[32]CHAPTER IIIFRANK HARRISItmust have been five or six years ago that a friend came to me with the news that Frank Harris had expressed a desire to see some of my verse. Precisely what my friend had told Harris about me, I do not know; something very exaggerated, perhaps; something complimentary, doubtless; something that piqued Harris’s curiosity, it was evident. As Harris is one of the few modern writers for whom my boyish admiration has survived manhood, I felt subtly gratified that he should take even a fleeting interest in me, and I sat down at once and copied out various poems that had already appeared inThe Academy, under Lord Alfred Douglas’s editorship, and inThe English Reviewin the days of Ford Madox Hueffer, and, more recently, when edited by Austin Harrison. With my verses I sent a letter, hypocritically modest as regards myself, honestly full of admiration as regards Harris. He replied from his villa in Nice, sending me a long letter in which he did me the honour to enter fully into the supposed merits and demerits of my work. Of one poem he said that it was not sufficiently sensual, and I have never been able quite to understand what he meant, for I had, with some particularity, described seven naked ladies swimming in a pool, and I had felt that my verses had obviously enough expressed my feelings.The correspondence continued until, one day, Harris wrote to tell me he was returning to London and to invite me to visit him there. In the event, however, my first meeting with Harris was in Manchester, whither he came[33]to lecture on Shakespeare to the local dramatic society. Jack Kahane (a great friend of mine) and I met him at the Midland Hotel upon his arrival, and from the very first moment he intoxicated me. Whilst he changed from his travelling clothes to evening dress he talked and ejaculated, beseeching us to remain with him as he had had “a rotten journey from London and felt unutterably bored.” I remember very little of what he said except that, with some venom, he called Browning “a not unprosperous gentleman.” He refused to eat or drink before his lecture and, presently, we went down to the large room in the hotel where he was to speak.We found there a mixed assembly. Everybody in Manchester, it should be explained, writes plays; at least, I never yet met a man in that delectable city who does not. Moreover, they “study” them. They weigh and compare the merits of Stanley Houghton and Ibsen, Harold Brighouse and Strindberg, Allan Monkhouse and Bjornson, Arnold Bennett and Hauptmann, Laurence Housman and Brieux, and so forth. They search for “inner meanings”; the more earnest of them hunt for “messages”; the more delicate seek to perceive Fine Shades. They are veritable disciples of Miss Horniman—priggishly intellectual, self-consciously superior. And, of course, the rock of their salvation is St Bernard. Innocuous people enough, but impossible to live in the same city with.To this assembly of earnest, pale men and spectacled women Harris was to lecture, and I looked from them to Harris and from Harris to them with joyful expectations. From the very first sentence he was fiery and provocative, throwing out daring theories, anathematising all forms of respectability, upholding with unparalleled fierceness a wonderful ideal of chivalry and nobility and condemning,en bloc, the whole human race, and particularly that portion of it seated before him. Ladies rustled; men stirred[34]uneasily. Then, having delivered himself of a passage of hot eloquence, he paused. A clock ticked. He looked defiantly at us and still paused. A fat lady in the front row, palpably embarrassed by the long silence and, no doubt, feeling that she had reached one of the most dramatic moments of her existence, banged her plump hands together and ejaculated: “Bravo!” A few other ladies of both sexes joined her, but Harris was not to be placated. Thrusting out his chin, he began again. And this time he attacked the Mancunian literary idol, Professor C. H. Herford, a great scholar, but a more than suitable object for Harris’s ridicule. Herford is a man who has not lived fully: a semi-invalid, asthmatic, bloodless and spectacled; a man of books and rather dusty books; in effect, a professor. He had recently reviewed Harris’s book,The Man Shakespeare, inThe Manchester Guardian, and had called it “a disgrace to British scholarship.” Why this should have annoyed the author I cannot tell, but Harris is at times a little unreasonable. Indeed, “annoyance” but feebly describes the feeling that spent itself in scalding invective and the most terrible irony. Each sentence he spoke appeared to be the last word in bitterness; but each succeeding sentence leaped above and beyond its predecessor, until at length the speaker had lashed himself into a state of feeling to express which words were useless. He stopped magnificently, and this time the room rang with applause. It is probable that not half-a-dozen people present believed his attack on Professor Herford was justified; indeed, it is probable that not half-a-dozen were qualified to form any opinion of value on the matter. Nevertheless, they applauded him with enthusiasm, and they did so because they had been deeply stirred by eloquence that can only be described as superb and by anger that was lava hot in its sincerity. Briefly, the lecture was an overwhelming success.I was soon to discover that Harris, like all the men of[35]genius I have met, is vain. I do not mean that he overrates his gifts: he does not; nor that his recognition of his own genius is offensively insistent: such is very far from being the case. I mean that he is inordinately proud, innocently and childlikely proud, of things that are not of the least consequence. At supper in the French Restaurant the head waiter slipped noiselessly across to the table at which Harris, Kahane and I were sitting. (Harris is the kind of man who acts as a magnet to all head waiters—a high tribute to his dominating personality.) When our orders had been given the waiter, turning to go, said: “Very good, Mr Harris.” On the instant Harris looked up. “So you know me?” he asked. “Yes, sir. I have had the pleasure of waiting on you in Monte Carlo and, if I am not mistaken, in New York as well.” It is difficult to describe the naïve pleasure Harris took in this: it stamped him at once as a man of the world—he who, of all people, required, in our opinion, no such stamp.For six hours we talked—talked long after every other visitor in the hotel had retired, and we were left alone in the Octagon Court in a pool of dim light. Harris is the only brilliant talker I have met who has not made me feel an abject idiot. To begin with, though he has a pronounced strain of violence, almost of brutality, in his nature, he is always infinitely courteous. He will listen to your (I mean my) feeble contributions to a discussion with interest which, if feigned, is so admirably feigned that you are completely deceived. And he can keep this sort of thing up indefinitely. Moreover, though his mind is agile enough, his speech is rarely quick; it is slow and deliberate, but without hesitation, without a single word of tautology.I cannot hope, after so long a lapse of time, to reproduce, however faintly, the true quality of Harris’s conversation, but I remember the substance of it most[36]vividly. In his lecture earlier in the evening he had mentioned Jesus Christ, and the reference to our Saviour had been so original in its implication, yet so reverent in its manner, that I felt he must have much that is new to say on a subject that has aroused more discussion than any other during the last two thousand years. So I broached it tentatively. He was aroused immediately, and skilfully drew me out to discover if I had anything new to say. I had not. I merely voiced what must be an age-long regret, that only one side of Christ’s nature has been presented to us in the Gospels; that the feasting, joyous Christ has been only faintly indicated; and that His tolerance towards the weaknesses of the body’s passions had always been shirked by those of the priestly craft. I thought it possible that at some future crisis in the world’s history Christ might come again and, on His second coming, present to the world a more complete embodiment of all the potentialities inherent in human nature.With much of this Harris agreed, though I soon perceived that his mind had for long been intuitively building up, and giving true proportion to, those elements in Christ’s nature that are only hinted at in the Gospels. He was all for a full-blooded, passionate Jesus, for a Jesus who had tested the body’s powers, for a Jesus who was crucified by passion before He was crucified by Pilate. In a word, he applied to Jesus the same intuitive method that he had already applied to Shakespeare. The danger of this method, of course, is that one is tempted (and it is almost impossible not to succumb to the temptation) to project one’s own personality into that of the man one is studying.“My next book shall be about Jesus Christ,” said Harris. “No man in these days has written honestly about Him.”“Shall you write as a believer?” I asked.“Most assuredly,” he replied.[37]Then Harris told us some stories—stories he had written, stories he had yet to write. I remember Austin Harrison once saying to me: “Frank Harris is the most astounding creature! He will tell you a story and tell it so marvellously that, when he has finished, you say to yourself: ‘That is the most wonderful thing I have ever heard.’ And you say to him: ‘Why, in God’s name, don’t you write that?’ Well, he does write it, and when you read it you see that, after all, it is by no means so wonderful a thing as you had thought it.” But this is only half true. The story that is told is a very different thing from the story that is written: so different, indeed, that one cannot find any basis for comparison. In telling a story Harris is elliptical; a faint gesture serves for a sentence; a momentary silence is an innuendo; a lifting of the eyebrows, a look, a dropping of the voice, a slowness in his speech—all these take the place of words. He is an exquisite actor and he is at his best when he is sinister and menacing. One need scarcely say that the effect of one of Harris’s stories, told in private, with only one or two listeners, is extremely powerful, for his personality, so quick to melt and suffuse his speech—colouring it and vitalising it—is strong and strange and full of tropicalrichness....But the actor’s gift is not rare, whereas that combination of talents that makes a great short-story writer is met with only once or twice in a generation. Harris’s claims to greatness in this direction cannot justly be denied, though of late years there has been a noticeable tendency to treat his work as though it were not of first-rate importance. His choice of subject, the violence of his thought, his strict honesty of mind, his open contempt for many of his contemporaries—these have brought him enemies whose only method of retaliation is to decry work they will not understand.But Harris could not be happy without hostility.[38]There is something of the jaguar in his nature; he must, for his soul’s peace, have his teeth in the flesh of an enemy. And, if he is not fighting an individual, he is offending society at large. Years ago, so Harris told me, when he was editingThe Fortnightly Reviewwith such distinction, he printed one of his own short stories in that magazine—a story that, for one reason or another, gave great offence to a large section of readers. Within twenty-four hours he had a hornet’s nest about his ears, and the directors of the firm, Messrs Chapman & Hall, who published theFortnightly, met in solemn conclave to discuss what should be done with so injudicious and reckless an editor. Needless to say, Harris stood by his guns, and one can imagine the splendidly arrogant way in which he would uphold his right to insert anything he chose in a magazine edited by himself. But discussion made matters only more critical, and Harris told me he would have been compelled to hand in his resignation if an unforeseen event had not occurred. That event was the entrance of George Meredith, who, at that time, was a reader for Messrs Chapman & Hall. As soon as his eyes lit on Harris he held out his hand, and walked quickly up to him, saying: “My warmest congratulations! Your story in the new number is quite the finest thing you have done—an honour to yourself and theFortnightly!” That left no further room for discussion and, needless to say, Harris retained his editorship of the great magazine.My first meeting with Harris was of the friendliest nature, and on his return to London he wrote to me thanking me for something I had written about him inThe Manchester Courier. (I noticed with amusement thatThe Manchester Guardian, unable, no doubt, to forgive Harris for attacking Professor Herford, had absolutely ignored the Shakespeare lecture, except to announce baldly that it had been given.)Very soon after this meeting in Manchester I went to[39]live in London, and called on Harris in Chancery Lane. He was running a curious illustrated weekly, entitledHearth and Home, and I remember sitting in a little back room in his office turning over the filesof his magazine and wondering what on earth he hoped to do with such a production. It was tame; it was watery; it was feeble. I looked at him quizzically.“What do you think of it?” he asked.“Well, don’t you see?...” I began hesitatingly; “don’t you see that ... well, now, look at thetitle!”“Title’s good enough, don’t you think?”“Oh yes, good enough ... good enough for Fleetway House. Why not sell it to Northcliffe? But you’ve got no Aunt Maggie’s column, and no Beauty Hints, and no Cupid’s Corner! Oh, Harris!”He laughed, and invited me out to lunch.I never discovered what strange circumstances had conspired to make him the possessor of this extraordinary production. No doubt he bought it for nothing, with the intention of rapidly improving it and selling it for something substantial later on. But I believe it died soon after—perhaps urged on to its grave by some verses of mine which were printed close to an advertisement of ladies’ ——.On our way out of the office we were joined by a very beautiful lady who, it soon transpired, shared my admiration for Harris’s genius. We jumped on to a bus running at full speed and alighted, a couple of minutes later, at Simpson’s.Harris should write a book on cookery. Perhaps he will. Harris should run a hotel. But he has already done so. Harris should be induced to print all the indiscreet things he says over coffee andliqueurs....It was a close study of Simpson’s menu that started the cookery discussion. The Beautiful Lady and I were told what was wrong and what was right with the menu. And[40]then there began a discourse, profound, full of strange knowledge and recondite wisdom, a discourse that Balzac should have heard, that the de Goncourts would have envied. We listened, amazed. And a waiter, having rushed to our table in the stress of his work, stood anchored, his mouth slightly open, his whole attention riveted on the Master from whom no gastronomic secrets were hid. Truly, Harris was amazing!After a considerable time his enthusiasm evaporated and we began to eat. And then ensued a long talk, full of indiscretions, of most enjoyable malice. Harris told us many things that, perhaps, it would have been wiser if he had kept to himself. But, in spite of his venom, his real hatred of certain individuals, he never for a moment permits himself to be blinded to the quality of a man’s work.“So-and-so is the most detestable person,” he said, speaking of a well-known writer, “but he is one of the few real poets alive.” Again: “X is the most generous-hearted man I have ever met; it’s a pity he can’t learn to write.”Mention of Richard Middleton, who had only recently died by his own hand in Brussels, troubled him, and it was clear that he had not yet recovered from the shock of this tragedy.