AT a public dinner the photographer said, “The people at the bottom tables buy the photos, the people at the top table steal the pencils.”

Half the public dinners are attended by women nowadays, and yet women did not even dine at the tables of their lords and masters in the eighteenth century. They then took a back seat. Now in the twentieth century women with common interests bind themselves together into societies, recognising that “union is strength,” and they too follow the tradition of ages, and preserve the sacred English habit of organising dinners.

Is there any more thoroughly British custom, institution, or act of national feeling, than a dinner? Heroes, potentates, benefactors to mankind, are given a mighty Guildhall feast by the Chief Representative of our great capital—the mightiest in the world. Other nations hold banquets, but with them wreaths and ribbons are more to the fore than turtle soup and barons of beef.

One public dinner that afforded me personally special pleasure was given by the New Vagabond Club, on my return from my first visit to Mexico, when a great compliment was paid me. Following their custom, the Vagabonds had singled out two writers of recent books to be honoured. The one, Sir Gilbert Parker, as author of his great novel The Right of Way, as their guest, and myself in the chair, because Mexico as I saw It was kindly considered (to quote the cards of invitation) “one of the best travel-books of the year.” We numbered three hundred. Modesty forbids repetition of the speeches. Obituary notices and speeches are always laudatory.

At another New Vagabond Dinner held at the Hotel Cecil, I remember being much amused by a young officer of the Königin Augusta Garde in Berlin, who was my guest. We had barely taken our seats when a deep sonorous voice roared forth:

“Pray, silence for his Lordship the Bishop of ——.”

“What a splendid voice that gentleman has,” exclaimed my German friend.

“It is the toast-master,” I replied.

“Toast?” he said, “but that is something to eat,” and before further explanation was possible the Bishop began to say grace, and everyone stood up.

“Is this the King’s health?” asked the Baron, lifting his empty glass.

“No, it’s grace,” I answered.

“What is grace? It seems like a prayer.”

“So it is, for your good behaviour,” I said.

“Do you always have it?”

“Yes, when we go out to dinner.”

“And not at home?”

“Oh no, we are only good like that and enjoy all that official ceremony at public dinners.”

He was much tickled at the idea, and likewise relieved that the King’s health was not being toasted with empty glasses.

Another public feast—the Dinner of the Society of Authors, in 1907—gave me still more food for mirth, besides intellectual and other enjoyment.

My seat at the top table placed me between Mr. Bernard Shaw and Lord Dunsany. Exactly opposite was one of the fork tables that filled the room, and gave accommodation to about two hundred and fifty guests. In the corner facing us sat a nice little old lady. Somehow she reminded me of a cock-sparrow. She was petite and fragile, with a perky little way, and her iron-grey hair was cut short. She looked at my neighbour on my left, consulted her programme, on which she read the name of Bernard Shaw, smiled with apparent delight, preened herself, and then the following conversation began:

Old Lady (beaming across table): “I do love your writing.”

Grey-bearded Gentleman (bowing): “Thank you very much.”

Old Lady: “One sees the whole scene so vividly before one.”

The grey-bearded gentleman bowed again.

Old Lady (bending a little nearer): “They live and move. The characters almost dance before one.”

Grey-bearded Gentleman (evidently rather pleased): “It’s good of you to say so. So few people read my sort of stuff as a rule.”

Old Lady: “They are works of inspiration! By the by, how does inspiration come to you?”

Grey-bearded Gentleman: “Well, it’s rather difficult to say. Anywhere, I think. An idea often flashes through my mind in a crowd, or even when someone is talking to me.”

Old Lady (flapping her wings with delight, and evidently hoping she was an inspiration): “Would you be so very kind as to sign my autograph book?”

“With pleasure,” was the reply. And thereupon she produced a tiny little almanac from her pocket and a stylographic pen, and with a beaming smile remarked:

“Under your name, please write Man and Superman!”

He turned to her with a puzzled look, and then this is what ensued:

“That is my favourite play.”

“Is it?”

“Don’t you love it the best?”

“Never read it in my life.”

“What! never read your own masterpiece!”

“No, madam. I am afraid you have made a mistake.”

“What! You do not mean to say that you are not Bernard Shaw?”

“No. I’m only Lewis Morris, the poet.”

Momentary collapse of the old lady, and amusement of my neighbour. By this time I was in fits. Shaw having telegraphed he would not come in till the meat course was over, Sir Lewis Morris had asked me if he might take his place.

