“Hélas! qu’est devenu ce temps, cet heureux temps,Où les rois s’honoraient du nom de fainéants;S’endormaient sur le trône, et, me servant sans honte,Laissaient leur sceptre aux mains ou d’un maire ou d’un comte?Aucun soin n’approchait de leur paisible cour:On reposait la nuit, on dormait tout le jour.Seulement au printemps, quand Flore dans les plainesFaisaient taire des vents les bruyantes haleines,Quatre bœufs attelés, d’un pas tranquille et lent,Promenaient dans Paris le monarque indolent.”
“Hélas! qu’est devenu ce temps, cet heureux temps,Où les rois s’honoraient du nom de fainéants;S’endormaient sur le trône, et, me servant sans honte,Laissaient leur sceptre aux mains ou d’un maire ou d’un comte?Aucun soin n’approchait de leur paisible cour:On reposait la nuit, on dormait tout le jour.Seulement au printemps, quand Flore dans les plainesFaisaient taire des vents les bruyantes haleines,Quatre bœufs attelés, d’un pas tranquille et lent,Promenaient dans Paris le monarque indolent.”
“Hélas! qu’est devenu ce temps, cet heureux temps,Où les rois s’honoraient du nom de fainéants;S’endormaient sur le trône, et, me servant sans honte,Laissaient leur sceptre aux mains ou d’un maire ou d’un comte?Aucun soin n’approchait de leur paisible cour:On reposait la nuit, on dormait tout le jour.Seulement au printemps, quand Flore dans les plainesFaisaient taire des vents les bruyantes haleines,Quatre bœufs attelés, d’un pas tranquille et lent,Promenaient dans Paris le monarque indolent.”
“Hélas! qu’est devenu ce temps, cet heureux temps,
Où les rois s’honoraient du nom de fainéants;
S’endormaient sur le trône, et, me servant sans honte,
Laissaient leur sceptre aux mains ou d’un maire ou d’un comte?
Aucun soin n’approchait de leur paisible cour:
On reposait la nuit, on dormait tout le jour.
Seulement au printemps, quand Flore dans les plaines
Faisaient taire des vents les bruyantes haleines,
Quatre bœufs attelés, d’un pas tranquille et lent,
Promenaient dans Paris le monarque indolent.”
When I told Dr. Verrall that we were reading Boileau he was delighted. He said: “How I wish I was reading Boileau; instead of which, when I have time to read, I read the latest Kipling story.” He said he spent his life in vain regret for the books he wanted to read, but which he knew he never would read. He could not help reading the modern books, but he often deplored the sad necessity. I stuck up for the modern books; I said I would far rather read Kipling than Boileau. I supposed in Boileau’s time people said: “Here I am, wasting my time reading Boileau, which I must read so as to follow the conversation at dinner, when I might be readingle Roman de la Rose.”
Dr. Verrall was an amusing story-teller, and I remember his telling a story of two old ladies who, while they were listening to the overture ofLohengrin, looked at each other with a puzzled, timid expression, until one of them asked the other: “Is it the gas?” Dr. Verrall told me he thought Rossetti’s poem, the “Blessed Damozel,” was rubbish. On the other hand, he admired his ballad, “Sister Helen.”
He said: “Why did you melt your waxen man, Sister Helen?” was a magnificent opening to a poem.
In spite of having learnt nothing in an academic sense at Cambridge, I am glad I went there, and I think I learnt a gooddeal in other ways. I look back on it and I see the tall trees just coming out in the backs, behind King’s College; a picnic in canoes on the Cam; bookshops, especially a dark, long bookshop in Trinity Street where a plaintive voice told one that Norman Gale would be sure to go up; little dinner-parties in my rooms in Trinity Street, the food arriving on a tray from the College kitchen where the cook madecréme brûléebetter than anyone else in the world; one night fireworks on the window-sill and the thin curtains ablaze; rehearsals for the A.D.C., and Mr. Clarkson making one up; long, idle mornings in Trinity and King’s; literary discussions in rooms at Trinity; debates of the Decemviri in Carr-Bosanquet’s room on the ground floor of the Great Court; summer afternoons in King’s College gardens, and the light streaming through the gorgeous glass of the west window in King’s Chapel, where, listening to the pealing anthem, I certainly never dreamed of taxing the royal Saint with vain expense; gossip at the Pitt Club in the mornings, crowds of youths with well-brushed hair and straw hats telling stories in front of the fireplace; the Sunday-evening receptions in Oscar Browning’s rooms full of Arundel prints and crowds of long-haired Bohemians; the present Provost of Eton mimicking the dons; and the endless laughter of those who could say:
“We were young, we were merry, we were very, very wise,And the door stood open to our feast.”
“We were young, we were merry, we were very, very wise,And the door stood open to our feast.”
“We were young, we were merry, we were very, very wise,And the door stood open to our feast.”
“We were young, we were merry, we were very, very wise,
And the door stood open to our feast.”
