THE CLUB.
Soon after Eddy’s return to London, Eileen Le Moine wrote and asked him
to meet her at lunch at a restaurant in Old Compton Street. It was a
rather more select restaurant than they and their friends usually
frequented in Soho, so Eddy divined that she wanted to speak to him
alone and uninterrupted. She arrived late, as always, and pale, and a
little abstracted, as if she were tired in mind or body, but her smile
flashed out at him, radiant and kind. Direct and to the point, as usual,
she began at once, as they began to eat risotto, “I wonder would you do
something for Hugh?”
Eddy said, “I expect so,” and added, “I hope he’s much better?”
“He is not,” she told him. “The doctor says he must go away--out of
England--for quite a month, and have no bother or work at all. It’s
partly nerves, you see, and over-work. Someone will have to go with him,
to look after him, but they’ve not settled who yet. He’ll probably go to
Greece, and walk about.... Anyhow he’s to be away somewhere.... And he’s
been destroying himself with worry because he must leave his work--the
settlement and everything--and he’s afraid it will go to pieces. You
know he has the Club House open every evening for the boys and young
men, and goes down there himself several nights a week. What we thought
was that perhaps you wouldn’t mind taking charge, being generally
responsible, in fact. There are several helpers, of course, but Hugh
wants someone to see after it and get people to give lectures and keep
the thing going. We thought you’d perhaps have the time, and we knew you
had the experience and could do it. It’s very important to have someone
at the top that they like; it just makes all the difference. And Hugh
thinks it so hopeful that they turned you out of St. Gregory’s; he
doesn’t entirely approve of St. Gregory’s, as you know. Now will you?”
Eddy, after due consideration, said he would do the best he could.
“I shall be very inept, you know. Will it matter much? I suppose the men
down there--Pollard and the rest--will see me through. And you’ll be
coming down sometimes, perhaps.”
She said “I may,” then looked at him for a moment speculatively, and
added, “But I may not. I might be away, with Hugh.”
“Oh,” said Eddy.
“If no one else satisfactory can go with him,” she said. “He must have
the right person. Someone who, besides looking after him, will make him
like living and travelling and seeing things. That’s very important, the
doctor says. He is such a terribly depressed person, poor Hugh. I can
brighten him up. So I rather expect I will go, and walk about Greece
with him. We would both like it, of course.”
“Of course,” said Eddy, his chin on his hand, looking out of the window
at the orange trees that grew in tubs by the door.
“And, lest we should have people shocked,” added Eileen, “Bridget’s
coming too. Not that we mind people with that sort of horrible mind
being shocked--but it wouldn’t do to spoil Hugh’s work by it, and it
might. Hugh, of course, doesn’t want things said about me, either.
People are so stupid. I wonder will the time ever come when two friends
can go about together the way no harm will be said. Bridget thinks
never. But after all, if no one’s prepared to set an example of
common-sense, how are we to move on ever out of all this horrid,
improper tangle and muddle? Jane, of course, says, what does it matter,
no one who counts would mind; but then for Jane so few people count.
Jane would do it herself to-morrow, and never even suspect that anyone
was shocked. But one can’t have people saying things about Hugh, and he
running clubs and settlements and things; it would destroy him and them;
he’s one of the people who’ve got to be careful; which is a bore, but
can’t be helped.”
“No, it can’t be helped,” Eddy agreed. “One doesn’t want people to be
hurt or shocked, even apart from clubs and things; and so many even of
the nicest people would be.”
There she differed from him. “Not the nicest. The less nice. The
foolish, the coarse-minded, the shut-in, the--the tiresome.”
Eddy smiled disagreement, and she remembered that they would be shocked
at the Deanery, doubtless.
“Ah well,” she said, “have it your own way. The nicest, then, as well as
the least nice, because none of them know any better, poor dears. For
that matter, Bridget said she’d be shocked herself if we went alone.
Bridget has moods, you know, when she prides herself on being
proper--the British female guarding the conventions. She’s in one of
them now.... Well, go and see Hugh to-morrow, will you, and talk about
the Settlement. He’ll have a lot to say, but don’t have him excited.
It’s wonderful what a trust he has in you, Eddy, since you left St.
Gregory’s.”
“An inadequate reason,” said Eddy, “but leading to a very proper
conclusion. Yes, I’ll go and see him, then.”
He did so, next day. He found Datcherd at the writing-table in his
library. It was a large and beautiful library in a large and beautiful
house. The Datcherds were rich (or would have been had not Datcherd
spent much too much money on building houses for the poor, and Lady
Dorothy Datcherd rather too much on cards and clothes and other
luxuries), and there was about their belongings that air of caste, of
inherited culture, of transmitted intelligence and recognition of social
and political responsibilities, that is perhaps only to be found in
families with a political tradition of several generations. Datcherd
wasn’t a clever literary free-lance; he was a hereditary Whig; that was
why he couldn’t be detached, why, about his breaking with custom and
convention, there would always be a wrench and strain, a bitterness of
hostility, instead of the light ease of Eileen Le Moine’s set, that
could gently mock at the heavy-handed world because it had never been
under its dominance, never conceived anything but freedom. That, and
because of their finer sense of responsibility, is why it is aristocrats
who will always make the best social revolutionaries. They know that
life is real, life is earnest; they are bound up with the established
status by innumerable ties, which either to keep or to break means
purpose. They are, in fact, heavily involved, all round; they cannot
escape their liabilities; they are the grown-up people in a
light-hearted world of children. Surely, then, they should have more of
the reins in their hands, less jerking of them from below.... Such, at
least, were Eddy’s reflections in Datcherd’s library, while he waited
for Datcherd to finish a letter and thought how ill he looked.
Their ensuing conversation need not be detailed. Datcherd told Eddy
about arranging lectures at the Club House whenever he could, about the
reading-room, the gymnasium, the billiard-room, the woodwork, and the
other diversions and educational enterprises which flourish in such
institutions. Eddy was familiar with them already, having sometimes been
down to the Club House. It was in its main purpose educational. To it
came youths between the ages of fifteen and five and twenty, and gave
their evenings to acquiring instruction in political economy, sociology,
history, art, physical exercises, science, and other branches of
learning. They had regular instructors; and besides these, irregular
lecturers came down once or twice a week, friends of Datcherd’s,
politicians, social workers, writers, anyone who would come and was
considered by Datcherd suitable. The Fabian Society, it seemed, throve
still among the Club members, and was given occasional indulgences such
as Mr. Shaw or Mr. Sidney Webb, and lesser treats frequently. They had
debates, and other habits such as will be readily imagined. Having
indicated these, Datcherd proceeded to tell Eddy something about his
assistant workers, in what ways each needed firm or tender handling.
While they were talking, Billy Raymond came in, to tell Datcherd about a
new poet he had found, who wrote verse that seemed suitable for
_Further_. Billy Raymond, a generous and appreciative person, was given
to finding new poets, usually in cellars, attics, or workmen’s flats. It
was commonly said that he less found them than made them, by some
transmuting magic of his own touch. Anyhow they quite often produced
poetry, for longer or shorter periods. This latest one was a Socialist
in conviction and expression; hence his suitability for _Further_. Eddy
wasn’t sure that they ought to talk of _Further_; it obviously had Hugh
excited.
He and Billy Raymond came away together, which rather pleased Eddy, as
he liked Billy better than most people of his acquaintance, which was
saying much. There was a breadth about Billy, a large and gentle
tolerance, a courtesy towards all sorts and conditions of men and views,
that made him restful, as compared, for instance, with the intolerant
Arnold Denison. Perhaps the difference was partly that Billy was a poet,
with the artist’s vision, which takes in, and Arnold only a critic,
whose function it is to select and exclude. Billy, in short, was a
producer, and Arnold a publisher; and publishers have to be for ever
saying that things won’t do, aren’t good enough. If they can’t say that,
they are poor publishers indeed. Billy, in Eddy’s view, approached more
nearly than most people to that synthesis which, Eddy believed, unites
all factions and all sections of truth.
Billy said, “Poor dear Hugh. I am extraordinarily sorry for him. I am
glad you are going to help in the Settlement. He hates leaving it so
much. I’m sure I couldn’t worry about my work or anything else if I was
going to walk about Greece for a month; but he’s so--so ascetic. I think
I respect Datcherd more than almost anyone; he’s so absolutely
single-minded. He won’t enjoy Greece a bit, I believe, because of all
the people in slums who can’t be there, and wouldn’t if they could. It
will seem to him wicked waste of money. Waste, you know! My word!”
