THE ALCOVE
Each week the Pitt League posted up on the walls of the theatre a notice
of the times and places of the various classes that were to be held.
There were some six rooms at the disposal of this enterprising society.
There was the attic at the top of Block I, a noisy room because the
dramatic society would probably be found rehearsing next door; then
there was the theatre, an impossible room; in the first place because it
was too big, and in the second because the scenic artists behind the
curtain carried on a continual dialogue to the tune of: “Where is that
blue paint?” “Have you put up the wings?” “Where the hell’s the hammer?”
which dialogue the scene-shifters accompanied with suitable crashes and
landslides. It was a poor room for study--the
[Illustration: THE BILLIARD ROOM AT MAINZ.
[_To face page 172._
]
theatre; and then there was the field officers’ dining-room--that was
not too bad. But one window-pane was missing, and there was no heating
apparatus, and the orderlies were always wanting to lay the plates;
altogether there was not a superfluity of spare space; there was really
only one decent room--the Alcove--and that was for one hour of the day
allotted to the botanists and anatomists. For the rest of the time an
agenda at the bottom of the Pitt League poster announced that “the
Alcove was reserved for authors, architects and other students.”
The Alcove was a small room opening out of the billiard-room, and its
possession by the “authors, architects and other students” was a
privilege jealously guarded. Not that we ever resorted to force, the
mere strength of personality was sufficient. A few acid epigrams drove
the intruders away with the impression that after all there were
lunatics in the camp. Only one man stayed for more than an hour, and
that was Captain Frobisher, a large, fat man who was doubtless an
excellent soldier, but who was not an addition to a literary society
that prided itself upon its exclusiveness. After all, when one is
searching for a lost rhyme, or trying to make an honest scene
sufficiently obscure to protect Canon Lyttelton’s delicate
susceptibilities, it is disconcerting to have to listen to a
conversation of this sort:--
“ ... And what do you think of the new offensive, Skipper?”
“Oh, we’ll wipe the swine off the face of the earth. I hope our men
don’t take too many prisoners. There’s only one sort of Hun that’s any
use, and that’s a dead one. Excreta, that’s all they are, excreta....
What I say is, smash ’em, and then when they’re down tread on ’em.
That’s all they’re fit for. A good Hun is a dead Hun.”
Of course such rhetoric is excellent in its place, and in the mouth of a
politician would appear as the supreme unction shed over the warring
banners of humanity. But there are times....
Frobisher must go. We all decided that. The only difficulty was that ...
well, even in confinement one must show respect to a senior officer. It
would have to be done with considerable tact; we could hardly approach
him ourselves. We supposed that if he really wanted, he could defend
himself on the ground that he was a student, a student of the
philosophical interpretation of a dozen cocktails. But yet he had to go.
And finally Stone undertook the job.
It took two bottles of Rhine wine to screw him up to the proper pitch,
but we got him there at last; and nobly did he fulfil our trust. It was
an unforgettable afternoon. Captain Frobisher was sitting at the middle
table discussing over a bottle of wine his schemes for the entire
destruction of the German race. The old saws were rolling smoothly from
his tongue.
“We must let them have it; what I say is, starve them out, bomb their
towns, confiscate their colonies; then make them pay right up to the
hilt, a crushing indemnity. They’d have done the same to us. An eye for
an eye. That’s the principle we must work on, a tooth for a tooth.” Even
a patriotic bishop could not have been more humanely vindictive.
And then we led in Stone.
He sat on the edge of the table nearest to the captain; his huge head of
hair was flung back in a wild profusion, his shirt was open at the
throat, he looked for all the world like a second Byron. And for the
space of an hour he lectured on the higher life. As a testimony to the
potency of the Rhine vintage, it was without parallel. It was a noble
exposition.
He began with Schopenhauer; the jargon of metaphysics reeled into
anacolutha: the absolute, the negation of the will; the thing in itself;
phenomena, and the real. The mind was dazed with the conflicting
theories of causation, and after each sounding peroration he recited in
a crooning monotone the less cheerful musings of the Shropshire Lad;
while we, entering into his mood, gazed up at him with enraptured eyes,
murmuring: “Delightful! Oh, delightful!”
