| Bohemia in London—Phil and his bulldog—How jokes get into Punch—Men who back big productions—Inducement more female than financial—A picture—A drawing for a duchess—“She’ll never be able to change that tenner.” |
I had known Phil in Australia, where he worked for the Sydney Bulletin. I found him living at St John’s Wood and firmly established as one of the leading artists on London Punch. There are Bohemians of the beer and back-biting variety, but Phil was the genuine article. He earned about two thousand a year and spent three thousand. An extraordinarily skinny man, with a face like a gargoyle, he was a self-taught artist, a self-taught actor; could give a Shakespearian reading as well as most dramatic artists, and could dance a bit if required. He knew everybody in the artistic, literary, and theatrical world, and his Sunday evenings at St John’s Wood gathered together the brightest and best of the Bohemians.
Phil welcomed me with open arms, mainly because he had bought a horse which he hadn’t seen for a year, and he wanted somebody to ride it. Phil was for ever buying things that he did not want; and he would have bought (on credit) anything from an elephant to an old master when properly approached. Also, like most comic artists, his life was one long and wearisome search for jokes suitable for illustrations. He told me that he kept a locker at the Punch office, and went down every week and brought away a hand-bag full of suggestions sent in by the public. Only one suggestion in each bag-ful was any good at all.
“One chap starts his suggestion by saying, ‘Draw a Scotch humorist,’ and another says. ‘Draw an elephant sitting on a flea,’ and I’m supposed to draw the agony on the flea’s features.”
He thought I might have some new Australian jokes. I fired one off at him with the warning that it had probably been done before:
“Never mind if it has, dear boy,” he said. “I’ve never done it.”
The theatrical profession, for some reason or another, looked upon Phil May as a kind of Aladdin—he only had to rub a lamp and he could get them jobs. So they flooded his Sunday nights and asked him to see producers, managers, concert promoters, etc., for them. It appeared that half the leg-shows in London were run by wealthy men, who had nothing to do with the theatre business but who put up their money for female rather than financial reasons. One such show was being floated at the time, and May said:
“There’s a syndicate at the back of this show, and every one of the syndicate has a lady friend on the payroll. They thought they’d boost it up by getting Arthur Roberts as producer. Arthur’s a great joke as a comedian, but he’s a bigger joke as a producer. What with the women fighting, and their gentlemen friends interfering, he could get nothing done. At last he tackled a johnnie who was sitting on a table in the centre of the stage, swinging his legs, and talking to a delicate damsel in a domino. Arthur, for once, in a way, was too angry to be funny, so he said: ‘Get to hell out of here, will you! How can I rehearse them with every loafer in London hanging about?’ So the chap said: ‘Well, you can’t rehearse them anyhow. I’ve got a thousand pounds in this show, so I’m going to stop here and talk to it!’”
Phil’s guests were as various as the animals that Noah took into the Ark. Van Biene, the ’cellist, of “Broken Melody” fame, might be seen talking to a little American siffleuse. Lewis Waller, the tragedian, and his offsider, Mollison, were heavily imported for the benefit of three Australian girl singers, all with colds.
Mollison told us that he had arranged with a capitalist to finance a show that he was going to produce, with Lewis Waller in the lead. The capitalist, after weeks of judicious handling, had just been led to the sticking-point. Then an interview was arranged, at which papers were to be signed and cheques handed over. Waller lost his head at the feeling of careless swagger of having five thousand pounds to play with; and when they met, he said to the capitalist:
“Five thousand pounds! It’s all very well, you know, but hardly enough, you know. You can lose five thousand in a fortnight. I produced Bouncing Belle—lost three thousand in a week. Lost four thousand in three weeks of Midsummer Madness. Five thousand’s only a flea-bite, you know. You want fifteen thousand really. Then you can hang on! Then you can stand a siege!” The capitalist’s jaw was dropping all this time, and as each fresh loss was mentioned he went whiter and whiter.
