by Unknown
A FEW papers of airy persiflage such as this were all that Anon ever published about Shakespeare and his contemporaries, but, as I think I have already said, they were not all I wrote and still less all I planned. Marlowe and Peele and Greene and Gabrielissime Harvey and Tom Nash and all the others, how I dwelt with them in the Edinburgh University Library and edited them with voluminous notes of import, the while with the other hand I reached out for John Skelton, Dunbar, Marvell, Mapes, Donne, Prynne. Masson is said, before he finished his monumental biography, to have known what happened on every day of Milton’s life (though I have always suspected that he was doubtful about one Wednesday), and if I did not precisely meditate a row of monuments on a smaller scale, I think that so far as the Shakespearians were concerned I could have drawn a nice little map before ever I saw London of where they lived and wrote and quarrelled and drank and mostly miserably died. They were the only people I searched for on my arrival, and I found some of them; but I could not have cared enough about them (I sorrowfully admit), else the book would have been written by now. I am not in a hilarious mood when I say this, but it is humorous to remember the one matter in which those labours helped me. When for a start in life I answered an advertisement for a leader-writer in a provincial newspaper, I was asked to send specimens of my leaders, and I, who had never written (nor read) a leader, sent instead a treatise on King Lear. I was appointed; so it was Shakespeare who got me on to the Press.
CHAPTER XI
“THE SADDEST WORD” — DARK PASSAGES IN ANON’S HISTORY
“I WAS in the Scotch express on my way to London, and I think it was at Carlisle that five of them boarded my compartment, all husband-high. When their packages had been disposed of and they were comfortably settled in their seats they turned their eyes on me and gave their verdict in the deaf-and-dumb alphabet, which unfortunately I understand. It spelt out the words ‘Quite harmless,’ and they then disregarded me for the rest of the journey. They talked openly of the most intimate things as if I were far away in the guard’s van. It is a treatment I am used to, but never perhaps have I been so blotted out, I who know that with another face I could be quite harmful.
They were bound, as their conversation showed, for a wedding where at least two of them were to be bridesmaids, and had almost as many topics as chocolates, but the one over which they lingered most lovingly was the Saddest Word. A tall poetical-looking girl thought that the saddest word was Nevermore. She was the loveliest of my scorners, her cheeks of the most delicate carmine and her eyes were like lakes. The fingers with which she had spelt out my doom betokened grace and breeding, while her voice, capable of the most varied modulations, now soft and tender, now deep and mellow, and again clear and bell-like, was of the timbre to stir a man who was not harmless to his innermost soul. Nevermore. The word in her opinion sounded like the wail of a broken heart. It was a judge passing sentence of death. Nevermore. That was what the relentless waves said as they dashed against the sullen rocks, and the seagulls eddying round the cliffs took up the shrill response. What she specially liked about Nevermore was its cruelty. It was as cruel as the grave. Was it not the grave itself, the grave of human hopes and aspiration? It recalled the past only to make the future more bitter. The loved ones, or the loved one of the past, where were they, where was he? Far away across the seas; we should meet him Nevermore. The dances we have had. Ah, the dances we shall have Nevermore. The smiles that were. The warm clasp of the hand that seemed so trivial, that meant so much. The nights on the river, when the boat glided down, shadowlike. The day when first they met and all seemed merry as a marriage bell. All, all are gone. Nevermore. The river glides on; but when shall they see it together again, they and the pale moon? Still the conservatory stands; but is it the conservatory of the days of yore? Ah, Nevermore, Nevermore. She could not look upon a raven now without fancying it croaking forth that doleful solemn word. ‘Quoth the raven, Nevermore,’ was the saddest line in English poetry.
