Part 12

Such dummies are irresistible to me. Coming warm, hot even, from the binder, they palpitate with a suggestion which no perusal of their contents can disturb. How much better than the finished book! I exclaim, and there are days when I feel that I will never write a book; I will write only dummies. I would write a title-page, a table of contents, and thirteen pages of some ghost essay, breaking off in the middle of a curious phrase, leaving the reader sweetly bewildered in this maze of tender thought. And, to give this dummy over-value, to heighten its charm and its mystery, I would add an index to the blank pages, wherein one could learn that on empty page 76 hovered the spirits of Heliogabalus and Gertrude Atherton. It would further inform one that Joe Jackson, George Augustus Sala, and fireless cookers were discussed on page 129. Fancy the reader's delight in learning that he might cull passages dealing with the breeding of white mice on unbegotten pages 67, 134, 185 et seq., 210, 347!

I have it in mind to call my first dummy, Shelling Peas for Shillings. The binding will be of magenta boards with a pistachio-green label, printed in magenta ink. The top will be stained pistachio-green and the edges will be unopened. On the title-page, I shall set an appropriate motto and a plausible table of contents might include:

The Incredible History of Ambrose Gwinett Inkstains and Stoppage Purcell, Polko, and Things Beginning with a P Folk-Dancing at Coney Island Carnegie Hall as a Cure for Insomnia Many Blue Objects and One Black One Ouida's Italy Erasmus Darwin's Biographer Etc.

You see how the subjects present images and ideas which will make it possible for the reader, in his mind's eye, to write the papers himself. Shelling Peas for Shillings, Peter rolled the name over. It's a good title. I shouldn't wonder if sometime that dummy would be much sought after by collectors.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 2: In a later book, his biography of Oscar Wilde, Frank Harris tells us more about himself than he does about Wilde. C.V.V.]

_Chapter X_

My story rolls on. As I gaze back through the years, gathering the threads of this history together, trying to weave them into form, I am amazed to recall how very few times, comparatively speaking, Peter and I met. Yet, I suppose, I was his best friend during these years, at any rate his most sympathetic friend. If there were no other proof, his will would offer excellent evidence in this respect. But we saw each other seldom, for a few hours, a few days, at best for a few weeks, followed by a period of vacuum. I had my own interests and, doubtless, he had his. It was characteristic that he never wrote letters to me, with the exception of the one or two brief notes I have already inserted in the text. His personality, however, was so vivid, the impression he made on me was so deep, that he always seemed to be with me, even when the ocean separated us. As I write these lines, I could fancy that he stands beside me, a sombrely joyous spectre. I could believe that he bends over my shoulder or, at any rate, that presently I will hear a knock at the door and he will enter, as he entered Martha Baker's studio on that afternoon in May so long ago.

The magic Florentine days marched to a close. I say marched, but the musical form was more exactly that of a gavotte, a pavane, or a stately Polish dance, imagined by Frederic Chopin. It was too perfect to last, this life which appeared to assume the shape of conscious art. One afternoon, Peter and I motored to the old Villa Bombicci, the design of which legend has attributed to the hand of Michael Angelo. Now it had become a farmhouse, and pigs and chickens, a cock and a few hens, stray dogs and cats, wandered about in the carious cortile. We had come to bathe in the swimming-pool, a marble rectangle, guarded by a single column of what had once been the peristyle. A single column, a cornered wall, and a cluster of ivy: that was the picture. We could bathe nude, for the wall concealed the pool from the farmhouse.

