[68]CHAPTER VISOME WRITERSArnold Bennett—G. K. Chesterton—Lascelles Abercrombie—Harold Monro—John Masefield—Jerome K. Jerome—Sir Owen Seaman—A. A. MilneOfall the famous writers I have met, I have found Arnold Bennett the most surprising. I do not know what kind of man I expected to see when it was arranged that I should meet him, but I certainly had not anticipated beholding the curiously, wrongly dressed figure that, one spring afternoon some few years ago, walked up the steps leading from the floor of Queen’s Hall to the foyer of the gallery. I was there by appointment. I was a friend of a friend of his—Havergal Brian, a young fire-eating genius from the Potteries, and Brian had planned this curious meeting. It was during the interval of an afternoon concert of a Richard Strauss Festival, and Ackté was singing.Bennett was rather short, thin, hollow-eyed, prominent-toothed. He wore a white waistcoat and a billycock hat very much awry, and he had a manner of complete self-assurance. I cannot say that I was unimpressed. We were introduced, and he looked at me drowsily, indifferently, insultingly indifferently. He did not speak and I, nervous, and a little bewildered by the colour of his socks, which I at that moment noticed for the first time, blundered into some futility.“I don’t see why,” said Bennett, in response.I didn’t either, so far as that went. Desperately uncomfortable, I looked round for Brian, and saw[69]him standing fifteen yards or so away, grinning malignantly.So I plunged into a new topic—with even more disastrous results.“I notice,” said I, “that you continue writing forThe New Agein spite of their violent attacks on you.”“Yes,” he answered laconically, and he looked dizzily over my left shoulder.Then and there I decided that I would not speak again until he had spoken. I had not sought the interview any more than he had. Presently:“I have been working very hard lately,” I heard. I turned quickly to him; he had spoken into space. I showed a polite interest and he thawed a little. He told me something of the number of words and hours he wrote a day, of the work he had planned for the next two years, of the regularity of his methods, of his disbelief in the value of “inspiration.” I seemed to have heard it all before about Anthony Trollope. He was not exactly loquacious, but he communicated a great deal in spite of a rather unpleasant impediment in hisspeech....Soon our interview was over, for we heard the orchestra tuning up, and we left each other with just a word of farewell and without a sigh of regret.His conversational powers never, I believe, reach the point of eloquence. I remember G. H. Mair giving me an amusing description of a breakfast he gave to Arnold Bennett and Stanley Houghton in his lodgings in Manchester. Bennett and Houghton had not previously met, and the latter was young and inexperienced enough to nurse the expectation that the personality of the famous writer would be as impressive as his work, and impressive in the same way. It is true that very extraordinary circumstances would be necessary to make breakfast in Manchester free from dullness, but Houghton no doubt thought that his meeting with Bennettwasan[70]extraordinary circumstance. In the event, however, he was disillusioned.They went in to breakfast, and Bennett sat moody and silent, crumbling a piece of bread. It chanced that on being admitted to the house Bennett had caught sight of a cabman carrying a particularly large trunk downstairs, and he began to question Mair closely about the incident, Mair explaining that a fellow-lodger was removing that morning and taking all his luggage with him.“Yes, yes,” said Bennett, a little impatiently, “but why should he have such a large trunk? It was enormous. I don’t think I have ever seen so large a trunk before. It was at least twice the usual size.”He took a mouthful of bacon and spent a minute in mastication. Having swallowed:“Absurdly large,” he said challengingly. “I can’t think why anyone should wish to own it. Besides, it’s not right to ask any man to carry such an enormous weight. That’s how strangulated hernia is caused. Yes, strangulated hernia.”The topic did not prove fruitful, and I can imagine Houghton cudgelling his brains to discover what strangulated hernia really was, and Mair saying something witty about it. But with his second cup of coffee and his marmalade and toast Bennett once more talked of the cabman, the impossible trunk, and the cabman’s hypothetical hernia.“Of course,” he remarked meditatively, “the man must havesomereason for owning such an incredibly large trunk, but I confess I can’t guess the reason. And, in any case, it is bound to be a selfish one. Now, strangulatedhernia——”And that was all that issued during a whole hour from one of the cleverest brains in England.That Arnold Bennett is almost painfully conscious of[71]his own cleverness there is no manner of doubt. He is stupendously aware of the figure he cuts in contemporary literature. He is for ever standing outside himself and enjoying the spectacle of his own greatness, and he whispers ten times a day: “Oh, what a great boy am I!” I was once shown a series of privately printed booklets written by Bennett—booklets that he sent to his intimates at Christmas time. They consisted of extracts from his diary—a diary that, one feels, would never have been written if the de Goncourts had not lived. One self-conscious extract lingers in the mind; the spirit of it, though not the words (and perhaps not the facts) is embodied in the following:—“It is 3A.M.I have been working fourteen hours at a stretch. In these fourteen hours I have written ten thousand words. My book is finished—finished in excitement, in exaltation. Surely not even Balzac went one better than this!”A great writer: no doubt, a very great writer: but you might gaze at him across a railway carriage for hours at a time and never suspect it.. . . . . . . .But if Arnold Bennett is the least picturesque and literary of figures, G. K. Chesterton is the most picturesque and literary. His mere bulk is impressive. On one occasion I saw him emerge from Shoe Lane, hurry into the middle of Fleet Street, and abruptly come to a standstill in the centre of the traffic. He stood there for some time, wrapped in thought, while buses, taxis and lorries eddied about him in a whirlpool and while drivers exercised to the full their gentle art of expostulation. Having come to the end of his meditations he held up his hand, turned round, cleared a passage through the horses and vehicles and returned up Shoe Lane. It was just as though he had deliberately chosen the middle of Fleet Street as the most fruitful place for thought. Nobody else in London could have done it with his air of absolute unconsciousness, of[72]absent-mindedness. And not even the most stalwart policeman, vested with full authority, could have dammed up London’s stream of traffic more effectively.The more one sees of Chesterton the more difficult it is to discover when he is asleep and when he is awake. He may be talking to you most vivaciously one moment, and the next he will have disappeared: his body will be there, of course, but his mind, his soul, the living spirit within him, will have sunk out of sight.One Friday afternoon I went toThe Daily Heraldoffice to call on a friend. As I entered the building a taxi stopped at the door and I found G. K. C. by my side.“I have half-an-hour for my article,” said he, rather breathlessly. “Wait here till I come back.”The first sentence was addressed to himself, the second to the taxi-driver, but as we were by now in the office the driver heard nothing. Chesterton called for a back file ofThe Daily Herald, sat down, lit a cigar and began to read some of his old articles. I watched him. Presently, he smiled. Then he laughed. Then he leaned back in his chair and roared. “Good—oh, damned good!” exclaimed he. He turned to another article and frowned a little, but a third pleased him better. After a while he pushed the papers from him and sat a while in thought. “And as in uffish thought he” sat, he wrote his article, rapidly, calmly, drowsily. Save that his hand moved, he might have been asleep. Nothing disturbed him—neither the noise of the office nor the faint throb of his taxi-cab rapidly ticking off twopences in the street below.... He finished his article and rolled dreamily away.His brother Cecil has the same gift of detachment. He can write anywhere and under any conditions. I have seen him order a mixed grill at the Gambrinus in Regent Street, begin an article before his food was served, and continue writing for an hour while the dishes were placed before him and allowed to go stone cold. Like most men[73]in Fleet Street who do a tremendous amount of work, he has always plenty of time for play, and I do not remember ever to have come across him when he was not ready and willing to spend a half-hour in chat in one of the thousand and one little caravanserai that lurk so handily in the Strand and Fleet Street.. . . . . . . .Of poets of the younger generation I have met only three—Lascelles Abercrombie, Harold Monro, and John Masefield. Abercrombie I remember as a lean, spectacled man, who used to come to Manchester occasionally to hear music and, I think, to converse intellectually with Miss Horniman. Of music he had a sane and temperate appreciation, but was too prone to condemn modern work, of which, by the way, he knew nothing and which by temperament he was incapable of understanding. He struck me as cold and daring—cold, daring and a little calculating. He appeared unexpectedly one day at my house, stayed for lunch, talked all afternoon, and went away in the evening, leaving me a little bewildered by the things he had refrained from saying. Really, we had nothing in common. My personality could not touch his genius at any point, and the things he wished to discuss—the technicalities of his craft, philosophy, æsthetics and so on—have no interest for me. If I had not studied his work and admired it whole-heartedly, I should have come to the conclusion that he had written poetry through sheer cleverness and brightness of brain. No man was less of a poet in appearance and conversation. He professed at all times a huge liking for beer, but I never saw him drink more than a modest pint, and his pose of “muscular poet” (a school founded and fed by Hilaire Belloc) deceived few.. . . . . . . .Harold Monro I used to see occasionally in the Café Royal, and I met him a few times at the Crab Tree Club.[74]I remember going with him, early one morning in June, 1914, after sitting up all night, to the Turkish baths in Jermyn Street. We swam a little in a tank and were then conducted to a cubicle, where I wished to talk, but Monro was heavy with sleep and soon began to breathe stertorously. A few days later he received me rather heavily at his office at The Poetry Bookshop, read some of my verses, and told me quite frankly that he did not consider me much of a poet. A sound, solid man, Monro, and he has written at least one poem—Trees—as delicate and as beautiful as anything done in our time.. . . . . . . .But neither Monro nor Abercrombie, greatly gifted and earnest in their work though they be, fulfils one’s conception of a poetic personality. There is no mystery about them, no glamour; they do not arouse wonder or surprise. John Masefield, on the other hand, has an invincible picturesqueness—a picturesqueness that stamps him at once as different from his fellows. He is tall, straight and blue-eyed, with a complexion as clear as a child’s. His eyes are amazingly shy, almost furtive. His manner is shy, almost furtive. He speaks to you as though he suspected you of hostility, as though you had the power to injure him and were on the point of using that power. You feel his sensitiveness and you admire the dignity that is at once its outcome and its protection.There are many legends about Masefield; he is the kind of figure that gives rise to legends. And, as he is curiously reticent about his early life, some of the most extravagant of these legends have persisted and have, for many people, become true. But the bare facts of his life are interesting enough. As a young man he grew sick of life, of the kind of life he was living, and went to sea as a sailor before the mast. He had neither money nor friends; or, if he had, he relinquished both. The necessity to earn a living drove him into many adventures, and[75]I am told that for a time he was pot-boy in a New York drink-den. Here his work must have been utterly distasteful, but the observing eye and the impressionable brain of the poet were at work the whole time, and one can see clearly in some of Masefield’s long narrative poems many evidences of those bitter New York days. How Masefield came to London and settled in Bloomsbury, becoming the friend of J. M. Synge, I do not know. For six months he was in Manchester, editing the column entitled Miscellany inThe Manchester Guardian, and writing occasional theatrical notices. I have been told by several of his colleagues on that paper that Masefield’s reserve was invulnerable; he quickly secured the respect of his fellow-workers, but not one of them became intimate with him. He lived in dingy lodgings, he worked hard and, at the end of six months, withdrew to London on the plea that he found it impossible to do literary work at night.But if the circumstances of Masefield’s life are little known, his spiritual history is more than indicated in his work. Here one sees a stricken soul; a nature wounded and a little poisoned; a nervous system agitated and apprehensive. His mind is cast in a tragic mould and his soul takes delight in the contemplation of physical violence. His personality, as I have said, is furtive. He shrinks. His intimate friends may have heard him laugh. I have not.It must be nearly six years since I visited him at his house in Well Walk, Hampstead. It was a miserably cold afternoon in February, and though it was not yet twilight the blinds of the drawing-room were drawn and the lights already lit. Masefield’s conversation was intolerably cautious, intolerably shy. In a rather academic way he deplored the lack of literary critics in England; the art of criticism was dead; the essay was moribund. He expanded this theme perfunctorily, walking up and down the room slowly and never looking me in the eyes[76]once. It was only when, at length, he had sat down—not opposite me, but with the side of his face towards me—that, very occasionally, his eyes would seek mine with a rapid dart and turn away instantly, and at such moments it seemed as though he almost winced. Such shrinking, such excessive timidity, whilst arousing my curiosity, also made me feel no little discomfort, and I was glad when a spirit kettle was brought in, with cups and saucers, and Masefield began to make tea.This making of tea, a most solemn business, reminded me ofCranford. The poet walked to a corner of the room, took therefrom a long narrow box divided into a number of compartments and proceeded, most delicately, to measure out and mix two or three different kinds of tea. The teapot was next heated, the blended tea thrown in, and boiling water immediately poured on it. And then the tea was timed, Masefield holding his watch in his hand and pouring out the fluid into the cups at the psychological second.... He ought, I think, to have taken a little silver key from his waistcoat pocket and locked up the tea-box. He ought to have taken his knitting from a work-box. He ought to have asked me if I had yet spoken to the new curate. But he did none of thesethings....Though for an hour he continued talking, he said nothing—at least, he said nothing I have remembered. The extraordinary thing about him was that, in spite of his timidity, his seeming apprehensiveness, he left on my mind a deep impression of adventure—not of a man who sought physical, but spiritual, risks. I think he is a poet who cannot refrain from exacerbating his own soul, who must at all costs place his mind in danger and escape only at the last moment. I believe he is intensely morbid, delighting to brood over dark things, seeing no humour in life, but full of a baffled chivalry, a nobility thwarted at every turn.. . . . . . . .[77]A man of a very different type is Jerome K. Jerome, whom I met at the National Liberal Club and elsewhere in the early days of the war. Like all humorists, he is an inveterate sentimentalist; his belief in human nature is as wide-eyed and innocent as that of a child. He is an untidy, prosperous, middle-aged man—very kindly, but a little intolerant. His mental attitude is that of a man sitting a little apart from life, alternately amused and saddened by the things he sees. In the drawing-room of his flat at Chelsea he seemed a little out of place; he did not harmonise with his surroundings. But in the Club he was easy, natural, at home. More than twenty years ago I heard him lecture in Manchester; the Jerome of to-day is the Jerome of those far-off years, a little mellower perhaps, a little quieter, a little more sentimental, but essentially the same in appearance, in manner and in his attitude towards life.. . . . . . . .I have met other humorists, but of a type very different from that represented by Jerome. Sir Owen Seaman I met at a little dinner given by the Critics’ Circle at Gatti’s to a colleague of ours who was on the point of leaving for the Front, and who, alas! is now no more. Sir Owen was made both by nature and training for a squarson—that useful but fast-dying gentleman who combines the duties and responsibilities of squire and parson. His personality, rather beefy and John Bullish, confirms one’s expectations. He made an excellent chairman at this particular dinner.. . . . . . . .His very brilliant assistant, A. A. Milne, I once interviewed for a now defunct Labour paper. I was invited to the office ofPunch, and met a tall, slim, yellow-haired and blue-eyed youth, who was so inordinately shy that, after half-an-hour’s perfunctory conversation, I discovered that I had not sufficient material for a paragraph,[78]whereas I had orders to make a column article of the interview. I knew instinctively that Milne must find, as I do, a good deal in W. S. Gilbert’s writings that is in deplorable taste, and I did my utmost to induce him to say something very rude about Sullivan’s collaborator. But he would not “bite.” He nodded and smiled at, and appeared to agree with, all the savage things I said of Gilbert, but he would say very little—and certainly not enough for my purpose—on his own account. I tried other subjects, but without success; finally, I got up in despair, thanked him for the time he had given me and prepared to depart.“But,” said Milne, eyeing me, a little distrustfully, “I must see a copy of your article before it is printed.”“Why, certainly,” said I, and that evening posted it to him, expecting to see it back with perhaps one or two minor alterations.But when my poor article arrived back (really, I thought it an excellent piece of work) I could scarcely recognise it, so heavily was it scored out, so numerous were the alterations. And Milne’s accompanying letter was scathing. I remember one or two sentences. “I cannot tell you how thankful I am,” he wrote, “that I insisted on seeing your article before it was printed. It does not represent my views in the least; your talent for misrepresentation is remarkably resourceful.”When the article was finally passed for publication at least seventy-five per cent. of it was from Milne’s pen. He wrote one or two other stabbing sentences to me, from which it appeared that, however numerous his virtues may be, he is unable to suffer fools gladly.
