Terrace. With her favourite cavalier, the Cambridge revo- lutionary, Mr. Dynamite Lamb, Mrs. Ponsonby - Jones visited every town of importance in the United Kingdom. Richly secured against all material want for the coming winter was any household whose head had agreed to vote for the anti- peer candidate. The consequence of these tactics was the return to St. Stephen's of that memorable majority pledged to the cry of "Down with the Lords!" When 104 THE "HOUSE OF LORDS QUESTION" Mr. Dynamite Lamb carried in the House of Commons his carefully-balanced resolu- tion, providing that the hereditary body should, as at present constituted, cease under existing conditions to form part of the legis- lature, Lord Fitztempest took the matter with a coolness that surprised everybody. Mr. Hazelrig had already, in the Commons, created a sensation by provisionally accept- ing Mr. Lamb's scheme, subject only to the definition of the circumstances which were to regulate the supersession of the peers. Here the matter remained for some time. Meanwhile, the lady voters having proved their power in the constituencies by enabling Mrs. Ponsonby-Jones to whip up a majority for Mr. Lamb, the more aggressively am- bitious spirits of the sex decided that their demonstrated ability to control the legis- lature entitled them to a Chamber of their own. This suggestion met with as little A TALE OF THE TERRACE 105 resistance from Mr. Hazelrig on behalf of the Government as had been encountered by the preceding reform. The reason was that Lord Fitztempest, after secret and searching inquiry throughout the kingdom, had satisfied himself of the possibility, greatly to his own party's advantage, of a compromise between the peers and their erstwhile antagonist, Mrs. Ponsonby-Jones. v. THE FITZTEMPEST-PONSONBY-JONES COMPROMISE This solution turned out, in fact, to be an offer from the Premier to the victorious lady to divide the spoils of conquest between them in a fashion that should be satisfactory to the honour of each. Lord Fitztempest had been described graphically, and more or less correctly, by an appreciative critic 106 THE "HOUSE OF LORDS QUESTION" as a mass of putty painted to look like granite. He was also a political pessimist of a constitutionally cynical turn. That things were doomed to go hopelessly wrong in this democratic day was his conviction. That one surrender or blunder more or less made very little difference was his unfailing solace. No person had yet proposed to deprive the peers of their titles, their estates, or social precedence. Under these circum- stances their lordships displayed an alacrity, which Mrs. Ponsonby-Jones had not antici- pated, to agree with their assailants while yet there was time, and by a seasonable reform to obviate their constitutional ex- tinction. The idea was to assimilate the operations of the Hereditary Chamber to those of the Privy Council, which never meets save when it is specially summoned. In other words, Lord Fitztempest and Mr. Hazelrig between them brought in a Bill relieving their lord- A TALE OF THE TERRACE 107 ships of habitual attendance on the crimson benches, and enacting that henceforward they should only use the painted Chamber when required by the Sovereign to revise, particularly in the department of foreign policy, the discussions and decisions of the elective legislature. Meanwhile, as it was a self - evident anomaly that the ladies of England should be trusted with a parliamentary franchise, and yet prevented from actually forming a part of the legislature, the citizenesses of the country should henceforth return depu- ties of their own to Westminster, who could transact their affairs on the premises of the peers on such occasions as their lordships were without any summons to Westminster. The speech in which Lord Fitztempest supported this proposal was quite humorous and almost convincing. Many years ago, he reminded their lordships, one of their own number had objected to the admission io8 THE "HOUSE OF LORDS QUESTION" of peeresses to the gallery as spectators of their debate on the ground that it would make the House look like a casino. Now, Lord Fitztempest suggested, his brother peers ought to be thankful that they had saved something of the earlier privileges of their order and their sex, that the Chamber was not to be unconditionally surrendered to its fair besiegers, and that those who had been its sole owners would yet have a place to meet in when they were wanted, which, he characteristically added, would not be very often. It had long been a maxim with the political press on the Premier's side to applaud the anticipation of your enemy's innovations whenever you had the chance, on the plea that it was better to be robbed or reformed by a friend than by an enemy. This was the principle on which Lord Fitztempest and his friends had, years ago, given the country gratuitous and com- A TALE OF THE TERRACE 109 pulsory education, and had trumped the Radical card of manhood suffrage by the Tory card of male and female adult fran- chise, with the eventual consequences in the year 19 which have been set forth faith- fully in this historic narrative. How I became Prime Minister BY AN UP-TO-DATE POLITICIAN IT had been a family idea from nursery days. When, therefore, other lads were wasting their time over their games I was showing those about me that I had what is called a "personality" which was all my own, or was learning in its different aspects the art of advertisement. " This boy," said the examiner who came to our grammar school, as he looked over my essay, "will surely come to the Cabinet if he does not stop at the gallows." When, therefore, it was known that I was going to stand for a scholarship at the university, my reputation had preceded me thither. Before they met in the college no HO W I BECAME PRIME MINISTER 1 1 1 chapel to elect, the dons had all agreed that I was to be the man. I had not tried to be brilliant or deep. In Latin and Greek, above all in the "Taste" paper, I might have been beaten by much less successful youths ; but before the examin- ation was half over the quaint and un- expected things written by James Jerkin (the English for the old French house of de Jerquand) had been repeated with sniggers in half the common - rooms of the place. The same luck followed me when I went into residence. Apart from luck with books and examinations, before my first term was over Jerkin of John's was as well known as the proctor's bulldog. In societies where I felt sure of my ground I spread amazement, when I was in the vein, by uttering sentiments remembered to this day. I was far too wise to fritter my talents away only on the studies of the place. I took indeed a first-class in my ii2 HOW I BECAME PRIME MINISTER Little-go examination, and followed it up with two other first-classes afterwards. But I worked at my cricket a good deal harder. I made myself, with more labour than my studies ever cost me, the first batsman in the place, and the second best wicket-keeper in England. In those days the newspapers were just glanced at alike by undergraduates and dons ; they were never really read. I rightly judged, therefore, that one who could possess himself of the cream of the daily prints would startle those about him more than if he made all Aristotle and Plato his own. Of course, though it was not then exactly the "swagger thing" to do, I went in for speaking at the Union. Not as a regular thing, but reserving myself for great occasions. First, having made them promise not to repeat it to a soul, I told one, and then another, that I might perhaps say a few words that night on the motion for or against the Government, which was HO IV I BECAME PRIME MINISTER 113 to be brought forward by the champion speaker among the boys. By the time that I got back to college for lunch, the news that Jerkin of John's was to speak that night was all over the place. " Surprisingly mature views for a mere youth ! " " Extraordinary aptness of illustration ! " these were the comments on the eloquence which was the distilled essence of that newspaper reading which superior spirits affected to despise. Soon after this men and dons, gathering together in the college gardens after breakfast, said with bated breath to each other : " Have you heard ? Jerkin speaks to-night ! " Encouraged by this reception, I resolved to show them that, if I had not before carried off university prizes, it was not from lack of power to do so. I sported my oak against all comers, kept a tea- kettle perpetually boiling on my hob, cooled my head with relays of wet towels, omitted ii4 HOW I BECAME PRIME MINISTER no other precautions to ensure success, and swept the board of academic prizes, but never relaxed my cricket or other athletic prowess. For one person who reads a three-line paragraph of university intelligence, there are at least a dozen who read a cricket score at Lord's. The sequel showed how right I was. In due course I ate my dinners and was called to the Bar. No solicitor knew, or cared to know, if I was that Jerkin of John's who was the only treble first-class of his year. But every lawyer, when he heard my name, and his clerk brought me my brief, wished to make sure that I was none other than the Jerkin who in one season had made five " centuries " and not out, and stumped three men in one over. The same record that had helped me so much at the Bar carried everything before it in the constituency. The first time of HO W I BECAME PRIME MINISTER 1 1 5 standing I was returned at the head of the poll. That place I never lost. To treat real work as play, to go in for play in a spirit of deadly earnest, this is not a bad rule for success in life. It is a sure way for coming to the front in politics, whether at Westminster or in the provinces. My own party was in opposition. My leader hinted to me that the hour had come when a question framed in a certain way which he suggested, and containing damaging innuendoes, might put the Government in a tight place. The ques- tion was asked. Before all its effects were over it did more than that ; it put Ministers on the left side of the Speaker, for it sup- plied a pretext for a censure-resolution, which my authorship of the question that had led up to it entitled me to move. Of course, it was understood that I should have a place in the incoming Administration. My old friends, the newspapers, once n6 HOW I BECAME PRIME MINISTER more did me a good turn ; the memory of my university prestige did me a better. The burden of press, of lobbies, and of smoking-rooms was that James Jerkin had long been the coming man, that no person represented national opinion so faithfully as he, and that the new Premier would do well to take him into the Cabinet. Into the Cabinet, therefore, without stopping at any intermediate office, I came at a bound. Some people hinted a few spiteful things. One editor, of whose name I made a note, applied to me the pointless platitude about the ascent of the rocket and the descent of the stick. By this time, as may be supposed, I had become something of a personage among the people as well as in Parliament. Some mischievous toadies there were who, thinking, I suppose, to please me, put in paragraphs about the antiquity of my Anglo-Norman ancestors, the de Jerquands of Angouleme. Now, HOW I BECAME PRIME MINISTER 1 1 7 nothing irritates the average member of the English democracy so much as for it to be hinted that his neighbour is his better by birth. Quick as thought, therefore, and publicly as the sun itself, I disclaimed the patrician impeachment. In one of my speeches to my constituents I plainly said, that though the de Jerquands might have worn chain-armour during the Second Cru- sade, and might be a very famous stock, I knew and wished to know nothing of them. " No, ladies and gentlemen ! " I went on, "it is a poor name, but it is my own. James Jerkin, son of Jeremiah of that ilk, Anglo-Saxon on both sides, a plain person, but a loyal son of the people." That deliverance was received with cheers which might have been heard from the North Foreland to Beachy Head. A friendly pencil in next week's Punch de- picted James Jerkin in an assembly of his n8 HOW I BECAME PRIME MINISTER countrymen declining a Frenchified baron's coronet which had been offered him. " Our Jimmy," or " The People's Jerkin," were the titles with which I was next greeted, which have never deserted me, and which I have, I hope, done nothing to disgrace. In the part of the country that I repre- sented at St. Stephen's the humble ass was the quadruped most extensively employed for purposes of locomotion. The complaint locally prevailed that the breed of donkeys was not what it used to be. Clearly, there- fore, it was the first duty of a patriot to stop this degeneration. To breed short- horns, to nurse orchids under glass roofs, might do for other statesmen. To me there remained the less decorative, but more useful, part of improving the stock and elevating the lot of the lowliest, though not the least faithful, of the four - footed friends of man. From the streets of Cairo to the heights of Hampstead, from the NOW I BECAME PRIME MINISTER 119 banks of the Nile to the beacons of Malvern, such an enterprise must secure applause. A philanthropic peer, now de- ceased, had scarcely heard of my plan before he hailed me on the platform as just the friend which humanity wanted. The costermongers of Whitechapel took their cue from him, hymned me in songs which made my name a household word in the East End. A little later, as good luck would have it, the favourite donkey that drew a Royal lady's chair went to its rest. I made interest enough in high places to be allowed to fill the vacancy with the sweetest little Neddy you ever saw in your life from my Midland breeding farm. The gift and its reception went straight to the popular heart, like the rifle -ball of the winner of the Queen's Prize to the bull's- eye at Bisley. Successes like these, of course, made me enemies. Shallowby Humm, to whose 120 HOW I BECAME PRIME MINISTER David from boyhood I had played Jona- than, said several rather unkind things. Dyce Digby rudely wanted to know how long donkeymania and Jerkinmania would last. "Long enough," said I to myself, "to see you both out, my fine gentlemen." The Right Honourable Timothy Highlow, now in opposition, but whom in early days I had helped to office, had to confess that in the race for public favour my donkeys had beaten his jampots. It was, in fact, for some time a duel between the " People's Tim," as Highlow had been called, and the "People's Jim," as I was now known. But with so thoroughly up-to-date a politician as myself, Tim could not be in it with Jim. Every great man, someone has said truly, creates the taste by which he is enjoyed. Certainly this has been always true of me. The sanitation of St. Stephen's is proverbially bad? Strange that before HO W I BECAME PRIME MINISTER 1 2 1 me it should have occurred to no one that the inveterate miasma was caused by the accumulation of decomposed jokes and stories stale to suffocation. When I first entered the House it literally reeked of Latin grammar tags and of mouldy quotations from Roman poets, whom M.P.'s found it easier to quote than they would have done to construe. Before I had been installed a session on my corner seat below the gangway I had changed all this, and let in an atmosphere of thoughts and allusions which freshened and sweetened the place. French opera bouffe, instead of Lempriere, supplied my allusions, quotations, and tropes. The men about me had forgotten the little Latin and Greek they ever knew. They did occasionally run over to Paris to enjoy the latest fun of the Boulevards ; or if they satisfied themselves instead with the accounts in a society paper, they would have been indignant if they had been found out. Some of my happiest hits were said by those who heard them to make them feel as if their time had been passed at the Caf6 Riche or Anglais in- stead of at Westminster. As it is the day of travel made cheap, so do we live in the hour of knowledge made easy. High rhetoric on provincial platforms did very well a hundred years ago for Canning at Liverpool or Plymouth, for Sir Robert Peel at Tamworth ; but it was not at all the sort of thing for the " People's Jim." Odds and ends of useful knowledge, familiar and forgotten truths in geography, astronomy, meteorology anything, in fact, from Shakespeare to musical glasses these, neatly arranged and wisely introduced, made my provincial speeches a little education to those who heard them. Some scoffers said it reminded them of the Polytechnic and Professor Pepper. But in popular speaking, HOW I BECAME PRIME MINISTER 123 as in duelling, the great thing is to fire low. Critics might smile, but I never went over the heads of my audience, and the laugh, I take it, really lay with me. Meanwhile things were getting into a mess both at Westminster and elsewhere. The " People's Tim " had become a mis- nomer, for the people would not follow him. Every minute, someone has said, if rightly used, is travel. But though the minutes of his life would have made a pretty large sum, Mr. Highlow had been a good many years without getting " much forrarder." He had reason to regret taking me at his own price rather than at mine before he had done with it. But I was now nearly big enough to set up on my own account. Some trouble with Dyce Digby I had. You see, we had been for long years such close friends that men spoke of us as a "party of two." But Dyce Digby was a creature of impulse, and took his pleasures i2 4 HOW I BECAME PRIME MINISTER not wisely but too well. There are few men, M.P.'s or not M.P.'s, who can give, if closely examined and " shadowed," an account of themselves at every moment during the twenty-four hours which will quite satisfy a jury of old women such as it is easy to strike in the House of Com- mons. Private inquiry agents are great blessings to the man who has his way to make, as I had, and is not squeamish about trifles, as it was never my weakness to be. Wherever Dyce Digby went, on horse or foot, by road or rail, there was he observed by some ubiquitous agent of my friend, Mr. Pollaky. In less than a year we had got together material against him which would have rilled a whole library of scandal- ous chronicles. Obviously such a man as this was not fit to retain the confidence of the husbands and fathers in the borough which he represented. Dyce Digby, there- fore, was given a hint to go. He has never HOW I BECAME PRIME MINISTER 125 found a way of getting back to the House of Commons. This is what the men of science call the survival of the fittest, which in this case happens to be myself. For one by nature not unamiable the processes were scarcely pleasant. But the command of patriotism silenced all scruples, and when the finger of one's country beckons one on, one can only follow so at least the world will read in the autobiography which, like the rest of them, I shall employ my next turn of Opposition in writing. Dyce Digby safely buried under several cartloads of scandal in private life, only one serious rival remained. Except in some few points of temper- ament, Rupert Oxford was a natural likeness of myself. In some ways more quick to see the private bearing of any public question, not less resourceful, Oxford had a trick of worrying himself about trifles which to weak nerves means the grave or 126 HOW 1 BECAME PRIME MINISTER the madhouse in any case failure and from which I was always free. No fidgety woman was ever " drawn " so easily. Out- side Parliament people liked him none the worse for his tantrums, his pets, and sulks. Such a man, I saw, was sure, if wisely baited, to exhaust himself before middle age. Poor Oxford quarrelled with every- one with the press, with his social toadies, with his leader, with his whole party, last of all with me. That was fatal, as is generally the case to persons who won't make way for the " People's Jim." He had a pretty funeral. Just to show there was no ill-feeling, I followed his body to the grave and went into demi-mourning for three weeks. I had now been master of the House of Commons for two years, not troubling it with set speeches in the old stately style, but addressing it in committee as one speaks at the directors' board, and on second HO W I BE CAME PRIME MINISTER 1 2 7 readings as at the annual meeting of share- holders. The plan succeeded even beyond my hopes. The most powerful newspapers found that in a business age what Parlia- ment wanted was a business man who had studied all the American notions, and whose ideas were thoroughly up to date. When the " People's Tim " disappeared, there was a general demand that his place should be taken by the " People's Jim." But it was not to be. A Court intrigue placed Lord Fitzbooby in the post which should have been mine. Great was the national disgust. The costermongers from the East End met in the majesty of their millions to protest against the slight on me. All Britons, grateful for my services to the race of donkeys, joined in these representations. During his short premiership, poor Lord Fitzbooby never went back to his house in Grosvenor Square without a nervous glance 128 HOW I BECAME PRIME MINISTER to see whether his windows had been broken in his absence. Whenever he heard a boy whistling in the street, the tune was sure to be a music-hall song written by the Laureate, bidding him, with all speed, make way for the " People's Jim." When the next vacancy occurred, every- one knew I could not be passed over again. An East End demonstration was to be held in a West End park, which my residence overlooked. The gates had been closed. The mob was like to pull down the railings. At this moment I showed myself on my balcony. " Good people," I said, in tones audible throughout the multitude, "pray go peace- fully to your homes. These things are in greater than human hands ; be sure, as I am, that all will be for the best." Such high-souled, disinterested patriotism struck a chord and roused an enthusiasm for me which carried all hostile cabals before it, HOW I BECAME PRIME MINISTER 