As Berry and I Were Saying

by Dornford Yates

  “How do they get these reputations?”

  “I really don’t know. Probably through being in cases which are splashed, because they are ‘news’. So the public gets to know their names.”

  “I’ve just remembered something. The famous Sir Edward Clarke. I rather think that he was before your time.”

  “Just before. But I can remember him, for Coles Willing took me to hear him in 1903. Some death-bed Will case. He was, of course, the leader of the Bar in his day: and he actually practised for half a century. Think of the changes he saw in fifty years. It was said that he left the Bar a disappointed man. He’d been offered the Mastership of the Rolls: this he refused, for he wanted to be Lord Chief Justice. But they never offered him that. He was, of course, a famous advocate. He grew very autocratic towards the end.”

  “And Five Were Foolish,” said Jill. “Wasn’t there something that started one of those tales?”

  “I know what you mean, my darling. We were driving down through France soon after the first Great War. And we stopped at a garage, for I wanted some cotton waste. They hadn’t got such a thing: but they sold me a box of rags, which, they said, were sterilized.”

  “The French all over,” said Berry.

  “Exactly. But I had to have something. The first rag which I took out had once been part of the shirt of a wounded man.”

  “How bestial,” said Daphne.

  “The French all over,” said Berry.

  “I didn’t take out any more. But that gave me the idea for the short tale Madeleine.”

  “What gave you the idea for The Stolen March?”

  “My favourite,” said Jill. “It always was.”

  “I don’t know at all. I just sat down and began, and the book carried on. I well remember that I couldn’t think how to get them out of The Pail. But the book did it all right – and, I think, quite naturally.”

  “If I may say so,” said Berry, “that book has some very high spots. Much, of course, was drivel: but—”

  “What was drivel?” said Jill.

  “I am happily unable,” said Berry, “to retain in my mind such written word as does not attain the standard necessary to merit my attention.”

  “Plagiarist,” said Daphne. “That’s Pride to the life. Only Boy would have put it better.” She turned to me. “I always hoped you’d write a sequel to The Stolen March.”

  “I meant to,” I said. “But a lot of people didn’t like it, you know.”

  “That,” said Berry, “I can well believe.”

  “Be quiet,” said Daphne. “But, Boy, that didn’t stop you?”

  I laughed.

  “No. That’s why I’m not a good author. I’ve always gone as I pleased. As long as I know that my work is up to standard, I don’t care what people like. But my publishers got worried. And so I put it off. And then I did other things, and – well, it’s too late now. It could be done: but the sequel would not be a patch on its predecessor. And that must never happen. If you are to write a sequel, it’s got to be just as good.”

  “Was Rupert of Hentzau as good as The Prisoner of Zenda?”

  “No. But the last scene lifted it very, very high.”

  “What was the best novel written between the wars?”

  “That’s easy. James Hilton’s Lost Horizon. About that, to my mind, there is no argument.”

  “What made you change your style?”

  “You mean, start writing romances?”

  “Yes. Blind Corner was the first.”

  “Well, I read an article – I think it was in The Spectator – in which the writer pointed out that an author who wrote stuff that sold, when he could really write better stuff should be ashamed of himself. That got me under the ribs. For I knew that, if I tried, I could write better English than so far I had. But there didn’t seem to me to be much scope for good English in the light stuff I had been writing. And so I wrote Blind Corner. Of course I got stacks of letters, saying ‘Anybody can do stuff like Blind Corner, but nobody else can do your light stuff. Please stick to your last.’”

  “What damned impertinence,” said Berry.

  “It was not meant. And I saw their point. But it wasn’t mine. So I wrote three more ‘Chandos’ books, before throwing back. The author who writes what his public wants him to write, because his public wants him to write it, is doomed.”

  “It has been done,” said Daphne.

  “I know. It’s a great mistake. In a way, it’s writing to order. And that is a thing no author should ever do.”

  “After the first four ‘Chandos’ books, you wrote Adèle and Co.”

