said, "The Saints protect me! it's the Masther himself—I'm kilt entoirely."
The "Masther," however, probably enjoyed the humour of it. Sir Henry, like his dear old friend Mr. J. L. Toole, has found a relief in occasional harmless fun. Toole, however, was irrepressible.
A PRESENTATION.
I was one day walking with him in Leeds (when he was appearing in the evening on the stage, and I on the platform). A street hawker proffered the comedian a metal pencil-case for the sum of a halfpenny. Toole made this valuable purchase. As soon as I left the platform that night, I found a note for me, inviting me to the theatre directly after the performance. Toole came back on to the stage, and making me an elaborate and complimentary speech, referring to me as "a brother artist in another sphere," etc., etc., presented me with the pencil! I made an appropriate reply, and we went to supper.
The following paragraph from the pen of Mr. Toole appeared in the Press the next day in London as well as the provinces:
"Brother artists, even when working in different grooves, do not lack appreciation of each other's work. After Mr. Harry Furniss's lecture in Leeds the other night, he and Mr. Toole foregathered; and the popular and genial actor presented the 'comedian of the pencil' with a very neat and handsome pencil-case, just adapted for the jotting down, wherever duty takes him, of those graphic sketches with which the caricaturist amuses us week by week."
I must confess I am sometimes guilty of mild practical jokes, but I am always careful to select reciprocative and kindred spirits—with such a spirit of practical joking as J. L. Toole, for instance. He and I have had many a joke at each other's expense. It so happened that when he was producing the great success, "The House Boat," he wintered at Hastings, where I had a house for the season, and we saw a great deal of each other. Toole was always what is called a bad study—that is, it was with great difficulty and pain he learnt his parts. On this occasion the time was drawing nearer and nearer for the production; he was getting more and more nervous about his new part, and I received a visit from his friend the late Edmund Routledge, asking me to protect "Johnny" from his friends—in other words, to keep his whereabouts dark, as he had to study. Toole had had one or two little practical jokes with me, which I owed him for, so having to rush up to town, I had the following letter written to him:
"Dear Mr. Toole—I suppose you recollect your old friends in Smoketown when you performed one night at our Hall and did us the honour of stopping at our house over Sunday. You then kindly asked us all to stop with you when we went to London—a promise we have treasured ever since. We called at Maida Vale yesterday, but finding you were at Hastings I write now to say that we are on our way. Besides myself I am bringing dear Aunt Jane you will remember—now unfortunately a confirmed invalid—and my boy Tom who has got a bad leg, and Uncle William and his three daughters, and my dear Sue, who, I am sorry to say, is still suffering, but I think a week at Hastings will do us all a world of good—particularly to have you to amuse us all the time.
"Yours very truly,"
And a signature was attached which I could not myself read.
The next day in London a hansom pulled up close to where I was walking, and a friend of Toole's jumped out, and, seizing my hand, he said, "I say, Furniss, you travel about a lot, lecturing and all that kind of thing—do you know Smoketown?"
SAVAGE CLUB.
MY DESIGN FOR THE MENU 25TH ANNIVERSARY DINNER.
The Original Drawing was by request presented to His Royal Highness.
"Smoketown!" I said, "Smoketown!" (Truth to tell, at the moment I had quite forgotten all about my letter to Toole; then it dawned upon me.) "Oh, yes—well," I said; "I had one night there, and some frightful friends of Toole's bored my life out. He had invited them, I believe, to stop with him in London, and they—"
"Just the people I want. What's their name?"
"I forget that entirely."
"Can you read this?" he said, producing my letter.
"No," I said; "I can't read that signature."
"Do you know where they are likely to put up in town?"
"Not the slightest idea."
"I've tried every hotel in London."
"Temperance?" I asked.
"No, not one. Happy thought!—of course that is where they'll be."
"Try them all," I said, as I waved my hand. And off the cab rushed to visit the various temperance hotels in London.
The next day I returned to Hastings, and went straight to Mr. Toole's hotel. Getting the hall porter into my confidence, he sent up a message to Mr. Toole that a gentleman with a large family had arrived to see him; and the porter and I made the noise of ten up the stairs, and eventually the gentleman and family were announced at Toole's door. I shall never forget poor Toole, standing in an attitude so familiar to the British public, with his eye-glass in his hand and his eyes cast on the ground—he was afraid to raise them. As soon as he did, however, his other hand caught the first book that was handy, and it was flung at my head.
Bohemianism, when I arrived in London, was emigrating from the tavern of sanded floors and clay pipes into Clubland. Artists, authors, actors, and journalists were starting clubs of their own, simply to continue the same pot-house life without restraint; in place of turning the public-house into a club, they turned the club into a public-house. If journalists in Grub Street were at their worst in those days, artists were at their best. The great boom in trade which followed the Franco-German War produced a wave of extraordinary prosperity, which landed many a tramp struggling in troubled waters safely on the beach of fortune. Working men in the North were drinking champagne; some of them rose to be masters and millionaires. They tired of drinking champagne, they could not play the pianos they had bought, or enjoy the mansions they had built; but they could rival each other in covering their walls with pictures, so the poorest "pot-boiler" found a ready sale. The most indifferent daubs were sold as quickly as they could be framed. Artists then built their mansions, drank champagne, and played on their grand pianos. When I, still in my teens, first met these good fellows, I might have been tempted, seeing what wretched work satisfied the picture-dealer, to abandon black and white for colour; but already the boom was over. Artists, like their patrons, had found out their mistake. They had either to let or sell their costly houses, and have, with few exceptions, little to show now for those wonderful days of prosperity in the early seventies—which they still talk over in their clubs in Bohemia.
The few exceptions are the survival of the fittest. But the best of artists have never seen such a boom in art as that I saw in my early days in London. It cannot be denied that, from a fashionable point of view, picture shows are going down. Artists have had to stand on one side as popular Society favourites: the actors have taken their place. One has only to visit the studios on "Show Sundays" to see what a falling off there is. "Show Sunday" was, some years ago, one of the events of the year. From Kensington to St. John's Wood, and up to Hampstead, the studios of the mighty attracted hosts of fashionable people to these annual gatherings.
A
