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Title: Things I know about kings, celebrities, and crooks
Author: William Le Queux
Release date: July 13, 2026 [eBook #79085]
Language: English
Original publication: London: Eveleigh Nash and Grayson Limited, 1923
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/79085
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THINGS I KNOW ABOUT KINGS, CELEBRITIES, AND CROOKS ***
[Illustration: Yours very sincerely]
William Le Queux
THINGS I KNOW
THINGS I KNOW
ABOUT KINGS, CELEBRITIES,
AND CROOKS
BY
WILLIAM LE QUEUX
LONDON
EVELEIGH NASH AND GRAYSON
LIMITED
1923
_Copyright in the United States of America
by William Le Queux, 1923._
_All translation rights reserved._
_Made and Printed in Great Britain by
Southampton Times Limited, Southampton._
To
MY DEAR FRIENDS
SIR WILLIAM & LADY EARNSHAW COOPER,
OF CASTLE CAREY, GUERNSEY,
I DEDICATE
THESE FEW REMINISCENCES OF
A WANDERING LIFE.
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I. WHAT I KNOW ABOUT KINGS 13
II. MORE ABOUT KINGS 31
III. AMONG REAL BRIGANDS 44
IV. IN SAVAGE EUROPE 57
V. THE LOVE ROMANCE OF KING PETER OF
SERBIA 67
VI. SOME SECRET HISTORY 77
VII. EVENINGS WITH “CARMEN SYLVA,” QUEEN OF
ROUMANIA 91
VIII. WHAT THE SULTAN OF TURKEY TOLD ME 105
IX. SECRETS OF WELL-KNOWN WOMEN 121
X. OTHER STORIES OF NOTABLE WOMEN 131
XI. ADVENTURES: HUMOROUS AND CURIOUS 147
XII. ADVENTURES IN JOURNALISM 162
XIII. AMONG EDITORS AND PUBLISHERS 187
XIV. CRIMINALS I HAVE MET 204
XV. MORE CRIMINALS I HAVE MET 222
XVI. SPIES AND SPYING 235
XVII. ABOUT OTHER SPIES AND THE TRUTH
CONCERNING “JACK THE RIPPER” 258
XVIII. STORIES OF FAMOUS FOLK 273
XIX. ADVENTURES IN CLUBLAND 286
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
WILLIAM LE QUEUX _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
PRINCESS LUISA OF SAXONY 35
VATT MARASHI, CHIEF OF THE SKRELI BRIGANDS 59
THE BRIGAND WOMAN WHO CARRIED ON THE BLOOD
FEUD 59
PETKOFF, PRIME MINISTER OF BULGARIA 88
MY BRIGAND BODYGUARD IN NORTHERN ALBANIA 88
KING NICHOLAS OF MONTENEGRO 105
TEWFIK PASHA 105
MR. LE QUEUX HELPING THE FRENCH POLICE TO
EXCAVATE AT LANDRU’S VILLA 230
CRIPPEN, THE POISONER 230
EXTRACTS OF LORD ROBERTS’ FAMOUS LETTER OF
WARNING 247
CARICATURE OF WILLIAM LE QUEUX 299
PREFACE
In writing of these episodes in the career of a wanderer over the
face of Europe, my object is to entertain and perhaps amuse many of
my unknown friends and correspondents who, scattered over the world,
have, from time to time, written me encouraging words of appreciation
concerning my works of fiction. To them, I would reveal certain
facts, some grave and some gay, which may be found of interest. To do
so, I propose to take my reader behind the scenes of some particular
phases of life with which he may be unfamiliar.
And let me say at the outset, these records of an eventful though
perhaps erratic life contain nothing but fact. I have led, and still
lead, a wandering life. My custom has ever been never to have even a
_pied-à-terre_ in one place longer than a year, and even during that
time to travel as much as possible. I may accurately call myself a
cosmopolitan, since when my hat is on my roof is on.
But these modest reminiscences are mainly about other people, and,
although I find myself compelled to use the first person singular
much more often than I desire, I pen them with the fervent hope that
they may be taken as a little arm-chair chat about modern men and
modern matters, rather than essays in autobiography.
Nobody, I am sure, cares a jot when I cut my first tooth or where
I learned to walk. No genealogical tree or tradition of race is
necessary--though my unusual name means in Norman-French “the King’s
head cook,” and I can trace my ancestors through centuries. But of
what use is it in these democratic days, when duke’s son and cook’s
son are on equality, and the “Red Flag” is sung in the House of
Commons?
However, while thus casually mentioning my name, it may not be
inappropriate to quote the following explanatory stanzas by a poet
unknown to me:
It troubles each sex,
So I put it to you,
Is it William Le Quex
Or William Le Queux?
I give you the cue,
So no longer perplex,
It is William Le Queux,
Not William Le Quex.
And for those who want to know who I am, I cannot do better than
refer them to the paragraph in that useful and entertaining annual,
_Who’s Who_.
=LE QUEUX, William Tufnell=; novelist; traveller; Commander
of the Orders of St. Sava of Serbia; Danilo of Montenegro;
Crown of Italy; San Marino Order, etc. Consul of Republic of
San Marino, retired; _b._ London, 2nd July, 1864; _e.s._ of
William Le Queux of Châteauroux, Indre. _Educ._: privately
in London; Pegli, near Genoa. Studied art in the Quartier
Latin; made a tour through France, Germany, and Italy on
foot; became journalist and special correspondent of _The
Globe_, 1891; special foreign correspondent of _The Times_;
resigned to devote his time to novel writing, 1893. Secretary
to British diplomatic mission to San Marino. Has travelled in
Russia, Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Siberia, the Areg region
of the Sahara Desert, Asia Minor, etc.; journeyed through
Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, Albania on special Government
Mission, 1907; Arctic (with Harry de Windt), 1908; Sûdan,
1909. Correspondent of the _Daily Mail_ in various capitals,
and war correspondent in the first Balkan War. Collector of
mediæval manuscripts, codices, and monastic seals, of which
he possesses a large and valuable collection; has intimate
knowledge of the Secret Service of other Continental Powers;
consulted by the Government in such matters. Forecasted the
Great War in his book, _The Invasion_, 1910. Is a keen student
of criminology, and also well known in wireless research.
Is a qualified wireless engineer, and was the first to
broadcast concerts over Great Britain and Ireland from his
powerful radio station 2AZ at Guildford in 1920–21 in the
early days of radio-telephony. Writes and lectures on wireless
research, and on spies and spying. Member of the Institute of
Radio Engineers. Author of over 130 novels and many kinema
films. President of the Wireless Alliance, Vice-President of
the Radio Association. President of many wireless research
societies.
_Recreations_: Pistol practice; ski-ing in Switzerland; the
study of Egyptology, and wireless research. _Clubs_: Mürren
Ski-Club; Swiss Alpine Club; British Ski Association; Crimes
Club; Tatlers’ Club. _Address_: Devonshire Club, London.
And with these words I make my bow, and set forth facts that,
without embellishment or distortion, may, I sincerely hope, prove
entertaining.
At all events, I simply tell of things I know.
WILLIAM LE QUEUX.
DEVONSHIRE CLUB,
LONDON, S.W.
CHAPTER ONE
What I Know about Kings--My Audience with the late Tzar--An
Emperor at Home--What he told me--A Chat with the King
of Italy--He gives me a Decoration--His Majesty’s
Troubles--King Edward and the Lost Letters--His Debts to
Baron Hirsch--Queen Victoria and her Sunshade.
My first acquaintance with any royalty was my presentation to the
Crown-Prince of Saxony, now King, by his wife, who, as Princess Luisa
of Tuscany, I had known as a girl--the pretty Austrian Archduchess,
who had charmed all hearts, nearly married King Ferdinand of
Bulgaria, and of whom I intend to gossip in another chapter. I was
asked by the Princess to call on her at the Royal Palace at Dresden
after her marriage, and spent a couple of pleasant hours with her and
her husband, then Crown Prince. The latter expressed himself charmed
to meet me, his wife having often spoken of me, and I thoroughly
enjoyed my visit, for after the first formal reception I was invited
to their private apartments, where the Princess made me thoroughly at
home.
We gossiped about such friends as we both knew in England and in
Italy, for Her Highness came to London each year _incognita_, and on
me had devolved the duty of looking after her general welfare. But
more of her adventurous life anon.
The second royal personage of whom I had audience was the late
Emperor of Russia.
Well I remember how one morning a tall, handsome officer of the
Imperial Guard entered my room at the Hôtel de l’Europe on the
Nevski, in Petrograd, and handed me a formidable envelope which
contained a command that I should present myself at the Palace of
Tzarskoye Selo (the Village of the Tzar) on the following afternoon
at three o’clock. And well also do I recollect being met at the
station by one of the Imperial carriages, and being driven to the
entrance of the great park, where I was met by an officer and
conducted past endless sentry-posts. I confess that I felt very ill
at ease when at last I stood in a small but gorgeous room, a pitiable
figure wearing my best dress-suit in the day-time. The two foreign
orders that I then possessed looked very much like brass, and I was
terribly conscious that in the daylight the ribbons had lost their
freshness.
With me was Count de Redetski, a fine, handsome man in uniform, with
a gold-braided tunic--one of the Imperial chamberlains, who chatted
with me as we waited.
“As this is a private audience, I do not expect His Majesty will
wear uniform,” he told me, which rather reassured me, for I think I
had visions of the Tzar of All the Russias wearing a golden robe and
perhaps a diamond crown.
A few moments later I was conducted along a softly-carpeted corridor
to a door, at which stood two statuesque sentries who saluted as we
passed, and I was shown in. Next moment a short bearded man, in a
rough brown shooting-suit, stood before me with a smile of welcome.
It was His Majesty the Tzar!
He expressed pleasure at my visit. Meanwhile I was conscious that I
was in His Majesty’s private cabinet, a magnificent blue-and-gold
apartment, with tables and chandelier of lapis lazuli, a parquet
floor, and pillars of violet glass. In the centre of the three long
windows, which gave an extensive view across the great lake, where
picturesque fountains were playing, was set a huge writing-table,
littered with papers, for the Emperor was, if nothing else, a busy
man.
“I have been told that you have been in Russia before,” he said
in English, with a gracious smile. “To Siberia, was it not--in my
father’s days?”
“Yes, your Majesty,” I replied, wondering who had told him of my
journey into Siberia by road many years before.
“And you have lately been in Russia with one of our good friends, Mr.
Harry de Windt,” he remarked. “I have read his books. He is always
very kind to us. And you, too, have always been kind to us--except
when you criticized our policy against the revolutionists,” said the
Tzar with a smile. “You have written a book warning us that war will
come between Germany and England. It was sent to me from London. I
may tell you that I agree entirely with Lord Roberts. Germany is
preparing for war, and Britain turns a blind eye to everything. But,
of course, I beg of you not to publish this. Our conversation is
entirely private, remember!” and he laughed.
I at once gave my word of honour not to publish a word of the
interview, and have not done so till now, when his tragic death has
removed the seal of secrecy from my pen.
Becoming reassured that I was not out for a sensational interview,
he spoke his mind freely. He did not criticize British politicians
or their politics, but it was quite evident to me that he distrusted
Germany. He referred to many facts of which I was in ignorance,
but which were of intense interest to the whole world, and such
sensational words, coming from the lips of the Tzar himself, would
have been eagerly read everywhere if only I had had permission to
publish them.
More than once he confessed that though he had given audiences to
several journalists, including the late Mr. W. T. Stead, he always
looked askance at everybody who wrote. Indeed, as he chatted,
displaying shrewd insight into the most difficult problems of
international politics, he twice repeated: “Of course I rely on your
promise of secrecy!”
He held Sir Edward Grey and Mr. A. J. Balfour in very high esteem;
and, referring to his own wide Empire, he said with a slight sigh of
regret:
“You British do not, I fear, understand us. We are not like you--we
are such a complex nation, such a mixture of European and Oriental,
and, alas! so far behind in civilization as you in England and in
America know it.”
He had seated himself at his table, while I, as etiquette demanded,
still stood.
The telephone rang, and he answered it.
He spoke so rapidly in Russian that I could only distinguish one or
two words. He seemed to become petulant at what he heard, for when he
replaced the instrument he turned to me, and smilingly said:
“Mr. Graham Bell was not really kind to us when he invented
telephones. I hate them!”
We chatted for a full half-hour, till I forgot that I was in the
presence of the ruler of over a hundred and fifty millions of
souls. While we were speaking, a beautiful Persian cat appeared
from nowhere, and with a leap landed on the Emperor’s knee. It was
evidently his pet, for he called it by name, and stroked it fondly as
he talked.
That was, perhaps, one of the most interesting half-hours in all my
crowded life; and when, to-day, I think of the gorgeousness of the
Imperial Palace of Tzarskoye Selo--and compare it with the horrible
fate of the Emperor and of his family--I sometimes feel that it is
impossible that the Romanoffs can have so completely and brutally
been exterminated by the poisonous serpent of Bolshevism.
I have the words still in my memory that the Tzar Nicholas spoke
before I backed out of his presence:
“The greatest misfortune,” said he, “is to have many wants and little
power; the greatest good fortune is to have much power and few wants.”
* * * * *
The next reigning monarch to accord me an audience was His Majesty
King Victor Emanuel of Italy. Again I was to be received privately,
not officially, and the presentation came from the Queen of Italy
herself, who was daughter of King Nicholas of Montenegro.
In the previous year I had been up in the Black Mountains, at
Cettigné, the Montenegrin capital, on a special mission from home,
and had there, in the peasant kingdom, met Her Majesty, who happened
to be on a visit to her father and mother. Therefore one winter’s day
at noon, I found myself driving in a car from the Grand Hotel to the
Quirinal Palace.
When a man wears evening dress at noon, he never feels comfortable.
I might have worn my gorgeous green-and-gold-embroidered uniform, as
Consul of the tiny Republic of San Marino, and felt that at least
I was cutting a pretty good figure among all the smartly-uniformed
officers and gorgeous flunkeys of the Royal Palace, but my uniform
is so gorgeous that I confess I dared not appear in it before His
Majesty! Only a few months before I had worn it at the Foreign Office
reception at Whitehall, and the Russian Ambassador, after inspecting
me, had said:
“Well, Mr. Le Queux, I thought I had a gorgeous uniform, but you
certainly beat me on all points! I especially like your feather!” He
referred to the white ostrich feather of my cocked hat.
But to resume. Feeling hopelessly badly dressed, and painfully
conscious that one button of my patent-leather boot was unfastened,
I passed into the Palace, between two rows of bowing servants, and
was met by a smart young officer, Count Gilardoni, who took me
to Marquis Mattioli Pasqualini, the acting Minister of the Royal
Household, whom I had known for several years.
“Ah! Here you are, my dear friend!” exclaimed the old official, who
was in a uniform that had grown rather tight for him. “I’ll let you
into a secret. His Majesty is going to bestow on you the Order of the
Crown of Italy! The Duke of the Abruzzi has recommended you for it,
because of your work regarding wireless, and for your translation of
the Duke’s book on his Polar travels, _The Stella Polare_.”
Ere I could reply to the old Marquis, a man of great personal charm
and a Court official to his finger-tips, I found myself ushered into
a long, narrow, old-fashioned room, of which the outstanding features
were several porcelain bowls, filled with freshly-cut yellow roses.
The sweet perfume of the flowers pervaded the apartment, though it
was winter and the room apparently a reception-room pure and simple.
There was no sign of a writing-table or of any business litter. In
the centre stood a man with an alert military figure, in a dark blue
serge suit, with the eager, clever face that is made familiar to one
by Italy’s postage-stamps.
He advanced to me with outstretched hand, and as I bent over it, he
exclaimed in Italian:
“I am very pleased to receive you, Signor Le Queux, because you have
so long been a good friend to Italy.”
“I fear I am not such a good friend as I should like to be, your
Majesty,” I replied. “I always do my best to place Italy in her true
light to my own people, and to those who read my books in America.”
“I know you do,” said he quickly. “I know how you have described in
such vivid language the beauties of my country and the charm of my
people. Yes, our _contadini_ have a charm all to themselves, one that
must appeal to you writers of romance. I told the same to Zola when
I saw him in Paris when I was Crown Prince. Your writer Ouida also
did very much for our Italy. She was the only one foreign writer who
really understood our _contadini_. Poor lady! She died in Lucca--did
she not?”
I replied in the affirmative.
“Yes, she was a little eccentric--eh? The Prefect told me how she
kept a dozen cats and dogs, and dressed as a _contadina_, and how Mr.
Labouchere tried to give her some work, but she refused it. Is that
true?”
I replied that it had unfortunately been so.
“Ah! And yet I recollect, when I was Crown Prince, that she reigned
queen of Society in Firenze. I was once taken to one of her
receptions in her palazzo, on the Lung’ Arno. I was only young then,
but I recollect wondering how a writer of fiction could make such a
social success.”
“Then your Majesty has perhaps read some of her books?” I inquired.
“I have them all in my library. They were my father’s. He loved them.
I think I like _Pascarel_ best of all, and _Signa_ next. She was
bitter against Mrs. Ross, wasn’t she?” he laughed.
All Italy knew the deadly feud between the two ladies, and it had
evidently reached the King’s ears.
“Among the learned, the most highly-born is not the greatest, but he
who knows the most. Do you agree, Signor Le Queux?” he laughed.
I agreed, feeling that the King of Italy, who was so gracious to me,
was one of the best-informed monarchs in Europe.
As I stood on that thick vieux-rose carpet, while he, dressed in
a dark blue lounge suit, sat on the arm of a big padded chair,
evidently his own pet chair, I watched his typically military
mannerisms.
“I have heard that it was due to your personal efforts that your
Mansion House Fund was started, for those who suffered by the
earthquake in Calabria,” he remarked suddenly. “I wish to thank you,
and also for your keen interest in Italy.”
“I did what I could, your Majesty,” I replied.
“Yes, I know that. But, oh!” and he drew a long breath and paused.
I wondered whether he knew the truth--a truth that I had
discovered--that bales upon bales of clothing, sent from England for
those rendered homeless by the terrible earthquake, had been for the
past year rotting on the quays at Naples.
“Yes,” he went on, “you English are always charitable. You are our
friends. But, alas! we have administrative scandals here, just as all
other countries have, and--well, perhaps ours may be even a little
worse.”
“I have lived much in Italy, your Majesty, and by observation I think
I must agree,” I said, smiling.
“Well, I will relate one. I don’t mind if you repeat what I tell
you,” he remarked suddenly, rising to his feet. “I went to Calabria
as soon as news of the earthquake reached me, and with some officials
motored through the devastated area. After two days my car came to a
fork in the road, one road an excellent, newly-made one running up to
the mountains, and the other, evidently an old road, going straight
on. Many of the mountain villages had been destroyed, so I determined
to take the higher road and explore. Now comes the scandal.”
His Majesty paused, and knit his brows.
“A member of my suite declared that there were no villages up there.
I asked why, if there were none, that the fine military road had
been made, evidently quite recently. My question nonplussed him, and
it became apparent that he had some motive in trying to prevent me
taking that road. Therefore I ordered the chauffeur to drive on, and
within ten minutes I realised the reason. The road came to a sudden
end! On my return to Rome I had searching inquiries made, and found
that though a large sum of public money had been expended to make a
new road for forty-eight kilometres across the mountains, only five
kilometres had been constructed, and the money for the remainder had
gone into somebody’s pocket! My countrymen are honest, Signor Le
Queux, but, alas! my politicians are very often the reverse!”
Those words were spoken to me shortly before the war, therefore those
who know the King of Italy were not surprised that in 1919 he had
serious thoughts of abdicating on account of the wholesale scandals
of his country’s administration, and the treachery and bribery
everywhere rampant. Italy fought as only patriots can fight. They
defeated the Austrians against overwhelming odds. But their successes
were negatived by the pack of unscrupulous financial adventurers
and jackals in the Chamber of Deputies at Rome. The King, alert and
intelligent as he is, knew it, and for that reason he has welcomed
with open hand Signor Mussolini, and the splendid Italian Fascisti,
who are known as “The Black Shirts.” Truly, wind, women, and fortune
change quickly.
On that occasion His Majesty invested me with the Order of the Crown
of Italy, and in doing so made some very kind remarks, saying:
“Whenever you wear this, Signor Le Queux, I hope you will always
remember it is given you by one who is very grateful to you for your
services.”
I had perhaps been able to be of service to the Kingdom and people I
love so well, but this praise was hardly deserved.
However, I confess that such words, coming from the mouth of a ruling
monarch, were very gratifying.
I have since been to a number of the gay Court functions at the
Quirinal, and on each occasion His Majesty has greeted me kindly, and
in other ways extended to me every consideration.
In another interview I had with the King at San Rossore, his summer
residence near Pisa, he received me under a big cedar, in the
beautiful grounds near the sea. And as we sat together, I recollect
one phrase he used:
“You are a friend of Italy, while I am a friend of England! If you
can still endeavour to attract English visitors to Italy, I really
hope you will. By that you will do me a personal favour. Tell the
English that I always welcome them to my country, for I regard them
as my friends, and without friends life is impossible.”
In a monarch’s life a single hair casts a shadow, and no monarch in
all the world, next to our own King George, is more devoted to his
country’s interests that is King Victor Emanuel.
He set out to eliminate scandals from the Government departments
within a week of ascending the throne.
A few days after his father’s death, being an early riser, he went
down to the Ministry of the Interior, and at nine o’clock took his
place in the office-chair of one of the highest officials. At ten the
official had not arrived, at eleven he had made no appearance. So the
King left a scribbled note on his desk dismissing him, and adding
that Italy paid her officials to administer her affairs, and expected
them to do so, adding that he hoped it would be a warning to others!
* * * * *
One of the unsolved mysteries that evolve around royalty, and in
which I have played a part, concerns King Edward. Not many weeks
after his accession, while walking in the noisy Via Balbi, in Genoa,
I met a well-known member of the British Foreign Office staff, whose
name I am not at liberty to mention. He explained that he had been
sent to Italy on a secret mission, and that, as I knew Italian, and
was also doing secret-service work, I might assist him.
Then he explained to me that the object of his journey from London
was to secure, at all costs, certain letters that King Edward desired
to repossess. Naturally I pricked up my ears. Could it be that some
of His Majesty’s private letters were in the hands of blackmailers?
What was the nature of the scandal that His Majesty desired to
suppress at any cost?
My friend told me that his instructions, and the name of the man
who was believed to have the letters in his possession, had come
direct from His Majesty himself. The name of the man who held the
documents was Enrico Brussi, who lived at a village called La Rocca.
But as there are several villages of the same name in Italy, and the
province was not given, I anticipated that our search would probably
be a long one.
It proved so. We visited three La Roccas, each of them mountain
villages; one near Ravenna, another not far from Cuneo, and a third
at a remote spot in Umbria. The fourth we tried was in the Province
of Lucca, and as our dusty carriage wound slowly up the steep road
we could see the little white village, with its square-towered
church, perched on a steep rocky precipice, with a background of blue
mountains behind.
After a two hours’ climb we arrived, and, leaving the carriage
outside the village (for the ancient, evil-smelling streets were
very narrow and uneven, almost tunnels in some places), we at last
found the house of Enrico Brussi. It was small, but clean-looking,
and, having knocked at the door, we were admitted by an old _donna di
casa_, who informed us that her master was at home.
In a few moments a well-dressed, middle-aged man appeared,
whereupon my friend--introducing himself as Mr. Henderson from
London--explained, in Italian, that we had ventured to call because
we had heard that he had some interesting English letters in his
possession. He added that we were collectors of autographs, and were
travelling about Italy endeavouring to discover autographs of famous
persons.
The man Brussi looked askance at us. I could see that he did not
swallow our somewhat lame story.
“I am afraid that I have nothing to interest you, _signori_,” was his
quiet reply.
“But you have some letters in English, have you not?” eagerly asked
my companion.
“Yes, I have,” was his reply.
“They are the letters I want,” said my companion, not quite sure of
his ground. For it was our firm belief that this man belonged to some
foreign gang of blackmailers.
“They would not interest you,” said he briefly.
“But if I offer to buy them, are you prepared to sell them--all, not
only a few?”
The man Brussi smiled, and shook his head in the negative.
“My friend here is prepared to give a very good price,” I remarked.
“Will you not reconsider your decision?”
But he declined, and I began to see that we should have considerable
difficulty in getting him to part with the letters.
Knowing the Italian character as I did, I knew that he would not
suggest a price, lest it be lower than that we were prepared to
give, so I urged my friend to offer two hundred lire for the letters
without seeing them.
The man looked at us with undisguised astonishment, a fact that
struck me as somewhat curious. Then, as though with great reluctance,
he said:
“Well, if the _signore_ really wants them, I will sell them for four
hundred lire!”
We both pretended that it was far too high a price, yet, as a matter
of fact, my friend had in his pocket a wad of bank-notes of the value
of a thousand pounds in English money, and would have paid even
double that sum if it had been demanded.
At last we consented to pay four hundred lire for the whole of the
letters. We impressed on him that we must have them all, and he
promised us that he would keep none back.
While we waited in breathless anxiety he went upstairs, and presently
returned with a packet of letters, which he handed to my friend in
exchange for four one-hundred-lire notes.
Then we both hurried from the house with our precious packet, and as
soon as we were out of sight eagerly opened it. My friend glanced at
the first letter; his face fell, and with an expression of disgust
exclaimed:
“Bah! Look what we’ve got! _Look!_” he cried, handing me one.
To my dismay, I found it to be a letter written by the old Duke of
Kent, the King’s grandfather, to his head gardener at Kew! And all
the letters were of the same character! Instead of relating to some
scandal, as we were convinced they would, they turned out to be
merely orders to a gardener!
We re-entered our carriage, both feeling extremely annoyed. Next day
I saw my friend off from Pisa to London, bearing the precious packet
that eventually found its way into King Edward’s hands.
But how His Majesty knew where those letters were, or the real reason
of the confidential mission, neither my friend nor myself could ever
imagine.
We had many theories, but I do not suppose any were correct. Only
King Edward himself knew the reason, but I somehow feel that the
letters we recovered were not the letters of which he had hoped to
regain possession.
Another mystery surrounded King Edward, but, this time, one I can
explain away.
King Edward, when Prince of Wales, like most princes, and, indeed,
nearly every commoner, frequently found himself short of money. But
how did he pay his debts? This question has puzzled many people, so
here let the truth be revealed.
Now, in common with many others, I have heard hard things said of
Jews, but, though I have known many, I have never experienced any
ill-will or ill-nature at their hands. The sins of the petty are
called great, and the sins of the great petty. It was so in the case
of King Edward. One of the wealthiest Jews of our time was the late
Baron de Hirsch, who, as most people know, was an intimate friend of
the King when he was still Prince of Wales--afterwards our splendid
sportsman-diplomat King, to whose memory every Briton lifts his hat.
His Royal Highness and the Baron were boon companions. They dined
together, shot together, and raced together, yet it is an open secret
that Queen Victoria, in her declining years, had conceived a very
great dislike for the successful financier, to whom the construction
of the Ottoman Railways had been due.
It was, in view of their friendship, therefore not surprising that,
when King Edward was short of funds, Baron Hirsch, like all Jews, was
ready to accommodate him. Notes of hand were signed time after time
by His Royal Highness. Thus the friendship between the pair became
a very close one, especially since Queen Victoria, though good, was
neither generous nor lavish, as you may judge from what I am about to
relate.
It was early spring on the Riviera, and I was, as usual, installed
in a little flat on the Promenade des Anglais, at Nice, where I was
working. The Queen had arrived, and was staying at the Excelsior
Hotel up at Cimiez, while the Prince of Wales and Baron Hirsch, who
travelled nearly every day to Monte Carlo, resided at Cannes.
I frequently saw them together at Ciro’s or in the Rooms. Sometimes
they would sit side by side on the pleasant _terrasse_ of the Café de
Paris, and listen to the Hungarian band. At others they would watch
the pigeon-shooting, or go for short cruises on the Baron’s big white
yacht, which usually lay in Villefranche Bay.
One day, while walking in the garden of the Casino at Monte Carlo
with my friend Monsieur B----, who was Baron Hirsch’s confidential
secretary, he introduced me to the great financier, and we
strolled together, chatting. The Baron seemed a charming and quite
unconventional man, and was particularly attached to his faithful
secretary, to whom he had made many handsome presents. Monsieur B----
was for ever praising the great millionaire’s generous treatment of
himself and others.
More than once he hinted to me about the large sums that the Prince
was borrowing from his chief. When in France, I was often Monsieur
B----’s guest at his beautiful house beside the lake at Enghien,
outside Paris, and our conversation usually drifted upon the same
subject. The public suspected the loans, but knew practically nothing.
Three years passed. The amount of the debt was gradually increasing,
when, quite unexpectedly, the Baron died.
I was in Paris at the time, and, one evening, went out to Enghien to
dinner. After the ladies had left the room, and Monsieur B---- and
myself were left alone, I mentioned the subject.
“Yes,” he said. “The will has been opened to-day, and the Baron has
left the sum of one million sterling to establish a colony for poor
Jews in Argentina. The money repaid by the Prince of Wales is to be a
portion of the sum.”
“Then the money will be called up?” I remarked.
“Undoubtedly! Everything is left in the hands of the Baroness, and
she holds the Prince’s notes,” he explained.
Weeks, nay months, went past.
The Baron’s executors wrote to His Royal Highness for repayment. On
hearing this the Baroness became furious. The executors, therefore,
went to the Baroness and demanded the one million sterling with
which to found the colony. They were compelled to do this before the
other legacies were paid. Negotiations ensued, and, to cut a long
story short, the Baroness called up my friend, Monsieur B----, and,
ascertaining from him the exact amount owed to her dead husband by
the Prince, she then and there wrote out a cheque for the whole in
favour of the executors!
The Baroness, wife of one of the despised race, thus paid the whole
of the late King Edward’s debt, out of her private fortune!
That same evening she wrote to His Royal Highness in London,
arranging a meeting, and suggesting dinner in her private suite at
Claridge’s Hotel. The appointment was kept, and the royal guest came.
They dined _à deux_, His Highness much mystified at the invitation,
and, of course, knowing nothing of the Baroness’s generous action.
But after dinner, when the servants had left, and they were alone,
the widow brought out her handbag, and from it produced the whole of
the Prince’s notes, and laid them on the table.
“Your Royal Highness had, I know, many financial transactions with my
husband,” his hostess said. “As his wife, I knew in what high esteem
he held your Highness. I feel that if he had lived he would never
have wished to call up the money advanced, therefore I do not like to
think that his executors should be forced by legal process to do so.”
The Prince gazed at her utterly astounded, for he had been very much
worried by the sudden death of his friend.
“But I understand that the money is part of a sum left to found a
colony for poor Jews?” he said.
“I am aware of that,” replied the Baroness. “But I have asked you
here to-night in order to extract one promise--in return for this,”
and she pointed to the heap of paper on the table representing her
husband’s loan to the Prince.
“A promise--what?”
“That when you succeed to the throne of Great Britain you will always
be kind to the Jews.”
“I can certainly promise that,” answered the Prince in a changed
voice, much impressed by the Baroness’s appeal.
“There is the fire,” said she, pointing to the grate. “Let us burn
the notes.”
His Royal Highness gathered up the papers, and, one by one, placed
them in the flames.
Then, with that exquisite courtliness which was one of King Edward’s
outstanding characteristics, he raised his hostess’s hand, and,
bending, kissed it.
They never met again, owing to the Baroness’s untimely end.
* * * * *
I do not wish to be accused of recording more ancient history than is
necessary, but it is my object to relate hitherto unknown incidents
and stories concerning some famous personages.
One of these concerns Queen Victoria during her last visit to Nice.
About a fortnight after her arrival, while passing up the Avenue de
la Gare, I met the well-known detective, Superintendent Fraser, of
Scotland Yard, who, with Monsieur Paoli, of the Paris Sûreté, was Her
Majesty’s personal protector.
When I asked him whither he was hurrying, he replied:
“Come with me. I am going on a--well, on a very confidential mission!”
At once I turned back with him. To my surprise, he stopped
before a cheap draper’s shop, and, pointing to a long string of
black-and-white striped sunshades, open and swaying in the wind, he
inquired their price.
“Five-francs-fifty,” replied the dark-eyed Provençal girl in French.
My police friend hesitated, and inquired if they were silk.
“No, m’sieur, they are cotton,” was the reply.
With that he turned away. Then he explained that the Queen, who had
been out for her afternoon drive, had just returned, and, calling
him, told him that in the Avenue de la Gare she had been attracted by
some sunshades hanging outside a shop.
“Go and buy me one, Fraser,” she had commanded. “They are the very
thing I want here.”
“But,” exclaimed my friend to me, “how can I take the Queen a
four-and-sevenpenny sunshade? Come back with me, and when I have told
her we will go out to the café!”
I walked back with him out to Cimiez, and waited while he passed
along the corridor of the great hotel to Her Majesty’s apartments,
which were guarded by French sentries and an idling assistant of my
friend.
His face had changed when, a few minutes later, he returned.
“I told the Queen,” he said, “but she has ordered me to go back at
once. She seemed quite indignant, and said:
“‘Fraser, you men know nothing about sunshades! Pray how much would
you expect me to give for a cotton sunshade? Go and get me one at
once!’”
We returned together and purchased one. That sunshade was a
prominent object in the streets of Nice, and country roads in the
neighbourhood, for each afternoon that season, when the Queen went
out, she held it proudly above her head for all to admire, the
passers-by no doubt believing it to be an expensive one of silk.
I afterwards learned from Superintendent Fraser that Her Majesty, on
her return to Windsor, gave it to Queen Alexandra, then Princess of
Wales, for use during the following summer!
CHAPTER TWO
More about Kings--I meet the Queen of Italy--King Nicholas of
Montenegro is kind to me--The Emperor Karl of Austria, who
stole his Mother’s Jewels and gave them to an Actress--The
Emperor Francis Josef and the Shah--Stories of my friend
Princess Luisa of Saxony--The Grand Duke and his False
Teeth.
I was on my first visit to Cettigné, the high-up little capital of
the peasant kingdom of Montenegro, approached by a ladder-like road
from Cattaro, on the Adriatic, when Princess Xenia of Montenegro--who
subsequently helped me in taking photographs for my book _An Observer
in the Near East_--presented me to her elder sister, Queen Elena of
Italy. Through the latter’s brother, Prince Mirko, I subsequently
received my first command to audience of that fine old peasant-ruler,
King Nicholas.
Cettigné is a quaint little place, scarcely more than a good-sized
mountain village, prosperous, clean, with broad streets. The people
by law are compelled to wear the national dress, the men with dark
blue baggy trousers, white woollen gaiters, raw-hide shoes, a short
scarlet jacket heavily braided with gold, and a small pork-pie cap
with black silk band, the crown of the same colour as the jacket,
bearing the King’s initials in Russian characters, “N.I.” The women,
who are particularly handsome, wear, when out of doors, beautifully
hand-embroidered blouses, and a kind of long coat, with open sleeves,
of soft dove-grey cloth. They are forbidden to wear European hats,
and wear the same as the men, except that the crowns are embroidered
in gold, and do not bear the royal cipher.
The fact that every man is armed, carrying a perfect arsenal of
weapons in his belt, is apt to give the stranger an uncanny feeling.
The man who brings you your morning coffee wears a couple or more
revolvers in his belt. And they are wise, for in that country,
bordering as it does upon savage Albania, peace and war walk ever
hand in hand.
At the time of my first visit my friend, Mr., now Sir, Charles Des
Graz, was British Minister to Montenegro. He afterwards, before his
retirement, was appointed to Peru, and during the war to Serbia. We
lived together at the Grand Hotel, and spent many pleasant days in
one another’s company.
He told me a good diplomatic story, of how a predecessor of his at
Cettigné had an intense hatred of rats. The hotel--which was also the
British Legation--was not devoid of them, and apparently they invaded
the Minister’s sitting-room, for one morning he found a rat had
devoured a whole box of his pet digestive tablets that had been sent
from London. Next night he waited for the intruder, no rat-trap being
obtainable in the capital, and soon after everyone had retired loud
shouts were heard from the dignified representative of Great Britain.
On rushing in, two waiters, in deshabille, found the Minister armed
with his diplomatic sword, in the midst of upset furniture, chasing a
rat. He had already made a lunge, and split a sofa, the stuffing of
which protruded, but amidst the hubbub the rat escaped.
My first private audience with King Nicholas of Montenegro was an
interesting one. At six o’clock one evening the royal _aide-de-camp_
called in a carriage, and drove me to the Palace, which was a long,
dark brown building, of somewhat plain exterior, as befitted the home
of the ruler of a fighting race, where I was received in the great
hall by half-a-dozen bowing servants in scarlet and gold.
Here I was met by the chamberlain, who, having told me his name,
conducted me up the grand staircase and into the audience-chamber,
with its fine old paintings of the Italian _cinquecento_ and highly
polished floor.
Then, after a moment, His Majesty--a brilliant figure with
deeply-lined, rugged face--entered, shook me by the hand, and
welcomed me to Montenegro.
It has always struck me how extremely punctual all royalties are, for
a person commanded to audience is never kept waiting as he so often
is in any business office.
The formal greetings ended, His Majesty said in Italian, in which we
conversed:
“Come, let us go into yonder room. We shall be able to talk more
comfortably.” And he led me into a smaller and more cosy chamber,
where he gave me a seat.
On the table, a great silver candelabra had been set, and by its
light I was enabled to obtain a good view of the ruler of Crnagora,
the “Land of the Black Mountains.” Of magnificent physique in spite
of his seventy years, his hair was only slightly grey. His fine
features were those of a mountain race, and his dark, keen eyes shot
quick, inquiring glances of alertness. Father of his people, he wore
the native costume--almost the same as that of his subjects passing
to and fro in the street; a costume of scarlet-blue-and-gold, with
a single cross in diamonds at the throat--the order of Danilo, of
which he was Master, and one which, at an audience a year later, he
bestowed on me.
After the first few minutes of regal formality His Majesty’s manner
had entirely changed. Putting ceremony aside, he produced his
well-worn cigarette case--of lizard skin, with the royal crown and
cipher in gold at the corner--offered me a Montenegrin cigarette,
took one himself, lit mine with his own hand, and then we fell to
chatting.
In this delightful manner we smoked together. I asked the
King-poet many questions, and learned many things. He explained
several difficult points in Balkan politics that I had never before
understood, and smiled and shrugged his shoulders when I mentioned
the question of Macedonia.
I was there with an object, mainly to sound His Majesty on his ideas
of the best way of settling the vexed question of Macedonia. When I
mentioned it he became grave.
“There will be war in the Balkans soon if the Powers remain
apathetic!” he said. Alas! how true were his words, for within
eighteen months I was at the Serbian front against the Turks,
attached to the staff of King Peter.
“There is but one way,” he said. “The Powers should call a conference
and place Macedonia under a Governor-General, who should be a
European prince. Reforms could then be carried out, and the Greek and
Bulgarian bands expelled from the country. Ah! if only the British
public knew what was happening in Macedonia, of the intrigues of
Turkey and Bulgaria, of the nearness we are to war, but”--and he
smiled and hesitated--“I almost forget myself. My position as a ruler
forbids me to talk politics, you know!” and he laughed.
Then later, when I had risen and was backing out of the room to
leave, His Majesty, who had also risen, said:
“When you return to Cettigné do not fail to let me know, and we will
have another chat. And give my kindest wishes to my old friend Chedo
Mijatovitch, in London.”
Count Chedo Mijatovitch was for a long time Serbian Minister at the
Court of St. James, and is well known in diplomatic and society
circles, having since made his home in London. He is one of my oldest
and best friends.
[Illustration: PRINCESS LUISA OF SAXONY.]
It was under his wing that I first entered the Balkans, for he had
given me a number of letters of introduction, written in scribbly
hieroglyphics that I could not understand, but which proved a
_passe-partout_ to everywhere, from the Adriatic to the Black Sea.
* * * * *
I have heard a good many stories of the old Emperor Francis Josef
of Austria, his successor the Emperor Karl, and of the Hapsburg
Archdukes, from the lips of the Emperor’s niece Princess Luisa of
Saxony. Her Highness possesses a fine sense of humour, and has a fund
of humorous anecdotes.
Her father, the Grand Duke of Tuscany, wanted her to marry Dom Pedro
of Brazil, whose praises had been sung to her constantly over the
dinner-table for weeks, and at last they were introduced at Baden.
They were pushed into each other’s society, both knowing that each
was to marry the other. One day Dom Pedro asked her whether she cared
for him, and she openly replied in the negative. Both laughed.
The Princess, in telling me the story, said:
“At once I saw that Dom Pedro was a young man to be trusted, and from
henceforth we both had a great game with our respective families.
When I pretended to go for lovers’ walks with him, he went out to
meet a pretty young café-singer, while I strolled about and had
many a chat with young men who had not the slightest inkling of my
identity--among them a young British diplomat who was on the staff of
the Embassy at Vienna, and who two years later recognized me at one
of the balls at the Imperial Palace.
“Poor Dom Pedro! Ultimately he went raving mad--about a year after
our escapades--and is now wearing out his life in one of the Imperial
castles in Austria, a hopeless lunatic.”
But for an incident which is not without humour, Princess Luisa,
instead of marrying the King of Saxony, would have been Queen of
Bulgaria.
One day, when we were motoring together from Florence to Rome
accompanied by her lady-in-waiting, Countess Függer, she related how
Prince Ferdinand was brought out for her inspection and approval by
his mother, old Princess Clémentine of Coburg, a sharp-tongued, ugly
old lady, with an ear-trumpet.
“From the first I hated the comic-opera Prince, with his huge nose,
perfectly trimmed beard, little pig-like eyes, and puffy cheeks,” she
told me. “He came to Salzburg wearing most horrible yellow boots, and
of course was a most superior person. Well, he soon grew amorous, and
I was warned by my brother Poldo that His Highness meant to marry me.
The Emperor had apparently declared to old Clémentine that Bulgaria
would not be safe till its reigning Princess was an Archduchess of
Austria.
“Poldo had really no need to warn me. I simply laid my plans, and
while Ferdinand, whose amours had been notorious, had already told me
that I was the only woman--the usual only woman--he could ever love,
I set about to prepare my own little bombshell.
“Aunt Clémentine had arrived at the castle with the special
ear-trumpet that she took out on visits, an ugly black affair with
gold lace hanging over its opening. How well I can recollect the way
she shouted back at one in that high-pitched, peevish voice. With
her came my brother-in-law, the Archduke Otto, with the Archduke
Sigismund, so that we were quite a family party, all assembled, I
suppose, to hear the glad announcement that I was betrothed to Prince
Ferdinand of Bulgaria.
“On the night of Aunt Clémentine’s arrival we all sat down to
dinner, Ferdinand being seated opposite me, elegant and happy, and
casting furtive glances that I mischievously disregarded, greatly
to my mother’s intense annoyance. During the meal, however, Aunt
Clémentine, with her ear-trumpet held over the table close to me,
suddenly exclaimed in her shrill voice:
“‘Ah, Luisa! What a delightful pair you will make when you marry my
Ferdinand! Really, you grow prettier every day.’
“‘Marry!’ I shouted back into my old aunt’s abominable ear-trumpet.
‘Why, I should never dream of marrying your son! Who said such a
thing? I, for one, will never live in a country where the men go
about in sheep-skins and the women twine flowers in their hair. Ugh!
Bulgaria may suit those who like the simple life, but for me, Vienna,
civilization, and a decent opera. Besides, when I marry I shall marry
a real man!’”
Princess Luisa, who usually called herself Countess of Montignoso,
or Countess de la Rose, when travelling, was nothing if not
unconventional. I used to see her practically every day in Florence.
Her beautiful villa was close to my own house, and in consequence she
often sat in my study telling me about members of the Hapsburg family.
Nobody ever knew where the Hapsburgs would break out next. The
Archduke Ludwig Salvator grew wine and sold it; his brother Archduke
Charles had a hobby of mending locks and riding daily on ’buses and
trams around Vienna, while the Duke Charles of Parma repaired watches
and clocks and did not forget to charge for his services.
Of the old Duke Charles the Princess once told me a funny story.
We were walking along the Passeggio, or esplanade, at Leghorn
together one evening, after having paid a visit to my old friend Mr.
Montgomery Carmichael, the well-known British Consul who wrote that
most delightful book, _In Tuscany_.
“I remember being taken to Meissen by my mother to see the old
Duke Charles of Parma. He was nearly blind, but still an elegant,
commanding figure,” said she.
“He passed his thin hand over my face slowly, and then said in French:
“‘Ah, yes I You are growing good-looking--like Marie Antoinette
somewhat--but with a happier expression.’ Then, with a sudden
outburst, he added, ‘Look at me well, Luisa! I am a rare type of
beast. I am your great-grandfather, old and ugly.’
“I looked at the erect and elegant figure in uniform, with the Order
of the Golden Fleece, and said:
“‘Ah! but when you were younger you were very handsome. I have seen
your portrait at the Hofburg.’
“‘Yes, yes,’ and a smile crossed his sightless countenance. ‘True, I
was young once, and enjoyed life--enjoyed it greatly, I can assure
you; and doubtless you too, Luisa, will enjoy it.’
“‘Well,’ remarked my mother coldly, and with meaning, ‘I hope Luisa
will not follow in your footsteps, grandfather!’
“The old man seemed pleased at this reference to the amours of
his early days, and before I left he gave me a very beautiful
eighteenth-century golden casket set with fine jewels, which I still
possess.
“That evening on our drive back from the Schloss into Dresden, about
fifteen miles, my mother told me an amusing story of the old Duke.
It appears that about five years before, when his eyesight was as
yet unimpaired, he was still a _bon viveur_. He was old and he was
toothless, for his pet abomination was false teeth. My father had,
one day, laughed at his empty mouth, saying:
“‘I know of a really excellent dentist--a good fellow, in Vienna,
who keeps me supplied with teeth--Kaltner, in the Praterstrasse. Why
not call him in and get him to make you a set? You would look twenty
years younger!’
“The old Duke was much impressed by the latter remark, and though he
declared he would never wear such abominations, he secretly called in
the dentist, who made him a complete set.
“They arrived on the day when he was giving a luncheon to half a
dozen pretty women--for he dearly loved a charming face--and for that
meal he wore them, priding himself that his valet had said that with
them in his mouth he was rejuvenated. The meal commenced merrily, and
he was particularly gracious to a certain Countess who sat on his
right, when suddenly he experienced difficulty. He had laughed with
his fair guests when, to his horror, he found himself unable to shut
his mouth!
“For a few moments he remained with his mouth open, a look of
terrible consternation upon his face. The guests thought he had been
seized with a fit. Suddenly, however, he took his false teeth from
his mouth, saying:
“‘Curse Ferdinand and his damned dentist! I’ll have no more of the
abominable things!’ and he cast them across the room. They struck a
marble statue, and went into a dozen pieces. There they remained till
two flunkeys entered with dignity and swept them up into a dust-pan!”
* * * * *
Here is a scandal, a strict secret of the Imperial family, which the
Princess disclosed to me concerning the Emperor of Austria, Karl
Franz Josef, who succeeded to the throne during the war.
It seems that the Emperor, before his accession, was a boon companion
of the German Ex-Crown Prince, and used to accompany him to the
various capitals on many disgraceful escapades. He also suffered from
that very prevalent malady known as impecuniosity. The Archduke Otto
and the Archduchess Maria Josepha, his parents, were a “hard-up”
pair, who had considerable trouble to make both ends meet. The old
Emperor had no great love for them because they were a stiff-necked,
pious couple, who had looked askance at His Majesty’s little
peccadilloes, and had whispered some hard things that had returned to
the Emperor’s ears.
Karl, one night in his peregrinations about Vienna, met a Jewish
singer at the Hofopern named Elsa Bland. She was a dark-haired woman
with a marvellous voice. The Viennese young men-about-town were
all raving over her beauty at the time the Archduke appeared in
her dressing-room. Karl Franz Josef became deeply fascinated, and
naturally wanted to give her a present, but he had not the cash with
which to purchase one. The embryo Emperor went to his mother, the
Archduchess, with an excuse to borrow some money, but the old lady,
who knew the world of Vienna well, guessed the motive of the request,
and sent her son empty away.
Not to be outdone in his amorous device, Karl Franz Josef, a man of
some resource where women are concerned, devised a plan.
The dark-haired, soft-spoken Jewess received three days later some
magnificent jewels that were naturally the admiration of all her
friends.
Next night a new musical opera was to be produced, and all Vienna
attended. Elsa Bland was taking an important part, and old Maria
Josepha was present.
To her horror, when fixing her glasses on the opulent Jewess, who was
her son’s friend, she recognized on the singer’s neck and arms the
contents of her own jewel-case, heirlooms of the Imperial family!
She called her son that same night and accused him of being a thief,
as indeed he was. But he only laughed vacantly, and declared that
Elsa Bland’s smiles were well worth a few paltry jewels.
In despair, his mother enlisted the sympathy of a friend, Count
Salm-Reifferscheidt, whom she asked to negotiate with the Jewess for
the return of the jewels.
The dark-haired Elsa, who had a male acquaintance in the background,
as is so often the case with women of her class, refused to give them
up. They had been presented to her by “her friend the Archduke,” and
they were hers. She had no knowledge whence they had come, and she
cared less, she said.
The situation became daily more critical. The handsome Elsa declared
that if she were worried any more by the Count she would hand a
written statement to her friend Rohr, a journalist on the staff
of the _Neue Freie Presse_, and expose the fact that His Imperial
Highness, the Archduke, had stolen the contents of his mother’s
jewel-box!
The only way out of the difficulty was to pay--and pay heavily. But
the worst fact was that none of the parties had any money!
So, after many family conferences, at which many hard words were
uttered, it was at last decided to go to the Emperor and present the
case.
The Count described to Princess Luisa what took place. The Emperor,
fearful lest Elsa’s friend, the journalist, should be told, and make
“copy” out of the scandal, to his pecuniary advantage, had Rohr
at once called to audience. The newspaper-man was amazed when the
Emperor bestowed on him a cross and ribbon “for services rendered
to the Empire.” Next day the Emperor called up the old Archduchess
and gave her a severe lecture, followed an hour later by a further
lecture to the fast-living young man who was heir to the throne.
Elsa Bland at length drove a very keen bargain with the Count, who
was at last compelled to go to the Emperor and borrow the sum that
the opera-singer demanded. In the end the money was paid, the jewels
restored to their rightful owner, and the fair Elsa was turned out of
Austria, bag and baggage, much to the dismay of Karl Josef.
* * * * *
Another story I heard in Court circles in Vienna concerns the Shah of
Persia, the famous Nasr-ed-Din.
The Emperor of Austria had entertained him at the Hofburg, but so
disgusting were the habits of his--the Persian--suite that an excuse
was made to send them on to Salzburg. The Grand Duke of Tuscany,
unconscious of what had happened in Vienna, invited the “King of
Kings.” He was a striking man, who wore a diamond aigrette in his
turban, and who, before he would ride out, had the mane of one of his
white horses dyed scarlet. Then, when he went forth with great pomp,
a servant held over the monarch’s head a huge and gorgeous golden
umbrella.
But the havoc created by the suite! The main hall of the west wing
of the palace, being built of marble, was given over to them as a
slaughter-house! They killed sheep and lambs on the inlaid marble
floors and roasted them whole there. Imagine the mess, the blood, the
disorder, and the smoke!
The Grand Duke and his family were in tears. A courier was sent to
the Emperor with an urgent note, asking him how they could get rid of
their unwelcome guests.
He brought back a reply in the Emperor’s own writing to the effect
that the Shah was there for a fortnight, and it would be a grave
insult to send him away. He would visit the Court of St. James next.
“Well,” airily exclaimed Poldo, the Archduke’s son, one day to his
mother, “they’ve turned the hall into a slaughter-house, I see. Now
they are saying their prayers in the Blue Salon. I am told they are
to sacrifice hens on the carpet there at noon to-morrow--they cut off
their heads, you know! I saw Egyptians doing it once outside a mosque
in Cairo!”
The thought of hens having their heads sliced off in the Blue Salon
was too much for the Archduchess, who at once became indignant and
sent for her husband.
Meanwhile Poldo whispered to his sister:
“The hen fiction has about filled mother up with horror, eh?”
At last the Shah left, after he had distributed presents with a
generous hand to everyone in the household, down to the kitchen-maids.
But the state of the rooms after they had gone was something too
horrible for words. Pigs could not have left worse behind.
CHAPTER THREE
Among Real Brigands--King Nicholas and the Skreli Brigands--I
am the First Englishman to Visit them--Life with a Brigand
Band--Vatt Marashi, Chief of the Skreli--The Brigand’s Code
of Honour--Keeping Strange Company.
A year, almost to the day, after my first visit to Montenegro, I
was back again in Cettigné, for I had resolved upon an adventure. I
always seek to see new countries and new people for the purpose of
writing novels, and trying to interest the public that has always
been so kind and generous to me.
I had travelled from London by way of Trieste, and taken the Austrian
Lloyd steamer, the _Graf von Wurmbrand_, to Cattaro, and then up that
ladder-like road to Cettigné, where I arrived one summer’s afternoon.
I called at the Palace, and wrote my name in the visitors’ book.
Within a couple of hours I was handed a command to audience. I went,
and when His Majesty King Nicholas had greeted me I told him the
object of my visit, saying:
“I want, your Majesty, to be allowed to go into Northern Albania, and
see the mountain tribes of which so much has been said.”
“The Skreli brigands!” he exclaimed in surprise. “Do you actually
contemplate visiting the tribes in what we Montenegrins call ‘The
Accursed Mountains’?”
I replied that such was my desire, whereupon he said:
“Take my advice. Don’t go. If you do, you will never return. Or you
may be held to ransom, just as the American lady, Miss Stone, was.
You will probably be shot at sight, like a dog. The whole country
is in a lawless state. You have no idea what those uncivilized
tribes are like. They are on our frontier, so I know. You are too
venturesome,” declared he.
But I was determined to see what the country was like in those
distant misty mountains, and I pressed His Majesty to assist me.
Twice I saw him, and on the third occasion he very reluctantly gave
me, as servant, a young, black-haired, eagle-eyed man, named Palok,
one of his own servants, who was a member of the tribe of the Skreli,
the dreaded brigands of Albania.
Our preparations for our adventurous journey occupied four days, and
on the fifth King Nicholas was kind enough to ride down to the shore
of the Lake of Scutari to see us off in a boat.
“Be careful!” said he. “I have given Palok a letter to Vatt Marashi,
the chief of the Skreli, asking him to give you safe conduct. I hope
he will. But I am much against your adventure, Monsieur Le Queux.
While you are away I shall be thinking of you. If you be held to
ransom, they will say I am to blame, but there--well, _S’bogom!_ (God
be with you.) But come back, and tell me all about it.”
In all the Slav countries “_S’bogom_” is a common salutation on
greeting or taking farewell of a friend. And on that early summer’s
morning, I felt as I was rowed across the lake that I was going into
a savage, unknown region--as I really was.
At Scutari, Palok left me for six days, and returned with a fellow
tribesman named Rok, a tall, cadaverous-looking ruffian. He told
me that he had been up in the mountains, and that the dreaded Vatt
Marashi had invited me to his forbidden fastness.
Next day we set out for the Accursed Mountains.
The Northern Albanian may be entirely uneducated, a barbarian, and at
heart a brigand, but is certainly no fool.
My new friend Rok was particularly intelligent, and as we toiled
along over those rough, rock-strewn paths and spoke in Italian, he
gave me much information about his country, and declared that Austria
and Italy were both equally their enemy.
After sunset, we rested at a point high up above a dark, gloomy
defile, where a stream wound away towards the plain, and there we
ate some slices of cold mutton and black bread and drank a glass of
_rakhi_, the rifles of my companions lying at hand in case of sudden
emergency.
I had noticed the queer, sinuous, almost uncanny way in which Rok
walked. His movements at even pace irrespective of the state of the
path, were stealthy. Indeed, he almost crept along, for his feet fell
silently; and, with his rifle ever ready, his keen black eyes were
searching every side for the enemy that he appeared to expect to meet
at every turn. It was an uncanny experience.
Sometimes, as he walked in front, he would halt, and closely scan a
mass of tumbled rocks, as though he suspected a lurking enemy; then,
thoroughly satisfying himself, he would go forward again without
glancing back. He was certain that no enemy was in his rear.
From his movements and natural caution, I could plainly see that we
were traversing a country not altogether friendly, so when we sat
over our evening meal, I asked Palok. His reply was:
“The Shiala are not on very friendly terms with the Skreli just now.
But it is nothing, _signore_, nothing.”
We went forward till darkness closed in, and then lay down to sleep
under an overhanging rock almost on the face of a sheer precipice, a
place in which Rok told us he often stayed on his way down to Skodra
(Scutari). He humorously called it his _han_, or hotel.
We dare not light a fire for fear of attracting hostile attention,
and the cold up there was intense. I tried to sleep, but was unable,
therefore I arose, sat outside in the bright, glorious moonlight, and
kept watch, while Rok curled himself up like a dog and snored soundly
in chorus with Palok.
There, in the East, the full moon seems to shine with greater
brilliance than in Northern Europe, and beneath its white rays those
bare, rugged mountains looked like a veritable fairyland. Only the
cry of a night-bird and the low music of the stream far below broke
the stillness of the Oriental night, and as I sat there I reflected
that I was the first Englishman who had ever been the guest of the
redoubtable chieftain, Vatt Marashi, the man whom the Turks so
hated, the man of whom blood-curdling tales had been told me both in
Montenegro and in Skodra, and whose fame as a leader of a wild band
had not long before been proclaimed by the London newspapers.
For hours I sat thinking, sometimes of my good fortune, at others of
my perilous position alone in the hands of such a people. But I had
heard that, notwithstanding their barbaric customs, an Albanian’s
word was his bond. Therefore I reassured myself that I should not be
the victim of treachery and reported to Constantinople as “missing.”
Slowly at last the moon paled, and I grew sleepy. That terrible road
had worn me out. Therefore I woke Palok to mount guard, and flung
myself down in his place and slept till the sun, shining in my face,
awakened me.
Through the whole day we went forward again, over a path so bad that
I often had to scramble with difficulty. I tried to ride the mule,
but it was out of the question, so I walked and stumbled, and was
helped over the rough boulders by my companions. The Skreli country
was surely an unapproachable region.
That night we slept again in the open, but in a spot less sheltered.
Then on once more with the first grey of dawn, till, just before
noon, Rok halted in the narrow track that wound around the face of
the bare grey mountain, and, drawing his revolver, fired three times
into the air.
The shots reverberated in a series of echoes. It was a signal, and
almost ere they had died away came three answering shots from no
great distance, and I was told that we were now in the Skreli region,
and there was nothing more to fear.
In Podgoritza, in Cettigné, in Skodra, and in Djakova I had heard
terrible stories of this fighting race, and of Vatt’s fierce hatred
of the Turks. Yet everyone had told me that, the chief having invited
me, I need not have a moment’s apprehension of my personal safety.
So I went forward, reassured, to meet my host.
Half an hour later I came face to face with real brigands--brigands
who looked like illustrations out of a boy’s story-book, the men who
had so often held up travellers and compelled the Turkish Government
to pay heavy ransoms.
There were about twenty, certainly the fiercest and most bloodthirsty
gang on which I have ever set my eyes. They were dressed in the
usual skin-tight white woollen trousers, with broad black bands
running down the legs, a short white jacket, also black-braided,
the sleeveless woolly bolero of mourning, hide shoes with uppers
consisting of a network of string, and small white skull-caps. Each
man carried in his belt a great silver-mounted pistol of antique type
and a silver-sheathed, curved knife, while around both shoulders were
well-filled bandoliers, and in the hand of each a rifle. Like Rok,
the heads of all were shaven, leaving a long tuft at the back, in the
mediæval Florentine style.
With one accord they all raised their rifles aloft and shouted me
welcome, whereupon one man stepped forward--a big, muscular fellow
with handsome face and proud gait--the great chief Vatt Marashi
himself!
Attired very much as his followers, his dress was richer, the jacket
being ornamented with gold braid. The silver hilt of his pistol
was studded with coral and green stones, probably emeralds, but he
carried no rifle. Jauntily, and laughing merrily, he approached me,
and bent till his forehead touched mine--the Skreli sign of welcome.
And all this in Europe in the twentieth century!
Was I dreaming? Was it real? I was the guest of actual brigands,
those men about whom I had read in story-books!
Vatt Marashi, holding my hand the while, addressed me. What he said
was interpreted into Italian by Palok as:
“You are welcome here to my country--very welcome. And you
are an Englishman, and have travelled so far to see us! It
is wonderful--wonderful! You live so far away--farther than
Constantinople, they say. Well, I cannot give you much here or make
you very comfortable--not so comfortable as you have been down in
Skodra. But I will do my best. Come, let us eat.”
I returned his greeting, whereupon the whole crowd of us walked along
to a spot where a cauldron was standing on a wood fire, and out of it
my host, myself, and Palok had pieces of boiled chicken and rice that
had especially been prepared for my coming.
The object of this meal, I afterwards learnt, was to cement our
friendship. The Albanian code of honour is astounding, even to
our Western ideas. A word once given by those Albanian tribes is
never broken, and if the stranger eats the food of the Skreli, even
though he prove an enemy, his person is sacred for twenty-four hours
afterwards. While the food remains undigested he may not be injured
or captured.
So while I ate with this wild chieftain his band squatted round,
apparently discussing me.
It was probably the first time they had seen an Englishman, Palok
explained, and they were at first inclined to regard me as a secret
agent of the Government, till later that afternoon their chief
assured them to the contrary.
Then that wild horde, to a man, became my devoted servants. I
photographed them, and the picture appeared in my book on the Near
East, together with Princess Xenia’s photographs.
