Part 10

Perhaps to some of us the moments of revelation, the flashes of insight, never come at all; to the best of us they come but rarely. Life has seemed to us, for months or years maybe, an overcrowded, beggarly repast, at which a man must snatch at morsels and crumbs of joy: now, in one flash of time, it will seem a divine banquet, the high festival of immortal creatures. The moment passes, but something has been left behind.

ON A CERTAIN CONTEMPORARY ESSAYIST

IN the early thirties of the last century, readers of _Fraser’s Magazine_ were puzzled, startled or irritated by a certain ‘Clothes-Philosophy,’ which was expounded to them month by month by an almost unknown Scotch fire-eater, a lover of brand-new words and riotous syntax. Such readers were privileged to witness the first great eruption of the Carlyle volcano. Doubtless it took most of them nearly twenty years to bring themselves to say that they had enjoyed the spectacle, and even then they were probably lying; but still, it was a privilege. But lest we should be too humble about our own day, I hasten to point out that we too have our ‘Clothes-Philosophy,’ and that it is cast in a simpler, more pleasing mould than the older one. It is, too, much more of a true ‘Clothes-Philosophy’ and is no elaborate mystification, no clumping Teutonic allegory, born in a study, but the real thing, coming newly every week or month from the tailor’s counter. Although he has his place here as a man of letters and may never have handled a needle or a pair of scissors, Mr. H. Dennis Bradley, I am sure, will not object to being called a tailor. It would be absurd of him to do so, for it is this very trade of tailoring, hitherto somewhat slighted, that he is now ennobling with his pen. But it would be equally absurd if we, on our part, set down Mr. Bradley merely as an astute advertiser who simply wants to make us buy his suits, one who is satisfied with clothing our carcases and is ready to leave mind and soul untended.

If Mr. Dennis Bradley is not at heart a man of letters, then I do not know the breed. From the very beginning, I divined the essential quality in him. I see him, in my mind’s eye, turning from the bundles of spring suitings, from the company of cloth merchants and cutters, into his sanctum to be alone with his art, or rather, his second and greater art, that of writing. There, I see him laboriously yet lovingly beating out phrase after phrase until each little essay is worthy of his great public. Lamb once said of a man that he would have been a tailor only he lacked the spirit. But think of how Lamb would have praised Mr. Bradley, who has the spirit to be not only an excellent tailor but a writer as well; and not, mark you, merely a tailor playing at authorship and trying to keep the needle and thread out of our sight, but an author and tailor at one and the same time, giving us, as it were, the literature and philosophy of shopkeeping and suit-making. This is to be a man of note, an originator, a force in letters. I fancy I can hear the unborn professors rustling their papers on ‘Bradley and His Age’ or ‘The Old Bond Street Circle.’

Being an original, Mr. Dennis Bradley cannot be fitted into any of our little pigeon-holes; he is not easily labelled; but as I have already spoken of his essays, we will keep the term and call him an essayist. His work, however, has had, and still has, so many phases that we shall do well to discriminate a little. There has been, for example, a change in his manner; and it has shown us, on the whole, a steady development, that advance towards the perfection of the instrument which marks the true artist. In his early work there was an irregularity, a wildness, a careless profusion, which promised much but hinted that the artist was not yet fully grown. He tried, if I remember rightly, to push his prose as near to poetry as it would go; and it was only later, when the thought became more weighty, that he turned to the quieter yet more impressive manner, the chiselled form and the pregnant phrase. During this early period, one of his favourite themes was Youth and Age; no new thing, it is true, but one to which he gave new significance by his characteristic treatment. When he exalted Youth and covered Age with ridicule, was he not interpreting the spirit of the times? One can discover, in that alone, the born man of letters. The times, disillusioned, were all for Youth, and he, divining it, stepped forth as our spokesman. Just because he happened to be also a tailor, just because young men happen to spend more on clothes than old men do, is no reason why Mr. Bradley should be robbed of his praise as a writer sensitive to our subtle changes of feeling.

