The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 2 14 – Furniss · Verses Across
Literature · Humor
The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 2 14The Confessions of a Diner
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Literature · Humor
The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 2 14
The Confessions of a Diner
FurnissEnglish
My First City Dinner--A Minnow against the Stream--Those Table Plans--Chaos--The City Alderman, Past and Present--Whistler's Lollipops--Odd Volumes--Exchanging Names--Ye Red Lyon Clubbe--The Pointed Beards--Baltimore Oysters--The Sound Money Dinner--To Meet General Boulanger--A Lunch at Washington--No Speeches.
THE THIRTEEN CLUB--What it was--How it was Boomed--Gruesome Details--Squint-Eyed Waiters--Superstitious Absentees--My Reasons for being Present--'Arry of Punch--The Lost "Vocal" Chords--The Undergraduate and the Undertaker--Model Speeches--Albert Smith An Atlantic Contradiction--The White Horse--The White Feather--Exit 13.
Probably no meal varies so much in the time of its celebration as that most important one, dinner. Some people still exist who dine at one o'clock; some also there are who daily observe that fearsome feast yclept "High Tea." The majority of people dine at various times ranging between seven o'clock and half-past eight, but there is one individual alone who dines at six. It is the City Guilder. Time was when City princes dwelt in City palaces, and rose at five, breakfasted at seven, lunched at twelve, dined at five and retired to rest at ten; but nowadays these magnates are lords of the City from ten till four, and of the West End and the suburbs for the remainder of the twenty-four hours, and they would in the ordinary course of things invite you to dinner at eight o'clock or so. What inscrutable law, then, compels them to hold their state dinners at the dread hour of six?
For it is at this time, when the ebb-tide of humanity sets strongest from the City, that the honoured guest of a City Company may be seen fighting his way, like a minnow against stream, in a hansom to his dinner at the hall of the Guild. Still, he goes "where glory waits him," so what recks he that the hour is altogether uncongenial and inconvenient?
Nevertheless, I know as a matter of fact that this earliness compels many invited guests to decline the honour and pleasure of dining with a "Gill" (as "Robert" would say), who would without doubt accept the invitation were the hours of the Guild as reasonable as their cuisine is excellent.
Personally, however, it has often been a pleasure to me to leave my easel at four o'clock and prepare to meet my practical City patrons "on their own midden" at "5.30 for 6."
As an illustration I will record a reminiscence of a very pleasant evening I once spent in the City, when the festivities--save for my having to make a speech--went off with that success which is inseparable from City dinners.
Imprimis, I arrive in daylight and evening dress. These two, like someone and holy water, don't agree, for not all the waters of Geneva nor the arts of the queen of all blanchisseuses can destroy the horrid contrast between a white tie and a white shirt; yet another good argument in favour of a reasonable dinner hour.
I hate being in a minority. More especially do I detest being in such a decidedly pronounced minority as one joins when one drives into the City about six o'clock in the evening against a vast current of toilers of commerce homeward bound. It may be weak, but I feel it all the same. I seem to divine the thoughts of the omnibus driver as he gazes down upon me from his exalted perch--he does not think my shirt is clean. His sixteen "outsides" bestow upon me a supercilious look that conveys to me that they opine I am merely cabbing it to the station en route for a "suburban hop." But I bear up under it all, and think of the magnificent banquet of which they, poor things, know nothing, and I am beginning to feel quite proud when a brute of a fellow in charge of a van catches his wheel in that of my cab and nearly pitches me out. I hurriedly decide to decline the next invitation I receive for a City dinner.
However, I live to reach Cannon Street and the mansion of the "Gill."
I am soon ushered into the Cedar Room, where I am received by the Master and the Wardens in their robes.
I mingle with the Guilders and their guests, and find the members of the Worshipful Company informing their friends that they are now in the Cedar Room; then they sniff, and the guests sniff and say "Charming!" Then they remark, "What a lot of pencils it would make!" and laugh, and the artists present agree that City folks are shoppy.
On a side table the stranger sees a number of what appear to him diagrams of City improvements, with mains and drains and all sorts of things, but on closer inspection they turn out to be the plans of the table. You discover one bearing your name, and opposite it a red cross, or perhaps I ought to say an exaggerated asterisk.
When you have taken your seat downstairs in the Banqueting Hall you inspect your plan, from which you find that you can tell who everybody is. Capital idea!
"Ah, seat Number 24, the great Professor Snuffers!"
You direct your gaze across the table to seat No. 24, and lo! your cherished preconception of the Professor vanishes instanter, for his bearing is military, and his whole appearance seems to denote muscle rather than mind.
This plan opens up a mine of instruction and information. You refer again, and next to the Professor you find the "Master of the Scalpers' Company."
"Dear, me, what a clerical-looking old gentleman!" is your mental comment.
Next you look for "The Rev. Canon Dormouse."
"Why, he's quite a youth! Can't be more than five-and-twenty, and wears a medal and an eye-glass! How types have changed!"
It occurs to you to open a conversation with your next neighbour, which you do by making a casual allusion to the Canon.
"Yes, dear old gentleman; does a lot for the poor--life devoted to them."
"Dear me, does he? Now to my mind, judging from appearances, the Master of the Scalpers' Company seems more cut out for that kind of work."
"Ha! ha! He's better at curing hams than souls."
"Well, I should not have thought so, merely judging character as an artist. Professor Snuffers seems to me also curiously unique. I know a good many Professors, but I never met one so anti-professional in appearance as that gentleman."
"Ah, Snuffers! Old friend of mine--where is he?"
"There," and you point to the name on the plan and nod over to the other side of the table.
"No, that's not Snuffers! I recollect now he told me he would not be able to come. That's Major Bangs, a guest asked to fill a vacant chair."
Similarly you find that the eye-glass youth is not Canon Dormouse, the clerical-looking gentleman not the Master of the Scalpers' Company, and so on. Oh, they are a capital idea, those plans!
