Chapter II: Front Matter (2)

A smile puckered his face. “I’ve only one; I do it myself. Oh, it’d never do to have her about, even if I could afford it. But,” he added, “if you’re so kind as to come with me to the door, you might engage her by asking where Mr. Thompson lives. That’s me. In the musical world my name was Moronelli; not that I have Italian blood in me, of course.”

“And shall I come up?”

“Honoured; but I live very quietly.”

We passed out of the gardens at Lancaster Gate, where all the house-fronts seem so successful, and out of it into a little street that was extremely like a grubby child trying to hide under its mother’s skirts. Here he took a newspaper from his pocket and wrapped it round the cat.

“She’s a funny woman,” he repeated; “Scotch descent, you know.” Suddenly he pulled an area bell and scuttled up the steps.

When he had opened the door, however, I saw before him in the hall a short, thin woman dressed in black, with a sharp and bumpy face. Her voice sounded brisk and resolute.

“What have you got there, Mr. Thompson?”

“Newspaper, Mrs. March.”

“Oh, indeed! Now, you’re not going to take that cat upstairs!”

The little old fellow’s voice acquired a sudden shrill determination. “Stand aside, please. If you stop me, I’ll give you notice. The cat is going up. It’s ill, and it is going up.”

It was then I said:

“Does Mr. Thompson live here?”

In that second he shot past her, and ascended.

“That’s him,” she said; “and I wish it wasn’t, with his dirty cats. Do you want him?”

“I do.”

“He lives at the top.” Then, with a grudging apology: “I can’t help it; he tries me--he’s very trying.”

“I am sure he is.”

She looked at me. The longing to talk that comes over those who answer bells all day, and the peculiar Scottish desire to justify oneself, rose together in that face which seemed all promontories dried by an east wind.

“Ah!” she said; “he is. I don’t deny his heart; but he’s got no sense of anything. Goodness knows what he hasn’t got up there. I wonder I keep him. An old man like that ought to know better; half-starving himself to feed them.” She paused, and her eyes, that had a cold and honest glitter, searched me closely.

“If you’re going up,” she said, “I hope you’ll give him good advice. He never lets me in. I wonder I keep him.”

There were three flights of stairs, narrow, clean, and smelling of oilcloth. Selecting one of two doors at random, I knocked. His silvery head and bright, pinched face were cautiously poked out.

“Ah!” he said; “I thought it might be her!”

The room, which was fairly large, had a bare floor with little on it save a camp-bed and chest of drawers with jug and basin. A large bird-cage on the wall hung wide open. The place smelt of soap and a little of beasts and birds. Into the walls, whitewashed over a green wall-paper which stared through in places, were driven nails with their heads knocked off, onto which bits of wood had been spiked, so that they stood out as bird-perches high above the ground. Over the open window a piece of wire netting had been fixed. A little spirit-stove and an old dressing-gown hanging on a peg completed the accoutrements of a room which one entered with a certain diffidence. He had not exaggerated. Besides the new cat, there were three other cats and four birds, all--save one, a bullfinch--invalids. The cats kept close to the walls, avoiding me, but wherever my little old friend went, they followed him with their eyes. The birds were in the cage, except the bullfinch, which had perched on his shoulder.

“How on earth,” I said, “do you manage to keep cats and birds in one room?”

“There is danger,” he answered, “but I have not had a disaster yet. Till their legs or wings are mended, they hardly come out of the cage; and after that they keep up on my perches. But they don’t stay long, you know, when they’re once well. That wire is only put over the window while they’re mending; it’ll be off to-morrow, for this lot.”

“And then they’ll go?”

“Yes. The sparrow first, and then the two thrushes.”

“And this fellow?”

“Ask him,” he said. “Would _you_ go, bully?” But the bullfinch did not deign to answer.

“And were all those cats, too, in trouble?”

“Yes,” he said. “They wouldn’t want me if they weren’t.”

Thereupon he began to warm some blue-looking milk, contemplating the new cat, which he had placed in a round basket close to the little stove, while the bullfinch sat on his head. It seemed time to go.

“Delighted to see you, sir,” he said, “any day.” And, pointing up at the bullfinch on his head, he added: “Did you ever see anything so wonderful as that bird? The size of its heart! Really marvellous!”

To the rapt sound of that word marvellous, and full of the memory of his mysterious brightness while he stood pointing upward to the bird perched on his thick, silvery hair, I went.

The landlady was still at the bottom of the stairs, and began at once: “So you found him! I don’t know why I keep him. Of course, he was kind to my little girl.” I saw tears gather in her eyes.

“With his cats and his birds, I wonder I keep him! But where would he go? He’s no relations, and no friends--not a friend in the world, I think! He’s a character. Lives on air--feeding them cats! I’ve no patience with them, eating him up. He never lets me in. Cats and birds! I wonder I keep him. Losing himself for those rubbishy things! It’s my belief he was always like that; and that’s why he never got on. He’s no sense of anything.”

And she gave me a shrewd look, wondering, no doubt, what the deuce I had come about.

