I came in from a stroll one day with Father Payne and Barthrop. Father
Payne opened a letter which was lying on the hall table, and saying,
"Hallo, Leonard, look at this. Gladwin is coming down for Sunday--that will
be rather fun!"
"I don't know about fun," said Barthrop; "at least I doubt if I should find
it fun, if I had the responsibility of entertaining him."
"Yes, it's a great responsibility," said Father Payne. "I feel that.
Gladwin is a man who has to be taken as you find him, but who never makes
any pretence of taking you as he finds you! But it will amuse me to put him
through his paces a bit!"
"Who on earth is Gladwin?" said I, consumed by curiosity.
Father Payne and Barthrop laughed. "I should like Gladwin to hear that!"
said Barthrop.
"Only it would grieve him still more if Duncan _had_ heard of him,"
said Father Payne; "there would be a commonness about that!" Then turning
to me, he said, "Gladwin? Well, he's about the most critical man in
England, I suppose. He does a little work--a very little: and I think he
might have been a great man, if he hadn't become so fearfully dry. He began
by despising everyone else, and ended by despising himself--and now it's
almost a torture to him to make up his mind. 'There's something base about
a _decision_,' he once said to me. But 'despising' isn't the right
word. He doesn't despise--that would be coarse. He only feels the
coarseness of things in general. He has got too fine an edge on his
mind--everything blunts it!"
"Do you remember Rose's song about him?" said Barthrop.
"Yes, what was it?" said Father Payne.
"The refrain," said Barthrop, "was
"'Not too much of whatever is best,
That is enough for me!'"
Father Payne laughed. "Yes, I remember!" he said; "'Not too much' is a good
stroke!"
I happened to be with Father Payne when Gladwin arrived. He was a small,
trim, compact man, about forty, unembarrassed and graceful, but with an air
of dejection. He had a short pointed beard and moustache, and his hair was
growing grey. He had fine thin hands, and he was dressed in old but
well-fitting clothes. He had an atmosphere of great distinction about him.
I had expected something incisive and clear-cut about him, but he was
conspicuously gentle, and even deprecating in manner. He greeted Father
Payne smilingly, and shook hands with me, with a courteous little bow. We
strolled a little in the garden. Father Payne did most of the talking, but
Gladwin's silence was sympathetic and impressive. He listened to us
tolerantly, as a man might listen to the prattle of children.
"What are you doing just now?" said Father Payne after a pause.
"Oh, nothing worth mentioning," said Gladwin softly. "I work more slowly
than ever, I believe. It can hardly be called work, indeed. In fact, I want
to consult you about a few little bits--they can hardly be called anything
so definite as 'pieces'--but I am in doubt about their arrangement. The
placing of independent pieces is such a difficulty to me, you know! One
must secure some sort of a progression!"
"Ah, I shall enjoy that," said Father Payne. "But you won't take my advice,
you know--you never do!"
"Oh, don't say that," said Gladwin. "Of course one must be ultimately
responsible. It can't be otherwise. But I always respect your judgment. You
always help me to the materials, at all events, for a decision!"
Father Payne laughed, and said, "Well, I shall be at your service any
time!"
A little while after, Gladwin said he thought he would go to his room. "I
know your ways here," he said to me with a smile; "one mustn't interfere
with a system. Besides I like it! It is such a luxury to obliterate
oneself!" When we met again before dinner, Gladwin walked across to a big
picture, an old sea-piece, rather effectively painted, which Father Payne
had found in a garret, and had had restored and framed.
"What is this?" said Gladwin very gently; "I think this is new?"
Father Payne told him the story of its discovery, adding, "I don't suppose
it is worth much--but it has a certain breeziness about it, I think."
Gladwin considered it in silence, and then turned away.
"Do you like it?" said Father Payne--a little maliciously, I thought.
"Like it?" said Gladwin meditatively, "I don't know that I can go as far as
that! I like it in your house."
Gladwin said very little at dinner. He ate and drank sparingly; and I
noticed that he looked at any dish that was offered him with a quick
scrutinising glance. He tasted his first glass of wine with the same air of
suspense, and then appeared to be relieved from a preoccupation. But he
joined little in the talk, and exercised rather a sobering effect upon us.
Once or twice he spoke out. Mention was made of Gissing's _Papers of
Henry Ryecroft_, and Father Payne asked him if he had read it. "Oh no, I
couldn't _read_ it, of course," said Gladwin; "I looked into it, and
had to put it away. I felt as if I had opened a letter addressed to someone
else by mistake!"
At a later period of the evening, a discussion arose about the laws of
taste. Father Payne had said that the one phenomenon in art he could not
understand was the almost inevitable reaction which seemed to take place in
the way in which the work of a great writer or painter or musician is
regarded a few years after his vogue declines. "I am not speaking," said
Father Payne, "of poor, commonplace, merely popular work, but of work which
was acclaimed as great by the best critics of the time, and which will
probably return to pre-eminence," He instanced, I remember, Mendelssohn and
Tennyson. "Of course," he said, "they both wrote a great deal--perhaps too
much--and some kind of sorting is necessary. I don't mind the _Idylls of
the King_, or the _Elijah_, being relegated to oblivion, because
they both show signs of having been done with one eye on the public. But
the progressive young man won't hear of Tennyson or Mendelssohn being
regarded as serious figures in art at all. Yet I honestly believe that
poems like 'Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal,' or 'Come down, O Maid,' have a
high and permanent beauty about them; or, again, the overture to the
_Midsummer Night's Dream_. I can't believe that it isn't a thing full
of loveliness and delight. I can't for the life of me see what happens to
cause such things to be forgotten. Tennyson and Mendelssohn seem to me to
have been penetrated with a sense of beauty, and to have been great
craftsmen too: and their work at its best not only satisfied the most
exacting and trained critics, but thrilled all the most beauty-loving
spirits of the time with ineffable content, as of a dream fulfilled beyond
the reach of hope. And yet all the light seems to die out of them as the
years go on. The new writers and musicians, the new critics, the new
audience, are all preoccupied with a different presentment of beauty. And
then, very slowly, the light seems to return to the old things--at least to
the best of them: but they have to suffer an eclipse, during which they are
nothing but symbols of all that is hackneyed and commonplace in music and
literature. I think things are either beautiful or not: I can't believe in
a real shifting of taste, a merely relative and temporary beauty. If it
only happened to the second-rate kinds of goodness, it would be
intelligible--but it seems to involve the best as well. What do you think,
Gladwin?"
