spending two years over a group that his conscience forbids him to
finish in as many months. Every year there are rumours that the Chantrey
trustees are to buy something from his studio. And every year they just
fail to do so for varying reasons. Poor Wensley, if ever a genius cut
life out of marble (and will never, I'm afraid, cut marble out of life)
it is he, hammering his years away in the purlieus of Chelsea. I have
seen a good deal of him lately, and once I am fairly inside his studio
find it very hard to escape those siren hands of his white-limbed men
and maidens under a good two hours. His group for this year's Academy,
if he has been able to finish it, will be as good as, if not better
than, anything that he has yet done, I think. May the gods be kind to
him, for he needs their pity in more ways than one. He is too good to be
allowed to fritter his life away in illustrating nursery books and
repairing mediocre saints; and there are times when one cannot help
feeling that his long knocking at the gates of official appreciation is
making him just a little bitter--brief times, for the next moment his
eye will be bright again and his smile so boyish as to make his fifty
years of struggle seem almost mythical.
Leaving him there, with his beautiful, unwanted works about him, I
always encounter a certain wave of spiritual depression. For, look where
one will, one's eyes would seem to be confronted only with the
grotesque, the degenerate, the pernicious; so much so that it becomes
hard to realise them merely as the little unworthy successes of a very
passing hour. Our newest music would appear fain to wed itself to the
obscene imaginings of a decadent poesy, to find its loftiest inspiration
in pathological versions of Elektra and Salome. Our latest dances seek
to lift into the very publicity that he lives for the erotic beastliness
of some such vicious weakling as a Parisian apache. Our most up-to-date
novels probe the labyrinths of sexual perversity at a shilling a time
under the banner of an emancipated virility, and our Sunday newspapers
reap the dung-hills for their headlines.
By this time, if it is on foot, my middle-Victorianism will nearly have
reached South Kensington Station, or, if it has been driving, Carter's
rosy-gilled countenance will be at the carriage-door wondering why it
doesn't get out. And so the wave will pass over me, and I shall be
rocking once again upon a more equable ocean. I shall behold your little
flower-girl hungering for her beautiful gown, and beside her
nine-tenths at least of her brothers and sisters, hands out for the real
beauty, and entirely impervious to the Wildes and the Strausses, the
Beardsleys, Johns, and Polaires. After all--let us remember it humbly
with thanksgiving--these people do not penetrate our homes. They are
doled out to us in public. We scan them in galleries. They are momentary
sensations in the circulating libraries. But we don't live with them. At
least I don't think we do, and in one way and another I have seen the
insides of a good many different homes. For a man may perhaps
temporarily subordinate his sense of decency to a well-meaning desire
for artistic fairness. He may accord a judicial word of praise to some
particularly masterly portrayal of a libertine's blotches or the pimples
of a fading courtesan. But he will seldom bear them home in his bosom to
set up among his _lares_ and _penates_. And since it is by these that we
must judge (for they are the heart-judgment of the race), my billow of
pessimism drops behind me and expends itself in foam upon the rocks.
No, it is our Thackerays and Fieldings, our Dickenses and Shakespeares,
that we still escort, hats off, to the true and formative intimacy of
our firesides. Our Blyths and Waleses and Victoria Crosses--my
classification is mainly themic--are for furtive journeys on the
underground, and a hasty burying in obscure corners; where a sanitary
Providence no doubt arranges for them some useful and inconspicuous
destiny.
Well, the hour is late, and I must stop. I can hear footsteps in the
hall, and in comes Molly, looking very gay, if a little sleepy, in her
newest evening frock. She has just been with some rather dull girls (Ah,
Molly, Molly, they are non-Shavians, I admit, but just talk to them
about horses!) to see a play. "The--_what_ was the name, my dear?"
"'The Scarlet Pimpernel,'" confesses Molly.
I look surprised--even incredulous--remembering certain sweeping
damnations of a month or two ago. "But surely," I venture timidly,
"isn't that the very--er--acme of provincial melodrama?"
The words have a strangely familiar sound, and Molly appears to
recognise them.
"Of course it is," she says. "I was _taken_ there."
The expression suggests ropes and cart-tails, and I commiserate with her
appropriately.
"Poor Molly, and of course you--you----"
But my courage fails me, and I dare not finish the question. She tosses
her dark head a little.
"W-well," she stammers, and then, being very honest with herself, stops
short, and begins to grow a little pink. I gasp, half rising from my
chair.
