Unpublished draft
Derived mostly from the British Library Newspapers Online database.
Perhaps sympathizing with him as a fellow labourer, those responsible for the printed
reviews of Pascoe's works were mostly (if not exclusively) fairly kind about them. The serial
nature of publications such as "London Today" ensured regular appearance of his name in the
"newly published" notices maintained by several of the quality newspapers, which may have
helped. The following brief selection of fuller "notices" gives a flavour of how his work was
received.
Academy Notes, 1877. By Henry Blackburn. (Chatto and Windus.) Illustrated Handbook to the Supplementary Art Galleries, By Charles Eyre Pascoe. (Hardwicke and Bogue.)—Mr. Henry Blackburn's ‘Academy Notes” have made their usual appearance, and are just as useful as usual. It is, however, very much to be regretted that Mr. Blackburn was “unable to avail himself of Mr. Alma-Tadema’s sketches of ‘The Seasons,’” as such an important contribution to the value of the book ought not to have been omitted, As every successful thing finds imitators, and Mr. Blackburn's `Academy Notes' have proved successful, Mr. Charles Eyre Pascoe has brought out an illustrated handbook of the supplementary art galleries, under which head he groups the Society of Painters in Water-Colours, the Institute and the Society of British Artists, the Dudley Gallery, and the Grosvenor. An illustrated handbook to the Grosvenor alone would have been far more useful and appropriate than one which gives it a few pages in connexion with half-a-dozen other "shows.”
The Dramatic List,- Such is the modest title of an admirable record of the principal performances of ... actors and actresses of the British stage. It is compiled and edited by Mr. Charles Eyre Pascoe, who has succeeded in producing an entertaining and com... work supplied with materials derived from dramatic sources. The difficulty of preparing contemporary biography is obvious, but Mr Pascoe has overcome it and has produced a volume which commends itself not only to the members of the profession, but to the public generally. The records given are with few exceptions limited to a statement of each player's principal appearances on the London stage., and the criticisms applied are from the leading journals of the metropolis. The volume is printed on beautiful paper in double columns, and is from the press of Messrs., Hardwicke and Bogue, of Piccadilly.
A Practical Handbook to the Principal Professions. By Charles Eyre Pascoe. (Hardwicke and Bogue.)—Gives complete information about the examinations and other preliminaries necessary for those who would enter the Civil Service, the Army, the Navy, and the Legal and Medical professions (the Clerical profession has been purposely omitted). The changes in these arrangements are so rapid that it is necessary to be well informed, and that for some time beforehand, of what is required. We can recommend this handbook confidently.
"A Practical Handbook to the Principal Professions." By Charles Eyre Pascoe (Hardwick and
Bogue)
Mr. Pascoe has produced a little volume a large portion of the information contained in which is obtained from official sources, and may be procured by any one who applies for it. Still it is well to have the recent regulations concerning admission to the Civil Service, the navy, army, and other professions, printed in a convenient form. The editor has omitted the Church as a profession —“because, in his judgment it is one requiring from those who seek to enter it, beyond mere educational attainments qualifications of a special order not to be lightly handled in a work of this kind; ” and he has included the mercantile marine— “because as a service it is rising in importance every day, and affords to young men having a predilection for a sailor's career opportunities and advantages which even admission to the Royal Navy does not always promise or confer.” Very full information is given with regard to all departments of the Indian service, and the chapter devoted to the medical profession contains an abstract of the regulations of the medical examining boards of the United Kingdom
— Charles Eyre Pascoe, who for several years resided in this country, and was connected with the Boston press, has compiled a volume called “‘The Dramatic List,’’ of which Roberts Brothers have issued an American edition, It professes to be a record of the principal performances of living actors and actresses of the British stage, with criticisms from contemporary journals. With few exceptions the records given are limited to a statement of each player's principal appearances on the London stage. Mr. Pascoe frankly states that he does not assume the volume to be complete, though he proposes to remedy its imperfections, of which he is aware, in future editions, The volume is an important addition to stage literature, and will be useful to all interested in modern dramatic affairs as a handbook to the celebrities of the profession, It is very handsomely printed and bound. |Received by W. B. Clarke.]
What to do with the girls? This perplexing question has just received another response from
Mr, Charles Eyre Pascoe, who, in his volume on "Schools for Girls and Colleges for Women,”
answers it very completely, supposing that the young ladies are still in statu
pupillari— that is, if they are not yet out of leading strings and their parents are
seeking a school for them, or if their ambition prompts them to become sweet
girl-graduates,golden-haired or otherwise, The book, published by Hardwicke and Bogue,gives
copious information on these subjects. In one respect only is it defective, and that is in its
list of schools, It does not, indeed, profess to be exhaustive, but it occasionally mentions
one school in a locality and omits another. This is, no doubt, an inadvertence-——possibly a
sign of hot haste in compilation—but the omitted schools and colleges may think it arises from
partisanship.