“Perhaps,” said Eddy, “he’ll learn how to enjoy life more now his wife
has left him. She must have been a weight on his mind.”
“Oh, well,” said Billy, “I don’t know. Perhaps so.... One never really
felt that she quite existed, and I daresay he didn’t either, so I don’t
suppose her being gone will make so very much difference. She was a sort
of unreal thing--a shadow. I always got on with her pretty well; in
fact, I rather liked her in a way; but I never felt she was actually
there.”
“She’d be there to Datcherd, though,” Eddy said, feeling that Billy’s
wisdom hardly embraced the peculiar circumstances of married life, and
Billy, never much interested in personal relations, said, “Perhaps.”
They were in Kensington, and Billy went to call on his grandmother, who
lived in Gordon Place, and to whom he went frequently to play backgammon
and relate the news. Billy was a very affectionate and dutiful young
man, and also nearly as fond of backgammon as his grandmother was. With
his grandmother lived an aunt, who didn’t care for his poetry much, and
Billy was very fond of her too. He sometimes went with his grandmother
to St. Mary Abbot’s Church, to help her to see weddings (which she
preferred even to backgammon), or attend services. She was proud of
Billy, but, for poets to read, preferred Scott, Keble, or Doctor Watts.
She admitted herself behind modern times, but loved to see and hear what
young people were doing, though it usually seemed rather silly. To her
Billy went this afternoon, and Eddy meanwhile called on Mrs. Le Moine
and Miss Hogan in Campden Hill Road. He found Miss Hogan in, just
returned from a picture-show, and she gave him tea and conversation.
“Of course you’ve heard all about our intentions. Actually we’re off on
Thursday.... Last time Eileen went abroad, the people she was with took
a maniac by mistake; so very uncomfortable. I quite thought after that
she had decided that travel was not for her. However, it seems not. You
know--I’m sure she told you--she was for going just he and she, _tout
simple_. Most improper, of course, not to say unwholesome. They meant no
harm, dear children, but who would believe that, and even so, what are
the _convenances_ for but to be observed? I put it before Eileen in my
most banal and _borné_ manner, but, needless to say, how fruitless! So
at last I had to offer to go too. Of course from kindness she had to
accept that, though it won’t be at all the same, particularly not to
Hugh. Anyhow there we are, and we’re off on Thursday. Hugh will be very
much upset by the Channel; I believe he always is; no constitution
whatever, poor creature. Also I believe he is of those with whom it
lasts on between Calais and Paris--a most unhappy class, but to be
avoided as travelling companions. I know too well, because of an aunt of
mine.... Well, anyhow we’re going to take the train to Trieste, and then
a ship to Kalamata, and then take to our feet and walk across Greece.
Hitherto I have only done Greece on the Dunnottar Castle, in the care of
Sir Henry Lunn, which, if less thrilling, is safer, owing to the wild
dogs that tear the pedestrian on the Greek hills, one is given to
understand. I only hope we may be preserved.... And meanwhile you’re
going to run those wonderful clubs of Hugh’s. I wonder if you’ll do it
at all as he would wish! It is beautiful to see how he trusts you--why,
I can’t imagine. In his place I wouldn’t; I would rather hand over my
clubs to some unlettered subordinate after my own heart and bred in my
own faith. As for you, you have so many faiths that Hugh’s will be
swamped in the crowd. But you feel confident that you will do it well?
That is good, and the main qualification for success.”
Thus Miss Hogan babbled on, partly because she always did, partly
because the young man looked rather strained, and she was afraid if she
paused that he might say how sad he was at Eileen’s going, and she
believed these things better unexpressed. He wasn’t the only young man
who was fond of Eileen, and Miss Hogan had her own ideas as to how to
deal with such emotions. She didn’t believe it went deep with Eddy, or
that he would admit to himself any emotion at all beyond friendship,
owing to his own views as to what was right, not to speak of what was
sensible; and no doubt if left to himself for a month or so, he would
manage to recover entirely. It would be so obviously silly, as well as
wrong, to fall in love with Eileen Le Moine, and Bridget did not believe
Eddy, in spite of some confusion in his mental outlook, to be really
silly.
She directed the conversation on to the picture-show she had just been
to, and that reminded her of Sally Peters.