"Surely," I exclaim, "you--you don't mean to say you actually _enjoyed_
it?"
There is a moment's appalled stillness; and then, very rosy, she stoops
suddenly to kiss my forehead.
"Daddy," she says, "you're an old _beast_."
Ever yrs.,
PETER HARDING.
VI
_To Miss Sarah Harding, The Orphanage, Little Blessington, Dorset._
91B HARLEY STREET, W.,
_March_ 31, 1910.
MY DEAR SALLY,
If the proprietors of a very excellent emulsion of cod liver oil did not
send me (as they do) a little memorandum book at the beginning of each
year, I should find letter-writing to my sister considerably more
difficult. The book is not spacious enough to be called a diary, and the
lines allotted to each day are merely sufficient to contain the baldest
records of two or three dry facts. But while it is less than a diary,
for the keeping of which, if it weren't for you, I'm afraid that I
should never have had even the desire, it is entirely valuable as a
means to an end. And may the aforesaid proprietors wax therefore as fat
and well-liking as their advertised babies. For although you may never
have thought of it, oh sister mine, it was by no means an easy condition
that you imposed upon me in exchange for your consent to my wedding.
"One letter a month, Peter," I can see your stern uplifted finger even
now, "one letter a month you must faithfully promise me, or Esther shall
only capture you over my dead body."
And although in those glorious days it seemed but a little bargain to
set one's hand to, yet I may now reveal to your horrified gaze--as
regards the pre-emulsion period at any rate--visions of a haggard
physician battering his cranium in a desperate effort to jog his memory
for news. A little reflection will secure you from considering this to
be an affront. For the very existence of such visions is the most
eloquent testimony to the state of his brotherly affections; and to
prevent your instantly taking the next train to town, I can assure you
positively that the wing of a merciful providence (the liver wing) took
him under its protection at the psychological moment. Thanks to the cod,
its oil, and the emulsion thereof, his memory has been propped up just
when he began to need it most. And this is why I can assure you most
positively that, although ourselves and our daffodils are shrivelling
to-day in the bitterest of easterly winds, but three short weeks ago we
were picking primroses in the woods of Upper Basildon.
We were staying of course with Uncle Jacob, who was celebrating his
seventy-sixth birthday and the fourth anniversary of his retirement from
the judicial bench in contravening all the known rules of health--or, at
any rate, the modern conception of them. Esther and Molly went down on
the Friday night, and I joined them on Saturday, his birthday.
It was a lovely warm morning, with just enough briskness in the air to
remind one that winter was still fighting a rearguard action, and just
enough warmth in the sun to make one quite certain that it would end in
a general defeat. Slipping into Portland Road Station in golfing kit, I
caught an early train at Paddington, and was down at Goring soon after
ten, where Esther and Molly met me in the pony-trap. We were to spend
the day upon some private links upon the downs above Streatley, a
beautiful, invigorating piece of country, and an offshoot, I think, of
the Berkshire Ridgeway. From a strictly golfing point of view the course
is, I suppose, an easy one. To players like myself, of the occasional
order, too delighted at achieving anything that may decently be called a
stroke to mind very much about a little pulling or slicing, the
penalties, no doubt, are scarcely severe enough. But there are
possibilities, at any rate, of some grand, exhilarating drives; the
greens are capital; and there is seldom the nerve-racking ordeal of
playing off before a multitude of cynical observers.
Instead, this particular course is filled for me with memories of
elemental foursomes, innocent of caddies, unwitnessed by any living
creature other than some simple sheep or an occasional pony, but filled
to the brim with such dramatic fluctuations of chance and skill as are
unknown to (or at any rate unremembered by) your poor plus 1 players at
Richmond or St. Andrews. For golf, like her fairer sister cricket,
reveals her wild and fickle heart in a truer lovableness at such places
as this. Kneeling on immaculate turf, you may salute her queenly
finger-tips at Hoylake or Sandwich or Rye--as her sister's at Lord's.
But to know her as she is--to know them both as they really are--to
snatch kisses from their sweet and rosy lips, to look deep into their
honest, if baffling eyes, you must woo them, afar from fashion, by
brae-side and village green.