129 and against which no petty intrigues could prevail. I alone, as the press with one voice said, had prevented a riot, perhaps averted a revolution. Dyce Digby, Rupert Oxford, the great Mr. Highlow himself were all now out of the way. Nothing remained for me but to perform a railway journey from a West End terminus to a historic building in a home county, and to go through an interesting ceremony, the details of which nothing would induce me to divulge, but the effect of which was to establish me in my remarkably secure posi- tion on the right hand of the Speaker's Chair. K How his Party lost Mr. Contango i. WHAT LED TO THE INCIDENT T) ELGRAVE SQUARE, a fine morn- -LJ ing in the height of the season. Lady Dilly, wife of Sir Hector Dilly, the chief parliamentary Whip of his party, turns from the window, out of which she has been looking in silent disgust during the last ten minutes, and says rather petulantly to her husband "So those odious people next door are having the red carpet and the awning put out again. I suppose they are entertaining to-night ; how very provoking, and my reception evening, too ! " 130 MR. CONTANGO 131 To explain the situation, it need only be said that Mr. Contango, the first City gentle- man who had ever settled in Belgrave Square, had recently gratified his own and his wife's social ambitions by buying the lease of an eligible mansion next door to that owned by Sir Hector Dilly, the Whip of the party with which Mr. Contango, when at Westminster, voted. Lady Dilly was now celebrating her first Belgravian season, and had issued cards for a dance on this particular night to the music of the fashion- able Red Magyar Band. In themselves, the wives, both of the party official and of the prosperous stockbroker, were pleasant, amiable ladies. Both, however, were rather pretty women. Both had their social aspi- rations, the one long since in process of realization, the other at last seeming in a fair way of attainment. The two, therefore, seemed to each other to move in orbits dangerously close. Mrs. Contango was the i 3 2 HOW HIS PARTY daughter of a pauper baronet of ancient lineage. She knew that Lady Dilly, for all her airs, as she said, had been promoted by her husband from a country vicarage to share the honours of his by no means ancient baronetcy. Lady Dilly being the hostess of her party, and Mrs. Contango the wife of a very wealthy member of it, the two ladies were on visiting terms ; that is, they exchanged calls as seldom as decency allowed. Mrs. Contango, on the strength of her family descent, assumed, perhaps unintentionally, to the Whip's wife a defensive attitude which had much annoyed that states woman. Mrs. Contango reflected that she was better born, as her looking-glass told her quite as attractive as, and, as her husband's cheques proclaimed, certainly wealthier than the Whip's lady. Lady Dilly, on the other hand, was admitted universally to be nothing less than perfectly charming. She was a clever woman with LOST MR. CONTANGO 133 intellectual tastes, and in the eyes of the world with faultless tact. But, as the members of her own household knew, she was not a person whose sunlight it was safe to intercept. She had in truth been spoiled by years of worship from those who followed Sir Hector in the St. Stephen's lobbies. Above everything, Lady Dilly was admitted by all whom she considered good judges to be incomparable as a chatelaine and a hostess. Since Mr. Paramount, the Prime Minister, had lost his wife, she had done the chief entertaining for the party, and was allowed to manage her hospitalities with great grace and skill. She lived, as she proudly reflected, in the best house in the most aristocratic square in London, and if inhabitants of Berkeley or Grosvenor Square might have challenged this de- scription, they had never done so to Lady Dilly's knowledge. It seemed, therefore, something like sacrilege when the residence 134 HOW HIS PARTY next to her own in that august enclosure was appropriated by a gentleman who had offices in Threadneedle Street. Nor did this dissatisfaction become less when Lady Dilly found that in a quiet way her new neighbour had an individuality of her own which she was not prepared to efface even under the social shadow of the Whip's wife. Independently of her ladyship's prejudices, Mrs. Contango developed her programme for the season with as light a heart and in as little awe of mightier rivals as if, instead of being in Belgravia's patrician centre, she was in Bayswater. These thoughts were in Lady Billy's mind while she poured out Sir Hector's tea, and found expression from her pretty lips while the baronet was munching his toast, and Faudel, the butler, was constantly entering the room to lay fresh telegrams or letters by his master's plate. LOST MR. CONTANGO 135 II. WHERE ARE THE RED MAGYARS? Sir Hector Dilly's head serving-man was always ready to reflect on an exaggerated scale her ladyship's unconcealed disgust at the presumption of, as the Dilly butler called them, "the noovoo reesh" next door. When, an hour or two later, he went, according to his habit, for his noonday draught to the sign of the " Running Foot- man," the chosen haunt of the below-stairs gentlemen, in or out of livery, in the district, he had conceived a sense of personal grievance at the thought of the stock- broker's lady venturing to entertain on the same night on which his mistress was "to receive," to meet Mr. Paramount and a royal duke himself. He scowled viciously 136 HO W HIS PARTY as he eyed from the pavement the prepara- tions for the evening's entertainment, and emitted a distinct oath when he was nearly tripped up by the roll of the but partially unfolded crimson cloth on which the dainty feet of the stockbroker's guests were that night to tread. Standing with others of his order at the bar of the " Running Footman," the ruffled Faudel overheard a glowing account from a Contango menial of the dance whose music was to be played by the famous Red Magyars. Faudel said nothing, but took a resolution the fruits of which were to be visible a few hours later. Sir Hector Dilly, a short-tempered man with an autocratic manner, as is often the case with party Whips, was visibly ruffled when he sat down to luncheon in Belgrave Square that day. " Could anything be done to stop these proceedings ? " was the question which, with the sweet unreasonableness of her sex, Lady LOST MR. CONTANGO 137 Dilly, still fretting at the thought of the Contango entertainment, had asked. "Well," was the Whip's grim reply, "with- out buying up the whole square or the foreign bandsmen, I do not see, my dear, how we can interfere." These words, overheard by Faudel, gave him, as he put it to a friend, a "notion." In the course of his afternoon stroll, he found himself near the headquarters of the Red Magyar instrumentalists. There is some reason for thinking that he himself had business there. m. WHAT HAPPENED AT MRS. CON- TANGO'S DANCE Between 10 and 1 1 p.m. nearly all Mrs. Contango's guests had arrived in Belgrave Square. The last palm tree had long since been placed in its appointed niche ; the last 138 HOW HIS PARTY Chinese lantern had been lighted under the balcony awning. Nothing was wanted but the musicians that dancing might begin. At last it was within measurable distance of midnight. Not a human being in the romantic uniform of the Red Magyars was in sight. The guests were looking curiously at each other ; poor Mrs. Contango moved about like a lost spirit, and wished that the earth would swallow her up. Mr. Contango, a gentleman of resource and penetration, saw the trick which had been played on him ; resolved to be even yet with his wife's persecutors ; and per- ceived in an instant how, the Red Magyars notwithstanding, the ball might be saved from being an entire fiasco. In five minutes more he was in a cab whirling towards a famous music-hall. Money was, of course, no consideration to Mr. Contango. He had not, therefore, much difficulty in arranging with the LOST MR. CONTANGO 139 manager for an immediate despatch of a sufficient number of qualified instrumentalists to play as long as his guests could dance. And dance they did with a good will to re- assure Mrs. Contango, whom everyone liked, and everyone pitied on the disappoint- ment which she had received. IV. MR. CONTANGO'S REPRISAL Shortly after this incident Mr. Contango's attendance at the House of Commons became more irregular than ever. His indifference to the edicts of the Whip was most marked. The society papers had, of course, got hold of the ball in Belgrave Square, and had hinted pretty directly that the Red Magyars had failed at the com- mand of a rival hostess. This, as readers of these lines know, was not entirely correct. 1 40 HOW HIS PARTY Morally, however, there may have been something in what these prints said. Be that as it may, Mr. Contango, a short, choleric gentleman, with a face and neck suggestive of apoplexy, decided that the moment had come for him, in his own phrase, to break the glasses. He had long been disgusted with the exclusiveness of the leaders of the party which he had in- cautiously joined, and now bluntly told Sir Hector Dilly and his understrapper that they need send him no more of their underscored whips. The chief club of the party hostile to that which Sir Hector Dilly served was next door in Pall Mall from their opponents' headquarters. A malcontent with Mr. Contango's means was not likely to be dis- regarded by tacticians so shrewd as Sir Hector Billy's rivals. Mr. Contango found, as might have been expected, that he had inadvertently associated in the past with LOST MR. CONTANGO 141 politicians whom he really did not approve, and that his chief, Mr. Paramount, and his minion, Sir Hector Dilly, were between them ruining the country. He had no sooner begun to recant his past errors than the anti-Paramountites received him with open arms, electing him into the great club of their party. Shortly after this the general election came. How the Paramount majority of 300 was changed into a minority of 152 is a fact of political history. Whether incidents of the Contango ball in Belgrave Square and the private feelings of men like Mr. Contango on these and other matters of socio-political intercourse contributed to that result is, of course, a subject of speculation, but is, there seems reason to believe, by no means improbable. The New Waitress ANOTHER STORY OF THE TERRACE I. WHAT MRS. PHILANDER THOUGHT OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS MRS. PHILANDER was the pretty and generally amiable wife of Mr. Theodore Philander, the rising member for the Midland constituency of Hilborough. She was really fond of her husband. She had a restless craving for social position. With the idea of gratifying this ambition she had encouraged her Theodore to enter the House of Commons, on the plea that it could not but help to improve his practice at the Bar. The delusion is a common 142 THE NEW WAITRESS 143 one, but a delusion it is, for no obscure member of the House of Commons was ever yet transformed by his parliamentary title into a famous advocate. Nor did the affix of M.P. to the gentleman's name ever promote the lady to a position which was not his and hers by birth already. Mrs. Philander had long since discovered her mistake, had found no pleasure in looking down on her lord from behind the grating in the Ladies' Gallery. Whenever she had ventured on the Terrace she had always retired flushed, secretly wretched, and openly indignant at the ostentatious efforts of Mrs. Ponsonby- Jones, long enthroned as the Terrace Queen, to patronize the new-comer. When, therefore, Mr. Philander began to keep unhallowed hours, seldom coming home till morning, sometimes not even returning then, but sneaking in with a guilty and disreputable look about lunch- 144 THE NEW WAITRESS time, saying that he had been forcibly detained by the Whips at an all-night sitting, Mrs. Philander shared the opinion of the peer Premier that the House of Commons was a thing of which one might easily have too much. ii. NO BETTER THAN A CAFE CHANTANT If Mrs. Philander had a failing it was an over-readiness to listen to the evil whispers of the green-eyed monster. Mr. Theodore Philander was perhaps no better than most of his sex. He was certainly no worse. His wife ought to have seen that when a City senator, Mr. Multiple, who sometimes visited them, seemed with odious familiarity to be rallying Philander on some little incident of no very domestic kind, that THE NEW WAITRESS 145 gentleman was not merely sinning against taste, but was deliberately playing the part of a mischief-making lago. But, like most wives who give place to suspicion before they cultivate intelligence, Mrs. Philander, putting, as she expressed it, two and two together, came, as is the habit of ladies with her temperament, to the conclusion that they made not four, but five. The next time, therefore, that her Theodore returned from St. Stephen's at an unholy hour to his South Kensington home with the usual account of detention by Irish or English obstructives, Mrs. Philander plainly let her lord see that she had heard that excuse too often to believe it, openly hinted at returning to her mother, and mentally vowed that she would herself see what was at the bottom of the business, and bring her treacherous spouse to a proper sense of his misdoings. 146 THE NEW WAITRESS III. MRS. PHILANDER'S STRATEGY The wife of the member for Hilborough had read in the society papers of the flirta- tions on the Terrace with which, on fine Wednesday afternoons, legislators were in the habit of relieving the monotony of dull debates. The place, as one newspaper critic said, was rapidly being transformed into a Thames-side tea-garden, and might easily become something still less dignified and more objectionable. Shortly after this, Mrs. Philander tingled with indignation at hearing that, for the convenience of their lady guests, the Repre- sentatives of the People had resolved to employ waitresses in neat black uniforms, with coquettishly frilled muslin caps, to THE NEW WAITRESS 147 hand round the strawberries and the tea. However, it is an ill wind which blows no one good. Mrs. Philander, when her temperament did not interfere with her reason, was a quick-witted little lady, and saw in the announcement of " Waitresses wanted for the House of Commons " just the opportunity which she had so long wanted. She had often played in private theatricals, and knew how to dress and look any part she might take. A few skilful touches with the brush, a little more pallor here or colour there, Mrs. Philander was satisfied that none of her friends would recognize her. She felt a little nervous on entering the private room at the House of Commons of Colonel Jessamy, the gentleman who had kindly undertaken for his brother -M. P. 's to select the new female attendants. But the sensation soon passed off. Maud Phil- ander was engaged in the name of Sarah i 4 S THE NEW WAITRESS Wilkinson for the tea-room department three days a week during the months of June and July. IV. WHAT MRS. PHILANDER DISCOVERED A few days afterwards Sarah Wilkinson j began her duties under the directions of the authoritative and forbidding spinster who had charge of the new waitresses: Most of them, as Mrs. Philander could not but admit, were well-mannered and attractive young women, though not, she complacently reflected, any one of them, her own superior in point of personal attractions. She knew from the looking- glass that the regulation costume of black and white suited her perfectly. She was prepared to find her appearance produce some effect upon the parliamentary tea- THE NEW WAITRESS 149 drinkers whose needs she was now bustling about to supply. The first person she served was the City M.P. Mr. Multiple, who looked hard at her, evidently did not recognize her, and seemed half inclined affectionately to pat her chin. The next parliamentarian in want of the non-intoxicating cup was Lord Buxton, the Leader of the Opposition. His lordship had a long, expressionless face, somewhat resembling that of a patrician cab-horse in reduced circumstances, with a general pre- dominance of Norman nose. He was, however, credited with accessibility to the charms of the sex, and visibly relaxed his habitual hauteur of manner when the new waitress, with a piquant ignorance or forget- fulness of his rank, said as she placed a tea-cup on the round table ' Bread and butter or toast, sir ? " "If," was Lord Buxton's comment to his colleague. Mr. Xewhaven, "we are going 150 THE NEW WAITRESS to have this sort of thing " and his lordship perpetrated something which in a lowlier mortal might have been a wink " we had better call the place Cremorne at once ! " Mrs. Philander could scarcely help over- hearing this, began to be rather impatient, and in an unguarded moment was very nearly asking his lordship or Mr. Newhaven if either of them could tell her where Mr. Philander was. She soon had the reward of her self- control. In something less than an hour her husband emerged from the Chamber to the stone walk outside fronting the river, not, as Mrs. Philander had expected, to keep an assignation, but simply thirsting for a cup of tea, and eyeing with a look of critical approval the figures in black and white drawn up at this moment in single file under the eyes of the already-mentioned superintendent. Sarah Wilkinson felt a little agitated and THE NEW WAITRESS 151 had a horrible suspicion that she was blush- ing when she tripped off to execute Mr. Philander's order for iced coffee and brown bread and butter. These modest luxuries were deposited on the little table. The nymph, before hurrying off elsewhere, satis- fied herself by a single glance that her husband had not penetrated her disguise, but that he was quite as favourably pre- possessed by her appearance as Lord Buxton or Mr. Newhaven had been. While she was yet looking at him under her eyelids, the M.P. took out his pocket- book, placed something crisp in an envelope, and began to write on a scrap of notepaper in pencil. " The wretch ! " said to herself Sarah Wilkinson ; " I believe he is going to offer me a five-pound note if I will let him walk home with me after work." 152 THE NEW WAITRESS V. THE DENOUEMENT The lady, however, though not entirely mistaken, had not, as the sequel will show, divined quite correctly the intentions of the member for Hilborough. When she returned with the brown bread and butter, the senator did, indeed, after having finished his coffee, place by the side of the empty cup an envelope. The new waitress took it up. It was addressed to Mrs. Philander. Retiring presently to read the missive, on opening the envelope there fell out a cheque for five -and -twenty guineas. It was accompanied by no proposal to which a committee of old maids could have taken exception, but by the simple words, " This is what you wanted for the new frock ; go home and read Othello'' THE NEW WAITRESS 153 Mrs. Philander, not naturally of large dimensions, felt smaller than nature had made her, intimated to the superintendent that the new place was not likely to suit her, returned to her South Kensington home, and was never known afterwards to express incredulity when Mr. Philander, as a victim of the House of Commons ob- structives, returned to his home with the morning milkman instead of at the sound of the evening muffin bell. How the House of Commons became a Cycling School i. WHAT HAD HAPPENED CONTRARY to the expectation which might be raised by the sequel of these remarks, the long-threatened New Zealander had not yet brought his sketch - book to Westminster Bridge. The arches of that structure were still intact. Penny steamers still lay off what but the other day was known as the Speaker's Steps. No matter how late the hour, or how busy and populous the floor within, the electric light had ceased to glow in the Clock Tower. In- side St. Stephen's Chapel a frequent ringing A CYCLING SCHOOL 155 might be heard. It was not that of a division bell, but of the bicycle. In plain English, the House of Commons as an edifice survived ; as a legislative institution it had ceased to exist. The following is the manner in which these organic changes had been brought about. n. HOW IT CAME ABOUT No Cromwell had, as might have been imagined, expressed himself about the moral antecedents of the elected law-makers with force rather than politeness. Professor Birrell, more occupied with his Quain pro- fessorship than with the purge which, in emulation of the historic one of Colonel Pride, he had often talked of applying to the Chamber, had not instigated the re- moval of the Speaker's mace, of his chair, 156 HOW THE HOUSE OF COMMONS or any other such bauble. In a word, nothing like a revolution by violence had taken place. Members, indeed, were still returned nominally to Parliament. Con- stituencies continued to exist in name. A former leader in the House of Commons, whose metaphysical acumen scarcely fell short of that quality as embodied in a still more illustrious predecessor, had entered into an elaborate argument to show that though St. Stephen's was at this moment a cycling school, the existence of the House of Commons was not terminated, but only suspended. Several generations before the date now spoken of, a Parliamentary and literary genius of the first order had described the common-sense of a country whose opinions were mirrored in its free press as recoiling in disgust from the imperfect vicariate of a House of Commons. Even that gifted person, who foresaw much, did not foresee BECAME A CYCLING SCHOOL 157 the incredibly gradual processes by which a constitutional change had been carried into full, if temporary, effect. The illuminated had for some time felt that, like the Alexandrian library in the judgment of Caliph Omar, the House of Commons was either unnecessary or dangerous. If its decrees coincided with those of " another place," it was superfluous ; if they contra- dicted that higher wisdom, then the Popular Chamber must clearly be a source of public mischief. During a long series of years the nation had shown a