I left Cambridge after my first summer term as I could not pass the Little Go, nor could I ever have done so, had I stayed at Cambridge for years. My life during the next five years was a prolonged and arduous struggle to pass the examination into the Diplomatic Service. When I left Cambridge I went to Versailles, and stayed there a month to work at French. Then after a few days at Contrexéville, with my father, I went back to Hildesheim and stopped at Bayreuth on the way.
That yearParsifalandTannhäuserwere given, and for the first time at Bayreuth,Lohengrin. Mottl conducted; Vandyk sang the part of Lohengrin. When I arrived at the station, after a long night’s journey, I was offered a place for the performance ofParsifalthat afternoon. I took it, but I was so tired after the journey that I fell asleep during the first act, andslept so soundly, that at the end of the act, I had to be shaken before I woke up. In the third act, it will be remembered that Lohengrin, when he reveals his parentage, his occupation, and his name, at Elsa’s ill-timed request, mentions that his father’s name was Parsifal. A German lady who was sitting near me, when she heard this, gave a gasp of relief and recognition, as if all were now plain, and sighed: “Ach der Parsifal!”
At Leipzig I ran short of money, and nobody would cash me a cheque, as I could not satisfy either the Hotel or the Bank or the British Consul (Baron Tauchnitz) that I was who I claimed to be. I telegraphed to the Timmes for money, and they sent it to the Bank for me by telegram, but even then the Bank refused to give it to me, as they were doubtful of my identity. Finally I got the Timmes to telegraph it to the Hotel. The Consul was annoyed, and said that Englishmen always appeared to think they could go where they liked and do what they liked. I told him this was the case, and I had always supposed it to be the duty of a British Consul to help them to do so. I stayed at Hildesheim till Mr. Scoones’ establishment for candidates for the Diplomatic Service examination opened at Garrick Chambers in London in September. The examination for the Diplomatic Service was competitive. Candidates had to qualify in each of twelve subjects, which included three modern languages, Latin, modern history, geography, arithmetic, précis-writing, English essay-writing, and shorthand. The standard in French and German was high, and the most difficult task was the translation of a passage from aTimesleading article into French and German as it was dictated. Life at Scoones’ meant going to lectures from ten till one, and again in the afternoon, and being crammed at home by various teachers. Mr. Scoones was a fine organiser and an acute judge of character. He was half French, and his personality was electric and fascinating; he was light in hand, amusing, and full of point. He used to have luncheon every day at the Garrick Club, which was next door to Garrick Chambers, and he lectured himself on French. He was assisted by the Rev. Dawson Clarke, who in vain tried to teach me arithmetic, and did manage to teach me enough geography, after five years, to qualify, and Mr. J. Allen, who gave us brilliant lectures on modern history. There was also a charming French lecturer, M. Esclangon, who corrected our French essays.The first time I wrote him an essay he wrote on it: “Le Français est non seulement pur mais élégant.”
I lived alone in a room at the top of 37 Charles Street, and worked in the winter months extremely hard. Special coaches used to come to me, and special teachers of arithmetic. One of them had a new system of teaching arithmetic, which was supposed to make it simple, but in my case the system broke down.
Mr. Scoones told my father after I had been there a little time that I was sure to pass eventually.
On Sunday evenings I used often to have supper with Edmund Gosse at his house in Delamere Terrace, and there I met some of the lights of the literary world: George Moore, Rider Haggard, Henry Harland, and Max Beerbohm. Sometimes there would be serious discussions on literature between George Moore, Edmund Gosse, and Arthur Symons. I remember once, when Swinburne was being discussed, Arthur Symons saying that there was a period in everyone’s life when one thought Swinburne’s poetry not only the best, but the only poetry worth reading. It seemed then to annihilate all other verse. Edmund Gosse then said that he would not be at all surprised, if some day Swinburne’s verse were to appear almost unintelligible to future generations. He thought it possible that Swinburne might survive merely as a literary curiosity, like Cowley. He also said that Swinburne in his later manner was like a wheel that spun round and round without any intellectual cog.
George Moore in those days was severe on Guy de Maupassant, and said his stories were merely carved cherry-stones. Edmund Gosse contested this point hotly. Still more amusing than the literary discussions were those occasions when Edmund Gosse would tell us reminiscences of his youth, when he worked as a boy at the British Museum, and of the early days of his friendship with Swinburne.
There was an examination for the Diplomatic Service that autumn, and I was given a nomination for it, but I was ill and couldn’t compete.
I went back to Hildesheim for Christmas. Christmas is the captain jewel of German domestic life, and no one who has not spent a Christmas with a German family can really know Germany, just as no one who has not lived through the Easter festival with a Russian family can really know Russia. It isonly in Germany that the Christmas tree grows in its full glory. The Christmas tree at Hildesheim was laden with little tangerine oranges and sprinkled over with long threads of silver snow. When it was lighted, the carol: “Stille Nacht, Heilige Nacht,” was sung round it. The presents were arranged, or rather displayed, on a table under the tree: new presents, and a present of many years’ standing, thePuppenstube, which took on a new life every Christmas by being redecorated, and having the small kitchen utensils in its dolls’ kitchen refurbished. The presents were not wrapped up in parcels, but they were exposed to the full view of those who were about to receive them, and so arranged that they appeared at their very best, as though Santa Claus and a fairy godmother had arranged them themselves. My present was a beautiful embossed dicky.
