Bohs 
 
 ots 
 
 yt 
 
 
 
THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF ILLINOIS 
 LIBRARY 
 
 OZ 
 Sie SFE) 
 
Return this book on or before the 
 Latest Date stamped below. A 
 charge is made on all overdue 
 books. 
 
 U. of I. Library 
 
 14685-S 
 
/ 
 
 ant mae Oe 
 Se ‘% 
 MAA cae ee 
 y et} er 
 
 
 
The Grub Street DC ights 
 
 Entertainments 
 J. C.. SQUIRE 
 
By J. C. SQUIRE 
 
 POEMS 
 
 POEMS: FIRST SERIES 
 A Collection of Poems written 1905-1918 
 
 POEMS: SECOND SERIES 
 A Collection of Poems written 1918-1921 
 
 THE BirpDs AND OTHER POEMS 
 Poems written 1918-1919 
 
 THE SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST 
 THE Moon 
 AMERICAN POEMS AND OTHERS 
 
 ESSAYS 
 Essays AT LARGE 
 Books REVIEWED 
 
 THE GOLD TREE AND OTHER STUDIES 
 Limited Autographed Edition 
 
 LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 Books IN GENERAL: FIRST SERIES 
 By Solomon Eagle 
 
 Books IN GENERAL: SECOND SERIES 
 Books IN GENERAL: THIRD SERIES 
 
 FICTION 
 THE GRUB STREET NIGHTS ENTERTAINMENTS 
 
 PARODIES 
 COLLECTED PARODIES 
 ‘TRICKS OF THE TRADE 
 
 THE COLLECTED PormMs OF JAMES ELROY FLECKER: 
 Edited, with an Introduction 
 
 SELECTIONS FROM MODERN POETS 
 
The 
 Grub Street Lights 
 
 L.ntertatnments 
 by 
 
 J. C. Sguire 
 
 
 
 tN EY ORK 
 GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 
 
Copyright, 1924, 
 By George H. Doran Company 
 
 oD 
 
 THE GRUB STREET NIGHTS ENTERTAINMENTS 
 
 — Be 
 
 PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 
 

 
 
 
 
 ee aii Ati 
 Wet r ae | 
 
 
 
 To 
 LADY EILEEN ORDE | 
 
 ‘WHO FIRED THE PIST OL AT THE START 
 
 
 
eee ae 
 
 as 
 
 4 
 i 
 
 
 
NOTE 
 
 Some of these stories appeared in 
 The London Mercury, whose editor has 
 no option; others in The Century, The 
 Windsor, and The Illustrated Review, 
 whose editors are thanked. 
 
 Pos 
 
ye en 
 SUA A aie 
 yee) } 
 
 
 
Lhe 
 
 III: 
 
 IV: 
 
 WEL 
 
 Vit. 
 
 VIII: 
 
 IX: 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 : THE MAN WHO KEPT A DIARY 
 
 THE BEST SELLER 
 
 THE SUCCESS 
 
 THE GOLDEN SCILENS 
 BAXTERIANA 
 
 THE LECTURE 
 
 THE CEMETERY 
 
 THE PAINFUL DILEMMA 
 
 THE MAN WHO WROTE FREE 
 VERSE 
 
 PAGE 
 
 13 
 38 
 72 
 114 
 136 
 P59 
 184 
 215 
 
 259 
 

 
THE GRUB STREET NIGHTS 
 ENTERTAINMENTS 
 

 
THE GRUB STREET 
 NIGHTS ENTER- 
 TAINMENTS 
 
 I: THE MAN WHO KEPT A DIARY 
 I 
 
 R. WILLIAM WIGGLESWORTH 
 
 was a bachelor. He had greying hair, 
 a bald spot, a small moustache, cham- 
 bers in Gray’s Inn, and a respectable, but 
 not a bloated, income. His only near rela- 
 tive was his niece Mary, who was engaged 
 in social work. Now it was nursing, now it 
 was education, now it was the promotion 
 
 of international harmony: she had poorly . 
 
 paid jobs in connection with all these suc- 
 cessively, and she more than earned her pay, 
 for her ability was considerable and her dis- 
 interested idealism even more notable still. 
 They often talked of Society and the duties 
 of its members. “Well, Uncle,” Mary 
 would say, “no doubt you are very kind in 
 your own circle. You help your char- 
 13 
 
14 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 
 
 woman’s family, you have helped me, I 
 have sometimes persuaded you to subscribe, 
 and you give handsome Christmas boxes to 
 the porter at the gate. But you really do 
 not justify your existence.” 
 
 “My existence?’ Mr. Wigglesworth 
 would murmur in reply. “Can I really be 
 of importance to any one? I am a very 
 humble person really. I merely want to go 
 on my quiet way. I am unfitted at this 
 stage to earn my living. I know nothing 
 whatever about politics; besides which no- 
 body in politics would ever take me seri- 
 ously. JI make what you would consider a 
 good use of the margin of my small income; 
 my pleasures, which consist of reading a 
 little and observing the world a little, are 
 surely harmless. I beg you do not attempt 
 to convert me into something other than I 
 am.” 
 
 “Oh, Uncle, you are hopeless,’ Mary 
 would reply; and, with a sigh, she would 
 resign herself to enjoying the admirable 
 luncheon that he had provided for her. The 
 sherry and the claret she often forgot to 
 commend; but, idealist though she was, she 
 never attempted to conceal her liking for 
 the lobster, of which she always secured the 
 major share. After luncheon, with her cof- 
 fee-cup in her hand, she would walk round 
 the room looking a little enviously at his 
 
The Man Who Kept a Diary 15 
 
 books, which were numerous and well 
 bound. She knew so little about them and 
 she wished she had time to know more. 
 Yet at the end, in spite of all their mutual 
 affection, she always went away wondering 
 whether this selfish bachelor existence ought 
 to be tolerated. Was not such epicureanism 
 the canker which destroyed empires? Was 
 not Mr. Wigglesworth, however modest and 
 conventionally virtuous, one of those drones 
 in the hive whose parasitical presence makes 
 the workers so justly angry? She would 
 sometimes discuss him with her more inti- 
 mate friends. “I know,” she would say, 
 “that it’s hopeless to expect him to go into 
 the House. But if only he would serve on 
 committees, or become honorary secretary of 
 the Lifeboats or the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ 
 Families, it would be better than nothing.”’ 
 “But how on earth, my dear,” the friend 
 would reply, “does he spend his time?” 
 “Oh,” she would reply, “fritters it away 
 somehow. He goes to his Club, and he goes 
 to private views, and he sometimes goes out 
 to tea, and he sometimes gets asked to a 
 City dinner. I believe he knows all the 
 booksellers and picture dealers, and old 
 friends ask him away for week-ends. And 
 sometimes he gives men’s dinners in his 
 chambers. Most of the men he asks are 
 lawyers. In the morning he reads The 
 
16 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 
 
 Times and sticks in bookplates and throws 
 out crumbs for the pigeons.” 
 
 “What a life!” 
 
 “Yes, what a life!” 
 
 II 
 
 For the ninety-ninth time Mary had been 
 tackling her uncle about his lack of occupa- 
 tion. He had, she thought, been more than 
 usually annoying about it to-day. On pre- 
 vious occasions he had at least had the grace 
 to be embarrassed by her reproaches and to 
 try perpetually to change the subject. How 
 well she knew those artless stratagems, the 
 questions about her work, the comments on 
 the morning’s news, the solicitudes about her 
 health, the remarks about letters which he 
 had received from distant cousins in Aus- 
 tralia, the sudden decisions, even, that there 
 was something wrong with the wine and 
 that a fresh bottle must be obtained. ‘‘No, 
 my dear Mary, let me get you another glass; 
 I simply cannot allow you to drink that.” 
 ‘To-day there had been an odd difference in 
 the atmosphere, no evasions, no shamefaced 
 excuses. Almost always in the past, though 
 his appalling inner stubbornness and inertia 
 had beaten her on the major issue, she had 
 at least reduced his arguments to pulp. He 
 had hardly even attempted to argue, only to 
 
The Man Who Kept a Diary 17 
 
 beg immunity from too severe a condemna- 
 tion. To-day he had assumed another and 
 a very exasperating attitude; it was for all 
 the world as though he had just parted from 
 some bold, conscienceless, even misogynist, 
 ally in the background, who had braced him 
 to fight for his evil cause. To-day there had 
 been none of those rather pathetic silences 
 under rebuke, when care settled on Mr. 
 Wigglesworth’s forehead and his heavily- 
 lidded eyes looked sadly out of the window 
 in search of the relief which he knew would 
 not be forthcoming. There was a new con- 
 fidence in his bearing, something almost of 
 boisterousness. Her most direct assaults 
 were met not merely with equanimity but 
 with jocularity. His eyes looked straight 
 at her and they positively glittered with 
 amusement. When she attacked he almost 
 seemed inclined to counter-attack; he even 
 chaffed her. No captain of industry or at- 
 torney could have worn a more assumed air, 
 no successful sailor could have been more 
 buoyant. ‘“Was he drunk?” she asked her- 
 self for one awkward moment; but no, he 
 was not drunk. Yet he could not have been 
 more unlike himself had he been at the 
 crisis of a desperate bout. 
 
 “Occupation,” he said, “there are all sorts 
 of occupations. I don’t wish to criticise 
 your mode of life, but I must ask you to 
 
18 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 
 
 suspend judgment about mine. I fully 
 agree that my pursuits are not obviously 
 utilitarian, but you really must take it from 
 me that there may be more in them than 
 meets the eye.” 
 
 “Tt’s all very well, Uncle William,” she 
 replied, “but I’m not going on my own 
 opinion, though I should have thought that 
 the way in which you waste your time was 
 perfectly obvious, and I confess that until 
 now [ always thought you admitted it your- 
 self. It isn’t only me; everybody I know 
 who knows you thinks it too dreadful that 
 you haven’t got any aim in life except just 
 amusing yourself. I know you're not selfish 
 at the bottom, but it does look like it, 
 doesn’t it?” 
 
 Mr. Wigglesworth bit his lip and hesi- 
 tated a little, while Mary recollected, in a 
 flash, all the occasions on which she had 
 tried to whitewash her uncle. “I know he’s 
 rather weak, but he’s most awfully kind, 
 really. He’s too modest; he doesn’t think 
 himself capable of really useful work; and 
 it’s so difficult to change old habits, isn’t 
 it, especially for a bachelor living by him- 
 self.” | 
 
 Had she been mistaken? had the mask of 
 diffidence and frailty at last fallen from a 
 nature which, in truth, had always been 
 hard and wilful? She rose, unhappily, as 
 
The Man Who Kept a Diary 19 
 
 soon as the meal was over. ‘I’m very sorry, 
 Uncle William,” she said in a slightly 
 strained voice, with her gaze averted, ‘I’ve 
 got an appointment and I shan’t be able to 
 wait for coffee.” 
 
 “Look here, Mary,” he said, with sudden 
 decision, taking the door handle from her 
 and waving her to the comfortable window 
 seat, “you simply must stay for a few 
 minutes.” 
 
 Still a shade sulky she half attempted to 
 renew her protestations, but he would have 
 none of them, and her chagrin was displaced 
 by curiosity when he added, with a very 
 earnest air, “ve found it very difficult to 
 tell you, but I can’t bear that you should 
 misunderstand any longer. I am not so idle 
 as you think.” She was baffled and bewil- 
 dered: images crowded on her confusedly: 
 secret service, a midnight concentration on 
 the ologies. He was smiling blandly at her. 
 ‘As a matter of fact,” he said, “I am keep- 
 ing a diary.” : 
 
 “What,” she exclaimed, as though he had 
 said he was keeping a spaniel, “I can’t see 
 that there’s anything remarkable about that. 
 I keep one myself.” 
 
 “Yes, Mary,” he went on, “but mine may 
 be a little different.’ Mr. Wigglesworth 
 was always an exact man with a dislike for 
 overstatement, so he left it at that. | 
 
20 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 
 
 “Oh,” said Mary, rather mystified. 
 
 “Yes,”’ added her uncle with a slightly 
 conspiratorial air, “but I’d rather, if you 
 don’t mind, that you kept it a secret.” 
 
 When she reached the Bureau of Psycho- 
 Technical Research she at once went to the 
 room of her friend Agatha Bonner and told 
 her all about it. A passion for social re- 
 construction does not always imply a gen- 
 eral education, but Agatha Bonner was un- 
 usually well read. She took in the situation 
 at once. “I don’t know your Uncle, Mary,” 
 she observed, “but I take it he is hardly 
 likely to be a Marie Bashkirtseff. You are 
 probably the niece of a modern classic. It’s 
 rather thrilling, Mary; it may be a great 
 historical document.” 
 
 “Well I never,” said Mary, ‘‘the old fox.” 
 But the cordiality of their relations was sub- 
 sequently uninterrupted. 
 
 III 
 
 It is one thing to talk about a man behind 
 his back and another to talk to him to his 
 face. Many months elapsed before anybody 
 directly mentioned his clandestine activities 
 to Mr. Wigglesworth, and then it was a 
 total stranger, a large lady with a treble 
 chin whom he had taken down to dinner in 
 a young Jewish politician’s house in Bays- 
 
The Man Who Kept a Diary 21 
 
 water. During the soup she looked at him 
 coyly, and in a winning whisper said to 
 him: “Oh, dear Mr. Wigglesworth, I would 
 give anything for a glance at your famous 
 Diary.” 
 
 Our friend smiled, urbanely yet modestly, 
 and observed: “Honestly, I don’t think 
 you'd find it very interesting. People ex- 
 aggerate so absurdly”; and then hastened to 
 turn the conversation to Mr. Epstein’s latest 
 exhibition. The lady was pertinacious, and 
 several times during the meal showed an 
 inclination to return to the theme, but Mr. 
 Wigglesworth successfully fenced her off 
 without direct rudeness, and even managed 
 to avoid conceding her an invitation to see 
 his charming collection of pictures in his 
 delightful chambers about which she had 
 heard so much. This encounter, had it 
 been reached without preliminary warnings, 
 might have startled Mr. Wigglesworth. In 
 the old days indeed it would have been a 
 matter of great surprise to him had any 
 stranger at all disclosed, not merely interest 
 in, but bare knowledge of his previous ex- 
 istence. He had walked quietly on the out- 
 skirts of the pulsing world and had grown 
 accustomed to pass unnoticed. But during 
 these last months the community had shown 
 increasing symptoms of a new attitude to- 
 wards him. Several college friends, who 
 
22 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 
 
 for years had forgotten him in the pursuit 
 of their promising careers, had sent him in- 
 vitations to stay in the country. He had 
 gone; he had found himself included in 
 carefully chosen and entirely enjoyable par- 
 ties; more than this, diffident though he was, 
 he had been unable to avoid feeling that 
 he had held his own with the wittiest and 
 the most important. The days had appar- 
 ently passed when, except his few intimates, 
 nobody asked him anywhere except to fill 
 an odd chair, and when, in a crowd, he had 
 been accustomed to find his partner, after 
 a few perfunctory words to him, addressing 
 herself to her other neighbour. And he con- 
 fessed frankly to himself that he liked the 
 change; it was agreeable to find people 
 laughing in chorus at his little jokes, to be 
 engaged, as equal with equal, in earnest dis- 
 cussions by people at the centre of affairs, 
 to be consulted as to his wishes, and to be 
 persuaded into joining all the most pleasant 
 excursions. His town life, meanwhile, had 
 suffered a similar gradual transformation. 
 Cards had begun to pour in on him from 
 everybody he had ever met, and from some 
 enterprising hostesses whom he had never 
 met at all. Wherever he was asked, there 
 he went; it was a congenial change to have 
 a status in the world; he was beginning to 
 talk very well, and he was always the cause 
 
The Man Who Kept a Diary 23 
 
 of good talk in others. It was especially 
 stimulating to find so many people anxious 
 to discover what his opinions were concern- 
 ing art, letters and politics; they seemed so 
 often to wish to agree with him. Materially 
 he was also prospering. At the second large 
 political reception to which he had gone a 
 Cabinet Minister edged him aside into a 
 corner and, after putting very strongly his 
 own side in a very complicated dispute then 
 raging behind the scenes, gave him a finan- 
 cial tip on which he told him he could safely 
 put his shirt. This Mr. Wigglesworth did; 
 with the result that he found no difficulty 
 at all in producing the large entrance fees ° 
 and annual subscriptions of the three excel- 
 lent clubs which he had recently been per- 
 suaded to join. In a thousand and one ways 
 Mr. Wigglesworth had perceived the indi- 
 cations of a growing interest and prestige; 
 as we have seen, therefore, it was no shock 
 to him when point-blank he was informed 
 that his carefully-guarded secret was out. 
 He did not even seem to mind. 
 
 IV 
 
 Barely two seasons had passed since all 
 London that counts had grown familiar with 
 the notion of Mr. Wigglesworth as chroni- 
 cler-in-chief to his time before an ever-vigi- 
 
24 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 
 
 lant Press became aware of him. The first 
 paragraph which came to Mr. Wiggles- 
 worth’s eyes was a scanty one, but signifi- 
 cant in that nobody else under the rank 
 of a countess was mentioned in it. It ap- 
 peared in a column signed “Yvonne,” and 
 ran: 
 
 Amongst the well-known people seen at 
 the Canine Waifs and Strays’ Thée-Dan- 
 sant yesterday were Prince Hippos of 
 Greece, the Grand Duke Justinian, Lord 
 Ramsgate, Lady Clackmannan and her 
 two charming children Bertie and Gertie, 
 and Mr. Herbert Wigglesworth, who 
 watched with interest but did not dance. 
 On dit, by the way, that when Mr. Wig- 
 glesworth’s Diary appears the dovecotes 
 are likely to be fluttered. 
 
 Only a few days elapsed, however, before 
 a further and more elaborate reference was 
 made, this time by a male causeur. 
 
 Yesterday, at an exclusive club, I lis- 
 tened to a fascinating conversation in 
 which two statesmen of European repu- 
 tation and a famous admiral took part. 
 The subject was diaries and the possibil- 
 ity of our own eventful time providing 
 posterity with a diarist of the standing 
 
The Man Who Kept a Diary 25 
 
 and value of Pepys or Greville. The 
 opinion was unanimous that a record of 
 the kind was likeliest to come from the 
 pen of Mr. Augustus Wigglesworth... Mr. 
 Wigglesworth, who is one of the best 
 known and busiest of men about town, 
 goes everywhere and sees everybody. For 
 years he has kept a full day to day record, 
 and a duchess told me the other day that 
 Mr. Wigglesworth had been the repos- 
 itory of more secrets than even the late 
 Sir George Lewis. 
 
 This became the stock form of all subse- 
 quent allusions, and they need not detain us 
 further. It was natural that after the mat- 
 ter had been openly referred to in print, 
 Mr. Wigglesworth should on occasion find 
 people bold enough to refer to it in his pres- 
 ence. Yet these were comparatively few. 
 Now and then a brazen lady would beg for 
 a glimpse of the diary. Once, on a wet 
 Sunday morning in the country, his hostess 
 blandly suggested that the company should 
 come upstairs to her room and Mr. Wiggles- 
 worth should read them a few innocuous 
 extracts: “Do; only quite old ones about 
 people who are all dead.” Our hero evaded 
 the request easily, he carried no diary about 
 with him. 
 
 “What about the entries you made last 
 
26 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 
 
 night?” cried one of the sprightlier of the 
 younger ladies; whilst the Solicitor-General, 
 who had that evening engaged Mr. Wiggles- 
 worth in an earnest conversation, gave an 
 involuntary stare of consternation. 
 
 “There were none,” said Mr. Wiggles- 
 worth; and, as a concession, bestowed on 
 them a number of reminiscences which were 
 very dull although entirely truthful. 
 
 The one place where frequent reference to 
 his habits was made was in the smoking-room 
 of the liveliest and latest of his clubs. 
 There he lived on terms of affectionate es- 
 teem with a number of subalterns whose 
 sense of humour was crude. They would 
 banter each other at tea-time; and when one 
 of them had made a remark of more than 
 ordinary obscenity, another would say: 
 “‘Mind you put that in your diary, Wiggles- 
 worth”; at which the whole assembly would 
 burst into a loud guffaw. 
 
 “A busy man,” they said in the para- 
 graphs. To Mr. Wigglesworth’s shame it 
 must be confessed that he was just as idle 
 as he had been in the days of his retirement. 
 He still lived in Grey’s Inn; he still rose 
 late; he merely went about more and talked 
 more; nobody ever saw him working. But 
 the world knew his ratson d’étre, and besides 
 that it was impossible that a man who was 
 seen so much could be conceived as anything 
 
The Man Who Kept a Diary raf 
 
 but an active man. In truth he had never 
 even joined a committee. In the old days, 
 except for the sporadic and unsupported so- 
 licitations of Mary, he never received a re- 
 quest from anybody to do anything; he was 
 too obscure. Nowadays nobody asked him, 
 though he occasionally accepted the office 
 of patron or vice-president, because he was 
 too celebrated. “Who else can we put on?” 
 the conversation would run. “What about 
 Wigglesworth, he’s very sensible and every- 
 body knows him.” ‘Oh, you can’t ask him; 
 he’s sure to have much too much on his hands 
 to settle down to a routine job.” 
 
 A Trusteeship of the National Portrait 
 Gallery was another matter; that he was 
 pleased to take, especially when he remem- 
 bered how little notice anybody took of his 
 opinions about art in the old days. This 
 was his one real office. 
 
 He kept the diary. It was all he did. 
 During those first few years he learnt a good 
 deal about human nature. In a few in- 
 stances men with whom he had been inti- 
 mate in the past seemed to avoid him; they 
 grew constrained in his presence and looked 
 askance. Once one of them broke silence 
 and revealed to Mr. Wigglesworth the dis- 
 advantages of his new role. He was sitting 
 in his library late at night, drinking a last 
 whisky and reading Saint Simon, when there 
 
28 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 
 
 came a sharp knock at the door. “Come in,” 
 he called, laying down his book, covers up- 
 wards; and there appeared, red and embar- 
 rassed, yet oddly resolute, the face of Sir 
 Herbert Pantile, the K.C. “Excellent, 
 Pantile,’ exclaimed Wigglesworth, ““‘it’s 
 splendid to see you. I thought you were 
 never going to come near me again. Have 
 a drink?” 
 
 “No, thank you,” said the lawyer shortly, 
 sitting upright on the edge of a hard chair. 
 “Look here, Wigglesworth, there’s some- 
 thing I want to speak to you about.” 
 
 “Why not?’ said Mr. Wigglesworth, 
 “though I don’t suppose I shall be able to 
 be of any use.” 
 
 “Don’t you though. Well, I’d_ better 
 come to the point at once. Do you remem- 
 ber that time in these rooms when I told 
 you about that affair with Sylvia?” 
 
 “Why, of course,” said Mr. Wigglesworth 
 sympathetically ; “and I can’t say how sorry 
 I was.” 
 
 Pantile glared at him. Then he suddenly 
 burst forth. “Look here, to put it bluntly, 
 I know very well you’ve got every word of 
 it down in your damned diary.” His eye 
 caught a large black enamelled deed-box in 
 the corner; he flushed again and almost 
 shouted, “I won’t have it. You've got to 
 tear it out. It’s monstrous. It’s damned 
 
The Man Who Kept a Diary 29 
 
 blackguardly. Vl, PU, Pll take proceed- 
 ings.” 
 
 “Listen to me,” said Mr. Wigglesworth, 
 really perturbed and distressed. “I swear 
 solemnly that not a word of that has ever 
 passed my lips, nor is there a syllable about 
 it in any diary I may have kept.” 
 
 “What proof have I got?’ asked Pantile, 
 a little mollified but still suspicious; “every- 
 body knows that a diarist would defeat his 
 own objects if he told everybody what he 
 was putting down. I'd like to see that day’s 
 entry.” 
 
 “T can’t show you that,” said Mr. Wig- 
 glesworth. “I don’t suppose you were the 
 only person I saw that day, and the confi- 
 dences of others must be respected as well 
 as yours. On my word of honour as an old 
 friend, your name is not so much as men- 
 tioned either on that page of my diary or 
 any other. That’s the absolute truth.” 
 
 The assurance was at last believed; yet 
 something about the mode in which it was 
 conveyed seemed to leave Sir Herbert even 
 more angry than he was before. Before he 
 was red and now he went white. “Good 
 night,” he said brusquely, and walked out 
 without shaking hands. Mr. Wigglesworth 
 sighed and realised that however silver the 
 lining there must always be a cloud. Yet 
 how small his clouds usually were in these 
 
30 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 
 
 days! Those who avoided him were as noth- 
 ing in number compared with those who 
 sought him out. Men saved up their jokes 
 for him, and rattled them out breathlessly. 
 Women dressed for him; strikingly and in a 
 describable fashion, as though they wished 
 to be raw material for epigrams; he was in 
 a manner an elevator of social standards; 
 at his approach the sober vegetable garden 
 became the gay parterre; like the sun, he il- 
 luminated everything upon which his radi- 
 ance fell. Great men, whose eyes would 
 have absently glazed if left with him in the 
 days of his obscurity, now sparkled and 
 shone to meet him. Many and various were 
 the confidences he received. He knew, and 
 was one of the very few who knew, why 
 Crete had not made war on Corea, and for 
 the sake of posterity three separate persons 
 had given him a full account of the negotia- 
 tions which led to the passage of the Im- 
 perial Federation Act. 
 
 Private scandals rained upon him. Even 
 when, as occasionally happened, a hubbub 
 ceased awkwardly as he entered a room and 
 he felt all too sure that something was be- 
 ing concealed from him, it always reached 
 him in the end. “You remember, Mr. Wig- 
 glesworth, that day when you found us all 
 in the drawing-room together. Well, I won- 
 der if you guessed what it was we were 
 
The Man Who Kept a Diary 3] 
 
 talking about. I’m sure I oughtn’t to tell 
 you but I simply must. You'll hardly be- 
 lieve it, it’s almost too disgraceful, but Billy 
 says that Betty—” Yes, the diary was sel- 
 dom mentioned, but it had a thousand con- 
 tributors. Anda thousand candidates. Sev- 
 eral times a lady told him that she had been 
 the One Real Love of some illustrious dead 
 man; no fewer than three ladies made this 
 assertion about their relations with the 
 late Lord Strype, a man of unblemished 
 repute. Painters, novelists, sometimes a 
 preternaturally intelligent commercial mag- 
 nate, sought the diarist’s private and par- 
 ticular attention. Two or three people even 
 bequeathed flattering miniatures of them- 
 selves to him when they died. Truly the 
 faces that were presented to Mr. Wiggles- 
 worth were not always characteristic faces; 
 and he was assured that, screened from the 
 world, there was a better side to many na- 
 tures deemed hard, ambitious, and grasping. 
 
 He was astonished at the industry with 
 which people endeavoured to reinforce the 
 impressions they had first made upon him. 
 With him the wit was always preternaturally 
 witty, the dreamer abnormally dreamy, the 
 sagacious man sagacious indeed. He often 
 marvelled at the aspirations thus innocently 
 revealed to him, and wondered now and 
 then, after a long encounter, whether or not 
 
32 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 
 
 he had imposed too great a histrionic stress 
 upon some strenuous aspirant after a repu- 
 table immortality, whether or not sometimes 
 his departure might be the signal for a re- 
 action, a collapse, a call for restoratives, a 
 swoon even. 
 
 Vv 
 
 Nobody was surprised when Mr. William 
 Wigglesworth became a K.B.E. The mar- 
 vel was rather that so generally respected 
 and trusted a figure should not have been 
 honoured before. “For public services,” the 
 description in the list briefly ran; after all 
 he was patron and vice-president of a great 
 many indispensable organizations, and he 
 had contributed substantially to the Na- 
 tional Art Collections Fund. The Prime 
 Minister had insisted; otherwise Mr. Wig- 
 glesworth might have declined. He took a 
 childish pleasure when attending vast par- 
 ties at which orders and decorations were 
 worn by all save him, in being the only man 
 in the room with a plain black coat. Of 
 such parties the diarist was in his later years 
 an invariable feature, much balder now, a 
 little rounder, his moustache gone completely 
 white. He would stand, the complacent but 
 charming centre of an admiring circle; or 
 wander through the rooms exchanging cheery 
 
The Man Who Kept a Diary 33 
 
 words with dowagers and diplomatists, art- 
 ists, men of letters, and, with a due admix- 
 ture of deference, Princes of the Blood. 
 Sometimes Mary, now Mrs. Wilkins, would 
 be there; ‘‘Yes,”’ she would whisper proudly 
 to her companion, ‘‘of course he’s my uncle.” 
 And what, in such brilliant scenes, were the 
 thoughts of Mr. Wigglesworth—or as we 
 must now call him, Sir William—as he 
 moved so successfully through this world 
 where events were being moulded and his- 
 tory, of which he was to be recorder, made? 
 He kept them to himself, as had always been 
 his way; but they ran like this. “There is 
 Barnby beckoning to me. He is shaping for 
 an entry in the diary. He conceives it like 
 this: 
 
 
 
 At the Queensferrys’ crush I saw 
 and Barnby. Poor fellow, he has taken 
 on too much and they overwork the will- 
 ing horse. The Polish business is obvi- 
 ously weighing on his mind, but it is sim- 
 ply his duty to spare himself. We can- 
 not afford to let him have a breakdown. 
 He looked anxious, worried, but the lines 
 he has contracted only make his thought- 
 ful face more handsome. 
 
 Little does he realise that I should be much 
 likelier to put it down like this: 
 
34 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 
 
 Saw that pompous ass Barnby at the 
 Queensferrys. His stupidity and smug- 
 ness are bad enough, but that look of spu- 
 rious concentration is more than I can 
 bear. It was like his infernal cheek to 
 pester me with his veiled abuse of all his 
 colleagues. 
 
 And there again on the balcony is Palmer, 
 the poetaster. He has seen me, but of course 
 he pretends not to have. I know what he 
 wants. His pale profile against the soft 
 midnight sky, a strange alien in that worldly 
 scene. Yes, I know all about that. The 
 most disgusting poseur in London, and about 
 the worst poet who ever deluded the world 
 into taking him seriously. Poor little Jones 
 over there in the corner is ten thousand times 
 better; Pll go up and speak to him, though 
 I shall probably frighten him out of his 
 life.’ Then he would go down the stair- 
 case, chatting and nodding to the orders and 
 decorations, get his hat and coat and depart 
 alone in a taxi for Gray’s Inn. The porter 
 would unbolt to him and, under the dark 
 sky, he would walk through the quiet old 
 squares, and up the rustling avenue of trees, 
 to his rooms and his secret; a mystery, an 
 Enigma, a Sphinx; the repository of a 
 myriad confessions and the divulger of none. 
 
The Man Who Kept a Diary 35 
 
 VI 
 
 Diarists and non-diarists, we all travel 
 the same road. The last entry must be 
 made. There is a page filled and the next 
 page must remain empty for ever. One 
 night Sir William left a jolly men’s party 
 at Manton’s studio, looking as well as ever; 
 next evening the papers recorded that he had 
 been found dead in his chair. The Times 
 on the following day had a long and re- 
 spectful obituary notice. “Sir William,” it 
 said, “was a man of great energy and mul- 
 tifarious interests. His services to, etc., etc., 
 will long be remembered. He had a host 
 of friends, and was on terms of close inti- 
 macy with half the most eminent men of 
 his day. But it is quite possible, nay likely, 
 that to our remote descendants he may be far 
 better known than to his contemporaries. It 
 has long been matter of common report that 
 throughout his life he was an indefatigable 
 diarist. Few, if any, have been privileged 
 to see his records, but his opportunities for 
 observation were unique. Wigglesworth’s 
 diary may well take its place beside Pepys’ 
 and Greville’s. The comparison is not too 
 extravagant. Sir William’s industry and 
 opportunities were fully equal to those of 
 his predecessors, and in point of wit and 
 breadth of culture he surpassed both of 
 
36 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 
 
 them. We understand that the executors 
 under Sir William’s will are the Rt. Hon. 
 Lord Barnby and Mr. Godfrey Palmer, the 
 poet, both friends of long standing.” 
 
 VII 
 
 So it was, and in a codicil of the will Sir 
 William not only gave his executors full 
 discretion as to the publication and expurga- 
 tion of his diary and the ultimate disposal 
 of the manuscript, but provided that any 
 profits arising therefrom should be divided 
 between the executors named, assuming them 
 to consent to act. The residue of the estate 
 he left to his niece Mary, now the wife of 
 John Wilkins, Esq., of Somerset House. 
 The executors undertook the burden of the 
 trust. 
 
 One spring morning, when the sun shone 
 brightly and the rooks cawed cheerfully over 
 the tree-tops in Bacon’s Walk, a little com- 
 pany assembled in the old chambers, still 
 tidy and comfortable as their late tenant 
 had left them. Lord Barnby had brought 
 his secretary, Mr. Palmer had come alone; 
 the fourth of the party was the deceased’s 
 solicitor who had brought a bunch of keys. 
 There was an air of expectation, even of 
 excitement, about the party; Mr. Palmer 
 fingered books on the shelves almost fever- 
 
The Man Who Kept a Diary o/ 
 
 ishly, while the solicitor cryptically fumbled 
 with papers in his attaché’s case. At last 
 he was ready. “Well, gentlemen,” he said 
 heartily, rubbing his hands, “we may now 
 gaze upon the buried treasure.” The key 
 went into the lock, and was turned. 
 
 They pulled them out. There were four 
 enormous volumes, as large as ledgers. All 
 except one were completely virgin of any 
 writing. On the first page of that one there 
 was a date carefully written, and a note 
 of the phase of the moon: underneath, in 
 large block capitals, this sole and simple 
 entry: 
 
 “This is the diary I have kept. I have 
 kept it for years. -I think, if published, it 
 should be published as it stands. Should 
 my executors in their wisdom think other- 
 wise, the responsibility is theirs.—W. W.” 
 
Il: THE BEST SELLER 
 I 
 
 VYDENE, No. 23 Acacia Road, High- 
 gate, was a brick villa in a double row 
 of such, with square bow windows upstairs 
 and down, and a small turf garden in front. 
 The approach to the front door was divided 
 from that of No. 25 by a single iron rail, 
 over which it was the custom of errand boys 
 to stride. The habits of errand boys, their 
 callings and whistlings, rather distressed 
 Acacia Road, which was nothing if not re- 
 spectable. Looking at any of the houses, 
 and at number twenty-three in particular, 
 an experienced observer might have supposed 
 himself able to make a very close guess 
 at the occupations, politics, religion, morals 
 and incomes of the inhabitants. Yet even 
 the most sagacious and likely-seeming guesses 
 are sometimes wrong. The other houses may 
 have contained all that the observer would 
 expect. But number twenty-three contained 
 something not found elsewhere in the street. 
 It contained a novelist. 
 The fact as yet was known to nobody. 
 The census-taker had collected from number 
 38 
 
The Best Seller 39 
 
 twenty-three particulars of two persons, and 
 two persons only: John Macdonald Bentley, 
 38, motor engineer and agent, and Edith 
 Bentley, 35, married woman. ‘The little 
 maid did not sleep under the roof. Her 
 pale face and mouse-coloured hair arrived 
 at seven, in time to black the grates and 
 cook breakfast; she departed daily after the 
 tea-things had been washed up and the sup- 
 per-things laid. There were no children. 
 Every morning, after John had gone to 
 business, Mrs. Bentley had plenty to do. 
 She helped Daisy do the bedroom, she her- 
 self dusted the drawing-room, she gave the 
 orders to the butcher, baker, and greengrocer, 
 and she then went out to do the shopping, 
 of which, mysteriously, there was always 
 some to be done. Almost invariably she was 
 back to a solitary luncheon. Very occa- 
 sionally she took the tube to Oxford Street 
 and, after a survey of the drapers’ latest 
 displays and the purchase of a handkerchief 
 or a piece of ribbon, she stood herself a 
 cinema, with tea on the gorgeous premises 
 to follow. She would have liked her hus- 
 band to take her sometimes to the films, but 
 she could not get him to go. He would do 
 a music-hall or a musical comedy now and 
 then; he thought little of them, but they 
 were a reasonable man’s entertainments. 
 The “pictures” he could not tolerate; he 
 
40 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 
 
 disliked the youths and maidens who fre- 
 quented them, and they even moved him 
 sometimes to grumpy mutterings about “‘silly 
 women.” And he particularly disliked those 
 films by which his wife was most attracted. 
 Mrs. Bentley did not care much for the 
 news-pictures, unless they were of royal pro- 
 cessions, and she was bored with enlarged 
 representations illustrating the intelligence 
 of plants and the remarkable, if reprehen- 
 sible, habits of insects. For her—Romance, 
 physical adventure mingled with Love. The 
 mere troubles and triumphs of explorers were 
 not enough for her; close-ups of lions and 
 tigers helped to fill in her background, but 
 gave her no thrill. She must have a hero 
 in love and a heroine in danger; the hero 
 must be bold and square-jawed, the heroine 
 fair, slim, courageous, high-spirited. Ob- 
 stacles must impede them and be. sur- 
 mounted; revolvers must point at them and 
 be knocked aside. She adored defiant and 
 deathless love, whether it was on the plains 
 of Arizona, where a solitary man on horse- 
 back will dash into a ring of ruffians and 
 rescue, with a swoop of the arm, a helpless 
 but still proud-spirited girl, or in the gilded 
 salons of Park Lane, where the millionaire’s 
 daughter will walk out of an unrelenting 
 parent’s study (after making one last fruit- 
 less appeal) hand in hand with the sunburnt 
 
The Best Seller Al 
 
 lover whom she believes to be a chauffeur. 
 She was intensely happy if she could see the 
 elementary virtues in action: Courage, Pa- 
 tience, Generosity, Sympathy, Kindness, 
 Family Affection. Her blue eyes sparkled 
 with especial intensity when it was the hero- 
 ine’s turn to do and dare, and a strong re- 
 sponse rang in her breast when Virility in 
 Adversity, assisted by writing on the screen, 
 proclaimed with a proud chin the doctrine 
 that “A Man’s a Man for a’ that.” This 
 was her view; though, of course, it was all 
 the nicer when he turned out to be a duke. 
 Not that in real life Mrs. Bentley had any 
 thoughts for dukes. She was a virtuous 
 woman, and she loved her husband. She 
 wished, sometimes, that he would share her 
 interests more, as she tried to share his— 
 though, when he made remarks of Fords and 
 the price of petrol and his ambitions and the 
 monstrously extravagant proposals of the 
 local Labour party, he certainly never 
 wanted her to say much. “Oh, John,” and 
 “Yes, John,” had been adequate. She treas- 
 ured, a little wistfully, the remote days of 
 their wooing, when he would pour out his 
 dreams of business success and seem to de- 
 Tive encouragement from her unqualified 
 faith in him. Even then, perhaps, he had 
 valued her voice rather as an echo of his 
 own; but as he had progressed so he had 
 
42 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 
 
 become more and more self-dependent. He 
 had had a rise; he had gone into partnership; 
 he had bought his partner out; he had made 
 an impression on persons more exalted in the 
 trade than himself, and on some local dig- 
 nitaries who might be useful when the time 
 came. Certainly he knew his job, was in- 
 telligent, industrious, and determined; and 
 she still felt that he would get through. 
 Yet private life did exist; she wished that 
 they could do more together and that he 
 would not be so curt and domineering. 
 
