Fortunately for my life and my sanity, my interests were, about this time, attracted into other ways—ways that led into London life, and were suitable for me to tread. In a restaurant where low-necked dresses and evening clothes crushed with loud exclamations, where there was ever an odour of cigarette and brandy and soda, I was introduced to a Jew of whom I had heard much, a man who had newspapers and racehorses. The bright witty glances of his brown eyes at once prejudiced me in his favour, and it was not long before I knew that I had found another friend. His house was what was wanted, for it was so trenchant in character, so different from all I knew of, that I was forced to accept it, without likening it to any French memory and thereby weakening the impression. It was a house of champagne, late hours, and evening clothes, of literature and art, of passionate discussions. So this house was not so alien to me as all else I had seen in London; and perhaps the cosmopolitanism of this charming Jew, his Hellenism, in fact, was a sort of plank whereon I might pass and enter again into English life. I found in Curzon Street another "Nouvelle Athènes," a Bohemianism of titles that went back to the Conquest, a Bohemianism of the ten sovereigns always jingling in the trousers pocket, of scrupulous cleanliness, of hansom cabs, of ladies' pet names; of triumphant champagne, of debts, gaslight, supper-parties, morning light, coaching; a fabulous Bohemianism; a Bohemianism of eternal hard-upishness and eternal squandering of money,—money that rose at no discoverable well-head and flowed into a sea of boudoirs and restaurants, a sort of whirlpool of sovereigns in which we were caught, and sent eddying through music halls, bright shoulders, tresses of hair, and slang; and I joined in the adorable game of Bohemianism that was played round and about Piccadilly Circus, with Curzon Street for a magnificent rallying point.
After dinner a general "clear" was made in the direction of halls and theatres, a few friends would drop in about twelve, and continue their drinking till three or four; but Saturday night was gala night—at half-past eleven the lords drove up in their hansoms, then a genius or two would arrive, and supper and singing went merrily until the chimney sweeps began to go by. Then we took chairs and bottles into the street and entered into discussion with the policeman. Twelve hours later we struggled out of our beds, and to the sound of church bells we commenced writing. The paper appeared on Tuesday. Our host sat in a small room off the dining-room from which he occasionally emerged to stimulate our lagging pens.
But I could not learn to see life paragraphically. I longed to give a personal shape to something, and personal shape could not be achieved in a paragraph nor in an article. True it is that I longed for art, but I longed also for fame, or was it notoriety? Both. I longed for fame, brutal and glaring.
Out with you, liars that you are, tell the truth, say you would sell the souls you don't believe in, or do believe in, for notoriety. I have known you attend funerals for the sake of seeing your miserable names in the paper! You, hypocritical reader, who are now turning up your eyes and murmuring "dreadful young man"—examine your weakly heart, and see what divides us; I am not ashamed of my appetites, I proclaim them, what is more I gratify them; you're silent, you refrain, and you dress up natural sins in hideous garments of shame, you would sell your wretched soul for what I would not give the parings of my finger-nails for—paragraphs in a society paper. I am ashamed of nothing I have done, especially my sins, and I boldly confess that I then desired notoriety.
"Am I going to fail again as I have failed before?" I asked myself. "Will my novel prove as abortive as my paintings, my poetry, my journalism?" We all want notoriety, our desire for notoriety is ugly, but it is less hideous when it is proclaimed from a brazen tongue than when it lisps the cant of humanitarianism. Self, and after self a friend; the rest may go to the devil; and be sure that when any man is more stupidly vain and outrageously egotistic than his fellows, he will hide his hideousness in humanitarianism. Victor Hugo was the innermost stench of the humanitarianism, and Mr Swinburne holds his nose with one hand while he waves the censer with the other. Men of inferior genius, Victor Hugo and Mr Gladstone, take refuge in humanitarianism. Humanitarianism is a pigsty, where liars, hypocrites, and the obscene in spirit congregate; it has been so since the great Jew conceived it, and it will be so till the end. Far better the blithe modern pagan in his white tie and evening clothes, and his facile philosophy. He says, "I don't care how the poor live; my only regret is that they live at all;" and he gives the beggar a shilling.
