had swallowed all his earlier work greedily, had given him a great
reputation, had filled his pockets with money. And now, when he was
doing far better work than he had ever done, no one wanted it, no one
would pay for it, no one seemed to appreciate it or had a good word to
say for his striving. No wonder he became a little bitter. If it hadn’t
been for Daisy he’d have been worse.
“It was on that bitterness of Craven that Falconer founded his plot. He
encouraged Craven in his belief, made him think he was really hated and
persecuted, and then one day he brought in the celebrated surgeon, Sir
James Tripper, to meet Craven.
“Craven happened to be exceedingly bitter that day; the Academy had
returned a picture to him; they wouldn’t even give it wall-room; yet it
was a beautiful little study.
“Tripper drew Craven out a little and made up his mind at once that he
was suffering from the mania of persecution. Doctors believe in the
prevalence of disease, as saints in the universality of sin.
“A few days later Falconer brought Mr. Wisley, a friend of Tripper’s,
to see Craven. Wisley, of course, came to the same conclusion as
Tripper, and was fully convinced besides that Craven should be shut up
and treated to a strict regimen.
“About this time Daisy Raffles had gone to Brighton to take care of
her aunt, who was ailing, and Craven, all alone, was shutting up his
studio one evening when two keepers and a warden came in and arrested
him. He asked them to show their warrant and they showed it. It was in
order: a London magistrate had signed it on the affidavit of the two
doctors. Tripper, of course, had a great name.
“Craven, poor devil, wanted to go home to tell his wife, but the warder
would not allow it. He was taken down by train and put in a private
asylum in Surrey, kept by a Mr. Waterman. Waterman had evidently
received his instructions from Wisley, so when he got his patient he
pretended that Craven was violent and put him in a strait-waistcoat and
threw him into a padded room. But he left the window open, and so the
flies got in and wandered about Craven’s face and buzzed in his hair
and moustache.
“They woke him up too every night by frequent visits of the warders.
Daisy Raffles said afterwards that this was a well-known way of driving
people mad, particularly excitable, strong men.
“Daisy was a wise little thing. When she came to the studio a week or
so afterwards and found it all shut up, and heard that Craven had not
been there, she began ferreting round, and soon ascertained that Craven
had gone away with three common-looking men. I do not know how she came
on the idea that he had been arrested, but she went and interviewed his
wife and they had a regular slanging match, it appears, and the wife
must have let out something, because Daisy told Miss Stannard that his
wife knew all about Craven’s arrest; knew, too, that he had been taken
down to Waterman’s private asylum in Surrey.
“Miss Stannard came to me about it. Daisy, she said, was in a fearful
state and I must devise some way of getting Craven out of the asylum. I
soon found out that it could be done by a writ of habeas corpus. To cut
a long story short we all swore that Craven was quite sane and got out
a writ to have him examined publicly and by independent doctors.
“In the meantime something had happened at Waterman’s asylum. Dr.
Girton was the visiting doctor. After Craven had been about a week in
the asylum Dr. Girton, according to law, had to see him and report on
his case. Girton reported that Craven was suffering from persecution
mania and was violent. But before the magistrate the case took on a
very different complexion.
“Dr. Girton gave his evidence very emphatically, but Craven was plainly
as sane as anybody in the court. He took the case into his own hands
almost at once. ‘Your Worship,’ he said to the magistrate, ‘they did
all they could to make me insane; they put me in a padded room and
would not let me sleep, but when Girton came in one morning, he found
me perfectly quiet, and he was so surprised that he asked me how I had
borne it so well, because to have flies eating your face while you are
unable to protect yourself is somewhat exasperating. I told him the
truth: no persecution, no prison, no want of sleep, no strait-waistcoat
had any effect on me, for I have been an artist in England.’
“The phrase made the magistrate smile and won the day.
“The end of it was that Mrs. Craven got her divorce unopposed, and when
she married Falconer Craven married Daisy Raffles and began to produce
the wonderful pictures that are now making him famous in the highest
sense.”
This story taught me what a great talent Collinson possessed; he mimed
the voice and accent of every character, managed in this way to convey
subtle nuances of the personality that are utterly lost in the written
story. For example, he showed you Miss Stannard as a sort of tall
English beauty, and Daisy Raffles as a little dark-eyed, fair-skinned
creature, whose soul had been drawn out by this painter and by that,
till she had attained an extraordinary culture. Is there any education
of a woman which can compare with the companionship of gifted men?
In some way or other, perhaps by cunning inflection of voice, Collinson
managed to suggest that Craven was Daisy’s complement, that the two, to
use an old phrase, were made for each other, and that their union was
rarely perfect.