On the occasion in question I met one of the Sheriffs of the City, who is also an Alderman--not a fat, apoplectic, greasy, vulgar Cr[oe]sus, but a handsome, thoughtful-looking gentleman, decidedly under fifty, who might be anything but an Alderman. But indeed the long-accepted type of an Alderman is exploded--such a type, bursting with good dinners, wealth and vulgarity, must explode--and the ph[oe]nix which has risen from his ashes would scarcely be recognised by the most liberal of naturalists as belonging to the same species. John Leech may have had living examples for his gross and repulsive monuments of gluttony; in my own experience, however, I find a gulf of great magnitude between the Alderman of caricature and the Alderman I have met in the flesh. The former has gone over to the majority of "four-bottle men" and other bygone phenomena.
Well, let us return to the dinner. The fare is excellent, the company delightful, and I am just revelling in that beatific state of mind born of a sufficiency of the good things of this earth, when nothing seems to me more pleasant than a City dinner, when I am tapped upon the shoulder by the Toastmaster, who bears a warrant to consign me to misery. I have to make a speech. I have passed through the ordeal before, but I find that familiarity, as far as speech-making is concerned, breeds no contempt. Between the City and the art in which I am interested there exists no affinity, and this perhaps is a blessing in disguise, as for once in a way one is of necessity compelled to "sink the shop." However, it is soon over. A plunge, a gasp or two, a few quick strokes, and I am through the breakers and on the shore--I mean on my seat. That was years ago--I am an old hand now.
I never could subscribe to that unwritten and unhonoured law which provides that an after-dinner speaker is entitled to five minutes in which to apologise for his incompetency in that capacity, and fifty-five minutes in which to speechify; and I have often wished that speechmakers one and all would recollect that a few words well-chosen and to the point, and a timely termination, are far more acceptable to the listener than all their maundering oratorical tours "from China to Peru," from the Mansion House to the moon. When I am going to a City dinner my own children show a lively interest to know the name of the Company, and if I name the Skinners' Guild their interest culminates in uproarious delight; but if I mention any other, most uncomplimentary groans greet the announcement, for the guests of the Company to which I refer can choose either to take or have sent to them a huge box of the choicest sweetmeats when the entertainment is over.
A propos of this, I recollect an incident the mention of which will, I fear, send a cold shudder through any worshipper of "Nubian" nocturnes and incomprehensible "arrangements." On one occasion after leaving the banquet of this Guild I beheld Whistler--"Jimmy" of the snowy tuft, the martyred butterfly of the "peacock room"--to whose impressionable soul the very thought of a sugar-stick should be direst agony, actually making his way homewards hugging a great box of lollipops!
I met a curious City man, not at a City dinner, but at "Ye Odd Volumes," where we both happened to be guests. He was certainly an odd-looking guest, a very old volume out-of-date--odd-fashioned overcoat with gold buttons, an odd-fashioned "stock," and an odd-looking shirt. While waiting for dinner he looked at me oddly, and eventually addressed me in this odd way:
"Sir, may I have the pleasure of exchanging names with you?"
"Why, certainly; my name is Harry Furniss."
"H'm, ha, eh, ha!" and he walked away.
After dinner came the speeches. As each guest was called upon, my odd friend was to his evident chagrin not named; I noticed from time to time the old gentleman was elevated--sitting high. At last, after I had returned thanks for the visitors, he rose and asked to be allowed to speak. He said something nice about me--the reason he explained to me later. The burthen of his speech was a protest that he had not seen one odd volume that night. "If you've got 'em, produce 'em. Ah!" (snapping his fingers at the company in general) "I don't think you know what an odd volume is!" And then turning round he placed on the table a huge volume on which he had been sitting all through dinner.
"There," he said, "that's an odd volume if you like--that's something unique. It contains 9,987 hotel bills--a chronicle (of my hotel expenses) for two-thirds of the present century."
Later he came round to me. He assured me that he didn't catch my name when he asked for it, but when I was speaking he recognised me and was glad to have the opportunity of making my acquaintance. It appeared he had bought many hundreds of "Romps" books for children and given them to Children's Hospitals and other institutions. So he had besides an odd volume a good heart--and what is more surprising, a watch in every pocket! Watch-collecting was his hobby, and, like a conjuror, he produced them from the most unexpected and mysterious places. One belonged to the Emperor Maximilian, and had in its case moving figures to strike the time. I confess I wished he had exchanged watches with me in place of names. His name, by the way, was Holborn; he was a well-known City tea-merchant.
When I visited Leeds for the British Association Meeting, I was made a member of Ye Red Lyon Clubbe, a dining club which I understand meets once a year as a relief to the daily monotony of the serious business of the Association--in fact, "for one night only" the British Ass. assumes the Lion's skin. To see learned Professors who have been dilating for hours and days on the most abstruse scientific subjects, with the most solemn faces, amidst the dullest surroundings, suddenly appear wagging their dress-coat tails to represent the tail of the hungry lion, and emitting the most extraordinary mournful, growling sounds, the nearest approach at imitating the roar of the lion, and otherwise behaving like a lot of schoolboys on the night before the holidays, is certainly a scene not familiar to the thousands who belong to the British Association.
Burlesque-scientific speeches are made after dinner, and although there are generally some practical jokes in chemical illustrations, the merry wits do not tamper with the dinner itself further than preparing a most excellent burlesque menu, which I take the liberty of here introducing:
JOURNAL
OF
SECTIONAL PROCEEDINGS.
Issued Tuesday Evening, September 9th, 1890, at 5.30 p.m.
SECTION A... Hors d'Oeuvres--Kinetic Vacua.
SECTION B... Puree Pontoise--Isomeric Naphthalene.
Consomme a la Princesse--Hydracid Halogen.
SECTION D... Kromesky a la Russe--Androgynous Cones.