Arnold Bennett—G. K. Chesterton—Lascelles Abercrombie—Harold Monro—John Masefield—Jerome K. Jerome—Sir Owen Seaman—A. A. Milne
Ofall the famous writers I have met, I have found Arnold Bennett the most surprising. I do not know what kind of man I expected to see when it was arranged that I should meet him, but I certainly had not anticipated beholding the curiously, wrongly dressed figure that, one spring afternoon some few years ago, walked up the steps leading from the floor of Queen’s Hall to the foyer of the gallery. I was there by appointment. I was a friend of a friend of his—Havergal Brian, a young fire-eating genius from the Potteries, and Brian had planned this curious meeting. It was during the interval of an afternoon concert of a Richard Strauss Festival, and Ackté was singing.
Bennett was rather short, thin, hollow-eyed, prominent-toothed. He wore a white waistcoat and a billycock hat very much awry, and he had a manner of complete self-assurance. I cannot say that I was unimpressed. We were introduced, and he looked at me drowsily, indifferently, insultingly indifferently. He did not speak and I, nervous, and a little bewildered by the colour of his socks, which I at that moment noticed for the first time, blundered into some futility.
“I don’t see why,” said Bennett, in response.
I didn’t either, so far as that went. Desperately uncomfortable, I looked round for Brian, and saw[69]him standing fifteen yards or so away, grinning malignantly.
So I plunged into a new topic—with even more disastrous results.
“I notice,” said I, “that you continue writing forThe New Agein spite of their violent attacks on you.”
“Yes,” he answered laconically, and he looked dizzily over my left shoulder.
Then and there I decided that I would not speak again until he had spoken. I had not sought the interview any more than he had. Presently:
“I have been working very hard lately,” I heard. I turned quickly to him; he had spoken into space. I showed a polite interest and he thawed a little. He told me something of the number of words and hours he wrote a day, of the work he had planned for the next two years, of the regularity of his methods, of his disbelief in the value of “inspiration.” I seemed to have heard it all before about Anthony Trollope. He was not exactly loquacious, but he communicated a great deal in spite of a rather unpleasant impediment in hisspeech....
Soon our interview was over, for we heard the orchestra tuning up, and we left each other with just a word of farewell and without a sigh of regret.
His conversational powers never, I believe, reach the point of eloquence. I remember G. H. Mair giving me an amusing description of a breakfast he gave to Arnold Bennett and Stanley Houghton in his lodgings in Manchester. Bennett and Houghton had not previously met, and the latter was young and inexperienced enough to nurse the expectation that the personality of the famous writer would be as impressive as his work, and impressive in the same way. It is true that very extraordinary circumstances would be necessary to make breakfast in Manchester free from dullness, but Houghton no doubt thought that his meeting with Bennettwasan[70]extraordinary circumstance. In the event, however, he was disillusioned.
They went in to breakfast, and Bennett sat moody and silent, crumbling a piece of bread. It chanced that on being admitted to the house Bennett had caught sight of a cabman carrying a particularly large trunk downstairs, and he began to question Mair closely about the incident, Mair explaining that a fellow-lodger was removing that morning and taking all his luggage with him.
“Yes, yes,” said Bennett, a little impatiently, “but why should he have such a large trunk? It was enormous. I don’t think I have ever seen so large a trunk before. It was at least twice the usual size.”
He took a mouthful of bacon and spent a minute in mastication. Having swallowed:
“Absurdly large,” he said challengingly. “I can’t think why anyone should wish to own it. Besides, it’s not right to ask any man to carry such an enormous weight. That’s how strangulated hernia is caused. Yes, strangulated hernia.”
The topic did not prove fruitful, and I can imagine Houghton cudgelling his brains to discover what strangulated hernia really was, and Mair saying something witty about it. But with his second cup of coffee and his marmalade and toast Bennett once more talked of the cabman, the impossible trunk, and the cabman’s hypothetical hernia.
“Of course,” he remarked meditatively, “the man must havesomereason for owning such an incredibly large trunk, but I confess I can’t guess the reason. And, in any case, it is bound to be a selfish one. Now, strangulatedhernia——”
And that was all that issued during a whole hour from one of the cleverest brains in England.
That Arnold Bennett is almost painfully conscious of[71]his own cleverness there is no manner of doubt. He is stupendously aware of the figure he cuts in contemporary literature. He is for ever standing outside himself and enjoying the spectacle of his own greatness, and he whispers ten times a day: “Oh, what a great boy am I!” I was once shown a series of privately printed booklets written by Bennett—booklets that he sent to his intimates at Christmas time. They consisted of extracts from his diary—a diary that, one feels, would never have been written if the de Goncourts had not lived. One self-conscious extract lingers in the mind; the spirit of it, though not the words (and perhaps not the facts) is embodied in the following:—“It is 3A.M.I have been working fourteen hours at a stretch. In these fourteen hours I have written ten thousand words. My book is finished—finished in excitement, in exaltation. Surely not even Balzac went one better than this!”
A great writer: no doubt, a very great writer: but you might gaze at him across a railway carriage for hours at a time and never suspect it.
. . . . . . . .
But if Arnold Bennett is the least picturesque and literary of figures, G. K. Chesterton is the most picturesque and literary. His mere bulk is impressive. On one occasion I saw him emerge from Shoe Lane, hurry into the middle of Fleet Street, and abruptly come to a standstill in the centre of the traffic. He stood there for some time, wrapped in thought, while buses, taxis and lorries eddied about him in a whirlpool and while drivers exercised to the full their gentle art of expostulation. Having come to the end of his meditations he held up his hand, turned round, cleared a passage through the horses and vehicles and returned up Shoe Lane. It was just as though he had deliberately chosen the middle of Fleet Street as the most fruitful place for thought. Nobody else in London could have done it with his air of absolute unconsciousness, of[72]absent-mindedness. And not even the most stalwart policeman, vested with full authority, could have dammed up London’s stream of traffic more effectively.
The more one sees of Chesterton the more difficult it is to discover when he is asleep and when he is awake. He may be talking to you most vivaciously one moment, and the next he will have disappeared: his body will be there, of course, but his mind, his soul, the living spirit within him, will have sunk out of sight.
One Friday afternoon I went toThe Daily Heraldoffice to call on a friend. As I entered the building a taxi stopped at the door and I found G. K. C. by my side.
“I have half-an-hour for my article,” said he, rather breathlessly. “Wait here till I come back.”
The first sentence was addressed to himself, the second to the taxi-driver, but as we were by now in the office the driver heard nothing. Chesterton called for a back file ofThe Daily Herald, sat down, lit a cigar and began to read some of his old articles. I watched him. Presently, he smiled. Then he laughed. Then he leaned back in his chair and roared. “Good—oh, damned good!” exclaimed he. He turned to another article and frowned a little, but a third pleased him better. After a while he pushed the papers from him and sat a while in thought. “And as in uffish thought he” sat, he wrote his article, rapidly, calmly, drowsily. Save that his hand moved, he might have been asleep. Nothing disturbed him—neither the noise of the office nor the faint throb of his taxi-cab rapidly ticking off twopences in the street below.... He finished his article and rolled dreamily away.
His brother Cecil has the same gift of detachment. He can write anywhere and under any conditions. I have seen him order a mixed grill at the Gambrinus in Regent Street, begin an article before his food was served, and continue writing for an hour while the dishes were placed before him and allowed to go stone cold. Like most men[73]in Fleet Street who do a tremendous amount of work, he has always plenty of time for play, and I do not remember ever to have come across him when he was not ready and willing to spend a half-hour in chat in one of the thousand and one little caravanserai that lurk so handily in the Strand and Fleet Street.
. . . . . . . .
Of poets of the younger generation I have met only three—Lascelles Abercrombie, Harold Monro, and John Masefield. Abercrombie I remember as a lean, spectacled man, who used to come to Manchester occasionally to hear music and, I think, to converse intellectually with Miss Horniman. Of music he had a sane and temperate appreciation, but was too prone to condemn modern work, of which, by the way, he knew nothing and which by temperament he was incapable of understanding. He struck me as cold and daring—cold, daring and a little calculating. He appeared unexpectedly one day at my house, stayed for lunch, talked all afternoon, and went away in the evening, leaving me a little bewildered by the things he had refrained from saying. Really, we had nothing in common. My personality could not touch his genius at any point, and the things he wished to discuss—the technicalities of his craft, philosophy, æsthetics and so on—have no interest for me. If I had not studied his work and admired it whole-heartedly, I should have come to the conclusion that he had written poetry through sheer cleverness and brightness of brain. No man was less of a poet in appearance and conversation. He professed at all times a huge liking for beer, but I never saw him drink more than a modest pint, and his pose of “muscular poet” (a school founded and fed by Hilaire Belloc) deceived few.
. . . . . . . .
