Chapter 18

It was the same with the treatment of literature; it all seemed reduced to a game played with counters. There was no simplicity of apprehension; the point seemed to be to apply a certain set of phrases as decisively as possible. I never heard a generous appreciation of a book; what I rather heard was trivial gossip about the author, followed by shallow, and I thought pedantic, judgments upon an author's lack of movement or aerial quality. If one of the approved authors under discussion seemed to me painfully sordid and debased, one was told to look out for his tonic realism and his virile force. How many times in those sad hours was I informed that the artist had no concern with ethical problems! If I maintained that an artist's concern is with any motives that sway humanity, I was told smilingly that I wanted to treat art in the spirit of a nursery governess. If, on the other hand, a book appeared to me utterly unreal and false, I was told that it was typical and spiritual, and that the conception of the artist must not be limited by his experience, but that he arrived at correct intuitions by the force of penetrating insight and by the swift inference of genius.

What seemed to me to be absent from it all was the spirit of liberty, of frank enjoyment, of eager apprehension. I do not say that my friends seemed to me to admire all the wrong things; they had abundant appreciation for certain masters, both in art and music; but I felt that they swallowed masters whole, without any discrimination, and that the entire thing was a matter of tradition and rule and precept and authority, not of irresponsible and ardent enjoyment. It was all systematised and regulated; there was no question of personal preferences. The aim of the perceptive man was to find out what was the correct standard of good taste, and then to express his agreement with it in elaborate phrases. Most of the party were of the same type. Not that they were oddly-dressed, haggard, affected women or long-haired, pretentious, grotesque men. I have been at such coteries, too, where they praised each other's work with odd, passionate cries and wriggling, fantastic gestures. That is terrible too, because that is culture which has turned rancid. But at my friend's house it was not rancid at all, it was simply unassimilated. My friend himself handed out culture in neat pieces, carefully done up, as a vendor of toffee might hand it out to purchasers; and the people who came there, well-dressed, amiable, quiet, courteous people, would have been delightful if they had not been so cultivated. Culture lay about in lumps; it had never soaked in. The result was that I felt I could never get to know any of these agreeable people at all. One tried to talk, and one was met with a proffer of a lump of culture. Then, as I say, it was all in pieces; it was not part of a plan or an attitude of mind; it had all been laboriously collected, and it was just as it had been discovered; it did not seem to have undergone any mental process.

And then, further, I felt that it was all too comfortable--it was all built on a foundation of comfort; that lay really at the bottom of it all. The house was too full of beautiful things; the dinner was too long and too good; the wine was too choice. I am not going to pretend that I do not like comfort; but I do not like luxury, and this was luxurious. I do not want to have a long and elaborate dinner; it should be _simplex munditiis_, as Horace said. And beautiful pictures and furniture are more beautiful if there is not too much of them. One felt, in this warm, fragrant house, with every room and wall crammed with charming objects, with every desire anticipated, the dinner-table bright with flowers and silver, with "orient liquor in a crystal glass," as if one stifled under a load of delights; I yearned for plainer rooms and simpler fare, and for freer and more genuine talk. One felt that the aim of the circle was satisfaction rather than beauty; to be sheltered and caressed rather than to be invigorated and tranquillised.

I was standing in a drawing-room one night before dinner, already sated with the food, the talk, the music, and the art of the day, as the guests began to arrive: such clean, brilliant men, faultlessly appointed; such beautiful and delicate women, with a vague sense of fragrance and jewels, came stealing in. Suddenly among the company there came stalking in a great literary man, an old friend of my own; handsome, too, and well-appointed enough, but with a touch of roughness and vigour that made him, I thought, like a chieftain among courtiers; and wearing the haggard air of the man who toils at his art, and cannot achieve his incommunicable hopes or capture his divine dreams. He came up to me, smiling, in a secluded corner. "Hullo," he said, "_mon vieux!_ who would have thought of finding you here in the island of Circe?"

"I might ask the same question," I said. "But perhaps I have the sacred herb, _moly_, the 'small unsightly root' in my bosom, to guard me against the spells."

"The leaf has prickles on it," he said, with a smile; "there is nothing prickly about our friends here."

This was mere sword-play, of course, not real talk; and then we had five minutes' talk which I will not put down, because I should betray secrets, and secrets too in their rough, uncut form, the gems of art, which must be cut before they are presented. But I got more out of those five minutes than I did out of the rest of my visit.

Presently we went in to dinner, and the performance began. How skilfully it was all guided and modulated by our host, who was in his best form. What delicate flies he threw over his fish; how softly they rose to them. The talk flashed to and fro; the groups formed, broke, re-formed. But it was a shallow stream; there was no zeal or vehemence; it was all polished, deft, superficial, conventional. It was like playing an agile and elaborate game; and I felt that those who took part in it were congratulating themselves on the brilliance of the affair. Education, religion, art, poetry, music--we had something to say about all; and yet I felt that no light had been thrown upon anything. A lady of high rank gave me her views upon the writing of English prose, with the air of one speaking condescendingly from Olympus, which, as we know, was above even Parnassus. In the middle I caught the eye of the great man, who was opposite me; he gave me a mournful smile, and I read his thoughts. When the ladies had withdrawn, my host, with a determined air as of a man above prejudice, started the conversation on rather more virile lines; and the result was a certain amount of delicately _risqué_ talk. But even here we felt that it was not human nature that was revealed. It was Voltairean rather than Rabelaisian; and I dislike both. Then afterwards we sank into luxurious chairs in the rich perfumed drawing-room; we talked low and impressively to charming ladies; there was some exquisite music, so pure and sweet that it seemed to me to put to shame the complex and elaborate pageant of life in which we took part; and outside, one remembered, there were the rain-splashed streets, the homeless wind; and the toiling multitudes that made such delights possible, and gave of their dreary, sordid labour that we might sit thus at ease. The whole thing seemed artificial, soulless, hectic, unreal. One could not help thinking of Dives and Lazarus, that strange parable that has so stern a moral. "But now he is comforted and thou art tormented." It is not suggested there that vice is punished and virtue rewarded; merely that wealth is penalised and poverty compensated.

Well, it is a great mystery. No uneasy doubt as to the rightness of things, as they are, ever troubled the mind of my serene host or his gracious wife. The following morning I went away; I was sped on my way with courteous kindness; but all the attention I received lies somewhat heavy on my heart. I do not know how I could express to my friends what I felt; they would not understand it if I tried to explain it. They think of me as a queer rustic being, fond of a lonely life; they feel, unconsciously enough, that they are conferring a benefit upon me by enabling me to set foot in so cultured a circle; and there is no sense of patronage about this--nothing but real kindness. But they feel that they are in possession of the higher and more beautiful life, and I have no sort of doubt that they believe I regard their paradise with envy; that I would live the same life if I had the means. I fully admit that I am not nearly so perfectly equipped with culture as my friends. I have not got a quarter of their stock or of their experience; but yet I am as absolutely sure that I, with all my deficiencies and ignorances, negligences, incompletenesses, am inside the sacred circle of art, as I am certain that they are without it. To me beauty is a holy and bewildering passion; a divine spirit, that sometimes heaps treasures upon me with both hands, and sometimes denies the least hint of her influence. But they, I feel, mistake craftsmanship and accomplishment and technique for the inner spirit of art; they have never felt the awful rapture, the overwhelming impulse. And thus, as I say, I return with a sense of weary gratitude to my lonely house with its austere rooms; to my old piano, my old books; to my wide fields and leafless trees, as of one returning home to worship at a quiet shrine, after being compelled to play a part in a pageant which is not concerned with the things of the soul.

XLIII

It must have been just about a year ago to-day that I received one morning a letter from an old acquaintance of mine, Henry Gregory by name, telling me that he was staying in my neighbourhood--might he come over to see me? I asked him to come to luncheon.

I do not remember how I first came to know Gregory, but I was instrumental in once getting him a little legal work to do, since when he has shown a dangerous disposition to require similar services of me, and even to confide in me. I am quite incapable--not on principle, but from a sort of feeble courtesy--of rejecting such overtures. It does more harm than good, because I am unable to help him in any way; and the result of our talks is only to send him away disappointed and annoyed, and to leave me both bored and compassionate, with that wholly ineffectual compassion which is a mere morbid sentiment. Judge between him and me! I will tell the whole story.

Gregory is a man of real ability, conscientious, clear-headed, accurate. He was one of a large family; his father a country solicitor, I think. He was at a public school and at the University; he has a small income of his own, perhaps £150 a year; and he drifted to the bar. I don't think he ever made friends with anyone in his life--he is constitutionally incapable of friendship. I have seen him in the company of one or two unaccountably dreary men, himself the dreariest of the party. He is long-winded, exact in statement, ponderous. He has no sort of imagination, and no touch of humour. He can be depended upon to give you a mass of detailed information on almost any point, and every subject that he touches turns to lead before your eyes. One has a sense of mental indigestion for a day or two after one has seen him, until one has forgotten his statements. If I desired to think ill of a writer, I should ask Gregory his opinion of him; he would extinguish once and for all my interest in the subject. He has been wholly unsuccessful at the bar; he lives in London lodgings, and I cannot conceive how he employs his time. There is a club I sometimes visit (I fear I should visit it oftener if Gregory were not a member), where he sits like a moulting condor in a corner, or wanders about seeking a receptacle for his information. I got him, as I have said, a piece of legal work; it was done, I believe, admirably; but the solicitor whom I referred to Gregory has since told me that he cannot employ him again. "I simply have not the time," he said; "our consultations took longer than I could have conceived possible; there was not a single contingency in heaven and earth that Gregory did not foresee and describe!"

This has gone on until Gregory has reached the mature age of fifty-five. He has no work and no friend. His relations cannot tolerate him. He is a deeply aggrieved man, bitterly conscious of his failure, and the worst of it is that it has never yet occurred to him that he may be himself to blame. He is so virtuous, so laborious, so just, so entirely free from faults of every kind, that he cannot possibly have even the grim satisfaction of self-censure. He has instinctively obeyed every copy-book maxim that was ever written; he is one of the very few men who cannot sincerely join in the Confession, because it is impossible for him to say that he has done those things that he ought not to have done; and yet, with all his powers and virtues, he is simply a tragic failure. No one has a word to say for him; he can get no work; he is an absolutely unnecessary person. Yet there are positions which he could have held with credit. He would have been an excellent clerk, and a competent official. But now he is simply a briefless barrister, without a friend in the world.

He arrived very punctually to luncheon. He is a small, sturdy man, with a big head, of a uniform, dull tint, as if it were carved out of a not very successfully boiled chicken. He is bald, and wears spectacles. He was rather primly dressed, and everything about him gave a sense of careful and virtuous economy, from the uncompromising hardness of his heavy grey suit to the emphatic solidity of his great boots. I had two rather lively young men staying with me, and they behaved with remarkable kindness. But Gregory put the garden-roller over us all in a very few minutes. One of my young friends asked a silly question about current politics. Gregory looked at him blankly, and said, "I am afraid that that question betrays a very superficial acquaintance with the elements of political economy. May I ask if you picked that up at Cambridge?" He gave a short mirthless laugh, and I understood that he was trying his hand at a little light social badinage. However, it flattened out my young friend, while Gregory ruthlessly told us the elements, and a good deal more than the elements, of that science. He was diverted from his lecture by the appearance of some ham. Gregory commented upon the inferiority of English hams, and described the process of curing hams in Westphalia, which, unfortunately for us, he had personally witnessed. So it went on. It was impossible to stop him or to divert him. When he ceased for a moment, to swallow a mouthful, I interjected a remark about the weather. Gregory replied, "Yes; and then they have a method of packing the hams which is said to have the effect of retaining their flavour in a remarkable degree. Imagine a strip of sacking revolving upon two metal objects somewhat resembling fishing-reels." So it continued; and it was delivered, moreover, in a tone of voice which it was somehow impossible to elude; it compelled a sort of agonised attention. After luncheon, while we were smoking, one of my young friends, who could bear passivity no longer, played a few chords of Wagner on a piano. Gregory poured into the gap like a great cascade, and we had a discourse on the origins of the Wagnerian librettos.

After it was over and we were trying to banish the subject from our minds, I sent the other two out for a walk--this had been agreed upon previously--and prepared to face the music alone. But they only just escaped, for Gregory followed them to the gate, determined that they should take a particular walk, to notice the geological formation of the country. We then went out for a stroll together, and Gregory said that he must talk business, and drew a strip of paper from his pocket. This contained a series of commissions for me to execute.

I was to get him some introductions to editors or Members of Parliament; I was to propose him at a club; I was to find him some pupils in law; I was to read a manuscript for him and place it. I raised feeble objections. "You seem to make a great number of unnecessary difficulties," said Gregory. "I don't think that any of my requests can be called unreasonable. You know enough of me to be able to say that I should discharge any duty I undertook thoroughly and competently." "Yes, I know," I said; "but one cannot force people's hands in these matters." "I don't ask you to force their hands," said Gregory; "I merely ask you to give me these introductions, and to write a perfectly truthful account of me." Perhaps I ought to have been more firm; but I could not find any adequate reason for objecting. I could not tell him that the all-embracing and all-sufficing reason against his possibility of success was that he was himself. When it came to placing his manuscript, I said that such things did not go by favour--and plucking up a desperate courage, said that we all had to make our own position in literature. I suggested that he must send his articles to editors like anyone else, and that they were only too anxious to secure the sort of things they wanted, "No," said Gregory; "there is an element of uncertainty about that which will not do for me. I have tried editor after editor, and have invariably had my articles returned. I will venture to say--and I do not think you will contradict me--that they are all thorough, sound, and accurate pieces of work, far more reliable than much of the stuff which appears every day; all I want is just the personal touch with an editor or two; but, of course, if you will not help me, I must try elsewhere--but I must confess that I am very much disappointed," He looked drearily at me, leaning on his stick. I do not think he had any idea where we were, nor had he seen any single object which we had passed; but at this moment he noticed a flower in the hedge, and looked tenderly at it. "Ha! there is _ailanthus vulgaris_," he said--"very unusual. Excuse my interrupting you, but botany is rather a passion of mine. It may interest you to hear..." and I had a few minutes' botany thrown in. "But we must return to our muttons," he said, after a short pause, with a convulsion of the jaw that was meant for a smile; and we did. He went over the whole ground again--and then suddenly came a human _cri du coeur_ which gave me one of those fruitless pangs which are the saddest things in the world. He was dusting the sleeve of his coat, and I could not help feeling with what unnecessary conscientiousness he was doing it. He turned to me, "Do help me, if you can. I really have done my best, but I can't get any work to do. I have not the position to which I may fairly say my abilities and diligence entitle me. I don't understand why it is--I can't see where I am to blame." Of course I promised to do what I could, and Gregory handed me a corresponding slip of paper to his own which he had prepared for me.

We drew near to the little wayside station where he was to catch a train. It was a summer day of extraordinary loveliness. The great green fen slept peacefully in the sun, and the low green hills beyond lay quivering in the haze. Gregory, lost in bitter musings, in his careful threadbare clothes, rather unpleasantly hot, hopelessly bewildered as to his place in the universe, conscious of virtue, equipped with information, desiring neither pity nor affection, but only work and due recognition, was a sad blot upon nature. The whole business of his creation and preservation seemed an ugly and a heartless one, and his redemption beyond the power of imagination. The train came in, and he got wearily in, shook hands, and immersed himself in a book. He said no more, made no sign, waved no hand of farewell. He did not feel any sentimental emotion; he had come on business, and he went away on business.

Of course it was of no use. I wrote a few letters, read Gregory's manuscript, and had to take a course of Sherlock Holmes in order to obliterate the nauseous memory of its dulness. Nothing came of it all, except a very offensive letter from Gregory about my ineffectiveness and general duplicity.

Why do I venture, it may be asked, to print this dreadful sketch of a man who may see it and recognise it? He will not see it, and for the best of sad reasons. But on reflection I do not know that the reason is a sad one. Gregory died rather suddenly in his lodgings a few months later, and so the curtain came down upon rather a dismal comedy, or a deplorable tragedy, according to one's taste in classification. The only marvel is why the sad drama was ever put on the stage, and why it was allowed to have so long a run. There is hope in this world for the Prodigal, who has a sharp and evil lesson, and comes crawling home to claim the love he had despised; but for the elder brother, with his blameless service and his chilly heart, what hope is there for him? He must content himself--and perhaps it is not so lean a benediction after all--with the tender words, "Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine."

XLIV