Poulet Saute a la Chasseur--Chytridian Woronina.
SECTION E... Braised Fillet of Beef--Lobengula Lion.
Roast Saddle of Mutton--Native Kalahari.
SECTION F... Grouse--Statistics of Slaughter.
Partridge--Progressive Decimation.
SECTION G... Savarin a l'Abricot--Diamagnetic amperes.
Sicilian Cream--A New Lubricant.
Victoria Jelly--High Carbon Slag.
Maids of Honour--Kinetic Leverage.
Pastry--Approaching the Elastic Limit.
Somebody has said that an Englishman will find any excuse to give a dinner, but my experience has been that this is truer of Americans. I have been the guest of many extraordinary dining clubs, but as the most unique I select the Pointed Beards of New York. To club and dine together because one has hair cut in a particular way is the raison d'etre of the club; there is nothing heroic, nothing artistic or particularly intellectual. It is not even a club to discuss hirsute adornments; such a club might be made as interesting as any other, provided the members were clever.
That most delightful of litterateurs, Mr. James Payn, once interested himself, and with his pen his readers, in that charming way of his, on the all-important question, "Where do shavers learn their business? Upon whom do they practise?" After most careful investigation he answers the question, "The neophytes try their prentice hands upon their fellow barbers." That may be the rule, but every rule has an exception, and I happened once to be the unfortunate layman when a budding and inexperienced barber practised his art upon me. I sat in the chair of a hairdresser's not a hundred miles from Regent Street. I had selected a highly respectable, thoroughly English establishment, as I was tired of being held by the nose by foreigners' fingers saturated with the nicotine of bad cigarettes. I entered gaily, and to my delight a fresh-looking British youth tied me up in the chair of torture, lathered my chin, and began operations. I was not aware of the fact that I was being made a chopping-block of until the youth, agitated and extremely nervous, produced a huge piece of lint and commenced dabbing patches of it upon my countenance. Then I looked at myself in the glass. Good heavens! Was I gazing upon myself, or was it some German student, lacerated and bleeding after a sanguinary duel? I stormed and raged, and called for the proprietor, who was gentle and sorry and apologetic, and explained to me that the boy must begin upon somebody, and I unfortunately was the first victim! I allow my beard to grow now.
Otherwise I should not have been eligible for the New York Pointed Beards, for no qualification is necessary except that one wear a beard cut to a point.
The tables were ornamented with lamps having shades cut to represent pointed beards. A toy goat, the emblem of the club, was the centre decoration. We had the "Head Barber," and, of course, any amount of soft soap. A leading Republican was in the barber's chair, and during dinner some sensation was caused by one of the guests being discovered wearing a false beard. He was immediately seized and ejected until after the dinner, when he returned with his music. It so happened we had present a member of the Italian Opera, with his beautiful pointed beard, and he had also a beautiful voice. But New York could not supply an accompanist with a pointed beard! So a false beard was preferred to false notes. The speeches were pointed, but not cut as short as the beard--rather too pointed and too long. It was just after the Bryan political crisis. The leading politician in the chair and one of the guests, a political leader writer, who had not met--not even at their barber's--since the election, had some electioneering dispute to settle. Americans, unlike us, drag politics into everything. Take away this peculiarity and you take away two-thirds of their excellent after-dinner speaking. The Pointed Beards may have something to do with the matter. The two lost their temper, and the evening was all but ruined thereby, when a happy thought struck me. Although as the guest of the evening I had spoken, I rose again to apologise for being an Englishman! I confessed that I had listened to the two speeches, but their brilliancy and wit were entirely lost upon me; the subtle humour of the American passed an Englishman's understanding. Their personalities and political passages were no doubt ingenious "bluff," but so cleverly serious and so well acted that I had for four-fifths of the acrimonious speeches been entirely taken in. At this all laughed loud at my stupidity, and the evening ended pleasantly.
The secretary of this dinner, which was a most excellent one, was the celebrated Delmonico, but it was not held at his famous restaurant. To have been complete it ought really to have been held in a barber's shop, for some of those establishments in America are palatial, and even minor barbers' shops are utilised in a curious way. One Sunday afternoon as I was taking a walk I overheard some singing in a shop devoted to hair dressing, and looking in I saw an extraordinary sight. There were about a dozen old ladies seated in the barbers' chairs, with their backs to the looking-glasses and brushes, singing hymns. It was a meeting of the Plymouth Brethren, who hired the shop for their devotions!
Of course at the Pointed Beards' dinner in New York we had oysters with beards--but no American dinner is complete without their famous oysters. Unfortunately I have to make the extraordinary confession that I never tasted an oyster in my life, and as I am touching upon gastronomy, I may also mention that I never touch cheese, or hare, or rabbit, or eel, and I would have to be in the last stage of starvation before I could eat cold lamb or cold veal; so it will be seen by these confessions that my cook's berth is not a sinecure, and that these complimentary dinners, as dinners, are to a great extent wasted upon me. I once, in fact, was asked to a dinner at a club, and I could not touch one single dish! But my friends kindly provided some impromptu dishes without cheese or oysters and other, to me, objectionable things. I was not so lucky in Baltimore. We all know Baltimore is celebrated for its oysters, and the night I arrived a dinner was given to me at the Baltimore Club, which opened as usual with dishes of magnificent oysters. The head waiter, a well-known figure, an old "darkie" with grey hair, placed a dish of oysters down before me with pride, and stood to watch my delight. I beckoned to him to take them away. He seized the dish and examined the oysters; got another dish, placed them before me. I again requested him to remove them. This happened a third time. I then told him plainly and emphatically that I did not eat oysters. By this time my host and his guests were at their third course, and I and the head waiter were still discussing oysters. My host did not notice this, as he was at the other end of the table, and there were many floral decorations between us; but I made bold to inform him of the fact that the waiter had not only taken away my plates but had removed my glasses, knives and forks, and left me with a bare cloth and no dinner. My host had to call the waiter out of the room and remonstrate with him, but it required some time and a great deal of persuasion before I, the guest of the evening, was allowed to begin my dinner when they were finishing theirs. It transpired that the humorous paper of Baltimore had published the impressions I would receive on visiting their great city, and prominently was a caricature of myself swallowing my first Baltimore oyster. This so interested the waiters of the club that they selected the largest for me, and were so disappointed at my refusing them that they punished me in the same way as Sancho Panza was punished before me.