Although there are some persons, not unpretending in criticism, who would have us believe that they prefer the earlier, wilder note, happily they are few, and most of us, I imagine, pass with pleasure to the later, more chastened form. Here we can remark his versatility, his admirable method of appealing to one type of mind after another. Now, he will give us a bright little philosophical treatise, and, sweeping away the accumulation of trivialities, he will dig in a brisk sentence or two to the roots of life, as in his essay on ‘The Three Essentials.’ Now, he will frankly appeal to the hard-headed man of affairs, and will annihilate half-a-dozen economic heresies in one paragraph. Sometimes it is the social rather than the purely economic problem that engages him. But his large sweep does not make for easy classification, and I, for one, cannot attempt to discriminate between such things, say, as ‘A Prophet on Profits,’ ‘Comparisons,’ and ‘Economy and Rubbish.’ Now and again, it is true, he seems to lay himself open to the charge of sacrificing everything to the topical appeal; but, after all, these are critical times, when men are looking for light; and, at the worst, the manner, unique in our letters, will remain to beguile us. Moreover, there also will remain the personal note, for like all your true essayists he does not hesitate to reveal his personality, to make the reader his confidant.

But when all is said and done, the most remarkable thing about Mr. Bradley, the thing that makes him unique, is his double rôle. One would have thought that his author-self would have come to despise and ignore his tailor-self. But no--their allegiance holds, and is, indeed, stronger than ever. In the early days, there was not always a perfect understanding between the two. The author would come forward and have his say, without leaving any opening for the tailor, who had perforce to push his way to the front and shout the louder. In short, the transition from pure literature to commerce was not always well done: one was often uncomfortably aware of a hiatus. But now--to be apt in metaphor--such creases have been ironed out and the whole thing fits together and is apparently seamless. We begin in the outside world, with all its heart-breaking problems, its gloom and strife; we are driven hither and thither, menaced with ruin; and yet when we come to the end, always we find ourselves in the same solemn temple, our one place of refuge, serene as demi-gods among the spring and autumn suitings. We never know at first what terrible problem we shall be asked to face, but always we have but to follow this new Ariel of ours to be led out of the world into the sanctuary in Old Bond Street. There are times, indeed, when the author, the victim of temperament, is so plunged into gloom that it is the tailor alone who saves the situation, who arrives just when we seem altogether lost, so that his inevitable final refrain of ‘Lounge Suits, Dinner Suits, Dress Suits, and Overcoats’ comes to our ears like a benediction.

Surely it is pleasant to reflect that one so unique in our letters is able, week by week and month after month, to appeal to such a large public, to dower his work with such lordly space and noble type, to have his own illustrator, even though this last is somewhat out of key, being a trifle too flippant and sybaritic for such solemn letterpress. I will wager that this ‘Clothes-Philosophy’ of ours has made more friends, not least among editors and others, than ever did the one our grandfathers knew. Which is a fine feather for Mr. Bradley’s cap--if ever he should take to wearing one.

ON LIFE AND LUCKY-BAGS

Reader, does your mind ever run back to the time when you were in receipt of a regular allowance, when you could be described almost as a ‘person of independent means’? The other day I mused in this vein, and fell to thinking of the day before yesterday, when I was a chubby, pudding-fed lad, and the aforesaid allowance amounted to four shillings and fourpence at the end of a year, but was delivered into my hands at the rate of one penny per week. Saturday morning was the appointed time, I believe. Of course, I often received other and larger sums; aunts and uncles were usually good for half-a-crown, or even more, and grandfathers in those days seemed to be literally made of silver coin. But the Saturday penny differed from these occasional presents in that it was my very own; there were no hints of money-boxes and savings-banks and ‘rainy-days’; the penny was placed in my hand, and could be used immediately as a sacrifice on the glittering altar of Juvenile Folly. This was very much to my taste, for, like most healthy children, I scorned those doubtful deities, Thrift and Prudence; even now I can hardly bring myself to accord them the worship which is, from what I hear, their due.