 Still, he conformed in part to her type, 
 and when, simply because she wanted to do 
 something in the idle afternoons and was 
 persecuted by her day dreams, she began 
 writing a story, it was largely on John that 
 she modelled her hero. The novel came to 
 a premature end. Too much influenced by 
 the last three Great Novels she had read 
 (and talked about to her neighbours) she 
 chose for its setting the northern part of 
 Rhodesia. The hero had a red shirt, top 
 boots, a horse, and, in the due course of 
 nature, a great deal of sunburn; he coped 
 with thirst, made fires out of sticks to keep 
 off the chills of night, struck goldfields, and 
 listened to the roaring of lions. The hero- 
 ine dressed in muslin, and was always ready 
 to ride two on a horse; she was delicate, 
 well posted in the latest novels, yet a good 
 
The Best Seller 43 
 
 shot and perfectly prepared to lead, till 
 something better turned up, the life of a 
 lonely settler’s wife. There was no difficulty 
 about the heroine at all, and the hero was 
 John a little altered; more trusting, more 
 egalitarian, more inclined to share experi- 
 ences. The difficulty came with the back- 
 ground. Much was remembered from the 
 other books: veldt, sjamboks, treks, rapid 
 sundowns, cactuses, stoeps, quivering heat, 
 scrub, and ostrich-farms. At the start it 
 seemed easy, but the details ran out; she 
 had never been out of England and it was 
 a handicap. The book ended abruptly, and 
 it was some time before another was begun. 
 It didn’t matter; she was only amusing her- 
 self. She went on with her ordinary life. 
 John, in spite of the slump, was prospering. 
 She asked for a new desk and got it. John 
 was always splendid about money. He 
 spent virtually nothing on himself. His few 
 evenings at the Conservative Club were fru- 
 gal and always with an eye to business; she 
 never asked for more than he could give her, 
 and she never had to justify her requests. 
 “What do you want a new desk for—just 
 for a few bills?” he might have asked. She 
 thought, in a frightened moment, that he 
 was going to say it; but he was unperturbed 
 and authorised the expenditure, kissed her 
 and went off up the road, looking neither 
 
44 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 
 
 to right nor to left. Into a locked bottom 
 drawer went the old sheets of “Riders in the 
 Wilderness”; the top was too tempting and 
 she began again. 
 
 Mrs. Bentley’s second theme, fortunately, 
 was less exotic. For three years now they 
 had spent their annual fortnight in Porth- 
 ruddock, a small fishing town between 
 Fowey and the Fal. They had enjoyed 
 themselves. Sailing, after one experience, 
 Mrs. Bentley had been content to forgo. 
 Most of the days she had sat on a stone seat 
 near the pier-head reading a novel from the 
 local general store, while John, in a yacht- 
 ing cap, had gone out fishing with an aged 
 oarsman. ‘The obvious beauty of the place 
 had made a deep impression on Edith Bent- 
 ley; thought of from Acacia Road it seemed 
 a paradise of fragrance and passion, the 
 summer sky, the idle waters, the boats, the 
 rocks, the blue eyes and bronzed faces of 
 the handsome young men and wrinkled 
 elders. Vaguely harking back to it this 
 morning she suddenly thought of a plot. 
 A mysterious and solitary lady visitor, of 
 surpassing beauty and intelligence, should 
 arrive—a young woman of title, of course 
 unmarried. Across her horizon should pass 
 the figure of young Harry the silent fisher- 
 man; and before long, when she is cut off, 
 after a reckless bathe, by the tide, Harry 
 
The Best Seller 45 
 
 should descend the precipice and painfully 
 carry her up. From there she started. 
 
 II 
 
 It took three months. All that time she 
 said nothing to John. She did not know 
 how he would take it, but at any rate she 
 would keep it as a surprise for him. He 
 might, she realised with dread, turn away 
 with a contemptuous, “Oh, have you?’ 
 But at moments she dreamed that he might 
 relax into the softer and more sympathetic 
 John she knew to be buried in him, might 
 even, perhaps, consent to share in her de- 
 lights and, in the evenings, over the fire, let 
 her read her novel to him and tell her how 
 much he admired her. For she had now 
 come to think that it was really good. She 
 had made discoveries as she went, surpris- 
 - ing herself by her ingenuity, by the fluent 
 richness of her descriptions, and being de- 
 lighted by the way in which her characters 
 came to life and presented her with situa- 
 tions of which she had not thought. For the 
 first time she began to think that she might 
 print it, even make money out of it. What 
 was a success, and how much money one 
 made out of a success, she had not the faint- 
 est idea. But she began to have visions of 
 substantial accretions, of a better piano, of 
 
46 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 
 
 a maid sleeping in—there was a bedroom 
 empty, besides the spare room that was 
 scarcely used—and even of a new house with 
 a larger garden. These fantastic visions she 
 kept in check, but they would recur. And 
 then one evening, when the last correction 
 had been made in the tidy manuscript, she 
 told John. 
 
 He had come home very pleased with him- 
 self. He had sold two cars and bought one 
 very cheap, an unprecedented day’s work; 
 and he came in, a very rare thing nowadays, 
 with a large bunch of flowers for the house. 
 All through supper Mrs. Bentley trembled 
 with excitement. “Surely,” she kept on 
 thinking, “John must see there is something 
 queer about me. I hope he won’t suddenly 
 ask me what. It’s difficult enough as it is.” 
 Apparently John noticed nothing whatever. 
 He ate his food steadily and with relish; 
 he made brief complacent remarks about 
 business and the weather; he congratulated 
 her on the meal and openly thanked God 
 that Edith was not like some men’s wives 
 whom he knew. The compliments were not 
 relished so much as they might have been, 
 for his wife was preoccupied. She fluttered 
 about making him some coffee, an unusual 
 treat, she carried off his boots and produced 
 his slippers, and she then sat girlishly on the 
 
The Best Seller 47 
 
 arm of his chair, which appeared to please 
 him. 
 
 “T’ve got a surprise for you, John,” she 
 said. 
 
 “Fire away, Edie,” he replied good-hu- 
 mouredly. 
 
 “Tve written a novel.” 
 
 His face went black. “What?” he said. 
 
 “ve written a novel.” 
 
 “Well, you’d be a sight better occupied 
 looking after the house!” It was a brutal 
 remark. 
 
 “How can you, John?” she said. “You 
 know I look after the house properly. You 
 know I’m a good wife.” 
 
 He was a little ashamed of himself. 
 
 “Well,” he went on, “your spare time is 
 your own; but I don’t believe in writing 
 women.” 
 
 She was bitterly disappointed. There was 
 that thick bundle of manuscript, neatly tied 
 up in green ribbon, full of the romance she 
 would have liked him to share. All the en- 
 suing week a resolution gradually crystal- 
 lised. She must pursue her dream alone if 
 she couldn’t do it in company. The time 
 might come when John would be sorry for 
 his mistake; perhaps there were, she reflected 
 with a sigh, inevitable drawbacks about 
 strong men. She had hoped against hope 
 
48 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 
 
 that he might help her to explore the un- 
 known avenues of publication; it hadn’t 
 even occurred to him that she might be 
 thinking of publication, and she could tell 
 from his demeanour that if she disclosed the 
 fact he would merely tell her not to be a 
 fool. Thinking it over, she realised that he 
 might dislike publication even more than the 
 fact of authorship; woman’s sphere was the 
 domestic, and he would feel a fool were his 
 wife known to be the author of foolish 
 stories. The result was, that for the first 
 time in her life she resolved on something 
 which she felt to be a deception of him: the 
 secret composition had not been that, but 
 the affectionate preparation of a surprise. 
 She saw in The Daily Mail one morning 
 an interview with Mr. Parker Finch, the 
 celebrated literary agent of Bedford Street. 
 Mr. Finch had just made his fiftieth cross- 
 ing of the Atlantic. He gave the interviewer 
 his latest impressions of that ocean and his 
 experiences of the working of Prohibition; 
 he paid hearty compliments to American hos- 
 pitality, and he boasted discreetly of the 
 novelists he had discovered and the manu- 
 scripts he had placed. He ended by saying 
 that the demand for vigorous fiction was 
 as great as ever, and that new authors capa- 
 ble of handling a powerful love interest 
 would find a market in two continents open 
 
The Best Seller 49 
 
 to them. For a day or two more she hesi- 
 tated; she was unaccustomed to negotiating 
 with the supermen whose names were men- 
 tioned in the newspapers; even the local 
 councillors whose fame filled The Highgate 
 Gazette inspired her with considerable awe. 
 Yet, she told herself, Lady Isabel, in her 
 story, never quailed; and with that reminder 
 she went out to a telephone call-office and 
 put her request for an interview through, 
 first to a telephone girl, and then to a suc- - 
 cession of other voices, of which the last 
 assured her that Mr. Finch was always de- 
 lighted to consider the work of new novel- 
 ists, and gave her an appointment for that 
 afternoon. She lunched early and put on 
 her best clothes; at half-past three she was 
 trembling in Mr. Parker Finch’s antecham- 
 ber. She stated her name and business, was 
 surprised to find that the clerks at the ledgers 
 did not bother to look up, and waited for 
 the messenger to return from the great man. 
 He came back: “Will you please come and 
 see Miss Perkins, who is head of our Fic- 
 tion Department?” Along the corridor she 
 walked, vaguely picturing the omnipotent 
 Miss Perkins; she imagined a fierce-looking 
 dame of middle-age, with pince-nez, a set 
 mouth and a high forehead. She was shown 
 into a small cabin and there she was pre- 
 sented to a young lady with very red lips 
 
50 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 
 
 and profuse fair hair, aged about twenty- 
 one, but obviously possessing the self-confi- 
 dence of maturity. The parcel was undone, 
 and “Bread upon the Waters” lay naked 
 upon the desk beside a high pile of similar 
 packages. 
 
 “It is a pity you haven’t had it type- 
 written,” remarked Miss Perkins, idly turn- 
 ing the pages over. “Still,” she added with 
 condescension, “the writing seems reasona- 
 bly clear. Well, Mrs. Bentley, as you no 
 doubt know, it’s almost impossible in these 
 days to get a first novel accepted. But you 
 will hear from us.” 
 
 Mrs. Bentley was slightly chilled; Mr. 
 Parker Finch, it seemed, was much more op- 
 timistic than his colleague; but a timid sug- 
 gestion that she would like a word with Mr. 
 Finch made no impression whatever. She 
 was ushered out, feeling lost; she was not 
 in the mood for a cinema and went home to 
 a solitary and rather depressed tea. 
 
 III 
 
 Three months passed, normal months. 
 For the first few days Mrs. Bentley waited 
 feverishly for news; none came. Other 
 novels appeared, some made successes; she 
 could not help nowadays reading these with 
 rather a jealous eye; their characters were no 
 
The Best Seller 51 
 
 more splendid, their scenes no more vivid, 
 than her own; and she was especially cha- 
 grined when she read one with a Cornish 
 setting, which had a cynical tone that re- 
 pelled her. As the weeks passed she began 
 to be reconciled; other stories came into her 
 head, but she did not try to begin them; 
 John never referred to the novel and never 
 even appeared to remember it. He was do- 
 ing well, making money; in the winter, he 
 casually mentioned, they ought to be able 
 to run a Ford themselves which could be 
 garaged at the works. Then, at last, one 
 morning in June, came a letter from Mr. 
 Parker Finch, signed “pp. E.P.,” asking for 
 the pleasure of an interview with her; he 
 had, he said, news which he thought would 
 gratify her. All her visions rushed back 
 in a flood; and when she found herself this 
 time brought not into Miss Perkins’s little 
 den but into the spacious and shiny office 
 of Mr. Finch himself, her heart beat almost 
 painfully fast and she was barely able to 
 speak. The agent, however, did not appear 
 to notice this. Portly, suave, grey-haired, 
 spectacled, he offered her a cigarette (she 
 had only twice in her life been offered one 
 before and refused in terror), lit one himself, 
 and proceeded to expound his good news. 
 His reader, he said, had been struck by the 
 popular potentialities of the work; he could 
 
52 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 
 
 say no more than potentialities, for these 
 things were always something of a gamble. 
 The firm had impressed this view upon 
 Messrs. Simpson, the well-known publishers, 
 with the result that they had accepted “Bread 
 upon the Waters” for publication in the 
 autumn. He had hopes that Earwakers 
 would do it in America, where the chances 
 of a profitable sale were even greater than in 
 England. “Here,” he said, “‘is the proposed 
 contract. I believe we have secured you ex- 
 cellent terms.” He proceeded to bewilder 
 her with ten per cents., fifteen per cents., 
 twenty per cents., reverting copyrights, Co- 
 lonial editions, dates, publishing prices, and 
 his own commission. 
 
 “Of course,” he concluded, “‘you would 
 prefer to take it away and consider it be- 
 fore signing, but we should like it back as 
 soon as possible or the book may be held up 
 until the spring.” 
 
 He gave it to her; she handled the 
 typewritten sheets as though they were 
 red-hot; the words swam. ‘“‘How am I to 
 make head or tail of it all?” she wondered 
 desperately, “and it’s no good asking 
 John.” She even thought that John might 
 stop the whole thing if she mentioned it to 
 him. 
 
 “Oh, please, Mr. Finch,” she said, “can’t 
 it all be settled now? Tm sure I’d much 
 
The Best Seller 53 
 
 better leave all these details to you. You 
 are so much more experienced.” 
 
 “Certainly, if you really think so, Mrs. 
 Bentley,” he replied, “but I thought it best 
 you should not sign without due considera- 
 tion a contract you might subsequently think 
 not to your advantage. However, if you’re 
 really sure: .\°2).7? 
 
 He witnessed her signature to two sets 
 of folios; he shook hands warmly; he ex- 
 pressed the best wishes for her success; he 
 said, ““We must have another one soon, you 
 know,” and he showed her out. 
 
 John was out that night, at the Club. 
 She was awake when he came to bed and 
 long after he had gone to sleep; but it was 
 scarcely the time for broaching the question 
 again. In the morning she followed him 
 down to breakfast; in her place were two 
 letters from aunts, and a long envelope 
 addressed in blue typescript. She opened 
 the others first with an air of unconcern, 
 then, thinking that John was glancing curi- 
 ously at her, slit the third with a knife and 
 pulled out the contents. It was her copy 
 of the contract, signed and stamped by the 
 publishers, and covered with a complimen- 
 tary note from Mr. Finch himself. The mo- 
 ment had come. 
 
 “John, you know that story I told you I 
 had written.” 
 
54 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 
 
 “Umph.” 
 
 “It’s been taken. It’s going to be pub- 
 lished as a book.” 
 
 John did not look enthusiastic, but if he 
 was annoyed he had the decency to suppress 
 his sentiments. 
 
 “This is the contract, John.” 
 
 “What contract?” 
 
 “The contract with the publishers. Mr. 
 Parker Finch arranged it.” 
 
 “Who is Mr. Parker Finch?” 
 
 “My agent.” 
 
 “How much have you had to pay him?” 
 
 “T haven’t paid him anything, John. He 
 only gets a commission on what they pay 
 me. It depends upon the sales.” 
 
 He could not entirely control himself. 
 “Don’t I earn you a good enough living?” 
 he asked, looking away from her with a set 
 face. Then, hearing her catch her breath, 
 he turned around and said more kindly, “For 
 God’s sake, Edie, don’t get carried away by 
 this nonsense. Nobody’s going to buy your 
 book, and if they do you can bet this agent 
 fellow will get all there is to be got out of 
 it. He isn’t in it for his health. Let’s have 
 a look at this precious contract.” 
 
 He examined it with as casual an air as 
 he could assume. The terminology was 
 strange to him, but he could find nothing 
 particularly wrong. “There’s a catch some- 
 
The Best Seller 55 
 
 where, I bet, but I don’t see where.” ‘Then 
 an access of anger came to him as he realised 
 that the thing was final. 
 
 “What right,” he said, fiercely, “had you 
 to go and fix up this rotten idiocy without 
 me? I suppose I can have some feelings in 
 the matter. Anyhow, why did you want to 
 be such a damned little fool as to sign the 
 thing without showing it to me? What do 
 you know about money and figures? What 
 does any woman know about business? 
 You’ve got no more of a business head than 
 that cat.” 
 
 She broke into tears. “I didn’t like to 
 show it to you before, John; you've disliked 
 me writing so; I thought you might have 
 stopped me from trying to get it published 
 atiall.” 
 
 John was a truthful man. “Well, I dare 
 say there’s something in that,” he said; 
 “come along now, you'd better cheer up. 
 The fat’s in the fire now.” 
 
 IV 
 
 For some weeks after ‘“ ‘Bread upon the 
 Waters,’ by Edith Bentley,” appeared it 
 showed small signs of success. Mrs. Bent- 
 ley had yielded to the blandishments of a 
 press-cutting agency, but the first batch of 
 cuttings she got was scarcely exhilarating. 
 
56 The Grub Street N ights Entertainments 
 
 She had had a moment of excitement when 
 her six author’s copies had arrived; one had 
 been sent to Aunt Jane, one to Aunt Emily, 
 one to John’s mother, and one to a school 
 friend, now married, in Canada; one she 
 had kept for local lending, and one for the 
 drawing-room. John, in a yielding mood 
 after a profitable deal, had gone so far as 
 to say that he “would have a look at it some 
 time’; the relatives had all written letters 
 full of pride and rhapsodies. “I do so love 
 Jacob,” Aunt Jane had said, and Aunt Em- 
 ily had written “Lady Isabel did quite right, 
 Edie. Whatever the world may say, she 
 would have been an unhappy woman if she 
 hadn’t. And how splendid Jacob was, giv- 
 ing all the money he had to that poor ex- 
 soldier on the Road.” ‘These letters she 
 read and re-read; but she made allowances 
 for the fondness of relatives. Was she 
 wrong? she wondered, as she perused the 
 opinions of the Press. Two or three lines 
 was all she usually got. A paper she had 
 never heard of wrote: “A harmless amateur- 
 ish romance” ; another “A silly tale presuma- 
 bly by a very young woman who has read 
 Miss Bagstock”’ ; and a third, which had ap- 
 parently confused her with somebody else, 
 referred to her book as being “One more con- 
 coction, true to type, by this popular author 
 who, we understand, is universally read by 
 
The Best Seller 57 
 
 servant girls.” As against these there was 
 some small consolation in the remark of a 
 penny morning paper that her book was as 
 readable as a number of others with which 
 it seemed to have been noticed, and a Scotch 
 paper’s warm but all too brief praise of it 
 as “an exciting but thoroughly wholesome 
 romance written with imagination, verve 
 and dramatic power.” The next lot were 
 similar, and then, lonelily, came a substantial 
 and glowing note from a journal in the 
 North of Ireland, which surprised her by 
 saying that the book was a magnificent ro- 
 mance and deserved a great success. 
 
 The first indication she had that “Bread 
 upon the Waters” had sold to the extent of 
 at least one copy came from Acacia Road 
 itself. Hitherto she had had but a cold 
 bowing acquaintance with Mrs. Harbutt, the 
 doctor’s wife at the end of the road, a great 
 aristocrat. One morning, as she was going 
 out with her shopping bag, she was stopped 
 by Mrs. Harbutt, who spoke with a sweet- 
 ness from which the touch of patronage had 
 almost entirely disappeared. “Oh, Mrs. 
 Bentley, I was so astonished when Mrs. 
 Hopkins told me you’d written a novel. 
 You simply must let me tell you that we 
 got it from the library, and my husband and 
 I have both enjoyed it immensely. Do come 
 to tea to-morrow. We have a very old 
 
58 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 
 
 friend coming. He is very literary, and we 
 have told him about your book. I’m sure 
 you and he would like to talk to each other.” 
 To tea she went; the old friend proved to 
 be a self-satisfied elderly gentleman named 
 Donkin, round-bodied, white-moustached, 
 small of eye, who expressed great pleasure 
 at meeting Mrs. Bentley. He discoursed, 
 while the doctor’s wife watched admiringly, 
 on the relation between “Bread upon the 
 Waters” and the principal works of Dickens, 
 George Eliot, Hope, Hichens, Hall Caine, 
 and Dell, all of whom he appeared to re- 
 gard as on a level with each other, though 
 slightly inferior to himself. Each had his 
 merits and his defects; “Bread upon the 
 Waters” was a promising beginning, “a very 
 promising beginning indeed, my dear lady.” 
 Mrs. Bentley was puzzled, humbled, but 
 grateful; whenever one of her characters was 
 under discussion she showed an animation 
 unusual with her, explaining or defending 
 her persons with eagerness. 
 
 Mrs. Harbutt was kind enough to pass the 
 word along the whole road; several women 
 previously known to Edith Bentley only by 
 sight accosted her and volubly proved their 
 ability to rise to her intellectual stature, 
 comprehend her creations and share her emo- 
 tions. “I am telling all my friends,” each 
 one assured her. Then one morning came a 
 
The Best Seller 59 
 
 letter from a stranger, a man living in Streat- 
 ham. It had been forwarded from the pub- 
 lishers. “Dear Madam,” it began :— 
 
 “TI crave your pardon for intruding on 
 your privacy, but I cannot help writing to 
 tell you that your great book, ‘Bread upon 
 the Waters,’ has altered my whole outlook 
 upon the scheme of things. I borrowed it 
 first from a lady friend. I have now, 
 though not rich, bought a copy for my- 
 self. J have never been so thrilled by a 
 story before; indeed, in the ordinary way 
 I do not read novels. You deserve a great 
 success. May Heaven shower all its 
 blessings on you! 
 
 Yours in gratitude, 
 Henry Cutts.” 
 
 This was a joy. Blushing, she passed it 
 over to John. He read it with an appear- 
 ance of impassivity and handed it back with- 
 out comment. Then, as he was moving to- 
 wards the hall, he said: “By the way, it 
 may interest you to know that one of my 
 customers spoke to me about your novel yes- 
 terday. Big man in his way, too. It seems 
 funny.” He did not add “I can’t imagine 
 what they see in it’—he had perused it 
 himself and told her it was a good enough 
 yarn but a bit off his beat. He was, how- 
 
60 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 
 
 ever, in spite of himself, contracting a new, 
 rather uncomfortable kind of respect for a 
 woman of whom people spoke so highly. 
 “Queer thing,’”’ he thought to himself as he 
 walked down to the tram, “I hope it won’t 
 go to her head.” 
 
 It did not, though she naturally gained 
 in confidence. Mr. Parker Finch wrote in 
 late November to say, “Would you mind 
 calling at once? I have several things to 
 talk over. You may like to know that I 
 heard from Mr. George Simpson himself 
 yesterday, and he says that the sales from 
 your book, slow at first, are now very satis- 
 factory indeed. He would like to meet 
 you.” When she went, Mr. Finch first of 
 all impressed on her the need of supplying 
 Messrs. Simpson, who were completely at 
 her service, with another novel by June. He 
 then said, ‘“Now, can you write short stories? 
 At this stage it will pay you.” 
 
 “Would one about a flying man do?” she 
 inquired. | 
 
 “‘Admirably, the very thing,” replied Mr. 
 Finch, as though the whole plot were before 
 him in all its details; “‘let me have it as 
 soon as you can.” He added, casually, that 
 while she was waiting for her first royalties 
 a hundred or two was at her service, if she 
 would honour him by accepting it. A pic- 
 ture of hats, dresses, and a resident maid 
 
The Best Seller 61 
 
 flashed across her mind; suppose it was now 
 or never? The thought of what John might 
 say deterred her, and she declined with 
 thanks. The next thing that happened was 
 that in the morning paper she saw, and 
 rubbed her eyes to see, a letter from a cor- 
 respondent raising a point of conduct in con- 
 nection with “Bread upon the Waters.” 
 More astonishing still was an_ editorial 
 footnote (which mentioned the publishers’ 
 name) asking for “opinions from our read- 
 ers’ regarding the characters in this novel 
 “which is everywhere being read and dis- 
 cussed.” That same afternoon Mrs. Bent- 
 ley was sitting at her desk by the bow win- 
 dow, thinking of the self-sacrifice and ulti- 
 mate happiness of her stern but tender fly- 
 ing man, when she heard an imperative 
 knock at the door. Peeping through the 
 lace curtain she beheld a young man, a com- 
 plete stranger, a shrewd-looking pale-faced 
 young man, wearing a rakish bowler hat and 
 a smart grey overcoat, who dropped a cig- 
 arette-end on the step and trod on it. Daisy 
 answered the door, a loud voice spoke, and 
 in he was shown, holding out a card in front 
 of him: “Mr. Edward Giles, The Daily Mes- 
 senger.” 
 
 “Excuse my coming without phoning you, 
 Mrs. Bentley. I couldn’t find your number. 
 Will you allow me to smoke a cigarette?” 
 
62 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 
 
 He suited the action to the word, replaced 
 the case, and went on: “The fact is, my 
 people want to know if you would be so 
 good as to allow us to print an interview 
 with you regarding the Present State of the 
 Novel.” 
 
 Mrs. Bentley was at a loss. “I think it 
 would be much better if you would go to 
 somebody who knows more about it.” 
 
 “Just what we wanted, Mrs. Bentley,” 
 said the bright young man encouragingly. 
 “If I said that you felt that your own suc- 
 cess proved that there was still a considerable 
 demand for good books, I should fairly rep- 
 resent you, shouldn’t I?” 
 
 “Yes,” faltered the successful novelist, 
 not knowing what else to say. 
 
 “And now about this matter of working 
 hours. Do you work late?” 
 
 “Oh, no; my husband always spends the 
 evenings with me.” 
 
 “The mornings then? The afternoons?” 
 
 Coys es.” 
 
 “In fact, I can tell the Messenger’s readers 
 that you are one of those who maintain that 
 the faculties are never so bright as during 
 the hours of daylight, and that Lord Byron’s 
 example of nocturnal work under the influ- 
 ence of stimulants is not to be commended 
 to creative artists in general.” 
 
 “Yes, that is—yes,”’ said Mrs. Bentley, 
 
The Best Seller 63 
 
 wishing he would go, but not accustomed to 
 the ejection of unwanted callers. Before 
 he had gone he had obtained from her simi- 
 larly dogmatic views regarding the ideal 
 number of sleeping hours, the place of 
 women in politics, the respective attractions 
 of Cornwall and the Riviera, the merits of 
 the younger poets, the prospects of religion, 
 and the reform of the House of Lords. 
 “Very many thanks, Mrs. Bentley,” he con- 
 cluded, clapping an elastic band over his 
 notebook and stuffing it into his pocket. 
 “No, thank you, I won’t stay for tea. I can 
 let myself out. Oh, I beg your pardon, but 
 can you let me have a photograph?’ He 
 thought little of that old Highgate photo- 
 graph of her, but took it and said that they 
 would get Thompson and Waller, of Bond 
 Street, to ask her for a special sitting. 
 “They will like to have one in stock,” he 
 remarked as he went, letting himself out. 
 She heard his stick rattling along the railings 
 as he vanished up the road. She was con- 
 fused. 
 
 She was more confused still when, at 
 breakfast next day, she looked at the morn- 
 ing’s Messenger. There was a whole column 
 of it, with the photograph reduced to the 
 size and complexion of a black postage 
 stamp. Under the headline, in heavy let- 
 ters, was a description of herself as “Edith 
 
64 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 
 
 Bentley, who has made an instantaneous 
 success with her striking romance of Corn- 
 wall.” In the introduction her address was 
 given—‘‘her quiet suburban retreat’”—and 
 also, what was worse, her husband’s name 
 and profession. She turned pale as John 
 took the sheet and, grinding his toast, 
 glanced over it. Happily, as he had an auto- 
 matic talent for avoiding the kind of topics 
 which did not interest him, though he would 
 have noticed anything about carburettors or 
 petrol prices if stowed away in the obscurest 
 corner, he stared at the very place without 
 noticing the article; then he put the paper 
 down, gave her his preoccupied morning sa- 
 lute, and walked off. At supper time it was 
 another affair. He stalked in looking very 
 angry indeed; anyhow it was bad enough 
 to have one’s wife in the papers, but to have 
 the more flippant and incompetent of one’s 
 associates jesting about one’s “quiet subur- 
 ban retreat’? was too much. ‘What did you 
 want to talk all this rot for?’ he said as 
 soon as he had come in, slapping accusingly 
 a copy of the paper which he had brought 
 with him. With unusual spirit she answered 
 that she had said scarcely a word of it. 
 “Anyhow,” she remarked, “look at this.” 
 It was a letter, just arrived, from Mr. Parker 
 Finch, who had written the moment he had 
 
The Best Seller 65 
 
 seen the interview. “Congratulations,” he 
 wrote, “on the magnificent column in the 
 Messenger. JY dare say you suspect that 
 Simpson’s arranged it, but they tell me it 
 was a spontaneous idea of the Messenger 
 people themselves. It’s just what we wanted 
 at this moment when the book is trembling 
 on the edge of a very big success indeed. By 
 the way, a draft contract for your second 
 novel is ready for your approval. Your 
 royalties payable in March will amount to 
 not less than £500; the next instalment, as 
 the book did not run to big figures for some 
 time after publication, will certainly be 
 much larger. I should be happy if you 
 would accept from me the enclosed cheque 
 for £250 in advance of your account. It is 
 not technically due, but may be of some 
 slight use to you. Yours, with renewed con- 
 gratulations.” 
 
 John stared at the letter. Then he stared 
 at the cheque. He was white and trembling. 
 The sum staggered him. ‘Though not an 
 imaginative man he suddenly thought of all 
 the hard drudgery he had had to do him- 
 self before he earned as much money as that. 
 It was cruel. It was incredible. Yet it was 
 true. And what couldn’t be done with such 
 a sum; and more coming too. But no, it 
 was only Edie. There was something funny 
 
66 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 
 
 somewhere; anyhow, he was hanged if he 
 was going to be dependent on it or have any- 
 thing to do with it. 
 
 “Look here, Edie,” he said, “this is a 
 fluke. Personally I prefer honest business. 
 Quick come, quick go. You put it in the 
 bank and don’t you expect too much.” 
 
 She was chilled. Put it in the bank! Her 
 first earnings that Mr. Finch had specially 
 sent her to spend; and so much coming too. 
 “IT won’t, John,” she said, “there’s lots of 
 things we want in the house and I’m going 
 to get them.” 
 
 ‘Please yourself,” he said, “but it stands 
 to reason this can’t last.” 
 
 “But, John,” she protested, “‘you can see 
 Mr. Finch’s letter. And they will give me 
 a big advance on the one I’m doing now, and 
 Mr. Finch says he believes he can get me 
 twelve hundred pounds for six short stories 
 from The Mauve and an American maga- 
 Zine.) 
 
 “Td like to know more about your Mr. 
 Finch,” said John. ‘“‘T’ve met these men 
 who talk big money before. But please 
 yourself.” 
 
 Vv 
 
 He thought it couldn’t last. But it did. 
 Interviewers now came almost daily, the let- 
 ters from admirers in small sackfuls. There 
 
The Best Seller 67 
 
 was a slight slackening as the English sales 
 waned, and then they began pouring in from 
 America. It appeared that from New York 
 to San Francisco, the whole population was 
 reading “Bread upon the Waters,” and the 
 whole population appeared to be of one mind 
 in its admiration for the book, its desire for 
 further elucidation of certain problems, and 
 its anxiety to obtain Edith Bentley’s auto- 
 graph. The £1,200 for the stories arrived; 
 also £500 advance in the expectation of the 
 MS. of “Out of the Mouth,” particulars of 
 which were now beginning to be bruited 
 about in paragraphs. Most of it did go into 
 the bank, but Mrs. Bentley, persuaded by a 
 fellow novelist whom she met at her first 
 grand luncheon with Mr. Finch and Mr. 
 George Simpson, had joined an intellectual 
 club, got on terms with a West End dress- 
 maker, and contracted the habit of an occa- 
 sional taxi, John’s Ford not having yet ap- 
 peared. Tempting offers for articles and 
 books became frequent; but she trusted Mr. 
 Finch and Mr. Simpson; and had she not 
 reason? England was nothing to America; 
 one way and another, fifteen months after 
 her first appearance in print, she had made 
 £10,000. If the dramatic schemes that Mr. 
 Finch was negotiating were to be successful 
 this might be multiplied several times. 
 More than once during the year she told 
 
68 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 
 
 John that they would simply have to leave 
 Acacia Road; she had seen a nice empty 
 house, in its own grounds, by the Heath. 
 He remained stubborn. “Put it in War 
 Loan,” he said, “and draw the interest.”’ As 
 the year drew on and she had an occasional 
 engagement at night—in the autumn she 
 made her first speech at a dinner—she be- 
 came accustomed to a hired Daimler; at the 
 end of it her literary friends, who did not 
 know John and regarded him as a vulgar 
 monster, braced her to the decisive act. She 
 took the house. John must move, and that 
 was all there was to it. 
 
 The house warming at Heath Crest was a 
 great success. The weather was too cold for 
 a garden party, but the rooms were filled. 
 All Acacia Road was there, Mrs. Harbutt 
 being flattering to a degree; enthusiastic over 
 “Out of the Mouth,” enthusiastic over the 
 chairs, the curtains, the conservatory, the 
 parlour-maid’s cap, everything. Mr. Don- 
 kin came with her, affable, reminiscent; “a 
 better book in some ways than your first, 
 Mrs. Bentley,” he said; “very like Dickens 
 in some regards, reminiscent of Dell in 
 others.” Lady Smyly came from the club; 
 she had a young man with her in a morning 
 coat and spats, she approved everything in a 
 loud voice to the fair fashion correspondent 
 of an evening paper who, with the instinct 
 
The Best Seller 69 
 
 of her kind, had found her way to the 
 “event.” Several popular novelists of both 
 sexes attracted general attention. Mr. Finch 
 engaged them all in turn. Mr. George Simp- 
 son himself made a transient and gracious 
 appearance, and some of John’s business 
 friends with their wives, who had insisted 
 upon coming, prevented John from hiding 
 upstairs as it was his instinct to do. Still 
 convinced that this fortune was all a bubble 
 compared with the solid structure of his mo- 
 tor business, he had gone on with it, refus- 
 ing, moreover, to touch a penny of the money 
 that his wife offered him. “I’ve made the 
 business myself,” he said, “and I can ex- 
 pand it myself.” 
 
 He knew his job, but he did not know 
 everything. Six novels appeared in six 
 years; two of them became popular plays, 
 all were vast successes. Long before Punch 
 left off mentioning Edith Bentley because it 
 was tired of doing it, long before the first 
 “Uniform Home Edition” was published, 
 before the first American trip, soon after the 
 visits to Spain and Algeria in search of local 
 colour, John’s spirit was finally broken. 
 Edie, after all, was prudent enough. With 
 fifty thousand locked away there was no 
 harm in spending any number of thousands 
 she might earn. The Bentleys to-day live 
 in a large villa at Teddington. There are 
 
70 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 
 
 several acres of garden and a drive. The 
 house, a noble structure well provided with 
 pilasters, turrets, battlements, pointed win- 
 dows, corbels and half timber, was built in 
 1870 by a Mincing Lane broker; the cellar 
 is large and the servants’ quarters adequate, 
 and the Rolls Royce and the two little cars 
 are housed in a converted stables. John 
 looks after them, it all puzzles him, but he 
 knows now that he married a wife greater 
 than himself, though it beats him to see why, 
 except that the results are there. Sometimes 
 he notices covert insults of her in papers. 
 “Jealousy, I suppose,” he says; she herself 
 never seems to bother. At Sunday luncheon, 
 when she is not abroad, Mrs. Bentley is at 
 home to all her friends who care to tele- 
 phone. Sometimes there are twenty there, 
 all apparently rich, judging by their cars: 
 overdressed ladies of middle age, journal- 
 ists, respectful publishers, a deferential Mr. 
 Parker Finch, American visitors, Mrs. Bent- 
 ley’s stockbroker, Mrs. Bentley’s solicitor, 
 some of the élite of the neighbourhood. 
 Mrs. Bentley sits at the head of the table, 
 full of laughter now, much fatter than she 
 was; double chinned and clad in the extreme 
 of fashion. People are sometimes puzzled 
 by the total absence from her demeanour 
 and conversation of that passion, that ardent 
 spirituality, that preoccupation with fire and 
 
The Best Seller 71 
 
 flood which are so invariably characteristic 
 of her fiction. Her talk is of people, foreign 
 hotels, and percentages, publicity, the United 
 States, the shameful immodesty of some of 
 her junior confreéres, the iniquities of the 
 Labour Party. This last, long ago, was one 
 of John’s topics, but he no longer cares, as 
 he does not himself pay rates. For him, he 
 drinks, on these occasions and all others, 
 rather too much whisky; he suffers from lack 
 of occupation, is glad when somebody’s mo- 
 tor goes wrong, and, in the mornings, potters 
 about the garden in slippers. Edith is as 
 fond of him as ever, but she has become ac- 
 customed now to treating him as “dear old 
 John,’ a quiet unobtrusive being whom it is 
 nice to talk to about her affairs when they 
 are alone, who is rather shy when there are 
 a lot of people about. He always agrees 
 with her. Now and again, when there is 
 a party, some visitor who wishes, either be- 
 cause he thinks John a good channel to his 
 wife’s pocket, or because he sincerely wishes 
 to encourage and draw out this retiring man 
 whom so many treat as a cipher, says to him: 
 “IT suppose, Mr. Bentley, that you do all 
 Mrs. Bentley’s business for her. Contracts 
 and so on. These artists, you know?” 
 “No,” says John, “Edie does all that herself. 
 She has a good business head, has Edie. I 
 leave all money matters to her.” 
 
II: THE SUCCESS 
 I 
 
 “TS there no hope that you may go on, 
 Mr. Donaldson?” asked the anxious- 
 looking man who sat in the publisher’s room. 
 
 “None at all, ?m afraid, Mr. Hilton,” 
 replied the head of the firm. “I need 
 scarcely say that I shall be profoundly sorry 
 if our personal association is broken, but 
 there must be some limit to the amount we 
 are prepared to spend on the endowment of 
 literature, however good.” | 
 
 “But,” timidly interposed Ambrose Hil- 
 ton, “I am convinced that this new one is 
 much better than anything that I have ever 
 written. I can’t help thinking people are 
 bound to like it. Don’t you think I may 
 be just on the verge of a success at last? 
 You’ve always believed in me; can’t you 
 back me just once more?” He was tempted 
 to add, “I shall be in a dreadful hole if you 
 don’t,” but the remnants of his pride re- 
 strained him. — 
 
 Donaldson was a decent old man. He 
 read little himself, but he respected intellect, 
 and he had always feeders Sin that the firm 
 
The Success 73 
 
 had a duty to literature up to a point. But 
 he shook his head. “I devoutly hope you 
 will have a success, Mr. Hilton, whether 
 with us or elsewhere. It may be that one 
 of our younger and more enterprising rivals 
 might be able to do more for you than we 
 have been able to do.”” Mr. Donaldson felt 
 more than a touch of compassion as he looked 
 at the delicate man beside him, the pinched 
 intellectual face, the fine forehead, with the 
 skin drawn tight and hollows by the temples, 
 the anxious eyes, the sensitive mouth under 
 the neatly-clipped greying moustache: a man 
 all intelligence, conscientiousness, consider- 
 ateness, decency: a quiet man who lived for 
 his work and had probably never harmed 
 anybody in his life. But, as he might have 
 said, there was a limit to compassion. That 
 way lay ruin. “No,” said Mr. Donaldson, 
 “[’m afraid that even if I felt, as I do not, 
 that we should be justified in continuing to 
 pay these advances, my views would be over- 
 borne by those of my partners. We shall be 
 happy, Mr. Hilton, to publish your novel on 
 a pure royalty basis, but we cannot, in the 
 present state of the market, pay you an ad- 
 vance which we fear the book is quite un- 
 likely to earn. Let me know when you have 
 thought it over.” 
 
 _ Ambrose Hilton rose. “I must apologise 
 for trying to argue with you, Mr. Donaldson. 
 
74. The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 
 
 I appreciate very much the faith that you 
 and your firm showed in me for so long, and 
 I quite see that from your point of view you 
 are forced to take the view you now do. 
 Good-bye and thank you very much.” 
 
 “Good-bye, Mr. Hilton, and the best of 
 good fortune.” 
 
