Mr. Barbecue-Smith arrived in time for tea on Saturday afternoon. He was
a short and corpulent man, with a very large head and no neck. In his
earlier middle age he had been distressed by this absence of neck,
but was comforted by reading in Balzac’s “Louis Lambert” that all the
world’s great men have been marked by the same peculiarity, and for a
simple and obvious reason: Greatness is nothing more nor less than
the harmonious functioning of the faculties of the head and heart;
the shorter the neck, the more closely these two organs approach one
another; argal...It was convincing.
Mr. Barbecue-Smith belonged to the old school of journalists. He sported
a leonine head with a greyish-black mane of oddly unappetising hair
brushed back from a broad but low forehead. And somehow he always seemed
slightly, ever so slightly, soiled. In younger days he had gaily called
himself a Bohemian. He did so no longer. He was a teacher now, a kind
of prophet. Some of his books of comfort and spiritual teaching were in
their hundred and twentieth thousand.
Priscilla received him with every mark of esteem. He had never been to
Crome before; she showed him round the house. Mr. Barbecue-Smith was
full of admiration.
“So quaint, so old-world,” he kept repeating. He had a rich, rather
unctuous voice.
Priscilla praised his latest book. “Splendid, I thought it was,” she
said in her large, jolly way.
“I’m happy to think you found it a comfort,” said Mr. Barbecue-Smith.
“Oh, tremendously! And the bit about the Lotus Pool--I thought that so
beautiful.”
“I knew you would like that. It came to me, you know, from without.” He
waved his hand to indicate the astral world.
They went out into the garden for tea. Mr. Barbecue-Smith was duly
introduced.
“Mr. Stone is a writer too,” said Priscilla, as she introduced Denis.
“Indeed!” Mr. Barbecue-Smith smiled benignly, and, looking up at Denis
with an expression of Olympian condescension, “And what sort of things
do you write?”
Denis was furious, and, to make matters worse, he felt himself blushing
hotly. Had Priscilla no sense of proportion? She was putting them in the
same category--Barbecue-Smith and himself. They were both writers, they
both used pen and ink. To Mr. Barbecue-Smith’s question he answered,
“Oh, nothing much, nothing,” and looked away.
“Mr. Stone is one of our younger poets.” It was Anne’s voice. He scowled
at her, and she smiled back exasperatingly.
“Excellent, excellent,” said Mr. Barbecue-Smith, and he squeezed Denis’s
arm encouragingly. “The Bard’s is a noble calling.”
As soon as tea was over Mr. Barbecue-Smith excused himself; he had to
do some writing before dinner. Priscilla quite understood. The prophet
retired to his chamber.
Mr. Barbecue-Smith came down to the drawing-room at ten to eight. He was
in a good humour, and, as he descended the stairs, he smiled to himself
and rubbed his large white hands together. In the drawing-room someone
was playing softly and ramblingly on the piano. He wondered who it could
be. One of the young ladies, perhaps. But no, it was only Denis, who got
up hurriedly and with some embarrassment as he came into the room.
“Do go on, do go on,” said Mr. Barbecue-Smith. “I am very fond of
music.”
“Then I couldn’t possibly go on,” Denis replied. “I only make noises.”
There was a silence. Mr. Barbecue-Smith stood with his back to the
hearth, warming himself at the memory of last winter’s fires. He could
not control his interior satisfaction, but still went on smiling to
himself. At last he turned to Denis.
“You write,” he asked, “don’t you?”
“Well, yes--a little, you know.”
“How many words do you find you can write in an hour?”
“I don’t think I’ve ever counted.”
“Oh, you ought to, you ought to. It’s most important.”
Denis exercised his memory. “When I’m in good form,” he said, “I fancy
I do a twelve-hundred-word review in about four hours. But sometimes it
takes me much longer.”
Mr. Barbecue-Smith nodded. “Yes, three hundred words an hour at your
best.” He walked out into the middle of the room, turned round on his
heels, and confronted Denis again. “Guess how many words I wrote this
evening between five and half-past seven.”
“I can’t imagine.”
“No, but you must guess. Between five and half-past seven--that’s two
and a half hours.”
“Twelve hundred words,” Denis hazarded.
“No, no, no.” Mr. Barbecue-Smith’s expanded face shone with gaiety. “Try
again.”
“Fifteen hundred.”
“No.”
“I give it up,” said Denis. He found he couldn’t summon up much interest
in Mr. Barbecue-Smith’s writing.
“Well, I’ll tell you. Three thousand eight hundred.”
Denis opened his eyes. “You must get a lot done in a day,” he said.