A number of my playmates received their weekly pennies at the same time--almost at the same moment, I imagine--and it was our invariable custom to retire in a body to a little shop near by. It was a tiny fancy-goods and sweet shop, whose owner must have subsisted almost entirely on the patronage of such small fry as ourselves. To us, as we clustered round the window, it was a veritable land of Heart’s Delight, for a penny was a potent talisman in those days, and we had the choice of a bewildering array of entirely useless articles. (What do children receive on Saturday mornings these times, I wonder; a ten shilling note or a War Bond?). So, clutching our pennies in warm, moist little hands, we would spend a delicious half-hour gazing through the shop window, a round-eyed, shrill-voiced crowd of speculators, until, after much discussion, our minds made up, we would clatter--one by one--into the shop and come out triumphantly hugging our purchases. The rest was a swift descent into prosaic life. The great moment had come and gone.

Now, sympathetic reader, I will discover to you the depths of my folly. For you must know that some poetic rogue, some Autolycus of the fancy-goods trade, had invented and placed upon the market the thing called the lucky-bag. It was my bane, and the cause of my weekly undoing. Never was there such a snare for an imaginative child! It was a large, sealed paper-packet, bulging auspiciously; it contained articles of great variety, and some, so ran the legend on the cover, were of ‘immense value.’ Here was wealth, touched with chance and mystery and magic; here was El Dorado within sight. When I add that the price of this marvel was exactly one penny, there is nothing more to be said.

At first we were all victims. But, alas!--nothing of ‘immense value’ was forth-coming. The packets contained nothing of more importance than some trivial little wooden article, and a few contemptible pink sweets--a vile pennyworth! The bulging, which gave one the idea that the bag was crammed with bulky toys, was caused, I regret to say, by a sheet of stiff brown paper artfully disposed beneath the outer covering. So my companions, worldly wise in their generation, laughed to scorn the wiles of the lucky-bag merchant, and betook themselves to other and more solid purchases--a top, a ball, or a pennyworth of bulls-eyes or toffee. Here they receive a pennyworth for a penny and were satisfied.

It was otherwise with me. I wanted the land of Heart’s Delight for a penny, and though I have never got it, there were moments when, holding the newly-bought, unopened bag in my hand, I had glimpses of joys beyond mere pennyworths of this and that. Week after week, month after month, the lure of the magic packet held me in thrall. There were times when I would resolve to break my bonds, and traffic no more with the cheater, the mocker of sweet innocence, but it was all to no purpose; as soon as I approached the fateful shop and caught sight of the bulging packets my resolutions went like smoke, and once again my penny would be swept into the till, and once more I would stand, with heart beating high, looking into the mysterious bag.

And always the same hollow mockery; always the stiff brown paper bringing my dreams to earth. My collection of little wooden egg-cups and tables grew apace; often I nearly made myself sick by trying to find some consolation in the abominable pink sweets. My elders laughed at me, and I was the scorn of my youthful playmates. Yet I think those pennies were well expended, for I moved, unknowingly, in great company--among the happy simpletons on the one hand and the fantastic dreamers on the other. Don Quixote, Parson Adams, Pickwick, and the rest at one elbow; Lully, Paracelsus, and all the other seekers of Philosophers’ Stones, Elixirs of Life, and Lands of Gold jostling me on the other side.

So I was in my innocence, and even now when I am ‘if a man speak truly, little better than one of the wicked,’ I have not changed so much. Though the pennies do not come so easily as of old, the dreams have not yet faded, the magical lights have not yet been quite extinguished; the solid pennyworths still fail to satisfy me, who have been on the very frontiers of El Dorado. So, though the disappointments still come thick and fast, I have my moments, perhaps you, too----?

But I fear my name will never head a subscription list or cause a commotion in Lombard Street. I sometimes think I shall never even be asked to open a bazaar.