Old Lady (collecting herself): “Never mind. You had better sign your autograph, all the same.”

And, not knowing whether to laugh or scowl, Sir Lewis Morris put on his glasses and wrote his name, then turning to me, said:

“Well, that was a funny adventure.”

Bernard Shaw himself arrived a little later, and sitting near us, waited for the moment when he was to get up and reply for the drama. Being a vegetarian, he had avoided the first part of the dinner.

A merry twinkle hung round his eye all the time he talked, and with true Irish brogue he duly pronounced all his wh’s as such, and mixed up will and shall! His red beard was almost grey, and his face has become older and more worn since success weighed him down, and wealth oppressed him so deeply.

I could not agree with Lewis Morris’s self-depreciatory remark that few people “read my sort of stuff,” for I learnt on very excellent authority that publishers have sold more than forty-five thousand copies of his Epic of Hades—not bad for poetic circulation—and that this and the Songs of Two Worlds shared between them sixty editions.

Poor Lewis Morris died a few months after this little comedy occurred.

To continue with G. B. S., here may be given the recollection of a luncheon at his home one day.

From dinners to a luncheon!—well, that is no great digression. Longer, certainly, than from luncheon to dinner, with five o’clock tea thrown in. To part from Bernard Shaw is too impossible.

“Mrs. Bernard Shaw” is the name upon the little oak gate across the stairway leading to the second-floor flat near the Strand.

Below are a club, offices, and other odds and ends, above and beyond the gate the great G. B. S. is to be found. “Bring your man to lunch here,” was the amusing reply I received to a note asking the Shaws to dine and meet “George Birmingham” (the Rev. James Hannay), the famous Irish novelist.

Accordingly, to lunch “my man” and I repaired. Everything about George Bernard Shaw is new. The large drawing-room overlooking the Thames is furnished in new art—a modern carpet, hard, straight-lined, white enamelled bookcases, a greeny yellow wall—a few old prints, ’tis true—and over the writing-table, his own bust by Rodin, so thin and aristocratic in conception, that it far more closely resembles our mutual friend Robert Cunninghame Graham. No curtains; open windows; sanitation; hygiene; vegetarianism; modernism on every side. Bernard Shaw has no reverence for age or custom, antiquity or habit—a modern man, his is a modern home, only rendered homelike by the touch of a charming woman. It is wonderful how loud-talking Socialism succumbs to calm, peaceful, respectable comfort. Since his marriage the Socialist has given up much of the practice of his theories, and is accepting the daily use of fine linen and silver, the pleasures of flowers and dainty things; he politely owns himself the happier for them; but then Mrs. Bernard Shaw is a refined and delightful woman.

George Bernard Shaw comes from Dublin, his wife from far-away Cork. She is well-connected, clever, and tactful, and the sheet-anchor of G. B. S.

Shaw was at his best. He ate nuts and grapes while we enjoyed the pleasures of the table. I told him I had first heard of him in Berlin, in 1892, long before he had been talked of here. I had seen Arms and the Man in the German capital—that, eight years later, I was haunted by Candida in America, and then came back to find him creeping into fame in England. That delighted him.

“Yes, I insist on rehearsing every line of my own plays whenever it is possible—if I can’t, well, they do as they like.”

I told him I had seen Ibsen’s slow, deliberate way of rehearsing, and W. S. Gilbert’s determined persuasion. What did he do?

“I like them to read their parts the first time. Then I can stop them, and give them my interpretations, and when they are learning them at home, my suggestions soak in. If they learn their words first, they also get interpretations of their own, which I may have to make them unlearn. I hate rehearsals; they bore me to death; sometimes I have forty winks from sheer ennui; but still I stick there, and, like the judge, wake up when wanted.”

“Do you get cross?”

“No. I don’t think so. I correct, explain why, and go ahead. I never let them repeat; much better to give the correction, and let them think it out at home; if one redoes the passage they merely become more and more dazed, I find.”

“Speaking of Ibsen, do you think his influence was so great?” I asked.

“Undoubtedly. But the movement was in the air. I had written several of my plays which, when they appeared, the critics said showed Ibsen’s influence, and yet at that time I had never read a word of Ibsen. He emphasised and brought out what everyone was feeling; but he never got away from the old idea of a ‘grand ending,’ a climax—a final curtain.”