I did not come across him again in the gardens for some time, and went at last to pay him a call. At the entrance to a mews just round the corner of his grubby little street, I found a knot of people collected round one of those bears that are sometimes led through the less conspicuous streets of our huge towns. The yellowish beast was sitting up in deference to its master’s nod, uttering little grunts, and moving its uplifted snout from side to side, in the way bears have. But it seemed to be extracting more amusement than money from its audience.

“Let your bear down off its hind legs and I’ll give you a penny.” And suddenly I saw my little old friend under his flopping grey hat, amongst the spectators, all taller than himself. But the bear’s master only grinned and prodded the animal in the chest. He evidently knew a good thing when he saw it.

“I’ll give you twopence to let him down.”

Again the bear-man grinned. “More!” he said, and again prodded the bear’s chest. The spectators were laughing now.

“Threepence! And if you don’t let him down for that, I’ll hit you in the eye.”

The bear-man held out his hand. “All a-right,” he said, “threepence; I let him down.”

I saw the coins pass and the beast dropping on his forefeet; but just then a policeman coming in sight, the man led his bear off, and I was left alone with my little old friend.

“I wish I had that poor bear,” he said; “I could teach him to be happy. But, even if I could buy him, what could I do with him up there? She’s such a funny woman.”

He looked quite dim, but brightened as we went along.

“A bear,” he said, “is really an extraordinary animal. What wise little eyes he has! I do think he’s a marvellous creation! My cats will have to go without their dinner, though. I was going to buy it with that threepence.”

I begged to be allowed the privilege.

“Willingly!” he said. “Shall we go in here? They like cod’s head best.”

While we stood waiting to be served I saw the usual derisive smile pass over the fishmonger’s face. But my little old friend by no means noticed it; he was too busy looking at the fish. “A fish is a marvellous thing, when you come to think of it,” he murmured. “Look at its scales. Did you ever see such mechanism?”

We bought five cod’s heads, and I left him carrying them in a bag, evidently lost in the anticipation of five cats eating them.

After that I saw him often, going with him sometimes to buy food for his cats, which seemed ever to increase in numbers. His talk was always of his strays, and the marvels of creation, and that time of his life when he played the flute at the Harmony Theatre. He had been out of a job, it seemed, for more than ten years; and, when questioned, only sighed and answered: “Don’t talk about it, please!”

His bumpy landlady never failed to favour me with a little conversation. She was one of those women who have terrific consciences, and terrible grudges against them.

“I never get out,” she would say.

“Why not?”

“Couldn’t leave the house.”

“It won’t run away!”

But she would look at me as if she thought it might, and repeat:

“Oh! I never get out.”

An extremely Scottish temperament.

Considering her descent, however, she was curiously devoid of success, struggling on apparently from week to week, cleaning, and answering the bell, and never getting out, and wondering why she kept my little old friend; just as he struggled on from week to week, getting out and collecting strays, and discovering the marvels of creation, and finding her a funny woman. Their hands were joined, one must suppose, by that dead child.

One July afternoon, however, I found her very much upset. He had been taken dangerously ill three days before.

“There he is,” she said; “can’t touch a thing. It’s my belief he’s done for himself, giving his food away all these years to those cats of his. I shooed ’em out to-day, the nasty creatures; they won’t get in again.”

“Oh!” I said, “you shouldn’t have done that. It’ll only make him miserable.”

She flounced her head up. “Hoh!” she said; “I wonder I’ve kept him all this time, with his birds and his cats dirtying my house. And there he lies, talking gibberish about them. He made me write to a Mr. Jackson, of some theatre or other--I’ve no patience with him. And that little bullfinch all the time perching on his pillow, the dirty little thing! I’d have turned it out, too, only it wouldn’t let me catch it.”

“What does the doctor say?”

“Double pneumonia--caught it getting his feet wet, after some stray, I’ll be bound. I’m nursing him. There has to be some one with him all the time.”

He was lying very still when I went up, with the sunlight falling across the foot of his bed, and, sure enough, the bullfinch perching on his pillow. In that high fever he looked brighter than ever. He was not exactly delirious, yet not exactly master of his thoughts.

“Mr. Jackson! He’ll be here soon. Mr. Jackson! He’ll do it for me. I can ask him, if I die. A funny woman. I don’t want to eat; I’m not a great eater--I want my breath, that’s all.”

At sound of his voice the bullfinch fluttered off the pillow and flew round and round the room, as if alarmed at something new in the tones that were coming from its master.

Then he seemed to recognise me. “I think I’m going to die,” he said; “I’m very weak. It’s lucky, there’s nobody to mind. If only he’d come soon. I wish”--and he raised himself with feeble excitement--“I wish you’d take that wire off the window; I want my cats. She turned them out. I want him to promise me to take them, and bully-boy, and feed them with my money, when I’m dead.”