GRIGSBY--A RECORD AND AN APPRECIATION

(_Being an attempt to capture an admired manner._)

It was, I think, Mr. S. P. B. Mais who told us that we live ‘in an age of amazing geniuses.’ The observation is so profoundly true, and one owes so much to this critic’s sane and luminous appreciations of contemporary writers, that one cannot help feeling surprised that he nowhere makes any mention of Grigsby. Certainly, in these fruitful times, a man cannot criticise all his fellow-authors; there are other omissions, notably D. S. Ballowby, Geoffrey Domsteen, Hilda Perkstone (who wrote _Wherefore?_), and Anna Lummit; nevertheless, a lover of contemporary letters can hardly forgive the critic’s strange neglect of Grigsby. Therefore, although making no pretence of being specially fitted for the task, I feel that my long admiration for the poet and my several years’ acquaintance with the man himself, render it a duty on my part to try and give a sketch, however slight, of his career, personality, aims and achievements.

Harold Hopkins Grigsby, poet and littérateur, was born sometime in the late seventies of the last century in the pleasant old town of Channingford. Like many other famous men of letters, he came from a family that showed no particular devotion to literature or the other arts; his father, a not very prosperous corn-merchant, spent his leisure hours breeding fox-terriers, while his mother was chiefly occupied with domestic duties. Grigsby himself, troubled maybe by painful memories, has said little of these early days, so little that I am unable to state where it was he received his education, but tuition of some sort he undoubtedly had. When we next see him, he is nearing the threshold of manhood, and is far removed from Channingford, being at Wolverhampton, apprenticed to an oil and colour merchant. There, in the oil and colour shop, he was indeed a caged soul; even yet he cannot speak of those Wolverhampton days without a trace of bitterness: ‘The oil did not make my path more smooth; the colour did not make my world less drab,’ he has said to me more than once. Then it was that his fancy began to take wing; he turned to literature. Friendless, away from home, misunderstood by those about him, he turned to the poets for consolation. ‘I owe more than man can repay,’ he has frankly confessed to me, ‘to Snipper’s fourpenny “Flowers of Poesie” series!’ He became an ardent student of the poet’s craft, and it was not long before he himself began to write. Several little things of his found their way into the Poets’ Corner of the local journal, and shortly after his twenty-second birthday, there appeared the first volume from his pen, _Blossoms of Sorrow_ (West Midland Almanac and Railway Guide Publishing Co.). It was not a success, being rather an immature production and quite unlike the poet’s later work; indeed, for years, he was ashamed of the volume, and refused to speak of it even to his intimate friends. Yet those of us who are fortunate enough to possess a copy (it is very scarce now, and must fetch a good price), can turn to _Blossoms of Sorrow_ and find, here and there, the definite promise of what has since been so magnificently achieved, can discover among so much immature writing more than a few hints of what was to come, the occasional note of the real Grigsby. Lines like these:

‘The withered flowers of an outworn passion Trodden under the feet of the dawn....’

Or

‘...You and I Are weary of life and enamoured of death, The end of the travail of blood, the labour of breath,’

are not without their significance now, when we know to what fulness of meaning and felicity of phrase such things are leading us.

About this time came the darkest hour of Grigsby’s early struggles. The volume, as I have said, was a failure; meanwhile, the poet’s father had died, owing money; and there had been a quarrel with the oil and colour merchant. Grigsby had now neither employment nor friends to whom he could turn. But the good fortune that has attended some few of our poets (notably Wordsworth) waited upon Grigsby when he had almost given up hope. He learned to his surprise that an aunt, whom he had not seen for years, had died leaving him a considerable sum of money, for the most part safely invested in Imperial Mineral Waters Pref. He was now free to devote all his time to the pursuit of letters, and it was not long before he did what most young geniuses do sooner or later, he went up to London. I have not space to chronicle his early years there, though a full record would make a very fascinating chapter in the literary life of the time; let it suffice to say that he moved as far as was possible in the literary and artistic world, formed many valuable friendships, yet never let a day pass without taking up his pen. Like many other brilliant young literary men, he soon came under the influence of R. U. Bortwith, the editor of the _Pale Review_ and the literary oracle of his day. It was in the _Pale Review_ that Grigsby’s first narrative poem, ‘Palomides,’ appeared, along with occasional lyrics. He also edited _The Apothecary in English Literature_ in the well-known series published by Messrs. Downe & Cashe, wrote a monograph on Henry Kirke White, and contributed some excellent criticisms and reviews to various periodicals. All this time, though he was becoming known to a small but influential group of critics and editors, no second volume of verse had come from his pen.

