If it is impossible to recapture the boyish moods of those early days,
it is also difficult not to import into these notes the point of view
and feelings that belong to later life. Surely, but gradually, the
scale of time changes with the years, and with it the range and quality
of the emotions: to-day, a year seems a very brief period; the few
months spent in the woods after our Gold Fields fiasco seemed both an
eternity, yet far too brief. A faint flavour of childhood’s immense
scale, when twelve months was an immeasurable stretch of time, still
clung to them, perhaps.
But the magnet of New York drew us. Any idea of returning to England
until I had made good was far from me. We arrived in the detested
city late in October, with livings to earn, and with less money than
when we had first come two years before. We took separate rooms this
time, for I had learned my lesson about sharing beds and clothes and
scanty earnings. It was to be each man for himself. Paxton disappeared
immediately; only occasionally did I hear his “Ouch, Ouch!” again; M.
found a bed in Harlem and started to teach boxing; I took quarters in
East 21st Street, on the top floor of a cheap but cleanish house, and
arranged for breakfast and dinner in a neighbouring boarding-house at
$2.50 a week.
Two Germans lived in the adjoining attic. Through the thin wooden
partition I heard their talk, their breathing, their slightest
movement. They rarely came to bed before midnight; they talked the
whole night through. Informing them in a loud voice that I understood
their language made no difference; they neither stopped nor answered.
Yet, oddly enough, I never once saw them; never met them on the stairs,
nor in the hall, nor at the front door. They remained invisible, if not
inaudible. But I formed vivid pictures of them, and knew from their
conversation that they were not better than they need be. An old man
and a young one, I gathered. An unpleasant house altogether, the low
rent more easily explained than I at first guessed. Long afterwards
I had my revenge upon those unsavoury Germans--by writing an awful
story about them, “A Case of Eavesdropping,” though by the time it was
published they were probably either dead or in gaol. A sinister couple,
these invisible Teutons!
My one main object was to avoid the _Evening Sun_: any work was better,
I felt, than a return to that hated sensational reporting. A place was
always open to me under McCloy, but my detestation of the police court,
and of the criminal atmosphere generally, was so strong that I would
rather have taken a street-cleaning job under Tammany than go back to
it. I therefore began by trying free-lance work, gathering news items
and selling them for a dollar or two apiece to various papers, writing
snippets of description, inventing incidents, and earning perhaps ten
dollars a week on the average. It was hard going, but pawning and
free lunches in the saloons made it possible to live. I knew all the
tricks by now; I used them. The blanket off my bed occasionally spent
a week-end with a new “Ikey,” though getting it out of the house and
back again was no easy matter, while the smell of the moth-balls I
always expected must betray me. It was a poor blanket, too, worth only
50 cents from Ikey’s point of view, and certainly not worth the foolish
risk involved. For, literally--though this never once occurred to me
at the time--it was stealing, and the fact that I told Ikey where it
came from, hoping to extract thereby an extra half-dollar from him,
could not have exonerated me if the landlady had met me on the stairs.
Personally, I think the quantity of food I devoured at the free lunch
counters in exchange for a five-cent glass of lager was a more flagrant
case of theft. Only it was a recognized theft. The temporary absence of
the blanket, anyhow, since I made my own bed, was never discovered, and
my heart remained innocent of conscious burglary.
A dozen years before, aged 12, I had once been accused of stealing by
the headmaster of the private school I adorned in Sevenoaks. I was
innocent, but the evidence was both ludicrous and damning, so damning,
indeed, that, strangely, I _felt_ guilty and accepted the punishment.
A terrifying experience, it haunted me for years, and the sight of a
policeman, or the words “criminal judge,” sent shivers down my spine
long afterwards. When a little older, I came to suspect that it was
worked up against me by the master to curry favour with an influential
parent; but at the actual time I had visions even of prison--for
something I had not done. All about a poem, too!
At evening “prep” a “bit of poetry,” as we called it, had to be learnt
by heart; my own poetry book was lost; I borrowed young Gildea’s.
The last thing in the world I wanted to own was that poetry book of
young Gildea, the last thing I wanted to do was to learn that poem by
heart. I spent the hour, therefore, inscribing my name with elaborate
flourishes on the title page. Twice I wrote it, with capitals, of which
I was very proud; I thought it ornate and beautiful; and when the hour
was over I tossed the book into my locker and forgot all about it.
