Philip soon realised that the spirit which informed his friends was
Cronshaw’s. It was from him that Lawson got his paradoxes; and even
Clutton, who strained after individuality, expressed himself in the
terms he had insensibly acquired from the older man. It was his ideas
that they bandied about at table, and on his authority they formed
their judgments. They made up for the respect with which unconsciously
they treated him by laughing at his foibles and lamenting his vices.
“Of course, poor old Cronshaw will never do any good,” they said. “He’s
quite hopeless.”
They prided themselves on being alone in appreciating his genius; and
though, with the contempt of youth for the follies of middle-age, they
patronised him among themselves, they did not fail to look upon it as a
feather in their caps if he had chosen a time when only one was there
to be particularly wonderful. Cronshaw never came to Gravier’s. For the
last four years he had lived in squalid conditions with a woman whom
only Lawson had once seen, in a tiny apartment on the sixth floor of
one of the most dilapidated houses on the Quai des Grands Augustins:
Lawson described with gusto the filth, the untidiness, the litter.
“And the stink nearly blew your head off.”
“Not at dinner, Lawson,” expostulated one of the others.
But he would not deny himself the pleasure of giving picturesque
details of the odours which met his nostril. With a fierce delight in
his own realism he described the woman who had opened the door for him.
She was dark, small, and fat, quite young, with black hair that seemed
always on the point of coming down. She wore a slatternly blouse and no
corsets. With her red cheeks, large sensual mouth, and shining, lewd
eyes, she reminded you of the Bohemienne in the Louvre by Franz Hals.
She had a flaunting vulgarity which amused and yet horrified. A
scrubby, unwashed baby was playing on the floor. It was known that the
slut deceived Cronshaw with the most worthless ragamuffins of the
Quarter, and it was a mystery to the ingenuous youths who absorbed his
wisdom over a cafe table that Cronshaw with his keen intellect and his
passion for beauty could ally himself to such a creature. But he seemed
to revel in the coarseness of her language and would often report some
phrase which reeked of the gutter. He referred to her ironically as la
fille de mon concierge. Cronshaw was very poor. He earned a bare
subsistence by writing on the exhibitions of pictures for one or two
English papers, and he did a certain amount of translating. He had been
on the staff of an English paper in Paris, but had been dismissed for
drunkenness; he still however did odd jobs for it, describing sales at
the Hotel Drouot or the revues at music-halls. The life of Paris had
got into his bones, and he would not change it, notwithstanding its
squalor, drudgery, and hardship, for any other in the world. He
remained there all through the year, even in summer when everyone he
knew was away, and felt himself only at ease within a mile of the
Boulevard St. Michel. But the curious thing was that he had never
learnt to speak French passably, and he kept in his shabby clothes
bought at La Belle Jardiniere an ineradicably English appearance.
He was a man who would have made a success of life a century and a half
ago when conversation was a passport to good company and inebriety no
bar.
“I ought to have lived in the eighteen hundreds,” he said himself.
“What I want is a patron. I should have published my poems by
subscription and dedicated them to a nobleman. I long to compose rhymed
couplets upon the poodle of a countess. My soul yearns for the love of
chamber-maids and the conversation of bishops.”
He quoted the romantic Rolla,
“Je suis venu trop tard dans un monde trop vieux.”
He liked new faces, and he took a fancy to Philip, who seemed to
achieve the difficult feat of talking just enough to suggest
conversation and not too much to prevent monologue. Philip was
captivated. He did not realise that little that Cronshaw said was new.
His personality in conversation had a curious power. He had a beautiful
and a sonorous voice, and a manner of putting things which was
irresistible to youth. All he said seemed to excite thought, and often
on the way home Lawson and Philip would walk to and from one another’s
hotels, discussing some point which a chance word of Cronshaw had
suggested. It was disconcerting to Philip, who had a youthful eagerness
for results, that Cronshaw’s poetry hardly came up to expectation. It
had never been published in a volume, but most of it had appeared in
periodicals; and after a good deal of persuasion Cronshaw brought down
a bundle of pages torn out of The Yellow Book, The Saturday Review, and
other journals, on each of which was a poem. Philip was taken aback to
find that most of them reminded him either of Henley or of Swinburne.
