Toby, M. P. And His Circle

( Originally Published 1912 )

DOES the reader wish to see more celebrities, or to meet again those he has seen before? Let him go to the Lucys, a. name that is spoken in London as though there were but two families of that name in the Kingdom, the Lucys of Charlecote, the scene of Shakespeare's poaching, and the Lucys of Ashley Gardens. The latter are the ones I refer to.

Most people are in one way or another, and often in many ways, like other people. Harry Lucy is like nobody else, except that in appearance he may recall Dickens's Tommy Traddles. He is one of the smallest of men, rubicund of complexion and crowned with a mop of tumultuous hair, white, surging and uncurbed as the crest of the sea, which knows no other combing than an occasional abstracted or distracted sweep of the fingers. He is an individual as rare and original as Mark Twain, of a pattern that nature in a fastidious mood evidently decided not to repeat, another instance of Byron's lines:

Nature formed but one such man
And broke the die in moulding Sheridan —

a variation of another line by Ariosto.

his humour is of the twinkling kind, like Aldrich's, and like that poet's, too, it is always catching you unprepared. It is like a restless winged thing, a little tormenting but quite stingless. It comes at you round the corner, and if it disappears for a moment it returns and pricks you till you laugh in perceiving that nearly everything may be assuaged and righted by it. It has been Punch's best asset for many years, and I believe that the public men of England prefer a line or two of its amiable banter in the columns of that sheet, so far as mention of themselves go, to a whole column of editorial praise in the Times, or in any other paper.

However wearisome and splenetic the sittings of Parliament may be, his "essence" of the proceedings always discovers some saving and reconciling grace which heals animosities and revives patience, and without the "Member for Sark" (his imaginary constituency), the House of Commons would be as little like itself as it would be without the Speaker himself or the mace on the table. Probably no one else has so complete a knowledge of its procedure, usages, and traditions, and probably no one else is to the same extent persona grata with all the individuals of all parties and all the factions as "Toby, M. P.," "Harry," or, to give him his proper' name and new title, Sir Henry W. Lucy.

A charming little lady is mated to him: a lady of infinite tact and friendliness, who is never apart from him and who participates in all he does, both work and play. When they are at sea she smilingly describes her-self to her friends as "marine secretary," when in the country as "rural secretary."

They are much at home and constantly entertaining, yet you find them everywhere in society — at Marl-borough House, at Windsor, when the King gives a garden party, at state balls, at every new play, at all the functions of the season. I am proud to have had them as friends for nearly thirty years.

For a time Lucy was editor-in-chief of the Daily News and used to gather at his table some of his colleagues, including Andrew Lang and Richard Whiteing. Lang ate, drank, and talked, never missing the thread of conversation, and wrote his article for the morrow's paper while the dinner progressed. The article was always a good one, moreover, and we, accustomed as we were to journalistic facility, looked upon the achievement as upon some feat by a magician which we could not explain. He never lets it be seen that he takes anything seriously. The world is a world of trifles for him, agreeable trifles or disagreeable trifles. Nothing is worth while except fishing or golf — London and all that goes on there a waste of time, to be laughed at or scorned. His attitude is one of mockery and disdain, not bitter but playful, and he makes a joke of even his own scholarship, and occasionally of the scholarship of others. Pooh ! Pooh ! Qui bono? Rubbish and rot! You listen to him wondering to what extent he is dissembling, and while you are pondering it your ears catch bits of slang like splashes of mud on fresh marble, and some one you hold in awe is spoken of as a "good-natured duffer" or as a "bloke." Then his speech returns to respectability without solemnity, and flows along in the pleasant way like a clear and sparkling river, now deep, now rippling in the shallows. Suddenly he pauses in the middle of a sentence, and astonishes you further by dropping his tall, loose, serpentine figure upon the floor to fondle the poodle or the cat, and stretched there continues the conversation from a position which, though it may surprise the others, evokes no apology or remark from him.

Nothing matters with him. He becomes almost petulant if anything is spoken of as being difficult or imposing. "But why?" he repeats, and makes light of it.

He reminded me of a story which Gilbert Parker tells of Beerbohm Tree. When Tree was touring America in Parker's "Seats of the Mighty, " the author took the actor to see Niagara Falls, and so arranged it that the first view should be as impressive as possible. He watched closely and eagerly, expecting an outburst of awe and rapture over the sublimity of the spectacle, and he was dumfounded when no emotion whatever appeared in Tree's face.

" Well?" said Parker.

"Well," said Tree, "is that all?"

