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THE extravagant success of Vice Versa had brought me into a new and very different world from that in which I had lived till then. I remember Mrs. Fletcher Moulton, the Lord Justice's first wife, telling me that the book was 'a key which had opened all doors to me', and though that was, of course, an over-statement, it certainly procured me the entree to a great many houses in which I could not have expected to find myself a visitor. James Payn had impressed on me the necessity of taking every opportunity of gaining experience that came in my way, and I went wherever I was asked. The difference I found between the dinner- and luncheon-parties I had formerly attended and those in which I was now a guest was in the talk I heard. The conversation was no longer a series of platitudes, but really amusing and interesting, the talk of men and women who had distinguished themselves in Literature and Art, Science and Politics, and the Theatre, and who as a rule took some trouble to be entertaining — people who, but for Vice Versa, would never have been more than names to me. At the George Smiths' house in Queen's Gate Gardens, for instance, I met and was introduced to such personages as Robert Browning, Professor Huxley, and the author of Tom Brown's Schooldays. They were all extremely kind and gracious to me, but I have nothing to record except that I had the honour of meeting them occasionally. Through Andrew Lang I made the acquaintance of W.B. Richmond and his charming wife, and for many years was a frequent guest at Beavor Lodge, their seventeenth-century house in Hammersmith. There was a delightful informality about their Saturday parties; a certain number would be asked to dinner, but at the garden-party which preceded it Richmond would add at least as many more guests, so that Mrs. Richmond never knew for how many she would have to provide. Not that that ever disturbed her equanimity; by some miracle of housekeeping, she was always equal to the occasion. The original guests dined in full kit, the rest in morning clothes or tennis flannels, and no dinner-parties could be more thoroughly enjoyable and successful. At one of them I met 'Dicky' Doyle, not long before his death, and recall him as a calm, benign-looking man with white hair and remarkably blue eyes, who said very little. The William Morrises were often at these parties, as were the Edward Poynters and Burne-Joneses, and Richmond's brother-in-law, William Fothergill Robinson, then a Chancery Q.C., afterwards Vice-Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. He and his family were to become among the closest and most valued of my friends. And there was Inglis, a younger brother of Richmond, an amiable voluble dilettante, with gifts that might have enabled him to distinguish himself in more than one profession but for his incurable indolence and the fact that he had been left a sum of money by a friend of his father's which made it unnecessary for him to work. He had indeed been called to the Bar, and for a time was in chambers with William Fothergill Robinson, who told me that a client came to see him one day, and as he was leaving, said to Inglis, 'Oh, by the way, Mr. Richmond, we're sending you a case for opinion — it's a point on a bill of exchange.' 'Rweally?' said Inglis, with his engaging lisp, 'That's verwy nice of you,' and added brightly, 'Tell me — what is a bill of exchange?' He was honestly anxious to know, but this was not likely to impress any solicitor with confidence, and I fancy Inglis was as much justified as I was in retiring early from practice. He was a brilliant scholar, and great things had been expected of him both at Charterhouse and Oxford, but somehow he had never done them, and had settled down into a pleasant good-natured gossip and connoisseur, with a wonderful talent for mimicry. Inglis would give an imitation, for instance, of an old verger showing tourists round a French cathedral which was so lifelike as to have a touch of genius, and that was only one item in his repertoire. This and other social qualities made him much in request, and he probably found his life agreeable enough as a rule, though I think there were times when he felt that it was rather a wasted one. I can see him now, a stout short figure, with a twinkle behind his single eye-glass, and a look of an omniscient jackdaw on his round face. And I see Beavor Lodge as it used to be: the postern door in the old wall by which one entered; the lawn with its trees and the big red Italian oil jars, the low-ceilinged rooms full of quaint and beautiful things, the big studio beyond with one or two of Richmond's portraits, or his big canvas of an audience in a Greek amphitheatre, his statue of a Greek shepherd, and countless designs for his mosaics in St. Paul's. And in garden, rooms, and studio a company of interesting and distinguished men and women, many of the latter remarkably beautiful. And Willie Richmond, fresh-coloured, with auburn hair and slight beard, and laughing blue eyes, vivacious and enthusiastic. And his wife, with her beautiful quietly humorous face, her hair in smooth wings over her temples, the simple rather severe dress that gave her a slightly medieval air. And the children, running about the grounds with Nelson, the handsome and gentle collie, I can see them all with my mind's eye as they were on those happy afternoons. The last time but one I saw Beavor Lodge was about five years ago; there were posters on the old brick wall and postern gate advertising it for sale, and the roof of the house had a dilapidated look, and the windows were dim and many of them broken. I found the caretaker and went in, some of the old oil jars still remained by the paths, but the garden was a ruin, and the rooms and studio I once knew so well were bare and dusty. And I realized that of all the friends I had known within those walls only four, or five at most, were still living. Considering that I was even then over seventy, I might have been prepared for this. But somehow I was not. A few months ago I turned down Beavor Lane again, and house and garden had gone, their site covered by engineering and other works. Robert Louis Stevenson was an intimate friend of Richmond's who once described to me how they sat up late in the studio telling one another gruesome stories of crime and murder, when suddenly there was a sharp rap on the French window that led to the garden, a bull's-eye lantern was flashed upon them, and a constable entered, having seen a light at a suspiciously late hour and come round to investigate, on which Richmond declared that he and Stevenson had worked themselves up into such a state of nerves by their own inventions that they both fell on their knees and assured the astonished officer that they were innocent. But Richmond's stories generally owed a great deal to his imagination. The only ghost-story, by the way, that I ever heard at first hand came from Beavor Lodge, and not from Richmond, but Lady Richmond, who was not given to romancing. They had not long taken possession of the house before Helen, the only daughter, complained to her mother that she was afraid to go to bed because of a 'lady in grey', who came into the night nursery, bent over her bed, and 'whistled through her teeth at her' — an unpleasant attention on the part of any spectre. And this apparition was often met in various parts of the house by the servants, and by Lady Richmond herself, who told me that once when she had rung for the parlour-maid to post a note she had just written, the door behind her had opened, and, thinking the maid was there, she had held out the note without looking round. It was not taken and she turned just in time to see the grey woman standing in the door-way before disappearing. I never heard that Richmond himself ever saw her, and indeed I think she only appeared to those of her own sex whom she does not seem to have alarmed particularly. But there were mysterious sounds and screams at times and at last — I do not know when, but before I knew the Richmonds — certain members of the Psychical Society succeeded in getting into communication with the Grey Lady, who, so I was told, confessed that she had murdered a child in that house. It seems that years ago it had been used by coiners and other desperate persons, but whether that had any connexion with her crime I never heard. But after that seance and confession the ghost seemed to have been laid, for she appeared no more for man years — not in fact until Richmond lay dying. Then a nurse who had arrived from the north at a very early hour in the morning told one of his sons that she had just seen a person in the garden who did not seem to have any business there — a woman in a grey dress.