Seeing that excitement was certainly worse for him than cats, I took the wire off. He fell back, quiet at once; and presently, first one and then another cat came stealing in, till there were four or five seated against the walls. The moment he ceased to speak the bullfinch, too, came back to his pillow. His eyes looked most supernaturally bright, staring out of his little, withered-up old face at the sunlight playing on his bed; he said just audibly: “Did you ever see anything more wonderful than that sunlight? It’s really marvellous!” After that he fell into a sort of doze or stupor. And I continued to sit there in the window, relieved, but rather humiliated, that he had not asked me to take care of his cats and bullfinch.

Presently there came the sound of a motor-car in the little street below. And almost at once the landlady appeared. For such an abrupt woman, she entered very softly.

“Here he is,” she whispered.

I went out and found a gentleman, perhaps sixty years of age, in a black coat, buff waistcoat, gold watch-chain, light trousers, patent-leather boots, and a wonderfully shining hat. His face was plump and red, with a glossy grey moustache; indeed, he seemed to shine everywhere, save in the eyes, which were of a dull and somewhat liverish hue.

“Mr. Jackson?”

“The same. How is the little old chap?”

Opening the door of the next room, which I knew was always empty, I beckoned Mr. Jackson in.

“He’s really very ill; I’d better tell you what he wants to see you about.”

He looked at me with that air of “You can’t get at me--whoever you may be,” which belongs to the very successful.

“Right-o!” he said. “Well?”

I described the situation. “He seems to think,” I ended, “that you’ll be kind enough to charge yourself with his strays, in case he should die.”

Mr. Jackson prodded the unpainted wash-stand with his gold-headed cane.

“Is he really going to kick it?”

“I’m afraid so; he’s nothing but skin, bone, and spirit, as it is.”

“H’m! Stray cats, you say, and a bird! Well, there’s no accounting. He was always a cracky little chap. So that’s it! When I got the letter I wondered what the deuce! We pay him his five quid a quarter regular to this day. To tell truth, he deserved it. Thirty years he was at our shop; never missed a night. First-rate flute he was. He ought never to have given it up, though I always thought it showed a bit of heart in him. If a man don’t look after number one, he’s as good as gone; that’s what I’ve always found. Why, I was no more than he was when I started. Shouldn’t have been worth a plum if I’d gone on his plan, that’s certain.” And he gave that profound chuckle which comes from the very stomach of success. “We were having a rocky time at the Harmony; had to cut down everything we could--music, well, that came about first. Little old Moronelli, as we used to call him--old Italian days before English names came in, you know--he was far the best of the flutes; so I went to him and said: ‘Look here, Moronelli, which of these other boys had better go?’ ‘Oh!’ he said--I remember his funny little old mug now--‘has one of them to go, Mr. Jackson? Timminsa’--that was the elder--‘he’s a wife and family; and Smetoni’--Smith, you know--‘he’s only a boy. Times are bad for flutes.’ ‘I know it’s a bit hard,’ I said, ‘but this theatre’s goin’ to be run much cheaper; one of ’em’s got to get.’ ‘Oh!’ he said, ‘dear me!’ he said. What a funny little old chap it was! Well--what do you think? Next day I had his resignation. Give you my word I did my best to turn him. Why, he was sixty then if he was a day--at sixty a man don’t get jobs in a hurry. But, not a bit of it! All he’d say was: ‘I shall get a place all right!’ But that’s it, you know--he never did. Too long in one shop. I heard by accident he was on the rocks; that’s how I make him that allowance. But that’s the sort of hopeless little old chap he is--no idea of himself. Cats! Why not? I’ll take his old cats on; don’t you let him worry about that. I’ll see to his bird, too. If I can’t give ’em a better time than ever they have here, it’ll be funny!” And, looking round the little empty room, he again uttered that profound chuckle: “Why, he was with us at the Harmony thirty years--that’s time, you know; _I_ made my fortune in it.”

“I’m sure,” I said, “it’ll be a great relief to him.”

“Oh! Ah! That’s all right. You come down to my place”--he handed me a card: “Mr. Cyril Porteus Jackson, Ultima Thule, Wimbledon”--“and see how I fix ’em up. But if he’s really going to kick it, I’d like to have a look at the little old chap, just for old times’ sake.”

We went, as quietly as Mr. Jackson’s bright boots would permit, into his room, where the landlady was sitting gazing angrily at the cats. She went out without noise, flouncing her head as much as to say: “Well, now you can see what I have to go through, sitting up here. I never get out.”

Our little old friend was still in that curious stupor. He seemed unconscious, but his blue eyes were not closed, staring brightly out before them at things we did not see. With his silvery hair and his flushed frailty, he had an unearthly look. After standing perhaps three minutes at the foot of the bed, Mr. Jackson whispered:

“Well, he does look queer. Poor little old chap! You tell him from me I’ll look after his cats and birds; he needn’t worry. And now, I think I won’t keep the car. Makes me feel a bit throaty, you know. Don’t move; he might come to.”

And, leaning all the weight of his substantial form on those bright and creaking toes, he made his way to the door, flashed at me a diamond ring, whispered hoarsely: “So long! That’ll be all right!” and vanished. And soon I heard the whirring of his car and just saw the top of his shiny hat travelling down the little street.

