THE LITERARY GENTLEMAN IN THE BACK PARLOUR
Aunt Tipping proved not so ludicrously out of it after all in regard to
the literary gentleman in the back parlour. Henry had hardly known what
to expect; but certainly he had pictured no one so interesting as Ashton
Gerard proved to be. For a dark den smelling strongly of whisky and
water, and some slovenly creature of the under-world crouched in a dirty
armchair over the fire, he found instead a pleasant little room, very
neatly kept, with books, two or three good pictures, and general
evidence of cultivated tastes; and on Mr. Gerard's refined sad face,
which, being shaven, and surmounted by a tuft of vigorous curly hair,
once black but now curiously splashed with vivid flakes of white,
retained something of boyish beauty even at forty, you looked in vain
for the marks of one who was in the grip of an imperious vice. Only by
the marked dimness and weariness of his blue eyes, which gave the face a
rather helpless, dreamy expression, might the experienced observer have
understood. So to speak, the ocular will had gone out of them; they no
longer grasped the visible, but glided listlessly over it; nor did they
seem to be looking on things invisible. They were the eyes of
the drowned.
Mr. Gerard had exceedingly gentle manners. It was easy to understand
that a landlady would worship him. He gave little trouble, asked for the
most necessary service as though it were a courtesy, and never forgot an
interest in Aunt Tipping's affairs. On bright days he revealed a vein of
quite boyish gaiety; and in his talk with Henry he flashed out a strange
paradoxical humour, too often morbid in its themes, which, as usually
the case with such humour, was really sadness coming to the surface in
a jest.
It soon transpired that a favourite subject of his talk was that very
weakness which most men would have been at pains to hide.
"So you're going to be a poet, Mr. Mesurier," he said. "Well, so was I
once, so was I--but," he continued, "all too early another Muse took
hold of me, a terrible Muse--yet a Muse who never forsakes you--" and
he laid his hand on a decanter which stood near him on the table,--"yes,
Mr. Mesurier, the terrible Muse of Drink! You may be surprised to hear
me talk so; yet were this laudanum instead of brandy, there would seem
to you a certain element of the poetic in the service of such a Muse.
Drinks with Oriental or unfamiliar names have a romantic sound. Thus
Alfred de Musset as the slave to absinthe sounds much more poetic than,
say, Alfred de Musset as a slave to rum or gin, or even this brandy
here. Yet this, too, is no less the stuff that dreams are made of; and
the opium-eater, the absinthe-sipper, the brandy-drinker, are all
members of the same great brotherhood of tragic idealists--"
He talked deliberately; but there was a smile playing at the corners of
the mouth which took from his talk the sense of a painful
self-revelation, and gave it the air of a playful fantasia upon a
paradox that for the moment amused him.
"Idealists! Yes," he continued; "for what few understand is that drink
is an idealism--and," he presently added with a laugh, "and, of course,
like all idealisms, it has its dangers."
With a monomaniac, conversation is apt to limit itself to monologue;
so, while Henry was greatly interested in this odd talk, it left him but
little to say.
"I'm afraid I shock you a little, Mr. Mesurier, perhaps even--disgust
you," said Mr. Gerard.
"Indeed, no!" exclaimed Henry; "but both the subject and your way of
treating it are, I confess, a little new to me."
"You are surprised to find one who is what is popularly known as a
drunkard not so much ashamed of as interested in himself; isn't that it?
Well, that comes of the introspective literary temperament. It is only
the oyster fascinated by the pearl that is killing it."
"You should write some 'Confessions' after the manner of De Quincey,"
said Henry.
"Indeed, I've often thought of it, for there's so much that needs saying
on the subject. There is nothing with which we are at once so familiar
and of which we know so little. For example"--and now he was quite
plainly off again--"for example, the passion for, I might say the dream
of, drink is usually regarded as a sensual appetite, a physical
indulgence. No doubt in its first crude stages it often is so; but soon
it becomes something much more strange and abstract. It becomes a
mysterious command, issuing we know not whence. It is hardly a desire,
and it is not so much a joyless, as a quite colourless, obedience to an
imperious necessity, decreed by some unknown will. You might well
imagine that I like the taste of this brandy there, as a child is
greedily fond of sweetstuff; but it would be quite a mistake. For my own
personal taste, there is no drink like a cup of tea; it is the demon,
the strange will that has imposed itself upon me, that has a taste
for brandy.