Among the friends to whom James Payn showed the opening chapters of Vice Versa was the late Horace Pym, who invited me to dine at his house in Harley Street before the book actually came out. This was the beginning of another long and greatly valued friendship, and for many years I have been a frequent guest at the beautiful house which he was building near Brasted, and to which he moved in June 1885. That friendship has, I am thankful to say, been maintained since the deaths of my kind host and hostess by Horace's son by his first marriage and the only survivor of his four children — Major Evelyn Pym, whose two elder sons are now grown up; one of them is my godson, and both, I think, regard me as a friend. In 1882 Julian, the elder son by the first marriage, was about five, and Evelyn three. There was one daughter by the second marriage, and another was born later, but I think it was some years before the two boys knew that Mrs. Pym was not their own mother, so devoted was she to all four children. When I first knew Julian he was laid up in bed with what was then supposed to be merely a temporary weakness due to a fall from a carriage. He recovered for a time and ran about as usual, but with gradually increasing difficulty. Then specialists were called in and found that the cause was spinal paralysis, and he was condemned, poor boy, to lie on his back for the rest of his life. Mercifully, for the greater part of it, he hardly seemed aware of how much he had been deprived; his spirits were high, he had an active mind and a keen sense of humour, and contrived to find the liveliest interest and enjoyment in every incident of his sadly restricted life. He was always busy, playing, reading, writing, and drawing, and I never saw any sign either of complaint or boredom. When Evelyn went first to a preparatory school and then to Eton, Julian seemed to identify himself with him, and would relate with sparkling eyes how 'we' won some hurdle-race, or rowed in such and such a boat. This pathetic happiness and content with his lot lasted until he was in his twenty-first year; when he was about eight he wrote a story which he called "The Boy who fought for England," a story that without any remarkable precosity was what any clever boy of his age but full of vigour and love of adventure might have written. Poor Julian's only adventures were being carried up and down stairs, and driving slowly through the Foxwold woods, lying on his back in an invalid carriage. I illustrated his story, and got it privately printed for him, and, with Horace's help, Julian 'grangerized' it, and it was sumptuously bound and included in the Foxwold Library catalogue. After Horace Pym's death — which, mercifully for him, came in Julian's lifetime — there was an obituary paragraph on him stating that 'many will regret the kindly old Quaker, who was the author of, among other works, a novel entitled, The Boy who fought for England'. Which would have amused Horace could he have seen it, for it was a little miracle of inaccuracy. His father had been the rector of Willian in Hertfordshire; Horace Pym was not a Quaker, though connected by marriage with the Foxes and Gurneys, who had been. And a Quaker would hardly have written a book with that particular title. However, The Times published a notice of him, written with knowledge and feeling by Rudy Lehmann, who, with his father and mother, had been among his most intimate friends. Horace Pym was an ideal host; an admirable raconteur with a gift for piling up ludicrous detail which reduced his guests to helpless laughter; he had a great love for and knowledge of Literature and Art, as was shown in his collection of books and pictures. He was the chief partner in a leading firm of solicitors, and one of his clients was Lord Beaconsfield. Horace used to describe an experience of his during that great statesman's last illness; he had called at Curzon Street to inquire after him, and the portly and imposing butler who appeared replied, 'Well, sir, his lordship's not so well to-day. The wind's in the Heast. I'm not so well.' Horace was a big man, weighing about 17 stone; he was once driving in a hansom with Corney Grain, who could not have weighed less, when the springs broke, and a street boy, seeing Horace get out first and Corney Grain follow, piped out, 'No b—y wonder!' to their joint delight. To return to poor Julian. After his father's death he began to realize more and more the bitterness of the fate that denied him any share in the activities and interests that might have been his. I did not know this till near the end, and even then it was not from him. I saw him several times up to the day before he died, but though he was too exhausted to talk much, what he did say was bright and cheerful. On the morning after I said good-bye to him, with the conviction that it was for the last time, he was alone with his nurse, when she saw him lift his head with a sudden radiant smile. Then he cried joyously, 'There's Dad!'and fell back, released. I suppose there is some explanation of why so fine a character with such gifts of mind and person, such capacities for enjoying and doing, such uncomplaining courage, should have been allotted so much less than the average share of human opportunities. But this is a mystery beyond our understanding, and one can only trust that somewhere, somehow, there is abundant compensation for these seeming injustices.
Through Horace Pym I came to know the Frederick Lehmanns and their beautiful and brilliant daughter Nina, afterwards Lady Campbell. Rudy, the eldest son, I had only known at Cambridge by sight, though I had met his brothers in Pashley's rooms at Trinity. But from 1884 and onward Rudy and I were often together at week-ends at Foxwold, and in 1890 or 1891 he became one of my colleagues on the Punch staff. Even at Cambridge, Rudy had been a celebrity; a fine oarsman — he was in one of the Cambridge trial eights, and, as will be remembered, coached the Oxford University eight for two or three years — was President of the Union, and equally good at all sports, he had ended by taking a first in the Classical Tripos. Then he was called to the Bar, and practised for a time with success, besides being part-author of a Digest of Over-ruled Cases. He contested several constituencies in the Liberal interest, and was eventually returned in 1906 as Member for the Harborough Division, which he represented till 1911. He was practically the founder of The Granta — the only Undergraduate periodical which has ever had more than a brief existence, and which, after considerably more than forty years, still flourishes. Under his editorship, Barry Pain made his first appearances in print, and considerably later A.A. Milne and Canon A.C. Deane were among its contributors. Rudy, with his spare athletic frame and his gallant air was a striking figure in any company; he was physically and morally fearless, and when, as in the case of the Boer War, his own view differed from that of the majority, he was absolutely indifferent to any loss of popularity it might entail, and nothing would induce him to modify his opinions. He was quick-tempered, and inclined to be overbearing and intolerant at times, but he was always warm-hearted and generous. He and I generally found ourselves in disagreement over the discussion of the cartoon at Bouverie Street, but I think there was no ill feeling on his part, as I am sure there was none on mine. And whenever I wanted any help on sporting details for my Punch work, I always applied to Rudy, and got the promptest and fullest information. When I was writing Mr. Jabberjee's papers and Rudy was coaching the Oxford crew, he arranged for me to be on board the umpire's launch with him during one of the practices. No one could have known him as I did without feeling a great admiration and fondness for him. He was a master of light verse; no one has ever written more spiritedly of boat-racing, for instance, or with truer pathos of dogs than Rudy did, while, in prose, his humour was robust and his satire incisive. It is infinitely sad to think that so splendid and many-sided a life should have ended in several years of bodily disablement and cessation of all activity.