“He killed himself in a mood of sheer disgust—disgust at his lack of success. True, he was still young, and was becoming more widely known month by month; also, he had many friends. Nevertheless, life did not give him what he asked and, tired of asking, he ended life. I remember him coming to me just before he left England. He wanted to get away. Some mood of loathing had come to him; he was fretful, yet determined. I offered him my villa at Nice; it was empty, the caretaker would attend to his wants and he would have ample leisure for his work. He hesitated, stayed in London a day or two longer and then disappeared to Brussels.... I know the[41]poison he used, and a score of times I have gone over in my mind the tortures he must have endured.”Harris paled; his face twitched and, involuntarily, as it seemed, his shoulders twisted themselves. Brooding, he was silent for a few minutes, and then, collecting himself with a little shudder, began to speak of other things.A little later the Beautiful Lady departed and we were left alone.“And now,” said Harris, “tell me about yourself. What are you doing? Why have you left Manchester?—but there is no reason to ask that. Tell me this—are you making enough money for yourself?”“Well, I’ve lived in London just one week,” said I, “and my tastes are rather expensive. Just before I left Manchester a very experienced journalist told me I should be making a thousand pounds a year at the end of eighteen months; another, equally experienced, declared I should never make more than six pounds a week. I hope the second one won’t prove correct.”He mused for a few moments.“You ought to make a thousand pounds a year pretty easily, I should think,” he said at length. “Whom do you know?”I knew nobody, and said so. He thereupon took a piece of paper from his pocket and wrote a list of names; at the top of the list stood J. L. Garvin; at the bottom, Lord Northcliffe.“Northcliffe’s away,” he said, “buying forests in Newfoundland to make paper with. However, he’ll be back in a week or two, and in the meantime I’ll write you a letter to give to him. And now we’ll take a taxi and see people.”Harris gave up the whole of that day to me and, largely owing to him, I had within the next few days more work offered to me than I could possibly get through. From time to time, months later, good things would come my[42]way, and nearly always I could trace them to something generous and fine that Harris had said of me.It was chiefly because he was so generous with his time that I so rarely called upon him. Often I would curb a strong desire to see him, feeling that however embarrassing my visit might be, he would, out of a quixotic kindness, throw up his work and come with me to talk. For this reason I had not seen him for some little time, when, one morning, I received a letter from him reproaching me for my absence. “Why have you hidden yourself for so long?” he asked. “I go to the Café every night; come, you will find me there.”“The Café,” of course, was the Café Royal. It so chanced that, that very afternoon, my duties took me to a symphony concert in the Queen’s Hall; the concert over, I found myself passing the Café Royal on my way from the Queen’s Hall to Piccadilly Circus, and turned in on the remote chance of finding Harris.At the end of the passage, near the windows where French papers are displayed, I found a crowd of a dozen excited men, all talking and gesticulating. The rest of the Café was empty, as one would expect at that time of the day. In the middle of the small crowd was Harris, who caught my eye almost at once. He came to me, and I saw that he was rather agitated.“Come and sit over here, Cumberland,” he said. “I’ve just been through a beastly quarter of an hour.”It appeared that a well-known and very distinguishedlittérateurhad quarrelled with him in the Café.... Blows had beenexchanged....We talked of money—an ever-absorbing topic both to Harris and to me. He told me his books had brought him practically nothing. ForThe Bomb, if I remember correctly, he received fifty pounds—certainly not more than one hundred pounds.“If I had been compelled to live by what my books[43]have brought me,” he said, “I should have starved. Yet it is not long ago that Arnold Bennett assured me that I should be able to earn five thousand pounds a year if I gave my whole time to fiction. But Bennett is wrong. My books, ever sinceElder Conklinwas published, have been enthusiastically praised, but they have not had large sales. Most authors must find book-writing the most unremunerative work in the world. I put an enormous amount of labour intoThe Bomb, as I do into all my books, and the labour was not made any the less from the fact that much of the earliest part of the book is autobiographical. In my young manhood I worked as a labourer, deep under water, at the foundations of Brooklyn Bridge; it is all described in my book.”Though I went to the Café Royal at frequent intervals after that I very rarely saw Harris there. He had abandonedHearth and Home, or it had abandoned him, and he was now throwing away his brilliant gifts onModern Society. I was elected an honorary member of the Cabaret Club, run by Madame Strindberg, the widow of the great Swedish writer, and I used to look in there occasionally in the early hours of the morning, expecting to run across Harris, who, I heard, also visited that exotic, underground and rather riotous place. But I never chanced to see him, and two or three months must have passed without my hearing of him.In March, 1914, I went to Athens for a holiday. Something brave and wonderful in that city, some ancient Bacchic madness, some fierce exaltation of soul took hold of me, and I remember sitting down one night, after a visit to fever-stricken Eleusis, to write to Harris, feeling the necessity of expressing myself to one who would understand. The reader may be amused that I should think Harris akin to ancient Greece, but if the reader is amused he does not know Harris. Only A. R. Orage is more Greek in spirit than he is. In reply Harris wrote at great[44]length, full of the fervour of a young student. He told me that in his young manhood he had spent a year of study in that wonderful city, and urged me to visit him on my return to England.But I was destined not to see him again. Very soon after my return to England he got into trouble with reference to something libellous that he had published inModern Society. He was kept in prison, if I remember rightly, for about a month. I sought permission to visit him there, but was refused, and I was staying in Oxford when he was released.Soon after the war broke out he wrote me the following letter fromParis:—23, Avenue du Bois de Boulogne, Paris,29th Aug.’14.My dear Cumberland,—I’m just back from the frontier.... This war of nations is going to test every man as by fire before it’s over. It will be long in spite of Mr Kipps and Bernard Shaw. The Russian masses will hardly come decisively into action (they have scarcely any railways and no good roads) till next May or June, and long before then, or rather in a couple of months from now, the French will be pressed back to within twenty miles of besieged Paris, when I hope the English forces on the flank will stop the German advance. Then will begin the slow process of driving the Germans home, which will be quickened by the Russian weight behind Cossack pricks. Fancy onemanhaving the power to set 400 millions of men fighting for their lives. And then they talk of man as a rational animal!!Don’t say you like what I wrote inThe Daily Sketch; all my best things were carefully cut out and filled up with drivel, till my cheeks burned.Your sketch of me is very kindly; the fault you find in me is not a fault. Jesus, Shakespeare, Napoleon—all the[45]greatest men have known their own value and insisted on it—perhaps because they have allcome to their own and their own received them not. When you have done great work you feel it is not yours, but given to you; you are only a reed shaken in the wind; you can judge it as if it had nothing to do with you. Moreover, you see that this failure to recognise greatness is the capital sin of all time, the sin against the Holy Ghost which He said could never be forgiven. Modesty is the fig-leaf of mediocrity—don’t let us talk of it. Remember how Whistler scourged it.I’m writing now onNatural Religion—my best thing yet: I’ve done more than Nietzsche: don’t think I’m bragging. I am the Reconciler; though my cocked nose and keen eyes may make you think me a combatant. Twenty years hence, Cumberland, if your eyes keep their promise, you’ll think differently of me. I remember as a young man getting Wagner to praise himself and saying to myself that no man was ever so conceited as the little hawk-faced fellow with the ploughshare chin. Did he not say that the step from Bach to Beethoven was not so great as that from Beethoven to Wagner! And yet for these fifteen years past I have agreed with him and find nothing conceited in the declaration. Only weak men are hurt by another man’s conceit; are we not gods also to be spoken of with reverence?To see the world in a grain of sandAnd Heaven in a wild flower,To hold Infinity in your handAnd Eternity in an hour.The question for you is, have I quickened you? Encouraged you to be a brave soldier in the Liberation War of Humanity? Did virtue come out of me? or discouragement? Now at nearly sixty I am about to rebuild my life: my own people have stoned and imprisoned and exiled me. Well—the world’s wide. In[46]October I shall be in New York, ready for another round with Fate. Meanwhile, all luck to you and all good will from your friend,Frank Harris.Remember this word of Joubert: there is no such sure sign of mediocrity as constant moderation in praise. Ha! Ha! Ha! Yours ever,F. H.There is not in this letter a single word to indicate that he was not, heart and soul, in sympathy with the Allied Cause. Late in September, 1914, I was myself in Paris, having visited Amiens and the Marne. I took the earliest opportunity of calling upon Harris, but discovered that he had left his rooms a few days earlier, leaving no indication of his next resting-place. On calling upon the American Consul I discovered that my friend had already sailed for the States.Subsequently he wrote bitterly about England in an American paper. I never had an opportunity of reading his articles, but I read various extracts from them in British newspapers, and was astounded both by the views they contained and by the manner in which those views were expressed.Years ago Ruskin wrote Rossetti a curious letter: he said he could regard no man as friend who did not value his (Ruskin’s) gifts as highly as he (Ruskin) did. Harris, no doubt, adopted the same kind of attitude towards England. England refused to accept him at his own estimate and, at length, in fierce disgust, Harris turned his back on a country which he deemed unworthy of him.
Itmust have been five or six years ago that a friend came to me with the news that Frank Harris had expressed a desire to see some of my verse. Precisely what my friend had told Harris about me, I do not know; something very exaggerated, perhaps; something complimentary, doubtless; something that piqued Harris’s curiosity, it was evident. As Harris is one of the few modern writers for whom my boyish admiration has survived manhood, I felt subtly gratified that he should take even a fleeting interest in me, and I sat down at once and copied out various poems that had already appeared inThe Academy, under Lord Alfred Douglas’s editorship, and inThe English Reviewin the days of Ford Madox Hueffer, and, more recently, when edited by Austin Harrison. With my verses I sent a letter, hypocritically modest as regards myself, honestly full of admiration as regards Harris. He replied from his villa in Nice, sending me a long letter in which he did me the honour to enter fully into the supposed merits and demerits of my work. Of one poem he said that it was not sufficiently sensual, and I have never been able quite to understand what he meant, for I had, with some particularity, described seven naked ladies swimming in a pool, and I had felt that my verses had obviously enough expressed my feelings.
The correspondence continued until, one day, Harris wrote to tell me he was returning to London and to invite me to visit him there. In the event, however, my first meeting with Harris was in Manchester, whither he came[33]to lecture on Shakespeare to the local dramatic society. Jack Kahane (a great friend of mine) and I met him at the Midland Hotel upon his arrival, and from the very first moment he intoxicated me. Whilst he changed from his travelling clothes to evening dress he talked and ejaculated, beseeching us to remain with him as he had had “a rotten journey from London and felt unutterably bored.” I remember very little of what he said except that, with some venom, he called Browning “a not unprosperous gentleman.” He refused to eat or drink before his lecture and, presently, we went down to the large room in the hotel where he was to speak.
We found there a mixed assembly. Everybody in Manchester, it should be explained, writes plays; at least, I never yet met a man in that delectable city who does not. Moreover, they “study” them. They weigh and compare the merits of Stanley Houghton and Ibsen, Harold Brighouse and Strindberg, Allan Monkhouse and Bjornson, Arnold Bennett and Hauptmann, Laurence Housman and Brieux, and so forth. They search for “inner meanings”; the more earnest of them hunt for “messages”; the more delicate seek to perceive Fine Shades. They are veritable disciples of Miss Horniman—priggishly intellectual, self-consciously superior. And, of course, the rock of their salvation is St Bernard. Innocuous people enough, but impossible to live in the same city with.
To this assembly of earnest, pale men and spectacled women Harris was to lecture, and I looked from them to Harris and from Harris to them with joyful expectations. From the very first sentence he was fiery and provocative, throwing out daring theories, anathematising all forms of respectability, upholding with unparalleled fierceness a wonderful ideal of chivalry and nobility and condemning,en bloc, the whole human race, and particularly that portion of it seated before him. Ladies rustled; men stirred[34]uneasily. Then, having delivered himself of a passage of hot eloquence, he paused. A clock ticked. He looked defiantly at us and still paused. A fat lady in the front row, palpably embarrassed by the long silence and, no doubt, feeling that she had reached one of the most dramatic moments of her existence, banged her plump hands together and ejaculated: “Bravo!” A few other ladies of both sexes joined her, but Harris was not to be placated. Thrusting out his chin, he began again. And this time he attacked the Mancunian literary idol, Professor C. H. Herford, a great scholar, but a more than suitable object for Harris’s ridicule. Herford is a man who has not lived fully: a semi-invalid, asthmatic, bloodless and spectacled; a man of books and rather dusty books; in effect, a professor. He had recently reviewed Harris’s book,The Man Shakespeare, inThe Manchester Guardian, and had called it “a disgrace to British scholarship.” Why this should have annoyed the author I cannot tell, but Harris is at times a little unreasonable. Indeed, “annoyance” but feebly describes the feeling that spent itself in scalding invective and the most terrible irony. Each sentence he spoke appeared to be the last word in bitterness; but each succeeding sentence leaped above and beyond its predecessor, until at length the speaker had lashed himself into a state of feeling to express which words were useless. He stopped magnificently, and this time the room rang with applause. It is probable that not half-a-dozen people present believed his attack on Professor Herford was justified; indeed, it is probable that not half-a-dozen were qualified to form any opinion of value on the matter. Nevertheless, they applauded him with enthusiasm, and they did so because they had been deeply stirred by eloquence that can only be described as superb and by anger that was lava hot in its sincerity. Briefly, the lecture was an overwhelming success.
