CHAPTER XVIII.

SPIRITUALISM AND REALISM.

THE craze for “table-turning,” “spirit-rapping,” and every conceivable trash connected with the occult sciences, was in full blast in the long-ago Sixties, and old ladies would form tea parties and sit all day and half through the night at round tables with their knotty old mittened thumbs pressed convulsively against those of their neighbours waiting for the moving of the waters. Lord Ashburton, who lived near Portman Square, was the arch-priest and arch-culprit that disseminated this fashionable twaddle, and there was not a spinster in that (then) highly-fashionable district that did not devour the leaflets that were periodically issued broadcast by the inspired old humbug. Occasionally invitations were issued for séances, when refreshments (more or less light) were provided to fortify poor human nature against possible unearthly attacks after the lights had been judiciously lowered.

It was at one of these functions that I on one occasion found myself, and, possessing in those days an appetite like a cormorant, was terribly disillusioned after two hours’ waiting for the “spirits” to hear his lordship order the butler to “bring in the urn.” (In those long-ago days tea without an urn the dimensions of a safe was an absolute impossibility.) Nor did spiritualism end here, for numerous haunted houses were in the market where apparitions and unearthly sounds could be seen and heard and which no one would rent.

It is the experience of a man I knew intimately that I will now—without expressing an opinion—relate, as far as I can recollect, in his own words:

“Looking for a house with plenty of elbow room and of reasonable rent, my attention was attracted by a dilapidated building—with garden in front and noseless statues liberally besprinkling it—situated in the Marylebone Road. Proceeding to the agent’s, I was considerably surprised by his terms. ‘The house,’ he began, ‘has a bad name; no caretaker will live on the premises. In a word, sir, here’s the key, and if you are willing to occupy it you shall have it rent free for six months.’ I at once closed with his offer, and seeking out a chum—lately ordained—we spent the next night in the haunted house. It was in the dining-room we proposed to make a first night of it, and barely had we settled down for a chat when footsteps were distinctly heard in the hall. ‘Our lantern!’ I whispered as we excitedly opened the door. Nothing was to be seen, nothing to be heard. ‘Hush!’ whispered my friend, ‘I hear something behind me.’ I heard the sound also. ‘Who’s there?’ I called out. ‘Who’s there?’ I repeated; but still the silence of the Catacombs. Then the sound of footsteps ascending the uncarpeted stairs was unmistakable till they gradually died away in the attics. A moment of indescribable stillness followed; a cold blast chilled the very marrow of our bones, and our lantern went out like the crack of a pistol.

“We returned to our armchairs after carefully locking the door, but we heard no more. And so we sat till welcome daylight made its appearance, and as the kettle simmered on the hob and the sound of awakening life made itself manifest in the Marylebone Road, it seemed impossible to realise the weird manifestations we had witnessed.

“‘—,’ said my friend, ‘we have learnt a terrible experience; Satan has been unloosed amongst us. Let us pray.’”

The house has long since been pulled down; majestic flats now occupy the site, and instead of the sepulchral moans of disembodied souls the untrained, throaty voice of lovely woman may be heard shrieking to the accompaniment of a hired piano, and producing a discord as damnable, if more up-to-date, than ever was heard in a haunted house.

In Surrey Street there was a house that rumour asserted had been hermetically sealed, and was not to be re-opened till a hundred years had passed, where, in the eighteenth century, a terrible tragedy had occurred during the progress of a bridal feast, and the distracted bridegroom, rushing out, had commanded that God’s sun should not again settle on the accursed board till the generation yet unborn was in being. And I have a vague recollection of having read, years later, a description of what was seen as the portals were thrown back after their century of peace, and light and air had percolated through the room. One can picture the table decked with its moth-eaten cloth, the piles of dust that represented the viands, the chairs pushed back in weird array, and the odour of the tomb that pervaded everything!

To all which, my enlightened twentieth-century reader, there is probably another side. The whole thing may be an absolute fable.

In the days before Trade had made those gigantic strides which have since dumped its votaries amid the once sacred pages of Debrett, when knights were not as common as blackberries, and the Victorian Order had not become a terror in the land, when buttermen sold butter, and furniture-men sold furniture, and before huge emporiums for the sale of everything had come into existence, it was “bazaars” that supplied the maximum of selection with the minimum of locomotion, such as to-day is to be found in the huge caravanserai yclept “Stores” and in Tottenham Court Road and Westbourne Grove in particular.