Vatt, the _Baryaktar_ (from the Turkish _bairakdar_, or
standard-bearer), unlike most Albanians, was fair-haired, above the
average height, and extremely muscular. He had a constant smile
of hearty good-fellowship. His eyes were fierce and barbaric;
nevertheless, he was pleasant of countenance, and I certainly found
him, from first to last, a staunch and excellent friend.
Lord of those wild, rugged mountains, his word was obeyed with a
precision that amazed me. A striking figure he presented as, with me,
he marched at head of his bodyguard, his chest thrown out proudly,
his head up, his keen eyes ever searching forward like every Albanian
of the hills, the wildest ruler of wildest Europe.
On every side, as we went forward to the tiny clusters of little
houses that formed the village where I was to be quartered, were bare
grey limestone rocks, without a single blade of grass, a desolate
mountain region into which no foreigner had penetrated except when
captured and held to ransom, as Miss Stone had been, the United
States Government having paid a large sum for her release. Through
centuries have that same tribe ruled that barren land, and no
conqueror of Albania has ever succeeded in ousting them.
“You have, no doubt, heard down in Scutari terrible things about me,”
he said, laughing, as, later on, we walked together. He had rolled me
a cigarette and given it to me unstuck. “I expect you feared to come
and see me--eh?”
I admitted that I had heard things of him not altogether calculated
to make me feel at ease.
“Ah!” he laughed, “that is because the Turks do not like us. Whenever
a Turkish soldier puts his foot a kilometre outside Skodra, we either
take away his Mauser and send him back, or else--well, we shoot him
first.”
“But they say that your men capture travellers.”
“And why not?” he asked. “We are Christians. Is it not permissible
for us to do everything to annoy those devils of Turks? But,” he
added, “if they say that I treat my prisoners badly, they lie. Why,
they get plenty of food and are well treated. I give them some
shooting if they like, and they generally enjoy themselves. But I
know. I too have been told that the Turks say I once cut off a man’s
ears. Bah! all Turks are liars!”
“Then it is only to annoy the Turks that your men commit acts of
brigandage?”
“Of course. The ransom is useful to us, I admit, but we live by our
flocks, and our wants are few. We are not like the people down in
Skodra. We are better, I hope.”
“And do you always watch the roads on the other side of the mountains
yonder?”
“Always. Our men are there now, all along the route between Ipek and
Prisrend. Who knows who may not pass along--a rich pasha perhaps.”
And his face relaxed into a humorous smile at the thought of such a
prize.
Then I marched along--a brigand for the nonce, like my host!
Surely it was one of the quaintest experiences of a varied and
adventurous life.
The tiny house in which I was given quarters had an earthen floor,
and consisted of two rooms, the ceilings and walls of which were
blackened by the smoke of years. The owner was an old man with a wife
and married daughter, the latter being a pretty young woman of about
nineteen, dressed in the gorgeous gala costume with golden sequins,
identical with those I saw down at Scutari during the _festà_. In my
honour she wore her finest garments, and her husband, a good-looking
young fellow five years her senior, seemed justly proud of her. His
name was Lûk. I named him “Lucky,” but he did not appreciate the wit.
He was, I found, one of the chiefs bodyguard who had come to greet me
at the confines of the Skreli territory, and proved a most sociable
fellow, ever ready to render me a service.
“These good people will look after you and make you as comfortable
as they can,” my host said, when he had introduced me to them. “I
have to go along the ravine, but will return in time to eat with you
this evening. You like good cigarettes? I will send you some.” And he
shook my hands, and, turning, went out, stalking again at the head of
his ferocious-looking band.
The bedroom, occupied in common by the family, was given over to me.
My bed on the floor was a big sack filled with dried maize-leaves. It
was not inviting, but Palok, having examined it critically, declared
it to be “_Cosi-cosi!_” and, having slept out for a couple of nights,
I was compelled to accept his verdict.
The girl in the sequins boiled us coffee over the fire, and with her
father and husband I sat outside the house in the golden sunset,
smoking and chatting. Both were full of curiosity. England was to
them a mere legendary land, but they knew more of London. When I
mentioned it, they declared that it could not possibly be so large as
Skodra!
I told them of Cettigné and of other towns in Montenegro I had
visited, but they held all Montenegro in contempt, for were they not
always raiding over the frontier? Lûk declared that he had walked in
Podgoritza openly, and in the market-place shot a man with whom he
was in _gyak_, or blood-feud.
“I walked out again, and no one dared to stop me,” he added, with
pride. “It would have been worse for them if they had!”
“But the Montenegrins are no cowards” I ventured to remark.
“Certainly not. They are very brave, but they dare not follow us
here. They always get lost in the mountains, and once they lose their
way they lose their lives,” he added, with a grin. “Our men killed
four over yonder mountain a few days ago.”
“The blood-feud?”
“Of course. It arose out of that.”
From the half-dozen other poor mountain homes came forth men, women,
and children, who grouped around us, watching us with curiosity.
According to Palok, rumour had at first gone round that I was a
prisoner, therefore they had refrained from gathering round to see
me. Now, however, they knew the truth, they welcomed me as their
guest.
Just before it grew dark the _Baryaktar_ returned, followed by
his bodyguard, without whom he never seemed to move. They did his
bidding, executed his orders, and were ever at his beck and call--the
picked men of the tribe.
While Vatt squatted on the floor, I sat on my battered old suit-case,
and together we ate a kind of mutton stew, rather rich but not
unpalatable. There was an absence of table cutlery, therefore we ate
with the aid of our pocket-knives and fingers. Now and then the old
woman would pick a tit-bit out of the pot and hand it to me with her
fingers. I was compelled to accept the well-meant hospitality, even
though her hands were not particularly clean.
The hot dish was tasty, but I could not manage the sour black bread,
for it was mouldy and gritty into the bargain.
It was a weird picture, the interior of that lowly hut, lit by a dim
oil lamp similar to those used by the early Greeks. The uncertain
firelight glinted on the sequin-ornamented dresses of the chieftain
and of Lûk’s pretty wife, throwing, now and then, into relief those
strangely unfamiliar faces that recalled the barbarians of an age
bygone and forgotten. The very language they were speaking was, as an
unwritten one, utterly incomprehensible and unintelligible to any but
the born Albanian.
It was difficult to believe that it was really only a very few weeks
ago that I had driven a car from London down to Brighton, that I had
dined at White’s, and, with a lady, had trod the red carpet of the
Savoy after the theatre.
And to-night I was actually having supper with real live brigands of
the mountains!
Lûk produced a bottle of _rakhi_, and Vatt Marashi lifted his tin mug
to me. I took a little of the potent spirit in the bottom of my own
drinking-cup, and tossed it off. It was not half so bad as I expected.
Then, as I rubbed my eyes, on account of the smoke, the chief took me
outside the house, and in the clear moonlight we sat down with Palok
on a big rock to chat.
He rolled me a cigarette of most excellent Turkish tobacco--of his
own growing, he told me--lit one himself, and we sipped the thick,
sweet coffee brought to us by Lûk’s wife.
The scene stretching before us was superb--a magnificent panorama
of mountains, some tipped with snow, white and brilliant under
the moonbeams. Below us, the valley was a great chasm, and lay in
unfathomable blackness.
With my strange host, I chatted about many subjects, and found him
far more intelligent than I would have believed. Keen-witted, quick
of perception, just in his judgment, and yet filled with an intense
hatred alike for both Turk and Montenegrin, he explained to me many
things of great interest.
He told me of the glorious traditions of his sturdy race, and of the
prince of the Skender Beg family, who, they hoped, would one day come
back to rule them.
“We, the chieftains, hold authority from him,” he declared. “Oh, yes,
he will come some day. Of that we are quite certain.”
“Englishmen have never dared to come here, have they?” I asked, with
some curiosity.
“Only once, a year or two ago. I discovered three of your compatriots
poking about in the rocks and chipping little pieces off. I had them
captured, and brought to me. At first I thought I would hold them to
ransom and make the Turks pay. But they were evidently poor fellows,
for their clothes were worn almost to rags, and they had very little
money. So I gave them their money back and sent them with an escort
down to the plain, forbidding them to enter our country again. I
wonder why they came, and why they were chipping the rocks?”
I told him that they were evidently mining prospectors; that
Englishmen travelled all over the world to discover minerals; and
that a mine in his country would be a source of great wealth. But my
explanation did not appeal to him. He could not see why they were
chipping off those pieces of rock. It was not flint, otherwise they
might have wanted them for gun-locks. No, the trio were distinctly
suspicious characters, and he was glad that he had expelled them.
“Have you ever held an Englishman to ransom?” I inquired.
“One. Five years ago. He came here shooting--after bears, I think.
He was evidently a great gentleman, for his guns were beautiful. The
Turks paid promptly.”
“Because he was an Englishman, eh?”
“Most probably,” he laughed. “Are they afraid of you English as they
are afraid of us?”
Soon afterwards he bade me good-night. Then I threw myself down on
my mattress of leaves and listened to the snoring of Palok and the
assembled family in the adjoining room.
I had thought Skodra barbaric, but here I was in an utterly unknown
corner of the earth, in an absolutely savage land--a land that knew no
law and acknowledged no master; a land that is the same to-day, even
after the war, as it was in the days of Diocletian and of Constantine
the Great--Albania the Unchanging.
CHAPTER FOUR
In Savage Europe--Real Brigands Before the Camera--The Brigand
Beauty and the Blood-Feud--Another Brigand Chief Offers me
“Sport”--A Murderer Tells his Strange Story--King Nicholas
Writes me a Poem--His Majesty Fines one of his Subjects
Five Francs and Pockets the Money.
On the day following the events recorded in the previous chapter,
we were climbing the rocks--for Vatt and his bodyguard thought that
they might get a shot at a bear--when there was a sudden alarm. The
hawk-like eyes of my companions espied strangers, and a sudden halt
was called. In a moment we were all under cover of the rocks. Every
man unslung his rifle, and Vatt himself, with knit brows, drew his
big silver-butted pistol, while I crouched behind a rock expecting
something to happen.
Nothing, however, did happen. But, a few moments later, there were
shouts from the opposite side of the defile, and my companions,
leaving the shelter of the rocks, waved their rifles over their heads
as a sign of greeting.
Vatt, replacing his pistol in his belt, spoke in a loud, sharp voice,
and received an answer. Those mountaineers can throw their voices
long distances, and be heard distinctly, a fact I often noticed.
Palok told me that the strangers were of the neighbouring tribe, the
Kastrati, and that their chief, Dêd Presci, had come to pay Vatt a
visit.
This was fortunate for me, since it gave me an opportunity of meeting
the other ruler of Northern Albania. Next to the Skreli the Kastrati
are most powerful in the Accursed Mountains, even to-day after the
war.
Half-an-hour later we met our visitors. Dressed very similarly to
my companions, they wore white, tasselless fezes instead of the
little white skull-cap, while the black stripes down their trousers
were somewhat different. The two chieftains touched foreheads, and
afterwards I was introduced. Dêd Presci, a round-faced, pleasant man,
rather stout and burly, his hair cut in mediæval style, gripped me
warmly by the hand, saying:
“I heard that you were in Skodra during the _festà_. Some of my men
told me there was an Englishman. But I never expected to meet you.
Perhaps you are coming across to see me, eh? If so, you are quite
welcome.”
“I may come next year to shoot, with a couple of English friends. May
I visit you then?”
“Most certainly. You have only, through one of our men down in
Skodra, to warn me of your coming, and I will give you safe escort,”
was his reply. “If you are fond of sport, you will find plenty with
us. Only bring a tent, and perhaps some provisions; for our food is
not what you foreigners are used to.”
“Then I shall return one day before long,” I promised.
“Do. You need fear nothing, you know. We never betray a friend.”
“Or forgive an enemy,” added Vatt, laughing.
“Especially if he be a Turk,” I remarked; whereat both chiefs laughed
in chorus.
That evening, in a small lonely house on the mountainside, I ate with
the pair; and the moon had long risen before Palok and I returned to
Lûk’s.
My camera was, from the first, regarded with a good deal of
suspicion, and it was with very great difficulty that I persuaded
anybody to be photographed. Many surreptitious snapshots I took with
a small Brownie camera, for unfortunately I had run out of films
for my larger Kodak. Those photographs, the first ever taken of the
Skreli brigands, may be found in my book.
[Illustration: VATT MARASHI, Chief of the Skreli brigands.]
[Illustration: The Brigand woman who carried on the blood feud.]
Early one morning, soon after sunrise, I was walking with Lûk and
Palok when a young woman passed us.
“That is Mrika Koi Marashut,” Lûk remarked.
“And who is she?” I asked.
“Mrika, the woman who carried on the blood-feud,” was his answer.
“Two years ago she was the most beautiful girl of our tribe, and
had a dozen men ready to marry her. She married Lez, a smart young
man from the Pulati side, and one of the _Baryaktar’s_ bodyguard,
like myself. A month after their marriage Lez was treacherously
killed by his brother, who lived down by the White Drin and was
violently in love with her. When she received the news she became
half demented by grief. But, by slow degrees, she formed her plans
for avenging her husband’s death, and for carrying on the blood-feud,
and, having no male relatives, resolved to take it on herself. She
therefore left us and was absent nearly a year, during which time
she persistently followed her brother-in-law first to Ochrida, in
Macedonia, then to Uskub, Prisrend, and many other places, always
awaiting her opportunity to strike the blow. This came one afternoon
when her husband’s assassin was walking in the main street in Skodra,
and she took Lez’s pistol from her belt and blew his face away. It
was valiant of a woman, was it not? But not only that,” he went on.
“Having killed the murderer, she went straight to his parents’ house,
three days’ journey, and shot them both dead. Since then she has
been back with us, now that poor Lez’s death has been avenged. I was
sorry he died,” he added regretfully, “for he was one of my dearest
friends.”
Murder is hardly a crime in Albania, for there life is cheap--very
cheap. An enemy or a stranger is shot like a dog, and left at the
roadside.
Palok told me of an incident that truly illustrates the utter
disregard the Albanian has for other people’s lives. He was once with
a man of the Hoti tribe--on the Montenegrin frontier--who had just
obtained a new rifle, probably from a murdered Turkish soldier. While
he was inspecting it a man passed close by, a stranger, whereupon the
man with the new gun raised it to his shoulder, took aim, and fired.
The stranger fell dead. Palok remonstrated, but his companion merely
said that he was testing his gun’s accuracy. Was it not better, he
asked, to test it that way, instead of waiting till face to face with
an enemy?
The assassin in that region is never punished, except by those who
take up the blood-feud. If the murder takes place in a town the
guilty one escapes to the mountains, or gets away into Macedonia, or
Serbia, where perhaps he earns his living by sawing firewood. Every
few years the Sultan issued an _irade_ “for the pacification of the
blood,” as it is put, and the murderer then returned. He paid a small
tax to the Government, after which he cannot be arrested; and if he
pays about three hundred crowns to the relatives of his victim, the
blood-feud is at an end.
This, however, does not apply to the mountain tribes. They care not a
jot for the Sultan’s _irades_ or the new King of Jugo-Slavia. There
is no law, except that of the blood-feud, the vendetta falling on the
murderer and on his next male relative. Many are the curious facts
that I have heard regarding the blood-feud and the Albanian laws of
hospitality.
A case in point was that of a young man named Koi, a friend of Lûk’s,
a tall, wiry youth, of somewhat sinister expression--a typical bandit.
I was talking about the hospitality extended by the various tribes to
each other, when Kol passed and Lûk beckoned him, saying:
“He has just had a curious experience in the Klementi country. Let
him relate it to you.”
So at Lûk’s invitation the young fellow accepted one of my
cigarettes, placed his rifle against the wall, and flung himself down
on a small boulder near us.
He blew a cloud of smoke from his thin lips, stroked his knees with
his hands, and looked at me with considerable curiosity, wondering
why I should want to know his story.
“The stranger is interested in your adventures with the Klementi.
Tell him all about them,” said Palok.
“Bah!” he said, with a slight shrug of his shoulders. “It was
nothing--mere chance--luck, if you like to call it so. There is
nothing to tell.”
“But what there is interests the Englishman. He is the _Baryaktar’s_
guest, remember,” Lûk remarked.
“Well,” said the young man reluctantly, and Palok translated his
words as follow: “The fact is that I was in blood-feud with a man of
the Klementi, and went over there to kill him. I laid in wait one
evening, and as he drove home his sheep I shot him from behind a
rock. He had killed my father, therefore I had a just right to avenge
his blood. My shot, however, aroused the whole valley, and I knew
that I, the only stranger, would be suspected and killed. Therefore I
sped away down the valley in the darkness till I reached a small mean
house. An old woman was there, and I craved food and shelter for the
night. She gave me food at once, for, like ourselves, the Klementi
never send a stranger away. I was hungry, for I had crossed into the
Klementi region in secret, and dared not seek food lest my presence
became known to the man I intended to kill. Scarcely had I eaten
the meal the old woman gave me when there came the sound of voices
outside, and to my horror I saw four men carrying in the body of my
victim.
“‘See!’ they cried to the woman who was befriending me. ‘One of the
Skreli has killed your son!’
“Then I knew that it was the murdered man’s mother who had given me
shelter. A moment later the men, among whom was the elder brother of
the victim, discovered me.
“‘See!’ they cried. ‘There is your son’s murderer. We will kill him!’
“I stood with my back to the wall, knowing well that my last moment
had come. The dead man’s brother raised his rifle while I drew my
pistol, prepared at least to fire once more before I died. I was
caught like a rat in a trap!
“The old woman, however, seeing my position and my helplessness,
cried:
“‘No! Enough! Though he has killed your brother, you may not touch
him! He is beneath our roof! He has eaten our bread, and our
protection must remain over him till to-morrow’s sunset. Remember, my
son, it is our law.’
“The man dropped his rifle, and his friends drew back at the old
woman’s reproof.
“‘Go!’ she said to me, after glancing at her son’s body. ‘You have
eaten our bread, and therefore you cannot be harmed.’
“‘Yes, go,’ added my victim’s brother. ‘Till to-morrow’s sunset I
will not follow. But after that I shall track you down, and, before
heaven, I will kill you!’
“Need I say that I took up my rifle, and, leaving the house,
travelled quickly all night and all next day, until I returned here?
But,” added Koi, with a slight sigh, “we shall meet one day, and he
will most certainly kill me!”
Is there any other country in the world where such a strict code of
honour exists? I am inclined to think not.
Had I been in the midst of a highly civilized people--a foreigner
wandering in the wilds of Scotland, for example--I certainly should
never have received the many charming kindnesses that I did at the
hands of those rough, uncivilized tribes. Climbing like cats up the
mountain-sides as they did, I was often compelled to lag behind,
being unused to such walking. But, laughing merrily, those armed
banditti would catch hold of my arms and pull me up the steeper
places; they would roll cigarettes for me, become distressed when I
grew fagged, and fetch and carry for me like children.
My neat automatic pistol was greatly admired as being a
much more handy and serviceable weapon than their own big
pistols--Austrian-made revolvers fitted to antique silver butts that
had once done service to flintlocks. My weapon with its magazine was
declared a marvel of ingenuity, and on many occasions Vatt and his
men amused themselves by firing with it at targets.
Once he remarked, with a grim smile, that it would be a very handy
weapon against the Turks. Where could he get one? Was it costly?
When I promised to send him one through a mutual friend in the bazaar
down in Scutari, as souvenir of my visit, his joy knew no bounds.
A month later I fulfilled my promise, sending it across from Sofia,
and I received an acknowledgment of its safe receipt.
I wonder whether or not he used it against the hated Turk? I know he
has survived the Great War, and he no doubt struts about with it in
his belt, a greater chief than all the others, because he possesses
the very latest and deadliest of weapons. He is to-day still Chief of
the Skreli, who defied the whole of the Turkish army.
On the same evening of my return to Cettigné from the Skreli country
I had audience of King Nicholas, who listened with greatest interest
to my account of Vatt Marashi and his tribesmen; for the latter were
constantly raiding on his frontier.
After hearing me for over an hour he invested me with the dark-blue
enamelled cross of the Order of Danilo, with its cherry-and-white
ribbon. Knowing His Majesty to be a poet of no mean distinction, I
ventured to ask him if he would write me a poem.
He laughed and replied vaguely, “Perhaps.”
Two days later a large envelope was ceremoniously delivered to me
containing the following in Serbian, in his own bold handwriting:
S’ veledušnog Albiona
Pružiše se dvije ruke
Crnoj Gori da pomogu
U junačke njene muke
S’ vrućom rječu na ustima
Gladston diže Crnogorce
A Tenison za najprve
U svijet ih broi borce
Na glas svoih Velikana
Britanski se narod trže
Da pomože da zaštiti.
Crnu Goru iz najbrže
Posla svoje bojne ladje
Sto na tečnost gospostvuju
Veledušno da zašitite
Domovinu milu Moju
O fala ti po sto puta
Blagorodni lyudi Soju
Dok je svjeta dok je greda
Nad Ulcinjem koje stoju
Hraniće ti blagodamost
Ova šaka sokolava
Koima si u pomoci
Stiga putem od valova.
It was later translated into English by my friend Count Chedo
Mijatovitch as follows:
From the great-souled Albion,
Two arms were stretched
To help Montenegro
In her heroic sufferings.
With fiery word on his lips
Gladstone lifts up Montenegrins,
Whilst Tennyson declared them
The very first fighters in the world.
On the call of their great men
British people rose up
In quickest manner, to help
And to protect Montenegro.
They despatched their warships.
Which rule over the seas.
Generously to protect
My Fatherland so dear to me.
Oh! thanks to thee, hundredfold thanks,
Noble race of men.
As long as the world lasts,
As long as the mountains above Dulcigno stand.
Will remain grateful to thee
This handful of falcons.
To whose help thou didst come
By the road of the waves.
Dear old King Nicholas was ever a paternal monarch. Each Thursday
morning he would sit in a big arm-chair beneath the portico of his
Palace, accessible to any of his subjects who wished to petition
him. He would listen to their troubles, give friendly advice, and
frequently dispense a rough-and-ready justice.
On one occasion, while walking in the main street of Cettigné, I saw
him stop a man and ask for his revolver. The man addressed drew his
weapon from his belt and gave it sheepishly to the king, who examined
it, and, finding it unloaded, promptly fined him five francs. The
man paid merrily, while His Majesty pocketed the money, with a smile
of evident satisfaction! There was a law that everyone must go
armed, and anyone found with a weapon without cartridges was liable
to a fine. It was apparently His Majesty’s delight to go about and
administer the law--to his own advantage!
When I went to the Palace to wish him farewell, he gave me several
messages to his friends in England, and on that occasion presented me
to his Consort, Queen Milena, a very handsome, white-haired woman,
whose daughter the Queen of Italy much resembles. It is only while
writing this page that Her Majesty’s death has occurred in Italy, and
she has been buried side by side with her husband, in the picturesque
Russian cemetery, overlooking the blue Mediterranean, at San Remo.
Her two other daughters I met while the pretty Princess Xenia was
assisting me with the photographs--Princess Militza, who married the
Grand Duke Peter of Russia, and Princess Stana, who became wife of
the Grand Duke Nicholas. Both were pretty, dark-eyed girls, devoted
to tennis, and hoping that one day Cettigné would establish a
golf-course.
They had been in Rome with their sister, the Queen, on several
occasions, and one afternoon as we sat at tea on the verandah of
Prince Mirko’s house Princess Stana sighed and said:
“Oh! how I wish we were back in Rome! Elena always gives us such a
glorious time at the Quirinal.”
CHAPTER FIVE
The Love Romance of King Peter of Serbia--His Majesty the
Most Misjudged Monarch in Europe--He is my Friend through
Fifteen Years--A King Incognito and his Troubles--His Many
Kindnesses to me--Prince George and the Ladies of the
Ballet.
King Peter of Serbia I first knew in Paris as Prince Peter
Karageorgevitch, before he was compelled to succeed to the
throne of Serbia on the assassination of King Alexander and his
adventuress-consort, Queen Draga.
From that fatal moment poor Peter was a misjudged man. The world
believed that he had had a hand in the royal tragedy, but I happen
to know that he had no desire to become King of Serbia. The skeleton
in His Majesty’s cupboard was a great and absorbing love romance, of
which I, among very few, knew the truth, and which is here related
for the first time. The lady lived in Paris, and I had often been her
guest at luncheon and dinner. At the moment of the royal tragedy she
was actually engaged to be married to the man she loved.
Suddenly, without warning, the Prince found himself called to
Belgrade to ascend a tottering throne. There was an affectionate
leave-taking, and the lady--whose name it would not be fair to
mention, for she has lately married--was inconsolable, and came to
London, where I called on her at Brown’s Hotel.
Meanwhile the monarch she loved was bearing all the vile abuse that
the Press of the world could vent upon his head. The British Press
openly declared him to be an assassin, and the British Government
withdrew its Minister from the Serbian capital. With his lips sealed,
poor King Peter was unable to utter a word in self-defence, while
time after time the lady in question, when I called and consoled her,
showed me the bitter articles that sensational journalists, ignorant
of the facts, wrote against her lover.
Those wicked articles broke the monarch’s heart, and in such
distressing circumstances he ascended the throne of Serbia, and was
later, with hollow mockery, crowned King, well knowing that the woman
he so dearly loved could never become his wife. The Serbians would
not tolerate a foreigner as queen, and in any case the marriage could
only be a morganatic one.
Such were his constant regrets, and so melancholy his frame of mind,
that he shut himself up in his Palace and saw hardly anybody except
his Ministers of State. Even this seclusion attracted the suspicions
of his traducers, who declared that the new King was a criminal, who
dared not show his face to honest folk, and some of our own most
influential but ill-informed newspapers were most bitter in their
recriminations. I tried to put them right, but they would not have it.
King Peter had been at Belgrade nearly two years before I had my
first private audience of him as King. Curiously enough, Europe
had never recognized in him the grandson of the great hero of the
Serbian people, the rough peasant Karageorge, who, in 1804, raised
the Serbians against their oppressors the Turks and defeated them.
Peter Karageorgevitch was a born soldier. His facial expression,
his stature, his grit, and his mannerisms, all reminded me of Earl
Roberts. In 1875 he fought at the head of his troop--which, by the
way, he raised himself and crippled his finances thereby--for the
emancipation of Bosnia. Surely he was a born soldier!
Serbia is a nation of poets and artists, and in its national poetry
there is a hero called Peter Mrcognitch, the Protector of the Poor.
And under that assumed name Prince Peter fought. In 1870 he fought
on the French side against the Germans, being awarded the Legion
of Honour for valour on the battlefield. And again, in 1914, he
fought against the Germans. Such was the man whom the world, in its
ignorance, denounced as a murderer!
The true history of the last weeks of Alexander’s reign, of those
black days of spies and suspicion in Belgrade, has never been told.
But I have myself been in those terrible secret oubliettes of the
old Turkish fortress, overlooking the junction of the Save with the
Danube, where those, many of them leading men of the political,
social, and literary world in Belgrade, who dared to utter a word
against Draga and her methods, were confined with but little
air or light till they died. The Royal House of Obrenovitch was
exterminated, it is true, but I affirm here and most solemnly that
King Peter had no hand in it whatsoever, and his forced parting with
Madame X was the greatest blow in all his splendid but unhappy life.
* * * * *
One dark autumn evening I left the Grand Hotel at Belgrade and drove
through the wide ornamental iron gates of the New Konak, or Palace.
Blue-coated sentries saluted; idling detectives lifted their hats;
and the lines of blue-and-gold liveried servants, drawn up in the
big entrance-hall, bent low as I alighted. It was all delightfully
impressive and amusing.
In the large inner hall was a wide horse-shoe staircase of regal
splendour and in excellent taste. All was very new, for the Palace
in which the tragedy had occurred had been pulled down, and its site
converted into a lawn.
At the head of the stairs Colonel Tcholak-Antich, the Royal Marshal,
in a bright blue uniform, and wearing many decorations, met me, and
with the usual etiquette we exchanged our names with our greetings.
“His Majesty wants you to sign his birthday-book, which he keeps for
his friends. Will you do so?” was almost his first question.
He took me into a little ante-room, and there I scribbled my name
in the space of July 2nd. And I may say that after I had done so,
no anniversary of my birthday passed till the King died without my
receiving a telegram on that day, bearing a red label, with the words
“Government Telegram; With Priority,” wishing me many happy returns.
In addition, as my intimate friends know well--for they have smoked
them--His Majesty used to send me a very welcome present of two
thousand of his own Serbian cigarettes each year, bearing his royal
cipher in gold on them.
But that apart.
I was at once conducted to the audience-chamber, the double doors
of which, to prevent eavesdroppers, were closed behind me, and by
etiquette I was left alone to await His Majesty.
The room, of fine dimensions with a gilded ceiling, seemed, under the
many electric lamps, ablaze with gold. The beautiful gilt furniture
showed well against the old rose carpet, the damask of the upholstery
matching the carpet and being brocaded with gold. Several fine modern
paintings of seascapes were on the walls, one big historical painting
by the great Botzaritch, whose talented son is a coming artist in
London to-day and quite recently drew a remarkable caricature of
myself. In the centre was a large settee and several fine gilt
chairs, set against a big gilt Renaissance table.
I had scarcely time to look across the luxurious room when the
long white double doors at the end opened and His Majesty, in the
dark-blue uniform of a Serbian general, entered.
“Well, my dear friend Le Queux, so at last you have come to see me!”
he exclaimed, taking my hand. “I have long been expecting you. Many
things have happened since we met in Paris, eh?”
He motioned me to a seat on the settee, and then, after handing me a
cigarette from the big gold box on the table, he took one, lit it,
and cast himself in a soft arm-chair opposite.
Then we began to chat.
“You are very welcome here in Serbia. But I need not tell you, my
dear friend,” he said, in his sharp military way. “I have read some
of the kind things you have written about us. Would that everyone
understood us as you do. I only wish writers would tell the truth
as you and Mr. Alfred Stead and a few others have done. But”--and
he paused, looking me straight in the face, with his dark, deep-set
eyes--“_you know the real truth_! The others, alas! don’t,” and he
sighed.
“Your Majesty has been entirely misunderstood,” I said, and then our
conversation drifted into matters of a purely private character, for,
as a matter of fact, I had seen Madame X at Cannes only three weeks
before, and she had given me a message to convey to him.
Presently I spoke of various matters regarding diplomacy--for the
truth was that the Foreign Office was anxious to know certain things,
and because I knew His Majesty, I had been asked to put certain
questions.
“Ah! you want me to talk politics,” he laughed, raising his hand
with the fine diamond on it. “No. I make a rule never to do so--even
to you, my dear friend! One of our chief faults here in Serbia is
that we talk far too much about politics. You have noticed that, I
daresay, in the cafés, in the Legations, and elsewhere, eh? All we
Serbians are the same--in Montenegro, in Bosnia, and elsewhere. It
is always so with a young nation. Our future will, I fervently hope,
be one of peace and prosperity. It will ever be my most earnest
endeavour to secure this for my people, so that Serbia may prove to
Europe that she does not merit the hard things said of her in the
past.”
His Majesty, after we had chatted about Florence, a city which he
knew quite well, told me a very interesting fact. “We have here, in
Serbia,” he said, “a most wonderful cure for rheumatism--the Ribarska
Banya. I only tell you what happened personally to me. As you know
perhaps, long ago, during the Russo-Turkish War, I contracted acute
rheumatism, and have been a martyr to it ever since. I visited every
watering-place in Europe, but none of their so-called ‘cures’ did me
any good. A year ago, with much reluctance, I went to Ribarska and
took the cure, and from that moment I have never since been troubled.
It was miraculous! With my own eyes I saw a poor woman wheeled there
entirely crippled, and twenty days later I saw her beginning to walk.
I would not have believed it had I not seen it with my own eyes. You
should tell people in England,” he added.
For an hour and a half we chatted about many things--of London,
of Paris, of Rome, of Vienna--for His Majesty was essentially an
up-to-date man of the world, as well as a monarch. “We want no
external troubles,” he declared to me. “We only want to be allowed to
progress.”
But, alas! what a débâcle was to come in the days of the war.
“I have had some amusing experiences here since I have been King,”
he went on. “One that happened soon after my arrival was rather
humorous. It is my habit, as you know, to ride out into the country
early each morning for exercise, and I always prefer to be alone. At
first the police insisted that I should have an escort, but I do not
like to feel as if I were under arrest, so I refused. One beautiful
summer’s morning, about a fortnight after I came here, I rode out
along the road to Ripanje, and when passing a small village I heard
an old peasant-woman loudly lamenting the fate of her relatives and
of the whole Serbian nation in general. I drew up, and as I remained
unnoticed it suddenly occurred to me that I was unknown, for my
features had not yet appeared on the postage-stamps or on the coinage.
“‘Well,’ I asked the old woman, ‘what has happened? Tell me.’
“‘Ah! general. If you only knew how the police treat us here! It
is most scandalous! Every police-agent expects a bribe, and if you
don’t give him one, he will trump-up charges against you. Woe! that
we Serbians should ever live under such a Government. Alexander is
dead, and now there is a new King. Oh! if he only knew, I feel sure
he would inquire into it all, for they say he is, after all, a good
Serbian, even though he shuts himself up in the Konak and never sees
anybody.’
“I inquired her name, and then told her that, being a general, I
sometimes saw the new King, and when next time I did I would mention
her complaint to His Majesty.
“‘Ah! Thanks, general,’ replied the old peasant woman. ‘If you do,
then you will earn the thanks of all of us here.’
“Well, on my return here I called Monsieur Paschitch, the Prime
Minister, and ordered a full inquiry. Its result was that an
appalling state of affairs was revealed. The peasantry were being
oppressed on every hand, and I ordered that the officials responsible
should not only be degraded, but prosecuted.”
On a dozen or more occasions, at different times, I was received by
King Peter. He was always most generous to me, and gave me the run
of the whole royal domains for fishing and shooting, and he sent to
me the beautiful signed portrait of himself, which can be found as
the frontispiece of my book, _An Observer in the Near East_--a book
which, by the way, was at first published anonymously, because I was
engaged in secret-service work.
More than once he was quite frank with me concerning his troubles.
We were sitting together one afternoon when he suddenly rose, and
with clouded brow paced his long room, overlooking the Danube and the
great Hungarian plains. Then, halting before me abruptly, he asked
with a sigh:
“Don’t you think I was far happier in Paris than in my present life
in this gilded cage?”
And on another day, when he was deploring how wrongly the world had
judged him, he said:
“A man’s life is one long warfare against the malice of his
fellow-men. The wise man changes his mind, the fool never!”
His Majesty’s love romance, to which I have referred, was surely
one of the most tragic that has ever occurred to any man. Because
of the recent marriage of Madame X, and because she is still my
friend, I refrain from telling the whole story. If I did, the reader
would accuse me of putting fiction into this volume, which I have
determined not to do. Yet surely the old adage that fact is often
stranger than fiction cannot be denied.
One day, perhaps, I shall make the real romance the plot of a novel,
and then I shall not be accused of mixing fiction with fact!
Poor King Peter had many family troubles, not the least being the
erratic life of his smart and extremely good-looking son, Prince
George, whose autographed photograph, together with that of his
father, looks up at me from my table as I write.
The private life of any young Crown Prince is popularly supposed to
be rather hectic, and in Prince George’s case it certainly has been
no exception. Indeed, it is an open secret that he was the original
of the character of “Prince Danilo” in the _Merry Widow_--the lazy
lover of languorous ladies.
One incident that will perhaps be interesting as revealing the life
of a good-looking, good-for-nothing boy, who really had no vices but
just enjoyed the joy of living, I may perhaps be permitted to relate.
One day, while in Belgrade, I had been invited to luncheon by Madame
Vesnitch, wife of Dr. Milenko Vesnitch, then Minister of Justice,
and afterwards Serbian Minister in Paris. At table were the Prime
Minister, my old and valiant friend Monsieur Nicholas Paschitch,
Costa Stoyanovitch, Minister of Commerce, Mr. Alexander Tucker,
Serbian Consul-General in London, and Colonel Tcholak-Antich, the
Royal Marshal, with some ladies, the Crown Prince being the guest.
After the ladies had left the table, the patriarchal Prime Minister,
Paschitch, with his long, sweeping beard and eagle eyes, who is
to-day still known as “The Grand Old Man of the Balkans,” looked
across at the Crown Prince and asked in French, so that all of us
should hear:
“Your Highness, there are rumours of some strange doings of yours
last night. Tell us what really happened.”
“Happened?” laughed the young Prince, with a cigarette between his
fingers. “Why, nothing really happened! It never does!”
“But there was some fun at the Palace, wasn’t there?” asked Dr.
Vesnitch, our host.
“Fun? Well, not much. They laughed--that was all,” was his reply.
“Well, do tell us what actually happened,” urged the Prime Minister.
“If you want to know, I’ll tell you,” laughed Prince George, after
sipping his coffee. “Last night I dined at the Military Club, when
somebody said that a new ballet was to be produced at the Opera. We
were all bored stiff, so half a dozen of us went to the club-box
at the theatre and saw a fairly good show. The curtain fell rather
early, so I suggested that we might have a little supper. We invited
eighteen of the girls, and took them round by the back door of the
Palace. Everybody was in bed. I woke up old Rachitch, the chef, and
the old buffer soon scraped us up some supper. But things seemed
very dull and slow. It was almost like a funeral. So, knowing where
the key of the Treasury is kept, I got it and took out the royal
crown and crowned myself King of Serbia. Oh! That woke up the whole
party! The girls yelled!”
Suffice it to say that Prince George renounced all his rights to the
succession two years later, and his younger brother, Alexander, who
recently married a daughter of the Queen of Roumania, now reigns as
King.
Truly Prince George, a merry, easy-going, humorous friend to me, was
hardly fitted to rule the new nation of Jugo-Slavia.
He was fond of practical jokes, and would sit in his window in a
wing of the palace that overlooks the principal boulevard--a fine
thoroughfare lined with plane trees--and with a catapult pick out his
friends, firing at them big pellets of chalk, which, bursting when
they hit, left nasty marks on their smart uniforms.
Yet when I was with him and his father for seven months, at the
Serbian headquarters, in the war against the Turks, he showed
himself to be a most brave and competent officer, whom everyone
loved. He very nearly lost his life at the battle of Kumonovo by a
deed that was never reported, namely, the saving of the life of a
student sergeant-major on the battlefield, at the risk of his own;
a deed that, if it had been performed by any British soldier, would
certainly have won the Victoria Cross.
Of his many love-affairs, of his boyish pranks, and of the many
stormy interviews he had with his father the King, tales are often
told in Belgrade. Nicholas Paschitch and his charming Italian
wife--whose guest I have been on so many occasions--tell many amusing
stories of the Crown Prince’s follies and extravagances, and of his
hopeless disregard of all that befitted his station as the coming
ruler of Jugo-Slavia, now the most powerful state in the Balkans.
CHAPTER SIX
Some Secret History--Tossing a Coin for the Throne of
Serbia--King Peter as an Artist--The Present King and
Queen--I am a Guest of King Ferdinand of Bulgaria--His
Presents to Me--The Assassination of Bulgaria’s Prime
Minister--My Own Narrow Escape--What King Ferdinand Thinks
of England.
On one of my visits to Belgrade I was charged with a secret mission
concerning new armaments for Serbia, in view of the coming war--a
mission that had a dramatic _dénouement_.
It being known that I was on terms of friendship with King Peter,
I had been asked at Whitehall to have a private chat with him
concerning certain political matters. It was a matter of secret
diplomacy, apart from that of officialdom. Though it was no secret,
of course, from my friend Sir Beethom Whitehead, who was then British
Minister at Belgrade (and to whom I am much indebted for many social
introductions in Serbia and elsewhere), it was deemed wise to keep
the matter from the Serbian Government. Nor was it surprising,
when one reflects how we British had treated Serbia on the King’s
accession.
Well, I was at once granted private audience as usual, and during a
whole afternoon laid before His Majesty the suggestions I had been
instructed in London to make. He considered them calmly, and then
entirely agreed.
“Monsieur Paschitch must know, but nobody else--for the present,” he
said. “I will speak to him about it.”
Next day I called on the Prime Minister, the grey-bearded, serious
man who is still one of my best friends, and we arranged certain
details. Some greedy persons had to receive gratifications--for
nothing is done officially in the Balkans without bribery. And
perhaps it may here be whispered that secret commissions are not
utterly unknown in Great Britain!
We made out a list of them, and the amounts that should be
paid. Waiting at the hotel was my friend Mr. Alexander Tucker,
Consul-General for Serbia in London. He was there as my secretary,
representing a strong financial group, who were ready to arm Serbia
for the great war that we knew was coming, though the world was doped
by the politicians.
That evening I had arranged everything, even to the amount of bribery
to be paid to the underlings, who professed to be pro-British, but
whose palms were itching to be greased by anybody’s money.
In the secrecy of my bedroom at the Grand Hotel I discussed with my
friend Tucker the details of the whole affair, and at ten o’clock
that night I wrote out a cipher telegram to London, saying that all
was arranged, and that I should return with the documents signed by
the President of the Council on the following Thursday.
This message I myself took to the telegraph office, not daring to
entrust it to anybody else, and later retired to rest, very well
satisfied with the result of my delicate and rather difficult
mission. I had, I felt, scored a great success for Britain’s prestige
in the Near East--one that it was hoped would cause Bulgaria to come
into line with our policy.
Mine was, in fact, the secret hand, administering quite unknown and
unsuspected Britain’s policy in the Near East. The position in which
I found myself was really a strange one. I was not a diplomat, but
a catspaw, who allowed himself to be used for patriotic purposes in
order to further our country’s interest and well-being.
I know there are some who have averred that I have made money out of
the services I have tried to render to the British Government, but
to those I reply that I have never asked, or received, _one single
penny_ of the British taxpayers’ money; and, moreover, the cost of my
fifteen years’ travelling across Europe, Asia Minor, and Africa as a
spy and counter-spy of Britain I have defrayed out of the royalties
on my novels. And I defy anyone to prove the contrary.
Patriotism is cheap to those who are paid for their speeches, their
propaganda, or their official or parliamentary salaries, but as I
have elsewhere stated, my own unswerving patriotism ruined me and
kept me even a poor man.
To enter Court circles may be pleasant enough, for some, but when it
is effected by a man who is compelled to write for his living, and
who has no axe to grind save that of serving his King and country,
it is often both heart-breaking and ruinous. There are well-known
men I could name, among them at least two of our present Cabinet
Ministers, who can testify to the truth of my statements, and to what
I have endeavoured with all my heart to accomplish for Britain in the
Balkans.
But to return to the incident of the Serbian armaments.
I awoke next morning feeling much gratified. I had a guarded
conversation over the telephone with M. Costa Stoyanovitch, the
Minister of Commerce, to whom M. Paschitch had spoken, and afterwards
Dr. Vesnitch, the Minister of Justice, rang up and invited me to
lunch.
Again I lunched in that handsome room, where the Crown Prince had
related his irresponsible midnight revels. Madame Paschitch, M.
Andrea Nikolitch, Minister of Public Instruction, and M. Patchu,
Minister of Finance, were among the guests.
Suddenly Dr. Vesnitch was called to the telephone. When he returned
his face was pale and grave, and he asked me into the next room.
“We are betrayed!” were his first words. “The Opposition knows
everything! There has been a spy of Austria in the Grand Hotel, who
has listened to all your conversations with Consul-General Tucker!
They even know the text of the telegram you sent to London last
night!”
I stood agape. It was the first time that a foreign spy had had the
advantage of me.
“Well? What is to be done?” I asked quickly.
“Deny everything. We must. There will be questions this afternoon in
the Skupchtina, and, to save the Government, we must refute them,”
he replied. “I will warn the President of the Council. Meanwhile
it will be best, Monsieur Le Queux, if you go back to your hotel
and remain there till you hear of the results of the questions.
Monsieur Paschitch will no doubt at once inform the King. Meanwhile
the position of the Government is certainly most insecure. The
pro-Germans are ready to defeat us at any moment.”
“But how can they know the text of my cipher message?” I asked the
Minister.
He shrugged his shoulders and replied,
“I have given instructions to the Prefect of Police, and we shall
see.”
I walked back to the hotel in a veritable vortex of intrigue and
mystery. The Opposition had discovered the motive of my mission, and
also knew the actual text of the message I had sent to London!
I waited for news. That afternoon the Leader of the Opposition rose
in that semi-circular chamber, the Skupchtina, and put some very
searching questions to the Prime Minister Paschitch.
Was it true that Monsieur Le Queux was in Belgrade on a confidential
mission from the British Government concerning artillery and
ammunition to be made in England? was one of the questions asked.
Whereupon Monsieur Paschitch rose solemnly and replied:
“It is true that Monsieur Le Queux, an English writer, is in
Belgrade. He is on one of his periodical visits to see his personal
friends, and have audience, as he always does, of His Majesty the
King. Monsieur Le Queux is an Englishman who travels frequently
in our Balkan countries, but, being no politician, nor in any way
connected with the British Government, no political importance can be
attached to his visit. He is here as any other Englishman may be in
Belgrade.”
Whereupon the Leader of the Opposition, a fiery little man with a
shock of black hair, rose flourishing the papers in his hand, and
said:
“The explanation of His Excellency the President of the Council can
hardly be in accordance with fact. There is a pro-British plot to
obtain armaments from Britain, in return for a loan, and as proof
of it Monsieur Le Queux despatched last night a telegram to London
in cipher, but which, translated into plain language, reads--‘All
arranged, terms satisfactory to Paschitch and Ministry. Government
guarantee. His Majesty supports us. Leaving Thursday.’”
The reading of my telegram caused a great shock to the Government.
Monsieur Paschitch repeated his denials, but everyone saw that the
truth was out, and, indeed, two days later the inevitable Cabinet
crisis came, and the Government resigned. I had been outwitted!
Now comes the sequel. Those members of the Serbian Government who
were to have considerable “gratifications” out of the secretly
arranged “deal” were all eager to discover the traitor. They were
not long in ascertaining the truth. A young Serbian whom my friend
Tucker knew, and who proved useful owing to his knowledge of English,
was proved to be an Austrian. And in the room adjoining mine at the
hotel, separated only by a wooden partition, was, I afterwards
learnt, a man named Hoedl, a well-known spy of Austria.
Both were promptly arrested, and after a swift trial were sentenced
to ten years’ hard labour for espionage.
I confess that I, thinking myself something of a secret agent, kicked
myself for not taking proper precautions. But they always say that
the shoemaker’s child is the worst shod! The contract for arms was
not placed with Germany, but by a clever manœuvre on the part of
Monsieur Paschitch it went to France.
I have seen Serbia under many conditions, grave and gay. I was with
my old friend Charles Hands of the _Daily Mail_ and Sir Philip Gibbs,
then of the _Daily Chronicle_, when we walked the streets of Belgrade
together during the first Balkan War. We felt that Serbia must go
under, and the outlook was black enough in all conscience at the time.
I had arrived from my home in Devonshire with a single suit-case. Six
hours after the declaration of war I had been summoned to London by
telegram. After two hours in London I caught the Orient Express, and
within three days arrived at the Serbian front, being attached to
the headquarters of King Peter and his son Prince George. I carried
with me eight boxes of first-aid appliances, hurriedly got together
in London, and they were the first to reach the wounded from outside
Serbia. They were obtained by Madame Grouitch, wife of the Serbian
Minister in London, and I was asked to convey them to the front.
For seven months I remained with the Serbians, and later on, when
back in Belgrade, I took part in the triumphal procession as the King
re-entered his capital after victory, and went to the Cathedral for
the thanksgiving service.
King Peter was a man of many fine qualities. In addition to being a
splendid soldier he was also something of an artist. He had a modest
studio at the back of the Palace, where, in his dull loneliness,
those hours of brooding over the might-have-beens and his lost love,
he killed time by painting landscapes. Only his intimate friends were
ever allowed to inspect his work, but on two occasions I sat with him
while he worked, and, though I am no critic of art, I thought the
scenes were very pleasing.
Once he said to me, hinting at the romance I have already described,
“would rather be a picture-dealer in Paris or London than King of
Serbia.”
Though he seldom saw Madame X after his accession, I know that they
kept up a constant correspondence, and I wonder whether or not in
years to come those letters they exchanged will be published. If they
be, they will, I am sure, show the true sentiments of a greathearted
and courageous sovereign, who was compelled by fortune to sacrifice,
for his country’s needs, his deep affection.
At His Majesty’s burial recently Madame X stood by his graveside, a
tall, handsome, pathetic figure, and wept bitterly, even though she
is married, and is to-day a well-known figure in society, both in
London and in Paris.
King Alexander, who now reigns over the extended country of
Jugo-Slavia, is a tall, rather thin-faced young man of thirty-five,
who speaks with a slight lisp, and is a very good linguist. Unlike
his father or his brother George, he has little military enthusiasm,
but is a deep reader and thinker, something of a scientist, and
filled with true patriotism towards his nation, as was his father.
He has been very kind to me on several occasions, and when I wrote
congratulating him on his recent marriage, he replied referring to
his father’s friendship towards me, hoping that I would soon be in
Belgrade again.
A story I once heard concerning his relations with his brother Prince
George I will venture to print. It was told me by an ex-Minister of
Serbia one day, in the Military Club in Belgrade, but of its truth
I have no means of ascertaining. I give it for what it is worth.
When, in 1909, Prince George’s pranks and practical jokes grew to
be a public scandal, his father, King Peter, became furious at the
state of affairs, and suggested that he should renounce his rights as
_Prince Héritier_. So he went to his brother, the present King, and
said:
“The King has almost had a fit of apoplexy. I’m the bad boy, and
old Paschitch has been lecturing me, and says I’ll have to renounce
my claim to the throne. I don’t want it, as you know, but surely we
ought to have even chances. I’ll toss you for it!”
And they did, with a French louis piece, Alexander winning the toss!
Next day, the 15th March, 1909, the resignation of the incorrigible
Prince George was announced, and he went off to Russia to join the
Army there.
I repeat that I cannot vouch for the truth of the story, but the
person who told it to me is one of the best-known diplomats in the
Near East, and he declared it to be a fact.
King Alexander’s consort I met in Bucharest, on one of my visits to
“Carmen Sylva,” Queen of Roumania, which I will later on recount. She
was then an extremely pretty girl, with a charming manner and elegant
as became the daughter of an elegant mother, who was one of the most
_chic_ and up-to-date princesses of Europe--Marie, daughter of our
late Duke of Edinburgh.
* * * * *
From Serbia to Bulgaria is not a far cry, and I have been in Sofia
many times. On one occasion I had left Paris, and was conveying some
despatches from Belgrade to my friend Sir George Buchanan, who was
British Minister to Bulgaria, and, later, Ambassador to Russia during
the war. He was then at the Legation at Sofia, with his wife, Lady
Georgina, and his daughter, who has lately achieved considerable
success in literature.
On arrival at the Grand Hotel Bulgarie, a rather dismal place
opposite the Royal Palace, at about four o’clock one summer’s
afternoon, I announced my arrival by telephone, and Sir George
promptly asked me to dine that evening at seven.
I was tired, and, having three hours to spare, I flung myself into an
easy chair and slept till six o’clock. Then I dressed and drove to
the Legation, a large, pleasant house, arriving just before seven.
On entering the drawing-room, where a number of guests were seated, I
was greeted by Lady Georgina, who exclaimed:
“Oh, Mr. Le Queux, I’m so sorry you couldn’t come to dinner!”
I stood aghast in surprise.
Then I glanced at the clock, and saw that it was nine! I had
forgotten to alter my watch after leaving Paris, for in Sofia they
have Eastern European time, which is about two hours different to
Greenwich.
The whole company laughed merrily at my discomfiture.
On the occasion of that visit to Sofia I was presented to King
Ferdinand through the good offices of Monsieur Demetrius Petkoff,
the Prime Minister, a very charming man, who had lost his arm in the
Russo-Turkish War, and who spoke English perfectly and showed me many
kindnesses. King Ferdinand during the war earned for himself the
sobriquet “Foxy Ferdinand” among readers of English newspapers. Why I
can never imagine. He is a well-read, extremely intelligent, refined
man, possessed of a keen sense of humour, and not any more sly than
any other European monarch.
The Palace is a long, one-storied building, built in the style of
the Palace of Versailles, and surrounded by a small park. Before the
gates of ornamental iron-work four sentries stand, and as one drives
in they salute, and a few minutes later one finds oneself in the
presence of Bulgaria’s ruler.
He was a fine, handsome man, of a rather Hebrew type, a keen aquiline
countenance, rather sallow, a big nose, a pair of merry eyes, and a
well-trimmed beard slightly grey. He was in military uniform, with
epaulettes, and a white astrachan cap, and a single cross of one of
the Orders at his throat.
He struck me as a rather stiff and overbearing person, vastly
different to King Peter or the King of Italy, but it was apparent
that he was somewhat interested in my visit. Why, I did not learn
till later.
When I ventured to ask him for a photograph for my book _An Observer
in the Near East_, he ordered one to be brought, and signed it.
“This is your second visit to Bulgaria, I understand,” he said.
“Well, I hope you will see everything. You will see to it, will you
not, Monsieur Petkoff?” he said to the Prime Minister at my side. “I
will give orders.”
Then, turning again to me, King Ferdinand said with a smile:
“Do not judge us exactly by your Western standards, will you? I
will try and make your stay as pleasant as it can be made. Later I
shall be happy to receive you again,” and he bowed, a sign that the
audience was at an end, and we backed out of the room.
It was quickly apparent that His Majesty had given orders that I
should not be dull while in his capital, for to my hotel next morning
came Monsieur Dmitri Standoff, of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs,
and Monsieur Mandercheff, of the same Ministry, who told me that
they had orders to drive me about the city and environs and show me
everything. Thus for ten days I remained the guest of King Ferdinand,
for I was not allowed to pay for anything, being made a member of the
Diplomats’ Club, and being the guest each evening of either Monsieur
Petkoff, the Prime Minister, or the Minister of Foreign Affairs.
An incident that occurred after I had been conducted over the
fine National Museum--for there are many handsome buildings in
Sofia--will illustrate the King’s generosity towards me while I was
his guest. I had admired some old Turkish filigree jewellery in gold
and silver, especially some great ear-ornaments worn by ladies of the
harem two centuries ago, as well as some ancient Turkish embroideries
and rich harem costumes embroidered in gold. Then I had again
expressed my admiration of them when we had driven out to Vladaja,
a pretty village on the road to the rose-fields of Kustendil, where
the world’s supply of real otto of rose is distilled in Shipkoff’s
factory.
On my return to the hotel that evening I found two huge parcels
awaiting me, with a note from the Foreign Minister saying that he
presented them “With the Compliments of His Majesty.”
On opening them, I found they contained every object that I had that
morning admired.
Those national treasures of Bulgaria I brought home, and must confess
that I distributed them among my lady friends!
The gifts, however, serve to show that even kings are not averse from
a little kindly publicity in a book written by a foreigner.
And now comes a curious and dramatic incident, which pains me as I
recall it.
One afternoon, after sitting in the diplomats’ gallery of the
Sobranje, or Parliament, a very handsome and well-appointed chamber,
where I had listened to the ministerial statement of Bulgaria’s
future attitude towards Turkey, the gist of the speeches being
translated to me by Monsieur Standoff, who sat at my side with the
Russian and French Ministers, I was invited by General Savoff,
Minister of War, to dine at his house.
The party proved an exceedingly pleasant one, and included Monsieur
Dobrovitch, the King’s private secretary, and several Bulgarian
Ministers, with their wives. I sat next to the Prime Minister
Petkoff, whose round face, with its little grey “Imperial” beard,
was ever overflowing with _bonhomie_, yet owing to his maimed arm he
had considerable difficulty with his knife and fork, and in this I
assisted him.
After dinner there was a small dance, and at about one o’clock in
the morning I walked home with my friend, who lived in a large house
facing the public park not far from my hotel.
It had been a delightful evening, and the brilliant Eastern moonlight
was glorious as we strolled in and out of the dark shadows. Monsieur
Petkoff was contemplating a visit to London, and we arranged to meet
there. I asked him for his photograph, for he was one of the leading
statesmen of the Balkans. He promised me one, and at his door I shook
his hand and left him as he entered with his latch-key.
Next morning at ten o’clock, as he left his house to go to the
Ministry, he was shot dead. Three revolutionists were arrested, and
at the subsequent trial it was proved that I had had a very narrow
escape, for they were lurking there in the shadow on the previous
night, and, being ignorant of whom I might be, had refrained from
making their _coup_!
Poor Petkoff shared the same fate as his predecessor Stambuloff.
Together with Mr. James Bouchier, the deaf Balkan correspondent of
_The Times_--whom the Bulgarians honoured by having a postage-stamp
printed with his photograph--I stood at the graveside of the fine
old statesman who had been my friend, and listened to the eulogy
pronounced by the Minister of Foreign Affairs. Truly life in the
Balkans has its adventures. The three assassins were duly executed.
No doubt I had a narrow escape on that glorious moonlit night, and it
will ever remain in my memory.
The photograph that His Excellency had promised me was delivered to
me by the police six hours after his death. It had been found in a
sealed envelope on his desk, together with a charming note that I
cherish, and its replica may be found in the book I have mentioned.
The original stands in my study with a little piece of crape on its
frame.
[Illustration: PETKOFF, Prime Minister of Bulgaria, who was murdered
a few hours after leaving me.]
[Illustration: My brigand body guard in Northern Albania.]
I have been in Sofia several times since, and I have had several
audiences of the man whom the English have denounced as “Foxy
Ferdinand.” He, like King Peter, has never been understood by us.
At heart he was an Anglophile. He loved the British nation, but
diplomatic blunder after blunder, made from Whitehall by certain
persons who know nothing of Balkan politics, estranged King Ferdinand
from us.
One winter day, only a few months before the tragedy of Sarajevo,
I stood in his audience chamber discussing a question regarding
the best way of administering Macedonia, when he turned to me and
revealed his innermost thoughts.
“Recollect,” he said vehemently, “if war comes I will never fight
against England. I would rather abdicate. I love your country and
admire your policy. It is only your vacillating politicians that
I cannot endure. You British have your eyes closed to Germany’s
machinations. True, my mother was German, and to a degree I am German
myself. But if war comes, as it must, I will fight on your side, if
your precious ill-informed officials will allow me!”
Precious ill-informed officials! Those words are to-day to me--and
perhaps to many readers--prophetic. While Britain was lulled to sleep
by the Campbell-Bannerman Administration, Ferdinand was alert to what
the Kaiser intended.
I know that our memories are so short that the Great War is to-day
an out-of-date topic with most people, but there are still those,
including myself, who acted for so long as a humble but patriotic
secret agent of Great Britain, who deplore the slow but sure grip of
the German octopus upon our land.
Alas! it was a thousand pities that Bulgaria ever fired a shot
against us, but my confidential reports to Whitehall were set aside
by one who, never having been in the Near East, and possessing only
a slight acquaintance with the French language, directed Britain’s
policy towards “the powder-magazine” of Europe.
Month in and month out I made my secret reports to certain quarters,
warning them that Europe was preparing for war and urging a
conciliatory policy with both Bulgaria and Turkey. I was spending
my hard-earned money in travelling hither and thither, and in
entertaining those who might give me information.
For my pains, I received only jeers from those millions of
politically-doped inhabitants of the United Kingdom, who, turning in
their slumber, declared:
“War will never come in our lifetime,”
But was not that part of the ingenious and costly propaganda of
Germany in our midst?
With Lord Roberts, Lord Charles Beresford, Lord Portsmouth, Lord
Clarendon, Lord Balfour, Sir George Butcher, Lord Headley, Sir W.
Joynson-Hicks, Lord Leith of Fyvie, and other of my friends, we all
knew that the Kaiser intended war. The reason we knew was a discovery
I made--one that has never been contradicted--and which I have
recorded in another chapter.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Evenings with “Carmen Sylva,” Queen of Roumania--Her Private
Life--“What is Conan Doyle Like?”--Her Interest in British
Novelists--She Bans Sex Problems and Does Not Like
Kipling--The Present Queen and Her Kindnesses to me--Life
in the Gayest Little Capital in the World--The Countess of
Cotroceni on Skis--A Laughter-loving Queen--Wicked Old King
Leopold of Belgium--My Chats with King Albert.
Let us pass from Bulgaria to Roumania, the romantic country of that
romantic Queen, the charming, silver-tongued poetess, who loved to
conceal her identity under the name of “Carmen Sylva.”
On my first visit to her gay little capital I met the big, burly,
fair-haired American, a wanderer and something of an adventurer, Mr.
William Caspar, to whom the British nation owes very much, as I shall
relate elsewhere in this volume. If there be one foreigner to whom
the British were indebted in the days immediately before the war, it
was to him, and his name should be recorded in our modern histories.
But this chapter deals with the private lives of monarchs I have met,
therefore I will return to the friendship that the Roumanian royal
family has extended toward me. Because I am a writer--I have never
called myself a “literary man,” remember--Her Majesty continually
invited me to the Palace, and I spent many a delightful evening with
her in her small, luxurious blue-and-gold drawing-room.
She never “got on” with her husband, King Charles. He was an erect,
stately, forbidding-looking man, with close-set eyes, and a full grey
beard; an irascible grumbler who never had a good word to say about
anybody, and who quarrelled so constantly with his Ministers that
Monsieur Take Jonescu--who was so well known in London during the
war--often refused a command to audience.
The Royal _ménage_ of Roumania was the reverse of happy, inasmuch as
the King lived on the left-hand side of the Palace and the Queen on
the right, and the pair were often not on speaking terms.
My visits to Her Majesty were always marked by the same etiquette.
I would receive a note from her private secretary asking me to come
to music at nine o’clock, and on arrival I was bowed into a small
ante-chamber, where one or the other of her ladies-in-waiting,
usually Madame Zoe Bengesco, or perhaps Madame Maurojeni, who was
_grande-maîtresse_ of the Court, would receive me. Then I was ushered
into the Queen’s pretty salon, or salons--for there were two of
equal proportions, the one running at right-angles to the other.