Nevermore did not seem so inexpressibly mournful as simply ‘Never’ to a second girl, who was undoubtedly the fairest in the compartment and was sitting on my newspaper. It is no disparagement to the others to say that she shone among them like the moon among stars. Yet were the sun a more fitting emblem, for she seemed a ray of sunshine rather than a being of flesh and blood. She was of a small form of the most enchanting roundness, and her noble head stood on a neck white as the untrodden snow. Her golden hair (or coal-black hair, for at times I got a little confused) escaped from its single band of ribbon, and fell in rich profusion over her shapely shoulders, caressing her delicate shell-like ears, and ever and anon lightly kissing the red pouting lips that men with some harm in them would have gladly done deeds of derring-do to win. Her melting eyes seemed ever on the point of glistening with a tear; and as she spoke falteringly, dreamily, she slowly picked a bun to pieces to get at the currants. Never was sadder than Nevermore because it did not even imply the pleasures of memory. Nevermore meant that though you might now be old and grey there had been moments of happiness to which you could look fondly back. They were gone, but they had been. No such solace could be got from Never. The lover’s glance, the hand-pressure, the moments in which one lives a lifetime; it was sad indeed to think that they would be no more, but sadder to think that they had never been. Nevermore was a sentence for the future, Never for the past and the future too. Saddest of all, Never meant that you knew what you had missed, what you must go on missing to the end. The most terrible line in English poetry was not ‘ Quoth the raven, Nevermore,’ but,
Never — for ever; for ever — Never.
The bells tolled it when the grave was filling, and the aged hills sent back the mournful words. The time to appreciate their significance was in autumn in the woods when all the twigs were bare and the naked trees shivered in the cold.
Wandering through the dead and rustling leaves (or eating buns in a train), she loved to murmur, ‘Never, for ever; for ever, Never.’
The others might be pretty; but the third speaker was a queen among her sex, majestic, stately, superb. Her eyes were black as death, their lashes of the same hue. Eyes wonderful, fatal not only to others, but to herself. Two dark arches marked the low brow, and the creamy skin had the blush that is at once the painter’s admiration and his despair; in tint it looked like a magnolia petal laid on a rose-leaf. Her white firm hands were plump and dimpled, with lissom fingers and cameo nails that might dig deep on provocation into the kind of man who was worth while, namely, any man except a harmless one. She spoke with a seductive voice that vibrated like sweet music through the compartment. To her, sadder far than any word was the tragic story told in the phrase It Might Have Been. Nevermore dealt with the inevitable. However bitter Never might be, not yours was the blame. Fate said that what was would be Nevermore; you had no voice in the matter. With It Might Have Been all was different. It implies fault on your part; and what so bitter in this vale of tears as the consciousness that you suffer for your own error, your own blindness? It is sackcloth and ashes now, and It Might Have Been bridal garments. It Might Have Been. With these words you are back again at the honeysuckled gate of your youth. Ah, how well you remember it, with its broken spars and the catch that clicked. He came. He was impatient, perhaps; but you, you were coy, and you parted to meet no more. That was the turning-point of your life. You did not realize it then. You know it now. And how easily It Might Have Been. Or it was at the yeomanry ball, and you sat on the stairs with Another. You longed to be with Him, for you had read aright from his eyes the tale he longed to tell; but though your hand would have thrilled to his touch you were mad and you sat on the stairs with Another. Mad, mad. And so he turned on his heel and left you, and the light went out of your life. It Might Have Been.
There is an attraction in some faces beyond all mere physical charm. A girl who thought there was most sadness in the simple words A Faded Flower had an ethereal look that the others lacked. A harmful man would perhaps have admired the others
more, but he would have chosen the seat beside her. What was it about her that gave her this subtle fascination? At times you would have said (if you had been sufficiently harmful to be worth listening to) that she was absolutely plain, and yet her face haunted you like a painting by the old Masters. Was it that there was a history in that face, that she was one who had already lived and suffered? She regretted that they had not bought chocolate cakes instead of drops, and it was because A Faded Flower was pathetic rather than tragic that she liked it best. A flower was the emblem of happiness; for it was shortlived. It was here to-day and gone tomorrow. Yet not gone; for the withered stem remained in your hand. The flower was the loved one’s gift far more than glittering jewels, for love was a thing that could not be bought, and a flower cost nothing more than a broken heart. If one could write the history of all the faded flowers that have ever been preserved, it would be a history of the heart since the days of Eve.
The fifth girl was such a one as it is the glory of English homes to grow. There is only one description of her: she was an English girl. Of a blooming complexion and elastic step, hers was the beauty of rosy health. She had been obviously a good daughter, and you could not look at her without feeling that she would make a good wife if you were sufficiently harmful to attract her. No other girl is to be mentioned in the same breath with such a one. She thought there was something strangely sad in the words She Never Told Her Love. Think of the unutterable grief of seeing him day by day as the years roll on, and knowing that he thinks she is without a heart. Ah, fate is sometimes hard. He will never know that her love for him is even as his for her.
