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My Life and Loves Vol. 2 Cimiez, Nice
VOLUME TWO FOREWORD CHAPTER I. SKOBELEF CHAPTER II. HOW I CAME TO KNOW SHAKESPEARE
CHAPTER III. GERMAN STUDENT LIFE AND PLEASURE CHAPTER IV. GOETHE, WILLIAM I, BISMARCK, WAGNER CHAPTER V. ATHENS AND THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE CHAPTER VI. LOVE IN ATHENS; AND "THE SACRED BAND" CHAPTER VII. HOLIDAYS AND IRISH VIRTUE! CHAPTER VIII. HOW I MET FROUDE AND WON A PLACE I
CHAPTER IX. FIRST LOVE; HUTTON, ESCOTT, AND THE EVENING NEWS CHAPTER X. LORD FOLKESTONE AND THE EVENING NEWS; SIR CHARLES
CHAPTER XI. LONDON LIFE AND HUMOR; BURNAND AND MARX CHAPTER XII. LAURA, YOUNG TENNYSON, CARLO PELLEGRINI,
CHAPTER XIII. THE PRINCE; GENERAL DICKSON; ENGLISH GLUTTONY; SIR
ROBERT CHAPTER XIV. CHARLES READE; MARY ANDERSON; IRVING;
CHAPTER XV. THE NEW SPEAKER PEEL; LORD RANDOLPH CHURCHILL; COL.
CHAPTER XVI. MEMORIES OF JOHN RUSKIN 4 CHAPTER XVII. MATTHEW ARNOLD; PARNELL; OSCAR WILDE; CHAPTER XVIII. THE EBB AND FLOW OF PASSION! CHAPTER XIX. BOULANGER; ROCHEFORT; THE COLONIAL CONFERENCE; JAN
CHAPTER XX. MEMORIES OF GUY DE MAUPASSANT CHAPTER XXI. ROBERT BROWNING'S FUNERAL; CECIL RHODES AND BARNATO;
CHAPTER XXII. LORD RANDOLPH CHURCHILL CHAPTER XXIII. A PASSIONATE EXPERIENCE IN PARIS: A FRENCH MISTRESS CHAPTER XXIV. THE FORETASTE OF DEATH FROM 1920 ONWARD
VOLUME TWO FOREWORD THE FIRST VOLUME of my autobiography was condemned
savagely from 231 nations for world empire may be said to have had its first act in the World War. It looks as if the United States and the English Confederation were sure to emerge as the most powerful; with Russia next in the race. But if the combative spirit in the individual is not repressed, there may yet be wars of annihilation wherein the present races of men may be blotted out. It is our task to form if we can a new religion or at least a new morality. And the new moral laws must be laws of health and laws of reason. We have been told a good deal about our duty to our neighbour; but first we must learn our duty to ourselves and we must study our bodies at least as carefully as our minds. The English and American people have enormous, preponderant power, power of numbers, power of wealth, power of almost unassailable position; but who does not see that their strength is out of all proportion to their brains. They are at the head of the industrial world; but they have no corresponding position in the world of science, or art or literature. We must copy the Germans and endow scientific research; we must copy the French and endow the arts and we must certainly imitate them by freeing literature from the silly prohibitions of an outworn Puritanism. That at least is my most mature opinion, and accordingly I have taken it on myself to set the example in this field. Does anyone imagine that we can hope to produce a greater Balzac while respecting the conventions of the Sunday School and using euphemisms such as our "little Mary"? Everyone admits today that painters and sculptors should be free to represent the naked human figure, but the moment a writer claims similar freedom he is boycotted and disgraced, his books are seized and burned and he may think himself lucky if he escapes fine and imprisonment. Yet the evil results of this ostrich policy are surely plain enough and well enough known. In this volume, in which I propose to tell the intimate history of half a dozen famous contemporaries, the three greatest and most famous died in the flower of manhood of syphilis and two of the three were English. In the World War more than one in four of our American officers had suffered or was suffering from this foul disease. It is bred and fostered by secrecy and prudery: Voltaire knew that "when modesty goes out of manners, (moeurs, Lat: mores) it goes into speech." No one need read our books unless they wish to; the conventiclers and churches will always be able to signify their disapprobation; but why should they be allowed to make of their prejudice a law and punish others for not rejoicing in their blindness? No one can answer Milton's plea in favour of always letting "truth grapple with falsehood." In this matter the time-spirit is with me and all the highest authorities. In France Flaubert was prosecuted for writing and publishing Madame Bovary; but a generation later the Nona of Zola passed unpersecuted and a generation later still La garconne of Victor Marguerite was published freely. 232 In England too there is progress, but it is backward. Thirty years ago Burton was allowed to publish his Arabian Nights privately, and send it through the post; today he would be imprisoned for the crime. Yet the greatest writers are all in favour of freedom. I want the unprejudiced to consider a few of the undoubted authorities. One evening after dinner Goethe read to Eckermann several scenes from Hanswurst's Hochzeit, or John Sausage's Marriage, written or at least begun in the poet's prime; Eckermann compares it with Faust for creative vigour and freedom; but adds at once that it goes "beyond all limits"; and he can not even give any excerpt to show its force and freedom. Goethe himself admits that he cannot publish it in Germany. "In Paris I would have been able to publish it," he adds, "but not in Frankfort or Weimar." This shows sufficiently what Goethe's opinion on free speech was; for the limits in Germany were and are far wider than in England or America. Let me quote another and equally great writer. Here is a small part of what Montaigne wrote on this subject, and Montaigne, as Sainte-Beuve declares is "the wisest of all Frenchmen"; I use Florio's translation: Non pudeat dicere quod non pudeat sentire—"Let us not be ashamed to speak what we shame not to think ... For my part I am resolved to dare speak whatsoever I dare do. And am displeased with thoughts not to be published. The worst of my actions or conditions seem not so ugly unto me as I finde it both ugly and base not to dare to avouch them ..." And again-"Both wee and they (men and women) are capable of a thousand more hurtful and unnatural corruptions than is lust or lasciviousness. But wee frame vices and weigh sinnes not according to their nature but according to our interest..." And still in the same chapter: "What monstrous beaste is this whom his delights displease ..." And finally: "Few I know will snarle at the liberty of my writings that have not more cause to snarle at their thoughts-looseness." And not only are the greatest German and French writers on my side but also the best Americans. I have already more than once adduced Whitman's faith and practice on this subject. In spite of a strange inarticulateness I regard him as the greatest of all Americans; but Poe is continually classed with him and accordingly I am eager to give Poe's considered opinion. Here are his words: If any ambitious man have a fancy to revolutionize at one effort the universal world of human thought, human opinion, and human sentiment, the opportunity is his own—the road to immortal renown lies straight, open, and unencumbered before him. All that he has to do is to write and publish a very little book. Its title should be simple—a few plain words—My Heart Laid Bare. But this little book must be true to its title. Now, is it not singular that, with the rabid thirst for notoriety which distinguishes so many of mankind—so many, too, who care not a fig what is thought of them after death, there should not be found one man having sufficient hardihood to write this little book? To write, I say. There are ten 233 thousand men who, if the book were once written, would laugh at the notion of being disturbed by its publication during their life, and who could not even conceive why they should object to its being published after their death. But to write it—there is the rub. No man dare write it. No man ever will dare write it. No man could write it, even if he dared. The paper would shrivel and blaze at every touch of the fiery pen! I wonder did even Poe realize how difficult it is to tell the truth about oneself. It is not merely a question of fear, as he seems to think; the paper might shrivel and I should not care a jot. German-American mediocrities might go on prating of my "literary and moral suicide," and the American authorities might go on making bonfires of my books in public, while saving from the flames copies enough to fill their pockets or gratify their taste in private. What would it matter to me? But is my attempt futile? That's the question. Is it possible truly to mirror in words the whole soul of man and this magical incomprehensible mystery of a world? I thought that if I used Truth and described the intense sex-urge of my youth simply, at the same time showing how passionately eager I have always been to learn and grow at all costs, that at any rate the porch of the temple would be significant and appealing. My first volume taught me that Truth was a mortal enemy of Beauty. I remember once measuring the distance between the pillars of the Parthenon on the Acropolis and finding that it was never exactly the same; the pillars looked to be of equal size and at an equal distance one from the other; but it was all a delusion of our seeing and the rhythmic beauty of the colonnade is surely due to inexactitude. Was this why Goethe wrote Wahrheit und Dichtung—Fact and Fiction Out of My Life? He saw that he could not write the naked truth and accordingly admitted the poetry? Should I follow his example? His autobiography is dull, even tedious; yet if he had tried to tell the truth, how fascinating it would have been. We should have known Frederika and Mignon and Madame Von Stein and a host of other passionate women to the heart's core; even his cook-wife would have thrown new light on what was prosaic in him and German-sentimental. We should have known Goethe infinitely better and he was well worth knowing. As he himself said: Willst du ins Unendliche schreiten, Geh nur in Endlichen nach alien Seiten. As soon as I first read it, I knew that this was my life's motto. The fact is we men cannot deal with absolutes. Truth is not for us; pure Light we cannot even 234 see; but a nearer and ever nearer approximation to truth should be our endeavour. One would have thought that the World War showed the danger of our ordinary aggressive Ideal clearly enough; yet the World War and its many millions of young and vigorous lives all lost is no worse than the hating, snarling and snapping of these dachshunds, poodles and bulldogs that are now making of Europe a hell on earth! And America, the America of Whitman and Lincoln, will stand aside forsooth and fill her pockets and see injustice done! To man propose this test Thy body at its best How far shall that project thy Soul On its lone way? What hope is there for humanity save in confession and reform; in truth and in love. We must construct a new ideal of life and build for ourselves a new faith: the arrogant, combative, prudish ideal of the past must be finally discredited and discarded. And if all the ways of love are beautiful to me, why should I not say so? All the girls and women I have met and loved have taught me something; they have been to me the charm and the wonder, the mystery and the romance of life. I have been from the Cape to Cairo; and from Vladikavkas to Vladivostok; but one girl has taught me more than I could find in two continents. There is more to learn and love in one woman's spirit than in all the oceans. And their bodies are as fascinating—thank God!—as their souls. And all the lessons they have taught me have been of gentleness and generosity, of loving-kindness and tender pity, of flower-soft palms and clinging lips, and the perfume of their flesh is sweeter than all the scents of Araby, and they are gracious-rich in giving as crowned queens. All that is amiable and sweet and good in life, all that ennobles and chastens, I have won from women. Why should I not sing their praises or at least show my gratitude by telling of the subtle intoxication of their love that has made my life an entrancing romance? The soul of life to me has always been love of women and admiration of great men. For many years only two men appealed to me as guides in life's labyrinth, Jesus and Shakespeare; twin spirits of intensest appeal; then in maturity others like Goethe and Heine, Leopardi, Keats and Blake, Nietzsche, Wagner and Cervantes, Cezanne, Monet, Rodin and a host of others; my contemporaries who taught me that they too shared my striving and were proud of their singular achievement: this admiration of great men and especially of great artists is the other side of my religion. 235 In the world I have made many friends and found kindness at least equal to my own; sunny days of joy and nights moonlit with mystery and no foe to be found anywhere save ignorance, no enemy save corsets, prohibitions and conventions, no boredom save hypocrisy and want of thought, no God save my own love of the highest, no devil except my own appalling limitations in sympathy and feeling. Yet the "unco guid" tell me that this honest attempt of mine to relate in simplest words the story of my earthly pilgrimage will do harm and not good, corrupt and not fortify. They lie and they know it, or the population of the world would diminish as rapidly as it is increasing. But one warning I must give: this, my second volume, will not be so exact and painfully true as the first for several reasons. First of all, as soon as my fears of life, the dread that I might not be able to earn a good living, had been blotted out by my success as a youth in the United States, life itself grew more fascinating to me. I realized that I could fashion it, almost at will, could travel or study as I pleased and so could develop myself almost as I wished. True, I had learned that I had dreadful, natural limitations; I could never be a great athlete, I was not big enough; nor a first-rate shot, my eyes were astigmatic; but I believed that within certain narrow limits I could do a great deal with myself and assuredly improve my mind and heart out of recognition. I resolved to do this; but first of all I wished to keep my word to Professor Smith and spend three or four years studying in Germany and afterwards at least one year at the University of Athens; a scholar I must be, even if I were never to be learned. Alas! life in my Lehrjahre was infinitely interesting to me, so I took few notes and must now trust my memory, even for Important facts. It is a paradox that may serve as a truth that an excellent memory is the source of much falsehood. In talking to my friend Professor Churton Collins once, I found that his extraordinary and minute exactitude came from a bad memory; he could not pin a date or a fact or a line of poetry in his head and so was compelled to verify all his statements. On the other hand, I had a most excellent memory, as I have said, especially for words; but even as a young man I had found out that my memory, even of poetry or prose, was often vitiated by time. Now and then my memory altered this word or that in a poem, sometimes bettering the original; but more often debasing the wordvalue in favour of extra sonority. My one natural endowment, a very strong and resonant bass voice, injured my memory. As I came to maturity I found that my memory suffered in a different way; it began to color incidents dramatically. For example, I had been told a story by someone, it lay dormant in me for years; suddenly some striking fact called back the tale and I told it as if I had been present and it was fulfilled with dramatic effects, far beyond the first narration. 236 I am no longer a trustworthy witness; yet more honest, I dare swear, than any Rousseau or Casanova of them all. Hamlet declares he could accuse himself of dreadful faults, but takes care never to hint even at the wild sensuality and mad, baffled jealousy which he pours out in floods on his unhappy mother, who, for love of lewdness, stands to him for his faithless mistress. I intend to accuse myself of all my worst faults, for already I notice that my mind is so confirmed a partisan that if I don't put in all the shadows, there will be little likeness to humanity in my self-coloured portrait. To write one's life truthfully one should keep a complete diary and record, not only facts; but motives—fears, hopes and imaginings—day by day at very considerable length. It is altogether too late for me to begin such a work; but from today on (November 22nd, 1923) I propose to keep such a careful record that when I come to this last lap of the race I may be able to put down the true truth in every particular. Yet no man's mind can mirror truth perfectly. But whether I can tell the truth or not does not alter the fact that I mean even in this second volume to keep as near the truth as I can. The soul of the first volume was the insane sex-urge of healthy youth and the desire to learn and grow and become someone of note in life. The inspiration of this second volume is the realization of the virtue of chastity, or, if you will, of total abstinence from all sex-pleasure for years and its effect not only upon character but upon the mind, and especially upon the creative power. In the first period I cultivated my will a little now and then in order to make my body subservient to my intelligence; in the second period I reaped enormous benefits from this discipline. I never dreamed then that one day in my old age I should sing the praises of chastity; but clearly enough I see now that chastity is the mother of many virtues. There's a story of Balzac that illustrates my meaning, I think it's told by Gautier. The great novelist came in one day with a gloomy face. "What's the matter?" asked Gautier. "Matter enough," replied Balzac; "another masterpiece lost to French literature!" "What do you mean?" cried Gautier. "I had a wet dream last night," Balzac replied, "and consequently shall not be able to conceive any good story for at least a fortnight; yet I could certainly write a masterpiece in that time." I found out that the chastity must not be continued too long or one would become too susceptible to mere sensuous pleasure; the semen, so to say, would get into one's blood and affect the healthy current of one's life. But to feel drained for a fortnight after one orgasm and unable to create any thing worth 237 while proves to demonstrate that Balzac, like Shakespeare, must have been of poor virility. Didn't Shakespeare cry at thirty-four or—five: Past reason hunted and no sooner had Past reason hated, an experience that few healthy men reach before fifty-five and some of us, thank God, never reach at all. But self-control or chastity must be practiced by all who wish to realize the highest in themselves or indeed who wish to reach vigorous old age. There are other experiences of this kind that I think just as interesting and important as Balzac's, which I propose to record in this self-history. For example, besides the merits of chastity, I was also to learn that my pleasure in the embrace was not my chief object: as love entered my life I found that the keenest thrill of ecstasy could only be reached through the delight given to your partner. Again in this I resembled Montaigne: "Verily, the pleasure I do others in this sport, both more sweetly tickle my imagination, than that is done unto me." In this volume I shall not be as contemptuous of convention as I was in the first; but I propose to use such freedom of speech as may be necessary, and certainly as much as Chaucer and the best Frenchmen use. After all, the final proof of the pudding is in the eating. If anyone can write as true a record of his time or paint such deep and intimate portraits of great men as I have painted, without using equal freedom of speech, he may condemn me. If no one has or can, then I am justified and in time shall be praised and my example followed. 238 VOLUME TWO CHAPTER I. WHEN THE Russian Turkish war broke out in the early
summer of 1877, I 239 not resist going over to see who the marksman was. I found it was my very independent American: he bowed and I had to ask: 'Didn't you see that the blacks had surrounded you?' "'To tell the truth, General,' he remarked, brushing his knee, 'I was so occupied with the gentlemen in front that I paid no attention to the others.' "From that moment on we were friends," Wolseley concluded, "much I imagine as Skobelef and you became friends; courage in a common danger quickly breaks down all barriers." However that may be, Skobelef and I soon became friends. The rich humanity in him and contempt of convention were irresistibly attractive to me; and there was something ingenuous, young in him, which made him accept my enthusiastic admiration, my hero-worship, if you will, without afterthought. I have noticed this naiveté since in other great men of action. In person Skobelef was above middle height, broad and strong; the lower face was concealed by a thick wavy moustache, beard and whiskers all coquettishly brushed away from the centre; the forehead was both broad and high, the nose thick and of Jewish type, the eyes grey and keen; nothing remarkable in the face; the impetuosity of his character showed itself in quick abrupt movements; he always appeared ready to strike; yet underneath there was much kindness in him and a fund of good humour. It was mid-August when he got his first real chance: he had declared a week before that the key of Plevna was a certain fort. "If we had that," he said, "we could make it hot for Osman." By what influence he got command of a large force, I don't know, but probably through the Emperor Alexander himself, of whom Skobelef always spoke with liking. The troops for the assault had to cross a stream and then climb the steep glacis: it had rained heavily the night before and the long slope was slippery. As the Russians began to toil up, the Turkish fire became deafening; but at first was not effective. When the Russians however got three quarters way up, they simply lay down in files. A moment's pause for thought and Skobelef galloped into the meadow, crossed the river and was soon among the fallen Russians. Naturally I was at his heels. Here the Turkish fire was diabolical; I noticed that it had cut down all the bushes near us to a certain height; I couldn't understand why; but Skobelef read the riddle almost immediately; swinging his horse round, he galloped back and gave orders that the men should advance in lines with a hundred yards or so between each line. When the first wave of men reached their fallen comrades, it too seemed to lie down—the Turkish fire was extraordinarily deadly; but the next wave got through and lined up close to the fortress; the third wave again got blotted out; but the fourth pressed on and joined the first line; at once Skobelef galloped up the glacis again and himself led the assault amid the frantic cheers of the men now racing to the redoubt. In his haste Skobelef fell into the ditch and had to be helped free of his horse; but though he was badly shaken 240 and bruised and the officers begged him to go back, he wouldn't listen to them, and as we entered the fort, we saw the Turks stampeding down the other side. A glance at the wall made the Turkish rifle practice clear to me: in order not to expose themselves, the Turkish soldiers had simply placed their rifles on the embrasures and fired away. About five hundred yards down the hill the bullets rained about four feet from the ground. This was the death-zone; a few hundred yards further down the bullets went into the air, three hundred yards higher up they whistled harmlessly overhead. When galloping up the slope Skobelef had noticed that the danger-zone was very narrow and at once seized the whole position and dealt with it victoriously. But he had reckoned without his leaders. As soon as he had distributed the Russian soldiers in the fort, he sent for reinforcements; but none came, no word of answer even to his entreaties. He had won Plevna—the commanding position of the redoubt now would have been clear to a child, but he had lost heavily and had not men enough to sustain an attack in force. The night began to draw down; it was after three o'clock before we got settled in the fort and darkness came slowly, but it came; time and again Skobelef sent for reinforcements; at length he received the information that none could be spared. We were told afterwards that the Tzar himself had urged the general to send the reinforcements but was assured that none could be spared, though it was sun-clear that out of two hundred thousand troops on the field it would have been easy to detach twenty thousand, and a quarter of that force sent to Skobelef would have won Plevna that day in August. When Skobelef was convinced that no help would be sent, he seemed stunned with the disappointment; then rage possessed him, his whole face quivered, tears rolled down his cheeks unheeded while he raved in contempt of his superiors: "The grand dukes hate me," he cried, "and the general staff because I win victories, but who is to hinder them coming in force themselves and getting the credit—who cares for the credit so long as the work's done— oh damn them, damn them and their mean jealousy; they can't spare even five thousand men, the liars and curs!" That night a couple of his officers sat with him and we all drank and discussed probabilities. As it turned out, Skobelef read his adversary Osman more correctly than any of us. "When we don't shell them in the morning," he said, "Osman must come to the conclusion that we are weak and he'll feel us out with an early attack; then we shall have to prepare to get out; but if I had five thousand men and fifty field guns—just what I asked for—I could win Plevna by noon: Osman would have to surrender. The silly envy of our commanders will cost Russia half a million lives and prolong the war six months!" Skobelef taught me that 241 putting yourself in your adversary's place was the essence of generalship. I remember when we were alone he turned to me. "Don't report anything of all this," he said. "No Russian would expose Russian shame; it is as if our mother were in fault, and I don't want the d... d Germans to sneer. Ah, if I could only get a chance against them, I'd show them that our Russian soldiers are the best in the world, incomparable—" and he went on to give instance after instance of their hardihood and contempt of death. It fell out almost exactly as Skobelef had foreseen; but later. It was long after noon when the Turkish soldiers attacked; we had difficulty in holding our own; an hour later Osman threw thirty thousand men more at us and we had to retreat; in an hour the retreat was a stampede and for hours driblets of broken men came limping, staggering and cursing into their previous quarters. Next day Skobelef kept to his rooms. I noticed at once that his reputation had grown immensely: his own officers all knew what he had accomplished and when officers from other commands came to him, they all showed themselves aware of his supreme ability. The fine thing about him was that all the respect and indeed adulation had not the slightest effect on him; when we met afterwards he always treated me with a certain kindly intimacy. Of course nothing could save Plevna: army corps after army corps joined the Russian force, the Turkish communications were cut, Plevna was surrounded: months later Osman surrendered and was nobly received by Skobelef, whom everybody hailed now as the hero of Plevna. Osman riding at the head of his garrison of nearly 100,000 men was a fine sight: he was small and pale and had one arm in a sling from a recent wound, and as he passed at the head of his staff through the Russian ranks, the Russians, led by Skobelef himself, cheered and cheered him again in the noblest way. War is almost worth waging when it brings such honourable distinction to the beaten. But though I learned a good deal in the war, I'm not here to compete with the professional historian. I want to picture Skobelef, who was, with Roberts, the best general I ever met; and the contrast between the two makes them both more interesting. Neither of them was highly intelligent. In the Boer War, Roberts went to church every Sunday and observed all ordinary customs. He was a sincere Christian and followed the lead of his wife in all social affairs. At first he took Kitchener at his face value, and even when at Paardeberg he was forced to realise his nonentity as a soldier, he kept his knowledge to himself for so long that he gave some support to the Kitchener myth. Skobelef, on the other hand, was altogether free of every form of snobbism; indeed, he had a certain sympathy with contempt of discipline and all social observances; some part of "the return to truth" of the nihilists had got into his blood; he hated all insincerities and in so far seemed to me a bigger man than Roberts. In insight and speed of stroke they were very much alike. 242 In the days of inaction that followed the taking and abandonment of the fort, I won Skobelef to tell me of his early life. With huge amusement he confessed that at fourteen or fifteen he was after every pretty girl he came near. One day an uncle found him trying to embrace a young servant in the house; she had just pushed the boy away when the uncle came on the scene. He said quietly, "You ought to be proud to be kissed, my girl, by the young baron." "I had no more difficulty," Skobelef said simply, "the news spread through the house like wildfire, and I had no more refusals." Nothing ever brought the true meaning of serfdom more clearly before me than this little incident. It was as illuminating as a phrase of Kropotkin later, when in his Memoirs of a Revolutionist he tells of the "Oriental practices" in the corps of pages and the countless immoralities and devilish cruelties that reigned during serfdom. Some facts tell volumes. When a soldier or servant was punished by flogging, if he died under the knout, the full tale of lashes was inflicted on his insentient corpse. And marriage among the serfs was often arranged by the master without any regard for love or individual preference. "Did you go often with your pretty maid?" I asked. "Continually," Skobelef laughed, "and when it wasn't that one, it was one of the others. I had them all, every girl and woman in the place from thirteen to fifty, but I liked the older ones best," he added meditatively. "If I had not had to go to school, I'd have killed myself with them; as it was I weakened myself so that now, at about forty, I'm practically impotent. Since I was five and twenty it takes some extraordinary circumstance, such as a drinking bout, to bring me up to the scratch!" "Good God!" I cried. "What a dreadful fate!" Till then I had no idea that the patrimony of sex-pleasure was so limited. "You must have been angry with yourself and regretted your early indulgences terribly?" I probed. "No," he replied, "No! I've had a pretty good time on the whole; and if I took double mouthfuls as a boy, as the French say, I have now many sweet memories. Oh, in Petersburg as a young man I had golden hours; there I met veritable passion, desire to match my own, and an understanding of life, a resolve to do great things and not be hampered by conventions—I remember my love let me have her, one day, in her dressing room, when everyone was ready to go driving; and they called and called her— Ah, life's victorious moments are all we get!" The whole confession was out of my very heart, only I was resolved to be wiser and make the pleasure last longer. Two little scenes of this campaign made an impression on me. It was after the capture of a town called Lovtcha, I think: Skobelef and his staff came upon a 243 lot of wounded Turks who had been dumped on the wayside by their comrades days before, men dying and dead, the wounded curled up in a hundred attitudes. Skobelef told the interpreter to ask them what they'd like before being taken to the field hospital; they all asked for food, but one big Turk with head all bandaged up asked for a cigarette. At once Skobelef leant down from his horse and offered his own cigarette case. The Turk took it, an officer gave him a match, and he puffed out the smoke with an air of ineffable content. And then by way of return he undid the knot of his bandage and began to unwind the dirty linen that covered his head. In spite of Skobelef's gesture and prayer not to do it, he went on, and as the last fold was plucked loose, in spite of the sticky blood, the man's half-jaw fell on his chest. The other half had evidently been taken off by a shell—a most horrible sight—but the Turk smiled, held his half-jaw up and began winding on the linen bandage again. When he had secured it, in went the cigarette again into his mouth and he smiled up at us his liveliest gratitude. "Fine men," said Skobelef, "great soldiers!" And they were—and are! One more scene. As an Englishman I managed to get down to Adrianople long before the Russian troops. I wanted to see Constantinople and the Turks before resuming work. At one station, I forget its name, I had to stay a day or two. The caravanserai was a miserable makeshift: one morning I heard that some Russian prisoners had been brought in and I went out and found a line of them outside the station sitting on benches and guarded by half a dozen Turks; one gigantic Turk marched up and down in front of the poor captives, scowling and muttering. I told the interpreter who was with me to go off and find a Turkish officer or the Russians would be murdered; he ran off at once. Suddenly the big Turk stopped in front of a bearded Russian at one end of the line, seized him by the beard and hair, wrenched his mouth open, and spat down his throat—I never saw such a gesture of hate and savage rage. My blood boiled, but I could do nothing except pray for the coming of some officer. Fortunately one came in time, and the poor Russians were saved. I never saw Skobelef after that fall, but he remains to me as a splendid memory and I shall tell now of his end. I was praising him one day in London when a Russian officer who was in the Russian embassy told me how he died. "You know he was our hero," he began. "There are more photographs of Skobelef in our peasant homes throughout Russia than even of the Tzar. And his end was wonderful: he had come to Moscow to review a couple of army corps; as usual, after the review, when he was very severe on some officers, he asked a lot of us junior ones to dine with him in the Slavianski Bazaar; to take away the sting of his sharp criticism, I fancy. Of course we all turned up, proud as peacocks at being asked, and we had a great feast. "Afterwards someone suggested that we should adjourn to Madame X's, who had a house in a neighboring street. Nothing loath, Skobelef, to our astonishment, consented and we all went round, picked our girls and disappeared into bedrooms. After midnight I heard a mad screaming, and just as I was I opened 244 my door and found in the passage the girl Skobelef had chosen. "The General is dead!' she cried. "'Dead!' I yelled. 'What do you mean? Lead the way,' and back she took me, sobbing hysterically, to her bedroom. There lay Skobelef, motionless, with eyes wide open, staring at the ceiling; I called him, put my hand and then my ear on his heart. It had stopped. I looked at the girl. 'It wasn't my fault' she cried. 'Really, it wasn't!' "I hastened back to my bedroom and dressed myself hurriedly; already every officer was up; we went to the keeper of the brothel and said we must take the general at once back to the Slaviansky Bazaar, his hotel. But the keeper said, 'It's forbidden: the police regulation prevents it; you must first get permission!' At once a couple of us rushed downstairs and drove to the police headquarters, but even there we could do nothing. Only the governor of Moscow, it seemed, could give us the permission. So off we raced to the palace. As ill-luck would have it, the governor was at his villa outside the town, so we had to take a droshky and drive like mad. At about three in the morning we knocked him up, got the necessary permission, and hurried back to the brothel. "The General was cold and stiff: it was incredibly difficult to dress him, but it had to be done; and then my friend took him by one arm and I by the other and we half-led, half-carried him out to the carriage. Neither of us had thought of the time. Alas! It was already day and to our astonishment the news had got out and the streets were crowded with people. As soon as they saw us half-carrying Skobelef, they all knelt down on the sidewalk and in the street, the dear people, and crossing themselves began to pray for the rest of his soul! "It was through a kneeling crowd that we took our hero to the Slaviansky Bazaar and laid him on his bed. And the piety of the Russian people is such, its admiration of greatness so profound, that the story has never got out or been in print. Do you wonder that some of us always think of our fatherland as Holy Russia?" As I listened to this story, the great words of Blake came into my mind, the final word for all of us mortals: And throughout all Eternity I forgive you, you forgive me: As our dear Redeemer said This is the wine and this is the bread. 245 CHAPTER II. HOW I CAME TO KNOW SHAKESPEARE AND GERMAN STUDENT CUSTOMS WHY I WENT TO HEIDELBERG and not to Berlin to study
I can't say; there 246 three months had mastered German, though he didn't speak it well. Onions confessed that he studied German three of four hours every morning, so I did the same and gave three or four more hours to it every afternoon. One day he astonished and pleased me by saying that I must have a genius for languages, for my German was already better than his. At any rate I spoke it more fluently; for I talked it whenever I got the opportunity while he was rather silent. Naturally young Tread well introduced me to the university; I took all his lectures and worked night and day to the limiting of sleep and exercise. In three months I spoke German fluently and correctly and had read Lessing, Schiller, Heine's Lieder, and all the ordinary novels, especially Soil und Haben. But I had not won much from the university lectures. I had heard one set of lectures on the Greek verb; but after two months the professor was still enmeshed in Sanskrit, and as I did not know a word of Sanskrit or its significance, I found it difficult to follow him. I was indeed continually reminded of Heine's experience. He had been hearing lectures on universal history, he tells us, but after three years' assiduous attendance he gave them up, for the professor had not yet reached the time of Sesostris. Kuno Fischerff was at this time perhaps the most popular professor in Heidelberg: he had announced a series of lectures on Shakespeare and Goethe and the aula was crammed not only by students, but by ladies and gentlemen from the town. Fischer had a face like a bulldog's and his nose had been split in a duel, which increased the likeness; he began by calling Shakespeare and Goethe the twin flowers of the Germanic race; I was still English enough to think the phrase almost a blasphemy, so I rubbed my feet loudly on the floor as a sign of disapproval or disagreement (ich scharrte). Fischer paused in utter surprise (it was the first tune, he told me afterwards, that he had ever been so interrupted): then, putting a manifest constraint on himself, he said: "If the gentleman who disagrees with me so emphatically will wait till I have finished, I will ask him to state the ground of his disapproval." There was applause throughout the audience at this and the men who were in my neighbourhood glared at me in angry surprise. Fischer went on to say that "the very name of Shakespeare showed his Teutonic ancestry; he was as German as Goethe." I smiled to myself, but I could not deny that the rest of the lecture was interesting, though the professor hardly attempted to realize either man. At the end he contrasted their schooling and congratulated his hearers on the fact that Goethe had enjoyed far superior educational opportunities and had turned them to brilliant account. The audience applauded enthusiastically as he sat down. Fischer, however, rose again immediately and holding out his 247 hand for silence added: "If the critic who made his disagreement at the beginning of my lecture so manifest now desires to explain, I'm sure we will hear him willingly." I got up and stammered a little, as if embarrassed, while asking the audience and the professor to excuse my faulty German. But as a Welsh Celt, I said, "What I feel is that the eloquent Professor is over praising the Teutons and especially their superior education. Superior!" I repeated; "Shakespeare has given us the drama of first love in Romeo and Juliet and of mature passion in Antony and Cleopatra, of jealousy in Othello, the malady of thought in Hamlet and madness in Lear; and against these Goethe has given Faust alone as a proof of his 'superior' advantages! "But 'Shake' and 'speare' are Teuton, we are told. Now English is an amalgam of low German and of French; but curiously enough, all the higher words are French and only the poor monosyllables are Teuton; for example, mutton is French while "sheep" or "schaf" is pure German. I had always imagined," I added after a pause, "that 'Shakespeare' was plainly taken from the French and was a manifest corruption of 'Jacques Pierre'"—at this the audience began to titter and Fischer, entering into the joke, clapped his hands, smiling. Naturally, my effect achieved, I sat down at once. As I was leaving the hall Fischer's servant came and told me the professor would like to see me in his room; of course I followed him at once and Fischer met me laughing. "Ein genialer Stretch! A genial invention," he said, "and no worse than many of our etymologies," and then seriously, "You made an admirable defence of Shakespeare, though I think Goethe has a good deal more to his credit than Faust." This is what I remember of the beginning of a talk destined to alter my whole life. When I told Fischer of the to me incomprehensible lectures on the Greek verb and other similar difficulties, he asked about my studies and then told me that most of the American students in Germany were not sufficiently well-grounded in Latin and Greek to make the most of the advantages offered them in a German university. Finally, he advised me strongly to shave off my moustache and go for a year into a gymnasium —school again for me, at twenty odd! My whole nature revolted wildly; yet Fischer was insistent and persuasive. He asked me to his house, introduced me to a Professor Ihne, who had been a teacher of the Kaiser's children or something very honourable, and who talked excellent English. He agreed with Fischer and Fischer won the day by remarking: "Harris has brains; his speech taught us all that, and you'll agree that the more talent he has, the more necessary is a thorough grounding." The end of it was that I consented, left my boardinghouse, went to live with a family, attended the gymnasium regularly and buried myself in Latin and Greek for eight or ten months, during which I worked on an average twelve hours a day. 248 In four or five months I was among the best in the gymnasium: indeed, only one boy was indisputably above me. When a Latin theme was set, he used to write 'Livy' or 'Tacitus' or 'Caesar' at the head and never used an idiom or a word that he could not show in the special author he was imitating. Twice a week at least the professor used to read out his essay to us, emphasizing the most characteristic sentences. Of course I became friends with the youth, Carl Schurz; I was resolved to find out how he had gained such mastery. He said, "'Twas easy"; he had begun with Caesar, and after reading a page tried to turn it back into Caesar's language; his Latin, he soon found, was all wrong, a mere mishmash, so he began to learn all the peculiar phrases in his daily lesson in Caesar; gradually he discovered that every writer had his own peculiar way of speaking, and even his own vocabulary. That gave me the cue. I went home and took up my Shakespeare. I had already noticed similarities between Hamlet and Macbeth; now I began to read for them and incidentally learned all the poetic passages by heart. Soon I began to catch the accent of Shakespeare's voice, hear when he spoke from the heart, and when from the lips; glimpses of his personality grew upon me, and one day I sat down to rewrite Hamlet, using my memory and thought. When I came to the scene in which Hamlet reproaches his guilty mother, I became aware of a Shakespeare I had dimly suspected. Visualizing the scene I saw at once how impossible it would be to write it. No man could possibly reproach his mother in that way. Hamlet was using the language of sexjealousy: my mother's infidelity would never have maddened me. I could not judge her temptation or my father's faults towards her. His goodness would make her sinning the more incomprehensible, and Hamlet's mother does not attempt to justify herself or explain. The ray of light came, inevitable, soulrevealing: Shakespeare was painting his own jealousy, and was raging not at his mother's sin, but at his love's betrayal; 'twas clear, every outburst reeked with sex. Who was it that had deceived Shakespeare and crazed him with jealousy? Who? The riddle began to intrigue me. In the long vacation which I spent in Fluelen on the Lake of Lucerne, I read and reread Shakespeare. It was his Richard the Second that revealed him to me unmistakably; Richard was so plainly a younger, more unstable Hamlet, just as Posthumus and Prospero were older, staider Hamlets. I hugged myself for the discovery; why hadn't everyone seen the truth? Time and again I read him and all manner of sidelights fell on the page, till the very fashion of his soul became familiar to me. Long before Tyler's book appeared and discovered Queen Elizabeth's maid of honour, Mary Fitton, as Shakespeare's mistress, I knew that in 1596 he had fallen in love with a dark gipsy, with fair skin, who treated him with disdain and was both witty and loose. Why else should he let Rosaline be thus minutely described in Romeo and Juliet, though she never appears on the stage, while there's not a word of bodily description about Juliet, the heroine? 249 In the same year, too, he revised Love's Labour's Lost at Christmas to be played at Court, and the heroine was Rosaline again, and every character in the piece describes her physically; and Shakespeare himself as Byron rages against his love for "a whitely wanton with two pitch balls in her face for eyes!" I could not but see, too, that she was the Dark Lady of the Sonnets— probably some lady of the court, I used to say, who looked down on Shakespeare from the height of aristocratic birth and breeding. Strange to say, I did not at that time go on to identify her with "false Cressid" or with Cleopatra. I did not get as far as this till I fell across Tyler's book years later and saw that he had confined Shakespeare's passion to the "three years" spoken of in the sonnets. I knew then that Shakespeare had loved his gipsy, Mary Fitton, from the end of 1596 on; and I soon came to see that the story told in the sonnets was told also in his plays of that period; and finally I was forced to realize that "false Cressid" and the gipsy Cleopatra were also portraits of Mary Fitton, whom he loved for twelve years down to 1608, when she married and left London for good. I shall always remember those great months spent in Fluelen, when I climbed all the mountains about the lake and twice walked over the St. Gothard and lived with "gentle Shakespeare's" sweet spirit and noble fairness of mind. One important result this discovery of Shakespeare had upon me; it strengthened my self-esteem enormously. I picked up Coleridge's essays on Shakespeare and saw that his Puritanism had blinded him to the truth and I began to think that in time I might write something memorable. When the time came to go back to work I returned to Heidelberg, entered again at the university and resolved to read no more Latin except Tacitus and Catullus. I knew there were beautiful descriptions in Virgil, but I didn't like the language and saw no reason for prolonging my study of it in seminar if I could get out of it. My next lesson in German life was peculiar. I was walking in one of the side streets with an English boy of fourteen or so who was living with Professor Ihne, when we met a tall young corps-student who pushed me roughly off the sidewalk into the street. "What a rude brute," I said to my companion. "No, no!" the boy cried in wild excitement, "All he did was to rempeln you!" "What does that mean?" I asked. "It's his way of asking you, will you fight?" "All right," I cried, and ran back after my rude gentleman. As I came up he stopped. "Did you push me on purpose?" I asked. 250 "I believe I did," he replied haughtily. "Then guard yourself," I said, and next moment I had thrown my stick into the gutter and hit him as hard as I could on the jaw. He went down like a log and lay where he fell. Just as I bent over him to see whether he was really hurt, there poured out from all the near-by shops a crowd of excited Germans. One, I remember, was a stout butcher who ran across the street and caught hold of my left arm: "Run and fetch the police," he cried to his assistant; "I'll hold him." "Let go!" I said to him. "He told me he had pushed me on purpose." "I saw you," exclaimed the butcher. "You hit him with the stick; how else could you have knocked him senseless?" "If you don't let go," I said, "and keep your hands to yourself, I'll show you." And as he tried to increase his grip, I pushed him into proper position with my left arm, at the same time hitting him as hard as I could on the point of the jaw with my free right hand. Down he went like a sack full of coal; the crowd gave way with much loud cursing and my little companion and myself went on our way. "How strong you must be!" was his first remark. "Not especially," I replied, mock modest, "but I know where to hit and how to hit." I thought the matter finished and done with, for I had seen the student get up hugging his jaw and knew there was no serious damage; but next morning I was in my rooms reading when six German policemen came to the door and took me away with them to a judge. He questioned me and I answered; the case against me would have been dismissed, I was told, had it not been for the butcher's lie that he saw me strike the student with my stick and the stick was found to be loaded. No German of that time could believe that a blow with the fist of a rather small man could be so effective. The student's face was bound up as if his jaw had been broken. The result was I was bound over to come up for trial; and in due time I was tried and convicted of groben Unfugs auf der Strasse, or, as one would say in English, "a rude assault on the street," and sentenced to six weeks in Carcer and dismissal from the university. 251 CHAPTER III. GERMAN STUDENT LIFE AND PLEASURE MY LIFE IN CARCER, the student prison, was simply
amusing. Thanks to my 252 Schiller in thought as the poet is generally above the rhetorician: and it took years more before I began to couple Heine with Goethe; and quarter of a century passed before I realized that Heine was a better writer of prose than even Goethe and the greatest humorist that ever lived. Common opinion about great men is so wildly beside the mark that even I could not free myself from its bondage for half a lifetime. My steadily growing admiration of Heine has often made me excuse the false estimates of other men and taught me to be more patient of their misjudging than I otherwise should have been. I was over fifty years of age myself before I began to recognize the myriad manifestations of genius with immediate certitude. I thank fortune that I wrote none of my portraits till I had climbed the height. But I began my acquaintance with Wagner and Bach, Mozart and Beethoven, Schiller and Heine here in Heidelberg and was delighted to find my heaven lit by such radiant new stars. My sex-life in Heidelberg was not by any means so rich. While I was learning the language I had few opportunities of flirting and I had already found out that my tongue was my best recommendation to girls. Before I begin to tell of my sex experiences in Heidelberg, I must relate an incident that was vital with results for me. While a master at Brighton College I had got to know Dr. Robson Roose quite ultimately, and when dining at his house with men only one evening, the conversation came on circumcision. I was astonished when a surgeon who was present declared that the small proportion of Jews who were syphilized owed their comparative immunity to circumcision, which hardened the skin of the man's sex. "Syphilis is only caught through the abrasion of the cuticle," he explained. "Harden the cuticle by exposure and you make it more difficult to catch the disease. All the morality of the Old Testament," he continued, "is hygienic: the Mosaic laws of morals were all laws of health." "It would be wise, then, for all of us to get circumcised?" I asked, laughing; and he replied: "If I were a lawgiver I would make it one of the "first commandments." Immediately I made up my mind to get circumcised. I felt sure, too, that the hardening of the cuticle would prolong the act, and already I had begun to notice that in my case the act was usually too quickly finished. Moreover, my power of repeating it was decreasing year by year and in the same proportion the desire to prolong the pleasure was growing keener; for in this, too, I was like Montaigne, who had to admit in that wonderful fifth chapter of the third book that he was "faulty in suddaine-ness" and had "to stay the fleeting pleasure and delay it with preambles." He loved to lie, as he puts it, "at Racke and Manger," for these "snatches and away marre the grace of it." As soon, then, as my work at Brighton College was finished I went to bed and was circumcised. Though the surgeon had assured me that I'd feel no pain, I felt a good deal, and for ten days after was in misery many times each day, for 253 a chance touch of my organ caused me acute suffering. During my first summer months in Heidelberg my prepuce contracted so that the act would have been difficult besides being painful, and this compulsory chastity taught me the most important lesson of my life. It taught me that absolutely complete chastity enabled me to work longer hours than I had ever worked: it was impossible to tire myself; in fact, I was endowed, so to speak, with an intense energy that made study a pleasure and with a vivid clearness of understanding such as I had never before experienced. At first I thought there must be some virtue in the climate; but one wet-dream made me realize that the power was in the pent-up semen. I began to make up my mind to sacrifice many pleasures in the future in order to keep this intense energy and sense of abounding vigour. I recognized that I had been all too often the spoil of opportunity and very frequently had sought pleasure when I was not even really in love. Time and again, too, I had given myself out of false vanity when I would rather have restrained myself. In fine, I began at this time to make up my mind only to sacrifice my strength when I was really attracted, or better still, only then when I was deeply in love. I would cease playing the fool, I resolved; I had acted the giddy idiot who squanders his patrimony without any understanding of its value; I would now turn over a new leaf and make an art of life. How had I been so blind, so foolish! I realized that I had already seriously diminished my capital of vigour, so to speak. In Brighton I had found it difficult to have two embraces in succession, whereas five years before at eighteen there was hardly any limit set. I resolved to restrain myself rigorously and get back to my former vigour, if indeed it were in any way possible. From this time on I date my Lehrjahre, as the Germans call the prenticeyears. I came to see later that I owed my salvation to the chance of circumcision, or as my vanity put it, to the desire to make myself as perfect as possible, which was the reason why I had undergone the pain of the operation. A word of Goethe came to me fraught with significance to mark this crisis: In der Beherrschung zeigt sich erst der Meister (In self-control the master reveals himself.) Two experiences at Heidelberg illustrate for me this new attitude towards life. I had met a rather pretty girl on the river bank one day; began a conversation with her and accompanied her to her house, where, she told me, she lived with a sister. It was getting dark and in a shady place I kissed her, and when she kissed me, warmly my naughty hand found its way up her clothes, and I found her sex ready for the embrace. Already this fact warned and chilled me: I was resolved never to go with any public woman; determined to pay, but restrain myself. In the sitting-room she 254 introduced me to her elder sister, who was chatting with a stout student who had just called. We all fraternized quickly. I soon ordered a bottle of Rhine-wine; the student preferred beer and soon betrayed himself as a most enthusiastic admirer of Kuno Fischer. Suddenly he said, "You know, Marthe and I are great friends," and he indicated the elder sister, "and I came here tonight to make love to her." "Go to it," I said. "I won't balk you: if I disturb you, I'll go." "You don't disturb us, does he Marthe?" and he suited the action to the word by getting up and leading the girl to the sofa at the side of the room. "Go into the bedroom!" cried my girl, Katchen, and Marthe followed her advice. They were ten minutes gone, but their proximity seemed to affect Katchen, who kissed me, again and again, passionately. When the student returned he threw four marks on the table, kissed his girl perfunctorily, saying, "I leave one for the Bier," and then addressed me, "Are you coming?" which gave me my chance. I turned to Katchen, gave her ten marks, kissed her hands and her eyes and followed the student out of the house. I had escaped without being too rude, for Katchen thanked me warmly for the gold piece and begged me with eyes and lips to return whenever I could, but—I could not stand the student or his talk. There was something so common, so animal in the whole performance that I hastened to say "Good night" to him and take thought by myself. I was frankly disgusted; quite clearly I saw then for the first time that there must be some admiration, some spiritual attraction, or the act would leave me cold. If the fellow had even admired the girl's figure, I said to myself, or her pretty Gretchen face, it would have redeemed the business; but this coupling like animals, brutalized by the four marks thrown on the table, and the curt leave taking—No! It was disgusting and a stain on the name of love. And now for a better and more memorable experience. I had gone to balls twice or three tunes in the Heidelberg because a friend wished me to accompany him or to complete a gay party. I seldom went of my own accord because dancing made me excessively giddy, as I have already related. But at one ball I was introduced to a Miss Betsy C, an English girl of a good type, very well dressed and extraordinarily pretty, though very small. She stood out among the large German frauleins like a moss-rose wrapped in a delicate greenery to heighten her entrancing color, and at once I told her this and assured her that she had the most magnificent dark eyes I had ever seen; for bashfulness I had never felt, and I knew that praise was as the breath of life to every woman. We became friends at once, but to my 255 disappointment, she told me she was going next day to Frankfort, where some friends would meet her the day after to accompany her back to England. Before I thought of what I was letting myself in for, I told her I would love to go to Frankfort with her and show her Goethe's birth-place and the Goethe- Haus; would she accept my escort? Would she? The great brown eyes danced with the thought of adventure and companionship—I was in for it—was this my next-born resolution of restraint? Was this my first essay in making an art of my life? Yet I didn't even think of excusing myself: Bessie was too pretty and too alluring, with a quiet humour that appealed to me intensely. A big German girl passed us and Bessie, looking at her arms, said, "I never knew what 'mottled' was before. I've seen advertisements of 'mottled soap'; but 'mottled' arms! They're not pretty, are they?" Bessie was worse than pretty; under medium height but rounded in entrancing curves to beauty; her face piquant; the dark eyes now gleaming in malice, now deep in self-revealing; her arms exquisite and the small mounds of white breasts half hidden, half discovered by the lacy dress. No wonder I asked, "What time is your train? Shall I take you to the Bahnhof?" "We'll meet at the station," she said, with a glint in her eye, "but you must be very kind and good!" Had she ever given herself? Did this last admonition mean she would not yield to me? I was in a fever but resolved to be amiable as well as bold. Next morning we met at the station and had a great talk; and at Frankfort I drove with her straight to the best hotel, walked boldly to the desk and ordered two good rooms communicating; and signed the register Mr. and Mrs. Harris. We were shown rooms on the second floor: our English appearance had got us the best in the house, and as my luck would have it, the second smaller bedroom had the key and bolt, so that I could reckon at least on a fair chance. But at once I opened the door between the rooms and helped her with her outside wraps and then, taking her head in my hands, kissed her on the mouth. At once, almost, her lips grew warm, which seemed to me the best omen. I said to her, "You'll knock when you're ready, won't you? Or come in to me?" She smiled, reassured by my withdrawal, and nodded gaily, "I'll call!" I spent the whole day with her and talked my best, telling her of Goethe's many love affairs and of Gretchen-Frederika. After dinner we went out for a walk and then returned to the hotel and went up to our bedrooms. I went into my room and closed the door, my heart throbbing heavily, my mouth all parched as in fever. I must cheat time, I said to myself, and so I put on my best suit of pyjamas, a sort of white stuff with threads of gold in it. And 256 then I waited for the summons, but none came. I looked at my watch: it was twenty minutes since we parted; I must give her half an hour at least. "Would she call me?" She had said she would. "Would she yield easily?" Again, as my imagination recalled her wilful, mutinous face and lovely eyes, my heart began to thump! At last the half hour was up; should I go in? Yes, I would, and I walked over to the door and listened—not a sound. I turned the handle; the room was entirely in the dark. I moved quickly to the lights and turned them on: there she was in bed, with only her little face showing and the great eyes. In a second I was by her side. "You promised to call me," I said. "Put out the light!" she begged. Without making any reply I pulled down the clothes and got in beside her. "You'll be good!" she pouted. "I'll try," was my noncommittal answer, and I slipped my left arm under her and drew her lips to mine. I was thrilled by the slightness and warmth of her, and at first I just took her mouth and held her close to the heat of my body. In a moment or two her lips grew hot and I put my hand down to lift her nightie: "No, no!" she resisted, pouting. "You promised to be good." "There's nothing bad in this," I said, persevering, and the next moment I had my hand on her sex. With a sigh she resigned herself and gave her lips. After caressing her for a minute or two her sex opened and I could move her legs apart, so at once I put her hand on my sex. My excitement was so intense that I felt a good deal of pain; but I was past caring for pain. In a moment I was between her legs with my sex caressing her sex; the great eyes closed, but as I sought to enter her she shrank back with a cry of pain: "Oo, oo! It's terrible— please stop; oh, you said you'd be good." Of course I kissed her, smiling, and went back to the caressing. Naturally, in a few minutes I was again trying to enter paradise; but at once the cries of pain began again and the entreaties to stop and be good and I'll love you so. She was so pretty in her entreating that I said: "Let me see, and if I hurt you, I'll stop," and drew down in the bed to look. The fools are always saying that one sex of a woman is very like another; it is absolutely false; they are as different as mouths and this I was looking at was one of the most lovely I had ever seen. As she lay there before me I could not help exclaiming, "You dear, pocket Venus!" She was so dainty-small, but the damage done was undeniable; there was blood on her sex and a spot of blood on one lovely little round thigh; and at the same moment I noticed that my infernal prepuce had shrunk and now hurt me dreadfully, compressing my sex with a ring of iron. For some obscure reason, half of pity, half of affection for the little beauty, I moved and lay beside her as at first, saying: "I'll do whatever you wish; I love you so much, I hate to hurt you so." "Oh, you great dear," she cried, and her arms went round my neck and she kissed me of her own accord a hundred tunes. A little later I lifted her upon me, naked body to naked body, and was ravished by the sheer beauty of her. 257 I must have spent an hour in fondling and caressing her; continually I discovered new beauties in her; time and again I pushed her nightie up to her neck, delighting in the plastic beauty of her figure; but Bessie showed no wish to see me or excite me. Why? Girls are a strange folk, I decided, but I soon found she was as greedy of praise as could be, so I told her what an impression she had made at the ball and how a dozen students had asked me to introduce them, saying she was the queen of the evening. At length she fell asleep in my arms and I must have slept, too, for it was four in the morning before I awoke, turned out the lights and crept to my own room. I had acted unselfishly, spared Bessie: to give her merely pain for my thrill of pleasure would not have been fair, I thought; I was rather pleased with myself. When I awoke in the morning, I hastened to her, but found she was getting up and did not want to be disturbed; she'd be ready before me, she said, and she wished to see the town and shops before her friends came for her at two o'clock. I followed her wishes, bolted the door between our rooms, took her for a drive, gave her lunch, said "Good-bye" afterwards. When I assured her that nothing had been done, she said that I was a darling, promised to write and kissed me warmly; but I felt a shade of reticence in her, a something of reserve too slight to be defined, and on the train back to Heidelberg I put my fears down to fancy. But though I wrote to her English address I received no answer. Had I lost her through sparing her? What a puzzle women were! Was Virgil right with his spretae injuria formae? the hatred that comes in them if their beauty is not triumphant? Do they forgive anything sooner than selfcontrol? I was angry with myself and resolved not to be such an unselfish fool next time. 258 CHAPTER IV. GOETHE, WILLIAM I, BISMARCK, WAGNER I had long been aware that there was something
rotten in the core of our 259 My student life in the walled town was all in extremes: by turns sterile and fruitful. I learned German thoroughly; wasted a year indeed on Gothic, and Old High German and Middle High German, too, till I knew German as well as I knew English, and the Niebelungenlied better than I knew Chaucer. Twice I went on public platforms and spoke in great meetings and no one suspected that I was a foreigner—all vanity and waste of tune, as I had to learn later. But at length I read Goethe, everything he had written, in chronological order, and so came into the modern world by the noblest entrance and stood breathless, enthralled by the Pisgah heights and the vision of what may come when men learn to develop their minds as some, even now, know how to develop their bodies. This was Goethe's supreme gift to men; he taught the duty of self-development to each of us and it is the first and chief duty; he preached culture as a creed, and even to those of us who had felt it beforehand and acted on it, his example was an inspiration. Later I saw that if Goethe had only had Whitman's pluck and had published the naughty poems and dramas that Eckermann tells us about and the true story of his life, he would have stood to the modern world as Shakespeare Und so lang du das nicht hast, Dieses: Stirb und werde Bist du nur ein truber Gast Auf der dunklen Erde. (And unless you master this— This: die and become You are but a shadowy guest On the dark earth.) stood to the feudal world, the sacred guide of men for centuries and centuries. But alas! He, too, was a snob and loved the dignities and flatteries, if not the empty ceremonials, of a provincial German court. Fancy a great man and one of the wisest of men content to sit on that old feudal wall in court attire and dangle buckled shoes and silken hose in the eyes of the passers by beneath him. Oh, Beethoven was right in his revolt when he crammed his hat down on his head as the Gross-Herzog drove by, while Goethe stood on the roadside, hat in hand, bowing. When Beethoven's brother put on his card Gutsbesitzer (land-owner), Beethoven put on his card Hirnbesitzer (brain-owner): the brainowner cannot be proud of being a landowner. Goethe had not sufficient reverence for his own genius, and though well-off, did not make the best of his astounding gifts. He should have visited England and France early in life and spent at least two years there. If Goethe had known Blake, he might have won to the heights earlier and understood that he must give his own spirit the richest nourishment; for surely Blake's first songs would have shown him that even a Goethe had worthy competitors and thereby would have rendered the tedious Wander-jahre that were not, 260 alas! spent in travel, altogether impossible; for even at sixteen Blake had reached magic of expression. In describing eventide he writes: ... Let thy west wind sleep on The lake; speak silence with thy glimmering eyes And wash the dusk with silver ... This "natural magic," as Matthew Arnold called it, is the one quality which Goethe's poetry never showed. Yet though consciously seeking the utmost self-development, how high Goethe grew even in the thin soil of Weimar. As a lyric poet he ranks with the greatest of all tune; no one has ever written a more poignant dramatic lyric than the appeal of Gretchen to the Madonna; and Mignon's confession is of the same supreme quality. Heine says that Goethe has written the best lyrics in all literature, and Heine knew. But it was Goethe the thinker who won my heart; phrases of his, couplets even, seemed to me pure divination. There is one word about him that I envy. When Emerson was confronted by his insight into botany and into biology, he found the true word for the great German: "Surely the spirit that made the world, confided itself more to this man than to any other." In sociology, too, Goethe deserves the high praise of Carlyle, and not mainly even for the discovery of the "open secret" that too great individual liberty leads inevitably to slavery (Coleridge saw as far as that and writes of those who Wear the name of Freedom Graven on a heavier chain, but because he (Goethe) was the first to draw the line between socialism and individualism and apportion to each its true place in the modern industrial world. I make no scruple of reproducing the passage here for the second time; it has never, so far as I know, been quoted by any sociologist or even noticed; and I had arrived at the same conclusion years before reading the fragment of the play Prometheus, that contains the deepest piece of practical insight to be found anywhere. "What then is yours?" Epimetheus asks; and the answer of Prometheus comes like a flash— "The sphere that my activity can fill, no more, no less." In other words, every department of industry that the individual can control should be left to him; but all those where the individual has abdicated, all joint stock and limited liability companies, should be nationalized or municipalized; in other words, should be taken over by the community to be managed in the interest of all. Joint stock company's management has every fault of state or municipal management and none of then-many virtues and 261 advantages, as Stanley Jevons proved in a memorable essay now nearly forgotten. In this magnificent apercu Goethe was a hundred years before his time, and considering that in the first years of the nineteenth century modern industry was in the cradle, so to speak, and gave scarcely a sign of its rapid and portentous development, Goethe's insight seems to me above praise. Of course he saw, too, that the land and its inherent products, such as oil and coal, should belong to the community. It should teach us all the inestimable value of the seer and thinker that Goethe, though far removed from the main current of industrial life, should have found the true solution of the social problem a full century before any of the belauded European statesmen! What a criticism of democracy in the bare fact! I owe more to Goethe than to any other teacher: Carlyle came first and then Goethe. Carlyle, who only knew two men in the world worthy of respect, the workman and the thinker, the two iron chords out of which he struck heroic melody; and Goethe, who saw even further and was the first to recognize that the artist was the greatest of the sons of men: his destiny the most arduous, prefiguring as it does, the ceaseless mother-labour of creation, the desire which is the soul of life to produce and produce, ever reaching outward and upward to a larger and more conscious vision; and when the critics complain that Goethe was too self-centred, they forget how he organized relief for the starving weavers, or worked night after night to save the huts of Thuringen peasants from fire. And his creative work is of the best: his Mephistopheles is perhaps too generalized, just as Hamlet is too individual, to rank with Don Quixote or Falstaff; but look at his women, his Gretchen, Mignon and Philina; only Shakespeare's Cleopatra and perhaps his Sonnet-Love are of the same quality. I am annoyed whenever I hear Homer, who is not as great as our Walter Scott, placed among the first of men: to me the sacred ones are Jesus, Shakespeare and Goethe; even Cervantes and Dante, though of the same high lineage, are hardly of the same stature; for Cervantes has given us, strange to say, no new type of woman, and Dante is singer rather than creators; whereas Goethe and Shakespeare are supreme singers as well as creators; and on the Head of the Crucified One climb the crowns of the world. For my own part and speaking merely personally, I would find a place for Balzac and Heine even in that high company; and who would dare to exclude Rembrandt, Beethoven and Wagner? One small point which differentiates Goethe from Shakespeare: Shakespeare followed Jesus in insisting on repentance, whereas Goethe will 262 have no sorrow for sin: what is past, is past, he says peremptorily, and tears are a waste of time: train yourself so that you will not fall twice into the same pit; and go forward boldly. The counsel is of high courage: yet sorrow, too, is the soul's purification. But what a counsellor is this Goethe: Einen Blick in's Buch hinein Und zwei in's Leben Das muss die rechte Form Dem Geiste geben. In Gottingen I learned a good many of the peculiarities of German university life and spent more time on the Pauk-boden (duelling-ground) and with the corps-students than in socialist meetings. Thanks to my excellent German, I was admitted everywhere as a German and soon discovered the cause of the extraordinary superiority of the German students in almost every department of life. I think the discovery of value because it enabled me to predict the colossal development of German industry and German wealth twenty years before it took place. The Emperor of Germany of that time, the grandfather of the present man, must have had a rarely good head or he would never have found a Bismarck and given him almost royal power. But his wisdom was shown, I am inclined to think, just as clearly in another field. Desirous above all things of strengthening his army, he called Wilhelm von Humboldt, the brother of the famous scientist, Alexander, to counsel. What should be done with the ever increasing number of students who year by year entered the army? Von Humboldt recommended that they should form a class apart as volunteers and be subjected to only one year's training instead of three. At first the old Kaiser would not hear of it: they would be inferior, he thought, to the ordinary soldier in drill and discipline. "All my soldiers must be as good as possible," was his final word. Von Humboldt assured him that the volunteers for one year would soon constitute the pick of the recruits, and he argued and pleaded for his conviction with such fervour that at length the old Emperor yielded. Von Humboldt said that a certain proportion, twenty per cent at any rate, of the volunteers would become non-commissioned officers before their year was over; and the Emperor agreed that if this happened, the experiment must be regarded as successful. Of course the first volunteers knew what was expected of them and more than fifty per cent of them gained the coveted distinction. All through the army the smartest soldiers were the one-year volunteers. It was even said later that the smartest non-commissioned officers were for the most part volunteers, but that is not generally believed, for the German is very proud of his non-commissioned officers and with good reason; for they serve 16 years with the colours, and as they are rewarded afterwards with good positions on the railways, or in the post-office or the police, and indeed may even rise to esteem as gentlemen, they form the most remarkable class in any army. I have known a good many German non-commissioned 263 officers who had learned to speak both English and French fluently and correctly while still serving. But not only was the whole spirit and mind and discipline of the army enormously vivified by the competition of the educated volunteers; but the institution exercised in turn the most wonderful effect upon the teaching and learning in the schools; and this has never been noticed so far as I know. The middle and lower-middle classes in Germany wished their sons to become one-year volunteers, and so fathers, mothers and sisters urged their sons and brothers to study and learn so as to gain this huge step in the social hierarchy. In turn this inspired the masters and professors in the Gymnasien and Real- Schulen, and these teachers took immediate advantage of the new spirit in the scholars: the standard of the final examination in the Gymnasien—das Abiturienten-Examen, or "the going-away" examination—was put higher and higher year by year till it reached the limit set by human nature. The level of this examination now is about the level of second-honours in Oxford or Cambridge, far above the graduation standard of American universities. There are perhaps a thousand such students in Great Britain year by year, against the hundred thousand in German universities, some of whom are going on to further heights. I don't for a moment mean to suggest that all these hundred thousand German students are the intellectual equals of the thousand honour men of the English universities; they may be on the same level of knowledge, but the best thousand from Oxford and Cambridge are at least as intelligent as the best thousand from German universities. Genius has little or nothing to do with learning; but what I do assert is that the number of cultivated and fairly intelligent men in Germany is ten times larger than it is in England. Many Englishmen are proud of their ignorance: how often have I heard in later life, "I never could learn languages; French, a beastly tongue to pronounce, I know a few words of, but German is absolutely beyond me: yet I know something of horses and I'm supposed to be pretty useful at banking," and so forth. I've heard an English millionaire, ennobled for his wealth, boast that he had only two books in his house: one "the guid book" meaning the Bible that he never opened, and the other his check book. One scene which will show the enormous difference between the two peoples is bitten into my memory as with vitriol. In order to get special lessons in Old German, I spent a semester in the house of a professor in a Gymnasium; he had a daughter and two sons, the younger, Wilhelm, an excellent scholar, while Heinrich, the elder, was rather dull or slow. The father was a big, powerful man with a great voice and fiercely imperious temper: a sort of Bismarck; he was writing a book on comparative grammar. Night after night, he gave me an hour's lesson; I prepared it carefully not to excite his irritability and soon we became real friends. Duty was his religion, sweetened by love of his daughter, who was preparing to be a teacher. My bedroom was on the second floor in the back; but often, after I had retired and was lying in 264 bed reading, I heard outbursts of voice from the sitting room downstairs. I soon found out that after my lesson and an hour or two given to his daughter, the professor would go through his lessons with Heinrich. One summer's night I had been reading in my room when I was startled by a terrible row. Without thinking I ran downstairs and into the sitting-room. Mary was trying to comfort her father, who was marching up and down the room with the tears pouring from his eyes: "To think of that stupid lout being a son of mine; look at him!" Heinrich, with a very red face and tousled hair, sat with his books at the table, sullen and angry: "Ei with the optative is beyond him," cried the professor, "and he's fifteen!" "Ei with the optative was beyond me at sixteen," I laughed, hoping to allay the storm. The boy threw me a grateful look, but the father would not be appeased. "His whole future depends on his work," he shouted. "He ought to be in Secunda next year and he hasn't a chance, not a chance!" "Oh, come," I said, "you know you told me once that when Heinrich learned anything, he never forgot it, whereas I forget as easily as I learn; you can't have it both ways." "That's what I tell my father," said Mary, and the storm gradually blew over. But as the time of the examination approached, similar scenes were of almost nightly occurrence; I've seen the professor working passionately with Heinrich at one and two o'clock in the morning, the whole family on pins and needles because of one boy's slowness of apprehension. The ordinary German is not by any means a genius, but as a rule he has had to learn a good deal and knows how to learn whatever he wishes; whereas the ordinary Englishman or American is almost inconceivably ignorant, and if he happens to have succeeded in life in spite of his limitations, he is all too apt to take pride in his ignorances. I know Englishmen and women who have spent twenty years in France and know nothing of French beyond a few ordinary phrases. It must be admitted that the Englishman is far worse than the American in this respect; the American is ashamed of ignorance. In mental things the German is, so to speak, a trained athlete in comparison with an Englishman, and as soon as he comes into competition with him, he is conscious of his superiority and naturally loves to prove and display it. Time and again towards the end of the nineteenth century, English manufacturers grieving over the loss of the South American markets have shown me letters in Spanish and Portuguese written by German "drummers" that they could not get equalled by any English agents: "We are beaten by their knowledge," was the true summing up and plaint. And in the first ten years of the twentieth century the German's pride in his unhoped-for quick success in 265 commerce and industry intensified his efforts, and at the same time his contempt of his easily beaten rivals. In the spacious days of Elizabeth, Englishmen and Englishwomen too of the best class were eager to learn and prized learning perhaps above its value; the Queen herself knew four or five languages fairly well, better than any English sovereign since. One other fact that an Englishman should always keep before him: the population of Great Britain at the end of the sixteenth century was roughly five millions; at the end of the nineteenth it was some forty-five millions, or nine times as many; yet three-fourths of all the schools today in England for higher education were there in the days of Elizabeth. That fact and all it involves explains to me the efflorescence of genius in the earlier, greater age: the population has grown nine-fold, the educated class had not doubled its numbers, and certainly has not grown in appreciation or understanding of genius. I am the more inclined to preach from this text because it suggests the true meaning of the World War, which England has steadily refused to learn. When from 1900 to 1910 she saw herself overtaken by Germany, not only in the production of steel, but also of iron and coal, England ought to have learned what her contempt of learning and love of sport were costing her, and have put her house in order in the high sense of the word. For a hundred years now she has been sending some of her ablest sons to govern India. She ought to have learned from Machiavelli that every possession of the Romans not colonized by Latins was a source of weakness in time of war. England ought to withdraw from India and Egypt as soon as possible and concentrate all her forces on developing her own colonies, who will always trade with her for sentimental reasons and by compulsion of habit. The Canadian buys six times as much of English goods as the American, and the Australian spends twenty times more on English products than on German, in spite of the superior qualities of the German output. The worst of it is that the English guides and leaders do not even yet grasp the truth. But at the time the growth of Germany and its eager intellectual life only confirmed me in the belief that by nationalizing the land and socializing the chief industries such as railways, gas and water companies, which are too big for the individual to manage, one could not only lift the mass of the English people to a far higher level, but at the same time intensify their working power. It would surely be wise to double the wages of the workman when you could thereby increase the productivity of his labour. Moreover the nationalization of the railways, gas, water and mining companies would give five millions of men and women steady and secure employment and sufficient wages to ensure decent conditions of life; five millions of workmen more could be employed on the land in life-leases, and in this way Great Britain might be made self-supporting and her power and wealth enormously increased. 