"Is that all?" frequently says Mr. Lang when others are holding their breaths over something very unusual, either admirable or in some way startling. I came from the country one night to dine with him at his house in Marloes Road, Kensington, and when he found that I had turned my back on the peace and beauty of Box Hill for that purpose, he upbraided me for what he probably thought was the height of folly. Nevertheless, sitting between him and Edmund Gosse (they are very intimate and sympathetic) I had my reward in the interplay of wit, as full of sparkle and exhilaration as the wine. The scope of his knowledge is extraordinary, and he has the same facility that Sir Edwin Arnold had.

I was talking with Arnold one day as to subjects on which he might write for the North American Review.

"I am ashamed to say it, but I must," he sighed. "I have been in journalism so long that I can write on any subject, " with strong emphasis on the "any. "

It was true. I gave him many subjects during my acquaintance with him, and he never failed, various and dissimilar as they were, to develop them into just the kind of article both editor and reader are eager for. He could not be dull. He had the true journalistic instinct and capacity for lucidity, colour, animation and condensation the art (or perhaps some may choose to call it the trick) of sufficiency without redundancy, and the projection of the essential and most significant parts of his material over the abstract and recondite. Necessity swung the whip. He who had written "The Light of Asia" could not have submitted to the toil of the "handyman" of the press without some distaste and some sense of misapplication and waste. Not even at the last did fatigue appear in his work, but while it was carefully hidden there it was pathetically visible in him. Blindness cast its darkness upon him, and a son betrayed him and defaulted, yet up to the last, cheery and courtly as ever, his pretty and devoted little Japanese wife at his elbow, he dictated what he could not write without revealing the creeping shadow of his afflictions.

Lord chancellors and lord chief justices also came to the Lucys,' and I met Lord Russell of Killowen there as well as at his own house near the Jeunes' in Harley Street. He was quite unlike what one would have supposed him to be from his reputation at the bar. Though an Irish-man, and the first Catholic lord chief justice, he looked like an English squire, and not a trace of the brogue lingered in his speech. A commanding figure, with a noble and mobile, clean-shaven face, and a clear, rosy complexion, he had a rural freshness about him, and when he talked his interest in agriculture and sport confirmed the inference which assigned him to a place in the country. Ascot and the Derby, the chances of the horses and the betting on them, topics of that sort would quickly draw him out and lead him into stories of the efforts he had made and the sacrifices he had endured that he might be present at some race meeting at Chester, Newmarket, or Epsom. Ile would confide to you, if you showed the right sort of understanding and appreciation, how once he nearly owned a Derby winner and while he took a pinch from hiง snuff-box and you recovered your breath, he would look the words as plainly as if he had spoken them, "What do you say to that?" Then the theatre and plays : he was fond of them, but old-fashioned in his preferences. Ile knew and admired Irving, but had said to him, "You know, Irving, I like those things you used to do two hundred years ago much better than those you are doing now."

Yes, observing him without knowing him, a stranger could not have been blamed for want of perspicuity if he had assumed from glimpses of him in such moods that he was a conservative and benevolent but rather "sporty" country gentleman of more than average intelligence and education. That he, this apparently bland and ingenuous person, could be the lord chief justice of England, who as Charles Russell (later Sir Charles) had been the terror of those he opposed and who in the cases of Mrs. Maybrick and Charles Stewart Parnell, not to mention scores of others, had impressed the whole world by his skill in the most ingenious and relentless cross-examination which the stubbornest of falsehood and guilt quailed under and at last confessed to, was more than perplexing.

I am speaking of him in his later years, when his age and his elevation to the lord chief justiceship had, of course, imposed more restraints upon him than were necessary in the combative advocate. As lord chief justice he bore himself with all the decorum and impartiality the office calls for; perhaps his composure cost him some effort, for he was naturally vehement, impatient, and more or less overbearing. Mellowed by age and unprovoked, however, he became on the surface at least almost benignant, and the volcanic explosions that had burst from him as a barrister were heard from him no more. Anybody would have thought him a philanthropic and confiding old gentleman, whose faith in human nature had never been disturbed. That was the impression he made on those who at the first glance did not identify him in the relaxation of social intercourse, though a fuller acquaintance was sure to reveal by and by something in his eye, a sort of probe or X-ray, which penetrated the object on which it was focussed with a perhaps startling comprehension of an unavailing reticence. He himself revealed nothing of the effect on him of what he discovered, nor connoted it except by another pinch of snuff. After all, the old Charles Russell was only sheathed and subordinated in the graver and more responsible lord chief justice, and he no doubt "spoke in silence" to himself with his old impatience of fraud, humbug, and hypocrisy. Strong men change less than weaker ones, and concealed but not abandoned were his old weapons of inquisition, analysis and denunciation.