Some time I sat on there, wanting to deliver that message. An uncanny vigil in the failing light, with those five cats--yes, five at least--lying or sitting against the walls, staring like sphinxes at their motionless protector. I could not make out whether it was he in his stupor with his bright eyes that fascinated them, or the bullfinch perched on his pillow, whom they knew perhaps might soon be in their power. I was glad when the landlady came up and I could leave the message with her.

When she opened the door to me next day at six o’clock I knew that he was gone. There was about her that sorrowful, unmistakable importance, that peculiar mournful excitement, which hovers over houses where death has entered.

“Yes,” she said, “he went this morning. Never came round after you left. Would you like to see him?”

We went up.

He lay, covered with a sheet, in the darkened room. The landlady pulled the window-curtains apart. His face, as white now almost as his silvery head, had in the sunlight a radiance like that of a small, bright angel gone to sleep. No growth of hair, such as comes on most dead faces, showed on those frail cheeks that were now smooth and lineless as porcelain. And on the sheet above his chest the bullfinch sat, looking into his face.

The landlady let the curtains fall, and we went out.

“I’ve got the cats in here”--she pointed to the room where Mr. Jackson and I had talked--“all ready for that gentleman when he sends. But that little bird, I don’t know what to do; he won’t let me catch him, and there he sits. It makes me feel all funny.”

It had made me feel all funny, too.

“He hasn’t left the money for his funeral. Dreadful, the way he never thought about himself. I’m glad I kept him, though.” And, not to my astonishment, she suddenly began to cry.

A wire was sent to Mr. Jackson, and on the day of the funeral I went down to ‘Ultima Thule,’ Wimbledon, to see if he had carried out his promise.

He had. In the grounds, past the vinery, an outhouse had been cleaned and sanded, with cushions placed at intervals against the wall, and a little trough of milk. Nothing could have been more suitable or luxurious.

“How’s that?” he said. “I’ve done it thoroughly.” But I noticed that he looked a little glum.

“The only thing,” he said, “is the cats. First night they seemed all right; and the second, there were three of ’em left. But to-day the gardener tells me there’s not the ghost of one anywhere. It’s not for want of feeding. They’ve had tripe, and liver, and milk--as much as ever they liked. And cod’s heads, you know--they’re very fond of them. I must say it’s a bit of a disappointment to me.”

As he spoke, a sandy cat which I perfectly remembered, for it had only half its left ear, appeared in the doorway, and stood, crouching, with its green eyes turned on us; then, hearing Mr. Jackson murmur, “Puss, puss!” it ran for its life, slinking almost into the ground, and vanished among some shrubs.

Mr. Jackson sighed. “Perversity of the brutes!” he said. He led me back to the house through a conservatory full of choice orchids. A gilt bird-cage was hanging there, one of the largest I had ever seen, replete with every luxury the heart of bird could want.

“Is that for the bullfinch?” I asked him.

“Oh!” he said; “didn’t you know? The little beggar wouldn’t let himself be caught, and the second morning, when they went up, there he lay on the old chap’s body, dead. I thought it was very touchin’. But I kept the cage hung up for you to see that I should have given him a good time here. Oh, yes, ‘Ultima Thule’ would have done him well!”

And from a bright leather case Mr. Jackson offered me a cigar.

The question I had long been wishing to ask him slipped out of me then:

“Do you mind telling me why you called your house ‘Ultima Thule’?”

“Why?” he said. “Found it on the gate. Think it’s rather distingué, don’t you?” and he uttered his profound chuckle.

“First-rate. The whole place is the last word in comfort.”

“Very good of you to say so,” he said. “I’ve laid out a goodish bit on it. A man must have a warm corner to end his days in. ‘Ultima Thule,’ as you say--it isn’t bad. There’s success about it, somehow.”

And with that word in my ears, and in my eyes a vision of the little old fellow in _his_ ‘Ultima Thule,’ with the bullfinch lying dead on a heart that had never known success, I travelled back to town.

STUDIES OF EXTRAVAGANCE

I.--THE WRITER

Every morning when he awoke his first thought was: How am I? For it was extremely important that he should be well, seeing that when he was not well he could neither produce what he knew he ought, nor contemplate that lack of production with equanimity. Having discovered that he did not ache anywhere, he would say to his wife: “Are you all right?” and, while she was answering, he would think: “Yes--if I make that last chapter pass subjectively through Blank’s personality, then I had better----” and so on. Not having heard whether his wife were all right, he would get out of bed and do that which he facetiously called “abdominable cult,” for it was necessary that he should digest his food and preserve his figure, and while he was doing it he would partly think: “I am doing this well,” and partly he would think: “That fellow in _The Parnassus_ is quite wrong--he simply doesn’t see----” And pausing for a moment with nothing on, and his toes level with the top of a chest of drawers, he would say to his wife: “What I think about that _Parnassus_ fellow is that he doesn’t grasp the fact that my books----” And he would not fail to hear her answer warmly: “Of course he doesn’t; he’s a perfect idiot.” He would then shave. This was his most creative moment, and he would soon cut himself and utter a little groan, for it would be needful now to find to find his special cotton wool and stop the bleeding, which was a paltry business and not favourable to the flight of genius. And if his wife, taking advantage of the incident, said something which she had long been waiting to say, he would answer, wondering a little what it was she had said, and thinking: “There it is, I get no time for steady thought.”

Having finished shaving he would bathe, and a philosophical conclusion would almost invariably come to him just before he douched himself with cold--so that he would pause, and call out through the door: “You know, I think the supreme principle----” And while his wife was answering, he would resume the drowning of her words, having fortunately remembered just in time that his circulation would suffer if he did not douse himself with cold while he was still warm. He would dry himself, dreamily developing that theory of the universe and imparting it to his wife in sentences that seldom had an end, so that it was not necessary for her to answer them. While dressing he would stray a little, thinking: “Why can’t I concentrate myself on my work; it’s awful!” And if he had by any chance a button off, he would present himself rather unwillingly, feeling that it was a waste of his time. Watching her frown from sheer self-effacement over her button-sewing, he would think: “She is wonderful! How can she put up with doing things for me all day long?” And he would fidget a little, feeling in his bones that the postman had already come.

He went down always thinking: “Oh, hang it! this infernal post taking up all my time!” And as he neared the breakfast-room, he would quicken his pace; seeing a large pile of letters on the table, he would say automatically: “Curse!” and his eyes would brighten. If--as seldom happened--there were not a green-coloured wrapper enclosing mentions of him in the press, he would murmur: “Thank God!” and his face would fall.

It was his custom to eat feverishly, walking a good deal and reading about himself, and when his wife tried to bring him to a sense of his disorder he would tighten his lips without a word and think: “I have a good deal of self-control.”

He seldom commenced work before eleven, for, though he always intended to, he found it practically impossible not to dictate to his wife things about himself, such as how he could not lecture here; or where he had been born; or how much he would take for this; and why he would not consider that; together with those letters which began:

“MY DEAR ----,

“Thanks tremendously for your letter about my book, and its valuable
criticism. Of course, I think you are quite wrong.... You don’t seem
to have grasped.... In fact, I don’t think you ever quite do me
justice....
“Yours affectionately,
“----.”

When his wife had copied those that might be valuable after he was dead, he would stamp the envelopes and, exclaiming: “Nearly eleven--my God!” would go somewhere where they think.

It was during those hours when he sat in a certain chair with a pen in his hand that he was able to rest from thought about himself; save, indeed, in those moments, not too frequent, when he could not help reflecting: “That’s a fine page--I have seldom written anything better”; or in those moments, too frequent, when he sighed deeply and thought: “I am not the man I was.” About half-past one, he would get up, with the pages in his hand, and, seeking out his wife, would give them to her to read, remarking: “Here’s the wretched stuff, no good at all”; and, taking a position where he thought she could not see him, would do such things as did not prevent his knowing what effect the pages made on her. If the effect were good he would often feel how wonderful she was; if it were not good he had at once a chilly sensation in the pit of his stomach, and ate very little lunch.

When, in the afternoons, he took his walks abroad, he passed great quantities of things and people without noticing, because he was thinking deeply on such questions as whether he were more of an observer or more of an imaginative artist; whether he were properly appreciated in Germany; and particularly whether one were not in danger of thinking too much about oneself. But every now and then he would stop and say to himself: “I really must see more of life, I really must take in more fuel”; and he would passionately fix his eyes on a cloud, or a flower, or a man walking, and there would instantly come into his mind the thought: “I have written twenty books--ten more will make thirty--that cloud is grey”; or: “That fellow X---- is jealous of me! This flower is blue”; or: “This man is walking very--very---- D--n _The Morning Muff_, it always runs me down!” And he would have a sort of sore, beaten feeling, knowing that he had not observed those things as accurately as he would have wished to.

During these excursions, too, he would often reflect impersonally upon matters of the day, large questions of art, public policy, and the human soul; and would almost instantly find that he had always thought this or that; and at once see the necessity for putting his conclusion forward in his book or in the press, phrasing it, of course, in a way that no one else could; and there would start up before him little bits of newspaper with these words on them: “No one, perhaps, save Mr. ----, could have so ably set forth the case for Baluchistan”; or, “In _The Daily Miracle_ there is a noble letter from that eminent writer, Mr. ----, pleading against the hyperspiritualism of our age.”

Very often he would say to himself, as he walked with eyes fixed on things that he did not see: “This existence is not healthy. I really must get away and take a complete holiday, and not think at all about my work; I am getting too self-centred.” And he would go home and say to his wife: “Let’s go to Sicily, or Spain, or somewhere. Let’s get away from all this, and just live.” And when she answered: “How jolly!” he would repeat, a little absently: “How jolly!” considering what would be the best arrangement for forwarding his letters. And if, as sometimes happened, they _did_ go, he would spend almost a whole morning living, and thinking how jolly it was to be away from everything; but toward the afternoon he would feel a sensation as though he were a sofa that had been sat on too much, a sort of subsidence very deep within him. This would be followed in the evening by a disinclination to live; and that feeling would grow until on the third day he received his letters, together with a green-coloured wrapper enclosing some mentions of himself, and he would say: “Those fellows--no getting away from them!” and feel irresistibly impelled to sit down. Having done so he would take up his pen, not writing anything, indeed--because of the determination to “live,” as yet not quite extinct--but comparatively easy in his mind. On the following day he would say to his wife: “I believe I can work here.” And she would answer, smiling: “That’s splendid”; and he would think: “She’s wonderful!” and begin to write.

