CHAPTER XII
NORWOOD AND SWITZERLAND
Psychic Research Society—Psychic Leanings—Literary Circles in London—Young Writers—Henry Irving—A Great Blow—Davos—“Brigadier Gerard”—Major Pond—American Lecturing in 1894—First Lecture—Anti-British Wave—Answer to Prayer.
The chief event of our Norwood life was the birth of my son Kingsley, who lived to play a man’s part in the Great War, and who died shortly after its conclusion. My own life was so busy that I had little time for religious development, but my thoughts still ran much upon psychic matters, and it was at this time that I joined the Psychical Research Society, of which I am now one of the senior members. I had few psychic experiences myself, and my material philosophy, as expressed in the “Stark Munro Letters,” which were written just at the end of the Norwood period, was so strong that it did not easily crumble. Yet as year by year I read the wonderful literature of psychic science and experience, I became more and more impressed by the strength of the Spiritualist position and by the levity and want of all dignity and accurate knowledge which characterized the attitude of their opponents. The religious side of the matter had not yet struck me, but I felt more and more that the case for the phenomena vouched for by such men as Sir William Crookes, Barrett, Russel Wallace, Victor Hugo and Zöllner was so strong that I could see no answer to their exact record of observations. “It is incredible but it is true,” said Crookes, and the aphorism seemed to exactly express my dawning convictions. I had a weekly impulse from the psychic paper, “Light,” which has, I maintain, during its long career and up to the present day, presented as much brain to the square inch as any journal published in Great Britain.
My pleasant recollection of those days from 1880 to 1893 lay in my first introduction, as a more or less rising author, to the literary life of London. It is extraordinary to remember that at that time there was a general jeremiad in the London press about the extinction of English literature, and the assumed fact that there were no rising authors to take the place of those who were gone. The real fact is that there was a most amazing crop, all coming up simultaneously, presenting perhaps no Dickens or Thackeray, but none the less so numerous and many sided and with so high an average of achievement that I think they would match for varied excellence any similar harvest in our literary history. It was during the years roughly from 1888 to 1893 that Rudyard Kipling, James Stephen Phillips, Watson, Grant Allen, Wells, Barrie, Bernard Shaw, H. A. Jones, Pinero, Marie Corelli, Stanley Weyman, Anthony Hope, Hall Caine, and a whole list of others were winning their spurs. Many of these I met in the full flush of their youth and their powers. Of some of them I will speak more fully later. As to the old school they were certainly somewhat of a declension, and the newcomers found no very serious opposition in gaining a hearing. Wilkie Collins, Trollope, George Eliot and Charles Reade had passed. I have always been a very great admirer of the last, who was really a great innovator as well as a most dramatic writer, for it was he who first introduced realism and founded his stories upon carefully arranged documents. He was the literary father of Zola. George Eliot has never appealed to me much, for I like my effects in a less leisurely fashion; but Trollope also I consider to be a very original writer, though I fancy he traces his ancestry through Jane Austen. No writer is ever absolutely original. He always joins at some point onto that old tree of which he is a branch.
Of the literary men whom I met at that time my most vivid recollections are of the group who centred round the new magazine, “The Idler,” which had been started by Jerome K. Jerome, who had deservedly shot into fame with his splendidly humorous “Three Men in a Boat.” It has all the exuberance and joy of life which youth brings with it, and even now if I have ever time to be at all sad, which is seldom enough, I can laugh away the shadows when I open that book. Jerome is a man who, like most humorists, has a very serious side to his character, as all who have seen “The Third Floor Back” will acknowledge, but he was inclined to be hotheaded and intolerant in political matters, from pure earnestness of purpose, which alienated some of his friends. He was associated in the editorship of “The Idler” with Robert Barr, a volcanic Anglo- or rather Scot-American, with a violent manner, a wealth of strong adjectives, and one of the kindest of natures underneath it all. He was one of the best raconteurs I have ever known, and as a writer I have always felt that he did not quite come into his own. George Burgin, like some quaint gentle character from Dickens, was the sub-editor, and Barrie, Zangwill, and many other rising men were among the contributors who met periodically at dinner. I was not unfaithful to “The Strand,” but there were some contributions which they did not need, and with these I established my connection with “The Idler.” It was at this time and in this way that I met James Barrie, of whom I shall have more to say when I come to that chapter which treats of some eminent and interesting men whom I have known.