steadily waning interest in the debates of an Assemblage long since robbed of its oratorical orna- ments, now exclusively, and to all appear- ance irreversibly, controlled by excellent men of business, whose addresses were always clear, but never rose above the board-room level. By this time the most able representatives of the industry, of the wealth, of the many- 158 HOW THE HOUSE OF COMMONS sided interests of the trade, of the culture, as well as of the diplomacy of the day, w*ere permanently seated in " another place." Either the Administration of the hour possessed the confidence of the Hereditary Chamber or did not possess it. In the former case the Bills sent up to the Lords from the Commons were passed by the Hereditary Legislators be- fore they went home to dine ; in the latter case those measures were never passed at all. The labours of an entire session were undone often within a few hours. At first popular opinion was amused. Then it was irritated. Finally it became somewhat impatient and disgusted. In this way it often propounded to itself the question whether an Assembly which was really privy to its own effacement could be worth preserving. By this time the more active and ambitious members of the BECAME A CYCLING SCHOOL 159 House of Commons were either born to a reversionary interest in a seat in the Peers, or looked forward to such promo- tion as to the polite goal of their career. When one, whether an individual or an assembly, has ceased to believe in him- self, the hour of doom is not far from sounding. The Leadership of the House of Com- mons was now divided between a gentleman who bred shorthorns or played golf and his associate who rode bicycles and expanded empires. Neither of them, as may be imagined, could spare very much time from these grave pursuits to take their places on the right of the Speaker's Chair. Both of them were very smart exponents of the newest social modes. Both, as is right for very clever and successful men, had an intel- lectual contempt for the dull prosers by whom they found themselves too often surrounded. Neither, therefore, passed very much time 160 HOW THE HOUSE OF COMMONS in the Chamber. The shorthorn breeder had quite enough to do with interviews with his stocktaker in his private room. The bicyclist was always practising new movements on special machines either in Palace Yard, or up and down Westminster Hall, and through the passages and vesti- bules of St. Stephen's themselves. Some newspapers had ceased to report Parlia- mentary debates. Others received hand- some subsidies for briefly summarizing the proceedings. What, therefore, more natural than that honourable gentlemen should hurry off to dinner or to other engagements, trusting to the printed reports next day if they wished to acquaint themselves with the arguments of their adversaries. This usage began to be so generally recognized, that questions asking Ministers whether such and such a newspaper's report of their speech was correct began to swarm upon the notice paper. BECAME A CYCLING SCHOOL 161 In consequence attendance in the Chamber fell off so steadily as to cause the figures constituting a quorum to be reduced, by order of the House, first to twenty, then to ten. Even this modest minimum often proved impracticable. Next some member, boldly recognizing the inevitable, moved that the Chamber should sit only on certain days in the week, and that only during some months of the year. Both the leaders he who golfed and he who cycled had been, when at Oxford, at Christ Church. There they remembered it was bad form for any member of the "house" to wear cap and gown. Equally bad form did they consider it now to be visible whenever a debate was going on. They were entertaining ladies on the terrace at tea. They were smoking in their respective private rooms. The House itself was the last place where anyone would look for them. M 162 HOW THE HOUSE OF COMMONS It was now obvious that so capacious a structure in so convenient a situation ought to be turned to some useful purpose. Dreamy philanthropists advocated its acqui- sition by St. Thomas's Hospital on the opposite bank of the Thames, then sadly in want of a new wing. More practical people rightly thought some money should be made out of it. The leader who golfed protested a few cartloads of sand and furze bushes would adapt it admirably for young beginners at his favourite game. The Poet Laureate, in a stirring ode, advocated a hippodrome, winding up with a suggestion that Dr. Jameson and his friends should be engaged practically to illustrate the inci- dents of their ride to Johannesburg. The structural alterations required were found to be too extensive. At this moment an opportunist member hit upon a happy compromise, conspicuously inspired by the genius of the day. While BECAME A CYCLING SCHOOL 163 the mammas and their daughters were enjoying light refreshments and listening to inspiriting music on the terrace, why should not the floor of the disused Chamber within be transformed into a kind of gym- nastic creche for the instruction of small boys, and perhaps little girls, in that difficult but most necessary of all arts. A return was moved for showing the percentage of fatal accidents from the two-wheeled iron horse admittedly caused by imperfect edu- cation in that method of locomotion which had now quite superseded the primitive use of the feet. This settled the business. Suggestions of convenience coincided with the dictates of humanity. A measure proposing that after a certain date the House of Commons should be dedicated to purposes more immediately beneficial to all sections of the community than those which it at present served was duly drafted, introduced 164 A CYCLING SCHOOL by the Leader of the House, and carried through all its stages, with the result which, if it be only temporary, is at least historical. A Story of the Studio THE SUSPICIONS OF DEAN STARCH THE Rev. Cyprian Starch, D.D., had resigned some years ago the deanery of Barchester. He was now living on his very comfortable income in his well- appointed town house, 365, Eaton Square. He had no children of his own, and con- sequently much unoccupied space in his Belgravian mansion. His sister, the wife of General Tinto, had not long since died in India. Her son, Leslie, a clever lad, with much talent of a not very practical kind and with a delicate constitution, on leaving Cambridge put his name down at the Inner Temple, waited for briefs in his 165 1 66 A STORY OF THE STUDIO chambers, occasionally visited that portion of the Royal Law Courts reserved for members of the Bar, and even reported cases for a law journal. His chief occupa- tion in court, however, was to draw caricatures on little scraps of paper of counsel, judge, jury, and litigants. From this it will be inferred rightly that Leslie Tinto's abilities were chiefly, if not exclu- sively, artistic. At last the young man openly renounced the law and let his chambers. He was now an inmate of his uncle's house in Eaton Square. Here his mother on her deathbed had consoled her- self with thinking her son's health would receive more attention from her sister-in- law, Mrs. Starch, than in London chambers or lodgings. The young artist's studio was close by in Ebury Street. His kind relatives could not understand why his painting should not be done beneath the roof where he slept A STORY OF THE STUDIO 167 and ate. Young Mr. Tinto had to explain the necessity of certain lights to a working painter. These, it seemed, were obtainable only in a room specially constructed for the purpose. So that every morning after the family breakfast Tinto went off to his studio, generally, though not always, return- ing to the family dinner. Of late his movements had been uncertain and his hours irregular. The ex- Dean of Barchester, who during twenty years of his life had been a school- master, did not like the look of things. At his clubs, the Old University in Suffolk Street and the Athenaeum in Pall Mall, the reverend gentleman had casually heard certain revelations of studio life which aroused his suspicions. Concurrently with this, the weekly journal called The Inquisitor had, after its usual fashion, created a new sensation by a series of articles, "by our Special Commissioner," 1 68 A STOXY OF THE STUDIO under the title of " The Artistic Mysteries of London." In these papers every atelier was represented as the scene of orgies in comparison with which the life of the Latin Quarter, as depicted in Trilby, was monastic, and the abandon of Mabille refined. Then came a powerful article from Mr. Frank, the editor, summing up the evidence which a stern sense of duty had compelled him to print, and appealing to the legislature to regulate by statute the transactions be- tween painters and their models, especially those of the latter who, like Trilby, sat for, to quote the now classical phrase, "the altogether." If, argued the journalist, the lower creation was protected against the outrages of unlicensed vivisectors, how much more sacred in a Christian country ought to be the female form divine. When at dinner in Eaton Square the Dean turned the conversation into such channels as these, his nephew affected to A STORY OF THE STUDIO 169 make light of it, and assured his relative that it was all a tissue of lying nonsense. But Dr. Starch had not been a schoolmaster for twenty years of his life without being able to detect what was passing in the young man's mind when the colour mounted to his cheeks, and other signs were visible of his being ill at ease. n. THE DEAN DETERMINES TO SEE FOR HIMSELF As a gentleman, the ex -Dean of Bar- chester disliked the idea of playing the spy even upon one for whose moral welfare he felt himself responsible. He was, however, an uncle, charged with practically paternal duties as well. His nephew might, for all he knew, be contracting habits equally ruinous to his moral well - being, to his spiritual and temporal prospects. 170 A STORY OF THE STUDIO One thing Dr. and Mrs. Starch had both noticed. Leslie Tinto had never asked either of them to visit his studio or to inspect the work which he had in progress, and which he talked of submitting to the Academy judges. " For all you know, my dear," said Mrs. Starch to her husband, " Leslie may have married already one of those persons ahem ! models as they are called. If you cannot find time to go to Ebury Street, I certainly will ! " The decision announced in these words imposed a fresh obligation on Leslie Tinto's uncle. Mrs. Starch was a woman of her word. No false delicacy would prevent her from personally examining his nephew's studio. The Dean trembled to think what she might find there. A shudder went down to the lowest button of his gaiters as he conjured up the vision of a personal rencontre between the blameless and prudish A STORY OF THE STUDIO 171 Churchwoman and another member of her own sex in the act of sitting for "the altogether," her unbound locks flowing down over the unhallowed shoulders, her spirit perhaps fired by a glass of green Chartreuse. The Dean, it was plain, owed a duty now to his wife as well as to himself, to say nothing of his dead sister and her unhappy son. He would, therefore, on the first day possible pay Mr. Leslie Tinto a visit in Ebury Street, and with his own eyes as- certain the real purpose of his nephew's visits to, and protracted sojourns in, that neighbourhood. in. WHAT DEAN STARCH SAW IN THE STUDIO Arrived in Ebury Street, Dean Starch, heedless of the remonstrances of the house- keeper who opened the door, insisted on 172 A STORY OF THE STUDIO ascending at once to his nephew's apartment, without any previous announcement. Vainly did the good woman say she was not sure whether Mr. Tinto was alone ; that he might have his sister with him, or Dean Starch supplied the omission, and gasping out with a sneer, "A model, I suppose ! " with more than decanal agility had in another minute flown upstairs and gained the landing just outside Mr. Tinto's studio. Here the very reverend gentleman paused for a moment. It now struck him that for an ex-dignitary of high degree in the Church of England it would be rather a derogatory and indelicate situation if he entered the room only to be confronted by what he suspected. While he waited at the door he could distinctly hear the voice of his relative in a tone of caress and blandishment within. " Sit up, my pretty one ; you are looking A STORY OF THE STUDIO 173 perfectly divine. Your head a little more towards the light, and bend the body a little to the left." " Lucky for her that my poor sister did not live to witness the degradation of her son. But I must stop this while I can." With these words the ex- Dean of Bar- chester gave a sharp rap at the door in order that the infamous creature might have time decently to drape herself and retire. In a few seconds his shameless nephew invited the caller to "come in." These words were scarcely out of the young man's lips when the Dean heard what he could swear was the smack of a kiss, and the words addressed to the creature within, " We are interrupted, my pet ; so put on your rags, and no more for to-day." In another moment the Dean had entered the studio. The scene which he witnessed spoke for itself. What was it ? Unabashed before his easel stood Leslie Tinto, giving 174 A STORY OF THE STUDIO a few touches to a female figure on the canvas designed to represent Andromeda liberated from the dragon by Perseus. On a very old easy-chair lay a shapeless mass of drapery, and, as it appeared to the Dean, human limbs dismembered from the body. Leslie Tinto noticed an expression of per- plexed disgust on the ecclesiastical face, and astounded the Dean by saying " I see you don't know what has become of my pretty one ! " " Sir," replied Dr. Starch, quivering with suppressed fury to the lowest point of his small-clothes, "do you dare to speak of your goings on in this way, and to a clergy- man?" So far from being abashed, the young man broke into a particularly merry laugh, but said nothing. In another minute the young artist took up the disjecta membra from the couch. These, with a little dexterous mani- pulation, presently and, as it seemed to Dr. A STORY OF THE STUDIO 175 Starch, by some act of creative magic, assumed the appearance of a female figure very imperfectly draped " Now, missy," audibly soliloquized the young man, addressing the dummy whom he had placed in a sitting posture, "sit there by yourself and show the Dean what a well-behaved young lady you are." Dr. Starch had not felt so small since an audacious boy at Radley, one day before breaking up, had set a butter slide for him, tripping him up in the big school. "A most ingenious contrivance, my dear Leslie," were the only words the good man could gasp out ; " but really, the affec- tion with which you address this inanimate effigy seems a little mysterious, not to say irrational. Why don't you paint, as I believe artists find it necessary to do, from the life?" " Models, my dear sir," was the reply, "are a luxury I cannot yet afford," 176 A STORY OF THE STUDIO " Let me know the cost, and I will see what I can do for you." With these words the ex-Dean of Bar- chester quitted the room, feeling that he had placed himself in a situation altogether unworthy of the clerical rank which he had once held. The first time that Leslie Tinto had the benefit of "the altogether" for his picture of " Perseus and Andromeda," hung at the next Burlington House show, Dr. Starch provided the model's fee. How I became Bishop of Barum REASONS FOR PREPARING THIS NARRATIVE SO many misstatements concerning my earliest mitre have not only passed into newspaper circulation, but have become partially stereotyped by the flimsy though widely read memoirs of the period, as to make it a duty to the Prime Minister, Mr. Porphyry, who first brought my name before her Gracious Majesty, as well as to myself and my family, briefly to narrate the inci- dents which caused the then Premier to decide on my succession to the late Dr. Bumbledore in the diocese that I have now held more than a quarter of a century. N 177 i/8 HOW I BECAME II. With much regret I have seen it stated that the sermon wherein Mr. Porphyry did me the honour to discover merit was preached on a ceremonial occasion, such as the Judge's Sunday at an assize town, or in a cathedral in the sister kingdom while the British Association for the Advancement of Science was visiting the place. There is not the slightest truth in any of these stories. I addressed from the pulpit neither the savants of the empire, nor the scarlet and ermined executors of justice, nor ever preached in any cathedral church till I did so in my own. Not only did such occasions at no time fall to my lot : I have always purposely avoided them. After twenty years' clerical labour in various cures, I received from my BISHOP OF BARUM 179 noble friend, the patron of the living, the rectory of Otterbourne. Lord Otterbourne was, I need scarcely say, created a peer by Mr. Porphyry, who had also recommended him to the Queen for the Garter. That these honours were bestowed on my noble friend by the Premier of the day in recognition of his countess's, rather than his lordship's, services to the political party led by the Right Honourable Plotinus Porphyry is notoriously true, for his lordship never personally distinguished himself except at Cambridge by his strange taste to take a part in any " black jobs," in undertaker's phrase, which might be going on. If the premiership of England were open to the fair sex, the honour long since would have been won by her lady- ship (I am not quite sure whether the same thing might not also be said about the primacy itself), for Lady Otterbourne's vigour and versatility of intellect could i8o HOW I BECAME compare with any of the historic queens of her own sex from her of Sheba, or Zenobia of Palmyra, down to our own Elizabeth. That Lady Otterbourne ever supplied with her own pen the pulpit with any of those sermons which she heard from the family pew in Otterbourne Church, as well as prepared her lord's speeches in Parliament, is, to the best of my knowledge, a fiction. She was, however, an accomplished theologian ; she would sometimes to favourite curates suggest indirectly subjects, and even texts, for sermons. But obviously this is quite a different thing from offering these hints to the rector of the parish. That early in the week during which Mr. Porphyry was to be the guest at Otterbourne Hall I received timely notice of whom my next Sunday's congregation would contain, together with the invitation to dinner, is of course the simple fact. BISHOP OF BARUM 181 Mr. Porphyry's vacation pastime was unlike most of those which English states- men have affected. He neither owned racehorses nor rode to hounds ; he did not shoot or fish ; he never captained his county eleven ; he wrote no articles for the reviews. Unlike his rival, Mr. Petherton, he collected neither bric-a-brac nor old china. Physically, not less than mentally, he was a man of great power. His thews and muscles found the exercise needful to keep them in good order, not in teaching his villagers cricket, as he could have done for he had been a famous bat but in lopping the redundant forest growths in and near the grounds of Hazeldene Manor, where he dwelt. In other words, Mr. Porphyry was the most famous amateur woodman of his day. Whenever, in his own demesne or elsewhere, he noticed any particular elm, or beech, or fir occupying more than its due share of space or light, and thus interfering with the i8z HOW I BECAME growth or vitality of its fellows, it was with Mr. Porphyry the work of a moment to produce his favourite axe, to take off his coat, to strip himself to the waist, and by as many well-directed strokes as were wanted to remove the superfluous or mischievous branches, in some cases to divide the parent stem itself. The chips that fell to the ground during this process in the days of Mr. Porphyry's greatest popularity, when his newspapers hailed him as " The People's Plotinus," were pounced upon, quick as thought, by his admirers, were privately treasured by them as relics, or were sent as almost sacred curiosities to the local museum. Mr. Petherton had lately made irreverent fun of these usages ; had discovered an untoward analogy between his great rival's favourite amusement and his parliamentary statesmanship, destructiveness, as he said, being the chief characteristic of both. Mr. BISHOP OF BARUM 183 Petherton had further cruelly suggested that to form a company for collecting the frag- ments of bark, even the grains of sawdust shed by Mr. Porphyry's hatchet, and to distribute them at a price to his worshippers throughout the world, would be an excellent plan for raising the funds which the Porphyry party then wanted for their organization. A general election was approaching, when it was announced that the Prime Minister was about to visit Otterbourne Park. He had not been actually defeated in the House of Commons, but the majority in favour of the Minister's local government reforms had become either so diminutive as to lack moral authority, or so out of hand as to be useless. The particular measure which the Minister had pledged himself to pass into law was such an extension of his favourite principle of " devolution " as would make each county, or group of counties, its own paramount authority. Mr. Porphyry's i8 4 ffOW I BECAME enemies of course raised the cry of the ancient monarchy and Parliament in danger of disintegration. The Minister, however, ingeniously maintained in answer that, so far from weakening the Crown or the Imperial Council, the machinery of his measure, by pruning away mischievous excrescences and inspiring municipalities with a new and lofty sense of their responsibilities, would stimu- late the sense of loyalty to the legislative authority at Westminster and to the sovereign lady upon the throne. in. THE SERMON That the prospect of Mr. Porphyry's presence at our next Sunday's service should have been mentioned in conver- sation between Lady Otterbourne and myself is very natural. This, however, BISHOP