CHAPTER XX
Wherein Master Devlin throws a Fierce Sidelight upon the Genius of Poetry
Literaturemight be born and die, and pass wholly away; but the wordy warfare of the distracted parties to each quarrel roused no such serious questioning in the most perfervid contestant’s thinking parts as was now troubling our Noll—the down was on his lip and chin and cheek; and the getting rid of it had mastered his ingenuity. He was balked. The flame of a match had sent the fluff to the ceiling in æthereal dust more than once; but now the increasing stiffness threatened bristles. He must be driven to the razor or to untidiness—and the eyes of young women forbad the untidiness. In his difficulty he put the point to Netherby Gomme; and Gomme, grimly suppressing the smile that lurked behind his serious eyes, led off the lad forthwith to his barber. It was thus that Noll first came to frequent the place where the wits lost whatsoever strength of hair lay in them.
Mike Devlin was lord and leading man of action in the rooms—and it is doubtful if he were not the leading wit—if we may judge by the relics of it that still do duty amongst the youth of the parish. He had two white-coated assistants in his clipping; they made the laughter to his airinesses also, when chins were slow in the wagging, coyly and splutteringly as they dared.
A cling of the shop’s bell.
The little cockney Irishman roused at sight of Netherby Gomme, and, at the word, he soon had Noll swathed in cloths and bibs and towels, and was lathering the soapsud on his face.
Devlin opened a long friendship with the youth by subtlety, shaving deftly the while over somewhat smooth ground:
“You’re in literatoor, sorr, I’ll be thinkin’?” said he.
“H’m, h’m!” grunted the youth; and added dryly: “More or less.”
He winked to Gomme, feeling the joke was with him—and the alert Devlin, catching the wink, saw that the boy was at ease. The first shave, Devlin was wont to say, was as distressing to one’s egoism as the marriage service to a maiden’s modesty.
“It won’t be po’try, will it, sorr?” asked Devlin.
Noll shook his head:
“No,” said he.
Mike Devlin smiled:
“I’m thinkin’ it’s not aisy to put poets under Mike Devlin’s hands without me knowing the feel of them. I can just smell them. Be Joshua, I shaved one every mornin’, when it wasn’t afternoon, for eight months on this very floor, and I got used to the feel of them.... Ah, that was a great poet, mind ye. Eh? I’ve clean forgot his name, but he was a great hairy man wid a head on him like a dam besom—ye could have swept Fleet Street wid him.... When that man walked down the street the whole town looked at him and said That’s a blarsted poet!... Begod, yes, that was a great poet. When he’d got the frenzy on him he hadn’t the time to clean himself. Eh, sir? What did he write? Why, just po’try. His shoulders was stooped with the application of him—begod, the very trousers on him betrayed the genius in him; they had knees on them like a horse that’s endin’ his days in the cab traffic. Oh, yes; ye could see the great man just fretted the pantaloons off himself wid worryin’ at the rhymes.... Po’try’s an oneasy means of livelihood, I’m thinkin’.... And, in fact, I had a slap at it meself.... I tried to pull off one of these pastorals, they call it, wid the cattle goin’ down to the drink and the great dirty blacksmith leanin’ on the anvil, takin’ a spit at his hands and makin’ the sparks fly, and the blacksmith’s daughter wid the beauty of old Trotter’s yellow-haired barmaid on her; but the divil a rhyme could I get to the blacksmith’s daughter but “fills her leathern sides wid water.” Well, in comes the poet one morning and asks me if I’ve made me will; but I told him my paleness was due to the po’try, and that it made life too oneasy and I was going to shake it off me heels. What’s the matter wid po’try? says he. Wid that I discovered me tribulation to him, and he mighty nearly got the whooping-cough—he told me I had better put aside the seductions of the Muse, I was sufferin’ from the echoes of old refrains. But it didn’t cost me a night’s sleep, thank God. Ye know, after all, sir, po’try’s like the hair-cuttin’—ye’ve got to be born to it, or ye’ve got to lave it severely alone.... Eh, sir? Ah, yes—be the gospels, he was a great poet—ye could smell the midnight oil on him. He just lived at the desk, gettin’ the rhymes into collusion. Genius? he was full of it. Free love was nothin’ to that man. Aisy, sorr, or I’ll be cuttin’ the nose off of ye! But as he said to me himself, there’s one law for genius, Devlin, and there’s another law for the middle classes; and it’s bad morals of the middle classes to try and usurp the weaknesses of their betters, says he. By the book, yes; he had the hall-mark of genius on him—he had the divil’s own contempt for the middle classes. They were like orange-peel under the great heels of the man.... Po’try’s a pagan callin’, says he, when all’s said—and if ye’re goin’ to make po’try ye’ve got to live it like a pagan, says he. And, by jewry, he did. Pagan he was—as Pompey’s pillar. Eh, sorr? Can’t I remimber anny-thing he wrote?... God knows. They tell me it was mostlypoems; but I keep to the accidents and the police reports, wid a dash of the politics, in the newspapers—the damned rhymes and superfluities always take my attention from the meanin’ of the sense—I’m that nervous all the time that the fellow will get his rhyme nately fixed up in the next line, by the popes I always forgit what the tune’s about.”
He stood off, and, head on one side, looked at the youth’s clean-shaven face with the air of an artist.
“Mind ye, sorr,” said he, damping the soap off his face—“I’m not blamin’ the poets. That’s a queer onnatural life they lead. Mr. Myre, that was in here just now, was complainin’ to another genius of the damn hard life of it he had, what wid the sinfulness of his natural nature, and his emotions, and the doing of things that wasn’t expected of him, and all the celebrated women after him—but now,there’sa man that stands to his principles like a hairy Afghan to his fowlin’-piece—he was sayin’ that an artist must havelived—and it is a part of his sacrifice to himself that he should debauch himself for the good of posterity, otherwise he only guesses at life like the maiden aunt lookin’ furtively over the window blind at the drama of the street. Begod, it’s the keen satirical tongue he has, Mr. Myre, when he’s pullin’ the leg of the maiden aunt....Andthe self-respect av him!”...