"_'Tingling is the test,' said Babbalanja, 'Yoomy, did you tingle, when
that song was composing?'_
"_'All over, Babbalanja.'_"
Herman Melville: Mardi.
"_We work in the dark--we do what we can--we give what we have. Our
doubt is our passion, and our passion is our task. The rest is the
madness of art._"
Dencombe: The Middle Years.
"_Les existences les plus belles sont peut-être celles qui ont
subi tous les extrêmes, qui ont traversé toutes les températures,
rencontré toutes les sensations excessives et tous les sentiments
contradictoires._"
Remy de Gourmont: Le Chat de Misère.
"_The man who satisfies a ceaseless intellectual curiosity probably
squeezes more out of life in the long run than any one else._"
Edmund Gosse: Books on the Table.
"_O mother of the hills, forgive our towers;
O mother of the clouds, forgive our dreams._"
Edwin Ellis.
_Preface_
So few people were acquainted with Peter Whiffle that the announcement,
on that page of the New York Times consecrated to wedding, birth,
and obituary notices, of his death in New York on December 15, 1919,
awakened no comment. Those of my friends who knew something of the
relationship between Peter and myself, probably did not see the slender
paragraph at all. At any rate none of them mentioned it, save, of
course, Edith Dale, whose interest, in a sense, was as special as my
own. Her loss was not so personal, however, nor her grief so deep.
It was strange and curious to remember that however infrequently we
had met, and the chronicle which follows will give evidence of the
comparative infrequency of these meetings, yet some indestructible
bond, a firm determining girdle of intimate understanding, over which
Time and Space had no power, held us together. I had become to Peter
something of a necessity, in that through me he found the proper
outlet for his artistic explosions. I was present, indeed, at the
bombing of more than one discarded theory. It was under the spell of
such apparently trivial and external matters that our friendship
developed and, while my own interests often flew in other directions,
Peter certainly occupied as important a place in my heart as I did in
his, probably, in some respects, more important. Nevertheless, when I
received a notification from his lawyer that I had been mentioned in
Peter's will, I was considerably astonished. My astonishment increased
when I was informed of the nature of the bequest. Peter Whiffle had
appointed me to serve as his literary executor.
Now Peter Whiffle was not, in any accepted sense of the epithet, an
author. He had never published a book; he had never, indeed, written a
book. In the end he had come to hold a somewhat mystic theory in regard
to such matters, which he had only explained to me a few moments before
he died. I was, however, aware, more aware than any one else could
possibly have been, that from time to time he had been accustomed to
take notes. I was as familiar, I suppose, as any one could be, with
the trend of his later ideas, and with some of the major incidents in
his earlier life he had acquainted me, although, here, I must confess,
there were lacunæ in my knowledge. Still, his testamentary request,
unless I might choose to accept it in a sense, I am convinced, entirely
too flattering to my slender talents, seemed to be inconsistent with
the speculative idea which haunted him, at least towards the end of
his life. This contradiction and an enlarging sense of the mysterious
character of the assignment were somewhat dispelled by a letter, dated
June 17, 1917, which, a few days after the reading of the will, his
lawyer placed in my hands and which indicated plainly enough that Peter
had decided upon my appointment at least two years and a half before he
died. This letter not only confirmed the strange clause in the will but
also, to some extent, explained it and, as the letter is an essential
part of my narrative, I offer it in evidence at once.
Dear Carl--so it read:
I suppose that some day I shall die; people do die. If there has been
one set purpose in my life, it has been not to have a purpose. That,
you alone, perhaps, understand. You know how I have always hesitated
to express myself definitely, you know how I have refrained from
writing, and you also know, perhaps, that I can write; indeed, until
recently, you thought I was writing, or would write. But I think you
realize now what writing has come to mean to me, definition, constant
definition, although it is as apparent as anything can be that life,
nature, art, whatever one writes about, are fluid and mutable things,
perpetually undergoing change and, even when they assume some semblance
of permanence, always presenting two or more faces. There are those
who are not appalled by these conditions, those who confront them with
bravery and even with impertinence. You have been courageous. You have
published several books which I have read with varying shades of
pleasure, and you have not hesitated to define, or at any rate discuss,
even that intangible, invisible, and noisy art called Music.
