A HERO-WORSHIPPER AGAIN GLIMPSES
HIS HERO, AFTER MANY YEARS
To look up Trist was, I knew, both necessary and desirable, and yet I
dreaded it too. Not quite as I had dreaded the visit to Esher, but
as a duty to be put off. Why? For we had been great friends; more,
he had been my exemplar, my model. His year or two of seniority, his
_flair_ for civilisation, as I might call it, had set him in the
position of mentor. I had been rather at his feet than by his side.
That was thirty and more years ago; and now, ... do you understand?
In the days when Trist and I shared rooms, I was in the City and he
sub-edited an evening paper. He was fresh from Oxford, wealthy,
contemptuous, and gay; he took his duties very lightly, but was an
admirable man for the post, and did much to establish the paper's
reputation on the humorous side.
Although I could not afford it, I went to the same tailor and hosier;
I smoked the same brand, which was then a simple thing to do, for it
was before the second discovery of tobacco, so to speak, when there
were few mixtures, and no "Pioneers of the Smoking World," and it was
possible to walk twenty yards along a street and not pass three
tobacconists. I am not naturally a hero-worshipper, but Trist found
me at an impressionable age and he filled an empty space. I had
better have been in love, no doubt, but that was not my way.
Soon after I had left England he threw up journalism, travelled, then
did some political private-secretarial work and so forth, and as
relation after relation died and left him money he gradually became a
connoisseur of life and nothing else, and settled down in Gray's Inn,
permanently, with his floating population of fifty pairs of perfect
trousers, a profile glass, and an invaluable man.
In Buenos Ayres I had written to Trist now and then, and he to me:
enough to inform each other that the end was not yet, but little more.
I continued to put off the call as long as I could. There is
something very perilous in the resumption of intercourse after many
years, especially when the man you are going to see was once your
hero. Heroes do not wear well, and it is a question whether they are
less heroic to their valets who see them continually or to old
admirers who have acquired thirty years of experience since they saw
them last. I was going, I felt, to see Trist with very clear eyes,
and I did not want to. I am absurdly fond of the past.
Few friendships, I suppose, wear honestly through a long life. The
friends do not progress equally; one matures quickly, the other
slowly. One becomes pious, the other impious. They marry (this is
the commonest interruption of all) antipathetic wives. It is all as
it should be if they were really friends once, for friends, in fact,
belong to periods rather than to all time, although sentiment would
have it otherwise. One is always changing a little, although of
radical change there is almost none, and new friends are found in
tune with each stage. I could admit no longer any need for Trist,
and yet all the same I longed to see him and dreaded it too.
There was another obstacle in the way. We were both bachelors. In
every man, I take it, even the most married, there sleeps a bachelor;
but a bachelor through and through as I have been, and as Trist is,
is a less negotiable quantity. No one probably has more affectionate
impulses than I,--a warmer wish to help and comfort,--and yet I am
always conscious of a slight barrier between me and those I would
befriend and assist, a barrier which probably would not be there had
I married. Marriage, there is no doubt, is a solvent; and the
curious thing is that the married reveal their state: marconigrams
pass.
Bachelors have many advantages, but they are all minor. Perhaps the
greatest advantage they enjoy is that of still being able to follow
an impulse; but even this rarely seems to give them all the pleasure
that it would give many a man who has tasted restriction. Feeding on
impulses can become as distasteful as feeding on jam roll.
As it happened, fate took the matter out of my hands, for I walked
bang into Trist one afternoon under my own roof--that is to say, in
Bemerton's shop. He was engaged in the characteristic occupation of
making some one do something for him, and in this case he was dealing
with such ordinarily unpromising material as Miss Ruth Wagstaff. He
seemed so genuinely glad to see me again that I felt ashamed of
having so long deferred my visit; and I promised to dine with him
that very evening.
I found Trist in very comfortable, almost luxurious, rooms, at the
top of a seventeenth-century house in Gray's Inn, overlooking a
beautiful grave square on one side and a beautiful grave lawn on the
other. Not quite the true Oxford cloister, but very near it; and
with busy London within a stone's-throw. His only companion is his
man, Jack Rogers, once a sailor in the King's Navy, but now through
the loss of an eye enjoying a pension on land, although only
twenty-nine years of age, and acting as valet, cook, and parlour-maid
to my old friend. Why a navy which owes most of its prestige to the
activities of a man who lacked not only one eye but also one arm
should be in such a hurry to get rid of Jack I cannot understand; for
he sees far more with his widowed orb than the ordinary observer does
with two, and is quite the most capable all-round hand I have yet met.
That Trist should live in Gray's Inn, off Holborn, of all streets,
and that his man should not have been for some years with the Duke of
B---- and the Earl of A----, are the surprising things; but then
Trist makes a point of never belonging wholly to any type. His aim
is always to be original somewhere, although never original enough to
be conspicuous.
Another of his foibles is to be thought worldly to a point of
cynicism; but he is of course far too English to be a genuine
success, although he may deceive the poor observer. Every man has
some ideal, and Trist has been true to his ever since I have known
him. I should describe his ideal, which he acquired as quite a
youth, as a blend of Lytton's Zanoni and Meredith's Adrian Harley,
the wise youth. (For one has to get one's durable exemplars from
books; in real life one finds them out.) Underneath, however, he has
a sympathetic kindliness which has prompted him to many actions
wholly out of keeping with his cool exterior.
He does nothing: he is a true dilettante; but though he does nothing
he knows all. He studies the papers, collects gossip, sees the new
plays, reads the new books, attends sales at Christie's and
Sotheby's. Half-past seven finds him in evening dress as naturally
as it finds a baby in bed. He is never in a hurry, and never late.
His cigarette case is always full.
