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."