We all want notoriety; our desires on this point, as upon others, are not noble, but the human is very despicable vermin and only tolerable when it tends to the brute, and away from the evangelical. I will tell you an anecdote which is in itself an admirable illustration of my craving for notoriety; and my anecdote will serve a double purpose,—it will bring me some of the notoriety of which I am so desirous, for you, dear, exquisitely hypocritical reader, will at once cry, "Shame! Could a man be so wicked as to attempt to force on a duel, so that he might make himself known through the medium of a legal murder?" You will tell your friends of this horribly unprincipled young man, and they will, of course, instantly want to know more about him.
It was a gala night in Curzon Street, the lords were driving up in hansoms; some seated on the roofs with their legs swinging inside; the comics had arrived from the halls; there were ladies, many ladies; choruses were going merrily in the drawing-room; one man was attempting to kick the chandelier, another stood on his head on the sofa. There was a beautiful young lord there, that sort of figure that no woman can resist. There was a delightful youth who seemed inclined to empty the mustard-pot down my neck; him I could keep in order, but the beautiful lord was attempting to make a butt of me. With his impertinences I did not for a moment intend to put up; I did not know him, he was not then, as he is now, if he will allow me to say so, a friend. The ladies retired about then, and the festivities continued. We had passed through various stages of jubilation, no one was drunk, but we had been jocose and rowdy, we had told stories of all kinds. The young lord and I did not "pull well together," but nothing decidedly unpleasant occurred until someone proposed to drink to the downfall of Gladstone. The beautiful lord got on his legs and began a speech. Politically it was sound enough, but much of it was plainly intended to turn me into ridicule. I answered sharply, working gradually up crescendo, until at last, to bring matters to a head, I said,
"I don't agree with you; the Land Act of '81 was a necessity."
"Anyone who thinks so must be a fool."
"Very possibly, but I don't allow people to address such language to me, and you must be aware that to call anyone a fool, sitting with you at table in the house of a friend, is the act of a cad."
There was a lull, then a moment after he said,
"I only meant politically."
"And I only meant socially."
He advanced a step or two and struck me across the face with his finger tips; I took up a champagne bottle, and struck him across the head and shoulders. Different parties of revellers kept us apart, and we walked up and down on either side of the table swearing at each other. Although I was very wroth, I had had a certain consciousness from the first that if I played my cards well I might come very well out of the quarrel; and as I walked down the street I determined to make every effort to force on a meeting. If the quarrel had been with one of the music-hall singers I should have backed out of it, but I had everything to gain by pressing it. I grasped the situation at once. All the Liberal press would be on my side, the Conservative press would have nothing to say against me, no woman in it and a duel with a lord would be nuts and apples for the journalists.
I did not go to bed at once, but sat in the armchair thinking, calculating my chances. A cab came rattling up to the door, and one of the revellers came upstairs. He told me that everything had been arranged; I told him that I was not in the habit of allowing others to arrange my affairs for me, and went to bed.
Among my old friends I could think of some half-dozen that would suit me perfectly, but where were they? Ten years' absence scatters friends as October scatters swallows.
The first one said, "it was about one or two in the morning?"
"Later than that, it was about seven."
"He struck you, and not very hard, I should imagine; you hit him with a champagne bottle, and now you want to have him out."
"I did not come here to listen to moral reflections; if you don't like to act for me, say so."
I telegraphed to Warwickshire to an old friend:—"Can I count on you to act for me in an affair of honour?" Two or three hours after the reply came. "Come down here and stay with me for a few days, we'll talk it over." English people, I said, will have nothing to do with serious duelling. I must telegraph to Marshall. "Of all importance. Come over at once and act for me in an affair of honour. Bring the Count with you; leave him at Boulogne; he knows the colonel of the ——." The next day I received the following. "Am burying my father; as soon as he is underground will come." Was there ever such ill-luck?... He won't be here before the end of the week. These things demand the utmost promptitude. Three or four days afterwards Emma told me a gentleman was upstairs taking a bath. "Hollo, Marshall, how are you? Had a good crossing? The poor old gentleman went off quite suddenly, I suppose?"
"Yes; found dead in his bed. He must have known he was dying, for he lay quite straight as the dead lie, his hands by his side...wonderful presence of mind."
"He left no money?"
"Not a penny; but I could manage it all right. Since my success at the Salon, I have been able to sell my things. I am only beginning to find out now what a success that picture was.Je t'assure, je fais l'ècole"...