 Ambrose Hilton put on his hat, faded out 
 of the room and went down the familiar 
 stairs, where the glass doors bore the familiar 
 names of persons always unknown to him: 
 “Cashier,” “Mr. Jellicoe,” “Advertising De- 
 partment.” It was a large house; large 
 enough, he thought with a sigh, to maintain 
 a dozen modest authors like himself. The 
 front office was always full of messengers 
 fetching parcels, the street entrance always 
 blocked with mysterious vans: in the show 
 window they lay in rows, the latest great 
 successes, novels of fabulous vogue, fashion- 
 able biographies, sumptuous two volume 
 works of travel which he saw mentioned in 
 every paper he opened. What a fly on such 
 a wheel must be a person like himself, he 
 reflected, as he left Southampton Street, 
 crossed the Strand by an island, and, scarcely 
 conscious of what he was doing, went down 
 Savoy Street towards the Embankment. 
 Yet, he had to admit at last, Donaldsons 
 could hardly be expected to behave other- 
 wise. What call had he on them? They 
 
The Success 75 
 
 had gambled on him and they had failed. 
 They had surely been kinder than most 
 would have been. He was a failure—lucky 
 perhaps to have found publishers who had 
 been so patient. He walked, musing, along 
 by the Thames parapet, under Waterloo 
 Bridge, and so, past the station, to the Tem- 
 ple Gardens. It was a sharp, but fine, 
 autumn morning; he had his overcoat on. 
 He crossed to the gardens, went in, and sat 
 on a seat under the plane trees, pleasant in 
 the sunshine with their large yellowing 
 leaves and peeling trunks. Twelve o'clock; 
 an hour to lunch and nothing to do. He 
 laid his brown paper parcel on the seat be- 
 side him. It contained the fruits of a year’s 
 devoted labour. He fell into thought about 
 it and surveyed the whole past which had 
 culminated in this moment of grey hopeless- 
 ness when the sunshine seemed ironic and 
 the chatter of passers-by callous. 
 
 An orphan with just enough money set 
 apart for his education, he had been sent to 
 a small public school and a small college at 
 Oxford. His life there had been, with the 
 exception of one incident, uneventful. He 
 had had a few quiet friends, mostly in other 
 colleges; he had read all the good books in 
 the Union library; he had, while an under- 
 graduate, contributed a few sensible papers 
 and one or two carefully-written stories, to 
 
76 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 
 
 the superior kind of London review. Under 
 something like compulsion, but with a good 
 grace, he had rowed in the college second 
 boat one year and he had attended a number 
 of debates without speaking. The excep- 
 tional incident occurred in his last Eights 
 Week. A friend of his, Arden, had his sister 
 up. Ambrose Hilton did not dance and cut 
 no great figure at parties of any kind; he 
 tended to drop plates and tread on skirts, 
 though his mere manners usually occasioned 
 favourable comment which would have sur- 
 prised him. But he met Evelyn Arden at 
 several functions, he had tea with her and: 
 her mother in Arden’s lodgings, and he finally 
 took her on the river in a canoe, a punt be- 
 ing beyond his powers of navigation. Her 
 beauty dazed him, her quickness of mind de- 
 lighted him, and her responsiveness to all 
 his tastes and opinions, as well as little 
 jokes, was something that never in his life 
 he had experienced before. Once or twice 
 they became serious almost to the point of 
 tenderness, and he was wild enough to fancy 
 she might even see something in him. He 
 checked himself, however, realising that so 
 lovely and gifted a woman could think little 
 of a shrinking, speechless being like himself. 
 This diffidence it was, rather than any mun- 
 dane considerations about his prospects of 
 maintaining a wife, which would have pre- 
 
The Success BA: 
 
 vented him from making anything like an 
 avowal without a more specific invitation 
 than he could expect to get. A grosser per- 
 son might have noticed that Miss Arden took 
 a particular interest in him, might have de- 
 duced encouragement from her willingness, 
 for the sake of his company, to forgo a good 
 deal of dancing, of which she was very fond, 
 from her deliberate choice of his conversa- 
 tion rather than that of several undergradu- 
 ates more celebrated for features, muscle or 
 mind, and especially from her action (almost 
 brazen she probably thought it herself) in 
 opening a correspondence with him a week 
 or so after the festivities had ended. Her 
 first letter—for she had to say something— 
 asked for information about books to read. 
 What was the best life of Shelley? Would 
 she find Fielding too dry for her? She also 
 wondered, in a postscript, what plans he had, 
 whether he had begun his novel, the synop- 
 sis of which had been so interesting, and 
 whether he was ever likely to be in the west 
 of England. Hilton replied at once, posted 
 the answer after a day’s wait, and then 
 feared that she might resent this appearance 
 of precipitate eagerness; it was difficult to 
 strike the mean between an intrusive haste 
 and a too unmannerly delay; he did not want 
 her to think he welcomed her letters more 
 keenly than he had a right to, and yet he 
 
78 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 
 
 dreaded that she should think him indiffer- 
 ent to the privilege she was bestowing. It 
 did not occur to him that she also was anx- 
 ious not to appear to force the acquaintance ; 
 at all events the upshot of it was that after 
 some months of intermittent and formally 
 friendly correspondence she wrote that she 
 had been offered a chance of a year’s holiday 
 in India, and hoped they would meet when 
 she came home. By this time he was settled 
 in London lodgings, with a hundred pounds, 
 which was all he had left, beginning what 
 he hoped would be a career in literary jour- 
 nalism that would keep him while he was 
 writing his first books. He pondered pain- 
 fully and long over the propriety of taking 
 her at her word, and attempting to prolong 
 the relation. In the end he did not. He 
 was afraid what she might think of him. 
 He ought not, he felt, to trade upon her 
 kindness. She could not help being bored 
 by him; nor, in fact, could any one except 
 a few male cronies who knew him intimately 
 and had learned to value him by force of 
 habit. That was his view; he was always 
 frightened by new people, and couldn’t sup- 
 pose that they found him anything but dull 
 and awkward. 
 
 So there was the end of Evelyn Arden; 
 the end in a manner at all events. The rec- 
 ollection of her was habitual with him. 
 
The Success 79 
 
 Only once did he get news of her; after that 
 he wanted no more. . . . It was after he 
 had been in London some years. He met 
 her brother, slightly aged and fattened, at 
 Hyde Park Corner; home for a holiday from 
 the fruit farm in British Columbia for which 
 the history Honours School had prepared 
 him. They had lunch together, talking of 
 old friends and what had become of them; 
 after sedulously exhausting every other as- 
 pect of their last Eights Week, Hilton, as 
 casually as he could, asked after his friend’s 
 sister. “Oh, I remember,” said Arden, “‘you 
 two made great pals, didn’t you? As a 
 matter of fact, she’s out in India. She got 
 married the year before last to a fellow she 
 met out there. He’s a judge or something 
 of the sort. They haven’t got any kids yet.” 
 
 It wasn’t civilised, Hilton told himself 
 after that, to go on dreaming day dreams 
 about another man’s wife, simply because 
 she had been decent to one. On occasion, 
 for he was introspective and prided himself 
 on the veracity of his analyses of life, he 
 stopped in the middle of the sentimental rec- 
 ollection, which he did permit himself, of 
 the happiest week in his life, by asking him- 
 self whether after all, he, like so many in- 
 experienced and romantic youths, had not 
 imagined her to be something finer, and es- 
 pecially abler, than she was. Had not a 
 
80 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 
 
 fresh skin, clear grey eyes, the daintiness of 
 a girl’s dress, her voice, acting on one who 
 had been virtually a young monk, had some- 
 thing to do with it? How much of her 
 triple beauty had been her, and how much 
 the long green reflections, slowly breaking 
 and uniting, on the Cher, the drooping 
 plumes of willow, the ripple by the boat, 
 the dappled silks of the cushions, the mur- 
 mur, the proud passage of swans? Had 
 he not himself been so raw and illiterate at 
 the time that any bookish prattle would have 
 taken him in, the small talk of a clever and 
 amiable young woman who knew how to 
 make him conversationally comfortable? 
 But no, he knew better. Her very sentences 
 remained clear in his memory; the penetra- 
 tion of them, the subtlety and freshness of 
 their humour and emotional colouring, the 
 admirable turn of their phrasing; half a 
 dozen such fragments would be quite suffi- 
 cient to attest a really remarkable, if still 
 immature, mind behind them, and a deep, 
 true heart as well. He knew, however he 
 might attempt to achieve disillusionment for 
 the sake of its cold comfort, that there had 
 been no mistake. Hard reason confirmed the 
 spontaneous judgment of love; Evelyn Ar- 
 den’s had been, without exception, the nature 
 most thoroughly in tune with his own, and 
 her intelligence had surpassed that of any 
 
The Success 81 
 
 other woman he had ever met. And often, 
 a little wistfully, he would wonder whether 
 she had ever seen any of his books; ask him- 
 self what she would think of the one now 
 being written; and then, sometimes, lapse 
 into a daydream. Evelyn was living with 
 him. She was sharing his work, accompany- 
 ing him on every imaginative adventure he 
 had, telling him his mistakes, perceiving and 
 praising every phrase that he knew to be 
 wise or beautiful. Her presence bent over 
 his shoulder, loving and encouraging, shel- 
 tering and strengthening. He dreamed; and 
 then he awoke to his loneliness and resigned 
 himself with a little laugh; for he was not 
 one who would continuously luxuriate in a 
 sorrow deliberately fed. 
 
 IT 
 
 Sitting there in the Temple Gardens he 
 saw again the twenty-five years which had 
 passed since he had left the university. The 
 earliest of them were years of hard struggle. 
 He had a few friends in positions of some 
 influence, and there were one or two editors 
 who had noticed an unusual quality in his 
 work; this meant that without much diffi- 
 culty he established certain “connections” 
 within a few months of his arrival in Lon- 
 don. He was allowed to try his hand at re- 
 
82 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 
 
 viewing for several papers, and no reviewer 
 every worked more doggedly and honestly 
 at his job. He took from the start “rooms,” 
 or rather a room, in a small street off Shep- 
 herd’s Market. The neighbourhood was at 
 once respectable and picturesque: a little 
 huddle of old houses, quiet inns, small shops 
 and stables, within a stone’s-throw of Cur- 
 zon Street on the one hand and Piccadilly 
 on the other. The house was brick and of 
 the eighteenth century ; the rooms had panels, 
 painted green or brown, there was no bath- 
 room, and the landlord was a retired butler, 
 a decent and deferential fellow, who had 
 married a housekeeper as sober as himself. 
 The other tenants were all “single gentle- 
 men,” who dressed better than they lived, 
 and had friends richer than themselves; one 
 of them wore a monocle, and all three were 
 in the habit of sallying forth every evening 
 with opera hats and ebony sticks. Hilton’s 
 room was on the ground floor, overlooking 
 the street. It had a faded Victorian air; 
 it was dignified in its shabbiness; the china 
 ornaments were bad even in age, but the 
 sporting prints were almost good. He let 
 everything remain, procuring only a convert- 
 ible couch instead of the too patent mahog- 
 any bed which stared at him on his arrival, 
 entirely counteracting the sitting-room effect 
 of the sofa, the mantelpiece, and the table 
 
The Success 83 
 
 in the window, with its green plush cloth and 
 twin-bottled inkstand. 
 
 There, after breakfast, he soon developed 
 the habit of the morning’s work; a brief walk 
 in Green Park whilst the room was being 
 “done,” and he came back for three good 
 hours of note-making and writing. In the 
 afternoon he would usually pay his business 
 calls, taking manuscripts to his offices and 
 difidently asking for books which he be- 
 lieved himself capable of reviewing, then 
 sometimes proceeding to tea at one of the 
 few houses he knew or at the Club in Picca- 
 dilly which he had been persuaded to join. 
 His evenings were spent on original work or, 
 more rarely, at dinner parties or theatres; 
 he took two holidays a year and very occa- 
 sionally was invited for week-ends in coun- 
 try houses. His reviews and critical essays 
 in those first few years made him just enough 
 to liveon. Many less able and conscientious 
 literary journalists made more. Character- 
 istically he was unable to write rapidly; he 
 could not bear to mislead the reader as to 
 the precise extent of his knowledge or to 
 present a plausible simulation of thought. 
 He must really exercise his intellect even 
 when he was contemplating a poor author. 
 He propounded to himself such questions as 
 “What does this man wish to do?” “How 
 has he done it?’ “How ought he to have 
 
84 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 
 
 done it?” ‘What image will best represent 
 the quality of his style?’ “What are his 
 intellectual and moral relations?” ‘What 
 obscure motives are at work behind his writ- 
 ing?”’: and he was never satisfied until he 
 had answered them all as precisely as he 
 could. His interest in the workings of the 
 human mind sometimes made him take too 
 seriously a foolish and worthless author. He 
 was often in difficulties about space; after 
 all his labouring he would find it necessary 
 to leave out three-quarters of what he had 
 discovered; he tended also to leave out, by 
 virtue of his very concentration upon essen- 
 tials, the information which his employers 
 most desired him to give—he failed to give 
 the reader a clear idea as to whether the book 
 was really worth buying or even looking at. 
 Of this fact he never had more than a vague 
 and occasional glimmering, but he agreed 
 with his editors when, with a cheerful ac- 
 ceptance of the stock metaphor which marked 
 the difference between them and him, they 
 told him that he worked best on a large can- 
 vas. Behind his back they put it more 
 crudely. They said that his short reviews 
 were both incompetent and dull: “although 
 of course there is always something in any- 
 thing that Hilton writes, he has no sense of 
 proportion, no gift of rapid summarisation, 
 and no notion of his audience.” They said 
 
The Success 85 
 
 also that although they were always glad 
 to see him they found it rather difficult to 
 talk to him. He had none of the small 
 change of conversation and seemed to know 
 nothing about the literary world of which 
 he was a member—nothing, at all events, 
 that was of much service in a gossiping five 
 minutes. On small provocation, with cer- 
 tain editors who were kind to him and knew 
 how to show discreetly their respect for his 
 mind, he would precipitate himself into a 
 problem that interested him, eagerly ex- 
 pounding the results of long thought. They 
 would lazily pretend to be taking in what 
 he said; then a caller would appear, or the 
 telephone bell would ring, or his host would 
 begin to look as though he wanted to go on 
 with his work. Words that grew familiar 
 would be hurried at his ear: “Yes, it’s ex- 
 traordinarily interesting. We must have an 
 evening together on it some time.” And 
 chilled but unresentful, he would go down 
 the stairs with his doubts about Pascal, the 
 form of the novel, Stendhal, Hazlitt, or the 
 future of prose, still awaiting resolution. 
 After a while he found books for review 
 more difficult to obtain, though in the best 
 quarters his longer studies were always 
 warmly welcomed. For a brief period after 
 the publication of his first novel he would 
 have no difficulty in obtaining as much criti- 
 
86 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 
 
 cal work as he wished; but by that time he 
 was in a position to do what he had always 
 intended to do, namely, devote himself en- 
 tirely to fiction. 
 
 III 
 
 For his first novel made him a “name” 
 which, for a time, in the narrow world of 
 monthlies and superior weeklies, was worth 
 something. He took three years over it, and 
 put into it every ounce of intellectual con- 
 centration of which he found himself capa- 
 ble. The title was “A Foregone Conclu- 
 sion,” and, though not addicted to play upon 
 words, he relished the fact that it meant 
 something more than it seemed to mean, 
 “foregone,” in this instance, bearing chiefly 
 its other, and renunciatory, significance. 
 How he had finally and precisely defined 
 the theme, the abnegation by a man of fifty, 
 who felt himself young, of a marriage, and 
 even of a proposal, to a young, intelligent 
 and beautiful girl who would certainly have 
 accepted him, does not much matter. But 
 he could hardly deny the fact that both the 
 character of the girl and the fact and im- 
 portance of the loss had risen, like a smoke, 
 from his own experience. He could not 
 avoid them; all he could do, being very 
 scruplous about vulgarity and the wounding 
 
The Success $7 
 
 of other people’s feelings and on principle 
 opposed to literal transcripts from life, was 
 to disguise the lady physically so much as 
 to make her unrecognisable, he hoped, even 
 by herself. He changed her height, the 
 colour of her eyes and hair, the pitch of her 
 voice, the nature of her specific talents. He 
 never grew quite reconciled to the changes, 
 or easy with the handling of them; he found 
 it impossible to regard the new hues as other 
 than masks, disguises. However, the girl in 
 the book appeared more consistent and at 
 harmony with herself to others than she did 
 to him, who could think no figure perfect 
 which did not in every regard conform to 
 the remembered ideal. Both characters, for 
 what others there were present were very sub- 
 sidiary, were applauded by those who en- 
 joyed the book as being completely realised. 
 Hilton was told by all the critics of impor- 
 tance that his knowledge of human psychol- 
 ogy was profound, that his sagacity was 
 equalled by his tenderness, that his work 
 was the fine flower of centuries of culture, 
 that every page of his book bore the marks 
 of distinction, that his outlook was entirely 
 his own, and that his English was admirable. 
 He had fused, they said, his particular story 
 and his general commentary on life and art, 
 ethics and esthetics; no writer had more con- 
 summately registered the finest shades of his 
 
88 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 
 
 atmospheres or more cunningly selected the 
 details of his backgrounds. He promised 
 to be a prose master, one of the most illumi- 
 nating of philosophical observers, one of the 
 most masterly interpreters of the human 
 heart. All this they said; and two thousand 
 copies were sold on the strength of it. Hil- 
 ton himself, honest about his own achieve- 
 ment, would, in a manner, have preferred 
 that they should have been a little less un- 
 qualified; what they stated as his achieve- 
 ment he knew to be only his aim; still, his 
 aim was at least perceived, and he could 
 hope, with incessant labour and discipline, 
 to approach nearer to it in time, though no 
 man might ever completely succeed in it. 
 All his old editors wrote to him for articles, 
 though expressing doubt whether he would 
 now have time for such things; certain hearty 
 men in the Club who did not pretend to have 
 read his book congratulated him unaffectedly 
 on its success with those who were qualified 
 to read it; an elderly novelist whom he ad- 
 mired wrote him a letter which he cherished 
 long after the old man’s death; and several 
 rich women invited him out to luncheon 
 parties where the elaborate food, the ex- 
 quisite dresses, and the politicians’ collars 
 made him very ill at ease and the obvious 
 despair of his hostesses. But the chief re- 
 sult of the respectful chorus was the action 
 
The Success 89 
 
 taken by his publishers, Messrs. Donaldson. 
 They had accepted the novel owing to an 
 emphatic report by their reader; it was, 
 moreover, part of their general policy, as 
 behoved a firm which had been one of the 
 three or four publishers-in-chief to the Great 
 Victorians, to ‘‘nurse’’ authors who seemed 
 likely to be ornaments of their country’s lit- 
 erature, and perpetual sources of a steady 
 revenue to boot. The immediate sales of ‘A 
 Foregone Conclusion” were not large, but 
 the critical consensus sufficed. Mr. Hilton 
 was summoned to his second interview with 
 Mr. Donaldson—then, in early middle age, 
 Mr. Frank, only son of the senior partner 
 of the time—and the publisher was hand- 
 some indeed. “Our opinion, Mr. Hilton,” 
 he said, “has been fully borne out by the 
 critics. I do not know, of course, how far 
 your income from novels may be of interest 
 to you” (Mr. Hilton indicated that it was 
 of great interest), “but I am prepared to 
 offer you, on publication, an advance of £200 
 on your next book. I suppose you have one 
 in preparation?” 
 
 “Yes,” replied Hilton, “it is half done. 
 It will be called “The Contract.’ ” 
 
 “A name of happy omen,” said Mr. Don- 
 aldson, “for though I am not proposing at 
 this moment a definite arrangement beyond 
 your next book, I think I may say we are 
 
90 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 
 
 prepared to back you until further notice. 
 We are confident that you will be a success 
 in the end, and although we must, for the 
 sake of form, say that some time the arrange- 
 ment may have to be varied, you may take 
 it that for the time being we are ready to 
 advance you £200 on every novel you write 
 and to keep the accounts for each separate. 
 I think it would be desirable that you should 
 try to complete one each year in readiness 
 for the autumn.” 
 
 IV 
 
 On that allowance Ambrose Hilton, for 
 fifteen years, had lived. The annual supply 
 was not quite to his fastidious taste, but he 
 continued it, and in the end became accus- . 
 tomed to the yoke. After all, he reflected, 
 all art is content and mould, and a fixed al- 
 lowance of time may be regarded as a diffi- 
 culty akin to the fixed structure of the son- 
 net. Certainly he knew that neither his sin- 
 cerity nor the intensity of his effort had ever 
 flagged; and, as he gained in experience of 
 life and of the medium, surely common sense 
 ratified his honest conviction that his work 
 in every regard had gone on deepening and 
 strengthening. One or two faithful adher- 
 ents for long maintained that, but these died 
 or left the critical platform. The public 
 
The Success 91 
 
 showed no appreciation of it whatever, and 
 as the years passed he grew reconciled to 
 diminishing notice. The second book was 
 beyond doubt received with great respect, 
 but here and there a warning was sounded. 
 “Mr. Hilton,” he was told by one of the 
 leading pontifts, “has scarcely fulfilled the 
 promise of his first novel. His peculiar dan- 
 ger, in point of fact, was evident even there. 
 His promise, it seems, may not mature, for 
 he shows a progressive inclination to swamp 
 his main theme with floods of analysis and 
 general reflections which are at best interest- 
 ingly irrelevant and at worst tedious.’ Pas- 
 sionately, with all the force he possessed, 
 he would have contested that view had he 
 found a suitable private occasion. He knew, 
 how well! with what integrity he had ob- 
 served the general shape which he had first 
 conceived to be proper to his subject, how 
 strictly he had confined himself to what 
 seemed to him to be the business of a teller 
 of such stories as his, with what labour of 
 the mind and strain of the imagination he 
 had endeavoured to define and elaborate re- 
 lations and states of mind exactly in propor- 
 tion to their richness and significance, how 
 exhaustive and yet how fastidious in execu- 
 tion was the ideal type to which he was en- 
 deavouring to conform, even in tone and per- 
 fectly proportioned like a perfect painting. 
 
92 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 
 
 ‘They did not even see what he was trying 
 to do! They thought he was losing his 
 thread, wandering, even padding! With 
 each successive work, each as he thought 
 better than the last, the complaints grew at 
 once sharper and briefer. The formula was 
 found. In the cruder journals it took the 
 simple outline of “Mr. Hilton gives us very 
 little bread to an intolerable deal of sack.” 
 The more pretentious kind preferred to open 
 with “Mr. Ambrose Hilton is a writer for 
 whom we have always had a considerable 
 respect,” and a demonstration that their in- 
 telligence was fully equal to comprehending 
 all that he said and meeting his erudition 
 with an equal learning; but these also, with 
 a mechanical regularity, complained that he 
 dealt voluminously in trifles and did not 
 seem to know what a story was. It puzzled 
 him, though it did not embitter. He knew 
 how exciting his stories were, he could con- 
 ceive no chase more feverish than his after 
 his elusive quarry. Any movement of the 
 heart, any spoken or unspoken word, was 
 likely to seem to him a momentous event; 
 must “‘action” always and only be the bur- 
 gling of a house, the escape with a rope- 
 ladder, the explosion of a pistol, and was 
 nothing worth describing but the obvious and 
 garish surface of urban life? He could have 
 put up his case, and he was convinced that 
 
The Success 93 
 
 it was an overwhelming one; but his dreams 
 of a community which would accompany him 
 in his expeditions after a fuller and more 
 thrilling life of heart and mind gradually 
 faded. Sometimes he did wonder whether 
 any practical steps that he might have taken 
 would have made things easier for him. Did 
 these men really read his books properly? 
 Ought he to have mingled more with them? 
 for most of them he had never met. Should 
 he have joined Societies, and met other per- 
 sons who wrote novels; he, who had not even 
 taken steps to thrust himself upon the two 
 or three living novelists whom he read and 
 admired? Was he not too much of a re- 
 cluse? Surely, without immodesty, he could 
 claim to have broken some new ground, 
 achieved some new beauty? Yet nobody— 
 except a few friends who were kind—seemed 
 to know it. His later books were scarcely 
 criticised at all. 
 
 Once, departing from his usual scenes to 
 carry out a project long cherished and long 
 prepared for by reading and reflection, he 
 attempted a reconstruction of ancient life, 
 careful and full, with the utmost possible 
 accuracy about the things which most con- 
 cerned him and the last attenuation of shad- 
 ing. His background was the Alexandria 
 of St. Clement, the brilliant city where, in a 
 society of the highest cultivation, educated 
 
94 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 
 
 paganism for the first time fought it out with 
 educated Christianity. In his man and his 
 woman he endeavoured to trace the finest 
 operations of both influences with a genuine 
 veracity, as they must, in such spirits, have 
 been; the effort was immense, but he knew 
 the book to be his best. It made no differ- 
 ence, but elicited one comment which com- 
 pletely baffled him. “This,” ran the stric- 
 ture, “is the sort of work which might have 
 been produced had Henry James collabo- 
 rated with their authors in something half- 
 way between ‘Salammbo’ and ‘Marius the 
 Epicurean.’” He scarcely saw. the point 
 about Salammbo, a book so physical, so 
 loaded with material images; but he re- 
 spected its author and was utterly astonished 
 to find that the sentence was meant not as 
 an eulogy but as an almost contemptuous 
 condemnation. Naturally he never for a 
 moment saw the possibility that his critic, 
 over and above anything else, might well be 
 one of those whose principal desire is to 
 mention the maximum possible number of 
 authors in a given space. In a forlorn way 
 Hilton took as a compliment what was in- 
 tended as a sneer; for a while the recollec- 
 tion of it comforted him; in the end he had 
 to fall back for comfort upon his own con- 
 science. He could see and he could state; 
 such integrity would not be wasted; a pos- » 
 
The Success 95 
 
 terity, however small, would have regard for 
 what his own age chose to ignore. For years 
 no letter of appreciation reached him; even 
 the requests, from Dakota and Kansas, for 
 autographs ceased to arrive, for only the first 
 two of his books were ever published, in 
 whatever small quantities in America. He 
 had settled down, he was informed, to a 
 steady but a very small sale. Most habitual 
 novelists, however obscure, could count on 
 rather more; but most were in greater de- 
 mand than he at the circulating libraries. 
 He did not want vast notoriety, but this 
 surely was failure. In his more confident 
 moments he thought of himself as a man 
 who should pour once a year a little phial 
 of distilled water into the turbid tideway 
 of the Thames, or as one playing a faint 
 Sicilian reed against the blare of a Wag- 
 nerian climax. But there were other times 
 when the thought of failure, real failure 
 as an artist, crossed his mind. Never when 
 he was at work, for that always took him 
 out of himself and his daily world. But 
 sometimes it happened in bed, in the dark- 
 ness; sometimes as he took his daily stroll 
 and the contrast was pointed between the 
 rich equipages and smart clothes that passed 
 him and his own neat shabbiness; and more 
 than once, in later years, he was acutely 
 aware of the possibility after his interviews, 
 
96 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 
 
 which occurred with each manuscript, with 
 an ageing Mr. Donaldson. Mr. Donaldson 
 was always courteous and kind, yet his first 
 warmth insensibly wore off. After the sixth 
 novel had been published it occurred to Hil- 
 ton that there was a faint new tinge in his 
 very proofs of faith. Hilton was too much 
 in awe of him to subject him to a thorough 
 scrutiny when he was in his presence; and 
 the total comprehension of Mr. Donaldson 
 was a thing he would never have hoped to 
 arrive at even had the inner Mr. Donaldson 
 genuinely awakened his finer curiosity, which 
 it did not. Yet Mr. Donaldson’s expression 
 was interesting and an image of the elusive 
 shade stole at last into Hilton’s mind. As 
 he signed the yearly contract, renewed the 
 yearly salary—for it had virtually become 
 that—there was just fleetingly visible in the 
 colour of his resolution the expression of a 
 Curtius who had engaged himself to leap, 
 not once but annually, into the gulf. Had 
 Mr. Donaldson altogether lost faith? Had 
 Mr. Donaldson ever had faith or concerned 
 himself with faith? Hilton did not know. 
 All he knew was that Mr. Donaldson had 
 at last given him his death warrant with 
 great kindness; that there was now, in the 
 opinion of an experienced judge, no chance 
 whatever that he should ever reach that po- 
 sition of established esteem which he had 
 
The Success 97 
 
 hoped to deserve, that he could not live on 
 the hundred a year which had come from a 
 great-aunt nine years ago, and that it might 
 well be that his worst dreads were well 
 founded, that there had been a breach always 
 between his conception and his expression, 
 that nothing he wrote seemed to others what 
 it seemed to him, that in short he was an 
 intelligent second-rate writer without a voca- 
 tion, a failure, a failure doubly. 
 
 Vv 
 
 Over forty; no future; no training; no- 
 where to go; nothing to do. There he sat 
 in the sharp sunlight reviewing the past in 
 fragments interspersed—for long habit could 
 not be broken—with half-hearted observa- 
 tions of the life around him, tentative grop- 
 ings for the right epithet for a woman’s 
 bloom under her veil, for the glint of light 
 on the band-stand top, for the colour of the 
 embankment parapet, for the scurry of 
 straws across the asphalt at his feet. He 
 did not see the expanse of his adult years 
 as an ordered progress; stray voices and 
 faces, long forgotten, came again, people he 
 had met only once, parties, far back, where 
 he had been taken seriously,'‘hours of ela- 
 tion, his first reviewing jobs, books scarcely 
 recalled given to him by men of whom he 
 
98 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 
 
 had lost sight, his first welcome from the 
 press, the completion of his favourite book, 
 delicious days of his holidays in Arles and 
 Naples and by the Dutch canals; scraps 
 from an innumerable host of such, all within 
 the power of divine memory to recover, all 
 but a preface to the sombre reality to-day. 
 The face of Evelyn Arden hovered over it 
 all. Big Ben struck and he rose. He 
 walked aimlessly back to the Strand and 
 lunched in a cheap teashop off a poached egg 
 and a pot of tea, bleak on a marble table. 
 The confusion of tongues, the constant shuf- 
 fling of incomers and outgoers, the harass- 
 ment and hurry of the waitresses, irritated 
 his fatigued nerves. He was sick of London 
 and the struggle and worry of it. He must 
 get away somewhere. He walked to the 
 bank and drew ten pounds, to his room and 
 packed a bag, and then went to Paddington 
 and took a third-class ticket to Warchester. 
 It was a peaceful and a homely place, his 
 favourite among all the cathedral cities, a 
 summary of all the English periods. He 
 knew nobody there, but he knéw a good inn; 
 and he had not been there for years. 
 
 VI 
 
 When Hilton finished his chop and his 
 beer in the ample and ancestral coffee-room 
 
The Success 99 
 
 of the “Dragon” at Warchester it was nine 
 o’clock. He went to his bedroom for no 
 particular reason and then came down again ; 
 he entered the billiard room and blushingly 
 declined a game and then returned to the 
 hall; he studied the programmes of the local 
 music-hall and the forthcoming Fat Cattle 
 Show, the mementoes of Royal Visits, and 
 the tariffs of long abandoned mail coach 
 services, looked at a stuffed pike, a caseful 
 of bright-eyed jays, goldfinches, bullfinches, 
 and woodpeckers, and several red-jacketed 
 time tables, and then, feeling too restless 
 to go to bed, resigned himself to the notion 
 of a walk and put on his overcoat and hat. 
 No sooner had he left the door and the 
 clamour of the bar behind him than he was 
 rejoiced that he had made his decision. The 
 old High Street, full of gables of all periods 
 reduced to one antiquity in the cold and 
 brilliant moonlight, was empty of traffic, an 
 avenue of mottled silver and dark shadows. 
 Passers-by were few and quiet. There was 
 no wind and hard frost was closing in; as 
 he walked along the dark southern pavement 
 listening to his own footsteps in the solitude, 
 peace fell upon his trouble. He paused at 
 the end of the street where the stone bridge 
 arches over the river, and leant over the par- 
 apet. Calm in the moonlight was the water, 
 broken by a few slow ripples; on one side the 
 
100 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 
 
 walls stood sheer, on the other, ranged in 
 receding series like the flat trees of a theatre, 
 stooping willows dipped their long ghostly 
 tresses to the stream. He was lost in that 
 loveliness; yet a shiver of cold made him 
 stamp his feet and walk briskly on till an 
 archway brought him into the Close and high 
 above its shining lawns towered the. great 
 cathedral, phantasmal in the moon, shad- 
 owed with buttresses and statuary. In for- 
 mer years he had seen it many times; ad- 
 mired its perfect proportions seen from 
 whatever angle, the delicate strength of its 
 detail; thought with humility on the devo- 
 tion and wisdom of the great unknown build- 
 ers who had raised it in an age of more sim- 
 plicity and certainty, when belief spoke nat- 
 urally in beauty. To-night the detail was 
 dim and no thought of human builders 
 crossed his mind; the cathedral did not seem 
 an edifice of stones, cunningly placed one 
 by one, but a great insubstantial flower, 
 something which had bloomed there in sud- 
 den completion, not touched by mortal 
 hands, a vision which had dawned and might 
 vanish. Hilton sighed deeply and turned 
 from its spectral magic; but as he perceived 
 the long line of the houses in the Close an- 
 other feeling, a feeling of acute loneliness, 
 came over him. Their lit windows were 
 ranged there, yellow or red blinded, in a 
 
The Success 101 
 
 long, low uneven line; as he walked across 
 the intervening turf their homely Georgian 
 fronts, porticoed and trellised, grew into dis- 
 tinctness. Music faintly reached him; a 
 voice, a piano and violin. Warmth, secur- 
 ity, gentle companionship were there; but he, 
 an outcast, was walking friendless in a 
 strange town. Ordinarily shy and self-con- 
 tained, content to forgo the general society 
 for which he was unfitted, and seldom, in 
 his own quarters, unable to make satisfac- 
 tory terms with seclusion, he now longed 
 wistfully for an escape from his solitude, 
 and would gladly have called on even the 
 slightest acquaintance, had he known such 
 to be in the city, and had he been able to 
 dare the intrusion. Then, suddenly, an 
 ironic truth flashed across his mind. There 
 must be people in that town who knew him, 
 though he did not know them; people, even 
 perhaps, who liked him, and would be de- 
 lighted to welcome him. Ambrose Hilton, 
 after so long a career of disappointment, 
 was not inclined to exaggerate the number 
 of his adherents; he had never been in the 
 way of meeting them, and he did not know 
 who they were. But presumably, with his 
 minute but “‘steady” sale, there must be 
 some. He was no favourite of the libraries, 
 and the supposition that Messrs. Donaldson 
 persuaded, by lavish advertisement, a fresh 
 
102 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 
 
 lot of innocents to buy each of his novels 
 as it came out, was untenable, for they had 
 long ceased to advertise them at all, except 
 in the barest annunciatory way. No; there 
 might be thousands who had two of his 
 novels apiece, or hundreds who had many or 
 most of them. He amused himself sadly 
 with the arithmetic. Warchester, though a 
 small city, must contain a more than average 
 proportion of cultivated persons. Very 
 likely there were—well, two households in 
 Warchester where a conscious penchant for 
 Hilton’s novels was confessed, two readers 
 who were familiar with that long series of 
 his thoughts, who knew, very likely, when 
 he was born, and even what he looked like, 
 who might consequently be glad,—even, he 
 joked incredulously, honoured—to receive 
 him, did they know he was wandering lone- 
 lily about their streets. Call it two. He 
 tried to picture them: an intelligent under- 
 graduate home for the vacation, a thin-faced 
 contemplative ecclesiastic, a pair of gracious 
 spinsters with greying hair. ‘Even in this 
 house, perhaps,” he thought, as through three 
 lit windows with half-drawn curtains he 
 caught glimpses of mahogany, old silver, and 
 the corner of full shelves. Footsteps came 
 suddenly upon him, and at the gate, within 
 a few yards of him, a dark form fell on the 
 ground with a moan. 
 
The Success 103 
 
 Hilton stooped, raised her head, and found 
 she was at once heavy and in a dead faint: 
 a rubicund woman gone pale, middle-aged, 
 pathetic in the light that filtered from a 
 window through the railings. There was 
 nothing for it but to explore the Christian 
 charity of a Cathedral close. People were 
 obviously up in the house and it was not 
 quite ten: he gave a little ring, and tapped 
 quietly with the pretty brass knocker in case 
 the servants should have gone to bed, leav- 
 ing his charge perforce on the ground with 
 his overcoat under her head. A maid came. 
 “T’m so sorry to trouble you,” said Hilton, 
 using his accustomed opening sentence for 
 every kind of conversation, “but a lady 
 seems to have fainted on your doorstep, and 
 I thought perhaps you might have a little 
 brandy.” 
 
 “Why, certainly, sir,” exclaimed the maid, 
 pleasantly excited, “won’t you please to 
 come in while I tell master?” 
 
 “No, thank you,” he replied instinctively, 
 “T think [’d better hold her.”” He went out 
 to the pavement again, listened to the pa- 
 tient’s breathing and counted what he sup- 
 posed to be her pulse without having the 
 slightest notion how numerous it should be. 
 Then to the lighted door came tripping the 
 blushing maid-servant, carrying a cut-glass 
 tumbler of yellow liquid, followed by a 
 
104 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 
 
 sturdy silver-haired gentleman in dinner 
 jacket and black tie. They stepped across 
 the three yards of garden path. 
 
 “Oh,” exclaimed the maid, “why it’s 
 Cook!” 
 
 The three of them carried her in. She 
 was given the restorative and assisted to a 
 sofa, where she came round. At last “quite 
 all right now,’’ she was led away by her 
 junior colleague, and Hilton, acutely feeling 
 that he was no member of this family circle, 
 attempted to go. “Certainly not, sir,” said 
 his host, emphatically, “put that coat down. 
 Now sit down yourself. Will you have a 
 whisky or would you rather have a brandy?” 
 On the edge of a chair Hilton did sit, ob- 
 serving it was really very late and he was 
 sure his host was just going to bed. ‘‘Cer- 
 tainly not, sir, why I’ve only just made the 
 fire up. Say when!” As he sipped his 
 whisky, drew the first puffs of his cigar, and 
 sank gradually into his deep armchair, grow- 
 ing comfortably warm, Hilton glanced rap- 
 idly round at the admirable old furniture, 
 the numerous bookcases, large and glass- 
 fronted or small and open, the baby-grand 
 piano, the desk, the mirrors in which the 
 candles filed away in endless diminishing 
 series, and the pictures. There were engrav- 
 ings, early water-colours, a few dimly seen 
 
The Success 105 
 
 oils, which might be Samuel Scott’s and 
 Bonington’s. 
 
 “Interested in pictures?” asked his host. 
 
 “Yes; especially in those of your period.” 
 
 A new interest appeared in his host’s 
 small, puckered eyes, and his rather grim, 
 square face assumed a new liveliness. He 
 showed Hilton what he had in the room. 
 Then he sat down again. “But you don’t,” 
 he said, “live anywhere near the Cathedral 
 here, do you?” 
 
 “Oh dear no,” replied the novelist, “I’m 
 only here for the night. I was out for a 
 moonlight walk.” 
 
 “Might I take the liberty of asking your 
 name? Mine is Dawkins.” 
 
 “Hilton, I’m called.” 
 
 ‘An odd coincidence,” said Mr. Dawkins. 
 “Although I daresay you might have found 
 the same thing on a good many other nights. 
 As a matter of fact, when you knocked, I 
 was just reading a book by a namesake of 
 yours.” ) 
 
 Hilton looked at the little table by his 
 host’s elbow. There was no doubt about 
 that rough blue cover. “Does it happen to 
 be “The Lost Torch?’ ” he asked. 
 
 “Yes. Do you happen to know it?” 
 
 “As a matter of fact,” said Hilton, blush- 
 
106 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 
 
 ing, “I wrote it myself. How extraor- 
 dinary !” 
 
 The man’s grim face lit up. “You don’t 
 mean it, sir! Are you Mr. Ambrose Hilton? 
 Well, well, I never thought to have such 
 luck. And I’d just finished the book. Take 
 another whisky. Yes, you must. You 
 needn’t think I’m going to let you go now 
 for a bit.” 
 
 “Are you sure you don’t want to go to 
 bed?” asked Hilton, feebly and insincerely. 
 
 “Certainly not. I am always late even 
 when alone.” 
 