Two isolated facts stand out in my memory during that time at Norwood. One was that there seemed to be an imminent danger of war with France and that I applied for the Mediterranean war-correspondentship of the “Central News,” guessing that the chief centre of activity and interest would be in that quarter. I got the appointment and was all ready to start, but fortunately the crisis passed. The second was my first venture in the drama. I had written a short story called “A Straggler of ’15,” which had seemed to me to be a moving picture of an old soldier and his ways. My own eyes were moist as I wrote it and that is the surest way to moisten those of others. I now turned this into a one-act play, and, greatly daring, I sent it to Henry Irving, of whose genius I had been a fervent admirer ever since those Edinburgh days when I had paid my sixpence for the gallery night after night to see him in “Hamlet” and “The Lyons Mail.” To my great delight I had a pleasing note from Bram Stoker, the great man’s secretary, offering me £100 for the copyright. It was a good bargain for him, for it is not too much to say that Corporal Gregory Brewster became one of his stock parts and it had the enormous advantage that the older he got the more naturally he played it. The house laughed and sobbed, exactly as I had done when I wrote it. Several critics went out of their way to explain that the merit lay entirely with the great actor and had nothing to do with the indifferent play, but as a matter of fact the last time I saw it acted it was by a real corporal from a military camp in the humble setting of a village hall and it had exactly the same effect upon the audience which Irving produced at the Lyceum. So perhaps there was something in writing after all, and certainly every stage effect was indicated in the manuscript. I would add that with his characteristic largeness in money matters Irving always sent me a guinea for each performance in spite of his purchase of the copyright. Henry Irving the son carried on the part and played it, in my opinion, better than the father. I can well remember the flush of pleasure on his face when I uttered the word “better” and how he seized my hand. I have no doubt it was trying for his great powers to be continually belittled by their measurement with those of his giant father, to whom he bore so remarkable a physical resemblance. His premature death was a great loss to the stage, as was that of his brother Lawrence, drowned with his wife in the great Canadian river of the same name as himself.
I now come to the great misfortune which darkened and deflected our lives. I have said that my wife and I had taken a tour in Switzerland. I do not know whether she had over-taxed herself in this excursion, or whether we encountered microbes in some inn bedroom, but the fact remains that within a few weeks of our return she complained of pain in her side and cough. I had no suspicion of anything serious, but sent for the nearest good physician. To my surprise and alarm he told me when he descended from the bedroom that the lungs were very gravely affected, that there was every sign of rapid consumption and that he thought the case a most serious one with little hope, considering her record and family history, of a permanent cure. With two children, aged four and one, and a wife who was in such deadly danger, the situation was a difficult one. I confirmed the diagnosis by having Sir Douglas Powell down to see her, and I then set all my energy to work to save the situation. The home was abandoned, the newly bought furniture was sold, and we made for Davos in the High Alps where there seemed the best chance of killing this accursed microbe which was rapidly eating out her vitals.
And we succeeded. When I think that the attack was one of what is called “galloping consumption,” and that the doctors did not give more than a few months, and yet that we postponed the fatal issue from 1893 to 1906, I think it is proof that the successive measures were wise. The invalid’s life was happy too, for it was necessarily spent in glorious scenery. It was seldom marred by pain, and it was sustained by that optimism which is peculiar to the disease, and which came naturally to her quietly contented nature.