I have begun many things but nothing have I ever completed. It has
always seemed unnecessary or impossible, although at times I have tried
to carry a piece of work through. On these occasions a restraining
angel has held me firmly back. It might be better if what I have
written, what I have said, were permitted to pass into oblivion with
me, to become a part of scoriac chaos. It may not mean anything in
particular; if it means too much, to that extent I have failed.
Thinking, however, of death, as I sometimes do, I have wondered if,
after all, behind the vapoury curtain of my fluctuating purpose, behind
the orphic wall of my indecision, there did not lurk some vague shadow
of intention. Not on my part, perhaps, but on the part of that being,
or that condition, which is reported to be interested in such matters.
This doubt, I confess, I owe to you. Sometimes, in those extraordinary
moments between sleeping and awakening--and once in the dentist's
chair, after I had taken gas--the knots seemed to unravel, the problem
seemed as naked as Istar at the seventh gate. But these moments are
difficult, or impossible, to recapture. To recapture them I should
have been compelled to invent a new style, a style as capricious and
vibratory as the moments themselves. In this, however, as you know, I
have failed, while you have succeeded. It is to your success, modest as
it may appear to you, that I turn in my dilemma. To come to the point,
cannot you explain, make out some kind of case for me, put me on my
feet (or in a book), and thereby prove or disprove something? Shameless
as I am, it would be inconceivable, absurd, for me to ask you to do
this while I am yet living and I have, therefore, put my request into a
formal clause in my will. After I am dead, you may search your memory,
which I know to be very good, for such examples of our conversations
as will best be fitted to illuminate your subject, which I must
insist--you, yourself, will understand this, too, sooner or later--_is
not me at all_.
When your book is published, I shall be dead and perhaps unconscious.
If, however, as I strongly suspect, some current connects the life to
be with the life that is, I can enjoy what you have done. At the best,
you may give others a slight intimation of the meaning of inspiration
or furnish guideposts, lighthouses, and bell-buoys to the poet who
intends to march singing along the highroad or bravely to embark on the
ships at sea; at the worst, I have furnished you with a subject for
another book, and I am well aware that subjects even for bad books are
difficult to light upon.
Salve atque Vale,
Peter.
This letter, I may say, astonished me. I think it would astonish
anybody. A profound and enveloping melancholy succeeded to this feeling
of astonishment. At the time, I was engaged in putting the finishing
touches to The Tiger in the House and I postponed meditation on Peter's
affair until that bulky volume could be dispatched to the printer.
That happy event fell on March 15, 1920, but my anthology, Lords of
The Housetops, next claimed my attention, and then the new edition of
Interpreters, for which I had agreed to furnish a new paper, and the
writing of this new paper amused me very much, carrying my mind not
only far away from cats, which had been occupying it for a twelvemonth,
but also away from Peter's request. At last, Interpreters was ready
for the printer, but now the proofs of The Tiger began to come in, and
I may say that for the next three months my days were fully occupied
in the correction of proofs, for those of Lords of The Housetops and
Interpreters were in my garret when the proofs of The Tiger were not.
Never have I corrected proofs with so much concentrated attention as
that which I devoted to the proofs of The Tiger, and yet there were
errors. In regard to some of these, I was not the collaborator. On Page
240, for instance, one may read, There are many females in the novels
of Emile Zola. My intention was to have the fourth word read, felines,
and so it stood in the final proof, but my ambition to surmount the
initial letter of Zola's Christian name with an acute accent (an
ambition I shall forswear on this present page), compelled the printer
to reset the line, so that subsequently, when I opened the book at this
page, I read with amazement that there are many females in the novels
of Emile Zola, a statement that cannot be readily denied, to be sure,
but still it is no discovery of which to boast.
It was not until September, 1920, that I had an opportunity to
seriously consider Peter's request and when I did begin to consider it,
I thought of it at first only as a duty to be accomplished. But when I
began searching my memory for details of the conversations between us
and had perused certain notes I had made on various occasions, visited
his house on Beekman Place to look over his effects and talk with his
mother, the feeling of the artist for _inevitable_ material came over
me and I knew that whether Peter had written me that letter or not, I
should sooner or later have written this book about him.