Peter was the first to undress and, as he stood on the parapet of the pool by the broken column, his body glowing rose-ivory in the soft light of the setting sun, his head a mass of short black curls, he seemed a part of the scene, a strange visitor from the old faun-like epoch, and I could imagine a faint playing of pipes beyond the wall, and a row of Tanagra nymphs fleeing, terrified, in basso-rilievo. Sometime, somewhere, in the interval since the days when we had pursued the exterior decorators on the Bowery and at Coney Island, he had discovered an artist, for now his chest was tattooed with a fantastic bird of rose and blue, a bird of paradise, a sirgang, or, perhaps, a phœnix or a Zhar-Ptitsa, the beak pointing towards his throat, the feathers of the tail showering towards that portion of the body which is the centre of umbilicular contemplation among the Buddhists. He straightened his lithe body, lifted his arms, and dived into the pool, where he swam about like a dolphin. It was Peter's nature, as I must have made evident by now, to take the keenest joy in everything he did. Almost immediately, I followed and we puffed and blew, spattering the crystal drops about in the air, so that it seemed as if showers of stones fell sharply, stinging our faces, as we lay on our backs in the warm water. Eventually, clambering up to the parapet, we sat silent for many moments and I remember that a fleecy cloud passed over the face of the sinking sun. It was very still, save for the soft lowing of cattle in the distant mountains, the cackling of the hens in the courtyard, and the sweet tolling of faraway bells.

Peter broke the silence.

I am not going back to the villa, he said.

Peter! I exclaimed. But....

I didn't know until just now. I love the villa. I love Florence. I love Edith and I love you. I have never been so happy, but it couldn't last. Just now when we were spattering water I had a premonition.... He laughed. There was once a singer--I do not recall her name, but it was neither Patti nor Jenny Lind--who retired while she was still in the best of voice, and those who heard her in her last opera will always remember what a great singer she was. So I am going away while I am happy, so that I can always remember that I have been perfectly happy--once.

But you always are....

There, you see, you think so! There are months and years when I am alone, when nobody sees me. Then I am struggling. I make a great deal of sport about work and, indeed, I _won't_ work at anything that doesn't interest me, but you know, you _must_ know by now, how much I want to write. It is coming so slowly. It is getting late ... late. I must go away to think. I'm too happy here and I am losing time. He was very earnest now. I _must_ write my book.

But you are coming back to the villa. Your clothes are there, and you will want to say good-bye to Edith.

No, that is just what I want to avoid and that is what you can do for me. I can't say good-bye to Edith. She would persuade me to stay. It would be so easy! You, especially, could persuade me to stay, but I know you won't, now that you understand how I feel. I shall catch the night express for Milan. Please, try to explain to Edith ... and you can pack my bags and send them after me.

But where are you going?

I don't know, and even if I did know and told you, you might be certain that I would change my mind and go somewhere else. Dispatch my bags to the American Express Company in Paris and I will send for them.

When shall we meet again?

Peter stood up, his nude body outlined against the crumbling, pink, vine-covered wall. Then he turned and stooped to draw on his clothing.

Chi lo sa? It will be sometime. You are going back to New York?

Yes, very soon. Perhaps next week.

Well, if we don't meet somewhere else, I will go there to see you, that much I promise. Then, almost awkwardly, he added, I want you to have my ring. He drew off the amethyst intaglio of Leda and the Swan and handed it to me.

We dressed in silence. The motor stood waiting in the road beside the decrepit farmhouse, noble even in its decay. Peter asked the chauffeur to drive him to the station, before he should take me back to the Villa Allegra, and at the station we parted.

Dinner that night seemed tasteless. Edith was furious; I have seldom seen her so angry. It was exactly what she would have done herself, had she been so inclined, but she was not at all pleased to have Peter usurp her privileges. She hardly waited for the salad, leaving me to munch my cheese and drink my coffee alone. Following dinner, I sat, a solitary figure on the loggia, smoking a cigarette and sipping my Strega. Giuseppe, the boy who brought it to me, seemed as dispirited as the rest of us. After trying in vain to interest myself in half a dozen books, I went to bed and rolled about restlessly during the long hot night. I was up very early and went to the garden as usual, but now lonely and miserable, to have my breakfast. The butler, more cynical than ever, brought the tray. A gardenia and a note were added touches. They were Edith's farewells. She had departed for a motor trip through the Abruzzi. She might return in three weeks. I was welcome to stay at the villa and wait or.... And so that summer ended.