Schools for Girls and Colleges for Women : Handbook of Female Education chiefly designed for the use of Persons of the Upper Middle Class; together with some Chapters on the Higher Employment of Women” By Charles Eyre Pascoe) (Hardwicke and Bogue) ‘The author of this handbook laments the want of girls’ schools suitable for persons of limited income, and considers that in every large town a school for girls should be established similar in character and purpose to the City of London School for boys. This is the object which the Girls’ Public Day School Company is seeking to accomplish; and, considering the success they have met with in London and the provinces, they are likely to supply a very distinct want. Mr. Pascoe quotes with. approval the sound remark that the true measure of a woman's right to knowledge is her capacity for receiving it and not any theories of ours as to what she is fit for or what she is likely to make of it; and be cannot understand why the education of a daughter should less an object of solicitude with parents than the education of a son. In a chapter devoted to Junior Local Examinations Mr. Pascoe sneers at the notion that girls should be especially prepared for them, and, after giving some examples from the papers set to candidates, asks whether they represent too high a standard for a girl of sixteen, He complains that our daughters are taught the subjects dealt with at the Oxford and Cambridge Local Examinations as if those subjects marked the culminating point of woman's education, but ticks notwithstanding that the best guarantee of a School's efficiency is the fact that pupils trained in it have obtained with “honours” or without, the “local examinations” certificate of the universities and College of Precepts. Information of every kind likely to assist a parent in the choice of school will be found in thee pages, which abound with details and estimates of cost. Girls’ schools, in general, the writer says, are lacking in stimulus ard inducement to work: but it would be more correct to say that they were formerly deficient in these respect; for the examinations now so common supply the stimulus that was lacking. The fear is lest these examinations should be treated as of primary importance, and all school work made to turn upon them. The wish to pass an examination creditably may act as a spur to the students; but success of this sort is not the object of education. We may add. that Mr. Pascoe supplies ample information with regard to women's colleges, and the higher or university education of women.
Under the title of “Our Dramatic List,” Mr C. E. Pascoe gives in a compact volume a record of the performances of living actors and actresses of the British Stage. The work is published by Mr David Bogue, of St. Martin’s-place, Trafalgar-square, and will serve as a useful memorial of some of the most important representations of the present time. The book is arranged in alphabetical style, so that the name of the actor or actress and their chief performances may be readily ascertained. All the best known of our popular performers are included in the work, which we can easily imagine has cost the author no little time and trouble. As a work of reference for the actor or the playgoer it will be welcome, as those who wish to recall any special performance, or the characters sustained by any popular histrionic celebrity, will be enabled to do so with ease by referring to a work of this kind. We say nothing on the score of dramatic criticism, because a work of this kind should be and is rather a record of actual work done than a critical inquiry as to its merits. ‘Dramatic Notes,” by the same author, is a series of sketches of performances now proceeding at our principal Theatres, with illustrations of some of the chief scenes in the pieces.
Our Actors and Actresses, by C. E. Pascoe (David Bogue), is also a work of
reference, one which must have cost much time and trouble to compile. It is curious that no
encyclopaedic almanac or dictionary of our living dramatic artists was attempted before Mr.
Pascoe published his “Dramatic List,” of which this is the second and revised edition. Probably
the difficulty of the task frightened away many. Even Mr. Pascoe apologises for the inevitable
incompleteness of the work, for, as he says, “new players are constantly coming forward while
old ones are constantly dropping out of sight.” The apology was almost unnecessary, for the
book would satisfy all, except that class of critics which is never satisfied. The author has
carefully avoided mere gossip, while giving the material facts in all the biographies, and has
succeeded in producing a volume which is not only valuable but even interesting.
Compiled and Edited by Charles Eyre Pascoe. (Hardwicke & Bogue.)
, By Henry Barton Baker. 2vols. (Bentley & Son.)
It is in the nature of things that the majority of books about actors shall be mere compilations. So soon as a writer goes back beyond his own necessarily limited experience he has to trust to the written opinion of others. Old anecdotes may be told again, and old lessons may be repeated. No amount of excogitation will, however, serve to frame a new theory concerning an individual ; there is scarcely chance of knocking an idol from his pedestal, and no chance whatever of restoring one to it from the dust. Actors remain in public estimation where the most competent judges of their own time have placed them, and the verdict passed upon them by their contemporaries is final. A man, then, who writes about players has to provide a book of readable gossip or an encyclopedia. The former task bas been admirably accomplished by Dr. Doran, the latter has been approached by the editors of the ‘Biographia Dramatica’ and by Genest. As those actors who are authors also have alone been dealt with in the ‘Biographia Dramatica’ and as Genest’s ‘Account of the Stage’ includes only the period between 1660 and 1830, there is ample room for a work that shall supplement the information we already possess, If any writer would take up the history of the stage where Genest quits it and supply a record of the performances of Harley and Wm. Farren, the commencement of whose careers alone Genest indicates -- of Keeley, G. V. Brooke, Robson, and others of even later date— a genuine service would be rendered not only to the present generation, but to succeeding times, It seems likely that the gap in stage history between 1830 and 1860 will be little less profound than that which occurs during an almost corresponding portion of the seventeenth century. For, concerning the period immediately succeeding that at which histories terminate, it happens by ill chance that criticism is silent also. Those animated descriptions of acting we owe to Lamb, Leigh Hunt, and Hazlitt do not extend far into the present century, and the criticisms of Talfourd, which would do something to keep up the link of connexion, have not yet been republished. Neither of the books before us supplies the information we require. While one deals only with living actors or those whose death. is quite recent, the other leaves off at the period at which existing records terminate, and is a mere reproduction of what was better in its earlier form.
