And now, hypocritical reader, I will answer the questions which have been
agitating you this long while, which you have asked at every stage of this
long narrative of a sinful life. Shake not your head, lift not your finger,
exquisitely hypocritical reader; you can deceive me in nothing. I know the
baseness and unworthiness of your soul as I know the baseness and
unworthiness of my own. This is a magical _tête-à-tête_, such a one as
will never happen in your life again; therefore I say let us put off all
customary disguise, let us be frank: you have been angrily asking,
exquisitely hypocritical reader, why you have been _forced_ to read
this record of sinful life; in your exquisite hypocrisy, you have said over
and over again what good purpose can it serve for a man to tell us of his
unworthiness unless, indeed, it is to show us how he may rise, as if on
stepping stones of his dead self, to higher things, etc. You sighed, O
hypocritical friend, and you threw the magazine on the wicker table, where
such things lie, and you murmured something about leaving the world a
little better than you found it, and you went down to dinner and lost
consciousness of the world in the animal enjoyment of your stomach. I hold
out my hand to you, I embrace you, you are my brother, and I say, undeceive
yourself, you will leave the world no better than you found it. The pig
that is being slaughtered as I write this line will leave the world better
than it found it, but you will leave only a putrid carcase fit for nothing
but the grave. Look back upon your life, examine it, probe it, weigh it,
philosophise on it, and then say, if you dare, that it has not been a very
futile and foolish affair. Soldier, robber, priest, Atheist, courtesan,
virgin, I care not what you are, if you have not brought children into the
world to suffer your life has been as vain and as harmless as mine has
been. I hold out my hand to you, we are brothers; but in my heart of hearts
I think myself a cut above you, because I do not believe in leaving the
world better than I found it; and you, exquisitely hypocritical reader,
think that you are a cut above me because you say you would leave the world
better than you found it. The one eternal and immutable delight of life is
to think, for one reason or another, that we are better than our
neighbours. This is why I wrote this book, and this is why it is affording
you so much pleasure, O exquisitely hypocritical reader, my friend, my
brother, because it helps you to the belief that you are not so bad after
all. Now to resume.
The knell of my thirtieth year has sounded, in three or four years my youth
will be as a faint haze on the sea, an illusive recollection; so now while
standing on the last verge of the hill, I will look back on the valley I
lingered in. Do I regret? I neither repent nor do I regret; and a fool and
a weakling I should he if I did. I know the worth and the rarity of more
than fifteen years of systematic enjoyment. Nature provided me with as
perfect a digestive apparatus, mental and physical, as she ever turned out
of her workshop; my stomach and brain are set in the most perfect equipoise
possible to conceive, and up and down they went and still go with measured
movement, absorbing and assimilating all that is poured into them without
friction or stoppage. This book is a record of my mental digestions; but it
would take another series of confessions to tell of the dinners I have
eaten, the champagne I have drunk! and the suppers! seven dozen of oysters,
pâté-de-foie-gras, heaps of truffles, salad, and then a walk home in the
early morning, a few philosophical reflections suggested by the appearance
of a belated street-sweeper, then sleep, quiet and gentle sleep.
I have had the rarest and most delightful friends. Ah, how I have loved my
friends; the rarest wits of my generation were my boon companions;
everything conspired to enable me to gratify my body and my brain; and do
you think this would have been so if I had been a good man? If you do you
are a fool, good intentions and bald greed go to the wall, but subtle
selfishness with a dash of unscrupulousness pulls more plums out of life's
pie than the seven deadly virtues. If you are a good man you want a bad one
to convert; if you are a bad man you want a bad one to go out on the spree
with. And you, my dear, my exquisite reader, place your hand upon your
heart, tell the truth, remember this is a magical _tête-à-tête_ which
will happen never again in your life, admit that you feel just a little
interested in my wickedness, admit that if you ever thought you would like
to know me that it is because I know a good deal that you probably don't;
admit that your mouth waters when you think of rich and various pleasures
that fell to my share in happy, delightful Paris; admit that if this book
had been an account of the pious books I had read, the churches I had been
to, and the good works I had done, that you would not have bought it or
borrowed it. Hypocritical reader, think, had you had courage, health, and
money to lead a fast life, would you not have done so? You don't know, no
more do I; I have done so, and I regret nothing except that some infernal
farmers and miners will not pay me what they owe me and enable me to
continue the life that was once mine, and of which I was so bright an
ornament. How I hate this atrocious Strand lodging-house, how I long for my
apartment in _Rue de la Tour des Dames_, with all its charming
adjuncts, palms and pastels, my cat, my python, my friends, blond hair and
dark.
