Part 4

When I was a struggling country actor in Liverpool, so far back as 1864, I made the acquaintance of a struggling barrister on the {62} Northern Circuit. His name was Charles Russell, and he, too, became Lord Chief Justice of England. I enjoyed his friendship until his death. His personality was both dominating and downright. You could not be in a room with him and not be conscious of his presence. No man more firmly said what he meant and meant what he said, while his Irish tongue was ever ready with the apt bright answer, as, for instance, when, asked the severest sentence for bigamy, he answered: "Two mothers-in-law!" He was a relentless cross-examiner, and though sometimes a sharp antagonist was always a friend. There was no littleness about him, and he had no use for a fool.

[Sidenote: Russell, L. C. J.]

When I started my hospital "readings," I made a point of avoiding any suggestion of "creed," and arranged two recitals on behalf of Jewish and Roman Catholic institutions: at the former the Chief Rabbi presided, at the latter Cardinal Vaughan promised to do so, but was prevented by sudden illness: his place was taken by the Lord Chief Justice. Soon afterwards I was asked to serve a cause which was pronouncedly Protestant. In talking over who was to be invited to preside, I found the committee very desirous that Lord Russell should be approached. I pointed out that he, being a fervent Roman Catholic, {63} could hardly be expected to comply, adding that he had only quite recently presided at a "reading" of the same story which I had given for the benefit of Catholics. The committee, however, said they could but be refused, and made their request. Lord Russell replied that I had gone out of my way to help a charity of his Faith, and that he would gladly do the same for me. The generous speech he made on the occasion was a warm tribute to the Reverend William Rogers--known widely as "Hang Theology Rogers." I cherish the remembrance of many acts of kindness shown to me and mine by Lord Russell of Killowen, but not one of them touched me more than that I have just related.

He was an ardent playgoer, with an intimate knowledge of Shakespeare, and rarely missed first nights, or when a play of one of his many friends was produced. He loved a game--of cards or otherwise--and I have seen him at Monte Carlo writhe because his exalted position robbed him of the pleasure of a "flutter" at _trente-et-quarante_. He was a real sportsman and a member of the Jockey Club.

I was greatly struck by a tribute the Lord Chief paid to an old guest, a host and true friend of mine for many years, the late Sir George Lewis. It was at the close of the {64} Parnell trial, when he spoke to this effect: "The most remarkable attribute in George Lewis is not his great knowledge of the law, not his unrivalled skill in conducting difficult cases, not his wonderful tact, not his genius for compromise. They are all beaten by his courage."

At a banquet given to Irving on his return from one of his tours in the United States, I was seated next to Lord Russell, who, half-way through the dinner, suddenly said to me: "I have to propose Irving's health. What shall I say?" I replied that no one could answer the question so well as himself. However, the Chief persisted, with that well-remembered, imperious manner of his, "Come, come, my friend, you must have done it often: tell me what I am to say." I recalled an occasion when I had proposed Irving's health, and said that I spoke of him as possessing "the strength of a man, the sweetness of a woman, and the simplicity of a child." Lord Russell turned to me with the question, "How about the wisdom of a serpent? I could not have left that out."

[Sidenote: Alverstone, L. C. J.]

Lord Alverstone, so long known as "Dick" Webster, who succeeded Russell, was Attorney-General, Master of the Rolls, and Lord Chief Justice, all in the same year. It was as Attorney-General that Webster dined with {65} me, and I paid a pleasant visit in his company to the Isle of Wight (which he represented in the House of Commons) to do him a small service.

I have always understood that he was a great worker: one of the gang, like Francis Jeune and Rufus Isaacs, who could light a fire and brew tea at any ghastly hour a.m.

Soon after he became Lord Chief, Alverstone presided at the Annual Dinner of the Actors' Benevolent Fund. He made an eloquent appeal on its behalf and generously headed the list of subscriptions. This was not the only instance of the real interest he took in the drama, being of great service when the old Covent Garden Theatre Fund came to an end.

He was no mean athlete, and fond of all sports; also a capital singer--a conspicuous figure for many years in the choir of the church in the Kensington High Street.

