Yesterday I found in a cupboard an old, small, battered portmanteau
which, by the initials on it, I recognised as my own property. The
lock appeared to have been forced. I dimly remembered having forced it
myself, with a poker, in my hot youth, after some journey in which I had
lost the key; and this act of violence was probably the reason why the
trunk had so long ago ceased to travel. I unstrapped it, not without
dust; it exhaled the faint scent of its long closure; it contained
a tweed suit of Late Victorian pattern, some bills, some letters, a
collar-stud, and--something which, after I had wondered for a moment or
two what on earth it was, caused me suddenly to murmur, ‘Down below, the
sea rustled to and fro over the shingle.’
Strange that these words had, year after long year, been existing in
some obscure cell at the back of my brain!--forgotten but all the while
existing, like the trunk in that cupboard. What released them, what
threw open the cell door, was nothing but the fragment of a fan; just
the butt-end of an inexpensive fan. The sticks are of white bone,
clipped together with a semicircular ring that is not silver. They are
neatly oval at the base, but variously jagged at the other end. The
longest of them measures perhaps two inches. Ring and all, they have no
market value; for a farthing is the least coin in our currency. And yet,
though I had so long forgotten them, for me they are not worthless. They
touch a chord... Lest this confession raise false hopes in the reader, I
add that I did not know their owner.
I did once see her, and in Normandy, and by moonlight, and her name was
Ange’lique. She was graceful, she was even beautiful. I was but nineteen
years old. Yet even so I cannot say that she impressed me favourably.
I was seated at a table of a cafe’ on the terrace of a casino. I sat
facing the sea, with my back to the casino. I sat listening to the quiet
sea, which I had crossed that morning. The hour was late, there were few
people about. I heard the swing-door behind me flap open, and was
aware of a sharp snapping and crackling sound as a lady in white passed
quickly by me. I stared at her erect thin back and her agitated elbows.
A short fat man passed in pursuit of her--an elderly man in a black
alpaca jacket that billowed. I saw that she had left a trail of little
white things on the asphalt. I watched the efforts of the agonised short
fat man to overtake her as she swept wraith-like away to the distant end
of the terrace. What was the matter? What had made her so spectacularly
angry with him? The three or four waiters of the cafe’ were exchanging
cynical smiles and shrugs, as waiters will. I tried to feel cynical, but
was thrilled with excitement, with wonder and curiosity. The woman out
yonder had doubled on her tracks. She had not slackened her furious
speed, but the man waddlingly contrived to keep pace with her now. With
every moment they became more distinct, and the prospect that they
would presently pass by me, back into the casino, gave me that physical
tension which one feels on a wayside platform at the imminent passing of
an express. In the rushingly enlarged vision I had of them, the wrath
on the woman’s face was even more saliently the main thing than I had
supposed it would be. That very hard Parisian face must have been as
white as the powder that coated it. ‘Coute, Ange’lique,’ gasped
the perspiring bourgeois, ‘écoute, je te supplie--’ The swing-door
received them and was left swinging to and fro. I wanted to follow,
but had not paid for my bock. I beckoned my waiter. On his way to me he
stooped down and picked up something which, with a smile and a shrug,
he laid on my table: ‘Il semble que Mademoiselle ne s’en servira plus.’
This is the thing I now write of, and at sight of it I understood why
there had been that snapping and crackling, and what the white fragments
on the ground were.
I hurried through the rooms, hoping to see a continuation of that
drama--a scene of appeasement, perhaps, or of fury still implacable. But
the two oddly-assorted players were not performing there. My waiter
had told me he had not seen either of them before. I suppose they had
arrived that day. But I was not destined to see either of them again.
They went away, I suppose, next morning; jointly or singly; singly, I
imagine.
They made, however, a prolonged stay in my young memory, and would have
done so even had I not had that tangible memento of them. Who were they,
those two of whom that one strange glimpse had befallen me? What, I
wondered, was the previous history of each? What, in particular, had all
that tragic pother been about? Mlle. Ange’lique I guessed to be thirty
years old, her friend perhaps fifty-five. Each of their faces was as
clear to me as in the moment of actual vision--the man’s fat shiny
bewildered face; the taut white face of the woman, the hard red line of
her mouth, the eyes that were not flashing, but positively dull, with
rage. I presumed that the fan had been a present from him, and a recent
present--bought perhaps that very day, after their arrival in the town.
