round, by and large, as Mr. Bixby said, is a horrible business. On
the one hand, most of us are excessively sorry to quit this world,
so, clearly, there must be something to be said for it. But, on the
other hand, how endless are the devices which we find to give a
seasoning to a dish which is, perhaps, rather insipid than nauseous.
I have eaten cold mutton with relish--after smothering it in about
half a dozen different condiments, sauces, relishes and salads. So
look at all the games we play with desperate earnestness, with a
vigour and delight and, sometimes, an asceticism which we give to no
office routine or serious employment of our lives. Perhaps we may try
and define what “life” means a little later; but, under all ordinary
and respectable conventions, I presume that the business of which
I have been dimly aware on this day of writing can in no wise be
classed as one of the serious employments of life; as, in any sense,
a vital part of life according to accepted doctrine, religious,
scientific or philosophical. The business of which, I say, I have
been dimly aware; for all I have seen of it has been Grove Road,
Grove End Road, and Circus Road and all the roads adjacent lined on
both sides with motor cars of all sizes, splendours and miseries;
the affair being the last day of the Oxford and Cambridge Cricket
Match. And, looking at all this fairly, it comes to this: here are
two wickets placed at a certain specified distance from one another
on a stretch of turf, and here are men with bats and here are men
with balls. Will the men with balls succeed in hitting the wickets,
or will the men with bats succeed in hitting those balls away to
remote parts of the turf? And on the whole: are the eleven young
men of Oxford or the eleven young men of Cambridge the smarter and
more skilled at these pursuits and in the subsidiary pursuit called
“fielding,” or the art of stopping the ball which the man has hit
with the bat from going to a remote part of the stretch of turf?
That, in the very rough, is cricket; and I want to ask the clergy
(if they have any time to spare from their self-appointed tasks of
meddling in politics, “disapproving” of bookstall novels, and serving
tables) what they honestly think Saint Paul would have said, if he
had seen twenty-two of his most promising young converts engaged in
this cricket business, applauded by a vast multitude of the saints?
I desire to put this question not with a wish to “score”--to use an
idiom of the game which we are discussing--but with an honest longing
for information. That is: will theologians maintain that the ’Varsity
Match and First Class County Cricket generally is a part of serious
life, or a serious part of life? Or, will the scientific people or
the philosophical people declare that this game, played as it is
played at Lord’s with desperate earnestness, is a necessary part of
the bodily and mental well-being of the human race? I say the game
as played at Lord’s, that is the great game; for the case of the
old-fashioned, village cricket on the green was somewhat different.
Then you had a number of people with two or three hours of leisure
before them who found a good deal of fun and relaxation and amusement
in bowling balls and hitting balls and running after balls, with
intervals of supping of ale, sitting on the bench under the shady
tree in front of the village inn; this is a very different matter
from the high cricket of our times, just as diverting yourself with a
ball, a racket and a net is remote from Mdlle. Lenglen’s game at lawn
tennis.
And these are the comparatively mild forms of sport. What of
rowing till you are blue in the face, what of climbing frightful
mountain-peaks, with half an inch of rock between you and a fall of
a thousand feet? Why do people do all these things, voluntarily,
gladly, enthusiastically? I can only suppose that they do these
things to make life tolerable, even entertaining, just as I add
tomato sauce, Worcester sauce, pickles, beetroot, cucumber and salad
to the cold mutton, to make _that_ tolerable and even appetising.
It would seem indeed that life must be an awful business, if you
have to plaster yourself on the walls of a sheer Alp before you can
endure it. This is “drowning” your cold mutton in strong sauce with a
vengeance.
And all this by way of a tentative explanation of why I ever wrote
anything at all, and still more why I have gone on writing, with
brief remissions, ever since the autumn of 1880. This problem, as
I have hinted already, is a profound mystery. For, taking first
the plain view of the man in the street, and applying his plain and
simple test, I have just been running through a list of my books from
1881 to 1922, and reckoning--it was an easy task--how much money I
have made by them. The list contains eighteen titles. Of these, the
“Heptameron,” “Fantastic Tales,” “Casanova” represent more or less
laborious translations--“Casanova” runs to twelve sizeable volumes.
And my total receipts for these eighteen volumes, for these forty-two
years of toil, amount to the sum of six hundred and thirty-five
pounds. That is, I have been paid at the rate of fifteen pounds and
a few shillings per annum. It seems clear, then, that my literary
activities cannot be adequately accounted for on the hypothesis of
mere greed and money-grubbing.