Perhaps the most extraordinary dinner I ever took part in was held in New York on November 3rd, 1896, when twelve leading Democrats and twelve Republicans sat down on the night of the most sensational election that has ever taken place in the United States. English readers will hardly realise what such a combination meant. The only parallel in this country was probably caused by Mr. Gladstone's Home Rule Bill, when leading Liberals and Conservatives stood on the same platform. But that was the result of a purely political question; political questions of that national character do not interest the better-class American. For instance, on my first visit to America I sat next to a very influential New Yorker at dinner. At that time also elections were pending, and I casually asked my acquaintance what he thought of the situation. He raised his eyebrows with great surprise and said:
"Pardon me, sir, we take no interest in politics here; we leave that to our valets."
I met that man the day of this dinner four years later. He was positively ill with excitement; he could talk of nothing but politics. Party emblems decorated his coat; every pocket was full of pamphlets--he had been working night and day to defeat Bryan. His valet, no doubt, was sleeping soundly the sleep of indifference--nothing to lose or nothing to gain should Bryan succeed. The silver scare of Bryan's touched the pockets, not the politics, of the prosperous; and that touch is the one touch that makes the whole American world kin.
It happened that I was dining at the house of the chairman of this unique dinner ten days before the election, and he was telling us of the coming election-night dinner as the most extraordinary in the history of their politics. To my surprise, days afterwards, I received an invitation. They all had to be consulted, and agreed that I was the only outsider they would allow to be present.
The dinner was held in an hotel in the centre of New York, and special permission had been given to have the room next to the one in which we dined turned into a telegraph office, where all the messages going to the central office were tapped, and we knew the result in the room as soon as it was known at the central office. Perhaps I was the only one present thoroughly indifferent, and certainly the only one who enjoyed his dinner. Speeches were indulged in even earlier than usual, and one of them had the portentous title of "England" coupled with my name! I rose and said that I felt exactly like a man who had been invited to a country house, and on his arrival was met by his friend on the doorstep with a long face and a cold, nervous hand. He was glad to see you, but had sad news: his wife was lying between life and death, and the doctors were round her bedside. Now, under such circumstances, one does not exactly feel one can make one's self at home. I assured my listeners that at the moment the Republic was lying in a critical condition, doctors were at her bedside, and it would be settled before midnight whether she was to live or die. If they would allow me I would rise later, and I trusted then my friends would be in a more genial and less excited mood. I had the pleasure of continuing my speech late that night, and congratulating them on the Republic having survived the Bryan crisis.
To describe the scenes after dinner when the results were announced, if I had a pen capable of so doing, would simply dub me in the minds of many readers as a second de Rougemont.
Late that night I reached the waterside. The North River was ablaze with red and blue lights, and rockets shot into the darkness from either shore. Every ferry-boat, tug-boat, scow, or barge in the harbour passed in an endless procession. The air quivered with the bellowings of fog-horns, steam whistles, and sirens. It was indescribable; language fails me. I can only quote the words of the New York paper with "the largest circulation in the world": "The wind-whipped waters of river and harbour glowed last night with the reflection of a myriad lights set aflame for the glory of the new sound and golden dollar. East and west, north and south, dazzling streams of fire played in fantastic curves across the heavens, and beneath this canopy of streaming flame moved a mammoth fleet of steam craft, great and small."
As I laid my aching head on my pillow I murmured: "Had I been an American citizen, much as I believe in sound currency and an honest dollar, one more rocket, a few more fog-horns, and I should have cast my vote for Bryan and Free Silver!"
At this dinner I contrasted the look of anxiety with the callous indifference of a face I had watched under similar but still more unique circumstances a few years before: the face of the chief of French poseurs--General Boulanger--whom I was asked to meet at dinner in London. It happened to be the night the result of his defeat at the polls was made known. He sat, the one man out of the score-and-five concerned; but as telegrams were handed to him, of defeat, not success, he never showed any signs of interest.
A few years afterwards, when on tour with my lecture-entertainments, I "put in" a week in the Channel Islands, under the management of a gentleman who had been intimately acquainted with Boulanger when he was a political recluse in Jersey; and one afternoon he drove me to the charming villa the General had occupied, situated in an ideal spot on the coast. The villa was most solidly built, and of picturesque architecture--the freak of a rich Parisian merchant, who had spared no pains or money over it. The work both inside and out was that of the best artists Paris could supply. It was magnificently furnished--a museum of beautiful objects, and curious ones, too. One bedroom was a model of an officer's apartments on board a man-of-war, even to the water (painted) splashing through a porthole. Another bedroom was a replica of an officer's tent. These were designed and furnished for the sons of the Parisian merchant, who for some domestic reason never went near his petite palace. He lent it to Boulanger, and there he lived the life of an exiled monarch. The place has never been touched since he walked out of it. In the stateroom, in which he received political deputations of his supporters from France, the chairs were arranged in a semi-circle round the table at which he sat when he received the last one. On the blotter was his speech, and a sheet of paper on which was written the address of the retreat. This was given to me, and here I reproduce it:--
We had coffee on the balcony, served out of china which had on it his monogram, and silver spoons with his crest. I did not pocket the spoons, nor the powder-puff of Madame, and other relics lying about; the rooms remained as they were left, even to gowns in the wardrobe. The delightful garden, cut out of the rocks, had run wild. The grapes hung in clusters, the flowers were one mass of colour, the paths were covered with grass. Below stood the summer-house where Madame drank her tea. In one corner on a wall was a small target with revolver bullet marks all over it, the result of the General's practice, when possibly he used the same revolver which he turned upon himself at the tomb of Madame de Bonnemain, in the cemetery at Ixelles, Brussels.