It was not long before I wearied of journalism; the daily article soon
grows monotonous, even when you know it will be printed, and this I did not
know; my prose was very faulty, and my ideas were unsettled, I could not go
to the tap and draw them off, the liquor was still fermenting; and partly
because my articles were not very easily disposed of, and partly because I
was weary of writing on different subjects, I turned my attention to short
stories. I wrote a dozen with a view to preparing myself for a long novel.
Some were printed in weekly newspapers, others were returned to me from the
magazines. But there was a publisher in the neighbourhood of the Strand,
who used to frequent a certain bar. I saw the chance, and I seized it. This
worthy man conducted his business as he dressed himself, sloppily; a dear
kind soul, quite witless and quite _h_-less. From long habit he would
make a feeble attempt to drive a bargain, but he generally let himself in:
he was, in a word, a literary stepping-stone. Hundreds had made use of him.
If a fashionable author asked two hundred pounds for a book out of which he
would be certain to make three, it was ten to one that he would allow the
chance to drift away from him; but after having refused a dozen times the
work of a Strand loafer whom he was in the habit of "treating," he would
say, "Send it in, my boy, send it in, I'll see what can be done with it."
There was a long counter, and the way to be published by Mr. B. was to
straddle on the counter and play with a black cat. There was an Irishman
behind this counter who, for three pounds a week, edited the magazine, read
the MS., looked after the printer and binder, kept the accounts when he had
a spare moment, and entertained the visitors. I did not trouble Messrs.
Macmillan and Messrs. Longman with polite requests to look at my MS., but
straddled on the counter, played with the cat, joked with the Irishman, was
treated by Mr. B., and in the natural order of things my stories went into
the magazine, and were paid for. Strange were the ways of this office;
Shakespeare might have sent in prose and poetry, but he would have gone
into the wastepaper basket had he not previously straddled. For those who
were in the swim this was a matter of congratulation; straddling, we would
cry, "We want no blooming outsiders coming along interfering with our
magazine. And you, Smith, you devil, you had a twenty-page story in last
month and cut me out. O'Flanagan, do you mind if I send you in a couple of
poems as well as my regular stuff, that will make it all square?" "I'll try
to manage it; here's the governor." And looking exactly like the
unfortunate Mr. Sedley, Mr. B. used to slouch along, and he would fall into
his leather armchair, the one in which he wrote the cheques. The last time
I saw that chair it was standing in the street, alas! in the hands of the
brokers.
But conservative though we were in matters concerning "copy," though all
means were taken to protect ourselves against interlopers, one who had not
passed the preliminary stage of straddling would occasionally slip through
our defences. I remember one especially. It was a hot summer's day, we were
all on the counter, our legs swinging, when an enormous young man entered.
He must have been six feet three in height. He was shown into Mr. B.'s
room, he asked him to read a MS., and he fled, looking very frightened.
"Wastepaper basket, wastepaper basket," we shouted when Mr. B. handed us
the roll of paper. "What an odd-looking fish he is!" said O'Flanagan; "I
wonder what his MS. is like." We remonstrated in vain, O'Flanagan took the
MS. home to read, and returned next morning convinced that he had
discovered an embryo Dickens. The young man was asked to call, his book was
accepted, and we adjourned to the bar.
A few weeks afterwards this young man took rooms in the house next to me on
the ground floor. He was terribly inflated with his success, and was
clearly determined to take London by storm. He had been to Oxford, and to
Heidelberg, he drank beer and smoked long pipes, he talked of nothing else.