And yet--and yet--well, perhaps that's just how we duffers always did
talk. Like amateur mountaineers, we are fain to conceal our lack of
craft in an admiration of extraneous circumstances--such as the view,
for instance. And indeed the view from almost any of these particular
eighteen holes is of the most comforting type that I know--a wide,
pastoral expanse, silvered here and there with water, and apparently
melting upon its horizons into a veiled and delicate endlessness. Upon
such a view I would quite willingly close my eyes for the last time. And
when the day comes for me to retire it will be to the arm of some such
westward hill as this that I shall trust my aged pilgrimage.
Grindelwald, Como, Cap Martin--they are good enough company for a mile
or two of the road. To have known them has been a real privilege, and to
meet them again would be an equal joy. But for the long, all-weathers'
tramp, for the comfortable silences of true comradeship, and above all
for those last hobbling footsteps of the journey, give me some little
hill like this above English cornlands.
And, taking everything into consideration, I can really find very little
in the way of an emotional demand that the view, for example, from the
fourth hole of this particular course doesn't amply satisfy. For eyes
necessarily accustomed to close studies and narrower outlooks there is
space enough and to spare, and grandeur too, if they are content to
accept it from above rather than below, and to feast upon those
heavenly Himalayas and ethereal Pacifics that Nature and a south-west
wind will always provide for the untravelled. As an echo, or perhaps
fountain, of which sentiments let me extract for you three verses from a
weekly paper upon my table. They are entitled--it is the Prayer Book
heading of the traveller's psalm--"Levavi oculos."
Mahomed, when the mountains stood
Aloof from his so strong desire,
Mahomed, being great and good--
And likewise free--concealed his ire.
And since their will might not be bent,
Mahomed to the mountains went.
I too, a clerk in Bedford Row,
Long years the mountains yearned to see,
And since to them I could not go,
Besought that they might come to me.
"If Faith," I said, "can mountains move,
How surely should they come for Love."
And lo, to-day I watch them crowd,
Range upon range, above my head,
Cordilleras of golden cloud,
And snow-white Andes, captive-led,
Yea, Himalayas, crowned with snow,
Above my head in Bedford Row.
Wiser than Mahomed, like this little clerk, I begin to think that I can
see myself enthroned, in my retirement, and letting my mountains be
brought to my door. Moreover to old age, a little timid of loneliness,
such a view as this would be completely reassuring. Cottages,
manor-houses, Oxford with her dreaming spires, they are all contained
within its broad and kindly grasp. Life, human life, trivial, cheery,
part and parcel of the ages, has not here been sacrificed to any merely
scenic splendour; while beneath it, if still flowing through it, lies
the fierce and jovial memory of Briton and Saxon and Dane, their frames
long since a part of this quiet crucible, and all but the heroic of
their memories--a peaceable reflection--distilled into oblivion.
Yes, one might do a great deal worse, I think, than retire to Streatley.
At any rate that is Uncle Jacob's opinion, and he has been there a year.
"View?" he remarked, when I pointed it out to him, "God bless my soul,
it's the finest view in England. Let me see, where are they? Aha, just
there. No, that's not them. _There_ they are--the Wittenham Clumps. My
honour, I think. Fore!"
When you have stayed here so long as an afternoon and evening, you will
perceive that as St. Paul's to Ludgate Hill or the cross to Banbury, so
are the Wittenham Clumps to Streatley. They are, at any rate, its
soundest conversational investment.
We celebrated the evening with a feast to which Uncle Jacob had bidden
several of his fellow-bachelors--Esther and Molly being the only ladies
honoured with an invitation. Uncle Jacob, who has never, I should think,
for the last thirty years consumed less than five glasses of port a
night, accompanied, upon normal occasions, by two cigars, and followed,
a little later, by a couple of large whiskies-and-sodas, was in great
form, and very anecdotal. He did full justice to an excellent repast,
and was knocking at our bedroom door at seven the next morning to summon
us for early service.
"After that, sir, you may loaf, lounge, practise approach shots in the
garden, play billiards, or pick primroses. But every able-bodied person
must attend divine service at least once on Sundays while he is a guest
under my roof." And so there he was, pink from his morning tub, and with
an autocratic twinkle in an eye as clear as yours. I have often, I'm
afraid, in a horrid, professional sort of way, contemplated Uncle Jacob,
who is typical of a distinct class of prosperous old gentlemen, albeit
not a large one. All my training and instincts tell me that he eats too
much, and drinks too much. And I know that, until his retirement, his
life, as a county-court judge, was almost wholly sedentary. And yet here
he is at seventy-six, cheerful, vigorous, and very pleasantly
self-satisfied--so apparently sound himself, in fact, as to be perhaps
just a little bit intolerant of the frailties of others. Personally I am
always tempted--a little unfairly, since he is really a trifle
exceptional--to wield him as a bludgeon over the misguided pates of
fanatical vegetarians. But, on the other hand, how just as reasonably
might not some head-strong _bon viveur_ wield him over mine, who am of
course a preacher of the simple life. No, I think that Uncle Jacob has
three things to thank for the blithe appearance that he cuts before the
world: his forefathers' healthy and athletic simplicity; the fact that
both by temperament and profession he has lived an objective, rather
than a subjective, life; and finally the truth--Medicine's most
comfortable axiom--that Nature, given half a chance, will always come up
smiling. He is lusty _malgre lui_.