I was soon to discover that Harris, like all the men of[35]genius I have met, is vain. I do not mean that he overrates his gifts: he does not; nor that his recognition of his own genius is offensively insistent: such is very far from being the case. I mean that he is inordinately proud, innocently and childlikely proud, of things that are not of the least consequence. At supper in the French Restaurant the head waiter slipped noiselessly across to the table at which Harris, Kahane and I were sitting. (Harris is the kind of man who acts as a magnet to all head waiters—a high tribute to his dominating personality.) When our orders had been given the waiter, turning to go, said: “Very good, Mr Harris.” On the instant Harris looked up. “So you know me?” he asked. “Yes, sir. I have had the pleasure of waiting on you in Monte Carlo and, if I am not mistaken, in New York as well.” It is difficult to describe the naïve pleasure Harris took in this: it stamped him at once as a man of the world—he who, of all people, required, in our opinion, no such stamp.
For six hours we talked—talked long after every other visitor in the hotel had retired, and we were left alone in the Octagon Court in a pool of dim light. Harris is the only brilliant talker I have met who has not made me feel an abject idiot. To begin with, though he has a pronounced strain of violence, almost of brutality, in his nature, he is always infinitely courteous. He will listen to your (I mean my) feeble contributions to a discussion with interest which, if feigned, is so admirably feigned that you are completely deceived. And he can keep this sort of thing up indefinitely. Moreover, though his mind is agile enough, his speech is rarely quick; it is slow and deliberate, but without hesitation, without a single word of tautology.
I cannot hope, after so long a lapse of time, to reproduce, however faintly, the true quality of Harris’s conversation, but I remember the substance of it most[36]vividly. In his lecture earlier in the evening he had mentioned Jesus Christ, and the reference to our Saviour had been so original in its implication, yet so reverent in its manner, that I felt he must have much that is new to say on a subject that has aroused more discussion than any other during the last two thousand years. So I broached it tentatively. He was aroused immediately, and skilfully drew me out to discover if I had anything new to say. I had not. I merely voiced what must be an age-long regret, that only one side of Christ’s nature has been presented to us in the Gospels; that the feasting, joyous Christ has been only faintly indicated; and that His tolerance towards the weaknesses of the body’s passions had always been shirked by those of the priestly craft. I thought it possible that at some future crisis in the world’s history Christ might come again and, on His second coming, present to the world a more complete embodiment of all the potentialities inherent in human nature.
With much of this Harris agreed, though I soon perceived that his mind had for long been intuitively building up, and giving true proportion to, those elements in Christ’s nature that are only hinted at in the Gospels. He was all for a full-blooded, passionate Jesus, for a Jesus who had tested the body’s powers, for a Jesus who was crucified by passion before He was crucified by Pilate. In a word, he applied to Jesus the same intuitive method that he had already applied to Shakespeare. The danger of this method, of course, is that one is tempted (and it is almost impossible not to succumb to the temptation) to project one’s own personality into that of the man one is studying.
“My next book shall be about Jesus Christ,” said Harris. “No man in these days has written honestly about Him.”
“Shall you write as a believer?” I asked.
“Most assuredly,” he replied.
[37]Then Harris told us some stories—stories he had written, stories he had yet to write. I remember Austin Harrison once saying to me: “Frank Harris is the most astounding creature! He will tell you a story and tell it so marvellously that, when he has finished, you say to yourself: ‘That is the most wonderful thing I have ever heard.’ And you say to him: ‘Why, in God’s name, don’t you write that?’ Well, he does write it, and when you read it you see that, after all, it is by no means so wonderful a thing as you had thought it.” But this is only half true. The story that is told is a very different thing from the story that is written: so different, indeed, that one cannot find any basis for comparison. In telling a story Harris is elliptical; a faint gesture serves for a sentence; a momentary silence is an innuendo; a lifting of the eyebrows, a look, a dropping of the voice, a slowness in his speech—all these take the place of words. He is an exquisite actor and he is at his best when he is sinister and menacing. One need scarcely say that the effect of one of Harris’s stories, told in private, with only one or two listeners, is extremely powerful, for his personality, so quick to melt and suffuse his speech—colouring it and vitalising it—is strong and strange and full of tropicalrichness....
But the actor’s gift is not rare, whereas that combination of talents that makes a great short-story writer is met with only once or twice in a generation. Harris’s claims to greatness in this direction cannot justly be denied, though of late years there has been a noticeable tendency to treat his work as though it were not of first-rate importance. His choice of subject, the violence of his thought, his strict honesty of mind, his open contempt for many of his contemporaries—these have brought him enemies whose only method of retaliation is to decry work they will not understand.
But Harris could not be happy without hostility.[38]There is something of the jaguar in his nature; he must, for his soul’s peace, have his teeth in the flesh of an enemy. And, if he is not fighting an individual, he is offending society at large. Years ago, so Harris told me, when he was editingThe Fortnightly Reviewwith such distinction, he printed one of his own short stories in that magazine—a story that, for one reason or another, gave great offence to a large section of readers. Within twenty-four hours he had a hornet’s nest about his ears, and the directors of the firm, Messrs Chapman & Hall, who published theFortnightly, met in solemn conclave to discuss what should be done with so injudicious and reckless an editor. Needless to say, Harris stood by his guns, and one can imagine the splendidly arrogant way in which he would uphold his right to insert anything he chose in a magazine edited by himself. But discussion made matters only more critical, and Harris told me he would have been compelled to hand in his resignation if an unforeseen event had not occurred. That event was the entrance of George Meredith, who, at that time, was a reader for Messrs Chapman & Hall. As soon as his eyes lit on Harris he held out his hand, and walked quickly up to him, saying: “My warmest congratulations! Your story in the new number is quite the finest thing you have done—an honour to yourself and theFortnightly!” That left no further room for discussion and, needless to say, Harris retained his editorship of the great magazine.
My first meeting with Harris was of the friendliest nature, and on his return to London he wrote to me thanking me for something I had written about him inThe Manchester Courier. (I noticed with amusement thatThe Manchester Guardian, unable, no doubt, to forgive Harris for attacking Professor Herford, had absolutely ignored the Shakespeare lecture, except to announce baldly that it had been given.)
Very soon after this meeting in Manchester I went to[39]live in London, and called on Harris in Chancery Lane. He was running a curious illustrated weekly, entitledHearth and Home, and I remember sitting in a little back room in his office turning over the filesof his magazine and wondering what on earth he hoped to do with such a production. It was tame; it was watery; it was feeble. I looked at him quizzically.
“What do you think of it?” he asked.
“Well, don’t you see?...” I began hesitatingly; “don’t you see that ... well, now, look at thetitle!”
“Title’s good enough, don’t you think?”
“Oh yes, good enough ... good enough for Fleetway House. Why not sell it to Northcliffe? But you’ve got no Aunt Maggie’s column, and no Beauty Hints, and no Cupid’s Corner! Oh, Harris!”
He laughed, and invited me out to lunch.
I never discovered what strange circumstances had conspired to make him the possessor of this extraordinary production. No doubt he bought it for nothing, with the intention of rapidly improving it and selling it for something substantial later on. But I believe it died soon after—perhaps urged on to its grave by some verses of mine which were printed close to an advertisement of ladies’ ——.
On our way out of the office we were joined by a very beautiful lady who, it soon transpired, shared my admiration for Harris’s genius. We jumped on to a bus running at full speed and alighted, a couple of minutes later, at Simpson’s.
Harris should write a book on cookery. Perhaps he will. Harris should run a hotel. But he has already done so. Harris should be induced to print all the indiscreet things he says over coffee andliqueurs....
It was a close study of Simpson’s menu that started the cookery discussion. The Beautiful Lady and I were told what was wrong and what was right with the menu. And[40]then there began a discourse, profound, full of strange knowledge and recondite wisdom, a discourse that Balzac should have heard, that the de Goncourts would have envied. We listened, amazed. And a waiter, having rushed to our table in the stress of his work, stood anchored, his mouth slightly open, his whole attention riveted on the Master from whom no gastronomic secrets were hid. Truly, Harris was amazing!
After a considerable time his enthusiasm evaporated and we began to eat. And then ensued a long talk, full of indiscretions, of most enjoyable malice. Harris told us many things that, perhaps, it would have been wiser if he had kept to himself. But, in spite of his venom, his real hatred of certain individuals, he never for a moment permits himself to be blinded to the quality of a man’s work.
“So-and-so is the most detestable person,” he said, speaking of a well-known writer, “but he is one of the few real poets alive.” Again: “X is the most generous-hearted man I have ever met; it’s a pity he can’t learn to write.”
Mention of Richard Middleton, who had only recently died by his own hand in Brussels, troubled him, and it was clear that he had not yet recovered from the shock of this tragedy.
“He killed himself in a mood of sheer disgust—disgust at his lack of success. True, he was still young, and was becoming more widely known month by month; also, he had many friends. Nevertheless, life did not give him what he asked and, tired of asking, he ended life. I remember him coming to me just before he left England. He wanted to get away. Some mood of loathing had come to him; he was fretful, yet determined. I offered him my villa at Nice; it was empty, the caretaker would attend to his wants and he would have ample leisure for his work. He hesitated, stayed in London a day or two longer and then disappeared to Brussels.... I know the[41]poison he used, and a score of times I have gone over in my mind the tortures he must have endured.”
Harris paled; his face twitched and, involuntarily, as it seemed, his shoulders twisted themselves. Brooding, he was silent for a few minutes, and then, collecting himself with a little shudder, began to speak of other things.
A little later the Beautiful Lady departed and we were left alone.
“And now,” said Harris, “tell me about yourself. What are you doing? Why have you left Manchester?—but there is no reason to ask that. Tell me this—are you making enough money for yourself?”
“Well, I’ve lived in London just one week,” said I, “and my tastes are rather expensive. Just before I left Manchester a very experienced journalist told me I should be making a thousand pounds a year at the end of eighteen months; another, equally experienced, declared I should never make more than six pounds a week. I hope the second one won’t prove correct.”
He mused for a few moments.
“You ought to make a thousand pounds a year pretty easily, I should think,” he said at length. “Whom do you know?”
I knew nobody, and said so. He thereupon took a piece of paper from his pocket and wrote a list of names; at the top of the list stood J. L. Garvin; at the bottom, Lord Northcliffe.
“Northcliffe’s away,” he said, “buying forests in Newfoundland to make paper with. However, he’ll be back in a week or two, and in the meantime I’ll write you a letter to give to him. And now we’ll take a taxi and see people.”
Harris gave up the whole of that day to me and, largely owing to him, I had within the next few days more work offered to me than I could possibly get through. From time to time, months later, good things would come my[42]way, and nearly always I could trace them to something generous and fine that Harris had said of me.
It was chiefly because he was so generous with his time that I so rarely called upon him. Often I would curb a strong desire to see him, feeling that however embarrassing my visit might be, he would, out of a quixotic kindness, throw up his work and come with me to talk. For this reason I had not seen him for some little time, when, one morning, I received a letter from him reproaching me for my absence. “Why have you hidden yourself for so long?” he asked. “I go to the Café every night; come, you will find me there.”
“The Café,” of course, was the Café Royal. It so chanced that, that very afternoon, my duties took me to a symphony concert in the Queen’s Hall; the concert over, I found myself passing the Café Royal on my way from the Queen’s Hall to Piccadilly Circus, and turned in on the remote chance of finding Harris.
At the end of the passage, near the windows where French papers are displayed, I found a crowd of a dozen excited men, all talking and gesticulating. The rest of the Café was empty, as one would expect at that time of the day. In the middle of the small crowd was Harris, who caught my eye almost at once. He came to me, and I saw that he was rather agitated.
“Come and sit over here, Cumberland,” he said. “I’ve just been through a beastly quarter of an hour.”
It appeared that a well-known and very distinguishedlittérateurhad quarrelled with him in the Café.... Blows had beenexchanged....
