“Did you expect him to sing Schumann?” I asked.
“I don’t know why not. It would have been rather a good point. But I
think I should have expected him to sing sea chanteys or old English
country airs, you know, the sort of thing they used to sing at
fairings—blind fiddlers and the village swains dancing with the girls
on the threshing floor and all that sort of thing. I might have made
something rather beautiful out of that, but I can’t _see_ Edward
Driffield singing music hall songs. After all, when you’re drawing a
man’s portrait you must get the values right; you only confuse the
impression if you put in stuff that’s all out of tone.”
“You know that shortly after this he shot the moon. He let everybody
in.”
Roy was silent for fully a minute and he looked down at the carpet
reflectively.
“Yes, I knew there’d been some unpleasantness. Mrs. Driffield mentioned
it. I understand everything was paid up later before he finally bought
Ferne Court and settled down in the district. I don’t think it’s
necessary to dwell on an incident that is not really of any importance
in the history of his development. After all, it happened nearly forty
years ago. You know, there were some very curious sides to the old man.
One would have thought that after a rather sordid little scandal like
that the neighbourhood of Blackstable would be the last place he’d
choose to spend the rest of his life in when he’d become celebrated,
especially when it was the scene of his rather humble origins; but he
didn’t seem to mind a bit. He seemed to think the whole thing rather a
good joke. He was quite capable of telling people who came to lunch
about it and it was very embarrassing for Mrs. Driffield. I should like
you to know Amy better. She’s a very remarkable woman. Of course the old
man had written all his great books before he ever set eyes on her, but
I don’t think anyone can deny that it was she who created the rather
imposing and dignified figure that the world saw for the last
twenty-five years of his life. She’s been very frank with me. She didn’t
have such an easy job of it. Old Driffield had some very queer ways and
she had to use a good deal of tact to get him to behave decently. He was
very obstinate in some things and I think a woman of less character
would have been discouraged. For instance, he had a habit that poor Amy
had a lot of trouble to break him of: after he’d finished his meat and
vegetables he’d take a piece of bread and wipe the plate clean with it
and eat it.”
“Do you know what that means?” I said. “It means that for long he had so
little to eat that he couldn’t afford to waste any food he could get.”
“Well, that may be, but it’s not a very pretty habit for a distinguished
man of letters. And then, he didn’t exactly tipple, but he was rather
fond of going down to the Bear and Key at Blackstable and having a few
beers in the public bar. Of course there was no harm in it, but it did
make him rather conspicuous, especially in summer when the place was
full of trippers. He didn’t mind who he talked to. He didn’t seem able
to realize that he had a position to keep up. You can’t deny it was
rather awkward after they’d been having a lot of interesting people to
lunch—people like Edmund Gosse, for instance, and Lord Curzon—that he
should go down to a public house and tell the plumber and the baker and
the sanitary inspector what he thought about them. But of course that
could be explained away. One could say that he was after local colour
and was interested in types. But he had some habits that really were
rather difficult to cope with. Do you know that it was with the greatest
difficulty that Amy Driffield could ever get him to take a bath?”
“He was born at a time when people thought it unhealthy to take too many
baths. I don’t suppose he ever lived in a house that had a bathroom till
he was fifty.”
“Well, he said he never had had a bath more than once a week and he
didn’t see why he should change his habits at his time of life. Then Amy
said that he must change his under linen every day, but he objected to
that too. He said he’d always been used to wearing his vest and drawers
for a week and it was nonsense, it only wore them out to have them
washed so often. Mrs. Driffield did everything she could to tempt him to
have a bath every day, with bath salts and perfumes, you know, but
nothing would induce him to, and as he grew older he wouldn’t even have
one once a week. She tells me that for the last three years of his life
he never had a bath at all. Of course, all this is between ourselves;
I’m merely telling it to show you that in writing his life I shall have
to use a good deal of tact. I don’t see how one can deny that he was
just a wee bit unscrupulous in money matters and he had a kink in him
that made him take a strange pleasure in the society of his inferiors
and some of his personal habits were rather disagreeable, but I don’t
think that side of him was the most significant. I don’t want to say
anything that’s untrue, but I do think there’s a certain amount that’s
better left unsaid.”
“Don’t you think it would be more interesting if you went the whole hog
and drew him warts and all?”
“Oh, I couldn’t. Amy Driffield would never speak to me again. She only
asked me to do the life because she felt she could trust my discretion.
I must behave like a gentleman.”
“It’s very hard to be a gentleman and a writer.”
“I don’t see why. And besides, you know what the critics are. If you
tell the truth they only say you’re cynical and it does an author no
good to get a reputation for cynicism. Of course I don’t deny that if I
were thoroughly unscrupulous I could make a sensation. It would be
rather amusing to show the man with his passion for beauty and his
careless treatment of his obligations, his fine style and his personal
hatred for soap and water, his idealism and his tippling in disreputable
pubs; but honestly, would it pay? They’d only say I was imitating Lytton
Strachey. No, I think I shall do much better to be allusive and charming
and rather subtle, you know the sort of thing, and tender. I think one
ought always to _see_ a book before one starts it. Well, I see this
rather like a portrait of Van Dyck, with a good deal of atmosphere, you
know, and a certain gravity, and with a sort of aristocratic
distinction. Do you know what I mean? About eighty thousand words.”
He was absorbed for a moment in the ecstasy of æsthetic contemplation.
In his mind’s eye he saw a book, in royal octavo, slim and light in the
hand, printed with large margins on handsome paper in a type that was
both clear and comely, and I think he saw a binding in smooth black
cloth with a decoration in gold and gilt lettering. But being human,
Alroy Kear could not, as I suggested a few pages back, hold the ecstasy
that beauty yields for more than a little while. He gave me a candid
smile.
