Part 3
It will be understood that by that time we had come to rely on the grown-up people for assistance in producing plays, and we had substituted their perverted adult taste for our juvenile conceptions of drama. The old plays, with their homely characters and dignified simplicity of setting, no longer pleased us. We craved for a debauch of Paul Clifford, and every new production had to be more elaborate in its insentient mimicry of life than the one before. The inevitable happened. The more our stage-setting approximated to Nature, and the more Paul pirouetted in the limelight, the less we attained to that illusion which had been so easy to achieve on a packing-case stage with two little coloured candles for footlights. There came a day when Paul no longer interested us, and we felt that we had exhausted the possibilities of the sensational. The theatre was closed, and when, many months afterwards, a vague curiosity led us to ask what had become of it, we learnt with but little regret that our elders had given it away to some little boy whose taste in drama was as yet unsophisticated. I wonder what he made of our real sea and our practicable fountains!
Not very long ago I was turning over some old books, when a small piece of cardboard slipped from between the pages and fell to the ground. It was in the likeness of a man, a man dressed in riding-boots and yellow satin; yet it was some moments before I realised that I was in the presence of the once great Paul Clifford. With recognition came something like remorse. It was no more than just to forgive his faults after so many years, and he really was a very good actor until an excess of praise turned his little pasteboard head.
I looked round the library, and after due consideration took a volume of the Laureate’s poems from the shelves, and laid the tired highwayman to rest between its pages.
“Sleep on, brave Paul!” I said softly. “No one will ever disturb you there.”
And now I have written his epitaph.
CHILDREN AND THE SPRING
POETS and careless, happy fellows like that may say what they like for the spring, but there are only two seasons in the year for children. The parties of Christmas appealed to our senses in a hundred pleasant ways. They shone with Jack Frost and Chinese lanterns and the gay gelatine from crackers; they compressed our limbs in the pride of new, uncomfortable suits and tight, shiny shoes; they tasted of burnt raisins and orange jelly; they sang with frosty carols and sensible tunes and the agreeable din of penny musical instruments; they smelt of Christmas-tree candles and tangerine oranges. Then there were pantomimes and large silver pieces from the pockets of millionaire uncles, and if all else failed, the possibility of snow. Certainly there was nothing the matter with winter.
Summer, too, had its fierce, immeasurable joys. This was the season of outdoor sports, hunting and boating and digging holes to New Zealand. There was cricket, real cricket, which means that you are out if you hit the ball into the next garden, and that you stop playing if you break a window, and there was hurling of javelins in wild shrubberies, and dabbling in silver brooks for elusive minnows. Later there would come long, adventurous journeys in railway-trains, when, like wise travellers, we would cuddle provisions of buns and pears and tepid sandwiches in our laps. Our legs would be so stiff when we reached our destination that we would totter on the platform like old men, and our eyes would be weary with watching the fleeting world. But as the cab crept up the gritty hills we would see the ocean waiting for us to come and play with it, and everything else in life would be forgotten. The country, with its apple-trees and its pigs and its secret places, was not to be despised, but it was the sea that led us home to our dreams.
Yet possibly the finest thing that the summer had to give us was the healthy, joyous sense of fatigue that comes from games. It was pleasant to drop on the lawn when cricket was over, and stay there, not wholly displeased with the scent of the flowers, looking into the blue sky until the gnats drove you in to tea. It was pleasant to lie on the beach, with the heat creeping up and down your face, and to let the sand trickle through your fingers, while the long waves whispered out to sea. It was pleasant to drowse in the hay after hunting buffaloes all the sunny afternoon. It was only at such moments, when the air had a savour of sleep, that we really felt conscious of youth as a desirable possession.
A child’s year would be divided abruptly into winter and summer, for youth is impatient of compromise, but as things are, there are spring and autumn to be reckoned with. For autumn, there is not much to be said. There were nuts and blackberries, and the sweet-scented fallen leaves, in which we would paddle up to our knees. But the seaside brown was wearing off our legs, and night came so soon and with so harsh and boisterous a note. It was not bad when we happened to be feeling very brave to lie awake at night and hear the branches screaming when the wind hurt them. The sheer discomfort of the outer world made bed delicious. But the necessary courage for this point of view was rare, and normally we would wish the nights quieter and less exciting. The autumn wind was for ever fumbling at our nursery windows like a burglar, or creeping along the passages like a supernatural thing. Sometimes our hearts stopped beating while we listened.