His friendship with Bortwith, however, soon brought him into touch with several other young poets, Robert Blorridge, Geoffrey Domsteen, Anna Lummit, and others, and it was not long before the famous ‘No Verb’ group was formed, a group of which, I have reason to know, he was the leading member. Whatever may be said to the contrary, there is no doubt that it was Grigsby, and Grigsby alone, who kept the ‘No Verbs’ together. By this time, everyone knows the aims and achievements of this enthusiastic little band of writers; how they triumphed in spite of a storm of hostile criticism is now ancient history; and we are only concerned with the movement so far as it affected Grigsby. To him most of the credit is due, for the original idea was his: I have had the story from his own lips. They were talking late one night at Domsteen’s, some four or five young poets, and the subject was, as usual, their art. It was agreed upon by all present that the old forms of verse were outworn, and that if the fresh beauty of English poetry was to be restored, there would have to be a change of form. It was then that Grigsby, in a flash, saw a solution to the problem--the Verb!--English verse must be shorn of its verbs to recover its beauty and arise rejuvenated. The idea was quickly outlined, and all his hearers took it up with enthusiasm. There and then, it was decided to eliminate the verb, and the group dispersed to begin experiments with the new form. Who can forget the battle that followed--the indignant letters, the replies, the hisses of derision and disapproval from pedantic critics, the answering battle-cry of ‘Down with the Verb!’? But we are not concerned now with the movement itself, but with what was its finest fruit--Grigsby’s second volume, _Nullity_, the book that made his reputation. It was only to be expected that a volume by a writer so original, and, moreover, written in the ‘No Verb’ manner, would be ignored or derided by conservative critics; nevertheless, it met with a warm welcome in some influential quarters. A review that appeared in THE BELLMAN’S JOURNAL was particularly enthusiastic, and did credit to its author, who, by a singular coincidence, chanced to be no less than Grigsby’s cousin. All good judges would not hesitate now to agree with the concluding remarks of the review: ‘By his sincerity, courage, extraordinary wealth of imagery and happiness of phrase, force of passion and depth of thought, Mr. Grigsby in _Nullity_ has shown himself not only a writer to be reckoned with, but one who has gained for himself, in one bound, a foremost place among contemporary poets.’ No sooner does one recall the volume than countless wonderful lines leap to the memory, passages of such sombre beauty as:

‘Faint press of worn etiolated feet Upon the dun mephitic street, Under a bulging reasty sky....’

or such well-remembered things as:

‘Spring!--the breezy spinster, sour-apple green, Acidulous virgin, lengthy and lean, And all our red-flannelled days at an end....’

or the familiar lines from ‘Decayed Trades,’ with all its quaint symbolism:

‘Weary of butchers with hands as heavy as lead, And fruiterers, fulsome as their old wares; Weary of bakers, sweaty with paste, and seemingly dead To all higher things, to all nobler cares.’

Though opinions may differ as to the value of the ‘No Verb’ manner, none can deny the beauty of the verse in _Nullity_. Indeed, the only just complaint that can be urged against Grigsby in this volume concerns itself with the note of pessimism that undoubtedly finds its way into the majority of the poems. But this, I have reason to know, was not the result of a foolish pose; Grigsby has always been too sincere an artist for that; but he himself was journeying through the ‘valley of the shadow’ at the time when the book was written, and the verses are the genuine expression of his moods and thoughts. There is no trace of pessimism or bitterness in his later work.