Part 14

The young poet walks down the steps of the stately mansion where he has been reading his poems aloud to bright-eyed admiration in a softly-lighted, softly-cushioned drawing-room. He hails a taxi, and as he sinks back into the padded seat he ponders the arid monotony of his existence; one day is so like another. Where is the thrill, the mystery of life? He will return to his flat. His clothes will be laid out ready for him. His man will ask him if he will have his bath at once. He will nod. He will undress slowly, will finish reading that review book in his bath; he will linger over his dressing. He is dining with Mrs Spurway. Just such another dinner-party as yesterday’s was and to-morrow’s will be. Lady Mary will be there and he will have to find occasion to whisper that he loves her as desperately as ever, though he knows too well how rapidly his ardour is cooling. She is like all the rest. And through the window he contemplates the firm, resolute back of the taxi-driver. How he envies him. That is life. He is not tied to a circle of social obligations. He lives outside the conventions. He is free.

The thoughts of the taxi-driver are not dissimilar. He, too, is pondering the monotony of his existence. How the London streets resemble one another. He has promised to take Mary Gubbins to the pictures that evening; and he remembers that he is getting rather tired of Mary Gubbins; she is like all the rest. He envies the gilded persons whom he bears all day long from one scene of revel to another. It is human to envy the conditions of another’s life. The young girl who looks from her bedroom window on to the street below is wooed by its sense of mystery and adventure, and the inspector of omnibus tickets pauses on the top deck to gaze wistfully at the lighted window. It is the hunger for experience, for variety, for a fuller life. We should all like to live a hundred lives, to enter into the heart of every mystery, to feel every human emotion of happiness and sorrow. That is a natural instinct. But its present manifestation is unfortunate. There is a deep-rooted conviction that life is only intense when it is bitter, that waitresses and dustmen and crossing-sweepers have seen deeper into the human heart than bank clerks and school-mistresses and lawyers, that life is only real when it is raw.

Some years ago a mixed vermouth at the Café Royal resulted in my inclusion in a general invitation to a studio party. An obscure musician was celebrating his wife’s elopement. There were prodigal promises of gin and whisky. Everyone would be there, I was informed. I had nothing to do that evening. I went, in search of life.

It was a surprise. We all have our illusion of Bohemia; all of us, that is to say, who study modern fiction and frequent the cinema. At the back of our mind there is a vivid picture of Bohemia as we would have it; an affair of half-lights and perfumes, and cushions and clinging draperies. Perhaps such a Bohemia exists somewhere. It may do; certainly it ought to. But it had no counterpart in that studio party.

By the time I arrived the party had been in progress a couple of hours. The atmosphere was thick. The floor was covered with cigarette ends and the splinters of broken glass. In various corners of the room partially inebriated couples were lost to the world in amorous abandon. An unwashed, unshaved Italian was strumming on a fiddle. There was a little dancing. A number of loose collared Americans were talking in art jargon at the tops of their voices. In a deep armchair, his nose broken, his forehead and eyebrows cut and swollen, a man slept. Whether he had disputed a brother artist’s claim to some lady’s favours, or whether his legs had been unequal to their task and he had collapsed upon a broken bottle, I was unable to discover. At any rate, he slept. He was a loathsome sight; and, for that matter, the whole party was a pretty loathsome sight. But I was impressed. I was just free from the shackles of military discipline and etiquette. Here, I thought, was life. Here was a society that had won to freedom, that was divorced from all preconceived opinions, from every super-imposed tradition of taste and conduct. It was, indeed, somewhat of a shock to me that the only man in the room who appeared to possess a razor should say in a dry voice, “What a show. Look at all these idiots pretending to be Dostoieffskies.” He was right, of course. London is full of people trying to be Dostoieffsky, nursing secretly the grief that they are not epileptic. Dostoieffsky preached the gospel of suffering, and because he spent his life in poverty, the modern idea would appear to be that the only real suffering is material privation, that the man has not lived who has not starved. It is the new snobbery. Once everyone was anxious to establish his descent from a baron. Now everyone is grieved if his pedigree does not contain a dustman.

James Joyce is like that, I fancy: or rather I should say the stuff he writes is. And he could have been so great a writer if he had not been led astray by that reckless heroism of his, that determination at all costs to transcribe life. Perhaps, though, _Ulysses_ is more than Journey’s End for a certain type of fiction: it may be that it is Journey’s End for the novel as a vehicle for narrative; it may be that the novel is played out.

Since the beginning of time the world has had stories told to it. But always in a different form. There was the epic, and that has gone; the ballad, and that has gone; the drama, and that is passing; the novel, and who knows but that the novel as a medium of story-telling has served its turn, that it is through the cinema that the twentieth century will elect to have its stories told, and that the novel will become a weapon of dialectic, a glorified form of journalism, or purely a medium of psychological investigation.