OF BARUM 185 I feel sure, was all. I had resolved to choose a topic which would suggest no controversial issues, but which, description being a strong point with me, should admit of illustration from natural objects familiar to my parishioners and all who heard my words. The Otterbourne country is re- markable for the beauty of its woodlands and the symmetry of the individual trees composing them. How had this pictu- resque perfection been obtained ? Surely by the industry of man seconding all the advantages of nature. Unless the wood- man's axe had removed obstructive growths, and preserved a free passage for air and sunshine to each member of the plantation or forest, Lady Otterbourne's trees would not be, as they justly were, the pride of the county. In search of an appropriate text from Holy Writ to introduce these thoughts, 1 was struck by a remarkable phrase in the fifth verse of Psalm Ixxiv. These are the i86 HOW 1 BECAME words which describe a man as " famous according as he had lifted up axes upon the thick trees." I was told afterwards for when in the pulpit I see nothing that on hearing the words relating to his favourite craft the Prime Minister lifted up his eyes with a look of surprised intelligence. Really, it struck me afterwards, if the sacred volume had been searched for a personal prophecy of Mr. Porphyry at his favourite pastime, language more verbally appropriate could not have been found. The parallel between forestry and other kinds of human action suggested by the above was necessarily now maintained from the pulpit. Discreet destruction up to a certain point was the necessary condition of good constructive work. This truth was, with chastened pictu- resqueness, exemplified by me from the native woodlands of our own Otterbourne, BISHOP OF BARUM 187 which assuredly would never have presented the beautiful appearance they did to-day unless they had been tended lovingly and trimmed discreetly by those who have studied the nature and knew the needs of sylvan development. The application of these principles was obvious. I need not pursue it in detail here, because the dis- course itself was printed and published at the request of my parishioners, dedicated, if I remember rightly, to the Countess of Otterbourne. As we walked in the park after service, her ladyship took an oppor- tunity of saying in tones meant for my ears alone " When you talk with Mr. Porphyry at dinner to - morrow, pray be careful, my friend, to say nothing which can spoil or weaken the effect of what we have all been edified and charmed by hearing from the pulpit." I took her ladyship's advice, and such 1 88 NOW I BECAME conversation as I had with the Premier was rigidly confined, I think, to the subject of diocesan colleges for candidates for Holy Orders. That, however, did not prevent my receiving, a few weeks later, an inti- mation from the Prime Minister of the pleasure he proposed to do himself in recognizing my thirty years of "unobtrusive parochial labour" by recommending me to her Majesty for the vacant diocese of Barum. The days have passed when legislation, whatever its subject-matter, can be greatly helped or hindered by the temper of the peers. I shall, however, in conformity with the principles already expressed, have no difficulty in defending the Ministerial local government measure, profanely called the Heptarchy Bill, if it comes up to our House next session, which, as the issue of the elections remains very uncertain, is, to say BISHOP OF BARUM 189 the least, doubtful. I shall speak as well as vote for it, and shall trust my example may not be without effect on my spiritual and temporal brethren. The Prime Minister's Love Affair I. THE TWO POLITICAL FRIENDS EMOTE, unfriended, melancholy, slow." Such was the quotation popularly applied to the frigid and shy Mr. Wenham, who, at the age of thirty-five, had become Prime Minister of England. Tall, upright in figure, with intellectual forehead and firmly-set lips, Wenham gave the House and the public the impression of a man who, for real greatness of character, wanted only a little more imagination. Of late years he had somewhat mellowed, and had unbent himself at dinner - tables and in drawing-rooms more frequently than he 190 PRIME MINISTERS LOVE AFFAIR 191 had ever yet been known to do. Still his social acquaintances were few ; his real intimates were almost none. Ladies, since the death of his wife, he shunned entirely. Of his own sex, he had only one friend. This was Theophilus Wynne, also an M.P., as well as a contrast in every respect to the austere Wenham. A ruddy, jolly face ; a figure inclined to rotundity ; a good- natured but very knowing smile these were the salient features of the Premier's genial and life-enjoying confidant. The political squibs of the period, prose and verse, especially the latter, constantly contrasted the habits, appearances, and tastes of this Nisus and Euryalus of political life. Matron or maid, so sang the social bards, the grave Mr. Wenham was blind to all their charms, deaf to all their blandishments. Not so, the poet proceeded, the gay Wynne. "Some like the light, the dark, the short, the tall; Not so this statesman. Faith ! he loves them all." 192 THE PRIME MINISTER'S That he might the better devote himself to his distinguished friend, Theophilus Wynne, a widower, as was Wenham, abstained from promoting any lady to the vacant place at the head of his table. On the other hand, he expected that his chief should practise a like self-denial. He had, in fact, long since arrived at the conclusion that national interests required Wenham to wed no other wife than his country. More openly he protested that only one lady worthy of Wenham had ever existed. As she happened to have been dead some centuries, and history told of no descend- ants of Queen Boadicea in the female line, the prospects of a Mrs. Wenham in Downing Street were necessarily rather remote. Persons who knew nothing of human nature wondered at the intimacy to which the commonplace and epicurean Wynne was admitted by his chief. There was, LOVE AFFAIR 193 however, no mystery in the fact. Wenham was very busy, and naturally shy. His nervous energy was not great. He found conversation when he was not inclined to it a tax. But he was by no means devoid of social instincts. No man was more fitted by nature to be the happy head of a household, surrounded by a smiling wife and children at play. Death had deprived the statesman of the gratification of these instincts. Wynne, who had known the Prime Minister's short and happy married life, recollected how in those days the austere and retired Wenham was in the bosom of his family the most playful and joyous of men. Directly the grave had closed over all that was dear to him, Wenham's inmost nature, as well as his exterior, changed. His temper became autocratic. He centred himself so exclusively in political life that the rest of the world, so far as he i 9 4 THE PRIME MINISTER'S noticed it, might as well not have existed. But there were moments when the Minister felt a craving for converse with one of his fellow-creatures. Wynne was the most easily accessible of these. His society placed no kind of strain on the Minister, who could doze in his chair or sit silent as the Sphinx without giving his faithful retainer the slightest offence. One of the statesman's chief amusements was the taking of long country drives, often to a very considerable distance from London, when the cares of state let him be absent for hours, days, even an entire week, as the case might be. In this way the two politicians had traversed much of the home counties, especially Surrey, always incognito, sometimes only recognized by chance visitors at the wayside hotels where they stopped. On such an occasion as this, a new arrival at the chief inn at Guildford, where the pair had passed the night, congratulated an LOVE AFFAIR 195 unsuspecting landlord on the distinguished guests he had entertained. "I don't know," the man replied, "any- thing about First Lords or Secretaries of the Treasury. All I know is, the stout one, directly they came here yesterday afternoon, made me put three bottles of my best champagne in ice, that afterwards he ordered, to take with his filberts, the best port to be had in the county of Surrey, and that when he paid it this morning he never looked twice at the bill. Them 's the politics for me. I have always gone yellow before, but bless me if I don't vote green now to the end of my life ! " 196 THE PRIME MINISTERS II. MR. WYNNE'S SUSPICIONS Mr. Wenham found it convenient to be a member of the Centurion Club, so called, not from any military associations, but from the fact of its having first consisted of a hundred members and being domiciled in a Mayfair street in a house indicated by that same number. It was not used by its habitue's for dining purposes. Its life began when other institutions had closed. All the small talk of the town was fumigated by its midnight tobacco. From this haunt Mr. Wynne returned to his bachelor's box in Cleveland Row more discomposed than he was usually seen. Mr. Wenham, so the talk of the place ran, had at last determined to take a Mrs. LOVE AFFAIR 197 Wenham to himself if for no other reason than to be emancipated from Mr. Wynne. Wynne, of course, treated the report as a joke, perhaps did not believe it himself. But he had more than once observed his chief at receptions in the society of the young lady with whom the statesman's name was now associated. He recalled in Lady Charlotte Fitzhugh a certain likeness to the departed Mrs. Wenham. As he knew that only the force of contrast had socially attracted his patron to himself, so it seemed just possible that the suggestion of a vanished face might really cause Lady Charlotte to captivate a premier. About this time, too, he knew Mr. Wenham had more than once accepted invitations to friends' houses where he would be likely to meet the clever and attractive young lady, who, with her widowed mother, lived at no great distance from Wynne's own abode. 198 THE PRIME MINISTERS " If," he soliloquized, " there should be anything in this and strange things do happen I really must" (and here Wynne examined complacently his reflection in a looking-glass) "marry her myself." The more Mr. Wynne thought about the matter, the deeper became his conviction that a benedict Prime Minister was incon- sistent with a Prime Minister whose glories were in some way reflected upon Theophilus Wynne, Esq., not a little to that gentleman's satisfaction. m. MR. WYNNE'S PATRIOTIC INTERPOSITION " A remarkably nice young woman, who deserves all the happiness she is likely to get." LOVE AFFAIR 199 Such was the opinion of Lady Charlotte Fitzhugh casually volunteered over the dinner - table to Wynne by the Prime Minister. But the reason for the dismay caused by the remark to the statesman's companion did not end here. The Prime Minister, when he was tired, had a way of letting his words drop without shaping them into deliberate sentences. To com- plete his amazement, Wynne heard his patron murmur, as if in soliloquy, some- thing of his desire to do what in him lay to contribute to Lady Charlotte's happiness. Things undoubtedly must be more grave than the Premier's Achates had even sup- posed. Except, perhaps, with his dinner, Wynne had never been in love in his life. He now noted in the great man's manner the pensiveness conventionally associated with the actual domination of the tender passion. 200 THE PRIME MINISTER'S " What age do you suppose George Darner is ? " Such was the question with which the Prime Minister, apparently apropos of nothing, broke the silence. Remembering to have heard a rumour of Lady Charlotte Fitzhugh's attachment to a Treasury clerk of that name, Wynne, without answering the question, mused to himself on the comparison which he supposed the great man was mentally drawing between his own age and that of a younger rival. Secretly, however, Wynne's resolution was taken. The time evidently had come when he must sacrifice himself in the place of his friend upon the altar of matrimony. If fate had predestined to him a wife, Lady Charlotte Fitzhugh might do as well as another. For himself, he felt no doubt that the Countess of Fitzhugh would welcome as a son-in-law so well placed and highly endowed a gentleman. As for LOVE AFFAIR 201 age, "Why," he whispered to himself, "a man is as young as he 's feeling ; I left off having birthdays at thirty -five, and don't feel more than that now." During the next few days or weeks Mr. Wynne went to more dinner - parties and attended more evening receptions than was his usual habit. He was more attentive to Lady Char- lotte Fitzhugh than he could ever remem- ber having been to anyone who was not a Cabinet Minister. But his main object was to ingratiate himself with the dowager her mamma. That lady, Mr. Wynne noticed, was sometimes escorted into tea- rooms and supper -rooms by a very well- looking young man who had about him the unmistakable cut of the Treasury or the Foreign Office. " Sir Guy Darner's eldest son, you know, a young man of the most excellent principles and improving prospects, family and official," 202 THE PRIME MINISTERS so Lady Fitzhugh explained the identity of her young cavalier. On some of these occasions the great Mr. Wenham was himself present, reserved as usual, but evidently, as Wynne thought, with a preoccupied heart. This idea was shared by others. So that patriotism whispered to Mr. Wynne there was no time to lose. Lady Fitzhugh had casually mentioned she would be at home on a certain afternoon. Wynne arrived, therefore, in Berkeley Square with the certainty of finding her ladyship visible. He had just broken the ice, and was on the point of saying something about "privilege to pay address to charming daughter," when Lady Charlotte Fitzhugh herself entered the room. Taking her mother a little way aside, the young lady, in a voice Wynne could not but overhear, said distinctly "That dear, good Mr. Wenham! People LOVE AFFAIR 203 may say he has no heart, but he has made me very happy." " Great heavens ! " mentally ejaculated the Premier's satellite, " so quick about it as this ? " The next moment the dowager was at his side again, echoing her daughter's praises of the statesman. What, however, had occurred was this. Mr. Wenham, who, without Wynne's help, had a way of hearing things in which he showed no interest, had learned of the mutual attachment of Lady Charlotte Fitz- hugh and Mr. George Damer. He had also learned that their union was delayed, not by the extreme youth of either, but by the need of some improvement in the gentleman's position. It so happened that, about this time, the secretaryship of the Tintacks Office had fallen in. Mr. Wenham had at once directed that the offer of it should be made 204 THE PRIME MINISTERS by letter to Mr. Darner, but had reserved to himself the pleasure of personally an- nouncing the fact to Lady Charlotte Fitzhugh. IV. HOW MR. WYNNE SAVES HIS FRIEND AND HIMSELF Mr. Wynne, however much relieved on his own account and his distinguished friend's by the happy turn events had taken, felt nevertheless in a rather awkward position. Happily the declaration to the young lady had been stayed in time. But the fatal secret had been confided to her mother. Nothing remained for Wynne but to assume an air of martyrdom as gracefully as he could. When, therefore, the dowager said she LOVE AFFAIR 205 awaited Wynne's congratulations, the gentle- man assumed a look of sentimental resigna- tion, remarked with a voice which had a tear in it that "there were chords, but that Providence tempered the wind to the shorn lamb," and that he thought he might get over the shock. Nothing less like the gentle animal first mentioned not by King Solomon, but by Laurence Sterne, could be conceived than the well-conditioned figure and smiling, ruddy face of the Prime Minister's friend. The dowager, however, did not laugh, and scarcely smiled as she rejoined "Yes, Mr. Wynne! I should not be at all surprised if your Christian fortitude does enable you to sustain the blow." Not very long after these events took place, a fashionable marriage was celebrated at St. James' Church, Piccadilly. The bride was given away by the Prime Minister himself, whose colleague in office her 206 PRIME MINISTER'S LOVE AFFAIR father had been. Mr. Wynne, as he said facetiously, the youngest bachelor present, returned thanks for the bridesmaids in a little speech full of pathos and wit. The happy pair, amid showers of rice and satin shoes, drove off to pass the honeymoon at a Thames-side villa which Theophilus Wynne, Esq., M.P., had kindly lent them for the occasion, and which had witnessed in other days many a pleasant little dinner whereat the proprietor had entertained the Prime Minister, who, by- the-bye, though scarcely yet middle-aged, remains unmarried to this day. Lord BoscobeFs Garter THE STORY OF A QUOTATION "Optat ephippia bos piger." Hor. Ep., i. 14, 43. I. MR. PYNSENT, the most autocratic, but also the most popular, Prime Minister whom the Great Green party had produced for fifty years, sat in his library reading, with an expression on his face as of one half puzzled, half amused, a letter, adorned with an earl's coronet, just placed in his hands. " So Bos is determined not to be too late this time ; old Tintagel's hatchment was only up yesterday, and here is this very plain hint about vacant honours. 207 208 LORD JBOSCOBEL'S GARTER Palmerston or was it Melbourne ? liked the Garter because there was no d d merit about it, but I am sure he never had a Boscobel to bother him." As he soliloquized thus a childish knock was heard at his door, and the Premier rose to admit and welcome his small visitor. While he is doing this, it may be well to state that Lord Boscobel had, in the darkest days of the Green outship, been a valued and consistent supporter of the party in general and of Mr. Pynsent in particular. The Prime Minister was not a rich man. Lord Boscobel's wealth, accumulating through a long minority and augmented by the discovery of fresh coal seams, had made him a Plutus among peers. Lord Boscobel was not himself a profound politician, but was a keen party man. The world saw in him only a good - natured, easy-going, rather sleepy aristocrat, fond of his comfort in the first place, pleased to LORD BO SCO BEL'S GAR TEX 209 gratify the sense of his own importance by patronising a statesman so eminent as Mr. Pynsent, and as a social pillar of a political organization so much in need of that sort of support as the Great Green party at this time was. Such an estimate of the nobleman with whom we are now dealing was true as far as it went, and so far as it went only. It entirely left out of account his character- istically patrician thirst for further promo- tion in the dignity of the peerage. If his lordship's political faith consisted, as indeed it did, of a single article, a faith in Mr. Pynsent's statesmanship, there co-operated with this in his noble mind a belief in Mr. Pynsent as the most convenient instrument for securing his further advancement in the pages of Debrett and Burke. Therefore it was that Lord Boscobel never refused to subsidize any election candidate for whom his chief wrote a letter of recommendation ; 2io LORD BOSCOBEL' S GARTER that he had placed his yacht at Mr. Pynsent's disposal whenever that statesman was ordered by his doctors to take a sea- voyage. Lord Boscobel's house in Berkeley Square and villa at Richmond were ever at his idol's command when, as of late years had happened frequently, the Great Green leader had chanced to be out of office, and so without a residence of his own in town. Mr. Pynsent, who went less into society than his predecessor, Mr. Burton, had, unknown to himself, a rival in the affections of Lord Boscobel, Mr. Horace Twining, more familiar to all sections of the polite world of the capital by his simple pagano- Christian name, " Horace." Since their Harrow and Cambridge days, Mr. Twining had lived much with, and even more on, the Earl of Boscobel. No one exactly understood the secret of his lordship's attachment to Mr. Twining, though the true explanation was exceedingly LORD BOSCOBEL' S GARTER 211 simple : that gentleman was never in the way and never out of it ; he could foresee by instinct when he was likely to be wanted ; he disappeared and reappeared at the right moment by a dexterous intuition. Horace Twining had the reputation in semi-royal quarters of being companionable ; he was a young man of good address and tact, of some cleverness, and of a great deal more cunning. His position as ante damnte to Lord Boscobel had given him prosperity. He superintended, without his presence being felt, the hereditary mansion in Berkeley Square ; he controlled, for their proprietor's good, Lord Boscobel's Welsh collieries, without his managerial hand obtruding itself on their proprietor's presence. Even before the death of Lord Tintagel, the Earl of Boscobel had advanced his preten- sions to the Blue Riband, and Mr. Horace Twining, who had reasons of his own for thinking that his noble patron had done 212 LORD BOSCOBEL'S GARTER enough for the Green connection and for its leader, was not the young gentleman to miss an opportunity of encouraging the idea in the mind of his lordship that he was a peer with a grievance. Mr. Twining's comment upon the whole situation amounted in effect to this : "Now that Tintagel has gone, and you have been passed over twice, I should send in my ultimatum." n. Long before the time which it has taken me to write this, Mr. Pynsent's visitor had entered, and the Premier's son, a rather clever and a very ubiquitous lower-school Etonian of fourteen, was sitting on a chair close to his father's writing-table. If Mr. Pynsent ruled his party with a rod of iron, his wife, Lady Emily, and his children LORD BOSCOBEL'S GARTER 213 controlled him in cords of silk ; and one of the writers in the Scorpion, who had, in a fit of disgust at not finding himself a lion at Mr. Pynsent's Thames-side villa, on the occasion of a Saturday to Monday visit not long since, avenged himself amicably for this neglect at the hands of his host by a vicious article, entitled " Small Boys in Big Houses," which the Prime Minister had never seen, for though the great-hearted scribe had sent the paper, turned down at his chivalrous invective against Mr. Pynsent's children, the broad- sheet had been intercepted by a secretary and deposited in the waste -paper basket, so many and impregnable are the lines of defence which protect Cabinet Ministers against the irreverent familiarities of the press. 