And, then, taking another side of the question: consider the debit of
toil and endeavour and mortification and disappointment that these
forty-two years of book-writing have cost me. I believe that business
men, engaged in manufacture, always “write off” a considerable sum
for legitimate wear and tear and depreciation of plant. What about
the wear and tear of mind and heart and that T,e,a,r, which is
pronounced in another manner; what about the depreciation of the
plant--a highly important one--of self-confidence that my writing
has inflicted on me? I have described some of the pains I endured
when I set out to write the thing which afterwards became the
“Chronicle of Clemendy,” and that was only the beginning of months
of hard and agonizing labour. And then I remember another occasion.
The “idea” which turned into “The Great God Pan” came to me; again
that delicious glow of delight. Now at last I had got hold of a
real notion; I had a curious tale, a rare fantasy set in a rarer
atmosphere to work upon: I thrilled at my heart as the explorer
must thrill as he comes suddenly to the verge of the dark forest,
or to the summit of the high mountain and sees before him a new
and wonderful and undiscovered land. Well I remember how all this
exquisite bliss was bestowed on me, one dark and foggy afternoon of
1890–91, in rooms in Guilford Street, not far from “The Foundling.”
The foul air shone bright, the dingy street, the dingy room were
irradiated: here was happiness almost too keen to be endured. With
no delay I got notebook and pencil and proceeded to “lay out” the
story; that is, to set down the various scenes and incidents by which
the plot was to be developed. Afterwards; the writing, and on the
whole I was not altogether so ill-contented--though I daresay that I
ought to have been disgusted--till it came to the last chapter. And
that simply would not be written. I tried again and again; it was
impossible. I could hit on no incident that would convey the required
emotion; and at last I put away the uncompleted MS. in despair; I was
within an ace of tearing it to bits. But think of the suffering, the
misery, the bitter disappointment of those evenings. True it was all
a silly thing, a toy; but an authority quoted in “The Water Babies”
says that one of the saddest sights in the world is a child crying
over a broken toy. My scheme was all silly, I allow; but I had set my
heart on it, I had glowed with pride over it: and here it was all
broken to pieces in my hands, a sorry, spoilt, piteous thing. True,
I found some sort of an ending six months later; but that was not
the same. There was no fun in that. You remember the party in the
cabrioily that called on Mrs. Bardell? There was a dispute about the
precise situation of Mrs. Bardell’s house, and finally the driver,
who had dismounted, led the horse by the bridle to the house with the
red door.
Here was a mean and low way of arriving at a friend’s
house! No dashing up with all the fire and fury of the
animal; no jumping down of the driver; no loud knocking at
the door; no opening of the apron with a crash at the very
last moment.... The whole edge of the thing had been taken
off; it was flatter than walking.
So with me and my story: I got to the house with the red door
eventually; but the whole edge of the thing had been taken off. And
so it has been with most of my books; I get, somehow or other, to the
house with the red door, or to a house which I try to persuade myself
is just as good; but on the way in the cabrioily I have suffered so
many disappointments that I am in no condition to enjoy the pleasure
of Mrs. Bardell’s society. I remember that, in writing “The Hill of
Dreams,” I sat down every night for three weeks with blank paper
before me, trying to get the second chapter. On some nights I wrote
half a dozen lines, on other nights a couple of pages--before the
evening’s work went, hopeless, into the drawer. A few months later,
having fallen on the wrong path, I had the pleasure of casting aside
about 30,000 words that I had written; and by the time the book was
at last ended there were two neat piles of MS. in my drawer; the one
a little higher than the other. The bigger pile consisted of the
folios that I had written and had been forced to reject. And think of
what that means: a heartbreak to every other page and the comment of
the author on himself and to himself: “You fool! Why do you pass your
life in rending your heart, in trying to do the thing that you can’t
do? Why weren’t you brought up to sit by a brazier in the streets, to
see that nobody steals the planks and railings and the wood pavement:
to do something that with an effort you might be able to do?” Or, to
return to our former metaphor: “Don’t you see that you haven’t the
knack of the toy maker? Then why will you persist in trying to make
toys which always break in your hands, while you fill the air with
lamentable boohoos?”
And yet, as I have said, such has been my employment, with
intermissions, from 1880 to 1922. It was like that in 1885–86. Night
after night, when my father had knocked out his last pipe at eleven
o’clock, did I draw out my papers from the table-drawer and set them
under the lamp. Winds came from the mountain of the west and shook
the trees about the house and sighed and wailed; snows came from
the mountains of the north and whitened the terraced lawn, black
clouds drifted over Wentwood, the winter rains scourged the land; and
still I wrote on in the silent house; struggling against the bitter
conviction of my incapacity, as a man struggles and claws at the
crumbling earth when his foot has slipped and he is over the edge of
the cliff. Yet, stubborn, I wrote on late into the night, far into
the morning, and as the year advanced I often drew the heavy crimson
curtain and looked out after I had put away my papers in the drawer,
and saw a red or golden dawn streaming above the forest in the east.
And as to the work itself? Let us not enquire too curiously; though I
have always been proud of my parody of the terms of an ancient writ.
_Diem clausit extremum_, he has ended his last day, was the title of
the writ, which is moved now and then even in these days: my writ was
called _Cyathum hausit extremum_: he has drained his last cup. And
then there is the _merum et mixtum cervisium_, and the Charter of
_Terra Sabulosa_ or Sandy Soil, and the offices of Tankard Marshal
and _Clericus Spigotti_, or Clerk of the Spigot; all choice jests--to
adopt the manner of the work in question. But, as I say, let us not
enquire too curiously into the merits of “The Chronicle of Clemendy.”
I am content to abide by the verdict of M. Octave Uzanne, who is
held, I believe, to be a good judge of letters. He said that it was
“le renouveau de la Renaissance,” and that I was sure of my place
beside Rabelais and Boccaccio, on the serene, immortal seats. I am
surrendering my judgment wholly to that of M. Octave Uzanne.
By the way; I do not know how it was, but the only copy sent out
for review was addressed to “Le Livre,” which was then edited by M.
Uzanne. Somehow, no review copies found their way to the English
papers. But the MS. had been shown to a pushing young literary
gentleman, and he said that if it were properly “cut” it might make a
good Christmas book for boys.
And then, again, the question returns: why did I compel myself to
undergo all the toil and misery and disappointment that the writing
of this “Chronicle of Clemendy” involved? It was my own choice,
nobody stood over me with a stick to force me to do it. Why? Why
do men row themselves into blueness and incipient heart disease at
Henley and Putney? Why do men expose themselves to horrors, miseries
and the instant risk of death on all the most desperate mountains
of the world? The answer is the same in all these cases: that cold
mutton (or life) is in itself intolerable; that _Le Gigot de Mouton
froid, sauce Cyanide de Potasse_ is better than the same dish
_nature_.
* * * * *
And, going further, the reason of this odd state of things is plain
enough. The fact is, that what we commonly call life is not life
at all. All the things that are considered serious, important and
vital: the faithful earning of a living, the going to the City every
morning to copy letters, keep accounts or float companies; the toils
of the Chancery barrister, of the factory hand, of the doctor, of the
shop-keeper, of the mining engineer, the affairs of all the serious
and necessary employments of life; these things are not life at all.
They are the curse of life, or, as it is sometimes called, the curse
of Adam; as the theologians might have told us if they had not
been too busy over the “curse of alcohol,” over the dubious moral
influence of “the pictures,” over the decidedly frivolous character
of the lighter fiction of the day, and the demoralising effects of
putting a bob on the winner--this dreadful offence, I believe, is
held to “harden the heart” more quickly and thoroughly than any other
method. But this curse of getting a livelihood remains profoundly
unnatural to man, in spite of his long experience of it: hence his
frantic efforts to escape from what he erroneously calls life by
running himself red in the face at Lord’s, by rowing himself blue in
the face at Henley, by drinking methylated spirit, by “putting on”
those criminal bobs, by playing mind-torturing games like chess, by
knocking small balls into small holes, by climbing Alps--and even by
writing books. He will do anything to get away from what are called
the serious facts of life and follow any track however desperate,
trivial, perilous, or painful, if only those serious facts can be
evaded and forgotten, though it be but for a few hours. And so I
wrote on, night after night, till the August of 1886 saw my task
ended; and I immediately began to think of what I could write next.
_Chapter IV_
I have just been trying to reckon up the various quarters which
I have occupied in my forty-two years on-and-off life in London.
When I first came up to town in 1880--the year when the play was
the thing--I stayed at Wandsworth in an old Georgian house near the
ugly Georgian church. I looked for it a few years ago, but I could
not find it; I suspect that shops now flourish on its site and on
the site of its grave old garden. Then, in 1881–82 I was domiciled
in a house fronting Turnham Green; here, too, were ample lawns and
gardens which, for all I know, may remain still. Clarendon Road,
as I have mentioned once or twice, entertained me in ’83, ’84, and
again in ’85, and when I returned to London at the beginning of ’87
I lodged for a time in Upper Bedford Place, Russell Square. This
place I left for an amusing reason. I had been out rather late. The
festivity was not furious; simply a little and most informal dance
given by Mrs. Augusta Webster, in those days an admired poetess; and
I suppose that it was half-past one when I got home from Hammersmith.