266 I tell all this because I resolved to make myself a social reformer and began to practice extempore speaking for at least half an hour daily. From Goettingen after three semesters I went to Berlin; it was tune; I needed the stimulus of the theatre and galleries of art and the pulsing life of a great city. But there was something provincial in Berlin; I called it a Welt-dorf, a world-village; yet I learned a good deal there: I heard Bismarck speak several times and carried away deathless memories of him as an authentic great man. In fact, I came to see that if he had not been born a Junker in a privileged position and had not become a corps-student to boot, he might have been as great a social reformer as Carlyle himself. As it was, he made Germany almost a model state. He was accused in the Reichstag one day by a socialist of having learned a good deal from Lassalle; he stalked forth at once and annihilated his critic by declaring that he would think very little of anyone who had had the privilege of knowing that extraordinary man and had not learned from him. It was Bismarck, I believe, who was responsible for the first steps towards socializing German industries; Bismarck who established the land-banks to lend money on reasonable terms to the farmers; Bismarck too who dared first to nationalize some German railways and municipalize gas and water companies; and provide for the extension by the state of the canal system. Under his beneficent despotism, too, the municipalities of Germany became instruments of progress; slums disappeared from Berlin and the housing of the poor excited the admiration of even casual foreign visitors; his bureausbureaus, providing suitable employment, were copied timidly forty years later in London. It is not too much to say that he practically eradicated poverty in Germany. The great minister himself anticipated that his attempts to lift the lowest class to a decent level would hem industrial progress and make it more difficult for the captains of industry to amass riches, but in this he was completely mistaken. He had given help and hope to the very poor, and this stimulus to the most numerous class vivified the industry of the whole nation; the productivity of bureaus increased enormously: German workmen became the most efficient in the world, and in the decade before the great war, the chief industries of steel and iron, which twenty years before were not half so productive as those of Great Britain, became three and four fold more productive, and showing larger profits, made competition practically impossible. The vivifying impulse reached even to the shipping, and while it became necessary for the British government to help finance the Cunard line, the Hamburg-America became the chief steamship line of the world and made profits that turned English shippers green with envy: immigration into Germany reached a million a year, exceeding even that into the United States. And this astounding development of industry and wealth was not due to natural advantages, as in the United States, but simply to wise, humane government and to better schooling. Every officer on a German liner spoke at 267 least French and English as well as German, whereas not one English or French officer in a hundred understood any language save his own. Looking over the unparalleled growth of the country and its prodigious productivity and wealth, it is hardly to be wondered at that the ruler ascribed the astonishing prosperity to his own wisdom and foresight. It really appeared that Germany in a single generation had sprung from the position of a second rate power to the headship of the modern world. And already in the early eighties, the future development could be foreseen. I spent one month of my holidays in Dusseldorf and Essen and was struck on all hands by the trained and cultured intelligence of the directors and foremen of the chief industries. The bureaus saving appliances alone reminded me of the best industries in the United States; but here there was a far wider and yet a specialized intelligence. Someday soon the whole story will be told properly, but even now in 1924 it's clear that the rival nations, instead of following Germany and bettering Bismarck's example, are resolved on degrading, dismembering and punishing her. It makes one almost despair of humanity. After Goettingen and Berlin, I went to Munich, drawn by the theatre and Opera-House, by Ernst Possart, the greatest Shylock I ever saw and assuredly the best-graced, all-round actor, except the elder Coquelin, who ruled the stage and was perfection perfected. And the music at Munich was as good as the acting: Heinrich Vogl and his wife were both excellent interpreters and through them, as I have told, I came to know Richard Wagner. In my fourth volume of Contemporary Portraits I've done my best to picture him in his habit as he lived; but I left out half-consciously two or three features which it seemed to me hardly right to publish just when I had learned in 1922 that Cosima Wagner was still alive. Here I may be franker. In my "portrait" I left it half in doubt as to the person who was the Isolde, or inspiring soul, of that wonderful duo of love which is the second act of Tristan. Of course there is no doubt whatever that Mathilde von Wesendonck was Wagner's Isolde; he wrote it to her in so many words: "Throughout eternity I shall owe it to you that I was able to create Tristan." In her widowhood Mathilde retired to Traunblick near Traunsee in the Bavarian Alps, and I might have seen her there in the wonderful summer of 1880 which I spent in Salzburg; but hardly anyone knew her importance in Wagner's life till after her death in 1902, when she left instructions to publish the 150 letters he had written her and the famous journal in the form of letters to her, which he wrote in Venice immediately after then-separation. He found a great word for her. "Your caresses crown my life," he wrote. "They are the joy-roses of love that flower my crown of thorns;" and Mathilde deserved even this praise: she was, as he said, always kind and wise, and above even her lover in living always on the heights. He complained one day to her that Liszt, his best friend, did not fully understand him. "There could be no ideal friendship," he added, "between men." At once she recalled him to his better self: "After all, Liszt is the one man most nearly on your level. Don't allow yourself to underrate him. I know a great phrase he once used about 268 you: 'I esteem men according to their treatment of Wagner.' What more could you want?" And her charming poetic word for their days of loving intimacy: "The heart-Sundays of my life." If ever a man was blest in his passions, it was Richard Wagner. And yet here, too, when at his best he shows the yellow streak. In 1865, six years after the parting with Mathilde, he allowed Madame von Bulow to write—it is true: "In the name of his Majesty, the King of Bavaria," to Mathilde, to ask her for a portfolio of articles and sketches which Wagner in the days of their intimacy had confided to her keeping. Naturally Mathilde wrote in reply directly to Wagner, giving him a list of everything in the portfolio, and adding finely: "I pray you to tell me what manuscripts you want and whether you wish me to send them?" In the cult of love women are nearly always nobler and finer than the best of men: Wagner's answer that the King wanted to publish the things did not excuse him for having allowed Cosima to crow over her great rival. But in publishing Wagner's letters to her and his Venice journal, Mathilde got even with Cosima; yet again Cosima was not to be outdone. She had left Von Bulow for Wagner, preferring, as someone said, "God to his Prophet"; but she, too, could reach the heights. Meeting Von Bulow years later, who said to her by way of reconciliation, "After all I forgive you," she replied finely; "it isn't a question of forgiveness, but one of understanding." And now, in face of the revelation of 1902 of Wagner's letters to Mathilde, she first wrote saying that "the Master desired these sheets to be destroyed" (der Meister wunschte beiliegende Blatter vernichtet); but when she found that they were sure to be published in spite of her opposition, she not only consented graciously to their publication in German, but added fourteen letters from Mathilde von Wesendonck, which she had found among Wagner's papers. The whole story, I think, is of curious human interest. Cosima was Wagner's equal and deserved all his praise of her as "intellectually superior even to Liszt"; but whoever studies Wagner's life will, I think, admit that it was Mathilde who wove the first joy-roses in his crown of thorns, and she it was who helped him to his supreme achievement. The Ring and Parsifal, he used to contend later, constituted his greatest message; and Cosima was the true partner of his soul who gave him happiness and golden days; but there can be no doubt that Mathilde was the Rachel of his prime and the inspiration of all his noblest, artistic masterpieces. Years later, he wrote the whole truth. "It is quite clear to me that I shall never again invent anything new. With Mathilde my life came to flower and left in me such a wealth of ideas that I have since had merely to return to the treasure-house and pick whatever I wish to develop ... She is and remains my first and only love; with her I reached the zenith: those divine years hold all the sweetness of my life." She was the inspiring genius, not only of Tristan but of the Meistersinger, and it would not be difficult to prove that the finest moment in Parsifal was due to Wagner's intercourse with her. She came at 269 the right time in his life. After all, he was well over fifty before Cosima joined him. Wagner's life rests on three persons: on Mathilde von Wesendonck, King Ludwig and on Cosima Liszt. In my "portrait" I said little of Cosima, but she was undoubtedly the chief person in his later life. His life with her in Tribschen from 1866 to 1872 was not only the happiest period of his existence but highly productive. The birth of the son, whom he boldly christened "Siegfried" (den ich kuhn 'Siegfried' nennen konnte) was to him a consecration. Instead of living with a woman like his wife, who continually urged him to compromise with all conventions because she didn't believe in him and was incapable of appraising his genius at its true worth, he had now a better head and completer understanding than even Liszt's— "Eine unerhort seltsam begabte Frau! Liszts wunderbares Ebenbild nur intellektuel uber ihm stehend" (a singularly gifted woman; Liszt over again though intellectually his superior)—to encourage and sustain him. In his delight, Wagner worked his hardest. For years he wrote from eight in the morning till five in the afternoon. In these happy fruitful years in Tribschen he completed the Meistersinger, perhaps his most characteristic work! He finished Siegfried also and composed nearly all the Gotterdammerung. Then, too, he wrote his best work, his Beethoven. In Tribschen he even began to publish the final edition of his works, and at length came the victory of 1870 to add a sort of consecration to his happiness. At long last the Germany he loved had come to honour and glory among men; now he too would live long and make the German stage worthy of the German people. He was really as affectionate as he was passionate, and his whole nature expanded in this atmosphere of well-being, encouragement and reverence. He took on the tone and manner of a great personage; he could not brook contradiction or criticism, not even from a Nietzsche, and this attitude brought with it blunders. If we mortals don't keep our eyes on the earth, we are apt to stumble. Talking one day about der Fliegende Hollander, he said he had heard the story from a sailor on his memorable voyage from Riga to London thirty-five years before. I could not help interrupting: "I thought you took the splendid redemption of the hero by love from Heine, Master?" "It was all told me by a sailor," he repeated. "Heine took the salvation of the hero by love from a Dutch theatre piece." But there is no such Dutch theatre piece. It was excusable in Wagner, you may say, to have been misled in this instance; he took the story from Heine, but he believed that Heine himself had borrowed it. But there is no such explanation possible in regard to the legend of Tannhauser. Wagner maintained always that he had taken the story from a simple Volkslegent (aus dem Volksbuch und dem schlichten Tannhauserlied); but there is no such Volksbuch, no such legend. It's all from Heine. And when one day I 270 talked with passionate admiration of Heine and placed him with Goethe far above Schiller, Wagner wouldn't have it. "Sie schwarmen—You are misled by admiration," he said. "Heine was only a simple lyric poet (ein Lyriker), but Schiller was a great dramatic genius." He owed to Heine's genius the finest things in all the German legends which he set to music, and I think in the future his denial of Heine, though little known now, will be about the greatest blot on Wagner's character, which in many respects was noble. It shows him so much smaller, less sincere even than Beethoven, and with none of that magic of loving-comprehension which our Shakespeare lavished even on his rival Chapman. That Wagner could pretend elaborately in such a case always seems to me to relegate him to a place below the very highest. Why will the men of genius who illumine our life keep such spots to mar their radiance? 271 CHAPTER V. ATHENS AND THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE I SHALL NEVER be able to describe natural beauty,
though I know scenes so 272 painfully conscious that I had no writing talent, always used to repeat what Balzac said of himself: "sans genie je suis flambe" (if I haven't genius I have nothing). When I resolved to go to Greece from Munich I felt I had been studying languages long enough, and the great classic writers and heroes did not impress me much. Except Socrates, none of them came near my ideal. Sophocles, I saw, repeated himself; his Electro was a bad copy of his Antigone and he ended his Ajax with a political pamphlet in favour of Athens; he was a master of language and not of life or art, and I had lost time over him. Then there was no Roman at all except Tacitus and Catullus, the poet lover of Clodia-Lesbia, and of course Caesar, who was almost the ideal of the writer and man of action. My four years of hard study had not brought me much; the couple of months with Skobelef were richer in food for the spirit, for they strengthened my ideal of vigorous life lived in contempt of conventions. I sent on my luggage and went through the mountains on foot to Innsbruck and thence took train to Venice. It was an astonishing experience. For the first time I came to see the value of the abnormal: water-streets gave the place unique distinction; the Bridge of Sighs was more memorable than any number of Brooklyn Bridges or even Waterloo Bridges; Marlowe's great phrase came back to me often: "I am myself alone!" Singularity is distinction. I did a fortnight's hard work at Italian and could make myself understood and understand everything said to me, but when I went to the people's theatre where the Venetian dialect was spoken, I could not understand it at all and at first felt out of it; yet I had been able to understand everything in the Munchener Volkstheater! In a week or so, however, after reading I promessi Sposi and a good deal of Dante, I became able to follow the Venetian slang and in a low cabaret caught glimpses of common Venetian life. Everywhere the working classes are the most idiosyncratic and consequently the best worth knowing. But I was longing for Greece, so I took a Florio boat and started. There was a Signer Florio on board and we became friends; he brought out some wonderful Marsala and taught me that there was at least one Italian wine worth drinking. From Florio I heard a good deal of Sicily and resolved on my way back to stop in Palermo or Syracuse to study it. On the ship was a little lame Greek child; the mother was taking it back to Athens to be operated on; she seemed very despondent; I found out it was because the father had gone to the States and had not written since and the mother had not money enough for the operation. How much would it cost? Five hundred drachmae: as luck would have it, I had just a little over that sum about me. I gave it to the mother and told her to cheer up. She cried a great deal and kissed my hand. I don't know why I gave the money; it left me short; I couldn't drink much wine, had to make a bottle last two days. At the end of the voyage my bill for extras and tips took everything I had, and when we reached the Piraeus I found I had no money to pay the boatmen for taking me and my luggage to the railway station. How I cursed my foolish liberality. 273 What business had I to be generous? That evening I went into the cabin and studied the passengers; I picked out a youngish man; he looked like a Jew but his nose was straight. I went up to him, told him of my dilemma, and asked him to lend me some money. He smiled, took out his pocket-book, and showed me notes of five hundred and a thousand drachmae. "May I take this?" I asked, and touched a thousand drachmae note. "Certainly," he said, "with pleasure." "Give me your card, please," I went on, "and in a week, as soon as I can get money from London, I'll repay you; I'm going to the Hotel Grand Bretagne. It's good, isn't it?" "It's supposed to be," he rejoined, "for the rich English all go there, but I'd prefer the Hotel d'Athenes." "I'll take your tip," I said, and shook hands. That night I slept in a room looking across the Palace-Square to the Acropolis. The gentleman who lent me the money was a Mr. Constantino, the owner, if I remember rightly, of the gas-works in the Piraeus. When I wrote to my London bank for money, they sent it me on condition I could get myself identified. That condition took me to the British Embassy and made me acquainted with the First Secretary Raikes, who was kind enough to identify me without further to do. I gave a dinner to Constantine and had him meet Raikes and other friends of mine and repaid him the money with a thousand thanks. Constantine and I remained friends for many a year. In the Hotel d'Athenes a number of students used to meet once a week in the evening and discuss everything connected with the Greek language, literature, art and life. The students were mostly men of a good deal of capacity pursuing postgraduate courses. They came from the Italian school, the French school and the German school, but no English or Americans fraternized with us, though, I remember, Raikes visited us about once a month: he was not only chief attaché or something more in the English Embassy, but also the brother of the postmaster general. We called him "Long Raikes" because he was about six feet five. I used to think that Raikes would do something memorable in life, for he had a curiously fair mind, though it was not what you would call dynamic. There was the German Lolling too, who later became the head of the Archaeological Institute in Berlin, if I am not mistaken, and who wrote the famous Baedeker guide-book to Greece. Then there was an Italian, a sort of assistant curator of the Pitti Gallery, in Florence, and an astonishing Frenchman, a man of perhaps forty or forty-five, with a fine presence and magnificent head, who spoke almost every European language excellently and with a perfect accent—the only Frenchman I ever saw, indeed, the only foreigner who spoke English so that you could not tell he was not an Englishman. I have forgotten his name, but we called him the Baron. 274 I remember one evening Raikes brought in Mr. Bryce, afterwards Lord Bryce, who was then about to make his first tour through Greece. A couple of Greek professors from the university used to come pretty regularly; one of them I christened Plato and the nickname stuck. I have forgotten his real name; he had charming manners and was extraordinarily intelligent and well-read in all sorts of out-of-the-way subjects. For instance, he knew South Africa and especially Cape Colony almost as well as I did, though he had never set foot in the country. I came into the room rather late one evening and was told by the chairman, Lolling, that they had had an interesting discussion on various European languages and had settled some points to their entire satisfaction. Everyone agreed, he said, that Italian was the most musical language, Spanish having been ruled out because of its harsh gutturals. German, it was decided, was the best instrument for abstract thought, and indeed the largest vehicle in a general way. French was considered to be the best language for diplomacy, being very precise and simple and having an extensive popularity from one end of Christendom to the other. Such were some of the general conclusions. "All very interesting," I said, "but where on earth do you put English?" "English," the German replied, "is very simple and logical, of course, but almost without grammatical construction or any rules of pronunciation. Therefore its claims have not been put forward very strongly, but we shall be glad to hear you on this subject, if you wish to say anything." Of course I took the bull by the horns at once and began by saying it would be easy to prove that English was the most musical of all the languages mentioned, at which there was a shout of amused laughter. Signor Manzoni, the Italian, wanted to know whether I was serious; he thought it would be easy to demonstrate that English was the most cacophonous of European tongues. "Let me first make my point," I interjected. "Why do you say Italian is the most musical of all languages?" "Because of our beautiful open vowel sounds," he replied, "and we have no harsh gutturals or sibilants." "But English has got your five pure vowel sounds," I replied, "and many more; English has six or seven different sounds for o and four or five different sounds for a; in fact, we have about twenty vowel sounds to your five. Is it really your contention that the fewer the instruments in an orchestra, the more divine is the music?" "I see your point," said Manzoni. "I didn't think of it before. It is a good point, but you must admit that your English s's are even a greater disqualification than the German gutturals." 275 "We avoid the sibilants," I replied, "as much as we can, though I do admit that the s is a danger in English, just as the guttural is in German; but the point is, you must admit, that we have a larger orchestra of vowel sounds than any other European language, and you must also admit that we have had the greatest poets in the world to use them. You can hardly then question the result as to the best music, for I know you would admit at once that the most complex music is pretty sure to be the finest." "I seize your argument," he replied thoughtfully. "It would have been truer to say that you English have the finest orchestra and we Italians the finest string quintet in the world." "Let us leave it at that," I exclaimed, laughing. "But if you care for my opinion, I can assure you that there are cadences in English verse so subtle and so musical that I put it above all other verse in the world, above even the best of Goethe. Think of the over-praised Greek, of Euripides, for example, who puts the caesura invariably in the second foot: his music is as mechanical as a treadmill. And no one tells you of that; all praise him, scholars and poets alike: And Euripides, the human, With his droppings of warm tears And his touches of things common Till they rise to touch the spheres. "Besides, this matter is being decided in another way. A century ago only about fifteen millions of people spoke English; now nearly two hundred millions of the most rapidly increasing population in the world speak English; in another century there will be four or five hundred millions speaking it; the only competitor we have really is Russian, and Russian will be in a secondary place as soon as Australia and the great plateau of Central Africa are filled with English-speaking people. The verdict of humanity will be in favour of English as the language of the most progressive and most numerous people in the world. And I am inclined to believe that this judgment by results is pretty good judgment." (A year or so later I remember Turgenev saying once that he infinitely preferred Russian to German or to French, though he spoke both languages excellently. He insisted that Russian was far richer, a far finer instrument than German, and, "it is already much more widely spread," was his final argument.) "The survival," said the Baron, "may be of the fittest, but the fittest is not always the best or highest. In spite of your arguments, and they are excellent, I regard the conclusions come to before you renewed the discussion as nearer the truth in many essentials. I still think Italian more musical than English: you cannot believe that your English "critcher" is as musical as creatura (he pronounced it in four syllables); and French is a better language for diplomacy than English, with finer shades of courtesy, more exact shades, I mean, of amiable converse. We French have fifty different ways of ending 276 our letters; contrast them with 'Yours sincerely,' 'Yours truly,' 'Yours faithfully.' It seems to me that in all matters of politeness we have the full orchestra and you have nothing but the banjo, the cymbals and the drum!" "The question," I replied, "is surely susceptible of proof. Give me any of the expressions with which you close your letters and I will undertake to render them into English without difficulty, giving the very shade of meaning you wish to have conveyed." "Pardon," he retorted, "but you would not even be able to translate amities! The shade between love and friendship would slip through the large English mesh and be lost." "We can say, 'your loving friend,'" I said, "or, 'your friend and lover,' or 'your affectionate friend,' the matter is perfectly simple." The discussion became general for a few minutes. They all gave me phrases they thought would be difficult to translate into English, but they were all easily convertible, and I resumed the discussion by saying: "Let me give one English instance and see how you would translate it. I shall not excogitate a phrase out of my inner consciousness; I will simply give a well-known passage of Ruskin's in which he praises Venetian painters and ask you to translate it. 'Venice taught these men,' he said, 'to love another style of beauty; broadchested and level-browed like her horizons; thighed and shouldered like her billows; footed like her stealing foam; bathed in clouds of golden hair like her sunset.' "Now, Baron, don't be in a hurry to translate into French 'thighed and shouldered like her billows' or 'footed like her stealing foam.' "I think you will find it hard to translate that sentence into even a page of any modern language, and in translating it I am sure you will lose the poetry of it, the beauty of it, or at least some part of the poetry and beauty; whereas you admit that I have been able to translate your French and German examples into their equivalent English pretty easily." "Tell us," said Lolling, "what you really thing about the English language." Flattered by the appeal, I did my best to sum up like a judge. "It was Max Muller," I said, "or one of the German philologists—it may have been Karl Werner—who put me on the track by saying that English had more names of things, was richer in substantives than any other language, the observant habit of the people, the sense of the facts of life being very strong in Englishmen. 277 "English has shed almost all grammatical forms, it seems to me, in the struggle for existence. It is more simple, more logical than any other modern language. It can be used more easily by uneducated people than any other tongue, more easily even than French, and that quality gives it its fitness for spreading over the world. Its real weakness in sound is, as the Baron knows, the habit of accenting the first syllable, which tends to shorten all words, and the sibilant, which should be avoided as far as possible. The worst weakness of English in structure was, strange to say, in a people so given to action, its paucity of verbs. "But here the poets have come to the rescue and have turned the present participles into verbs, as in the passage I quoted from Ruskin; and they have also managed to turn nouns into verbs: 'She cupped her face with her hand'; 'he bottled up his wrath'; 'he legged it away.' These are just instances to show how the richness of English nouns is converted into the astonishing, unexpected richness of English in painting verbs. All modern European languages have painting adjectives and epithets at hand with all the colours of the palette; but we are alone in being able to use present participles that are half-adjectives and half-verbs, and to convert even nouns into verbs, and so lend both pictorial beauty and speed to the tongue almost at will. "Though I have great liking for classic Greek, the Greek of Plato and Sophocles, I still think the language of Shakespeare and Keats the most beautiful in the world. That is why I resent the way it is prostituted and degraded by the users. The aristocracy of England has degraded the tongue into a few shibboleths of snobbery. It's 'awfully' this and 'awfully' that; she is a 'high-stepper', and 'high-stepper' becomes a portmanteau adjective of the next generation of snobs who would fence themselves away from the middle classes, not by excellence of speech, but by idiotic shibboleths. The English aristocrat degrades his language as much as the corner-boy whose one adjective is 'bloody.' "Oh! That English aristocracy: how it dwarfs the ideal! It knows a good deal about outward things, about the body and men's dress and social observances and trivial courtesies; but alas, it knows very little about the mind, and nothing about the soul—nothing. What aristocrat in England ever thought of training his faculties of thought, as lots of schoolboys train their muscles, to almost perfect vigour and beauty, knowing instinctively that no muscle must be overdeveloped, but all should be kept in perfect harmony. Yet even here the Hindu Yogi knows more about the muscles of the heart and stomach and intestines, the most important parts of the body. "No Englishman thinks it disgraceful today to be completely ignorant of German, French, Italian, and Russian and the special achievements of these peoples in thought and art and literature—" "True, true," exclaimed the Baron, interrupting me, "and it needs saying; but what do you mean by the 'soul' exactly, and how can one train that? 278 "I know very little about it myself, I must confess," I replied, "but I got just a whiff of it as I came through India, and I have always promised myself to go back and spend six months or a year in assimilating the wisdom of the East. Gautama Buddha always impresses me as one of the noblest of men, and where a single tree grows to the sky, the soil and climate, too, must be worth studying. But we've gone far afield and gotten far away from our theme." "Let me just say one word," the Baron broke in. "I think France in almost every way finer than England, nearer the ideal. Every Frenchman of any intelligence loves the things of the mind—art and literature—and tries to speak French as purely and as well as possible, whereas in England there is no class that seems to care for the finest heritage of the race in the same way. And what airs the English aristocrat gives himself. He's hardly human. Have you noticed that the only people who don't come to our meetings are the English students? And yet they need cosmopolitan education more than any other race." Athens holds many of the deathless memories of my life. I was looking at the figures on the parapet of the Temple to the Wingless Victory one day when I suddenly noticed that the dress was drawn tight about the breast just to outline the exquisite beauty of the curve—sheer sensuality in the artist. Thirty years later I asked Rodin what he thought, and he declared that the Greek gods of the Parthenon are as undisguisedly sensual as any figures in plastic art. I met yet another person in this life at the Hotel d'Athenes who deserves perhaps to be remembered. One day a tall good-looking Englishman was introduced to me by the manager of the hotel. "This is Major Geary, Mr. Harris. I've told the Major," he went on, "that you know more about Athens, and indeed about all Greece, than any one of my acquaintances, and he wishes to ask you some questions." "I'll be glad to answer so far as I can," I said, for Major Geary was goodlooking and evidently of good class, tall and of course well-set-up, tho' he told me he had left the Royal Artillery some years before and was now in Armstrong's. "The fact is," he began, "I've been sent out to sell some of our guns, and I want to ask someone who knows how I should set to work. A man at our Embassy advised me to go the King first." "That would do you no good," I replied. "Do you know Tricoupis, the Prime Minister? You can surely get a letter to him and that will be the best door to his confidence." Geary thanked me and followed my advice; a little later we lunched together and I found him an admirable host with, strange to say, a rare knowledge of English poetry. Shakespeare he knew very little about, but a 279 great part of English lyric poetry was at his finger's ends, and he showed astonishing taste and knowledge. Geary's delight in poetry drew us together, and one morning he asked me to go with him to meet Tricoupis and some of the ministers and support the Armstrong proposition. Briefly, it was that the English firm would give a much larger and longer credit than either Krupp or Creusot would give. I went with him the more willingly, for I was eager to meet Tricoupis, who had written in a masterly way the History of the Revolution. But at the meeting Tricoupis was all business and I could get no private or confidential speech with him. Towards the end of the sitting, Geary pulled out a magnificent gold watch which had been given to him by his comrades when he left the Royal Artillery; it was engraved, if I remember rightly, with the arms of the artillery in jewels. As Tricoupis would not force a decision on his colleagues, he was the more courteous to Geary and expressed his admiration of the watch. Geary at once took it off the chain and showed it to him; the next man leaned forward to look, and the watch passed down the table, while Tricoupis assured Major Geary that his proposal would be seriously considered and answered within a week or so. As he rose, Geary exclaimed, smiling, "And my watch!" But the watch was not forthcoming and no one seemed to know what had become of it. Tricoupis frowned, evidently disgusted. "Gentlemen," he said, at length, "if Major Geary's watch is not forthcoming, I'll get the police in and have us all searched." "No, no!" Geary broke in, knowing that the commission he hoped to get from selling cannons was much more important than the watch. "I'd rather lose the watch; please, no police among gentlemen and in your house; I couldn't hear of it!" "It's very kind of you," responded Tricoupis. "I'm sure the watch was pocketed by mistake and now the man who took it is ashamed to give it up publicly; suppose we put out the lights, and as my colleagues file out the man who has the watch can slip it on that little table by the door, where the buhl clock now stands, and no one will be any the wiser." "First rate," cried Geary. "It takes genius," and he bowed to the Premier, "to hit on so admirable a solution." The lights were all turned out and the ministers filed out of the room in almost complete silence. We heard them in the hall and then the house-door closed. "Now," said Tricoupis, "we'll find your watch, Major," and he turned up the gas; but there was no watch on the table and—the buhl clock too had disappeared. 280 A week later, I believe, the watch was found through Tricoupis' efforts and returned to the Major, but I don't think Geary brought off Armstrong's deal. I tell the story because it is eminently characteristic of the Greece I knew and loved, loved in spite of its poverty, which was the cause of the somewhat low business morality of an exceedingly intelligent people. When I knew Athens thoroughly and could speak modern Greek fluently I went with some friends, a German student and an Italian, on foot through Greece. We went to Thebes and Delphi and climbed Parnassus, and finally I went on by myself to Janina; and then returning visited Corinth, Sparta and Mycenae, where I was lucky enough to be among the first to see the astounding head of the Hermes of Praxiteles, surely the most beautiful face in plastic art, for no Venus, whether of Melos or Cnidos, possesses his superb intellectual appeal. It is curious that though love is the woman's province and love is the deepest emotion in life, yet the profoundest expressions, even of love, are not hers. And yet I cannot believe that she is man's inferior, and surely she is sufficiently articulate! It's a mystery for the future to solve, or some wiser man than I am. 281 CHAPTER VI. LOVE IN ATHENS; AND "THE SACRED BAND" I HAD BEEN IN the Hotel d'Athenes a week or so when
I noticed a pretty 282 away the sofa, which on my side barred her door. I tried the lock but found it closed on her side, worse luck! As I lay in bed that night about eleven o'clock, I heard and saw the handle of the door move. At once I blew out the light, but the blinds were not drawn and the room was alight with moonshine. "May I come in?" she asked. "May you?" I was out of bed in a jiffy and had taken her adorable soft round form in my arms. "You darling sweet," I cried, and lifted her into my bed. She had dropped her dressing-gown, had only a nightie on, and in one moment my hands were all over her lovely body. The next moment I was with her in bed and on her, but she moved aside and away from me. "No, let's talk," she said. I began kissing her, but acquiesced, "Let's talk." To my amazement, she began: "Have you read Zola's latest book, Nana?" "Yes," I replied. "Well," she said, "you know what the girl did to Nana?" "Yes," I replied, with sinking heart. "Well," she went on, "why not do that to me? I'm desperately afraid of getting a child; you would be too in my place; why not love each other without fear?" A moment's thought told me that all roads lead to Rome and so I assented and soon I slipped down between her legs. "Tell me please how to give you most pleasure," I said, and gently I opened the lips of her sex and put my lips on it and my tongue against her clitoris. There was nothing repulsive in it; it was another and more sensitive mouth. Hardly had I kissed it twice when she slid lower down in the bed with a sigh, whispering, "That's it; that's heavenly!" Thus encouraged I naturally continued: soon her little lump swelled out so that I could take it in my lips and each time I sucked it, her body moved convulsively, and soon she opened her legs further and drew them up to let me in to the uttermost. Now I varied the movement by tonguing the rest of her sex and thrusting my tongue into her as far as possible; her movements quickened and her breathing grew more and more spasmodic, and when I went back to the clitoris again and took it in my lips and sucked it while pushing my forefinger back and forth into her sex, her movements became wilder and she began suddenly to cry in French, "Oh, c'est fou! Oh, c'est fou! Oh! Oh!" And suddenly she lifted me up, took my head in both her hands, and crushed my mouth with hers, as if she wanted to hurt me. The next moment my head was between her legs again and the game went on. Little by little I felt that my finger rubbing the top of her sex while I tongued her clitoris gave her the most pleasure, and after another ten minutes of this delightful practice she cried: "Frank, Frank, stop! Kiss me! Stop and kiss me, I can't stand any more, I am rigid with passion and want to bite or pinch you." 283 Naturally I did as I was told and her body melted itself against mine while our lips met. "You dear," she said, "I love you so, and oh how wonderfully you kiss." "You've taught me," I said. "I'm your pupil." While we were together my sex was against hers and seeking an entry; each time it pushed in, she drew away; at length she said: "I'd love to give myself to you, dear, but I'm frightened." "You need not be," I assured her. "If you let me enter, I'll withdraw before my seed comes and there'll be no danger." But do what I would, say what I would, that first night she would not yield to me in the usual way. I knew enough about women to know that the more I restrained myself and left her to take the initiative, the greater would be my reward. A few days later I took her up Mount Lycabettus and showed her "all the kingdoms of the spirit," as I used to call Athens and the surroundings. She wanted to know about ancient Greek literature. "Was it better than modern French literature?" "Yes and no; it was altogether different." She confessed she could not understand Homer, but when I recited choruses from the Oedipus Rex, she understood them; and the great oath in Demosthenes' speech, "Not by those who first faced death at Marathon" — and the noble summing up brought tears to her eyes—"Now by your judgment you will either drive our accusers out over land and over sea, houseless and homeless, or you will give to us a sure release from all danger in the peace of the eternal silence." On hearing this, she kissed me of her own accord. As we were walking that afternoon down the long slope of Lycabettus, "You don't want me any more?" she said, suddenly. "Men are such selfish creatures; if you don't do all they want at once, they draw away." "You don't believe a word of that," I interrupted. "When have I drawn away? I'm awaiting your good pleasure. I didn't want to bother you perpetually, that's all. If you could see me watching the handle of your door every night-" "Some night soon it will turn," she said, and slipped her hand through my arm. "I don't like to decide important things when I am all a quiver with feeling, but I've thought over all you said and I want to believe you, to trust you— see?" And her eyes were one promise. Luckily, when the handle of her door did turn, I was on the watch and took her in my arms before she had crossed the threshold, and the love-game she had taught me went on for a long time. At length wearied and all dissolved in 284 sensation, she lay in my arms and my sex throbbing hot was against hers, seeking, seeking its sheath. Luckily I did not force matters but let the contact plead for me. At length she whispered, "I hate to deny you; will you do what you promised?" "Surely," I said. "And there's no danger?" "None," I replied. "I give you my word of honour," and the next moment she relaxed in my arms and let me have my will. Slowly I penetrated, bit by bit, and she leaned to me with greedy mouth, kissing me. It was divine, but oh, so brief: a few thrusts and I was compelled to withdraw to keep my word. "Oh, it was heavenly," she sighed as I took up my spurting semen on my handkerchief, "but I like your mouth best: why is that? Your tongue excites me terribly: why?" she asked, and then, "Let's talk!" But I said, "No dear! let's begin. Now there's no risk; I can go with you as much as we like without danger. I'll explain it to you afterwards, but take my word and let's enjoy ourselves." The next moment I was in her again and the great game went on with renewed vigour. Again and again she came to an ecstasy and at length as I mounted high up so as to excite her more, she suddenly cried out: "Oh, oh, que c'est fou, fou, fou," and she bit my shoulder and then burst into tears. Naturally I took her in my arms and began to kiss her; our first great loveduet was over. From that night on she had no secrets from me, no reticences, and bit by bit she taught me all she felt in the delirium of love: she told me she could not tell which gave her most pleasure, but I soon learned that she preferred me to begin by kissing her sex for ten or fifteen minutes and then to complete the orgasm with my sex used rather violently. All the English schoolboy stories of some fancied resemblance between the mouth and the sex of the woman, and the nose and sex of the man, I found invariably false. Eirene had rather a large mouth and a very small pretty sex, whereas the girl with the largest sex and thickest lips I ever met had a small thin mouth. Similarly with the man. I'm sure there's no relation whatever between the sex and the feature of the face. An exquisite mistress, Eirene, with a girl's body, small, round breasts, and a mouth I never grew tired of. Often afterwards, instead of walks, we adjourned to my room and spent the afternoon in love's games. Sometimes her mother came to her door and she would laugh and hug me; once or twice her brother came to mine, but we lay in each other's arms and let the foolish outside world knock. But we always practiced the game she had been the first to teach me; for some reason or other I learned more about women through it 285 and the peculiar ebb and flow of their sensuality than the natural love-play had taught me; it gives the key, so to speak, to a woman's heart and senses, and to the man this is the chief reward, as wise old Montaigne knew, who wrote of "standing at rack and manger before the meal." I was always trying to win confessions from my girl friends about then-first experiences in sensuality, but save in the case of some few Frenchwomen, actresses for the most part, I was not very successful. What the reason is, others must explain, but I found girls strangely reticent on the subject. Time and again when in bed with Eirene I tried to get her to tell me, and at long last she confessed to one adventure. When she was about twelve she had a French governess in Marseilles, and one day this lady came into the bathroom, telling her she had been a long time bathing, and offering to help her dry herself. "I noticed," said Eirene, "that she looked at me intently and it pleased me. When I got out she wrapped the robe about me and then sat down and took me on her knees and began to dry me. As she touched me often there I opened my legs and she touched me very caressingly, and then of a sudden she kissed me passionately on the mouth and left me. I liked her very much. She was a dear, really clever and kind." "Did she ever dry you again?" I asked. Eirene laughed. "You want to know too much, sir," was all she would say. When I returned to Athens at the end of the summer, I took rooms in the people's quarter and lived very cheaply. Soon Eirene came to visit me again and we went often to the Greek theatre and I read Theocritus with her on many afternoons; but she gave me nothing new and in the spring I decided to return by way of Constantinople and the Black Sea to Vienna, for I felt that my Lehrjahre—"prentice-years"—were drawing to an end; and Paris beckoned, and London. One of the last evenings we were together Eirene wanted to know what I liked best in her. "You've a myriad good qualities," I began. "You are good-tempered and reasonable always, to say nothing of your lovely eyes and lithe slight figure. But why do you ask?" "My husband used to say I was bony," she replied. "He made me dreadfully unhappy, tho' I tried my best to please him. I didn't feel much with him at first and that word 'bony' hurt terribly." "Don't you know," I said, "one of our first meetings, when you got out of bed to go to your room, I lifted up your nightie and saw the outline of your curving thighs and hips; it has always seemed to me one of the loveliest contours I've 286 ever seen. If I had been a sculptor I'd have modelled it long ago—'bony,' indeed; the man didn't deserve you: put him out of your head." "I have," she said, "for we women have only room for one, and you've put yourself in my heart. I'm glad you don't think me bony, but fancy you caring for a curve of flesh so much. Men are funny things. No woman would so overprize a mere outline—your praise and his blame both show the same spirit." "Yet desire is born of admiration," I corrected. "My desire is born of yours," she replied. "But a woman's love is better and different: it is of the heart and soul." "But the body gives the key," I said, "and makes intimacy divine!" I found several unlocked for and unimaginable benefits in this mouthworship. First of all, I could give pleasure to any extent without exhausting or even tiring myself. It thus enabled me to atone completely and make up for my steadily decreasing virility. Secondly, I discovered that by teaching me the most sensitive parts of the woman, I was able even in the ordinary way to give my mistresses more and keener pleasure than ever before. I had all the joy of coming into a new kingdom of delight with increased vigour. Moreover, as I have said, it taught me to know every woman more intimately than I had known any up to that time, and I soon found that they liked me better than even in the first flush of inexhaustible youth. Later I learned other devices but none so important as this first discovery which showed me once for all how superior art is to nature. The Sacred Band For I doubt not through the ages one increasing purpose runs And the thoughts of men are widened by the process of the suns. After studying in Athens for some months, I heard of a club where university professors and some students met and talked classic Greek. A mistake or even an awkwardness of expression was anathema, and out of this reverence for the language of Plato and Sophocles there grew a desire to make the modern tongue resemble the old one as nearly as possible. It was impossible to bring back into common use the elaborate syntax; the subtle, shading particles too were lost forever; but it was sought to use words in their old meaning so exactly that even today Xenophon could read the daily paper in Athens and understand it without difficulty. This assimilation was only possible because the spoken language of the Greeks, e koine dialektos, had for many centuries existed side by side with the literary tongue. The spoken dialect had been preserved in the New 287 Testament and in the Church services, and so it came easy for learned and enthusiastic Grecians to keep the language of the common people as like that of Plato as possible; and the race is so extraordinarily intelligent that even the peasant, who has always called a horse alogos (the brainless one), knows that ippos is a finer word for the same animal. And though the common pronunciation is not exactly that of classic times, still it is a great deal nearer the antique pronunciation than any English or even Erasmic imitation. The modern Greek does use his accents correctly, and anyone who has learned to do that by ear can appreciate the cadence of classic Greek poetry and prose far more perfectly than any scholar who only reads for the rhythm of long and short syllables. I think it was Raikes told a story that illustrated a side of this Greek ambition for me. Professor Blackie, a well-known Scotch historian and Philhellene, came out to Athens on a visit and spoke in the Piraeus. Raikes went to hear him with a distinguished university professor who was one of the leaders of the Hellenic movement. After listening to Blackie for a while, the Greek professor turned to Raikes and said, "I had no idea that English sounded so well." "But he's speaking modern Greek," said Raikes. "Good God!" cried the professor, "I'd never have guessed that; I've not understood a single word of it." One experience of this time I must relate shortly, for it had an enormous, a disproportionate influence on my whole outlook and way of reading the past. Everyone knows that Plutarch was born at Chaeroneia, and in my wanderings on foot through Attica I stayed for some days in a peasant's house on the plain. When Philip of Macedon and Alexander, his son, afterwards called the Great, invaded Attica, they came almost as barbarians and the city of Thebes had to bear the first shock. Plutarch tells how three hundred Theban youths of the best families came together and took a solemn oath that they would put a stop to Philip's astonishing career of conquest or die in the attempt. The forces met at Chaeroneia, and Philip's new order, the famous phalanx, carried all before it. In vain the three hundred youths dashed themselves against it; time and again they were beaten back and the phalanx drove on. In the bed of a river, the "Sacred Band," as they were called, o ieros lochos, made their supreme effort and perished to the last man; and after the battle, we are told, the noble three hundred were buried in one grave by their parents in Thebes. The course of the river, Plutarch says, was turned aside so that they might all be interred on the very spot where their final assault had failed. Everyone knows that in our day there was a gigantic marble lion at Chaeroneia. The Turks in their time had heard that there was money in it, so they blew it up to get the treasure, but they found nothing, and no one could 288 understand what the lion of Chaeroneia was doing in the centre of a deserted plain, far away from any village. At a big meeting of the Classic Greek Society, I declared my belief that the lion of Chaeroneia was an excellent specimen of antique work carved in classic times. I believed it had been erected over the barrow of the "Sacred Band," and if excavations were carried out, I felt sure that the grave of the heroes would be discovered. Greek patriotism took fire at the suggestion; a banker and friend offered to defray the expenses and we went up to Chaeroneia to begin the work. There was no river at Chaeroneia, but a shallow brook, the Thermodon, was a couple of hundred yards away from the fragments of the lion. On studying the ground closely, I was insistent that a long grass-grown depression in the ground near the lion should be laid open first, arguing always that the lion would prove to have been erected on the grave itself; and soon the barrow was discovered. Four stone walls a foot or so broad and six feet or so in height had been built in the form of an elongated square, resting on the shingle of an old river bed, and therein like sardines we found the bodies, or rather, the skeletons of the "Sacred Band." The first thing we noticed was the terrible wounds sustained in the conflict; here, for example, was a skeleton with three ribs smashed on one side while the head of the spear that killed him was jammed between a rib and the backbone; another had his backbone broken by a vigorous spearthrust and one side of his head beaten in as well. The next thing that struck us was that the teeth in all the skeletons were excellently preserved and in almost perfect order. Clearly our inferiority in this respect must be due to our modern, cooked food. We counted two hundred and ninety-seven skeletons, and in one corner there was a little pile of ashes, evidently of the three who had survived longest and were finally cremated. At one side of the oblong enclosure there was a solid piece of masonry some ten feet square, plainly the pedestal of the lion which was placed there couchant, looking away over the bodies of the dead towards Thebes in eternal remembrance of the heroism of the youths who had given their lives in defence of their fatherland. A "Sacred Band," indeed! So, the poetic legend that this modern historian and that could not even take seriously was found to be strictly and exactly true, a transcript of the facts. It all helped to make the work of the writer precious to me and vivified the past for me in such a way that I began to read other books, and notably the New Testament, in a different spirit. German scholars had taught me that Jesus was a mythical figure: his teaching a mish-mash of various traditions and religions and myths. He was not an historical personage in any way, they declared; the three synoptic Gospels were all compiled from 50 to 80 years after the events, and John was certainly later still. 289 The story of the "Sacred Band" led me to use my brain on the person of Jesus as I had already used it on Shakespeare; and soon I found indubitable proof that Jesus was not only an historical personage, but could be studied in his words and works and realized in his habit as he lived. Tacitus and Josephus both were witnesses to his existence, and if the passage in Josephus has been added to, that of Tacitus is untouched and absolutely convincing: "A certain fellow called Jesus" (Quidam Jesu) did certainly live and teach in Jerusalem and was there crucified as the "King of the Jews" and "Son of God!" Not God or King to me in any superhuman sense, but flesh and bone, a man among men, though a sacred guide and teacher of the highest. As I read, the scales fell from my eyes, and I saw that this Jesus was blood-brother to Shakespeare: both weak in body: Jesus could not carry His Cross and was supposed to have died in the first few hours of agony; both too, called "gentle"; both of incomparable speed and depth of thought and sweet loving-kindness of character. Read the Arthur of King John speaking to his executioner, Are you sick, Hubert? You look pale today: In sooth, I would you were a little sick, That I might sit all night and watch with you. I warrant I love you more than you do me, and then recall the sacred words, "Suffer little children to come unto me and forbid them not; for of such is the kingdom of heaven!" Surely these two men are of the same divine spirit. In courage Jesus was the greater and accordingly came to a more dreadful end and to a loftier fame; but Shakespeare insists on the need of repentance and absolute forgiveness just as Jesus did: "Pardon's the word for all." My life was enriched by finding another sacred guide, but alas! I yielded to the new influence very reluctantly, and it was many years before the knowledge of the Christ began even to modify my character. But this gradual interpenetration is the dominant impulse in the next twenty years of my life and bit by bit led me to attempt that synthesis of paganism and the spirit of Jesus, which, it seems to me, must constitute the essential elements at least of "the religion of the future!" For what is the spirit of Jesus but the certainty that God is just goodness and must be loved by all of us mortals! The first duty of man or woman is purely pagan: each of us should develop all his faculties of body and mind and soul as harmoniously as possible. He should, too, secure the highest enjoyment possible from his gifts; but when he has thus, so to speak, reached the zenith of his accomplishment, he should study how to give the utmost possible help to his fellow-men and make "the new commandment" of Jesus the chief purpose of his life. 290 Alas! To "love one another" is a most difficult rule, unless we can remember that it is just to love what is good and to forgive the veiling faults. The best way to this all-comprehending love, I feel, is by dint of pity— "good pity," Shakespeare calls it, and "sacred pity," "holy pity" even, for it leads, he knew, to pardon and forgiveness. And this pity must needs result in redressing the worst injustices of life, and, above all, in levelling up the awful inequality that gives one child everything in unimaginable superfluity and denies to another just as gifted and healthy even decent conditions of living. The handicap of the rich and great is just as poisonously bad as the handicap of the poor that stunts the frame and impoverishes the blood. It is pity and loving sympathy that may amend in time the worst diseases of society. One would think that the knowledge of natural laws and the control of natural resources, while increasing enormously the productivity of bureaus, would of necessity improve the position of the labourer. So far that has not been the case: the greater power given us by the thinker and man of science has merely increased the inequality between the possessors and the hordes of the dispossessed. If that process continues, the race is doomed; but already those of us who have reached a certain plane of thought, even though they have found riches easy or hard to acquire, are on the side of the poor. John Stuart Mill thought the remedy lay in heavy succession duties and it may be that this is the most practical way of attack; indeed, it looks as if it were, though I prefer the nationalization of the land and public utilities, such as railways and water and gas companies. Yet the succession duties in England since the World War have remained without serious objection at something like thirty-three per cent of the great inheritances. One thing is certain, in one way or other the worst inequalities must be ended. The overgreat individual liberty in England has led to the practical enslavement and degradation of the working classes. In 1837 only ten per cent of recruits were below five feet-six in height; in 1915 seventy per cent were below that height and even fifty per cent could not pass the puny physical standard required. Having learned in life both what riches can give and what poverty gives, I have always stood in favour of the poor. The levelling up process is the most important task of our politicians, and they should be classed according to the help they give to this reform of reforms. But after the World War and the misery which the hateful so-called peace of Versailles has brought upon Europe, other fears for the future of humanity must invade the soul. Pity, that angel of the world, must be cultivated and taught, or life for us short-sighted, selfish animals will become impossible. Will not some young noble-minded man start a new "Sacred Band" that will struggle for humanity and the rights of man as valiantly as those Theban youths struggled for the liberty and safety of Greece? Or must we come to the despair sung by Sophocles in his Oedipus of Colonos: 291 Who breathes must suffer and who thinks must mourn And he alone is blest who n'er was born. But, everyone is asking, does this rebirth of paganism, which is mainly due to the progress of science, hold any hope, any consolation, in presence of the awful mystery of death? It must be admitted that here the fates are almost silent. We no longer believe, it is true, as the Greek did, that it would have been better for us never to have been born. We are proud of our inheritance of life, can already see how it may be bettered in a thousand ways, but hope beyond the grave there is none. Yet we English and Americans have the highest word and the most consoling yet heard among men. Meredith's noble couplet is higher than the best of Sophocles: Into the breast that bears the rose Shall I, with shuddering, fall? These seventy years or so of life are all we've got, but, as Goethe says, we can fill them, if we will, with great deeds and greater dreams. Goethe and Meredith: I have compared them before: I love them both. ... Both are cupbearers undying Of the wine that's meant for souls! 292 CHAPTER VII. HOLIDAYS AND IRISH VIRTUE! I WENT BY SHIP from Athens to Constantinople and
admired, as every one 293 produce. It takes a thousand years to make a Vienna and fortunately for us no one man can utterly destroy it. After spending some months in Vienna, I realized that the Danube was the great patrimony which the Viennese had left unexploited. Vienna should be the greatest port in south-western Europe, but the Austrians haven't dredged and developed the noble stream as they should have done. Will they now, in poverty and misery, repair the fault? It is still time—always time, thank goodness! Why did I leave Vienna? Because I had met a girl who attracted me, a cafedancer who was returning for a rest to her home in Salzburg, and who talked to me so much of Salzburg, the birthplace of Mozart—"the most beautiful city in the world," she called it—that I had to go and visit it with Marie for guide. Marie, Marie Kirschner was her real name, and I have tried to sketch her in my story, A Mad Love, for indeed she was the best type of German, or perhaps I should say Austrian. To me she represented Vienna and its charms quite exquisitely. She had a perfect girl's figure, kept slight and lithe with constant exercise, for she danced at least an hour every day to keep up to the mark, as she said. Marie had a piquant, intelligent face with a nez retrousse as cheeky as her light hazel eyes; best of all, she was curiously frank about her sexual experiences and won my heart by telling me, one of the first evenings, how she had been seduced willingly enough, because of her curiosity, by an old banker of Buda-Pesth when she was barely thirteen. "He gave my mother and me enough to live on comfortably for six years or more and let me learn dancing. Otto died in his sleep or he'd have done more for us; he was really kind and I had grown to care for him, though he was a poor lover. However, he left us the house and furniture and I was already earning a fair living—" "And since then?" I asked. Marie tossed her head. "Qui a bu, boira," she said. "Isn't love a part of life and the best part? Even the illusion of love is worth more than anything else, and now and then hope tempts me, as I believe I tempt you. Oh, if we could see Salzburg and the Berchtesgaden and the Geiereck together; what a perfect summer we might have, in most lovely surroundings!" "It's impossible," I said, "to give you an unforgettable memory; you've had so many lovers!" "Never fear a number," she replied, smiling. "The great majority leave us nothing worth remembering; men know little about love. Why till now, my old banker's the best memory I have: he was really affectionate und hatte mich auf den Handen tragen mogen (he would have carried me in his hands)"—a German expression meaning "he took every care of me"— and 294 "He taught me a lot too; oh, Otto was a dear," and with this assurance I took Marie to Salzburg. I had never even heard Salzburg mentioned before among the beautiful cities of Europe, but I found by chance that Wilkie, the Scottish painter, had used something like the right words to describe it. He said that "If the old town of Edinburgh with its castle on a rock were planted in the Trossachs and had a broad swift river like the Tay flowing between the houses of the town, it might resemble Salzburg." Salzburg itself is set amongst mountains and nearby are numberless scenes of romantic beauty: the Traunsee to the east, and the Chiemsee with the King of Bavaria's wonderful palace to the west; while to the south across the Bavarian border is Berchtesgaden, one of the most beautiful regions in Europe. Here is the Untersberg, nearly 7000 feet in height, with the famous Kolowrat caverns containing ice-masses that look like great waterfalls suddenly frozen; and on the eastern side, the Geiereck with the cliffs and precipices that have earned it its name. Marie was an incomparable guide, of the sweetest temper, a born companion and as good a lover as a man. Better indeed in that she made all the preliminaries of love fascinating: Marie was the first to tell me that my voice was musical—a delight to hear—exceedingly powerful, yet resonant and sweet. "I'd rather hear you recite than anyone," she said. "No actor was ever your equal; and your face too: I love the courage in it and the amazing life in it." Marie was a born flatterer and found new compliments continually. Every day she discovered some new trait to praise, but goodness and sweetness of nature are not dramatic or interesting. I did my best forty years later to picture Marie in A Mad Love, and trying to find some fault to make her human, hit upon the fact that she would give her lips readily to any one who touched her heart, even tho' she didn't love him. But—I've not done her goodness justice. Time and again she reminded me of Browning's wonderful verses: Teach me only teach, love, As I ought! I will speak thy speech, love, Think thy thought. Meet if thou require it Both demands Laying flesh and spirit In thy hands. But after six weeks or so I began to feel tired. Eirene's passion had weakened me, and charming, faultless as Marie was, I wanted to learn something new, and I had for the time being at least exhausted German. When we returned from the lovely country and its exquisite walks and drives, I bought Marie a gorgeous picture of Leopold's fairy palace on the Chiemsee and fairly ran away to Florence for the fall. 295 There I worked at Italian first and then at the pictures and the art-life. And now my education in art, always growing, took in the mosaics at Ravenna, and in Milan I came upon a small collection of Visconti armour of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, some suits of which I managed to secure for very small sums. Before the American demand began to grow imperious in the middle eighties, good suits of armour cost very little. I bought a gold inlaid suit complete for £. 100 that I sold five years later In London for £. 5,000; and the dealer got £. 15,000 for it. Italy appears to have taught most visitors a great deal. It taught me very little, but one experience in Milan was valuable. I got to know Lamperti, the great teacher of singing, and his German wife; and from Lamperti I learned a good deal about il bel canto and that culture of the voice for which Italy is famous. Lamperti wanted to teach me his art; he tried my voice and assured me that I'd have a great career, for without training I could sing two notes lower than were ever written. "Your patrimony is in your throat," he used to say, but I assured him it was in my head, and the career of a basso profundo did not appeal to me, though I believe I might have made a good actor. Lamperti had a fund of interesting anecdotes about singers and musicians, and he was the first to tell me that my rooted dislike of the piano came from a good ear. "You have "absolute pitch,'" he said, "an extraordinary ear and a great voice. It's a ski not to cultivate your voice," but I had more important things to cultivate—at least that was my conviction. I've often thought since what a different life I might have had, had I taken Lamperti's advice and used his teaching, but at the time I never even considered it. I picked up whatever I could about music. I read Leopardi morning, noon, and night, for his profound pessimism appealed to me intensely, even in the flower of youth. He says to his heart: ... non val cosa nessuna I moti tuoi, ne di sospiri e degna La terra. Amaro e noia La vita, altro mai nulla, e fango e il mondo. I learned there in Florence for the first time the lesson that Whistler afterwards taught everyone who had ears to hear, that there was no such thing as an artistic period or an artistic people, that great artists were sporadic products, like all other great men, that in fact genius was as rare as talent is common. But I had then no idea that the world is always suffering from want of genius to direct it, and that reverence for it and love of it is always a forecast of its possession. But one amusing experience of this time in Florence may find a place here. I had read a good deal of Italian when a friend one day asked me had I read Ariosto. Strange to say, I had passed him over, though I had read a good deal of Tassoff and some of the moderns and been disappointed. But Ariosto! What had he done? Well, my friend recited his first sonnet on beauty and the 296 riches of love and lent me the book which contained also this lively and witty story. It seems there was a painter whose name Ariosto had forgotten (non mi ricordo il nome), who always painted the devil as a beautiful young man with lovely eyes and thick dark hair. His feet, too, were well-shaped and there were no horns on his head; in everything he was as lovable and as fair as an angel of God. Not wishing to be outdone in courtesy, the devil came once just before daybreak to the painter when he was sleeping and told him to ask whatever he most desired and his wish would be granted him. Now the poor painter had a lovely wife and lived in jealous ecstasies, extremes of doubt and fear; consequently, he begged the devil to show him how he could guard against any infidelity on the part of his wife. The devil at once put a ring on his finger, assuring him that so long as his finger was in this ring, he could make his mind easy, for there would be no cause for even a shadow of suspicion. Glad at heart the painter woke up to find his finger in his wife's sex (it dito ha nella fica all moglier). Even afterwards the name of Ariosto had a meaning to me and significance, for he goes on to say that he isn't sure of the efficacy of the cure: if the woman took it into her head to give herself and deceive the man, she would accomplish even the impossible—a purely Latin view of the matter. I returned to Paris, and in the early spring of 1881 I went out to live in Argenteuil. I don't remember why I went to Argenteuil, but I took an apartment in a villa on the river and there I passed a great summer. I worked hard at French and came to speak it with fluency and fair correctness, but I did not attempt to master it as I had mastered German, though French literature and French art too of the nineteenth century appealed to me infinitely more than the German literature or art of the same period. It was at Argenteuil in this spring that I read Balzac through and quickly came to the conviction that he was the greatest of all modern Frenchmen, the only one indeed who has enlarged our conception of French genius and added a story to the noble building designed and decorated by Montaigne. Balzac is one of the choice and master spirits of the world, but not intellectual enough, or perhaps not dreamer enough, to be in the foremost file and help to steer humanity. In spite of his prodigious creative faculty, he has added no new generic figure to the Pantheon. He knew women profoundly; but even his Baronne Hulot has not the significance of Goethe's Gretchen. This year in Paris was made memorable to me also by meeting Turgenev, as I've told in my "snapshot" of him. I knew then that he was a great man, but I 297 did not put him nearly as high as I did later. Far and away the greatest Russian writer, I see now that by his creation of Bazarof, the realist, he ranks among the leaders and guides of men: a greater artist even than Balzac, though not so productive, perhaps because artistic productivity depends on living a great part of one's life amongst one's own compatriots. In this summer too I met Guy de Maupassant at dinner, thanks to Blanche Macchetta, and our acquaintance began, which was destined to grow year by year more intimate, till his tragic death some ten years later, At the time I thought him at least as great as Turgenev: now I know better. I got to know, too, the handsome Jew journalist Catulle Mendes, surely one of the most wonderful improvisatori ever seen. He could write you a poem like Hugo or De Musset in a few minutes; could imitate any and every master of French prose or verse with equal ease and astounding mastery. Ever afterwards he was to me the perfect model of the man of talent without a touch of genius that might have ennobled or destroyed his unique gift of words. At the time I could only admire him, though I felt that something was lacking in him. His nickname in Paris hit off his beauty of person perfectly— un Christ de Bordel! I had a memorable summer in Paris. In spite of a want of introductions, I came to know this man and that, here a writer on the Figaro, there an artist, and they introduced me to others. Towards the end of the summer I made up my mind to go to Ireland again and study the country and conditions for myself. A little while before, Disraeli had spoken of the cloud in Ireland no larger than a man's hand that might yet develop into a great storm. The increasing power of the Land League, the growth of the court for fixing rents, the advent to power of Parnell, made me eager to study the problem for myself; and so I crossed from Holyhead to Dublin and gazed again at scenes familiar to me in boyhood. From the beginning I went to all the Nationalist meetings, and I suppose it was only natural that my strong bias in favour of Irish freedom should have been strengthened. Still, I went too to Trinity College, Dublin, and got an independent scholarly view that found some good points occasionally even in the castle and English domination. Of course I went to Galway and equally of course to Kerry, where my mother was buried, and I may as well give here the only independent judgment I ever heard of her. A famous Plymouth brother was lecturing once and I went up to him afterwards to inform myself more exactly on some point of his strange creed. As soon as he saw my card he said, "I knew some Harrises well once in Kerry, a Captain and Mrs. Harris; you don't come from that stock, I presume." "Indeed I do!" I exclaimed, and it turned out that he knew both my father and mother very well indeed. As may be imagined, I was intensely interested, 298 particularly when I found that my religious friend was a gentleman with a very good head of his own and a judgment free at least from ordinary bias. He spoke of my father's energy, though clearly he did not like him particularly; but my mother to him was a saint of the sweetest disposition and very goodlooking, "a thousand tunes too good for her domineering, little husband. I had a very great admiration for her," he went on. "Though I was younger, I was really pained to hear of her death. You lost a good mother in her, my friend," was his summing up, and curiously enough, my own childish recollections corroborated the impression he gave of her sweet kindliness of nature. My father too when he spoke of her, which was very seldom, always laid stress on the fact that it was difficult to make her angry: "a very sweet and gentle nature" which her eldest son, Vernon, had inherited. The thing I noticed most in Ireland was the way it rained, and the poverty of the wretched land impressed me the more, the more I studied it. The moral influence of the Catholic Church too was to be seen everywhere in the splendid physique of the people, and I was fated to experience its vigour very sharply. It was at Ballinasloe that I was surprised by the sheer loveliness of the innkeeper's daughter. I had been walking and working hard for some time and was minded to take it easy for a week or so when I came to his inn. The girl captivated me. She hadn't much to do and they liked to hire their jaunting-car to me, and I got into the habit of taking Molly (Margaret was her name) with me everywhere as a guide. Her mother had long been dead and the father found enough to do in his bar, while an elder sister took charge of the house. So Molly and I spent a good deal of time together: I made up to her from the beginning. Naturally I kissed her as soon as I could and as often as I got the chance; and when I told her I loved her, I found she took it much more seriously than I did. "You wouldn't be after marrying me," she said. "You'd be ashamed of me over there in London and Paris and Vienna." My boxes showed labels that were known to everyone in the house. "You're an angel," I replied, "but I have a lot to do before I can think of marrying"; still the kissing and caressing went on continually. I got into the habit of taking my dinner in my sitting-room, for there was seldom anyone in the public dining-room, and when my things were cleared away and I sat reading, Molly would come in and we'd talk like lovers. One evening I asked her why she didn't come to me in bed after everyone was asleep; to my amazement she said she'd love to and I made her promise to come that very night, scarcely daring to believe in my good fortune. About eleven I heard the pattering of bare feet, and as I opened the door that gave into my sitting-room, there was Molly with nothing but a red Indian shawl over her nightie. In bed together I kissed and kissed her and she responded, but as soon as I tried further she held me off: "Sure, you wouldn't be doing anything like that." "You don't care for me much or you wouldn't deny me," was my retort. 299 "Indeed I would; you must be good for I love to cuddle you," and she slipped her arms round me and held me to her till I grew almost crazy with desire. At first I smiled to myself: a few nights of preliminaries and nature would be too strong, but I had reckoned without my host. I have not even described Molly and yet I shall always see her as she stood before me nude that first night. She was as tall as I was and splendidly formed, of the mother-type with large breasts and hips. She held her head turned away, as if she did not want to see me while I perused her naked charms. But her flower face was finer even than her figure: the great grey eyes shaded with long black lashes that curled up, while masses of very dark hair fell to her waist. Curiously enough, her skin was as fair as that of a blonde. When she turned, half-smiling, half-fearful, to me, "Have you seen enough now," I drew down the nightie I had half round her neck. "I could look a long time without ever having enough, you beauty!" "Sure, I'm like everybody else and my cousin Anne Moriarty's the beauty, with her golden hair!" "Nothing like so beautiful as you!" For answer, I kissed her. "You'll catch cold; you'll come to-morrow?" She nodded and I went to bed in a fever. I had failed absolutely, but I was in no hurry and ultimate failure was unthinkable. The next night I began by showing her the syringe and explaining its use. She would hardly hear me out, so I began kissing her sex till she sobbed breathless in my arms; but still she wouldn't let me come to the natural act. "Please not; be good now!" "But why, why?" The question stung her. "How could I ever go to church? I confess every month; sure it's a mortal sin!" "No sin at all and who'd know?" "Father Sheridan would ask me; sure, he knows I like you; I told him." "And he'd condemn it?" "Oh my! That's why I can come to you, because none of them would even dream that I'd come like this to you. But I love to hold you and hear you talk, and to think I please you makes me so proud and glad." "Don't you love my kisses best?" 300 "They make me afraid. Talk to me now; tell me of all the places you've seen. I've been reading of Paris—it must be lovely—wonderful—and the French girls dress so well—oh, I'd love to travel." Again and again I tried, but the denial was adamant. Molly thrilled and melted under my kissing, but would not consent to what she'd have to confess afterwards to the priest. A few days later, I made it my business to meet Father Sheridan and found him very intelligent. He was of the old school, had been brought up in St. Omer and had a delightful French tincture of reading and humour, but alas! He was as crazy as any Irish-bred priest on the necessity of chastity. I drew him out on the subject and found him eloquent. At his fingers' tips, he had all the statistics of illegitimacy and was proud of the fact that it was five times less frequent in Ireland than in England; and to my amusement I found it was commoner in Wales than in Scotland. Sheridan would never admit that the Welsh were Christians at all—"all pagans," he'd say, with intense emphasis, "mere savages without a church or a saint!" He was proud of the fact, I found, that it was his duty to denounce a young man and woman from the pulpit if they kept company too long, or with a suspicion of undue intimacy. "They should marry and not burn," was a favorite phrase of his. "The children of young parents are always healthy and strong": it was an obsession with him. Yet he would drink whisky with me till we both had had more than enough. How do the Irish come to have this insane belief in the necessity and virtue of chastity? It is their unquestioned religious belief that gives it them, yet in the mountains of Bavaria and in parts of the Abruzzi, the peasants are just as religious, and there, too, chastity is highly esteemed, but nothing to be compared to its power in Ireland. I've often wondered why? To cut a long story short, I used all the knowledge I had with Molly, yet failed completely. I knew that at certain periods women feel more intensely than at others; I found out that three or four times each month Molly was easily excited, especially about the eighth day after her monthlies had ceased. I used every advantage; but nothing gave me victory. One night, I was halfinsane, so I promised to do nothing and thus got permission to lie on her, intending if necessary to use a little force. "That's nothing," I repeated, "nothing," as I rubbed my sex on her clitoris; "I'm not going in." But suddenly she took my head in her hands and kissed me. "I trust you, dear; you are too good to take advantage of me," and as I pressed forward, she said quietly, "You know I'd kill myself if anything happened." At once I drew away. I couldn't speak, could hardly think. "All right!" I cried at last. "You've won because you don't care," and I threw myself away from her. 301 "Don't care!" she repeated. "I love you, and I'll love you all my life," and as she took me in her arms all my stupid resentment vanished and I set myself to interest her as much as I could. But with failure in the nightly lists, Ballinasloe soon became intolerable to me. I had long ago exhausted all the beauties of the neighbourhood and had come to the conclusion that outside love, the place was as devoid of intellectual interest as a town in western America. The clergyman I couldn't talk to, the lawyers and doctors were all tenth-rate. Some of the younger men were eager to learn and came to the inn in the evening to hear me talk, but I, too, had to be about my Father's business. I went for a trip to Londonderry to study the citadel of Irish Protestantism and to make the final parting with Molly easier. When I returned, I didn't ask her to come to me at night: what was the good? But the night before I went to Belfast she came and I explored with her some of the side-paths of affection and confessed, with all frankness, that since I met Smith I was all ambition—under a vow, so to speak, to develop every faculty I had at any cost. "I am not ambitious, Molly, of place or power or riches, but of knowledge and wisdom I'm the lover and priest, resolved to let nothing stand in the way." I explained to her that that was the reason why I had come to Ireland, just as the same desire of knowledge had driven me years before round the world, and would no doubt drive me again. "I don't want happiness even, Molly, nor comfort, though I'll take all I can get of both, but they're not my aim or purpose. I'm wedded to the one quest like a knight of the Holy Grail and my whole life will go to the achievement. Don't ask me why, I don't know. I only know that Smith, my friend and professor in Lawrence, Kansas, lit the sacred fire in me and I'll go on till death. You must not think I don't care for you; I do with all my heart. You're a great woman, heart and soul and body, but my work calls me and I must go." "I've always felt it," she said quietly, "always felt that you would not stay here or marry anyone here. I understand and I only hope your ambition may make you happy, for without happiness, without love, is there anything worth having in life? I can't believe it, but then I'm only a girl. If you ever thought of coming back, write first. To see you suddenly would stop my heart with joy." 302 CHAPTER VIII. HOW I MET FROUDE AND WON A PLACE IN LONDON AND GAVE UP WRITING POETRY! NOW MY LEHRJAHRE (student years) were ended, London