On New Year’s Eve, the Christmas tree was relit, and as the bells rang for New Year, we clinked glasses of punch and said: “Prosit Neujahr.” If you want to know what is the spirit of a German Christmas you will find its quintessence distilled in the poem of Heine about “Die heil’gen drei Kon’ge aus Morgenland,” which ends:
“Der Stern blieb stehn über Joseph’s Haus,Da sind sie hineingegangen;Das Ochslein brüllte, das Kindlein schrie,Die heil’gen drei Könige sangen.”
“Der Stern blieb stehn über Joseph’s Haus,Da sind sie hineingegangen;Das Ochslein brüllte, das Kindlein schrie,Die heil’gen drei Könige sangen.”
“Der Stern blieb stehn über Joseph’s Haus,Da sind sie hineingegangen;Das Ochslein brüllte, das Kindlein schrie,Die heil’gen drei Könige sangen.”
“Der Stern blieb stehn über Joseph’s Haus,
Da sind sie hineingegangen;
Das Ochslein brüllte, das Kindlein schrie,
Die heil’gen drei Könige sangen.”
While I was going through this complicated and protracted training, the date of the examination was, of course, only a matter of conjecture, but when an Ambassador died there was always an atmosphere of excitement at Garrick Chambers, and on Scoones’ face one could clearly read that something momentous had occurred. As a rule the examinations happened about once a year. Having missed my first chance, which was fortunate, as I was woefully unprepared, I had to wait a long time for my second chance, and I spent the time between London, which meant Garrick Chambers, Germany, which meant Hildesheim, and Italy, which meant Madame Traverso’s pension at Lung’Arno della Borsa 2 bis, at Florence.
One night, at Edmund Gosse’s, in the winter of 1895, Harland was there, and the conversation turned on Anatole France. I quoted him some passages fromLe Livre de Mon Ami, which he had not read. The name of Anatole France had not yetbeen mentioned in the literary press of London, and Harland said to me: “Why don’t you write me an article about him and I will print it in theYellow Book?” TheYellow Bookby that time had lost any elements of surprise or newness it had ever had and had developed into an ordinary review to which the stock writers of London reviews contributed. I said I would try, and I wrote an article on Anatole France, which was accepted by Harland and came out in the April number. This was the first criticism of Anatole France which appeared in England. In the same number there was a story by Anatole France himself, and a long poem by William Watson. When the proof of my article came, I took it to Edmund Gosse, and read it aloud to him in his office at the Board of Trade in Whitehall. He was pleased with it, and his meed of generous and discriminating praise and encouragement was extremely welcome and exhilarating. He said there was a unique opportunity for anyone who should make it his aim and business to write gracefully and delicately about beautiful and distinguished things, and that I could not do better than try to continue as I had begun. No one could have been kinder nor more encouraging. The University is not a stimulating place for aspiring writers. The dons have seen it all before so many times, and heard it all so often; the undergraduates are so terribly in earnest and uncompromisingly severe about the efforts of their fellow-undergraduates; so cocksure and certain in their judgments, so that at Cambridge I hid my literary aspirations, and when I left it I had partially renounced all such ambitions, thinking that I had been deluding myself, but at the same time cherishing a hidden hope that I might some day begin again. Edmund Gosse’s praise kindled the smouldering ashes and prevented them from being extinguished, although I was too busy learning arithmetic, geography, and long lists of obscure terms in French and German to think much about such things.
One night that winter I went with my father and my sisters to the first night of theNotorious Mrs. Ebbsmithat the Garrick Theatre. Sir John Hare and Mrs. Patrick Campbell both played magnificently, and Mrs. Campbell enjoyed a triumph. She held the audience at the beginning of the play by her grace, and by her quiet magnetic intensity, and then swept everyone off their feet by her outbursts of vituperation. Mr. Shaw,writing in theSaturday Reviewabout it, said that one of the defects of the play, the unreality of the chief female character, had “the lucky effect of setting Mrs. Patrick Campbell free to do as she pleases in it, the result being an irresistible projection of that lady’s personal genius, a projection which sweeps the play aside and imperiously becomes the play itself. Mrs. Patrick Campbell, in fact, pulls her author through by playing him clean off the stage. She creates all sorts of illusions, and gives one all sorts of searching sensations. It is impossible not to feel that those haunting eyes are brooding on a momentous past, and the parting lips anticipating a thrilling imminent future, whilst some enigmatic present must no less surely be working underneath all that subtle play of limb and stealthy intensity of tone.” After the third act the audience applauded deliriously, and the next day the critics declared unanimously that Mrs. Campbell had the ball at her feet. They all prophesied that this was the beginning of undreamed-of triumphs. They little dreamed how recklessly she would kick the ball.