This girl, who had more buns than any two of the others, specially infuriated me, and it was while she was still prating, as they had all been doing, of the kind of bounder she preferred (for that is what it amounted to) that I began ostentatiously to converse with myself in the deaf-and-dumb alphabet. Having thus got their scared attention at last, I joined briefly in their discussion. ‘Ladies,’ I said in deaf-and-dumb, ‘the saddest words a broken-hearted young man can have applied to him on his journey to London to seek his fortune is that he is “quite harmless.”’ I then bowed (if the Scotch can bow) and withdrew harmlessly to another compartment.”
DID Anon ever hear ladies discussing him for the briefest moment in a train or anywhere else?
Alas, his trouble was that ladies did not discuss him.
Let us at present pointedly ignore the fair ones of that compartment and concentrate with kindly interest on the mean male figure in the corner. I remember (I should think I do) that it was his habit to get into corners. In time the jades put this down to a shrinking modesty, but that was a mistake; it was all owing to a profound dejection about his want of allure. They were right, those ladies in the train; ‘quite harmless’ summed him up, however he may have writhed (or be writhing still). I am not speaking about how he appealed to man, but about how he did not appeal to woman. Observe him in that compartment. Though insignificant he is not ugly. To be ugly, if you are sufficiently ugly, is said to attract the wayward creatures. The rubber that blotted Anon out is called (and it deserved a big word) Individuality. Anon has read and thought (with resentment) a great deal about individuality, one of the delicious characteristics of which is expressed in the words said to be so common on the lips of woman, ‘The sort of man, my dear, who wherever he may be, is always the centre of it; when you enter a room, without seeing him you know he is there, when he goes he leaves a blank.’ You don’t need to be handsome to be this sort of man, but the handsome ones can, in classic language, do it on their heads, and at any rate it is the handsome kind that our poor Anon wants to be. If you could dig deep enough into him you would find first his Rothschildian ambition, which is to earn a pound a day; beneath that is a desire to reach some little niche in literature; but in the marrow you find him vainly weltering to be a favourite of the ladies. All the other cravings he would toss aside for that; he is only striving hard for numbers one and two, because he knows with an everlasting sinking that number three can never be for him. If they would dislike him or fear him it would be something, but it is crushing to be just harmless.
We continue to survey him in the train. You who don’t know him conclude that he is sitting on one side of the compartment instead of the other side because, say, he likes to face the engine. Not a bit of it. I who remember know that he is sitting there in order not to face the mirror. On one side of railway compartments (as you know so well) there is often a tiny narrow mirror, and our Mr. Anon prefers to sit with his back to it. In after years he always pursued this policy, not merely in trains. I have heard people say (or it has been repeated to me) that at such and such a dinner-party he was comparatively bright, while at such another one he had been drearier than ever. They did not know, no one could know without penetrating his sorrowful heart, that in the first case that dreadful mirror over the mantelshelf was behind him and in the second case in front. He had his most unhappy experiences when there were mirrors north, south, east, and west as in restaurants. I have no recollection of a mirror in his lodgings, but I presume that if there was one he turned its face to the wall.
He heard every other male talked of by lenient ladies (and how lenient they can be about the wrong men) as having some redeeming feature; he was a good listener, or he had a way with him, or his face lit up when he smiled. Anon was a good listener, but could not look as if he were listening, so he might as well have worn Herbert Spencer’s ear-flaps. He certainly never had a way with him. (Nobody knows exactly what this is, but if you have it you have reached harbour.) He did, however, once (though the tragic fool was unaware of it) have a simply irresistible smile. He never even saw it nor any of its effects, but I believe I could bring forward witnesses of it to this day (and have a good mind to do so). The tale is a deplorable one. In early days the school I attended at Dumfries was a ‘mixed’ one, whereat the girls, little witting that they were destroying me, once took a plebiscite about which boy had the sweetest smile. It reached my dazed ears that I had come out on top, and in the ensuing exaltation my smile left me for ever. So far as is known I have never smiled since. If ever in those first years in London Anon in privacy twisted his face before a lookingglass, you know what he was trying to bring back.