As there were no particular social distractions at Davos, and as our life was bounded by the snow and fir which girt us in, I was able to devote myself to doing a good deal of work and also to taking up with some energy the winter sports for which the place is famous. Whilst there I began the Brigadier Gerard series of stories, founded largely upon that great book, “The Memoirs of General Marbot.” This entailed a great deal of research into Napoleonic days, and my military detail was, I think, very accurate—so much so that I had a warm letter of appreciation from Archibald Forbes, the famous war correspondent, who was himself a great Napoleonic and military student. Before the end of the winter we were assured that the ravages of the disease had been checked. I dared not return to England, however, for fear of a relapse, so with the summer we moved on to Maloja, another health resort at the end of the Engadine valley, and there we endeavoured to hold all we had won—which, with occasional relapses, we succeeded in doing.
My sister Lottie, free at last from the work which she had so bravely done, had now joined us. Connie, the younger sister, had come back from Portugal earlier, and had joined us at Norwood, where she had met and eventually married E. W. Hornung the novelist. Of Hornung I will speak later. In the meantime Lottie’s presence and the improvement of the invalid, which was so marked that no sudden crisis was thought at all possible, gave me renewed liberty of action. Before the catastrophe occurred I had given some lectures on literature at home, and the work with its movement and bustle was not distasteful to me. Now I was strongly pressed to go to America on the same errand, and in the late autumn of 1894 I set out on this new adventure.
My brother Innes, he who had shared my first days in Southsea, had since passed through Richmond Public School, and afterwards the Woolwich Academy, so that he was now just emerging as a subaltern. As I needed some companion, and as I thought that the change would do him good, I asked him to come with me to the States. We crossed on the ill-fated German liner Elbe, which a very short time afterwards was sunk in collision with a collier in the North Sea. Already I observed evidence of that irrational hatred of the British which in the course of twenty years was to lead to so terrific a result involving the destruction of the German Empire. I remember that on some fête day on board, the saloon was thickly decorated with German and American flags without one single British one, though a fair proportion of the passengers were British. Innes and I then and there drew a Union Jack and stuck it up aloft, where its isolation drew attention to our grievance.
Major Pond was my impresario in America, and a quaint character he was. He seemed the very personification of his country, huge, loose limbed, straggling, with a goat’s beard and a nasal voice. He had fought in the Civil War and been mixed up with every historical American event of his lifetime.
He was a good, kind fellow and we formed a friendship which was never broken. He met us in the docks, and carried us off to a little hotel beside the Aldine Club, a small literary club, in which we had our meals.
I have treated America and my impression of that amazing and perplexing country in later pages of these memoirs, when I visited it under more detached conditions. At present it was all hard work with little time for general observations. Pond had fixed me up a pretty hard schedule, but on the other hand I had bargained to get back to Davos in time to spend Christmas with my wife, so that there was a limit to my servitude. My first reading was given in a fashionable Baptist Church, which was the usual launching slip for Pond’s new lecturers. We had walked from the retiring room and were just coming in sight of the audience when I felt something tickle my ear. I put up my hand and found that my collar was undone, my tie had fallen off, and my stud, the first cause of all the trouble, had disappeared. Standing there, on the edge of the platform, Pond dragged out his own stud. I replaced everything, and sailed on quite as I should be, while Pond retired to refit. It is strange, and possibly more than coincidence, how often one is prevented at the last moment from making some foolish appearance in public.
The readings went very well and the audience was generous in applause. I have my own theory of reading, which is that it should be entirely disassociated from acting and should be made as natural and also as audible as possible. Such a presentment is, I am sure, the less tiring for an audience. Indeed I read to them exactly as in my boyhood I used to read to my mother. I gave extracts from recent British authors, including some work of my own, and as I mixed up the grave and the gay I was able to keep them mildly entertained for an hour. Some papers maintained that I could not read at all, but I think that what they really meant was that I did not act at all. Others seemed to endorse my method. Anyhow I had an excellent first reception and Pond told me that he lay smiling all night after it. He had no difficulty afterwards in booking as many engagements as he could fit into the time. I visited every town of any size between Boston in the north and Washington in the south, while Chicago and Milwaukee marked my western limit.