I was moving softly up the stairs, and was a good deal puzzled to
hear the clanking noise of metal on metal, as I passed the door of
the first-floor bedroom. However, I supposed that somebody was ill
and that the fire was being kept up. But the next morning, the
landlady addressed me gravely. She said that Mr. and Mrs. Sogden
had been very much alarmed by hearing footsteps in the middle
of the night, and had made preparations for receiving burglars;
and on the whole the landlady thought that I should be much more
comfortable at her sister’s in Great Russell Street, where no ladies
were taken and things “were more Bohemian.” And, indeed, she was
quite right. The garret--a real garret, with a sloping roof and a
dormer window--looked out on Dyott Street, the last remnant of the
old rookery of St. Giles; the house was late seventeenth century or
quite early eighteenth, and the room, with tea and bread and butter
breakfast included, only cost ten-and-six a week. Later in the year,
I moved across the street and lived for a while over a stained-glass
business; then I crossed again and lived over a tailor’s shop.
January, 1890, found me in two rooms in Soho Street--undoubted
seventeenth century, panelled, with beautifully deep wooden cornices.
And here took place the battle of the fleas.
I had moved in, as I say, early in the year, in cold weather. The
rooms seemed quite all right, and the black tom cat of the premises
was a remarkable and consistent character whom it was a privilege
to know. His daily plan of dining with every one in the house,
from his own family in the basement to the people in the attics,
finally welcoming the cat’s-meat man with loud shrieks, shewed, I
thought, Mind. And, as I say, the cornice; well, I wish that I had
been draughtsman enough to draw a section of it. Well, everything
was as pleasant as it could be; and there, at the door, was all
Soho to explore and investigate, and I suppose I need not say that
Soho offered then, and still offers, I am glad to note, a large and
curious field wherein the contemplative mind loves to expatiate.
Very well; but the weather got warmer: and the fleas appeared.
At first as single spies; and then in battalions. They swarmed
everywhere. They made life hideous and intolerable. I did not see
what was to be done. My furniture, such as it was, occupied the
rooms; it would be highly inconvenient for me to move. The advertised
specifics were useless. I isolated a flea--they were fair, large
fleas--with a little of the powder, under a wine glass and watched
his behaviour. He seemed happy, though perhaps a little torpid; he
reminded me of a stout, red-faced old gentleman who has had two or
three glasses of “hot Scotch,” and is inclined to fall asleep by
the tavern fire. Clearly, such mild measures were useless against
the busy multitudes which swarmed all over my rooms. Then, I had
a notion, a much more brilliant notion than anything that I have
known in the region of literature. I have an odd and random vein of
practicality within me, and it came out in the Soho Street emergency.
I took a large sheet of newspaper and brushed it over with treacle
and laid it on the bedroom floor and waited for an hour or two. At
the end of that time, a dozen or so of fleas were sticking fast to
the treacle. I experienced the happy glow of the inventor; and now
there was no dismal reaction. By the evening, there were at least
six dozen fleas captured and out of action. I thought I might say,
Eureka.
But then there came a difficulty. I discovered a certain property
in treacle, which, so far as I know, is not recorded in scientific
text-books. The matter of the work--to use the term of alchemy--was,
I found, susceptible to weather. In certain states of the atmosphere,
in place of being sticky, it became crystalline and as hard as glass.
I do not know whether this interesting property of treacle can be
utilised for forecasting purposes. But this hardness rendered it
useless for my immediate end. The large, fair fleas hopped on to the
trap and hopped away. I surveyed the problem anew. Again the flash
akin to genius. I thought of fly-papers and bought half a dozen. The
battle was over in a few weeks. I kept a careful daily account, and
in a month, or perhaps five weeks, I had captured over three thousand
fleas. And I had purged the first floor of 12 Soho Street utterly of
all the race. I recollect well one night’s bag. I had been to see “A
Pair of Spectacles” at the Garrick, and when I came home I found I
had got 120 fine fleas.