Mr. Barbecue-Smith suddenly became extremely confidential. He pulled up
a stool to the side of Denis’s arm-chair, sat down in it, and began to
talk softly and rapidly.
“Listen to me,” he said, laying his hand on Denis’s sleeve. “You want to
make your living by writing; you’re young, you’re inexperienced. Let me
give you a little sound advice.”
What was the fellow going to do? Denis wondered: give him an
introduction to the editor of “John o’ London’s Weekly”, or tell him
where he could sell a light middle for seven guineas? Mr. Barbecue-Smith
patted his arm several times and went on.
“The secret of writing,” he said, breathing it into the young man’s
ear--“the secret of writing is Inspiration.”
Denis looked at him in astonishment.
“Inspiration...” Mr. Barbecue-Smith repeated.
“You mean the native wood-note business?”
Mr. Barbecue-Smith nodded.
“Oh, then I entirely agree with you,” said Denis. “But what if one
hasn’t got Inspiration?”
“That was precisely the question I was waiting for,” said Mr.
Barbecue-Smith. “You ask me what one should do if one hasn’t got
Inspiration. I answer: you have Inspiration; everyone has Inspiration.
It’s simply a question of getting it to function.”
The clock struck eight. There was no sign of any of the other guests;
everybody was always late at Crome. Mr. Barbecue-Smith went on.
“That’s my secret,” he said. “I give it you freely.” (Denis made a
suitably grateful murmur and grimace.) “I’ll help you to find your
Inspiration, because I don’t like to see a nice, steady young man like
you exhausting his vitality and wasting the best years of his life in
a grinding intellectual labour that could be completely obviated by
Inspiration. I did it myself, so I know what it’s like. Up till the
time I was thirty-eight I was a writer like you--a writer without
Inspiration. All I wrote I squeezed out of myself by sheer hard work.
Why, in those days I was never able to do more than six-fifty words an
hour, and what’s more, I often didn’t sell what I wrote.” He sighed.
“We artists,” he said parenthetically, “we intellectuals aren’t much
appreciated here in England.” Denis wondered if there was any method,
consistent, of course, with politeness, by which he could dissociate
himself from Mr. Barbecue-Smith’s “we.” There was none; and besides,
it was too late now, for Mr. Barbecue-Smith was once more pursuing the
tenor of his discourse.
“At thirty-eight I was a poor, struggling, tired, overworked, unknown
journalist. Now, at fifty...” He paused modestly and made a little
gesture, moving his fat hands outwards, away from one another, and
expanding his fingers as though in demonstration. He was exhibiting
himself. Denis thought of that advertisement of Nestle’s milk--the two
cats on the wall, under the moon, one black and thin, the other white,
sleek, and fat. Before Inspiration and after.
“Inspiration has made the difference,” said Mr. Barbecue-Smith solemnly.
“It came quite suddenly--like a gentle dew from heaven.” He lifted his
hand and let it fall back on to his knee to indicate the descent of the
dew. “It was one evening. I was writing my first little book about the
Conduct of Life--‘Humble Heroisms’. You may have read it; it has been
a comfort--at least I hope and think so--a comfort to many thousands.
I was in the middle of the second chapter, and I was stuck. Fatigue,
overwork--I had only written a hundred words in the last hour, and I
could get no further. I sat biting the end of my pen and looking at the
electric light, which hung above my table, a little above and in front
of me.” He indicated the position of the lamp with elaborate care. “Have
you ever looked at a bright light intently for a long time?” he asked,
turning to Denis. Denis didn’t think he had. “You can hypnotise yourself
that way,” Mr. Barbecue-Smith went on.
The gong sounded in a terrific crescendo from the hall. Still no sign of
the others. Denis was horribly hungry.
“That’s what happened to me,” said Mr. Barbecue-Smith. “I was
hypnotised. I lost consciousness like that.” He snapped his fingers.
“When I came to, I found that it was past midnight, and I had written
four thousand words. Four thousand,” he repeated, opening his mouth very
wide on the “ou” of thousand. “Inspiration had come to me.”
“What a very extraordinary thing,” said Denis.
“I was afraid of it at first. It didn’t seem to me natural. I didn’t
feel, somehow, that it was quite right, quite fair, I might almost say,
to produce a literary composition unconsciously. Besides, I was afraid I
might have written nonsense.”
“And had you written nonsense?” Denis asked.
“Certainly not,” Mr. Barbecue-Smith replied, with a trace of annoyance.
“Certainly not. It was admirable. Just a few spelling mistakes and
slips, such as there generally are in automatic writing. But the style,
the thought--all the essentials were admirable. After that, Inspiration
came to me regularly. I wrote the whole of ‘Humble Heroisms’ like that.