I have had the privilege to know, but not to act as their host, all the eminent lawyers who have held the office of Lord Chief Justice of England since the Cockburn days: Coleridge, Reading, Trevethin and Hewart.

The late Lord Esher, Master of the Rolls, my wife and I had the pleasure to know well and to delight in his friendship and hospitality. My acquaintance began when the Courts were {66} held in Westminster Hall, and I was foreman of a jury before "Mr. Justice Brett," in an interesting case, but troublesome to me, as it kept me from important rehearsals.

In a New Year letter to my wife he addressed her as:

"DEAR FRIEND,--You are a very perplexing person to write to. If I say 'Dear old friend' it won't do in every sense: because, although you are an old friend, you are in looks and ways a young woman. If I say 'Dear little friend,' it is a term of endearment--but you are a very great person. However, I begin by wishing you both a very happy year. If it is as prosperous as your goodness deserves I can wish you in that respect no more. I cannot tell you how I chafed under not being able to see you in _Money_; but in the mornings I was in Court, and in the evenings did not venture out! Vile old age!! Lady Esher went to see you, and told me she had never seen anything more charming than you. With that I stop. My love to you both. Believe me always a very true admirer and very truly yours."

Of all the judges I have known I think the imposing presence of Lord Hannen on the Bench was second to none. His dignity appealed to me enormously when, through the kindness {67} of the Bar, I attended some of the sittings of the Parnell Commission. I remember my wife saying to him at our table, when he was President of the Divorce Court, that he seemed to her to pass too much of his life in separating united couples. His answer was that he passed much more of it in wondering why the couples had ever wished to be joined together.

[Sidenote: James of Hereford]

I never knew much of Lord James of Hereford, but saw a good deal in early days of Mr. Henry James, a successful self-made barrister who had just taken silk, and was on the way to the great position he reached.

He was one of a little coterie which included Lord Anglesey, ("P."), Millais, Merewether, Q.C., Hare, "Willie" Mathews, one or two others, and myself, who played, with great zest, an old-fashioned card game--four-handed cribbage.

James was made Attorney-General, refused the Lord Chancellorship, and became a Peer.

I remember his once saying: "Fame has no Present; Popularity no Future."

One of our early legal friends was Baron Huddleston. When we first met he was known as "the buck of the Bar," and always pleaded as Counsel in black kid gloves. We owed to him and "Lady 'Di'" many happy visits in {68} delightful company to the Grange at Ascot. He had his vanities, and gloried in being written and spoken of as "The Last of the Barons."

I was dining with Arnold Morley, at one time Postmaster General, after Huddleston's funeral, when I "put my foot in it" more painfully than ever in my life. The little company comprised: John Morley, Herbert Gardner, afterwards Lord Burghclere, Sir Charles Dilke, George Lewis, Henry Labouchere, and one other man whose name I forget. During dinner Lewis said: "Oh! Bancroft, I saw by an evening paper that you were among Huddleston's friends to-day, tell us about his cremation; what is it really like?" Without thought I let myself go and replied that when the coffin disappeared from view Henry James (Lord James of Hereford) asked Sir Henry Thompson, the pioneer and President of the new movement, if we could see any more. Accompanied by Lord Falkland, we entered the inner compartment, so I described what we there saw, it being remembered that cremation was then in its infancy, adding that I revolted against the idea of consigning the remains of a loved one to such a fate. As I spoke my eyes fell upon Sir Charles Dilke, and I was conscious that his late wife had been {69} so treated. It did not need the leer on Labouchere's face to tell me so.

[Sidenote: St. Helier and Holker]

Lord St. Helier, who became President of the Divorce Court, was also a kind friend of long standing. My wife and I first met him as Francis Jeune, when he was just foreshadowing his successful career, at the house of Lady St. Helier, Mrs. John Stanley then, and soon afterwards we passed them in a carriage on the St. Gothard Pass--before the days of its wonderful railway--when they were on their honeymoon. He was a great authority on ritualistic and ecclesiastical law generally and always a tremendous worker. He had charming manners and was never ruffled--not even when he committed a duchess to gaol. We enjoyed their hospitality in London and at Arlington Manor. I have only one little objection to offer--I cannot help a feeling of resentment against a judge, or, in fact, any barrister, having a moustache and beard. It is not fair to the wig.