In his early days at the bar his temper sometimes got the better of him, and on a memorable occasion he brought down on his head a rebuke from the court, presided over by Justice Denman, who said that before the next day he would consider what he ought to do. On the following morning both bench and bar were in a state of excited anticipation, and Justice Denman, entering the court with more than ordinary solemnity, began the business of the day by saying, " Mr. Russell, in my condition of sorrow and resentment yesterday I could not trust myself to take the action which seemed imperative, but since the court adjourned last evening I have had the advantage of considering with my brother Judge the painful incident, and I " Russell was instantly on his feet, and spreading his outstretched arms with an air of superb magnanimity and pacificatory desire, said: "Yes, my lord, and I beg that you will not say another word upon the subject, for I can honestly assure you that I have entirely and forever dismissed it from my memory" — a turning of the tables which evoked such a roar of laughter in the court that even Mr. Justice Denman and his associate had to join in it.

One night when I was dining with him at Harley Street, a girl from Cincinnati was among the guests, and for some reason or other not apparent she was very ill at ease. Perhaps it was the importance of the lord chief justice that agitated her, though it is not usual for an American girl to be flustered by the eminence of the people she meets. She, the ordinary girl, will air her ideas of science to a Tyndall, her philosophy to a Spencer, her poetry to a Tennyson or her political knowledge to a Glad-stone without any consciousness of fatuity or impudence. When others sit and listen she, unabashed, will offer her own opinions with the assurace of an equal and with a staggering lack of diffidence. The girl from Cincinnati was not of that kind, however. She was more like one of those English girls who are fast disappearing in the manumission of the sex in this age of the suffragette — those demure, tremulous, self-effacing creatures who blush when spoken to and whose only comment on what-ever my be said to them is "Fancy!" The Cincinnati girl got little further than monosyllables, and stammered over even them. When Lord Russell himself spoke to her she sank as if on the verge of collapse. His manner was gentleness itself and his handsome face smiled. He spoke of his fondness for America and of New York, which he knew well.

"Yes, " she said laboriously. "New York is — fine."

"I think Fifth Avenue is the most magnificent thoroughfare in the world."

"Yes. The gardens round the houses are so beautiful, aren't they?"

It was ill-bred of me and unkind, I confess, but I could not contain myself. "Gardens round the houses in Fifth Avenue ! " I exclaimed.

The hopeless look she gave me shamed me. His face did not show surprise; it was one of those faces that rarely mirror what is passing in the mind. After a moment's hesitation and beaming encouragement he replied: "The gardens in Fifth Avenue? Ah, yes, to be sure. I had almost forgotten the gardens." He pitied and ameliorated her plight as soon as he saw it. I assumed that she knew the street well enough, but that she was in such a nervous confusion, so like a person drowning, that her knowledge lapsed into illusion and her tongue wagged away from whatever intelligence she may have had when she was not distraught.

Could this be he, I asked myself again, of whose imperiousness and explosiveness I had heard so many instances?

He reserved his sympathy for the weak and the wronged. The domineering side of his character came out not only in his encounters with crime, but also when he was offended by pretence and vulgarity. A Manchester solicitor, gold-chained, jewelled, and wearing a magnificent fur coat, came into his chambers one day.

"What do you mean by coming here in a coat like that? Take it off at once, sir, " Russell cried savagely. Everybody present was dismayed, but as soon as the coat was removed he plunged into the case which the solicitor had brought as if nothing unusual had happened. When he was irritated he could use pretty strong language.

Also at the Lucys' I have met Mr. H. G. Wells, a very different person from what you would expect him to be from a mer้ reading knowledge of "Kipps," "Tono Bungay," "Mr. Polly, " and "Ann Veronica," a smallish, demure, unobtrusive, low-voiced man, very particular as to his clothes, almost feminine in his fastidiousness. The open-eyed and eye-opening audacity of his novels and the originality and daring of his social and political theories could not possibly be surmised from what one sees of him in ordinary intercourse. He gives the impression of being a butterfly rather than the vigorous radical and intellectual force that he is, though you can-not fail to observe the humour of his mouth and eyes. I admire Mr. Wells for both the trenchant simplicity of his style, its ease and grace, its honesty, its unlaboured and tranquil movement "Strong without rag้; without o'erflowing full" and for the profundity of his insight into human nature, and I predict that his works will long outlast those of most of his contemporaries in fiction.

