those roomy, squarely built mansions, that stand in respectable
gardens on the outskirts of North London. But the porch showed a true
individuality. It contained two highly glazed yellow pots, filled with
aspidistras, standing on a floor of coloured tiles.
As soon as one entered the hall the fun began. There were black china
negresses, ‘nice bright’ wallpapers, heads of healthy animals, glazed
oleographs, and at every turn, photographs of some royalty in a large
silver frame. One object in the billiard-room I particularly admired.
This was a sofa, covered with cushions of really inspiring colours.
One cushion, which was placed between a blue and orange stripe and a
form of black check, had for its main design the Star-spangled Banner,
worked in blue and crimson wools.
Conversation amid such surroundings was bound to be exciting. Lipton
got under way, and let flow an apparently inexhaustible stream of
reminiscences. There was something very appealing in listening to the
candid confessions of an entirely self-made multi-millionaire, who
gloried in the fact that he _was_ self-made.
Lipton told me that he was the first English tradesman who really
understood advertising.
‘When I got my first little shop,’ he said, speaking with a beautiful
Scottish burr, ‘I realized two things: first, that if you wanted to
sell more goods than the man next door, you had to sell better goods.
Secondly, that if you wanted to sell a _great many_ more goods, you had
to make people look at ’em, whether they wanted to or not.
‘D’you know what I did?’ And here he slapped his thigh and chuckled to
himself, ‘I got hold of two fat pigs, painted “Lipton’s Orphans” on
their backs, and used to lead ’em home from the market-place every day.
That was good advertising, wasn’t it?’
I agreed.
‘But even better’s to come, even better’s to come!’ (Here the secretary
departed, and I had a suspicion that he had heard the story before.) ‘I
trained those pigs to lie down in the middle of the road just opposite
my wee shop! Think of it. Two braw pigs lying down like that. They
stopped the traffic. When we got a crowd round, somebody would say
“Why! _There’s_ the wee shop!” And they’d all trot along and look at my
window. What d’you think of that?’
And then he told me the story of Lipton’s Bank Notes--almost the best
piece of publicity that can ever have been invented. One of his chief
slogans was: ‘Lipton gives £1 value for 15_s._,’ something to that
effect, and in order to spread this slogan all over England he had £1
notes issued with a note in very small type at the bottom that goods
to the value of £1 could be bought for only 15_s._ at any of Lipton’s
stores. So beautifully were these notes engraved that occasionally they
would be used, by canny and dishonest persons, in place of the real
article. The authorities learnt this and Lipton had to stop his notes.
But not before several little comedies had occurred.
‘D’you know,’ said Sir Thomas, with a sparkle in his eye, ‘that a man
in an hotel at Edinburgh actually gave me one of my own notes as part
of my change? Did I what? No, I didn’t. He was a clever fellow, and I
let him keep it.
‘_And_ ...’ here he leant back in a sudden paroxysm of mirth, ‘I was
travelling in the train once with two elders and they were talking of
the collection at the Kirk the Sabbath before.
‘“Five pounds seventeen and elevenpence,” said one of ’em.
‘“Aye,” said the other, “but three of the notes were Liptons.”’
Lipton has, of course, a real veneration for Kings and Queens. He
adores them with a fervour that at times almost becomes poetical,
and he can never quite rid himself of the shy wonder that he, the
ex-factory boy who started life on 2_s._ 6_d._ a week, should have
risen to such heights.
He took me into his drawing-room (which I believe he called a parlour)
and showed me some of his collection of royal photographs, with the
remark that:
‘No other commoner in the United Kingdom has ever entertained the same
number of crowned heads.’
Looking at the photographs, I could quite believe it. Royal photographs
are all very well in small numbers, but in quantities they become a
little oppressive. There were several rows of them on the piano, all
in heavy silver frames, there were pictures of Queen Victoria on the
wall, slightly fly-blown, there were portraits of King Edward, stout
and urbane, on the mantelpiece, and every table had on it a photograph
of some high-busted lady or be-whiskered gentleman, signed Augusta
or Charles or Emelia or John, or some such name, with the signature
written in that curious scrawl which denotes either a royal origin,
success behind the footlights, or delirium tremens.
And yet--Lipton himself was still simple and charming. His pride was so
naïve that one could not possibly object to it. ‘The Kaiser said to me
...’ ‘Her Majesty remarked ...’ ‘The Prince of Wales and I ...’--they
were all only little pats on the back of the ex-factory boy.
