Marse Henry Part 6

"Colonel Shook," I said, "you need not bother about this friend of mine. He has no real idea of returning to the Confederate service. He is teaching school over here at Beech Grove and engaged to be married to one of the--girls. If you carry him off a prisoner he will be exchanged back into the fighting line, and we make nothing by it. There is a hot luncheon waiting for us at the ----'s. Leave him to me and I will be answerable." Then I left him.

Directly he came out and said: "I may be doing wrong, and don't feel entirely sure of my ground, but I am going to let you gentlemen go."

We thanked him and made off amid the cheery good-bys of the a.s.sembled blue-coats.

No lunch for us. We got to our horses, rode away, and that night I was at our rendezvous to tell the tale to those of my comrades who had arrived before me.

Colonel Shook and I met after the war at a Grand Army reunion where I was billed to speak and to which he introduced me, relating the incident and saying, among other things: "I do believe that when he told me near Wartrace that day twenty years ago that he was a good Union man he told at least half the truth."

Chapter the Fourth

I Go to London--Am Introduced to a Notable Set--Huxley, Spencer, Mill and Tyndall--Artemus Ward Comes to Town--The Savage Club

I

The fall of Atlanta after a siege of nearly two months was, in the opinion of thoughtful people, the sure precursor of the fall of the doomed Confederacy. I had an affectionate regard for General Hood, but it was my belief that neither he nor any other soldier could save the day, and being out of commission and having no mind for what I conceived aimless campaigning through another winter--especially an advance into Tennessee upon Nashville--I wrote to an old friend of mine, who owned the Montgomery Mail, asking for a job. He answered that if I would come right along and take the editorship of the paper he would make me a present of half of it--a proposal so opportune and tempting that forty-eight hours later saw me in the capital of Alabama.

I was accompanied by my fidus Achates, Albert Roberts. The morning after our arrival, by chance I came across a printed line which advertised a room and board for two "single gentlemen," with the curious affix for those times, "references will be given and required." This latter caught me. When I rang the visitors' bell of a pretty dwelling upon one of the nearby streets a distinguished gentleman in uniform came to the door, and, acquainted with my business, he said, "Ah, that is an affair of my wife," and invited me within.

He was obviously English. Presently there appeared a beautiful lady, likewise English and as obviously a gentlewoman, and an hour later my friend Roberts and I moved in. The incident proved in many ways fateful.

The military gentleman proved to be Doctor Scott, the post surgeon. He was, when we came to know him, the most interesting of men, a son of that Captain Scott who commanded Byron's flagship at Missolonghi in 1823; had as a lad attended the poet and he in his last illness and been in at the death, seeing the club foot when the body was prepared for burial. His wife was adorable. There were two girls and two boys. To make a long story short, Albert Roberts married one of the daughters, his brother the other; the lads growing up to be successful and distinguished men--one a naval admiral, the other a railway president.

When, just after the war, I was going abroad, Mrs. Scott said: "I have a brother living in London to whom I will be glad to give you a letter."

II

Upon the deck of the steamer bound from New York to London direct, as we, my wife and I newly married, were taking a last look at the receding American sh.o.r.e, there appeared a gentleman who seemed by the cut of his jib startlingly French. We had under our escort a French governess returning to Paris. In a twinkle she and this gentleman had struck up an acquaintance, and much to my displeasure she introduced him to me as "Monsieur Mahoney." I was somewhat mollified when later we were made acquainted with Madame Mahoney.

I was not at all preconceived in his favor, nor did Monsieur Mahoney, upon nearer approach, conciliate my simple taste. In person, manners and apparel he was quite beyond me. Mrs. Mahoney, however, as we soon called her, was a dear, whole-souled, traveled, unaffected New England woman.

But Monsieur! Lord! There was no holding him at arm's length. He brooked not resistance. I was wearing a full beard. He said it would never do, carried me perforce below, and cut it as I have worn it ever since. The day before we were to dock he took me aside and said:

"Mee young friend"--he had a brogue which thirty years in Algiers, where he had been consul, and a dozen in Paris as a gentleman of leisure, had not wholly spoiled--"Mee young friend, I observe that you are shy of strangers, but my wife and I have taken a shine to you and the 'Princess'," as he called Mrs. Watterson, "and if you will allow us, we can be of some sarvis to you when we get to town."