Then Waller made a dignified exit. The capitalist drew a long breath and said:
“Mollison, I don’t think I’ll go in for this.”
At these Sunday night shows, nobody did his own speciality. Instead of doing lightning sketches, Phil May sang sentimental ballads in a pleasant tenor voice. Florrie Schmidt, an operatic soprano, played the accompaniment of “There’ll be a hot time in the old town” for a tragedian, who was making his audiences flood the pit with their tears every night. Back of it all, there was a strain—the strain of the wanted job, of the thousand and one worries of the hard-up professional. Bohemia hid its troubles as well as it could, but there were many little anxious colloquies in corners of the room and many faces that looked a lot brighter after a talk with a manager or a concert promoter. Phil’s Sunday nights got many a poor mime or musician a job.
Phil’s proudest possession was a prize bulldog that somebody had given him—the cheeriest, kindest, sloberiest bulldog that anyone ever saw. When we proceeded to sally out at night, Mrs May would always insist that Phil should take the bulldog, hoping that the sense of responsibility and fear of losing the dog would bring him home before daylight. In our peregrinations from pub to pub everybody knew Phil and everybody wanted to shout for him. Americans who recognized him by his portraits would introduce themselves and say:
“Ah must have a drink with Mr Phil May.”
While I was arguing the point, and saying that he did not want any more drinks, the bulldog would brush against somebody’s leg; and the owner of the leg, looking down into the cavern of ivory and red flesh which the bulldog called a mouth, would go faint all over. Then there would have to be drinks to bring this man round, and to insure the others against a similar collapse. After a couple of hours of this, Phil would call a cab and say:
“Take this dog home to St John’s Wood for me, will you?”
The dog loved riding in cabs, and evidently had the idea that when he entered a cab he had bought it; for if there happened to be nobody at home when he arrived there, he would refuse to leave the cab and the cabman had to sit on the box and wait, perhaps for an hour or two, until Mrs May came home. No wonder that Phil was chronically hard-up!
One night, after the theatres had shut, we went for supper to a restaurant much frequented by the better-paid of the theatrical world. The place was wreathed in smoke; the jabber was incessant, and there was much hilarity as each celebrity came in. Louis Bradfield, with some of the beauty chorus from the Gaiety Theatre, got perhaps the best “hand”. Then Phil May started to do little caricatures on the backs of the menus. The next thing was the appearance of a waiter, bearing a silver salver, on which lay a ten-pound note:
“The Duchess of So-and-So’s compliments, and she would like to buy one of Mr May’s little sketches.”
Phil took up the tenner and drew a sketch on the back of it—about the sketch the less said the better—and handed it to the waiter. “Mr Phil May’s compliments, and he has much pleasure in presenting the duchess with one of his sketches.”
“Blast her impudence,” said Phil. “She’ll never be able to change the tenner, anyhow.”
On another night we went to the National Sporting Club, a somewhat faded institution, where Phil was in great demand; and it was hard to keep the booze hounds off him. Vacant faces loomed through the tobacco smoke and heavy jowls hung over long drinks. A big Lancashire manufacturer joined our party; a fine, fresh-complexioned, burly man, who seemed a good sort. He said that he had a concession (meaning a contract) to install electric tram-cars in Perth and Ballarat, and that he would make fifty thousand pounds out of it. This seemed terrific, but I believed him. He said that his son was a college-taught fellow, and weak in the chest. Kipling’s sailor man and his son over again.
At the National Sporting Club I met Bob Beresford, whom I had known in South Africa. A curious character, a bland, attractive, gentle personality; so simple-looking—and such a demon! A Queensberry Cup winner, a splendid billiard-player, and the best pigeon shot for money in the world. He talked of taking some horses out to Australia; but I assured him that there would be no scope for him. He certainly wouldn’t come out for amusement, and the racing Australian has less money and is harder to separate from it than his English brother.