We talked of money—an ever-absorbing topic both to Harris and to me. He told me his books had brought him practically nothing. ForThe Bomb, if I remember correctly, he received fifty pounds—certainly not more than one hundred pounds.
“If I had been compelled to live by what my books[43]have brought me,” he said, “I should have starved. Yet it is not long ago that Arnold Bennett assured me that I should be able to earn five thousand pounds a year if I gave my whole time to fiction. But Bennett is wrong. My books, ever sinceElder Conklinwas published, have been enthusiastically praised, but they have not had large sales. Most authors must find book-writing the most unremunerative work in the world. I put an enormous amount of labour intoThe Bomb, as I do into all my books, and the labour was not made any the less from the fact that much of the earliest part of the book is autobiographical. In my young manhood I worked as a labourer, deep under water, at the foundations of Brooklyn Bridge; it is all described in my book.”
Though I went to the Café Royal at frequent intervals after that I very rarely saw Harris there. He had abandonedHearth and Home, or it had abandoned him, and he was now throwing away his brilliant gifts onModern Society. I was elected an honorary member of the Cabaret Club, run by Madame Strindberg, the widow of the great Swedish writer, and I used to look in there occasionally in the early hours of the morning, expecting to run across Harris, who, I heard, also visited that exotic, underground and rather riotous place. But I never chanced to see him, and two or three months must have passed without my hearing of him.
In March, 1914, I went to Athens for a holiday. Something brave and wonderful in that city, some ancient Bacchic madness, some fierce exaltation of soul took hold of me, and I remember sitting down one night, after a visit to fever-stricken Eleusis, to write to Harris, feeling the necessity of expressing myself to one who would understand. The reader may be amused that I should think Harris akin to ancient Greece, but if the reader is amused he does not know Harris. Only A. R. Orage is more Greek in spirit than he is. In reply Harris wrote at great[44]length, full of the fervour of a young student. He told me that in his young manhood he had spent a year of study in that wonderful city, and urged me to visit him on my return to England.
But I was destined not to see him again. Very soon after my return to England he got into trouble with reference to something libellous that he had published inModern Society. He was kept in prison, if I remember rightly, for about a month. I sought permission to visit him there, but was refused, and I was staying in Oxford when he was released.
Soon after the war broke out he wrote me the following letter fromParis:—
23, Avenue du Bois de Boulogne, Paris,29th Aug.’14.
My dear Cumberland,—I’m just back from the frontier.... This war of nations is going to test every man as by fire before it’s over. It will be long in spite of Mr Kipps and Bernard Shaw. The Russian masses will hardly come decisively into action (they have scarcely any railways and no good roads) till next May or June, and long before then, or rather in a couple of months from now, the French will be pressed back to within twenty miles of besieged Paris, when I hope the English forces on the flank will stop the German advance. Then will begin the slow process of driving the Germans home, which will be quickened by the Russian weight behind Cossack pricks. Fancy onemanhaving the power to set 400 millions of men fighting for their lives. And then they talk of man as a rational animal!!
Don’t say you like what I wrote inThe Daily Sketch; all my best things were carefully cut out and filled up with drivel, till my cheeks burned.
Your sketch of me is very kindly; the fault you find in me is not a fault. Jesus, Shakespeare, Napoleon—all the[45]greatest men have known their own value and insisted on it—perhaps because they have allcome to their own and their own received them not. When you have done great work you feel it is not yours, but given to you; you are only a reed shaken in the wind; you can judge it as if it had nothing to do with you. Moreover, you see that this failure to recognise greatness is the capital sin of all time, the sin against the Holy Ghost which He said could never be forgiven. Modesty is the fig-leaf of mediocrity—don’t let us talk of it. Remember how Whistler scourged it.
I’m writing now onNatural Religion—my best thing yet: I’ve done more than Nietzsche: don’t think I’m bragging. I am the Reconciler; though my cocked nose and keen eyes may make you think me a combatant. Twenty years hence, Cumberland, if your eyes keep their promise, you’ll think differently of me. I remember as a young man getting Wagner to praise himself and saying to myself that no man was ever so conceited as the little hawk-faced fellow with the ploughshare chin. Did he not say that the step from Bach to Beethoven was not so great as that from Beethoven to Wagner! And yet for these fifteen years past I have agreed with him and find nothing conceited in the declaration. Only weak men are hurt by another man’s conceit; are we not gods also to be spoken of with reverence?
To see the world in a grain of sandAnd Heaven in a wild flower,To hold Infinity in your handAnd Eternity in an hour.
To see the world in a grain of sandAnd Heaven in a wild flower,To hold Infinity in your handAnd Eternity in an hour.
To see the world in a grain of sandAnd Heaven in a wild flower,To hold Infinity in your handAnd Eternity in an hour.
To see the world in a grain of sand
And Heaven in a wild flower,
To hold Infinity in your hand
And Eternity in an hour.
The question for you is, have I quickened you? Encouraged you to be a brave soldier in the Liberation War of Humanity? Did virtue come out of me? or discouragement? Now at nearly sixty I am about to rebuild my life: my own people have stoned and imprisoned and exiled me. Well—the world’s wide. In[46]October I shall be in New York, ready for another round with Fate. Meanwhile, all luck to you and all good will from your friend,Frank Harris.
Remember this word of Joubert: there is no such sure sign of mediocrity as constant moderation in praise. Ha! Ha! Ha! Yours ever,F. H.
There is not in this letter a single word to indicate that he was not, heart and soul, in sympathy with the Allied Cause. Late in September, 1914, I was myself in Paris, having visited Amiens and the Marne. I took the earliest opportunity of calling upon Harris, but discovered that he had left his rooms a few days earlier, leaving no indication of his next resting-place. On calling upon the American Consul I discovered that my friend had already sailed for the States.
Subsequently he wrote bitterly about England in an American paper. I never had an opportunity of reading his articles, but I read various extracts from them in British newspapers, and was astounded both by the views they contained and by the manner in which those views were expressed.
Years ago Ruskin wrote Rossetti a curious letter: he said he could regard no man as friend who did not value his (Ruskin’s) gifts as highly as he (Ruskin) did. Harris, no doubt, adopted the same kind of attitude towards England. England refused to accept him at his own estimate and, at length, in fierce disgust, Harris turned his back on a country which he deemed unworthy of him.
[47]CHAPTER IVMISCELLANEOUSMadame Yvette Guilbert—Sir Victor Horsley—Mrs Pankhurst—Jacob Epstein—Madame Aïno AcktéYvette Guilbert!... Yvette Guilbert! I suppose that only a writer who really can write can say anything useful or dignified about this most wonderful woman.... And yet I must try. Do you remember that extraordinary breath-catching passage inVillettewhere Charlotte Brontë describes the acting of Vashti—Vashti who was Rachel—Vashti who went to London when Charlotte loved Héger?... That, I always think, was a great event. Little Currer Bell, with her most modest mind and her most proud heart, sitting, so breathlessly, on one side of the footlights, and Rachel walking from the wings, beyond the footlights, and, like an empress, speaking, thinking like an empress, and, like a veritable woman, loving and hating.... Do you remember that passage? If you do, perhaps you will think, as I do, that, after all, only women can write of women. Did not Jane Austen create Elizabeth Bennet? And who was it who wrote theSonnets from the Portuguese? And even, after all, Aphra Behn ... well,sheknew something about women, didn’t she?So that I feel only a woman can write at all convincingly of Yvette Guilbert. I must just gossip and prattle a little while.I must have heard Yvette Guilbert a score of times. The first occasion was in the Midland Hall, Manchester, eight or ten years ago, when she sang to an audience of[48]about two hundred frigid people who, apparently, knew as much French as I know of the language of the Serbs, and as much about Art as the pencil with which I write knows about the thoughts it records. Ernest Newman was there and, that night, wrote an article forThe Manchester Guardianthat must have more than compensated Guilbert for the smallness of the audience. For she loves praise, even the praise she gives herself, as the following letter addressed to myself will testify:Je reçois votre aimable lettre et votreadmirable article!! Je ne peux pas vous dire toutela joieque je ressensen lisant que vous comprenezsi bienmes efforts! Je n’ai jamaissu être hypocriteet j’ai toujours manqué de diplomatie dans la vie àcause de cela; aussi, je n’hésitepas àvous dire que jecroissincèrement mériter vos bonnes paroles parce que je passema vie entièreàme dévoueràmon art sans jamais de vacances. Mon amour pour le travail et la Beauté et tout ce qui estpureen art est tout le “mateur” de mes forces intellectuelles. Merci d’avoir devinéce quele public ne voitpas toujours. Mes mains dans les vôtres.Yvette Guilbert.Guilbert has no singing voice, and yet she sings. Her singing voice is small ... ever so small. Yet clear, distinct, expressive and, in the lowest register, most deep and thrilling. How little mere “voice” matters! Only consider. Here, on one hand, we have Madame Clara Butt with, I suppose, one of the most wonderful organs that this world, or any other world, has ever listened to. But would you walk five miles to hear her sing? I wouldn’t. You, I hope and believe, wouldn’t either. Would you walk five miles to hear Blanche Marchesi sing—Blanche Marchesi, whose voice, as mere voice, is like a hundred other voices? Of course you would. Voice matters little. It is the temperament, the intellect, behind the[49]voice that counts. And the eternal struggle that Yvette Guilbert has had to undergo has been the struggle to make her comparatively small voice express the wonderful things of her imagination.A gesture. A look. An inflection. Two paces on the platform. A little cry ... a little cry of dismay. A superb and beautiful signal that tells us the Mother of God is big with a Child. A tiny silence. A moment of jauntiness. Something arch and irresistible. Something tragic that makes you clench yourfists....One day Yvette Guilbert wrote to ask me to call on her. I did not go. One feels so foolish in the presence of genius. One’s vanity is hurt. One is afraid of being found out.. . . . . . . .In the early days of the war I visited Sir Victor Horsley several times at his home. I was interested in shell shock, in the influence that the horror of war has on certain types of human nature, and he was good enough to supply me with a great deal of information. Quiet and undemonstrative, he used always to stand, or move slowly up and down the room; in the long talks we had together, I do not remember his sitting down once.I don’t think I ever met a man more careful to express his exact meaning; he appeared to have a horror of exaggeration and he qualified nearly every statement he made. In discussing scientific subjects such scrupulous carefulness is, of course, not only wise but necessary, and when, later on, I wrote a newspaper article on the effect that the strain and horror of war have on the human brain, Sir Victor showed himself very anxious that, in quoting his views, I should do so in language that could not possibly be interpreted in two different senses.He told me what my own experience in France and Salonica in 1915–1917 confirmed later on, that it is frequently the neurotic, the artistic, the excitable man who most quickly adapts himself to, and is least disturbed by,[50]the incredible cruelties of warfare, whilst the phlegmatic type of man is more liable to be broken by those cruelties. Sir Victor Horsley suggested that this was, in some measure, due to the fact that the neurotic man has, in imagination, tasted the terror of war before he has actually experienced it; that he has, as it were, prepared his mind for the shock it is to receive. The unimaginative man cannot do this, so that when his turn comes to go to the trenches and witness stark horrors, his nervous system reacts most violently.Sir Victor spoke a good deal to me about the evil influence of drink, and continually regretted that rum was served out to our soldiers. On this subject, of course, though I disagreed with him profoundly, I did not attempt to argue, though I pointed out that Napoleon had won many of his campaigns by almost drugging his men with spirits. To this he made no reply, though he shook his head gravely and seemed to ponder a little.My last interview with him was in his long, bare dining-room, where, as we stood before the fire, he described to me in a low, serious voice two or three war cases of mental trouble (functional, of course, not organic), and I could see that the war was, so to speak, closing in around him and enveloping him with its violent appeals, its tragic interests.. . . . . . . .Mrs Pankhurst I met only once, but the impression she has left on my mind is that of a most vivid personality. I saw her in many ridiculous situations that would have made almost any other person look positively foolish; but Mrs Pankhurst’s sense of personal dignity is so strong, her personality is so imperious, and, above all, she possesses so much humour and good sense, that it is impossible to imagine any situation, however grotesque, that would render her ridiculous.My interview with her was at the close of a day during which she had worked incessantly. She was tired, and[51]her face was lined and rather dim. An hour earlier I had seen her in Oxford Street, Manchester, seated in an open, horseless carriage, a dozen enthusiastic girls pulling at the shafts, a few ribald boys following and shouting small obscenities. I admired the perfect way she carried off the trying situation. She sat perfectly calmly, as though nothing in the least unusual were happening, as though, indeed, it were her daily custom, and the daily custom of all women, to be dragged through the public streets by a band of young ladies.We sat under a lamp at a large table. The things we discussed are now of no consequence, for the need for their discussion no longer exists. I can only give my impression of her.She struck me as being unutterably weary, weary bodily and perhaps mentally. Her personality suggested a body and a spirit being driven by an implacable will, a will that had no mercy for herself or for others, a will that no power could break. I could not help wondering, as I looked at her, whether she had not her moments of doubt, of self-distrust. She must have had, for all men and women have. But those moments would be few and short. Though she spoke to me very quietly, without a gesture, with one rather tightly clenched hand on the table, I felt the sheerpowerof her, the power that a quenchless spirit always gives to its owner.Fanatic? Well, yes, if to be indifferent to the opinion of other people and to be absolutely sure of yourself is to be fanatical. Certainly, she was strange and grim and relentless. And yet one could not doubt her tenderness, her deep sympathy, her devotion to humanity. Yes, a strange woman, but perhaps not so very strange. The qualities I saw in her are common qualities; the difference between her and others was simply that she possessed those qualities in an unusual degree.. . . . . . . .