“Did you hear what the stupid child’s done? Joined the Wild Women, and
jabbed her umbrella into a lot of Post Impressionists in the Grafton
Galleries. Of course they caught her at it--the clumsiest child!--and
took her up on the spot, and she’s coming up for trial to-morrow with
three other lunatics, old enough to know better than to lead an ignorant
baby like that into mischief. I expect she’ll get a month, and serve her
right. I suppose she’ll go on hunger-strike; but she’s so plump that it
will probably affect her health not unfavourably. I don’t know who got
hold of her; doubtless some mad and bad creatures who saw she had no
more sense than a little owl, and set her blundering into shop-windows
and picture-glasses like a young blue-bottle.... By the way, though you
are, I know, so many things, I feel sure you draw the line at the
militants.”
Eddy said he thought he saw their point of view.
“Point of view! They’ve not one,” Miss Hogan cried. “I suppose, like
other decent people, you want women to have votes! Well, you must grant
they’ve spoilt any chance of _that_, anyhow--smashed up the whole
suffrage campaign with their horrible jabbing umbrellas and absurd
little bombs.”
Eddy granted that. “They’ve smashed the suffrage, for the present, yes.
Poor things.” He reflected for a moment on these unfortunate persons,
and added, “But I do see what they mean, all the same. They smash and
spoil and hurt things and people and causes, because they are stupid
with anger; but they’ve got things to be angry about, after all. Oh, I
admit they’re very, very stupid and inartistic, and hopelessly
unaesthetic and British and unimaginative and cruel and without any
humour at all--but I do see what they mean, in a way.”
“Well, don’t explain it to me, then, because I’ve heard it at first-hand
far too often lately.”
Eddy went round to the rooms in Old Compton Street which he shared with
Arnold Denison. Arnold had chosen Soho for residence partly because he
liked it, partly to improve his knowledge of languages, and partly to
study the taste of the neighbourhood in literature, as it was there that
he intended, when he had more leisure, to start a bookshop. Eddy, too,
liked it. (This is a superfluous observation, because anybody would.) In
fact, he liked his life in general just now. He liked reviewing for the
_Daily Post_ and writing for himself (himself _via_ the editors of
various magazines who met with his productions on their circular route
and pushed them on again). He liked getting review copies of books to
keep; his taste was catholic and omnivorous, and boggled at nothing.
With joy he perused everything, even novels which had won prizes in
novel competitions, popular discursive works called “About the Place,”
and books of verse (to do them justice, not even popular) called
“Pipings,” and such. He wrote appreciative reviews of all of them,
because he appreciated them all. It may fairly be said that he saw each
as its producer saw it, which may or may not be what a reviewer should
try to do, but is anyhow grateful and comforting to the reviewed.
Arnold, who did not do this, in vain protested that he would lose his
job soon. “No literary editor will stand such indiscriminate fulsomeness
for long.... It’s a dispensation of providence that you didn’t come and
read for us, as I once mistakenly wished. You would, so far as your
advice carried any weight, have dragged us down into the gutter. Have
you no sense of values or of decency? Can you really like these florid
effusions of base minds?” He was reading through Eddy’s last review,
which was of a book of verse by a lady gifted with emotional tendencies
and an admiration for landscape. Arnold shook his head and laughed as he
put the review down.
“The queer thing about it is that it’s not a bad review, in spite of
everything you say in appreciation of the lunatic who wrote the book.
That’s what I can’t understand; how you can be so intelligent and yet
so idiotic. You’ve given the book exactly, in a few phrases--no one
could possibly mistake its nature--and then you make several quite true,
not to say brilliant remarks about it--and then you go on and say how
good it is.... Well, I shall be interested to see how long they keep you
on.”
“They like me,” Eddy assured him, complacently. “They think I write
well. The authors like me, too. Many a heartfelt letter of thanks do I
get from those whom there are few to praise and fewer still to love. As
you may have noticed, they strew the breakfast table. Is it _comme il
faut_ for me to answer? I do--I mean, I did, both times--because it
seemed politer, but it was perhaps a mistake, because the correspondence
between me and one of them has not ceased yet, and possibly never will,
since neither of us likes to end it. How involving life is!”