Some time in 1884 I met the brilliant J.K.S., the younger brother of the late Sir Herbert Stephen and son of the Judge. He had a big powerful frame and a massive head, with regular features and piercing light grey eyes; his expression was calm and almost solemn, which gave a piquancy to his frivolous outbursts. In both action and speech he had a sublime disregard for the conventions. His Lapsus Calami proved him a worthy successor to Calverley, at a time when the art of light verse in his particular vein seemed to have perished. He was the wittiest and probably one of the most eloquent speakers at the Union in his day, and I have been told by those who heard him there in the last year of his short life that even Gladstone was not more marvellously effective. Poor Jim's life was another instance of a beginning full of exceptional promise, only to end tragically in illness and premature death. He was one of a party with whom I twice rowed down from Oxford to Twickenham; we rowed 'ran-dan', i.e. with two of the oarsmen rowing and the one in the centre sculling. Thanks to George Millar's coaching on Windermere Lake I could row in quite good style, but I was not a powerful oar compared with the others. So Jim extemporized a triolet addressed 'To Guthrie, steering' which ran as follows:
It was on one of these expeditions that the conversation turned on rhymed epitaphs, and especially those in which the deceased's surname was one of the rhymes, I remarked that my own surname would be difficult to fit into a rhyme. 'Not a bit,' said Jim. 'Perfectly easy. Here you are!'
And I could desire no better inscription when the time comes to require one. There is an unpublished stanza by him on the Calvinist conceptions of Heaven and Hell which is as follows:
It was in the summer of 1887 that I had the honour of meeting Tennyson. I was in rooms at Haslemere and Mr. and Mrs. Richmond Ritchie (as they then were) were staying with me for a few days. Mrs. Ritchie was an intimate friend of the Tennysons and arranged to bring me to luncheon at Aldworth, their house on Blackdown. I do not remember that Tennyson spoke much during the meal, but as we were leaving, he said to me, 'Mr. Guthrie, I hear a dreadful report about you.' I was not alarmed, as his manner was quite genial, and asked what he had heard. 'Why,' he said, 'I'm told that you write for "Punch".' I might have reminded him that he himself had twice contributed verses to the paper, but perhaps it was as well that I did not. So I merely admitted that he had been correctly informed, and wondered privately what he would think of me when he read my next contribution — a burlesque recitation based on the Lincolnshire dialect of his 'Northern Farmer'. I do not suppose he ever read it himself, but his eldest son, Hallam, told me afterwards that he had not only read, but actually recited it at a Freshwater village concert; so I am glad to think it was not resented by the family. I was told a characteristic story of Tennyson which, so far as I know, has not appeared in print. An enthusiastic admirer of his, who was staying at Aldworth, was, to her intense delight, invited to accompany him for a walk in his old English garden. They paced the terrace together in silence; he said nothing and she was afraid to speak for fear of losing some priceless utterance. The silence remained unbroken until they had returned to their starting-point, when he remarked abruptly, 'Coals are very dear.' She received this without comment and he remained in abstraction for another tour of the terrace, when he spoke again. 'I get all my meat from London,' he said, and again she did not see her way to following up the subject. Another long silence, and then he stopped beside a clump of carnations which were obviously drooping, and she waited hopefully for a comment that she could always treasure. But all Tennyson said was: 'It's those cursed rabbits!' Which was the sum total of his conversation on that particular afternoon. It hardly needs saying, however, that with those with whom he was in sympathy, Tennyson could be as true and great a poet in his talk as he was in his writings, however prosaic he might choose to be with the profane vulgar.
It was also owing to Mrs. (afterwards Lady) Ritchie that I had the privilege of lunching with another great poet — Swinburne. I was staying with the Ritchies at Wimbledon, and went with her to lunch with him and Watts-Dunton at the Pines. Max Beerbohm has described a similar experience of his own with such charming sympathy and humour that any further attempt on my part would be futile. So I shall only record one incident connected with my visit. George Smith had just begun his splendid Dictionary of National Biography, and had presented Mrs. Richmond Ritchie with a copy of the first volume. This she had brought with her, thinking, as she explained to Watts-Dunton, that Swinburne would like to look through it. Unfortunately Watts-Dunton's hearing was very little better than Swinburne's, and he roared into the latter's ear, 'Take it, my dear Swinburne, take it! A magnificent gift!' So Swinburne took it accordingly, with so profuse a gratitude that poor Mrs. Ritchie found it impossible to confess that she had only intended a loan of the volume. Swinburne's deafness prevented him from taking much, if any, part in the conversation at luncheon, and all I can recall of him is his Shakespeare-like high domed head, and his strange sea-green eyes, as he sat opposite. Afterwards I was less fortunate than 'Max', for he did not show me his books, nor, probably divining that I was not a kindred spirit, did he say more to me than courtesy prescribed. I sometimes passed him afterwards on Wimbledon Common, a slight large-headed figure with a light quick step that was almost dancing, but I never ventured to remind him of our meeting. I felt sure that it would be futile to try to recall an impression of which he had never been conscious.