At Easter I went to Florence once more and stayed there far into June. I think it was that year I spent a little time at Perugia. One day I drove to Assisi. The country was in the full glory of spring. We passed groaning carts drawn by slow, white oxen; poppies flared in the green corn; little lizards sunned themselves on the walls; one felt one was no longer in Italy, but in an older country, in Latium; in some little kingdom in which Remus might have been king, or that kindly monarch, Numa Pompilius, with Egeria, his gracious consort. I saw the Italy that I had dreamt of ever since as a child I had read with Mrs. Christie in theLays of Ancient Romeof “where sweet Clanis wanders through corn and vines and flowers,” of milk-white steer grazing along Clitumnus, and the struggling sheep plunging in Umbro. And when at last Assisi appeared, with its shining snow-white basilica crowning the hill like a diadem, one seemed to be driving up to a celestial city.
On the 18th of May, life was made exciting by an earthquake. It happened about nine o’clock in the evening. We had just finished dinner at the pension. I had walked to my bedroom to fetch something, when there came a noise like a gas explosion or a bomb exploding, and I was thrown on to my bed. The pictures fell from the walls, and the ground seemed to be slipping away from one. Outside on the landing—welived on the second floor of the Palazzo Alberti, up two flights of stairs—I heard the servants crying: “Sono i Ladri” (“The thieves are upon us”), and there was a scamper down the stairs, as the maid and the cook rushed down to bolt the front door and keep out the thieves. Then various objects of value were saved, or at least a mysterious process of salvage was begun. A box containing family deeds was carried from one room to another, and some American children were carried downstairs in a blanket. The shock, I think, lasted only seven seconds, but had been, while it lasted, intense. Then there was a good deal of bustle and discussion, and everybody suggested something different that ought to be done; and Madame Traverso carried on a conversation with the landlady of the house, who lived on the first floor. Relations between the two households had hitherto been strained, and a state of veiled hostilities had existed between them. The earthquake changed all this and brought about a reconciliation. From her window Madame Traverso called to the landlady and assured her that we were: “Nelle mani di Dio” (“We are in the hands of God”). “Si,” answered the landlady: “Siamo nelle mani di Dio” (“Yes, we are in the hands of God”). Signora Traverso said we could not sleep in the house that night. It was not to be thought of, and we joined the population in the streets. No sooner had people begun to say it was all over, and that we could quietly go home, than another faint tremor was felt. People encamped in carriages; others walked about the streets. The terror inspired by an earthquake is unlike any other, because you feel there is no possible escape from it. At eleven o’clock in the evening there was another faint shock. We got to bed late; some of the inmates of the pension slept in a cab. The next day one could inspect the damage done. The village of Grassina near the Certosa had been destroyed. I had just been to the Certosa, and one of the monks there, an Irishman, when we asked him what the green liqueur was made of, that he sold, said: “Shamrocks and melted emeralds.” Grassina was a village where on Good Friday I had seen the procession ofGesù Mortoby torchlight, in the April twilight, with its centurions in calico and armour, its tapers, its nasal brasses and piercing lamentation, and crowd of nut-sellers; a ceremony as old as the soil, and said to be a new incarnation of the funeral of Pan.
The Palazzo Strozzi was rent from top to bottom with a huge crack. Pillars in Piazza dell’Anunziata had fallen down; and at San Miniato, the school of the Poggio Imperiale had been seriously damaged. Had the shock lasted a few seconds longer the destruction in Florence would have been extremely serious, and many irreplaceable treasures would have been destroyed.
The afternoon after the earthquake I bicycled out to see Vernon Lee, and she said that the butcher boy in her village declared that in the afternoon before the earthquake he had seen the Devil leap from a cleft in the ground in a cloud of sulphurous fumes and fires. In the night there was another slight shock towards one in the morning. I was asleep and I was woken suddenly, and experienced the strange sensation of feeling the floor slightly oscillating, but it only lasted a second or two, and that was the last of the earthquake.
I made that year the acquaintance of Professor Nencioni, a poet and a critic, and a profound student of English literature and English verse. He was saturated with English literature, and his poems show the influence and impress of the English poets of the nineteenth century. He used to give lectures on English poetry in Italian; he was a stimulating, eloquent lecturer, and his knowledge of English was amazing. I went to his lectures and made his acquaintance, and we had long talks about literature. He asked me if I had written anything, and I told him I had some typed poems, but that I had given up trying to write verse. He asked me to show them him. The next time I went to his lecture I took my typed MSS. and left it with him. The next Sunday after the lecture he came up to me with the MSS. in his hand and said: “Lei è poeta,” and he said: “Never mind what anyone may tell you,Itell you it is a fact.” I was greatly exhilarated by Nencioni’s encouragement, but I thought that being a foreigner he was perhaps too indulgent, and I would have felt uncomfortable had a Cambridge undergraduate overheard his conversation. It had nevertheless an effect, and I thought that I would some day try to write verse again.
Towards the end of the summer, I went back to Germany. Edward Marsh joined me at Hildesheim and stayed at the Timmes’. E. was the most painstaking and industrious pupil Professor Timme ever had, and he enjoyed the German life to the full, but it was his misfortune rather than his faultthat he offended the easily ruffled susceptibilities of the Timme family.
On one occasion he made what turned out to be an unfortunate remark about the river Innerste, which is Hildesheim’s river. He said it was dirty; upon which Professor Timme, much nettled, said: “Das will ich nicht sagen. Sie ist viel reiner als mancher Fluss, der von einer Grosstadt kommt, und vielleicht ganz rein aussieht.” [I won’t say that; it is much cleaner than many a river that comes from a big town and perhapslooksquite clean.]
There was a delightful German pupil living in the house called Erich Wippern, a brother of Hans Wippern, who had been there before. We arranged to give aKneipefor him and the other boys in one of the villages. The matter had been publicly discussed and seemed to be settled, but at the last minute, Professor Timme objected to it, and we had a long and painful interview on the subject. He said theKneipewas not to be, and when I reminded him that he had already given his consent, he lost his temper. We decided after this distressing scene to go away, and we left for Heidelberg, our ultimate objective in any case, the next day.
E. and I had invented a game which I think I enjoyed more than any game I have ever played at, with the exception of a good game of Spankaboo. It was called: “The Game.” You played it like this: One player gave the other player two lines or more of poetry, or a sentence of prose, in any language. The other player was allowed two guesses at the authorship of the quotation, and, if he said it immediately after the second guess, breathlessly so to speak, a third guess; but there must not be a second’s pause between the second and the third. They had to be “double leads.” The third had to come, if at all, helter-skelter after the second guess. If you guessed right you got a mark, and if you guessed wrong you got a nought; the noughts and crosses were entered into a small book, which went on getting fuller and fuller. They were added up at the bottom of every page; but as The Game is eternal, we shall never know who won it, until the Last Day, and then perhaps there won’t be time. We both played it well on the whole, although we both had strange lapses. I never could guess a line out ofLycidasand E. never could guess a line out ofAdonaïs. I attributed oneday one of the finest lines of Milton to the poet Montgomery, and E. made an equally absurd mistake, which happened to have a profound effect on my future, or rather on my future literary aspirations. We were playing the game in theBiergartenat Hildesheim. The band was playing the overture fromTannhäuser. Schoolboys were walking round the garden, arm in arm, and when they met an acquaintance took off their hats all together, in time, and by the right, or by the left, as the case might be, held them at an arm’s length and put them back stiffly. At many little tables, groups and families were sitting enjoying the music, drinking beer and eatingButterbrote. I said to E.: “Who is this by inThe Game?” which was the recognised formula for saying you had begun to play, because the game began suddenly in the midst of conversation and circumstance quite remote from it: no matter how inappropriate or inopportune. The lines I quoted were these:
“Sank in great calm, as dreaming unisonOf darkness and midsummer sound must dieBefore the daily duty of the Sun.”
“Sank in great calm, as dreaming unisonOf darkness and midsummer sound must dieBefore the daily duty of the Sun.”
“Sank in great calm, as dreaming unisonOf darkness and midsummer sound must dieBefore the daily duty of the Sun.”
“Sank in great calm, as dreaming unison
Of darkness and midsummer sound must die
Before the daily duty of the Sun.”
“Oh,” said E., without any hesitation, “it’s magnificent—Shakespeare.”
“No,” I said, “it is not by Shakespeare; it is the end of a sonnet by Maurice Baring, written at Hildesheim in 1892.”
Now I had shown the poem in which these lines occurred with others to some undergraduates at Cambridge, possibly to E. himself, and had been told the stuff was deplorable, which no doubt it was, but this had so damped my spirits that I had resolved never to try and write verse again. Then came Nencioni’s praise (who had marked these very lines in blue pencil), and I partially reconsidered my decision. Now came this incident, which opened a shut door for me. It was not that I didn’t know that in this Game one was capable of any aberrations. It was not that I took myself seriously, but the mere fact of E. making such a mistake convinced me that mistakesin my favourwere possible. Nencioni might be right after all. In any case, there was no reason why I should not try; and two days later I produced a sonnet, which E. entirely approved of, and which I afterwards published.
It was a great game; it included not only verse and prose, but sayings of great and small men, and even of personalacquaintances. We were both at our best in guessing things from books we had never read. I had an unerring ear for Zola’s prose, which I had then read little of, and E., whose reading was far wider and deeper than mine, was very hard to baffle except, as I have already said, by quoting Shelley’sAdonaïs, which he ended by learning by heart.