Soon, very soon, I grew conscious that he thought me a simpleton; he
pooh-poohed my belief in Naturalism and declined to discuss the symbolist
question. He curled his long legs upon the rickety sofa and spoke of the
British public as the "B.P.," and of the magazine as the "mag." There were
generally tea-things and jam-pots on the table. In a little while he
brought a little creature about five feet three to live with him, and when
the little creature and the long creature went out together, it was like
Don Quixote and Sancho Panza setting forth in quest of adventures in the
land of Strand. The little creature indulged in none of the loud, rasping
affectation of humour that was so maddening in the long creature; the
little creature was dry, hard, and sterile, and when he did join in the
conversation it was like an empty nut between the teeth--dusty and bitter.
He was supposed to be going in for the law, but the part of him to which he
drew our attention was his knowledge of the Elizabethan dramatists. He kept
a pocket-book, in which he held an account of his reading. Holding the
pocket-book between finger and thumb, he would say, "Last year I read ten
plays by Nash, twelve by Peele, six by Greene, fifteen by Beaumont and
Fletcher, and eleven anonymous plays,--fifty-four in all." He neither
praised nor blamed, he neither extolled nor criticised; he told you what he
had read, and left you to draw your own conclusions.
What the little creature thought of the long creature I never discovered,
but with every new hour I became freshly sensible that they held me in
still decreasing estimation. This, I remember, was wildly irritating to me.
I knew myself infinitely superior to them; I knew the long creature's novel
was worthless; I knew that I had fifty books in me immeasurably better than
it, and savagely and sullenly I desired to trample upon them, to rub their
noses in their feebleness; but oh, it was I who was feeble! and full of
visions of a wider world I raged up and down the cold walls of impassable
mental limitations. Above me there was a barred window, and, but for my
manacles, I would have sprung at it and torn it with my teeth. Then passion
was so strong in me that I could scarce refrain from jumping off the
counter, stamping my feet, and slapping my friends in the face, so tepid
were their enthusiasms, so thin did their understanding appear to me. The
Straddlers seemed inclined for a moment to take the long creature very
seriously, and in the office which I had marked down for my own I saw him
installed as a genius.
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 race horses. 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 to 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 hardupishness
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, and 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, fame, brutal
and glaring, fame that leans to notoriety. 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 "horrid 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. I
walked along the streets mad; I turned upon myself like a tiger. "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?" I
looked back upon my life,--mediocrity was branded about my life. "Would it
be the same to the end?" I asked myself a thousand times by day, and a
thousand times by night. We all want notoriety, our desire for notoriety is
hideous if you will, but it is less hideous when it is proclaimed from a
brazen tongue than when it hides its head in the cant of human
humanitarianism. Humanity be hanged! 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 hideous with self, and the
innermost stench of the humanitarianism he vented about him is unbearable
to any stomach, not excepting even Mr. Swinburne's, who occasionally holds
his nose with one hand while he waves the censer with the other. Humanity
be hanged! Men of inferior genius, Victor Hugo and Mr. Gladstone, take
refuge in it. Humanity 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;
shouts and oaths; 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 chappie who seemed inclined to empty the mustard-pot
down my neck; him I could keep in order, but the beautiful lord I saw 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. About three or half-past the
ladies retired, and the festivities continued with unabated vigour. We had
passed through various stages, not of intoxication, no one was drunk, but
of jubilation; 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 wrath, 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 in it would be carrion for the society papers. But
the danger? To the fear of death I do not think I was ever susceptible. I
should have been afraid of a row with a music hall singer, because I should
have had much to lose by rowing with him, but as matters stood I had too
much to gain to consider the possibilities of danger. Besides there was no
need to consider. I knew very well there was no reality in it. I had broken
sixteen plates consecutively at the order to fire dozens of times; and yet
it was three to one against my shooting a man at twenty paces; so it was
ten thousand to one against a man, who had probably only fired off a
revolver half-a-dozen times in a back yard, hitting me. In the gallery you
are firing at white on black, on the ground you are firing at black upon a
neutral tint, a very different matter. In the gallery there is nothing to
disturb you; there is not a man opposite you with a pistol in his hand. In
the gallery you are calm and collected, you have risen at your ordinary
hour, you are returning from a stroll through the sunlight; on the ground
your nerves are altered by unusual rising, by cold air, by long
expectation. It was three to one against my killing him, it was a hundred
to one against his killing me. So I calculated the chances, so much as I
took the trouble to calculate the chances, but in truth I thought very
little of them; when I want to do anything I do not fear anything, and I
sincerely wanted to shoot this young man. I did not go to bed at once, but
sat in the armchair thinking. Presently 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. One thing, and only one thing
puzzled me, who was I to ask to be my second? My old friends were
scattered, they had disappeared; and among my new acquaintances I could not
think of one that would do. None of the Straddlers would do, that was
certain; I wanted some one that could be depended upon, and whose social
position was above question. 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. At last my thoughts
fixed themselves on one man. I took a hansom and drove to his house. I
found him packing up, preparing to go abroad. This was not fortunate. I
took a seat on the edge of the dining-room table, and told him I wanted him
to act for me in an affair of honour. I told him the story in outline. "I
suppose," he said, "it was about one or two in the morning?"