Captain Frobisher fidgeted nervously on his form, he moved first to one
extremity, then to another. Periodically he attempted a conversation
with his companion; but every time he began, Stone broke into a state of
fervour more than usually impassioned, and Frobisher’s attention was
irresistibly drawn towards this strange creature who had emerged
suddenly out of a world he did not know. Stone realised his traditional
conception of the romantic poet, the long-haired, sprawling,
effervescent creature that he had never seen, but that he had been told
the war had killed. And here into the very centre of Mainz, into this
home of militarism, was introduced the loathsome atmosphere of Paris and
the Café Royal, this unpleasant reincarnation of the hectic nineties.
For an hour he stood it, and then Stone arrived at the point to which
all his previous eloquence had led. “I don’t know,” he said, “I have
thought it out for a long time, but I am still uncertain as to which of
all the collective emotions has done most harm, has wrought most damage
to the suffering individual. Once I thought it was religion, religion
with its bigotry and ritual, its confessional and chains; but during the
last four years I have been sorely tempted--sorely tempted, my dear
Waugh--to believe that of all the evils that can befall a community,
there is none worse than the scourge of Patriotism.”
It was the limit, beyond which even the endurance of a soldier could not
pass. Captain Frobisher threw at Stone one glance charged with distrust,
and strode from the room. He never entered it again; and the “authors,
architects and other students” were able to return to earth, and become
once more respectable citizens.
Of the architects and other students we saw very little. Occasionally a
linguist would drift in with a conversation grammar and a notebook, and
sometimes a financier would draw up tables of expenditure and loss, but
on the whole the Alcove was the property of “Wordsmiths.”
There were about five of us in all, and as soon as _appel_ was over we
used to proceed towards the billiard-room laden with pens and paper. At
this early hour there were usually not more than three of us, as Tarrant
and Stone preferred to take breakfast at a later hour; but Milton Hayes
was invariably to be found there, embellishing lyrics, or putting the
final touches to his musical comedy, and in the intervals of production
expounding his latest æsthetic theories.
A vivid contrast was presented by Tarrant and Stone. With popular taste
they were both equally unconcerned. Relative merit interested them not
at all; their standards were deep-laid and inelastic.
Tarrant usually appeared in the Alcove at about one o’clock, and
observed a ritual that would with any one else have savoured of
affectation, but was with him perfectly natural. Nature had endowed him
with generous proportions, more built for comfort than for speed; and he
accentuated the natural roll of his gait by his strange footwear. A pair
of field boots had been abbreviated into shoes by the camp cobbler in
such a way as to admit of the insertion of two fingers between the
leather and the instep. To keep them on his feet as he walked, Tarrant
had to resort to a straddle that was one of the features of camp life.
And as he entered he bulked largely in the door of the Alcove,
marvellously shod, carrying under one arm a dictionary, a notebook and a
Thesaurus, and over the other a cardigan waistcoat and a green velvet
scarf.
He flung his books noisily on the table and then proceeded to array
himself for the ardours of composition. He first of all divested himself
of his collar and tie, and wrapped round his throat the green velvet
scarf, that would have lain more appropriately as a stole on the
shoulders of an ecclesiastic than it did as a muffler on those of a
_Gefangener_, engaged on a psychological study of seduction. Tarrant
then removed his tunic, disclosing a woollen waistcoat, over which he
proceeded to draw the second woollen coat that he had brought with him.
He explained that they brought him physical ease.
“You see, old man,” he said, “it’s not much use my mind being free, if
my limbs are encased in even the loosest of military tunics.”
He then proceeded to work.
Every writer, of course, has his own particular foible, and Tarrant’s
was an appalling accuracy in gauging the exact number of words that he
had written. Most writers are quite content to add up the number of
lines in a page, then find the average number of words in a line and
multiply. But Tarrant would have none of these slipshod methods.
“On that principle,” he said, “I suppose you’d call a line a line
whether it goes right across the page or not?”
“Yes,” I confessed.
He gave a grunt of contempt.
“And then you say _The Loom of Youth_ is 110,000 words long; why, half
the lines you call ten words long only consist of two words--‘Bloody
Hell.’ That’s not the way to do things.”