“But how the devil am I to get over the first Mrs. Driffield?”
“The skeleton in the cupboard,” I murmured.
“She is damned awkward to deal with. She was married to Driffield for a
good many years. Amy has very decided views on the subject, but I don’t
see how I can possibly meet them. You see, her attitude is that Rose
Driffield exerted a most pernicious influence on her husband, and that
she did everything possible to ruin him morally, physically, and
financially; she was beneath him in every way, at least intellectually
and spiritually, and it was only because he was a man of immense force
and vitality that he survived. It was of course a very unfortunate
marriage. It’s true that she’s been dead for ages and it seems a pity to
rake up old scandals and wash a lot of dirty linen in public; but the
fact remains that all Driffield’s greatest books were written when he
was living with her. Much as I admire the later books, and no one is
more conscious of their genuine beauty than I am, and they have a
restraint and a sort of classical sobriety which are admirable, I must
admit that they haven’t the tang and the vigour and the smell and bustle
of life of the early ones. It does seem to me that you can’t altogether
ignore the influence his first wife had on his work.”
“What are you going to do about it?” I asked.
“Well, I can’t see why all that part of his life shouldn’t be treated
with the greatest possible reserve and delicacy, so as not to offend the
most exacting susceptibility, and yet with a sort of manly frankness, if
you understand what I mean, that would be rather moving.”
“It sounds a very tall order.”
“As I see it, there’s no need to dot the i’s or to cross the t’s. It can
only be a question of getting just the right touch. I wouldn’t state
more than I could help, but I would suggest what was essential for the
reader to realize. You know, however gross a subject is you can soften
its unpleasantness if you treat it with dignity. But I can do nothing
unless I am in complete possession of the facts.”
“Obviously you can’t cook them unless you have them.”
Roy had been expressing himself with a fluent ease that revealed the
successful lecturer. I wished (a) that I could express myself with so
much force and aptness, never at a loss for a word, rolling off the
sentences without a moment’s hesitation; and (b) that I did not feel so
miserably incompetent with my one small insignificant person to
represent the large and appreciative audience that Roy was instinctively
addressing. But now he paused. A genial look came over his face, which
his enthusiasm had reddened and the heat of the day caused to perspire,
and the eyes that had held me with a dominating brilliance softened and
smiled.
“This is where you come in, old boy,” he said pleasantly.
I have always found it a very good plan in life to say nothing when I
had nothing to say and when I do not know how to answer a remark to hold
my tongue. I remained silent and looked back at Roy amiably.
“You know more about his life at Blackstable than anybody else.”
“I don’t know about that. There must be a number of people at
Blackstable who saw as much of him in the old days as I did.”
“That may be, but after all they’re presumably not people of any
importance, and I don’t think they matter very much.”
“Oh, I see. You mean that I’m the only person who might blow the gaff.”
“Roughly, that is what I do mean, if you feel that you must put it in a
facetious way.”
I saw that Roy was not inclined to be amused. I was not annoyed, for I
am quite used to people not being amused at my jokes. I often think that
the purest type of the artist is the humorist who laughs alone at his
own jests.
“And you saw a good deal of him later on in London, I believe.”
“Yes.”
“That is when he had an apartment somewhere in Lower Belgravia.”
“Well, lodgings in Pimlico.”
Roy smiled drily.
“We won’t quarrel about the exact designation of the quarter of London
in which he lived. You were very intimate with him then.”
“Fairly.”
“How long did that last?”
“About a couple of years.”
“How old were you then?”
“Twenty.”
“Now look here, I want you to do me a great favour. It won’t take you
very long and it will be of quite inestimable value to me. I want you to
jot down as fully as you can all your recollections of Driffield, and
all you remember about his wife and his relations with her and so on,
both at Blackstable and in London.”
“Oh, my dear fellow, that’s asking a great deal. I’ve got a lot of work
to do just now.”
“It needn’t take you very long. You can write it quite roughly, I mean.
You needn’t bother about style, you know, or anything like that. I’ll
put the style in. All I want are the facts. After all, you know them and
nobody else does. I don’t want to be pompous or anything like that, but
Driffield was a great man and you owe it to his memory and to English
literature to tell everything you know. I shouldn’t have asked you, but
you told me the other day that you weren’t going to write anything about
him yourself. It would be rather like a dog in a manger to keep to
yourself a whole lot of material that you have no intention of using.”
Thus Roy appealed at once to my sense of duty, my indolence, my
generosity, and my rectitude.
“But why does Mrs. Driffield want me to go down and stay at Ferne
Court?” I asked.
“Well, we talked it over. It’s a very jolly house to stay in. She does
one very well, and it ought to be divine in the country just now. She
thought it would be very nice and quiet for you if you felt inclined to
write your recollections there; of course, I said I couldn’t promise
that, but naturally being so near Blackstable would remind you of all
sorts of things that you might otherwise forget. And then, living in his
house, among his books and things, it would make the past seem much more
real. We could all talk about him, and you know how in the heat of
conversation things come back. Amy’s very quick and clever. She’s been
in the habit of making notes of Driffield’s talk for years, and after
all it’s quite likely that you’ll say things on the spur of the moment
that you wouldn’t think of writing and she can just jot them down
afterward. And we can play tennis and bathe.”
“I’m not very fond of staying with people,” I said. “I hate getting up
for a nine-o’clock breakfast to eat things I have no mind to. I don’t
like going for walks, and I’m not interested in other people’s
chickens.”
“She’s a lonely woman now. It would be a kindness to her and it would be
a kindness to me too.”