There was another struggle over the eventual form, a question
concerning which Peter had made no suggestions. It seemed to me,
at first, that a sort of haphazard collection of his ideas and
pronunciamentos, somewhat in the manner of Samuel Butler's Note-Books,
would meet the case, but after a little reflection I rejected this
idea. Light on the man was needed for a complete understanding of
his ideas, or lack of them, for they shifted like the waves of the
sea. I can never tell why, but it was while I was reading William Dean
Howells's Familiar Spanish Studies one day in the New York Public
Library that I suddenly decided on a sort of loose biographical form,
a free fantasia in the manner of a Liszt Rhapsody. This settled, I
literally swam ahead and scarcely found it necessary to examine many
papers (which was fortunate as few exist) or to consult anything but
my memory, which lighted up the subject from obscure angles, as a
search-light illuminates the spaces of the sea, once I had learned to
decipher the meaning of the problem. What it is all about, or whether
it is about anything at all, you, the reader, of course, must decide
for yourself. To me, the moral, if I may use a conventional word to
express an unconventional idea, is plain, and if I have not succeeded
in making it appear so, then I must to some extent blame you, the
reader, for what is true of all books, is perhaps truest of this, that
you will carry away from it only what you are able to bring to it.
_Chapter I_
One of my friends, a lady, visited Venice alone in her middle age. It
was late at night when the train drew into the station, and it was
raining, a drizzly, chilling rain. The porter pushed her, with her bag,
into a damp gondola and the dismal voyage to the hotel began. There
were a few lights here and there but she had the impression that she
was floating down the Chicago River in a wash-tub. Once she had reached
her destination, she clambered unsteadily out of the black barge,
wobbled through a dark passageway, inhaling great whiffs of masticated
garlic, and finally emerged in a dimly lighted lobby. At the desk, a
sleepy clerk yawned as she spoke of her reservation. Tired, rather
cross, and wholly disappointed, she muttered, I don't like Venice at
all. I wish I hadn't come. The clerk was unsympathetically explanatory,
Signora should have visited Venice when she was younger.
A day or so later, the lady recovered her spirits and even her sense of
humour for she told me the story herself and I have always remembered
it. The moment it passed her lips, indeed, I began to reflect that
I had been lucky to encounter the Bride of the Adriatic in my youth.
Paris, too, especially Paris, for there is a melancholy pleasure to be
derived from Venice. It is a suitable environment for grief; there is a
certain superior relish to suffering there. Paris, I sometimes think,
smiles only on the very young and it is not a city I should care to
approach for the first time after I had passed forty.
I was, as a matter of fact, in my twenties when I first went
to Paris--my happiness might have been even greater had I been
nineteen--and I was alone. The trip across England--I had landed at
Liverpool--and the horrid channel, I will not describe, although both
made sufficient impression on me, but the French houses at Dieppe
awakened my first deep emotion and then, and so many times since, the
Normandy cider, quaffed in a little café, conterminous to the railroad,
and the journey through France, alive in the sunlight, for it was
May, the fields dancing with the green grain spattered with vermilion
poppies and cerulean cornflowers, the white roads, flying like ribbons
between the stately poplars, leading away over the charming hills
past the red-brick villas, completed the siege of my not too easily
given heart. There was the stately and romantic interruption of Rouen,
which at that period suggested nothing in the world to me but Emma
Bovary. Then more fields, more roads, more towns, and at last, towards
twilight, Paris.
Railroads have a fancy for entering cities stealthily through backyards
and the first glimpses of Paris, achieved from a car-window, were not
over-pleasant but the posters on the hoardings, advertising beer and
automobile tires, particularly that of the Michelin Tire Company,
with the picture of the pinguid gentleman, constructed of a series of
pneumatic circles, seemed characteristic enough. Chéret was dead but
something of his spirit seemed to glow in these intensely coloured
affiches and I was young. Even the dank Gare Saint Lazare did not
dismay me, and I entered into the novel baggage hunt with something of
zest, while other busy passengers and the blue porters rushed hither
and thither in a complicated but well-ordered maze. Naturally, however,
I was the last to leave the station; as the light outside deepened to a
rich warm blue, I wandered into the street, my porter bearing my trunk,
to find there a solitary cocher mounted on the box of his carious
fiacre.