It needed the splendour of Cronshaw’s delivery to make them personal.
He expressed his disappointment to Lawson, who carelessly repeated his
words; and next time Philip went to the Closerie des Lilas the poet
turned to him with his sleek smile:
“I hear you don’t think much of my verses.”
Philip was embarrassed.
“I don’t know about that,” he answered. “I enjoyed reading them very
much.”
“Do not attempt to spare my feelings,” returned Cronshaw, with a wave
of his fat hand. “I do not attach any exaggerated importance to my
poetical works. Life is there to be lived rather than to be written
about. My aim is to search out the manifold experience that it offers,
wringing from each moment what of emotion it presents. I look upon my
writing as a graceful accomplishment which does not absorb but rather
adds pleasure to existence. And as for posterity—damn posterity.”
Philip smiled, for it leaped to one’s eyes that the artist in life had
produced no more than a wretched daub. Cronshaw looked at him
meditatively and filled his glass. He sent the waiter for a packet of
cigarettes.
“You are amused because I talk in this fashion and you know that I am
poor and live in an attic with a vulgar trollop who deceives me with
hair-dressers and garcons de cafe; I translate wretched books for the
British public, and write articles upon contemptible pictures which
deserve not even to be abused. But pray tell me what is the meaning of
life?”
“I say, that’s rather a difficult question. Won’t you give the answer
yourself?”
“No, because it’s worthless unless you yourself discover it. But what
do you suppose you are in the world for?”
Philip had never asked himself, and he thought for a moment before
replying.
“Oh, I don’t know: I suppose to do one’s duty, and make the best
possible use of one’s faculties, and avoid hurting other people.”
“In short, to do unto others as you would they should do unto you?”
“I suppose so.”
“Christianity.”
“No, it isn’t,” said Philip indignantly. “It has nothing to do with
Christianity. It’s just abstract morality.”
“But there’s no such thing as abstract morality.”
“In that case, supposing under the influence of liquor you left your
purse behind when you leave here and I picked it up, why do you imagine
that I should return it to you? It’s not the fear of the police.”
“It’s the dread of hell if you sin and the hope of Heaven if you are
virtuous.”
“But I believe in neither.”
“That may be. Neither did Kant when he devised the Categorical
Imperative. You have thrown aside a creed, but you have preserved the
ethic which was based upon it. To all intents you are a Christian
still, and if there is a God in Heaven you will undoubtedly receive
your reward. The Almighty can hardly be such a fool as the churches
make out. If you keep His laws I don’t think He can care a packet of
pins whether you believe in Him or not.”
“But if I left my purse behind you would certainly return it to me,”
said Philip.
“Not from motives of abstract morality, but only from fear of the
police.”
“It’s a thousand to one that the police would never find out.”
“My ancestors have lived in a civilised state so long that the fear of
the police has eaten into my bones. The daughter of my concierge would
not hesitate for a moment. You answer that she belongs to the criminal
classes; not at all, she is merely devoid of vulgar prejudice.”
“But then that does away with honour and virtue and goodness and
decency and everything,” said Philip.
“Have you ever committed a sin?”
“I don’t know, I suppose so,” answered Philip.
“You speak with the lips of a dissenting minister. I have never
committed a sin.”
Cronshaw in his shabby great-coat, with the collar turned up, and his
hat well down on his head, with his red fat face and his little
gleaming eyes, looked extraordinarily comic; but Philip was too much in
earnest to laugh.
“Have you never done anything you regret?”
“How can I regret when what I did was inevitable?” asked Cronshaw in
return.
“But that’s fatalism.”
“The illusion which man has that his will is free is so deeply rooted
that I am ready to accept it. I act as though I were a free agent. But
when an action is performed it is clear that all the forces of the
universe from all eternity conspired to cause it, and nothing I could
do could have prevented it. It was inevitable. If it was good I can
claim no merit; if it was bad I can accept no censure.”
“My brain reels,” said Philip.
“Have some whiskey,” returned Cronshaw, passing over the bottle.
“There’s nothing like it for clearing the head. You must expect to be
thick-witted if you insist upon drinking beer.”
Philip shook his head, and Cronshaw proceeded:
“You’re not a bad fellow, but you won’t drink. Sobriety disturbs
conversation. But when I speak of good and bad…” Philip saw he was
taking up the thread of his discourse, “I speak conventionally. I
attach no meaning to those words. I refuse to make a hierarchy of human
actions and ascribe worthiness to some and ill-repute to others. The
terms vice and virtue have no signification for me. I do not confer
praise or blame: I accept. I am the measure of all things. I am the
centre of the world.”
“But there are one or two other people in the world,” objected Philip.
“I speak only for myself. I know them only as they limit my activities.
Round each of them too the world turns, and each one for himself is the
centre of the universe. My right over them extends only as far as my
power. What I can do is the only limit of what I may do. Because we are
gregarious we live in society, and society holds together by means of
force, force of arms (that is the policeman) and force of public
opinion (that is Mrs. Grundy). You have society on one hand and the
individual on the other: each is an organism striving for
self-preservation. It is might against might. I stand alone, bound to
accept society and not unwilling, since in return for the taxes I pay
it protects me, a weakling, against the tyranny of another stronger
than I am; but I submit to its laws because I must; I do not
acknowledge their justice: I do not know justice, I only know power.
And when I have paid for the policeman who protects me and, if I live
in a country where conscription is in force, served in the army which
guards my house and land from the invader, I am quits with society: for
the rest I counter its might with my wiliness. It makes laws for its
self-preservation, and if I break them it imprisons or kills me: it has
the might to do so and therefore the right. If I break the laws I will
accept the vengeance of the state, but I will not regard it as
punishment nor shall I feel myself convicted of wrong-doing. Society
tempts me to its service by honours and riches and the good opinion of
my fellows; but I am indifferent to their good opinion, I despise
honours and I can do very well without riches.”
“But if everyone thought like you things would go to pieces at once.”
“I have nothing to do with others, I am only concerned with myself. I
take advantage of the fact that the majority of mankind are led by
certain rewards to do things which directly or indirectly tend to my
convenience.”
“It seems to me an awfully selfish way of looking at things,” said
Philip.
“But are you under the impression that men ever do anything except for
selfish reasons?”
“Yes.”
“It is impossible that they should. You will find as you grow older
that the first thing needful to make the world a tolerable place to
live in is to recognise the inevitable selfishness of humanity. You
demand unselfishness from others, which is a preposterous claim that
they should sacrifice their desires to yours. Why should they? When you
are reconciled to the fact that each is for himself in the world you
will ask less from your fellows. They will not disappoint you, and you
will look upon them more charitably. Men seek but one thing in
life—their pleasure.”
“No, no, no!” cried Philip.
Cronshaw chuckled.
“You rear like a frightened colt, because I use a word to which your
Christianity ascribes a deprecatory meaning. You have a hierarchy of
values; pleasure is at the bottom of the ladder, and you speak with a
little thrill of self-satisfaction, of duty, charity, and truthfulness.
You think pleasure is only of the senses; the wretched slaves who
manufactured your morality despised a satisfaction which they had small
means of enjoying. You would not be so frightened if I had spoken of
happiness instead of pleasure: it sounds less shocking, and your mind
wanders from the sty of Epicurus to his garden. But I will speak of
pleasure, for I see that men aim at that, and I do not know that they
aim at happiness. It is pleasure that lurks in the practice of every
one of your virtues. Man performs actions because they are good for
him, and when they are good for other people as well they are thought
virtuous: if he finds pleasure in giving alms he is charitable; if he
finds pleasure in helping others he is benevolent; if he finds pleasure
in working for society he is public-spirited; but it is for your
private pleasure that you give twopence to a beggar as much as it is
for my private pleasure that I drink another whiskey and soda. I, less
of a humbug than you, neither applaud myself for my pleasure nor demand
your admiration.”
“But have you never known people do things they didn’t want to instead
of things they did?”
“No. You put your question foolishly. What you mean is that people
accept an immediate pain rather than an immediate pleasure. The
objection is as foolish as your manner of putting it. It is clear that
men accept an immediate pain rather than an immediate pleasure, but
only because they expect a greater pleasure in the future. Often the
pleasure is illusory, but their error in calculation is no refutation
of the rule. You are puzzled because you cannot get over the idea that
pleasures are only of the senses; but, child, a man who dies for his
country dies because he likes it as surely as a man eats pickled
cabbage because he likes it. It is a law of creation. If it were
possible for men to prefer pain to pleasure the human race would have
long since become extinct.”
“But if all that is true,” cried Philip, “what is the use of anything?
If you take away duty and goodness and beauty why are we brought into
the world?”
“Here comes the gorgeous East to suggest an answer,” smiled Cronshaw.
He pointed to two persons who at that moment opened the door of the
cafe, and, with a blast of cold air, entered. They were Levantines,
itinerant vendors of cheap rugs, and each bore on his arm a bundle. It
was Sunday evening, and the cafe was very full. They passed among the
tables, and in that atmosphere heavy and discoloured with tobacco
smoke, rank with humanity, they seemed to bring an air of mystery. They
were clad in European, shabby clothes, their thin great-coats were
threadbare, but each wore a tarbouch. Their faces were gray with cold.
One was of middle age, with a black beard, but the other was a youth of
eighteen, with a face deeply scarred by smallpox and with one eye only.
They passed by Cronshaw and Philip.
“Allah is great, and Mahomet is his prophet,” said Cronshaw
impressively.
The elder advanced with a cringing smile, like a mongrel used to blows.
With a sidelong glance at the door and a quick surreptitious movement
he showed a pornographic picture.
“Are you Masr-ed-Deen, the merchant of Alexandria, or is it from far
Bagdad that you bring your goods, O, my uncle; and yonder one-eyed
youth, do I see in him one of the three kings of whom Scheherazade told
stories to her lord?”
The pedlar’s smile grew more ingratiating, though he understood no word
of what Cronshaw said, and like a conjurer he produced a sandalwood
box.
“Nay, show us the priceless web of Eastern looms,” quoth Cronshaw. “For
I would point a moral and adorn a tale.”
The Levantine unfolded a table-cloth, red and yellow, vulgar, hideous,
and grotesque.
“Thirty-five francs,” he said.
“O, my uncle, this cloth knew not the weavers of Samarkand, and those
colours were never made in the vats of Bokhara.”
“Twenty-five francs,” smiled the pedlar obsequiously.
“Ultima Thule was the place of its manufacture, even Birmingham the
place of my birth.”
“Fifteen francs,” cringed the bearded man.
“Get thee gone, fellow,” said Cronshaw. “May wild asses defile the
grave of thy maternal grandmother.”
Imperturbably, but smiling no more, the Levantine passed with his wares
to another table. Cronshaw turned to Philip.
“Have you ever been to the Cluny, the museum? There you will see
Persian carpets of the most exquisite hue and of a pattern the
beautiful intricacy of which delights and amazes the eye. In them you
will see the mystery and the sensual beauty of the East, the roses of
Hafiz and the wine-cup of Omar; but presently you will see more. You
were asking just now what was the meaning of life. Go and look at those
Persian carpets, and one of these days the answer will come to you.”
“You are cryptic,” said Philip.
“I am drunk,” answered Cronshaw.