The more I thought of it the more I liked Collinson’s little tales.
In this one he had given us a sort of picture of that artist-life in
Chelsea flashed out on a dark background of calumny, vilification and
hate.
I was astonished to find that York Fowell was even more deeply
impressed. Suddenly he spoke to Collinson: “You know that Clarke, here,
had already told me your story of ‘The Temple to the Forgotten Dead.’ I
dare not say it made a deeper impression than this; but it was surely
an extraordinary story or, if you will, an extraordinary idea. No one
but Goethe has ever tried to add anything to the Christian ideal, and
his pagan attempts in the _Wanderjahre_ are not very successful. But
your ‘Temple to the Forgotten Dead’ has really something in it; we
should cultivate piety and reverence for those who have gone before
us, as you call them, ‘The Unknown Benefactors of Humanity.’ To have
succeeded even partially where Goethe failed is honour enough for any
man. I congratulate you with all my heart. And this Chelsea story might
have written by Maupassant. It is enough for any man’s measure to touch
Goethe on the one hand and Maupassant on the other.”
To my surprise the warm praise affected Collinson greatly; his whole
face quivered, his eyes filled with tears. “I never expected,” he said,
“to be compared with Goethe; but ideas come to me sometimes that I
love; they don’t seem to be mine,” he added deprecatingly. “They come
to me--at their will and time--”
“You have got,” said York Fowell abruptly, “what I would give ten years
of my life for--the creative spirit. I’ve toiled and studied, but never
had any such divine visitation. You are very lucky, I think. But why
don’t you write these stories of yours? They’d make a reputation for
you and you should be known.”
“I can’t write,” said Collinson abruptly. “You overpraise my little
things; but it’s very kind of you,” and he stretched out his hand
impulsively to York Fowell, who took it, smiling amiably.
A little later we went away together and to my wonder York Fowell
praised Collinson enthusiastically. “We must draw him out,” he
concluded; “we must find the hidden source of those charming
imaginings. Fancy the little master of an unknown school living on such
heights of thought! What does he read? Do you know?”
I had to confess that I knew nothing really about Collinson, but
Fowell’s enthusiasm affected me and I resolved to get to know him.
But the next Saturday came and Collinson wouldn’t tell a story--had
none in his head, he said; and when we questioned him he told us he had
an ordinary grammar school training, had learned German and French and
Italian on his own, and, curiously enough, had gone as by instinct to
the very greatest spirits. Heine, we found, he knew nearly by heart;
he used to call him the first of the moderns. And in French, Villon
and Balzac and Vauvenargues, and in Italian, Leopardi. He had got to
the heights through literature. He was a Socialist without knowing the
modern concept of the word--thought the land should belong to all the
people and all public utilities should be nationalised, and stopped
there.
Curiously enough Collinson was passionate about the need of
nationalising coal-mining. I found out that he had once paid a visit
to a friend in Merthyr and had been horrified by the degrading slavery
of the miners’ life. “Humane living,” he exclaimed passionately, “is
impossible under such conditions! It must all be lifted and ennobled.”
Little by little I came to know Collinson. One evening we walked to
his house and he said timidly: “I’d ask you in, but my wife hates me
to bring anyone unless they are known here socially, and she always
objects to men without their wives. She was a Paget, you know, and is
in love with all conventions.”
“Why did you marry her?”
He shrugged his shoulders: “I had a turn of bad luck. I found it so
hard to teach kids who didn’t want to learn and I had a couple of
boys of sheer genius who interested me intensely. The ‘Head’ gave
me notice just after I had met Mrs. Livinstone. She had married an
officer in the 10th Cavalry; he drank himself to death, I believe.
Anyhow, she was a widow and pleasant and always inviting me. I told
her one evening that I thought of going to London to get a new place
and--somehow or other--I don’t know how it was--I found she wanted me
to marry her, and I was--a coward. I hated to go to the agencies and
pay and beg a place; it was humiliating, with ‘thoughts that wander
through eternity’--thoughts make aristocrats of some of us. And so we
were married. But I hate her society friends; that’s why I began going
to the ‘pub.’ It’s common, and most of the _habitués_ don’t understand
me or my stories, but after all they don’t look down on one like the
society crew. I’m quite happy when I can meet someone like you and York
Fowell; he’s very able, isn’t he?”
“Very!” I nodded. “They say in Oxford he knows more than half the
Faculty--an extraordinary power of assimilation; he learned everything
as a sponge absorbs moisture.”
“And he compared me to Goethe, didn’t he?” said Collinson with jubilant
eyes.
“Indeed he did,” I replied, “and when we were alone he thanked me for
bringing him to the ‘pub’; said he had never had so great an evening.
