A BOOK OF THE DAY.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XIII, Issue IX, 1 September 1894, Page 207

A BOOK OF THE DAY.

MIR SALA'S RECOLLECTION'S.

DESPITE the anonymity of the British press, it is not so difficult as it might seem for a journalist to

achieve distinction of a real and —for the space of his life-time—an enduring kind. The veil of anonymity is not so opaque that it is not readily pierced in the case of any man or woman who writes what the world wants to read. Mr Sala is himself a striking casein point. Signing perhaps one tenth of all he has written, he is yet the most familiar and the most popular of British journalists. But Mr Sala is, and long has been, very much more than a journalist. He has been a Bohemian and a man about town, the friend and intimate of a great number of the most distinguished personages of his time. He has seen most men and all cities worth the seeing. It was, then, inevitable that, with his vast store of anecdote, his intimate know’edge of the world, his natural vivacity, and a collection of general information which has rarely been rivalled, he should not only write his experiences, but write them in a wholly admirable way. Mr Sala has seen Louis Philippe when King of France; be has seen Thiers, Guizot and Lamartine ; three revolutions has he witnessed in Paris ; he has been with Garibaldi in the Tyrol and with Daniel O'Connell at the London Tavern. He witnessed the second funeral of Napoleon. He was at the storming of Puebla; spent thirteen months in America during the Civil War ; was personally acquainted with Abraham Lincoln, Charles Sumner, Longtellow, and Bayard Taylor, with Grant and Greeley and Jeff. Davis. Mr Sala has spoken with Emperors, been patted on the head by Wellington ; and as for royal functions and ceremonies, he has seen so many that he reckons a royal marriage or the funeral of a king a very small thing. In this present collection of essays and gossipy sketches be gives us, not for the first time, some account of his early life and struggles. It is now well known that Mr Sala began life as a bandy boy at a theatre at a remuneration of 15s a week ; that he began his wide acquaintance with men and things in the well-thumbed pages of greasy books in a cheap coffee-shop; that he al most unconsciously prepared himself for his life work as a journalist by wandering about the streets of Paris, seeing life in London, and reading and studying in museums or at home. In short, * wide reading and wide wandering ’ made him a journalist. A HAD MEMORY. Although a good deal has been told us of Mr Sala’s youth, not so much is known of the way in which he works and writes at the present time. For instance, there is a popular impression that he has a wonderfully good memory, and that he can write with ease and speed an article on any subject under the sun. But Mr Sala tells us—as the expert always knew—he looks up his factsand theories with painstaking care, and that he has a very bad memory : — * Over and over again have I been congratulated on the possession of an exceptionally retentive memory. I have no such gift; and were I endowed with it, I should take the observation that my memory was phenomenally retentive not as a compliment, but as an insult; because the being credited with a marvellously good memory amounts, in my opinion, to an obscure implication and insinuation that such knowledge of books as your writings display is due not to systematic and indefatigable study on your part, but to the mere fact that your abnormally retentive memory has enabled you to retain the contents of works at which you have only briefly and casually glanced. I repeat distinctly that I have naturally, in many respects, an extremely defective memory. I never could remember proper names ; I have a bad memory even for ordinary faces ; and when I meet persons whom I have known in various parts of the world, I more often recognise them by their voices than by their countenances.’ •dashing off’ leaders. When writing leading articles or art criticisms Mr Sala labours in a special study, in which are stored 2,000 books of reference by which he verifies his facts and guarantees his quotations. On the first shelf come the Bible, Shakspeare, and Milton, followed by histories, encyclopa-dias, and other familiar books of reference :— * Then there are shelves full of dictionaries and polyglot vocabularies,grammars, provincial word books, and the like. There are shelves full of books about horses ; about Napoleon I. and his dynasty ; about Wellington and Napier. There is a complete Cookery Library, full of culinary manuals in a dozen tongues from the time of Queen Elizabeth to our own day ; there are