Even when he said to me:
‘I’ve the largest collection of Press cuttings in the whole world,’ the
remark seemed, by the way in which it was said, to be in the best of
taste.
The quality which I found most lovable about Sir Thomas Lipton was his
intense devotion to his mother. That was the only time when he was
really serious. He told me that all his life he had worked for her and
for her alone, and that he had never found any other woman in the world
who could make him forget her. And his very last words to me were:
‘You stick to your mother, laddie, as you would stick to life. As long
as you do that, you won’t go far wrong.’
* * * * *
I don’t know what it is about Hugh Walpole that I find, no doubt
wrongly, a little worrying, unless it is his appearance of complacency.
He _is_ so successful, isn’t he? I have really no right to mention him
at all, for I only met him once, and that was at a station, when we
were both ‘seeing off’ a mutual friend to America--a situation which
was sufficient to make enemies of us for life. But I had heard--oh,
a great deal about him from the friend in question, who was a very
delightful American woman who has been fairy godmother to a great many
young authors and artists.
We were in Venice together (the very delightful American woman and I)
and one day she said, ‘Let’s go and get some lemons for Hugh Walpole.’
‘Lemons? They’ll go bad long before we get home.’
‘Not real lemons. Glass apples. Venetian glass. Hugh has taken a new
house in London and I want to give him a present.’
So we entered a gondola, pushed off across the silver water, and were
soon in Salvati’s, buying beautiful glass lemons for Hugh.
If this is to be a history of my life, as it is rapidly appearing to
become, I had better get the subject of Venetian glass off my chest
at once. It used to drive me quite mad with excitement, and still
does--in Venice. On the morning in which the very delightful American
woman and I went in search of the lemons, a new and most divine set
of glass had just come in fresh from the factory. There were pieces
of yellow glass that were like frozen sunlight, shadowy goblets that
seemed to be bubbles poised on a puff of smoke, dim bowls that might
just have been taken dripping from the green depths of the sea, pots
of plain, clean glass with tiny fruits in sharp colours on the tops,
little twinkling plums and vivid sour green apples. There were rich
goblets engraved with golden dragons, and tall slim cups of grey glass,
like pale ladies coming out of a mist.
We chose our lemons, entered the gondola, and drifted down the grand
canal. I did not particularly want to hear about Hugh Walpole, but he
was apparently ‘in the air,’ so I asked why he was so great a success
in America.
‘Because they think he’s typically English. They also think he’s
exceeding clever,’ said the very delightful American woman (who may be
referred to as the V.D.A.W.).
‘But he’s neither.’
‘How do you know? You’ve never met him’ (which was perfectly true). ‘He
_is_ typically English. His face is like an old English squire’s. And
he is very clever. Or at least we think so.’
And then the V.D.A.W. delivered herself of a very good piece of
literary criticism.
‘You’ll find Hugh Walpole’s books in every best bedroom in the United
States, except possibly, in the very best ones, where you will not
find works in English but in French, to show that we have travelled.
Way out in the Middle West, there will be a copy of _The Dark Forest_
or _The Prelude to Adventure_ carefully placed on a table near the
radiator. It will probably never have been read, but it will be there.
That’s culture.’
An extraordinary idea. ‘How does one get this reputation for culture?’
I said. ‘My books have just as nice covers as Hugh Walpole’s, and there
is no reason why they should not also have the benefit of steam heat.’
‘You’re too young,’ was the only answer I got.
However, I learnt more about Hugh Walpole, and at least discovered that
he had this very admirable quality--the capacity to plod. Right at the
beginning, apparently, Henry James had told him that if he went on, and
on, and on, he would eventually get there. It seems to me that he _has_
gone on, and on, and on, but that he has not got there. Still, the
going is good.
Then I met him. The scene was Victoria Station on a raw morning in
winter, with little wisps of yellow fog lurking under the high roof.
The V.D.A.W. was ensconced in her carriage behind a large bouquet of
roses which he had given to her. In her lap was an American magazine
which he had also given her. I noticed with a slight amusement that it
was ‘featuring’ a story by Hugh Walpole himself.
When the train bearing the V.D.A.W. had departed into the fog, we
walked out of the station together.
‘I hate seeing people off,’ he said.
‘So do I. Especially people I like.’
‘Quite.’
He paused in the middle of the station and scratched his head.
‘I should like to write a guide,’ he said, ‘on how to see people off.
It would be done in several moods. Grave and gay. Topics to be avoided.
Time-limits.’
