The Innocent Moon

by Henry Williamson

  At question time Warbeck got up and said, “I would like to ask the lecturer what emotion inspired him to write his own series of jingoist verses, particularly the one which described the spirit of a soldier, shot for cowardice, entering the Hall of the Free Beer and Free Woodbines. The dead heroes sitting at the tables roared for him to go out. No man,” said Warbeck, “who had been in action himself would have written that bit of fearful mongrelism. I will not promote it above its poetic content to call it doggerel.”

  He looked around. “Will Mr. Harsnop tell us what was his own chief emotion in the war? Was it admiration for front-line soldiers, which it could hardly be, for clearly Mr. Harsnop does not understand them, or was it a sublimation of his own fearful thoughts? Perhaps Mr. Harsnop will tell us if he served at the front?”

  Harsnop said he was a gunner, and had frequently been in action.

  “But were you not an anti-aircraft gunner, well behind the lines?”

  Harsnop admitted that that was one of his duties, but that he failed to see why, as a writer, he should not write of courage and devotion to duty, which he saw all around him at the front. “Now I will ask you a question,” he said. “I don’t know who you are, but from your general tone and attitude I should hazard that you are one of the Comrades, if not Red, at least a delicate pale pink.”

  “Unlike yourself,” retorted Julian, “I have no politics. But if I did have a political outlook, and if it were pink, it would at least have more colour than that of a milksop. I am not saying that you are a milksop, but if you are not one, why do you write like a milksop? Your verse, I will not call it poetry, may have autopsychical value as a revelation of your inner fears, but otherwise it has no value whatsoever.”

  “You are being personal, and you are an extremely rude man,” said Mrs. Portal-Welch. “Mr. Harsnop, I must apologise to you for what the last speaker has said. Now are there any more questions, from members?”

  I wanted to say that in battle everyone feels glassy fear, at least in the first wave when machine-guns are cutting down a line of men on either side of you, and that no infantryman who had been through it would damn another who lost his nerve, for some had private fears which sapped them, originating from before the war; but I could not get up to speak, as I felt suddenly exhausted.

  Julian is a bit of a bully. Before the arrival at Caxton Hall he said to me that my essay in The English Review was “pure nonsense, and anybody could have written it.” After the meeting he started to hold forth on Swinburne in the neighbouring pub, and I slipped away with a young Suffolk poet called Southwold, who had been with the infantry and agreed with me that Harsnop had got his literary style from Kipling, the bravado part.

  Jan. 20. Julian is now full of ideas for travel. Today he suggested that we go to Spain together, working our passages; an hour later he proposed Holland; after closing time it was a flying trip to Cambridge, in an Aero Club ’plane; ten minutes later, “We must, simply must, take a wherry on the Broads this coming summer.”

  These expeditions having been enjoyed in fancy, “We’ll spend the summer in Devon, I think, and write like mad.” Then, “Dine with me next Wednesday in Town, and I’ll introduce you to Lorna and Toots Pounds.” Etc., etc., etc. Meanwhile we are trudging over country unseen by him, he about a yard ahead of me, turning round all the time, so that I can’t get him out of my sight, as I pretend to be taking in his yards of Swinburne, tangled up with boastings of himself in a niche of the Temple of Fame.

  But this is too nude a portrait, as Barbellion would say. Julian can, when sober, be an interesting companion. Then I enjoy his company, and his presence keeps me from brooding about Spica—sometimes.

  Phillip was sitting one evening towards the end of January in the Café Royal with Julian Warbeck and Anders Norse. They were in the room lined with mirrors in gilt frames fixed against the walls, marble-topped tables, and red plush settees. Norse, a man of about thirty, with healthy red face and prematurely white hair, was holding in the palm of his hand five sovereigns, an uncommon sight since the war. Turning to the girl sitting quietly on his right hand beside a massive man with an ugly powerful face and a fringe of dark ringlets under a wide-brimmed black felt hat, Anders Norse said cheerfully, “Nice feel these have, don’t you think?”—at which the girl, wearing a jibbah of large wooden beads and a yellow scarf on her dark head replied, “If one is only interested in money, perhaps.”