These apartments were furnished with splendid old brocade-covered
furniture; tables with interesting knick-knacks and photographs of
prominent European authors; a grand piano; and the fine organ on
which Her Majesty more than once played for my benefit. Rich heavy
curtains, fine modern paintings, a polished floor, all combined,
assisted by the softly-shaded electric lights, to produce a harmony
of quiet taste and the acme of luxury.
I well recollect the first time that Madame Bengesco ushered me
into that room. I was standing talking to the Lady of the Court
when, on turning, I found myself face to face with a tall, striking
white-haired lady _en décolletée_, with a sweet smile of welcome on
her well-preserved countenance. She wore a very handsome gown of
pale dove grey, but no jewellery save a single gold bangle and a
magnificent emerald ring, which I afterwards learnt had been given
her by the Tzar Alexander who was murdered. This ring she always
regarded as her mascot.
“I am delighted to welcome you, Monsieur Le Queux,” she said, as I
bowed. “Your books are not unknown to me. We read many English novels
in Bucharest, you know!”
“And we in England read your Majesty’s books also,” I ventured in
reply.
“Come,” she said. “Let us sit over in that corner,” indicating a
cosy-corner seat near the big blazing fire. And as we crossed the room
Madame Bengesco bowed and withdrew.
Our conversation turned upon English and French literature, and at
once I recognized how widely she had read recent English novels. She
was eager to know about a number of our popular writers. What was
Conan Doyle like? Had I met him? Was he anything like a detective?
She wanted to meet Clement Shorter because of his interest in the
Brontës. Did I know Lord Northcliffe, and was he a really great man?
She asked me about my friends--Max Pemberton, Sir William Robertson
Nicoll, H. G. Wells, Sidney Low, Rider Haggard, and St. John Adcock.
I was kept busy answering questions for a full hour.
Her Majesty had a violent dislike for politicians, it seemed, but was
intensely interested in our popular authors.
“I love Austin Dobson’s poems, and ‘The Sundial’ most of all. I
have tried to model some of my own verses after the lines he has
taken, with, alas! but poor success, I fear,” she added. “Next to
poetry, I love a real love-and-crime romance. I get all my books from
Hatchard’s, in Piccadilly, and I must say they send me everything
that is interesting. I detest books that deal with sex-problems. They
are better left unwritten. And, really, your women authors are the
worst offenders.”
“I am of your Majesty’s opinion,” I said.
“I am very glad of that. As far as I have read your own books, I have
never come across a line that a schoolgirl could not read,” she went
on. “Many writers are too frank, and, if they are, I give orders
that their future books are not to be sent to me. I will show you my
English books,” and she rose and took me into a large library, where
one wall was lined from floor to ceiling by all the most recent works
of popular authors.
“See this!” she said, pointing to Coulson Kernahan’s _God and the
Ant_. “I have read it five times. Is it not splendid? And these.” And
she pointed to two volumes by my old friend Robertson Nicoll.
As I glanced along the shelves I noticed volumes by many men I knew.
Max Pemberton, famed for wearing “fancy vests,” as Lord Northcliffe
used to call them; travel books by my old friend Douglas Sladen;
Seton Merriman, Ouida, H. G. Wells, Wilkie Collins, and Walter
Besant. Modern English poets were well represented, though, curiously
enough, I saw no volume of Kipling’s. Two long shelves were also
devoted to the works of American writers of fiction.
The opposite wall was lined with shelves filled with German and
Italian fiction, while at the end was a complete set of Maurice Le
Blanc’s works, and hundreds of volumes of French novels and poets,
all in uniform bindings, bearing the royal cipher in gilt on the back.
We returned to the salon, where she made me describe others of my
literary friends in London and tell some stories of them. I told
her of the house-dinners of the Savage Club, of the dinners of
the Vagabond Club, now alas! defunct, and of the various Society
hostesses who delighted to assemble literary people, not forgetting
Douglas Sladen’s famous receptions at his flat in Kensington, where
one met everyone worth knowing, and munched a sandwich and spent a
couple of hours in one’s own atmosphere of books and art.
“How I should love to go with you to Mr. Sladen’s,” the Queen said.
“Perhaps I may, eh, if I come to London?”
I promised that the next time she came to London I would take her one
evening.
“But they must not know who I am!” she laughed. “I will be your
friend Madame Somebody, eh?”
That well-remembered evening was one of the many I afterwards spent
with the delightfully well-informed woman, who was a patroness of
literature as well as a reigning Queen.
She was marvellously intelligent, and perfectly regal in her aspect
and her manner.
And, further, in Roumania, and throughout Europe, the name of “Carmen
Sylva,” that sweet-faced, womanly woman who, though Queen, was so
charming and unassuming, was synonymous of all that was good and
charitable. For Roumania she did what no other woman had attempted,
in that all the charity throughout the whole kingdom had been
initiated by her, and partly supported by her efforts. She lived
her life for the poor and needy, and worked hard for years on their
behalf.
On another evening, her secretary, Mademoiselle Helen Vacaresco,
introduced me to the Queen’s presence, and she became deeply
interested in Lord Leverhulme’s model village at Port Sunlight.
Would I get her particulars of it? I promised, and Lord Leverhulme
duly sent photographs and plans for a village, which she intended
to construct near Bucharest, but unfortunately her efforts were
frustrated by the outbreak of war. Again, she founded a school for
the blind on the same plan as that of Sir Arthur Pearson, and it is
still doing excellent work. She named it “The Home of Light.”
* * * * *
On three occasions I met the Crown Prince Ferdinand and his wife--the
present King and Queen--in Carmen Sylva’s salon, and had chats with
them, once just before King Charles’ death.
The present King, a Prince of the House of Hohenzollern, is rather
a dull person, who is fond of motoring and who takes but little
interest in his country’s well-being. The Queen on the other hand,
is, as she has ever been, a pretty, smartly-dressed woman who
believes in having a real good time. She spends much time out of
Roumania, in Paris, London, Brussels, or anywhere where there is
“something going on.” She loves to dance to a jazz band, and is an
inveterate cigarette-smoker. She seldom, if ever, reads anything more
elevating that a French novel, and loves to be photographed while
bathing, for the delectation of readers of the newspapers. This is
unfortunate, for the disregard of the conventionalities is typical of
the Roumanian woman, and is apt to create a wrong impression.
Once a white-bearded old French diplomat declared to me, in the
Travellers’ Club, in Paris:
“In all Bucharest, my dear fellow, I don’t believe there is a single
honest woman. I was Minister there for twelve years, and I think I
ought to know!”
I am inclined to believe he was nearly right, as far as a certain
section of Roumanian society is concerned, for my observations have
led me to the conclusion that the night-life of Bucharest is far
gayer than that of Paris or Budapest.
And, indeed, a certain British Minister of my acquaintance, who was
sent to represent us at Bucharest, closed the Legation, and, rather
than allow his wife and daughter to live in the place, kept them in
his country house in Surrey, and lived at the garish and expensive
Hôtel Boulevard.
Any of my readers who have visited Bucharest know the Hôtel
Boulevard, and they also know the Villa Regala, once a royal villa,
but now turned into a gay night-restaurant, where, at a wink or a
word to the hall-porter of the Boulevard, one will be provided with
a gay assembly of the gentler sex, ready to have supper, and to be
your most amusing friends, though you have never met before, and
after your supper turn night into day, and drive home hilariously in
the morning sunshine.
Gaiety and utter irresponsibility are in the atmosphere of Bucharest,
where, I confess, I myself have had many amusing adventures.
It is, _par excellence_, a fine city, a city of wild enjoyment and
wilder gambling, a city that justly bears the reputation of being one
of the most expensive in the world. And yet you certainly get your
money’s worth, as I have many times told my friends of the golden
youth of Paris. For the poor, Bucharest is the cheapest city; for
the rich, the dearest. Prices at the Hôtel Boulevard are far higher
than at the Ritz or Claridge’s in London, yet everything is perfect.
One can obtain no better cutlet of sterlet in all Russia than at
Capsa’s Restaurant, and the caviare that one eats on toast, with a
liqueur glass of vodka, at eleven o’clock, is as good as one can get
at the Arcadia Garden in Astrakhan. I have eaten sterlet in Moscow,
and caviare in the Arcadia, with its summer theatre and beautiful
gardens, so perhaps I may presume to criticize.
Yes, Bucharest is a riotous place. Ask any diplomat who puts his foot
across the threshold of the St. James’ Club, and he will close one
eye knowingly.
I do not know what the divorce laws may be in Roumania, but they are
rather lax, I think.
One little incident, at which I laughed heartily at the time, was a
practical joke played by my American friend, William Caspar.
In the course of his adventures in Bucharest society, in which I
often accompanied him, he met a very well-known lady, who, because
of his generosity, apparently believed him to be extremely wealthy.
She laughingly hinted to him that she wanted a new Paris gown, to
outshine one of her rivals at a very smart function. Caspar heard
all she said, and, being an exceedingly shrewd business man, he
resolved to teach her a lesson.
“Yes, madame, I will buy you a dress,” he drawled, while all three of
us were dining one night at Capsa’s, that gay restaurant in the Calea
Victoriei, where the wonderful gipsy band plays so magnificently, and
where meals cost far more than one could ever spend at any London
restaurant. “If you will do me the honour of accepting it, I will
send you a new gown.”
“But you don’t know the measurements!” declared the lady.
“Will you give me the name of your dressmaker, and I will see her?”
Caspar said, his big cigar still between his lips.
The lady gave him the address of her dressmaker, and three days later
she received, in a large cardboard costume box, with much tissue
paper--a doll’s dress!
I was once invited by the present Queen Marie to the Château of
Peleshor, a painfully new summer residence that King Charles had
built for his nephew, now King. I had driven from the station at
Sinaia, an overcrowded resort of _chic_ Roumanians who wear the very
latest of “creations” of the Rue de la Paix, and with me was the
Prime Minister, George Cantacuzen, a grey-headed man with mutton-chop
whiskers, whom I knew in Bucharest, and whom I found in the train.
We all took tea together in the summer villa, where the great airy
room was open to a magnificent vista of high mountains and glorious
woods.
The soft mountain breeze through the green and gold room was very
refreshing.
I recollect that little Princess Ileana came in to greet us, a
charming child with her fair hair falling over her shoulders, and
because she bounced about the room and upset a cup of tea her mother
severely reproved her, and sent her away with her German governess.
The conversation was mainly about an important military review at
which the Crown Princess would be compelled to appear on horseback at
the head of “the 4th Regiment de Rochiori.”
“I detest riding!” she declared to me. “And I can’t think who the
fool was who invented the fashion of women being military officers. I
believe it was the Kaiser.”
The tone of voice in which she mentioned the German Emperor revealed
that she had no great regard for him. Indeed, it is an open secret
that she usually referred to him as “His Pompousness of Potsdam,” a
name which she bestowed on him long before the war.
Her Majesty is a brilliant conversationalist, and, though so much
abroad, is highly popular, not only at her own Court, but at Rome,
Madrid, and St. James’. When at Deauville last year, she is credited
with remarking to the King of Spain, while discussing a little
tit-bit of scandal: “A man who loves a woman never tells her the
whole truth of what he thinks of her. The deeper his affection, the
more silent he becomes.” She is also credited with inventing, when in
the schoolroom long ago, the saying, “A little woman is a dangerous
thing.”
Queen Marie is an up-to-date consort, bright, intelligent, and
fascinating. Her husband is dull, apathetic, yet something of a
dandy. She is continually on the move, making fresh friends in
democratic circles, and thoroughly enjoying herself. Often she
travels _incognita_ to Paris, where she is a well-known customer at
the most expensive modistes in the Rue de la Paix, or she will spend
a week at Monte Carlo, and perhaps the next at St. Moritz, or at
Mürren, while the newspapers will say that she is in Vienna, visiting
an aunt. As a rule, the name she uses is Countess Cotroceni, which is
really one of her titles, and she always has with her one faithful
lady-in-waiting, who is quite as bright and merry as herself.
In summer the pair can frequently be seen bathing at Deauville, of
which place they are both very fond, or taking tea in the courtyard
of the Hotel Normandy, or eating shrimps and drinking sherry at the
Potinière. Their big, cream-coloured car is a familiar object along
the national highways of France, for Her Majesty, since peace has
reigned in Roumania, has been seldom at home. She has always called
me, ever since our first meeting, “Mr. Le Quex.” Lord Northcliffe
nicknamed me “Quex,” and used to delight in finding me with my friend
Twells Brex, and then introduce us as “Quex and Brex,” and say, “They
will now do their chameleon turn when Marlowe (the editor of the
_Daily Mail_) chances to turn his back.”
Poor Twells Brex! He told me of that persistent little spider that
spun its web over his bed as he lay dying.
“How very small things interest one when your days are numbered,” he
said to me, putting out his hand. “My little spider has been sent to
comfort and interest me. And, after all, we are only spiders in the
great universe with the ‘Einstein Theory,’ and our old friend Conan
Doyle communicating with spirits, eh?”
And he laughed merrily. Next day, alas! he was dead.
But I am digressing from the chapter--concerning only high personages
I have known.
Old King Leopold of Belgium--or “King Cléo-pold,” as King Edward
called him--I met on two occasions. He was a wicked old man. I was
presented to His Majesty in Brussels by my friend Mr. H. M. Stanley,
the explorer, after his return from the Aruwimi, and had a long
and interesting chat with him. The subject of our conversation was
travel, and he evinced considerable interest when I told him of my
projected journey with Harry de Windt, to explore the Kola Peninsula
in Northern Russia--which is still practically one of the few unknown
regions of the world to this day.
The second occasion I saw him was when I was passing in a motor-boat
beneath the wall of his beautiful garden at Villefranche, while
returning to Nice from the motor-boat races across the Bay of Monaco.
As we went along we were pelted with tangerine oranges by three
pretty, laughing girls in summer frocks, while, between them, dressed
in flannels, was the white-bearded old King, enjoying their fun. They
were apparently having a little carnival to themselves. The King of
the Belgians was always a very popular figure on the Côte d’Azur,
even though he was a very close-fisted old gentleman. He owned half
the Congo State, yet he would never pay for anything if he could
possibly help it.
King Edward never liked him. I know that to his intimate friend,
Baron Hirsch, he used always to refer to him as “that old Belgian
scoundrel.” Whenever King Edward could avoid King Leopold he would,
and on one occasion, when Prince of Wales, he resigned from an
exclusive Paris club because King Leopold had been elected a member.
He did not agree with King Leopold’s administration of his Congo
possessions--the slave-raiding, ivory-hunting, and all the terrible
atrocities that were suddenly revealed and could not be refuted. The
late Lord Roberts once remarked to me, when we were discussing him:
“Yes, King Leopold is an old vampire, who lives on the blood of the
blacks.”
Nevertheless, he was a gay old fellow who, in London, was often to be
seen with a couple of friends of his own kidney, idling in the lounge
of the Empire, or the Alhambra, for he had a peculiar _penchant_ for
ladies of the stage.
The exposures of the atrocities committed with his own knowledge
in the Congo State by the ivory-raiders, and the torture and
extermination of whole tribes of natives, greatly annoyed him.
He paid at least two famous French writers heavily for their
manuscripts, destroying them rather than allowing the damning
evidence to be published.
A Belgian journalist named Lefranc, who had been an army officer in
the Congo, wrote an awful exposure of the maladministration; how King
Leopold had given certain orders to deal harshly with the natives if
they refused to deliver up their ivory. He had photographed a number
of official documents, and had actually published the book. But His
Majesty bought up all the issued copies, and paid eight thousand
pounds for the manuscript and the type!
Only two copies saw the light of day, and one of those was shown to
me by Lefranc himself. It contained horrible disclosures of the slave
traffic carried on by His Majesty’s officers.
In the last couple of years of old “Cléopold’s” life, he fell in love
in his dotage with a lady named Vaughan, of whom he became very fond.
He at once abandoned his amorous adventures “and settled down.” On
his death the Baroness Vaughan laid claim to a very large portion of
his property, and a long law-suit resulted.
There is an amusing story of him. He always carried with him a bad
French franc. He had it in his pocket for over twenty years, and
would never move without it. His valet had to change it into the
pocket of every suit he wore, whether uniform or civilian, and he
usually changed four or five times a day, for he was a dandy of the
old school.
Princess Luisa of Saxony once asked him the reason of his belief in
the mascot and the history of the coin.
He drew it out. It was worn very bright and smooth, and was
apparently made of pewter.
“This was given to me late one night in Paris under peculiar
circumstances,” His Majesty said to her. “I was ill-dressed, and my
clothes were torn, for I had been robbed of all my money--every sou.”
She smiled, and suggested that he had been spending a merry evening.
“Yes, Luisa,” he laughed, “I had; but it is now nearly twenty years
ago. How well I recollect it! I stood beneath a lamp at the corner
of the Boulevard des Italiens and the Place de l’Opéra, penniless.
Though a king, I wanted a franc very badly at that moment to get
a glass of cognac, for I felt faint. So I actually begged of a
passer-by. Yes, I begged! Funny for a king to ask for relief. Well, I
was in Paris _incognito_, and I had my reason. The well-dressed man
I approached looked me up and down, and, recognizing my dilapidated
condition, gave me a franc. I then crossed to the Café de l’Opéra,
and paid for my glass of brandy with the coin, whereupon it was at
once found to be bad. Fortunately I saw a man in the café, a banker
in Brussels, who recognized me, and at once came to my assistance
after a whispered word from me. When I examined the coin I found a
date scratched on it. No doubt it was my benefactor’s mascot, and he
had given it to me in mistake. I have often thought since whether the
owner of that mascot ever dreamed to whom he had inadvertently given
his bad franc.”
Under King Leopold’s nephew, the present King Albert, Belgium has
arisen phœnix-like from the ruins caused by the War to a great and
increasing prosperity. Both King Albert and his Queen Elizabeth
are not only highly popular in their own country, but are welcomed
wherever they go. They both have a liking for air-travel, and I was
present recently one afternoon in the wireless hut at the Croydon
aerodrome when a machine descended, and, quite unexpected by the
staff, there stepped out the royal pair. Unconventionally the King
lit a cigarette and chatted with the pilot, while the Queen, who
looked as though she had not had a very comfortable journey, for the
weather was gusty, sat alone in the waiting-room while a car was
hastily obtained from the garage to convey them to the Ritz Hotel.
They were _incognito_, and, having crossed to do some shopping, they
returned to Brussels the next day.
Next time you see walking in Bond Street a very tall, handsome,
military-looking man, very spruce and erect, accompanied by a
well-dressed woman, look again and see if they are not King Albert
and his wife. They come to London at odd times, and even their coming
is unknown at the Belgian Legation.
Albert, who has generously granted me two audiences, is a progressive
monarch, and under his rule gallant little Belgium is daily
prospering. In the course of one conversation I had with him he made
a witty remark, saying:
“The honour of women consists in the good opinion that is held
concerning them.”
[Illustration: KING NICHOLAS OF MONTENEGRO.]
[Illustration: TEWFIK PASHA.]
CHAPTER EIGHT
What the Sultan of Turkey Told Me--His Distrust of the
Kaiser--The Ladies of the Imperial Harem--The Truth About
the Armenian Massacres--Their Authors Executed by Order
of the Sultan--How Noury Pasha’s Girls Escaped from the
Harem--A Chat with the Grand Vizier--His Fears--Professor
Vambery and the Sultan’s Carpets--A Day with the Prince of
Monaco on Board his Yacht--The Prince of Johore’s “Rags” at
Oxford--Painting the City “Red.”
Europe, and especially Great Britain, has never properly understood
the Turk. She does not to-day.
Through the good offices of Tewfik Pasha, Grand Vizier of Turkey, and
who is still my old and valued friend, I was granted an audience by
the Sultan Abdul-Hamid--or “Abdul the Damned,” as he was popularly
called in England--only a few weeks before the Young Turk Party arose
in Constantinople and kicked out of Turkey his hooked-nosed Majesty
bag and baggage, together with eighty-three ladies of the harem and
two hundred and forty-four female slaves.
I had known Tewfik Pasha as Turkish Ambassador to Berlin, but on
the first occasion I visited him in Constantinople, I received a
rude shock. In a ramshackle cab I drove from the Pera Palace Hotel,
through the dog-infested streets, to the Sublime Porte, as the
Government Offices are called. Having passed the sentries, I found
myself before a long, low, tumble-down building, the woodwork of
which had not been painted for years; a shabby, neglected place with
windows--some of them broken--that had not been cleaned for ages.
Entering, a messenger in a worn-out frock-coat and a greasy fez
greeted me, and ushered me along an endless corridor, up a flight of
stairs, and along still another corridor, the flooring of which was
so worn and rickety that through the cracks of the flooring one could
see into the corridor below. At last he ushered me into a small,
shabby room at the end, where there instantly appeared a servant
bearing the usual cup of coffee and cigarette.
Then I signed the visitors’ book, and in it saw the signatures
of all the diplomatic corps in Constantinople. Suddenly the
Russian Ambassador entered briskly, and, with a cheery “_Bon jour,
monsieur_,” also signed the book.
A moment later the secretary came, and, presenting to him His
Excellency’s regrets, explained that he had already an appointment
with me, and asked if he could call later. The representative of
the Tzar said he would call on the following morning, and I was
then ushered into the Grand Vizier’s private room, where there rose
to meet me the most powerful man in the Ottoman Empire--as even he
remains to-day. A quiet-mannered, quiet-spoken, grey-bearded old
gentleman, with kindly eyes and fatherly manner, he is entirely the
opposite of what one would expect of the “terrible Turk.”
In his frock-coat and well-ironed fez, he greeted me warmly.
With him stood my friend, Noury Pasha, a fair-bearded, slim man, much
younger, who was _Secrétaire-Général_.
I had been in Constantinople once before, and have been there many
times since, mostly on confidential matters, and, indeed, the reason
of my presence there that day was that I was on a journey of inquiry.
We discussed politics for a couple of hours, and it was plain that
His Excellency was greatly perturbed by the sudden rise of the Young
Turk Party, for he showed me a copy of a manifesto issued by the
“Ottoman Committee of Union and Progress.”
“This it was intended to issue broadcast,” he said. “But fortunately
the police got wind of it and have seized the printing press and
arrested fifteen of those who were responsible for its printing. I
have ordered all copies to be destroyed except this one, so that it
may not alarm the public. I have withheld its discovery from the
Sultan. If he knew of it he would be furious, and woe betide the men
under arrest. Read it!”
I took the small poster in my hand and read in French, as there was a
translation with the Turkish:
“During the thirty years of his reign Abdul-Hamid has
brought ruin on the land; one half of our patrimony he has
delivered to the enemy (Germany); he has destroyed our Fleet;
disorganized our Army; he has reduced the people to misery; he
has annihilated our Government system, and has left nothing
to the civil organization of the civilization of the past.
He has concentrated the whole Government into his own hands,
and has dismissed all his tried and experienced Ministers,
transferring the reins of office to self-seekers and traitors
willing to become his tools.”
The manifesto, continuing, urged that the despotic régime must end,
and prophesying that if it did not the enemies of the country would
again provoke disorders, in the hope that they would bring about
foreign intervention. It concluded with a firm demand that all should
unite “to depose the Sultan and make a clean sweep of the rotten and
traitorous Government.”
“Yes,” I said, as I handed it back to him, “it is certainly
calculated to inflame public opinion.”
“It is,” declared His Excellency vehemently, “and, between ourselves,
we are very uneasy about it.”
He had cause to be. Indeed, the incident is, I have thought, worth
recording in these pages because it was the first time that the
Turkish Revolutionary Party had been taken seriously, and I had been
let into the secret--one that I did not fail to transmit as soon as
possible to the proper quarter in London.
That night I dined with Noury Pasha at his pretty house, together
with his son. The Secretary-General of the Sublime Porte had held the
post for eighteen years, and to him was due Turkey’s constant and
clever juggling with the Powers. He pitted his wits against those
of the greatest European statesmen, and usually won. He held the
distinction of having had bestowed on him more foreign decorations
than any living man, and the late Lord Dufferin, in referring to him
one day when we were discussing him, called him “The Ironmonger,” on
account of the stars and crosses with which his breast was decorated.
In the diplomatic circle there was a legend that if he had to wear
all his stars he would have to pin some of them on his back. As it
was, he always wore his medals--about ten of them--suspended from a
bar high on his left shoulder.
Nevertheless, he was a most charming man, and a delightful companion,
who was ever a good friend of mine--and of Great Britain--throughout
a number of years.
In the cosy room on the ground floor of his artistic home where we
dined he removed his fez, an action done only towards an intimate
friend, and as we chatted I saw the many signed photographs of all
the great statesmen of Europe.
As one of the cleverest men in all Europe, I always enjoyed his
conversation. He enjoyed the full confidence of the Sultan, and was
almost incessantly consulted by His Majesty.
Over our meal, although I knew it to be a great breach of etiquette,
I ventured to inquire of the health of his wife and two daughters.
I had never seen either of the ladies without the yashmak, or veil,
but the girls both wore gauzy ones, and I had seen that they were
uncommonly good-looking.
“Ah!” he laughed. “Since you were here last I fell into terrible
disgrace.”
I inquired how.
“Well,” he replied, laughing, “it was in this way. You know that I
look at most things from your Western standpoint. I believe in your
Western progress and Western ideas, so neither my wife nor myself
were desirous that the girls should lead a secluded harem life, as
do all our Turkish girls. But there was a difficulty--one which I
resolved to overcome, even though I might be compelled to overstep
the bounds of conventionality. The plan my wife and I adopted was
this: First we engaged an elderly lady, whom I knew in Paris, to
come here and become their French governess. Then, after a year,
Madame Perrin went back to Paris and enlisted the services of two
young nephews of hers, who were eager to have a trip out here to
the Bosphorus. They came, and stayed at the Pera Palace for a week
or so, and one day they purchased four tickets back to Paris by the
Orient Express. At seven o’clock on the following morning the two
young Frenchmen brought ladders to the wall of my garden, and at
half-past seven both girls with their ‘young men’ were in the express
on their way to the West. When I heard of their elopement I naturally
pretended to foam at the mouth. That Madame Perrin’s nephews should
have betrayed me! Oh! it was an unspeakable breach of trust!”
And he paused, with his cigarette held in his long, slim fingers.
“Well, the expected very soon happened. Half an hour later even
before I had finished my lamentations on the loss of my daughters, a
message came from the Yildiz, summoning me at once to the presence
of His Majesty. I guessed what it was about. His spies, who exist
everywhere, had not been idle. When I presented myself in his little
audience-room in the kiosk in the park he was, I saw, in a towering
rage. ‘Noury,’ he cried, pale with anger, ‘I have trusted you, and
yet you have juggled with me, as you have juggled with Britain and
France!’ I pretended ignorance. ‘You have not kept a strict paternal
eye on your daughters. They have left Turkey!’ I pretended to gasp
in surprise. ‘Yes’ His Majesty went on, ‘you know that I have issued
a decree that no Turkish woman shall leave our country!’ I replied
that I was well aware of the decree, for, as a matter of fact, I had
myself drawn it up! ‘Then I declare it to be disgraceful on your part
that you have not properly guarded your two daughters. Here are two
young Frenchmen who come from Paris, meet them surreptitiously--how,
we know not!--and elope with them!’ I humbly apologized for my lack
of surveillance. But it did not appease the Old Gentleman. He wrought
himself up into a most violent temper, and, shouting to me, ordered
me to go after them at once to bring them back. And he added that
after their return he would consider what punishment he would inflict
on them and on myself! I had left the room much crestfallen, for I
saw myself suddenly out of favour, when His Majesty yelled after me:
‘Noury! Come back!’ I went back, when suddenly His Majesty burst into
a fit of laughter and said in a quiet, conciliatory voice: ‘Noury, I
have ordered you to go after your girls, and you must go--by the next
train. But--well’--and his dark eyes twinkled merrily--‘you need not
go farther than the frontier!’ He knew that by the time I reached
the Bulgarian frontier they would have passed seven or eight hours,
and be well on their way to Paris! Of course I made the journey, and
returned to report my non-success,” laughed my friend, “and my girls
are now finishing their education at Neuilly, and will never, I hope,
return to Turkey.”
On the day following, after the Selamlik, the weekly attendance
of the Sultan at the mosque, Noury, in uniform with his many
decorations, drove me, attired in my best dress-suit, to that
Palace, or collection of Palaces, known as the Yildiz Kiosque.
Just before we drove into the gateway of the Imperial demesne
our carriage was stopped by four sentries, and my companion
being recognized, it was allowed to pass the four or five idling
police-agents in plain clothes and a detachment of the Sultan’s
bodyguard in rather shabby blue uniforms.
Then suddenly we found ourselves in a glorious park, driving beside
a broad lake over which the trees hung, gay with blossom. A party of
veiled, laughing women were being rowed along by four negro oarsmen,
while a fat eunuch sat in the stem. They were, Noury explained,
ladies of the Imperial harem taking the air.
We pulled up before a good-sized house, built in the style of a
handsome villa on the French Riviera, which stood in a garden ablaze
with flowers, and which had a verandah along the lake-side. A negro
servant in the Imperial livery bowed low as we descended, and next
moment two more negro servants of higher grade appeared.
Noury Pasha spoke to them in Turkish, whereupon, in a few seconds,
a sallow-faced Turk in uniform, with decorations, appeared. It was
Hahki Pasha, the Sultan’s private secretary, to whom I was introduced.
After a laughing conversation in Turkish with my friend, we were
conducted to an exquisite little room, with gilt furniture of the
Empire period, a great crystal chandelier, a priceless cream-coloured
silk carpet, decorated with bunches of wistaria, and several
luxurious divans.
“His Majesty knows English fairly well, but it is not etiquette to
speak it. He will only converse in Turkish,” Noury muttered to me, as
I stood awaiting the appearance of the aristocratic ruler of over two
hundred million souls--the man who was known to the world, because of
his callous disregard for human life, as “The Red Sultan.”
“But you will translate, eh?” I asked.
“Of course. His Majesty told me that he would be pleased to see you
because you are a writer. He writes himself, you know. Though the
world is ignorant of it, he has written some of the finest poetry in
our language, and two historical romances that, however, have only
been printed at his private press. He has a printing press here in
the Yildiz.”
At that moment the long white-and-gold doors were thrown open and
a rather wizened little old man in neat black, and wearing a fez,
entered.
I was in the presence of the Sultan of Turkey! His marked Hebraic
features were familiar to me in pictures, but he had never allowed a
photograph to be taken of himself. The sharp aquiline face, the quick
dark eyes under their shaggy brows, the high forehead and the beard,
were exactly the same as I had expected, though he seemed a thin,
worn old man, shrunken so that his clothes hung loosely on him.
We both made our obeisance, to which His Majesty grunted something in
Turkish in response.
Then the Sultan seated himself with dignity on a small divan covered
with cream silk, on which was a design in cherry colour. We, of
course, remained standing.
He addressed to Noury some words in Turkish, evidently making some
inquiry concerning me, and then my companion, turning to me, said:
“His Majesty welcomes you. He has heard of your previous visit to us,
and is glad to receive you.”
“I thank His Majesty for his kindly greetings,” I replied. “And
please assure him of my friendliness towards Turkey through many
years. I know that we in Britain unfortunately do not understand her.”
“His Excellency Tewfik Pasha has already mentioned you to His
Majesty,” said Noury, after conversing again with the Sultan.
“His Majesty wishes me to say that he is much gratified by your
friendship. He is fully aware that he is known in England as ‘The Red
Sultan,’ and is believed to have been directly responsible for the
massacres in Armenia. His Majesty has said, ‘Noury, you know the real
truth. I wish you to tell it.’ So I will do so.”
Then Noury Pasha went on, while the Sultan, who understood
English, listened. He told me the following, which I found very
interesting--the real truth of the terrible massacres.
“One afternoon, while at the Sublime Porte, I received an urgent
command from His Majesty to come here, which I did, with all speed,”
he said. “On arrival in this room I found His Majesty greatly
perturbed and terribly angry. He showed me a message that he had
just received from his private intelligence department (for the
Turkish capital always swarms with spies) stating that there had been
wholesale slaughter of men, women, and children in various districts
in Armenia. ‘Look!’ cried His Majesty. ‘What does this mean? Who
gave such an order? Find out, and he shall pay for it! It is a plot!
A plot to blacken me further in the eyes of all Europe! The Kaiser,
though he pretends to be my friend, hates me. He intends to make
war, depend on it, and he intends to extend his territory to the
Bosphorus. But the evil is done! What can I do?’ His Majesty cried.”
And at this the Sultan nodded approvingly, having understood all his
Secretary-General’s words.
“His Majesty had no hand whatever in the Armenian massacres, though
all Europe declared that he had. They were, we know, the result of a
plot engineered from Berlin, and seven of our officers of high rank
were executed by order of the Sultan for the dastardly part they
played. The Under-Governor, who had given the order for the massacre
of Christians, was also executed, and at His Majesty’s orders I went
to Armenia, and there had built three large orphanages, for which
His Majesty has paid and endowed from his own private purse for the
children whose parents were killed.”
This was an entirely different version from that which had reached
Europe, and while Abdul-Hamid has been denounced everywhere, I feel
confident, in view of facts afterwards proved, that what I was told
was the actual truth.
Even to-day many people believe that the Sultan was responsible, and
aided and abetted those who committed the terrible atrocities, but
it was really a plot of the Young Turk Party, fostered and aided in
secret by Germany. Indeed, within a week of my audience of “Abdul
the Damned” the Young Turks proclaimed themselves, entered the
closely-guarded Yildiz Kiosque, overran the great harem, seized his
Majesty, bundled him on board a steamer, and took him to Salonica. A
number of his favourite wives followed him into exile, but hundreds
of other women were dispersed and the great Palace was closed.
Then, to the surprise of everyone, my old friend Tewfik Pasha--who
had hitherto supported his Imperial master most loyally--was asked to
return to his office as Grand-Vizier, which he did, and later acted
as Turkish Ambassador in London, where, before the betrayal of Turkey
into Germany’s hands, I often used to spend an evening with him at
the Embassy in Portland Place.
Old Abdul-Hamid struck me as very refined, but of rather abrupt
manner. His nose was decidedly a hooked one, and his hands were
thin, yellow, even claw-like; his skin like tightly-drawn parchment
over his high cheek-bones; and his speech high pitched and squeaky.
While he sat talking to Noury and listening to the translation of his
conversation into English he smoked cigarettes, the aroma of which
was delicious, and I noticed that in the ring on his finger was a
magnificent, priceless ruby, which had been drilled in the centre and
a magnificent diamond set in it.
His chief hobbies were literature and music, for among the monarchs
of the world he was perhaps the most highly cultured. Unbounded was
his generosity towards those to whom he gave audience and to whom he
took a fancy.
The great Oriental scholar, Professor Vambery, once told me an
amusing incident. He had had audience of Abdul several times, for he
could speak Turkish, therefore the Sultan conversed freely.
“Ah!” said His Majesty one day, “you have never seen my
carpet-factory! You must go and see it. I will send one of my
secretaries to you to-morrow morning at ten o’clock.”
The Professor was compelled to pretend that he would be delighted to
see over the factory, though, as a matter of fact, he had booked his
journey to Vienna for the next morning.
The morning came, and at the Pera Palace Hotel there appeared a
smart young secretary with one of the Imperial carriages, in which
the Professor was taken to see the manufacture of those magnificent
silk Turkish rugs and carpets that the Imperial factory produces. The
carpets are of the most gorgeous and most expensive in the world,
and were, and are still, given as presents to royal houses, and as
offerings at the holy shrine at Mecca.
The Professor admired a number of them, and declared himself much
interested, yet at heart feeling very annoyed at missing his train,
for he had to wait two days for the next through express.
Some three months later the Professor chanced to be looking out of
the window of his flat at Wilmersdorf, outside Berlin, when he saw a
motor-lorry drive up piled high with bales of carpets!
Presently a man arrived with the news that he had a consignment of
carpets from Constantinople, whereupon the Professor put on his hat,
went downstairs, and ordered the man to drive to a certain dealer
in rich furniture in Berlin, where they were unpacked. Before he
left the place the Professor had sold them for several thousands of
pounds, and took away the cheque in his pocket!
The Sultan had treated the Professor just as King Ferdinand of
Bulgaria had treated me. Each carpet he had admired had been noted,
and the whole lot packed and sent to him.
Through the clever scheming of the Kaiser, whom Abdul-Hamid so
distrusted, notwithstanding his constant declarations of friendship,
Turkey became alienated from us. But, notwithstanding Kemal’s
influence, Tewfik Pasha is still a most formidable power in the
Empire, and he certainly has never been other than pro-British. I met
Kemal several times at the house of Noury Pasha, and I found him to
be most intelligent, and a splendid conversationalist.
Enver Pasha, of whom we heard so much during the war, I also met
once or twice, the last occasion being at Adrianople, after his
unsuccessful expedition against the Skreli and Kastrati tribes in
Northern Albania. He was sent to the Albanian mountains with a large
force, but the brigands, whom I have already described, assisted by
several other tribes, held Enver and his army at bay for four months,
inflicting many losses by means of sniping till he received orders
from Constantinople to withdraw.
Then the tribes against whom he had been fighting threatened
terrible reprisals. They were Greek Christians and declared that at
a given signal they would swoop down from the mountains and massacre
every Mohammedan in the town of Scutari. For that reason all the
Christian inhabitants placed the sign of the cross in red paint over
their doors, and even to-day Scutari is not exactly happy, for the
tribesmen hate the Turks.
Enver was the “big noise” in the Turkish Army. He held Britain in
supreme contempt, and was a puppet of the Kaiser, full of blatant
bombast and wonderful schemes that never matured.
* * * * *
Among the minor royalties I have met was Prince Albert of Monaco--“Le
Prince Rouge-et-Noir,” as King Edward called him.
I happened to be in Tromsö, in the North of Norway, with my friend
Harry de Windt, on our way around the North Cape to the Kola
Peninsula, and the Prince’s fine steam-yacht, _Princess Alice_, was
lying in the harbour. The irrepressible Harry knew the Prince, and
took me on board.
The ruler of Monaco, a good-looking, cheery, elderly man, with
laughing eyes and a small grey beard, greeted us in quite a homely
fashion. He was in a much-worn, even shabby, yachting suit, while
his officers and crew were all very spic-and-span, and the splendid
vessel very well kept.
The Prince was returning from a cruise off Spitzbergen, where he had
been taking specimens from the deeper depths of the ocean. He showed
us some queer fish, some alive in tanks, but others preserved, they
having died as soon as the heavy pressure of water had been taken off
them. The study of oceanography interested me greatly, and the Prince
showed me various specimens of hitherto unknown shell-fish, seaweed,
etc., which they had dredged up, and which he was taking to his
wonderful museum at Monaco, which I expect many who read these lines
have seen.
Being entirely ignorant of oceanography, I spent a most instructive
couple of hours, for both Harry and I sat with him while he was
engaged in mounting a specimen, and in the meantime he gave us a
quantity of information on a most absorbing subject.
His Highness explained to us the dredges, the appliances that, worked
by electricity, bored into the bed of the ocean and took specimens
of its geological formation; of grapplers, and nets that could be
opened and closed when at the bottom of the sea; of fish-traps
and contrivances for collecting vegetable growth in the depths of
perpetual darkness, all of which were entirely new to me.
At the Prince’s invitation we remained to luncheon, the quartette
being completed by the yacht’s captain.
The Prince invited me to visit him the next time I went to Monaco,
and I was afterwards his guest at luncheon there. He was certainly
an expert in his own branch of science, and he had the knack of
telling you a thing so vividly that you immediately understood. Till
that well-remembered day at Tromsö, I never knew there were so many
secrets of the ocean-bed.
Next day, when we sailed on the black old Norwegian cargo-boat, the
_Mercur_, for Vardö, that fishing-station round in the stormy Arctic
Sea, His Highness waved as we passed the yacht, and, as a send-off,
the _Princess Alice_ gave us three loud blasts on her siren,
awakening the echoes of the mountains around the fiord.
The two sons of the Sultan of Johore have recently spent several
years in England. I have seen a good deal of them, and they were
often my guests at Guildford for several weeks on end. The Crown
Prince Ismail is a slim, dark-haired, and rather elegant young
man, whose features are only slightly bronzed, and who is very
English-looking. Indeed, he has lived in England nearly all his
life, and cannot speak Malay. To his intimates at Oxford, where he
was under a private tutor, and afterwards at the London clubs, he is
known as “Biffy.”
One day, after lunching with me at the Devonshire Club, a friend of
mine, who was one of the party on that occasion, said:
“Well, Biffy, I suppose one day ere long we shall see your face on
the Johore postage-stamps, eh?”
“I don’t know,” drawled the Crown Prince. “But, if you do, I hope it
will please your school-girls who stick stamps into albums.”
Biffy, is, _par excellence_, a lady-killer. He is extremely
good-looking, perfectly courteous to a dowager-marchioness or a
pretty _débutante_ alike. In certain smart circles in London he is an
idol, for he is an extremely amusing conversationalist, a splendid
dancer, and, while he has all the Oxford culture and merriment, he
is nevertheless a very level-headed young man, quite fitted to
succeed his popular father.
To my home circle, with my valued secretary, Miss Mabelle Lodge, who
had typed my books for some years, and who is an outspoken critic,
and my two step-daughters, both he and his brother, Prince Ahmed,
had an open invitation. They came and went just as they pleased.
Prince Ahmed, the younger brother, is much more staid than the Crown
Prince. He graduated at Balliol, and on coming down studied in
the engineering department of the General Post Office, under that
well-known telegraph-engineer, Mr. J. H. Haynes, the Sultan, his
father, being determined that he should be no idler. The Colonial
Office asked Mr. Haynes to take him as pupil, and when he left to
return to Johore a short time ago he had earned full qualifications
as an assistant telegraph engineer.
The two young Princes, who were angled after by many girls in London
society, have a keen sense of humour.
While at Balliol, Prince Ahmed was foremost in any Oxford “rag,” and,
living in Oxford as I did during one year of the war, I was often let
into secrets of what was about to happen.
One rag that was rather amusing was brought off about a week before
the Armistice. Somebody in the “lab” invented a new indelible
vermilion paint.
With this pigment a fellow-undergraduate at Balliol, Constantine
Gallop--a brilliant and coming man, by the way--Prince Ahmed and
a dozen others scrambled up to those big classical busts near the
Sheldonian, in the “Broad,” and daubed their faces red!
At the same time another party was waiting in St. Giles’s, where,
underneath a shop occupied by a “bazaar,” was a long glass sign under
the windows bearing the words “Finest Collection in the World.”
This latter they detached swiftly, having on the previous night
released all the screws, and, carrying it to the “Broad,” hung it
beneath the vermilion-coloured busts!
The police were soon on the spot, but the delinquents fled. Ahmed
spent that night in the Randolph Hotel, where I had my rooms, and
next morning Oxford rose to the fact that the city had been “painted
red.”
The paint in question was a great triumph, for though, after much
scrubbing and sand-papering, the classical busts were restored to
their true stone colour, yet Balliol wrote some most insulting words
in the same paint on the walls of Trinity, and so deeply did the
pigment sink into the stonework that they had to be dug out, and new
stones substituted!
While the Crown Prince Ismail is a charming and refined young man,
and essentially a pet of the ladies, a sybarite in the manner of
Oriental princes. Prince Ahmed is just the reverse. He is splendid
at all games, a fine tennis-player, a keen motor-cyclist, and a good
golfer.
Both were our intimate friends for six years, and we were deeply
sorry when, a few months ago, the time came for their return to
Johore. But the Sultan, who is growing old, felt that “Biffy” should
be instructed in his duties towards the State over which he will
eventually rule.
We often exchange letters, and both the young Princes express regret
that they are so far away from London, and from my two yapping
miniature Pomeranians--my pets “Toby” and “Tweedles,” to whom they
were devoted, and who never leave me while I sit at my table at work.
CHAPTER NINE
Some Secrets of Well-known Women--The Charlady’s daughter
who is a Peeress--The Woman German Spy who has Married a
Peer--The Daughter of a Peer Marries a Gendarme at Monte
Carlo--A Blackguard who has been Knighted.
In the course of my cosmopolitan life I have met many notable men
and women of to-day, both British and foreign, who have been--by one
freak of fortune or another--in the public eye, and are therefore
celebrities. They range from bishops to crooks, and from peeresses to
adventuresses.
When I review my many friends, I hardly know where to begin, or what
to say about them.
Perhaps it will interest the reader if I am indiscreet and tell
secrets of some well-known people I have met.
Two young women well-known and highly popular in Society to-day,
are uppermost in my mind as I write these lines. Both are pretty,
and both welcomed everywhere. And both will, of course, hate me for
disclosing their secrets.
The first young lady was the daughter of an estimable woman who acted
as charlady at a furnished house I rented at Cromer in 1913. She was
a pretty, blue-eyed, doll-like girl, who earned a few shillings a
week by taking out on the sea-front perambulators containing children
of visitors who wished to go golfing or on excursions. She went to
London, met the son and heir of a well-known peer, and eventually
married him.
At once a press agent got to work. She was photographed as one of
England’s greatest beauties, her name was included in _Burke_, and
she has been boomed constantly. Once a week her picture will meet
your eye, depicting her riding to hounds, golfing, ski-running,
walking in the Park, or chatting on the Terrace of Monte Carlo.
And yet to the mother of this young lady with the soft complexion
and appealing eyes I paid a daily wage of two shillings to do the
scrubbing.
If you believe what you read about the pretty lady you will think she
combines the facial beauties of Miss Gladys Cooper with the prowess
of Diana, and is the last word in the sports of ski-ing in winter and
lawn-tennis in summer.
One night last season I met her at a dance given at Claridge’s by my
charming friend, the Marchioness Townshend, and we went into a corner
and chatted together. The great company, gay indeed, included the
French Ambassador and the Countess of Saint Aulaire, the Marquis and
Marchioness of Carisbrooke, Princess Troubetskoy, Lord Leigh, and
Mrs. George Pinckard. But I do not suppose anybody in the ballroom
suspected that when I sat out with the slim little blue-eyed lady
that I whispered a word of congratulation on her great social success.
Who among that gay crowd would have guessed the truth--that the
pretty young married woman, radiant and beautiful, with a splendid
diamond necklet, which her father-in-law had given her on her
marriage, was the daughter of my rheumatic old charwoman!
We have kept our secret even to this day. Her husband and her
husband’s parents do not know exactly who she is, though her name, as
I have said, appears in _Burke_, and, after all, she is very happy.
The story of the other pretty lady, also a peeress, is far more
remarkable, and again, for obvious reasons, I do not give her name.
Suffice it to say that she is not of English birth, though everyone
in her own smart social circle believes her to be.
She came beneath my notice in a curious way. While engaged in
counter-espionage work on the Clyde during the war, I had my
headquarters at the Central Station Hotel, in Glasgow. One evening
a young Canadian officer asked to see me, and disclosed a very
remarkable story, one so curious that I eventually induced him to
write down and sign the particulars. They were afterwards duly
investigated by the Intelligence Branch.
He told me how, two years before the declaration of war, he had left
Quebec to make a tour of Europe, and had joined a pleasure cruise
sailing from New York. Among the passengers was an extremely handsome
young lady named Ethel Muirhead, who came from Buenos Ayres, and
who was travelling alone. He confessed that he had fallen violently
in love with her, and on arrival in London had taken her to see the
sights of the metropolis. Later, in Paris, they were constantly
together, though she was extremely reticent concerning her relatives.
She had some German friends in Paris, to whom she introduced him, and
some friends of hers in Rome were also German. Indeed, in Rome the
secretary of the German Embassy apparently knew her well.
In due course, one night the liner put into Naples, whereupon the
lady, who was walking the deck with her admirer after dinner,
suddenly halted, and, looking into his face, said that she
felt herself compelled to tell him something--namely, that in
half-an-hour’s time she was going ashore, and leaving the ship.
“Why?” asked the young man, astounded at the sudden announcement.
“Because--well--to tell you the truth,” she said hesitatingly,
“because I am meeting my fiancé here, and we are going to be married!”
The young man was staggered, for all along he had believed that she
reciprocated his honest affection.
The girl bade him farewell, and he saw her go ashore in the tender.
She would not allow him to accompany her, because her fiancé was
awaiting her, but before they parted she gave him her photograph as a
souvenir.
He showed it to me. That photograph went to London together with the
young Canadian’s signed story, and by its means inquiries were made
concerning the pretty Ethel Muirhead, as she had called herself.
I think I cannot do better than copy the report of the searching
investigation made in a number of quarters. It runs as follows:
“Alice Ann Morrison, _alias_ Ethel Muirhead, Mary Greenlees,
known as ‘Slim Betty.’ Born in Buenos Ayres in 1893, her
father being a shipping clerk and her mother Italian. Was
employed in a shop in Buenos Ayres. Went to New York and
thence to Berlin. Knows Spanish and Italian well, and has been
identified by S---- S---- as a well-known German secret agent,
who lived in Paris, 124 Rue des Petits Champs, in 1912, being
on friendly terms with B----, who was then a high official
at the French Admiralty. Two years prior to this the girl
in question acted as decoy to the dangerous Creswell gang
of card-sharpers working the transatlantic liners, and was
then known as Betty Bates, and to her associates as ‘Saucy’
Greenlees. Is an adventuress of the worst type and a very
clever secret agent. Married in 19-- ----”
and following is the name of a well-known English peer!
The reader would be very surprised to know the present name of this
ex-German spy, who is to-day a pretty and much-photographed peeress,
whose smiling face frequently peers out at you from the pages of the
illustrated papers. Very few people except myself know the real truth
concerning her.
I meet her sometimes, and she is always gracious to me. But will she
be so kind and affable when she has read these lines, and learns, for
the first time, that I know her secret?
Truly this is a strange world, and the phantasmagoria of life is full
of interest. Would that I dare reveal her identity.
But what a shock her husband would sustain.
It is a secret that is better undivulged.
* * * * *
I was walking across Grosvenor Square one day with the Marquis
Imperiale, the Italian Ambassador in London, who was for several
years so popular in society.
We passed a rather angular lady of uncertain age, evidently a
war-widow, who was wearing extremely smart shoes and very expensive
silk stockings.
“Ah! Signor Le Queux,” remarked His Excellency, “the goods are well
displayed in the window, are they not?”
I afterwards met the same lady a few nights later in a certain
drawing-room in Curzon Street, and two months later her photograph
appeared in the _Evening News_ as the chief figure in a certain
_cause célèbre_.
As a novelist I have naturally ever been in search of real romance.
The romances of real life are around us every day, as any reader of
these pages well knows. But it was a particularly curious romance of
real life in which I participated while I rented a flat that had been
vacated by Madame Marconi (mother of Senatore Marconi), facing the
Mediterranean at Leghorn.
The British chaplain one day hinted to me that among the small
English colony in the sun-blanched Italian town there was a
half-starved teacher of English, a certain Signora Baccelli.
I managed to meet the lady, and discovered a very curious romance. It
was, to tell it briefly, that she, the eldest daughter of a certain
well-known English earl, had, while on their annual winter sojourn on
the Riviera, met and fallen in love, with Enrico Baccelli, a tall
and particularly handsome gendarme in the service of the Principality
of Monaco. Her parents were aghast. Every effort was made on the part
of the father and mother to keep their daughter from the good-looking
guardian of the peace, who, in his smart uniform, used to do daily
duty in patrolling the Place du Casino. They appealed to the Prince
of Monaco, and the too-handsome young fellow was, on some pretence,
sent to Austria.
But the pretty young lady managed to escape from her father’s seat in
Hampshire and join him in Prague, where they were married. Then her
parents cut her off, and allowed the newly-married pair to drift.
Poor little lady! Though her name is one of the most historic in
Britain, and you will also find her in _Burke_, she was in very
homely circumstances when I met her. She cared not a jot for the
action of her parents. “They had to do it,” she remarked to me in
English, while her tall, handsome husband stood by, not understanding
what we were saying. “I do not blame them. One day they will
recognize that I love Enrico. I would rather marry the man I love,
though he be a gendarme, than make a loveless alliance, such as
is made each season in Mayfair. After all, we women ought to be
mistresses of our own hearts.”
I agreed. We all three became friends, and for a couple of years
they often came and lunched with me. At last the earl forgave his
daughter, and to-day they both live in London and are highly popular.
Baccelli is not the gendarme’s real name, but it is an Italian one,
and you often see a reference to their doings in the _Morning Post_.
Such is real romance--romance that, when the novelist like myself
deals with it, resembles mere fiction. But it is to be found
everywhere.
* * * * *
“Jean” Palmer, as she was known to her intimate friends, lived
in a beautiful corner house in Grosvenor Square, in what Society
contemptuously nicknamed “The Biscuit Box.” She was the wife of Sir
Walter Palmer, of the firm of Huntley & Palmer, of Reading, and was
for many years my friend. We had literary and artistic tastes in
common. Oscar Wilde and Coulson Kernahan were of our little set. The
wife of a very wealthy man, she delighted in being a Bohemian, and
was at heart a great lover of good music.
Her “Wednesdays,” when she decorated her house in Grosvenor Square
with flowers, which, by the way, often cost her three hundred pounds,
will long be remembered. The gorgeous rooms, with their priceless
paintings, the concerts that cost her fabulous sums in fees to the
greatest artists of the day, and those wonderful suppers with the
most cultured and artistic set in London around the tables, are still
fresh in the memory of many besides myself.
_Trilby_ had been produced, and Jean Palmer had nicknamed me “Little
Billee,” a name which stuck to me for years.
One day, during the winter season in Florence, I met her in Gilli’s
in the Via Tornabuoni, at the fashionable hour of eleven, when
everyone goes and eats a cake and drinks a glass of vermouth.
“Hulloa, Little Billee!” she cried. “Look here! Come to a concert
with me this afternoon. There’s a new fiddler going to play in a
schoolroom out at the Porta Romana.”
I pointed out that the day was warm, and I was not keen about sitting
to hear a fiddler in a schoolroom that afternoon.
“Gladys is going with me. Won’t you take mother and daughter?” she
urged.
So I reluctantly consented.
After luncheon we drove to a small schoolroom somewhere near the
gate of the old road to Rome, where we found about forty people
had assembled. On the platform there presently appeared a thin,
cadaverous, shabbily-dressed youth, with black, piercing eyes and
long hair and rather sallow complexion.
“Oh! So that’s the new genius!” I whispered to Jean.
“Yes. He looks the part, doesn’t he?”
We waited. He played on his violin so magnificently that some of the
audience declared him to be the new Paganini.
“Funny name!” remarked Jean, who had never before even looked at her
programme. “Kubelik. Hungarian, eh?”
That moment marked the young violinist’s rise to success. After
the performance she sought him out and invited him to dinner. We
all three dined together. Next day she invited him to drive up to
Fiesole and take lunch there. In the carriage Lady Palmer had her pet
Pekinese.
Kubelik, shy yet charmingly boy-like, remarked in French:
“Oh, what a pretty dog! Those are very expensive, are they not?”
“I gave a thousand francs for him,” replied his hostess.
Whereupon he sighed and said:
“Ah! that is just double what my violin cost!”
Within two months Jean Palmer had presented him with that magnificent
Stradivarius which she acquired from the Finch Hatton family, and had
launched him in London on the road to fame.
He was tied up to some Hungarian agents in Budapest, but in order to
free him she paid them out a very big sum. She presented him to King
Edward, who gave him the magnificent ring that he showed me on the
night he received it, and she paid him a fee of five hundred pounds
each time he performed at her “Wednesdays.”
Therefore by the kind-heartedness of Jean Palmer did Kubelik rise to
the pinnacle of fame as the greatest violinist of his time.
* * * * *
On a January afternoon in 1914 I was standing on the carpeted steps
of the Casino at Monte Carlo, having just left an American friend,
when suddenly I met a smartly-groomed man whom I knew in London--a
man-about-town reported to be wealthy, and a member of at least two
good clubs.
“Look here, Le Queux,” he exclaimed in a low voice, “I know you are
interested in little Lady X, as everyone is. What do you think of
this?” And he took from his pocket-book a letter in the handwriting
of a much-photographed young peeress, whose beauty was notable and
whose marriage had been one of the smartest in the previous season.
It was, I must admit, a most compromising letter, with a date that
showed it to have been written since her marriage.
“Well,” he asked, “what do you think of that, eh?” and he grinned.
“You ought to burn it--not show it round.” I declared in annoyance.
“Where did you get it?”
“That’s my affair, my dear fellow,” he laughed, putting it back into
his wallet. “I mean it to be of considerable use to me,” he said in a
voice of triumph.
Then I recollected that I had once heard a faint whisper that my
well-dressed friend lived by his wits, and now I realized that he was
a blackmailer.
In secret, I watched during the months that followed, and it became
plain that the scoundrel squeezed money time after time out of the
pretty young wife. I happen to know that he compelled her to pawn
her jewels, and when he could get no more out of her, the blackguard
gave her husband the incriminating letter, and it formed the basis of
divorce proceedings. Poor little Lady X died last year.
But to-day that despicable blackguard is actually a knight! He
married a rich woman older than himself, and you will constantly read
of their doings in the “Society gossip.” Is it any wonder when I
read of them I am nauseated? Yet is it any worse to grant honours to
war-profiteers or aliens from nowhere?
The King cannot be blamed for the graft that has been accepted for
honours in the past. Indeed, it is hoped that the new system, with
its array of penalties, may prevent it in future. The King naturally
believes in those whom he trusts with the government of his country,
and not even the most violent tub-thumper in Hyde Park can possibly
blame him.
The case I have referred to is, I fear, but one of many where honours
have been bought by men in order to whitewash themselves--bought in
the open market, as they would buy a bundle of pink tape. But I have
hope that such cases will never again be repeated. We must not allow
“celebrities” to manufacture themselves by means of a fat cheque
to “the proper quarter,” and thus demand a niche in the already
overcrowded pages of “_Who’s Who_.”
CHAPTER TEN
Stories of Notable Women--Old Countess of Cardigan and
Her Gay Parties--Naughty Stories Told by the Wittiest
Woman in London--The Phantom Car in Park Lane--When Don
Jaime, the Spanish Pretender, Saw a Ghost--High Jinks at
Deene Park--Edward and the Game-keeper--How the Cardigan
_Memoirs_ Came into Being--My Friendship with the Crown
Princess of Saxony--Its Result--I Arrange Her Highness’s
Secret Marriage with Signor Toselli--Amusing Incidents
After the Ceremony--I Induce the Princess to Write Her
_Memoirs_.
Dinner-table stories are directly responsible for the prevailing
fashion of writing one’s recollections, this book of mine being one
of many such volumes.
I may be justly accused of having invented the modern “memoir.” It
happened in a curious way. The old Countess of Cardigan, widow of
Lord Cardigan of Balaclava fame, whom I had known all my life, had
been a friend of my father. In my boyhood days she called me “Willie
Liqueur.” For thirty years or so I was constantly a guest at Deene
Park, Northamptonshire, the stately home of the Cardigans, where King
Henry slept after the Battle of Bosworth.
Lady Cardigan was a celebrity. She had for seventy years known
everyone who was worth knowing, and had led a very hectic life--if
all reports were true.
When she was eighty, with her yellow wig and her painfully narrow
chest, her dress of pale carnation satin and her squeaky voice, I
often used to sit in her little upstairs drawing-room at Deanery
Street, Park Lane, and listen to her gossip over the tea-cups. Her
statements about people caused me, as a journalist, to shudder for
fear of the law of libel, and I have often strolled back down Park
Lane utterly amazed that I should have been so magnetized for an hour
by a woman old enough to be my great-grandmother.
I had heard hundreds of stories--some of them side-splitting--from
the old countess’s lips, but her handwriting grew from bad to worse,
till it became quite illegible, so whenever I received a letter with
the well-known coronet upon it I always rang up the faithful and
portly Knighton, who was her butler as well as her man of affairs,
and a conversation something like this took place:
“I say, Knighton, I’ve had a letter from her ladyship. When shall
I come?” Knighton would then apologize, and go to look at his
mistress’s diary, and afterwards reply:
“Dinner, sir, next Friday.”
And so I would sit down and write an acceptance.
One night at Deanery Street during the London season, the “Old Lady,”
as we called her, gave a dinner-party, and among those present were
the Countess of Westmorland, Lady Angela Forbes, “Cis” Fane, young
Brudenell-Bruce, who was heir to the Cardigan estates, but who, alas!
was killed in the war, and Sir Nigel and Lady Kingscote.
I remember that we had one of her ladyship’s pet dishes, a Spanish
ham that she got from somewhere in Castile, stewed in sherry. Over a
slice of it, served with great dignity by the never-smiling Knighton,
Lady Cardigan began to tell some extremely amusing stories of people
she had known, including Lord Beaconsfield, who had proposed marriage
to her. Then she eclipsed the stories by an extremely “risky” one, at
which we were all convulsed--all but Knighton.
“Well, Lady Cardigan,” I exclaimed across the table, “I’m a bit of an
author. And I’m wondering why you don’t write a book of your stories.”
“A book!” exclaimed the yellow-haired old lady, who was glittering
with diamonds. “A book! My dear Mr. Le Queux! Why, if I wrote a book
who would ever publish it?”
“If you will write a book, I will see that it gets a publisher,”
I said, taking a sporting chance, but remembering that a big blue
pencil would be necessary.
“Yes!” cried pretty Lady Westmorland, who had been one of the great
beauties of England, and who was sitting beside me. “Oh! it would be
such fun!”
Cis Fane opposite me sighed, and whispered audibly:
“Good Lord deliver us!”
The party seemed all highly tickled by the suggestion, and presently
her ladyship said:
“Very well, Mr. Le Queux. If you think the public would like to read
some of my stories, then I will hold you to your promise, and write
them.”
On that same evening I had a curious experience. As I left the house
with Brudenell-Bruce, the butler blew his whistle for a taxi, and we
entered, telling the man to drive to the Bachelors’ Club.
Hardly were we inside when a breath of sweet perfume caused me to
glance around, and I said:
“Why, this isn’t a taxi, Brudenell!”