It was a great success, and so has everything been that I have written
since.” He leaned forward and jabbed at Denis with his finger. “That’s
my secret,” he said, “and that’s how you could write too, if you
tried--without effort, fluently, well.”
“But how?” asked Denis, trying not to show how deeply he had been
insulted by that final “well.”
“By cultivating your Inspiration, by getting into touch with your
Subconscious. Have you ever read my little book, ‘Pipe-Lines to the
Infinite’?”
Denis had to confess that that was, precisely, one of the few, perhaps
the only one, of Mr. Barbecue-Smith’s works he had not read.
“Never mind, never mind,” said Mr. Barbecue-Smith. “It’s just a little
book about the connection of the Subconscious with the Infinite. Get
into touch with the Subconscious and you are in touch with the Universe.
Inspiration, in fact. You follow me?”
“Perfectly, perfectly,” said Denis. “But don’t you find that the
Universe sometimes sends you very irrelevant messages?”
“I don’t allow it to,” Mr. Barbecue-Smith replied. “I canalise it. I
bring it down through pipes to work the turbines of my conscious mind.”
“Like Niagara,” Denis suggested. Some of Mr. Barbecue-Smith’s remarks
sounded strangely like quotations--quotations from his own works, no
doubt.
“Precisely. Like Niagara. And this is how I do it.” He leaned forward,
and with a raised forefinger marked his points as he made them, beating
time, as it were, to his discourse. “Before I go off into my trance, I
concentrate on the subject I wish to be inspired about. Let us say I am
writing about the humble heroisms; for ten minutes before I go into the
trance I think of nothing but orphans supporting their little brothers
and sisters, of dull work well and patiently done, and I focus my mind
on such great philosophical truths as the purification and uplifting of
the soul by suffering, and the alchemical transformation of leaden evil
into golden good.” (Denis again hung up his little festoon of quotation
marks.) “Then I pop off. Two or three hours later I wake up again, and
find that inspiration has done its work. Thousands of words, comforting,
uplifting words, lie before me. I type them out neatly on my machine and
they are ready for the printer.”
“It all sounds wonderfully simple,” said Denis.
“It is. All the great and splendid and divine things of life are
wonderfully simple.” (Quotation marks again.) “When I have to do my
aphorisms,” Mr. Barbecue-Smith continued, “I prelude my trance by
turning over the pages of any Dictionary of Quotations or Shakespeare
Calendar that comes to hand. That sets the key, so to speak; that
ensures that the Universe shall come flowing in, not in a continuous
rush, but in aphorismic drops. You see the idea?”
Denis nodded. Mr. Barbecue-Smith put his hand in his pocket and pulled
out a notebook. “I did a few in the train to-day,” he said, turning over
the pages. “Just dropped off into a trance in the corner of my carriage.
I find the train very conducive to good work. Here they are.” He cleared
his throat and read:
“The Mountain Road may be steep, but the air is pure up there, and it is
from the Summit that one gets the view.”
“The Things that Really Matter happen in the Heart.”
It was curious, Denis reflected, the way the Infinite sometimes repeated
itself.
“Seeing is Believing. Yes, but Believing is also Seeing. If I believe in
God, I see God, even in the things that seem to be evil.”
Mr. Barbecue-Smith looked up from his notebook. “That last one,” he
said, “is particularly subtle and beautiful, don’t you think? Without
Inspiration I could never have hit on that.” He re-read the apophthegm
with a slower and more solemn utterance. “Straight from the Infinite,”
he commented reflectively, then addressed himself to the next aphorism.
“The flame of a candle gives Light, but it also Burns.”
Puzzled wrinkles appeared on Mr. Barbecue-Smith’s forehead. “I don’t
exactly know what that means,” he said. “It’s very gnomic. One could
apply it, of course to the Higher Education--illuminating, but provoking
the Lower Classes to discontent and revolution. Yes, I suppose
that’s what it is. But it’s gnomic, it’s gnomic.” He rubbed his
chin thoughtfully. The gong sounded again, clamorously, it seemed
imploringly: dinner was growing cold. It roused Mr. Barbecue-Smith from
meditation. He turned to Denis.
“You understand me now when I advise you to cultivate your Inspiration.
Let your Subconscious work for you; turn on the Niagara of the
Infinite.”
There was the sound of feet on the stairs. Mr. Barbecue-Smith got up,
laid his hand for an instant on Denis’s shoulder, and said:
“No more now. Another time. And remember, I rely absolutely on your
discretion in this matter. There are intimate, sacred things that one
doesn’t wish to be generally known.”
“Of course,” said Denis. “I quite understand.”