It would be impossible for me in a short chapter to deal with all the interesting dinners and other entertainments I have attended; but I must confess that I was immensely flattered by a lunch given to me in Washington by the Rev. Dr. Wesley R. Davis, the well-known Albany preacher, who had retired from the pulpit and become an official of the Postal Department in Washington.
The novelty of this lunch was the idea of the chairman to sandwich each course with a story. We began with some very fine and large Lynhaven oysters. We English, with one exception, have no appreciation of the size of these huge American oysters. That one exception was Thackeray. And I may safely say that I never sat down to a meal in America and expressed my surprise at the size of the oysters (which I purposely did) but that someone told me what Thackeray said of them. On this occasion I was told the story by none other than General Horace Porter, one of the best if not the greatest of all raconteurs in the United States. Here it is:
"You know what Thackeray said when he first saw one of our oysters,--that he felt in eating it he was swallowing a new-born baby."
After the green turtle Mr. Willard, the well-known actor, was called upon, and related a brace of capital theatrical stories.
After Carolina shad and pommes Parisienne I was called to my legs. Now there is nothing so depressing as telling stories or making speeches at two o'clock in the afternoon. General Porter remarked that he could never tell a story till after eleven o'clock at night. He managed, however, to tell several of his best on this occasion. As the gallant General will tell them again, and I trust many times, I shall not publish them here. Mine are not worth repeating. As I said, I felt at the moment something like a well-known literary celebrity distinguished for his capital Scotch tales and his conversational brevity. He was invited to meet the late James Payn, who had expressed such a strong desire to make his acquaintance that he agreed to dine at the Reform Club (which he had not done for a considerable time), and this was only arranged by their giving him the same waiter and allowing him to sit at the same table he was in the habit of having at lunch every day. The others were Sir Wemyss Reid and Sir John Robinson, of the Daily News. The four enjoyed a capital dinner. Payn, Sir Wemyss and Sir John were at their best, but the guest never made a remark. However, towards the end of the dinner, he put his knife and fork down, looked round, and said, "This is the very first time in my life I have sat down with three editors." This was all his conversation.
I was referring to the fact that brevity is the soul of wit, and that the Scotch author's remark about the three editors expressed my fear in addressing so many members of the Government as were present.
Then came the pheasant, and before we had quite relished the excellence of the celery salad that favourite American comedian, W. H. Crane, mixed a salad of stories which were highly relished. I shall pass over his theatrical stories and select two which followed, and which are so typical of American humour, that I give them in full.
A poor man on tramp in the country one fine July day staggered in an exhausted state into the garden of a rich old lady, and falling on his hands and knees on the grass plot at the feet of the lady, pulled himself along biting at the grass like a half-starved animal.
"My good man," the lady said, "why do you eat the grass in that way? Are you really so hungry?"
"Madam," cried the man, looking up, "I am starving!"
"Poor man, poor man!" remarked the lady, with a look of pity. "My eyes fill with tears--my heart bleeds for you. Go round to the kitchen door, go round to the kitchen door, the grass is longer there!"
The other referred to the darkie railway hand who had by degrees worked into a position at the depot (pronounced day-po, de-pot or de-poo), where he strutted about in a costume embellished with gold lace. An English tourist (oh, those poor fools--English tourists!) was standing by the rails as an express train flew past at ninety miles an hour--s-c-h-w-r-r-r-r! and in a second was lost to sight.
"Ah!" remarked the English tourist to the gentleman of colour. "The--ah, train--ah, didn't--ah, stop--ah, here--ah!"
"No sir, nebber eben hesitated!"
On May the 17th, 1888, I gave a dinner at the Garrick Club to my fellow-workers on Punch, and others,--a merry meeting of twenty-four. Mr. F. C. Burnand was at the other end of the table, and as the souffle glace aux fleurs d'oranges heralded the near approach of the end of the dinner I noticed a mischievous look in Burnand's eyes, and it struck me he intended to make a speech! As there was no "object" in my giving the dinner except a purely social one,--in fact to reciprocate the hospitality of some present whom I could not ask to my house in consequence of my wife's long illness,--I naturally felt extremely anxious when I saw that Mr. Burnand intended introducing speeches. I had sent a message to him that I wished for none. My evening would be spoilt by speeches, and even the witticisms of Burnand could not save it--yet he was incorrigible. I must pay him back! A happy thought struck me as he was speaking. I sent for note-paper. I, unobserved, tore it into strips and slipped the pieces into my breast-pocket. When I rose I acted being extremely nervous, assured my friends that I had implored the "Vice" not to introduce speeches, and with (true) feeling implored them not to credit the "chicken and champagne" the "Vice" had more than hinted at, and of course said I was unaccustomed to speaking, etc. I then fumbled about my pockets, and nervously produced my "notes," carefully laying them out in a long column in front of me. My guests looked with pity upon me, and their dismay was evident when I began as follows: "I was born--I was born--in 1854. I--I----" (break down). Note No. 2. "I came to London--I came to London----"
"Hear, hear," murmured the sufferers.
Another collapse,--I sought other "notes." "Art--art--Greek art----"
"Hear, hear, ha, ha!" (They were beginning to guy me!)