  Phillip had seen the girl at the Parnassus Club but had never spoken to her. Had she recognised him? If so, she had made no sign. Surely she would not think that Anders Norse, in his unsophisticated geniality, had offered her money because he wanted to get off with her?

  Julian, with folded arms, looked arrogantly amused. Phillip wondered what he should do if the sculptor were suddenly to open his hands, powerful with the moulding of so much clay, and tear off the collar of Anders’s coat. So he leaned across and said, “My friend has no ulterior motive, I assure you, he thinks that a sovereign is a beautiful piece of work. We are writers, of a sort. Will you do us the honour of drinking with us?”

  “Sure,” replied the sculptor. “I vill have a large ‘Old Scottie’, and this lady, who is my Sibyl, vill have a bottle of Burgundy.”

  Julian grunted, and began to bite his nails. He had no regard for what were generally ridiculed in the popular press as the distorted figures of a Jewish sculptor from New York’s East Side. The grunt was succeeded by enjoyment that old Phillip had been caught in a characteristic impulse to make things worse in the best of all possible worlds.

  The waiter came with a bottle lying on its side in a flat wicker basket. He held it to the gaze of the sculptor, to show the label; then presented the cork, before pouring the top of the wine into a glass. Then bowing, he set before the sculptor a large glass of whisky with a bottle of soda-water; and three tall glasses of Pilsener beer, which the three men had been drinking.

  “One pound, sixteen shilling,” said the waiter, coming to Phillip’s side.

  Phillip had only some coppers, and his last ten-shilling note. Quietly, with a slow smile, Anders Norse put down two sovereigns on the plate, nodding to the waiter who bowed and went away with the money.

  Shortly afterwards the sculptor, his drink merely sipped, left with his model, who had not touched her glass of wine.

  “Hurr,” grunted Warbeck. “‘I vill ’ave a large Old Scotti and my Sibyl she vill ’ave a boddle of Burgundy. Well, it’s a poor heart that never rejoices,” and taking the whisky, he poured it down his throat, followed by his glass of Pilsener with the remark, “Beer is for the young, bed is for the old, I think.”

  “I’m awfully sorry, Anders,” said Phillip. “I ought not to have interfered.”

  “It’s all right, Phillip. I had to spend them sooner or later. I got them from an American client this morning.”

  “I’ll pay you back as soon as I can.”

  “Don’t worry. By this time in five years you’ll be earning five thousand a year.”

  “Do you really think so?”

  “I’m sure of it.”

  Julian Warbeck scoffed again as he reached for the bottle of Burgundy.

  “By the way, did you get payment for your essay in the English Review?”

  “No. I didn’t really want any, Anders.”

  “Well, you can’t live on air. Even Shelley had private means. Let me try next time. I’ve sent your book to Hollins, by the way, with a special letter of recommendation to J. D. Woodford, their reader. Don’t worry, it will be taken sooner than later. Well, I must be on my way.”

  Phillip was left with Julian and the bottle of Burgundy. “I can’t drink my beer, it’s too cold,” he said. “Can you manage it for me?”

  “Certainly!” Down Julian’s gullet went the pale yellow beer. Phillip swallowed a glass of red wine, and after initial doubts began to feel cheerful. Half an hour later the two left, the bottle having been emptied.

  By this time Phillip was feeling exhausted by Julian’s consta
nt scoffing, which became bullying when Phillip would not lend him the ten-shilling note. He was so persistent that at last Phillip, near to tears, gave it to him, with the feeble remark, “At least Swinburne was a gentleman, even if he was a poet.” And turning away he ran along the Embankment, followed by Julian, who soon gave up.

  Phillip ran on as far as the Sphinx, where he stopped, feeling breathless and deathly sick. He managed to get to the parapet in time to spare himself shame before people passing by. Vomiting gave no relief. He felt that he could not breathe. Bending over again, with a choking feeling, he felt in his mouth a strange salty taste. He saw blood on the parapet, while Cleopatra’s Needle appeared to be falling over. He was lying on the paving stones; and managing to get to a plane tree, leant against it, breathing quickly, his heart thudding in his ears.

  A policeman helped him to a seat. Later an ambulance arrived, its bell heard dimly through a desire to sleep. He was taken to the casualty ward of Gower Street Hospital, and lying on a bed, given oxygen. Later he was questioned by a young doctor, who told him that he had had a haemorrhage.

  “Is it going to be fatal, doctor?”

  “No, but you must stay here for the time being. Where do you live?”

  He gave the address of his South Devon cottage.

  “Anyone there to look after you?”

  “I live alone.”

  “Aren’t you visiting anyone in London?”

  “I have been, but I don’t want to worry them, or bother them.”

  “You say you have a disability pension for this? Very well. Perhaps we can arrange for the military authorities to take you into a sanatorium. You’ll be X-rayed in the morning. Meanwhile don’t worry, drink this, and then go to sleep.”

  Feb. 10. I am feeling much better. Have given up smoking and drinking. I really think that the crisis of my life is here now. The flux was a warning to live a more healthy, regulated life. God knows I am trying to improve all round; to be tolerant of others, and kindlier. If my work becomes rotten, well then, so much is unfortunate: but to produce works of genius at the expense of laughter, happiness, joyousness and health—I AM NOT GOING TO DO IT. It is a ghastly fight I’m fighting: it is primarily one of the will, for conservation, or self-control, of emotion. But can I become, now, an entirely different man? By doing so, shall I fail, or succeed as Spica suggests? Hitherto I have been terribly and appallingly weak and lacking in self-control. But clear as Venus the evening star reluming the western sky, pure as that lustre which glows and glorifies the watcher as it did Keats, bringing a sense of uplifting and a feeling of tranquillity, the star of a gentle and cherishing love burns in my heart.

  So far Phillip had been paying his quarterly pension money to his mother; otherwise he existed on the £2/2/-a week for writing 400–500 words of the Motor Notes. By the end of January that had ceased, after Bloom had told him that he had no space for his half column; they had to take more advertisements. Against this was Anders Norse’s steady encouragement; whenever Phillip called at the Adelphi basement there he sat, cheery and optimistic, behind his table with piles of books on the floor and an old typewriter in front of him. He suggested that Phillip should write stories for Pearson’s Magazine about the countryside, and said they would pay up to twenty guineas. Phillip told Anders that he had never forgotten the bird and animal stores by F. St. Mars, illustrated by Warwick Reynolds, which had appeared before the war. It was a shock to be told that F. St. Mars had died of consumption.

  Feb. 14. No more lying in bed till 9 or 10 in the morning, running to seed, forming habits of loafing; then spasmodically walking 20 miles in a day, followed by idleness; writing 5,000 words one night, and 500 the next week.

  A man’s defects can be conquered, as I proved to myself in March 1918, when I drove myself out of my old weak character, and forgot myself in having to think for and of others. Except for the element of chance man can control his own destiny upon this earth in the things that matter: happiness, objective thought, action and success. Ergo, a man with anything in him can always be understood by others if he develops the powers to simplify matters, and sets aside his own petty complaints.

  At the Parnassus Club this evening I met a nice man nicknamed ‘Brex’, a Canadian, in spirit both young and fresh. He is literary editor of The Daily Crusader. He lectured on journalism. The beginner’s motto, he said, should be “Faith, Hope and CLARITY”. He seems friendly to me. His lecture was derided as bourgeois, smug, and commercial by a thin youngish man who was a conscientious objector in the war, and before that used to work on the English Review, when it was edited by Ford Madox Hueffer.

  I walked part of the way home with this critic who informed me that he would be recognised as one of the major European novelists as soon as paper was available again. “Before the war I had more translations than any other young English author,” he said.

  I didn’t think he had it in him to be a comprehensive writer; his reactionary views were narrow; he was mannered, he objected to so much, and from a political standpoint. We shall see.

