London Days: A Book of Reminiscences. Arthur Warren

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      Monsignor Capel at home was in purple-edged cassock, with purple buttons and broad purple sash. If in his shaggy overcoat he had suggested bulk, in his cassock and biretta he was a dignified, even an imposing figure. He received me in his study at the twilight hour. The fire-glow played over the room, while the papal chamberlain submitted to the processes of an interview. But "submitted" is scarcely the right word; it is merely the word that custom applies to the extraction of copy from a willing subject. He had invited the interviewer and did not pretend that the interview was torture. We sat by the fire and spun. The room was on the ground floor of the house and in the rear, overlooking the garden. His writing desk was in a bay window, and above it a crucifix was suspended. Near it, on the left wall, hung a large photograph of Pope Pius IX and his household. The Monsignor himself was not inconspicuous in this. About the room were a dozen or more photographs of celebrities. Among these was a photograph of Gladstone. "I keep that here as a penance," said Capel, to whom the name of the "Grand Old Man" was anathema.

      Capel alluded to himself as a "lamb" in politics, but his allusion to politicians opposed to his way of thinking were anything but lamblike that early evening. He had published a pamphlet called "Great Britain and Rome, or Ought the Queen to Hold Diplomatic Relations with the Sovereign Pontiff?" Of course he held that she ought, and he said so to the immense disapproval of the majority of his fellow countrymen. He had also produced a pamphlet on the Irish Question which, then as now, could be counted on for enraging and puzzling half the population. The solution proposed by him, was, I believe, more Roman Catholicism, but why and how to get more of what was already in excess one did not see then, and sees now even less than before.

      But Capel's star was dimming. His Catholic college, or university, or whatever it was, had failed for lack of support and faults of administration, and the financial troubles were soon to drive him to the bankruptcy court, if they had not already done so. And His Eminence Cardinal Manning had thrown his influence against the captivating Monsignor. The Cardinal had his reasons, and, I suppose, they were good reasons. At any rate, like Shylock's, they were sufficient. When the Cardinal was against a man in his flock, that man's chances for preferment, and even for holding his own, were not worth discussing. Capel went to America in 1883. He sailed on the Arizona whose captain was the brother of my friend, Henry Murray. The Monsignor made a meteoric flash over the American continent. I saw him there. And then the continent swallowed him. He died in California, if not unknown then practically forgotten.

      The sequel to my visit at Scarsdale Lodge was an article, and the article was sent, on chance, to the Boston Herald, then the leading newspaper in New England and of almost metropolitan importance. I did not know any one connected with the paper, not even the editor's name. But the article was printed, although I did not know that until some months later, at the end of 1882, when I turned up in Boston, at the Herald office, and asked for the editor, sending him my card with a message of inquiry about the article which I had posted to him from London some months earlier.

      I intended to ask him for a job, for I had decided to settle awhile in Boston and turn my London experiences to account if the opportunity could be made.

      A boy came to the room where I had waited on the anxious seat for an unhappy quarter of an hour.

      "Mr. Holmes will see you," he said. "Come this way."

      Holmes was the man's name, was it! Yes, John H. I had learned that much, and I followed the boy to an inner office. A dark-haired, slender, agreeable-mannered man, who looked rather like the Whitelaw Reid of that time, rose from his desk. As he did so I said:

      "Mr. Holmes, I believe."

      "Yes," said he, "and you are the writer of that article?" naming it.

      "Yes," said I.

      He held out his hand, and smiled. We shook hands, and I tried to look as if it were my daily occupation to be welcomed by the editors of powerful journals. Naturally, I did n't feel that way, and was nervously wondering what to say next. That anxiety vanished as the editor asked:

      "Are you at liberty to do any more work of that kind, or of any special kind, for us?"

      "Yes," said I, concealing, I hoped, my eagerness and delight.

      "Then I will take as much as you are willing to write," said he, "and pay you ten dollars a column, and when you go anywhere for us, your expense bill."

      This seemed a fair beginning, particularly as I had not been compelled to ask for it, as I had expected to do. When I closed the door behind me and descended the stairs, I felt an elation of spirit that was natural enough in a young chap who was more than five months short of his twenty-third birthday.

      And so, with the beginning of 1883, I took the plunge into journalism. There followed five more or less adventurous years which carried me from one end of the country to the other and across the Atlantic and back again. Then in 1888, I was appointed London correspondent of the same paper, a position which I held for nine years until called elsewhere. It is with memories and impressions of the London Days of that time, and of some of their celebrated personages, that the following pages are concerned.

      CHAPTER V

      BROWNING AND MOSCHELES

      You will look in vain now for the old brown-brick bungalow that stood, for the most part concealed by trees and shrubs, within the railings of the park-like enclosure halfway down Sloane Street, on the left-hand side, as you go from Knightsbridge. It stood there till the end of the eighties. If you walked there in the days of my early acquaintance with it, or glided through Sloane Street in a hansom, the chances were that the bungalow would still escape your glance, sheltered as it was by foliage. But from the top of any 'bus you could make it out readily, and you would wonder, as most 'bus fares did, what lucky or eccentric fellow lived within the very plain walls and had all that Cadogan enclosure as a back garden. Probably your neighbour on the 'bus top would tell you, 'bus neighbours being at all times well stocked with misinformation, that the favoured dwelling was the home of the gardener of the enclosure. But it was not. It was the home of my delightful friend, Felix Moscheles, and there you could find Robert Browning almost any Sunday afternoon when he was in London.

      Felix Stone Moscheles was the son of Ignaz Moscheles, composer and pianist, whose intimate friendship with Mendelssohn is revealed in the latter's published correspondence. Felix was born in London February 8, 1833, at Number 3 Chester Place, Regent's Park, and Mendelssohn acted as his godfather at the christening in St. Pancras Church. Felix died at Tunbridge Wells, December 22, 1917. He was as kind a man as ever lived. He was an artist by profession, fond of music and musicians, as you might expect him to be; he spoke several languages fluently and with equal charm—English, French, German, Esperanto, and I know not what else—and he was passionately attached to movements for world peace. We know that nothing made for the peace of the world down to mid-1914; that while Germany had been deceiving it, the world had lulled itself to sleep with "drowsy syrups" and ecstatic daydreams. I think the awakening killed my dear old friend. That is not surprising. He was over eighty-one when the war broke out, and almost eighty-five when he died. Down to 1913, when I saw him last, I used to say that he was the youngest man of my acquaintance. He had the optimism of СКАЧАТЬ