‘The Dramatic List’—to deal first with the less pretentious work—aims at supplying a record of the principal performances of living English actors. No attempt is made to pass an individual criticism upon those whose artistic careers are traced, and few particulars, or none at all, are supplied concerning personal surroundings. Published criticisms are laid under contribution, and the verdicts of the leading journals, wherever they can be obtained, are given. Our own columns have supplied a large per-centage of the opinions now collected. A book compiled under such conditions must have a certain value, and it is likely that Mr. Pascoe’s volume will, as its author anticipates, pass through successive editions. There is special cause, then, to point out shortcomings that may be remedied in following books. First, then, of omissions. It is strange to miss from a work that supplies a full account of such actors as Mr. Arthur Garner, Mr. James Rhind Gibson, Mr. Augustus Glover, Mr. Henry Hamilton, and Mr. Charles Sugden, the name of Mr. Charles Warner, who has won a recognized position in London, or that of Mr. Dominick Murray, who, albeit he has been for some time in America, has a right to be counted among the few first- class actors we possess. Miss Moodie, whose late performance at the Haymarket has won her the highest commendations, is unnoticed, as are Mr. Henry Marston and Mr. Wm. Belford, two well-known supporters of Mr. Phelps in bis famous management of Sadler's Wells. Miss Venne of the Strand, one of the most. rising actresses of the day, Mrs. Stephens, the best “old woman” we possess, Mr. W. H. Stephens, Mr. J. G. Taylor, Mr. Leathes, Mr. Calhaen, Miss Edith Heraud, Miss Litton, Miss Kate Saville, and Mise Charlotte Saunders are a few only of those for whose names we seek in vain. It is certain that these omissions will be supplied in the next issue of the book. What is of more importance is, however, to correct the information which is supplied concerning the private life of actors, which, short as it is, is sometimes grievously inaccurate. It is a pardonable weakness in an actress to supply herself with a fancy parentage or pedigree ; but an author who aims at supplying accurate information must shut his ears to such fables. It is strange and saddening to observe how many of those classed among living actors have died while this work was in the press, Among the biographies which appear in a volume speaking of artists still living are those of Phelps, A. Wigan, Charles Mathews, Jobn Parry, John Clarke, and Mdlle. Beatrice. A natural result of the method adopted is that favourable criticisms, as a rule, are supplied. A stranger coming to the perusal of the work might judge that the condition of the stage was eminently prosperous. In some cases, however, and notably in that of a German actor who of late has acquired unenviable notoriety, unfavourable opinions are expressed. Mr. Pascoe’s book is a convenient work of reference. His second edition will, however, we fancy, be an improvement on the first.
Mr. Barton Baker’s qualifications for the task he has essayed are few. He writes in a pleasant, good-natured, easy-going spirit, and takes very sensible views upon most subjects connected with the stage. So hasty, however, is he in statement and so ungrammatical in style, his book is monumental in inaccuracy. There is scarcely a page that does not supply some specimen of the most slovenly English. ... We regret to speak thus strongly against a book which, in spite of its faults, is fairly interesting and amusing.
A kind of literature connected with schools and colleges which threatens every year to become more extensive is that of “Handbooks,” “Education Manuals,” and “Educational Year-Books.” These serve a useful purpose in showing the progress that is made from time to time in the increase in the number of schools, in the character of examinations, &c. By looking through such a book as “Pascoe’s Schools for Girls ” (Schools for Girls and Colleges for Women. By C. E. Pascoe. Hardwicke and Bogue), we are able to appreciate the rapid strides that have been made in women’s education during the last few years. The author has made a thorough survey of the ground occupied by women in the field of education. His book treats of kindergartens, of middle and secondary day-schools, of proprietary colleges, of the arrangements for university residence, and of the various public examinations to which girls are now admitted. The book contains lists of the principal schools, with extracts from the reports of the examiners, details of the school fees, and facts relating to the salaries of teachers and other matters, To parents seeking information with respect to the education of their daughters, this book will prove invaluable ; and it will be found almost equally useful to professional teachers who are interested in the movements that occur within their own sphere of activity.
Dramatic Notes, by C. E. Pascoe author of the “Dramatic List” (David Bogue), is an extremely interesting little handbook of the principal performances at the London theatres during the past year. In most cases the playbills are given with the original casts, and any modifications that have occurred are duly noted. The volume thus gives a complete retrospect of the dramatic events of 1879, which is not only very interesting reading in itself, but will prove invaluable when the history of the drama of the Victorian age comes to be written. It is embellished with many illustrations from the pencil of Mr. T. Walter Wilson that are really perfect In their way, and are perhaps the most attractive feature of a thoroughly trustworthy compilation, which deserves the success we are glad to note it has already achieved.
“London of To-Day:” An Illustrated. Handbook for the Season by Charles Eyre Pascoe,” (Sampson Low, Marston, Searle, and Rivington, 1886) A really good handbook to the metropolis has long been wanted, and Mr. Charles Pascoe has at last supplied the deficiency. In the pages of ‘London of To-Day” the country cousin and the peripatetic American will find full directions about what to look at, what to wear, and where to dine. The book is pleasantly and brightly written. Here and there it is true we come across some rather amazing statements, such as that St James's Palace is "thrown into the shade, architecturally, by Marlborough House,” and that Westminster Abbey is richer in historical associations than any other church in the world “with the exception, perhaps of the Kremlin at Moscow." but on the whole the tourist cannot do better than buy Mr. Pascoe. As a class tourists have large appetites, and Mr. Pascoe gives full information about all our London restaurants.
Of the making of London guide-books and hand-books there is no end, and some of them have been not only instructive, but entertaining. Mr.Charles Dickens the younger has in particular produced a Dictionary of Contemporary London as useful as it is amusing. Let me add to the list Mr. Charles Eyre Pascoe’s “London of To-day: an Illustrated Hand-book for the Season.” Into a medium octavo volume of some four hundred pages Mr. C. E. Pascoe has contrived to pack very neatly and symmetrically an amazing amount of useful information. He tells the traveller at what hotels to stay; where he can find boarding-houses and furnished lodgings ; at what restaurants he shall dine; to what clubs he has a chance of obtaining admission ; whither he can run out of town from Saturday until Monday ; at what shops ladies and gentlemen can purchase all their needments; in fact, as a London cicerone from the Tower to Mr. Jay’s International Fur Store in Regent-street, from the Hotel Métropole to the new Cock Tavern in Fleet-street, and from Lambeth Palace to Mr. Van Der Weyde’s photographic studio, Mr. C. E. Pascoe is every body's guide, philosopher, and friend. The illustrations are numerous and unconventional in execution. The one representing Sir Frederick Leighton, Bart., P.R.A., in full evening dress and with his presidential gold medal adorning his manly bosom, in the act of receiving a lady of fashion at the annual conversazione at the Royal Academy, is a sweet boon. Mr. Pascoe’s artist has not been quite so successful in his counterfeit presentment of Mr. Corney Grain. The distinguished entertainer is apparently glued to a grand pianoforte, and the key board has seemingly entered into his soul.
"London of To-day." By Charles Eyre Pascoe. (Sampson Low and Co.) We are glad to see that this useful little publication has attained to a third year of existence. It really overflows with information about that wonderful "province of houses" which is at once the pleasure-city of the world and its intellectual and commercial centre. Many of the facts given must needs be familiar to Londoners, though there are few of them who might not find a serviceable hint or two within the covers of Mr. Pascoe's book. To strangers it may be heartily recommended; though not, of course, as infallible. Authorities differ considerably as to the relative cost of living in hotels and lodgings; and the comparative estimate of expenses which is supplied on page 47 might certainly be challenged. As to the observations on the subject of Shops for Gentlemen etc, they may safely be pronounced as valuable and agreeable reading as most other forms of advertisement.
“London of To-day, 1888." by Charles Eyre Pascoe,(Sampson Low and Co.) Guide books have long enough been the collected dreary desert of hard and hackneyed facts, but now at last the time seems to have come for better things even in this neglected literary department. The tourist to London will at all events find this, if he acquires the present handy little volume, in which the sights of London and all the countless little items with out knowing which the stranger can never become really acquainted with life in London, are chattingly and charmingly discussed. A large number of capital illustrations add greatly to the value of the book.
Pascoe’s Illustrated Pocket Books. By Charles Eyre Pascoe (London : Hazell, Watson, and Co.)—Five handy little volumes of convenient size and brimful of useful information, have been already issued. Although only one of the series, “The American Road through England,” is directly dedicated to the use of our Transatlantic cousins, it is impossible not to suppose that the remainder are equally addressed to that discerning section of the travelling public. The titles of the other volumes are “London in Little,” “Brighton,” “ Eastbourne and Hastings,” and “The Roads to Paris from London.” Of the last-mentioned we should say that it was very far from being exhaustive, and really seems intended to get the reader to his destination in as short a time as possible. In future editions of these volumes we would suggest, as the result of some experience in the ways of travellers, American and indigenous, that Mr. Pascoe should supplement his works by a supply of “wayside information.” Important villages, imposing buildings, or historical landmarks attract the eye of strangers, and very often the Englishman is sadly disconcerted by having to make avowal of his ignorance. Mr. Pascoe could save him from either the shame or the questioning.
The handy little series entitled Pascoe’s Illustrated Handbooks including London in Little,, Brighton, Eastbourne, and Hastings, The Roads from Paris To London, and The American Roads through England (Hazell, Watson, and Viney), compiled by Mr. Charles Eyre Pascoe and illustrated by Mr. H. Tringham, may be commended as containing much useful information and many attractive illustrations ; but the repetition in volume after volume of much of the same matter and many of the same illustrations is, perhaps, a little tedious.
London of To-day, an illustrated hand-book for 1891; by Charles Eyre Pascoe (London, 1891: Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent, & Co., Limited). — A guide-book pure and simple, has few attractions for the generality of people. Hard and fast facts and figures pall upon those on holiday making intent, and sooner than wade through the average guide-book, the wanderer prefers trusting to his luck to find his way about in a strange place than damp the ardour with which he or she as the case may be, was imbued on setting out. The old guide-book is happily rapidly becoming a thing of the past, going out of date in company with many another institution dear to our fathers and grandfathers. The latter-day guide-book is just a trifle more interesting than that of yore, but it has remained for Mr. C. E. Pascoe to strike out an entirely new and original line in this special branch of literature. "London of To-day" is not only an excellent guide, philosopher, and friend to the visitor to town, but the information is dished up in such a capital style that resident Londoners thoroughly conversant with the sights, &c., of the big city could pick it up and enjoy a chapter or two at a time. Mr. Pascoe's light and piquant style carries his readers through page after page without wearying them in the smallest degree. The varied nature of the information dealt with may be gathered from the fact that the subjects range from suitable hotels for the visitor to patronise, together with all particulars regarding cuisine, tariff, &c., fashionable out-door resorts, theatres and miscellaneous entertainments, art galleries, drives and excursions, the museums, &c., to suitable places for obtaining the necessaries and luxuries of life. Mr. Pascoe in thus so successfully dealing with a usually dry subject has not only earned the gratitude of the multitude but has also opened up a large and profitable field for his pen in this branch of literature. After "London of To-day" (seventh edition) any work of a similar nature from his pen should find a ready sale.
“Let who will go to Chicago” is the tenour of a book, pamphlet, brochure, or call it what you will, by a Mr. Charles Eyre Pascoe, “but I can show you without going out of London a world’s fair of even greater interest.” It is an introduction to men and manners, an essay on the queer side of things, a social skit, a political and moral “expedition,” to use a villainous Yankee word now becoming acclimatised. Mr. Pegram, whose clever studies are the saving of the production, is one of the most brilliant, as he is, we believe, quite the youngest of the new black and white school, and no caricaturist, but an excellent draughtsman. It is worth while to wade through some of Mr. Pascoe’s discursive dissertations on things in general and follies in particular to come across his clever sketches, and if the rest is padding—well, it is sometimes amusing padding. To be Heinesque is not given to every one; even to be fanciful needs a lighter touch, and to satirise the world’s weaknesses and the degenerate spirit of the age is a cheap pastime nowadays. One illustration which we reproduce shows the interior of "The Temple of Fashion,” the "enchanting or enchanted circle with the female devotees prostrate around it, The presiding priestess, with her magic wand, is explaining some of its mysteries, into which no man dare seek to penetrate. It is a striking picture, made up of women, mortal women, genuflecting, even more so than is customary in other temples.” In this diluted “Sartor Resartus” strain does the description continue. A little of it might do very well, but anything more is too much. ("London's World's Fair, 1893, and Great Social, Political, and Moral Exposition,” by Charles Eyre Pascoe and Fred Pegram, Sampson Low, Marston, and Co.)