[52]Jacob Epstein, after flouting the artistic conventions for at least ten years, is being taken to the heart of the public. The impossible is happening, and it is happening because of the war. The war has forced reality upon us; it has made us love beauty rather than prettiness, truth rather than make-believe, the soul of things rather than their appearances.Epstein, I think, could never be said to be in revolt against any of the artistic tendencies of the time. He simply did not follow those tendencies or permit them to influence him. But three or four years ago, when I first met him, he had the appearance, the manner, and even the thoughts of one who is in revolt.I remember discussing with him some very curious and, indeed, rather alarming designs of his which were being exhibited at a little gallery whose name I have forgotten. The designs were openly and widely described as “indecent”; to me they were not indecent: they were merely meaningless. I could see no idea behind them.“They are not designs,” said Epstein, a little petulantly, I thought.“Then whatarethey?” I asked. “What doyoucall them?”“I am not aware that I call them anything.”“But what do theymean?”He smiled curiously and (we were sitting in the Café Royal) lit a cigarette.“Ah! That is for you to find out. Surely you don’t expect an artist to explain himself?”Of course he was perfectly right, and I was more than foolish to ask him these questions. But I flogged at it.“Now, your busts! Especially that wonderful head of Augustus John’s son!—beautiful, marvellous! But those extraordinary red drawings.”“I cannot explain them,” said he, “but I would[53]certainly like you to understand them, for it seems to me that you are not unintelligent.”He gave me a quick, sly look, and we began to talk of John. I am afraid that Epstein must have qualified his opinion of my intelligence, for he asserted, in contradiction to what I was saying, that John was on the wrong tack, and we failed to come to any agreement about this most wonderful of living painters.Like most artists, Epstein is pronouncedly inarticulate. He is, I suppose, as much a mystery to himself as he is to others. But his work is, of course, a hundred times more interesting than himself.I used to see him often, but we rarely did more than acknowledge each other’s existence, and when I saw him the other week in khaki, sitting in the Café Royal, it was clear to me that, though he said he remembered me, he had only a vague recollection of my personality and had completely forgotten my name.. . . . . . . .I have often thought it strange that while singers like Madame Patti and Madame Tetrazzini should conquer the world—and by the world I mean every section of the musical public, vulgar and fastidious alike—another and, to my mind, a very much finer artiste, Madame Ackté, should be regarded with delight only by those whose musical experience is wide and whose minds have been tutored by comprehensive study. Personality, after all, is almost everything in Art, and Madame Ackté has a personality that dwarfs into insignificance nearly all singers who are her equal in technical attainments and in musical subtlety.Her great part is Salomé, in Richard Strauss’s opera of that name. With the wonderful intuition of a healthy, robust mind she has divined all the perverted wickedness of that most tortured woman. Her acting is among the finest things of our day.[54]No one could guess, in talking to this quiet, almost demure woman, that she has in her such fires of passion, such powers of portraying devastating wickedness. She has charm, graciousness, simplicity. Like Yvette Guilbert, she has worked hard almost every day of her life. Her talk is all of music and acting. She seems most unmodern. Her ingenuous love of praise is delightful, and if you notice the little subtleties in her singing and acting that most people do not notice, she is your friend for ever.
Madame Yvette Guilbert—Sir Victor Horsley—Mrs Pankhurst—Jacob Epstein—Madame Aïno Ackté
Yvette Guilbert!... Yvette Guilbert! I suppose that only a writer who really can write can say anything useful or dignified about this most wonderful woman.... And yet I must try. Do you remember that extraordinary breath-catching passage inVillettewhere Charlotte Brontë describes the acting of Vashti—Vashti who was Rachel—Vashti who went to London when Charlotte loved Héger?... That, I always think, was a great event. Little Currer Bell, with her most modest mind and her most proud heart, sitting, so breathlessly, on one side of the footlights, and Rachel walking from the wings, beyond the footlights, and, like an empress, speaking, thinking like an empress, and, like a veritable woman, loving and hating.... Do you remember that passage? If you do, perhaps you will think, as I do, that, after all, only women can write of women. Did not Jane Austen create Elizabeth Bennet? And who was it who wrote theSonnets from the Portuguese? And even, after all, Aphra Behn ... well,sheknew something about women, didn’t she?
So that I feel only a woman can write at all convincingly of Yvette Guilbert. I must just gossip and prattle a little while.
I must have heard Yvette Guilbert a score of times. The first occasion was in the Midland Hall, Manchester, eight or ten years ago, when she sang to an audience of[48]about two hundred frigid people who, apparently, knew as much French as I know of the language of the Serbs, and as much about Art as the pencil with which I write knows about the thoughts it records. Ernest Newman was there and, that night, wrote an article forThe Manchester Guardianthat must have more than compensated Guilbert for the smallness of the audience. For she loves praise, even the praise she gives herself, as the following letter addressed to myself will testify:
Je reçois votre aimable lettre et votreadmirable article!! Je ne peux pas vous dire toutela joieque je ressensen lisant que vous comprenezsi bienmes efforts! Je n’ai jamaissu être hypocriteet j’ai toujours manqué de diplomatie dans la vie àcause de cela; aussi, je n’hésitepas àvous dire que jecroissincèrement mériter vos bonnes paroles parce que je passema vie entièreàme dévoueràmon art sans jamais de vacances. Mon amour pour le travail et la Beauté et tout ce qui estpureen art est tout le “mateur” de mes forces intellectuelles. Merci d’avoir devinéce quele public ne voitpas toujours. Mes mains dans les vôtres.Yvette Guilbert.
Guilbert has no singing voice, and yet she sings. Her singing voice is small ... ever so small. Yet clear, distinct, expressive and, in the lowest register, most deep and thrilling. How little mere “voice” matters! Only consider. Here, on one hand, we have Madame Clara Butt with, I suppose, one of the most wonderful organs that this world, or any other world, has ever listened to. But would you walk five miles to hear her sing? I wouldn’t. You, I hope and believe, wouldn’t either. Would you walk five miles to hear Blanche Marchesi sing—Blanche Marchesi, whose voice, as mere voice, is like a hundred other voices? Of course you would. Voice matters little. It is the temperament, the intellect, behind the[49]voice that counts. And the eternal struggle that Yvette Guilbert has had to undergo has been the struggle to make her comparatively small voice express the wonderful things of her imagination.
A gesture. A look. An inflection. Two paces on the platform. A little cry ... a little cry of dismay. A superb and beautiful signal that tells us the Mother of God is big with a Child. A tiny silence. A moment of jauntiness. Something arch and irresistible. Something tragic that makes you clench yourfists....
One day Yvette Guilbert wrote to ask me to call on her. I did not go. One feels so foolish in the presence of genius. One’s vanity is hurt. One is afraid of being found out.
. . . . . . . .
In the early days of the war I visited Sir Victor Horsley several times at his home. I was interested in shell shock, in the influence that the horror of war has on certain types of human nature, and he was good enough to supply me with a great deal of information. Quiet and undemonstrative, he used always to stand, or move slowly up and down the room; in the long talks we had together, I do not remember his sitting down once.
I don’t think I ever met a man more careful to express his exact meaning; he appeared to have a horror of exaggeration and he qualified nearly every statement he made. In discussing scientific subjects such scrupulous carefulness is, of course, not only wise but necessary, and when, later on, I wrote a newspaper article on the effect that the strain and horror of war have on the human brain, Sir Victor showed himself very anxious that, in quoting his views, I should do so in language that could not possibly be interpreted in two different senses.
He told me what my own experience in France and Salonica in 1915–1917 confirmed later on, that it is frequently the neurotic, the artistic, the excitable man who most quickly adapts himself to, and is least disturbed by,[50]the incredible cruelties of warfare, whilst the phlegmatic type of man is more liable to be broken by those cruelties. Sir Victor Horsley suggested that this was, in some measure, due to the fact that the neurotic man has, in imagination, tasted the terror of war before he has actually experienced it; that he has, as it were, prepared his mind for the shock it is to receive. The unimaginative man cannot do this, so that when his turn comes to go to the trenches and witness stark horrors, his nervous system reacts most violently.
Sir Victor spoke a good deal to me about the evil influence of drink, and continually regretted that rum was served out to our soldiers. On this subject, of course, though I disagreed with him profoundly, I did not attempt to argue, though I pointed out that Napoleon had won many of his campaigns by almost drugging his men with spirits. To this he made no reply, though he shook his head gravely and seemed to ponder a little.
My last interview with him was in his long, bare dining-room, where, as we stood before the fire, he described to me in a low, serious voice two or three war cases of mental trouble (functional, of course, not organic), and I could see that the war was, so to speak, closing in around him and enveloping him with its violent appeals, its tragic interests.
. . . . . . . .
Mrs Pankhurst I met only once, but the impression she has left on my mind is that of a most vivid personality. I saw her in many ridiculous situations that would have made almost any other person look positively foolish; but Mrs Pankhurst’s sense of personal dignity is so strong, her personality is so imperious, and, above all, she possesses so much humour and good sense, that it is impossible to imagine any situation, however grotesque, that would render her ridiculous.
My interview with her was at the close of a day during which she had worked incessantly. She was tired, and[51]her face was lined and rather dim. An hour earlier I had seen her in Oxford Street, Manchester, seated in an open, horseless carriage, a dozen enthusiastic girls pulling at the shafts, a few ribald boys following and shouting small obscenities. I admired the perfect way she carried off the trying situation. She sat perfectly calmly, as though nothing in the least unusual were happening, as though, indeed, it were her daily custom, and the daily custom of all women, to be dragged through the public streets by a band of young ladies.
We sat under a lamp at a large table. The things we discussed are now of no consequence, for the need for their discussion no longer exists. I can only give my impression of her.
She struck me as being unutterably weary, weary bodily and perhaps mentally. Her personality suggested a body and a spirit being driven by an implacable will, a will that had no mercy for herself or for others, a will that no power could break. I could not help wondering, as I looked at her, whether she had not her moments of doubt, of self-distrust. She must have had, for all men and women have. But those moments would be few and short. Though she spoke to me very quietly, without a gesture, with one rather tightly clenched hand on the table, I felt the sheerpowerof her, the power that a quenchless spirit always gives to its owner.
Fanatic? Well, yes, if to be indifferent to the opinion of other people and to be absolutely sure of yourself is to be fanatical. Certainly, she was strange and grim and relentless. And yet one could not doubt her tenderness, her deep sympathy, her devotion to humanity. Yes, a strange woman, but perhaps not so very strange. The qualities I saw in her are common qualities; the difference between her and others was simply that she possessed those qualities in an unusual degree.
. . . . . . . .
[52]Jacob Epstein, after flouting the artistic conventions for at least ten years, is being taken to the heart of the public. The impossible is happening, and it is happening because of the war. The war has forced reality upon us; it has made us love beauty rather than prettiness, truth rather than make-believe, the soul of things rather than their appearances.
Epstein, I think, could never be said to be in revolt against any of the artistic tendencies of the time. He simply did not follow those tendencies or permit them to influence him. But three or four years ago, when I first met him, he had the appearance, the manner, and even the thoughts of one who is in revolt.
I remember discussing with him some very curious and, indeed, rather alarming designs of his which were being exhibited at a little gallery whose name I have forgotten. The designs were openly and widely described as “indecent”; to me they were not indecent: they were merely meaningless. I could see no idea behind them.
“They are not designs,” said Epstein, a little petulantly, I thought.
“Then whatarethey?” I asked. “What doyoucall them?”
“I am not aware that I call them anything.”
“But what do theymean?”
He smiled curiously and (we were sitting in the Café Royal) lit a cigarette.
“Ah! That is for you to find out. Surely you don’t expect an artist to explain himself?”
Of course he was perfectly right, and I was more than foolish to ask him these questions. But I flogged at it.