drew me 303 Strand, and Oxford Street could have been developed to high purpose, but no! The builders preferred to build as their fathers had builded, without plan or design, and we have the wretched result: narrow winding streets in the heart of the city, no thought, no soul. London is the meanest of great capitals, with the solitary exception of Berlin; yet, if the English had followed Wren, it might easily have been the noblest. I went back to the Grosvenor, wondering whether I ought to go to Salcombe or try to get work in London. An accident determined me. I was in the smoking-room after lunch when a couple of gentlemen drew my attention. The afternoon was wet and they were passing the time by betting on the flies crawling up the window panes. I heard one say, "I'll bet five hundred this one gets higher in two minutes," and then the other: "Done with you and I'll bet a thou mine reaches the top first." The younger man was nearly drunk, and I soon saw that his older companion sought to confuse him by running three or four different bets at the same time. This idea caused me to watch more carefully, and it soon became clear to me that the older man was cheating the younger. Suddenly, to my surprise I heard him, after a brief dispute, say, "That makes ten thou you owe me— quite enough, too, for such an idiotic game." The younger man pulled himself together and remarked with the portentous gravity of intoxication: "Five thou, Gerald, at most, and I don't believe you reckoned in the thou I gained with my bluebottle." "Oh yes, I did," replied the sharper. "Don't you remember: it was at the very outset when I owed you a couple of thousand." "You're d... d clever, Gerald," retorted the other, as if hesitating, and then with a sudden decision, "I'll give you an I.O.U. this evening." His friend nodded, "All right, old man!" As the two were leaving the room I called over the waiter. "Who are those gentlemen?" I asked. "The young one, Sir, is Lord C—, son of the Earl of D—; the other isn't staying here. He's a friend and his name's Costello, I believe. Lord C—, Sir, can drink; he's not often drunk like that." I don't know why, but Lord C— had made so pleasant an impression on me that I resolved to open his eyes, if I could, to the fact that he had won and not lost and ought not to pay £. 5000, or indeed anything at all. Accordingly, I sat down, then and there, and wrote an exact accounting of what I had noticed and sent it to Lord C—'s apartment. Next morning I got a note from him, thanking me warmly and asking me to meet him in the smoking-room. We met and I found him curiously generous, willing even to make all sorts of allowances for the so-called friend who had plainly cheated 304 him. On the other hand, I was indignant and advised him to send my letter just as it was to his friend. I was willing to stand by every word. "Very kind of you, I'm sure," said Lord C—. "I think I'll do that. Are you going to stay in London? Would you lunch with me to-day?" I consented and in the course of lunch told him I wanted to go to Salcombe to see Froude. He knew Salcombe and spoke with admiration of the beauties of the Devon coast and indeed of the whole county. "You ought to drive down," he told me. "That is the best way to see our English scenery." I shrugged my shoulders regretfully. "I'm not rich enough to indulge in such pastime: I must soon get to work." The next morning I was told that some one wanted to see me at the door. I went there and found a groom with a dog-cart, who handed me a letter from Lord C—, begging me to accept the dog-cart and horse and drive down to Salcombe. "My groom," he added, "knows every foot of the way and I'm not using him for the next month. You've done me a very good turn; I hope you'll allow me to do you one. Only one thing I ask—that you'll not mention anything about the betting episode." But after forty years there can be no harm in recalling it. Next day, after thanking Lord C— for his splendid present, I set off for Salcombe and about a fortnight later called upon Mr. Froude in his house on a cliff overlooking the bay. I was ushered into a delightful room and gave the servant Carlyle's letter to take to Mr. Froude. In a few moments Froude came in with the letter in his hand. He was tall and slight, of scholarly, ascetic appearance. "An extraordinary letter," he began. "You know what Carlyle says in it?" "No, I don't," I replied. "I put it in my pocket when he gave it to me, and when I took it out I found it had stuck and I never opened it. I knew it would be friendly and more than fair." "It's very astonishing," Froude broke in. "Carlyle asks me to help you in your literary ambitions; says he 'expects more considerable things from you than from anyone he has met since parting from Emerson.' I'd be very proud if he had said it about me. Take a seat, won't you, and tell me about your meeting with him. I have always thought him the best brain, the greatest man of our tune," and the grey eyes searched me. "He has been my hero," I said, "since I first read Latter Day Pamphlets and Heroes and Hero Worship as a cowboy in western America." "A cowboy!" repeated Froude, as if amazed. "It was Carlyle's advice," I went on, "that sent me for four years to German universities; and I finished my schooling with a year in Athens." 305 "How interesting," said Froude, who evidently did not understand that adventures come to the adventurous. We talked for an hour or more, but when he asked me to lunch as a sort of after-thought, I told him I had arranged to drive back to the near-by town and lunch with a friend. On this he assured me that he would return to London in a fortnight or so and soon after give a dinner and invite Chenery, the editor of The Times, and other people of importance in literature to meet me. He would do his best to carry out Carlyle's wishes. I thanked him, of course, warmly, while protesting that I didn't want to give him trouble. He then asked me, had I written anything he could read? I pulled out a small bound book in which I had written in my best copperplate hand a few dozen poems, chiefly sonnets, and gave it to him. A little later we shook hands and I returned to my inn and next morning set off for London by another road. The English country pleased me hugely, it was so neat and well-kept, but there was nothing grandiose about the scenery—nothing as fine as the Catskills, nothing to compare with the enthralling beauty of eastern France, to say nothing of the Rockies! Hardly had I left Froude when I realized that I should indeed be a fool if I trusted to his help. "Help yourself, my friend," I kept repeating to myself, "then, if he helps, so much the better; and if he doesn't, it won't matter." I still had a couple of hundred pounds behind me. When I reached London I sent the groom with the dog-cart and horse back to Lord C—, thanking him for a superb holiday and lovely trip. But I took care the very same day to engage rooms near the British Museum at a pound or so a week, and there I went and unpacked, first telling the Grosvenor Hotel people that I'd call once a week for letters. My acquaintance with Lord C— won me much politeness. A morning or two later, I saw in one of the papers something about John Morley and the Fortnightly Review; the journal called it, I remember, "the most literary of our reviews." I took down the address of it in Henrietta Street, Covent Garden, and without losing time, went and called about nine o'clock in the morning. To my surprise, the office was a sort of shop, the publishing house of Chapman and Hall. The clerk behind the counter told me that Mr. Chapman usually came in about eleven and if I could wait—I asked for nothing better; so I took a seat and waited. At about ten-thirty Mr. Chapman came in, a well-made man of five feet ten or so, past the prime of life, with thinning hair and a tendency to stoutness. I got up as soon as I heard his name and said, "I'd like a few minutes with you." He took me up to his room on the first floor and I told him how I had just returned from a visit to Froude, to whom I had taken a letter from Carlyle. He appeared greatly impressed, regretted that he had nothing for me to do; but when I spoke of working for the Fortnightly, he said I should come back in the afternoon and see Mr. Escort, who was the acting editor in place of Mr. John Morley. At four o'clock I turned up and Chapman introduced me to T. H. S. 306 Escott. Escort was a good-looking, personable man, very curious as to how I had come to know Carlyle and what Froude had said to me, but at the end he turned me down flatly. "I have nothing for you to do, I'm sorry," was his curt dismissal. "Have you never any translation?" I asked. "Seldom," he replied, "but I'll bear you in mind!" "Don't do that," I replied. "Let me come each day and if you've nothing to do, it won't matter. But I'll be on hand if unexpectedly you need a proof read or an article verified or anything." "As you please," he said rudely, shrugging his shoulders, as he turned away disdainfully—I couldn't but see. But every morning I was seated in the shop when Chapman came. He used to acknowledge my bow with an embarrassed air. When Escott arrived in the afternoon, he generally went straight up to his back room on the first floor, pretending not even to see me. After about a week Chapman asked me up to his room one day and told me politely that I must see now there was nothing for me to do: would it not be better to try elsewhere rather than wait about? I felt sure Escott had suggested this to him. I said I hoped I was not bothering him; I would soon have regular work; I'd tell him as soon as I succeeded; meantime, I hoped he would not mind my being on hand. "No, no!" he hastened to say. "It's for your sake I'm speaking; I only wish I had something for you to do." On this I smiled and went away till the next day, when again I was in my place as before. Meanwhile I was fitting another string to my bow; I had got to know A. R. Cluer, now a county court judge, on a railway journey, and almost at once we became friends by dint of similarity of taste and interests. He had rooms in the Temple and one day he asked me why I did not try to get work on the Spectator. He advised me to ask Escott to give me an introduction to the chief editor, Hutton. But I would not ask Escott for any favour, and so there and then Cluer went round with me to the Spectator office and saw me enter. When the clerk came, I said, "I want to see Mr. Hutton!" "Have you an appointment?" "No," I replied, and at the same time I took out a sovereign and laid it before him. "Tell me where Mr. Hutton is," I said, "and that pound is yours." 307 "On the second floor," whispered the clerk hastily. "But you won't give me away, will you?" "No, no," I assured him. "I'll go up and you need never even have seen me." I went out of the shop at once, and up the stairs at the side. When I got to the second floor I knocked: no answer; a minute or two later I knocked again, and loudly. "Come in!" I heard and in I went. There was a big man seated at a table with his back to me, immersed in some proofs; he was evidently very near-sighted, because his nose was almost touching the manuscripts. I stood a few moments by his left side, quietly taking stock of the room with its bookcases opposite to me, then I coughed loudly. The big man dropped his glasses on the table and turned to me at once, evidently surprised out of politeness. "Goodness gracious!" he exclaimed, "who are you? How did you come in?" "My name won't help you much, Mr. Hutton," I replied, smiling, "and I don't want to bother you. I want work, think I can write—" "We have too many writers," he ejaculated. "Can't find work enough for those we know." "There's always room at the top," I countered. "Suppose I can do better than any you've got; it'll be to your interest to use me." "Goodness me!" he exclaimed. "Do you think you can write better than any of us?" "No, no," I corrected, "but there are some subjects I know better than any Englishman. You're a judge: the first ten lines of an article by me will tell you whether I am merely diseased with conceit or whether I'm really worth using." "That's true," he said, getting up and going over to the bookcase, "Do you know anything about Russia?" "I was with General Skobelef at Plevna." "Goodness me!" he ejaculated again. "Here's a book on Russia and the war that may interest you," and he handed me a volume. "Have you any special knowledge of the United States?" he went on, still peering at the books. "I've been through a western university," I replied, "am a member of the American bar, have practiced law." 308 "Really?" he cried. "Well, here's a book of Freeman on America that may amuse you. Don't be afraid of telling the truth about it," he went on. "If you disagree with him, say so!" "Thanks ever so much," I replied. "I'm greatly obliged to you. The chance to show what I can do is all I want," and I went out at once, but not before I had caught a kindly glint in the peering eyes, which showed me that Richard Holt Hutton was really a gentleman who put on a hard abruptness of manner to mask or perhaps to protect his real sweetness of nature. When I got downstairs I showed the clerk the books as a proof he would not be blamed, and I took pains to thank him again before I rejoined Cluer. When Cluer saw the books and heard that I had talked with Hutton, he exclaimed, "I don't know how you managed it. I won a first class at Oxford and wrote to him, but could not even see him. How did you manage?" Under a promise of secrecy I told him, and then we talked of the books and what I'd write, but I didn't go straight home and begin the job at once, as Cluer advised. First of all I sat down and thought. Many days had passed since I returned to London and I had had as yet no hint of success, saw in fact no gleam even of hope. What was I to do? I must win soon! It struck me almost at once that I ought to know the mark I was aiming at. To win R. H. Hutton, I must know him first; accordingly, next morning I went to the British Museum and asked for all his books. I got a dozen or more ponderous tomes and spent the next two days reading them. At the end of that time I saw the soul of R. H. Hutton before me as a very small entity, a gentle-pious spirit, intensely religious. "He will enjoy a slating of Freeman," I said to myself, "for he knows Freeman to be rude, cocksure and aggressive. I'll give Hutton just what he wants." I went home and wrote the best stuff I could write on the Russian book, and then, after reading Freeman with great care and finding that indeed he was the very type of an arrogant, pompous pedant who mistook learning for wisdom, I let myself go and wrote an honest but contemptuous review of his book; indeed, there was nothing in it for the soul. I ended my review with the remark that "as Malebranche saw all things in God, so Mr. Freeman sees all things in the stout, broad-bottomed, aggressive Teuton." I had made another friend in my first week in London who was now to stand me in good stead, the Reverend John Verschoyle, then a curate at Marylebone Church. I don't remember how I met him; but I soon discovered in him one of the most extraordinary literary talents of the time; in especial a gift for poetry almost comparable to that of Swinburne. 309 Verschoyle was of good family and had migrated from Trinity College, Dublin to Cambridge, where at seventeen he had written the Greek verses for the year book issued by the university; his English verse, too, seemed to me miraculous—a lyric gift of the highest. Though only an inch or so taller than I was, he was fifty inches round the chest and prodigiously strong. I called him a line battle-ship cut down to a frigate. He was handsome, too, with a high forehead, good features and long, golden moustache. Of all the men I met in my life, the one that most people would have selected as likely to do great things, at least in literature; yet he brought it to nothing and died untimely in middle-age. He happened to call on me just when I had finished my two reviews and naturally I gave him them to read. He knew Hutton's works. "A high churchman," he called him, "who admires Newman prodigiously." At once he declared that Hutton would certainly take the article on Russia; it was so new that Russia should show signs of a revolutionary spirit, was so unexpected, and so forth. "I wanted your criticism," I insisted. "Please point out any faults: I'm more at home in German than in English." He smiled: "Here's a sentence that proves that, I think, and there's another." Soon we were at it hammer and tongs, but he quickly convinced me that my half-doubt was amply justified. After he had gone through the two articles, I had had the best lesson in English I ever got. From that day on for five years the Bible and Swift never left my bedside, and in those years I never opened a German book, not even my beloved Heine or Schopenhauer. It had taken me years to learn German, but it took me twice as long to cleanse my brain of every trace of the tongue. No writer should ever try to master two languages. I wrote or rewrote the little essays and then sent them off to Hutton. The next day I was back at my post at Chapman's, and when I told Chapman that I was on the Spectator he laughed and said he was delighted; and a day or two later he called me in and gave me a couple of books he wanted my opinion on. "Meredith is our reader," he said; "but it takes him weeks often to give an opinion and I'd like to know about these books as soon as possible." My chance had come. I thanked him, went straight home and sat down at once to read and re-read the books. They took me all day and I spent the best part of the night writing my opinion of them. Next morning I went round to Verschoyle with them, who told me the reviews were all right, showed indeed remarkable improvement in my English. "The short sentences strike the right note," he remarked, "but you mustn't let them become stereotyped; you must vary them very often." I thanked him and took the reviews to Chapman. He was greatly impressed. "I thought you'd keep 'em a week," he said. "I had no wish to hurry you so." 310 "It's nothing," I replied, "but the one book you could publish with some changes; the other is puerile." "I agree with you," he said, "and if you take this to the cashier downstairs, he'll give you the two guineas for your opinion." "No, no," I exclaimed. "I'm heavily in your debt for letting me bother you as I've done. Please use me whenever you can; I'll be only too glad to be of any service." Chapman smiled at me most cordially and from that day on gave me books every week, and asked me my opinion on this or that literary matter almost every day. He must have praised me to Escott too, for one afternoon Escott asked me up to the Fortnightly office and gave me a German article he wanted me to read and write an opinion on. "Shall I translate it?" I asked. "Only if you find it astonishingly good," he replied. Next day he had my written opinion. A little later he gave me an Italian article to translate and shortly afterwards, complaining that his work on the World took up a lot of his time, he gave me half the Fortnightly to correct; and when he found I did this too with the utmost care and speed, he asked me to sit in his room and soon I was playing secretary and factotum there every afternoon. The importunity that in the Bible won God had been successful too in London. But though a month had passed since I came from Salcombe, I had heard nothing from Froude, and, stranger still, nothing from the Spectator. I could only possess my soul in patience. Meanwhile I saw Verschoyle nearly every day and one day had a little dispute with him which showed, I think, a difference of nature. We had been discussing a passage in a Fortnightly article of mine, when he said: "These prolusions of ours are very interesting but don't lead to any goal." "Self-improvement is the best of goals," I replied; "but I hate your word 'prolusions.' It's correct enough, but surely a trifle pedantic?" "The exact word is rarely pedantic," he asserted. "Why not 'prolusion,' rather than 'preparatory exercise?'" "I can't say," was my answer, "but I want to be understood by the people at once. I would not use 'prolusion' for anything." Verschoyle shrugged his broad shoulders in manifest disagreement. 311 It was Verschoyle who first introduced me to modern English poetry and to a number of living English poets, notably to a Dr. Westland Marston and his blind son, Phillip. They lived in the Euston Road, and though now poor had apparently been well off formerly, and were friends with all the literary men of repute. Verschoyle told me that Phillip Marston had had the most unhappy life. He had been engaged to a very pretty girl, Mary Nesbit (sister of E. Nesbit, afterwards Mrs. Hubert Bland,) and one morning going to her room to wake her he found her dead. The shock nearly killed him. A couple of years later, his dearest friend Oliver Maddox Brown, f died almost as suddenly. Three or four years later his sister, Cicely, who had been quite well the day before, was found dead in her bed in the morning. His other sister, Eleanor, died in the following year, 1879; and his most intimate friend and fellow-poet, Arthur O'Shaughnessy, some two years afterwards. And in 1882 James Thomson,} the author of The City of Dreadful Night, was taken with a seizure in Phillip's rooms and carried out to a hospital to die; and in the same year, his hero and friend Rossetti died at Birchington. It looked as if fate had picked him out for punishment, and so fear came to me that misfortune often dogs gifted mortals, whereas fortune flees them. Phillip Marston was good-looking with a fine forehead and auburn hair; his eyes seemed quite natural and very expressive. I don't know why, but I agreed almost at once with Verschoyle's estimate that Phil Marston was one of the sweetest and most unselfish of men. We spent the whole afternoon together and before we left Phillip asked me to return when I liked. In a day or two I called again and had some hours with him: he took to me, he said, because I was almost as hopeless as he was. "Verschoyle," he went on "puzzles me with his Christian belief. I have no belief, none, cannot conceive how any one can cherish any faith in the future, however faint, and I feel that you agree with me." "Yes, indeed," I replied, and quoted, Only a sleep eternal In an eternal night! He bowed his head and said with inexpressible sadness, "'Dead! All's done with,' as Browning says. There's no hope for the survivors, either, none." "I am not so sure," I interrupted. "It seems to me that the wisest of men are always the most kindly, and from that fact I draw the hope that in the future, bit by bit, we mortals may get to loving-kindness for each and every man born, and so make this earthly pilgrimage a scented way of inexpressible delights." "The sweeter you make it," he cried, "the worse it will be to leave it." "Is that true?" I asked. "Surely, when we have drunk deep of love and life, we shall be able to go to death as one now leaves a table—satisfied." 312 It was dear Amy Levy, whom I got to know about this tune, who gave perfect expression to my thought, though she herself was as hopeless as Marston: The secret of our being, who can tell? To praise the gods, and Fate is not my part; Evil I see and pain; within my heart There is no voice that whispers: "All is well." Yet fair are days in summer and more fair The growths of human goodness here and there. "Beautiful, beautiful," he repeated when I had finished reciting the sextet, "and true; but it does not take us far, does it?" Phillip Marston was beyond any consolation—pain clothed him as with a garment—but his pity for others and his sympathy with human sorrow was inexhaustible. A little later he gave me a volume of his poems. "I've written, too, on the eternity of sleep," he said, and in the book I found this sonnet he had written to his love, Mary Nesbit. To me, it seems one of the sincerest and noblest of English elegies, though steeped in sadness. It must have been for one of us, my own, To drink this cup and eat this bitter bread. Had not my tears upon thy face been shed, Thy tears had dropped on mine; if I alone Did not walk now, thy spirit would have known My loneliness; and did my feet not tread This weary path and steep, thy feet had bled For mine, and thy mouth had for mine made moan. And so it comforts me, yea, not in vain, To think of thine eternity of sleep; To know thine eyes are tearless though mine weep; And when this cup's last bitterness I drain, One thought shall still its primal sweetness keep— Thou had'st the peace, and I, the undying pain. About this time, too, I came to know Miss Mary Robinson and her sister, but for some reason or other we did not get on very well. She laughed at me once over something I had said and chilled me. I was perhaps too young to realize her value, and soon she married a French professor and went to Paris to live and I lost sight of her; but now and again since I have had glimpses of a fine mind and regretted that I had not learned to know her. I think it was Francis Adams, the poet of The Army of the Night, who introduced me to the Robinsons. I shall have much to tell of him later, but now I need only say Verschoyle and the Marstons, Amy Levy, Miss Robinson and Francis Adams made me aware of the fact that London at that time, and indeed at all times, 313 thanks to the eternal goodness, is a nest of singing birds, crowded, indeed, with men and women of talent and distinction, who moreover are usually devoted to poetry as the noblest of all the arts. My chief fault in life and as a critic, as Shaw has felt, is that I have always been an admirer of great men and never cared greatly for those who fell short of the highest. Marston interested me as Amy Levy interested me, by the sheer pathos of their unhappy fate and immitigable suffering, but it was only later that I came to see that their poetic achievement, too, if not of the very highest, was of real value and had extraordinary importance. After his untimely death on the fourteenth of February, 1887, people talked of poor Marston's drinking habits and how he would sit up at night till all hours and—the cackle of stupidity! The fools could not even forgive the blind for trying to turn night into day! If drinking drowned sad, lonely thoughts, why not drink? I thank dear Phil Marston for hours of sweet companionship and an exquisite, all-embracing sympathy, and England can never forget his noble poetry. About this time I got a letter one morning that surprised me. My name on the envelope was written in such tiny characters that I could scarcely read it, but when I opened the cover two proofs fell out, Spectator proofs at last and a letter in Hutton's tiny script! "You were right," he began, "your reviews justify you. The one on Freeman is a gem and the Russian one provokes thought and may lead to discussion. I send you proofs of both and should be delighted if you'd call with them when corrected. I want more of your work. Yours truly, R. H. Button." At last the door was forced. I sat as in a charmed trance for some little time, then I opened the proofs and tried to read them as if a stranger had written them. The Russian one was certainly the better of the two, but it was the review of Freeman, aimed at Hutton's head and heart, that had won the prize. Food for thought in that. I began then to say to myself that no one can see above his own head. As I read the articles I noticed little roughnesses of swing and measure and set myself to correct them on another paper: I wanted to show Verschoyle the virginal proofs and get his opinion. While working in this way the noon post brought me a letter from Froude excusing his long silence, but he wished the dinner in my honour to be a great success and he had to wait till certain people had returned to town. Now, however, he'd be glad to see me on such and such a night and he'd keep my remarkable poems till then. "They have proved to me," he concluded, "that Carlyle's estimate of you was justified." Nothing could be more flattering, but my discussions with Verschoyle and the reading of his and Marston's poetry had shaken my belief in my 314 qualifications as a lyric poet; still, I had recently written a sonnet or two that I liked greatly and—conceit does not die of one blow. That afternoon I took the Spectator proofs to Verschoyle who, strange to say, agreed with Hutton that the Freeman paper was the better of the two, and he only suggested a single emendation, which I had already jotted down. Clearly his critical gift in prose was not as sure as in verse, or he was not so interested, for I had made some forty corrections. Next day I took the proofs most scrupulously corrected to Hutton and had a delightful talk with him. "Write on anything you like," he said, "only let me know beforehand what subject you've chosen so that we shan't clash. Let me know always by Monday morning, will you? I like your English, simple, yet rhythmic, but it's your knowledge that's extraordinary. You'll make a name for yourself; I wonder you're not known already. These are not days to hide one's light under a bushel," and he laughed genially. "On the contrary," I cried, "we put it with large reflectors behind it in front of the tent and pay a barker to praise our illuminating power." "A barker!" repeated Hutton. "What's that?" and I explained the racy term to him to his delight. "You Americans!" he repeated. "A barker! What a painting word!" But I didn't forget that I had still to win his heart, so when a pause came, I remarked quietly, "I wonder, Mr. Hutton, if you could help me to one of my ambitions. I knew Carlyle well, but I also admire Cardinal Newman immensely, though I've never had the joy of meeting him. Would it be too much to ask you for an introduction to him?" He promised at once to help me. "Though I don't know him intimately," he added reflectively, "still, I can give you a word to him. But how strange that you should admire Newman!" "The greatest of all the Fathers," I cried enthusiastically. "The sweetest of all the Saints!" "First rate," exclaimed Hutton. "That might be his epitaph. With that tongue of yours, you don't need any introduction; I'll just cite your words to him, and he'll be glad to see you. 'The greatest of all the Fathers,'" he repeated. "That may indeed be true, but surely St. Francis of Assisi is 'the sweetest of all the Saints?'" I nodded, smiling. Hutton was right, but I felt that I must not outstay my welcome, so I took my leave, knowing I had made a real friend in dear Holt Hutton. About this time I wrote an article in the Spectator which won for me the acquaintance and praise, if not the friendship, of T. P. O'Connor, M. P., a very 315 clever and agreeable Irishman who stands high among contemporary journalists. He has met most of the famous men of his time, but has hardly ever written of the indicating figures; the second and third rate pleasing him better. So far as I know, he has never even tried to study or understand any great man in the quirks of character or quiddities of nature that constitute the essence of personality. He has written for the many about their gods— Hall Caine and Gosse, Marie Corelli and Arnold Bennett, Conrad and Gilbert Frankau—and has had his reward in a wide popularity. But in the early eighties he was still young with pleasing manners and the halo about his head of possible achievement. Now for Froude and his dinner, which had I known it, was to flavour my experience with a sense of laming, paralysing defeat. Before dinner Froude introduced me to Mr. Chenery, the editor of The Times, and at table put me on his left. When the dinner was almost over, he presented me to the score of guests by saying that Carlyle had sent him a letter, asking him to help me in my literary career and praising me in his high way. He (Froude) had read some of my poems and had assured himself that Carlyle's commendation was well deserved; he then read one of my sonnets to let his guests judge. "Mr. Harris," he added, "tells me that he has begun writing for the Spectator, and most of us know that Mr. Hutton is a good, if severe, critic." To say I was pleased is nothing: almost every one drank wine with me or wished me luck with that charming English bonhomie which costs so little and is so ingratiating. As we rose to go to the drawing-room for coffee, I slipped into the hall to get my latest sonnet from my overcoat. I might be asked to read a poem, and I wanted my best. How easily one is flattered to folly at seven and twenty! When I reached the drawing-room door, I found it nearly closed and a tall man's shoulders almost against it. I did not wish to press rudely in, and as I stood there I heard the big man ask his companion what he thought of the poetry. "I don't know; why should you ask me?" replied his friend, in a thin voice. "Because you are a poet and must know," affirmed the tall man. "If you want my opinion," the weak voice broke in, "I can only say that the sonnet we heard was not bad. It showed good knowledge of verse form, very genuine feeling, but no new singing quality, not a new cadence in it." "No poet, then?" said the tall man. "Not in my opinion!" was the reply. 316 The next moment the pair moved away from the door and I entered; with one glance I convinced myself that my stubborn critic was Austin Dobson, who assuredly was a judge of the technique of poetry. But the condemnation did not need weighting with authority; it had reached my very heart because I felt it, knew it to be true. "No new singing quality, not a new cadence in it"; no poet then; a trained imitator. I was hot and cold with self-contempt. Suddenly Mr. Froude called me. "I want to introduce you," he said, "to our best publisher, Mr. Charles Longman, and I'm glad to be able to tell you that he has consented to bring out your poems immediately; and I'll write a preface to them." Of course I understood that 'good kind Froude,' as Carlyle had called him, was acting out of pure goodness of heart; I knew too that a preface from his pen would shorten my way to fame by at least ten years. But I was too stricken, too cast down to accept such help. "It's very, very kind of you, Mr. Froude!" I exclaimed, "And I don't know how to thank you, and Mr. Longman too, but I don't deserve the honour. My verses are not good enough." "You must allow us to be the judge of that," said Froude, a little huffed, I could see, by my unexpected refusal. "Oh, please not," I cried. "My verses are not good enough; really, I know; please, please give them back to me!" He lifted his eyebrows and handed me the booklet. I thanked him again, but how I left the room I have no idea. I wanted to be alone, away from all those kind, encouraging, false eyes, to be by myself alone. I was ashamed to the soul by my extravagant self-estimate. I took a cab home and sat down to read the poems. Some of them were poor and at once I burned them, but after many readings three or four still seemed to me good and I resolved to keep them; but I could not sleep. At last, in a fever, I heard the milkman with his cans and knew it was seven o'clock. I had lost a precious night's sleep. I flung myself out of bed and burnt the last four sonnets, then got into bed again and slept the sleep of the just till past noon. I awoke to the full consciousness that I was not a poet; never again would I even try to write poetry, never. Prose was all I could reach, so I must learn to write prose as well as I could and leave poetry for more gifted singers. Renewed hope came with physical exercise. After all, I had done a good deal in my first month or so. I had steady work on the Spectator; Hutton paid me three pounds for each paper, and I took care to write at least one every week and often two. Escott gave me more and more work on the Fortnightly, and after I had told him of Froude's dinner in my honour, he invited me to dine at his home in Brompton and I got to know his wife and pretty daughter. Chapman too invited me to his house in Overton Square, and I began to know quite a number of more or less interesting folk. 317 CHAPTER IX. FIRST LOVE; HUTTON, ESCOTT, AND THE EVENING NEWS HOW DOES LOVE come first to a man? Romance writers
all agree that love 318 "And my name is Laura Clapton." A few more questions and in five minutes I found that she was living with her father and mother in Gower Street; her father was a stockbroker and I could call any afternoon. I had time to promise I'd come next day and tell besides how I was working on the Fortnightly Review and the Spectator, thanks chiefly to my knowledge of various countries and languages. "I know some foreign languages, too," said Miss Laura. I was simply delighted to find her accent as good in German, French, Italian and Spanish as it was in English, and her command of the languages extraordinary: "Two years spent with my mother in each country," was her explanation. Next day I called and was introduced to a little, round-faced, roly-poly of a mother. Very ugly, I thought, with pug nose and small gray-blue eyes, but in spite of face and figure, the little fat woman had an air of dignity, or, it would be truer to say, of imperiousness tinged with temper. When I met Queen Victoria later I was irresistibly reminded of Mrs. Clapton. When Mr. Clapton came in the same evening, I saw where the daughter had got her good looks. Clapton was a handsome Irishman of perhaps five feet eleven, showing his fifty years in stoutness and greying hair. All his features were excellent, the hazel eyes splendid, and the man's personality genial and attractive. I easily understood how coming to Memphis, Tennessee, at five and twenty, the senator's daughter he met fell promptly in love with him. But he had been unfaithful and the proud southern girl wouldn't forgive him, and had taught her only daughter too to take her side, though in public the family held together. The whole situation was clear that first evening and I took an immediate liking to the good-looking, happy-go-lucky father, who probably out of custom kept up appearances with his unattractive wife for old affection's sake, and the pride he took in his daughter's looks and cleverness. For the daughter was undoubtedly clever and her looks grew on me: moving about in the room, taking off her hat and seating herself, the rhythmic grace of her beautiful figure made itself felt. I think from the beginning the mother disliked me as much as the father liked me. I found that Miss Laura loved the stage, had trained herself, indeed, to be an actress, and was only kept from going on the stage by the mother's insensate vanity and pride of birth. Naturally, I got them theatre tickets and soon became intimate. A month or so later the father wanted to spend Christmas at Brighton; nothing could have suited me better. I knew Brighton well, so early in the week we went down and stayed at the Albion Hotel. In the mornings we all used to go out walking, but the fat mother soon returned to the hotel with her husband, leaving Laura and myself to our own devices. Two incidents I remember of those first days: I had put some rhetoric into an article in the Spectator on Hendrik Conscience, the Belgian writer, and I read it to Laura 319 one afternoon. "You read wonderfully," she said, "and that prose is lovely. You're going to be a great writer!" I shook my head. "A good speaker, perhaps," I said, for already I thought of going into the House of Commons. I didn't believe that I had genius, but I felt sure I could make myself an excellent speaker, and naturally I confided my ambitions to her. She had risen, and as I rose and thrust the paper into my pocket, I repeated passionately the last words of the article. Her eyes were on a level with mine and I suppose the passion in my voice moved her, for her eyes gave themselves to me: the next moment my arms were around her and my lips on hers. She kissed me naturally, without shyness or reserve. I could not help thinking at once, "She has often given her lips; she's too good-looking to have been left unpursued." The thought gave me boldness. "How beautiful you are," I said putting my arm round her waist. She smiled but drew back a little. "You flatterer!" "No, no," I pursued; "not a taint of flattery; I'm so much in earnest that I'm absolutely truthful. Your figure is most beautiful: I love and admire small breasts, just as I admire and love large hips," and I put my hands again on her figure. "I love your word," she responded, "that you are 'so much in earnest that you are quite truthful,' deep love and truth always go together, don't they?" "Always," I replied. Her quick ears heard someone coming and she turned away, but the touches had thrilled me, and I could not forbear clasping her waist from behind. She wound herself out of my arms with infinite litheness and with pouting lips and frowning brows reproved my daring, but the finger on her mouth was a warning and her eyes were smiling: she was not really angry at all. The next minute her mother came in. The situation of the father and mother filled me with pity for the girl; I felt in my bones that the father in especial must have called on her sometimes to help pay the weekly bills. She had been trained in worldly wisdom, yet had kept her spiritual enthusiasms. Her difficulties, which I surmised, endeared her to me. On Christmas Eve we happened to be alone again in the sitting-room. After the first kiss I naturally kissed her whenever I had the chance, and under my kissing and caressing her lips grew hot. But she drew back almost at once. "How strangely you kiss," she said, her eyes thoughtful. 320 I loved her for her frankness and read it rightly, I think: she was still virgin, but on the point of yielding. I resolved to be worthy of her. "Laura, dear," I said, "I want to speak to you soul to soul. I love you and want you: give me six months or at most a year more and I shall have won a position in London and money. I've done a good deal in four months; I'll win completely in a year. Give me the year, will you, and I'll ask you to marry me!" "I love you," she replied, "and trust you. I'll wait, you can be sure," and we kissed again as a sort of consecration—indeed as lovers kiss, whose spirits flow together at meeting of the lips. The rest of those Christmas holidays can be told rapidly. I felt that Laura did not put much confidence in my assurances of splendid and rapid success. She had heard similar hopes expressed far too often by her father and had found them evaporate. I first heard the American word from her for such forecasts of hope, "hot air." How was she to know the difference between the gambler and the workman, whose self-confidence was rooted in many and widely different experiences? I resolved to get back to London as soon as possible, and up to the last day, with the optimism of first love, I hoped to meet Laura there almost every day. On the second of January I paid the hotel bill and was astonished by it; it took nearly all my nest-egg: Clapton had drunk champagne in his bedroom. But what did it matter? I had had the time of my life and a smile from Laura's lips; a glance of approval from her eyes meant more to me than a fortune. Just before lunch the father asked me to go out with him for a stroll. As soon as we were alone, he began by thanking me for the holiday. "I'd never have let you foot the bill," he began, "but I've had a long run of bad luck in this open stock exchange I founded in London. My partner, I find, has bolted in my absence and taken all the funds, but I only need just a small sum for expenses, a thousand '11 do—" I would not let him conclude; I wanted to spare him the humiliation of asking. I broke in at once, "I'd let you have it with a heart and a half if I had got it, but the truth is the holiday has brought me, too, to rock-bottom. I must go back and get to work, and I can't even get such a sum quickly. I say to you, as I've said to Laura, give me a year and I'll win." His look was enough; the splendid long hazel eyes were as hard as buttons. "Never mind," he said, "it doesn't matter." In ten minutes we were back in the hotel and I don't think I got ten words more from him that day. Evidently the father, too, thought me no prize. When we reached London I drove them first to Gower Street, but their rooms were not ready for them. The father saw the landlady and came down to us in 321 the hall and told us, with feigned indignation, that the hostess had not acted on his wire, but in a couple of hours their old rooms would be ready. "Mr. Harris will perhaps take care of you till then," he added. "I have to see—" The vagueness of the arrangements confirmed my suspicions of Clapton's irresponsibility and increased my sympathy with the queenly girl. Of course, I was only too glad to be of service. I drove the ladies first to my rooms to get rid of my luggage. Though I had not wired, my rooms were all ready, swept and garnished; and the mother and daughter came in and had tea and afterwards I took them to Kettners, a good Bohemian restaurant, for dinner. I left them at eleven o'clock in their rooms and got a long kiss from Laura in the passage; I felt well repaid. As soon as I was alone and rehearsed the happenings of the day, as was my custom, I saw I had no time to lose. "If you want the girl," I said to myself, "you'll have to win a position quickly." Clearly I felt that now both the father and the mother would be linked against me. They might, probably would, turn the cold shoulder and make it unpleasant for me even to call. Besides, I must not lose time and energy courting Laura; this was the determining thought: I must get to work at once and without encumbrance of any kind. That night I wrote to Laura fully, saying I would not see her for three months and telling her why: I would ask her to marry me within the year. She answered, saying she understood and would wait. My choice of her was so absolute that I took it for granted that she had chosen me with the same complete certitude. Yet I felt I must win as soon as possible and win big. Next morning I went down to Chapman, the publisher. What would he give me for a book on my experiences in western America as a cowboy, etc.? He listened to me and told me he might give £. 100. "But it's only because I know you," he added. "Usually we expect the author to help us in bringing out his first book." In half an hour I learned a good deal of the practice of publishing and found reason to echo Byron's caustic reply to Murray, who sent him a Bible instead of a check. Byron returned the book with one alteration. He had written in the word: "Now Barrabas was a 'publisher'," instead of the Biblical "robber." No hope of a fortune through a book. Five days in every week I spent now on this trail, now on that, but London business was better organized than business in the United States at that time and so again and again I found the hoped-for outlet was a blind alley. At length, after nearly a month of disappointments, I went down to the stock exchange and sought for a place as a clerk in a broker's office. I found that only one clerk in each office had the entree to the floor of the House, a privileged position again, to conquer which would cost at least a year's hard work. Besides, except the house of a German-Jew, not a single stockbroker seemed to want my services. But the Jew wanted many German letters written and I was more than willing to do them after hours; but the pay offered was only three pounds a week, and I stood hesitating. On my birthday, the fourteenth of February, I resolved to take Klein's offer and wrote to him that as soon as I had settled some business I'd be round, certainly within a week. 322 All this time I had been working steadily on the Spectator and growing there in influence. On each Saturday and Sunday I wrote two articles that always appeared; indeed, now I could control their position, for one day Hutton had taken me downstairs and introduced me to Meredith Townsend, his partner, saying that in the holidays, when he (Hutton) was away, he'd be glad if Townsend would use me in his (Hutton's) place. "He knows half a dozen languages," said Hutton, "and he corrects proofs as carefully as a born reader." Townsend assured me of his interest, and while Hutton was away I got a good deal of editorial work to do on the Spectator and came to know Townsend intimately. In many respects he was the complement of Hutton. He had spent many years in the East and knew China fairly well. As Hutton was profoundly religious, so Townsend cared chiefly for success. Hutton believed with all his soul and mind that mankind was growing in goodness and grace to some divine fulfilment. Townsend was certain that "man in the loomp was bad," as Tennyson's Northern Farmer had it, and must come to a bad end. But the two men together fairly filled the English ideal at once sentimental and practical, and so the paper came to power and influence and wealth, notwithstanding the fact that save for a smattering of French, neither editor knew anything of modern Europe or America, nor of modern art and literature. I was really needed by them, and had I started with them a year or two sooner, or continued a year or two longer, I might have brought it to a partnership and the paper to a wider success. But when Hutton wanted to know if twenty-five pounds would satisfy me for the extra editorial work I had done, I smiled and assured him his good word was all I wanted and that I was fully paid with the six pounds a week I made from my articles. I knew how to win, if I didn't know when I would win. However, my chance came, as always, at the last moment. One day I was in the Fortnightly office when Escott, coming up the stairs, met Chapman in the passage between their two rooms. After a word or two of greeting, Escott said loudly, "I think your protégé will get the editorship of the Evening News. I gave him a warm letter to Coleridge Kennard, the banker, who, I understand, foots all the bills." When he came into the room I had to report to him the results of a mission he had entrusted me with. The topic of the day was "The Housing of the Poor." Lord Salisbury had written an article in favour of the idea in The Nineteenth Century magazine, and Escott, egged on by Joseph Chamberlain, the Radical leader, had sent Archibald Forbes, the famous war correspondent, to Hatfield to report on what Lord Salisbury had done on his own estate for the rehousing of his poor. Forbes had sent in a most sensational report. He described houses in the village of Hatfield with vitriol in his pen instead of ink; one diningroom he pictured, I remember, where "feculent filth dripped on the table during meals." The whole paper was a savage attack on Salisbury and his selfish policy. It frightened Escott, and when I pointed out that the antithetical rhetoric really weakened Forbes's case, he asked me, "Would you go down to Hatfield and check Forbes's account," adding, "I have spoken 323 to Mr. Chamberlain about you and your articles in the Spectator and he hopes you'll undertake the job." Of course I went down to Hatfield at once with a proof of Forbes's article in my pocket. In the very first forenoon I found that the house where the "feculent filth dripped" didn't belong to Lord Salisbury at all, but to a leading Radical in the village. At the end of the day I was able to write that Forbes had only visited one house belonging to Lord Salisbury of the thirty he had described. I then called on Lord Salisbury's agent and told him I had been sent to ascertain the truth: "Would he give it to me?" Would he? He was a thorough-going admirer of Lord Salisbury, whom he described as probably the best landlord in England. "Lord Salisbury's not rich, you know," he began, "but as soon as he came into the title and property he went over every one of the six hundred houses on the estate: he found four hundred needed rebuilding; we decided that he could only afford to rebuild thirty a year. The same evening he wrote me that he could not accept rent for any of the four hundred houses we had condemned, and when the houses were rebuilt he would only take three per cent of the cost as rental. I'll show you one or two of the houses that are still to be rebuilt," he added. "I shouldn't mind living in them." I then showed him Archibald Forbes's paper, without disclosing the writer's name. "Lies," he cried indignantly, "all lies and vile libels. If only all noblemen acted to their tenants and dependents as Lord Salisbury does, there would not be a radical in England," and I half-agreed with him. Now I reported the whole investigation to Escott and he said, "You must tell Chamberlain about it: he'll be dreadfully disappointed for he had picked Forbes. But I am enormously obliged to you; you must let me pay your expenses, at any rate. I'll get it from Joseph," he added, laughing. "Shall we say twenty pounds?" "Say nothing," I replied, "but give me a letter recommending me for the editorship of the Evening News and we'll call it square." "With a heart and a half." cried Escott. "I'll give you the best I can write and a tip besides. Get Hutton of the Spectator to write too about your editorial qualities and see Lord Folkestone about the place, for though Kennard pays, Lord Folkestone is really the master. Kennard wants a baronetcy and Lord Folkestone can get it for him for the asking." Of course I acted on Escott's advice at once. Hutton gave me an excellent letter, declaring that he had used me editorially and hardly knew how to praise me as I deserved. The same evening I sent off all the letters. Two days after I got a note from Lord Folkestone, saying that Mr. Kennard was out of town, but if I'd meet him at 324 the office of the Evening News in Whitefriars Street in the morning, he'd show me round and we'd have a talk. Of course I accepted the invitation and left my letter within an hour at Lord Folkestone's house in Ennismore Gardens, then hastened off to Escott at once to find out all about Lord Folkestone. I found that as soon as his father died, he would be Earl of Radnor with a rentroll of at least £. 150,000 a year. "The eldest son's called Lord Folkestone by courtesy, for they own nearly the whole town and this Lord Folkestone married Henry Chaplin's sister. She's a great musician, has a band of her own made up of young ladies and her only daughter. Radnor is an old man and so Folkestone must soon enter into his kingdom; he's something in the Queen's household," and so forth and so on. I was soon to know him intimately. Coincidence has hardly played any part in my life; indeed, one incident about this time is the first occasion in my life when I could use the word. I was returning from Escott's house in Kensington when I asked the cabby to take me by the Strand and Lyceum Theatre, for I was greatly interested then in Irving's productions. As luck would have it, while I was looking at the advertisement, the people were going into the theatre, and, as I turned, a young man jumped out of a four-wheeler and then helped out Laura Clapton and her mother. He was in dress clothes but unmistakably American, thirty years of age perhaps, about middle height, broad and very good-looking. He was evidently much interested in Laura, for he went on talking to her even while helping her mother to alight, and Laura answered him with manifest sympathy. For a moment—just one wild impulse—I thought of confronting them; then a wave of pride surged over me. As she had not waited even three months, I would not interfere. I drew aside and saw them enter the theatre, rage in my heart. How far had the acquaintance gone? Not very far, but— Was Laura, too, that queen among women, a mere spoil of opportunity? Then I would live for my work and nothing else, But the disappointment was as bitter as death! 325 CHAPTER X. LORD FOLKESTONE AND THE EVENING NEWS; SIR CHARLES DILKE'S STORY AND HIS WIFE'S; EARL CAIRNS AND MISS FORTESCUE NEXT MORNING at ten o'clock I met Lord Folkestone in
the offices of the 326 that nonsense: that's why he took it up. But if it couldn't be made to pay, of course he'd have to drop it ultimately. Nobody seemed to know how to make it pay: the advertisements were increasing, but the circulation didn't seem to budge. If instead of selling six or eight thousand a day it sold fifty thousand, the "ads" would come in and it would have to pay. What did I think I could do? "Give me the paper for one month, Mr. Kennard," I said, "and I'll tell you all about it." "What conditions?" he asked. "Your own," I replied. "I shall be perfectly content with whatever you and Lord Folkestone decide. I give you my word I shan't injure the paper." "Very handsome, I must say," said Kennard. "I think we should accept?" He turned in question to Lord Folkestone. "Surely," Lord Folkestone nodded, "and for the first time I think we have a chance of making the paper a Derby winner." In this spirit we shook hands and they introduced me to the heads of departments. The sub-editors seemed sulky and disappointed: the head machinist, a Scot, too independent; the book-keeper, a Mr. Humphrey, the husband of the brilliant writer, "Madge" of Truth, thoroughly kind and eager to help me. I told him before Kennard and Folkestone that I wished to make no changes for the first month; I'd study the field. As soon as the directors had left, Humphrey gave me the true truth on all points within his knowledge. He thought it nearly impossible to make a cheap Conservative paper pay. There was a manifest contradiction between policy and price; then the machines were worthless and Macdonald not much good and— Clearly my task would be a difficult one. The chief sub-editor, Abbott, put on a nonchalant air. "Had he any ideas as to how the paper could be made successful?" He did what he was told, he said, and that was all. I went home that night with the latest Evening News in my hand and the latest Echo, its Radical rival. The Echo had a policy, a strictly Liberal policy with less than nothing to offer the workman except cheap contempt for his superiors. My Conservative-Socialist policy must beat it out of the field. The news in both papers was simply taken from the morning papers and the agencies and was as bad in one paper as in the other. It was plain that certain news items should be rewritten and made, after the American fashion, into little stories. I hadn't found the way yet, but I would find it. The lethargy in the whole establishment was appalling. It took an hour to make the stereo-plates for the best machine and often the old rattletrap machine would stop running; 327 and when I went down and interviewed Macdonald, he told me he was the only man who could get the old tin-pot machine to work at all. The previous editor had never entered the machine-room. I spent an hour every day there and soon one workman struck me, six feet in height and splendidly made, with a strong face. Whenever the machine stopped, Tibbett seemed to know at once what was wrong. When I got him a moment alone I asked him to come to see me upstairs after his work. He came, it seemed to me, reluctantly; bit by bit, by praising him and showing confidence in him and not in Macdonald, he spoke plainly. "Macdonald has got Scotchmen to work in order to keep his berth; he's no good himself and they are like him. Twelve men in the machine-room; five could do the work and do it better," Tibbett declared. Ten pounds a week, I said to myself, instead of twenty-five, a good saving. I asked Tibbett if I discharged Macdonald and gave him the job whether he'd do it. He seemed reluctant; the cursed esprit de corps of the working man made him hesitate, but at length he said he'd do his best, but— but—. Finally he gave me the names of the four men he'd keep. Next morning I called in Macdonald and discharged him and his brother-inlaw together. I gave him a month's salary in lieu of notice, his brother-in-law two weeks, and left the others till the next Saturday. An hour later there was the devil's own row in the machine-room. The discharged Scots suspected that Tibbett had given the show away and began calling him names. He knocked them down one after the other and they called in the police and had Tibbett arrested for assault and battery. Next day I went to the Police Court and did my best for him, but the stupid magistrate accepted the doctor's statement that the elder Macdonald was seriously injured. His nose, it appeared, was broken, whereas it should only have been put out of joint, and he gave Tibbett a month. His wife was in court and in tears; I cheered her up by telling her I'd have him out in a week, and thanks to Lord Folkestone, who went to the Home Secretary for him, he was let out in the week with a fine of £. 20 instead of the month's imprisonment. At the end of the week, Tibbett came back and the machines went better than they had ever done. I gave each of his three workmen two pounds weekly and four to Tibbett and a new spirit of utmost endeavour reigned in the machine room. To cut a long story short, I got Tibbett to tell me who was the best man in the casting department—Maltby was his name, the best workman and the most inarticulate man I ever met. I reduced the expenses there two-thirds, saving another fifteen pounds a week and increasing the efficiency incredibly. At once the time occupied in casting plates for one machine fell from an hour to the best American time of twenty minutes, but Maltby gradually reduced it to twelve minutes with astonishing results, as I shall soon relate. I began to get lessons on all sides. The war in Egypt was on and one morning, hearing a good deal of noise, I went into the great outer office where the 328 newsboys had assembled for the first edition. They talked loudly and seemed discontented, so I went in among them and asked one for his opinion. "There's a bloody bill!" cried the youngster disdainfully. He couldn't have been more than twelve, shoving the Evening News contents bill in my face. "A bloody bill; how do you expect us to sell papers on that?" "What's wrong with it?" I asked. "Nothing right!" was the reply. "Hain't there been a battle and great slaughter? Look at this Daily Telegraph bill. There's a real bill for ye; that'll sell paipers! Ours won't!" Of course I saw the difference at once, so I took the boy critic and a friend of his into my office and with the paper before us sat down to get out a new and sensational bill. Then I sent for the chief sub-editor, Abbott, and showed him the difference. To my amazement he defended his quiet bill. "It's a Conservative paper," he said, "and doesn't shout at you." The boy critic giggled. "You come out to sell paipers," he cried, "and you'll soon hev' to shout!" The end of it was that I gave the boy ten shillings and five to his friend and made them promise to come to me each week with the bills, good and bad. Those kids taught me what the London hapenny public wanted and I went home laughing at my own high-brow notions. The ordinary English public did not want thoughts but sensations. I had begun to edit the paper with the best in me at twenty-eight; I went back in my life, and when I edited it as a boy of fourteen I began to succeed. My obsessions then were kissing and fighting: when I got one or other or both of these interests into every column, the circulation of the paper increased steadily. I was awakened every morning at seven with breakfast and the papers: I could hardly get up earlier, as the milk did not come till seven. One morning my Telegraph told me that there had really been a battle in Egypt and of course the English had won. While driving to the office I cut out and arranged the account in The Telegraph and bettered it here and there with reports taken from the Daily Chronicle and The Times. I was at the office before eight, but no sub-editors came till nearly nine. That didn't matter so much, but the compositors only began to drift in at eight-fifteen. At once I set them to work and by nine I had put the whole paper together, with one short leading article instead of two long ones, and a good bill. The first edition sold over ten thousand; I told the sub-editors not to be caught napping again and informed the printers that they had all to be present at eight sharp. They promised willingly. My boy critic was on the job 329 and congratulated me and gave me, incidentally, a new idea. "Some days," he said, "the news of a victory comes into the Telegraph between four in the morning, when they go to press, and ten, and then they bring out a speshul edition. My brother works on the Telegraph; he's a compositor and he'd give me the first pull of any speshul stuff and I could bring it to you. If your paiper is ready, you could taike the news and be out almost as soon as the Telegraph. Then you'd sell; oh my! 'twould be a holy lark!" I fell in with the idea, told him he should have a sovereign to share with his brother every time he succeeded, and gave him my address: he was to come for me in a cab whenever he got such news. By extra pay I induced three "comps" to come in at six in the morning, and downstairs Maltby and his assistant and Tibbett and his brother were always on hand at the same hour. One morning the little imp came for me. In half an hour I was in the office and had given the report of a big battle from the Telegraph word for word to the comps. They worked like fiends; indeed, the spirit was such that the comp who ought to have gone downstairs with the news called to his two chums to tail on to the rope and jumped into the letter-lift, which would have practically fallen five stories had not the chums clung on to the pulleys at the cost of bleeding fingers. In ten minutes, the Evening News was selling on the street, and, as it happened, selling before the Telegraph's special edition. We could have sold hundreds of thousands, had the old machines been able to turn them out. As it was, we sold forty or fifty thousand and Fleet Street learned that a new evening paper was on the job. About noon that day I had a visitor, Mr. Levi Lawson, owner of the Telegraph, a little, fat, rubicund Jew of fifty or sixty, fuming with anger that his thunder had been stolen. I soon saw that he only suspected that we were out before him, for he informed me that I must never reproduce more than 30 per cent of a Telegraph article, even when I published the fact that the account was taken from their columns and gave them full credit. I showed him that I had stated in my preliminary story that the Telegraph correspondent was usually the best. That seemed to appease him, and as I knew my zeal had led me too far, I told him that I always meant to give the original purveyor of the news twenty minutes' start. Just as Lawson was going out, conciliated, in came Lord Folkestone. I introduced Lawson to him and Lawson told him the story, adding, "You've a smart editor in this American; he'll do something." When Folkestone heard the whole story and how the "comp" had risked his life in his eagerness to save half a minute, he had the men up and thanked them and took me off to lunch, saying I must tell the whole story to Lady Folkestone. He confided to me on the way that Lady Folkestone couldn't stand Ken-nard: "He's not very kindly, you know!" Lady Folkestone at that time was a large lady of forty-odd, who was as kind and wise as she was big. Henry Chaplin, her brother, the Squire of 330 Lincolnshire, as he was called, was one of those extraordinary characters that only England can produce. Had he been educated, he would have been a great man; he was spoiled by having inherited a great position and fifty or sixty thousand pounds a year. He was handsome, too, tall and largely built, with a leonine aspect. Everyone in the eighties told you how he had fallen desperately in love with a pretty girl, who on the eve of marriage ran away with the Marquis of Hastings. Chaplin at once went on the turf in opposition to the Marquis; a few years later he got a great horse in Hermit, who burst a blood vessel ten days before the Derby. The Marquis plunged against Hermit: for the first time the Derby was run in a snow storm (God's providence coming in to help righteous indignation) and Hermit won. On settling day the Marquis blew his brains out, or what stood for them, and Chaplin was vindicated. I don't know what became of the lady, but Chaplin went into the House of Commons and soon developed an ore rotunda style of rhetoric that sometimes deformed a really keen understanding of life. I knew him as a most lavish spender; he used to order special trains to take his guests to his country house, and his claret was as wonderful as his Comet port. He had read a good deal, too, but he had never forced himself to read anything that did not appeal to him, and so he was far too self-centred in opinion, with curious lacunae of astounding ignorance. An Englishman through and through, with all the open-handed instincts of a conquering and successful race, and with a deep-rooted love of fair play and surface sentimentalities of all sorts that no one could explain, such as the English taste in men's dress and a genuine indifference to every other art. I have said a lot about Henry Chaplin because his sister was curiously like him in essentials, as generous-kindly and sweet-minded as possible, with at bottom an immense satisfaction in her privileged position. She loved music genuinely, yet when I talked of Wagner's astonishing genius, she seemed to have absolutely no comprehension of it. Her daughter was tall and pretty, the son, too, a fine specimen so far as looks went, but with no conception of what I had begun to call to myself the first duty, which consists in developing the mind as harmoniously as the body. Such self-development increases one's power enormously, but is as easy and dangerous to overdo as it is easy and dangerous to overdevelop a muscle. English society I learned to know through the unvarying kindness of the Folkestones: it struck me as superficial always and of the Middle Ages in its continual reference to a Christian, or rather a Pauline, standard of morals, which sat oddly on a vigorous, manly race. When my month was up I was able to show that I had increased the efficiency of the Evening News staff and had saved to boot some five thousand pounds yearly of expenses, while adding nearly as much to the revenue. 331 Thereupon the directors engaged me for three years as managing director at a salary of a thousand pounds a year and expenses, with a proviso that if I made the paper pay in the time, I should have a fifth of the net profits and an engagement for ten years, or for life, as Kennard suggested. At once I felt I had won. I could marry now or just go on with the work: why didn't I seek out Laura and marry her? Simply because I had seen her twice at different theatres with the same sturdy, handsome American. The last time, coming out behind her mother, he had taken hold of her bare arm and she had rewarded his lover-like gesture with that smiling gift of herself I knew so well and valued so highly. No, I was not jealous, I said to myself, but I was in no hurry to put my head in the noose. So I worked with all my might at the paper and went out in the evenings. Folkestone had taken me to Poole's, his tailor's, and I was fairly well turned out. I was not a society favorite but already excited some interest, due chiefly to Folkestone's chivalrous backing. I don't remember exactly how I came to know Arthur Walter of The Times, but we soon became great friends and I spent half my summers at his country house near Finchampstead. Mrs. Walter, too, took me up and was very kind to me, and I came to regard the whole household with real affection. Already I could tell them stories of a London life they knew little or nothing about, the life of the coulisses. Sir Charles Dilke I got to know intimately through the paper and I may as well tell the story here, for he made me know Chamberlain and the Radical party with fruitful consequences. A Mr. Crawford, f a man of some position, suddenly filed a petition for divorce and named the Radical baronet, Sir Charles Dilke, as co-respondent. To my astonishment, the mere accusation was like an earthquake: London talked of nothing else. Folkestone gave me the aristocratic view. "Dilke," he said, "was known as a loose fish. The scandal would ruin him with his constituents, but nobody in society would think any the worse of him." I saw the chance of a journalistic sensation, so I wrote to Dilke at once, saying that if I could do him any good, the Evening News would help him to put his case properly before the public. At once he replied, begging me to come to see him in his house in Sloane Street. He met me there next morning with outstretched hands. "Your belief in my innocence," he began, "has been the greatest encouragement to me." "Good God!" I cried. "Innocent! Like everyone else I thought you guilty; it's the politician I came to help, not the innocent." At once he smiled, "We can talk then without affectation," and we did. I soon discovered that he took the whole thing far more seriously than I did or than Lord Folkestone. "A verdict against me means rum to my career in Parliament," he declared. 332 "But the great Duke of Wellington," I objected, "wrote to Fanny who threatened to publish his letters: 'Dear Fanny, publish and be damned.'" "An aristocratic society then," replied Dilke, "rather enjoyed a scandal; today the middle classes rule, and adultery to them is as bad as murder." "Let's make fun of the whole thing," I proposed, "and so lighten the consequences." "Very kind of you," replied Dilke. "It may help, but it won't save me." In the next weeks I got to know Dilke well. He was one of the few men I met in London who knew French thoroughly and could speak it as a Frenchman with fluency and a perfect accent, but in spite of this advantage, he knew very little of French literature or art. He lived in politics, and though hardworking, he was not well read, even in English, and anything but brilliant. From time to time I met at his house all sorts of people like Jusserand, now French ambassador at Washington, and Harold Frederic, the brilliant American journalist and writer, and Edward Grey, Dilke's understudy as a minister for foreign affairs; Rhoda Broughton, too, the novelist and a host of others. For Dilke was a rich man with many intellectual interests and a tinge as I have said, of French culture. He had inherited not only the Athenaeum journal from his father, but also miniatures of Keats that I esteemed more highly. This admiration of mine astonished him and he was good enough to offer me a beautiful specimen. "If you would let me give you something for it—" I hesitated. "What would it be worth?" he asked. "I'd give you a hundred pounds willingly," I replied. "Is it worth as much as that?" he exclaimed. "If I had it, I'd not take a thousand for it," I cried. "Really!" he said, but no longer pressed it on me, for Dilke was anything but generous. The great question for Dilke in the divorce case was, should he go into the witness box and deny the adultery or not. He never discussed it with me till the trial was on; then at noon one day he called at my office and put the matter before me. Naturally I told him that he must go into the box and deny it. Any gentleman would have to do that for a lady, even if the liaison had been so notorious that his denial would only cause a smile. Thereupon Dilke told me that he had talked the matter over with Joseph Chamberlain in a room in the Law Courts and that Chamberlain had insisted that he mustn't go into the box. 333 "Dilke," I cried, "it is surely worse than foolish to go to your rival for advice. Chamberlain and Dilke are the two Radical leaders. Fancy Dilke accepting Chamberlain's counsel." Dilke hemmed and hawed and beat about the bush, but at last confessed. "You see," he said, "my name was often coupled with the name of Mrs. Crawford's mother when I was young in London, and people might be horrified at the idea that I would corrupt my own daughter." "Good God!" I cried. "That does complicate the affair. But no English judge would allow any question, even in cross-examination, that would tend to discover such a pot of roses." "It doesn't horrify you?" asked Dilke. "I thought Chamberlain would have a fit when I told him." "I wouldn't have told him," I said. "But do you think she is your daughter? Is there any likeness, or attraction?" "No nothing," he replied. "The Greeks, you know, thought nothing of incest. Some indeed say that the highest type of Greek beauty was evolved through the father going with the daughter, the brother with the sister—" "We can discuss that another time," I said, "and I would like to, because I have some strange facts on it. The consanguinity is supposed to produce greater beauty, but certainly less strength and less intellect; but now I can only beg you to go into the box. If you don't, Stead and the other Radical journalists will get after you and declare that your abstention is a proof of your guilt. It is probable, too, that the judge will express the same opinion and then the fat would be in the fire. The nonconformist conscience would get on its hind legs and howl." Everyone remembers that in spite of my good advice, which I urged with all my power, Dilke funked the witness box, let the case go by default against him, and the judge said that his abstention must be taken as a confession: "Every gentleman would repel such an accusation with horror." Yet this righteous judge had heard Mrs. Crawford in the witness box declare that Dilke insisted on bringing a Mrs. Rogerson to their bed when she was in it, "And Mrs. Rogerson," she added, "was an old woman and Dilke's old flame!" British prudery pretended not to know what this second string to Dilke's bow could possibly mean, but in the best class of society the matter was fully discussed. While I was defending Dilke as well as I could, John Corlett of the Pink 'Un', the London paper distinguished for its free speech, came to me and said, "You know Dilke and all about this case of Crawford." I admitted that I knew a good deal about it. "Can't you do something funny on it for me? You know we can sail near the wind, but mustn't make the sails shiver." 334 An idea came into my head and I gave it to Corlett. "Put in any comment about the case you like," I said, "and then sketch a little palette bed in the simplest of small bedrooms, because that is where Dilke assures me that he sleeps. Put two pillows on the bolster and leave the sketch for the first week with the caption, 'An Exact Reproduction of Sir Charles Dilke's Bedroom!'" "That won't set the Thames on fire," said Corlett. "Still, the idea has a little piquancy." "But think what you would be able to do next week," I said, "when you put in great letters that you made one mistake in the picture of Dilke's bedroom last week, that you are happy to be able to rectify it this week. Then reproduce the picture again exactly, putting, however, three pillows on the bolster instead of two." "I will send you fifty quid for that," said Corlett. "That's the best thing I've heard for a h—1 of a while." And he kept his word. I always liked John Corlett. There was no nonsense about him, and he was a first-rate paymaster. One quality Sir Charles Dilke had of greatness, a quality rare even in England and almost unknown among American politicians: he judged men with astounding impartiality. He knew the House of Commons better than anyone I ever met, with the solitary exception of Lord Hartington, and I was a fairly good judge of this accomplishment, for from the moment I became editor of the Evening News, I began to go to the House of Commons three or four times a week and listen to all the debates from the "Distinguished Strangers' Gallery." There and in the lobbies I met all sorts and conditions of men from Captain O'Shea and Biggar to Mr. Parnell and Count Herbert Bismarck. One incident about Dilke I must not forget to relate. As soon as the result of his trial was made known, Mrs. Mark Pattison, the widow of the famous rector of Lincoln College, Oxford, cabled to him from India, "I believe in your complete innocence and am returning to marry you at once." This recalls a story that was hatched in Oxford, I believe, about Mark Pattison, the famous Grecian and his pretty young blonde wife, who had surrounded herself with a band of young Fellows and scholars, which seemed at variance with the pedantic tone of the elderly head. One day an old friend found Pattison walking in the college garden, lost in thought. "I hope I'm not interrupting," he said, after vainly trying to interest the Rector. "No, no! my dear fellow," replied Pattison, "but I have ground for thought. My wife tells me that she thinks she's enceinte," and he pursed out his lips in selfsatisfaction. "Good God." cried the friend, "whom do you suspect?" 335 When we read Mrs. Pattison's cable in the morning paper, Folkestone exclaimed, "Really, I begin to feel sorry for Dilke; his sins are finding him out," and Harold Frederic's word was much the same: "A bos bleu on a rake will be something novel even in London." I never liked Lady Dilke. She was a woman of forty-odd when I first met her, an ordinary stout, short blonde with brown hair, blue eyes, commonplace features and complexion, who was always a pedant—indeed the only bluestocking I ever met in England. I may give one typical instance of her pedantry and so leave her to rest. When I had made some reputation as a Shakespeare scholar and had declined her invitations for years and years, she wrote to me once, telling me that the French diplomat, M. Jusserand, was a great Shakespearean authority whom I really ought to meet; and "who wishes to meet you," she added. "Won't you therefore dine with us on the— and meet him? Please come at seven and then you can have an hour together before dinner." I wrote thanking her and turned up at seven sharp; I was eager to see if any Frenchman knew anything at first hand of Shakespeare. Lady Dilke introduced me at once to M. Jusserand in the little off-drawing-room on the first floor and said, "Now I'll leave you two sommites of learning to talk and straighten out all difficulties, for you both believe, I think, that Shakespeare was Shakespeare and not Bacon, though I remember once—," and the garrulous lady started off on a long story of how she had once met a Baconian at Lincoln College, "whom even my husband had to respect and this is how he approached the great question—" Jusserand and I looked at each other and listened with courteous, patient inattention; the lady went on for the whole hour and the dinner-bell found us still listening, neither of us having got in a single word edgeways. To this day I know nothing of Jusserand's views. From his marriage on, Dilke and I used to lunch together once a week, now in this restaurant, now in that, for many a year, and nine-tenths of what I learned about the House of Commons and English politicians came from him. In fact, it was he who showed me the best side of English Puritanism, its appreciation of conduct and strict observance of all obligations. I always preferred the aristocrat view, at once more generous and looser; but the middle-class semi-religious outlook is perhaps more characteristically English, for it has propagated itself almost exclusively all over the United States and the British colonies. Dilke taught me where Dickens got his Gradgrind, the master of facts, "the German paste in the Englishman," I called it. Dilke was well informed in politics and worked up all his speeches in the House with meticulous care. But though he spoke monotonously and without a thrill of any kind, Gladstone, some time before the Crawford divorce case, had solemnly selected Dilke to follow him in the Liberal leadership. Laborious learning is 336 esteemed in England beyond even genius, altogether beyond its value. This is what Goethe meant, I believe, when he spoke of the English as "pedants." One evening at dinner Dilke corrected Harold Frederic in a little unimportant fact. For some reason or other, Frederic had asserted that only about half the inhabitants of Salt Lake City were Mormons. At once Dilke corrected him: "Ninety per cent, my dear Frederic, and eighty per cent communicants." Harold looked his disgust but said nothing. Afterwards, going home together, he expatiated on this tic of Dilke's and arranged with me to catch him. Harold was to get up the number of Copts in Lower Egypt; of course Dilke would pretend to have the figures at his fingers' ends and Frederic would bowl him out. For my part I was charged to find out the number of Boers in the Transvaal in comparison with men of other nationalities, and accordingly I got up the figures. At our next dinner in Sloane Street I turned the talk on Cairo and said how surprised I was at the number of different nationalities there were in that strange land. "I met Copts by the score," I said; at once Dilke fell into the trap. "Surely," he said, "the Copts in Cairo don't number more than a few hundreds." "What do you think, Frederic?" I asked across the table, to get the proper audience. "Copts in Cairo," repeated Frederic. "You can hardly be serious, Dilke; there are some eleven thousand of them." Dilke was nonplussed. "Really, eleven thousand," he kept repeating; "Copts? Really?" He was evidently shocked by the correction. A few minutes later he committed himself to the statement that there were comparatively few Boers in Johannesburg and thus fell into my hands. I never saw a man so taken aback; accuracy was his fetish and to have it desert him twice in one evening was too much for his equanimity. I mention these things just to set off a racial peculiarity of the Englishman which, I'm sorry to say, is showing itself almost as prominently in the American, though, I am glad to believe, without the intolerable presumption of the Englishman that knowledge and wisdom are synonymous. In my first year in the Evening News I learned and practiced nearly every journalistic trick. When the annual boat race between Oxford and Cambridge was about to be decided, I found out that the experts usually knew which crew would win. Of course sometimes they are mistaken, but very rarely, and this year they all agreed it was a foregone conclusion for Oxford. Accordingly, on the great morning I had fifty thousand papers printed with "Oxford won" in big letters under the latest preliminary reports 337 of the training, etc. As soon as the telephone message came through that Oxford had won, I let the boys out and this start enabled me to sell all the fifty thousand papers. I did the same thing with race after race on the turf and soon it began to be known that the Evening News had the earliest news of the races. I only mention these things to show that I was really working at high pressure day in, day out. Time and again, luck favoured me. One morning the announcement came in that the marriage between Lord Garmoyle and Miss May Fortescue had been broken off and that the lady was suing for breach of promise. Within ten minutes I had got her address and was off in a hansom to interview her. I found her a very pretty and very intelligent girl who blamed the whole fiasco upon Earl Cairns, one of the Conservative leaders, who was the father of Lord Garmoyle and naturally enough did not wish his only son to marry an undistinguished actress. I gathered from Miss Fortescue that Cairns was a North of Ireland man, a great lawyer, but very religious and prudish, one who still spoke of Sunday as the Sabbath and thought the stage the antechamber of hell. When Miss Fortescue saw that I meant to fight for her, she gave me letters both of Lord Cairns and Lord Garmoyle that were very interesting and confessed to me that though she "cared for" Lord Garmoyle, she had put the damages for the breach of promise at ten thousand pounds "because his father will have to pay." I wrote a two-column article at once, telling the whole story under the title "Beauty and the Peer," exciting all the sympathy possible for Miss Fortescue and throwing all the odium on Earl Cairns. The article caused a tremendous sensation. That a Conservative paper should have printed such an attack upon a Conservative peer and leader was unheard of. Kennard happened to be in Brighton, but he was told about the article within a couple of hours of its appearance and at once wired to me to stop publishing the story, which he characterized as "obscene!" I went to Lord Folkestone for support and found that he was merely amused. He didn't like Cairns, thought him narrow and bigoted, and encouraged me to go on, while promising to smooth down Kennard's ruffled plumage. Accordingly, I kept on and had a second article next day still more sarcastic. To cut a long story short, Lord Cairns couldn't stand the contemptuous exposure, so paid the ten thousand pounds of damages demanded, and everyone, including Miss Fortescue, gave me and the Evening News credit for the victory. This journalistic triumph doubled the circulation of the paper, increased its advertisements considerably and so gave us all a foretaste of success. I cleaned out the sub-editors' room and put friends of my own in place of the hacks, notably an Australian Irishman named Dr. Rubie; turned out the old leader-writers too and gave their work to Cluer and other friends. The whole place was soon abuzz with life and vigour. 338 But I had some rebuffs. The office of the St. James Gazette was just opposite our office in Whitefriars Street, and when I went out at noon I used to see a dozen of their carts drawn up on one side of the street, while our fifteen or twenty carts were drawn up on the other side—all alike waiting to get the papers and hurry off to distribute them to the various shops all over London. I went into the matter and found that we were paying some six thousand pounds a year for our carts. At once I got an introduction to Greenwood, the editor of the St. James's, and offered to give his paper, which cost a penny, the benefit of our very much larger distribution at about half of that his carts cost him. To my astonishment he refused and stuck to his refusal, though it was plainly stupid. Three years afterwards, when my first stories came out in the Fortnightly Review, Greenwood praised them to the skies, and very ingenuously admitted that he had had a prejudice against me because he had heard me called an "American business man" and now regretted his hostility. We became in fact very good friends, and long before he died I grew to esteem and love the man. Lord Folkestone often got me to call for him at the Carlton Club and there one day he told me a couple of jokes about club life that seemed to me to be amusing. The Carlton Club, as everybody knows, is the official club of the Conservative party, and one day an influential member, recently joined, put up on the notice board a request that the nobleman who had stolen his umbrella would kindly return it immediately. After this notice had been up a week or so, an irascible nobleman went to the secretary and drew his attention to it. "It is a libel on our order," he said, "and I insist that the name of the nobleman should be given or the notice should be taken down." Hereupon the secretary went and interviewed the member who had put up the notice. "I don't know his name," said the member. "Why then do you think it is a nobleman?" asked the secretary. "Well, this club, according to your own statement, is made up of noblemen and gentlemen. No gentleman would steal my umbrella, so it must be a nobleman." And here is a story of the Athenaeum Club, which in its own way is almost as amusing. The Athenaeum possessed for many years a famous and polite porter, named, I think, Courtney, who could identify hats, umbrellas and walking sticks belonging to members, and was never known to make a mistake. One day a dignified Bishop on his way out was duly handed his things by the janitor. "This umbrella does not belong to me, Courtney," said the right reverend prelate. 339 "Possible not, my Lord," replied Courtney, "but it is the one you brought into the club." Such stories as these abound in London and give a special, distinctive flavour to life in England, and for that reason I shall reproduce some of the best, not forgetting those coined in New York. 340 CHAPTER XI. LONDON LIFE AND HUMOR; BURNAND AND MARX ... O thou wondrous Mother-age