“No, apparently not,” he drawled. “But it will take us to the club.”
A few minutes later we got out, and, as I went forward to pay, I
was faced by a smart chauffeur, who gazed at me, and, apparently
startled, hastily drove swiftly away down Piccadilly, leaving us both
standing on the pavement amazed.
We never fathomed the mystery, but it seemed certain that the car was
waiting in Deanery Street for some evil purpose, and the man mistook
us for the persons who were to join him.
Next day I sought Eveleigh Nash at his office in King Street, Covent
Garden. He, not knowing Lady Cardigan, except by repute, did not
seem anxious to publish the book, so I went away resolving to let the
matter drop.
A week later, however, I had an urgent summons to go to the “Old
Lady” at Deanery Street, and found that she held me to my promise
given over her dinner-table!
So next day I returned to my friend Eveleigh Nash, told him the whole
circumstances, and in the end it was decided to obtain the help of
Mrs. Maude Chester ffoulkes. I took Mrs. ffoulkes round to tea at
Deanery Street a few days later, with the result that the first
Volume of modern “recollections” was issued to the public, and made a
great sensation.
But I can tell you that when the manuscript was ready the blue pencil
had to be exercised very freely on some of those stories before
they were passed by Eveleigh Nash, who detested the book from the
beginning and, I believe, always regretted that he published it.
Old Lady Cardigan was a wonderful figure. Her Christmas and shooting
parties at Deene were centres of the wildest fun--the merriment of
the gayest and most irresponsible set in England. They were the
“smartest” of the “smart” and when one accepted an invitation it
meant uninterrupted enjoyment from the moment of arrival to that of
departure.
The magnificent old mansion, once an ancient abbey, stands in the
midst of a beautiful park, and after the “Old Lady” had retired, as
was her habit, at 9 p.m., the great lakes and splendid beech-formed
avenues echoed with nocturnal merriment.
Dinner was always served on a service of George III. silver, with
great state at a big round table. I hated those heavy silver soup
plates, and when later on one used one’s knife upon a plate, it cut
into it. It was always a stately meal, but the plates to me seemed
ever greasy.
Lady Cardigan would allow no motor-car to approach Deene, nor would
she have any electric bell. In the dining-room she had the ordinary
pull-bell, with a long string attached to it; while her constant
attendant, waking or sleeping, driving or pouring out tea, was a
particularly annoying brown miniature Pomeranian named “Bundle.” One
dare not go near one’s hostess for fear of “Bundle’s” teeth.
At one of the shooting-parties, that included, as was usual, a number
of well-known people were Don Jaime, the Pretender to the Spanish
throne, and his brother, who figured prominently in the public eye at
the moment.
Don Jaime occupied King Henry VII.’s bedroom, a great panelled
apartment with a huge four-post bed in which I had often slept. His
brother was in the next room, and I in the room adjoining that. The
rest of the old wing was occupied by Dr. Thomas Pink, of Lyddington,
Lady Cardigan’s pet doctor, whom she always told people had kept her
alive for the past twenty years, young Brudenell-Bruce, and several
other bachelor guests. It was the bachelors’ quarter.
On that well-remembered night we all retired about 2 a.m., after
a gay time among the ladies in the big smoking-room--an apartment
with highly-decorated Renaissance carvings over the fireplace that I
hesitate to describe here, but a description of which may be found in
certain books on English architecture.
I suppose I had been in bed about an hour when I was awakened by a
most unearthly yell. I dashed out into the corridor, to find Don
Jaime in pale blue silk pyjamas.
“_Dios!_” he gasped. “I--I’ve seen a ghost!”
“What?” I ejaculated.
Brudenell, who had at that moment sprung out of his own room, heard
the Prince’s assertion and said:
“Ghost be hanged! Go to bed, Prince. We don’t have ghosts at Deene!”
“You do! Lady Cardigan believes in the White Lady,” he said, in his
broken English.
“Well, I don’t--for one,” I said, and by this time the whole
corridor was agog with Don Jaime and his ghost. He described it as a
young nun in a black habit.
“Oh, get back to bed and make love to her if she comes again,” I
replied, rather annoyed at being awakened out of my sleep. So we
returned to our rooms.
I do not think I had been in bed half-an-hour when I heard another
yell from the room next to me!
This time it was Don Jaime’s brother who had seen the same ghost! He
described it, as we all stood in our pyjamas in the corridor.
I declared to the company that somebody was playing a practical joke,
with which my old friend Dr. Pink--who always wore a big piece of
pink coral as dress-stud, by the way--agreed. At four o’clock we went
to sleep again, but so utterly scared were the Spanish Prince and his
brother that they left Deene next morning without even making their
adieux to their hostess.
From that day to the present the mystery has never been fathomed, and
though the butler Knighton still lives in Northamptonshire, he has,
on several occasions, assured me that there was no ragging.
“I always knew of any rag, sir. And if there had been one, I should
have known,” he said the last time I asked him. “No. It’s a mystery,
sir.”
There was no gayer country house in all England than Deene Park in
those days before the war. Our hostess, a _grande dame_ of the old
school, threw open her beautiful home to her friends, and without
stint or formality bade them enjoy themselves.
Yet Lady Cardigan was most punctiliously dignified, and, as everyone
who knew her is so well aware, she resented any intrusion on her
privacy. In her insistence of the observance of her “manorial
rights,” she in many ways outvied the most feudal chatelaine.
It was her custom, when the weather was fine and warm, to be wheeled
on to the beautiful terrace at Deene. She invariably selected a spot
near a large magnolia, whose creamy blossoms and glossy leaves made
a special appeal to the exotic tastes of the old lady. Here she would
doze happily till Knighton, in due time, reappeared and conducted her
with pomp and circumstance back to the house.
Mrs. ffoulkes, who stayed at Deene a good deal while collaborating
with the old lady in writing her famous memoirs, found me with a
fellow-guest, Rear-Admiral H. W. Wilkin, in the smoking-room one
afternoon and told me an amusing incident that had just happened.
It seems that her ladyship was dozing in the shade of the magnolia
when her slumbers were disturbed by the sound of voices.
“And--now--dear Mr. Smith,” came in the cultured High Church accents
of the neighbouring Vicar’s wife, “you will get a good view of the
park, and here--is the wonderful magnolia.”
“Oh, how truly fair,” drawled the impulsive young shepherd of souls,
who accompanied her, “but how very sad it is to reflect on the many
scandalous stories current about this beautiful ancestral home!”
Suddenly an imperious, high-pitched voice made itself heard.
“Who are you, and how dare you walk on my terrace?” it demanded.
The intruders approached the locality whence the voice proceeded,
and there they saw an irate and golden-haired lady, whose facial
adornment would have given points to Jezebel, yet whose attire was
more suitable for a young lady still in her teens.
The Vicar’s wife was, as befitted her calling, courageous!
“Mr. Smith was lunching with us, your ladyship,” she said, “and I
thought I would bring him across the park to look at the beautiful
magnolia.”
“Am I Countess of Cardigan, or am I not?” demanded the Lady of the
Magnolia. “You’ve no business to bring any fool of a curate about
here! I hate ’em!” Then, ringing a bell furiously, she shrieked:
“Knighton--Knighton--_Knighton_! Turn these people _out_!” At this
moment Knighton, discreet as ever, appeared from nowhere, and, with
a gesture worthy of an Archbishop’s butler, conducted the Vicar’s
wife and the curate homewards, and then rapidly removed the enraged
countess.
In the great hall of Deene, a replica of Westminster Hall and built
at the same time, the aged countess would sing chansonettes after
dinner, and dance with her guests with the agility of a young woman,
and yet she was over eighty!
Great Britain will never again see her equal, for both she and Lady
Dorothy Nevill, whom I knew well, were the last of the old Victorian
school, and passed just as the port-drinking, fox-hunting parson, and
the fat squire of the Pickwickian days, have passed.
My friend Nash and I were among the guests at Deene one week-end
after her recollections had been published, the fashion of writing
memoirs set, and the whole world laughing at her amusing and often
rather ill-natured stories. Nash, at dinner, related the following:
“Lord Frederic Hamilton invariably tells me some amusing story when
we meet. The one I remember best is about an American millionaire who
decided to buy a property in Scotland. He arranged to look over an
estate in the Highlands, and the Scottish peer to whom it belonged
made a point of showing him round the place himself. When at last
they returned to the house the American happened to notice over the
entrance-hall the words: ‘EAST, WEST, HAME’S BEST,’ and, turning to
the owner, he remarked, ‘Well, my lord, it’s very kind of you to
have shown me over this property, and I don’t think we’re likely to
fall out about the price, but there’s one stipulation I must make
(pointing to the motto). That damned fellow Hame has got to take down
his ad-ver-tisement.’”
Eveleigh Nash is a splendid raconteur and a well-known
man-about-town, as well as being a famous publisher. Mrs. George
Pinckard, who is so well known in Society, once remarked to me, “The
Row would never be the same if Eveleigh deserted it.”
Not long ago he and I were dining with “Ruby”--as her intimate
friends call her--at her delightful Georgian home in Chesterfield
Street, Mayfair. George Pinckard, her husband, was M.F.H. in
Surrey, and, by the way, generously gave a military remount depôt
to the Government, which he himself supported. Afterwards in the
drawing-room the conversation turned on literary people, whereupon
Nash, in his dry way, said:
“I used frequently to meet J. W. Cross, who married George Eliot,
the novelist, and I once heard him tell at a house-party a good
story about himself. Cross, after spending several years of his life
as a banker in Wall Street, returned to settle down in his native
country, and shortly afterwards received an invitation from a friend
to stay with him for the grouse shooting. It was about the time that
‘driving’ birds was introduced, and Cross, whose shooting had got
rather rusty during the years he had spent in New York, deemed it
advisable to get some coaching from the head gamekeeper. After a few
days the host remarked to the keeper, ‘How’s Mr. Cross getting on,
Joe?’ ‘Well, sir,’ replied Joe, ‘he’s _missing_ better than he did!’
Some years afterwards Cross told this story to King Edward, whose
service Joe had entered, and the King remarked, laughing, ‘I shall
never get rid of Joe; that’s one of the most tactful things that has
ever been said.’”
The Cardigan memoirs being such a huge success, I suggested that my
old friend the Princess Luisa, wife of the Crown Prince, now King of
Saxony, should publish her recollections.
Perhaps my claim to be an old friend of Her Imperial Highness is
shown by what she herself has written in _The Life Story of the
Ex-Crown Princess of Saxony_.
In that book she says:
“Though I may be an Imperial Princess of the fatal Hapsburgs, with
many titles after my name as registered in the _Almanach de Gotha_, I
am, after all, only a woman with the same heart, the same sentiments,
the same maternal love, and the same detestation of hypocrisy and
sham as any woman who reads this narrative of mine.
“I know England well, and I know and admire the dear British people.
I know beautiful Scotland. With Mr. Le Queux I have shopped in Bond
Street in London and in Prince’s Street in Edinburgh, and I have been
in Oban and in Inverness, at Cowes and at Ilfracombe, but none has
dreamed that the woman in a plain navy skirt and cream blouse--both
made, by the way, in the Rue de la Paix--was the same person about
whose erratic doings so much has been written at the instigation of
her enemies.
“I love the public. Heartily tired as I am of the glare and glitter
of palaces and the wild turmoil of unceasing plot and counterplot
among those who elbow each other to get into the vicinity of a
throne, I prefer a life with the public to one apart from it.
“Some years ago I went upon an escapade in Dresden which would have
shocked the stiff and narrow-minded Court, in order to discover for
myself in what estimation I was held by my Saxon people. As a matter
of fact, Mr. Le Queux was at our Court at Dresden at the time, and
with my husband, the Crown Prince Frederick-August, we had sat at
five o’clock tea, when the sudden idea occurred to me.
“Mr. Le Queux had mentioned that _Il Trovatore_ was to be given at
the opera that night, and had been recalling some reminiscences of
the great composer, Verdi, with whom both he and his father had been
intimate friends. My husband and I were listening to the amusing
stories when it struck me that instead of attending with the royal
circle, as had been arranged--for at Court we are but creatures of
routine, and live by rules and arrangements laid down for us by the
Minister of the Household and the other officials whom we call the
_Grands Chargés de la Cour_--I might go alone and watch.
“After Mr. Le Queux had bowed before King Albert and his consort,
Carola, who had just entered the room, and had departed, I pleaded a
bad headache, and later sent word to my husband that I could not go
to the opera, and did not wish to be disturbed.
“Now, I had a confidential maid--one whom I had brought from Austria
and who had been with me some years--and in her I confided. I sent
her out to a theatrical costumier’s, where she obtained a dark wig
and a box of ‘make-up,’ and, putting on one of her dresses, I was
soon transformed into a woman of the people. In this guise she saw
me out of the Palace by the servants’ entrance, and I proceeded to
the Opera on foot while the others were still dining. For some time I
waited in the queue, then paid for my modest seat in the gallery, and
at last found myself between two stout women, high up, with the royal
box away on my right.
“The house gradually filled while I sat there among the people. Ah!
how my thoughts ran back to my girlhood days, my stiff upbringing,
my staid, angular governess, with all the hide-bound regulations of
Court manners and Court etiquette, and that parrot-cry ever dinned
into my ears since I had been ten years of age: ‘Imperial Highness,
be careful of the public! Imperial Highness, what will they think?
Imperial Highness, what will they say?’
“That night I sat with the public in order to hear and to know what
they said. The King and Queen entered, and the house, including
myself, rose to salute them. The stout woman on my left, with whom I
had already become on friendly terms by offering her a sight of my
programme, exclaimed:
“‘Ah! Carola is in that same shabby old gown she wore a fortnight
ago when we came to hear _Faust_. Cannot a queen afford a new one?’
“‘I suppose she wears the grand ones in the Palace and puts on any
worn-out thing when she comes here--afraid to spoil it, eh?’ remarked
the woman on my other hand.
“At that moment my husband, smart in his blue uniform, smiling and
good-looking, entered the box, and, advancing, bowed, whereupon all
hands were clapped.
“‘Ah!’ exclaimed the stout critic on my right. ‘The Crown Prince is
only a dressed-up popinjay. He will be our King soon, of course--a
fine, handsome man, but nowadays he dare not call his soul his own,
with such a father and mother!’
“‘When he becomes King he will be all right’ declared the other
woman. ‘Old Albert cannot last for ever. But look! they’ve shut the
door of the box. Where is Luisa? Isn’t she coming?’
“The orchestra struck up, and in the royal box they had all settled
themselves.
“‘Poor Luisa!’ went on the woman, turning to me confidentially as
she added, ‘Another unpleasantness, I suppose! Her life must be a
wretched one. She looks always so smiling and so good-tempered, yet
whenever one sees her driving, here in the theatre, or at the reviews
there is a look in her face of sadness and disappointment. Haven’t
you noticed it?’ she asked. ‘That smile she wears is only the mask of
a broken heart.’
“‘Do you really think so?’ I asked.
“‘Yes, of course. Why, everyone knows what a dull life she has of it
with old Carola snapping at her all the time, and the King going out
of his way to make things uncomfortable for her. Everybody in Saxony
pities poor Luisa!’
“I was silent. So that was what the public were saying about me!
“One woman I took to be the wife of an artisan, the other was, no
doubt, the wife of a small tradesman, and I--well, I was the wife of
the elegant, good-looking Crown Prince who sat in the middle of the
royal box, smiling graciously upon those upon whom he was so soon to
be called to rule.
“I learnt much that evening. It taught me that though I was without
friends in that great, gloomy, gilded Palace, yet the Saxon people
were my friends.
“Yes, I love the public; yet from my earliest recollections as a girl
I had been always taught to hate _das verdammte Publikum_ (the damned
public), as my father, the Grand Duke of Tuscany usually referred
to the people: a favourite remark, by the way, of the late Emperor
Francis Josef.
“For the benefit of those who may not know exactly who I am,” she
goes on in the book of her life story, “I may, perhaps, say that
though I am usually called Luisa, Ex-Crown Princess of Saxony, I
was christened on September 8th, 1870, at the Imperial Castle of
Salzburg, with eleven different names, and succeeded to the titles of
Archduchess of Austria, Duchess of this, Baroness of that, Countess,
and what not. Under my last title, Countess of Montignoso--a
beautiful estate in Italy, belonging to my family--I am still known,
for even the wrath of poor old Francis Josef--himself no saint, by
the way--could not deprive me of that. My father was Ferdinand IV.,
Grand Duke of Tuscany, and my grandfather, the last ruler of Tuscany,
lived in the Pitti Palace in Florence, now turned into one of the
greatest art-galleries in the world, which many of my readers know,
and have, no doubt, admired.”
* * * * *
The affairs of this erratic yet charming lady had, ever since she had
separated from her husband and had her name connected with M. Giron,
her son’s tutor, been in my hands, and it struck me that if I could
induce her to write the story of her eventful life, so much of which
I alone knew, it should be of great interest.
After an unconventional career all over Europe, the Princess had
fallen deeply in love with Signor Toselli, who was, by the way,
utterly unsuited to her, as I openly told her. But she was bent on
marrying him, and at her request I arranged that the contract should
be made one morning in secret at the Registry Office in Henrietta
Street, Strand.
It was a few months after their marriage that I travelled from London
to Fiesole, above Florence, where they were living in a large old
Italian villa, and not without a great deal of persuasion I prevailed
upon the Princess to receive Mrs. Maude Chester ffoulkes and to allow
her to collaborate with her in writing her memoirs.
This she did, with the result that the second volume of memoirs,
_My Own Story_, was published by the House of Nash, and was even a
greater success than the recollections of Lady Cardigan.
Since then we have been flooded by books of the reminiscences of
persons, some well known, and others a trifle obscure, but I have
thought it to be of some little interest to here tell the story of
how the fashion in “memoirs” was inaugurated.
The events that immediately followed the Princess’s secret marriage I
will let Her Imperial Highness describe in her own words:
“A small party of five people entered the restaurant of the Savoy
Hotel, and sat down to a table overlooking the river, to eat the
wedding luncheon. All five of us were half fearful lest we might be
recognized, but among that gay, chattering throng we were unnoticed,
and whispered our toasts across our glasses.
“Luncheon ended, we passed out by the back of the hotel and walked
along the Embankment, fondly believing that nobody knew of the happy
event. But already the sleuth-hounds of the London Press had scented
news of it from the Registrar’s Office, the register had been
inspected and a copy of the register obtained. While walking along a
Press-photographer took a snapshot of Signor Toselli, Mr. Le Queux,
and myself, which was the first inkling we had that our secret was
out.
“We decided to enter the Hotel Cecil by the back way, and Mr. Le
Queux conducted my husband and myself to his rooms, urging us to
admit no one. Meanwhile he descended to the front hall to deal
diplomatically with an assembly of thirty or forty representatives of
various newspapers clamouring for news. It was not every day that an
Imperial Princess was married in secret at a London Registry Office.
“Because I had endeavoured to keep the whole thing quiet, Mr. Le
Queux was extremely discreet. He admitted to the reporters that I
had been married, a fact they already knew from the copy of the
certificate, which one enterprising journalist had demanded and paid
for. Of details Mr. Le Queux gave none. Though a writer himself, he
was full of regrets that he could not oblige his friends, yet, as he
pointed out, he was compelled to respect my wishes.
“Meanwhile an amusing incident has occurred upstairs. Signor Toselli
was seated writing a letter while I stood at the window, when, of
a sudden, a man burst into the room unannounced and faced us with
surprise upon his face. We, of course, believed him to be a reporter
who had eluded the vigilance of those below, therefore my husband
promptly and with few words took hold of him and bundled him out of
the room.
“A few minutes later Mr. Le Queux returned, accompanied by the man
whom Signor Toselli had so unceremoniously ejected, and introduced
him. He was Mr. Fred Le Queux, who, of course, knowing nothing of the
circumstances, had been astounded to find strangers occupying his
brother’s quarters.
“Truly, that day was one fraught with much excitement. We dare not
go forth from the hotel, for the journalists were still watchful.
They had been informed in confidence that we were to leave Victoria
that night for Paris. Instead of doing so, however, Mr. Le Queux
and myself drove in one cab, with my husband and Mr. Le Queux’s
brother in another, to Charing Cross Station, and were able to leave
unobserved, while the journalists were waiting eagerly at Victoria.”
The skittish Princess omits to tell what she said to me on our way to
the station:
“Now, Mr. Le Queux, thank you for all you’ve done for me to-day. I
know you hesitated, and you have done this because you are my old
friend, and I’m very grateful. But there is only one thing wanting to
complete the sensation which will be in the papers to-morrow!”
“And what is that?” I asked.
“Why, for me to elope with you!” she laughed. “That would be a
first-class shocker for the people, wouldn’t it?”
Princess Luisa was always incorrigible, as those who have read her
own story so well know.
And none know it more than myself.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Adventures: Humorous and Curious--My Only Superstition--I
Purchase a Mummy Mask of an Arab at Luxor and Two of
My Servants Die--Lord Carnarvon’s Death--I Ride on the
First Motor-Car in England--Motoring Adventures with
Lord Northcliffe--Secrets of How England Saw the First
Aeroplanes--William Caspar, Adventurer and Practical
Joker--The Race that Finished Before It Started.
I am by no means a superstitious man except in one direction, and
it has been forcibly brought back to me by the recent death of my
friend Lord Carnarvon--who, by the way, took a great interest in
the Casino at Corfu, in which I was also interested--following on
his discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamen at Thebes. There are a
good many, including Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who believe the Earl’s
sudden end to be due to the vengeance of the “Ka” or “double” of the
Pharaoh. From the historian Herodotus we learn that the wise men of
Egypt taught that the souls of the dead passed through “every species
of terrestrial, aquatic, and winged creatures.” And to many of the
present generation it does not seem incredulous that the spirit of
the dead monarch, or of some other soul who resented interference
with the king’s tomb, has taken revenge through the agency of a
poisonous insect.
In the Egyptian “Book of the Dead” it is distinctly laid down,
that the preservation of the body was necessary for the continued
existence of the soul, hence the efforts to embalm and to preserve
it undisturbed. Herodotus again asserts that the soul returns to
animate the dead frame “after a period of 3,000 years.”
To me, this is of peculiar interest on account of my own personal
experience. While at Thebes a few years ago. Sir Gaston Maspero--one
of the greatest Egyptologists who ever lived, and then head of the
Antique Department of the Egyptian Government--introduced me to
an old Arab _hadj_, who lived in Luxor, and who acted as agent of
the British and other national museums, for, as is well known, all
antiques discovered in Egypt are first claimed by the Government,
but if better specimens are already in the great museum in Cairo,
then the duplicate objects are sold. Indeed, there is a room in the
Cairo museum where they are marked in plain figures, and are all, of
course, guaranteed genuine.
In the den of the old fellow with the green turban we inspected
a quantity of things he had for sale, all duplicates of objects
already in the museum, and I bought several things to add to my own
collection, including several fine strings of beads, a human eye
of lapis-lazuli from a sarcophagus, a number of amulets, Ushabitu
figures, an alabaster canopic jar, and, finest of all, the gilded
mask from the mummy of a priestess of Isis who had lived in the
Eighteenth Dynasty, viz. 1600 B.C., and which had been found in a
tomb near Aswân.
I had them carefully packed, and brought them home to my house
overlooking Dartmoor. I arranged them in a big glass case, where
there were other objects I had previously collected in Egypt. In
the centre on a wooden stand, I placed the gilt mask; it was in a
splendid state of preservation. Judge of my dismay, however, when,
on entering the room next day, I found that the mask had dropped to
pieces from its stand!
I had it repaired, but within one week from that date I suffered a
severe financial loss; one of my servants died from disease; and a
second servant expired suddenly, an inquest being held on her at
Ashburton. In the next week a relative died quite unexpectedly, and
also my pet collie. During the week following I had another serious
financial loss, which compelled me to give up the house.
Feeling that there must be some uncanny influence at work, I packed
up the whole of my Egyptian collection, including the mummy-mask, and
sent it to the Peterborough Museum, where they have ever since been
on exhibition.
Is it little wonder, therefore, that the strange circumstances that
surrounded the death of Lord Carnarvon should interest me? While
those objects I bought in Luxor were in my possession ill-fortune
certainly dogged me. Whether somebody’s “Ka” was annoyed with me, or
whether an “elemental” had been let loose, I know not. I can only
relate my own experiences and let others comment on them.
Those who knew Lord Carnarvon knew that he loved practical joking.
I had several examples of it. His character was a mingling of
shrewdness and whimsicality. He told me one day, on his return from
America, of an adventure of his there. He had apparently promised a
friend in the City--a rich company promoter, whom I knew well--to
obtain information regarding a certain much-boomed commercial
enterprise in America. On his way to California he paused in New
York, and of the hotel barber made inquiry regarding the person in
control of the venture.
The man who cut his hair gave his opinion, and recounted certain
facts concerning the great American financier. Later he wrote a note
asking for an interview. He was received by the industrial magnate,
whom he described to me as “a fellow with eyes like gimlets and a
mouth like a steel rat-trap.”
“The chap no doubt admired my impudence as a stray Englishman asking
straight out for advice,” Lord Carnarvon said to me in relating
the story. “He gave me sound advice, after listening to me most
courteously. He advised me in a friendly way not to touch the stocks
on any account. I looked at him, thanked him, and then drove straight
to a telegraph office near Wall Street, and advised my friend to buy
eagerly. I went across to California, where I fished for a month,
and then when back in New York I found that the shares had soared
upwards, and my London friend had cabled me his sincere thanks. I
called on the financier and told him that I could not leave America
without returning thanks for the advice he had so kindly given me, as
in addition to the profit my friend had made it had defrayed all the
expenses of my trip. The financier was puzzled, and remarked that he
had advised me against buying. I told him that though he had given me
that advice, yet I felt sure he wished me to buy, and I had done so.
The American looked at me shrewdly for a moment, and then he burst
into laughter and said, ‘Pray consider my house your home whenever
you return to America!’”
Lord Carnarvon was a man of indefinable charm that, when he chose to
exert it, attracted the confidence of all sorts and conditions of
men. He was gifted with a wonderful memory and the scholarly instinct
of thoroughness in any work or recreation he undertook. We were both
interested in Egyptology, and that was the basis of our friendship.
* * * * *
The first motor-car that arrived in England was shown one summer’s
evening at the Imperial Institute, and was followed by a dinner. The
car was hailed as something marvellous. I attended the dinner with
Lord Northcliffe, who almost immediately afterwards ordered one of
the new road vehicles, and I was his companion on many of his early
runs, both in England and on the Continent. I was one of the first
to make the trip by road across France to Monte Carlo, and well do
I recollect the excited crowd that assembled before the Casino to
watch the arrival of the weary travellers from London. And we were
very weary and fed up with breakdowns, I assure you.
In aviation I have, also, taken a keen interest, for I acted as
judge at the first British aviation meeting, held on the Doncaster
racecourse.
The secret history of this--which has never yet been published--is
worth recounting. In France, many flights had been made by Bleriot
and others. Cody was busy with his experiments, but it remained for
my big, burly, fair-haired American friend, William Caspar, to bring
aviation to England.
Caspar was a bright, cheery optimist, a much-travelled man, and a
cosmopolitan to his finger-tips, but, like many men who dabbled in
foreign “concessions” and interested himself in “wild-cat” schemes,
he was often hard pressed for money. He had had a most adventurous
career--cowboy, manager of a Wild West Show, manager of a well-known
orchestra, principal proprietor of the Gaming Casino on the Island
of Corfu, professional gambler, and lots of other things, before he
determined that “England _must_ have aviation!” as he put it to me.
For years I had constantly met him in various places widely scattered
throughout Europe. Thus I knew the vicissitudes of his fortune. In
London he was well known at the Carlton, Savoy, and Cecil hotels. He
had been staying with me at the Cecil before he went again on the
Continent, determined to bring aviation to England.
For nearly three months I heard nothing of him, till one night he
burst into my room, and, in his bluff American way, said:
“Boy! the trick’s done! England is really going to have aviation
after all!”
“How?” I asked.
“Because I’ve got the money here,” and he pulled out a cheque for a
large amount. “It’s like manna from heaven--eh, boy? I tell you I’ve
been broke for a long time. For the last fortnight I’ve been at Spa,
in Belgium, unable to get away because I couldn’t pay my hotel bill.”
“Which is frequently the case,” I laughed.
“Yes, that’s so,” he went on, “but mine was a very bad plight. I
couldn’t raise any money in Paris, or in Brussels, but I heard of a
wealthy Baron and his brother who lived at Spa. So I went there and
saw them. Nothing doing! If England wanted aviation, let the English
put up the dough. I gave them details of my scheme, painted a pretty
picture of the thousands of people who would go to Doncaster just to
see what an aeroplane was like, and so on; the races, the crowds, and
the money that might be made. But it didn’t appeal to them. Twice I
saw the brothers, but they declared that there was no money in it,
so I left them and wondered how, with five francs in my pocket, I
was going to get out of Spa and back to Paris and on to London. The
other night, after dinner, I went out for a stroll down the Avenue
to think it all over, and not having any money, even for a cup of
coffee, I walked about for hours. At last, on returning to my room,
I saw on my dressing-table what I expected--an envelope that was
part of the hotel stationery. It was, I was certain, a polite note
from the management requesting immediate payment of my account. So
I let it lie there for an hour before I tore it open. Then judge of
my delight, boy, when I found that the Baron had called during my
absence and had written me a note to say that he and his brother had
reconsidered the matter and had agreed to put up the money. So!” he
added, flourishing the cheque, “England is to have aviation!”
Caspar was a hustler. Next day he went up to Doncaster, where, posing
as a wealthy financier, he quickly enlisted the co-operation of
the Mayor and Corporation. Hangars and pylons were erected on the
historic racecourse, while he sped back to Paris, to engage at any
cost aviators to bring their machines to England.
The fees he paid were most generous. To Cody he paid two thousand
pounds to bring his machine--which some wag named “The Cathedral.”
With him came Le Blon, Sommer, Delagrange, and several others--all
of whom, except Sommer, by the way, met within a year, their death
through flying. The reason for this hustle was that the Corporation
of Blackpool had got wind of Caspar’s scheme, and was running an
opposition attraction three days after ours was announced.
Harry de Windt, Basil Tozer, and myself assisted our friend Caspar,
who, being an ex-showman, knew well how to advertise and how to treat
the Press. He always did things on a lavish scale. The less money
he had in his pocket, the more expensive the restaurant at which he
dined. He often used to say to me:
“When William Caspar has money, then the whole world has money!”
It was so in the case of the Doncaster aviation meeting. He was
generous in his payment on every hand. He not only invited the
English Press, but the foreign Press also, and on the day of the
opening a grand luncheon was given, at which stirring speeches were
made by Doncaster’s Mayor and by others.
The affair proved a great success in every way--except for flying.
As the judge, I was perched up on a high wooden tower in the centre
of the racecourse. I had a stop-watch, and a telephone to the
Press-room, in the grandstand, where there were telegraph machines in
connection with the various London newspaper offices. The event was a
national one.
Nobody had timed aerial flights before, therefore out of my windows
I gazed at Le Blon circling the pylons, and forgot to take the time
when he started. When he had finished, I spoke over the telephone to
Harry de Windt at the other end, guessing the time he had taken from
start to finish, and giving the time by my stop-watch.
A few minutes later the telephone rang, and I heard Harry’s familiar
voice say:
“Look here, Billy, what’s the matter with you?”
“Nothing,” I replied. “Why?”
“Well, the boys have just reckoned it out and found that according to
your time Le Blon finished before he began!”
Then I heard Caspar’s voice exclaim:
“Say, Le Queux, do you want any assistance with the timing over
there? Fellows can’t very well win before they start!”
That first aviation meeting, which extended over four days, was
full of humour. It could not be doubted that Caspar did the Press
well, since in three days it was found they had consumed over three
thousand seven hundred cigars, to say nothing of the amount of wine
and spirits--which had better be omitted. All the meals were free,
and people, pressmen or not, went into the great dining-room, ate and
drank what they wanted, and came out again. The Corporation, which
was bearing part of the expenses of entertainment, suddenly awoke to
the fact that it must attend to the matter. So, one morning, supplies
were cut off, not, however, before many boxes of cigars had been
distributed unopened.
William Caspar himself was the most prominent figure at that meeting.
His get-up was calculated to impress the public. He had a wonderful
pair of bright yellow boots that laced up to the knees--which he
called his “flying boots”--a marvellous suit of check tweeds, a cap
to match, and huge gauntlet gloves. But he never flew!
Huge crowds came each day, and thousands paid their half-a-guinea
merely to be allowed to walk around the hangars and inspect the
various types of machines--mostly inventors’ freaks that could not
fly and never did. The weather, however, was gusty and entirely
against the aviation of those early days. Everyone who attempted to
go up came to grief, Cody’s machine turning a complete somersault.
Thus the meeting was unfortunately not a financial success. It cost
the Doncaster Corporation a considerable sum, and the Belgian Baron
and his brother lost their money. Caspar made not a halfpenny,
for I had to lend him some money a few days later, and the only
satisfaction we gained was that we had all thoroughly enjoyed
ourselves.
And so it was that aviation first came to England!
Cody constructed a second edition of the celebrated “Cathedral,”
and when he took it to Shoreham one day he and my friend Clarence
Winchester, the aviator--who wrote that entertaining book _Flying Men
and Their Machines_--made a perilous ascent on it. But their altitude
never reached above six hundred feet, which in those early days
seemed something of a miracle. They came down quicker than they went
up. But all this seems strange after the latest gliding experiments.
Winchester tells this story of Cody. The pioneer also invented a
monoplane. This machine flew so fast when Cody first tried it that,
on descending, he admitted he was a bit scared by the speed. He
was asked what he thought of his own invention. “Well,” he replied
thoughtfully, “I fancy it would be a trifle easier to fly a streak of
lightning!”
One day William Caspar played a practical joke on me. He had had a
sudden wave of prosperity, and was running a gaming casino at Rimini,
on the Adriatic, in combination with certain English financiers; I
being a member of the Syndicate.
I had met him in Milan, and we were travelling together down to Rome
on business connected with the Syndicate. One of the best of good
fellows, Burbidge, of Harrod’s, now alas dead, was with us. Caspar
had with him in the train a new and very expensive dispatch-case, in
green leather, with double locks, and I noticed he took extreme care
of it, fearing lest it should be stolen.
He took it with him into the dining-car, both at luncheon and dinner,
and when we arrived in the Eternal City, he would not allow the
voluble porter to handle it.
At the Grand Hotel, on our arrival, he carefully handed it over to
the cashier with a request that he would place it in the safe and
give a receipt for it, which the sleek obsequious Italian cashier
did. His precaution did not strike me as very strange, for I knew
that sometimes my friend carried with him confidential documents
and considerable sums in cash. It was, also, his custom to carry an
automatic pistol in his hip-pocket, and he was a dead shot.
We went to our rooms, for it was late at night, and next morning all
three of us met in the hall of the hotel. We were just about to go
forth, when he suddenly said:
“Oh! Wait a moment, Le Queux, I want something out of my
dispatch-case.”
He crossed to the brass grille of the cashier’s desk, and presented
his receipt, whereupon the sleek young man went to the great safe,
unlocked it with his keys, and carefully brought forth the precious
case. Caspar just as carefully unlocked both locks, with the little
Chubb’s key on his watch chain, while the cashier and several others
standing by, including myself, peered in to see what the precious
case contained.
Caspar drew forth a pair of ebony hair-brushes, brushed his hair very
carefully in a long mirror at the side, replaced them, relocked the
case and handing it back to the cashier said, without a suspicion of
a smile:
“Thank you very much. Will you please put it back again?”
* * * * *
I suppose this rather disjointed record of an erratic life would not
be complete without some reference to the interest I have taken
in wireless ever since years ago, in Leghorn, where I lived while
Senatore Marconi was engaged in his early experiments, and long
before the marvellous discovery was launched on the world.
For a number of years I have been a keen experimenter, and have
often been dubbed a fool for my pains. Certainly we had very crude
apparatus till the outbreak of war set many persons experimenting
and conducting research-work, as result of which the apparatus has
been brought to greater perfection, and the transmission of the human
voice by wireless accomplished.
In the latter field I was one of the first experimenters, and to
those who nowadays delight in listening to broadcasting it may be of
interest to know that I was the first person to broadcast speech and
music to amateurs and experimenters. This I did for one hour each
evening during the first seven months of 1920--the early days of
radio-telephony.
Many amateurs, I believe, know my call and my voice, 2AZ, for fully
a hundred in all parts of the country were good enough to write from
time to time and report on the strength and quality of my signals.
The set in question I started to establish in Guildford early in
1919, and was fortunate enough to have the advice and assistance of
Mr. Duncan Sinclair, now of the Wireless Section of the Air Ministry,
and Mr. E. P. Brown and Mr. F. A. Love, both land-telephone experts
and well known in the wireless world. With the exception of the small
radio-telephone sets used on aeroplanes and then being “scrapped”
by the Disposals Board very little was known at the time concerning
long-distance radio-telephony. It could be accomplished, we knew. But
how? That was the problem we set ourselves to solve.
For six months we worked daily with various apparatus and circuits,
burning out expensive transmitting-valves, piercing condensers,
ruining microphones, and other almost daily misfortunes. At last,
just as we thought ourselves within an ace of success, our generator
broke down, and we could get no firm in London to undertake its
rewinding--not even the makers themselves! It had to be scrapped, and
after considerable delay and expense a new one was installed in its
place.
Still no result! A second single-line aerial had been erected at
right angles to the transmitting aerial--a twin one--in order to
be able to listen to our own telephony and gauge the strength and
modulation of what was being sent out.
From listeners in London and in various towns reports came in that
mumblings could be heard, but no word was distinguishable beyond
“Hulloa! 2AZ calling!” Weeks went on, valve after valve was tried,
condenser after condenser, choke after choke, till I confess that
more than once I stood in my wireless-room in despair. Indeed, so
many disappointments did I have that one night I declared to my
friend Ernest Brown, that I felt like smashing up the whole bag of
tricks with a hammer.
He counselled patience, so we continued. My Morse could be read by
Mr. L. Meyer in Amsterdam, and was also reported from Paris and the
south coast of Ireland, but telephony seemed as far off as ever. Then
I resolved to alter the wave-length to a thousand metres. This meant
a new inductance, in the testing of which I was assisted by Mr. Frank
Phillips, who is associated with the “Burndept” Company.
The Marconi Company, who were taking great interest in my
experiments, kindly lent me certain apparatus, while from the
research department at Chelmsford some highly valuable suggestions
were made, based upon their own experience.
A further three months of costly failure passed, till one day I
received a letter from an amateur in Manchester, whom I did not
know, telling me that my speech on the previous night--the weather
forecast from the evening paper--was perfectly clear! Imagine my
joy! Next day came letters from Mr. T. W. Higgs at Bristol, Mr. G.
Woods of Liverpool, and Mr. F. T. Townsend, secretary of the Ipswich
Wireless Club, all congratulating me on both speech and music. These
were followed quickly by reports from such research-workers as Mr. W.
A. Ward at Sheffield, Mr. L. C. Willcox at Warminster, Captain E. J.
Hobbs at Wareham, Mr. W. W. Burnham at Blackheath, Mr. W. J. Crampton
at Weybridge, Mr. H. H. T. Burbury at Wakefield, and a number of
others.
Naturally, on meeting with such sudden success, we persevered
enthusiastically, in order to get the set to function more perfectly
and to attain greater distances, till one day we received a report
from the operator at Inchkeith, on the Firth of Forth, four hundred
and twenty miles from Guildford, and lastly from the well-known
amateur, Mr. G. W. G. Benzie, of Peterculter, Aberdeen, five hundred
and fifty miles distant.
A curious incident occurred one evening while transmitting
a selection of jazz music. My second aerial was switched on
to my receiving set--Marconi 7 valve, with the new double
note-magnifier--when by mistake the Morse “inker” was switched on,
whereupon the printing machine began to respond to the music, and
recorded all the higher notes on the tape! It ticked and printed,
keeping time with the music, greatly to our amusement.
Another laughable incident happened one night when I called by
telephony 2HX, and mentioned my friend Mr. Love by name, whereupon
some unknown amateur in Rotterdam called me by Morse, and asked in
French: “What is that about love? Please repeat.” And next moment
another message was flashed out to me, I believe by a professional
operator, saying: “Love to the girls also!” This created quite a
disturbance in the ether concerning love, one man tapping out “Love
to 2AZ!” This continued till a Government station--I believe it was
Aldershot--grew angry, and told the delinquents to “shut up.”
Whilst on the subject of wireless, my friend, Colonel C. G. Chetwode
Crawley, the Deputy Inspector of Wireless Telegraphy of the General
Post Office, has from time to time told me some humorous stories of
radio. The other day an applicant for a wireless receiving licence
filled in the particulars of his experiments as “home comforts.”
Another man applied to the G.P.O. for a licence to experiment with
“crystal detonators!”
One of the best of Colonel Crawley’s stories, however, concerns a
business man, who had had so many differences with his wife that the
conjugal life became almost impossible. One day recently he suddenly
left Victoria for the Continent, and on board the Channel boat sent a
message by radio, which was received at Niton, in the Isle of Wight,
and said, “Going for good.”
The wife, on receiving it, “saw red.” In a few days she sold up her
furniture, let her flat, and went to live with her mother. She wrote
to an address in Spain, but without receiving a reply. A month later
her husband turned up. He had been to the flat only to find it let to
another family, and angrily demanded an explanation. His wife showed
him the radio message.
“But there’s a word left out, my dear!” he gasped. “I sent you a wire
to say that I was going for a good trip. The word ‘trip’ has been
omitted.”
Furious correspondence ensued between the G.P.O. and the aggrieved
pair. The G.P.O. sought out the original telegram as despatched from
the ship, but the word “trip” did not appear upon any form whatever.
Nevertheless, the well-organized and “brainy” G.P.O. apologized for
their “error,” and the home is a happy one again.
Did the gentleman cast off the matrimonial fetters and then repent?
Who knows?
A further story which I heard from another source concerns the
famous American wireless hero Binns, who was once an operator at
the Crookhaven Wireless Station, where it was a standing joke that
all his breakfasts for three hundred and sixty-five days every year
consisted of two hard-boiled eggs. During the war he was an operator
in a very important position in the Grand Fleet, and a certain most
secret signal was required to be sent ashore.
He puzzled for a moment, and then with his hand upon the Morse key
tapped out the extraordinary words which no doubt puzzled the Germans:
“Two hard-boiled eggs transmitting. Urgent.”
He rapped this out half a dozen times, and all the stations around
the coast were much puzzled.
But Crookhaven sprang alert at once. They knew it was Binns. They
took his secret message for the Admiralty, and replied,
“O.K.! Two hard-boiled eggs.”
It is said that the result of that code message was the sinking of a
German cruiser!
CHAPTER TWELVE
Adventures in Journalism--How I Became a Journalist--Reporting
in the House of Commons--Humours of the _Globe_
Newspaper--Stanley: the Explorer’s Great Secret Revealed
for the First Time--Mr. Gladstone’s Kindnesses to Me--The
Lord Chancellor and my Books--The Mysterious Person Who
Sent the _Globe_ the First News of the _Victoria_ Disaster
Twelve Hours Ahead of the First Intimation--I Nearly Lose
My Life at Bow Street during the Police Strike--How I
nearly “Killed” Queen Victoria--Cardinal Manning Becomes
My Friend--He Takes a Drink with the Reporters--I Go
with George Augustus Sala to Describe the “Holy Coat” at
Treves--We Become Pilgrims from Metz--The Editor of the
Berlin _Punch_ is Sent to Prison for Six Months for Copying
my _Globe_ Article.
_Who’s Who_ states that while studying art in Paris I forsook the
Quartier Latin and became a journalist.
It happened in this way. I had met the great _feuilletonist_, Emile
Richebourg, the dark-eyed, serious, bearded man whose domestic novels
ran for years in _Le Petit Journal_, and it occurred to me, tired
as I was of the art school, to try and write a short story. I wrote
many without success. One day I completed one of fifteen hundred
words that I called _La Pipe Cassée_, and it was published. Zola read
it, and I suppose it met with his approval, for he sought me out in
my shabby rooms, _au troisième_, off the Boul’ Mich’, and his great
encouragement urged me to continue.
I did, and achieved some success. So much, indeed, that one day I
forsook art, and after a tour of Europe, mostly on foot, became a
clerk in a silk-weaving factory in Genoa, and later on arrived in
London, where, after some adventures, I became a journalist. I was
subsequently appointed on the staff of the _Globe_, the Government
organ which at that time was in the zenith of its popularity.
At first I was a reporter in the gallery of the House of Commons, my
seat being beside H. W. Lucy, or “Toby, M.P.,” as he was known in
_Punch_ in the days of Gladstone and Parnell. Then very soon I was
promoted to be sub-editor, and began the journalistic and literary
career that I have pursued till to-day.
I do not think that I ever took myself seriously, as did some of my
fellow-craftsmen, mostly untravelled novelists of both sexes. I have
ever regarded novel-writing as a sea of adventure, where very often
the best writer finds himself stranded while the mediocre teller of
stories struggles safely into port.
In my student days in Paris I met many young artists, lawyers,
and literary men, who afterwards made their mark; but again, when
sub-editor of London’s oldest evening newspaper, the _Globe_, I met
many more celebrities whose names are to-day household words. The
contributors of the “By-the-Way” column were, in themselves, the
best collection of literary brains in London. Davenport Adams, the
dramatic critic, who wrote the standard _Dictionary of the Drama_,
and who was a bosom friend of Henry living and Ellen Terry, and who
wore a faded velveteen coat day and night, and who smoked the vilest
of cigarettes; Joe Knight, the jovial editor of the _Athenæum_;
Algernon Locker, the clever assistant-editor of _Punch_ to-day; the
brilliant C. L. Graves and his equally brilliant collaborator E. V.
Lucas, and the great Lord Salisbury, Premier of England. All these
wrote the front page of the _Globe_, in the days when I sat, amid
clicking tape-machines, doling out the world’s news to those who
cared to pay a penny for the pale pink sheet.
It is not generally known that those “turn-overs” in the _Globe_
describing the happenings of an imaginary village called Wozzle, by
“A Wozzleite,” were written by the great Lord Salisbury, then Prime
Minister, who really described the little town of Hatfield, where he
had his country seat.
Again, we had for years an unknown poet who dropped his brilliant
contributions of topical verse into the letter-box in the Strand, and
though we published them two or three times a week, he never applied
for any payment, and nobody knows even to-day of his identity.
I found my days of journalism full of interest, because I met so many
cultured and interesting people. Though my office hours were from
seven in the morning till four in the afternoon, I was sufficiently
eager to write fiction--as Zola had urged me to do--till late each
night, and often to the small hours.
In those days the late Sir George Armstrong was chief proprietor
of the _Globe_, with Sir William Madge as manager. My instructions
were to run it as a paper written by gentlemen for gentlemen, and I
endeavoured to do my best to make it _The Times_ of the evening.
My best reporter was Charles F. Palmer--who later became editor
when I resigned to become a novelist--and who eventually, under
Horatio Bottomley’s wing, became Member for the Wrekin Division. It
is a thousand pities that poor Palmer, a sturdy and devoted friend,
was cut off in his prime. I helped him by speaking at his election
meetings in the Wrekin Division, and I had great hopes of him as an
Independent Member. Through twenty years he had occupied a seat daily
in the Reporters’ Gallery in the House of Commons, and no man in
all Britain had a more intimate knowledge of British politics or of
Parliamentary procedure.
While I was on the _Globe_ I fretted at being so much confined in
the office, and whenever I could I went forth to report current
events happening in London; more especially the mysteries of crime.
I assisted in the investigation of each of the “Jack-the-Ripper”
murders in Whitechapel, accompanied by two friends--Charles
Hands, who was afterwards on the staff of the _Daily Mail_, and
Lincoln Springfield, who was reporter of the _Star_, and who is
to-day proprietor of that most breezy and popular journal, _London
Opinion_. During the “Ripper” scare ours was a three-handed game. We
practically lived as a trio in Whitechapel, and as each murder was
committed we wrote up picturesque and lurid details while we stood on
the very spot where the tragedy had occurred. One evening Springfield
of the _Star_ would publish a theory as to how the murders had been
done, together with a facsimile of those letters in red ink, received
by Scotland Yard the day before; next night Charlie Hands would have
a far better theory in the _Pall Mall_, and then I would weigh in
with another theory in the _Globe_. Only recently the actual identity
of “Jack the Ripper” has been discovered and will be found for the
first time disclosed in Chapter XVII.
Sir H. M. Stanley, the African explorer, was for many years my
intimate friend.
An incident that occurred in 1890, while I was still sub-editor of
the _Globe_, is very curious, and has never been before disclosed. I
will tell it exactly as it happened.
Stanley had returned after being lost for two years in the Forests of
Perpetual Night, and was the idol of the hour, lecturing and being
fêted everywhere, with honours being bestowed on him for his daring
to lead his gallant little band into the very heart of the Unknown.
He had written his monumental work _Through Darkest Africa_, which
was just about to be published, and, moreover, it was announced with
great _éclat_ that he was to be married to Miss Dorothy Tennant, the
clever author of _London Street Arabs_, and other books. The whole
world was excited at the romance.
One warm afternoon I was seated in my office in the Strand, examining
piles of “copy” that came pouring in from all sources, sheeting what
news should appear in the “Special” edition of that night’s paper.
My office boy suddenly announced that a man was in the office below,
asking to see “the editor.”
In reply to my inquiry as to what he was like, the boy said:
“He looks like a workman, sir. He won’t go away till he sees you. He
says he has something very important to tell you.”
Thinking he might have some exclusive news, I ordered him to be shown
up. He proved to be a tall, thin, rather loosely-built man of about
forty, in a shabby old jacket and faded and patched blue trousers,
such as are worn by engineers.
As he stood cap in hand, I asked him his business, when he replied:
“Well, the fact is, sir, I’m a seafaring man, and I’m stranded! I’ve
had some funny experiences, and I thought if I told you some of them
to put in your paper, perhaps you might give me something, so that I
can get up to Liverpool to join another ship. I’ve been a long time
in Africa.”
“Well, lots of people have been in Africa,” I remarked dubiously.
“Yes, I know. But they haven’t been where I’ve been.” And then he
went on to mention places of which I had never heard. He began to
tell me a remarkable story of how he deserted from his ship, on
board of which he had been a stoker, and of his wanderings along the
African coast. Then he started to describe what he had seen. Some of
this I took down in shorthand, and still have my notes.
“Well,” I said at last, “I confess I know very little of West Africa,
but I have a friend who has been there, and he no doubt would like to
have a chat with you.” And then I gave him a few shillings and he
promised to return next afternoon at three o’clock.
I had formed an opinion that he was only cadging, and that I should
never see him again.
Later, however, I telephoned to Stanley, who was then living in De
Vere Gardens, and he promised to come and interview the fellow, who
had given his name as George Harding.
Next afternoon Stanley arrived just before three, and when the man
was shown up I introduced him as my friend.
“Oh! you know something about Africa, sir?” Harding said, never
having met Stanley before, and quite unaware of his identity.
The great explorer admitted that he knew a little concerning the
Congo.
“Ah! That’s just where I’ve been, and up the Aruwimi, too,” said the
man. “Do you know it?”
“Yes, I do,” Stanley replied, evidently much taken aback.
“How funny! I thought I was the only white man who’d been up in those
forests,” he said, and then he began to speak of various tribes
and their chiefs, and the names of native villages; all of which
held Stanley absolutely agape. Time after time he tested the man’s
knowledge of places and things.
I got out the large map of Africa where there were great blanks
showing unexplored country, and with his finger Harding pointed
to different spots where native villages were situated, and the
direction of rivers of which Stanley alone knew the names; for the
book _Darkest Africa_ had not yet been published, and was only in its
proof stage.
Then Stanley questioned him about certain other tribes, their chiefs,
their habits, and apparently learned much that was of interest to
him. The man described the pigmies, and gave such details concerning
their life that the great explorer sat utterly astounded.
“Do I tell you the truth, sir?” asked the man presently. “I thought
I was the only white man who had ever been right up the Aruwimi, but
you’ve evidently been there too.”
“Yes, you have certainly told the truth,” was Stanley’s halting
reply. “I confess I am amazed to find that you have been
there--evidently before me, from one or two of your remarks. One of
those chiefs you knew died nearly a year before I got there and had
been succeeded by his brother.”
The man Harding then told us more of his astounding adventures--how
he had escaped from a cannibal tribe, after witnessing one of their
disgusting orgies, and how he had become husband of a chief’s
daughter, as well as many thrilling episodes and narrow escapes he
had during his four and a half years in the Congo forests.
Eventually Stanley gave him a five pound note, without revealing his
identity, and made an appointment to meet him on the following day.
When he had gone, the famous African explorer, whose name was on
everyone’s lips, stood staring at me pale and aghast. At first he
could not utter a word.
“Only fancy, Le Queux, that fellow has done all the journey that I
have done--and more!” he gasped. “He was alone! _He is a greater
traveller than I have ever been!_”
A few days later _Through Darkest Africa_ was published, and
Stanley’s reputation became established throughout the world. But to
the day of his death, a few years later, he befriended the unknown
stoker who had really been the actual discoverer of the Aruwimi, the
Forests of Perpetual Night, and the pigmies.
While on the staff of the _Globe_ I met Mr. Gladstone on several
occasions, and more than once he showed me kindnesses. I recollect
one day, when he opened a new wing of Guy’s Hospital, the Press were
invited to the luncheon, and it was expected that the Prime Minister
would make an important declaration of policy towards Turkey.
I chanced to arrive half-an-hour before the luncheon, and long before
any other representatives of the Press, when, to my surprise, I was
informed that Mr. Gladstone had already spoken, for his pressing
engagements would not allow him to remain to the luncheon. Just
as I had been told this the Prime Minister recognized me, and,
approaching, said in a low voice:
“There was no pressman here when I spoke, was there?”
I replied that there was not.
“Then come along. Lets go into that little room over there,” and he
took me across to what was apparently a sister’s private room, and
while I sat at a plain deal table the Grand Old Man leaned against it
and repeated his speech, which I took down.
But he turned it into the third person, dictating: “Mr. Gladstone,
having performed the formal opening ceremony, addressed those
present, and said that the policy of the Government towards the
Sublime Porte was----”
He dictated for about a quarter of an hour without hesitation in that
low, husky, yet perfectly clear voice of his, seated easily on the
corner of the table and swinging his leg as he spoke.
“Will that do, Mr. Le Queux?” he asked, laughing, as at last he stood
up.
“Excellently, sir,” was my reply, as I closed my notebook and thanked
him.
“I suppose the others will be horribly annoyed,” he said. “They have
all gone in to luncheon now, and are no doubt waiting for me to
appear. If you are going towards the Strand I can set you down at
your office.”
And thus I drove through the city beside the great Prime Minister.
The _Globe_ was the only newspaper to publish the speech that night,
and I had the satisfaction of knowing that _The Times_ was compelled
to use my report next morning.
Mr. Gladstone was also very kind to me when I published my second
novel, _Zoraida_. From Hawarden he wrote: “Quite by accident I saw
your novel, _Zoraida_, when staying at Chatsworth a fortnight ago,
and I read it. I want to congratulate you on your fertility of
invention and your vivid scenes of the Great Sahara and its desert
wanderers. The book has interested me.--W. E. GLADSTONE.”
I fear the praise was ill-deserved, but I confess I was much
gratified.
I afterwards learned that it was at Mr. Gladstone’s suggestion that
Queen Alexandra, then Princess of Wales, read my novels, and gave a
standing order for each of my books to reach her as soon as it was
published.
Somebody in the bookselling world discovered this fact, and when King
Edward ascended the throne, I was at once advertised by enterprising
publishers as “The Queen’s favourite novelist.” Among other notable
people who professed themselves interested in my novels, and
personally congratulated me, were Earl Balfour, Lord Derby, Lord
Birkenhead, Mr. Lloyd George, Bishop Ryle, Father Bernard Vaughan,
Sir Edwin Cornwall, Sir Henry Duke, and Mr. Justice Bray.
At a private house in the West End, where I was dining one night with
a number of distinguished people, soon after the publication of _The
Invasion_, Lord Halsbury, a little tubby figure, sidled up to me and
said very severely:
“Ah! So you are William Le Queux, eh? Well, I only wish I were still
Lord Chancellor. I would have had you up before the House for writing
that alarming book on the coming war.”
I was rather resentful, and he saw it.
Then the dear old lawyer laughed, and with a sly wink added:
“Wouldn’t you have liked it, eh? What an advertisement it would have
been for Roberts, Northcliffe, and your book!”
I can only here say that in addition to endeavouring to work in the
interests of my King and country, as every man should, I have at
times tried to entertain them with healthy, if exciting, fiction. I
am, alas! only too well aware of my own failings, of my hopeless
grammar when compared with the perfect English of some of my
contemporaries, yet to my critics I would point out that my early
knowledge of other languages interfered seriously with my knowledge
of English. I am a cosmopolitan, and for that I would crave the
reader’s forgiveness for any grammatical errors in this book or in
others I have written.
But in this chapter I am dealing with my early struggles--the days
when I was by day a London journalist and by night a struggling
novelist; when four hours’ sleep sufficed me, and when I used every
morning at half-past six to walk round Covent Garden in order to get
a breath of the fresh vegetables from the country. The dust of London
was, in those days, over my heart.
Another rather curious circumstance occurred to me during my
journalistic career. As usual, I entered my room at the _Globe_ at
seven o’clock one morning--for I have ever been an early riser,
and even to-day am often at my desk at five o’clock and work till
noon--when I saw on my blotting-pad several private telegrams in
their buff envelopes, distinguishable from the ordinary Press and
“agency” telegrams on their multiplicated “flimsies,” as they are
called in Press parlance.
One of them I opened bore the words “_Editor Globe--Victoria sunk_.”
There was no name of the sender, but the message had been despatched
a few hours before from a small town on the Tunisian coast.
This intrigued me. I looked up Lloyd’s Shipping List and found two
_Victorias_. Then in the Navy list I found H.M.S. _Victoria_ was the
British flag-ship in the Mediterranean.
I dashed along to the Admiralty and there interviewed the official on
duty.
“Probably a hoax,” he said. “We’ve had no news of it. No name is
given of the sender, you see.”
“But is the Fleet anywhere off the coast of Tripoli or Tunis?” I
asked.
“How do I know where the Mediterranean Fleet is?” asked the dapper
young man. “No, don’t publish the report. I expect it is somebody
trying to pull your leg--perhaps a tourist who has gone to see the
ruins of Carthage and thought he might have a bit of fun.”
So I replaced the telegram in my pocket and returned to the office.
Four times during that day I sent to the Admiralty to ask if they
could throw any light on the mysterious telegram, but they were
unable. No word reached them till twelve hours after the first news
of the disaster arrived that H.M.S. _Victoria_, with Vice-Admiral
Sir George Tryon on board, had been sunk in collision with the
_Camperdown_ on account of a faulty manœuvre on Sir George’s part.
The Admiral remained on the bridge as his vessel sank under him,
while twenty-two officers and three hundred and thirty-six crew also
perished.
Official knowledge often comes many hours after what is known and
discussed in London and New York newspaper offices long before the
authorities are informed.
The _Globe_ on that June day, in 1893, was the first to give the news
of the disaster to the world--news that they had received early in
the morning.
But till to-day the sender of that mysterious telegram has never
revealed himself. I have often wondered who despatched it from the
shore so quickly after the disaster occurred.
In the strike of the Metropolitan Police in London I narrowly
escaped serious injury--even death. After the last edition of the
_Globe_ had gone to press, I strolled round to Bow Street Police
Station--only a minute’s walk from the office--to see what was
happening, for it seemed very grotesque that the police of London
should go on strike and leave malefactors to do what they liked.
The streets were crowded by all the hooligans from the East End,
cheering the police and jeering against all law and order. The whole
underworld of London seemed to have been let loose that night, and
had assembled in that rather narrow street that leads from the Strand
to Long Acre.
I managed to get to the steps of the police station, where Charlie
Hands was standing with my reporter Charles Palmer and Lincoln
Springfield, when suddenly a heavy earthenware spittoon was flung
from an upper window of the section-house, and, escaping my ear by
an inch, smashed on to the pavement. Another inch, and it would have
undoubtedly smashed my skull.
Not long afterwards I sat in Bow Street Police Court, where the
charge against Oscar Wilde was being investigated, my interest being
all the keener because I had met him many times at Lady (Walter)
Palmer’s fine house in Grosvenor Square, she being one of Wilde’s
best friends.
I reported the whole of Bottomley’s trial in connection with the
Hansard Union, when “Mr. Bottomley in the Box” appeared day after day
on the contents-bills of the _Globe_ and the _Echo_. From a youth
I had always attentively studied criminology, so I endeavoured to
attend every sensational murder trial at the Old Bailey. Often I had
as companion my very old friend George R. Sims. Throughout thirty
years we frequently sat together at the Old Bailey, watching murder
trials, the last occasion being when we sat side by side through the
trial of Smith, who murdered his “brides” by drowning them in their
baths.
Let me whisper it. Both Sims and myself, rather portly persons, got
into those fatal zinc baths produced in court during a luncheon
interval, while several famous counsel looked on, making humorous
remarks.
In that case, Sir E. Marshall-Hall rose to such brilliancy as an
advocate that Smith would undoubtedly have been acquitted if the
accused had not, at the very last moment, taken his defence into his
own hands. Smith was hanged, but Sir E. Marshall-Hall’s magnificent
conduct of the case--like, later on, the defence of Greenwood at
Carmarthen Assizes--won for him the admiration of both Bench and Bar,
as well as great popularity with the public.
A more able, astute, and learned counsel there is none in the
kingdom. For many years he has been my friend, and I think I
can safely say that he is personally one of the most modest,
large-minded, and most charitable men I have ever met.