On other occasions, while walking the streets or about the countryside, he would suddenly be appalled at his own ignorance, and would say to himself: “I know simply nothing--I must read.” And going home he would dictate to his wife the names of a number of books to be procured from the library. When they arrived he would look at them a little gravely and think: “By Jove! Have I got to read those?” and the same evening he would take one up. He would not, however, get beyond the fourth page, if it were a novel, before he would say: “Muck! He can’t write!” and would feel absolutely stimulated to take up his own pen and write something that was worth reading. Sometimes, on the other hand, he would put the novel down after the third page, exclaiming: “By Jove! He can write!” And there would rise within him such a sense of dejection at his own inferiority that he would feel simply compelled to try to see whether he really was inferior.

But if the book were not a novel he sometimes finished the first chapter before one or two feelings came over him: Either that what he had just read was what he had himself long thought--that, of course, would be when the book was a good one; or that what he had just read was not true, or at all events debatable. In each of these events he found it impossible to go on reading, but would remark to his wife: “This fellow says what I’ve always said”; or, “This fellow says so and so, now I say----” and he would argue the matter with her, taking both sides of the question, so as to save her all unnecessary speech.

There were times when he felt that he absolutely must hear music, and he would enter the concert-hall with his wife in the pleasurable certainty that he was going to lose himself. Toward the middle of the second number, especially if it happened to be music that he liked, he would begin to nod; and presently, on waking up, would get a feeling that he really was an artist. From that moment on he was conscious of certain noises being made somewhere in his neighbourhood causing a titillation of his nerves favourable to deep and earnest thoughts about his work. On going out his wife would ask him: “Wasn’t the Mozart lovely?” or, “How did you like the Strauss?” and he would answer: “Rather!” wondering a little which was which; or he would look at her out of the corner of his eye and glance secretly at the programme to see whether he had really heard them, and which Strauss it might be.

He was extremely averse to being interviewed, or photographed, and all that sort of publicity, and only made exceptions in most cases because his wife would say to him: “Oh! I think you ought”; or because he could not bear to refuse anybody anything; together, perhaps, with a sort of latent dislike of waste, deep down in his soul. When he saw the results he never failed to ejaculate: “Never again! No, really--never again! The whole thing is wrong and stupid!” And he would order a few copies.

For he dreaded nothing so much as the thought that he might become an egoist, and, knowing the dangers of his profession, fought continually against it. Often he would complain to his wife: “I don’t think of you enough.” And she would smile and say: “Don’t you?” And he would feel better, having confessed his soul. Sometimes for an hour at a time he would make really heroic efforts not to answer her before having really grasped what she had said; and to check a tendency, that he sometimes feared was growing on him, to say: “What?” whether he had heard or no. In truth, he was not (as he often said) constitutionally given to small talk. Conversation that did not promise a chance of dialectic victory was hardly to his liking; so that he felt bound in sincerity to eschew it, which sometimes caused him to sit silent for “quite a while,” as the Americans have phrased it. But once committed to an argument he found it difficult to leave off, having a natural, if somewhat sacred, belief in his own convictions.

His attitude to his creations was, perhaps, peculiar. He either did not mention them, or touched on them, if absolutely obliged, with a light and somewhat disparaging tongue; this did not, indeed, come from any real distrust of them, but rather from a superstitious feeling that one must not tempt Providence in the solemn things of life. If other people touched on them in the same way, he had, not unnaturally, a feeling of real pain, such as comes to a man when he sees an instance of cruelty or injustice. And, though something always told him that it was neither wise nor dignified to notice outrages of this order, he would mutter to his wife: “Well, I suppose it _is_ true--I can’t write”; feeling, perhaps, that--if _he_ could not with decency notice such injuries, she might. And, indeed, she did, using warmer words than even he felt justified, which was soothing.

After tea it was his habit to sit down a second time, pen in hand; not infrequently he would spend those hours divided between the feeling that it was his duty to write something and the feeling that it was his duty not to write anything if he had nothing to say; and he generally wrote a good deal; for deep down he was convinced that if he did not write he would gradually fade away till there would be nothing left for him to read and think about, and, though he was often tempted to believe and even to tell his wife that fame was an unworthy thing, he always deferred that pleasure, afraid, perhaps, of too much happiness.

In regard to the society of his fellows he liked almost anybody, though a little impatient with those, especially authors, who took themselves too seriously; and there were just one or two that he really could not stand, they were so obviously full of jealousy, a passion of which he was naturally intolerant and had, of course, no need to indulge in. And he would speak of them with extreme dryness--nothing more, disdaining to disparage. It was, perhaps, a weakness in him that he found it difficult to accept adverse criticism as anything but an expression of that same yellow sickness; and yet there were moments when no words would adequately convey his low opinion of his own powers. At such times he would seek out his wife and confide to her his conviction that he was a poor thing, no good at all, without a thought in his head; and while she was replying: “Rubbish! You know there’s nobody to hold a candle to you,” or words to that effect, he would look at her tragically, and murmur: “Ah! you’re prejudiced!” Only at such supreme moments of dejection, indeed, did he feel it a pity that he had married her, seeing how much more convincing her words would have been if he had not.

He never read the papers till the evening, partly because he had not time, and partly because he so seldom found anything in them. This was not remarkable, for he turned their leaves quickly, pausing, indeed, naturally, if there were any mention of his name; and if his wife asked him whether he had read this or that he would answer: “No,” surprised at the funny things that seemed to interest her.

Before going up to bed he would sit and smoke. And sometimes fancies would come to him, and sometimes none. Once in a way he would look up at the stars, and think: “What a worm I am! This wonderful Infinity! I must get more of it--more of it into my work; more of the feeling that the whole is marvellous and great, and man a little clutch of breath and dust, an atom, a straw, a nothing!”

And a sort of exaltation would seize on him, so that he knew that if only he did get that into his work, as he wished to, as he felt at that moment that he could, he would be the greatest writer the world had ever seen, the greatest man, almost greater than he wished to be, almost too great to be mentioned in the press, greater than Infinity itself--for would he not be Infinity’s creator? And suddenly he would check himself with the thought: “I must be careful--I must be careful. If I let my brain go at this time of night, I sha’n’t write a decent word to-morrow!”

And he would drink some milk and go to bed.

II.--THE CRITIC

He often thought: “This is a dog’s life! I must give it up, and strike out for myself. If I can’t write better than most of these fellows, it’ll be very queer.” But he had not yet done so. He had in his extreme youth published fiction, but it had never been the best work of which he was capable--it was not likely that it could be, seeing that even then he was constantly diverted from the ham-bone of his inspiration by the duty of perusing and passing judgment on the work of other men.

If pressed to say exactly why he did not strike out for himself, he found it difficult to answer, and what he answered was hardly as true as he could have wished; for, though truthful, he was not devoid of the instinct of self-preservation. He could hardly, for example, admit that he preferred to think what much better books he could have written if only he had not been handicapped, to actually striking out and writing them. To believe this was an inward comfort not readily to be put to the rude test of actual experience. Nor would it have been human of him to acknowledge a satisfaction in feeling that he could put in their proper places those who had to an extent, as one might say, retarded his creative genius by compelling him to read their books. But these, after all, were but minor factors in his long hesitation, for he was not a conceited or malicious person. Fundamentally, no doubt, he lived what he called “a dog’s life” with pleasure, partly because he was used to it--and what a man is used to he is loath to part with; partly because he really had a liking for books; and partly because to be a judge is better than to be judged. And no one could deny that he had a distinctly high conception of his functions. He had long laid down for himself certain leading principles of professional conduct, from which he never departed, such as that a critic must not have any personal feelings, or be influenced by any private considerations whatever. This, no doubt, was why he often went a little out of his way to be more severe than usual with writers whom he suspected of a secret hope that personal acquaintanceship might incline him to favour them. He would, indeed, carry that principle further, and, where he had, out of an impersonal enthusiasm at some time or another, written in terms of striking praise, he would make an opportunity later on of deliberately taking that writer down a peg or two lower than he deserved, lest his praise might be suspected of having been the outcome of personal motives, or of gush--for which he had a great abhorrence. In this way he preserved a remarkably pure sense of independence; a feeling that he was master in his own house, to be dictated to only by a proper conviction of his own importance. It is true that there were certain writers whom, for one reason or another, he could not very well stand; some having written to him to point out inaccuracies, or counter one of his critical conclusions, or, still worse, thanked him for having seen exactly what they had meant--a very unwise and even undignified thing to do, as he could not help thinking; others, again, having excited in him a natural dislike by their appearance, conduct, or manner of thought, or by having, perhaps, acquired too rapid or too swollen a reputation to be, in his opinion, good for them. In such cases, of course, he was not so unhuman as to disguise his convictions. For he was, before all things, an Englishman with a very strong belief in the freest play for individual taste. But of almost any first book by an unknown author he wrote with an impersonality which it would have been difficult to surpass.

Then there was his principle that one must never be influenced in judging a book by anything one has said of a previous book by the same writer--each work standing entirely on its own basis. He found this important and made a point of never rereading his own criticisms; so that the rhythm of his judgment, which, if it had risen to a work in 1920, would fall over the author’s next in 1921, was entirely unbiassed by recollection, and followed merely those immutable laws of change and the moon so potent in regard to tides and human affairs.