It must have been somewhere in the late eighties that I first met George Meredith. Through Walter Frith I had become acquainted with a young Russian, Andre Raffalovich, the son of a Paris banker. He was a mere boy, no more than eighteen I was told, though he may have been older, and he had just come to London well furnished with introductions and taken a ground-floor flat in Albert Hall Mansions, where he entertained lavishly, and it was at luncheon at his flat that I met George Meredith. He had an interesting and distinguished face with thick curly grey hair, and spoke in elaborate periods in a deep and booming voice; he never said anything that was not well worth hearing, and, being well aware of it, he was a little impatient of interruptions. Either on this occasion or a later one at the same table he had begun to speak when one of the party, a girl, incautiously broke in with some remark. On which Meredith observed: 'I had just launched a conversational barque for which I had ventured to anticipate a favourable voyage, and it had scarcely left port before foundering untimely — sunk by this young lady's comment. Precisely why she should have chosen to submerge it I can but conjecture. It may be that the sails or the rigging did not meet with her approval. Or possibly the Captain had — ah — a red nose. Or perhaps ——' (and here he invented a number of similar explanations before concluding with) 'But, whatever her reasons, my unfortunate vessel is — ah — irrecoverably lost.' It was quite good-humouredly said, but it was a rebuke notwithstanding, and intended to be one. Years afterwards I met Meredith at a dinner-party, where for once he was talked down. This was by Frank Harris, who was then, I think, editing the Fortnightly, and who was as noted a conversationalist and had quite as booming a voice as Meredith himself. Meredith began to lead as usual, but was never permitted to finish. Frank Harris interrupted by disagreeing with him, and expounded his own views with vigour and eloquence. For a time George Meredith seemed a little restive under what must have been, for him, an unprecedented experience, but gradually he became spellbound by Harris's undoubted power, and ended by evidently admiring his antagonist. When we went up to the drawing-room, Frank Harris somehow mesmerized us into sitting in a circle round him, while he told us two of the stories he was writing for the Fortnightly — very good stories they were, too, on Bret Harteian lines; and no one seemed more impressed by them than George Meredith. I shall always regret that I had an opportunity of seeing and hearing George Meredith again not long before his death — and lost it by my own lack of courage. His son Will had arranged to meet me at a station on the Dorking line and bicycle to Box Hill, where we were to have tea with his father at his cottage. Somehow I got to Dorking without having seen Will, and so, hoping he had gone on before me, I cycled to Box Hill, and climbed the hill to the cottage. When I got there I found that he had not arrived. Through an open window I could hear the maid trying to explain to George Meredith, who had grown rather deaf, and evidently resented being disturbed, that I had come to see him. And then I heard 'Guthrie? Guthrie? Never heard of him! Ask him what he wants to see me about!' and realized that he had either never been told of Will's arrangement, or had forgotten it. Without Will to account for me I did not feel equal to facing George Meredith just then, explaining the situation, and obliging him to entertain an unwelcome guest, so I told the maid that I would not disturb him, and went away. Will arrived later, but unfortunately after my departure. If I could have been sure that he would be there at all, I should have risked a rather formidable quarter of an hour, and I wish I had. But in the circumstances I don't know that I could very well have acted otherwise than I did. To carry off that interview successfully would have required an assurance and a charm of manner which I was conscious that I did not possess. I regret it the more because there are few of his books that I have not read many times, and always with increased admiration for so great and original a genius as George Meredith. Meredith had no very high opinion of the Drama of his day, or of those who represented it on the stage; I remember his concluding a satirical description of an imaginary modern comedy with the words: 'And when the play comes to an end and the final curtain has fallen, we haste to congratulate the performers on — ah — having finished.'
In 1890 H.M. Stanley stood as Conservative candidate for North Lambeth. He had married the beautiful and gifted Miss Dorothy Tennant, and as I was already a friend of hers, and of her mother and sister, Mrs. Frederick Myers, I found myself enrolled as one of his canvassers, and frequently met him at dinner at Mrs. Tennant's house in Richmond Terrace. I remember him at those dinners as a silent and rather grim figure, with thick grey hair, a livid brown complexion, and the eyes of a caged lion. At his meetings he was a forcible but by no means an ingratiating speaker, and I had an impression that he was intensely bored by the whole business, and cared very little whether he won or lost the election. But I heard him give a vivid and picturesque account of life in the African forests once when addressing the workmen at Price's Candle Factory, and they listened with evident interest. Other meetings were less orderly, for reports had been circulated by the opposition suggesting — of course quite untruly — that Stanley's expeditions had been characterized by cruelty. This, of course, had its effect on many of his hearers, but a great deal of the hostility was carefully organized; after one meeting the Stanleys and I made a rush for their brougham between a lane of hired prize fighters, who kept off the crowd until we were safely inside, when we drove off, minus one of the carriage doors. Another meeting is memorable for me because one of the speakers, a young Irishman who had been a lieutenant of Stanley's in Africa, made the very finest bull I have ever heard, surpassing even Sammy's efforts. 'Gentlemen,' he said, 'if this measure' (I forget what it was — probably the Home Rule Bill), 'if this measure is passed, it will throw down an apple of Discord which will burst into foire and flood the entire counthry!' But none of his hearers seemed to think what an unusual kind of apple this would be. I found canvassing quite amusing, though I did not consider it useful, except as a means of discovering what voters could be counted on as being in our favour. There did not appear to be many of these, but I found that the chief point was to listen to whatever a voter might have to say. And sometimes, after revealing himself as an ardent Radical, he would say, "Oo did you say your man was? Stanley, eh? Well, I dunno as I mayn't give 'im a turn this time.' But I never thought it likely that he would. On the day of the election I looked up a little Italian confectioner in the Waterloo Road who had promised me to vote for Stanley and found he had not done so yet; he said he couldn't as it was raining. So I took him to the polling station under my umbrella, and his vote was, I believe, the only one Stanley owed to my personal effort. I was one of the tellers in the counting of votes, and for some time I thought we were doing very well. Then an enthusiastic supporter of Stanley's — a pompous person with a high sandy crest, who struck me as the living image of Mr. Pumblechook — leaned over my shoulder and whispered, 'Prepare your mind for a defeat.' And a defeat it was — Coldwell, the Radical candidate, being returned by a considerable majority. I drove back to Richmond Terrace with Stanley, and if he made any allusion to the election at all, I have forgotten what it was. But I remember that Hawke, his man, opened the front door, and that Stanley's remark to him was: 'Hawke, you're beaten.' Which I thought an oddly detached way of announcing his defeat. Whether Stanley was detached or not, he came forward at the next election and was successful. I do not think that he took any great part in the debates, or that he was particularly successful as a speaker. But, of course, a parliamentary reputation has to be gained in the House itself, which pays little regard to achievements outside its precincts.