341 The dancing and singing, and above all the astonishing plastic beauty of the chorus girls, gave me a foretaste of London, for in Paris the chorus women were usually hags. Miss Nelly Farren is the Baron Abomelique de Barbe Bleue and Miss Vaughan, Kate Vaughan is Lili, the Baron's bride. Here is the first verse of her song in the second act: French language is a bother, To learn it I don't care, Don't like to hear my mother Called by the French a mere. I like a husband to myself But the dear one is my cher Though I've only got one father Yet they swear he is a pere. Then Kate danced as no one ever danced before or since, with inimitable grace, and the way she picks up her dress and shows dainty ankles and hint of lovely limbs is a poem in itself; and all about her beautiful, smiling girls, in costumes that reveal every charm, sway or turn or dance, as if inspired by her delightful gaiety. In another scene she imitates Sarah Bernhardt and there is infinite humour in her piquant caricature; some one else mimics Irving, and all this in a rain of the most terrible puns and verbal acrobatics ever heard on any stage—an unforgettable evening which made me put Burnand down as one of the men I must get to know as soon as possible, for he was evidently a force to count with, a verbal contortionist, at least, of most extraordinary agility. I will give one proof of his quality from my memories of ten years or so later, just to give handsome little Frank his proper standing, for he was as kindly pleasant as he was good-looking and witty, and that's saying a good deal. In the London New York Herald, a weekly paper, there had appeared the story of Lord Euston's arrest, so detailed that it was almost as libellous as the account in the Star, the ha' penny Radical evening paper, of which Ernest Parke was the editor. I knew Euston pretty well and he had told me that he meant to make it "hot" for anyone who traduced him. He was a big, wellmade fellow of perhaps thirty, some six feet in height and decidedly manlylooking, the last person in the world to be suspected of any abnormal propensities. The story in the Star was detailed and libellous: Lord Euston was said to have gone in an ill-famed house in the West Central district; and the account in the Sunday Herald was just as damning. On the Monday following, Burnand came to lunch with me in Park Lane and by chance another guest was the Reverend John Verschoyle, whose talent for literature I have already described. 342 For some reason or other Verschoyle at table had condemned those who married their deceased wife's sister, evidently ignorant of the fact that Burnand had committed this offence against English convention. A little later, after the ladies had left the table, Verschoyle brought the conversation on the article in the New York Herald about Lord Euston; he was positive that a Sunday paper, by even mentioning such an affair, had killed itself in London. Burnand remarked, smiling, that he could not agree with such a verdict; surely it was the function of a newspaper to publish "news," and everyone was talking of this incident. But Verschoyle, purity-mad, stuck to his guns. "How could you explain such an 'incident'," he insisted, "to your wife or daughter, if she asked you what it was all about?" "Very easily," retorted Burnand, still smiling, but with keen antagonism in his sharp enunciation; "I'd say: 'my dear, Lord Euston feels himself above the ordinary law, and having nothing better to do, went to this notorious gambling house to play. He thought the game was going to be poker, but when he found it was baccarat he came away.' " No wittier explanation could be imagined; even Verschoyle had to try to smile. Curiously enough, in the libel action which Lord Euston brought against the Star newspaper, and which resulted in the condemnation of Ernest Parke, the editor, to a year's imprisonment, the explanation of Lord Euston was something like Burnand's excuse for him. He said that someone in the street had given him a card with poses plastiques on it; as he was at a loose end that night, he went to the address indicated. When he found that there were no poses plastiques, he came away. One may say that burlesques and wit like Burnand's could also be found in Paris, but the comic humour, plus the physical beauty of the chorus girls, were not to be found there, nor the tragedy. Ernest Parke was a convinced Radical and a man of high character, yet he was sentenced to a year's imprisonment for reproducing, so he told me, a police inspector's statement, and one which in any case did Lord Euston no harm at all. Yet no one in London expostulated or thought of criticizing the judge, though it seemed to me an infamous and vindictive sentence only possible in England. The preposterous penalty discovers a weak and bad side of the aristocratic constitution of English society. The judges almost all come from the upper middle class and invariably, in my experience, toady to aristocratic sentiment. Every judge's wife wants to be a Lady (with a capital, please, printer!), and her husband as a rule gets ennobled the quicker the more he contrives to please his superiors in the hierarchy. If Lord Euston had been Mr. Euston of Clerkenwell, his libeller would have been given a small fine, but not imprisoned, though the imputation even of ordinary immorality would have injured him in purse and public esteem grievously, whereas it could not damage Lord Euston in any way. And now for a contrast. 343 It was early in the eighties—I know it was a cold, windy day—that I went up to Haverstock Hill to call upon Dr. Karl Marx at his modest home in Maitland Park Road. We had met some time before, after one of Hyndman's meetings, and were more or less friends. Hyndman had contradicted something I had said, and when I quoted Engels as on my side, he told me that he knew Engels and spoke German as well as English. Seeing that a large part of the audience was German, I challenged him to reply to me and began speaking in German. When the meeting was over a German came up and congratulated me and asked me would I like to know Karl Marx? I replied that nothing would give me greater pleasure and he took me out and introduced me to the famous doctor. He was by no means so famous then as he is now forty years later, though he well deserved to be. I had read Das Kapital some years before. The first book, indeed, all the theoretical part, seemed to be brain-cobwebs loosely spun; but the second book and the whole criticism of the English factory system was one of the most relentless and convincing indictments I had ever seen in print. No one who ignores it should be listened to on social questions. When I had absorbed it, I sent for Marx's other books, A Life of Lord Palmerston and Revelations of the Diplomatic History of the Eighteenth Century. The Palmerston is written by one who had no feeling for character: the hero, an Irishman alive to his finger-tips, is buried under an erudition that prevents one seeing the forest for the trees; but the Revelations contain the best picture extant of the progress of Russia from the time she threw off the Tartar yoke to the latter half of the eighteenth century. In person Marx was broad and short, but strong with a massive head, all framed in white hair; the eyes were still bright blue, by turns thoughtful, meditative and quick-glancing, sharply curious. My German astonished him; where had I got the fluency and the rhetoric? Talking of religious belief, I had said that der Lauf des menschlichen Gedanker-ganges ist filr mich die einzige Offenbarung Gotten (the course of the progress of human thought is to me the only revelation of God). "Wunderbar! echt Deutsch!" Marx exclaimed (peculiarly German), which was the highest form of praise to a German of that time. He met me with critical courtesy, evidently surprised that an Englishman should have read not only Das Kapital, but all his contributions to periodicals. I told him I thought his book on the English factory system the most important work on sociology since The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith: on the one hand the advocate of socialism, on the other the individualist, while both forces, I thought, must meet in life and an equilibrium between them must be established. Marx smiled at me, but didn't even attempt to consider the new idea. He made much the same impression on me that Herbert Spencer made twenty years later, but Spencer was contemptuous-angry under contradiction, whereas Karl Marx was inattentively courteous. But both had shut themselves off from hearing anything against his pet theory, one-sided though it was. And just as Herbert Spencer was worth listening to on everything but "the field I've made my own," so was Karl Marx. He was the first to tell me how the French 344 bourgeoisie had massacred thirty thousand communists in Paris in cold blood after the defeat of 1870; but he condemned this bloodshed just as passionately as he condemned the strain of brutality in the anarchist Bakounin. His deep human pity and sympathy were the best of him, the heart better than the head—and wiser. Much in the same way, Spencer saw that savagery in man was developed and perpetuated in the standing armies of Europe, though wholly at variance with the spirit of forgiveness preached from a thousand pulpits. Marx and Spencer, like Carlyle and Ruskin, were of the race of Polyphemus—one-eyed giants; but the latter pair were artists to boot! Another contrast. It was about this time that I first met Lord Randolph Churchill's brother, the Duke of Marlborough. Though he was perhaps ten years older than I was, we became friends through sheer similarity of nature. He too wanted to touch life on many sides. He liked a good dinner and noble wine whether of Burgundy or Moselle, but above all, he loved women and believed with de Maupassant that the pursuit of them was the only entrancing adventure in a man's life. After a dinner at the Cafe Royal one night, he discoursed to me for an hour on the typical beauties of a dozen different races, not excluding the yellow or the black. He had as good a mind as his brother, but nothing like Randolph's genius as a captain or leader of men. I may tell one story of him here, though it took place much later, when I was editing the Fortnightly Review. I had met Lady Colin Campbell in Paris and found that she spoke excellent French and Italian because she had spent her childhood in Florence. Shortly after I was made editor of the Fortnightly Review—in 1887 it was, I think—Mrs. Jeune told me I ought to meet Lady Colin and publish some of her articles. I said I should be very glad to renew acquaintance with so pretty a woman. One day Mrs. Jeune brought about a meeting and told me to go to the back drawing-room where Lady Colin was waiting for me. I went upstairs and opened the door and there was Lady Colin toasting her legs in front of the fire. As soon as I spoke she dropped her skirt, excusing herself on the ground that she had got her feet wet and cold, but the exhibition seemed intentional, the appeal gross. At any rate, it put me off, and I soon found her articles were just as obvious as her tall, lithe figure and great dark eyes and hair. I had rejected one or two of her papers when the Duke asked me to dinner and soon told me, without unnecessarily beating about the bush, that he was in love with Lady Colin and had promised her that I would publish her next paper. I told him I couldn't do it, but he pressed me so earnestly that at length I said, "If you will write me an absolutely frank article, setting forth the sensuous view of life you have often preached to me, I'll accept Lady Colin's contribution blindfold; but I want absolute frankness from you." He broke in, laughing. "It's a bargain and I am greatly obliged to you; I'll write the article at once and let you have it this week." "Life and Its Pleasures," I soon saw, was frank to indecency. I should have to expurgate it before publishing, but it was sure to cause a huge stir. 345 I put the article away for some real need and assured the Duke that I would publish it sooner or later. I wish I had kept the paper, but I remember one passage in it which contained his defence. "There are persons," he wrote airily, "who will object to my frank sensuality. I have been asked in astonishment whether I really could see anything to admire in the beautiful knees of a woman. I have no doubt there are little birds who sip a drop or two of clear water at a lake-side and wonder what a healthy frog can find in the succulent ooze that delights his soul. Such prudes, and they are numerous and of both sexes in England, remind me of the witty Frenchman's joke. The talk had come to a discussion of differences between a chimpanzee and a gorilla: 'What animal do you think is the most like a man?' the hostess asked and at once the Frenchman replied, 'An Englishman, Madame, surely.'" The Duke had as many witty stories at command as anyone I have ever known, and he told them excellently. He attributed many of them to Travers, the famous wit of New York in the seventies who died alas! without leaving any inheritors of his talent. Travers was a real wit without alloy. I have a dozen stories of his which are good and one or two worth preserving. When Fiske and Gould had come together to exploit the finances of the Erie railroad and rob the American people of many millions of dollars, Fiske gave a luncheon party on his yacht and of course, among others, invited Travers. The financier took the wit all over the yacht and finally in the cabin showed him his own portrait painted by Bougereau, whom he called the most famous French painter, and a portrait of Gould, by some American, hanging near it. "What do you think of 'em?" he asked triumphantly. "Surely some—something's lacking," stuttered Travers with a puzzled look, for he exaggerated his stutter and pointed his witticisms with an air of bewilderment, just as Lord Plunkett used to do in London. "Lacking," repeated Fiske; "what do you mean?" "Mean," ejaculated Travers; "why, that the S-S-S Saviour should b-b-b-be between the two thieves!" Only one better story than this has come out of America in my time and I'll put it in here to get rid of it. A young American went to a hotel and saw the manager about getting some work; he was hard up, he said, and hungry, and would do almost anything. The manager put him off on the head waiter, who was slightly coloured, but famous for his good manners. He heard the lad's plaint and then, "I guess you'll do your best and work all right, but has you tact?" 346 "Don't know what tact means," said the lad, "but I'll get some if you tell me how!" "That's it," replied the darky, with a lordly air, "that's it. No one I guess kin tell you what tact is or how to git it, but I'll try to make it clear to you. The other day a lady's bell rang. She was a real beauty from old Verginny and all the waiters wuz busy, so I decided to go up myself and wait on her. "When I opened the door there she was, right opposite me, in her bath. Yes, in her bath. Of course I drew the door to at once, saying, "Scuse me please, Sir, 'scuse me!' Now the "scuse me' was politeness; but the 'Sir!' That was 'tact.' See! Tact!' " 347 CHAPTER XII. LAURA, YOUNG TENNYSON, CARLO PELLEGRINI, PADEREWSKI, MRS. LYNN LINTON I WAS TO MEET my fate again and unexpectedly. It was
in my second year 348 and the goddess responded, or at least did not move away, and her smiling, kindly glance warmed my heart. The supper was unforgettable, for Laura had followed my work and the subtle flattery enthralled me. "Is May Fortescue really as pretty as you made out?" "It was surely my cue to make her lovely," I rejoined. Laura nodded with complete understanding. She enjoyed hearing the whole story; she was particularly interested in everything pertaining to the stage. That evening everything went on velvet. The supper was excellent, the Perrier-Jouet of 1875—the best wine chilled, not iced; and when I drove the mother and daughter home afterwards, while the mother was getting out Laura pressed her lips on mine and I touched her firm hips as she followed her mother. I had arranged too a meeting for the morrow for lunch at Kettner's of Soho in a private room. I went home drunk with excitement. I had taken rooms in Gray's Inn and when I entered them that night, I resolved to ask Laura to come to them after lunch, for I had bought some Chippendale chairs and some pieces of table silver of the eighteenth century that I wanted her to see. How did I come to like old English furniture and silver? I had got to know a man in Gray's Inn, one Alfred Tennyson, a son of Frederick Tennyson, the elder brother of the great poet, and he had taught me to appreciate the recondite beauty in everything one uses. I shall have much to tell of him in later volumes of this autobiography, for, strange to say, he is still my friend here in Nice forty-odd years later. Then he was a model of manliness and vigour; only medium height, but with good features and a splendidly strong figure. His love of poetry was the first bond between us. He was a born actor, too, and mimic; he had always wished to go on the stage—a man of cultivated taste and good company. Here I just wish to acknowledge his quickening influence: I only needed to be shown the right path. Very soon I had read all I could find about the two Adam brothers who came to London from Scotland and dowered the capital in the latter half of the eighteenth century with their own miraculous sense of beauty. The Adelphi off the Strand was named after them: even in their own time they were highly appreciated. But I was genuinely surprised to find that almost every age in England had its own ideals of beauty, and that the silverware of Queen Anne was as fine in its way as that of the Adam Brothers; and the tables of William and Mary had their own dignity, while a hall chair of Elizabeth's time showed all the stateliness of courtly manners. I began to realize that beauty was of all times and infinitely more varied than I had ever imagined. And if it was of all times, beauty was assuredly of all countries, showing subtle racecharacteristics that delighted the spirit. What could be finer than the silver and furniture of the First Empire in France? A sort of reflex of classic grace of 349 form with superabundance of ornament, as if flowered with pride of conquest. At length I had come into the very kingdom of man and discovered the proper nourishment for my spirit. No wonder I was always grateful to Alfred Tennyson, who had shown me the key, so to speak, of the treasure-house. It was Alfred Tennyson, too, in his rooms in Gray's Inn, who introduced me to Carlo Pellegrini. Pellegrini was a little fat Italian from the Abruzzi and Tennyson's mother was also an Italian, and she had taught her son sympathy for all those of her race. At any rate, Tennyson knew Carlo intimately, and in the eighties Carlo was a figure of some note in London life. He was the chief cartoonist of Vanity Fair and signed his caricatures "Ape." They constituted a new departure in the art: he was so kindly that his caricatures were never offensive, even to his victims. He would prowl about the lobby of the House of Commons, taking notes, and a dozen of his caricatures are among the best likenesses extant. His comrade Leslie Ward, who signed "Spy," was nearly as successful. A better draftsman, indeed, but content with the outward presentment of a man, not seeking, as Pellegrini sought, to depict the very soul of the sitter. Carlo confessed to being a homosexualist, flaunted his vice, indeed, and was the first to prove to me by example that a perverted taste in sex might go with a sweet and generous nature. For Carlo Pellegrini was one of nature's saints. One trait I must give: once every fortnight he went to the office of Vanity Fair in the Strand and drew twenty pounds for his cartoon. He had only a couple of hundred yards to go before reaching Charing Cross and usually owed his landlady five pounds; yet he had seldom more than five pounds left out of the twenty by the time he got to the end of the street. I have seen him give five pounds to an old prostitute and add a kindly word to the gift. Sometimes, indeed, he would give away all he had got and then say with a whimsical air of humility, "Spero che you will invite me to dine —eh, Frankarris?" The best thing I can say of the English aristocracy is that this member of it and that remained his friend throughout his career and supplied his needs time and again. Lord Rosebery was one of his kindliest patrons, my friend Tennyson was another, but it was in the nineties I learned to love him, so I'll keep him for my third volume. Here I only wish to remark that his frank confession of pederasty, of the love of a man for boys and youths, made me think and then question the worth of my instinctive, or rather unreasoned, prejudice. For on reflection I was forced to admit that paederastia was practiced openly and without any condemnation—nay, was even regarded as a semi-religious cult by the most virile and most courageous Greeks, by the Spartans chiefly, at the highest height of their development in the seventh and sixth and fifth centuries before our era. And what was considered honourable by Aeschylus and Sophocles and Plato was not to be condemned lightly by any thinking person. Moreover, the passion was condemned in modern days merely because it was sterile, while ordinary sex-sensuality was permissible because it produced children. But as I practiced Lesbianism, which was certainly sterile, I could not but see that my 350 aversion to paederastia was irrational and illogical, a mere personal peculiarity. Boys might surely inspire as noble a devotion as girls, though for me they had no attraction. I learned, too, from Carlo Pellegrini the entrancing, attractive power of sheer loving-kindness, for in person he was a grotesque caricature of humanity, hardly more than five feet two in height, squat and stout, with a face like a mask of Socrates, and always curiously illdressed; yet always and everywhere a gentleman—and to those who knew him, a good deal more. Next day I was waiting at Kettner's when Laura drove up; I hastened to pay her cab and take her upstairs. She didn't even hesitate as she entered the private room, and she kissed me with unaffected kindliness. There was a subtle change in her; what was it? "Did she love anyone else?" I asked, and she shook her head. "I waited for you," she said, "but the year ran out and five months more." "Mea culpa," I rejoined, "mea maxima culpa, but forgive me and I'll try to make up—" After we had lunched and I had locked the door against any chance intrusion of waiter or visitor, she came and sat on my knees and I kissed and embraced her almost at will but—. "What's the matter, Laura? The red of your lips is not uniform; what have you been doing with yourself?" "Nothing," she replied, with an air of bewilderment. "What do you mean?" "You've altered," I persisted. "We all alter in a year and a half," she retorted. But I was not satisfied; once when I kissed the inside of her lips, she drew back questioning. "How strangely you kiss." "Does it excite you?" I asked, and a pretty moue was all the answer I got in words. But soon under my kissings and caresses her lips grew hot and she did not draw away as she used to do a year and a half before; she gave her lips to me and her eyes too grew long in sensuous abandonment. I stopped, for I wanted to think, and above all, I wanted a memorable gift and not a casual conquest. "I want to show you a lot of things, Laura," I said. "Won't you come to my rooms in Gray's Inn and have a great afternoon? Will you come tomorrow?" And soon we had made an appointment; and after some more skirmishing kisses I took her home. Laura lunching with me in my rooms in Gray's Inn. The mere thought took my breath, set the pulses in my temples throbbing and parched my mouth. I had already discovered the Cafe Royal, at that time by far the best restaurant in 351 London, thanks to the owner, M. Nichol, a Frenchman, who had come to grief twice in France because he wanted to keep a really good restaurant. But now Nichol was succeeding in London beyond his wildest hopes (London always wants the best) and was indeed already rich. Nichol's daughter married and the son-in-law was charged by Nichol with the purchase of wine for the restaurant. Of course he got a commission on all he purchased, and after five and twenty years was found to have bought and bought with rare judgment more than a million pounds worth of wine beyond what was necessary. In due time I may tell the sequel. But even in 1884 and 1885 the Cafe Royal had the best cellar in the world. Fifteen years later it was the best ever seen on earth. Already I had got to know Nichol and more than once, being in full sympathy with his ideals, had praised him in the Evening News. Consequently, he was always willing to do better than his best for me. So now I ordered the best lunch possible: hors d'oeuvres with caviare from Nijni; a tail piece of cold salmon-trout; and a cold grouse, fresh, not high, though as tender as if it had been kept for weeks, as I shall explain later; and to drink, a glass of Chablis with the fish, two of Haut Brion of 1878 with the grouse, and a bottle of Perrier-Jouet of 1875 to go with the sweet that was indeed a surprise covering fragrant wild strawberries. Nowhere could one have found a better lunch and Laura entered into the spirit of the whole ceremony. She came as the clock struck one and had a new hat and a new dress, and, looking her best, had also her most perfect manners. Did you ever notice how a woman's manners alter with her dress? Dressed in silk she is silky gracious, the queen in the girl conscious of the rustle of the silken petticoat. I had a kiss, of course, and many an embrace as I helped her to take off her wraps. Then I showed her the lunch and expatiated on the table-silver of the Adam brothers. When we had finished lunch, the water was boiling and I made the coffee and then we talked interminably, for I was jealously conscious of a change in her and determined to solve the mystery. But she gave me no clue—her reticence was a bad sign, I thought; she would not admit that she had any preferred cavalier in the long year of my absence, though I had seen her twice with the same man. Still, the proof was to come. About four I took her to my bedroom and asked her to undress. "I'm frightened," she said. "You do care for me?" "I love you," I said, "as I've never loved anyone in my life. I'm yours; do with me what you will!" "That's a great promise?" "I'll keep it," I protested. She accepted smiling: "Go away, sir, and come back in ten minutes." 352 When I returned I had only pyjamas on, and as I went hastily to the bed I was conscious of absolute reverence: if only the dreadful doubt had not been there, it would have been adoration. As I pushed back the clothes I found she had kept her chemise on. I lifted it up and pushed it round her neck to enjoy the sight of the most beautiful body I had ever seen. But adoring plastic beauty as I do, I could only give a glance to her perfections; the next moment I had touched her sex and soon I was at work: in a minute or two I had come but went on with the slow movement till she could not but respond, and then in spite of her ever-growing excitement, as I continued she showed surprise. "Haven't you finished?" I shook my head and kissed her, tonguing her mouth and revelling in the superb body that gave itself to my every movement. Suddenly her whole frame was shaken by a sort of convulsion; as if against her will, she put her legs about me and hugged me to her. "Stop, please!" she gasped, and I stopped; but when I would begin again, she repeated, "Please," and I withdrew, still holding her in my arms. A moment later, remembering her fear, I got out of bed and showed her in the next room the bidet and syringe. She went in at once, but as she passed me I lifted the chemise and had more than a glimpse of the most perfect hips and legs. She smiled indulgently and turning, kissed me and passed into the dressing-room. I felt certain now that she had given herself in that d... d year and a half to someone else. She was not a virgin, nor at her first embrace, but she had not been used much. Why? Had she been enceinte and got rid of the coming child? That would explain her lips, poor dear girl. If she would trust me and tell me, I would marry her; if not— When she returned she was all cold; I lifted her into bed, and after taking off her chemise covered her till she got warm, and then bit by bit studied her figure. It was not perfect, but the faults were all merits in my eyes. Her neck was a trifle too short, but her breasts were as small as a girl's of thirteen; her hips were perfect with almost flat belly, long legs and the tiniest, best-kept sex in the world. It was always perfectly clean and sweet. I have never seen one more perfect. The clitoris was just a little mound and the inner lips were glowing crimson. I began to tongue the sensitive spot, and at once she began to move spasmodically. As I touched just below the clitoris, she squirmed violently: "What are you doing?" she cried, trying to lift my head. "Wait and see," I replied, "it's even more intense there, the sensation, isn't it?" She nodded breathlessly, and I went on; in a little while she gave herself altogether to my lips and soon began to move convulsively and then: "Oh, Frank, oh! It's too much. I can't stand it, oh, oh, oh!"—she tried to draw away: as I persisted, she said, "I shall scream. I can't stand it— please stop," and as I lifted my head I saw that her love-juice had come down all over her sex. I touched the little clitoris again with my lips but she lifted my head up for a 353 kiss and putting her arms about me strained me to her madly. "Oh you dear, dear, dear! I want you in me, your—, please." Of course I did as she requested and went on working till her eyes turned up and she grew so pale—I stopped. When she got her breath again—"I would not have believed," she said after a while, "that one could feel so intensely. You took my breath and then my heart was in my throat, choking me—" Those words were my reward. I had learned the way to her supreme moment. How we dressed I don't know, but passing through the dining-room I found myself desperately hungry and Laura confessed to the same appetite, and once more we set to on the food. Why was Laura to me different from any other woman? She did not give me as much pleasure as Topsy; indeed, already in my life there had been at least two superior to her in the lists of love, and a couple also who had flattered me more cunningly and given me proofs of a more passionate affection. Her queenly personality, the sheer brains in her, may have accounted for part of the charm. She certainly found memorable words: this first day as we were leaving the bedroom, she stopped, and putting her hands on my shoulders she said, "Non ti scordare di me" (Don't forget me), and then, putting her arms round my neck, "We were one, weren't we?" And she kissed me with clinging lips. And if it wasn't a word that ravished me, it was a gesture of sacred boldness. As she gradually came to understand how her figure delighted me, she cast off shame and showed me that the Swedish exercises she practiced day after day had given her lovely body the most astonishing flexibility. She could stand with her back to a wall and, leaning back, could kiss the wall with her head almost on a level with her hips, her backbone as flexible as a bow. To me she was the most fascinating mistress and companion with a thousand different appeals. To see her in her triumphant nakedness strike an attitude and recite three or four lines, and then take the ultra-modest pose of the Florentine Venus and cover her lovely sex with her hand was a revelation in mischievous coquetry. But now and then she complained of pains in the lower body, and I became certain that her womb had been inflamed by a wilful miscarriage: she had given herself to my American rival. If she had only been frank and told me the whole truth, I'd have forgiven her everything and the last barrier between us would have fallen, but it was not to be. She was still doubtful, perhaps of my success in life, doubtful whether I would go from victory to victory. In the humility of love I wanted to show her the reasons of my success, told her how I had learnt from newsboys, foolishly forgetting that to women ignorant of life, results alone matter: the outward and visible sign is everything to them. It took years for her to learn that I was able to win in life wherever I wished, on the stock exchange even more easily than in journalism. And her mother was always against me, as I learned later. "He 354 can talk, but so can other people," she would say with a side glance at the Irish husband, whose talking was always unsuccessful. But though our immediate surroundings were unfavourable and doubtful, when we were together Laura and I lived golden hours; and now, when I think of her, I recall occasional phrases both of love's sweet spirit and poses of her exquisite body that made me shudder with delight. Month in, month out, we met in private once at least a week, and once a fortnight or so I took mother and daughter to the theatre and supper afterwards. In that summer I bought a house in Kensington Gore opposite Hyde Park and only a few doors away from the mansion of the Sassoons, whom I came to know later. This little house gave me a place in London society. I gave occasional dinners and parties in it, helped by Lord Folkestone and the Arthur Walters, and had a very real success. I remember Mrs. Walter once advising me to invite a new pianist who was certain to make a great name for himself, and the first time I met him I arranged an evening for him: a hundred society people came to hear him and went away enthusiastic admirers. It was Paderewski on his first visit to London, and mine was the first house in which he played. Of course I would have had Laura there to hear him, but it was difficult for her to go out in the evening without her mother, and I could not stand the mother. She made herself the centre of every gathering by rudeness, if in no other way, and Laura would not hear a word criticizing her. I remember saying once to her, "You got all your beauty and grace from your father." She was annoyed immediately. "I got my skin from my mother," she retorted, "and my hair as well and my heart, too, which is a good thing for you, Sir, as you may find out," and she made a face at me of exquisite childishness that enchanted me as much as her loyalty. Girls nearly always prefer their mother to their father: why? One evening Laura and her mother came to a small evening party I gave in Kensington Gore and Mrs. Lynn Linton was there, who was by way of being a great admirer of mine and a great friend. Laura sang for us: she had been admirably trained by Lamperti of Milan, whom I knew well, but she had only a small voice and her singing was of the drawing-room variety. But afterwards, feeling that she was suffering through the failure of her song. I got her to act a scene from Phedre and she astonished everyone: she was a born actress of the best! Everyone praised her most warmly in spite of the mother's pinched air of disapproval: she was always against Laura's acting. But Mrs. Lynn Linton took me aside and advised me to get rid of the mother: "She's impossible; the girl's a wonder and very good to look at, you Lothario! Or are you going to marry her?" "Marry," I replied, "sure," for Laura was within hearing. 355 "Get rid of the mother first," advised Mrs. Lynn Linton. "She's no friend of yours, anyone can see that. How have you offended her?" I shrugged my shoulders; have likes and dislikes any avowable reason? I found it difficult, not to say impossible, to get any sex-knowledge from Laura. Like most girls with any Irish strain in them, she disliked talking of the matter at all. I asked her, "When did you first come to realize the facts of sex?" "I don't really know," she'd say. "Girls at school talk: some elder girl tells a younger one this or that and the younger one talks of the new discovery with her chums and so the knowledge comes." My reverence for her was so extraordinary that although I made up my mind a dozen tunes to ask her had she ever excited herself as a girl, I never could. Often, indeed, when I asked her something intimate, she would take me in her arms and kiss me to silence while her eyes danced in amusement; and if I still persisted I'd get some phrase such as, "You have me, Sir, body and soul; what more do you want?" Once I asked her about dancing. I had grown jealous watching her: she was picked out by the best dancers at every party and the sensuous grace of her movements attracted universal admiration. Not that she exaggerated the sensuous abandonment; on the contrary, it was only indicated now and then. As a dancer she reminded me irresistibly of Kate Vaughan, whom I always thought incomparable, the most graceful dancer I ever saw on any stage. Laura moved with the same easy exquisite rhythm, a poem in motion. But she denied always that the dance excited her sensually. "It's the music I love," she would say, "the rhythm, the swaying harmony of the steps. It's as near intoxication as sense-indulgence." "But again and again his leg was between yours," I insisted. "You must have felt the thrill." She shrugged her shoulders and would not reply. Again I began. "You know that even your little breasts are very sensitive; as soon as my lips touch them the nipples stand out firm and glowing red and your sex is still quicker to respond. You must feel the man's figure against your most sensitive part. I believe that now and again you take care his figure should touch you: that adds the inimitable thrill now and then to your grace of movement." At first she seemed to hesitate, then she said thoughtfully, "That seems to me the great difference between the man and the woman in the way of love. From what you say, it is clear that touching a woman's legs or feeling her breast would excite you, even if you didn't care for her, perhaps even if you disliked her; but such a contact doesn't excite a woman in the least, unless she loves the man. And if she loves him as soon as he comes towards her, she's thrilled; when he puts his arms round her, she's shaken with emotion! With us 356 women it's all a question of love; with you men, sensuality takes the place of love and often leads you to cheat yourselves and us." "That may indeed be the truth," I replied. "In any case, it's the deepest insight I've heard on the matter and I'm infinitely obliged to you for it. Love then intensifies your sensations, whereas it is often the keenness of our sensations that intensifies our love." "You men, then," she summed up, "have surely the lower and more material nature." And in my heart I had to admit that she was right. Whenever we had been long together, her attraction for me was so overpowering that it always excited suspicion in me. I don't know why; I state the fact: I was never sure of her love. Verses of the old German folksong often came into my mind: Sie hat zwei Auglein, die sind braun Heut du Dich! Sie warden dich uberzwerch anschaun Heut du Dich! Heut du Dich! Vertrau ihr nicht, sie narret Dich. Sie hat ein licht goldfarbenes Haar Heut du Dich! Und was sie red't das ich nicht wahr, Heut du Dich! Heut du Dich! Vertrau ihr nicht, sie narret Dich! (Her beauty's full of contrasts, hazel eyes and golden hair and lovely body: Don't trust her! She's fooling you!) 357 CHAPTER XIII. THE PRINCE; GENERAL DICKSON; ENGLISH GLUTTONY; SIR ROBERT FOWLER AND FINCH HATTON; ERNEST BECKETT AND MALLOCK; THE PINK 'UN AND FREE SPEECH IT IS DIFFICULT TO talk of English customs in the
last quarter of the 358 The Prince too preferred champagne to claret and so the taste in champagne grew keener; and soon the natural wine superseded the doctored French varieties. In the course of a single decade it became the habit in London to join the ladies after having drunk a glass or two of pure champagne during the dinner and a cup of coffee afterwards while smoking a cigarette. Sobriety became the custom and now a man who drinks to excess would soon find it impossible to discover a house where he would be tolerated. The cigarette, introduced by the Prince of Wales, made London society sober. In an aristocratic society good customs as well as bad sink down in everwidening circles like water poured on sand. Gentlemen in England no longer drink to excess and now it is difficult to find a man anywhere who could tell you the year of a great claret or port, whereas in the mid-Victorian era, nine men about town out of ten could have made a fair guess at any known vintage. The hospitality of the English gentry is deservedly famous; there is nothing like it anywhere else in the world, nothing to be compared to it. Of course I make allowances for the fact that young men are especially wanted at dinners because married people are more difficult to pair off. Besides, the custom of primogeniture that gives everything to the eldest son and drives the younger boys to India or the colonies puts the young men in London at a premium. The fact remains that after my first month as editor of the Evening News, I did not dine in my own house half a dozen times in the year, and I had to reject more invitations than I could accept. Nothing was expected of the young man in return: provided he was properly introduced and had decent manners and was now and then amusing or able to tell a good story, he was a persona grata everywhere. The kindness was genuine and general and deserves description. Almost at the beginning of my work in London and when I only knew a few people of position such as Mrs. (afterwards Lady) Jeune, I received an invitation to dinner almost a month ahead from a General Dickson who, I soon found out, was well-known in London as a prominent member of the Four-in-Hand Club. In the House of Commons I happened to mention him to Agg Gardner then as now, I believe, the Member for Cheltenham, and he exclaimed, "Dickson! I should think I did know him. One of the best, a rare old boy; gives a very good dinner and usually invites only one lady to half a dozen men. Says that a pretty woman is needed to keep the talk up to a high standard. Of course, you'll go." When the evening came I went to the house in one of the big West End squares. A couple of old soldiers were acting as footmen in the hall, and scarcely had I taken off my coat when General Dickson in person appeared out of a room to the right and welcomed me cordially. He was a fine-looking man, above middle-height, well set up with broad shoulders. He had good features, too, and his bronzed face was framed by a mass of silver hair. 359 "I'm glad to see you," he said warmly, giving me a strong handclasp. "I am delighted to be here," I said, "but I thought myself quite unknown in London. It was therefore doubly kind of you to invite me. I didn't think you'd remember me!" "I met you at Wolseley's," he said, "and at dinner you said something about beauty that struck me. You said, 'There must be something strange in any excelling beauty.' Now beauty has passed out of my life, but a good dinner still appeals to me, so I took your phrase and applied it to a dinner—where, mind you, it's equally appropriate. 'There must be something strange in any excelling dinner'. So as I knew I'd have something strange tonight, I thought it only fair to ask you for your opinion of my attempt," and he laughed heartily, pleasantly. The dinner was very good. There was a pretty, blond woman on the General's right, whose name I forget, though I got to know her fairly well later in London. She played hostess excellently and the service was faultless, too, though all the attendants were evidently old soldiers. The butler, I remember, with silver hair like his master, had the pleasant old custom of announcing the wine he was offering you, 'Chateau Lafitte 1870,' and so on. The dinner was very good, indeed, but no surprise in it till we came to the 'savoury,' when the door at the side opened and a Russian appeared in national costume with a great silver dish. "Milk caviar," our host announced, "sent to me by His Majesty, the Czar, whom I have the honour to know slightly," and he turned smiling to me. "'Something strange,' indeed," I cried in response, "for even in Moscow or Nijni I have never tasted it. I've heard somewhere that it all goes to the Czar." We all enjoyed the delicacy, though I noticed that the blond mistress of the ceremony did not take any of the cut-up onions which went with the caviar, but contented herself with a squeeze of lemon, and all of us followed her example. This dinner at General Dickson's taught me that good eating was more studied in London than anywhere else in the world. Agg Gardner knew the General for his table, just as Gardner himself was known to everyone as a gourmet and fine taster in both food and wine. He's the head still, I believe of the kitchen committee in the House of Commons. Strange that we had no word for gourmet in English, though we have gormandiser for gourmand, and glutton for goinfre, and others could be formed as gutler—even German has got Feinschmecker, but English has no dignified word, I'm afraid, for one who has a fine palate both in food and drink. Even "feaster" has a touch of greed in it instead of discrimination; so I've coined "fine taster," though it's not very good. 360 But it is only among the better classes that one dines to perfection in London. The best restaurants are no better than the best in Paris or Vienna or Moscow; and the English middle class dine worse than the French middle class because they know nothing of cooking as an art; and the poor live worse and fare harder than any class in Christendom. English liberty and aristocratic harshness result in the degradation of the weak and the wastrel, and alas; often in the martyrdom of the best and most gifted. There are no Davidsons and Middletons, no despairing suicides of genius in any other country of Christendom, though in this respect America runs England close, for her two greatest, Poe and Whitman, lived in penury and died in utter neglect. "It's needful," we are told, "that offences come, but woe unto him by whom the offence cometh." The old bad habit of eating and drinking to excess was still rampant in the eighties at city dinners. I remember how astonished I was at my first Lord Mayor's Banquet in 1883. The Evening News being Conservative, I was given a good seat at the Lord Mayor's table, nearly opposite him and the chief speakers. After the first banquet I never missed one for years because of the light these feasts cast on English customs and manners. I will not tell about them in detail, indeed, I couldn't if I would, for my notes only apply to two or three out of a dozen or more. The first thing that struck me was the extraordinary gluttony displayed by seven out of ten of the city magnates. Till that night I had thought that as a matter of courtesy every man in public suppressed any signs of greed he might feel, but here greed was flaunted. The man next to me ate like an ogre. I took a spoonful or two of turtle soup and left the two or three floating morsels of green meat. When he had finished his first plateful, which was emptied to the last drop in double quick tune, my neighbour, while waiting for a second helping, turned to me. "That's why I like this table," he began, openly licking his lips. "You can have as many helpings as you want." "Can't you at the other tables?" I asked. "You can," he admitted, "but here the servants are instructed to be courteous and they all expect a tip. Most people give a bob, but I always give half a crown if the flunkey's attentive. Why do you leave that?" he exclaimed, pointing to the pieces of green meat on my plate. "That's the best part," and he turned his fat, flushed, red face to his second plateful without awaiting my answer. The gluttonous haste of the animal and the noise he made in swallowing each spoonful amused me. In a trice he had cleared the soupplate and beckoned to the waiter for a third supply. "I'll remember you, my man," he said in a loud whisper to the waiter, "but see that you get me some green fat. I want some Calipash." "Is that what you call Calipash?" I asked, pointing with a smile to the green gobbets on my plate. 361 "Of course," he said. "They used to give you Calipash and Calipee with every plateful. I'll bet you don't know the difference between them: well, Calipash conies from the upper shell and Calipee from the lower shell of the turtle. Half these new men," and he swung his hand contemptuously round the table, "don't know the difference between real turtle and mock turtle, but I do." I couldn't help laughing. "Now you," he went on, "this is your first banquet, I can see. You're either a Member of the 'Ouse or perhaps a journalist. Now, ain't ye?" "I'm the editor of the Evening News," I replied, "and you've guessed right. This is my first Lord Mayor's Banquet." "Eat that up," he said, pointing to the green pieces on my plate. "Eat that up; it'll go to your ribs and make a man of you. I gamed three pounds at my first banquet, I did, but then I'm six inches taller nor you." He was indeed a man of huge frame. "No place like this," he went on, "no place in the world," and he emptied another glass of champagne. "The best food and the best drink in God's world and nothing to pay for it, nothing. That's England, this is London, the grandest city on earth, I always say, and I'm proud to belong to it!" When the first helping of mutton was brought to him, he demanded jelly, and when it was brought he cleared his plate in a twinkling and asked for more. "Do you know what that is?" he cried, turning again to me. "That's the finest Southdown mutton in the world, three or four years old, if it's a day, and fit for a prince to eat. Fair melts in your mouth, it does. I don't say nuthin' against Welsh mutton, mind ye, or Exmoor, tasty and all that, but give me Southdown. Now that," he added, pointing to the full plate the waiter had brought him, "that's a bellyful; that's cut and come again style!" And he winked approval at the waiter. To my amazement he had a second and third helping of mutton and went through the rest of the menu with the same avidity, getting redder and redder, hotter and hotter all the while. He must have eaten a pound and a half of meat, and he admitted he had drunk three bottles of champagne before the close. "Doesn't it make you drunk?" I asked. "Bless you, no," he exclaimed. "If you eat your fill and put a good lining of this mutton round your belly, you can drink as much as you like, or at least I can. Thank God for it," he added solemnly. 362 In the intervals of the speech-making after the dinner, he confided to me that he was the head, if I remember aright, of the Cordwainer's Company, and invited me in due course to their annual dinner a month later and treated me like a prince. "You don't eat and drink as you ought to," was his conclusion. "There's no pleasure on earth like it, and unlike all other pleasures, the older you get, the keener your taste!" That was his philosophy. But I found William Smith a kindly host and was not surprised to hear that he stood well with all who knew him. "His word's his bond," they said, "and he's more than kind if you need him. A good fellow is Bill and a true blue Conservative." All in all, a model Englishman. I remember at a later banquet having a little tub of a man for neighbour. He seemed uncomfortable and I couldn't account for his wrigglings till I saw he had an immense bottle between his legs. "What's that?" I cried. "A Jeroboam of Haut Brion '78'," he ejaculated. "The best wine in the world." "Where on earth did you get that immense bottle?" I enquired. "It's as big as six ordinary bottles." "No, it ain't," he said. "A magnum is two bottles and this here is four, and a rehoboam is eight, but I can't run to that." "You don't mean to say," I interrupted, "that you're going to drink four bottles to your own cheek?" "I don't know about cheek," he retorted angrily, "but thank God I can drink as I like without asking your permission." "Is it really the best wine in the world?" I queried. "I'd like to taste it! Did you bring it?" "You can have a glass," the manikin replied, "and I don't offer that to everybody, I can tell you, or there'd be d... d little left for Johnny; but you can have a glass with a heart and a half." I went on with the bottle of champagne I had ordered till the end of dinner and then reminded my little neighbour of the promised glass. "I oughtn't to give it you," he grumbled. "You've been smoking and no one can taste the bouquet of fine wine with tobacco smoke in his mouth. But," he added, withholding the bottle, "for God's sake, clean your palate before you taste this wine!" 363 "How shall I clean my palate?" I asked. "By eating bread and salt, of course," he said, "but you'll never enjoy the real bouquet and body of wine till you've given up smoking." And as he spoke he poured into his own glass the last drops of the noble Bordeaux. "A great wine," he said, smacking his lips. "The phylloxera ruined the finest vineyards; Chateau Lafitte had to be replanted with American vines. No one will ever again drink a Chateau Lafitte as our fathers knew it, but this Haut Brion is the next best. What do you think I gave for that Jeroboam?" "I can't imagine," I said. "Perhaps three or four pounds." He smiled pityingly. "Nearer ten," he replied, "and not easy to get at that! In ten years more it'll be worth double, mark my words. I know what I'm talking about." A curious little man, I thought to myself when I saw him drinking port and then old cognac with his coffee. "Push coffee, the French call it," he said, tapping his glass of cognac, "and they know what's good." When the banquet was over he asked me to help him to his carriage, as his legs were drunk. "The only part of me that ever feels the wine," he said grinning. I had nearly to carry him out of the room, but he was violently sick before I got him to his brougham. Evidently, his legs were not the only part of his body to revolt that night. The way those men ate and drank, gluttonised and guzzled was disgusting, but I had seen German students drink beer till they had to put then-fingers down their throats and then go back to the Kneipe again, rejoicing in their bestiality. "It's the same race," I said to myself again and again. "The same race with bestiality and brutality as predominant features!" One evening later I left the hall before the speech-making had begun, and as luck would have it, I met George Wyndham at the door. "You here!" he cried. "What do you think of English conviviality?" "English bestiality, you mean," I retorted. "Bestiality?" he repeated. "I've seen none; what do you mean?" "Come outside," I said and drew him outside the door into the pure air for a minute or so. "Now," I went on, "put your head in when I open the door and you'll understand what I mean!" As I opened the door the stench was insupportable. "Good God!" cried Wyndham, "Why didn't I notice it before?" 364 "You're on the right side of the top table," I explained, "and therefore you suffered less than we did." "Good God!" he repeated. "What a revelation!" That was the night, I think, when Lord Salisbury, then Prime Minister and chief guest, made a really great speech. He reminded his audience that the previous year, speaking in the same place, he had thought himself able to promise that peace would be maintained in the coming year. "Some might think I was mistaken," he went on, "when they read in this morning's paper of the Black Mountain campaign and other fightings on our northwest frontier in India, but such frays are not to be called war and hardly constitute a breach of the peace. Seen in true perspective, they are nothing but the wavebreaking in blood-stained foam on the ever advancing tide of English civilization." The fine image was brought out in his most ordinary manner and voice without any attempt at rhetoric and perhaps was the more effective on that account. But if I wish to give a true picture of the London of my time, I must go further than I've yet gone. In this year Sir Robert Fowler was elected Lord Mayor of London for the second time, an almost unique distinction. In view of the attacks that had been made on the city finances and the attempts to democratise the city institutions, it was felt advisable for the great Corporation to put its best foot foremost. Sir Robert Fowler was not only an out-and-out Conservative and a rich man, but also a convinced supporter of all city privileges, and for a wonder a good scholar to boot who had won high university honours. "A Grecian, Sir, of the best!" I met this gentleman at dinner one night at Sir William Marriott's, who was M.P. for Brighton and had been made judge-advocate-general; and so had managed to lift his small person and smaller mind to the dignity of ministerial position that ensured, I believe, a life-pension. I went to Marriott's dinner rather reluctantly; his wife was a washed-out, prim, little woman, kindly but undistinguished, and Marriott himself rather bored me. His dining-room was small and the half dozen city magnates I found assembled rather confirmed my doubts of the entertainment. Suddenly Fowler came in, a large man who must have been five feet ten at least in height and much more in girth. We were soon at dinner and the way the guests ate and drank and commented on all the edibles and appraised all the wines was a sort of education. One guest held forth on the comparative merits of woodcock and partridge and amused me finally by declaring that a poet had settled the question. "What poet do you mean?" I laughed, for poetry and guzzling were poles apart, I thought. 365 "I don't know his name," he replied, "but here's the verse," and he began: "If the partridge had the woodcock's thigh So good a bird could never fly; If the woodcock had the partridge breast So good a bird was never dressed." Another convive declared that the French knew nothing of champagne except what "we English have taught 'em. I remember when they never thought of preferring one year to another or one special vintage to all others. We taught 'em that Perrier-Jouet 1875 is the best champagne ever seen. The Frenchmen think then: blooming Veuve Clicquot's the prime champagne, but they have no palates, they don't know anything about sparkling wines." I had just taken a spoonful of clear soup when my nostrils were assailed by a pungent, unmistakable odour. I looked at the rubicund little man next to me, but he went on drinking glass after glass of champagne, as if for a wager. I was on Lady Marriott's left hand, opposite to Sir Robert Fowler, who was of course on her right. By the time we had enjoyed the roast and come to the game, the atmosphere in the room was quite appalling; the partridges, too, were so high that they fell apart when touched. I had never cultivated a taste for rotting meat and so I trifled with my bread and watched the convives. On first sitting down, Sir Robert Fowler had talked a little to Lady Marriott and myself, but after the roast beef had been served he never spoke to us, but ate—like an ogre. Never have I seen a man stuff with such avidity. First he had a helping of beef, then Yorkshire pudding and beef again. After the first mouthful he cried out to his host, "Excellent Scotch beef, my dear Marriott. Where do you get it and how is it kept so perfectly?" "Secrets of the prison house," replied Marriott, smiling. He knew that once the dinner was finished, the Mayor would forget the whole incident. When I turned to eat I found my huge vis-a-vis smacking his lips and hurrying again to his plate, intent on cutting and swallowing huge gobbets of meat while the veins of his forehead stood out like knotted cords and the beads of sweat poured down his great red face! I looked at Lady Marriott and saw a shrinking in her face corresponding to the disgust I felt. I looked away again to spare her, when suddenly there came a loud unmistakable noise and then an overpowering odour. I stared at the big glutton opposite me, but he had already finished a third plateful of the exquisite Scotch beef and was wiping his forehead in serene unconsciousness of having done anything out of the common. I stole a glance at Lady Marriott; she was as white as a ghost and her first helping of meat still lay untouched upon her plate. The quiet lady avoided my eyes and had evidently made up her mind to endure to the end. 366 But the atmosphere got worse and worse, the smells stronger and stronger, till I rejoiced every time a servant opened the door, whether to go out or come in. All the guests were eating as if their lives depended on their appetites and Marriott's butler and four men servants were plainly insufficient to supply the imperious desires of his half dozen guests. I have never in my life seen men gormandise to be compared with those men. And the curious thing was that as course followed course their appetite seemed to increase. Certainly the smell got worse and worse, and when the savoury of soft herring roes on toast came on the board, the orgy degenerated into a frenzy. Another unmistakable explosion and I could not but look again at my hostess. She was as pale as death, and this time her eyes met mine in despairing appeal. "I'm not very well," she said in a low tone. "I don't think I can see it through!" "Why should you?" I responded, getting up. "Come upstairs; we'll never be missed!" We got up quietly and left the room and in fact were not missed by anyone. As soon as Lady Marriott breathed the pure air of the hall and stairway she began to revive, while the change taught me how terrible the putrid atmosphere of the dining-room had become. "That's my first City dinner," said Lady Marriott, drawing a long breath as we sat down in the drawing-room, "and I hope devoutly it may be my last. How perfectly awful men can be!" "So that's Sir Robert Fowler," I said. "The best Lord Mayor, the only scholarly Lord Mayor, London has ever had!" One story about Fowler must be inserted here, though the incident took place some time later. The Honourable Finch-Hatton, a son of Lord Winchelsea, had been returned to Parliament as a Conservative. On one of his first nights in the House of Commons he happened to be sitting beside Fowler, who made a long speech in favour of London government and "the great institutions of the greatest City in the world." At the end he said he would not conclude with any proposal till he heard what his opponents had to say in answer to him; he could hardly believe that they had any reasonable reply. While Fowler was speaking, Finch-Hatton had shown signs of restlessness; towards the end of the speech he had moved some three yards away from the baronet. As soon as Fowler sat down, Finch-Hatton sprang up holding his handkerchief to his nose. "Mr. Speaker," he began, and was at once acknowledged by the Speaker, for it was a maiden speech, and as such entitled to precedence by the courteous custom of the House. "I know why the Right Honourable Member for the City 367 did not conclude his speech with a proposal; the only way to conclude such a speech appropriately would be with a motion!" And Finch-Hatton sat down amid the wild cheers and laughter of the whole House after making the wittiest maiden speech on record. The success of the mot was so extraordinary that I believe he never again ventured to address the House. Finch-Hatton had spent half a dozen years as a squatter in Queensland and was said to be the only white man that ever lived who could throw a boomerang as well as a Queensland aborigine. It is certain that no one ever threw a boomerang with such success in the House of Commons, for with one winged word he destroyed the influence of Sir Robert Fowler. As soon as Fowler's name came up afterwards the story of Finch-Hatton's maiden speech was told, too, and wild laughter submerged Fowler's reputation. But if I have set down these examples of English gluttony and, if you will, of English bestiality, I must also say that in the best English houses you found the best food in the world perfectly served and enjoyed with charming decorum. I often said that the English idea of cooking was the best in the world: it was the aristocratic ideal, the wish to give to every single thing its own peculiar flavour. For example, potatoes are best boiled in their skins; the water should then be drained off and the potatoes allowed to steam a few minutes: then you get a potato at its best. Beef should be roasted before the fire and served lightly cooked; mutton, too, should be roasted, but better done; veal and pork should be well done. Everyone of any position in my time in London knew that grouse lightly roasted and eaten cold with a glass or two of brut champagne made a lunch for the gods. The French, on the other hand, are usually reputed to be the best gourmets in the world, but I have never eaten a first-rate meal in any French house or restaurant. The French have the democratic idea of cooking and are continually tempted to obliterate all distinctions with a democratic sauce. They will serve you potatoes in twenty ways, all of them appetizing, but none of them giving the true potato flavour. In fact, you don't know half the time what you're eating in France; it's the sauce you taste! Fancy serving a partridge aux choux: the whole exquisite flavour of the bird lost, swamped, drowned in the pungent taste and odour of the accursed cabbage! Compare this bourgeois mess with the flavour you get of an English partridge roasted before a fire by a cook who knows the value of the jewel he is asked to set; nothing but boiled rice or the heart of a lettuce with olive oil from Nice should ever be served with the dainty morsel. But then there are so few cooks in England, and nearly all who merit the name are French. As I began this chapter with the story of General Dickson's jovial courtesy and excellent dinner, so I must in justice to London end it with the account of a still more memorable feast enjoyed in Ernest Beckett's (afterwards Lord Grimthorpe's) house in Piccadilly, because it, too, throws light on the 368 consummate savoir faire and kindness which enriches English life and distinguishes it above life in any other country. I had got to know Beckett pretty well towards the end of 1887. He had heard me tell some of the stories I afterwards published and encouraged me by warm praise. He was always pressing me too to go into the House of Commons. "You may write wonderfully," he used to say, "but you'll never write as well as you talk, for you're at least as good an actor as a story teller." One evening Beckett asked me to dinner; Mallock and Professor Dow-den of Dublin University were the only other guests. I knew both men slightly and had read a good deal of both and especially of Mallock, not only his New Republic but all his attacks on socialism in defence of an unrestrained individualism. In spite of his reserved manners and rather slow way of speaking, I had come to feel a genuine esteem for his very considerable abilities. I was glad too to meet Dowden again. His book on Shakespeare I thought piffle; it was all taken from what I had begun to call the Ragbag, the receptacle where the English store all the current ideas about Shakespeare, ideas for the most part completely false and not seldom ridiculously absurd. Nine out of ten English mediocrities are afflicted with the desire to make this God Shakespeare in their own image, and this inexplicable idolatry of themselves has led them into all manner of incongruous misconceptions. Naturally I had no idea when we sat down to dine that Beckett had arranged the whole affair just to find out whether my knowledge of Shakespeare was really extraordinary or not. Still less did I imagine that Mallock had offered himself as chief inquisitor, so to speak. Towards the end of dinner Beckett turned the conversation deftly enough to Shakespeare and Mallock remarked that though he had only read him casually, carelessly, "like all the world, he had yet noticed that some of Shakespeare's finest expressions— 'gems of thought'—were never quoted, indeed, were not even known to most of the professional students." I nodded my agreement. "Give us an instance!" cried Beckett. "Well," replied Mallock, "take the phrase, 'frightened out of fear'; could, a truth be more splendidly expressed? An epigram unforgettable!" "You're right," exclaimed Beckett, "and I must confess I don't know where it occurs. Do you, Harris?" "Enobarbus in Antony and Cleopatra," I replied. "Enobarbus is the conscience of the play: the high intellectual judgment of Shakespeare called in, this once, to decide between 'great Caesar' and Shakespeare's alter ego, the lover Antony. It's the only time I think that Shakespeare ever used such an abstraction." 369 "A remarkable apercu," said Dowden. "I had no idea that you were a Shakespeare lover; surely there are not many in the States?" "Not many anywhere, I imagine," was my laughing reply. A moment or two later Mallock began again. "Shakespeare is always being praised for his wonderful character drawing, but I'm often shocked by the way he disdains character. Fancy a clown talking of 'the primrose path!'" "A clown!" I repeated. "You mean the porter in Macbeth, don't you?" "Of course, the porter!" Mallock replied. "A very clown!" "Curious," I went on laughing. "I asked because the porter, I believe, doesn't say 'primrose path' but 'primrose way'." "Are you sure?" exclaimed Mallock. "I could have sworn 'twas 'primrose path'; I think 'path' better than 'way'." "My memory, too, supports you, Mr. Mallock," Dowden chimed in. "I feel certain it was the 'primrose path'; 'path' is certainly more poetic." "It is," I replied, "and that's probably why Shakespeare gives 'primrose way' to the sleeper porter and 'primrose path' to Ophelia; you know she warns her brother of the 'primrose path' of dalliance." "I believe you're right!" exclaimed Mallock. "But what an extraordinary memory you have." "The man of 'one book,' you know," I laughed, "is always to be dreaded." "It seems strange that you should have studied Shakespeare with such particularity," Dowden remarked pleasantly. "From some of your writing in the Spectator, which our mutual friend Verschoyle has shown me, I thought you rather a social reformer after the style of Henry George." "I'm afraid I am," I confessed. "Yet I admit the validity of most of Mr. Mallock's arguments against socialism, though I can't imagine how he can argue against the obvious truth that the land of the people should belong to all the people." "Why should we care for the people," cried Mallock, "the Great Unwashed. They propagate their kind and die and fill forgotten graves. It is only the great who count; the hoi polloi don't matter." Mallock always put forward the aristocratic creed with even greater ability than Arthur Balfour, yet I thought my view the wiser. 370 "The physique of the English race is diminishing," I began, "through the poverty of the mass of the people. In 1845 only one hundred and five recruits out of a thousand were under five feet six in height, while in 1887 fifty per cent were below that standard. The girth of chest, too, shows a similar shrinkage." "That leaves my withers unwrung," scoffed Mallock. "Why should we care particularly about the rag, tag and bobtail of the people?" "Because your geniuses and great men," I replied, "come from the common mass; the Newtons, Darwins and Shakespeares don't spring from noble loins." "Nor from the lowest class either," returned Mallock. "From the well-fed, at least." "The more reason," I retorted, "to give the mass of the people humane conditions of life." "There we must all be agreed," Beckett broke in. "If the mass of the people were treated as well as the aristocrat treats his servants, all would be well; but the manufacturer treats his workmen, not as servants, but as serfs. 'Hands': the mere word is his condemnation." The conversation continued on these general lines till suddenly Dowden turned to me. "One thing you must admit," he said smiling. "Shakespeare took the aristocratic side, was indeed an aristocrat to his finger-tips. Surely no great genius was ever so completely indifferent to social reforms or indeed to reforms of any sort. His caricature of Jack Cade is convincing on that point." "Quite true!" cried Mallock. "Undeniable, unarguable, indeed." "Don't say such things," I broke out. "I can't hear them without protest: what age was Shakespeare when he wrote Jack Cade? Think of him fresh from the narrow, brainless life of village Stratford, transplanted into that pulsing many-coloured life of London with young aristocrats all about him on the stage. No wonder he sneered at Jack Cade; but ask him twenty years later what he thought of the aristocrats and the harsh misery of ordinary life and you would have got a very different answer! The main truth about Shakespeare, and it's an utterly neglected truth, is that he grew from being an almost ordinary youth into one who stood on the forehead of the time to come, a sacred leader and guide for a thousand years." "Very interesting," retorted Mallock, "and new, but I want proofs, I'm free to confess, proofs! Where's the Jack Cade in his latest works, or rather, where shall we find Essex and Southampton disdained and Cade treated as a great reformer and martyr to a cause?" 371 "He's got you there, Harris," exclaimed Dowden. "Has he? First of all, Mr. Mallock, you'll have to admit that Shakespeare quickly came to see the English aristocrat as he really was. No better or more bitter portrait of the aristocrat exists in any literature than Portia gives of her English suitor in The Merchant of Venice: 'a proper man's picture' but 'a poor dumb show.' He knows no foreign language and his manners, like his clothes, lack all distinction. So much for 'the poor pennyworth!' "But no Jack Cade on a pedestal, you say. Well, Posthumus was Shakespeare's alter ego, as plainly as Prospero, and what does Posthumus say in prison when he cries to the Gods: I know you are more clement than vile men, Who of their broken debtors, take a third, A sixth, a tenth, letting them thrive again On their abatement: that's not my desire... "What would Shakespeare have said to Chamberlain's Bankruptcy Act, which is the law of England today and for many a year to come? You now take everything from the broken debtor and do not then discharge him, but keep his failure hung over him for years in order to force him to the prison, which the beggared seldom escape. In this we are infinitely viler than Shakespeare's 'vile men.' Shakespeare not a social reformer! If your laws were conceived in the spirit of his maturity, the millennium would be realized. I always put him with Jesus as a thinker." Mallock laughed as at an enormity and I didn't pursue the theme. I had given them pause, which was enough. We adjourned to the drawing-room for coffee, which was excellent, as the whole meal had been. Beckett ate with the keenest enjoyment, but in strict moderation, and all of us cultivated a similar control. While drinking the coffee Dowden said he hoped I'd write on Shakespeare. "You've certainly given me food for thought," he added courteously. "And me too," cried Mallock. When they went away, Beckett kept me and for the life of me I could not understand why, till he suddenly blurted out, "Tant pis if you think worse of me, but I think I owe it to you to tell you the truth. I was talking to Mallock the other day about you, praising your extraordinary scholarship and knowledge of Shakespeare and your genius. He said that genius was difficult to measure, but knowledge was easy; why not let him test your knowledge of Shakespeare; and so I arranged this dinner. If you had come to grief I'd have said nothing, but you came through so brilliantly that I think you ought to know. I hope you're not angry with me?" "No, no," I replied. "How could I be?" 372 "I want to be friends," rejoined Beckett warmly. "I want you to regard me as a friend and as a sign of it I wish you'd call me Ernest and let me call you Frank." "That's dear of you," I responded, and gave him my hand. From that day on Ernest Beckett was a true friend of mine and my affection for him grew till he passed—alas! all too soon, into the eternal silence. One word more on the freedom of speech used in good society in London in the eighties and nineties of the nineteenth century. It was not so outspoken as the best French or German society, but its rule was very much like the rule of the best Italian or Spanish society: anything was permitted if it was sufficiently funny or witty. In the Prince of Wales' set in especial, it was possible to tell the most risqué story, provided always that it was really humorous. And the Pink 'Un, or chief sporting paper of the day, edited by John Corlett and printed on pink paper once a week, certainly set a broad example. One instance will prove this. Just before I returned to London the Baroness Burdett Coutts, a great favorite of the Prince and the Queen for her goodness of heart and many benefactions, though well over sixty years of age, married young Mr. Bartlett, an American, a good-looking man of six or seven and twenty, and five feet ten in height. Prince Edward, it was said, was asked by the Queen to remonstrate with the old lady. But she met him by saying that she could not make her dear boy unhappy. "He is head over ears in love with me, you know," she said. The Prince could only smile and perhaps repeat the British saying under his breath: "No fool like an old fool." The week after the marriage Corlett published the announcement in the Pink 'Un, and underneath in large letters, this: AN ARITHMETICAL PROBLEM: How many times does twenty-seven go into sixty-eight and what is there over? Perhaps nothing except the famous naughty blunder in The Times some years later ever caused such widespread merriment. The tone of English society is the tone of a well-bred man of the world, whereas the tone of American society is the tone of a Puritan grocer. 373 CHAPTER XIV. CHARLES READE; MARY ANDERSON; IRVING; CHAMBERLAIN; HYNDMAN AND BURNS IN MY EARLY DAYS in London one event moved me