Next morning I was summoned into the headmaster’s presence. He wore
red whiskers about an otherwise clean-shaven face: a face of natural
sternness, with a big nose, a mouth of iron, and steely blue eyes. He
was a clergyman of evangelical persuasion.
I had no idea why I had been summoned, but his glance made me at once
feel uneasy.
“Blackwood minor,” he said in a solemn and portentous voice, “did you
do--_this_?” He held out Gildea’s poetry book towards me with the cover
open. His finger pointed to my name in pencil, flourishes and all.
I was completely puzzled as to what was coming, but I admitted the
signature of course.
“Is the book yours?” he asked. I said it was not. “Gildea has reported
the loss of his own copy,” the voice of doom went on. “It has been
found--_in your locker_--and with _your name written_ in it.” The
voice made me think of “and God spake” in the Bible.
He looked at me in such a way that I felt sure I was going to be
flogged. What had I done? And why? I couldn’t quite remember. No
explanation came to me. The simple truth was too silly to mention. I
had nothing to say except to admit everything. The man, with his awful
manner and appalling aspect, terrified me. I stood speechless and
paralysed, wondering what was coming next. The red whiskers made me
think of Satan.
I little dreamed, however, that the headmaster would say what he then
did say. He spoke with a terribly slow, deliberate emphasis.
“This is as grave a case of stealing,” fell the awful words of
judgment, “as ever came before a _Criminal Judge_. I have sent for your
father.”
I was petrified. It was enough to frighten any boy into his boots.
My father in due course arrived; Gildea’s parents, both of them,
arrived likewise; there were consultations, mysterious comings and
goings; it was a day of gloom and terror; for some reason I made no
attempt to defend myself; it all flabbergasted, frightened, puzzled me
beyond understanding. I was made to confess to Gildea and to apologize
to the parents. To my own father I said nothing. He looked troubled,
yet somehow not as grave as he ought to have looked. Perhaps he had
his doubts.... What that fiendish headmaster, whose name I will not
mention, had said behind my back, I did not know, for my father never
referred to the matter afterwards, and both I and my brother were
removed from the school at the end of the term. But I was severely
punished--sent to Coventry for three days--for doing something I had
both done and had not done, and the phrase “Criminal Judge” was burnt
into my memory with letters of fire. My revenge was rather an oblique
one--a fight with that headmaster’s son, though about quite another
matter. With each blow I landed--and I landed several--I saw red
whiskers on a boy about my own age!
This digression concerning a poetry book occurs to me only now, while
telling of my wickedness about the blanket. The lesson that master
wished to teach me had no effect, for the simple reason that I had
_not_ stolen. The fear, however, doubtless remained; the injustice
scored deep, bitter wounds. I trace back to it a curious persistent
dread, not entirely obliterated even now: the dread of being accused
of a crime I have not committed; yet where the evidence of guilt
seems overwhelming. Patanjali’s “Aphorisms” describe a method of
living through in imagination all possible experiences. A series of
laborious incarnations would be necessary to exhaust these experiences
in the ordinary way. They can be lived out in the mind instead. In
imagination, anyhow, thanks to that little school injustice, I have
often tried to _realize_ the feelings of a man serving a term of
imprisonment for a crime he has not committed. Patanjali’s interesting
method is, at any rate, a means of opening the mind to a sympathetic
understanding of many an experience one could not otherwise know. Only
imagination must be sustained and very detailed, and the projection of
the personality is not easy.
An interlude of play-acting now enlivened my period of free-lance
journalism. Kay was in my life again, and the opportunity came through
him. He had spent the summer between odd jobs on the stage, and odd
jobs at buying and selling exchange in Wall Street. He made both ends
meet, at any rate, and had a cheap room in the purlieus of Hoboken
across the river. A part in a third-rate touring company had just been
offered to him, and he said he could get me a part as well. One-night
stands in the smaller towns of New York State with a couple of plays,
of which “Jim, the Penman,” was one, formed the programme, and my utter
ignorance of acting, he assured me, need not stand in the way. My
salary would be $15 a week, with travelling expenses paid. Gilmour, the
leading man, and organizer of the company, was anxious to find someone
like myself.
I jumped at it. Gilmour looked me up and down and said I’d do. I had
only one line to say. I was a prison warder on sentry duty, pacing to
and fro between the walls at night, when Gilmour, the hero, escaping
from his cell, knocks me down after a brief struggle, and disappears
into the night. A moment later the alarm is given; other warders
arrive, find me wounded on the ground and ask which way the prisoner
has gone. “That way,” I shout, pointing the direction before losing
consciousness; whereupon the curtain falls.