Gladwin, who had been dreamily regarding the wine in his glass, gave a
little start almost of pain, as if a thorn had pricked him. He glanced
round the table, and then said in his gentlest voice, "Well, Payne, I don't
quite know from what point of view you are speaking--from the point of view
of serious investigation, or of edification, or of mere curiosity? I should
have to be sure of that. But, speaking hurriedly and perhaps intemperately,
I should be inclined to think that there was a sort of natural revolt
against a convention, a spontaneous disgust at deference being taken for
granted. Isn't it like what takes place in politics--though, of course, I
know nothing about politics--the way, I mean, in which the electors get
simply tired of a political party being in power, and give the other side a
chance of doing better? I mean that the gross and unintelligent laudation
of any artist who arrives at what is called assured fame, naturally turns
one's mind on to the critical consciousness of his imperfections. I don't
say it's noble or right--in fact, I think it is probably ungenerous--but I
think it is natural."
"Yes, there is a good deal in that," said Father Payne, "but ought not the
trained critics to withstand it?"
"The trained critic," said Gladwin, "the man who sells his opinion of a
work of art for money, is, of course, the debased outcome of a degrading
system. If you press me, I should consider that both the extravagant
laudation and the equally extravagant reaction are entirely vulgar and
horrible. Personally, I am not easily pleased: but then what does it matter
whether I am pleased or not?"
"But you sometimes bring yourself to form, and even express, an opinion?"
said Father Payne with a smile.
"An opinion--an opinion"--said Gladwin, shaking his head, "I don't know
that I ever get so far as that. One has a kind of feeling, no doubt; but it
is so far underground, that one hardly knows what its operations may be."
"'Well said, old mole! Canst work i' the earth so fast? A worthy pioneer!'"
said Payne, laughing.
Gladwin gave a quick smile: "A good quotation!" he said, "that was very
ready! I congratulate you on that! But there's more of the mole than the
pioneer about my work, such as it is!"
Gladwin drifted about the next day like a tired fairy.
He had a long conference with Father Payne, and at dinner he seemed aloof,
and hardly spoke at all. He vanished the next day with an air of relief.
"Well, what did you think of our guest?" said Father Payne to me, meeting
me in the garden before dinner.
"Well," I said, "he seemed to me an unhappy, heavily-burdened man--but he
was evidently extraordinarily able."
"Yes," said Father Payne, "that's about it. His mind is too big for him to
carry. He sees everything, understands everything, and passes judgment on
everything. But he hasn't enough vitality. It must be an awful curse to
have no illusions--to see the inferiority of everything so clearly. He's
awfully lonely, and I must try to see more of him. But it is very
difficult. I used to amuse him, and he appointed me, in a way he has, a
sort of State Jester--Royal Letters Patent, you know. But then he began to
detect the commonness of my mind and taste, and, one by one, all the
avenues of communication became closed. If I liked a book which he
disliked, and praised it to him, he became inflicted with a kind of mental
nausea: and it's impossible to see much of a man, with any real comfort,
when you realise that you are constantly turning him faint and sick. I had
a dreary time with him yesterday. He produced some critical essays of his
own, which he was thinking of making into a book. They were awfully dry,
like figs which have been kept too long--not a drop of juice in them. They
were hideously acute, I saw that. But there wasn't any reason why they
should have been written. They were mere dissections: I suggested that he
should call them 'Depreciations,' and he shivered, and I felt a brute. But
that didn't last long, because he has a way of putting you in your place. I
felt like something in a nightmare he was having. He annexes you, and he
disapproves of you at the same time. I am awfully sorry for him, but I
can't help him. The moment I try, I run up against his disapproval, and my
vulgar spirit revolts. He's an aristocrat, through and through. He comes
and hoists his flag over a place. I felt all yesterday as if I were a
rather unwelcome guest in his house, you know. It's a stifling atmosphere.
I can't breathe or speak, because I instantly feel myself suspected of
crudity! The truth is that Gladwin thinks you can live upon light, and
forgets that you also want air."
"It seems rather a ghastly business," I said.
"Yes," said Father Payne, "it's a wretched business! That combination of
great sensitiveness and great self-righteousness is the most melancholy
thing I know. You have to get rid of one or the other--and yet that is how
Gladwin is made. Now, I have plenty of opinions of my own, but I don't
consider them final or absolute. It ends, of course, in poor Gladwin
knowing about a hundredth part of what is going on in the world, and
thinking that it's d--d bad. Of course it is, if you neglect the other
ninety-nine parts altogether!"