"Yes," I said, "but, gentlemen, before that toast is honoured I beg to propose to you a toast. The toast, always the premier toast in every gathering composed of English gentlemen." The joke was then mine. In the most perfunctory and glib manner I gave the Royal Toast. After it was duly honoured I gave the second Loyal Toast, "The House of Lords," "The Houses of Parliament," "The Army, Navy and Reserve Forces,"--each time calling upon some one or two to respond. The reply for "The Navy," I recollect, fell to Sir Spencer Wells, who was originally in the Navy. (The Army had a legitimate representative.) We had Law, Art, Letters, Music, the Medical Profession, Commerce, the Colonies, America (responded to by E. A. Abbey)--in fact we had no fewer than twenty-four toasts; twenty-four or more replies. But this was only the first round! I was determined to keep the speeches going and not to let Burnand say another word. So I passed him over, and ignoring his appeals from the chair, I got through--or very nearly through--another score of speeches, reinforced by Toole and others coming in after the theatres, until the closure was moved and the meeting adjourned.
Burnand and I rode to Mill Hill and back the next morning, and he had to admit I had utterly routed him. The victory was mine!
To keep up the flow of oratory in the second series of speeches I had to call upon my guests to speak to a different toast from the one they replied to earlier. This added to the fun. But the best-regulated humour, such as Burnand's introductory speech, often gives a false impression. For instance, I actually managed to get Charles Keene on to his legs,--I think I am right in saying the only occasion on which he ever spoke. I coupled his name with "Open Spaces" (Sir Robert Hunter, the champion of "open spaces," had responded the first time). It struck me that I was paying Keene a compliment when I referred to his marvellous talent in depicting commons and fields and vast spaces in his unequalled drawings of landscapes.
"Umph! Furniss, I see, chaffs me about leaving so much white in my work--not filled up with little figures like his."
And I do not think he ever understood I intended to compliment him.
Towards the end I received a memorandum in pencil on a soiled piece of paper:
And he walked in--dear old Toole in an old coat.
I have given many another sociable dinner, but none with greater success than this at which I turned Burnand's accidentally unhappy speech into a Happy Thought.
When I was offered the chairmanship of the dinner of the London Thirteen Club, it was with a light heart that I accepted. I was under the impression that the dinner was to be a private kind of affair--a small knot of men endowed with common sense meeting to express their contempt for ignorant and harmful superstition. I had already had the honour of being elected an honorary member of the Club, but somehow or other I had never attended any of its gatherings, nor had I met with one of its members.
When the time came, it was with a heavy heart that I fulfilled my promise. This Thirteen Club idea, which hails from America, had in the meantime been "boomed," as our cousins across the Herring Pond would put it, into an affair of great magnitude. It was taken up by the Press, and paragraphs, leaderettes and leaders appeared in nearly every journal all over the country. This is the style of paragraph I received through a Press cutting agency from numberless papers:--
"Mr. W. H. Blanch, who has been elected President of the London Thirteen Club for the year 1894, is the promoter of an organised protest against the popular superstition which led to the formation of the Thirteen Club four years ago. In his new position as President, Mr. Blanch has evidently resolved upon a more vigorous and aggressive campaign than that which has hitherto characterised the operations of the Club, for the New Year's dinner which is announced to take place on Saturday, the 13th of January, promises to be something altogether unique as a social gathering. Mr. Harry Furniss, one of the hon. members of the Club, will preside at this dinner, which is announced to take place at the Holborn Restaurant, and in room No. 13. The members and their friends will occupy 13 tables, with of course 13 at each table, and perhaps needless to say peacock feathers will abound, whilst the knives and forks will be crossed, and any quantity of salt will be split. During the evening the toastmaster on this somewhat memorable occasion, instead of informing the assembled company that the Chairman will be happy to take wine with them, will vary this stereotyped declaration by announcing that the Chairman will be happy to spill salt with them. The Club salt-cellars, it is stated, are coffin-shaped, whilst the best 'dim religious light' obtainable from skull-shaped lamps will light up the banqueting-hall, before entering which the company will pass under the Club ladder. Other details too gruesome to mention will perhaps only be revealed to the company who will sit down to this weird feast, which promises to make a record, nothing of the kind having yet been attempted in London."
These paragraphs rather frightened me. What had I let myself in for? Where would it all end?
Then other notices, inspired no doubt by the President, made their appearance from time to time, and heaped upon my devoted head all manner of responsibilities. Waiters suffering from obliquity of vision were to be sought out and fastened on to me:
"The Secretary of the London Thirteen Club has requested the manager of the Holborn Restaurant to provide, if possible, cross-eyed waiters on the occasion of the New Year's dinner of the Club over which Mr. Harry Furniss is announced to preside on the 13th inst. Mr. Hamp, the manager, while undertaking that the Chairman's table shall be waitered as requested, has grave doubts whether the supply of waiters blessed in the way described will be equal to the large demand so suddenly sprung upon him."
Other dreadful proposals there were, too, "too gruesome to mention." I may at once frankly admit that I do not like the introduction of the "gruesome" graveyard element. The ladder we all had to walk under, the peacock's feathers, the black cat, the spilling of salt, breaking of mirrors, presenting of knives, wearing of green ties (not that I wore one--the colour doesn't suit my complexion) or opal rings, are fair fun, and I think that in future it would be as well to limit the satire to these ceremonies, to the exclusion of the funereal part of the business. For badges each wore in his button-hole a small coffin to which dangled a skeleton, and peacock's feathers. In my opinion the peacock's feathers would have been sufficient for the purpose of the Club: the only object I had in going to the dinner was to help to prove that these stupid superstitions should be killed by ridicule. I detest Humbug, and Superstition is but another name for Humbug. I am a believer in cremation, but that is no reason why I should hold up to ridicule the clumsier and more unhealthy churchyard burials about which so much sentiment exists.
It was amusing to note my absent superstitious friends' excuses for their non-appearance. One declined because he had an important engagement that he could not possibly put off on any account. Late on the evening of the dinner I heard this same gentleman grumbling because no one had turned up at his club to play a game of billiards with him! Another had fallen asleep and did not wake in time, and a third had been unlucky with his speculations of late, which he attributed to having seen the new moon through glass, and therefore he declined to tempt the fates further. Mr. George R. Sims, the well-known "Dagonet," betrayed sheer fright, as the following letter will testify:
"MY DEAR SIR,--At the last moment my courage fails me, and I return the dinner ticket you have so kindly sent me.
