[_4 Aug. '10_]
I came away for a holiday without any books, except one, and I cut off the
whole of my supply of newspapers, except one. As a rule my baggage is most
injurious to railway porters, and on the Continent very costly, because of
the number of books and neckties it contains. I wear the neckties, but I
never read the books. I am always meaning to read them, but something is
always preventing me. Before starting, the awful thought harasses me:
Supposing I wanted to read and I had naught! This time I decided that it
would be agreeably perilous to run the risk. The unique book which I
packed was the sixth volume of Montaigne in the Temple Classics edition.
We are all aware, from the writings of Mr. A.B. Walkley, Sir William
Robertson Nicoll, Mr. Hall Caine, and others, what a peerless companion is
Montaigne; how in Montaigne there is a page to suit every mood; how the
most diverse mentalities--the pious, the refined, the libertine, the
philosophic, the egoistic, the altruistic, the merely silly--may find in
him the food of sympathy. I knew I should be all right with Montaigne. I
invariably read in bed of a night (unless paying in my temples the price
of excess), and nobody who ever talked about bed-books has succeeded in
leaving out Montaigne from his list. My luggage cost much less than usual.
I positively looked forward to reading Montaigne. Yet when the first night
in a little French hotel arrived, and I had perched the candle on the top
of the ewer on the night-table in order to get it high enough, I
discovered that instead of Montaigne I was going to read a verbatim
account of a poisoning trial in the Paris _Journal_. That is about three
weeks ago, and I have not yet opened my Montaigne. I have, however, talked
enthusiastically to sundry French people about Montaigne, and explained to
them that Florio's translation is at least equal to the original, and that
Montaigne is truly beloved and understood in England alone.
* * * * *
It was on the second day of my holiday, in another small provincial town
in Central France, where I was improving my mind and fitting myself for
cultured society in London by the contemplation of cathedrals, that I came
across, in a draper's and fancy-ware shop, a remaindered stock of French
fiction, at 4-1/2d. the volume. Among these, to my intense disgust, was a
translation of a little thing of my own, and also a collection of stories
by Léonide Andreief, translated by Serge Persky, and published by _Le
Monde Illustré_. Although I already possessed, in Montaigne, sustenance
for months, I bought this volume, and at once read it. A small book by
Andreief, "The Seven that were Hanged," was published in England--last
year, I think--by Mr. Fifield. It received a very great deal of praise,
and was, in fact, treated as a psychological masterpiece. I was
disappointed with it myself, for the very simple reason that I found it
tedious. I had difficulty in finishing it. I gather that Andreief has a
great reputation in Russia, sharing with Gorky the leadership of the
younger school. Well, I don't suppose that I shall ever read any more
Gorky, who has assuredly not come up to expectations. There are things
among the short stories of Andreief (the volume is entitled "Nouvelles")
which are better than "The Seven that were Hanged." "The Governor," for
example, is a pretty good tale, obviously written under the influence of
Tolstoy's "Death of Ivan Ilyitch"; and a story about waiting at a railway
station remains in the mind not unpleasantly. But the best of the book is
second-rate, vitiated by diffuseness, imitativeness, and the usual
sentimentality. Neither Andreief nor Gorky will ever seriously count.
Neither of them comes within ten leagues of the late Anton Tchehkoff. I
think there must be young novelists alive in Russia who are superior to
these two alleged leaders. I have, in fact, heard talk of one Apoutkine,
in this country of France, and I am taking measures to read him.
* * * * *
When at length I settled down in a small hotel in a village on the farther
coast of Brittany, I had read nothing but Andreief and criminal processes.
Nobody else in the hotel, save one old lady, read anything but criminal
processes. It is true that it was a sadly vulgar hotel. My fellow-guests
were mainly employees who had escaped for a fortnight from the big Paris
shops. In particular there was a handsome young woman from the fur
department of the Grands Magasins du Louvre, who (weather permitting)
spent half her morning in a kimono at her bedroom window while her husband
(perfumery department) discussed patriotism and feminism in the café
below. When I remember the spectacle, which I have often seen, of the
staff of the Grands Magasins du Louvre trooping into its prison at 7.30
a.m. to spend a happy day of eleven and a half hours in humouring the
whims of the great shopping classes, I was charmed to watch this handsome
and vapid creature idling away whole hours at her window and enjoying the
gaze of persons like myself. She never read. Once when I had a bit of a
discussion with her husband at lunch upon an intellectual matter, she got
up and walked away with an impatient gesture of disdain, as if to say:
"What has all this got to do with Love?" Her husband never read, either.
Their friends did not read, not even newspapers. But another couple had an
infant, aged three, and this infant had a rather fierce grandmother, and
this grandmother read a great deal. She and I alone stood for literature.
She would stay at home with the infant while the intermediate generation
was away larking. She was always reading the same book. It was a thick
book, with a glossy coloured cover displaying some scene in which homicide
and passion were mingled; its price, new, was sixpence halfpenny, and its
title was simply and magnificently, "Borgia!" with a note of exclamation
after it. She confined herself to "Borgia!" She was tireless with
"Borgia!" She went home to Paris reading "Borgia!" It was a shocking
hotel, so different from the literary hotels of Switzerland, Bournemouth,
and Scarborough, where all the guests read Meredith and Walter Pater. I
ought to have been ashamed to be seen in such a place. My only excuse is
that the other two hotels in the remote little village were just as bad,
probably worse.