MEMOIRS OF A CLUBMAN.*
Tun clubs of which Mr. Burgin is a member are by no means those serious and decorous palaces which stand on either side of Pall Mall and St. James's Street, where bald heads, with a perspective of upheld newspapers, may be seen through the window, and the owners repose in armchairs with their backs to the light. Mr. Burgin's resorts of the New Vagabonds and the Whitefriars are far more amusing establishments, whose members meet for the festive purpose of dining in company, which is by no means the practice of the serious institutions mentioned above. But perhaps the most original chapters of this book are those at the beginning concerned with the author's adventures in Canada and the Levant. In Canada, indeed, where in his early days Mr.. Burgin was attached to the staff of a periodical entitled the Four Corners Gazette, he had a most useful lesson in the art of condensation :- " Tn a fit of enthusiasm I had volunteered to learn how to set type—from my own articles—and it was tedious work, in spite of the encouragement of Mutt, the foreman. ' You'll get so darned sick of your own eloquence that you'll cut every.' thing short,' he declared, as he sat on a heap of exchanges;1 and smoked the corncob of consolation. ' It's the beginning of wisdom to cut everything short and, mostly, the ending of it.' " Young authors who begin their careers by dictating their " copy " might usefully try this experiment. Shortly after his Canadian experience Mr. Burgin proceeded to the Levant. He tells the following anecdote of the editor of a local paper :- " The editor and proprietor of the Levant Herald, E— W—, was one of the most brilliant and versatile men I have ever mot or expect to meet. Someilimes, when he grew tired of his paper, he wrote a leader, well knowing that it would cause him to be suppressed for a month."
Can this have been the object of an eminent editor of to-day tl It would explain certain mysterious events which have puzzled the world in general.
Among other anecdotes of Constantinople Mr. Burgin tells of an Englishman, Colonel N—, employed by the Turks in the gendarmerie, who
" went to our ambassador about the non-payment of his salary, and the ambassador insisted on his being paid. Two officials from the Turkish War Office came to the colonel's house on the following morning leading two donkeys laden with his salary in copper coins. The colonel indignantly remonstrated, where- , upon the Turks said that copper was a legal tender, and that they would do the donkeys to a post in front of the door, and come back for them in half an hour. If the colonel did not take the money, that was his affair. Then they disappeared. Directly they were out of sight, the colonel and his man. unloaded the money, took it into the house and sold the donkeys in the nearest bazaar. After that, he never had any more trouble about his salary."
Although these early chapters contain many anecdotes, they are entirely outshone in this line when Mr. Burgin becomes an habitue of Fleet Street and meets most of the literary people worth seeing. He was almost at once elected to the
• Memoirs of a Clubman. By G. B. Burgin. London: Hutchinson. Os. net.I.
Old Vagabonds Club, in company with a gentleman "who returned thanks for his election in the following phrase : ' I thank you, gentlemen, for admitting me to this honourable body of great men, one of whom I am now which.' " We are not told exactly the date at which Mr. Burgin began the first of the sixty novels that stand to his credit, but his chapters on novel writing give considerable insight into his methods. He has also a chapter on " The Methods of Authors," in which he gives us information as to the work of his contemporaries and also of the effect of their labours on their readers. On the subject of Mr. Arnold Bennett, he tells us :— " A friend once angrily complained to me, I've been reading one of Bennett's books. Two boys stand on a bridge for several pages, their object being to spit on the heads of the crew of a canal barge coming along in the distance. In several pages more, the barge gradually draws up to the bridge. The boys spit at the crew and—miss I don't call that realism. From what I know of boys, they'd have succeeded at every shot and the crew would have had their hearts' blood. Some one ought to tell Bennett to be more careful.' " But Mr. Burgin does not confine his anecdotes to male novelists. He gives us a whole chapter on " The Methods of Women Writers," of whom, apparently, it may be said that they have no special method of writing but that the words live on the nibs of their pens, or, rather, it may be supposed in the present day, in the keys of their typewriters. Of the authors of the past whom Mr. Burgin met, the most interesting is Swinburne, who seems to have made an entirely different impression on his mind from the picture which we are given with such vivid- ness in Mr. Max Beerbohm's latent book, the only points which struck both writers being the roast mutton and the figure (in the technical sense of the word) of the poet. We are also given a tantalising glimpse of " a whole boxful of unpublished Stevenson letters," one of which Mr. Burgin was allowed to take as a remembrance. Unfortunately, owing to difficulties about copyright, he is not able to reproduce the letter, but quotes one sentence—" The future is a fine thing in its way, and, what's more, it's all we have to come and go upon."
During the course of his long life Mr. Burgin, as may be supposed has made certain excursions into the world behind
the footlights, and has come to the reasoned conclusion that, "'when -compared with theatrical managers, editors are simply angels of light." In connexion with actor-managers, he quotes
a witty saying of Zangwill : " The actor's conception of the part is that it is greater than the whole." The theatrical chapters contain a most entertaining account of how Mr. Burgin submitted his first play—a " curtain-raiser "—to Mr. Willie Edouin, who made an appointment with him at the Strand Theatre at six on the next evening. Mr. Burgin was shown into Mr. Edouin's dressing-room:— " On a chair lay a curious something stuffed with horsehair. I did not know what it was, but the doorkeeper regarded it with reverence. That's the guv'nor's musk rat,' he explained.
I think he meant mascot. Presently Mr. Edouin came in and also regarded me with a certain amount of suspicion. When I.faltered out why I was there, his countenance cleared. Oh yes,' he said cheerily, that little play of yours. There's a blind woman in it, isn't there ? " Yes, there is a blind woman in it. You see—.' To be sure. I knew something in it was blind. But I'm a bit late. P'raps you wouldn't mind helping me on with my false stomach. Never act without that.' The false stomach proved to be the musk rat' on the chair. It took some time to adjust and seemed to be a sort of lifebelt made out of a burst tyre and stuffed with horsehair. All the time I was struggling with it, one man put Mr. Edouin's right foot into the right leg of a pair of stage trousers, another put his left foot into the left leg and nearly upset him, whilst the actor pulled on a wig and began to rub grease paint over his face. Just as he finished, the call-boy appeared. Come again to-morrow at the same time and I'll be a little earlier,' said Mr. Edouin as he dashed away."
Finally Mr. Edouin gave him £15 for the play, a certain portion of which, it may be supposed, was consumed in 'bus fares to the strand Theatre during the many visits which Mr. Burgin had to pay to the theatre in order to collect the cheque.
It will be seen from these samples that the book is full of lively anecdotes. It is the record of a man who, if he is the possessor of a rather pedestrian talent, is a conscientious work- man, and has produced a vast number of books of which the ideals are on the side of the angels. There are many brilliant young authors of whom one cannot say as much ; indeed, they would be horrified could there be any fear of such an accusation being levelled against them.
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