A dear friend of far-away days was Lord Justice Holker ("Sleepy Jack"). I knew him first in my old Liverpool apprenticeship when he was leader of the Northern Circuit and its legal giants. I saw him once at the Assizes there stop a case for some minutes after whispering to his clerk, who hurriedly left the court, {70} and returned with Holker's snuff-box, which had been left in the robing-room.

Later on he had a place in Yorkshire where he had happy shooting-parties for his friends, but nothing would induce him to fire a gun himself.

Another legal friend and welcome guest was Lord Justice Mathew, who told us a pretty story of his witty fellow-countryman, Father Healy.

A young Englishwoman, who was his companion at a dinner party, asked him, as there was no mistletoe in Ireland, what the girls and boys did at Christmas-time without it. "Ah, if it's kissing you mean," the old priest answered, "they do it _under the_ rose!"

Mathew had a witty tongue of his own. No doubt, it will be remembered by his legal friends that at the time Herschell was Lord Chancellor, Arthur Cohen, a distinguished Q.C., quite looked to be appointed to a puisne judgeship, which he did not get. When Mathew heard of Cohen's resentment, he expressed surprise that his learned friend expected anything else from Herschell but a Passover.

[Sidenote: Serjeant Ballantine]

I made acquaintance in my early professional days with Serjeant Ballantine, always a pleasant and amusing companion, with a {71} great love of the theatre. Throughout his life he was very Bohemian in his tastes and habits. I remember him first at Evans's, a music-hall of those days, in Covent Garden--it stood where prize-fights now take place at the National Sporting Club--where there was a noted choir of boys, and where "Paddy Green," the manager, squeezed hot potatoes from their jackets with his napkin for favoured guests.

Ballantine devoted himself entirely to criminal cases. He was a great cross-examiner, but he found his equal in Serjeant Parry, who had masterly power over a jury. Another of his rivals was the distinguished advocate, Henry Hawkins, afterwards Lord Brampton, who was known to be as rich as Ballantine was poor. In a robing-room on one occasion Ballantine asked Hawkins what he was going to do with all his money, adding that when he died he could not take it with him, and that even if he could he feared it would melt.

Ballantine defended the impostor Arthur Orton, the "Claimant," in the first Tichborne trial and professed belief in the genuineness of that rascal. Later he was retained for the defence of the Gaekwar of Baroda in India. He received for his services the largest fee then {72} known, but he lost the bulk of it at Monte Carlo on his way home.

When I became acquainted with Frank Lockwood he was a young actor at a seaside theatre. He did not, in the judgment of his comrades, show much promise and wisely abandoned the stage as a career. I next met him as a rising barrister at the house of the Kendals, with whom he was on terms of close friendship, as he soon became with my wife and me.

Lockwood was a brilliant caricaturist. His company was always a delight. I remember an evening when he sat by me at dinner after he had fought many a hard battle, and I asked if he were offered a judgeship would he accept it. In a moment he answered, no; he loved the fight too much. Soon afterwards, however, he had changed his mind, longed for relief from the struggle and sighed for peace. It was not to be. His health suddenly broke down, his strength was failing, and he had to give in.

Frank Lockwood was a popular leader at the Bar, a genial Member in the House, a perfect host, a welcome guest, a delightful companion, a staunch friend.

[Sidenote: Montagu Williams]

The career of Montagu Williams was the most varied of any man I have known. Both {73} his father and his grandfather were barristers. After he left Eton, Montagu was for a time a schoolmaster; then fired, I suppose, by the outbreak of the Crimean War, he entered the Army. After peace was declared he resigned his commission and became a member of a theatrical touring company with a well-known amateur of those days, Captain Disney Roebuck. Next, on the advice, I believe, of his godfather, Montagu Chambers, he resolved to go to the Bar. During his studies he wrote for the Press, including Dickens's _Household Words_. He also wrote plays, chiefly in collaboration with his old friend and school companion at Eton, Frank Burnand. The best of them was _The Isle of St. Tropez_, a really good drama, in which Alfred Wigan played.