Visitors to the metropolis will find the “Guide to London” of Ward, Lock, and Bowden comprehensive, up to date, and furnished with maps, plans, and illustrations. It is, moreover, remarkably cheap. "London of To- Day,” by Charles Eyre Pascoe (office of "London of To-Day,” Creed Lane), is also an illustrated handbook. and treats in chatty style of the sights and matters of interest generally to those visiting the centre of the terrestrial globe. The illustrated “Pocket Guide to the Midland Railway.” has attained its third edition, and the London and North Western — Railway issue ‘‘ Tours in Ireland” for visitors to the Emerald Isle, while ‘On Sea and Shore” (Aberdeen Steam Navigation Company) is an illustrated guide to a summer holiday ocean trip to the Highlands of Scotland. Wales is not forgotten, the "Guide to Llandudno,” by C. Caldicott (Iliffe and Son), describing a charming spot. "The Way About Oxfordshire,” by H. Graves is published by the same firm and contains a map and many illustrations
A word of advice to those who are either interested in London, or who intend visiting it this year, is to obtain a good guide-book, and there is little difficulty in doing so, as Messrs. Bemrose & Sons, Ltd., of 23, Old Bailey, E.C., have just issued their volume for 1898 on 'London of To-day.' To write a description of London year after year is a difficult subject to tackle, and Mr. Charles Eyre Pascoe, the editor, is certainly to be commended, especially as it is by no means easy to make interesting matter out of mere facts. Mr. Pascoe, however, is quite equal to this task, for his volume this year is as full as ever. This handbook has been reduced to 1s., and in it you will find 'Where to Stay,' 'Where to Dine,' and 'What to Do,' all most useful information. It also takes account of all the forthcoming events, giving the day and dates, and the when and where. I am sure my readers will agree with me in calling it dirt cheap at 1s. when they have read the book (which, by-the-bye, is beautifully illustrated), and realised the amount of useful information it contains, all lightly and brightly written.
“I have received a dainty book, entitled ‘The Golf Grounds of the South-West,”’ by Charles Eyre Pascoe. giving on its showing a gossiping summary of the attractions of these downs whither men and maids resort to drive the flying ball. The letterpress is illustrated from sketches by Holland Tringham and Victor Prout, and also from photographs. These golfing grounds, in Surrey, Hants, Dorset, Devon, and Cornwall, are placed within easy reach by the excellent arrangements of the London and South-Western Railway.”
A most timely book has just come to us from the press of D. Appleton & Co.. New York—“The Pageant and Ceremony of the Coronation of Their Majesties King Edward the Seventh and Queen Alexandra". The volume will be found equally valuable to those who are fortunate enough to see the coronation and to those who must content themselves with written accounts, for it forms a complete compendium of the coronation rites and ceremonies and state pageant. The author has had unusual facilities for making it authoritative, so it will prove quite valuable as a handy work of reference. The colored illustrations will be found especially useful in giving the proper idea of the regalia. The book consists of three parts: Part 1—The accession and proclamation, etc., of the King, including various important matters incident to the first year of his Majesty's reign. Part 2—-The grand event of the coronation itself. Part 3— The rite and ceremony in St. Peter's Abbey Church of Westminster. The author, predicts that the old form as practiced in 1838 will be followed as nearly as possible. This is added in a fourth part or appendix to the volume, in which is given “The Form and Order of the Service and Ceremonies Ob- served in the Coronations in the Abbey Church of St. Peter, Westminster.” The price of the book is $1 40.
A special edition of “ London of To-Day ” under the title of The Pageant and Ceremony of the Coronation (Simpkin, Marshall), by Charles Eyre Pascoe, is a handbook for the visitor to London for the Coronation, as it not only describes and explains the ceremony, but acts as a guide to the side shows: for the provincial and American visitor, describing the sights of London and the country that must be seen, and reliable information about hotels, flats, boarding-houses, and places of amusement that can be recommended.
We have received from the chief passenger agent of the North- Eastern Railway at York two publications of interest to all who are now looking forward to their customary summer vacation, the one— the “Holiday Annual of the North-Eastern Railway,” written by Mr. Charles Eyre Pascoe, author of “London of To-Day,” pleasantly reminds us of the innumerable attractions, inland and sea- ward, of the northern half of England compassed by that Company's system; the other, the “Guide to Hotels and Furnished Lodgings,” &c., tells us where we may be most conveniently and suitably lodged and boarded while there touring and holiday-making. Like all the printed work issued for purposes of publicity by the North-Eastern Company, these two publications are not less useful and instructive as holiday companions, than attractive and pleasing to the eye as literature—alike in cover- designs, illustrations, paper, and typography. The “Hotels and Lodgings” Guide is an old and familiar friend and adviser. The “Holiday Annual” is new. Mr. Pascoe gossips to us in its pages very pleasantly about the varied attractions of the North-Eastern Railway, its dales, spas, coast resorts, &c., and patriotically appeals to all sorts and nationalities of tourists, British, Colonial, American, in behalf of this most picturesque and every way charming northern half of the “old country.” Sight-seeing, rambling, ruminating, fishing, golfing, chatting with country-folk in inn-kitchens, &c., nothing appears to come amiss to the writer of this ‘“ Holiday Annual,” which is quite apart from the ordinary district guide books. A publication this, which should serve to whet the appetite of holiday tourists, and to encourage Londoners and others to make the best of their way—now summer is nigh—into Yorkshire, Durham, Northumber- land, and via Darlington to the Lake District, than which parts of England (as Mr. Pascoe justly points out) few more charming in scenery are to be found.
Mrs. Cornwallis West's Reminiscences to be Another Early London Publication— Important Art Book.
Special Cablegram. Copyright, 1907, by THE NEW YORK TIMEs Co.
LONDON, June 28—
All readers of English political novels and many others besides are familiar with the phrase "Downing Street” as symbolical of the English Government. No. 10 Downing Street has been the official residence of the Prime Minister ever since the days of Sir Robert Walpole, early in the eighteenth century. Never till now, however, has its history been told in book form.
Now that attention has been called to this omission, it seems a very strange one. Charles Eyre Pascoe has written and is to publish himself a noteworthy book on the house. In writing his history Pascoe had access to a collection of letters and papers relating to No, 10, which are preserved in the house itself. He has also obtained new information regarding Sir James Downing, the seventeenth century soldier and politician who gave his name to the street. Downing, curiously enough, was the second graduate of Harvard College.
The story of the street is traced back to the time of Cardinal Wolsey’s downfall and is full of interesting matter.
The well-known American, Mrs. Cornwallis-West, formerly Lady Randolph Churchill ....
NO. 10, DOWNING STREET, WHITEHALL: Its History and Associations, by Charles Eyre Pascoe. London, Duckworth, 21s.
By Harold Spender.
There is nothing in London so characteristic of English life as Downing-street—that little sombre row of dirty brown-brick houses, for all the world like Bloomsbury lodgings. Here is our "crown of wild olives" for the men whom we honour most! We bid them leave their Belgrave-squares and country houses and come into a street far less imposing than many an East-end slum, possibly haunted with germs of every disease, and probably defying all the regulations of the great Department over the way. Here is our English White House, our English Elyse—this little soot-coated lane, with its ancient doorways and inadequate windows, its dented and corroded railings, its general air of remembering a past that was better than its present. The terrible pride of British simplicity was never carried further.
And yet, as Mr. Charles Pascoe shows in this interesting volume, we shall all be the poorer when the authorities have to condemn the houses of Downing-street as uninhabitable dwellings. Pass through those humble antique doorways, and you enter a region sacred to the spirit of the English race. Thirty-six British Prime Ministers—not to speak of other Ministers—have trod those passages and lived in those rooms since Sir Robert Walpole first took possession in 1735.
Every room is crammed with history. Every chair and every table has listened to words that have moulded the growth of England. From every wall there look down on you pictures and busts of our greatest. Walpole, Chatham, Pitt, Wellington, Gladstone, they are all there, in marble or on canvas, still looking down on the dim rooms that they trod in the flesh. When, out of mercy, we have to build a new street for our rulers, these old storied buildings must not fall to the housebreaker. Even in a city where no man has been found rich enough in purse or heart to save Crosby Hall, someone must be found to save Downing-street.
Outsides deceive. "Number 10," for instance, may be sad without, but it is all beautiful within. Artist and architect have combined to construct a mansion of singular charm, with panelled passages, cheerful prospects over the park, and large hospitable rooms. The dining-room is a spacious and lofty. The reception-room can house a considerable crowd. The Cabinet-room—as Mr. Pascoe's beautiful illustration shows—is worthy of its object. The present Prime Minister has shown his sense of fitness in bringing the Cabinets back from the Foreign Office to this famous chamber. For it was in this long room, with its quaint Corinthian columns, its book-lined walls, its long mahogany table, that Pitt's Cabinet sat and held Europe against Napoleon. It was here that the Reform Cabinets saved England for the people, and that Mr. Gladstone expounded his great Budgets. This is the heart of England.
How many people know the history of Downing street? Mr Pascoe has studied it deepoly, and has dug out, from various sources, some interesting new facts. But he obscures his narrative so successfully in the entanglements of a very bad form of Carlylese that it may be worth while to set forth clearlyy the main iutlines of the story. The site of Downing-street, then, was originally the western end of that great palace of Whitehall which Wolsey built, Henry VIII. and Elizabeth inhabited, the Stuarts lost to Cromwell, and William III. deserted to neglect and fire. It lay slightly south of the old Royal cockpit, but so near that the original address of Ministers' meetings was "At the Cockpit." Charles II. gave a lease of this particular piece of land to Sir George Downing, an old Cromwellian soldier and Ambassador who "came over" at the Restoration, and earned this reward by securing the arrest of three Regicides in Holland. Downing was a great rascal, with all the characteristic habits of the renegade—servility, treachery, and avarice. It is a quaint and curious thing in our history that he should have given his name to the central street in our Government.