An artist friend, Albert Worcester, had already determined my
destination and so I gave commands, Hotel de la Place de l'Odéon, the
cocher cracked his whip, probably adding a Hue cocotte! and we were
under way. The drive through the streets that evening seemed like
a dream and, even later, when the streets of Paris had become more
familiar to me than those of any other city, I could occasionally
recapture the mood of this first vision. For Paris in the May twilight
is very soft and exquisite, the grey buildings swathed in a bland blue
light and the air redolent with a strange fragrance, the ingredients
of which have never been satisfactorily identified in my nasal
imagination, although Huysmans, Zola, Symons, and Cunninghame Graham
have all attempted to separate and describe them. Presently we crossed
the boulevards and I saw for the first time the rows of blooming
chestnut trees, the kiosques where newsdealers dispensed their wares,
the brilliantly lighted theatres, the sidewalk cafés, sprinkled with
human figures, typical enough, doubtless, but who all seemed as unreal
to me at the time as if they had been Brobdingnags, Centaurs, Griffins,
or Mermaids. Other fiacres, private carriages, taxi-autos, carrying
French men and French ladies, passed us. I saw Bel Ami, Nana, Liane de
Pougy, or Otero in every one of them. As we drove by the Opéra, I am
certain that Cléo de Mérode and Leopold of Belgium descended the steps.
Even the buses assumed the appearance of gorgeous chariots, bearing
perfumed Watteauesque ladies on their journey to Cythera. As we drove
through the Tuileries Gardens, the mood snapped for an instant as I
viewed the statue of Gambetta, which, I thought at the time, and have
always thought since, was amazingly like the portrait of a gentleman
hailing a cab. What could more completely symbolize Paris than the
statue of a gentleman perpetually hailing a cab and never getting one?
We drove on through the Louvre and now the Seine was under us, lying
black in the twilight, reviving dark memories of crime and murder,
on across the Pont du Carrousel, and up the narrow Rue de Seine. The
Quartier Latin! I must have cried aloud, for the cocher looked a
trifle suspicious, his head turned the fraction of an inch. Later,
of course, I said, the left bank, as casually as any one. It was
almost dark when we drove into the open Place, flanked by the Odéon,
a great Roman temple, with my little hotel tucked into one corner, as
unostentatiously as possible, being exactly similar to every other
structure, save the central one, in the Place. I shall stop tonight, I
said to myself, in the hotel where Little Billee lived, for, when one
first goes to Paris when one is young, Paris is either the Paris of
Murger, du Maurier, or the George Moore of the Confessions, perhaps the
Paris of all three. In my bag these three books lay, and I had already
begun to live one of them.
The patron and a servant in a long white apron were waiting, standing
in the doorway. The servant hoisted my trunk to his shoulder and bore
it away. I paid the cocher's reckoning, not without difficulty for,
although I was not ignorant of the language, I was unaccustomed to the
simplicity of French coinage. There were also the mysteries of the
pourboire to compute--ten per cent, I had been told; who has not been
told this?--and besides, as always happens when one is travelling, I
had no little money. But at length the negotiations were terminated,
not to the displeasure of the cocher, I feel certain, since he
condescended to smile pleasantly. Then, with a crack of his whip, this
enormous fellow with his black moustaches, his glazed top-hat, and
his long coat, drove away. I cast a long lingering look after him,
apparently quite unaware that many another such teratological specimen
existed on every hand. Now I followed the patron into a dark hallway
and new strata of delight. He gave me a lighted candle and, behind
him, I mounted the winding stairway to the first floor, where I was
deposited in a chamber with dark red walls, heavy dark red curtains
at the windows, which looked out over the Place, a black walnut
wash-hand-stand with pitcher and basin, a huge black walnut wardrobe,
two or three chairs of the same wood, upholstered with faded brocade,
and a most luxurious bed, so high from the floor that one had to climb
into it, hung with curtains like those at the window, and surmounted
by a feather-bed. There was also another article of furniture,
indispensable to any French bedroom.
I gave Joseph (all men servants in small hotels in Paris are named
Joseph, perhaps to warn off prospective Potiphar's wives) his vail,
asked for hot water, which he bore up promptly in a small can, washed
myself, did a little unpacking, humming the Mattchiche the while,
changed my shirt, my collar and my necktie, demanded another bougie,
lighted it, and under the humble illumination afforded by it and
its companion, I began to read again The Confessions of a Young Man.
It was not very long before I was interrupted in the midst of an
absorbing passage descriptive of the circle at the Nouvelle Athènes by
the arrival of Albert Worcester, who had arranged for my reception,
and right here I may say that I was lodged in the Hotel de la Place
de l'Odéon for fifty francs a month. Albert's arrival, although
unannounced, was not unexpected, as he had promised to take me to
dinner.