“Plays are funny things,” he continued. “A few years ago I received a letter from a young man in the country. He said his people were strict Methodists, he had never been in a theatre in his life, he had not even been allowed to read Shakespeare, but Three Plays by Shaw had fallen into his hands, and he had read them. He felt he must write a play. He had written one. Would I read it? I did. It was crude, curious, middle-aged, stinted, and yet the true dramatic element was there. He had evolved a village drama from his own soul. I wrote and told him to go on, and showed him his faults, but never heard any more of him.

“Once a leading actor-manager of mine took to drink. I heard it; peril seemed imminent. I wrote and told him I had met a journalist, named Moriarty, who had found him drunk in the street; explained that under the influence of alcohol he had divulged the most appalling things, which, if true, would make it necessary for me to find someone else to play the part. Terrible despair! Many letters at intervals. I continued to cite Moriarty, and all went well. One fine day a letter came, saying my manager had met the tale-bearer. He had happened to call at a lady’s house, and there Moriarty stood. The furious manager nearly rushed at his enemy’s throat to kill him; but being in a woman’s drawing-room, he deferred his revenge. Nevertheless, he would, by Jove, he would do it next time, if he heard any more tales. Vengeance, daggers!

“Then I quaked. I had to write and say my ‘Moriarty’ was a myth, so he had better leave the unoffending personage alone.” And G. B. S. twinkled merrily through those sleepy grey eyes as he told the tale.

Once I was inveigled into editing and arranging a souvenir book for University College Hospital, of which more anon. I asked Mr. Shaw to do something for the charity. This is his characteristic reply, written on a post card:

Yet another public dinner stands out prominently in my memory.

Quite a crowd attended the Women Journalists’ Dinner of November, 1907. Mrs. Humphry Ward was in the chair. Next to her was the Italian Ambassador, the Marquis di San Giuliano, and then myself. My neighbour was especially interesting as the descendant of an old Sicilian family, Lords of Catania since the time of the Crusades, and also because he himself had earned a considerable name in literature. Later he left London for the Embassy in Paris, and is now in Rome, as Minister for Foreign Affairs.

Taking up my card, his Excellency exclaimed:

“Why, are you the lady who wrote that charming book on Sicily?”

I nodded.

“I am a Sicilian, and I thank you, madam,” he said. In fact, in the exuberance of his spirits, he shook and re-shook me by the hand.

We became great friends, and he often came in to have a talk about his native land.

A Sicilian, he sat in the Italian Parliament for many years, and was three years in the Ministry; then, in 1905, he was asked to come to London as Ambassador. He had never been in the diplomatic service, and had only visited Great Britain as a tourist; in fact, he feared the climate, on account of rheumatism, which at fifty-two had nearly crippled him. But pressure was brought to bear, so he came to St. James’s.

He declared England to be most hospitable, the people were so kind and opened their doors so readily; and he loved the climate. He was delighted he had come.

“In Sicily,” he said, “you are right in saying that we are still in the seventeenth century. We have much to learn. I believe in women having equal rights with men in everything. I think they ought to have the suffrage. Your women in England are far more advanced than in Italy, and I admire them for it. I have the greatest respect and love and admiration for women. My wife came from Tuscany. She was advanced for an Italian, and she first opened my eyes to the capabilities of women. I hope before I die to see them in a far better position than they already hold. They have helped us men through centuries and they deserve reward.”

What a delight the Marquis di San Giuliano will be to the suffragists among his own countrywomen if ever they attain to the advancement of our own Parliament Square agitators.

He lunched with me one day early in January, 1908, and afterwards drove me down to the Pfeiffer Hall of Queen’s College, Harley Street, where, with Sir Charles Holroyd as chairman, he had promised to deliver a lecture to the Dante Society. Its subject was the twenty-sixth canto of the Inferno, the whole of which the Ambassador read in Italian. Then he went on to comment upon the text in English, and explained the symbolical meaning of Ulysses’s voyage and wreck.

I was struck by a theory which the lecturer advanced: that the canto was possibly one of the factors that helped to produce the state of mind in Christopher Columbus which prepared him for his immortal discovery. In the inventory of the estate of a Spaniard who was a comrade of Columbus, one of the items named was a copy of Dante’s poem. It was probable that Columbus, an Italian, and much more educated than this officer, was in the habit of reading the book. It was known that a certain astronomer who was one of Columbus’s foremost inspirers, was a keen Dante student. Probably Columbus’s track, as far as the Canary Isles, varied but little from that of Ulysses. Certainly in Columbus’s speech to his wavering crew is found an echo of Ulysses’s exhortation.

On the drive to Queen’s College the Marquis wore a thick fur coat, and it was a mild day; I remarked upon it.