"Tu crois ça...on fait l'ècole après vingt ans de travail."
When we were excited Marshall and I always dropped into French.
"And now tell me," he said, "about this duel."
No sooner had I begun to tell the story than it dawned upon me that it was impossible to tell it seriously, for it was fundamentally an absurd story; and I lacked courage to tell Marshall that I only wished to go through with the duel in order to become notorious. No one will admit such a thing as that to his friend, and if I had admitted it Marshall would not have consented. I suddenly began to get interested in other things. There was Marshall's painting to talk about. After the theatre we went home and æstheticised till three in the morning. The duel became the least important event and Marshall's new picture the greatest. At breakfast next day the duel seemed more tiresome than ever, but the gentlemen were coming to meet Marshall. He showed his usual tact in arranging my affair of honour; a letter was drawn up in which my friend withdrew the blow of his hand, I withdrew the blow of the bottle, etc.—really now I lack energy to explain it any further.
Hypocritical reader, you draw your purity garments round you, you say, "How very base"; but I say unto you remember how often you have longed, if you are a soldier in Her Majesty's army, for war,—war that would bring every form of sorrow to a million fellow-creatures, and you longed for all this to happen, because it might bring your name into theGazette. Hypocritical reader, think not too hardly of me; hypocritical reader, think what you like of me, your hypocrisy will alter nothing; in telling you of my vices I am only telling you of your own; hypocritical reader, in showing you my soul I am showing you your own; hypocritical reader, exquisitely hypocritical reader, you are my brother, I salute you.
Day passed over day, and my novel seemed an impossible task—defeat glared at me from every corner of the room. My English was so bad, so thin,—stupid colloquialisms out of joint with French idiom. I learnt unusual words and stuck them up here and there; they did not mend the style. Self-reliance had been lost in past failures; I was weighed down on every side, but I struggled to bring the book somehow to a close. Nothing mattered to me, but this one thing. To put an end to the landlady's cheating, and to bind myself to remain at home, I entered into an arrangement with her that she was to supply me with board and lodgings for three pounds a week, and henceforth resisting all Curzon Street temptations, I trudged home to eat a chop. I studied the servant as one might an insect under a microscope. "What an admirable book she would make, but what will the end be? if I only knew the end!"
I saw poor Miss L. nightly, on the stairs, and I never wearied of talking to her of her hopes and ambitions, of the young man she admired, and she used to ask me about my novel.
When my troubles lay too heavily upon me, I let her go up to her garret without a word, and remained at the window wondering if I should ever escape from Cecil Street, if I should ever be a light in that London, long, low, misshapen, that dark monumented stream flowing through the lean bridges. What if I were a light in this umber-coloured mass? Happiness abides only in the natural affections—in a home and a sweet wife. Would she whom I saw to-night marry me? How sweet she was in her simple naturalness, the joys she has known have been slight and pure, not violent and complex as mine. Ah, she is not for me, I am not fit for her, I am too sullied for her lips. Were I to win her could I be dutiful, true?...
"Young men, young men whom I love, dear ones who have rejoiced with me, not the least of our pleasures is the virtuous woman; after excesses there is reaction, all things are good in nature, and they are foolish young men who think that sin alone should be sought for. The feast is over for me, I have eaten and drunk; I yield my place, do you eat and drink as I have; do you be young as I was. I have written it! The word is not worth erasure, if it is not true to-day it will be in two years hence; farewell! I yield my place, do you be young as I was, do you love youth as I did; remember you are the most interesting beings under heaven, for you all sacrifices will be made, you will be fêted and adored upon the condition of remaining young men. The feast is over for me, I yield my place, but I will not make this leavetaking more sorrowful than it is already by afflicting you with advice and instruction how to obtain what I have obtained. I have spoken bitterly against education, I will not strive to educate you, you will educate yourselves. Dear ones, dear ones, the world is your pleasure, you can use it at your will. Dear ones, I see you all about me still, I yield my place; but one more glass I will drink with you; and while drinking I would say my last word—were it possible I would be remembered by you as a young man: but I know too well that the young never realise that the old were not born old. Farewell."
I shivered; the cold air of morning blew in my face, I closed the window, and sitting at the table, haggard and overworn, I continued my novel.
THE END