2i 4 LORD BOSCOBEL'S GARTER III. As Mr. Pynsent indicated by his move- ments that he was now about to answer the recently received missive of the patrician candidate for the two coveted initials whom he had almost unconsciously spoken of by the familiar monosyllable " Bos," the small boy rose to go. " No need for you to run away, Percy. This is a letter which you could answer as well as I can with four words of Horace that you learned in the lower fourth." And with a smile Mr. Pynsent quoted the Horatian example from the Latin syntax, " Optat ephippia bos piger." Left alone by his sire in the library, Master Pynsent soon began restlessly to contrive some occupation for himself. His 215 fond father had often told him that some day he should be his private secretary. " Happy thought ! " chuckled the Eton urchin to himself. Why should he not begin his secretarial apprenticeship at once, and show that he could, in his own phrase, "do a little stroke off his own bat" on his father's casual hint? The smart boy saw that his parent had got no further with his reply to the Boscobelian application than to address the envelope to the noble Earl in Berkeley Square. The child seized a pen, and observing a letter lying open in remarkably clear characters, resolved to fashion his own caligraphy after this model. The handwriting that Master Pynsent now made it his object to reproduce happened, as perverse luck would have it, to be the MS. of Mr. Twining himself, a note he had addressed by him to the Premier on his patron's business. " Optat ephippia bos piger," murmured, with self -approval, the 216 LORD BOSCOBEVS GARTER Etonian as, with a fine flourish of his quill, he finished the classical excerpt, enclosed the paper adorned with this epigraph in its envelope, and dropped it into the receptacle for the postal despatches of the Premier. Percy Pynsent hurried off to his fond mother. IV. "Nothing the matter, I hope, Bos? You look as if something had upset you." These were the words which on the day following the above incident were addressed to Lord Boscobel by Mr. Oxymel, the most suave and effective of Treasury Whips, as the pair met in the morning-room of the Purple Patch Club, a non-political associa- tion in St. James' Street, but much affected by both parties in the State. "Something has upset me," abruptly replied Lord Boscobel, and taking the LORD BOSCOBEL'S GARTER 217 Pynsent missive from his pocket-book, he said to Mr. Oxymel, " Can you tell me who wrote this ? " The Whip glanced hurriedly at the Latin words, and said, " Horace, I believe ; but I know ' the sage ' is in the library, for I saw him talking there to Twining ten minutes ago. To be sure, let us go and ask him ; he knows everything." Among the blind the one-eyed is king, and, with all due respect to the denizens of the joint -stock palaces of London, if one excepts the precincts of that abode of mildly convivial omniscience the Athenaeum, a club reputation for universal knowledge is gained somewhat easily. " Ce diable Harcourt, Us ait tout" was the admiring ejaculation of the French Minister when his private secretary pointed out to him that Melbourne was not, as his chief had fondly imagined, at the Cape, but in Australia. 218 LORD BOSCOBEVS GARTER Mr. Crabbe, above alluded to by his club sobriquet, "the sage," was a retired Indian judge, who, being condemned by dyspepsia to pass the dinner-hour over tea and toast in the club library, indemnified himself for this enforced "sojourn with the silent dead " by seldom saying a good word about the active living. During his resi- dence in a remote Madras station he had kept up some of his Haileybury learning, and he had not yet been long enough at home to lose it all. "Who wrote that?" asked Mr. Oxymel of the Oriental pundit, placing as he did so the Latin legend received by Lord Boscobel in Mr. Crabbe's hand. "Why," replied "the sage," judicially surveying the paper through his pince-nez, and looking the while as many unutterable things as he could, " who could have written it but Horace ? Somewhere," he added, sinking his voice to a confidential whisper, LORD BO SCO BEL'S GARTER 219 " in the Epistles or the Satires, but Horace, I know. Any schoolboy would have told you that." " Exactly what I said to Lord Boscobel just now," commented Mr. Oxymel, for whom the world contained no other Horace but his own special b&e noire, Mr. Horace Twining. " And," rambled on " the sage," " curiously enough, another Horace, your friend Mr. Twining, was seated writing at yonder table five minutes ago, and has left there a specimen of his precious penmanship." This seemed to the Whip too good to be true, but it was a fact nevertheless. Quickly seizing the scrap of paper with its few words of Mr. Twining's MS., he said, " Now, my lord, compare that with what you have in your pocket, and you will see that I am something of an expert after all." " I have not had much practice in that 220 LORD BOSCOBEL'S GARTER sort of thing," rather sulkily rejoined Lord Boscobel to the blithe, jubilant little Treasury understrapper, "but I don't think the classics are much in our Horace's line," with which words the peer, visibly nettled, went off to keep an appointment. " I should not be surprised," observed Oxymel, "if that noble lord were to give our friend Twining a bad quarter of an hour to-morrow morning." "It would be much more to the purpose," grumpily observed the scholar from Hindo- stan, "if his lordship were to spend a quiet twenty minutes with his Horace in his library to refresh his classics and improve his mind." " Good heavens ! " exclaimed Oxymel, with a surprised laugh, " I believe we are playing a regular game of cross questions and crooked answers. My dear sage, what ' Horace ' do you suppose we are speaking about?" LORD BOSCO BEL'S GARTER 221 " The only Horace I care to know," responded the victim of chronic jaundice, who could be as sentimental over his classics as over his curry itself, ' ' is the Venusian bard." " Oh!" laughed the man of affairs, "you mean the sabine furin, fons bandusia, and all that sort of thing I don't believe Boscobel has looked inside a Latin book since he left Harrow. We were talking about a very different thing, Horace Twin- ing's fist." " I thought," curtly replied Mr. Crabbe, " you asked me who wrote the words about ' bos piger, etc.,' which I fancied someone had rather smartly applied to Lord Boscobel's wish for the Garter. But," he added in a musing tone, "how odd that the handwriting should be so like Twining's." 222 LORD BOSCOBEL y S GARTER V. When, on the day following these con- versations at the Purple Patch Club, Mr. Twining presented himself to his patron in Berkeley Square, he found the noble Earl somewhat ruffled in his temper, and disposed to be peremptory in his manner. While Lord Boscobel was deliberating whether, without too much risk of looking foolish, he could demand an explanation from Mr. Twining at the risk of breaking with his creature, as well as losing the services of a particularly convenient hench- man, he was told that the Prime Minister's son was waiting to see him. The fact is, that since Mr. Percy Pynsent had rejoined his mother on the eventful afternoon above described, a good deal, as they say in the House of Commons, had happened. LORD BOSCOBEL'S GARTER 223 " My boy," said Lady Emily Pynsent, when her son had finished the narrative of his epistolary exploit on his sire's behalf, "this is a more serious matter than you ever fancied, and may cause us some incon- venience. It will be a good experience of men and manners for you to get out of your scrape as you best can. Lord Boscobel is good-nature itself, but even good-natured peers may stand upon their dignity, and even your bos piger will not like you the better for laughing at him." " Trust me, my dear mother," were the boy's words, uttered with the sublime self- assurance which belongs to extreme Etonian juvenility, "to put matters straight. I will see," the boy condescendingly added, " Bos myself to-morrow ; he is a gentleman, and must accept an apology." When that night Mr. Pynsent emerged from his dressing-room, Lady Emily said something to him as to the bestowal of 224 LORD BOSCOBEL' S GARTER the Garter vacant by the demise of the Earl of Tintagel ; but with more abruptness than was usual for he had just been run rather too close to be pleasant in a House of Commons division the Premier told his lady that there were at least three names on his list having precedence over Lord Boscobel. " We shall see, my dear," were Lady Emily's last words as beside her her dis- tinguished spouse, who had the first attri- bute of statesmanship, the power to sleep at will, sank tranquilly into the innocent slumber of the patriot in office. VI. Percy Pynsent, though little more than fourteen, was a thorough man of the world in miniature, as so many Eton boys are. Once closeted with Lord Boscobel, the LORD BOSCOBEL'S GARTER 225 Premier's son, plunging in medias res, began by saying " I am awfully sorry, but look here, Bos," he was about to say, but checked himself just before he had uttered the monosyllable by which he was accustomed to hear his seniors speak of the Premier's pet peer, and having finished this brief preface of apologetic regret, the youthful Pynsent added : " I really don't know what made me do it. It didn't strike me," he went on to say, "fast piger meant lazy. The fact is, I confounded it with what they call Achilles: impiger, iracundus, inexorabilis, acer. I thought you would not mind being compared with the fellow who was so good a shot that he could kill anybody by hitting him in the heel running," from which slightly confused explanation it will be seen that Master Pynsent had no very accurate recollection of the Homeric legend. To receive a schoolboy's apologies, however 226 LORD BOSCOBEL 1 S GARTER sincere, when the apologist himself can only with visible difficulty preserve the gravity of his voice and face, is not a very dignified position for a peer of mature years, and Lord Boscobel caught with relief the first opportunity of terminating the interview by slipping a crisp piece of water-marked paper into the hand of his caller, and expressing a hope that when the youth returned from his exeat to his house- master's in Keate's Lane he would find the eleven in good trim for the impending match against Harrow at Lord's. Whether Lord Boscobel was or was not immediately after this decorated with the Blue Riband left at the Prime Minister's disposal by the decease of the Earl of Tintagel it is un- necessary to say, but of the following facts there is no doubt : that at this present time his lordship has his allotted stall in St. George's Chapel ; that he has shaken off the inactivity which earned for him his LORD BO SCO BEL'S GARTER 227 bovine abbreviation of his patronymic ; that he is now a useful official in Mr. Pynsent's fourth administration ; that he has no longer need of Mr. Horace Twining's services ; that he has lately taken Mr. Percy Pynsent, whose school and college days alike are over, as his "private secretary unpaid," all of which incidents may be referred directly to the Etonian's expedition to his father's library on the fateful afternoon the history and sequel of which have been faithfully set forth here. The Cabinet Council i. THE EDITORIAL COMMISSION A.L the quidnuncs of Pall Mall, all the oracles of Fleet Street, every editor in the kingdom, London or provincial, knew intuitively that there was a fresh crisis in the Cabinet. So well had the secret been kept, that no conjectures worth a moment's credence had yet been circulated by any of the news-agencies as to its cause. The editor of the Penny Trumpet, Mr. Guy Limber, disgusted that the Premier, Lord Courtfield, had not taken him into the Ministerial confidence, had registered a vow 228 THE CABINET COUNCIL 229 to devise means of unveiling the mysteries of State before his paper was many numbers older. Limber united the keen scent of a detective with the fervour of a crusader. His taste might sometimes seem low. His moral purpose was said by those who knew him best always to be high. By his own skilful example and his power of com- municating his professional enthusiasm to those whom he employed, in the course of "interviews," so improved by the British adapter as to make the Yankee inventor green with envy, Limber had habituated his public to such artistic accounts of the transactions of the Cabinet at home, or of the deliberations of diplomatists abroad, that the statesmen immediately concerned in the episodes were often highly edified when they read for the first time the Penny Trumpet's account of their proceedings. Of the many applicants for service on his staff in business of this sort, the strenuous 230 THE CABINET COUNCIL editor had just chosen one modest youth fresh from college, in whom he thought he perceived great aptitudes for journalistic service. Reginald Dimley had worshipped the great Limber since as an undergraduate he had sent a paragraph of college gossip to the office of the Penny Trumpet. He was a gentleman-like, well-connected, and pleasant-mannered lad. His friends had destined him for the Civil Service ; but he no sooner perceived the possibility of association with Limber than, discarding all domestic remonstrances, the newly- fledged graduate took employment under the man who more than anyone else he admired. As yet he had not won his spurs in his new occupation. The editor indeed was beginning to doubt whether he might not have misjudged the aspirant. But Dimley was very willing. Limber had the forbearing patience of greatness, and now he thought events might give his THE CABINET COUNCIL 231 contributor a better chance than they had before. The Premier was to entertain some of his colleagues on a week's-end visit at his seat, Courtfield Castle. It at once occurred to the shrewd editor that as Lord Pal- merston held important conferences at Broadlands, so his successor and admirer would utilize the presence of his brother politicians beneath his roof informally, at least, to discuss the grave issues of State with which the hour was big. Clearly, therefore, the immediate thing to do was for Dimley to travel to Courtfield Castle for a Saturday-to- Monday outing ; when there, on some plea or other, to smuggle himself into the First Lord's house, and to trust to luck for picking up an authentic idea of the State business trans- acted around him. This, then, was the editor's commission to his zealous but very raw and credulous recruit, adding : "I 232 THE CABINET COUNCIL believe that the whole Cabinet trouble is caused by Mr. Jaguar's overbearing ways." Dimley thought he would have no diffi- culty in effecting an entrance into the Castle where the great men were to fore- gather. Fortune favoured him more than he had hoped. He knew something at college of a son of the Premier's. When, at the club to which they both belonged, Dimley mentioned casually that on such and such a day he would be walking with his knapsack not far from Courtfield, Lord Henry Courtfield amiably said that he hoped the young journalist would receive a note asking him to pass the night be- neath his father's roof. The little pedestrian tour which Dimley had suggested was struck out of his pro- gramme, and at the close of the week the young man presented himself at the main entrance of Courtfield Castle. He was received at the front door by a magnifi- THE CABINET COUNCIL 233 cent gentleman whom he took to be the noble host himself, and with whom, in a moment of nervous impulsiveness, he was about to offer to shake hands. The mis- take was not committed, for at this moment Lord Courtfield himself appeared on the scene. Noticing that the young man looked hot and tired and shy, he said to the stately being who had so awed the new-comer "Jarman, show Mr. Dimley his room the Blue Room, next to the Cabinet Chamber and see whether he would like to have a cup of tea brought to him ! ' Courtfield Castle had been in the Premier's family for centuries. Most of its rooms were distinguished by some historic title, e.g.> the Star Chamber, or the Queen's Boudoir, or in the present case the Council Chamber, where our young friend was to be domiciled for the night. But Reginald Dimley, full of visions of 234 THE CABINET COUNCIL statesmen in secret conclave assembled to settle high questions of State, did not think of this, and could only congratulate himself on being so close to the scene of the Minis- terial deliberations. Not, of course, that he would have turned eavesdropper. But sometimes, you know, it is impossible not to overhear things, however one may dis- like it. ii. THE CABINET AT WORK While the young journalist was refreshing himself with his tea he heard a light tap at his door, and Percy Courtfield, the Premier's son, to whom he owed his invi- tation, entered a simple, ingenuous youth, who only wished to make the visitor at his ease, and who knew how servants in great houses sometimes bully guests to whose THE CABINET COUNCIL 235 comfort they do not think it will be profit- able to minister. " Be sure," were the words of the Premier's son to his acquaintance, "to ask for all that you want, and to see that you get it. The fact is," he continued, " there is something like a civil war downstairs in this house going on. Jarman, the groom of the chambers, whom you saw loafing about in the hall as if all the place belonged to him just now, makes himself so con- foundedly disagreeable to the under-servants that they will do nothing if they can help it, and visitors are left to look after them- selves." Left alone by his friend once more, Dimley began mentally to deliberate how his present position in the ministerial dwell- ing was to be turned to newspaper account. He could not, he reflected, with decency thus early in his visit put any leading questions to his host, and the Ministers 236 THE CABINET COUNCIL who might be beneath the same roof as himself were not likely to volunteer him any important statements. While these thoughts occupied him he could hear, with a plainness which surprised him, the click of billiard balls, and the voice of someone marking the game : " Plain, sixteen, spot, twenty - four, and six to go up." Evidently the partition walls of Court- field Castle were not thick. In a few more seconds Dimley was roused from his reverie by the sound of several footsteps unmis- takably just outside his door. " Evidently," he said to himself, " Ministers are now just entering the Council Room, next to which Lord Courtfield said I was to be. If these walls are all so thin, who knows what I may be compelled, however much against my wish, to hear ? " Almost mechanically Reginald Dimley took out his notebook and spread it on the THE CABINET COUNCIL 237 table before him, so as to be prepared for all contingencies. 11 1 'm not a-goin' to stand this bloomin' sort of thing any longer ! I Ve not a word to say against his lordship or the place ; but if this new-comer, who is put over us all, is to treat us like so much dirt, I shall resign my place." Other voices followed to the same effect, all polite enough about Lord Courtfield, but bitterly discontented against the beggar on horseback who, in the phrase overheard by Dimley, had been put over them all. Dimley remembered his editor's theory of Mr. Jaguar as the cause of the Cabinet trouble, and chuckled at receiving such direct confirmation of the view. Presently the conversation ceased. " Evidently," said Dimley to himself, " the Council is over now. I had no idea that Cabinets only lasted so short a time, and that noble statesmen used such low slang. 