XIII

I am uncertain as to the official highbrow attitude towards the “Movies.” I am indeed doubtful whether there is one. Highbrowism is supposed to turn on all objects of popular enthusiasm a cold judicial eye, to weigh and compare the manifold futilities of each fresh expression of humanity’s imperfect reason, and to deliver a final, an irrevocable judgment. That, at any rate, is what the jaundiced writer would have us think. “A coterie of the intellectuals,” he will say. And I suppose it is all right. I suppose that somewhere, in some form, highbrowism does exist. I can only say that I have not met it. The men and women who have been described to me as “impossibly highbrow” reveal themselves for the most part on acquaintance as very simple, ordinary folk who are more interested in cricket than Russian politics, and more interested in law reports than either. This may only be additional evidence of cunning. But, as I say, I have a very real suspicion that highbrowism is nothing more than a popular conception, and that to talk about a “highbrow” attitude is about as sensible as to call seventy million people France and treat them as one person.

But whether highbrowism exists or not, a popular conception is always a useful peg to hang a chapter on. In the days when I sat at the foot of the history sixth and was driven to deploy, as a screen for my ignorance and idleness, many ingenious devices, I had resort frequently to a ruse which has no doubt in its time assisted many another harassed historian, but which I should like to think was of my own invention. I would manufacture some startlingly dogmatic exaggeration, attribute it to a writer whose name I was careful to conceal, and proceed to illuminate the quotation with historical illustrations. The answer to a question on Prussian diplomacy would, for example, open thus: “A certain eighteenth-century essayist, a writer more remarkable perhaps for the vigour than the accuracy of his assertions, once stated that to be successful it was necessary to be unscrupulous, and though there are fortunately many careers against which no such charge could be rightfully directed, there are others, among which must be unquestionably included that of Bismarck ...” etc. etc. Such an opening set a note of erudition that would, I hoped, for at least a page and a half, prevent its reader from discovering that the meal I set before him contained “a deal of sack and very little bread.”

And so I return to my opening sentence: that though I do not know what is the official highbrow attitude towards the cinema, I should, if I had to define it in a hundred words for a symposium, write something like this. “The highbrow professes to despise the American sobstuff drama: he objects to the conversion into films of plays and novels. He searches in classical presentations for anachronisms and historical blunders. He enjoys, however, the gymnastics of Douglas Fairbanks, the knockabout comedies, Charlie Chaplin and the Pathé Gazette.” And were my opinion to be invited further, I should pronounce myself to be in complete disagreement with this attitude. I enjoy American sobstuff; I feel the right emotions at the right moment. I pray that the misunderstanding between the hero and the heroine may be speedily and effectively removed. It is with extreme difficulty that I restrain myself from rising in my seat to explain to the young ass that the affluent and middle-aged person with whom he saw her at the opera was in fact her uncle. In these days of infinite compression it is not unpleasant to have told one in eighty minutes a story that it would take a day and a half to read, and told on the whole, I find, more entertainingly than in a full-length novel. There are no psychological or sociological interludes; one gets on with the business. Indeed, for ninety-nine per cent. of the long films that are put upon the market, I am, I take it, the sort of person the producer has in mind when he produces them. As the dramatic critic says, “For those that like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing they like.”

But by the short, one-reel affairs I am, I confess, unmoved. It does not amuse me to see the Duke of York inspect Boy Scouts at Northampton, nor am I anxious to learn by what process sardines are transferred from the Atlantic to the breakfast table. Films that are described as “interest” weary me. Nor can I believe that Larry Semon is a comedy king. Rarely can a civilised people have allowed itself to be entertained by more primitive, less subtle humour. It is entirely of the “top-hat-on-the-chair” variety, and it ends like the Harlequinade, in a chase.

There is, however, one trick in the comedy film which always gets me; the trick of making you, by a reversion of the film and turning of the handle backwards, see an aged and effete man do a standing, backward, fifteen-foot jump on to the top of a narrow wall. You see a plate that has been smashed to atoms recollect itself and become whole. You see milk that has been spilt return to the pitcher. A couple of ruffians have reduced a room in three minutes to utter ruin; the handle is turned and the room restores itself. A miracle, you say. For, although you know perfectly well that it is a trick, you cannot help for the moment being swept into credulence. After all, there, before your eyes, the thing is happening.