Those large, dark, penetrating eyes, which terrify a witness under
cross-examination, that big, mobile countenance, those eyebrows that
shift up and down, and yet, in contrast, that pleasant, easy-going,
even fraternal manner that he sometimes assumes towards the jury, is
that of a great legal genius, a man who studies the psychology of
crime and who knows its degrees as few other men in England know them.
The country admires him, it is true, but I happen to know that
criminal judges, even though he falls foul of them sometimes, admire
and trust him even more.
Once I congratulated him on a great success at an Assize Court in the
north, whereupon he simply sighed, and, turning to me, said:
“Luck, my dear fellow--only luck!”
My work on the _Globe_ was not without its humorous side. On one
well-remembered day I had been out to snatch a hasty lunch at
Simpson’s, across the way, when on my return I glanced at the
tape-instruments as usual. On one of them was a startling message,
printed on the slip:
“_Her Majesty the Queen died at Windsor at ten o’clock this
morning._”
I re-read it, and held my breath.
My next action was to telephone down to the printers to place the
margins of the paper in deep mourning, telling the head printer that
the Queen was dead.
My message caused the greatest consternation in the printing works,
but all goes like clockwork in the office of any London evening
newspaper, and it was a standing joke that if the last trump sounded
the _Globe_ should come out with an “extra special.”
Ere I had time to consider what I should write concerning the great
calamity that had overtaken the nation the head printer was in my
room, exhibiting a wet contents bill in heavy mourning, with the
words “Death of the Queen.”
In the meantime Mr. “Jack” Jewell, the sporting editor, who, for
so many years as “Larry Lynx,” wrote the sporting article for the
_Globe_ and also Sir William Madge’s weekly paper, _The People_, had
passed through the printing-room and heard the news. He went out into
the Strand, where he met the sub-editor of the _Echo_, and told him
of the calamity.
I stood alone in my room, undecided. All was ready. I had written
some lines that began with the words:
“The whole British nation, and the world, will learn with
deepest sorrow that Her Majesty Queen Victoria passed away at
Windsor Castle, where she was spending Easter, at ten o’clock
this morning. No further details of our national calamity have
reached us before going to press.”
I had the proof in “double-leads,” as the printers call it, in my
hands.
Everyone was out at lunch--Sir George Armstrong, the chief
proprietor, Sir William Madge, the manager, and all the staff, except
Charles Palmer who came in at that moment.
“Inquire of the Press Association,” Palmer suggested.
It only required me to press a bell on my table to set the great
presses going, and to launch on the world the unexpected news that
“Victoria the Good,” who had just celebrated her second jubilee, was
dead!
I rang up, and in answer to my eager inquiry I heard an insulting
voice say:
“Whatever we send out is true. Ours is a reliable service, you know.
Others are not.”
And he rang off.
Of Reuter’s, and of the Central News, I inquired, but both declared
that they knew nothing of the Queen’s death.
At that moment the inspector of the Exchange Telegraph Company, an
electrician, who visited the newspaper offices each hour to renew the
spools of tape, ink the machines, and see they were in working order,
entered the room without knocking, as he always did.
I pounced on him instantly, asking:
“What about this report of the Queen’s death that your people have
sent out?”
“Queen’s death? What do you mean?” he asked, staring at me.
Then with a smile on his face the little man, who for years had
trudged from one newspaper office to another all day long, dived
into the huge waste-paper basket set beneath the automatic machine
to receive the hundreds of yards of printed tape that we never used,
and presently drew out a piece about six inches long, on which were
the words--after giving the time--“John Walters, for thirty years
coachman to----”
_It was the Queen’s coachman who had died!_
And so I very narrowly made the _Globe_ the laughing stock of the
whole world.
Yet as a matter of fact the _Echo_ did actually publish the
report--as a rumour only--and many copies were sold outside the Royal
Exchange before the edition was suppressed.
No! The life of a news-editor is not exactly a bed of roses.
The dear old _Globe_ has, alas! passed away, and is merged into the
_Pall Mall Gazette_, after Charles Palmer became editor, and fell
foul of the German-paid betrayers during the war.
In my book _Scribes and Pharisees_, written long ago, I have
described the inner working of the _Globe_ office, and revealed
much that I believe has amused people. I referred to Palmer as the
“weevil,” because he was so clever in any investigations that he
undertook as second reporter, under William Jeans. One unwritten
law of the _Globe_ was that no member of its staff had ever been
discharged. Sir George Armstrong was a humorist, and always very
lenient. An apprentice in our editorial department, named Knight,
was once called up and told to resign. But he continued to draw his
salary as usual, and still remained there for years after I left.
Jack Jewell, the original “Larry Lynx,” was a great character, and
a most hearty, good-humoured soul. But he had periodical bursts of
merriment, and sometimes did not turn up in the mornings. On such
occasions his office-boy, named Tilbury--a particularly bright
lad--would read up the morning papers and write out “Larry Lynx’s
Latest” tips for the day--an event that happened ten or a dozen times
a month.
And, funnily enough, the office-boy’s tips were often more correct
than those given by our popular sporting editor!
So much for journalistic tipsters!
Though I am not a Roman Catholic, the late Cardinal Manning became a
very generous friend to me. One day he called on me at the _Globe_
office to enlist the paper in the cause of some charity. I took
it up, and in return His Eminence gave me the run of his private
library at the Archbishop’s house at Westminster. I often spent my
evenings there, and on several occasions the dear old soft-voiced
Cardinal came in and chatted to me about journalism and literature.
He afterwards gave me a letter of introduction to Cardinal Rampolla
at the Vatican, which was of the greatest use to me.
Here is a little story that will show the broadmindedness of His
Eminence.
A new Roman Catholic church was to be consecrated at Hounslow, and
with other representatives of the Press I journeyed down there one
very hot summer’s morning. I arrived late; the church was crowded to
overflowing, and the ceremony had started. I saw the impossibility of
sitting inside, so I stood by an open window and heard the beautiful
service.
Afterwards Father O’Sullivan, the resident priest, on coming out,
beckoned me over, and with three or four pressmen led me into his
house near by.
“You fellows will find some whiskey and glasses,” he said hurriedly,
his round face beaming. “After I’ve seen to the Cardinal I’ll join
you. Phew! The heat! You must all be just as thirsty as I am!”
And he closed the door. Beneath the table stood a big wicker-covered
jar of excellent Irish whiskey, and on a tray some glasses, so we
helped ourselves to the very welcome refreshment, and began to smoke.
Presently Father O’Sullivan joined us, and somebody told a good
story, which set us all laughing merrily as we stood around with our
glasses in our hands.
Of a sudden the door again opened, and His Eminence the Cardinal,
very feeble and frail, stood before us.
In an instant he took in the situation, and, laughing, said:
“Ah, gentlemen! I see that you are far better off than I am! I’m
thirsty too!”
“Will your Eminence take a glass of water?” asked the priest quickly.
“I must apologize that none was provided in your room!”
“No apology is needed,” the Cardinal assured him, smiling. “But I
really will take some water.”
So, laughing merrily at the situation, the famous Cardinal, who would
no doubt have been elected Pope had he lived, stood with us, sipping
his water, and chatting with us, while we drank our whiskey.
When he left, he remarked:
“I am very pleased, gentlemen, to see that Father O’Sullivan is
entertaining you so pleasantly.”
A few days later, when I saw him in his library, he mentioned the
incident, and, with a laugh, remarked:
“Though Father O’Sullivan forgot my water he didn’t forget his own
whiskey, did he?”
One morning I set out from Charing Cross for the city of Treves, on
the Moselle, in order to see and describe for the _Globe_, the Holy
Coat, which is exhibited in the ancient cathedral once every fifty
years.
I was alone as far as Brussels, but when changing trains, to go south
to Treves, I saw on the platform the burly figure of old George
Augustus Sala, the veteran travelling correspondent of the _Daily
Telegraph_.
“Hulloa, Le Queux!” he cried merrily. “Are you going to see this
confounded coat?”
I admitted that I was, and we travelled together all day. On our
arrival at Treves we found that it was quite impossible to obtain
beds, the whole place being filled with pilgrims from all over
Europe--an unwashed crowd that had arrived to see the relic of whose
authenticity I am not in a position to judge.
Tents had been erected all over the countryside and down the streets
of the old Roman town, and one could hardly get to the cathedral for
the dense throng.
We found vacant seats before what seemed to be the best café in the
place, and Sala at last had a private chat with the proprietor.
“I happen to be one of the honorary guardians of the Coat,” the man
said. “But, unfortunately for you journalists, the Bishop has to-day
given orders that no mere sightseers shall be allowed to enter the
cathedral.”
“Oh, then that settles it, Le Queux!” said Sala, fixing me with his
cross-eye. “We must become pilgrims.”
And pilgrims we became next day, for we both bought blue peasants’
blouses and caps, and with a rosary each, we together went in under
a big blue banner borne aloft by a pilgrimage from Metz. As Sala
chanted with seriousness, in his deep bass voice, it was all I could
do to keep a straight face. But we were the only journalists who got
in, and I recollect that my description published in the _Globe_ was
headed “The Holy Coat at Treves: By an Amateur Pilgrim.”
The editor of the _Kladderadatsch_, the _Punch_ of Berlin, copied
my article without giving me credit for being its author, and was
promptly sent to prison for six months for daring to call into
question the genuineness of a “holy” relic. And serve him right. I
did not hold, however, with a writer in the _Pall Mall_ who, a few
days afterwards, declared that a “holy pair of trousers” had been
discovered in a church in a village somewhere in Bohemia!
* * * * *
Among the many leading lights of the legal profession whom I met
during my journalistic days, I have pleasant recollections of Mr.
Justice Avory, Sir Archibald Bodkin, Lord Justice Scrutton--of
copyright knowledge, and a good friend of all authors; Sir Henry
Duke, who was at that time a journalist on the staff of the _Daily
Telegraph_; Sir Edward Marshall-Hall, K.C.; and also of my old
practical joking friend, Charles Gill, who afterwards rose to become
a King’s Counsel, Recorder of Chichester, Senior Counsel to the
Treasury, to the Bankers’ Association, and to the Jockey Club, as
well as a Bencher of the Middle Temple.
But at the time of the story I am about to relate we were both young,
and he was glad enough to earn a few guineas at police or county
courts. We had a mutual friend in a stout, highly-humorous solicitor
named George Lay, who practised mainly at the Brentford Police Court,
and, like Gill, was well known in London theatrical circles.
One day, during a General Election, I went down to the riverside town
of Staines, where a very hot contest was in progress. On the previous
night the parties in opposition had come to fisticuffs at a meeting.
Dixon-Hartland, the banker, was contesting the constituency in the
Conservative interest, and it seemed a foregone conclusion that he
would be re-elected.
I arrived at the Bridge House Hotel at Staines, about six o’clock,
and had ordered some dinner in readiness for the meeting at the
Town Hall at seven, when to my surprise in walked Charles Gill,
wearing his monocle, accompanied by George Lay. The local bench of
magistrates had been sitting, and both had been engaged in opposition
in a serious case of assault on a wife by a jealous husband.
They greeted me, and, as we sat down to dinner, inquired the reason
of my visit to Staines.
I told them, whereupon, after a brief silence, Gill made a suggestion.
“Look here, Lay,” he said, “why shouldn’t we stay and have a bit of
fun? We’ve been slanging each other all day. Why not let us continue?”
“How,” asked Lay, always ready for an adventure.
“Well, let’s go to this election meeting with Le Queux. You support
Dixon-Hartland, and I’ll take the part of the other Johnnie--what’s
his name? You sit in front and I’ll sit at the back, and we’ll create
some real trouble between us, eh?”
George Lay at once agreed.
We ate our dinner and went to the meeting. Lay sat in the second
row, with Gill far away at the back. The chairman made a comfortable
speech to a packed audience extolling the virtues of the candidate
who sat on the platform smiling down on his supporters.
All went quietly until Dixon-Hartland rose to speak. Gill allowed
him to make a few statements, and then, to everyone’s surprise, he
rose and loudly protested in his most forensic language against the
statement--something with regard to Ireland--and appealed to the
chairman and to the audience, causing a great sensation.
Whereupon George Lay rose, and, turning to the interrupter with a
flow of vituperation that could only be possessed by a brow-beating
police-court solicitor, inquired the name of “this gentleman, this
unknown outsider, who has come here to upset our meeting!”
That was a signal for a sharp quarrel between the pair. They shouted
at each other, both crimson with anger, and shook their fists
threateningly. They called each other nasty names, till the chairman,
with great difficulty, called them to order, and at last stopped the
uproar.
Then, all being quiet again, the candidate proceeded. But Gill
allowed him to go on for only about five minutes, when again he rose
to object. Again Lay jumped up, and again the pair attacked each
other with violence, cheered by one portion of the audience and
hissed by the other.
Four times was this repeated, till the audience at last took sides
with the objector and his opponent, and would no longer listen to the
candidate. The uproar became intense, the chairman became powerless,
the crowd got out of hand, chairs were smashed, and the meeting
broke up in terrible confusion. I myself narrowly escaped from an
infuriated partisan of the opposition candidate, who was flourishing
the leg of a broken table.
When I got outside I saw Gill standing on the step of the Town Hall
still haranguing the crowd.
Afterwards we all three took the last train from Staines to London,
and many a time we laughed over our joke.
Gill became more serious in his latter days. He was a member of the
committee appointed in 1918 to inquire into German war crimes, and he
worked very hard as a member of the sub-committee which was presided
over by the late Mr. Justice Peterson and which dealt with the
treatment of thousands of British prisoners of war in Germany.
From his position as counsel to the Jockey Club (of which he was also
an honorary member) it will be gathered that Gill was interested in
sport, and country pursuits were his principal relaxations from the
depressing labour of his profession. Following the tradition of the
Old Bailey, he was also a patron of the drama, and at one time was
often seen at first-night performances. He was a popular member of
the Turf, Garrick, Beefsteak, and other clubs.
* * * * *
One December morning I joined a big party headed by George Augustus
Sala, and including Bennett Burleigh, the war correspondent, Melton
Prior, the artist, and a number of kindred spirits of Fleet Street.
We met at Euston Station, having been invited by the Cambrian
Railways--I believe they were our hosts--to visit Barmouth, in North
Wales, and describe its advantages as a winter resort against the
then much-advertised Colwyn Bay.
We boarded a special train, which, after leaving Shrewsbury, stopped
frequently, and champagne was served at the station bars.
At Barmouth the Town Council met us, and put us into most comfortable
quarters at the Coes-y-Gedol Hotel. We were rather crowded, however,
and Sala and myself, being constant fellow-travellers over Europe in
those days, shared a room.
Sala wore his golf-cap in bed, I remember, just as Harry de Windt
invariably does. Only I have seen Harry in a _wagon-lit_ sleeping in
his bowler, for, curiously enough, the explorer is most fastidious
about draughts.
Well, on the night of our arrival at Barmouth the council of that
thriving watering-place, with its beautiful stretch of sands for
bathing, gave us a splendid banquet of welcome. The Mayor, the local
doctors, the Town Clerk, and other municipal officials told us of
its warm winter climate and of its hours of winter sunshine, which
were not eclipsed by those at St. Leonards or Bournemouth, and we sat
spoon-fed with the little town’s advantages.
We retired to bed full of Barmouth and its coming winter life.
Sala, as he threw off his braces, said:
“By Heaven, Le Queux, according to the city fathers this place must
be equal in warmth to Palermo or Algiers. Winter sunshine! I don’t
see much sign of it, eh? I’m horribly cold!” and with a shiver he
cast a glance with his blind eye towards me and soon dived into bed.
Next morning when we rubbed our eyes and looked out of the window the
ground was deeply covered with snow! It snowed all day--and the next!
Those who had invited us naturally grew alarmed. They wondered what
we would say.
George Augustus Sala on the second afternoon called an informal
committee meeting in the smoking-room of the hotel, at which most of
us were present.
“Look here, you fellows,” he said bluntly, “these people have done us
very well, haven’t they? They can’t help the snow. They can help it
at Colwyn Bay, where their weather report says it is always sunshine.
Now I put it to the vote, for we are all of us sportsmen. Shall we
tell the truth--or shall we lie? Now--the truth? Hands up!”
Not a hand was raised.
“Lies--artistic ones?” he asked, with his cocked eye glancing at the
door in fear of any outsider intruding.
Every hand went up.
“The lies have it!” he answered, and the lies did have it. You have
only to search the files of the London daily newspapers on the
following day to read what gloriously bright sunshine and blue skies
reigned at Barmouth during the visit of the London Press!
Probably journalists may object to the revelation of such secrets,
but, after all, the town of Barmouth had, in a perfectly justifiable
bid for winter prosperity, spent so much money on our entertainment
that we all agreed that we had been placed in a most difficult
position by the clerk of the weather.
And in journalism the truth is, after all, not always welcome. If
everyone suddenly became candid concerning his neighbour, this would
indeed be an uncomfortable world.
But there was a _dénouement_ of my story. One of my assistants on the
_Globe_ knew what had happened. It was his duty to check the reports
each morning from the Meteorological Office. He waited his time till
about a fortnight later snow was reported at Colwyn Bay. He promptly
replaced the word “fine” by “snow.” And he left the word “snow”
against Colwyn Bay for weeks and weeks, notwithstanding the protests
of readers at that North Wales resort.
When I protested, he said:
“Well, Colwyn Bay can’t have it all its own way. It has been sunny at
Barmouth each day for the past few weeks, so why can’t we give Colwyn
Bay a bit of snow?”
In May he changed the word opposite Colwyn Bay to “unsettled,”
whereat the municipal authorities and hotel-keepers grew furious,
and wrote some most uncomplimentary letters.
With the modern press-agent I have no patience. He is paid to
exaggerate to the public the mediocre and magnify the unworthy person
into a genius. He is a product of our present age of advertising.
Given a financial backing your press-agent of to-day--clever and
subtle in his paragraphs, I grant--can accomplish miracles in the
social standing of his clients, be they the _nouveau riche_, the
pretty chorus girl, the budding artist, the writer, or the crook.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Among Editors and Publishers--The Hiding Place of King
Solomon’s Treasures--An Amazing Story which Puzzled Dr.
Adler, the Chief Rabbi--Adventures in Novel-Writing--Mr.
Asquith and the Editor--A Special Correspondent’s
Humour--Sir George Newnes and I Play at Cross Purposes--The
Great _Tit-Bits_ Treasure Hunt and its Humours--The Man
Who Found the Secret of the World’s Origin--_Pearson’s_
and Their Brilliant Staff--Percy Everett Compels the
Author of _If Winter Comes_ to Destroy a Wasps’ Nest--The
Editor of _Pearson’s Magazine_ has a Most Humiliating
Experience--Stories of Writers.
At first the publishers were not exactly kind to me.
I wrote my first novel, _Guilty Bonds_, on my return from Russia,
where I had been on a special mission for _The Times_, the country
then being under the Emperor Alexander, and people were being exiled
wholesale to Siberia without any charge being made against them.
The story sold well, for, coincident with _Called Back_, it was
one of the first novels that described Russia under the Tzars. It
was afterwards dramatized. My old friend Joseph Hatton wrote _By
Order of the Tzar_! and had it published with a significant yellow
ticket inside, the public to this day never dreaming that it was the
colour of the passport issued to every Jewess, of whatever station,
proclaiming her to be a woman of ill-fame!
Feeling success assured, I went to the Great Sahara with the
Dubois Expedition, and on returning wrote _Zoraida_ and _The Great
War_. Because George Griffith--who had written _The Angel of the
Revolution_--induced me, I gave both these books to the Tower
Publishing Company.
They produced them well. Coulson Kernahan, my oldest literary friend,
then reader to Ward & Lock; Sir Robertson Nicoll--to whom I owe much
of my success; W. E. Henley, Clement Shorter; Norman Gale; Douglas
Sladen, and Davenport Adams--of the black velvet jacket--all declared
my success to be assured.
I had then given up journalism and was living in a cosy little flat
at the Magnan end of the Promenade des Anglais at Nice, going up
in July and August to the Pyrenees to escape the great heat on the
Riviera.
I trod on air and worked hard; but imagine my dismay and
disappointment when, at the moment I expected to receive a
substantial cheque for the royalties on both books, which were
selling by thousands, I received a formal letter from a bankruptcy
official to say that the Tower Publishing Company had failed, and
that I should not only get nothing from my two years of labour,
but that the copyrights had been bought by a well-known firm of
publishers, and passed out of my hands! Such was the law in those
days. I had, in my youthful enthusiasm, toiled for two years for
nothing!
That was over thirty years ago, and to-day, as I write, _Zoraida_
has just begun as “a great new Le Queux serial” in an Irish daily
newspaper!
Could any man experience a greater set-back?
I went to my old friend A. P. Watt, the literary agent, who was just
then commencing business in Paternoster Row, and he introduced me to
various publishers.
Sir George Hutchinson and Alfred Spencer, his partner, F. V. White,
who was publishing _Belgravia_ and John Strange Winter’s novels;
Newman Flower, who had just come to Cassell’s; Fisher Unwin, who
later sought me in Florence; and Eveleigh Nash, all became my firmest
friends, and remain so to-day. I also got to know intimately Stanley
Paul, the burly giant who, alas! has had ill-health of late years,
W. L. Courtney, Israel Zangwill, Sir Ernest Hodder-Williams, whom
everyone congratulated on his well-earned title, and the irascible
old George Newnes and his kindly son, Sir Frank.
Then, later, I met such outstanding men as Lord Riddell, Sir Edward
Hulton, James Heddle, and William Lees, who had just graduated from
Thomson’s of Dundee to the fiction department of the _Daily Sketch_.
With the belief that publishers are often pilferers of one’s
royalties I do not agree.
With the exception of the Tower Publishing Company--which let George
Griffith and myself down so very badly--I have never met a firm who
would descend to “cook” an author’s accounts. I hold in respect
every firm with whom I have had business dealings, both here and in
America--where, because of curious copyright laws, the temptation to
steal is certainly open. Even the good continental firms are always
fair and above-board.
I have many pleasant recollections of my editor and publisher
friends, not only in London, but also in Paris, Milan, and New York.
But to the aspiring author I would say a word of warning regarding
the firms who publish books on commission. If a book is not worth the
publisher’s risk it certainly is not worth the author’s, no matter
how tempting the terms offered.
A mysterious affair, which remains a mystery to this day, is known
only to myself, although both Sir C. Arthur Pearson and my dear
friend, Dr. Adler, the Chief Rabbi, both now dead, knew of it.
One day, during the five years I lived at the Hotel Cecil, a waiter
brought me a card bearing the name of Broström, with an address in
Stockholm. A tall, middle-aged, clean-shaven Swede was ushered in,
and handed me a letter of introduction from a friend, a certain
Baroness Ernberg, who is one of the leaders of Society in the
Swedish capital.
This letter explained that my visitor was a well-known civil engineer
in Sweden, that he was highly trustworthy, and that he had a very
curious disclosure to make to me.
We sat down, and certainly what he told me caused my eyes to bulge.
Briefly, it was that a friend of his, a certain Professor Afzelius,
at Abö University, had discovered in the original text of the Book
of Ezekiel preserved in the Imperial Library at Petrograd a cipher
message that gave the whereabouts of the concealed treasures from
King Solomon’s temple.
At first I was inclined to laugh, but he assured me that he wished
for no money, only my influence and support to induce a London
newspaper to take up the matter and send out an expedition to
Jerusalem to explore.
“I will leave these papers with you,” he said. “I daresay you do not
know Hebrew, but if you will submit them to any good Hebrew scholar I
think you will find that he will be much interested.” And he rose and
left.
I thought of my old friend Dr. Adler, Chief Rabbi, and that same day
I called and left the papers, he promising to go through them, but
expressing an honest scepticism.
Three days later, when I called, he admitted that he had gone through
them with his distinguished brother, and that there was certainly
something in them very curious and intensely interesting to Hebrew
scholars. It was his opinion that the matter should certainly be
further investigated. Indeed, he seemed highly excited over the whole
matter.
In consequence, I called on another old friend, Sir C. Arthur
Pearson, then proprietor of the _Standard_, put the matter before
him and suggested the sending out of an expedition to Palestine to
explore. To this he most generously acceded, and an initial sum was
agreed between us for its cost. I was to head the expedition to
Palestine.
That afternoon I walked along the Strand full of suppressed
excitement. I was to search for the treasure of Solomon!
I called Mr. Broström on the telephone, and when he arrived at the
hotel I announced the joyful news, and the amount placed at my
disposal for the equipment of the expedition.
But, to my utter amazement, he replied:
“To-day I have had a telegram from my friend Afzelius, in Abö, and,
though I thank you, we have decided not to carry our investigations
any further.”
He left me, and he has never since been seen in London.
Dr. Adler admitted that the papers in Hebrew I placed before him
contained something extraordinary. And it certainly seems apparent
that there is some curious hidden message in the earliest manuscript
of Ezekiel. Can any reader solve the mystery why the discoverers so
suddenly withdrew? I cannot.
The curious incident gave me the idea for my novel, _Treasure of
Israel_.
My recollections of editors are many. Here is one.
The day that H. H. Asquith was appointed Home Secretary I met
Lincoln Springfield (now the editor of that gay and flippant paper
_London Opinion_) at one of those many cheerful resorts that the
town no longer knows--Romano’s Bar, and Springfield pretended to be
broken-hearted over Mr. Asquith’s appointment. “Asquith would be
delighted to refuse to reprieve me were the occasion ever to arrive,”
said L. S., and when I asked him what Asquith had against him my
friend related this incident.
At the Parnell Commission, when Asquith was Sir Charles Russell’s
junior, he used to sit next Springfield, who, with T. P. O’Connor and
H. W. Massingham, reported the trial for the _Star_. Asquith and
Springfield had many an idle hour’s gossip together during the many
months of that trial. Stock Exchange flutters arising among other
topics, the journalist communicated to the barrister the fact that
a certain company, the White Lead Co., Ltd., was to be floated, and
was for a day or two to be rushed up to a substantial premium. Both
decided to improve their bank balances by venturing to the extent
of a hundred shares. Springfield the instant he got his allotment,
sold his hundred at a profit of £70 or £80, and forgot about the
matter. But Asquith had not grasped the necessity of seizing a rapid
profit, and in a week or two the engineered premium ran off into a
huge discount, and Asquith lost the major part of his £100 flutter.
This was no joke to Asquith in those early struggling days. Hence
Springfield’s mock fear of reprisals on the part of Mr. Secretary
Asquith.
“Lincoln” is an unusual Christian name, but it is not unique. Some
years ago there appeared in the Divorce Court a co-respondent named
Lincoln Jefferson. Dear old Harry Fenn, the Divorce Court reporter,
got to thinking of Lincoln Springfield as he wrote his report,
and he inadvertently recorded the co-respondent’s name as Lincoln
Springfield Jefferson. Thus it appeared in the _Daily Telegraph_.
Springfield was on the _Pall Mall Gazette_ in those days, and his
colleague there, Charlie Hands--afterwards the special correspondent
of the _Daily Mail_--cut out the report. He deleted the name
Jefferson by carefully sticking over it a piece of white paper that
rendered the deletion imperceptible, thus making the report declare
that the co-respondent was Lincoln Springfield. This doctored report
Charlie Hands hung up on the wall of one of the _Pall Mall’s_
editorial rooms, having first headed it “Serpent Springfield: How a
Man May Have Curly Hair and Yet Be a Villain.” He had barely fixed
it on the wall when Mr. Springfield’s wife called at the office, and
could not be restrained from reading the report. It took five hectic
minutes to restore Springfield’s unsullied reputation.
Charles Terry, the blue-eyed sportsman, beloved of every bookman and
publisher, and who has had quite as varied an experience as myself, I
first met when he was proprietor of R. H. Everett & Son, publishers.
He had then been manager of the London Opera House, and later became
manager of the book department of Messrs. Odhams Limited. He tells a
good story about books.
A few months ago, having prepared the balance sheet of his
department, he was chatting with Mr. Elias, managing director of the
firm of Odhams.
“Terry,” said Elias, “Mr. Harris, our chief accountant, says that
your accounts are extremely clear and well kept. You must be a jolly
good book-keeper.”
Terry, who began life as an accountant, was rather flattered, and
admitted that he knew a good deal about book-keeping.
“Yes, I thought so,” replied Elias. “But we want you to _sell books_,
not to _keep them_!”
Each time I enter the great offices of George Newnes Limited I
recollect the first day I put my foot across that threshold.
For about three years I had constantly contributed to the then
newly-established _Tit-Bits_, but had never seen its founder, George
Newnes. Being back in England, it struck me that I might venture to
call. So I did.
I gave my name, waited a few moments in the waiting-room, and
presently was ushered into the presence of the bluff, outspoken man
who, in common with other Lancashire men, had come to London by sheer
perseverance and hard grit.
But his reception of me! Well, it was so hostile that I stood
staggered in wonder as he paced up and down his fine, airy room,
denouncing me, and heaping on my head all sorts of vituperations.
At last I managed to get in a few feeble words.
“I really don’t understand you, Mr. Newnes.”
“Understand me! Can’t you hear?” he cried excitedly. “Don’t you
understand that you’ve done more harm to the firm than anybody else
has ever done?”
“Perhaps I have, but I’ve been paid for it,” I replied meekly.
“Paid? Who’s paid you?”
“The firm,” I replied.
“The firm paid you!” he cried, glaring at me. “Are you mad? What do
you mean? This firm has paid you to do what you’ve done against me?”
I stood aghast.
Then I calmly turned to the door to go.
“No, you shan’t,” he cried. “We must have all this out. I won’t stand
it from you--or anybody else!”
“But there is nothing to have out, Mr. Newnes,” I said quite calmly.
“All the contributions I have made to your journals you have invited
and paid for.”
“Contributions? What the devil do you mean?”
“Well, you have published a good many under my name--William Le
Queux.”
“Good God! Are you Le Queux?”
“Certainly,” I said. “Who do you think I am?”
“Why, I understood that you were that cursed swindler H----, who let
me down so badly over some paper!”
The lad who had ushered me in had an impediment in his speech, so he
had understood that I was “Mr. H----”--hence his violent anger.
We laughed, shook hands, and ever afterwards he was my firm friend.
Soon after that incident I wrote for _Tit-Bits_ a serial, called _The
Tickencote Treasure_, and it aroused in the young men of the office
the idea of a real treasure-hunt. Golden sovereigns in iron tubes
were sunk into the ground at night, in odd places, by people who
travelled in motor-cars up and down the country.
A real treasure-hunt began. I believe Sir Frank Newnes, son and heir
of the late Sir George, was in the forefront of that new excitement.
Excitement! If you sent a postcard to your local paper that the
treasure was sure to be buried in Such-and-Such road, those who lived
in the road would find, ere it was light next morning, a gang of
people of all ages, digging up every front garden and casting great
bushes out on the pavements in their frenzied efforts to discover the
hidden sovereigns.
The hunt grew so fierce at last that somebody dug beneath a
telegraph-pole, on the Great North Road, near Hitchin, and tossed it
over, thus interrupting the whole telegraph communications with the
North of England. The Government remonstrated, and the merry game was
stopped. But while it lasted it was full of fun.
The Marquis of Exeter, whose lordly mansion, “Burghley House by
Stamford town” is described by Tennyson in his “Lord of Burghley,”
helped me to write _The Tickencote Treasure_. The little hamlet of
Tickencote is on his estate, and there has long been a legend that
great treasure is buried on one of the farms.
The Marquis helped me in my attempt to locate it, but, alas! we dug
without avail. However, we had many merry days over it, and the
Marchioness gallantly assisted us.
Only a few weeks before writing these lines, I lunched at the Reform
Club with my friend Mr. W. Grierson, who to-day so ably conducts
the great House of Newnes, and who, besides being a most successful
business man, is also a clever editor. He told me a typical story of
the troubles of publishers, who with authors do not always see eye to
eye.
“I had a funny letter during the publication of _The Outline of
Science_,” he said. “After the appearance in serial form of the
second part I had a letter from a correspondent earnestly begging me
‘to hold up publication till I heard further from him.’ He had just
discovered ‘the secret of the origin of the world.’ In a few days
he would send his article, in which ‘everything would be explained
and the _face of modern science would be entirely changed_.’ The
fact that this man’s masterpiece has not yet seen the light of day
only provides one more illustration of the short-sightedness of
publishers, and how slow we are to recognize originality!”
In the whole world of publishing there is no man with a more open
mind than Grierson. When I edited _The War of the Nations_ I was many
times annoyed by the way in which he mutilated my manuscript. Once I
remonstrated.
He smiled at me across the table, and said:
“Le Queux, you are an author. You know your subject and write with
authority. But it is my job to keep my fingers on the pulse of the
public, the readers of all our papers and magazines. I try and gauge
what they desire to read, and I provide it for them. Will you forgive
me?”
To gauge the taste of the public is indeed a hard task.
In the long years of authorship I have sometimes half-heartedly
executed commissions from publishers, when, to my surprise, my
work has met with great and instant success. At others, when I am
enthusiastic over an idea or the plot of a novel, I am frequently
doomed to disappointment.
Why? Who can tell the real reason of a book’s or a play’s success?
I have written much for the House of Pearson--in fact, continuously
from the day it was established to the present.
Peter Keary, who was partner with Sir C. A. Pearson, was a close
friend of mine from the first publication of _Pearson’s Weekly_ to
the day of his untimely death. He was a clever editor, and a shrewd
business man, with a keen sense of humour. We often spent a night in
town together. His bosom friend was Mr. George Griffith, who wrote
_The Angel of the Revolution_, and other notable books, and who held
the record for going round the world (before the construction of the
Siberian Railway) in seventy-one and a half days.
One day Keary invited F. V. White, the publisher, Griffith, and
myself to dine at his house on Wimbledon Common, and we all went down
together.
Before dinner Keary said:
“I’ve got a new game to show you fellows. It’s quite simple.”
He took us out upon the lawn, where he put up cricket stumps.
“Now,” he said, “we put a shilling on each stump and the one who
knocks them off gets the shillings. Quite simple.”
We all three bowled, but had no luck, yet Keary--whom we afterwards
found was a very good cricketer--knocked off the shillings each
time either of us tried to bat. I believe it cost us about thirty
shillings each before we went in to dinner.
At table Keary turned to us and said:
“I told Everett that I meant you chaps to pay for your dinners!”
I remember that White was very annoyed.
Percy W. Everett, to whom he referred, is now head of Pearson’s,
and has also been a friend of mine for many years. He is a cheery,
merry-eyed man of untiring energy, and impervious to fatigue.
A few weeks ago, while chatting with him at the dinner of the
Crimes Club, of which he is a fellow-member, he told me of a most
humiliating experience he once had. He said:
“I remember very well how one day a short, good-looking, apparently
harmless gentleman strolled into my office, and began to talk
to me of a science of which nothing was then known in this
country--ju-jitsu. He explained how the weakest man who understood
the science could overcome the strongest man who knew nothing about
it. In the interests of truth, and to find out if my visitor were
really qualified to write an article on this subject, I challenged
him to prove his words. The next moment I was on my back on the
floor. I was allowed to rise again, but a simple though deadly grip
with but two fingers was responsible for an immediate and very
undignified editorial somersault. A most painful quarter of an hour
ensued. One by one, with fiendish science, my visitor subjected the
joints of every part of my body from head to toe to strains that,
as it proved, they were anatomically unable to resist. I suffered
every kind of known agony. But the result was that I obtained for
_Pearson’s Magazine_ a series of articles on ju-jitsu that created a
world-wide sensation.”
A. S. M. Hutchinson, author of _If Winter Comes_, tells an amusing
story of Everett, who was his chief in the days when he was editor of
_The Royal Magazine_, a post now filled by that writer of delightful
short stories, F. E. Baily.
It seems that one Saturday night Percy Everett, who, by the way, is
an outdoor man, and takes very long walks, even as far as Brighton,
invited Hutchinson down to his home at Elstree, as he intended that
night to destroy a wasps’ next. The nest, since it was under some
thick bushes, was difficult of access, and Hutchinson’s task was to
creep in on his hands and knees in the dark to pour paraffin into
the hole. It was a job that required considerable care and pluck,
for Everett, standing behind striking matches, told him that wasps
always kept a sentinel outside their nest, both by day and night and
asked him if he could “spot” him. He couldn’t, as he is near-sighted.
Everett was crouching behind him blocking the way out, and every
moment Hutchinson expected the whole swarm to attack him.
In telling the story he said:
“However, by the mercy of Providence the sentinel wasp was not up
to his work that night, and I squirted down my paraffin and backed
out praising heaven. Everett applied the match (I will say that much
for him) and I got as far away as I could in the darkness and stayed
there.”
Hutchinson also told me, referring to his early days on the _Royal
Magazine_, that:
“The thrill of the Israelites when entering the Promised Land was
a torpid yawn compared to my sensations as I first walked into
Pearson’s.”
Writing of Hutchinson, the present editor of the _Royal_ says:
“Hutchinson I remember as a tremendous worker. I can see him still at
a roll-top desk, working on doggedly amid a cloud of tobacco smoke,
turning out page after page in his careful, fastidious handwriting.
This careless world seldom takes temperament into account, preferring
to measure the ox-like type and highly-strung person of creative
imagination by a general rule of thumb. Nevertheless, the price of
success is a great deal higher to the second than to the first, for
he lives on his nerves, and his masterpieces are literally written
with his heart’s blood.”
Another ex-member of the Pearson staff is C. W. Shepherd, now editor
of the _Northern Newspaper Syndicate_. He told me the other day a
good story concerning John Hassall, the well-known artist. At the
time he was under Everett on the editorial staff of _Pearson’s_,
they were publishing an article on the influence of colour in daily
life, and he went to see one or two eminent people to get their
views--including Lady Duff-Gordon on dress and John Hassall on
art. He had a cheerful chat with Hassall in his studio, and, after
discussing various colours, he asked him what he would call the best
tonic colour. “The colour of a good port wine,” said he. “That is
why one instinctively holds up a glass of port to the light,” Some
spirit of mischief prompted Shepherd to try and trip him up. “But
surely,” he said, “you do the same with a bottle of Bass?” “Ah!” said
Hassall, as quick as lightning, “but that’s to see if there’s any
cork in it.”
My friend D. M. Sutherland, editor of the _Pall Mall Gazette_,
tells a good journalistic story of the great Horace Greeley, whose
handwriting was so bad that at one time there was only one compositor
in the office in New York who could set up his copy. This man seemed
to his fellows unduly puffed up by this fact.
One day, while the super-compositor was out, a bird that had flown
into the office walked into some printing ink and then on to a number
of loose sheets lying on the floor.
“Why,” said one of the printers, picking up a sheet, “this looks like
the old man’s writing.” So saying, he fastened the sheets together
and put them on the absent compositor’s case.
Presently the compositor came back, and, with all eyes turned on
him, picked up the sheets, and to the amazement of the room started
setting up the supposed “copy.” Presently, however, he jibbed at a
word and asked the man nearest him what it was.
“How should I know?” was the reply. “You know that you alone can read
the old man’s writing. Better ask him.”
Reluctantly the baffled compositor took the sheet to Greeley’s
sanctum.
“Well,” grunted the great man, “what is it?”
“It’s this word, Mr. Greeley,” stammered the man.
Greeley snatched the sheet from the man’s hand, looked at the alleged
word, and threw himself back with a snort of disgust.
“Why,” he shouted, “any fool could see what it is! It’s
unconstitutional!”
Stanley Paul, the publisher, tells a delightful story of a certain
well-known cosmopolitan writer. He says, “Returning from a trip to
the Gay City my friend (who is popularly known as ‘the master of
mystery’) asked me how I had enjoyed myself. I replied that I had
had a good time, and mentioned some of the gay places I had visited.
In his turn he sighed, and said that nowadays he never had time to
explore the modern Montmartre. In order to test the soundness of
this statement I referred to one notorious place, quietly stating
as a joke that I was very surprised to see the author’s caricature
by a well-known French artist adorning the walls, when the latter
exclaimed with much agitation, ‘Hush! No! No! No!’ I said, ‘Ah! I
wondered whether you had ever been there!’”
Mr. W. L. Courtney once referred to publishers as a “timid race of
men,” but are they also absent-minded? A story is told concerning
Stanley Paul, when he started business in Clifford’s Inn, and was
at the time prominent on the executive of several athletic clubs,
whose headquarters were at the Argyll Hotel. One day, when absorbed
in the prospect of a London-to-Brighton walk, which was then one of
Paul’s hobbies, the office-boy said a gentleman wanted to see him.
Asked who it was, he said he wasn’t sure, but he thought it was
“Argle,” and Mr. Paul, thinking of a “gentleman” he sometimes saw at
headquarters, decided to be “out” and couldn’t be seen till after
6 p.m. The gentleman left. Next day the correspondence contained a
very courteous note from His Grace the late Duke of Argyll, asking if
it would be possible for Mr. Stanley Paul to see him at Kensington
Palace in connection with his memoirs, _Intimate Society Letters of
the Eighteenth Century_, which Mr. Paul had previously commissioned
for publication.
Mrs. M. Chester ffoulkes, the well-known authoress--who, by the way,
was at one time private secretary to Douglas Sladen--once told me
how, while collaborating with Lord Rossmore, who was writing his
reminiscences, they quarrelled desperately. It was a case of Dr.
Fell with them both, all the time. But when the book was published
Lord Rossmore invited the popular Maude to lunch one Sunday at the
Stud House, Hampton Court, and in front of his assembled guests
presented her with a platinum and coral necklet.
“Isn’t it a nice present, Maudie?” remarked his lordship.
Mrs. ffoulkes took the necklet and replied pensively, “Yes, it is
very pretty--a clear case of ‘After Battles--Rewards’” (the motto of
the Rossmores).
It was Lord Rossmore who, when speaking to Mrs. ffoulkes about a
certain publisher whom most people will recognize, remarked:
“But, damn it! the fellow is a gentleman! I thought a publisher was
always a shopkeeper. It is the accepted idea!”
“Well,” replied Maude, “the accepted idea of a nobleman is that he is
a gentleman, but it’s often wrong, isn’t it?”
Lord Rossmore was compelled to agree.
In the Bath Club the other day I heard a good story concerning my
old friend David Whitelaw, the well-known editor of the _London_
and _Premier_ magazines. He was walking one hot afternoon last year
on Brighton Pier with Herman Finck, the composer of so many popular
orchestral pieces, and as they passed the bandstand the orchestra,
under Captain Amers, was playing “In the Shadows.”
The irrepressible David complimented Herman on hearing his own
composition played to the pleasure of the great assembly of summer
idlers. To be polite, Herman Finck bet Whitelaw a level shilling
that if they continued their walk they would discover somebody
reading one of his novels. Whitelaw accepted, and together the
pair strolled along eagerly scanning every book or paper that
the seaside girls and fellows were reading. Every author except
David seemed to be represented on that drowsy summer afternoon,
beside the lazily-lapping waves. The well-known novelist-editor had
almost given up hope when suddenly Finck pointed out a very old and
shabby gentleman in steel-rimmed spectacles seated in one of the
pier-shelters. On his lap was a cheap edition of _The Little Hour of
Peter Wells_. But the old fellow was fast asleep!
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Criminals I Have Met--Sarah Bernhardt Introduces Me to Madame
Humbert of the Humbert Millions--The Pale-faced Cripple
who was a Jewel Thief--I Meet Pietro Rossi, who Murdered
the Baroness di Vinadio--I am Suspected of being his
Accomplice!--Delloye, the Paris Bank-clerk, who Worked at
His Desk by Day, and Posed as a Millionaire at Night--My
Pretty Friend Gabrielle Sohet--What M. Paul Deschanel,
President of the Republic, Thought of Delloye.
In the course of my wanderings up and down Europe, searching for
local colour and fresh ideas for my novels, and at the same time
continuing to act as secret agent of Great Britain, I have mixed with
all sorts and conditions of persons, both in the _haut monde_ and in
the underworld of the great cities.
Who goes spying must often keep queer company, associating with
swindlers, adventurers, _escrocs_, and undesirables of all sorts.
The criminal world is at least exciting. To a student of crime and
its psychology it is, of course, of intense interest. As one of the
oldest members of the Crimes Club of London--to which I have referred
in the chapter on my adventures in club-land--I have always taken an
especial interest in the criminally inclined. Curiously enough, I
seem to possess a magnetic attraction for criminals! Why, I cannot
imagine.
In the years that I have drifted about the smart continental hotels
I have had some strange and sometimes exciting experiences. Some of
these adventures I have, I confess, recorded in my romances, thereby
turning truth into fiction.
I well recollect one day being at lunch with Madame Sarah
Bernhardt--who was my friend through more than thirty years--at her
beautiful house in the Avenue Pereire, in Paris. The Divine Sarah,
in that sweet, musical voice of hers, introduced me then to a short,
stout, rather overdressed Frenchwoman, whose name I did not catch,
but whose manner was that of a _grande dame_. We chatted together in
the big salon, where with us were, among others, two of my oldest
friends, Madame Zola and Paul Deschanel, who afterwards became
President of the French Republic.
The stout lady was telling me that she had rented a summer château
in Brittany, somewhere near Quimperle, and that she and her husband
were leaving Paris in a month’s time. Before we parted she gave me
her card, and expressed a hope that I would call and join one of her
Wednesday evening parties. As I took her card I saw that her name was
Humbert.
Acting on her invitation, I found that she lived in a magnificent
mansion in the Avenue de la Grande Armée. Her salon was filled
by smartly-gowned _mondaines_, Senators, Deputies, and financial
magnates.
My hostess, in a magnificent black gown, with a wonderful necklace of
pearls, greeted me effusively, and introduced me to the attractive
daughter of Monsieur Lebaudy, the great sugar-refiner. Not till I
began to chat with my charming little friend did I identify the name
of my hostess, Madame Humbert, with the romantic story of the safe
that contained nearly four million pounds, and which by the terms of
a will she was forbidden to open.
That evening I was shown the huge dark-green safe, which stood in the
corner of a small room at the back of the house, the two keyholes
being covered with great seals of red wax.
As a novelist that locked safe interested me.
The mystery of the marvellous fraud of the Humbert millions may be
half forgotten, therefore I will venture to refresh the reader’s
memory. Thérèse Daurignac, a rather plain country girl, daughter of
an evil-living old fellow of Bauzelles, near Toulouse, who claimed to
be Count d’Aurignac, was often shown by her father an old oak chest.
He was fond of telling her that it would, on being opened after his
death, be found to contain documents that should bring her a great
fortune and place her among the highest in France.
This impressed the girl, and no doubt turned her head, till she
became one of the greatest adventuresses in French history. When her
father died the chest was found to be empty! But in the meantime
Thérèse kept up her father’s fiction. My friend, Mr. Barry Richmond,
in a very able review of the case, says that among the wealthy folk
in the neighbourhood who befriended the Daurignacs was the Humbert
family, consisting of M. Gustave and Mme. Humbert and their son
Frédéric. M. Gustave Humbert was Mayor of the district, a Senator,
and a person of considerable distinction. Thérèse Daurignac’s first
connection with this family was humble enough, she being employed as
a washerwoman by old Mme. Humbert.
But the girl had her eyes open to eventualities, and she laid herself
out to attract the attentions of M. Humbert’s son Frédéric, a law
student. She contrived to surround herself with the air of mystery
and romance that by a twist she gave to the legend of the Daurignac
fortune. It impressed people, even the Humberts.
M. Gustave Humbert and his wife took up their residence in Paris,
leaving Frédéric behind to pursue his law studies at Toulouse. It
was Thérèse’s great chance, and she seized it. The Humbert parents
shortly afterwards learned with mortification that their son was
determined to marry his mother’s ex-washerwoman. The marriage took
place in spite of all their objections, which were considerable, for
Gustave Humbert was rising to the head of his profession, and was
shortly to become Minister of Justice.
For two or three years the woman lived as an adventuress,
when suddenly the Senator announced to his friends that his
daughter-in-law had inherited an enormous fortune.
At first the amount of Mme. Humbert’s inheritance was given out as
£80,000, but gossip increased it to £800,000, and finally it was
popularly credited with being £4,000,000. That was the amount that
Madame Sarah Bernhardt mentioned to me. The Humberts very cleverly
accepted this gratuitous estimate, and £4,000,000 remained for twenty
years the figure of the mythical fortune.
Details were soon forthcoming to substantiate the story.
According to Mme. Humbert, she was travelling on the Ceinture
Railway one afternoon soon after her marriage when she heard groans
proceeding from the compartment next her own. She climbed to it along
the footboard, entered, and found an old man suffering great agony.
She undid his collar, assisted him as best she could, and by the time
the train reached Paris he had sufficiently recovered to leave the
station without further help. Before he departed he made a careful
note of his benefactress’s name and address, and told her that he was
an American, called Robert Henry Crawford. This was the story all
Paris knew.
It was not long after the railway incident that, declared Mme.
Humbert, she received a copy of the old man’s will. He had died at
Nice, leaving a fortune of £4,000,000 to be divided between Mme.
Humbert and his two nephews on certain extraordinary conditions.
One-third of the £4,000,000 was left to his nephew, Robert Crawford;
one-third to Henry Crawford; and the rest to Marie Daurignac,
Thérèse’s sister, who was still a child at school. Out of the
inheritance the three legatees were to pay Mme. Humbert £14,400 per
annum.
It was on no firmer basis than this extravagant invention that,
says Mr. Barry Richmond, Mme. Humbert for the next twenty years was
enabled to borrow sums amounting to about £3,000,000, to live the
life of a _grande dame_, and to ruin thousands of people in all
classes of French society.
But soon Thérèse showed the touch of genius that lifted her
complicated series of frauds far beyond the level of an ordinary
commonplace swindle. She invented an interminable lawsuit over the
will, and in a few months’ time, with the help of her husband (and,
as many people believed, of Gustave Humbert), piled up a huge mass of
legal procedure that not even the lawyers could unravel.
The mythical Crawfords pleaded (through counsel, of course) against
Thérèse. They lost cases and won them, appealed and were appealed
against, paid heavy fees to famous lawyers, and wrote countless
letters of instructions. This sort of thing went on for years, and
to the ordinary mind it was proof positive of the Crawford brothers’
existence. Phantoms do not engage in long and costly lawsuits.
It never seems to have occurred to anyone that Mme. Humbert was
running both sides of the affair, that she was plaintiff as well as
defendant, and defendant as well as plaintiff, that she was inspiring
all the legal attacks made on her by the supposed Crawfords.
There, in the Humberts’ magnificent mansion in the Avenue de la
Grande Armée, for all to see, stood the famous locked safe containing
the £4,000,000.
It was when Madame Humbert was at the height of her success that
Madame Sarah Bernhardt introduced me to her. Her father-in-law’s
position as French Minister of Justice had, besides serving to induce
confidence in his daughter-in-law’s pretentions, gave her the
_entrée_ to the best Parisian society. Thérèse, the ex-washerwoman,
had now become a _grande dame_, and was living on credit on a scale
that no other swindler has ever approached. She was surely the queen
of _escrocs_. She and her husband Frédéric Humbert entertained
lavishly. How well I recollect those wonderful nights in her great
flower-decked salons, where I usually met Zola and his wife and
other French celebrities in art, the drama, and diplomacy. The most
prominent members of Parisian society considered it the height of
_chic_ and popularity to be photographed in company with their host
and hostess, either at the races or at one of the country châteaux
that the Humberts had bought and in which they constantly had smart
house-parties.
The cleverness of that arch-adventuress has never been equalled.
Financiers crowded about her and offered loans, while she exhibited
to any sceptical persons big piles of letters purporting to be from
the Crawfords, together with voluminous correspondence concerning the
lawsuits that ever and anon cropped up concerning her inheritance.
Madame’s extravagance naturally necessitated a great deal of money,
and at last a woman who was her rival in Society, a certain Madame
Guilbert, set about rumours concerning the famous safe. People began
to hesitate before they made loans, and slowly but surely the great
Action so cleverly built up by twenty years of double-dealing was
brought to a dramatic _dénouement_.
I remember a certain night when, walking past the Madeleine with Zola
and a lawyer friend of his, the latter told us that Waldeck-Rousseau,
the famous lawyer, who had been acting for one of Madame Humbert’s
creditors, had been making very careful investigations, and had
arrived at the conclusion that the whole thing was a colossal swindle.
“Surely not!” I said.
Zola laughed incredulously. He had been misled and bamboozled just as
all Paris had been. Both of us had looked with awe on that great safe
containing £4,000,000.
“Well,” said our friend, “you will see. Waldeck-Rousseau has been
to the director of _Le Matin_ to-day, and has placed all his proofs
before him!”
Surely enough, the famous lawyer had interested the _Matin_ to probe
the great mystery of the safe, with the result that a series of
trenchant articles appeared, and in the end a joint law-case against
Madame Humbert and the bulk of her creditors was commenced. After
many delays the judge decided, as the _Matin_ intended, that the only
way was to inspect the contents of the safe, and he fixed a definite
day for it to be unsealed and unlocked.
And, lo! when opened, the safe supposed to contain £4,000,000 was
found only to contain a foreign copper coin _worth a halfpenny_!
It was on such security madame had obtained some £3,000,000, and
ruined thousands of people!
Madame and her brother Romain Daurignac fled, but were arrested a
few weeks later in Madrid and brought to Paris, where a long and
sensational trial took place. During part of it I was present in
court. Madame Humbert, when pressed, declared that the mythical
Crawford was none other than Marshal Bazaine, the man who surrendered
Metz to the Germans in 1870, and that the four million sterling was
the price he received for his treachery. She further added that when
she discovered the true source of the millions she destroyed the
original will and all the bonds.
Such a fantastic story was, however, not credited, and madame and
her husband were found guilty--“with extenuating circumstances,”
strangely enough--and both sentenced to five years’ solitary
confinement, while Romain Daurignac received three years and Emile
Daurignac two years.
Surely it was the most colossal fraud ever perpetrated in Europe.
* * * * *
I frequently find myself in Nice about Carnival-time, for I served
for several years on the Carnival Committee at San Remo.
On one occasion, while occupying my usual room at the Hôtel de
Luxembourg, on the Promenade des Anglais--which I always do in
preference to the far gayer and better painted ones, for I like quiet
for writing, and can always go to the dancing at the neighbouring
hotels. Paint means everything to a hotel, both here and everywhere
else. White and pale green paint will convert a farmhouse into
a country villa. I always look at the back of a hotel, and test
the qualities of the kitchen. As an old traveller, I think I have
acquired an unerring sense of hotels. They may put their photographs
in Bradshaw, or in their local brochures, and may present themselves
as “the perfect paradise,” but as soon as I cross the threshold and
speak to the reception clerk I can sum the place up. And I am seldom
wrong. The man who is ever travelling acquires the hotel-sense,
whatever that may be. He knows whether after the soup will come
the _lesso_. Perhaps my readers who do not know Italian will not
understand. But your _chef_ of any nationality will, and will smile
if you ask him.
But this is digression, for which I apologize.
Well, on that occasion, at the Luxembourg at Nice I noticed on the
day of my arrival a pinched-faced, grey-eyed little man, with a
despairingly sad expression, being wheeled out of the lift and in to
his meals.
The figure of the poor invalid was most pathetic amongst all the
gaieties of Carnival, the masked crowds, and the famous Battle of
Flowers. So on the next evening I chatted to him, and he drew his
chair up in the billiard-room, while I sat on the raised lounge. He
was forlorn, friendless, hopeless, a gloomy but well-educated man.
His name was Andrade, a Spaniard, but he spoke very good English. He
was a lawyer in Bilbao before he was compelled to retire owing to his
infirmity, he told me.
A week later I was suddenly recalled to London, and regretted leaving
him, as we had become friends and used to chat daily. Indeed, I had
several times walked by his side when his tall, thick-set male nurse
pulled his bath-chair along the promenade.
One evening, about three months later, I came off the Calais express
at the Nord station in Paris, and drove to the Grand Hotel. After
a wash I went down to dinner alone, when I saw across the great
restaurant, at a table in the corner, two very smartly-gowned young
ladies, with three smart-looking men. All were laughing merrily over
their wine.
One of the men I recognized instantly as my crippled friend Señor
Andrade. He was laughing merrily, his glass poised in his hand. Then
he set it down, and, after some words to the girl next to him, they
all rose, and walked out of the restaurant.
He had evidently been restored to health by a miracle! But how?
The situation intrigued me, and what I found out was certainly
interesting. While the two ladies and one of the men were staying
there at the Grand, my crippled friend--who had discarded his invalid
chair, and was apparently leading a gay life--was with his male nurse
living at the Continental, while the other man was a guest at the
Maurice.
I watched still further, and found that while the cripple of Nice
and his male nurse were inseparable, and spent their evenings in the
cabarets on the Montmartre, the little circle always met each morning
for some discussion, and in secret. They met either at the Grand, or
at the Continental, as though they were a party of visitors seeing
Paris.
One morning I had lunched at the Brasserie Universale, in the Avenue
de l’Opéra, and, on going out, I encountered quite unexpectedly
my friend Brigadier Gilliot, of the Sûreté. As we walked together
towards the Louvre, I told him of the mysterious cripple.
Early next morning with my café-au-lait the waiter brought me a note
saying in French:
“MY DEAR LE QUEUX,--Please take no further notice of your
crippled friend. I will explain why, later on.--Your friend,
JULES GILLIOT.”
Two days later the waiter ushered him into my room.
“Well, my dear friend,” he said, with a laugh, “you have done us
a very good turn, though you did it quite unintentionally. Your
friend Andrade is, as I suspected at once, Léon Albacete, the most
daring and expert jewel-thief in Europe. The moment you described
him I had my suspicions, and went back to my bureau to look at his
photograph. Yesterday a jewel-case belonging to the Duchess d’Ussac,
and containing half-a-million francs worth of jewels, was stolen at
the Gare de l’Est, and to-day, knowing what we do, and what was in
progress, we arrested the whole gang. In the room of your cripple
friend was found the jewel-case, with the whole of the contents.
Albacete is a slippery customer. When resting, he adopted the rôle
of invalid, and as a cripple he misled you thoroughly. He was not
arrested without a struggle. He fired two shots at my agents, and one
man has a bullet in his shoulder.”
He was sentenced at the Assize Court of the Seine to ten years’ hard
labour.
Some readers may know the beautiful Villa Igiea Hotel at Palermo,
in Sicily--that great white building facing the blue bay, where the
clear, tideless Mediterranean laps lazily on the brown rocks of the
long terrace.
The lounge, which runs the whole length of the hotel, has long
windows, giving a beautiful view of the sea, and is carpeted in
green, a soft carpet into which one’s feet sink as one walks. It
is one of the most luxurious hotels in all Europe, where one may
exchange the English winter for delightful spring.
In that lounge I met a wealthy, middle-aged Italian nobleman, the
Count Ugo Rizzetti. The hall-porter whispered to me that he was one
of the most wealthy men in Italy, for he possessed in Umbria the
great mediæval Castello Rizzetti, and broad wine-lands around the
neighbouring hills.
Your Italian nobleman is ever the same; elegant, well-dressed,
extremely affable, with sallow face, and in middle-age usually grows
a dark beard.
The Count was very popular among the ladies in the hotel. He had been
there a fortnight when I arrived. In speech he was full of quick
gestures, his eyes were dark and brilliant, and his face was rather
sallow.
He was a heavy cigar-smoker, and always had excellent Havanas. He
told me that he loved golf, and played frequently on the Florence
course, and when he was in England he had played at Ascot with some
friends named Walker.
Ours was quite a pleasant friendship. We took many long walks
together along the picturesque sea-road to Arenella and the Vergine
Maria, or up to Monreale, with its wonderful view across the sapphire
bay, or perhaps to the summit of Monte Pellegrino. Then, before
dinner, we usually took our _apéritifs_, either at the big Trinacria,
on the Quattro Canti, or at the Italia.
Count Rizzetti was a charming man, more refined than most Italians,
and he seemed quite well versed in Cinquecento art, and that of the
Proto-Renaissance, of which I had very little knowledge. He evidently
moved in the best Italian society, and talked to me of the Strozzis
as his intimate friends.
One afternoon, after we both had been out at a picnic with
Henniker-Heaton, of Post Office reform fame, I returned to my room,
and was much surprised to find unlocked the leather despatch-case
that I always kept locked because I had a certain private
telegraph-code inside.
I knew I had locked it with my own hand. Who could have a second key?
I called the chambermaid, but she denied all knowledge of the matter.
It was, to me, a most mysterious affair.
At dinner I mentioned it in confidence to the Count, and he seemed
most perturbed that anybody had tried to penetrate into my private
affairs.
That night, immediately after dinner, I went out to meet a lady at
the Hôtel des Palmiers.
Next morning I had occasion to go to the General Post Office in
Palermo, when, on entering, I saw the Count at the _guichet_ of the
_poste-restante_, and, as I approached him from behind, the clerk
handed him a letter that I saw was addressed, not to Count Ugo
Rizzetti, but to “Signor M. Carava.”
I noticed that he was much confused at our encounter, but I took
no notice. It was not a crime for a man to receive letters at a
_poste-restante_ in a name not his own. I had done it myself. But,
ever since I had mentioned the mysterious search of my belongings,
the Count had seemed to have avoided me. Perhaps, however, it was
only my fancy.
I saw little of him that day except at meals, but that night, while
I was sitting alone in the beautiful palm-garden facing the sea,
enjoying the bright moonlight and watching the brightly-lit mail
steamer crossing the bay on its way to Naples, the _maître d’hôtel_
approached me, and in a low, confidential tone said:
“There is a gentleman at the front door of the hotel, signore, who
wishes to see you privately. He prefers to remain outside.”
In surprise I rose and followed the man through the hotel to the
front entrance, where I was met by a well-dressed, thin-faced,
middle-aged Italian, who raised his soft grey hat, and, after
inquiring my name, politely said:
“I believe you are a friend of the Commendatore Pavolini in Rome,
signore?”
The stranger had mentioned the name of the Chief of the Italian
Secret Police, who was an old friend of mine, and whom I had more
than once assisted in some delicate inquiries.