At Heidelberg I introduced E. to Professor Ihne. Professor Ihne, confronted, in the shape of E., with an undergraduate, or rather with a graduate, who had just taken his degree, and had won academical distinctions, was in his most Johnsonian mood, and contradicted him even when he agreed with him. He asked E. what degree he had taken at Cambridge, and when E. said: “Palæography,” Ihne, with a smile, said: “Oh, that’s all nonsense.” The Professor turned the conversation on to his favourite topic: the superfluity of the Norman element in the English language; the sad occurrence of the word pullulate in aTimesarticle was mentioned, and E. made a spirited defence of the phrase: “Assemble and meet together,” which he said was a question of rhythm. “Pooh!” said Ihne, “it’s only association makes you think that.” The word “to get,” he said, was used to denote too many things. Poor E. was interpellated, as if he, and he alone, had been responsible for the shortcomings of the English language. He used, said Ihne, the word education when he meant instruction. “One is instructed at school,” he said. He asked E. for the derivation of the word caterpillar. E. had no suggestion to offer. Ihne said he derived it from Kater and to pill, but he had also given καθερπίζω a thought. Then the talk veered round to literature. “Schiller,” said Ihne, “is a greater dramatic poet than Shakespeare. Shakespeare’s tragedies are too painful;King LearandOthelloare unbearable.” E. said, unwisely, that Schiller’s women were so uninteresting. Ihne said that that was a thing E. could know nothing about, as he was not a married man. For his part, and he had been a married man, Schiller’s characters, and especially Thekla, were the most beautiful women characters that had ever been drawn. E. tried to defend Shakespeare, and pointed out the qualities of Shakespeare’s women. He mentioned Portia. “No,” said Ihne; “Portia is not a good character, because she oversteps her duties as counsel and tries to play the part of a judge.” “I consider Lord Byron,” said Ihne,“the finest English poet of the century.” E. said Byron had a great sense of rhythm. “If he had merely a great sense of rhythm,” said Ihne, “he wouldn’t have been a great poet.” E., to propitiate him, said something laudatory about Goethe’sFaust. Ihne at once said that Schiller was a greater poet than Goethe, becauseFaustwas a collection of detached scenes, and Schiller’s plays were complete wholes.
We saw Professor Ihne several times, and what I have described is typical of all our conversations.
After staying at Heidelberg for about a week I went back to London, and the routine of Garrick Chambers began once more.
The time soon came when I had to go up for my first examination, and before it there was a period of intensive cramming. I had scores of teachers, and spent hour after hour taking private lessons in Latin, German, shorthand, and arithmetic. A great deal of this cramming was quite unnecessary, as it did not really touch the vital necessities of the examination. I read a great deal of German; all Mommsen, a great deal of French, and all Renan; but literary French and German were not what was needed; long lists of technical words were far more necessary. The clichés of political leader-writers; the German for abelligerent, and the French for aCommittee on Supply; an accurate knowledge of where the manufacturing cities of England were situated, and the solution of problems about one tap filling a bath half again as quickly as another emptied it. I spent a great deal of time, but not enough as it turned out, making lists of obscure technical words. I learnt the Latin forprize-money, which I was told was a useful word for “prose,” but unfortunately the word prize-money did not occur in the Latin translation paper. The word ismanubiæ. I am glad to know it. It is indeed unforgettable.
We were examined orally in French, German, and in Italian. When I was confronted with the German examiner, the first thing he asked me was whether I could speak German. I was foolishly modest and answered: “Ein wenig” (“A little”). “Very well,” he said, “it will be for another time.” I made up my mind that next time I went up I would say I spoke German as well as Bismarck, and wrote it better than Goethe.
I kept my resolution the last time I went up for the examination, and it was crowned with success.
Here is one of the arithmetic questions from the examination paper set in 1894:
“What vulgar fraction expresses the ratio of 17½ square yards to half an acre?” (I am told this is an easy sum.)
Here is a sentence which had to be translated into German as it was dictated in English:
“Factions are formed upon opinions; which factions become in effect bodies corporate in the state;—nay, factions generate opinions in order to become a centre of union, and to furnish watchwords to parties; and this may make it expedient for government to forbid things in themselves innocent and neutral.”
Here is a geography question of the kind I found most baffling:
“Make a sketch of the country between the Humber and the Mersey on the south, and the Firth of Forth and Clyde on the north.”
When I went up for the examination, I think it was in January 1896, I failed both in geography and arithmetic, and so had to begin the routine of cramming all over again. All the next year I rang the changes again on Florence, Hildesheim, and Scoones. When the examination was over, I went abroad with Claud Russell, and we went to Paris and Monte Carlo. Lord Dufferin was Ambassador in Paris, and we dined with him once or twice.
We saw Guitry and Jeanne Granier perform Maurice Donnay’s exquisite play,Amants.
At Monte Carlo we stayed with Sir Edward Mallet in his “Villa White.” A brother of Lord Salisbury, Lord Sackville Cecil, was staying there. He had a passion for mechanics; we had only to say that the sink seemed to be gurgling, or the window rattling, or the door creaking, and in a moment he would have his coat off, and, screwdriver in hand, would set to work plumbing, glazing, or joining.
One night after dinner, just to see what would happen, I said the pedal of the pianoforte seemed to wheeze. In a second he was under the pianoforte and soon had it in pieces. He found many things radically wrong, and he was grateful to me for having given him the opportunity of setting them right. Sir Edward Mallet had retired from the Diplomatic Service. The house where we stayed, and which he had designed himself, was a curious example of design and decoration. It was designed in the German Rococo style, and in the large hall stuccopillars had for capitals, florid, gilded, coloured, and luxuriant moulded festoons which represented flames, and soared into the ceiling.