‘The chief thing,’ I suggested, ‘would be to strictly limit’ (I noticed
that the split infinitive made him blink, genteel man of letters
that he was) ‘to strictly limit the number of times one said, “Well,
good-bye.” We must have said it at least sixteen times this morning.
Every whistle made us say it.’
‘I don’t remember saying it more than once,’ he remarked.
Then we entered the Tube, and endeavoured to converse by shouting
feverishly into each other’s ears. (Oh! There is no doubt that we were
meant to be enemies for life.)
‘I hear you’re doing dramatic criticism and book-reviewing,’ he
screamed.
‘No, I’m not,’ I bellowed. ‘I’m only a reporter.’
Bang, bang, bang.
‘Well,’ he shrieked, ‘that’s not as bad as the other.’
‘What is not as bad as which?’ I howled.
‘I mean that book-reviewing’ (and here the train suddenly came to a
halt so that his voice boomed out like a sergeant-major’s) ‘is far more
soul-destroying than reporting.’
I should like to see Hugh Walpole battering at East End doors on
windy nights in winter, trying to gain admission to a house where a
murder has just been committed, and see which he thought was more
‘soul-destroying.’
‘I did book-reviewing for a long time on the _Evening Standard_,’ he
confided, in a hoarse whisper, ‘and’ (here the train started, so he
again had to yell) ‘it nearly killed me.’
Bang, bang, bang.
‘And what about the dramatic criticism?’ I howled.
He gathered all the remaining wind that was in his lungs and shrieked,
‘Don’t know so much about it. But I should think that would rot your
brain before long.’
He got out at Charing Cross, and as I hurtled along towards the
unaristocratic destination of Blackfriars, I pondered on the type of
mind that thought dramatic criticism would rot the brain. To see, night
after night, the curtain rise on the flash and light of the drama. To
feel, as every daylight faded, that some new pageant was gathering
to spread itself out before one’s eyes. To sit in the warm, scented
darkness and analyse the motives, the construction, the technique of
the play, even if it is a bad play. To have always the hope, sometimes
justified, that one would be caught up in the sudden rapture that
comes from great acting. Is that ‘rotting the brain’? Not, I think,
to a young man. However, Hugh Walpole is not a young man. He was born
middle-aged. But he is rapidly achieving his first childhood.
CHAPTER TWENTY
A Memory--And Some Songs
One of the most wonderful evenings of my life was when, in the heart of
the Australian Bush, Melba sang for me alone.
I ought, if I had a tidy mind, to describe how I got to the Australian
Bush, and how so divine a person as Melba should be singing to me
at all. But that can come in due course. For the moment I want to
recapture that scene as I lived it.
There is a long room, panelled in green, lit only by the misty glow
from outside the windows, fragrant with the scent of yellow roses.
There are wonderful old mirrors that catch the dying sparkle of a Marie
Antoinette Chandelier. In the half-light so many lovely things shine
dimly ... a picture of dark, closely-clustered flowers, a case of fans,
delicate as the world of fairies....
I am standing at the window. There is a long veranda, and in the
distance I can see, faintly outlined, the pillars of the loggia that
leads to an Italian garden. Mountains, fabulously blue, rise on the
horizon and everything is very quiet. Only a few hours ago the air
had been rent with the shrill cries of parrots, flying to their
resting-place in the forests. Even while we had dined we could hear the
liquid warbling of magpies, that strange noise, like water gurgling
from a flask, which brings all Australia before me as I write. And
after dinner, while we had taken our coffee, the whole of the fields
around had echoed with the chirping of crickets. But now ... silence.
And then, like a moonbeam stealing into an empty room, that voice,
which is as no other has ever been...
_Dans ton cœur dort un clair de lune..._
The notes die away and there is silence again. I go on looking at the
blue mountains. Then, from the other end of the room, a sudden laugh,
the sort of laugh that people may make in Heaven, and--
‘Well, did you like me?’
I laugh too. It seems so utterly fantastic to attempt to appreciate in
words an art like this. Nobody ought ever to clap Melba. They ought to
remain silent. The greatest things in art are above applause.
It was in, I believe, 1923, that I first had the delight of meeting
her, but it was not till the season had really begun, and I found
myself in Covent Garden, listening to the first opening bars of ‘_Mi
Chiamano Mimi_,’ that I really came under her spell. It was not the
first time I had heard her sing. As a small boy of nine I had been
taken to one of her concerts by my mother, and had greatly irritated my
family by informing them, when I returned home, that I thought she sang
exactly like myself.