“Now, your busts! Especially that wonderful head of Augustus John’s son!—beautiful, marvellous! But those extraordinary red drawings.”
“I cannot explain them,” said he, “but I would[53]certainly like you to understand them, for it seems to me that you are not unintelligent.”
He gave me a quick, sly look, and we began to talk of John. I am afraid that Epstein must have qualified his opinion of my intelligence, for he asserted, in contradiction to what I was saying, that John was on the wrong tack, and we failed to come to any agreement about this most wonderful of living painters.
Like most artists, Epstein is pronouncedly inarticulate. He is, I suppose, as much a mystery to himself as he is to others. But his work is, of course, a hundred times more interesting than himself.
I used to see him often, but we rarely did more than acknowledge each other’s existence, and when I saw him the other week in khaki, sitting in the Café Royal, it was clear to me that, though he said he remembered me, he had only a vague recollection of my personality and had completely forgotten my name.
. . . . . . . .
I have often thought it strange that while singers like Madame Patti and Madame Tetrazzini should conquer the world—and by the world I mean every section of the musical public, vulgar and fastidious alike—another and, to my mind, a very much finer artiste, Madame Ackté, should be regarded with delight only by those whose musical experience is wide and whose minds have been tutored by comprehensive study. Personality, after all, is almost everything in Art, and Madame Ackté has a personality that dwarfs into insignificance nearly all singers who are her equal in technical attainments and in musical subtlety.
Her great part is Salomé, in Richard Strauss’s opera of that name. With the wonderful intuition of a healthy, robust mind she has divined all the perverted wickedness of that most tortured woman. Her acting is among the finest things of our day.
[54]No one could guess, in talking to this quiet, almost demure woman, that she has in her such fires of passion, such powers of portraying devastating wickedness. She has charm, graciousness, simplicity. Like Yvette Guilbert, she has worked hard almost every day of her life. Her talk is all of music and acting. She seems most unmodern. Her ingenuous love of praise is delightful, and if you notice the little subtleties in her singing and acting that most people do not notice, she is your friend for ever.
[55]CHAPTER VSTANLEY HOUGHTON AND HAROLD BRIGHOUSEButperhaps you have forgotten who Stanley Houghton was? Well, not so long before the Great War he was famous, both in England and America, as the author ofHindle Wakes, he was universally alluded to as a charming personality, and he promised to become one of the most prosperous playwrights in England. Then, while still young and not yet accustomed to his fame, he died in Italy. Thereupon some thousand newspaper-writers recorded his death and wrote about him some of the most lamentable nonsense it has ever been my misfortune to read.Let me tell you all about it.I was introduced to Stanley Houghton in Manchester by Jack Kahane—the latter a most brilliant and engaging personality who knew everybody: or, rather, everybody knew him.“This,” said Kahane, indicating Houghton, “is one of Miss Horniman’s pets. She is doing a play of his this week at the Gaiety. Now, let me see, Stanley, what is the name of your little play?”Houghton laughed deprecatingly.“Oh, I saw it last night,” said I, “and jolly good it was. But I’ve seen another play of yours besidesThe Younger Generation; it was founded on a story by Guy de Maupassant. That, also, was tremendously amusing.”He frowned, and I understood from the way that he[56]looked over my head that I had displeased him. For a moment he was silent, then:“I’ve just been reading some of your verses inThe English Review,” said he; “quite nice, quite nice.”So then I examined him closely and saw a tall, fair youth, with plenty of straw-coloured hair, a prominent, rather crooked nose, and a manner of painful self-consciousness. I believe that, from that moment, we distrusted each other most heartily. We parted a few minutes later and I think Houghton must have shared my suspicion and regret that we should often have to meet after that date. Kahane was and is (though he has been in France these three years and I in Macedonia) my most intimate friend, and had lately “taken up” Houghton, and whenever Kahane did a thing he did it pretty thoroughly. And friends of a friend are bound to tumble across each other continually.Later in the day I protested to Kahane.“What on earth has induced you to take up this man Houghton?” I asked.“He amuses me,” said Jack. “And, really, you know, one or two of his little things are quite promising. When he bores me I rag him. And then he loses his temper.Il m’amuse, and that’s all I require from him.”Shortly after I was elected a member of a funny little coterie in Manchester, called the Swan Club. Kahane had founded it. There were twelve of us altogether: Kahane; Stanley Houghton; Harold Brighouse (whose play,Hobson’s Choice, is making “big money” in London at the moment of writing); Charles Abercrombie (now a Lt.-Colonel and a C.B.); Walter Mudie, the best of good fellows; Ernest Marriott, artist; W. Price-Heywood, accountant and leader-writer; myself and a few hangers-on of the Arts. We used to meet for lunch at a shabby little restaurant in Peter Street, Manchester, opposite the[57]Theatre Royal, and we did our utmost to induce each other to talk about ourselves.In this little coterie Houghton was a veritable whale among the minnows. He was also a fish out of water. From the very first his success spoiled him. He would take himself ponderously. Brighouse worshipped success, so he worshipped Houghton. The rest of us, if we worshipped anything at all, worshipped genius, and as Kahane was the only one among us who had a touch of that divine quality, we rather tended to worship him. But Kahane frittered away his gifts; he made a lot of money by dint of working about an hour a day and by the sheer force of his personality. For the rest he played and played hard. He talked; he ragged; he listened to music and saw plays; he fell in love; he indulged harmless vices; and he wrote two wonderful plays, full of faults, but streaked with originality, with fire and with colour. In effect, he could beat both Houghton and Brighouse at their own game, and they knew it. But, at that time, playwriting with Kahane was only a game; with the other two it was deadly earnest.Houghton and Brighouse were something (and, I gathered, something not very brilliant) in the city. Quite what that something was I do not know, though I remember seeking out Brighouse once in a dark warehouse smelling of damp cloth. Every afternoon Houghton and Brighouse would close their ledgers, or petty-cash books, or whatever it was they did close, and rush off home—Brighouse to catch, perhaps, his six-fiveP.M.train to Eccles, and Houghton to jump gymnastically (he played hockey, I believe) on to a passing tram bound for Alexandra Park. After a hurried meal, out with the MSS., the notebooks, the typescript and to work! And how hard theydidwork!I remember Brighouse telling me some years ago that he had written more than thirty plays, but I cannot[58]conceive that anybody but himself has read them all. Brighouse slogged, and he beat so long at the door of success that at last it opened to him. Houghton also slogged, but in a dandified way. He was clever, he was cute, and he played his cards well.. . . . . . . .Houghton was, not without full justice, called the leader of the Manchester School of dramatists. He was hard; he was unimaginative; he was unromantic. But he was extraordinarily apt, and he had a neat and tidy brain. Close must have been that union of souls that bound his soul to the soul of Miss Horniman. Miss Horniman never (well, hardly ever) produced a romantic play, and Stanley Houghton never wrote one. He was out to “make good,” and Miss Horniman helped him to go one better.I need scarcely say that Houghton was, so far as his plays were concerned, an industrious man of business. When the real artist has finished a work, he ceases to take interest in it; but, with Houghton, when a play was completed his interest in it immediately intensified. He sent his plays everywhere: to the provinces, to London, to America, to agents. As soon as a play came back, “returned with thanks,” out it went again by the next post. And he pulled strings—oh! ever so gently, but he pulled them.Though quite a few of his plays had been produced in the north, and though he had written some clever dramatic criticism forThe Manchester Guardian, he was unknown in London till the Stage Society producedHindle Wakes. Then Fame came to him and knocked him off his feet. It is impossible to imagine a man more conscious of his success. His consciousness of it made him, on occasion, tongue-tied. In conversation he could be ready, and his repartee was frequently brilliant, but during the years I knew him his attitude always suggested that he[59]anticipated and feared attack. I saw him once at the bar of the Gaiety Theatre, Manchester, in the midst of a group of friends. I was not of their company, but I noticed that he stood silent, erect and strained, his head a little thrown back, his face set. Then, and on many other occasions, it seemed to me that he longed to break down the feeling of awkwardness—to throw off the obsession of self-consciousness—that overcame him.But I must confess that I rarely saw him in company in which there were not two or three who were hostile to him; therefore I saw him but seldom at his best. Not infrequently, there was a “dead set” against him, and if the banter were edged with malice (as it not infrequently was) he withered like a lily under the grip of a frost. The truth is, he was not modest and he could not feign modesty. His vanity was neither charming nor aggressive; it was cold and distant, without geniality, without humour. Genius is one of the wombs of vanity, but Houghton had no genius; there was not a trace of magic in him; he was merely extraordinarily clever, closely observant and possessed of an instinctive sense of form and of literary values.. . . . . . . .There came a day when it entered my head to interview him forThe Manchester Courier, a paper for which I wrote musical criticism. He accepted my proposal with alacrity, invited me to the Winter Garden of the Midland Hotel, and provided me with coffee, liqueurs and cigars.He began by telling me that this was the first time he had been interviewed for the Press.“An uncomfortable half-hour awaits you, then,” said I, and, on the instant, he began to fidget.I noticed that he was dressed for the occasion; he looked prosperous and literary and there hung about him just a suspicion of cosmopolitanism. Not only sartorially was he prepared; his mind was in tune to the occasion[60]and the right pose was donned. That is to say, he was determined not to appear conceited or self-satisfied; but he did not succeed. He made light of his success in a heavy, emphatic way. He praisedHindle Wakeswith faint damns, and suggested that this play would soon cease its successful run in London. He was careful not to evince any pleasure in his success, any natural buoyancy of spirit, any momentary delight. In a word, he was dull, tactless and insincere. There was nothing boyish or charming or graceful in his words; he had on all his heavy armour and it banged and clanged as he moved.When the interview was over he invited me to his father’s house for the evening meal. I went. I went out of curiosity. He did not amuse me, but most certainly he did interest me.When we had finished our meal he took me to his study. Near the window was a typewriter; in the typewriter was a sheet of paper half covered with script. There were very few erasures.“I always compose straight on to the machine,” said Houghton.“Ah yes,” said I, “and so did J. M. Synge. It has always seemed to me remarkable that Synge should do that; in your own case, of course, it is not quite so remarkable.”“It is a comedy for Cyril Maude” (I think he said Cyril Maude). “He wired to me the other day to go up to London to see him. Yes; he wanted a comedy, and he wanted me to write it. That was about a fortnight ago. Well, the thing’s nearly finished; in another week it will be on its way to London. Rather quick work, don’t you think?”“Quite. But all that you have told me I know already, and, really, you must know that I know. You see, Brighouse comes to the Swan Club day by day, drinks his[61]beer—you know, the conventionally British pint hewillhave in a pewtermug——”“Yes; Harold is very British,” interrupted Houghton.“Isn’t he? Well, as I was saying, Brighouse drinks his beer, fixes his eyes on his plate, and then spasmodically tells us all the news about you. He told us, for example, about Cyril Maude giving you a hundred (or was it a thousand?) guineas for the sight of a new comedy; he told us aboutThe Daily Mailwanting articles from you at some colossal figure; he told us about the host of people who send you wires every day; he told us about——”Houghton stirred uneasily, but he looked intensely gratified.“He told us about everything,” I added, after a slight pause. “What you tell him he tells us. But why don’t you come and tell us yourself, Houghton? We never see you at the Swan Club nowadays. It must not be said of you that you desert old friends, that success has made you careless of those you once liked.”He darted a glance at me and decided, as was indeed the case, that I was attempting to be ironical.“The truth is,” said he, “that the company I find at the Swan Club is not always very congenial. One or two new men have been latelyintroduced——”He looked away from me meaningly.“Quite,” said I, unperturbed; “oh, quite.”“And,” he continued, “I am kept very busy with one thing and another. It is true that I have given up my business and now intend devoting all my energy to literary work, but just at the present moment I am kept at it from dawn to dusk.”Silence fell upon us, a rather oppressive silence, I think, for I remember hunting about in my mind for something to say. I noticed a copy ofThe Playboy of the Western Worldon the little table before us.“Still reading Synge?” I asked.[62]“Yes; still reading Synge,” he replied. Then, after a pause: “A great man, Synge.”“An interesting man, a curious man,” said I, “but great? Only G. H. Mair, Willie Yeats and high school girls think Synge great, Houghton.”