And so Tarrant laboriously added up every word. It became quite a mania
with him. So much so, in fact, that he used to embark on long
discussions as to the derivation of amalgamated words, and whether
“lunch-time” should count as two or one. For his rough draft he kept
beside him a small slip of paper, on which at the end of each sentence
he used to make mathematical calculations, that reminded me of school
cricket, the scoring box, and the attempt to keep level with the tens.
Correction involved much labour. At the end of the sentence he might
have noted down 277 words. Then he would revise; half a clause
consisting of eight words would be omitted, and on the slip of paper
down went 269. Then a celibate noun called for an adjectival mate, and
270 was hoisted amid applause. It was an amusing game, but it took up a
great deal of time. Very rarely did Tarrant produce more than 400 words
as the result of three hours’ work, and his absolute maximum for a day
was 1100.
“All great men work slowly,” he said. “Flaubert took seven years over
_Madame Bovary_, and I shall take only a year over this,” and with a
sudden sweep he flashed the discussion back on to his pet subject of
words.
“You see, I’ve done 48,374 words, and there are three more chapters of
approximately 3000 words each. Now will that be enough?”
I told him that Mr. Grant Richards had stipulated in one of his weekly
advertisements, that if he liked a book, it could range between the
limits of 45,000 and 200,000 words, and Tarrant once more returned
peacefully to his addition.
* * * * *
Stone, Tarrant’s constant companion through the tedium of eighteen
months’ imprisonment, was chiefly conspicuous for his conversation.
Nobody ever actually saw him writing, or had indeed read anything he had
written, but he always carried about with him a notebook, that gave the
impression that he had either just risen from his labours, or was merely
waiting the inspiration of the moment. As a scholar and a critic he was
easily the most brilliant of our little circle, and it was delightful to
hear him dethrone the idols of the twentieth century. He had very little
use for any critic since Pater, or any novelist since Sterne. Of the
modern novelists he maintained that the only two worth considering were
H. H. Richardson and Arnold Bennett, though to Gilbert Cannan he
extended a hand of deprecatory welcome. Wells was the chief target of
his wit.
“I don’t know what to make of him,” he used to say. “Sometimes I think
we may almost excuse him on the ground that if he had not written the
_New Machiavelli_, _Perkins and Mankind_ would not exist. But, really,
as I read his recent stuff, _Marriage_, _The Soul of a Bishop_, _Joan
and Peter_, why, Max has ceased to be the parodist of Wells, Wells has
become the parodist of Max.”
As an actual “Wordsmith” Stone enjoyed a reputation something similar to
that of Theodore Watts. One felt that he had only to publish what he had
written, and he would receive world-wide recognition. In the notebook
that never left him, he was supposed to carry the key that should unlock
his heart. There lay two completed poems, and a tenth of a novel. But
they were quite illegible. None of us ever saw them. Occasionally when
the influence of Rhine wine had somewhat weakened the phenomenal barrier
that separated Stone’s mentality from the real world of his metaphysics,
he would promise to inscribe them for us in the morning in the full
indelibility of purple pencil. Once he even went so far as to recite one
of them; but the words came to us droningly sweet through a mist of
inaudibility, and there remains only the recollection of certain
sounding words, a low murmur as of a distant waterfall. In the morning
all the promises were forgotten, and sometimes I have been tempted to
wonder whether those poems had any real existence in the sphere of
phenomena. Stone was so at the mercy of his metaphysics, he indulged in
expeditions into a world whither I had neither the wish nor the ability
to follow him, and perhaps he merely imagined those two poems as some
manifestation of that inexplicable “Thing-in-itself” over which he was
so concerned. Perhaps they had no counterpart in that draggled notebook;
and though it is quite possible that some day we shall see those poems
immortally enshrined in vellum, personally I rather doubt it.
Those hours in the Alcove contain all I personally would wish to
remember of my captivity. It was a delightful room, with its white
tables and windows opening on the fowl-run; it was a perfect place in
which to write. The click of billiard balls, and the murmurous rise and
fall of inaudible conversations provided the ideal setting for thought.