Meanwhile he went to the Club House by the Lea most evenings. That, too,
he liked. He had a gift which Datcherd had detected in him, the gift of
getting on well with all sorts of people, irrespective of their incomes,
breeding, social status, intelligence, or respectability. He did not,
like Arnold, rule out the unintelligent, the respectable, the
commonplace; nor, like Datcherd, the orthodoxly religious; nor, as Jane
did, without knowing it, the vulgar; nor, like many delightful and
companionable and well-bred people, the uneducated, those whom we,
comprehensively and rightly, call the poor--rightly, because, though
poverty may seem the merest superficial and insignificant attribute of
the completed product, it is also the original, fundamental cause of all
the severing differences. Molly Bellairs thought Eddy would have made a
splendid clergyman, a better one than his father, who was unlimitedly
kind, but ill at ease, and talked above poor people’s heads. Eddy, with
less grip of theological problems, had a surer hold of points of view,
and apprehended the least witty of jokes, the least pathetic of
quarrels, the least picturesque of emotions. Hence he was popular.
He found that the sort of lectures Datcherd’s clubs were used to expect
were largely on subjects like the Minimum Wage, Capitalism versus
Industrialism, Organised Labour, the Eight Hours Day, Poor Law Reform,
the Endowment of Mothers, Co-partnership, and such; all very interesting
and profitable if well treated. So Eddy wrote to Bob Traherne, the
second curate at St. Gregory’s, to ask him to give one. Traherne replied
that he would, if Eddy liked, give a course of six. He proceeded to do
so, and as he was a good, concise, and pungent speaker, drew large
audiences and was immensely popular. At the end of his lecture he sold
penny tracts by Church Socialists; really sold them, in large numbers.
After his third lecture, which was on the Minimum Wage, he said he would
be glad to receive the names of any persons who would like to join the
Church Socialist League, the most effective society he knew of for
furthering these objects. He received seven forthwith, and six more
after the next.
Protests reached Eddy from a disturbed secretary, a pale, red-haired
young man, loyal to Datcherd’s spirit.
“It’s not what Mr. Datcherd would like, Mr. Oliver.”
Eddy said, “Why on earth shouldn’t he? He likes the men to be
Socialists, doesn’t he?”
“Not that sort, he doesn’t. At least, he wouldn’t. He likes them to
think for themselves, not to be tied up with the Church.”
“Well, they are thinking for themselves. He wouldn’t like them to be
tied up to his beliefs either, surely. I feel sure it’s all right,
Pollard. Anyhow, I can’t stop them joining the League if they want to,
can I?”
“We ought to stop the Reverend Traherne that’s where it is. He’d talk
the head off an elephant. He gets a hold of them, and abuses it. It
isn’t right, and it isn’t fair, nor what Mr. Datcherd would like in the
Club.”
“Nonsense,” said Eddy. “Mr. Datcherd would be delighted. Mr. Traherne’s
a first-rate lecturer, you know; they learn more from him than they do
from all the Socialist literature they get out of the library.”
Worse than this, several young men who despised church-going, quite
suddenly took to it, bicycling over to the Borough to hear the Reverend
Traherne preach. Datcherd had no objection to anyone going to church if
from conviction, but this sort of unbalanced, unreasoning yielding to a
personal influence he would certainly consider degrading and unworthy of
a thinking citizen. Be a man’s convictions what they might, Datcherd
held, let them _be_ convictions, based on reason and principle, not
incoherent impulses and chance emotions. It was almost certain that he
would not have approved of Traherne’s influence over his clubs.
Still less, Pollard thought, would he have approved of Captain
Greville’s. Captain Greville was a retired captain, who needs no
description here. His mission in life was to talk about the National
Service League. Eddy, who, it may be remembered, belonged among other
leagues to this, met him somewhere, and requested him to come and
address the club on the subject one evening. He did so. He made a very
good speech, for thirty-five minutes, which is exactly the right length
for this topic. (Some people err, and speak too long, on this as on many
other subjects, and miss their goal in consequence.) Captain Greville
said, How delightful to strengthen the national fibre and the sense of
civic duty by bringing all men into relation with national ideas through
personal training during youth; to strengthen the national health by
sound physical development and discipline, etcetera; to bring to bear
upon the most important business with which a nation can have to deal,
namely, National Defence, the knowledge, the interest, and the criticism
of the national mind; to safeguard the nation against war by showing
that we are prepared for it, and ensure that, should war break out,
peace may be speedily re-established; in short, to Organize our Man
Power; further, not to be shot in time of invasion for carrying a gun
unlawfully, which is a frequent incident (sensation). He said a good
deal more, which need not be specified, as it is doubtless familiar to
many, and would be unwelcome to others. At the end he said, “Are you
Democrats? Then join the League, which advocates the only democratic
system of defence. Are you Socialists?” (this was generous, because he
disliked Socialists very much) “Then join the League, which aims at a
reform strictly in accordance with the principles of co-operative
socialism; in fact, many people base their opposition to it on the
grounds that it is too socialistic. Finally (he observed), what we want
is not a standing army, and not a war--God forbid--but men capable of
fighting _like_ men in defence of their wives, their children, and their
homes.”