But what, what had he done that she should break it between her hands,
scattering the splinters as who should sow dragon’s teeth? I could not
believe he had done anything much amiss. I imagined her grievance a
trivial one. But this did not make the case less engrossing. Again and
again I would take the fan-stump from my pocket, examining it on the
palm of my hand, or between finger and thumb, hoping to read the mystery
it had been mixed up in, so that I might reveal that mystery to the
world. To the world, yes; nothing less than that. I was determined to
make a story of what I had seen--a conte in the manner of great Guy de
Maupassant. Now and again, in the course of the past year or so, it had
occurred to me that I might be a writer. But I had not felt the impulse
to sit down and write something. I did feel that impulse now. It would
indeed have been an irresistible impulse if I had known just what to
write.
I felt I might know at any moment, and had but to give my mind to it.
Maupassant was an impeccable artist, but I think the secret of the hold
he had on the young men of my day was not so much that we discerned
his cunning as that we delighted in the simplicity which his cunning
achieved. I had read a great number of his short stories, but none that
had made me feel as though I, if I were a writer, mightn’t have written
it myself. Maupassant had an European reputation. It was pleasing, it
was soothing and gratifying, to feel that one could at any time win
an equal fame if one chose to set pen to paper. And now, suddenly, the
spring had been touched in me, the time was come. I was grateful for the
fluke by which I had witnessed on the terrace that evocative scene. I
looked forward to reading the MS. of ‘The Fan’--to-morrow, at latest. I
was not wildly ambitious. I was not inordinately vain. I knew I couldn’t
ever, with the best will in the world, write like Mr. George Meredith.
Those wondrous works of his, seething with wit, with poetry and
philosophy and what not, never had beguiled me with the sense that I
might do something similar. I had full consciousness of not being
a philosopher, of not being a poet, and of not being a wit. Well,
Maupassant was none of these things. He was just an observer, like me.
Of course he was a good deal older than I, and had observed a good deal
more. But it seemed to me that he was not my superior in knowledge of
life. I knew all about life through him.
Dimly, the initial paragraph of my tale floated in my mind. I--not
exactly I myself, but rather that impersonal je familiar to me through
Maupassant--was to be sitting at that table, with a bock before me, just
as I had sat. Four or five short sentences would give the whole scene.
One of these I had quite definitely composed. You have already heard it.
‘Down below, the sea rustled to and fro over the shingle.’
These words, which pleased me much, were to do double duty. They were
to recur. They were to be, by a fine stroke, the very last words of
my tale, their tranquillity striking a sharp ironic contrast with the
stress of what had just been narrated. I had, you see, advanced further
in the form of my tale than in the substance. But even the form was as
yet vague. What, exactly, was to happen after Mlle. Ange’lique and M.
Joumand (as I provisionally called him) had rushed back past me into the
casino? It was clear that I must hear the whole inner history from the
lips of one or the other of them. Which? Should M. Joumand stagger out
on to the terrace, sit down heavily at the table next to mine, bury his
head in his hands, and presently, in broken words, blurt out to me all
that might be of interest?... ‘“And I tell you I gave up everything for
her--everything.” He stared at me with his old hopeless eyes. “She
is more than the fiend I have described to you. Yet I swear to you,
monsieur, that if I had anything left to give, it should be hers.”
‘Down below, the sea rustled to and fro over the shingle.’
Or should the lady herself be my informant? For a while, I rather leaned
to this alternative. It was more exciting, it seemed to make the writer
more signally a man of the world. On the other hand, it was less
simple to manage. Wronged persons might be ever so communicative, but
I surmised that persons in the wrong were reticent. Mlle. Ange’lique,
therefore, would have to be modified by me in appearance and behaviour,
toned down, touched up; and poor M. Joumand must look like a man of whom
one could believe anything.... ‘She ceased speaking. She gazed down at
the fragments of her fan, and then, as though finding in them an image
of her own life, whispered, “To think what I once was, monsieur!--what,
but for him, I might be, even now!” She buried her face in her hands,
then stared out into the night. Suddenly she uttered a short, harsh
laugh.
‘Down below, the sea rustled to and fro over the shingle.’
