I CANNOT remember how old I was when I wrote the thrilling poem about the
tiger who swallowed the horse, nor am I quite certain that it was my
first literary effort, but I know that I was still at the tight
knickerbocker stage, and that my previous poems, if there had been any,
had remained secrets of my own. It was due to a cousin that my
conspiracy against the world of common sense was finally discovered.
Woman-like, she tickled my ears with flattery, and persuaded me to let
her read the precious document; and then, as soon as she had it in her
hand, she fled to the camp of the Olympians, leaving me alone in the
little dark room to reflect on the guiles of the sex. With straining
ears I waited for the distant chorus of mocking laughter that would
announce my failure, while my body tingled all over with shame. Yet
beneath my fear I was conscious that I had not been wholly unwilling to
be betrayed. It seemed to me that if I proved to be a great poet, my
future traffic with the Olympians might be of a more agreeable character
than it had been previously. On the other hand, I felt that life would
be impossible if they greeted my poem with scorn. Conceived and
perfected in solitude, it had become an intimate part of myself, and I
turned dark thoughts to the purple berries that grew in the shrubbery,
and provided us with wholly innocuous poison for our arrows. Even then,
it would seem, I had an instinctive knowledge of the tragedy of failing
as a poet.
And then, while I yet waited in suspense, I heard the sound of footsteps
and knew that my cousin was returning. In a flash I realised how stupid
I had been to remain in the room, when I might have hidden myself in some
far corner of the attic and appeared no more until my shame had been
forgotten. My legs trembled in sudden panic, and it seemed to me that my
face was ticking like a clock. I received my first critic with my head
buried in the cushions of the sofa.
Looking back, I perceive that the Olympians rose to the occasion, but at
the time I could hardly believe my good-fortune. Long after my cousin
had gone away I lay on the sofa turning over the pleasant message in my
mind—and the magic half-crown in my hand. Praise I had desired, if not
expected; but that the Olympians—whose function in life was to divert our
tips into a savings-bank account that meant nothing to us, that these
stern financiers should give me a whole half-crown in one sum, unhindered
by any restrictions in the spending, was incredible. Yet I could feel
its rough edge in the dark; and considering its source, I formed an
erroneous idea of the influence of the arts on the minds of sane grown-up
people, from which even now I am not wholly delivered.
After a while, with a mind strangely confused between pride and modesty,
I stole into the room where the others were sitting. But with a quick
sense of disappointment I saw that I need not have concerned myself at
all with the proper attitude for a young poet to adopt. The Olympians,
engaged in one of their meaningless discussions, did not notice my
entrance, and only my brothers were interested when I crept silently into
their midst.
“What are you going to spend it on?” they whispered.
Oddly, for I was the youngest of four, this success of mine was
responsible for a literary outburst in our normally uncultured
schoolroom, and one of the fruits of that intellectual disturbance, in
the shape of a manuscript magazine, lies before me. It contains an
editorial address to the “friendly reader,” two short stories full of
murders, a quantity of didactic verse, and the first instalment of a
serial, which commences gravely: “My father was a bootmaker of
considerable richness.” Of literary achievement or even promise it would
be hard to find a trace in these yellowing pages, but there is an
enthusiasm behind every line of them that the critic would seek in vain
in modern journalism. Indeed, those were the days in which to write,
when paper and pencil and half an hour never failed to produce a
masterpiece, and the finished work invariably thrilled the artist with
“out-landish pride.” I cannot recall that any further half-crowns
rewarded our efforts, and possibly that is the reason why three of the
four boys who wrote that magazine are now regenerate and write no more.
And even the fourth must own to having lost that fine, careless trick of
throwing off masterpieces, and to regretting, in moments of depression,
the generous Olympian impulse that enabled him to barter his birthright
of common sense for a silver coin with a rough edge. And the
Olympians—they, too, have regretted it, I suppose, for the goddess of
letters is an exacting mistress, and we do not willingly see our children
engaging in her irregular service. Yet I do not see what else they could
have done at the time.
A little while ago I discovered a small girl, to whom I act as a kind of
illegal uncle, in the throes of lyrical composition. With soft words and
flattering phrases, borrowed, perhaps, from the cousin of the past, I won
the paper from her grasp. It was like all the poetry that children have
ever written, and I was preparing to banter the young author when I saw
that she was regarding me with curious intentness, and that her face
turned red and white by turns. Even if my intentions had been honourable
I could not have disregarded her signs of distress. “I think it’s very
nice indeed,” I said; “I’ll give you half a crown for it.”
As her fingers closed on the coin I felt inclined to raise a shout of
triumph. For now that I had paid the half-crown back I should be able
gradually—for, of course, the habit of years is not broken in a minute—to
stop writing. My only fear is that my conscience may have gone to sleep
in my long years of aloofness from simplicity; for though I already
detect a note of vagueness in the eyes of my niece, and her mother
complains that she is becoming untidy, I hold my peace, and offer no
explanation. For I feel sure that if I did I should recover my
half-crown.