238 THE CABINET COUNCIL However, the situation is quite clear, and I have been compelled to hear enough to make it plain that a powerful section of the Cabinet kicks against Jaguar having his way so much, and they don't mince matters about it either. Really, their disgust with him almost makes them forget their good manners." in. THE DESPATCH PREPARED It had during many weeks been an open secret that the Stalwarts of the Light Green party were displeased at the ascendency over the consultations of the Cabinet which the energetic Secretary of State, Mr. Jaguar, had acquired. He had been introduced into the Cabinet by the Premier to conciliate an important body of popular supporters. On the strength of this fact he really claimed to THE CABINET COUNCIL 239 control its policy, much as Dimley had heard the political malcontents in the adjoin- ing compartment describing. All this our journalist had time enough before the dinner-bell rang to put into a crisp, piquant narrative of the Ministerial situation, written for immediate despatch to the editor of the Penny Trumpet. Reginald Dimley was finishing his article, when there came another tap at his door. Once more it was young Courtfield, who again expressed a hope that the literary visitor had received all proper attention. " My father has himself noticed," he added, " that groom of the chambers, Jar- man's, bullying ways with the other servants. They have made a very proper representa- tion to him about it, and I hope it will end in Jarman's going. By George ! I can hear his horrid voice in that room on the other side of you." "You don't mean," returned Dimley, 240 THE CABINET COUNCIL "that the man is in the same room as the Cabinet Ministers ? " The Premier's son could not restrain an amused laugh. " I see," he said, " you are misled by the name ; but it has no more to do with the Cabinet than with the Spanish Inquisition. It is called so just to distinguish it, instead of giving it a number as they do in hotels. Who used it in Queen Elizabeth's days I don't know. Now it is a sort of still- room. No one ever goes inside it except the upstair servants." Poor Reginald Dimley cast a look of touching regret at the manuscript which he had just completed, and had been, indeed, about to post to his chief. Of course, the whole thing was plain now. But though the composition just completed was not to go to the office for which it had been pre- pared, the contributor's visit to Courtfield Castle was not destined to be without result. THE CABINET COUNCIL 241 Lord Courtfield, a kind-hearted man, who sympathized with newspaper writers, especi- ally if they supported him, as the staff of the Penny Trumpet did, complimented in the course of the evening the young journalist, his guest, on certain compositions which he had read, and then, with frank good humour and an amused laugh, said " Perhaps before you return to town you would like to know the truth about these rumoured dissensions in the Cabinet ? " Dimley's face at once brightened, only, however, to be overcast when the Prime Minister continued " About that I can say nothing, because," he added, with a twinkle in his eye, "there are no dissensions to talk about." Before Reginald Dimley went to bed he composed another article, embodying his real interview, just recorded, with Lord Courtfield, but necessarily, as the phrase is, somewhat "exploiting it." On this the 242 THE CABINET COUNCIL Penny Trumpets editor based a powerful leading article, cautioning the public against " the mischievous inventions of eavesdrop- ping contemporaries." Although, therefore, Dimley's smartly-written original account of the situation had been committed to the flames by its author, the young man, on getting back to his newspaper office, found that his position with his chief was even better than if the narrative of what he had imagined to take place in the Cabinet Room of Courtfield Castle had actually been despatched and published with all the honours of leaded type. The 'Whitechapel Wonder" A STORY OF THE NEW JOURNALISM I. THE GENESIS OF THE IDEA THE great colonial capitalist Nathaniel Knapp, a middle-aged gentleman with a bull-neck and rather an apoplectic appear- ance, was entertaining at supper in his chambers in the Albany a guest whom he was in the habit of playfully indicating by the name of " my friend the clergyman." His guest's ecclesiastical robes consisted of a splendid silk gown trimmed with chinchilla fur and a magnificent sealskin cloak, now thrown carelessly aside on the tapestry- 243 244 THE " WHITECHAPEL WONDER" covered couch. In place of the tonsure the divine wore a sumptuous growth of real auburn hair. The complexion, brilliant, if at moments a trifle too florid, told of anything but ascetic vigils of prayer. The clergyman's name, as given soon after birth, was Cherry Wilkins. Since then it had been glorified into Cherubina Willoughby. The salary commanded by the owner of this nom de theatre amounted to a large slice out of the income attached to an Anglican canonry. The ostensible occasion of the present meeting between the ex-member for Mel- bourne, who, having sheared a thousand flocks, had now thoughts of becoming member for London, and the clerical object of his Platonic attachment, was to settle preliminaries for enabling Miss Cherubina Willoughby (nde Sally Wilkins) " to go into management" on her own account. That highly endowed and remarkably THE " WHITECHAPEL WONDER" 245 shrewd lady had, however, been thinking over the idea ; had come to the conclusion that the West End possessed quite as many theatres as it could support already, and that the philosophic appreciator of the " Queen of the Variety Stage " might, rather more to that sovereign's advantage, invest his money in a different quarter. The skeletons of the ortolans had been removed by Nathaniel Knapp's valet. Turning the chair round from the table to the fire, the ecclesiastic known in the play- bills by the style already named permitted the devoted colonial to place one of his perfumed cigarettes between her lips and then to light it. The following was the substance of what the divine skirt-dancer and incomparable mimic (see " Frivolity's " nightly playbills) had to say. This fair and prudent person, having been thinking things over, had come to the conclusion that there was, in the new 246 THE " WHITECHAPEL WONDER" slang, a "slump" in theatres and a boom in newspapers. " Why not," was the upshot of her sug- gestion, "run an evening paper of your own?" This would at once advance the pro- fessional interests of Miss Cherubina Willoughby and help the social and political aspirations of Nathaniel Knapp. Was not the May/air Butterfly for sale? " Suppose you buy that, and either," added Miss Willoughby, "edit it yourself, or get a real man about town, like Wallace Caroll, none of these Fleet Street hacks, to edit it for you ? " Knapp, seeing that his "clerical friend" had already settled the question mentally, had no thought of serious resistance, and only said, as a mere matter of form, that he understood nothing of newspapers. " No more," commented Miss Willoughby, "do you of theatres. You can get all the THE " WHITECHAPEL WONDER* 247 business done for you. I will see you are not cheated, and everyone knows that an evening newspaper is the chic thing to have nowadays." ii. THE "WHITECHAPEL WONDER" STARTED If playhouses were at a discount, so, as he lay awake that night considering the subject, must also, it struck Nathaniel Knapp, be newspapers, ante or post meridian. If the thing was to be done at all, the first essential was to strike out a new and original line. Any plant or good- will which the May/air Butterfly possessed might possibly be worth buying if it were 248 THE " WHITECHAPEL WONDER" to be had cheap. But as for the title, Knapp would have nothing of that Determining at once to "go for" some- thing which would secure attention by mere force of repulsion and shock, the ingenious Knapp, as if by sudden inspira- tion, repeated aloud to himself the words, " The Whitechapel Wonder, with which is incorporated The Mile End Mercury, a paper of two worlds." Knapp's remarkable successes during his colonial career had persuaded him that nothing which he touched could fail. Above all, he would give a wide berth to profes- sional journalists, whom he knew to be an impecunious, and whom he, therefore, chival- rously concluded to be, in his own words, "a low lot." The Mayfair Butterfly had excellent offices in the western section of the Strand ; the paper, premises in Salisbury Street, accommodations, and goodwill were, as THE "WHITECHAPEL WONDER" 249 Miss Willoughby had assured him, to be bought at a bargain. Mr. Wallace Caroll knew as little of printers' ink and editors' measuring rule as Nathaniel Knapp himself could desire. On the other hand, Caroll had con- tributed to the daily and weekly press in days gone by ; had received a good education, which he had not quite forgotten ; was supposed to know the world, and to be well received at the illustrious dwelling which adorns the south-western extremity of Pall Mall. Mr. Caroll received the proposal, not indeed aridly, but still favourably. He had some sense of humour, which was gratified by the idea of a Whitechapel Wonder whose offices were almost within a stone's -throw of his own St. James's Street club, and whose editor was one of the most univers- ally requested men at the West End. Of course Mr. Knapp would understand that 2 5 o THE " WHITECHAPEL WONDER" for undertaking the work Caroll would need, not only a handsome salary, but a capable coadjutor. "That," promptly responded Knapp, "the proprietor of the Whitechapel Wonder had seen to already." The next day, therefore, the new owner of the West End journal with the East End name introduced to his chief editor, Wallace Caroll, his future Adlatus, Mr. Shirley Brabazon, resembling his titular chief in his ignorance of everything to do with newspaper technique, but in nothing else. Wallace Caroll was a short, dapper little gentleman, with a tendency to embonpoint, with a moist, merry, twinkling eye, the largest fund of good anecdote in the United Kingdom, and a native inability to take existence seriously. Equally popular in the region of green - rooms and of princely habitations, he was a particular favourite (bien entendu] of the " Queen of the Variety THE "WHITECHAPEL WONDER" 251 Stage," the " Empress of European Skirt- dancers," Miss Cherubina Willoughby her- self. On the other hand, the collaborator of the ex-diplomatist Caroll, Mr. Shirley Brabazon, a tall, severe figure of sallow, saturnine countenance, was a very serious person indeed. In earlier life an ascetic student, he had been associated prominently with the Puseyite movement, and had, in fact, taken Anglican orders. Though long since he had taken advantage, like other eminent men, of the parliamentary Act enabling him to doff his priestly calling, the deportment and traditions of the priest- hood still clung to Brabazon. His favourite studies were mediaeval architecture and Greek Church theology. Quite recently the majestic Miss Maud Mammoth, the greatest tragedienne of two hemispheres, was said to have touched a tender chord in the bosom of the austere Brabazon. Be 252 THE " WHITECHAPEL WONDER" that as it may, this much is certain : whenever the Mammoth's name was in the bill, Brabazon was seldom now out of the house. Whether this was all none could say. For the colleague of Caroll was about as communicative as an oyster, and when he turned his back upon the dinner-table left no more track behind him in his going than a spider promenading on the sea-sand. in. HOW THE "WHITECHAPEL WONDER" PROSPERED. When, punctual to the stroke of 10 a.m., the editors of the Whitechapel Wonder alighted at their office door in the little street out of the Strand, the children and THE " WHITECHAPEL WONDER" 253 servant-girls of the precinct were on the look-out to be cheered by a smile from Caroll, or withered by Brabazon's scowl. If, as sometimes happened, the twin con- ductors undertook the management of the paper on alternate days, there was as much or as little of resemblance or consistency between the principles on which the two successive issues of the journal were com- piled as if they had been numbers of The Sporting Life and the Church Times re- spectively. This at least secured variety, but did not always please the proprietor, and tried the public. No serious collision resulted from this diversity of temperaments and styles, except when the time came to comment on the social fashions or foibles of the day. If the writer retained by Brabazon to denounce the frivolities of the contemporary stage was rather too rough upon the accomplishments in which Miss Willoughby excelled, particu- 254 THE "WHITECHAPEL WONDER" larly upon skirt-dancing and mimicry, or referred rather pointedly to the impersona- tions of Miss Mammoth as alone redeeming the contemporary boards from absolute worthlessness, Wallace Caroll the next day applied the needful corrective to such sour doctrines by inserting an article "from our special critic" on the moral tendency of Miss Willoughby's performances, or an ode "from our newest poet laureate" apostrophizing that lady's gyrations as the poetry of motion. In this way the balance was held pretty equally, and the boat sailed, on the whole, with an even keel. There were, of course, other contribu- tors to the Whitechapel Wonder besides Caroll and Brabazon, who, as a matter of fact, wrote very little with their own pens, that they might the better perform the editorial function of guiding the pens of others. While the public was, on the whole, THE " WHITECHAPEL WONDER" 255 amused by the daily and unforeseeable mutations of the print, which had, of course, won the nickname of The Strand Weathercock, to the contributors and gene- rally to the well-wishers of the paper the system had its inconveniences. Those letters from outraged correspondents to the editor provoked by the tactics of Wallace Caroll were, if they reached the office when his colleague was on duty, wholly ignored by Shirley Brabazon, and vice versa. Laissez alter, when reduced to a system after this fashion on an evening newspaper, has its disadvantages. The various writers of articles and of " notes " began to complain when they found the arrangements to which Caroll had pledged the proprietor absolutely ig- nored by Brabazon. As it proved impossible to secure attention and redress under the newspaper's dual control, the journalists employed on it, or the members of the 256 THE " WHITECHAPEL WONDER" public particularly offended by its vagaries, applied directly to the proprietor, Nathaniel Knapp, who wished above all things to spend in quiet the evening of a laborious life, to get, by admission into smart society and first-rate Pall Mall clubs, the flattering equivalent for the money he was lavishing on the Whitechapel Wonder and on other stepping-stones to fashionable consideration. He had indeed been balloted into the Carl ton. He found it really less to his liking than those resorts which were at his disposal without an entrance -fee. As for society, he was nowhere ; if he entered a Mayfair drawing-room it was only to be called to account by someone who thought himself or herself covertly attacked or satirized in " that accursed newspaper," as Knapp now irritably began to call his broadsheet. Miss Cherubina Willoughby had not either been as pleasant as usual. When THE "WHITECHAPEL WONDER" 257 Knapp placed a cigarette between her lips, and was proceeding to seal the gift, the lady, in decidedly unecclesiastical language, wanted to know how it was that the arts and accomplishments of the " Variety's " artiste were so often unrecognized, while Miss Maud Mammoth's performances in Shakespearean drama were so preposte- rously overpraised. IV. NATHANIEL KNAPP'S COUP D'ETAT Meanwhile Brabazon and Caroll, with all the young gentlemen, as fresh to news- paper work as themselves, whom they employed, were having a merry time of it. It was not journalism, but it was a capital 258 THE "WHITE CHAPEL WONDER" joke. No weekly dinners of a comic paper can ever have witnessed such screams of laughter at the diners' own esoteric fun as punctuated the editorial labours of Messrs. Caroll, Brabazon, and their staff. Great as was the contrast between the two editors in the Salisbury Street office, they were perfectly at one in resolving to make all which was to be made out of the colonial plutocrat. How long this golden season might have lasted but for the effect of the already- named considerations on the proprietor of the Whitechapel Wonder, it is impossible to say. At last Nathaniel Knapp took a reso- lution, and proceeded to carry it out with no word of warning. Going to the news- paper office one day at the hour at which he judged his editors' labours would be over, he was told by the housekeeper, who at first did not recognize him, that THE " WHITECHAPEL WONDER" 259 Mr. Caroll was particularly engaged at that moment, and could see no one in his room. Knapp's temper was up. He was not going to be kept out of his own office. He brushed past the woman, and, walking upstairs, heard a noise as of vocal music in the French tongue issuing, as he thought, from the direction of the editorial sanctum. A little vestibule was at the top of the stairs. Into it Knapp walked, to find a litter of luncheon dishes and half-consumed dainties in process of removal. The door of the editors' room was ajar. Knapp now knew the owner of the voice to be the person he had suspected. He identified beyond doubt the clear, musical organ of his friend "the clergyman," musically trilling forth a humorous Parisian song, often sung in happier days for his own pleasure. 2 6o THE "WHITECHAPEL WONDER" He looked through the half-open door. There at a table covered with the remains of divers good things sat the proprietress of the bewitching voice, not at this moment singing, but drolly twisting her pretty mouth, nostrils, and eyebrows, as if in imitation of another countenance, into shapes not their own. Knapp felt as if he should have an apoplexy. While he examined for any signs of seizure his reflection in a looking- glass, it struck him that the imitation which Miss Cherubina Willoughby was giving in the next room must be that of his own proprietorial self. This, indeed, was the case. Knapp hurried off to the office of his solicitor, close by. That gentleman, in execution of his principal's coup d'ttat, inti- mated to Mr. Caroll that he had ceased to be editor of the Whitechapel Wonder, and that his services would not in any other capacity be required. THE "WHITECHAPEL WONDER" 261 Nathaniel Knapp, having satiated his appetite for uncouth and sensational titles, resumed for his property its earlier style of The May fair Butterfly ; re-engaged as his editor, not any brilliant amateur of the West End, but the steady-going, sure- footed, serious Mr. Bourgeois, who had been weaned on printers' ink, tucked up in proof-sheets, and who had only in all his life passed three weeks consecutively to the west of Temple Bar. The Mayfair Butterfly flourishes to this day as a highly respectable and perfectly innocent society journal. As for Miss Cherubina Willoughby, Knapp did the handsome thing by the lady settled upon her a comfortable sum. She shortly after- wards married the heir to a dukedom. Nathaniel Knapp gave up his chambers in the Albany, found an exemplary wife in a lady of title, the daughter of an earl, has long since got a safe seat in the House 262 THE " WHITECHAPEL WONDER" of Commons, occupies one of the best Cubitt-built houses in Grosvenor Square, and has never since dabbled in journalism, whether new or old. The Strange Adventures of a Sermon A MAY MEETING'S TALE BISHOP PINDAR'S MISSION IF your mother falls sick, cable to me, c/o General Donald, 666, Westbourne Terrace, Hyde Park, London. Be careful, and avoid even all appearance of evil. You neither drink nor smoke yourself, but yester- day you were with those who do both." Such were the last words spoken to his son by Bishop Pindar, of Louisiana, before leaving his American home to cross the Atlantic on a temperance oratorical tour in England, beginning in London. In the States, since the days of J. B. Gough, no 263 264 THE STRANGE ADVENTURES Rechabite rhetoric had produced the effect of the Bishop's. In all respects he pre- sented a complete contrast to his prede- cessor. Like several other good and brave men of his Church, Pindar had worn the sword before he donned the surplice. He had been on Grant's staff during the Civil War ; he had perhaps caught from his chief the calm composure of manner which no surprise or danger could ruffle. His speech was full of emphasis without vehemence. Much of the secret of his influence came from the passionless gravity of his most solemn appeals. The success attending the American revivalists in England, and the accounts which he had heard from them of the drink evil in the furthest and nautical east of London, had much to do with his present expedition. General Donald, who was to be the Bishop's English host, was a man cast in the same mould as the Havelocks and OF A SERMON 265 Lawrences, who have made our Indian empire, and who, though brave and loyal servants of " John Company," or of the Crown, as the case might be, have gloried in being first, and above all, soldiers of the Cross. As a youth, in his native land, he had distinguished himself in the classes and examinations of his university ; through- out life he had been a hard student as well as a dauntless fighter. On his final return to Europe, the seat of learning that had trained him wished to elect him as its principal. He declined the honour, but did eventually consent to contest with a Cabinet minister the succession to the Lord Rectorship. In that competition the General gained unprecedented majorities in all the nations. The truth is that Donald, while subordinating his whole life to his idea of social and religious duty, was yet a practical man of the world, who did not feel it part of his creed to forsake the club for the 266 THE STRANGE ADVENTURES cloister. He had been an original member of the old Oriental Club in Hanover Square; he still belonged to the Rag ; he was on the committee of the East India United Club, next door to it. He was, on the surface, of an easy and pleasant manner. Once or twice some younger men at his clubs, who knew him well, ventured to rally him on his Evangelical enthusiasm, and to ask him whether it was true that at the National Club in Whitehall, to which he also be- longed, he read family prayers every day with the servants, and preached on Sundays. The tone of the General's perfectly cour- teous rejoinder was not such as to provoke a repetition of the bantering inquiry. Mrs. General Donald, though an excellent lady in her way, was not an enthusiast like her husband in the causes that he considered good. Sometimes, it must be admitted, she found a handle for her jokes against the General on his undiscriminating sympathies OF A SERMON 267 and hospitalities. For this sturdy soldier was not an infallible judge of the motives and the conduct of all with whom he thought it his duty to co-operate. "And now this American bishop!" the lady had said. " I hope he is not like the teetotal butler you heard of at the National Club, and who got delirium tremens before the keys of the cellar had been a week in his pocket." " I hope devoutly not," murmured to himself the General, who was acutely con- scious of the opportunity which his mistakes had given the enemy to blaspheme. But audibly he said nothing, and only entreated his wife to see that the same marks of outer respect were paid to the expected guest as if he had been one of the English spiritual lords. 