“I always transpire so, when I speak, that I am afraid of catching cold,” he replied.

What a trouble all these oddities of our language must be to foreigners. I remember a more amusing slip from the talented wife of a very public man, who speaks the English tongue with perfect grace and charm. I had asked if her husband wore his uniform when performing annually a great historic ceremony.

“Oh no, he wears his nightdress,” she replied, meaning his dress clothes.

Apropos of the Milton Centenary the Italian Ambassador was asked to speak at the Mansion House on “Milton in connection with Dante.” He motored down to my mother’s house in Buckinghamshire, where I was staying, and together we explored Milton’s cottage, where the poet wrote Paradise Regained and corrected Paradise Lost. We spent some time looking over manuscripts and photographs, in order that he should be saturated with the subject, and the next night he went to the Mansion House full of his theme.

“I got up,” said His Excellency, “referred to Milton, then to Dante, knowing that this was only my preliminary canter to personal reminiscences to come. What were those reminiscences? I gazed at that vast audience. I pondered. I knew there was something very important I had to say. I returned to the dissimilarity of the two men’s work. I wondered what my great point was, and finally with a graceful reference to poetry, I sat down.

“Then, and not till then, did I remember I had cracked the nut, and left out a description of Milton’s home, the kernel of my speech.”

This man is a brilliant speaker in Italian and French, and quite above the average in English and German. Which of us who has made a speech has not, on sitting down, remembered the prized sentence has been forgotten?

The Marquis gave some delightful dinners in Grosvenor Square. I met Princes, Dukes, authors, artists, actors, and even Labour Members of Parliament, at his table. He was interested in all sides of life, and all the time he was in England he continued to take lessons in our language.

I first met Mr. Cecil Rhodes in December, 1894, at a dinner-party which was notable for its Africans, Dr. Jameson and H. M. Stanley being there as well. A woman’s impression of a much-talked-of man may not count for much. He sat next me. I was fairly young and maybe attractive, I suppose, so he talked to me as if I were a baby or a doll. To be candid, I took a particular dislike to Rhodes from the moment I first saw him. A tall, some might say a handsome, man, his face was round and red, and not a bit clever so far as appearances went. He looked like an overfed well-to-do farmer, who enjoyed the good things of this life. He seemed self-opinionated, arrogant, petulant, and scheming—no doubt what the world calls “a strong man.” There seemed no human or soft side to his character at all. Self, self, ambition. And self again marked every word he uttered.

Of course he was masterful. Even his very Will denoted that. It was hard, cool-headed, calculating, and less generous to his family than it might have been.

Still Rhodes did great things, and was it not he who said, “It is a good thing to have a period of adversity”? Mighty true—but strangely disagreeable.

Although outwardly so indifferent to everyone and everything, Cecil Rhodes was not above the vanities. He and a friend of mine had been boys together, and Rhodes became godfather to one of the latter’s children, a post which he considered held serious responsibilities. He wished to make his godson a valuable present. It was the proud parent’s idea to ask the great African to let the gift be his portrait.

“Of course I will,” said Cecil Rhodes; “arrange the artist and terms, and tell me when I am to sit, and I’ll go.”

So matters were settled. An artist was asked to undertake the commission, and one fine day my friend took Rhodes round to the studio for the first sitting.

The artist decided to paint him side face. Rhodes petulantly refused to be depicted anything but full face. Discussion waxed warm, and, naturally, my poor friend felt very uncomfortable. However, the artist, claiming the doctor’s privilege of giving orders and expecting to be obeyed, began his work on his own lines.

Cecil Rhodes gave only the first sitting and one other. Then, finding the picture was really being painted side face, like a child he became furious. He refused ever to sit again, and on his return from the studio wrote a cheque for the stipulated sum, and sent it to the artist, asking him to forward the picture to him as it was.

The brush-man guessed that his object was to destroy the canvas, so, instead of sending the picture, he returned the cheque. Thus the portrait—unfinished, indeed, hardly begun—remained hidden away in the studio; and now that the sitter is dead, it should possess some interest.

A man who knew Cecil Rhodes very well once told me:

“He was a muddler. I was one of his secretaries. When he went away we sorted his correspondence, ‘One,’ ‘Two,’ ‘Three.’ ‘One’ included the letters requiring first attention. ‘Two’ those not so important, and so on. When he came back from Bulawayo, we gave him the letters. Three months afterwards, he had never looked at one of them. ‘Leave them alone, they will answer themselves,’ he said; but that was a most dangerous doctrine, and sometimes nearly cost C. R. his position. He made endless enemies through this extraordinary, selfish, lazy indifference.”

