Part 11

It was shortly after the appearance of _Nullity_, if my memory serves me, that I met the poet for the first time. I had dropped into the habit of looking in at Ivorstein’s studio, and it was on one of my visits there that I found a group of artists and men of letters listening intently to a tall, slim young man in their midst. He was declaiming, if I remember rightly, against Miss Sylvia Sylcox, the popular poetess, whose _Noughts and Kisses_ was then going through edition after edition. The speaker was no other than Grigsby; and when afterwards I had the fortune to make my way homewards in his company, I counted myself a lucky man. Nor was I wrong, for after years of--what he has been good enough to call--friendship, my admiration for the artist is only equalled by my respect for the man. A brilliant conversationalist, witty yet always kindly, with a fund of just comment upon authors living and dead always to hand, I know no man of letters who makes such a genial, wise companion. But this is by the way. A little later, the great happiness of his life came to him, his marriage, which in itself did not a little to widen his outlook and touch his work to even finer issues. The lady of his choice, who has proved herself an invaluable helpmate and a very charming hostess, was Miss Cecilia Snorks, daughter of the late Canon Snorks, and herself the writer of two well-known books, _Humble Hearts in Many Mansions_ and _The Heptameron Retold for Children_. But we must pass lightly over the next few years, during which time, however, Grigsby’s pen was not idle. He published two slim volumes, _Palomides and Other Poems_ and _Buckingham: A Tragedy_, which did not attract so much attention as _Nullity_, but yet commanded respect and doubtless added to their author’s reputation. Also, as before, he was engaged in periodical work, for the most part critical essays and reviews, many of which he afterwards collected and published in _A Poet--And Some Others_ (Downe and Cashe). Then, after a prolonged retreat in South Lancashire, he produced the work his friends had long been expecting, the work that many of us believe has given him--or will give him--a high place in English literature. I refer, of course, to _The Golden Garnering_, a volume of lyrics of no great size, but yet packed with poetry of the highest order. Here, at last, we have the true Grigsby, self-confident, matured, in full command of his powers. All that had gone before, his childhood at Channingford, the early struggles at Wolverhampton, the days and nights with his brilliant set in London, the ripeness of later, quieter years, all lead to _The Golden Garnering_; and not in vain, for it is one of the few enduring contributions of this age to letters. In these lyrics of Grigsby’s, one discovers all the best qualities of our older English verse, along with a great deal that is new, being native to the poet. Over and above the beautiful lyrical flow, the sharply etched phrase, the abundant fine imagery, familiar to all lovers of our verse, there is a touch of restless modernity, an increasing burden of thought, that mark the true poet of our own time. Dropping the ‘No Verb’ manner and returning with increased power to the older forms, Grigsby, in this volume, presents us with an extraordinary variety of measures, alike only in their marvellous fitness for each subject and mood. At times, he will move us with exquisite cadences, perfectly wedded to the matter, as in--

‘Sleep, gentle sleep, I know not whence it comes, Sleep from the dusk of some immortal dream, Clouds to the eyes and hazes o’er the mind....’

At other times, we are roused and delighted by one startling yet just image, as in--

‘Day, a white pack, chases the black fox, Night, And faster than horse and hound, the fled-away shades....’

Again, the poet will express himself with force and passion, yet seem to be singing a carelessly beautiful song, as, for example, in the oft-quoted ‘Hymn to the Clubmen’--

‘Men of wrath, your tongues are burning With the angry words unspoken; And all love and beauty spurning, Nature has for you no token....’

Or in the less lyrical but still more forceful and characteristic lines beginning:

‘The dust of noonday shall be cursed To him: and he shall slake his thirst In many a public place....’

And, here and there, we see the poet using the full compass of his instrument, as in the now famous ‘To the Ox,’ and particularly the familiar fourth stanza, beginning:

‘Thou know’st naught of our bitterness, grave beast; No angry Pharisees can frown thee down; For thee, the hills have spread their dewy feast Of agelong green, outlasting road and town....’

But one could go on quoting until the volume was exhausted. There is, however, something still to be said before leaving _The Golden Garnering_. There is no doubt that Grigsby shows himself in this book as one in the true tradition of our great English poets; he takes his place in that magnificent procession which includes Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth, Shelley and all the other masters of the craft; and his verse has so clearly the same qualities as that of his great predecessors that perhaps it is not surprising that some critics, of more ill-will than knowledge or judgment, have gone so far as to accuse Grigsby of plagiarism. The accusation is, of course, so unjust, nay, so utterly absurd, that it merely recoils on the heads of those who have been foolish enough to make it. But as some of the passages quoted above have been actually cited as instances of the so-called plagiarism, readers who have not already dismissed these charges have here an opportunity of discovering what importance need be attached to them. Those of us who know the poet have no fear of the result. And here, this slight sketch of Grigsby’s life and work must end. He has much yet to offer a public that is looking to him more and more for vision and hope; there is, to my knowledge, at least one volume still in manuscript that will surprise even the most ardent lovers of _The Golden Garnering_. We may be sure that what follows from his pen will not fall below the very high standard he has set himself. And pondering over the poet’s career, still happily unfinished, though none of us can hope to claim such genius, we may at least try to emulate the other virtues that, in this rare instance among men of letters, go along with it, the patience and perseverance, the unselfish, even temper, and, not least, that devotion to a high ideal which is not so uncommon among men of our race as our enemies would have us believe.