Harold Monro I used to see occasionally in the Café Royal, and I met him a few times at the Crab Tree Club.[74]I remember going with him, early one morning in June, 1914, after sitting up all night, to the Turkish baths in Jermyn Street. We swam a little in a tank and were then conducted to a cubicle, where I wished to talk, but Monro was heavy with sleep and soon began to breathe stertorously. A few days later he received me rather heavily at his office at The Poetry Bookshop, read some of my verses, and told me quite frankly that he did not consider me much of a poet. A sound, solid man, Monro, and he has written at least one poem—Trees—as delicate and as beautiful as anything done in our time.
. . . . . . . .
But neither Monro nor Abercrombie, greatly gifted and earnest in their work though they be, fulfils one’s conception of a poetic personality. There is no mystery about them, no glamour; they do not arouse wonder or surprise. John Masefield, on the other hand, has an invincible picturesqueness—a picturesqueness that stamps him at once as different from his fellows. He is tall, straight and blue-eyed, with a complexion as clear as a child’s. His eyes are amazingly shy, almost furtive. His manner is shy, almost furtive. He speaks to you as though he suspected you of hostility, as though you had the power to injure him and were on the point of using that power. You feel his sensitiveness and you admire the dignity that is at once its outcome and its protection.
There are many legends about Masefield; he is the kind of figure that gives rise to legends. And, as he is curiously reticent about his early life, some of the most extravagant of these legends have persisted and have, for many people, become true. But the bare facts of his life are interesting enough. As a young man he grew sick of life, of the kind of life he was living, and went to sea as a sailor before the mast. He had neither money nor friends; or, if he had, he relinquished both. The necessity to earn a living drove him into many adventures, and[75]I am told that for a time he was pot-boy in a New York drink-den. Here his work must have been utterly distasteful, but the observing eye and the impressionable brain of the poet were at work the whole time, and one can see clearly in some of Masefield’s long narrative poems many evidences of those bitter New York days. How Masefield came to London and settled in Bloomsbury, becoming the friend of J. M. Synge, I do not know. For six months he was in Manchester, editing the column entitled Miscellany inThe Manchester Guardian, and writing occasional theatrical notices. I have been told by several of his colleagues on that paper that Masefield’s reserve was invulnerable; he quickly secured the respect of his fellow-workers, but not one of them became intimate with him. He lived in dingy lodgings, he worked hard and, at the end of six months, withdrew to London on the plea that he found it impossible to do literary work at night.
But if the circumstances of Masefield’s life are little known, his spiritual history is more than indicated in his work. Here one sees a stricken soul; a nature wounded and a little poisoned; a nervous system agitated and apprehensive. His mind is cast in a tragic mould and his soul takes delight in the contemplation of physical violence. His personality, as I have said, is furtive. He shrinks. His intimate friends may have heard him laugh. I have not.
It must be nearly six years since I visited him at his house in Well Walk, Hampstead. It was a miserably cold afternoon in February, and though it was not yet twilight the blinds of the drawing-room were drawn and the lights already lit. Masefield’s conversation was intolerably cautious, intolerably shy. In a rather academic way he deplored the lack of literary critics in England; the art of criticism was dead; the essay was moribund. He expanded this theme perfunctorily, walking up and down the room slowly and never looking me in the eyes[76]once. It was only when, at length, he had sat down—not opposite me, but with the side of his face towards me—that, very occasionally, his eyes would seek mine with a rapid dart and turn away instantly, and at such moments it seemed as though he almost winced. Such shrinking, such excessive timidity, whilst arousing my curiosity, also made me feel no little discomfort, and I was glad when a spirit kettle was brought in, with cups and saucers, and Masefield began to make tea.
This making of tea, a most solemn business, reminded me ofCranford. The poet walked to a corner of the room, took therefrom a long narrow box divided into a number of compartments and proceeded, most delicately, to measure out and mix two or three different kinds of tea. The teapot was next heated, the blended tea thrown in, and boiling water immediately poured on it. And then the tea was timed, Masefield holding his watch in his hand and pouring out the fluid into the cups at the psychological second.... He ought, I think, to have taken a little silver key from his waistcoat pocket and locked up the tea-box. He ought to have taken his knitting from a work-box. He ought to have asked me if I had yet spoken to the new curate. But he did none of thesethings....
Though for an hour he continued talking, he said nothing—at least, he said nothing I have remembered. The extraordinary thing about him was that, in spite of his timidity, his seeming apprehensiveness, he left on my mind a deep impression of adventure—not of a man who sought physical, but spiritual, risks. I think he is a poet who cannot refrain from exacerbating his own soul, who must at all costs place his mind in danger and escape only at the last moment. I believe he is intensely morbid, delighting to brood over dark things, seeing no humour in life, but full of a baffled chivalry, a nobility thwarted at every turn.
. . . . . . . .
[77]A man of a very different type is Jerome K. Jerome, whom I met at the National Liberal Club and elsewhere in the early days of the war. Like all humorists, he is an inveterate sentimentalist; his belief in human nature is as wide-eyed and innocent as that of a child. He is an untidy, prosperous, middle-aged man—very kindly, but a little intolerant. His mental attitude is that of a man sitting a little apart from life, alternately amused and saddened by the things he sees. In the drawing-room of his flat at Chelsea he seemed a little out of place; he did not harmonise with his surroundings. But in the Club he was easy, natural, at home. More than twenty years ago I heard him lecture in Manchester; the Jerome of to-day is the Jerome of those far-off years, a little mellower perhaps, a little quieter, a little more sentimental, but essentially the same in appearance, in manner and in his attitude towards life.
. . . . . . . .
I have met other humorists, but of a type very different from that represented by Jerome. Sir Owen Seaman I met at a little dinner given by the Critics’ Circle at Gatti’s to a colleague of ours who was on the point of leaving for the Front, and who, alas! is now no more. Sir Owen was made both by nature and training for a squarson—that useful but fast-dying gentleman who combines the duties and responsibilities of squire and parson. His personality, rather beefy and John Bullish, confirms one’s expectations. He made an excellent chairman at this particular dinner.
. . . . . . . .
His very brilliant assistant, A. A. Milne, I once interviewed for a now defunct Labour paper. I was invited to the office ofPunch, and met a tall, slim, yellow-haired and blue-eyed youth, who was so inordinately shy that, after half-an-hour’s perfunctory conversation, I discovered that I had not sufficient material for a paragraph,[78]whereas I had orders to make a column article of the interview. I knew instinctively that Milne must find, as I do, a good deal in W. S. Gilbert’s writings that is in deplorable taste, and I did my utmost to induce him to say something very rude about Sullivan’s collaborator. But he would not “bite.” He nodded and smiled at, and appeared to agree with, all the savage things I said of Gilbert, but he would say very little—and certainly not enough for my purpose—on his own account. I tried other subjects, but without success; finally, I got up in despair, thanked him for the time he had given me and prepared to depart.
“But,” said Milne, eyeing me, a little distrustfully, “I must see a copy of your article before it is printed.”
“Why, certainly,” said I, and that evening posted it to him, expecting to see it back with perhaps one or two minor alterations.
But when my poor article arrived back (really, I thought it an excellent piece of work) I could scarcely recognise it, so heavily was it scored out, so numerous were the alterations. And Milne’s accompanying letter was scathing. I remember one or two sentences. “I cannot tell you how thankful I am,” he wrote, “that I insisted on seeing your article before it was printed. It does not represent my views in the least; your talent for misrepresentation is remarkably resourceful.”
When the article was finally passed for publication at least seventy-five per cent. of it was from Milne’s pen. He wrote one or two other stabbing sentences to me, from which it appeared that, however numerous his virtues may be, he is unable to suffer fools gladly.
[79]CHAPTER VIISIR EDWARD ELGARTheweaknesses that seem to be inseparable from genius—and, most particularly, from artistic genius—are precisely those one would not expect to discover associated with greatness of mind. It would appear that few men are so great as their work, or, if they are, their greatness is spasmodic and evanescent. Works of genius, it is sometimes stated, are created in moods of exaltation, when the spirit is in turmoil, when the mind is lit and the nerves are tense. In some cases it may be so. It was so, I believe, in the case of Wagner, who had long spells, measured by years, of unproductiveness, when his creative powers lay fallow; and it was so in the case of Hugo Wolf, Beethoven, Shelley, Poe, Berlioz and many other men whose names spring to the mind. But it certainly was not so with Balzac and Dickens, any more than it is to-day with Arnold Bennett.There is in Sir Edward Elgar’s work a strange contradiction: great depth of understanding combined with a curious fastidiousness of style that is almost finicking. Many aspects of life appeal to his sympathies and to his imagination, but an innate and exaggerated delicacy, an almost feminine shrinking, is noticeable in even his strongest and most outspoken work.... It is this delicacy, this shrinking, that to the casual acquaintance is at once his most conspicuous and most teasing characteristic.My first meeting with Elgar was ten years ago, when, being commissioned to interview him for a monthly musical magazine, I called on him at the Midland Hotel,[80]Manchester, where he was staying for a night. On my way to his room I met him in the corridor, where he carefully explained that he had made it a strict rule never to be interviewed for the Press and that under no circumstances could that rule be broken. His firm words were spoken with hesitation, and it was quite obvious to me that he was feeling more than a trifle nervous. I have little doubt that this nervousness was due to the fact that in an hour’s time he was to conduct a concert at the Free Trade Hall. However, he was kind enough to loiter for some minutes and talk, but he took care, when I left him, to remind me that nothing of what he had said to me must appear in print.I, of course, obeyed him, but, in place of an interview, I wrote an impressionistic sketch of the man as I had seen him during my few minutes’ conversation at the Midland Hotel. Of this impressionistic sketch I remember nothing except that, in describing his general bearing and manner, I used the word “aristocratic.” At this word Elgar rose like a fat trout eager to swallow a floating fly. It confirmed his own hopes. And I who had perceived this quality so speedily, so unerringly, and who had proclaimed it to the world, was worthy of reward. Yes; he would consent to be interviewed. The ban should be lifted; for once the rule should be broken. A letter came inviting me to Plas Gwyn, Hereford—a letter written by his wife and full of charming compliments about my article.So to Hereford I went and talked music and chemistry. It was Christmas week, and within ten minutes of my arrival Lady Elgar was giving me hot dishes, wine and her views on the political situation. The country was in the throes of a General Election, and while I ate and drank I heard how the Empire was, as Dr Kendrick Pyne used to say, “rushing headlong to the bow-wows.” Lady Elgar did not seem to wish to know to what particular party (if any) I belonged, but I quickly discovered that to confess[81]myself a Radical would be to arouse feelings of hostility in her bosom. Radicals were the Unspeakable People. There was not one, I gathered, in Hereford. They appeared to infest Lancashire, and some had been heard of in Wales. Also, there were people called Nonconformists. Many persons were Radicals, many Nonconformists; but some were both. The Radicals had won several seats. What was the country coming to? Where was the country going?Where, indeed? I did not allow Lady Elgar’s rather violent political prejudices to interfere with my appetite, and she appeared to be perfectly satisfied with an occasional sudden lift of my eyebrows, and such ejaculations as: “Oh, quite! Quite!” “Most assuredly!” and “Incredible!” If she thought about me at all—and I am persuaded she did not—she must have believed me also to be a Tory. After all, had not I called her husband “aristocratic,” and is that the sort of word used by a Radical save in contempt?After lunch Elgar took me a quick walk along the river-bank. For the first half-hour I found him rather reserved and non-committal, and I soon recognised that if I were to succeed in obtaining his views on any matter of interest I must rigidly abstain from direct questions. But when he did commit himself to any opinion, he did so in the manner of one who is sure of his own ground and cannot consider, even temporarily, any change in the attitude he has already assumed.I found his views on musical critics amusing, but before proceeding to set them down I must make some reference to his relations with Ernest Newman. Newman, it is generally agreed, is unquestionably the most brilliant, the fairest-minded and the most courageous writer on music in England. His power is very great, and he has done more to educate public opinion on musical matters in England than any other man. For some little period[82]previous to the time of which I am writing he and Elgar had been close friends, and their friendship was all the stronger because it rested on the attraction of opposites. Elgar was an ardent Catholic, a Conservative; Newman was an uncompromising free-thinker and a Radical. Elgar was a pet of society, a man careful and even snobbish in his choice of his friends, whilst Newman cared nothing for society and would be friendly with any man who interested or amused him.Up to the time Elgar composedThe Apostleshe had no more whole-hearted admirer than Newman, but this work was to sever their friendship and, for a time, to bring bitterness where before there had been esteem and even affection. Newman was invited by a New York paper—I thinkThe Musical Courier—to write at considerable length onThe Apostles. As his opinion of this work was, on the whole, unfavourable, he may possibly have hesitated to consider an invitation the acceptance of which would lead to his giving pain to a friend. But probably Newman thought, as most inflexibly honest men would think, that, on a matter of public concern, silence would be cowardly. In the event, he wrote his article and sent it to America, also forwarding a copy to Elgar himself, telling him that, though it went against his feelings of friendship to condemn the work, he thought it a matter of duty to speak what was in his mind. That letter and that article severed their friendship, and the severance lasted for some considerable time.My visit to Elgar took place during his estrangement from Newman, and when I mentioned the subject of musical criticism to him it was, I imagine, with the hope that the name of the famous critic would crop up. It did.