I replied in the affirmative, whereupon he said:
“I am Questore (Chief of Police) of Palermo. The Commendatore sent
me a telegram in cipher an hour ago, asking you to pack your things
and leave this hotel at once. Go anywhere you wish--anywhere out of
Palermo---to Messina, or across to Calabria. But do not remain here.
He asks you to do this at once.”
“But why?” I inquired, much puzzled.
“Unfortunately, signore, I am not in a position to explain,” was the
police official’s polite response. “Of course, our conversation is
strictly private. When you leave here do not leave your address. The
Commendatore will tell you the reason in due course.”
“But it is late,” I remarked.
“The express to Messina leaves at a quarter to eleven,” he remarked.
“Very well, I will go by that to Messina,” I said much puzzled. “I
will stay at the Regina Elena for a day or two. Will you let the
Commendatore know?”
“Certainly,” he replied, and, raising his hat, turned, and was
quickly lost in the darkness.
During that night I lay in the _wagon-lit_ between Palermo and
Messina, wondering why my friend had sent me that mysterious message.
Signor Pavolini is well known in London, for at one time he was
Commissary of Police at the Italian Consulate-General, after a
brilliant police record as chief of the detective service in Florence.
Next evening the concierge of the hotel at Messina handed me a
telegram, which I found was from the great police official. His words
were: “_See newspapers--Pavolini._”
I dashed out and bought an evening paper, when a glaring head-line
caught my eye: “Arrest of Pietro Rossi.”
Pietro Rossi! At last the assassin, who had been hunted for nearly
a year, had been caught. Readers of the continental newspapers will
no doubt recollect the sensational case. The Baroness di Vinadio, a
wealthy old lady who lived in a great cinquecento palace in Bologna,
was believed to have gone to Paris, for the servants had been sent
on holiday and the place closed. When it was re-opened by a relative
who could obtain no news of the Baroness, the body of the unfortunate
lady was found on the floor of her dressing-room. She had, according
to the medical evidence, been dead about three weeks.
A steel despatch-box, containing the Baroness’s jewels and a
considerable sum of money and negotiable securities, had been opened
with its key, and the contents extracted, while the whole place
was stripped of its plate and pictures, among them a small ancient
painting of S. Francesco on a panel about six inches square.
After much investigation two servants, the Baroness’s maid and a
footman, were arrested, the little painting being found concealed at
the house of the footman’s father, while among the maid’s belongings
was a brooch that was identified as the property of the dead
Baroness. The maid protested that the brooch had been given her by
her mistress before she left for Paris.
The pair were tried and convicted, and, while the footman was
sentenced to solitary imprisonment for life, the woman escaped with
ten years’ penal servitude.
My friend the Commendatore Pavolini was, however, not quite
satisfied. The trial had caused a great sensation, but, expert
criminologist that he was, he felt that there was something further
behind it all. After long and diligent inquiry he discovered that
the Baroness had met in secret and been courted by Pietro Rossi, a
good-looking, well-educated clerk employed by her lawyers in Milan.
Perhaps this man was scheming to get the old lady’s money, but it is
evident the woman was flattered by the man’s attentions, otherwise
she would not have met him clandestinely, as she did. No doubt he
proposed marriage to her and was refused. Whereupon he formed a
deep-laid and diabolical plot. He knew that the brooch had been given
by the Baroness to her maid, and, having first made the acquaintance
of the footman’s father, a gardener, he took the little picture,
and succeeded in one of his visits to the house to slip it behind a
wardrobe.
Later he made a secret rendezvous with the old lady at the palazzo,
after the house had been shut and everyone thought she had gone to
Paris, as indeed she had done and returned to Bologna unnoticed.
He calmly and callously murdered her, and decamped with all her
property, disposing of the securities in Brussels a week later. He
gained by his crime nearly twenty thousand pounds, therefore he
assumed the title of Count, and led a life of luxury, while the
innocent pair were tried and sentenced.
After six months, however, the maid and footman were suddenly
released, and the police of Europe and America were raising a
hue-and-cry for the lawyer’s clerk Pietro Rossi, who proved to be no
other than my fascinating companion, Count Ugo Rizzetti.
It was not long before I learned that the mysterious visitor to my
room was a police agent who was inquiring into my identity as an
associate of Rossi; and my old friend’s warning was in order that I
should be able to slip away from Palermo and not be called on to give
evidence.
Rossi was tried at Bologna, and sentenced to solitary confinement
for life. He died in his cell about a year ago.
Another famous _escroc_ I met was the Comte de Rebecque.
While I lived at the Château des Grands-Vignes, at Veneux-Nadon,
in the Forest of Fontainebleau, Sarah Bernhardt, La Duse, La Belle
Otero, and a number of Paris stage celebrities visited me on summer
afternoons, while my life-long friend, Paul Deschanel, then President
of the Chamber of Deputies, often motored out to me for a run in the
glorious forest. I, in turn, often went to the artists’ colony at
Barbizon, and there I first met the clever young artist named Gaston
Deltour, who, by the way, afterwards designed several covers for my
books. He introduced me to his very pretty sister Gabrielle, who had
married a publicity-expert named Sohet. They often visited me, and
one Sunday Madame Sohet, who was about twenty-four and a typically
smart Parisienne, was accompanied by a tall, refined, dark-haired
man, named Comte de Rebecque. I rather liked him. As we took tea
together in the garden on the border of the Forest he told me that
he had properties in Chile, but lived mostly in Paris. I quickly saw
that he was a great admirer of my artist friend’s pretty sister.
They stayed till evening, taking me in their car for a run round the
Gorge aux Loups, and then returned to Paris.
Two days later the pretty Gabrielle was missing from her home, while
inquiries at the Count’s fine house near the Arc de Triomphe made it
plain that he too was missing. It was evident that she had eloped
with him.
A week later Paris was startled by a strange truth. The millionaire
Count was in reality a Paris bank-clerk named Delloye. Most readers
of these pages will recollect how this plausible young man led a dual
existence, working hard in the bank all day, and posing at night as
a wealthy nobleman, giving expensive parties and entertaining on a
lavish scale.
At once a warrant was issued for the arrest of the missing pair,
as it had been found that Delloye, whose salary was about two
hundred and fifty pounds a year, had by a most ingenious system that
astounded the experts in banking embezzled over four million francs
belonging to the bank.
Next day it was discovered that the pseudo-Count had bought a fine
steam-yacht at Havre, and, having engaged a crew, the pair had sailed
away in it.
To this sensational story the newspapers devoted much space, and
weeks elapsed before the yacht was heard of again, for she purposely
kept out of the track of the shipping. Because of an accident the
vessel put into Buenos Ayres, but its name had been changed and its
appearance altered. Delloye and the pretty Gabrielle Sohet were
arrested, and after long legal delays were extradited and brought
back to Paris.
When Gabrielle faced her trial the jury found that on her part she
had honestly believed her lover to be a millionaire, so she was
released, but the pseudo-Count was sent to hard labour for a very
long period, one that has not yet expired.
I remember discussing the case with Paul Deschanel in 1920, after he
had become President, when, smiling, he said:
“Ah, Delloye was like so many others, _mon cher_ Le Queux. He
ploughed the water, built upon the sand, and wrote upon the wind.”
Poor Deschanel! He was eight years older than myself, but first and
foremost in all our students’ pranks on the Boul’ Mich’. He was at
the St. Barbe College, and passed in literature and law. Elsewhere
I have described our student life together, and I often reflect
how strange it was that after our buoyant youth spent together,
that I should drift into becoming a wanderer and a novelist, while
he, always merry and irresponsible, should enter the cold austere
officialdom of France, as _sous-préfet_ of Dreux, _secrétaire
général_ of the Seine-et-Marne, then Deputy for the Eure-et-Loir, and
so on till he presided over the destinies of France.
His untimely end, hastened by an imbalanced mentality, which betrayed
itself suddenly in recent years, came as a great shock to me. I
wrote at the time my reminiscences of him in the _Daily Sketch_.
To him I was much indebted in many ways. He introduced me, after I
had found my public as a novelist, to Daudet, Rostand, Willy, Baron
de Constant, Foch, Emile Legouis, the Professor of English at the
Sorbonne, the dramatic author Eugène Brieux, whose _La Femme Seule_
is so well known as a gem of dramatic art, M. Raymond Poincaré, and a
host of others, whom I met, and some of whom I still meet each time I
spend a few days at the Hôtel Chatham, in Paris, of which I have been
a constant habitué for many years.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
More Criminals I Have Met--Dr. Crippen, the Poisoner, Gives
me Material for a Murder Mystery--My Secret Knowledge of
Him--On his Arrest I Remain on the Continent in Order to
Avoid being Called as Witness--My Friendship with Armstrong
the Poisoner--Our Chats in the Club--At the Invitation of
the Paris Police, I Assist in the Investigations against
Landru, “the French Bluebeard”--What Landru Said to Me when
he was Brought to Gambais--My Suspicions of an American
Multi-Millionaire.
My adventures among criminals have been many. One little incident is
kept ever fresh in my memory by the ring that is on my finger as I
write these lines.
I happened, as I periodically am, to be on a visit to the Balkans,
seeking local colour for a new novel, but principally picking up any
scrap of information that might be of service to the confidential
department at Whitehall that Lord Roberts had organized.
I found myself in the picturesque little capital of Herzegovina,
arriving at the Hotel Narenta late one evening. The town was well
known to me, and the hotel, with its delightful garden sloping to the
river, is among the most comfortable in Eastern Europe. Ivan, the
tall, bald-headed _maître d’hôtel_, welcomed me, and gave me a very
late dinner, after which I went along to the Officers’ Casino and
returned at about twelve o’clock.
I suppose it was about three when I was awakened by a half-dressed
waiter, who, speaking in Serbian--which I understood slightly--told
me that an elderly English gentleman, who had arrived that morning,
had been taken very ill. The waiter could not understand English.
Would I kindly see him?
I got up, and, following the man, was taken to a large bedroom, where
in bed lay a white-bearded old man, apparently in great pain.
With difficulty he asked me to summon a doctor, which I did at once.
The stranger’s face was death-like, and very soon after my entry he
lost consciousness. Presently a young Serbian doctor arrived, and,
the patient being conscious again, I translated his symptoms as well
as I could. Then, after a further half hour, the mixture that the
doctor had hastily given him brought him round again completely, so
much so that he sat up in bed and chatted quite cheerily.
He told me that sometimes he had similar attacks.
“Curiously enough, they generally come on when I am travelling
alone,” he went on. “It is really very good of you to have taken so
much trouble over a stranger. But now, please, you must return to
bed, and not worry about me any more. I shall be quite all right. My
name is Askew--Charles Askew. We will meet in the morning. What is
your name?”
I told him.
But I sensed something peculiar--an air of mystery that I could not
define. He seemed very anxious about a battered tin box that lay on a
table near him. I had the impression that he suspected me of taking
the key and opening it during the time he was unconscious.
When I returned to my room, I began to wonder whether he was a crook
in hiding, for Herzegovina is a good country in which to hide one’s
identity.
Next day we went for a long walk together, and the old fellow talked
shrewdly of many matters, but concerning himself he was extremely
reticent. I showed him the bazaar where one can buy beautiful
Oriental work much cheaper than in the bazaar at Sarajevo or at
Constantinople. On the following day we walked a long way up the
beautiful valley of the Buna river.
Whatever else Mr. Askew was, he was a studious man, a lover of
nature, and something of a botanist, possessing a wide knowledge of
wild birds and their habits. He had a keen, rugged face that made him
look younger than his years. In his habits he was frugal. For his
breakfast he took fruit, which he ate sparingly, and at both lunch
and dinner limited himself to a single glass of white wine. He also
smoked only three cigarettes a day.
One day, as we were wandering about the Town of the Thirty Mosques,
as the place is often called, he turned to me and, with a laugh, said:
“You may think me a bit of a crank. Perhaps I am. I sometimes come
abroad alone, just for a change, and forget to leave my address,
and----” Then he suddenly hesitated, rather embarrassed, I thought,
and did not finish his sentence.
As we returned to lunch I became more than ever convinced that Mr.
Askew was a crook in hiding.
That same night, however, when I went to my room before dinner, I
found on my dressing-table an envelope addressed to me.
I tore it open and, to my surprise, found inside the curious antique
ring that Mr. Askew had worn on his finger and in which, as it was
unique, I had evinced an interest.
With it was a charming little note of thanks, begging me to accept
the ring as a souvenir--a letter signed by one of America’s
multi-millionaires, a man who is credited to be one of the richest
men in all the world!
I dashed downstairs, only to be told by the porter that Mr. Askew had
left Mostar an hour before for Agram.
The ring has ever since been on my finger, as a present from one of
the most modest, charming, and unassuming of men I have ever been
privileged to meet.
And I had suspected him of being a crook in hiding!
The keeper of the gems at the Louvre in Paris has pronounced the gem
set in the ring to be one of the smallest engraved Greek gems in the
world. It still has its ancient oval setting in ivory, yellow with
age, while the perfectly engraved Greek figures can be seen only by
the aid of a magnifying glass. How it was ever engraved in the days
before the invention of the microscope is a mystery.
* * * * *
Among the many letters I have received from readers of my books in
various parts of the world, none perhaps has been more curious that
the epistle that the hall-porter at the Devonshire Club handed me
one night on my return from the Continent. Many letters from unknown
readers are of interest, some of them suggesting new themes, and new
plots for books.
It was so in this case. The brief, polite letter was from a certain
Doctor Adams, living in Essex, who expressed himself greatly
interested in my mysteries of love and crime, and asking when it
would be convenient for me to see him, as he had a suggestion to put
before me regarding a new and exciting plot. I was particularly busy
at the time, and was about to go to Khartoum, therefore I replied
that I was leaving London for three months. After the lapse of that
period he wrote again, and was so anxious to see me “at any time or
any place in London” that I made an appointment at the club, and one
morning he called.
He was a dapper, fair-haired man, of middle age, very well-dressed,
with a tall hat and patent-leather boots. I took him into one of the
smaller rooms, and while we smoked he told me that he was a doctor in
the country, and an ardent reader of my books, especially those that
concerned secret poisoning.
“In one of your books you mention a volume, _Secrets of the State
of Venice_,” he said. “I believe it gives, in Latin, copied from
the original secret documents of the Council of Ten, still preserved
in the archives of Venice, the formula used in preparing the slow
poisons used by those in the pay of the Council to poison their
enemies.”
I explained that it was a very rare book, which had been printed
in Petrograd about 1869, and that I had found it in a second-hand
booksellers’ shop in Stockholm. It was at the moment in my study in
Florence.
My visitor expressed regret that it was not in London, but hoped that
he might one day be permitted to read it. He went on to tell me that
he had been in the Far East and had made deep studies in toxicology.
Indeed, he seemed to know the standard _Manual_ of Dr. Witthaus by
heart, and he then quoted many bewildering facts concerning poisons.
“I suppose many people are deliberately poisoned and the murderer
never traced?” I remarked.
“Hundreds,” he declared. “Since the days when Palmer poisoned
thirteen people with his old-fashioned strychnine--in those days very
hard to discover--hundreds of people of both sexes have been got rid
of by poison or the bacteria of fatal diseases.”
I was inclined to be a little sceptical, and mentioned the skill
of such pathologists as Drs. Willcox and Spilsbury, both of whom I
knew, and whose marvellous mirror-tests for arsenic I had witnessed,
whereupon, smiling, and in a strange, mysterious voice he said:
“Ah, of course you do not know the newly-invented poisons, some of
them German--poisons that, if administered in their proper doses,
produce death from apparently perfectly natural causes and which
utterly defy detection.”
This interested me, and I listened while he explained the effects of
several of them, naming them, and telling me the minimum fatal dose
of each. He spoke of death calmly and coolly, as only medical men can.
“Poisoners are always bunglers,” he declared. “The fools use
arsenic, antimony, alkaloidal and glucosidal poisons, under the
delusion that they won’t be found out. Sometimes they are not. The
doctor, who has been attending the patient for some disorder and the
patient apparently dies from it, is often unsuspicious. He gives a
certificate of death without even dreaming that poison is the cause.”
“Have you ever known such cases?” I asked.
He hesitated, then with some little evasion, I thought, declared that
there had, no doubt, been many.
Our conversation was certainly such as would interest anyone who,
like myself, studied the psychology of crime.
The next time we met was in Devonshire. He happened to be at
Plymouth, and motored across Dartmoor one afternoon to call.
Again as we sat in my study our conversation drifted to his pet
subject--one by which he seemed obsessed--namely, that of secret
poisoning.
He described to me the formula of certain secret poisons, and, after
a long chat, told me more about the newly-discovered poisons, and of
one which, if given hypodermically, would cause almost instant death,
as though from heart-failure.
“If the body were discovered at once, poison might be suspected
because of a peculiar smell, which, however, would disappear after
about four hours,” he added. “To obviate that, the puncture or
scratch should be rubbed with menthol. And I defy any pathologist to
discover the true cause of death!”
Then he confessed to me that the reason he had approached me was
because my books had attracted him, and that he thought he might be
able to suggest the plot of an up-to-date novel dealing with the most
subtle form of poisoning.
I listened as he unfolded to me a most diabolical and ingenious plot,
at which I sat aghast at the man’s mentality. He had weighed every
detail and taken every precaution that there was no flaw by which the
assassin could be traced. I agreed that it was wonderful, but far too
morbid and horrible.
“Bah!” he laughed. “Tell the public the truth, and show them how easy
it is to commit murder and go scot-free. It would protect them from
jealous, murderously inclined enemies.”
We met several times afterwards, and he unfolded to me many plots
from his fertile brain, one of which, indeed, I did use later in my
novel, _The Red Widow_.
But in his presence I always felt a strong antipathy towards him,
though he was such a frank, merry, easy-going man. He had explained
so many means by which deadly poisons and bacteria of fatal diseases
could be disseminated that at last, whenever I received a letter from
him, I opened it with the scissors, held it from me as I read it, and
dropped it straight into the fire. I confess that I feared lest he
might do me harm!
At last I refused to see him any more, and a few weeks later I went
back to Florence, where I had rented a villa on the Viale dei Colli
and forgot about the affable but repulsive Adams.
One day, however, on opening the _Daily Mirror_, I saw a large
photograph of him smiling out at me. He was wanted by the police,
having eloped with a young girl, named Le Neve, after the sudden
disappearance of his wife in Hilldrop Crescent, Holloway.
Beneath the photograph of my whilom friend Dr. George Adams was the
name of “Dr. Crippen”!
I confess that the unexpected charge against him caused me
considerable anxiety. I knew that he was an expert poisoner, and felt
certain that his poor wife had died at his hand. He had on that first
day we met declared to me that “Poisoners are always bunglers,” and
certainly he himself had been no exception.
That his wife was not the only person he had murdered I feel
confident, because of the halting and evasive replies he gave to
many of my questions. He was, no doubt, an expert who knew as much
about the latest discovered poisons and their effects as any of our
greatest toxicologists. He had declared to me--with what truth I know
not--that a certain chemist in Frankfort sold secret poisons with
full directions at very high figures and asked no questions. This
seems to be borne out, for in at least two recent cases of murder by
poison, one in France and one in Italy, the poison used is known to
have come from Frankfort.
At last, by means of wireless, Crippen was detected and arrested with
the girl. Portions of his wife’s body were discovered, and he was
charged with poisoning her.
Then I suddenly recollected. I had written him two or three letters!
Would the police discover them and call me as witness? I knew that
the evidence I could give would have great weight with the jury, but
I had no desire to appear at the Old Bailey. Therefore I remained in
Florence and said nothing to anyone till, on Crippen being executed,
I breathed more freely.
* * * * *
Another queer but perfectly cool murderer was “the world’s great
lover,” Henri Désiré Landru, the French “Bluebeard.” He was a little
bald-headed, spade-bearded man, with deep-set, ferret eyes. In April,
1919, he was arrested at his home in the Rue Rochechouart, in Paris,
because a woman to whom he had promised marriage had mysteriously
disappeared. The sister of the missing woman had accidentally
recognized him in the street and insisted that a police agent should
watch where he went.
Slowly and with great patience the Sûreté learned that their prisoner
was a man of mystery known as Diard, Dupont, Freminet, Guillet, and
a dozen other names, and one of the most alert and cunning _escrocs_
in France. Soon the police began to discover that on at least eight
occasions he had proposed marriage to women, who, in each case,
were never afterwards seen, and of whose fortunes he had managed to
acquire entire possession. It was plain that he had been gambling in
women’s lives, but if he had murdered them, where were the bodies?
For over a year he was kept in prison and constantly interrogated,
but not by a single word did he betray the truth. There was no
evidence against him, and he constantly declared his innocence.
The houses in which he had lived out in the country at Neuilly,
Vernouillet, and the villa of mystery at Gambais in the Forest of
Rambouillet, about forty miles from Paris, had been investigated,
but nothing had been found. Indeed it looked as though he would have
to be released, when in 1921 the police decided on making a more
thorough investigation at the villa at Gambais, which several of the
missing women had been known to visit.
As one interested in criminology I was invited by the Chief of
the Sûreté to assist the police and the medicolegists in their
investigations. I motored out each day from Paris to a lonely house
called “The Hermitage,” on the high road to Houdan. There I rendered
what assistance I could in the excavations, which consisted in
digging up the rather extensive garden and a field adjoining, taking
up the floors of the villa itself, as well as the concrete flooring
of the outhouses and garage.
It was under the concrete of the latter that we discovered a number
of small pieces of charred bone, which, after microscopic examination
in Landru’s dining-room, where an apparatus had been set up, the
medical experts, Doctors Anthony and Paul, declared to have come
from at least three bodies. In addition, we found burned hairpins,
two steel stay-busks, bone buttons, and other objects. The search
had been exciting enough, and we were all keen on examining most
critically each handful of earth and stone. But those were the
discoveries that eventually brought Landru to the guillotine.
[Illustration: Le Queux helping the French police to excavate at
Landru’s villa.]
[Illustration: Crippen, the poisoner.]
The authorities resolved on a reconstruction of the crime, for
now they were certain that several of the missing women had been
lured to that lonely house, killed, and their bodies cremated in the
kitchen-stove.
I was present. Landru, brought by car under police-guard and in
secret, arrived at the scene of his crimes at about eleven o’clock
one morning.
When he was brought into the small dining-room, where it was supposed
he had poisoned his victims before disposing of their bodies, his
demeanour showed nothing of the criminal.
He wished us a polite, “_Bon jour, messieurs._” Then glancing
round that room, which had no doubt been the scene of several most
diabolical crimes--six it is believed--smiled superciliously.
“Henri Désiré Landru, you are accused of wilfully poisoning in this
room Madame Héon on December 6th, 1916, and of poisoning Madame
Collomb, on Christmas Day 1916!” said the examining magistrate in
French, in a deep hard voice.
“Rubbish!” laughed the prisoner with a nonchalant air.
“It is the accusation against you!”
“Then prove it!” said Landru jeeringly.
“You must prove your innocence,” replied the magistrate.
“I am innocent--that is all!” was his reply. “And I thank you for a
very pleasant motor-ride. The air of Gambais is always delightful.
I wish I were coming back here to spend a holiday. But I shall,
messieurs--never fear.”
I whispered in English to a detective who had been working in the
excavations for the past fortnight, and he overheard me.
“Ah!” he sneered. “I don’t know who you are, but you seem very amused
at all this. So am I. You call me Bluebeard. Oh! how foolish and
farcical it is!”
I made no reply. But addressing me again, he said:
“I suppose, monsieur, that you are one of the wonderful doctors who
hope to establish the fact that when I brought ladies here I killed
them for their valuables. Well, all I reply is--just establish the
facts. I thank you all for a glorious run through the Forest.”
The examining magistrate put to him other severe questions, but never
for a second could he upset the marvellous equanimity of the prisoner.
The next time I saw Landru, on November 30th, 1921, was in the
crowded and stifling Assize Court at Versailles. The place was
packed. The Court had risen. The Jury were absent to consider the
verdict, and before their box was an array of furniture and women’s
clothing that gave one the idea of a second-hand dealer’s shop.
The atmosphere was electrical. All the world waited to hear the
verdict.
Suddenly Landru was brought in, his face pale, more yellow and
strained that when he had jeered at us at Gambais. He noticed the
smart women of Paris straining their necks to get sight of him. From
his seat a few seconds later, he rose, and bowing politely to the
spectators, said with the same cynical smile that he had given me:
“I wonder if there be any lady in court who would like to take my
place? I am quite ready to vacate it--I assure you!”
Those were the last words to the public of one of the greatest and
most callous criminals of our time.
Five minutes later he was condemned to death. He was theatrical to
the end, but his calmness never deserted him. His counsel, Maître
Moro-Giafferi, who is an old friend of mine and one of the most
famous criminal lawyers in Europe, appealed, but the conviction was
upheld and at four o’clock on the morning of February 25th, 1922,
Landru, on being offered the usual glass of rum and a cigarette, said
with the same cynical laugh:
“I do not need them. I am brave!”
A few seconds later the knife fell and he was dead. How many women
he had murdered will never be known.
* * * * *
My next meeting with a murderer was one cold March afternoon. I
was sitting before the big fire in the smoking room of a certain
West End club of which I am a member--I omit its name for obvious
reasons--when there strolled in a fellow member with whom I often
chatted when we were spending an idle hour of gossip over our tea and
toast. He was a country solicitor, living in Herefordshire and had
been a member only a couple of years. Business frequently brought
him to London, and on such occasions he slept at the club. He was a
man of refinement and taste, a good talker, a golf enthusiast and
somewhat humorous. He was, indeed, quite popular.
That March Sunday afternoon I remember well, as I was just back from
ski-running at Mürren. As he stood before the fire I chanced to
remark that the Crimes Club was holding their usual dinner that night
and I was remaining in town to attend it.
“In my profession I am constantly dealing with petty crime. I would
so much like to go to one of your dinners,” he said. “I suppose you
discuss the celebrated cases of poisoning and so on? It must be most
interesting.”
I replied that at the meetings many unknown facts concerning great
crimes were often revealed.
But as I sat there I never dreamed of the terrible crime of which,
not a month before, the man standing astride the rug had been guilty.
He had deliberately poisoned his wife, and at that moment she was
lying in her grave!
“Yes,” he repeated, throwing himself into a big armchair and lazily
smoking an excellent cigar. “I should so much like to be present at
one of the meetings.”
I met my fellow-clubman on quite half a dozen subsequent occasions,
and no doubt he would have found the deliberations of the Crimes Club
full of interest, for he was none other than the notorious poisoner,
Herbert Rowse Armstrong. When his wife’s body was exhumed by order of
the Home Office about seven months after our fireside conversation,
arsenic was found to have been the cause of death, and then came
another charge of attempting to poison a friend.
As everyone knows, Armstrong was hanged in Gloucester Gaol in
January, 1922.
Yes, I have met some very queer people.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Spies and Spying--I am the First to Warn Britain of the Coming
War--Everybody Derides Me--How I Knew that the Kaiser
was Plotting War--I Bring Documentary Evidence to London
and Place it before Earl Roberts and the Cabinet--It is
Stolen by German Agents--I Write _The Invasion_, and am
Denounced by the Premier in the House of Commons as a
Scaremonger--The Premier Apologizes Privately and Says he
has Discredited Me for Political Reasons--Earl Roberts,
Lord Charles Beresford and Mr. Lloyd George Stick by Me--I
Become a Secret Agent of Great Britain and Manage to See
Over the Ehrardt Gun Factory in Düsseldorf, where Big Guns
were in the Making--_The Invasion_ is Translated into
Twenty-seven Foreign Languages--The Germans Invite Me to Go
Over to Them and Offer to Pay Me Well!
I think I can claim to be the first person to warn Great Britain that
the Kaiser was plotting a war against us.
I discovered, as far back as 1905, a great network of German
espionage spread over the United Kingdom. I found out the secret
through a friend in Berlin, who was at the time under-director of
the Kaiser’s Spy Bureau, and who had married an Englishwoman who was
believed by all, except her husband, to be German. As is usual in
Germany, his master did not exactly “play the game” with him, and,
therefore, in 1905, he told me frankly what was in progress.
I came back from Germany and endeavoured to awaken public opinion
concerning the peril, but my voice was, alas! that of one crying in
the wilderness. Spies! What on earth did Germany want to spy upon
us for? Were we not good friends with Germany? Had not the Kaiser
assured Lord Haldane of his peaceful intentions? Did not the great
War Lord in his golden helmet come to Buckingham Palace, and did he
not parade the Embankment on his way to the Mansion House?
No, Le Queux was a writer of romance. Who could believe a word he
said? So nobody would listen to me. No newspaper would publish any
article that I wrote, although I asked no payment for it. I sent four
London daily newspapers a letter of warning, asking the Editor to
publish it. All returned it. The editor of one of the most powerful
organs wrote:
“MY DEAR LE QUEUX,--We cannot publish this! Spies exist only
in your imagination. We don’t want to alarm the public.”
Alarm the public? I, who knew the truth, was walking about London
telling people a story at which they only laughed!
Now, to my friend Earl Roberts I related what I had discovered.
He listened to me attentively and declared that he, too, was very
suspicious of Germany’s intentions. I introduced him to Lord
Northcliffe and we all three discussed the peril for over an hour.
I next consulted Colonel Lockwood, M.P. for Epping, now Lord
Lambourne. He heard me, instituted his own inquiries in Essex, and
three weeks later entirely agreed with me. He realized the danger,
and one day put a question in the House, whereupon the whole of our
legislators laughed him to scorn. Spies! It was Le Queux with a bee
in his bonnet again!
I saw Prince Louis of Battenberg and Lord Charles Beresford who,
on my producing facts that I had at my own expense obtained, fully
agreed that a serious peril existed.
In this way the small circle of the men I have named first became
aware of Germany’s elaborate system of espionage that was working in
every direction for one purpose only--a coming war.
The Admiralty had a kind of scratch intelligence service at the
time, and so had the War Office. If any officer happened to obtain a
tit-bit of information he sent it “to the proper quarter” where it
was pigeon-holed and nobody ever again referred to it. Scotland Yard
with its much vaunted Special Branch, looked after wild Irishmen and
political undesirables, but spies--oh! it was all very absurd.
The greatest Empire of the world, sucking down daily the soothing
syrup handed out by a pro-German press, declared Lord Roberts, Lord
Northcliffe and myself to be a set of scaremongers.
I was in a quandary, but just at that moment, when nobody would
publish a word concerning the spy peril, my old friend Mr. D.
C. Thomson, proprietor of the _Dundee Courier_ and a group of
influential newspapers in Scotland and England, heard what I had
to say, and after consulting with one of his Editors, Mr. G.
B. Duncan--one of the most able and popular journalists in the
Kingdom--resolved to make some investigations. With Mr. Duncan I
travelled for some weeks about Scotland, gathering a quantity of
information. On our return to Dundee, Mr. Thomson decided that as the
public refused to believe in the actual existence of German spies
among us, or of the Kaiser’s intentions for war, I should write a
series of articles based on the facts that we had gathered.
Thus I wrote the first story ever written about spies, called _Spies
of the Kaiser_. It was published by Mr. Thomson in _The Weekly News_,
a journal that has a huge circulation throughout the United Kingdom.
It also appeared later in book form, and, when the scales at last
fell from the eyes of the public, I had many imitators, who obtained
much kudos and made much money out of the kind of article I had
inaugurated.
Still the Government was much against my having dared to tell the
truth to the public. The octopus hand of Germany was on every walk
of life, and I knew myself to be a marked man. My old friend in
Berlin--who had, long years before, been a fellow student of mine in
Paris--warned me one day when we met at the Hôtel des Indes at the
Hague, that if I proceeded with my exposures I should certainly be
ruined in some way or another.
I laughed and expressed defiance. If I had not done so and had
withdrawn from the attitude I had taken up, I might have to-day been
a rich man.
I came back to London and in Lord Roberts’ study in Portland Place, I
one morning told him what Herr N---- had told me.
“I feel that all is hopeless,” I said to the gallant old
Field-Marshal. “I have done my level best, and nobody will hear me.
I know the truth, but because I dare to tell it, people think I am a
lunatic. My popularity as a writer will wane--and I have to earn my
living by my pen!”
“My dear Le Queux,” said the white moustached old soldier, holding
out his hand in a fatherly manner, “the world thinks me a lunatic
also, because, after my forty years service in India, I have come
home and dared to tell England that she is unprepared for war. I know
you fear that you will earn unpopularity if you persevere with your
good work. But stand by me--follow me. Charles Beresford and I will
support you in every way, and we will, between us, try and convince
these careless money-making people around us, that they are living on
the brink of a volcano.”
I grasped his outstretched hand, and thus the compact was made.
Lord Roberts became Commander-in-Chief, and almost his first work
was the formation--entirely apart from the official one--of a new
voluntary Secret Service Department, of which I became a member.
Half-a-dozen patriotic men in secret banded themselves together.
Each paying his own expenses, set to work gathering information in
Germany and elsewhere that might be useful to our country in case of
need. Italy and the Near East were the regions allotted to me, but my
travels took me also to Russia, to Germany, and to Austria.
We soon discovered in our midst most remarkable ramifications of
Germany’s spy system. As time after time I came home to report to
Lord Roberts what I had found out in the course of my travels as a
wandering novelist, the great military leader became more than ever
convinced of the Kaiser’s slow but sure preparations for war.
Suddenly I received a guarded note from my German friend, Herr N----,
asking whether I could meet him in Switzerland as he wished to renew
my acquaintance. He would be in Zurich on a certain date.
I read between the lines that he wished to see me, so I travelled
to Zurich, where in my bedroom at the Dolder Hotel he handed me a
document that, when I brought it to London, caused the greatest
sensation in certain quarters.
It was the full report of a secret council held a month before at
Potsdam, at which the Emperor presided, Prince Henry of Prussia--a
clever man whom I knew personally, having been on one of his
motor-tours--the representatives of the leading Federal States, and
the chiefs of the army and navy--including my informant--being also
present.
At this secret council the Kaiser appeared in naval uniform, pale,
determined, and somewhat nervous and unstrung, my friend told me, and
went on to describe the scene. The Emperor spoke for more than two
hours, illustrating his speech with many maps and diagrams as well as
models of new air-craft and long-range guns designed for the coming
war.
At first the Emperor’s voice had been almost inaudible, and he
looked haggard and worn, but his words, according to the transcript
that my friend gave me--and which I eventually produced in my book
_German Spies in England_, after being forced by hostile public
opinion to keep it secret for seven years--were significant enough.
He openly declared that he intended to have war.
“In calling this council this evening,” the Emperor said, “I have
followed the Divine Command. Almighty God has always been a great and
true ally of the House of Hohenzollern, and it is to Him that I--just
as my august ancestors did--look for inspiration and guidance in the
hour of need. After long hours of fervent prayer light has, at last,
come to me. You, my trusted councillors and my friends, before whom I
have no secrets, can testify that it has been, ever since I ascended
the Throne, my most ardent desire to maintain the peace of the world
and to cultivate, on a basis of mutual respect and esteem, friendship
and goodwill with all the nations on the globe. I am aware that the
course followed by me did not always meet with your approval, and
that on many an occasion you would have been glad to see me use the
mailed fist rather than the silken glove chosen by me in my dealings
with certain foreign nations. It was a source of profound grief to me
to see my best intentions misunderstood, but, bullet-proof against
public censure and criticism, and responsible only to the Lord above
us for my acts, I calmly continued to do what I considered to be my
holy duty to the Fatherland. True to the great traditions of Prussia,
and the House of Hohenzollern, I believed in the necessity of
maintaining a great army and an adequate navy as the best guarantee
of peace. In our zeal for the preservation of peace we were compelled
to keep pace with the ever-increasing armaments of our neighbours,
until the limit seems now to have been reached.
“We find ourselves now face to face with the most serious crisis in
the history of our new German Empire. Owing to the heavy taxation
and the enormous increase in the cost of living, the discontent of
the masses is assuming alarming proportions, and even infecting the
middle and upper classes, which have, up to the present time, been
the strongest pillar of the monarchy. But, worst of all, there are
unmistakable signs that the discontent is spreading even among the
troops, and that a secret well-organized anti-military movement is
afoot, calculated to destroy all discipline, and to incite both my
soldiers and sailors to open disobedience and rebellion.
“As, according to the reports of my Secret Service, a similar
movement is making itself felt in nearly all the states of Europe,
all indications point to the fact, which admits, indeed, no longer of
any doubt, that we have to deal with an international revolutionary
organization whose voiced object is the overthrowing of throne and
altar, and the establishment of a Republican government....
“‘Breakers ahead!’ is the call of the helmsman of the Imperial ship
of state, and I am ready to heed it. How to find an honourable and
satisfactory solution of the problem is a question to which I have
devoted the closest attention during these last months. The outlook
is, I admit, dark, but we need not despair, for God, our great Ally,
has given into our hands the means of saving our Empire from the
dangers which are threatening it. You know what I mean.
“It is the wonderful invention which Count Zeppelin was able, through
the grace of the Lord, to make for the safeguarding and glory of
our beloved Fatherland. In this invention God has placed the means
at my disposal to lead Germany triumphantly out of her present
difficulties and to make once and for all good the words of our poet,
‘_Deutschland, Deutschland über alles!_’ Yes, gentlemen, Germany over
everything in the world, the first power on earth both in peace and
war.
“That is my irrevocable decision. At present we are, thanks to our
airships and our new monster guns, which will be a surprise for our
enemies, invincible, and can carry at will war into the enemy’s own
country.
“Of course it is too early yet to fix the exact date when the blow
shall be struck. But I will say this, that we shall strike as soon
as I have a sufficiently large fleet of Zeppelins at my disposal. I
have given orders for the hurried construction of more airships of
the improved Zeppelin type, and when these are ready we shall destroy
England’s North Sea, Channel, and Atlantic Fleets, after which
nothing on earth can prevent the landing of our army on British soil,
and its triumphant march to London. Do you remember, my Generals,
what our never-to-be-forgotten Field-Marshal Gebhard Lebrecht von
Blücher exclaimed, when looking from the dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral
upon the vast metropolis at his feet? It was short and to the point.
‘What a splendid city to sack!’
“You will desire to know how the outbreak of hostilities will be
brought about. I can assure you on this point. Certainly we shall
not have to go far to find a just cause for war. My army of spies
scattered over Great Britain and France, as it is over North and
South America, as well as all the other parts of the world where
German interests may come to a clash with a foreign power, will take
good care of that. _I have issued already some time since secret
orders that will, at the proper moment, accomplish what we desire!_”
In due course I gave the document to Lord Roberts, and also showed
it to Lord Charles Beresford, Lord Northcliffe, Prince Louis of
Battenberg, Rear-Admiral H. W. Wilkin, and a number of officers
of high rank. In addition, it was placed before the Cabinet, who
pooh-poohed it. Yet six years later the Kaiser carried out his
programme almost to the very letter, and came very near achieving his
dastardly object.
My friend from Berlin had given the report of that speech to me with
these words:
“There is war coming; I am certain of it. And though I am a German,
I am one who does not believe in war. Therefore I think your friends
should know what is intended, and be warned in time. For that reason
I give it to you, assuring you that those words are the exact words
used by His Majesty, and trusting to your honour always to regard
your source of information as secret.”
I gave him my hand in pledge, and have never divulged his name, even
though during the war his ingenuity regarding the organization of
enemy spies was very often pitted against my own.
I have said that when I brought it to London the speech created
a great sensation among those to whom I showed it in confidence.
Very naturally its authenticity was doubted by some members of the
Cabinet, and all the machinery of the official Secret Service was set
to work to try and discredit it. But certain facts were brought to
light that left no doubt of its genuineness.
I spoke to several publishers of my intention of writing a book
exposing the Kaiser’s intentions for war, but they one and all
dissuaded me, saying that such a subject would be unpopular. The
country laughed at any idea of German treachery, and the book would
in consequence be a complete failure.
Now the German Government, by some means, learned that I was in
possession of a report of that secret speech of the Kaiser’s, and
a curious incident resulted. In September, 1909, I determined to
write a book pointing out that Germany meant war. With that object
I showed Eveleigh Nash, whose offices were then at Fawside House,
Covent Garden, the opening chapters of my manuscript, together with
the speech in question. He, in my presence, locked them in a drawer
of the writing-table in his private room. Two days later, when Mr.
Nash opened that drawer, he found they had been stolen! German secret
agents undoubtedly committed the theft--which was reported in certain
newspapers at the time--for I have since learnt that my manuscript
is now in the archives of the Secret Service in Berlin! This, in
itself, is sufficient proof of how eager the Kaiser was to suppress
his declaration of war. It was fortunate that I had kept a copy of
the speech, which I did not publish till the outbreak of war.
I was utterly disheartened at the apathy of the nation. I was
doing my utmost, spending my hard-earned money in travelling and
discovering the truth, yet nobody, except the few men I have already
mentioned, would listen to me. I was openly told that my patriotism
would spell ruin to me, as, alas! it eventually did, thanks to
the same pro-German influence then at work, officially deluding,
reassuring, and lulling the public to sleep, even as it is to-day.
I was in despair, and one afternoon, when I sat with Lord Roberts in
his library, I told him that all I had endeavoured to do was without
avail; for I was being denounced on every hand as a scaremonger,
and told that I was a novelist and should stick to my profession of
writing fiction.
“If people prefer your fiction to your fact, why not write a work of
fiction--a description of what would happen if a great war came and
we were invaded?” the Field-Marshal suggested.
The idea seemed a good one, but I pointed out that, not being a
military man, I would make many technical blunders. Whereupon he said:
“I have the country’s welfare at heart, just as you have. I will
prepare the scheme of attack and defence, and give you hints, if you
will write the book.”
“And who will publish it?” I queried.
“Try Lord Northcliffe,” was his advice.
I did. Next day I saw my old friend whom the _Daily Mail_ staff
called “The Chief.” Within an hour he had given me an open
commission. I was to write, regardless of expense, a forecast of
“The Invasion” for the _Daily Mail_, besides being promised a very
handsome price for it.
“I know your pocket has suffered very much, Quex,” he said, for he
always called me by that name. “Write a good stirring forecast. Tell
Lord Roberts we will both try and wake up the country to a sense of
its peril.”
In high spirits I went back to Portland Place and told the gallant
old soldier, and that same evening we started to plan out an
imaginary German invasion.
Having _carte blanche_ in the matter of expense, I sought the aid
of Colonel Cyril Field, R.M.L.I., and Major Matson, both military
experts, while H. W. Wilson, the well-known naval expert, was eager
and ready to assist me in connection with naval matters.
For four months we reconnoitred the whole of East Anglia, from the
Tyne to the Thames, making notes, marking maps, and finding out the
most vulnerable points--including Weybourne Gap, in Norfolk, which
was no doubt one of the points marked by the Germans for their
disembarkation at the proper moment--and then, on my return to
London, I was appalled to find that I had spent over three thousand
pounds on what some would have termed “a joy ride.”
Lord Northcliffe paid it, remarking that, provided the forecast was
well done, he would not mind the expense.
Then I took a flat in Queen Anne’s Mansions, Westminster, and there
began to write. It was a colossal task as may well be imagined by
anyone who has read the book, and further I had to surmount a heavier
barrier than any I had ever dreamed might obstruct my way.
Thus, when at last I had, after a year’s work, finished the
manuscript, and Lord Roberts had read every line and corrected
any mistake I had made, and one morning--as will perhaps be
remembered--the whole front pages of _The Times_, the _Daily
Telegraph_, the _Morning Post_, the _Daily Mail_, and the _Daily
Chronicle_, as well as the front pages of certain great provincial
papers, bore a map of England, showing the districts that would be
invaded, and announcing that the publication of my forecast, “The
Invasion,” would commence in the _Daily Mail_ on the morrow, the
Campbell-Bannerman Government determined that every word I wrote
should be discredited and held in derision.
That same afternoon in the House of Commons a question was asked
of the Prime Minister whether his attentions had been directed to
the advertisements. The campaign against me had now started in real
earnest!
Sir H. Campbell-Bannerman replied that he had seen the
advertisements, and, denouncing me as a mere scaremonger, declared
that such work was pernicious literature, “calculated to inflame
public opinion abroad and alarm the more ignorant public at home.”
I at once wrote asking how he could criticize a work he had never
read; and, moreover, why he accused his electors, the British public,
of being more ignorant than their neighbours across the Channel. I
knew it was a poser. But of the jugglery of politics there is no
end, so I smiled and forgave him when next day he sent by special
messenger a note in his own handwriting marked “Strictly Private” and
in which he apologized for the words he had used. He meant “the more
ignorant _section_ of the public at home,” and hoped that I would
not, in the exigencies of politics, take any word of his as being
personally offensive. He concluded by asking me to call at Downing
Street when I could, as he wanted to make full explanation!
Next day the _Daily Mail_ appeared with the opening chapters of my
work. It proved a huge success. Everyone congratulated me on it. At
the Savage Club, at the Devonshire, at Boodles, at the Reform, at the
houses I visited, I was hailed as the man-who-dared-to-tell-the-truth.
[Illustration:
_I therefore wish you every success in your endeavour to
impress upon the people of this country that the possession
of a world-wide Empire carries with it defensive obligations
commensurate with the commercial and other advantages which it
confers, and that, without concerted and patriotic effort, we
may not improbably lose what our ancestors won.--_
_Believe me
Yours very truly
Roberts._
Extracts of Lord Roberts’ famous letter of warning.]
Naturally I was much gratified, for among the letters I received was
one that I here publish for the first time:
“47 PORTLAND PLACE,
“LONDON, W.,
“_22nd August, 1906_.
“DEAR MR. LE QUEUX,--I return with many thanks the enclosure
of your letter of 2nd August.
“The imaginary scheme seems carefully thought out, and it
forcibly illustrates the risk we should run under present
military conditions, if, owing to the temporary absence
or inferiority of our fleet, a Continental power (meaning
Germany) were able to seize an opportunity for landing a large
force of picked soldiers in this country.
“The maintenance at home of an adequate number of well-trained
and organized troops and reservists would not only set free
the navy for offensive action and the protection of our
sea-borne commerce, by relieving it to an appreciable extent
of the onerous obligation which it has lately undertaken of
defending these shores without military co-operation, but
would also enable such reinforcements to be despatched to our
Colonies and dependencies as might be required to preserve the
integrity and safeguard the interests of the British Empire.
“I therefore wish you every success in your endeavour to
impress upon the people of this country that the possession
of a world-wide Empire carries with it defensive obligations
commensurate with the commercial and other advantages which it
confers, and that, without concerted and patriotic effort, we
_may not improbably lose what our ancestors won_.
“Believe me,
“Yours very truly,
“ROBERTS.”
Have we not already lost Ireland, and are we not daily losing grip on
Australia and on Canada? Is the reader aware that the newspapers in
the latter country, when advertising for a man to do a job, add: “No
English need apply”?
I received a flood of other congratulatory letters from, among
others, the Duke of Northumberland, the Duke of Argyll, the Duke of
Fife, the Earl of Derby, the Earl of Rosebery, the Earl of Wemyss,
Viscount Milner, Viscount Hardinge, Lord Brassey, Lord Tweedmouth,
Lord Newton, Field-Marshal Sir George White, Lieut.-General Sir
William Nicholson, Sir Ralph Moor, Major-General Sir J. Wolfe
Murray, Sir Albert Rollit, M.P., Sir William Holland, M.P., Sir
Joseph Dimsdale, M.P., Sir Charles Lawson, Sir Francis Tress Barry,
M.P., Sir Henry Seton-Karr, Sir Theodore V. S. Angier, Major-General
Sir Edwin Collen, Sir John Turney, Sir Henry W. Tyler, Colonel
Sir Reginald Hennell, General Sir Stanley Edwardes, Sir Alfred
Newton, Sir Fortescue Flannery, M.P., Colonel Sir Henry Rawlinson,
Alderman and Sheriff Sir Vesey Strong, Sheriff Sir George Woodman,
and Mr. Spenser Wilkinson, all of whom became my personal friends
and supporters. I found myself popular among those who knew of the
pro-German propaganda and its financial influence.
At last England seemed about to wake up!
Shortly afterwards I attended with Earl Roberts a meeting to consider
national defence, which was called by the London Chamber of Commerce
and presided over by the Lord Mayor at the Mansion House. The
Field-Marshal had stated in the House of Lords that our armed forces
were as absolutely unfitted and unprepared as they had been in 1899.
“What the nation requires, especially that portion of it occupied
with the great business interests of the country,” he told the
crowded meeting, “is peace and security not only from actual war but
from alarms and panics. Such security, I regret to say--and I think
you will agree with me--cannot be ensured by diplomacy alone or by a
policy of conciliation alone, as some would have us believe. The only
true safeguard is that the armed forces of the Crown should be in
such a state of readiness and efficiency that it would not be to the
interests of any Power to risk war with us.”
Thus, in a splendid, vigorous speech, he put before them facts
showing our hopeless insecurity, and strongly urged that the country
should awaken to the peril of the apathy into which it had fallen.
Afterwards Lord Brassey, in proposing a vote of thanks, made a fine
speech, and later, when Earl Roberts introduced me to him in the Lord
Mayor’s parlour, he congratulated me on “The Invasion.”
The _Daily Mail_ had scored a success, even though the staff
themselves had at first expressed some doubts as to its reception.
Then, on Eveleigh Nash publishing it in book-form, with an
introduction by Earl Roberts, it at once went through many editions.
It caused such widespread attention--because no critic could pick
a hole in the invasion scheme, designed as it was by one of the
greatest strategists of our time--that it was translated into no
fewer than twenty-seven languages, including Arabic, Urdu, Icelandic,
Syrian, Japanese, and Chinese. Naturally I was much gratified at
having at last aroused the British nation, and others, to realize
that the Kaiser’s pretensions of friendship were false.
My friends saw that we were drifting towards war, yet, though I
had made a success with _The Invasion_, its result was exactly the
opposite to what I had hoped.
The world read my book eagerly. They devoured the scenes of how our
shores were invaded, of the fierce battles in Essex, Lancashire, and
Yorkshire, and of the enemy’s advance on London. Then, on finishing
the book, they simply set it aside, and, admitting that it was quite
an exciting work of imagination, set me down as a second-class Jules
Verne!
But a greater disillusionment came when a plausible round-faced
German came over from Berlin, called on Mr. A. P. Watt, my literary
agent, and arranged with him to pay a very handsome sum for the
German rights of the book.
I was in Naples when I received my agent’s letter, and by telegram
accepted the terms of the Concordia Press, in Berlin, congratulating
myself that even our enemies would learn the truth that they could
not invade us with success!
Judge my chagrin when, six months later, I saw an illustrated
edition of _The Invasion_ in German, the conclusion of which had
been entirely rewritten, making the result of the invasion a _German
success_! And there were pictures of Germans sacking London!
Worse! It was published, and bound in gilt, as a prize for German
boys at school!
I walked into the “Chief’s” room at the _Daily Mail_ offices filled
with fury and disgust.
“Under English law I’m an Englishman, and I love England!” I said to
Lord Northcliffe. “But, being the son of a French father, I’m also a
Frenchman, and I thank God for it!”
Those were my first words when I entered his room, and they caused
him to turn quickly from his chair, where he was dictating letters to
his secretary, Miss Owen.
“Hulloa, Quex! You’re not well! What’s up?” he asked. “Max has just
been in with a bad stomach-ache. He’s got a chill through wearing a
new fancy vest that hasn’t been aired.”
He referred to Max Pemberton.
I fear I used some rather strong language, but in his usual humorous
way he calmed me, and asked me down to Elmwood, his place near
Broadstairs, for the week-end.
I saw that we had advanced no farther in arousing the public. Had
it not been for Earl Roberts, Lord Northcliffe, Mr. Lloyd George,
Lord Charles Beresford, and a few other intimate friends, I should
have given up. But when bent on achieving an object I am perhaps
rather tenacious, so the money that I received in royalties from _The
Invasion_ I again spent on travelling Europe as a secret agent of
Great Britain.
I parted with my money freely, leading a gay life with the one idea
of gaining information of use to Great Britain. I was the only
Englishman who ever entered the great gun-factory of Ehrardt’s,
in Düsseldorf, where they were then constructing big guns. If my
identity had been discovered I should have spent the remainder of
my life in a German fortress. My escapade cost me a large sum in
bribery, which I paid to a certain adventurer in Constantinople, but
I got the knowledge that I wanted.
In due course the result of my adventure was reported by me,
docketed, and sent to those dusty pigeon-holes in the War Office.
The staff there, all keen and eager, dare not, after Lord Roberts
retired, show any alertness or enterprise. The Government had said,
“There are no spies,” and the staff of the Intelligence Branch was
compelled to assume a lack of intelligence.
It is curious, as a writer in the _Daily Mail_ pointed out recently,
that in _The Invasion_, written five years before the Great War,
not only was the Battle of Jutland forecasted, but several of the
ships sunk were actually described as sunk, while, in addition, the
bombardment of Scarborough was predicted and some of the houses
struck by shells actually named! Strange coincidences, at least.
* * * * *
The whole situation in 1910 to 1913 was hopeless. All I could do was
to write novels in which I took as my villain a spy. They became
popular. One could write spies in fiction, but to say there were
spies in real life was almost an offence against King and country.
One September night in 1910 I had an adventure in London that opened
my eyes widely to what was in progress, and to how our national
existence was at stake, though the nation was so entirely ignorant.
I received a note from General Sir Alfred Turner, who lived in Cheyne
Walk and whom I had not met, declaring that he greatly admired my
patriotism, and asked me to dine _en famille_ one Sunday evening.
I accepted the invitation, and went. To my great surprise, I found
among the guests the German Ambassador, the Chancellor of the
Embassy, the Military and Naval Attachés with their ladies, Lady
Tree, Miss Viola Tree, Mr. Lewis Waller, Lady Westmorland, Lady
Dorothy Nevill, and others.
In a corner of the drawing-room after dinner I found myself chatting
with the German military attaché--a man who was hail-fellow-well-met
with every journalist in London--who turned the conversation round to
my anti-German writings. By his invitation I met him at his club next
day. He entertained me to an expensive luncheon, and then suddenly
laughed at me for what he termed my misguided propaganda.
“There will be no war between your country and mine,” he assured me.
“You are so very foolish, my dear Mr. Le Queux. You have ruined your
reputation by these fixed ideas of yours. Why not change them? We
desire no quarrel with Great Britain, but we also, of course, realize
that you are doing only what you consider to be your duty.”
“It _is_ my duty,” I responded.
My diplomatic friend sucked at his cigar, and laughed.
“As a literary man you, of course, write to interest the public. But
you would interest your public just as easily by writing in _favour_
of Germany--and I tell you that we should quickly recognize the
favour you do us, _and recompense you well for it_.”
I rose from my chair.
I confess that I grew angry, and I told him what was in my mind.
I gave him a message to his own Secret Service in Berlin, which was
very terse and to the point, and then I left his club.
I give this as one single instance of the cunning manner in which the
German Secret Service endeavoured to nobble and bribe me, so as to
close my mouth and thus combat my activity.
Another instance was when the Nord-Deutscher Lloyd Line, of Bremen,
kindly invited me to take a voyage round the world, free of expense,
so that I might visit the various German colonies and write
descriptions of them. And, on a third occasion, German diplomats were
amazingly kind to me, both in Constantinople and in Belgrade, and
again broadly hinted at their readiness to win me over to their side.
How pitiable, how absolutely criminal was our apathy!
Here is another instance. One August morning in 1913, a year before
the war, I was sauntering along the village street at Southborough on
the Hill, three miles south of Tonbridge, in Kent. I was dressed as
a City man taking a country holiday, and had a camera hanging from a
strap over my shoulder. I had a girl with me, in order to complete
the picture. I was down in that rural retreat in order to watch
certain things that were in progress.
What I saw and photographed was certainly of great interest.
About twenty-five German officers in mufti, all speaking German and
making no disguise of their nationality, rode through Southborough,
and during the whole day actually reconnoitred very carefully the
hills between Tonbridge and Tunbridge Wells, taking many bearings,
deliberating on sites for guns, and taking photographs. _They were
preparing for the invasion of England!_
That night the party returned to London, where they were entertained
by the German Ambassador at Carlton House Terrace.
Such a deliberate survey of our own country by a foreign army was
outrageous. I showed my photographs to Lord Roberts, and he, much
incensed, urged me to write to the Press. I did so, but the British
public had been doped, and not a single newspaper published a line
concerning the enemy’s survey of the Kentish hills. One editor wrote
to me declaring me to be a fool. That was only a year before the
outbreak of war.
I often wonder by whose orders it was that all the motor signs on
high roads from the Kentish coast to London were marked by the
black-and-white stripes of German official direction-posts! It would
be interesting to discover, for they silently pointed the way from
the coast to the capital, and the public little dreamed of why they
were black-and-white.
That the Germans intended to effect a sudden and unexpected landing
on the east and south coasts was proved in many ways. Earl Roberts,
Lord Northcliffe, and myself tried to point it out time after time,
but our warnings always fell on deaf ears. It was given over to
me to investigate. I found that on the east coast from Hull to
Felixstowe most hotels facing the sea had either a German manager or
proprietor, or, if not, there were Germans occupying private houses
or boarding-houses on the sea-front of every town.
Again, wherever a tenant was wanted for a public-house a German-born
applicant was ready to accept almost any condition to take up the
licence, while in no fewer than forty-two cases--as I reported to
the War Office--Germans or pretended Frenchmen or Swiss were living
either next door, or next door but one, to the most important
telegraph offices, ready to make a dash, and seize or destroy the
instruments on “The Day.”
Happily “The Day of the Invasion” never came, but it was not
prevented by any effort on the part of the pro-German Party, which
in 1914 existed in Britain, just as it exists here to-day. By that
staff-ride of German cavalry in Kent it was plain that the downfall
of England was being plotted, but who cared so long as officialdom
had its pickings and enjoyed its own social standing? I was only
laughed at for the trouble I had taken to watch it.
Do not the souls of the millions who died on the battlefields of
France, of Belgium, of Italy, and of the East rise against the
plotters? Does not the onus of the frightful loss of the flower
of our dear English lads lie, not on our four-hundred-a-year
legislators, but on some of the golfing, dividend-seeking, pushful
pro-Germans with old-world English names, often assumed, who have
ruled our country through past years?
What will be the opinion of those who come after us?
Without politics, I repeat--for I am no politician, and have never
voted in my life--I would pay a tribute--the tribute that the whole
nation should pay--to Mr. Lloyd George and his advisers, who came
in for so much adverse criticism before the war. I declare as my
opinion--an opinion that millions share--that the manner in which he,
as Chancellor of the Exchequer, faced and grappled with the financial
situation at the outbreak of war was an illustration of British
pluck, coolness, and readiness unequalled in our history. As I have
already stated, my only feeling is one of pure patriotism towards the
country that gave me birth. Any of these plain statements of fact,
which I here set down, I defy any political or official juggling to
disprove.
Though we are at peace to-day, there are signs everywhere of another
war in the very near future. The writing-on-the-wall is there for
those who are intelligent enough to read it. To-day throughout the
world there is frantic and gigantic effort to produce fresh war
material of a far more destructive nature--fast bombing aeroplanes,
poison-gases, microbe-bombs, and high explosives such as the world
has never before seen. And against whom? Great Britain, without a
shadow of doubt.
Though we once cleared the enemy out of our island, he is here again
in full force.
From the widespread and insidious Secret Service of Germany nothing
is sacred. Details of our new helicopter were known in Berlin two
days after its secret trials, while of a new war-vessel launched in
secret this summer photographs reached Berlin within a week. Germany
laughs at our apathy, and still boasts that she knows all about us,
our political, military, and civil population alike. I know that from
the inside. In the archives of Herr Steinhauer’s department in Berlin
there are thousands on thousands of detailed reports--furnished
constantly throughout the past ten years--regarding the lives and
means of prominent persons in England, with descriptions of their
homes wherein, one day, the undefeated enemy hope to billet their
troops.
Then we have those unscrupulous people, men and women who act as
“fixed-posts”--and it is no exaggeration to say that there are still
dozens back again in England notwithstanding all official assurances
to the contrary--who have all gone through an elaborate system of
training in signalling, in reducing messages to code, and in decoding
them, in map-making, in the use of carrier pigeons, and of secret
wireless.
To-day, more than ever, the German nation hopes to strike in secret
a staggering blow against London and our ports, not by invasion from
the sea, but, after paralysing us from the air, to land an army. I
fear that no political soothing-syrup, by whatever party, has any
effect whatever on me, because I happen to know what I am writing
about. I have not forgotten that Mr. McKenna told us that all German
spies in our country were “safely under lock and key,” though a
week later there were arrested a number of dangerous spies, two of
whom were afterwards executed. Nor have I forgotten what trouble I
got into for publicly mentioning this fact at a lecture I gave one
afternoon at Buxton. After my speech all the London Press, both
morning and evening, were served with notices forbidding them to
publish my remarks! Charles Palmer, of the _Globe_, showed me the
notice served on him, and laughingly said:
“Does not that, in itself, bear out your argument that certain
authorities ruled by the Hidden Hand of Germany are afraid of your
merciless exposures?”
Well, I tried to be patriotic, and have ever endeavoured to do my
best for my country, even though it was all unavailing. But I feel
strongly that I should still continue to raise my voice in warning
and declare that Germany still means to attack, and, if possible,
conquer, Great Britain, and is actually at the moment stirring up
strife for that purpose.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
About other Spies--I am Shown the List of British Traitors
Paid by Germany--For that Reason I am Feared in Certain
Quarters--Why Scotland Yard Withdrew its Protection from
Me--My Campaign Against Enemy Aliens--Efforts to Discredit
Me--Poisonous Gossip in Society--A Report is Set About
that I Am a German Spy!--Our Silly Censorship--I Defy
it, and As a Patriot Await Prosecution--The Traitors
Fear Lest I May Make Ugly Disclosures--Prominent Men Who
Supported Me--Humours of Lecturing--I Meet the Mock Monk
Rasputin--Herr Steinhauer, Chief Spy of the Kaiser--The
Identity of “Jack the Ripper” Disclosed for the First Time.