Apart from this little visit in the country I have been very busy; and
some difficult and rather critical cases have tied me to town ever
since. Horace, after some hesitation, has decided to take up medicine,
and is working already for his first and second examinations at
Cambridge, where he will now, I think, stay an extra year. Next month
Esther and I are snatching a week with old Bob Lynn at Applebrook, when
young Calverley will look after my patients, and I shall, I hope, land
trout for a little while instead of fees. Molly is well and very
stately, biding her time, politically speaking, with a stern eye on Mr.
Asquith and a doubtful one on Mr. Balfour. Claire decided after all that
she would like to postpone her confirmation until next year. She came up
for a week-end, at her mistress's wish, to consult about it.
"You see, Daddy," she told me thoughtfully, "I'm not _frightfully_ keen
on it"; and then after contemplating her toes for a moment, "It's not
that I want to be wicked exactly, only I like feeling sort of comfy."
When Mummy came in we had a little talk about it, and it emerged, I
think, that being "comfy" meant retaining certain rights as to dormitory
feasts and midnight expeditions that were believed to be incompatible
with the confirmed conscience. Next year it would be different. Well, I
suppose next year it will; and having preached her a little sermon,
which she accepted very gracefully, we ended in a compromise. She was to
be as good as she could, but need not take the irrevocable step till she
felt quite ready for it--somewhere about next Easter.
Meanwhile she has discovered Mr. Stanley Weyman, and is doubtful if
there is anything in all literature to compare with "Under the Red
Robe," though one of the girls thinks "Count Hannibal" almost as good.
Tom's letters are terse, and, as I told you last month, we are still
rather troubled about him.
My love to the orphans, with their proper little plaits and their shiny
cheeks. And that they may continue to rejoice their matron's heart is
the prayer of
Her affectionate brother
PETER.
VII
_To Harry Carthew, Trenant Hotel, Leeds._
91B HARLEY STREET, W.,
_April_ 8, 1910.
MY DEAR CARTHEW,
I believe every word you tell me about yourself--that you are feeling,
that is to say, pumped-out, uncertain, doubtful each morning if you can
get through the day without breaking down, and as a result of it all,
very wretched and depressed. At the same time I can only assure you, and
I think you must accept my word as a trained man, that you are
physically sound, and indeed at this very moment a "first-class life."
I know how difficult it is to believe all this when one is suffering as
you are now. But believe me, it is the gospel truth, and one that you
must reiterate daily, and if need be hourly, to yourself. Remember that
all this is just a phase of experience. Twelve months from now you will
be laughing at the memory of it. Twelve years hence it will have ceased
even to be a memory. And if you could only observe your troubles from
without, as I do, you would see at once how very understandable they
are.
For here are you, a busy enough barrister at all times, plunging
headlong into the sea of electioneering, from which, after a very stormy
month or two, you emerge to find heavy arrears of work awaiting you at
chambers, to say nothing of two unexpectedly prolonged and arduous cases
in the courts. In addition to these things you have been, as you tell
me, caught up a little in the present whirlwind of rubber speculation,
and have had rather disquieting reports of Eric's health in Switzerland.