268 THE STRANGE ADVENTURES II. THE GENERAL'S NAP DISTURBED There 's no call to go ' my lord '-ing him like that ! He 's only a colonial, or some- thing of that sort, and does not rank with an English rector." So spoke to one of the housemaids at 666, Westbourne Terrace, the butler, Dawley. For in the basement of that house the opinions entertained and ex- pressed reflected rather those of Mrs. Donald than of the General upstairs. Like the shrewd observer which in all things habitually he was, General Donald had noticed one or two real or imaginary failures on the part of his domestics of proper deference towards his guest. The few words of gentle caution addressed by him to his servants on the subject did not OF A SERMON 269 tend to increase the visitor's popularity below stairs. It must have been nearly a week after Bishop Pindar's arrival that, the guest having gone out on business of his own, the host, glad of a quiet day to make up his arrears of reading, writing, of study generally, and of meditation, was sitting in his library, a nobly furnished room, in which the fragrance of Russia leather bindings mingled with that of Persian ivory chess- men in their sandalwood board and case. A little tired with his morning's constitutional, and ready to refresh himself with a siesta for his afternoon's work, the General was not too well pleased when, contrary to the rules of his household, the servant inter- rupted him with, "A man waiting, waiting in the hall to see you, sir ! " The old soldier checked any rising words of irritation, quieted himself with a strong pull at his moustache, and merely said : 270 THE STRANGE ADVENTURES "Tell him the hour to call is n a.m. to- morrow, and to write for an appointment." Thus much, it seemed as a fact, the well- drilled butler had already conveyed to the caller, who, it seems, replied that he came a long way from the other side of London, and that he had something which he must place in the hands of Bishop Pindar, or at least see safely lodged with that eccle- siastic's host. " What sort of a man, Dawley ? " asked the General. " Looks a seafaring sort of a man, I should say, regular East Ender in dress. Tells me he has come from the ' Spotted Dog,' down East Ham way, with some of the Bishop's property." " In that case, as his lordship is out, and the man has had a long walk, you had better show him in." OF A SERMON 271 III. THE LANDLORD OF THE "SPOTTED DOG" The first effect of the entrance of the stranger, whose bronzed complexion and coarse pea-jacket did not belie Dawley's description of him, was faintly to qualify the Russia leather and sandalwood aroma of General Donald's library with a dash of the scent exhaled by "Negro Head" tobacco, and possibly Jamaica rum. Such odours, at any rate, had before now suffused his garments, and still faintly clung to them. The man's manner was perfectly respectful. Pulling his forelock, he explained himself to be the proprietor of a little tavern generally known as the " Spotted Dog," on the Epp- ing road, and that there had been left on his premises a packet with instructions for 272 THE STRANGE ADVENTURES it to be returned to Bishop Pindar, c/o General Donald, 666, Westbourne Terrace. "No offence, sir," the man continued, " but I should like myself to place it in the Bishop's hands." " The " The General's lips shaped themselves as if to emit a D-sound, which might have been followed by the words " you would." But, pulling his moustache with subdued fierceness, he stifled the ejacu- lation of his unregenerate days, and simply said, "The Bishop will be in presently. I will be responsible for the packet, and give it him myself." Still the landlord of the " Spotted Dog," down Stratford way, delayed. His motive in doing so was obvious enough to the Scotchman who confronted him, and whose Evangelicalism had not taken away his native shrewdness. The publican, of course, as General Donald saw, recognized the compromising nature of the appearances, OF A SERMON 273 and wished to make what capital he could out of them for himself. "Surely," so had run the publican's thoughts, "even a mis- sionary, or at least not an English bishop, might be good for a gold coin at the least as compensation for the trouble of restoring the lost property," to say nothing of other aspects of the untoward predicament. He of the " Spotted Dog " placed upon the table the packet, just sufficiently open for the General to read the inscription : " To be returned to Bishop Pindar, etc., immediately." There could be no doubt as to what the article in question was. It could not be anything else but a sermon, lecture, or homily of some sort, divested of the outer silk covering which usually encases such discourses. General Donald, though a stranger to fear upon ordinary occasions, was conscious of his looks betraying his internal dis- comfort ; he was indeed perplexed and 274 THE STRANGE ADVENTURES vexed more than he could have found words to express. Had he once more been deceived by appearances ? As his wife had ventured to hint, and the servants below stairs firmly believed, was his epis- copal guest a scamp in disguise ? Had the General himself become once more the dupe of an unscrupulous adventurer, as but some months ago he had been of a so - called revivalist from foreign parts, who turned out to be much wanted by the police of two continents ? While he revolved these things in his mind, a cab stopped at his door; the next moment Bishop Pindar was in the room. Entering apparently in a state of some agitation, the prelate was not restored to composure by the expression on his host's face. Amid his nervous preoccupation, he disregarded the presence of the East End publican, but, standing near to General Donald's table, caught a glimpse of a OF A SERMON 275 familiar and much-missed document. With the words " My sermon restored, I declare ! " the prelate made as though he would have put the document in his pocket. But at this moment a knock at the front door was heard. Presently a servant entered, with the card of " Mr. Ronald Macpherson," of the Daily Courier, who desired at once, though only for a moment, to see Bishop Pindar, or, if he were out, General Donald. IV. THE MYSTERY CLEARED UP What had really happened requires now, with the briefest possible retrospect, to be explained. Among the objects dear to the heart of the good American Bishop was the rescue from the temptations there besetting them of sailors of all nations 276 THE STRANGE ADVENTURES in the densely populated shipping districts near to the London Victoria Docks. He had lived and laboured among this sort of men in his native New Orleans ; he knew them thoroughly. Of invincible faith, not in himself, but in a higher aid which he had never found fail him, he felt that he had a mission to all Eng- lish-speaking seafaring folk, to whichever branch of the Anglo - Saxon race they belonged. Therefore, instead of preaching on Sunday at St. Paul's, whose pulpit had been placed at his disposal, the Bishop decided to deliver his address in a huge building between East and West Ham, that very quarter near to which, though before whose existence by that name, once ran the high-road from London to the eastern counties. The Daily Courier was the chief organ of the philanthropic public. Special reports of all that was said or done for the good OF A SERMON 277 of those who could not help themselves constituted a special feature in its columns. The most capable stenographers of its staff were always told off for such occasions. Than Ronald Macpherson, like others, the flower of his order, an Aberdonian, the Daily Co^tr^er and all Fleet Street could show no better shorthand writer. Bishop Pindar's East End address being a feature of the spring meeting season, was entrusted to this Scotch expert to report. Parliament was of course at the same time in session at Westminster. With the Law Courts in the morning, and the Houses at night, a stronger man even than Macpherson might well have been exhausted at the week's end. Such indeed was his fatigue that during the first part of the Saturday night he tossed feverishly in his bed from side to side without closing his eyes. At last a dull, heavy sleep came. When Macpherson awoke to consciousness, the Sunday bells 278 THE STRANGE ADVENTURES were ringing. The reporter remembered he was due for Bishop Pindar's address in the Ham Tabernacle. A sharp stroke of inward agony seemed to run a red - hot dagger through him. His Scotch self- possession came to his rescue ; in ten minutes he was driving as fast as hansom cab could fly from his home in Brixton, where so many gentlemen of his craft dwell, to the densely populated district some two or three miles off. As Macpherson knew must be the case, the function in the Ham Hall was finished before he reached the place. But and he devoutly thanked Heaven that it was so Bishop Pindar was still on the premises. It was not a work of many minutes to find that divine, per- sonally to explain to him what had happened, and how his timely aid alone could enable the overworked reporter to save his reputation with his employers, and to provide the printer of the Daily Courier OF A SERMON 279 for the following Monday that same evening with the " copy " for the report of the Bishop's address. Before Pindar entrusted the document to the stenographer he remembered to write on the outside sheet of it in bold characters the address, the construction of which the reader already knows. The Fleet Street offices of London daily newspapers do not open to their staff till some hours after noon. Nor even in the best-regulated of them on the first day of the week is there always good accommodation for writing until the evening, when the printers are actually at work. Macpherson was naturally anxious to get back to his Brixton home, so that he might eat his afternoon dinner with his family on the one day in the week which he could call his own. The only possibility of his doing this was for him to copy out the Bishop's address while he was yet in 2 8o THE STRANGE ADVENTURES the Ham district, and thence despatch it to the office of his newspaper. Macpherson knew even less of metropolitan places of entertainment than did most of his careful and frugal colleagues. He had, however, heard of a tavern locally styled the " Spotted Dog," not very far from the site of the historic thoroughfare already mentioned, in old days a house of some repute. From hearsay he felt himself sure here of finding a quiet corner in which he could copy out the episcopal manuscript. " Nothing stronger than a big pot of your best tea, with a few slices of bread- and-butter." Such were Macpherson's in- structions as he passed through the bar to the little room allotted him upstairs for his work. Our stenographer was a quick longhand writer. In little more than an hour his task was done, ready for the printer ; he was free to rejoin his family in Brixton. OF A SERMON 281 Passing through the bar -parlour, or bar itself, he just stopped to give his host "Good-day," and to pay the little bill. A Presbyterian by nurture, it was with the agitation of a guilty man that he prepared to issue forth into the street. On his way home he took the office of his newspaper. Putting his hand in his pocket, he found his own manuscript safe there, but did not at once feel or miss or even think of the Bishop's manuscript. He had gone too far now on his way home with any good result to turn back. Bishop Pindar's sermon -case would be safe in the room where its transcription for the news- paper had been done. So, tolerably at ease, he returned to his suburban home just in time for the Sunday joint. As he hoped in time enough to prevent complications, on the Monday he repaired to the inn where he had worked on the previous day. 282 THE STRANGE ADVENTURES Meanwhile the landlord of this place, ignorant of his Sunday customer, and seeing in the document left on his premises the potentiality of a small windfall in cash, had, as the reader knows, called at General Donald's, in Westbourne Terrace. Directly Macpherson possessed himself of this fact, shrewdly discerning the ele- ments of a compromising situation for the Bishop, he followed in a cab, and now, in the presence of the General, the prelate, and the publican, gave substantially the same version of the facts as has been set forth here. "It seemed, certainly, a strange place for the sermon-book of an episcopal temperance preacher." So commented on the facts General Donald, not without a secret sigh of relief that his wife would not, as a short time ago it seemed certain she would, have another story against him for her non- Evangelical and society friends. OF A SERMON. 283 As for the " Spotted Dog," it will be looked for to-day in vain, for it has long since been turned into a tea and coffee tavern. Its landlord humbly follows in Bishop Pindar's preaching wake. PLYMOUTH WILLIAM BRENDON AND SON PRINTERS BOOKS TO READ BOOKS TO BUY. GREENING & CO.'s NEW AND FORTHOOM1NG PUBLICATIONS. A Trip to Paradoxia, and other Humours of the Hour. Being Contemporary Pictures of Social Fact and Political Fiction. A Work of Social Satire by T. H. S. ESCOTT, Author of "Personal Forces of the Period," "Social Transformation of the Victorian Age," " Platform, Press, Politics and Play," etc. Cover designed by W. S. ROGERS. Crown 8vo, art doth, gilt, 5/- nett. The Lady of the Leopard. A Powerful and Fascinating Novel by CHAS. 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HALF-A-CROWN. %* The Publishers ask the public to disregard all rumours, statements, and Press paragraphs which have been recently circulated as to the authorship of THE HYPOCRITE; all such reports are premature and unauthorized. A FEW PRESS OPINIONS. Weekly Sun. "The mystery attaching to the authorship of The Hypocrite is making it much talked about. . . . Yardly Gobion is a virile character, a young man with a perfect genius for deception, a neat taste in wit, and a pretty talent for epigram." Public Opinion. "By an oversight this clever book has been overlooked, and we think it due to the unknown author to offer our humble apologies for the uninten- tional neglect. . . . This tragic incident brings to an end one of the most remarkable works that have appeared in 1898." Court Circular. "The work is decidedly clever, full of ready wit, sparkling epigram, and cutting sarcasm." Echo. 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He maintains throughout an atmosphere perfectly in harmony with the idea that has suggested his work. Birmingham Post. " The work is remarkably clever ; it is self-consistent ; it is strong." London Morning. "A remarkable book. . . . Clever the book undoubtedly is its brutally frank analysis of the temperament of. man with brain and mind hopelessly diseased lifts the author out of the common rut of novelists, and stamps him as a writer of power." Sheffield Telegraph. "It is always clever, and often even more than merely clever." Lloyd's. "The book sparkles with epigrammatic sayings and satirical allusions. The characters are all vividly drawn, some of them being undoubted and recognizable caricatures. The writing is that of a clever pessimist with a vein of sardonic humour that keeps the reader amused. The author may wear a green carnation, but whether he does or not it is the work of a skilful pen." Lady. " An author whose genius is only equalled by his modesty is a rara art's in these days of self-advertisement, but such a one is the author of The Hypocrite. . . . Whoever he may be, he has tjbe right literary method, his work is absolutely realistic, his style is fluent and distinctive, and he has the rare faculty of gripping the reader's attention at the outset, and retaining it to the very last. . . . The Hypocrite is something more than a remarkable book ; it is, in effect, a sermon con- veying a definite message to those who have the wit to understand it." GREENING AND CO., 20, Cedl Court, Charing Cross Road, LONDON, W.C. TWO SPLENDIDLY INTERESTING BOOKS BY CLEMENT SCOTT. A. "THE WHEEL OF LIFE." A FEW MEMORIES AND RECOLLECTIONS C'de omnibus reous"). Crown 8vo. Crimson Buckram, Gilt Lettered. TWO SHILLINGS. Popular Edition, Paper Wrapper: SIXPENCE. Times. "Will entertain a large class." Telegraph. "Mr. Scott's pleasant style and facile eloquence need no recom- mendation." Weekly Sun (T. P. O'CONNOR) says: A Book of the Week "I have found this slight and unpretentious little volume bright, interesting reading. I have read nearly every line with pleasure." Illustrated London News. "The story Mr. Scott has to tell is full of varied interest, and is presented with warmth and buoyancy." Catholic Times. "The variety of Mr. Clement Scott's reminiscences is one of the charms of the book. His pleasant style never allows the interest to flag." Ceylon Times. "An interesting book which can be picked up at odd moments, and always found diverting." Punch. " What pleasant memories does not Clement Scott's little book, The Wheel of Life, revive 1 The writer's memory is good, his style easy, and above all, which is a great thing for reminiscences, chatty." Referee. GEORGE R. SIMS (Dagonet) says : " Deeply interesting are these last memories and recollections of the last days of Bohemia. ... I picked up The Wheel of Life at one in the morning, after a hard night's work, and flung myself, weary and worn, into an easy chair, to glance at it while I smoked my last pipe. As I read all my weariness departed, for I was young and light-hearted once again, and the friends of my young manhood had come trooping back from the shadows to make a merry night of it once more in London town. And when I put the book down, having read it from, cover to cover, it was ' past three o'clock and a windy morning.' " "SISTERS BY THE SEA." (SEASIDE AND COUNTRY SKETCHES.) Third Edition. Vignette and Frontispiece designed by Geo. Pownall. Attractively Bound in Cloth. PRICE ONE SHILLING. Observer. "The little book is bright and readable, and will come like a breath of country air to many unfortunates who are tied fay the leg to chair, stool, or counter." Morning. "Bright, and fresh, and pretty. . . . Mr. Scott appeals so directly to the sympathy of the reader that it is as good as change of air to read of his trips to the seaside, and you almost expect to find your face bronzed by the time you get to the end of the book." Sheffield Telegraph. " Bright, breezy, and altogether readable. . . . East Anglia, Nelson's Land, &c. &c., are all dealt with, and touched lightly and daintily, as becomes a booklet meant to be slipped in the pocket and read'easily to the pleasing accompaniment of the waves lazily lapping on the shingle by the shore." Dundee Advertiser. "It is all delightful, and almost as good as a holiday. The city clerk, the jaded shopman, the weary milliner, the pessimistic dyspeptic, should each read the book. It will bring a suggestion of sea breezes, the plash of waves, and all the accessories of a holiday by the sea." May be obtained at the Railway Bookstalls and of all Booksellers. GREENING &. CO., 20, Cecil Court, Charing Cross Road, LONDON, W.C. A PLEASING AND PRETTY PRESENT. MADONNA MIA, O L E Is E IST T SOOTX, Author of " The Wheel of Life," " Poppyland," &c. AND OTHER - - - - - - " STORIES. Crown 8vo t Cloth Gilt, top edge gilt, 3/6. St. James's Gazette. "Full of grace and sentiment. The tales have each their individuality and interest, and we can recommend the whole as healthy refresh- ment for the idle or weary brain. ' Punch. '"Madonna Mia' is genuinely interesting. All the stories are good; you are ' Scott free' to pick 'em where you like." (The Baron de B. W.) Weekly Dispatch. "The book is characteristic of the work of its author bright, brilliant, informing, and entertaining, and without a dull sentence in it." Pelican. " Full of living, breathing, human interest. Few writers possess the gift of bringing actual existence to their characters as does Mr. Scott, and in the pages of his newest book you shall find tears and smiles and all the emotions skil- fully arranged and put in true literary fashion." Weekly Sun. 