profoundly, the death 374 pilgrimage. Surely it is well with dear Charles Reade: I saw his coffin lowered into the grave, but I find it hard to forgive myself. I ought to have seen and known him in order at least to have thanked him for his deathless gift to humanity and the many hours of pure delight I had had with his brave heart and noble spirit. But now I must say a word or two of other occurrences that throw a certain light on English character and conditions. An American actress, Mary Anderson, took London by storm. It was said that Lord Lytton bought a row of the stalls night after night and filled the seats with chosen guests; his admiration surprised everyone who knew him, because he was regarded as an avowed admirer of the ephebos, rather than of woman's beauty; but he certainly fell for "our Mary," as some tried to nickname her. This was the Lord Lytton, who in The New Timon sneered at Tennyson: The jingling medley of purloined conceits, Out-babying Wordsworth and out-glittering Keats. And Tennyson's answer was even more savage: What profits now to understand The merits of a spotless shirt, A dapper boot, a little hand, If half the little soul is dirt? Before Mary Anderson appeared I had called on her and done a sketch of her career for the Evening News. She was a tall, graceful, good-looking blonde, but I never dreamed of her huge success. Her mind was as commonplace as her voice. She had no special gift, but on the stage she was beautiful: the foot-lights set her off peculiarly, though she could not act for nuts. To compare her as an actress with Ellen Terry or even with Ada Rehan would be ridiculous: she was comparatively inarticulate. Yet her appearances were events; she went from triumph to triumph. Through her success I realized that there are special scenic qualities demanded by the stage. She was very tall and when she came down the stage in white, she dominated it and dwarfed all the other women; in talking she had a slight American accent that would have ruined her as a Shakespearean actress, but by the time she played in The Winter's Tale she had shed her twang and spoke fairly; her eyes were a little deep set, her nose perfectly cut: in a room she was just pretty, on the stage a goddess. How much of her success was due to her statuesque grace and how much to Lytton's passionate advocacy can never be known. Her career taught me how susceptible the English are to mere physical beauty. They rate it in all animals higher than any other race and study it more intimately: shorthorn bull or Berkshire sow, bulldog or greyhound, terrier or mastiff, Southdown ram or Welsh sheep, race-horse or hunter— all are admired for their perfect conformity to type, which argues a most 375 passionate and imaginative understanding of what type is or should be. Were it not for their idiotic Puritanism the English would be the greatest sculptors in the world and world-renowned besides for their extraordinary understanding of every form and type of bodily beauty. I visited the British Museum with Rodin later to study the figures from the Parthenon. He went into ecstasies over them; they were as sensuous, he declared, as any figures in all plastic art. George Wyndham went with me at another time but he would not be seduced. The Greek feet and ankles were too large and ill-shaped, he argued; the womens' necks, too, and breasts were coarse. He preferred the figures from the Temple of Nike Apteros, and even they had bad faults. At length he asserted that the facial type was too wooden: the nose in a straight line from the forehead was ugly. In fine, the best English type, he insisted, was far finer, lovelier at once and more spiritual than the Greek ideal, and I agreed with him. Europe has learned what natural beauty is from English tourists. Was not Ruskin the first to assert that French trees were far more beautiful than English trees? He did not give the reason, but I may. England is afflicted with a wind from the southwest that blows three hundred odd days each year. Against this attack all trees when young have to stem themselves or they would be uprooted; as it is, they are dwarfed and crooked. And the woodlands of France suffer from the same plague, though much less severely. There are no forests in the world to be compared with the American: in half an hour's drive out of New York up the Hudson one sees more varieties of exquisite and well grown trees than one can find in all France, or even Germany. And as the trees, so are the men and women: one can find more types of exquisite girlhood and splendid manhood in an hour in New York than one can find in a day in London or a week in Paris or Berlin or Moscow. How is it that American athletes hold all the records? How is it that they can run faster and jump higher than any of the English athletes, though the other day the English were supposed to be supreme in all forms of sport and athletics? In forty years there has not been a single English heavyweight boxer of the first class simply because the mass of the people have been impoverished to a degree that is not yet realized even in England. The physical manhood of the race has been dwarfed by destitution. But this argument had led me away from my theme. Shortly after my first meeting with Mary Anderson, I saw Tommaso Salvini as Othello. Salvini had every personal qualification: fine presence and in especial a magnificent and perfectly trained voice, now splendidly sonorous, now sweet, always grateful to the ear. The speech containing the lament, "Othello's occupation gone," was never so superbly rendered: the breaking voice, the tears falling from the convulsed face, the hands even knitting and relaxing, formed an unforgettable picture. Salvini at that moment was Othello and when he suddenly turned on Iago he was terrific; but the famous soliloquy in the bed376 chamber before he murders Desdemona was given in far too loud a voice: he would have waked the dead. He had no conception of the complex English passion, that a man can admire, love, even, what he's resolved to destroy, lest "she should sting more men": Shakespeare's own passion, far too complex for the Italian nature. And in Macbeth Salvini had no inkling that he was acting the thought-plagued Hamlet. His Macbeth never hesitates, never falters: he has not the "if 'twere done, when 'tis done," and so forth. Yet he was the best Othello I've ever seen. Why are actors, like politicians, always over praised? It would take a dozen of the best of them to portray Hamlet to my satisfaction. I should want Irving to look the part, and Forbes-Robertson to recite some of the soliloquies, and Terriss to stab Polonius, and Sarah Bernhardt to send Ophelia to a nunnery with ineffable tenderness; and even then, whom should I get to show the passion of Hamlet's jealousy or the contempt he felt for Kemp, the clown, who gagged probably and did not say the lines set down for him because he was lifted out of himself by the applause of the groundlings; and worst omission of all, who would impersonate the supreme poet who sings of "the undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveller returns," though he has just been talking to his father's ghost? It was at a dinner that Arthur Walter gave in his house off Queen's Gate, that I got to know Henry Irving. I had met him before, notably at a supper given by Beerbohm Tree in the Garrick Club after he had played Shylock at the Lyceum. I had come from Munich to see his Shylock and compare it with the best Shylock I had ever seen, that of Ernst Possart Irving, having been told by Tree that I had come a thousand miles to see him play, was very gracious and hoped I had liked his impersonation. Naturally, I said, "It was very wonderful, but not Shakespeare's—quite!" Irving insisted on knowing what I meant. Everyone who saw him will remember the scene when Shylock prays to be allowed to go home as a beaten and broken man: Shy. I pray you give me leave to go from hence I am not well; send the deed after me, And I will sign it. Duke. Get thee gone, but do it. Or. In christening shall thou have two godfathers: Had I been judge, thou shouldst have had ten more, To bring thee to the gallows, not the font: (Exit Shylock) It is the only case, I think, in which our gentle Shakespeare allows a gentleman to insult a beaten man. I was therefore outraged by Irving's conception: he was near the door when Gratiano spoke; at once he turned, walked back to Gratiano, drew himself up, crossing his arms, and scanned 377 him contemptuously from head to foot amid the wild applause of the whole house. When Irving challenged me to explain, I said it seemed to me that if Shylock had treated Gratiano in this way, Gratiano would probably have spat in his face and kicked him off the stage. "I can't agree with you," retorted Irving dryly. "I think the applause showed I was right in my conception of Shylock as a great tragic figure." "But Shylock himself tells us," I replied, "that the hero Antonio spat upon his Jewish gabardine." Irving turned away and began talking to someone else. His rudeness annoyed the more because I was reproaching myself for having been too frank. Long afterwards, when Mounet-Sully played Hamlet in Paris and Lemaitre, the great French critic, wanted to know how he compared with Irving, I could not help telling the truth. "Irving," I said, "is the ideal Hamlet for the deaf and Mounet-Sully for the blind!" But in 1884-85,1 met Irving frequently, and Bram Stoker, his manager, always sent me tickets for the Lyceum when I asked for them. One night I gave a supper party and had Lord Lytton and Harold Frederic, both passionate admirers of Irving; and when we drew together to smoke with the Turkish coffee, Irving talked better than I had ever heard him talk; indeed, till then I had thought him rather inarticulate. I had mentioned, I remember, that Lord Randolph Churchill had promised to come to "the apotheosis of the God," as he phrased it, but at the last moment had to excuse himself because of an important debate in the House. "Please tell Mr. Irving," he added in his letter, "how I should have liked to describe the prodigious effect of his Mephistopheles made upon me." Of course Irving was delighted and went off at score, speaking in his natural voice and with no trace of his stage mannerisms and mumblings, which I found so insupportable. "I met Lord Randolph first in 1880 in Dublin," he began. "His father was there as Viceroy and Lord Randolph had gone to live in Dublin. We went across to play a week of Shakespeare and the first night we opened with Hamlet. To my surprise, there was no great reception, no special recognition. At the end of the first act Bram Stoker came to me. "There's someone in the Vice regal box,' he said. 'I think it's Randolph Churchill, the younger son of the Duke.' Now Blandford, his elder brother, had made himself notorious a little while before through a very ugly divorce case; but after all, those affairs are private. I shrugged my shoulders therefore. At the end of the next act Bram Stoker came to say that Lord Randolph would like to make my acquaintance and thank me for my wonderful acting, etc. I told him to bring him round, and at the end of the act he brought Lord Randolph to me in my dressing room. He came to me at once with outstretched hands. 'I have to thank you, Mr. Irving,' he began, 'for one of the greatest pleasures of my life, an incomparable 378 evening!' I bowed of course, but he went on. 'I had no idea that Hamlet was such a great play.' "I stared at him: was he trying to be humorous? I replied dryly: ' Hamlet is usually supposed to be a great play.' "'Really!' he said, 'I hadn't heard of it.' This was too much for me: he was either a fool or trying to pull my leg. I turned away. At once Randolph added in a very courtly way, 'I mustn't take up your time by exposing my ignorances; you are no doubt busy.' "'No,' I replied, 'this act is chiefly taken up by the fair Ophelia.' "'Really!' he burst out again. 'I think Miss Terry too is wonderful. I mustn't lose a word of what she says.' I smiled and he added, 'I can't go without hoping to meet you again; won't you dine with me on Sunday next in the lodge in Phoenix Park, which my father has been good enough to place at my disposal?' "His manner, something ingenuous and enthusiastic in his youth, pleased me, and I accepted at once, conscious of a certain sympathy. During the week I was told that he had been in the Vice regal box every night. On the Sunday I went to dine with him a little intrigued: what would he say? He met me in the hall: 'Oh, Mr. Irving,' he began, 'I can't reckon what I owe you: through you I've come to know Shakespeare; what a man he was! Half a dozen of his plays are great plays, and interesting—' "'But surely you must have known them before?' I asked. 'Surely at Oxford you must have read some of them, even if in our schooldays the great things get neglected?' "'No, no, I assure you,' he replied. 'I never read him at school nor at Oxford. I'm afraid I was very lazy and idle all through, but his Lear is a great, great play: I'd love to see you in it; and there's something in the Antony and Cleopatra that appeals to me peculiarly. Do you ever play it?' "'It's a little difficult to stage,' I answered, and while explaining we took our seats at the table and I found him a first-rate host. "Lord Randolph made a profound impression on me," Irving went on. "As soon as I realized that he was not posing I said to myself, "This is a great man, too; unconsciously he thinks that even Shakespeare needs his approval! He makes himself instinctively the measure of all things and of all men and doesn't trouble himself about the opinions or estimates of others.' Afterwards, when they made fun of him in Parliament, as they did at first with silly caricatures of him as an impudent boy, I knew the day would come when they'd have to take him seriously." 379 I was delighted with the story and with the simple, sincere way Irving told it. I think still it shows intellect in him and an appreciation of greatness that I did not at all expect. Sometime later Arthur Bourchier, the actor, told me an amusing story that shows Henry Irving in another light. "When Benson at Oxford was drilling his amateur company in Shakespeare and Aeschylus, he asked Irving down once for the opening night of the Agamemnon. I was in Benson's company and delighted when he showed me Irving's charming letter of acceptance. He was flattered, he said, by the invitation and would come gladly. We were all on the alert, as you may imagine, on the great night. Well, the performance went without a hitch and afterwards Irving came round on the stage and congratulated Benson in the handsomest way. "A great play," he said, "and a very great actor. I'm delighted to feel, Mr. Benson, that the University, too, has come to enrich the stage. I think you gave the chief things superbly"; and he really spoke simply, as if he meant every word of it, and we drank it all in greedily, as young men do. His praise affected Benson so much that shortly afterwards he confessed, "Your appreciation, Sir, gives me courage"—he began—"I think I shall give the Trilogy." "Do, my dear fellow," cried Irving, clapping him on the shoulder, "do. It's a part that'll suit you admirably." "After that," said Bourchier, grinning, "the curtain came down of itself." I have given this story as well as the others because it illustrates a side of the actor; and now I'll make a further personal confession that tells against myself and puts a certain nobility of Irving in a fair light. In my later years in London I seldom went to the Lyceum and took little stock in Irving's later achievements, though right up to the end of the century his "first nights" were something more than social events. Irving always gave the impression of being more than an actor: he had a great personality; his marked peculiarities of figure, face and speech set him apart and gave him unique place and distinction. Of the three or four chief personages of the eighties, he was the most singular—more arresting even than Parnell. Randolph Churchill and Gladstone had to be seen in the House of Commons to win full recognition, but Irving, like Disraeli, took the eye everywhere and excited the imagination. As Shylock, even, Irving made everyone else upon the stage appear common, an effect surely not contemplated by the creator of the "Ebrew Jew"! There can be no doubt that his peculiar enunciation and accent on the stage were deliberately adopted in order to increase the effect of his appearance, for in private life he spoke almost like anyone else. His "make-up," in fact, went so far as to include his speech and voice. If we are to believe tradition, Garrick in this was his exact 380 opposite: he was always simple and natural on the stage, we are told, but in private was always acting, always playing a part. With Goethe, I felt that the admission of young girls had a more laming effect on the theatre than it had even upon books. "Young girls," said the great German, "have no business in the theatre; they belong to the cloister and the theatre is for men and women only and the elemental human passions. But as it is impossible to get the maidens and their emasculating influence out of the theatre, I have stopped going to it. I would have to shut my eyes to all the feebleness and foolery, or accept it all, without even trying to improve it, and that's not my role." In those first years in London, I had a paltry little spite against Irving: he denied me the advertisement of the Lyceum Theatre on the ground that the Evening News was a ha'penny paper; and I thought it mean and shabby of him, and Stoker put the blame on Irving himself. About the same time, I discovered Wilson Barrett's inordinate ambition to oust Irving from his pride of place. After the Fortescue triumph, I had been introduced to Miss Terry and had flattered her to the top of her bent; and, indeed, I admired her hugely: I thought her far and away the best English actress. Somewhere or other I heard now that Miss Terry's engagement with Irving had run out and that he did not want to increase her salary. At once I flew to Wilson Barrett and induced him to give me a letter offering Ellen Terry double what she was getting with Irving and a percentage in the profits of the Princess's Theatre to boot. I took it to Miss Terry and after reading it she laughed. "May I keep it?" "Certainly," I replied. "You would be the chief person in the Princess's." She laughed again. "You tempt cleverly; why?" "Frankly, because I don't think Irving appreciates you properly." Miss Terry smiled but would not commit herself. When I announced in the Evening News that it was just possible that Miss Terry would soon go to help Wilson Barrett at the Princess's, I had my revenge. In half an hour Bram Stoker was at my office with a flaming contradiction which I refused to insert, saying I had reason to believe that Miss Terry might change her "leading man." I thought Stoker would have had a fit. Away he rushed and in a short while brought Irving back with him, who assured me that Miss Terry had renewed her engagement with him. "It was signed, sealed and delivered." "I am very glad for your sake," I said, "and will give the news in tomorrow morning's edition," and, I added, "though you may not care for the announcement in a ha'penny paper." Bram Stoker, I saw, understood what I 381 meant, for afterwards the Lyceum advertisement was sent to the Evening News without being asked for. It was a mean and paltry revenge to take, but Bram Stoker had been needlessly curt and disdainful in his initial refusal, and consequently I had no idea how wrong I had been till some years afterwards, when I assisted at Irving's bankruptcy and the first meeting of his creditors, and learned to my amazement that he had nearly thirty old actresses and actors on his civil list, to whom he gave weekly pensions of from thirty shillings to five pounds. To all the weaker members of his craft that had ever played with him he behaved with a princely generosity: he had filled his great position nobly and I had made it more difficult for him. I was ashamed of myself to suffering. From that time on I tried to atone to Irving for my forgotten meanness, but I wish to record it here simply as showing that some of our worst deeds are due to want of knowledge and to a too low estimate of our fellow men. What judges of literature these journalists are! Froude has just published his Life of Carlyle and The Times compares it with Boswell's Johnson. "Carlyle," says The Times, "is a greater person than Johnson," and, it adds, "all the reading world will allow that there can be no comparison between Mr. Froude and Boswell"; all of which might be true without establishing the conclusion. The great portraits of the world are not of the greatest persons, nor written by the greatest men, of what life-history would compare with Plato's pictures of Socrates? If the great master of prose and thought had only written one dialogue between Socrates and Xanthippe, telling us of their intimate relations and reactions and giving us the woman's and wife's point of view, he might have painted a companion portrait to the Crito and the Phaedo that would have completed his work. Carlyle was not as human as Johnson. Let us take one phrase of the great Doctor: he has visited Garrick behind the scenes and breaks out with the confession that "the black legs and snowy bosoms of your actresses, David, excite my amorous propensities." Has he not here painted himself to the life? And then Froude: a better stylist perhaps than Boswell, but without Boswell's intense interest in his subject. What weaknesses has Froude discovered in Carlyle? Why he doesn't even tell us how Carlyle managed to save £. 30,000. Why didn't Carlyle go to visit Goethe in Weimar? That would have been better than putting bawbee to bawbee; and when he made his wife jealous, how did he console her and win forgiveness? Froude is interested in literature rather than life, and not in this spirit are great biographies written, or indeed great anything else. Erdachtes mag zu denken geben Doch nur Erlebtes wird beleben. 382 But already everyone was talking of Joseph Chamberlain and his "Unauthorized Programme" in the Fortnightly Review, and of Gladstone and the mess he had got himself and his government into, partly through his dislike of Chamberlain and of Parnell, who, since the Kilmainham business, and because of the perpetual unfair attacks in The Times, was coming more and more into prominence. It was in reference to Parnell and his rise that I first said to myself, "Great men, like kites, go up against the wind." But Parnell, thoroughly English as he was and magnificently handsome to boot, certainly the handsomest man in my time in the House of Commons, never succeeded in England, though towards the end he was on the point of succeeding in the House of Commons, a fact which to me deepens the tragedy of his untimely death. But Chamberlain was the central figure on the political stage. I measured him perhaps harshly on our first meetings. I've told how surprised I was at the noble way Lord Salisbury acted in regard to his tenants' houses at Hatfield, rebuilding as many as he could, year by year, and then fixing a rental not to exceed three per cent on the cost of the building; and above all refusing from the outset to accept any rent at all on the houses he regarded as unfit for habitation. "Are you sure?" Chamberlain asked me peevishly when I brought him my report. "Can it be that this whole detailed indictment of Archibald Forbes is wrong with any justification?" Time and again he returned to the charge: "Forbes had no motive, no reason to be unfair: he's supposed to be a great reporter. It's extraordinary, you'll admit that, most extraordinary." At length I could stand it no longer: he was so petty, so ungenerous to his rival. "It's Salisbury's nobility," I said, "that strikes me as extraordinary. If the Liberal manufacturers and industrial monopolists of England had behaved as well to their workmen as this great landlord had behaved to his tenants, there would be no strikes in England, no trade unions either, no industrial discontent." Chamberlain looked at me with undisguised antagonism in his eyes but said nothing, and soon afterwards I took my leave. One day I waited for him in his dining-room, where there were several Leighton pictures, and he introduced them to me pompously as, "All by Leigh ton, the President, you know of our Academy." I nodded and Chamberlain went on, "I gave 2000 pounds for that one." "Really?" I gasped. "Yes," he replied, "what do you think it's worth?" I could not help it; I replied, "I don't know the value of the frame." 383 It's hardly necessary to say that he didn't want to see me again for many a day. But another incident occurred some time later which explains, I think, my early misjudgement of the man. The gist of Forbes's article appeared in Truth, Labouchere's weekly paper. I asked Escott had he given it to Labouchere but he denied it, saying that it must have been given by Chamberlain himself. I wrote of it as false and foolish and made fun of it in the Evening News and Lord Salisbury's agent wrote thanking me for my defence, at the same time telling me that Lord Salisbury had forbidden him to write any correction to the press; and had added finely, "It's impossible for us to praise each other." But my defence of the truth stood me in good stead with Lord Salisbury much later, as I may tell when I come to the Venezuelan difficulty. Now I had to read Chamberlain's "Unauthorized Programme" as it appeared month by month in the Fortnightly Review, for all this time I was in close touch with Escott and his family. I found it difficult to explain Chamberlain's extraordinary success. He had no idea that Bismarck's work in nationalizing the German railways was the best way of lifting the labouring classes to a higher level; he preferred the old individualistic lenitives: for years he believed in unrestricted free trade; he didn't even know that joint-stock management of industry had every fault of state management and none of its virtues; from a continental point of view he was extraordinarily ignorant; he had read practically nothing and was curiously uneducated. He had driving force of will and for years I saw little more in him. All this, I think, accounts for Gladstone's dislike of the man, as was shown by the low position he gave the Radical leader when forming his Cabinet in 1886, though Chamberlain was even then absolute master of six seats in Birmingham alone. Kimberley and Granville, old worn out war horses, became Indian and Colonial Ministers respectively, whereas Chamberlain had only a minor appointment as head of the Local Government Board. This Ministry showed curious weaknesses and justified my sneer that there was "a screw loose in the Cabinet." Everyone knew of course that Chamberlain's great fortune lay in his monopoly of the trade in screws. But Gladstone should have taken him into his confidence and given him whatever place he wanted, for he was undoubtedly at this time the head of the Radical party and the most influential member of the majority after Gladstone himself. When the Home Rule Bill came before the House, pressed forward, as Randolph Churchill said aptly, by "an old man in a hurry," Gladstone must have realized his blunder in underrating Chamberlain, for Chamberlain and Hartington both resigned, and their resignation, or rather Chamberlain's, made the bill Impossible. Gladstone nicknamed the rebels "dissentient Liberals," but the name didn't stick; they soon came to be known as "Liberal-Unionists," and no one could deny that Chamberlain had given up the succession to the leadership of the party rather than sacrifice his principles. But if Gladstone had handled him to the height of his deserving in 1886, some Home Rule Bill 384 would have passed the House and the history of "the distressful country" would have been different. I could not even account for Chamberlain's extraordinary influence in Birmingham till I made up my mind to go and visit it. Then I was soon convinced; everyone in Birmingham knew his work and spoke in warmest admiration of him. In the very first year he was Mayor, in 1874, he bought up the gas works on behalf of the Corporation; he increased the efficiency of the services public and private in the most extraordinary way and transferred the growing profits into the pockets of the taxpayers. A year or so later he dealt with the water supply in the same spirit and with even more wonderful results, while showing himself a really democratic English statesman of the best. In the gas business he used all the growth of revenue in relief of the rates, while in the water service he ordained a minimum of profit in order that the continually growing supply should be distributed throughout the community and should especially benefit the poorest classes. In his third term he did even better at a greater personal cost. There were slums in Birmingham of unimaginable foulness, where long continued poverty had festered into disease. One or two facts will give some idea of the situation: infant mortality in the slum was three times as high as in the more decent quarters, the length of life was not one half as long, and the ratio of crime was tenfold higher. Chamberlain conceived the idea of cleansing this Augean stable, and in order to judge him fairly, it must be remembered that his powers were severely limited; and a certain resentment, based on the overgrown love of Englishmen for individual liberty, and hatred of authoritative interference or molly-coddling, made itself felt unpleasantly from the beginning. Yet he triumphed over every difficulty: bolder than Haussmann in Paris, he drove a great boulevard through the heart of slumland and called it Corporation Street. Today Corporation Street has the best shops in Birmingham, and he leased out the sites for only seventy years, so that when the leases fall in before the middle of this century, the Birmingham rates will be relieved to the tune of over £. 100,000 a year. On my return from Birmingham I couldn't help asking Chamberlain one day how he had managed it. "Your gas and water improvements were easy," I began. "Indeed, in Germany they would be merely usual, but how did you manage your street through slum-land? Didn't some slum owners object to selling and ask extortionate, extravagant prices for their houses?" "Some," he replied laughing. "Dozens held me up as boldly resolved as highway robbers. But I had various ways of dealing with them. I had obtained powers over more than the slum area, so, if they were determined, I said, 'All right, my friend, I'll alter the direction of my avenue and leave you in the slum you prefer. You'll not profit by my improvement, that's all.' To another I'd say, 'Look here, if you won't come in, I'll leave your tumbled down old shack in the middle of my avenue and I'll take care you don't get permission from the Corporation to rebuild on the site for many a year.' And yet another I'd influence by an appeal to his sense of fair play, and that's very 385 strong in Englishmen. I showed them that I dealt out even-handed justice: no one should profit more than his neighbour, and that finally was my most persuasive argument; but on the whole I had to pay twice or thrice the value of the land to the individual owner." He told it all with such laughing good humour, showed besides such a rich human sympathy, even with the meanest and most grasping, and such unconquerable resolution to boot, that he won me completely. I had tears in my eyes when he finished and I murmured, "Well done, good and faithful servant!" He took my words up seriously, and putting his hand on my shoulder said, "I love my house here and my ease, but if I could blot out the shameful, criminal poverty of these islands as I have in Birmingham, I'd consent to go penniless into the streets tomorrow. And yet I've no imitators even. The slums of Glasgow are worse than the worst in Birmingham, but no Scot takes the matter in hand and solves it as I have in Birmingham—and more, much more could be done. One spends half one's life before one comes to realize the problem and understands how easy it would be to solve it; and how important! But oh! the time's so short; one can do so little!" And he sighed deeply. As he sat down again at his writing-table I noticed for the first time his extraordinary likeness to the younger Pitt: I was carried away by sympathy and had to say something. "I'm very glad I went to Birmingham," I began. "I misjudged you; I'm heart-glad to see that a Bismarck is also possible in England. At any rate, your spirit shows that the problem will be tackled sooner or later and brought to a noble issue." "That's the hope," he said, smiling. "I'm glad we feel alike on the chief thing," he added. "I wonder if that's true," I replied. "Your free trade views always make me shudder." "Aren't you a free-trader?" he exclaimed, in open-mouthed astonishment. "Indeed, no," I retorted. "Free trade creates your slums, and I admire the despot who transforms them." He shrugged his shoulders; he was evidently too busy then to embark on a new discussion. "Won't you take a cigar?" he said, holding out the box, and I felt that I was dismissed. But ever afterwards I cherished a profound admiration for the statesman who had turned Birmingham from an ordinary English town into probably the best ordered and healthiest large town in the kingdom. Often afterwards I wished that instead of butting my head against his free trade prepossessions, I had asked him why he didn't found a 386 municipal opera house and theatre in Birmingham and so lift its spiritual life to the level of life in Marseilles or Lyons. Gladstone's Home Rule bill was defeated because he yielded to small personal prejudice, and yet every Englishman who knew this thought Gladstone a great man; and he commanded a personal reverence greater even than Bismarck in Germany. For my part, I never esteemed him, save as an orator, and at this time had not yet been introduced to him. All this while the discontent of the working classes in Great Britain, as in Ireland, grew steadily and increased in bitterness. In London it found determined defenders in the Social Democratic Federation. Mr. H. W. Hyndman had started this association a couple of years or so before as a follower more or less convinced of Karl Marx. The first time I heard Bernard Shaw speak was at a meeting of the Federation, but I had left it before he joined and he left it soon afterwards. On a Monday early in February, 1886, the Federation called a meeting in Trafalgar Square which ended in a riot. The mob got out of hand and marched to attack the clubs in Pall Mall and soon proceeded to loot shops in Piccadilly and hold another meeting at Hyde Park Corner. The ringleaders were arrested and tried: they were Hyndman, Williams, Burns and Champion. Williams and Burns, both workingmen, were bailed out by William Morris, the poet. Hyndman seemed to me an ordinary English bourgeois with a smattering of German reading: he was above middle height, burly and bearded; Champion, the thin, well-bred officer type with good heart and scant reading; Williams, the ordinary workingman full of class prejudices; and John Burns, also a workingman, but really intelligent and thoughtful, who afterwards proved himself an excellent minister and resigned with Lord Morley rather than accept the world war. In spite of deficient education, Burns was even then a most interesting man; though hardly middle height, he was sturdy and exceedingly strong and brave. He had read from boyhood and we became great friends about the beginning of the century through the South African War. Burns was an early lover of Carlyle, and the experiences of a workingman's life had not blinded him to the value of individual merit. In many respects he stood on the forehead of the time to come, and if his education had been equal to his desire for knowledge, he would have been among the choicest spirits of the age. Even in 1886 I'm glad to say I rated him far above most of the politicians, though he never reached any originality of thought. 387 CHAPTER XV. THE NEW SPEAKER PEEL; LORD RANDOLPH CHURCHILL; COL. BURNABY; WOLSELEY; GRAHAM; GORDON; JOKE ON ALFRED AUSTIN FROM 1883 ON FOR thirty years I studied English life
and English politics, 388 humour and eloquence of Oscar Wilde; and it was the uncle of the Queen who had asked me to invite him, as he had heard so much of Wilde's genius. I want to tell of these men and of many others at least as justly renowned in order to give a picture of those crowded days of London in the last decades of the nineteenth and the first of the twentieth century. As I have said, cherishing the ambition of going into the House of Commons myself, I was at first more eager to know the politicians than the poets. I took pains to be present every evening in the House for several years, until I had learned not only to know the fifty or sixty more prominent members, but also the procedure, traditions and tone of the Assembly. It is often spoken of as unique, ideal and all the rest of it, and the House of Commons must certainly be regarded as the finest deliberative assembly in the world. In the first year or so the circumstance that made the greatest impression on me was the election of Mr. Arthur Peel early in 1884 to the Speakership, instead of Mr. Brand, whom I knew, who was retiring as Lord Hampden. At that time few members even knew anything of Arthur Peel, who was the youngest son of the famous prime minister, and who had been almost undistinguished as a member from Warwick for many years. But the moment he got on his feet to return thanks for his election everyone was thrilled. He was fairly tall, had a good presence, a dark, bearded face set off by a high aquiline nose, an ordinary, baritone voice; yet he had an air of masterful dignity that was impressive; and what he said was noteworthy. I shall always remember one long sentence, badly constructed, but perfectly natural—the talk of a man thinking aloud and not one reciting a carefully prepared oration—yet carrying in clumsy words a curious sense of authority. "With the support of the House," he said, "I may be permitted," and he paused—"to enforce the unwritten law, the most cherished and inestimable tradition of this House, I mean that personal courtesy, that interchange of chivalry between member and member—compatible with the most effective party debate—which is one of the oldest, and I humbly trust may always be, the most cherished of the traditions of this great Assembly." The sensation was astonishing: everyone felt that he had struck the right note, and had struck it with an almost magical dignity of personal character. From that moment the Speaker held the house in awe. Not his impartiality alone, but his greatness of character was never questioned. Ever afterwards I had a higher opinion of the House of Commons; perhaps among the ruck of silent members whom one didn't know, there might be another Arthur Peel! I followed the debates more closely than ever and I was able to do this most comfortably through the kindness of Lord Randolph Churchill, whom I came to know well about this time. As soon as he found that I had some difficulty now and then in getting a seat in the "Distinguished Stranger's Gallery," he spoke to the Speaker and to the funny little Master of Arms, Gossett, whom I never saw but in his court dress with little sword, knickers and black silk stockings; and so got me a seat on the floor of the House itself in a sort of pew 389 set apart for the half dozen of the Speaker's friends. There I could hear and see everything, even with my short sight, as if I had been a member. My first meeting with Lord Randolph Churchill impressed me hugely. He was always represented by Punch and the comic papers as a very small man, or even as a boy, in spite of a ferocious upturned moustache. To my astonishment I found he was a good five feet nine or ten inches in height and carried himself bravely. The peculiarity of his face was seldom or never caricatured; it consisted of a pair of prominent round grey-blue eyes, well deserving the nickname of goggle-eyes. The face was peculiarly expressive of anger or contempt, but a second glance showed that the features were all fairly regular and the shape of the head quite excellent. Altogether a personable man, but when he spoke in the House, he often stood with one hand akimbo on his hip, which, with his thick, upturned, dark moustache, gave him a cocky or cheeky look and led the would-be humorists to treat him as an impudent boy; and he was assuredly lacking in reverence for his elders and supposed leaders in the House of Commons. At the very beginning he invited me to come one afternoon to the Carlton Club to talk over some incident in the Bradlaugh imbroglio. I was struck almost at once by the surpassing generalship in the man and by his colossal assurance. Oddly enough, I had come to the meeting without having lunched, and as I knew it was not allowed to give food to a non-member in the Carlton, I mentioned a propos de bottes that I was sharp set. At once he declared that he would have something brought up at once, and when I reminded him of the rule, he shrugged his shoulders, rang, and when the footman came, gave his order with such deliberate curtness that the man was only anxious to get away and do what he was told. I got an excellent lunch and a good bottle of wine in a jiffy: as usual, in England I found that mean rules were made for mean men. Soon after our first meeting I talked to Randolph of Bradlaugh, for I had formed a high opinion of Bradlaugh's character when he lectured in America. Randolph was proud of an incident that Winston has told excellently in his Life, and so I make no apology for reproducing it here. "On February 21 there was another Bradlaugh scene. The member for Northampton, advancing suddenly to the table, produced a book, said to be a Testament, from his pocket, and duly swore himself upon it, to the consternation of the members. Lord Randolph was the first to recover from the surprise which this act of audacity created. He declared that Mr. Bradlaugh, by the outrage of taking in defiance of the House an oath of a meaningless character upon a book alleged to be a Testament—it might have been the Fruits of Philosophy—had vacated his seat and should be treated as if he were dead." In moving for a new writ, he implored the House to act promptly and vindicate its authority. Mr. Gladstone, however, persuaded both sides to put off the decision until the next day. On the 22nd therefore a debate on privilege ensued. Sir Stafford Northcote merely moved 390 to exclude Mr. Bradlaugh from the precincts of the House, thus modifying Lord Randolph's motion for a new writ. Lord Randolph protested against such a 'milk and water' policy and urged the immediate punishment of the offender. After a long discussion, in which the temper of all parties was inflamed by Mr. Bradlaugh's repeated interruptions, Sir Stafford substituted for his simple motion of exclusion a proposal to expel Mr. Bradlaugh from the House; and this being carried, the seat for Northampton was thereby vacated. "Lord Randolph seems to have gained much credit in Tory circles for the promptness and energy with which he had acted," his son writes. Then came the Kilmainham negotiations and Mr. Parnell's release, and on top of all the murder in Phoenix Park of Lord Frederick Cavendish and Mr. Burke. But alas! Randolph had fallen seriously ill and was out of the fight for half a year. Everyone said that had Randolph been able to head the attack on the Kilmainham Treaty, Gladstone's government would have fallen. He returned to a triumph. The Liberals had been asked by their Whips not to take part in the discussion on Egypt and Randolph at once jeered at them "for assisting in the capacity of mutes at the funeral obsequies of free speech." I give this as a proof of his power of speech, though it was his captaincy I always admired, and not his eloquence. Years later, talking with Lord Hartington of Randolph's career, I found that he whom I always regarded as "the conscience of the House of Commons" agreed with me in my estimate of Randolph. He told me how annoyed Gladstone was with Randolph over the Bradlaugh business. "He doesn't believe in Christianity," said Gladstone, "yet is not ashamed to use the religious prejudices of others to gain some paltry political advantage." "But at length," said Lord Hartington, "the chiefs of both parties found themselves in one lobby and the majority of the House with Randolph in the other, which convinced me that Randolph was a strategist without an equal. And later no one ever led the House of Commons as he did: he knew the House better than it knew itself. As a Parliamentarian he had no equal, no second, even, in my experience." In our first talk I recognized the qualities in Randolph of a great captain, not as clearly as I saw them later, but clearly enough to see in him a reincarnation of the peculiar power of his ancestor, the first Duke. He had, too, at this time an extraordinary geniality and a passionate belief in the efficacy of a series of reforms which I thought merely lenitive, but which he lauded as distinctively English. I shall have much more to say of him later, but here, because it has become the fashion to sneer at him, I wish to put it on record that no one could meet him, as no one could meet Parnell, without recognizing greatness in him. Both of them made a far deeper impression on me than Gladstone, though he was infinitely the most articulate of the two. 391 In these first years of my editorship I got to know A. M. Broadley, who wrote for the World and made himself prominent as a defender of Arabi Pasha and Egyptian independence. It was Broadley who introduced me to Colonel Burnaby, who, too, was a whole-hearted partisan of Lord Randolph Churchill. Fred Burnaby was another extraordinary personality, physically, I think, the finest specimen of manhood I've ever seen: over six feet four inches in height and some forty-seven inches around the chest. Stories innumerable were told of his bodily strength and most of them, I believe, were true. When he joined the Horse Guards, some young subalterns got two donkeys through the window into his bedroom. Coming home late one night, Burnaby found them, and taking one under each arm, carried them quietly downstairs. I saw him once take a poker in his hands and bend it. He was good-looking withal: large forehead and chin, straight, heavy nose and really fine, kindly, laughing eyes set well apart, while a heavy dark moustache partially concealed assuasive lips. Had I met him fifteen years earlier I might have made a hero of him, for he was intelligent as well as strong; he spoke, too, half a dozen languages and was completely devoid of snobbism or "side." I always felt grateful to him for taking me up as he did. It pleased him that I had read his Ride to Khiva, and he told me a story about it that amused me. On his return to England after his famous "Ride," he was invited to dinner at Windsor to tell the Queen about his adventures. Of course he obeyed the order, got into the train at Waterloo and fell fast asleep, did not change at Weybridge, but went on to Basingstoke, where he woke up. He had then to persuade the station master to make up a special train and send him back to Windsor. "The dearest dinner I ever had in my life," was his humorous comment on the incident. We were talking one afternoon about bodily exercise and muscular development when somewhat to my astonishment, Burnaby was all in favour of moderation. "Especially in youth," he said, "we can easily overdo it and develop our muscles at the cost of our vital energy. I don't know how to put it better," he went on, "but I'm sure I'm overdeveloped. I've seen little slips of fellows get the passionate love of fine women, while great athletes are never remarkable as lovers." He spoke with bitterness and I took it as a personal confession, for I had noticed the same truth; and everyone knew later that poor Burnaby's marriage was not happy. Yet Roman ladies and even empresses chose gladiators as lovers: why? Burnaby came to grief in a way that throws a certain light on the English aristocratic code. One of his brother officers, a captain, I think, had an intrigue with a lady and used to go to meet her at some rooms in the Temple. One day Burnaby on his way to Broadley crossed this officer in the square. Probably he told Broadley jokingly of the recontre. At any rate next week in the World, which Broadley wrote for, there appeared a paragraph warning the officer in question not to be caught on his way to No—— in the Temple, as everyone knew the attraction. 392 The officer called a meeting of his brother officers in the regiment and accused Burnaby of being the tell-tale. Burnaby, essentially truthful, could only say that he did not recall mentioning the fact; but it leaked out that Broadley was the paragraphist and the officers thereupon sent Burnaby, the colonel, to Coventry; and a little later, when Prince Edward was to dine with the regiment, the officers notified Burnaby that ft he appeared, no other officer would come to the table. This boycott cut Burnaby to the heart. Before going out to serve in the Sudan with Wolseley's expedition to save Gordon, Burnaby invited me to dinner in his rooms. I had often dined with him before and was always interested. He touched life on a great many more sides than the ordinary English officer; he was well read in three or four literatures and eagerly receptive to all that was fine in art and life. He was an excellent companion, too; told a good story with subtle humour and was essentially large-hearted and generous. In memory I put Fred Burnaby almost with Dick Burton among the noblest men I've known. After the dinner he told me quietly he didn't intend to come back alive. "It seems funny," he remarked in the air, "to be under sentence of death, but within a month or so I shall have entered the great 'Perhaps', as Danton I think called 'the undiscovered country'." I argued passionately against his decision, told him his life and achievements as a great adventurer loomed bigger in my eyes than the whole corps of officers. "I'd give a wilderness of monkeys and mediocrities," I cried, "for one Burnaby. For God's sake, get hold of yourself and live out a great life to a noble end." "Perhaps you don't know of the way I'm boycotted?" he asked. "I've heard of it through Broadley," I replied; but I had heard, too, that Colonel Ralph Vivian, who was immensely popular, had turned away from Burnaby markedly a few weeks before in Hyde Park, and I had realized for months past that Burnaby was wounded to the soul. Now he unburdened his pent-up sorrow. "Life's a more difficult game than we are apt to imagine in youth," he began. "Who could have a better start than I? Fairly well born with perfect health, great strength, height, too, and not so ugly as a wolf, as the French say; endowed besides, with fair brains, good verbal memory, love of adventure and travel and minded seriously to make the best of all my advantages. At thirty-five invited to Windsor, a personage in society with an uncommon reputation, and the position of a Colonel of the Guards; and at forty through no crime, no fault of my own an outlaw, an outcast." (He spoke with intense bitterness.) "I have no chance of recovery and am the worse off that the outside is still brilliant. Thank God, I know how to die!" And the whole face was transfigured, lit up by indomitable resolution and joyous courage. 393 "Don't talk like that!" I cried, appalled by the chill of death in the air. "I can't listen to you; it's not worthy of your brains or sense. You have done no intentional wrong," I went on. "Your position is really the revolt of commonplace idiots against a personality, someone of distinction and achievement. It's your business to live it all down, walk through it unheeding. You remember Goethe said, 'When the King rides abroad, the village curs all bark at his horse's heels.' Let 'em bark." But Burnaby would not be encouraged. "If things were different at home," he sighed, "I might try. But no, I'm a failure, Harris; have come to grief everywhere, so 'one fight more, the best and the last'"; and again the eyes, gladly. I can't reproach myself. I did all I knew, argued with him, assured him that the highest public opinion would not condemn him; begged him for the sake of all of us who cared for him to play the game out. At length he interrupted me: "The die is cast: I'm going out to the Sudan at the beginning of the week. I'll consider what you've said and I'm infinitely obliged to you for saying it, but each man, my friend, must 'drie his own weird'." Tears were in my eyes and my heart was sore as we parted. All the world knows how nobly Burnaby gave his life in the battle of Abou Klea in the Sudan. The Arab rush had broken the British square and the next moment the dervishes would have entered and swept away the formation, when the giant Burnaby hurled himself into the gap in front of his old comrades of the Blues and stemmed the torrent. As the square reformed behind him, Burnaby still fighting, though bleeding from a dozen wounds, went down with an Arab spear through his throat. He had saved a thousand lives and turned disaster into victory. Bennett Burleigh, the famous war correspondent of the Telegraph, wrote to me afterwards that Burnaby saved 'all our lives.' As I read of his heroic death I cried like a child and then wondered whether his fellow officers were still proud of their idiotic boycott. To me dear Fred Burnaby was the hero of the Sudan, and not Charles Gordon. I never cared for Chinese Gordon greatly, perhaps because he was so extolled on all hands, beslobbered with the cheap adulation of those who didn't even know him by sight. I went to interview him for the Evening News when he came over from Brussels at Gladstone's behest and was about to start for the Sudan to free the garrisons beleaguered by the forces of the Mahdi. Perhaps because I didn't expect much, I got little or nothing from him. According to Stead and the Pall Mall Gazette, he was a "Christian hero ... Christ's warrior," a blasphemous contradiction in terms only possible in England or America. Charles Gordon was un-English in one respect: there was absolutely no "side" about him; he was transparently simple and sincere. He was good-looking too, with a remarkable forehead, both broad and high. But I discounted large foreheads, for my experience rather justified the German word: 394 Gross Stirn Wenig Gehirn. though Victor Hugo's praise is apt to infect all of us. Hugo said finely that a large forehead had much the same effect as an expanse of sky in a landscape. I certainly did not understand Gordon. When I asked him why he gave up his intention to go to the Congo in order to go to Khartoum instead, he smiled, saying the need in the Sudan was more urgent. "He would go to the Congo later," he added, "if God willed." I gathered that he looked on himself as an instrument in God's hands to do whatever he was called upon to do. His fatalistic belief seemed to me childish, the result of success and much praise working on a poor brain. His conceit or, if you will, his faith, went beyond reason. He had no insight into men or events. As soon as he reached Khartoum he startled Baring and shocked Gladstone by asking that his old enemy, Zebehr Pasha, the notorious slave-trader, should be sent up from Cairo to help him. Now some of us remembered that Zebehr Pasha's son, Suleiman, got up a rebellion in 1879 in Darfour against Gordon and his lieutenant, Gessi. Gessi beat Suleiman in battle, took him prisoner, and then in cold blood had him executed. Baring was of the opinion that Zebehr would do Gordon harm, and Gladstone's prejudice against the slave-dealer being insuperable, Zebehr was denied to Gordon. As if to mock his belief in providence, events fought against Gordon from the beginning. Scarcely had he reached Khartoum when the Mahdi's lieutenant, Osman Digna, took Sinkat by storm and put not only the Egyptian garrison, but every man, woman and child in the place to the sword. No wonder the garrison at Tokar made friends with their savage foe and surrendered on terms, a great many going over, heart and hand, to the enemy. Then Khartoum was threatened and a Christian England forced Gladstone's hand and a military expedition was set on foot to save the saviour. General Wolseley of course led the British forces and he determined, in memory, I imagine, of his Red River Expedition, to go up the Nile instead of taking the short cut by Suakim and Berber. The whole, silly tragicomedy discovered to me as by a lightning flash all the unspeakable stupidity of government by democracy, which means today by an ill-informed press and a sentimental loud-voiced minority. Yet amid all the hubbub there came suddenly the voice of an authentic man. One morning The Times published a letter from the Mahdi, if I remember rightly, to the English government. It was astoundingly well written and translated into pure Biblical English of the best. I haven't got it, I'm sorry to say, but it made an indelible impression on me as the greatest document published in my time, superior even to the letter Parnell published when Gladstone threw him over in the O'Shea divorce case. The Mahdi asked the English why they were coming out against him with horse, foot and artillery? Didn't they know that if they were working with God and for His high 395 purpose, a small force would be invincible? Whereas if their aim was selfish and cruel, no force would be sufficient. Tell me what you want, he said practically, and if it is right and just, you will have no difficulty; on the other hand, if your purpose is secret and evil, you are only ploughing the sand. Addressed really to Gladstone, the wording of the appeal was irresistibly comic; the old Christian rhetor hoist on a petard of his own manufacture. The whole summer England followed the expedition up the Nile with breathless interest. At length in December, after the victory of Abou Klea, a dash to Khartoum was resolved on. As if to demonstrate the utter worthlessness of his judgment, Gordon sent down a message on 29 December that "Khartoum was all right and could hold out for years." But Wolseley knew better and early in January, Sir Charles Wilson made his dash for Khartoum; he found the town had already fallen and the Mahdist forces fired on his steamer from the walls. "Gordon a prisoner" was the first report; and then came the truth. Hearing the noise of the Mahdist inrush, Gordon ran out of his palace with drawn sword and was stabbed to death in the entrance to his palace. The whole costly expedition was turned thereby into a fiasco. Were the forces to return and give up the Sudan to the slave-dealer and the Mahdi? Gladstone wished to do this, but aristocratic England could not so easily accept defeat! As soon as Wolseley returned to England I made it my business to see him, and I was interested to find that his view of men and affairs was not very different from my own. Wolseley was always to me a lightweight: no power of personality, no depth of insight, an ordinary English gentleman with much experience of affairs. By dint of rubbing against abler men than himself he had got a sort of clever woman's flair for what was going on above his head; eminently kind and fair-minded, too, with an ambition altogether out of proportion to his capacity. All this and more was illustrated by some stories he told me. I had been asking him about courage and he astonished me by saying that a volunteer army was always better than a conscript army. "One in three of the conscripts," he added, "is sure to be a coward and that minority may bring disaster at almost any time." Somehow or other he convinced me. Then the talk came on Gordon, as most talks did about that time. "Oh you know," he began, "Gordon and I were in the Crimea together, every day side by side for hours in the trench before the Redan." "Really," I exclaimed. "That must have been interesting!" "Very interesting," he went on "and an object lesson in that courage we were talking about. Towards the end the trench got within eighty yards or so of the ramparts of the fort and was so shallow and muddy-wet that it did not give us much shelter. At six o'clock each evening we went off duty and others came in our stead. Gerald Graham, now General Sir Gerald Graham, was the bravest man I ever knew: six feet-odd in height and handsome to boot. Every night as the clock struck Graham used to get up, put his hands in his pockets and stroll off towards his quarters. Soon the Russians remarked this and 396 gathered in the evening on the near rampart for a pot-shot at the big Englishman. As luck would have it, they always missed him. I remonstrated with him again and again. 'It can be only a question of time, Graham,' I said, 'and they'll get you. For God's sake, don't be so foolhardy.' But Graham went on turning himself into a cockshot every evening for weeks and I assure you after ten days or so it was a miracle how he escaped, for some hundreds used to shoot at him and the bullets buzzed like bees." "You didn't imitate him?" I asked, laughing. "No, indeed," Wolseley replied seriously. "Even at that time I meant to be Commander-in-Chief of the British Army if I could manage it, and so every evening I crawled along the muddy wet trench for a couple of hundred yards or so on my belly till I was fairly out of range. I thought myself far too valuable to make myself a cockshy." "And Gordon," I asked, "Gordon was a subaltern with you. How did he act?" "None of us could make Gordon out at that time," Wolseley replied. "One evening he'd get up, bold as brass, link arms with Graham, and stroll off with him as if the nearest Russian marksman was a thousand miles away. I came to understand bit by bit that it was all a question of his prayers with Gordon. If God had accorded him some sign of approval, he'd stroll away with Graham wholly unconcerned; if, on the other hand, he was left in doubt of the divine guidance, he'd crawl through the mud lower than I thought necessary, and longer. Gordon was a queer fish; but Graham was the bravest of the brave. "I remember afterwards in the Chinese war meeting Graham by chance," Wolseley continued. "One evening I saw a big man on horseback in the mist and ran across to ask some question. When I reached him I saw it was Graham and in my delight I slapped him on the thigh as I put my question. "That's all right,' he answered me, 'but please don't slap that thigh: I've just got a bullet in there,' and as I looked at my hand, it was all crimson. Graham paid no more attention to wounds than to danger. You know he got the V.C. I tried time and again to get it but had no luck; life will not give us all our desires." To my amazement he was disappointed! Fancy a leader of armies wanting the V.C.! Wolseley was an interesting man, though I think these stories of Gordon and Graham the best I ever got from him. Still, he had led an eventful life and his memories of the Civil War in America fascinated me and I shall have to tell them later, for they explain why I worked to get him made Commander-in- Chief and so attain the summit of his ambition. For a good many years we met and dined together half a dozen times every season and he was always an excellent host; and perhaps he enjoyed my cow-punching stories as much as I delighted in his memories of Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee. 397 It was at Wolseley's house much later when he was the Ranger at Woolwich that I made a little jest which has been attributed to others. Alfred Austin had just been appointed Poet Laureate by Lord Salisbury, though he had no more poetry in his composition than a house-fly. He had other merits, however. For years he had written leading articles in the Standard and praised Lord Salisbury in and out of season. Accordingly, when Lord Tennyson died, Lord Salisbury appointed Alfred Austin to the post: "Alfred the Little, after Alfred the Great," as some anonymous wit declared. Of course Lord Salisbury should have appointed Swinburne or any one of half a dozen poets greater than this little creature, but no! He appointed his eulogist—a disgraceful outrage on English poetry, the gravity of which he was incapable even of understanding. I had met Austin often and thought him a mere journalist and place-hunter without talent or personality, but this evening when we met at Wolseley's he treated me with marked condescension. "I've known Mr. Harris," he said, "when he was merely editor of the Evening News." His tone was so high and mighty that I replied, "I hear now that you write poetry as well as prose; which do you intend to use in the future?" "Oh now," he replied, "I must write a certain amount of poetry." "Why?" I replied, pretending ignorance. "Oh, to keep the wolf from the door," he replied, smiling. "I see," I retorted, "I see, very good: you read your poetry to the wolf, eh?" Austin used to avoid me afterwards, but the word pleased me infinitely, perhaps, because I was seldom witty. 398 CHAPTER XVI. MEMORIES OF JOHN RUSKIN I NEVER MET ANY one in my life whose personal
appearance disappointed 399 precocious," he said, "hi many ways. I was in love, I remember, over head and ears in love before I was fifteen." As I knew he had been divorced from his wife, who declared that the marriage had never been consummated, this astonished me to amazement. "Really!" I exclaimed, "whom with?" "A Domecq girl—the daughters of my father's Spanish partner in the winebusiness," he explained. "I met them all in Paris when I was fourteen: 'A Southern Cross of Unconceived Stars,' I called them and fell prone in love before Adele, who was a blonde, a little older than I was. Two or three years later they visited us at Herne Hill, and I remember when I was eighteen or so writing verses on 'her grace, her glory, her smile'; but when I confided to my father that I wanted to marry her, he quickly disillusioned me. 'Your mother would never consent, John,' he said. 'She's a Roman Catholic!' "I loved my mother and besides was very religious at that time, though not so religious as all that; yet it was soon settled, as life has a trick of settling things. Adele came to Herne Hill again on a visit in 1839, when I was twenty years of age, but gave me no hope; indeed, I think she did not take me seriously, even; was simply amused and flattered by my devotion. She married the next year, in 1840, and so went out of my life. That affected my health; I was delicate for some years." Ruskin made an impression on me of a most affectionate, sweet nature; at every meeting he would take my hand and grip it with an intensity of good feeling. At the same time, there was about him a sort of wistful weakness, as of one whose life was full of regrets; and of course I was all agog to find out about his marriage. I had already noticed that if I let him talk, he would soon begin to talk about himself and say things that were of great interest to me. All I had to do was to profess admiration and start him with a question and soon he would become reminiscent and personal— pathetically anxious, I thought, to justify and proclaim himself. We had been talking, I believe, about Carlyle's deep love for his wife, when Ruskin suddenly told me off hand that he had never been in love at all with his wife, Miss Gray. When he was about twenty-eight, he said, she came to stay with them at Denmark Hill. His mother wanted the match and "She (Miss Gray) was very pleasant and kind, so in April '48 I married her. I had already lost nearly all my religious faith. I went to Normandy with my wife and began The Seven Lamps of Architecture. "When I was a little over thirty, we returned to live in Park Street and I got to know Carlyle and another of your friends, Coventry Patmore and the Pre- Rafaelites. In 1853 we went to Scotland with Millais and Millais did my portrait. It was there I discovered that my wife loved Millais. I went to his studio one morning and opened the door quietly, without the faintest 400 suspicion—there they were in each other's arms on the sofa. I was startled and involuntarily stepped back, drawing the door quietly to after me. What was I to do? I was a little shocked but I had never loved her, so there was no pang of pain. I was merely annoyed but I had my dignity to consider. I resolved simply to be more ceremonious than I had been." I stared my astonishment and Ruskin must have felt it, for he began to explain. "I did not wish to break off with him. I thought I had no right to. My portrait was not finished and I wanted it finished: I thought it might be one of the great portraits of the world; but I wanted, too, to keep my dignity." I could scarcely help grinning; what had dignity to do with it? But Ruskin went on, "I thought him, and still think, him, a very great master, so I was simply scrupulously polite until the portrait was finished and then he went away. I have no doubt he felt the difference in my manner. I was very cold and reserved and he was not so boisterous as he had been sometimes, or jovialcoarse. "A little later, my wife left me and brought an action for divorce, f Of course I did not defend it; I had no interest in it. A year later, in 1854, she got her freedom and married Millais. I am rather proud of the fact that, even after this, I wrote enthusiastically about Millais' genius as a painter. Personally they never touched me, never came near me!" I don't remember how I started him off again, but I think I asked him how he came to admire Turner so early. "I always knew a good deal about painting," he began, "and I was the first, I think, to see Turner's real greatness; I bought many of his works before I was twenty-three. You know I published the first volume of Modern Painters when I was twenty-four. "When Turner died and left his paintings to the nation, I went to see them and found them still in boxes in the cellars of the National Gallery, unappreciated, seemingly—altogether uncared for. I thereupon wrote to Lord Palmerston, I think, the Prime Minister, and told him I should be very proud, indeed, if I were allowed to put Turner's works in order. He put me in communication with the trustees and I was duly appointed, and all through '57 and half through '58 I worked at classifying Turner's pictures and getting them in order and mounting his water colours. Then came one of the worst blows of my whole life. "I had always believed that the good and the pure and the beautiful were one, various manifestations of the Divine. Again and again I had associated beauty of color in painting with holiness of life. I knew, of course, that the rule was not invariable: Titian was supposed to have lived a loose life; they even talk about him in connection with his daughter, but it seemed to me like madness, a mere legend, not to be considered. I always cherished the belief that Goodness and Wisdom and Purity and Truth went together with great 401 talent, and Turner was my hero. One day (I think it was in '57) I came across a portfolio filled with painting after painting of Turner's of the most shameful sort—the pudenda of women—utterly inexcusable and to me inexplicable. "I went to work to find out all about it and I ascertained that my hero used to leave his house in Chelsea and go down to Wapping on Friday afternoon and live there until Monday morning with the sailors' women, painting them in every posture of abandonment. What a life! And what a burden it cast upon me! What was I to do? "For weeks I was in doubt and miserable, though time and again I put myself in tune with the highest, till suddenly it flashed on me that perhaps I had been selected as the one man capable of coming in this matter to a great decision. I took the hundreds of scrofulous sketches and paintings and burnt them where they were, burnt all of them. Don't you think I did right? I am proud of it, proud—" and his lower lip went up over the upper with a curious effect of most obstinate resolution. I thought it the most extraordinary confession I had ever heard; I remember that it kept me from visiting Ruskin for days and days. In fact, the next time we met he came and called upon me in my little house in Kensington Gore, opposite the Park. I kept away from the Turner question: I felt sure we should quarrel over it, or rather that I should offend him as I had offended other friends with what seemed to me the plain truth. What possible right had he to destroy another man's work, not to speak of the work of one whom he extolled as a heaven-born genius. So I talked of Carlyle and his teaching. He admitted to me that it was Carlyle who had practically made him a socialist, though "I was already on the road," he added with huge glee. "I found once, you know, that Xenophon, four hundred years before Christ came upon the earth, had talked about 'common fellows in the mart, who were always thinking how they could buy cheapest and sell dearest.' Our modern Gospel!" he added in a tone of triumphant disdain, "Fit only for 'common fellows!'" "Which do you think your best work?" I asked Ruskin once. "The revelations of art and natural beauty or your sociological books?" "They form a whole," he replied, pursing out his lower lip in deep thought, "but most people seem to prefer my Fors—Fors Clavigera, I mean. Don't you know," he added merrily, "that it was Carlyle who christened my Fors Clavigera 'Fors Clavivinegar'?" Of course I laughed with him, but the jest seemed to me to be poor! Now and then Ruskin came and spent the evening with me, I remember, in Kensington Gore, but he came oftener to lunch, when we would talk afterwards and I would drive him back to his hotel. 402 I remember one day telling him how extraordinary it seemed to me that he should have won to such emotion of style without passion. He turned on me at once. "Why do you say that? I loved more than once passionately: if I had married Adele, the marriage would have been consummated, I can assure you. But much later, when I was over forty, I fell in love, oh! in love and was consumed as in a flame. Love, love, has been my undoing!" he added in a thin sad voice. "Really?" I queried, genuinely surprised. "Would you tell me about it?" After a long pause he told me of going to Ireland and visiting a Mrs. Latouche, and how Rosie, the young daughter of twelve, came down in the evening to greet him, like a fairy in a tiny pink dressing-gown. "She was only a child, but even then so wise and thoughtful, and I was forty-two. "When she was seventeen, she came to London with her mother and I had wonderful weeks with her at Denmark Hill: she called it 'Edenland.' We met often, especially at Lady Mount Temple's at Broadlands. It was in this very year that I told her I loved her, and with her deep eyes on mine, she asked me to wait until she was of age—'Only three years more,' she said. Of course I spoke to her mother, but she seemed displeased and very reluctant. "When Rosie was about twenty she was infinitely distressed by my lack of faith. She published a booklet of poems, Clouds and Light; she was a most fervent Christian, believing every word of the Master. It was in that very year, I think, that she passed me by, without speaking to me, as Beatrice once passed Dante." There was intense pathos in his thin voice, something helpless and forlorn in his attitude, in the trembling lower lip and downcast hands, as of one defeated irremediably, that made my heart ache as he spoke. "My unbelief did me infinite harm with her, loosened the spiritual tie between us, but later I learned the true cause of our separation. Her father (I think Ruskin said) brought her to London and took her to meet Mrs. (afterwards Lady) Millais. My former wife no doubt told her of my asceticism or abstinence, for when after half an hour's talk my darling came downstairs and her father asked her if she now understood his reluctance to sanction our marriage, she said, 'I understand that there are people to whom the body is everything and the soul nothing. Don't talk of it, please; I never want to think of it again!' "My poor darling! My Rose of Life!" My notes of all this scene are so fragmentary, mere detached words, only to be explained by the fact that I believed I should never forget the very syllables he used. But alas! The words are all gone and I can only translate, so 403 to speak, my vague impressions into words. I am not certain of anything, but it seems to me, as well as I can remember, that he told me, too, that in her last illness he was allowed to go to Rosie Latouche and for one whole night hold his love in his arms before she died; or was it that he desired this so intensely that he gave it as his supreme desire? I am uncertain and the fact is not very important. I am certain of the next thing: that he suddenly started up crying: "There it is! Don't you see the devil?" and he rushed across the room. "The cat!"—and he appeared to pick up a cat. "Open the window," he cried, and I opened the window and he came over and seemed to hurl it out. "The Devil," he exclaimed, panting. "The Evil One come to tempt me. You saw it! Didn't you?" I could only reply, "I saw that you seemed to throw something out of the window. But now it's gone," I added, hoping to allay his breathless excitement. "I'm not well," he broke off suddenly. "Thinking of my dreadful loss and of my darling's death always unmans me: I must not think of it; I dare not. I have been ill every year lately, through thinking of how I lost her, my love. I had an attack of brain fever in '78 and again in '81 and last year again and again. I am getting very old and weak. Forgive me if I wander." He reminded me of Lear. His face had gone quite grey and drawn; he filled me with unspeakable pity. What a dreadful, undeserved tragedy! I took him out as if he were a child and drove him back to his hotel. All the while tears were running down his thin, quivering cheeks. I have never seen any sadder face, except Carlyle's. I asked him once whether I could get Miss Latouche's poems and he told me that he would let me see his copy. His best poem to her, he said, began, "Rosie, Rosie, Rosie Rare," and I wondered whether he had copied the German lyric: Roslein, Roslein, Roslein rot Roslein auf der Heide, though he knew no German. He dwelt with inexpressible tenderness on the fact that Rosie used to call him "Saint Chrysostom" or "Saint Crumpet," and he always carried in his breast pocket her first letter to him between two thin plates of fine gold. 404 Ruskin admitted, indeed laid some stress on the fact, that he had lost all belief in what he called derisively "the Jew Jeweller’s Heaven"; but at the same time he declared repeatedly that the one thing he was surest of in his life was that Rosie's spirit often came to him as "a ministering Angel" and that she was "quite, quite happy." I remember asking him once about the road at Hinksey, the famous road he had begun to get made at Oxford by the students; he defended it, said that it would be a good thing for all the better classes to learn some handicraft. "Manual labour is good for all of us, even Gladstone," he added laughing, but he did not appear to take much interest in the road. Toynbee was one of his foremen and Alfred Milner used to work on the road and Oscar Wilde loved to laugh about it. It was from Oscar, I think, when talking of Ruskin's lectures, that I heard Ruskin's epigram on Naples. It combined, he said, "the vice of Paris, the misery of Dublin, and the vulgarity of New York." But Ruskin had never seen New York and knew nothing of it, just as he knew nothing of the vice of Paris. He was at his best talking of virtues. I never heard Ruskin lecture, but he told me himself that after some practice he used to trust to the inspiration of the moment for everything, except perhaps the first words and the peroration, which he usually wrote out and learned by heart. "Sometimes I omitted the summing-up," he added, "just to disappoint the foolish audience." After all possible qualifications, it is certain that Ruskin had the most extraordinary influence in the university. Strange to say, I got the full impression of it from one of my earliest dinners with Cecil Rhodes. I knew that everyone, even old professors, went to Ruskin's lectures, knew that all the younger men were profoundly moved by his passionate idealism and patriotic fervour; but it was from Rhodes that I came to understand the full effect of Ruskin's extraordinary talent. One can judge of his rhetoric from his inaugural lecture: There is a destiny now possible to us, the highest ever set before a nation to be accepted or refused. We are still undegenerate in race; a race mingled of the best northern blood. We are not yet dissolute in temper, but still have the firmness to govern and the grace to obey ... Will you youths of England make your country again a royal throne of kings; a sceptred isle, for all the world a source of light, a centre of peace; mistress of learning and of the Arts, faithful guardian of time-tried principles, under temptation from fond experiments and licentious desires; and amidst the cruel and clamorous jealousies of the nations, worshipped in her strange valour, of goodwill towards men? One can imagine the effect of this noble rhetoric on young enthusiastic spirits. Though ordinary professors were never applauded, Ruskin was always applauded on entering; and sometimes the feeling he called forth was so intense that the students sat spell-bound with bowed heads and dimmed eyes as he folded his notes and went out. 405 Of course it was his imperialism that endeared him especially to Rhodes; it might have been meant expressly for him. This is what England must either do, or perish; she must found colonies as fast and as far as she is able, formed of her most energetic and worthiest men; seizing every piece of fruitful waste ground she can set her foot on, and there teaching these her colonists that their chief virtue is fidelity to their country, and that their first aim is to advance the power of England by land and sea ... You think that an impossible idea. Be it so; refuse to accept it, if you will; but see that you form your own ideal in its stead. All that I ask of you is to have a fixed purpose of some kind for your country and for yourselves, no matter how restricted, so that it be fixed and unselfish. Among Rhodes's papers after his death was found a note in his handwriting which shows clearly what Ruskin's words had meant to him: You have many instincts, religion, love, money-making, ambition, art and creation, which from a human point of view I think the best, but if you differ from me, think it over and work with all your soul for that instinct you deem the best. C. J. Rhodes. It was Ruskin more than any other man who created the empire builder and gave form and purpose to Rhodes's ambition. Because Rhodes wasn't quite satisfied with English patriotism, he selected Ruskin's last words as the most important. Rhodes had been affected by the Boers as I have been affected by the Americans; he told me often that he could never exclude the Boer from any African empire he might have a hand in forming. Ruskin as patriot is admirable, though I much prefer some of his writing descriptive of natural beauty, especially what he says of the Swiss mountains. It is only fair to note that Ruskin lived his idealism before expressing it rhetorically. He was all of a piece and transparently frank. He had a great love for Oxford, and I had seen somewhere that he resigned his Slade Professorship of Fine Arts because he felt himself growing old. "It must have been a source of regret to you," I said to him one day, "that you felt too weak to go on with your famous Oxford lectures." "Too weak," he repeated scornfully. "Weakness had nothing to do with it. The room in which I spoke was always overcrowded and had many inconveniences. It was not well lighted for one thing, so I asked the authorities to provide a decent auditorium for the lectures on art that should mean so much to a well graced university. They replied that they were already in debt and left it at that. Yet the very next day they voted £. 10,000 to erect a laboratory for Dr. Burdon Sanderson to use for his experiments on living animals, and £. 2,000 more to fit up this ante-chamber to Hell with the 406 necessary instruments! Oxford University, too poor to give anything to that love of beauty which does so much to redeem this sordid world, but able to endow vivisection and lavish thousands on instruments of devilish torture! "My way was clear. I resigned my professorship as a protest and wrote to the vice-chancellor, asking him to read my letter, giving the reasons for my resignation to convocation. But the vice-chancellor had not the grace to answer me or read my letter publicly as I had requested; and when I wrote to the editor of the university paper indignantly, he simply suppressed it; and so the conspiracy of silence triumphed and the London press announced that I had resigned owing to 'advancing years!' "Oxford preferred the screams of agonizing dumb creatures to anything I could say in praise of the good and beautiful and true! It showed me of what small account I was among men. Perhaps my vanity needed the lesson," he added, sighing "but I lamented the good cause hopelessly lost." The whole incident is intensely characteristic, showing how England treats its teachers and guides: how differently Paris treated Taine! As I got to know Ruskin better and we talked of books at great length, I found his taste often to seek. He lauded Mrs. Browning's poetry to the skies and confessed that he disliked Swinburne; the worst prudery of Puritanism went with his thin blood and lack of virility. And his judgment of painting and painters was almost as faulty, though he thought himself a perfect critic and often declared that it was he who discovered and made the reputation of five great artists "despised until I came: Turner, Tintoret, Luini, Botticelli and Carpaccio, but they were no greater," he would add, "than Burne-Jones and Rossetti, my dear boys." The comparison seemed to me inept, so I changed the subject. Why do I put these vague and inconsecutive memories together? Though he had great influence and was a great name in England for many years, Ruskin did not impress me profoundly, save as a rhetorician: indeed, to me he was not really a man of genius, not a sacred leader of men. He was perverse and purblind, an English Puritan who after he came out of the prison of Puritanism still bore the marks in his soul of subjection to English ideals and subservience to English limitations. All his economics were better put by Carlyle and he injured Whistler, who was a greater master than his Turner. In a few weeks of casual meetings I had exhausted him, or felt that he had given all he had to give to me, and his habitual sadness and diseased selfcenteredness distressed my youthful optimism. One morning I asked him cheekily whether he had not been tempted to keep some of Turner's naughty paintings? 407 "They would have been very interesting," I added lamely, feeling him antagonistic. At once he turned on me. "I've always felt that you don't approve of what I did," he said sharply. "Why don't you speak out? I'm proud of what I did," and his wintry eyes gleamed with challenge. "Proud!" I repeated. "I think it dreadful to kill a man's work!" "Perhaps it was the kind of work you would wish to preserve," he snapped; and now I noticed for the first time that when he got angry his lip would curl up on one side and show his canine tooth like a snarl of an angry dog, intensified by the peculiarity that it was only one side of his lip that would lift. He had told me that a dog had bitten him when a boy and split his lip. "I'm not ashamed to admit that," I continued. "Any attack on puritanical standards and English prudery seems worthful to me; but if a great man had done work I hated, work in praise of war, for instance, or defending cruelty, I would not destroy it. Who am I to condemn part of his soul to death? I hate all final condemnations." "I did what I felt to be right." "I'm sure of that," I broke In. "That's the pity of it. The evil men do from high motives is the most pernicious. The being a trustee you took as a challenge to your courage: I understand; but I can only regret it. I'm very sorry." I had offended him deeply; I knew I had at the time. He never came to me again and before I could make up my mind to go to him I heard that he had left London. It is painful to me now to recall my stupid frankness, but in essence we were then at opposite poles; yet I ought to have remembered what he did for the English world and what he gave to the English people; and after all no man's gift is perfect. But the truth is, I did not rate Ruskin then so highly as I do today. I had from the beginning the French view of art and artists and felt as they feel, that admiration of beauty is the highest impulse in our humanity. It has since come to be my very soul and in time it has taught me a new ethic. I had no idea then that the English rated artists like acrobats and thought more of a half-educated politician like Chamberlain than of a great painter or sculptor or musician; and so I underrated the originality of Ruskin and had no idea that his constant preoccupation with what is memorable in art and literature, his impassioned admiration of great work, first astonished and then interested thousands who would never otherwise have come to a comprehension of the artistic ideal. His devotion to art, or, as he would have said, to the beautiful everywhere, lifted thousands of English men and women to a higher understanding of life. Moreover, he enriched English 408 literature with passages of magnificent prose and perhaps the finest descriptions of natural beauty in the language. Ruskin was to the English a great prophet of the beautiful; art to him was a religion and that view had never suggested itself to them; he taught them to love and admire artists like Turner, Tintoret and Botticelli, and to esteem such great men as benefactors of humanity; he enlarged the English outlook and ennobled it and therefore was a blessing to his people. I should have been indignant in the eighties with any comparison between him and Carlyle, who to me then was a seer and sacred guide; but Carlyle's deification of force and his disdain for the aesthetic side of life make him appear to me now hardly more valuable than Ruskin. The ordinary English instinct that placed Ruskin side by side with him was nearer right. In spite of his paltry education and curious limitations, Ruskin was a moral and ennobling influence in England for half a century, and no doubt a stronger influence because at bottom he was bred on the Bible and brought up to revere all English conventions and English ideals. The end of his life was extremely sad. He went abroad in '88 and '89. In '89 he had an awful illness and he lived almost without mind for another eleven years, dying in 1900. I do not believe there ever was a sadder life, or, rather, I think he suffered as much as his mind allowed him to suffer; and Carlyle suffered more because he had more intellect, and seeing far more clearly, could not delude himself with the visitations of "a ministering angel." Stripped of the pleasure of love, life is a poor inheritance. 409 CHAPTER XVII. MATTHEW ARNOLD; PARNELL; OSCAR WILDE; THE MORNING MAIL, BOTTOMLEY IN MY FIRST YEAR on the Evening News I was reaching