Henry James, when I first knew him, wore a neat brown beard and had a striking resemblance to King Edward VII when Prince of Wales. In later years he was clean-shaven, which completely transformed him into the likeness of a particularly subtle abbe. In conversation he was meticulously (no other adverb is so appropriate) careful to convey his precise meaning, so that his remarks became a sort of Chinese nest of parentheses; it took him some time to arrive at his point but he always reached it, and it was always well worth waiting for. On occasions, however, he would be not only accurate but concise. I met him at a dinner-party once, shortly before the production of a play of his, and his hostess asked him if he did not find rehearsals a great strain. To which he replied: 'I have been sipping the — er — cup of Detachment.' No phrase could be a more perfect description of the state of mind to which most dramatists find themselves reduced at a certain stage of rehearsals. It may have been — though I am not sure that it was — from that same dinner-party in Kensington that he and I were walking back together when, as we came near De Vere Gardens, where he lived, a newsboy approached, croaking out some evil tidings, and bearing a contents sheet with 'Famous Actor Murdered' on it. We bought a paper, and were shocked to find that the handsome and popular Terriss had been stabbed to death that evening at the stage door of the Adelphi Theatre. Henry James never wrote a play that had any great success on the stage; he had great gifts, but the sense of the theatre was not one of them. The minute analysis of impressions and motives which distinguishes his novels could hardly be conveyed in dialogue, and though he condensed his dialogue to a form which he probably considered an inartistic compromise, it always remained more literary than dramatic. 'Every dramatist, my dear Guthrie,' I remember his saying to me, 'and by "dramatist" I mean a writer who seriously attempts that most difficult and elusive art of expressing his impressions of life in a dramatic form — be that form Tragedy, Comedy, Melodrama, or what you will — every dramatist, then, as he sits at his desk to evolve his conceptions, must first visualize, or have before his mental eye, the proscenium of a theatre. And above that proscenium an immense clock, its hands indicating the hour of eight-thirty. Those hands will move inexorably on, till they reach eleven, and that deplorably insufficient space of time is all that is allowed him in which to make the actions and motives, however intricate, of his dramatis personae intelligible to an audience which he dare not count upon as possessing more than the average degree of intelligence. In that busy period of two hours and a half — and even there I am considerably overstating it in omitting to deduct the time occupied by the two intervals, which may represent anything from twenty to thirty minutes — within two hours, then, he must present and solve the problem he has set himself, or he is doomed.' When The Man from Blankley's was in rehearsal, he asked me to tell him what the play was about; I did, and his comment was: 'A most interesting problem,' which I'm afraid was not at all the light in which I had regarded it myself, though I suppose there is a sense in which any play may be considered as a problem to be worked out to a satisfactory solution. It was certainly Henry James's view. I was one of the audience at the first night of his Guy Domville at the St. James's — a very terrible first night indeed. It was a costume play; the period early Georgian; George Alexander played the name-part and was extremely well supported, while the stage sets designed by Edwin Abbey were charming. For a time all seemed to be going well, the dialogue, being Henry James's, was exquisitely phrased, and the house listened to it attentively. But before the first act was over it was clear that the play was not gripping the audience; the coughs which are so infallible a sign of it grew more and more frequent. However, the house was full of his friends and admirers, and the applause at the end of the act was loud enough, though it came chiefly from the stalls and dress circle. The second act went fairly well, until the entrance of one of the female characters in an extraordinary head-dress like a gigantic fur muff. It had, I believe, been copied from a contemporary print, and was strictly of the period, but unfortunately it gave the gallery the excuse they had been waiting for, and from that moment the fate of the play was sealed. At the second curtain the applause from the lower parts of the house irritated the gallery into counter demonstrations, and throughout the third act they constantly interrupted the performers by laughter and jeers. George Alexander, though quite unused to such a reception, kept his nerve admirably, and so did his company, but when the final curtain fell there was an exhibition of brutality by some of the audience which I have never before or since seen equalled in any theatre. Loud calls for 'Author' came from every part of the house, and when Henry James appeared, evidently hoping that by some miracle the play was saved, the applause was drowned by merciless booing and hissing from the gallery, which had a visibly withering effect on him. The rest of us did our best, but no amount of clapping could prevail over those venomous boos, and Henry James retired, deadly pale but dignified, fully aware that his play had failed. I cannot say that I thought it a good play; the conduct of the hero in the last act in resigning the woman he loved, and who he knew loved him, to his rival and best friend, whom she did not love at all, and performing this self-sacrifice in her presence, would have wrecked any piece. But, even apart from the fact that it was the work of so distinguished a man, it had a literary grace which entitled it at least to respect and courtesy. If Henry James was not intended for a dramatist, some of his work has provided the material for a successful drama, as was proved by the production of that most striking and effective play Berkeley Square, which I wish he could have lived long enough to see. As a novelist his fame is secure enough, and even if some of his longer fictions are less read nowadays, the author of such short stories as "Daisy Miller" and "The Turn of the Screw" is in no danger of being forgotten.
I knew Rhoda Broughton for a great many years, and often lunched with her at her house on Richmond Hill, and subsequently at the various Chelsea flats which she took when she came up from the country for a few weeks in London. It seems strange to me, as a lifelong admirer of her work, that it should apparently be so little remembered nowadays; she had the rare gift of making her stories real and vivid; she knew how to draw girls with a charm that made their worst faults of temper pardonable, she had an unerring eye for all the fashions and follies of her day, and a light and humorous touch in dealing with them which she never lost. Joan and A Beginner, for instance, are both books which, in my opinion at least, entitle her to rank with Jane Austen as a satirist and observer. Both novels, I suppose, are little known to the present generation of readers, but I believe that, sooner or later, they will be rediscovered, and that then it will be found wonderful that so racy and humorous a writer could ever have been forgotten. Authors, however, have their fates — often undeserved — and once submerged in the waters of oblivion are not easily restored to animation. Rhoda Broughton was a good and sympathetic friend, but as pungent in her talk as in her writings, and it was dangerous to be guilty of any affectation in her company. I sat opposite to her at a dinner-party once and heard her neighbour — a middle-aged man who considered himself, for no very obvious reasons, irresistible to women — say to her: 'I should like you to know my boy — he's much nicer than I am!' To which she replied: 'Would you like me to say that that's impossible — or that I can quite believe it? Because I'll say either.'
