IX

I have sometimes thought that, in its early days at all events, and

before the more serious trouble arose, our married life might have

been a little brighter if we had quarrelled occasionally. It would

perhaps have shown a more agreeable disposition in me. But we did not

quarrel. I felt, and probably showed, displeasure and dissatisfaction;

and Fanny-- But how shall I presume to tell what Fanny felt? She

showed occasional tears, and what I grew to think rather frequent

sulks and peevishness.

Our first difficulties began within a day or two of our marriage.

Chief among them I would place what I regarded as my wife's altogether

unaccountable and quite unreasonable determination to keep up

relations with her mother. I thought I was unfairly treated here, and

I made no allowance for filial feelings, or the influence of Fanny's

life-long tutelage. I only saw that she had very gladly allowed me to

rescue her from the tyranny of a spiteful, gin-drinking, old woman;

and that, within forty-eight hours, she was for visiting her mother as

a regular thing, and even proposed that I should join her in this.

That was one of the early difficulties; and another, more distressing

in its way, was my discovery of the fact that it was apparently

impossible for me to think consecutively, or to write when I had

thought, in a room which was my wife's living place. It was strange

that I should never have given a thought before marriage to a

practical point so intimately touching my peace of mind and means of

livelihood.

At present it did not seem to me that I could possibly afford to rent

another room. I certainly was not prepared to banish Fanny to our tiny

bedroom, separated from the other room by folding doors. She had no

notion as yet that her presence or doings constituted any sort of

interruption in my work. The change from carrying on the whole work of

a lodging-house to living in lodgings with practically no domestic

work to do was one which, in my foolish ignorance, I had thought would

prove immensely beneficial to overworked Fanny. As a fact I think it

bored her terribly after the first week. She sometimes liked to read,

but never, I think, for more than half an hour at a stretch. She never

wrote a letter, and did not care for thinking.

I have found very few people in any class of life who like to sit and

think; very few, even among educated people, who showed any sympathy

or comprehension in the matter of my own lifelong desire for leisure

in which to think. To do this or that, yes; but just to think! That

seems to be a lamentable and most boring kind of futility, as most

folk see it. It has for many years figured as the most desirable thing

in life to me.

Looking back upon my married life, I believe I may say with truth that

for two years I did not relax in my sincere efforts to make it a

success. It would be more exact perhaps to say that for one year I

tried hard to make it a success, and for another year I tried hard to

make it tolerable. Yes, I did my best through that period, though my

efforts were quite unsuccessful. I realise that this does not justify

or excuse the fact that, to all intents and purposes, I then gave up

trying. In that, of course, I was to blame; very much to blame. Well,

I did not go unpunished.

It would not be easy for a literary man who had never tried it to

understand what it means to live practically in one room (with a

sleeping cubicle opening out of it) with a woman. I suppose a woman

would never forgive or see much excuse for the man who makes a failure

of married life. I wonder how it would strike a literary woman if she

tried life in these circumstances with an unliterary man who, whilst

clinging to leisure and having no inclination to forfeit an hour of it

in a day, yet was bored extremely from lack of occupation and

resource.

The horrid intimacy of urban life for all poor and needy people must

be very wearing. Its lack of privacy is most distressing. But this

becomes enormously aggravated, of course, where the bread-winner must

do his work within the walls of the cramped home. And that aggravation

of difficulties is multiplied tenfold if the bread-winner's work must

not only be done inside the home, but must also be the product of

sustained and concentrated thought; if it be work of that sort which

lends itself readily to interruption, in which a moment's break may

mean an hour's delay, and an hour's delay may mean for the worker a

fit of hot disgust in which his unfinished task finds its way into

fireplace or waste-paper basket.

The year which I gave to trying to make a success of our married life

appears to me in the retrospect as a monotonous series of abortive

honeymoons, separated by interludes of terribly hard and unfruitful

labour for me (more exhausting than any long sustained working effort

I ever made), throughout which, out of respect for my praiseworthy

resolutions as a would-be good husband, my exacerbated temper was

cloaked in a sort of waxy fixative, even as some men discipline their

moustaches. I see myself in these periods as a man acutely tired,

miserably conscious of the barren nature of his exhausting daily toil,

and wearing a horrible set smile of connubial amiability; the sort of

smile which, in time, produces a kind of facial cramp.

My wife, poor little soul, was not, I think, burdened by any self-imposed

task touching the set of her lips. And it may be this was so

much the worse for her. In the absence of any recognised duty she knew

of no distraction save her visits to her mother, regarding which she

felt a certain furtiveness to be necessary, by reason of my ill-judged

show of impatience in this matter, and my refusal to open my own arms

to the woman who, for years, had made Fanny's life a burden to her.

'Confound it!' I thought. 'My part was to release her from this

harridan's clutches, not to go round and mix tears and gin with the

woman.'

But I was wrong. I should have gone much farther, or not near so far.

(How often that has been my fault!) Either I should have prevented

those visits, or sterilised them by taking part in them.