Sometimes I found that it took me all my time to fit in the engagements, however fast I might travel. Once, for example, I lectured at Daly’s Theatre in New York at a matinée, at Princeton College the same evening, some 50 miles away, and at Philadelphia next afternoon. It was no wonder that I got very tired—the more so as the exuberant hospitality in those pre-prohibition days was enough in itself to take the energies out of the visitor. It was all done in kindness, but it was dangerous for a man who had his work to do. I had one little break when I paid a pleasant visit to Rudyard Kipling, of which I shall speak later. Bar those few days I was going hard all the time, and it is no wonder that I was so tired out that I kept to my bunk most of the way from New York to Liverpool.
My memories are the confused ones of a weary man. I recall one amusing incident when as I bustled on to the stage at Daly’s Theatre I tripped over the wooden sill of the stage door, with the result that I came cantering down the sloping stage towards the audience, shedding books and papers on my way. There was much laughter and a general desire for an encore.
Our visit was marred by one of those waves of anti-British feeling which sweep occasionally over the States, and which emanate from their own early history, every grievance being exaggerated and inflamed by the constant hostility of Irish pressmen and politicians. It all seems very absurd and contemptible to the travelling Briton, because he is aware how entirely one-sided it is, and how welcome, for example, is the American flag in every British public display. This was not known by the home-staying American, and probably he imagined that his own country was treated as rudely by us as ours by his. The Dunraven yacht race had given additional acerbity to this chronic ill-feeling, and it was very active at the time of our visit. I remember that a banquet was given to us at a club at Detroit at which the wine flowed freely, and which ended by a speech by one of our hosts in which he bitterly attacked the British Empire. My brother and I, with one or two Canadians who were present, were naturally much affronted, but we made every allowance for the lateness of the evening. I asked leave, however, to reply to the speech, and some of those who were present have assured me that they have never forgotten what I said. In the course of my remarks I said: “You Americans have lived up to now within your own palings, and know nothing of the real world outside. But now your land is filled up, and you will be compelled to mix more with the other nations. When you do so you will find that there is only one which can at all understand your ways and your aspirations, or will have the least sympathy. That is the mother country which you are now so fond of insulting. She is an Empire, and you will soon be an Empire also, and only then will you understand each other, and you will realize that you have only one real friend in the world.” It was only two or three years later that there came the Cuban war, the episode of Manila Bay where the British Commander joined up with the Americans against the Germans, and several other incidents which proved the truth of my remarks.
A writer of average income is bound to lose pecuniarily upon a lecture tour, even in America, unless he prolongs it very much and works very hard indeed. By losing I do not mean that he is actually out of pocket, but that he could have earned far more if he had never gone outside his own study. In my own case I found after our joint expenses were paid that there was about £1,000 over. The disposal of this money furnished a curious example of the power of prayer, which, as Mr. S. S. McClure has already narrated it, I have no delicacy in telling. He tells how he was endeavouring to run his magazine, how he was down to his last farthing, how he dropped on his knees on the office floor to pray for help, and how on the same day an Englishman who was a mere acquaintance walked into the office, and said: “McClure, I believe in you and in the future of your magazine,” and put down £1,000 on the table. A critic might perhaps observe that under such circumstances to sell 1,000 shares at face value was rather hard upon the ignorant and trusting buyer. For a long time I could clearly see the workings of Providence as directed towards Sam McClure, but could not quite get their perspective as regards myself, but I am bound to admit that in the long run, after many vicissitudes, the deal was justified both ways, and I was finally able to sell my holding twenty years later at a reasonable advance. The immediate result, however, was that I returned to Davos with all my American earnings locked up, and with no actual visible result of my venture.
The Davos season was in full blast when I returned, and my wife was holding her own well. It was at this time, in the early months of 1895, that I developed ski-running in Switzerland as described in my chapter on Sport. We lingered late at Davos, so late that I was able to lay out a golf course, which was hampered in its start by the curious trick the cows had of chewing up the red flags. From Davos we finally moved to Caux, over the lake of Geneva, where for some months I worked steadily at my writing. With the autumn I visited England, leaving the ladies at Caux, and it was then that events occurred which turned our road of life to a new angle.