  “To my mind,” said Berry, “taking it by and large, you’ve never bettered that book.”

  “I shall always think it’s the best of the ‘Berry’ books.”

  “Better,” said Daphne,” than The House that Berry Built?”

  “That’s my belief.”

  “One thing, I’ll give you,” said Berry. “For some extraordinary reason, your books don’t date.”

  “That’s just an accident.”

  “Some reviewers,” said Jill, “keep on referring to your tales as being impossible. They’re quite nice, as a rule, but they will keep on saying that the things that happen are impossible. That always makes me cross, for they’re not impossible.”

  “I know,” said I, laughing. “It used to annoy me once. But I don’t care now. You see, you must remember this. We know that they are not impossible. Take Cost Price. Everything in that book could easily have happened. A courageous giant, like Chandos, who knew no fear, could have done all that he did. And there was no situation which was unreasonable. But, then, we know the Continent of Europe. And we know that all those things could have happened there. But the reviewer doesn’t know the Continent… And so he says, ‘Impossible. Entertaining no doubt: but impossible.’ Of course such things couldn’t take place in England. That is why I always make France or Austria the scene. And I refer to Austria before 1938. In Blind Corner I took care to say that, if you had cared to fight a duel with a couple of Lewis guns in the Austrian countryside, before the first war, no one would have taken the trouble to come and see what it was.”

  “I can bear that out,” said Berry. “It’s perfectly true. And everything that happened in She Fell Among Thieves could perfectly well have happened in France up to the second Great War.”

  “Well, there we are,” I said. “The reviewers don’t realize that, and I don’t blame them. But it happens to be true. After all, what is a romance? As I have said before, it is a ‘tale with scene and incidents remote from every-day life’. And there, I think, lies the answer. I once had a terribly nice letter from a bloke, who said ‘What I like about your books is that you never write anything which isn’t entirely possible. Given initiative, drive, courage, strength and money, any fit man could do what Mansel and Chandos do. And you always give a perfectly satisfactory explanation of everything. That’s why your books are convincing.’”

  “That was a rare tribute.”

  “It was, indeed. And I valued it very much. You see, it’s so easy, when A and B are in a jam, for C, the hero, to appear in a waiter’s dress and lug them out. But how did C get there? How did he get taken on? How was it that he was there at the critical moment? Well, that’s left to the imagination – and must be swallowed whole: for the author doesn’t know any more than the reader does. And when the police are coming and you’ve got to dispose of the dope. Well, you open a panel and you press a lever which drops the dope into a furnace. That’s fine, of course. But who installed the contrivance – a rather elaborate contrivance – behind the panelling of a London flat?” I shrugged my shoulders. “Convenient waiters and levers are all very well. But my experience is that in life they are not there. Such work is slovenly. I have always maintained that if you publish a book, you’ve got to play fair. The Stolen March was a fantasy: the action of Blood Royal and Fire Below took place in a principality not to be found on the maps: but, allowing for the c
ustom of the country, Chandos did nothing which a fine fellow couldn’t have done. Frankly, I should be ashamed to offer my public something which no thinking man could accept. It is, I suppose, a matter of self-respect.”

  “Why did you write Lower Than Vermin? I mean, that was down a street which you’d never taken before.”

  “I’ll tell you. I waited a year or two for somebody else to write it, by which I mean, to write a similar book: somebody whose position was more important than mine. But nobody did. And so I decided to do it; for I felt that, before it was too late, some author of standing ought to place upon record the truth about the old days, which, because they know no better, today the young revile. Indeed, they are so instructed. They are taught, by fellow-travellers – for they can be nothing else – fellow-travellers older than they, that the old days were wicked days, when the rich oppressed the poor, when no one who was not well-born had a chance of making good, when Great Britain did robbery with violence on nations weaker than she. I have heard such a fellow-traveller, whose name is by no means unknown, declare such things on the broadcast – and he was only a year or two younger than I. We know that such things are lies, and the fellow-travellers who tell them, know that they are lies. We know that the England of our youth was a happy, prosperous land, where most men, high and low, were well content with their lot. And so, before it was too late, I determined to set down the truth.