"I sometimes wonder whether we poor drunkards are not the victims of
disembodied powers of the air who, by some chance, have contracted a
craving for earthly liquors, and can only satisfy that craving by
fastening themselves upon some unhappy human organism. At times there
comes an intermission of the command, as mysterious almost as the
command itself. For weeks together we give no thought to our tyrant. We
grow gay and young and innocent again. We are free,--so free, we seem to
have forgotten that we were ever enslaved. Then suddenly one day we hear
the call again. We cry for mercy; we throw ourselves on our knees in
prayer. We clutch sacred relics; we conjure the aid of holy memories; we
say over to ourselves the names of the dead we have loved: but it is all
in vain--surely we are dragged to the feet of that inexorable will,
surely we submit ourselves once more to the dark dominion."
Henry listened, fascinated, and a little frightened.
"The longer I live, the more I grow convinced that this is no mere
fancy, but actual science," Mr. Gerard continued; "for, again, you might
well imagine that one drinks for the dreams or other illusory effects it
is said to produce. At first, perhaps, yes; but such effects speedily
pass away, they pass away indeed before the tyranny has established
itself, while it would still be possible to shake it off. No, the dreams
of drink are poor things, not worth having at the best. Indeed, there
are no dreams worth having, believe me, but those of youth and health
and spring-water."
And Mr. Gerard passed for awhile in silence into some hidden country of
his lost dreams.
Henry gazed at him with a curious wonder. Here was a man evidently of
considerable gifts, a man of ideals, of humour, a man witty and gentle,
who surely could have easily made his mark in the world, and yet he had
thrown all away for a mechanical habit which he himself did not pretend
to be a passion,--a mere abstract attraction: as though a man should
say, "I care not for the joys or successes of this world. My destiny is
to sit alone all day and count my fingers and toes, count them over and
over and over again. There is not much pleasure in it, and I should be
glad to break off the habit,--but there it is. It is imposed upon me by
a will stronger than mine which I must obey. It is my destiny."
"Yes, idealists!" said Mr. Gerard, presently coming back from his dreams
to his great subject, with a laugh. "That reminds me of a story a
business friend of mine told me the other day. A clerk in his office was
an incorrigible drunkard. He was quite alone in the world, and had no
one dependent upon him. The firm had been lenient to him, and again and
again forgiven his outbreaks. But one morning they called him in and
said: 'Look here, Jones, we have had a great deal of patience with you;
but the time has come when you must choose between the drink and the
office.' To their surprise, Jones, instead of eagerly promising reform,
looked up gravely, and replied, 'Will you give me a week to think it
over, sir? It is a very serious matter.' Drink was all the poor fellow
had outside his drudgery; was it to be expected that he should thus
lightly sacrifice it?--
"But, to talk about something else, your aunt, Mrs. Tipping, who has a
great idea of my literary importance, has a notion that I may be of some
help to you, Mr. Mesurier. Well, I'll tell you the whole extent of my
present literary engagements, and you are perfectly at liberty to laugh.
At the present time I do the sporting notes for the _Tyrian Daily Mail_,
and I write the theological reviews for _The Fleet Street Review_. These
apparently incongruous occupations are the relics of an old taste for
sport, which as a boy in the country I had ample opportunity for
indulging, and of an interrupted training for the Church--'twixt then
and now there is an eventful gap which, if you don't mind, we won't
sadden each other by filling--Let us fill our glasses and our pipes
instead; and, having failed so entirely myself, I will give you minute
directions how to succeed in literature."
Mr. Gerard's discourse on how to succeed in literature was partly
practical and partly ironical, and probably too technical to interest
the general reader, who has no intention of being a great or a little
writer, and who perhaps has already found Mr. Gerard's previous
discourse a little too special in its character. Suffice it that Henry
heard much to remember, and much to laugh over, and that Mr. Gerard
concluded with a practical offer of kindness.
"I don't know how much use it may be to you," he said; "but if you care
to have it, I should be very glad to give you a letter to the editor of
_The Fleet Street Review_. He has, I think, a certain regard for me, and
he might send you a book to do now and again. At all events, it would be
something."
Henry embraced the offer gratefully; and it occurred to him that in a
day or two's time there was a five days' excursion running from Tyre to
London and back, for half-a-guinea. Why not take it, and expend his last
five pounds in a stimulating glimpse of the city he some day hoped to
conquer? He could then see his friend the publisher, present his letter
to the editor, and perhaps bring home with him some little work and a
renewed stock of hopes.
So, before they parted that night, Mr. Gerard wrote him the letter.