In a sense, there was truth as well as youthful complacency in that
criticism. Her voice _is_ like a choirboy’s, as crystalline, as utterly
removed from things of the earth.
One day she said to me, with characteristic directness, ‘You’re not
well. You’re poisoned. You’ve been working too hard. You ought to come
out to Australia and help me with my Opera Season.’
I denied indignantly that I was poisoned. (My doctor afterwards
confirmed her diagnosis.) I said that I knew nothing about Opera. But
all the same, though it was some six months later, I went out to join
her in Australia--that was in the beginning of 1924.
Melba is so great a woman--I use the word ‘great’ in the fullest
sense--that one cannot possibly attempt a full-length portrait of her
in a few pages. But, from the notebook of my imagination, I may perhaps
draw out a few pages, roughly scribbled over with thumbnail sketches,
that may make you feel you know her a little.
I shall take the sketches simply as they occur, without attempting
to put them in order. The first one is labelled ‘energy.’ The
face of Melba appears, rising calmly over a heavy _chaise-longue_
which, unassisted, she is pushing across the room. It is one of her
furniture-moving days. The whole of her boudoir is upside down.
Pictures stand in rows against the walls, china is ranged along the
floor, and over the chairs and sofas are scattered quantities of
bibelots--pieces of jade, little mother-of-pearl boxes bearing the
words _Souvenir_ and _Je pense à toi_, crystal clocks, a tiny gold case
containing a singing bird with emerald eyes.
The furniture-moving goes on. I endeavour to help, and am told with
great frankness that I am far more bother than I am worth, and that I
had better content myself with watching. And so I watch, amazed. Little
by little the room takes shape. At one moment she is standing on a
chair, and the next she is kneeling on the floor, doing the work of six
British labourers. _Voilà._ It is done. And she is at the piano again,
trilling like a newly fed thrush.
If Melba had had no voice she might have made a fortune as an art
connoisseur. I have been driving with her sometimes, and have seen,
on the other side of the street, a window full of antiques. ‘Look,’ I
have said. ‘Don’t you think there might be some fascinating things in
there?’ She looks. In the space of ten seconds her eye has taken in the
entire contents of the window, and she either says ‘All fake,’ or she
stops the car. I have never known her wrong. It is as inexplicable to
me as the feat of the eagle which can see a mouse hidden in a field of
corn a mile beneath.
So many people who like to pretend that they are artistic will tell you
that they cannot bear to live with ugly things. They will say this with
pained expressions, even when they are sitting, apparently unmoved,
beneath a Landseer stag, on a Victorian settee. With Melba it really
is pain. Whenever I see her in an ugly room I know the exact feeling
of the Oyster who is irritated by a piece of sand. She is restless.
Her eyes dart hither and thither. She bites her lips. For two pins she
would get up and hurl things out of the window.
I shall never forget once when she was singing three times a week in
the Opera at one of the great Australian cities, and was staying in
an hotel in order to be near the theatre. She came down at about ten
o’clock to go for a drive. I met her in the hall. As we were going out
she paused in the entrance way and said:
‘Those pots. Look at them. They’re hideous enough in all conscience,
but they’re made ten times worse by being pushed out in that ridiculous
position. Let’s push them back against the wall.’
Now wherever Melba goes in Australia there is always a little crowd in
her wake, as though she were the Queen of the Continent, which indeed
she is. And the prospect of moving pots in the entrance of an hotel
struck me as alarming in the extreme.
I mumbled something about ‘waiting.’ She looked at me scornfully.
‘Wait?’ she said. ‘What for? Come on.’
Without the faintest interest in the sensation she was making, she
bent over and began to move the first pot into position. I shall never
forget the sparkling look of satisfaction on her face, the slight flush
that the effort caused, the waving ospreys in her hat, and the cry of
‘There--isn’t that better?’ when the first pot was placed in position.
I saw a tall red-faced individual glowering down on us.
‘Excuse me,’ he said.
‘I’m Melba,’ she said. ‘I’m doing some furniture-moving for you.’
He was quite speechless for a moment. Then, after a gulp he managed to
say, ‘But, Madame....’
‘Oh, I shan’t charge you anything,’ she remarked.
Those pots are as she placed them to this day.
The next sketch is labelled ‘The Singing Lesson.’ There are the
outlines of a long bare room, a platform, some seats in front, occupied
by professor and pupils. Melba sits by herself in a corner, biting a
pencil. A pupil steps on to the platform and begins to sing. Suddenly
the voice rings out, ‘Stop!’