“The worst of musical criticism in this country,” said Elgar, “is that there is so much of it and so little that is serviceable. Most of those who are skilled musicians either have not the gift of criticism or they cannot express[83]their ideas in writing, and most of those who can write are deplorably deficient in their knowledge of music. For myself I never read criticism of my own work; it simply does not interest me. When I have composed or published a work, my interest in it wanes and dies; it belongs to the public. What the professional critics think of it does not concern me in the least.”Though I knew that Elgar had on previous occasions given expression to similar views, his statement amazed me. So I pressed him a little.“But suppose,” I urged, “a new work of yours were so universally condemned by the critics that performances of it ceased to take place. Would you not then read their criticisms in order to discover if there was not some truth in their statements?”“It is possible, but I do not think I should. But your supposition is an inconceivable one: there is never universal agreement among musical critics. I think you will notice that many of them are, from the æsthetic point of view, absolutely devoid of principle; I mean, they are victims of their own temperaments. They, as the schoolgirl says, ‘know what they like.’ The music they condemn is either the music that does not appeal to their particular kind of nervous system or it is the music they do not understand. They have no standard, no norm, no historical sense,no——”He stammered a little and waved a vague arm in the air.“There are exceptions, of course,” I ventured. “Newman, for example.”“No; Ernest Newman is not altogether an exception. He is an unbeliever, and therefore cannot understand religious music—music that is at once reverential, mystical and devout.”“‘Devout’?” whispered I to myself. Aloud I said:“A man’s reason, I think, may reject a religion, though his emotional nature may be susceptible to its slightest[84]appeal. Besides, Newman has a most profound admiration for yourThe Dream of Gerontius.”Elgar was silent for a few minutes. Then, with an air of detachment and with great inconsequence, he said:“Baughan, ofThe Daily News, cannot hum a melody correctly in tune. He looks at music from the point of view of a man of letters. So does Newman, fine musician though he is. Newman advocates programme music. Now, I do not say that programme music should not be written, for I have composed programme music myself. But I do maintain that it is a lower form of art than absolute music. Newman, I believe, refuses to acknowledge that either kind is necessarily higher or lower than the other. He has, as I have said, the literary man’s point of view about music. So have many musical critics.”“And so,” I interpolated, “if one has to accept what you say as correct, have many composers, and composers also who are not specifically literary. And, after what you have said, I find that strange. Take the case of Richard Strauss, all of whose later symphonic poems have a programme, a literary basis. Do you, for that reason, declare that Strauss regards music from the literary man’s point of view—Strauss who, of all living musicians, is the greatest?”He paused for a few moments, and it seemed to me that our pace quickened as we left the bank of the river and made for a pathway across a meadow. But he would not take up the argument; stammering a little, he said:“Richard Strauss is a very great man—a fine fellow.”But as that was not the point under discussion, I felt that either his mind was wandering or that he could think of no reply to my objection.A little later, on our way home, we discussed the younger generation of composers, and I found him very[85]appreciative of the work done by his juniors. He particularly mentioned Havergal Brian, a composer who has more than justified what Elgar prophesied of him, though perhaps not in the manner Elgar anticipated.Apropos of something or other, Elgar said, I think quite needlessly and a little vainly:“You must not, as many people appear to do, imagine that I am a musician and nothing else. I am many things; I find time for many things. Do not picture me always bending over manuscript paper and writing down notes; months pass at frequent intervals when I write nothing at all. At present I am making a study of chemistry.”I think I was expected to look surprised, or to give vent to an exclamation of surprise, but I did neither, for I also had made a study of chemistry, and it seemed to me the kind of work that any man of inquiring mind might take up. I did not for one moment imagine that I was living in the first half of the nineteenth century when practically all British musicians were musicians and nothing else and not always even musicians.When we had returned to the house we sat before a large fire and, under the soothing influence of warmth and semi-darkness, stopped all argument. In the evening Lady Elgar accompanied me to the station, and all the way from Hereford to Manchester I turned over in my mind the strange problem that was presented to me by the fact that, though I was a passionate, almost fanatical lover of Elgar’s music, the creator of that music attracted me not at all. I saw in his mind a daintiness that was irritating, a refinement that was distressingly self-conscious.Some years later Sir Edward Elgar moved to London, and when I saw him in his new home he tried to prove to me that living in London was cheaper than living in the country.His attitude towards me on this occasion was peculiarly[86]strange. I represented a Labour paper, but Elgar did not know that I was at the same time writing leading articles for a London Conservative daily. He treated me with the most careful kindness, a kindness so careful, indeed, that it might be called patronising. It soon became quite clear to me that he imagined I myself came from the labouring classes, but I cannot boast that honour, and as he, the aristocrat, was in contact with me, the plebeian, it was his manifest duty and his undoubted pleasure to help me along the upward path. I was advised to read Shakespeare.“Shakespeare,” said he, “frees the mind. You, as a journalist, will find him useful in so far as a close study of his works will purify your style and enlarge your vocabulary.”“Which of the plays would you advise me to read?” asked I, with simulated innocence and playing up to him with eyes and voice.The astounding man considered a minute and then mentioned half-a-dozen plays, the titles of which I carefully wrote down in my pocket-book.“And Ruskin,” he added as an afterthought. “Oh, yes, and Cardinal Newman. Newman’s style is perhaps the purest style of any man who wrote in the nineteenth century.”“I do not think so,” said I, thoroughly roused and forgetting to play my part. “TheApologiais slipshod. My own style, faulty though it may be, is more correct, more lucid, even more distinguished than Cardinal Newman’s.”He turned away, either angry or amused.“It is true,” said I, with warmth. “Anyone who has tried for years, as I have done, to master the art of writing, and who examines theApologiacarefully will perceive at once that it is shamefully badly written. For two generations it has been the fashion to praise Newman’s style, but those who have done so have never read him in a critical[87]spirit. I would infinitely prefer to have written a racy book like—well, likeMoll Flanders, where the English is beautifully clean and strong, than the sloppyApologia.”“Moll Flanders,” he said questioningly; “Moll Flanders? I do not know the book.”“It is all about a whore,” said I brutally, “written by one Defoe.”And that, of course, put an end to our conversation. I rose to leave.The impression left on my mind by my two visits to Elgar is definite enough, but I am willing to believe that it does not represent the man as he truly is. He is abnormally sensitive, abnormally observant, abnormally intuitive. Like almost all men, he is open to flattery, but the flattery must be applied by means of hints, praise half veiled, innuendo. If you gush he will freeze; if you praise directly, he will wince. His mind is essentially narrow, for he shrinks from the phenomena in life that hurt him and he will not force himself to understand alien things. His intellect is continually rejecting the very matters that, in order to gain largeness, tolerance and a full view of life, it should understand and accept. Yet, within its narrow confines, his brain functions most rapidly and with a clear light.I have been told by members of the various orchestras he has conducted that when interpreting a work likeThe Dream of Gerontiushis face is wet with tears.He has a proper sense of his own dignity, and it is doubtful if he exaggerates the importance of his own powers. Many years ago, as I have related, I employed the word “aristocrat” in describing him, and to-day I feel that that word must stand. He has all the strength of the aristocrat and many of the aristocrat’s weaknesses.
Theweaknesses that seem to be inseparable from genius—and, most particularly, from artistic genius—are precisely those one would not expect to discover associated with greatness of mind. It would appear that few men are so great as their work, or, if they are, their greatness is spasmodic and evanescent. Works of genius, it is sometimes stated, are created in moods of exaltation, when the spirit is in turmoil, when the mind is lit and the nerves are tense. In some cases it may be so. It was so, I believe, in the case of Wagner, who had long spells, measured by years, of unproductiveness, when his creative powers lay fallow; and it was so in the case of Hugo Wolf, Beethoven, Shelley, Poe, Berlioz and many other men whose names spring to the mind. But it certainly was not so with Balzac and Dickens, any more than it is to-day with Arnold Bennett.
There is in Sir Edward Elgar’s work a strange contradiction: great depth of understanding combined with a curious fastidiousness of style that is almost finicking. Many aspects of life appeal to his sympathies and to his imagination, but an innate and exaggerated delicacy, an almost feminine shrinking, is noticeable in even his strongest and most outspoken work.... It is this delicacy, this shrinking, that to the casual acquaintance is at once his most conspicuous and most teasing characteristic.
My first meeting with Elgar was ten years ago, when, being commissioned to interview him for a monthly musical magazine, I called on him at the Midland Hotel,[80]Manchester, where he was staying for a night. On my way to his room I met him in the corridor, where he carefully explained that he had made it a strict rule never to be interviewed for the Press and that under no circumstances could that rule be broken. His firm words were spoken with hesitation, and it was quite obvious to me that he was feeling more than a trifle nervous. I have little doubt that this nervousness was due to the fact that in an hour’s time he was to conduct a concert at the Free Trade Hall. However, he was kind enough to loiter for some minutes and talk, but he took care, when I left him, to remind me that nothing of what he had said to me must appear in print.
I, of course, obeyed him, but, in place of an interview, I wrote an impressionistic sketch of the man as I had seen him during my few minutes’ conversation at the Midland Hotel. Of this impressionistic sketch I remember nothing except that, in describing his general bearing and manner, I used the word “aristocratic.” At this word Elgar rose like a fat trout eager to swallow a floating fly. It confirmed his own hopes. And I who had perceived this quality so speedily, so unerringly, and who had proclaimed it to the world, was worthy of reward. Yes; he would consent to be interviewed. The ban should be lifted; for once the rule should be broken. A letter came inviting me to Plas Gwyn, Hereford—a letter written by his wife and full of charming compliments about my article.
So to Hereford I went and talked music and chemistry. It was Christmas week, and within ten minutes of my arrival Lady Elgar was giving me hot dishes, wine and her views on the political situation. The country was in the throes of a General Election, and while I ate and drank I heard how the Empire was, as Dr Kendrick Pyne used to say, “rushing headlong to the bow-wows.” Lady Elgar did not seem to wish to know to what particular party (if any) I belonged, but I quickly discovered that to confess[81]myself a Radical would be to arouse feelings of hostility in her bosom. Radicals were the Unspeakable People. There was not one, I gathered, in Hereford. They appeared to infest Lancashire, and some had been heard of in Wales. Also, there were people called Nonconformists. Many persons were Radicals, many Nonconformists; but some were both. The Radicals had won several seats. What was the country coming to? Where was the country going?
Where, indeed? I did not allow Lady Elgar’s rather violent political prejudices to interfere with my appetite, and she appeared to be perfectly satisfied with an occasional sudden lift of my eyebrows, and such ejaculations as: “Oh, quite! Quite!” “Most assuredly!” and “Incredible!” If she thought about me at all—and I am persuaded she did not—she must have believed me also to be a Tory. After all, had not I called her husband “aristocratic,” and is that the sort of word used by a Radical save in contempt?
After lunch Elgar took me a quick walk along the river-bank. For the first half-hour I found him rather reserved and non-committal, and I soon recognised that if I were to succeed in obtaining his views on any matter of interest I must rigidly abstain from direct questions. But when he did commit himself to any opinion, he did so in the manner of one who is sure of his own ground and cannot consider, even temporarily, any change in the attitude he has already assumed.
I found his views on musical critics amusing, but before proceeding to set them down I must make some reference to his relations with Ernest Newman. Newman, it is generally agreed, is unquestionably the most brilliant, the fairest-minded and the most courageous writer on music in England. His power is very great, and he has done more to educate public opinion on musical matters in England than any other man. For some little period[82]previous to the time of which I am writing he and Elgar had been close friends, and their friendship was all the stronger because it rested on the attraction of opposites. Elgar was an ardent Catholic, a Conservative; Newman was an uncompromising free-thinker and a Radical. Elgar was a pet of society, a man careful and even snobbish in his choice of his friends, whilst Newman cared nothing for society and would be friendly with any man who interested or amused him.