"If I had only myself to think of, I would gladly come and defy the fates, and do all that the members are pleased to do except wear the green necktie suggested by my friend Mr. Sala (that would not suit my complexion). But I have others to think of--dogs and cats and horses--who if anything happened to me would be alone in the world.
"For their sakes I must not run the risks that a faithful carrying out of your programme implies.
"Trusting that nothing very terrible will happen to any of you in after life,
"Believe me,
"Sincerely yours,
"(Signed) GEO. R. SIMS."
I confess my real and only reason was to protest. In England superstition is harmlessly idiotic, but elsewhere it is cruel and brutal, and a committee should be formed to try the lunatics--everyday men of the world--who suffer from it, for there is no doubt that they and their families are made miserable through superstitious belief. Nothing kills like ridicule, and it is the Club's object by this means to kill superstition. Some, like Mr. Andrew Lang, may think it a pity to interfere with this humbug, but I venture to think it is a charity when one considers the absurdity of educated men of the present day making themselves unhappy through the stupid nonsense of the dark ages. For instance, take two of my most intimate friends. One in particular suffered in mind and body through having a supposed fatal number. This number was 56, and as he approached that age he felt that that year would be his last. Fancy that for a man of the world, who is also a public man, and a member of the Government at the time of the dinner! He was also a charming companion and a delightful friend, and no man I knew had a wider circle of acquaintance. I happened to accompany him in a six weeks' tour on the Continent during the year he believed fatal to him, or perhaps it may have been the year previous; anyway, he was suffering from that horrible complaint, superstition. He first made me aware of it the night we arrived in Paris by thumping at my door in a terrible state to implore me to change rooms with him--his number was 56, and it terrified him! Next day we travelled in a carriage numbered 56, and my friend was miserable. At the theatre his seat was 56, the ticket for his coat was 56, 56 was the number of the first shop he entered to buy some trifle I suggested to him. Indeed, I may at once confess that I took care that 56 should crop up as often as possible, as I thought that that would be the best way to cure the patient. Not a bit of it; he got worse, and was really ill until his 56th birthday was passed.
To take the chair at this "most unique" banquet, as the papers styled it, was no easy task, and to be waited upon by cross-eyed menials was quite enough to make a sensitive, imitative being like myself very nervous. Some of this band of gentlemen who had neglected to go to the Ophthalmic Hospital seemed to consider that their being bought up for the occasion was a great honour, and one youth in particular, with black hair, a large sharp nose--and oh! such a squint!--whose duty it was to open the door of the reception-room, at which I stood to receive the guests as they arrived, was positively proud of his unfortunate disfigurement, and every time he opened the door he flashed his weirdly set eyes upon me to such an extent that I felt myself unintentionally squinting at every guest I shook hands with.
When dinner was served a huge looking-glass was flung at my feet, where it shattered into a thousand fragments with a tremendous crash, giving one a shock so far removed from any superstitious feeling as to act on one as an appetiser before dinner.
Then whilst everybody else is enjoying his dinner without let or hindrance, the poor Chairman has to hold himself prepared for various surprises. Telegrams of all sorts and descriptions were handed to me.
But perhaps the most interesting of all the postal and telegraph deliveries brought me during the dinner was a letter from my old and valued friend "'Arry" of Punch, who had accepted an invitation, and was to have proposed the health of the Chairman, but unfortunately was laid up with a sore throat:
"Try and make my kind and would-be hosts understand that as 'Arry would say, there is 'no kid about this.' I enclose a few doggerel verses penned painfully on a pad perched on a pillow, which--if you can read 'em--you are welcome to do so.
"My elbow's sore
And so no more
At present, from yore
Old friend (and bore)
"E. J. MILLIKEN."
Here is the "painfully-penned" doggerel:--
"13 Jany., 1894.
"THE LOST (VOCAL) CHORDS.
"Lying to-day on my pillow, I am weary and ill at ease,
And the Gargles fail to soothe me,
And the Inhalations tease. I know not what is the matter;
To swallow is perfect pain,
And my Vocal Chords seem palsied!--
Shall I ever use them again?
"So I can't propose your health, friend,
Or drink to the 'Thirteen's' luck.
I must dine on--Eucalyptus,
And Sulphur, or some such muck.
I have no Salt to be spilling;
My only knife is a spoon;
And I have not the smallest notion
If there is, or isn't, a Moon!
"But I picture you on your legs, there,
And the 'Thirteens' ranged around;
And I feel I could sound your praises,
If these Vocal Chords would sound.
But I know that in guttural gurgling
The point of my jokes you would miss;
If I tried to lead the cheers, friend,
My 'hooray' you'd take for a hiss.
"So 'tis just as well as it is, friend,
And doubtless 'the other chap'
Will do you the fullest justice;
So I'll turn and try for a nap.
But before I resume my gargle,
And my throttle with unguents rub,
I'll drink--in a glass of Thirteen port--
To the health of the 'Thirteen Club.'
"It may be that some bright Thirteenth
They may ask me to Dinner again;
It may be I then shall be able
To speak without perfect pain.
It may be my unstrung larynx
May speak once again with words:
For the present, excuse me--along of
My poor Lost (Vocal) Chords!!!"
I was relieved and amused to find one present even a little more embarrassed than myself. He was a rotund, happy-looking man of the world, and he had to sit isolated during part of the dinner, as his guests were afraid to attend the uncanny banquet. However, the Secretary, being a man of resource, ordered two of the cross-eyed attendants to fill the vacant places. I shall never forget the face of the poor man sandwiched between them. During the course of the dinner the black-edged business card of an "Undertaker and Funeral Furnisher," of Theobald's Road, Bloomsbury, was brought to me. Under the impression that he had supplied the coffin-shaped salt-cellars, and wished to be paid for them, I sent to enquire his business, whereupon the undertaker sent me in the following telegram he had just received from Cambridge:
"Call upon Harry Furniss this evening Holborn Restaurant Thirteen Club Dinner for orders re funeral arrangements."