If those thoughtless girls of my school days had left to me my one asset, Anon’s future would probably have been very different. Never would he have become such a monster of a labourer. Sufficient for him to have devastated female society. Once (if you will excuse my drivelling) he did seem about to achieve a solitary triumph. A beautiful lady did actually agree to accompany him to a daring luncheon for two at a riverside hotel. (How those memories cling.) He was to hire a carriage (such were the dimensions of the affair), and call for her in it at her address; he did hire it, but when he was halfway to the hotel he found that he was alone; in some imbecile reflections on mundane matters he had forgotten her. He drove back hurriedly, but was hopeless enough to tell her why he was so late; and I suppose that luncheon for two is waiting for them still. What is such a man to do with himself except plod on writing weary novels and plays? That I can now see clearly is why I at last took to those callings. Perhaps it is why all novelists and playwrights take to them.
CHAPTER XII
“THE BLUE AND WHITE ROOM” — CONTINUATION OF THE DARK PASSAGES
“THERE is a saying that hopelessly good-natured people look at life through coloured spectacles. Leonora, whom I am visiting, would not thank you for looking at this room through them unless she chose the colour. They might not harmonize with the room, which is blue and white; and she would resent the intrusion of any spectacles that were not blue. The first night I spent in this room I noticed that the blind was tied up in such a way that it could not flutter down. Snow had fallen all day, and when I put my head on the pillow the cold back garden shone like a white ghost through the window. I did not like it, and I said so next morning. Leonora, who has been married for quite two months, explained tha
t the effect of the snow was so good against the blue of the room. I think this was my first flash into what her spare room had become to her. I have been writing here, and a few minutes ago I caught myself at my old trick of jerking my pen behind me; result, the wall shows ink spots. Had they been blue I could have faced them, but woe is me to spill black in Leonora’s blue and white room. Nevertheless this does give me a subject to write about. I dip in Leonora’s blue bottle, and resume in chastened spirit.
Leonora’s husband is a doctor, and he has a sense of humour. Many a time have I said things that have made him throw back his head. But when I mentioned the blue and white room he uncrossed his legs nervously. We were down stairs in the surgery; but he glanced hurriedly at the door and put down his mortar. I caught him looking covertly at me; and after an uncanny silence he said, ‘The blue and white room,’ as if he had said much more. When he had gone into the anteroom where he dispenses bottles between six and seven o’clock, I sat on ruminating. Truths gradually revealed themselves to me, and I saw that his reserve was manly. There are subjects which are best not discussed, even between friends; and since then I have not mentioned the blue and white room to him. Yet when we bade each other goodnight that evening it was with an unusual grip of the hands; we understood each other. My grip meant that, though he was a married man who had consequently brought it on himself, I sympathized with him; and his meant that had he had his way I should not have to sleep in the blue and white room.
To say that the bedroom is a study in blue and white is not to do it justice. In the furnishing of this room Leonora discloses a genius which we thought she almost lacked in her maiden days. I found this out gradually. The person who occupies the blue and white room never knows all at a glance. He is always finding out something new (in blue or white). The room grows upon him; and with it admiration for Leonora. Take for instance the books. One day the doctor missed from his library a medical treatise; he could find it nowhere. The lady of the house was questioned, and she suggested that he should make use of one of the other treatises instead. This sent him prowling. He went straight to the blue and white room, and returned with the treatise (which is bound in blue). I was induced thereby to make a scrutiny of the bookshelf in my bedroom. All the bindings are blue or white or both. I discovered that the gentle but dogged Leonora had searched the library for volumes suitable for the blue and white bedroom; and the books suitable for a blue and white bedroom are books that are bound in blue and white. They are not a happy family on that shelf. There are two of Black’s novels (I am sure she would like to change his name to Blue), a parliamentary handbook, a Thomson and Tait’s ‘Elements of Natural Philosophy,’ an ‘Anatomy,’ and several other medical works, a copy of ‘Horace,’ two time-tables, etc. To-day I notice that a parliamentary blue-book has been added. It was too large for the shelf, so was laid in a provocative attitude on the dressing-table.