Up to the time Elgar composedThe Apostleshe had no more whole-hearted admirer than Newman, but this work was to sever their friendship and, for a time, to bring bitterness where before there had been esteem and even affection. Newman was invited by a New York paper—I thinkThe Musical Courier—to write at considerable length onThe Apostles. As his opinion of this work was, on the whole, unfavourable, he may possibly have hesitated to consider an invitation the acceptance of which would lead to his giving pain to a friend. But probably Newman thought, as most inflexibly honest men would think, that, on a matter of public concern, silence would be cowardly. In the event, he wrote his article and sent it to America, also forwarding a copy to Elgar himself, telling him that, though it went against his feelings of friendship to condemn the work, he thought it a matter of duty to speak what was in his mind. That letter and that article severed their friendship, and the severance lasted for some considerable time.
My visit to Elgar took place during his estrangement from Newman, and when I mentioned the subject of musical criticism to him it was, I imagine, with the hope that the name of the famous critic would crop up. It did.
“The worst of musical criticism in this country,” said Elgar, “is that there is so much of it and so little that is serviceable. Most of those who are skilled musicians either have not the gift of criticism or they cannot express[83]their ideas in writing, and most of those who can write are deplorably deficient in their knowledge of music. For myself I never read criticism of my own work; it simply does not interest me. When I have composed or published a work, my interest in it wanes and dies; it belongs to the public. What the professional critics think of it does not concern me in the least.”
Though I knew that Elgar had on previous occasions given expression to similar views, his statement amazed me. So I pressed him a little.
“But suppose,” I urged, “a new work of yours were so universally condemned by the critics that performances of it ceased to take place. Would you not then read their criticisms in order to discover if there was not some truth in their statements?”
“It is possible, but I do not think I should. But your supposition is an inconceivable one: there is never universal agreement among musical critics. I think you will notice that many of them are, from the æsthetic point of view, absolutely devoid of principle; I mean, they are victims of their own temperaments. They, as the schoolgirl says, ‘know what they like.’ The music they condemn is either the music that does not appeal to their particular kind of nervous system or it is the music they do not understand. They have no standard, no norm, no historical sense,no——”
He stammered a little and waved a vague arm in the air.
“There are exceptions, of course,” I ventured. “Newman, for example.”
“No; Ernest Newman is not altogether an exception. He is an unbeliever, and therefore cannot understand religious music—music that is at once reverential, mystical and devout.”
“‘Devout’?” whispered I to myself. Aloud I said:
“A man’s reason, I think, may reject a religion, though his emotional nature may be susceptible to its slightest[84]appeal. Besides, Newman has a most profound admiration for yourThe Dream of Gerontius.”
Elgar was silent for a few minutes. Then, with an air of detachment and with great inconsequence, he said:
“Baughan, ofThe Daily News, cannot hum a melody correctly in tune. He looks at music from the point of view of a man of letters. So does Newman, fine musician though he is. Newman advocates programme music. Now, I do not say that programme music should not be written, for I have composed programme music myself. But I do maintain that it is a lower form of art than absolute music. Newman, I believe, refuses to acknowledge that either kind is necessarily higher or lower than the other. He has, as I have said, the literary man’s point of view about music. So have many musical critics.”
“And so,” I interpolated, “if one has to accept what you say as correct, have many composers, and composers also who are not specifically literary. And, after what you have said, I find that strange. Take the case of Richard Strauss, all of whose later symphonic poems have a programme, a literary basis. Do you, for that reason, declare that Strauss regards music from the literary man’s point of view—Strauss who, of all living musicians, is the greatest?”
He paused for a few moments, and it seemed to me that our pace quickened as we left the bank of the river and made for a pathway across a meadow. But he would not take up the argument; stammering a little, he said:
“Richard Strauss is a very great man—a fine fellow.”
But as that was not the point under discussion, I felt that either his mind was wandering or that he could think of no reply to my objection.
A little later, on our way home, we discussed the younger generation of composers, and I found him very[85]appreciative of the work done by his juniors. He particularly mentioned Havergal Brian, a composer who has more than justified what Elgar prophesied of him, though perhaps not in the manner Elgar anticipated.
Apropos of something or other, Elgar said, I think quite needlessly and a little vainly:
“You must not, as many people appear to do, imagine that I am a musician and nothing else. I am many things; I find time for many things. Do not picture me always bending over manuscript paper and writing down notes; months pass at frequent intervals when I write nothing at all. At present I am making a study of chemistry.”
I think I was expected to look surprised, or to give vent to an exclamation of surprise, but I did neither, for I also had made a study of chemistry, and it seemed to me the kind of work that any man of inquiring mind might take up. I did not for one moment imagine that I was living in the first half of the nineteenth century when practically all British musicians were musicians and nothing else and not always even musicians.
When we had returned to the house we sat before a large fire and, under the soothing influence of warmth and semi-darkness, stopped all argument. In the evening Lady Elgar accompanied me to the station, and all the way from Hereford to Manchester I turned over in my mind the strange problem that was presented to me by the fact that, though I was a passionate, almost fanatical lover of Elgar’s music, the creator of that music attracted me not at all. I saw in his mind a daintiness that was irritating, a refinement that was distressingly self-conscious.
Some years later Sir Edward Elgar moved to London, and when I saw him in his new home he tried to prove to me that living in London was cheaper than living in the country.
His attitude towards me on this occasion was peculiarly[86]strange. I represented a Labour paper, but Elgar did not know that I was at the same time writing leading articles for a London Conservative daily. He treated me with the most careful kindness, a kindness so careful, indeed, that it might be called patronising. It soon became quite clear to me that he imagined I myself came from the labouring classes, but I cannot boast that honour, and as he, the aristocrat, was in contact with me, the plebeian, it was his manifest duty and his undoubted pleasure to help me along the upward path. I was advised to read Shakespeare.
“Shakespeare,” said he, “frees the mind. You, as a journalist, will find him useful in so far as a close study of his works will purify your style and enlarge your vocabulary.”
“Which of the plays would you advise me to read?” asked I, with simulated innocence and playing up to him with eyes and voice.
The astounding man considered a minute and then mentioned half-a-dozen plays, the titles of which I carefully wrote down in my pocket-book.
“And Ruskin,” he added as an afterthought. “Oh, yes, and Cardinal Newman. Newman’s style is perhaps the purest style of any man who wrote in the nineteenth century.”
“I do not think so,” said I, thoroughly roused and forgetting to play my part. “TheApologiais slipshod. My own style, faulty though it may be, is more correct, more lucid, even more distinguished than Cardinal Newman’s.”
He turned away, either angry or amused.
“It is true,” said I, with warmth. “Anyone who has tried for years, as I have done, to master the art of writing, and who examines theApologiacarefully will perceive at once that it is shamefully badly written. For two generations it has been the fashion to praise Newman’s style, but those who have done so have never read him in a critical[87]spirit. I would infinitely prefer to have written a racy book like—well, likeMoll Flanders, where the English is beautifully clean and strong, than the sloppyApologia.”
“Moll Flanders,” he said questioningly; “Moll Flanders? I do not know the book.”
“It is all about a whore,” said I brutally, “written by one Defoe.”
And that, of course, put an end to our conversation. I rose to leave.
The impression left on my mind by my two visits to Elgar is definite enough, but I am willing to believe that it does not represent the man as he truly is. He is abnormally sensitive, abnormally observant, abnormally intuitive. Like almost all men, he is open to flattery, but the flattery must be applied by means of hints, praise half veiled, innuendo. If you gush he will freeze; if you praise directly, he will wince. His mind is essentially narrow, for he shrinks from the phenomena in life that hurt him and he will not force himself to understand alien things. His intellect is continually rejecting the very matters that, in order to gain largeness, tolerance and a full view of life, it should understand and accept. Yet, within its narrow confines, his brain functions most rapidly and with a clear light.
I have been told by members of the various orchestras he has conducted that when interpreting a work likeThe Dream of Gerontiushis face is wet with tears.
He has a proper sense of his own dignity, and it is doubtful if he exaggerates the importance of his own powers. Many years ago, as I have related, I employed the word “aristocrat” in describing him, and to-day I feel that that word must stand. He has all the strength of the aristocrat and many of the aristocrat’s weaknesses.
[88]CHAPTER VIIIINTELLECTUAL FREAKSInthe most tragic and most trying moments of life it is well to turn aside from one’s sorrows and refresh one’s mind and strengthen one’s soul by gazing upon the follies of others. Those others gaze on ours.In my spiritual adventures I have met many amazingly freakish people. Ten years ago the Theosophical Society overflowed with them. They were cultured without being educated, credulous but without faith, bookish but without learning, argumentative but without logic. The women, serene and grave, swam about in drawing-rooms, or they would stand in long, attitudinising ecstasies, their skimpy necks emerging from strange gowns, their bodies as shoulderless as hock bottles. The men paddled about in the same rooms, but I found them less amusing than the women.“You were a horse in your last incarnation,” said a fuzzy-haired giantess to me one evening, two minutes after we had been introduced.“Oh, how disappointing!” I exclaimed. “I had always imagined myself an owl. I often dream I was an owl. I fly about, you know, or sit on branches with my eyes shut.”“No; a horse!” shouted the giantess, with much asperity. “I’m not arguing with you. I’m merely telling you. And I don’t think you were a very nice horse either.”“No? Did I bite people?”“Yes; you bit and kicked. And you did other disagreeable things besides. Now,Iwas a swan.”[89]I evinced a polite but not enthusiastic interest.“You would make an imposing swan,” I observed.“Yes. I used to glide about on ponds, like this.”She proceeded to “glide” round and round the corner of the room in which we were sitting. She arched her neck, raised her ponderous legs laboriously and moved about like a pantechnicon. Her face assumed a disagreeable expression and I thought of a rather good line in one of my own poems:And swans sulked largely on the yellow mere.“And how much of your previous incarnation do you remember?” I asked, when she had finished sulking largely in the yellow drawing-room.“Oh, quite a lot. It comes back to me in flashes. I was very lonely—oh,solonely.”She gave me a quick look, and I began to talk of William J. Locke, who, a few days previously, had published a new book. Resenting my change of subject, she left me and, a few minutes later, as I was eating a watercress sandwich, I heard her saying to a yellow-haired male:“You were a horse in your last incarnation.”I met this lady on other occasions, and always she was occupied in telling men that they had been horses and she a swan—an oh-so-lonely swan.“Why,” said I to my hostess one day, “don’t Madame X.’s friends look after her? See—she is arching her neck over there in the corner, and I am perfectly certain she has told the man with her that he has been, is, or is going to be a horse.”For a moment my hostess looked concerned.“Look after her? What do you mean?”“Well, she is obviously insane.”“On the contrary, she is the most subtle exponent we have of Madame Blavatsky’sSecret Doctrine. Eccentric,[90]perhaps, but as lucid a brain as Mr G. R. S. Mead’s or as Colonel Olcott’s. You should get her to describe your aura. She is excellent, too, in Plato. She doesn’t understand a word of Greek, but she gets at his meaning intuitively. There is something cosmic about her.Youknow what I mean.”“Oh, quite, quite.” (But whatdidshe mean?)“Cosmic consciousness is a most enthralling subject,” continued my hostess, digging the hockey-stick she always carried with her well into the hearthrug. “Walt Whitman had it, you know.”“Badly?” I inquired.She appeared puzzled.“I don’t quite know what you mean by ‘badly.’ He could identify himself with anything—the wind, a stone, a jelly-fish, an arm-chair, a ... a ... oh, everything! They were he and he was they. Hethoughtcosmically. Fourth dimension, you know. Edward Carpenter and all that.”I rather admired this way she had of talking—a little like the Duke in G. K. Chesterton’sMagic.“Oh, do go on!” I urged her.“What I always say is,” she continued, “why stop at a fourth dimension? Someone has written a book on the fourth dimension, and some day perhaps I shall write one on the fifth.”“A book? A real book? Do you mean to say you could write a book? How clever! How romantic!”“Well, I have thought about it. One is influenced. One has influences. The consciousness of the ultimate truth of things, the truth that suffuses all things, the cosmic nature of—well, the cosmos. Do you see? Tennyson’sIn Memoriam.”“Yes; Tennyson’sIn Memoriamdoes help, doesn’t it?”“Did I say Tennyson’sIn Memoriam? I really meant[91]Shelley’sRevolt of Islam. The fourth dimension is played out. It’s done with. It was true so far as it went, but how far did it go?”“Only a very little way,” I answered.“Yes, but Nietzsche goes much farther. Have you read Nietzsche? No? I haven’t, either. But I have heard Orage talk about him. Nietzsche says we can all do what we want. We must dare things. We must be blond beasts. Mary Wollstonecraft and her set, you know. Godwin and those people.”She waved her hockey-stick recklessly in the air and marched inconsequently away. Nearly all the Theosophists I met were like that—inconsequent, bent on writing books they never did write, talkers of divine flapdoodle, inanely clever, cleverly inane. Dear freaks I used to meet in days gone by!—where are you now?—where are you now?. . . . . . . .A freak who ultimately lost all reason and was confined in a private asylum used to sit at the same desk that I did when, many years ago, I was a shipping clerk in Manchester. This man, whose name was not, but should have been, Bundle, had considerable private means, but some obscure need of his nature drove him to discipline himself by working eight hours a day for three pounds a week. The three pounds was nothing to him, but the eight hours a day meant everything. He was a conscientious worker, but I think I have already indicated that his intelligence was not robust. He had no delusion; he merely possessed a misdirected sense of duty.One day he left us, and a few months later I met him in Market Street. He looked prosperous, smart and intensely happy.