And Even Now

by Max Beerbohm

  And Even Now

  Max Beerbohm

  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 swingdoor 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 swingdoor 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 tha
t 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’—tomorrow, 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 o
f 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.