It is a pity, I always feel, that the producers make such little play with this device. It could be infinitely diverting. There would be no need for the broken things always to be made whole. It is amusing to see a house that has been blown to atoms rise proudly out of the _débris_ into stately indestructibility. But it would be as amusing to see a team of builders slowly, brick by brick, unbuild a mansion. The end would always precede the start. This trick might even be made the vehicle for subtle satire. A maid, for instance, would walk backwards into a tidy drawing-room, and would litter the floor with cigarette ash, cover the shelves with dust, and disturb the papers on your desk. Nor would it be necessary for the producer to confine himself to material accidents. He could describe thus the backward development of the emotions and the sensations. Imagine, let us say, a day lived backwards, as the film would show it you.

You would rise from your bed at midnight, and wearily put on your evening clothes. You might discover that you were drunk, but though you would spend the next two hours at a table with walnuts and wine in front of you, the shells of the walnuts would become whole and the glass that you raised to your lips would be empty; while the glass that you replaced before you would be full. You would in fact rise from the table sober. You would pass through curious states of mind. You would sit down to read a book knowing the plot, the theme, the treatment; but, as you read, this knowledge would pass page by page from you. And you would rise from your armchair saying: “I’ve just got this new book by Michael Sadleir from the library. I think I shall enjoy it.” It might be the afternoon of an assignation. Languid and quiescent would you come to the arms of love; vibrant and eager-eyed would you leap from them. As the sun moved eastward, carrying you to three o’clock, you would find yourself sitting warm and comfortable in the Café Royal, the stump of a cigar between your fingers, an empty liqueur glass on the table. But in two hours’ time you would be refolding a napkin and telling your guest that you hoped he was as uncommonly hungry as you were.

And then you would be washing your hands. As you dried them they would become less dry until they were quite wet, and you would place them, white and glistening, into a basin of dirty water, and all the dirt from the water would settle upon your hands, till the water was clean and your hands were grubby: and when the water was quite clean you would take your hands from it and they would become instantly dry and dirty and uncomfortable. You would put on your coat and you would walk backwards out of the restaurant towards your office.

And so the day would pass. At your office you would forget matters that an hour earlier you had settled, and you would seek information of them from your secretary. As the sun sank eastwards you would grow less hungry. You would indeed feel increasingly comfortable till you found yourself at the breakfast table and were forced to watch your empty plate become filled with kidneys and bacon and tomatoes. Finally, after you had bathed and had shaved, and in the process had restored to your chin its rough, bristly appearance, you would be lying in bed, clear-eyed, fresh, ready for the day’s work; you would be watching the sun sink slowly behind a bank of cloud: “A glorious day,” you would say to yourself. You would watch the maid move quietly about the room; she would lower the blinds; the room would become dark. You would feel a little dazed, a little drowsy. For a moment you would wonder where you were. There would be a loud knock upon the door; you would find yourself in the bitter throes of a nightmare; its agony would pass. You would drift into a deep, untroubled sleep.

But that, you will say, is an ordinary, and on the whole rather unromantic day. It is the hour of stress, of delirium, of turmoil, that if the past is to be relived you would ask to see again. Let the operator have done, you say, with this traffic of routine. Let us be transported to something of greater matter. We must make a choice? To the hour, then, of that first dance together, to that hour of which the memory can never leave us; to that hour than which we have known nothing fresher, keener, more romantic.

So be it; you are once again in that silk-hung alcove, in your ears the sound of music and the stir of feet, in your heart a brimming ecstasy. Let the handle turn. You are sitting there alone. The grey curtain is drawn back; she steps towards you. You do not notice her partner. He bows, steps backward, leaving you together. The sound of music ceases. There is a silence. Your arms are about her neck, your lips are against hers. You draw back, you look into her eyes, deep wide eyes, hazel, below the fringe of hair: the dark brown hair that is curled in a plaited loop about her ears; you think how wonderful it would be to kiss her. Your hand slips from hers and you are talking, eagerly, happily, and she is smiling up at you and you are thinking: “If this could last for ever.” You are in the ballroom. She is in your arms. What are they playing, she asks you, although you have told her it is “Honolulu Eyes.” You have never known that a valse could be like this. Life is suddenly a very marvellous, a very precious thing. The music ceases; you stand beside her talking. You are thinking, “In a moment I shall be dancing with her. In a moment she will be in my arms.” Your hostess is beside you. Your name and hers are murmured in introduction. She is walking away, backwards, beside your hostess. You are thinking, “I am going to be introduced to her.” She is standing in the doorway of the ballroom. You are dazzled by her as she hesitates there for a moment, radiant in the black, low-waisted dress; then she turns behind the curtain. And all knowledge, all memory of her is lost. You have never met her. You are tired and dispirited; life has become a worthless, an empty thing. Nothing remains of that high ecstasy, except far down a vague resentment that no such miracle has come to you.

And you have had enough of the film. It is all very amusing, no doubt, to see one’s life lived backwards, to recover one’s old enthusiasms and prejudices and loyalties. But it is rather a cruel business, with the evening coming before dawn; friendships must end at the hour when they begin; the first kiss must always be the last; and you sit in your chair and draw uncomfortable parallels and wonder whether old age is not rather like that: the reversal of the film. Whether there will not come a time at forty-five, at fifty, or at sixty when you will find yourself sitting at the banquet, confident and happy, in harmony with yourself and with your companions, replete with the good things of life. And then slowly the wheel will turn. The scene of repose will pass. You will gradually cease to be full of good food and wine. You will grow a little cold, a little hungry. You will find yourself among strangers; you will be embarrassed and unhappy, and you will rise from the table with the _mauvais quart d’heure_ in front of you.

A far-fetched simile, and one that will, doubtless, hardly bear examination. Morbid, too, perhaps, but then it is the privilege of youth to make “copy” of its grey hairs. It is only natural that our imagination should fly like a scout before us into the country where we must travel. Age is as real to us now as our youth will be to us when we are old. It is distant, unknown: romantic therefore. How will it come to us, we wonder, this trial which must make or break us? In what words will it address us, in what shape present itself? With what armour shall we be defended? Shall we pass petulantly, resentfully, with struggles, into middle-age? Shall we cry, as does a child in the nursery impotently over a broken toy? Shall we beat our hands against the barred gates of the enchanted garden? It is inconceivable that there should not be one such moment of rage and bitterness and of frustration. But will it be slow in passing? That is the question that we ask ourselves. Shall we find it difficult to shrug our shoulders, to say: “The wine is different, but it is still good.”

We seek our answer in the companionship of age. Venerable, white-haired gentlemen who spend their afternoons asleep in the libraries of their clubs, are messengers to us from that far country. They know the geography of the road that we must travel. They have left much behind them on the road. They, too, knew once courage and danger and ambition. But it is not pity that we bring them for the loss of this rich merchandise. We do not contrast consciously their weariness with our vigour, our hope with their resignation, their weakness with our capacity. We come in a mood of humble curiosity; is there comfort, we ask them at that last tavern: Life is a bargain; you have lost much; does the exchange content you?

And they tell us so little. They brag extravagantly of their youth, of their feats and gallantries and disasters. “We lived, and fought and suffered, and life was good.” But they overact the part. They are too hearty about it. We are what they were once, and we know it to be a far less ecstatic business than they would have us think. When they appeal in contrast to our sympathies, we feel that they are, on the whole, really rather enjoying themselves. After a certain age people seem to lose the power of self-criticism. They will not place their life as they have made it beside their life as they had hoped to make it. They pretend to be something they are not. Instead of finding themselves, they lose themselves.

But occasionally, now and again, one does meet an old man who will tell you the truth about himself, who will not try and dramatise his life, who will face the past as once he could face the future, with unbandaged eyes. Such a man I have the privilege to number among my friends. We meet casually, once or twice a month, in our club at lunch. And usually we sit together afterwards over our coffee and liqueurs. And in the summer we can watch from the terrace the grey water of the river moving sluggishly below us, bearing pleasure-boats, tramps, and steamers on its muddied surface, carrying them to sea or harbour. And we find it easy to talk there of the drift and hurry, the traffic and confusion of human life, and of that abiding rhythm that makes out of discord, harmony.

He speaks always unassumingly, always confidently, as a man should who has achieved balance.

“Life is still as entertaining to me,” he will say, “as surprising, as adventurous as it was thirty years ago. I am the spectator, and that is the only difference. I sit ‘quiet handed’ in the shadow and find the answer to much that, when I was young, puzzled me.

“At sixty we cease to make love, if we are wise. _On fait voyeur_ and women lift their mask. It is our recompense for the loss of youth: this privilege of confidence.”

He talks to me of his friends whom he has the leisure to observe and understand, and in particular of a certain lady who has flavoured the charm of youth with widowhood.

“A man of my age,” he says, “may speak of all things, even of love, with complete propriety to a young and attractive person. And as I sit beside her in that softly-lighted drawing-room, in that dusk of lilac and lavender, with the sound of a woman’s voice about me, and before my eyes the loveliness of brown hair and hazel eyes and pouted mouth, and in my heart the knowledge that she could love, I reflect how once I should have been the prisoner of a single impulse, and I tell myself I am happier now, sitting there, listening while she lays bare her soul to me as thirty years ago she might have revealed her body.

“‘It isn’t worth it, my dear Gerald,’ she will say; ‘really it isn’t worth it. There’s so little harmony, so much friction. We read of love at first sight, of people rushing into each other’s arms. But how often does that happen? Half the time we are trying to make a man who is indifferent fall in love with us, and the other half to get rid of a man who has begun to weary us. It’s always the same.’

“There is a pause, and she leans back against the high-heaped pile of cushions with a little sigh that is half-boredom and half-petulance.