By the time that a spell of the set smile and the barren labours had

brought me near to breaking point, Fanny would be frequently tearful

and desperately peevish from her boredom, and from poor health; for I

fancy she was in little better case than I as regards the penalties of

a faulty and inadequate dietary, combined with long confinement within

doors. These conditions would produce in me a day or two (and a

sleepless night or two) of black, dyspeptic melancholy, and quite

hopeless depression. Then, as like as not, I would try a long tramp,

probably in Epping Forest, and after that--another abortive honeymoon.

In other words, full of wise resolutions and determined hopefulness, I

would apply the fixative to my domestic circle smile and amiability,

and make an entirely fresh start, with a little jaunt of some kind as

a send off.

I fancy Fanny's faith in these foredoomed attempts remained

permanently unsullied. I know she used to resolve to discontinue the

long gossipy afternoons with her mother in Howard Street--in some

mysterious way the mother had lain aside all her old pretensions as a

tyrannical autocrat, and they met now, I gathered, as friendly

gossips--and to become an ideal wife for a literary man. She would

even tell our landlady not to clean or tidy our rooms any more, since

she, Fanny, intended to do this in future. And she would do it--for a

week or so; just as I would keep up my sickening grin, and the attempt

to make myself believe that I really liked doing my work in public

libraries, reading-rooms, waiting-rooms, and other such inspiring

places. Not even on the first day of a new honeymoon could I force

myself to fancy I liked the attempt to work in our joint sitting-room.

That affected me like a neuralgia.

The point, and perhaps the only point I can make in extenuation of my

admitted failure to conduct my married life to a successful issue, I

have made already; for one year I did, according to my poor lights,

strive consistently and hard for success. Throughout another year I

did strive as hardly, and almost equally consistently to make our

joint life tolerable for us both. More than that I cannot claim, and,

in the light of all that happened, I feel that this much is rather

pitifully little.

X

It may very well be that during the first years after my marriage some

of the chickens I had hatched out in the preceding years of slum life

and incessant scribbling came home to roost. In the case of my

reckless sins against hygiene and my digestion, I know they did. But

also, I fancy, as touching work, and its monetary reward; for my

earnings increased somewhat, while my work suffered deterioration,

both in quality and quantity.

If it had not chanced to reach me in the black fit which preceded one

of my make-believe new honeymoons, I should doubtless have been a good

deal more elated than I was by the letter I received from Mr. Sylvanus

Creed, the well-known connoisseur and arbiter of literary taste, who

presided over the fortunes of the publishing house that bore his name.

This letter--written with distinction and a quill pen upon beautifully

embossed deckle-edged paper, which seemed to me to have a subtle

perfume about it--requested the pleasure of my company at luncheon

with the great Sylvanus; the place his favourite club--the Court, in

Piccadilly.

He received me with beautiful urbanity, if a thought languidly. It was

clearly a point of honour with him to refer to nothing so prosaic as

any kind of work until he had plied me with the best which his

luxurious club had to offer; and I gladly record that our luncheon was

by far the most ambitious meal I had ever made, or even dreamed of, up

to that day. And then, over the delicate Havannahs and fragrant coffee

and liqueurs--the enterprise of youth was still mine in these matters,

and in those days I accepted any such delicacies as the gods sent my

way with never a thought of question, or of consequence--I was

informed, with truly regal complaisance, that a certain bundle of

manuscript short stories of mine (which by this time had been the

round of quite a number of publishers' readers without making any

perceptible progress towards germination and print) had been chosen

for the honour of inclusion in the new _Fin de siecle_ Library of

Fiction, which, as all the world knows--or knew, at all events, during

that season--represented the last word, both in literary excellence

and artistic publishing.

I was perhaps less overpowered than I might, and no doubt ought to

have been, by reason of the fact that I had at least been shrewd

enough to know in advance that it was hardly for my bright eyes the

famous publisher was entertaining me. However, I assumed a decent

amount of ecstasy, and was genuinely glad of the prospect of seeing my

first book handsomely published. After a proper interval I ventured

upon a delicate inquiry as to terms; whereupon the deprecatory wave of

Sylvanus Creed's white and jewelled hand made me feel (or pretend to

feel) a low fellow for my pains. I gathered that on our return to the

sumptuously appointed studio from which my host directed the destinies

of his publishing house, one of his secretaries of state would submit

to me a specimen of the regulation agreement for the publication of

first books.

That airy mention of 'first books' caused a chill presentiment to

pierce the ambrosial fumes by which I was surrounded. The transaction

was to bring me no particular profit, I thought. Well, the luncheon

had been superfine. The format of Sylvanus Creed's books was

indubitably pleasing to hand and eye. And, true enough, it was a

'first book.' Money, after all--and particularly after such a

luncheon ...

But I will say that in subsequently signing the daintily embossed

agreement (subtly perfumed, I thought, like the letter paper) I was

blissfully ignorant of the fact that it also gave Mr. Sylvanus Creed

my second book, whatever that might prove to be, upon the same

exiguous terms. The fault was wholly mine, of course. There was the

agreement (in the most elegant sort of copper-plate script) quite open

for my perusal. I fancy, perhaps, the Court Club's liqueurs were even

more agreeably potent than its wines. I know it seemed absurdly

curmudgeonly that I should think of wading through the document, and

while Sylvanus's own fair hand held a pen waiting for me, too. And,

indeed, I do not in the least grudge that signature now.