 Whilst Hilton was being conventionally 
 catechised about his visit, and his previous 
 visits, to Warchester, his thoughts darted 
 back, with irony, pleasure and surprise, to 
 his recent meditations in the moonlight, and 
 the odd statistical calculation in particular. 
 So here was one of the two Warchester 
 devotees whom the law of averages seemed 
 likely to allow him. Such actually existed; 
 he was not merely read, and praised in kind- 
 ness, by his London acquaintance. Mr. 
 Dawkins, who was obviously nothing if not 
 blunt and straightforward, began to un- 
 bosom himself on the subject of Hilton’s 
 work and position, a subject which he was 
 clearly not in the habit of discussing every 
 day. “I don’t,” he said, “go about very 
 much and I don’t know many people who 
 
The Success 107 
 
 read, but I imagine your circulation is not 
 very large, Mr. Hilton?” 
 
 “T’m afraid it isn’t,” said Hilton, looking 
 at his boots. 
 
 “T daresay,” continued Mr. Dawkins, 
 “that the Dean and Chapter have never so 
 much as heard of you.” 
 
 “Only too likely, I fear,” replied Hilton, 
 amused by this candour. “I can hardly say 
 that I have been a success.” 
 
 “Well,” his host went on, swishing from 
 the syphon as he began, “that is what I 
 simply cannot understand. Still, it depends 
 what you call a success. I must tell you 
 that you have given me more pleasure than 
 any living writer. I have all your books 
 here,” indicating shelves sunk in the white 
 panelling next his chair, “and there are few 
 that I have not read twice, some three times. 
 It’s only in the last few years, since I came 
 here, that I have read much,” (Hilton pic- 
 tured him as having been in business abroad, 
 America, say, or Hongkong) “and I dare- 
 say some of these modern things may be be- 
 yond my comprehension. But I simply can’t 
 get on with most of them. Some are silly, 
 some are pretentious; even the clever ones 
 do not give one anything to bite on. I may 
 be old-fashioned, but I like a novelist to 
 think and to be ample. I want him to create 
 a world for me, not to give me brilliant 
 
108 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 
 
 scraps. You do that. I daresay some of 
 them find you too tough for them, or not 
 exciting enough. There may be other books 
 like yours; if so I haven’t come across them.” 
 He proceeded, with the simplicity of the 
 man unaccustomed to literary conversation, 
 to tell Hilton much that he knew already 
 about his characters, his style, his descrip- 
 tions, his view of life. Possibly some of the 
 last finesses of language and imagery may 
 have escaped so hard-headed and, in a man- 
 ner, inexperienced a reader, but this could 
 only be guessed; for even where he could 
 not precisely define his satisfaction he plainly 
 received it. Here, thought Hilton, was one 
 of the Warchester readers; a better could 
 hardly be hoped for in an imperfect world. 
 Was there really, could there ever have been, 
 a second? ‘Now here,” said Mr. Dawkins, 
 continuing his explanation, “‘is the sort of 
 thing I mean.” He drew from the tight 
 shelf the last novel but one, a well-worn 
 copy, ran through it, found a page, and 
 handed it to Hilton with a finger pointing 
 to a paragraph. There was a pencilled line 
 down the whole margin. 
 
 “Yes,” said Hilton, “that cost me a lot of 
 trouble, and I admit I was pleased with it. 
 I see you have the habit of marking your 
 books. I have myself.” 
 
 “No,” replied Mr. Dawkins, “in point of 
 
The Success 109 
 
 fact I don’t. Something stops me. That 
 book, and some of the others, are full of 
 marks, but they are not mine. The volumes 
 are duplicates. They belonged to a friend 
 of mine who used to live here: actually the 
 friend who introduced me to your works, 
 for which I am eternally thankful. You can 
 see how freely that one is marked.” Hilton 
 turned the pages and looked at the pencil- 
 marks, long and short. Yes, freely; and 
 how wisely, how percipiently! Scarcely a 
 sentence was marked which he had not 
 known, or at least hoped, to be exceptionally 
 good. He noticed page after page, line after 
 line: his most carefully built pictures, his 
 most delicate and evanescent shades of emo- 
 tion and characterisation, the most poignant 
 of his moments of spiritual experience, his 
 faintest subsmiles, the finest turns of his dis- 
 creet music: all had been surely seized by 
 an eye and a heart that nothing true and 
 good could escape and, as it seemed, nothing 
 half-done deceive. He looked up; Mr. 
 Dawkins, his legs outstretched and his hands 
 in the side-pockets of his jacket, was gazing 
 into the fire. 
 
 “Your friend,” Hilton remarked, ‘must 
 have been an extremely good critic.” 
 
 “Yes,” Mr. Dawkins answered musingly, 
 without moving his head. Hilton turned a 
 few more pages. The only thing which sur- 
 
110 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 
 
 prised him was that sometimes the pencil 
 had noted sentences he had thought common- 
 place though honest maxims about life and 
 so on, and sentences to the deepest meaning 
 of which he had thought himself alone to 
 have the key, words into which his own in- 
 ner conflicts had betrayed him, words, well 
 enough to any eye, but to himself known 
 as the vehicles for his personal loss and long- 
 ing and an old private grief. 
 
 “But,” he said, “I am rather puzzled that 
 some rather ordinary sentences should have 
 been marked. I suppose one can never be 
 sure what one’s words convey to any one 
 else.” | 
 
 “Never, I suppose.” 
 
 “I should like to have met your friend,” 
 Hilton went on, “he must have been un- 
 usual.” 
 
 “Not he,” said Mr. Dawkins, “she. It 
 was a lady.” 
 
 It surprised Hilton, who, unaccustomed to 
 visualising even his men readers, had never 
 supposed himself to appeal to women, with 
 whom he thought himself too dull, too pre- 
 occupied with intellectual things, even to . 
 converse with success. “She has left War- 
 chester, then?’’ he asked. 
 
 “She is dead,”’ said Mr. Dawkins, a sigh 
 implicit in the words. He paused. A flame 
 leapt in the fire and the ticking of the clock 
 
The Success 111 
 
 became audible. “That is why I have some 
 of her books; she left instructions that I 
 was to take anything [ liked. I cannot tell 
 you the difference it has made to me or what 
 she did for me, the kindest of friends. She 
 came here to live a year or two before me; 
 her house was just across the Close. She 
 lived a quiet life, alone, but she must have 
 given happiness wherever she went. She 
 admired you very much. If that isn’t suc- 
 cess, I should like to know what is. Now 
 I come to think of it, I won’t swear that she 
 didn’t say that she had once met you.” 
 
 “What was she called?” 
 
 “Her name was Mrs. Howard.” 
 
 “T have met several Howards, but I doubt 
 if they liked my books.” 
 
 “Possibly I am mistaken. Anyhow it 
 must have been so long ago that you could 
 hardly be expected to remember her. Per- 
 haps it was before she married. Her hus- 
 band was a judge. Before she came here as 
 a widow, she was in India for many years.” 
 
 India! Hilton nearly dropped the book 
 that was in his hands: his worthless book, the 
 Dead Sea fruit that he would have destroyed 
 in a moment for a glimpse of what returned 
 to his mind. India! name of mysterious 
 import, but associated for him with one thing 
 only, all its tribes and potentates, temples 
 and elephants, jungles and deserts, beasts, 
 
112 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 
 
 hill-stations, myths, mountains, rivers, sun- 
 light, soldiery, a vague and inchoate back- 
 ground to one woman long gone from sight 
 but perpetually imagined. He forced him- 
 self to say something, wondering that he saw 
 no sign that Mr. Dawkins had an inkling 
 that his heart was pounding, that he was 
 controlling a trembling body, that something 
 was happening to the skin of his face. Could 
 this incredible coincidence have happened? 
 No, no, it must not be true that Evelyn 
 Arden was dead. India was a vast place 
 and Warchester a small; he might have met 
 a Mrs. Howard. As he talked of indifferent 
 things, his eyes kept glancing at the pages 
 which his shaking fingers turned. There was 
 another stray sentence marked: on the very 
 last page: a casual conjunctive sentence from 
 a long final meditation: “a word twenty 
 years ago might have made all the differ- 
 ence.” Full of dread but unable to refrain, 
 wanting to cry aloud, he went back to the 
 beginning and turned to the fly-leaf. There 
 it stood, small, motionless, confronting his 
 moist eyes: the signature, unreal as to the 
 second half of it, “Evelyn Howard”: a 
 slight pencilled name in the small but bold 
 hand of another time, not a stroke of the 
 “Evelyn” changed from those old signatures 
 which he knew by heart. With a great 
 effort, he prevented himself from breaking 
 
The Success TS 
 
 down. The room swam round a vision of 
 the ghost who had visited it as it were 
 but yesterday ; the clock ticked “Dead, dead, 
 dead, dead.’ He set his face hard. “TI think 
 I remember Mrs. Howard now,” he said: 
 “T hope she did not suffer before she died.” 
 
 Mr. Dawkins looked up, with a slightly 
 puzzled expression. “No,” he said, rising 
 as Hilton had risen, “she died suddenly. 
 She was still young and very beautiful. 
 Must you go? Well, I shall always re- 
 member this visit and be grateful to Cook 
 for fainting.” They went out into the hall, 
 and he continued: ‘“‘Let me help you on with 
 your coat. It is a cold night. The moon is 
 still up. I should be honoured if you would 
 come again some time. Now I think of it, 
 there is somebody else in Warchester who 
 would be sorry to miss a chance of seeing 
 you. That’s Miss Penfold, of the High 
 School, who is a great disciple of yours. I 
 suppose you couldn’t come here to-morrow 
 for tea with her if I could arrange it?” 
 
 “TI should have been very glad,” said Hil- 
 ton, his face turned to the night, “but I shall 
 be obliged, after all, I think, to leave War- 
 chester by the first train to-morrow. You 
 have been very kind. I hope we shall meet 
 again. Good-night.” The door shut behind 
 him and his footsteps rang again on the 
 stones. 
 
IV: THE GOLDEN SCILENS 
 I 
 
 ITTLE Mackenzie Wile lived with his 
 little wife in a little flat near Walham 
 Green. He was half Scotchman and half 
 Jew: an alarming combination on paper but, 
 in this instance, not at all alarming in the 
 flesh. A more agreeable and harmless little 
 pair than he and his wife never existed: 
 everybody who knew them shared their re- 
 gret that they had no children, though add- 
 ing the silent rider that perhaps it was just 
 as well in one way because they found it 
 hard enough to live as it was. People who 
 knew him very slightly would refer to him 
 kindly behind his back as “‘poor little Mac- 
 kenzie,’ though they addressed him as 
 “Wile”; he was very seldom Mistered, 
 whether in his presence or out of it. “A 
 good little soul,” they would say; and “he 
 really does know an awful lot about some 
 things’; and, more pompously, “he is an 
 extraordinary mixture of shrewdness and 
 simplicity.” 
 The simplicity was always charming and 
 the shrewdness was sometimes useful. Men 
 
The Golden Scilens 115 
 
 smiled in a friendly way when they conjured 
 up a picture of him: the small shabby figure, 
 the round head, the crinkly fair hair grow- 
 ing thin on top, the wide eyes behind the 
 round spectacles, the squat fleshy nose, the 
 small fair moustache over a mouth half-open 
 in a timid apologetic smile. He always 
 peered round an editor’s door with the look 
 of one who feared to be thrown downstairs, 
 and wished to disarm the enemy by a frank 
 revelation of his willingness to go at a word 
 if he was not wanted. Yet who could have 
 had the heart to kick him out? He would 
 often, so peculiar was his scale of values, 
 show surprise as well as regret when pro- 
 posals were “turned down” which nobody 
 but he would have made. Sometimes he 
 wished a weekly to take a full-length review 
 article on a young Polish novelist whom he 
 thought ought to be translated; sometimes 
 he desired eight pages in a congested monthly 
 for the full exposition of a new fact he had 
 discovered regarding the parentage or place 
 of marriage of some Elizabethan writer, a 
 Greene or a Marston, or a new theory as to 
 the printer of some volume of sonnets by 
 Googe or Watson. He was very interested, 
 so why was not everybody? It all seemed 
 very arbitrary to him, but he made all the 
 suggestions he could, and every now and 
 then his suggestions were welcomed. The 
 
116 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 
 
 weeklies gave him a few books to review; 
 the Times Literary Supplement occasionally 
 printed a_ bibliographical communication 
 from him as “From a Correspondent’; and 
 at times, because something about which he 
 knew had become fortuitously topical, he 
 appeared with a full-dress article in one of 
 the solid reviews. Odd paragraphs he pro- 
 duced in numbers, and he received two or 
 three times a week postcards ending “I ex- 
 pect you know about this: could you do us 
 a note?’ He did hack translation and he 
 engaged ina little private trading. He knew 
 all the booksellers, and when he bought from 
 one to sell to another, neither minded, be- 
 cause they all liked Wile, and they all made 
 their profits, and they all on occasion got 
 valuable information and advice from him. 
 This is all put in the past tense: to-day, 
 happily, Mackenzie Wile need no longer 
 work as hard as he did, and his little wife, 
 though she still sews and knits incessantly, 
 no longer has to conceal her worries under 
 a brave face. From the way in which this 
 remarkable transformation took place sev- 
 eral lessons may be drawn. One is that we 
 can never tell when a hobby, any hobby, 
 may not turn out to be useful; and another 
 that Mackenzie’s simplicity was distinctly 
 limited and his shrewdness even more emi- 
 nent than his friends had suspected. 
 
The Golden Scilens BU 
 
 If there is one thing more than another 
 which Mackenzie really enjoyed, it was the 
 study of booksellers’ catalogues. At break- 
 fast he usually had one propped against his 
 tea-cup; his evenings off were invariably de- 
 voted to the pastime. Sometimes he had 
 urgent work to do, and once or twice a month 
 some literary friend would generously come 
 in for a talk. This would cause a commo- 
 tion. Both the Wiles would give the guest 
 an eager welcome, there would be a mag- 
 nanimous contest over the only comfortable 
 arm-chair, and Mackenzie, after a hurried 
 search in the bedroom for his wife’s purse, 
 would run out to the Walham Arms for 
 three bottles of beer. Most nights were free, 
 however, and while his consort sewed Mac- 
 kenzie would pore over the latest catalogues, 
 from the shops and the salerooms, with a 
 stub of pencil in his hand and a jumble of 
 worn reference books on the floor beside him. 
 He could seldom buy anything unless it was 
 very cheap and promised, at need, an easy 
 profit; but he learnt and he loved to learn. 
 Once a month, perhaps, tempted by some- 
 thing about which he had special knowledge 
 or by a large assortment of unclassified old 
 books which might contain treasure, he at- 
 tended an auction for an hour or two: if he 
 bid for a small lot or two the booksellers did 
 not unduly embarrass him by competition. 
 
118 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 
 
 It was, therefore, only in the ordinary course 
 of things that he should have visited 
 Hodgeby’s rooms on the Monday morning 
 when the tenth instalment of the celebrated 
 Vernon collection of manuscripts was on 
 view, preparatory to the sale on the follow- 
 ing day. He had studied the catalogue 
 closely, and there were many interesting and 
 valuable items; in any event he would not 
 have willingly missed an important stage in 
 the slow dispersal of that vast and historic 
 collection which was taking even more years 
 to break up than had been occupied in its 
 formation. 
 
 He spent most of the morning by the 
 shelves, examining illuminated missals, frag- 
 ments of plays, old vellum deeds, bundles 
 of letters, poems, ecclesiastical accounts: for 
 Sir William Vernon’s taste, if it deserved 
 such a name, was very catholic, and he would 
 buy anything so long as it was hand-written 
 and old. Mackenzie would have liked to 
 linger over many of the lots, but he dared 
 not waste time, and his progress was made 
 all the quicker owing to the fact that he al- 
 ways modestly evacuated a place which any 
 larger and redder man seemed desirous of 
 occupying. He was not a prospective pure 
 chaser and he did not wish to intrude. Yet, 
 just before noon, he reached a corner which 
 for some time he showed no inclination to 
 
The Golden Scilens 119 
 
 leave: and he became so absorbed in a vol- 
 ume that those who wished to reach some- 
 thing beyond him were forced rudely to 
 nudge him out of the way. Brooks of Ox- 
 ford Street noticed him with amusement. 
 “What’s he found now?” he remarked with 
 a smile to another trade friend of Macken- 
 zie’s. ‘Oh, some curio or other, I suppose,” 
 said the friend. Mackenzie was oblivious. 
 At last, unobtrusively slipping his volume 
 back into its inconspicuous place, he turned, 
 and with a firmness of movement that he 
 had never achieved before, strode out into 
 the street and performed an action he had 
 never performed before. He hailed a cab. 
 
 “Where to?” asked the driver. 
 
 “British Museum. Go like hell,” said 
 Mackenzie, not even blushing at the unusual 
 strength of his own language. The cabman 
 approximated as nearly as he could to his in- 
 structions, and in five minutes pulled up out- 
 side the solitude where flocks of Venus’ doves 
 softened the austerity of Minerva’s pillars. 
 “Wait,” said Mackenzie; and hastened up 
 the gravel without giving the dubious cabby 
 anoption. He scuttled through the hall and 
 down the corridor to the Reading Room, 
 nodding to the attendant, who knew him 
 well. Behind the central ring of counters he 
 espied the bald head and black moustache 
 of Mr. Curtain, the very man he wanted, 
 
120 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 
 
 and, by a stroke of luck, in the Reading 
 Room. Mr. Curtain came to his message. 
 
 “What can I do for you?” he asked. 
 
 “T must have a few minutes with you be- 
 fore lunch,” said Mackenzie. 
 
 “Well ?? 
 
 “T can’t talk here. It is really impor- 
 tant. Take me toa private room. I promise 
 it’s worth while.” 
 
 “Come along then,” said Curtain, pursing 
 his lips resignedly, and they went off through 
 a swing door to the corner where one of the 
 greatest of experts made epochs in biblio- 
 graphical history. Mackenzie pulled a 
 Hodgeby catalogue out of his pocket, laid 
 it down, opened at the last lots, and said, 
 with an abruptness that startled his com- 
 panion, who had always regarded him as the 
 mildest of Museum frequenters: 
 
 “Tt’s about this!” 
 
 “What’s about what?” asked Mr. Curtain. 
 very reasonably. 
 
 “Tll tell you ina minute. I’m talking to 
 you in the completest confidence, as I know 
 that keen as you are on the Museum my 
 secret will be safe with you. Do you know 
 a rich man who can be trusted?” 
 
 “Rather a large order, isn’t it?” observed 
 Mr. Curtain. “But I daresay I might think 
 of one if you gave me a few moments. . . . 
 Yes, I do. There is a friend of mine called 
 
The Golden Scilens 1Zt 
 
 Campbell. He is a rich man, and he is com- 
 pletely honest. . . . Of course he inherited 
 his money.” 
 
 Mackenzie Wile fastened upon the essen- 
 tial and neglected the trimmings. “I want 
 to see him at once,” he said, ‘‘and I will tell 
 you why.” 
 
 2 2 2 xk > 
 
 Half an hour afterwards, talking excitedly 
 in whispers, they reappeared in the’ Reading 
 Room. Mr. Curtain passed one of his col- 
 leagues. “I may not be back at all this 
 afternoon,” he remarked. Outside, Wile’s 
 cabman, in the last stages of hope deferred, 
 was attempting to engage a policeman in 
 conversation. His strained look vanished as 
 he caught sight of his long-lost fare. 
 
 “Tell him where to go, please,” said Mac- 
 kenzie. 
 
 “460 Addison Road,” said Mr. Curtain. 
 
 “Have you got enough for the fare on 
 you?” inquired Mackenzie. 
 
 “That’s all right,” said Mr. Curtain. 
 
 As they ran along the streets behind Ox- 
 ford Street they were both too excited to 
 talk, but occasionally the little man drove 
 in points he had made already. ‘Of course, 
 as I said,” he remarked several times, “‘it is 
 only a guarantee I want from Mr. Campbell. 
 It’s quite likely that I shan’t need his money. 
 It might go for next to nothing,” and “You 
 
122 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 
 
 must go straight up there after lunch. 
 They’d better not see us together. For good- 
 ness’ sake don’t look at it too long, or some 
 one will smell a rat. They know you too 
 well.” 
 
 “All right,” Mr. Curtain kept replying. 
 As they stopped outside the house in Addison 
 Road he cheered his companion with a last 
 reassurance. “I’m sure,” he said, “that 
 Campbell will back you. It would amuse 
 him, and he likes to see business men done 
 down.” 
 
 II 
 
 The sale at Hodgeby’s was the most nota- 
 ble of the season, and the only occasion on 
 which the rooms were crowded. Every 
 dealer in London was there, though few of 
 them expected to get much that was worth 
 having against the competition of the Ameri- 
 can book-kings who had come over especially 
 for the sale: Mr. Ling, of New York, who 
 was staying at Claridge’s; Mr. Hopkins, of 
 Philadelphia, who was staying at the Carl- 
 ton; and Major Levinstein, of Chicago, who 
 was staying at the Ritz. These three mag- 
 nates, all wearing confident smiles, sat at the 
 big table in the middle; they were some dis- 
 tance apart and occasionally chaffed each 
 other between the events. Around them 
 
The Golden Scilens 123 
 
 were their British confréres; behind them a 
 dense miscellany of poor and rich, including 
 several noble collectors who had never been 
 to an auction before, two or three ladies on 
 the arms of explanatory cavaliers, small 
 bookselling fry from the suburbs, journalists, 
 bibliographers, clerks and pedlars. Mr. Cur- 
 tain was there, no doubt with a watching 
 brief for the Museum; Mr. Wile was also 
 there, holding no communication with Mr. 
 Curtain; and in a corner of the room behind 
 the hammerman’s rostrum, wearing an un- 
 restrained smile, was a sunburnt man of mid- 
 dle age, with a silk hat, a monocle and a 
 bushy fair beard. To the picture dealers of 
 London he was well known as Mr. Sinclair 
 Campbell; some of the booksellers might 
 have recollected the name as that of an in- 
 frequent purchaser of classics through the 
 post, but they were unacquainted with his 
 face and took no notice of his presence. 
 
 The morning’s proceedings, after a quiet 
 beginning, were thrilling enough. Prices 
 ran high; when the Saint Louis Book of 
 Hours came on, the slight nods and faint 
 syllables of the great Americans produced 
 the effect of an artillery battle; by lunch 
 time a hundred lots had gone, and tens of 
 thousands had been spent, most of it by 
 Mr. Ling, and most of the rest by the Major 
 and Mr. Hopkins. There was a loud buzz 
 
124 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 
 
 of released chatter when the adjournment 
 came and the principal buyers went off to 
 fortify themselves with champagne for fur- 
 ther plunges. Mr. Wile went with the rest 
 down the stairs. Just outside he met Mr. 
 Campbell, who took him affably to the next 
 corner and then whispered in his ear: “It’s 
 all right, my boy. I said you could go to 
 five hundred if anybody smells a rat. But 
 I find it amusing in there. I don’t care if 
 it’s thousands. You can go on as far as you 
 like. If it looks like breaking me, I shall 
 take my hat off, and then you can stop. I 
 shall be back at two-thirty.” 
 
 He was. So was Mr. Curtain. Macken- 
 zie Wile, after a gobble at a tea-shop, was 
 back long before. Time, he found, was 
 dragging intolerably now. He watched the 
 clock crawl, and wondered if the sale would 
 ever be resumed; he listened wearily to the 
 jocular conversations of men who seemed 
 to think the day a day like other days: he 
 surprised one acquaintance who addressed 
 him by answering with something very like 
 curtness. ‘Well, I’m hanged,” thought the 
 man, “‘it’s like being charged by a rabbit.” 
 At last the auctioneer climbed again to his 
 pulpit and his voice rang out announcing 
 the next lot. Scattered voices, an inquiry, 
 a few taps of the hammer, and then the 
 same sequence in monotonous repetition. 
 
The Golden Scilens 125 
 
 Mr. Curtain came back to his corner, and 
 Mr. Campbell, replete and almost grinning, 
 to his. More big lots turned up; there were 
 prolonged encounters, and deep breaths were 
 drawn as the giants advanced their bids, now 
 in tens, now in fifties, now in hundreds, and 
 once, for a wild half-minute, in thousands. 
 The room grew dimmer; the lights were 
 turned on; the end of the day’s business was 
 approaching. Most of the general public 
 gradually dispersed, and the Major and Mr. 
 Hopkins, glutted, took their leave also. Mr. 
 Ling, alone of the Americans, remained; but 
 he had snapped the elastic over his note- 
 book and looked rather like a man who was 
 seeing something out; perhaps he wanted to 
 watch the London booksellers, who had re- 
 mained in force, hoping to pick up a few 
 things towards the end. Lot 190 went for 
 twenty-five shillings: the laconic diary of 
 a French officer in the Seven Years’ War. 
 Lot 191 fetched even less: some letters from 
 Miss Anna Seward. As 193 drew near our 
 poor Mackenzie felt like bursting; he tried 
 to keep his face still and dared not catch 
 any human eye. The moment came. The 
 auctioneer held up a bundle; “No. 193, three 
 domestic account books, one of them of the 
 early seventeenth century.” An attendant 
 took it from him and passed it down to the 
 table, around which sat a dozen booksellers. 
 
126 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 
 
 They glanced at each book: two of them 
 were patently late and dull, and the other 
 was indecipherable, except for an occasional 
 headline such as “For Ye Ague,” ““To Roste 
 a Capon.” Hardly worth having on a day 
 like this! “A pound?” suggested the auc- 
 tioneer. No voice replied, as Mackenzie, 
 with magnificent will-power, controlled him- 
 self lest eagerness should breed suspicion. 
 “Well, ten shillings,” said the auctioneer, 
 sighing over the meanness and shortsighted- 
 ness of mankind. 
 
 “Ten,” broke out Mackenzie, in a voice 
 so unintentionally loud that he could not 
 help blushing. Somebody at the table 
 flapped the parcel over again and nodded 
 carelessly: “Fifteen shillings bid. A pound 
 for 193. Twenty-five shillings bid.” Mac- 
 kenzie’s rival glanced at him; he knew him 
 and chanced it. “Two pounds,” he said. 
 “Ten,” said Mackenzie. “Three pounds,” 
 replied the other bidder, and now a wizened 
 and spectacled dealer with a walrus mous- 
 tache looked up from his calculations, and 
 cut in with three pounds ten. ‘Four 
 pounds,” continued Mackenzie. “Five,” 
 said the first; then, as though involuntarily, 
 a lay spectator at the back suddenly com- 
 mitted himself to six, and looked sorry for 
 it. “Seven,” mechanically proceeded Mac- 
 _kenzie. 
 
The Golden Scilens 127 
 
 “Wonder who he’s bidding for,” whis- 
 pered Brooks of Oxford Street to his neigh- 
 bour, for they both knew the limits of Wile’s 
 purse. Mackenzie was unconscious of com- 
 ment, and went on to nine pounds. 
 
 It was at this point that Mr. Ling, who 
 had been meditating, began to take notice. 
 He had done very well, and felt like a little 
 sport. How slowly these Britishers (for he 
 always used that offensive term) were creep- 
 ing up; how cautiously they schemed for 
 this bit of old rubbish. Now was the op- 
 portunity for a little jovial Napoleonism just ~ 
 to oxygenise ’em. “Ten pound bid,” re- 
 marked the auctioneer, scarcely able to 
 conceal his astonishment; the astonishment 
 broke through all his guards when, emphatic 
 and nasal, the voice of the American rang 
 out “Fifty.” 
 
 Mr. Ling always stopped smiling when he 
 made a joke; but almost everybody else 
 laughed aloud as this monstrous extinguisher 
 came down on the competitors. “No hope 
 of a secretive purchase now,” was the expres- 
 sion which Mr. Curtain read on Mackenzie’s 
 resolute face: “The landslide has begun and 
 I’m going full out.” “Sixty,” said Macken- 
 zie; “A hundred,” rejoined Mr. Ling. The 
 professionals looked bewildered. What had 
 Wile found out? Was Ling merely coming 
 in on spec.? or did he know too? One of 
 
128 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 
 
 them, unable to resist temptation, came in 
 next with “a hundred and ten,” which Mac- 
 kenzie capped with “a hundred and fifty,” 
 and Mr. Ling with “two hundred.” The 
 bidding had now emerged from its slow 
 peregrination through obscure byways and 
 was bowling down a broad boulevard in the 
 full view of all. ‘Three hundred,” said 
 Mackenzie. “Fifty,” said Ling, and then 
 his humble rival, with a sharp snap, fired 
 out “five hundred.” 
 
 There was a loud rustle, and a noise like 
 that which greets the ascension of fireworks. 
 Mr. Ling paused: the joke was going too 
 far; what was this darned old account-book 
 anyway? But the challenge had been his 
 and he did not like to be beaten. With a 
 completely impassive face he broke all rec- 
 ords by advancing in a leap to two thousand. 
 
 Mackenzie stole a glance at Mr. Campbell. 
 He saw with agony Mr. Campbell’s hands 
 moving towards his hat, then with inexpres- 
 sible relief observed Mr. Campbell to clutch 
 both rims of it firmly and squeeze it down 
 on his head, his eyeglass remaining firmly 
 set and his white teeth showing through his 
 beard. It was still all right. “Going,” an- 
 nounced the auctioneer. ‘“Three thousand,” 
 shouted Mackenzie Wile. Mr. Ling shook 
 his head and stood up; the hammer came 
 down with a smack; and the room broke into 
 
The Golden Scilens 129 
 
 loud applause, as men always will in such 
 places when they think somebody has given 
 too much for something. Strangers slapped 
 Mackenzie on the back; Mr. Ling himself 
 then struggled through to him. 
 
 “Well, boy,” he said with an admiring 
 gaze, “I’m darned if I know what we were 
 bidding for, but I’m glad you’ve got it.” 
 The implied question was not answered; 
 Mackenzie was preoccupied with getting his 
 prize away. A deposit was asked for; a 
 cheque was promptly written out by Mr. 
 Campbell; a bank was telephoned to; and 
 three men stole away to tea in Addison Road. 
 
 “It was worth it,” smugly remarked Mr. 
 Campbell as they parted later, “and remem- 
 ber it’s a loan from me. The purchase is 
 yours.” 
 
 2 2 2 2 
 
 Seven days later, after the first undirected 
 curiosity had been forgotten, the booksellers 
 of two continents were biting themselves 
 with rage. 
 
 _ All wars, all race-meetings, all debates, 
 all prize-fights that first morning faded into 
 nothingness as the posters, the headlines, the 
 leading articles were unanimously devoted 
 to the one great theme: the rediscovery, in- 
 side what they picturesquely called “Ann 
 Hathaway’s Diary,” of a scene from Hamlet 
 in Shakespeare’s handwriting, the original 
 
130 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 
 
 MS., freely corrected. Cables flashed the 
 news to all the zones; millionaires in Los 
 Angeles telephoned agents in New York 
 about it; ambassadors officially informed 
 kings, still in bed; and the embattled profes- 
 sors of Germany rejoiced as one man at the 
 prospect of new pasture. Wile’s literary 
 friends uproariously drank his health in pub- 
 lic houses ;.and multitudes of more respecta- 
 ble Englishmen thought it scandalous that a 
 fellow like this Wile, not a business man at 
 all, should make a fortune simply because 
 of a great deal of undeserved luck and a 
 little silly learning. 
 
 This was the story, in summary, that they 
 all read. Mackenzie Wile, the well-known 
 critic and bibliographer (portrait, inset) was 
 looking over the shelves at Hodgeby’s when 
 his attention was arrested by a small volume 
 of early Jacobean date in Old English script. 
 The volume was a mixed collection of recipes 
 for the table and for diseases, and domestic 
 memoranda of one sort or another, a collec- 
 tion of a kind commoner in a later age than 
 in that. The writing was difficult to read, 
 and had probably never been read since the 
 first owner’s death; certainly Sir William 
 Vernon would never have attempted to read 
 it. Mr. Wile, a skilled paleographer, de- 
 ciphered much of it and his curiosity was 
 aroused by one or two dates, initials and 
 
The Golden Scilens 131 
 
 family names—for the writer had sometimes 
 put down the sources of her remedies as well 
 as notes about birth and deaths. “Hall” and 
 “Hart” and “Judith” were amongst those 
 which first struck Mr. Wile. He might per- 
 haps have finally laid the volume aside had 
 he not noticed a word, faded, brown and 
 Gothic looking, on the inside front cover. 
 The covers, of vellum, had (as often hap- 
 pened) been stiffened by sheets of old manu- 
 script laid within them and covered with flap 
 edges. Turning the book in his hand, Mr. 
 Wile saw the bottoms of several words and 
 one whole word obviously carried down from 
 a line above. The word read “‘scilens” or 
 “scileus.”’ Possibly other persons had exam- 
 ined it that morning. If so, those who did 
 not know Latin no doubt thought it Latin, 
 and those who knew Latin no doubt thought 
 it dog-Latin. Mr. Wile was better in- 
 formed. He had for years studied Tudor 
 handwriting. He was familiar with the 
 More manuscript in the Museum and with 
 the researches of Sir E. Maunde Thompson, 
 Mr. Pollard and Mr. Dover Wilson. He 
 had learned much from these scholars: “‘sic 
 vos” (but this only in the T%mes and the 
 Morning Post) “non vobis mellificatis apes.” 
 And two pieces of knowledge of stupendous 
 import leapt to his mind as he gazed at the 
 word. The less significant was that Shake- 
 
132 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 
 
 b BON tb Maal “i ieee: A> Ip | 
 
 speare’s “‘m’s,” ‘‘n’s” and “u’s” were always 
 indistinguishable; the far more vital was that 
 Shakespeare is the only man on record who is 
 known to have spelt the word “silence” as 
 “scilens.” Thus does it appear in the “‘More 
 Addition” and thus in Mr. Justice Silence’s 
 name in the quarto of Henry IV, Part 2. 
 Staggered by his discovery, Mr. Wile (his 
 furtive movements were conjecture since 
 none had watched him) drew back the tough 
 vellum and saw that the two preceding words 
 were) restiis.7) 5 (Dherestvisisiiences i )bhe 
 climax of Hamlet! Mr. Wile dared not dis- 
 lodge the whole cover, but peeping in he saw 
 enough to convince him that many more 
 lines, some freely corrected, were there, and 
 what looked like the ends of three separate 
 attempts by Shakespeare to write his own 
 name, on the margin, to his satisfaction. 
 
 On this Mr. Wile boldly bid; he was sure 
 of his ground. After the auction, in com- 
 pany with expert friends, he took the cover 
 to pieces, and found three separate whole 
 leaves, covered with writing, all from Ham- 
 let, on both sides. Several valuable emen- 
 dations of the text had already been secured. 
 The note-book itself had been demonstrated 
 beyond all dispute to have been kept by 
 Shakespeare’s wife. } 
 
 “Tt is understood,” concluded all the news- 
 paper “stories,” “‘that the manuscript will go 
 
The Golden Scilens 133 
 
 to America.” They had no authority for 
 this assertion, except the authority of com- 
 mon sense, which should perhaps count. At 
 all events their predictions were accurate. 
 Mr. Curtain made a pathetic attempt to 
 secure the Greatest Manuscript Treasure in 
 the World for the British Museum. Mac- 
 kenzie held out firmly, much to Mr. Cur- 
 tains’ grief; the grief was intensified by the 
 fact that Mr. Campbell, who had never en- 
 joyed himself so much, openly encouraged 
 Wile to hang on and get the most enormous 
 price he could. “I’m extremely sorry,” said 
 Wile, “I should like the manuscript to go 
 to the Museum and IJ shan’t forget the serv- 
 ice you did me before the sale; but I can’t 
 sacrifice what you ask me to sacrifice.” For 
 the British Government’s final offer of pur- 
 chase price (in the form of an advance on 
 the Museum’s whole book allowance for 
 many years) was a beggarly hundred thou- 
 sand pounds. And when this offer, which 
 nearly drove half the officials in the Treas- 
 ury to suicide, was made, Mackenzie already 
 had in his hands eight telegrams from the 
 United States, each offering half a million. 
 
 The chaffering was conducted in full view 
 of the whole world; Mr. Campbell liked it 
 so, and Mackenzie, of whom his old self had 
 been but an irresolute shadow, did not mind. 
 At one million five hundred thousand six of 
 
(a) \| 
 
 \ | 
 
 134 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 
 
 the competitors had dropped out. Two re- 
 mained. One was Mr. Thaddeus Harrison, 
 the great New York financier, who for many 
 years has been gathering together a library 
 which he intends to bequeath to his old Uni- 
 versity at Troy, N. Y.; the other, less cele- 
 brated but rumoured prodigiously rich, was 
 Mr. Paul Jones, of Florida, whose meteoric 
 rise to wealth as a merchant prince in Nas- 
 sau, the Bahamas, has received less than its 
 due meed of attention. For five days these 
 two in America and our two friends in Eng- 
 land virtually lived in the cable offices. 
 Special editions of the evening papers came 
 out as each new bid was received. At first 
 they crept up cautiously by hundred thou- 
 sands at a time. “Harrison offers two 
 millions,’ ran the poster for one edition; 
 “£2,100,000 from Jones” ran the next. 
 Then the pace of the offers was accelerated. 
 At five millions there was some hesitation; at 
 six both competitors seemed to have got new 
 breath. Finally, when both had simultane- 
 ously cabled bids of twelve million pounds, 
 the limit seemed to have been reached. 
 “Can’t do it,” was Mr. Jones’s last message 
 in reply to a polite suggestion of a rise; and 
 Mr. Harrison was equally clear with “Not 
 another cent.” 
 
 “What shall I do now?” Wile asked his 
 bearded mentor. 
 
The Golden Scilens 135 
 
 “Well, you will be pretty comfortable 
 with the sum,” said Mr. Campbell, ‘“‘and the 
 only thing you can do now is to close with 
 the man who will pay quickest.” Another 
 frenzied exchange of messages occurred, and 
 in the end Mr. Harrison, with six millions 
 down and another six in a month, was pro- 
 claimed the victor. 
 
 Mackenzie Wile, at the suggestion of his 
 friend, handsomely chartered at his own cost 
 a Cunard liner to take the manuscript across 
 the Atlantic. As well he did, for Mr. Har- 
 rison could now barely have paid a first-class 
 return fare. He had to sell all his steel, all 
 his shipping, all his rails, all his beef. The 
 result in Wall Street was the worst panic 
 of modern times. Crash after crash came; 
 every kind of new issue had to be suspended; 
 and from Oregon to Maine the little punters 
 were ruined in tens of thousands. 
 
 “T think,’ said Mr. Campbell to Mr. 
 Wile, “you had better start buying in New 
 York for all you’re worth.” He did; and 
 we may yet live to see him offered the throne 
 of Greece. 
 
V: BAXTERIANA 
 I 
 
 ME: HAWKE and her daughter Albinia 
 amused themselves in their own way. 
 They liked theatres, dances and supper- 
 parties: Albinia, at her usually early and 
 hasty dinner, babbled to Dad about hotels 
 he had never entered and young men he had 
 never seen: the family were on perfect terms, 
 and neither his wife nor his daughter had 
 ever asked Eustace Hawke to go to a dance. 
 No: he would kiss them both, help them on 
 with their wraps, give them his blessing as 
 they scuttled out to the car, and then he 
 would retire to the top of the house. There 
 was his study, quiet, secluded, warm, with 
 regiments of books, a comfortable armchair, 
 a reading lamp, a box of cigars and a jolly 
 log-fire. And there, the day’s work at his 
 chambers put clean out of mind, he would 
 settle down to his literary hobbies. 
 
 The chief of these was the life and works 
 of Richard Baxter; and there was certainly 
 nothing abnormal in that. ‘Thousands of 
 others shared it, lawyers, doctors, parsons, 
 literary men, Pamir teat wherever the Eng- 
 
 13 
 
 
 
Baxteriana 137 
 
 lish language was spoken: and the fact that 
 it gave him a masonic connection with so 
 large and widespread a community was to 
 Hawke one of its incidental charms. He 
 liked the monthly dinners of the Baxter 
 Club, the annual pilgrimages to Baxter’s 
 birthplace, the quotations from Baxter that 
 he heard on the lips of politicians and other 
 commonplace people. He enjoyed the little 
 monographs on aspects of Baxter, Baxter’s 
 residences and travels, Baxter’s bibliography, 
 Baxter at Cambridge, Baxter’s friends, which 
 were continually peeping out from the Press 
 in England and America. He liked contrib- 
 uting occasionally to the odd little periodical 
 called Baxteriana which an enthusiast at 
 Nottingham conducted, and he liked getting 
 letters about his contributions. Grubbing 
 for unimportant and unprofitable facts in a 
 great writer’s life was a relaxation after the 
 hard and uncongenial work of the day, and 
 miscellaneous reading was all the more amus- 
 ing when anything he encountered, event or 
 opinion, might be related to the one great 
 theme of his hero. 
 