Certainly there was no help for it. I was too ill of the long crossing to oppose him. At Blackwall we took the High Level for Fenchurch Street, at Fenchurch Street a cab for the West End--Mr. Mahoney bossing the job--and finally, in most comfortable and inexpensive lodgings, we were settled in Jermyn Street. The Mahoneys were visiting Lady Elmore, widow of a famous surgeon and mother of the President of the Royal Academy.

Thus we were introduced to quite a distinguished artistic set.

It was great. It was glorious. At last we were in London--the dream of my literary ambitions. I have since lived much in this wondrous city and in many parts of it between Hyde Park Corner, the heart of May Fair, to the east end of Bloomsbury under the very sound of Bow Bells. All the way as it were from Tyburn Tree that was, and the Marble Arch that is, to Charing Cross and the Hay Market. This were not to mention casual sojourns along Piccadilly and the Strand.

In childhood I was obsessed by the immensity, the atmosphere and the mystery of London. Its nomenclature embedded itself in my fancy; Hounsditch and Sh.o.r.editch, Billingsgate and Blackfriars; Bishopgate, within, and Bishopgate, without; Threadneedle Street and Wapping-Old-Stairs; the Inns of Court where Jarndyce struggled with Jarndyce, and the taverns where the Mark Tapleys, the Captain Costigans and the Dolly Vardens consorted.

Alike in winter fog and summer haze, I grew to know and love it, and those that may be called its dramatis personae, especially its tatterdemalions, the long procession led by Jack Sheppard, d.i.c.k Turpin and Jonathan Wild the Great. Inevitably I sought their haunts--and they were not all gone in those days; the Bull-and-Gate in Holborn, whither Mr. Tom Jones repaired on his arrival in town, and the White Hart Tavern, where Mr. Pickwick fell in with Mr. Sam Weller; the regions about Leicester Fields and Russell Square sacred to the memory of Captain Booth and the lovely Amelia and Becky Sharp; where Garrick drank tea with Dr. Johnson and Henry Esmond tippled with Sir Richard Steele.

There was yet a Pump Court, and many places along Oxford Street where Mantalini and De Quincy loitered: and Covent Garden and Drury Lane.

Evans' Coffee House, or shall I say the Cave of Harmony, and The c.o.c.k and the Cheshire Cheese were near at hand for refreshment in the agreeable society of Daniel Defoe and Joseph Addison, with Oliver Goldsmith and d.i.c.k Swiveller and Colonel Newcome to clink ghostly gla.s.ses amid the punch fumes and tobacco smoke. In short I knew London when it was still Old London--the knowledge of Temple Bar and Cheapside--before the vandal horde of progress and the pickaxe of the builder had got in their nefarious work.

III

Not long after we began our sojourn in London, I recurred--by chance, I am ashamed to say--to Mrs. Scott's letter of introduction to her brother. The address read "Mr. Thomas H. Huxley, School of Mines, Jermyn Street." Why, it was but two or three blocks away, and being so near I called, not knowing just who Mr. Thomas H. Huxley might be.

I was conducted to a dark, stuffy little room. The gentleman who met me was exceedingly handsome and very agreeable. He greeted me cordially and we had some talk about his relatives in America. Of course my wife and I were invited at once to dinner. I was a little perplexed. There was no one to tell me about Huxley, or in what way he might be connected with the School of Mines.

It was a good dinner. There sat at table a gentleman by the name of Tyndall and another by the name of Mill--of neither I had ever heard--but there was still another of the name of Spencer, whom I fancied must be a literary man, for I recalled having reviewed a clever book on Education some four years agone by a writer of that name; a certain Herbert Spencer, whom I rightly judged might he be.

The dinner, I repeat, was a very good dinner indeed--the Huxleys, I took it, must be well to do--the company agreeable; a bit pragmatic, however, I thought. The gentleman by the name of Spencer said he loved music and wished to hear Mrs. Watterson sing, especially Longfellow's Rainy Day, and left the others of us--Huxley, Mill, Tyndall and myself--at table.

Finding them a little off on the Irish question as well as American affairs, I set them right as to both with much particularity and a great deal of satisfaction to myself.

Whatever Huxley's occupation, it turned out that he had at least one book-publishing acquaintance, Mr. Alexander Macmillan, to whom he introduced me next day, for I had brought with me a novel--the great American romance--too good to be wasted on New York, Philadelphia or Boston, but to appear simultaneously in England and the United States, to be translated, of course, into French, Italian and German. This was actually accepted. It was held for final revision.