A month later, Edith was back in New York and again I saw a good deal of her. She asked for news of Peter but I had none to give her. Other friends of mine who had heard about him from Edith, expressed a desire to meet him but, so far as I was concerned, I did not even know whether or not he was alive. In December, however, passing through Stuyvesant Square with its gaunt bare trees, the old red-brick Quaker school-houses, and the stately but ugly Saint George's, on my way to Second Avenue, where I intended to visit a shop where Hungarian music might be procured, I found him, sitting alone on a bench.

I am too happy to see you again, he greeted me, but only you. Edith must not be told that I am in New York, for at last I am working and I can afford no interruptions. Edith has a way of breaking up the rhythm of one's life and my life is very rhythmic just now. Do you remember, one night at the villa, there was some conversation about formulæ and black magic?

You mean the contessa....

She was speaking figuratively, perhaps, but I have taken her literally. He paused for a moment; then he continued, It is possible that you will also remember my telling you in Florence that I believed Donatello's David to be the most beautiful work of art in the world.

I remember; I still think you were right.

I haven't altered my opinion. It is the most beautiful _statue_ I have ever seen, just as Debussy's l'Après-midi d'un Faune is the most beautiful music I have ever heard, just as The Hill of Dreams is--have you read it?

At that time, I had not, and I admitted it. I was even ignorant of the name of the author.

Now Peter, as he sat on the bench beside me, began to speak of Arthur Machen: The most wonderful man writing English today and nobody knows him! His material is handled with the most consummate art; arrangement, reserve, repose, the perfect word, are never lacking from his work and yet, at the age of fifty, he is an obscure reporter on a London newspaper. There are, of course, reasons for this neglect. It is a byword of the day that one only takes from a work of art what one brings to it, and how few readers can bring to Machen the requisite qualities; how few readers have gnosis!

Machen evokes beauty out of horror, mystery, and terror. He suggests the extremes of the terrible, the vicious, the most evil, by never describing them. His very reserve conveys the infinity of abomination. You know how Algernon Blackwood documents his work and stops to explain his magic orgies, so that by the time you have finished reading one of his weird stories, you completely discount it. On the other hand, although Machen writes in the simplest English concerning the most unbelievable impieties, he never lifts the crimson curtain to permit you to see the sacrifice on the Manichean altar. He leaves that to the imagination. But his expression soars so high, there is such ecstasy in his prose, that we are not meanly thrilled or revolted by his negromancy; rather, we are uplifted and exalted by his suggestion of impurity and corruption, which leads us to ponder over the mysterious connection between man's religious and sensual natures. Think, for a moment, of the life of Paul Verlaine, dragged out with punks and pimps in the dirtiest holes of Paris, and compare it with the pure simplicity of his religious poetry. Think of the Song of Songs which is Solomon's and the ancient pagan erotic rites in the holy temples. Remember the Eros of the brothels and the Eros of the sacred mysteries. Recall the Rosicrucian significance of the phallus, and its cryptic perpetuation in the cross and the church steeple. In the middle ages, do not forget, the Madonna was both the Virgin Mother of Christ and the patron of thieves, strumpets, and murderers. Far surpassing all other conceivable worldly pleasures is the boon promised by the gratification of the sensual appetite; faith promises a bliss that will endure for ever. In either case the mind is conscious of the enormous importance of the object to be obtained. Machen achieves the soaring ecstasy of Keats's Ode on a Grecian Urn or Shelley's To a Skylark, and yet he seldom writes of cool, clean, beautiful things. Was ever a more malignantly depraved story written than The White People (which it might be profitable to compare with Henry James's The Turn of the Screw), the story of a child who stumbles upon the performance of the horrid, supernatural rites of a forgotten race and the consequences of the discovery? Yet, Machen's genius burns so deep, his power is so wondrous, that the angels of Benozzo Gozzoli himself do not shine with more refulgent splendour than the outlines of this erotic tale, a tale which it would have been easy to vulgarize, which Blackwood, nay Poe himself, would have vulgarized, which Laforgue would have made grotesque or fantastic, which Baudelaire would have made poetic but obscene. But Machen's grace, his rare, ecstatic grace, is perpetual and unswerving. He creates his rhythmic circles without a break, the skies open to the reader, and the Lord, Jesus Christ, appears on a cloud, or Buddha sits placidly on his lotus. Even his name is mystic, for, according to the Arbatel of Magic, Machen is the name of the fourth heaven.