 For, though Hawke was always reticent 
 about his deepest thoughts, Baxter certainly 
 was his hero. His interest in Baxter was 
 more than that of a mere collector or critic; 
 his hobby-horse was more than a toy. Like 
 many men externally dry and worldly-wise, 
 
138 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 
 
 he had a deep faculty for reverence, and he 
 revered the memory of Robert Baxter. To 
 him Baxter was not merely a great man and 
 a great writer, but a teacher whose sagacity 
 never failed and a character the fine recti- 
 tude of whose responses could never be ques- 
 tioned. ‘Though Baxter had died before 
 Hawke was born, he felt that he knew and 
 loved him better than any human being. He 
 expanded and mellowed in the society of 
 his Baxterian cronies, for he knew that they 
 shared his feelings. Often, when he was 
 sitting by himself, some phrase in Baxter’s 
 essays or letters, humorous and humane, or 
 magnificently resolute in its clear morality, 
 would make him rest his book on his knee, 
 and stare with a rapt expression into the 
 fire. He was thus engaged, one foggy eve- 
 ning in November, when there came a knock 
 at the door. “Damn!” he said under his 
 breath; but aloud, “Come in!” 
 
 The parlourmaid entered. “Mr. Atkins 
 is below, sir, and would like to see you.” 
 
 “Why on earth didn’t you bring him up?” 
 asked Mr. Hawke, a little roughly. 
 
 Edith flushed: “I told him I would see if 
 you were in, sir,”’ she said. 
 
 “I’m sorry, Edith,’ said Mr. Hawke. 
 “Quite right. Bring him up.” 
 
 Mr. Hawke glanced at the whisky tray 
 and resigned himself to a spoiled evening. 
 
Baxteriana 139 
 
 Atkins was, no doubt, the son of an old 
 friend, and he wished him well at the Bar. 
 It was also true that he had told the boy 
 to come in whenever he liked in the evenings; 
 but why would people take polite remarks 
 so literally? Three visits in three months 
 was absurdly excessive on the part of a youth 
 who had nothing in common with him, and 
 who did not even seem to enjoy himself 
 when he came. Footsteps approached up 
 the stairs. Aknock. “Mr. Atkins.” There 
 stood that superior and not very able young 
 man, with his smooth fair hair, his small 
 fair moustache, his expression, half sulky, 
 half supercilious. “Come in, Atkins,” said 
 the host, “I’d been hoping you might drop 
 ins: 
 
 Mr. Atkins condescended to a whisky. 
 Once more it was not clear why he had come, 
 though he surely must like to come; once 
 more Mr. Hawke took pains to make him 
 talk. He asked him about his work; he had 
 got one or two small cases on circuit, but his 
 hopes, fears and ambitions were unfathom- 
 able. Questions about his family educed the 
 usual answer: “Oh, they’re all right as far as 
 I know.” Questions of the gossipy kind 
 about people elicited two kinds of answer. If 
 he knew the person mentioned, he said, “Oh, 
 yes, I know him,” as though that dealt with 
 that. If he did not know the person, he 
 
140 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 
 
 said, “No, I don’t know him,” thereby dis- 
 missing the person, possibly very eminent 
 and old enough to be his grandfather, into 
 some limbo of insignificant shades. “He is 
 my guest,” reflected Mr. Hawke, after he 
 had had once more to abandon the kindly 
 hypothesis that Mr. Atkins was shy in the 
 presence of an older man. 
 
 It was now late in the evening, and Mr. 
 Hawke had begun to hope that his young 
 exquisite was about to go, when Mr. Atkins 
 saw fit to notice the book which his host had 
 laid open, face downwards, on the little table 
 between them. ‘“‘Ah, Baxter,” he remarked, 
 with a slight lift of the eyebrows, ‘“a nice 
 lot he was.” 
 
 “He happens to be my favourite author,” 
 replied Mr. Hawke, with some coldness, very 
 deliberately knocking a long ash from his 
 cigar. 
 
 ‘A pleasant customer, all the same,” said 
 Mr. Atkins. “Perhaps you haven’t seen 
 those letters?” 
 
 “T think,” said Mr. Hawke stiffly, “that 
 I have read every letter of his that has ever 
 been printed.” | 
 
 “Oh, I don’t think the ones I mean will 
 be printed,” said Atkins, with a wintry smile. 
 “There might,” he remarked, with a faint 
 titter, “be trouble with the police.” 
 
 Mr. Hawke sprang round in his chair: 
 
Baxteriana 141 
 
 “What the devil do you mean by it?’ he 
 said angrily. 
 
 The young man appeared a little alarmed. 
 “T didn’t mean to shock you, sir,” he said, 
 dropping his affectation of impassivity, “but 
 I didn’t know you would take it so seriously. 
 I didn’t suppose you’d know really. It’s 
 only a week or two ago that Bertie Fynes 
 got hold of them.” 
 
 “Them? What?” 
 
 “The letters,’ said the youth, a little 
 pleased at the sensation he had made, though 
 surprised at its nature. He relapsed into his 
 own phraseology. ‘“Thick isn’t the word for 
 them. [ve never seen anything like them. 
 What an old hypocrite!” 
 
 Hawke rose to his feet, suppressing his 
 heat with difficulty. He stood with his back 
 to the fire and looked sternly down at his 
 guest. “I suppose you are hardly to be ex- 
 pected to know,” he said, “that you are de- 
 faming the memory of one of the noblest of 
 men, and I won’t suggest that you are con- 
 sciously telling a revolting falsehood. I can 
 only presume that Fynes has imposed on you 
 with a disgusting practical joke.” 
 
 Atkins flushed, began a sentence angrily, 
 checked himself, looked at his feet and said, 
 surlily: “How did I know you were going 
 to take it like this? Anyhow I’ve seen the 
 letters.” 
 
142 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 
 
 “T didn’t say you hadn’t seen something,” 
 retorted Hawke, “you’ve seen some filthy 
 forgeries or other. I can’t think Fynes 
 doesn’t know better, even if you don’t. It’s 
 simply appalling when men of his standing 
 lend themselves to things of this sort. I 
 won’t hear another word about it.” 
 
 Atkins’ mouth curled for an instant in an 
 obstinate smile. He controlled himself. 
 “Tm sorry,” he said, “let’s change the sub- 
 ject. May I help myself to another drink?” 
 
 Hawke nodded coldly. Then he too 
 pulled himself together and resumed polite 
 conversation. In another ten minutes the 
 young man, with an exaggerated surprise as 
 his eye caught the clock, professed an urgent 
 obligation to go, and went. 
 
 II 
 
 Hawke’s anger simmered down. He told 
 himself to forget the episode. It took all 
 sorts to make a world; fools like Atkins and 
 insensitives like Fynes; no great man’s repu- 
 tation had escaped foul aspersions from his 
 degraded inferiors, and even Baxter, unsul- 
 lied though his memory had for so long ap- 
 parently been, could not hope to escape the 
 general fate. He invited such attack less 
 than most eminent men; his honesty was so 
 evident, his noblest words and acts were 
 
Baxteriana 143 
 
 expressed with such humour and humility, 
 he was so manly, so hearty, so sociable, so 
 tolerant to weaknesses that he did not share, 
 that the most vicious and jealous had been 
 constrained to let him alone. He could not 
 be expected to escape altogether, but slander 
 against Baxter bore its own contradiction on 
 the face of it, and the best thing his devotees 
 could do was to let it alone, dismissing it 
 with the brief frank contemptuous descrip- 
 tion that would have contented Baxter him- | 
 self had he heard it. His whole life was 
 on record in Pickersgill’s great biography, 
 a life of public service, of innocent private 
 enjoyment, of deep spiritual experience, in 
 which for months at a time every hour of 
 the great humanist’s waking existence could 
 be counted and shared. The aspersion was 
 as absurd as it was monstrous; whatever rec- 
 ord came to light Baxter could never be 
 shamed. A vision of the rugged, kindly old 
 face, so familiar in a hundred portraits, came 
 back to Hawke, as he mused by his dying 
 fire. Yes, it was preposterous. If Fynes 
 was hardly capable of so vile a fraud him- 
 self, he must have a morbid side to him, 
 hitherto unsuspected, which, in this regard, 
 had betrayed him into a gullibility equally 
 uncharacteristic of him. Some low creature 
 had imposed on him with a forgery for the 
 sake of getting money out of him. Hawke 
 
144 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 
 
 went to bed; the family would come in later. 
 Several times that night he woke up. 
 
 III 
 
 Yet Fynes was an intelligent, an unusu- 
 ally acute, man; a man less likely than most 
 to be taken in, as shrewd as he was self- 
 controlled. The thought kept on recurring 
 to Mr. Hawke during the few days that fol- 
 lowed Atkins’ call. He would impatiently 
 thrust it aside and then it would return, like 
 a creeping spider that a man brushes off his 
 clothes. When he was hard at work in his 
 chambers, in pauses of the conversation at 
 family meals, in bed especially when all was 
 quiet except for the passing cabs: it returned 
 again and again, with unpleasant insistence. 
 In the daytime it was comparatively easy to 
 deal with; it could be ignored. At night, 
 when the imagination will pursue strange 
 paths and almost any wild horror seems pos- 
 sible in a universe so vague and so dark, it 
 would not be driven away. The first time 
 that an inner voice whispered to Mr. Hawke: 
 “Suppose it is all true?” his flesh crept, his 
 hair tingled, and he reproached himself in 
 an agony of shame. The voice came again 
 and again, insinuating like the serpent in the 
 garden, extending the sphere of its corrup- 
 tion like the maggot in the apple, until he 
 
Baxteriana 145 
 
 had become so accustomed to it that he be- 
 gan to reflect upon its argument, each time 
 going farther and farther before abusing 
 himself as a beast and roughly pushing his 
 thoughts away. Suppose it was all true? 
 Might it not be all true? Had not every 
 man’s nature unexplored depths? Was any 
 man’s life really known to his fellows? Had 
 we not all things to hide? Wasn’t it pos- 
 sible that every one of the friends whom 
 he most admired led a secret life which was 
 concealed beneath an open countenance and 
 a facade of morality and good works? 
 Could he swear that in any single case there 
 was no furtive indulgence which would hor- 
 tify the world if exposed, that in any cup- 
 board there was no skeleton? Were not 
 men such enigmas that anything might be 
 true about them? had he not heard hushed- 
 up stories about some of the most reputable? 
 Might there not be reserves behind the con- 
 fessions of even the most candid of them, 
 a St. Augustine or a Rousseau, depths beyond 
 depths? Was not the brute in every man 
 tugging at the chain? Who could promise 
 that it should never break its bars, never 
 escape for some terrible excursion? Again 
 and again the questions returned. He had 
 thought he knew everything there was to 
 be known about Baxter; he would have 
 gone bail for Baxter even had every other 
 
146 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 
 
 “worthy” on the roll come to the test and 
 failed. Yet could hebe sure? Baxter might 
 have gone through seventy years of life con- 
 cealing the evil side of his nature; many of 
 his moods of depression might be traceable 
 to that, much of his confident judgment of 
 others to a perverted desire to compensate in 
 a way, for his own derelictions. Suppose 
 he were bad all through; that all his toler- 
 ance of the sinner as well as all his intoler- 
 ance of the sin was the fruit of a devilish 
 irony which none had ever penetrated, a 
 sustained mocking joke which he never al- 
 lowed any one to share! MHawke’s mind 
 groped through endless dank corridors full 
 of bats and crawling things; then retreated 
 in horror at its own ill pursuits. One page 
 from Baxter’s essays, one sentence from his 
 recorded conversation, one recollection of the 
 eyes and voice and gestures that were as 
 familiar as those of a living friend, and the 
 thing seemed impossible again. 
 
 Hawke grew more and more unhappy. 
 His life was poisoned. He cursed Atkins 
 for breaking in on his peace; he cursed Fynes 
 for a gloating fiend; he cursed himself for 
 a vacillating traitor. Yet no sooner had he 
 called himself a traitor than the quiet voice 
 resumed its acid argument: “No, not a 
 traitor, a coward. You think it may be true, 
 and you won't face it.” He would reply 
 
Baxteriana 147 
 
 that the mere assent to an investigation of 
 so foul a charge was treachery to his hero’s 
 memory; Baxter himself would never have 
 persuaded himself thus or wavered thus in 
 an old allegiance. ‘“‘Sophistry, sophistry,” 
 came the reply, reiterated until he had no 
 longer the strength to resist it; “you know 
 in your heart that you are deceiving your- 
 self, that you are being a coward for com- 
 fort’s sake.” 
 
 About a week after the beginning of his 
 trouble this word ‘‘comfort” came so clearly 
 into his head that he could not help a grim 
 smile. For if he was a coward for com- 
 fort’s sake, it was a poor sort of comfort he 
 was now enjoying. He was both miserable 
 and restless. He could not work properly, 
 read properly or sleep properly; he was 
 brusque and distracted in conversation, and 
 at home he was so grumpy that his wife and 
 daughter became seriously concerned about 
 him, and began pertinaciously to urge him, 
 directly and by elaborate hints, to take a hol- 
 iday, which increased his irritability. He 
 answered them with transparent falsehoods: 
 there was nothing wrong with him, there was 
 nothing annoying him, a man might be al- 
 lowed to think about his work, and so on. 
 They could not drive him; but in the end 
 he drove himself. He could stand this un- 
 certainty no longer, an uncertainty which not 
 
148 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 
 
 only ruined his work but robbed him of his 
 recreation: for, since the fateful evening he 
 had been hardly able to look at his book- 
 shelves, much less settle down to his favour- 
 ite reading. One morning, when the sun 
 shone, he went to his study before leaving 
 home and wrote to Fynes a letter which he 
 sent off by hand, asking for an immediate 
 reply, to his chambers. “I may not be in 
 to dinner to-night; I have to see a man,” he 
 remarked to his wife as he left home. 
 
 “Do look after yourself, Eustace,” she 
 said impetuously; “I do wish you'd take 
 things more easily. Anyhow, it'll be all 
 right to-night. We're both going to Lady 
 
 2 33 
 
 Fouracres’. 
 
 IV 
 
 “Dear Fynes,”’ ran the letter, “I have just 
 heard from Atkins that you possess a manu- 
 script collection of Baxter’s letters. The ac- 
 count Atkins gave me of them was so as- 
 tonishing as to be incredible. I can only 
 suppose that there is a mistake somewhere. 
 I hope Atkins was not in error in telling me 
 about them. But since he has told me, I feel 
 that I must, if you will allow me, see them. 
 I am, as you may know, a close student of 
 Baxter’s life and works; and I feel it is vital 
 to me to clear up this most disquieting mys- 
 
Baxteriana 149 
 
 tery. I could come round to your flat to- 
 night if you are free.” The plunge had been 
 taken; as he proceeded to the Temple Mr. 
 Hawke was relieved, and relieved to find 
 himself relieved. Reasoning had frequently 
 failed him; something beyond reason now 
 told him that he had done the right thing. 
 For the first time for days he was able to 
 work well and to eat a normal lunch. 
 Fynes’s answer came, “By all means.” Mr. 
 Hawke dined alone at Simpson’s, in the 
 agreeable calm of a man who has acted upon 
 an irrevocable decision, burnt his boats and 
 landed on a firm, although unknown, shore 
 from which return is impossible. He walked 
 along the Embankment to the flat in West- 
 minster, and, as he walked up the steps of 
 the Mansions, was ashamed to feel a thrill 
 of excitement which conscience tried to quell 
 with a desperate “No: this shameful thing 
 is not true.” 
 
 Fynes received him in his luxurious study- 
 drawing-room, the abode of a bachelor with 
 a taste for Chippendale, French classics, old 
 morocco and limited editions. “Delighted 
 to see you,” he said, and proceeded at once, 
 rather apologetically, to explain why he had 
 never invited Hawke to see his Baxter treas- 
 ures before. “Of course, I need scarcely say, 
 Hawke, that in the ordinary way I should 
 be only too charmed for you to see and make 
 
150 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 
 
 use of anything I happen to have. But I 
 couldn’t help keeping these particular things 
 dark. I’m not especially keen on blowing on 
 people’s reputations, and I don’t especially 
 enjoy hurting their admirers’ feelings. I 
 knew how devoted you were to Baxter, and 
 I didn’t want to upset you; besides these 
 things, whoever had written them, would 
 probably shock you. I, I am afraid, am 
 rather case-hardened.” 
 
 “That’s all right,” said Mr. Hawke, un- 
 easily looking around, “I quite understand. 
 And I hope you understand my motives in 
 coming. The thing has got absurdly on my 
 nerves and I simply must get rid of it.” 
 His loyalty and his desire that the solid 
 ground should not fail beneath him were re- 
 sponsible for his next words. “I hope you 
 won't mind my saying that I shall probably 
 question their authenticity.” 
 
 Fynes looked at him with eyes steady un- 
 der their drooping lids, and mouth that tight- 
 ened whimsically. “I doubt it,” he said, 
 “their pedigree is perfect.” He walked toa 
 corner by the door, knelt down, and began 
 unlocking the lowest drawer of a dark ma- 
 hogany cabinet. “I got them,” he said, 
 “from Brooks of Oxford Street. He doesn’t 
 usually deal in this sort of thing, but a great 
 author is another matter. I take it you ad- 
 mit that Brooks is straight?” 
 
Baxteriana 151 
 
 “Yes,” replied Mr. Hawke, gulping 
 slightly, and feeling at once a little sick and 
 a little excited now that he was right on the 
 verge. 
 
 ‘Well, he gave his guarantee, and I’ve 
 gone into it pretty carefully myself. It may 
 be astonishing, but I can tell you it’s all 
 right.”” He rose with a portfolio, brought 
 it over and put it on a small table in front 
 of Hawke. Keeping his hand on the packet, 
 he went on: “I need scarcely ask you whether 
 you know Baxter’s handwriting?” 
 
 Hawke looked him in the eyes with a 
 spurious boldness. “I know it,” he said, “as 
 well as my own. I know the papers of the 
 day and their water-marks, and I know some- — 
 thing about inks. I know where Baxter was 
 at almost any date in his life. I also claim 
 to know something about all his friends.” 
 
 “T don’t think you know about this one,” 
 remarked Fynes with a cynical little laugh. 
 “Look at them yourself, and take your time 
 about it.”’ 
 
 Mr. Hawke examined the letters. They 
 were a revelation. There was no question 
 here of mere exuberant animality or jocular 
 coarseness. It was like looking into the 
 Bite oes 
 
152 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 
 
 Vv 
 
 He walked home. His world had been 
 shattered. For the first few minutes the 
 excitement of discovery had been so great 
 that he had almost enjoyed himself. Even 
 now at moments the savage in him was 
 elated when the thought came, “What a 
 secret! Imagine the sensation if one told the 
 world to-morrow.” By the time he reached 
 his dark house the savage had savoured all 
 he could of that imaginary thrill; there re- 
 mained the civilised man ashamed at his own 
 baseness, sorrow-stricken because of the de- 
 struction of his idol, unable to see how he 
 would ever reconstruct a world to live in, in 
 revolt against the meanness and squalor of 
 the whole human race, willing to believe 
 anything of anybody, hopeless, wretched 
 past despair. He lay awake in anguish all 
 that night, turning or still on his back, his 
 eyes sometimes shut, sometimes deliberately 
 open to the glimmering window as a par- 
 tial refuge from the nightmare of his own 
 thoughts. Now and then the face of Baxter 
 came back to him: sometimes the old face 
 unchanged, sometimes a mask distorted with 
 villainy, sometimes a new image with re- 
 proach in its eyes, unjustly presenting itself 
 considering what he had learned. Mr. 
 Hawke thought of the collection of books in 
 
Baxteriana 153 
 
 the room across the landing; the docketed 
 Baxterian references; the half-completed 
 papers; the files of Baxteriana, repository of 
 the eager and innocent recreations of so 
 many harmless people—if indeed anybody 
 was harmless. What a monstrous monument 
 to hypocrisy they had all built up! How 
 they had imposed on the world with their 
 ideal pictures of this hideous creature! 
 With what fatuity they had taken him for 
 granted! With what ease he had swindled 
 them all into thinking that all good causes 
 would be helped if they discovered who his 
 maternal great-grandparents were and in 
 what hotel at Chichester he had stayed dur- 
 ing his one brief visit there! The night 
 seemed endless; when he rose at last in the 
 cold dawn_he was amazed at the face, drawn, 
 white, hag-ridden, which confronted him in 
 the glass. Daylight made things easier 
 though; and after an early toast and coffee, 
 he fled from the prospect of an inquisitive 
 family, walked up Sloane Street to the Park, 
 and with his overcoat well buttoned up, be- 
 gan to stroll up and down by the Serpentine. 
 It was a crisis; what should he do? Was it 
 his duty to explode the vast deceit of the 
 Baxter legend or was it not? Should he 
 be a party to a colossal lie? or should he 
 precipitate an exposure which would destroy 
 the pastime of thousands, the living even of 
 
154 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 
 
 some, and be a powerful agent on behalf of 
 a cynical and embittered philosophy of life? 
 He had thought the crucial decision about 
 duty had already been taken; but no, it was 
 still in front of him. Through a thin mist 
 a wintry sun touched with orange the slug- 
 gish ripples of the lake; a grey gull drifted 
 to and fro; the solitude and quietness grad- 
 ually assuaged his trouble and induced a cer- 
 tain resignation. Peace seemed worth hav- 
 ing; even the illusion of stability better than 
 a world all obvious quicksands. “Great is 
 Truth and it shall prevail”; ““Let justice be 
 done if the Heavens fall’’: with these two 
 proverbs he had often fortified himself dur- 
 ing a life of struggle, but this morning they 
 had lost their force. He was fatigued; he 
 envied those whose faith was undisturbed; 
 “why trouble them?’ he asked himself. 
 And arguments came to reinforce his incli- 
 nation. If Baxter’s reputation was not a 
 work of nature could it not be regarded as 
 an ideal creation of Art? It expressed a 
 dream of the race if not the achievement of 
 Baxter. That figure, so loved and revered, 
 had never lived in the world, but it had the 
 existence of a grand statue, and to destroy 
 it would be like shattering a statue to pieces 
 because its lines had but a legendary basis. 
 Why diminish the beauty in the world? or 
 remove a consolatory lie that was only a 
 
Baxteriana 155 
 
 lie in a sense? The passers-by grew more 
 numerous. Mr. Hawke did not wish to at- 
 tract attention by parading longer in Napo- 
 leonic contemplation; he made a quick re- 
 solve, stepped out for Hyde Park Corner, 
 took a cab to the Temple, and rang Fynes up. 
 Fynes was still in, no doubt at a late break- 
 fast. “I say, Fynes,” said Mr. Hawke, “‘do 
 you feel inclined to sell those letters?” He 
 thought he heard a slight titter at the other 
 end; it made him blush, but he was deter- 
 mined to see the thing through. 
 
 “Well,” came the answer, “as a matter 
 of fact, I had been thinking of it already. 
 Ive got an offer for them from America.” 
 
 “We can’t do it over the telephone,” said 
 Mr. Hawke resolutely; “T’ll come along and 
 see you at once.” Then, without giving 
 Fynes time to say that he was going out, 
 he rang off. He called a cab in the Strand, 
 and set off again for the scene of his last 
 night’s ordeal. 
 
 His mind was made up. He could not 
 bear that the scoffers of the world should 
 rejoice to find that Baxter also had disgraced 
 himself. “Hypocrisy,” he remembered, “‘is 
 the tribute that vice pays to virtue.” After 
 all, it showed the superiority of virtue, and 
 any tribute was better than none; why, he 
 thought, with a wistful smile, should he in- 
 tercept Baxter’s tribute, if that only meant 
 
156 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 
 
 a score for unashamed and unmitigated vice? 
 Arrived at the flat, he found on Fynes’s face 
 an expression of friendly interest. 
 
 “Do you want these letters very badly, 
 Hawke?’ he asked, “for, if so, ’m afraid 
 youll have to pay through the nose for 
 them.” 
 
 “T will pay anything within reason,” said 
 Hawke; and at the other man’s cold chaffer- 
 ing he found reviving within himself some- 
 thing of his old affection for Baxter, a de- 
 sire to protect him maternally against a cruel 
 sardonic world. 
 
 “Tve been offered a very large sum by 
 an American,” continued Fynes. “He wants 
 them purely as a collector. I don’t know 
 what your interest in them may be, but if, 
 as I suspect, you want to suppress them, 
 you've got to go rather a long way.” 
 
 “To be frank, I do want to suppress 
 them,” said Hawke; “I think they are abom- 
 inable and ought to be suppressed. Can’t 
 you see that?” | 
 
 “Oh, yes, I can see it,” said Fynes, “and 
 it may comfort you to know that my Ameri- 
 can is the last man in the world to publish 
 them. Half his pleasure would vanish if 
 he hadn’t got the things to himself. He has 
 offered me four thousand pounds for them: 
 I need money, and it means a lot to me.” 
 
 Hawke was dazed. Four thousand 
 
Baxteriana 157 
 
 pounds! He began to confess inability to 
 compete and then his gorge rose. What 
 guarantee was there that the letters would 
 not be vulgarly exploited? Ought not a 
 self-respecting man to make any sacrifice 
 rather than be beaten in a matter of this 
 kind? Wouldn’t Baxter himself want him 
 to have the courage of his convictions? he 
 reflected automatically; then pulled himself 
 together with the reminder that Baxter was 
 a blackguard anda humbug. Four thousand 
 pounds, though he made a good income, was 
 half his savings; and he was a prudent man. 
 But he suddenly saw red; he simply had to 
 act; and, rather hoarsely, but still quietly, 
 he said, “Tl give you five thousand if you'll 
 hand over the manuscripts now.” 
 
 “That’s good enough for me,” said Fynes. 
 
 Mr. Hawke did not go back to his cham- 
 bers. He went to his house and there he 
 went to his study; the fire was not lit, but 
 he lit it and nursed it to a blaze. He then 
 opened his parcel and, without looking again 
 at its contents, put them one by one on the 
 flames and watched them shrivel. As the 
 last curled up and calcined his heart light- 
 ened, and he sighed: he was burning letters 
 of Baxter’s, and it was impossible for the 
 old love to be entirely uprooted. He fought 
 down his pangs, turned, and looked at his 
 shelves with alien eyes. 
 
158 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 
 
 VI 
 
 Rumours got about; they were indignantly 
 repudiated by Baxter’s champions; there was 
 no evidence, and Baxter stands as high as 
 ever he did. Mr. Hawke, however, found 
 his occupation gone. He could pity Baxter 
 now; he was not merely disgusted with him. 
 But he committed his unfinished researches 
 to the flames and he resigned his membership 
 of the Baxter Society, without giving any 
 explanation. They implored him to remain 
 on if only as an honorary member; he weak- 
 ened and assented. But nothing could re- 
 vive his former enthusiasm; nobody else 
 could minister to his tastes as Baxter had 
 ministered to them; he avoided Baxterians 
 and he found himself disinclined for any new 
 literary hobby. The result was that one 
 morning he suddenly announced to his wife 
 and daughter that he would like to join them 
 at the evening’s dance if they didn’t mind. 
 
 They were overjoyed. So it is an ill wind 
 that blows nobody any good. 
 
VI: THE LECTURE 
 I 
 
 SS ceee may make a man, in some de- 
 gree, fat and complacent. Much public 
 speaking may make him, often uncon- 
 sciously, hypocritical, a fisher for laughs and 
 cheers, a formulator of statements which he 
 may once have thought to be true, but which 
 in the end he makes without considering 
 whether they are true or false. Literary 
 artists and politicians are extremely liable 
 to both dangers, and three young men, as- 
 sembled in the quiet American bar of Bas- 
 sano’s noisy restaurant, were agreed that both 
 had enveloped Alfred Winter. They were 
 all reviewers, and all trying to write, which 
 is another matter. They were all keen and, 
 naturally, lean; and they were bound to con- 
 fess that Winter was getting fat, that his 
 work was deteriorating, and that he was rap- 
 idly becoming a systematic humbug. 
 
 “Bound to confess” was the phrase; but 
 they made the confession with varying meas- 
 ures of reluctance. If John Bateson was 
 even a little reluctant, the fact was not evi- 
 dent. He was of the fierce and uncompro- 
 
160 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 
 
 mising sort—as indeed Winter himself had 
 been in early youth—and would listen to 
 no defence. He shook his black hair and 
 scowled at his tumbler: “He’s a rotter,”’ he 
 remarked, “and you both know it. If the 
 truth’s to be told, I don’t suppose even his 
 early stuff was as good as we used to think 
 it. Anyhow he’s sold himself. And,” he 
 added, with an intonation of deep contempt, 
 “he’s got the price.” 
 
 “We could do with some of it,” sighed 
 Hugh Macintosh, “but I’m afraid it’s true. 
 It’s an awful pity; he might have been a 
 greater man than you think, Bateson. He’s 
 certainly gone west now. It’s almost in- 
 credible that a few years ago we all of us 
 took his opinion for gospel.” 
 
 “Speak for yourself,” said Bateson, 
 bluntly, turning his dark, strong face to the 
 speaker, “I didn’t. I could always see the 
 man would go the way of all charlatans.” 
 
 The third was a young man with pince- 
 neZ, a sensitive thin face, innocent blue eyes 
 and mouse-coloured hair. He had been 
 thoughtfully leaning on the bar and kicking 
 the brass footrail, and he now looked up, 
 framing his lips for a protest. 
 
 “I suppose you’re going to defend him, 
 Emery,” said Bateson. 
 
 “You're ‘so extreme,” said’ Hmery.- “It's 
 really too absurd to say that he’s never done 
 
The Lecture 161 
 
 good work, or that he doesn’t write well even 
 now. I admit he’s a bit thin nowadays, and 
 tries to go for a bigger public than the Lord 
 meant him for; and I’m afraid he’s lost his 
 sense of humour about himself. But I’m 
 sure he doesn’t know he’s a charlatan.” 
 “Which he is,” said Bateson. “Did you 
 ever hear one of his precious lectures?” 
 “Oh, of course I have, but you will be 
 so unfair. Anyhow I’m off. I said I’d have 
 an early tea with him this afternoon.” 
 “Take care,” laughed Macintosh, “or 
 you'll be becoming a little humbug too.” 
 
 II 
 
 The conversation had meant more to 
 Adrian Emery than to the others, who, by 
 the time that he had walked the hundred 
 yards to Charing Cross, were probably dis- 
 puting about something else. Winter’s fig- 
 ure as he had first known it hovered before 
 his eyes as he made his way through the 
 trafic towards Piccadilly. Six years ago 
 Winter had only been a celebrity of sorts, 
 not an oracle revered by all the half-read 
 people in the country. He was a charming 
 figure then, hearty and gay, with his clear, 
 twinkling eyes, quick laugh, and delightful 
 habit of equal conversation with the hum- 
 blest and youngest. Slightly unconven- 
 
162 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 
 
 tional, too; an “extremist’’ rather feared and 
 frowned upon by the elderly and respectable. 
 His loose tweed suit, pink tie and wide soft 
 hat were worn as though he liked them, and 
 had forgotten he had them on; he was nat- 
 ural, free of speech, witty and daring, at the 
 same time sensible. Then he had found, by 
 imperceptible degrees, a market for his wit 
 and sense and, in restricted quantities, his 
 audacity. It had been a rapid progress: first 
 dramatic criticism, then criticism of pictures, 
 then two picaresque books, half story, half 
 amusing commentary on modern thought and 
 life, and then a successful play. The play, 
 which had a setting of international politics, 
 was a great success. To his old associates 
 it was the beginning of the end; to his new 
 the end of the beginning. He had arrived: 
 and in two years no Academy banquet was 
 complete without him. Insensibly, as it 
 seemed to Emery, who had a year or two 
 back seen him almost daily, he had got softer, 
 more easily satisfied both with himself and 
 with things in general. There was a Winter 
 legend: he did his best to live up to it, and 
 found it no difficult task. He had begun to 
 be applauded as a constructive critic of mod- 
 ern life: the applause gave him a keener 
 taste for construction: and apparently the 
 vaguer and more platitudinous he became 
 the heartier was the response from the pub- 
 
The Lecture 163 
 
 lic. To-day in any town in England might 
 have been found half-a-dozen persons will- 
 ing to lecture on the work and influence of 
 Alfred Winter, and any of them with such 
 a subject might count on an audience: he 
 was indubitably superior yet comprehensi- 
 ble to all. All this, as Adrian Emery walked 
 to Winter’s club, he recalled and faced more 
 frankly than he would ever consent to do in 
 conversation. He contemplated, also, cer- 
 tain other disagreeable symptoms: the ele- 
 ment of dandyism which had crept into Win- 
 ter’s négligé, his fondness for dropping out, 
 as it were by accident, information about 
 invitations he had received, causes that had 
 welcomed his assistance, and prices he had 
 been offered by obsequious managers and 
 magazines. Winter even, Emery thought 
 with a blush, showed signs of a still un- 
 worthier form of vanity, nonchalantly pa- 
 trading his eminent acquaintances, referring 
 to venerable mandarins of literature, poli- 
 tics and society as Dick and Arthur. It was 
 a dreadful pity, in spite of Bateson. Emery 
 was convinced that a very good man was go- 
 ing wrong. 
 
 ' He made his resolution. The truth was 
 becoming too widely realised in the only 
 quarters that mattered. Young as he was, 
 and obscure, he would do a friend’s unpleas- 
 ant duty even at the risk of a breach. He 
 
164 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 
 
 must let Winter know, delicately or brutally, 
 what was happening to him, what his friends 
 feared and what delighted his enemies. 
 
 It took an effort, but he did it. Winter 
 began by arguing: he put up a case for the 
 interviews and the films, and hotly denied 
 that his writing had grown more slipshod. 
 “As for these lectures,” said Emery, “why 
 on earth do it? You cannot possibly put 
 your best into them. They are all just vague 
 uplift.” 
 
 Winter did not deign to reply. The words 
 stung. The parting was strained. “I have 
 a big lecture on at Mulcaster to-night,” said 
 Winter, coldly. 
 
 “What’s the subject?” asked the distressed 
 Emery, trying to pretend that things were 
 the same as they had been. 
 
 “Oh, something or other about Art. 
 Good-bye.” 
 
 Iil 
 
 The city of Mulcaster is one of the largest 
 in North Central England. It boasts, liter- 
 ally if inexplicably, a large number of ware- 
 houses, cobblestones, trams and inhabitants, 
 and it rather piques itself on its ability to 
 show London how to do things. The ex- 
 presses take three hours to get there from 
 whichever of several stations you choose; the 
 
The Lecture 165 
 
 first-class carriages are very comfortable, and 
 an early dinner may always be obtained on 
 board. Alfred Winter secured a carriage to 
 himself, tipped the attendant to bring him 
 a tumbler and a water-bottle, produced a 
 silver whisky flask, a writing-block and a 
 fountain pen from the pockets of his heavy 
 fur coat, hung up the coat and put up his 
 feet, and prepared to meditate on his ora- 
 tion for the evening. He had done this sort 
 of thing often enough; there was an hour 
 and a half before the first dinner, and there 
 would be a short time afterwards. He had 
 no need to bother about changing, as the 
 tweeds and the pink tie, though they might 
 have been resented on any one else, were 
 too generally regarded as a necessary part 
 of his literary and ethical equipment to 
 be abandoned in favour of evening dress. 
 Plenty of time. And anyhow what did it 
 matter? In earlier days he had felt nervous 
 without full notes and was sometimes inef- 
 fective even with them. But he knew now 
 his gifts of improvisation, and memory dis- 
 euised as improvisation; he knew his audi- 
 ences; and he knew, to-night as most nights, 
 his theme. He had lectured in Wales, Dev- 
 onshire, Birmingham, Yorkshire, London, 
 Oxford, Cambridge and more places than he 
 could remember on “The Primary Function 
 of Art.” In the quite old days, when subur- 
 
166 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 
 
 ban and college literary societies provided 
 him with the best platforms he could get, 
 he had frequently read papers on that sub- 
 ject, and the lecture had developed with 
 time, as also had his lecture on ““The Place 
 of Fiction in the Modern State,’ and that 
 on “The Drama.” He still liked, if he was 
 not too tired or lazy, to devote a little 
 thought to his subject before speaking, and 
 to make a few notes, new if on the old lines. 
 But even these were not, at a pinch, neces- 
 sary. Some of the argument might be miss- 
 ing, some of the chief points lost; but he 
 never failed, he knew, to remember enough 
 of the more elevated passages and the more 
 successful quotations and the more success- 
 ful impertinences to carry him through. 
 There were even, ready to leap into the 
 breach at need, a number of trained veteran 
 jokes which could always be relied on to 
 cover a temporary breakdown in the main 
 movement, and turn failure into success; he 
 had learned the whole art of speaking slowly 
 and with great emphasis whilst he was try- 
 ing to think of the next thing he ought to 
 say; he knew that with the lights around, 
 the table at his hand, rows of eager faces 
 in front of him, and the stimulating sounds 
 of applause in his ears, he could always rely 
 on himself to produce the requisite amount 
 of words and gestures, however bored and 
 
The Lecture 167 
 empty he may have felt right up to the end 
 
 of the chairman’s inane introductory eulogy. 
 So, leisurely sipping and not very much con- 
 cerned, he settled down with his white paper 
 and his pen. 
 
 He made a few idle marks; then he looked 
 out of the window for a while at the autumn 
 landscape, soft under a dove-coloured sky; 
 then he fell to drawing vague faces on his 
 paper. “Why on earth do I do it?’ he 
 muttered to himself as he mixed a stiff 
 whisky; “Oh damn!” he exclaimed five min- 
 utes later, as he mixed another. ‘“This’ll be 
 the last anyhow,” he concluded with reso- 
 lution, and fell so grimly to the making of 
 notes that he took no notice of the summons 
 to dinner, the falling of twilight, the turn- 
 ing on of the lights. The train groaned 
 and stopped: “Harley,’’ a dim station, rat- 
 tling cans, rain flicking the window in front 
 of a melancholy lamp. It was the last stop 
 before Mulcaster. He looked through his 
 notes again, and then deliberately tore them 
 up into small pieces and scattered them on 
 the floor. “I shan’t need them,” he said, 
 listening to his own voice loud above the 
 rattling of the wheels, “I’m in the mood. 
 Id better let it come as it will.” The rat- 
 tling became violent, stations flew by in 
 rapid sequence, then there was a slowing 
 down and a grating: lights, a broad hall, the 
 
168 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 
 
 white steaming of many engines, voices, a 
 row of porters, the stop. He got out with 
 his bag, and two men in glistening wet over- 
 coats ran up and pressed him by the hand. 
 
 IV 
 
 They were the President and Secretary of 
 the Federation of Literary Societies which 
 had organised the meeting; damp but eager 
 both. The President, Mr. Maxwell, was 
 head of a secondary school; he wore spec- 
 tacles, a drooping moustache and a soft hat. 
 He was introduced by the Secretary, Mr. 
 Archibald Jump, with whom Winter had 
 corresponded; Mr. Jump wore a bowler, and 
 had a clean-shaven intelligent face and an 
 anxious smile. They fought politely for 
 Winter’s bag, and hurried him down the 
 misty platform, singing in antiphony. 
 
 “T hope you had a good journey, Mr. Win- 
 ter.) 
 
 “This is a great pleasure.’ 
 
 “We have all been looking forward to it.” 
 
 “It’s a wet night, but they’ll turn out for 
 you.” 
 
 “We've had to get the Central Hall; St. 
 Andrew’s wasn’t big enough.” 
 
 “The Lord Mayor is going to take the 
 chair.” | 
 
 “How you scored over Gilbert Hughes in 
 
The Lecture 169 
 
 that letter. We all laughed about it here.” 
 
 “T have every book you have written, Mr. 
 Winter.” 
 
 “We had Mr. Hughes here in the spring. 
 He didn’t go down well with our people.” 
 
 “What do you think of George Hawk- 
 shaw’s new novel?” 
 
 “Mary of our teachers are using your last 
 book in the schools.” 
 
 “You will have a great many of the teach- 
 ers there to-night.” | 
 
 “T think you know Mrs. Jones of Wigan. 
 She asked me to tell you how sorry she was 
 that she wouldn’t be able to get over for 
 your lecture.” 
 
 But, as Winter grunted or made no reply, 
 the enthusiasm diminished, the song died 
 away. They courteously put him in a cab, 
 ar.d did their best with an occasional timid 
 sentence in the darkness. Winter was 
 moody, answered abruptly, and gazed out 
 of the window at the lamp-lit mist and the 
 passing vehicles, Moody; well, it was 
 hardly strong enough. Great writers are 
 pardonably eccentric, but this was over the 
 border. The same thoughts coiled out of 
 the minds of both the worthy officials. Win- 
 ter was worse than moody; he seemed a little 
 mad, and he—well, he had been drinking. 
 
 A gloomy journey, but they turned into a 
 Square, and there were the broad steps of 
 
170 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 
 
 the Hall and people swarming up them. 
 Mr. Maxwell, Mr. Jump, and Winter with 
 them, went round through a side door and 
 found the Lord Mayor, eight o’clock having 
 struck, in a dismal little waiting-room, chaf- 
 ing at their delay. Introductions were hur- 
 ried through; a corridor was traversed; and 
 the four of them broke upon the platform of 
 a vast hall, crowded floor and gallery. The 
 Lord Mayor took the central seat, Alfred 
 Winter sat, still looking very sombre, on his 
 right, and the President and Secretary, un- 
 comfortable in so public a position, endeav- 
 oured to be unobtrusive on chairs to the ex- 
 treme right and left of this central group. 
 The Lord Mayor rose. He hemmed. He 
 spoke of the distinguished visitor. He 
 hemmed again. He spoke of Art. He 
 hemmed again. He spoke, amid general ap- 
 plause, of the progressive spirit of Mulcas- 
 ter, and hemmed for the last time. He then 
 called upon Mr. Alfred Winter, the distin- 
 guished dramatist, critic and publicist, to 
 deliver the address to which they had all so 
 eagerly been looking forward. 
 
 Winter looked at his feet, rose with a men- 
 acing air, walked past the reading desk that 
 had been prepared for him, and put one hand 
 ferociously in his pocket.. There he stood, 
 the figure already well known in caricature. 
 The crowd was thrilled and hushed, but Mr. 
 
The Lecture 171 
 
 Maxwell and Mr. Jump felt ill at ease, they 
 knew not why. He began to speak. “My 
 Lord Mayor, Ladies and Gentlemen,” he be- 
 gan, “I fear that my address to-night will 
 not be precisely what you expect, but it may 
 be” (he could not get rid of his fluency) 
 “that some, at least, of you will think that 
 I was wise in diverging a little from the 
 theme to which I am nominally to devote 
 myself.” There was a rustle. The Lord 
 Mayor looked intelligently around and then 
 smirked at his hands. Mulcaster was to get 
 something out of the ordinary, an honour 
 which, after all, was only her due. The 
 whole audience was agog. This was one of 
 Winter’s characteristic surprises. He was 
 living up to his reputation. 
 
 “We are assembled to-night,” said Win- 
 ter, in a clear but slightly harsh voice, “‘to 
 consider the subject of the Primary Func- 
 tions of Art. It sounds very important. 
 There has just been an earthquake in China 
 in which 100,000 people have perished, of 
 whom a half were roasted to death. We are 
 considering the Primary Functions of Art. 
 There seems to be a chance of another great 
 European War. We are considering the Pri- 
 mary Functions of Art. In this city, as in 
 others, there are at this moment multitudes 
 of people, men and women, who are desper- 
 ate through poverty, sweated and unem- 
 
172 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 
 
 ployed. We are considering the Primary 
 Functions of Art. We have all had a good 
 meal, and we can forget these things for a 
 while. We know they exist; but we find 
 the Primary Functions of Art more amusing. 
 Platitudes about Art are more amusing; and 
 I freely admit that I could provide you with 
 them as I have provided many audiences be- 
 fore.” Expectancy was on tip-toe. Winter 
 was in one of his bold moods. ‘They were 
 to have him at his best. 
 
 “Well,” he went on, “you are not to take 
 me as underrating the importance of Art. I 
 have talked a good deal of well-fed cant 
 about it in my time. I began by meaning 
 what I said; and I am honestly convinced 
 that much that I said, though I do not claim 
 that it was new, was right. Art is impor- 
 tant, it 1s symptomatic, and a civilisation 
 which does not live by it is doomed. But 
 it must be at least five years since I gave a 
 minute’s hard thought to that or any other 
 subject; one can get along with cheap sub- 
 stitutes for thought just as well. I have 
 been a popular humbug, as most so-called 
 thinkers and leaders of opinion are, partic- 
 ularly if they habitually lecture.” 
 
 It was a startling opening. Even Winter, 
 whose wisdom was usually so delightfully 
 mixed with whimsicality, was not expected 
 to go quite so far. The hall, packed with 
 
The Lecture 473 
 
 people, was absolutely silent, except for a 
 few slight laughs which were angrily hushed. 
 The Lord Mayor looked fogged and inclined 
 to sleep, anxiety was written on the features 
 of Mr. Maxwell, Mr. Jump wondered if and 
 how Winter would ever extricate himself 
 from such a beginning. Smiles could be seen 
 here and there on the faces of a few flippant 
 who enjoyed any kind of surprise; Winter, 
 who usually felt his audiences very surely 
 and was very clever with them, seemed to 
 make no endeavour to keep in touch. There 
 was a lady in the front row, beaming with 
 delight; the more he scowled, the more she 
 beamed. Perhaps she had heard truth for 
 the first time in her life, had relished it, and 
 had suddenly acquired a morbid passion for 
 more. Such a face, on another occasion, 
 might have attracted Winter’s gaze; on this 
 he merely loured stubbornly out towards the 
 body of the hall, his head and arms as nearly 
 motionless as was compatible with loud and 
 determined speech. 
 
 “For what,” he went on, “is this sort of 
 lecture? There may be something to be said 
 for informative lectures or acknowledged 
 ‘turns’ by Polar explorers, astronomers and 
 honest professional entertainers. You don’t 
 learn as much from the best of them as you 
 might from an hour’s reading, but if you 
 are too lazy to read you may learn some- 
 
174 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 
 
 thing from such lectures; and anyhow you 
 may regard them as a legitimate amusement. 
 But my sort of lecture is different. I don’t 
 come here with facts and I don’t admit to be 
 merely selling my personality. I am sup- | 
 posed to be a missionary with a high calling. 
 I desire to throw light for you on the highest - 
 aspects of life, and you are craving for what 
 I can give you. I have, it is supposed, come 
 among you for the mission’s sake, in order 
 that you might share the enjoyments, spirit- 
 ual and esthetic, that I have, in order that 
 others may perceive certain moral issues as 
 clearly as I do myself. I may tell you that 
 that assumption, which it is usual for both 
 parties on these occasions to make, is an ab- 
 solute lie!” 
 
 There was a loud indignant murmur, 
 which completely overbore the giggles. Mr. 
 Jump stared feverishly at Mr. Maxwell. 
 Mr. Maxwell made a movement and then 
 checked himself. The Lord Mayor looked 
 startled. Winter assumed a commanding at- 
 titude, and the audience, not wishing to be 
 precipitate, relapsed into quietude. “I am 
 speaking,” he said, ‘‘for myself alone, though 
 I fear that everything I say applies to many 
 besides myself. I am not suggesting that all 
 such lecturers are humbugs, though most of 
 them are certainly wasting their time while 
 they are on the platform, especially if they 
 
The Lecture 175 
 
 speak from notes or impromptu. The solem- 
 nity of Ruskin, the simple-minded enthusi- 
 asm of William Morris, were probably not 
 assumed, though they undoubtedly said all 
 they had to say more effectively in print 
 than in public speech. But so far as I my- 
 self am concerned I may say that I simply 
 don’t know why I have come here to-night.” 
 
 A faint hope dawned in the breast of Mr. 
 Maxwell and Mr. Jump, who sat nervously 
 stroking their chins; there was a rustling of 
 whispers in the audience as those who knew 
 all about Winter’s cleverness told their puz- 
 zled friends to wait and see what would come 
 next. Slowly and resonantly he went on 
 again. “I do not honestly know,” he said 
 in tones that rang clearly to the back of the 
 far high gallery, “why I have come to Mul- 
 caster, and this audience to-night. I knew 
 well—or rather I thought I knew—when I 
 left London this afternoon, what I was go- 
 ing to do when I got here. I knew I should 
 be welcomed by an eager crowd of people; 
 and I intended to give them such a lecture, 
 indeed the very same lecture, as I had often 
 delivered to such crowds before. There was 
 a certain, not at all original, skeleton argu- 
 ment which may be found in many men’s 
 books, and which I daresay is as good as most 
 arguments. There was a certain amount of 
 illustration, a good deal of picturesque pad- 
 
176 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 
 
 ding, certain jokes that I have frequently 
 (always with apparent spontaneity) made, 
 and a rather poignant peroration which I 
 could, if supported, deliver on my head, or, 
 if hypnotised, in my sleep. I should have 
 appeared earnest, but I should have been 
 cold-bloodedly acting; I should have ap- 
 peared spontaneous, but I should have been 
 performing psychological experiments that I 
 knew by heart, treating you, quite rightly, 
 as the precise replica of a hundred other 
 easily handled crowds.” They murmured 
 again. “But why,” he proceeded, “did I 
 come? It wasn’t, certainly, from sheer de- 
 votion to your welfare. I wish you well, 
 but I would not put myself out for you. 
 I may often appear good-humoured and 
 kindly, but I am really thoroughly selfish; 
 and at this moment I might be sitting com- 
 fortably in my house enjoying good company 
 or writing something very lucrative, instead 
 of standing on a platform in an ugly indus- 
 trial town to which I said I would come to 
 deliver a lecture on the Function of Art. 
 Why did I come then?’ 
 
 Loud cries of “Yes, why?” came from the 
 gallery, and in two places in the hall scuffles 
 broke out which caused widespread commo- 
 tions. Sporadic shouts of “Sit down!” 
 “Shut up!” “Go back to your home!” 
 “Disgraceful!” were audible, and a man 
 
The Lecture 177 
 
 with an umbrella began approaching the 
 platform up the central passage between the 
 seats. The Lord Mayor, proud of his fa- 
 mous talent for keeping meetings in hand, 
 rose and beat with his fist on the table. The 
 water-glass fell off; there was an involuntary 
 laugh; order was restored. “I must beg 
 you,” said the Lord Mayor, “ladies and gen- 
 tlemen, to hear Mr. Winter out. Some of 
 you may feel, perhaps justly, that he has 
 been unnecessarily provocative. But we 
 must remember that he is our visitor, and 
 that there are those who have paid for their 
 seats and who desire to hear what further 
 Mr. Winter may have to say.” 
 
 Winter glanced casually at the Lord 
 Mayor, and went calmly on. “It certainly 
 wasn’t the money that attracted me,” he ob- 
 served. 
 
 “Didn’t you get enough?” cried a voice 
 from the renewed hubbub. 
 
 “Yes,” said Winter, “do not misunder- 
 stand me. I donot remember precisely what 
 sum Mr. Jump offered me; no, to be honest, 
 I remember perfectly well. It was twenty- 
 five guineas.” 
 
 “You ought to pay it back,” shouted the 
 voice, amid cheers from the back, whilst the 
 front rows and the Lord Mayor looked un- 
 comfortable at this bickering about filthy 
 lucre. 
 
178 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 
 
 “It is, I must add,” the lecturer proceeded, 
 “a very handsome fee for this sort of thing. 
 Often enough quite eminent men are asked 
 to come and do this sort of thing for ten or 
 fifteen guineas and their railway fares, and 
 many of them find that it pays them to do 
 it at that. A few years ago I myself would 
 have jumped at an offer of even five guineas, 
 thought I should have accepted the engage- 
 ment with apparent reluctance and difficulty. 
 Twenty-five guineas would have seemed a 
 tempting sum to me, and I daresay it still 
 does to many of you. Some of you no doubt 
 could spare the whole amount as easily as 
 you have spared the amount of your seats 
 this evening; but others probably have to 
 count every shilling, and cannot but envy 
 people who are paid so many pounds for an 
 hour’s apparently easy speechmaking. But 
 it isn’t now a large sum to me; I have plenty 
 of money, and can make it with very much 
 less effort and discomfort than this kind of 
 excursion involves. What was it then? 
 Was it mere weakness? Inability to say 
 ‘No’? I have tried to convince myself that 
 it was that, but I fear I was trying to let 
 myself off on the score of an amiable weak- 
 ness. Was it that I enjoy public speaking? 
 Sometimes, after I have started, and when 
 the audience is responding well, I do; often 
 I do not, and in anticipation the thing is 
 
The Lecture 179 
 
 always a bore and a burden. Was it my 
 vanity then? In some obscure way I think 
 TOEWP ASE eid c: 
 
 He elaborated the argument with painful 
 realism, and the waters of discontent swelled 
 again. Again the Lord Mayor, red and furi- 
 ous, had to rise to secure him a hearing. 
 “We shall all, I think,” he shouted, “‘be re- 
 lieved when Mr. Winter finds it convenient 
 to bring his surprising remarks to a close, 
 and I trust he will be short, but I must again 
 beg you not to reduce the proceedings to a - 
 confusion which will not reflect credit on 
 Mulcaster.”’ 
 
 “T shall not,”’ said Winter, his face still 
 perfectly impassive, “detain you much 
 longer, but there is one last aspect of the 
 matter on which I feel obliged to say a few 
 words. I have analysed my own motives 
 for coming here, but what were yours? 
 Mixed, of course, as you yourselves are 
 mixed. Some of you, including probably the 
 two gentlemen behind me, are poor and ear- 
 nest students who spend all they can on 
 books, and felt in coming here that they 
 could learn something from me and be up- 
 lifted by contact with an inspiring person- 
 ality.” 
 
 “Boo!” came a loud roar from the gal- 
 lery. 
 
 “Even those, I do not doubt, were gov- 
 
180 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 
 
 erned also, in common with the majority of 
 you, by the more trivial motive of curiosity. 
 A few of you have read my books, more 
 have seen my name in the newspapers, more, 
 still, have had my name, habits and charac- 
 teristics dinned into their ears during the 
 past few weeks in order that this hall might 
 be filled. The great majority of you came 
 to listen to me on this subject as they would 
 have come to listen to me on any other sub- 
 ject: they came, that is, at best to pick up a 
 few scraps of information, at worst to listen 
 idly, looking forward to a chance of laughter 
 or cheap emotion, liking to gape at a pictur- 
 esque celebrity, of whom, after a week’s close 
 contact, they would be thoroughly tired. 
 ‘Primary Functions of Art,’ indeed! Why, 
 half of you barely understand what the words 
 mean, and even if I told you would forget 
 it by to-morrow.” 
 
 The storm broke now uncontrollably. 
 Even in the front rows angry gentlemen got 
 up and exclaimed “Intolerable!” Some be- 
 gan to shepherd their womenfolk away; 
 others remained standing, and saying “Sit 
 down, sir,” ‘“Monstrous, sir.” Behind them 
 all restraint was rapidly disappearing. Men 
 stood shouting and waving their fists. 
 Howling groups pressed their way up the 
 gangways. The back of the hall, lost now 
 to all sense of respectability and local pride, 
 
The Lecture 181 
 
 was a tumult of songs, cat-calls and yells 
 of execration. The lady in the front row 
 was in a state of silent ecstasy. Winter’s 
 calm fell off him as he made a last desperate 
 effort to be heard. His veins stood out, his 
 arms waved, the pink tie fluttered in the air, 
 and he bellowed with the full force of his 
 lungs: “Yes, and the last touch of asininity 
 and humbug is given by the customary idiocy 
 of putting in the chair a man who, if it 
 hadn’t been for this row, would have been 
 fast asleep. Look at his face! What on 
 earth does this Lord Mayor know about Art? 
 What does he care?” 
 
 The Lord Mayor put his hands on the 
 table, and half rose, his eyes bulging incred- 
 ulously from his red face. “This sack of 
 stocks and shares,” roared Winter, in a 
 pythagorean frenzy; “This great donkey! 
 This walrus! This frog!’ The Lord Mayor 
 sprang towards him. The concourse, exas- 
 perated beyond measure by this last insult 
 to Mulcaster, bawled, hissed, hooted, thun- 
 dered. A vast pack of hot faces began press- 
 ing against the platform. Some climbed on 
 others’ shoulders. Mr. Maxwell acted. He 
 seized Winter, flung him across to Jump, and 
 escaped as by a miracle into a side street 
 and a cab. Simultaneously with its start- 
 ing, a great horde, howling like wolves, burst 
 out into the street. The cab darted ahead. 
 
182 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 
 
 Mulcaster was saved from the disgrace of a 
 lynching. “My hat and bag,” complained 
 Winter, now in a state of collapse, as the 
 cab rounded the first corner. 
 
 “Get off without them, damn you,” said 
 Mr. Maxwell, who had never sworn in his 
 life before. ‘Shove him into the train, 
 Jump,” he said, “I’m getting out here. I 
 can’t stand it any longer. I hope you realise 
 you’ve ruined us,” he exclaimed, in a voice 
 husky with grief. But he hadn’t ruined 
 them. 
 
 Alas for the frailty of human nature and 
 the special weaknesses of an advertising age! 
 “Any sort of publicity,” as Winter, in his 
 decline, had learnt to say, “is better than 
 none.” The next day’s headlines, certainly, 
 described his conduct as extraordinary. But 
 it immensely extended his fame; his precise 
 words faded from memory; and thenceforth 
 he was in far greater demand, both as an 
 author and lecturer, than he had ever been 
 before. Within three weeks he himself 
 firmly believed that he had deliberately done 
 the whole thing as a stunt; he chuckled about 
 it as his friends declared that he was even 
 cleverer and more daring than they had 
 thought. Some time passed before the offi- 
 cials of the Mulcaster Literary Society recov- 
 ered from their shock; but eventually even 
 Mr. Maxwell forgave what he now thought 
 
The Lecture 183 
 
 to have been a joke, if a poor one; and when 
 a plumper Winter, after three years, re- 
 turned to the city in a large touring car, it 
 was to deliver a lecture (at a very large fee 
 in a theatre) on quite orthodox, wise and 
 whimsical lines. One sly allusion to his pre- 
 vious appearance and disappearance in Mul- 
 caster brought the house down. 
 
 Only the Lord Mayor suffered. He, poor 
 man, became such a butt that he had to re- 
 tire from public life. 
 
VII: THE CEMETERY 
 I 
 
 Te is possible to have a great reputation 
 in letters and yet make very little money. 
 It is possible to have a fairly respectable 
 reputation and make hardly any money at 
 all. This is especially so with poets. Lionel 
 Crewe was a poet. 
 
 From time to time he had published a 
 book in prose. None of these had been 
 novels. There was a dialogue on esthetics, 
 a small monograph on Michael Angelo, a 
 collection of essays on Life and Art, and 
 a volume of rather solid reprinted reviews. 
 These works had been treated with consider- 
 ation by all the reputable critics, and with 
 deference by those who will treat anything 
 with deference if they are sure at once that 
 it is intelligent and that it cannot possibly 
 be popular. They said that he had “a dis- 
 tinguished mind”’; his sober reflections gave 
 them an opportunity to talk about intuition, 
 abstract reality, Croce and Bergson; the nor- 
 mal reader, perusing these comments in a 
 slightly bewildered way, was given the im- 
 pression that he was hopelessly beyond the 
 
 184 
 
The Cemetery 185 
 
 pale. Yet even those who used Crewe’s 
 speculations as a smoke-screen always gave 
 their reviews some such heading as “The 
 Prose of a Poet.” Nobody else appeared 
 to read this prose at all, and whenever Crewe 
 found that some one had read one of these 
 books he sadly assumed that the gentleman 
 (for it was never a lady) had been the re- 
 cipient of a review copy. Sales were negli- 
 gible. The booksellers were slightly bitten 
 once, but not again; and no two of these 
 works were issued with the same publisher’s 
 imprint. 
 
 Even the poems had appeared with a va- 
 riety of publishers, and even these were far 
 from lucrative. Two of Crewe’s early books 
 had gone into a second edition, but no more. 
 Extension Lecturers who discussed Modern 
 Literature never talked about his books, and 
 there was no demand for them in the shops 
 just before Christmas. Habitual critics of 
 poetry usually mentioned him with respect 
 when they remembered him; though they 
 always kept review copies of his books, they 
 did not often refer to them. His first book 
 of lyrics had been received with some warmth 
 and then forgotten; when he followed it up 
 with a play called “Artaxerxes” everybody 
 said it ought to be staged; but when it was 
 staged, by a Society, for one performance, 
 nobody went to see it. He drove steadily on, 
 
186 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 
 
 now with a book of Elegies, now with a dra- 
 matic monologue in blank verse, now with a 
 narrative poem concerning Tristram and 
 Iseult or Paris and Helen. The corpus of 
 his works had become considerable; his 
 standing was respectable; his earnings, as we 
 have said, were negligible. Men conversing 
 about him would say that he was good but 
 somehow dull; they admired him when they 
 were reading him, but when they were not 
 reading him they didn’t want to read him. 
 There was a lack of fascination about him; 
 he wanted aerating; the acuter diagnosed a 
 disease which manifested itself by many 
 symptoms. He was at once genuine and 
 derivative; his expression was in a manner 
 his own, yet constantly reminiscent of the 
 great dead, and the more elderly dead, Mil- 
 ton, Dante, Goethe and Wordsworth, in par- 
 ticular; he lacked always the last touches of 
 fire, of accuracy and of music; and he was 
 oddly out of touch with his contemporaries. 
 His works might have been written thirty 
 years earlier; and it must be admitted that 
 if his contemporaries showed little interest 
 in him he displayed a similar indifference to 
 them. Not usually given to irony, Crewe 
 would sometimes smile to himself when he 
 saw that some new anthologist had once more 
 copied the same two familiar selections in- 
 stead of referring direct to his books; it did 
 
The Cemetery 187 
 
 not occur to him that anthologists automat- 
 ically assumed that two poems from Crewe 
 would be enough and knew that no one 
 would complain of the absence of more. For 
 Crewe cherished, in his quiet way, a very 
 good opinion of his own powers and per- 
 formance. | 
 
 Few, probably, suspected how good was 
 his opinion of himself. He did not boast 
 or, unless invited, even talk about his writ- 
 ings. Most of his acquaintances thought 
 him modest. He seldom entertained in his 
 own flat; his most frequent visitors were a 
 few old college friends who swore by him, 
 believed him to be a great poet (if unread- 
 able by persons so stupid as themselves) and 
 far better than all the fashionable scribblers 
 whose names filled people’s mouths. Never- 
 theless he “floated about” a good deal; he 
 never refused an invitation to attend a din- 
 ner or sit on a committee; and only the 
 acutest, whose acuteness was born of sympa- 
 thy, and whose sympathy bred silence also, 
 perceived that when, politely and tranquilly, 
 he took his place among his fellows, he did 
 so as one who felt himself entitled to be 
 invited anywhere, and was secretly justified 
 by the conviction that his rightful place was 
 with his peers at the head of any table. 
 They were right. Neglect annoyed him a 
 little. He had seldom read his juniors, ex- 
 
188 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 
 
 cept occasionally in magazines, since he was 
 twenty-five, and he was now fifty; he was 
 not jealous of them, but thought them very 
 trivial, and entirely lacking in both manage- 
 ment and magnificence; it certainly seemed 
 absurd that people should chatter about them 
 so much, and he could not conceal from him- 
 self that whenever he was able to say about 
 one of these, “I’m afraid I don’t know his 
 work very well,” it gave him a certain pleas- 
 ure. There were those, the simpler and less 
 cultivated of the persons he encountered, 
 who were impressed by this; there were 
 elderly circles where, although he was not 
 read, his name was vaguely known, but 
 which had not yet heard rumour of his 
 juniors, more celebrated in another world. 
 Yet it would be giving a false impression 
 to suggest that he brooded overmuch. He 
 was really devoted to his art and quite con- 
 vinced that he was the successor and equal 
 of all the great poets, and that more than 
 any other living man he would have been 
 the chosen companion and comprehending 
 friend of Coleridge, Arnold and Shakespeare. 
 When he thought of his career as a career 
 in a competition he was consoled by the cer- 
 tainty that he was in the end bound to win 
 it. His own age might have underrated him 
 at thirty and at forty; if he lived long 
 enough his work would survive the flashy 
 
The Cemetery 189 
 
 ephemerides; in any event he would be a 
 classic after his death. Meanwhile, having 
 an income, he could afford to wait; and it 
 was something that the wiser heads among 
 his own contemporaries had a regard for him. 
 He smiled now and then when he got a 
 letter from no matter whom, saying: “I may 
 be a fogy, but I find your work much more 
 satisfying and substantial than all this young 
 stuff.” The most devastating of the criti- 
 cisms made about him in an opposite sense, 
 he naturally never heard; they were confined 
 to conversation. 
 
 He was fifty—he had always had a fifty- 
 ish air about him—when .the first serious 
 turning-point of his life came; for it had not 
 seriously deranged him when the only woman 
 to whom he had ever proposed had refused 
 him. In brief, he lost all his money. An 
 oilfield was devastated by an army, a repub- 
 lic defaulted, a managing director absconded, 
 and Lionel Crewe, after half a life dedicated 
 to Art, had to get a job. It was a distaste- 
 ful business to look for one; it involved mak- 
 ing humble requests to rather coarse literary 
 friends upon whom he had liked privately, 
 always strictly privately, to look down, men 
 who always obtusely failed to. see that they 
 ought to treat him with a certain deference. 
 With whatever reluctance, he swallowed his 
 pride and set about it. There was nothing 
 
190 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 
 
 for it but something connected with litera- 
 ture; the spontaneous and quixotic offer of 
 an old friend, who had heard of his mis- 
 fortune, to teach him the work of an indigo 
 importer could not be accepted, and he be- 
 gan a progress through every office in Fleet 
 Street where he knew anybody. His recep- 
 tion was uniformly cordial until his mission 
 was known, when smiles and delicate com- 
 pliments gave way to head waggings, anxious 
 frowns, lip-pursings, and promises to “look 
 out for something.” A few novels to review 
 was all that his trip brought him, and he 
 was wondering whether to advertise for a 
 secretaryship, when he happened to meet a 
 man, a politico-literary peer in point of fact, 
 in the reading-room of the club. Accident 
 brought out his circumstances; an introduc- 
 tion was offered and gratefully accepted; and 
 after lunch next day Crewe went off again 
 in good hopes of getting something out of 
 the editor of The Morning Sun, as staid, 
 solid and influential a daily newspaper as 
 any in England. He was shown up into a 
 panelled room where a youngish man with 
 a bald forehead and pince-nez sat, holding 
 the torn-open note in his hand. It was the 
 celebrated Mr. J. Willis Wills, a Power in 
 the Land. 
 
 As Mr. Wills was not inhuman the inter- 
 view was not without its embarrassment for 
 
The Cemetery — 191 
 
 him. It is not pleasant to have a proud, 
 cultivated and accomplished gentleman suing 
 one, with whatever air of assumed coolness, 
 for a job of almost any sort. Mr. Wills did 
 not display his embarrassment and Lionel 
 Crewe did not perceive it. Mr. Wills was, 
 in fact, of the two far the more percipient. 
 It did not, for example, take him long to 
 decide, in spite of Crewe’s assertion that he 
 was willing to do anything, that he was 
 actually qualified to do virtually nothing. 
 “Not politics, I suppose?” asked Mr. Wills. 
 “No, of course not politics,” replied Crewe. 
 Mr. Wills’s thoughts scurried round like 
 eager birds looking for an opening in a cage. 
 The drama, music, the pictures: these were 
 all covered and one couldn’t sack a promis- 
 ing subordinate to oblige a friend’s friend. 
 Crewe was patently (he could not hoodwink 
 himself) not the man for a special reporter; 
 he had no office training which would enable 
 him to devil for the working staff. How- 
 ever, Charity will find out the way. Mr. 
 Wills had an idea. He smiled brightly and 
 firmly slapped an open palm on his desk: 
 “T’ve got it,” he said, “there’s the Ceme- 
 tery. There’s a lot to be done there and we 
 can keep you busy for a long time.” He 
 added, remembering with whom he was deal- 
 ing, “If you’d consent to do that, we’d really 
 be most exceedingly grateful.” 
 
192 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 
 
 II 
 
 The cemetery, graveyard, mausoleum, cat- 
 acomb or vault in a newspaper office is a 
 department whose existence might be de- 
 duced more widely than it is. Eminent men 
 seldom give three days’ clear notice of their 
 impending deaths; not only that, but they 
 have a habit of dying at the most incon- 
 venient hours from the Fleet Street point 
 of view. They will drop dead from heart 
 disease at eleven o’clock on a Sunday night; 
 or their sudden disappearance in mid-Atlan- 
 tic will be reported just when all competent 
 hands are busy coping with a political crisis. 
 Some of them complicate matters still fur- 
 ther by giving scarcely any particulars about 
 their lives and performances in the handy 
 reference books. Nevertheless, choose they 
 their moments never so awkwardly, they can- 
 not outmanceuvre the vigilant hawks of the 
 Press. They may die when they will: the 
 next editions will contain full summaries 
 of their careers, cool and considered estimates 
 of their wisdom and stature. The public, 
 sleek tyrant, takes what it gets as a matter 
 of course. Cesar clad in purple, certainly 
 did not bother as to who fished the murex 
 up; if he wanted nightingales’ tongues all 
 the year round, he got them; he would have 
 been annoyed if they were not there. The 
 
The Cemetery 193 
 
 gross and unwondering Israelites took manna 
 in the wilderness as a matter of course, and 
 asked no questions about water from the 
 rock: that was Moses’s job, and what on 
 earth was he good for if he could not do 
 that? The parallel need not be carried far- 
 ther; but the miracles of the press need a 
 certain amount of preparation. Those obit- 
 uaries, of three inches or three columns, 
 which so promptly and comprehensively re- 
 cite the birth and achievements of the dead, 
 are not composed whilst the printer stands 
 waiting. ‘Those lists of dates and publica- 
 tions, speeches and appointments, those copi- 
 ous summaries of the upward struggles of 
 Prime Ministers and artists, Lunacy Com- 
 missioners and Artillery Colonels, are not 
 the spontaneous effusions of omniscience. 
 They are written in advance, kept ready in 
 galley proof, so that the printer can get to 
 work as soon as the fatal news comes in. 
 And naturally, since men often survive their 
 first fame for many years, they are from 
 time to time brought up to date. 
 
 That was the task to which Lionel Crewe 
 was consigned. He was, Mr. Wills saw 
 suddenly, obviously a safe man, as well as 
 an educated man. “You will find them all,” 
 he said, “in pigeon-holes arranged alphabeti- 
 cally. You need not worry about the polli- 
 ticians, bishops and so on; confine yourself 
 
194 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 
 
 to the literary men, the painters (if you 
 feel equal to them) and the scholars. Vm 
 afraid some of them are very old. Give 
 yourself a free hand. Where you feel in- 
 clined, write a whole new notice. See to it 
 that a man’s obituary is suitably enlarged 
 where he has become much more important 
 since he was last attended to. Where 
 you can introduce something from personal 
 knowledge, do.” 
 
 “I think,” said Crewe, “I know the sort 
 of thing.” 
 
 “Yes, of course you do. You’ve probably 
 read thousands of them. My assistant, Mr. 
 Hughes, will introduce you to the compos- 
 ing-room, and if you find yourself in any 
 difficulty he’ll be able to put you right. You 
 might just, as a matter of form, show him 
 your first specimen, but I’m sure it will be 
 all right.” 
 
 With the rest of that conversation we need 
 not detain ourselves. The first example, the 
 subject of which was dictated by Hughes, 
 was thoroughly satisfactory. Mr. Hughes 
 was a cheery journalist with a respect for 
 men of letters, and Crewe warmed to his 
 kindness. Crewe’s corrections and additions 
 to the yellow strip of type that was given 
 to him were so extensive that Mr. Hughes 
 deemed it necessary to set the whole thing 
 over again and get a clean proof for filing. 
 
The Cemetery 195 
 
 “It saves time later,” he explained; “speeds 
 up the setting and gives us the measurement 
 in advance. Slight corrections don’t, of 
 course, matter. Well, you will be all right 
 here now, won’t you? Just get on with it 
 as you think fit. Ring if you are out of 
 paper or the fire wants making up; and let 
 Mr. Donkin have any stuff you want set. 
 They'll probably come up for three or four 
 small notices in the course of the day; if 
 you're still here you might as well just have 
 a look at them to see that they’re all right. 
 But these devils nearly always insist on dying 
 just as we’re going to press.” 
 He banged the door and disappeared. 
 
 III 
 
 It was a high room and quiet. The sun 
 came in over the neighbouring roofs. Crewe 
 sat down, stood up irresolutely, and sat down 
 again, turning his chair to face the long wall, 
 which, from window to door, and from ceil- 
 ing to floor, was covered with wooden 
 drawers, bearing lettered labels, varying in 
 antiquity. There suddenly came over him a 
 feeling of awe as he gazed at that great 
 flat honeycomb of the predestinate dead. 
 He wondered whether those rosy-cheeked 
 men, riding now, or walking the streets, 
 haranguing crowds or suavely conversing in 
 
196 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 
 
 offices, would turn pale if they could visual- 
 ise this place where they were all already 
 in the past tense. The sample which he had 
 just revised—the corpse was a vociferous 
 elderly critic, probably taking the chair at 
 a public dinner that very night—had begun 
 with: “It is with very great regret that we 
 record the death of’; it was full of chilling 
 preterites and pluperfects; and it ended with 
 a sentence beginning ““The deceased gentle- 
 man was twice married.” Here, embraced 
 within a few cubic feet, was the memento 
 mori for thousands; a spectacle which, by 
 telescoping history, reduced all human effort 
 and ambition to nullity. Ten years of striv- 
 ing and plotting, desperate travelling and 
 talking, might pass; or twenty years; but 
 then, with absolute certainty, out would 
 come the drawer, the folder, the long slip, 
 and what was determined would be done. 
 These notices took upon themselves the 
 similitude of vague vigilant animals waiting 
 unseen in their holes, motionless and sleep- 
 less, for the moment to pounce where there 
 was never defence. Beyond the individuals, 
 he reflected, here was the Age itself, already 
 dead and gone, beaten down and dismissed ; 
 then he smiled ironically, as he reflected that 
 it would indulge in one slight reprisal on 
 its successor by perpetuating, in its self-writ- 
 ten epitaphs, its own complacencies and its 
 
The Cemetery 197 
 
 own commonplaces. ‘“‘Ab-Ad,” “‘Ock-Oll’: 
 what a magazine! So Crewe’s thoughts 
 wandered whilst the dust specks wandered 
 in the mild sun-rays; then he pulled him- 
 self together, reminded himself that he had 
 a living to earn, and resolved to begin 
 looking for his confréres under letter “A.” 
 He pulled out the first drawer, which was 
 high up, got it down, flapped up a num- 
 ber of blue cardboard jackets, opened one 
 and saw a proof and some cuttings, and 
 then was struck by an idea. He felt a little 
 sickness in the pit of his stomach and then 
 he felt himself blush. He recoiled and stood 
 still, his eye fixed on a drawer in the second 
 row down. It was labelled ‘“By-Cru” and 
 it stood out before his gaze as though it 
 alone were in focus and all the rest in a mist. 
 
 “By.” “Bywater” perhaps. “Cru,” Cru- 
 den; Cruden’s “Concordance” ; possibly a de- 
 scendant in the army. And in between 
 them, with great and small, long and short, 
 the one which mattered more than all the 
 rest put together. There, somewhere, was 
 the Sun’s verdict on Lionel Crewe, stowed 
 away, forgotten, until the day when it also 
 should be needed. A proof of type like the 
 rest, cold, fixed, retrospective, checking off 
 in brief statements all that his dreams had 
 meant to him, the evidence of an artist sand- 
 wiched, possibly, between the obituaries of 
 
198 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 
 
 two wholesale grocers. The blood went to 
 his head, and his heart beat rapidly. He 
 simply must have a look at it. Attempting 
 an air of unconcern—for men do not reserve 
 all their histrionics for company—he pulled 
 out the drawer and carried it to the table. 
 
 For a minute he could not find what he 
 was seeking. The thought crossed his mind 
 that perhaps the whole truth was that his 
 contemporaries did not really suppose him 
 worth recording at all; but, come, this was 
 too much, this was impossible! He turned 
 them over again and came to a thin folder 
 which he had missed, outside which was writ- 
 ten “Creswell, Crether, Crew, Crewe.” His 
 hands trembled as he opened it. He noticed 
 that Admiral Crether, of whom he had never 
 heard, had two long galleys to himself, and 
 he could not resist, already, a novel pang 
 of jealousy and a protesting snort. Was he 
 here? Yes, here he was. One strip; his 
 name at the top; about five inches of type. 
 A date at the end was four years past. 
 
 Walking about the room, he read it 
 at great speed. As he read, his step quick- 
 ened and his mouth tightened. He looked 
 through it again, more slowly, and then laid 
 it on the table. “It’s scandalous,” he cried, 
 “it’s abominable.” 
 
 “It’s so utterly stupid and ignorant,” he 
 cried, and paused again. 
 
The Cemetery 199 
 
 “T can’t expect every one to agree, but it’s 
 patently absurd. It’s so damned unjust,” 
 he wailed. You could not hope for fine 
 criticism in an obituary written by some odd 
 hack turned on to the job, but the Suz really 
 was expected to maintain a certain standard. 
 It had a responsibility towards itself and its 
 readers, and its readers had faith in it. The 
 other obituaries he had glanced at had, on 
 the whole, been sound and fair; the one he 
 had brought up to date had been a really 
 creditable and balanced criticism of a man 
 who had enjoyed more reputation than he 
 deserved. ‘Just like my luck,” muttered 
 Crewe, who was always frank with himself 
 about his luck, though he had never specifi- 
 cally complained to others. And he visual- 
 ised all respectable England reading this 
 coarse and careless rubbish at its breakfast 
 tables, and confirmed for life in its habit of 
 neglecting and underestimating the works of 
 Lionel Crewe, the solidest, most durable poet 
 of his time. Then, with the ground failing 
 beneath his feet, he had the horrid thought 
 that, after all, things need not always come 
 right, even in the end. He had always been 
 supported by the consoling conviction that 
 posterity would rectify the wrongs of the 
 present. He might be outshone by a thou- 
 sand charlatans now, but his death would be 
 a signal for a re-estimate; he would be in 
 
200 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 
 
 the Pantheon as long as civilisation lasted. 
 As he looked at the dreadful dismissal of 
 the late Mr. Crewe even this hope wavered. 
 Surely this, in so authoritative a quarter, 
 might damp down all curiosity about him, 
 warn off all investigators: then time might 
 pass and he might be relegated for ever to the 
 limbo where even Herrick, who lived in an 
 age of few poets, had once been hidden for 
 over. a: century. It was cruel! | Jt was 
 beastly! It was not to be borne! ‘Tastes 
 might differ, but the grotesque was the gro- 
 tesque. These calculated damnings with 
 faint praise burnt word for word into his 
 mind. He could shut his eyes to see them. 
 in bright letters: “Crewe’s thought always 
 had a certain kind of distinction and his lan- 
 guage a certain kind of dignity. . . . His 
 style was distinctly derivative. ... He 
 showed little originality in his choice of sub- 
 jects. . . . He was out of touch with the 
 main movements in contemporary literature ; 
 his imagery was on the conventional side, his 
 psychology can only be described as distinctly 
 on the beaten track, and there was a savour 
 of academic eloquence about his writing. 
 . . . His verse was not unmusical, but it 
 was not conspicuously musical; at moments 
 he seemed to glimpse heights which he never 
 achieved. . . . It might have been better for 
 him if he had never read Milton and Words- 
 
The Cemetery 201 
 
 worth. . . . There was perhaps a consider- 
 able poet buried in him, but something— 
 ‘maybe a lack of direct contact with life as 
 men live it—seemed to prevent its disinter- 
 ment. . . . He will be remembered, if he 
 is remembered at all, as a gifted man who 
 never failed in his regard for the great tradi- 
 tions of letters, and a poet who in one or 
 two lyrics showed what, in happier circum- 
 stances, he might have achieved. .. . Of 
 his prose works, which included a good deal 
 of the best and most useful kind of literary 
 journalism, the most conspicuous is perhaps 
 the monograph on Michael Angelo, which 
 resumes very succinctly the main facts of 
 the great painter’s life, character and influ- 
 ence and which well deserves to be re- 
 PLintedin vey 
 
 How utterly wretched! ‘This, as a de- 
 scription of a life of devoted service to let- 
 ters! Crewe paced and paced the room and 
 then, with a gesture of despair, took up his 
 hat and went out to lunch. As an after- 
 thought he carried the offensive proof with 
 him; he set it before him at the luncheon 
 table and mused. There were additions to 
 it in a neat small hand; it struck him, after 
 some contemplation, that the hand was one 
 which he could imitate. 
 
 The thought was no sooner entertained 
 than repelled in horror. ‘“Forger,’’ cried an 
 
202 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 
 
 inner voice, “how could you think of such 
 a thing!” Very depressed, he abandoned the 
 idea, went back to his work, and carried on. 
 Yet, when he left the office, and again next 
 morning, the temptation recurred insistently. 
 “You can do nobody any harm,” urged an- 
 other inner voice, ‘and you will be doing a 
 service to the cause of truth.” The pressure 
 was never intermitted and at last, after a 
 week, he yielded. 
 
 Almost without intending it, he began by 
 striking out a few words, an operation the 
 performance of which did not need any sim- 
 ulation at all. “His thought had always a 
 certain kind of distinction and his language 
 a certain kind of dignity.”” What was the 
 meaning of that grudging qualification? how 
 could it be justified? why should the Sun 
 make a fool of itself by printing anything 
 so stupid? He hesitated; then he drew out 
 his fountain pen in order to strike out ‘a 
 certain kind of” in two places. Surely, he 
 thought, there was nothing wrong in that; 
 he was merely doing his duty to this obituary 
 as he had been instructed to do it to them 
 all. He gazed; he paused; he acted. 
 
 IV 
 
 Each day for several weeks, in the midst 
 of a conscientious application to his regular 
 
The Cemetery 203 
 
 labours, Crewe took down the file which con- 
 tained his own little slip, reconsidered it, and 
 amended it in the interests of mere truth. 
 A “scarcely” went, an “almost” went, a 
 “rather” went, and various qualifications 
 such as “if he is remembered at all.” For 
 a time he confined himself to simple exci- 
 sions; but when he had cut out all that he 
 was inclined to cut out, the notice, shorter 
 even than it was to begin with, was still very 
 unsatisfactory. He was, both instinctively 
 and deliberately, a man of great intellectual 
 integrity. He had no desire to cheat or get 
 more than his due; he thought as much (he 
 told himself) about the prestige and respon- 
 sibility of the Suz as he did about his own 
 reputation. It was really a wrong thing that 
 what was, in such matters and on such occa- 
 sions, the highest national authority, inspir- 
 ing much of the metropolitan and virtually 
 all the provincial and colonial press, should 
 provide an inaccurate and incompetent rec- 
 ord. Patently, in his own case as much as 
 in others, it was his duty as a man whom the 
 Sun trusted as an expert, to improve this 
 ridiculous screed and bring it nearer the plain 
 facts. Some improvements were quite ob- 
 vious and very few days had passed before 
 he made them. He hesitated slightly before 
 his first employment of the false handwrit- 
 ing; but he was soon persuaded that the end 
 
204 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 
 
 justified the means, since the end was the 
 mere avoidance, by eschewing his own hand, 
 of a very unlikely discussion originating one 
 could hardly guess where, but certainly in 
 some quarter not properly equipped for a lit- 
 erary controversy. ‘“There was a savour of 
 academic eloquence about his writing!” 
 Hang it all, this showed a plain misappre- 
 hension of indisputable facts! Had he not 
 always quite deliberately aimed at that lofti- 
 ness of expression which he believed to be 
 the proper vesture of the Muse? Had he 
 not consciously stood as an opponent of the 
 modern tendency towards a flat conversa- 
 tionalism in movement and vocabulary? 
 Had he not always been ready with clear- 
 cut grounds even for the employment of a 
 certain measure of archaism? ‘This obituary 
 had obviously been written by some unthink- 
 ing parrot of aman who had merely repeated 
 what he had heard from parties on whom 
 Crewe had always frowned and who were, 
 as he thought, responsible for the degenera- 
 tion and disintegration of English literature. 
 He would leave the truth, he decided, but 
 place it in its proper aspect. He deleted 
 that sentence about academic eloquence and 
 substituted: “he maintained, both in his the- 
 ory and in his practice, that most modern 
 writers have made a fatal mistake in throw- 
 ing overboard half the resonance of the great 
 
The Cemetery 205 
 
 tongue which they have inherited, and in his 
 longer works, he deliberately, and almost 
 alone in his generation, endeavoured, as the 
 greatest of our poets endeavoured. before 
 him, to clothe high thoughts in high lan- 
 guage. He did not, in fact, disdain organ 
 music.” The same fact was stated; no new 
 judgment was expressed; the thing was 
 merely put accurately. Similar modifica- 
 tions he introduced into the reference to his 
 choice of subjects. Why this assumption 
 that the greatest subjects in the world had 
 been exhausted? Had not Milton thought 
 of reviving the Arthurian legends, had not 
 the nineteenth century revived them? Why 
 should Swinburne write the hundredth Tris- 
 tram poem and he not the hundred-and-first ? 
 Why this idiotic assumption that the immor- 
 tal myth of Helen of Troy could not be re- 
 fertilised by the thought and feeling of each 
 successive generation ? 
 
 Each day for several weeks he altered here 
 a little and there a little, in minute writing 
 on the ample margins. He brought almost 
 every sentence of this critical summary into 
 a closer relation with indisputable truth; 
 then it occurred to him that not a single 
 point that had been made had been illus- 
 trated by quotation. It was clear that, from 
 any point of view, obituary criticism, like 
 any other criticism, must be more informa- 
 
206 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 
 
 tive, interesting and convincing, if the points 
 were adequately illustrated. Crewe knew 
 his own poems by heart, and he was at no 
 loss for admirable quotations—how well 
 they looked out of their contexts, he could 
 not help thinking—to display all the princi- 
 pal characteristics of his art. He quoted a 
 peroration on which he had always prided 
 himself; a description of one of his classical 
 heroines; a passage which showed (for this, 
 surely, had to be demonstrated too) that, 
 when there was fitting occasion, he could 
 be colloquially simple with the best of them; 
 and a whole short lyric which exhibited an 
 especially neglected branch of his activity. 
 This done (not, it must be realised, without 
 long delays, fresh considerations, new and 
 carefully weighed out decisions) he added 
 two representative quotations from his philo- 
 sophic pieces, necessary to show his creative 
 work in its right relief. Now and again he 
 would add also some fact which had been 
 omitted; there were particulars as to his 
 friendships; there were a few maxims on 
 which he had always prided himself and 
 which he believed to be salutary. All this, 
 he was persuaded, was not so much dictated 
 by egotistic motives as by the assurance that 
 the cause in which he believed stood in need 
 of propaganda. Was it not resonable that, 
 
The Cemetery 207 
 
 finally, he should round off the incomplete 
 statement by references to what were evi- 
 dently the tenets of one or two of his poetic 
 contemporaries, who had a different theory 
 of expression ; references that were, of course, 
 not hostile, but merely by way of definition. 
 
 Three months had passed since he had be- 
 gun work in the Cemetery. He had earned 
 his keep, he flattered himself; all the literary 
 biographies in those rows of berths were now 
 polished and up to date; and his own was 
 now as good as the others. It was not, of 
 course, either as full or as laudatory as it 
 would have been had another person, famil- 
 iar with his works, written it. But at least 
 bare justice had been done, and, though it 
 was difficult to calculate the precise gross 
 length of the scores of additions which now 
 covered the blank yellow stretch of un- 
 printed galley, the five inches had probably 
 been expanded into a full column, a column 
 worthy of three rows of headlines. He read 
 it through for the last time one summer day, 
 just before lunch, and replaced it in its nook 
 determined not again to disturb it. Full of 
 the subject he left his room and the build- 
 ing, and walked down to Blackfriars Bridge, 
 where he automatically leant upon the para- 
 pet of the Embankment and looked at the 
 swirling waters of high tide. He felt 
 
208 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 
 
 strangely detached from life; void of all im- 
 pulse towards further original creation ; look- 
 ing forward to nothing. 
 
 Suddenly a strange idea took possession of 
 him. He had prepared for his death: why 
 not die? Thirty years of jealousies and re- 
 sentments came to a head in him. ‘These 
 people had ignored and deprecated him all 
 these years, chasing after every sort of will- 
 o’-the-wisp whilst they were blind to the ra- 
 diance of his own steady lamp. Why not 
 teach them a lesson? Why not show them 
 that they had fatuously ignored a Master 
 living amongst them? Once that Sun obit- 
 uary had appeared none of them would ever 
 dare to be half-hearted again about him; they 
 would know and they would have to re- 
 orientate themselves. 
 
 There was the water. He could not swim, 
 and he had the will to sink. It was only 
 one movement over the stones and he would 
 fall and drown. He could, if he liked, leave 
 a message on the bank; but that was hardly 
 necessary. Just that little action, and to- 
 morrow’s Szn would promulgate the fact of 
 his eminence, the names of all his books, 
 the signal grandeur of his finest passages, 
 to every educated household in the country. 
 Yes; this was the natural sequel to his prep- 
 arations, the final polish of his justifiable 
 revenge. He placed a hand upon the para- 
 
The Cemetery 209 
 
 pet and prepared to scramble over to his 
 death. 
 
 At this moment he heard voices, quite close 
 to him. A young man and a young woman 
 had come into the same bay, and were talk- 
 ing to each other affectionately but in- 
 telligently. “Look at the sun on the red 
 sails of those barges,” the girl suddenly 
 said; “isn’t it lovely!” Crewe involuntarily 
 looked at the sunlight, which he had not 
 noticed all day, fostering the rich red-brown 
 of the sails; and a pang shot through his 
 heart. Other similar passages followed, 
 making a similar impression on him, and 
 then, strikingly if unoriginally, to the evi- 
 dent admiration of her companion, the girl 
 broke out with, “Well, we may be hard up, 
 but it’s good to be alive!” 
 
 The phrase was not new to Lionel Crewe. 
 But somehow he had never properly taken 
 it in before. He was on the verge of suicide 
 and it assumed a new force. Good to be 
 alive; yes, it was good to be alive! There 
 was the sun, there were the barges; there 
 were the stone walls and the water poppling 
 past them, there were the people and the 
 trams, the farther shore and the sky. They 
 all shone with beauty and mystery, and as, 
 with palpitating heart, he drank the spec- 
 tacle in, his thought began ranging the whole 
 universe of his experience. Life; how multi- 
 
210 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 
 
 tudinous and how rich it was! His own 
 hand, lying on the stone, was a wonder. 
 Everything he had ever seen was a wonder. 
 There were all the continents and cities, 
 rivers and forests; all the busy millions of 
 men in their fields and factories; all the seas 
 and their ships, all the deserts and their 
 secrets. There was day with its radiance 
 and night with its softness and stars; there 
 were the seasons: spring, with its burst of 
 green buds from the black trees, summer 
 and its succession of the insects and flowers, 
 autumn and its harvest moon and _leaf- 
 strewn pools, winter and its miraculous 
 frosts. Beyond all these symbols, to be con- 
 templated in Life alone, was the mystery 
 of eternity, of the roots from which sprang 
 every planet and every blossom and every 
 human soul. 
 
 Lionel Crewe was excited as he had never 
 been excited before. He reached out to 
 grasp all things, and to mould them all to 
 his song. A new neighbour broke his thought 
 and he returned to earth to remember his 
 preposterous resolve. He had been going 
 to his death; and why? Simply for fame, 
 a fame which he would not see, and a fame 
 which must at best be fleeting in comparison 
 with the life of the earth, itself a thing of 
 no duration. In a hundred years all his 
 critics, rivals and friends would be dead; 
 
The Cemetery 211 
 
 some, by a minority, would still be remem- 
 bered. In three hundred years that com- 
 pany, with or without his own name, would 
 be much sparser. In a thousand years? 
 Well, but in ten thousand? The very fame 
 of Homer, he saw, would dwindle and die in 
 a geological age; what did it matter, whether 
 long or short? He was bothering, he now 
 knew, over something that did not matter, 
 employing complicated stratagems to entrap 
 something that would vanish when it was 
 caught. “God,” he muttered to himself, 
 “what a fool I have been!” With a new 
 wisdom in his eyes and a half smile on his 
 lips he turned from the wall and walked 
 northward. 
 
 He went into a public house, had a glass 
 of beer and a sandwich, and hurried back 
 to the Sun office. The nearer he approached 
 it the faster he went; and, once inside the 
 building, he began leaping up the stairs three 
 at a time. Turning the first corner he 
 bumped violently into somebody, nearly 
 knocking him over. It was Mr. Hughes, as 
 cheerful as ever. 
 
 “Hallo,” said Mr. Hughes, “forgotten 
 something ?” 
 
 “No,” cried Crewe, racing past him with 
 an apology, “remembered something.” 
 
 Up four flights he went, along the corri- 
 dor, round the corner, and into his familiar - 
 
212 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 
 
 headquarters. The very room seemed to 
 greet him with a new friendliness, as though 
 knowing that he had thrown off the burdens 
 both of life and of his subterfuge. He 
 slapped down his hat, flung off his coat, 
 pulled down the familiar dossier, plucked 
 out the much-tinkered obituary, and set to 
 work with a gusto such as he had never be- 
 fore known. His first action was to shear 
 off the whole bottom of the proof with the 
 scissors; this removed at one stroke nine- 
 tenths of his elaborate additions. Next he 
 blocked out every other addition he had 
 made; and finally he set himself to reduce 
 the notice to the shortest reasonable dimen- 
 sions. Having done this he was still not 
 satisfied. This, after all, was only a game. 
 He was full of poetry now; it sang in 
 his head, superb stuff with unprecedented 
 thythms; he felt the necessity of saying, for 
 the sheer sake of saying, what he thought 
 of his previous aims and. achievements. 
 “Rather an academic artificer than a poet,” 
 he wrote in, still employing the calligraphy 
 of his old deceit. “Mr. Crewe’s work was 
 all bred out of books,”? he wrote; and ‘“‘con- 
 coction not inspiration is the word that oc- 
 curs to one.’ A few adjectives such as 
 “pompous,” “dull” and “‘wooden”’ were dis- 
 creetly sprinkled about, and he looked at the 
 completed work with a smile of satisfaction. 
 
The Cemetery LAG 
 
 The first Lionel Crewe had now been de- 
 scribed as he deserved. 
 
 He had finished for the day. He strode 
 out. He was going to begin a new career 
 forthwith; the hidden springs of his nature 
 had been unsealed and he was not going to 
 care a dump what any one, living or un- 
 born, would say about him. He returned 
 to his lodgings to enjoy the prospect: un- 
 happily we shall never know what he would 
 have made of it, for he died that evening 
 of heart failure. 
 
 The news reached the Szn offices late, 
 through a Press Agency. The person in 
 charge was an underling; he sent a menial 
 upstairs for Lionel Crewe’s obituary, glanced 
 at it, and sent it down to the printer. Next 
 morning it appeared, and the small world 
 that bothered about such things was pro- 
 foundly shocked. Crewe had some genuine 
 admirers, not of the first order of percipi- 
 ence; there were many other people who 
 respected him without admiring him; there 
 was a third class of people who had never 
 read a line he had written but were quite 
 prepared to join in any campaign on behalf 
 of the maltreated Muses against the pachy- 
 dermatous Philistines. The first section 
 started the row; the other two sections will- 
 ingly enough joined in. A great writer, they 
 said, had been treated unpardonably by a 
 
214 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 
 
 great newspaper; the only possible reply was 
 a mass meeting of sympathisers. The meet- 
 ing was held; a Crewe Society was formed; 
 various members engaged themselves to write 
 at length, in all the best quarters, on the 
 signal merits of Crewe’s work; and, in five 
 minutes, it was arranged that a memorial 
 edition should be published, and that the 
 Dean of Westminster would be asked to ad- 
 mit a tablet into the Poets’ Corner in the 
 Abbey. This request, owing to lack of space 
 and the blind faith that the Dean could not 
 help reposing on the edicts of the Sun, was 
 refused ; the subscriptions were diverted to a 
 statue in a Bayswater Square. The din made 
 was so great that the general public bought 
 Crewe’s works in large numbers, and he was 
 established, for at least a century, as part 
 of the canon of English literature. 
 
VIII: THE PAINFUL DILEMMA 
 I 
 
 | Pe obeying of conscience, even for a 
 man with the best of intentions and no 
 thought for self, is not always an easy mat- 
 ter. Conscience is often a Cerberus, a 
 double-headed hound with two fierce throats 
 yelping “‘dictates,”’ and two ravening maws 
 gaping in rivalry for the single and indivisi- 
 ble bone of “placation.” A man can only 
 do his best. He must often make his choice 
 on the spur of the moment, and yet he must 
 risk reproach for not choosing otherwise. 
 These embarrassments, common to the life 
 of all men who control their actions and 
 censor their motives, come in certain peculiar 
 forms to the arbiters of the arts. Ought an 
 editor to print a barely tolerable article be- 
 cause he knows its author to be a struggling 
 hero who supports a wife, a mother, a 
 mother-in-law and five children? Ought he 
 to accept weak verses from a rich man be- 
 cause he hopes to persuade the rich man to 
 spend a large amount of money on scholar- 
 ships or the succour of poor artists? Ought 
 a critic to overpraise a writer because he has 
 been underpraised By others or because a 
 2 
 
216 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 
 
 little favourable notice may enable him, a 
 deserving human, to earn his next year’s 
 meals? How far should the morals of an 
 able work influence the critic’s decision to 
 notice or not to notice it, since all notice 
 must attract attention to it? How far isa 
 critic entitled, out of a consideration for a 
 friend’s feelings, to suppress his conviction 
 that that friend’s vogue as an artist is ut- 
 terly unjustified and that the public’s eyes 
 should be opened to the fact that they have 
 been worshipping a sham whilst ignoring 
 better men? Such questions, in the form 
 of dilemmas, present themselves daily. It is 
 all very well for you, bold Reader, to an- 
 swer them all with a loud “No,” “Yes,” or 
 “Not at all.” But they are never quite so 
 simple as they appear here. 
 
 II 
 
 It was a winter’s evening. "Two men were 
 in a Chelsea library-drawing-room after an 
 early supper. Ronald Cameron, young, fair, 
 tall, good-looking, was standing in evening 
 dress. His host, John Fulford, darker and 
 older, sat by a table covered with books. 
 These men were two of the most reputable 
 and influential critics in London, Fulford 
 of books, Cameron of the drama; they were 
 waiting for Fulford’s wife. 
 
The Painful Dilemma DAW 
 
 “It’s a filthy night outside,’ said Cam- 
 eron, “I don’t like leaving this fire. I hope 
 Dolly will think the theatre worth it.” 
 
 “Oh, she’s sure to enjoy it. Id rather 
 you than I though, to-night,” replied Ful- 
 ford. 
 
 “What shall you do?’ 
 
 “T shall probably work. I’ve a lot of re- 
 views to do. There’s this wretched novel of 
 poor old Hoffman’s. I wish to the Lord I 
 could say something good of it. I saw him 
 last week. He’s such a harmless creature 
 and he looked at me with the pleading eyes 
 of a dog. He simply lives for his Art and 
 he’s no use at it. I shall have another look 
 at it, but it’s just as mediocre as the rest. 
 I shan’t be able to mention it at all.” 
 
 Cameron lit a cigarette and laughed. “It’s 
 a pity,” he said, “that so many nice men 
 write bad books.” 
 
 “Yes,” said Fulford, rising as his wife en- 
 tered, ‘and that so many swine write good 
 ones. Well, good-bye both of you; I hope 
 you will enjoy yourselves. You'll find me 
 here when you come back.” 
 
 “T trust so,” said Dolly, laughing; and off 
 they went. 
 
 Fulford got himself a drink, settled in his 
 chair, and began work. That is to say he 
 took up the top book from the pile by the 
 reading lamp, lit a cigarette, laid the book 
 
218 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 
 
 on his knees, and gazed into the fire. He 
 had, they said, an interesting face: it was 
 aquiline and worn by forty-five years of in- 
 tense living. His long legs stretched out to 
 the fender; now and then he sipped at his 
 glass or felt in the box for another cigarette; 
 now and then he gently swept back a lock 
 of thick dark hair from his forehead. At 
 moments he frowned, at moments bit his 
 under lip or gently cursed. For he was 
 thinking of Alexander Hoffman, pitying 
 him, longing to do something for him, at 
 a loss to discover how. He had known this 
 man for ten years; ever since the aspirant 
 after immortal laurels had thrown up his 
 clerkship, at twenty-three, and entered into 
 that literary fray for which he was so singu- 
 larly unfitted. He had first come to Fulford 
 at the Sentinel office with an unnecessary 
 introduction given with facile benevolence 
 by another literary editor who had merely 
 wished to fob him off—for thus do some 
 novices tramp the full circle of the editorial 
 rooms, hope diminishing with each new kind 
 offer. Hoffman’s face was already prema- 
 turely aged, his eyes bright in their deep 
 hollows, lines running from the base of his 
 large nose to the sides of his sensitive mouth, 
 his curly hair even then preparing to retreat 
 at the temples. In ten years, Fulford real- 
 ised with a pang, ten years of frustration 
 
The Painful Dilemma 219 
 
 and underfeeding, that quite young man had 
 grown grey. He remembered that first con- 
 versation, the anxious persistence of that 
 even gentle voice with its marked cockney 
 accent. Hoffman was not so much (though 
 he had to live) asking for work as for rec- 
 ognition of the genius in his unpublished 
 manuscripts; it had gradually dawned on 
 Fulford that he united in unique combina- 
 tion excessive personal shyness and humility 
 with impenetrable confidence in his powers 
 as an artist. Fulford led him on to talk, 
 smiled assent convincingly, was more and 
 more taken and touched as the little man 
 poured out his history and his ambitions. 
 Hoffman talked at large about the changing 
 scope of the novel, the possibilities of psy- 
 chology, his own determination to explore 
 new territories of technique. His eyes shone, 
 his smile grew intensely eager, whenever his 
 suggestions seemed to find a response. And 
 (Fulford remembered) it was evident, for 
 all his knowledge, enthusiasm, independence, 
 fierce determination to hold the world at 
 attention, that he lacked everything which 
 might make him what he wished to be. His 
 ideas were half-baked and odd, whilst his 
 expression was commonplace in detail and 
 contorted at large; he had no sense of hu- 
 mour and obviously no power of instinctively 
 understanding other human beings. He was 
 
220 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 
 
 not perceptive, not subtle; he had no agility 
 of mind, only a great obstinacy of convic- 
 tion; he could talk but was too absorbed in 
 his own notions to listen; he had no feeling 
 for the shades of words; there was a fire 
 within him, but it was not the divine fire. 
 Yet Fulford had been attracted. He had 
 liked him, been drawn to him, wanted to 
 help him, genuinely hoped that he should 
 succeed somehow, that he should find things 
 more comfortable, and taste some kind, any 
 kind, of success. ‘Then the little man sud- 
 denly remembered he was in the presence 
 of what, compared with himself, was a 
 potentate whose careless hands could scatter 
 blessings and curses, had checked himself, 
 shyly apologised for wasting his elder’s time, 
 and wistfully, stammeringly asked the vital 
 question. “‘Couldn’t you,” he said, “assist 
 me with a little reviewing, Mr. Fulford? 
 It would help me to keep going while I am 
 finishing my book.” 
 
 Fulford could not remember now what 
 book he had, with a knowledge that he was 
 to this extent betraying his paper, doled out 
 to the eager hands. The result, at all events, 
 came down to expectations. A few later 
 experiments—unless an experiment must 
 contain an element of uncertainty—were 
 made, though Hoffman could not help seeing 
 in time that behind Fulford’s “You see our 
 
The Painful Dilemma 221 
 
 reviewing staff is already too full’ there was 
 a very half-hearted appreciation of the merits 
 of his work. Fulford could recall still the 
 general nature of those incompetent reviews, 
 shapeless mixtures of dullness and cranki- 
 ness, with a queer ineffective force in 
 them and always some King Charles’ head, 
 Dostoevsky or Freud, dragged in, even were 
 the book a record of travel or a polite social 
 comedy. Every time, though no one else 
 knew it, Fulford had received a letter of 
 complaint from some hot-blooded reader en- 
 raged at the reviewer’s “silliness,” “‘juvenile 
 cocksureness,” and “bad English.” They 
 were far from the truth in the pictures they 
 had formed of the Unknown Objectionable; 
 but Fulford knew well, though he returned 
 evasive answers, that in essence they were 
 right. In the end he had to push Hoffman 
 off, giving him every possible token of good 
 feeling except the work for which he yearned. 
 It was to Hoffman’s credit that he never 
 conceived the slightest grudge; he was sad 
 that Fulford’s intelligence was so limited, 
 but he continued to show that he liked him, 
 as far as one so remote from ordinary man- 
 kind could like anybody. They were friends. 
 
 Their encounters had not been frequent: 
 accidental meals together after meetings in 
 the Strand, fleeting conversations in corners 
 at literary parties; once a talk at Fulford’s 
 
222 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 
 
 club where Hoffman, an odd apparition in 
 those respectable surroundings, had been 
 brought in to lunch by a casual patron. Ful- 
 ford could disentangle no impressions of 
 these occasions: merely a general memory of 
 Hoffman’s anxious face and unpractical as- 
 pirations and of his own benevolent feelings 
 and suppressions. But one picture did stand 
 out vividly clear after four or five years. 
 Hoffman, after a prolonged absence, had 
 been announced at the office one afternoon. 
 He had come in very apologetically with 
 the news that he was to be married next day 
 at the Tottenham Court Road Registry 
 Office. Fulford thrust back a rash impulse 
 to offer to be present. This was not asked; 
 but they were to have a party in the evening 
 in their rooms (“his room” thought Ful- 
 ford) in Bloomsbury. “I thought you might 
 come in for a little while,” said Hoffman. 
 “Emily hopes so too. She knows how good 
 you have been to me. We should be very 
 grateful.” 
 
 “Why, of course,” exclaimed Fulford, 
 “T’m delighted at your news and shall be 
 equally delighted to come to your house- 
 warming.” That evening, in a fit of im- 
 prudent generosity considering the state of 
 his own bank balance, he had gone the whole 
 hog: it was not a clock, or spoons, or a book, 
 but a really beautiful, useful and expensive 
 
The Painful Dilemma — 223 
 
 writing desk that he despatched to the ad- 
 dress in Bloomsbury. And next night, mak- 
 ing excuses for his wife, he turned up at the 
 crush. He was late, and the din, as he 
 climbed the stairs, at its height. The large 
 room, with its far end curtained off, was lit 
 by candles and full of people: sour intel- 
 lectuals, Buffalo Bills, toreadors and apaches 
 from the less opulent studios of Chelsea, 
 some forlorn-looking damsels and young men 
 whom he guessed to be Mrs. Hoftman’s 
 friends, and one or two stray elders lke 
 himself, present, no doubt, on the same 
 terms. Hoffman appeared and scrambled 
 away to bring back his wife, a small brown 
 person with a shy frank smile for the dis- 
 penser of bounty. Beer was flowing; but 
 there was whisky in a discreet corner for 
 Fulford, and overwhelming thanks for the 
 desk, which more than compensated for the 
 supercilious glances and sullen glowerings 
 of the intelligentsia whose works he had 
 probably refused to praise. After a few 
 minutes with Mrs. Hoffman he liked her 
 very much; she was mothering Alexander 
 already; perhaps she was an elementary 
 school teacher and Alexander had met her 
 in a tea-shop. The whole scene came back 
 to him now, the Hoffmans’ brief moment of 
 grandeur; and he sighed as he thought of 
 the bitter struggle they must have had since, 
 
224 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 
 
 the pinching of that poor gallant little 
 woman, the efforts to keep up a brave face, 
 the disgruntled associates, the hopes for each 
 successive book, always dashed to the ground, 
 vast incoherent books which aimed so high 
 and fell so flat, books which no honest friend 
 of their author could possibly review and 
 which had never had a word of praise except 
 in obscure log-rolling coteries. There was 
 all the recognition Hoffman had obtained. 
 Now and then, silently hoping against hope 
 to convert him, he had sent Fulford some 
 ambitious tale or manifesto printed in one 
 of those may-fly journals, those organs of 
 the Ishmaelites, of which three or four are 
 always struggling for existence in London. 
 Polite ambiguities had been returned in ac- 
 knowledgment, together with personal in- 
 quiries all too obviously warmer. Poor 
 devil! Here was another book which had 
 been palmed off on an unwary publisher: 
 proclaimed on the jacket.as a masterpiece 
 comparable with the works of Balzac, Tol- 
 stoi and other eminent foreigners. ‘““Well,” 
 muttered Fulford to himself as he stared at 
 the bright coals, “I only wish I could do 
 something for the poor chap.” ‘There was a 
 knock at the door. 
 
The Painful Dilemma 225 
 
 III 
 
 There stood Mrs. Hoffman, shabby and 
 pale, her shoulders moist with melting snow. 
 Desperate determination was in her tired 
 eyes as she tripped over to him, hardly no- 
 ticing his outstretched hand. “Oh, Mr. Ful- 
 ford,” she said, as he almost forced her into 
 a chair, “I hardly dare ask you. I know 
 how busy you are. But Alec’ (how odd the 
 name sounded) ‘“‘is asking for you, and he’s 
 so ill, I can’t tell you how ill he is.” | 
 
 “But of course I will! What is the mat- | 
 ter with him?” 
 
 “Didn’t you know?” she asked with a 
 touch of pain that gave Fulford a twinge 
 of remorse, “he’s been ailing for months and 
 [ve had him in bed for weeks. He seems 
 to be wasting away. He’s too weak to talk 
 long now. All he can think of now is his 
 new book, “The Overworld.’ It’s coming out 
 on Wednesday and he’s in a fever about it. 
 He’s had so much hard luck, so many dis- 
 appointments, poor boy. He kept on speak- 
 ing of you, and I simply had to come.” 
 
 She noticed the book. ‘‘Yes, I have it 
 here,” said Fulford hastily. “Shall we go 
 along at once?” 
 
 “Yes, it would be so good of you; I got 
 the girl from below to sit with him while 
 I ran out.” 
 
226 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 
 
 In the hall Fulford left a note for his wife. 
 He put on his heavy coat and opened the 
 door. It was blowing hard in the darkness 
 and a fierce sleet was falling. Mrs. Hoffman 
 was apologetic for it. “It isn’t far to walk 
 to South Kensington,” she said, “and we 
 can get a train from there.” On such a 
 night! Fulford felt ashamed when he 
 thought of all the unnecessary cabs he had 
 taken in his life, and of this woman to whom 
 a cab was a thing that simply did not occur. 
 He shouted for one from the rank at the 
 corner. As it raced through the dim wet 
 streets he answered her hurried confidences 
 mechanically; the whole struggle of this poor 
 pair formed itself into a series of pictures 
 that made his heart ache; he worried as to 
 what he could do; he seemed suddenly to 
 be surrounded by tragedies complacently ig- 
 nored, human duties callously left undone, 
 and here she was thanking him for his “‘kind- 
 ness.’ Men and women, he reflected bit- 
 terly, must be content for small mercies if a 
 few civil words were kindness to people bat- 
 tling in solitude with poverty and failure. 
 They turned out of Holborn into one of the 
 degenerate Georgian streets of the quarter. 
 They climbed the gas-lit stair, with its old 
 panelling, long since painted green. Ful- 
 ford remembered stories of vermin behind 
 
The Painful Dilemma 227, 
 
 old wood. They reached the landing and 
 softly entered. 
 
 The curtains at the far end were gone. A 
 girl sat by the bed, the crochet in her lap 
 bright in the rays of a shaded lamp on a 
 small table. The bed was in shadow and 
 the girl put her finger to her lip. Of the 
 invalid only a little grey hair could be seen 
 between sheet and pillow. Fulford had 
 never been there since the wedding party. 
 It seemed vast and very bare; of course there 
 had been a crowd there then: but his desk 
 had gone as well, and he knew, with a pang, 
 where and why it had gone. A few chairs, 
 a few poor prints on the wall, a small shelf 
 of books: it was all they had, and they had 
 never had much more. A moment showed 
 all this: then, on the silence came a faint 
 voice from the bed, “Is that Emily?’ She 
 tip-toed towards him: “Yes, Alec.” 
 
 “Will Mr. Fulford come?” 
 
 “He is here now.” At the word the bed 
 clothes stirred, a straining bony elbow ap- 
 peared, the alarmed women hurried to ar- 
 range the pillows and Hoffman was propped 
 up, with a hand extended over the bed 
 clothes. “Come and sit down, Mr. Ful- 
 ford,” he whispered. The girl from below 
 quietly disappeared from the room, Fulford 
 took the chair and the sick man’s hand, and 
 
228 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 
 
 Mrs. Hoffman, saying “Tl leave you for 
 ten minutes,”’ followed her friend. 
 
 Fulford was at once shocked and fascinated 
 by the change in Hoffman. His hair had 
 gone thin and quite grey; his face had a 
 horrible agelessness; his ashen stubbled skin 
 was tightly drawn over the bones; his dark 
 eyes, larger than ever in their deep hollows; 
 had a look of fever. But he was not de- 
 lirious; he talked, hoarsely and feebly, with 
 more than his old intentness, and, after get- 
 ting through his thanks as it were in pre- 
 determined order, he said, in a voice trem- 
 bling with decision: “Mr. Fulford, I want 
 to ask you a great favour. My book comes 
 out the day after to-morrow. I know it’s 
 the biggest thing I’ve done. Will you read 
 it? And if you like it say so?” 
 
 “Why, of course, my dear fellow,” said 
 Fulford, blushing; “as a matter of fact I 
 was just beginning it when your wife came.” 
 
 Hoffman ignored this and proceeded: “I 
 know it’s a great deal to ask you. You're 
 busy. You’ve always been kind about the 
 others. I knew you couldn’t have read them. 
 I quite understood you hadn’t time.” 
 
 Fulford was silent; he had read quite 
 enough of them. “I promise not to ask you 
 again,’ said Hoffman with an appealing 
 look; and was seized by a fit of spasmodic 
 coughing. Fulford’s eyes suffused with tears. 
 
 b] 
 
The Painful Dilemma 229 
 
 This was a dying man’s request. No word 
 of that had been said: but it was evident 
 that Hoffman, his doctor, Emily herself, 
 must know that he was dying, evident also 
 that Mrs. Hoffman knew well enough what 
 he wanted Fulford for. The extent of the 
 emergency must remain unspoken. “When 
 a man is dying it is etiquette to leave the 
 first mention of death to the dying man.” 
 The sentence framed itself in Fulford’s 
 waiting brain; then he felt bitterly ashamed 
 of the form of it, humiliated at its callous 
 detachment. The coughing stopped; Hoff- 
 man was still again in the warm shadows, 
 lying back with his eyes closed. Then he 
 opened them and went on. “My cough,” 
 he said. ‘Will you promise me to look ‘at 
 my book soon? If you like it will you say 
 so? My whole vision of the world is in it. 
 I have had many disappointments. I value 
 your opinion. It would make me so happy 
 if you could see all I mean. My hero goes 
 through every modern philosophy. It all 
 illustrates mine. It is a drama like Faust 
 really, only in prose.” 
 
 It was another drama that Fulford saw: 
 the lamp-lit room, the dying man in bed, the 
 dream, the utter devotion to art and thought, 
 which made himself feel like some smug 
 grocer or butcher, the courage and anguish 
 of a soul. He struggled for expression and 
 
230 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 
 
 found it, fixing his eyes in false candour on 
 the searching pathetic eyes before him. 
 “Tm sorry you didn’t know it,”’ he said, “I’ve 
 always admired your books. It’s only an 
 accident that I haven’t reviewed them. Il 
 seldom do novels, you know.” In point of 
 fact he had suppressed all his staff’s carping 
 notices of Hoffman, except one that had 
 slipped in by accident. The deception, how- 
 ever, was wasted on Hoffman. Hoffman 
 had no time for debates, excuses or explana- 
 tions; he was thinking only of the immediate 
 crisis, concentrated on wrenching from the 
 world that recognition of his genius and pro- 
 phetic powers for which he had lived. 
 
 “I’m grateful you say so,” he said. “If 
 so I know you'll think this the greatest thing 
 Ihave done. There is a message in it. The 
 plan is grand. There’s nothing like it. Em- 
 ily will tell you so.” 
 
 “T1l review it myself,” said Fulford, tak- 
 ing the plunge, “‘on the day of publication.” 
 He was rewarded by the most beautiful 
 pts he had ever seen illuminating a human 
 
 ace. 
 
 Mrs. Hoffman returned; she offered him 
 a cup of cocoa, and accompanied him down 
 the stairs. In the hall she wrung his hand. 
 “Oh, how can I thank you,” she said; “I 
 know you are going to do what he wants.” 
 Fulford could have hugged her. 
 
The Painful Dilemma PS | 
 
 IV 
 
 He was again in the wet freezing night, 
 looking for the lights of a cab-rank, but 
 scarcely noticing the progress of his steps and 
 unaware of the sleet. ‘I’ve done it,” he 
 kept on saying to himself, “and I’m glad 
 Ive done it.” A warm exaltation mingled 
 with the pain left by the contemplation of 
 a spectacle so wretched and so splendid. 
 The problem had crudely presented itself 
 and the solution was obvious and inevitable; 
 it was really no dilemma at all; seen at close 
 quarters it had only one horn. On the one 
 side there were two human beings, innocent 
 and gentle, one of whom, defeated and de- 
 - prived all through his life, was within a few 
 days of death, the hand of which already 
 overshadowed him. Fulford’s whole being 
 swelled with love and pity as he thought, 
 afoot and in the taxi, of those two harmless 
 lives, of Emily’s selfless devotion and moth- 
 ering, of the pure aspirations of her husband, 
 of the little pleasures they would no longer 
 share, of the sufferings silently borne, the 
 inadequate food, the struggle after external 
 decency, the dread of doctor’s bills, the shy 
 visits to the pawnshop, the courage. He had 
 it in his power to make the man, and the 
 wife through him, happy, ecstatically happy 
 for a day, before he was beyond reach of 
 
232 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 
 
 help or hearing, banished, before his time, 
 into the unknown dark. . And what was the 
 alternative? To hurt the helpless, to beat 
 down the appealing hands, to turn his back, 
 to inflict the last savage anguish on two 
 hearts which had never harboured anything 
 but charity, to stare at a dying man with 
 frozen eyes, to know for years that a widow 
 would live with the unforgettable memory 
 of a final cruelty. And all why? Simply 
 to satisfy some self-instituted “intellectual 
 conscience,” to support some myth called an 
 artistic standard, to minister to his own de- 
 sire to exercise a fine judgment, to save a 
 few people from buying a book they would 
 not enjoy—and to preserve his own reputa- 
 tion as a critic as flawless as possible! What 
 could all these trifles weigh against those 
 other things; in six months Hoffman would 
 be dead and gone, and book and review would 
 alike be forgotten. Common kindness was 
 more important than this chatter of culture; 
 but here was the opportunity for more than 
 that, the imperative call to a holy duty of 
 comfort in the last emergency of life. 
 
 He walked up his steps and turned the 
 key. His note was still there: Dolly and 
 Cameron had not yet returned ; an age seemed 
 to have passed but it was not yet half-past 
 ten. Upstairs again and pacing the cosy 
 study, he remembered that he had impul- 
 
The Painful Dilemma 230 
 
 sively told the novelist that he would not 
 only himself write at length about the new 
 masterpiece but would do his best to per- 
 suade other influential critics to “read the 
 book,” the tacit assumption being that to 
 read was to be conquered. “Might as well 
 be hanged for a sheep as a lamb,” he re- 
 marked with only a rough approximation to 
 what he meant. “ll ring up Bowley and 
 Dick Jones in the morning and lunch on it. 
 We'll give the poor devil a really fine show 
 and he can die happy.” 
 
 He heard steps and returned to his chair. 
 The theatre-going pair broke in, laughing. 
 How had he got on? No, he hadn’t done 
 much. There, he might as well have come 
 with them. What was the play like? The 
 common coin was flung about while Cameron 
 took a last drink: somehow he didn’t feel like 
 confiding in Cameron, intimate though he 
 was. When Cameron had gone he made 
 Dolly draw up to the fire and told her the 
 whole story; she not only agreed with him 
 but abashed him by admiring him, a process 
 that always made him feel unworthy. 
 
 Next day he carried out the programme. 
 It could not be denied that Bowley, who was 
 getting on in years, had seen many people 
 in trouble, and was inclined to think artis- 
 tic perfection the only thing that gave value 
 to life, was a little difficult to move; but 
 
234 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 
 
 he made the great concession in the end un- 
 der pressure of Fulford’s graphic pictures 
 of the Hoffmans’ life and home. Dick Jones 
 was easier; he was a good judge of literature 
 but did not take it seriously; he had an al- 
 most cynical view about the importance and 
 durability of newspaper criticisms, and he 
 cared little about what the world of critical 
 conversation said about him. Neither of 
 them had read the book, and Bowley had 
 never read anything of Hoffman’s or even 
 heard of him, though he was quite prepared 
 to believe that any young author deserved 
 the worst that could be said of him. Friend- 
 ship prevailed; Fulford knew that he might 
 qualify his praise, but he would at least 
 grant the full column that gave the stamp 
 of importance; and Dick Jones could be 
 trusted, in the cause of humanity, to go the 
 whole hog. Neither, moreover, would give 
 the show away: Bowley was too proud, and 
 Dick too indifferent. Relieved and happy 
 at the thought of the sudden glory in that 
 death chamber when the loud trumpets of 
 the three best known newspaper critics could 
 be heard sounding the fame of ‘““The Over- 
 world” in the streets, Fulford returned home 
 and settled down with the grim intention 
 of being hypnotised by the book. He sur- 
 rendered to it; that is, he rather acceded to 
 the author’s intentions than scrutinised his 
 
The Painful Dilemma 235 
 
 accomplishment. Even at that it was rather 
 slow going, but there was a certain intrinsic 
 interest in the curious workings of Hoffman’s 
 mind, and his pseudo-titanic visions of hu- 
 man existence; and latent always behind the 
 obscure and cloudy speculations, the ineffec- 
 tively passionate outbursts, the odd and un- 
 intentionally obscene passages of ‘“‘stark real- 
 ism,’ there was the image of that unquench- 
 able spirit in its perishing frame waiting for 
 the light to fade in the single bare room. 
 He succeeded thus in imputing to the book 
 all that he knew of Hoffman’s fineness and 
 strength; and, when he began writing the 
 pzan he had virtually vowed to publish, he 
 almost forgot his difficulties. The nodosities 
 of Hoffman’s English really, for the time, 
 presented themselves as the “natural result 
 of a masterful soul’s struggling with a vast 
 intractable mass of material,’? and his ob- 
 scurity was next door to a merit in the qual- 
 ifying word of the phrase “an immense 
 smoky flame.” ‘““The audacities of an intel- 
 lect wrestling with the real,” “beautiful clear 
 images against a turbulent, almost chaotic, 
 background,” “loveliness that is the flower 
 of pain,’ “Mr. Hoffman’s magnificent en- 
 deavour to record and summarise the conflict- 
 ing aspirations of a tortured age’: phrases 
 like these passed fluently from Fulford’s 
 pen, and he had so far persuaded himself 
 
236 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 
 
 and lost himself in the dedicated task that 
 he did not smile when he began a paragraph 
 with, “It cannot be denied that the book has 
 its Jongueurs.” Having concluded with a 
 sentence about “the promise of greatness,” 
 he folded the review up. He was afraid 
 to look through it again lest he should be 
 tempted to tone it down. 
 
 On the morning of publication it ap- 
 peared, a downright crashing salutation to 
 the genius of Alexander Hoffman. The 
 other two fulfilled their promises and Hoff- 
 man, in the world which discusses such 
 things, became famous in a day. There was 
 a rush for “The Overworld” at the libraries. 
 A great many people no doubt persuaded 
 themselves that they liked it, and a great 
 many more that if they didn’t it was because 
 it was too deep for them: the agreement of 
 the critics was convincing. Fulford received 
 at.once a joyful little letter from Mrs. Hoff- 
 man, the invalid being too weak to write: 
 thank Heaven the news had not at once 
 killed him and he could relish his happiness 
 before he died. Fulford meant to call but 
 did not on each of the immediately succeed- 
 ing days; the sort of neglect that may leave 
 a lifetime of self-reproach behind it. He 
 was then suddenly summoned into the coun- 
 try, and it was a full fortnight after the 
 momentous day of virtuous log-rolling that 
 
The Painful Dilemma Bot 
 
 he was walking hurriedly along the Strand 
 and encountered a figure that gave him the 
 shock a man gets who meets a ghost in broad 
 daylight. It was Hoffman’s double, in a 
 new navy suit; no, it was Hoffman himself 
 who sprang forward with a smile of delight 
 on a face that looked healthier than it had 
 ever looked before. He was a new man with 
 a new kind of confidence. “I began to get 
 better at once,” he said. “You saved my 
 life’; and, after a profusion of thanks, he 
 made Fulford’s heart sink within him by 
 saying, “Let me come along with you and 
 tell you about my new play.” Fulford had 
 to go: he was now pledged for life. 
 
 Vv 
 
 So it was. Bowley might retreat and 
 cover his tracks; Dick Jones might forget 
 and could not decently be further dragged 
 in; but Fulford felt bound now not to be- 
 tray the man he had, as it were, induced to 
 go on living. And every month that passed 
 made it more difficult for him, for it was 
 impossible to prevent people finding out the 
 worthlessness of an author who gave liter- 
 ally nobody either instruction or entertain- 
 ment. “People,” one says, but not the whole 
 world is meant. On the strength of that one 
 resounding chorus Hoffman had got substan- 
 
238 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 
 
 tial offers from England and America for 
 his next three books, and a large number of 
 periodicals which specialised in the audacious 
 and the incomprehensible put him on the 
 list of their elect. Sneers at him began ap- 
 pearing in certain quarters; to him these 
 seemed the natural fruits of jealousy and 
 the exhilarating rewards of the pioneer; so 
 long as he retained the championship of a 
 man like Fulford he had all the aid he 
 wanted. 
 
 But Fulford? He could not explain, and 
 his prestige consequently suffered. Nothing 
 could compensate for his absurd belief in 
 the egregious Hoffman, and the austerer 
 young were merciless to him. “Say what 
 you like,” remarked a hard voice which he 
 overheard at a party, “that fellow Fulford 
 cannot be any good. Look at the rot he 
 talks about that ass Hoffman’s rubbish. He 
 must be either corrupt or a fool.” 
 
 It was a heavy burden; but how could 
 he turn upon Hoffman and kill him? There 
 are dilemmas of which one horn will com- 
 pletely vanish and then return more spiky 
 and formidable than ever. 
 
IX: THE MAN WHO WROTE 
 FREE VERSE 
 
 I 
 
 as is a very short story. It is hardly 
 a story at all. It might even be de- 
 scribed as all moral and no story: a lamenta- 
 ble thing, but the fit is upon us. 
 
 It was Sunday afternoon; the sky blue, 
 the sun hot, the shade cool because of a 
 slight breeze. The Manor House, its ancient 
 stones mottled yellow and grey, its arched 
 oaken door ajar, half its mullioned and 
 leaded windows open, slept behind its gently 
 sloping lawn. Lady Muriel was presumably 
 asleep as well; at any rate she had retired 
 to her room after the exhausting chatter of 
 lunch. Sir Herbert and his wife, active del- 
 egates from a more energetic world, had 
 gone out for a walk, though all country 
 walks must have been very much alike to 
 them, and they would certainly have noth- 
 ing to report when they returned except Sir 
 Herbert’s hearty and self-evident appetite 
 for tea. The two young men who completed 
 the party had professed weariness and re- 
 sorted to the shadow of the great cedar, 
 with the Sunday papers and a large collec- 
 
 239 
 
240 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 
 
 tion of Muriel’s latest books. Adrian Rob- 
 erts, bowed beneath the load of a Foreign 
 Office clerkship, had taken the hammock; 
 Reggie Twyfold, who was burdened only 
 by an acute intelligence and enough to live 
 on, was comfortable in a deck chair with a 
 foot-rest; both were well supported by cush- 
 ions in red, blue, green and orange silk. 
 Their reading was desultory amid the en- 
 chantment of the afternoon. Curving down 
 to their right was a concourse of lilacs, 
 laburnum, and red hawthorn all in bloom. 
 On the left a border, a rockery, the bricks 
 of the walled garden, and southward, mak- 
 ing an opening through which the woody 
 pastoral landscape fell and fell into blue 
 distance, two groups of tall elms newly in 
 leaf. At intervals a rook drowsily cawed in 
 one of them and there was a slight flutter 
 of wings; otherwise the birds were silent, 
 and an occasional white butterfly in lazy 
 erratic flight was the only thing in move- 
 ment. 
 
 The church clock struck three; Adrian laid 
 his book on his knees, Reggie languidly 
 dropped his to the ground. 
 
 “Muriel’s books,” said Reggie, “seem even 
 more ridiculous here than they do in town.” 
 
 “Tm reading Trollope,’ replied Adrian 
 from his hammock, with the air of one who 
 preferred not to waste his time. 
 
The Man Who Wrote Free Verse 241 
 
 “I confess,” replied Reggie defensively, 
 “that I can’t help looking at the stuff.” 
 
 “Some of the bindings are rather engag- 
 ing.” 
 
 “No, I mean the insides,” insisted Reggie. 
 “T can’t help being curious about them, idi- 
 otic though they are. You can’t realise what 
 rot all these novels are.” 
 
 “Oh, yes, Ican. They are pretentious and 
 psychological, dull and obscene, or cheaply 
 cynical. I do occasionally look at one for 
 conversational purposes with other people, 
 though I dare not admit it to Muriel or she’d 
 bore me to death with her arguments.” 
 
 “This one I have here isn’t even punctu- 
 ated.” 
 
 “It makes little difference,” said Adrian 
 consolingly ; “none of these people can write 
 and few of them seem even to want to.” 
 
 “But, really, Adrian, I can’t quite ignore 
 it all as you do. It’s the poetry I was 
 thinking of most. I confess I can’t make 
 head or tail of three-quarters of it, but I 
 can’t help thinking I may be wrong. Why 
 should they be writing what seems to us 
 cacophonous gibberish? It isn’t only Mu- 
 riel, you know. Lots of people seem to ad- 
 mire it, and it’s happening all over Europe 
 and America.” 
 
 “Not really, my dear. We hear a good 
 deal about it, and the papers we read seem 
 
242 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 
 
 to think it all ought to be taken seriously. 
 In point of fact these creatures are scarcely 
 read by each other. It’s a kind of hideous 
 little underworld; the sort of thing you see 
 when you lift up a large stone and see dis- 
 gusting insects, beetles and centipedes, scut- 
 tling about. They dislike the daylight too. 
 It’s all the most awful nonsense. The sec- 
 ond-rate have discovered the trick of incom- 
 prehensibility in our own time; the trick of 
 bogus audacity has always been known.” 
 
 “I know, that’s what it all seems like to 
 me when I read it. Yet when I’m not read- 
 ing it I feel that there may be something 
 genuine in all this movement .. .” 
 
 “Which?” asked Adrian in an amused 
 voice. 
 
 “Oh, the whole of it. The general mix-up. 
 All these isms and experiments. Scientific 
 and social conceptions can’t alter without 
 modifying art; music changes and poetry 
 may change; and I conceive new things be- 
 ing said in a new way.” 
 
 ‘And so can I,” said Adrian. “T really 
 don’t mind people saying anything they like 
 if they mean it and are competent to express 
 themselves. I don’t insist upon rhymes, and 
 I don’t, so long as my ear is pleased, mind 
 people’s lines being all of different lengths, 
 and I don’t mind impressionism if it pro- 
 duces effects on me, and I’m not a bit afraid 
 
The Man Who Wrete Free Verse 243 
 
 of my sub-conscious. But when half-wits, 
 or no-wits, invite me to applaud their absurd 
 posing and silly illiteracy I see no reason to 
 do so.” 
 
 “But don’t you think,” Reggie went on, 
 still generously resolute to put a case against 
 which all his instincts revolted, “that in some 
 way it is all important and symptomatic. 
 Doesn’t it seem to you significant that when 
 the Bolsheviks got into power in Russia they 
 made all the Cubists and things official 
 artists?” 
 
 Adrian was unmoved. ‘No,’ he said, 
 “I’m sure that highly elaborate nonsense 
 means nothing whatever to the proletariat. 
 To their leaders it only meant one more 
 annoyance to the bourgeoisie; though per- 
 haps they naturally felt a kind of affinity 
 for the rape of language and the murder 
 of ideas.”’ His eyes strayed to the far land- 
 scape. ‘The confiscation of the comma,” 
 he murmured, as it were for his own benefit. 
 Then he recalled himself and began speak- 
 ing in more vigorous tones. “Look here, 
 Reggie, you yourself could write all this 
 bosh on your head.” 
 
 “That’s hardly a compliment, is it, if all 
 you say is true?” 
 
 “But, quite seriously, you could and you 
 could take them all in. Why not do it, 
 Reggie? Start a career as an advanced poet. 
 
244 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 
 
 A small piece of shell in your ribs ought not 
 to interfere with that; in fact it might be 
 rather a help. Get them all to take you 
 seriously and then give it away.” 
 
 “But, Adrian, how could 1? They’d all 
 guess. Besides, how would you like to have 
 to fraternise with this dreadful rabble and 
 be despised by all civilised people?” His 
 high voice was querulous. 
 
 Adrian turned his head. ‘“That’s quite 
 easy,’ he said. “Take a false name and— 
 yes, an accommodation address, I think they 
 call it. Be invisible! Refuse to meet any 
 one! Bea hopeless invalid! Or disgusting 
 to the sight! Why not a leper? A leper 
 would do beautifully! It really could be 
 quite easily managed. There’s a man I get 
 my boots from who would let you use his 
 address. He used to be in the Royal Opera 
 Arcade, but he’s just moved now to a place 
 that looks like a private house, in fact there 
 are actually rooms there.” 
 
 Two substantial figures silently appeared 
 in the opening between the elms, Sir Her- 
 bert, hearty even at that distance, and his 
 wife a meet companion. Lady Muriel’s 
 voice was heard from an upper window. 
 Adrian waved an arm to them and prepared 
 to rise. “Do think about it, Reggie,” he 
 said. 
 
The Man Who Wrote Free Verse 245 
 
 II 
 
 Reggie Twyfold sat at his sitting-room 
 window in the Albany. He was on the top 
 floor: dormers on the eastern side: and he 
 looked out on a skyline of slates, chimney- 
 stacks, and chimney cowls revolving dizzily 
 in a brisk wind. ‘You must begin,” Adrian 
 had said, “by emptying your mind com- 
 pletely and recording only disconnected im- 
 pressions. You can work in the rebellion 
 and work out the verbs later.” This ad- 
 vice was superfluous; he could have got on 
 well enough without it; but it strengthened 
 him in his purpose to know that Adrian was 
 confident about what he himself had sus- 
 pected, and he was resolved now to see the 
 imposture through to the bitter—he did not 
 guess how bitter—end. He had, in his time, 
 written competent verse and prose, but he 
 had never sweated such blood trying to write 
 sense as he had now sweated trying to write 
 nonsense. Two and a half hours of scrib- | 
 blings and deletions had left him exhausted: 
 and he looked at the fruits of his labours 
 with an expression of doubt. “It’s gro- 
 tesque,”’ he said, “nobody could print such 
 rubbish. It’s inconceivable that there isn’t 
 more in it than this.” But Adrian was com- 
 ing to luncheon and he had sworn to have 
 
246 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 
 
 a first attempt to show him; and, with a 
 groan, he settled down to perfect the experi- 
 ment. He was still poising his pen over the 
 sheet when Adrian stole in. ‘‘“Well,” he 
 said, ‘I see syou've been at, it/) duobster, 
 good! Let’s read it while we have lunch.” 
 
 “T don’t think it’s really ready,” protested 
 Reggie. 
 
 “But all the better, Reggie,” said Adrian, 
 snatching the paper from him. They sat 
 down at the table. Adrian absently evis- 
 cerated half a lobster while he read the sheet, 
 and re-read it. Then “All poetry can best 
 be tested by being read aloud,” he said; and 
 suited the action to the word. He read it: 
 
 The chimney-cowls 
 Gyrate 
 In the 
 Wind 
 There is a blot of ink 
 On 
 My paper. 
 I am going to have lunch 
 Before long 
 And J am glad there is 
 u'e\ 
 Lobster. 
 “My dear,” said Adrian, as he finished, 
 “I congratulate you. This is a most ad- 
 
The Man Who Wrote Free Verse 247 
 
 mirable beginning. But there are several 
 faults in it.” 
 
 “Good Lord, I should think so,” said 
 Reggie; “I’ve never written down such dis- 
 mal filth in my life.” 
 
 “Oh, I didn’t mean faults in that sense; 
 I meant really what you would ordinarily 
 call merits.” 
 
 “Y’m damned if I can see them,” said 
 Reggie. 
 
 “But they are there all the same,” said 
 Adrian, almost paternally. “For one thing 
 there is almost a flow to it. For another the 
 sentences are quite ordinary. For another 
 you actually express, in one place, a genuine 
 emotion: I mean when you refer to the lob- 
 Ster.) 
 
 Reggie defended himself. ‘One must say 
 something,” he argued. 
 
 “Not necessarily. Please remember that 
 you are lampooning or, rather, imitating. 
 You’ve read far more of these silly poems 
 than I have. You know all the kinds of 
 them as well as I do. Think of the kinds. 
 Use what you have done as raw material 
 and develop a poem in each kind from it. 
 You must know what I mean. For instance 
 there is the very simple kind which consists 
 of leaving out everything conjunctive, run- 
 ning together a series of objects, and end- 
 
248 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 
 
 ing with an exclamation. You know as 
 well as I do what I mean, don’t you?’ 
 “Oh, of course,” said Reggie, 
 
 Gyrating cowls. 
 Ink. 
 Oh God! A Lobster! 
 
 But it would be asinine to think of getting 
 any one to print that.” 
 
 “Not as asinine as you suppose. You've 
 seen things just like that in books and papers, 
 haven’t you? Now put your back into it. 
 I’ve got an hour to spare and I shall read 
 Matthew Arnold while you show what you 
 can do. You know them all quite well. 
 Don’t forget the classical one and don’t for- 
 get the one which is allowed to rhyme, by 
 way of compensation for its especially poly- 
 syllabic obscurity. Eat that pear now, and 
 proceed with your work.” 
 
 Reggie obeyed. Adrian stretched himself 
 on the sofa while the bard, in fitful bursts, 
 covered several sheets of paper with writing. 
 Now and then he looked up. “You needn’t 
 stare at the chimney-pots again,” said Adrian 
 on one occasion, “once is quite enough. You 
 can make up all you want to know about 
 them.” 
 
 Three quarters of an hour elapsed. Reg- 
 gie rose with a defiant exclamation. ‘“Well, 
 
The Man Who Wrote Free Verse 249 
 
 I’ve done them,” he exclaimed, “and if you 
 really think these things are at all like their 
 originals, all I can say is Lord help some- 
 body.” 
 
 “You can read them this time,” said 
 Adrian. “T’ll listen and make necessary sug- 
 gestions, though I daresay none will be nec- 
 essary.” 
 
 Reggie took a deep breath, and began in 
 a voice which showed his determination to 
 beat down his shame. “This,” he said, “‘is 
 one kind that I think you may recognise. 
 
 Chimney cowls 
 
 Cut 
 
 Against sky. 
 
 Inky | 
 Excruciating, torturing, abominable 
 Lobsters. 
 
 Claws like saws 
 
 Goggle-eyes, pins, tentacles 
 Goggle-eyes at goggle-eyes 
 
 Fat men dining at 
 
 Thevkeitzs; 
 
 “Not a bad beginning,” remarked Adrian. 
 “T couldn’t tell from your reading, though, 
 whether the lines began with capital letters 
 or small] ones.” 
 
 “Oh, all small ones,” Reggie assured him, 
 “and every other line is to be printed upside- 
 
250 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 
 
 down. ‘Ritz’ is in very large capitals, and 
 there is a line of alternate notes of excla- 
 mation and interrogation marks at the bot- 
 tom. But I couldn’t read those aloud, could 
 ] 2” 
 
 “No, of course not. What about the 
 next?” 
 _ “Well, this rhymes; but it is really fear- 
 fully obscure: 
 
 Apocalyptic chimney cowls 
 Squeak at the sergeant’s velvet hat 
 Donkeys and other paper fowls 
 Disgorge decretals at the cat. 
 
 The lead archdeacon eats her cheese 
 Corrupting their connubial bliss 
 
 And Mary on her six black knees 
 Refuses Christopher a kiss. 
 
 Autumnal abscesses relent 
 The twilight of ancestral days 
 
 But, smiling at the parsnip’s scent, 
 The Nubian girl undoes her stays!” 
 
 “Splendid,” said Adrian. ‘“That is much 
 freer. I hope the next one will not rhyme 
 though.” 
 
 “It does a bit, I’m afraid,” said Reggie, 
 “but so very badly that I don’t think you 
 could mark it down a point for it. I’m not 
 
The Man Who Wrote Free Verse 251 
 
 sure, though, whether it is quite obscure 
 enough: 
 
 Jewelled parakeets arise 
 
 Making many a silver noise 
 
 Round the checkered chimney cowls 
 Whilst the old Marchesa’s owls 
 Blinking in the glaring day 
 
 Flit like fans from far Cathay 
 Glittering ink sheds bleak incense 
 On the poodle’s stifled sense 
 
 Whilst the crimson-armoured lobster 
 Wishes that he was an oyster 
 Slipping like a cockatoo 
 
 Through the woods ““Tu-whit, Tu-whoo” 
 Through porticoes and pilasters 
 Starred with oleanders, asters, 
 
 Prim pagodas, jet, wax-fruits 
 Crinolines of Dresden queens 
 
 And indecent salmon-tins 
 
 Darting through . . .” 
 
 “That’s enough,” interrupted Adrian. 
 “That’s quite all right. I suppose you get 
 the word ‘crystal’ in somewhere?” 
 
 “Yes, of course,” said Reggie, “it comes a 
 little later on with the jade and the uni- 
 corns. I found that one so easy that I could 
 hardly stop.” 
 
 “Put that one aside to be submitted to an 
 editor. What is the next?” 
 
252 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 
 
 “Classical,” said Reggie, ‘‘and you are to 
 take it that all the proper names are spelt 
 with good hard ‘k’s’ and ‘os’s’ instead of 
 ‘us’s.’ This is how it goes: 
 
 Chimney cowls 
 Cut 
 Against sky.” 
 
 “But this is the same as the first,’’ Adrian 
 broke in. ‘‘You’ve read this one before.” 
 
 “Only the beginning,” said Reggie. 
 “This kind begins like the first but then it 
 gets different. Besides it isn’t ever printed 
 upside down; a few italics instead: 
 
 Chimney cowls 
 
 Cut 
 
 Against sky 
 
 O Phoibos Albanios 
 The white limbs 
 Of the nymphs 
 
 On Hymettos 
 
 To Pan, the honey 
 Acrid 
 
 In the nostrils, 
 
 To, the purple 
 
 Of the vats of Herakles 
 On the cliffs 
 
 By Akrokeraunia | 
 Hard and bitter 
 
The Man Who Wrote Free Verse 253 
 
 The shells 
 But the flesh 
 Ah Zeus! 
 Ah good!” 
 
 “Ts that all?” asked Adrian. 
 
 “Yes; isn’t it enough?” 
 
 “Absolutely perfect. But there is one 
 kind missing. Except for that line about. 
 fat men eating at the Ritz there was noth- 
 ing really expressing the spirit of real re- 
 volt. You do not do it metaphorically by 
 dissolving words as you have dissolved gram- 
 mar; you do not do it literally by stating 
 your desire to destroy society, to throw in- 
 fernal machines at the comfortable, to burn 
 libraries and pictures, to abolish education, 
 to bombard churches and to tip the Almighty 
 off his throne. You do not even wish you 
 were a tiger or a motor-car.” 
 
 “Well, hang it all, Adrian,” said Reggie, 
 kicking the fender a little peevishly, “TI have 
 hardly had time, have I? But I do assure 
 you I can do that one even more easily than 
 the others. If you find those satisfactory 
 this will be as well.” 
 
 “Yes, they’re quite perfect.” 
 
 “Well, I don’t know whether to hope 
 you're right or not. Even now I cannot per- 
 suade myself that this horrible drivel will 
 take anybody in.” 
 
254 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 
 
 “Well, my dear, you’re wrong. I will 
 send you a list of papers to which you may 
 submit them and the address is all right. 
 Now I must be going. The Balkans are 
 waiting for me.” He took up his hat, stick, 
 and gloves and went out. His leisurely foot- 
 step had sounded four times on the stairs 
 when Reggie rushed after him. 
 
 “T say, wait a minute,” he called breath- 
 lessly, “‘there’s one thing we’ve forgotten. 
 What is my name to be? I simply must 
 have a convincing one. It would be awful 
 to be found out before the time for dis- 
 closure comes; nobody would ever believe 
 I was leg-pulling.”’ 
 
 Adrian leant with his back to the banis- 
 ters, pinched his chin and frowned slightly 
 in thought. 
 
 “Ought I to be a woman do you think?” 
 suggested Reggie. 
 
 “Wait a minute,” said Adrian; and then, 
 “T’ve got it. These made-up names are 
 never convincing. I’ve a brilliant idea. 
 Nobody has ever dreamed of using his own — 
 “mame as a pseudonym.” 
 
 “But, Adrian, it would be absurd to sign 
 myself Reginald Twyfold.” 
 
 _ “T wasn’t suggesting it. What you must 
 do is to sign yourself Charles Twyfold, or 
 Sidney Twyfold, or Ralph Twyfold. John 
 always looks false. I think Sidney; nobody 
 
The Man Who Wrote Free Verse 255 
 
 would ever call himself by a name like Sid- 
 ney unless it really was his name.” 
 
 Reggie was still slightly alarmed. ‘““T'wy- 
 fold,” he ventured, “‘is such an uncommon 
 name. I shall be pestered by people asking 
 me if he is a relation.” 
 
 “Yes. And what better disguise could 
 you have? Frankly admit, when you have 
 to, that he zs a relation. Try to turn the 
 subject; but if you are pressed confess to 
 a second cousinship. Let it be extracted 
 from you that his branch of the family is 
 a little detrimental. ‘I think Sidney lives in 
 Paris. His father had to flee the country 
 and settle in Boulogne, while he himself 
 was not exactly sent down from Oxford but 
 found it convenient to come down after one 
 
 122 
 
 term.’ Good-bye! 
 
 Ill 
 
 A month passed; a month spent by the 
 disreputable Sidney in industrious composi- 
 tion and despatch of manuscripts. Reggie, 
 who couldn’t help liking Muriel in spite of 
 her brainless pretentiousness and was always 
 amused by a dive into strange society, was 
 lunching at her house in Upper Berkeley 
 Street. There was a company of twelve in 
 the jazz dining-room: six young men and 
 six middle-aged women. The women, at a 
 
256 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 
 
 glance, seemed all to have white faces and 
 red hair; the young men had white faces and 
 either no hair or too much; tortoiseshell spec- 
 tacles were generally worn; voices were 
 pitched high; and any little indecency was 
 welcomed by titters of appreciation. The 
 husbands of the ladies were absent on busi- 
 ness or sport; and Art was the principal 
 theme of talk. Reggie managed to keep his 
 end up with the vivacious dames on either 
 side of him. He knew very few of the names 
 of the latest and most devastating Franco- 
 Brazilian painters, and pornography, owing 
 to some strange inhibition, he always shrank 
 from discussing in mixed company. But he 
 met his companions half way; and now and 
 then, when he inadvertently slipped into 
 seriousness, sense, or the disclosure of an 
 acquaintance with the major artists of the 
 past, he delighted them with the surprise of 
 a fresh point of view. The time might come, 
 he reflected, when they might think morality 
 too charming and agree to turn to it for an 
 entirely novel sensation. Suddenly across 
 the confusion of sights and sounds he was 
 aware of Muriel’s long neck and vast stupid 
 eyes as it were shouting across a font of 
 painted wooden pomegranates. “Reggie,” 
 she cried, “you simply must tell me, who 
 is Sidney Twyfold. I simply must know 
 him.” 
 
The Man Who Wrote Free Verse 257 
 
 “Why ?” asked Reggie, “if you don’t mind 
 saying.” 
 
 “But, dearest Reggie, he writes the most 
 marvellous poetry. We’re all simply raving 
 about it. Nobody ever heard of him till two 
 weeks ago. Didn’t you see his “Mammon 
 Fox-Trot” in the—I forget which of the 
 papers it was—last week?” | 
 
 “No,” said Reggie, hoping his face was 
 not paling as he thought it was. 
 
 “But he must be a relative of yours, isn’t 
 he?” 
 
 It was the first rehearsal of what was to 
 be Reggie’s programme until everybody knew 
 about his vagrant Continental cousin who 
 was so averse from personal publicity. “I 
 have a distant cousin who I think is called 
 Sidney, or else Stanley,” he said bravely, 
 “but Pve never even seen him. His family 
 live abroad, I believe. I expect it may be 
 he.” 
 
 “But why don’t you run him down? He 
 is wonderful. You simply must find him 
 and bring him in touch with others who are 
 doing the same thing.” 
 
 Reggie was evasive. He promised to look 
 at the poem, and expressed a conviction that 
 cousin Sidney would be sure to turn up un- 
 assisted. The exchange of sentences, domi- 
 nant. above the surrounding scherzo, gave 
 a new direction to the general conversation. 
 
258 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 
 
 Sidney had been printed in five places in the 
 last three weeks, and most of those present 
 had revelled in his whole product. It was 
 agreed that he had not yet found a definite 
 direction; but as Bertie Griffin said, that 
 was perhaps all the better. Even Cubism 
 and Futurism, it was agreed, had been too 
 narrow. Sidney. Twyfold comprehended 
 these and more: he was at once Electrist, 
 Early Victorian, Deliquescent, Sadist, Uni- 
 versalist, Psychoanalyst and Communist; 
 and he could equal each of the most ad- 
 vanced poets on his own ground. Words 
 like reality, metaphysics, complex, impres- 
 sion, release, significance, dull, sentimental 
 and priapic began to swarm in the air like 
 swallows preparing for migration. Reggie 
 could not help being pleased at having 
 caused such a stir. “So much better,” he 
 heard a myopic youth say, “than Teddy’s 
 ‘Convulsions in Blue Flat Minor.’ ” 
 
 Muriel protested: “I thought Teddy’s 
 thing delicious.” , 
 
 “No,” said the youth, “that sort of thing 
 is rather vewx jeu. People like Twyfold 
 have got much farther.” 
 
 Reggie had a lift in Greta Rogers’s car 
 as far as Piccadilly Circus. He could not 
 help, in the comparatively reasonable atmos- 
 phere of a ¢éte-a-téte, asking her whether 
 she could explain the “Mammon Fox-Trot’’ 
 
The Man Who Wrote Free Verse 259 — 
 
 to him, or indeed throw the slightest hint of 
 its meaning to him. “Reggie,” she said, “I 
 wish you wouldn’t be so obstinate. A// the 
 amusing young men are doing it, and they 
 must be right.” 
 
 He went down Jermyn Street, turned to 
 the left after looking carefully around him, 
 and sidled into the bootmaker’s for his post. 
 He gathered it up, went back to the Albany 
 and locked his door. ‘There were two 
 cheques; there was a manuscript rejected, 
 as he knew and even hoped it would be, by 
 John Fulford to whom he had wickedly sent 
 it; there was a solemn letter of fraternity 
 from a humourless ass who had written all- 
 too-understandable free verse for years and 
 was now about to move with the times; there 
 _ were three invitations from people he did 
 not know and three more from people he did 
 know, including Muriel herself; there was a 
 request from an emancipated young woman 
 for an assignation; and there was a letter 
 calling him a disgusting scoundrel addressed 
 from one of the Service Clubs and honestly 
 signed ““W. H. P. Matthews, Col.” Reggie 
 sighed; then he laughed; he would go 
 through with it now, and in two years, when 
 Adrian gave the word, he would blow the 
 whole thing sky-high. 
 
260 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 
 
 IV 
 
 It is impossible here to detail the stages 
 by which Sidney Twyfold attained his ulti- 
 mate fame. His art developed along various 
 paths, and Reggie managed his career with 
 great acumen. At-times he wrote poems con- 
 sisting entirely of lines like: 
 
 MPSS pout Our Rl she 
 Po OL NAVE 
 
 But he knew that after a while even his 
 keenest admirers would want rather more 
 pabulum than that. He mixed these cun- 
 ningly with poems in all the other modes, 
 graduated down to quite lucid, if violently 
 savage, denunciations of the throne, the 
 hearth, and the altar, his views on the need 
 for trampling on women being specially pro- 
 nounced. He even went farther: at rare 
 intervals he dug out some of the old seriously 
 pretty poems of his regenerate days and sent 
 them to respectable periodicals which had 
 previously rejected them. They were always 
 printed; his disciples rejoiced that their hero 
 could do that sort of traditional thing on 
 his head, and the earnest seekers after truth 
 argued still more earnestly that the fault, as 
 concerned his darker works, must obviously 
 lie with the reader and not with the poet. 
 
The Man Who Wrote Free Verse 261 
 
 As his vogue in all the advanced circles of 
 England and America grew, the chase after 
 his body became hotter. After a brief and 
 risky employment of a district messenger 
 with a cab, he had to leave the bootmaker 
 (who was glad to get rid of him) and move 
 Sidney’s quarters to a friend’s flat in Paris: 
 it meant delay with the posts, but compara- 
 tive safety was assured unless the French 
 Post Office could be tampered with for par- 
 ticulars of readdressing. The appearance of 
 his collected volume, ‘‘Ourang-Outang,” 
 marked an epoch: all the papers had long 
 reviews, enthusiastic, hedging or denuncia- 
 tory; red political journals began calling 
 him the Poet of the Revolution; and an 
 offer of £5,000 for the MSS. came from a 
 transatlantic bookseller. Reggie was exer- 
 cised by this; he would have liked the 
 money, but his conscience would not allow 
 him to sell a commodity the value of which 
 he intended presently to destroy. The book- 
 seller, however, was not blind to the adver- 
 tising value of his mere offer; he blazoned 
 it, and the refusal, abroad, and even the 
 most conventional began to think that there 
 must be a finely austere artist in this Twy- 
 fold who not merely declined all personal 
 publicity but had stated that he did not ap- 
 prove of the factitious making of money by 
 the sale of manuscripts. 
 
262 The Grub Street Nights Entertainments 
 
 The two years were nearly up, and Adrian 
 and he were continually dinning on the ways 
 and means by which the imposture should 
 be revealed to the world. The leader of 
 revolt would suddenly throw off his dark 
 cloak and step forward as the Laughing King 
 of the Imbeciles. How certain it all seemed! 
 Yet life is but one vast chain of sleeping 
 volcanoes, and this plan also went up in 
 an unheralded eruption. 
 
 Reggie had gone to bed early that night 
 when the great British Bolshevik Revolu- 
 tion broke out. He did not see St. Paul’s 
 and Westminster consumed by flames; he 
 was not present when the Queen Victoria 
 Memorial, that idol and symbol of a hated 
 aristocracy, was pulled down by ropes; he 
 was still asleep in the most secluded thor- 
 oughfare in London, when the morning boat 
 for Russia left crowded with refugees bound 
 for the safest and most prosperous monarch- 
 ist country remaining. ‘The first, in fact, 
 that he knew of the change, was the appear- 
 ance in his bedroom of three dirty and hirsute 
 men with pistols, who announced themselves 
 as the heads of the British Soviet, Abramo- 
 vitch, Macalister and Evans. Reggie, dazed, 
 took some time to pull himself together; but 
 when he was at last awake he thought they 
 had gone mad, for they clicked to the salute 
 and said, in unison, ‘“The Dawn, Comrade.” 
 
The Man Who Wrote Free Verse 263 
 
 “What?” asked the astonished Reggie. 
 
 “We greet the Poet of the Revolution,” 
 chimed the three harsh voices. 
 
 “But,” exclaimed Reggie, with a sudden 
 intuition, “you've got the wrong man. You 
 must have looked me up in the telephone 
 book and got the wrong name. The poet ts 
 Sidney Twyfold; I’m Reggie; he’s my 
 cousin.” 
 
 Abramovitch spoke. “Zere is,” he said, 
 “no further neet for dezeption, gomrade. 
 Ve haf spied on you and your letters for a 
 year. You haf done your vork; you must 
 now haf ze revard.” ‘They led him away. 
 
 As they went down the stairs Reggie heard 
 the uproar of a vast multitude cheering in 
 those cloisters where no multitude had ever 
 been before. Above the din shrill voices 
 were calling his own name. He began to 
 Suess. 
 
 V 
 
 And so it was. Reggie, after that intoxi- 
 cating pageant in Hyde Park where he was 
 unveiled to a people which had thrown off 
 its chains, became the official Laureate of 
 the British Republic. He was allowed one 
 room in his old quarters at the Albany, and 
 was guarded night and day; for, after all, 
 though his sentiments had hitherto been un- 
 
264 The Grub Street N ights Entertainments 
 
 exceptionable, the bourgeois blood might 
 out. It was a tedious job being the Tyrteus 
 of the Reds; but so long as he could not be 
 understood they were quite satisfied with 
 him. All his friends, including Adrian and 
 Muriel, were in St. Petersburg (formerly 
 Leningrad) earning their living by teaching 
 dancing and English, and selling work which 
 they described as English Peasant Embroid- 
 ery. He was no worse off than they; and 
 he had a salary of a million paper pounds 
 a day as well asa barrel of beer a year. He 
 knew that Adrian would not give him away 
 for fear of getting him shot; still, it mattered 
 little, for, had the truth about Reggie 
 been told, his masters would probably have 
 treated it as one more infamous capitalist 
 lie. 
 
 He died in the end, poor fellow, of bore- 
 dom and intellectual starvation. His funeral 
 was attended by half the army and millions 
 of the proletariat. He was buried in the 
 National Pantheon in Villiers Street, Strand. 
 
 THE END 
 
PVA aa 
 
 ' 2 a Wig 
 
 ae ae nee 
 as 
 
 9 
 
 ee 
 
 et (ot 
 
 
 
Drape) 
 
 eA 
 
 
 
De aay 
 ad 
 
 4 
 
 
 
| 
 
 | 
 
 iM 
 
 053311 
 
 > 
 Cw. 
 i 
 5 === 
 
 ni 
 
 3 011 
 
 
 
 ll 
 
 |