Now I know you to be a healthy disbeliever in drugs, the possessor of a
scepticism, in this respect, that I largely share. And I'm not going to
wind up this letter with a prescription. But you tell me that your cases
are now well in hand, and that you have four clear days before the Leeds
Sessions begin; and therefore, if you will let me, I am going to assume
the sceptre of the autocrat, and commandeer them for your good. First,
then, select a bedroom with a south aspect, and have your bed pulled up
beneath the window in such a manner that, being propped up with pillows,
you can survey some little portion of the outside world. Having done
this, prepare to stop in it for thirty-six hours. The preparation will
be simple. Procure a round table and a selection of suitable books. What
these should be I daren't prescribe. Let me suggest widely that most of
them should deal rather with abstracts than concretes, that some of them
should therefore be books of poetry, but that a volume of Jacobs'
stories should by all means be included. Select one newspaper only, and
that of an unsensational character. Let me recommend, without prejudice
to political convictions, the "Morning Post." As regards Eric, consign
him mentally, as you have done actually, to the wisdom of his headmaster
and the school doctor. And for the rest, commend your affairs to the
discretion of your broker. Now as to diet--for twenty-four hours you
must live on milk, and milk alone, no matter how hungry you may become.
The hunger will by no means be hurtful, and you can console yourself by
remembering that your bodily tissue-waste, while in bed, will be
comparatively small. So much for the first day. For breakfast, upon the
second, have a bowl of bread and milk. Lunch in bed on some sole or
plaice, followed by a rice pudding and some stewed fruit. Rise at three,
spend an hour in the garden if the day is warm enough, and have tea at
half-past four. Being in the provinces, this meal may be accompanied by
two boiled eggs without creating undue attention. Have a warm bath,
followed by a cold sponge-down, at seven o'clock, when you must retire
to bed, supping on bread and milk at half-past eight, and taking
thereafter some effective, but not too violent aperient, such as five
grains of calomel, let us say, an hour later.
On the third day, having breakfasted in bed upon a cup of tea, two
rounds of buttered toast and a boiled egg, you may rise at eleven, and
take an hour's walk. For lunch you should have some boiled fish,
potatoes, stewed fruit and custard. In the afternoon you should take
another hour's walk, and have a cup of tea and some toast at half-past
four. Dine in your room at half-past seven upon some clear soup, sole, a
nicely grilled chop with some mashed potatoes, and any sort of sweet
that you may fancy. Having dined, drink a cup of coffee, and smoke your
first cigar among your fellow-men downstairs. Upon the fourth day,
arise, and have a cold tub. Don some old and comfortable tweeds, eat the
biggest breakfast of which you are capable, seize a stout stick, take an
early train, and spend the day in the country, eating when and what you
like, and drinking, if you can get it, some good home-brewed ale. Go to
bed early, and I will promise you that, upon the morning of the fifth,
you will arrive in court at any rate relatively cheerful. A fortnight's
holiday, when the sessions are over, will complete the good work.
Yrs. very sincerely,
PETER HARDING.
VIII
_To John Summers, M.B., at Actonhurst, Granville Road, Bristol._
91B HARLEY STREET, W.,
_April_ 12, 1910.
MY DEAR JACK,
I expect that, by this time, a good long night and twenty-four hours'
reflection will have restored your equanimity. For I can't imagine that
much more would be necessary, although I can sympathise, with a very
sincere fellow-feeling. Bless you, my boy, it's happened to all of
us--and goes on happening too, if that's any comfort to you.
Why even young Calverley, who was in here just now, and who looks, as
you know, almost supernaturally solemn for his five-and-thirty years,
was the victim of a similar experience only last week, under
circumstances far less considerate than yours. For the old lady--the
scene was somewhere near Cadogan Square, and it was his second
visit--received him in person, sitting very bolt upright.
"You're very young," she told him. "I _don't_ like you. And you don't
understand my case."
So you see your experience has not been by any means unique; and I
really don't think that you have any ethical ground for complaint. The
lady considered you, quite erroneously of course, to be too
inexperienced, and having told you so in a letter that is by no means
ungraceful, has called in another practitioner. He may be, as you say,
an ignorant old rotter. But that is irrelevant. And the fact that you
are a locum tenens doesn't, I think, alter the situation.
After all, we are merely the servants of the public, in spite of our
M.D.'s and our hospital appointments. And we must face the fact with as
much philosophy as we can gather about us. If they don't want us, well,
they won't have us, and there's the bitter end of it. Coming fresh from
the hospital, where one has been, perhaps, a house-surgeon or
house-physician, into the entirely different atmosphere of private
practice, it is sometimes a bit hard to realise this, and the process is
always a painful one. For between the house-surgeon, clad in white,
backed up by the accumulated authority and tradition of his hospital,
surrounded by satellite nurses, and perhaps (dare I breathe it?) a wee
bit lordly, and the very young man, in a new frock-coat, who will be
ushered next week by a curious parlour-maid into a private drawing-room,
there is all the difference in the world.