A BUDGET OF GOSSIP.

Otago Witness, Issue 2407, 19 April 1900, Page 60

A BUDGET OF GOSSIP.

The generation which knew Thackeray and Dickens intimately is rapidly passing away. It is 36 years since the author of "Vanity Fair" died, and nearly 30 since the creator of "David Copperfield" joined the majority with dramatic suddenness. Mr John Hollingshead not merely knew both of these great masters of romance in the ordinary sense of personal acquaintance, but was a member in far-off years of the staff of Household Words, when Charles Dickens presided over its fortunes, and of the Cornhill in its brilliant opening adventures when W. M. Thackeray was at the helm. Mr Hollingshead has, in his time, played many parts — almost as many in fact as the late George Augustus Sala, whom in. some points he resembles not a little, and not least in enterprise and the keen zest of life. His latest book " According to My Lights" (Chatto and Windus), is a characteristic budget of gossip about the metiopolis and -its literary and social traditions, with a few unconventional ditties thrown in at the end. If variety is the spice of life, Mr Hollingshead can bs congratulated on his share of it. He lia^ been journalist, dramatic critic, playwright, and director of at least three London theatres, and is still clo.-ely connected, we believe, with the management of ths stage. Most of the reprinted articles in the present volume are of small consequence, though here and there, as picturesque •studies of Old Calais and the Pioneers of Earl's Court attest, a note of more permanent interest is struck.

Calais Mr Hollingshead regards as one of the old turnpike gates of the world. Every travelled man knows it in the touch-and-go sense. He lingers as a rule, however, only long enough to answer the &tand-and-deliver demands of the Custom House, and so the place, outside its harbour and railway station, is little known. Calais resembles a Flemish much more than a French town, and that is especially true of its picturesque Hotel de Ville, with its delicate turret and silvery chimes. The gate built by Richelieu in 1635, and immortalised by Hogarth, his disappeared, and so for the matter of that has the Hotel BeFsehi, which Sterne made famous in. his Sentimental Journey. There is a comparatively modem iim of the name in the Rtie Courbet, and Thackerary used to go thither because of "the romantic associations of the name. But the old Hotel Dessein whers Steune loitered was in the Rue Royale— the main road to Paris from the north of France. In hid days there was a public cravden and a small theatre in close proximity to the old hostelry. The garden has gone long age, but the little theatre still remains to minister delight to the more humble classes of the townsfolk. Mr Hollingshead says with truth that celebrities down at the heel have made Calais thenlast refuge — Beau Brummel in one generation, and George Hudson, the so-called Railway King, in another. The pioneers of Earl's Court, or rather of the big variety show which is found in that fashionable suburb, a local habitation, Avere, we are assured, the London tea-gardens of last century. They in turn were the descendents of such plea&ure-grounds as Marylebone Gardens, Ranelaigh', and Vauxhall— places of rosort to the fashionable world which Richardson, Smollett, and, Fielding depicted. Marylebone Gardens vanished in 1778, Ranelagh at the beginning and Vauxhall about the middle of the present century. Then the virtues of the universal shilling were discovered by the Great Exhibition, and first the Crystal Palace and finally Earl's Court were established for the delectation of all who could command that sum. Quit© the B|ost i»J^w»tiaOMi%S&liaJ& M

Hollingshead's book are those which afford homely, but vivid, pictures of Thackerary ' was quiet and deliberate in Thackeray was quiet and deliberate in. manner, was quite without any assumption of dignity, but always simple and natural.He liked to ride on the top of a 'bus, and', if he possibly could, by the side of the driver. As an editor, he was kind, gentle, and accessible, but he was not a business man, and worked too much by fits and starts. Dickens, on the contrary was as bustling and as methodical as the most prosperous merchant in the city. He was supposed to do all his literary work between 10 in the morning and 2 in the afternoon, and then he would set off on a 20mile walk. He would spend five hours in. pedestrian drudgery, and made himself a' martyr to locomotion. Mr Hollingshead thinks that, so far as London was concerned, Dickens was its . great interpreter ; but he never quite got into touch with either the Continent or the United States, for he never escaped certain narrow, insular prejudices. His taste in dress was somewhat pionounced — a tribute to the dandyism which Count D'Orsay made fashionable in his youth. We can well believe that the walks of Dickens were always tours of observation. "The streets and the people, the houses and the roads, the cabs and the traffic, the characters in the shops and on the footways, the whole kaleidoscope of metropolitan existence — these were the books he studied and few others." Mr Hollingshead thinks that Dickens knew perfectly well his true rank in the world of letters. It seems that during the last 12 or 15 years of his life, when his fame was assured, he never took the trouble to read any criticisms of his own writings. He knew, in fact, that his own ascendency, such as it was, was not to be challenged. Perhaps the view which is expressed in these pages is right. Charles Dickens, humanly speaking, would have lived much longer, except for his persistent mechanical walks, and that other and more serious form of exhaustion which was due to the worry and excitement of his dramatic public readings.