I decided that I must choose the first of these two ways. It was the
less chivalrous as well as the less lurid way, but clearly it was the
more artistic as well as the easier. The ‘chose vue,’ the ‘tranche de la
vie’--this was the thing to aim at. Honesty was the best policy. I must
be nothing if not merciless. Maupassant was nothing if not merciless. He
would not have spared Mlle. Ange’lique. Besides, why should I libel M.
Joumand? Poor--no, not poor M. Joumand! I warned myself against pitying
him. One touch of ‘sentimentality,’ and I should be lost. M. Joumand was
ridiculous. I must keep him so. But--what was his position in life? Was
he a lawyer perhaps?--or the proprietor of a shop in the Rue de Rivoli?
I toyed with the possibility that he kept a fan shop--that the business
had once been a prosperous one, but had gone down, down, because of his
infatuation for this woman to whom he was always giving fans--which she
always smashed.... ‘“Ah monsieur, cruel and ungrateful to me though she
is, I swear to you that if I had anything left to give, it should be
hers; but,” he stared at me with his old hopeless eyes, “the fan she
broke to-night was the last--the last, monsieur--of my stock.” Down
below,’--but I pulled myself together, and asked pardon of my Muse.
It may be that I had offended her by my fooling. Or it may be that she
had a sisterly desire to shield Mlle. Ange’lique from my mordant art. Or
it may be that she was bent on saving M. de Maupassant from a dangerous
rivalry. Anyway, she withheld from me the inspiration I had so
confidently solicited. I could not think what had led up to that scene
on the terrace. I tried hard and soberly. I turned the ‘chose vue’ over
and over in my mind, day by day, and the fan-stump over and over in my
hand. But the ‘chose a’ figurer’--what, oh what, was that? Nightly I
revisited the cafe’, and sat there with an open mind--a mind wide-open
to catch the idea that should drop into it like a ripe golden plum. The
plum did not ripen. The mind remained wide-open for a week or more, but
nothing except that phrase about the sea rustled to and fro in it.
A full quarter of a century has gone by. M. Joumand’s death, so far too
fat was he all those years ago, may be presumed. A temper so violent as
Mlle. Angélique’s must surely have brought its owner to the grave, long
since. But here, all unchanged, the stump of her fan is; and once more I
turn it over and over in my hand, not learning its secret--no, nor
even trying to, now. The chord this relic strikes in me is not one of
curiosity as to that old quarrel, but (if you will forgive me) one
of tenderness for my first effort to write, and for my first hopes of
excellence.
‘HOW SHALL I WORD IT?’ 1910.
It would seem that I am one of those travellers for whom the railway
bookstall does not cater. Whenever I start on a journey, I find that my
choice lies between well-printed books which I have no wish to read, and
well-written books which I could not read without permanent injury to my
eyesight. The keeper of the bookstall, seeing me gaze vaguely along his
shelves, suggests that I should take ‘Fen Country Fanny’ or else ‘The
Track of Blood’ and have done with it. Not wishing to hurt his feelings,
I refuse these works on the plea that I have read them. Whereon he,
divining despite me that I am a superior person, says ‘Here is a
nice little handy edition of More’s “Utopia”’ or ‘Carlyle’s “French
Revolution”’ and again I make some excuse. What pleasure could I get
from trying to cope with a masterpiece printed in diminutive grey-ish
type on a semi-transparent little grey-ish page? I relieve the bookstall
of nothing but a newspaper or two.
The other day, however, my eye and fancy were caught by a book entitled
‘How Shall I Word It?’ and sub-entitled ‘A Complete Letter Writer for
Men and Women.’ I had never read one of these manuals, but had often
heard that there was a great and constant ‘demand’ for them. So I
demanded this one. It is no great fun in itself. The writer is no fool.