And thus, with every circumstance of artistic fitness and ease, I was

committed to authorship. The second floor back in Camden Town looked a

shade dingy after my publisher's sanctum; but I carried a couple of

gift copies of the _Fin de siecle_ books in my hand, and my own

effusions were to form the fifth volume of the series. With such news

I clearly was justified in bidding Sidney Heron take his dinner with

us that night. Fanny rather cooled about the great event, when its

monetary insignificance was made partially clear to her. But she

enjoyed the little dinner with Heron; and, as a matter of fact, we

were doing rather well in the monetary way just then, though hardly

well enough to enable me to rent a third room for use as study.

I found that sovereigns had somehow shrunken and lost much of their

magic in Fanny's hands with the passage of time. At the time of our

marriage, I had been agreeably surprised to learn that Fanny was a

cleverer economist than I, with all my grim learning in South

Tottenham. The few pounds I was able to give her on the eve of our

marriage had been made to work miracles I thought. But lately it had

seemed a little different. Fanny had, of course, changed in many small

ways; and one result, as I gathered, was that our sovereigns had

become less powerful. Their purchasing power was notably reduced, it

seemed. Fortunately, I was earning more. But it was clear the increase

in my earnings would not as yet permit of any increase in our

expenditure upon rent. Sometimes in the Cimmerian intervals

immediately preceding one of our fresh starts, my reflections upon

such a point were very bitter. There was no sort of doubt that the

quality of my work was suffering seriously from lack of a private

workshop....

On the day my second book was published--the first, while favourably

reviewed, had not precisely taken the world by storm; its successor

was my first novel--I had said that I should not get back to our rooms

before about seven o'clock, in time for the evening meal. A dizzy

headache, combined with a series of interruptions in the public

reading-room where I had been at work, brought me to Camden Town

between four and five, determined to take a couple of hours' rest, to

sleep if possible on our bed. It happened that I met our landlady on

the steps of the house, and asked her casually if my wife had returned

yet. Fanny had said in the morning that she had promised to go and see

her mother that day. The landlady looked at me a little oddly, I

thought. Her reply was normal, and, characteristically enough, more

wordy than informing:

'Oh, I couldn't sye, Mr. Fr'ydon; I reely couldn't sye. I know Mrs.

Fr'ydon went art early this mornin', because she 'appened to speak to

me in passin', an' she said she was goin' to see 'er mother, "Oh, are

yer?" I says. "An' I 'ope you'll find 'er well," I says.'

I passed on indoors and upstairs, thinking dizzily about Cockney

dialect--I had the worst kind of dyspeptic headache--and feeling

rather glad my wife was away. 'An hour's sleep will set me right,' I

muttered to myself as I entered our tiny bedroom.

But Fanny was lying on the bed, fully dressed, even to her hat, and

with muddy boots. She was maundering over to herself the silly words

of some inane song of the day. She was horribly flushed, and-- But let

me make an end of it. My wife was grossly and quite unmistakably

drunk, and the stuffy little room reeked of gin.

As it happened I never had been drunk. It was not one of my

weaknesses. But if it had been, I dare say I should have been no whit

the less horrified and alarmed and disgusted by this lamentable

spectacle of my wife--stupid, maundering, helpless, and looking

like ... But I need not labour the point.

In a flash I recalled a host of tiny incidents. It was extraordinary

how recollection of the series rattled through my aching brain like

bullets from a machine gun.

'This has been going on for some time,' I thought. And then, 'I

suppose this is hereditary.' And then, 'This comes of the visits to

Howard Street.' And then, curiously, recollection of those wedding

night words of Heron's which had so touched me: 'Heaven bless you! You

are both good souls, and--after all, some are happy!'

'Perhaps some are,' I thought bitterly. 'I wonder how much chance

there is for us!'

In just the same way that I think the beginning of our married life

might have been more agreeable, less strained, if we had had

occasional quarrels, so I dare say at this critical juncture, when I

discovered that my wife had taken to drinking gin, my right cue would

have been that of open anger, or, at all events, of very serious

remonstrance. It is easy to be wise after the event. I did not seem to

be capable just then of talk or remonstrance. All I did actually say

was commonplace and unhelpful enough. I said as I remember very well:

'Good God, Fanny! I never thought to see you in this state.' And

then--the futility of it--I added, 'You'd better take your hat and boots

off.'

With that I walked into the sitting-room, closing the dividing door

after me, and subsided, utterly despondent, into the chair beside the

empty grate. A man could hardly have been more wretched; but after a

minute or two I could not help noticing, as something singular, the

fact that my sick, dizzy headache had disappeared. The pain had been

horridly severe, or I should hardly have noticed its cessation. But

now, with my spirits at their lowest and blackest, my head was clear

again; not by a gradual recovery, but in one minute.