“Is that so?” asked he languidly.I invited him to have a cigarette, but he refused. In truth, we were both very uncomfortable and, by the subtle understanding and inverted sympathy that hearty dislike engenders, we rose simultaneously to our feet, rather hurriedly left the room, and soon found ourselves in the hall downstairs. He opened the front door and we stood for a moment, looking around us.Next day my interview with Houghton appeared inThe Manchester Courier, with a portrait of the young dramatist. I do not remember a word of that article, but I am quite sure it was insincere, without distinction, and full of inanities; indeed, I would bet at least ten drachmæ that there occur in it such expressions as “inherent modesty,” “charming personality,” “interesting outlook on life,” and so on. A journalist (must I say it?) is like a barrister: he is fee’d to say what is required to be said. At all events, the interview pleased Houghton, for he sent me a copy ofHindle Wakeswith a jocular inscription on its title-page.. . . . . . . .The friendship between Brighouse and Houghton increased in intensity, and when Arnold Bennett publicly referred to Brighouse in terms of no small admiration Houghton decided that his eager disciple could be received into the inner sanctum of his coldly fraternal breast. And Brighouse, grateful to Bennett, loudly proclaimed thatMilestoneswas “the greatest play since Congreve.”“But why Congreve, Brighouse?” I asked. “Surely you mean H. J. Byron?”[63]But no! He said he meant Congreve.“I do not,” I said, considerably perturbed, “I do not like to think, Brighouse, that you have stained your virgin mind with Congreve.”“I’ve looked at him,” said he icily. “He wrote comedies.Milestonesis a comedy.”Now, I was used to Brighouse for, from the age of eleven to thirteen I had been at the same school with him, and I remembered how enormously sensitive and how self-contained and how stubborn he was. I also remembered that Rabelaisianism, or Congrevism, or, indeed, any ism that denoted the real philosophic vulgarity of the human mind, or any jolly indecent wit, was repellent to him.“There are, I suppose, expurgated editions of Congreve, Brighouse. I imagine you as a collector of expurgated editions.”But he buried his nose in his pint of beer and refused further converse.Now, such are the influences that one man may have upon another, it came about that the more successful Houghton became, the harder worked Brighouse. Said Brighouse to himself, I imagine: “If Stanley can do all this, why not I?” So he worked desperately, sloggingly, overwhelmingly. Yet, in spite of all his hard work, he kept a most watchful and jealous eye on his contemporaries, and I remember meeting him at one of Miss Horniman’s orgies at the Gaiety Theatre when a new play of Galsworthy’s was given. It was a beautiful play (Galsworthy has not written many beautiful plays), but I regret to say I do not remember its name. At the end of the first act Brighouse was disgustingly “superior,” and at the end of the second he was contemptuous. So I sought a quarrel with him. There are, I think, few emotions so devastating, and so difficult to control, as the anger that surges upon one when one hears a beautiful work of art, noble, subtle and full of humanity, treated[64]with contempt by a man whose vanity has blinded the eyes of his soul. But I do not remember making any attempt to control my anger at Brighouse; rather did I nurse and nourish it, and, when the proper time came, I poured it upon him with generosity. Harold—or “Brig,” as we used to call him—is too much a man of the world not to know how to deal with an excitable man in a temper, and I remember coming away from our quarrel feeling rather foolish and having a disturbing admiration for Brighouse’s dignity. After this little episode, we were always very polite to each other, and, later on, when we met in London, our meeting was not without some cordiality.Since these days Brighouse has scored a big success withHobson’s Choice. He will score other successes. He will die reputed and rich. He will live, some day, in a West End flat and have a cottage in the country from which he will issue at regular intervals and take long walks in muddy lanes. I believe he will sedulously cultivate the friendship of those who may be of service to him, and he will drink his pint of beer every day of his life. He will be praised twice a year by Sir William Robertson Nicoll. Yes, he will be praised twice a year by Sir William Robertson Nicoll. And when Sir William dies, Mr St John Adcock will take up the cry. And, when the war is over, our successful young dramatist will go to America, where the money comes from.... I should like to see Harold in America.. . . . . . . .There came a day when a new one-act play by Houghton was given at the Manchester Gaiety—a play I subsequently saw at a London music hall, its fit home; but I remember neither the play’s title nor its plot. I recollect, however, that three or four men and women met in the corridor of a London hotel and talked or suggested risky things. Rather stupid, I thought it, and it certainly never occurred[65]to me that it was immoral or nasty; it was merely a dramatic experiment that did not quite come off. But the dramatic critic ofThe Manchester Guardian—either Mr A. N. Monkhouse or Mr C. E. Montague (I think the former)—“went for” it tooth and nail on the score of its alleged immorality. The criticism was scathing: it made a wound and then poured acid into the wound. Houghton must have felt the criticism sorely, but when I met him next day he pluckily treated it as a matter of no consequence whatever.“A reasonable man cannot expect always to be understood,” said he, “and I supposeThe Manchester Guardian, which has always been very good to me in the past, has a right to scold me if it thinks fit.”“Ascolding, Houghton? Why, you were thrashed.”“Well, I s’pose I was. But I can stand it.”Vain men are invariably supersensitive, and for that reason I think Houghton felt every word and act of hostility; but he never showed weakness under opposition, and he could hit back when he thought it worth while.I once witnessed a physical assault upon him after a rather rowdy dinner, when we all took to ragging each other. There was no excuse for the assault, except what excuse may be found in bitter feeling and enmity, but Houghton received the blow without a word, and we who witnessed it neither expostulated with his assailant nor expressed sympathy with his victim. Houghton paled and his large eyes gleamed, and I have no doubt that on a subsequent occasion he settled the matter with the man who was responsible for his humiliation.Only a very few men really understood Houghton, and those were men who, like Walter Mudie, had known him intimately in boyhood. Mudie swore by him and would hear no word against him. But there was something forbidding in Houghton’s nature—a barricade of reserve that[66]he himself had not wilfully erected, but which had been placed there by Nature. It was impossible for people who met him casually a few times to form a high opinion either of his intellect or of his personality. I remember Captain James E. Agate, a most original and brilliant colleague of Houghton’s onThe Manchester Guardian, once saying to a group of people: “Don’t you make any mistake about Houghton. He’s not such a fool as he appears.” But it is a very incomplete man who requires such a double-edged defence as that.Though the contrary has often been stated, Houghton did not, I believe, take much interest in anybody’s work except his own. He patronised a young bank clerk, Charles Forrest, who had written a promising little play that was subsequently, by Houghton’s recommendation, I believe, given in Manchester and Liverpool; but when he came in contact with work that was, in many respects, superior to his own, he was airily superior and supercilious. He once asked to see a blank-verse play of my own that was given at the Manchester Gaiety, but as I was aware that he knew as much of blank verse as I do of conic sections—which is nothing at all—I refrained from passing on my MS. to him. In other men’s work he looked for faults; in his own he found perfection.. . . . . . . .I need scarcely say that when I went to London I did not seek out Houghton, who had settled down in the Metropolis some months before me. But we met in the Strand, he wearing a fur-lined overcoat and looking a trifle like H. B. Irving, and I carrying a load of review books under my arm. We looked at each other; we hesitated; we stopped. Stanley was a trifle languid and, after a few inconsequent remarks, he began telling me the history of his fur overcoat. He had, he said, bought it for five pounds or seven pounds, or some such ridiculously low price, and he had bought it second-hand.[67]And (Fate wills these things) whenever I hear the name Stanley Houghton I think of that rather tall, rather aristocratic, figure in the Strand wearing its second-hand fur-lined overcoat and talking, with embarrassment, about nothing in particular, standing first on one foot and then on the other.It is, of course, impossible to predict with certainty what further successes Houghton would have achieved had he lived, but there can be little doubt that his sharp and lively talents would have produced plays even more noticeable thanHindle Wakes. A little more experience of life would probably have shown him the futility and the destructive effects of his intellectual snobbery. He was raw and crude, and success did not mellow or enlarge him.
Butperhaps you have forgotten who Stanley Houghton was? Well, not so long before the Great War he was famous, both in England and America, as the author ofHindle Wakes, he was universally alluded to as a charming personality, and he promised to become one of the most prosperous playwrights in England. Then, while still young and not yet accustomed to his fame, he died in Italy. Thereupon some thousand newspaper-writers recorded his death and wrote about him some of the most lamentable nonsense it has ever been my misfortune to read.
Let me tell you all about it.
I was introduced to Stanley Houghton in Manchester by Jack Kahane—the latter a most brilliant and engaging personality who knew everybody: or, rather, everybody knew him.
“This,” said Kahane, indicating Houghton, “is one of Miss Horniman’s pets. She is doing a play of his this week at the Gaiety. Now, let me see, Stanley, what is the name of your little play?”
Houghton laughed deprecatingly.
“Oh, I saw it last night,” said I, “and jolly good it was. But I’ve seen another play of yours besidesThe Younger Generation; it was founded on a story by Guy de Maupassant. That, also, was tremendously amusing.”
He frowned, and I understood from the way that he[56]looked over my head that I had displeased him. For a moment he was silent, then:
“I’ve just been reading some of your verses inThe English Review,” said he; “quite nice, quite nice.”
So then I examined him closely and saw a tall, fair youth, with plenty of straw-coloured hair, a prominent, rather crooked nose, and a manner of painful self-consciousness. I believe that, from that moment, we distrusted each other most heartily. We parted a few minutes later and I think Houghton must have shared my suspicion and regret that we should often have to meet after that date. Kahane was and is (though he has been in France these three years and I in Macedonia) my most intimate friend, and had lately “taken up” Houghton, and whenever Kahane did a thing he did it pretty thoroughly. And friends of a friend are bound to tumble across each other continually.
Later in the day I protested to Kahane.
“What on earth has induced you to take up this man Houghton?” I asked.
“He amuses me,” said Jack. “And, really, you know, one or two of his little things are quite promising. When he bores me I rag him. And then he loses his temper.Il m’amuse, and that’s all I require from him.”
Shortly after I was elected a member of a funny little coterie in Manchester, called the Swan Club. Kahane had founded it. There were twelve of us altogether: Kahane; Stanley Houghton; Harold Brighouse (whose play,Hobson’s Choice, is making “big money” in London at the moment of writing); Charles Abercrombie (now a Lt.-Colonel and a C.B.); Walter Mudie, the best of good fellows; Ernest Marriott, artist; W. Price-Heywood, accountant and leader-writer; myself and a few hangers-on of the Arts. We used to meet for lunch at a shabby little restaurant in Peter Street, Manchester, opposite the[57]Theatre Royal, and we did our utmost to induce each other to talk about ourselves.
In this little coterie Houghton was a veritable whale among the minnows. He was also a fish out of water. From the very first his success spoiled him. He would take himself ponderously. Brighouse worshipped success, so he worshipped Houghton. The rest of us, if we worshipped anything at all, worshipped genius, and as Kahane was the only one among us who had a touch of that divine quality, we rather tended to worship him. But Kahane frittered away his gifts; he made a lot of money by dint of working about an hour a day and by the sheer force of his personality. For the rest he played and played hard. He talked; he ragged; he listened to music and saw plays; he fell in love; he indulged harmless vices; and he wrote two wonderful plays, full of faults, but streaked with originality, with fire and with colour. In effect, he could beat both Houghton and Brighouse at their own game, and they knew it. But, at that time, playwriting with Kahane was only a game; with the other two it was deadly earnest.
Houghton and Brighouse were something (and, I gathered, something not very brilliant) in the city. Quite what that something was I do not know, though I remember seeking out Brighouse once in a dark warehouse smelling of damp cloth. Every afternoon Houghton and Brighouse would close their ledgers, or petty-cash books, or whatever it was they did close, and rush off home—Brighouse to catch, perhaps, his six-fiveP.M.train to Eccles, and Houghton to jump gymnastically (he played hockey, I believe) on to a passing tram bound for Alexandra Park. After a hurried meal, out with the MSS., the notebooks, the typescript and to work! And how hard theydidwork!
I remember Brighouse telling me some years ago that he had written more than thirty plays, but I cannot[58]conceive that anybody but himself has read them all. Brighouse slogged, and he beat so long at the door of success that at last it opened to him. Houghton also slogged, but in a dandified way. He was clever, he was cute, and he played his cards well.
. . . . . . . .
Houghton was, not without full justice, called the leader of the Manchester School of dramatists. He was hard; he was unimaginative; he was unromantic. But he was extraordinarily apt, and he had a neat and tidy brain. Close must have been that union of souls that bound his soul to the soul of Miss Horniman. Miss Horniman never (well, hardly ever) produced a romantic play, and Stanley Houghton never wrote one. He was out to “make good,” and Miss Horniman helped him to go one better.
I need scarcely say that Houghton was, so far as his plays were concerned, an industrious man of business. When the real artist has finished a work, he ceases to take interest in it; but, with Houghton, when a play was completed his interest in it immediately intensified. He sent his plays everywhere: to the provinces, to London, to America, to agents. As soon as a play came back, “returned with thanks,” out it went again by the next post. And he pulled strings—oh! ever so gently, but he pulled them.
