Fortunately for my life and my sanity, my interests were, about this
time, attracted into other ways--ways that led into London life, and
were suitable for me to tread. In a restaurant where low-necked dresses
and evening clothes crushed with loud exclamations, where there was ever
an odour of cigarette and brandy and soda, I was introduced to a Jew of
whom I had heard much, a man who had newspapers and racehorses. The
bright witty glances of his brown eyes at once prejudiced me in his
favour, and it was not long before I knew that I had found another
friend. His house was what was wanted, for it was so trenchant in
character, so different from all I knew of, that I was forced to accept
it, without likening it to any French memory and thereby weakening the
impression. It was a house of champagne, late hours, and evening
clothes, of literature and art, of passionate discussions. So this house
was not so alien to me as all else I had seen in London; and perhaps the
cosmopolitanism of this charming Jew, his Hellenism, in fact, was a sort
of plank whereon I might pass and enter again into English life. I
found in Curzon Street another "Nouvelle Athènes," a Bohemianism of
titles that went back to the Conquest, a Bohemianism of the ten
sovereigns always jingling in the trousers pocket, of scrupulous
cleanliness, of hansom cabs, of ladies' pet names; of triumphant
champagne, of debts, gaslight, supper-parties, morning light, coaching;
a fabulous Bohemianism; a Bohemianism of eternal hard-upishness and
eternal squandering of money,--money that rose at no discoverable
well-head and flowed into a sea of boudoirs and restaurants, a sort of
whirlpool of sovereigns in which we were caught, and sent eddying
through music halls, bright shoulders, tresses of hair, and slang; and I
joined in the adorable game of Bohemianism that was played round and
about Piccadilly Circus, with Curzon Street for a magnificent rallying
point.
After dinner a general "clear" was made in the direction of halls and
theatres, a few friends would drop in about twelve, and continue their
drinking till three or four; but Saturday night was gala night--at
half-past eleven the lords drove up in their hansoms, then a genius or
two would arrive, and supper and singing went merrily until the chimney
sweeps began to go by. Then we took chairs and bottles into the street
and entered into discussion with the policeman. Twelve hours later we
struggled out of our beds, and to the sound of church bells we commenced
writing. The paper appeared on Tuesday. Our host sat in a small room off
the dining-room from which he occasionally emerged to stimulate our
lagging pens.
But I could not learn to see life paragraphically. I longed to give a
personal shape to something, and personal shape could not be achieved in
a paragraph nor in an article. True it is that I longed for art, but I
longed also for fame, or was it notoriety? Both. I longed for fame,
brutal and glaring.
Out with you, liars that you are, tell the truth, say you would sell the
souls you don't believe in, or do believe in, for notoriety. I have
known you attend funerals for the sake of seeing your miserable names in
the paper! You, hypocritical reader, who are now turning up your eyes
and murmuring "dreadful young man"--examine your weakly heart, and see
what divides us; I am not ashamed of my appetites, I proclaim them, what
is more I gratify them; you're silent, you refrain, and you dress up
natural sins in hideous garments of shame, you would sell your wretched
soul for what I would not give the parings of my finger-nails
for--paragraphs in a society paper. I am ashamed of nothing I have done,
especially my sins, and I boldly confess that I then desired notoriety.
"Am I going to fail again as I have failed before?" I asked myself.
"Will my novel prove as abortive as my paintings, my poetry, my
journalism?" We all want notoriety, our desire for notoriety is ugly,
but it is less hideous when it is proclaimed from a brazen tongue than
when it lisps the cant of humanitarianism. Self, and after self a
friend; the rest may go to the devil; and be sure that when any man is
more stupidly vain and outrageously egotistic than his fellows, he will
hide his hideousness in humanitarianism. Victor Hugo was the innermost
stench of the humanitarianism, and Mr Swinburne holds his nose with one
hand while he waves the censer with the other. Men of inferior genius,
Victor Hugo and Mr Gladstone, take refuge in humanitarianism.
Humanitarianism is a pigsty, where liars, hypocrites, and the obscene in
spirit congregate; it has been so since the great Jew conceived it, and
it will be so till the end. Far better the blithe modern pagan in his
white tie and evening clothes, and his facile philosophy. He says, "I
don't care how the poor live; my only regret is that they live at all;"
and he gives the beggar a shilling.
We all want notoriety; our desires on this point, as upon others, are
not noble, but the human is very despicable vermin and only tolerable
when it tends to the brute, and away from the evangelical. I will tell
you an anecdote which is in itself an admirable illustration of my
craving for notoriety; and my anecdote will serve a double purpose,--it
will bring me some of the notoriety of which I am so desirous, for you,
dear, exquisitely hypocritical reader, will at once cry, "Shame! Could a
man be so wicked as to attempt to force on a duel, so that he might make
himself known through the medium of a legal murder?" You will tell your
friends of this horribly unprincipled young man, and they will, of
course, instantly want to know more about him.
It was a gala night in Curzon Street, the lords were driving up in
hansoms; some seated on the roofs with their legs swinging inside; the
comics had arrived from the halls; there were ladies, many ladies;
choruses were going merrily in the drawing-room; one man was attempting
to kick the chandelier, another stood on his head on the sofa. There was
a beautiful young lord there, that sort of figure that no woman can
resist. There was a delightful youth who seemed inclined to empty the
mustard-pot down my neck; him I could keep in order, but the beautiful
lord was attempting to make a butt of me. With his impertinences I did
not for a moment intend to put up; I did not know him, he was not then,
as he is now, if he will allow me to say so, a friend. The ladies
retired about then, and the festivities continued. We had passed through
various stages of jubilation, no one was drunk, but we had been jocose
and rowdy, we had told stories of all kinds. The young lord and I did
not "pull well together," but nothing decidedly unpleasant occurred
until someone proposed to drink to the downfall of Gladstone. The
beautiful lord got on his legs and began a speech. Politically it was
sound enough, but much of it was plainly intended to turn me into
ridicule. I answered sharply, working gradually up crescendo, until at
last, to bring matters to a head, I said,
"I don't agree with you; the Land Act of '81 was a necessity."
"Anyone who thinks so must be a fool."
"Very possibly, but I don't allow people to address such language to me,
and you must be aware that to call anyone a fool, sitting with you at
table in the house of a friend, is the act of a cad."
There was a lull, then a moment after he said,
"I only meant politically."
"And I only meant socially."
He advanced a step or two and struck me across the face with his finger
tips; I took up a champagne bottle, and struck him across the head and
shoulders. Different parties of revellers kept us apart, and we walked
up and down on either side of the table swearing at each other. Although
I was very wroth, I had had a certain consciousness from the first that
if I played my cards well I might come very well out of the quarrel; and
as I walked down the street I determined to make every effort to force
on a meeting. If the quarrel had been with one of the music-hall singers
I should have backed out of it, but I had everything to gain by
pressing it. I grasped the situation at once. All the Liberal press
would be on my side, the Conservative press would have nothing to say
against me, no woman in it and a duel with a lord would be nuts and
apples for the journalists.
I did not go to bed at once, but sat in the armchair thinking,
calculating my chances. A cab came rattling up to the door, and one of
the revellers came upstairs. He told me that everything had been
arranged; I told him that I was not in the habit of allowing others to
arrange my affairs for me, and went to bed.
Among my old friends I could think of some half-dozen that would suit me
perfectly, but where were they? Ten years' absence scatters friends as
October scatters swallows.