Towards the end of the year, when Philip was bringing to a close his
three months as clerk in the out-patients’ department, he received a
letter from Lawson, who was in Paris.
Dear Philip,
Cronshaw is in London and would be glad to see you. He is living at 43
Hyde Street, Soho. I don’t know where it is, but I daresay you will be
able to find out. Be a brick and look after him a bit. He is very down
on his luck. He will tell you what he is doing. Things are going on
here very much as usual. Nothing seems to have changed since you were
here. Clutton is back, but he has become quite impossible. He has
quarrelled with everybody. As far as I can make out he hasn’t got a
cent, he lives in a little studio right away beyond the Jardin des
Plantes, but he won’t let anybody see his work. He doesn’t show
anywhere, so one doesn’t know what he is doing. He may be a genius, but
on the other hand he may be off his head. By the way, I ran against
Flanagan the other day. He was showing Mrs. Flanagan round the Quarter.
He has chucked art and is now in popper’s business. He seems to be
rolling. Mrs. Flanagan is very pretty and I’m trying to work a
portrait. How much would you ask if you were me? I don’t want to
frighten them, and then on the other hand I don’t want to be such an
ass as to ask L150 if they’re quite willing to give L300.
Yours ever,
Frederick Lawson.
Philip wrote to Cronshaw and received in reply the following letter. It
was written on a half-sheet of common note-paper, and the flimsy
envelope was dirtier than was justified by its passage through the
post.
Dear Carey,
Of course I remember you very well. I have an idea that I had some part
in rescuing you from the Slough of Despond in which myself am
hopelessly immersed. I shall be glad to see you. I am a stranger in a
strange city and I am buffeted by the philistines. It will be pleasant
to talk of Paris. I do not ask you to come and see me, since my lodging
is not of a magnificence fit for the reception of an eminent member of
Monsieur Purgon’s profession, but you will find me eating modestly any
evening between seven and eight at a restaurant yclept Au Bon Plaisir
in Dean Street.
Your sincere
J. Cronshaw.
Philip went the day he received this letter. The restaurant, consisting
of one small room, was of the poorest class, and Cronshaw seemed to be
its only customer. He was sitting in the corner, well away from
draughts, wearing the same shabby great-coat which Philip had never
seen him without, with his old bowler on his head.
“I eat here because I can be alone,” he said. “They are not doing well;
the only people who come are a few trollops and one or two waiters out
of a job; they are giving up business, and the food is execrable. But
the ruin of their fortunes is my advantage.”
Cronshaw had before him a glass of absinthe. It was nearly three years
since they had met, and Philip was shocked by the change in his
appearance. He had been rather corpulent, but now he had a dried-up,
yellow look: the skin of his neck was loose and winkled; his clothes
hung about him as though they had been bought for someone else; and his
collar, three or four sizes too large, added to the slatternliness of
his appearance. His hands trembled continually. Philip remembered the
handwriting which scrawled over the page with shapeless, haphazard
letters. Cronshaw was evidently very ill.
“I eat little these days,” he said. “I’m very sick in the morning. I’m
just having some soup for my dinner, and then I shall have a bit of
cheese.”
Philip’s glance unconsciously went to the absinthe, and Cronshaw,
seeing it, gave him the quizzical look with which he reproved the
admonitions of common sense.
“You have diagnosed my case, and you think it’s very wrong of me to
drink absinthe.”
“You’ve evidently got cirrhosis of the liver,” said Philip.
“Evidently.”
He looked at Philip in the way which had formerly had the power of
making him feel incredibly narrow. It seemed to point out that what he
was thinking was distressingly obvious; and when you have agreed with
the obvious what more is there to say? Philip changed the topic.
“When are you going back to Paris?”
“I’m not going back to Paris. I’m going to die.”
The very naturalness with which he said this startled Philip. He
thought of half a dozen things to say, but they seemed futile. He knew
that Cronshaw was a dying man.
“Are you going to settle in London then?” he asked lamely.
“What is London to me? I am a fish out of water. I walk through the
crowded streets, men jostle me, and I seem to walk in a dead city. I
felt that I couldn’t die in Paris. I wanted to die among my own people.
I don’t know what hidden instinct drew me back at the last.”
Philip knew of the woman Cronshaw had lived with and the two
draggle-tailed children, but Cronshaw had never mentioned them to him,
and he did not like to speak of them. He wondered what had happened to
them.
“I don’t know why you talk of dying,” he said.
“I had pneumonia a couple of winters ago, and they told me then it was
a miracle that I came through. It appears I’m extremely liable to it,
and another bout will kill me.”
“Oh, what nonsense! You’re not so bad as all that. You’ve only got to
take precautions. Why don’t you give up drinking?”
“Because I don’t choose. It doesn’t matter what a man does if he’s
ready to take the consequences. Well, I’m ready to take the
consequences. You talk glibly of giving up drinking, but it’s the only
thing I’ve got left now. What do you think life would be to me without
it? Can you understand the happiness I get out of my absinthe? I yearn
for it; and when I drink it I savour every drop, and afterwards I feel
my soul swimming in ineffable happiness. It disgusts you. You are a
puritan and in your heart you despise sensual pleasures. Sensual
pleasures are the most violent and the most exquisite. I am a man
blessed with vivid senses, and I have indulged them with all my soul. I
have to pay the penalty now, and I am ready to pay.”
Philip looked at him for a while steadily.
“Aren’t you afraid?”
For a moment Cronshaw did not answer. He seemed to consider his reply.
“Sometimes, when I’m alone.” He looked at Philip. “You think that’s a
condemnation? You’re wrong. I’m not afraid of my fear. It’s folly, the
Christian argument that you should live always in view of your death.
The only way to live is to forget that you’re going to die. Death is
unimportant. The fear of it should never influence a single action of
the wise man. I know that I shall die struggling for breath, and I know
that I shall be horribly afraid. I know that I shall not be able to
keep myself from regretting bitterly the life that has brought me to
such a pass; but I disown that regret. I now, weak, old, diseased,
poor, dying, hold still my soul in my hands, and I regret nothing.”
“D’you remember that Persian carpet you gave me?” asked Philip.
Cronshaw smiled his old, slow smile of past days.
“I told you that it would give you an answer to your question when you
asked me what was the meaning of life. Well, have you discovered the
answer?”
“No,” smiled Philip. “Won’t you tell it me?”
“No, no, I can’t do that. The answer is meaningless unless you discover
it for yourself.”