The present buildings are a mere remnant of the old Downing-street which covered the site of the present Foreign Office. It was originally built by Sir George Downing between 1663 and 1671 on the site of some old Cockpit Lodgings, and let to various tenants of no particular note. George I gave "No. 10" to his Hanoverian Ambassador, but that Ambassador dying in 1731 he handed it over to Sir Robert Walpole. Walpole seems to have taken it on condition that the house should remain a perquisite of the First Lord of the Treasury; and so it has remained ever since.
Probably the longest residents in Downing-street during its history have been William Pitt and W. E. Gladstone. William Pitt lived there the greater part of his official life, mostly alone. But for two years with that strange and interesting niece of his, Lady Hester Stanhope. "I count all days lost not spent at Number 10," he said when Lady Hester was there. But she did not remain long. The East was calling her, and she went to Lebanon to live and die among the Druses. Mr. Gladstones Downing-street periods were not as long as Pitts. It is a curious coincidence that Mr. Herbert Gladstone is now living in the very house where he was born when Mr. Gladstone was talking of the Exchequer in the early sixties.
Behind the garden door of No. 10 is a little garden, bright enough in summer, dismal in winter. A door lets you out into St. Jamess Park—a favourite outlet of Mr. Gladstones. At one side, at the back of the Treasury, is a closed passage which is fabled to be an old water-gate where Cromwell was to embark after his Councils. It is more likely, as Mr. Pascoe suggests, an old exit from the Cockpit. There is much gravel in the garden and little grass. It was once suggested to Mr. Gladstone that the gravel should be grassed. The old man flashed fire. 'How could the Treasury afford it?' he asked indignantly.
It was a happy idea to devote a book to this great street. But for that fault of style Mr. Pascoe has done his work well. He is obviously in love with his subject, and has devoted to it immense labour and industry. The illustrations are splendid, and the general setting of the book is worthy of the publisher.
Mr. Charles Eyre Pascoe has just published ‘‘Dickens in Yorkshire: Being Notes of a Journey to the Delightful Village of Dotheboys, near Greta Bridge.” It is an attractively produced volume, to which all admirers of ‘Nicholas Nickleby’ will turn with interest, no less than that felt by admirers of the picturesque district—Bowes, Barnard Castle, Rokeby, and Eggleston Abbey—with which it deals. The illustrations, plain and coloured, are good; but the principle of putting a picture in colours outside the book is bad, in view of rebinding at some future date. There has been almost as much controversy about the origin of ‘Master Humphrey’s Clock’ (which also is said to spring from the locality) as about the original of Squeers. Mr. Pascoe has something to say of both. As to Squeers and his family, he takes pains to show—in spite of Dickens's disclaimer of portraying any one schoolmaster—that a popular local legend is by no means to be accepted as gospel. We agree with Mr. Pascoe that the portrait “of a dignified-looking lady” which he gives cannot be that of Fanny Squeers, although the voice of the village declares that it is. Barnard Castle boasts the possession of "Blagroves," a quaint house, where Cromwell stayed. Near Greta is the building formerly ‘The George "—now no longer an inn, “but a pleasant, well-furnished, and well-administered house for boarders”: “If no longer inn by name, this is the identical house where Dickens and Hablot K. Browne stayed. on their arrival, an hour before midnight, by the mail-coach from York, January 31,.1838 . . . This was the old ‘New Inn,” later ‘George and New Inn,” the Greta Bridge posting-house, where — passengers by coach breakfasted on ‘"toast, cakes, and Yorkshire pie, cold beef, hot tea, coffee, and ham-and-eggs,’ and survived in joyful hope of that way living to be a hundred. . . . . One of the best inns we have stayed in was in a remote Yorkshire village. In outward seeming it suggested a likelihood of proving one of the worst. Never were we more agreeably disappointed—being well content to sojourn there many days.”
In such fashion does Mr. Pascoe gossip of his experiences; and even if he has a tendency to rhapsody, is not this the centenary year of Squeers’s creator?
Mr Pascoe confines himself to Dickens’s connection with Greta Bridge. Our own idea of Dickens in Yorkshire would be to relate also something of the novelist’s readings in York, Bradford, Harrogate, Hull, Leeds, and Sheffield. Moreover, Dickens, about 1837, formed a lasting friendship with Mr. Charles Smithson, of Malton, and it was Mr. Smithson who found a raven at a Flamborough public-house, the bird being sent to Dickens when he was inconsolable for the loss of the ornithological oddity he mentions in the introduction to ‘‘Barnaby Rudge.” For many years Mr. Alfred Lamert Dickens, the novelist’s younger brother, lived at Malton, being engaged as a civil engineer in the construction of railways hard by, and there are still old people in Malton who remember seeing both Alfred and Charles there. There are also legends in Malton that some of the novelist’s characters were taken from originals in that neighbourhood. Mention might also be made of the visit by Dickens and Wilkie Collins to Doncaster; and there is good reason for the belief that the original of the “Holly Tree Inn” was in Yorkshire, not far from the district of which Mr. Pascoe writes.