The British public are even to-day ignorant of the widespread and
powerful pro-German influence that was at work in our country before
the outbreak of war, during the struggle for our national existence,
and continues even to-day.
I am a thorn in the side of the traitors. There is no doubt whatever
of the truth a certain Cabinet Minister told me when he said:
“There are a good many people in England who are wishing that
something would happen to you, Le Queux.”
“I know,” I said. “And I know the reason.”
In high quarters, strings were being pulled constantly against me,
much to my detriment. The penalty I paid for daring to write _The
Invasion_ proved of very serious consequences to me, inasmuch as
the newspapers that did not agree with my patriotic endeavours
tried to suppress me by refusing to publish any more of my novels
serially! And by this I lost a very considerable part of my income.
Nevertheless, my friends encouraged me in the work I was striving to
do, and I felt sufficiently rewarded to know that when the war came
my efforts were appreciated, even by many of those who had hitherto
turned a deaf ear to all my warnings.
And now let me explain why I was such a thorn in the side of our
traitors who, working in unison, constituted the Hidden Hand. They
feared me because I possessed knowledge of their identities, and in
many cases of the sums secretly paid to them by Germany! The truth
was that in 1912 my friend Herr N----, for my personal information,
showed me a list of persons in England to whom German money had been,
and was still being indirectly paid. And he was their pay-master!
I was aghast at the sight of this list. I sat staggered. It was
appalling that persons whom the nation considered highly patriotic
and upright, and who were afterwards loudest in their praise of “our
gallant fellows,” should have fallen into the insidious tentacles of
the great German octopus.
I know that this sensational statement will be questioned, but I
vouch on my honour and all I hold most sacred as to its truth.
Remember the traitors unearthed in France--Lenoir, Bolo Pasha, and
many others--and what Germany was doing in France she did also in
England, though here our betrayers have remained undiscovered and are
allowed to go free in full possession of their blood-money.
The names I read in that list were mostly well-known throughout the
country, and embraced persons of the higher and official classes.
Members of Parliament and others, including two influential writers
who were my friends. I asked to be allowed to make a copy of the
list, but my request was refused, therefore I could only carry the
names in my memory. In it the Foreign Office, Home Office, India
Office, Admiralty, and War Office were all represented; and all
should have faced the firing party instead of living to-day, lolling
in their cars and enjoying themselves on the price of their treachery.
“Now you see for yourself how Germany is working,” my friend said,
as he replaced that amazing document in his pocket. “You know the
truth concerning your own betrayers. But, of course, you will regard
what I have shown you as strictly confidential. _One day, if we are
conquered, we may publish those names! Who knows?_”
My lips have been sealed till to-day. There are traitors in every
camp, and Britain was, and still is, no exception. Would that Germany
would publish those names and the amounts annually paid to each. I
hinted at what I knew to my friends, and for that reason I believe
Lord Charles Beresford one day, during the war, turned on a certain
politician in his bluff fiery way and declared him in my presence to
be among the traitors. And the politician only laughed!
During the war many events proved beyond all doubt that we were being
betrayed by some persons in authority. Therefore the facts speak
for themselves. I make no charge against any Government as a whole.
Each did its best in turn, but our betrayers were in our midst and
secretly pulled the wires that worked the Hidden Hand.
Many persons have wondered why I have met with much hostility in
certain official circles, but what I here reveal for the first time
is surely sufficient explanation. By some means it had become known
to the traitors that I had gained knowledge of them and, in fear lest
I should make disclosures of how they had been bribed by German gold,
they united to discredit me and to wreck my reputation.
To what extent this was carried is shown by an incident that occurred
two days after war was declared.
Scotland Yard knew that ever since the publication of _The
Invasion_ and my campaign against the Hun I had received a number
of threatening letters, all of which I sent to the Department. The
Metropolitan Police, feeling that I was in personal peril while
the country was still swarming with Germans, very properly placed
a police guard night and day on my house--for I was then living at
Upper Halliford, near Sunbury-on-Thames, which is in the Metropolitan
Police area. Indeed, the detective inspector who saw me expressed
the view that I was in grave danger, and for that reason they had
resolved to give me protection. So a constable lurked each night in
the summer-house in my garden.
Two days later, at orders from a higher quarter, my police protection
was suddenly withdrawn! By the Hidden Hand, of course--the hand of
someone who hoped every day that something might happen to me, for I
was a _person who knew too much_!
A few weeks later I was lunching at Lady Owen Philipps’s when my
friend Mrs. Eckstein, who sat next to me, said:
“Oh, Mr. Le Queux, do you know the latest about yourself? It is all
over London that you are really a German spy! I’ve heard it from half
a dozen people during the past week. I wonder who started such a
wicked report?”
I only smiled. I knew that it had come from the traitors, in order
to hound me down and discredit me in case I broke my vow of silence
concerning them.
Further, I greatly incensed the authorities by my campaign that
demanded that all Germans of whatever class should be interned. I
was, however, assisted by Lord Leith of Fyvie, Sir W. Joynson-Hicks,
an old friend and a true Englishman, the Duke of Newcastle, another
old friend, the Earl of Crawford, Earl Clarendon, Lord Galway, Lord
Headley, and others.
For months the wire-pullers resisted. Sir Edgar Speyer, Privy
Councillor, put his fingers to his nose at the King and crossed to
America; yet not till after we held a violent meeting at the Mansion
House, where many hard things were said, did the authorities at last
yet very reluctantly resolve to intern enemy aliens. I happen to
know that, so bitter was their opposition to our just demands, they
actually interned two Germans who, being employed in our own Secret
Service, were doing valuable work for us! Hundreds of dangerous
aliens were allowed to slip through the meshes of the net by those
who, bent on our downfall, were awaiting the landing of the Germans.
Indeed, at no period of the war were they all interned. Further,
though I pointed out to the authorities that Detective-Sergeant
Wegner, who was Russian born and spoke German like a native, and had
been conveniently “retired” from Scotland Yard at the outbreak of
war, should be re-employed, it was refused, even though he had been
an expert on alien enemies in the West End!
I myself undertook some investigations on the Clyde, assisted by
Alexander Morton, the messenger-at-arms, of Glasgow; and in one case
I found a German carrying on a typewriting school, actually training
secretaries--some thirty of whom he had managed to get posts at the
naval base at Rosyth! I published the results of my investigations
in the _Glasgow Sunday Post_, and by doing so further incensed the
authorities, who were anxious to suppress me.
After that I wrote a book, _German Spies in England_, and in open
defiance of the idiotic censorship published it. There were fierce
official threats to prosecute me and also my publisher, Mr. Stanley
Paul. But I presume it was feared that I might make some rather nasty
accusations, and bring proof against certain highly-placed persons,
so the matter was allowed to drop. Then I went further, and wrote
another fearless exposure of the truth, which I called _Britain’s
Deadly Peril_, and again defiantly published it, well knowing that
I had a patriotic circle of good friends behind me. I awaited
prosecution, but none came.
About this time a Danish bookseller, who sells my books in
Copenhagen, wrote to me telling me he had just returned from Berlin,
where he had heard of the naval raid on Scarborough _three days
before it took place_! He was often in London before the war, and in
the course of his interesting letter he wrote:
“I always thought the spy mania in England exaggerated, but
now I am absolutely persuaded that even those Englishmen who
recognize this peril do not realize the lengths to which it
goes. They have been suspecting waiters and servants, whilst
the spies are in high social positions; they have contented
themselves with searching the houses of German barbers and
grocers, whilst neglecting the hands which collect and forward
to Berlin the information gathered by more humble satellites.
“It is very sad to have to say such things, but I think the
most dangerous spies still in England are not Germans, whether
naturalized or not, but are people belonging to neutral
countries--even to countries actually fighting Germany--and
also subjects of Great Britain herself.
“I would not have written this if I was not sure of it; the
diplomat from whom I got the information assured me that there
are some English and French of both sexes who come regularly
to Berlin, or to frontier towns through neutral countries,
and have conversations with officials and then return. The
restrictions as to luggage and passports, both in France and
in England, are not half so severe as they should be; _they
are even slacker than at the beginning of the war_. I know,
personally, of a number of stolen American passports under
the shelter of which German spies are now travelling, and
an Italian Consul with whom I happened to travel a few days
ago said he had discovered two fellows with false Italian
passports almost perfectly imitated.
“In Berlin I heard people, well-informed people, saying that
in every English town of importance, and on every spot of
strategical value on the British coast, Germany has got _few
friends_ keeping their eyes open, and ready to receive an
eventual German raid, and to give their friends as strong a
hand as possible.”
That letter bore out exactly what I was trying to preach every day.
* * * * *
One day while lunching with Lord Northcliffe at his house in St.
James’ Place--I having assisted Lady Northcliffe and the Duchess of
Roxburghe in the organization of a field hospital for Serbia--he said
to me:
“Quex, my dear fellow, why don’t you lecture? Tell the people about
spies and their ways. Having been our spy yourself, you know the game
better than anybody. I’m sure it would interest people.”
As first I demurred, but he pressed me, assuring me that it would
cause the people to think.
“There are spies everywhere among us, as you are aware. The
authorities are most reluctant to arrest one, for reasons we already
know. Now and then one is caught, just in order to make pretence of
our great vigilance and keep incompetent people in their jobs.”
So I decided to lecture. Perhaps some of those who read this book
may have listened to me while I spoke from one or other of the two
hundred and twenty-eight different platforms I occupied, in as
many different towns, from Aberdeen to Brighton and from Cromer to
Carmarthen.
Lord Headley, who is a great humorist, often took the chair, and
among other chairmen I had the Earl of Midleton, ex-Minister for War,
the Earl of Clarendon, the Marquis of Linlithgow, Lord Rochdale,
Lord Leith of Fyvie, and many peers, parsons, provincial mayors, and
distinguished people.
Now Lord Headley is a ventriloquist inasmuch as he can speak without
moving his lips. He lives at St. Margaret’s, near Twickenham, and
I introduced him to Douglas Sladen, who lived across the Thames
at Richmond; so the pair became great friends. But it was his
lordship’s ventriloquial abilities that worried me. We would travel
down from London together by car to some distant town, arrive about
six o’clock, eat a chop, and go to the place where I was “billed” to
lecture, usually for some local charity, so I paid the expenses! Duly
we arrived on the platform amid applause, and duly he would rise and
make an eulogistic speech that caused me to blush.
Then, when I rose and began to try and entertain my audience for an
hour and a half without the aid of “pictures”--no easy task in these
days, if one is not a variety performer, I assure you--he would
presently _sotto voce_ give his humorous impressions of the audience.
I heard whispered loudly, though nobody else could hear, something as
follows:
“Good Lord! What a funny crowd! Putrid! Look at that old girl at
the corner of the third row! What a guy! She’ll look under the bed
to-night to make sure there’s not a spy there!”
Then a pause.
“That’s it! They’ve all got their mouths open now. Tell them a funny
story. Yes, they’re right with you--with you every time--look at the
reporters scribbling it all down--lots in the papers to-morrow. Phew!
The place is packed. I’m tired--beastly tired!”
I was compelled to endure this, and much more, for he would single
out persons in the audience, indicate them, and criticize their
personal appearance in such a manner that I had to clench my hands
and set my jaws hard to keep myself from laughing in the faces of my
listeners.
One hot summer’s night I was advertised to lecture in the Town Hall
at Windsor, and we drove down together by car from London. It was for
charity. I was suffering from a bad cold in the head, and I could
hardly speak. Indeed, I had been in bed till four o’clock, but was
determined not to disappoint those who wished to hear me. I had been
told, too, that, the Court being in residence at the Castle, a number
of officials attached to it had taken tickets.
On the way down I said to my chairman:
“Look here, Headley, no humour to-night. I’m horribly ill, and really
can’t stand it. How I shall get through it I don’t know.”
“My dear fellow, I can see you’re queer,” he replied. “I won’t utter
a single word. Dry up early, and let’s get back as soon as we can. We
have to go up to Newcastle to-morrow, remember.”
And so it was arranged.
The big hall was packed. His lordship explained that I was suffering
from a very bad cold and had risen from my bed to fulfil my promise
in the cause of charity.
Then I rose, and I started in a voice that I fear was very harsh and
hoarse. Though feeling only half awake I nevertheless did my best.
For nearly half-an-hour I went on, till suddenly I heard that
familiar voice exclaim in a whisper:
“I know that you will forgive me. I humbly apologize, but I--I really
can’t help it. Don’t kick me when you get me outside, will you? But
we’ve actually come across It at last! Great Scot! Look!”
I continued lecturing, determined to take no notice of his lordship’s
remark.
A few minutes later he said:
“Ah! It’s quite evident that you’ve lost your sight as well as your
voice. No! You’re not looking in the right direction! You’re blind!”
I continued with my lecture, telling a story that made the audience
laugh.
“My dear fellow,” whispered my chairman, “do look down below--in the
first row of the stalls.”
I did so, and at once I burst out laughing with the audience. I could
not help it.
In a seat right beneath where I stood sat an elderly lady in black,
with a double-sized old-fashioned ear-trumpet, covered with a little
black lace curtain, and as she listened intently, she turned the
whites of her eyes upwards to me. She was the wife of a famous
headmaster whose name I think I may as well omit.
When we got outside, Lord Headley said:
“I knew, my dear Le Queux, that you would, in such circumstances,
forgive me for breaking my promise. But I couldn’t resist. Oh! What a
time we have on these lectures, don’t we?”
I had many other humorous adventures on my lecture tour. More than
once I found Horatio Bottomley lecturing in the same town as myself,
and staying at the same hotel. On such occasions we always had supper
together.
I knew him in London quite well, for I used to write for _John Bull_.
Almost the first week I went out lecturing I met him on the railway
platform at Perth, on a winter’s day, both of us going up to Dundee.
“Well, Le Queux,” he asked, bustling up with his secretary behind
him, “what are you doing here?”
I told him that I was out lecturing.
“So am I, dear boy,” he said in his breezy way. “So am I. Just trying
to turn an honest penny, you know!”
At his trial he alleged that he made nothing by his tub-thumping
lectures that drew such big crowds because he was such a fine
showman, but I happen to know that he would turn up his nose at a fee
of a hundred guineas to lecture. He told me so.
At that moment Horatio was the idol of the middle and lower classes.
They believed in him, and certainly he was very outspoken in his
criticisms, and, like myself, was hated by the authorities because he
dared to tell the truth. One afternoon I strolled in at one of his
lectures in a mining town, where quite unexpectedly he pointed to me
and told his audience what I had done for England. I was cheered to
the echo, and felt most embarrassed.
I could write a volume about my amusing experiences while lecturing.
Travelling in war-time was bad enough, and what with food-rationing,
lack of motor-cars, and such-like inconveniences, it was really a
dog’s life.
Both Mr. Lloyd George and Lord Colwyn were extremely good to me
during my lecturing, for they both took a great interest in my
propaganda against the enemy. Both knew that my attitude was correct
and reliable beyond attack, for, had it not been, I should have been
prosecuted and probably imprisoned for publishing books in defiance
of the Government’s censorship.
Here I will say a word concerning the censorship of letters. The
reader will recollect that a huge department was formed to open
and read everyone’s correspondence. Hundreds of men, women, and
flappers were engaged in Kingsway and its vicinity in order to throw
dust in the eyes of the public, in pretence of preventing enemy
communication. And one’s letters were marked with the words, “Opened
by the Censor.”
This was all too funny for words, though you, my reader, and
myself had to pay for it, even to the flappers’ teapots. The whole
department was a delusion and a fraud. I know this is a sweeping
statement to make, but I make it because the German Secret Service
had discovered a means of secret writing between the lines of an
ordinary letter that, even if suspected and treated with chemical
reagents, as so many hundreds were, the invisible writing, instead
of being revealed, was instantly destroyed! I feel half inclined to
explain the matter, but I hesitate to do so for fear that it may not
be in the public interest.
I know Herr Steinhauer, who acted as chief director of German
espionage throughout the world. In 1913, while on one of my
periodical visits to Turkey, I was staying as usual at the Pera
Palace Hotel in Constantinople.
Before dinner Fred Stevens, who was one of the known crooks in
Constantinople--now dead--lounged in, and we took our glass of
sherry in the bar. As we lifted our glasses there entered a tall,
round-faced, smart-looking man of about forty, with a well-trimmed
fair moustache and typically German, whom he introduced to me as
Dr. Beutner. I understood that he was a representative of the big
furnishing house of Heewart Wolfe in Berlin, and that he was their
buyer of Turkish, Persian, and Angora carpets, of which he was an
expert.
I strolled about with him for several days, and Stevens accompanied
us. On two evenings we went together to the Concordia, the gay
music-hall in the Grand Rue, and one afternoon we crossed the
Bosphorus to Scutari and spent a delightful evening there. It was not
till two months later that, to my great surprise, I discovered that
my entertaining friend Dr. Beutner was none other than the notorious
Herr Steinhauer, the Kaiser’s bosom friend and confidant, and head of
the service of German espionage in Great Britain.
About eighteen months before the war I met another highly interesting
person, whose name was afterwards on everyone’s lips. It was in
a far-off log-built fishing town, a black, treeless settlement,
which for three months in the year endures the Arctic night. It
was snowing hard when I stepped off the black old tramp-steamer,
laden with dried fish and whale-oil, on to the new landing-stage of
what was afterwards to be an important strategic point, the little
place founded in 1900, called Alexandrovsk. At that time public
works had just been ordered from Petrograd--the Catherine Harbour
to be deepened and a new quay built. I lunched with the captain of
the ship, the engineer in charge of the works, the stout military
commander in a grey uniform too small for him, and a scraggy-bearded,
long-haired, ill-conditioned-looking man in a greasy black robe.
His eyes were bloodshot and deep-set, he spoke the Russian of the
_mujik_, but he wore, suspended by a heavy silver chain, a crucifix
of magnificent emeralds.
I wondered what could be the worth of those splendid gems. After
we parted and I returned again to the ship, I inquired of Captain
Thurstrup as to whom the priest might be.
“Oh,” he replied, “I ought to have told you. He is the Monk Rasputin,
the great friend of the Emperor. There are all sorts of wonderful
tales afloat as to his influence over the Imperial family, and many
of them are, I believe, true. He has come down to see the place and
report to the Emperor.”
Little did I dream that the dirty, unkempt, pasty-faced priest with
his sinister smite and damp, flabby hand was the Kaiser’s creature,
who would eventually throw Holy Russia into the melting-pot.
* * * * *
I think it is well-known that after the murder of the Mock-monk
in Petrograd the Kerensky Government handed to me, in confidence,
a great quantity of documents which had been found in the safe in
the cellar of his house, in order that I might write an account of
the scoundrel’s amazing career. This I did, from the documentary
evidence, under the title of _Rasputin_, which met with great
interest all over the world. Now among that huge mass of letters,
telegrams, and compromising correspondence from the Empress and
others--for Rasputin was a blackmailer, as well as a priest--I found
the greater part of a manuscript which he himself a criminal, had
evidently intended to publish, entitled “Great Russian Criminals.”
It was in French, a language which the monk knew only slightly,
and being typed, had evidently been dictated. In it I found to my
amazement _the actual truth concerning the “Jack the Ripper” crimes_!
I did not publish it in my book because I have been unable, until
recently, to verify any of the facts alleged. I will, however, quote
from Rasputin’s own manuscript which, before I returned it to the
Revolutionary Government, I copied, as follows:
“London was horrified by the evil work of a mysterious
criminal known as ‘Jack the Ripper,’ who killed and mutilated
a number of women of ill-repute in the East End of the
capital. The repetition of the appalling crimes mystified the
world. The true author of these atrocities was disclosed by a
Russian well-known in London, named Nideroest, a spy of our
Secret Police, who was a member of the Jubilee Street Club,
the Anarchist Centre in the East of London. One night in the
club the identity of ‘Jack the Ripper’ was revealed to him by
an old Russian Anarchist, Nicholas Zverieff. The mysterious
assassin was Doctor Alexander Pedachenko, who had been on the
staff of the Maternity Hospital at Tver, and lived on the
second floor in the Millionnaya, but had gone to London, where
he lived with his sister in Westmorland Road, Walworth. From
there he sallied forth at night, took an omnibus across London
Bridge and walked to Whitechapel, where he committed his
secret crimes.
“Alexander Pedachenko, according to Zverieff--whose record
appears in the reports of the Secret Police--was aided by a
friend of his named Levitski, and a young tailoress, called
Winberg. The latter would approach the victim and hold her in
conversation and Levitski kept watch for the police patrols,
while the crimes and mutilations took place. Levitski, who had
been born in London, wrote the warning post-cards signed ‘Jack
the Ripper’ to the Police and Press. It was through Levitski
that Zverieff knew the truth.
“The report of Nideroest’s discovery amused our Secret Police
greatly, for, as a matter of fact, they knew the whole details
at the time, and had themselves actively aided and encouraged
the crimes, in order to exhibit to the world certain defects
of the English police system, there having been some
misunderstanding and rivalry between our own police and the
British. It was, indeed, for that reason that Pedachenko, the
greatest and boldest of all Russian criminal lunatics, was
encouraged to go to London and commit that series of atrocious
crimes, in which agents of our police aided him.
“Eventually at the orders of the Ministry of the Interior
the Secret Police smuggled the assassin out of London, and
as Count Luiskovo he landed at Ostend, and was conducted by
a secret service agent to Moscow. While there he was, a few
months later, caught red-handed attempting to murder and
mutilate a woman named Vogak and was eventually sent to an
asylum, where he died in 1908.
“After the return to Russia of Levitski and the woman Winberg
the Secret Police deemed it wise to suppress them, and they
were therefore exiled to Yakutsk. Such are the actual facts of
the ‘Jack the Ripper Mystery’ which still puzzles the whole
world.”
I venture to give this quotation from Rasputin’s unfinished work
because I have only recently discovered that a doctor named
Pedachenko did actually live in Tver, and his homicidal tendencies
were well-known. Again, I have further found out that a man named
Nideroest was a member of the Jubilee Street Club and was known in
connection with the Anarchist affray at Tottenham, and also with the
Sidney Street affair.
In addition, it must be remembered that during the war, Rasputin was
plotting with Protopopoff, Minister of the Interior, for the downfall
of Russia, and therefore he had access to all the secret archives of
that Department, from which it is plain he obtained his facts.
Hence, without agreeing that our police system is defective, I print
these disclosures among “Things I Know.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Stories of Famous Folk--Mr. Lloyd George Chaffed by Lord
Birkenhead--We Journey Together to Eat Oysters--Sir John
Foster Fraser, Max Pemberton and Myself Make a Bet--How
the Ex-Premier “Pulled Our Leg”--Sir Robert Horne and the
New Zealand Mutton--General “Brab” Brabazon and His Good
Looks--Eveleigh Nash’s Funny Stories--Coulson Kernahan
Recounts Some Amusing Episodes--Miss May Edgington and
the Film Producer--How a Novelist Rode a Race--Sir Rider
Haggard and Myself Have an Adventure.
Last October I went as fellow-guest with Mr. Lloyd George, Lord
Birkenhead, and Sir Laming Worthington Evans down to the annual
oyster feast at Colchester. The Mayor of Colchester had asked me
to propose the toast of “The Colne Oyster Fisheries”--why I know
not--but as Mr. Lloyd George was available at the last moment I
happily escaped the necessity of telling a lie as excuse.
We were a merry party on the way down, for it included T. P.
O’Connor, the Lord Mayor of London and Lady Mayoress, Sir John Foster
Fraser, Max Pemberton, and Mr. Lloyd George, who made us laugh with
his many humorous remarks. He was wearing a particularly shabby felt
hat, and Lord Birkenhead, always smartly groomed, chipped him about
it.
Mr. Lloyd George took off his faded hat, regarded it critically, and
said:
“Do you think anybody will notice it? It’s moving day to-day, for
we are clearing out of Downing Street; the fact is, I couldn’t find
another!”
Sir John Foster Fraser, Max Pemberton, and myself, then made a bet
that somebody at the coming feast of oysters would in the course of
his speech, certainly refer to “the succulent bivalve.”
Later we all three listened intently to the speeches, after we had
eaten dozens of delicious oysters, washed down with Chablis.
Suddenly Mr. Lloyd George, beaming with good humour, rose, and in
the course of his speech said: “And now that we have just partaken
of these very succulent”--and then he paused and looked across to
where Max and I were seated, and smiled slyly--“these very succulent
oysters,” he went on.
I heard a distinct groan from Foster Fraser, near by.
At that function the Mayor of Colchester had, for some reason, issued
the invitation to “Sir” William Le Queux, and as such I appeared in
all the newspapers, much to the amusement of my friends and also to
that of the ex-Prime Minister.
I have met so many famous folk, and heard so many stories told, that
I hardly know where to commence.
A dear friend of mine who often kindly invited me to her delightful
house, “Inchmery,” is Constance Lady de la Warr, who is a most
charming hostess of the old school; she is extremely well versed in
literature, and knows innumerable literary people. Her son, the late
Earl, was a great friend of mine in the days when he was developing
Bexhill and when all the financiers who helped him took their “pound
of flesh,” much to the dear, but rather erratic, Earl’s detriment.
One winter evening, his lordship met me at a railway station on the
border of the New Forest, and drove me to his mother’s house so
furiously in the dark that I never thought I should live to enter the
well-lighted stone hall. But I did, and there found Eveleigh Nash
awaiting me, for he has been for many years a great friend of the de
la Warrs.
That night at dinner I remember he told us an amusing story. He said:
“I once knew well a wonderful old lady, Mrs. Herbert of Llanover (the
mother of Lord Treowen). She was nearly ninety when she died, but to
the end her brain was clear, and her memory amazing; and, when I used
to stay with her at Llanover, she told me many good stories, of which
the following is a sample.
“She married, in the early reign of Queen Victoria, Mr. John Arthur
Jones of Llanarth Court, Monmouth, but she had not long been Mrs.
Jones before she hated the name and asked her husband whether he
could arrange to take the surname of Herbert, which he was quite
entitled to do, as his family had inter-married with the Herberts.
Being a very punctilious gentleman, Mr. Jones decided, before taking
any definite steps in the matter, that he would write to Lord
Pembroke, the head of the Herbert family, to ask whether he had any
objection to his taking the name of Herbert. To this inquiry Pembroke
replied, ‘I have not the slightest objection to your assuming the
name of Herbert, provided in turn you don’t ask me to take the name
of Jones.’”
I can recall two more amusing stories Nash told before the
smoking-room fire at the Devonshire Club, with Lewis Edmunds, K.C.,
the chairman of the committee, standing astride on the hearthrug, and
Noel Mobbs, Lord Blyth, and Lord Cowdray listening.
He said:
“General Sir John Brabazon, who died recently, was a well-known
figure in town. Among his friends he was called ‘Brab,’ but as he
never could sound the letter ‘r’ he was more familiarly referred
to as Bwab. He was once talking to a lady in the drawing-room of a
house where he had been invited to dinner, when an ugly-looking man
with a large blue patch on his cheek and nose came into the room.
Brab, who hadn’t caught the lady’s name, turned to her and said
in a horrified accent, ‘What a dreadful looking fellow!’ ‘Excuse
me, General Brabazon,’ replied the lady frigidly, ‘but that is my
husband.’ ‘Oh, really,’ said Brab, who was not in the least perturbed
by his blunder, ‘how very interesting that I should have met you this
evening, because very likely you can tell me--_is he like that all
over_?’”
We all laughed, whereupon Nash went on:
“Dr. W. A. Chapple, who was Liberal M.P. for Stirlingshire for
several years, told me an amusing story about Sir Robert Horne, the
ex-Chancellor of the Exchequer. Sir Robert was the Conservative
candidate who opposed him, and having heard that Dr. Chapple was
a native of New Zealand, he determined to make the best of the
information. One evening Sir Robert was addressing a meeting in the
parish of Slamanan, where he was born, and remarked, ‘I see around me
many old friends with whom I have played on the green as a boy, and I
venture to think that you would rather have the home-bred stock than
New Zealand mutton.’ This was received with cheers and much laughter,
but, unfortunately, its effect was spoilt by an old Scotsman, who
shouted from the back of the hall, ‘We can do fine wi’ the mutton;
it’s the horns we dinna want.’ Sir Robert Horne was not returned at
that election.”
* * * * *
Basil Tozer, whose newly-published volume, _Recollections of a
Rolling Stone_, has been so much talked about, I have known for many
years, and among amusing stories that he has not included in his book
is one that he told me in Boodle’s recently.
For some months during the war he was billeted in a little
cosmopolitan hotel in Rouen, and on going up to his bedroom rather
late one night he found that his heavy earthenware hand basin had not
been emptied. Deciding on a course habitual to the aborigines of the
town, he opened his bedroom window, meaning to empty his basin out
of it, when to his horror the basin slipped from his hands and fell
with a crash on to a glass roof on the ground beneath, and on to the
table where a lot of Canadian N.C.O.’s were playing jack-pot.
“The howls of execration and outburst of frightful language that
followed I shall never forget as long as I live,” Tozer said to me.
To avoid discovery he at once switched off the light and jumped into
bed, and next day he had the satisfaction of hearing the Canadian
N.C.O.’s declaring to each other the awful things they would do to
the owner of that basin if they only could lay hands on him.
But they never did lay hands on him!
The eccentric Dr. Cann, who, as Tozer tells us in his book, used to
walk about the London streets in his shirt-sleeves in the height
of the season, had a great iron safe full of sixpences that he had
collected. He thought that it was “insanitary” to wear a tie, and
therefore never wore one; and though himself abstemious, he carried
in his pocket a flask of port and a flask of sherry from which
he would give drinks to anybody he met in Oxford Street or any
neighbourhood that took his fancy. He was at one time the leading
physician in Dawlish. He died a year or two ago.
But Tozer does not tell us that when Dr. Cann owned steeplechase
horses, he, Tozer, used to train and ride them for him. One of these
animals was, I well remember, a big raking chestnut, called Kaiser,
which Tozer rode at Torquay races, Totnes races, and elsewhere.
It was at a Torquay meeting that, happening to be standing by when a
horse fell at a bank, throwing and stunning its rider, Tozer jumped
on to the animal’s back and finished the race, coming in second! And
the most curious thing was that when he went to weigh in he exactly
tipped the scale at the weight of the rider who had been thrown, so
that had he won the race it would have been awarded to the animal’s
owner!
A racing friend tells me that the rule is that if a horse falls,
anybody who is a qualified rider, as Basil Tozer was, is at liberty
to get up and finish the race, if the horse be in the field where he
fell, namely that he had not jumped another fence.
* * * * *
Stanley Austin of the _Daily Mirror_, who is so well-known in
literary and Bohemian circles, related a story to me lately, while
we were dining together at the Arts Club. Sir William Orpen, K.B.E.,
R.A., the famous portrait painter was, he told me, staying at a
well-known country house and incidentally painting the portrait of
the wealthy owner. One morning Sir William came down before breakfast
to work on the portrait and was met in the hall by the butler, who
said, “You’re a painter, aren’t you?” “Certainly,” said Orpen. “Well,
I wish you’d do a little job for me. That infernal fool, my young
footman, has kicked some paint off the drawing-room floor, and there
will be a devil of a row if the master sees it; will you touch it up
a bit?” “Of course I will,” said Orpen, and fetched his palette and
did the job, thoroughly enjoying the humour of the situation as did
also the “master” when Orpen told him some time afterwards.
The other day, while I was walking with a well-known member of
the Wellington Club up St. James’s Street, an elegantly-dressed
foreign-looking man in tall hat, morning coat and monocle, suddenly
passed us. They nodded, and I asked who he was.
“Oh! Don’t you know? That’s Count Glaxo,” was my friend’s reply,
“they call him that because he is the father of so many bonnie
babies.”
* * * * *
Miss May Edgington, the well-known novelist and dramatist, who is
one of the prettiest and most charming of all our lady writers, one
afternoon, with her husband, motored out to see me at Guildford. Her
husband is Mr. F. E. Baily, editor of the _Royal Magazine_.
We were sitting together on the lawn discussing the sharp practices
of the kinema trade and how the importation of German-made films was
proving detrimental to our own products, when she told me a good
story concerning the foreign kinema idea of English sport.
“One of my stories has been recently filmed,” she said, “and I was
asked to the trade show and to be guest of honour at the lunch
afterwards. Although I hate films, I went to the trade show and saw
that they had kept faithfully to the story, except that they had put
in an extra scene at the beginning, depicting a lovely country house,
with its lawns, gardens, and flowers, with beautiful women walking
about in beautiful frocks. One or two of the women were leading
petted greyhounds. The men were mostly in silk hats and morning
coats, apparently proposing marriage to anyone they met under the
rose arches. It was altogether a pretty scene.
“So when the film people asked me afterwards what I thought of my
picture, I said it seemed very nice and that they had kept pretty
closely to the story, except for the addition of the garden-party
with which it opened. Whereupon the producer replied somewhat coldly:
‘That isn’t a garden-party, Miss Edgington; that’s a British coursing
match!’”
* * * * *
Coulson Kernahan, a friend of Swinburne and Watts-Dunton, has been my
friend ever since the days of long ago when he was “reader” to Ward
& Lock, the publishers, and recommended them to publish some of my
earlier works. To him quite recently a well-known novelist with no
small idea of himself, but who had had, in the _Daily Chronicle_, a
bad review of his latest book, said:
“I don’t care what the _Chronicle_ says, or what any other infernal
paper says about my work--I have a public behind me.”
“Have you?” remarked “C.K.,” as he is known to his friends, with a
smile. “That accounts, of course, for the odour of bad whiskey that
pervades you, and gives some of us the idea that you very often have
a head.”
“I might have said swelled head,” remarked Kernahan, as he told me
the story. But instead he went on:
“You’re lucky, my dear old fellow, to have a public behind you. My
nearest ‘pub’ at Fairlight is half-a-mile away.”
Mr. J. A. Craig, editor of _Great Thoughts_, remarked one day to
Kernahan that a friend of his, the Rev. Principal Griffith-Jones, was
busy writing a book on “Providence,” a subject he had studied for
thirty years.
“Oh, that’s nothing!” said Kernahan. “I have studied and practised
improvidence for more than sixty.”
One day in the Savage Club I asked Kernahan what he thought of a
certain man.
“Oh, well,” he replied, “He’s the sort of man whose chief interest
in life would, I could well believe, be in his collection of
postage-stamps.”
A few months ago I was lunching with him and Mrs. Coulson Kernahan,
whose novels are so well known, at their pretty country house at
Fairlight, near Hastings, where the windows command a magnificent
view of the Sussex Downs and of the sea.
Among the guests was a very popular clergyman, the Rev. Halbert Boyd,
author of that clever book _Men and Marvels_, with whom we are both
on terms of intimate friendship.
While chaffing Boyd across the table Kernahan remarked, “There
are four creatures entirely without conscience--cats, spiders,
journalists, and--clergymen.”
I added publishers to the list, and it was unanimously accepted.
Another story told of him is that while lecturing at Norwich one
night a dog in the audience started barking furiously, so that he
could hardly be heard. When the dog had been unceremoniously hustled
out, Kernahan, having stopped, said: “Now, if I were speaking in
Parliament instead of lecturing here in Norwich, the papers to-morrow
morning would punctuate its report with (in brackets) ‘Interrupted by
the Member for Barking.’”
During a railway journey from London one night he told me a story
about a man who lived in the same east coast town where he once
was living. The man, whose name was Dickson, began life as a small
barber, then turned into a money-lender and advanced on mortgages,
which he foreclosed as soon as he found that his clients were pressed
for money. He then started to develop a building estate, and built a
number of small detached villas in what he called Dickson’s Avenue.
Kernahan happened to be walking with a local friend when the name was
being affixed to the end of the new road.
“Ah! Quite so,” he remarked to his friend, who had sadly suffered at
Dickson’s hands. “Dickson’s been ’aving you all his life!”
While writing this book, I had an amusing experience with my friend
and neighbour, Sir Rider Haggard. He had been asked to take the chair
at the Gaiety Theatre at Hastings in aid of a fund for the starving
children in Eastern Europe. Lady Paget, the organizer, spoke at some
length, and after she had concluded a speaker rose from the row of
the novelist’s supporters on the platform and began to address the
meeting volubly on behalf of the League of Nations Union.
Now the League of Nations Union is like a red rag to a bull to the
famous author of _She_. He had not noticed that the meeting was held
under the auspices of the Union, so he writhed in his chair for some
moments, and then rose to protest against “this gentleman addressing
the meeting.”
The speaker apologized, and was about to sit down, when somebody
shouted, “Go on! Go on!”
Another speaker explained humbly that the meeting had been called by
the League of Nations Union, at which Sir Rider’s countenance was a
study.
He withdrew his protest and sat it out to the end, but as he and I
went back to St. Leonards his anger knew no bounds, and he declared
that he would never again take the chair at a charity meeting.
Sir Rider Haggard’s business acumen is well shown in the following.
A certain well-known book of his, written years ago, was not
copyrighted in the United States, and an enterprising film firm at
Los Angeles, on discovering this, resolved to make a screen-play of
it. They did so, and it was a huge success. It was brought to England
and shown everywhere up and down the country, the company making huge
profits, while its author waited patiently. Then, when it was all
over, Sir Rider Haggard descended heavily on the offending pirates
and compelled them to disgorge all the profits they had made in
England and other countries where the story had been copyrighted.
* * * * *
As I write these lines I note with deepest regret the death of my old
“bull-dog” friend “Klondike” Boyle. A big, blue-eyed man with a hard,
bitter look, he was a son of the Canadian prairie, and a man whose
adventures in the “back of beyond” would fill volumes. His baptismal
name was Colonel Joseph Wentworth Boyle, D.S.O. At one time he was
manager to Slavin, the pugilist, but on the outbreak of war he was on
the Yukon, 10,000 miles from England, where he raised a machine-gun
corps, which was later trained at Witley camp, in Surrey.
He was known to everyone as “The King of the Klondike,” and while at
Witley was invited by my popular friend, Mrs. George Pinckard, to
stay at Coombe Court, George Pinckard’s beautiful place close by, and
I dined with them one night. While there Mrs. Pinckard’s charming
little daughter, Coral, became greatly attached to the big, bluff
fellow, and he gave her several small nuggets of Klondike gold. One
day Coral came up to him and said: “You are a king, aren’t you?”
Boyle smiled at the child, and replied: “They call me a king, but I’m
not really one.”
“Ah!” replied the little child, “I thought not, because you don’t
wear a crown.”
One day I was his fellow guest at Coombe, and with his hostess, Mrs.
Pinckard, we were walking across the park to see the remounts, when
the conversation turned on his great fortune. He described, how
during the gold rush, he and his seven companions did their thrilling
400-mile forced march from Dawson City to the Yukon. The party
reached the Yukon more dead than alive. There were rumours that gold
was to be found in that area, and, with Frank Slavin as his partner,
Boyle staked out a claim, the boundaries of which were determined
only by the limit of view.
“Yes,” said Boyle, as we crossed the beautiful park, “we picked out a
bend of the river as far as the eye could reach, and soon proved our
claim, and struck it square.”
The fact was that, after the claim had proved to be the greatest
placer (alluvial) gold mine in the world, Boyle and his associates
took out £3,000,000 worth of gold.
Harry de Windt and his friend Tony Safe were up there at the time,
and though they were both lucky, Boyle took the honours.
Immediately after the Armistice I again met Boyle at the house of
a well-known actress, and our conversation chanced to turn on the
Near East. He became interested, especially about things I told him
concerning Roumania. It apparently fired his ambition to go there,
for a few weeks later he went to Bucharest, and within a couple of
months had become the hero of the Roumanians. A dare-devil to his
finger-tips, he was absolutely without fear. It was he who, when the
Bolshevists refused to hand over sixty Roumanian prisoners, flew into
the Bolshevist camp by French aeroplane, leaped into the same boat
as the prisoners, and made the Russians take him with the prisoners
to the Crimea. There he persuaded the Bolshevists to keep their word
and returned with the prisoners to Bucharest.
The King and Queen of Roumania took a great fancy to him, so much so
that our Foreign Office regarded him with considerable annoyance,
for he became one of the leading men in that country. It was he who
prevented one of the Roumanian princes from eloping. Subsequently
he became food-controller and also reorganized the Roumanian
railway service. He always appealed to me as one of the most daring
adventurers I have ever met. He had the spirit of a lion and the
heart of a child.
Boyle latterly went everywhere with the King and Queen of Roumania,
and the last time I saw him was last summer, when he was bathing in
the sea at Deauville accompanied by the Queen, with the King of Spain
watching. I afterwards had a chat with him in the palm-court of the
Normandy, when he told me that he had fallen foul of the British
Government, who suspected him of espionage!
I have just mentioned Mrs. George Pinckard. She is one of the most
witty and popular women in London, and has an enormous circle of
friends, whom at her charming house in Chesterfield Street she so
constantly entertains.
When a certain man who began life as a small grocer had married his
cook, and had waxed wealthy during the war, was made a baronet, Ruby
Pinckard is credited with inventing a conundrum, which went the
rounds of Society:
“What has the King accomplished that the Almighty was unable to do?”
was the question.
The answer was: “He’s made Mrs. X a ‘lady’!”
George Pinckard her husband, who is equally popular in Society, is
Lord of the Manor of Witley, and was for some years Master of the
Chiddingfold Hounds.
One day during the war George, on being told that a lady with a
foreign name had changed it to Nelson, at once remarked:
“Why Nelson? Why isn’t she up to date and call herself Jellicoe at
once?”
The late Viscount Midleton was extremely near-sighted--indeed, almost
blind. One day he and George Pinckard were travelling together from
Waterloo to Guildford, when, after chatting a few moments, both
settled themselves and began to read. Suddenly Lord Midleton thought
he had a bundle of rugs at his side, got up, and began to lift them
up on to the rack. There was a loud shriek, for the bundle proved
to be a diminutive old lady wrapped in furs. Lord Midleton was most
profuse in his apologies, and George Pinckard had to begin a merry
conversation in order to clear the atmosphere.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Adventures in Clubland--The Last Bohemian in Paris--“Uncle
Smith” and the Junior Garrick Club--A Night Drive with
W. S. Penley and its Result--We Sell Up the Junior
Garrick--The Crichton--Our “Lions” of the Savage--Society
Establishes the Lyric Club--I Dine with La Belle Otero
before Her Début--A Tragedy of Leicester Square--Earl
Roberts at My Suggestion becomes President of the New
Vagabonds--The Argonauts--Tales of the Lyric Club--The
Devonshire Club, and Once Crockford’s in the Days of
the Dandies--The Exclusive Crimes Club and What We Do
There--Mysteries of the Ham-Bone Club.
I have known a good many clubs, and more clubmen of various social
standing.
My earliest club was a little congregation that used to meet every
night, in my student days, in Paris, at a table in the Café Vachette,
in the Boul’ Mich’. Paul Deschanel, my fellow student who afterwards
became President of the Republic, Spiridion--the great painter
whose “Sappho” is so well known--and Revillion, who is Préfet of
Basses-Alpes, were members, with a dozen others. We called ourselves
the Beggars Club, and dined frugally each night, the meal usually
ending in some “rag” or other. We drank nothing more intoxicating
than a _framboise_, an _orgeat_, or a _café-cognac_, known as a _jus
de chapeau_, when funds permitted. We were beggars because we begged
francs from one another.
Often on my visiting Paris nowadays I eat a meal alone in that same
well-remembered corner, where I used to sit when a fellow-student of
so many who have since made their mark. Some are dead, while others
occupy high positions in literature, art, politics, and medicine. My
thoughts wander back to the Bohemia in Paris that has long ago been
a thing of the past--the world where a man is judged neither by his
pocket nor his coat, but only by his real worth as a sterling good
fellow.
It is perhaps not more than seven years ago when, one summer’s
evening, while passing along the Boulevard de Clichy, I came across
a tall, cadaverous old friend of my youth, Georges Brandenbourg,
the famous journalist of the _Figaro_. He was dressed in his
old-fashioned flat-brimmed silk hat, much worn, a frock-coat green
with age, very baggy trousers, and a flowing black cravat.
“Ah! _mon cher_ Le Queux!” he cried, patting me on the back. “Welcome
to Paris again! Let’s have a drink!”
I was compelled to have a glass of absinthe with him, and then, while
we were gossiping about the Beggars Club of the old days, he suddenly
said:
“But you must dine with me to-night. Oh, you must, my dear fellow! I
will accept no excuse. I have to do my _Figaro_ article afterwards,
but we must dine first. Yes, you must dine with me.”
So we went forth again into the Boulevard, where my dear old Bohemian
friend stopped at a butcher’s, bought half a kilo of “biftek,” which
we roasted together over the gas-stove in his carpetless high-up room.
And it tasted sweeter to me, Bohemian that I am, than the very best
dinner at the Ritz.
Two months later he died of septic pneumonia, and with him passed the
last of the old-fashioned Paris Bohemians familiar to readers of Du
Maurier’s _Trilby_. His biographical notice was excellently written
by my friend Ernest Daudet.
After “The Beggars” in Paris, the next club of which I became a
member after coming to London as a journalist was the Junior
Garrick, the premises of which were on the eastern corner of Adelphi
Terrace. In the centre was the Savage, which still exists, and on the
western corner the Crichton. I was a member of all three of them.
In those days of comparative poverty, before I joined the _Globe_,
I went mostly to the Junior Garrick, because if I had no money with
which to pay for my dinner--as was often the case--the accommodating
hall-porter would lend me a small sum on my cheap watch-and-chain.
How many times that watch-and-chain went backwards and forwards I
could not count. But I could always rely on a good square club meal
at the Junior Garrick.
We were a merry Bohemian crowd of literary men and actors,
including Augustus Moore, Eric Mackay--who wrote _Love-Letters of a
Violinist_--Linton, the landscape-painter, Beerbohm Tree, George R.
Sims, old George Grossmith, who had just finished newspaper reporting
at Bow Street, George Lay, the theatrical solicitor. Sir George
Lewis, Penley, Charlie Glenney, William Terris, the actor, Dan Leno,
then earning about five pounds a week and very glad to get a “shop,”
Brandon Thomas, who wrote _Charley’s Aunt_, Henry Pettit, young Harry
Irving, and a host of kindred spirits. Most of us were in those days
a very fourth-rate lot in all our professions, just as was our dub.
Its furniture was extremely shabby, and its only claim to distinction
was that it was established in an old Adams house and had on its
walls many oil paintings of considerable value.
When the bailiffs were put in those pictures were carefully
considered, and when at last we were sold up, the hall-porter’s book,
which everyone had to sign, sold for a big price because of the
autographs of the members and their distinguished friends.
I recollect a little incident one Saturday night at the Junior
Garrick.
Penley, who was playing in _The Private Secretary_, Charlie Glenney,
who was “resting” and myself had dined together at the club and had
gone with Penley to the theatre. The house was crowded, so we spent
the evening in “Spalding’s” dressing-room, and after Penley had
rubbed off his grease-paint and changed out of his clerical attire he
suggested that we should have supper at Rule’s, in Maiden Lane, which
we did.
Over the meal Glenney suggested that we should both spend Sunday at
his house out at Isleworth, an invitation that we accepted.
So into the Strand we sauntered, long after midnight, and Glenney,
hailing a passing hansom cab, said:
“Look here, cabby, how much do you want to take us three to
Isleworth?”
“Well, sir, I don’t know where the devil it is, but I’ll take yer for
a quid!”
The bargain was fixed. We three wedged ourselves into the cab and
drove westward, trotting along Piccadilly, Knightsbridge, and
Kensington, where I think I must have fallen asleep.
At any rate, when I again opened my eyes I found that we were at a
standstill in the country, with the sun shining and the old horse
quietly grazing on the grass beside the road.
I nudged Penley, who woke with a start, and in his thin, squeaky
voice exclaimed:
“Good Lord! Where are we?”
“I don’t know, old man,” was my reply; “there’s a breath of country
air anyhow.”
He pushed up the trap-door in the roof and shouted in his clerical
voice:
“Hi, cabby! Where are we?”
“I don’t know, sir,” replied a sleepy voice from above. “But we’ll go
and see.”
And he whipped up the old horse to explore, when at last we found
ourselves well on the Portsmouth road, near Esher, very far from
Glenney’s house. We had breakfast at the Bear, and it was high noon
before we arrived at Isleworth.
The Crichton Club was but a weak imitation of the Junior Garrick and
did not last very long. Most of its members were also the habitués
of the Junior Garrick, and on its collapse some of us went to the
Yorick, in Bedford Street, Covent Garden, founded by “Uncle Smith,”
once the leading light of the Junior Garrick. Others got themselves
elected by hook or by crook to the Savage.
Neither the premises of the Savage nor its members need any
description by me. Thirty years ago the Prince of Wales, afterwards
King Edward, used often to preside at our weekly house-dinners, and
the guests included the greatest men of the day. I can recall those
dinners, when we had Stanley, Nansen--who wrote his name on the
green wall, where one can see it still--half a dozen Lord Mayors
and as many Cabinet Ministers, foreign diplomats and statesmen
galore, as our guests, while there contributed to our post-prandial
entertainments such well-known men as Rutland Barrington, George
Grossmith, Courtice Pounds, Toft the sculptor, Phil May, Alfred
Praga, and dozens of others who were world-famous.
I have heard Alfred Praga, the President of the Society of
Miniaturists, tell an amusing story of his introduction to the Savage
Club.
“Phil May was my sponsor at this club, and on the day of my election
he perpetrated a bit of ‘spoof’ the effect of which I have hardly
lived down yet--after a membership of over twenty-five years.
“On introducing me as a new member in the bar I noticed he made
some _sotto voce_ remark that I--naturally flattered--thought were
only complimentary things about me, and that he wished to spare my
blushes. I afterwards learned that he told the fellows that I was
immensely wealthy, and was equal to anything they could order in the
way of drinks, and could simply buy the club up if I wanted to! Some
took advantage of this, but others declined on the ground that they
would never be able to return the compliment to a Crœsus like myself.
Alas! I had many an occasion afterwards on which I was compelled to
make him explain away his little joke, and only gradually was I able
to take my proper place as a humble exponent of one of the great
impecunious professions.”
After being a member of the Savage some ten years, Max Pemberton
resigned, and so did I. Why, I really cannot tell to this day.
Perhaps it was because I had been invited to join the Committee of
the Lyric Club, the handsome and luxurious premises of which had just
been built at the corner of Whitcomb Street and Coventry Street, just
off Leicester Square.
It was a Society club, of which Lord Lonsdale was the chief founder.
It possessed all sorts of innovations, including a big private
theatre, where theatrical shows could be given on Sunday evenings,
and private dining-rooms fitted as yacht cabins, Indian bungalows,
etc., where the food was in keeping with the desired effect. Dinner
in the yacht cabin was served by stewards in uniform, and in the
Indian bungalow by Indian servants, and so forth.
It was the first club of its kind to have lady guests, and its chief
feature was its Sunday-night theatrical entertainments. The club
appealed to me as a Bohemian.
Indeed, I was a member of the Lyric Club all through the innumerable
vicissitudes it withstood for many years. At last it died and was
resuscitated as the Prince of Wales’s Club, under which title it
dwindled away and was closed for a long time. It later became the
Motor Club.
Each time I pass its portico to-day a sad tragedy is recalled to me,
and which I will now relate.
Living in the Rue des Petit Champs, in Paris, was a friend of
mine, Henri Jurgens, the well-known impresario. One afternoon,
meeting me in the American bar of the Hôtel Chatham, over which the
ever-humorous “Johnnie” so long presided, he invited me to dine with
him at his flat.
“I found two new girls the other day, singing and dancing at a little
café in Marseilles. They are coming to dine with me to-night and I’m
giving them a trial turn at Olympia afterwards,” he said. “Come and
dine too.”
I accepted, and found two very handsome, dark-eyed, and very modest
young French girls. Provençal from their accent, neatly but poorly
dressed, wearing cotton blouses and dark skirts.
It was a merry meal, during which Jurgens urged them not to be
frightened at appearing before a Paris audience.
“They are no more critical than they are in Marseilles,” he assured
them.
The elder was a dancer, and the other, a few months her junior, a
café singer.
While we sat in a box in the theatre they went on one after the
other, among the “early turns,” and both were voted successes. The
dancer executed a Spanish dance with castanets, showing wonderful
agility, while the other sang two gay chansonettes with a splendid
voice and looked very charming in her stage dress.
The dancer was afterwards known as La Belle Otero, and the singer
was her friend, Liane de Vries. In the later years of their huge
successes, when they both became the rage of Paris and of London, and
earned huge salaries, I often reflected on that night at M. Jurgens’s
flat.
About a year after their first appearance in Paris, Mademoiselle de
Vries, who was notable for her great beauty, came to London to sing
at the Alhambra, and, knowing her well, I invited her to sing at the
Lyric Club one Sunday night.
She came, and delighted the audience, which consisted mostly of
well-known Society people. Afterwards she had supper with me, and
then, as we sat together in the corner of the room, she told me in
confidence that M. Jurgens had proposed marriage to her.
“I have refused three times,” she said. “He is such a dear, and
has been so very good to me, yet I really cannot marry a man I do
not love. This morning I had a telegram from him. He will be here
to-morrow, so I shall leave London as early as I can in the morning,
as I do not want to meet him.”
“Where shall you go?”
“I really don’t know. I have written to the Alhambra management
terminating my engagement.”
That was all she would tell me; but she seemed greatly perturbed.
Presently, while she was standing in the hall with her cloak on, and
I was getting into my coat, a cab stopped and my friend Jurgens, who
was a member of the club, dashed in.
The girl gave vent to an exclamation of amazement and he excitedly
persuaded her to go outside with him and get into the cab. For nearly
half an hour the cab remained there, while the pair held an animated
conversation.
Then they drove off. That was the last I ever saw of my poor friend
Jurgens. Next day he telegraphed me farewell from Dover, and that
same night he committed suicide in his flat in Paris.
That is why I can never pass the corner of Whitcomb Street and
Coventry Street without a painful memory.
* * * * *
Some seventeen years ago I followed my old friend George R. Sims
to the Devonshire Club, and there became one of a little literary
circle that embraced Sir W. Robertson Nicoll, Clement Shorter, Max
Pemberton, Sir George Sutton, Arnold White, and Frank Richardson,
of “whiskers” fame, and G. H. Fosdike Nichols, who is “Quex” of the
_Evening News_, and knows more about people and their doings than
any other man in London. Years have gone, but we all survive as I
write this, save poor Sims, Robertson Nicoll, and the erratic Frank
Richardson.
I have been a member of a good many dining clubs: first the Old
Vagabonds, then the New Vagabonds, and afterwards of the Argonauts;
all three having as their leading lights that dual control of my old
friends Douglas Sladen and G. B. Burgin; the one hirsute and the
other bald, but who, when working together to run a dining-club,
formed the most perfect combination in the world.
All three clubs have been many times described, therefore I need
not remark much about them, except that at the meetings of the New
Vagabonds at the Hotel Cecil one met everyone worth knowing and
everyone who had “done something.” Alas! It is a thousand pities that
the New Vagabonds no longer exists.
I recollect when I asked Lord Roberts to become its president he
looked at me very gravely, and asked:
“What name did you say?”
“The New Vagabonds,” I replied. And I recited the roll of membership,
which included many famous names associated with art, literature, and
the drama.
“Well,” he said, “it’s title sounds uninviting, but I suppose I’ve
been as much of a roving vagabond as most of you. Yes, if they want
me to become its president I will.”
Mr. G. B. Burgin, in his excellent book, _Memoirs of a Clubman_,
tells a story concerning myself at the first dinner of the New
Vagabonds over which Lord Roberts presided.
He relates how, while I sat next to the president and was wearing
miniatures of my decorations, a girl, indicating myself, asked him,
“Who is that distinguished General with the wistful face next to Lord
Roberts?”
Mr. Burgin also recalls an incident connected with the pronunciation
of my somewhat unusual name--NOT _a nom-de-plume_, as so many have
believed. He says:
“I was coming up to town one day when a girl and her mother got into
the train. The girl carried a book under her arm. When they were
comfortably settled the mother said: ‘Give me that book of Le Quek’s,
dear,’ and the daughter replied: ‘Excuse me, mother, but I think you
mean Le Kook’s.’ They appealed to me, and I said authoritatively that
the proper pronunciation was ‘Le Kew’; another man in the corner
broke in with ‘Le Kicks,’ and they were still kicking over it when I
left the train.”
Mr. Burgin was, of course, correct. My name has, however, always been
a stumbling-block, and more especially so, since Pinero wrote “The
Gay Lord Quex.”
I am one of the earliest members of another club, which is known
as “Our Society.” It was started by Arthur Lambton--to whom I
believe I acted as literary godfather--Ingleby Oddie, now coroner
for Westminster, H. B. Irving, Lord Albert Godolphin Osborne, and
Herbert Crosse, its object being the study of criminology. Professor
Churton Collins, Sir Melville Macnaghten, of Scotland Yard, George
R. Sims, Eveleigh Nash, Sir A. Conan Doyle, Max Pemberton, Filson
Young, Arthur Diòsy, J. B. Harris-Burland, P. W. Everett, Thomas
Marlowe, editor of the _Daily Mail_, with Sir Sydney Russell Wells,
Sir George Turner, and Sir H. Waterhouse as representatives of the
medical profession, soon gathered round our board, and by the rules
membership was strictly limited to forty.
Lord Northcliffe, when he joined, nicknamed us “The Forty Thieves.”
About three or four dinners are held annually, and at them the latest
mystery of crime is earnestly discussed, though there is a rule that
our deliberations are entirely secret, and no word of them ever
divulged. We have somehow now earned the sobriquet of “The Crimes
Club.” About a dozen guests are allowed, and nowadays our membership
has been increased to sixty.
Among the regular attendants, in addition to those mentioned above,
are the Duke of Newcastle, Lord Portarlington, Lord Sackville, Lord
Kintore, Sir Eric Drummond, Admiral Sir E. Inglefield, General Sir
A. Balfour, Sir Wilfred Atlay, Sir Godfrey Baring, Sir John Hall,
Sir Henry Jerningham, and Colonel G. Cornwallis-West, while legal
celebrities such as Sir E. Marshall-Hall, K.C., Sir H. Curtis
Bennett, K.C., and Mr. Theobald Mathew are all to be seen around the
table.
Arthur Lambton, to whose untiring efforts the club is due, and who
acts as honorary secretary, takes the chair, and the procedure
is, that a member reads a paper on some recent criminal case, and
sometimes it is followed by a discussion in which counsel, who has
acted for the prosecution or for the defence, takes part. The cases
are analysed and the mentality of the guilty one dissected in a
manner that is of intense interest to those who study the psychology
of crime. My own small contributions have been the description of
the crimes of Landru, and how I helped the Sûreté to investigate
them, and also a small description of spies I have met. It certainly
is the most exclusive and most interesting club in London, and its
subscription is two half-crowns yearly!
There is, of course, a long waiting list, but no vacancy occurs,
unless a member resigns or dies. An additional loss to that of Lord
Northcliffe, one of our best-known and most popular members, who has
recently died, is caused by the death of my old and valued friend
Arthur Diòsy, traveller and lecturer, whose striking features,
with the long-upturned moustachios, were so well known in London
drawing-rooms.
He was my friend through thirty years, and in many ways a most
remarkable figure in Bohemian London. Though born in London, he was
the son of Martin Diòsy, a Hungarian refugee and patriot. After being
educated in Germany, he learnt Japanese and became an advocate for
an Anglo-Japanese alliance, founding the Japan Society and being its
chairman. He knew Japan better than any other Englishman and--let me
whisper it--lectured for years on that country before he had ever
visited it!
I recollect though we were close friends, we had not seen each other
for about six years, when I happened to arrive in Biskra, on the
desert border in Algeria. The hotel was a third-rate one, the others
all being full.
Passing along the corridor, I heard a voice. Diòsy’s was peculiar and
once heard was always remembered, so I knew who was my fellow-guest.
“What ho! Arthur!” I cried.
“Who’s that?” asked Diòsy, with his strange, rolling tongue. Then he
turned the corner, and, facing me, said:
“By the beard of the Prophet, behold the mystery-monger!”
I met Arthur Diòsy constantly all over Europe. When we sat together
at the Crimes Club we used to exchange jokes about our travels. Lord
Northcliffe, who was one of his great admirers, said one night at the
club when we were all there together:
“Look, Quex! Look at the wily old Jap! Take good stock of him, for
he’s wonderful. He can lecture on any mortal subject on earth at five
minutes’ notice.” And so he could.
Poor Arthur Diòsy! He was a man after my own heart, and I hesitate to
let my pen run further across this page.
It was only just before last Christmas that, having eaten
kippers together, at one o’clock in the morning, in the Ham-Bone
Club--London’s only really Bohemian Club, of which I am about to
tell you--I strolled with him as far as Jermyn Street, and we stood
outside the house where he had rooms.
“Well, my dear Le Queux,” he said, “_au revoir_ to you. You are going
ski-ing in Switzerland, and I go to the Riviera. We shall both be
back in town in March and we will then pick another pair of those
succulent kippers, which are such a speciality of the Ham-Bone--eh?”
We grasped hands and parted, while I walked along to the Devonshire
in the moonlight.
He went out to Cannes, and, alas! died there a few weeks later.
And as I write this, his cheery caricature drawn by Sava Botzaritch
still laughs out to me from its silver frame.
I referred to Arthur Lambton as the energetic organizer and secretary
of the Crimes Club. He tells a good story about a murder. It will be
recollected that Devereux murdered his wife, put her body in a trunk,
and then poured glue all over her. When the trunk was opened she was
taken out stiff and viscous like a fish.
Being at breakfast with his father, the late General Arthur Lambton,
my friend asked: “Anything in the paper this morning?” “No,” replied
the General, “except that I see a gentleman named Devereux has put
his wife in aspic!”