One afternoon Lord Sackville Cecil said he wanted to see the gambling-rooms. We went for a walk, and on our way back stopped at the rooms. Lord Sackville Cecil was not an elegant dresser; his enormous boots after our walk were covered with dust, and his appearance was so untidy that the attendant refused to let him in. I suggested his showing a card, but his spirit rebelled at such a climb-down, and we went home without seeing the rooms.
From Monte Carlo I went to Florence. I went back to my pension but also stayed for over a week with Vernon Lee at her villa. Her brother, Eugene Lee-Hamilton, who had been on his back a helpless invalid for over twenty years, had suddenly, in a marvellous manner, recovered, and his first act had been to climb up Mount Vesuvius.
I recollect the great beauty and the heat of that month of March at Florence. Giotto’s Tower, and the graceful dome of the Cathedral, seen from the plain at the foot of San Gervasio, looked more like flowers than like buildings in the March evenings, across vistas of early green foliage and the delicate pageant of blossom.
We went for many delightful expeditions: to a farmhouse that had belonged to Michael Angelo at Carregi; to the Villa Gamberaia with its long grass terrace and its tall cypresses—a place that belongs to a fairy-tale; and I remember more vividly than all a wine-press in a village with wine-stained vats, large barrels, and a litter of farm instruments under the sun-baked walls—a place that at once conjured up visions of southern ripeness and mellowness. It seemed to embody the dreams of Keats and Chénier, and took me once more to the imaginary Italy which I had built when I read in theLays of Ancient Romeof “the vats of Luna” and “the harvests of Arretium.”
Then came a summer term at Scoones, distracted and dislocated by many amusements. I went to the Derby that year and backed Persimmon; to the first performance of Mrs. Campbell’sMagdathe same night; I saw Duse at Drury Lane and Sarah Bernhardt at Daly’s; I went to Ascot; I went to balls; I stayed at Panshanger; and at Wrest, at the end of the summer, where a constellation of beauty movedin muslin and straw hats and yellow roses on the lawns of gardens designed by Lenôtre, delicious with ripe peaches on old brick walls, with the smell of verbena, and sweet geranium; and stately with large avenues, artificial lakes and white temples; and we bicycled in the warm night past ghostly cornfields by the light of a large full moon.
In August I went back to Germany, and heard theRingat Bayreuth. Mottl conducted. But of all that sound and fury, the only thing that remains in my mind is a French lady who sat next to me, and who, when Siegfried’s body was carried by to the strains of the tremendous funeral march, burst into sobs, and said to me: “Moi aussi j’ai un fils, Monsieur.” Then in London I made a terrific spurt, and worked all day and far into the night to make ready for another examination which took place on November 14. I remember nothing of this long nightmare. As soon as the examination was over, I started with Claud Russell for Egypt. We went by train to Marseilles, and then embarked in a Messagerie steamer. I spent the time reading Tolstoy’sWar and Peacefor the first time. The passengers were nearly all French, and treated us with some disdain; but Fate avenged us, for when we arrived at Alexandria, we were, in obedience to the orders of my uncle (Lord Cromer), allowed to proceed at once, while the rest of the passengers had to wait in quarantine. We went to Cairo, and stayed at the Agency with my uncle. The day we arrived it was pouring with rain which, we were told, was a rare occurrence in Cairo.
We used to have breakfast on a high verandah outside our bedrooms, off tiny little eggs and equally small fresh bananas.
At luncheon the whole of the diplomatic staff used to be present, and usually guests as well. The news came to Cairo that I had failed to pass the examination, in geography and arithmetic. Claud Russell, I think, qualified, and was given a vacancy later.
In the evening my uncle used sometimes to read us passages of abuse about himself in the local press. One phrase which described him as combining the oiliness of a Chadband with the malignity of a fiend delighted him. He gave us the MSS. of his book,Modern Egypt, which was then only partly written, to read. He was never tired of discussing books: the Classics, French novels, the English poets of the eighteenth century.He could not endure the verse of Robert Browning. His admiration for French prose was unbounded and for the French gift of expression in general, their newspaper articles, their speeches, and, above all, their acting.
Sometimes we rode to the Pyramids, and one day we had tea with Wilfrid and Lady Anne Blunt in their Arab house.
We did not stay long in Cairo; we went up the Nile. The first part of the journey, to a station whose name I forget, was by train; and once, when the train stopped in the desert, the engine-driver brought Claud Russell a copybook and asked him to correct an English exercise he had just done. Claud said how odd we should think it if in England the engine-driver brought us an exercise to correct.
Then we embarked in the M.S.Cleopatraand steamed to Luxor, where we saw the sights: the tombs of the kings, the temple of Carnac, the statue of Memnon. We bathed in the Nile, and smoked hashish.
We were back in Europe by Christmas, and spent Christmas night in the waiting-room of Turin railway station playing chess; and when we arrived in London the momentous question arose, what was I to do to pass the examination? We were only allowed three tries, and my next attempt would be my last chance.
The large staff of teachers who were cramming me were in despair. I was told I must pass the next time.