Lest we deceive ourselves in narrow pharisaism and epicureanism as to the cleanliness of the world, he may occasionally drag us through its mire, perhaps repelling us by dipping his hand in it to prove its depth, but oftener he leads us to inspiring hill-tops and pantascopic views, where the air is pure and invigorating.

At the Lucys too you may sometimes find Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree and his accomplished and diverting wife, Lady Tree, both of whom are celebrated for their wit. Whenever you go to London one of the first things you are likely to hear is a fresh epigram of hers or his. I have had the pleasure of knowing them for twenty years or more, and he is still something of a mystery to me through the multiplicity of his activities, which he steadily pursues while apparently he is enveloped in a cloud of dreams. "He has a way of appearing to be soaring in the clouds while he is rooted to earth. Only a witticism, an inanity, or a piece of chopped logic, is necessary to bring him down. He picks it up, plays with it, turns it round and about and upside down — and utters a drollery or pungent criticism upon it in swift, neat epigram. He is not farthest away when his eyes are dreaming — his hearing is tense and keen. This makes for the baffling thing in him. He never speaks except to say the illuminating something he never babbles nothings. His absent-mindedness is the peg for many tales, as when he went to pay a call, he got to reading his letters in the hansom, stepped out when the cabby drew up at the door, rang the bell, still reading letters, and, on the servant opening the door, said, "Come in ! come in ! " walked down the steps into the hansom and drove home again, still reading letters. "

That is a fair description of him. A John-a-Dreams you think, as you see his eyes upturned while he rests his elbow on the table or the arms of his chair. He is more than a dual personality. The artistic temperament is paramount in him, and never content with less than the fullest measure of its aspirations, and yet he is the proprietor and manager as well as the leading actor of His Majesty's, which he has made the first theatre of the Empire, and that no more by the lavish splendour and accuracy of what it offers than by its intellectual and aesthetic appeal.

Joseph Jefferson used to tell us at The Players how on an imaginary visit to the gates of Heaven St. Peter did not recognize him.

"Jefferson, Joe Jefferson, you know."

The saint shook his head until Jefferson added "Rip Van Winkle."

"Ah!" The celestial custodian smiled a little. "I'll let you in, but see here ! if I do you've got to change that part. We are getting a bit tired of it even up here."

Tree cannot be excluded from Paradise on that score — for want of novelty and variety. His variety is infinite, his ambition boundless. However marked and gratifying his success may be in one part he is no sooner familiar in it than he is impatient to add another to his amazingly versatile record, and from the classics he swings to the modern, from Shakespeare and Sheridan to Stephen Phillips, Ibsen, Oscar Wilde, and still more recent playwrights. Nor does he ever fail to command respect, for subtle intelligence and artistry ingrain all his impersonations. He is never less than interesting and often great.

His Hamlet is of all the most poetic and in that, as in "The Balladmonger," his own personality is visible, but in Falstaff, in old Demetrius of "The Red Lamp," and especially in the character of the swollen, blatant vulgarian of "Business is Business," every idiosyncrasy of his own completely disappears. Indeed, I think that the last is an incomparable example of his genius for self-effacement and transfiguration.

Another thing to his credit is the magnanimity of his attitude toward his fellow players which allows him to engage them without thought of peril to his own pre-dominance. It is not uncommon for the star to take very good care that those who support him shall not do so too well. Tree's policy is generous, not only to the members of his company but through them to the public. He divides honour with those who surround him and even subordinates himself so that another part than his may have all the value ,and prominence the author intended. Too often jealousy disturbs or suspends the judgment of the bright, particular star. He is afraid of his satellites, and prefers them to be dim, not brilliant, not invaders of his orbit, visible only as foils to his effulgence. Tree, on the contrary, strives to surround himself with actors who can take every advantage of their opportunities, and no spectator is more pleased than he is when they justify his selection by running close to him in the approval of the audience. I have often seen him in his dressing-room, that laboratory of his miraculous trans-formations, at the end of the first nights, with a few friends around him, and while they have been pouring congratulation into his ears he has let the flattery pass in order to praise his associates.

"How fine you were, Tree. You surpassed yourself."

"Do you think so?" with a quizzical glance. "But wasn't A splendid! And B ! When the King ogles her, and she drops her eyes and courtesies! I must tell her how good she was."

He is reckless of cost in his productions, yet he frankly declares that he does not want to produce any plays that the public will not pay to see.