shelves devoted to Law, to Inventions and Mechanics, to Fine Art, and to brie a brae ; and I declare that, in the course of every week, my unfortunate amanuensis is called upon to fetch and carry dozens of volumes, new and old, and turn up passages in them in order that I may be sure, humanly speaking, that I am not making glaring mistakes in that which I write. The labour is rendered necessary in the performance of the task which the outside public, sometimes good-humouredly, and sometimes contemptuously, calls “dashing off a leader.” I remember that excellent man, the late Charles H. Spurgeon, who was a frequent correspondent of mine, felicitating me once in bright, cheerful language on the ease with which I “dashed off” the leaders in question. I thanked him in reply for his kind words ; but I added that I should be very much pleased if he would pay me a visit some morning and sit in my study while I was laboriously dictating and not “dashing oft ’’ an article of, say, fifteen hundred words.’ THE REAL THACKERAY. The first mentioned of the * People 1 have Known ’ is Thackeray, of whom Mr Sala has many reminiscences. A good many of Thackeray’s peculiarities of temper were due to his frequent illnesses. Says Mr Sala :— •I need scarcely say that when he was not in a tetchy temper, caused by extreme physical anguish, Thackeray was one of the'most delightful conversationalists it was pos-

sible to imagine. There were very few subjects indeed on which he could not talk, and talk admirably. He was as fluent in the French and in the German as in the English language. He bad, I should say, a fair knowledge of Italian. He was never tired of discoursing about books and bookmen, about pictures and painters, about etchers and engravers and lithographers ; and, moreover, he was a born wit and a brilliant epigrammatist. So we walked and talked by bustling Knightsbridge, into crowded Piccadilly ; and halting just opposite Morell’s, the well-known Italian warehouse, Thackeray observed that he was about to order some wine. He made me a bow which, in its sweeping stateliness, would have done honour to Sir Charles Grandison ; concurrently giving me his hand, which was cold enough to have belonged to a professor of swimming who had just emerged from his tank ; and then be stalked over the way ; leaving in my mind a perplexed impression that he bad suddenly forgotten who I was, or, that knowing me, he had arrived at the conclusion that I was a confounded bore and that the sooner he got rid of me the better it would be. When I came to know him intimately I understood the reason for these sudden reactions of apparent hauteur and * stand oflishness.’ It was only his way. He could not help that which probably was due either to an acute spasm of bodily pain or the sudden passing of a black cloud across the mind of one who, although be could be upon occasion full of fun and frolic, was not, 1 should say, on the whole, altogether a happy man.* THE FIRST •CORNHILL’ DINNER. Some of Mr Sala’s first literary work was the writing of articles for the Cornhill Magazine, edited by Thackeray, and published by Mr George Smith, of the firm of Smith and Elder, of whom we read :— * He was a festive bibliopole ; and once a month the eontributors to and the artists of the Cornhill were bidden to a sumptuous banquet, held at a bouse in Hyde Park Square. I well remember the first Cornhill dinner. Thackeray, of course, was in the chair ; and on bis left band I thiuk there sat a then well-known baronet, Sir Charles Taylor. On the president’s right was good old Field Marshal Sir John Bur goyne. Then we had Richard Monckton Milnes, soon to be Lord Houghton ; Frederick Leighton and John Everett Millais, both young, handsome men, already celebrated and promising to be speedily famous. I thiuk George 11. Lewes was there; but I am sure that Robert Browning was. Anthony Trollope was very much to the fore, contradicting everybody; afterwards saying kind things to everybody, and occasionally going to sleep on sofas or chairs, or leaning against sideboards, and even somnolent while standing erect on the hearthrug. I never knew a man who eould take so many spells of * forty winks’ at unexpected moments, and then turn up quite wakeful, aleit, and pugnacious, as the author of “ Barchester Towers.” ’ •THE REV. DR. SALA.’ Thackeray finds in Mr Sala an enthusiastic admirer and defender against the various charges which have been brought against him. This is how Mr Sala speaks of his relations with the author of * Vanity Fair ’: — * He had an odd way of calling me the “ Reverend Doctor Sala,” chiefly because, 1 believe, I used to talk to him quite as outspokenly and seriously as in the old time he had talked to me. I never flattered nor fawned upon him, and 1 never took liberties with him. He knew how much I loved and revered him, and that is why we got on so well together. There were some friends of his who used to call him “ Thack ” and slap him on the back. I never called him anything but “Mr Thackeray,”and I did so because I knew he was my elder, and because 1 conscientiously believed that he was in every way my better.’ THE RAPID RISE OF ‘ BOZ.’ It has become somewhat the fashion to depreciate Dickens nowadays; but Dickens’ success and popularity during his lifetime were unqualified and extraordinary—and remain so still to a very great extent. Says Mr Sala :— * There had never been in the History of English Letters so complete, so brilliant, so unexpected and so welldeserved a victory. Think of what there had been Round the Corner, on the other side. The racquet ground of the Fleet, the coffee-room of the King’s Bench ; the dingy attorney’s office with the grimy windows and the jaundiced looking blinds, the desks dented by innumerable penknives, the floor splashed with unnumbered inkstains, the ignoble public house where shabby lawyers' clerks congregated in bar-parlours at night to drink and smoke. The pawnbroker’s, the cheap eating-house, the chandler’s shop ; the pits of transpontine theatres, Bartholomew and Green wich fairs ; the cattle and horse market in Old Smithfield ; the cheap suburban tea gardens, the frowsy “well ” at the police courts, and not iufiequently the scaffold before the Debtors' door at Newgate—these were the scenes on the Other Side of the Corner which the industrious young lawyer’s clerk and reporter had to mingle in and to de scri be.’ ‘ BOZ ' AS A TALKER. Lovers of Dickens, and even those who do not acknowledge his spell, will find the chapter devoted to him intensely interesting. The following passage, as contrasting Thackeray and Dickens as conversationalists, is specially interesting : — * To talk to Dickens was a vastly different thing from talking to Thackeray. The author of “ Vanity Fair ” was a master of anecdote, pertijlage and repartee ; he was a varied and fluent linguist; he was a lover and practitioner of art : be was saturated with seventeenth and eighteenth century literature, both French and English ; and he could hold his own with such masters of conversation as Abraham Hayward and Richard Monckton Milnes (Lord Houghton), and with such a formidable epigrammatist and wit as Douglas Jerrold. Dickens, on lheotherhand, seldom talked at length on literature, eitherof the past orthe present. He very rarely said anything about art; and, for what is usually termed “ high art,” I think that he had that piofound contempt which is generally the outcome of lack of learning. Indeed,

when I first visited Venice and wrote for him an article called •* a I’rodle at the Prow niy text being a gondola on :he (hand Canal and the gondolier’s dog—he expressed hin>«elf as specially pleased with my production on the ground that it contained “ no cant about art.” What he liked to talk about was the latest new piece at the theatres, the latest exciting trial or police case, the latest social craze or social swindle, and especially the latest murder and the newest thing in ghosts. He delighted in telling short droll stories, and occasionally indulging in comic similes and drawing waggish parallels. He frequently touched on political subjects —always from that which was then astrong Radical point of view, but which at present I imagine would be thought more Conservative than Democratic ; but his conversation, I am bound to say once for all, did not rise above the amusing commonplaces of a very shrewd, clever man of the world, with the heartiest of hatred for shams and humbugs.’ UNDER THE STARS AND STRIPES. During the American War Mr Sala was sent out as special correspondent to the States, • to look at things in general and people in particular ’ and to write his impressions of what was going on around him It is hardly necessary to say that the chapter dealing with Mr Sila’s experiences as a journalist in America is full of good things. (If course he saw everybody and everything, and many a strange story has he to tell of men and matters during the civil war. Not all are sombre, for even while the war was going on all sorts of festivities took place in New York and Washington. Jokes and funny stories were rife, and their nature may be judged by this extract :— " To Mr Evarts belongs the anecdote of the bereaved widow whose busband had such a large circle of friends that the company which she received on the evening of his interment crowded her drawing-room almost to suffocation. A lady friend of the widow edged her way up to her, and, pointing to something very bright and shining visible above the heads of the assembly, in a remote corner of the apartment, whispered in her ear; “ Say, is that a new eight-day clock? What d’ye gi’n for sich ?’’ “It’s not a clock,” sobbed the disconsolate widow, “it’s the dear departed. We sot him on end to make room for more company.” The supposed eight day clock was indeed the “ casket,” richly ornamented with silver nails, bosses, and handles, to which the dear departed had been consigned. But in Senator Bayard is vested the copyright of the story of a well-known New York humourist, who occasionally indulged too freely in the vintages of Epernay, and who, being asked to dinner by Mr Bayard at his bouse in Washington, was observed by his host, who had himself walked home with him, to be attentively counting the number of steps in the high “ stoop,” or flight of stairs, in front of the mansion. “ What on earth are you counting those steps for?” asked the Senator. “ Got to come down again I" was the reply of the prescient humourist and admirer of “ Extra Dry.” ’ WHISKY AND WAR. In 1864 ‘ our special correspondent ’ was sent to watch the war in Mexico. It so happened that the War of Secession in the States was at its height, and a voyage to Mexico was often rendered more than unpleasant by the Federal gnnboats, which were blockading all the southern ports and preventing ships landing men and stores for the Southerners. During the run from New York to Havana, Mr Sala’s ship was boarded three times by the Federals, the commander of one being good enough to fire a shot into the bows because the skipper had not at once obeyed the signal to lay to • The skipper, the first officer, and a select party of passengers were playing a cheerful game of poker when the shot from the Federal cruiser came crashing into the timbers forward. It was a lieutenant from the gunboat who boarded us, and he talked at first in a very menacing manner ; but when our captain bad conducted the gallant son of Neptune to his—the captain’s own—cabin he emerged therefrom about ten minutes afterwards with an expression of perfect confidence and satisfaction on his manly countenance. Of course the steamer’s papers had been submitted to him, and found to be in proper order ; still, unless I gravely err, he bad had another cause for complacency. “ You see, sir,” explained our thoughtful skipper, “ when these navy chaps that does the blockading want a drink of whiskey they just bear down on the first passenger steamer they sight, and overhaul her to make sure that she isn’t a blockaderunner. It was right good Bourbon that I gave that leeftenant.”' the land or Montezuma. Arrival at the port of Vera Cruz at the time of the French occupation of Mexico was not particularly ex liilarating, to judge by Mr Sala’s description. This is how he describes the chief port of Mexico as it was thirty years ago ‘ Vera Cruz in 1864 bore the strangest of aspects. There were several French men of-war in the harbour ; and immediately you landed you found yourself surrounded by military natives of la Belle France, mingled with more or less ragged Mexicans in striped serapes or blankets and coach wheel hats ; swarthy women with ribosos or mantles of black cloth or silkily fine cotton drawn over their heads —the Mexican substitute for the mantilla of Old Spain—together with shovel hatted priests, muleteers, half castes, Indians, mendicants, and dogs innumerable. The narrow and dirty streets of the town were patrolled by droves of zopilotcs— black vultures of the turkey-buzzard genus, which hopped about unmolested in the open and pestiferous gutters; in fact, their vast capacity for devouring carrion had caused the zopilotcs to be placed under the immediate protection of the police.’ ‘ G.A.S.’ APPRAISED BY A BANDIT. But Mr Sala’s ad ventures did not end with the blockaders. On hearing that he was to go to the capital from Vera Cruz in company with a prominent local banker, an audacious bandit made no secret of his intention to kidnap the Don and his friend :— * For the don he meant to ask, be said, a ransom of 50,000 dollars. There was in his company, added “ El Aguador,” another person—an Englishman, whose name he conld not gather, but who was fat. For El Gordo, the corpulent traveller, besbonld demand a ransom of 2,000 dollars. Take physic, pomp ! Here was a rascally Mexican highwayman who not only alluded uncomplimentarily to my personal appearance, but contemptuously appraised me at the pitiful price of £4OO sterling.’ A HUMOROUS USURER. From Mexico to the Strand and from bandits to mouey-