“Are you busy?” he asked. “No? Well, come with me.”He slipped his arm in mine, led me into Mosley Street,[92]and stopped in front of the large, dismal office of the Calico Printers’ Association.“That,” said he, “is mine. Now, come into Albert Square.”When we had arrived there he pointed to the Town Hall.“That also is mine. The Lord Mayor gave it to me with a golden key. Here is the golden key.”Producing an ordinary latchkey from his pocket, he carefully held it in the palm of his hand for my inspection.“It is,” he announced, “studded with diamonds. But you can’t see the diamonds. Crafty Lord Mayor! You don’t catch him napping. He’s hidden them deep in thegold....”I enjoyed this poor fellow’s company more than I did that of a very old woman to whom I was introduced in a pauper asylum. She was sitting on a low stool and, pointing at her head with her skinny forefinger, “It’s pot! It’s pot!” she said.But even she provided me with more exhilaration than do the tens (or perhaps hundreds) of thousands of real freaks who, I imagine, inhabit every part of the globe. I allude to the vast throng of people who arise at eight or thereabouts, go to the City every morning, work all day and return home at dusk; who perform this routine every day, and every day of every year; who do it all their lives; who do it without resentment, without anger, without even a momentary impulse to break away from their surroundings. Such people amaze and stagger one. To them life is not an adventure; indeed, I don’t know what they consider it. They marry and, in their tepid, uxorious way, love. But love to them is not a mystery, or an adventure, and its consummation is not a sacrament. They do not travel; they do not want to travel. They do not even hate anybody.All these people are freaks of the wildest description; yet they imagine themselves to be the backbone of the[93]Empire. Perhaps they are. Perhaps every nation requires a torpid mass of people to act as a steadying influence.In the suburbs of Manchester these people abound. I know a man still in his twenties who keeps hens for what he calls “a hobby.” Among his hens he finds all the excitement his soul needs. The sheds in which they live form the boundaries of his imagination. I should esteem this man if he kicked against his destiny; but he loved it, until the Army conscripted him. God save the world from those who keep hens!I know a man who has been to Douglas eighteen times in succession for his fortnight’s holiday in the summer. Douglas is his heaven; Manchester and Douglas are his universe. No place so beautiful as Douglas; no place so familiar; no place so satisfying. After all, Douglas is always Douglas. Moreover, Douglas is always miraculously “there.” God save the world from men who go to Douglas eighteen times!I know a man who hates his wife and still lives with her. He is respectable, soulless, saving, a punctual and regular churchgoer, a hard bargain-driver. He walks with his eyes on the ground. He has always lived in the same suburb. He will always live in the same suburb. God save the world from men who always live in the same suburb!I know aman ...But this is getting very monotonous. Besides, why should I particularise any more freaks when all of them, perhaps, are as familiar to you as they are to me?. . . . . . . .Then there is the literary freak; not theposeur, not the man who wishes to be thought “cultured” and intellectual, but the scholarly man who, during an industrious life, has amassed a vast amount of literary knowledge, but whose appreciation of literature is lukewarm and without zest. Very, very rarely is the great writer a scholar. Dr Johnson[94]was a scholar, but, divine and adorable creature though he was, he was not a great writer. None of the great Victorians had true scholarship, and very few even of the Elizabethans. And to-day? Well, one may consider Thomas Hardy, Joseph Conrad, H. G. Wells, Bernard Shaw, Arnold Bennett and G. K. Chesterton as great writers; if you do not concede me all these names, you must either deny that we have any great writers at all (which is absurd) or produce me the names of six who are greater than those I have named (and the latter you cannot do). Have any of these anything approaching scholarship?And yet in our universities are scores of men who are regarded as possessing greater literary gifts than those who actually produce literature. These learned, owlish creatures pose pontifically. Whenever a new book comes out they read an old one! The present generation, they say, is without genius. But they have always said it. They said it when Dickens, Thackeray and Charlotte Brontë were writing. I have no doubt they said it in Shakespeare’s time. The present generation teems with genius, but our “scholarly” mandarins know it not. How barren is that knowledge which lies heavy in a man’s mind and does not fertilise there. When one considers the matter, how essentially dull and stupid and brainless is the man devoid of ideas!One of these bald-pated freaks is well known to me. He moves heavily about in a quadrangle. He delivers lectures. He has written books. He passes judgment. He annotates. He writes an occasional review. Funny little freak! Great little freak, who knows so much and understands so little.... When England wakes (and I do not believe that even yet, after nearly four years of war, England is really awake) such men will pass through life unregarded and neglected; they will sit at home in a back room, and their relatives and friends will love and[95]pity them, as one loves and pities a poor fellow whose temperament has made him a wastrel, or as one pities a man who has to be nursed.. . . . . . . .People of the Play:A handful of literary freaks.Scene:A drawing-room in Tooting, or Acton, or Highgate, or Ealing, or any funny old place where the middle classes live.Time: 8P.M.on (generally) Thursday.MrsArnold. Now that Miss Vera Potting, M.A., has finished reading her most interesting paper on Mr John Masefield, the subject is open for discussion. Perhaps you, Mr Mather-Johnstone, will give us a few thoughts—yes, a few thoughts. (She smiles wanly and gazes round the room.) Amostinteresting paperIcall it.Rev.Mather-Johnstone, M.A. Miss Potting’s most interesting paper is—well, most interesting. I must confess I have read nothing of—er—Mr Masefield’s. I prefer the older poets—Cowper, Bowles’ Sonnets, and the beautifully named Felicia Hemans. Fe-lic-i-a! To what sweet thoughts does not that name give rise! But it has been a revelation to me to learn that a popular poet (and Miss Potting has assured us that Mr Masefieldispopular) should so freely indulge in language that, to say the least, is violent, and I am glad to say that such language is not to be found in the improving stanzas of Eliza Cook.MrS. Wanley. I have read some verses of Mr Masefield’s in a very—well—advanced paper called, if my memory does not deceive me,The English Review. I did not like those verses. I did not approve of[96]them. They were bathed in an atmosphere of discontent—modern discontent. Now, what have people to be discontented about? Nothing; nothing at all, if they live rightly. (He stops, having nothing further to say. For the same reason, he proceeds.) Nevertheless, I thank Miss Potting, M.A., very much for her most interesting paper. There is one question I should like to ask her: is this Mr Masefield read by the right people?MissVera Potting, M.A. Oh no! Oh dear, no! Most certainly not! Still, it is incontestable that heisread.MrS. Wanley. Thank you so much. I felt that he could not be read by the right people.MissGraceley(rather nervously). I feel that I can say I know my Lord Lytton, my Edna Lyall, my Charlotte M. Yonge and my Tennyson. I have always remained content with them, and after what Miss Vera Potting, M.A., has said about Mr Masefield in her most interesting paper, I shallremaincontent with them.MrS. Wanley. Hear, hear. I always seem to agree with you, Miss Graceley.MrsArnold(archly). What is the saying?—great minds always jump alike?Rev.Mather-Johnstone(sotto voce).Jump?MrPorteous(with most distinguished amiability). I really think that this most interesting paper that Miss Vera Potting, M.A., has read to us should be published. It is so—well, so improving, so elevating,so——MissVera Potting, M.A. (who has already fruitlessly sent the essay to every magazine in the country). Oh, Mr Porteous! How can you? Really, I couldn’t think of such a thing.Rev.Mather-Johnstone, M.A. (who, being not altogether free from jealousy, thinks this is really going a bit too[97]far). But perhaps we do not all quite approve of women writers—I mean ladies who write for the wide, rough public.MrsArnold. True! True!... But then, what about Felicia Hemans?Rev.Mather-Johnstone, M.A. Mrs Hemans was Mrs Hemans. Miss Vera Potting, M.A., is, and I hope will always remain, Miss Vera Potting, M.A.MrPorteous. Oh, don’t say that! What I meanis——(This sort of thing goes on for an hour when, very secretly and as though she were on some nefarious errand, MrsArnolddisappears from the room. She presently reappears with a maid, who carries a tray of coffee and sandwiches. The dreadful Mr Masefield is then forgotten.]You think the above sketch is exaggerated? Ah! well, perhaps you have never lived in Highgate, or in the suburbs of Manchester, Birmingham, Sheffield or Leeds. I could set down some appalling conversations that I have heard in suburban “literary” circles. There is a place called Eccles, where, oneevening——. . . . . . . .In London Bohemia there are many freakish people, but, for the most part, they are altogether charming and refreshing. Quite a number of them have what I am told is, in the Police Courts, termed “no visible means of subsistence,” but they appear to “carry on” with imperturbable good humour and borrow money cheerfully and as frequently as their circle of acquaintances (which is usually very large) will permit.Frequenters of the Café Royal in pre-war days will recognise the followingtypes:—Picture to yourself a Polish Jew, young, yellow-skinned, black-haired; he has luminous eyes, sensuous lips and damp hands, and he dresses well, but in an extravagant[98]style. He is a megalomaniac, and he has all the megalomaniac’s consuming anxiety to discover precisely in what way other people react to his personality. One night my bitterest enemy brought him to the table at which I was sitting, introduced us to each other, and walked away.“I am told you are a journalist,” my new acquaintance began. “I myself write poems. I have a theory about poetry, and my theory is this: All poetry should be subjective.”“Why?”“Never mind why. I am telling you about my theory. All poetry should be subjective; as a matter of fact, all the best poetry is. To myself I am the most interesting phenomenon in the world. To yourself, you are. Is it not so?”“Yes; you have guessed right first time.”“Well, I have in this dispatch case eight hundred and seventy-three poems about myself, telling the world almost all there is to know about the most interesting phenomenon it contains.”He took from his case a great pile of MS. and turned the leaves over in his hands.“Here,” said he, “is a blank-verse poem entitledHow I felt at8.45A.M.on June8, 1909,having partaken of Breakfast. Would you like to read it?”I assured him I should, though I fully expected it would contain unmistakable signs of mental disturbance. But it did not. It was quite respectably written verse, much better than at least half of Wordsworth’s; it was logical, it had ideas, it showed some introspective power, and it revealed a mind above the ordinary.I told him all this.“Then you don’t think I’m a genius? Some people do.”“You see, I’m not a very good judge of men—particularly[99]men of genius. You may be a genius; on the other hand, you may not.”“But what exactly do you think of me?”“I have already told you.”“Yes, but not with sufficient particularity. Now, put away from you all feeling of nervousness and try to imagine that I have just left you and that a friend of yours has come in and taken my place. You are alone together. You would, of course, immediately tell him that you had met me. You would say: ‘He is a very strange man, eccentric....’ and so on. You would describe my appearance, my personality, my verses. You, being a writer, would analyse me to shreds. Now, that is what I want you to do now. I want you to say all the bad things with the good. And I shall listen, greedily.”“But, really!” I protested. “Really, I can’t do what you ask.”Disappointed and vexed, he sat biting his underlip.“All right,” he said at length, “we’ll strike a bargain. After you have analysed me I, in return, will analyse you.”“You have quite the most unhealthy mind with which I have ever come in contact.”“You really believe that?” he asked, delighted. “Do go on.”“Oh, but I’m sorry I began. This kind of thing is dangerous.”“Yes, I know. But I like danger—mental danger especially.”“But drink would be better for you. Even drugs. You are asking me to help to throw you off your mental balance.”“I know.I know. But you won’t refuse?”“To show you that I will I am leaving you now in this café. I am going. Good-night.”But he met me many times after that, and always[100]pursued me with ardour. In the end he gained his desire and, having done so, had no further use for me.I call him The Man Who Collects Opinions of Himself. He is still in London. And he is not yet insane.Then there was the lady—since, alas! dead—who used always to appear in public in a kind of purple shroud, her face and fingers chalked. She rather stupidly called herself Cheerio Death, and was one of the jolliest girls I have ever met. She longed and ached for notoriety and for new sensations: she feasted on them and they nourished and fattened her. Only very brave or reckless men dared be seen with her in public, for, though her behaviour was scrupulously correct, her appearance created either veiled ridicule or consternation wherever she went. Yet she never lacked companions.“Hullo, Gerald!” she used to say to me; “sit down near me. You are so nice and chubby. I like to have you near me. How am I looking?”“More beautiful than ever.”“Oh, youaresweet. Isn’t he sweet, Frank?” she would say to one of her companions. “Order him some champagne. I’m thirsty.”And, really, Cheerio Death was very beautiful in a ghastly and terrible way. By degrees, all the reputable restaurants were closed to her, and in the late autumn of 1913 she disappeared, to die of consumption in Soho. Poor girl! Perhaps in Paris, where they love theoutréand the shocking, she would have secured the full, hectic success that in London was denied her.. . . . . . . .Are freaks always conscious of their freakishness? I do not think they are. Not even the man who wilfully cultivates his oddities until they have become swollen excrescences hanging bulbous-like on his personality is aware how vastly different, how unreasonably different he is from his fellows. He is more than reconciled to[101]himself; he loves himself; he is what other people would be if only they could. Vanity continually lulls and soothes and rots him. The nature that craves to be noticed will go to almost any lengths to secure that notice.It has always appeared curious to me that the ambition to become famous should very generally be regarded as a worthy passion in a man of genius. It is but natural that a man of genius should desire his work to reach as many people as possible, but whether or not he should be known as the author of that work seems to me a matter of no importance whatever. But to the man himself it is all-important. He has an instinctive feeling that if, in the public eye, he is separated from his work, savour will go from what he has created. He and his work must be closely identified.This desire to be widely known, to be talked about everywhere, is in the man of genius accepted as natural, but it is this very desire that, in many cases, makes a freak of the ordinary man. Obscurity to him is death.