He’s coming again; but you disappointed him the last time when you
would not tell us another story.”
Collinson turned his clear blue-eyes on me with an expression of
humility I never saw in anyone else and cried: “I hadn’t a good story
in my head; but the next time I’ll do better than my best for you,
you’ll see”; and his eyes seemed to veil themselves in a mist of
thought.
And in truth the next Wednesday he was better than his best. As soon as
we came in he began:
“The other evening I had a wonderful night. I dreamed I was in some
city in India, near the gates; it must have been Delhi, and I was a
public story-teller. As evening fell, and the people began to drift
into the country from their work in the city, I came out and sat at the
door of my house in the deep shadow, with a great copper pan at my side
for offerings. At first I told stories of Gautama Buddha, when he was a
prince, and bit by bit the crowd gathered, and one asked me how I knew
the prince.
“‘By likeness of nature,’ I replied boldly. ‘We can all know those we
love, and I love the prince, who gave up everything--honour and riches
and pleasure and joy and all the good things of this world--to go and
live with his pain-stricken brethren and teach them how to attain
Nirvana, where there is no suffering, because desire is dead.’
“‘But how can you know Gautama’s life as a young prince?’ another
questioned, and a strange answer came to me in my dream. I said: ‘You
know that there is a star near the Southern Cross so distant that it
takes nearly two thousand seven hundred years for light to come from it
to our earth; the tiny spark of radiance we see and name left it before
the birth of Gautama, and in my imagination I knew someone living on
that star, and he had watched the light ray that started from earth in
Gautama’s youth and had taken photos of what the light brought him,
and so he showed me pictures of Gautama even before his soul opened to
the truth. Think of it! nothing is lost in this wonder-world. Light
is still carrying the pictures it received ten thousand years ago,
and it should be possible to reflect them again as easily as those of
yesterday or to-day. Time is only relative; space a condition of our
thought.
“‘I have begged my star-habitant to return to me out of the realm of
sleep and one of these nights bring me light-pictures of the young
Jesus as He walked and spoke when His mother and father found Him at
twelve years of age teaching the Rabbis in the Temple.
“‘Fancy, if I could get the whole history of His life in photograph
after photograph--when He first collected His disciples and drew them
with Him to Nazareth, and how the townsfolk were indignant at one they
knew giving Himself out as a prophet.
“‘Don’t we know Him?’ they cried; ‘are not His mother and His brethren
here with us? How dare He pretend to such authority?’ and they went
about to kill Him and He had to hide. His mother, we are told, declared
He was mad; perhaps that was the reason He said afterwards: ‘This is my
mother and these my brethren who do the will of my Father.’
“And think of the picture of the woman taken in adultery, when Jesus at
first did not know what to say, for He realized that He had not come to
fulfil the terrible law of Moses, with its ‘eye for an eye,’ but was
full of a new and diviner message: ‘Let him that is without sin among
you first cast the stone.’
“When this was said I saw all prisons vanish and all judges and
judgments become ridiculous, for hospital wards took the place of
prison cells, and doctors and nurses came instead of jailers and
executioners. We have both now, side by side in our silly life, the
prison here and the torturers, and the hospitals there and the healers!
What madmen men are with Secretaries of State for War and no Secretary
of State yet for Peace anywhere, though Jesus is dead these two
thousand years!
“Think of it and remember that only one disciple records this story of
the adulterous woman. Matthew, Mark and Luke saw nothing in it; but
John remembered and recorded it: that explains to me why John was the
beloved disciple.
“And remember, too, what Jesus said to the woman: ‘Neither do I accuse
thee.’ What does this mean? Surely that He too was a sinner and had no
more right to condemn than anyone else.
“Ah, the Sacred Story! One of these days we shall have all of it
divinely illustrated and illumined, for the New Commandment of Jesus is
the porch of the modern world, the door into the New Life!”
There was something inspired in the man. Even the tradesmen who sat
around the table were moved by the unearthly passion of the vibrant
voice, and York Fowell’s eyes were a confession of astonished
admiration. I don’t know how we came away, but I shall always remember
how York Fowell thanked Collinson.
A day or two afterwards I was called up to London and got that
appointment at Durham which changed my whole life. I never saw
Collinson again and York Fowell died untimely in the next autumn; but
Collinson has left a memory as a story-teller that I have sought to
perpetuate.