From the time Montagu was called by the Inner Temple there were few important criminal cases in which he did not take a part--and very quickly a prominent one. His great knowledge of every side of life and quick grasp of things resulted in a large practice, and he defended more scoundrels than any man of his day. Later on, he was grievously afflicted by throat mischief, which ended in the saving of his life at the cost of his voice, through a serious operation; he could afterwards only speak in a whisper. He was, however, {74} appointed a London police magistrate, in which work he again distinguished himself, and soon became known as "the poor man's beak."

It was during the theatrical episode in his varied career that he came across, and married, Louise, a daughter of two prominent and respected early Victorian players, Mr. and Mrs. Keeley, whom I remember seeing act so long ago as 1851, the year of the Great Exhibition, when Robert Keeley was the partner of Charles Kean at the old Princess's Theatre.

Louise Williams was gifted with a sweet voice and sang with charm. I still seem to hear her exquisite rendering of Edgar Allan Poe's words, which I can trust my memory to recall:

"And neither the angels in Heaven above, Nor the demons down under the sea, Can ever dissever my soul from the soul Of the beautiful Annabel Lee."

I can recall no man who enjoyed more universal popularity than Douglas Straight; it began at Harrow and followed him throughout his life. He never allowed his interests to become cramped: they embraced the law, politics, journalism, sport, the drama and society. He began as a journalist, was {75} Conservative M.P. for Shrewsbury, and had a successful career at the Bar, which ended in a judgeship of the High Court in India.

He had great social gifts, nowhere better proved than by my friend Pett Ridge, who tells a story of his popularity with the fair sex, that twelve ladies agreed to give a dinner at a fashionable restaurant, the novelty on the occasion being that each of them was to be responsible for one male guest. The whole dozen invited Douglas!

[Sidenote: "Willie" Mathews]

I lost a close and affectionate friend in Charles Mathews, the Public Prosecutor, whom I first knew in the sixties, when he was a little chap at Eton and wore a turn-down collar. My next remembrance of him is as the "baby" member of the Garrick Club, where, from the date of his election, he was beloved. In those days "Willie" Mathews was "devil" to Montagu Williams and working hard in his company and that of Douglas Straight at the criminal bar, the scene of many triumphs in his successful career. He was _persona grata_ wherever he went, and in widely different circles, from Balmoral to Bohemia.

Charles Gill was another old friend. We saw more of him at his beloved Birchington than in London. He was known in his Kentish home as "The Mayor"--so christened, I {76} think, by his neighbour, that modern Colossus who seems to be always striding between New York and Leicester Square, the successful and erratic Frederick Lonsdale.

Gill was closely associated in early days with Straight and Mathews; later in his brilliant career there was scarcely a sensational criminal trial in which he did not play a leading part.

A very wise member of his profession only lately said that were any friend of his in a difficulty that called for unerring judgment and delicacy of handling his best advice would be: "Consult Charles Gill."

{77}

V

PAINTING: SCULPTURE: MUSIC

"So famous, so excellent in Art."

[Sidenote: Painting]

It is many years since, as my wife and I were leaving the Savoy Theatre at the close of an afternoon performance of a Gilbert and Sullivan opera, we were shocked by a newsboy shouting "Death of Lord Leighton." We made Frederic Leighton's acquaintance in the green-room of our theatre. Soon afterwards we dined at his beautiful house in Kensington. In its neighbourhood there was a nest of his comrades in art, including Val Prinsep, Luke Fildes and Marcus Stone. We were friends for years: he did me the honour to propose me at the Athenæum, but did not live to see me elected. He was a remarkable and gifted man--an Admirable Crichton--painter, sculptor, linguist--as well as an eloquent, if a somewhat florid, speaker, and an admirable man of affairs, besides, as we actors say, having a perfect appearance for his part. Was it not Thackeray who told him once that Millais {78} was the only man with a chance against him for the Presidency of the Royal Academy?