The Club apparently realised suddenly that this was what they did want,
and crowded up to sign cards and receive buttons inscribed with the
inspiring motto: “The Path of Duty is the Path of Safety.” In short,
quite a third of the young men became adherents of the League,
encouraged thereto by Eddy, and congratulated by the enthusiastic
captain. They were invited to ask questions, so they did. They asked,
What about employers chucking a man for good because he had to be away
for his four months camp? Answer: This would not happen; force would be
exerted over the employer. (Some scepticism, but a general sentiment of
approval for this, as for something which would indeed be grand if it
could be worked, and which might in itself be worth joining the League
for, merely to score off the employer.) Further answer: The late Sir
Joseph Whitworth said, “The labour of a man who has gone through a
course of military drill is worth eighteen-pence a week more than that
of one untrained, as through the training received in military drill men
learn ready obedience, attention, and combination, all of which are so
necessary in work.” Question: Would they get it? Answer: Get what?
Question: The eighteen-pence. Answer: In justice they certainly should.
Question: Would employers be forced to give it them? Answer: All these
details are left to be worked out later in the Bill. Conclusion: The
Bill would not be popular among employers. Further conclusion: Let us
join it. Which they did.
Before he departed, Captain Greville said that he was very pleased with
the encouraging results of the evening, and he hoped that as many as
would be interested would come and see a cinematograph display he was
giving in Hackney next week, called “In Time of Invasion.” From that he
would venture to say they would learn something of the horrors of
unprepared attack. The Club went to that. It was a splendid show, well
worth threepence. It abounded in men being found unlawfully with guns
and being shot like rabbits; in untrained and incompetent soldiers
fleeing from the foe; abandoned mothers defending their cottage homes to
the last against a brutal soldiery; corpses of children tossed on pikes
to make a Prussian holiday; Boy Scouts and Girl Guides, the one saving
element in the terrible display of national incompetence, performing
marvellous feats of skill and heroism, and dying like flies in discharge
of their duties. Afterwards there was a very different series to
illustrate the Invasion as it would be had the National Service Act been
passed. “The Invaders realise their Mistake,” was inscribed on the
preliminary curtain. Well-trained, efficient, and courageous young men
then sallied into the field, proud in the possession of fire-arms they
had a right to, calm in their perfect training, temerity, and
discipline, presenting an unflinching and impregnable front to the
cowering foe, who retreated in broken disorder, realising their mistake
(cheers). Then on the Finis curtain blazed out the grand moral of it
all: “The Path of Duty is the Path of Safety. Keep your homes inviolate
by learning to Defend them.” (Renewed cheers, and “God Save the King”).
A very fine show, to which, it may be added, Mr. Sidney Pollard, the
Club Secretary, did not go.
It was soon after this that Captain Greville, having been much
pleased--very pleased, as he said--by the Lea-side Club, presented its
library with a complete set of Kipling. Kipling, since the Kipling
period was some years past, was not well known by the Club; appearing
among them suddenly, on the top of the Cinema, he made something of a
furore. If Mr. Datcherd would get _him_ to write poetry for _Further_,
now, instead of Mr. Henderson and Mr. Raymond, and all the people he did
get, that would be something like. Finding Kipling so popular, and
yielding to a request, Eddy, who read rather well, gave some Kipling
readings, which were much enjoyed by a crowded audience.
“Might as well take them to a music hall at once,” complained Mr.
Pollard.
“Would they like it? I will,” returned Eddy, and did so, paying for a
dozen boys at the Empire.