success and my 410 seem to care for them, so I talked of Emerson as a great poet like Whitman, but he would not have it. I began by quoting So take thy quest through Nature, It through thousand natures ply Ask on thou clothed Eternity Time is the false reply. "But is that poetry?" Arnold doubted. "I can't believe it somehow." "Think of his Humble Bee," I cried, "and deny him if you can," and I quoted again, Aught unsavoury or unclean Hath my insect never seen But violets and bilberry bells Maple sap and daffodils Grass with green flag half-mast high; Succory to match the sky, Columbine with horn of honey Scented fern and acrimony Clover, catchfly, adder's tongue And brier-roses dwelt among, All besides was unknown waste All was picture as he passed. Wiser far than human seer Yellow-breeched philosopher. "That surely has the true note!" "It has, it has indeed," Arnold hesitated reluctantly, "but we are all poets at odd moments." "Only at odd moments, I should say!" was my reply, for he was merely evading the issue, but he shook his head. "I think the Humble Bee worthy to be ranked with the Skylark of Shelley," I went on. "Not for music, of course, but it has homely poetic virtues of its own, and some day it will be known and loved. I seldom praise Emerson," I added, "because he quarrelled with Whitman and stood for convention as against freedom of speech." "I'm afraid that I too am in favour of the conventions," said Arnold. "Speech can easily be too free, can't it?" "I hate English prudery," I replied, "and English hypocrisy. Life in England is like life in an English Sunday school, with a maiden-lady as a teacher and an atmosphere of deadly dullness. Shall we never get to the larger freedom of Dante, if not that of Goethe?" 411 "Was Dante ever free in that sense?" asked Arnold. "Surely," I replied, "some of his humour is the jolly humour of a naughty little boy who puts out his tongue at you and worse." "Really?" doubted Arnold. "I remember nothing like that in Dante!" "Here is one verse," and I quoted from the end of the twenty-first canto of the Inferno: Per l'argine sinistro volta dienno Ma prima avea ciascun la lingua stretta Co'denti verso lor duca, per cenno: Ed egli avea de cul fatto trombetta. "And he had made a trumpet of his behind!" "How strange," laughed Arnold. "I never noticed it. I must have read over it! Goethe of course was free, but Goethe put his worst things in Faust in asterisks instead of plain words." "Yet we know from Eckermann," I said, "that Goethe used the plain words and even wrote very naughty plays and poems." Arnold was too English, I think, in feeling to take up the gauntlet. I tried to get him to write for me for the Fortnightly Review and he sent me a poem, a threnody on a favorite dog that has its place in English poetry. He was indeed marvellously gifted, and I always resented the fact that the English had used one of their noblest spirits as an inspector of schools. If Arnold had been honoured from thirty to sixty, as he should have been, had men been willing to pay gold to hear him talk on any subject, he would have given us even more than he did. This is to be the chief mystery of life, why men accord so little love and honour to the real guides during their lifetime. Arnold should have been put in a high place and listened to with reverence by the ablest politicians and men of letters, but he was simply disregarded, and how he kept his sunny good humour in the universal indifference was a puzzle to me. I always felt him superior in range and Tightness of thought to any of his contemporaries. There was in him also a depth of melancholy; yet in the intercourse of life he was invariably optimistic. In this, as in many ways, he resembled Anatole France. He had perfect manners, too, like the great Frenchman—met everyone on the pure human level, preferred to talk on high themes, yet used banter charmingly with the barbarians. He loved to find the best in everyone and gloss over faults, was the first to praise Oscar Wilde to me when everyone condemned him as an eccentric poseur. "A fine intelligence and most wonderful talker," he said. It was 412 because Matthew Arnold seemed to me to reach ideal manhood, was indeed free of faults or mannerisms, that I was always probing to discover his shortcomings. One day I could not help trying to get to the ultimate of his thought. I used his famous definition of the "Something not ourselves that makes for righteousness" to draw him out. "That 'not ourselves,'" I said, "always seems to me wrong. The only thing in the world that makes for righteousness is the holy spirit of man." "What about sunsets and flowers and the song of birds?" he replied with a quaint half-smile, "and the music of the spheres. Will you deny them all?" He had caught me: I could only smile back at him; yet surely the soul of the Divinity is in us men and revealed most completely in our noblest. We cannot read the riddle of nature. Not on the walls of our cell shall the reconciling word be found, but in the heart of man grown tired of bearing: The weary weight of this unintelligible world. I had just come to think of Matthew Arnold as the most perfect man of letters I had ever met, when the shocking news came that like his father, he had died of heart failure. He sprang over a gate or fence, fell forward and never spoke again. What a tragedy is the untimely end of so great and sweet a nature. As I came to know it, life in London grew richer and richer to me. Every dinner at Mrs. Jeune's or Lady Shrewsbury's became an event. And when I mention Mrs. Jeune as hostess, I must not forget the Arthur Walters, who were more than kind to me from the beginning. Every summer from 1884 to 1895 I went to stay more than once at their country place at Finchampstead for weeks at a time. There I met Hurlbert and Sir Ernest Cassell and his daughter and other notorious people; and both Arthur and Mrs. Walter became dear to me out of their abounding human kindness. I tried again and again to get Arthur Walter to see Parnell as he was, but all my efforts were in vain. He was always resolved to regard Parnell as a revolutionary and Irish hater of England. On the other hand, I had a certain admiration for Parnell and some liking. It was Verschoyle who gave me the first idea of him as a great fighter. He told me a story of his youth in the Shelbourne hotel in Dublin. One day Verschoyle and some of his family were in the hotel and at the next table a tall man was talking what they considered treason. At length Verschoyle's cousin, a notorious athlete and boxer, got up, went over to the next table and said, "If you want to talk treason, you had better get a private room, for I won't listen to it in public." 413 "Mind your own business," said the tall man, getting up, and the next moment they were hard at it. Verschoyle said, "I was utterly astonished to find that my cousin did not win. The tall man was just as good as he was or a little better. There was the dickens of a fight. When the waiters came in and the police and separated them, we found that the man's name was Parnell, Charles Parnell." The first time I met Parnell with Mrs. O'Shea was at a dinner given by dear old Justin McCarthy. It must have been pretty early in Parnell's acquaintance with Mrs. O'Shea, for she was seated opposite to him, and Parnell scarcely ever took his eyes from her face. At this time she seemed to me a sonsy, nice looking woman of thirty-three or thirty-five with pretty face and fine eyes, very vivacious, very talkative, full of good-humoured laughter. Now and then, picturing a woman, she exaggerated, I thought, her Irish brogue with some artistry to bring out a characteristic; evidently a lively, clever woman and excellent company. All the while she talked, the dour, silent, handsome man opposite devoured her with his flaming eyes. I remember saying in fun to Justin afterwards, "If she were as much in love with him, as he is with her, it would indeed be a perfect union." But kindly Justin would not admit the liaison. "He's attracted," he said. "I think we all are. She's an interesting woman." Soon, however, everybody knew that they were lovers and lost in a mutual passion. Parnell was tall and well-made, but he seemed to me too slight to be very strong; but Mrs. O'Shea, whom I questioned on the subject, told me his mere physical strength had astonished her time and again, and she did not dwell on it at all unduly. Parnell was of the stuff of great men through greatness of character, but as a political leader he was curiously ill-read and ill-informed. Time and again I am compelled to draw attention to the ignorances of English politicians. Even the example of Bismarck and the astounding growth of modern Germany have taught them nothing. I always felt there was an insane streak in Parnell, though Mrs. O'Shea never hints at such weakness in the two great volumes she dedicated to their love story. His superstitions showed, I thought, mental weakness. I remember walking with him once to his house to dinner. At the door he stopped and would not enter. Muttering something under his breath, he said, "Do you mind walking a little more before going hi?" I didn't mind a scrap, though already we were somewhat late, but after a turn he was still dissatisfied and went on for another stroll. This time he was successful. "I hate four and eight," he said, "but when my last step brings me to the count of nine, I'm happy. Seven, even, will do, but nine's a symbol of real good luck and I can go in rejoicing!" And with a smiling face in he went. But he knew no economics and had no idea of any remedy for Irish poverty. If he had ever won to complete power in Ireland, he would certainly have disappointed his followers. 414 In these first two or three years in London something happened of incalculable importance to my whole life, and the lesson came to me without any warning. I had grown accustomed to go on Saturday and Sunday to Lord Folkestone's to lunch, and after lunch Lady Folkestone used to give us coffee in the drawing-room. With the coffee there was always a pretty liqueur decanter full of cognac—really good fine Champagne. One day Lord Folkestone came away with me after lunch and said, "I wonder will you forgive me, Frank, if I tell you something purely for your good?" "I should hope so," I replied. "I can't conceive of anyone telling me something for my good that I'd resent." "I'm glad to hear you say that," he rejoined. "I'm much older than you know; life has taught me certain things, but I am a bad hand at beating about the bush, so I will tell it you straight off. I noticed yesterday that you drank five or six glasses of cognac with your coffee. Now no one can do that without ruining his constitution. You took enough today to make most people drunk; you showed no sign of it, but it will certainly have its effect. When you consider it, I think you will know it's sheer affection that makes me tell you this." "I'm sure of it," I said, but I spoke only from my lips, for I was mortally hurt and angry; a little while later we separated and I went on home. I took the affair terribly to heart; I could not but recognize the kindness of Lord Folkestone, the sympathy that had prompted his warning, but my vanity was so great that it hurt me desperately. That evening I came to a saner view. The best thing I can do, I said to myself, is to take the warning to heart. The way to prove that I have self-control is to show it. For one year, then, I won't drink a drop of wine or spirits. I'll stop everything. Within a week I recognized how right Lord Folkestone had been to warn me. My whole outlook began to alter. I saw many things more quickly than I had seen them before, and I noticed that not only had I been getting stouter, but that I had been getting more lazy and more self-satisfied. I began to take exercise and found it at first extremely hard to walk five miles in an hour or to run a quarter of a mile without ill effects, but soon I began to get back to my former strength and health. In three or four months I found out a great many things—found that health of mind and quickness of wit depended, too, on health of body in my case. In three months I began to do my work easier, all work; and as I did away with the drink, the fat literally fell from me. I lost a couple of stone in three or four months and began to walk everywhere instead of driving, and took long walks on Sundays instead of lazy excursions in a carriage. Before the end of the year I told Lord Folkestone that I owed him more than I owed anyone in the world for his kind warning. "It is eleven months since you 415 warned me," I said, "and I am resolved to go on for another year and drink nothing this next year too." He was delighted. "You don't know how much better you look," he said. "We have all remarked that you have gone back to the old energy and vigour that you used to have. I am more than glad, but I found it very difficult to tell you. I was so afraid of losing your friendship." I took up his hand and kissed it—one of the few men's hands I have kissed in my life. Most of this early time in London was brightened by occasional meetings with Oscar Wilde. As I have told in my book about him, I was introduced to him at Mrs. Jeune's; and I was surprised first of all by the kindness of his literary and artistic judgments and then by his wit and humour. "Did I know Frank Miles?" he asked shortly after we first met. "We are living together; he's one of the finest artists of this time," and nothing would do but we must look out Miles in order that I should be introduced to him then and there. Frank Miles was at this time, in the early eighties, a very pleasant, handsome, young fellow who made a sympathetic impression on everyone. I went to see them in Chelsea and bought a drawing of Lily Langtry by Miles that I thought wonderful: the same head, life-size, twice—once in profile and the other almost full face. What has become of it I really don't know. In a year or two I discovered in it Miles's limitations as an artist: it was pretty and well drawn, but hardly more. Miles declared that he had discovered and immortalized Mrs. Langtry, and at once Oscar stuck in gravely: "A more important discovery than America, in my opinion; indeed, America wasn't even discovered by Columbus: it has since been detected, I understand," and we all laughed. His fun was irresistible. Partly through the apotheosis of Mrs. Langtry, the Prince of Wales was a frequent visitor in their house; and Miles had commissions from every pretty woman in society, including the famous Mrs. Cornwallis West. What a charming, artistic home it was: Oscar and Miles invited me to tea and we were waited on by a pretty girl about sixteen years of age, most fantastically attired, whom they called Miss Sally. Sally Higgs soon became famous for her rare beauty and was painted by Leighton (afterwards Lord Leighton) as Daydreams and by Marcus Stone, the Academician, and a host of others. Sally was astonishingly pretty and charming to boot. I heard of her often afterwards; a couple of years later she married a boy just down from Eton, the son of a rich man. The father shipped the boy to the States and gave Sally a couple of pounds a week as solatium, but she soon found a rich protector and indeed never had any pecuniary difficulty, I imagine, in her whole sunny life. Sally, as I soon realized, was a born Bohemian and not troubled with any socalled moral scruples, though she was always gay and carefree. She assured 416 me that Miles only liked her face and "Mr. Wilde says nice things to me and is a perfect gentleman and that's all." Miles was the son of a canon and a country rector who made him a good allowance and at first encouraged his intimacy with Oscar, but later rumours of Oscar's proclivities reached him, and his first book of poems confirming the canon's doubts, he insisted that the two friends should part. "My son must not be contaminated!" Much against his will, as Miles told me, he had to tell Oscar his father's decision. Wilde went almost crazy with rage. "D'ye mean that we must part after years together because your father's a fool?" Miles could only say that he had no alternative and at once Oscar retorted, "All right, I'll leave the house at once and never speak to you again," and upstairs he went, packed his things and left: he was proud to a fault. Sally told me he never returned; and almost immediately Miles's vogue appeared to pass. I saw him from time to time in London but he quickly dropped out of social life and I was horrified to hear some years later that he had lost his wits and ended his days in a mad-house. When I told Oscar he still cherished his anger. "He had no wits to lose, Frank," he said. "He was an early creation of mine, like Lily Langtry, and they pass out of one's life as soon as they are realized." But I always had a soft spot in my heart for Sally, though I could not but believe that Miles was something more than a mere friend to her, which shielded her from me. It was his faculty of enthusiastic praise which distinguished Oscar Wilde in those first years and made his reputation, as I have said in my Life of him. Mrs. Langtry I had met in Brighton and taught to skate at the West Street rink, never dreaming that she would reign in London a year or so later as a peerless beauty. Oscar and Miles discovered her, but it was the Prince of Wales's admiration that gave her position and vogue. Oscar told everyone she was "the loveliest thing that had ever come out of Greece," and when one corrected him with "out of Jersey," he passed it off with "a Jersey Lily, if you please, the perfect type of flower." Oscar's humour, however, was his extraordinary gift and sprang to show on every occasion. Whenever I meet anyone who knew Oscar Wilde at any period of his life, I am sure to hear a new story of him—some humorous or witty thing he had said. The other day I saw a man who had met Wilde in New York after his first lecture tour. He told him he hoped it had been a success, and Oscar answered him gravely, but with dancing eyes. "A great success! My dear man, I had two secretaries, one to answer my letters, the other to send locks of hair to my admirers. I have had to let them both go, poor fellows: the one is in hospital with writer's cramp, and the other is quite bald." 417 Oscar and I went together once to Whitechapel to hear Matthew Arnold lecture on Watts's picture, entitled Life, Death and Judgment. "What Puritans Englishmen all are," said Oscar as we came away. "The burden of Arnold's song: I slept and dreamed that life was beauty I woke and found that life was duty: Yet he's a real poet, Frank, an English saint in side-whiskers!" It was irresistibly comic. Another time we went to hear Walter Pater lecture; he talked wonderfully but continually fell into a low conversational tone as he read his address. "Speak up. Speak up, please. Louder! We can hear nothing!" resounded through the house time and again. At length he had finished and came down to join us. Of course we both praised his essay to the skies, and indeed it was exceedingly good from beginning to end, thoughtful and wonderfully phrased; but Pater had been alarmed by the frequent admonitions. "I'm afraid I was not heard perfectly," he said, trying to excuse himself. We reassured him, but he came again to the point. "Was I heard?" "Overheard now and then," replied Oscar, laughing, "but it was stupendously interesting." "Overheard now and then" was surely the wittiest and most charming description possible. I have often been asked since to compare Oscar's humour with Shaw's. I have never thought Shaw humorous in conversation. It was on the spur of the moment that Oscar's humour was so extraordinary, and it was this spontaneity that made him so wonderful a companion. Shaw's humour comes from thought and the intellectual angle from which he sees things, a dry light thrown on our human frailties. If you praised anyone enthusiastically or over praised him, Oscar's humour took on a keener edge. I remember later praising something Shaw had written about this time, and I added, "The curious thing is, he seems to have no enemies." "Not prominent enough yet for that, Frank," said Oscar, "Enemies come with success; but then you must admit that none of Shaw's friends like him," and he laughed delightfully. Ah, the dear London days when meeting Wilde had always an effect of sunshine in the mist! Success came to me in my work and it came, I must confess, through the gambling spirit so powerful in England. I had learned quickly on the Evening News that the London public, which wanted to know the results of this or that great horse race, was more easily won than any other public. So I was forced 418 to study the sport which had little attraction for one so dreadfully shortsighted as I was. While interesting myself in it, I came to see that the "starting prices" were the chief factor in the gambling. One day, I think it was in 1885 or 1886, I heard that there was a great dispute about the starting prices. One morning paper, the Sporting Life, gave one set of prices and the other, the Sportsman, gave a different set. At once I called on one editor and offered to publish his "starting prices" in a special edition of the Evening News at eleven or twelve o'clock each morning, giving his paper full credit; indeed, publishing his paper's name above the prices. Of course he was to supply me with "copy" fairly early. He consented at once and gladly, even went out of his way to praise the Evening News. On leaving him, I hastened hot-foot to the rival sheet and got that editor, too, to pledge himself to give me the day's "starting prices" as early as possible, if I gave his paper credit for the news. With both editors I signed a contract for, I think, two or three years. Next morning, when the early edition of the Evening News appeared with both starting prices, I was not left long in doubt as to the value of my news. Instead of selling three or four thousand copies, we sold twenty thousand; and in a week this early edition sold more than all the other editions put together; and our advertisement revenue more than doubled itself in a month. I saw that with good machines I could make the paper pay immediately and pay enormously. How was I to get the £. 15,000, or £. 20,000 necessary to equip the paper with proper up-to-date machines? About this time or a little later I had a great experience. A young fellow came from Birmingham with the idea of founding a halfpenny morning paper. He had only £. 5,000 but he thought it should be enough, and he came to me to make terms for printing and publishing his offspring. My estimate was by far the cheapest he had had. He was very anxious to know that I would not put the price up on him later. I was greatly interested and said I had thought of starting a morning edition of the Evening News and would talk the matter over with him. He took fire at my idea of making each item of news a sort of story in the American fashion, and finally asked me would I help him with the editing. I said I'd be delighted to go in with him, but I did not think £. 5,000 would go far. He said it ought to go a couple of months and by that time he ought to have a circulation of 50,000; and with a circulation of 50,000, he could get £. 50,000 more for the venture in Birmingham. "All right," I said, "if you can get the further money, we can get the 50,000 circulation in three months." And so the Morning Mail was started; within two months we had 50,000 circulation. We had already received notice from The Times that they had a weekly paper called The Mail and that our Morning Mail infringed their copyright; and they began an action claiming £. 20,000 damages. I sent my friend off to Birmingham and went myself to see Arthur Walter of The Times. I told him the action was ridiculous—a morning paper, a halfpenny paper in London had neither the shape nor look of the weekly edition of The Times, which they called The Mail. Arthur Walter told me that he agreed with me, but 419 that his father was very angry over the matter and that he could do nothing. A week later my friend came back from Birmingham and told me that The Times action had prevented him getting any money and he would have to close the paper up unless I could finance it. I spoke to Lord Folkestone about it and soon convinced him that a halfpenny morning paper must beat all the penny papers out of the field. Success and a great fortune were before us, offering themselves, so to speak. He caught fire at the idea of a Conservative morning halfpenny paper that might have a sale of a million and be as influential as The Times. He declared he would speak to Lord Salisbury about it; but first, with his inborn loyalty, he thought we ought to propose the scheme to Coleridge Kennard. Accordingly Kennard was brought into counsel. By this time I had got to know all the Kennard family pretty well. Mrs. Kennard was a tall, fine-looking woman without much individuality, I thought; the son, Hugh, was in the Guards and soon afterwards got married; the daughter, Merry, was charming, both kind and affectionate and very pretty. Hugh confided in me one evening; wanted to know if the Evening News could be made a pecuniary success or not. I assured him it could, but would take a year or so. Now I saw him again and set all his doubts at rest, but Coleridge, the father, seemed peevish to me. He didn't want a fortune, he said; he wanted the loss to cease. "It's costing heavily and the hopes you held out," he said to Lord Folkestone, "don't seem likely to be realized!" He soon let me know that his hope was that he might be made a baronet. "I don't care for it for myself especially," he said, "but I want it for my son and I've spent 70,000 pounds to get it, though I was told at the beginning that 40,000 would more than suffice." I came thus face to face with the fact that every title had its price. Kennard hated the Morning Mail and would not hear of putting up the £. 20,000 needed for new machinery, so I persuaded Folkestone to go to Lord Salisbury, the leader of the Conservative Party, and put the matter before him, or rather to let me see him. A day or two later Lord Salisbury sent for me and I called on him in Arlington Street and talked to him for an hour. To me it was evident that The Times would soon have to reduce its price from threepence to a penny or better still to a halfpenny, for the many must be our masters if they were organized; and I went on to show him by figures that it was only the want of machinery that prevented me from getting a circulation of hundreds of thousands in a month or two. He was interested and put probing questions to me. As a young man he had been poor, and even after his marriage had earned his living as a journalist on the Saturday Review, and this vital discipline had made him. But when I told him of my experience in founding the Morning Mail and said that I could get a circulation of a million within six months and make a quarter of a million pounds a year out of the paper, he told me that all I had said had been very interesting, but there was an effect of "foreshortening" in all my enthusiasm. He thought it would take many years to get a million circulation; still he would help me. 420 He would ask the Whips to call a meeting of the Conservative party and allow me to address them in the Carlton Club, and if I could get advances from them of the 15,000 or 20,000 pounds I wanted, he would be very glad and more. He said at the end, "I will back the project as far as I can. I think it very possible you will be successful." In due time I heard from the Whips and one afternoon I went down and talked about the new halfpenny morning paper to three hundred members of the Conservative party in the Carlton Club. They subscribed—at least they put down the moneys they would be willing to be responsible for —and the Whips came to see me, saying they had put down something like 5,000 pounds. I got up at once and said, "That lets me out. I will have nothing to do with the attempt to make bricks without straw; but within ten years some of you will be very sorry that you did not put money in the first halfpenny morning paper proposed to you. When you find in twenty years or so from today a halfpenny paper more influential than The Times and making half a million yearly, you will wonder why you did not take a flutter, at least, in it." I was cheered by one or two people, but I was disgusted at the idea that I had put the price as low as I could, and that I had got hardly more than one quarter of what I wanted. The first Whip came to me and said, "You ought to take the money and come back in six months and they would give you much more. You can get all you want; why throw the handle after the blade?" "I have come to the parting of the ways," I replied. "I was and am eager to go on with the work, but to go on crippled for a few thousand pounds and to beg and beg and make the plans obvious and expatiate on the proven is not my game; I had rather give it all up. I am going to Rome for six months' holiday." A big man came to me while I was talking to the Whip and said, "You know you interested me profoundly. My name is Henniker Heaton. I made my money on a paper in Sydney, Australia, and I think you and I might talk business." "I shall be delighted," I said, "but it must be very soon, for I am going to Rome unless I get 20,000 pounds down." He said he would come and see me in the office, and he came, and I more or less took to him, but he wanted time to consider the matter and I wasn't going to give him any time. Again and again Walter of The Times had told me that if I would take a position on The Times he would give it to me; but I had done three years of extremely hard work and in the three years had hardly grown at all intellectually. I wanted some new mental nourishment, wanted to see Rome and study it, and read Ranke and Mommsen and study them and try to grow a little. For travel and reading were already the bread and meat of my mind. This idea made Henniker Heaton grin. He thought making money and getting a position was the only thing in the world, and the moment I 421 discovered this in him, I had no more interest in what he said. I went to see Lord Folkestone and after a talk with him I called a meeting of the directors of the Evening News and got four months' vacation, and forthwith left for Rome. Oh! I was to blame. Success had come to me too easily in London. I ought to have taken the Whip's advice and gone on with the paper. I should have got all the money I needed and made the Morning Mail the success the Daily Mail became ten years later, and founded my future on a secure basis of hundreds of thousands of pounds income. But I had won so easily that I took no account of money or the power that money gives, and I went away casually to the most delightful holiday in Rome, which led to my severing my connection not only with the Morning Mail, but also the Evening News, as I shall tell in due course. It was in 1887,1 think, that a little Jew called Leopold Graham came to the Evening News office with some piece of city news. He had no notion of writing and was poorly educated, but he had a smattering of common French phrases and a real understanding of company promoting and speculative city business. He interested me at once and we became friendly, if not friends. He told me he was working with Douglas Macrae on the Financial Times and there he had met Horatio Bottomley, whom he described as one of the wiliest men in the city of London. I was interested in the competition between the Financial Times and the Financial News, directed by the Jew, Harry Marks. I had got to like Marks; he had had his education as a journalist in New York and was an interesting personality: a man of good height and figure and strong face without marked Jewish features. We became friendly almost at once, though as soon as I took to reading the News I saw that Marks had few scruples and many interests. Macrae made the impression on me of being a harder worker even than Marks, and perhaps a little more scrupulous. I shall never forget how Macrae pressed me one day early in our acquaintance to lunch with him in his office. He could give me a good chop, he said, and a first-rate bottle of "fizz," and as the business we were talking over promised well, I consented. At once he called for "Harmsworth, Alfred Harmsworth," and a youth of perhaps twenty or so came into the room, a good-looking fellow whom Macrae commissioned to cook half a dozen chops and to get besides a salad and a Camembert cheese. It was all procured swiftly and deftly put on the table and we lunched fairly well. I hardly noticed Alfred Harms-worth at all. Bottomley made a far deeper impression on me than any other journalist: he was nearer my own age and Graham had already praised his ability to me enthusiastically—and Ikey was no fool. Bottomley was a trifle shorter even than I was, perhaps five feet four or five, but very broad and even then, when only seven and twenty, threatened to become stout. He had a very large head, well-balanced, too, with good forehead and heavy jaws; the eyes small and grey; the peculiarity of the face a prodigiously long upper lip: he was clean-shaven and his enormous upper lip reminded me at once of the giant Charles Bradlaugh. When I mentioned the fact to Graham afterwards, he 422 replied at once, "Some say he's an illegitimate son of Bradlaugh. In any case, he has the most profound esteem and liking for him, thinks him one of the greatest men of this time." "He's not far wrong," was my comment. At the time, I was too busy with my own work on the Evening News to pay much attention to financial journalism, and some time elapsed before I got to know any of them at all intimately. In 1888 or '89 Graham told me that Bottomley had bought the Hansard Union and was going to bring out a great company. Everyone knew the name of Hansard as publishers of the debates in Parliament, and like most other people, I had imagined that Hansard had some official status or rights. To my astonishment I learned that Hansard was merely a printing and publishing firm to which Parliament had given the contract to publish a complete account of its proceedings. Graham made me see that a big public company with this well known name and function would certainly be supported enthusiastically by the investing public. One day Graham brought Bottomley to see me. We lunched together, I think, at the Cafe Royale, and almost at once Bottomley told me of the Hansard Union Company. "An assured success," he declared, and then asked me point blank if I could get Lord Folkestone and Coleridge Kennard to be directors. I told him I'd think it over. Off-hand he said to me, "Get me those two names as directors and I'll give you a cheque for £. 10,000." "Big pay," I ejaculated, "and I love big figures. But tell me, what have you paid for all the companies you're going to amalgamate and what is the capitalization?" Without demur and with astonishing exactitude he gave me all the figures. I took notes and afterwards I said, "Practically, you are buying all the businesses for £. 200,000 and are selling them to the company for a million?" "I may add a quarter of a million debentures," he rejoined coolly. Needless to say, he added, the quarter of a million alone left him a swinging profit. Next day I put the thing before Folkestone. He said, "If you advise it, Frank, I'll do it: why not?" I told him that in my opinion the venture was overcapitalised and must fail, and he said at once, "That finishes it, Frank, so far as I am concerned; but tell me what Coleridge Kennard says." Coleridge Kennard, when I put the matter before him, said that the capitalization mattered nothing to him: everyone knew that one sold at a profit, if one could. I gave Bottomley Coleridge Kennard's name but refused to take any money for it. In a couple of years what I foresaw happened. At first the amalgamated companies paid large dividends—if I recollect aright, two in the very first year—and then the whole thing fell into bankruptcy and people spoke of it as "Bottomley's swindle." The failure came too soon, the ruin was too big; it shocked business people. Very soon it was brought before the courts and The Queen vs. Bottomley was the chief event of the day. I went to hear the 423 criminal trial and was never more amused in my life or more interested. It came before Mr. Justice Hawkins, who was known as the "hanging judge," certainly the severest judge in half a century in London. What chance did Bottomley stand before such a tribunal? I was to learn what brains could do. At first the case went badly for Bottomley. It was very clear that the business had been overcapitalised and hundreds of thousands of pounds must have gone into Bottomley's pocket. But as soon as he stood up to address the court, all this faded to irrelevance. From the beginning by sheer genius he took the bull by the horns. "I'm glad," he began, "heart-glad that I'm before Mr. Justice 'awkins. He has the name of being a severe judge, but his ability was never questioned; it's his ability I rely on today in my hour of need, his power of getting to the bottom of a complicated business." From such compliments he went on to a detailed history of the purchase of the various companies. Time and again when he told of acquiring a new company, he drew the attention of the Judge pointedly to the fact that, though the price might seem high, this new business helped to complete and sustain the larger fabric he had in mind. "I want to make my idea clear to you, my Lud!" was the burden of his long, quiet and eminently persuasive exposition. His show of frankness was as wonderful as his detailed knowledge. Before he had finished, even the barristers in the court were won over to admiration: a Q.C. said, "I've never listened to so complete a statement." One and all forgot that Bottomley had lived for months with every business he had to describe; nothing was astonishing to me, save the point-blank compliments to the Judge he lavished in and out of season. Long before the end of the trial he had converted one of the strongest judges on the bench into his advocate and assistant. Bottomley not only won his case, but turned the judge into his personal friend, who believed not only in his ability but in his integrity. Some time afterwards Mr. Justice Hawkins gave Bottomley the wig and gown he had worn all his life as a Judge. The whole incident is unique in the history of the English bench and proves Bottomley's astounding cleverness as nothing else could. Clearly, he was a man of genius. But if the lights were high, the shadows were heavy. If he had guided the amalgamated businesses for five years, he might have earned the half million or so he made out of the amalgamation, but to drop his bantling almost as soon as it came to the birth showed cynical contempt, I thought, for public opinion, and indeed for anything but money. Moreover, his long speech at the trial discovered time and again an ignorance of grammar and a cockney incapacity to pronounce the letter h, which was astonishing in so able a man. The same Q.C. who had praised his long exposition turned to me at the end with the remark, "A d... d clever outsider!" I always thought that if Bottomley had gone for a couple of years to Germany or to France for hard serious study he might have been one of the masters and guides of the new time, but his ignorance kept his appeal always on a low level and directed it to the all but lowest class. 424 He wasn't much more ignorant than Lord Randolph Churchill, but Churchill didn't drop his h's, and if he had, the English would have taken it as an amiable eccentricity in the son of a Duke. Look at Horatio Bottomley! What is the characteristic of that short, stout, broad figure, that heavy jowl and double chin? Surely greed. He was greedy of all the sensual pleasures, intensely greedy; even at thirty he ate too much and habitually drank too much. To see him lunching at Romano's with two or three of his intimates, usually subordinates, with a pretty chorus girl on one side and another siren opposite, while the waiter uncorked the fourth or fifth bottle of champagne, was to see the man as he was. He was greedy, too, of power, and vain as a peacock, wanted always to have a paper at his command, and of the half dozen he owned never brought one to success, save John Bull, which was a success simply through the blind patriotism excited by the World War. He went into Parliament, and I remember that he told me once in a moment of expansion that he would yet be Chancellor of the Exchequer. Rhodes a little later made much the same confession to me, and Rhodes had a better chance by far than Bottomley, for he had founded himself upon a great fortune, and though nearly as ignorant as Bottomley, he didn't drop his h's and had all the outward marks of a better class education. I told Rhodes he would hardly succeed, and I didn't disguise from Bottomley that he had no earthly chance. "There are half a dozen men of real ability in the House of Commons," I said, "of ability to be compared to yours; Hicks-Beach, for example, is of high character and has besides a touch of genius; Balfour has extraordinary charm of person and mind and much reading to boot; Chamberlain, too, has real ability and a great fortune acquired within ordinary rules: these three will all be against you with a savage injustice of antagonism, for they all look on the prizes of a political life as their appanage. On the other side, you have Gladstone, who is an aristocrat at heart, and Dilke ditto, and Parnell, and Redmond, and Healy: all will be down on you, for you neither represent nor care for their democratic gospel or their personal ambitions. Then there are John Burns and Cunninghame Graham, who will hate you because of your indifference to ideal causes. In fact, all the leaders of all the parties will turn the cold shoulder to you, and to get to the top from your stand-point seems to me utterly impossible." "You think you could do it?" "I have not so many handicaps," I retorted, "but I'm beginning to doubt whether the driving power of desire is there." "That's in me," he said smiling, and set his great jaw; and I could not but agree. 425 CHAPTER XVIII. THE EBB AND FLOW OF PASSION! ALL THIS WHILE I've said nothing of my love affair
with Laura, though it 426 if you get one more suspicion, you'll never see her again. Let her know it's final. She doesn't want to lose your money and your little gifts: be ruthless." But no resolve did me any good. Behind my anger, my love moaned crying, "Have I been so careless of you, my darling, that you wanted another affection? What have I failed to do? Love's service all planned and perfect, but not marriage, and Laura's as proud as Lucifer. Marry her tomorrow and she'll be faithful; it's not fair to the girl, this life as a kept mistress." Almost I yielded, but the thought of her mother came between us. I'd have to invite her, be polite at least to her; impossible, and again I saw the man's arm drawn away from Laura's waist! I thought I should go mad. I got up and rang the bell. Bridget, my servant, came in, and when she brought me the whisky and soda she said, "You don't look well, Sir." "I don't feel well, Bridget," I said. "I've not eaten." "Oh, we can get you dinner at once, Sir; there's cold grouse in the larder," and soon I dined while Bridget waited on me. She had lovely Irish eyes and was kindness itself. As she stood by me after helping me to something, I put my arm around her, and nothing loath, our eyes and then our lips met. Soon I found she cared for me and this spontaneous affection did me good, took the unholy rage and bitterness out of me and brought me back to quiet thoughts and sanity. To cut a long story short, I consoled myself with Bridget's affection and fresh prettiness, and the fears of madness all left me not to return for many a day. Yet next day I was ruthless. Laura had a perfect explanation. "He was a Scot; her mother had invited him to dinner and had then gone up to her room for something and left them together and—" I smiled. "Don't sit so close together on the sofa next time," I said, "or you'll never see me again. I mean it absolutely: you must make your choice." Laura got furiously angry: what did I suspect; it was a public room: couldn't she sit with a friend? She had manifestly no idea of the storm of rage and hatred she had called to life in me. But conscious of a worse fault in myself, I was willing to forgive and if possible to forget; and I only record the fact in its naked brutality because it's true that I was really frightened of myself, frightened that I should never regain control and so snatched at the nearest way to sanity. But it led me further astray than I had imagined. What held me to Laura so absolutely? First of all, of course, there was the immediate attraction of good looks, but I had seen just as beautiful girls who did not attract me deeply. It was Laura's fine intelligence that pleased me so intimately, and especially the fact that her knowledge of languages gave her a cosmopolitan ideal and so allowed her to see the little peculiarities of the people surrounding us in a humorous 427 light. Yet in spite of her amused disdain of English snobbishness and English reverence for mere conventions, she yet regarded the better class of English as the best people in the world, just as I did. All these threads of attraction and sympathy combined to form a bond which was enormously strengthened by a single strand: she had one of the loveliest figures I've ever seen. I could stand admiring her nudity and studying it by the hour: gradually my passionate admiration took away her shamefacedness and she would strip for me, always, however, treating my adoration as childish. "You must know my figure," she said once, "much better than I know it myself." "Naturally," I replied, but even now in old age I am at a complete loss and utterly unable to express wherein the infinite attraction consisted. This love of plastic beauty goes naturally with that adoration of virginity which led me to stray a hundred times in my life and is now as inexplicable to me as it was fifty years ago. Even now a well-made girl's legs of fourteen make the pulses beat in my forehead and bring water into my mouth. After Mrs. Mayhew when I was seventeen, no mature woman who had been enjoyed ever attracted me physically with this intensity. It was the young and untried and with the years the unripe that drew me irresistibly; and once at least a little later I gave myself to the pursuit for months in an orgy of lust. But that's a story for my next volume and is intended to show what wealth can do. Now I can only say that Laura had won me body and mind and soul. For the soul was the chiefest factor in the deathless fascination and it often humbled me. There's a sonnet, entitled White Heather, of an almost unknown poet of this time, one Ronald Macfie, that gives partial expression to this idolatry of love. Here is the sextet: O Queen! and I answer the wind in gentle wise, Saying that I have chosen as embassy This passionless heather, thinking it may devise Some white, soft suppliant way towards my plea To tell how earth is hallowed by thine eyes, How life grows holier in loving thee. Laura often found words that affected me like these verses. After enjoying her one golden afternoon and kissing her from mouth to knees, she suddenly took my head in her hands and said to me with a sort of childish gravity, "Set tutto il mio ben." I've had better bedfellows, mistresses more given to the art of love and far more proficient in arousing maddening sensations, but my instinct on the whole was justified: I loved Laura better than anyone I knew up to that time or for many a year afterwards; esteemed her, too, as more intelligent; and I still think her figure the most beautiful I've ever seen. 428 It was her mutism that was the barrier between us always, but at long last the heart-talk had to take place. One day she asked me, "If you got a letter reflecting on me, should you mind?" "What sort of letter?" I asked, and after much probing she confessed it might be a letter of hers that showed "affection—for some one else!" "Passion, you mean?" I asked. "Not passion," she replied. "You may as well tell me everything," I urged, "because the letter, however outspoken, will only confirm my suspicions. I know you were in love with that American and you gave yourself to him. I saw you together." "No, no!" she cried. "Never as I have to you, never!" My jealous rage wouldn't take it. "Nonsense!" I cried. "I saw him in the Savoy once put his hand on your bare neck; that's what kept me away from you after the year was up." Her eyes grew large. "At the Savoy?" she cried. "Mother was with me." "Yes," I went on pitilessly, "but he was with you often when your mother wasn't there. Why can't you tell the truth? That's the thing that separates us: I can forgive, but you can't be honest! Why not say at once he had you dozens of times. I know more than that." "Sometimes I think you hate me," she said in a low voice, mournfully. "It's not true: I've never given myself to sex-pleasures as I have with you— never, Frank. You must know that, dear!" But I was inexorable: I would get the whole truth at last. "Why, you got in the family way with him," I cried, "and he gave you or you took medicine and brought about a miscarriage." "Oh, oh!" she cried, covering her face with her hands. "You could think that. You're wicked, wicked; that's not love," and she flamed upright before me, "nor the truth." I smiled. "It isn't the truth," she persisted. "I never had a miscarriage as you say. Disgusting!" "Call it what you will," I cried. "Your blotched lips showed me you had womb-trouble and inflammation, and as soon as I touched your sex, I knew you were no longer a virgin; but my love was strong enough to forgive you everything, if only you had trusted me enough to tell me the whole truth. You never realized how infinitely I love you." 429 "You call that love?" she cried. "To try to shame me; oh!" "More than love," I went on. "To know all and forgive everything and blame myself! I should not have left you a year alone without a word in your equivocal position and with your father and mother. I was to blame, bitterly, and I have taken all the blame to myself, but you should have cared enough to tell the truth, Laura!" "But if I thought something bad about you," she began, "I couldn't bring it out and hurt you with it. I'd put it away back in my mind and forget it and say to myself, "That's not Frank, not my love.' I'd deny it to myself and in a month or so, I shouldn't even think of it, much less speak about it. "Now I'll tell you something, Sir, just to show you the difference of our spirits and what I have had to forgive. When we parted you told me you would let me hear in three months how things were going with you, but certainly within the year. Within the three months I saw you going about with other women, while I refused to go anywhere alone with the American my father had introduced to us, and who wanted me, I could see. "One evening, six months after our parting, and you had sent me no word, he was taking us all to the Cafe Royale, that I had selected on your recommendation, to dinner, when I saw you coming down the upper flight of stairs with a pretty girl. I found out the stairs led to the private rooms. Ah, how it hurt me! I could scarcely eat, or speak, or even think. I was like one trodden on and numb with pain. While I had been denying ordinary courtesies, you were going with young girls to private rooms. Afterwards for days and days I raged when I thought of it, and then you blame me, and say you'll forgive me, if only I will tell all the truth, and you who began it. What have you to tell? And what have I to forgive? "Time and again, I've thrust the truth away. I've denied it to myself, and as soon as you came to me I was so glad and proud, so heart-glad that I forgot all your wrongs and insults. I pushed them back in my mind and forgot them. 'They are not my Frank!' I used to say. 'He's wonderful, so strong and wise and he has real passion and affection too.' Oh!" And the lovely eyes filled with tears: "Men don't love as we women do!" "Forgive me," I cried, touched in spite of myself. "Forgive me," I repeated. "You were mistaken about the private room, really you were. Till I saw the American caress your bare shoulder I never went to a private room with anyone; indeed, I'm sure I didn't, but I love you for your defence and your half-proud, half-gentle persuasiveness. We won't talk any more about our sins, but you need not be afraid that anything he or anyone else can say will have the smallest effect on me. I love you and I know you, your eyes and 430 sweet soul, and the hard work you've done studying, and your noble loyalty to your mother, and all." "You darling, darling!" she exclaimed. "Now I believe you love me really, for those are the sort of things that I love about you: your giving money to your sister and her husband, your careless generosity and your wonderful talk. But you're too suspicious, too doubting, you naughty, naughty dear!" And the lovely eyes gave themselves, smiling. "It's your naughtiness saves you," I responded, "and your wonderful beauty of figure; your little breasts are tiny-perfect, taken with your strong hips and the long limbs and the exquisite triangle with the lips that are red, crimsonred as they should be, and not brown like most, and so sensitive, curling at the edges and pearling with desire." Suddenly she put her hand over my mouth. "I won't listen," she pouted, wrinkling up her nose—and she looked so adorable that I led her to the sofa and soon got busy kissing, kissing the glowing crimson lips that opened at once to me, and in a minute or two were pearly wet with the white milk of love and ready for my sex. But in spite of the half-confess ion, the antagonism between us continued, though it was much less than it had been. I could not get her to give herself with passion, or to let herself go frankly to love's ultimate expression, even when I had reduced her to tears and sobbings of exhaustion. "Please not, boy! Please, no more," was all I could get from her, so that often and often I merely had her and came to please myself and then lay there beside her talking, or threw down the sheets and made her lie on her face so that I could admire the droop of the loins and the strong curve of the bottom. Or else I would pose her sideways so as to bring out the great swell of the hip and the poses would usually end with my burying my head between her legs, trying with lips and tongue and finger and often again with my sex to bring her sensations to ecstasy and if possible to love-speech and love-thanks! Now and again I succeeded, for I had begun to study the tunes in the month when she was most easily excited. But how is it that so few women ever try to give their lover the utmost sum of pleasure? One of the most difficult things to find out in the majority of women is the time when they are most easily excited and most apt to the sexual act. Some few are courageous enough to tell their lover when they really want him, but usually he has to find the time and season for himself. With rare courage Dr. Mary Stopes in the book recently condemned in England out of insane, insular stupidity, has indicated two or three days in each monthly period when the woman is likely to be eager in response. Her experience is different from mine with Laura, chiefly I think because she does not bring the season of the year into the question. Yet again and again I have noticed that spring and autumn are the most propitious seasons, and the two best moments in the month I have found to be just before the period and just when the vitality in 431 the woman's seed is departing, about the eighth or ninth day after the monthly flow has ceased. I may of course be mistaken in this. Pioneers seldom find the best road and the spiritual factors in every human being are infinitely more important than the merely animal. I may give a proof of this. One day Laura asked me, "Have you helped father recently?" "What do you mean?" I asked. "Well, he was hard up a little while ago and bothered mother, and then he got money and got afloat; and yesterday he wanted to know why we never had you now at the house at dinner or for the evening, and I just guessed. Was it you who helped him?" I nodded. "And you never even told me!" she exclaimed. "Sometimes I adore you. I've never known anyone so generous— and not to speak of it, even to me. You make me proud of you and your love," and she put her hand on mine. "I'm glad," I said, "but why don't you now and then try to give me pleasure in the act?" "I do," she said, blushing adorably, "but I don't know how to. I've tried to squeeze you, but you ravish me and I can only let myself go and throb in unison. My feelings are overpowering; every fibre in me thrills to you, you great lover." "There," I said; "that pleases me as much as my gift pleased you." "Ah," she sighed; "it's the soul we are caught by, while you naughty men are caught by the body." "By the body's beauty," I responded, laughing, "and by the soul as well." In my bedroom at Kensington Gore I had a wonderful copy of the well known Titian in the Louvre of a girl lying on her side. Laura one day for fun stretched herself on the bed and took up the exact same pose. She was infinitely better made, slighter everywhere in the body and with more perfect hips and limbs. When she got up and was seated on the bed she suddenly put her foot behind her head, discovering the loveliest curves. To pay her for her exquisite posturing I tried to amuse her by telling her naughty stories I had chanced to hear. One, I remember, made her laugh heartily. It was the story of a solemn English lady engaging a maid. She had asked all sorts of questions and the maid had withstood the interrogatory with perfect propriety. At length the lady asked, "Oh, Mary, have you been confirmed?" Mary hung her head for a moment, then replied in a low voice, "Yes, Mum, once, but the baby didn't live!" The little play on words had a 432 greater success than far finer stories. Women naturally like best what concerns them most intimately. 433 CHAPTER XIX. BOULANGER; ROCHEFORT; THE COLONIAL CONFERENCE; JAN HOFMEYR; ALFRED DEAKIN; AND CECIL RHODES; THE CARDINALS MANNING AND NEWMAN IT WAS IN 1885 when he was made minister of war by
M. Freycinet that 434 with brown beard and long floating moustache; he was broad, too, and strong, and sat his horse like a centaur. In an hour all Paris seemed to be in the streets: I never saw such enthusiasm; the populace became delirious and a song in favour of the hero sprang from a myriad throats. I then realized how chauvinist the French public is! Speaking to Madame Laguerre about it, the thought came into my head that the generation after the war of '70 was coming to manhood and aching for revenge, which perhaps explained Boulanger's colossal, astonishing popularity. She would not have it, but said she'd watch and let me know. From another person, too, I heard about Boulanger. I had known Rochefort and his paper the Intransigent for some time. He was really an extraordinary personage. I shall never forget his story of how he founded La Lanterne. He had got into trouble with Napoleon the Third whom, after Victor Hugo, he used to call "Napoleon le petit," and at length he fled to Brussels. There he resolved to bring out a paper to cast light into the dark places and so called it La Lanterne. "But when the first copy was brought to me," he said, "I put it down in utter dejection. There were good things in it, but one thing was lacking: there was no powder in the tail of the rocket, nothing to drive it up and make every one buy it and talk. I sat the whole day beating my brain, trying to excogitate some word that would give it wings. Finally the printer's boy came to the door and I got up in despair: I thought of the state of France, with millions subject to that poor charlatan, and at once the word came. I wrote as the first paragraph: "France counts thirty-five millions of subjects, not counting the subjects of discontent." But it was as a lover and critic of art that I really esteemed Henri Rochefort. I had bought my first Barye from him and from him I heard of the miserable poverty of the great sculptor. "Barye," he said, "was so hard up that he often came to me with the model of a tigress or lion in his pocket and asked outright for help. Sometimes I could not buy his models; I was ashamed to offer so little for such masterpieces. I've bought his things as cheap as fifty francs a piece because I could not spare any more at the time, and now they're worth thousands and will be priceless. He was le Michelangelo des jauves, the Michelangelo of the Cat tribe"—a fine appreciation! It was Rochefort who took me to see Boulanger in his house in the street Dumont d'Urville, near the Etoile. I was surprised to find Boulanger as short as I was; his torso was fine, but his legs were very short; he looked his best on horseback. With Rochefort he was silent: indeed, I was astounded to see how the clever and witty journalist assumed the lead and kept it. Rochefort was not a man to be content with a second place in any society; he was all nerves and audacity. A thin, slight figure about five feet nine or ten with silver hair bristling up like a brush from his high forehead and his brown eyes flaming, he literally stood over Boulanger and talked without a pause, laughing every now and then at his own phrases. Boulanger made an impression on me of kindliness and perhaps courage, but certainly not of command or 435 dominant will. He was good-looking and of easy, pleasant manners, but not a great man in any sense of the word. When we went away and I spoke of Boulanger's silence, Rochefort said wittily, "The flag does not need to be articulate." One later story of Rochefort should find its place here just to round off his portrait and explain the great place he held in Paris and the enormous influence he wielded. It was the beginning of the winter after Marchand was forced to retreat from Fashoda. France was in a fever: nine Frenchmen out of ten were bitterly incensed with the English. Rochefort wrote a leading article in which he asked Queen Victoria not to visit Nice that winter, as had been her custom in those latter years. He began very politely: "France was more than hospitable, more than courteous to women," he said, "and especially to persons of distinguished virtue and position. For these reasons the baser sort of French journalist will assert that you, Madame, are a welcome visitor, but it won't be true; after Fashoda it'll be a lie. We don't want to be reminded of that intolerable humiliation, and especially not by the appearance of cette vieille caleche qui s'obstine a s'appeler Victoria" (that old stage-coach that persists in calling itself a Victoria). The word went all over France in an hour and had its effect, though masses of the better class of Frenchmen deplored the gratuitous insult to a harmless old lady. Rochefort made no secret of his desire to overthrow the Republic in favour of a military despotism, and I believe it was he who told me that the Duchesse d'Uzes was supplying the Boulangists with funds. At any rate, I got to know it either from him or from Laguerre: one thing was sure; money was forthcoming to any extent. I shall always be glad that I was in Paris at the end of January, 1889, and was invited by Rochefort to the famous dinner at the Cafe Durand, given in honour of Boulanger's triumph in the election of Paris. The voting was on the 27th of January and the excitement in Paris was incredible. The whole city and every monument in it was placarded with electoral appeals; now and then you read Jacques, but everywhere Boulanger. The posters alone must have cost a fortune: Paris was white with them. The popular newspapers, too, were filled with stories of the hero, everywhere his personality and his achievements; what might not be hoped from him! He was to be president or dictator, head of France, surely, and her army; the saviour of the people! What did all this excitement mean? Even Marguerite Laguerre admitted to me that the thought of la revanche was in every French heart, and Boulanger was the selected hero of a new coup d'etat. She thought he would be elected and Laguerre put his majority at 25,000; but when the news came in that with half a million votes cast he had a majority of 100,000 (it was afterwards found to be 81,000), Paris went crazy. Even in the Hotel Meurice, where I was staying, there was an air of suppressed excitement. The manager came to see me while I was dressing. "Will there be a revolution?" he wanted to know. When I went out I found the streets crowded and finally took a cab and went 436 round by the Grands Boulevards, as the rue Royale was crammed with people. Never was there such a dinner: it took place in the big room on the first floor. Everyone will remember that Durand's then was on the corner of the rue Royale, opposite the great Church of the Madeleine. I had been a customer at Durand's for some tune; the owner and the waiters knew me and I was ushered upstairs. Already some thirty or forty persons were seated at table. At the end nearest the door le brav' General; near him on his right, I think, Comte Dillon, who as soon as he saw me called out and pointed to the empty chair beside him. All round the table were journalists and deputies; I had hardly time to congratulate Boulanger when another visitor was being presented to him. I had only just shaken hands with Rochefort when he was dragged off to a conference at the other end of the room. When he returned, he was laughing. "Think of it," he said. "That unfortunate Jacques, our opponent, is dining in the restaurant opposite." Everyone exploded as at the best of jokes. From time to time some new dish was served and we ate; the excitement grew steadily as we drank and the heat became tremendous. At length Rochefort gave the order to open the windows, which all gave on the rue Royale and the great place. Suddenly the cry came to us from the crowd outside: "Vive Boulanger!" It was taken up by the thousand voices and carried in a great wave of sound to the Church and far up the Boulevard; and again the air throbbed with the cry: "Vive Boulanger." I went to find Laguerre: he was surrounded; Rochefort: he was perorating. I went to the window: you could have walked across the great open place on the heads of the crowd. I made my way downstairs and the head waiter whom I knew assured me that there were five thousand students in the crowd. I returned to the dining room. The quietest man in the place was General Boulanger, drinking his coffee calmly at the head of the table. And again the cry went up, thrilling me: "Vive Boulanger, Vive Boulanger! I could not keep still. I went to him and said, "Surely, General, it is time. The hour has struck!" "What do you mean?" he asked with perfect composure. "The Elysee Palace is just over there," and I pointed, "hardly quarter of a kilometre to go!" To my astonishment he shook his head. "What!" I cried. "When are we to start?" "We have no forces," he replied. 437 I laughed aloud. "There are five thousand students below there waiting," I cried, and again, as if to give weight to my challenge, came the great wave of sound: "Vive Boulanger, Vive Boulanger!" It affected him. He leant towards me and said, "I'm willing and ready. See Rochefort and Dillon: if they agree, we'll start." I passed behind him round the table and went to Rochefort, still talking; I drew him on one side and said, "Boulanger's ready to go to the Elysee." Blank surprise came over his face: a moment's thought and then an imperious, "Non, non! restons dans l'ordre." "Order is a first-rate resting place," I said, "but you don't find crowns in it." "We're not ready," retorted Rochefort. "We've made no preparations!" "First-rate"; I said, "perhaps the others are equally unprepared. Our force is there in the street ready. Listen!" And again the cry arose: "Vive Boulanger, Vive Boulanger!" Rochefort shook his head resolutely and turned away. Suddenly it came to me: that was why Napoleon the Third had succeeded, because he was ready to try and try again. Had he not failed twice before he finally won? I went back to Boulanger. "What does Rochefort say?" he asked at once and I told him. "But he's wrong," I went on. "That's why Napoleon won. He tried and failed, tried and failed again, but the third time he won. Try! Try again! They can't eat you!" Le brav' General shook his head. "We've made no preparations," he said, repeating Rochefort's foolish word. And a minute or two later Laguerre had the same answer: "Not prepared"—as if preparation was necessary. "I can't act against Rochefort," was le brav' General's last word. "What do you risk?" I cried. "Nothing. They can't punish you for wishing to pay a visit to the President?" He shook his head slowly; he was in doubt. I turned away: kings who daren't crown themselves are not worth crowning. I went round and shook hands with Rochefort, Laguerre and le Comte Dillon. They were all talking eagerly, hopefully of their chances, of what might happen, no one of them seeing the plain fact that unless they could get an election to sweep France as Paris had been swept that day, they'd never have a better chance than that moment. I went out into the street, almost at the door was met by a young man who asked, "Is he coming?" I shook my head, grinning as he turned away, evidently disappointed. I hesitated; if they had been Englishmen I'd have asked the young fellow to come up with me and speak to Boulanger himself. But no! They might resent it. I've heard since that Naquet, the Senator, also advised Boulanger to go to the Elysee that night. It may be true. This is sure: 438 the crowd of students expected the General to do something, to have at least a try for a crown! His opponents, or one of them, was wiser: it was Mr. Constans who had just come into the Government with a speckled reputation from the Far East. Mme. Laguerre's word for him was the best; ni conscience, ni tete, mais du poing. He now showed resolution. Scenting the danger, he threatened Boulanger, or sent some false friend to him with the intimation that his arrest had been resolved, and at once Boulanger fled to Brussels. In the summer he came over to London, a damp squib. Everyone saw when he fled from Paris that he had lost his chance. I asked him to dinner in Park Lane and had Wyndham and half a dozen friends to meet him. A witty and pretty Irishwoman insisted that he should talk English to her, and to my surprise he talked quite fairly for a Frenchman, and in answer to my question said that he had been at school in Brighton, "but after thirty years or so one forgets a language." I dined with him a little later once or twice in Portland Place, but it was depressing and the champagne was appalling, sweet as sugar. His friends, the ubiquitous Rochefort among them, tried a little later to get up a demonstration at the Alexandra Palace and a banquet, but only a few people went out of curiosity; and poor Boulanger issued an immensely long address "to the People, my sole Judge," meaning the people of Paris. But they had already judged and condemned him by default, though he didn't seem to know it. No one knew or cared how long he stayed in London or when he left it: his bolt was shot. Suddenly, a couple of years later, the news came to us that he had killed himself in Brussels on the grave of his bonne amie, Madame Bonnemain, and so went into the shrouding silence, this poor Antony, who we fancied might have been a Caesar. But greatness was not in him. Many are called; but few chosen. The whole incident set me watching. If the French were determined on la revanche, interesting things would soon happen, and now as editor of the Fortnightly Review, it behoved me to keep in touch with France. But M. Ferry made me alter my opinion. Everyone knows how he made war and annexed Tonquin, but when I saw him later in Paris and congratulated him on his achievement, he told me it had ruined him. "Even in my own district," he said, "my constituents won't forgive me the lives lost and the cost. The French peasant won't have war: he cares nothing for Alsace-Lorraine. You may take it from me: there'll never be a war of revenge!" But the next generation was of a different spirit; they went in for athletics and practiced bodily exercises even in the army, and Caillaux told me in 1912 that the chief French generals thought that Russia and France or France and England could easily whip Germany. I didn't share the opinion, but it was impossible not to recognize 439 that there was a new spirit abroad in France, the exact opposite to what M. Ferry had predicted twenty years before. Now I must recall the chief event to me of this decade, the Colonial Conference of 1887 and my meeting with three men: Cecil Rhodes, Alfred Deakin and Jan Hofmeyr. Sir Henry Holland presided at the meetings of twenty or thirty colonial ministers with a courteous good nature that did not exclude dignity, but it was Jan Hofmeyr, whom I had previously met in Cape Town on my first voyage round the world, that I most wished to see. I wanted to meet him and find out whether my first estimate of him ten years ago or so before was justified. He came to lunch and dined with me; I got to know him really well and considered him from that time on one of the ablest and best men I've ever met. The breadth of view and imperial fairness of his fine Dutch mind taught me to understand and appreciate the best English mind. I began to see that the English race had high qualities in profusion, and above all a genius for government founded on individual character and a recognition of the real forces in practical life, which did not exclude ideal strivings. Strange to say, though gifted with a singular sense of physical beauty, as I have, I think, shown, the English don't even attempt to foster or develop this, which I regard as their highest endowment. The French establish opera houses and national and municipal schools of music, and subsidize even provincial art galleries and so forth, and the Germans spend money freely, endowing chemical and physical laboratories; but the English and Americans close their eyes to all such spiritual needs. The object of all civilized life is the humanization of man, and it must be admitted that less is done in this direction by England and America than by almost any state in Christendom. Jan Hofmeyr was too much occupied with the possible conflict between Briton and Boer and the pressure of the coloured races to care much for national theatres or municipal art schools. Nor did I talk with him about them, the Dutch caring even less for art than the English. It was Hofmeyr, I think, sturdy, broad, sensible Boer that he was, who introduced me to Cecil Rhodes, but Rhodes at first did not make as good or as deep an impression on me as Alfred Deakin. The Australian seemed more open to ideal influence, and above all, he loved literature as well as politics. I invited all three to dinner in my little house in Kensington Gore, just opposite Hyde Park. Cecil Rhodes had to go away early and Deakin, too, had an engagement, so that I was soon left alone with Hofmeyr. Hofmeyr spoke slightingly of Deakin while I stuck up for him. At any rate, I concluded, "He's brainier and better read than your Cecil Rhodes!" "He may be; it's possible," Hofmeyr admitted, "but Cecil Rhodes is master of Kimberley and already one of the richest and most powerful men in South Africa. He'll go far and may do big things." 440 I remember distinctly how shocked I was at this evidence of Hofmeyr's worship of the golden calf. I suppose it was Professor Smith's influence and that of German universities that kept me so naive, though I was over thirty. I had yet to learn how universal the power of money is, and I am sure that my first lesson in world values came that evening from Hofmeyr. In half an hour he showed me the enormous influence Rhodes exercised in the Cape and indeed all through South Africa because of his great wealth. He summed up, half bitterly, "He has more influence with the Boer leaders than I have, though they have known me all their lives; money is God today and the millionaire rules." I soon found out how right Hofmeyr was. Dilke, for example, knew all about Cecil Rhodes and told me he'd be glad to meet him with me at any time. "A very able man!" but when I spoke to him of Deakin he was hardly interested, though he knew his name and work. Arthur Walter, too, the son of the manager of The Times, spoke of Rhodes with unfeigned respect, though at this time he hadn't met him, whereas my praise of Deakin fell on stopped ears. Strange to say, Rhodes seemed to like me, perhaps because I knew the Cape and Hofmeyr and felt a great liking for the Boers and was not afraid to proclaim it openly. At any rate, he asked me to lunch and I met some important people in his rooms at the Burlington Hotel, notably Lord Rothschild, whom I had already met at Dilke's; and on this occasion I noticed that Rhodes cared little for what he ate, though he drank quite as much as was good for him. What I liked about Rhodes from the beginning was his entire absence of "side" or pretence of any sort. I had already settled in my mind the rule, which, however, is subject to important exceptions, that no great or wise man ever gives himself airs. "Side" is a characteristic of the second rate, and when a great man uses it, as Lord Salisbury did occasionally, it is to ward off the pushing or impertinent; still, it is almost always a proof of weakness. I saw this perfectly exemplified in the Archbishops Manning and Newman. I had gone to see Manning at Westminster because of an article on the poor of the East End, in whom he professed to be greatly interested. He kept me waiting that first time and then had little knowledge to give me, indeed, had to summon an attendant priest in order to be coached. I shrugged my shoulders and soon rose to go; then he dropped the pontifical air and assured me that he would be much obliged if I sent him whatever I wrote about the East End. From that time on he was perfectly courteous and sympathetic, but I could not but contrast my first impression of him, seated in his great chair and with an attendant priest standing by him, with the perfect simplicity of Newman, who was unaffectedly pleased with my enthusiastic praise of his Apologia and almost immediately wanted to know where I stood, what school of thought I favoured, what my opinions were on the great themes. When he learned of my utter disbelief, he seemed distressed: I hastened to admit that man's respect for unselfish loving-kindness and indeed for all that 441 is above him showed a touch of the Divine, but Nature red in beak and claw was appalling, and— Newman nodded gravely. "Doubts are stepping stones to faith," he said, nursing his chin on his hand. "Faith is priceless, wings above the abyss, making us one with the universal soul." "That reminds me," I said, "of the noblest words in the Religio Medici: There is surely some piece of Divinity in us, something that was before the elements, and owes no homage to the sun. "Magnificent!" the old saint cried, his whole face lighting up with a sort of supernal radiance. "Magnificent! Noble words, magnificent; but did you ever read his Christian Morals and his Vulgar and Common Errors? I like them both." "No," I replied, "but I'll get them. I love his Hydriotaphia; the last chapter of the Urn Burial is glorious, full of passages finer even than Bossuet (Newman nodded smiling); Browne is an enigma to me, a country doctor commanding magical phrases, and yet though as a boy he may have seen Shakespeare, he never mentions him, so far as I know." "He was a great man, nevertheless," said Newman, "and we are all his debtors. Do you remember one thing he said: 'I love to lose myself in a mystery, to pursue my reason to an O, altitudo?' "t I shook my head, and towards the close of our talk he counselled me, smiling, "You should not depreciate memory as you did the other day: it's ungrateful when you can carry about with you in memory's satchel such priceless jewels as that sentence of Browne. Such words enrich life." I had only said that great verbal memory often hindered one from thinking for oneself, but the memory of great things said greatly do indeed enrich life, as Newman said, and there are few more notable jewels in all English prose than this of Sir Thomas Browne. Whenever I think of Newman and his passionate faith, I am reminded of the great verse: ... Life's truer name Is "Onward." No discordance in the roll And march of that Eternal Harmony To which the stars beat time— Only great souls can be so persuaded! 442 CHAPTER XX. MEMORIES OF GUY DE MAUPASSANT IT WAS IN THE early eighties that Blanche Macchetta,
or Roosevelt, as she 443 of a right to it, or indeed to the noble de which he always used. But at bottom, like most talented Frenchmen, he cared little for titles and constantly preached the nobility and necessity of work and of the daily task; in fact, he admired only the aristocracy of genius and the achievements of artists and men of science. He dined with me and I told him I wanted to publish his stories in English and would pay for them at the highest French rate. He seemed surprised, but he had need of money and soon sent me stories, some of which I published later in the Fortnightly Review. One winter Dilke lent me his villa at the Cap Brun near Toulon. I invited Percy Ffrench of Monivae, who had once been British ambassador at Madrid, to pay me a visit, and while he was living with me, we ran across Maupassant in Cannes. Ffrench spoke French as well as English and his praise of me and of my influence in England seemed to affect Maupassant; at any rate, he agreed to come to us on a visit for a few days. He stayed a week or so and I began to know him intimately. One evening I remember I was praising L'Heritage to him. He told me what I had guessed, that the bureau life depicted in the story was taken from his experiences in the Ministry of the Marine in his early days in Paris. I suggested that the ending was too prolonged, that the story ended inevitably with the heroine's condemnation of the girls who proposed to do exactly what she had done. "Comme ces creatures sont infames" should have been the last word of the tale. He hesitated a little and then, "I believe you're right: that gives snap and emphasis to the Irony." After reflecting a little, he asked, "Why don't you write stories?" "I haven't the art," I replied carelessly, "and I love hie more than any transcript of it." "You couldn't be so good a critic," he went on, "unless you were also a creator. Get to work and we'll have the pleasure of criticizing you in turn." "I'll think of it," I replied, and indeed from that day on the suggestion never left me. Could I be a writer? I had always known that I could be a good speaker and political thinker, but to write was to measure myself with the greatest; had I genius? If not, I'd be a fool to begin. Suddenly it came into my head that I might tell a tale or two and see what effect they'd have. But I didn't take the work seriously for some time; not indeed until the idea of a seat in Parliament became silly to me, but that's another story. The better I knew Maupassant the more I got to like him. He was a typical Frenchman in many ways; kindly, good-humoured and fair-minded. He liked rowing, was very proud, indeed, of his strength and exceedingly surprised to find that my early English school training and the university life in the U.S.A. had made me, if not stronger, certainly more adroit, than he was. 444 It was from him I first heard the French proverb, ban animal, bon homme. His physical vigour was extraordinary; he told, for instance, of rowing all the night through after being the whole day on the Seine. Horseplay always appealed to him, too, even when he happened to be the victim. One morning on the river at Argenteuil, when he rose to take another's place at an oar and stepped on the gunwale of the stout boat to pass on to his thwart, the steersman, seeing the opportunity, threw himself on the gunwale at the exact moment and Maupassant was tossed into the water. "I couldn't help laughing," he said. "It was so perfectly timed." "Had you a change of clothes?" I asked. "Oh, no!" he crowed. "I simply rowed hard till I got hot and the clothes dried on me. In those days I never caught cold ..." It was this abounding physical vigour, I think, that inspired his kindly judgments of his contemporaries and rivals: he found genius even in Bourget. The only person I ever heard him criticize unfairly was E. de Goncourt: he always spoke derisively of his ecriture artiste. "The people who have nothing to say are naturally very careful how they say it," was one of his remarks. "It's when the two powers are found together, a deep, true vision of life and a love of words, as in Flaubert, that you get the great master." Goncourt was even more prejudiced; after Maupassant's death he denied vehemently that he was a great writer. As soon as Maupassant found that I was muscularly very strong, fully his equal indeed, he began to talk of amatory performances. He was curiously vain, like many Frenchmen, and not of his highest powers. "Most people," he said, "are inclined to think that the lower classes, working men and especially sailors, are better lovers than those who live sedentary lives. I don't believe that; the writer or artist who takes exercise and keeps himself in good health is a better performer in love's list than the navvy or ploughman. It needs brains," was his thesis, "to give another the greatest possible amount of pleasure." We all three discussed the matter at great length. I told him I thought youth was the chief condition of success, but to our surprise he would not agree to that, and clinched the matter by talking of a dozen consecutive embraces as nothing out of the common. Laughingly, I reminded him of Monsieur Six-fois in Casanova, but he would not accept even that authority. "Six-fois," he cried contemptuously. "I've done it six fois in an hour." I cannot but think that some such statement as this grew into the story told me in Nice in 1923 by my friend George Maurevert, the writer, that Maupassant, excited by Flaubert's disbelief, went once with a huissier as witness to a brothel in Paris and had six girls in an hour. Flaubert was singularly ascetic, yet very much interested in Maupassant's astounding virility. 445 Believe this story or not as you please, but no one should take it as a libel on Maupassant—still less on contemporary French manners—for Lumbrose tells in his book how Bourget and Maupassant paid a visit to a low brothel in Rome, where Bourget sat in a corner, he says, and was mocked by Maupassant, who went off with a girl. Time and again Maupassant told me he could go on embracing as long as he wished. "A dangerous power," I said, thinking he was merely bragging. "Why dangerous?" he asked. "Because you could easily get to exhaustion and nervous breakdown," I replied. "But you must be speaking metaphorically." "Indeed I'm not," he insisted, "and as for exhaustion, I don't know what you mean; I'm as tired after two or three times as I am after twenty." "Twenty!" I exclaimed, laughing. "Poor Casanova is not in it." "I've counted twenty and more," Maupassant insisted. I could do nothing but shrug my shoulders. "Surely you know," he went on after a pause, "that in two or three times you exhaust your stock of semen so that you can go on afterwards without further loss?" "There would be increased nerve exhaustion, surely," I countered. "I don't feel it," he answered. As we separated for the night, Ffrench declared that the whole thing was French braggartism. "They love to show off," he insisted. But I could not be so sure; Maupassant had made an impression on me of veracity and he was certainly very strong. On reflection, the idea came to me that perhaps he had begun to care for women very late in life and that in boyhood he had never practiced selfabuse and so had arrears to make up. I determined to ask him when I got a good chance, and a day or two later, when Ffrench happened to be out somewhere and Maupassant and I went for a walk to Toulon, I put the question to him. "No, no," he replied. "I learned to excite myself by chance. When I was about twelve a sailor one day practiced the art before me, and afterwards, like most healthy boys, I played with myself occasionally. But I did not yield to my desires often." 446 "Was it religion restrained you?" I asked. "Oh, dear, no!" he cried. "I was never religious; even as a boy religion was repulsive to me. When I was about sixteen I had a girl, and the delight she gave me cured me of self-abuse. I believe that my experiences were fairly normal, save that I learned from E— that I could go on longer than most men. "I suppose I am a little out of the common sexually," he resumed, "for I can make my instrument stand whenever I please." "Really?" I exclaimed, too astonished to think. "Look at my trousers," he remarked, laughing, and there on the road he showed me that he was telling the truth. "What an extraordinary power," I cried. "I thought I was abnormal in that way, for I always get excited in a moment, and I have heard men say that they needed some time to get ready for the act; but your power is far beyond anything I have ever seen or heard of." "That is the worst of it," he remarked quietly. "If you get a reputation, some of them practically offer themselves. But one often meets women who don't care much for the act. I suppose you meet that sort oftener in England, if half one hears is true, than in France. Here the women are generally normal. But it's seldom they feel intensely: however, some do, thank God." Naturally I spent a great deal of thought on his abnormality. I soon noticed that he did not admire girls as I did. He seemed to prefer women and to keep to one or two. I half came to the conclusion that he husbanded his powers more than most men. But this he denied absolutely. "Temptation is there to be yielded to," he declared. "I deny myself nothing that suits or pleases me in life; why should I?" He was as much given to the pursuit of the unknown as anyone could be. I remember once, when we were talking of hunting big game in America or in Africa, he broke in, declaring that woman is the only game in the wide world worth pursuing. The mere hope of meeting her here or there, in the train going to Cannes or out walking—the Hoped-for One, the Desired— alone gives interest and meaning to life. "The only woman I really love," he went on, with a certain exaltation, "is the Unknown who haunts my imagination— seduction in person, for she possesses all the incompatible perfections I've never yet found in any one woman. She must be intensely sensuous, yet selfcontrolled; soulful, yet a coquette: to find her, that's the great adventure of life and there's no other." 447 I was astonished to discover that he was vainer of his amatory performances than even of his stories. "Who knows," he'd say, "whether these tales of mine are going to live or not? It's impossible to tell; you may be among the greatest today but the very next generation may turn away from you. Fame is all chance, the toss of a com, but love, a new sensation, is something saved from oblivion." I would not accept this for a moment. "The sensation is fleeting," I cried, "but the desire of fame seems to me the highest characteristic of humanity and in our lifetime we can be certain of enduring reputation and an influence that lives beyond the grave." Maupassant shook his head, smiling. "Tout passe; there is no certainty." "We know," I went on, "the whole road humanity has travelled for tens of thousands of years. The foetus in the womb shows our progress from the tadpole to the man, and we know the millenniums of growth from the human child to the thinker and poet, the God-man of today. The same process is still going on in each of us; have you become more pitiful than others, largerhearted, more generous, more sympathetic, more determined to realize the highest in yourself? Put this in your book and it is sure to live with an everwidening popularity. Goethe was right: Wer immer strebend sich bemuht Den konnen wir erlosen. "And Rabelais?" he retorted sarcastically, "and Voltaire? How do they fit in your moral Pantheon?" "Voltaire defended Galas," I replied, "and Rabelais would be as easy to praise as Pascal, but your objection has a modicum of truth in it. It is the extraordinary, whether good or evil, that is certain to survive. We remember the name of the Marquis de Sade because of his monstrous, revolting cruelty as surely as that of St. Francis. There's lots of room for scepticism everywhere in life. I was only stating the rule which gives ground enough for hope and encourages to the highest achievement. Three or four of your stories will be read a thousand years hence." "We can hardly understand Villon," he retorted, "and the speech of the He de France in the twelfth century is another language to us." "But printing has changed all that," I replied. "It immobilizes language, though it admits the addition of new words and new ideas. Your French will endure as Shakespeare's English endures." "You don't altogether convince me," Maupassant replied, "though there's a good deal of truth in your arguments; but if you were not a writer yourself, you would not be so interested in fame and posthumous renown." 448 There he had me and I could only laugh. A day or two later Ffrench came to tell me how magnificently endowed Maupassant was as a lover. I asked Ffrench whether he thought the abnormality a sign of health. "Of course," he cried. "Proof of extraordinary strength," but somehow or other I was not so sure. It was in 1885 or 1886, I think, that he sent me his Horla with an interesting letter. "Most critics will think I have gone mad," he wrote, "but you'll know better. I'm perfectly sane, but the story interested me strangely: there are so many thoughts in our minds that we cannot explain, fears in us that are instinctive and form, so to speak, the background of our being." Le Horla made a tremendous impression on me; the title was composed from le hors-la, the being not ourselves in life. It was the first of Maupassant's stories which was quite beyond me. I couldn't have written anything like it. And asking myself, "Why?" I came to the conclusion, inspired perhaps by mere vanity, that I was too healthy, too normal, if you will, and that set me thinking. When next I saw him: "That Horla of yours is astonishing," I began. "To fear as you must have feared in order to write that dreadful tale is evidence enough to me that your nerves are all jangled and out of tune." Maupassant laughed at me. "I've never been in better health," he declared, "never in my life." I had studied all venereal diseases in Vienna and I had just been reading a new German book on syphilis in which, for the first time, I found the fact stated that it often kills its victims by paralysis between forty and fifty, when the vital forces have begun to decline. Suddenly the thought came into my head and I put the question to Maupassant: "Have you ever had syphilis?" "All the infantile complaints," he said laughing. "Everyone has it in youth, haven't they? But it's twelve or fifteen years now since I've seen a trace of it. I was completely cured long years ago." I told him what the German specialist had discovered, but he wouldn't give any credence to it. "I dislike everything German, as you know," he said. "Then' science even is exaggerated." "But the other day," I reasoned, "you complained of pains in your limbs and took a very hot bath; that's not a sign of health." 449 "Let's go for a long walk," he replied. "You'll soon find I'm not decrepit." We had our walk and I put my doubts and fears out of mind for the moment, but whenever I though of Le Horla I became suspicious. There were chapters, too, in some of his other books which disquieted me. It was in the spring of 1888, I believe, that I met him at Cannes, where he had come in his yacht Bel-Ami from Marseilles. We dined together and he told me that he had had wonderful experiences in Algeria and the north of Africa. He had pushed to Kairouan, the Holy City, it appeared, and admired its wonderful mosque, but he had brought back little, save the fact that each Arab had three or four concubines besides his wife, and that all the women are usually wretchedly unhappy, with jealousy as a sort of continual madness. He told me of a Jewess who kept a house with her two daughters and said he'd like to write the story of one of them and make her fall in love with a French officer because he took her out driving and was kind to her. "Any evidence of affection, as apart from passion," he remarked, "has a curious weight, especially with such women. They are far prouder of tenderness than of desire." "Long novels," he confessed once casually, "are much easier to write than nouvelles or contes. Pierre et Jean, for example, I finished in less than three months and it didn't tire me at all, whereas La Maison Tellier cost me more time and a far greater exertion." Perhaps its was the preference in both writers for the short story that made me always couple Kipling with de Maupassant in my thoughts, but I must admit at once that Kipling was by far the more interesting companion. Draw him out, show him interest, and he could tell a tale by word of mouth as well as he ever wrote one. Unlike most able Frenchmen, Maupassant was not gifted as a talker, perhaps because he never let himself go to the inspiration of the moment; but now and then he would surprise you by width of vision or Tightness of judgment, showing a mind, as Meredith said, that had "travelled." We were all talking of Napoleon one night when I told how he had astonished me. I said once that Jesus had been the first to discover the soul and speak from it and to it, notably in the ineffable Suffer little children to come unto me. Years later I found that Napoleon had used the very same phrase: "Jesus discovered the soul." "I don't like Napoleon," said de Maupassant, "though everyone must admire his intelligence, but I always think Jesus the wisest of men; how he came to such heights of thought in such surroundings is one of the wonders of the world to me. He had no mark upon him of his age; he was for all time." 450 "It is curious," I agreed, "indeed, almost impossible to frame him in his tune. Again and again he speaks for all ages and for all men; but now and then comes the revealing word. Do you remember how the Devil took him up into the high mountain and showed him all the Kingdom of the Earth? It is manifest from that phrase that he thought the world was flat, and if you went high enough you could oversee it all." "True, true," cried Maupassant. "I hadn't thought of it; yet he leads us all today and we follow humbly and at some distance." Maupassant was almost as patriotic as Kipling, but not so blinded by the herd-instinct. "You know," he said to me once, "we Normans and Bretons dislike the English more than the Germans; you are our enemies, it was you who came and sacked our towns and took toll of our wealth. The German is far away from us while you are close, just there across a strip of sea." "I understand," I replied, "but the English have no fear, no dislike of you. How do you explain that?" "Curious," he declared. "I think it must be because we were rich and you were poor before the modern industrial era. The rich always fear the poor and they have good reason for their instinctive dread." The explanation was ingenious and in part true, I imagine. Very early in our acquaintance, in spite of his alertness of mind and sympathetic, companionable good humour, I began to realize the truth of Taine's word that Maupassant was a sort of taureau triste, 'a sad bull.' Maupassant complained at first of his eyes; a year or so later he said that he often went blind for an hour: "A terrifying experience," he called it. About this time he confessed he had tried all the drugs; neuralgia plagued him and he took ether for it—"a temporary relief was better than nothing" —but with his sound good sense, he quickly saw that a drug only deferred the payment while increasing the debt. No wonder Flaubert begged him to be "moderate" in everything, in muscular exertion, in writing even, and especially in yielding to fits of sadness that only left one depressed and drained (abruti). Maupassant loved to ascribe all his malaise to overwork; more than once he boasted to me of having written fifteen hundred pages in one year, to say nothing of articles in the Gaulois and the Gil Blas. The pages hardly contained more than one hundred and fifty words each, or say two English novels in the year; hard work, but nothing extraordinary, unless one takes into the account his steadily diminishing stock of health, which began to strike me about this time. 451 One evening I shall always remember. He had had neuralgia in the morning, which had gradually yielded to food and drink, a glass of wonderful port completing the cure. We had been talking of the belief in God when Maupassant turned to the personal factor. "What a strange being is man," he cried, "an imperial intelligence that watches the pains and miseries of its unfortunate fleshy partner. Plainly I note that I am getting steadily worse in health, that my bodily pains are increasing, that my hallucinations are becoming longer, my power of work diminishing. The supreme consolation comes from the certitude that when my state gets too bad, I'll put an end to it. Meanwhile I won't whine, I've had great hours! Ah! Great hours!" It was in 1889,1 think, that I first discovered why he was getting steadily worse in health. He broke an engagement with me, and when we next met a month later, I was still annoyed with him and showed it. To excuse himself, he blurted out that he had had an unexpected visitor from Paris and went on to confess that one's "late loves were the most terrible." "She is exquisitely pretty," he broke in, "perfect physically: a flawless mistress, a perfumed altar of love, and has besides a wealth of passion that I never met before. I can't resist her, and the worst of it is, I can't resist showing off with her and bringing her to wonder. What vain fools we men are and how I pay for the excess afterwards. Really, for a week after an orgy with her I suffer like one of the damned, and even now, though she has been a month gone, I'm a prey to misery (inducible malaise). I wish she'd keep away: she drains me, exhausts my vitality, unnerves me." I thought it my duty to warn him. "You are showing the surmenage everywhere," I said. "Your skin is leaden, your expression curious, troubled, fearful even. For God's sake, cut out all that orgy business: it's excusable at twenty or thirty but not at forty; it's your test and trial. You'll go under if your mind doesn't master your body. Take Shakespeare's great word to heart: even his Antony would not be 'the bellows and the fan to cool a harlot's lust'; it was doubtless his own confession." "What a great phrase," cried Maupassant, "the bellows and the fan, great... "I know all that," he went on, "but then I say to myself, I'm beaten anyhow, growing steadily worse; one more gaudy night will be so much to the good. You can't imagine her myriad seductiveness. She uses a perfume that makes me drunk at first like ether; in an hour it has vanished but the still more intoxicating subtle scent of her body has taken its place; and her bodily beauty, and the ineffable charm of her withholding, and her giving drive me crazy. Never before have I experienced such pleasure or given it. "Man! she's an aphrodisiac. As soon as my state of depression and misery begins to lighten, I want her. My thoughts turn to her; my mind, my body ache for her. Of course I make all sorts of good resolutions: I will be moderate and restrain myself; but when she is there I feel in me the strength of ten and the desire of conquest, the mad longing to reach an intenser thrill than ever 452 before overpowers me, and her intense response carries me away, and—once more I fall into the depths." He was assuredly a great lover, one of the most gifted of whom we have any record, and though in talk with me he usually dwelt most on the physical side of the passion, his letters to his mistress show that he was devoted to her spiritually as well, and that she was his heart's mate and complement. There is no greater love story in all literature; it ranks with Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra, and some of Maupassant's phrases are as intense as the best of Shakespeare. Surely it deserves to be recorded and given its due importance. Now who was she, this incomparable mistress? A Jewess, well off, ten years or so younger than Maupassant and married to a man who would not have forgiven her unfaith had he even suspected it. The lovers had to meet at long intervals and on the sly. Ten years after Maupassant's death she wrote of him and their love in La Grande Revue and it is plain, I think, from those pages, that if Maupassant had told her the effect of then' love-orgies on his health, she would not only have refused to be a party to injuring him, but would have sought to help him to self-control. Her affection for him seems both deep and high; she delights to record all his good qualities: his love and admiration of his mother; his kindness even to shameless beggars; his interest in other men and women, particularly in all curious, uncommon types; his constant desire to be fair and honest. Of course she dwells on his love for her and gives one extract from his letters to her twice. Here it is in French, a superb expression of love's humility and that sacred adoration of love that will yet redeem this sordid existence of ours. Comme je vous aimais! Et comme j'aurais voulu m'agenouiller tout a coup devant vous, m'agenouiller la, dans la poussiere, sur le bord du trottoir, et baiser vos belles mains, vos petits pieds, le bas de votre robe, les baiser en pleurant. It is easy to English it: "How I love you! How I wished to throw myself on my knees before you, there in the dust of the sidewalk, and kiss your lovely hands, and your little feet, the hem of your dress—kiss them all with hot tears." This Madame X has more in her than facile appreciation. Maupassant confesses once that he is a "romance-writer, even in his embracings." She adds finely, "I would rather say that he remained a lover even in his romances.... And what a wonderful lover he was," she goes on. Every meeting was a new birth of love, thanks to his genius. Through him I have lived such wonderful enchanting hours that I shudder to think what life would have meant, had I not met and loved him. His letters, and they were many, came at odd moments, most of them were dated at night; often I had 453 only just left him when a letter from him would come, so ardent, so passionate, so tender, that I could hardly refrain from hastening back to him. Here's the end of one of those love letters that shows, I think, marvellous intensity of feeling, perhaps the most astonishing and convincing expression known to me of the deepest human passion. A few hours ago, you were there in my arms. Now I'm alone. But you remain with me. All the peculiarities of your personality live in me with such overwhelming unity that I seem to see your voice, to breathe your beauty, to hear the perfume of you ... I kiss your white hands and my lips dwell on your scarlet mouth ... Surely this man reached undream'd of heights! Some of us knew beforehand that Maupassant was richly affectionate, a born lover if ever there was one, but these golden words are the best proof of his astonishing genius. Alas! His fall was the more appalling. In 1890 his love recognizes a profound change in him. "He is living," she says, "hi a state of spiritual exaltation that brings with it hallucinations." In August he writes from Nice telling her that he needs her: "I am troubled by such strange ideas, oppressed by such mysterious anguish, shaken by such confused sensations that I feel like crying, 'Help, help!' "The confused echoes of days I have lived torture me now and again, or excite me to a sort of madness"; and then he talks of the wild regrets he feels "for the days that are no more" (des regrets pour un temps qui jut et qui ne sera plus jamais, jamais). "I have the feeling," he goes on, "that my end is near and wholly unexpected. Come to me, come!" It was this appeal, this cry of supreme distress, that brought about her final fatal visit. Again and again she notes the constant preoccupation of his thought with the idea of death, even at a time when she was filled with a sense of his abounding health and vigour. Towards the end she declares that "his reason never seemed shaken; his sensations had altered, it is true, but not his judgment!" She is always an advocate of the angel, always sees the best in her lover, and when all is over and long past, further off than far away, her words still ring pathetically sincere; the heart's cry for the golden days, "the days that are no more!" "Only two years before, how full of life he was, and how strong, and I was young and in love with him. Oh, the sad, painful years I have lived since." 454 I think no one will deny that if Maupassant had told this woman the truth, she would have helped him to exercise self-restraint. Not once does she dwell on the physical side of their affection. It is the joys of his companionship she recalls, the delights of their spiritual intimacy. It is always he who calls and she who comes. Maupassant's fate is not so worthy of pity, for he was warned again and again, and we mortals can hardly complain, even of those catastrophes that are unexpected and difficult, if not impossible, to foresee. Even his valet, Francois, had warned him. Three or four years before the end Maupassant knew that the path of senseindulgence for him led directly to madness and untimely death. He could trace the progress of his malady in body and in mind from Le Horla, in the beginning, to Qui salt with its unholy terror, the last story he ever wrote. Even in his creative work he was warned after every excess and in fifty different ways. First an orgy brought on fits of partial blindness, then acute neuralgic pains and periods of sleeplessness, while his writing showed terrifying fears; and all this disease had to be cured by rest and dieting, baths and frictions, and, above all, by constant change of scene. Then came desperate long-continued depression broken by occasional exaltations and excitements; later still, periods of hallucination, during which his mind wandered and which he recalled afterwards with humiliation and shame; and always, always the indescribable mental agony he spoke of as inducible malaise. Finally he lost control of his limbs, saw phantoms on the highway and was terrified by visions that gave him the certainty of madness, which could only be faced by the fixed resolve to put an end to himself, if the punishments became more than he could bear. Yet he prayed again and again for the fatal caresses. It is possible that syphilis had weakened his moral fibre; many of us between forty and fifty have come to nervous breakdown and by resolute abstinence, careful exercise and change of scene have won back to health and sanity. But it was the young Maupassant of the boating on the Seine and the heedless insane indulgences with Mimi and Musette that weighted the dice against him. I have said that it took sheer good fortune for a miracle of genius such as Shakespeare to grow to full height and give the best in him; had it not been for Lord Southampton's gift of a thousand pounds we should never have seen Hamlet or Lear or Macbeth or The Tempest. It requires a miracle of genius, and extraordinary bodily strength to boot, in a Frenchman to reach healthful old age as Hugo did and at seventy write on the art and joy of being a grandfather. But Maupassant, like Shakespeare, was first and last a lover, and that's the heaviest of all handicaps. His valet Francois has told us more of the truth about the last stage than any other observer. He noticed at once that Maupassant's inamorata was 455 extremely pretty and beautifully dressed. "C'est une bourgeoise du plus grand chic; elle a tout a fait le genre de ces grandes dames qui ont ete elevees soil aux Oiseaux, soit au Sacre-Coeur. Elle en a garde les bonnes et rigides manieres." (She's a woman of the greatest distinction, the perfect type of those noble ladies who have been brought up in some famous convent such as the Holy Heart. She has all their charm of manner and their high-bred aloofness.) As he saw the effect of her intimacy with his master, whom he loved, he grew to hate and dread her visits. Time and again he was tempted to tell the "Vampire," as he called her, to keep away. On the twentieth of September, 1891, about two o'clock in the afternoon, he heard the bell and at the door found the woman "who had already done my master so much harm. She passed me, as she always did, without speaking, with impassive marble face." After the catastrophe, he regrets he did not tell her what she was doing and slam the door in her face. He did not know that in August Maupassant had written to her, begging her to come—a piteous last appeal which I have already quoted. "In the evening Maupassant seemed broken (accable) and didn't speak of the visit. In spite of the constant care, he hadn't recovered a month later. Early in November they went from Paris to Cannes to the Chalet de l'Isere." Maupassant was still suffering from tortured nerves (malaise indicible). On the fifth of December he wrote to his lawyer: "I am so ill that I fear I shall not live more than a few days." Every two or three days he went across to Nice to lunch with his mother at the villa Les Ravenelles and Francois went with him to prepare his meal, for he knew exactly how to cook so that his master would get the most nourishment with the least chance of indigestion. On the twenty-fourth of December he paid his mother a long visit and promised to spend Christmas day with her; he was getting better slowly and wanted above all things to get to work once more and finish a sketch he had begun of Turgenev. He begged his mother to read all Turgenev s novels and send him a page or two on each; she promised she would. But on Christmas day he put her off: two ladies, two sisters—one married, the other unmarried—had come to see him and he went with them and spent the day on the island Ste. Marguerite in the Bay of Cannes. We all know who the married one was. Francois does not tell us anything of this change of plan, but he records that in the afternoon of the twenty-sixth, Maupassant went out for a walk towards Grasse and returned ten minutes later. Francois was dressing himself but Maupassant called him loudly, imperiously, to tell him that "he had met on the road a shade, a phantom!" "He was evidently," continued 456 Francois, "the victim of an hallucination and was afraid, though he wouldn't confess it." "On the twenty-seventh at breakfast he coughed a little and in all seriousness declared that he had swallowed a morsel of sole and it had gone into his lungs and he might die of it." This day he wrote again to his solicitors that "he was going from bad to worse and believed that he would be dead within a couple of days." As he went out for a sail on his yacht in the afternoon, the sailor Raymond remarked that he could not lift his leg properly to get on board: now he put it too high, and again too low. Francois remarks that he had already noticed this same symptom of paralytic weakness. On the first of January Maupassant couldn't shave himself, told Francois that there was a sort of mist before his eyes; but at breakfast he ate two eggs and drank some tea and feeling better, set off for Nice, as otherwise "my mother will think I'm very ill." Francois went with him. Curiously enough the reports of this last day's happenings differ widely. His mother says that they talked the whole afternoon and that she remarked nothing abnormal in him, except a sort of exaltation or subdued excitement. In the middle of dinner alone together (tete a tete) he talked wildly (divaguait). "In spite of my entreaties, my tears, instead of sleeping there in Les Ravenelles, he would go back to Cannes. I begged him to stay," she says, "went on my knees to him in spite of the weakness of my old bones; he would follow his own plan (il suivait sa vision obstinee). I saw him disappear in the night, excited, mad, wandering in mind, going I didn't know where, my poor child" (Et je vis s'enfoncer dans la nuit ... exalte, fou, divaguante, allant je ne sais ou, mon pauvre enfant). Most of this is inexact, a fiction of memory, not fact. Francois gives us the truth more nearly: he tells us that he prepared Maupassant's dejeuner and there were present, besides his mother, his brother's wife, and his niece and his aunt (Madame de Harnois), whom Guy loved greatly. At four o'clock the carriage came for them, and on the way to the station they bought a quantity of white grapes to continue his usual regimen (cure). Francois tells how on reaching home Maupassant changed his clothes, put on a silk shirt to be more comfortable, dined on the wing of a chicken, some chicory, and a souffle of rice with cream flavored with vanilla, and drank a glass and a half of mineral water. A little later Maupassant complained of pains in the back. Francois cured him with ventouses, gave him a cup of camomile, and Maupassant went to bed at eleven-thirty. Francois seated himself in an armchair in the next room and waited till his master should fall asleep. At twelve-thirty Francois went to his bedroom but left the door open. A moment after the garden bell rang: it was a telegram; but he found Maupassant sleeping with his mouth half open 457 and went back to bed without waking him. He continues. "It was about twofifteen when I heard a noise. I hurried into the little room at the head of the stairs and found Maupassant standing with his throat cut." "See what I've done, Francois," he said. "I've cut my throat; it's a pure case of madness!" Francois called Raymond, the strong sailor, to help him, then sent for the doctor and helped to put the poor madman in a strait waistcoat. In my first sketch of Maupassant, published in the first volume of my Contemporary Portraits, I was able to go a little deeper even than Francois. I reached the Hotel at Antibes early in January, 1892, when all the world was talking of poor Maupassant's breakdown in madness. At once I went across to Nice and from the accounts of eye-witnesses reconstituted the scene at and after the dejeuner of the first of January in his mother's villa, Les Ravenelles. During the meal his mind had wandered and so justified his mother's fears and anxieties; after the meal he came out on the little half-moon terrace with the blue sky above and the purple dancing sea in front to mock his agony. I quote here what I wrote at the time. How desperately he struggled for control; now answering some casual remark of his friends, now breaking out into a cold sweat of dread as he felt the rudder slipping from his hand; called back to sanity again by some laughing remark, or other blessed sound of ordinary life, and then, again, swept off his feet by the icy flood of sliding memory and dreadful thronging imaginings, with the awful knowledge behind knocking at his consciousness that he was already mad, mad —never to be sane again, mad—that the awful despairing effort to hold on to the slippery rock and not to slide down into the abyss was all in vain, that he was slipping, slipping in spite of himself, in spite of bleeding fingers, falling— falling... Hell has no such horror! There in that torture chamber—did it last but a minute—he paid all debts, poor, hounded, haunted creature with wild beseeching eyes, choking in the grip of the foulest spectre that besets humanity ... He returned to Cannes by train and at two next morning Francois heard him ringing and hurried to his bedside, only to find his master streaming with blood and mad, crying wildly, 'Encore un homme au rancart! au rancart!' (Another man on the dust-heap). Surely this phrase is De Maupassant's, and the remark that Francois puts in his mouth, "It's a pure case of madness," is only his own later summing up of the situation. "Another man on the dust-heap" is the despairing soul-cry of De Maupassant. 458 It was found afterwards that De Maupassant had taken out his revolver, but Francois had already removed the cartridges, so De Maupassant put the revolver down and took up a sort of paper-knife which did not cut deeply enough and injured his face more than his neck. The doctor got De Maupassant to bed and he slept while Francois and Raymond watched in the dim light and thought of the irreparable disaster. In the morning they found the wire from the Jewess, the "Vampire," as Francois calls her again bitterly, while he wonders whether her evil influence, by means of the telegram Maupassant never saw, could have helped to bring about the supreme catastrophe. Everyone knows that the great writer got rapidly worse, was taken to Paris to the asylum of Dr. Blanche, became more and more a mere animal till death took him a year and a half later on the third of July, 1893. Maupassant's life story and tragic end are full of lessons for all artists. What I find in it is the moral I am continually emphasizing, that every power given to us is almost of necessity a handicap and a danger. It was said of Byron, and is surely no less true of Maupassant, that he "awoke one morning to find himself famous." The publication of Boule de Suif put Maupassant in one day among the great masters of the short story. He was praised on all sides as an impeccable artist; it is scarcely to be wondered at that he afterwards neglected self-criticism and hardly ever bettered the workmanship he had shown in that early story. He wrote over two hundred short stories in the next ten years, but perhaps no single tale shows finer artistry. Again: he was gifted with extraordinary virile power; the consequence was that he got syphilis before he was of age and brought himself to an untimely end because he was determined to show off his prowess as a lover. When shall we artists and lovers learn that the most highly-powered engines require the strongest brakes? But how dare I judge him? How inept all criticism appears when I think of his personal charm; the gladness in his eyes when we met; the clasp of his hand; his winged words in the evenings spent side by side; the unforgettable glint when a new thought was struck out; the thousand delights of his alert, clear intelligence; ah, my friend, my dear, dear friend! Gone forever! Guy, swallowed up and lost in the vague vast of uncreated night, lost forever! I reread his last volume: it begins with a masterpiece: L'Inutile Beaute; at the end Un Cas de Divorce and Qui Sait. And now Un Cos de Divorce seems more characteristic to me and more terrible than Qui Sait, with deeper words, words wrung from the soul of a great lover—the man's adoration of 459 the beauty of flowers, his passionate love of the orchid with its exquisite roseate flanks and ivory pistils giving forth an intoxicating perfume stronger far and sweeter than the scene of any woman's body. And he watched the flower fade, wither and die, losing all loveliness, and instead of the seductive perfume, the vile odor of decay. 460 CHAPTER XXI. ROBERT BROWNING'S FUNERAL; CECIL RHODES AND BARNATO; A FINANCIAL DUEL; ACTRESS AND PRINCE AT MONTE CARLO EARLY IN DECEMBER, 1889, Smith Elder, the
publishers, sent me a copy of 461 Shakespeare was infinitely franker. He quoted the last three lines of his poem to me, beginning with Wordsworth's statement, which he prints in italics. ... "With this same key Shakespeare unlocked his heart; once more! Did Shakespeare? If so, the less Shakespeare he." Which seemed to me a dire example of the smaller man judging the greater and in itself mere drivel. I undertook to prove to him that Shakespeare had told a good deal even about his own sensual experiences. I cited the sonnet on lust: Enjoyed no sooner but despised straight, Past reason hunted, and no sooner had Past reason hated, as a swallow'd bait On purpose laid to make the taker mad. "The man who could write that at thirty-five must have been very weak," I began. "It's a confession of weakness: the ordinary healthy man doesn't hate lust after enjoyment; on the contrary—" But Browning would not discuss or even consider it. "There are things that should not be told," he persisted, "things that the public has no right to know"; whereas I was just as sure that all men could learn even from the weaknesses of a great man. Blake knew that The errors of a wise man make your rule Rather than the perfections of a fool. I could not get Browning even to argue or think; he preferred to take my wish to know as an impertinence and we parted in some coldness, though of course as soon as I saw that I could not prevail, I drew back and sought to excuse myself. We met afterwards half a dozen tunes half casually; he never came to my house again nor had I ever again the chance of a private talk with him. And now he was gone ... to where on high Love weighs the counsel of futurity Browning—that vivid soul— Covered with silence and forgetfulness. The passing of such men makes life poorer. When I heard that Browning was to be buried in the Abbey I was heart-glad; an everlasting rest in the great Temple of Silence and Reconciliation was surely due to him. I spoke to Froude about this ceremony on the last day of the dying year and he asked me to go with bun. Of course I was only too glad to promise. 462 It was a foggy, gloomy morning, bleak, too: in the Abbey itself Froude introduced me to Lecky. I was glad that I had read his Rationalism with great interest, for he became friendly when I told him what his phrase for prostitutes—"the sisterhood of sorrow"—had meant to me. "One of the great phrases of our literature," I called it, but I could not help wondering whether with a little loving-kindness the oldest profession could not be made "a sisterhood of joy." But neither he nor Froude would consider it; they called it "a poor French invention," and when I cited what I think the noblest thought in Proudhon, f they still remained entirely unconvinced. Proudhon proposed that the lowest forms of labour, the cleansing of sewers and the most dangerous trades, should be undertaken by the chivalry of youth—a sacred band of volunteers. Men become soldiers, he said, for scant pay and risk their lives for almost nothing. Why not hearten them to take up the vilest and most dangerous work in the same chivalrous spirit? "The sewer brigade would soon win distinction," Proudhon declared, and in the same way it seemed to me that the sisterhood of sorrow might accept even the degradation of lust as a new distinction! But they would not have it; the majority of even able men cannot take up a new idea and give it a reasonable hospitality. While we were talking, the great bell began to toll and the deep tones brought a solemn silence. The whispering was at once hushed. As I looked about me, I was astonished by the number of well known faces even I with my short sight could distinguish: Meredith and Wolseley and, strange to say, Whistler and Irving and Frederic Harrison, Bret Harte, too, and du Maurier. The whole space was crowded and the faces gleamed oddly in the grey mist shot through by the gold of a few candles and lamps. Suddenly the organ rang out in Purcell's burial mass and the bier, preceded by choir and clergy, with Browning's son as chief mourner, was borne to the chancel steps. The papers next day gave a long list of those who followed the coffin, but I could only recognize the fine head of Sir Frederick Leighton. The choristers sang a hymn: the young voices brought tears to my eyes and I was not the only one so affected: Huxley's handkerchief was before his eyes as the music ceased. The coffin was lowered to its place by Chaucer's tomb; the Dean said the benediction and the great organ boomed out the Dead March from Saul. Slowly we all began to move, and when I stood by the grave, great spirits seemed to people the place: Chaucer and Shakespeare, Spenser and Ben Jonson were there, and the great Doctor with his stout figure and reverent soul; and the spirit of Robert Browning met them and words of his seemed to stir the sentient air: 463 O lyric love half angel and half bird And all a wonder and a wild desire. Other lines of his floated into my head, unforgettable lines: the woman's confession in The Ring and the Book: He was ordained to call and I to come. And how Browning thanks God that each man has two soul-sides: ... one to face the world with One to show a woman when he loves her. But does the light come after the darkness and will the woman-soul be wailing? Who knows? Who can tell? Out of the throng in the great church into the foggy great gloom. Even Froude is affected; I hear him whispering: "Soon, soon. He giveth his Beloved sleep," and then aloud: "What a great ceremony!" he went on, "and a great man." I bowed my head. In the summer of 1888 Rhodes startled English society by giving £. 10,000 to Parnell on condition that he'd work for the retention of Irish Members in the British House of Commons, for he believed, as he told Parnell, that "Irish Home Rule would lead to Imperial Home Rule." Suddenly it dawned upon English politicians that they must enlarge their views or the ablest men from their own colonies would be against them. I had already helped to found the Imperial Federation League, so I was heart and soul with Rhodes from the beginning. A very notable Englishman, I thought him, without "side" or pose of any sort, using British snobbery with some disdain to forward his own schemes. He spoke of Parnell as "the most reasonable and sensible man I have ever met." People forget many of Rhodes's achievements. In 1887 Lord Salisbury was quite willing to accept Portugal's extravagant claim to a continuous dominion from Angola on the west coast to Mozambique on the east, which would have finally limited England's empire in Africa. Luckily Rhodes had won Sir Hercules Robinson over to his, or rather Bartle-Frere's idea, that England should annex the whole high central plateau of Africa from the Cape to Cairo. W. H. Smith was opposed to granting a charter to the Rhodes' Exploration Company till Sir Hercules Robinson talked of "the amateur meddling of irresponsible and ill-advised persons in England." In April, 1889, Lord Gifford, Rhodes, Rudd and Beit applied for a charter and Lord Knutsford commended the proposal to Lord Salisbury as likely to save the heavy expenses that had been incurred in British Bechuanaland; and Rhodes was informed privately that he would get what he wanted if he put influential persons on his board. Thereupon he got the Duke of Abercorn as Chairman: the Duke got the Prince of Wales's son-in-law, the Duke of Fife, to consent to join the board, and best of all Albert Grey, whom Courtney called 464 "the Paladin of his generation," and the most distinguished member of the South African Committee. Though warned by Chamberlain, Albert Grey finally agreed to throw in his lot with Rhodes. The trick was turned and the Chartered Company came into existence. All through these negotiations I met Rhodes twice or thrice a week and learned to know him intimately, and most of the marked steps of his rise of fortune and power I heard from his own lips. In 1882 his De Beers Company only paid three per cent on the capital of £. 200,000; in 1888 it paid twentyfive per cent on a capital of over two millions and a quarter. It paid, that is, £. 6,000 in 1882 and six years later £. 600,000. Then he told me of his long fight with Barnato and how at length he incorporated Kimberley Central with De Beers. I shall never forget how summarily he treated it and how differently it all sounded when I heard it from Beit later and then from Barnato and Woolfie Joel. They went, it appeared, to a final meeting one evening in Kimberley, Rhodes and Beit on one side, Barnato and Woolfie Joel on the other. Beit had made it up with Rhodes to let him do the bargaining: "I'm not a Jew for nothing; I'll get it cheaper than you can!" Rhodes consented. Barnato and Woolfie were nearing the place when Barnato said suddenly, "What should we get?" Woolfie said, "Half a million, I hope." "Bah!" cried Barney, "I'm going to be a millionaire tonight, you'll see. Rhodes doesn't value money," and he smacked his lips. When the four met, Rhodes, forgetting all that he had promised Beit, began at once, "I hate bargaining: I'll give you, Barnato, more than your holding in Kimberley's worth. I'll give you a cool million cash!" Beit cried, "Oh my God, my God, Rhodes! You'll ruin us." Barnato got up at once and reached for his hat: "We may as well go, Woolfie, if they think one million can buy us. I thought we were going to get a square deal," and he turned to the door. "Sit down, sit down," cried Rhodes. "Here, Beit, you talk to them." The quartette spent the whole night talking, bargaining, disputing, but at length Rhodes and Beit bought Kimberley Central for over five million sterling; yet the amalgamation was a good deal for De Beers and left Rhodes free to make even more out of the gold fields of the Rand than he had made out of diamonds in Kimberley. When he got the promise of the charter for his exploring company, he went about London with a sheaf of many coloured application forms in his breast pocket. Long before this I had introduced him to Arthur Walter of The Times. 465 Strange to say, Arthur Walter did not take to Rhodes at first. "He's a boor," he said. "He forgets common civilities in his haste to push his own ideas." "True enough," I replied, "but you'll get to like him, Walter; he has no malice in him, nothing petty," and soon my forecast proved true. On a certain evening Rhodes outstayed Walter and then handed me a coloured form. "Write your application for shares in the Chartered Company on that," he said, "and up to a thousand shares you'll get the allotment." I handed him back the paper, shaking my head; at once he selected another color and pushed it across to me. "That's the biggest I'm giving, Harris; that goes in thousands." "I don't want it," I said. "I don't gamble." "Gamble be d... d!" he cried. "This is a certainty: these shares will be dealt in on the stock exchange at a premium of £. 5; you can make £. 40,000 in a week by using that form. I'll give you £. 20,000 for it when you please!" "No, no, Rhodes," I said. "You mustn't misunderstand me. I believe Chartered Shares will go to a big premium (within a week they went to £. 8 each), but I like you and what I've done I've done to help you and the cause we both have at heart, and I don't want any pay for it." He held out his hand to me, saying simply, "I understand, still I wish ..." I shook my head. "D'ye know there's only one other man in England besides yourself who has refused? Look at this list," and he handed it to me. One of the first names to catch my eye was that of the Duchess of Abercorn; the next that struck me in turning the pages was that of Schradhorst, the brother of the Liberal agitator who was always against Rhodes's schemes: he was down for 100 shares. "He asked me for "em," was Rhodes's comment. "Who's that?" I asked, pointing to a name which had only five shares opposite to it. "Oh," exclaimed Rhodes after some thought, "that must be the name of the midshipman who took me out in his gig to the flagship in Simon Bay." We both laughed: from duchess to midshipman, enemy as well as friend, all held out their hands. And Rhodes persisted with me. "You're too careless about money, Harris! You'll see; you'll be sorry for it yet. Take £. 10,000; put it away in Consols and forget it. Before you die, you'll say my advice was the best you've ever had." Winston Churchill gave me the very same advice twenty years later, said that the money I got him for his Life of his father had made him free from care and fear. Rhodes and Winston Churchill were right. I should have taken the 466 money offered me and put it away in Consols and have forgotten about it; I'd have been happier if I had followed their advice. For a good many years about this time I spent the worst of the winter months in Monte Carlo and at first used to gamble a good deal, though I never lost my head or did myself any serious harm. One evening at Monte Carlo I became aware that the Prince of Wales was standing just behind me. Almost at the same moment Sir Algernon Borthwick, whom I knew fairly well, touched my shoulder and bending down told me in a low voice that the Prince wished me to be presented to him. Of course I got up and turned round at once, and the Prince, shaking my hand said, with a strong German accent, "I've heard a great deal about you from my uncle, the Duke of Cambridge. He calls you the best storyteller he has ever met. I hope I may hear you tell some stories one of these days, but now I see you are playing with great luck and I wish you'd put these on for me," and he handed me a bundle of bank notes. His accent was that of a German Jew and "the" was a stumbling block: "that" was "dat" and "these" "dese." There had been a run of red and I had backed it, so I placed the Prince's pile beside mine and won a couple of times, when I took off a couple of maximums for each of us. I was well inspired, for black won the next coup and the Prince was as delighted as a child. What he said about the story-telling came into my head as he stuffed the notes in his pockets. It suddenly occurred to me that probably no one had ever ventured to tell him a naughty story. So I told him a naughty rhyme to his huge amusement. Here's to the game of twenty toes, It's known all over the town; The girls play it with ten toes up And the boys with ten toes down. "Tell me another, tell me another," he cried. So nothing loath, I told him a story that always seemed to me supremely amusing. An old actor found himself one evening on the Thames embankment. Out of work and out at elbows he sat brooding, when one of the female night birds sank onto the bench beside him. He made room for her, bowing courteously, so she began to talk, and finally asking him what he was. "An actor, Madame, merely an old actor. And you?" he added courteously. "Oh," was the bitter reply. "I'm only a prostitute!" The broken down actor turned to her earnestly; "Two great professions, Madame, ours, cursed by the competition of amateurs!" 467 The Prince knit his brow for a moment and then the humour struck him and he laughed heartily. "Another story, Sir," I began, and told of Lady Hawkins. Sir Henry Hawkins, the famous "hanging" judge, so-called, had married his cook in later life and she used English like a common cockney woman and soon became the notorious Mrs. Malaprop of the last decades of the nineteenth century in London. Sir Henry Hawkins loved beautiful oriental carpets and had got a splendid one for his sitting-room. At a reception once, a young lord complimented Lady Hawkins on the splendid carpet. "I don't know how many men have copulated me upon that carpet," the lady is said to have replied. The Prince was so delighted and laughed so heartily that I told him the story of the English servant girl who came to her mistress at the end of the first week, saying, "Mum, I'll have to leave." "Why, Mary," said the mistress, "you've only been here just over a week and we've tried to make it comfortable for you. What's wrong?" "Well, mum, it's them 'orrid texts in my bedroom. I can't abear 'em." "Horrid texts, Mary? What texts?" asked the old Puritan lady in astonishment. "Well, Mum, there's one just over my bed: 'Be ye also ready, for you know not the day nor the hour when the Master cometh.' " "Well," said the old lady, "what do you object to in that, Mary?" "Well, mum," said Mary setting her jaw. "I've been ready over a week and he ain't come yet. I can't sleep." The Prince laughed so consumedly that I continued with old schoolboy "chestnuts" that I should have thought everyone knew. Evidently he had never heard one of them, for he walked up and down the gambling room for half an hour with his arm on my shoulder, shaking with laughter. It was the limericks he seemed to like most; one in especial pleased him so much that he tried to learn it by heart. Here it is. There was a young lady at sea Who said, "God, how it hurts me to pee." "I see," said the Mate, "That accounts for the state Of the captain, the purser and me." 468 I noticed that both Lord Hartington and Randolph Churchill were waiting for a chance of speech with the Prince. I told him this and as a sudden thought came into my head, I blurted it out: "Jeanne Granier, the great French actress is here, Sir, and she's one of the wittiest women in Paris and a great story teller. If you'd do me the honour to sup with me tonight at the Grand Hotel, I'd have Granier and we'd try to amuse you." "I'd love it," he said at once, "but the d... d journalists might talk. Get Lord Randolph Churchill to come too and it'll all be put to his account; more talk about him than me, see?" "All right, Sir," I said. "Shall we say ten o'clock?" "Sure, sure!" he replied. "At ten I'll be with you." On my way to find Jeanne Granier I saw Randolph and he consented to come, but with some unwillingness. "If you don't wish to come," I said, "I can get Lord Hartington, but the worst of it is, he knows no French, while your French is very good." "That settles it," he said whimsically. "I'll call it a command and come." I soon found Granier and took her to dinner; she was the best type of French woman and I think we liked each other sincerely. When I told her about the Prince and how I had won him by risqué stories which no one had ever dared to tell him before, she laughed with keen appreciation. "We are all won by the lives we know nothing about," she said. "I'll tell him stories he has never imagined; leave it to me." We had an excellent dinner and a little before ten made our way to the Grand Hotel. At the very door of the hotel we came across the Prince. It was a wonderful night: the heavens like one deep sapphire set off by the radiance of a full moon. Scarcely had I presented Mile. Granier to the Prince and he had said how delighted he was to know personally such a queen of the stage, when she struck an attitude and pointing to the moon cried: "Qu'elle est belle et pale cette lune-la." And then in a man's voice she rejoined, "Pour belle je n'en sais rien; pour pale, elle doit bien I'etre, elle a passe tant de nuits!" The Prince laughed, delighted with the witty innuendo, and indeed I was surprised by it, till some years afterwards I found that the witty word was from Henri Becque, the dramatist, who passed almost unnoticed and unknown through life, in spite of possessing a great talent. When we got upstairs to my rooms Randolph soon put in an appearance, but he didn't add much to the gaiety of the evening. All the burden was carried by Jeanne Granier, who immediately, after a little supper, began telling us stories of her early life on the stage with incomparable verve and humor. She had been on the boards as a child and from ten years of age on had hardly 469 known an evening without being annoyed by the desire of some old man. "What did they do?" asked the prince. "This manager kissed me, Sir," she said; "that director pinched my bottom (fesses) as I passed; the other told me I was pretty and tempting: all of them without exception persecuted me. Yet I liked it all, I must confess, and the bolder they were, the more I liked 'em!" We could not but laugh! The Prince was rejuvenated, and towards the end Randolph, too, began to take an interest in Granier's stories; and really they were excellent and formed a complete intimate picture and chronicle, so to say, of the French stage. The name of Sarah Bernhardt having come up, she recited a witty little verse as an epitaph of the great cabotine: Artiste adoree aux deux poles Ci-git Sarah, qui remplissait Mieux ses roles Que son corset. Of course we all talked of Sarah for some time and then went off upon Coquelin, whom I always thought the best actor I had ever seen on any stage. To my amazement Randolph agreed with me; he had seen him in Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme and like myself thought him inimitable. Curiously enough, Granier knew a witty epitaph on him, too, and gave it with astounding brio and a shade of malice. Ci-git sous le marbre et le lierre Le petit-flls, le digne heritier de Moliere: Seulement trop modest, au lieu de Poquelin Il s'est appele Coquelin. I don't know why we all laughed so consumedly or why the hours fled so delightfully, but when we separated it was nearly three o'clock and the Prince thanked me for one of the most charming evenings he had ever spent. He praised Granier, too, to the nth and sent her away happy, and even Randolph said that it was a great and memorable night. Before leaving he confessed to me that his inexplicable depression came from losses at the tables. "I must stop gambling," he said. "I have no luck." His luck was out forever, as I shall tell in a later chapter. It seems to me that it was about this time that the great brewing firm of Guinness turned its business into a limited liability company. The company was brought out by the house of Baring and no one ever saw such a success in company promoting in the city of London. All day long hundreds of people besieged the banking offices and when the doors were shut, some daring spirits put stones in their checks and threw them through the windows, determined to get their applications accepted. The shares went immediately 470 to a large premium and everyone was congratulating Lord Revelstoke as the head of the great bank. I saw him one afternoon and he admitted to me that Barings had made over a million pounds sterling on the one transaction, and in the one day, a stroke unparalleled, save by some performances of Hooley some years later. A day or two afterwards I met Lord Rothschild at dinner at Sir Charles Dilke's, and I was very curious to find out whether the man's ability in any way matched his great position. I told the story of the Guinness promotion as Lord Revelstoke had told it to me and Lord Rothschild listened with seeming interest. When I had finished he said, "The Guinness promotion was offered to us first but we refused it!" "That must cause you some regret," I said, "seeing that it was such a success: even Rothschild's must think a million worth putting in their pockets." "I don't look at it quite in that way," retorted Lord Rothschild. "I go to the House every morning and when I say 'No' to every scheme and enterprise submitted to me, I return home at night carefree and contented. But when I agree to any proposal, I am immediately filled with anxiety. To say 'Yes' is like putting your finger in a machine: the whirring wheels may drag your whole body in after the finger." "Goodness gracious," I cried, "I never thought of looking at it from that point of view." The great financier seemed to me extra cautious, rather than clever, but he had clever people about him, strange to say, and notably Carl Meyer, whom I shall tell about in a later volume. Talking of Lord Rothschild with Dilke later, I found that he agreed with me in my estimate of the gentleman. "When you get to the top of life's pyramid," he said, "caution becomes a virtue, and you have no idea how broad the foundation is laid. The Baron one day took me over the great banking house and showed me in the strong room a million sterling, in sovereigns, that had been put there by his grandfather with the injunction that his father should never touch it, except in case of great emergency. "Wouldn't a draft on the Bank of England," said the son, "be just as good and bring us in thirty thousand a year interest?" "No," said the grandfather, "there are moments when you need gold if it were for nothing but to give you the sense of security." I heard later a story of William Waldorf Astor which bore out the same lesson. I shall probably tell it in my next volume. 471 CHAPTER XXII. LORD RANDOLPH CHURCHILL A GREAT DEAL has been written about Lord Randolph
Churchill by those 472 with a contempt, too, for titular authority that would have been marked, even in a Radical. In 1878 he attacked a Minister, ponderous Sclater-Booth, in a way that rejoiced the House. "I don't object," he said, "to the Head of the Local Government Board dealing with such grave questions as the salaries of inspectors of nuisances. But I have the strongest possible objection to his coming down here with all the appearance of a great lawgiver to repair, according to his small ideas and in his little way, breaches in the British Constitution." And then the witty sneer that set the House roaring: "Strange," he went on, as if speaking to himself, "strange, how often we find mediocrity dowered with a double-barreled name!" Sclater-Booth's harmless little bill introduced the elective principle timidly into County Government. Randolph attacked it as of "brummagem-make," a "most Radical measure, a crowning desertion of Tory principles, a supreme violation of political honesty." Everyone went out of the House comparing this with Disraeli's famous attacks on Peel. A little later Randolph spoke on Irish education in the most liberal and pro- Irish spirit. Thanks to the years he had passed in Dublin when his father was Viceroy, he knew Ireland and Irish matters better than almost any English politician and so established his reputation for brains as well as audacity. The House always filled to hear him, even more than for any Minister. In spite of the fact that he was still a bad speaker, now too loud, now too low, always dependent on his notes and frequently at a standstill, confused by their volume, he was the greatest attraction in the Chamber; and in the beginning of the Parliament of 1880 the Bradlaugh incident gave him his first real opportunity. He changed his seat to the corner seat below the gangway and at once made himself the head of the new group composed of Drummond Wolff, Gorst and Arthur Balfour, which he himself christened the "Fourth Party," as Winston relates. For the next seven years Randolph Churchill was incontestably the most sensational figure in the House of Commons, and long before the defeat of Gladstone's government he was recognized as the ablest Conservative in the Chamber. The House of Commons has a very strong schoolboy element in it, and Gladstone's defeat was symbolized to everyone by the fact that hardly were the division figures given to the Opposition Whip, when Randolph jumped up on his corner seat and started all the cheering! Naturally, he became Leader of the House and Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Conservative Ministry of Lord Salisbury, and here another trait showed itself, his gratitude. Randolph took care that all supporters should be rewarded: Wolff was made a privy counsellor and Gorst an un-der-secretary of state: honor to the Jew and a salary to the needy. I remember, after I had got to know and like Lord Randolph, lunching on Sunday at Mrs. Jeune's when he was at the same table. Almost before lunch 473 was finished, Lord Randolph got up and excused himself with "urgent business" and left the room, followed closely by the Conservative Whip. In a few moments, to our astonishment, this gentleman, Winn, if my memory serves me truly, returned, pale as a ghost and evidently too angry to choose his words. When Mrs. Jeune pleasantly asked him, "Has anything happened," he replied, "A piece of brutal rudeness entirely unprovoked. Yesterday Randolph came to me and said he wanted half an hour's talk. I had to tell him I was too busy then. He asked me to meet him here today, said he'd leave early, begged me to follow his example and we might have half an hour's quiet talk. A little against my habit, I consented; you saw how I followed him; in the hall I asked him, 'Where shall we go for our talk?' He cried, 'Can one never get rid of you and your talks!' and flung out of the house. I was never so insulted in my life!" The poor gentleman seemed almost unable to get over the shock to his dignity; we all commiserated with him while secretly diverted by Randolph's rudeness. But no one who wishes to win in English political life, not even a Duke's son, can afford to be habitually rude, and especially not to a Whip of his own party. When a day or two later I mentioned the fact to Lord Randolph, he merely grinned. "I had forgotten," he said, "that I asked him to follow me, but he's rather a fool." Still, men intent on gaining and keeping power should learn "to suffer fools gladly," as St. Paul knew. Another story here that should have found a place before his triumph. He dined with me one night—if I remember rightly, at the short-lived Amphitryon Club—and afterwards he took me with him to a meeting at Paddington, where he was 'billed' to speak. The dinner had been excellent and the Perrier-Jouet of 1875 was, I think, about the best champagne I ever drank. We had a magnum, and for the first and last time in my knowledge of him, Randolph showed himself a little excited, or perhaps I should say, reckless. At any rate, I had never heard him speak so well: in his own constituency, with none but friends and admirers about him, he spoke without notes. Usually he wrote out his speeches and learned them by heart and even then depended on notes for the sequence of subjects and special phrases. This night he talked extemporaneously, and to my astonishment adapted without knowing it a thought in the second part of Goethe's Faust to the condition of English politics at that moment. He began by predicting that a general election was at hand, and "which party will win in it, is the question of questions. The Liberals and Mr. Gladstone are very confident; they know that the working classes hold the balance of power; and the Liberal bourgeoisie think they are nearer the workmen than the aristocratic Conservatives can possibly be. But my feeling is that this earl or that marquis is much more in sympathy with the working man than the greedy nonconformist butcher or baker or candlestick maker. I want you to seize my point because it explains what I have always meant when I spoke of myself as a Tory-democrat. The best class and the lowest class in England come together naturally: they like and esteem each other; they are not greasy hypocrites talking of morality and frequenting the Sunday school while 474 sanding the sugar; they are united in England in the bonds of a frank immorality." Naturally I led the cheering, which, however, was curiously feeble and soon died away into half-hearted laughter and much shamefaced grinning. In the pause that followed I looked over the side of the platform to the reporters' table: everyone had dropped his pen or pencil and was waiting for the rest of the speech. Randolph spoke for some time longer and, I thought, with effort, as if to efface the impression of his great and true word. When we were driving away, he asked me whether he had said anything very dreadful. I sought to reassure him. "The best thing I ever heard or ever expect to hear on an English platform," I said, and I told him what he had said. At once he took fright. "It's all that d... d champagne," he cried, "but we must see that the phrase doesn't get into The Times so that it can be dexterously contradicted or perhaps smothered. You'll help me, won't you?" Of course I consented, but assured him that the reporters hadn't taken down the phrase. He laughed, but insisted on making assurance doubly sure, so we drove first to The Times office; and as good luck would have it, I found Arthur Walter there, who, after hearing everything, sent to the composing room for a "pull" of the report, and to my amusement, the great phrase had been carefully omitted. Next morning I went through all the newspapers: not a single one had thought the truth worth recording. This phrase is still to me the high-water mark of Randolph Churchill's intelligence. Either a little before or a short time after this occurrence, I was dreadfully disappointed in him. The channel-tunnel scheme had been set on foot and at once I took fire for the idea. A little earlier I had been astonished by the extraordinarily rapid growth both of Antwerp and Hamburg as ports, and I had found out that this was due partly to the fact that freights brought to any British port had to "break cargo" and be transhipped again because there was no channel tunnel which would have allowed trains to run right through to the continent. I made a special study of the question and came to the conclusion that if a tunnel were running, the port of London would soon be once more the first in the world. I couldn't but believe that English common sense would insist on the enterprise being carried out with the briefest possible delay. And there was big money in the gamble. Accordingly, I went to work with pen and word of mouth to convince the English public of its plain self-interest. In ten minutes' talking I persuaded Lord Randolph Churchill, and encouraged by my warm praise of him as a "pioneer," he declared that he would not only vote for the project, but speak for it to boot. On hearing this I felt sure of victory. To cut a long story short, when the debate came on, a new thought entered Randolph Churchill's brain. With a great deal of humor he pictured an English official, the secretary of state for home affairs, hearing that five thousand French troops had seized the tunnel 475 and were coming through to Dover. Ought he or ought he not to blow them all up? "For one," summed up Lord Randolph, "I prefer security to the doubt." The whole picture was idiotic. As I had pointed out to Randolph, no French troops would take such a desperate risk; both ends of the tunnel could be raised above water level, so that they could be easily blown to pieces by a mere gunboat. No general would send troops through such a defile, and if he did, ten to one they'd all have to surrender the next day. But the parliamentary triumph was all Randolph cared for and the whole thing gave me the measure of his insularity. But why, after all, should I blame him, when now, forty years later, the channel tunnel scheme has just been vetoed again by five prime ministers considering the whole question in cold blood, now that airplanes have dropped bombs in London and played havoc with the protection given to England by the sea. At the very moment of writing this, too, I find Winston Churchill defending the construction of a channel tunnel with the very arguments I had used to persuade his father a generation ago. At the moment I was wretchedly disappointed, for I had been fool enough to say that Randolph Churchill would defend the scheme, whereas it was he who damned it altogether. He had made a fool of me and merely grinned when I told him how I had come to grief through believing in his word: from that time on my faith in him was shaken. He knew more about Ireland, as I have said, than any English member or minister I had come across, and when over the Home Rule Bill of Gladstone he started the slogan, "Ulster will fight and Ulster will be right," I was paralyzed with horror, for I understand the demoniac cleverness of the vile appeal and realized some of the evil consequences. I could not but remonstrate with him. "You are fighting for today," I said, "but tomorrow, with or without Gladstone, Irish Home Rule will come into being and you'll look like Mrs. Partington." "Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof" was his cynical answer. He was always the fighting politician out to win personal victories, careless of the evil seed he flung broadcast, with absolutely no vision of an ideal future. I was forced to see that my hopes of him were ill-founded. We were both at Wadhurst once, the Murietta's place in Sussex, where Madame de Sainturce dispensed a most gracious hospitality. Sir William Gordon Gumming, I remember, was one of the party, the Sir William who at that time was supposed to be a bosom friend of Prince Edward and gave himself considerable airs because of the royal support. The second day Randolph asked me to come with him to a private room for a talk: he knew that I knew Parnell and Mrs. O'Shea, and he wanted to find out whether it was true that Parnell disguised himself to visit Kitty, and whether that was the explanation of his astonishing changes in appearance. Sometimes Parnell would appear in the House of Commons with a full beard; a week later it was shaved off; now he wore his hair down on his shoulders; next week it was 476 cropped close; and again the top of his head was clean-shaven, as if he had been playing priest. "What did it all mean?" Randolph wanted to know. I told him the truth as I saw it, that Parnell was one of the strangest human beings I had ever met. He was constantly visiting Mrs. O'Shea in disguise, whether to escape notice or merely because he was superstitious I could never quite determine; thirteen terrified him; he counted the paving stones, and if nine brought him with his right foot to the threshold, he walked in happily; I have known him to walk around for half an hour till a lucky number freed him from fear. To my astonishment, Randolph nodded his head, "I can understand that." I could only stare at him in blank wonder. While we were talking the door opened and Lady Randolph appeared. Naturally, I got up as she called out, "Randolph," but he sat still. In spite of his ominous silence, she came across to him, "Randolph, I want to talk to you!" "Don't you see," he retorted, "that I've come here to be undisturbed?" "But I want you," she repeated tactlessly. He sprang to his feet. "Can't I have a moment's peace from you anywhere?" he barked. "Get out and leave me alone!" At once she turned and walked out of the room. "You ought not to have done that, for my sake," I said. "Why not?" he cried. "What has it to do with you?" "Your wife will always hate me," I replied, "for having been the witness of her humiliation. You, she may forgive; me, never." He laughed like a schoolboy. "Those are the astonishing things in you," he said. "You have an uncanny flair for character and life; but never mind: I'll say you were angry with me for my rudeness and that will make it all right!" "Say nothing," I retorted. "Let us hope that she may forget the incident, though that's not likely. Ever afterwards Lady Randolph missed no opportunity of showing me that she disliked me cordially. I remember some years later how she got into the express train for the south in Paris and coolly annexed an old man's seat. I spent ten minutes explaining who she was and pacifying the old Frenchman, but she scarcely took the trouble to thank me. She showed her worst side to me almost always and was either imperious or indifferent. When Lord Randolph became Leader of the House of Commons and Chancellor of the Exchequer, his real greatness came to view at once. The most irresponsible and daring of critics, the type of opposition leader whose 477 metier and raison d'etre was constant attack, frivolous or weighty, took on in one day a new character, a strange unexpected dignity. The metempsychosis astonished everyone: he was not only fair-minded but kind; he would listen to and answer the bore or the fool with dignified courtesy! For the first and only time in the history of the House of Commons, he used his cabinet ministers and party leaders as pawns in a game and treated every debate as a new campaign. Formerly, ministers used to give their names to the Whips and rise to speak when they chose, without reference to the result as they do today. Randolph Churchill altered all that: in the middle of the debate he thought nothing of asking a cabinet minister to speak later or not to speak at all that night, according to the speeches of the opponents. And it was soon clear that Randolph was a most consummate tactician, using all his lieutenants with uncanny understanding. For instance, there was among the Conservatives a large and voluble Jew named Baron de Worms, who delighted in spouting shop-soiled commonplaces. At one moment in a debate Randolph sent Baron de Worms a flattering note, telling him he reckoned on him to reply to the Liberal who was then speaking. De Worms nodded, smiling happily, and when his turn came took the floor with pompous fluency. At once Gladstone began to take notes. Shortly after, Randolph whispered to de Worms to stop: he had given himself away sufficiently and might easily go too far; but de Worms went on till Randolph pulled his coattail violently with a "Sit down, you fool!" Gladstone got up and made de Worms appear ridiculous. As soon as the Great Debater finished his speech, Randolph rose and deplored the fact that the most eloquent man of the day so often kept the debate on a low level because he loved to expose platitudes. And then he went on to develop new arguments and lift the whole controversy to a higher level. When he sat down everyone in the House admitted that Gladstone had been sharply countered, and not only out-generalled, but put in a secondary place. Till I questioned Randolph afterwards, I had no idea that he had planned the whole attack like a born captain and used poor de Worms as a bait to "draw" Gladstone. In all the essential qualities of leadership he surprised everyone capable of judging. Gladstone was reported to have said that Lord Randolph was the courtliest man he had ever met and the greatest Conservative since Pitt. In the six weeks after the adjournment, he won golden opinions from all sorts and conditions of men. The best judges, even men as clear slighted as Hartington and Dilke, did not perceive all his qualities till later. After the Bradlaugh debate Hartington said that Randolph knew the House of Commons better than the House knew itself, but Dilke, I think, was the first to see his unique qualities as a director of debate and captain of word warfare. Time and again I quoted Bacon's great word that might have been written expressly about him: "Great men, like the heavenly bodies, move violently to their places and calmly in then: places." 