"Later than that," I said; "it was about seven."
"My dear fellow, he struck you, and not very hard, I should imagine; you
hit him with a champagne bottle, and now you want to have him out. I don't
mind acting as intermediary, and settling the affair for you; he will no
doubt regret he struck you, and you will regret you struck him; but really
I cannot act for you, that is to say, if you are determined to force on a
meeting. Just think; supposing you were to shoot him, a man who has really
done you no wrong."
"My dear ----, I did not come here to listen to moral reflections; if you
don't like to act for me, say so."
I telegraphed to Warwickshire to an old friend:--"Can I count on you to act
for me in an affair of honour?" Two or three hours after the reply came.
"Come down here and stay with me for a few days, we'll talk it over." I
ground my teeth; what was to be done? I must wire to Marshall and ask him
to come over; English people evidently will have nothing to do with serious
duelling. "Of all importance. Come over at once and act for me in an affair
of honour. Bring the count with you; leave him at Boulogne; he knows the
colonel of the ----." The next day I received the following: "Am burying my
father; so soon as he is underground will come." Was there ever such
luck?... He won't be here before the end of the week. These things demand
the utmost promptitude. Three or four days afterwards dreadful Emma told me
a gentleman was upstairs taking a bath. "Holloa, Marshall, how are you? Had
a good crossing? Awful good of you to come.... The poor old gentleman went
off quite suddenly, I suppose?"
"Yes; found dead in his bed. He must have known he was dying, for he lay
quite straight as the dead lie, his hands by his side ... wonderful
presence of mind."
"He left no money?"
"Not a penny; but I could manage it all right. Since my success at the
Salon, I have been able to sell my things. I am only beginning to find out
now what a success that picture was. _Je t'assure, je fais
l'école._"...
"_Tu crois ça ... on fait l'école après vingt ans de travail._"
"_Mon ami, je t'assure, j'ai un public qui me suit._"
"_Mon ami, veux-tu que je te dis ce que tu a fait; tu a fait encore une
vulgarization, une jolie vulgarization, je veux bien, de la note inventée
par Millet; tu a ajouté la note claire inventée par Manet, enfin tu suis
avec talent le mouvement moderne, voilà tout._"
"_Parlons d'autre chose: sur la question d'art on ne s'entend jamais._"
When we were excited Marshall and I always dropped into French.
"And now tell me," he said, "about this duel."
I could not bring myself to admit, even to Marshall, that I was willing to
shoot a man for the sake of the notoriety it would bring me, not because I
feared in him any revolt of conscience, but because I dreaded his sneers;
he was known to all Paris, I was an obscure something, living in an obscure
lodging in London. Had Marshall suspected the truth he would have said
pityingly, "My dear Dayne, how can you be so foolish? why will you not be
contented to live?" etc.... Such homilies would have been maddening; he was
successful, I was not; I knew there was not much in him, _un feu de
paille_, no more, but what would I not have done and given for that
_feu de paille_? So I was obliged to conceal my real motives for
desiring a duel, and I spoke strenuously of the gravity of the insult and
the necessity of retribution. But Marshall was obdurate. "Insult?" he said.
"He hit you with his hand, you hit him with the champagne bottle; you can't
have him out after that, there is nothing to avenge, you wiped out the
insult yourself; if you had not struck him with the champagne bottle the
case would be different."