MY LAST WORD
_There is an end of time and an end of the evil thereof: when delight
is gone out of thee and desire is dead, thy mourning shall not be for
long._
_Grief, thou fearest, shall remain with thee now that an end of thy
pleasure is come: but grief likewise shall not abide with thee._
_At the beginning a little sorrow was ordained thee, and a little joy
as well: but there is nothing of thine that endureth._
_Yet the adventure of life was glorious and the magic of moments of
love and pity and understanding beyond description or thanks._
_In a sun-haze of exquisite memories I, too, like a God, look upon the
world and say it was all “good.”_
+Frank Harris.+
+Nice, 1923.+
Transcriber’s Notes
For printer’s errors and other inconsistencies in punctuation,
spelling, etc., only the changes listed below were made.
_Italics_, +Small Caps+, and +ALL SMALL CAPS+ were formatted as so.
On page 6 a period was corrected to a comma in “I happened to touch
your hand,”.
On page 23 “them” was corrected to “then” in “and then came broken
wailing notes”.
On page 37 a missing period was added in “of the lark I would have come
out to meet you.”.
On page 37 a missing period was added in “I could not come out in that
_bouge_ with red eyes.”.
On page 38 a missing comma was added in “But to me she was a
revelation,”.
On page 41 a missing quotation mark was added in “‘I’ll need only ten
minutes to get rid of the grease”.
On page 50 “St Matthew” was standardized to “St. Matthew”.
On page 61 a missing closing quotation mark was added in “Why should he
leave me?”.
On page 66 “St Louis” was standardized to “St. Louis”.
On page 70 a missing period was added in “death that can be inflicted
on a woman.”.
On page 76 the missing double quotation mark at the beginning of “The
king thought in silence. ‘Her courage,’” was added.
On page 77 a missing quotation mark was added in “‘but love is surely a
madness”.
On page 77 “consel” was corrected to “counsel” in “love is surely a
madness and there may be some wisdom in your counsel”.
On page 80 an ending double quotation mark was corrected to an ending
single quotation mark in “‘I wish to be sent back to my father.’”.
On page 80 a missing opening quotation mark was added in “and you
loved this young man.”.
On page 84 the missing double quotation mark at the beginning of “She
answered quietly:” was added.
On page 87 “happinesss” was corrected to “happiness” in “happiness is
not for wise”.
On page 103 “erpression” was corrected to “expression” in “The dominant
expression of the face was”.
On page 111 “mercant” was corrected to “merchant” in “taller even than
the merchant”.
On page 113 “policeman” was corrected to “policemen” in “Two policemen
took hold of the young man and dragged him”.
On page 120 “Have you have heard of the painter” was corrected to “Have
you heard of the painter”.
On page 128 an extra opening single quotation mark was removed before
“You,” in “leave it to you both. You,”.
On page 156 “It really more than pretty” was corrected to “It was
really more than pretty” in “It was really more than pretty, set off as
it was by red-gold hair”.
On page 162 “thought he did not seem to have noticed” was corrected to
“though he did not seem to have noticed”.
On page 165 a doubled “looked” was removed in “he looked ten years
older”.
On page 167 “Knightbridge” was corrected to “Knightsbridge” in “I came
away from Knightsbridge”.
On page 180 an opening parenthesis was corrected to a comma in “She was
pretty, but what took me was her perfect figure”.
On page 184 “Touton” was corrected to “Toutou” in “It is wonderful, you
know, Toutou”.
On page 196 an opening single quotation mark was corrected to an
opening double quotation mark in “and there is some ground for them”.
On page 201 “Mr” was corrected to “Mr.” in “Don’t you go exciting
yourself, Mr. Scroper.”.
On page 221 a missing ending quotation mark was added in ““what do you
call it in French?””.
On page 224 “desirious” was corrected to “desirous” in “He was probably
even more desirous”.
On page 239 “brillant” was corrected to “brilliant” in “a brilliant
idea occurred to me”.
On page 243 “form was more beautiful Micah’s” was corrected to “form
was more beautiful than Micah’s” in “knew that Leah’s shapely slim form
was more beautiful than Micah’s, and that Micah in turn was finer than
the negroid type”.
On page 267 “musn’t” was corrected to “mustn’t” in “that he mustn’t get
thick ears”.
On page 275 a missing opening quotation mark was added in “for a couple
of thousand dollars”.
On page 292 “in” was corrected to “it” in “he had to look at it in
surprise”.
On page 296 a missing opening quotation mark was added in “he’s
naturally quick and he has learned the game”.
On page 297 a missing ending quotation mark was added in ““Just that,”
he said bitterly.”.
On page 299 “not” was corrected to “note” in “he got another little
note from Kate”.
On page 315 a missing opening quotation mark was added in ““Suddenly I
cried:”.
On page 329 an extra, errant closing double quotation mark was removed
in “resolved to get to know him.”.