He has evidently a natural talent for writing letters. His style is, for
the most part, discreet and easy. If you were a young man writing ‘to
Father of Girl he wishes to Marry’ or ‘thanking Fiance’e for Present’
or ‘reproaching Fiance’e for being a Flirt,’ or if you were a mother
‘asking Governess her Qualifications’ or ‘replying to Undesirable
Invitation for her Child,’ or indeed if you were in any other one of the
crises which this book is designed to alleviate, you might copy out and
post the specially-provided letter without making yourself ridiculous in
the eyes of its receiver--unless, of course, he or she also possessed
a copy of the book. But--well, can you conceive any one copying out
and posting one of these letters, or even taking it as the basis
for composition? You cannot. That shows how little you know of your
fellow-creatures. Not you nor I can plumb the abyss at the bottom of
which such humility is possible. Nevertheless, as we know by that great
and constant ‘demand,’ there the abyss is, and there multitudes are at
the bottom of it. Let’s peer down... No, all is darkness. But faintly,
if we listen hard, is borne up to us a sound of the scratching of
innumerable pens--pens whose wielders are all trying, as the author of
this handbook urges them, to ‘be original, fresh, and interesting’ by
dint of more or less strict adherence to sample.
Giddily you draw back from the edge of the abyss. Come!--here is a
thought to steady you. The mysterious great masses of helpless folk for
whom ‘How Shall I Word It’ is written are sound at heart, delicate in
feeling, anxious to please, most loth to wound. For it must be presumed
that the author’s style of letter-writing is informed as much by a
desire to give his public what it needs, and will pay for, as by his own
beautiful nature; and in the course of all the letters that he dictates
you will find not one harsh word, not one ignoble thought or unkind
insinuation. In all of them, though so many are for the use of persons
placed in the most trying circumstances, and some of them are for
persons writhing under a sense of intolerable injury, sweetness and
light do ever reign. Even ‘yours truly, Jacob Langton,’ in his ‘letter
to his Daughter’s Mercenary Fiance’,’ mitigates the sternness of his
tone by the remark that his ‘task is inexpressibly painful.’ And he, Mr.
Langton, is the one writer who lets the post go out on his wrath. When
Horace Masterton, of Thorpe Road, Putney, receives from Miss Jessica
Weir, of Fir Villa, Blackheath, a letter ‘declaring her Change of
Feelings,’ does he upbraid her? No; ‘it was honest and brave of you to
write to me so straightforwardly and at the back of my mind I know you
have done what is best.... I give you back your freedom only at your
desire. God bless you, dear.’ Not less admirable is the behaviour, in
similar case, of Cecil Grant (14, Glover Street, Streatham). Suddenly,
as a bolt from the blue, comes a letter from Miss Louie Hawke (Elm View,
Deerhurst), breaking off her betrothal to him. Haggard, he sits down to
his desk; his pen traverses the notepaper--calling down curses on Louie
and on all her sex? No; ‘one cannot say good-bye for ever without deep
regret to days that have been so full of happiness. I must thank you
sincerely for all your great kindness to me.... With every sincere wish
for your future happiness,’ he bestows complete freedom on Miss Hawke.
And do not imagine that in the matter of self-control and sympathy, of
power to understand all and pardon all, the men are lagged behind by the
women. Miss Leila Johnson (The Manse, Carlyle) has observed in Leonard
Wace (Dover Street, Saltburn) a certain coldness of demeanour; yet ‘I
do not blame you; it is probably your nature’; and Leila in her sweet
forbearance is typical of all the other pained women in these pages: she
is but one of a crowd of heroines.
Face to face with all this perfection, the not perfect reader begins to
crave some little outburst of wrath, of hatred or malice, from one of
these imaginary ladies and gentlemen. He longs for--how shall he word
it?--a glimpse of some bad motive, of some little lapse from dignity.
Often, passing by a pillar-box, I have wished I could unlock it and
carry away its contents, to be studied at my leisure. I have always
thought such a haul would abound in things fascinating to a student of
human nature. One night, not long ago, I took a waxen impression of the
lock of the pillar-box nearest to my house, and had a key made. This
implement I have as yet lacked either the courage or the opportunity to
use. And now I think I shall throw it away.... No, I shan’t. I refuse,
after all, to draw my inference that the bulk of the British public
writes always in the manner of this handbook. Even if they all have
beautiful natures they must sometimes be sent slightly astray by
inferior impulses, just as are you and I.
And, if err they must, surely it were well they should know how to do it
correctly and forcibly. I suggest to our author that he should sprinkle
his next edition with a few less righteous examples, thereby both
purging his book of its monotony and somewhat justifying its sub-title.
Like most people who are in the habit of writing things to be printed,
I have not the knack of writing really good letters. But let me crudely
indicate the sort of thing that our manual needs....