Machen does not often write of white magic; he is a negromancer; the baneful, the baleful, the horrendous are his subjects. With Baudelaire, he might pray, Evil be thou my good! Consider the theme of The Great God Pan, a psychic experiment, operation, if you will, on a pure young girl, and its consequences. Again a theme which another writer, any other writer, would have cheapened, filled in with sordid detail, described to the last black mass. But Machen knows better. He knows so much, indeed, that he is able to say nothing. He keeps the thaumaturgic secrets as the alchemists were bidden to do. Instead of raising the veil, he drops it. Instead of revealing, he conceals. The reader may imagine as much as he likes, or as much as he _can_, for nothing is said, but he rises from a reading of one of these books with a sense of exaltation, an awareness that he has tasted the waters of the Fountain of Beauty. There is, indeed, sometimes, in relation to this writer, a feeling[3] that he is truly inspired, that he is writing automatically of the eternal mysteries, that the hand which holds the pen is that of a blind genius, and yet....

More straightforward good English prose, limpid narrative, I am not yet acquainted with. What a teller of stories! This gift, tentatively displayed in The Chronicle of Clemendy, which purports to be a translation from an old manuscript--Machen has really been the translator of the Heptamaron, Béroalde de Verville's Moyen de Parvenir, and the Memoirs of Casanova--, flowered in The Three Imposters, nouvelles in the manner of the old Arabian authors. This work is not so well-known as The Dynamiter, which it somewhat resembles, but it deserves to be. Through it threads the theme, that of nearly all his tales, of the disintegration of a soul through an encounter with the mysteries which we are forbidden to know, the Sabbatic revels, the two-horned goat, alchemy, devil-worship, and the eternal and indescribable symbols. The problem is always the same, that of facing the great God Pan and the danger that lurks for the man who dares the facing.

And one wonders, Peter continued, his eyes dilating with an expression which may have been either intense curiosity or horror, one wonders what price Machen himself has paid to learn his secret of how to keep the secrets! He must have encountered this horror himself and yet he lives to ask the riddle in flowing prose! What has it cost him to learn the answer? Popularity? Perhaps, for he is an obscure reporter on a London newspaper and he drinks beer! That is all any Englishman I have asked can tell me about him. Nobody reads his books; nobody has read them ... except the few who see and feel, and John Masefield is one of these. This master of English prose, this hierophant, who knows all the secrets and _keeps_ them, this delver in forgotten lore, this wise poet who uplifts and inspires us, is an humble journalist and he drinks beer!

Peter paused and looked at me, possibly for corroboration, but what could I say? I had never, until then, touched upon Machen, although I remembered that Mina Loy had included him in her catalogue of protestants in the symposium at the Villa Allegra. Later, when I sought his books, I found them more difficult to arrive at than those of any of his contemporaries and today, thanks to the fame he has achieved through his invention of the mystic story of The Bowmen, the tale of the Angels at Mons, a story which was credited as true, for returning soldiers swore that they had really seen these angels who had led them into battle, thus arousing the inventive pride of the author, who published a preface to prove that the incident had never occurred except in his own brain, his early books command fantastic prices. Eight or nine pounds is asked for The Chronicle of Clemendy and forty or fifty pounds for his translation of Casanova. But on that day I said little about the matter, because I had nothing to say.