We went out to dine, we went to the theatre, and after the theatre we went
home and aestheticised till three in the morning. I spoke no more of the
duel, I was sick of it; luck, I saw, was against me, and I let Marshall
have his way. He showed his usual tact, a letter was drawn up in which my
friend withdrew the blow of his hand, I withdrew the blow of the bottle,
and the letter was signed by Marshall and two other gentlemen.
Hypocritical reader, you draw your purity garments round you, you say, "How
very base;" but I say unto you remember how often you have longed, if you
are a soldier in her Majesty's army, for war,--war that would bring every
form of sorrow to a million fellow-creatures, and you longed for all this
to happen, because it might bring your name into the _Gazette_.
Hypocritical reader, think not too hardly of me; hypocritical reader, think
what you like of me, your hypocrisy will alter nothing; in telling you of
my vices I am only telling you of your own; hypocritical reader, in showing
you my soul I am showing you your own; hypocritical reader, exquisitely
hypocritical reader, you are my brother, I salute you.
Day passed over day: I lived in that horrible lodging; I continued to
labour at my novel; it seemed an impossible task--defeat glared at me from
every corner of that frouzy room. My English was so bad, so thin,--stupid
colloquialisms out of joint with French idiom. I learnt unusual words and
stuck them up here and there; they did not mend the style. Self-reliance
had been lost in past failures; I was weighed down on every side, but I
struggled to bring the book somehow to a close. Nothing mattered to me, but
this one thing. To put an end to the landlady's cheating, and to bind
myself to remain at home, I entered into an arrangement with her that she
was to supply me with board and lodgings for three pounds a week, and
henceforth resisting all Curzon Street temptations, I trudge home through
November fogs, to eat a chop in a frouzy lodging-house. I studied the
horrible servant as one might an insect under a microscope. "What an
admirable book she would make, but what will the end be? if I only knew the
end!" I had more and more difficulty in keeping the fat landlady at arm's
length, and the nasty child was well beaten one day for lingering about my
door. I saw poor Miss L. nightly, on the stairs of this infamous house, and
I never wearied of talking to her of her hopes and ambitions, of the young
man she admired. She used to ask me about my novel.
Poor Miss L.! Where is she? I do not know, but I shall not forget the time
when I used to listen for her footstep on the midnight stairs. Often I was
too despondent, when my troubles lay too heavily and darkly upon me, I let
her go up to her garret without a word. Despondent days and nights when I
cried, Shall I never pass from this lodging? shall I never be a light in
that London, long, low, misshapen, that dark monumental stream flowing
through the lean bridges; and what if I were a light in this umber-coloured
mass,--shadows falling, barges moored midway in a monumental stream?
Happiness abides only in the natural affections--in a home and a sweet
wife. Would she whom I saw to-night marry me? How sweet she was in her
simple naturalness, the joys she has known have been slight and pure, not
violent and complex as mine. Ah, she is not for me, I am not fit for her, I
am too sullied for her lips.... Were I to win her could I be dutiful,
true?...
"Young men, young men whom I love, dear ones who have rejoiced with me, not
the least of our pleasures is the virtuous woman; after excesses there is
reaction, all things are good in nature, and they are foolish young men who
think that sin alone should be sought for. The feast is over for me, I have
eaten and drunk; I yield my place, do you eat and drink as I have; do you
be young as I was. I have written it! The word is not worth erasure, if it
is not true to-day it will be in two years hence; farewell! I yield my
place, do you be young as I was, do you love youth as I did; remember you
are the most interesting beings under heaven, for you all sacrifices will
be made, you will be fêted and adored upon the condition of remaining young
men. The feast is over for me, I yield my place, but I will not make this
leavetaking more sorrowful than it is already by afflicting you with advice
and instruction how to obtain what I have obtained. I have spoken bitterly
against education, I will not strive to educate you, you will educate
yourselves. Dear ones, dear ones, the world is your pleasure, you can use
it at your will. Dear ones, I see you all about me still, I yield my place;
but one more glass I will drink with you; and while drinking I would say my
last word--were it possible I would be remembered by you as a young man:
but I know too well that the young never realise that the old were not born
old. Farewell."
I shivered; the cold air of morning blew in my face, I closed the window,
and sitting at the table, haggard and overworn, I continued my novel.
THE END.
End of Project Gutenberg's Confessions of a Young Man, by George Moore