As stated above, Stanley was at this dinner of which I have been writing, and I often met him later. He always appeared to me shy, reticent, almost to moroseness on occasions. He was a small man with white wavy hair, round face, and square jaw, dark of skin—probably more dark in effect than reality, in contrast to the hair. He was broadly made and inclined to be stout. His face was much lined, but a merry smile spread over his countenance at times.

At one of my earliest dinners with the Society of Authors I sat between him and Mr. Hall Caine. No greater contrast than that between these two men could be found, I am sure—the latter quick and sharp; Henry Stanley, on the other hand, stolid in temperament and a person not easily put out or disturbed.

“I walk for two hours every day of my life,” said Stanley. “Unless I get my six or seven miles’ stretch, I feel as if I would explode, or something dreadful happen to me. So every afternoon after lunch I sally forth, generally into Hyde Park, where, in the least-frequented parts, I stretch my legs and air my thoughts. I live again in Africa, in the solitude of those big trees, and I conjure up scenes of the dark forest and recall incidents the remembrance of which has lain dormant for years. Taking notes, going long walks, studying politics, compose the routine of my daily life.

“I am a Liberal-Unionist, and shocked that you should say you are a Radical—no lady should ever hold such sentiments.”

And he really appeared so terribly shocked I could not help telling him a little story of how on one occasion an old gentleman was introduced to take me down to dinner. Some remark on the staircase made me say, “I am a Radical.” “Ma’am!” he replied, almost dropping my arm, and bending right away from me. “Are you horrified? Do you think it dreadful to be a Radical?” I asked. “Yes, ma’am, I am indeed shocked that any lady—and let alone a young lady—should dare to hold such pernicious views!” Really, the old gentleman was dreadfully distressed, seemed to think me not even respectable, and, although I did my best to soothe him with the soup, to chat to him on other topics with the fish, it was not until dessert was reached that he was really happy or comfortable in his mind that his young neighbour was fit society to be next to him at a dinner-party.”

Stanley laughed.

I asked him if he had any desire to go back to Africa.

“None,” he replied. “I may go some day, but not through any burning desire; for, although I have been a great wanderer, I don’t mind much if I never wander again.”

During the evening he proposed the health of the late Mr. Moberly Bell, our chairman, whom he had known for twenty-eight years. Stanley had a tremendously strong voice, which filled the large hall, and seemed to vibrate through my head with its queer accent. He spoke extremely well, without the slightest nervousness or hesitation; his language was good and his delivery excellent.

It was not till I read his Life, when it first came out in 1909, that I realised what a struggle his had been. Reared in a workhouse, this maker of the Congo (which we muddled and allowed the Belgians to take for their own) was indeed a remarkable man. He attained position, wealth in a minor degree, a charming lady as a wife, and a title. His self-education and magnificent strength of purpose secured all this unaided, even by good fortune. His Life reads like an excellent novel. In these Socialistic days one receives with interest his remark, “Individuals require to be protected from the rapacity of Communities. Socialism is a return to primitive conditions.”

Yes. Stanley was a great man. Seven thousand miles across unknown Africa, amidst slave-traders, cannibals, and wild beasts, his expedition “tottered its way to the Atlantic, a scattered column of long and lean bodies; dysentery, ulcers, and scurvy fast absorbing the remnant of life left by famine.” So he crossed from East to West, and traversed hundreds of miles of the river Congo.

My other neighbour at that dinner—Hall Caine—had much in common with me, and we discussed Iceland, where, of course, we had both been; Norway, which he knew in summer and I in winter; and then Nansen.

The Manxman is an interesting companion, his nervous intensity throws warmth and enthusiasm into all his sayings and makes his subjects appear more interesting than they really are, perhaps. There is a magnetic influence in him. Physically delicate, a perfect bundle of nerves, there is an electric thrill in all he says, in spite of the sad, soft intonation of his voice.

He ponders again and again over his scenes, throws himself heart and soul into his characters, himself lives all the tragic episodes and terrible moments that the men and women undergo, with the result that by the time the book is completed he is absolutely played out, mind and body.

Certainly, to sum up, my dinner neighbours have often been, and often are, most interesting, and frequently delightful as well.

Nothing in the world is more bracing than contact with brilliant minds. Brilliancy begets brilliancy just as dullness makes thought barren.