Trist's second ambition (the first being never to be unprepared) is
to own the best Old Crome. His life may be said almost to have been
dedicated to Old Crome. He has three on his walls, and he wants
others, but they must be better than the three; which to my eye are
perfect. Two are views of Household Heath, which stood for the
promised land to this painter, and the other is a cottage and a tree
and a peasant woman. They are the only pictures in the room. In the
dining-room one painter again is represented, and one only, the rare
and marvellous Bonington, who perished in his pride, but not before
he had revolutionised French landscape painting,--all water-colours.
Trist spends hours every week in curiosity shops, and in the summer,
when he is driven from London by sheer lack of activity there, he
makes his holiday in Norfolk, partly sailing on the Broads and partly
bicycling among the farmhouses, into which with masterly address he
finds his way and scans the walls for the Master's glow. His manners
are charming, and he rarely meets with a rebuff. Down to the present
time, however, he tells me, one Crome and one only has he found that
he covets--and that he cannot get. The owner, a strong wealthy
farmer of as much independence and will-power as Trist himself, would
as soon sell his daughter.
Nothing else moves Trist to feeling. Old Crome and Bonington can
light his eye, but for the rest his attitude through life is one of
cool, amused detachment and perfect self-possession. I have from
time to time set down his _obiter dicta_ on the management of one's
affairs in a very civilised progress through this vale of tears; but
as I can remember only those that he has dropped in my hearing, the
record necessarily is deprived of thousands that may be better,--as
indeed I suppose Boswell's also is. (A new collection of Johnson's
good things uttered when Boswell was absent would stand almost first
among the books we desire. I mentioned this to Mr. Bemerton one day,
for we often talk of the impossible books we should like to have.
"Yes," he said, "and what a good subject for the forger." He is, by
the way, greatly interested in literary forgeries, and keeps a number
of them together on a shelf, and is one of the few people who have
read _Vortigern_.)
Here, then, are certain of the aphorisms with which Trist would, in
his Chesterfieldian manner, instruct his son, if he had anything so
ridiculous. All begin with the same words--concerning which I might
perhaps say that by "life" Trist does not mean what a poet means, or
a saint, or a schoolboy, or a motorist, or even what I mean by it.
Trist means by "life" a protected ease. I have jotted them down from
time to time as I remembered them--my first thought being
mischievously to convict him of inconsistency. I see now, however,
that one definite idea connects all.
"The art of life," says Trist, "is the pigeon-holing of women." True
enough of Englishmen, at any rate, who want women only when they want
them (and then they must behave); but no Frenchman would say it.
"The art of life," says Trist, "is to say the same things to
everybody. To differentiate one's treatment of people may be
interesting, but it leads to complications."
"The art of life," says Trist, "is to assume that no one else has any
feelings."
"The art of life," says Trist, "is the use and not abuse of alcohol.
A wise _apéritif_ can make a bad dinner almost good, and a bad
partner almost negligible."
"The art of life," says Trist, "is to be so well known at a good
restaurant that you can pay by cheque."
"The art of life," says Trist, "is to make your tailor come to you."
"The art of life," says Trist, who hates gossip, "is never to see two
unrelated people together; but if you must,--and it can't be helped
very easily,--never to mention it again. Three-quarters of the ills
of life proceed from the report that So-and-so has been seen with
So-and-so. There is too much talk. A wise autocrat would cut out
the tongue of every baby. A silent society would probably be a happy
one; because it would be largely without scandal." That seemed to
me, I said, too drastic, and I recommended instead the example (from
my Chinese book) of Hsin Shao, of the second and third century A.D.,
"who is now chiefly remembered in connection with his practice of
devoting the first day of every month to criticism of his neighbours
and their conduct."
"The art of life," says Trist, "is never to be out of small change."
"The art of life," says Trist, "is to keep down acquaintances. One's
friends one can manage, but one's acquaintances can be the devil."
"The art of life," says Trist, "is to show your hand. There is no
diplomacy like candour. You may lose by it now and then, but it will
be a loss well gained if you do. Nothing is so boring as having to
keep up a deception."
"The art of life," says Trist, "is to live near a post office, but
never to go there one's self."
"The art of life," says Trist, "is never to think you know what other
people are feeling about you. You are sure to be wrong."
"The art of life," says Trist, "is to be thought odd. Everything
will then be permitted to you. The best way to be thought odd is to
return a cheque now and then on a conscientious scruple. There is no
such investment."
Trist also has a very interesting and ingenious theory that goes more
deeply into the management of life. "I do not believe," he once said
to me, "in carving out our own destiny, but I believe that the
unexpected happens so often, and the expected so seldom, that one
might by steadily anticipating ills avoid calamity."
Trist, however, is not really as monstrous as these maxims would make
him out to be. For the full play of his personality he must
undoubtedly be calm and prosperous and spoiled; but once he is in
that state of bliss he can be extraordinarily kind. One would not
see him carrying a poor woman's bundle, or putting himself out over a
street casualty; but he has befriended several young artists and
musicians, and he lends money capriciously to needy persons at the
very moment when money means most to them. He likes to play Fate.
I came away from his rooms that first evening a little saddened. I
could not help contrasting the past, when he was so necessary to me,
with the present, when we each made the other constrained, and had
grown so naturally into the power of doing without each other that
the early conditions could never be restored.
But since then I have fallen into the old Trist habit again, and now
I like to be with him almost as much as ever, although I am no longer
plastic as I was. I like his fastidiousness, and it amuses me (and
perhaps does me good) to watch the skill with which he looks ahead by
instinct to ensure his comfort.
We are to go down to Miss Gold's to tea one afternoon next week.
Trist, it seems, has a taxi-cab driver in his pocket, and he will
convey us there. "I telephone him when I want him," said Trist; "it
is far better than being bothered with a car of one's own."
Of course.