I have mentioned the Ham-Bone Club.
It is but vaguely known to Society, and then only through the Press
publishing an occasional paragraph concerning it. Few even of
artistic and literary London are aware of its existence.
As befits the only real Bohemian set still left in London, it keeps
almost exclusively to itself. And yet it is surprising how many
interesting and notable men--whose names are household words--gather
together in stables and hay-lofts that have been transformed into
the club premises. There artists, sculptors, editors, and other men
of note go to enjoy themselves, to eat a cheap dinner, to laugh,
to dance, to sup off kippers, and to find delight in innocent but
exciting “ragging.”
[Illustration: Caricature of William Le Queux.]
The walls of its big, narrow room, are covered with framed
caricatures of the better-known members. There is a bar at one end
with a big barrel on the counter, and little tables set around,
together with a piano that is played by a young Armenian pianist and
composer of great promise, whom everyone calls “Marcantonio.”
The place is crowded with members dancing with artists’ models,
mannequins from West End dressmakers, and other pretty girls who
were only allowed to join the club after the committee had made most
searching inquiries and had proved that they were all regularly
employed in some profession or another.
The Ham-Bone is the gayest yet most wholesomely minded of all the
London night clubs.
You may go to the Embassy, where it is expensive, the
Forty-Something, Rector’s, and a dozen other night dance clubs, but
the Ham-Bone reigns supreme for fun, frolic, and a real good time.
The Bohemians of London run it.
* * * * *
I have attended other eccentric London clubs. There was the now-long
defunct Thirteen Club, established to counteract the superstition
attached to that supposed unlucky number. I knew the “Magic Circle”
or professional conjurers’ club, and am still a member of the
Tatlers. Recently I was guest with Lord Birkenhead and Arthur Lambton
at a new club formed by Oxford undergraduates, on similar lines to
our Crimes Club. Their name is “The Thugs.”
I had a long discussion with the ex-Lord Chancellor, as to whether
the right pronunciation was Tugs, Thougs, or Thugs. He pronounced
that it should be “Tugs,” so “Tugs” it is.
That night, indeed, he was made a Tug, and seemed to thoroughly enjoy
it.
The club is one that we shall hear more of in the near future.
Another club of which I was once a member, may claim to be one of
the most exclusive clubs in the world--the Florence Club in Florence.
The members, which consist for the most part of the proud but
penurious Tuscan aristocracy, actually black-balled a British Prince!
After that, Major Percy Chapman, British Consul-General in Florence,
Montgomery Carmichael, British Consul to Leghorn, and all the English
members resigned, _en bloc_, including myself. For some years, too, I
was a member of the Travellers’ Club in Paris, and later of the Turf
Club in Cairo and the International Sporting Club at Monte Carlo.
But of all clubs, I prefer the Devonshire, with its old-fashioned
comfort, and its fine traditions.
A good medical story was told me recently by my friend, Dr. Cyril
Horsford, the well-known laryngologist and aurist, of Harley Street.
While acting as specialist at the hospital at Genoa during the war,
he found that to many of those rendered dumb by shell-shock, speech
could be induced by touching the patients’ throat in a certain
way and suddenly asking him a question. Late one evening a man
was brought in and put to bed. He was unable to utter a word, so
Horsford asked him if he would like to speak again. The man smiled
incredulously, whereupon Horsford told him that he would restore his
speech at twelve o’clock to-morrow. The patient, however, wrote down
that he would bet him all he possessed that he would not.
In the morning the specialist had many patients to see and at last
the man in question was shown in. Horsford recognized him and acted
as he had done in other cases, whereupon the man at once spoke.
“Ah! you see!” said the doctor, “I’ve won my bet!”
“Excuse me, sir, you ’aven’t,” replied the man. “You said twelve
o’clock, it’s ten minutes parst!”
The most disreputable-looking person who ever entered the portals
of the Devonshire Club was old Lord Clanricarde. I often chatted
with him. He was shabby and parsimonious to the extreme. He had a
mania for collecting paper-bags. He used very often to stay at the
Victoria Hotel at St. Leonards, and I frequently met him out on the
Promenade doing his shopping. This consisted of buying a couple of
bananas, or an apple, or perhaps a bun, which he would eat in a
shelter and then carefully preserve the bag until he had a pile upon
his dressing-table, when his man upon his departure would carefully
tie them up and take them away. He left, as is well known, his great
fortune to the Lascelles family.
Even London police-court magistrates may be “taken in.” An
acquaintance of mine, a well-known metropolitan stipendiary, met a
few weeks ago an actor in another club of which I am a member.
They became friendly, and eventually the magistrate lent him £100 on
the “wife-and-starving-family” appeal. The actor did not pay, the
magistrate could not afford to risk publicity by putting him to the
county court, so he rather foolishly wrote to the committee of the
club asking them to remove the name of the delinquent from the list!
The actor is now a hundred pounds the richer, and his worship will, I
fear, have to whistle for his money!
There are several variations of the following Devonshire club story,
but I give the true one, for which Eveleigh Nash vouches.
My friend, Frank Richardson, as everyone knows, held whiskers in
deadly horror. One day Max Beerbohm had arranged with Frank to lunch
with him at the club. Max arrived at a few minutes before one o’clock
and went into the smoking-room, where sat Thomas Barratt, head of the
Pears’ Soap firm, one of the best of men, who possessed a colossal
white, spade-shaped beard that swept half way to his waist. Beerbohm
did not know who Barratt was, but he saw at a glance his patriarchal
beard, so he went out into the hall, and pretended to be thoroughly
overwhelmed. At that moment Richardson entered and dashed up to him.
“What’s the matter, Max?” he asked anxiously.
“Hold my hand, hold my hand,” replied Beerbohm with simulated
breathlessness. “_I’ve just seen Gawd!_”
In another of Frank Richardson’s jokes I myself participated. He had
just written his book on whiskers and was having a deadly feud with
“Tatcho Sims” as he called him. A few days before Christmas when I
entered the club, the porter handed me a large square parcel. I cut
the string to find what appeared to be a handsome jewel-box, which,
on opening, I found to contain three bottles of a much advertised
tooth-wash, lying on a bed of apricot velvet.
Inside was a letter from the enterprising firm asking me to accept
the little present, and if I obtained any benefit from their
preparation would I kindly send them a line or two, which they might
use when advertising. It was not an unusual request. I have had many
such.
“Hulloa! William!” I heard Richardson exclaim behind me, “then you’ve
got a box too. I had mine a week ago.”
“Oh!” I said. “What did you write to the people?”
He took from his wallet a copy of his letter, the firm’s reply, and
his reply. Richardson wrote:
“Sirs,--I am very grateful to you for sending me your wonderful
preparation. I have used it on my hair with marked effect. It is
turning my hair quite grey.--Yours very truly, Frank Richardson.”
To this the firm replied regretting that Mr. Richardson had not read
the directions, and that the preparation was intended for the teeth,
and not the hair.
Frank’s reply was:
“Sirs,--I have your letter, and I have thoroughly tested your
preparation. I am glad to tell you that I have found it equally
efficacious in dysentery and backache, in bleaching the hair, and in
putting a shine on my brown boots.--Yours truly, Frank Richardson.”
Mr. Lewis Edmunds, K.C., who interests himself very much in the
Devonshire Club, tells me some quaint stories of the Bar.
One he told at the fireside in the smoking-room the other day was
distinctly humorous.
“Once I was junior with Sir Frank Lockwood in a divorce case heard
in camera before Mr. Justice Butt--oh! a dreadful case!” he said.
“Well, you know that the legal maxim is that a client must come into
court with clean hands. During the course of the case, Lockwood, who
was a marvellous caricaturist, drew a picture of our client with his
hands dripping with ink! When the case was over the parties went away
in two cabs which raced down the Strand and collided. Thereupon the
parties got out and came to fisticuffs, the end being that they came
up at Marlborough Street on cross-summonses for assault.”
Rupert Grayson, who is a director of Eveleigh Nash’s publishing
company, told me at the Guards’ Club, where I was dining with him one
night, a very interesting story of Monte Carlo.
Many stories of luck and fortune at Monte Carlo have been told, but
this one that Grayson tells is even better, in my opinion, than most.
An Englishman punting at roulette placed five francs _en plein_ on
number seventeen. The number turned up. He understood very little
French, and when the croupier inquired whether he wished to leave
his winnings on the number, he called across the table “Two, two,”
meaning leave two and return the rest. The croupier, misunderstanding
him, imagined it “_Tout, tout_,” and began piling up the entire
winnings on seventeen. When the Englishman saw that he was replacing
more than two plaques he shouted excitedly, “Two--enough, enough.”
The croupier, thinking he said “_Tout--neuf, neuf_,” transferred
the whole of his winnings to number nine. “_Neuf, rouge, impair, et
manque!_” cried the croupier a moment later. The Englishman had won
over 6,000 francs with his original five francs in two coups.
Talking of Monte Carlo, Louis Drexel, Rupert Grayson’s
brother-in-law, tells a good story of his father, “Tony” Drexel, who
was staying at the Hôtel de Paris. At three o’clock every morning his
father was awakened by a man in the room above throwing his boots
violently on to the floor. This practice became so unbearable that
at last complaints were addressed to Fleury, who was then manager at
the Paris. The Frenchman apologized. M. Fleury could rest assured it
would not happen again. Next morning, punctually at three o’clock,
the Frenchman returned to his room. Unthinkingly following his usual
custom, he hurled his right boot to the floor before he remembered,
with horror, his promise. In the room below, “Tony” Drexel, awakened
as usual, lay waiting for the second boot. Long, dreary hours passed,
till a message reached the Frenchman: “As Mr. Drexel would like to
get to sleep, would the gentleman have the goodness to throw down the
second boot as soon as possible.”
The late Sir George Lewis, the famous solicitor, once declared to me
in the Devonshire:
“The Divorce Court is the biggest blackmailing court in all Europe.
In half the cases there is blackmailing, and a general square-up all
round before the parties go into court. The public never see divorce
proceedings in their true light. The lawyers know, but the public is
unaware.”
Next day he used the same words in giving evidence before the Divorce
Commission.
This view is borne out by my friend Lord Birkenhead, who quite
recently declared to me that he had long reached the conclusion that
our divorce laws are almost the worst in the civilized world.
In discussing the question with the Divorce Law Reform Union, of
which the brilliant ex-Lord Chancellor is president, he told them
that:
“There is no chicanery and no trickery to which judges in the Divorce
Court have not been compelled to resort. This does not apply to the
judges in any other court of law. There is no room in this country
for a clergy established by law who deny the right of marriage to
people, freed by law, in a Church established by law,” he asserted.
Another fellow-clubman at the Devonshire is a tall, cheery, athletic
golf-player, well known in business circles in London. Mr. A. Noel
Mobbs, brother of the famous Colonel E. R. Mobbs, D.S.O., who was ten
years ago popular as wing-three-quarter in the English Rugby Football
Team. When Colonel Mobbs died, a subscription fund for a memorial
reached £2,600, and a bust was a year ago put up to his memory in
the Market Square in Northampton, the balance being given to various
charitable institutes in which he was interested.
“My chief claim to fame is being Edgar’s brother,” Noel Mobbs is fond
of saying. But Noel Mobbs has another distinction, that of finance,
for after the war he and a few friends gave the British Government
seven and a half million pounds sterling for the “dump” at Slough.
In addition, he is chairman of half-a-dozen other big companies, to
which he attends, with his merry laughter, in his intervals between
golf and bridge.
I was with him ski-ing in Mürren last year, and I witnessed one of
the funniest sights I ever saw on the snow. Mobbs, tall, thin, and
athletic, in proper ski garb, had picked up the art of ski-ing in a
marvellous manner, and started to run down the Allmendhubel slope,
which is very steep, as any ski-runner knows. As he approached the
raised snow-bank at the bottom, he saw a pretty young lady in sweater
and cap seated on the bank admiring the view across to the Jungfrau.
He made an attempt to “telemark,” and thus stop dead, but he bungled
it at about twenty-five miles an hour, crossed his skis, rammed them
home in the snow, and landed plump in the astonished girl’s lap!
There he remained in an undignified position, and with many
apologies, for a full ten minutes before he could be extricated, his
skis being so deeply imbedded!
Many stories are told in clubs and elsewhere of men who, by
surreptitious means, obtain a larger share of spirits than others not
so cute.
Colonel F. J. Agabeg, of the Chota Nagpore Regiment, who was so well
known in India before he retired and came to live in Bedfordshire,
told me in Mürren last winter a very good example of this.
A brother officer of his one day after polo was seated on Agabeg’s
verandah, about to take a peg. The native servant was pouring out the
whiskey into a big, thirst-quenching glass, and asked,
“How much, sahib?”
“Oh! just cover the ice,” was the careless reply.
The Indian servant poured on, being unaware that ice floats.
In telling these stories I hope I have not taken the reader too
frequently under the spreading chestnut tree; but if I have recounted
an anecdote he knows, well I ask him to forgive me, particularly if I
have told it in an inferior way.
Perhaps I may print some further reminiscences one day. But for the
present these must suffice.
THE END.
INDEX
Abö University, 190
Abruzzi, Duke of the, 18
Adams, Davenport (dramatic critic), 163, 188
Adams, Doctor (of Essex), 225–229
Adcock, St. John, 93
Adelphi Terrace, 288
Adler, Dr. (Chief Rabbi), 189
Admiralty, the, 237, 259
Adrianople, 116
Aerodrome, Croydon, 103
Afzelius, Professor, 190
Agabeg, Colonel F. J. (of the Chota Nagpore Regiment), 306
Ahmed, Prince (brother of the Crown Prince of Johore), 119
Albacete, Léon (the most daring and expert jewel thief in Europe),
213
Albania, 10, 32, 44;
the unchanging, 56;
brigands of, 45;
laws of hospitality, 60;
mountains of, 116
Albion, 64
Aldershot, 160
Alexandra, Her Majesty Queen, 30
Alexandrovsk, 269
Algeria, 10
Alhambra Theatre, 101, 292
America, 18, 189
Amers, Captain (musical conductor), 202
Andrade. _See_ Albacete, Léon, 212
Angier, Sir Theodore V. S., 248
Anglia, East, 245
Anthony, Doctor, 230
Argentina, Jews in, 27
Argonauts Club, 294
Argyll, His Grace the late Duke of, 201, 248
Argyll Hotel, 201
Armenia, 113
Armstrong, Herbert Rowse, (poisoner) 234
Armstrong, Sir George (Proprietor of the Globe), 164, 176
Aruwimi, 100, 168. _See_ Harding, George
Ashburton, 149
Askew, Charles (the American millionaire), 223;
an ornithologist, 224;
his gift of rare Greek gem to Le Queux, 225
Asquith, H. H. (Home Secretary), 191
Astrakhan, Arcadia Garden, 97
Aswân, 148
Atlay, Sir Wilfred, 296
Austin, Stanley (of the _Daily Mirror_), 278
Australia, 248
Austria, Francis Joseph, Emperor of, 35
Austria, Karl Franz Joseph, Emperor of, 35;
succeeded to the throne during the war, 39;
a boon companion of the German Ex-Crown Prince in many
disgraceful escapades, 39
Austria, Maria Josephs, Archduchess of, 39
Austria, Otto, Archduke of, 39
Avory, Mr. Justice, 180
Baccelli, Enrico, 126
Baccelli, Signora, 125
Bachelors’ Club, 133
Baden, 35
Baily, Mr. F. E. (Editor _Royal Magazine_), 278
Balfour, Lord, 90, 170
Balfour, General Sir A., 296
Balfour, Mr. A. J., 16
Balkans, 34, 222
Balliol, 119
Baring, Sir Godfrey, 296
Barmouth, North Wales, 183
Barratt, Thomas J., 301
Barrington, Rutland, 290
Barry, M.P., Sir Francis Tress, 248
Bath Club, 202
Battenberg, Prince Louis of, 236, 242
Bazaine, Marshal (traitor, surrendered Metz to Germans in 1870), 210
Beaconsfield, Lord, 132
Beefsteak Club, 183
Beerbohm, Max, 301, 302
Beggars’ Club, 286
Belgium, Albert, King of, 103
Belgium, Elizabeth, Queen of, 103
Belgium, Leopold, King of, 100;
audience with King Albert, 104;
presented to King Leopold by H. M. Stanley, 100
Belgrade, 67
_Belgravia_, the, 188
Bell, Mr. Graham (inventor of telephones), 16
Bengesco, Madame Zoe, 92
Bennett, Sir H. Curtis, 296
Benzie, Mr. G. W. G. (of Peterculter, Aberdeen), 159
Beresford, Lord Charles, 90, 236, 251, 260
Berlin, 115, 242
Bernhardt, Madame Sarah, 205, 219
Besant, Walter, 94
Beutner, Dr. (Steinhauer the spy and the Kaiser’s bosom friend), 269
Bexhill, 274
“Biffy.” _See_ Ismail, Crown Prince, 118
Binns (American wireless hero), 161
Birkenhead, Lord, 170, 273, 299, 304
Black Mountains, Land of the, 33
Bleriot (aviator), 151
Blood-feud. _See_ Marashut, Mrika Kol, 59
Blücher, Field-Marshal von, 242
Blyth, Lord, 275
B----, Monsieur, Baron de Hirsch’s confidential Secretary, 26;
his admiration of the great financier’s generous treatment of
himself and others, 27;
beautiful house at Enghien, 27
Bodkin, Sir Archibald, 180
Bolshevism, 16
Bond Street, 104, 140
Boodles Club, 246
Bosphorus, 113
Bottomley, Horatio, 164, 267
Bouchier, Mr. James (of _The Times_), 88
Boul’ Mich’, 220, 286
Boyd, Rev. Halbert (author of _Men and Marvels_), 280
Boyle, D.S.O., Colonel Joseph Wentworth, (“The King of the
Klondike”), 282, 283
Brabazon, General Sir John, 275
Brandenbourg, Georges (of the _Figaro_), 287
Brassey, Lord, 248, 249
Bray, Mr. Justice, 170
Brazil, Dom Pedro of, 35
Brex, Twells, his pathetic story of a spider, 100;
death, 100
Bridge House Hotel, Staines, 181
Brieux, Eugène (dramatic author), 221
Brigands, the Skreli, 44
Brighton, 54, 198
Brighton Pier, 202
_Britain’s Deadly Peril_, 262
Broström, a Swede, 189
Brown, Mr. E. P. (land telephone expert), 157
Brown’s Hotel, 67
Brudenell-Bruce, young, 132
Brussels, 152
Brussi, Enrico, 23, 24
Buchanan, Sir George (British Minister to Bulgaria), 84
Buchanan, Lady Georgina (wife of Sir George), 84
Bucharest, 84, 96
Buckingham Palace, 236
Budapest, 96
Buenos Ayres, 123
Bulgaria, 37;
intrigues of, 34
Bulgaria, Ferdinand King of, 13, 85;
at heart an Anglophile, 89;
estranged from England by blunders made at Whitehall, 89, 116
“Bundle” (Countess of Cardigan’s dog), 135
Burbridge of Harrod’s, 155
Burbury, Mr. H. H. T. (of Wakefield), 159
Burgin, Mr. G. B., 294, 295
Burleigh, Bennett, 183
Burnham, Mr. W. W. (of Blackheath), 159
Butcher, Sir George, 90
Butt, Mr. Justice, 303
Buxton, lecture at, 257
“Bwab.” _See_ Brabazon, General Sir John
Café Vachette, 286
Cairo, 148
Calabria, 216;
earthquake, 20
Calea Victoriei, 98
California, 149
Campbell-Bannerman Government, 246
Campbell-Bannerman, Sir. H., 246
Canada, 248
Cann, Dr. (the eccentric physician), 277
Cannes, 26, 298
Cantacuzen, George, 98
Capsa’s Restaurant, 97
Carava, Signor M., 215
Cardigan, Countess of (widow of Lord Cardigan of Balaclava fame),
131;
her appearance, 132;
her “risky” stories, 132;
Eveleigh Nash regrets publication of them, 134
Carisbrooke, Marquis of, 122
Carisbrooke, Marchioness of, 122
Carlton Hotel, 151
“Carmen Sylva,” Queen of Roumania, 84;
her private life, 92;
interest in British novelists, 93;
intended to construct model village at Bucharest, 95
Carmichael, Mr. Montgomery (British Consul and author of _In
Tuscany_), 37
Carnarvon, Lord, 147, 149, 150
Carrier pigeons, 256
Casino, at Corfu, 147
Caspar, William (an American), 91, 97, 98;
brought aviation to England, 151;
a dead shot, 156;
characteristics, 153;
dress, 154;
fond of practical joking, 155;
an hustler, 152;
did things on a lavish scale, 153
Cattaro, 31, 44
Cecil Hotel, 151, 189
Cettigné, capital of Montenegro, 31;
the people by law are compelled to wear the national dress, 31;
the women forbidden to wear European hats, 31;
every man armed, 32;
King Nicholas fines a man in the street for being unarmed, and
pockets the money, 65
Chapple, Dr. W. A. (Liberal M.P. for Stirlingshire), 276
Châteauroux, 10
Chatsworth, 170
Chesterfield Street, Mayfair, 139
Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, 252
Cimiez, 30
Clanricarde, Lord, 300;
his appearance, 300;
his frugality, 301;
his great fortune, 301
Clarendon, Lord, 90, 261
Claridge’s Hotel, 28, 97, 122
Clémentine, Princess of Cobourg, 36;
appearance of, 36;
ungracious manners, 37
Clichy, Boulevard de, 287
Clifford’s Inn, 201
CLUBS:
Argonauts, 294
Bachelors, 133
Bath, 202
Beefsteak, 183
Beggars, 286
British Ski Association, 11
Crichton, 290
Crimes, 197
Devonshire, 11
Diplomats (Bulgaria), 86
Florence (Florence), 30
Garrick, 183
Guards, 303
Ham-Bone, 297
International Sporting at Monte Carlo, 300
Jockey, 183
Junior-Garrick, 288
Lyric, 291
Magic Circle, 299
Military (Belgrade), 84
Monte Carlo, 300
Motor, 291
Mürren Ski, 11
New Vagabonds, 294
Old Vagabonds, 294
Our Society, 295
Prince of Wales’s, 291
Reform, 246
Savage, 246
St. James, 97
Swiss Alpine, 11
Tatlers, 11
Travellers (Paris), 96
Turf (London), 183
Turf (Cairo), 300
Cody (the pioneer of aviation), 151, 155
Colchester, oyster feast at, 273
Collen, Major-General Sir Edwin, 248
Collins, Professor Churton, 295
Collins, Wilkie, 94
Colwyn Bay, 185
Colwyn, Lord, 268
Constance, Lady de la Warr, 274
Constant, Baron de, 221
Constantinople, 47, 105, 116
Cooper, Sir William (of Castle Carey, Guernsey), dedication, 5
Cooper, Lady Earnshaw, dedication to, 5
Cooper, Miss Gladys, 122
Cornwall, Sir Edwin, 170
Cornwallis-West, Colonel G., 296
Cotroceni, Countess, 99
Courtney, Mr. W. L., 201
Coventry Street, 293
Cowdray, Lord, 275
Cowes, 140
Craig, Mr. J. A. (editor _Great Thoughts_), 280
Crampton, Mr. W. J. (of Weybridge), 159
Crawford, Earl of, 261
Crawfords, the mythical. _See_ Richmond, Mr. Barry, and the Humbert
Case.
Crawley, Colonel C. G. Chetwode (of the General Post Office), 160
Crichton Club, 290
Crimes Club, 197, 233
Crippen, Dr., _See_ Adams, Doctor, 225
Cromer, 121
Crookhaven Wireless Station, 161
Cross, Mr. J. H., 139
Crosse, Mr. Herbert, 295
Croydon aerodrome, 103
Curzon Street, 125
Czrnagora (Black Mountain), 33
_Daily Chronicle_, 245, 279
_Daily Mail_, 10, 192, 245, 249
_Daily Sketch_, 189, 221
_Daily Telegraph_, 192, 245
Dartmoor, 148
Daudet, Ernest, 287, 221
Daurignac, Thérèse (one of the greatest adventuresses in French
history), 206
Dead, Book of the, 147
Deanery Street, Park Lane, 131
Deauville, 99
Deene Park, Northamptonshire, 131
Delagrange (aviator), 153
Delloye (Paris bank clerk). _See_ Rebecque, Count de, 219
Deltour, Gaston (artist), 219
Deputies, Chamber of, at Rome, 21
Derby, the Earl of, 248, 170
Deschanel, Paul (President of French Republic), 205, 219, 220, 286
Des Graz, Charles, Mr., now Sir, 32
Devereux (murderer), 298
Devonshire, 82
Devonshire Club, 118, 225, 246, 275, 300, 304, 305
Dimsdale, M.P., Sir Joseph, 248
Diòsy, Arthur, 296;
born in London; son of Martin Diòsy, Hungarian refugee and
patriot, 296;
studied Japanese, 296;
his great knowledge of Japan, 297;
founded the Japan Society, 297;
admired by and friend of Lord Northcliffe, 297;
died at Cannes, 298
Diòsy, Martin, 296
Diplomats’ Club, Bulgaria, 86
Divorce and its laws, 304
Dixon-Hartland (the banker), 181
Djakova, 48
Dobrovitch, Monsieur, 87
Dobson, Austin, his poems, 93
Downing Street, 246
Doyle, Sir A. Conan, 93, 295;
communicating with spirits, 100
Draga, Queen, 67, 69
Dresden, 38, 140;
royal palace at, 13
Drexel, Louis (Rupert Grayson’s brother-in-law), story of his
father, “Tony” Drexel, 304
Drexel, “Tony,” 304
Drummond, Sir Eric, 296
Duchess d’Ussac, 213
Dufferin, Lord, 108
Duff-Gordon, Lady, 199
Duke, Sir Henry (formerly journalist of _Daily Telegraph_), 170, 180
Dulcigno, mountain of, 65
Du Maurier (artist and author of _Trilby_), 287
Duncan, Mr. G. B. (editor), 237
Eckstein, Mrs., 261
Edgington, Miss May (novelist), 278
Edmunds, K.C., Mr. Lewis, 275, 303
Edward VII., King of England, 22, 25;
his exquisite courtliness, 29;
dislike of King “Cléo-pold,” 100;
when Prince of Wales resigned from an exclusive Paris club
because King Leopold had been elected a member, 101, 128,
139, 290
Edwardes, Sir Stanley, 248
Egypt, 147
Elias, Mr., 193
Eliot, George (the novelist), 139
Elmwood, near Broadstairs, 250
Elstree, 198
Empire Theatre, 101
Enver Pasha, his supreme contempt of Britain, 116;
a puppet of the Kaiser, 116
Ernberg, Baroness, 190
Evans, Sir Laming Worthington, 273
_Evening News_, 125
Everett, Percy W. (of _Pearson’s_), 197, 295
Everett & Son (publishers), 193
Exeter, Marquis of, 195
Ezekiel, Book of, 190
Fane, “Cis,” 132
Fascisti, Italian (“The Black Shirts”), 21
Fawside House, Covent Garden, 243
Fell, Dr., a case of “I do not like you,” 202
ffoulkes, Mrs. Maude Chester (authoress), 134, 137, 201, 202
Field, Colonel Cyril (military expert), 245
Fife, the Duke of, 248
Finck, Herman (composer), 202
Flannery, M.P., Sir Fortesque, 248
Fleet Street, 183
Fleury, M. (manager Hôtel de Paris), 304
Florence, 36, 127, 188
Florence Club in Florence, 300;
one of the most exclusive in the world;
its members, British Prince black-balled, 300;
resignation of English members, _en bloc_, 300
Flower, Mr. Newman, 188
Foch, 221
Forbes, Lady Angela, 132
Foreign Office, 259
France, 10
Fraser, Sir John Foster, 273
Fraser, Superintendent (of Scotland Yard), 29
Függer, Countess, 36
Fyvie, Leith, Lord of, 90, 261, 264
Gaiety Theatre, Hastings, 281
Gale, Norman, 188
Gallop, Constantine, 119
Galway, Lord, 261
Gare, Avenue de la, 29
Garrick Club, 183
“_Gawd_,” 302
Genoa, 163
George V., King of England, 22
George, Mr. Lloyd, 170, 251, 268, 273
German Ambassador, 252
German machinations, 89;
war intended by Kaiser, 90, 113, 237;
his scheming, 116
German Military Attaché, 252
German Naval Attaché, 252
German officers openly survey Kentish hills, and deliberate on
sites for guns, 253;
the party returning to London were entertained by German
Ambassador at Carlton House Terrace, 254;
motor signs on roads from Kentish coast to London were marked by
black and white stripes of German official direction posts,
254
German secret agents in London, 243
German Secret Service, their cunning modes of bribery, 253
Germany, 10, 15
Gibbs, Sir Philip (of the _Daily Chronicle_), 82
Gilardoni, Count, 18
Gill, Charles, practical jokes of, 181
Gilli’s in the Via Tornabuoni, Florence, 127
Gilliot, Jules, 213
Giron, M., 143
Gladstone, W. E., 65;
his kindness, 168
Glasgow, 123
Glenny, Charlie, 288
_Globe_, The, 10, 163;
merged into _Pall Mall Gazette_, 177
Government, Campbell-Bannerman’s, 246
Grand Hotel at Belgrade, 69
Grand Hotel, Bulgaria, 85
Grand Hotel, Cettigné, 32
Graves, C. L., 163
Grayson, Rupert (director of Eveleigh Nash’s publishing Co.), 303;
his stories of luck and fortune at Monte Carlo, 303, 304
Greeley, Horace (of New York), 200
Grey, Sir Edward, 16
Grierson, Mr. W. (of Newnes), 195
Griffith, George (author), 187, 197
Griffith-Jones, Rev. Principal, 280
Grossmith, George, Senior, 288
Grosvenor Square, 125, 127
Guards’ Club, 303
Guilbert, Madame, 209
Guildford, 10, 118, 157, 159
Gun-factory, Düsseldorf, 251
Guy’s Hospital, 168
Haggard, Sir Rider, 93, 281
Hahki Pasha, 111
Haldane, Lord, 236
Hall, Sir John, 296
Halsbury, Lord, 170
Ham-Bone Club, 297;
(London’s only really Bohemian Club and run by Bohemians), 298
Hame, “That damned fellow,” 138
Hamilton, Lord Frederic, 138
Hands, Charles (of the _Daily Mail_), 82, 165, 173
Hansard Union, 173
Hapsburgs, the fatal, 34, 35, 37, 140
Harding, George (a stoker, the unknown and actual discoverer of the
Aruwimi, the Forests of Perpetual Night, and the Pigmies), 166
Hardinge, Viscount, 248
Harris-Burland, J. B., 295
Harris, Mr. (of Odhams), 193
Hassall, John (artist), 199;
differentiates the tonic colours of port wine and Bass, 200
Hatchard’s (booksellers), 93
Hawarden, 170
Haynes, Mr. J. H. (well-known telegraphic engineer), 119
Headley, Lord, 90, 261;
his humour and ventriloquism, 264–267
Heddle, Mr. James, 189
Helicopter, details of our new instrument were known in Berlin two
days after its secret trials, 256
Henderson, Mr., 23
Henley, W. E., 188
Hennell, Colonel Sir Reginald, 248
Henniker-Heaton, 215
Henrietta Street, Covent Garden, 144
Herbert, Mrs. of Llanover (mother of Lord Treowen), 275
Herodotus, 147
Herzegovina, 222
Hicks, Sir W. Joynson, 261
Hidden Hand of Germany, 257, 259
Higgs, Mr. T. W., at Bristol, 159
Hirsch, the late Baron de, 26;
his intimate friendship with King Edward, 26;
visits to Monte Carlo, 26;
his death, 27;
left by will one million sterling for poor Jews in Argentina, 27,
101;
his high esteem of Prince of Wales, 28
Hirsch, Baroness de, 27;
her kindness to King Edward (when Prince of Wales), 27;
her wish that when His Royal Highness succeeded to the throne of
Great Britain he would always be kind to the Jews, 28;
her death, 29
Hobbs, Captain E. J. (of Wareham), 159
Hodder-Williams, Sir Ernest, 189
Hoedl, spy of Austria, 82
Hofburg, 42
Hohenzollern, House of, 240
Holland, M.P., Sir William, 248
Home Office, 259
Horne, Sir Robert (ex-Chancellor of the Exchequer), 276
Horsford, Dr. Cyril (laryngologist and aurist), 300
Hôtel Chatham, Paris, 221, 292
Hôtel de l’Europe (Petrograd), 14
Hôtel des Indes, Hague, 238
Hôtel des Palmiers, 215
Hotel Excelsior at Cimiez, 26
Hotel Narenta, Herzegovina, 222
Hotel Normandy, 100
Hoti tribe, 60
Hounslow, 178
Hulton, Sir Edward, 189
Humbert case. _See_ Richmond, Mr. Barry, 206
Humbert, Madame, 205
Huntley and Palmer, 127
Hutchinson, Sir George, 188
Hutchinson, A. S. M. (author), 198
Ileana, Princess, 98
Ilfracombe, 140
Imperial Institute, 150
Imperiale, Marquis, 125
Inchkeith, on the Firth of Forth, 159
India office, 259
Inglefield, Admiral Sir E., 296
International Sporting Club at Monte Carlo, 300
_Invasion, The_, forecast in the _Daily Mail_ of what would happen
if a great war came and we were invaded, 243–247;
large sum paid for the German rights, 250;
the conclusion entirely re-written, making the result a German
success, 250;
worse! published and given as a prize for German school-boys, 250
_Invasion, The_, published in book form by Eveleigh Nash, with
introduction by Earl Roberts, 249;
translated into twenty-seven languages, 249
Ipek, 51
Ireland, 248
Irving, Sir Henry, 163
Irving, H. B., 288, 295
Isleworth, 289
Ismail, Crown Prince, 118
Italy, 10;
His Majesty King Victor Emanuel of 17, 18
Ivan (a maître d’hôtel), 222
“Jack the Ripper,” 165, 270
Jaime, Don (Pretender to the Spanish throne), 135
Jeans, William (of the _Globe_), 177
Jermyn Street, 297
Jerningham, Sir Henry, 296
Jewell, Mr. “Jack” (Larry Lynx), 175
Jews, 25, 27
Jezebel, 137
Jockey Club, 183
Joe (gamekeeper to King Edward), amusing anecdote of, 139
_John Bull_, 267
Johore, Sultan of, 118;
Ismail, Crown Prince, 120;
Prince Ahmed, 120
Joynson-Hicks, Sir W., 90
Jugo-Slavia, country of, 83
Ju-jitsu, 198
Junior Garrick Club, 288
Jurgens, Henri (impresario), 292, 293
Jutland, Battle of, forecasted, 251
Kaltner, dentist, 38
Karageorgevitch, Prince Peter. _See_ Serbia, King Peter of, 67
Kastrati, the (brigands), 57
Keary, Peter (of _Pearson’s_), 196
Kensington Palace, 201
Kent, Duke of, letters of, 25
Kernahan, Coulson, 94, 127, 188, 279
Kew, 25
Khartoum, 225
King Street, Covent Garden, 133
Kingscote, Sir Nigel, 132
Kingscote, Lady, 132
Kintore, Lord, 296
_Kladderadatsch_, the editor of (_Punch_, of Berlin), 180;
sent to prison for six months for copying a _Globe_ article, 180
Klementi country, 60
Knight, Joe (editor of the _Athenæum_), 163
Knighton (butler to Countess of Cardigan), 132, 136, 138
Kol (a typical bandit) 60
Kola Peninsular, 100
Kubelik (Hungarian violinist), 128
Kustendil, rose-fields of, 87
Labouchere, Mr., 19
La Duse (actress), 219
Lambourne, Lord. _See_ Lockwood, Colonel
Lambton, the late General Arthur, 298
Lambton, Mr. Arthur, 295, 296;
good story about a murder, 298
Landru, Henri Désiré (the French Bluebeard), 229–233, 296
La Rocca, 23
Lawson, Sir Charles, 248
Lay, George (theatrical solicitor), 288;
at Brentford, 181
League of Nations Union, 281
Lebaudy, Monsieur, 205
Le Blanc, Maurice, 94
Le Blon (aviator), 153
Lees, Mr. William, 189
Lefranc (Belgian journalist), 102;
his horrible disclosures of the slave traffic, 102
Legation, British, at Montenegro, 32
Leghorn, 125
Legouis, Emile (Professor of English at the Sorbonne), 221
Leigh, Lord, 122
Le Neve. _See_ Adams, Doctor
Leno, Dan, 288
_Le Petit Journal_, 162
Le Queux, Mr. Fred, 145, 146
Le Queux, William Tufnell, _see_ in _Who’s Who_, 10, 11, 17;
sub-editor of the _Globe_, 163;
writes for Newnes, 194;
W. E. Gladstone reads his novels and recommends them to Queen
Alexandra when Princess of Wales, 170;
his friendship with Monsieur B----, Baron Hirsch’s confidential
secretary, 26;
audience with King of Italy, 19;
invested with the Crown of Italy, 21;
went to Belgrade on confidential mission from British Government,
80;
evenings spent with _Carmen Sylva_, 92;
private audience with King Nicholas of Montenegro, 32;
the King’s appearance, mode of dressing his palace, 33;
the audience-chamber with its paintings of the Italian _cinque
cento_ period, 33;
requests permission of King Nicholas to visit the Skreli
brigands, is given a letter of introduction to Vatt Marashi,
the chief of the Skreli, requesting safe conduct, 45;
return to Cettigné from the Skreli country, and in audience with
King Nicholas relates experiences with Vatt Marashi and the
banditti, 63;
is invested with the order of Danilo of Montenegro, 63;
guest of King Ferdinand of Bulgaria, 85;
friend of King Peter of Serbia, 67;
audience with “Abdul the Damned,” of Turkey, 105;
acted as judge at the first British aviation meeting, held on
Doncaster racecourse, 151;
the first person to broadcast speech and music to amateurs and
experimenters, 157
Le Queux, “Sir” William (of Colchester), 274
Leverhulme, Lord, 95
Lewis, Sir George, 288, 304
Lez (one of Vatt Marashi’s body guard), 59
Library, Imperial (Petrograd), 190
Linlithgow, the Marquis of, 264
Linton (artist), 288
“Little Billee” (nickname), 127
Locker, Algernon (assistant editor of _Punch_), 163
Lockwood, Sir Frank (a caricaturist), 303
Lockwood, Colonel (now Lord Lambourne), 236
Lodge, Miss Mabelle (secretary and critic), 119
London, 52
_London_ Magazine, 202
Lonsdale, Lord, 291
Louvre, the keeper of the gems, 225
Love, Mr. F. A. (land telephone expert), 157
Love, laughable incidents on the wireless about, 159
Low, Sydney, 93
Lucas, E. V., 163
Lucca, 19, 23
Lucy, H. W. (“Toby, M.P.,” of _Punch_), 163
Ludwig Salvator, Archduke, 37
Lûk, an Albanian brigand, 52, 58, 59
Luxembourg, 211
Luxor, 148
Lyddington, 135
Lyric Club, 291, 292
Macedonia, 10, 34, 59, 60
Mackay, Eric, 288
Macnaghton, Sir Melville (of Scotland Yard), 295
Madge, Sir William (manager of _The Globe_), 164, 176
“Magic Circle” (professional conjurers’ club), 299
Mandercheff, Monsieur, 86
Manning, the late Cardinal, 178;
a generous friend, 178
Marashi, Vatt, chief of the Skreli brigands, 45;
invites Mr. Le Queux to his forbidden fastness, 45;
the man hated by the Turks, 47;
notwithstanding their barbaric customs, an Albanian’s word is his
bond, 47;
characteristics of the brigands, 48;
mode of dressing, 48;
Marashi’s welcome of the first Englishman to visit the brigands,
49;
his hospitality and friendship, 50;
Albanian code of honour astounding to Western ideas, 49;
Vatt Marashi’s appearance and hearty good fellowship, 50;
from first to last, a staunch and excellent friend, 50;
Albanians are Christians and commit acts of brigandage only to
annoy their ancient
enemy, the Turk, 51;
Marashi relates the glorious traditions of his sturdy race, and
of the King of the Scanderberg family, George Castriot, 55;
visit of Dêd Presci, chief of the Kastrati, a neighbouring tribe,
57;
his appearance, 58;
brigands’ dislike of photography, 58;
Dêd Presci’s welcome of Le Queux and promise of sport and a safe
escort if he ever came to visit him, 58;
Albanians never betray a friend or forgive an enemy, 58;
return to Cettigné from the Skreli country and audience with King
Nicholas to give an account of experiences with Vatt Marashi
and the banditti, 63
Marashut, Mrika Kol (the woman who carried on the blood-feud), 59
“Marcantonio” (an Armenian pianist and composer), 299
Marconi Company, 158
Marconi, Madame (mother of Senatore Marconi), 125
Marconi, Senatore, 157
Market Square, Northampton, 305
Marlowe, Mr. Thomas (editor of the _Daily Mail_), 100, 295
Marshall-Hall, Sir E., 174, 296
Maspero, Sir Gaston (Egyptologist), 148
Massingham, H. W., 192
Mathew, Mr. Theobald, 296
Matson, Major (military expert), 245
Maurojeni, Madame, 92, 93
May, Phil, 290
Mayfair, 126
McKenna, Mr., 256
Mecca, 115
Meissen, 37
_Mercur_, the (old Norwegian boat), 118
Merriman, Seton, 94
Messina, 216
Metropolitan Police, strike of, 171
Meyer, Mr. L., 158
Midleton, Earl of, 264
Mijatovitch, Count Chedo (three times Serbian Minister to the Court
of St. James), 34, 64
Military Club, Belgrade, 84
Militza, Princess, 66
Milner, Viscount, 248
Mirko, Prince, 31, 66
Mobbs, Mr. A. Noel, 275, 305
Mobbs, D.S.O., Colonel E. R., 305
Monaco, Albert, Prince of (“Le Prince Rouge-et-Noir,” as King
Edward called him), 116;
his steam-yacht _Princess Alice_, 117;
his intimate knowledge of oceanography, 117;
his wonderful museum at Monaco, 117
Monaco, Bay of, 101
Monte Carlo, 26, 99, 122, 129;
stories of, 303
Montenegro, 10
Montenegro, King Nicholas of, 17;
accessible to any of his subjects, 65;
a poet, 63;
his poetry translated into English by Count Chedo Mijatovitch, 64.
_See also_ Marashi Vatt
Montenegro, Milena, Queen of, Consort of King Nicholas, 66;
her appearance and resemblance to her daughter, the Queen of
Italy, 66;
her death and burial in the Russian cemetery, at San Remo, 66
Montenegro, Xenia, Princess of, 31;
assists W. Le Queux in taking photographs for the book _An
Observer in the Near East_, 31;
introduces the author to her elder sister, Queen Elena of Italy,
31
Montignoso, Countess of, 143
Montmartre, 201
Moor, Sir Ralph, 248
Moore, Augustus, 288
_Morning Post_, 126, 245
Morocco, 10
Moro-Giafferi, Maître (counsel for Landru), 232
Morrison, Alice Ann (ex-German spy), 124
Morton, Alexander (messenger-at-arms, of Glasgow), 262
Moscow, 97
Motor Club, 291
Muirhead, Ethel (an adventuress of the worst type). _See_ Morrison,
Alice Ann, 124
Murray, Major-General Sir J. Wolfe, 248
Mürren, 99, 305
Mussolini, Signor, 21
_My Own Story_ (authoress, Luisa, Ex-Crown Princess of Saxony).
_See_ Saxony, Luisa Princess of, 144
Nansen, 290
Naples, 20, 123
Nash, Mr. Eveleigh, publisher, 133, 134, 188, 243, 249, 274, 295;
his amusing stories, 275;
more amusing stories, 301.
_See_ Hame
Neuilly, 111
Nevill, Lady Dorothy, 138, 252
Newcastle, Duke of, 261, 296
Newnes, Sir Frank, 189
Newnes, Sir George (founder of _Tit Bits_), 189, 193
Newnes, House of, 195
Newton, Lord, 248
Newton, Sir Alfred, 248
New Vagabonds’ Club, 294
New York, 123, 149
Nice, 29
Nice, Promenade des Anglais at, 26
Nichols, G. H. Fosdike (“Quex” of the _Evening News_), 293
Nicholson, Lieut.-General Sir William, 248
Nicoll, Sir Robert, 188
Nicoll, Sir William Robertson, 93, 293
Nikolitch, M. Andrea, Minister of Public Instruction, 79
Niton, Isle of Wight, 160
Northcliffe, Lord, 93, 100, 150, 171, 237, 242, 244, 251, 264;
his secretary, Miss Owen, 250
Northcliffe, Lady, 264
Northumberland, the Duke of, 248
Noury Pasha, 106, 108, 110, 111
Oban, 140
Obrenovitch, The Royal House of, 69
Ochrida, in Macedonia, 59
O’Connor, T. P., 191, 273
Oddie, Mr. Ingleby (coroner for Westminster), 295
Odhams Limited (publishers), 193
“Old Lady,” the (Countess of Cardigan), 134
Old Vagabonds’ Club, 294
Orpen, Sir William, K.B.E., R.A., 278
Osborne, Lord Albert Godolphin, 295
O’Sullivan, Father (priest at Hounslow), 178
Otero, La Belle (dancer), 219, 292
Ouida (novelist), 19, 94
“Our Society” Club, 295;
its nicknames, “The Crimes Club,” 295;
membership limited to forty, 295;
Lord Northcliffe on joining called it “The Forty Thieves,” 295;
its members; its subscription, two half-crowns yearly, 296;
its honorary secretary, Mr. Arthur Lambton, 298
Owen, Miss (Lord Northcliffe’s secretary), 250
Oxford, 118
Paget, Lady, 281
Paix, Rue de la, 140
Palermo, 216, 218
Palestine, 190
_Pall Mall Gazette_, 192
Palmer, Charles F. (editor of the _Globe_), 164, 173
Palmer, “Jean,” 126 (wife of Sir Walter Palmer), 127, 173
Palok, a member of the tribe of the Skreli, and trusted servant of
King Nicholas, 45;
conducts W. Le Queux to Vatt Marashi, 46, 53, 57–59.
_See_ Marashi
Paoli, Monsieur, 29
Paris, 27;
café de, 26
Paris stage celebrities, 219
Parma, Charles Duke of, 37
_Pascarel_ (by Ouida), 19
Paschitch, Monsieur Nicholas, Prime Minister of Serbia, 73, 75
Pasqualini, Marquis Mattioli, 18
Passeggio, at Leghorn, 37
Patchu, M. (Minister of Finance), 79
Paternoster Row, 188
Paul, Doctor, 230
Paul, Mr. Stanley, 189, 262
Pavolini, Commendatore (Chief of the Italian Secret Police), 216
Pearson, Sir C. Arthur, 189, 190
Pearson, House of, 196
_Pearson’s Weekly_, 196;
Peter Keary of, 196
Pegli, near Genoa, 10
Peleshor, Château of, 198
Pemberton, Max, 93, 250, 273, 295
Penley (actor), 288
Pera Palace Hotel, 105, 115
Perrin, Madame, 109
Persia, Nasr-ed-Din, Shah of, 41, 42
Peru, 32
Peterborough Museum, 149
Peterson, Mr. Justice, 183
Petkoff, Monsieur Demetrius, 85, 86;
shot dead, 88
Pettit, Henry, 288
Pharaoh, 147
Phillips, Mr. Frank, 158
Philipps, Lady Owen, 261
Piccadilly, 93
Pinckard, Miss Coral, 282
Pinckard, Mr. George (Lord of the Manor of Witley), 139, 284, 285
Pinckard, Mrs. George, 122, 139, 282
Pinero, 295
Pink, Dr. Thomas, 135
Pitti Palace, Florence, 143
Podgoritza, 48
Poincaré, M. Raymond, 221
Portarlington, Lord, 296
Portland Place, 245
Portsmouth, Lord, 90
Potinière, 100
Potsdam, 239
Potsdam, His Pompousness of (sobriquet of Kaiser), 99
Pounds, Courtice, 290
Praga, Alfred (President of the Society of Miniaturists), 290
Praterstrasse, 38
_Premier_ Magazine, 202
Presci, Dêd (chief of the Kastrati), 57
Prince of Wales’s Club, 291
Prince’s Street, Edinburgh, 140
_Princess Alice_ (Prince Albert of Monaco’s steam yacht), 117
Prior, Melton, 183
Prisrend, 51, 59
Pronunciation of Queux, 10, 100, 295
Pronunciation of Thugs, 299
Prussia, Prince Henry of, 239
Quartier Latin, 10
Quebec, 123
Queen Anne’s Mansions, Westminster, 245
Quex of _The Evening News_, 293
“Quex and Brex,” 100
Quex, The Gay Lord, 295
Quirinal Palace, 17, 66
Rachitch, the chef, 75
Radio Engineers, Institute of, 11
Radio, humorous stories of, 160
Radio-telephony, 157
Rampolla, Cardinal, 178
Randolph Hotel, Oxford, 120
Rasputin, the monk, 270
Ravenna, 23
Rawlinson, Colonel Sir Henry, 248
Rebecque, Count de (sharper), 219
Redetski, Count de, 14
Reform Club, 195, 246
Regina Elena (Messina), 216
Registry Office, Henrietta Street, 144
Revillion (Préfet of Basses-Alpes), 286
Ribarska Banya, the, cure for rheumatism, 72
Richardson, Frank, 293, 301, 302
Richebourg, Emile, 162
Richmond, 264
Richmond, Mr. Barry, and the Humbert case, 206
Riddell, Lord, 189
Rimini, casino at, 155
Ripanje, 72
Ritz Hotel, 97, 103
Riviera, 125
Rizzetti, Count Ugo, 214
Roberts, Lord, 15, 19, 90, 236–238, 222, 242, 244, 251;
his opinion of King Leopold, 101;
characteristic letter, 247;
President of New Vagabonds’ Club, 294
Rochdale, Lord, 264
Rochiori, 4th Regiment de, 99
Rohr, journalist, _Neue Freie Presse_, 41
Rok, member of the tribe of the Skreli, 45, 47
Rollit, M.P., Sir Albert, 248
Romanoffs, the, 16
Romano’s (in the Strand), 191
Rome, 36, 66, 123
Rosebery, the Earl of, 248
Ross, Mrs., 19
Rossi, Pietro (assassin). _See_ Rizzetti, Count Ugo, 214
Rossmore, Lord, 201, 202
Rostand, 221
Rosyth, 262
Rotterdam, 159
Roumania, Charles, King of, 91, 95
Roumania, Marie, Queen of, 98;
brilliant conversationalist, 99
Roxburghe, the Duchess of, 264
_Royal_ Magazine, 198, 199
Rule’s in Maiden Lane, 289
Russell, Sir Charles, 191
Russia, 10;
under the Tzars, 187;
the late Emperor of, 13–17;
Peter, Grand Duke of, 66
Ryle, Bishop, 170
Sackville, Lord, 296
Safe, Tony, 283
Saint Aulaire, Countess of, 122
St. Barbe College, 220
St. James’ Club, 97
St. James’ Place, 264
St. Moritz, 99
St. Paul’s Cathedral, 242
Sala, George Augustus (travelling correspondent of the _Daily
Telegraph_), 179, 183;
he and W. Le Queux disguise as peasant pilgrims to see the Holy
Coat at Treves, 180
Salisbury, Lord (Premier of England), 163
Salm-Reifierscheidt, Count, 40, 41
Salzburg, 36, 42;
Imperial Castle of, 143
San Marino, Republic of, 10, 17
San Rossore, near Pisa, 22
Sarajevo, 224
Savage Club, 94, 246
Savoff, General, 87
Savoy Hotel, 144, 151
Saxony, Crown Prince of (now King), 13
Saxony, Luisa, Princess of, 102, 109, 140, 143;
her sense of humour and fund of anecdotes, 35;
Poldo, her brother, 36;
stories of Dom Pedro of Brazil, 35;
and Prince Ferdinand of Bulgaria, 37;
usually called herself Countess of Montignoso or Countess de la
Rose when travelling, 37;
story of the Grand Duke Charles of Parma “and his damned
dentist,” 39;
the Emperor Karl of Austria steals his mother’s jewels and gives
them to Elsa Bland the Jewess operatic singer, 40
_S’bogom_, common salutation of greeting or farewell in all Slav
countries, 45
Scarborough, bombardment predicted, 251
Schloss, the, 38
Scotland Yard, 29
Scrutton, Lord Justice (of copyright knowledge), 180
Scutari, 45, 47, 50
Secret agent of Great Britain, 251
Selamlik, the, 110
Serbia, George, Crown Prince of, 74;
the original of the character of “Prince Danilo” in the _Merry
Widow_, 75;
his fondness for the ballet, 76;
his love of practical jokes, 76;
showed himself to be a competent officer and nearly lost his life
in saving that of a sergeant-major at the battle of Kumonovo,
76
Serbia, King Peter of, 67;
compelled to succeed to the throne of Serbia, had no desire to
become King of Serbia, absorbing love romance, the most
misjudged monarch of Europe, grandson of the peasant hero
Karageorgevitch, a born soldier, resemblance to Earl Roberts,
fought at the head of a troop which he raised for the
emancipation of Bosnia, 68;
fought in 1870 on the French side against the Germans, awarded
the Legion of Honour; and again, in 1914, he fought against
the Germans, 69;
King Peter in addition to being a soldier was also an artist, 83;
his death, 83
Seton-Karr, Sir Henry, 248
Shepherd, C. W. (editor _Northern_ Newspaper Syndicate), 199
Shiala, the, enemies of the Skreli, 46
Shoreham, 155
Shorter, Clement, 93, 188, 293
Shrewsbury, 183
Siberia, 10, 15
Sigismund, Archduke, 36
_Signa_ (by Ouida), 19
Simpson’s (in the Strand), 175
Sims, George R., 173, 288, 295, 302
Sinaia, 98
Sinclair, Mr. Duncan (of the Air Ministry), 157
Skupchtina, the, 80
Sladen, Douglas, 94, 188, 201, 264
Slavin, Frank (pugilist), 282, 283
Slough, 306
Sobranje, the (Parliament), 87
Sofia, 84
Sohet (publicity-expert), 219
Sohet, Madame (Gabrielle Deltour), 219
Solomon, King, 190;
treasures of his temple, 191
Sommer (aviator), 153
Spa, in Belgium, 152
Spain, King of, 284
Spencer, Mr. Alfred, 188
Speyer, Sir Edgar, 261
Spies, German, 225, 235, 237
Spilsbury, Dr., 226
Spiridon (painter of “Sappho”), 286
Spitzbergen, 117
Springfield, Lincoln (editor of _London Opinion_), 165, 173, 191–193
Spurgeon, Sir Arthur, 189
Stambuloff, M. (predecessor of Petkoff and shared the same fate), 88
Stana, Princess (wife of the Grand Duke Nicholas), 66
Stancioff, Monsieur Dmitri, 86
Stanley, Sir H. M. (the explorer), 100, 165, 167. _See_ Harding,
George
_Star_, the, 192
Stead, Mr. W. T., 15
Steinhauer, Herr (director of German espionage), 268
_Stella Polare_ (Polar travels), 18
Stevens, Fred (a crook), 269
Stockholm, 189
Stone, Miss (the American), held to ransom by the Skreli brigands,
45;
large sum paid by U.S. Government for her release, 50
Stoyanovitch, Costa (Minister of Commerce), 75
Strong, Alderman and Sheriff Sir Vesey, 248
Stud House, Hampton Court, 202
Sûdan, 10
Sutherland, D. M. (editor _Pall Mall Gazette_), 200
Sutton, Sir George, 293
Switzerland, 11
“Tatcho Sims” 302
Tatlers’ Club, 299
Tcholak-Antich, Colonel, 69
Tennant, Miss Dorothy, 165
Tennyson, 65, 195
Terris, Will (the actor), 288
Terry, Mr. Charles, 193
Terry, Ellen, 163
Thebes, 147, 148
“The Day,” German preparations in England for, 254
“The Thugs” (new club formed
by Oxford undergraduates), 299
_The Times_, 10, 245
Thirteen Club, 299
Thomas, Brandon (author of _Charley’s Aunt_), 288
Thomson, Mr. D. C. (proprietor of _Dundee Courier_), 237
Thomson’s (of Dundee), 189
Thurstrup, Captain, 270
Tilbury (office boy and sometimes tipster for Larry Lynx), 177
“Toby” (a dog), 120
Toft (sculptor), 290
Toselli, Signor, 144, 145
Tower Publishing Company, 188
Townsend, Mr. F. T. (Secretary of Ipswich Wireless Club), 159
Townshend, Marchioness, 122
Tozer, Basil, 153, 276, 278
Traitors, unearthed in France--Lenoir, Bolo Pasha and many others,
259;
Britain has betrayers still in her midst, 260
Travellers’ Club, Paris, 96, 300
Tree, Beerbohm, 288
Tree, Lady, 252
Tree, Miss Viola, 252
Treves, 179
Trieste, 44
_Trilby_, 127
Trinity College, Oxford, 120
Tromsö 117
Troubetskoy, Princess, 122
Tucker, Mr. Alexander, 75
Tugs, Thougs, or Thugs, 299;
the right pronunciation of, 299;
the ex-Lord Chancellor pronounced that it should be “Tugs,” so
“Tugs” it is, 299
Tunisia, 10
Turf Club in Cairo, 300
Turf Club, London, 183
Turkey, 169;
intrigues of, 34;
Tewfik Pasha, Grand Vizier, 105
Turkish Revolutionary Party, 107
Turner, General Sir Alfred, 252
Turner, Sir George, 295
Turney, Sir John, 248
Tuscany, Ferdinand IV., Grand Duke of (father of Luisa, Ex-Crown
Princess of Saxony), 143
Tuscany, Princess Luisa of, 13
“Tweedles” (a dog), 120
Tweedmouth, Lord, 248
Tyler, Sir Henry W., 248
Tyne, 245
Tsarskoye Selo, Palace of, 14
“Uncle Smith” (of the Junior Garrick Club), 290
Unwin, Mr. Fisher, 188
Ushabitu figures, 148
Uskub, 59
Vacaresco, Mademoiselle Helen, 95
Vagabond Club, 94
Vambery, Professor (Oriental scholar), 115
Vardö, 118
Vaughan, Baroness, 102
Vaughan, Father Bernard, 170
Verdi, 140
Verne, Jules, 250
Vesnitch, Dr. Milenko, Minister of Justice, and afterwards Serbian
Minister in Paris, 75
Vesnitch, Madame, 75
Via Balbi, in Genoa, 22, 23
Victor Emanuel, King of Italy, 22
Victoria, H.M.S. (Vice-Admiral Sir George Tryon’s ship), 172
Victoria Hotel at Hastings, 301
Victoria, Queen, 26;
dislike for the late Baron de Hirsch, 27;
her parsimony, 29;
last visit to Nice, 29
Vienna, 37, 99, 115
Villa Igiea Hotel, Palermo, 213
Villa Regala, Bucharest, 96
Villefranche, 101
Vinadio, Baroness di, 217
Vladaja, 87
Vries, Mademoiselle de, 292
Waldeck-Rousseau (famous lawyer), 209
Wall Street, New York, 139, 150
Waller, Mr. Lewis, 252
Walters, John (Queen Victoria’s coachman), 177
War Office, 259
Ward and Lock (publishers), 188, 279
Ward, Mr. W. A. (Sheffield), 159
Waterhouse, Sir H., 295
Watt, Mr. A. P. (literary agent), 188, 250
Wegner, Detective-Sergeant (expert on alien enemies), 262
Wells, H. G., 93
Wells, Sir Sydney Russell, 295
Wemyss, the Earl of, 248
Westmorland, Countess of, 132, 252
Weybourne Gap, Norfolk, 245
Whiskers and Frank Richardson, 301
Whitcomb Street, 293
White, Arnold, 293
White, F. V. (publisher), 197
White, Field-Marshal Sir George, 248
Whitehall, 89, 222
Whitehead, Sir Beethom (British Minister at Belgrade), 77
Whitelaw, David (novelist), 202
_Who’s Who_, 10, 163
Wilde, Oscar, 127, 173
Wilkin, Rear-Admiral H. W., 137, 242
Wilkinson, Mr. Spenser, 248
Willcox, Dr., 226
Willcox, Mr. L. C. (of Warminster), 159
“Willie Liqueur” (sobriquet of W. Le Queux), 131
Willy, 221
Wilmersdorf, 115
Wilson, H. W. (naval expert), 245
Winchester, Clarence (aviator, wrote _Flying Men and Their
Machines_), 155
Windsor, 30;
lecture at Town Hall, 265 (Lord Headley, chairman)
Windt, Harry de (explorer and traveller), 10, 15, 100, 117, 153, 283
Wireless, 18;
broadcasting, 157, 158
Wireless station, Crookhaven, 161
Witthaus, Dr., 226
Woodman, Sheriff Sir George, 248
Woods, Mr. G. (of Liverpool), 159
Wozzle, an imaginary village (Hatfield), 164
Wozzleite, a pseudonym of Lord Salisbury, 164
X., Lady, little, 129
X., Madame (engaged to King Peter), 67, 69, 83
Xenia, Princess, 66
Yildiz, the, 109, 112, 114
Young, Filson, 295
Yukon, 282
Zeppelin, Count, 241
Zola, 19, 162, 164, 209, 210
Zola, Madame, 205
_Zoraida_ (a novel), in Irish daily paper, 188
Zurich, 239
Transcriber’s Note:
Words may have multiple spelling variations or inconsistent
hyphenation in the text. These were not changed. Six misspelled words
were corrected.
Words and phrases in italics are surrounded by underscores, _like
this_. Those in bold are surrounded by equal signs, =like this=.
Obvious printing errors, such as backwards, reversed, upside down,
or partially printed letters and punctuation, were corrected. Final
stops missing at the end of sentences and abbreviations were added.
Duplicate letters at line endings were removed.
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