A PARAGON OF HOSTS

Mr. Max Beerbohm, in his delightful essay on _Hosts and Guests_, declared that ‘In life or literature there has been no better host than Old Wardle.’ It is an affirmation that does him credit, and I, for one, would not readily tilt against this or any other judgment of his. Nevertheless, I have just discovered a man who, considered simply as a host, seems to me greater than even Old Wardle himself. Life has a knack of over-reaching letters, and so it chances that my candidate is no mere character of fiction, dispensing the vast but insubstantial hospitality born of a novelist’s flow of fancy and ink, but one who was a real--a very real--person in his day. And I account him the greatest of hosts because he dedicated his life to the business, or rather to the noble service, of hospitality: he seems to have had no other passion in life, no other motive for living, apart from this desire to entertain his friends as friends should be entertained; he aimed at perfection and achieved it, and so remains the host unblemished, immaculate, a luminous ideal. Once out of the brutish state, man is a hospitable creature; his records are crowded with instances of unsparing bounty, of prodigal feasts and fortunes squandered upon entertainment: the table groans through the ages. But neither legend nor history shows us the fellow of him whom I praise. Even in the most magnificent figures of hospitality there is some flaw; emperor or oligarch, merchant-prince or baron, not one but shows some motive outside pure benevolence, some speck of pride, some touch of self-seeking. He alone is unspotted, hospitality incarnate, the perfect host, whose story I have lately read in an old volume that is a gallery of strange forgotten figures. There, it is true, he appears only as a man of whims, an eccentric, an oddity in a collection of oddities; but it takes time for a man to come into his own. But though nearly two hundred years have gone over his grave, Mr. Mathew of Thomastown, for such was his designation, shall take his true place yet as the pattern of hosts and the idol of all who go out as guests.

Mathew, whose Christian name has not come down to us, was an Irish gentleman who inherited a large estate at Thomastown, in the county of Tipperary, a patrimony that was worth some eight thousand a year. This was a good income even in England at the beginning of the eighteenth century. In Ireland, where things were cheaper, it was almost princely. No sooner had Mathew taken over his estate than he determined to build a large mansion, after a design of his own, for the special purpose of entertaining, and to surround it with grounds, laid out in the newly adopted mode of English gardening and comprising some 1500 acres of his best land. This meant an enormous outlay, and so, in order to avoid incurring any debt on the estate, he did what few other Irish gentlemen of his or any other day have done--he deliberately cut down his own expenditure. For seven years (how these significant numbers crop up!) he retired to the Continent and lived on six hundred a year, while the remainder of his income was used to carry out his great scheme, or, if you like, to nurture his most glorious hobby-horse. Already, you see, he plainly shows himself no ordinary man. His great plan, his long view, his voluntary exile--these things mark him off from the common run of men. He was a man with a purpose, with a vision that kept his feet travelling along one straight road. Most men of this type, men with a purpose, have looked to vastly different ends; their purpose has been to gain as much power, to obtain as much of other people’s money, as possible; on the other hand, the end that he proposed was the spending of money on other people. Irish gentlemen of his day were, of course, hospitable and generous to the point of eccentricity, but then they differed from him in having no vision to which they shaped their destiny. They were capable of spending all, and more than all, their incomes on entertaining, but they were certainly not capable of doing what Mathew did, of living for seven years on less than a twelfth part of their incomes for the sake of future hospitality. It is clear that Mathew had qualities that are rarely combined in one person; he could not only dream, plan, and try to shape his destiny, he could also afford to wait; and people who have ideas and can afford to wait are very seldom found either in his day or since, particularly in the county of Tipperary. He was a great man, and we cannot know too much about him.