It was not an exacting part. Gilmour said I should make a “bully
warder.” My own shabby clothes, with a brown billycock hat, would
do as they were. I was to carry a large wooden pistol. We rehearsed
the scene, swaying to and fro, breathing hard, grunting with effort,
cursing each other fiercely, until the prisoner, wrenching the pistol
from me, struck me on the head and floored me. Such was my rôle.
I played it at Yonkers and Mount Vernon, three nights in each place,
if memory serves me correctly, but “went through it” is the true
description of my performance. For the theatre, either as a writer or
actor, I possess no trace of talent, a fact rediscovered recently when
playing an insignificant part in Drinkwater’s “Oliver Cromwell” on tour
with Henry Ainley. My dismissal at the end of the first week, however,
was not due to this lack of skill--it was due to a pail of beer and the
leading lady. For the leading lady, handsome daughter, I remember, of
a Washington General, was the inspiration of the touring company, and
it was for her _beaux yeux_ that the enterprise was undertaken. Gilmour
was what is known as “crazy” about her, his jealousy a standing joke
among us, so that when those _beaux yeux_ were turned upon my lanky,
half-starved self, there were warnings that trouble might begin. But
I was looking for salary and food rather than for trouble. In the
dressing-room we underlings all shared together, though “dressing”
was of negligible kind, I was quite safe. Chance meetings, however,
were unavoidable, of course, and Bettina’s instinct for adventure was
distinctly careless. It was here the pail of beer came in--into our
crowded dressing-room. Who brought it, I have forgotten; the miscreant
who stood treat to the band of hungry and thirsty Thespians is lost
to memory. I only know that, empty of food as I was, my share of that
gallon pail distinctly cheered me. The _beaux yeux_ had been boldly
rolling; another pair of eyes, not so lovely, had been rolling too. To
be ungallantly honest about it, my own feelings were not engaged in
any way, except on this particular night, when they were considerably
roused--against that stupid, jealous Gilmour. The way he glared in my
direction stirred my bile; the few glasses of beer made me reckless.
When the escaping prisoner fought with me for the possession of the
great wooden pistol, I refused to be “thrown.”
The scanty audience that night witnessed a good performance of my
brief, particular scene. Gilmour cursed and swore beneath his breath,
but he was a smaller man than I was. He could do nothing with me. What
was a shocking performance in one sense, was a realistic and sincere
performance in another. Had my share of the pail been slightly bigger
than it was, I should undoubtedly have “thrown” the prisoner and spoilt
the curtain. As it was, however, Gilmour managed in the end to wrench
the pistol from me, and in doing so, his fury genuine, he landed me
a blow on the forehead with its heavy butt that stunned me. I fell.
He fled. Roars of applause I heard dimly. My brown billycock hat, I
remember, fell on its springy brim, bounced into the air, then hopped
away against the footlights. And all my interest went with my precious
hat. To the warders who at once rushed on with cries of “He’s escaped!
Which way did he go?” I used the right words, taking my cue correctly.
Only I pointed in the wrong direction. I pointed towards my old hat
against the footlights. It lay outside the curtain.
It is odd to think that somewhere in the under-mind of the individual
who lay half-stunned on the stage of a Yonkers theatre, pointing
wildly at a dilapidated, but precious, old brown billycock, slept a
score of books, waiting patiently for expression a few years later.
It is difficult, indeed, as I write these notes, to realize that
the individual who describes the incidents is the individual who
experienced them. The body itself has changed every single physical
particle at least four times in succession. Nor is the mind the same.
With the exception of one or two main interests, easily handed on by
the outgoing atoms to the incoming atoms in the brain, “I” possess
little that the “I” of those distant New York days possessed. Even the
continuity of memory is bequeathable by atoms leaving the brain to the
new ones just arriving. Where, then, is the self who experienced years
ago what the self holding this pen now sets down?
The “I,” during the next few years, at any rate, went rolling; rolling
from one experience to another, if not cheerily, at least resignedly.
Whatever happened--and what happened was mostly unpleasant--there was
never absent the conviction that it was deserved, and must be lived
out in a spirit of acceptance, until finally exhausted. Any other
attitude toward unwelcome events meant evasion, and a disagreeable
experience shirked merely postponed it to another time, either in this
life or another. There was, meanwhile, a _real_ self that remained
aloof, untouched, neither happy nor unhappy, a spectator, but a royal
spectator. Into this eternal Self was gathered the fruit and essence
of each and every experience the lower “I” passed through; the secret
of living was to identify oneself with this exalted and untroubled
royalty....