We were to pa.s.s the winter in Italy. An event, however, called me suddenly home. Politics and journalism knocked literature sky high, and the novel--it was ent.i.tled "One Story's Good Till Another Is Told"--was laid by and quite forgotten. Some twenty years later, at a moment when I was being lashed from one end of the line to the other, my wife said:

"Let us drop the nasty politics and get back to literature." She had preserved the old ma.n.u.script, two thousand pages of it.

"Fetch it," I said.

She brought it with effulgent pride. Heavens! The stuff it was! Not a gleam, never a radiance. I had been teaching myself to write--I had been writing for the English market--perpendicular! The Lord has surely been good to me. If the "boys" had ever got a peep at that novel, I had been lost indeed!

IV

Yea, verily we were in London. Presently Artemus Ward and "the show"

arrived in town. He took a lodging over an apothecary's just across the way from Egyptian Hall in Piccadilly, where he was to lecture. We had been the best of friends, were near of an age, and only round-the-corner apart we became from the first inseparable. I introduced him to the distinguished scientific set into which chance had thrown me, and he introduced me to a very different set that made a revel of life at the Savage Club.

I find by reference to some notes jotted down at the time that the last I saw of him was the evening of the 21st of December, 1866. He had dined with my wife and myself, and, accompanied by Arthur Sketchley, who had dropped in after dinner, he bade us good-by and went for his nightly grind, as he called it. We were booked to take our departure the next morning. His condition was pitiable. He was too feeble to walk alone, and was continually struggling to breathe freely. His surgeon had forbidden the use of wine or liquor of any sort. Instead he drank quant.i.ties of water, eating little and taking no exercise at all.

Nevertheless, he stuck to his lecture and contrived to keep up appearances before the crowds that flocked to hear him, and even in London his critical state of health was not suspected.

Early in September, when I had parted from him to go to Paris, I left him methodically and industriously arranging for his debut. He had brought some letters, mainly to newspaper people, and was already making progress toward what might be called the interior circles of the press, which are so essential to the success of a newcomer in London. Charles Reade and Andrew Haliday became zealous friends. It was to the latter that he owed his introduction to the Savage Club. Here he soon made himself at home. His manners, even his voice, were half English, albeit he possessed a most engaging disposition--a ready tact and keen discernment, very un-English,--and these won him an efficient corps of claquers and backers throughout the newspapers and periodicals of the metropolis. Thus his success was a.s.sured from the first.

The raw November evening when he opened at Egyptian Hall the room was crowded with an audience of literary men and women, great and small, from Swinburne and Edmund Yates to the trumpeters and reporters of the morning papers. The next day most of these contained glowing accounts.

The Times was silent, but four days later The Thunderer, seeing how the wind blew, came out with a column of eulogy, and from this onward, each evening proved a kind of ovation. Seats were engaged for a week in advance. Up and down Piccadilly, from St. James Church to St. James Street, carriages bearing the first arms in the kingdom were parked night after night; and the evening of the 21st of December, six weeks after, there was no falling off. The success was complete. As to an American, London had never seen the like.

All this while the poor author of the sport was slowly dying. The demands upon his animal spirits at the Savage Club, the bodily fatigue of "getting himself up to it," the "d.a.m.nable iteration" of the lecture itself, wore him out. George, his valet, whom he had brought from America, had finally to lift him about his bedroom like a child. His quarters in Picadilly, as I have said, were just opposite the Hall, but he could not go backward and forward without a.s.sistance. It was painful in the extreme to see the man who was undergoing tortures behind the curtain step lightly before the audience amid a burst of merriment, and for more than an hour sustain the part of jester, tossing his cap and jingling his bells, a painted death's head, for he had to rouge his face to hide the pallor.

His buoyancy forsook him. He was occasionally nervous and fretful. The fog, he declared, felt like a winding sheet, enwrapping and strangling him. At one of his entertainments he made a grim, serio-comic allusion to this. "But," cried he as he came off the stage, "that was not a hit, was it? The English are scary about death. I'll have to cut it out."

He had become a contributor to Punch, a lucky rather than smart business stroke, for it was not of his own initiation. He did not continue his contributions after he began to appear before the public, and the discontinuance was made the occasion of some ill-natured remarks in certain American papers, which very much wounded him. They were largely circulated and credited at the time, the charge being that Messrs.

Bradbury and Evans, the publishers of the English charivari, had broken with him because the English would not have him. The truth is that their original proposal was made to him, not by him to them, the price named being fifteen guineas a letter. He asked permission to duplicate the arrangement with some New York periodical, so as to secure an American copyright. This they refused. I read the correspondence at the time.