It must not be supposed that Eddy neglected, in the cult of a manly
patriotism, the other aspects of life. On the contrary, he induced Billy
Raymond, a good-natured person, to give a lecture on the Drama, and
after it, took a party to the Savoy Theatre, to see Granville Barker’s
Shakespeare, which bored them a good deal. Then he got Jane to give an
address on drawings, and, to illustrate it, took some rather apathetic
youths to see Jane’s own exhibition. Also he conducted a party to where
Mr. Roger Fry was speaking on Post-Impressionism, and then, when they
had thoroughly grasped it, to the gallery where it was just then being
exemplified. First he told them that they could laugh at the pictures if
they choose, of course, but that was an exceedingly stupid way of
looking at them; so they actually did not, such was his influence over
them at this time. Instead, when he pointed out to them the beauties of
Matisse, they pretended to agree with him, and listened tolerant, if
bored, while he had an intelligent discussion with an artist friend whom
he met.
All this is to say that Eddy had his young men well in hand--better in
hand than Datcherd, who was less cordial and hail-fellow-well-met with
them, had ever had them. It was great fun. Influencing people in a mass
always is; it feels rather like driving a large and powerful car, which
is sent swerving to right or left by a small turn of the wrist. Probably
actors feel like this when acting, only more so; perhaps speakers feel
like this when speaking. Doing what you like with people, the most
interesting and absorbing of the plastic materials ready to the
hand--that is better than working with clay, paints, or words. Not that
Eddy was consciously aware of what he was doing in that way; only about
each fresh thing as it turned up he was desirous to make these lads that
he liked feel keen and appreciative, as he felt himself; and he was
delighted that they did so, showing themselves thereby so sane,
sensible, and intelligent. He had found them keen enough on some
important things--industrial questions, certain aspects of Socialism,
the Radical Party in politics; it was for him to make them equally keen
on other things, hitherto apparently rather overlooked by them. One of
these things was the Church; here his success was only partial, but
distinctly encouraging. Another was the good in Toryism, which they were
a little blind to. To open their eyes, he had a really intelligent
Conservative friend of his to address them on four successive Tuesdays
on politics. He did not want in the least to change their politics--what
can be better than to be a Radical?--(this was as well, because it would
have been a task outside even his sphere of influence)--but certainly
they should see both sides. So both sides were set before them; and the
result was certainly that they looked much less intolerantly than before
upon the wrong side, because Mr. Oliver, who was a first-rater, gave it
his countenance, as he had to Matisse and that tedious thing at the
Savoy. Matisse, Shakespeare, Tariff Reform, they all seemed silly, but
there, they pleased a good chap and a pleasant friend, who could also
appreciate Harry Lauder, old Victor Grayson, Kipling, and the Minimum
Wage.
Such were the interests of a varied and crowded life on club nights by
the Lea. Distraught by them, Mr. Sidney Pollard wrote to his master in
Greece--(address, Poste-Restante, Athens, where eventually his
wanderings would lead him and he would call for letters)--to say that
all was going to sixes and sevens, and here was a Tariff Reformer let
loose on the Club on Tuesday evenings, and a parson to rot about his
fancy Socialism on Wednesdays, and another parson holding a mission
service in the street last Sunday afternoon, not even about
Socialism--(this was Father Dempsey)--and half the club hanging about
him and asking him posers, which is always the beginning of the end,
because any parson, having been bred to it, can answer posers so much
more posingly than anyone can ask them; and some captain or other
talking that blanked nonsense about National Service, and giving round
his silly buttons as if they were chocolate drops at a school-feast, and
leading them on to go to an idiot Moving Picture Show, calculated to
turn them all into Jingoes of the deepest dye; and some Blue Water
maniac gassing about Dreadnoughts, so that “We want eight and we won’t
wait” was sung by the school-children in the streets instead of “Every
nice girl loves a sailor,” which may mean, emotionally, much the same,
but is politically offensive. Further, Mr. Oliver had been giving
Kipling readings, and half the lads were Kipling-mad, and fought to get
Barrack-room Ballads out of the library. Finally, “Mr. Oliver may mean
no harm, but he is doing a lot,” said Mr. Pollard. “If he goes on here,
the tone of the Club will be spoilt, he is personally popular, owing to
being a friend to all in his manner and having pleasant ways, and that
is the worst sort. If you are not coming home yourself soon, perhaps you
will make some change by writing, and tell Mr. Oliver if you approve of
above things or not. I have thought it right to let you know all, and
you will act according as you think. I very much trust your health is
on the mend, you are badly missed here.”
Datcherd got that letter at last, but not just yet, for he was then
walking inland across the Plain of Thessaly between Volo and Tempe.