" It is far better to read Shakespeare in the study than to see him presented in the archaic and echoic methods so dear to epicures in mediocrity. Either Shakespeare wrote for the stage or he did not. If for the stage, then it should be the sole aim of the theatre to create the, illusion and the emotional intention of the poet in the most compelling way that is granted to it.

"The merely archaic presentation of the play can be of interest only to those who do not pay their shilling to enter the theatre. The art that appeals only to a coterie is on a lower plane than that which appeals to the world. The theatre is not for those who fulfil their souls in footnotes."

I could fill a chapter with further instances of his wit, but one more example of it must suffice. He was playing in Dublin to small audiences while another theatre was full to overflowing, the attraction there being a bouncing and voluptuous woman, who was more than generous in the display of her person.

"What's the use?" sighed Tree, " How can Art ever compete with Nature."

Speaking of "Toby, M. P." I am reminded of the Houses of Parliament, where for ten years or more I spent a good deal of my time, an experience that depended for its pleasure, like so many things in life, on the novelty of it. The proceedings themselves are often of less interest than what one can see in the lobbies, in the dining-room and on the terrace. There may be no vacancy for one in the galleries, but any member can invite his friend to tea or dinner as often as he pleases, and those who are in the cabinet and the ministry have rooms of their own, up winding stairs and at the end of narrow, musty corridors, where they can entertain in privacy and without restrictions. A delightful feeling of mystery and exclusiveness envelops one in being among the chosen of those little, privileged companies, who, I am net ashamed to say, I sometimes turned to account in the editorial work I was doing.

"If you want to see anybody I'll send for him," William Woodall, who was then financial secretary to the war office, used to say, and he would provide a corner in which I could discuss with possible contributors the matters I had in hand, while he engaged his other guests, fellow members of the House and people of the world of literature and art, who had dined with him earlier, in a post-prandial way. It was easier for an editor to get celebrities of the political world to write for him then it is now. The misuse of their names and their material by sensational and unscrupulous periodicals has made them wary and suspicious of even the best.

But when Woodall sent his message the person sought, usually and most obligingly came, and the business, was done off-hand; or if not quite off hand, after a little haggling. The commercial spirit holds hard and fast in many places, and I never quarrel with it nor despise it when through it a man merely seeks the most he can get from sources amply qualified to provide it. I can recall how surprised the late Robert C. Winthrop of Boston was when he was told that Tennyson accepted pay for his poems and Gladstone pay for his articles. The unsophisticated old gentleman thought they sacrificed their dignity and slighted the rights of humanity in doing so, but his point of view was that of the rich amateur. who in his abundance and leisure finds sufficient reward on his occasional excursions into books and magazines, through the accruing honour of what he flatters himself is a service to mankind. Tennyson drove hard bargains with his publishers, and I think it was I who awakened Mr. Gladstone to a sense of the commercial value of his articles. Mr. Gladstone had been satisfied with twenty or thirty guineas as a fee as often as he wrote for the English reviews. I was able to increase his honorarium to several times that amount, and thereby established a precedent to which henceforth he always adhered. After his first transaction with me a London editor pressed him for a contribution, and it came, but in the corner of the manuscript was pencilled, like the figures on a lawyer's brief, the inexorable price, one hundred guineas. The editor was stunned, and his review, one of great merit, did not long outlast the shock. I also had a curious experience with Tennyson. He wrote some verses for us, and as soon as he had received the very substantial sum agreed on, he wrote that we had better publish them with-out delay, "as otherwise they might leak out." That was an ingenious way of putting it, and I had some difficulty in convincing him that if they "leaked out" be-fore they appeared in our columns they would have very little value for us.

I do not of course mean to say that Woodall, kind and influential as he was, summoned the Gladstones, the Motleys, and the Balfours of the House to his sanctum, but lesser though not undistinguished men answered his message by appearing, probably as a favour to him rather than as a concession to me. They were not lacking in business instinct. I have to smile now as I recall a dashing young fellow who was then at the beginning of his career, unaided by wealth or power, and with no other advantages than his talents. He was full of energy, but gasping after his run up the stairs. He listened to my proposal with rapid comprehension. " All right ! All right ! I'll do it — but not for twenty guineas. Make it thirty, and it's done." Since then that business-like young man has been raised to the peerage and has had the highest office in the gift of the crown.

This reminds me of a story the president of the Adams Express Company told me of Andrew Carnegie. Mr. Carnegie had confided to him that his first savings were invested in ten shares of that company's stock.

"And have you got those ten shares yet?" the president asked.

"No."

"Too bad! If you'd kept them you might have been a rich man now."