The receiver of the telegram, I learnt from his card, had been in business fifty-four years, but evidently this was the first time he had been the victim of this Theodore Hookish joke. I called the funeral furnisher in. Unobserved by the green-tied guests and the cross-eyed waiters, he walked through the banqueting hall, and as soon as he arrived at the chair, black-gloved, hat in hand, with the ominous foot rule projecting from the pocket of his funereal overcoat, I stood up and introduced him to the company, read the telegram, and invited him to go round the tables and take the orders. Whether it was that the man of coffins met the gaze of any particularly cross-eyed waiter, or was overcome by the laughter called forth by my solemn request--an outbreak foreign to the ears of a gentleman of his calling--I know not, but he promptly vanished. Later in the evening a request came from him for a present of one of the coffin-shaped salt-cellars, and no doubt the one I sent him will adorn his window for another fifty-four years, to the delight of the Cambridge undergraduates whose little joke was so successful.
In place of the old-fashioned formula, "The Chairman will be pleased to drink wine with the gentlemen on his right," and then on his left, the Toastmaster had to announce that the Chairman would be pleased to "spill salt" with those on his right, etc.; but force of habit was too strong, and "drink wine" came out, and although this was corrected, it was strange that in some cases the guests held up their glasses and did not spill salt. Of course, throwing salt over the shoulder was prohibited; that superstitious operation would have been sufficient to disqualify any member.
Beside each member was placed a looking-glass, and in the course of the evening it went forth that "The Chairman will be pleased to shiver looking-glasses with the members," and smash! smash! went the mercury-coated glass all over the tables.
It then fell to me to present each of the thirteen chairmen with a pen-knife, refusing of course the customary coin in return. I was presented with a ferocious-looking knife, with a multiplicity of blades and other adjuncts, which I treasure as a memento of the dinner.
These are a few trifles I had to deal with in addition to the usual toasts, and I fervently trust it may never again be my lot to be called upon to take the chair at a "unique banquet" entailing such surprises and shocks and so many speeches:
I proposed the loyal toast as follows:--
The Queen Prince and Princess of Wales and rest of the Royal Family 13
I had a point to make, but forgot it (oh, those squinting waiters!), showing that 1894 was a very unlucky year. However, any mathematician could prove that '94 = 9 + 4 = 13. Q.E.D. I might also have really utilised only thirteen words in giving the toast of the evening, as follows:
Enemies
of
Superstition
Ignorance
and
Humbug
drink
success
to
The
London
Thirteen
Club
-------
13
-------
-------
On my way to the Thirteen Club Dinner I met a well-known Punch artist, also a keen man of the world. I invited him. He started with horror. "Not for worlds! I am superstitious--never more so than at this moment. Why, do you know that this has been a most unlucky month with me? Everything has gone wrong, and I'll tell you why. The other night I woke up and went to my bedroom window to see what kind of a night it was--rash, stupid fool that I was! What do you think I saw?" "A burglar?" "Not a bit of it--I wouldn't have cared a pin for a brace of 'em. I saw the new moon through glass! That's why everything's gone wrong with me. What a fool I was!" "What a fool you are!" I ejaculated, as I jumped into a hansom for room 13, recalling to mind that my fellow-worker was not the only humorist who has been superstitious.
Albert Smith, the well-known author and entertainer, was very superstitious, and a curious incident has been related me by a friend who was present one night when Smith startled his friends by a most extraordinary instance of his fear of the supernatural. It was in the smoking-room of the old Fielding Club, on New Year's Eve, 1854. The bells were just ringing in the New Year when Smith suddenly started up and cried, "We are thirteen! Ring, ring for a waiter, or some of us will die before the year is out!" Before the attendant arrived the fatal New Year came in, and Smith's cup of bitterness was full to overflowing. Out of curiosity my friend wrote the names of all those present in his pocket-book. Half of them were ordered to the Crimean War, and fought throughout the campaign. No doubt Smith eagerly scanned the lists of killed and wounded in the papers, for as the waiter did not arrive in time to break the unlucky number, one of them was sure to meet his death. However, all the officers returned safe and sound, and most of them are alive now. The first man to depart this life was Albert Smith himself, and this did not happen until six and a half years afterwards.
Correspondence from the superstitious and anti-superstitious poured in upon me. But I select a note received by the President some time before the dinner as the most interesting:
"CHRISTIANIA, NORWAY.
"SIR,--I see you are going to have an anniversary dinner on the 13th of this month, and I take the liberty to send you the following:
"In 1873, March 20th, I left Liverpool in the steamship Atlantic, then bound for New York. On the 13th day, the 1st of April, we went on the rocks near Halifax, Nova Scotia. Out of nearly 1,000 human beings, 580 were frozen to death or drowned.
"The first day out from Liverpool some ladies at my table discovered that we were thirteen, and in their consternation requested their gentleman-companion to move to another table. Out of the entire thirteen, I was the only one that was saved. I was asked at the time if I did not believe in the unlucky number thirteen. I told them I did not. In this case the believers were all lost and the unbeliever saved.
"Out of the first-cabin passengers saved, I was one of the thirteen saved.
"At the North-Western Hotel, in Liverpool, there can be found thirteen names in the book of passengers that left in the Atlantic on the 20th of March, 1873, for New York; amongst them my own. Every one of those passengers except myself were lost.
"Now, if these memorandums about the number thirteen--by one that does not believe in it--is of any interest to you, it will please me very much.
"I am, yours very truly,
"N. BRANDT.
"9, KONGENS GADE."
It is absurd to say that I have been unlucky since presiding at that dinner. On the contrary, I have been most lucky--I have never presided at another!