For sameness and consistency he had a natural contempt. It was the unexpected both in art and criticism that he particularly looked for; anything being, as he said, preferable to dulness--a sentiment in which he was supported by the public; not that, to do him justice, this weighed with him, for he had a genuine distrust of the public, as was proper for one sitting in a seat of judgment. He knew that there were so-called critics who had a kind of formula for each writer, as divines have sermons suitable to certain occasions. For example: “We have in ‘The Mazy Swim’ another of Mr. Hyphen Dash’s virile stories.... We can thoroughly recommend this pulsating tale, with its true and beautiful character study of Little Katie, to every healthy reader as one of the best that Mr. Hyphen Dash has yet given us.” Or: “We cannot say that ‘The Mazy Swim’ is likely to increase Mr. Hyphen Dash’s reputation. It is sheer melodrama, such as we are beginning to expect from this writer.... The whole is artificial to a degree.... No sane reader will, for a moment, believe in Little Katie.” Toward this sort of thing he showed small patience, having noticed with some acumen a relationship between the name of the writer, the politics of the paper, and the temper of the criticism. No! For him, if criticism did not embody the individual mood and temper of the critic, it was not worthy of the name.

But the canon which of all he regarded as most sacred was this: A critic must surrender himself to the mood and temper of the work he is criticising, take the thing as it is with his own special method and technique, its own point of view, and, only when all that is admitted, let his critical faculty off the chain. He was never tired of insisting on this, both to himself and others, and never sat down to a book without having it firmly in his mind. Not infrequently, however, he found that the author was, as it were, wilfully employing a technique or writing in a mood with which he had no sympathy, or had chosen a subject obviously distasteful, or a set of premises that did not lead to the conclusion which he would have preferred. In such cases his scrupulous honesty warned him not to compromise with his conscience, but to say outright that it would have been better if the technique of the story had been objective instead of subjective; that the morbidity of the work prevented serious consideration of a subject which should never have been chosen; or that he would ever maintain that the hero was too weak a character to be a hero, and the book, therefore, of little interest. If any one pointed out to him that had the hero been a strong character there would have been no book, it being, in point of fact, the study of a weak character, he would answer: “That may be so, but it does not affect what I say--the book would have been better and more important if it had been the study of a strong character.” And he would take the earliest opportunity of enforcing his recorded criticism that the hero was no hero, and the book no book to speak of. For, though not obstinate, he was a man who stood to his guns. He took his duty to the public very seriously, and felt it, as it were, a point of honour never to admit himself in the wrong. It was so easy to do that and so fatal; and the fact of being anonymous, as on the whole he preferred to be, made it all the harder to abstain (on principle and for the dignity of criticism) from noticing printed contradictions to his conclusions.

In spite of all the heart he put into his work, there were times when, like other men, he suffered from dejection, feeling that the moment had really come when he must either strike out for himself into creative work, or compile a volume of synthetic criticism. And he would say: “None of us fellows are doing any constructive critical work; no one nowadays seems to have any conception of the first principles of criticism.” Having talked that theory out thoroughly he would feel better, and next day would take an opportunity of writing: “We are not like the academic French, to whom the principles of criticism are so terribly important; our genius lies rather in individual judgments, pliant and changing as the works they judge.”

There was that in him which, like the land from which he sprang, could ill brook control. He approved of discipline, but knew exactly where it was deleterious to apply it to himself; and no one, perhaps, had a finer and larger conception of individual liberty. In this way he maintained the best traditions of a calling whose very essence was superiority. In course of conversation he would frequently admit, being a man of generous calibre, that the artist, by reason of long years of devoted craftsmanship, had possibly the most intimate knowledge of his art, but he would not fail to point out, and very wisely, that there was no such unreliable testimony as that of experts, who had an axe to grind, each of his own way of doing things; for comprehensive views of literature seen in due perspective there was nothing--he thought--like the trained critic, rising superior, as it were professionally, to myopia and individual prejudice.

Of the new school who maintained that true criticism was but reproduction in terms of sympathy, and just as creative as the creative work it reproduced, he was a little impatient, not so much on the ground that to make a model of a mountain was not quite the same thing as to make the mountain; but because he felt in his bones that the true creativeness of criticism (in which he had a high belief) was its destructive and satiric quality; its power of reducing things to rubbish and clearing them away, ready for the next lot. Instinct, fortified by his own experience, had guided him to that conclusion. Possibly, too, the conviction, always lurking deep within him, that the time was coming when he would strike out for himself and show the world how a work of art really should be built, was in some sort responsible for the necessity he felt to keep the ground well cleared.

He was nearly fifty when his clock chimed, and he began seriously to work at the creation of that masterpiece which was to free him from “a dog’s life,” and, perhaps, fill its little niche in the gallery of immortality. He worked at it happily enough till one day, at the end of the fifth month, he had the misfortune to read through what he had written. With his critical faculty he was able to perceive that which gave him no little pain--every chapter, most pages, and many sentences destroyed the one immediately preceding. He searched with intense care for that coherent thread which he had suspected of running through the whole. Here and there he seemed to come on its track, then it would vanish. This gave him great anxiety.