But of all the seasons of the year, spring is most oppressive to the spirit of childhood. The dear, artificial things that had made the winter lovely were gone, and the pastoral delights of the summer were still to come, yet Nature called us forth to a muddy, unfinished world. Then was the season of the official walk, a dreary traffic on nice, clean pavements, that placed everything in the world worth walking to out of bounds. A cold wind without the compensating advantage of snow would swing round the corners of streets, and we would feel as if we were wearing the ears and noses of other people. When we were not quarrelling we were sulking, and each was equally fatal, for the Olympians only needed a pretext to make our days bitter with iron and quinine. And our quarrels, that at kinder seasons of the year were the regretted accidents of moments, lingered now from day to day, and became the source of fierce and lonely pride. If one of us, released for a minute from the wearing of the world’s woes, made timid efforts to arrange a concerted game, he would become the object of general suspicion, and his sociability would be regarded as a hypocritical effort to win the favour of the grown-up folk. The correct attitude was one of surly aloofness that spluttered once or twice a day into tearful rebellion against the interference of the authorities. It is insulting to give a man medicine when he tells you that he wishes he were dead.
Of course, underlying these disorders was just that dim spirit of disquiet that has made this season of the year notable for the production of lyric poetry. We had no means of expressing the thing that troubled our blood. Indeed, we ourselves did not know what was the matter, though this ignorance did not make our discomfort less. Time, who in the glare of a Christmas party or on the shore of a summer sea could run faster than we, seemed to take a spiteful pleasure in lingering in this unattractive place. And although our attitude towards life appeared to have been determined for us by Fate, when the long day ended and we thought over things in bed, we had not even the satisfaction of being proud of our day’s work. We would vow silently to our pillows that things should go better to-morrow, but alas! there might be many morrows before summer brought peace to our blood.
It is not only children whom the spring winds stir to madness, but a man has striven but poorly if he cannot contrive to bear in patience with this vernal torment of living, or even to turn it to some useful purpose in his work. But children, who can only express themselves in their play, must pay for the joys of the coming summer in moods speechless and almost too bitter for their years. In sympathy with all the green, quick things of Nature, their blood is in a state of passionate unrest for which their minds can supply no adequate reason, and they are unhappy in consequence. But I am far from blaming the Olympians for the attitude they adopted in this difficult business. They kept a wise eye on our health, and if our naughtiness became outrageous, we were punished. For the rest, as they could not give us lips of silver and a pipe of gold with which to chant the amazing gladness of the spring, I do not see what they could do.
ON NURSERY CUPBOARDS
THEY were deep and wide and tall, and filled as to the lower shelves with a number of objects which no child of spirit could find interesting any longer. Here were the battered fragments of the presents of bygone birthdays, of which the true ownership was dubious, because we none of us would confess that we had ever been young enough to receive such childish gifts. Here also were foolish trifles from forgotten Christmas-trees, useless objects employed by the fraudulent to give their trees a deceitful appearance of wealth. Then there were the presents that were too useful: the elevating gifts of aunts and the improving offerings of god-parents, things that either trespassed on the arid land of lessons or presumed some grown-up virtue which the recipient neither had nor coveted. The Olympians would refer to these dull possessions in the aggregate as “the children’s toys”; but we knew better. Our true treasures, the things we loved, never saw the inside of that unromantic depository save through the thoughtless tidying of our rulers. The works of watches and mechanical toys, our soldiers and cannon of brass, our fleet of walnut boats and empty cartridge-cases—these things and their brothers slept under our pillows or in the very private cardboard boot-box under the bed. By day those that were being employed were spread about the floor or strained our pockets to bursting-point. The people who were too old to know any better referred to them contemptuously as “rubbish,” a word we privately reserved for their aggravating presents. And though the long interval that separated dinner and tea on wet days might weary us of our immediate jewels, it was not in the cupboard that we sought relief from Boredom. It is true that now and again some Gentleman Adventurer would climb on a chair and investigate the shelves that were supposed to be beyond our reach, to return with piratical spoil of matches and cotton and citrate of magnesia, a cate that tingles pleasantly on the tongue of youth. But even from this point of view it could not compare with the rich cupboards of the kitchen and the dining-room, those Meccas of piracy that filled our dreams with monstrous raisins and pickled onions, a successful pilgrimage to which would assure a man the admiring homage of his comrades for days to come.
In short, we were content to regard the toy-cupboard as a harmless hobby of the grown-up people, and we were not far wrong. It was not for them to understand that one general cupboard could not hold the real treasures of four children, whose sense of possession was keen even to the point of battle. It was a dustbin for toys that had been found out, and we would have scorned to display its sordid contents to our friends. To them, if they were worthy, were revealed the true mysteries, the things that we fought for and made into dreams, the sun and moon and stars of our imaginative heaven. Sentimental elders might greet it with tears for their lost youth if they wished; we received their congratulations calmly, and kept our pity for their insanity to ourselves.
In truth, the thing was a symbol for all our relations with grown-up people. They always seemed so sensible and yet they could not understand. If we fell off the banisters on to our heads they would overwhelm us with sympathy, when every one knows that a big lump on the head is a thing to be proud of. But if a well-meaning aunt insisted on reading to us for a whole afternoon in the horse-chestnut season we were expected, and even commanded, to be grateful for this undesired favour. And so it was in the matter of toys. Sometimes, by accident as it were, they gave us sensible things that we really wanted. But as a rule their presents were concrete things that gave our imaginations no chance. We only wanted something to make a “think” about, but few of the official presents were suitable for this purpose. One of the gifts that delighted me most as a child was a blue glass dish, large and shallow. Filled with water it became a real blue sea, very proper for the navigation of smaller craft. Empty and subverted it became the dome of an azure city. And holding it before my eyes I would see a blue world, a place the existence of which I had previously only suspected. An ocean, a city, and a world combine to make a better present than a commonplace toy. Once in a blue moon I have seen strange sights, and something of the glamour of that dish is with me even now.
Naturally, in course of time an uncommon significance became attached to such things as this, and I should have no more thought of keeping my blue sea in the same cupboard as my brother’s maxim gun than he would have allowed that excellent weapon to be the bedfellow of my sister’s famous one-legged nigger doll. We realised far better than our elders the meaning of their favourite shibboleth, “a place for everything”; we knew that the sea air would rust a cannon, and that poor Dorothy could swim but poorly with her one dusky leg. So we tacitly left the cupboard as a place wherein the grown-ups could keep the toys they gave us to please themselves, and found exclusive and more sympathetic hiding-places for our treasures. Now and again a toy might pass through both stages of existence. Mechanical toys did not amuse us at all, until the donors were tired of playing with them, and we might pull them to pieces and make them our very own. And the costly gifts of uncles were useless until the authorities had ceased to see that we took care of them. But these doubtful cases apart, we would divide our presents into their respective groups as soon as we had removed the wrappings. “This and this can go into the cupboard, but this shall go to bed with me to-night!” It was not the person who “understands” children who was most fortunate in the choice of gifts.
For the rest, with unconscious satire, we constituted the toy-cupboard the state prison of the nursery. Refractory dolls and kittens, and soldiers awaiting court-martial, repented their crimes in its depressing gloom, and this was really the only share it had in our amusements. Beyond that it stood merely for official “play,” a melancholy traffic in which we never indulged. Its shelves were crowded with the illusions of grown-up people, and, if we considered it at all, it was in the same aspect in which we were wont to regard them. They were obviously well-meaning, but somehow or other they lacked understanding, and the nursery cupboard was full in consequence.
THE FAT MAN
I MET him first at Lord’s, the best place, perhaps, in all London for making acquaintances and even friends. Even if he had not worn a light suit of clothes that drew the critical eye inevitably to his monstrous girth he would have been conspicuous as occupying with difficulty the space provided for two persons on an afternoon when seats were at a premium. But though I own to no prejudice against flesh in itself, it was not his notable presence that induced me to speak to him, but rather the appealing glances that he threw to right and left of him when he thought to have detected that fine wine of the game which, tasted socially, changes a cricket match to a rare and solemn festival. Such an invitation is one that no one for whom cricket is an inspiration can refuse, and it was natural that thereafter we should praise and criticise in wise and sympathetic chorus.
The acquaintance thus begun warmed to intimacy at the Oval and Canterbury, and I began to seek his easily recognisable figure on cricket-grounds with eagerness, to feel a pang of disappointment if he was not there. For though to his careless eye his great moonlike face might suggest no more than good-natured stupidity, I had soon discovered that this exuberance of form barely concealed a delicate and engaging personality, that within those vast galleries of flesh there roamed the timid spirit of a little child. I have said that to the uncritical his face might seem wanting in intelligence, but it was rather that the normal placidity of his features suggested a lack of emotional sensitiveness. Save with his eyes—and it needed experience to read their message—he had no means of expressing his minor emotions, no compromise between his wonted serenity and the monstrous phenomenon of his laughter, that induced a facial metamorphosis almost too startling to convey an impression of mirth. If normally his face might be compared with a deep, still pool, laughter may be said to have stirred it up with a stick, and the consequent ripples seemed to roll to the very extremities of his body, growing in force as they went, so that his hands and feet vibrated in humorous ecstasy.
Later, when, in one of his quaint interrogative moods, he showed me a photograph of himself as a child, I was able to give form to the charming spirit that Nature had burdened with this grievous load. I saw the picture of a strikingly handsome little boy, with dark, wide eyes and slightly parted lips that alike told of a noble sense of wonder. This, I felt, was the man I knew, whose connection with that monstrous shape of flesh had been so difficult to trace. Yet strangely I could recognise the features of the boy in the expansive areas of the man. In the light of the photograph he resembled one of those great cabbage-roses that a too lavish season has swollen beyond all flowerlike proportions, yet which are none the less undeniably roses. Others might find him clumsy, elephantine, colossal; thenceforward he was for me clearly boyish.
His voice varied more in tone and quality than that of any other man I have ever met, and over these variations he seemed to have little control; and this, too, made it very difficult for strangers to detect the trippings and hesitancies, gentle, wayward, and infinitely sensitive, of his childlike temperament. Within the limits of one simple utterance he would achieve sounds resembling the drumming of sudden rain on galvanised iron and the ecstatic whistlings of dew-drunk birds. It was sometimes difficult to follow the purport of his speech for sheer wonder at the sounds that slid and leaped and burst from his lips. His voice reminded me of a child strumming on some strange musical instrument of extraordinary range and capacity which it had not learned how to play. His laughter was ventriloquial and rarely bore any accountable relationship to the expressions of mirth of ordinary men. It was like an explosive rendering of one of those florid scales dear to piano-tuners, but sometimes it suggested rather an earthquake in his boots.
He dwelt in a little flat that seemed like the upper floor of a doll’s-house when related to its proprietor, and here it was his delight to dispense a hospitality charmingly individual. His meals recalled nothing so much as the illicit feasts held in school dormitories, and when he peered curiously into his own cupboards he always looked as if he were about to steal jam. He would produce viand after viand with the glee of a successful explorer, and in terms of his eager hospitality the most bizarre cates appeared congruous and even intimately connected, so that at his board grown men would eat like schoolboys, with the great careless appetite of youth.
He had a fine library and a still finer collection of mechanical toys, which were for him a passion and a delight. It was pleasant to see him set some painted piece of clockwork careering on the hearthrug, stooping over it tenderly, with wondering eyes, and hands intent to guard it from disaster. It was pleasant, too, to hear him recite Swinburne, of whom he was a passionate admirer; for, though his voice would be as rebellious as ever, his whole body would thrill and pulse with the music of the poet. He always touched books softly because he loved them. Of bonfires he spoke reverently, though a London flat hardly lent itself to their active exploitation; and I remember that he told me once that nothing gave him a keener sense of what he had lost in growing up than the scent of burning twigs and leaves. Yet if he felt this loss, what should it have been for us who had come so much farther than he!
Himself a child, he was beloved of children and treated by them as an equal; but I never knew another child who was so easily and continuously amused. The Hippodrome, the British Museum, the Tower of London, and the art of Messrs. Maskelyne and Devant alike raised in him the highest enthusiasm, which he expressed with charming but sometimes embarrassing freedom. Alone of all men, perhaps, he found the Royal Academy wholly satisfying, and it could be said of him truly that if he did not admire the picture he would always like the frame. He had a huge admiration for any one who did anything, and he liked riding in lifts.
Though he treated women with elaborate courtesy, their society made him self-conscious, and he, who could direct his body featly enough in a crowded street, was apt to be clumsy in drawing-rooms. Perhaps it was for this reason that they had apparently played no marked part in his life, and I may be wrong in attaching any special significance to a phrase he made one quiet evening in his flat. We had been speaking of the latest sensation in our group of mutual acquaintances, of the marriage of Phyllis, daintiest and most witty of cricket-lovers, to a man in whom the jealously critical eyes of her friends could perceive no charm; but the conversation had dwindled to silence when he said, “Surely his love can make any man lovely!”
Then, as if the subject were closed, he fell to speaking of his latest pocket-knife with boyish animation; but the phrase dwelt in my mind, though the image of the brave boy with wide eyes and lips parted in wonder was all that I ever knew of the man who made it.
CAROL SINGERS