Inthe most tragic and most trying moments of life it is well to turn aside from one’s sorrows and refresh one’s mind and strengthen one’s soul by gazing upon the follies of others. Those others gaze on ours.
In my spiritual adventures I have met many amazingly freakish people. Ten years ago the Theosophical Society overflowed with them. They were cultured without being educated, credulous but without faith, bookish but without learning, argumentative but without logic. The women, serene and grave, swam about in drawing-rooms, or they would stand in long, attitudinising ecstasies, their skimpy necks emerging from strange gowns, their bodies as shoulderless as hock bottles. The men paddled about in the same rooms, but I found them less amusing than the women.
“You were a horse in your last incarnation,” said a fuzzy-haired giantess to me one evening, two minutes after we had been introduced.
“Oh, how disappointing!” I exclaimed. “I had always imagined myself an owl. I often dream I was an owl. I fly about, you know, or sit on branches with my eyes shut.”
“No; a horse!” shouted the giantess, with much asperity. “I’m not arguing with you. I’m merely telling you. And I don’t think you were a very nice horse either.”
“No? Did I bite people?”
“Yes; you bit and kicked. And you did other disagreeable things besides. Now,Iwas a swan.”
[89]I evinced a polite but not enthusiastic interest.
“You would make an imposing swan,” I observed.
“Yes. I used to glide about on ponds, like this.”
She proceeded to “glide” round and round the corner of the room in which we were sitting. She arched her neck, raised her ponderous legs laboriously and moved about like a pantechnicon. Her face assumed a disagreeable expression and I thought of a rather good line in one of my own poems:
And swans sulked largely on the yellow mere.
And swans sulked largely on the yellow mere.
And swans sulked largely on the yellow mere.
And swans sulked largely on the yellow mere.
“And how much of your previous incarnation do you remember?” I asked, when she had finished sulking largely in the yellow drawing-room.
“Oh, quite a lot. It comes back to me in flashes. I was very lonely—oh,solonely.”
She gave me a quick look, and I began to talk of William J. Locke, who, a few days previously, had published a new book. Resenting my change of subject, she left me and, a few minutes later, as I was eating a watercress sandwich, I heard her saying to a yellow-haired male:
“You were a horse in your last incarnation.”
I met this lady on other occasions, and always she was occupied in telling men that they had been horses and she a swan—an oh-so-lonely swan.
“Why,” said I to my hostess one day, “don’t Madame X.’s friends look after her? See—she is arching her neck over there in the corner, and I am perfectly certain she has told the man with her that he has been, is, or is going to be a horse.”
For a moment my hostess looked concerned.
“Look after her? What do you mean?”
“Well, she is obviously insane.”
“On the contrary, she is the most subtle exponent we have of Madame Blavatsky’sSecret Doctrine. Eccentric,[90]perhaps, but as lucid a brain as Mr G. R. S. Mead’s or as Colonel Olcott’s. You should get her to describe your aura. She is excellent, too, in Plato. She doesn’t understand a word of Greek, but she gets at his meaning intuitively. There is something cosmic about her.Youknow what I mean.”
“Oh, quite, quite.” (But whatdidshe mean?)
“Cosmic consciousness is a most enthralling subject,” continued my hostess, digging the hockey-stick she always carried with her well into the hearthrug. “Walt Whitman had it, you know.”
“Badly?” I inquired.
She appeared puzzled.
“I don’t quite know what you mean by ‘badly.’ He could identify himself with anything—the wind, a stone, a jelly-fish, an arm-chair, a ... a ... oh, everything! They were he and he was they. Hethoughtcosmically. Fourth dimension, you know. Edward Carpenter and all that.”
I rather admired this way she had of talking—a little like the Duke in G. K. Chesterton’sMagic.
“Oh, do go on!” I urged her.
“What I always say is,” she continued, “why stop at a fourth dimension? Someone has written a book on the fourth dimension, and some day perhaps I shall write one on the fifth.”
“A book? A real book? Do you mean to say you could write a book? How clever! How romantic!”
“Well, I have thought about it. One is influenced. One has influences. The consciousness of the ultimate truth of things, the truth that suffuses all things, the cosmic nature of—well, the cosmos. Do you see? Tennyson’sIn Memoriam.”
“Yes; Tennyson’sIn Memoriamdoes help, doesn’t it?”
“Did I say Tennyson’sIn Memoriam? I really meant[91]Shelley’sRevolt of Islam. The fourth dimension is played out. It’s done with. It was true so far as it went, but how far did it go?”
“Only a very little way,” I answered.
“Yes, but Nietzsche goes much farther. Have you read Nietzsche? No? I haven’t, either. But I have heard Orage talk about him. Nietzsche says we can all do what we want. We must dare things. We must be blond beasts. Mary Wollstonecraft and her set, you know. Godwin and those people.”
She waved her hockey-stick recklessly in the air and marched inconsequently away. Nearly all the Theosophists I met were like that—inconsequent, bent on writing books they never did write, talkers of divine flapdoodle, inanely clever, cleverly inane. Dear freaks I used to meet in days gone by!—where are you now?—where are you now?
. . . . . . . .
A freak who ultimately lost all reason and was confined in a private asylum used to sit at the same desk that I did when, many years ago, I was a shipping clerk in Manchester. This man, whose name was not, but should have been, Bundle, had considerable private means, but some obscure need of his nature drove him to discipline himself by working eight hours a day for three pounds a week. The three pounds was nothing to him, but the eight hours a day meant everything. He was a conscientious worker, but I think I have already indicated that his intelligence was not robust. He had no delusion; he merely possessed a misdirected sense of duty.
One day he left us, and a few months later I met him in Market Street. He looked prosperous, smart and intensely happy.
“Are you busy?” he asked. “No? Well, come with me.”
He slipped his arm in mine, led me into Mosley Street,[92]and stopped in front of the large, dismal office of the Calico Printers’ Association.
“That,” said he, “is mine. Now, come into Albert Square.”
When we had arrived there he pointed to the Town Hall.
“That also is mine. The Lord Mayor gave it to me with a golden key. Here is the golden key.”
Producing an ordinary latchkey from his pocket, he carefully held it in the palm of his hand for my inspection.
“It is,” he announced, “studded with diamonds. But you can’t see the diamonds. Crafty Lord Mayor! You don’t catch him napping. He’s hidden them deep in thegold....”
I enjoyed this poor fellow’s company more than I did that of a very old woman to whom I was introduced in a pauper asylum. She was sitting on a low stool and, pointing at her head with her skinny forefinger, “It’s pot! It’s pot!” she said.
But even she provided me with more exhilaration than do the tens (or perhaps hundreds) of thousands of real freaks who, I imagine, inhabit every part of the globe. I allude to the vast throng of people who arise at eight or thereabouts, go to the City every morning, work all day and return home at dusk; who perform this routine every day, and every day of every year; who do it all their lives; who do it without resentment, without anger, without even a momentary impulse to break away from their surroundings. Such people amaze and stagger one. To them life is not an adventure; indeed, I don’t know what they consider it. They marry and, in their tepid, uxorious way, love. But love to them is not a mystery, or an adventure, and its consummation is not a sacrament. They do not travel; they do not want to travel. They do not even hate anybody.
All these people are freaks of the wildest description; yet they imagine themselves to be the backbone of the[93]Empire. Perhaps they are. Perhaps every nation requires a torpid mass of people to act as a steadying influence.
In the suburbs of Manchester these people abound. I know a man still in his twenties who keeps hens for what he calls “a hobby.” Among his hens he finds all the excitement his soul needs. The sheds in which they live form the boundaries of his imagination. I should esteem this man if he kicked against his destiny; but he loved it, until the Army conscripted him. God save the world from those who keep hens!
I know a man who has been to Douglas eighteen times in succession for his fortnight’s holiday in the summer. Douglas is his heaven; Manchester and Douglas are his universe. No place so beautiful as Douglas; no place so familiar; no place so satisfying. After all, Douglas is always Douglas. Moreover, Douglas is always miraculously “there.” God save the world from men who go to Douglas eighteen times!
I know a man who hates his wife and still lives with her. He is respectable, soulless, saving, a punctual and regular churchgoer, a hard bargain-driver. He walks with his eyes on the ground. He has always lived in the same suburb. He will always live in the same suburb. God save the world from men who always live in the same suburb!
I know aman ...
But this is getting very monotonous. Besides, why should I particularise any more freaks when all of them, perhaps, are as familiar to you as they are to me?
. . . . . . . .
Then there is the literary freak; not theposeur, not the man who wishes to be thought “cultured” and intellectual, but the scholarly man who, during an industrious life, has amassed a vast amount of literary knowledge, but whose appreciation of literature is lukewarm and without zest. Very, very rarely is the great writer a scholar. Dr Johnson[94]was a scholar, but, divine and adorable creature though he was, he was not a great writer. None of the great Victorians had true scholarship, and very few even of the Elizabethans. And to-day? Well, one may consider Thomas Hardy, Joseph Conrad, H. G. Wells, Bernard Shaw, Arnold Bennett and G. K. Chesterton as great writers; if you do not concede me all these names, you must either deny that we have any great writers at all (which is absurd) or produce me the names of six who are greater than those I have named (and the latter you cannot do). Have any of these anything approaching scholarship?
And yet in our universities are scores of men who are regarded as possessing greater literary gifts than those who actually produce literature. These learned, owlish creatures pose pontifically. Whenever a new book comes out they read an old one! The present generation, they say, is without genius. But they have always said it. They said it when Dickens, Thackeray and Charlotte Brontë were writing. I have no doubt they said it in Shakespeare’s time. The present generation teems with genius, but our “scholarly” mandarins know it not. How barren is that knowledge which lies heavy in a man’s mind and does not fertilise there. When one considers the matter, how essentially dull and stupid and brainless is the man devoid of ideas!
One of these bald-pated freaks is well known to me. He moves heavily about in a quadrangle. He delivers lectures. He has written books. He passes judgment. He annotates. He writes an occasional review. Funny little freak! Great little freak, who knows so much and understands so little.... When England wakes (and I do not believe that even yet, after nearly four years of war, England is really awake) such men will pass through life unregarded and neglected; they will sit at home in a back room, and their relatives and friends will love and[95]pity them, as one loves and pities a poor fellow whose temperament has made him a wastrel, or as one pities a man who has to be nursed.