Now we were walking and presently stopped before Peter's door, a house on the south side of Stuyvesant Square, conveniently near, Peter observed, in sardonic reference to Marinetti's millennium, the Lying-in-Hospital. He unlocked the door and we entered. The hall was painted black and was entirely devoid of furniture. A lamp, depending on an iron chain from the ceiling, shed but a feeble glow, for it was enclosed in a globe of prelatial purple glass. We passed on to a chamber in which purple velvet curtains were caught back by heavy silver ropes, exposing at symmetrical intervals, the black walls, on which there were several pictures: Martin Schongauer's copperplate engraving of The Temptation of Saint Anthony, in which the most obscene and foulest of fiends tear and pull and bite the patient and kindly old man; Lucas Cranach's woodcut of the same subject, more fantastic but less terrifying; two or three of Goya's Caprichos; Félicien Rops's Le Vice Suprême, in which a skeleton in evening dress, holding his head in the curve of his elbow, chapeau claque in hand, opens wide an upright coffin to permit the emergence of a female skeleton in a fashionable robe; black ravens flit across the sky; Aubrey Beardsley's Messalina; Pieter Bruegel's allegorical copperplate of Lust, crammed with loathsome details; and William Blake's picture of Plague, in which a gigantic hideous form, pale-green, with the slime of stagnant pools, reeking with vegetable decays and gangrene, the face livid with the motley tints of pallor and putrescence, strides onward with extended arms, like a sower sowing his seeds, only the germs of his rancid harvest are not cast from his hands but drip from his fusty fingers. The carpet was black and in the very centre of the room was a huge silver table, fantastically carved, the top upheld by four basilisk caryatides. On this table stood a huge egg, round which was coiled a serpent, the whole fashioned from malachite, and a small cornelian casket, engraved in cuneiform characters. There were no windows in the room, and apparently no doors, for even the opening through which we had entered had disappeared, but the chamber was pleasantly lighted with a lambent glow, the origin of which it was impossible to discover, for no lamps were visible. In one corner, I noted a cabinet of ebony on the top of which perched an enormous black, short-haired cat, with yellow eyes, which, at first, indeed, until the animal made a slight movement, I took to be an objet d'art. Then Peter called, Lou Matagot, and with one magnificent bound, the creature landed on the silver table and arched his glossy back. Then he sharpened his claws and stretched his joints by the aid of the casket scratched with the cuneiform symbols.

Lou Matagot, Peter explained, signifies the Cat of Dreams, the Cat of the Sorcerers, in the Provençal dialect.

There were a few chairs, strangely modern, Ballet Russe chairs, upholstered in magenta and green and orange brocades in which were woven circles and crescents and stars of gold and silver, but Peter and I seated ourselves at one end of the room on a high purple couch, a sort of throne, piled with silver and black cushions, on which was worked in green threads an emblem, which Peter explained was the character of Mersilde, a fiend who has the power to transport you wherever you wish to go. Now, he pulled a silver rope which hung from the ceiling, the lights flashed off and on again, and I observed that we were no longer alone. A little black page boy in a rose doublet, with baggy silver trousers, and a turban of scarlet silk, surmounted by heron's plumes, sparkling with carbuncles, stood before us. He had apparently popped out of the floor like the harlequin in an English pantomime. At a sign from Peter, he pressed a button in the wall, a little cupboard opened, and he extracted a bottle of amber crystal, half-full of a clear green liquid, and two amber crystal glasses with iridescent flanges.

I am striving to discover the secrets, said Peter, as we sipped the liqueur, the taste of which was both pungent and bitter.

Not in this room! I gasped. Unless you mean the secrets of Paul Poiret and Léon Bakst.

No, he laughed, as the cat leaped to his shoulder and began to purr loudly, not in this room. This is my reception-room where I receive nobody. You are the first person, with the exception of Hadji, to enter this house since I have remodelled it but, he continued reflectively, I have a fancy that the bright fiends of hell, the beautiful yellow and blue devils, will like this room, when I call them forth to do my bidding.

Again he warned me, Not one word to Edith, do you understand? Not one word. I must be alone. I have told you and only you. I must work in peace and that I cannot do if I am interrupted. This room is my relief. It amuses me to sit here, but it is not my laboratory. Come, it is time to show you. Besides, I have my reasons....