Though quite a few of his plays had been produced in the north, and though he had written some clever dramatic criticism forThe Manchester Guardian, he was unknown in London till the Stage Society producedHindle Wakes. Then Fame came to him and knocked him off his feet. It is impossible to imagine a man more conscious of his success. His consciousness of it made him, on occasion, tongue-tied. In conversation he could be ready, and his repartee was frequently brilliant, but during the years I knew him his attitude always suggested that he[59]anticipated and feared attack. I saw him once at the bar of the Gaiety Theatre, Manchester, in the midst of a group of friends. I was not of their company, but I noticed that he stood silent, erect and strained, his head a little thrown back, his face set. Then, and on many other occasions, it seemed to me that he longed to break down the feeling of awkwardness—to throw off the obsession of self-consciousness—that overcame him.
But I must confess that I rarely saw him in company in which there were not two or three who were hostile to him; therefore I saw him but seldom at his best. Not infrequently, there was a “dead set” against him, and if the banter were edged with malice (as it not infrequently was) he withered like a lily under the grip of a frost. The truth is, he was not modest and he could not feign modesty. His vanity was neither charming nor aggressive; it was cold and distant, without geniality, without humour. Genius is one of the wombs of vanity, but Houghton had no genius; there was not a trace of magic in him; he was merely extraordinarily clever, closely observant and possessed of an instinctive sense of form and of literary values.
. . . . . . . .
There came a day when it entered my head to interview him forThe Manchester Courier, a paper for which I wrote musical criticism. He accepted my proposal with alacrity, invited me to the Winter Garden of the Midland Hotel, and provided me with coffee, liqueurs and cigars.
He began by telling me that this was the first time he had been interviewed for the Press.
“An uncomfortable half-hour awaits you, then,” said I, and, on the instant, he began to fidget.
I noticed that he was dressed for the occasion; he looked prosperous and literary and there hung about him just a suspicion of cosmopolitanism. Not only sartorially was he prepared; his mind was in tune to the occasion[60]and the right pose was donned. That is to say, he was determined not to appear conceited or self-satisfied; but he did not succeed. He made light of his success in a heavy, emphatic way. He praisedHindle Wakeswith faint damns, and suggested that this play would soon cease its successful run in London. He was careful not to evince any pleasure in his success, any natural buoyancy of spirit, any momentary delight. In a word, he was dull, tactless and insincere. There was nothing boyish or charming or graceful in his words; he had on all his heavy armour and it banged and clanged as he moved.
When the interview was over he invited me to his father’s house for the evening meal. I went. I went out of curiosity. He did not amuse me, but most certainly he did interest me.
When we had finished our meal he took me to his study. Near the window was a typewriter; in the typewriter was a sheet of paper half covered with script. There were very few erasures.
“I always compose straight on to the machine,” said Houghton.
“Ah yes,” said I, “and so did J. M. Synge. It has always seemed to me remarkable that Synge should do that; in your own case, of course, it is not quite so remarkable.”
“It is a comedy for Cyril Maude” (I think he said Cyril Maude). “He wired to me the other day to go up to London to see him. Yes; he wanted a comedy, and he wanted me to write it. That was about a fortnight ago. Well, the thing’s nearly finished; in another week it will be on its way to London. Rather quick work, don’t you think?”
“Quite. But all that you have told me I know already, and, really, you must know that I know. You see, Brighouse comes to the Swan Club day by day, drinks his[61]beer—you know, the conventionally British pint hewillhave in a pewtermug——”
“Yes; Harold is very British,” interrupted Houghton.
“Isn’t he? Well, as I was saying, Brighouse drinks his beer, fixes his eyes on his plate, and then spasmodically tells us all the news about you. He told us, for example, about Cyril Maude giving you a hundred (or was it a thousand?) guineas for the sight of a new comedy; he told us aboutThe Daily Mailwanting articles from you at some colossal figure; he told us about the host of people who send you wires every day; he told us about——”
Houghton stirred uneasily, but he looked intensely gratified.
“He told us about everything,” I added, after a slight pause. “What you tell him he tells us. But why don’t you come and tell us yourself, Houghton? We never see you at the Swan Club nowadays. It must not be said of you that you desert old friends, that success has made you careless of those you once liked.”
He darted a glance at me and decided, as was indeed the case, that I was attempting to be ironical.
“The truth is,” said he, “that the company I find at the Swan Club is not always very congenial. One or two new men have been latelyintroduced——”
He looked away from me meaningly.
“Quite,” said I, unperturbed; “oh, quite.”
“And,” he continued, “I am kept very busy with one thing and another. It is true that I have given up my business and now intend devoting all my energy to literary work, but just at the present moment I am kept at it from dawn to dusk.”
Silence fell upon us, a rather oppressive silence, I think, for I remember hunting about in my mind for something to say. I noticed a copy ofThe Playboy of the Western Worldon the little table before us.
“Still reading Synge?” I asked.
[62]“Yes; still reading Synge,” he replied. Then, after a pause: “A great man, Synge.”
“An interesting man, a curious man,” said I, “but great? Only G. H. Mair, Willie Yeats and high school girls think Synge great, Houghton.”
“Is that so?” asked he languidly.
I invited him to have a cigarette, but he refused. In truth, we were both very uncomfortable and, by the subtle understanding and inverted sympathy that hearty dislike engenders, we rose simultaneously to our feet, rather hurriedly left the room, and soon found ourselves in the hall downstairs. He opened the front door and we stood for a moment, looking around us.
Next day my interview with Houghton appeared inThe Manchester Courier, with a portrait of the young dramatist. I do not remember a word of that article, but I am quite sure it was insincere, without distinction, and full of inanities; indeed, I would bet at least ten drachmæ that there occur in it such expressions as “inherent modesty,” “charming personality,” “interesting outlook on life,” and so on. A journalist (must I say it?) is like a barrister: he is fee’d to say what is required to be said. At all events, the interview pleased Houghton, for he sent me a copy ofHindle Wakeswith a jocular inscription on its title-page.
. . . . . . . .
The friendship between Brighouse and Houghton increased in intensity, and when Arnold Bennett publicly referred to Brighouse in terms of no small admiration Houghton decided that his eager disciple could be received into the inner sanctum of his coldly fraternal breast. And Brighouse, grateful to Bennett, loudly proclaimed thatMilestoneswas “the greatest play since Congreve.”
“But why Congreve, Brighouse?” I asked. “Surely you mean H. J. Byron?”
[63]But no! He said he meant Congreve.
“I do not,” I said, considerably perturbed, “I do not like to think, Brighouse, that you have stained your virgin mind with Congreve.”
“I’ve looked at him,” said he icily. “He wrote comedies.Milestonesis a comedy.”
Now, I was used to Brighouse for, from the age of eleven to thirteen I had been at the same school with him, and I remembered how enormously sensitive and how self-contained and how stubborn he was. I also remembered that Rabelaisianism, or Congrevism, or, indeed, any ism that denoted the real philosophic vulgarity of the human mind, or any jolly indecent wit, was repellent to him.
“There are, I suppose, expurgated editions of Congreve, Brighouse. I imagine you as a collector of expurgated editions.”
But he buried his nose in his pint of beer and refused further converse.
Now, such are the influences that one man may have upon another, it came about that the more successful Houghton became, the harder worked Brighouse. Said Brighouse to himself, I imagine: “If Stanley can do all this, why not I?” So he worked desperately, sloggingly, overwhelmingly. Yet, in spite of all his hard work, he kept a most watchful and jealous eye on his contemporaries, and I remember meeting him at one of Miss Horniman’s orgies at the Gaiety Theatre when a new play of Galsworthy’s was given. It was a beautiful play (Galsworthy has not written many beautiful plays), but I regret to say I do not remember its name. At the end of the first act Brighouse was disgustingly “superior,” and at the end of the second he was contemptuous. So I sought a quarrel with him. There are, I think, few emotions so devastating, and so difficult to control, as the anger that surges upon one when one hears a beautiful work of art, noble, subtle and full of humanity, treated[64]with contempt by a man whose vanity has blinded the eyes of his soul. But I do not remember making any attempt to control my anger at Brighouse; rather did I nurse and nourish it, and, when the proper time came, I poured it upon him with generosity. Harold—or “Brig,” as we used to call him—is too much a man of the world not to know how to deal with an excitable man in a temper, and I remember coming away from our quarrel feeling rather foolish and having a disturbing admiration for Brighouse’s dignity. After this little episode, we were always very polite to each other, and, later on, when we met in London, our meeting was not without some cordiality.
Since these days Brighouse has scored a big success withHobson’s Choice. He will score other successes. He will die reputed and rich. He will live, some day, in a West End flat and have a cottage in the country from which he will issue at regular intervals and take long walks in muddy lanes. I believe he will sedulously cultivate the friendship of those who may be of service to him, and he will drink his pint of beer every day of his life. He will be praised twice a year by Sir William Robertson Nicoll. Yes, he will be praised twice a year by Sir William Robertson Nicoll. And when Sir William dies, Mr St John Adcock will take up the cry. And, when the war is over, our successful young dramatist will go to America, where the money comes from.... I should like to see Harold in America.
. . . . . . . .
There came a day when a new one-act play by Houghton was given at the Manchester Gaiety—a play I subsequently saw at a London music hall, its fit home; but I remember neither the play’s title nor its plot. I recollect, however, that three or four men and women met in the corridor of a London hotel and talked or suggested risky things. Rather stupid, I thought it, and it certainly never occurred[65]to me that it was immoral or nasty; it was merely a dramatic experiment that did not quite come off. But the dramatic critic ofThe Manchester Guardian—either Mr A. N. Monkhouse or Mr C. E. Montague (I think the former)—“went for” it tooth and nail on the score of its alleged immorality. The criticism was scathing: it made a wound and then poured acid into the wound. Houghton must have felt the criticism sorely, but when I met him next day he pluckily treated it as a matter of no consequence whatever.
“A reasonable man cannot expect always to be understood,” said he, “and I supposeThe Manchester Guardian, which has always been very good to me in the past, has a right to scold me if it thinks fit.”
“Ascolding, Houghton? Why, you were thrashed.”
“Well, I s’pose I was. But I can stand it.”
Vain men are invariably supersensitive, and for that reason I think Houghton felt every word and act of hostility; but he never showed weakness under opposition, and he could hit back when he thought it worth while.
I once witnessed a physical assault upon him after a rather rowdy dinner, when we all took to ragging each other. There was no excuse for the assault, except what excuse may be found in bitter feeling and enmity, but Houghton received the blow without a word, and we who witnessed it neither expostulated with his assailant nor expressed sympathy with his victim. Houghton paled and his large eyes gleamed, and I have no doubt that on a subsequent occasion he settled the matter with the man who was responsible for his humiliation.
Only a very few men really understood Houghton, and those were men who, like Walter Mudie, had known him intimately in boyhood. Mudie swore by him and would hear no word against him. But there was something forbidding in Houghton’s nature—a barricade of reserve that[66]he himself had not wilfully erected, but which had been placed there by Nature. It was impossible for people who met him casually a few times to form a high opinion either of his intellect or of his personality. I remember Captain James E. Agate, a most original and brilliant colleague of Houghton’s onThe Manchester Guardian, once saying to a group of people: “Don’t you make any mistake about Houghton. He’s not such a fool as he appears.” But it is a very incomplete man who requires such a double-edged defence as that.
Though the contrary has often been stated, Houghton did not, I believe, take much interest in anybody’s work except his own. He patronised a young bank clerk, Charles Forrest, who had written a promising little play that was subsequently, by Houghton’s recommendation, I believe, given in Manchester and Liverpool; but when he came in contact with work that was, in many respects, superior to his own, he was airily superior and supercilious. He once asked to see a blank-verse play of my own that was given at the Manchester Gaiety, but as I was aware that he knew as much of blank verse as I do of conic sections—which is nothing at all—I refrained from passing on my MS. to him. In other men’s work he looked for faults; in his own he found perfection.
. . . . . . . .
I need scarcely say that when I went to London I did not seek out Houghton, who had settled down in the Metropolis some months before me. But we met in the Strand, he wearing a fur-lined overcoat and looking a trifle like H. B. Irving, and I carrying a load of review books under my arm. We looked at each other; we hesitated; we stopped. Stanley was a trifle languid and, after a few inconsequent remarks, he began telling me the history of his fur overcoat. He had, he said, bought it for five pounds or seven pounds, or some such ridiculously low price, and he had bought it second-hand.
[67]And (Fate wills these things) whenever I hear the name Stanley Houghton I think of that rather tall, rather aristocratic, figure in the Strand wearing its second-hand fur-lined overcoat and talking, with embarrassment, about nothing in particular, standing first on one foot and then on the other.
It is, of course, impossible to predict with certainty what further successes Houghton would have achieved had he lived, but there can be little doubt that his sharp and lively talents would have produced plays even more noticeable thanHindle Wakes. A little more experience of life would probably have shown him the futility and the destructive effects of his intellectual snobbery. He was raw and crude, and success did not mellow or enlarge him.