At the end of his seven years’ exile he returned to Dublin and spent some time there, probably to meet as many good fellows as he could before settling in the country and beginning his noble career as host. He must have had a good many adventures at home and abroad, but only one has come down to us, and that happened during his stay in Dublin. The story is worth telling because it shows him in another light. At that time, towards the end of Queen Anne’s reign, party feeling was at its height; Whigs and Tories had just been bitterly divided about the Peace, and the question of who was to be Anne’s successor was widening the rift between parties. As usual, Dublin was a storm-centre; blows were following words more closely than ever, and gentlemen were calling each other out every day. News of this delectable state of affairs in Dublin reached the ears of two fighting men in London, Major Pack and Captain Creed, who thought it a good opportunity to try their skill in fence among the Irish, and so set out for Dublin in search of adventures. Determined to go to the fountain-head of honour, they made inquiry in the Dublin coffee-houses for the best swordsmen, and learned that a gentleman lately arrived from France was accounted one of the best in Europe. This was no other than our friend Mathew. Major Pack, who was clearly no Bobadil, resolved to take the first opportunity of picking a quarrel. Seeing Mathew carried along the street in his chair one day, the fire-eating major, after the manner of his kind, deliberately jostled the fore-chairman. Mathew, however, being a quiet fellow for all his swordsmanship, gave the major the benefit of the doubt and took no notice of the incident. But, unfortunately for himself, Pack boasted of the affair in a public coffee-house, giving it out that Mathew had not the spirit to ask for an explanation. A friend of Mathew’s, Macnamara by name and one of the best fencers in Ireland, happened to be present, and he promptly took up the quarrel, told the major that his friend Mathew would certainly have chastised him had he observed the affront, and promised, on his absent friend’s behalf, a speedy meeting if that was what the major was wanting. The upshot of it was that within a few hours’ time, in a private room in a tavern, four Christian gentlemen were busily engaged in trying to let each other’s blood out. Four--because the seconds, Macnamara and Captain Creed, could not allow themselves to be mere spectators, and so fell to work with their principals. The fight, which should cut some figure in the annals of the duel, was long and bloody. But though the two English officers fought with great obstinacy, they were clearly out-matched, and finally were so exhausted from the wounds they had received that they were compelled to admit defeat.

Here Mathew’s biographer, after describing the combat, tells us of a singular circumstance, which is best related in his own words. ‘Upon this occasion,’ he writes, ‘Mathew gave a remarkable proof of the perfect composure of his mind during the action. Creed had fallen first, on which Pack exclaimed: “Ah, poor Creed, are you gone?” “Yes,” replied Mathew, with the utmost calmness, “and you shall instantly _pack_ after him,” at the same time making a home thrust quite through his body, which threw him to the ground. This was the more remarkable as he was never known in his life, either before or after, to have aimed at a pun.’ Bravo, Mathew! Had you never been the greatest of hosts, had you never attained such skill with the sword, yet we could have made shift to send you down to posterity as ‘Single-Pun Mathew.’ I am not sure, however, that our chronicler is right when he gives us this as an example of Mathew’s perfect composure of mind. Surely this solitary pun, this lonely but splendid star, was due to the temporary absence of that perfect composure of his mind; a momentary feeling of elation crashed through his lifelong habit of avoiding puns, and out the thing flashed. On this incident alone one could build up a very pretty defence of those Shakespearian puns which appear to be the bane of so many worthy persons’ admiration for the poet. But Major Pack and Captain Creed are still bleeding on the tavern floor--we must return to them. The surgeons, finding it impossible to have them moved, had beds brought into the room, where the two officers lay for many weeks. At first their lives were despaired of, but being stout fellows, they contrived to astonish everybody by recovering. It is pleasant to relate that their most constant visitors were Mathew and his friend Macnamara, that all four were soon on the best of terms, and that Pack and Creed were completely cured of their fire-eating propensities. We can safely leave them to rejoin their regiments, and turn to Mathew in his greatest _rôle_, Mathew as host.

He had stayed long enough in Dublin to gather about him a circle of excellent friends, and so he determined to retire to his estate at Thomastown and begin his great work. All his plans had been put into execution, and everything was ready. And now you shall discover what manner of host he was. But first let me ask you to consider, in strict private, your own trials as a guest; think of the visits you have made that you began in high hopes and cut short in utter weariness; remember the tribulations that only the guest, modest, sanguine, wistful, long-suffering, can know, those thorns thick-set about the rose of hospitality; enumerate the things that have made you invent appointments to get away and tell lies innumerable to avoid returning; consider what might have made your stay in Jones’ house a pleasant memory and your good friend Brown a better host; and when you have done all this, you will be more apt to appraise Mathew at his true worth.