  “Whether this did any good, I shall never know. But I had a great many letters, thanking me for the book. I only received one letter which disapproved of the picture which I had drawn. Two letters, from different countries, whose writers were English-bred, said the same thing. They said, ‘Lower Than Vermin should be made compulsory reading in every school’. So, at least, they got my idea. And now I’ve talked more than enough about my own stuff. I can’t think how I’ve written thirty books to date. It seems such a lot, somehow. But many authors, of course, have written far more than that.”

  “I am credibly informed,” said Berry, “that some authors set themselves an allotted task. This is always to write five thousand words a day – or three or four or six. And this, they faithfully do.”

  “So I believe,” said I. “Trollope, I know, did that: and so did Arnold Bennett. And so has done many another, for all I know. Now Trollope and Arnold Bennett were both great men: and I can only suppose that they could control their gifts. For I could never do that.

  “In the first place I never employ the yard-stick. When I get up from my table, I’ve no idea at all how many words I have written since I sat down. When I’ve finished a tale, I’ve no idea of its length. I know that it’s not too short; but no more than that. As a matter of fact, my short stories were always rather long. But they just worked out that way. The book or the tale decides – it’s nothing to do with me. They are all eventually measured, but that’s my publisher’s job.

  “In the second place, I never could engage to write so much a day. I’ve always worked pretty hard, but one day the book will go, and another day it won’t. And I cannot possibly force it: the stuff wouldn’t be worth reading if I did. Setting yourself to write so many pages a day is much like writing to order: such as can do it – and turn out stuff worth reading, as Trollope and Bennett did, command my admiration: I don’t know how they do it, and that’s the truth.”

  “Bear with me,” said Berry. “What about dictation?”

  I laughed.

  “The man who can dictate fair prose is a rara avis indeed. I think it likely that Winston Churchill can. So, possibly, can Somerset Maugham. But, then, they probably do it, if they do, as Thackeray did. Thackeray had a magnificent memory. He would stroll in Kensington Gardens, composing his work as he went. And, when he came home, he would dictate the passages he had composed. But wash out the superman, and you may safely say that stuff which is dictated is never fair prose.”

  “One thing more. You always write your stuff in longhand first?”

  “Always. After I’ve done a few pages, I move to the typewriter. On that I knock out what I’ve written any old way. I don’t care what it looks like, so long as it is in type. You see, when I write, I’m always throwing back – reading over what I have written: when this is in type, it’s very much easier to read. When I’ve copied what I have written, I sometimes go on composing and typing as I compose. But never for very long. After a page, perhaps, I come back to the longhand again.

  “When I’ve done about a chapter, I revise it, that is to say, I cut the typescript about – in longhand, of course. Alter and prune and add, till it looks like nothing on earth. But I keep it legible: for, when the book is finished, the fair copy’s made from that.”

  “So the typescript is really your original manuscript?”

  “I suppose it is.”

  “And he tears them up,” said Jill.

  “He’s not going to tear up this one,” said Berry. “It’ll probably be sold at Sotheby’s for an enormous sum.” He sighed. “I suppose it’ll go to America. It can’t be helped. And now let’s go on Circuit for quarter of an hour.”

  “That’s right,” said my sister. “Brooch and The Assizes. I used to love to see The Red Judge go by.”

  “So did I. They’re a bit of the old world, Her Majesty’s Justices in Eyre.”

  “What does that mean?” said Jill.

  “‘Eyre’ ’s the old word for ‘Circuit’. There are two Judges, sometimes. But the ‘churching’ of the Judge, the state coach with its footmen on the tail-board, the escort, the trumpeters, and The Judge’s Lodging – these are all old institutions and stand for dignity. They’re very picturesque and very valuable. One day, I suppose, they will go the way of the Grand Jury: and that will be that. But I shall regret their passing.

  “In my hearing a member of the Bar once scoffed at the state which is kept by Her Majesty’s Justices in Eyre. He was – well, senior to me, so I held my tongue. I remember his saying that he was once engaged in a case which lasted three days – I think, at Lewes. So he stayed in the town. One day, when the Court had risen, he went for a walk. And he fell in with the Judge – Mr Justice Day. The Judge confided to him that he had left the court by an unobtrusive door, in order to avoid being driven back in the coach: and declared his relish at the thought of the coach and its attendant ‘flunkeys’ awaiting his coming in vain. That the narrator relished this distasteful reminiscence was very clear. Later, he was raised to the Bench, and I used to wonder what he made of it all.”

  “It doesn’t sound a very good appointment.”

  I shrugged my shoulders.

  “I think he did all right. And here let me pay a tribute, in case I forget.

  “Nobody ever hears of The Clerk of Assize. He is really the Clerk of Arraigns, and each Circuit has its own Clerk. If he discharges his office with ability, he can become a most important man. It was generally recognized in my day that Arthur Denman of the South Eastern Circuit was the finest Clerk of Assize that ever was seen. Dignity personified, he truly distinguished his most ancient office. His wisdom was infinite, and his address superb. He was severe – I never saw him smile – and most punctilious. More than one Judge feared him: the Bar certainly did.

  “Almost the first case in which I appeared alone was heard at the Maidstone Assize. I was frightened out of my life, but I managed to struggle through. When the case was over, Denman beckoned to me. He was sitting below the Judge, so I went and sat down by his side.

  “‘Please never again let me see you address the Court with a hand in your pocket.’

  “‘I’m very sorry,’ I said. ‘It was unintentional.’

  “‘Perhaps. But it was highly disrespectful. All right.’

  “I suppose some people would have resented this rebuke. But I did not; for Denman was qualified to administer it. I never got to know him – I don’t think any member of the Bar ever did. But we knew one another in Court. And I have much to thank him for. He was, of course, the author of Denman’s Digest, a most admirable work.

/>   “The other outstanding personality of the South Eastern Circuit was the Circuit Butler, Smither. He was a splendid servant – the servant of the Bar. He had an inherent dignity, which was compelling. He was always on duty, looking after members of the Bar who were staying the night in the town, and attending other members who were returning by train. He’d carry their robes to the station and get them a seat. And things like that. All sorts of little matters were dealt with by Smither. We always got on very well. Once or twice, if a Judge fell sick, and a Commissioner of Assize came down to do his work, Smither would seek me out and ask me to give him lunch. Why he chose me, I don’t know: but, of course, I was very much flattered and very pleased. I only hope the Commissioner enjoyed it as much as I did: but I rather doubt that.”

  “What did the other members of the Bar think about it?”

  “I’ve no idea. They never seemed to mind. Perhaps it was an honour which they were glad to escape.”

  “Were you ‘The Junior’?”

  “Oh, no. ‘The Junior’ was Gerald Dodson, now Recorder of London – and, I believe, a first-rate Recorder, too.”

  “To bed,” said Daphne, rising. “It’s terribly late.”

  “Not my fault,” said Berry. “Your fool of a brother will talk.”

  “Rot,” said Jill. “You’re always egging him on.”

  “I must confess,” said Berry, “to a certain squalid curiosity of which I am heartily ashamed. And he seems to be able to satisfy it. But I’m going to tread it under. I will encourage no more of these grisly memories. Some may be side-lights on history: but the glare they cast is sordid.”

  “They’re better,” said Jill, “than the stuff you want shoved in.

  “‘Stuff,’” said Berry. “‘Stuff.’ God give me strength. You’re a very naughty little girl, and tomorrow you shan’t sit up. ‘Stuff.’ Their intrinsic value apart, drawn from the precious cask of wisdom unrefreshed, the memories I have vouchsafed are literature. Walkup’s in all their glory were not arrayed like one of these.”

  “To bed,” said I, laughing, “before he says anything worse.”