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"It is a clever book, splendidly written, and striking in its wonderful power, and keeping the reader interested The author has not failed in his effort to prove the case. The awful truth of its pages is borne home upon us as we read chapter after chapter. The book should have a good effect in certain quarters. One of the best features is the dividing line drawn most plainly between socialism and anarchism. To its author we tender our thanks, and predict a large sale." Daily Telegraph. "The hero is an interesting dreamer, absorbed in his schemes, which are his one weakness. To women, save when they can further the good of his cause, he is obdurate ; in business, strong, energetic, and powerful. He is shown to us as the man with a master mind and one absorbing delusion, and as such is a pathetic figure. No one can dispute the prodigality and liveliness of the author's imagination ; his plot teems with striking incidents." Vanity Fair. "The story tells itself very clearly in three hundred pages of very pleasant and entertaining reading. The men and women we meet are not the men and women we really come across in this world. So much the better for us. But we are delighted to read about them, for all that; and we prophesy success for Mr. Archer's book, particularly as he has taken the precaution of telling us that he is 'only in fun.'" Aberdeen Free Press. "A story in which there is not a dull page, nay, not even a dull line. The characters are well drawn, the incidents are novel and often astounding, and the language has a terseness and briskness that gives a character of vivacity to the story, so that the reader is never tired going on unravelling the tangled meshes of the intricate plot until he comes to the end. A Social Upheaval is, indeed, a rattling good book." GREENING &. CO., 20, Cecil Court, Charing Cross Road, LONDON, W.C. A POWERFUL AND FASCINATING TALE. H IROVCl. BY J. L. OWEN. (AUTHOR OF "THE GREAT JEKYLL DIAMONDS," &c. ) Crown 8vo, Art Cloth, 3/6. the book a very fascinating as well as eventful volume." Public Opinion. "Mr. J. L. Owen has given a title to his work which will cause many conjectures as to the nature of the story. Now, if we divulged what are numerous flashes of originality that lift the author above ordinary commonplace." Truth. "I much prefer the ghastly story Seven Nights -with Satan, a. very clever study of degeneration." THE GATES OF TEMPTATION. A Natural Novel by Mrs. ALBERT S. BEADSHAW. Author of "False Gods," "Wife or Slave, &c. Crown 8vo, Art Cloth, Cover designed by W. 5. ROGERS, 2/6. SOME PRESS OPINIONS. London Morning. " Mrs. Albert Bradshaw has done such uniformly good work that we have grown to expect much from her. Her latest book is one which will enhance her reputation, and equally please new and old readers of her novels. It is called 'The Gates of Temptation,' and professes to be a natural novel. The story told is one of deep interest. There is no veneer in its presentation, no artificiality about it." Midland Mail. " The characters are vividly drawn. There are many pleasant and painfultincidents in the book, which is interesting from beginning to end." Aberdeen Free Press. "Mrs. Bradshaw has written several good novels, and the outstanding feature of all of them has been her skilful development of plot, and her tasteful, pleasing style. In connection with the present story we are able to amply reiterate those praises. The plot again is well developed and logically carried out, while the language used by the authoress is always happjr and well chosen and never commonplace. . . . The story is a very powerful one indeed, and may be highly commended as a piece of painstaking fiction of the very highest kind." GREENING AND CO., 20, Cecil Court, Charing Cross Road, LONDON, W.C. THE POTTLE PAPERS. A REALLY FUNNY BOOK. Written by SAUL SMIFF. Illustrated by L. BAVEN HILL. Crown 8vo, Art Cloth, Gilt Top, 2/6. ' ' The Prince of Wales has accepted a copy of Saul Smiff s delightfully merry book, 'The Pottle Papers." The Prince is sure to enjoy Raven Hill's clever sketches." Court Circular. St. James's Gazette. "Who says the sense of humour is dead when we have ' The Pottle Papers ' ? We can put the book down with the feeling that we have spent a very enjoyable hour and laughed immoderately. ' The Pottle Papers ' will be in everybody's hands before long." Pall Mall Gazette. " Plenty of boisterous humour of the Max Adeler kind . . . humour that is genuine and spontaneous. The author, for all his antics, has a good deal more in him than the average buffoon. There is, for example, a very clever and subtle strain of feeling running through the comedy in ' The Love that Burned' a rather striking bit of work. Mr. Raven Hill's illustrations are as amusing as. they always are." Manchester Courier. "A book full of funny fooling, and is admirably suited for the holiday season. The tedium of a railway journey will disappear as if by magic by a perusal of the marital affairs of Mr. and Mrs. Pottle. The book is pleasantly and cleverly illustrated by L. Raven Hill, and the frontispiece, entitled 'Mrs. Pottle's Cigar,' is an inspiration." Sheffield Telegraph. "Anyone who wants a good laugh should get 'The Pottle Papers.' They are very droll reading for an idle afternoon, or picking up at any time when 'down in the dumps.' They are very brief and very bright, aud- it is impossible for anyone with the slightest sense of humour to read the book without bursting into 'the loud guffaw' which does not always 'bespeak the empty mind.'" TIIC PDHCM DAQQinU BY ANTHONY p VERT Int unttN rAoolUN. Crmvnv Daily Telegraph. " It is a study of one of the worst passions which can ruin a lifetime and mar all human happiness one of the worst, not because it is necessarily the strongest, but because of its singular effect in altering the complexion of things, transforming love into suspicion, and filling its victim with a petulant and unreasonable madness. All this Anthony Vert understands, and can describe with very uncommon power. The soul of a jealous woman is analysed with artistic com- pleteness, and proved to be the petty, intolerant, half-insane thing it really is. ... The plot is well conceived, and well carried out. Anthony Vert may be con- gratulated on having written a very clever novel." Queen. "A remarkably clever book. . . There is no disputing the ability with which the writer handles her subject. I say her subject, because the minuteness of the touches, and the odd, forcible style in which this book is written, point to it being the work of a female hand. The book is an eminently readable one, and it is never dull for a minute." World. "As the study of a jealous soul The Green Passion is a success, and psychological students will be delighted with it. . . The tragedy which forms the denouement to this story is of such a nature as to preclude our doing more than remotely alluding to it, for he (or is it she ?) has portrayed an ' exceedingly risky situation.'" Whitehall Review." In The Green Passion the author traces with much ability, and not a little analytical insight, the progress of jealousy in the breast of a woman who is born with a very ' intense,' although not a very deep, nature. . . Thre is in Mr. Vert's work a certain tendency towards realism, which has its due Llfect in making his characters real. They are no loosely-built fancies of the journalistic brain, but portraits almost snapshot portraits of men and women of to-day." GREENING &, CO., 20, Cecil Court, Charing Cross Road, London, W.C. LORD JIMMY. OF 3VETJSIC-ia:-A.LI J LIFE. BY GEORGE MARTYN. Cr. 8vo, Cloth Gilt, 2/6. Outlook. "The book is both humorous and dramatic." Pelican. "It is amusing and interesting two very good qualities for a novel to possess." Sheffield Telegraph. "The book is vivaciously written, several of the charac- ters being human enough to look like studies from life." Aberdeen Free Press. " The characters are skilfully depicted, and the whole book is amusing and interesting." Glasgow Citizen. "'Decidedly clever' will be the verdict of the reader on. closing this book." _ THE LADY OF CRISWOLD. H -Romantic Stors. By LEONARD OUTRAM. Crown 8vo, Cloth Gilt, 2/6. London Morning. "The story is cleverly constructed, is full of incident with more than a dash of tragedy, and holds the attention of the reader to the close. Dealing with modern life of the higher class, Mr. Outram's story is consistent, and though it aims at romantic effect, is not strained or overdrawn." Whitehall Review." No one can complain of lack of sensation, it is full of startling episodes. The characters are drawn with a rapid and vigorous touch The interest is well maintained." North British Advertiser. "A thrilling tale of love and madness." DONA RUFINA. BY HEBER DANIELS. (AUTHOR OF "OUR TENANTS," &c.) A STORY OF CARLIST CONSPIRACY. ffieinQ a iRineteentb Centurg "Romance. Crown 8vo, Cloth Gilt, 2/6. Bookman. "A highly emotional, cleverly written story." Eastern Morning News. "Readers will be fascinated by the stirring scenes, the swiftly moving panorama, the enacted tragedies, the wild, passionate, lawless loves depicted in the most sensational manner in this volume." Society. "Altogether a very intelligible and interesting story of intrigue and love. The author has put some excellent work into the book." Lloyd's. "The author has woven a clever story out of strange materials. . . - The interest of the book only ceases when the end is reached." AT ALL BOOKSELLERS AND RAILWAY BOOKSTALLS. GREENING AND CO., 20, Cecil Court, Charing Cross Road, LONDON, W.C. The Most Weird and Exciting Novel of the Day ! A Startling Story ! THE DEVIL IN A DOMINO A Realistic Study by CHARLES L'EPINE. Sewed, 6d. ; Cloth Edition, I/-. Truth . " The story is written with remarkable literary skill, and, notwithstanding its gruesomeness, is undeniably fascinating." Sketch. "It is a well-written story. An admirable literary style, natural and concise construction, succeed in compelling the reader's attention through every line. We hope to welcome the author again, working on a larger scene." Star. "May be guaranteed to disturb your night's rest. It is a gruesome, ghastly, blood-curdling, hair-erecting, sleep-murdering piece of work, with a thrill on every page. Read it." Sunday Chronicle. "A clever study by 'Charles L'Epine,' who should, by his style, be an accomplished author not unknown in other ranks of literature. Beyond comparison it is the strongest shilling shocker we have read for many a day. The author has succeeded in heaping horror upon horror until one's blood is curdled." THE FELLOW-PASSENGERS: A MYSTERY AND ITS SOLUTION. By RIVINGTON PYKE, Author of "THE MAN WHO DISAPPEARED." Long \2rno, 132 pp. Sewed, 6d. ; Cloth Edition, I/-. Whitehall Review. "Those who love a mystery with plenty of ' go," and a story which is not devoid of a certain amount of realism, cannot do better than pick up ' Fellow- Passengers.' The characters are real men and women, and not the senti- mental and artificial puppets to which we have been so long accustomed by our sensationalists. The book is brightly written, and of detective stories it is the best I have read lately." Weekly Dispatch. " If you want a diverting story of realism, bordering upon actuality, you cannot do better than take up this bright, vivacious, dramatic volume. It will interest you from first page to last." Catholic Times. "This is a well-written story, with a good plot and plenty of incident. From cover to cover there is not a dull page, and the interest keeps up to the end." Glasgow News. " It is a thriller. . . . The sort of book one cannot help finishing at a sitting, not merely because it is short, but because it rivets. . . . The author uses his materials with great ingenuity, his plot is cleverly devised, and he very effectively works up to a striking denouement." DEATH AND THE WOMAN. BY ARNOLD GOLSWORTHY. (" Jingle" of " Pick-me-up.") Crown 8vo, 250 pp., Picture Boards. ONE SHILLING. Scotsman. "A cleverly constructed story about a murder and a gang of diamond robbers. . . . The tale never has to go far without a strong situation. It is a capital book for a railway journey." Star. "A good shilling's-worth of highly coloured sensationalism. Those readers who want a good melodramatic story smartly told Mr. Golsworthy's latest effort will suit down to the ground." Literary World. " We do not remember having read a book that possessed the quality of grip in a greater degree than is the case with ' Death and the Woman.' . . . Every page of every chapter develops the interest, which culminates in one of the most sensational denouements it has been our lot to read. The flavour of actuality is not destroyed by any incredible incident ; it is the inevitable thing that always happens. 'Death and the Woman' will supply to the brim the need of those in search of a holding drama of modern London life." GREENING & CO., 20, Cecil Court, Charing Cross Road, LONDON, W.C. GIFT BOOIC- ( ^he Grand ^aniandrvm,' And other fanciful Fairy Tales for the youthful of all ages, climes, and times. By S. J. ADAIR FITZ-GERALD, Author of "The Zankiwank and the Bletherwitch," "The Wonders of the Secret Cavern," "The Mighty Voltic," &c. Many full-page and smaller Illustrations by GUSTAVE DARRE. Square Svo, Art Cloth, Gilt, 3/6. PRESS OPINIONS. Pall Mall Gazette. "A charming little book, simply written, and therefore to he comprehended of the youthful mind. It will become popular, for the writer has a power of pleasing that is rare." People. " It is a delightful story for children, something in the style of Alice in Wonderland, but also having a flavour of Kingsley's Water Babies." Sun. "Good fairy stories are a source of everlasting joy and delight. Mr. S. J. Adair Fitz-Gerald breaks fresh ground, and writes pleasantly. The book has the added advantage of being charmingly illustrated in colour." Lloyd's. "For youngsters who enjoy the absurdities of Fairyland, The Grand Panjandrum will be just the thing. The grotesque illustrations are quite in keeping with the letterpress, and will amuse all children lucky enough to get this neat and pretty volume." Scotsman. " It will make the eyes of readers open wide with wonder and delight." "A wonderful sixpence worth of fascinating stories by leading writers." Dundee Advertiser. VIII BT.TIDF A Volume of Dramatic CLEMENT SCOTT. S J. ADAIR FITZ-GERALD. Mrs. ALBERT S. BRADSHAW. T. C. ELDER. GEORGE S. JACOBI. HARRY MONKHOUSE. A. DEWAR WILLOCK. and Humorous Stories by DAN LENO. HORACE LENNARD. GEORGE ALEXANDER. ROSS FERGUSON. ARTHUR W. COLLINS. GEORGE POWNALL. W. SCOTT FOLKESTONE, &c. Numerous full-page pictures and other smaller illustrations (including portraits of the Authors) by S. H. SIME, ALICK RITCHIE, STUART READE, BERNARD MUKNS, CLAUDE CALTHORPE, &c. **" 6D - A FEW PRESS OPINIONS OF "YULE-TIDE TALES." **" 6o - Daily Telegraph. "An attractive volume of stories. Its contents generally are of a dramatic character, many of them being tales of theatrical life, while among the contributors are several well-known names connected with the stage. Not the least pleasing of its features are the numerous illustrations by clever artists, and perhaps the most interesting of these are the portraits of theatrical celebrities who contribute to the publication." Glasgow Herald. "The stories are all very readable, and the book contains some pretty illustrations." Surrey Gazette. " It is full of good things." GREENING AND CO., 20, Cecil Court, Charing Cross Road, LONDON, W.C. AN IMPORTANT WORK ON ELOCUTION 1 1 1 THE ART OF ELOCUTION BY Ross FERGUSON. INTRODUCTION BY GEORGE ALEXANDER. (Dedicated by permission to Miss ELLEN TERRY.) Crown 8vo, Cloth. -:- ONE SHILLING. SOME OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. Australian Mail. "A useful little book. We can strongly recommend it to the chairmen of public companies." Stage. "A carefully composed treatise, obviously written by one as having authority. Students will find it of great service." People's Friend. "Contains many valuable hints, and deals with every branch of the elocutionist's art in a lucid and intelligible manner." Literary World. "The essentials of elocution are dealt with in a thoroughly capable and practical way. The chapter on public speaking is particularly satis- factory." Glasgow Citizen. "A valuable aid to self-instruction. Has many points which make it of special value. It is the work of an expert, it is concise, simple, and directed towards a thoroughly practical result." Madame. "The work is pleasingly thorough. The instructions are most inter- esting, and are lucidly expressed, physiological details are carefully, yet not redundantly, dwelt on, so that the intending student may have some very real and definite idea of what he is learning about, and many valuable hints may be gleaned from the chapters on 'Articulation and Modulation.' Not only for actors and orators will this little book be found of great service, but everyone may find pleasure and profit in reading it." Accepted by H.M. the Queen and H.R.H. the Prince of Wales. LONDON: A Guide for the Visitor, Sportsman, and Naturalist. BY J. W. CUNDALL (Author of "America Abroad," &c.). Including an Article on "LITERARY RESTAURANTS," by CLEMENT SCOTT. Long i2mo, Cloth. SIXPENCE. SOME PRESS OPINIONS. Vanity Fair. "A capital little guide book. No bulky volume this, but a handy booklet full of pithy information on all the most important subjects connected with our great city." Outlook. "A handy booklet, more tasteful than one is accustomed to." Pelican. " As full of useful and entertaining information as is an egg of meat." Bookman. "A very lively and readable little guide." To-day. " One of the best guide books for visitors to London. It is a model of lucidity and informativeness, and the profuse illustrations are admirably executed." Glasgow Herald. "A useful little work for those who have no desire to wade -through many pages of information before getting what they want." A NEW AND INTERESTING STORY OF THEATRICAL AND LITERARY LIFE. "FAME, THE FIDDLER." By S. J. ADAIR FITZ-GERALD. New and Cheaper Edition. Crown 8vo, Cloth Gilt, 2/6. REVIEWERS' REMARKS. Standard. "There are many pleasant pages in 'Fame, the Fiddler," which reminds us of 'Trilby,' with its pictures of Bohemian life, and its happy-go-lucky group of good-hearted, generous scribblers, artists, and playwrights. Some of the characters are so true to life, that it is impossible not to recognize them. Among the best incidents in the volume must be mentioned the production of Pryor's play, and the account of poor Jimmy Lambert's death, which is as moving an incident as we have read for a long time. Altogether, ' Fame, the Fiddler ' is a very human book, and an amusing one as well." Pall Mall Gazette. "A pleasant, cheery story. Displays a rich vein of robust imagination." Western Daily Press. "A novel of more than average merit. Cleverly written, and intensely interesting throughout." Graphic. "The volume will please and amuse numberless people." _ Literary World. " Full of interest. The racy and fluent delineations of some phases of life in London cannot fail to take hold of the imagination, and appeal to the interest of the reader." Sheffield Telegraph." Successfully reproduces a phase of life which is always interesting, and we follow with pleasurable sympathy the author's guidance through the mazes of Bohemia." Public Opinion. "The little circle of needy, happy-go-lucky, literary, artistic, and dramatic Bohemians is an amusing one, and we thank Mr. Fitz-Gerald for introducing us to it." 1 i "THAT FASCINATING WIDOW," And other Frivolous and Fantastic Tales, for River, Road, and Rail. BY S. J. ADAIR FITZ-GERALD, Author of" Fame, the Fiddler," "A Tragedy of Grub Street," " Stories of Famous Songs," etc. Long I2mo, Cloth. ONE SHILLING. The Globe. "The author, Mr. S. J. Adair Fitz-Gerald, has already shown him- self to be the possessor of a store of humour, on which he has again drawn for the furnishing of the little volume he has just put together. Among the tales included are several which might be suitable for reading or recitation, and none which are dull. Mr. Fitz-Gerald frankly addresses himself to that portion of the public which desires nothing so much as to be amused, and likes even its amusements in small doses. Such a public will entertain itself very pleasantly with Mr. Fitz-Gerald's lively tales, and will probably name as its favourites those titled ' Pure Cussedness,' ' Splidgings' First Baby,' and 'The Blue-blooded Coster.'" Whitehall Review. "_Written with all the dash and ease which Mr. Fitz-Gerald has accustomed us to in his journalistic work. There is a breezy, invigorating style about this little book which will make it a favourite on the bookstalls." Glasgow Herald. "Nonsense, genial harmless nonsense, to which the most captious and morose of readers will find it difficult to refuse the tribute of a broad smile, even if he can so far restrain himself as not to burst out into genuine laughter." Weekly Dispatch. "Very bright and amusing, and the book is an excellent shillingsworth." The Scotsman. " The widow is a charmingly wicked person. The stories are well written, with a pleasant humour of a farcical sort ; they are never dull. The Referee. "Another little humorous book is 'That Fascinating Widow,' by Mr. S. J. Adair Fitz-Gerald, who can be very funny when he tries. The story which gives the title to the book would make a capital farce. ' The Blue-blooded Coster ' is an amusing piece of buffoonery." At all Booksellers and Railway Bookstalls. GREENING &, CO., 20, Cecil Court, Charing Cross Road, LONDON, W.C, A FUNNY BOOK BY A FUNNY MAN! DAN LENO, HYS BOOKE. A Volume of Frivolities : Autobiographical, Historical, Philosophical, Anecdotal and Nonsensical. Written by DAN LENO. Profusely Illustrated by SIDNEY H. SIMK, FRANK CHESWORTH, W. S. ROGERS, GUSTAVK DARR, ALFRED BRYAN, and DAN LENO. FOURTH EDITION. Containing an Appreciation of Dan Lena written by CLEMENT SCOTT. Crown 8vo, Art Cloth, Gilt Edges, Two Shillings. Popular Edition, sewed, Picture Cover, One Shilling. This enormously successful book of genuine and spontaneous humour has- been received with a complete chorus of complimentary criticisms and pleasing "press" praise and approval. Here are a few REVIEWERS' REMARKS. Scotsman." Bombshells of fun." Globe. " Full of exuberant and harmless fun." Lloyd's. "One long laugh from start to finish." Referee. " In Dan Lena, Hys Booke, one discovers how enormously comical is- the personality of the writer." Outlook. "This illustrious author is even funnier in print than on the boards. Hys Booke provokes plenty of laughter." St. Paul's. "It is very funny. The stories are refreshingly amusing and spontaneous." Daily News (Hull.) "The funniest book we have read for some time. You must perforce scream with huge delight at the drjr sayings and writings of the funny little man who has actually killed people with his patter and his antics. Page after page of genuine fun is reeled off by the great little man." Morning Leader. "This Booke is not only very humorous, it is the cause of humour in others ; to read it is to become inspired with a reckless desire to read it to others, and to cast the universe into convulsions of mirth. . . . Dan Lena, Hys Booke, is a rich contribution to the gaiety of the British Empire." Dundee Courier. "It is a characteristic piece of work, as truly like him as could be. It is brimful of humour and mirth provoking sallies, with a little bit of pathos here and there. From the first chapter to the last there is not a dull page to be found." Sunday Chronicle. "Amusing stones, whimsical anecdotes, sense and non- sense jostle each other in an amazing medley. The whole book is written in that easy, unconventional style which shows the personality of the writer at every turn. The same wit and point and persifage which mark Dan Leno's sketches on the stage are here transferred into the colder atmosphere of black and white. And so credit- ably is the work done, that no limelight effects are required to enhance the merits of the book. . . . Dan Lena, Hys Booke, is distinctly a book to read and enjoy. It is almost as funnily illustrated as it is written." AT ALL BOOKSELLERS AND RAILWAY BOOKSTALLS. GREENING AND CO., 20, Cecil Court, Charing Cross Road, LONDON, W.C. University of California SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY Return this material to the library from which it was borrowed. NON-RE ILL JAN DUE2WKSFRO* zooo DATE ON llilU S UTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARV 000035739 /