His house had accommodation for forty guests and their servants, and each guest had every convenience to hand in his own suite of rooms. If he wished, a guest could take his meals in his own apartment, ordering what he wanted from the kitchen and, if he felt inclined, inviting other guests to dine with him. If he wanted society, he could go to the common dining-room, where a ‘daily ordinary’--as they called it then--was kept. Here there was none of the customary ceremony; the host took his place anywhere; all ideas of rank and precedence were laid aside; they were all good fellows together. This dining-room must have been like nothing that we have known in a private house; it comes nearer to a restaurant, but a restaurant somewhere in the Happy Isles, a restaurant of men’s dreams, where the company is select and small, the fare choice, the waiters quick and obliging and innocent of tip-hunting, and, not least, one where there is nothing to pay. This was the day of the coffee-house, and Mathew had one of his largest rooms fitted up to resemble one of these places, upon which contemporary civilisation seemed to be dependent. It had all the features of the City coffee-house, such as Will’s, the haunt of Dryden, or Button’s, beloved of Addison; there were barmaids and waiters, ready to supply refreshments at all hours of the day; and chess-boards, backgammon tables, newspapers, pamphlets, and what not. But more wonderful still, the mansion contained not only a coffee-house, but a tavern! Oh, noble Mathew! One could, of course, take a glass in one’s own room or the coffee-house, or split a bottle in the dining-room--there was no restriction; still, for the sake of the jolly Pantagruelian fellows among his guests, Mathew set up a tavern. There, attended by a ‘waiter in a blue apron’ (then the fashion in taverns), they could give their orders without restraint, and fuddle and roar it after supper without fear of disturbing the more sedate members of the house-party.

There were plenty of games at Thomastown, but no gamesters, for the only restriction we hear of in the place refers, wisely enough, to gambling. It was the sportsman’s paradise. There were two billiard tables and a bowling green; fishing-tackle of all kinds and various guns; a pack of buckhounds, another of foxhounds, and yet another of harriers, and twenty hunters in the stable for the use of those guests who had not their own. We hear nothing of a library, but perhaps because it is taken for granted. I hope so. Mathew, I am certain, was no Squire Western, but a man given not to devouring books, but at least to delicate bouts of reading; no student or ‘wit,’ but one, as the fashion then was, with a gentlemanly taste for letters. I like to think that there was a library, perhaps immediately above the coffee-house, where one could range among the tall folios and now and then come upon a ‘kind-hearted play-book,’ and also have the pleasure of taking down one or two things strange to one, new books, something by Crébillon or Le Sage, Prior’s poems or the brand-new work by Mr. Pope, _The Rape of the Lock_. Nor do we hear anything of music, but this, too, we may surely take for granted. In all this changing company of Irish gentlemen there must have been more than a few musicians, and somewhere on the premises a clavichord or spinet and a viol or two for them to play. One would like to think that a select company, before adjourning to the ‘tavern’ after supper, could listen to something in the strain of _Stay, Shepherd_ or _Whither runneth my Sweetheart?_ a song by Dr. Blow or something from one of Mr. Purcell’s operas, and perhaps even a sonata by Corelli or one of Couperin’s suites, which had once set our host Mathew tapping his feet when he was in France. These are perhaps idle fancies, but we are not to be denied them, and they are not too idle to complete the picture.

But Mathew’s great glory comes not so much from the lavishness of his hospitality, in which, of course, he has been often surpassed, though perhaps by none of equal means, as from the spirit in which that hospitality was given, from his own conduct as host. When he showed each new guest over the house, he always told him: ‘This is your castle; here you are to command as absolutely as in your own house.’ We have all heard some such words as these, but Mathew really meant what he said. As we have seen, a guest could dine or sup where he pleased; there was no ceremony at the table, and Mathew took his place anywhere. In fact, he made a point of mixing with his guests as one of themselves, and neither invited nor expected compliments and thanks. Without good organisation his scheme would have ruined him in a very short time: but he had some faithful stewards and had so contrived his system of domestic economy that there was no possibility of the waste and thieving common in most large establishments then and since. He himself, it seems, superintended everything, even the daily accounts, and did it early in the morning before his guests were afoot. The house was always full, but we are told that there was never any confusion or disorder. Mathew himself sometimes went away for several days at a time, but everything went smoothly in his absence. He was fortunate enough, it appears, to have solved the ‘servant problem,’ which, if we may believe Swift and other contemporary writers, was very pressing at that time, and it says something for his luck or wisdom that the idle, drunken, lying rogues of servants, so familiar to readers of contemporary memoirs and so on, were entirely absent from the house at Thomastown. And this mention of servants brings us to our hero’s master-stroke. ‘Mr. Mathew,’ our authority tells us, ‘was the first that put an end to the inhospitable custom of giving _vales_ to servants, by making a suitable addition to their wages; at the same time assuring them that if they took any afterwards they should be discharged with disgrace; and to prevent the temptation, the guests were informed that he would consider it as the highest affront if any offer of that sort were made.’ After that, to dwell longer on his rare virtues as a host would be to paint the lily. Who will dare now to contest the claim I have made for him? Oh, peerless Mathew!