I met Russell Lowell — then the American Ambassador — at Whitby in 1883. He was a friend of the du Mauriers, and often took part in our expeditions up the Esk or over the Moors. I have a vivid recollection of him at a picnic at Cock Mill, in a grey top-hat and frock-coat, dancing 'the Lancers' with dignified accuracy on the lawn by the creek. The only humorous remark of his that I can remember was, I am afraid, scarcely worthy of him. We were passing some big steam-cranes, which inspired the comment: 'The Cranes of Ibycus!' But every humorist is liable to make jokes like that in unguarded moments. He was pleasant, scholarly, and courtly mannered, and popular in Society. England has always been fortunate in the matter of American ambassadors, and Lowell was as distinguished a representative of his country as any of them.
When I was a boy at Grimstone's I first made the acquaintance of "The Jumping Frog," which gave me an unbounded admiration for Mark Twain. I was at King's College School, and had read everything of his that had yet appeared, when he came over to England for the first time and gave a lecture on 'The Sandwich Islands', which, to our intense delight, my brother Leonard and I were taken to hear. We both found the lecture disappointing; it was difficult, for us at least, to know when Mark Twain was intending to be humorous or merely instructive, any burlesque exaggeration in his statements was lost on us, and two stories that he told we had read before in his books. We liked his description of the female costume, 'the women wear — well, the women wear just a smile', and a remark about the native dogs whose chief beauty was their luxuriant tails, 'A friend of mine said that if he had one of those dogs, he should keep the tail, and throw the balance of the dog away!' But on the whole we were distinctly bored. Some years afterwards I read The Mississippi Pilot, Tom Sawyer, and that masterpiece Huckleberry Finn, but that I should ever meet and speak to Mark Twain seemed beyond all reasonable probability in those days. However, I did meet him on two occasions. The first was at a party at Mrs. Tennant's house in Richmond Terrace, when he told negro ghost stories in the Southern dialect, and acted them with a weird effectiveness that showed what a success he might have had on the stage. He spoke with a slow drawl and pronounced accent. The second occasion, which I have described elsewhere, was many years afterwards, when he dined at the Punch table as the guest of the proprietors, the staff being invited to meet him. There is a story of him which, if it has appeared in print at all, has not done so for a great many years, and which I shall therefore risk repeating. He was travelling on a very slow train in the States, and after repeated stoppages called for the conductor: 'Conductor,' he said, 'I should like to suggest that you unhitch the cow-catcher from the front of the locomotive, and fasten it on to the rear car. Because', he explained, 'it appears to me very unlikely that this train is going to overtake any cow. But I do see a serious danger that a cow may stroll after this train, jump into the rear car, and bite some of the passengers.'
I met Rudyard Kipling first at dinner at his uncle's and aunt's (Mr. and Mrs. Edward Poynter's) house at Albert Gate, I think somewhere in the late eighties. I had known and admired his Indian stories almost from the time they appeared, as some of them had been lent to me by a friend of his and mine. He was a vivacious and amusing talker, and I still remember his description that evening of his trials as an editor in India when 'making up' his paper with native compositors. We became friends; he came to my rooms once or twice, and we went for walks together occasionally. On one of them he told me the outline of a story he was writing — it was the priceless one of the medical man and the drunken navvy on the platform of a country railway station on a Sunday afternoon in summer, and I am sure he found me an appreciative listener. On another he was very anxious that I should write a story on a subject he suggested — a 'monkey-puzzler' tree, its owners wondering whether it really would puzzle a monkey to climb it, an organ-grinder appearing with a monkey, the experiment made with catastrophic results. I, however, protested that he would treat the idea infinitely better himself — which I am glad to say he did. Later I was asked to dine — I think again at Albert Gate — to meet him and his fiancee, Miss Balestier, and that was the last time I ever had any talk with him. But in 1900 he wrote me an extraordinary kind and generous letter about 'The Brass Bottle', then running as a serial in the pages of the Strand Magazine. I saw him and his wife at Lady Poynter's funeral, but it did not seem a time to remind him of our old acquaintance, especially as he showed no sign of recognition, and we parted without speaking, greatly to my own regret.
I first read Erewhon in a boat on the backs while I was up at Cambridge, and it made a deep impression on me, for until then, although I was anything but religiously minded, it had never occurred to me to question the orthodox creed. But I was not fated to meet the author of Erewhon till near the end of his life, and when I did, the meeting can hardly be called successful — either from Butler's point of view or my own. It was at a dinner-party; the ladies had just left, and my host brought me to where Butler sat and introduced us. All Butler said was: 'I was in the midst of a most interesting discussion with my neighbour here.' And naturally all I could do was to beg that I might not interrupt that discussion. Which I certainly did not, for it was continued without any effort to include me in it, and as it quite probably concerned the authorship of the Odyssey, I was more than content to stay out. Apparently Butler had not caught my name, for he wrote to our hostess the next day, expressing his regret that he had had no talk with me, as he knew and liked Vice Versa. I was sorry, too, though of course I had quite understood that he could not be expected to welcome my inopportune presence in the circumstances. The unfortunate thing was that I lost my only opportunity of a conversation with Samuel Butler.
Tall and burly, with blunt features, rather small but honest and kindly eyes, and a reddish pointed beard, Bram Stoker would probably not have impressed a first acquaintance as possessing any marked degree of diplomacy. And yet he had more than the average amount or he could not have acted as Henry Irving's business manager for many years with unvarying skill and success. Nor did his genial rather boyish face suggest the slightest taste for the macabre, but he was the author of Dracula, perhaps the most blood-curdling story in the English language. I've no doubt he thoroughly enjoyed writing it, for he had a pretty taste in vampires. Once when we were walking home from a party together late at night, he said, in the soft Irish accent I cannot attempt to suggest: 'I've an idea for another story. It would open like this: A celebrated Harley Street doctor in his consulting-room, a patient shown in. The patient is a cadaverous-looking man, and evidently is very anxious about his health. For some time he cannot bring himself to speak out, but at last he tells the doctor, who of course is bound by his profession to secrecy, what is troubling him. 'He is a vampire, and has just discovered that his latest victim is in a galloping consumption. So naturally he 's in terror lest his own health may be affected. Now don't you think that's a strong situation, eh?' It was such a strong situation that I laughed long and loud, until he joined in, and between us I'm afraid we must have awakened many a sleeper in that quiet Chelsea street. I remember two of Bram's stories of his Irish experiences which he told inimitably. One was of how, when he had undertaken to carve at supper during a dance, one of the maids came up and said, 'If ye plase, Sorr, will ye cot me a slice of beef for the pianner.' The other was of a visit to a country-house where the large staff of servants begged unblushingly for tips at parting, from the butler down to the page, who said pathetically, 'Ah, spare a copper or two for the pore bottons!' Bram wrote other books, but Dracula was by far the most popular of them. It still sells, after going through countless editions, and I am glad to say that highly realistic stage and film versions of it have brought a small fortune to his widow. I only wish he could have lived to see it on the screen, for I gather that, unlike most of such adaptations, it did full justice to its original.