As though she had been shot, the pupil stops dead. Melba gets up from
her seat, goes to the platform, says to the accompanist, ‘Let me sit
down a minute,’ and then turns to the girl.
‘I’m not going to eat you,’ she says. Her own smile brings an answering
smile to the face of the girl.
‘Sing me “Ah.”’
‘Ah.’
‘No--“Ah”--’ up here, in the front of the mouth.
‘Ah!’
‘No. You’re still swallowing it. Listen. Sing mah. Close your lips,
hum, and then open them suddenly. Mah, mah, mah.’
‘Mah, mah, mah.’
‘That’s better. Now higher. Right. Higher.’
She takes her up the scale. At F sharp she stops. ‘Piano. Please,
please, _pianissimo_! You’ll ruin your voice if you sing top notes so
loud. Better, but still too loud. _Pianissimo!_’ She leans forward, one
finger to her lips.
Somewhere about the top B flat the girl cracks. She blushes and turns
appealingly to Melba. Melba takes no notice and strikes a note higher.
‘I don’t think I can....’
‘I don’t care what you think,’ says Melba. ‘Sing it.’
‘But I shall crack.’
‘That doesn’t matter, I don’t mind what sort of noise you make. I just
want to hear it.’
The girl attempts it again, the note is pure and round.
Melba rises from the piano and steps briskly from the platform. ‘She’s
got a lovely voice,’ she says. ‘A lyric soprano. She’s taking her chest
notes too high, that’s all. Send her up to me and I’ll make that all
right.’
I wonder how many other prima donnas there are in this world who would
do that, who would put themselves to endless pains and expense, simply
for the love of song.
I have yet to be informed of their names and addresses.
The third sketch is labelled--the artist. The scene is a rehearsal of
_Othello_. For three hours she has been singing, directing, talking
at one moment to the orchestra, at the next, to the stage hands, to
anybody and everybody. The scene is set for the last act, and with
her meticulous sense of detail she has been busying herself with
the crimson draperies that overhang the bed. Now she is standing in
mid-stage, sending her voice up to the men who work the lights. ‘More
yellow,’ she is crying, ‘more yellow. This isn’t a surgery. You’re
blinding me. That’s better. Wait a minute. Not so much of that spot
light on the bed. I am not a music-hall artist.’ Then, _sotto voce_,
‘How on earth does the poor man think that Desdemona could go to sleep
with a light like that in her eyes?’
She is almost the only woman I have ever known who has an absolute
horror of the slip-shod. Study her day when she is singing in opera.
She is up with the lark. After breakfast she is in her boudoir,
‘warming’ her voice, studying her rôle from start to finish. She
lunches frugally, drinking only water. After lunch she drives or walks.
At five there is the pretence of a meal--an omelette or a little fish.
From now onwards she eats nothing till after the performance.
She is in her dressing-room from an hour and a half to two hours
before the performance. Her make-up is scrupulous. She describes in
her autobiography the importance which she attaches to the minutest
details of make-up, but I don’t think that even her own description
quite makes one realize the perfection of it. From her wig to her
shoes, everything is as it should be. I have seen her reject fifty
shawls for the part of Mimi, simply because they were not in keeping
with her idea of the character.
Sketch four might be named Courage. I remember a day when we were
driving together, and, as she stepped from the car, the chauffeur
slammed the door full on to her fingers, crushing them cruelly. She
cried--‘Oh, my hand!’ and the door was feverishly dragged open again.
She bit her lip, walked into the theatre, sat down and closed her eyes.
That was all. There was no hysterics, no ‘Vapours,’ not even a tear.
It is not only in physical courage that she excels. She has the sort
of gay fearlessness which allows her to motor late at night through
the Australian Bush with only a single chauffeur, and jewels of more
value than I should care to estimate. One night she was motoring home
with Lady Stradbroke, who is the wife of the Governor of Victoria. The
car broke down in the middle of a forest. The chauffeur had to run off
into the darkness, leaving the women alone. There they sat for a full
hour. Any tramp, any of the roving, husky ‘sun-downers’ with whom the
Bush abounds, might have come along and taken all they wanted. Lady
Stradbroke told me that though she herself was shaking in her shoes,
Melba kept up a perpetual babble of chatter. I asked her when at two
o’clock in the morning they arrived, if she had not been fearfully
agitated. She laughed her unforgettable laugh. ‘Agitated? Me? They
wouldn’t hurt _me_. I’m Melba.’