  Another man I have become friendly with, and his son and two daughters, is a regular contributor to Pearson’s Magazine. E. J. is a bit finnicky in manner, and in talk rather dry and almost cynical. He is scornful about profiteers (his villains) but otherwise his stories are romantic and sentimental. He knew Ernest Dowson, who wrote Cynara.

  (Here I must interrupt to record how, one night when I tried to read this poem to Mother, she laughed as soon as I had started. I made four starts, each time she was laughing before I had got to the end of the first line. At last she explained that the first line of Cynara was, when read by me, rather funny. Thus,

  Last night, ah yesternight, betwixt her lips and mine

  There fell thy shadow, Cynara …

  had, as I read it, become

  Last night, ah yes! tonight! etc.)

  But to continue:

  E.J.’s younger daughter is beautiful, with a big mouth, brown eyes, and I feel, very clever. She reminds me of Spica, and I almost love her. Possibly milady is 12. When I told her that I shot partridges at Husborne Abbey two years ago she was angry, and said that I was not to do it again. Decided to write a short story for her (secret!).

  If I could, I would love every girl-child in the world: or perhaps I would be loved by them. This may sound strange to people like ‘Sappho’, John Crowe, etc., but not to those men and women who, for example, love Francis Thompson’s Daisy, Poppy, and his poems about the Meynell children. I would like to live in a large old house in the country and have a lot of beautiful children with me, and tell them stories that would make their eyes to shine, and then I would know that the shine was because of me, and therefore mine. How beautiful to have children of one’s own. Miserere me, it will never be. I shall be too poor, or become ill before I can get married—this damned consumption, will it kill me? Or perhaps like Willie and my elder sister, I may develop fainting fits.

  If Thompson could have met a greatheart when he was 23 or 24, he would have grown, not within himself as phosphorescent wood in a decaying pollard willow, but as a happy tree.

  Feb. 17. I am writing newspaper articles, but cannot potboil. I can not. I try, but chuck it and go for a walk.

  Brex, the Literary Editor of The Daily Crusader, is a good fellow. He has taken three articles of mine, In the Country, 300 words each, and paid for them beforehand, 1½ guineas each. I am sure he has done this to help me.

  He gave me his novel—Man Plays a Part.

  Brex could, I think, do very good things in the novel line, but he should cast several serious faults. One of them is complacency and finding material success too easily. He has the gift of graphic (but not vivid) description, a manner of gentle humour, and a noble perspective. The man is all right, but his means of conveyance are at present imperfect. I gather that Lord Otterburn thinks highly of him.

  ‘The Otter’ appears to be a man of great influence behind the scenes. Brex will be pushed so quickly in the damned jour
nalistic world that he will overstep the narrow way of the artist and never find it again.

  Yesterday I had a long and very kind letter from Spica, who is back at Cambridge (that’s the place to meet young men! Ignoble thought, Phillip!) and now learning jewellery work. I enclosed several MSS for her in my succinct, impersonal reply.

  But I wish she would tell me if she loves me. I think it would enable me to find my happiness, and therefore health, so much more quickly. This suspended situation is sapping: like an attack projected, but delayed. Let the barrage fall! Six hours out of seven, at present, one is fighting despair.

  I have been re-reading Jefferies’ Story of my Heart, which is all-in-all to Willie. I agree that in thought, or rather aspiration, this poor boy from an unhappy Wiltshire smallholding ranks with the great geniuses of the world, of which Jesus Christ is easily the first and most sublime, at least in the Western (or should it be Eastern?) World. But there is too much strain in Jefferies; from utter loneliness. He died of phthisis at the age of 38.

  Feb. 19. Wonderful news! Willie has come on leave from France, looking very well!

  Chapter 6

  THROUGH THE WOODS

  The following Sunday Phillip and Willie had arranged to meet two men members of the Parnassus Club at Brumley South Station for a walk in the country. Their destination was Phillip’s deserted lime-kiln quarry on the Westerham Road. When the London train came in Phillip saw that Broughton and Quick had brought the girl he had seen with the sculptor in the Café Royal.