lenders Mr Sila jumps airily. We turn over a page and come across a whole batch of stories about famous and infamous money-lenders of some thirty odd years ago :— * Somewhere in a street off the Strand, between Waterloo Bridge and the Adelphi, there flourished, when I was quite a young man, another facetious usurer whom I will call Mr Thorough—he did things so very completely. He had a front office and a back office, the last bis own private sanctum, which was, so far as I recollect, devoid of any furniture except the bureau at which he sat, an iron safe, a couple of chairs, and a hanging bookshelf, on which reposed an Army List, a Navy List, a Clergy List, and “ Boyle’s Court Guide.” Hie humour was peculiar. When you called upon him with some stamped paper which you were anxious to get discounted, bis first proceeding was to unlock a drawer, take out his cheque book, flourish it in your sight, replace the book in the drawer, lock it, and then, putting his hands in his pockets, cheerfully address you in this wise : “ Well, my buck ; and what might you want with me?" You replied that you wanted a bill discounted. Impossible ! There was no money in London—absolutely no money in London. “ Still,” he would continue on being further pressed, “ there will be no barm in taking just a peep at the young ’un. Has she got the name of the Governor of the Bank of England on her back ?” ’ EVENING DRESS AND GOOD BEHAVIOUR. One of the most readable chapters of this most readable book is devoted to a description of ‘ The Fast Life of the Past,’ and a comparison of it with the fast life of to day. ‘Generally speaking, I incline to the impiession that what little “ fast ” life we have left among us in the upper ranks of society has had its roughness materially modified by the habit of donning evening dress on the slightest provocation ; of smoking cigarettes ; of wearing gardenias in the button hole, and of drinking lemon squashes, or at least modicums of ardent spirits largely diluted with aerated waters. A gentleman in a sable swallowtail coat, a white cravat, a snowy shirt-front with a diamond stud in the centre, and a Gibns hat, thinks twice before he “ punches ” the heads of cabmen and defies policeconstables to single combat; and when we remember that the present time is one in which even prize-fighters appear in evening dress, I think there is something in my contention that “ fast ” life in 1894 is altogether more polished, more refined, and perhaps a little less courageous and daredevil than the roaring horseplay and the coarse dissoluteness of the past.’ FASHIONS IN DRINKS. No book of Mr Sala’s would be complete without some reference to things edible or potable ; and though we have no room for any of the stories of famous dinners, diners, and cooks, we cannot omit the following passage, which shows how fashion dominates even such things as • goes ’ of whisky and glasses of wine : — * Business, however, is business ; and in the days of which I speak very few business transactions could be begun or terminated without the agency of what was conventionally known as “ a pint of wine.” Frequently the pint became a quart, and not unfrequently brandy and water hot was considered as a convertible beverage for the juice of the grape. When I speak of brandy and water I may add it was almost invariably brown brandy—precisely that brown brandy which my mother used to mingle with her Christmas plum-puddings, and which is understood by the Americans when they order “ soda and dark bottom.” To drink pale brandy, or cognac, was looked upon as affectation ; and not one Englishman out of a hundred ever touched whisky, either the Irish or Scotch variety.’ Time would fail to tell of all the varied dishes provided by this veteran chef in this feast of recollections and flow of anecdote. Apart from the tastes of good things we have given, some idea of the fare of this intellectual repast may be gathered from a hasty glance down the menu wherein we find such dainties as Dinners departed, Cooks of my acquaintance, Taverns that have vanished. Pictures that haunt me, Songs that come back to me, Pantomimes past and present, Famous Funerals, Charles Dickens in Paris,’ and a host of other interesting matters. Mr Sala expressly warns us that this is not an autobiography—that is a pleasure to come : but if the piice de resistance that is to be prove worthy of the hors d’oeuvrc which now precede it, it will indeed be delightful Like a wise chef, Mr Sala has by his present book stimulated our appetite for the real meal which is to follow in due course. In the meantime the entries are delightful eating and are easily digested.

: Things I Have Seen and People I Have Known. By George Augustus Sala. Two vols. (London : Cassell and Co., Limited.)