I suppose that there are not many alive now who remember Hamilton Aide even by name, but from the seventies till the end of the nineteenth century he was among the celebrities of his day. He had once, as I think du Maurier told me, held a commission in one of the Guards regiments, but had left the Army while still a young man, and ever since had devoted himself to Art, Music, and Literature, in two at least of which he had obtained distinction. As a water-colour painter, although he continued to sketch until the end of his life, I should not say that he ever rose much above the amateur level, but he wrote one or two novels which were popular, a comedy A Nine Days' Wonder, which had a successful run at, I think, the old Court Theatre, and, quite in his later years, he adapted from the French a farce Dr. Bill, which George Alexander produced and appeared in with equal success at the St. James's. Aide was also popular as a composer. Years before I met him I heard in some one's rooms at Trinity a song called 'Remember or Forget', the words and music of which were so charming that I asked who had composed them, and both were Aide's. When I first made his acquaintance he must have been about sixty, although he always looked considerably younger than his actual age, for he never lost any of his abundant and ambrosial locks, or changed perceptibly in other ways to the end of his long life. He was slightly below the average height, neat in figure, and always perfectly turned out; he knew everybody and went everywhere, and his musical parties in his Hanover Square flat were always crowded in the Season. But when he was not travelling or visiting on the Continent he spent most of his later years in his delightful home at Ascot, in which I recall spending many pleasant and interesting week-ends; in one of them the house-party included the Beerbohm Trees. Tree had just received the script of A Woman of No Importance from Wilde, and read it to us in the drawing-room after dinner. He read it well, as he naturally would, and was distinctly put out when at the conclusion of the second act, a lady remarked, 'And is that the end of the play?' But, to tell the truth, neither I nor Aide thought the play would be as successful as it proved to be, and even when I saw it on the stage I could not consider it a masterpiece, as in a very different way The Importance of being Earnest undoubtedly is. I think that to the end of his life Aide retained dramatic ambitions and, though I have no positive knowledge of the facts, had submitted more than one play to managers. If so, he probably found, as all ageing dramatists must find, that the technique which had once pleased the public had lost its vogue, and that he had fallen out of touch with the times. However that may have been, his intimate friend, Miss Harriet Young, the musician, who was with him at the end, told me that in his delirium he evidently imagined that he was conducting a rehearsal of a comedy in which — unlike rehearsals in general — all was going smoothly, and he was perfectly happy. It was well that Death itself should come kindly to him, who in his long and happy life had done so many kindnesses. There was a very beautiful memorial service for him at St. Paul's, Wilton Place, with exquisite music and singing, and as I sat in the church I could not help thinking how pleased he would be with the perfection with which this his last party of all was being conducted.
In July 1905 I met Henry Irving twice, the first time was at dinner at the Bernard Partridges' beautiful Georgian house in Church Street, Chelsea. The Burnands, Plowden the magistrate, and Mrs. Rhodes an American lady, were the other guests. Irving had become a little bent and his long hair was very grey, his calm scholarly face more worn than when I had last met him off the stage, but it had the same clear ivory pallor, and his general appearance had the distinction with a shade of something strange and aloof which had always made him unmistakable wherever he happened to be. At dinner there was some mention of a man we all knew who had acquired a building plot from a highly exclusive colony on the east coast and had lately to the intense disgust of his friends there sold his plot to an outsider. 'Ah,' commented Irving, with the intonation of one of his sinister speeches in The Bells, 'our friend Blank was always — a — fond of — h'm — ah — making a bit, eh?' Then he told us of a bailie he had met in Glasgow who enlarged to him on the number of cases in his court that were due to 'drenk'. 'It's the whusky that does it,' he groaned, 'it's a' the whusky. Why, there's a friend of mine who's made nae less than L120,000 by whusky alone. Aye,' he concluded, 'if I had to begin all over again, I'd be a disteller. There's naething like whusky!' Irving gave this with a grim enjoyment. Next he related how he had unwittingly received a bad half-crown in his change and handed it to a cabman for his fare and how the man, who must have been singularly unobservant, promptly gave him into custody for attempting to pass false coin. Irving gave a long and dramatic account of his being taken to a police station and protesting that he was due at the theatre. The superintendent said, 'Well ——' (a long pause) 'you can't — ah — go away.' I said to him, 'May I write a note?' 'We can't allow you any paper,' he said. 'Then,' continued Irving, 'I took a loose piece of paper from my pocket and wrote' (here he went through the action of writing) 'a letter to Sir George Henry' (who was the Head of the Police at that time). 'The effect was — ah — instantaneous, they overwhelmed me with apologies and the cabman — ah — drove me on to the Lyceum.' In the drawing-room afterwards he gave us an account of a certain charity matinee of King Rene's Daughter at the Lyceum,which was got up by Sir Theodore and Lady Martin and Miss Geraldine Jewsbury, and how on the morning of the production they had turned up with an enormous box containing bunches of grapes, which they proceeded to nail up on various parts of the scenery (and here Irving unexpectedly roused himself, got out of his chair, and went through a pantomime of using hammer and nails on the drawing-room walls). 'And this,' he concluded, coming back and sinking into his chair, 'this was the man who in the Quarterly Review was complaining of me — of Me, mark you, for over-elaboration!' This took some time in telling; during most of it he lay back in a low arm-chair with his chin resting on his shirt front, now and then nothing could be heard but occasional scraps such as 'Ah,' I said, 'H'm? Dear me!', 'Indeed?' and there would be moments when the story seemed lost. But all the time he was really working up to his climax which when it came was most effective. He also told us how he had once been offered the Lyceum Theatre for L120,000, but being advised by the proprietor of a leading daily not to give more than L80,000 for it had lost the opportunity. 