The rolling-stone went rolling, therefore, somewhat in this spirit,
which helped and comforted, which made most things possible, bearable
at any rate, because it was the outcome of that strange inner
conviction established in my blood, a conviction, as mentioned, neither
argument nor evidence could alter.
Letters from home, home memories as well, pertained now to some
distant, unrecoverable region that was dead and gone. My mother’s
letters--one every week without a single omission--expressed a larger
spirit. Her faithful letters, secure in a sincere belief, were very
precious, I remember. Sometimes, though never successfully, they
tempted me almost to giving my full confidence and telling more than
my camouflaged reports revealed. From the rest of my family, with the
exception of a really loved brother, I knew myself entirely divorced, a
divorce that later years proved final and somehow inevitable.
To my father, who was always something of a stranger to me, I could
never tell my heart; my mother, on the other hand, always had my
confidence, coupled with an austere respect. Few words passed between
us, yet she always knew, I felt, my thoughts. And this full confidence
dated, oddly enough, from an incident in early childhood, when I was
saying the Lord’s Prayer at her knee. There was a phrase that puzzled
me even when I was in knickerbockers: “Lead us not into temptation....”
I stopped, looked up into her face, and asked: “But _would_ He lead me
into temptation unless I asked Him not to?” Her eyes opened, she gazed
down into mine with a thoughtful, if perplexed expression, for a moment
she was evidently at a loss how to answer. She hesitated, then decided
to trust me with the truth: “I have never quite understood those
words myself,” she said. “I think, though, it is best to leave their
explanation to Him, and to say the words exactly as He taught them.”
“Old souls” and “young souls” was a classification that ruled my mind
in this New York period: my mother was of the former, my father of the
latter. In the Old lay innate the fruits, the results, the memories of
many many previous lives, and this ripeness of long experience showed
itself in certain ways--in taste, in judgment, in their standard of
values, in that mysterious quality called tact; above all, perhaps,
in the type and quality of goods they desired from life. Worldly
ambitions, so-called, were generally negligible in them. What we
label to-day as the subconscious was invariably fully charged; also,
without too much difficulty, accessible. It made them interesting,
stimulating and not easily exhausted. Wide sympathies, spread charity,
understanding were their hall-marks, and a certain wisdom, as apart
from intellect, their invariable gift; with, moreover, a tendency to
wit, if not that rare quality wit itself, and humour, the power of
seeing, and therefore laughing at, oneself. The cheaper experiences of
birth, success, possessions they had learned long ago; it was the more
difficult, but higher, values they had come back to master, and among
the humbler ranks of life they found the necessary conditions. Christ,
I reflected, was the son of a carpenter.
The Young Souls, on the other hand, were invariably hot-foot after
the things of this world. Show, Riches and Power stuck like red
labels on their foreheads. The Napoleons of the earth were among
the youngest of all; the intellectuals, those who relied on reason
alone, often the prosperous, usually the well-born, were of the same
category. Rarely was “understanding” in them, and brilliant cleverness
could never rank with that wisdom which knows that _tout comprendre,
c’est tout pardonner_. To me the Young Souls were the commonplace
and uninteresting ones. They were shallow, sketchy, soon exhausted,
the _Dutzend-menschen_; whereas, the others were intuitive, mature
in outlook, aware of deeper values and eager for the things of the
spirit....
Thinking over my distinguished relations, I found none fit to black
the boots of that kindly waiter in Krisch’s cheap eating-house, Otto,
the Black Forest German, who trusted us for food and often forwent
his trumpery tip with a cheery smile. And there were many others,
whose memory remains bright and wonderful from those dismal New York
years.... A volume of “Distinguished People I have Met,” for instance,
would include the Italian bootblack at the corner of 4th Avenue and
20th Street, who had the sun in his face, in his bright black eyes and
brown skin, and who trusted me sometimes for a month, although five
cents meant as much to him as it did to me. The bigwigs I interviewed
for newspapers are forgotten, but the faces of Otto and the Italian
shine in memory still. I even remember the sentence the latter taught
me. It invariably formed our daily greeting: _E molto tempo che siete
stato amalato?_ Often since have I spouted it in Italy, as bewildered
by the voluble replies I could not understand, as the peasants were by
my familiar enquiry after their health. Mrs. Bernstein, I think, would
be entitled to a place, and Grant, who pawned his overcoat to buy me
food, most certainly to full mention.