In Soho Square, on the western side, where to-day—and all day—men with pronounced features, forbidding countenances, and of usurious tendencies may be seen in a first floor window exchanging views on the iniquitous restrictions associated with stamped paper, a bazaar existed in the long-ago sixties where dogs that squeaked and elephants that wagged their tails might have been bought by children of tender years who, for aught we know, may have since been plucked of their last feather by the vultures that now hover over those happy hunting grounds.

Turning into Oxford Street there was the Queen’s Bazaar, afterward converted into the Princess’s Theatre, still with us, with its dismal, dingy frontage and limited shelter for ladies with guttural voices; whilst almost opposite was the Pantheon, with perhaps the most chequered career of all, having been, in turn, the National Opera House, the accepted Masquerade house, a theatre, and a bazaar till 1867, when it attained its present proud position as the main tap for the supply of Gilbey’s multifarious vintages.

Still further west was the St. James’s Bazaar, built by Crockford, and soon converted into a hell, where more monies changed hands and more properties were sold than in all the other bazaars in the universe.

But perhaps the most tenacious of life was the Baker Street Bazaar. In its spacious area was situated an unpretentious shop (since spread half up the street) with two or three windows in Baker Street, while on the hinterland was the bazaar, and over it Tussaud’s Waxworks. Entering from King Street was the area occupied annually by the Cattle Show, whilst still further space was available—as we were lately informed by the police reports—for empty coffins, false beards, volatile dukes, lead and bricks in bulk, sleeping and reception rooms, scores of flunkeys, and addenda too multifarious to mention. Never having seen the subterranean Duke nor the bewhiskered Druce, one may be permitted to marvel where all this ghastly conglomeration found shelter, and whether the confusion that must have occurred amongst the Dutch dukes, the English shopmen, the cattle, and the Waxworks can in any way be held responsible for the startling contradictions with which we have lately been regaled.

But does any one who traverses the historic area between Soho Square and Charing Cross give a thought to the interest that once clustered round where Crosse and Blackwell’s factory now stands? Does any one realise whilst “held up” in a broken-down “Vanguard” in Shaftesbury Avenue that the neighbourhood once echoed with the Royalist battle-cry “So-ho” in the days of that greatest of Englishmen—Cromwell? Does any one ever give it a thought that Charing Cross was not so very long ago a resort of footpads, and that even so late as the Sixties the sweet waters of the somewhat putrid Thames oozed and bubbled where the District railway station now stands? And how few are aware that, when Drummond’s Bank was in course of construction, fossils of mammoth, cave lions, rhinoceros, and Irish deer were found; and that in future ages, excavations will probably unearth skeletons of hybrids we all try to dodge and whom naturalists will describe as voracious, living on suction, apt to beg, borrow, or steal, migratory to a limited extent, and usually to be met with between Charing Cross and St. Paul’s or on the plateaus that abut on the Criterion?

As an observant judge once remarked to one of these pariahs who filled up his cup of iniquities by snatching a fowl from a confiding poulterer’s, “God has given you intelligence; your parents have given you a good education; your country has provided you with excellent prospects both for the present and future, instead of which you go about stealing ducks.”

Passing still further west along the Strand, the changes of time and idea become more apparent as one contemplates that stronghold of Christianity—Exeter Hall—plastered with bills and lately passed into alien hands; and the period, the surging crowd, all lend themselves to the illusion, and one might almost fancy one heard the echo of 1,000 years ago, “Not this man, but Barabbas.”

Oh, the irony of Fate! methought; truly does Time turn the old days to derision; and one knows not whither one’s vapourings might have landed one as a zealous constable fixed his official eye upon the stoic who, deeming it advisable to “move on,” sought consolation, but found none, in an adjoining tobacconist’s by indulging in one of Salmon and Gluckstein’s real Havanas (five for a shilling).

Skimming (not wading through) the report of the Court of Inquiry lately dragging its monotonous length in the vicinity of the Chelsea embankment, one was struck by the change that has come over these senseless preliminaries, which occasionally end in smoke and sometimes in legalised military or civil tribunals. For such courts are as old as the hills, and are convened on every possible excuse. If a soldier loses a shoebrush it is (or was) a Court of Inquiry that established the interesting fact; if an officer was accused of a more heinous offence, it was a Court of Inquiry that heard what was to be said.

The only difference is that, whereas the old style cost no more than a few sheets of foolscap and the unnecessary lumbering of regimental records, the identical luxury cannot now be indulged in without an array of Old Bailey lawyers, who harangue the old warriors that constitute the court for hours, utterly oblivious of the fact that they are better judges of things military, and not likely to be carried away by those bursts of eloquence that so impress the twelve jack-puddings of which our bulwarks and liberties are said to be composed.

The earliest of these Courts of Inquiry was in ’41, when Lord Cardigan killed Captain Tucket in a duel—and ended in his trial and acquittal by his brother peers.

Later on, in ’44, Lord William Paget and the same bellicose Earl had a domestic squabble in which the former said “he had,” and the latter said “he hadn’t,” and this began by a Court of Inquiry and culminated in the High Court.

Again, in ’54 Lieutenants Perry and Greer were hailed before a Court of Inquiry for practical jokes of a pronounced character, but the inquiry ended in smoke, as it was “revised” by the Minister of War.

In ’61 was the Court of Inquiry in the 4th Dragoon Guards which, disclosing undoubted bullying on the part of Colonel Bentinck (the present Duke of Portland’s father), ended in a court martial, when nothing but interest saved the old gentleman’s bacon.

Later on, there was the Mansfield affair, when a disagreement arose between Sir William Mansfield (afterwards Lord Sandhurst), or his wife, and an aide-de-camp that elicited much that was amusing in regard to purloined jams and other preserves, for which her ladyship was supposed to be celebrated; all which instances ended in the usual way after an infinity of positive assertion met by flat contradiction.

Whether the farce lately enacted, with its lawyers and their speeches, affected the result, or benefited anybody except the lawyers, is a point upon which most people will agree; all which, however, sinks into insignificance in comparison with the question as to when and how did this interference with military tribunals first become tolerated, and how can our Military Council or our Military anything, or the officers constituting the Court, submit to be harangued by “only a civilian,” as one of Robertson’s plays describes outsiders?

In all the military tribunals of the past such an innovation was unheard of. Colonel Crawley, on his trial, had words put into his mouth by Sir William Harcourt (whose reputation as an orator it made), but he was not permitted to address the Court. In the Robertson Court Martial it was the same, and in the Navy to-day a prisoner is defended by “a friend,” but no civilian would be permitted to “quarter deck it” in that conservative service.

Even Colonel Dawkins—who, by the way, was a Household Brigade man—amongst all his eccentric experiences, never got so far as suggesting that a civilian should bridge the chasm that has hitherto existed between the Law Courts and the Horse Guards by all this special pleading, and one wonders what old Sir George Browne or General Pennefather would have said (or sworn) if such a suggestion had been proposed to them! It may be too much to say there would have been an earthquake, but the foundations of the house would certainly have vibrated.

And it is the ignorance of what the present privileges of the Guards are that makes it difficult to form any opinion on the merits of the case. The friction that these “privileges” used to cause when a Household regiment was occasionally brigaded at Aldershot or Dublin or the Curragh with regiments of the line was, however, undeniable.

It pained old captains with Crimean and Indian medals to be “turned out” by a field officer with a fluffy upper lip and a youthful voice that had not long before sounded at Eton; it was irritating (at least) for colonels commanding distinguished regiments to see a Guard’s sentry fumbling with his rifle and deliberately coming to the “carry,” and five minutes after “presenting” to a brevet major of the Guards, who was trundling a hoop when the old warrior was in the trenches before Sebastopol; it was annoying to read in general orders special reminders as to the prohibition regarding imperials and capricious shaving, and to see half-a-dozen Guards officers with beards like pioneers; it was amusing to hear (as one did) the son of old Sir Percy Douglas (who was for a little season in the Guards) inform a distinguished field officer that the “executive” command could only be given by a Guardsman to a Guardsman; and still more amusing to hear the retort which made mincemeat of the privilege, at least, on that occasion—all which nonsense has, however, been considerably modified. By all means let the Guards retain their privileges and licences—but let them in mercy be “consumed on the premises.” And if the physique of these favoured regiments is not as fine as of yore, no one will deny that their “marching past” and their “dressing” are far superior to that of the line and “pretty” enough to please even Admiral Scott himself.

It may further be conceded without fear of contradiction that the Queen’s Company of the Grenadiers in 1862 was a magnificent specimen of physique and drilled to perfection under Lord Henry Percy and Micky Bruce.

Beards, indeed, have always been a cause of offence. In the tropics (except in India) a man is compelled to shave; with the thermometer below zero, the same regulation is rigidly enforced.

It was Colonel Crealock’s beard at Gibraltar that was the indirect cause of an officer being tried by Court Martial; it was Prince Edward of Saxe-Weimar’s and Colonel Phillip’s beards that led to invidious remarks in the Dublin Division; and, until the razor is abolished beyond the precincts of the four-mile radius, so long will a link remain between the grand old days of the muzzle loader and cold steel and the modern requirements for potting an enemy at a thousand yards rise.