His beautiful art was best illustrated in his early days, I always thought, by _The Slinger_ and the sculptured figure of an athlete struggling with a python. I also remember well his life-like portrait of the famous explorer, Sir Richard Burton.

[Sidenote: Millais]

In many respects a total contrast to Leighton was the successor to his great office, John Everett Millais. I was fortunate in his acquaintance at the Garrick Club when I was elected as a member fifty-six years ago. Millais loved the club and cared but little for any other.

Although looked upon as a Jerseyman, he chanced to be born at Southampton, and I remember being told by a man--who was for many years prompter under our management--that he had seen Millais, as a very small boy, sprawling upon the stage of the Southampton theatre and drawing with a piece of chalk things that had form and shape.

I don't know when he first came into fame and astounded the world by the wonderful children of his brush and brain. Beautiful things teem through the memory. I see the little creature, on a church bench, listening to _The First Sermon_; a work of infinite pathos {79} called _The Blind Girl_; Walter Raleigh on the shingly shore, clutching his knees and absorbing the yarns of an old sea-dog; the two nuns digging a grave for a comrade in _The Vale of Rest_; those well-known masterpieces, _The Princes in the Tower_, _The Black Brunswicker_ and _The Order of Release_. And then the gallery of portraits--Tennyson, Newman, Gladstone, Bright and the unfinished Disraeli. Others also crowd upon remembrance: those of my comrades, Henry Irving and John Hare--not, in my judgment, among his best examples,--of Arthur Sullivan--one of the very best,--and the great surgeon, Henry Thompson, which, like the striking portrait of Mr. Wertheimer by Sargent, as you look at it, seems that it might speak. I see also the beautiful portraits of Mrs. Langtry and Mrs. Jopling Rowe, but, alas! not one of my wife. I offered Millais a large sum to paint one of her for me, but he declined, for two reasons; he said that he could not bring himself to accept money from a brother artist, and that he should fail, as the face would change while his eyes turned even for a moment to the palette. One word to recall his masterly landscapes, _Chill October_, and, if I remember their attractive titles, _The Fringe of the Moor_ and _The Sound of Many Waters_. Never in any man's work was {80} refinement more closely merged with art. I see a fine photograph of him daily, if in London, with an autograph in the corner, briefly accepting an invitation to dinner in these words: "I'm your man." I looked down upon his handsome features, as he was fading away from life, and kissed him.

[Sidenote: Poynter]

Edward Poynter succeeded to the President's chair, which had only been occupied by Millais briefly. It was during his reign that I had the honour at the Royal Academy Banquet to respond for the Drama: the toast had only once been proposed before, when Irving replied. It was a difficult task, and the greatness of the audience impressed me with my own littleness. Wisely, I am sure, I limited myself to five minutes only, and venture to give an extract from what I said:

"I was not unmindful that the proposal of this toast at that great banquet was a mark of respect to the stage which could only make the stage the more respect itself. I could not speak in that room--surrounded as I was by the rulers in that fairyland--without some attempt, however faint, to say that my admiration of the beautiful art, so splendidly illustrated year by year upon those walls, was as true as my love for the living pictures we players tried to paint. Our pictures, alas! {81} died early, for the greatest actor's work must be a passing triumph; it was not cut in marble, nor did it live on canvas, but could only owe its fame to written records and traditions. Vast wealth might keep for us, and for the ages yet to come, the undying splendour of a Reynolds or a Millais, but no sum could buy one single echo of the voice of Sarah Siddons. The drama was the most winning, fascinating, alluring thing that ever was conceived for the recreation of mankind. As England could claim to be the parent of the drama in Europe, so could she claim to be the mother of the greatest dramatist the world had owned, whose mighty genius left all art in debt that never could be paid, and whose works alone would make the stage eternal."

The pictures by Poynter which live clearest in my memory are his _Catapult_ and _Visit to Æsculapius_. Concerning the latter work a story "went the rounds"--possibly as untrue as many another--that two beautiful sisters were as flattered by the eminent painter's wish to make drawings of their heads as they were horrified to find them reproduced upon bodies of well-known models in the nude.