And then, having won this notable victory, a very odd distaste for
London came upon me. I am not joking; the sentiment had nothing to do
with the insects whom I had defeated; but, somehow, London sickened
me. Its faint, hot summer airs were an oppression, its swarming
streets a tribulation; I thought of cold wells in the hills and
running brooks and the breath of the wood and the mountain in the
early morning--and I resolved to be a countryman again. So I took a
cottage high up on the Chiltern Hills, and while certain alterations
were being made, I left for Tours, Touraine, France.
The Rabelaisian enthusiasm was still upon me. I had just issued a
translation (called “Fantastic Tales”) of that extraordinary and
enigmatic book, “Le Moyen de Parvenir,” by Beroalde de Verville, who
was a canon of Tours Cathedral. So to Touraine I went; to see the
land of Rabelais, of Beroalde, of Balzac. And the odd thing is, that
my first Sunday afternoon in Tours--I got there on a Saturday--was
a severe disappointment. The fact was that I had taken Doré’s
wonderful illustrations to the “Contes Drolatiques” for granted.
I supposed that the enchanted heights, the profound and sombre
valleys, the airy abysses of these amazing plates represented, with
a little exaggeration, perhaps, the veritable scenery of Touraine.
You remember the picture showing how that sinful little page
climbed the heights of Marmoutiers to confess his sin to the Abbot?
Well, that Sunday afternoon, early in September, 1890, I set out
from the Faisan, in the Rue Royale, to see the tremendous ascent
of Marmoutiers. I crossed the bridge over the Loire, most of it
sand with a swift stream here and there, and arrived at Portillon,
where the conductor of the steam tram was calling out “Marmoutiers,
Rochecorbon, Vouvray” in a melodious chant. But I walked along the
road to Marmoutiers. Alas! there were no terrific heights, as in the
picture. Imagine something like the high ground near the river at
Henley; nothing higher, nothing as high. Instead of the dark green
woods of Henley, golden rocks and golden earth shining in a very
happy sun; little villas, larger villas, everywhere with gardens
that were gardens indeed. Green walled closes, with rich green
lawns; fountains in the midst of them, flowering shrubs and flowery
creepers blossoming and trailing everywhere; kitchen gardens where
the peaches glowed and burned dark against the hot white walls, where
the pears on the dwarf trees were as shapes of golden honey: at
last the old _clôture_ of the Abbey of Marmoutiers with pepper-pot
turrets at intervals, close to the road, and inside the enclosure,
the modern buildings of a convent school: and the mellow, river cliff
behind all. It was delightful; but it was not a bit like Doré. I
confess, my heart sank. And then going on by the river road, I got
to Rochecorbon. Still the warm cliff overhung the road, underneath
it a small hamlet with a tavern, “A la Lanterne de Rochecorbon,” and
perched on the edge of the cliff the Lantern, an odd structure which
looked something like an ancient factory chimney, and was, I suppose,
the sole relic of the ancient castle celebrated by Balzac. It took me
some time before I could get Dora’s Touraine out of my mind and enjoy
the Touraine of actuality on its own merits. And these are many.
There were great moments on this first visit to the garden of France.
I was staying at the Faisan in the Rue Royale--that street which
Balzac, who was born in it, praises as being “always royal, always
imperial,” which in these later days has taken to calling itself the
Rue Nationale--a delicious inn indeed. I got the recommendation from
Thackeray. Philip stayed there once. He calls it the “Faisan d’Or.”
It had three courtyards, or rather a courtyard and two gardens,
both closed in by the hotel walls. You entered the courtyard under
the archway in the Rue Royale; to the left was the dining-room hung
with tapestries depicting in an ancient mode the famous castles of
Touraine; on the right was the kitchen, all bright with glowing
copper pots, and the big round cook standing at the open door or
bending over his furnace, occasionally shaking one of his pots
knowingly and beaming on you as you sat at your little table in the
courtyard as much as to say: “You will find it good.” Around this
great man were four or five boys, all in white like their chief, who
seemed to be busy all day long in washing vegetables, in chopping
meat and herbs fine for _farses_, in manifold culinary employments,
running out now and again and shaking showers from bags full of
wet lettuce or endive leaves. At the back were the stables, and on
market days the yard of the Faisan was full, like an English inn
yard, of all manner of queer traps and shandridans from the country.
And beyond this courtyard, at the back of the house, were the two
gardens, secret, retired and delicious. Such green turf was there in
these chosen places, so pleasant a music in one of them of a singing
fountain, so glowing the flowers about it with the water drops
glittering on them, so sweet the shade of overhanging boughs--there
are here and there gardens that address the heart and spirit and not
the florist, as Poe knew well.