The trouble was that the standard of arithmetic demanded by this examination was an elementary standard, and I had now twice attained by cramming a pitch I knew I should never surpass. At Scoones’ they said my only chance lay in getting an easy paper. It was said that my work had been wrong not in degree but in kind. I had merely wasted time by reading Renan and Mommsen; other candidates, who had never read a German book in their lives, by learning lists of words got more marks than I did. Herr Dittel, who gave me private lessons in German, said that he could have sent a German essay of mine to a German magazine. But not knowing the German for “belligerent,” I was beaten by others who knew the language less well. The same applied to the French in which I was only second, although perhaps in some ways the best French scholar among the candidates.
It seemed useless for me to go back to Scoones’ and useless to go abroad. After much debate and discussion the matterwas settled by chance. I made the acquaintance of Auberon Herbert in the winter, and instead of going to a crammer’s I settled to go and live at Oxford, and I took rooms at King Edward Street and went to coaches in Latin and arithmetic. For two terms I lived exactly as an undergraduate, and there was no difference between my life and that of a member of Balliol except that I was not subject to College authority.
Then began an interlude of perfect happiness. I did a little work but felt no need of doing any more, as, if anything, I had been overcrammed and was simply in need of digestion. I rediscovered English literature with Bron, and shared in his College life and in the lives of others. Life was a long series of small dramas. One night Bron pulled the master’s bath-chair round the Quad, and the matter was taken with the utmost seriousness by the College authorities. A College meeting was held, and Bron was nearly sent down. Old Balliol men would come from London and stay the night: Claud Russell and Antony Henley. Arnold Ward was engrossed in Turgenev; Cubby Medd,—or was that later?—who gave promise of great brilliance, was spellbound by Rossetti. And then there were the long, the endlessly long, serious conversations about the events of the College life and athletics and the Toggers and the Anna and the Devor. It was like being at Eton again. Indeed, I never could see any difference between Eton and Balliol. Balliol seemed to me an older edition of Eton, whereas Cambridge was to me a slightly different world, different in kind, although in many ways like Oxford; and, although neither of them know it, and each would deny it vehemently, they are startlingly like each other all the same.
I knew undergraduates at other Colleges as well as at Balliol and a certain number of the Dons as well.
I also knew a good many of the old Balliol men who used to come down to Oxford and sometimes stay in King Edward Street.
Then came the summer term. We had a punt, and Bron Herbert, myself, and others would go out in it and read aloud Wells’Plattner Storyand sometimesAlice in Wonderland, and sometimes from a volume of Swinburne bound in green shagreen—an American edition which contained “Atalanta in Calydon” and the “Poems and Ballads.” That summer I made friends with Hilary Belloc, who lived at Oxford in Holywell and was coaching young pupils.
I had met him once before with Basil Blackwood, but all he had said to me was that I would most certainly go to hell, and so I had not thought it likely that we should ever make friends, although I recognised the first moment I saw him that he was a remarkable man.
He had a charming little house in Holywell, and there he and Antony Henley used to discuss all manner of things.
I had written by now a number of Sonnets, and Belloc approved of them. One of them he copied out and hung up in his room on the back of a picture. I showed him too the draft of some parodies written in French of some French authors. He approved of these also, and used to translate them to his pupils, and make them translate them back into French.
Belloc was writing a book about Danton, and from time to time he would make up rhymes which afterwards became theBad Child’s Book of Beasts. The year before I went to Oxford he had published a small book of verse on hard paper calledVerses and Sonnets, which contained among several beautiful poems a poem called “Auvergnat.” I do not think that this book excited a ripple of attention at the time, and yet some of the poems in it have lived, and are now found in many anthologies, whereas the verse which at this time was received with a clamour of applause is nearly all of it not only dead but buried and completely forgotten.
We had wonderful supper-parties in King Edward Street. Donald Tovey, who was then musical scholar at Balliol, used to come and play a Wagnerian setting to a story he had found inPunchcalled the “Hornets,” and sometimes the Waldstein Sonata. He discussed music boldly with Fletcher, the Rowing Blue. Belloc discoursed of the Jewish Peril, the Catholic Church, the “Chanson de Roland,” Ronsard, and the Pyrenees with indescribable gusto and vehemence.
People would come in through the window, and syphons would sometimes be hurled across the room; but nobody was ever wounded. The ham would be slapped and butter thrown to the ceiling, where it stuck. Piles of chairs would be placed in a pinnacle, one on the top of the other, over Arthur Stanley, and someone would climb to the top of this airy Babel and drop ink down on him through the seats of the chairs. Songs were sung; port was drunk and thrown about the room. Indeed we had a special brand of port, which was calledthrowing port,for the purpose. And then again the evenings would finish in long talks, the endless serious talks of youth, ranging over every topic from Transubstantiation to Toggers, and from the last row with the Junior Dean to Predestination and Free-will. We were all discovering things for each other and opening for each other unguessed-of doors.
Donald Tovey used to explain to us how bad, musically,Hymns Ancient and Modernwere, and tried (and failed) to explain me the Chinese scale; Belloc would quote the “Chanson de Roland” and, when shown some piece of verse in French or English that he liked, would say: “Why have I not known that before?” or murmur: “Good verse. Good verse.” Antony Henley used to quote Shakespeare’s lines fromHenry V.: