It really _was_ rather like a first night; but there was this
intimidating difference, that whereas the worst play in the world draws
at least one good house, we were by no means certain of that measure of
success. Our venture had been announced, most kindly, in Divisional
Orders, as well as verbally at the Y.M. Cinema; but still we knew it was
not everybody who believed in us, and that 'a wash-out' had been
predicted with some confidence. Even those in authority, who had most
handsomely given me my head, were some of them inclined to shake theirs
over the result. It was therefore an exciting moment when we opened at
two o'clock on the appointed afternoon. There was more occasion for
excitement when I had to lock the door for the last time some weeks
later; and the two disappointments are not to be compared; but my
private cup has seldom filled more suddenly than when I unlocked it with
my own hand--and beheld not one solitary man in sight! 'A wash-out' was
not the word. It was my Niagara.
At least it looked like it; but after one bad quarter of an hour it
turned into a steady trickle of repentant warriors. If the two of us
had been holding a redoubt against the enemy, I am not sure that we
should have been more delighted to see them than we were. In half an
hour the big reading table was surrounded by solemn faces; each of the
two stoves had its full circle in the easy chairs; the New Book Table
had been discovered, was being thronged, and the best piano in the area
yielding real music to the touch of a real pianist. The Rest Hut had
started on its short but happy voyage.
Those there were who came demanding candles and boot-polish, and who
fled before our softest answers; and there were seekers after billiards
who had to be directed elsewhere for their game. I had tipped too many
cues at the last hut, and stopped too many games for the further
performance of that worse than thankless task, to have the essential
quality of the Rest Hut subverted by a billiard-table. The readers,
writers, musicians, and above all the weary men, of an Army Corps were
the fish for my rod; and we had not been open an hour before I was
enjoying good sport, tempered by early misgiving about my flies.
The first book that I connect with a specific inquiry was one that I had
certainly failed to order. It was 'anything of Walter de la Mare's'; and
I felt a Philistine for having nothing, but a fool for supposing for a
moment that I had pitched my hut within the boundaries of Philistia.
There might have been a conspiracy to undeceive me on the point without
delay. The Poetry Shelf (despite deficiencies so promptly proven)
received attention from the start. I forget if it was Mr. de la Mare's
admirer who presently took out _The Golden Treasury_, of which we
mercifully had several copies; it was certainly a Jock. I showed him the
Shelf, and could have wrung his hand for the tone in which he murmured
'Keats!' It was reverential, awe-stricken and just right. Clearly _his_
Dominie had not abused the taws.
In the meantime I had taken a deposit on three prose volumes. These were
they, these the first three authors to cross my counter: