And Even Now
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Max Beerbohm >> And Even Now
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14 This e-text was prepared by Tom Weiss (tom@iname.com)
AND EVEN NOW
by MAX BEERBOHM
TO MY WIFE
I offer here some of the essays that I have written in the course of
the past ten years. While I was collecting them and (quite patiently)
reading them again, I found that a few of them were in direct
reference to the moments at which they were severally composed. It was
clear that these must have their dates affixed to them. And for sake
of uniformity I have dated all the others, and, doing so, have thought
I need not exclude all such topical remarks as in them too were
uttered, nor throw into a past tense such of those remarks as I have
retained. Perhaps a book of essays ought to seem as if it had been
written a few days before publication. On the other hand--but this is
a Note, not a Preface.
M.B.
Rapallo, 1920.
CONTENTS
A RELIC (1918)
`HOW SHALL I WORD IT?' (1910)
MOBLED KING (1911)
KOLNIYATSCH (1913)
NO. 2. THE PINES (1914)
A LETTER THAT WAS NOT WRITTEN (1914)
BOOKS WITHIN BOOKS (1914)
THE GOLDEN DRUGGET (1918)
HOSTS AND GUESTS (1918)
A POINT TO BE REMEMBERED (1918)
SERVANTS (1918)
GOING OUT FOR A WALK (1918)
QUIA IMPERFECTUM (1918)
SOMETHING DEFEASIBLE (1919)
`A CLERGYMAN' (1918)
THE CRIME (1920)
IN HOMES UNBLEST (1919)
WILLIAM AND MARY (1920)
ON SPEAKING FRENCH (1919)
LAUGHTER (1920)
A RELIC
1918.
Yesterday I found in a cupboard an old, small, battered portmanteau
which, by the initials on it, I recognised as my own property. The
lock appeared to have been forced. I dimly remembered having forced it
myself, with a poker, in my hot youth, after some journey in which I
had lost the key; and this act of violence was probably the reason why
the trunk had so long ago ceased to travel. I unstrapped it, not
without dust; it exhaled the faint scent of its long closure; it
contained a tweed suit of Late Victorian pattern, some bills, some
letters, a collar-stud, and--something which, after I had wondered for
a moment or two what on earth it was, caused me suddenly to murmur,
`Down below, the sea rustled to and fro over the shingle.'
Strange that these words had, year after long year, been existing in
some obscure cell at the back of my brain!--forgotten but all the
while existing, like the trunk in that cupboard. What released them,
what threw open the cell door, was nothing but the fragment of a fan;
just the butt-end of an inexpensive fan. The sticks are of white bone,
clipped together with a semicircular ring that is not silver. They are
neatly oval at the base, but variously jagged at the other end. The
longest of them measures perhaps two inches. Ring and all, they have
no market value; for a farthing is the least coin in our currency. And
yet, though I had so long forgotten them, for me they are not
worthless. They touch a chord... Lest this confession raise false
hopes in the reader, I add that I did not know their owner.
I did once see her, and in Normandy, and by moonlight, and her name
was Ange'lique. She was graceful, she was even beautiful. I was but
nineteen years old. Yet even so I cannot say that she impressed me
favourably. I was seated at a table of a cafe' on the terrace of a
casino. I sat facing the sea, with my back to the casino. I sat
listening to the quiet sea, which I had crossed that morning. The hour
was late, there were few people about. I heard the swing-door behind
me flap open, and was aware of a sharp snapping and crackling sound as
a lady in white passed quickly by me. I stared at her erect thin back
and her agitated elbows. A short fat man passed in pursuit of her--an
elderly man in a black alpaca jacket that billowed. I saw that she had
left a trail of little white things on the asphalt. I watched the
efforts of the agonised short fat man to overtake her as she swept
wraith-like away to the distant end of the terrace. What was the
matter? What had made her so spectacularly angry with him? The three
or four waiters of the cafe' were exchanging cynical smiles and
shrugs, as waiters will. I tried to feel cynical, but was thrilled
with excitement, with wonder and curiosity. The woman out yonder had
doubled on her tracks. She had not slackened her furious speed, but
the man waddlingly contrived to keep pace with her now. With every
moment they became more distinct, and the prospect that they would
presently pass by me, back into the casino, gave me that physical
tension which one feels on a wayside platform at the imminent passing
of an express. In the rushingly enlarged vision I had of them, the
wrath on the woman's face was even more saliently the main thing than
I had supposed it would be. That very hard Parisian face must have
been as white as the powder that coated it. `coute, Ange'lique,'
gasped the perspiring bourgeois, `e'coute, je te supplie--' The swing-
door received them and was left swinging to and fro. I wanted to
follow, but had not paid for my bock. I beckoned my waiter. On his way
to me he stooped down and picked up something which, with a smile and
a shrug, he laid on my table: `Il semble que Mademoiselle ne s'en
servira plus.' This is the thing I now write of, and at sight of it I
understood why there had been that snapping and crackling, and what
the white fragments on the ground were.
I hurried through the rooms, hoping to see a continuation of that
drama--a scene of appeasement, perhaps, or of fury still implacable.
But the two oddly-assorted players were not performing there. My
waiter had told me he had not seen either of them before. I suppose
they had arrived that day. But I was not destined to see either of
them again. They went away, I suppose, next morning; jointly or
singly; singly, I imagine.
They made, however, a prolonged stay in my young memory, and would
have done so even had I not had that tangible memento of them. Who
were they, those two of whom that one strange glimpse had befallen me?
What, I wondered, was the previous history of each? What, in
particular, had all that tragic pother been about? Mlle. Ange'lique I
guessed to be thirty years old, her friend perhaps fifty-five. Each of
their faces was as clear to me as in the moment of actual vision--the
man's fat shiny bewildered face; the taut white face of the woman, the
hard red line of her mouth, the eyes that were not flashing, but
positively dull, with rage. I presumed that the fan had been a present
from him, and a recent present--bought perhaps that very day, after
their arrival in the town. But what, what had he done that she should
break it between her hands, scattering the splinters as who should sow
dragon's teeth? I could not believe he had done anything much amiss. I
imagined her grievance a trivial one. But this did not make the case
less engrossing. Again and again I would take the fan-stump from my
pocket, examining it on the palm of my hand, or between finger and
thumb, hoping to read the mystery it had been mixed up in, so that I
might reveal that mystery to the world. To the world, yes; nothing
less than that. I was determined to make a story of what I had seen--a
conte in the manner of great Guy de Maupassant. Now and again, in the
course of the past year or so, it had occurred to me that I might be a
writer. But I had not felt the impulse to sit down and write
something. I did feel that impulse now. It would indeed have been an
irresistible impulse if I had known just what to write.
I felt I might know at any moment, and had but to give my mind to it.
Maupassant was an impeccable artist, but I think the secret of the
hold he had on the young men of my day was not so much that we
discerned his cunning as that we delighted in the simplicity which his
cunning achieved. I had read a great number of his short stories, but
none that had made me feel as though I, if I were a writer, mightn't
have written it myself. Maupassant had an European reputation. It was
pleasing, it was soothing and gratifying, to feel that one could at
any time win an equal fame if one chose to set pen to paper. And now,
suddenly, the spring had been touched in me, the time was come. I was
grateful for the fluke by which I had witnessed on the terrace that
evocative scene. I looked forward to reading the MS. of `The Fan'--to-
morrow, at latest. I was not wildly ambitious. I was not inordinately
vain. I knew I couldn't ever, with the best will in the world, write
like Mr. George Meredith. Those wondrous works of his, seething with
wit, with poetry and philosophy and what not, never had beguiled me
with the sense that I might do something similar. I had full
consciousness of not being a philosopher, of not being a poet, and of
not being a wit. Well, Maupassant was none of these things. He was
just an observer, like me. Of course he was a good deal older than I,
and had observed a good deal more. But it seemed to me that he was not
my superior in knowledge of life. I knew all about life through him.
Dimly, the initial paragraph of my tale floated in my mind. I--not
exactly I myself, but rather that impersonal je familiar to me through
Maupassant--was to be sitting at that table, with a bock before me,
just as I had sat. Four or five short sentences would give the whole
scene. One of these I had quite definitely composed. You have already
heard it. `Down below, the sea rustled to and fro over the shingle.'
These words, which pleased me much, were to do double duty. They were
to recur. They were to be, by a fine stroke, the very last words of my
tale, their tranquillity striking a sharp ironic contrast with the
stress of what had just been narrated. I had, you see, advanced
further in the form of my tale than in the substance. But even the
form was as yet vague. What, exactly, was to happen after Mlle.
Ange'lique and M. Joumand (as I provisionally called him) had rushed
back past me into the casino? It was clear that I must hear the whole
inner history from the lips of one or the other of them. Which? Should
M. Joumand stagger out on to the terrace, sit down heavily at the
table next to mine, bury his head in his hands, and presently, in
broken words, blurt out to me all that might be of interest?... `"And
I tell you I gave up everything for her--everything." He stared at me
with his old hopeless eyes. "She is more than the fiend I have
described to you. Yet I swear to you, monsieur, that if I had anything
left to give, it should be hers."
`Down below, the sea rustled to and fro over the shingle.'
Or should the lady herself be my informant? For a while, I rather
leaned to this alternative. It was more exciting, it seemed to make
the writer more signally a man of the world. On the other hand, it was
less simple to manage. Wronged persons might be ever so communicative,
but I surmised that persons in the wrong were reticent. Mlle.
Ange'lique, therefore, would have to be modified by me in appearance
and behaviour, toned down, touched up; and poor M. Joumand must look
like a man of whom one could believe anything.... `She ceased
speaking. She gazed down at the fragments of her fan, and then, as
though finding in them an image of her own life, whispered, "To think
what I once was, monsieur!--what, but for him, I might be, even now!"
She buried her face in her hands, then stared out into the night.
Suddenly she uttered a short, harsh laugh.
`Down below, the sea rustled to and fro over the shingle.'
I decided that I must choose the first of these two ways. It was the
less chivalrous as well as the less lurid way, but clearly it was the
more artistic as well as the easier. The `chose vue,' the `tranche de
la vie'--this was the thing to aim at. Honesty was the best policy. I
must be nothing if not merciless. Maupassant was nothing if not
merciless. He would not have spared Mlle. Ange'lique. Besides, why
should I libel M. Joumand? Poor--no, not poor M. Joumand! I warned
myself against pitying him. One touch of `sentimentality,' and I
should be lost. M. Joumand was ridiculous. I must keep him so. But--
what was his position in life? Was he a lawyer perhaps?--or the
proprietor of a shop in the Rue de Rivoli? I toyed with the
possibility that he kept a fan shop--that the business had once been a
prosperous one, but had gone down, down, because of his infatuation
for this woman to whom he was always giving fans--which she always
smashed.... `"Ah monsieur, cruel and ungrateful to me though she is, I
swear to you that if I had anything left to give, it should be hers;
but," he stared at me with his old hopeless eyes, "the fan she broke
to-night was the last--the last, monsieur--of my stock." Down below,'-
-but I pulled myself together, and asked pardon of my Muse.
It may be that I had offended her by my fooling. Or it may be that she
had a sisterly desire to shield Mlle. Ange'lique from my mordant art.
Or it may be that she was bent on saving M. de Maupassant from a
dangerous rivalry. Anyway, she withheld from me the inspiration I had
so confidently solicited. I could not think what had led up to that
scene on the terrace. I tried hard and soberly. I turned the `chose
vue' over and over in my mind, day by day, and the fan-stump over and
over in my hand. But the `chose a` figurer'--what, oh what, was that?
Nightly I revisited the cafe', and sat there with an open mind--a mind
wide-open to catch the idea that should drop into it like a ripe
golden plum. The plum did not ripen. The mind remained wide-open for a
week or more, but nothing except that phrase about the sea rustled to
and fro in it.
A full quarter of a century has gone by. M. Joumand's death, so far
too fat was he all those years ago, may be presumed. A temper so
violent as Mlle. Ange'lique's must surely have brought its owner to
the grave, long since. But here, all unchanged, the stump of her fan
is; and once more I turn it over and over in my hand, not learning its
secret--no, nor even trying to, now. The chord this relic strikes in
me is not one of curiosity as to that old quarrel, but (if you will
forgive me) one of tenderness for my first effort to write, and for my
first hopes of excellence.
`HOW SHALL I WORD IT?'
1910.
It would seem that I am one of those travellers for whom the railway
bookstall does not cater. Whenever I start on a journey, I find that
my choice lies between well-printed books which I have no wish to
read, and well-written books which I could not read without permanent
injury to my eyesight. The keeper of the bookstall, seeing me gaze
vaguely along his shelves, suggests that I should take `Fen Country
Fanny' or else `The Track of Blood' and have done with it. Not wishing
to hurt his feelings, I refuse these works on the plea that I have
read them. Whereon he, divining despite me that I am a superior
person, says `Here is a nice little handy edition of More's "Utopia"'
or `Carlyle's "French Revolution"' and again I make some excuse. What
pleasure could I get from trying to cope with a masterpiece printed in
diminutive grey-ish type on a semi-transparent little grey-ish page? I
relieve the bookstall of nothing but a newspaper or two.
The other day, however, my eye and fancy were caught by a book
entitled `How Shall I Word It?' and sub-entitled `A Complete Letter
Writer for Men and Women.' I had never read one of these manuals, but
had often heard that there was a great and constant `demand' for them.
So I demanded this one. It is no great fun in itself. The writer is no
fool. He has evidently a natural talent for writing letters. His style
is, for the most part, discreet and easy. If you were a young man
writing `to Father of Girl he wishes to Marry' or `thanking Fiance'e
for Present' or `reproaching Fiance'e for being a Flirt,' or if you
were a mother `asking Governess her Qualifications' or `replying to
Undesirable Invitation for her Child,' or indeed if you were in any
other one of the crises which this book is designed to alleviate, you
might copy out and post the specially-provided letter without making
yourself ridiculous in the eyes of its receiver--unless, of course, he
or she also possessed a copy of the book. But--well, can you conceive
any one copying out and posting one of these letters, or even taking
it as the basis for composition? You cannot. That shows how little you
know of your fellow-creatures. Not you nor I can plumb the abyss at
the bottom of which such humility is possible. Nevertheless, as we
know by that great and constant `demand,' there the abyss is, and
there multitudes are at the bottom of it. Let's peer down... No, all
is darkness. But faintly, if we listen hard, is borne up to us a sound
of the scratching of innumerable pens--pens whose wielders are all
trying, as the author of this handbook urges them, to `be original,
fresh, and interesting' by dint of more or less strict adherence to
sample.
Giddily you draw back from the edge of the abyss. Come!--here is a
thought to steady you. The mysterious great masses of helpless folk
for whom `How Shall I Word It' is written are sound at heart, delicate
in feeling, anxious to please, most loth to wound. For it must be
presumed that the author's style of letter-writing is informed as much
by a desire to give his public what it needs, and will pay for, as by
his own beautiful nature; and in the course of all the letters that he
dictates you will find not one harsh word, not one ignoble thought or
unkind insinuation. In all of them, though so many are for the use of
persons placed in the most trying circumstances, and some of them are
for persons writhing under a sense of intolerable injury, sweetness
and light do ever reign. Even `yours truly, Jacob Langton,' in his
`letter to his Daughter's Mercenary Fiance',' mitigates the sternness
of his tone by the remark that his `task is inexpressibly painful.'
And he, Mr. Langton, is the one writer who lets the post go out on his
wrath. When Horace Masterton, of Thorpe Road, Putney, receives from
Miss Jessica Weir, of Fir Villa, Blackheath, a letter `declaring her
Change of Feelings,' does he upbraid her? No; `it was honest and brave
of you to write to me so straightforwardly and at the back of my mind
I know you have done what is best.... I give you back your freedom
only at your desire. God bless you, dear.' Not less admirable is the
behaviour, in similar case, of Cecil Grant (14, Glover Street,
Streatham). Suddenly, as a bolt from the blue, comes a letter from
Miss Louie Hawke (Elm View, Deerhurst), breaking off her betrothal to
him. Haggard, he sits down to his desk; his pen traverses the
notepaper--calling down curses on Louie and on all her sex? No; `one
cannot say good-bye for ever without deep regret to days that have
been so full of happiness. I must thank you sincerely for all your
great kindness to me.... With every sincere wish for your future
happiness,' he bestows complete freedom on Miss Hawke. And do not
imagine that in the matter of self-control and sympathy, of power to
understand all and pardon all, the men are lagged behind by the women.
Miss Leila Johnson (The Manse, Carlyle) has observed in Leonard Wace
(Dover Street, Saltburn) a certain coldness of demeanour; yet `I do
not blame you; it is probably your nature'; and Leila in her sweet
forbearance is typical of all the other pained women in these pages:
she is but one of a crowd of heroines.
Face to face with all this perfection, the not perfect reader begins
to crave some little outburst of wrath, of hatred or malice, from one
of these imaginary ladies and gentlemen. He longs for--how shall he
word it?--a glimpse of some bad motive, of some little lapse from
dignity. Often, passing by a pillar-box, I have wished I could unlock
it and carry away its contents, to be studied at my leisure. I have
always thought such a haul would abound in things fascinating to a
student of human nature. One night, not long ago, I took a waxen
impression of the lock of the pillar-box nearest to my house, and had
a key made. This implement I have as yet lacked either the courage or
the opportunity to use. And now I think I shall throw it away.... No,
I shan't. I refuse, after all, to draw my inference that the bulk of
the British public writes always in the manner of this handbook. Even
if they all have beautiful natures they must sometimes be sent
slightly astray by inferior impulses, just as are you and I.
And, if err they must, surely it were well they should know how to do
it correctly and forcibly. I suggest to our author that he should
sprinkle his next edition with a few less righteous examples, thereby
both purging his book of its monotony and somewhat justifying its sub-
title. Like most people who are in the habit of writing things to be
printed, I have not the knack of writing really good letters. But let
me crudely indicate the sort of thing that our manual needs....
LETTER FROM POOR MAN TO OBTAIN MONEY FROM RICH ONE.
[The English law is particularly hard on what is called blackmail. It
is therefore essential that the applicant should write nothing that
might afterwards be twisted to incriminate him.--ED.]
DEAR SIR,
To-day, as I was turning out a drawer in my attic, I came across a
letter which by a curious chance fell into my hands some years ago,
and which, in the stress of grave pecuniary embarrassment, had escaped
my memory. It is a letter written by yourself to a lady, and the date
shows it to have been written shortly after your marriage. It is of a
confidential nature, and might, I fear, if it fell into the wrong
hands, be cruelly misconstrued. I would wish you to have the
satisfaction of destroying it in person. At first I thought of sending
it on to you by post. But I know how happy you are in your domestic
life; and probably your wife and you, in your perfect mutual trust,
are in the habit of opening each other's letters. Therefore, to avoid
risk, I would prefer to hand the document to you personally. I will
not ask you to come to my attic, where I could not offer you such
hospitality as is due to a man of your wealth and position. You will
be so good as to meet me at 3.0 A.M. (sharp) to-morrow (Thursday)
beside the tenth lamp-post to the left on the Surrey side of Waterloo
Bridge; at which hour and place we shall not be disturbed.
I am, dear Sir,
Yours respectfully,
JAMES GRIDGE.
LETTER FROM YOUNG MAN REFUSING TO PAY HIS TAILOR'S BILL.
Mr. Eustace Davenant has received the half-servile, half-insolent
screed which Mr. Yardley has addressed to him. Let Mr. Yardley cease
from crawling on his knees and shaking his fist. Neither this posture
nor this gesture can wring one bent farthing from the pockets of Mr.
Davenant, who was a minor at the time when that series of ill-made
suits was supplied to him and will hereafter, as in the past, shout
(without prejudice) from the house-tops that of all the tailors in
London Mr. Yardley is at once the most grasping and the least
competent.
LETTER TO THANK AUTHOR FOR INSCRIBED COPY OF BOOK.
DEAR MR. EMANUEL FLOWER,
It was kind of you to think of sending me a copy of your new book. It
would have been kinder still to think again and abandon that project.
I am a man of gentle instincts, and do not like to tell you that `A
Flight into Arcady' (of which I have skimmed a few pages, thus wasting
two or three minutes of my not altogether worthless time) is trash. On
the other hand, I am determined that you shall not be able to go
around boasting to your friends, if you have any, that this work was
not condemned, derided, and dismissed by your sincere well-wisher,
WREXFORD CRIPPS.
LETTER TO MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT UNSEATED AT GENERAL ELECTION.
DEAR MR. POBSBY-BURFORD,
Though I am myself an ardent Tory, I cannot but rejoice in the
crushing defeat you have just suffered in West Odgetown. There are
moments when political conviction is overborne by personal sentiment;
and this is one of them. Your loss of the seat that you held is the
more striking by reason of the splendid manner in which the northern
and eastern divisions of Odgetown have been wrested from the Liberal
Party. The great bulk of the newspaper-reading public will be puzzled
by your extinction in the midst of our party's triumph. But then, the
great mass of the newspaper-reading public has not met you. I have.
You will probably not remember me. You are the sort of man who would
not remember anybody who might not be of some definite use to him.
Such, at least, was one of the impressions you made on me when I met
you last summer at a dinner given by our friends the Pelhams. Among
the other things in you that struck me were the blatant pomposity of
your manner, your appalling flow of cheap platitudes, and your hoggish
lack of ideas. It is such men as you that lower the tone of public
life. And I am sure that in writing to you thus I am but expressing
what is felt, without distinction of party, by all who sat with you in
the late Parliament.
The one person in whose behalf I regret your withdrawal into private
life is your wife, whom I had the pleasure of taking in to the
aforesaid dinner. It was evident to me that she was a woman whose
spirit was well-nigh broken by her conjunction with you. Such remnants
of cheerfulness as were in her I attributed to the Parliamentary
duties which kept you out of her sight for so very many hours daily. I
do not like to think of the fate to which the free and independent
electors of West Odgetown have just condemned her. Only, remember
this: chattel of yours though she is, and timid and humble, she
despises you in her heart.
I am, dear Mr. Pobsby-Burford,
Yours very truly,
HAROLD THISTLAKE.
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