When the Metropolitan Board of Works was at the zenith of its power, and thoroughfares were being projected, and whole streets were disappearing and ancient rookeries being demolished, it was incredible the leakage that appeared to exist, and how the friends of indiscreet or dishonest employés reaped a harvest by acquiring dilapidated buildings for a song, and standing out for huge compensation when the day for demolition drew nigh.

An astute former hanger-on at Faultless’s cock-pit in Endell Street surprised me considerably on one occasion as he stood at the door of a dilapidated beer-house in Covent Garden by informing me that he had bought it for a trifle, and six months later I was literally staggered by again meeting the rascal shovelling out potatoes at a little greengrocery shop where now stands the London and Westminster Bank opposite the Law Courts.

He explained that he had a brother in a humble but trusted position at Spring Gardens, and that his old beer-house had ceased to exist, and he expected his “present property” would “come down” before long.

Green Street, leading from Leicester Square, was another channel for the acquisition of large profits, and when every house was a bug-walk, and demolition a matter of a few months, the news was actually “offered” to a man I knew well able to find the requisite purchase money, but rejected from misplaced prudential motives.

The present London Pavilion was another glaring instance of jobbery, and years before it was necessary to hustle the ex-Scott’s waiter from the cosy nest-egg he so diligently nursed, the Board of Works descended on him like an avalanche with a peremptory notice to quit.

At this stage one Villiers comes upon the scene, but whether he was a scion of the noble house of Jersey or Clarendon is not clear. Suffice that tradition credited him with having once been a considerable actor who had made a great hit in a minor part in the _Overland Route_ at the Haymarket during the fifties. Later, he appears to have become lessee of the transpontine Canterbury Hall, where he was a dismal failure, and spent the latter portion of his tenancy in bed—a victim of gout and the importunities of irrepressible bill-stickers.

It was in these darkest hours that the Board of Works entered into his life, and in an incredibly short space of time he had enlisted the co-operation of a sporting furrier, had hustled the unhappy Loibel out, and was in undisputed possession of the London Pavilion. How the £103,000 was found to pay the out-going man is of no particular importance, suffice that so indecent was the haste that an auction was deemed superfluous; the entire contents were turned over at a valuation, and as Loibel toddled out Villiers toddled in, and—undisturbed by parochial or other demands—he gradually rose to affluence, periodically visited Continental watering-places, was a person to be reckoned with in a mushroom political club, and died recently worth a considerable personalty.

The juggle over the Pavilion never attracted much interest, and the gladiators being respectively a German and a Jew the transaction was forgotten almost at its inception.

Passing through the Opera Colonnade I tried not long ago to locate the exact shop—once a cigar merchant’s—in which the Raleigh, originally known as the “Old Havana Cigar Club,” may be said to have had its being, for it was whilst sitting on tubs one afternoon in the fifties that three or four Mohawks of the first order persuaded Tod Heatly—the ground landlord—to provide some sort of superior night-house which, by opening its doors at 10 p.m. and not closing them till the last roysterer had reeled home, would “meet a want long felt,” as modern advertisements occasionally describe their worthless wares.

It was later—in the early seventies—that the proprietorship changed hands, and was worked on more commercial lines by the Brothers Ewen (triplets), who, believing in quantity rather than quality, periodically sat as a committee under the chairmanship of an amiable old gentleman (Lord Monson) and elected everything and everybody capable of producing the increased subscription.

It was in the solitary long room of the Tod Heatly era that details were arranged for the duel (which never came off) in regard to an accusation of foul play that was made in a Pall Mall club, when an old gentleman, who was in Court dress, was considerably astonished at receiving a flip on his calf from an erratic trump. And in this room, too, enough Justerini’s brandy was consumed of a night to float the motors which now lumber that once-sacred chamber. For whisky and other emanations of the potato were then practically unknown and only heard of by the privileged few who had seen an illicit Boucicault still on the stage.

Proceeding yet further west I passed the College of Surgeons—presented by George IV. in a fit of after-dinner generosity to that distinguished body to be held for all time on a pepper-corn rent. One can almost picture the burst of humble gratitude that gushed forth at the gracious act, and the bland smile that illumined the anointed features at the consciousness of having done a generous deed without being one penny the worse for it. It was condescensions such as this that endeared “the first gentleman” to a loyal and dutiful people. And then across the square, where Northumberland House once stood, I wondered if one human being could locate the spot within fifty yards, and whether the old lion that topped it pointed his tail to the east or west, a subject on which more bets have been made than ever fell to the lot of man or beast.