'And', he concluded, 'the site alone is worth double the money now!' He stayed late, smoking cigar after cigar, and holding us all by his extraordinary magnetic personality whether he talked or was silent. Two days later I met him again at luncheon at the Henry Lucys'. Charles Wyndham was one of the party and told a story of a nouveau riche describing how he came to choose his wife. 'I couldn't make up my mind whether it was to be Louisa or her sister Maria,' he said. 'And all of a sudden I come on a picture — a religious subject it was — and under it was "'Ave Maria", which I took to be a sign.' At the end Irving leant across the table and said to Wyndham with judicial approval, 'That story 's all right.' Irving was particularly kind and gracious to me that afternoon as I said good-bye at his brougham door and I saw him drive off, little knowing that I had seen him for the last time. Within three months, on October l3th, 1905, Henry Irving when appearing as Becket at the Bradford Theatre was seized with syncope just after uttering Becket's dying words 'Into thy hands, O Lord, into thy hands', and though he lived for an hour or so longer he never spoke again. So fine and well-graced an actor could not have wished for a worthier way of quitting the stage, and Henry Irving's death was the noble climax to a splendid career. Until very recently the greatest actor's fame could not long survive him and soon became a mere tradition, and in Irving's day there were no talking films to show generations that never saw him what he was at his best. To attempt to do so in words is probably quite hopeless. But no other actor I have ever seen had his power of holding and fascinating an audience. And this in spite of mannerisms that would have been fatal to most actors; he pronounced his vowels in a manner peculiar to himself, he was often unintelligible and occasionally almost inaudible; he walked with a slight drag in one leg. His personality — the face with its ivory pallor, the keen narrow eyes under the heavy eyebrows, the clearcut slightly aquiline nose, and thin sardonic lips — was unmistakable in any character, but that never destroyed the illusion. He became that character without ceasing to be Henry Irving. And his range was wide. As Charles the First he could by the kingliness of his bearing and the distinction and beauty of his appearance excite passionate sympathy in a very indifferent play, and a more princely or more intensely interesting Hamlet than his was I have never seen nor can hardly imagine. Then in such parts as Mephistopheles, or Dubosc in The Lyons Mail, he became the very embodiment of evil, while as Mathias in The Bells he gave a representation of a murderer suddenly haunted by the recollection of a crime he had almost forgotten, which was absolutely terrifying. And all these three plays were poor enough in themselves — it was Irving's genius that gave them their life and magic. As Sergeant Brewster in the late Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's excellent one-act play Waterloo, Irving perhaps for the only time was unrecognizable; nothing could have been truer or more moving than his dying Peninsular veteran. Off the stage Irving preserved his unique distinction; he was always calm and self-possessed, with a touch of irony or satire in his manner at times; it was impossible to imagine him as being ever at a loss or appearing in the least degree ridiculous; there was something regal about him and also a mysterious aloofness at times which seemed to set him above his fellows. His elder son, Harry, closely resembled him in appearance and was an excellent actor especially in parts that his father had created, but he never dominated and thrilled his audiences quite so masterfully and completely as did Henry Irving, whose magnetism was too personal to be transmitted.
I only once met the late Miss Isadora Duncan, and that was at the very beginning of her career. It was at an evening party at the Holman Hunts' charming old house at Fulham. Whether she was a guest or came there professionally, I don't know, but she performed several dances that evening. I remember her prefacing one of them by announcing: 'The next dance is intended to represent the remorse of the boar after slaying Adonis', which I thought rather an ambitious undertaking, and it did not seem to me that her rendering of a remorseful boar was particularly realistic, graceful as it undoubtedly was. I was introduced to her afterwards, and my recollection of her is that of a slight and rather prim girl, with a touch of the typical American 'school marm'. She told us how she based her dancing on a careful study of the Greek vases at the British Museum, and before she left she offered to come early some morning and dance bare-footed on the lawn for Holman Hunt's sole benefit — a proposal which he gently discountenanced. There was nothing in the Isadora Duncan of that period to indicate the brilliant temperamental artist who was to lead so adventurous and so unhappy a life. |
WORKS BY F. ANSTEY (1)
(1) This list has been compiled, with
acknowledgements, from the privately printed
Bibliography of the Works of F. Anstey, by
Martin John Turner, London, 1931.
Vice Versa, or A Lesson to Fathers, 1882.
The Giant's Robe, 1884.
The Black Poodle and Other Tales, 1884.
The Tinted Venus, 1885. (Illustrated edition, 1897.)
A Fallen Idol, 1886.
Burglar Bill and Other Pieces, For the Use of the Young
Reciter, 1888. (Enlarged edition, with title Mr. Punch's
Young Reciter, 1892.)
The Pariah, 1889.
Voces Populi, First Series, 1890.
Voces Populi, Second Series, 1892.
Tourmalin's Time Cheques, 1891. (Reissued as The Time
Bargain, or Tourmalin's Cheque Book, 1905.)
The Talking Horse and Other Tales, 1892.
Mr. Punch's Model Music-hall Songs and Dramas, 1892.
The Travelling Companions, 1892.
Mr. Punch's Pocket Ibsen, 1893. (Enlarged edition, with
title The Pocket Ibsen, 1895.)
The Man from Blankley's and Other Sketches, 1893.
Under the Rose, 1894.
Lyre and Lancet, 1895.
The Statement of Stella Maberly, 1896.
Baboo Jaberjee, B.A., 1897.
Puppets at Large, 1897.
Paleface and Redskin, 1898. (Reprints of selected stories
from The Black Poodle and The Talking Horse.)
Love among the Lions, 1898.
The Brass Bottle, 1900.
A Bayard from Bengal, 1902.
Only Toys, 1903.
Salted Almonds, 1906.
Winnie, an Everyday Story. (In In a Good Cause, 1909.)
Percy and Others, 1915.
In Brief Authority, 1915.
The Last Load, 1925.
Humour and Fantasy, 1931. (Reprints of Vice Versa, The
Tinted Venus, A Fallen Idol, The Talking Horse, Salted
Almonds, The Brass Bottle.)
A Long Retrospect, 1936.
PLAYS
The Man from Blankley's (produced in 1901), 1927.
The Brass Bottle (produced in 1909), 1911.
Vice Versa, 1910.
A Statue at Large, 1911 (MS.).
Love among the Lions, 1911 (MS.).
ADAPTATIONS OF MOLIERE
The Would-be Gentleman, 1926.
The Imaginary Invalid, 1929.
Four Moliere Comedies (The Miser, A Doctor Perforce,
The Learned Ladies, The Misanthrope), 1931.
Three Moliere Plays (Tartufe, Scapin the Trickster, The
School for Wives), 1933.
|
(End.)