Personally I can never write in a room that is quite silent; its
isolation frightens me, and through an open window I listen in vain for
the indistinct noises of humanity.
And then towards evening, when the labours of the day were ended, we
would sit together round a bottle of a villainous brand of
_Laubenheimer_ and discuss the merits of Tchecov and de Maupassant. Long
contests were waged there on the vexed problems of æsthetics; the limits
of dramatic art, _vers libre_, the function of criticism. All these in
their turn passed through the sieve of dialectic. At times even
captivity seemed a pleasant business, so full of leisure was it, after
the bustle of the months that had preceded it. And no doubt years hence,
when the rough outlines have become gently blurred against a harmonious
background, we shall cast a glamour over those lazy days, and see in
them a realisation of Bohemian dreams, of a Paris café and Verlaine
leaning over a white table-cloth declaiming his lovely valedictory
lines. And perhaps Time, that great alchemist, may even go so far as to
transmute that foul white wine into the purest absinthe. We shall think
of Dowson and the Cheshire Cheese, of the Rhymers’ Club and the
delightful artifice of the nineties, and we shall claim companionship
with those brave innovators to whom a finished work of art was a
sufficient recompense for their weariness. But within it was not really
like that; and as Pater has said, no doubt that ideal period of artistic
endeavour has never had any existence outside the imagination of the
dreamer, sick with a sort of far-away nostalgia, a vague longing for
wider prospects and less narrowing horizons. Every generation has flung
its eyes backwards over the past, and thought “if it had only been then
that we had lived--then, when the values of life were still clear and
simple,” and round certain names and ages there has been woven in
consequence the thin gossamer of Romance, and the artist has found
comfort in his conception of a world that has been passed by. From these
backward glances and averted faces has emerged much that will never
pass--Thais and Salambo, Henry Esmond and Marius the Epicurean.
During the last three years I have often wished that I had been born
thirty years earlier, at a time when the influence of French literature
was making itself so keenly felt, and when Verlaine was the light about
the young men’s feet. It is a glamorous world that we catch glimpses of
through the opening doors of Mr. George Moore’s confessions. But I
suppose that really it would not have been so very wonderful after all,
and that those delicate creatures whose feet moved through Symons’s
verse to a continual rustle of silk and cambric, were probably the most
tawdry of _grisettes_, and those Paris cafés and the many-coloured
glasses of liqueur, they were very much like the Alcove, I expect; and
the Alcove is a place where no one would wish to sojourn indefinitely.
But we shall always look back at it with some affection. We spent there
many happy hours, and there the weariness of captivity was relieved by
the human comradeship that alone makes life endurable. We shall not
easily forget how, when the billiard-room was closed for the night, we
used to step out into the square, just as the sunset was flooding it
with an amber haze, and walk beneath the chestnuts, prolonging the
conversations of the afternoon, until the cracked bell and waking lights
drove us back to the barracks. I shall never forget those evenings.
Probably never before was the citadel--that home of militarism--the
scene of so much artistic discussion; and it may be that in after days
our ghosts will linger round those memorial places, and that on some
quiet evening two tenuous and ungainly forms will be seen swinging down
the avenue beneath the chestnuts--
“Dans le vieux parc solitaire et glacée,”
and the sentries of some Jäger regiment will catch the sound of thin
voices floating across the night. They will be still arguing over the
same old questions, those two foolish ghosts, those questions whose
solution the rest of the world has long since decided to ignore.
“But look here now, honestly, surely Brooke is not too bad; listen to
this ...” and the faint words of “Mamua” would be borne over last year’s
leaves.
But the elder ghost would shake his head; and a thin reedy voice would
pipe--
“No, it won’t do, old man, won’t do, only a whispering gallery.” And
they would pass on, still arguing, still differing, and still,
apparently, very good friends.
And the two German sentries would look at one another sympathetically.
“Kriegs-gefangeners, Fritz,” one would say, “captured in the great war.
There were a lot of ’em here, and those two, you’ll always see them
walkin’ up and down there talking the most awful rot, all about poetry
and things. Poor fellows! probably a little wrong in the head, they
were, a bit maddish you know; they look a bit that way.”
And it is not for me to deny it.