. . . . . . . .
People of the Play:A handful of literary freaks.Scene:A drawing-room in Tooting, or Acton, or Highgate, or Ealing, or any funny old place where the middle classes live.Time: 8P.M.on (generally) Thursday.MrsArnold. Now that Miss Vera Potting, M.A., has finished reading her most interesting paper on Mr John Masefield, the subject is open for discussion. Perhaps you, Mr Mather-Johnstone, will give us a few thoughts—yes, a few thoughts. (She smiles wanly and gazes round the room.) Amostinteresting paperIcall it.Rev.Mather-Johnstone, M.A. Miss Potting’s most interesting paper is—well, most interesting. I must confess I have read nothing of—er—Mr Masefield’s. I prefer the older poets—Cowper, Bowles’ Sonnets, and the beautifully named Felicia Hemans. Fe-lic-i-a! To what sweet thoughts does not that name give rise! But it has been a revelation to me to learn that a popular poet (and Miss Potting has assured us that Mr Masefieldispopular) should so freely indulge in language that, to say the least, is violent, and I am glad to say that such language is not to be found in the improving stanzas of Eliza Cook.MrS. Wanley. I have read some verses of Mr Masefield’s in a very—well—advanced paper called, if my memory does not deceive me,The English Review. I did not like those verses. I did not approve of[96]them. They were bathed in an atmosphere of discontent—modern discontent. Now, what have people to be discontented about? Nothing; nothing at all, if they live rightly. (He stops, having nothing further to say. For the same reason, he proceeds.) Nevertheless, I thank Miss Potting, M.A., very much for her most interesting paper. There is one question I should like to ask her: is this Mr Masefield read by the right people?MissVera Potting, M.A. Oh no! Oh dear, no! Most certainly not! Still, it is incontestable that heisread.MrS. Wanley. Thank you so much. I felt that he could not be read by the right people.MissGraceley(rather nervously). I feel that I can say I know my Lord Lytton, my Edna Lyall, my Charlotte M. Yonge and my Tennyson. I have always remained content with them, and after what Miss Vera Potting, M.A., has said about Mr Masefield in her most interesting paper, I shallremaincontent with them.MrS. Wanley. Hear, hear. I always seem to agree with you, Miss Graceley.MrsArnold(archly). What is the saying?—great minds always jump alike?Rev.Mather-Johnstone(sotto voce).Jump?MrPorteous(with most distinguished amiability). I really think that this most interesting paper that Miss Vera Potting, M.A., has read to us should be published. It is so—well, so improving, so elevating,so——MissVera Potting, M.A. (who has already fruitlessly sent the essay to every magazine in the country). Oh, Mr Porteous! How can you? Really, I couldn’t think of such a thing.Rev.Mather-Johnstone, M.A. (who, being not altogether free from jealousy, thinks this is really going a bit too[97]far). But perhaps we do not all quite approve of women writers—I mean ladies who write for the wide, rough public.MrsArnold. True! True!... But then, what about Felicia Hemans?Rev.Mather-Johnstone, M.A. Mrs Hemans was Mrs Hemans. Miss Vera Potting, M.A., is, and I hope will always remain, Miss Vera Potting, M.A.MrPorteous. Oh, don’t say that! What I meanis——(This sort of thing goes on for an hour when, very secretly and as though she were on some nefarious errand, MrsArnolddisappears from the room. She presently reappears with a maid, who carries a tray of coffee and sandwiches. The dreadful Mr Masefield is then forgotten.]
People of the Play:A handful of literary freaks.
Scene:A drawing-room in Tooting, or Acton, or Highgate, or Ealing, or any funny old place where the middle classes live.
Time: 8P.M.on (generally) Thursday.
MrsArnold. Now that Miss Vera Potting, M.A., has finished reading her most interesting paper on Mr John Masefield, the subject is open for discussion. Perhaps you, Mr Mather-Johnstone, will give us a few thoughts—yes, a few thoughts. (She smiles wanly and gazes round the room.) Amostinteresting paperIcall it.
Rev.Mather-Johnstone, M.A. Miss Potting’s most interesting paper is—well, most interesting. I must confess I have read nothing of—er—Mr Masefield’s. I prefer the older poets—Cowper, Bowles’ Sonnets, and the beautifully named Felicia Hemans. Fe-lic-i-a! To what sweet thoughts does not that name give rise! But it has been a revelation to me to learn that a popular poet (and Miss Potting has assured us that Mr Masefieldispopular) should so freely indulge in language that, to say the least, is violent, and I am glad to say that such language is not to be found in the improving stanzas of Eliza Cook.
MrS. Wanley. I have read some verses of Mr Masefield’s in a very—well—advanced paper called, if my memory does not deceive me,The English Review. I did not like those verses. I did not approve of[96]them. They were bathed in an atmosphere of discontent—modern discontent. Now, what have people to be discontented about? Nothing; nothing at all, if they live rightly. (He stops, having nothing further to say. For the same reason, he proceeds.) Nevertheless, I thank Miss Potting, M.A., very much for her most interesting paper. There is one question I should like to ask her: is this Mr Masefield read by the right people?
MissVera Potting, M.A. Oh no! Oh dear, no! Most certainly not! Still, it is incontestable that heisread.
MrS. Wanley. Thank you so much. I felt that he could not be read by the right people.
MissGraceley(rather nervously). I feel that I can say I know my Lord Lytton, my Edna Lyall, my Charlotte M. Yonge and my Tennyson. I have always remained content with them, and after what Miss Vera Potting, M.A., has said about Mr Masefield in her most interesting paper, I shallremaincontent with them.
MrS. Wanley. Hear, hear. I always seem to agree with you, Miss Graceley.
MrsArnold(archly). What is the saying?—great minds always jump alike?
Rev.Mather-Johnstone(sotto voce).Jump?
MrPorteous(with most distinguished amiability). I really think that this most interesting paper that Miss Vera Potting, M.A., has read to us should be published. It is so—well, so improving, so elevating,so——
MissVera Potting, M.A. (who has already fruitlessly sent the essay to every magazine in the country). Oh, Mr Porteous! How can you? Really, I couldn’t think of such a thing.
Rev.Mather-Johnstone, M.A. (who, being not altogether free from jealousy, thinks this is really going a bit too[97]far). But perhaps we do not all quite approve of women writers—I mean ladies who write for the wide, rough public.
MrsArnold. True! True!... But then, what about Felicia Hemans?
Rev.Mather-Johnstone, M.A. Mrs Hemans was Mrs Hemans. Miss Vera Potting, M.A., is, and I hope will always remain, Miss Vera Potting, M.A.
MrPorteous. Oh, don’t say that! What I meanis——
(This sort of thing goes on for an hour when, very secretly and as though she were on some nefarious errand, MrsArnolddisappears from the room. She presently reappears with a maid, who carries a tray of coffee and sandwiches. The dreadful Mr Masefield is then forgotten.]
You think the above sketch is exaggerated? Ah! well, perhaps you have never lived in Highgate, or in the suburbs of Manchester, Birmingham, Sheffield or Leeds. I could set down some appalling conversations that I have heard in suburban “literary” circles. There is a place called Eccles, where, oneevening——
. . . . . . . .
In London Bohemia there are many freakish people, but, for the most part, they are altogether charming and refreshing. Quite a number of them have what I am told is, in the Police Courts, termed “no visible means of subsistence,” but they appear to “carry on” with imperturbable good humour and borrow money cheerfully and as frequently as their circle of acquaintances (which is usually very large) will permit.
Frequenters of the Café Royal in pre-war days will recognise the followingtypes:—
Picture to yourself a Polish Jew, young, yellow-skinned, black-haired; he has luminous eyes, sensuous lips and damp hands, and he dresses well, but in an extravagant[98]style. He is a megalomaniac, and he has all the megalomaniac’s consuming anxiety to discover precisely in what way other people react to his personality. One night my bitterest enemy brought him to the table at which I was sitting, introduced us to each other, and walked away.
“I am told you are a journalist,” my new acquaintance began. “I myself write poems. I have a theory about poetry, and my theory is this: All poetry should be subjective.”
“Why?”
“Never mind why. I am telling you about my theory. All poetry should be subjective; as a matter of fact, all the best poetry is. To myself I am the most interesting phenomenon in the world. To yourself, you are. Is it not so?”
“Yes; you have guessed right first time.”
“Well, I have in this dispatch case eight hundred and seventy-three poems about myself, telling the world almost all there is to know about the most interesting phenomenon it contains.”
He took from his case a great pile of MS. and turned the leaves over in his hands.
“Here,” said he, “is a blank-verse poem entitledHow I felt at8.45A.M.on June8, 1909,having partaken of Breakfast. Would you like to read it?”
I assured him I should, though I fully expected it would contain unmistakable signs of mental disturbance. But it did not. It was quite respectably written verse, much better than at least half of Wordsworth’s; it was logical, it had ideas, it showed some introspective power, and it revealed a mind above the ordinary.
I told him all this.
“Then you don’t think I’m a genius? Some people do.”
“You see, I’m not a very good judge of men—particularly[99]men of genius. You may be a genius; on the other hand, you may not.”
“But what exactly do you think of me?”
“I have already told you.”
“Yes, but not with sufficient particularity. Now, put away from you all feeling of nervousness and try to imagine that I have just left you and that a friend of yours has come in and taken my place. You are alone together. You would, of course, immediately tell him that you had met me. You would say: ‘He is a very strange man, eccentric....’ and so on. You would describe my appearance, my personality, my verses. You, being a writer, would analyse me to shreds. Now, that is what I want you to do now. I want you to say all the bad things with the good. And I shall listen, greedily.”
“But, really!” I protested. “Really, I can’t do what you ask.”
Disappointed and vexed, he sat biting his underlip.
“All right,” he said at length, “we’ll strike a bargain. After you have analysed me I, in return, will analyse you.”
“You have quite the most unhealthy mind with which I have ever come in contact.”
“You really believe that?” he asked, delighted. “Do go on.”
“Oh, but I’m sorry I began. This kind of thing is dangerous.”
“Yes, I know. But I like danger—mental danger especially.”
“But drink would be better for you. Even drugs. You are asking me to help to throw you off your mental balance.”
“I know.I know. But you won’t refuse?”
“To show you that I will I am leaving you now in this café. I am going. Good-night.”
But he met me many times after that, and always[100]pursued me with ardour. In the end he gained his desire and, having done so, had no further use for me.
I call him The Man Who Collects Opinions of Himself. He is still in London. And he is not yet insane.
Then there was the lady—since, alas! dead—who used always to appear in public in a kind of purple shroud, her face and fingers chalked. She rather stupidly called herself Cheerio Death, and was one of the jolliest girls I have ever met. She longed and ached for notoriety and for new sensations: she feasted on them and they nourished and fattened her. Only very brave or reckless men dared be seen with her in public, for, though her behaviour was scrupulously correct, her appearance created either veiled ridicule or consternation wherever she went. Yet she never lacked companions.
“Hullo, Gerald!” she used to say to me; “sit down near me. You are so nice and chubby. I like to have you near me. How am I looking?”
“More beautiful than ever.”
“Oh, youaresweet. Isn’t he sweet, Frank?” she would say to one of her companions. “Order him some champagne. I’m thirsty.”
And, really, Cheerio Death was very beautiful in a ghastly and terrible way. By degrees, all the reputable restaurants were closed to her, and in the late autumn of 1913 she disappeared, to die of consumption in Soho. Poor girl! Perhaps in Paris, where they love theoutréand the shocking, she would have secured the full, hectic success that in London was denied her.
. . . . . . . .
Are freaks always conscious of their freakishness? I do not think they are. Not even the man who wilfully cultivates his oddities until they have become swollen excrescences hanging bulbous-like on his personality is aware how vastly different, how unreasonably different he is from his fellows. He is more than reconciled to[101]himself; he loves himself; he is what other people would be if only they could. Vanity continually lulls and soothes and rots him. The nature that craves to be noticed will go to almost any lengths to secure that notice.
It has always appeared curious to me that the ambition to become famous should very generally be regarded as a worthy passion in a man of genius. It is but natural that a man of genius should desire his work to reach as many people as possible, but whether or not he should be known as the author of that work seems to me a matter of no importance whatever. But to the man himself it is all-important. He has an instinctive feeling that if, in the public eye, he is separated from his work, savour will go from what he has created. He and his work must be closely identified.
This desire to be widely known, to be talked about everywhere, is in the man of genius accepted as natural, but it is this very desire that, in many cases, makes a freak of the ordinary man. Obscurity to him is death.