478 But now and then a spice of the old Randolph delighted the House. A specious motion was made, hiding a cunning trap: Randolph rose. "Surely in vain is the net spread in the sight of any bird," he began and the House howled its appreciation. "Randolph can't be caught napping; he had two eyes"—a score of differently worded eulogies! Everyone in the House seemed lifted to a higher level through his ability. The exact contrary of this took place a few years later when Arthur Balfour became Leader of the House. He persisted in treating members as if they had all come from Connemara and he was still Irish Secretary, and the House resented his insolent impertinences. When the House met again Lord Randolph's power had grown: he had deposed Gladstone, had won a greater position in the House than Gladstone himself. True, very soon there were rumors of disputes in the Cabinet. "They object to Randolph's budget," we heard, the "they" being Lord George Hamilton for the Navy and W. H. Smith for the Army; but everyone felt that "they" must give in. Then a golden day when one heard that Lord George Hamilton cut down his estimate; there would be peace. What would Randolph's budget be like? He told me on two or three occasions that he meant to bring in a democratic budget; Gladstone's cry of "Peace, Retrenchment, and Reform" seemed to have got into his blood. In vain I tried to persuade him that the times had changed, that the days of the old ten pound householder who paid all the taxes and therefore loved economy as the chief of virtues had passed away for ever. "The majority of the presentday voters," I asserted, "pay nothing and Englishmen usually prefer freehandedness to economy." He would not even consider it. One evening he told me that "Smith's holding out and won't reduce his estimates and he's backed by Salisbury! Think of the pair," he cried, "old tradesmen both! And both hate me. I'll resign and see what they'll do in front of Gladstone." "Don't be mad," I cried. "Don't resign, stick to the wheel." Suddenly he told me at dinner that he was going down to Windsor, and when out of ignorance I saw nothing to wonder at in that invitation, he explained to me that in his elder brother's divorce case ten years or so before, he had taken up the cudgels for Blandford against the Queen and had been boycotted by the Court ever since. He was immensely pleased with the Queen's invitation. When he returned from Windsor, the news of his resignation had preceded him and created an extraordinary sensation: it was whispered with bated breath that he had used the Queen's letter paper to write his resignation to Lord Salisbury, as if Randolph could ever have thought that anyone would imagine he would steal dignity from an invitation to Windsor. Lord George Hamilton went down in the train with him to Windsor and tells us that even then Randolph had made up his mind to resign. In gratitude for some earlier support from The Times, Randolph had given that paper the first news and editor Buckle chastized him very courteously in two whole columns. The same morning I got a line asking me to come to see him; I went up to 479 Connaught Place with heavy heart about eleven o'clock. The rows of carriages about the house startled me and the house itself was crammed with Tory members of Parliament. I caught Randolph between two rooms. "What d'ye think of it?" he cried, joyously bubbling over. "More than two hundred and fifty Tory members come to attest their allegiance to me: I've won; the 'old gang' will have to give in." But he had reckoned without Salisbury's obstinacy and dislike. Nothing happened for days and I got another note. Again I went to Connaught Place, empty now, the rooms, and deserted. Randolph came to me. "The rats desert the sinking ship," he began gloomily. "Salisbury has cabled Harrington to return from the continent and in a week he'll arrive." "Will Hartington help him?" I asked. "He had a great opinion of you, I know," and I told him how Hartington had praised his leadership of the House to me and how convincing the praise was, because those who praised most highly were the best judges. At first Randolph seemed dejected, but in the course of talk he told me how he had won the Queen at dinner and how she told him she regarded him as a true statesman. "A great woman," he added, "one of the wisest and best of women." A few days later Hartington arrived; Randolph met him at the railway station and was profoundly impressed. "A noble man," he said afterwards, gravely. "He assured me that he regarded me as a born Conservative leader and would do nothing to embarrass me." A couple of days later he told me in wonderment that Salisbury had offered to serve with or under Hartington and that Hartington had refused: "I must win now; that's Salisbury's last card." But it wasn't. A couple of days later I called upon him; he met me with the exclamation: "I'm dished. Goschen will be Chancellor; I had forgotten Goschen." He went on to tell me that Mrs. Jeune had suggested it to him. "As soon as she mentioned the name," he said, "I felt struck through the heart. I knew it was all over." And it was. "Old Morality," W. H. Smith, undertook to lead the House and Goschen made himself responsible for the finances and Randolph was out in the cold. I tried to persuade him that nothing was really lost. "The corner seat below the gangway," I cried, "and your most stinging criticism and in six months 'Old Morality' will be glad to get back to his bookshop, and ..." He shook his head to my utter wonder. "I can't," he said. "I am a Conservative; I can't. Ah! If it were Gladstone in power, I'd get to work at once. I can't fight my own side." But he had fought his own side on the Brad-laugh business six years before; why had he changed? "Why on earth then did you resign?" rose to my lips, but I said nothing. The tragedy was complete without comment. 480 One more incident, for the fallen lion was to get more than one kick. Strange it was that from 1880 to his resignation in 1886 everything seemed to favor and help him. After his resignation everything went against him. Astonishingly good luck in a series and then astonishingly bad luck. Yet just at first everything seemed to go well; all through the session of 1887 there were rumors of reconciliation. People were so under the spell of Randolph's consummate leadership and masterful personality that they felt sure he would break out in some new way; he must have something up his sleeve. Then came tidings of a pact with Chamberlain and the mirage of a Center party. As leader of the House, "Old Morality" Smith, without an "h" to his name, was almost absurd. The rumor grew; then Bright died and Central Birmingham was vacant. At once I heard through Louis Jennings, Randolph's best friend and also a good friend of mine, that Randolph, sick of Paddington and villadom, was going to stand for Bright's old seat and make Torydemocracy a reality. But Chamberlain would not hear of such a rival near his throne; he told Hicks-Beach that if Randolph stood for Central Birmingham, the unwritten compact between the Liberal Unionists and the Conservatives would be broken and he would consider himself free to act as he pleased. Hicks-Beach at first fought for Randolph: he had always the highest opinion of Randolph's genius. When Gladstone fell in 1886, Lord Salisbury called Hicks-Beach with Randolph to determine who should lead the Lower House. Hicks-Beach's claim was older and many would have said better founded; he was a man of high character, great experience and real ability, but he wouldn't hear of any comparison. Randolph, he declared, was the first choice in every way: he must be the Leader and he, Hicks-Beach, would take a place under him. Now he hated to wound Randolph but Chamberlain was inexorable. As Hicks-Beach hesitated, Chamberlain set Lord Harrington to work and Harrington's intervention settled the matter: Randolph must give up the idea of representing Central Birmingham or destroy the coalition. Randolph left the decision to Hicks-Beach and Hicks-Beach told him he must save the party and withdraw. Randolph felt the blow intensely. The news had got out, and to be beaten by Chamberlain, he felt, was humiliating. Randolph went racing, began to bet heavily and at first made money. People smiled as at the aberrations of a boy. A year or so later came another blow. The government announced its intention to appoint a Royal Commission to enquire into the accusations of Parnell by The Times. Randolph, well informed as always on Irish matters, saw the danger and out of sheer greatness of soul sent to W. H. Smith a protest pointing out the peril, more than hinting, indeed, his opinion that Parnell would be whitewashed. His old colleagues were too stupid to pay any attention to his warning. When the report came before the House early in 1890, Randolph drafted an amendment with Jennings, blaming The Times while ignoring the action of the government. Jennings was to introduce the amendment which Randolph promised to support in a speech. The House was thronged: Jennings was in his place waiting to be called on by the Speaker 481 when Randolph got up and began attacking the government in the bitterest words he could find. When he sat down he saw that Jennings was angry and wrote him several little notes, but Jennings was seriously offended and would never speak to Randolph again. The truth is, as his son has said, Randolph was too much of an aristocrat, too self-centered, too imperious and impatiently irritable to be a good friend. He quarreled with almost everyone, notably with Gorst and Matthews, who owed him much —with everyone, indeed, except Hicks-Beach, Ernest Beckett, afterwards Lord Grimthorpe, his brother-in-law Lord Curzon, and Wolff, whom he seldom saw. After the Chamberlain business I saw less of him, but I met him a little later in Monte Carlo and dined with him and had him to dinner more than once, as I shall tell later. While he played lieutenant to Randolph, I met Louis Jennings frequently and got to like him really; and after the quarrel over the amendment I saw still more of him. He wanted me to take up the New York Herald in London and edit it. But I had good reason to distrust Gordon Bennett,! as I may tell later, and so nothing came of Jennings' well meant proposal. But it brought us close together, and in his anger over what he called Randolph's traitorism, we often discussed Randolph and his future. Jennings was an excellent, kind fellow, with brains enough to appreciate Randolph's brains, and dowered besides with perfect unselfish loyalty. Speaking of Randolph once he said, "You know he doesn't like you, don't you?" "No," I replied. "I thought he rather liked me, not that it matters much: his likings and dislikings are not reasonable." "He has great charm of manner," said Jennings, "when he likes, and he uses it and reckons on it. But he's done for; we're wasting time talking about him." "What do you mean?" I cried. "He's in his prime, has twenty years before him and unique parliamentary genius. If he'd give up gambling and playing the fool, he could be Leader of the House and Prime Minister again within a couple of years." Jennings shook his head: "He's not so strong as you think; in my opinion he's doomed." "What on earth do you mean?" I exclaimed. "I oughtn't to tell it, I suppose," he said, "but Randolph told it to me casually enough once when trying to explain a headache and a fit of depression, and it's an interesting story." Here it is as I heard it from Jennings that evening in Kensington Gore. 482 "Randolph was not a success at Oxford at first," Jennings began. "He never studied or read; he rode to hounds at every opportunity and he was always as imperious as the devil. But after all, he was the son of a Duke and Blenheim was near and the best set made up to him, as Englishmen do. He was made a member of the Bullingdon Club, the smartest club in Oxford, and one evening he held forth there on his pet idea that the relationship of master and servant in the home of an English gentlemen was almost ideal. 'Any talent in the child of a butler or gardener,' he said, 'would be noticed by the master, and of course he'd be glad to give the gifted boy an education and opportunity such as his father could not possibly afford. Something like this should be the relationship between the aristocratic class and the workmen in England: that is Tory-democracy as I conceive it.' Of course the youths all cheered him and complimented him and made much of him, and when the party was breaking up, one insisted on a 'stirrup-cup.' He poured out a glass of old brandy and filled it up with champagne and gave it to Randolph to drink. Nothing loath, Randolph drained the cup, and with many good wishes all the youths went out into the night. Randolph assured me that after he had got into the air he remembered nothing more. I must now let Randolph tell his own story." "Next morning," Randolph began, "I woke up with a dreadful taste in my mouth, and between waking and sleeping was thunder-struck. The paper on the walls was hideous—dirty—and, as I turned in bed, I started up gasping: there was an old woman lying beside me; one thin strand of dirty grey hair was on the pillow. How had I got there? What had happened to bring me to such a den? I slid out of bed and put on shirt and trousers as quietly as I could, but suddenly the old woman in the bed awoke and said, smiling at me, 'Oh, Lovie, you're not going to leave me like that?' "She had one long yellow tooth in her top jaw that waggled as she spoke. Speechless with horror, I put my hand in my pocket and threw all the money I had loose on the bed. I could not say a word. She was still smiling at me; I put on my waistcoat and coat and fled from the room. 'Lovie, you're not kind!' I heard her say as I closed the door after me. Downstairs I fled in livid terror. In the street I found a hansom and gave the jarvy the address of a doctor I had heard about. As soon as I got to him, he told me he knew my 'brother and ..." I broke out in wild excitement, 'I want you to examine me at once. I got drunk last night and woke up in bed with an appalling old prostitute. Please examine me and apply some disinfectant.' Well, he went to work and said he could find no sign of any abrasion, but he made up a strong disinfectant and I washed the parts with it; and all the time he kept on trying to console me, I suppose, with cheap commonplaces. "There isn't much serious disease in Oxford. Of course there should be licensed houses, as in France, and weekly or bi-weekly examination of the inmates. But then we hate grandmotherly legislation in England and really, my dear Lord Randolph, I don't think you have serious cause for alarm.' Cause for alarm, indeed; I hated myself for having been such a fool! At the end I carried away a couple of books on venereal diseases and set at work to devour them. My next week was a 483 nightmare. I made up my mind at once that I deserved gonorrhea for my stupidity. I even prayed to God, as to a maleficent deity, that he might give me that; I deserved that, but no more, no worse: not a chancre, not syphilis! "There was nothing, not a sign, for a week. I breathed again. Yet I'd have to wait till the twenty-first day before I could be sure that I had escaped syphilis. Syphilis! Think of it, at my age, I, who was so proud of my wisdom. On the fateful day nothing, not a sign. On the next the fool doctor examined me again: 'Nothing, Lord Randolph, nothing! I congratulate you. You've got off, to all appearance, scot-free.' "A day later I was to dine with Jowett, the Master of Balliol. It was a Sunday and he had three or four people of importance to meet me. He put me on his left hand; he was always very kind to me, was Jowett. I talked a lot but drank very sparingly. After that first mad excess, I resolved never to take more than two glasses of wine at any dinner and one small glass of liqueur or brandy with my coffee. I wouldn't risk being caught a second tune. I was so thankful to God for my immunity that vows of reform were easy. "In the middle of dinner suddenly I felt a little tickling. Strange! At once I was alarmed, and cold with fear, excused myself and left the room. Outside I asked a footman for the lavatory, went in and looked at myself. Yes! There was a little, round, very red pimple that tickled. I went out and begged the butler to excuse me to the Master. 'I am feeling very ill,' I said, 'and must go home.' "'You don't look well,' he replied, and in a minute I was in a hansom and on the way to the doctor's. Luckily he was in and willing to see me. I told him what brought me and showed him the peccant member. At once he took out his most powerful lens and examined me carefully. When he had finished I asked him, 'Well?' "'Well,' he said dispassionately, 'we have there a perfect example of a syphilitic sore!' Why I didn't kill him, I don't know. "Inwardly I raged that I should have been such a fool. I, who prided myself on my brains, I was going to do such great things in the world, to have caught syphilis! I! It was too horrible to think of. Again the fool doctor: 'We must cure it,' he was saying. 'It's incurable,' I retorted; 'all the books admit that.' "'No, no,' he purred on. 'Taken in time we can make it innocuous. Mercury is a sovereign remedy, nothing equal to it, though very, very depressing. Have you resolution enough to persevere with it? That's the question.' "'You'll see,' I replied. 'Any other advice?' 484 "'Absolute abstention from all alcoholic drink,' he said. 'I'll write you out a regimen, and if you follow it, in a year you will be cured and have no further ill effect.' "To cut a long story short, I did what he told me to do, but I was young and heedless and did not stop drinking in moderation and soon got reckless. Damn it, one can't grieve forever. Yet I have had very few symptoms since and before my marriage. The Oxford doctor and a London man said I was quite clear of all weakness and perfectly cured." I was thrilled by the story: was there another chapter to it? Was this what Jennings meant when he said that Randolph was doomed? What else did he know or fear? I had just found about Maupassant, had begun to attribute his ghastly fears to syphilis. But then Maupassant had taken little or no care to cure himself, while Randolph asserted that he had done everything he was told to do. I could not but ask, "Do you think it has injured Randolph's health?" "I'm sure of it," Jennings nodded. "He has fits of excessive irritability and depression which I don't like. In spite of what he told me, I don't think he took much care. He laughed at secondary symptoms, but now I hear he's going for a long holiday to South Africa under Beit's auspices and that may cure him. At any rate, his fate no longer concerns me." A couple more stories and Randolph Churchill's life is told so far as I am concerned. I have already said that I met him in Monte Carlo a good many times in almost successive years. At first he amused me by his childish belief that he could make money gambling at the tables. I told him that at Baden- Baden, Blanc, the proprietor, had only half the odds in his favor and yet had managed to make a great fortune. But he insisted that the power of varying the stake gave the punter an advantage; I was of use to him because I had known Monte Carlo for years, as well as it could be known, croupiers and directors and all. He was childishly self-confident and I found I was wasting my time trying to dissuade him from playing, so I showed him what they call "Labby's system," which is a very slow progression if you lose and therefore less dangerous than most systems, which are usually modifications of the silly doubling game which quickly kills or cures, as your maximum stake is limited. After several meetings at Monte Carlo Randolph became more friendly to me and talked more frankly with me than he had ever done in the days of his success. One evening after dinner in the Hotel de Paris we had a really serious talk about politics and I found we were poles apart. I pointed out that just as village communities were superseded by nations, so nations now were in process of being superseded by world empires; already two were being formed, Russia and the United States, which must soon dwarf all nations. The 485 question for England was; would she bring about a union with the colonies and become an English confederation of states with an imperial senate drawn from all her colonies, instead of that potty House of Lords? To my astonishment he got angry. "I know the House of Lords," he exclaimed, "and there's a lot of good sense in it and good feeling and I hate your imperial senate of jumped-up grocers from Ballarat and shopkeepers from Sydney!" I found nothing to say: he lived still in feudal times and his brains were an accident. I then talked to him of socialism and the part it should play in a well ordered community. Randolph would not have socialism at any price, did not really understand the first word of the modem problem. He would not acknowledge that the prosperity of the working classes in France came from the partition of the land of France during the Revolution. "The comparative prosperity of the French peasants has its drawbacks," he insisted. "Look at their narrow, sordid lives!" he cried, "I prefer England with its wider freedom and one class at least that gets all the best out of life and sets a great example." After that evening I took little interest in his possible return to power. His want of education maimed him; he could never be a Mazzini, let alone a Bismarck. As he ate and drank and spoke of the well dressed women that came and went, I understood how "illiterate" had come to mean "lewd." I noticed now too for the first time that he was terribly nervous: his hands twitched; he started and shook at every sudden sound. I could only hope that his trip to South Africa would bring him back to health and strength. He went out in a Donald Currie liner and contributed articles to an English journal, in which he condemned the food and drink as that of a second class lodging house. He was amply justified but he was bitterly attacked for his well founded criticism. All the mercantile world, whose patriotism is mainly self-interest, and their champions in the press, kept on ridiculing him month in month out till they had seriously damaged his reputation with the many. Yet the food on board ship was bad everywhere till Ballin with the help of Harris established a Ritz restaurant on the Kaiserin Auguste Victoria and at once lifted all ocean travel into a higher category of comfort. He was the first to make sea life luxurious. Randolph came back from South Africa bearded like a pard, a grey-haired old man. Others have told how he tried to regain his place and influence in Parliament and his ghastly failure. The House filled to hear him: he got up and after the first few words began to mumble and hesitate and repeat himself incoherently, while frequent emphatic gestures emphasized the grotesqueness of the exhibition. Balfour sat beside him with his head bent forward, buried in his hands. "Randolph's finished," was the universal verdict. "What's happened to him?" everyone was asking. "Who would have believed it?" 486 I heard from Beit that Randolph had made money by following his advice and investing in the deep levels; indeed, it is known that when he died he left a great many thousands of pounds to his widow, all derived from this source. Jennings' words recurred to me again and again: "Randolph's doomed," I was soon to learn the reason. His brother died and at once I announced that I was going to publish in the Fortnightly Review an article on "The Art of Living" by the late Duke. I showed phrases of it to reporters, and as everyone knew the brains and frankness of the Duke, it was easy to work up a tremendous sensation, for indeed the article was almost too outspoken to be published. My readers will remember that I got the article by publishing, at the Duke's request, a paper written by Lady Colin Campbell, who was the Duke's mistress at the time, and a very pretty mistress, too. I only consented to publish her outpouring on condition that the Duke would write me a perfectly frank paper giving his real views of life and living. He certainly did what I asked: in the paper he declared that women were the only things in life worth winning. "A good dinner and the good talk of able men is interesting, but without women and the pleasure they give, life would be stale, flat and unprofitable, a tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury signifying nothing." Some years after I had published Lady Colin's paper, the Duke told me that she had insisted on being invited to spend a week at Blenheim by his new wife, formerly the rich Mrs. Hammersley of New York. The Duchess consented at once in all innocence, and in due course Lady Colin appeared and insisted on flaunting her intimacy with the Duke, whom she always called by his Christian name. In huge glee he told me that the devil of a woman would take him for a walk in the morning alone and keep him till they were late for lunch. "We are such old friends," she said to the Duchess, "and I haven't seen him for so long. You must really forgive us: when we are together time flies." The Duke said, "My wife is far from being a fool: indeed, no woman is blind in such a case and Lady Colin'll never get another invitation to Blenheim." That was as much as I knew when I got a letter from Randolph, asking me to come to see him in his mother's house in Grosvenor Street, where he was staying at the time. I went all unsuspecting. I had often had similar notes from him in the past. When he came across the room to shake hands with me, I was appalled by his appearance. In a couple of years he had changed out of character, had become an old man instead of a young one. His face was haggard; his hair greyish and very thin on top; his thick beard, also half-grey, changed him completely. He held himself well, which added dignity, but the old boyish smile had gone. "Sit down, sit down," he said. "We must have a talk! You don't know the Duchess of Marlborough, do you?" he began. "She would like to know you and I think you would be friends. I'm going to bring about a meeting. She's really a remarkable woman and my brother's death has been a dreadful blow to her; she loved him, as good women love us, in 487 spite of our faults. When she read about the article he had written for you and that it was going to be published she was appalled, shocked. She had read the article and hated it, believed it was written under the influence of Lady Colin Campbell, whom she disliked, and she burned the article and the proof you had sent him before my brother—and thought it was done with forever. When she saw the announcement that that hateful article was going to appear, she was beside herself. She sent for her solicitors; they told her nothing could be done. Finally she wired for me and I went to see her. I must tell exactly what I said to this poor, grief-stricken woman. 'We have no power,' I said, 'but it was lucky that you sent for me, because I know the editor of the Fortnightly well, and I'm sure that as soon as Frank Harris understands the position and your rooted objection, he'll suppress the article. I know him and I can promise for him. Make your mind easy: the article will never appear.' Was I not right, Harris?" he added, getting up and holding out his hand. There was a suspicion of the theatre in the appeal, which chilled me a little. It was manifestly prepared, but it was excellently done. Still I hesitated. "You see, I am only a trustee, so to speak," I began. "I don't own the Review: this article of the late Duke was bought and paid for at a very high price." "Of course," Randolph broke in, "it goes without saying that the Duchess will pay whatever's needed, will pay eagerly. That's understood." "But no money payment will do it," I said, and explained how I had only consented to load the Review with Lady Colin's paper because his brother had promised me a contribution so interesting as to atone for the dullness of Lady Colin. "She was very good-looking," Randolph remarked, "with an extraordinary figure. My brother was a good judge .. ."and he smiled. "I'm sure you'll see," I went on, "that I can't pleasure you In this matter. I'm not free, you understand ..." "I know Frank Harris," he replied. "You can do it, if you will, and I have promised on your behalf. You won't refuse an old friend's last request," and he held out his hand again. As I took his hand and looked at him I felt sick: the deep lines on his face, the heavy gummy bags under his miserable eyes, the shaking hand—it might well be his last request! He misunderstood my silence: he feared it meant refusal. Not knowing he had won, he played his last card. "Come, Harris," he began in the most appealing way, "do what I wish and I'll write you an article on any subject you like in exchange for my brother's! Come, say 'Yes'." A moment later he put his hand over his eyes and sat down heavily. "I have slept badly and I don't feel well today," he went on in trembling, indistinct tones. I could not leave him in 488 doubt a moment longer: he filled me with pity and regret— such an end to such a great career! "It shall be as you wish," I said. He looked at me profoundly, and when he liked, his prominent eyes had something piercing in them. "I was sure of you," he said. "I knew you had only to understand the position to do as we wished! I thank you with all my heart and the Duchess will thank you, too, when she hears the good news. I promised to telegraph her," and he turned towards a side table. Then, bethinking himself, he turned to me, "But what am I to write about for you?" he began. "I'm avoiding all hard tasks, but I'll do my best!" "Forget it!" I said. "Get well and strong; that's what your friends all want of you and nothing more." "I'll do my best," he said, "but sometimes I fear the dice are loaded against me." They were loaded indeed and more heavily than either of us dreamed. The rest of his tragic history is soon told. In the eighties and nineties Sir Henry Thompson, the famous doctor, used to give "octave" dinners, as he called them, from the number of the guests. He was a good doctor, I believe, and knew a great deal about stricture and the prostate gland, but he was prouder of the fact that he had written two dull novels and had had paintings hung in the Academy exhibitions. He loved to show two or three pictures of Alma Taddema in his drawing-room, which in itself defines his taste and proscribes his talent. He was kindly, however, and at seventy kindliness is a proof of virtue. His wines, too, were sound without being extraordinary and his guests were often interesting. At one such dinner I remember Randolph was the guest of honor and sat on our host's right. Lord Morris sat on Thompson's left and I came next, and on my left was Sir Richard Holmes, the genial librarian of Windsor. He was kind enough to ask me to come down and pay him a visit and inspect the collection, and I would have accepted eagerly had he not first talked to me of his water color sketches, which also could be seen from time to time gracing the anemic walls of the Academy. The amateur artist, like the amateur writer, is to me almost as boring as the actor or singer. When we sat down at table I was almost opposite Randolph and could not but notice that he bowed very glumly to Lord Morris, who was on my right, and still more coldly to me. He looked far worse now than when I had seen him in Grosvenor Street only a couple of months before: his face was drawn and his skin leaden grey; there were gleams of hate, anger and fear in his eyes, the dreadful fear of those who have learned how close madness is. The soup had come and gone when I said something about Ireland to Lord Morris, who agreed with me. To my amazement Randolph suddenly broke in angrily. "You know a great deal about Europe, Mr. Harris, and of course all 489 there's to be known about America," he barked at me, "but what do you know about Ireland?" "I was born in Galway," I replied, "and brought up in the Royal School at Armagh, and one gets from childhood a certain flair difficult to acquire in later years." "Impossible to acquire," chimed in Lord Morris. "No Saxon ever gets it. I knew without asking that you were a native of my dear, distressful country." Lord Morris spoke with a brogue that would bear, but he always showed me a great deal of kindness, perhaps because I learned very early in our acquaintance that he had a foot in both the Irish camps and was one of the very few men whose opinion on Irish matters could be accepted without misgiving. I believe that he was only "scored" off once in his life, and that was by the notorious Father Healy, a great friend of his. One day Lord Morris was describing a wedding he had witnessed, and carried away by the beauty of the bride, he added, "And there was I with not even a slipper to throw after her." "Why on earth didn't you throw your brogue?" whipped in Healy, brogue being also the name given to the Irish peasant's stout shoe! All through the next course Lord Randolph didn't speak a word. As the game was being taken round, the footman noticed that it was not properly cut, so he passed Lord Randolph quickly to get it dispieced at the sideboard. At once Randolph pointing with outstretched hand, squealed out as if in pain, "E-ee- e-e-e!" "What is it, Lord Randolph?" asked the host in utter solicitude. "E-e-e-e!" He repeated the high squeal, while pointing with his finger after the footman. "I want that—e-e-e! Some of that—e-e!" "It shall be brought back," said Sir Henry. "I'm very glad you like it." The grouse was brought back: Randolph helped himself and began to eat greedily. Suddenly he stopped, put down his knife and fork and glared at each face round the table, apparently suspecting that his strange behavior had been remarked. He was insane, that was clear. From that moment on I could drink but not eat. Randolph Churchill mad! Like Maupassant! When the table broke up, I asked Holmes had he noticed the incident with the game. "No, I didn't remark anything, but the grouse was excellent," he said. Later I asked Lord Morris had he remarked anything strange in Randolph's behavior. "No," he replied, "except that he seems to be in a d... bad temper. " "Didn't you notice how he squealed and pointed?" I went on. "He's mad!" 490 "Was he ever sane?" countered Morris, laughing, and therewith I had to be content, but ever afterwards I knew I had seen Randolph Churchill in what I called "the malignant monkey stage" of insanity. His shrill prolonged squeal is always in my ears when I think of him. Years later, after he had returned to London and died there, I happened to be at dinner once, and beside Mrs. Jack Leslie, his wife's sister. I told her of my experience at Sir Henry Thompson's "octave." "Randolph was quite mad," she said, "when my sister took him on that last trip round the world. We all knew it. No one but Jenny would have trusted herself to go with him, but she's afraid of nothing and very strong. Yet from things she has" let drop, she must have had a trying time with him. Why once, she told me, he drew out a loaded revolver in the cabin and threatened her, but she snatched it from him at once, pushed him back in his berth, and left the cabin, locking the door behind her. Jenny is the bravest woman I ever knew." No wonder Winston has proved his courage time and again. One day, some years later, I was at dinner with Lady Randolph, as I always called her, at Lady Cunard's. I told her something of what Mrs. Jack Leslie had told me and expressed my admiration of her courage in taking Randolph round the world. "At first," she said, "when he was practically a maniac and very strong it was bad enough, but as soon as he became weak and idiotic, I didn't mind." What an epitaph! 491 CHAPTER XXIII. A PASSIONATE EXPERIENCE IN PARIS: A FRENCH MISTRESS IN THIS VOLUME, which contains my memories of De
Maupassant, I wish to 492 "I'm not much in the humor for kissing," I said. "I'm sleepy. I think I've drunk too much: that Musigny was potent." "As you please," she said, and in two minutes had made up a bed for me on the sofa. I pulled off my outer garments, and whilst listening to her splashing in her cabinet de toilette, fell fast asleep. I was awakened suddenly by the acutest pang of pleasure I had ever felt, and found Jeanne on top of me. How she had managed it, I don't know, but the evil was done, if evil there was, and my sensations were too intense to be abandoned. In a moment I had reversed our positions, and was seeking a renewal of the delight, and not in vain: her sex gripped and milked me, with an extraordinary strength and cleverness, such as I had never before imagined possible. Not even with Topsy had I experienced such intensity of pleasure. Taking her in my arms, I kissed her again and again in passionate surprise. "You can kiss me now," she said pouting, "but you didn't believe me when I told you in the victoria to choose me and you would profit by the exchange. My friend has only her pretty face," she added contemptuously. "You're a wonder!" I exclaimed, and lifting her up I carried her over to the bed. As I laid her down, I lifted her nightie: she was well made from the waist down, but her breasts were flaccid and hung low. Still, one thing was sure. "That wasn't your daughter," I said; "you've never had a child." She nodded, smiling. "I was lonely," she said simply, "and Lisette was so pretty and so merry that I adopted her years ago, when she was only a year old. I'm old at the game, you see," she added quietly. I don't know why, but everything Jeanne said increased my interest in her. There was personality and brains in her, though she certainly was anything but pretty, and she not only talked most excellent French, but knew all social customs and observances. When I wished to pay her, she would not accept any money, told me she had no need of anything, and was glad to know me, wanted me as "a friend—and lover," she added, smiling. A day or two later, I gave a lunch at my hotel and had Jules Claretie of the Francais, and a famous comic actor from the Palais Royal, and Jeanne, who made a most surprising hostess. Everyone was charmed with her. She found the right word to say to everyone and had more than tact. She told me afterwards she would never forget my kindness in treating her as an equal. Later I found out that she was the daughter of a French general, but had lost father and mother in the same year. A younger sister whom she loved had been disappointed in love and taken to dope and after her death Jeanne had resolved to make money. She made no secret of the fact that she had two admirers, one a deputy who visited her every fortnight or so and gave her twenty thousand francs a year, the other an old senator who came from time to time, expecting always to find her ready, for he allowed her fifty thousand a year and had given her more than that in one sum. "He's a dear, and I owe him infinite kindness," she 493 said, "and I assure you that when I drove with Adele in the Bois, it was for her sake, not mine, but I liked your jumping into the carriage and your selection of me." It was at that lunch, I think, that Claretie told the story of Aimee Desclee which I may reproduce here, as Aimee Desclee was in many ways the most seductive actress I've ever seen on any stage. "I knew her," Claretie began, "when I was very young in Paris and had just got a place as dramatic critic on the Figaro. I fell in love with her and made up to her, as young men do. One day she told me she wanted to be an actress, to play Phedre, if you please. When I told her she'd have to begin by walking on and could not hope for even a small part for months, she laughed at me and said, that as some men were born generals and not subalterns, so she had no need to serve any apprenticeship. As dramatic critic I knew most of the leaders of the profession, and, strange to say, a few days afterwards I met a man who had taken a theatre and whose leading lady had broken down with bronchitis, if I remember rightly. I told him that I had the very person to take her place and make a great sensation, and I introduced him to Aimee. She made a good impression on him and finally he agreed to produce Phedre and give her her chance. "The night came, the theatre was filled, and Aimee appeared with worse than stage fright. I never saw such a fiasco. One could hardly hear a word she said and in five minutes, amid the jeers of the audience, she fled from the stage and the curtain came down on an audience half-laughing, half-angry, only to be appeased by getting back their entrance money. It took all my savings! "Naturally my colleagues on the press made fun of what they called my infatuation. Some assured me that a pretty face did not make a great actress; others hinted that the girl must have hidden charms: in fine, I was ridiculed on all sides. "I saw nothing more of Aimee, but a year or so later I heard that she had run away to Italy with a comic actor with whom she was madly in love; then we heard that he had left her in Venice without a sou; and some months afterwards I got a short note from her, asking me to come to see her. There was a curious fascination about her, so I went. When she came into the room I was struck dumb! She had lost all her beauty and grown ten years older. 'What has happened?' I could not but ask. "'Like Dante,' she replied, 'I have been in Hell.' "'You had a bad time?' I went on stupidly. "She nodded, and then, 'Do you guess why I've sent for you?' I shook my head. 'I want you to give me another such chance as you gave me before.' 494 "'Impossible,' I replied. 'Everyone laughed at me, and now they all know you. I could not if I would.' "'Now they won't laugh,' she replied. 'I know the kindness in you for me, know that you will help me, and I assure you of my eternal gratitude. You and I must always be friends,' and she held out both hands to me. Her voice had extraordinary quality and her personality charmed me as ever. I found myself saying, 'I will do my best,' and when she thanked me, smiling with her eyes full of unshed tears, I knew I'd do all I could, and more. "Strange to say, about a month later a theatrical agent came to me, just as the first had come a couple of years earlier: he had a theatre and a company but the star actress he wanted to boom had gone off to America and left him in the lurch. Did I know of any actress who could play a great part? Without hesitation I took him to Aimee Desclee. "He knew the whole story of her previous fiasco, but on the way I assured him she had changed, begged him to trust his own judgment, and what I expected happened. He was swept off his balance by her personal magnetism and he staged Phedre for her, only stipulating that no one should know her real name until afterwards. "Well, we beat the big drum and did all we knew, but the house was almost empty. When Aimee Desclee came on the stage, before she opened her mouth, I thrilled with expectation, and her first words carried us all off our feet. At the end of the first act I went out and sent notes to half a dozen colleagues to come and hear her, but when I returned to the theatre it was full. Paris had already in some magical way got news of the event and in an hour everyone knew that a great actress had been discovered. 'I think,' added Claretie, 'that she was the greatest actress I have ever seen.' " Claretie told the little story superbly and with strange reticence; yet, to my astonishment, Jeanne heightened the effect. "I heard her a little later in Froufrou," she said, "and agree with you. Not only was she a great actress but a great woman. There were tones in her voice that wrung the heart. It was her own soul's suffering that gave her the power: Dumas fils was wise to choose her for his heroine." This lunch taught me that Jeanne in her way was a surprising woman: she was extremely well read, had all the lighter French literature at her fingers' ends, and could find new words to say of Flaubert, and Zola, Daudet and Maupassant even, words that were illuminating. She knew Paris, too, all its heights and depths, was a wonderful companion for a man of letters, and an incomparable mistress. After a day or two I began to doubt her magic. She never tried to excite me, but whenever I sought her I found the same diabolical power. The French have the word for her: "Casse Noisettes" they call it, or "nutcrackers," a 495 woman's sex with the contractile strength of a hand, and Jeanne knew the exact moment to use it. I grew more and more infatuated and yet out of fear tried time and again to give her money and tear myself loose, but she would not accept money, though always eager to lunch or dine with me and meet actors, actresses, and men of letters. One day we had been for a long outing at Fontainebleau, had dined there, and returned. I wanted to kiss her but she turned away. At length I said in pure despite, "I'll have to be getting back to London to my work." Jeanne looked at me. "I was going to propose something else," she said. "I have a place near Algiers, sunbathed, between the mountains and the sea, wonderful. You could have ponies to ride and could give yourself to writing books and leave that silly journalism once for all." "I mightn't succeed," I said, "and I have too little money to make the trial." "I have more money than you think," she remarked quietly. "I have three hundred thousand francs saved and that house and farm and—" "I can't live on your money," I broke in rudely. "Why not?" she rejoined. "We could be married and have an almost perfect life." I started. What a prospect! The intercourse of the past month came back to me. Once I had caught Jeanne by chance when she had just washed her face: she had no eyebrows, she painted them in, and gave her light eyelashes, too, a dark tone with some pigment. Marry her? I laughed to myself and could not help shaking my head. "I am a fairly good mistress, am I not?" she asked. "The best possible," I replied. "No one could deny that, and an excellent companion to boot, but I want to see more of life and the world before settling down; and I've always resolved to go round the world every twenty years or so; and I want to learn a couple of new languages and—" "You could do all that," she insisted. "I should not hinder you. I want to make my house a house beautiful: I want you as husband and companion, but you could always take a whiter off or a summer and go round the world, so long as you came back to me; and you would come back, I know you. You want to make a great reputation as a writer and I'm sure you will, but that means years of hard work, carefree years. Think it over." I smiled, but shook my head. 496 A day or two afterwards she said, "I shall have to send Lisette to school unless we go south together; she's getting to be a big girl and is exquisitely pretty. You should see her in her bath!" "I'd love to," I said without thinking. The next evening when we came in, Jeanne took me to the next floor and opened the door. There was Lisette in the bath, a model of girlish beauty, astonishingly lithe and lovely. She turned her back on us and snatched a towel hanging near, but Jeanne held it back saying, "Don't be silly, child. Frank won't eat you, and I've told him how pretty and well formed you are." At this the girl lifted big inscrutable eyes to her and stood at gaze, a most exquisite picture: the breasts just beginning to be marked, the hips a little fuller than a boy's, the feet and hands smaller—a perfect Tanagra statuette in whitest flesh with a roseate glow on the inside of arms and thighs, while the Mount of Venus was just shadowed with down. She stood there waiting, an entrancing maiden figure. I felt my mouth parching, the pulses in my temples beating. What did it mean? Did Jeanne intend—? The next moment Jeanne lifted the child out of the bath, and covering her with the towel said, "Dry yourself and come down, dear. We're all going to dine soon." When we were downstairs she asked, "Well, are you going with us to Algiers?" "Suppose I wanted Lisette?" I asked boldly. Jeanne shrugged her shoulders. "There are sure to be several Lisettes in your life," she said seriously, "but only one Jeanne, I hope," and she set her eyes on mine. "You are a wonder," I rejoined, "a marvel!" Nothing more was said then, but when Lisette came down in her nightie and dressing-gown, Jeanne encouraged her to sit on my knees after dinner, and I seem still to feel the warm imprint of her lithe body on my legs. When I went back to the Meurice that night I knew I'd have to fight the greatest temptation of my life. Could I fight it? It was Shakespeare's word that saved me, I verily believe. I could not be "the bellows and the fan to cool a harlot's lust." Yet the temptation was tremendous, for really Jeanne was a most interesting companion and an adorable mistress. I wanted to know why she had selected me. "How does one know why this man pleases you intimately," she asked, "whereas another repels you? You please me physically, interest me mentally, and I know you're hardworking and kind. I think we could have an almost ideal 497 existence, and I'm tired of Paris and lonely, without an object or purpose in life." "And Lisette?" I asked. "Oh! the Lisettes are for later," she smiled. "Before she's grown up you'll have found an Arab beauty with even lovelier limbs. It's the artist in you leads you to stray, the attraction of plastic beauty on you. I noticed that at the very beginning, but I can't make my breasts small and round. If I could I would, you may be sure, but I know I can give you more pleasure than any other woman, and so I feel sure you will always come back to me." It was true, but could I work with Jeanne: that was the doubt. Already I felt more tired than I had been for years. That night I studied my face in the glass and saw that my features had sharpened, and I had lost my healthy color. I was getting grey and worn, and if a month had this result, what would a year effect or ten years? I could not shut my eyes to the truth. I should be played out. I would have one more gaudy, great night; I'd kiss Lisette, too, and feel if she responded, and then for the train to Calais and my work again in London. And this I did. I gave a big lunch to people of importance in the theatre and in journalism and invited Jeanne and referred everything to her and drew her out, throning her, and afterwards returned to her house to dinner. While she was changing and titivating, I took Lisette in my arms and kissed her with hot lips again and again while feeling her budding breasts, till she put her arms round my neck and kissed me just as warmly; and then I ventured to touch her little half-fledged sex and caress it, till it opened and grew moist and she nestled up to me and whispered: "Oh! how you excite me!" "Have you ever done it to yourself?" I asked. She nodded with bright dancing eyes. "Often, but I prefer you to touch me." For the first time I heard the truth from a girl and her courage charmed me. I could not help laying her on the sofa, and turning up her clothes: how lovely her limbs were, and how perfect her sex. She was really exquisite, and I took an almost insane pleasure in studying her beauties, and parting the lips of her sex kisses: in a few moments she was all trembling and gasping. She put her hand on my head to stop me. When I lifted her up, she kissed me. "You dear," she said with a strange earnestness, "I want you always. You'll stay with us, won't you?" I kissed her for her sweetness. When Jeanne came out of the cabinet, we all went into the dining-room, and afterwards Lisette went up to her room after kissing me, and I went to bed with Jeanne, who let me excite her for half an hour; and then mounting me milked me with such artistry that in two minutes she brought me to spasms of sensation, such as I had never experienced before with any other woman. Jeanne was the most perfect mistress I had met up to that tune, and in sheer power of giving pleasure hardly to be surpassed by any of western race. 498 An unforgettable evening, one of the few evenings in my life when I reached both the intensest pang of pleasure with the even higher aesthetic delight of toying with beautiful limbs and awakening new desires in a lovely body and frank honest spirit. Next day I left Jeanne a letter, thanking her and explaining as well as I could the desire in me to complete my work, and enclosing five thousand francs for her and Lisette, all I could spare. Then I took the train and was in my home in Kensington Gore before nightfall. I had won, but that was about all I could say, and I wasn't proud of myself. For months the temptation was in my flesh, more poignant than at first, till suddenly I heard from the comic actor of the Palais Royale, Monsieur Galipaux, I believe, that Jeanne had left Paris and gone to live in Algiers. "We all miss her," he added. Since then I've neither seen nor heard of her or Lisette, but she taught me what astonishing quality as lovers some French women possess. Often since when I've met mad, unreasoning jealousy, the memory of Jeanne has recurred to me. She taught me that a woman can love and delight in giving the most extreme pleasure, and yet be without jealousy of the aesthetic, lighter loves of man. The faithfulness of heart and soul and the spiritual companionship is everything to such a few, rare women. 499 CHAPTER XXIV. THE FORETASTE OF DEATH FROM 1920 ONWARD I HAVE DECIDED at one jump to pass over more than a
quarter of a century, 500 day in Richmond Park. One morning I noticed something move in the high bracken, and riding to the spot, found a keeper kneeling beside a young doe. "What's the matter?" I asked. "Matter enough," he replied, holding up the two hind legs of the little creature, showing me that they were both broken. "Here she is, Sir," he went on. "As pretty as a picture, ain't she? Just over a year or so old, the poor little bitch, and she come in heat this autumn and she must go and pick out the biggest and oldest stag in the park and rub her little bottom against him—Didn't you, you poor little bitch!—and of course he mounted her, Sir; and her two little sticks of legs snapped under his weight and I found her lying broken without ever having had any pleasure; and now I've got to put her out of her pain, Sir; and she's so smooth and pretty! Ain't ye?" And he rubbed his hand caressingly along her silky fur. "Must you kill her?" I asked, "I'd pay to have her legs set." "No, no," he replied, "it would take too much time and trouble and there's many of them. Poor little bitch must die," and as he stroked her fine head gently, the doe looked up at him with her big eyes drowned in tears. "Do you really lose many in that way?" I asked. "Not so many, Sir," he replied. "If she had got over this season, she'd have been strong enough next year to have borne the biggest. It was just her bad luck," he said, "to have been born in the troop of the oldest and heaviest stag in the park." "Has age anything to do with the attraction?" I asked. "Surely it has," replied the keepers. "The old stag is always after these little ones, and young does are always willing. I guess it's animal nature," he added, as if regretfully. "Animal nature," I said to myself as I rode away, "and human nature as well, I fear," with heavy apprehension or presentiment compressing my heart. Now to my experience. In the early summer of 1920, having passed my sixtyfifth birthday, I was intent on finishing a book of Portraits before making a long deferred visit to Chicago. Before leaving New York, a girl called on me to know if I could employ her. I had no need of her, yet she was pretty, provocative, even, but for the first time in my life, I was not moved. As her slight, graceful figure disappeared, suddenly I realized the wretchedness of my condition in an overwhelming, suffocating wave of bitterness. So this was the end; desire was there but not the driving power. There were ways, I knew, of whipping desire to the standing point, but I didn't 501 care for them. The end of my life had come. God, what a catastrophe! What irremediable, shameful defeat! Then for the first time I began to envy the lot of a woman; after all, she could give herself to the end, on her death bed if she wished, whereas a man went about looking like a man, feeling like a man, but powerless, impotent, disgraced in the very pride and purpose of his manhood. And then the thought of my work struck me. No new stories had come to me lately: the shaping spirit of imagination had left me with the virile power. Better death than such barrenness of outlook, such a dreadful monotonous desert. Suddenly some lines came to me: Dear as remembered kisses after Death, Deep as true love and wild with all regret Oh, Death in life, the days that are no more! As I sat there in the darkening office, tears poured from my eyes. So this is the end! I crawled home: there, all by myself, I'd be able to plumb the disaster and learn its depth. For the first time in my life, I think, tears were rising in my heart and I was choking with the sense of man's mortality. Tears, idle tears; I well know what they mean Tears from the depth of some divine despair. Why "divine"; why not accursed? Rise in the heart and gather to the eyes When looking at the happy autumn fields And thinking of the days that are no more Oh! Death in life! the days that are no more! I would go home. And then a dreadful incident came back to me. One day, a long time before the World War, Meredith sent me a copy of Richard Feverel, all marked with corrections. In his letter he told me that he was setting himself to correct all his books for a final definitive edition. He wanted to know what I thought of the changes he had made. "I think you will find them all emendations," he wrote, "but be frank with me, please, for you are almost the only man living whose judgment on such a matter would have weight with me. Morley, too, is a judge, but not of creative work, and as you have always professed a certain liking for Richard Feverel, I send that book for your opinion." Naturally I was touched and sat down to read, feeling sure that the alterations would be all emendations. But the first glances shocked me: he kept preferring the colorless word to the colorful. I went through the job with the utmost care. In some three hundred changes there were three of four I 502 could approve; all the rest were changes for the worse. At once I got my car and drove down to Box Hill. I came to the little house in the late afternoon and found Meredith had just got back from his donkey drive up the hill. He took me to his working room in the little chalet away from the house and we went at it hammer and tongs. "You've put water in your ink," I cried, "and spoiled some of the finest pages in English. The courtship in the boat, even, you've worsened. For God's sake, stop and leave well, excellent-well, alone!" At first he would not accept my opinion, so we went through the changes, one after the other. Hours flew by. "How do you explain the fact," he cried at last, "that I'm still unconvinced, that in my heart you've not persuaded me?" I had to speak out; there was nothing else for it. "You are getting on," I said. "The creative power is leaving you, I fear. Please, please, forgive my brutal frankness!" I cried, for his face suddenly seemed to turn grey. "You know, you must know how I reverence you and every word of this scene; the greatest love idyll in all literature is dear to me. It's greater than Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. Don't alter a word, Master, please, not a word! They are all sacred!" I don't know whether I persuaded him or not; I'm afraid not. As we grow older we grow more obstinate, and he said something once later about finding pleasure in correcting his early work. But the fact remained fixed in my soul: Meredith had passed the great climacteric; he must have been about sixty-six and he had lost the faculty even of impartial judgment. Had I lost it too? It seemed probable. God, the bitterness of this death in life! The days that are no more! From that time on, I began to mention my age, make people guess it, women as well as men, but saw no comprehension, even in thoughtful women. If you are not bald and have no grey hairs—the stigmata of senility —you are all right in their opinion, all right! Oh, God! Yet I soon found that my judgment had not lost its vigor. My virility had decreased, was never prompt to the act as before, but it was still there, and so long as I treasured it, did not spend it, the faculty of judgment was but little changed. My worst fear was groundless: total abstinence was a necessity unless—but that's another story or two. 503 The want of joy, even the shuddering mistrust of the enfeebled faculties, might be borne without complaint. The general health, however, everyone tells me, begins to suffer: catch a cold and you have rheumatic pains that are slow to cure; eat something that disagrees with you and you are ill not for a few hours, as in maturity, but for days and weeks, don't take exercise enough, or take a little too much, and you suffer like a dog. Nature becomes an importunate creditor who gives you no respite. I remember years ago visiting Pitt House that stood on the top of Hampstead Heath. I wanted to know why it was called Pitt House: I found that the owner, hearing that Lord Chatham was in bad health, had placed the house at the great statesman's disposal, and ever afterwards it has been known as Pitt House. There the man went who had picked Wolfe and won an empire for Britain after scores of Parliamentary triumphs; there he passed his last days in profound loneliness and black melancholy. Tormented by gout, he used to sit by himself all day long in a little room without even a book, his heavy head upon his hand. He couldn't bear even the presence of his wife, though they had been lovers for many years; he would not even see a servant, but had a hatch cut in the wall so that he could take the meal placed outside on a slide, and, when he chose, push out the platter again and close the hatch against everybody. Think of it: he who had been for long years master of the world, whose rare appearances in the House of Commons had been triumphs, reduced to this condition of despairing solitude! That hatch in the wall was as significant to me as his great speech in defence of the American colonists. That old age is usually embittered by bad health is true, I think, to most men, but not to me, thank God! I am as well now at nearly seventy as I ever was, better, indeed. I have learned how to keep perfectly well and shut the door in the face of old age and most of its Infirmities. Let me, for the benefit of others, tell the story here briefly. On my third visit to South Africa in the late nineties, I caught black water fever, was deserted on the Chobe river by all my coolies, who thought the spirits had come to take me because I wandered in my speech and talked nonsense loudly. How I won to the sea and civilization in four months of delirium and starvation I shall tell at length when I come to it in the ordinary course. It's enough here to say that on the ship going back to Europe, the inside of my stomach came away in strips and pieces, and when I reached London I found myself a martyr to chronic Indigestion. I spent two years going from this celebrated doctor to that all over Europe—in vain. One made me live on grapes and another on vegetables and a third on nothing but meat, but I suffered almost continuously and became as thin as a skeleton. My own doctor in London brought about the first improvement: he told me to give up smoking. I had smoked to excess all my life, but I stopped at once, though I must admit that no habit was ever so difficult to break off. A year later, if I caught the scent of a really good cigar, the water would come into my mouth, though I soon discovered that by giving up smoking all my food 504 tasted better and fine wines developed flavors I had never before imagined. Had I to live my life again, nothing would induce me to smoke. It is, I think, the worst of all habits, an enemy at once to pleasure and to health. But the indigestion held and made life a misery. Following Schweninger's advice (he had been Bismarck's doctor), I tried fasting for a fortnight at a time and derived some benefit from it, but not much. One day my little London doctor advised me to try the stomach pump. The word frightened me, but I found it was only a syphon and not a pump. One had to push an india rubber tube down one's throat, pour a quart or so of warm water into the stomach through a funnel, depress the funnel below one's waist, and the water could come out, carrying with it all the impurities and undigested food. The first time I did it with the help of the doctor and the immediate relief cannot be described. From feeling extremely ill, I was perfectly well in a moment. I had got rid of the peas that the doctor had recommended and I could not help grinning as they came out with the water, proving that his prescription had been bad. The next day I tried washing out again and soon found that my stomach would not digest bread and butter. No doctor had ever advised me to leave off eating bread and butter, but now the reason was clear. The black water fever had weakened my spleen and so I could not digest starchy things or fats. In a week the stomach pump gave me a scientific dietary: I loved coffee, but coffee, I found, was poison to me, for it arrested digestion. Of course I left it off and avoided bread and butter, potatoes, etc., and at once my digestion began to do its work properly. For fifteen or twenty years now I have washed out my stomach nine days out of ten before going to bed, for every now and then I take too much butter or coffee or eat some grease-sodden food in a restaurant; and I find it no more unpleasant to wash out my stomach than to wash my teeth, and it gives me perfect sleep and almost perfect health. But some sufferer may ask, "What do you do if you get indigestion after lunch or after breakfast?" I can only reply that if it is at all painful I wash out immediately; but if it is only slight, I take a dose of an alkaline powder of a Dr. Dubois, a French master who has bettered bicarbonate of soda and all such other lenitives with his alcalinophosphate, which gives instantaneous relief. But the remedy, the infallible and blessed remedy for all ills of digestion, is the stomach pump. Thanks to it, and to strictest moderation in eating and drinking, and total abstinence from tobacco, I enjoy almost perfect health! I am certainly better now than I have been since I was thirty. 1 content myself with a couple of cups of tea in the morning; I make a good meal about one o' the clock; and in the evening take nothing but a vegetable soup and on occasion a morsel of meat or sweet. Now I can drink a small cup of coffee, even with cream, after my lunch and feel no ill effects. Almost seventy, I can run a hundred yards within a couple of seconds as fast as I could at twenty, and I do my little sprint every day. 505 Perfect health I have won back, but age, though kept at bay, is not to be denied. The worst part of it is that it robs you of hope: you find yourself sighing instead of laughing: the sight of your tomb there just before you on the road is always with you; and since the great adventure of love no longer tempts, one tires of the monotony of work and duties devoid of seduction. Without hope, life becomes stale, flat and unprofitable. The worst of all is the hopelessness. If you needed money before, there were twenty ways of making it: a little thought and energy and the difficulty was conquered; now, without desire, without joy, without hope, where can you find energy? The mere notion of a crusade fills you with distaste. "Why? What for? What's the good?" come to your lips as the tears rise to your eyes. Now, too, my memory for names has suddenly become very bad. Often I remember words I want to quote, but for the moment I can't recall the writer's name. Or I go to the shop to buy a book and I've forgotten the author. All this increases my labor and is worse than annoying. I try to think it balances another weakness of mine which is exceedingly agreeable. All my life long I have forgotten unpleasant events and ordinary people in the strangest way. My wife often says to me, "You remember Mary or Sarah"—a servant who had done this or omitted to do that: I've forgotten her altogether. I remember my wife getting very angry with me in New York once because a second-rate writer followed me to our gate and got me to lend him ten dollars. "Don't you remember," she exclaimed, "how he spoke and wrote against you not six. months ago?" I have forgotten the whole occurrence; the petty miseries of life are all overwhelmed in oblivion to me very quickly after they occur, and I count this among the chief blessings of my life. The past to me is all sweet and pleasant, like a lovely landscape sunveiled. But the present gets steadily darker; and the future! Whitman's plaint over his Leaves of Grass at the very end echoes in my heart. Begun in ripen'd youth and steadily pursued, Wandering, peering, dallying with all—war, peace, day and night absorbing, Never even for one brief hour abandoning my task, I end it here in sickness, poverty and old age. I sing of life, yet mind me well of death. Today shadowy Death dogs my steps, my seated shape, and for years Draws sometimes close to me, as face to face. And yet something, is it what Goethe calls "the sweet custom of living," holds one in life. 506 I for one cannot accept the solace: with the loss of virility the glamour has gone out of life. One notices that a girl's legs are nothing wonderful; even well formed ones don't thrill and excite as they used to thrill: the magic is almost gone! Ten years ago I read the announcements of Paris theatres with vivid curiosity; now I would hardly cross the street to witness the bepuffed sensation of the hour. Nearly all the glamour is gone. Five years ago, I'd take up a book I had just corrected, hot from the press, with intense interest: is there anything new and extraordinary in it? Now I read and the critical sense is extravagantly keen because the glamour has gone, even from my own work. I see plainly that my fourth book of Portraits is not so good as the first two; I see that this book of short stories, Undream'd of Shores is nothing like so good as its predecessor, Unpath'd Waters! The skies are discrowned of the sunlight The earth dispossessed of the sun. Why then continue the struggle? Why not make one's quietus with a bare syringe? I have no fear of the undiscovered country. None! Why hesitate? I can't hope to write better at seventy than at sixty; I know that's not likely. Why lag another hour superfluous on the stage? I don't know: I pace the earth and breathe the air and feel the sun. And there's a certain attraction in it, but very slight: the first hard jolt and I'll go. As it is, my wife's future restrains me more than any other factor: I should grieve her, hurt her? Yet I owe her all kindness! There's the hypodermic syringe; tomorrow, I'll buy the morphia. Is there, then, no pleasure in life? Oh yes, one; the greatest, keenest, and wholly without alloy, reading! And in the second line, listening to great music and studying beautiful paintings and new works of art: all pure joy without admixture. I go into my little library and take down a Chaucer: it opens at The Persones Tale and in a moment I am in a new world; I read of the Seven Deadly Sins, Pride first, "the rote of all harmes"; for "of this rote springen certain braunches, as ire, envie, accidie or slouthe, avarice or coveitise, glotonie and lecherie ..." I have no pride whatever, whether within the heart or without, and none of its branches, in especial "no swelling of herte which is when man re-joyceth him of harme that he hath don"; no trace of any branch, except it be lecherie, though how that pleasant sin can be said to be affiliated to pride, I am at a loss to understand. 507 I read first of the "stinking sinne of lecherie that men clepen avoutrie" (adultery) "that is of wedded folk and the avouterers shall bren in helle." My withers are unwrung; I never coveted another man's wife! But then I read "of lecherie springen divers species, as fornication, betwene man and woman, which ben not maried, and is dedly sinne and ayenst nature." "Ayenst nature?" Why? "Parfay the reson of a man eke telleth him wel that it is dedly sinne; for as moche as God forbad lecherie and Seint Poule... " Worse follows: "another sinne of lecherie is to bereven a maid of hire maidenhed ... thilke precious fruit that the book clepeth the hundreth fruit; in Latine hight centesimus fructus," and I smile, for this sweet pleasure is not specially forbidden by "Seint Poule." Finally I glance at the Wif of Bathes' confession: I wol not lie; A man shall win us best with flateries And with attendance and with besinesse Ben we ylimed bothe more and lesse, or as I learned it at school, And with a close attendance and attention Are we caught more or less the truth to mention. Suddenly another great phrase, especially addressed to women, I believe, catches my eye, warning the fair ones not to dress so as to show the "buttokkes behinde, as it were the hinder part of a she ape in the ful of the mone." Laughing merrily, I resolve not to grieve for the fullness of life or for the full moons I have missed! Chaucer is but one of many sorcerers who can change the whole world for me and make of heavy, anxious times, joy-brimming, gay hours of amusement and pleasant discourse. And this entertainment I can vary at will; pass from smiling Chaucer to rapt Spenser and hear him telling of ... her angel face That made a sunshine in a shady place. Thank God! There are hundreds of books I want to read: I must learn Russian and see a new part of God's world; and I've heard of a new Spanish poet from Nicaragua, Ruben Dario, a love poet of the best, whose prose also is remarkable. And Arno Holz, whom I met in Berlin, has honey at the heart of him; and Schopenhauer is there, whom I've not listened to for five and twenty years, and so many, many others, thank God. Enough for years! I hate my ignorances: 508 there is Willie Yeats, a compatriot and certainly one of the greatest poets writing in English today, the winner last year of the Nobel prize. And above and beyond them all, Heinrich Heine, whose life I almost wrote and always wished to write—Heine, after Shakespeare, the most lovable of men, "the best of all the humorists," as he said himself, the wisest of moderns, save in his own affairs. I wonder why Heine never wrote any dramas or novels? His keen, impartial vision might have given us wonderful dramas or stories. Why did he never try a novel with that exquisite prose of his, a prose as perfect as Shakespeare's? One of these days I shall give a whole month to Heine, though I know dozens of his poems by heart. And so I am bathed again in the profound pleasures of the soul, the joys of art and artistic endeavor and accomplishment, that for us moderns just coming of age outweighs all the comforts and solace of religion. Here at last we mortals are on firm ground, with the profound conviction that at length we have come into our inheritance. For by dint of living to the highest in us, as artists should, we men can not only make a new world fairer and more soulsatisfying than any ever pictured in the future by the fanatic, but we can enter into and enjoy our paradise when we will. And love is written over the door in luminous, great letters; and all who care to enter are welcome; and one cannot be too hopeful, for here all desires are realized, all forecasts overpassed. Now at long last I must take myself seriously to task. Thank God, by taking thought one can add something to one's stature. What is my message to men? Men my brothers, men the workers, ever doing something new That which they have done but earnest of the things that they shall do. Partly it is the bold joy in love and frank speech, partly the admiration of great men, and especially of the great benefactors of humanity, of the artists and writers who increase our joys, and of the men of science and healing who diminish our pains. Here in this world is our opportunity: here in these seventy years of earthly life our noble, unique inheritance. And because of this conviction I loathe wars and the combative, aggressive spirit of the great conquering race, the Anglo-Saxons with their insane, selfish greeds of power and riches. I hate then" successes and dread the life they're building with blood for plaster. I want all the armies disbanded and the navies as well and the manufacture of munitions made a criminal offence everywhere. And I want new armies enrolled: the moneys now spent in offense and defense should be devoted to scientific research; schools of science must be endowed in every town on the most liberal scale, and investigators installed for original research and honored as officers. I want schools of music and art too in every city and opera houses and theatres where now are barracks; and 509 above all hospitals instead of our dreadful prisons, and doctors instead of gaolers, nurses instead of executioners. And I want, want, want food and lodging assured to everyone and no questions asked in our poorhouses, which are merely the insurance of the rich against disaster. My ideals are all human and all within reach, but realized, they would transfigure life. And if this new ideal is not soon brought into life I am frightened, for the abyss yawns before us. Here is Sir Richard Gregory, the famous scientist, sounding the alarm in the daily English press of this year 1924. He tells us, "We are on the threshold of developments by which forces will be unloosed and powers acquired far beyond our present imaginings, and if these gifts are misused, mankind must disappear from this planet." Yet England and America, too, are spending thousands of millions on armies and navies, sets of false teeth that are no good even to bite with, as I told President Harding—to his horror. What can I do to commend the new Ideal State and the new Ideal Individual? Very little and that little will be effective in measure as I better myself and take the motes out of my own eyes. Death closes all; yet something ere the end Some work of noble worth may yet be done. And so by way of art and letters and belief in a future millenium, on this friendly earth of ours, I reach love of life again and settle down to do the best in me. Can one ever forget that little verse? The kiss of the Sun for pardon And the song of the birds for mirth— One is nearer God's heart in a garden Than anywhere else on Earth. What do I need after all but a little money to give me security, and even that is not impossible to come by, for my wants are few and I am satisfied with little so long as the spirit is interested and delighted. And I have been helped by friends again and again. American friends whom I did not even know have sent me moneys and loving encouragement and time and again brought tears to my eyes, sweet tears of gratitude and affection. I can only do my best for them in return, better than my best if possible. And I begin with this humiliating confession. Shakespeare said that he was more sinned against than shining. I wish I could say as much, but I feel that I have sinned against others, at least as deeply as I 510 have been sinned against; and I am not even sure now, as I used to be, that I have been more generous to others than men have been to me. A few will surely read this, my book, in the spirit in which it was conceived; some will even see what it has cost me. They talk of making money by an outspoken book: it's absurd. If the book is in English, you lose by writing it; you lose by publishing it; you lose by selling it. In French it is possible to make money by it, but even there it entails loss of prestige. Victor Marguerite, the son of the famous General, was cut out of the Legion of Honor for publishing La Garconne last year, 1923. And a professor, Edmund Gosse, knighted for mediocrity in England, writes about "the brutality of La Garconne and the foul chaos of Ulysses," though both Victor Marguerite and James Joyce are children of light, above his understanding. A year or two ago I was honored on all hands: wherever I came I felt that men and women spoke of me with interest, curiosity at least. Since the first volume of My Life appeared, everywhere I feel the unspoken condemnation and see the sneer or the foul, sidelong grin. I have paid dearly for my boldness. All pathmakers, I say to myself, must suffer, but unjust punishment embitters life: the Horridges in England and the Mayers in America are foul diseases. Still, my reward is certain, though I shall never see the laurels. Many men and some few women will read me when I am dust and perhaps be a little grateful to me for having burst the fetters and led the way out of the prison of Puritanism into the open air and sunshine of this entrancing world of wonders. The other day here in Nice, I heard a delightful limerick: If the skirts get any shorter Said the Flapper with a sob; I'll have two more cheeks to powder And a lot more hair to bob. Is there not a laugh in it? And a good laugh is something in this ephemeral life of ours. 511 |
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