Meeting a more sedate if more stodgy acquaintance later on, I was taken to the Junior Carlton for a drink. It takes twenty years to get to the ballot for the Junior Carlton, and membership of the club entitles a man to a reserved seat in heaven—if he ever gets there. So I was greatly surprised to see a particularly blatant Australian making himself very conspicuous among the members.
This man had married money in Australia, and had got into the House of Commons. In fact, he was a pillar of the Conservative party; and this entitled him to membership of the Senior Carlton, a purely political club. The Senior Carlton was under repair, so their members were temporarily accommodated at the Junior Carlton. My Australian acquaintance was displaying himself at the door of the club, strutting around the smoking-room, and ordering the waiters about as though he owned the place. The joke was that he had several times been enthusiastically blackballed from this same Junior Carlton!
My host for the evening was himself an Australian, who had done very well in the South African war. He said: “That fellow is the sort that gets us a bad name. No wonder the barber up in Buluwayo wrote on his door, ‘Dogs, kaffirs, and Australians not admitted.’”
Monday, November 26th 1901—After some correspondence, called at The Times office to see about some work. Very severe ordeal. Was shown into waiting-room, then piloted by a haughty menial round the whole building because the rules don’t allow of anyone going straight up any stairs to the place that he wishes to reach. Those stairs are all defendu. After having circumnavigated the office, I was shown into another waiting-room. Passed a tranquil hour in meditation, and was then shown in to Moberley Bell, the manager, a fine big personable man. I did not see Buckle, the editor. I suppose he is too busy, keeping his eye on the Sultan of Turkey and the Kaiser. Perhaps he is like the Pink ’Un editor, who is supposed not to know his way to the office.
Wrote some verses for the Pink ’Un, which they printed, and asked me to call. Here at last, I thought, I will see the real Bohemia. The staff are supposed to live in an atmosphere of bailiffs and intoxication, and there are some very smart writers among them—Pitcher and Shifter and others. Found them a hard-working lot of busy men. Not one of them was drunk, and none of them said anything specially worthy of publication. They are the last line of the Old Guard, the guard that never surrenders. And they are putting up a spirited fight against the introduction of motor cars!—If you don’t believe this look up the files of the Pink ’Un.
Then John Corlette, owner of the paper, and always referred to as “Master”, was discovered going to the races in a motor car, and the bottom fell out of the Pink ’Un policy.
Wednesday, December 4th—Wound up this London trip by attending a public meeting in Hyde Park in favour of General Buller, who has been recalled from Africa. First came four mounted police troopers and then a band. If one starts four mounted police and a band through London there is no trouble in getting a hundred thousand people to sympathize with anything. Temperance societies were conspicuous with their banners, though it is a mystery why a temperance society should wish to demonstrate on Buller’s behalf. He has never been what one could call a distinguished advocate for temperance. The crowd streamed along, pausing occasionally to cheer for Buller and to hoot Lord Roberts. The demonstration did not mean anything except that they were sick of the war. Passing through clubland, a couple of collectors pushed long bamboo poles up to the first-floor balconies, where sat a prime assortment of fat, well-fed old colonels, with swag bellies and port-wine noses. They laughed at the first collecting bag, but were met with a fierce roar of dislike that made the grin die off their faces, and the purple of their noses turn to an ashen grey. They hurriedly dumped some coins in the bag and vanished inside. The crowd were really nasty; it only needed someone to throw a brick through a window and they would have gutted the building.
Passing through the crowd I heard a large hairy ruffian say to a very small man:
“I’ve just been givin’ a chap a sock in the nose for talkin’ nonsense abart Buller. Wot’s your opinion abart Buller?”
Soon after I left London Phil May died, leaving nothing for his widow; but the Punch people gave her all his original drawings. As Phil May did not leave an enemy in the world, people rushed in to buy the drawings, and the widow cleared something like three thousand pounds by the sale. The Bohemians of London may have had their weak points, but they were prepared to pay their tribute to the greatest Bohemian of them all.